The Baroness, Part 24
Revenge is a dish served very cold
[A few miles west of Black’s Crossing in upstate Gothametropolisyork]
“Well, Huntmaster, it took you long enough to set this up,” Elizabeth Zemo carped at the tall man in khaki hunting clothes.
“I apologize, Baroness, but you must remember that the quarry was holed up at the Lunar Public Library. It took some time to arrange the hunting grounds here, not to mention a sure-fire decoy.” He gestured at a cage set in the middle of the immense open field, which held a Thonnagarian male warrior, apparently sleeping. “Obtaining the radio codes and frequencies was rather difficult, you know.”
“Expensive, too,” noted the Baroness. “Are you sure she’s coming?”
“We located the limo two minutes ago just outside the thermosphere. It’ll be cloaked, but should be here in about 20 seconds. You can hear it coming in now.” A low roar filtered in through the windows of the hunting blind, quickly gaining intensity.
“She thinks the decoy is another lost warrior from her planet,” the Huntmaster explained. “I’ll challenge her when she discovers the deception, and then the hunt is on. You can watch from here or from the observation zeppelin. Adieu, your excellency.”
“Good hunting, Huntmaster, and remember I want her taken alive.”
Picking up her binoculars, Elizabeth focused in on the distant cage. There was a shimmer of light, and a sleek, metallic ship materialized nearby. Moments later its hatch opened and Shazara Pel, Pigeon-warrior of Thonnagar, leaped to the earth. Another shimmer and the ship vanished again, followed by a roar from its takeoff engines. Shazara Pel, now alone, stalked over to the cage, calling to its occupant in lusty cries, screeches and chirps. There was no reply.
Baroness Zemo flicked the switch of a long-range receiver-translator and listened to the avian heroine as she prepared to liberate the caged warrior.
With a swipe of her battle mace, Shazara Pel knocked out the front bars of the cage and stepped inward to release the sleeping warrior. she exclaimed as she grasped the decoy.
“I do,” the Huntmaster’s rumbling baritone answered. “Shazara Pel, you have offended my patron, Baroness Zemo, and I have vowed to capture you on her behalf. Surrender now, or face me.”
“I know not this Baroness Zemo, and I have done nothing to offend any honest man or woman. Stand aside, or face my wrath.”
“Why do these scenes always have phony-medieval dialogue and lame posturing?” Elizabeth muttered to Sally. “Couldn’t he just say, ‘I’m here to capture you,’ and she ‘Over my dead body’?”
“No, Shazara Pel, I have challenged first. I am the Huntmaster, premier hunter of earth, and I am charged . . . “
“Get me some coffee, Sally, they’re going to be another ten minutes boasting at each other.”
[Eleven minutes later]
“I still wanna be ‘It.’ I never get to chase anyone. It’s not fair.”
“All right, you get a fifteen second head start, and if you make it to the top of that hill over there, you’re ‘It.’ One-one thousand, two-one thousand . . . .”
The Pigeon-warrior extended her wings and activated her Z-Alloy bracelets to propel her away from her adversary. Ten seconds later, the Huntmaster leaped into the rear of a waiting Land Rover equipped with a frightening number of guns and weapons and roared away after her.
“You cheated!” came a thin voice from high above.
“Says who?”
The camouflaged Land Rover seemed to melt into the landscape as it left the road, but, from an adjacent grove of trees, three more armed Land Rovers emerged and began firing streams of darts into the air ahead of the fleeing Pigeon-warrior. She whirled, neatly avoiding the danger but arresting her flight. From below, there was the “crump” of a large gun discharging, and an oddly formed shell rocketed upward towards Shazara Pel. She juked right to avoid it, but with another “pop” the shell detonated, releasing a large net whose corners were propelled far outwards, ready to capture the flying heroine in their grasp.
With a sweep of her arms, however, Pel increased the gravitational pull on the net, arresting its ascent within a few centimeters of her outstretched wings, and propelling it back at high speed toward its origin. “A feeble attempt!” she crowed. “I will hunt you down like the vermin you are!”
The net crashed to the ground at high speed, but the Huntmaster had sped away. “I’m hunting pigeon today, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha,” he cackled in a poor imitation of Elmer Fudd’s voice. That, however, was enough to direct the Pigeon-warrior’s sharp eyes to the marksman’s current location, and she swooped down at high speed, brandishing her war-mace. The Huntmaster raised his tranq-gun for a dead-on, unmissable shot, but another pass of the Z-alloy bracelets increased its weight ten-fold, ruining the shot. He flung himself to the ground and rolled away frantically as Shazara Pel’s war mace, gravity-amplified to ten times its normal weight, struck for his head. It clipped his ear as she gracefully pulled into her turn, a mere centimeter above the grass, and prepared to land to strike a final blow.
The Huntmaster rolled to his knees and scrabbled toward a patch of brush a few meters away. Landing elegantly on her feet, Shazara Pel began striding toward him, then stopped. The Huntmaster had gained the briar patch and had vanished, once again invisible thanks to his active camouflage.
“Hide like the rabbit you are,” Shazara Pel called. “I will still flush you out and eliminate you. I will not write any victory ballad for you, though, spawn of a cowardly father.”
“I can’t see anything,” Silicone Sally observed.
“Let’s try the zeppelin,” replied Elizabeth Zemo. “It’s got telephoto equipment and radar ranging.”
“Why a zeppelin?” Sally asked as they left the blind and headed for Elizabeth’s Mercedes Maybach.
“One, I’m a German baroness. The Zemo zeppelin’s almost a family tradition. Second, it’s great for hanging around – quieter than a helicopter and more efficient. Finally, this one’s filled with helium, which means it’s about the safest thing possible in the air.”
“I know what you mean,” Sally agreed. “The Parodyverse is dangerous enough as it is.”
Meanwhile, the Huntmaster’s assistants were returning, hoping to give their employer some cover for an escape. As the first Land Rover approached, the aviatrix leaped five meters into the air, boosted by her Z-alloy bracelets, and bounded over the approaching truck too fast for its gunner to track her. Twisting in midair, she landed just to the rear of the truck as it braked. Again the metal mace lashed out, this time smashing through the rear of the truck and rupturing the gas tank. As gasoline gushed out past the hot muffler, she once more leaped into the air on full anti-gravity, soaring high as the mangled Land Rover erupted in flame. The two other trucks skidded to a halt and their gunners fired streams of darts into the air, but the experienced flyer easily evaded them.
“Just a little higher,” the marksman sheltered in the brush muttered, and then fired his own tranq-weapon. The dart flew true but impacted the Pigeon-warrior’s metal wing just beyond the armpit, startling her but causing no harm. She focused her enhanced eyesight on the brush patch, catching glimpses of movement but not enough to press an attack. A game of hide-and-seek ensued, with Shazara Pel floating over the battlefield, occasionnally swooping down and scything patches of brush with her war mace but never quite hitting the Huntmaster, while he patiently set up shooting points, firing at unexpected moments but never getting past her armor.
A silvery cigar-shape joined Shazara Pel in the sky. The Zemo zeppelin had once again returned to the skies, emblazoned with the “Z” in lightning bolts so beloved of Baron Heinrich Zemo.
“I still feel like I’m in some World War I epic, your excellency,” Sally groused. She was decked out in a German sailor’s suit straight out of the Kaiserliches Zeppelinflotte. Baroness Elizabeth Zemo, standing by the rudder controls, was dressed in a full Kapitan zur Zee’s uniform.
“We should look the part, Sally.”
“But that tunic must be strangling you. At least I can shift things around.”
“I will not wear a Nazi uniform, period. Even if I have to look a hundred years out of date.”
“Frankly, I always preferred the Kaiser’s army,” a deep voice interjected. “It had a real appreciation for the value of aristocracy.”
“What are you doing here? I mean, how nice of you to join us, Grandfather Baron Otto.”
“You are here to watch the hunt and torture of your adversary. What better entertainment for me? And in a zeppelin, too. You make me proud, Elizabeth.”
“Thanks, but so far it seems to be a stalemate. The Huntmaster has really underestimated the Pigeon-woman.”
“Then we must motivate him.” The un-alive Baron stepped over to the radio and flipped the switches to connect him to their employee. “Huntmaster, this is Baron Ottokar Zemo. I am most disappointed by your performance so far. Explain yourself.”
“Who are *you*? I work for the Baroness Elizabeth Zemo. Now get off this frequency.”
“Huntmaster,” Elizabeth interrupted, “he’s family – sort of. Now what’s going on down there?”
“If you had given me better intelligence, I would have had her by now. How was I to know she swings a 400 pound club and makes things fly away?”
“Did you read the dossier?”
“It was all historical and didn’t mention any current threats. Anyway, don’t worry about the dossier, I’ve got other plans . . . urk! Aaagh!”
“What happened?” Elizabeth shouted.
“While you three were arguing, I was watching,” Silicone Sally explained. “Birdie there suddenly cocked her head as if she were hearing something and then swooped down at high speed. When she got close to the ground, she swung that club of hers at that patch of bushes there,” she pointed, “and then I heard Huntmaster scream on the radio.”
“So she got Huntmaster,” Baron Otto mused. “You really should hire better minions, Granddaughter.”
“The Confisticator wasn’t available,” the Baroness retorted. “And you were the one who wanted a hunt in the first place.”
“Huntmaster on Channel One,” Sally interrupted.
The video screens flickered on, showing a Huntmaster in considerable pain. His left arm hung uselessly from his shoulder, which was bloody and distorted. “She got me in the shoulder,” he groaned. “But I’m not done yet. I got her with the slow-acting tranq-dart. It’s just a matter of time now.”
“Hmm,” Baron Otto murmured. “The quarry gets first blood, at the price of slow incapacitation. A classic story.”
“All right, you’re on the ground, what’s she doing?” Elizabeth felt that something was not quite right.
“My hunter drones . . . will be here in a minute or so to take over,” the Huntmaster explained through gritted teeth.
“And until then?”
The Huntmaster looked skyward, and then grinned an evil smile. “You’re on your own.”
Sally’s shriek confirmed that. “She’s coming for us! With that big club!”
“Sally, get to the machine gun bubble!” Baron Otto commanded.
“What machine gun bubble?”
“This is the sport model, Grandfather Baron Otto,” Elizabeth shouted. “We just have a couple of bombs and laser guns!”
“So get to the laser guns!”
“Sally, did you charge the laser guns?”
“I didn’t even know we had laser guns! You said this was an observation run!”
“Scheiss!”
Shazara Pel’s war club, gravitationally enhanced to 35 times its normal weight, left her hands and spun end over end toward the lumbering zeppelin. It struck exactly where she intended, at the lower center of the gondola, ripping apart metal and fiberglass, and then fell a few feet and hung in mid-air as she reversed its gravity. Scooping it up as she flew by the zeppelin, the Pigeon-warrior gave it a mocking salute as she banked towards the crippled Huntmaster below.
The blow had knocked all three passengers to the floor of the gondola. The zeppelin rocked sideways, rolling around its axis, for several moments, throwing Elizabeth back to the floor as she struggled to get to her feet. Finally, she managed to stand, gripping the control board.
“Not . . . a lot of damage, I think,” she gasped. “Just ballast.”
Sally, looking out a window, confirmed it. “Yes, we’re losing water from those tanks really fast. Doesn’t look as if any diesel is going with it. We should be able to fly this thing.”
“I told you zeppelins were the safest way to watch this battle,” Elizabeth preened.
“We seem to be gaining altitude,” Baron Otto mentioned.
Silicone Sally was the first to work it out. “You know, when a balloon loses the weight on it, it just starts sailing upward. Really fast. Until it pops.”
“3,500 meters and rising,” Elizabeth Zemo reported.
“Do we have oxygen masks on this thing?” asked the ever-practical Sally.
“I didn’t check it out. I left that to the Huntmaster,” the Baroness replied. Her eyes darted back and forth across the gauges. “Ouch. O2 tank pressure zero.”
“It’s getting cold in here,” Sally noticed.
Elizabeth’s eyes were back on the altimeter. “4,500 meters [gasp] – that’s almost 15,000 feet.”
“It’s [wheeze] fifteen below zero in here. The fog [gasp, gasp] from my breath is freezing!”
“I’ll see you both later,” intoned Baron Otto. “I’d send help, but I don’t think there is time.” He vanished from the gondola.
Down below, Shazara Pel was circling, searching for signs of her pursuer. Occasional groans and yelps came to her ears, confirming that he was still on the field. The whispers of three muffled jet engines began to be heard, and she lifted her head to scan the horizon. The Huntmaster’s drone airplanes had arrived, directed by his remaining henchmen. Fast, small, and maneuverable, they were a potent challenge.
Although the Pigeon-warrior was beginning to feel sluggish, she went on the attack, brandishing her mace against the small air-to-air rocket the leading drone had launched, smashing its fins and causing it to spiral downward. A leap and a juke to the right, and the second plane’s missile streaked harmlessly by.
The two lead drones now bracketed Shazara Pel, and both turned for her, firing darts. The Pigeon-woman was now feeling dreamy and slow as the sedative slowly took effect. Two more darts struck her arm, and discharged even more tranquilizer. With a mighty effort, Pel spun and ducked as the two drones came straight at her. In the classic comic book ending, they impacted, taking themselves out of the hunt.
The third drone now confronted Shazara Pel one-on-one. It discharged its missile, and once again the mighty war mace crashed down and disabled the missile. The drone then charged at her, occasionally firing darts, but mostly acting like a crazed bull sprinting at a red cape.
“You’re going to miss her too,” carped the operator of the second drone.
“No, I’m not,” snapped the teenager at the joystick of the remaining drone. “Didn’t you watch her? She always darts to her right in close combat.”
And, as the drone approached, Shazara Pel juked once again to her right, readying her club to destroy her last pursuer. This time, though, the drone anticipated the feint and collided directly into her, knocking her unconscious from the sky. With her last remaining awareness, she reduced the gravity pull on herself to avoid injury, and floated mindlessly to the ground.
“We’ve got . . . to . . . pop . . . the envelope.” Elizabeth was gasping for breath at 6,000 meters. “Otherwise we’ll . . . freeze . . . or suffocate.”
“We’ll . . . fall like . . . a . . . rock.” Sally wheezed back. “And . . . I’m . . . hardening up . . . fast. I can’t seal . . . anything.”
“I’ll take that chance. Here, wrap yourself around me when we start falling.” Elizabeth brandished a laser pistol and fired at the gas bag’s fabric. The beam bounced off the aluminized Kevlar.
“Now . . . what?” Sally moaned.
As it happened, Shazara Pel landed only ten meters away from the equally unconscious and wounded Huntmaster.
“Are you going to get her?” asked operator one.
“Nope,” replied operator two. “Jim should tie her up. He’s the one who got her."
Jim was also reluctant. “Hey, I’m the one that got her. Why should I have to be the one who takes the chance of tying her up?”
“Are you afraid of a woman?” sneered number two.
“I’m not afraid. I mean, I’ve even touched one at the pool. Accidentally of course. Besides, doesn’t the Huntmaster want to have the glory?"
Several minutes passed while the debate went on, and then a rush of air announced the arrival of De Brown Streak.
“Damn,” he muttered, “I didn’t expect to find you when we got those reports of an aerial battle out here. Black’s Crossing is more for the supernatural beasties.” In moments he had raised the Pigeon-warrior to his shoulders and had zoomed off with her to Phantomhwk Memorial Hospital, leaving the Huntmaster to the state police he had summoned.
Floating high above, at 65 degrees Celsius below zero, Elizabeth Zemo and the frozen Silicone Sally faced imminent death.
Playing the part of Baroness Elizabeth Zemo:
J. Jonah Jerkson
VOICE OF THE PEOPLE
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