Read Cloneworld - 04 for Free Online Page B

divorce. She cited reasons such as Franco being unreasonable to live with. And lusting after other women... which wasn't that surprising when you considered his wife was a zombie, and Franco would lust after a one-legged whore in a vat of supermodels. He was that kind of dude.
    "Actually, I am divorced," Franco said primly, "but I have a long line of women lining up to be the next Mrs Haggis."
    "So that's your name? Haggis?"
    "Yes. Haggis. Franco Haggis. Shaken, not stirred. Except, you know, when I've been shaken."
    "Which would be right now?"
    "Er, yes. Opera decapitating herself, that was hardcore shit. Left me a bit rattled. After all, I'm here to, er, yes, well. I've said enough."
    "And killed enough, by all the sounds of it." The old org started to cackle, rocking backwards and forwards. Her machinery hissed and spat occasionally, and she belched old oil smoke, and Franco stared at her, as he would a particularly mangy dog.
    "So then," said Franco, conversationally. "What you in for?"
    "Murder."
    "Aaah."
    "Well, they call it murder, but I call it self-defence. After all, they was only gangers, they was. And we're practically at war. Damn police shouldn't have come poking around my neighbourhood. We have walls and things. And gates. Their disguises didn't stand up to much."
    "So you killed the Royal Ganger Police? Wowsers. How many?"
    The old org shrugged. "Thirty, forty. It's hard to count when they all get mashed up in a slurry pulp of severed limbs."
    Franco shuffled along his bunk, until he was as far away from the aged psycho as was humanly possible without actually merging into the steel of the cube prison's wall. He felt suddenly, deeply vulnerable in his BWAUs and flip flops. It wasn't exactly War Grade Armour. It wasn't exactly nuke-proof Permatex.
    "Wonderful," he said. Shit. Just my luck. Put in a cell with a police-murdering metal psychopath machine-woman! Hot damn and bloody hot bollocks. How does I get myself into these damn situations, eh? I ask you, eh?
     
    And Franco slept.
    In his sleep, he dreamed. He dreamed Pippa came to him, naked and voluptuous, and his hands ran down her naked flanks, along the powerful muscles of her arms and belly, and she smiled at him, and there was love in her eyes, and Franco chuckled to himself because this was just natural, and normal, and good, and the way it should be. She moved into him, pressing her body against his, and he groaned in longing and lust, but something more, something deeper, for he had always loved Pippa, always been addicted to her worse than any injected narcotic, or even a lightly fried sausage/horseradish muffin.
    "Franco," she said, and kissed him, and their mouths pressed and her breath was sweet and their tongues entwined, and she groaned in fast-rising lust, and need, and hot bubbling ecstasy - and Franco's eyes flared open in sudden, wild, hard, insane panic, as "Franco," she said, and kissed him, and their mouths pressed, but her lips were metal, and her breath was foul like broken old engines, and their tongues entwined and her tongue was scaled, metal, like a robot snake, and she groaned in fast-rising lust, and need, and hot bubbling ecstasy -
    "Get off!" screeched Franco, shoving the old org away. She clanked back, leg hydraulics hissing, and grinned at him, licking her lips.
    "You taste real fine, wanker!"
    "Eurch! Ouerch! How could you do that? How could you take such advantage? I feel," he pouted, "quite abused." He spat out a mouthful of black engine oil. "Yeuch!"
    "An old gal has to take what she can get." The org retired to her own bunk, and was soon snoring, oil bubbles frothing at her lips. Her mechanicals made whirring and grinding noises deep in her machine bowels.
    Rubbing his lips on his arm at least a hundred times, Franco retired back on his own bunk, grumbling, and casting many a suspicious glance at the old crone. "Cheeky git," he muttered, and pressed his earlobe comm in a vain attempt at communicating with Pippa.
    There