by Pat Mills
"Kiss the cone! Kiss the cone! Kiss the cone! We're cloud hoppers! Screw you, gob stoppers!"
But the cone had its own personal "silence violence": a newly designed, built-in tractor beam to immobilise lawbreakers. The beam was relatively harmless and certainly not life-threatening, but the rappers were not expecting it. As a beam of light shot skywards from the cone towards them, they naturally felt fear.
"Biol!" cried out one. "Gaia!" screamed the other.
Their fear was fatal. They caught the Red Death.
In moments they started to decay.
Within minutes they were reduced to skeletons floating in the air. On the ground below, the talk cone wasn't quite sure what to make of it all.
A driver headed across the Taylor District in his sporty open skip. Inscribed on the side was the customary safety sign: "Level fill only. No standing." Then Medusa decided to send out a few lava bursts from her volcano that overlooked Marineris. It wasn't a serious assault on the city. Yet.
But she liked to keep the humans on their toes while she waited for an answer to her ultimatum. Just to let them know she hadn't forgotten them. It was also in retaliation for, and probably in imitation of, the lava louts who were still dropping grenades down her vents. In return, she spewed out a mild torrent of yellow lava in the direction of Marineris. Wherever it struck, whether it missed people or not, they felt fear and contracted Slimes, decaying instantly.
Then, as an encore, she blasted a cloud of choking black embers into the air. As it started to fall in the general direction of central Marineris, the driver of the Mr Skippy looked up. He'd been feeling pretty happy, skippy even, that the lava had missed him. But this time it didn't seem as if he was going to be quite so lucky.
"No hot ashes!" cried out the driver of the skip as the red-hot cinders rained down. He naturally felt fear and his fear was fatal. He contracted Slimes. Within minutes he was reduced to a skeleton lying in the bottom of his skip.
The outbreak of Slimes was the opportunity the cyboons had been looking for. Years of brutal treatment at the hands of the Bald Ones meant that they felt no fear. So they were not affected by Slimes. In fact, they felt very little, apart from deep hatred of the baldies.
So when they saw the baldies' corpses being carried out onto the streets, they went on a looting spree by way of celebration. They broke into the baldies' Electronic Emporiums and obeasteries. They ran off with trivias, belly-blasters and music boxes. They removed biol meal makers for obeasts, like the "Grub in a Tub" model, complete with diving board. And cranes for winching obeasts out of trouble when they were stuck in pedestrian traffic jams.
The cyboons had no idea what any of these objects were for, but they knew the baldies valued them, so they must be worth something. Possibly they would pray to them later. Certainly they would grunt to them.
The cyboons were also puzzled by the contents of the baldies' homes. They spread toothpaste on bread. They liked the minty flavour. They drank "Arm Arnie" aftershave. It made them very jolly. They fired guns at the shower after they turned it on and it sprayed them. They washed fish in the toilet. They were astonished when they pressed the flush lever and the fish disappeared. They couldn't understand where they'd gone.
Some of the houses they broke into still had live baldies in and their customs were similarly baffling. In the kitchen of one apartment they saw a tube running from the biol tap straight into an obeast's open mouth. He was contentedly sucking the food down like an Arab puffing on a hookah.
Many obeasts thought this was a rather gross way of eating and would have a "Grub in a Tub" installed in their homes instead. Putting on Max-swell swimsuits from Pig-U-Like, they would dive into their meals.
In another apartment, the sight of a family of obeasts, frolicking in their food at bath time, and having a good wallow in it like hippos, seemed very peculiar to the cyboons indeed.
The killdozer drew close to a group of armed cyboons that had blocked the road. One cyboon had put a pair of hot pants on his head and this seemed to make him the leader, because the others were grunting their approval at him. Another was trying to operate a DA gun and had inserted about six DAs in another cyboon's rear. He was going to tattoo him next.
When they saw the ABC Warriors approaching, they turned their guns on them, apart from a couple of cyboons who turned their guns on themselves.
"We don't have time for this," scowled Blackblood. "Let's just mow them down."
"No," interjected Mongrol. "We're here to increase the peace for every creature on Mars. Humans. Trimorphs. Clones. Robots. And cyboons." He climbed out of the killdozer. "At ease, soldiers. I'll deal with this."
"How will you get your message of peace and goodwill across?" queried Blackblood. "I didn't know you spoke Grunt."
Deadlock took no interest in the problem. He left it to the others to sort out this local difficulty. Instead he laid out his tarot cards and seemed rather disturbed by what he divined there, notably the Ten of Swords that depicted a human knight impaled by ten swords.
When the cyboons saw Mongrol with his power paws dragging along the ground, walking purposefully towards them on his knuckles, the apes grunted and shrieked their approval. He was clearly one of them. They whistled and hooted and screeched at each other. The gist of what they were saying seemed to be that this just might be the True Silver cyboon of legend who would lead them out of bondage into the promised land.
"Yes, yes, that's good," said Mongrol, as they followed his simple pointing instructions and started to move their barricade out of the way.
But their leader began ranting and chittering and pointing aggressively at Mongrol. He seemed to be saying that he was superior to the newcomer, for he alone wore the Sacred Pants on his head and they must destroy the newcomer, for he was in league with the baldies. There was some indecision about all this, but the apes finally decided to go along with it.
"No, no, that's bad," said Mongrol as they began snarling and firing at him. "Hmm. I think I'm going to have to use some minimal force here."
Moments later Mongrol rejoined the others and, acting under his orders, Mek-Quake carefully steered his way around all the unconscious cyboons lying in the road.
The Warriors' objective was "Air Souls" in the exclusive Syrtis Major Street. The shop supplied bottled rare airs imported specially from Earth. There was "Mont Blanc," fresh from the Alpine mountaintops. "Amazon", with its rich, humid, exotic atmosphere. When you breathed it in, its suppliers claimed, you could almost hear the monkeys. And the top of the range "Everest" was characterised by its light, cool flavour. Its price alone would take your breath away. All were available refined or with gas. Air Souls had "Everything for the connosair." This was a word aficionados used. "Connoisseur" didn't sound quite right somehow. Air Souls' clients were the rich, the health conscious and, undoubtedly, the cerebrally challenged.
"Of course," commented Mongrol as they approached the shop. "Bottled air is the perfect way to distribute the virus throughout the city."
They had carried out a security check on the shop's owner. He was the retired Olympic-class eater, Lung Chaney. Few could forget his final farewell beast feast when he broke the world record for consuming a pool full of biol. After a bad start, when he also broke the diving board and belly flopped into his food, he made an impressive recovery by slurping up the entire contents of the pool in thirty laps, and fifteen minutes - one minute faster than the existing record set by the legendary Lead "Belly" Zeppelin. Finally, he lay at the bottom of the emptied deep end, like a beached whale, triumphant and exhausted. After he was winched out, he did a "lap of honour" for the cheering crowds.
This explained the extra wide doors to his shop. There were posters on both of them: "Everest - now with added pranyama" and "Blow away those bogies with Sirocco, full of Eastern Promise."
"Good idea," said Blackblood, checking his sub-machine guns. Joe and Deadlock slipped round the back of the building. Mek-Quake remained outside in killdozer mode, blocki
ng the exit. Mongrol, Hammerstein and Blackblood stepped inside.
They had no idea who or what they would find when they entered, guns at the ready. But it was Hammerstein who was in for the biggest shock.
There, standing behind the counter, was a familiar figure: the mysterious and beautiful Russian robot Nikita. "Hammersteinski!" she exclaimed.
"You know this robot?" asked an astonished Mongrol.
"Well, er ..." Hammerstein was lost for words.
Blackblood said nothing. He looked away from Hammerstein so he could hide the grin of amusement on his face.
"That was the most beautiful bouquet of flowers you sent me, Hammersteinski," said Nikita. Her accent was heavier than a T-54 tank. She had more curves than the Kremlin. She shone brighter than the chandeliers on the Moscow Metro.
"Er... I think we may have bumped into each other in the street."
Deadlock and Joe entered the bottling plant at the back of Air Souls. They passed row upon row of stacked air cylinders. Some of them had undoubtedly been used to contaminate Marineris with Slimes.
"I smell bad breath," commented Deadlock.
"Yes, it's coming from over here," said Joe, indicating the loading bay. A vast obeast of a man lay there. He was dead and had a look of absolute terror on his face. His enormous abdomen had been impaled by a forklift truck. He had been dead for several days.
"Lung Chaney," said Joe. Deadlock nodded.
Their weapons at the ready, they moved on.
Next to the bottling plant was the indoor pool where Lung trained for many long, hard months, preparing for his attempt on the world food eating record. Normally it would have been up to the brim with biol; but on this occasion it was filled with boiling hot water.
This was to accommodate the monstrous alien amphibian known as Snnktts. It was a Turkish bath that closely resembled his aquatic home world orbiting Sirius. Only his eyes were visible above the water, but they were bad enough. There were about eight of them, give or take a couple.
As the steam cleared for a moment, Deadlock and Joe could discern Hoodwink standing by the side of the pool. Clearly they were expected.
As Snnktts knew everything, he knew that the ABC Warriors would find the source of the Red Death and that Deadlock and Joe would confront him.
What would happen next was more a question of possibility, rather than certainty. He foresaw the probability of a fight with Deadlock, but its outcome was uncertain. Fate was never that specific. And no betting man would want to place a wager on who would win. For Snnktts was an alien from the fourth dimension whose science was so advanced it was indistinguishable from magic. And Deadlock was a wizard who had spent centuries following the anarchic path of Khaos.
However, in view of the likelihood of battle, Snnktts had wisely materialised outside Hoodwink's body. Otherwise it may have been necessary to burst out in a hurry and Snnktts didn't like that sort of thing. It was far too vulgar and bad for his image too.
The tabloid media on Mars enjoyed lurid accounts of demons' body bursting from their hosts. They spoke of how the hosts' heads spun round and their eyes popped out on stalks, and all this was accompanied by streams of green vomit and so forth.
But the demons were trying to present a modern, more sympathetic look these days. That's why they preferred to call themselves Sirians or Shining Ones or Angels, rather than the Brotherhood of Cthulhu or Newts or the Many Angled Ones. They were really trying to clean up their act.
But they didn't appear to have entirely succeeded, judging by the disgusting smell coming from the pool.
The creature wallowing in the water, its medium of choice, could hardly be described as an Angel. The insulting term used by enemy occultists - Newt - was closer. Although even that was very approximate.
The problem with a human seeing the inhuman is that the human brain looks for the nearest Earth animal or object it resembles, to make sense of it. But there isn't anything. When he can't find it, he goes mad. In more serious cases, it may cause the deluded human to worship the inhuman as an "Angel" or a god.
To attempt to try and describe the indescribable, the words "great pile of vomit," "steaming mass of biol" and "squelchy bits of animals insides they wouldn't even use in sausages" might come close.
Snnktts also had long claws projecting from what may have been arms or tentacles. Like everything else with the Many Angled Ones, it depended on the angle you were looking from.
Any image this conjures up, however, would still only be an approximation. Anything closer might be injurious to the mind. This wasn't so much of a problem for Joe and Deadlock because they'd seen some pretty disgusting things in their time, and therefore had some terms of reference and comparison and were very grounded. Even so, Snnktts was fairly close to the top of their list of the Seven Abominations of the Galaxy.
Snnktts reared right up out of the water behind Hoodwink who said nothing in the presence of his inter-dimensional master. But his eyes shone with triumph and pride and the arrogant sneer he gave the two robots seemed to suggest: Why aren't you bowing down and worshipping my master?
"Ssfdmkpsdsf," said Snnktts conversationally from the shallow end.
It took a moment for the translation to kick in.
"Hello."
"Greetings, Deep One from the Cosmic Waters," replied Deadlock.
Oh, Gaia, thought Joe privately to himself. They're going to have one of those smart-ass wizard conversations with each other. Exchanging knowing looks and talking like out-of-work Shakespearean actors. Why do two cosmic masterminds have to behave like that when they meet? They have long and tedious harangues about the significance of their roles in the Universe before they finally get down to the killing. "Why can't we just get stuck in right now? Blast this obscenity to bits, smear it all over the walls, so they look like something out of a dirty protest, and be on our way," said Joe.
"Because there are rules," said Snnktts and Deadlock together, sounding exactly, like smartass wizards.
"However," added Deadlock, raising his sword, "as the ex-Principal of the Kollege of Khaos, I can tell you: rules are there to be broken."
"So let's get stuck in!"
Sword flashing and guns blazing, the two ABC Warriors did so.
TWENTY-FIVE
"This is frightfully bad form," said Mongrol to Hammerstein. "The gel's that professional assassin you were thinking of recruiting. And somehow she's mixed-up with the Red Death."
"Mixed-up is the word," said Nikita.
"What do you mean?" enquired Hammerstein. He was still hoping against hope that there was an innocent explanation.
"You remember how I once said I was like a Molotov cocktail, made of many things?"
"Fiery and dangerous and likely to explode."
"And made of many things?"
"Some of which might surprise me."
"Let me break this to you gently, Hammersteinski," she said.
"Whatever it is, I can deal with it."
"Very well, Hammersteinski." The Russian beauty smiled at him one last time. "My name is Nikita, but as in Nikita Khrushchev."
Her voice became deeper.
Much deeper.
The same nanobot technology that produced the disposable washing machine, which instructed shape-changing polymers, that brought about radical machine transformations, went to work in seconds.
There was a blur and a flurry of intense movement: of limbs being converted and adapted, of female components being altered into guns and spikes and claws, of feminine features being transformed into masculine.
And Nikita mekamorphosised into the menacing and all-to-familiar image of Mass Destruction. And he was interested in doing a lot more damage than a boil wash.
"Well, it's clear now the real meaning of MD's initials," said Blackblood. "They stand for Master of Disguise. Or should that be Mistress of Disguise?"
"Good Gaia!" exclaimed Mongrol.
"Or perhaps Mass Distraction?" grinned Blackblood.
"You bo
otleg!" said Hammerstein to MD.
"So you've been going out with Mass Destruction?" said an appalled Mongrol.
"Well, not really 'going out,'" said Hammerstein.
"So it wasn't a briefs encounter?" asked Blackblood.
Interrogation was his specialty, and he felt perfectly entitled to get to the bottom of this. There had been a serious breach of security and it was imperative to find out how much damage had been done. And if he enjoyed himself in the process, well, that was a bonus.
"Did you interface with her? With him?"
Hammerstein saw the looks on his comrades' faces. Shamefaced, he realised how badly he'd let them all down.
"Don't be ridiculous. Nothing like that happened. Nothing of the kind. Well, not really. Well, okay, just a bit. You know what I mean?"
"I certainly do. Big Boy," said Mass Destruction.
"Well," said Blackblood. "MD certainly made an Air Soul out of our boy scout here. Or should I say NKVD did." He stressed the initials with relish. "And all because our boy scout here was more interested in her wiggle than his woggle."
With a sinking feeling, Hammerstein realised Blackblood was going to be dining out on this for months.
"No, years," said Blackblood intercepting the thought.
"What? Have you been reading my private thoughts? You've still got that scanner, haven't you-?"
"There's no time for this," growled Mongrol.
"Yes, you're absolutely right," agreed Hammerstein. "As ABC Warriors, we must behave with a proper sense of decorum at all times. Excuse me." And he smashed Blackblood in the face with his hammer. The blow sent him hurtling back across the shop.
"The enemy's that way, soldier," Mongrol pointed out to Hammerstein.
"Right," said the latter, grateful to escape into action. Mongrol stopped him for a moment. "But look, don't beat yourself up over this.
"Of course, sir. Thank you, sir," said Hammerstein gratefully.
"Let me do it later."
For now, there was no doubt who had won the power struggle. Under the strain, Hammerstein had involuntarily gone back to his primary mode, calling Mongrol "sir."