"Yah," beamed Olga, beaming.
Franco frowned. He coughed. "Um. Right. Then, tomorrow, Fizzy, you can be in charge of soil samples. Shazza, you're on rock samples. And Olga can collect ice samples. And Sax can do the housework, with or without his wig. I think that superb plan has covered all the bases, so it has."
"And what will you do?" said Fizzy.
"I am the Team Leader. I will Lead the Team."
"Yeah, but what will you actually
do?"
Franco leered at her suggestively. "I'll have both my hands full, don't you worry you none."
"Tsch," tutted Fizzy. "Damn Ruperts."
"I can see you're the feisty one in the crew!" said Franco, slowly, brain working hard. "And that's why I want to do
your
staff appraisal first! I'll see you in my quarters in half an hour. With or
without
your uniform."
Franco winked. Fizzy stared at him, face stone.
It was later. Much later. BaseCamp was established. Sax was downloading upgrades, although Franco was damned if he could work out what possible benefits a mute DumbMutt could garner from any kind of possible digital download. Maybe they were upgrading his brain, ha ha?
"At last! Is ready!" Olga swirled her giant fork in the giant pan, and held up a cube of quivering meat on the end of three long prongs. The other members of the team sat around an alloy table, knives and forks clasped in hands, plates empty, staring at the wobbling cube. Olga's eyes widened. "Is good, ya?"
"What," said Shazza, placing her knife and fork fastidiously by her plate, "is that?"
"Meat stew."
"What kind of meat?"
"Is meat."
"Beef? Pork? Dog? Rat? Za-beeber bug? Krustalanious Snake Burger? What?"
"Is meat, innit?" Olga tossed the cube, and Franco caught it expertly, popped it in his mouth, and chewed.
"Mmm. It's good, sweetheart." Franco coughed, frowned, remembered himself. "Quite tasty. I'll have me a pan of that."
Olga dished out huge ladles of quivering meat stew, and the team ate in considered silence for a while. Franco was the first to finish and, belching heartily, he pushed his plate away and patted his fat and, some would say, nicely rotund, belly. "Great meat stew, Olga. You're a fine cook."
"Ach, thank you Franco. I make ze special effort, just for you."
Franco coughed, and turned his attention to Shazza. She was picking wordlessly through the meal, focused as if working on the latest world-saving mission. Franco coughed again. Shazza looked up. "Yes?"
"Wondered if you, like, fancied coming round for a game of Monopoly afterwards. You'd be amazed what this smart-uniformed squaddie can do with the Old Boot."
"Err, no. Anyway, what about your wife?"
Franco's eyes glazed over. "Wife?"
"Yeah, you're wife. Mel. Just a few hundred klicks south-west of this very position. Would she be happy, you soliciting affection via a dodgy game of Monopoly like this?"
"Solicito whatting?"
"Look," Shazza nudged Fizzy, "I'll tell you what we can do, seeing as you've pulled rank and instead of collecting samples for the QGM we seem to be having a day of relaxing, or as you call it, a rearward leisure-time comfort-zone. Considering we're doing
fuck all
to aid the war effort, why don't you nip over, visit your zombie chick. Give her a good seeing to." She winked, coquettishly.
"Do
what?"
snapped Franco. "Now - now listen here! Me and Mel, well, we got divorced."
"So, you're single?" asked Fizzy, running a hand through glossy red locks.
"Yeah, baby," growled Franco.
Fizzy turned a sideways glance to Olga. "See. I told you. Now the playing field is well and truly open. Go for it, girl. Especially one with your, ahh, culinary skills. A man like Franco should be biting your hand off for a second chance at wedded bliss."
Olga beamed.
Franco stood, a little woodenly. "Actually, girls, whilst you're here relaxing, I've decided to take the Giga-Buggy out and do a spot of scouting, secure the area, check the perimeters, you know, that sort of brave solitary hero sort of thing."
"I'll come with you," said Olga immediately.
"No, no, I'd rather work alone on this one."
"How long will you be?" said Fizzy.
"Not sure, y'know, as long as it takes." Franco grinned. "I tell you what, Olga, get yourself back in that kitchen and make me a fine sausage stew for when I get back. How's that sound?"
"I'll stew your sausage," muttered Olga, licking her lips.
"Eh?"
"Nothing, Team Leader Captain Franco." She beamed, showing missing teeth, gold teeth, and a tongue and lips arrangement that could suck a tennis ball through a straw.
Franco shuddered, expressing a field of goosebumps, and made his way from the canteen, heading on a mission for the hold.
The 6X6 Armoured Giga-Buggy was a serious piece of off-road kit. Armed with stowable eight-barrel MiniGuns using sixteen different types of interchangeable ammunition, it also packed K52 Dragon SAMs and armour-piercing 52mm canons. It could operate fully submerged in water, quicksand, even magma for a short period of time, and was rated a 10.2 on the anti-NBC filtration channels. It was, as Franco succinctly put it, an
awesome
piece of battle shit.
Franco clambered through to the cockpit, his belly scraping on hull struts, and sat ensconced in the most high-tech military-grade digital equipment found this side of a Quad-Gal Future Battlefield. Franco squinted at the controls, then looked around conspiratorially, as if someone might have snuck inside the cockpit without him seeing. He eased a rolled-up document from the inner pockets of his recently acquired combat jacket (recently acquired from Shazza's locker when she was sat on the toilet), and unrolled it on the Giga-Buggy's cockpit controls. He focused. His finger traced a line, and mouthed co-ordinates, then he stared up and
out
of the Giga-Buggy's screen. A storm howled. The Buggy's readouts said it was getting worse.
"Ach, I'll be all right," he muttered. "After all, it's not every day a squaddie has the chance to get his paws on a fabled treasure carved from sub-PlutoniumIII! Iskander's Crown, hey, here I come!"
He gunned the engines, with a series of crunches engaged twin gearboxes, then nosed the vehicle out of the BaseCamp's protective shelter...
Out, into the storm.
Hours had passed. Franco's earlobe comm buzzed. It was Keenan.
"Everything OK your end, Haggis?"
"Aye, boss," said Franco, easing up on the Buggy's ascent of what he considered a quite treacherous rocky, ice-strewn trail, criss-crossed by several narrow but threateningly deep crevasses. As the Buggy stopped, ice creaked, ominously. "Nothing to report from here except snow, more snow, a bit more snow, and possibly a touch of snow. Is everything OK up your end? No horrible monsters or zombie deviants or anything?" He cackled quietly at this Big Joke. After all, the planet had been cleared by the DropBots, had it not? It was as safe as safe could be. Safe as butter. Safe as daffodils.
"Yes." Keenan's voice was cool. Controlled. But Franco had known Keenan long enough to detect a hint of something; if not worry, exactly, there was an element there, a suspicion maybe, a hunch.
"But something's not right?"
"No," said Keenan. "I've patched this through just to you. I'll talk with Pippa in a while. I'm not on a Global Channel. After all," Franco could almost
hear
the grin, "wouldn't like Snake and his buddies to listen in on our little love messages, would I?"
"You don't trust them?"
"About as far as I can throw them, and they're hefty blokes."
"Well, keep me informed," said Franco.
"You too. Where are you now?"
Franco stared at the icy mountains, and down at his treasure map and the glowing trails of dots. "Um, just doing a recce, y'know, checking the place is safe from... from..."
"Ice zombies?"
"Aye, them's the fellas."
"Well, have a good one."
"You too, Keenan. Out."
The comm died and Franco sat, listening to the ice beyond the walls of the Giga-Buggy. If I find the treasure, he said to himself, grinding his teeth a little, then I'll be sure to share it with Keenan. And with Pippa. Obviously, with Pippa.
He tried hard to convince himself. He didn't do a very good job.
The Giga-Buggy roared through ice and snow, six huge bubble wheels churning a mush and ejecting spikes and chains to deal with the harder slides; up slopes the Buggy snarled, belching out toxic black fumes, down narrow valleys, through frozen forests of white icing, across solid rivers of ice with depth monitors
blipping
at Franco, who paid little attention, so focused was he on the treasure map and thoughts of wealth, cash, dosh, loot, and Iskander's Crown in particular. Some sly research had told him the Crown was indeed a deeply valuable artefact sought by a thousand museums Quad-Gal wide. Franco's research had also revealed the Crown lived in an underground ice palace filled to the brim with fist-sized diamonds, rubies, kreegers and splaffs. That's why Franco had brought the Buggy. There was lots of boot space for stash.
"Hmm."
Franco jabbed brakes, and the Buggy slid sideways before coming to a halt scant metres before a four-thousand foot precipice. Wind howled up, blowing snow like confetti. It reminded Franco of his wedding day to Mel. The zombie. He grunted. It did little to put him in a good mood.
"Bloody shite missions," he muttered. "I deserves to be a rich man! Splaffs like my fist? I'll have me some of that treasure."
The wind howled a song between mountain peaks. Trees rustled around the throbbing Buggy. Franco squinted at his map, then at the Buggy's screen. He tapped in fresh co-ordinates.
NOT RECOGNISED Ø flashed the console.
"Huh?"
He tapped in the co-ords again, slower this time, aware he had five thumbs and fat fingers porked up on a diet of fat, fat, sausage fat, cheese fat and fat-filled fatty horseradish.
NON-EXISTENT Ø flashed the console this time, more urgently. Outside, the wind sang as huge bruised iron clouds gathered and made threatening growls of planet-sized menace. To Franco, none of this existed. There was only The Moment. And The Moment was searching for The Treasure.
For a third time he input data, and the console made a rude sound at him, halfway between buzz and fart. Franco thumped it, because that sort of thing always seemed to work for him, a deviant symbiosis of the flesh and the mechanical; then, in annoyance he slammed open the cockpit and stood up, radiant in one of Olga's huge billowing hand-knitted orange and green striped cardigans, which blended quite naturally with his combat camouflage, or so he thought.
The console remained obstinately silent. GET STUFFED, it seemed to be saying. YOU ARE AN IDIOT.
He punched a key. It farted at him.
GET FUCKED, implied the Buggy.
Franco sighed. "OK. Have it that way. I'll navigate manually, you fat porky pig in shit." Back in the Buggy, brushing snow from the shoulders of his fetching cardie, he moved the Buggy slowly up the slope and across a narrow, fragile ice bridge - which he only recognised as such when it crumbled noisily behind him. Roars boomed distantly as snow and ice picked up velocity and violence. In rear scanners Franco watched ten thousand tonnes of ice tumble into a planet-sized gorge. Franco scratched his beard. "Damn and bloody bollocks," he said, recognising that he now had what could be considered a serious problem vis-à-vis returning to BaseCamp. Still, the treasure beckoned in the way only treasure can, and Franco
knew
he'd always find a way round the problem. He always did. That's why they called him Franco "Lucky Scrotum" Haggis. He had a history of non-impregnation.
Avalanches boomed in the valleys below, like a spastic bass drum rhythm.
Franco crawled his six-wheeled Giga-Buggy onwards and upwards towards that which he was promised.
Well, in his own head, anyway.
Franco halted, and tyres crunched on packed ice. Franco gazed up. The sky was darkening, fast, rimed at the edges by hints of green ice. Soon be night, he thought, mood turning saturnine. Franco hated the night. The dark. The cold. Give him bikini-clad machine gun toting dancing tequila-swigging party girls on a sunny alien beach any day! Preferably, and he acknowledged this was a distended fantasy, each with three breasts.
Makes me wish I had three hands!
he grinned, replaying an old squad joke.
Something glinted. In the ice. Buried.
Franco squinted.
"Wassat?" He scratched his beard, and killed the Buggy's engine. Silence fell in like a tumbling of worlds. He opened the cockpit, and the outside environs were curiously still, perfectly calm, a plateau of the idyll. Franco climbed clumsily up, clumped across corrugated steel, and
thumped
into the snow up to his knees.
He started to move forward. "Blast. Bugger. Damn." The snow impeded every movement, every little action, making every exploit ten times harder. Wading forward, Franco was soon red in the face and acknowledging in that secret place every sausage-eater holds in his heart that he really, obviously, most definitely should give up dodgy meat.