Franco grasped his laser cannon with a rattle. He took a deep breath. Which way to go? And was Strogger dead? But on the up side, maybe Strogger was
dead?
He'd be free of her unpredictability...
Franco had turned, his back to the TankMeks, to stare at the lolling features on the old org. Now, he heard a tiny, tiny
click.
Oh no, he thought.
Please. No. Not here. Not now. Not like this. Not in my underpants...
Slowly, he turned around.
Franco stared at the motionless TankMeks. He looked from left to right, at the wall of formidable metal warriors. There were perhaps two hundred of the machines, each thirty feet high. They were a battalion of steel and guns, stinking of oil.
Franco swallowed.
On
one
TankMek, a small red light blinked.
Franco grasped his laser cannon more tightly.
As...
A rocket fired from the TankMek, sending Franco diving to the left with a grunt, rolling in the dirt and slamming into a tarpaulin-sheathed war machine, and sending a shock through his body that jarred him from teeth to balls. The rocket hissed on a stream of burnt fuel, slammed into Mrs Strogger and exploded, picking her up and sending her spinning over the canyon and the stock-piled machines in a gout of fire and billowing black smoke. Franco aimed his gun and sent a volley of green laser bursts across the small clearing to scar hot metal channels up the TankMek. And it -
roared.
It opened metal jaws and bellowed at Franco and tiny red eyes focused in him, and with a sinking feeling Franco realised... shit. The bastard was an AI. Machine brain. Superior to the humans who created them. Very clever. Very
deadly.
The TankMek strode forward, hydraulics hissing, and Franco kept firing grimly, face set, eyes locked, mouth dry as a Harmattan. The laser bursts cut runs of liquid metal up the TankMek's hull, scarring it horribly but failing to penetrate the armour. It reared over Franco and he carried on firing, laser blasts scorching his own face with their proximity. A huge fist slammed down towards him, a fist the size of his entire body, and Franco rolled right at the last minute, but a metal tri-wheel track rose over him and stomped down, sending Franco scrabbling away. He ran, arms pumping, and heard the
whine
of a minigun charging. Bullets screamed, as Franco, also screaming, reached the wall of TankMeks and dived between a machine's legs. Bullets spat and clanged behind him and he cowered like a little girl in a forest at night.
But if he'd thought hiding behind a fellow TankMek would stop the machine, he'd been sorely mistaken. Bullets screamed after him, pinging from the legs of the surrounding TankMeks. Franco hunkered down, and the gunfire stopped, followed by a heavy clanking and
whirring.
The TankMek grabbed the TankMek behind which Franco cowered and twisted, launching its fellow war machine down the canyon floor and scoring grooves in the stone. Franco was left, cowering in his underpants, staring up at the evil enemy TankMek. It closed, slowly, as if savouring cornering the weak human shell. Its metal jaws looked, to Franco, like it was grinning.
"Got you," it said, voice gravelly and metallic.
"Well, you got this," said Franco, an instant before the TankMek realised he'd been holding the trigger and building an Impact Charge in the Steyr laser cannon. Franco released the blast straight at the TankMek's groin, and the blast slammed it backwards to land on its metal arse. Franco uncurled, then cursed as, with a growl, the TankMek climbed to its feet. That was all he had. And now... well,
now
the laser cannon would take several more minutes to recharge.
He was weaponless.
Franco ran, dodging behind the line of TankMeks, and heard a pounding sound behind him. Franco veered right, doubled back, then stopped with a skid, kicking up dirt, and grabbed hold of a dormant machine to steady himself. Like a monkey up a tree, Franco scaled the machine, nine and a half fingers and thumbs finding handholds in the grooves and ridges of steel. He climbed over the vertical tank turret and up again, to stand beside the upright gun.
I'll be safe up here. The mongrel won't be able to spot me amongst all the iron work! Look, charging away like a dumb dog after a rancid bone, he's going the wrong bloody way, I tell ye...
But even as Franco watched, the TankMek whirled with a skid of splintered rock fragments, and he realised with horror it was simply getting enough distance for a decent
run up...
It pounded towards him and leapt, and the whole TankMek on which Franco cowered tipped backwards. With a scream, like a pirate riding the mast of a sinking galleon, he rode the TankMek to the ground, a thundering noise in his ears, a roaring of steel grinding against steel all around and through him. Franco was encompassed,
buried
by the two TankMeks and it was a damn miracle he wasn't crushed to a pulp. When the roaring finished, Franco realised he had lost his laser cannon and had covered his head with his hands.
Shit. Damn. Shit damn and rancid bloody bollocks! I nearly got pancaked!
He opened his eyes, and was confused by what he saw. And then he realised. It was the enemy TankMek's
face
, inches from his own. Its eyes opened and glowed red. Its mouth opened, iron jaws squealing. And, with a fetid breath of old engine oil, of crushed bearings, of sour grease, it said, "I'm going to fuck you up, sonny," before a fist the size of a small car whirred past his head... but Franco had rolled, and was scrambling away from the entangled machines.
The TankMek stood, with grindings of steel, and glared at Franco, who was wondering what the hell he could do now. With only underpants and flip-flops to his name, he was stuffed.
The TankMek charged, then abruptly jerked back, as if on elastic. The second TankMek, which had been knocked to the ground, reared up and pounded the first with a two-fisted hammer punch and a sound like a cubescraper collapsing. Franco ambled to a halt, sweating and panting, bent, his hands on his knees. He watched the two TankMeks knock ten tons of crap out of each other, literally. Fists flew. Shotguns boomed. Chunks of steel rattled off across the dusty canyon floor. Lengths of H-section were wrenched free and tossed away. The fight became a blur, and as Franco regained his breath, he watched the two awesome war machines pounding, kicking, shooting, gouging, then rolling around on the dusty floor like school boys having a scrap. Franco took a deep breath and scratched his chin.
"Well, I never!"
And all the time, he could hear their bickering, gravelly metal voices:
"Attack me, would you?"
"I was after the human meat!"
"You threw me!"
"I'll bloody kick you!"
"Go on then!"
"What do you think this is?"
"A party, dickhead!"
"You shouldn't have thrown me! You've got steel-rot!"
"Oh, steel-rot, is it?"
"Yes, and melt-brain."
"Ha! You're the one who looks like his face has been eaten by an attack of acid SPAWS!"
"You cheeky fuck! That's only because you took a liberty!"
"Oh, liberties now, is it?"
And so on.
Franco's eyes scouted for his laser cannon, his only chance of getting out of this whole place, this whole continent, this whole bloody
world
alive. He saw it on the ground. Near the scrapping
scrap.
"Aha!"
Tentatively, Franco edged towards the pugilising robots. Metal screamed against metal. The TankMeks were equally matched, and rending and tearing each other with a ferocity Franco had only seen before in smaller, nastier AIs, including the infamous GG models. Bad news. Bad shit.
Franco was close now. His eyes flickered between the cannon and the fight. Another footstep. And another.
With a shriek of tearing steel, suddenly one TankMek wrenched the head off the other and stood swaying, staring at the head's dangling cables as if surprised by its own strength.
Franco swallowed. Hell! Which one was it? The one which had saved him, or -
"There you are, you little shit!" snarled the Mek. Oil like blood dribbled from its jaws. One arm was twisted and bent, trailing a battered ammo belt.
"Aaah!" said Franco.
The TankMek launched itself at Franco, who twisted and dived between its legs, grabbing the laser cannon and rolling over - to have the weapon smashed from his hands. The TankMek loomed over him. Franco swallowed.
"Truce?" he whimpered.
"You're gonna die, meatfuck," growled the TankMek, and a claw shot out from its chassis, enclosing Franco's throat and pinning him to the ground. Franco wriggled, legs kicking, like a fish on a hook. His hands scrabbled at the claw, his fists punching the twisted alloy. But the Mek was strong. Real strong.
There was a buzz, and a click, and a gun emerged from the machine's torso. The dark eye of a barrel levelled at Franco's face. Franco stared into that dark eye, into its spiralled barrel...
"Oh feck," he said.
CHAPTER FOUR
MEATPUKE
The Mistress strode down the alloy corridor, a hundred gangers parting before her, hands on weapons, eyes turned down in reverence to her Magnificence, her Superiority, her Natural Wonderfulness, for she was The Prime, she was The God, she was... The Mistress. She stopped. For a moment, it looked like her face was a mass of seething pink snakes in a bucket of oil, but then she calmed herself and breathed deeply, and her flesh melded into an approximation of humanity. Any gangers who saw the effect blinked and rubbed at their tired eyes, eyes filled with smoke and gun oil, minds filled with detonation and napalm - and put it down to bad dreams.
"Teddy?" she snapped. She gazed down at the twisted figure of her faithful assistant. Teddy Sourballs was a pulped bag of pulverised bones. Teddy Sourballs was a bruised and battered shit steak. Teddy Sourballs was a cellophane wrapper of minced human. She was fucked. She was more than fucked. She was worse than fucked. She was
dead.
"You stupid, stupid
bitch
," snapped the Mistress, and kicked the corpse. Then she kicked Teddy again. She kicked her a third time, watching the dead body flop about as if every joint was a machine part on fluid bearings in a grotesque parody of the orgs... the orgs whom the Mistress hated with
such
venom.
The Mistress turned back to Ziggurat, who had hobbled along in a sideways shuffle after her. His odd coloured eyes observed her without criticism, then glanced down at the tangled barbed-wire mop above Teddy's dead head. "She died in the line of duty, Mistress," he said softly. His fingers flexed, like a gunfighter ready to draw.
"She was a fucking dim-witted abomination!" snapped the Mistress, eyes glowing as if lit by black nuclear fire on the inside of her skull. "Her failure to follow policy and procedure is
not
what I expect of my Ministers! From my Ministers I expect unfaltering
obedience.
From my Ministers I expect clarity of thought when aligned to my specific gameplan
instructions.
I do
not
expect my Ministers to think for themselves. They are not
experienced
enough to
think
for themselves. They have a rollicking good CV, I'd be the first to admit it, crafted and honed over a thousand different incidents and built on the back of other gangers' hard work - a certain guidance and direction of misappropriated congratulation, a certain
shifting
of reward from others to their own paperwork, and all this I congratulate." She looked down. Kicked Teddy's corpse again. "What I
don't fucking expect is for them to take matters into their own hands!
"
Ziggurat stood, face impassive. The ganger guards around them, mostly RGPF but with a few newly arrived emissaries from The Bad Army, lowered their eyes and avoided the Mistress's fiery gaze. She seemed less than human. Indeed, she seemed less than
ganger.
Which she was.
Ziggurat coughed. "Ma'am? Franco Haggis and the rogue org have been spotted in the Symmetrical Canyon. I believe they are about to activate some of our war machines."
"Good! Get over there, make sure there's nothing left but an oily pulp. Take some Bad Army infantry with you - kick up the shit. And make sure you have some experienced cameramen along for the ride; get it all on vid. We can do a week of shows about what happens when you cross somebody like Opera. And me. Yes?"
"Yes," said Ziggurat, ever-soft. His green eye and his yellow eye gleamed.
"Did you Re-Slush Teddy?"
"She's coming."
Even as the words whispered softly over Ziggurat's warm, wet lips, the hunchback shifted to one side, and along the alloy corridor came Teddy Sourballs. She wore the same clothing, and had been prepped - a memory update from her mobile memcard. She stopped, and looked down at her own corpse, her original, her template. Teddy Sourballs had been cloned. Copied.
Gangered.
"You going to follow orders this time, arsehole?" snapped the Mistress.
"Yes, Mistress." She was still staring at her body, a strange, twisted look on her face. She recognised she had made mistakes; ended up dead. And she knew she was still only walking, talking,
breathing
on the whim of her moderately insane employer.