Cloneworld - 04 (15 page)

"Good." The Mistress grabbed her shirt, pulled her close. Her breath was sweet and dangerous, like sugared snake venom. "Don't fuck up again," she whispered, then kissed her on the lips and released her. "And - make me a cup of tea! You know I like a cup of tea!"

"Yes... Mistress."

The Mistress wandered down the corridor, hips swaying.

Ziggurat glanced at Teddy. "You okay?"

"Hmm? Yeah. Yes. It's just a surreal experience, staring at your own corpse." She shivered. "It's the first time I've been gangered from Slush."

"I'm going after Franco." Ziggurat gave a twisted grimace. It may have been a smile. "Want to come along?"

Teddy focused on Ziggurat for the first time. "I want that schmuck dead," she said, lips compressed, eyes narrowed. "I want some payback. I want some torture."

Ziggurat gave a nod. "Torture." He toyed with the word on his deformed face. "Now there's a thought. I'll make a deal with you."

"Yes?"

"If you play by my rules, when we catch this...
Franco Haggis...
well, I'll teach you how to play with him properly."

"You up to something here, Zig?"

Ziggurat gave a single nod. "I'm always up to something," he said.

Pippa and Tarly stood at the edge of the canyon, gazing down at a vast array of gathered war machines. Sunlight gleamed from the greased metal. Echoing silence filled the space, punctuated by the distant
hum
from the nearby vast city of Nechudnazzar. The canyon was on the outskirts, leading away into arid lands; into a wasteland of scrub, sand and small, spiky, harshland trees.

"I'm getting a lot of readings. A lot of activity down there," said Tarly, looking at her PAD.

"I don't see shit." Pippa, twin yukana swords sheathed on her back beneath her pack, clasping an MPK machine gun in her gloved hands, cut an impressive figure. She smoothed back her bobbed brown hair and glared down into the canyon, as if challenging the whole world to a fight. "The PAD must be throwing a glitch."

"No. No. It's not
physical
activity; its digital."

"Machines?"

"Yeah. Lots of them."

"AIs?"

"Yeah."

"I hate those motherfuckers."

"They have the same rights as humans."

Pippa shrugged. "Yeah, well, when a bucket of steel, alloy and bolts shows me a distinct lack of empathy, a lack of
humanity,
I find it hard to restrain myself from putting a yukana through its spindly neck. I'd like to see them behave like
life.
Truly I would. But until that moment," she withdrew a black sword, formed from a single molecule, with a tiny
shring,
"well, I'll just have to give them extreme violence."

"There!"

Tarly pointed. Pippa squinted. She could make out some distant activity amongst the machines. A fight? It was hard to tell. "Is the ID Franco?"

"Not sure. The PAD is blank."

"If that's Franco, we'll never reach him in time," snapped Pippa. "Let's move."

"We base jumping?"

Pippa nodded, took three steps back, and launched herself from the three-thousand-foot cliffs without hesitation. She fell like a rock, hair whipping, eyes streaming tears. She pulled her micro-chute at the last moment, glided down onto rock, boots landing with a thud. She cut the cords, watched Tarly land close by, and jumped down a series of jagged rock outcrops until her boots hit the dusty floor on the canyon bottom.

"I'm getting AI readings from
all
these machines," said Tarly, softly. She gazed around in awe.

"You mean they're all..."

"Waiting. Awake, and waiting."

Pippa stared around. She estimated there must have been... three, four thousand units of varying types? And all of them were awake, watching, listening, choosing to do
nothing.

"If it kicks off," said Pippa, "there's going to be a world of shit."

Tarly grinned. "You're Combat K, chick. Deal with it."

"Aaaaaaaaarrrgh!" screamed Franco as he waited for death, and watched the eye of the gun, and thought in a split of a split-second oh my God this is it, this is the moment and of all the dirty, stinking, rotten, shitty luck, to think of all the beer not drunk, all the women not interfered with, all the kebabs not suckled, all the horseradish not drooled down my haggard and badly-cropped beard, it's just not fucking fair and it should be fair, I should be allowed to fight my way out of this shit but this metal bastard isn't playing by the rules... but hey, what rules? This is war, maggot...

He was curled, foetal, hands over his head, eyes watering, lips gibbering. And then there was a hefty
clang
and daylight seemed to flood Franco's senses, as if a great weight had been lifted, a trapdoor opened in the clouds, allowing sunlight to flood in. He opened one eye experimentally, to see Mrs Strogger, face grim, mouth grim, eyes grim, in the pose of one who has delivered a mighty meaty right hook. Ten feet away, the TankMek was on its arse, legs kicking, shaking its head as if it had just received a mighty, meaty thump with a hammer.

"Rockabilly!" grinned Franco, leaping to his feet. He ran to the other, recently mashed TankMek, and grabbed a section of its severed leg with a grinding crash of wrenching steel. He turned on Mrs Strogger. "Come on! Let's finish it off!"

Franco ran at the TankMek, which was only just regaining its senses. Franco delivered a mighty blow to its skull with the leg-part, as Mrs Strogger came up behind it and, dropping to one knee, put it in a head-lock. Franco danced about the TankMek, whacking and braining the AI, cackling all along. "Thought you had me, eh? Thought you'd kill me, eh? Call
me
a meatfuck, eh? Well the shoe's on the other foot, laddie, the sandal's on the other twisted spam appendage..." And as he whacked and clanged with his primeval clubbing weapon, Mrs Strogger squeezed and grunted and was, effectively, locked in combat with the struggling TankMek. It was quite a feat, for the enemy machine was much bigger than Strogger. Her size was no indication of her vast
strength!

Later, Franco would admit he was probably little more effective than a bee buzzing around the TankMek's face, and that the mighty org upgrades of Mrs Strogger did a fair old job in the events that followed. But he'd only admit it after ten pints of Guinness. Maybe twenty. And only then as pillow talk.

A squeal rang across the canyon as, finally, the TankMek yielded. Mrs Strogger twisted its huge head neatly off, showering cables and sparks, and lifted the huge alloy unit up in both hands with a grin, trailing wires and glowing connectors.

"We are victorious!" she cried.

"We're the Smart Party!" yelled Franco triumphantly, and only sheer bloody decency stopped him pounding his chest in an impersonation of Tarzan, such was his euphoria.

They stood, panting, as silence flooded the canyon. All around, dormant war machines stood a silent, useless watch. Franco dropped his improvised club. He was battered and bruised, and blood trickled from a dozen different cuts. He grinned up at Mrs Strogger. "Shit. We won. And all this against
one
of them!"

Mrs Strogger shrugged, sat with a heavy clank, and wheezed like a failing starting motor. She exuded old engine oil pheromones. She looked, to Franco, suddenly older, more weary, a burned-out hopeless fucking case. But she'd saved him. She'd come back and damn well saved him!

Franco moved over to her, and reaching over, gave her a hug.

Mrs Strogger looked up. "What's that for, bastad?"

"For saving my life."

"You're too good-looking to have your head shot off."

"And you're..." he searched his small repertoire of compliments frantically for a suitable equivalent, "too much of a well-greased engine to give up now. Come on cybe-org, on your feet. I don't know about you, but these damn gangers and their war machine army are starting to
get on my tits."

Mrs Strogger stood. She looked at Franco. She smiled. Then her gaze drifted, and her look
shifted
to something less than normal, to something filled with a mixture of angst and certainty of death.

"Er," she said.

"We sure saw that metal meathead off, eh, girl?" Franco picked up the TankMek leg part and waved it around his head like a monkey. "Let's hope no more bother to show up, or we'll take them apart as well, grind them down into buckets of bolts, eh lass?"

"Er."

"Some pussy got your tongue?"

Mrs Strogger pointed. Franco turned. In almost perfect, well-greased silence, the silence of the perfectly balanced, perfectly oiled machine, the silence of clockwork perfection, the silence of machine equilibrium, three thousand war machines had slowly dragged free their tarpaulins and formed a semi-circle around the two escapees.

Franco looked up into the twisted, anger-filled, psychopathic faces of at least twenty TankMeks, and the smile fell from his chops faster than drool from a SPAW's ill-fitting space jaws.

"Truce?" suggested Franco.

"Kill it," snarled a TankMek.

And then all Hell
really did
break loose...

Pippa stopped, hand on MPK, and stared. Suddenly, missiles roared and fire blossomed. Machine gun fire slammed. Bullets spat. Lasers cut red, green and blue swathes through fire and dust and exploding metal. Roars rocked the rock. Lights flickered like dying stars. A TankMek shot a hundred feet into the air, trailing fire and a thick plume of oily black smoke, then, describing an arc, was lost in a wall of green billowing flames.

"What is it?"

"Franco," snapped Pippa. She hit her PAD. "Alice. We need you.
Fast.
"

"What's the plan?" snapped Tarly.

Pippa grinned. "Get in and out and the motherfuck away..."

Franco Haggis ran in slow-motion, as if modelling some dodgy rotten hair conditioner. Explosions exploded around him, blossoms of purple, green and red fire encouraging him to run with both hands over his head. Occasionally, his stolen heavy-duty minigun, ammunition belts tossed carelessly across both shoulders, requisitioned from a TankMek Mrs Strogger had thoughtfully cut in two, howled and jabbered like a wild jabberwocky, spitting and snarling, fire erupting, bullets cutting lines of hot metal death into the ranged ranks of the war machines. All around lay death and metal destruction, mayhem and insanity. Franco Haggis tiptoed and scampered through a raging forest of war, dodging one way, ballerina-skipping another, his face and body bathed in fire and bruises and wondering, just wondering how the fucking fuck he was still alive.

Mrs Strogger pounded behind him, hydraulics hissing, face contorted in rage at these
machines
of the gangers which she saw as a direct mockery of her own race.
Those gangers!
she raged, slicing through another torso with her arm-knife, flinching at the explosion from its battery pack.
They think to mock me! To mock
us
! To mock my entire race! They have devised a group of inferior machines whose very existence cackles at our regal lineage! Well, I will show them, I will tear apart their inferior machinery and show that only a true org, a true blend of human and machine, can reach the pinnacle arc of an evolutionary machine age!

Mrs Strogger blasted several more TankMeks from existence using their own advanced weaponry which she had, within a few short seconds, bone-welded to her org chassis. Mrs Strogger was not just a war machine, she was a war machine with the ability to
fast-upgrade
during battle.

Franco ran a merry dance, sometimes behind the psychopathic aged org, sometimes before her, and sometimes cowering beneath her legs as all hell raged above him. The Symmetrical Canyon was being gradually blasted into a mad smush of powdered rock, rock globules and liquid magma. Lava flowed from every direction, as the ganger AI war machines endeavoured to liquefy Mrs Strogger and pulp Franco Haggis into pastrami, as per instructions. However, it would seem the ganger war machines were having a bad day.

"Infantry," growled Mrs Strogger.

"Oh, yeah?" snarled Franco, popping up from between her legs like some rabid, bruise-covered, blood- and saliva-smeared last-minute self-ejected caesarean. He turned his head left and right, and lifted his battle-scarred minigun. "Where are they? Let me at 'em! At last, an enemy on my own level..."

And from out of the smoke emerged Pippa, uniform neat, gloved hands clasping her MPK without a tremble, eyes cold. "I see you, Franco Haggis," she said, voice level, eyes looking past him. She squeezed off a burst, removing the head from an attacking AI. "You little maggot."

"Pippa! Lass! Glad you could, ahem,
finally
join the party!"

And explosion rocked the ground, making all of them stumble, and from high above came the whine of engines. Smoke billowed and fire roared. Tarly appeared at Pippa's shoulder.

"Is this him?"

"Aye. This is him."

"I thought he'd be... taller."

Franco strode close, one flip-flop missing. "Hey! Lay off the wisecracks. Have you any air transport?"