"Oh. It's you."
"Nice to see you as well, dickhead."
"Sorry, Pippa. Don't be like that. What I meant was, we're in the shit again. Together. As usual. Ha-ha."
"I've don't it, Franco. Done what I always said I would not."
"You reprogrammed the GASGAMs? Into carrying warheads?"
"Yes. That
bitch
can detonate any whole city or org war factory she wants now. And all for a fucking TV program. Reality TV. It should be burned into infinity."
Franco stood, and stretched, and moved to Pippa. He patted her with his bound hands. "You had to do it. We need that 3Core. And talking of that junk chip, where is the little maggot?"
"There. In the console."
"Best grab it."
Pippa ejected the 3Core with a tiny
phzut.
She gazed at it, almost reverently. She offered it to Franco, but he shook his hands and head. "No no. You keep it. Look after it! We don't want to be leaving that little monkey behind!"
"So - you believe you'll be leaving the War Compound alive, then?" said Teddy Sourballs. She stood in the doorway, Ziggurat peering from behind her. She smiled then, a nasty smile on a nasty face beneath nasty barbed-wire hair. "Well. Allow me check your code first, shall I?"
She moved to the console, a cocky walk - especially for one who Franco had already slaughtered. He watched her with distaste.
The dead should bloody stay dead,
he thought bitterly. Then he brightened.
Maybe I'll get a chance to kill her again? Next time, I'll rip her damn head off and make sure!
Teddy spent a good twenty minutes at the console, scrolling through the code, and then gave a single nod and turned to Pippa, who was standing, head hung low, feeling deeply ashamed of herself. After all, it wasn't every day you programmed a hundred nukes for a madman. Madwoman. Mad... snakeperson? Shit.
"You did well. Your code is... precise. You can tell that you once worked on missile systems."
Franco stared at her. "You worked on fucking
missile
systems?"
"There's a lot you don't know about me, Franco Haggis."
"Well how the
hell
do
they
know, then? It's Combat K classified, ain't it?"
"Supposed to be," growled Pippa. "Your bloody fiancée told them everything. Pulled the files. On you, me, Keenan, and God only knows who else. These gangers have all the intel they need. Tarly Winters is their direct line to the heart of QGM Intelligence."
"Yes. Well," said Teddy. She hit a key, and the code disappeared. All the screens went black. She moved to the rear of the console, pulled out a pistol, and put eight bullets into the heart of the machine. Smoke from the ruined case crawled into the air, as if ashamed. They could smell burning. "Just so you don't think you can change the horror you have wrought."
"Thanks."
"Now, my dears, it is time for
us all
to go to war." She smiled at Ziggurat, who stood naked, palms outwards, as if he expected trouble.
"When can we leave?" said Pippa, voice a low growl.
"You get your freedom after the war is done," said Teddy. Her dark eyes glittered. "
After
Clone TV has made its show.
After
the orgs have been wiped clean off the face of Cloneworld! You see, the idea is all in the name. It's called Cloneworld for a reason. Us gangers, this is our planet. We don't want any filthy orgs polluting our water and air."
"You're just one big, happy family, aren't you?" said Pippa.
Outside, sirens suddenly started shrilling through the snow. Thousands of engines fired up, and Pippa groaned inwardly; the
attack
was now in progress. Even if they wanted to, how could they stop a whole invasion taking place?
"We must leave," said Pippa.
"No," said Teddy, backing away. "After the slaughter. After the wargames. After Clone TV has had its moment of glory! After...
we have won."
Franco got the unwritten signal from Pippa. He'd worked combat missions with her for too many years not to know when impending violence was on the cards... he could sense her tension, and knew, just
knew
when she was going to explode. When she was lied to. When she was cheated. When she was betrayed. Times like now...
Outside, a thousand massive infantry SLAMs lifted off, jets roaring and turning the snow to mush. On the long road to the sea, convoys of tanks and mobile guns started off on churning tracks. Five hundred choppers fired their engines, and with rotors
whumping,
rose high into the snow-filled sky above The Teeth. Outside, the army moved. The army
flowed...
a huge black and green steel beast, with no head and no heart and no soul.
This wasn't battle.
This was extermination.
Pippa kicked herself forward, an abrupt movement, hindered by her bound hands, but fast enough to catch Teddy Sourballs off-guard. The woman stumbled back, Pippa hurtling at her - but Ziggurat got in the way. The small hunchback threw himself between them with a hiss, and Pippa bounced from his surprisingly solid frame, recovered, and snapped off five quick kicks to Ziggurat's body and arms. He took each blow with a stoic grunt, then lifted his head, grinning at her with lop-sided jaws.
"Want to play, little girl?"
"Want to die, little hunchback?"
"Well, I want to kill
you
," nodded the naked Ziggurat, spreading his arms wide. The
pulse
flew past Pippa's head as she went into a fast dive, and exploded against the wall behind her. Computer equipment, alloy panels and boards flew out in all directions, scattering sparks as they went. Smoke curled from the shattered equipment. The roar of the pulse deafened Franco, and he coughed on raw smoke.
Franco moved forward now: him to one side, Pippa, regaining her composure, to the other.
"What's his deal?" snapped Franco.
"Let me show you," said Ziggurat, and slapped his hands together, pointing them at Franco. Franco was picked up with a shout and tossed across the stone room. He plummeted through banks of computers and hit the wall, sliding to the floor behind a bench, groaning and trickling blood from his ears.
"He wasn't fast enough," said Ziggurat.
Pippa started to back away.
"Squawk!" squawked Polly, in the corridor outside. Her wings flapped, and she lost a green alloy feather. "Everybody's getting away! They're going to kill all the orgs! On live TV! It's not fair, squawk!"
"Help me out here, then!" hissed Pippa, eyes still locked on Ziggurat.
"Bugger that!" squawked Polly, and flapped off through the smoke.
Ziggurat was moving forward, Pippa moving back on balanced heels. But she only had a few seconds before he closed her in, locked her down, and did what he was going to do...
"I thought you still needed me? In case things went wrong."
"Change of plan," said Ziggurat, lifting his hands up in the air. Bands of blue-white electric danced from palm to palm, and Pippa felt the hairs on the back of her neck and arms stand up as a truly awesome charge was built, fizzing and crackling, into something quite extraordinary...
Around the room, metallic items started to vibrate. A cold wind whipped in from the corridor down which Sourballs had fled. Pippa's hair streamed out behind her. Ziggurat was standing on the spot, naked, his whole body now
infused
with power, with raw energy, and he was drawing it not just from his hump storage unit, but from every power source in the room. In the Monastery!
"Time to fry," Ziggurat smiled, a narrow cruel smile, his green eye and his yellow eye fixed on Pippa without emotion, without compassion, without empathy.
Ziggurat was not a man who nurtured regret in his soul.
All he held was hatred.
And
power...
His hands came together in a sharp vicious sweep, and Pippa hissed...
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
BATTLE TV
Franco lay in a hell-hole, his head spinning, copper blood in his mouth, wasps in his ears, fur in his throat, a steel timpani band thundering in his heart, which threatened to crawl up his throat and puke itself onto the stone floor. He coughed up a chunk of phlegm as big as his fist, and spat it on the floor, which twisted inside-out, turned into a rubber monster and tried to swallow him. Franco resisted the pull of the liquid floor, and his hands glooped upwards as he realised he was on his hands and knees, and that was a position he never wanted to suffer. Submissive. Taking it like a dog. No way! Franco fought through the sparks and crackling energy, and lifted his head above the parapet of fallen, battered computer consoles. Pippa was backing away from Ziggurat, who was capering like some comic devil, his little todge swinging for all it was worth.
Still swimming through treacle, Franco cast around for a weapon, and found a long shard of jagged crystal from inside one of the smashed computer systems. He tested it against his palm, and it drew blood. It was sharp as a razor. Franco grinned.
This'll do nicely!
He watched for a moment, mesmerised by the growing charge as Ziggurat gathered his energy in order to
Holy Shit, in order to fry Pippa like a fried egg!
Franco's arm snapped back, and just as Ziggurat's hands came together Franco launched the makeshift dagger as hard as he could. It slammed through the air, end over end, and a split-second before Ziggurat's hands connected, before he sent the charge of dark energy blasting across the stone room, the crystal dagger pierced his eye, cleaving through to the brain.
His hands connected with a
snap
as he reeled back in sudden pain and disbelief, a shrill scream on his spittle-flecked lips.
"Aha!" shouted Franco, punching the air.
Big mistake.
The bolt of energy crackled and howled across the chamber, and clean removed Franco's arm at the elbow. For a long, long time Franco stared at the stump, his mouth hung open like a dead donkey's, and there was no pain, and no blood, and he just stared, uncomprehending, as the world howled around him and electrical static discharged, crackling, on every metal surface in the chamber.
Then reality
caught up.
Pain lanced up Franco's arm in a smashing wave, like a storm sea against a brittle glass shore, and there was no blood because the limb had been removed by
hot blue energy
, cauterising the stump. Pain beat him like a hammer. Agony washed him in molten lava. Franco crumbled to his knees, his good hand cradling his elbow, as a scream bubbled up in his throat and spewed like vomit droplets into the air...
Pippa lowered her hands, blinking. Ziggurat was on his knees on the floor, swaying, sobbing, the dagger in his eye socket and blood running down his lop-sided face. Even as Pippa watched, he reached up to the length of crystal, touched it, screamed, and dropped his hands as if stung. Pippa's looked right, her head moving like pouring honey, and blinked at Franco. His arm had gone. Vaporised. He, too, was rocking like a baby...
Priorities.
Pippa climbed to her feet. She didn't remember falling to her knees. She walked unsteadily across the chamber, the air crackling around her, the hairs on her head rising in the static, and she broke into a run as she approached Ziggurat, whose single yellow eye watched her through waves of pain, and his hands came up -
No!
- but it was too late, as with a snarl Pippa leapt atop him, throwing him onto his back, and his hands scrabbled at her and she knew,
knew
the fucker would have disintegrated her into component atoms with his weird dark energy blast. Well, he wouldn't do it again. She fought past his struggling hands, and grasped the crystal deep in his eye socket. "Why hasn't this killed you, motherfucker?" she hissed, her mouth close to his, and she leant her weight on the make-shift dagger. She felt it ease in further, into Ziggurat's eye-socket, into the pulping brain beyond.
"No!" he screamed, "No! Have mercy! Please, have mercy!"
"Why? You never showed us any!"
"Let him live," said Franco, voice hoarse, and Pippa turned fast, head slamming round, eyes narrowing.
Franco was swaying, face pale, vomit on his shirt, his right arm gone at the elbow. His free hand was supporting the wounded limb as if cradling a newborn child, and he was panting, haggard, injured beyond repair. His eyes had a haunted look Pippa had seen before - like when somebody's worst nightmare had just come true, but realisation hadn't quite sunk in yet. And this was up there for Franco, she knew... up there with losing his eyes, or his legs. Ironic, considering he was trained in the detonations business, where loss of limbs was almost mandatory...
"Why?" she snarled.
"Leave him!" bellowed Franco, dropping to one knee, then pulling himself raggedly back to his feet.
Pippa shook her head. "I can't do that," she said, voice simple, eyes bleak. She yanked out the crystal with a
scloop
of punctured eye jelly and pulverised, mashed brain.
"He's defenceless," said Franco, groggy, swaying.
"Good," said Pippa, simply, and drew the sharp crystal across Ziggurat's throat. Flesh peeled back like neatly pared chicken, and the blood spilled in a thick gush, spreading across the floor as Ziggurat thrashed on his hump and Pippa held him down, her hands pinning his arms, her strength working against his spasming as slowly, slowly, Ziggurat died.