Pax Omega

by Ewing, Al

  Scorpio grinned. “We got our blind eye. I won’t bore you with the details – although they are deeply yvoorg, true believer – but Victoria just got hit smack in her ugly face on a scale nobody never saw before, even counting that Martian jazz from last year. Britannia is reeling with the feeling right now, and – assuming they survive this – they are not gonna to be able to say boo to a goose any time soon.”

  El Sombra blinked. “If they survive? Magna Britannia?”

  “Could go either way. Obviously, if they don’t, it’s a whole other ball game, but I’m a glass-half-full kind of cat, dig?”

  “So...”

  Scorpio nodded. “So right now, there’s everything to play for, and if we don’t take advantage our buddy Adolf definitely will. Which means sometime in the next month or so – as soon as we negotiate how down the Italians and Russians want to be with this happening – America goes to war.” He pointed a finger at El Sombra’s chest. “And America wants you.”

  El Sombra couldn’t help but laugh. The idea of him dressing in a helmet and flak jacket and parachuting into the forests with a hundred other men, weighed down by some heavy machine gun, seemed somehow far more absurd than the thought of sneaking half-naked across the border with his sword in his hand. “I don’t know, amigo. I think I might prefer to be my own man.”

  “You would be, baby. In the squad I’m building, there’s no room for anything else.” He grinned.

  El Sombra blinked. “You’re a very strange man, Jack Scorpio. Why all this... cool, cat, baby, groovy, all that. What is that? Spy talk?”

  Jack nodded. “Kind of. It’s dream language – focuses the trained mind, distracts the untrained mind. Right now, it’s futzing you up a little, am I right?”

  “Well...”

  “It’s cool, I’ll tone it down, let you think straight. If we work together, I’ll teach you how to do it – Jim Channon turned me on to the concept when we were in the First Earth Battalion. It’s basically a mixture of lucid dreaming and... well, it’s kind of hard to explain without, uh...” Jack tugged idly on his moustache for a second. “Okay, have you seen what Andy Warhol’s been up to lately?”

  “Ow!” El Sombra winced, feeling his other self bubbling painfully up. He rubbed the knot at the back of his mask, forcing the thoughts back down. “Djego has. He enjoyed ‘Cellphone’ – the sculpture.”

  “Yeah, he’s just finished a new one called ‘Pod’ – it’s similar, only instead of the grid of numbers, there’s a perfect ceramic circle. I was meditating on that earlier today. Anyway, it’s connected to that – dream logic, dreamworld thinking. There is another world. There is a better world.” Jack smiled, and El Sombra felt suddenly ill – faded and washed out, as if he was no longer quite real. “Well, there must be. Right? See what I did to you there?”

  He was grinning, as if he knew some secret El Sombra didn’t. The masked man’s guts turned over, and he felt the sudden urge to throw up. Scorpio laughed. “Weaponised cosmic awareness. Welcome to the big leagues.”

  “Let’s... change the subject.” El Sombra said, quietly. “Why don’t you tell me more about –” he tailed off suddenly, noticing Jack’s eyes widen at something just behind his left shoulder. In the distance, he heard the crash of shattering glass.

  “What?” El Sombra turned, and saw that one of the disused warehouses now had a broken skylight. A cloud of disturbed dust lingered in the air. “What happened?”

  Scorpio breathed out. “Doc Thunder happened. Damn.”

  “What?”

  “He just fell out of a clear blue sky and into that warehouse.” Scorpio reached for his holster, drawing a large revolver – a Magnum of some kind – with three chambers, arranged on some sort of revolving drum. “Didn’t look like an accident, either. Want to see for yourself?”

  El Sombra blinked. Well, why not? He had nothing better to do.

  “Groovy, amigo.”

  SLEDGEHAMMER BLOWS

  “En garde!”

  That was the war-cry on the lips of Savate, The Man Of A Thousand Kicks – as he leapt into astounding action! Few men alive could hope to avoid the hammer-blows of Doc Thunder for long, but the wily Frenchman was perhaps the most agile fighter ever to take on the forces of law and order – and in addition, he was the veteran of a dozen previous duels with the super-scientific powerhouse, and thus knew his every move almost before he made it.

  Meanwhile, Doc Thunder fought under the handicap of his own heroic conscience – for he knew that if he struck his enemy with his full strength, strength enough to punch a hole in a brick wall and bend solid steel girders into pretzels, Savate would die – as surely as if he had been hit by a cannon shell! Thus, he pulled his punches, which only made them easier to avoid, and all the time the dread machinery was continuing to distil the blood of Jason Satan. Every second spent in battle brought closer that fatal moment when the deadly poison gas would be ready!

  If he could only wreck the machine before it finished its terrible operation, but no! The mercenary was determined to force him away from it, and from the rocket that would deliver the hideous payload into the skies of New York!

  Savate knew all of Doc Thunder’s weak points. Every second, another flurry of kicks like sledgehammer blows slammed into Doc Thunder’s eyes, blocking his sight. He swung a fist out at his side in a wide arc, hoping to knock the rocket over, but struck only the empty air!

  And the next moment, twin jets of fire engulfed him in an aura of flame!

  For the stumbling combat had driven America’s Greatest Hero into the firing-line of Mister Murder’s Murder Chair!

  And as readers of the Daily Clairon well know – mayhem is the Murder Chair!

  FIERY HOLOCAUST

  The insect-like front legs of Mister Murder’s fiendish contraption bathed Doc Thunder in a blazing inferno, burning the world-famous t-shirt from his back – but it would take more than that to ignite the Man Of Might! Judging that the Frenchman had leapt to safety rather than risk being consumed by the fiery holocaust, Thunder turned towards the source of the flames – grabbing hold of the Murder Chair’s incendiary legs and crushing them in his super-powerful grip as if they were tissue paper!

  “Nein! Nein! You cannot do this!” screamed the balloon-headed Nazi, as Doc Thunder lifted the Murder Chair from the ground, the six remaining legs scrabbling furiously at his naked chest – but the razor points could do little more than scratch at his near-indestructible skin. Doc Thunder turned his head and saw Savate, already tensing to dodge what he knew was coming. But Savate wasn’t the only one who knew how to predict an old foe.

  With a mighty heave, Doc Thunder hurled the Murder Chair, with the screaming head of Untergang trapped within it, not at the place where Savate was – but where he would be!

  Wha-a-amm!

  The French mercenary was treated to the head-butt of a lifetime – and he was lucky to get it! For had Doc Thunder used any less skill in aiming one enemy at another, the razor points of the Chair’s insectile legs might have speared Savate through the chest and ended his life in one agonising instant!

  As ever, Doc Thunder made pains not to take a human life if he could possibly avoid it. But against the deadly killing power of Jason Satan, The Man With The Touch Of Death, would even America’s Greatest Hero have the luxury of choice? Did he dare to leave this maddest and deadliest of criminals to live another day?

  No!

  Not now that this most monstrous of men had stumbled upon the deadly secret contained within his own blood! Jason Satan was a living weapon of death, a ticking poison-bomb that would end the lives of millions were he to escape that room!

  But could even Doc Thunder subdue the grinning albino without succumbing to the foul ichor that coursed through the insane murder’s veins? Could even his mighty constitution survive a single touch from the lunatic’s hand?

  The choice was kill – or die! Which would it be?

  THE TOUCH OF DEATH

  The two combatants circled
warily. Jason Satan’s arms were spread wide, the venom in his fingertips ready to strike as he blocked Doc Thunder’s path to the clanking machinery that was even now completing the distillation of Satan’s blood into deadly poison gas!

  Doc Thunder considered wrapping his bare knuckles to strike the death-blow and perhaps ward off the worst of the fatal effect – but with his clothing destroyed by the Murder Chair’s flame-cannons, he had nothing to wrap them in. He would have to hope that he was strong enough to touch Jason Satan and survive – though no man ever had!

  The super-scientist’s eyes narrowed – his enemy’s did likewise! Like gunslingers of old, they were judging the moment to unleash the deadly forces at their command! Concentration was total! The slightest distraction now could mean the difference between life – and death!

  And at that moment the warehouse door crashed open – and Jack Scorpio, Agent of S.T.E.A.M. burst into the fray! Joined by Mexico’s Greatest Hero – the masked swordsman known as El Sombra!

  Fate can be cruel! For Doc Thunder allowed his attention to be drawn to the smashing entrance of these two incredible heroes for the split instant his foe required – to land the fatal blow!

  Jason Satan leapt forward – to plant his open palm square in the centre of his opponent’s bared chest – inches from his beating heart!

  The touch of death had been delivered – to Doc Thunder!

  (CONTINUED ON PAGE FOLLOWING.)

  “THIS DOESN’T LOOK good, amigo,” El Sombra muttered.

  It didn’t.

  Doc Thunder was on the floor, convulsing. His skin had turned a hideous, waxy yellow, and as Jack Scorpio watched, a clump of hair came loose from his scalp and drifted to the floor. His bowels had let go, a rivulet of blood ran from one ear, suggesting some terrifying haemorrhage in his brain, and white foam oozed from the corners of his mouth. His eyes stared blankly at nothing at all.

  Jason Satan stood over him, fixing the two intruders with his milk-white eyes and his ghastly yellow grin. Doc Thunder had fought The Man With The Touch Of Death several times over the past few years, always careful to wear protective clothing in their battles. This time, he hadn’t expected Satan’s involvement – but then, Satan was generally a solo operator. He’d never been part of the world of Untergang before.

  Not that Doc Thunder had suspected Untergang’s involvement either.

  Before he began his vacation in the forbidden kingdom of Zor-Ek-Narr, he’d been cleaning up the loose ends from previous cases – including the theft of a large quantity of high-test hydrogen peroxide, stolen from a rocket research facility out in Brentwood by a gang of inexperienced heist artists. Peroxide was expensive and difficult to synthesise, but it worked well in attitude jets, and wasn’t half so expensive as cavorite – in fact, there was talk of using it to send rockets into space without the benefit of the gravity-defying alloy. Presumably the crooks had read one of the reports extolling its virtues and figured it’d be easier to steal than cavorite, too.

  In the planning stages, it had sounded like a three-man job, but they’d needed to bring in a couple of inside men at the facility, and, after all their efforts, the peroxide they stole was only worth fifty grand as opposed to the hundred they’d assumed they could get. In the end, they just didn’t have the experience or the contacts to get a good price, and the resentment had simmered, with each member thinking they deserved more than their meagre share.

  The gang had planned to split the cash after fencing the H2O2, but greed prevailed, and Doc Thunder – having easily tracked the gang to their hideout – found himself bursting in on a pitched gun battle. Too small a payoff between too large a group – it often turned out that way.

  After he’d picked up the pieces and found out from the surviving thieves who their fence was – a man named Winston F. Keeler – he wasn’t that shocked to find the man apparently dead of a heart attack. He was a good thirty stone, and clearly didn’t take much care of himself. He did take good care of his records, though, and Thunder found a notebook in a wall safe – along with a hundred thousand dollars in cash – detailing exactly where the peroxide had been delivered; some kind of insurance, presumably.

  It hadn’t helped him. Winston Keeler’s death had not come naturally to him; he had been assassinated by an injection of digitalis. Had Doc Thunder known, he might have had second thoughts about crashing into the abandoned warehouse the peroxide had been delivered to.

  As it was, he assumed it was a fairly simple scam of a type he’d seen before – concentrated peroxide would be stolen, then diluted depending on the target market. Laboratories and water treatment plants would buy it at concentrations of 30% without looking too hard – with further dilution, the same stuff could be bottled and sold as hair bleach. Keeler had bought for fifty grand and sold for ninety – an enterprising businessman could turn that into as much as three hundred, depending on supply and demand. A large, seemingly abandoned warehouse most likely meant an operation of that nature.

  Undiluted, high-test peroxide also made for excellent bombs, of course. Doc Thunder thought that was possible, but unlikely. He definitely didn’t consider that it might be used for the purpose originally intended: rocket fuel.

  More fool him.

  “I honestly didn’t know if that would work.” Jason Satan grinned. “Isn’t it wonderful when your secret dream comes true?” He sniggered, taking a step closer, his fingers flexing eagerly.

  Scorpio levelled his gun. “Hold it, slick. One more step and I put a hole in you the size of the Brooklyn tunnel.”

  “Go ahead,” Satan cackled. “Shoot me. Send my beautiful blood hissing and spraying from my veins. Drench yourself in it.” He took another step. “Make my day.”

  Jack Scorpio’s finger squeezed the trigger, but the gun refused to fire. He just couldn’t seem to squeeze hard enough.

  Behind him, the Murder Chair hissed and clanked as Mister Murder righted himself and scuttled forwards. He chuckled, a high-pitched giggle that echoed obscenely out of his cavernous mouth. “Herr Scorpio. How wonderful to see you again. Especially now that I’ve learned to counter your... unique mental defences. Please, tell your trigger finger to move. You’ll find I am fully in control. And if I can control one finger...” – Scorpio felt his mind lurch as his arm suddenly swivelled, aiming the gun at El Sombra’s head – “...there. Good soldier.”

  “Make him fire.” Satan ran a wet grey tongue over his yellow fangs. “I want to see the Mexican’s head burst.”

  “Why not?” Mister Murder twitched his shoulders in something almost like a shrug. “I’ve grown so much more powerful since the last time we fought, Herr Scorpio. You should have made sure of me then. Now... my mind is powerful enough to wear you like a glove. Like a puppet.” The wrinkled, egg-like head cracked into a malevolent smile. “You will make a fine agent of Untergang.”

  “Excusez-moi?”

  Mister Murder froze, then scuttled slowly around. Savate stood behind him, arms folded, brow furrowed in anger.

  “Did you say... Untergang?”

  CREED OF HATE

  Mister Murder’s eyes blazed with sudden rage! Curse the luck!

  Up until now he had used his strange mental powers to fog Savate’s mind, so the Frenchman accepted any story he was told without thinking. Thus, he did not question why the World’s Most Evil Brain should no longer be working for Untergang, nor why two such accomplished killers should be wasting their time preparing ‘knockout gas’ to use against the city. In his mind, the three of them had been planning some great caper, to rob a sleeping city blind – but now, with a single unguarded word, Mister Murder had torn the scales from his pawn’s eyes!

  Could he reassert his mental domination and retain control over Jack Scorpio at the same time? It would be a supreme effort – but he was ubermensch! Created in the laboratories of the Ultimate Reich to annihilate free will and spread the Fuhrer’s creed of hate across all the continents of the globe! Not only could he do it – it was his dest
iny!

  Savate froze, feeling a prickling sensation running down the nerves in his arms. Suddenly, he was rooted to the spot, his limbs refusing to obey him. Jack Scorpio was likewise helpless, unable to do anything but keep his weapon pointed directly at El Sombra’s head. Doc Thunder, meanwhile, was still insensate, struggling in the terrible grip of Jason Satan’s poison – and despite his superhuman physiognomy he found himself inching closer to death with each passing second!

  OOZING GOBBETS

  Glistening beads of sweat trickled over Mister Murder’s horrifically enlarged brow as he concentrated on keeping the tableau in place. It was all he could do to keep two minds under his control – three was quite impossible. Thus, the time for El Sombra to die was now – and at Jack Scorpio’s hand!

  The hideous mutant supermind gritted his teeth as he tightened his mental hold. There was some vague fuzz gathered around Scorpio’s thoughts – the vestiges of the S.T.E.A.M. brain-training that had thwarted Mister Murder in the past – but still, the deranged telepath forced the agent’s finger to tighten on the trigger of his incredible multi-ammo magnum... squeezing it... until –

  – until the gun clicked uselessly in Scorpio’s hand... and El Sombra seized his moment and leaped forward – for the kill!

  His razor-sharp blade – which this reporter can exclusively reveal was inherited from his dead brother in a furious battle against the forces of the Luftwaffe – sliced directly thru Mister Murder’s obscene cranium, transforming the Untergang abomination’s gigantic head into a gruesome cauldron, open to the world, filled with oozing gobbets of bloody, sundered brain matter! A fitting end for the arch-Nazi!