Tales of the Parodyverse

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Dancer
Wed Oct 05, 2005 at 07:09:59 pm EDT
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Far Away #7 - Okay, so here's tomorrow's bit early. I just happened to have a bit of time before I left.
Originally
Far Away #6 - a last bit before i go back to work
In Reply To

Dancer
Wed Oct 05, 2005 at 10:02:48 am EDT
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    The Gelbah’Trakh Faction Battle Tank was three days out on a standard training sweep when the commander was awoken by Trooper Skrrl. That was standing orders. The mission was scored on kills, and Commander Yassk was keen that his name was on the top of any record of destruction.

    “Yes,” he demanded gruffly, swinging out of his cramped bunk and reaching for his helmet.

    “Humanoid targets, sir. Trekking across the desert. We’re picking up three lifeforms and some advanced tech.”

    “Another Patrol? The Drothh perhaps? We had intelligence they were in this area.” A Drothh patrol on foot away from their support equipment would be an excellent achievement.

    “Can’t tell sir. They have a combat droid with them, but I don’t recognise the configuration.”

    “Take us in, Trooper.”

    Trooper Grottu at the helm traced the target. “They’ve seen us, sir. Two of them are starting to run, taking the droid with them.”

    “Keep a track on them,” Yassk said. “What about the other? Is he abandoned as wounded, or is he a suicide bomber?”

    Skrrl checked the scanner. “He’s completely unarmed, sir. Not even a blade. And he’s just standing in front of the tank.”

    “Run him over. Then come in to burn the others where they’re stood.”

    “Yes sir.” Grottu grinned. He loved it when the tracks popped people.

    Miles stood and watched the battle tank advancing towards him. He braced himself, caught it, and tipped it over on its apex to slam down on its top.

    He carefully opened the door and dodged aside in case there was anyone left conscious in the vehicle. There wasn’t.

    Canada, the Runner, and Robogirl came over to inspect the prize.

    “Not bad,” the Runner admitted. “But you scratched the paintwork.

    Robogirl climbed inside the downed vehicle and tossed the unconscious Soldiers out through the hatch. When she was ready, Miles heaved the tank back onto its treads again.

    “Can you understand these controls?” Canada asked Robogirl.

    She checked. “Enough. I can figure how to drive this.”

    “Anything that gets us moving faster than we were,” the Runner grouched.

    “Yes,” agreed Miles. “Time is against us. Drive straight for that dome where the transmissions are from.”

    Robogirl climbed into the driver’s bucket seat and hammered the accelerator.

    “So what’s the plan when we get to the dome?” said Canada. “Do we try and fake our way in, assuming we’re not at war with the dome people, or what?”

    “I’m hoping Robogirl here can negotiate us through whatever security procedures they have, and maybe tap a computer system to tell us where Kat and Sarah are,” Miles answered. “If not, well then I’m gonna do to whatever they send against us what I did to this tank. I’m going in there, one way or another.”

    “Fine by me,” agreed the Runner.

    They headed off across the terrain, avoiding the minefields. The men were able to sit back and relax for the first time since they’d met.

    “So you all know this is a suicide mission, right?” the Runner said. “Just saying.”

    Canada nodded. “Thing is, it feels right. We don’t know who we are, how we got here. We could just try and scrabble a living, hiding in the ruins, never understanding. Never trying to put things right. But…”

    “I could never do that,” Miles interrupted. “Something ripped all these people, American citizens, maybe people from other worlds too, just ripped them from their daily lives and brought them here to be murdered. That demands justice. It demands vengeance.”

    “I keep thinking we should have worked out what’s going on by now,” said the Runner. “I feel slow and dumb.” He pointed to his comrade. “Don’t you say it, Canada!”

    “Do I need to? Look, we’re still a couple of hours off that dome. Why don’t you guys get some rest? I’ll sit up front with Robogirl and keep an eye on her.”

    “She’s sure worth keeping an eye on.”

    Miles and the Runner tossed out the smelly rags on two of the bunks and tried to make themselves comfortable. Canada moved up front.

    “Here to keep an eye on me?” asked Robogirl. “Yeah, I’ve got really good hearing.”

    “Yes, I am,” agreed the young man. “And also I wanted to offer an apology.”

    “An apology?”

    “To you. Look, I don’t remember much. I don’t remember whether robots are commonplace where I come from, two a penny. But you seem pretty remarkable to me.”

    “And to me. If you’re surprised to find I’m actually a robot, picture my shock.”

    “I guess. So what I’m saying is, I don’t know how to treat a robot. At first I thought you were just some kind of appliance.”

    “Maybe I am,” Robogirl said bitterly. “Maybe I’m just a cruel joke.”

    “Now I’m not so sure,” Canada said. “If I didn’t know you were made of metal and wires I’d think you were human. And a pretty worthwhile human to know, at that.”

    “But you do know I’m metal and wires.”    

    “Yeah. So maybe I need to re-evaluate?” The rubbed his hand across his tousled hair. “Anyhow, I’m sorry if I treated you badly, or hurt your feelings. I can only hope I’m not this dumb when I know who I am.”

    Robogirl managed a smile. “S’okay. I guess you should know that…”

    Just then the communications panel lit up with an incoming signal.

    “Oh crap! It’s another tank!” the cyborg recognised. “We have to talk to them.”

    “Hold on a moment!” Canada called. “Let me grab this helmet to give my voice some authenticity! What are they saying?”

    “Battle Tank Theta One-Eleven, are you receiving, over? Respond or be destroyed.”

    Canada leaned forward and hammered his fist onto the reply key. “This is Theta One-Eleven. What the hell do you want?”

    Robogirl turned to stare at the man beside her. His voice was rougher, and he was speaking fluent Galbah’Trakh. Even his body language had changed, as he hunched forward in an oppressive battle-crouch.

    “We want to know why you’re entering sector 09775 by 29997, Theta One-Eleven. Give me one reason why we shouldn’t blow you into scrap metal.”

    “First reason,” growled Canada, “is that if you miss I’d be coming and ramming your missile launchers where you’ll pray they don’t detonate. Second reason, we got an incoming prisoner that meets the immediate return criteria. An X-311, Suspected Meta. And third, you probably couldn’t find the launch button on that big penis substitute of yours with diagrams and your mother to help you.”

    “What?” Robogirl mouthed, wincing.

    Miles and the Runner had heard the dialogue and were clustering up behind to find out what was going on.

    There was a silence over the intercom that seemed altogether too long.

    “Don’t deviate from your course, Theta One-Eleven. I’m looking for an excuse.”

    “No deviation,” Canada answered. “I’m saving that for when I date your mother later.” He snapped off the communicator.

    “What?” asked the Runner. “Did anyone remember to pack an exorcist?”

    Canada pulled the Soldier’s helmet off his head and stared at it in shock.

    “How did you know all that?” demanded Miles, suspicious again. “How to behave, what to say?”

    “Whatever he did, it worked,” Robogirl reported. “They’re not missile-tracking us any more.”

    “It just… came to me,” Canada said, swallowing hard. His eyes were a little wild.

    “Give me that helmet,” the Runner demanded. He pulled it over his head.

    “Anything?” Miles asked.

    “Only a funky smell. I guess these Soldiers aren’t real big on breath mints.”

    “I don’t know what happened,” Canada confessed. “It was weird. It was like I was suddenly someone else.”

    “Put the helmet on again,” Robogirl said. “Your whole body rhythm changed when you had it on before. Even your pulse-rate and respiration altered.”

    Canada reluctantly pulled on the helmet. “So what are you all looking at?” he demanded belligerently.

    “Whoa,” said the Runner. “Canada has the power to turn into a dick at will.”

    “How about I rip you a new hole to make stupid noises out of?” Canada offered.

    “Take the helmet off,” Miles said. “It’s a great trick, however you do it, but maybe best used sparingly.”

    “Great,” sulked the Runner. “Miles is Superman and Canada is Possessed-By-Mr-T Man, and we got purple-haired Robot Supermodel, and all I’ve got is amazing good looks and a personality that doesn’t quit!”

    Canada looked at the helmet in fascinated horror. “It was like being a different person. But not just the character. I knew things. The language. The context. What it was to be a Soldier.”

    “Really?” Miles was interested now. “Okay, I want you to put it back on again. We need to ask Soldier-you some questions.”

    “We’ve already learned their society doesn’t have tic-tacs,” the Runner offered.

    “Do it, please,” Robogirl asked Canada. “If you can help me with some code keys, I can finally crack this encryption system before I… Before it’s too late.”

    “That’s not what you were going to say,” realised the Runner. “What is it, Robogirl?”

    “Nothing.” So her internal damage was worse than she’d told, and her power systems would only keep her alive for another few hours. So what? She wasn’t after sympathy.

    Canada dragged on the helmet for a third time.

    “Where’s this tank from? What’s it’s mission?” Miles asked.

    “Who wants to know?”

    “Control it, Canada. Just access the memories, not the personality?”

    “Or what?”

    “Please, Canada,” Robogirl asked. “We need this.”

    Canada snorted. “Gelbah’Trakh Faction Battle Tank Theta One Eleven has a nine day reconnaissance and kill mission out of Dome Twenty-Seven. We find sentient life and eliminate it. We’re not on a gathering mission. We specially look out for the Sevilla and K’Roth Factions. Double kill-credits for them and the Drothh.”

    “Nice,” the Runner said. “So many people just want that dull world peace stuff.”

    “Dome Twenty-Seven. Who’s in charge there?” went on Miles.

    “Usually the General.”

    “Usually?”

    “A lot of the inner enclave are there now. Chain of command is a mess. The General’s still left to run the Games, but I guess the Minister is in charge if he wants to be.”

    “The Minister? A priest?”

    “The Minister of Torment. Lord Torkamahda. How do I know all this stuff? Am I ever going to get it out of my head?”

    “Take the helmet off,” said Robogirl.

    “Make me.”

    She reached over, grabbed Canada with an unbreakable grip, and dragged the helmet away from him.

    “Aaahhh!” he gasped, his face wet with sweat. “Oh… ahhh… I was almost lost. Almost lost. Nothing to stop it… no points of reference. No memories but his memories…”

    “Just relax, buddy,” the Runner said. “You did good. We got some useful stuff.”

    “Some useful stuff,” agreed Miles. “We’ll try again later.”

    Robogirl shot him a harsh look.

    “We need that information,” he replied.

    Another forty-five minutes passed as the grey geodesic dome grew larger and larger in their forward screen.

    “That place must be big enough to hold a small city,” the Runner guessed. “What are those big-ass energy plumes coming out of it?”

    “Vents, as best as I can tell,” Robogirl said. “I’m picking up a massive thermal bloom about sixty miles north of here, perhaps some volcanic activity. And there’s a lot of coded chatter. Some of it seems to be emergency transmissions.”

    Just then the communications panel chattered to life again, demanding access codes. Canada took a deep breath and plunged into the helm again. Robogirl frantically hacked security computers to work out the appropriate algorithms.

    “Right,” a gruff, grudging security man said over the radio. “Get yourselves in here as fast as you can. We’ve got a class one scramble and you’ll be needed. We have ourselves a situation at the blister pit and the Minister’s heading towards a skinning frenzy.”

    “What kind of situation?” demanded Canada.

    “Some slaves got loose. Somehow they’re fiddling with one of the gravimetric generators on the blister. Could send the whole thing up, take out everything for a thousand miles. They’re sending in Kwatrain.”

    Miles and the Runner made “Who? What?” gestures to Canada, but he shrugged his shoulders.

    “We’ll be there when we’re there,” Canada growled before cutting the signal.

    “This is very lucky,” Miles told the others. “We couldn’t ask for a better distraction. Robogirl, can you find where in the dome they might have taken Kat and Sarah.”

    “I’d need to get to a terminal inside.”

    The Runner kept talking just to mask his nervousness as the tank made its way through the dome security perimeter. “So who are this Kat and Sarah we’re taking insane risks to rescue, Miles?” Robogirl had assured them that the tank’s shielding would protect them from being detected as impostors, but it was a nerve wracking moment.

    “Apart from the people you stopped me from rescuing before? Well, Katarina’s a girl who helped me when I was hurt. Sarah’s my wife.”

    Robogirl noticed that Miles always mentioned Kat before Sarah though. She didn’t say anything.

    There was a metallic clunk as the outer blast doors closed behind the tank. The inner doors began to grind open.

    “We need to get to this Minister,” Canada said, himself once again without the helmet. “If he’s the man behind these criminal acts, he’s the one we need to bring to justice.”

    “Anyone who calls himself Minister for Torment’s gotta need a smacking,” the Runner suggested.

    “Or a really good PR firm,” Robogirl added. She realised it felt good to quip along with the others, as if she wasn’t just a thinking machine.

    The inner doors stopped moving and an ugly furry humanoid gestured for them to drive forwards. Robogirl followed the red line painted on the iron floor.

    Another Soldier appeared in front of them, one of the orange-and-black winged men. He gestured for the tank to veer off to a side garage.

    “What’s this?” Miles asked. “R-girl? Canada?”

    “Not usual procedure,” Canada answered, managing to make even this innocent comment sound surly.

    There were another dozen orange Soldiers waiting in the bay.

    “Talk to them,” Miles told Canada. “See what’s up.”

    “What do you pretty orange flygirls want with a Gelbah’Trakh tank?” Canada demanded. “We don’t answer to General Steppenstoat’s bum-boys!”

    “Not big on the diplomacy here, are they?” Robogirl asked.

    “You reported you’d captured a meta?” the officer in charge answered. “We’re here to take it into custody.”

    “Oh great,” the Runner muttered. “Now they start to get efficient.”

    “Bring him out. We’ve brought the shackles.”

    “What do we do now?” Robogirl asked.

    Miles cracked his knuckles. “They want the meta to go out. I’ll go out.”

    “This isn’t going to be diplomatic either, is it?”

    “When it all starts, get Robogirl to a terminal where she can find Kat and Sarah. If you can tell me, tell me. If not go find them and get them to safety. Don’t wait for me. Just save them.”

    “Send out the meta, you stupid g’vorakhs!” called the officer. The term just didn’t translate.

    Miles went out to them. Things escalated from there.

    The first central security knew about their local problem was when Miles threw tank theta one-eleven through their control centre.

    “Is it me,” the Runner asked, “or does Miles have some anger management problems?”

    Still wearing his captured helmet, and uncomfortably strapped into Gelbah’trakh armour, Canada dragged Robogirl over to a maintenance terminal. “Find our quarry or die!” he told her.

    Robogirl bit back a retort and got to work. It took a while to understand the systems, and longer to unpick the security locks.

    Alarm klaxons sounded and a troop of heavy tusked guards ran forward with leashed warhounds. Miles hammered them back and collapsed part of the superstructure on them. He was moving too fast for the Soldiers’ laser rifles, a ruthlessly precise war machine ploughing ever onwards through the citadel’s defences.

    He never even saw the Seeker drones drop into position behind him and charge up their decomplilers.

    The Runner didn’t consciously think about it. He just blurred forwards and pulled Miles out of the way. He blurred forwards impossibly fast. Fast enough to swat the drones out of the air without trying hard.

    “Whoa!” the black man gasped. “Now the jogging suit makes sense. Apart from showing off my buns of steel, I mean. Now this is better!” And he joined Miles in pushing back the opposition.

    “Got them!” Robogirl said. “They’ve been separated. I can find case notes on Sarah, she’s on level 92-B, but… they’ve sent Katarina to the gladiator pits as a bed slave.”

    Miles head jerked round. “What?” He clenched his fist and popped the head of the Soldier he was grasping.

    “The… the gladiator pits,” Robogirl repeated, seeing the look on Miles’ face. No sane person would want to get in his way right now. “Down that way.”

    The main force of security troops that hadn’t been diverted to the blister pit arrived and got in Miles’ way.

    Canada dragged his hat off, gasping, then tugged on Robogirl’s sleeve. “Come on. He’s heading to the pits. We’ll try and find this Sarah. You know what she looks like, right?”

    “Yes. I saw her as she buried me.”

    “Come on then. Hey, Runner! Run into this elevator with us.”

    Secondary security has shut down the lift shaft. Robogirl over-rode it. The car rose three dozen levels before grating to a halt.

    “Uh-oh,” was all Robogirl had time to say.

    And below, Miles kept pushing forward, fighting dirty, fighting bloody, ignoring injury and fatigue and anything they threw at him, a savage, compelled, lethal weapon with one objective.

    The Soldiers weren’t sufficient to stop him. He kept driving forward, dragging the enemy along with him.

    The General was not amused. He gave the order to send in the gladiators. Fifty or more brutal kill-trained warriors with nothing to lose burst from their cages and went in with mace and lance and axe and tooth and claw.

    General Steppenstoat waited patiently until Miles was almost completely dogpiled by the kill-crazed warriors from the arena, then carefully aimed his customised disintegrator pistol at the intruder’s exposed forehead.

    Then he fired.


Continued…???



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