Franco gave him the finger, and cut another rope. And another. And another...
"Shoot him!" screamed Cap'n Bluetit, and at least fifty weapons turned on Franco, who squawked and ducked as bullets chewed the wood alongside his head.
"Kill him!" Another volley ate in the barnacle-encrusted wood.
"Pulp him!" A third volley tore across the ship, bullets whining and pinging from a mad array of stolen projectile weapons spanning five centuries of piracy.
Franco crawled forward, popped up like a mole from a hole, and slashed another rope. More bullets screamed overhead, and, peering through a ragged hole, Franco saw the pirates running back towards the rail and their shortly-to-be-hijacked ship.
"A-har indeed," growled Franco, and gave Tarly the signal as he leapt up, probably in slow-motion, and bullets whined through the air, cutting past him and around him, and he was balanced on the rail with one hand, and his cutlass swung down with heroic precision, as Tarly hit the hyperdrive and the galleon moaned, and groaned, and shook, and shot off across the Teeth Ocean like a cat with a scalded arse.
Cap'n Bluetit stood on his new, stricken vessel, mouth agape, hands on hips, filled like a jug to the brim with disbelief. "I just don't believe it," said the pirate org. "I just don't bloody believe it!"
One of his subordinates sidled up to him. "You all right, Cap'n?"
"Of course I'm not fucking all right!"
he screamed, and slapped the dumb pirate across his metal skull. "They took my ship and all my gold and my collection of fine ganger silk underwear! Would you be alright? Eh? I ask you!"
"Er, Cap'n, they're heading on a bearing of seventeen degrees, right?"
"And?"
"Well, isn't that a direct heading for the, er, you know? The Mouth of the Ocean?"
"So it is!"
Cap'n Bluetit smiled, suddenly, and looked around at his crew. "Get working, lads. We're going after my ship. A-har!"
Franco and Tarly had overpowered the remaining rogue pirate orgs, and thrown them over the side for good measure, to sink under the weight of their metal. Franco watched them disappear under the waves, but his face went hard. "Fuck 'em," he said. "They made their fortune robbing and killing innocent folk. They gets what they deserves."
"Quite right, buster, squawk!" said Polly.
Franco scowled at the bird, but said nothing, instead focusing on the bright horizon, filled with layered shafts of blue, magenta and orange.
"We did it," he said.
"We did," agreed Tarly.
They'd cut Queen Strogger down, who had sustained only minimal damage to her flesh and cyborg components. The only thing injured seemed to be her pride, and she made a vow to hunt down all pirates across The Teeth Ocean and destroy them utterly when she was returned to power on the Org Throne at Org.
The wind streamed through Franco's slightly reduced, square-bottomed beard. One hand on the controls, he piloted the galleon smoothly across the rolling Teeth Ocean.
"This is grand," he said.
"Indeed," said Tarly, and she moved in close to him, and snuggled up to him a bit. "You were quite heroic back there, Franco, to tell you the honest truth."
"Hey!" he said, and frowned, because he couldn't think of a name he'd been called which would perfectly sum up his current situation. "You know what, darling?" he said. "I could get used to this, a life on the ocean waves, just my good woman by my side, the wind in my beard, all nautical stuff inside my head; I think it'd be a reet good break from soldiering, I do."
"I'm hardly a good woman," said Tarly.
"Okay then, with my psychopathic assassin-killer QGM General by my side. How's that sound?"
"You don't mind that I'm a psychopath?" said Tarly, gazing into his eyes.
"Hey, what woman isn't?" grinned Franco, then held up both hands as she slapped him. "Joke! Joke! I beg a truce!"
Ahead, on the glittering ocean, a school of dolphins leapt from the waves, and in a surge of surf they ploughed on alongside the fast-powered galleon, smiling faces turned slightly to one side as if regarding the humans at the prow of this anachronistic, hyperdrive-powered vessel.
"Beautiful!" said Tarly, breathing deep the salty ocean air.
"Stunning," agreed Franco, as he watched the dolphins accelerate past the ship and disappear over the horizon. "But hot damn, I just didn't realise they could swim so fast!"
"They can't, squawk!" squawked Polly. "You're heading for The Mouth of the Ocean!"
"The What of the What?" scowled Franco, thinking
oh yeah, here we go again, one more bloody damn and bloody problem to deal with, out of the fire and into the frying pan, an' all that!
"It's an ocean whirlpool!" squawked the robot parrot. "It'll suck you in and suck you down and crush you into component atoms! You have to turn around, head the other bloody way! Squawk!"
"Hey, don't you worry you none," said Franco, flapping his hand as if to wave away a minor problem. "Is that
all?
A liddle widdle ocean whirlpool? This fucking hyperdrive could take us into
orbit
, baby! It'll be a super-hyper-match for some liddle biddle bit of bibble wibble water current any damn ocean could throw at us. You just watch and see. Now. See?
See?
"
He turned the ship around with a grind of gears.
Behind him, in the distance, under the magenta and red flashing horizon, the dolphins started screaming.
"Increase the power," said Franco, calmly, a man utterly and completely in control.
Tarly increased the power.
"Increase it some more," said Franco, although his voice had now lost its edge of calmness. There was a crack in the plaster. A beetle in the bath. A snake in his pants... so to speak.
"Increased to full," said Tarly, her own voice wavering a little.
"What? You mean to
full
full? A hyperdrive should get us bloody starbound, not flounder around in a puddle of piss like a fish with no fins!"
"
Yes
," hissed Tarly, "but this is a
hyperdrive
which has been stolen from a crash site and buckled together using zip-ties and spit, then cobbled to an ancient galleon using spit and spunk. It's on full power, mate. That's as fast as she damn well goes!"
Franco stared at his new horizon, which was a perfect reverse tracking shot.
"We're still going backwards," he said, voice level.
"I can see that," snapped Tarly. "What are we going to do about it?"
"Row?" said Franco, hopefully.
"You're all going to drown, squawk!" yelled Polly the Parrot, helpfully.
"
We're
all going to drown," corrected Franco with a scowl.
"Not me, buster! I can fly!"
"Damn and bloody bollocks," snarled Franco, and ran towards the mast, where he started to climb like a monkey on acid. Below, the hyperdrive engine was whining and rattling as they fought the awesome pull of, well, gee, Franco could see it now
and lo and behold if it wasn't just the biggest damn ocean whirlpool he'd ever had the misfortune to lay eyes upon in his entire fucking existence!
He climbed back down, and sidled over to Tarly.
"Er," he said.
"Is it bad?"
"It's bad, mate."
"Are we going to die?"
"Yep. We're gonna die."
"So, no paddling out of this one, then?"
"Nope. Don't think so love."
Faster and faster they went, backwards towards a vast ocean whirlpool more than four kilometres in diameter... and all to the distant, needle-scratching soundtrack of screaming, dying dolphins...
CHAPTER TEN
3CORE
Pippa dropped into a dark corridor and crouched, yukana sword at the ready. For close quarters combat she found the sword more effective than any projectile weapon. Her yukanas were her
babies
.
Pippa's clone dropped behind her, and they waited in the gloom, tuning in to their surroundings, the feel in the air, the textures, the smell, the aura. Beneath their boots, they could feel distant, mechanical
thumps
; rhythmical, almost like a heartbeat. As if the Slush Pits were
alive.
Pippa stood first, eyes narrowing as she stared off down the long, straight corridor.
"It's based on a grid," said the clone, voice low.
"Any idea where this Pod Vault prick-tease is?"
"At the centre, I think. The core of the facility."
Pippa gave a nod, and moved off slowly, the distant thumping unnerving her. It vibrated through her boots and made her feel a little sick. She reached a set of dark steps and peered down. Everything was lit by pin-prick red lights shedding a bare minimum of illumination, and giving the ubiquitous black metalwork an eerie red glow.
"Feels like the inside of a brothel," murmured Pippa.
"Been in many brothels?"
"You'd be surprised where I've been, sweetie." Pippa smiled. She was really starting to miss Franco, and right now, to have him with her, spade-like hands clasping a pair of Kekra quad-barrel machine pistols, she would have happily let him stick his tongue down her throat.
Pippa ran her hand down the stock of the MPK. It was matt-black, smooth, familiar, like an old friend, an ex-lover for whom she still had feelings. The gun felt totally solid and real in her hands, something she could rely on without doubt. No human was like that. She smiled, a nasty smile.
No clone was like that.
Pippa padded down the stairs. She stopped halfway, hand resting against the wall. It felt soft and warm, even though her gloves. Organic, even. Pippa curled her lip in disgust. What sort of place had the gangers built? A living shell to clone other organic shells? The whole damn place was starting to disgust her, creeping up on her like a dark smoke, a mist oozing in off a river of sewage.
She reached the bottom of the stairs, easing herself to the edge and peering into the darkness. As her clone had said, the place was a grid, an ordered network of corridors. The thumping was subtly louder, as if great machines were hard at work.
Across from her, there was a door. She glanced back at her clone, who gave a little shake of her head. Pippa shrugged, and moved forward anyway. Her hand touched the warm metal, which gave a little as she pushed, then opened into a vast chamber. Warm air blew out, smelling of decay, of rotting garbage, old meat, decomposing vegetables, and Pippa stepped in and it was dark, but her eyes adjusted and she could see huge vats. They were low-walled, maybe waist-high on Pippa, and circular, each one fifty metres across. There were thirty of them, stretching off across the chamber.
Behind her, Pippa's clone closed the door and dropped to a crouch.
"What's in them?"
"You're guess is as good as mine."
Pippa moved forward and stood by the rim of one of the vats. It held some kind of green-tinged black chemical soup. Occasionally, a lump would surface, then disappear beneath the gently agitated surface.
"There's... stuff in here," said Pippa.
"I think these are recyc vats."
"Recyc vats?"
"Recycling."
"Recycling what?"
"You don't want to know."
Pippa saw a hand surface, bob for a moment in all its severed glory, then dip beneath the surface again. There came a
thrumming
noise and a sound like gnashing swords. The surface vibrated violently, then went curiously still.
"Interesting," murmured Pippa.
Her clone came up beside her. "Yes?" she said, with a narrow smile.
"That was a hand. What the
fuck
are they recycling?"
"Unused ganger shells," said the clone.
"What, dead people?"
"They're not people. They're blank bodies. They have no minds. They only last so long. You know how it is with meat - how easy it is for it to go... off."
From the far end of the chamber there came a clattering sound and Pippa's MPK snapped up, tracking, and it took every ounce of discipline she had not to slam off an ND. She blinked. Huge doors high up in the wall had opened, and she noticed for the first time the rails criss-crossing the ceiling, a mass of mono-track. Some kind of upside-down wheeled cart clattered into view, and swinging from it, like so many slaughtered beef carcasses, were...
"No," said Pippa.
They were men and women, even children, all naked. Their pale white bodies were unreal, ghost-like, covered with a viscous sheen. They swung gently as the cart clattered along the track, bringing them closer and closer to where Pippa and her clone crouched in hiding. They were clamped in tight steel vices with three prongs each, bloodlessly piercing their skulls. The ganger shells were drained of fluid.
"That's gross," said Pippa, standing, gun in her hands. "Just plain evil. What kind of fucking society do you have down here on Cloneworld?"
"And so it is, the base problem with humanity and all its self-centred pious hypocrisy. You think what we do is so bad? Look at your own history, Pippa, look at your own constant slaughter, your endless fucking examples of genocide! We clone ourselves, we copy ourselves - is that such a crime? Never, ever in our entire history have we rounded up millions of our own kind and exterminated them in ghettos, or camps, or fields, or hangars. And yet throughout your history books and filmys, this has gone on time after time after time. War crimes and slaughter - even whole fucking planets destroyed, billions of lives pulped into waste! So don't try and preach to me about our society being warped or evil. We're just different. And for humanity, with all its wisdom and technology and superiority, what is different is to be feared."