Mistake.
Both women stopped, Pippa pouring with sweat. She had slowed, weariness showing with every movement. But hatred burned in her face; hatred and frustration. She could find no way through her enemy's guard. It was too good. Too neat.
Too perfect.
"Show yourself, coward!"
"Why?"
"I need a name, for when I skewer your arse with my blade!"
The attacker reached up and whipped off her mask. Her brown bobbed hair tumbled free. Her green eyes glared at Pippa - from a face that was her exact clone.
Pippa stared, mouth open...
As her ganger attacked.
Franco leapt down the ramp, Kekras in his tattooed fists. He was scowling, blinking, looking from one Pippa to the other. They were the same, perfectly matched, and their sword strikes rang through the early morning chill as Pippa fought
herself.
Every strike she made was anticipated, every block a narrow escape. But, despite appearances, they weren't evenly matched; her clone had the upper hand - because she
knew.
"Let me kill it," shouted Franco.
"No!" hissed Pippa through gritted teeth. Nearly frenzied, both blades a dazzling blur, sweat pouring down her face and through lank hair, Pippa forced her clone backwards. The squeals of their clashing swords echoed through the stillness. They were near the cliff edge, now, still battling, blades glowing in the early morning sunlight. Pippa blocked, sent a low, horizontal cut slashing through thin air, then launched herself, both boots hitting her own mirrored face. Her ganger grabbed Pippa's legs and staggered back, and both women flipped from the ledge and disappeared...
The plateau was left in a sudden, icy silence.
"No!" yelled Franco, and leapt forward - as behind him a huge, droning gunship rose from a ravine, rotors slamming, engines pounding. Its miniguns roared, and heavy-duty bullets slammed into the Hornet, kicking up sparks and violence and chaos. In Franco's earlobe comms, Alice spoke calmly:
"We need to leave. Now."
Franco skidded to a halt, gazing at where Pippa had fallen, then back to the gunship, guns roaring, lines of bullets kicking up towards him. He could see a pilot, clad all in black. Franco growled something incomprehensible, face stubborn, eyes hooded, and watched impassively as twin lines of churning rock sped past him to either side - missing him by a miracle - and lifted both his Kekra quad-barrel machine pistols to send a volley of bullets slam into the gunship's cockpit glass, cracking it...
"Come on!" screamed Tarly from the ramp. The Hornet's engines were whining, and only Franco was stopping Alice kicking them into the air and turning missiles on the ganger's gunship...
"What about Pippa?"
"We'll find her! Come on!"
Franco sprinted for the Hornet, and even as he scrambled up the landing ramp it was folding inwards, and Alice leapt the Hornet into the sky, turned its missiles on the ganger's gunship - and paused in horror, as her computer scanners screamed at her in frantic disarray. In raw digital
panic...
The gangers hadn't just brought their own gunship, something Alice had thought not only illegal under QGM Law, but
impossible
thanks to the countless anti-aircraft GASGAM gunbots that patrolled Cloneworld on a mission of aerial destruction... no, they'd also brought their own
gunbots,
two of them, huge sleek machines manufactured by QGM and deadly to anything which took their fancy. In an instant, Alice saw their danger - the gunbots were rogues, they'd been
hacked
by the gangers. Cracked and hacked and corrupted. Now, the gangers held all the aces...
In a flicker of binary she made a decision, and hurled the Fast Attack Hornet skywards in a glittering beam of insane acceleration, as below, the gunbots launched directional missiles which screamed after them, snapping at the Hornet's heels like a pack of hungry metal wolves...
Franco, tossed about the cabin like a pea in a bucket, watched in horror as Cloneworld disappeared, faded, in a flicker of dissolving colour.
CHAPTER SIX
THE GANGERS
Pippa fell, hit rock and ice with a grunt that knocked both yukana swords from her grasp, then slid on the near-vertical rocky face, which tore at her clothing, tore her flesh and gave a her a vast view leading five thousand feet straight
down...
The sight welled up and punched her in the face, the mouth, the throat, the heart - it filled her like a detonation, and a scream bubbled in her throat as her gloved hands and boots scrabbled to find purchase, and she slid with acceleration towards a vast, yawning abyss of black rock and deep, panoramic ravines of snow and welcoming death...
Pippa hit the rim and sailed out over the edge, and something hard clamped around her wrist and slammed her against the vertical rock wall. Pippa hung over the sheer drop, panting, blood and sweat in her hair, in her eyes. Slowly, she groaned, and looked up - into her own face.
Pippa had been saved by her own ganger. The clone stared down at her, a wicked, mocking smile on her features, her iron grip holding Pippa's wrist, fingers leaving deep imprints.
"Got you," she said.
"Why save me,
bitch,
when you were sent to kill me?"
"Who said I was sent to kill you?"
Pippa considered this for a while. The ganger hauled her up and sat her on the rim of the ledge - of the
world,
which opened up beneath and before them. They stared out over a circle valley, below and beneath and
beyond
; a vast, circular pit lined with towering monoliths. The Gangers, huge black teeth, vast and brutal and pointing, mocking, to the gods.
A cold brittle wind whipped Pippa's hair in her face. "Shit," she said, and spat, looking at her ripped gloves. Pain battered her, beating at her arms and legs, hips and back, chest and neck and head. It felt as though somebody was dancing on her. It felt as though the whole fucking world had given her a right hook.
"Good to be alive, yes?" said the clone, and Pippa saw her cradling her yukana swords.
Better than me,
she thought bitterly.
The bitch is better than me.
"Pass me a sword, I'll show you how good it is."
The clone laughed with genuine humour, and nodded out at the vast savage world beyond. "That's the way you want."
"What do you mean?"
"The Slush Pits. That's where you're going, right? To the Pod Vault. After the 3Core."
Pippa said nothing, face remaining blank. But her eyes gleamed. How could she know? How could
it
know? Where was the fucking chink in their armour? How had their plans possibly been leaked? Tarly? The old ragged org, Mrs Strogger? Franco's flapping mouth after a pint of whiskey?
"Come on, up you get."
"Oh yeah? Like I cooperate that easy."
The yukana tip touched Pippa's throat. "It was a demand, not a request."
"That's more like it, bitch."
Pippa stood, and stretched, and her body screamed at her, but as the cold wind whipped down from vast mountain peaks, and her eyes watered, and she breathed deep the crisp snow and fresh air from vast lonely places, by all the gods it
did
feel good to be alive. Pippa looked up, and back, but there was no sign of the ganger gunship.
As if reading her mind, her clone said, "It's too wild. We'll rendezvous down in the valley. I hope you're good at climbing."
"I'm good at killing," snarled Pippa, some of the fire coming back into her belly and destroying the mountain euphoria. "Want to see me try?"
The clone seemed to sigh. "I don't want to kill you, Pippa. Truly I don't. But you will come with me, or I'll chop off a limb at a time. Ever seen somebody climb with only one arm? Me neither, but I think I'm interested enough to experiment."
Pippa gave a small nod. "Down?"
"That way. The narrow path."
Pippa led the way, shivering now despite her WarSuit. It intrigued her to see her clone wore similar attire - but with subtle differences. As if the gangers had copied the WarSuit, as well as Pippa's genetic substance. Pippa gave a grimace. The bastards. The cheating, cheating bastards.
She picked her way carefully down the narrow, icy trail. It was mostly bare rock, and sometimes short heather, or harsh winter grass, clung to the steep slopes. Boulders rested treacherously on either side. The wind snapped at her like an angry little dog. A yakker snakker.
Pippa's clone followed close behind, one yukana drawn, one sheathed against her back. She did not speak. Pippa heard her breathing occasionally - it matched her own. The same beat, same rhythm, same heart, same lungs, same veins and blood. Damn. Shit. And if she, Pippa, had been given a mission to hunt down her clone and bring her in, would she?
Damn right she would.
Would she have compassion?
No.
Would she be willing to skewer the bitch like a fish on a spear?
Oh, yes.
"What made the path?"
"What do you mean?"
Pippa shrugged, and glanced back. For a moment, vertigo took her in its fist and threatened to toss her down the mountain. She swallowed and breathed cold air deeply. "It's a simple enough question. The path. The trail. I don't see any happy ramblers in the vicinity; can't imagine the gangers going in for a whole lot of active mountain pursuits."
"You're right. Keep moving, bitch, we have a lot of ground to cover."
"I'm right?"
"Gangers don't come here. It's forbidden by the Mistress."
"Why forbidden?"
"You have a lot of questions."
"Just trying to soak up my environment."
"All the better to escape with, eh?" But she was smiling. "That's what I like to see. Never lose that fighting spirit. Never lose the will to escape. You're certainly a girl after my own... genetics."
"So answer the question."
The clone shrugged. "I know on paper, Cloneworld -- or at least, Clone Terra - may look like a pretty contained and understandable world, society, infrastructure, whatever. But it's had a turbulent history. There's been a lot of
experimentation.
A lot of genetic manipulation. And sometimes, things can go wrong."
"How wrong?"
"Pretty bad wrong. It's like the Slush Pits, the place you'd so painfully like to visit. That's a bad place, Pippa, old girl. And if you ever did escape my nasty evil clutches, then I'd advise against seeing it. Some things are best left to the imagination. Or at least, best left
dead.
"
"What's that got to do with the mountains? And this trail?"
"Over the years, the decades,
the centuries,
certain
things,
creatures, were bred, and grown, and manipulated. You can do a lot of shit with genetic malfunction if you try. And believe me, in this endless fucking war between orgs and gangers, the gangers have been trying their best to gain the upper hand. They bred soldiers.
Monsters.
Only some escaped from the Slush Pits. Some escaped into the mountains. And over the years, they interbred. They changed and warped and deviated."
Pippa looked about sharply as, distantly, over some lonely dark peak, a howl went up, a high piercing note which held for what seemed an eternity, then slowly dropped in volume and pitch, trailing off into a bestial, gurgling growl.
"We call them Pit Creatures, or just
critters
."
The clone had stopped, catching her breath, and Pippa turned to her. The trail was so narrow she felt herself lean unconsciously
forward,
towards the side of the mountain, as if willing herself to cling to the rock, allowing the mountain to wrap her in an embrace to ward off falling. She reached out and touched a boulder to steady herself. Damn that vertigo.
"These critters friendly, are they?"
"What do you reckon?"
Pippa laughed, a brittle crack of ice. "Give me a sword."
"No."
"You'd leave me defenceless?"
"A woman like you is never defenceless,
sweetie.
"
"Give me a
sword
, dammit!"
"The only sword you'll take from me is one you pry from my twitching, dead fingers. And if you look inside yourself, look into your heart, you'll see that's the same answer you would give me if this were reversed. We're the same, Pippa. The same person. The same code. And you can't fucking argue with genetics."
Pippa stared at her. "Who
are
you?"
"I am you, and you are me."
"When were you cloned?"
The cloned Pippa grinned, and her eyes sparkled with humour, with mischievousness, and with a bright, deadly intelligence. "That sort of thing is classified. Not available for open public consumption."
"Tell me, damn you!"
"Not today. Now let's get moving. If I'm not mistaken, that was a call to hunt."
"So they're on our trail?"
"Hmm," said the clone, and looked across the mountains, then down, where a huge sections of scree slopes and chimneys greeted her wary gaze. "I really wish you hadn't kicked us over that ledge. We would be having so much more fun right now."