He stopped by the doorway, and turned. "Pippa?"
"Yeah, fucker?"
"Did I do good?"
"Amazingly, and loath though I am to bestow you with praise, you did good, Franco. Real good."
"Hey!" He winked. "They don't call me Franco 'Spy-High Get the Info and Get Pissed Into the Bargain' Haggis for nothing, you know, chick." He winked again. And coughed. "I'm, er, going for a long soak in a bath. Now, I don't want any answers right now, you understand, but if either of you two foxy sexy wayward young strumpets would like to join me..." He winked again. "Well. You know where I am."
Franco had just settled into the hot bath water full of bubbles and lavender, giving a long, languorous sigh, when a tremble made him grasp the sides, brow furrowed, eyes narrowed. "What the..."
Alice shrieked through the intercom -
"Attack! Attack! We're under attack! Imminent attack in five seconds by some sneaky, stealthy, underhand, bastard, missile-type bastard..." There came a bang and a smash and a crash and the whole world seemed to turn upside down - indeed,
did
turn upside down - as noise screamed through the Fast Attack Hornet. Franco was picked up from his bath, along with the entire tub of water, and thrown at the roof, where something hard slammed into his head, and the world collapsed into a detonation of explosions and shuddering, bright white light.
CHAPTER FIVE
DAMAGE TIME
Franco blinked fast, coughed, spat, and turned over, amidst sloshing, bubbling froth and small pieces of metal and emergency foam. He spluttered and gasped, apparently inhaling most of the bathwater. Then the ship spun again, the alarms shrieked and Franco felt the heat of a distant, blossoming fire cloud, an instant before the internal extinguishers hammered into action. Franco crawled along the ceiling amongst the light fittings and stripped-out mechanicals - the Hornet was a war machine, after all - and the screeching alarms which left his ears ringing, until the ship abruptly flipped again and Franco was flung across the bathroom interior like a stranded, flopping fish, hit the wall mirror with a
crack
that sent spider-web ripples across the glass and cut his back to ribbons, then hit the ground hard. Alice managed to gain control of
Metallika,
and stabilised the ship as Franco crawled along a corridor and into the cockpit.
Pippa was seated at the controls, face grim, a long gash over one eye trailing blood down her cheek. Tarly was in a black nightdress, and seemed unharmed. They both glanced at Franco as he crawled in, stark bollock naked, and heaved himself to his feet.
"What the hell happened?" he boomed.
"And more importantly," said Pippa, snapping her gaze back to the screens, "where the hell are your pants?"
"Who needs pants at a time like this?"
"You do," said Pippa. She glanced at him again. "We were hit. Looks like a WormMek Missile."
"They're evil little bastards," said Franco, striding forward. Franco was an expert in all things detonation: explosives, grenades, missiles, HighJ, HighQ, HighX, guns and bombs and things that go
bang
in the night. "
And
they're illegal. Sneaky. Holy missile bollocks! This is bad bad news. Damage?"
"The fucker's taken out the main engines. I'm bringing us in... over there." She pointed through the evening twilight. They'd reached the edge of the vast Pinetop Forest and were now near the vast, rearing mountain peaks known as The Gangers. Franco watched them hove into view, vast and black, each of the hundred or so mountain peaks a direct imitation of its fellow - as if some freak of nature had created a cloned mountain range a billion years previous in readiness for the weird and wacky race that would one day inhabit the lands. He said so.
"They were built," said Tarly, by way of explanation. "This planet was terraformed."
"How big are they?" said Franco, staring at the peaks in awe. He had a thing about mountains. He hated them, and they hated him. It was a wholly mutual arrangement in loathing and disgust (and effort and sweat).
"What's bothering me at the moment," said Pippa through gritted teeth, as she guided the wounded
Metallika
across the mountain threshold and into a cool, silent enclosure of mountain peaks, losing height all the time, "is the proximity of your
cock
to my
face.
"
"Hey," swaggered Franco, "it wouldn't be the first time."
"Only in your dreams."
"Exactly!"
"Get it away
before I
chop it off."
"No need to be like that," mumbled Franco, shifting his stance so that his nakedness was now closer to Tarly than Pippa. Tarly looked him up and down, face impassive, thoughts unreadable at this robust, stocky, overweight and overinsane naked Combat K squaddie just inches from her personage. "S'not my damn fault I was in the middle of a luxurious bath
after finding out all the information I'd been sent to find out and thus progressing our mission, and possibly helping to save the entire damn and bloody Quad-Gal from the invasion of the terrible scourge of the junks!"
He grinned.
"Report?" said Pippa, inclining her face.
"It's not good," said Alice. "That was a
very
specialised stealth model. AI. Knew how to side-step many of our built-in protection scanners. It crawled up on us at a leisurely pace - so slow, I didn't even see it coming."
"Are we still spaceworthy?"
"Negative. Main engines are totally destroyed, bar a few stranded tatters of matrix coil. We've also completely lost cockpit integrity; we couldn't maintain pressure in the vacuum of space. You'd all be sucked inside out."
"Shit." Pippa rubbed her eyes. "Give me some good news."
"The majority of our weapons are intact. We are still airborne. The bastard didn't hit the fuel stock. If he had, and I'm sure that was his target, then we would have gone
boom
skyhigh, my friend. And just because I'm an AI, doesn't mean I want to die. The gangers are using illegal AIs - the old kamikaze school. Very old minds. Very
strange
minds."
"You think they're readying for war?"
"A major one, yes. I'd say they propose to wipe out the orgs."
A silence flooded the cockpit. Below, mountains, snow and mist rolled by. Mrs Strogger eased into the cockpit, her mechanicals grinding, and sat down. Her old, lined face was sombre. "I heard all of that," she said, and turned to Pippa, then Tarly, then finally Franco. "I must warn my people. I must stave off this attack. I must..."
"First, I must initiate emergency repairs," said Alice. "Then, I will attempt to get messages to your command. Despite being built as a war machine, a terrible destructor, I do not agree with war in principle. And yours is a war that should have ended a million years ago."
"There is too much hate," said Mrs Strogger, softly. "Too many crimes in the past. We cannot forgive. We cannot forget."
Pippa nodded. "I've heard that one before."
Franco coughed, and suddenly feeling self-conscious in front of the old org, said, "Hey, listen, I'm just going to find some, you know, pants." He looked away from Mrs Strogger, whose eyes were fixed on his flaccid genitalia.
"Don't go on my account," said Tarly, suddenly. Franco looked at her and she met his gaze.
"Er," he said.
"Go on!" snapped Pippa. "Get your deviant tackle out of here! I'm sick of seeing your hairy fucking arse."
"Less of the damn hairy, reet?" muttered Franco, and feeling suddenly oppressed by the sheer amount of oestrogen in the room, he sidled sheepishly out of the cockpit.
"You shouldn't be so hard on him," said Tarly, rubbing at her eyes and moistening lips with tongue.
"
What?"
snapped Pippa.
"I agree," said Mrs Strogger. "He might look a bit queer, but he's a good man to have by your side in a firefight. He was fair aggressive against those TankMeks, the little bastad. I was suitably impressed. For a human, you understand. For we all know that in Org Law, when '
the path of the human meatpie is crossed, one should taketh a bite, and yea, sever a limb, for all human meatpies are a dilution of the Machine Principal, and lo! Machine Principal is Law.
'"
Pippa and Tarly stared at Mrs Strogger.
"Tell me again why you're here?" said Pippa.
"I helped rescue Franco. And he's your friend. So you owe me - a ride, at least. Back to my own world."
"The Org States?" said Tarly. "I'm interested. Why do you and the gangers never cease your endless bloody war?"
Mrs Strogger considered this. "It goes back a long way. A long, long way. Once, there was the Holy Machine Heart, which was stolen by the gangers in an attempt to push us from our home planet, Orgworld. This world. A world terraformed by humans when Earth Oppression made the cyborgs illegal. As if we were," she gave a little laugh, "
dangerous
or something."
"I'm a bit hazy," said Pippa, staring out at the mountains beneath. The Hornet, around her, was clunking and hissing, but Alice was doing a good job of keeping her in the air. Pippa didn't feel nervous; she trusted Alice with her life. "What happened on Earth? That was, what, a few hundred thousand years ago?"
"Yes. We were a religion, back then. We believed in a Rise to Heaven by upgrading our bodies using machine parts. This, we believed, was our Evolution. Our Salvation. The only way to reach God was to
become
God. A Machine God. The Earth Authorities saw it different; the varying religions of Earth collectively agreed to see our new upstart religion banished to an offworld colony. So Orgworld was created. Built
for us
in order to get
rid of us.
"
"We need to land," said Alice, voice a gentle hum. "I suggest you all strap yourselves in."
"Rough ride?" said Pippa.
"Possibly. And I don't like to take chances."
The Fast Attack Hornet
Metallika
cruised over The Gangers, engines grumbling, and Alice found a high, snowbound plateau. Kicking out the Hornet's landing gear, she settled in a cloud of steam and streaks of molten rock. The engines cooled and clicked, and the titaniumIII ramp unfolded and touched down on rock.
Pippa strode out, followed by Tarly. The two women stood, surveying the vast mountain range as a bloated red moon coloured the sky crimson, and red light cascaded into every hollow, into every crevasse, scattering rubies of crystalline ice across scree slopes and icy, jagged pinnacles.
"What a beautiful place," said Tarly, taking a deep breath. "Can you smell that ice?"
"Yeah. Drink it in, lap it up,
General.
This is a place to fucking
die.
Don't be conned by the pretty colours and lavish pastel shades. This mountain range is as savage as they come; it'll drink you in and puke you out."
Tarly stared hard at Pippa, as an ice breeze rustled her curls. "Has anybody ever told you that you're a maudlin, stroppy and aggressive bitch?"
"All the time," smiled Pippa. "But they usually end up with a sword in the spine."
"I'll make sure I don't turn my back on you," said Tarly, curtly.
"That'd be for the best," said Pippa, turning back into the warmth and security of the Hornet's battered interior.
Franco lay in all his glorious nakedness on his bunk, staring up at the ceiling and replaying events in his mind. Cloneworld. Clone Terra. Orgs. Gangers. Nechudnazzar. Pubs and Guinness and drunken AI women. Information. 3Core. The Junk Soul. Over by the Slush Pits. An easy gig. An easy steal. Bugger.
Franco coughed, and sat up, and rubbed at his weary eyes. It had been a long mission. But then, they always seemed to be long missions nowadays. Nothing was ever simple anymore. And people - aliens, people, monsters, robots, just
enemies in general
- just didn't seem to give him a break. It was like the entirety of all fucking creation was out to get him. Yes, maybe he was paranoid. After all, being mad (sometimes), and having been incarcerated at The Mount Pleasant Hilltop Institution, the "nice and caring and friendly home for the mentally challenged" for what felt like
decades
and forced to imbibe as many legal, illegal and
immoral
intoxicants as his body could no-doubt endure, all of it
had
to have coloured his perception on reality. But it did feel, sometimes, just occasionally, like Franco Haggis was just a comedy pawn in some omniscient bastard's insane Game of the Galaxy.
Franco sat up. Poured himself a drink. This was wind-down time, post-mission time, although he knew - painfully, clearly, obnoxiously - that pretty soon he'd be out and down in the shit again. And next time, maybe he wouldn't return. Maybe next time he'd end up dead and squished. And what then? What the fuck would happen then? He'd be a footnote on a single page of a pointless history. A squib who never made his mark. A grease stain who'd barely had the grease to leave a grease stain.
Shit. I'm drunk. But then, I earned it, right? I spend my entire life with people telling me I shouldn't get drunk, and then when I bloody do something of worth, of candour, of vigour, of importance, then they bloody stick their oar in once again and moan about how I shouldn't get drunk. Well - why the fuck not? It's not like I've got a wife and kids to look after! Is it?