Free Cloneworld - 04 by Andy Remic Page A

Industrial Wall Socket.
    "Er," said Franco.
    "Yes?" said Mrs Strogger, staring at him.
    "You got shot then, you realise?"
    "So?"
    "Didn't it hurt?"
    "Should it?"
    "Hmm," said Franco. He stared at her recharge socket. "So, that thing, then."
    "What thing?"
    "That, er, that big tube coming from your groin."
    "My recharge cable."
    "Odd place to put it."
    "Your meaning?"
    "A-ha-ha," said Franco. "What I'm meaning to say, is that you're a, y'know, female org. A girlie. And that there big sausage thing, well, it looks a bit like a..."
    "Yes?" Each letter contained knives.
    "What I mean to say is, somebody, a pervert or something, or a comedian, might say it looks like you've got a massive black..."
    "Yes?"
    "Nothing," said Franco, and smiled, clenching his teeth.
    At that moment, a volley of ammunition slammed across the prison kitchens, and Franco cowered on the floor, tray held over his head as bullets pinged and clanged , and one neatly removed the bottom inch of his little finger.
    " Aargh!" screamed Franco, staring in disbelief at the minor amputation. Blood pumped from the wound, and Franco's instant reaction was to put it in his mouth.
    Mrs Strogger suddenly reached over, her face a scowl, and grabbed Franco's arm. He struggled for a moment, like a fish on a hook, as she dragged him towards her and produced, from a flap in her belly, what turned out to be a glowing soldering iron. Holding Franco in an unbreakable grip, Mrs Strogger cauterised the stump of Franco's little finger as he screamed again, gnashing his teeth as the stench of frying pork filled the air.
    Strogger abruptly let Franco go and he slapped back onto his arse - as another volley whirred overhead. The chefs had organised themselves into two fighting lines, one line reloading ancient Crack Rifles whilst the other took aim and fired. Franco grabbed his laser cannon, his movements fired up by the pain not just in his finger, but in his pride, and started blasting away like a cowboy madman with pistols at a disco.
    Chefs were slammed backwards, left and right, leaving trails of steaming cabbage soup, sending platters of rotten vegetables into the air, sending bowls of black braised beef scattering across the steel floor with dry, hard, drumming sounds. Another line of bullets whined across the kitchen, puncturing bubbling pans of donkey stew, and suddenly the air was filled with screaming alarms and more red strobes flickered into life. Behind them, in the corridor leading to the kitchens, Sourballs appeared with a squad of ten prison guards.
    "Found you! At last!" she screeched, barbed-wire hair bobbing madly. "Kill them!"
    Lasers whined from the corridor, and Franco scrambled sideways across the cupboards, miraculously missing a combined crossfire of laser blasts and ancient steel shells. He dived, slamming into a cupboard, and fired his laser cannon down the corridor without looking, squeezing off twenty bursts of crackling energy. When he peered round, three guards were dead, their corpses smoking, and the rest had fled for cover.
    Franco glanced at Mrs Strogger. "We're in the shit!" he snapped, pain in his finger giving him an urgency he hadn't felt in a long, long time. "I could do with some fucking help, you old hag!"
    "Almost charged," smiled the old org, her wrinkled face relaxed into the euphoria of a terminal Crack67 sniffer.
    Franco started to crawl along a line of cupboards. His idea was simple: flank the chefs, take them out in a hail of laser fire, then get the hell out of the kitchens and away before Sourballs and her laser-shooting chumps caught up with him. To Hell with Mrs Strogger! The ancient mechanised bitch was too busy getting juiced up!
    "I would call a ceasefire, if I was you," came the trembling voice of Teddy Sourballs.
    Franco halted. He didn't speak; to make a sound would be to give away his new position. And he liked it just fine that nobody now knew where he was. Franco listened. The chefs had ceased their fire; obviously they