"Just fix these round your waists, girls," said Paddy, grinning from his lopsided head like a jelly monster from the darkest corner of gelatine hell. "Then, Zegg will have the guys haul you up."
As Paddy reached around Franco to grab a rope, he bumped his jelly-bean head into Franco's fake chest and one of the eyes looked up and closed, then opened. With heart-stopping revulsion Franco realised Paddy was actually
actually fucking winking
at him.
"Like the beard," said Paddy, nose teeth clicking. "Gives a guy something to, y'know, hang on to."
"Argh," said Franco, as the ropes went taut.
Swiftly, Combat K were hauled into the sky and the hell of medically-engineered deformity fell away. Now, they witnessed the bustle of activity in the mammoth chamber, as all around airships were being loaded in a likewise manner, some using ropes, many using ladders up which deformed nurse and doctor and patient squaddies attempted to climb. It was like some mammoth freakshow circus act. To one side, two of the zeppelins had peeled away and were making their way silently through the vastness of the cavern. The noise also dropped away and Franco glanced up to where some kind of mechanical winches were clicking at high speed, winding the ropes into slots above black iron cages.
"This is weird," said Fizzy, breathless in the cold air as they rose.
"This is hell," snapped Shazza.
"But at least that weirdo pervert Paddy isn't coming," said Franco, with a shudder which ended in the unconvincing wobble of his fake boobs.
"I think he take liking to you, fat man!" chuckled Olga, her little piggy eyes sparkling. "I think Franco a stud in this place, Franco a little pot-bellied gigolo in this place! Har har! You could settle down! Get yourself a deformo harem! Raise yourself some genetic mutations and play football with them at ze weekends. Many will have four or five legs, no? Great footballers! Yes, what is ze saying? Franco could have 2.4 freaks, har har har."
"Yeah yeah, laugh it up on your mush, Olga. How do you know there's not some huge monstrosity waiting for
you
on this airship? Eh? Eh? Maybe
you're
the one who's about to fall in love."
"Impossible," said Olga, smiling at Franco toothily. "I'm already in love."
Ropes slowed in their ascent, and Combat-K touched boots (or in Franco's case, one bare foot, one sandal) to the metal cage platform. They undid their ropes, and climbed the steps to find - row after row after row of seated soldiers, all wearing backless gowns, all bearing long slim guns, all wearing odd heads and too many limbs.
Franco glanced around, his practised eye taking in the Zeppelin3's weaponry. At the nose, there were four huge barrels attached by braided hoses to tanks which fell away beneath the airship. He nudged Shazza. "You see those?"
"What about them?"
"Military flamethrowers. Roasters. They call them Gordons."
"Gordons what?"
"Just Gordons."
"What, and they have them stashed
just below
fifty trillion tonnes of explosive gas?"
Franco considered this. "Dumb," he agreed. Then he nudged Shazza again. "And you see down there?"
She followed his pointing stubby finger, to where the airship carried long finned slots. "Go on, genius, what are they?"
"Kekra Mini-Halo Missiles."
"They're awesome," butt in Fizzy. "I've seen them in action! They were banned, weren't they?"
"Highly unstable," said Franco, nodding. "It's the T6 explosive, needs to be kept quite warm. Drop it below a certain temp and kaboom." He waggled his eyebrows.
"Kaboom?"
"Big bad badda boom," he said, straight-faced.
"So, for example, taking them out into an icy wasteland?"
"Bad move," said Franco.
Up at the head of the pew-like rows filled with deformed squaddies was a kind of open cockpit, and they could see a small, pot-bellied man standing there in an emerald green uniform, waving to the four "nurses" to join him.
The squad picked their way between the hundreds and hundreds of seated soldiers, tense and wary, feeling as if they were walking deeper into the lion's den, and subtly aware of eyes, far too many eyes, sometimes far too many eyes
on the same face
, all watching their tight-clad arses. There was a distinct atmosphere of happy misogyny.
As they approached, each Combat-K member was thinking,
this is it, the test
. Could they pass as a crack medical nurse squad? Or would they be immediately rumbled and mown down in a hail of bullets? Franco didn't have much faith.
"Hello!" roared the little man, belly pouch bouncing, holding his hand out in greeting. Above his unusually normal quota of limbs sat a tall head which was kind of curved, and bent, with a fat top-knot nipple. The arcing head was yellow, and looked just a little bit like a banana. At school, his nickname would have had to have been
banana-head.
Kids were cruel like that. "I'm Zegg, I'm the Para-Medic in charge of Zeppelin3. Welcome to my Air Ambulance! You nurses with rumpy pumpy arses are much welcome!"
"Thank you," said Franco, affecting a completely unbelievable high-pitched female squeak. "It's, um, good to be here."
Zegg eyed the four nurses, his banana-head tilting at a curious angle. It's like he's wearing a fruit-salad mask, thought Franco, and snorted, almost bursting into a panicked and hysterical laughter. He clamped his tongue between his teeth and bit until he could taste blood. Now was not the time for laughter. Now was a time to
die.
"Who was your Mentor?" asked Zegg, slowly.
Franco flapped, his eyes growing wide, and he became solidly aware of the D5 in his hands. Blow Zegg's head off, grab the controls of the zeppelin, and send it careering for the ground. That would be their only chance at escape when rumbled...
Shazza stepped forward and smiled. "It was Sabrina," she said, smoothly, eyeing Franco with a
calm-down-you-idiot
stare.
"Ahh," said Zegg, relaxing, "from the Porn Squad. That's great." He eyed the four unlikely nurses up and down, then gave a large, leering grin. "You should happily be up for entertaining the troops during the flight to the battleground," he said, nodding approvingly. "Some of the lads are a bit nervous. They could do with some fun sexual relief."
Slowly, Franco, Olga, Fizzy and Shazza stared back at the hundreds of deformed mutations. Franco coughed, and glanced at Zegg, who was once again staring intently at Franco's bosom like a sniffer-dog worrying a bag of dope.
"I've got to say, girls, Dr. Bleasedale did a fine job on you."
"How so?" squeaked Franco, in his unbelievable
falsetto voce
.
Zegg nodded, as if in appreciation of fine art or a priceless sculpture. "Wow. She really went to work on you four; you're the most freakish, twisted and deviated surgical mutations I've ever, ever seen!"
Turning back to the controls, the Zeppelin3 began to rise, a pebble in the vastness of the cavern, its nose turning and following the first two vacating airships. Franco glanced at Olga, and gave a weak smile.
"At least it can't get any worse," muttered the ginger-bearded nurse squaddie.
"Hello hello again!" came a voice, and down the gantries strode the red-velvet figure of Paddy, his vertical stacked eyes blinking, his nose teeth clacking. He stopped alongside Combat K. "Thought I'd hitch a lift to battle along with this crew, hope you don't mind Zegg, old chum?"
"No problem Paddy! The more the merrier! We all love to build bridges around here! Ah har ha ha!" They laughed, a comedy duo of freaks in a not-very-funny situation, linked in a deviant union by sick medical mutation. Whoever said plastic surgeons didn't have a sense of humour?
"It's just," Paddy hunched in, like a hunchback conspirator with a lopsided head sharing his deepest secrets, "it looks like the Zeppelin3, with you four sexy sex-chicks onboard, it looks likes this will be the biggest fun ride of the last, ooh, thousand years! Know what I mean?" He boomed laughter, one eye winking again, and squeezed Franco's arse.
"Gerrof!" growled Franco, forgetting to use his fake falsetto.
"Ahahaha," said Paddy. "That's what I like to see. A nurse with spirit! An utmost bubbling energy! And hands that can crack a coconut! Any more macho, sweetie, and you'll be joining the Village People! Aha ha ha ha ha. And... and and and if you don't mind me saying so, your lack of peroxide hair and cherry-red lipstick..."
"Yeah?" snarled Franco.
"Well." Paddy's eyes gleamed, and he licked his greasy lips. "Ladies. It's a real turn on."
the Zeppelin3 moved up to the roof of the cavern, then into a wide tunnel which swallowed the vessel like a pea in an ocean. Franco and the squad took seats behind Zegg and Paddy, and as they rose through the vastness Franco experienced a strange sensation, as if he was rising from the belly of a beast, up its vast oesophagus to be vomited out into freezing ice air.
As they rose, so the temperature fell and fell and fell, until they saw a distant oval of light. Gradually, the tunnel was filled with a grey-white aura and they emerged into a perfect snowscape, cruising from a sloped shaft and up into the heavens which were gloriously clear. A white world spread out around the Zeppelin3, and Zegg manoeuvred the cumbersome vessel with skill, lifting it gradually to a high altitude where the breeze was crisp, cold and violently refreshing.
Zegg continued to prattle on, in what Franco termed a Terminally Useless Talk; he would speak, gush, froth and ejaculate, but rarely did his dialogue make any sense except to promote his own sense of self-worth and importance.
"...yes and now the Para-Medics are at the forefront of all military medical battlefield technology, and you'll find that the Para-Medics - did I mention I was a Para-Medic? - well the Para-Medics are the most lethal in battle, the most terrible in combat, and between us we are a collective genius in the art of destruction." He beamed.
"Is that so?" said Franco.
"Oh yes," said Zegg, plodding his zeppelin through the cold skies. "Once, millennia ago, these airships were Air Ambulances, they were used for emergencies across the entirety of Sick World and the Para-Medics, even then, were held in a very high esteem but not in the same high esteem as we now demand, due to our terrible lethality in battle, did I mention we were terrible in battle? The Para-Medics are supreme in battle, and it's rare any other army can get the better of us but as I was saying, the Air Ambulances were used in emergencies and Para-Medics like me, with the Red Band, we were the top notch guys better believe it but the bureaucracy kept trying to mess with us because, hey, that's what bureaucracy does right and I soon learned that even if an emergency call came in, and say, some loon or doccie needed emergency treatment for a heart attack or vertical vein strip or something just as life-threatening, well, because of that dang bureaucracy I'd just sit there and eat my sausage and egg sandwich and to hell with all those the bastards."
Franco frowned. "So, you'd let people die?" he said. "For a muffin?"
"Oh yes," beamed Zegg. "They're all moaning whining cripples anyway, every last one of them using our dang Air Ambulances as a taxi service from one continent to another. I realised that if I made them suffer, as you do, then they'd never try it again oh no so they wouldn't."
"That's because they'd be dead," pointed out Franco.
"A valid point, yes, but, and let's be frank here, there's not
really
many people worth saving, are there?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, I'd save another Para-Medic, of course, that's a life worth saving, but when you get old, well you kind of deserve to die, and anybody who abuses stuff, drugs and stuff, and alcohol and stuff, they deserve to die as well, and anybody of a different
species,"
he looked aghast for a moment, "I mean, you know, those non-humans, those damn stinking
aliens.
They all smell, you know. That alien smell. In the Para-Medics, we call it the ali-smell."
"So aliens deserve to die?" said Fizzy.
"Of course! Don't you think?"
"Well that solves that problem," snapped Franco. "We wondered how Sick World had folded all those centuries ago; with guys like Zegg at the helm, how could it not work?" But Franco's sarcasm was lost, for Zegg was off on another rant connected with a] the superiority of the Para-Medics, and b] the inferiority of everyone and everything else.
"When we go into battle now, we, as Para-Medics, are united! We are totally united! We have developed the much-feared Wheelchair-Bomb, Scatter Shells, Urine Clusters and Iodine Grenades! We are the most incredible air unit ever to fly a zeppelin across a planet!"
There came an odd squeaking sound, and Franco squirmed uncomfortably in his nurse outfit with just that little bit too much PVC.
"Are you OK?"
"Aye, just this g-string bit," he grunted, and tugged, "riding high."
"Ahhh, g-strings," said Zegg, his eyes glazing as his banana-head glistened. Condensation from high-altitude clouds seemed to settle on his large bulbous protrusion. "We're a big fan of g-strings in the Para-Medics. There isn't a Para-Medic who can't remove a g-string with his teeth, blindfolded. And talking of removing underwear with his teeth..." He beamed at Olga. "Hey, you, chunky, I can stick this baby on AutoP. We could nip back to the Bedchambers, I can show you what a Para-Medic is
truly
capable of!" He winked, just so she got the idea.