by Lee Bond
xxx
Chad had seen many things in his time.
He’d done most things, too, when you got right down to it.
He’d been on planets where man was forbidden to go, had traded with true Offworld aliens whose sole goal in life was to assist him in the destruction of other men. He’d supped with beings so profoundly different from the normal concept of ‘intelligent’ life that there was no word to describe their … differences. Chadsik al-Taryin well understood what it was to be different, inhuman, monstrous.
He’d also been in bad situations; he’d been chased around a planet by an angry Enforcer, he’d been trapped in the gravity well of a black hole, and he’d grown up in Arcade City under the watchful eye of a maddened King.
Most ‘recently’, bizarre and not-at-all fictitious Offworld aliens had kidnapped him, aliens who’d then taken it upon themselves to transform him from a reasonable fellow into a psychotic schizophrenically tortured Universe-class assassin.
Chad had lived his life, had reveled and reviled every moment of it and it was only just now -as he hung precariously to a finger larger than his entire body- beginning to realize something shocking.
It was a revelation that, under normal circumstances, would have him looking about for a couch or something to sit on so he could rest his head between his hands.
The thing he’d only just now figured out was this; when he thought of himself as Chad, he was ‘normal’. But when he thought of himself as ‘Chadsik’, many uninvolved people were going to be murdered over something trivial, something like ‘because their blood smelled funny’ or ‘their eyes are in the wrong spots’.
Chad figured that somewhere in there were reasons why he talked in two different accents, but there was something infinitely more bizarre than his weirdness to deal with right then…
None of his experiences, none of his hard-won knowledge or wisdom, all of his drug intake and queer hallucinations, none of those things could’ve prepared him for being snatched out of the air by a fucking armor-plated cyborg over a hundred feet tall. The heat and stench alone were unbearable and should the great bleating bastard realize what was going on around his hand there’d be a spot of trouble, but that wasn’t of immediate concern to Chad.
Nono, not yet. What was of more immediate and pressing concern was that –right that moment- Chad was unprepared. Who in their right minds would wake up and think to himself as he prepares for a day of murdering ‘today I is going to encounter a hundred foot tall cybernetic super-soldier, I should pack summink a bit more powerful than this poxy little gun, yeah?’
It was humiliating, is what it was. Everyone in Latelyspace was bonkers, stark-raving mad lunatics. They made him look sane as sand.
Gripping himself to a finger with his legs, Chad resumed cautiously sticking Kivalian force mines to the ‘soldier’s’ outrageously huge mitt, holding on for dear life every time the hand went in for another chunk of Museum. He knew as he did so that the crackers weren’t really going to do a damned thing to the armor-plated glove. He knew Conquistador-class armor plating when he smelled it. The best he could hope for was a big noise and a bit of a surprise, two things he figured he could use to his advantage.
The FrancoBritish assassin assumed that the two mountainous men were enjoying their first day out in the ‘real world’ and that the God Army’s OverCommander had well and truly lost his shit over what’d been going on. Much of Chad’s plan relied on this being a Mutant’s First Day Out. He was banking on the fact that they’d never experienced true discomfort. If Kivalian force mines were something that exploded on them with anything approaching regularity, there was no getting away at all.
The last of the charges stuck to the palm with a clang and Chad gratefully let go; he’d primed them with a ten-second delay, which wasn’t much time. The cyborg fell backwards for three seconds before firing his boot-boosters for a second time…
xxx
The second Gunboy, nicknamed Old Tim by the Proctors who rode him, realized one of two programmed targets was trying to escape. Reaching out with lightning fast reflexes, Tmolus snatched the fleeing cyborg out of the air, as a man would catch a fly.
Trapped against the big hand like a fly trying to buzz it’s way through a window, Chad panicked and cut his boot-boosters. Old Tim seized the opportunity and bashed ‘his’ hand and the assassin against the side of The Museum, knocking the diminutive cyborg senseless and caving more of the nearly-demolished systemic treasure inwards. Old Tim let loose with a bellow of pure, primordial joy as he watched his target fall to the ground.
Pauly, who was having a hard time finding the first of two targets, moaned metallically at Tim’s success. A few seconds later, a dozen powerful explosions rattled the palm of his hand, driving him backwards off The Museum. Old Tim cocked his massive head to one side, waiting to see if his brother was fine.
When it developed that the explosions were of no overriding concern, Old Tim turned his attention back to Chad, who was tumbling, dazed, confused -and not at all happy- down the ruined side of The Museum, crashing and clattering across every jagged outcropping. Old Tim, driven by his Proctors, activated wrist-mounted Gatling lasers and opened fire, blanketing a ten square foot section of already well-destroyed stone in an almost solid block of energy.
Chad felt pain as he hadn’t felt since those first few seconds of consciousness after freeing himself from his Offworld captors. The laser barrage had just vaporized all of his clothes and was rapidly approaching the point where his infinitely resilient skin would begin to peel away. That, more than anything was frightening. Alas, there was nothing he could do except survive; the pure force of the beams had effectively trapped him against the side of the wall and was literally shoving him to the ground far below. Every second was a dose of pure, punishing agony.
Pauly concluded that the injuries to his hand were superficial. He bleated that the other target wasn’t in The Museum and that he was turning his attention to Old Tim and his target.
Old Tim deactivated his wrist-lasers and lumbered out of the way just far enough so that his friend Pauly –who was closer to the small gnat-like being-, could grab hold of the worthwhile target.
Pauly did just that. Grabbing Chad by a foot, the cybernetic giant grinned a cavernous, metal-toothed smile at the miniature cyborg’s squawking, weak, indignation. Casually Pauly tossed the cyborg away with an overhand toss. Chad spun nauseously through the air.
Turning as one, the Gunboys targeted the rapidly dwindling speck that was Chadsik al-Taryin. They opened their shoulder missile ports and set three dozen miniature plasma warheads arcing and spiraling through the air. The two –and their six Proctors apiece- watched in amazement as Chadsik al-Taryin danced and moved like never before, somehow miraculously managing to avoid three-quarters of the missiles that lanced out at him, twisting his metallic body in bizarre and malleable ways.
The Gunboys were patient, though. They knew that no being could escape a ploy as effective as theirs. Fired according to an intensely complex pattern -one designed for every circumstance, even one as impossible as a cyborg bending and folding in such supple ways- the missiles would strike.
Because he was only half-conscious and battered across every inch of skin, eventually Chad miscalculated. Finally, two of the missiles struck with a vengeance, hammering into his precious skin, coating him in fire hotter than the hottest star. Terror burned through him, matching the relentless heat of the plasma charges. That panic forced Chad into something he’d never done, never found reason to do; blindly, he activated protection routines buried deep within his subconscious mind, routines that’d always worried him, routines he’d never needed. Until now.
The assassin’s body speedily bent, buckled, twisted and rearranged itself, unused, unknown and unimagined cybernetic joints popping open to fuse into different shapes until Chadsik al-Taryin was transformed into something resembling nothing so much as a very large metallic coffin. More missiles slammed into him, transf
orming the FrancoBritish assassin into an arc of light flaring across Central’s dark skyline.
Satisfied their target was dead or dying, The Gunboys turned back to The Museum. With all primary objectives either finished or missing, their secondary goal, cleansing an infected population of hostages, needed completion.
xxx
Griffin had had enough.
He was more than a little nonplussed at the weird transformation Chadsik al-Taryin had undergone mere seconds before being utterly destroyed, but, aided by the Enforcer suit, he knew that the cyborg –whatever had happened- was going to survive his wounds.
And that meant he’d acquitted himself rather nicely of Trinity’s mission, even though, strictly speaking, he’d done sweet fuck all to help the assassin out.
More importantly, the Hungryfish wouldn’t fire its Hand of Glory payload. Griffin knew he’d survive such a conflagration thanks to his suit, but Trinity’s displeasure was a thing to be avoided. He gave himself a congratulatory pat on the back.
All that remained for him to deal with then was the Gunboys. Something had to be done about them, and right quick.
The Enforcer shook his head in disgust. The Gunboys were, in a Universe of oddities and freaks, a perversion.
If the Latelians were capable of designing and implementing a military concept that made him, Griffin Jones, feel sorry for Chadsik al-Taryin, a misbegotten freak of a man, then there was something truly, righteously fucked up with the world.
Watching the Gunboys rip and tear their way into The Museum, Griffin wondered if Trinity truly understood how dangerous Latelyspace was, and for something like the eight billionth time in the last thirty seconds wondered why in the goddamn hell It didn’t just steamroll the whole fucking system into paste. It was something the AI did time and again, with all the regularity of a clock counting down time.
Irrespective of the galactic AI’s refusal or inability to deal with the Latelians effectively, it was goddam high time the Gunboys met their maker. And since the damned AI hadn’t gotten back to him, Griffin was A-OK in taking matters into his own hands. Some shit just couldn’t be ignored, and the Gunboys fell into a category of shit all their own.
Trouble was, they were walking battleships and owned an appalling amount of firepower. Griffin had on-board weapons that could very easily dismantle the misbegotten beasts in a matter of seconds but the level of force would transform downtown Central into a smoking slagheap of radioactive glass. Beyond his own response level being overtly dangerous and just as likely to earn Trinity’s vast disapproval, each of the machine-men were equipped with very sophisticated, very jumpy reactors.
Griffin didn’t doubt for a second that if he didn’t accidentally destroy the planet in taking the Gunboys down, the power sources nestled deep in their chests would surely erupt, spilling untold amounts of radioactive death into the heavens.
Whatever It’s insane reasons were for wanting the Latelians alive and kicking even when they presented a grave threat to Trinityspace, Griffin had every intention of making sure Hospitalis didn’t blow up. Trinity’s punishments were … distressing. Especially since It’d gone out of It’s way to use re-interment into deep sleep as a motivator.
There was an option. There were always options.
As far as choices went, though, Griffin detested the one his Suit was suggesting.
“Fuck me sideways.” The Enforcer muttered miserably. There was only one reliably safe way to shut the monsters down without them triggering their apocalyptic weapons or having their reactors explode.
He was going to have to climb inside the gigantic motherfuckers and kill them from the inside out, ripping loose each and every power line sending electric life-blood to every inch of each beast.
“This is such bullshit.” The Enforcer sighed. This whole thing was … bullshit.
Growling with exasperation, Griffin skated up to Old Tim’s leg, went interdimensional for half a tick, and started slowly burrowing his way up to the heart reactor, turning the external heat on his suit all the way up to high for good measure.
The effect was immediate and overwhelming. Old Tim let loose with a bellow of hot-damn pain and stopped digging through the rubble in search of targets. He clapped a hand around his vast calf and started trying to claw through the battle armor. As the pain continued moving higher and higher, the sounds escaping from Old Tim became louder and higher until people in Port City could hear his cries of anguish.
Pauly -operating on a barely noticeable, long-since forgotten subroutine deep inside the original Goddie’s tiny brain- stopped his digging and rushed to his comrade’s aid. Following sublingual cues, Pauly grabbed hold of Tmolus’ double-thick chest plate, planted his feet on his friend’s legs and heaved for all he was worth. The chest plate came free with a sickening, moist, tearing sound. Pauly tossed the thousand-ton armored plate to the ground and hurried to his compatriot’s aid once more.
Old Tim bellowed mournfully and toppled backwards. Pauly had been too late, and whatever was wrong with his friend had proven fatal.
Dismissing his fallen comrade, Polyphemus knew only that there was something in the area capable of killing him. He asked for and received permission from his Proctors to flee.
xxx
Vasily stared at his broken prote, then at the charred mess that was his forearm; he’d removed it scant milliseconds before it’d fused itself to his arm and the awful thing was still trying to sizzle its way through the tough composite of the table.
He couldn’t say why he’d taken the prote off before it’d gone critical. It certainly hadn’t been the pain, which, while uncomfortable, had been bearable.
Possibly the only explanation he had was his understanding of Tomas Kamagana: among his many failings, the aged EuroJapanese scientist had a preternatural ability to understate the severity of things. Whether it was intentional or not, oftentimes, Tomas neglected to explain fully how bad things could get.
A case in point was the suicide of Tomas’ wife: given a choice between dying a slow agonizing death to the cancerous mass in her brain or succumbing to madness from that same disease, Vasily’s sister had chosen instead to end her own life. Tomas Kamagana, ridiculously stoic, had described the act as ‘lamentable’ when in fact, it’d very nearly destroyed both families.
It was a shame that Vasily hadn’t reacted quick enough to warn his men. It wasn’t until his proteus had turned white hot and erupted into flames, that he’d realized his error in forgetting Tomas’ penchant for underestimation. It was a shame he hadn’t remember sooner.
It was lucky that his command staff had found the slowly warming prote to be just uncomfortable enough to remove it well ahead of critical discharge. Now was not the time for the top end of the command structure to be without leaders.
Any Goddie still alive inside The Museum had to be in fantastic agony; Vasily had ordered the three greenskins outside his door shot simply so he think; with all of them bereft of their machines, there was no way to identify the enormous burst of energy that’d ripped it’s way free of The Museum. Wherever it’d come from, the sheer power of it had thrown all of Hospitalis into darkness almost instantly.
With the lights coming back on, it was evident that that same torrent of … whatever … had done something to his Gunboys.
From his command post, Vasily clearly saw that Old Tim was inexplicably down, apparently dead. The scene was easy enough to understand; for some reason, Pauly had found reason to yank the other soldier’s chest plate out, sending blood, gore and irreplaceable electronic components everywhere.
Vasily turned to the older prote on the table beside him and shook his head. Though it was still filled with his command codes, the old KamaZhen tech lacked the processing power necessary to handle the torrential flow of data that had to be washing from the millions of subsystems housed inside the battle armor.
It, like Old Tim, was useless.
The Proctors inside the fallen mech were presumably dead or dying becau
se none of the emergency release valves had popped. There was little point in dispatching men to see about freeing anyone inside. With the Gunboy dead, nothing aboard would work. Trying to dig the immersion pods out manually would take hours, if not days, to accomplish, by which point the Proctors would be dead anyway.
Trying to think clearly through all the rage and frustration boiling in him, Vasily closed his eyes. Unsurprisingly, the only thing coming to mind was a small –discreet- prayer that Alyssa could spin the situation. No Sigma, no amount of Watergate Men, nothing could hide this. This wasn't going to go away.
A hiccupping bray of volcano-like fear filled the command station. Vasily’s eyes snapped open and the OverCommander ran outside to see what was happening.
Polyphemus was running out into the streets of Central, a freakish nightmare of folding and unfolding extra joints. The OverCommander watched in utter disbelief as Pauly drew his Missile Guns and started –obviously- trying to locate whatever had killed his comrade. Seemingly independent of conscious operation, every other weapon system aboard the massive soldier popped open and did the same.
“Fuck me sideways.” Vasily bellowed.
There had to be some way to get in touch with the Proctors. If Polyphemus let loose with his Missile Guns inside city limits, the devastation would be catastrophic.
Tired, weary to his very bones, Vasily started running towards where he knew his command staff was housed, shouting and hollering orders to anyone capable of functioning as he picked up speed. The OverCommander passed U-Ito and Harredad, and they barked their understanding and split up.
xxx
Griffin wigged out for a second. Just a second, but it was long enough for a bit of a freak out. The weapons on that fucking thing … what had the Latelians been thinking?
He shivered inside his Enforcer suit and seriously considered nuking the second Gunboy before succumbing to common sense; with it’s weapons activated and ready to roll, anything he did to torch the fucking thing would turn at least three hundred square miles of real estate into a cinderblock.