yukana.
Pippa rolled forward, coming up with the blade in hand and leaping as the hammer whirred over her at waist-height. It would have crushed every rib in her body, and more. The Thumper's arms whirled about, and Pippa dodged more heavy blows and stepped in, ramming the sword into the Thumper in one straight, swift blow, right up to the hilt. The Thumper paused, a sudden, shocking stillness, and Pippa withdrew the yukana and rammed it into the Thumper
again
. It sparked and fizzled, and with a screech of metal on metal reversed fast, bubble tyres pounding the floor as Pippa took a step back and lifted her sword, dark eyes fixed on the machine, which, she assumed, had realised she could
damage
it.
"What's the matter, fucker, armour not as tough as you thought?"
The Thumper spun around and seemed to utter a low growl, almost below hearing. And Pippa realised it was
angry.
She'd stuck her little needle into its innards, and now it was
angry.
She laughed at the machine, and realised with a shocking chill that it
was
an AI after all, not just some dumb Bot with the intelligence of a brick. It had the ability to
think.
To analyse, and rationalise, and problem solve and, supposedly, empathise.
Yeah. Right. Like that thing gives a fuck whether I live or die!
But it did give a fuck. It wanted her dead. Wanted her dead real bad...
The Thumper sped at Pippa, who ran towards the machine and dived at the last moment, claw and hammer swishing through the air. Her yukana slashed left, then right, as she passed beneath the machine; huge chunks of rubber were cut from the bubble tyres, and as Pippa slowed she twisted, saw the wheel struts, and lashed out again in a shower of sparks. There came a
clunk
and the Thumper seemed to sit down with a jerk, collapsing off its wheels. Pippa grinned and lifted her yukana, matt black blade gleaming in the dull light of the red pin-prick lights and the glowing embers of burning crates. The arm with the cone lashed towards Pippa and she knew what was coming, heard the
whoosh
in its pipes, and she bit down on her fear like an apple filled with maggots, and she grimaced, and yelled, and charged forward, and her yukana met the lashing arm with all her force, the blade sliding and sparking up the scaled hose until she reached the Thumper's hull
.
The blade bit, and detached the limb at its core joint. Pippa grabbed the protruding bolts and climbed up onto the Thumper's hull, and standing, panting, streaked with sweat and dirt and smoke from the fires, she lifted the yukana high and rammed it down through the Thumper. With a shower of sparks, and a roar, as if Pippa swam beneath the ocean during a vast earthquake or tidal wave, the Thumper's remaining arms settled on the ground and the machine was still.
Pippa stood, panting for a few moments, then dragged out her yukana and leapt down from the machine. She ran over to her clone, who was lying on her back with a hole through her body the size of Pippa's head. At first glance Pippa thought her clone was dead: she was soaked with blood, and the wound was ragged and torn, edged with strips of flesh and bone. Pippa reached forward, fingers nearly touching the wound but reluctant... what could she do?
Nothing, she realised.
Pippa's clone opened her eyes, and smiled through a sheen of blood speckles. "I... tried to help," she said.
"You did good," said Pippa.
"I was sent to... kill you. But you know something? In... in the end, I liked you too... much."
Pippa saw her clone's finger stretching out, flexing almost spasmodically, and she took the clone's hand and thought about all the bad things this creature had done, all the savage killings, the murders, the murders in
her fucking name...
and that was if she'd lied, because maybe
she
was the clone and the dying woman in front of her was Pippa. The real Pippa. The original. The template.
Pippa barked a laugh, but tears were rolling down her cheeks.
She was confused.
It was just too fucked up. Too mashed up.
And Pippa realised that here and now, before her on the ground, dying, dribbling blood like a baby dribbles spit, coughing up chunks of her own smashed lungs, a quarter of her body flushed out like bad piss... well, here and now, this wasn't an evil creature, wasn't a ganger, wasn't an enemy, wasn't somebody to be hated. At the end of the day, it was just a woman lying on the floor, dying.
Pippa squeezed her fingers.
"Thank you," she said. "For your help."
"What I said... said before... I..." she spasmed, and her eyes glazed over. Then she relaxed, and her tongue licked her lips. "It's a trap," she said. "All... a trap."
Then she died on the factory floor.
Pippa held her hand for a while, slack fingers in hers, and when she opened her eyes she thought her dead clone was crying. Until she realised it was her own tears, dripping from weeping eyes, flowing from her face to its mirror image. Pippa looked at herself in death, and shuddered.
Is this how I'll appear? Is this what it'll taste like?
And she had the unique experience of watching herself die.
She did not like it one bit.
Pippa stood, and rummaged through her clone's clothing for extra MPK mags. Then she took the second yukana sword and sheathed both weapons on her back, beneath her pack.
She looked up. Around. There had to be cameras. Had to be. She grabbed one of the spikes through her arm, readying herself for the agony, and yanked it out with a spurt of blood.
"Right, fuckers!" she screamed. "I'm coming for you!"
Pippa's MPK blossomed, yammering, hot fire ejecting from the glowing barrel. A line of squib soldiers went down in a fast line from left to right, punched from their feet, splattering blood up a wall of sand crates. Crouching, she paused as the smoke swirled and parted, her body tense, eyes narrowed. She stood slowly and stepped forward, searching. Another squib charged at her, screaming, and a single bullet between the eyes slapped him back, ending his fury with a nasty
crack
.
"Any more?" she said, voice calm.
Apparently, there were not, and she touched her arm delicately where she'd patched her flesh together with skinglue after removing the Thumper's nails. She took a deep breath, levelling the pain in her mind.
Control it
, she snarled at herself.
Pippa stepped gingerly between the corpses and stepped through the door into another narrow corridor. These were the worst - in the confines it was easy to get shot, easy to die - but Pippa's fury was carrying her on, pushing her on, and when it came down to it, when the shit hit the fan, she no longer cared, no longer worried about consequence, no longer gave a fuck about the 3Core and Quad-Gal and the invading junk army. That was just a backdrop, a distant play acted out for the benefit of the decadent and mocking gods. Pippa had nothing left to fight for, and even worse, nothing left to live for. Everything she had loved was gone, and that shrivelled her heart to a small black place and locked the gate.
You must be close. To the 3Core. They're throwing everything they have at you...
And she didn't care. Her whole life she had been a victim, and despite her hatred and violence and her ability to kill, she knew now - she had been the
victim.
A victim of bullies and an abusive father. A victim of hate. A victim of anger. A victim of pride. A victim of fury. And she was tired, so tired, and wanted to let it all go...
But could not.
She kicked open the door and bullets whined at her, slapping the wall beside her head, tiny splinters of hot steel stinging her skin. She unleashed metal fury, stepping,
leaping
, into a roll and coming up fast, eyes narrowed, lips pursed, MPK slamming in an arc that ended with a final
crack
as she took out the last enemy squib on the high bridge above her. He staggered, hit the rail, flipped over, and landed with a dull
thud
in front of her, unmoving.
Pippa stared through the gloom. There was, at the centre of the chamber, what could only be described as a huge pod.
Can it really be that simple? A Pod Vault? A fucking pod in the middle of a room? But then, she'd killed, what? Sixty? Seventy angry little gangers in the process? Did that make it an easy infiltration, or was she just jaded beyond belief after decades of slaughter? But it was all for the greater good, right? All for the bigger fucking picture.
I'm tired of death,
she realised.
I'm tired of the kill. Maybe Keenan did the right thing after all. Maybe I should go back to VOLOS, the core of Sick World, the twisted, warped, corrupted Machine God... Maybe I should join Keenan? It has to be better than this.
Pippa moved forward, wary, MPK sweeping her surroundings. The Pod Vault was barely what Pippa would describe as a museum; it was a room, an armoured room designed to protect an item, a series of items, something precious. She stepped through the arched portal of the black pod and into the dark, oil-smelling interior. It occurred to her that it might be a trap; that the whole thing might just crush her, or swamp her in poisonous gas, or inject her with a thousand spikes. She no longer cared. Pippa had moved beyond thoughts of death. She was sick of the gangers, sick of the clones, she just wanted out of there - one way or another.
It was cool inside the Pod Vault. A single room with a gentle, glowing light. There were diamond shelves with various items ranging across their sparkling expanse. Pippa scanned the shelves, squinting a little, holding her breath. They'd travelled long and hard and fast trying to find an answer to the junks; could she really be this close to discovering the one thing which could save the Quad-Gal from their infectious invasion?
She murmured a tiny laugh.
Her eyes alighted on a small grey disc. Around the edge, in tiny, alien script were letters, or numbers - some form of identification. This had to be it. The 3Core. The junk's computer chip, once used to run their global mainframe, and which coordinated their civilisation and their battles and their society. The heart, mind and soul of their civilisation. The Junkala Soul. Quad-Gal Military could reprogram it, re-infect the spreading junks with a digital retrovirus. Turn them from warmongering creatures of accelerating destruction into... something not quite so corrupt.
Pippa reached out.
Her fingers closed slowly around the disc, and she lifted it to her face, and she
felt
the power emanating from the tiny object: something so small, so delicate, so fragile, and yet with the potential to do so much good. It had been hidden here, hoarded here, and Pippa was damn sure the gangers had no real idea of what it was, of what it could potentially
achieve
. They'd have taken over the Quad-Gal by now if they had any inkling of its
power.
"Beautiful, is it not?" said the soft, slow voice.
Pippa whirled, crouching, yukana out and quivering, the
shring
hanging in the air.
At the entrance stood a small man, a hunchback, one shoulder lower than the other. His face was oval, his hair a straggled mess, his mouth upturned at one corner, his eyes mismatched in colour - one green, one yellow, a curiously mesmerising stare.
Pippa looked for weapons, but the hunchback was unarmed.
Pippa relaxed a little. His soldiers would be outside, of course. Waiting for her to step out. Ambush!
Hell.
"Do you know what it is?"
"I know it belonged to the junks. That is all. We have tried to decode it, but do not have the technology. Quad-Gal Military saw to that with their...
sanctions."
He almost spat the last word, but then smiled lop-sidedly.
"Hmm," said Pippa, eyes searching for a way out. She did not consider the hunchback a threat. He was little more than a distraction before the real violence began. How many soldiers? How many guns? Shit, she was trapped like a bear in a cage. Well, she'd fucking dance all right. She'd dance and maim and kill until she could kill no more.
"How did you convince your clone to help you? We were amazed by that turn of events. She was genetically
programmed
to hate you, to bring you in, to kill you as a last resort."
Pippa gave a small shrug. "I did nothing."
"You changed her."
"I could not change her. She was me."
"She was a copy of you," said Ziggurat. "She was your clone. With a few...
modifications.
"
"Much as I'd like to stand here chatting," snapped Pippa, stepping forward, yukana lowering to the hunchback's throat, "I need you to step out of the way. In one piece is fine, but if you like, you can do it in several slabs."
"Tut tut," said Ziggurat, smiling gently. "You people do so underestimate me. But you only do it once."
Pippa hesitated. But she was deadly tired, emotionally distraught, mentally drained, psychologically bruised and just damn sick of the whole fucking ball game.
"I warned you," she said, and launched herself at the hunchback, yukana slamming down in a killing stroke - only Ziggurat wasn't there; he'd side-stepped neatly, right hand darting out, the palm of his hand slapping Pippa's chest over her heart and
accelerating
her backwards with such force she could not breathe. She sped across the Pod Vault's interior, hit the wall and fell to the ground. She rolled to her feet, hissing. Ziggurat traded his air of nonchalance for an expression of loathing. This was fine. Pippa was used to people trying to kill her. It was when they were nice she started to worry...