Cloneworld - 04 (47 page)

"Just sounding the alarm, don't you know. Squawk! Emergency! Emergency! There's an emergency going on, Buster!"

"Yes yes, we bloody heard you!" snapped Franco, and tried to slap the parrot as he hopped across the chamber.

Within minutes they stampeded into the Mole's cockpit, and Strogger and Anklebolt, who were
still having the same argument,
looked up, faces frowning.

"What's the emergency?" snapped Franco, panting. Outside, through the rockshield, they were still surging ahead, the mole's paddles continuously cutting and grinding through rock.

"I just wanted the Combat K ident code for Pippa," came Alice's sleepy voice. "So I can track her with more clarity through these miles and miles of strata."

"What?" said Franco, and glared at the parrot. "What's emergency about that?"

"It's important information, buster! Need it updating now, we do! Squawk!"

"You feckin' eedjit," said Franco, rubbing his groin. "Did myself an injury then, I did!"

Tarly closed her arms around him. "Yeah, but that's nothing a bit of loving won't put right."

It took three days for the Mole to dig under the ocean, on a solid bearing towards Pippa's location. At length, Alice called Franco and Tarly from what had been christened their "Love Nest" - a place from which they rarely emerged - and Franco slumped into the cockpit seat, face pale, hands trembling.

"Are you all right?" said Queen Strogger, staring hard at the Combat K squaddie.

"Yeah, yeah, it's this Tarly lass, she's got everlasting energy, I tell you! I feel like a bloody cow - milked."

Tarly sat down next to him, smiling and rubbing his leg.

"Hello, lover."

"Er. Hello. No, no! Focus! Alice, Polly said," and he eyed the bird evilly, "that you have more information. Or are you going to simply tell me a bit of rock went past?"

"No. It's Pippa. Her co-ordinates. She has moved."

"Where from? Where to?"

"She was lost in the depths of Clone Terra. Now she's moving -
fast -
towards The Teeth mountain range."

"Why would she go there? Do you think she knows about this plot by the gangers to build an army? And more importantly, has she found the 3Core?"

"I just have co-ordinates, Franco," said Alice, voice dreary. "Still, if she does land in The Teeth it will make our journey significantly easier. We are only hours away from the outer edges of the base bedrock."

"Hours?" said Franco.

"Hours!" smiled Tarly, rubbing his thigh.

"Gods, no!" said Franco. "I haven't got no energy!"

"Let me persuade you," said Tarly, taking him by the hand and leading him out of the cockpit.

He gave a feeble, backward grin. And disappeared.

Queen Strogger and Princess Anklebolt III glared at each other with daggers. Really. They had knives poking out of their eyes. And Polly looked on, oblivious to this biomechanical animosity surrounding her.

"Tsch," said Polly the Parrot, Special Robotic Friend. "Kids nowadays, eh? Squawk?"

It was hours later. Franco, lying in bed, smoking a cigarette and drinking a glass of whiskey, felt the decline in power and sat up.

"Come here, lover," growled Tarly.

"No, no, listen! We're slowing down. Something's going on."

Franco got out and started to dress, in clothes he'd found in the Mole's stores. He pulled on a rough shirt and pants, and heavy boots, eschewing his usual sandals because he realised he was going into a possible combat situation, and after the loss of a little finger, didn't want to lose any other digits.

"Come back, lover!"

"No! Come on Tarly, shift your arse."

"Just once more..."

"Hey, just because they call me Franco 'Snake in His Pants' Haggis, doesn't mean I can perform for a whole
week
without a break. Anyway, we have more important business to attend."

"What's more important than servicing your snake?" grinned Tarly.

Franco stared at her. "You're behaving a bit weird, love."

Tarly shrugged, and climbed elegantly from the bed. She stood, naked, tall and firm and proud, a perfect example of what a woman could aspire to. She was perfectly formed, she was athletic and yet demure, she was psychotic and yet exciting, and she did it for Franco in bucketfuls. She was a vixen. A Valkyrie! A
Goddess!

The Mole gave a shudder, and slowed yet more. "Come on. We need to be ready. I bet there's a few surprises ahead of us!" Franco walked out through the narrow doorway.

Tarly smiled. "I think you may be right, there," she said.

"We're reaching the surface. ETA three minutes," said Alice, as Franco appeared in the cockpit.

The Mole had slowed to a gentle rhythm of scooping and grinding, and Franco scratched his beard. "Alice, you sure now that this is where Pippa is?"

"To within fifty metres," said Alice, gently. "And now she's stationery. We're at the heart of The Teeth mountain range, slap-bang in the middle of Cloneworld."

"Are there any baddies?" said Franco, baring his teeth.

"My scanners show no other activities," said Alice, weakly. "Although I feel...
odd.
Like I may have been...
hacked.
"

"Great," muttered Franco, frowning. He scratched his beard. "So, it looks like Pippa found the 3Core then, and came here for a rendezvous?" He rubbed his chin. "Just... what a strange choice of destination. Unless she got some kind of message from QGM. Unless they're picking us up! Hey, maybe we're going home? Whiskey! Sausages! Brothels!"

Tarly coughed.

"Not brothels! Bars! Clubs and pubs and yippidy do!"

Ahead, the scoops slowed yet again. The Mole shuddered, engines whining. Then daylight broke, blinding them suddenly as the Mole surged upwards and
out
from the bedrock. Franco ran over and hit the controls, killing the engine. The Mole's lead carriage, vertical for a moment, toppled over and
thudded
on its suspension. The rest of the carriages remained beneath the rock, in an excavation of its own creation.

"Daylight!" beamed Franco, grabbing his machine gun and running for the door. "I do hope Pippa's all right, I mean, we didn't part under the best of circumstances, did we, but she did well, not dying after that fall, and I'm reet pleased about that, just hope she managed to get that message to Quad-Gal Military and there's a SLAM ship waiting to hot-drag us all from this ball of miserable crap!"

He opened the door. It had started snowing, a thick, swirling blanket toppling over the mountains. The world outside was white, and Franco slapped a button to unfold the steps. "Pippa!" he bellowed, tottering out into the fresh fall.

The world was white!

The world was beautiful!

The world was... full of soldiers pointing guns at him!

Franco blinked.

"Drop the gun, dickhead," came a voice from behind him, and Franco scowled, and turned, and stared hard at Tarly Winters - who was prodding him with the barrel of an org machine gun.

"Er?" he said.

"Gun! Or I'll turn you into ribbon fucking pasta!"

"Hey? What happened to
luvvy-duvvy-wuvvy
? What happened to
your little chickenhead?
What the bloody hell - nay! - the
bloody bollocks,
happened to
your little greasy piston of thumping delight?
"

"Just do it, moron."

Franco climbed down the steps and threw his gun to the ground. There were about a thousand soldiers waiting for him. He grinned. Not the best odds in the world, but he'd taken worse.

"I'm sorry, Franco!" Pippa ran across the snow, boots leaving imprints. She fell into him, and they held each other for a few moments, and Franco pulled back. He smiled into her face, a look of genuine happiness there.

"I'm glad you're okay," he said. "Did you get the..."

"Yeah. But they took it." Pippa gestured to the Mistress, standing, arms crossed, behind her.

Tarly walked across the snow as more soldiers ran into the Mole and bound Queen Strogger and Anklebolt III with anti-org meshclips. Even Polly was captured, although she did manage to nastily peck a soldier on his hand; a quite vicious and bloody assault.

Franco scowled - his scowl getting even worse when he saw the face of Teddy Sourballs. "I don't bloody believe it! I thought I fucking killed you already! Come over here, let me do it again..."

"The benefits of living on Cloneworld," smiled Teddy, her face creasing into weird and wonderful ugliness.

Franco whirled back on Tarly, who strode casually, leisurely, to the Mistress. She draped an arm around the Mistress's shoulders, and grinned over at Franco.

"No!" he said.

"Yes."

"No!" His eyes were wide. "You're in this together? I don't believe it! I just don't bloody believe it!" He stamped his foot. Then he stamped it again! "And... you're... you're... you're hot bloody lesbians! Rabid Carpet Munchers! Gash Guzzlers! Marmalade Makers! You're... you're both... Twat Bandits!"

"Excuse me?" said Tarly, her eyes twinkling with a dark, inner humour. She waved her hand dismissively. "Oh, no. No, Franco, sweetie. It's nothing like that."

She turned then, and kissed the Mistress, and for a long moment it looked like a normal kiss, their tongues entwining, their hands enfolding, fingers interlacing, and they were enjoying themselves, revelling in the kiss, the sort of passionate kiss enjoyed by long-lost lovers finally reunited... and then something started to happen, something started to
change
, and big, wrist-thick strings broke away from both heads, peeling away, until their heads and faces were simply streamers of pale white snakes and the snakes merged and writhed and twisted together, sliming together, wriggling together in possibly the most intimate mating of flesh ever witnessed.

Franco gasped, and his jaw dropped.

Then his mind.

But there was more. It wasn't finished yet. The Mistress and Tarly Winters continued to
break down
into streamers of flesh, their clothes falling away like useless floating gasbags as their arms and legs and torsos all disintegrated into writhing thick snakes, each with its own eyes and flickering red forked tongues, and the two women
merged
and
grew
and turned to face Franco and Pippa and Queen Strogger and Princess Anklebolt and it was one huge seething mass of pink, almost a globe, without limbs, without hair, only lots and lots and lots of tiny little eyes and tiny hissing fangs...

Pippa looked at Franco, her face hard. "And you were shagging
that
?" she said.

Franco looked pale. His hands were shaking. "I wasn't just shagging it. I was going to marry it!"

Pippa tutted. "You're sick," she said.

"I'm going to
be
sick," he said.

"Lock them away!" came the low-level, sibilant hissing, and it wasn't a voice as such, but a
feeling
, transferred through the air on hundreds of tiny flickering breaths.

And a thousand armed soldiers, standing in a rough circle around the captured, closed in with ready weapons and hard eyes.

Franco covered his face and wept.

It was late. Outside, it was dark. Pippa stood, and moved to the narrow window of the stone chamber. She reached out, opened it, breathed in cold fresh mountain air ripe with the perfume of snow. A few flakes drifted in, and she reached out, allowing one to settle on the warm flesh of her hand and melt.
That's me,
she thought.
Melting inside. Disintegrating. Breaking down into nothing. Dying.

"What are you doing?" said Ziggurat, his voice soft, watching her intently. The hunchback never removed his gaze from Pippa. He never slept.

"I've done it."

"Reprogrammed the cards?"

"Yes, the GASGAMs can be loaded with the warheads. They will deliver your payload."

"Just remember," said Ziggurat, odd eyes narrowing. "This is for the greater good. This is for the Quad-Gal! To stop the junks. You understand, little lady? You remember that well?"

"I remember."

Franco, slumped in a chair in the corner, started snoring; Pippa stared at him. His hands and feet were bound tight, and he twitched occasionally. Poor Franco. Always the victim, no matter how much punishment he doled out.

"Wait here. Teddy will come and check the code."

Ziggurat disappeared, and Pippa glanced up at the twin-eye security cams. They followed her worse than any dose of clinging syphilis. She scowled up at them, and then at the snoring figure of Franco.

How can he sleep? How can he sleep now? How can he sleep through this? How can the bastard sleep at all?

"Oy! Franco! Wake up!"

Franco snorted himself awake, and grasped blindly for his Kekra quad-barrel machine pistols, which weren't there. "Eh? What? Wassgoinon?" He rubbed at his nose, which was drooling a long trail of snot, and blinked rapidly several times.