Biohell (5 page)

“I’ve estimated. We’re good like
that.”

“So... you don’t know where I’ve
been, don’t know what I’ve been doing or what I’ve been earning—but you can
still estimate my annual income and taxation on what you think I
may
have
possibly might have earned?”

“Yes. I extrapolated from your
early
army career
earnings, plus those monies accrued whilst in Combat
K. Earnings which you also failed to declare and pay relevant tax.” She smiled.
It was neat.

“How do you know about Combat K?”
Franco’s voice had dropped low, and to anybody who knew him, levelled out at a
dangerous tone. His brain was already working out distances to the nearest gun,
bomb, or gun/bomb combo. Survival instinct was using his brain as a punch-bag.
Sobriety ripped out his kidney and beat him with it.

“I’m from the Quad-Gal External
Revenue.” Mel smiled a teeth smile. “I know everything.”

“Combat K is classified. Top
level.”

The gun which appeared in Franco’s
hand was small and black, and completely non-menacing. But to anybody in the
know, the Heckler & Koch Kat.5 anti-terrorist microlite was a savage
weapon. It could clean remove a person’s head. Hell, a single round could
remove an entire
torso.

“I’ve been assigned to track you
down,” said Mel.

“For a mission?”

Mel frowned. “No, Mr Haggis. For
you to pay your
tax.”

“We’re in The City. Nobody pays
tax in The City!”

“But you worked for the Quad-Gal
Military. Quad-Gal Government. Gov6. And
that
had nothing to do with The
City. You
are
in arrears, Mr Haggis. Franco. And, yes, whilst there are
no official
laws
here, QGM can have you extradited. You owe what you
owe. And that sum is
very large indeed.
I suggest you co-operate, or I’ll
be forced to initiate my PAB.”

“PAB?”

“Panic Attack Button. There’s a
flier with twenty Battle SIMs just a couple of blocks away.” She eyed the gun. “I
believe the punishment for attacking a Quad-Gal Tax Inspector is, oh, instant
death.”

Franco deflated.

“OK. OK. I admit it guv’nor. It’s
a fair cop. I never paid my bloody tax to the bureaucratic penny-pinching,
money-skimming daylight robbers we call
the System.
Go on. Hit me with
it. How much do I owe?”

Melanie told him.

Franco went pale.

“However.”

“Yes?” He raised an eyebrow above
a face filled with despondency.

“There... might be a way out of
this.”

“Yes?”

“You were Combat K. Right? The
best of the best. Elite. A super-soldier?”

“Yeah. Right. Fat lot of good
that
did me! Hah! Save the world, nay, the damn
galaxy,
and the bastards
still expect 33%. Where’s the justice in that, I ask you?”

“Do you... still have your
uniform?”

Franco frowned. “Um. Yee-
ees?”
It was a long drawn-out answer. Wondering. Questioning. Cow-
fused.

Melanie smiled. It was a wide
smile. Very wide. Very...
friendly.
She stood up and moved to Franco
with undulating hips. She reached behind herself, undid the molecular zip, and
stepped lithely free of her one-piece business suit. Full breasts filled a
Glitter Web bra. A flat stomach greeted Franco’s slack-jawed awe. Athletic legs
rose from diamond shoes up to a micro-filament thong that could only be called
underwear because it was
under there.
Franco stared at something slick
and inviting.

Mel reached forward. She licked
her lips. Her eyes were gleaming. She patted his arm. “Go and slip into your
uniform,” she said. “There’s a good boy.”

~ * ~

Mel
had hunted Franco down for tax purposes— initially. But she’d volunteered for
the job after seeing photos of him in his Combat K uniform, admittedly a
few
years younger, and a few pounds lighter, but still proud and erect and
strong. As it transpired, Mel had a thing about soldiers. Especially uniformed
soldiers. And
especially
Combat K uniformed soldiers. She acknowledged
this was a character defect, but she was willing to work around it.

However, on that first evening,
despite stripping from her bamboo business suit and dancing with Franco in his
uniform, she had refused to “rush things”. She left after an hour with a
coquettish smile. Franco was left with an erection that could drill hull steel.
Melanie departed with the promise she would return that night... with something
special.

As Mel began her arduous
sixty-nine floor descent, Franco, in his eagerness to please, like a puppy with
a wagging tail, shouted, “I’ll cook us a meal! I’m a good cook, I am!”

Mel laughed. “OK then.”

As she disappeared, the enormity
of what he’d said sunk in. A meal. Cooked. By. Franco. Shit.

Franco liked to eat. Hell, that
went without saying. A gourmet chef, however, he was not. And he so desperately
wanted to please! At first he thought about buying a fine meal from a
restaurant and passing it off as his own... but he reluctantly admitted that a)
his funding was limited, i.e. he had none, and b) his oven was darker than the
fabled Black
Black
Hole of Black Sinax. He opened the oven
optimistically on squeaking hinges, and poked around with a stick, but when
something in that dark and greasy mess grabbed the stick, snapped it in two,
growled, “I’m tryin’ a sleep in here,” and tossed the stick onto the floor with
a clatter, Franco resigned himself
never
to venture into the oven again.

And so, with little option left,
Franco decided that the one thing he could cook, something he was
good
at
cooking, something which would be easy-peasy, a breeze... but which might well
be his curse as well as his saviour... was chilli. A good, honest-to-goodness,
wholesome fresh cooked chilli. Made to his own aged family recipe. With his own
cleanly scrubbed hands. And with the freshest ingredients his little money
could conjure from an InfinityChef. And he knew, wow, it would blow her little
socks off. It would knock her sideways.
And,
hopefully, guarantee him a
shag.

Most people, when faced with this
dilemma, would have simply summoned a meal from a local street-corner
InfinityChef. But in reality, everybody knew the molecular-reconstituted food
tasted like crap; the best way to cook was to beg and borrow as many fresh
ingredients as possible. After all, only the
poor
or the
desperate
ate
from a public Level 1 InfinityChef.

After a whirlwind stealing spree,
which bagged Franco most of the ingredients he needed, he set to chopping
leeks, onion, garlic, adding beans and strips of fresh beef (or as fresh as
organo-construct auto-expanding meat could get)... and then moved on to the crème
de la crème of his homespun dish. Chillis. Fresh chillis. Franco had to
concentrate
really
hard, now. Because Franco liked chilli peppers. He
liked
a lot
of chilli peppers. He liked the kind of amounts you could
use to blast open a bank vault. So, careful not to overdo this culinary
adventure, Franco chopped and chopped, and removed the seeds, and added the
chillis to the bubbling pan.

Fast forward two hours.

A whirlwind cleaning of the
apartment, good scrub in the bath, best silver glitter suit, neatly trimmed
beard, (stolen)
Elvis Aftershave
dabbed at precise intervals about the
body. -

Franco was ready. No.
Ready,
babee.

The knock sounded exactly on
time. Franco grinned. Tax inspectors, huh? Precise to the point of anal
bureaucracy. It was in their nature. In their damned
blood.

Franco flung open the door,
half-expecting the whole thing to be some huge practical joke, half-resigned to
seeing some fifty stone Blubber Stripper leering down with only half her own
teeth and a spool of saliva connecting her from tongue to floor. But no. It was
Melanie. Wearing a quite ravishing simple black dress, neck to ankle, tight as
a body-stocking and showing off her perfect curves in a perfectly perfect
curving way.

“Hi,” said Franco.

“Something smells good.” She held
up a bottle of wine. Franco looked at it carefully. It was Chateaux du
Tek-Paris. Thirty years old.
Very
select. “Come on, I’m ready for a
drink. It’s been a long week.”
Wow. She liked a drink. A girl after his own
heart! Could it get any better?

Franco opened the bottle. Poured
two glasses. They sat, a little awkwardly, one at each end of the sofa (newly
covered with a quite garish floral covering which had, until recently, been
next door’s curtains).

They sipped the wine. It was
divine.

Franco savoured the flavour, and
didn’t dare quite look at Mel. She was stunning. She had little silver flowers
woven into her long dark hair. She smiled at him.

“You have a good—um—climb?”

“The stairs?” Mel laughed.
Tinkling sunlight. “Like you said, it’ll keep me fit.”

“You look pretty fit as it is.”
Franco bit his lip. Blushed.
Don’t be too eager you dumb-arse little fool if
you’re too eager she’ll run a mile like they all do. Play it cool. No. Super
cool. Sophisticated. Charming. Like James Bond, that most eternal of action
heroes, 578 films and counting. Yeah. That’s it. A ginger James Bond. You want
ice with that sir? Ye-arse. Shaken. Not stirred.

“What
is
that smell? It’s
sumptuous?”

“Chilli. Homemade. I nicked...
borrowed
all the ingredients fresh from the market. My mom used to make it.” Franco
beamed. “An old family recipe. You want to eat now?”

“Sounds good.”

Franco disappeared in the
kitchen, and when he returned with two plates of chilli, rice and tortillas,
Mel had switched off the lights and lit two candles. Flames crackled. Soft
yellow light cast pastel shadows over the walls. And, despite its designation
as
shit-hole,
in the softening ambience of candlelight, Franco’s apt was
transformed into something quite romantic.

Franco sat down, a little closer
this time. The plates steamed on the table.

Mel took a small, dainty
mouthful.

Franco waited... if he’d made it
too hot, it’d blow her damn head off! And bang would go his chance of a...
well, he frowned. Not just a shag. No. This was... something more. Something
different.
Something
special.
His heart thudded in his chest.
He
felt
different. This woman was... divine. Franco’s face broadened into an almost
relaxed smile. For once, sex didn’t matter. There was no urgency. Franco— and
he hated to admit this—well, he
liked Mel too much.

They ate.

“So how
did
you find me?”
said Franco.

“Quad-Gal External Revenue work
closely with all other Government Agencies. I’m used to tracking people down. I’m
efficient. I’m good at my job.”

Franco placed down his fork. “Can
I ask you something?”

“Be my guest.”

“This isn’t a wind-up, is it?”

Mel stared at him from behind
long dark eyelashes. “Why would you say that?”

“Well, I’m only a little fella,
but I’ve got a big heart. I don’t like being messed about. And I’m not
exactly...” he wrestled... “what some would consider a good catch. I’m not
wealthy. I drink too much. I
can
be crude, or so my friends tell me.” He
sighed. “What I’m trying to say is, well, look, well, the thing is, just
look
at you.”