Hardcore - 03 (16 page)

"I agree!" agreed Franco.

"By the way, my name is Sabrina."

Franco bit his tongue, and turned his head. She was sat by his bed, his hospital bed, and Franco's eyes immediately fell on her generous cleavage. Sabrina's bosom quivered like ripe, vibrating melons, filling, or rather,
over-spilling
, a skin-tight nurse uniform which required little, if at all any, imagination. Sabrina coughed, and Franco's eyes lifted from this simple visual pleasure to her face which, if anything, was even more beautiful. She had perfect, flawless, almost translucent skin. Her features were framed by a shock of bright blonde hair, and she wore a very sexy and very inviting succulent red lipstick.

"Are you a nurse, or an angel?" said Franco.

Sabrina laughed coquettishly. "Oh, you do flatter me, Franco."

"You know my name?"

"We went through your pack. Please excuse us, but you were unconscious for hours and we wanted to check your blood group and allergies before administering any treatment."

"You administered treatment?" Franco was suddenly suspicious. Franco was always suspicious. It came from suffering eternal and continuous bad luck.

"Just a muscle relaxant, to combat the shock given by the Convulser. And some burn cream applied to your chest. You were scorched by the impact." Franco relaxed a little, and released a large sigh. "There's nothing to worry about here, Franco, we're all friendly nurses.
Very
friendly nurses. And you've been such a brave, brave little boy."

I'm in bloody heaven, thought Franco, suddenly.

Thank you, God. Thank you for delivering me from evil!
And
for delivering me into the bosom did I say bosom ha ha I meant
hands
of this buxom lovely nurse wench. Franco beamed, his beam an all-teeth beam.

"So," edged Franco, careful now, precise, for he didn't want to ruin this illusion which had saturated many a fantasy on long, lonely evenings with only his right hand for company. "So... let me get this straight. You're a nurse, there's lots of other nurses, and you're here in this hospital in the middle of nowhere..." he glanced about, noting the plethora of empty beds, "and with no patients to satiate your lust did I say lust ha ha I
meant
professional medical need to help people and make people better. Would you say that's a fair appraisal of the situation?"

Sabrina leant a little closer. Her eyes sparkled, as if filled with angel dust, and Franco could see she was gently amused by him, no, not gently amused, more than that, she was
dazzled
by him.

"You, little Franco Wanco, are our only liddle biddy patient. And you're being such a good boy, such a brave soldier, such a grown up liddle policeman, so you are."

"I am?"

"Yes." She was closer now. Her breath was sweet, like flowers. "You are. And do you know what happens to brave little soldiers on this particular ward filled with generously proportioned and
sexually deprived
nurses?"

"Something nice?" ventured Franco.

"Oh yes, baby, something nice," she crooned, and lifted her arm, resting her chin on her hand. Only, she didn't. Because she didn't actually have an arm, or a hand on which to balance her beautiful and flawless chin.

Franco stared. And he stared damn hard.

"What's that?" he ventured, eventually.

Sabrina fluttered her eyelashes. "What do you mean,
sexy?"

"Um. That thing. There. Where your arm should be?"

"That? Why, that's my No. 3 Syringe."

"But... but... it's your
arm
, woman!"

"Yes, I had it genetically hot-wired to my stump after the amputation."

"The amputation?"

"Yes. The multiple-amputation. During the War of the Doctors."

Sabrina stood suddenly, a fast, fluid motion, her limbs unfolding as if she were some kind of mechanical spider. Both her arms were huge, steel hypodermic needles, each hand a needle like a finger of sharpened razor steel. She had a bosom, yes, a sexy bosom, no doubt, a charged and wobbling Franco-wet-dream of a bosom, certainly, but below her waist her legs weren't legs at all, for each limb had been replaced, bone-grafted, with a crude steel and plastic crutch, little holes peppering each alloy length in order to adjust her height. Sabrina took several steps back, her crutch-legs clacking on the tiled floor. Only then did Franco notice the smell. The medical smell. The stench of sterile swabs, of iodine-cleansed instruments. The perfume of the autoclave machine.

"Is something wrong?"

"Gah," said Franco, and sat up. Although he didn't. This seemed to be a day of things
not
happening.

Franco realised he was strapped, very firmly, and with wide leather straps, to the bed. "Bugger," he said, eyeing Sabrina with the sort of look a donkey reserves for a carrot when the pesky vegetable is tugged away.

Sabrina clacked forward, generous bosom bouncing. "Sorry about the straps, Mr. Haggis. But this
is
a sanatorium. And we see from your records that you were once a patient at The Mount Pleasant Hilltop Institution, the 'nice and caring and friendly home for the mentally challenged'. Well, we'd be happy to continue with your therapy at
no extra cost."
She smiled. It was a dazzlingly beautiful smile. "We're nice like that, around here."

"No," croaked Franco. "Wait! I was discharged..."

"You escaped."

"I was wrongly incarcerated! It was a set-up! After the days in the Combat Squad..."

"Ahh yes, the Combat Squad. Combat K. Another figment of your mad and overused imagination. Shame on you, Franco, for coming up with such a psychologically weak scenario in which you perpetuate your super-hero combat-soldier narcissistic wank-fantasy little boy chickenhawk longings."

"I'm not mad, I tell you!" snarled Franco, yanking against the straps with all his strength. The bed jumped a little, metal legs clattering.

"Now now," said Sabrina. "Time for you to calm down, little man. After all, there's a whole host of nurses here with, shall we say,
very special requirements
of you. After all, we haven't seen a male specimen of your
masculinity,
your
calibre,
for, oooh, about a thousand years."

Franco squinted. Behind Sabrina, from the gloom of the emergency lighting, emerged at least another five or six nurses. Each one, in their day, must have been a stunner, but now they were a sick and maudlin collection of medical experimentations gone wrong. One woman had scalpels for arms. Another's upper torso had been organically welded to a wheelchair, and her stumped arms had tiny grippers with which to grasp the rubber wheels. A third - Franco blinked in horror - had a colostomy bag for a head, her little blue brain swirling around in some kind of murky brown liquid, along with her eyes, which bounced around like energetic goldfish. Another nurse had some kind of weird stainless-steel integrated head and neck brace, metal scaffolding rising from her shoulders and encompassing her face. Big metal teeth protruded roughly from her jaw and fake teeth clacked together with tiny, tinny sounds. This eager nurse came forward, metal teeth clacking almost uncontrollably, as if in a frenzy of excitement, or -
the horror
- sexual arousal.

"This is Ginger," said Sabrina, smiling kindly and calmly down at Franco's prostrate body. "She has a
very
special request." Sabrina gazed at Franco's groin.

"Oh no, no way, you can just all get to buggery, you bloody mad rampant deviant nurse bitches from hell!"

"Buggery?" said Sabrina, with a narrow smile. Ginger produced a long, slightly banana shaped metal object from beneath her tight-fitting uniform, allowing her buxom breasts to bounce back into place. The object gleamed, as if well polished, or at least, well used. Franco paled. It was a C1 Three-Blade Sigmoidoscope Anorectal Retractor, 140mm. Ouch. "If that's what you want, Mr. Haggis, we can certainly entertain. After all, we are here, simply, to please." She smiled, waving the Anorectal Retractor.

"No!" screamed Franco, "No no no!" He thrashed and jerked and pulled and struggled at the leather straps, but they were old, and well-designed, designed, in fact, to stop people escaping. "You'll not get away with this! I'm a man! I have my, my morals! I'm not..." he fluttered his eyelids, "some kind of tart."

"You must calm down," said Sabrina, eyes glinting. "It hurts less that way." She advanced, lifting one hypodermic arm. Franco saw clear fluid sloshing around inside the chamber. She gave it a little squirt, and fluid spurted from the tip, a premature ejaculation. "Here," she leant close, smiling broadly, her perfume engulfing Franco with a heady fragrance that made him swoon. "Let me give you a bit of help.'

CHAPTER FIVE

SICK WORLD III: SECOND DJIO

Keenan stood on the ramp, shielding his eyes from glaring equatorial sun and breathing in a hot, arid air which made him want to choke. The heat shimmered on the desert. From the DropShip ramp spread a hostile dry wilderness of sand and rocks, thousands upon thousands of large, rounded boulders, and several remote outcroppings of staggered ancient cliffs, sheer and orange and distantly threatening. Keenan moved down the ramp and rolled himself a cigarette using Widow Maker
tobacco.

"Pretty hot," said Snake, leaning against the rim of the doorway and staring down at Keenan, his one beady eye squinting in bright light after the gloomy interior.

"Aye." Keenan lit the weed, and took a deep, deep drag.

"You roll one of those for me, soldier?"

"You'll be asking to share my bunk, next."

Snake laughed, a low, easy, rolling laugh, and strode down the ramp, slapping Keenan on the back. "I think we got off to a bad start, me and thee. I think you have a very low opinion of the work I've done."

"Cam?"

"Yeah boss?" Cam spun into view, silent, stealthy. Snake whirled, fast, gun
clacking
gently against Cam's case. Cam flickered a fast series of coloured lights, which Keenan read and gave a single nod.

"Should watch where you're poking that thing," said Cam. "Somebody might take it and shove it up your arse."

"You're a tad tetchy for a little PopBot," said Snake, holstering the 11mm with a whisper of leather. He smiled, but it was a cold smile, an imitation of humour, and Keenan could see the message in Snake's eye. He'd been close to pulling the trigger; and he didn't like Cam... or maybe just PopBots in general. Keenan filed this for another day.

"Cam, sort out the DropShip. We're gonna take the Buggy, do some scouting." He looked sideways at Snake. "That OK with you, Big Man?"

Snake smiled easily, his dark eye unreadable. "Whatever you say, Keenan. You're in charge."

"I just wouldn't like to step on your toes," said Keenan, and handed Snake the cigarette.

Snake took a long drag, and blew a cloud of tox over Cam, who backed away, motors whirring. "I'm a snake, pal," he said. "No toes to step on."

Whilst Cam fine-tuned the DropShip into a BaseCamp, Keenan, Snake and Ed headed off in the Giga-Buggy to secure the area, and make sure there were no nasty surprises waiting out in the sand. Cam busied himself with the BaseCamp's computer, whistling happily to himself as he tweaked emissions, regulated aircon, sampled the immediate sand around the BaseCamp using CampGrippers (which brought to mind several rude jokes via a comedy subroutine), and generally checked that all was working and well; especially necessary after the initial apparent sabotage during descent.

There came a tiny
click,
and Cam spun fast. Maximux was stood, stripped to the waist, his body wiry and taut, tendons standing out like cables under chicken-skin. A light sheen of sweat bathed him, and he wore long combat trousers and high black boots, strapped with the latest TitaniumIV digital garrotte laces. His head was down as he fiddled with a tiny metal mechanism.

Cam bobbed for a moment, watching Max suspiciously, then he chided himself. They were all Combat-K now, and despite being on what was widely regarded as an easy gig, they still had a job to do, and would do it to the best of their ability. After all, were they not consummate professionals?

"What are you thinking?" came Max's drawl, and his head lifted, eyes staring at Cam. His hands went still.

"Um," said Cam. "I was just considering our position. That we're all Combat K, and we'll get the job done to the best of our ability."

"Yeah." Maximux grinned, and his face contorted, looking
not quite right
against a human head. Cam's lights flickered. He felt uneasy, which was a rare feat, for he had no glands or chemicals with which to feel such an emotion. It was the nearest machine code equivalent. "We'll certainly do that, boy."

"Um. Actually," said Cam, ever the pedant, "I'm not a boy, I'm a GradeA+1 Security Mechanism with advanced SynthAI and a Machine Intelligence Rating (MIR) of 3450. I have integral weapon inserts, a quad-core military database, and Put Down[tm] War Technology. I am," if he'd had a mouth, he would have beamed a smile, "quite a prize. The Prodigal Son. The light that burns twice as bright."

Maximux took a step forward, then stopped again, fiddling with the tiny, intricate metallic contraption in his hands. "What the hell is Put Down[tm] War Technology, if you don't mind me asking?"