"As long as I remember."
"Can I ask you a question?"
"Sure," nodded the woman, hair bobbing. Her heart beat a little faster, making a faint
bu bum, bu bum, bu bum
sound. "Feel free. I'm just the cleaner round these parts."
"Why..." said Pippa, but could think of no diplomatic way of putting it, so just rushed the rest. "Why are all your internal organs on the outside?"
"That'd be Dr. Bleasedale," said the woman, smiling, a quite bizarre expression with so many visible teeth. "Every now and again, she has another great idea for surgery, and asks for volunteers. She's a great surgeon, you know. She's helped me acclimatise."
Pippa frowned. "You volunteered to have your heart hung from a chain around your neck?"
"Oh yes. It's portable, manoeuvrable, and I can hot-swap it when it burns out."
"Burn out a lot of hearts, do you?" snorted Betezh, in disbelief.
The cleaner threw him a sharp look, that demonstrated she was a lot less stupid than Betezh imagined. "More than you'd think, laddie," she snapped. "When you've worked these corridors for hundreds and hundreds of years, you go through a few, aye."
The cleaner squinted at Betezh, then back at Pippa. "Has he got permission to be here?"
"He's with me," said Pippa, slowly.
The cleaner nodded. "You, I know. But the others... are you sure they've got clearance? I'd hate to have to resort to some form of horrible physical violence to remove their pestilence and impurity from my clean and sterile corridors."
Betezh snorted a laugh, but Pippa gave him a stern look.
Betezh shrugged. "Well, what does she expect? I mean, look at her, all ragged and deformed, threatening to remove us! I mean, what is she, a super-deranged cleaner warrior, or something? Har har har."
"Har har har," repeated the cleaner, eyes gleaming, heart pumping faster, as she turned to face Betezh and her thumb flicked something on the handlebars of the buffer. There came a series of quick-succession mechanical clicks and the buffer reared, pistons slamming from cases and two huge circular blades spinning out from the core, each about three feet in diameter and spinning fast with razor edges. The buffer-turned-slicer slammed up around, and lunged towards Betezh with the cleaner hanging grimly onto the handlebars and Betezh threw himself backwards, stumbling, mouth a black hole of horror as the twin blades hit the floor, there came shearing screaming sounds, and huge chunks of stone and tile and wood flew up, decorating the air with debris.
"Pippa!" he screamed, and Pippa dragged free her D4 as Mel leapt back from a horizontal swipe of the huge twin blades, spinning up like an accelerated turbine with a roar of metal and stench of hot oil. The D4
boomed
but the cleaner ducked, shells ricocheting from spinning blades with sparks and squeals as she dragged the bucking, violent, barely-controlled machine around in a heavy, pendulous arc which nearly took Pippa's head clean off. Pippa rolled, breathing deep, aware that her own weapons seemed suddenly weak and small and poor. She eyed the huge whirling blades with sour respect.
"I'm going to kill you," snarled the cleaner. "I'm going to clean you up like little stains! I'm going to polish you from the pages of history!"
She advanced, huge blades whining and jigging and barely under her aggressive control.
Olga had been rejected from an early age. As a child, she had been bulky, or "fat" as the many children in school liked to call her. They bullied her relentlessly, right up to the point where she learned to use her fists, and found she could move a lot faster than a fat girl should. During one Period 5 afternoon lesson, Olga, aged eleven, relentlessly hunted down her tormentors and gave them a pummelling they would never forget.
After that, Olga had respect. She had the respect of her peers and, indeed, most of the older children. Occasionally, one of the older boys or girls would make some nasty sly comment, usually about her huge bosom, sometimes about the girth of her arse. But it worked wonders what a hard sudden right hook could do, and bad news like Olga travelled fast. Soon, there wasn't a kid in the school who wasn't a] new or b] simple who dared give Olga the verbal. And these, Olga always allowed a single chance. She believed every idiot deserved one warning.
However, even with this new found power and respect, it did little to earn Olga true
friends
, and she learnt quickly that she was one of those children, and later, adults, who seemed simply destined... sadly... to be alone.
Fast forward to the present, and in Fizzy and Shazza, Olga had found a curious social equilibrium. Here, in this combat zone, she had been accepted for she was deadly enough in her own right, and the two girls seemed not to see, or at least worry about, Olga's massive size. Yes, she had enough fat to float a whale, but as long as Captain Ahab didn't rear his ugly mush, Olga was safe with her two new friends.
Until now, trapped in the aptly-named trapdoor, waiting for acid-spewing heads to dissolve her into nothing more than succulent fat strands. Below, she heard the spinning of tyres, could smell a hint of exhaust fumes, and knew.
Like her entire life of singularity, without friendship, without love, Olga knew with a deep and heartfelt sadness, knew that she was going to die as she had lived: alone. Great tears washed down her plump wobbling cheeks, and Olga took a deep breath, determined to make these little twisted genetic monsters pay dearly for eating her flesh and ruining her dreams of one day winning Franco's hand in marriage...
How could Fizzy and Shazza leave her?
Easy, she thought with a snarl.
Everybody else always had.
Suddenly, Olga felt something harsh and taut snare her legs, there came a distant roar and like an egg sucked through a hosepipe, Olga gave a massive
sclup
and was towed through the trapdoor by the power of the Buggy. She hit the ground hard, dazed, and Fizzy helped her, grunting and straining, into the vehicle.
"Hit it!" she screamed.
A ramp slammed open from the bowels of the BaseCamp, and as Heads poured into the cockpit space so recently vacated by Olga's bulk, so the Buggy slammed out into darkness and snow, wheels churning, and followed by a surge of scampering, gnashing, screeching creatures that fell quickly behind after a few short seconds of violent acceleration...
Olga, lying on her back, stared up at her Shazza and Fizzy. They were smiling. They'd rescued her!
To Olga, they looked like angels.
"Thank you," she whispered, and with a warmth and contentment in her heart, passed into a realm of honeyed unconsciousness.
They found Franco's Buggy, deserted except for the recharging angular form of Sax. The dog snored, an odd bubbling sound like snot being sucked through a straw. His wig was curiously askew, as if he'd been through the wars.
"Where did he go?"
They peered through the storm, which seemed to increase in fury even as they stood, shivering, huddling within WarSuits and heavy jackets. The building was impressive, all glass and crystal walls, sloping zeniths and retro-wood slats.
REC CENTRE.
RESEARCH. EXPERIMENTATION. CONFINEMENT.
The three women exchanged glances. "I don't like the sound of that," said Shazza.
"What's this
experimentation
bit mean?"
"Keep your guns ready," growled Olga. She set her square chin in a square pose. "Franco needs help. I know it! We're going in."
Fizzy, Shazza and Olga formed a tight squad triangle as they crept from the snowy blizzard outside, into the darkened interior of the REC. Everything was quiet, gloomy, and they moved with ease down wide corridors.
"He's got to be in here somewhere," said Fizzy, staring gloomily at her zero-reading PAD. "I still don't understand how
everything
managed to blow a fuse at the same time. It's as if the whole damn planet turned against us!"
"It'll be magnetism, or something," said Fizzy, covering her arcs of fire. "I've seen it before, often in violent storms like this. We're close to the pole as well; that sort of shit plays havoc with complex electronics."
"Still, I'd feel happier if we could reach Pippa. Or even Keenan. It's giving me the creeps, this
Franco going missing
business."
Olga said nothing, for she was still basking in the glow of her rescue by these, her two new best friends.
"Wait!" hissed Shazza, dropping to one knee. She lifted a sandal, and showed it to Olga. "Is this one of Franco's?"
Olga nodded, paling in the gloom. "That's not ze good sign."
"At least we're in the right place."
"Let's just hope he's in one piece."
"Franco is very resourceful," said Olga. "If there is ze way for him to survive, he will have taken it."
"Even at the expense of his sexual integrity?"
"Yes, especially at ze expense of ze boy's sexual integrity," said Olga, missing the joke entirely. To Olga, Franco was a paragon of sophistication, fine morals and charisma.
"Yes. Well." Fizzy and Shazza exchanged glances, and then continued until they heard a distant fizzing sound. Somewhere, in the gloom, there came a faint glow... as of electricity.
"Olga not like that," said Olga, lifting her shotgun.
"Down here," hissed Shazza.
They cut left, down a narrow winding corridor littered with medical debris. Broken trolleys, unopened boxes half rotten with damp and showing the gleam of dulled medical instruments, rusted oxygen cylinders, piles of yellow bags of clinical waste; even body bags, which were curiously
full
and made the girls curiously
uninterested
in investigation.
Olga shuddered. "Might be zombies," she said.
"I thought Franco's wife was a zombie," said Fizzy.
"Ex-wife," said Olga, with a tight smile.
Suddenly, a scream rent the air, distant, agony-filled, desolate, frustrated, and most of all, male.
The scream died.
"Franco?"
Olga nodded, and took the lead as they pounded along the narrow winding corridor. She kicked trolleys out of the way, the shotgun small in her large and large-knuckled fists. She stopped before a door, and with a deep breath, and an apprehensive glance back at Fizzy and Shazza, who nodded their readiness, lifted her heavy boot and slammed the door off its hinges. The door hit the ground, and a sight from a nightmare met their wandering eyes. Franco hung from a hook, a butcher's slab in oil and white underpants, and surrounding him, dribbling, drooling, and in various states of dismemberment, were thirty to forty genetically modified and medical-implement-
merged
nurses, their peroxide hair permed or splayed in extravagant bouffants, their cherry-red lipstick smudged, or at the very best, applied with cement trowels.
One nurse had hold of Franco's bulge, and Franco's eyes bulged from their sockets, and Franco's bulge bulged embarrassingly from his big white underpants. "Ahh," he said, eyes falling on the stunned shocked expressions of Fizzy, Shazza and Olga. "Ahh, I know what it looks like, but - honestly - I can explain."
"Kill them all!" screamed Sabrina, waving her hypodermic syringe arms, and the nurses turned, and charged...
The following battle was not so much a battle as an explosion in a medical charnel house. Olga's D5 boomed, and the nurse with a colostomy bag for a head suddenly found out the downside of having a skull made from a plastic bag. The colostomy bag burst, and her brain and eyes ran out in a stream of diarrhoeic colostomy coolant as her hands scrabbled for her eyeballs and brain, fumbling them like a blind rugby player in a bath of meatballs. Guns roared, bullets spat, and the deviated nurse horrors slammed at the three female Combat-K squaddies, snarling, spitting, tearing with claws and jaws and needles and scalpels and Franco squinted through the fine blood mist which hung and spurted into the air as the short violent battle raged through the room and left a spread of mangled nurse corpses lying like so many bludgeoned seal cubs on a Scandinavian beach.
Panting, the three Combat-K women reloaded weapons, their bodies tense, ready for more combat. Olga was the first to come down from the high of sudden violence, the adrenaline of finding herself still alive, and Franco gestured wildly with his head. "Through there! Sabrina, the leader, she ran away! She got away!"
Olga ran to the door, but it was bolted shut on the other side. Olga blasted at the locks, D5 booming, but it was no good; the alloy portal was starship hull grade, and it'd take more than shells to loosen a hull grade rivet.
"Thank the gods!" boomed Franco. "I thought I was a goner!"
"Looks more like a boner to me," chuckled Fizzy, calming herself after the fight. The three women picked their way through straggled corpses, careful to avoid scalpel arms and hypodermic fingers. They stood, like judges before a disgraced criminal, peering up at Franco, Franco's underpants, and Franco's telltale bulge.
"Listen," he said, "this ain't how it looks."
"How does it look?" said Shazza.
"I know it looks like I'm oiled up and having fun, but I'm not, reet, them damn deformed nurses with their pretty faces and bobbing breasts, well, they, they," he pouted, lower lip protruding, eyes drooping, "they took advantage of poor Franco."