Back to the Archive.
The shining golden servitors that serviced the Gameship shimmered in from nowhere to destroy the humans in their living quarters. Intruders from Earth had offended the Gamesmaster, had determined his secret, and now all humans everywhere would die.
"Ooh, shiny!" Amy Aston admitted as they entities spawned into existence. She pressed down the switch that activated the device Al B. Harper had prepared earlier. The shimmering creatures tried to hold their form inside the disruption field but exploded into little golden drops. "I feel so much better now," Amy admitted.
"I’m surmising the Legion has found a way of annoying the villain as usual," Miss Framlicker commented. "Emergency evacuation?"
"Looks like," agreed Ebony of Nubilia. "But I don’t have a Shoggoth fragment with me after my amulet got vaporised, and I don’t know how else we can get out of here!"
Shazana Pel had got hold of a huge mace from somewhere and was looking happier than the others had ever seen her. "You are making war upon the Gamesmaster? This is worthy!"
Dr Blargelslarch hurried back into the monitor room shepherding the green-skinned slave girls Vizh was looking after. "If I didn’t know better I’d say someone had just activated a biofield disruption wave generator," he suggested.
"It was some kind of geek-ray," Nitz the Bloody agreed. "Looks like the super-friends have managed to really piss the Gamesmaster somehow."
"Over here, girls," Uhuna called to the frightened slaves. "You are under our protection."
"Is Master Visionary here?"
"He has commanded us to care for you," the Abhuman princess assured them. "Now stand over there and see to your make-up, okay? We have hero-ey things to do."
Miss Framlicker finished making the adjustments to the dimensional transportation apparatus that had brought the Earth team to the gameship in the first place.
"That won’t get you out of here," Dr Blargelslarch warned. "The gameship is proof to teleportation, dimensional travel and so on if the Gamesmaster doesn’t approve."
"We have a couple of edges," Amy assured him, plugging in energy conduits. "Al?"
Al B. Harper and Temporary Death rushed in from the lab annex. "We’ve lost touch with the people in the forbidden area of the gameship!" Temporary Death warned. "And I’m sensing quite a bit of lethal intent, by the way."
"Okay," Al B. noted, checking the readings on the interdimensional portal generator. "That disruption field won’t hold the bad guys for long. Time to evacuate. Ebony?"
The high priestess of the Manga Shoggoth rummaged in her satchel and handed a piece of rock to Nitz. "Here," she said.
"Cool," said Nitz the Bloody. "My very own bit of dirt."
"It’s a bit of Earth," Ebony corrected him. "You know, the Earth that’s linked to your Earth deity Zeku?"
"So you can use your powers here," Miss Framlicker spelled it out. "Moron."
"This? This is all I needed all along to be able to call on the power of Zeku?" protested Nitz. "Why didn’t you tell me?"
"Yeah, cause we so wanted a mega-powered juvenile delinquent wandering round the gameship," Amy scorned. "Activate the damn portal, buckethead, before we all get wiped out!"
Nitz swallowed his anger and directed it to his spell. "Workeku!" he commanded the dimensional gate.
"Workeku?" Shazana Pel objected. "That’s it? That’s magic?"
The portal crackled to life, but a way to Earth didn’t open up.
"As I warned you," Blargelslarch said. "Blocked."
"What shall we do?" asked one of the slave-girls timidly.
"Don’t panic," Miiri replied. "That’s for starters." She looked at the humans rushing about as if they knew what they were doing. "Their women don’t panic," she noted. "They do things. Useful things. And nobody tells them to."
Al B. lifted a small black cube from his pocket. "Like I said, we have a couple of tricks. Here’s Sir Mumphrey’s contribution. I don’t know where he got this, but it’s… well basically its concentrated time."
"Time?" Nitz blinked. "What time?"
"A chronal component to allow us to shift the portal through a time when the gameship wasn’t here and there was no barrier," Miss F snapped impatiently. "Do shut up and stop wasting oxygen."
"There’s no shortage of oxygen here," Nitz objected.
"And yet," Miss Framlicker retorted.
Al B. Harper strapped in the chronal cube, invented a half-dozen new algorithms to allow the system to handle it, and nodded to Amy to open the gateway. The arcing electricity across the wire framework intensified, changed colour, then crackled aside to reveal the EEE firehouse on the other side.
"I’m suggesting you run!" Al B. warned, checking the energy reading.
The golden servitors shimmered through the walls. They were larger, fiercer, and they didn’t look like they were delivering drinks.
"Running sounds very very good!" admitted Dr Blargelslarch.
"But what about Lisa, Dancer and Yo?" worried Uhuna. "And Sorceress?"
"They’re in a different part of the plan," Al B. replied, trying to hold the portal open despite the shorting out of circuits all across his board. "The dangerous bit."
"This isn’t the dangerous bit?" Amy winced.
"Retreat then!" Shazana Pel called out, making the first servitor with a savage gusto. "I shall hold them at bay!"
Uhuna shepherded the green-skinned slaves through the portal. Amy and Miss F hurried after them.
"You won’t be fighting alone!" Al B. promised her. "Guys?"
As the shimmering servitors moved forward to enclose the Thonnagarian warrioress a red-white-and-blue soldier slammed into them from behind. The Collie dog at his side leapt on servitors with a blood-curdling growl.
"Continue the extraction, Harper," Mr Epitome called out. "We’ve got you covered."
More of the servitors welled into compensate for the new incursion.
Then the Manga Shoggoth bubbled through the gateway (although he wasn’t actually using it, just being polite since Al had gone to the trouble of fixing it up). "Hello Ebony. Could you make sure the TIVO is set for Yu-Gi-Oh Waking the Dragons?"
"On it," agreed the high priestess, diving through the portal and back to Earth.
"Um…" hesitated Dr Blargelslarch. "Am I allowed…?"
"We’re granting you asylum or whatever," Al B. assured him. "You too Temp… Tricia. Get through there."
Al shepherded the last of the support team through the gateway. "Time to leave," he called back to Epitome and the Shoggoth. "Thank them for the hospitality and get out of there before the transductive matrix destabilised completely."
Mr Epitome lofted the unconscious winged woman he’d just retrieved on his shoulder, called for Glory, and leaped for the gateway a second before it exploded. He tumbled with Shazana Pel onto the floor of the firehouse and Amy helpfully doused the flames on his back.
The Shoggoth didn’t get through. The bad news was it would have to take the long way home. Bad news for the servitors, that was.
The green-skinned slave girls huddled together and looked uncertainly round the strange alien building. "Welcome to Earth," Uhuna told them. "Ah, here’s Hallie to take care of you. Hallie, these are Visionary’s slave girls…"
