Hardcore - 03 (25 page)

The rest of the battle was short, sharp and vicious. Removing most of the other tentacles, Pippa stepped in close, looked up into beady eyes, and rammed a yukana through the decapus up to the hilt. The beast quivered, and slowly sank down into a spreading blob. Its limbs went still. Silence fell like fallout.

Betezh stood, and puffed out his chest. "Did you see that? Did you see how brave I was?"

"
What?"

"All them scalpels and stuff, look, they're all stuck in its hide. I'm a damn fine shot, even though I say so myself."

Pippa stared hard at Betezh, and shook her head. "Wake that bitch up. We need to get out of here."

After reclaiming his pack, Betezh slapped Dr. Bleasedale across the face until, blurry-eyed, she coughed and became animate. She blinked, confused, then stared morosely at the decapus. "You killed him?" she said, voice low.

Pippa nodded. "Ya, daarling. Come on, on your feet. You're going to show us the way out of this shit-hole."

"You can't possibly leave yet," said Bleasedale. "The fun was just beginning! I have operations to perform! Transplants to, er, transplant. I am a
professional,
and you are fools to turn down my medical attention. I will make you live forever!"

Pippa's yukana snaked out, the tip of the gore-covered blade touching just under Bleasedale's chin. Using the tip, Pippa lifted Bleasedale's eyes until she could look long and hard into the depraved surgeon's gaze.

"You're going to give me some answers," said Pippa. "Or I might just carry out surgery of my own. What did you do with our guns?"

"They were taken to the weapon stores."

"Why the hell has a hospital got weapon stores?"

Bleasedale went suddenly quiet, her eyes shifting from left to right.

Pippa's sword moved up Bleasedale's cheek, and pressed. Blood welled at the tip, and ran down the depraved doctor's chin, dripping onto floor tiles.

"Pippa." Betezh's voice was low.

"What?" she snapped, turning, eyes narrowing.

"Don't," he said.

"Don't what? This bitch was about to carve us into pieces."

"Yeah, but, don't."

Pippa gave a short, nasty laugh. "You're all so fucking weak," she snarled, as Bleasedale moved suddenly, fast, much faster than Pippa had anticipated; a boot slammed Pippa's groin, and a fist cracked her sternum. Bleasedale sprinted for the double doors, and was gone in a second, leaving the doors swinging to smear chunks of nurse zombie flesh in wide dark arcs.

Pippa wheezed, gave Betezh an evil look, and snapped, "Don't just stand there. Chase after her!"

Betezh leading, they ran to the doors, pushing them open to reveal a wide, polished corridor. Strip-lights illuminated the spotless tiles and walls of the corridor. Ahead, signs informed visitors of different wards and departments.

There was no sign of Bleasedale.

"Where did she go?" snapped Pippa.

Betezh shrugged. "You bloody well let her escape!"

"If
you
hadn't been whining about me cutting her up, we could have got some answers. Come on." Pippa jogged forward, a sword in each hand, face grim, WarSuit speckled with decapus gore.

Betezh followed at a distance, fighting with the straps of his pack.

The corridor was long, wide, and had perhaps forty doors leading off what appeared to be the main hospital artery. It was eerily quiet. Pippa led the way, further down the artery, swords at the ready, head swinging left and right, listening.

Betezh's boots started to squeak on the polished floor.

"Betezh!"

"What?"

"Stop squeaking."

"I can't help it! It's me boots!"

"Gods, why do I always get the idiots?"

She halted again, listening carefully, and spun with swords at the ready as a door back down the corridor opened revealing Mel, with an unhappy and muddy Miller in tow. Pippa relaxed, allowing the tension to ease from her body.

"That's our way out," she said, smiling, then louder, "Mel! Down here. What took you?"

"Ick ead."

Pippa nodded, and felt a little bit of confidence returning. Mel and Miller both had weapons and, sheathing a blade, she took the D4 shotgun from the unprotesting Health and Safety Officer. She pumped it, and grinned.

"You see any trouble on the way in?"

Mel shook her head, which brushed against a hospital sign, making it sway gently, squeaking. It read: REHABILITATION UNIT THIS WAY >.

"Nothing? No deformed nurses with no legs? No mad doctors in black leather boots? No little bitchy insects that sting you and put you to sleep?"

Again, Mel shook her brown-scaled head, saliva drooling from jaws to ruin the perfectly clean and highly-polished floors.

"I think," said Betezh, "that Mel can lead us out. Ain't that right, girl? You used your sense of sniff, didn't you girl? Tracked us that way, ain't that right girl? Just like a sniffer dog aha ha ha."

Mel pulled out her PAD, and shook her head, scowling with zombie deviant brows at Betezh. Her long talons punched in digits, and the PAD displayed Pippa's location.

"It's the spinal logic-cubes," said Pippa, voice low. "The PAD picks up their digital signature. Steinhauer may have signed our eventual death warrants, but on this occasion he did us a favour." Pippa smiled at Mel. "It's good to see you, Mel." She breathed deeply, genuinely pleased. "It's good to have a bit of backup. Thanks for coming."

Mel gave a purr.

"This way?" Betezh, eager as ever to get away from imminent danger, was edging along the corridor.

"Wait." Pippa was rubbing at her head, frowning. "We have to investigate. Right?"

"Oh no," said Betezh. "We nearly got carved up in there by a mad surgeon and a decapus sea-monster. What do you mean, we need to investigate? Look around you! There could be hundreds of these deviant nurses and doctors. This place is bloody
huge!
We need to call in to Keenan, get the other squads here fast, and
we can all then investigate together."

"You're beginning to sound like a yellow chicken-shit," smiled Pippa.

"I am a realist. I enjoy my internal organs, thank-you-very-much."

Pippa considered this. "Listen," she said, "haven't you wondered about the AnalysisBots? The DropBots? They come down here, do a sweep, tell us the planet is deserted of all forms of life. And then, bam! We arrive and all manner of deviated medical shit leaps out at us."

"So?"

"
So,
moron, it's a little bit suspicious, right? Why didn't the 'Bots pick up on stuff? I've seen these things in operation, they're incredibly accurate, can smell organic life from a billion paces. Why would they make such a mistake?
How
could they make such a mistake?"

"I'm sure there is a legitimate explanation," said Betezh, tightly. "Now can we
go
before that Bleasedale character comes back with a horde of legless zombie nurses?"

"I have to agree with Betezh on this one," said Miller, who had been watching the exchange with alarm, and writing in a little notebook. "It has to be said, I have been dragged beyond the call of duty, and this sort of place is no sort of place for an officer of the Royal Quad-Gal Chief Health and Safety Division of the Combined Safety and Health Institutes of Quad-Gal. It's just not right."

"We'll vote," said Pippa, eyes gleaming. "Who says we investigate? Find out what scourge is out there on those weird hospital wards?"

Pippa and Mel raised their hands.

Betezh grinned. "So who votes to head back for the relative safety of the BaseCamp?" Pedantically, both he and Miller raised their hands. Betezh's grin widened. "That means we have a stalemate, Little Miss Twisty Exploration Knickers. And in that light, we should return to BaseCamp at once and comm Keenan for extra help..."

"No. I think you'll find
we
won the vote." Pippa hoisted the D4, checked the shell-mag, and started off down the corridor with Mel close by, claws gouging tiles.

"Wait! Hey, how do you make that out?" Betezh jogged after his squad leader, and Miller reluctantly followed.

Pippa glanced back, her bobbed brown hair swishing around her head. She gave him a dazzling smile. "Girl power," she said.

They'd been searching for nearly two hours, and outside the sun had risen, removing the eerie green glow and making the place seem infinitely less menacing. Ward after deserted ward they searched, and although the abandoned hospital was clean, it had a desolate air, unlived in, as if long ago deserted. Beds lay empty, sheets made up and neatly tucked in a fold. Trolleys stood idle, next to monitors and strange devices none of Combat-K had ever before seen. It was Pippa who realised; Sick World had been a hospital planet not just for humans, but for aliens as well, and the weird and wonderful diseases that came about in a galactic boiling pot of sexual adventure and zero inhibition.

Betezh and Miller whined the whole way round, at first pleading and attempting to appeal to Pippa's sense of logic and self preservation, then Miller resorting to threatening court martial and the punishment of Steinhauer; finally, Betezh even tried the old
Keenan wouldn't want you out in these dregs on your own little lady
routine.

Pippa stopped, boots squealing on polished hospital tiles. "What the fuck's that supposed to mean?" she snarled, whirling about.

"I was just saying that Keenan, well, he kind of likes his women alive, yeah? And if you go and get yourself killed, then..."

"And what," growled Pippa, moving close to Betezh, "makes you think I am Keenan's woman?"

Betezh swallowed. "Well," he began. Then, wisely, thought about it. "Well," he began a second time, "well you know that thing you had going together, you know, the little romance thing, I know all about it, Franco told me about it..."

He stopped. Pippa was quivering with rage.

"Hey," said Miller. "Look. Down there. It's a cleaner."

Pippa and Betezh turned together. At the end of the corridor, distant, a figure had come into view. It seemed to be a woman, holding a large machine which hummed softly, polishing the floor.

She moved the machine backwards and forwards, buffing the tiles.

Betezh snorted a laugh. "Well that's answered that question then! There's a bloody loony cleaner on the loose, been polishing the damn floors for the last thousand years! Probably a malfunctioning AI drone, or something."

"No," said Pippa, voice soft, head tilted. "It's a woman alright."

"How do you know?"

"I can smell her perfume."

"Hey, look," said Miller. "She's naked."

"No, she's not, she's wearing...
something."

They stared, and Pippa led the group forward, wary, her D4 covering doorways, their boots ruining the polish. Pippa stopped, and Miller walked into the back of her.

"Shit," she said.

"Holy Mother of Monkeys," snapped Betezh, and rubbed at his eyes, as if in a dream. "You're bloody right she's wearing something, but it ain't her clothes!"

They stared at the cleaner, happily buffing away at her floor. She stopped, and glanced up at her audience. She smiled, although it was hard to tell, because most of her teeth were on the outside.

"What's that," said Betezh, head tilting, "that thing, there?"

They winced, scowling, staring at the wobbling item clinging to her lower back.

"That would be a kidney, I think," said Pippa, slowly. "And obviously the big red pumping thing hanging from a chain around her neck, that would be her heart." They stared at the tubes, ersatz veins, leading into and out of her flesh and connecting the external, beating heart to her lungs and arteries.

"What's that little shrivelled thing, there?" said Miller, eyes narrowed.

"That'd be her liver," said Betezh.

"Doesn't look like her liver," said Miller. "It's all black and shrivelled."

"Maybe she has a drink problem," said Betezh through clenched teeth. "The real problem
here
is
why
all her organs are on the outside."

"Ask her," said Pippa.

"What? You're kidding?"

"She's smiling," said Pippa, then shrugged, and moved forward. The cleaner was leaning on her machine, and up close Pippa could see other oddities. Her teeth were stuck to the outside of her skin, and veins roved up and down her flesh like tiny roadmaps in 3D relief. In several places, long tears were evident in her flesh, revealing stretched pink muscle within; and that heart pumped rhythmically on its chain, glistening, as if oiled.

"Hello," said Pippa, voice soft, meeting the eyes of the cleaner which, thankfully, seemed to be where God put them.

"Hello! Do you think I've done a good job?"

"Of the floor? Yes. You've done an excellent job."

"Only," the woman looked left, and right, "I wouldn't like to be punished for shoddy workmanship. Not again."

"Have you been working here long?"