Major Karnage

by Gord Zajac

  Tristan strode out onto the stage. The long flowing robes were gone. She wore a sharp black suit, with a three-quarter-length coat. She carried a riding crop under her arm, its handle encrusted with glittering jewels. Her hair was swept up and pulled back into a tightly coiffed bun. The sharp stilettos on her feet stabbed at the stage floor with military precision. There was no fanfare or introduction to announce her arrival. Nothing but the soft crackle of flames, and the clicking of her stiletto heels, amplified and echoing throughout the compound.

  The D-Pads shot her from a low angle, giving her a commanding presence. The flickering flames highlighted her sharp features. She stared out with a grim, solemn countenance at the crowd. Karnage saw the telltale white line of the microphone by her temple.

  She looked out at her followers, studying them carefully. They hushed into absolute silence. Tristan nodded slightly to herself, then began her speech.

  “Last night, I was granted a personal audience with the Lightbringer.” She spoke in a deep, even tone. Karnage heard her voice echoing through the walls of the tent. “The Illuminated One has informed me of a dire threat to our people. A threat to the very might of Spragmos himself.

  “Doubtless you have all heard the rumours: a plague of demons has erupted from that cesspool of depravity that is called Dabneyville. And I stand here before you today to inform you that these rumours . . . are true. The Lightbringer himself has grappled with these demons! And he has come here, at this time, to lead us in the ultimate battle of Good versus Evil!

  “These demons conspire to destroy your Inner Worm. They wish to rip Spragmos from your hearts, and leave you empty—barren— with no Inner Worm to guide you. They will stop at nothing to destroy us. So we must act first, and destroy them! In the name of The Worm!” Tristan thrust her fist into the air. “Ma-ma-oo-powpow!”

  The crowd answered her cry. “Ma-ma-oo-pow-pow!”

  “I know that you have been taught that violence is against the teachings of Spragmos, and some of you have failed to understand the nuance in these teachings.” Tristan paused, and looked out at the crowd, as if daring someone to speak. “In times of danger, when the Way of The Worm is under threat, battle is the most glorious endeavour in which a Spragmite may partake. It cleanses the mind, and awakens The Worm within. It is a test of your devotion. I know that you all pride yourselves on being the devoted servants of Spragmos.”

  Tristan leaned down towards the camera, the torchlight flickering magnificently across her face. “And you ARE devout! You ARE loyal! You are Spragmites: the Beloved Children of Spragmos! Ma-ma-oo-pow-pow!”

  “Ma-ma-oo-pow-pow!”

  Tristan paced across the stage, her heels rhythmically clacking in time with her words. “All of this talk against violence stems from fear. Now this is normal. This is natural. When you first enter battle, you will feel fear. But a true Spragmite will never let fear overpower their devotion.”

  She leaned in close, speaking softly. “For fear is the Worm-killer. Fear is the doubt that sedates the Inner Worm. Confront your fear. Set your Inner Worm upon it, and you will feel it disappear. For in truth, there is no fear. There is only The Worm. And The Worm . . . is The Word! Ma-ma-oo-pow-pow!”

  “Ma-ma-oo-pow-pow!”

  Tristan continued. “As you head into battle, remember that the enemy, too, will be frightened—more frightened, in fact, than any of you could ever be. For they are not Spragmites! They do not have Spragmos on their side. Their Inner Worms lie in slumber. They have not heard The Word.”

  “Ma-ma-oo-pow-pow!”

  “Ma-ma-oo-pow-pow!”

  Tristan beamed out at the crowd. “Oh, I will be proud to lead you into battle. So proud to fight alongside you all. In the name of Spragmos! Ma-ma-oo-pow-pow!”

  “Ma-ma-oo-pow-pow!”

  Tristan strode purposely off the stage while the crowd cheered. They broke into spontaneous chants of “Ma-ma-oo-pow-pow.”

  The crowd was still chanting when Tristan appeared through the curtains. She smiled at Karnage. “So? How did I do?”

  “You’d have made one hell of a military commander,” Karnage said.

  “Yes,” Tristan said. “Yes, I would. I have done my part, Major. Now it is time for you and Russell to do yours.”

  Karnage nodded. “We’ll move into position. Once we see the first of the worms hit the main gates, we’ll head in.” He turned to Stumpy. “Let’s go, Corporal.”

  Stumpy saluted. “Yes, sir.”

  “Good luck, Major,” Tristan said. “And please don’t take this the wrong way, but I sincerely hope I never see you again.”

  “The feeling’s mutual,” Karnage said.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “They’re on the move.” Stumpy had his eye on the scope of his rifle. He stood up. They were on a ridge overlooking Dabneyville in the distance. Karnage saw the needle-like line of the Dabney National tower against the thick lush green of Mount Dabney. The clouds covering the squidbug mothership were white and fluffy.

  “Let’s go, Corporal.” Karnage climbed into the front of the flightpack. Stumpy strapped himself into his makeshift harness on the back. He was seated higher than Karnage, his feet dangling above the ground. Karnage hit the activators and the flightpack rose into the air.

  They flew high above the desert, slowly approaching Mount Dabney. Karnage saw the undulating bodies of the train of worms as they raced down the Gail Dabney Expressway. The train hit the gates, and burst through without even slowing down.

  “Good old E-nium!” Stumpy shouted.

  The line of worms disappeared behind the city walls. They caught sight of them again when they were closer to the city. The worms were moving slowly now, inching their way through the streets. Some of the Spragmites had dismounted. They were looking around, confused. Karnage could see why. There was no resistance. The streets were empty. There was no one for them to fight. Karnage’s heart jumped, and he looked up at the clouds. If they ain’t there . . . what am I gonna do?

  Karnage caught a small dot of movement. A sewer grate popped open, and somebody crawled out.

  No, Karnage thought. Not somebody. Some thing.

  The creature had four arms and tentacles undulating from its back like Karnage’s clone.

  Karnage pointed it out to Stumpy. “Humbug,” he shouted.

  It carried something in its hands. Karnage couldn’t tell if it was a goober rifle or an energy spear. One of the Spragmites rounded the corner and stopped when he saw the humbug. He turned back to his comrades, then motioned towards the humbug. The humbug levelled its weapon and fired a green energy ball. The Spragmite disappeared. More creatures poured up out of the sewer and charged the Spragmites head on. The humbugs charged through the streets, firing pink and green balls at the Spragmites. They were quickly decimated.

  The second wave of worms came barrelling through the wall and ploughed through the humbugs, spilling them in all directions. Spragmites jumped down from the worms and grabbed stray weapons. A Spragmite grabbed an energy spear and accidentally shot himself, disappearing instantly. Another grabbed a goober rifle and fired, winging a humbug in an arm. The Spragmites and humbugs became a quivering, roiling mob of arms and tentacles, accentuated by the occasional green and pink flash.

  “Major! Look out!” Stumpy pointed towards the mountain.

  Karnage looked and saw a pair of Dabneycops flying towards them in flightpacks. As they approached, Karnage saw they had four arms sticking out from their uniforms, and a mess of mouth tentacles fringed the base of their visors. Their extra arms held goober rifles. They fired at Karnage and Stumpy.

  “Squidcops!” Karnage shouted. He dipped down, out of the path of the goober. “Return fire!” he barked.

  Stumpy aimed and fired, hitting a squidcop in the leg. It spun out of control and struck its partner. There was an explosion of yellow smoke and the two squidcops plummeted towards the ground.

  “Here come some more!”

  Another pair were flying up from
the town. Karnage increased his altitude, heading for the cloud. Almost there. Almost there.

  Stumpy strafed the incoming squidcops with goober. One of the squidcops took a blast to the face. The flightpack flipped end over end as the ball of goober expanded over the flightpack’s controls. It tumbled back down to the town below. The other squidcop levelled a goober pistol at Karnage and fired. Karnage tried to duck, but it struck the back of his hoverball. He spiralled out of control and the flightpack started spinning towards the mountain. “Stumpy! Solvent!” he yelled.

  “On it!” Stumpy pulled out the can of solvent. He reached over the edge of the balls and sprayed down the goober. It pulled off and liquified into a long stream of pink. Karnage restabilized, and just missed hitting the trees. A spray of pine needles stung his legs. Another couple of squidcops joined the first in the chase as Karnage banked up into the cloud.

  “Major, look out!”

  The mothership instantly appeared through the mist. Karnage pulled back and yanked the emergency brake. A parachute shot out of the back of the flightpack, slowing them down, but not enough. The flightpack clipped the top edge of the ship, and something sheared off. “Rear stabilizer’s gone!” Stumpy shouted.

  “Abandon balls!” Karnage and Stumpy unstrapped themselves and tumbled down onto the mothership, rolling across its surface. Karnage came to a stop facing up, and saw a pair of squidcops fly by above them in pursuit of their damaged flightpack that cavorted and frolicked until it disappeared into the mist. The squidcops followed, and the buzzing of their flightpacks slowly faded away. He turned and saw Stumpy struggling to his feet nearby.

  Karnage looked down. He was standing on the squidbug mothership. Panels flickered with green light. An occasional sliver of white light cut a squiggling path along the surface.

  Karnage sniffed the air. It stank of squidbug. He looked at Stumpy. “Looks like we made it, Corporal,” Karnage said.

  Stumpy looked around with wide, terrified eyes. “How do we get in?”

  Karnage spotted a thin streak of white light flickering towards them. He dropped his foot on it as it was about to speed by. The light curled back and started spinning around Karnage’s foot. Another sliver of white cut a zig-zag pattern across the surface of the mothership. It headed right for Karnage, and joined the first in orbiting his foot.

  More and more lines of white joined the others under Karnage’s foot, until it had formed a bright quivering puddle of white. Stumpy watched in awe as the puddle spilled forward, urging them to follow it. The light rippled and ebbed across the rough surface of the ship. It flowed around panels, occasionally darted back to avoid a random burst of green, and finally pooled in a ring around a large hatch. The ring glowed brightly, then winked out. The hatch spiralled open.

  Karnage turned to the disbelieving Stumpy and grinned.

  “Open sesame,” he said.

  MK#0: ZERO HOUR!

  CHAPTER ONE

  Karnage and Stumpy landed in a narrow tunnel. Long squiggly tubes of light ran along the walls, floor, and ceiling. The tubes were layered on top of each other, length-wise along the floor. Pulses of green light flowed through the tunnels at a frenetic pace, pulsing and strobing in a violent electric light show. The occasional line of white randomly twirled and flowed through the tubes, as it moved around and under the green.

  Above them, the white ring of light around the hatch pulled away from its opening, and sprayed out, disappearing into the vast tubes of green. The hatch spiralled shut above them.

  Stumpy shielded his eyes against the bright flashes of green. “Where are we?”

  “I dunno,” Karnage said. “This doesn’t look like any part of the ship I’ve seen before.”

  “I feel like I’m stuck inside a fibre optic cable or something.”

  “Maybe that’s what this is,” Karnage surmised. “Like a giant fibre optic cable. Or a steam tunnel—or crawl space o’ some kind.”

  “Seems kinda large to be a steam tunnel,” Stumpy said.

  “Trust me, this is cramped by squidbug standards.” Karnage pointed to the squiggling green lights shooting all around them. “What do you make of all these lights?”

  Stumpy studied the tubes as the lights shot through them. “Well, if I were to guess, I’d say it’s some kind of communications system. There’s something in the way that they pulsate. Like a sort of pattern to ’em, see?”

  Karnage shook his head. “I ain’t no C&E guy.” A thin white streak shot through the green. Karnage pointed to it. “And what about the white lights? What about them?”

  Stumpy studied them as they passed through. He shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t think they’re the same. They don’t fit the pattern.”

  “Don’t fit the pattern how?”

  “There’s just something about them. The green ones are a lot more focused. Direct. They’re going somewhere and they make no bones about it. But the white ones . . .” Stumpy pointed to one that was circling nearby. It shot off, heading back in the direction it had come from. “They’re all over the place. Like they’re trying to appear random.”

  “They’re trying to appear random?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I think they are. Like a pirate broadcast. Like somebody’s hackin’ the system.”

  Karnage grew excited. “Can you track where the white ones are comin’ from, Corporal? Trace ’em back to their source?”

  “I don’t know.” Stumpy looked at Karnage with a glint in his eye. “But I can sure as hell try.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Stumpy followed the lights through the tunnel, with Karnage close behind, his goober rifle at the ready, keeping an eye out for squidbugs.

  Stumpy traced them through the pipes, sometimes doubling back as they changed direction. At one point, the white lights stopped completely. The pair paused to wait for any further sign of them, slowly growing more anxious by the minute. Just when Karnage thought they would have to double back and try to pick up the trail, a white light shot straight past them, then diverted into a tunnel opening overhead. Stumpy cursed something fierce as they tried to find somewhere they could climb up after it, but the walls of the tunnel were too smooth. Karnage finally resorted to firing goober balls up the wall of the tunnel in order to give them something to hold onto.

  As they delved deeper, the green lights grew less frequent while the white became more prevalent, the tint of the tunnels slowly changing to a soft grey. The toxic stink of squidbugs became less intense, the air cooler on Karnage’s skin. It wasn’t exactly fresh, but it stung his nostrils less.

  Eventually, they arrived at a section of tunnel where there was no green light at all: just a single lone pulse of white rhythmically oscillating through the walls like a heartbeat. They traced it until they came to a hatchway where the white light was glowing in the surrounding tubes.

  Karnage looked out through the hatchway into a main corridor. A single squiggling pipe ran along the wall and around the massive doors. Nothing glowed or squiggled in the hallway, save for the lone pulse of white coursing its way through the wall. It was deathly quiet.

  Karnage looked back at Stumpy. “I’ll go first. You see any squidbugs try to ambush me, you—”

  Sparks flew around the hatchway as the corridor echoed with loud machine gun fire. Karnage and Stumpy threw themselves against the wall of the tunnel.

  The gunfire abated, and Karnage heard the faint sound of spent shells tinkling against the floor. A voice called out to them from the darkness.

  “You best come out of there, you fuckknuckling fuckmonkeys, or I will blow your donkeyfucking faces off!”

  Karnage grinned so broadly that it hurt. He looked at Stumpy.

  “What the hell are you smiling about?” Stumpy said.

  “I know that voice.” Karnage shouted out through the hatchway: “Captain Daisy Velasquez! You will stand down and cease fire! That is an order! You hear me?”

  There was a long pause, and the voice called from the darkness: “Major? Is tha
t you?”

  “You’re goddamn well right it’s me,” Karnage barked. “Now stand down and cease fire!”

  Karnage heard the gun reload with a loud chunk. “Prove it,” she said. “Show yourself, and maybe I’ll think about not firing.”

  “What kind of backwater bohunk do you take me for, Vel? I know you. You’ll shoot first and apologize for it later!”

  “You stay hidden, I’ll shoot you. You come out and I don’t think you look like the Major, I’ll still shoot you.”

  “What the hell kinda choice is that?”

  “It’s the only one you get. You got ’til I count to ten. Better make up your mind quick, cuz I count fast.”

  Stumpy looked at Karnage. “You trust her?”

  “I trust her to shoot anything that moves,” Karnage said. “Still, we don’t have much choice. How do I look?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do I look like me?”

  Stumpy shrugged. “I guess.”

  Karnage nodded. “Good.” He called out to Velasquez. “All right, I’m coming out!”

  Karnage stepped through the hatch. He was surprised and pleased that he wasn’t instantly hit with a hot spray of bullets. She must be mellowing in her old age.

  Velasquez emerged from the darkness, holding a gun larger than she was. The muzzle was pointed directly at Karnage’s chest. She slowly lowered it as her jaw dropped.

  “Well, suck my dick ’til my hips cave in,” she said.

  “You don’t have a dick, Captain,” Karnage smiled.

  “Neither do you.” Velasquez returned the grin. “But that hasn’t slowed you down none.”

  Karnage closed the gap between them and they shook hands. “Major,” she said.

  “Good to see you again, Captain.” Karnage turned back to the hatch. “Stumpy!”

  Stumpy tentatively stuck his head out.

  “Front and centre,” Karnage barked.

  Stumpy climbed out of the hatch and joined the two of them in the middle of the hallway.