Hardcore - 03

by Andy Remic

  "No," interjected Fizzy. "We checked. After take-off, when we realised you were so foolishly and unprofessionally under-equipped. You're like one of those dumb-fucks who dies on the mountain, wandering around without Gore-Tex, no map, no compass, completely underestimating the savage murdering brutality of Nature. She's a bitch, ain't she?" Fizzy grinned, a big-teeth grin which didn't allow Franco much opportunity for humorous camaraderie.

  Olga's hand descended, slapping Franco's shoulder so hard he nearly pitched under the cockpit console. He grunted, coughing, and saw the gleam in Olga's eye.

  "No."

  "What do you mean 'no' Little Franco?"

  "Just, no."

  "But you not know what Olga suggest."

  Franco stared at her huge flat face, her small, pig-like eyes. They seemed full of... concern. Like a mother's concern for a particularly retarded son.

  "Go on," said Franco, warily.

  "Olga is big lass, yes? Well, she sure her clothes will fit Franco absolutely no problem lubberly jubberly. That way, Franco not freeze his skinny-arse off in ze freezing wastes of Yax. Sound like a good plan?" She roared with laughter, and slapped Franco again. "Of course is ze good plan."

  "OK," said Franco, voice slow, and still imbued with a terrible wary suspicion. "Suppose I was to say yes..."

  "Let's go, then, to Olga's bed chamber and help you struggle from your little pants and T-shirt and standing all naked in Olga's bedchamber so you can then try on some of Olga's underwear, did I say ze underwear, silly me Olga was meaning ze clothes for ze winter mission of course." She beamed.

  "Yes, go on Franco," said Fizzy, grinning at him. "Go and entertain Olga for a while. She's gagging for a bit of hero company like what you have to offer. I'm sure she'll grab your..."

  "Borrocks," said Sax, choosing that moment to look up from his basket, wig slightly askew. Something inside him went clonk.

  "Yeah, don't be such a wet fish," chimed in Shazza. "Go on. Olga's a lass who loves a good time, doncha gal?"

  Franco deflated. In a small voice, he said, "I suppose I might pop along in a little while to have a look at your, um, wardrobe." His eyes narrowed. "But don't be getting any bloody damn and bloody ideas, alreet?"

  "Ideas?" Olga fluttered her eyelashes. It had the same effect as a bear fluttering its eyelashes prior to pulling your head clean off. "I would ze never dream of it, sweetie."

  Yax was a savage harsh land of ice-storms, ice-hail, ice-sheets and snow. Much of the year was spent in darkness, and when there was a hint of daylight the sun hung low, a bloated red orb slung over the horizon like a zombie corpse over the back of a saddle. The DropShip howled, banking, jets turning ice-hail to water and lowering slowly, a wary predator, between walls of jagged, ice-encased mountain and lower yet, into a broad valley split by a sluggish, ice-bobbing river. Occasionally, sparkles of red fire blossomed amidst the ice, then hissed and were extinguished, leaving trails of frozen magma and ash from the underground volcanic fault which kept this river fluid amidst a -40oC summer.

  The DropShip cooled swiftly with several alarming clangs and bangs. Landing struts, sunk deep in snow and ice, quickly assimilated a sheen of ice webs.

  Creaking, the hold ramp lowered and Franco stood, hands on hips, beaming. He wore knife-cut army combats and a Guinness t-shirt. His face glowed instantly red from frost-nip, and his broad smile, showing his single missing tooth, was nothing if not a platter of massive fake humour.

  "Ach, it's not that bad!" he bellowed, and strode down the ramp, hands still on hips, like some perverse and deviant catwalk model. The wind whipped him with cat-o'-nine-tails lashes of pain. Snow stuck instantly to his ginger beard, forming long curled icicles. He turned, surveying the three huddled figures in the doorway, wrapped in heavy furs and the most advanced military Gore-Tex Combat-K would and could provide. "It's just, y'know, refreshing. Like a dip in a cold bath after a sauna. That sort of thing. Makes a man of ye, so it does."

  The three females stared at him. Warily, they emerged, and slid worryingly down the ramp. Fizzy poked Franco in the chest. "You've gone blue, dickhead."

  "Ate some bad cheese."

  "You've ice in your beard!"

  "Must have been that ice-pop I had after lunch."

  "Mate, you're shivering worse than a blue-peanut junkie during a gun-turkey withdrawal."

  "Yeah, well," he grinned, "suppose I need a voddie. The chill affects me like that, sometimes."

  "Franco," Fizzy looked deep into his eyes, "you are one stubborn son-of-a-bitch."

  "Hey, I never said I was perfect. Never said I was Mr. Franco 'Perfect Pecs' Haggis, never said I was some kind of incredible macho hunky superhero, although now I think about it, I am. Come on, let's get this show onna road, this ship launched, this sperm ejaculated from the barrel. It's gonna be a long, hard gig of," he sniggered, holding his belly with one scarred hand, "collecting damn soil samples." The team of four stepped away from the DropShip, and Sax appeared, groggily, just as Franco hit the TRANS key. The DropShip growled, motors whirring as panels clanked and slid, hydraulics hissed and the whole vehicle stood up and transformed into a DropShip BaseCamp. With a strangled "Borrocks" Sax tumbled back into the interior, and they could hear him banging and clanking around, bounced and tossed as walls rearranged themselves and Sax was bounced around like a spanner in a tumble drier, like a bone between slurping jaws.

  Steam hissed, melting more snow and ice. The wind howled mournfully. Franco slapped his blue thigh, and strode up the new ramp towards the gleaming interior. Once inside, away from the storm which crackled around air-vents like an electric banshee, Franco scowled at his team. They stared back at him, only moderately disbelieving. Being part of a Franco Haggis combat squad was a bit like being committed.

  "OK team. This is how it works. Today, we'll establish a rearward leisure-time comfort-zone with our main priority being that of spa-works, imbibing pleasure-sense altering substances and with the possibility of loquacious arousal on the imminent horizon if I'm not very too much mistaken."

  "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 thr
eatening 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.