Cloneworld - 04 (2 page)

"The
bitch.
"

Pippa rubbed at her chin, eyes staring into the distant blue glow of the planet, swirling with white masses of cloud cover. It had been a simple mission. Using previously gathered intelligence, Franco's aim was to visit the planet covertly in order to determine the whereabouts of something called the
Junkala Soul.
An ancient planetary being named VOLOS had directed Combat K to Cloneworld; Franco's job was to get in via a high-dive SLAM drop, sniff around, and get out again. No fuss. No drama. But now he'd vanished, and Pippa had to decide how long to leave it before revealing her cloaked Hornet and attracting unwanted interest from Cloneworld's authorities. And Pippa knew, both dominant factions on the planet - the orgs and the gangers - had little or no love for QGM, the Quad-Gal Military. In fact, the orgs and gangers were downright hostile and suspicious of all things QGM; they saw them as interfering, meddling bureaucrats. Which they no doubt were.

"Shit."

"Your tension levels are running at 97%." Alice released a gentle aroma of orange blossom. "I suggest a hot bath and a beaker of alcoholic depressant."

"No. No, I'm going to have to fly in after the simpleton, aren't I? If I find out..."

"Yes?" enquired Alice, politely.

"No, no, it's okay. I was about to say that if I find out this mission has been compromised because of Franco's incurable love of beer, brothels and nasty alien cuisine... but then, no, that wouldn't happen, would it? Even Franco's not
that damn stupid
to risk the entire future of the Quad-Gal under an onslaught of invading junk armies like a toxic plague, even
he's
not that fucking dumb to risk it all for gambling, booze and cheap sex."

Pippa and Alice considered this.

"Is he?" said Pippa, eyebrows arching over beautiful green eyes.

"I think we should go in," said Alice, making a calculated decision.

"Shit. Yeah, so do I. Prime the engines..."

"Engines primed," said Alice, and deep in the belly of the Fast Attack Hornet
Metallika,
slick neutron engines fired into life with a tremble of anticipation. "SLAM drop commencing in five, four, three..."

"Stop!" shouted Franco, suddenly, and from the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of four or five QuickRepair PopBots fluttering near the dungeon ceiling amidst the mould and dripping water. Again, he frowned at the context, and his eyes met Opera's and there was a bright, sparkling intelligence there. Something was deeply wrong. This whole thing stunk like a rancid dead donkey.

"One last request?" smiled Opera.

"Yes. This." Franco's boot lashed out, slamming Opera in the crotch. She grunted, taking a step back, and the digital chainsaw hit the ground, buzzing as it cut a stream of sparks through stone. There came a squawk, and the five men started forward with torture implements raised. Franco's boots clamped the chainsaw's flanks and kicked it up into the air, where it spun for a moment and fell to earth in an arc, shearing neatly through one of Franco's hand shackles - and the arm of the steel chair itself - before skittering off across the floor, leaving a trail of molten stone. Franco wrenched his right arms free, just as the first bulky beefcake struck with the iron bar. Franco took the blow on his arm, twisted his wrist, and took the bar neatly from the man, who stood for a moment, hands empty, a confused expression rioting across his flat features. The look vanished as the bar hit him between the eyes with a meaty
thunk.
He dropped, and Franco levered the bar under the shackle on his left wrist, popping it with a squeal, and stood. The other four men attacked, screaming, and Franco ducked the whirring mace, planted a left punch in its owner's belly, backhanded the iron bar across Scalpel's face, front-kicked Shears in the balls, and slammed the iron bar across Knuckle-Duster's temple. Franco grabbed Mace, who was doubled over, wheezing, by the hair at his temples with both hands, and rammed his knee into his nose three times. The thug dropped, bleeding, to the dungeon floor. The beefcake with the digital scalpel threw the buzzing weapon, and Franco swayed, the blade flashing past his face and embedding in the wall.
This is getting serious,
thought Franco with a frown, and he leapt forward with a grunt and shoved the iron bar up the man's nose so hard it wedged into his skull, and he hit the floor, screaming and trying to pull it out with blood- and snot-slippery hands.

"Wait," came Opera's soothing voice. She had collected the digital chainsaw and held it in front of her, weaving a gentle figure of eight as she advanced on Franco with purposeful steps.

"Don't do it," snapped Franco, fists clenching. "I am not," he preened, "as shit as I look."

"You come in here, messing everything up with your fucking
combat training,
you little fat bastard...!"

The chainsaw swung for him, and Franco skipped back. The spinning, glowing chainsaw blade caught the wall and left a long glowing streak of molten stone.

"I'm warning you," said Franco, face grim, voice dropping to a dull monotone, "if you don't put down the pretty toy, I'm going to have to get nasty. And if there's one thing I really hate, it's killing a beautiful woman with a bosom like yours."

"You bastard, you ruined my show!" howled Opera, charging forward, but Franco had ducked to the right, back towards the groaning heavies, and as she swung the buzzing chainsaw Franco spun away, Opera tripped over the fallen body of one of her men, and the chainsaw blade fell back, cutting neatly through her own neck. Opera's head rolled across the floor like a deflating football. Blood trickled from the neatly cauterised neck stump. Everything was still, tense, a frozen moment in time, and Franco uncoiled from his fighter's crouch and looked around warily.

"Cut! Cut! Cut!"

And suddenly there were blinding floodlights blazing from every angle, along with mechanical roars and grinding and the thumping of heavy ratchets filling the world as two of the very
walls
were lifted on huge mechanical arms, and Franco turned around, dazed and confused, a mixture of horror and wonder on his goatee-bearded face as, as, as... as he realised he was in a fucking
television studio
.

"Cut! I said stop the fucking cameras!" squealed a small, frizzy-haired man, as he came stomping towards Franco, and Franco simply gawped with a stupid look as he took in the dollies and cranes and jib-arms, the plethora of sound engineers and runners and a studio audience who were sat, mouths open in shock at the sight of their favourite, funny, brilliant TV star Opera with her head now twelve metres from her body.

"Franco, you stupid little bastard, you just went and killed Opera! She's the biggest TV star
in the whole damn world!
What were you thinking? What were you doing? Oh my Green Gods, we're gonna be so in the shit-oven over this fiasco, and I ask again,
What were you even thinking of, you stupid little ginger twat? You were on fucking TV for all that's holy, you were on a live TV show!"

Franco considered this. "Actually," he said, looking around for the exit, fists still clenched, mind working fast, "if I was being pedantic, I'd say that a) I didn't know I was on TV, b) Opera
technically
cut off her own fat head, and c) what kind of insane TV show has you pretending to torture people in a torture dungeon? Eh? I said eh?"

The producer seemed to fill up with a crimson rage. "It's
Torture,
the numero uno most popular and well-loved reality TV show in the whole of fucking Quad-Gal, you chump! It's beamed through all Four Galaxies, is watched by fifteen
billion
Blobbers, and
you just killed the bloody star! The Prime of Core Government will have your head on a silver platter for this atrocity!
"

Franco looked around. He scratched his beard. He looked around again. "Er," he said. Then shrugged. "I'm. Er. Sorry?"

There was a commotion, and fifty heavily armed police officers stormed through a variety of doors and studio entrances. They carried state-of-the-art MPK sub-machine guns and D5 Shotguns used for riots and crowd control (and the controlling slaughter of rioting crowds). And... Franco blinked. Every single member of the Royal Ganger Police Force looked
exactly the same.
They were the same build, the same height, and had the same facial features - that of a thirty-year-old man in his prime, with neat dark hair and purple rings under the eyes from too many late nights drinking coffee and eating donuts.

"Throw down your weapons!" came a crackly voice through a loud-hailer.

"Put your hands in the air!"

"Lie on the floor!"

"Hands behind your back!"

"Don't move, sucker!"

"I'm not carrying a weapon," said Franco, helpfully.

"He can't put his hands in the air
and
lie on the floor, you idiot," crackled the loud-hailer.

"Er, just kneel down then, with your hands in the air. And throw down your weapons, mister!"

At that point, Franco's earlobe comm gave a tiny buzz. In his ear, Franco heard Pippa's voice. "At last, we've found the bugger. Franco? Franco, what are you - oh, no, tell me this is a joke, a bad dream, a slap in the face with a portable bloody nuke! You've
killed Opera?
Holy shit! She's a public
phenomenon
and you've just decapitated her on live TV! Oh,
no...
"

"I didn't kill her," said Franco through gritted teeth. "She sort of cut off her own head with a digital chainsaw during a fight. I was the completely innocent party, I was."

"Listen, just hang tight," snapped Pippa. "Do not fight these goons. I repeat, do not fight..."

The RGPF waded into Franco, and he slammed a right hook, a right straight, a left hook, another right straight, breaking jaws and cheekbones on that perfectly gangered face before the sheer weight of cloned police and batons clubbed him to the ground in a flurry of eagerness and Franco entered yet another blissful state of dreamless euphoria.

CHAPTER ONE

PUBLIC ENEMA NO. 1

She lay on a cold slab. It was uncomfortable, pressing against her shoulder blades, coccyx and ankles. She was naked. She shivered, but relished the feeling. Goosebumps rippled along her flesh. Pain teased her. But then - that was okay. Pain meant life. Pain meant
existence.
She opened her eyes. The world was grey. The world was black. Swirling whorls, a fluid jigsaw. And she remembered -
no colour
. Everything was black and white. Like an old filmy. Like the P-Earth-History books. She released a breath. A breath held in a cage for a million years. She sat up. Looked around. Her eyes settled on a table. On the table there was a photograph. Next to the photograph was a gun. She took the gun. It nestled in her palm, like metal flesh. She licked her lips. Studied the face in the photo. And instinctively, because she was programmed to, she knew what she must do.

Franco groaned, long and low, and realised he was in the shit. This was going to be a week of being in the shit, he understood that now, and somehow it made him reticent to open his eyes because everything would be brown.
I'll just lie here for a while. It's cool. No new violences are being visited upon my organs, and despite a rumbling in my belly and the craving for a few stiff whiskies, I think I could just get used to this.

"Oy!"

Franco remained stoically calm, and stubbornly refused to open his eyes. A distant pounding drummed through his skull from rough treatment at the hands and clubs of the Royal Ganger Police Force. The ends of his fingers tingled, signifying some element of nerve stress, and Franco tried hard not to imagine what would happen when Pippa finally turned up... and yet! Yet it had been going so well. And what happened when things were going so well, was that they usually
stopped
going so well, and then kicked a man in the balls - or if one didn't have balls, the nearest damn equivalent...

"Oy! You there!"

Franco gave in. He opened his eyes. He gazed up at cold grey steel. It was a cold grey steel ceiling attached to cold grey steel walls. A cool breeze washed over him.
Aircon? A drink, sir? Maybe you'd like to retire to your room for a massage...?
Franco clicked his brain into gear and ran a physical diagnostic. He wiggled everything. Everything seemed to work. His eyes were going in and out of focus, and he tenderly touched his head where a lump the size of an egg was threatening to crack open and spill yolk across the... yep, he checked, across the cold grey steel floor. So then! Police cell. Ganger police cell. A ganger police cell fashioned from, Franco blinked and checked around, a solid cube of grey cold steel. Shit.
Shit.
How did one escape from a cube? And more importantly, how did they
feed
you?

"I said oy, you, bastad!"

There came a whirring sound, followed by several clunks, and Franco shuffled into a sitting position on his cold grey steel bunk. From the steel gloom came a woman, a little old woman, and
awww
, Franco liked little old women because they reminded him of his mum, and Franco loved his mum, but this little old woman
leered
and
loomed
from the gloom because, because... the clanking stopped. She had splayed metal toes at the end of what could only be described as robot legs.