I am not human, thought Pippa.
I am not human anymore.
"Drink."
The world was a hybrid gestalt. Nothing was real. Not guns, not ammo, not soldiers, not sex, not family, not friends, not alcohol - aah, pleasant alcohol, let me drink you down and sink in your velvet pink vulva. I don't want this anymore. I don't want this world. I don't want this existence. How could this happen to me? How could it all become so confusing? How could it all become so twisted? So fucked up? It's like a man in a bad shirt forcing his fist down your throat. Like a best friend stabbing you in the back with a rusty dagger,
et tu brute
and all that. Wink, wink. Like a mother pissing on your grave. Like a father giving a blow job. Like a lover drowning you in acid. Like a brother ignoring your pleas for help.
"
Drink...
"
She spluttered. It was acid on her tongue and in her throat and it burned, it burned bad, baby, and she screamed and lashed out, knocking the canteen away. Soothing noises came and she rested her head on cold butter which gave way, and she sank into the soft fat belly of the (under)world and wondered why all the lights had gone out.
"It wasn't supposed to be this way."
Pippa opened her eyes. She felt whole again. She felt clean again. Then she remembered she wasn't real, she was a genetic construct, a clone of a clone of a clone, a collection of genetic matter which mimicked another. And she'd done bad things. Terrible things. And what right did she have? She wasn't life. She wasn't
real
life. Just an imitation of a copy. But weren't we all? Aren't we all? Isn't that the way human genetics work? Longevity, earned the hard way. Codes passed down through the centuries. Fuck a long life, fuck immortality, you get immortality through your children and grandchildren and great grandchildren. But that doesn't do you any good. Because you're dead. Dead and
fucked.
"Sit up. We need to get moving."
Pippa's eyes snapped open, and she hissed between clenched teeth. She smashed a blow left, but her clone ducked and she laughed, laughed out loud, for none of it was real and she was the fucking
clone
, so the real Pippa ducked, and she was faster than her clone, better than her clone, more real, more lifelike, more human, more human, Dear God is there a heaven for the copies? If the copies believe in God, does He accept them in past the Gates of Heaven? Or is there a fast-track McChute all the way down to Hell?
After all. How can you have a soul if you were
made?
How can you find peace, or love, if you're a pressing from a template?
How can you find redemption when you don't even exist?
The world spins round and round and round, and we want to get off, but we can't get off 'til we
die.
And that was the point. Pippa realised she wanted to die. She was tired of it all. Tired of the fight. Tired of the loss. These things never came easy. Victory never came easy. Nor redemption or love or life. And to find she wasn't really real, to find she was just a... just a fucking
clone,
made a mockery of her entire existence.
Implanted memories.
A rewritten history.
I don't believe in a God that I need to worship.
I don't believe in a need to get down on my knees.
Lies, lies. All lies.
But wouldn't God help? Help you how?
You need help, Pippa. You need something.
You need the Light.
You need the Path.
Pippa sighed, and drank, and sat up, and looked around at a bleak world through bleak eyes. It didn't matter that she hadn't killed Keenan's family, his wife, his children, and lost him to VOLOS. She wasn't real. She was the clone. Which meant... the
real
Pippa did those things. Committed those crimes. Atrocities. Betrayals.
It was all true, wasn't it? All fucking true.
Pippa was an evil, helpless, hopeless creature.
But then... aren't we all?
Pippa, the clone, looked at her real self, whom she had once believed unreal. And she pitied the reality.
"We've got to get moving," said Pippa.
"I know," said Pippa.
"The monsters are coming in the night."
"I know."
"We must fight."
"Yes."
"Together."
"As one."
Nothing mattered any more. Not identity, not individuality, not the unique; the chances were that they were both going to die. And that suited Pippa, and Pippa, just fucking fine.
The screams started. Distant wails. Claws scrabbling on stone, feet pounding scree. The hunters had tracked them. The mutations of mutations had hunted them down and Pippa and Pippa took hold of a yukana sword each and moved to the doorway, past the small fire, and stepped out into the cold wilderness of The Gangers.
From high up the dark slopes came an army of creatures. Ten, twenty, thirty, a hundred. The shapes were dark blurs under the light of a velvet moon. They moved fast, on two legs, four, six, some skidding on single ski-like appendages. Some looked like tigers and bears and wolves. But blended. Mutated. They had long claws, like scythes. Some had fangs, curving over massive jaws and glistening with snake venom. Some slithered on bellies but had the faces of women, which screamed and screamed as bulging bodies pulsed with strings of unborn children. Some were blended with insects, human faces above giant scorpion claws, or crab bodies with pincers and strings of salami intestine trailing like over-fat over-ripe sausages from punctured, bulging anus-sacks. Some were fish, clacking and snapping, dead eyes staring ahead as they slithered and ran and crawled and flopped down the scree slopes towards the two women, standing side-by-side now, standing shoulder to shoulder, together, facing a common enemy, facing death, and not just death but an eternity of suffering and agony at their hands and claws and pincers.
"We must fight together," growled Pippa.
"Yes," said Pippa.
"We will die here," said Pippa.
"Tonight," agreed Pippa.
"We will make them suffer," said Pippa.
"As we have both suffered," said Pippa.
They lifted their swords, and under a yellow moon watched calmly as the charging hordes approached.
CHAPTER SEVEN
CRASH AND BURN
Franco sat in the UChair, scowling up at General Tarly Winters and Mrs Strogger, who stood, side by side, arms folded, watching him with the baleful glares of the terminally wary. He might look like a comedy munchkin, but Tarly had read the reports and Strogger had seen him fight first hand. He was a right bloody handful when he kicked off, and no mistaking.
"We have to go back for her."
"I agree," said Tarly, and ran a hand through her red curls, "under normal circumstances. But these are
not
normal circumstances. These are
exceptional
circumstances, and there's a damn sight more at stake here than one little lady; we have a planet about to go supernova with an internal war
you helped to start,
and we have ten million rogue alien junks scouring the Four Galaxies intent on our fucking annihilation. So call me old fashioned, Franco Haggis, but in my book there's a bigger game being played. That's why I'm a QGM General and you're a dog-soldier soldier-grunt. And that's why I'm pulling rank on you."
Franco regarded Tarly for a few moments. Her anger was up, and she was flushed red. Franco narrowed his eyes a little.
"You ain't been laid in a while, have you, love?"
"
What?
"
"You heard."
"I'll fucking bust your balls to the brig, you whiny little bastard. What the fuck has
that
got to do with our current predicament? What has that got to do with saving the planet? Halting the war?"
Franco gave a little shrug. "Jealous of her, are you?"
"Clever tactic, but it won't work on me. This is not personal. And anyway, I don't have to answer to a moron."
"You do it every day when you look in the mirror."
"Franco, you're a minute away from being locked up. And Mrs Strogger here has kindly agreed to help enforce any decision I make. Not," she hissed, moving closer to stare Franco in the eyes, "that I need any help doing that."
The Kekra touched her temple, and Franco grinned, showing his missing tuff, one of the many victims from his bar-brawling days. "Not with a bullet in your skull, you can't," he said, voice now very quiet, very dangerous, because the fuckers had cooperated back on the Hornet under the pretext that they'd go back after Pippa, only now,
now
, just like every bastard in command Franco had ever met, back through the years, past drill instructors and sergeants, even to his old power-hungry, ego-infused, spunk-stained old Headmaster at
Botton School for Boys
, Killian Britchards, they were pulling rank, changing the rules, changing the game, and as usual Franco was stuck in the middle with his head up his arse. It was always the same; the people with the power did what the fuck they liked, and to hell with the Little Guy. Well, this Little Guy had given many nasty people many nasty shocks in his lifetime; he was a distillation of surprise, and the Master of Mayhem to those who tried to take advantage. Which was most people.
"Are you threatening a superior QGM Officer?" came Tarly's soft, dangerous voice.
"Ha-ha-ha, of course not," mumbled Franco, and the gun went
click.
"See, no mag. I was only fucking witcha. But the point is,
you fucking promised
we'd go after Pippa. And now you're reneging on our deal. The deal that got me back here. Hell, I was happy to go over that cliff after her. But oh, no, you had to make your false fucking General-promises, like all you snivelling Top Brass do, then pull the plug and flick the switch and turn Franco off when Franco's ready to go! Well, Franco is here to tell you he won't take no shit, and he won't let Pippa die because you didn't have the balls - quite literally - to go after her and help."
Tarly moved away, poured herself a drink, and sipped it, looking at Franco over the swirling amber liquid. "Hmm," she said.
Outside, engines hummed. Space was black. Cloneworld was distant, a swirling blue-grey mass peppered with clouds, a planetary
clone
of Old Earth, Bad Earth, Shit Earth. The irony was not lost on Franco. He was a lot more sophisticated than he looked. A
lot more.
Although you wouldn't believe it.
Franco uncurled from the UCouch and stretched, looking to his right, out of the porthole. Stars flickered. Franco cracked his knuckles. He stared back at Tarly, challenge in his eyes and in his face. He looked calm, but a beast raged within him and Tarly could see it; had seen such things, a million times before. She hadn't got to the position of
general
by being a dumb ass. Just by being brutal.
"So what's it to be, eh?" said Franco.
"New things have come to light."
"Oh, yeah?"
"Yes."
"Such as?"
"Mrs Strogger, and your quite masterful exfil of such an important personage."
"Eh? The old crone?"
"Hah! Bastad!"
Franco stared at Strogger. Stared at Mrs Strogger. Stared at -
what had she said? Strogger 7576889?
And Franco had to remember that Mrs Strogger had five hundred and thirty-three children. That was a lot of children. That took stamina. That took resourcefulness. It showed a certain...
masochistic
tendency.
Franco stared at Mrs Strogger. Stared hard. He'd kind of got used to having her around during recent exploits. She had become, he shuddered to admit, like part of the furniture. Now, he reappraised her. Her old and wrinkled skin. The malevolent green glow, deep in her eyes. The spikes along her arms. The mechanical legs and armoured feet, ready to leave an imprint in steel, baby, steel! He watched her chromed teeth clacking manically. Looked at the bad join where her greased midriff-piston could elevate her to the rank of, well, to the rank of
very tall org.
He listened to the clanking and whirring, and breathed in the stench of aged engines and manky old oil. She stank like a backstreet mechanic's workshop. She oozed exhaust ports. She ejaculated
decay.
"What about her?"
"She's special," said Tarly.
"You're damn right she is," said Franco. "Special needs."
Tarly sighed. Glanced up, as if expecting Alice, the ship's computer, to help - but Alice kind of
liked
Franco, and was capricious for a ship's computer, so she kept quiet and let Tarly sweat, and enjoyed the scene for what it was: entertainment for a thousand-year old mind.
"Explain," said Franco, as he moved to the InfinityChef. He punched in several digits and the device buzzed, like a fart, as if the billion-dollar top-of-the-range perfect culinary machine was quite literally
offended
by the choice Franco had forced it to create. There came a pause. From the slot emerged a long, quivering, grease-smeared sausage like nothing Tarly Winters, nor indeed Mrs Strogger, had ever seen in their lives. To call it phallic was an insult to the phallus, all the more painful an association by the way Franco tore the end savagely from the wiener and chewed, cubes of gristle gleaming between his teeth. He waved the long, quivering sausage at Tarly. "Go on then. Spill the beans, Bagpuss."