Pippa struggled to her knees, and looked up at Glob. She saw the gleam of triumph in his eyes, saw the erect bulge in his pants, and realised, one way or another, she was about to be properly fucked.
"You should have listened to me
before,
chicken," snarled Glob, waving his machine gun. "If you'd come out back for a bit of fun, and you were good, I could have
saved
your ass. Now, your ass is going to get minced."
"You know something?" slurred Pippa, still groggy from the beating, feeling incredibly sick, a huge egg-sized lump on the back of her head slamming her with nausea, bile, and a need to lie down in a cool dark room with an ice-pack. "I'd rather go through the fucking mincer than spend a single second near your little waggling sore-minced maggot, maggot." She smiled. It was not a nice smile.
"That's OK," said Glob. "Because that can be arranged." He lunged at her, fist powering in a hook that would have sent her neatly to her death, had she not leapt forward herself at the same time, head crunching into Glob's erect and bulging groin and making him howl in dick-fire agony. Glob staggered, and Pippa rocked backwards and swept her boots out, slamming left, taking Glob's stumpy little legs from beneath him. He fell, caught his face on the steel plank with a crunch and splatter of open wounds, bounced up a few inches, then slapped down into the cone of the grinding Becker & Harris Limb Mincer. His legs went in first. The mincer slowed, given some proper work to do, and Glob looked up screaming, his hands reaching out towards Pippa who slowly climbed to her feet and stood on the plank, gazing down at the spinning mesh of sharpened steel. Glob was dragged round and round, like scum sucked down through a plughole, and gears meshed beneath the machine as it stepped up the party and ejected a stream of sausage meat onto a long table already filled with waiting sausage skins...
Below, Betezh surged to his feet - and Pippa ran, and flipped off the Becker & Harris, landing suddenly amongst dazed Porters. Betezh grabbed a yukana as, in the same movement, Pippa ducked and twisted, allowing the blade to be drawn from her pack, and Betezh slashed down, severing the JellyNet which still bound her hands. The JellyNet strands screamed, quivering and vibrating as Pippa took the yukana by the blade, flipped it over to catch the hilt, then stared hard at the stunned, open-mouthed Porters.
"Boo," she said, and in a vicious slamming horizontal stroke took four heads from bodies with a
schlup schlup schlup schlup
of vibrating weapon. Machine guns howled with hypodermic rounds, but Pippa was ducking, whirling, moving, and several Porters pottered forward, abdomens open, bowels jiggling free into cupped hands. Pippa stood, back straight, and drew her second sword in a fluid arc. One yukana slashed down, freeing Betezh's screaming JellyNet hands, and he grabbed a syringe machine gun and stared at the weapon, then shrugged. "When in Rome."
They faced a sudden, frozen horde of Porters and Dr. Bleasedale, who stood, shaking and purple with rage, vibrating on the spot, so filled with fury they thought she might possibly explode.
"Get them!" she howled.
The Porters charged, but were used to dealing with elderly patients in wheelchairs, not two highly trained and extremely pissed Combat-K special forces killers. Pippa and Betezh leapt forward and carved an easy path through the Porters to Bleasedale, leaving behind a scatter of body parts and the odd rolling head. The rest of the Porters carried on their charge right out of the Bridge's doors, to leave the place suddenly, silently, deserted. The two swing doors swung backwards and forwards, like the portal of a wild west saloon, until, with a squeak, they were still.
"You can't kill me!" belched Bleasedale. "I am the doctor! I make things well! I repair that which is broken! I fix that which is ill! I am a doctor! I am
the
doctor! You do not
fuck
with the doctor! The doctor is always right! Wrong is something that happens to
other
people! I am a
professional,"
she spat the word on a shower of spit, "and I am
not used to these intrusions and you are messing with my concentration and there is a battle to be fought and sausages to be cooked and you cannot stop me now when I am about to become the Leader of Kludek under VOLOS!"
Pippa strode forward. As the little black stick came up, Pippa cut the fingers from Bleasedale's hand with a swift stroke of her yukana. Dr. Bleasedale stared down at the severed stumps, and howled suddenly, like a toddler who's just had a lollypop removed.
"Tell me about VOLOS," said Pippa, voice low.
"No! I cannot! He'll kill me!"
"I'll kill you."
"His death will be a thousand times more painful!"
"Wanna bet?"
Bleasedale smiled, then, and nodded. "Oh, ya, daarling." Suddenly, she turned and launched herself at the SLAM Cruiser's controls. Screams ran around the walls in the form of wailing alarms and the SLAM lurched, made several deep vomiting sounds, then dipped its nose towards the ground and accelerated violently.
Pippa and Betezh were wrenched from their feet and slammed across space, whacking against the curved cockpit vista. Below, they saw dopy nurse-soldiers begin a slow-motion scatter as the huge Mk I SLAM Cruiser howled towards its own stationed army...
"We will all die together!" screamed Dr. Bleasedale. "Ya! Together in a meat slurry!'
CHAPTER TEN
LEAD ZEPPELIN
The armies of Kludek were busy little bees. Squaddies were happily climbing into trenches ready for the first round of battle, and indeed, whistles were being blown in readiness for the grand kick-off. Across the expanse of No Man's Land it was a swirling, icy waste where wind whipped up eddies of churning, powdered snow. The opposing army of Yax was also climbing into its trenches and blowing whistles and readying heavy-mounted G52 machine guns. The two vast armies were preparing for battle, generals issuing orders, captains filtering orders, sergeants screaming harshly at troops with badly polished boots, and above it all banners snapped in the wind and flags wavered and pride slammed through these readying armies of two of the greatest continents on the planet...
Above the Yax armies, huge airships were delivering the last of the nurse soldiers, along with a battalion of chained Convulsers, electricity sparking and crackling and filling the air with ozone. Behind the Kludek lines, the last of the SLAM Cruisers were hovering, waiting to disgorge military payloads of infantry into this new arena of war, onto this battlefield of insanity, into this... game. Everything was going smoothly. Sergeant Caligula, of the Fifth Battalion Porn Troops, checked his wrist-clockwork. It ticked and tocked and told him they were nearly ready for the Great Off, the Big Push, the Enema Rush. He blew his whistle. More whistles echoed back down the trenches, telling him his trench troops were ready, and that all machine guns were primed in case the filthy dirty enemy tried a surprise attack charge over No Man's Land...
However.
Something seemed to be happening across the icy kilometre stretch of No Man's Land. The Kludek army seemed to be in some disarray and at first Sergeant Caligula rubbed his hands together, realising that any disruption in the Kludek ranks would give them a clear head start in the slaughter stakes.
In the sky, one of the huge hanging SLAM Cruisers suddenly dipped, and accelerated towards the ground. It connected with a deafening roar that physically shook the entire ice-shelf on which the great armies stood, and ploughed along through its own army scattering thousands of troops, who were picked up on a broad flat nose-cone and spat into the air like wailing ragdolls. With engines roaring, the SLAM Cruiser powered on, carving a furrow through its own military trenches, squashing a thousand bestethoscoped doctors armed with paracetamol machine guns, orange tans and a Big Ego, and continued, on into the sacred holy-ground of No Man's Land and -
Towards the Yax battlelines.
"It's a trap, a trick, a con!" screamed Caligula. "The dirty stinking cheating bastards are trying to get one up on us! Advance advance advance! Charge charge charge!" He blew his whistle, and nurse-soldiers streamed over the trench walls trailing peroxide curls, and charged - waddling - into No Man's Land.
Heavy machine guns started to roar, firing prosthetic limbs.
The sky filled with arms and legs. It was quite a sight...
Seeing the attack begin before the allotted time, the Kludek army screamed and blew whistles and charged, also accompanied by the music of machine guns, this time firing vials of piss, and in the midst of the two charging armies the SLAM Cruiser ploughed on with the tenacity of an advancing glacier, pushing up thousands of tons of churned ice and snow as, deep in its belly, fire blossomed and barrelled and ignited
gas
and
boomed
and worked its way towards the billion-gallon fuel tanks...
Armies clashed like knives. Bullets howled, made from needles and scalpels and surgical saws. Flesh
whumped
in chunks from shuddering bodies. Voices roared in appreciation. Screams shrilled. Engines churned. Swords decapitated. Syringes punctured. Blood flowed into the mud and squatted in glistening puddles... as the doctors, nurses and patients of Sick World went to war.
Franco's eyes gleamed. He could see his ginger goatee beard, his tight nurse uniform, his heavily-muscled biceps all reflected in the polished gleam of a thousand targeted machine guns. He clutched at the Leksell gamma-focus flapping loose around his neck, but knew in this situation the bomb-focus would be no use; although he wished, and wished hard. He staggered back under a force of snarling, almost physical, hatred which rolled out to meet him, and his generous arse cheeks met the Zeppelin's control panel -
There came a clatter of ratchet levers. Franco whirled - but too late! "Franco!" screamed Fizzy. "That's the..." Engines roared, and the stationary Zeppelin dipped its nose and powered towards the ground.
Guns roared, as a thousand deviant doctors opened fire. Hypodermics whistled around Franco, who threw himelf behind the console and winced and gurned and hung on for grim life with a grim face and dark grim thoughts.
Olga slammed down next to him, her great hands clamping the console so tightly the alloy buckled. Franco, straggled goatee streaming, forced his head around and saw several deviant doctors with way too many wavering legs and suckers plucked from their seats and slammed back in the slipstream, vanishing.
An idea crawled into Franco's mind like a slug under a cabbage.
"Aha!"
With great force of will and muscle he hoisted himself up, and saw they were about to plough into the ground and no doubt suffer a certain, messy death. He reached out, teeth gritted, and grabbed the controls. There came a noise like crashing battleships, the Zeppelin lifted its nose and climbed for the sky. Behind, several doctors flopped from their bench seats, bounced off the flanks of the helium-filled vessel, and sailed spread-eagled towards the warring factions below...
Franco grappled his way into the pilot's seat.
"What the hell are you doing?" screamed Shazza.
"Saving the day," rumbled Franco heroically, puffing out his hairy chest from behind his skimpy nurse uniform. "And there is still no charge for awesomeness!" With all his puffing, his fake boobs nearly flopped out. Somehow, the effect of sexy coquettish nurse was quite lost on Shazza. "Hang on tight," he said. "Real tight." And then he winked. It was quite awesome.
Franco, despite appearances, despite sexual perversion, despite the beard, was a quite amazing and adept mechanic. Where machines were concerned, he could pretty much fix anything, and they didn't call him Franco "Grease Monkey Mick" Haggis for nothing. Genuinely. As a result, a hurried glance across the console told him everything he needed to know about controlling the Zeppelin3 airship. He grabbed a lever, and spun a dial. The Zeppelin3, despite its bulky appearance, was an advanced evolution of a primitive concept. Engines growled, and the machine shot up further into the sky until the icy battlefield was nothing more than a chequered gameboard; and then, idly, the cumbersome vehicle suddenly spun, flipped, and hung upside down...
Screams, squawks and grunts echoed from the pews in the Zeppelin3, as a whole battalion of deviants detached from their particular greasy perches and, some with machine guns still spitting hypodermic bullets, performed spread-eagled freefalls without the aid of a parachute.
Franco, hanging onto a gear lever, glanced across at Olga. She was scowling at him, as her immensely powerful hands slowly compressed a layer of alloy and steel. Her fat legs kicked rhythmically. Her tattoos gleamed under a layer of sweat.
Fizzy and Shazza, long hair streaming, hung on with grim looks as the Zeppelin3 sat, suspended, upside down with engines thrumming. Franco threw a glance back at the deformed soldiers. There were only three left. Three, and Paddy Pudson, who had clasped hold of a steel stanchion with his nasal teeth.
"Dop it! Dop it!" he wailed. "Pud us da wide way ud!"
Franco gestured with his head, but his own colleagues were far from impressed; probably as they were about to fall to their own deaths.
"Turn us over!" instructed Olga with the voice of an avalanche. Unstoppable. There came a squeal of steal, and one hand broke free clasping an oyster shell of metal. She dangled, huge bosom bobbing like footballs in a bin bag. Franco stared with wide eyes.