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Post By The Hooded Hood tests whether the market will bear midweek double-sized gorefests Wed Sep 13, 2006 at 09:11:18 am EDT |
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#287: Untold Tales of the Parody War: The Battle of the Orient | |
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| #287: Untold Tales of the Parody War: The Battle of the Orient Previously: The Parody Master’s invasion force has occupied Beijing and the surrounding provinces, has begun the conversion of the indigenous population to necrozombies to swell their armies, and retains control of much of China’s nuclear arsenal. The Avatar, prime agent of the Parody Master, has orders to do what harm he can to Earth’s defenders. The war is about to get bloody. Alice White, the Widget, has been talked into volunteering for Terminus Team, a military programme for metahumans to earn remission from criminal charges or punishments in exchange for undertaking dangerous missions. Too late she has learned that she is on a team with the biofield-manipulating Exemplary, the former Black Operations agent who hates her ex-boyfriend ManMan, who recently beat up ManMan’s elderly aunt, and who is now turning his malice against Alice herself. The Lair Legion Field Team: Hatman (Jay Boaz, leader), CrazySugarFreakBoy (Dreamcatcher Foxglove, deputy), Donar Olmanson (hemigod of thunder), Trickshot (Carl Bastion), the Probability Dancer (Sarah Shepherdson), the Manga Shoggoth, Mr Epitome (Dominic Clancy), Yuki Shiro, ManMan (Joe Pepper), Citizen Z (Baroness Elizabeth von Zemo) The Terminus Team: Major Standard (commander), Anvil Man (Brendan MacGillicuddy), Spring-Loaded Man (Armand Braithwaite), Exemplary, the Widget (Alice White), Ultraninja, Rimshooter (Yasud Al-Kamara), Brokenface (Rory Murdoch), Boombox (Toyah Jones), Double Dentist, the Knitter, Horror Hag, Raincoat Man, the Fraudster, Mallard Previous chapters at The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom Character descriptions in Who's Who in the Parodyverse Location descriptions in Where's Where in the Parodyverse  The MH35 J/M Pave-Low helicopter took fire as it passed over the Grand Canal perimeter into the zone occupied by the Avatar’s forces. Trailing black smoke it limped to a landing near Tongxian, about ten kicks east of Beijing. Even as the vehicle went down, sleek silver avacraft were rising from a forward airbase at Hongxing fifteen miles south and west. “We don’t have much time!” Major Standard barked at his Terminus Team. “Even with the covering fire they promised us we have nothing that can take those things out of the air easily. They’ll be here in less than two minutes. Everybody ship out!” Some of the Team had trained for this. They were the ones that fumbled least to grab their packs and equipment and leave the wrecked aircraft. The newest recruits like Mallard and the Knitter were already on the verge of panic. “Don’t forget your survival kits,” the Widget reminded them. “Not if you want to survive.” She was amazed how calm she felt. This was a high-risk mission under enemy fire in a war zone, a thousand times more dangerous than any superhero conflict she’d ever been in. She wondered how many of the others in her squad were hiding the same terror behind their professional facades. Not Anvil Man, probably. Brendan MacGillicuddy was a seasoned supervillain clad in rusted yet indestructible mystical armour with the ability to cause explosions anywhere in his line-of-sight. Anvil Man was the backbone of the unit. He even seemed to enjoy being there. Right now he was ripping the rear bay door off the Pave-Low where the heavy landing had buckled it. Probably not Ultraninja or Rimshooter either. The exiled Technopolitan science villains had fought wars before. The silent woman in the traditional ninja black spoke very little and gave away less. She ate alone, trained alone. Nobody had even seen her face. Rimshooter wore army combat fatigues like he’d been born in them, and morphed his flesh into a variety of military weapons and equipment as required. Yasoud Al-Kamara had been army before he’d volunteered for the metahuman upgrade programme and he’d been a merc ever since. The third Technopolitan was Brokenface. Rory Murdoch’s entire lower skull had been detached and replaced with a steel and adamantine jaw that somehow opened wide enough to swallow a man inside. In training the Widget had watched him bite his way through a tank. But right now Murdoch smelled of whiskey, despite Standard’s orders, so maybe he didn’t relish the idea of more of his body being replaced with grotesque cybernetics. He’d probably borrowed or stolen the alcohol from Uncle Bob, the felonious crime clown who claimed his abilities needed liquor to power them. Some of the others were hard to read too. Horror Hag mumbled to herself as she left the helicopter and followed the line heading west to cover in the paddy fields; but then Horror Hag always mumbled to herself, a mad old lady with the power to project that madness to others as she noticed them. Everybody avoided Horror Hag. Raincoat Man was tough to understand too. The rest of the Team avoided him as well, but that was mainly because he appeared not to wash. He was concentrating hard now, using his cursed raincoat to extend a non-detection field over the combat force. Occasionally his coat twitched as if something was moving beneath it. The Widget stopped paying attention to the others and concentrated on getting herself and her twelve golfball-shaped hovering microrobots away from the LZ. She could analyse Spring-Loaded Man, Double Dentist, Boombox, Mallard, the Fraudster, the Knitter some other time. “Move! Move!” Major Standard was gesturing urgently, sparing quick glances at his wristwatch as he urged his unit to cover. If he ever had doubts or fears – or compassion – then Alice White had never seen them. Standard led the Terminus Team with absolute authority; he’d lost troops in the field before because that was the deal the metahumans who joined the Team got – amnesty or parole in exchange for dangerous military service. Standard had no powers himself, but each of his Team had an organic implant that Standard could trigger from the control sheath on his left forearm to kill them by remote control. If Standard died then all the implants were triggered automatically. “Need some help, Alice?” Exemplary asked as she sprinted for cover. The former agent of the Shadow Cabinet was in perfect physical shape, not even breathing hard as he kept pace beside the Widget as they made for the water margin. “We can’t have you dying yet, can we?” The Widget didn’t answer the provocation. Exemplary was turning her life into a living hell – even before this suicide mission into occupied China with it’s 30% chance of operational success. His covert manipulation of biofields to bring her pain until she yielded to him was only the beginning of his plans for her. “Just do what he wants,” Toyah Jones, Boombox, had advised her when Alice first joined the Team. “It’s… not so bad.” The whine of anti-grav engines signalled the arrival of the first of the avaplatforms. “Just the one?” Major Standard demanded of Rimshooter. Yusuf Al-Kamara checked the radar installation in his left forearm. “For now. Two more half a minute behind, more after that.” “We need that half minute,” Standard declared. “MacGillicuddy!” “Oh yeah,” said Anvil Man. He rose up from the rice field, clapped his hands together, and watched the silver needle in the skies above explode into a rose of flame. “I never get tired of that,” he admitted. “We should just stay here,” Double Dentist chorused. “We should stay here and do that to every single one of them.” Standard shook his head. “We have a mission. Move out.” The hunter packs were out in force across central Beijing. Once humanoid, the hounds had been genetically and mystically modified to better serve the will of their Parody Master. Now they were loosed to bound over the rooftops after the intruder, gleefully baying as they chased down the cyborg private investigator who was their quarry. The hunt had been going on for six hours now, raging from the high skyscrapers outwards over the jumbled older residences that crowded around the urban centre. It had taken a while for the tech troopers to lock onto the peculiar signal of the intruder’s mechanics but now the pursuit was closing in. Half a dozen grav-wagons hovered overhead and three remote weapons platforms shifted to attack range. Yuki Shiro waved cheerfully at the targeting camera drones and activated her full stealth array. That puzzled the incoming missiles enough to turn them back towards their own ordinance, requiring hasty neutralisation. By then, Yuki was already at street level, racing up Andingmen Dongdajie between the abandoned vehicles that blocked the main thoroughfare. One of the hounds jumped from cover behind a trailer van and sank its teeth into her arm. She tossed it high into the air, sending it yelping over the nearest tower block. But not they were closing in. Yuki slithered beneath a bus to avoid the tracer bullets but the Avawarriors thwarted her attempts to escape into the sewer systems. Instead she had to cut down a service alley beside the Confucian Temple then double back into the leafy cover of Ditan Park. The Avawarriors were waiting for her, a full squad of fifty with support war machines. “Surrender and you will be treated as a prisoner of war,” the Avacommander told her. “Same to you,” Yuki told the forces surrounding her. “Give up now and you’ll get treated fairly.” The Avawarriors closed in on her. The Avacommander went down with a subsonic arrowhead embedded into his helmet. The soldiers behind him were swathed in neon-bright tangled silly string that clogged armour servos and contracted to render them helpless. The largest of the assault robots fell, neatly carved into two pieces by ManMan’s sentient knife. “Or you could try fighting the Lair Legion,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! offered them. “What kept you?” Yuki demanded. “I thought you’d never get here. It took me ages to get them lined up this good.” Ultraninja returned from her scouting mission and made her report. “The control centre is still intact. It is indeed under Avawarrior control.” Major Standard frowned. In the distance to the south the first flashes of the conventional military engagement were beginning. Two hundred thousand rapidly-deployed international troops had hooked up with a third of a million soldiers of China’s standing army to try and breach the perimeter of the captured territories. They had little chance of success yet. It was a distraction. “Force strength?” Standard asked. “Over two hundred Avawarriors, perhaps as many support staff. Patrols of necrozombies with handlers.” “Too bad,” shrugged Spring-Loaded Man. “Guess we just have to go home again.” “That’s not going to happen,” Standard told him. “We go in.” “If we go in, we die,” Spring-Loaded Man objected. “These other idiots might buy into that whole suicide for pardon thing, but I…” Anvil Man closed one massive iron-gauntleted fist around Armand Braithwaite’s neck. “If the Major says we go in, we go in.” “We have to go in,” Standard declared. “From that control station the Avatar can access China’s entire nuclear facility. We have to disable it without merely destroying it, which could also trigger an emergency launch cascade. The mission is to get one of these over-ride discs into the main console.” “We should go in,” Exemplary agreed. “We can stand to take a few casualties.” He smiled across at Alice. “The Widget would be best suited to go in first and clear the traps.” The Avatar received news of the Legion incursion to Beijing Centre with equanimity. He’d anticipated an attempt to exfiltrate the spy ever since she’d been identified that morning. He was ready. “Intelligence has identified the CrazySugarFreakBoy!, the Trickshot, and the ManMan assisting the cyborg female,” the lead Parody Priest reported. “All four have been assessed as low-power threats.” “Then whoever assessed them should be executed,” the Avatar replied. “These four have been carefully chosen for maximum disruption. This is not merely a rescue attempt to retrieve some valuable agent with valuable espionage data. This is meant to focus our attention and assets on their incursion.” The Cultist looked less confident. “We don’t bring them down? You want them captured alive?” “Not especially,” the Avatar decided. “Nor do I need the administrative centre of that city any more. We have extracted most of the useful population. Authorise the use of heavy artillery. Blow them to pieces.” “They’ve changed strategies,” Knifey warned the Legionnaires as they avoided shrapnel from exploding buildings behind one of Trickshot’s fast-setting thermoplastic arrows. “They’re not interested in catching you any more.” Trickshot ducked as a thirty foot long iron girder skewered the plastic shield and narrowly missed his head. “No, really?” “We’re just going to get people killed if we stay here,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! decided. “We’ve done all we can. Time for bed.” Yuki looked rebellious for a moment, but then her enhanced hearing picked up terrified screams from the people deemed not useful enough to evacuate for the war effort. “This way,” she said, tearing up a sewer entrance. “We’ll use exit route C.” Around them the buildings began to explode as the high-level combat drones started carpet-bombing the city. “Well, we distracted them,” ManMan growled as he ducked into the underground tunnels. “I hope whatever we achieved was worth it.” Terminus Team went in at sunset. Raincoat Man obscured the remote sensors and the Widget used her widget drones to disable the more physical alarm systems. Anvil Man, Rimshooter, and the Knitter took up position at the edge of the secure area. The others travelled the open ground in pairs across and took cover in an abandoned hanger near the main terminal. “I can pick up their transmissions,” Rimshooter announced. “There’s a lot of chatter about incursions in central Beijing. The Lair Legion, apparently.” Exemplary snorted. “Let’s hope they all die,” he said. “Of course, that would upset Alice, since her boyfriend is one of them these days, right Alice?” “I’m not seeing ManMan any more,” the Widget replied coldly. “No. I guess he’s moved up a league,” Exemplary mocked. “Too bad. That leaves you without any friends at all, Alice.” “Can it,” Brokenface told Exemplary. “You’re always riding her. Give it a rest.” Exemplary glared at the cyborg. “I haven’t ridden her yet,” he smirked. Major Standard gestured for them to cut the chatter. He was watching the main bunker with field glasses, waiting for another signal from Ultraninja that the way was clear for the next leg of the mission. Then the heavy duty war machine ripped the side off the hanger and sprayed the interior with incendiary bullets. “We’re discovered!” Spring-Loaded Man shouted unnecessarily. He uncoiled his artificial limbs to send him bounding away from the bright trail of tearing missiles. Mallard twitched as the bullets pounded through her. She dropped to the ground then never moved again. “Help me!” pleaded Raincoat Man; they were his final words. Blood gushed from between his lips. The Widget had her drones bracket the attacking war robot and emit a localised electromagnetic pulse. It was hell on their batteries but it took the attacker down. Three more came up behind it. “Plan B!” shouted Major Standard. “Direct assault on the objective, three teams, just like we rehearsed it!” Then he crumpled over, unconscious. “Enemy magecraft!” warned Exemplary, catching Standard as he fell and hefting him over his shoulder with ease. “Don’t worry, I’ve got him. Carry on with the mission.” Boombox screeched into her microphones. The sonic blast sent the incoming robots toppling. Avawarriors raced in to take their place. Horror Hag moved forward to greet them, giggling. Alice White’s world became red. Blood seemed to flow everywhere. The noise was deafening. She lost all track of where she was or what she was doing; except to keep moving and to survive. The Knitter tangled the incoming enemy in his psionic weave. It gave the Team a few seconds to shift away from the killing zone and try again. “This way!” Rimshooter called to the Team, appearing through the smoke of battle. “We can still make it! Fraudster, set them on a diversion that way. Double Dentist, drill us a hole down to the complex below. Do it!” There was a bright flash of ordinance and Rimshooter, Fraudster, and Double Dentist vanished in a gory smudge. “No!” Alice heard herself shrieking. “Nonononononononono!” Only Exemplary seemed to know what he was doing. The survivors staggered after Exemplary. Uncle Bob brushed against the secure blast doors to the control centre then vomited on them. They shuddered and ground open. Brokenface charged the necrozombies that guarded the entrance. “I’m hit!” screamed the Knitter. “I’m hit!” He tried to heft his needles with one arm pumping blood, then fell back as another three rounds took him in the chest. This won’t work Alice suddenly realised. A terrible sense of the battle had come upon them. They were waiting for somebody to try this. They’re ready for us. It won’t work. More Avawarriors were appearing now. Exemplary grabbed their biofields and twisted their necks round in a swift full circle. Then he amped up his own strength levels and tore through the floor to drop to the interior of the command centre. “After him!” Boombox cried; but she was unable to follow her own advice as an Avasword nearly severed her head from her body. She fell underfoot and was carved to pieces by the parody troopers. Brokenface and Uncle Bob slithered down the hole after Exemplary. Alice closed her eyes and set her widgets to strobe pulse. The brilliant light sent the Avawarriors into convulsions and gave her the chance to slip past them along the main corridor. She willed one of her drones to over-ride the key pad panel so she could enter the elevator. I should be running, she told herself. “What do I care about the mission? Why am I doing this? She had no good answers. And so she entered the lift and had a widget direct the car to descend to the most secure level. Operation: Oriental Thunder officially began at 2213 local time, 1413 zulu time, 0913 at the Lair Mansion; three minutes afterwards the Avatar’s carpet bombing of central Beijing began, confirming the deployment of at least some of the Avaforces’ heavy ordinance away from the front line. Word to advance came to the international defence force. Columns began to close on Beijing from the south-east, from the northeast, and from the west. General Lindstrom passed the word to Hatman. Hatman sent in the Lair Legion. The storm blew in from the south-east, a black cloud-front that defied weather patterns and hammered down on the Avawarriors’ defences like the wrath of a frustrated hemigod; exactly like the wrath of a frustrated hemigod. Whatever occult resistance was attempted by the Parody Cultists deployed against such assaults was brushed aside with contemptuous ease, and then they had problems of their own. The thunder rolled across the river plain. Lightning spiked down through captured military equipment, rendering millions of dollars worth of foreign armaments into molten slag. Behind the storm came the lord of the thunders himself, Donar of Ausgard, riding to battle on a Viking chariot pulled by two flying goats. Witchfire surrounded him as he raced through the dark storm-haze and destruction followed in his wake. He hefted a weapon that could split mountains and dropped down into the heaviest clusters of Avawarriors. “For Annj!” he spat as he fell into the battle. Then came the round of inexplicable power failures. Energy packs shorted, servo motors overloaded, complex computer programmes fatally glitched. The Probability Dancer arrived riding pillion behind a handsome soldier who had asked her out for dinner afterwards, and she was happy because this time she really had met the perfect man, she was sure. In the meantime she twisted chance like a child tangles wool and her every movement cast the best-prepared plans of the Parody Master’s finest into disarray. The Manga Shoggoth came from below. Huge, plastic, amorphous, he welled out of the grates and vents, first the size of a football field and then the size of a small village; squirming, bubbling… singing. “Arashi gareki honoo kakera machi tatsumaki chikara hikari YATSUra matsuri sora nakama hashiru RASSERA RASSERA RASSERASSE RASSERA” An elder being is sanity-mangling enough before he begins his cover version of the Akira theme music. As the Avawarriors were scattered and pressed back the first Earth ground troops deployed. Rough pontoons straddled the water crossings where bridges had been dismantled. Tanks moved forwards from Hangu and Hanguzhan, pressing past road blocks into the occupied urban areas. The beach-head had been established. The Battle of the Orient had begun. “They are committed,” the Parody Priest reported. “Launch the assault upon their main base at Baitang,” the Avatar ordered. The remnants of Terminus Team 3 made it to the command centre the hard way, leaving a gory trail of enemies plastered across the walls. Exemplary was in charge now, still hefting the unconscious Major Standard over one shoulder, either to protect him or as additional body armour. Brokenface and Uncle Bob kept up with him, both of them covered in the blood of others as they rampaged forward. They ploughed free of a tangle of new necrozombies, the former personnel of the base, and reached the heavy bomb shield doors of the main control room. “It’ll take me hours to chew through that,” Brokenface argued. Uncle Bob’s acid flower would take even longer. Exemplary laid Standard on the floor and flexed his fingers. “It’s time we had a chat,” he told the others. “Time we cleared the air.” “What do you mean?” Brokenface snarled. “The whole mission’s become one big clusterf&ck. I dunno where that Ultraninja got to but she was made. We got ambushed and it’s all hit the crapper from there.” “The first mistake,” Exemplary lectured, “was in putting Major Standard over us. No mere human can understand what it is like to be us.” “Permanently drunk?” suggested Uncle Bob, dragging the last of the whiskey out of his third hip flask. “They think they can enslave us to him with those implants and that remote control bracelet of his,” Exemplary went on. “They can’t. Not me. Not when I’ve had enough time to adjust my biofield to simulate Standard’s. They always underestimate my gifts and training.” He reached down, snapped the Major’s forearm, and tore the control bracer loose. Bob and Brokenface had both flinched but neither died. “As long as I have this gadget, we’re all fine,” Exemplary told them. “And that means we don’t need Standard to keep breathing.” “Hold it,” Rory Murdoch objected. Brokenface didn’t like Standard, but he liked Exemplary less. “We signed on to get pardons. I’m not fragging my C.O.!” “And the second mistake,” Exemplary went on calmly, “was you telling me to can it with little Alice. I don’t like people telling me what to do with my women.” Brokenface took one step forward before every nerve ending in his body screamed as if ablaze. He shuddered to the floor, jerking spastically as if having a fit. “You wus the one what knocked out Standard!” Uncle Bob realised, staring at Exemplary through heavy-lidded eyes. “You had this planned.” “I certainly pinged the Avaforces’ security systems to alert them to our presence, yes,” agreed Exemplary. “What do you think my reward will be when I alone survive this lethal mission, having accomplished the goal and saved the world? I’m thinking of asking for command of the Terminus Team programme in place of the late Major Standard who heroically fell in the fight for freedom.” Uncle Bob shifted uncomfortably. “Only survivor?” he swallowed. Brokenface gave a final scream then stopped moving. “I think so,” Exemplary replied. “It makes for a better story.” Uncle Bob rushed him. Exemplary slammed a fist through the mad clown and ripped his guts out. That just left the unconscious Major Standard. Epitome lifted a foot and stamped down on the soldier’s head, splitting it like a melon. “Dismissed,” he told the pulped corpse. At the other end of the corridor the service lift stopped at the command level and the door opened. There seemed to be nobody inside. Exemplary turned to start tearing through the blast doors of the control room. He was surprised when they opened by themselves. Too late he realised that he wasn’t the only one that could set a trap. The Avatar had anticipated the assault on the base and had deliberately prepared a final surprise to take out Earth assets. Thirty Avawarriors poured out and set upon him, too many to manipulate, too many to fight. And he had no back-up left. Half a dozen Avacruisers seared in like lethal hornets at MACH-2, heading towards the allied forward base at Baitang. The fighter craft were far superior to anything that the Earth allied forces could put into the air. The skies were cleared in less than a minute and suddenly the Avatar had completer air superiority over the battlefield. The attacking craft took up bombing formation and prepared to render the city of Baitang and the accumulated forces there into dust. Their attack run would then take them out over the Yellow Sea to sink the carrier group there before returning to pick off the tank columns that would be left bereft of support or relief. “Incoming,” Mr Epitome warned, jinking the Epitome Express away from the first of the raiders. “Six of them, delta formation, thirty thousand feet.” “On it,” Hatman replied, his Jets cap propelling him at speeds to match the intruders. “Take cover.” Epitome secured the advanced aircraft he’d appropriated years ago from the Idiom, switched to aqua mode, and plummeted into the ocean to avoid the missile locks on his vessel. The explosions on the surface of the sea rocked him but the Express veered away and took deep cover. Hatman exchanged his Jets hat for his Hurricanes cap. “Well?” demanded General Lindstrom as the force 10 winds slapped down all air traffic, scattering the Avacrusiers like chaff. “”Three confirmed kills, two more limping for home,” Citizen Z reported, listening to Hatman’s report commentary over her mask radio. “Last one coming round for an attack on our exhausted hero. Epitome?” “On it,” the paragon of power reported, banking the Express up from the water and launching air to air missiles to catch the damaged Avacrusier in the flank. “We have neutralised the Avatar’s principal long-range air assets.” “Rest of the attacks?” Hatman demanded as he winged down to the base with his Eagles cap. “FMRC are bogged down on the western assault at Xin’an,” Citizen Z declared. “The Globetrotting Gangbusters are taking heavy fire north at Daliang. We’re meeting the mission parameters, but only barely. We have troops across the Yellow River and a spearhead force at Tanguantun.” “Tell them to entrench,” Lindstrom decided. “This push has gone about as far as it can for now. We’ve checked the enemy’s progress and laid down battle lines. Next will be a war or attrition.” Hallie’s voice cut across the comms channel. “I’m getting some broken chatter from Terminus Team 3 on LairSat Nine. I’m patching it through.” “…anybody hear this? Come on, man! They’re all dead, slaughtered. We were chopped to bits, man. Wiped out! You have to get me out of here. You promised me…” “Spring-Loaded Man,” Hallie supplied. “Armand Braithwaite.” “They’re all dead?” Hatman worried. “But the nuclear launch facility…” “They may not all be down,” Epitome analysed. “I’m still getting a transponder signal from Anvil Man at least. The others could be underground, shielded.” “Or dead,” noted CZ. “But I suppose our glorious leader will want to go and take a look for himself.” It was a good try to get Jay Boaz killed, but it didn’t work. “I’m exhausted,” Hatman admitted. The magnitude of the hurricane had been immense. “Contact Dream and get him to check the area on his way out of Beijing if he can. And have Donar ready to do some heavy support if anyone’s still alive to rescue.” “With pleasure,” Citizen Z replied. “CrazySugarFreakBoy! Your leader has an insanely dangerous mission of hope for you and your merry band to attempt…” The Widget waited until widget 9 checked there was nobody left in the hallway before dropping from her uncomfortable position pressed from wall to wall at ceiling level in the elevator car. “That looked so much easier in the movies,” she complained. She had a nasty suspicion that she might have split her jumpsuit. The hall was full of dead people. There had been a major battle with necrozombies here and nobody was playing by the old rules. Then she saw what was left of Major Standard and she nearly vomited again. She checked the over-ride disc in her belt pouch. Every member of the mission team had been given a copy of the codes to input that would neutralise a significant proportion of the nuclear threat facing the world. Alice had also programmed the codes into her widgets. If she could get any one of them near enough to the master console she could use them to manually defuse the situation. She realised that the security bracer was missing from Standard’s arm. She realised that she was still alive anyhow. Had it all been a bluff? Then she heard the screaming from further down the corridor. An Avawarrior was crying in pain. According to the briefing most Avawarriors had their pain centres dulled or disconnected surgically. Somehow, this warrior’s nerves had become reconnected. Stepping round the corpses of Uncle Bob and Brokenface, the Widget peered through the blast doors. Exemplary was there, battling alone against two dozen Avawarriors, his body a mass of bloody wounds. And still he fought. The Widget sent her remote drones into the room, fanning out to find the central panel they’d been told about in the briefing. If she could deliver the payload while all the enemy were taking apart Exemplary the mission could still be saved. There was no central panel. The whole room had been stripped out to make it into a trap for Earth metahumans. The whole mission had been for nothing. Exemplary knew that by now. At his point he wasn’t fighting for victory, he was battling for survival. Only his iron control of his own biofield was preventing him from dying from the massive gashes on his neck and torso. He continued to amplify his strength, speed, and invulnerability, pushing his capacities past what the Avawarriors could do, tearing at them with fists that could crumple steel. They continued to come at him with energy blades that could slice through titanium. Alice had to decide whether to run or fight. Did she save her skin and leave her tormentor to die a heroic death against impossible odds, or did she risk her life to save a man she hated? She had no idea at all why she decided to go in. “Foul invaders!” screamed Donar, pounding the Avatank into even smaller pieces. “I wast in the middling of a most important coffee when thou didst raise thine traitorous heads!” Dancer cautiously tapped the hemigod on the shoulder. “Um, big guy? Any chance you could stop frothing like a laté for a minute and take a breath?” The Ausgardian considered this. “Nay,” he decided. “I am most wondrous wroth, and must grievously smite mine adversaries for the nonce.” “Fine. But Hatty just called. He’d like you to grievously smite your adversaries about twenty miles north from here, so CSFB! and the gang can help out the Terminus Team people who have got themselves cornered out there.” Donar considered this. “I wilt smite them forthwith. Perhaps even fifthwith.” And the skies went black. At the Tongxian Military Base the combat had bogged down to hard slogging and heavy artillery. On the one side the Avaforces had entrenched and were unshipping their proton dissociator cannons and deploying their class omega combat drones. On the other Anvil Man still struggled beneath a literal dogpile of Avawarriors testing their blades against his mystical armour. Trickshot blew apart the pile with a pair of explosive arrows. “Aw, it’s only Anvil Man!” he spat. “I thought I wus savin’ somebody worth savin’.” “Just let me finish these bozos an’ you’re next!” Brendan MacGillicuddy promised. “Aren’t we supposed to be working on the same side?” Yuki Shiro checked, using the dome of Anvil Man’s armour as a vaulting stool to somersault onto the floating weapons platform above. Three deft punches ripped out its computer core. “Hey, Advil Man, we’re here to rescue you!” “Yeah well,” snarled the unstoppable engine of destruction, “you’re about an hour too late for everyone else.” That was when the Legion began to understand exactly how bloody the combat had been around the entrance to the command centre. “Anyone else left alive?” CrazySugarFreakBoy! asked in sick tones? “I dunno,” Anvil Man shrugged. “Down there, maybe? Ultraninja, Brokenface, Uncle Bob, the Widget maybe?” ManMan looked up sharply. “The Widget? Alice White the Widget? Gold foil suit and some lame flying golfballs? She’s part of this mission?” “Oh yeah… Exemplary said she’d been your squeeze a whiles back.” ManMan’s head jerked back. “Exemplary?” The Avawarrior armour was shielded from electrical discharges and too well protected for Alice’s widgets to over-ride their command systems. Instead the Widget sent her remotes to take control of the base’s automated defence systems, reawakening multi-billion yen ordinance designed to protect the control centre against intrusion. Bright green lasers flared and began quartering the room in a lethal lightshow. “Yipe!” yelped Alice as the grid crisscrossed just over her head. She hastily ordered widget 3 to adjust the vectors. The Avawarrior armour was also protected against hard light, but the Chinese weapons were powerful enough to scorch the surfaces of their battlesuits and give them pause. As her remotes reported in the Widget realised that the systems had already been suborned once. The Avatar had transformed the Chinese defences into a giant trap for superheroes. “Well now the trap turns,” Alice declared. She was still trying to get the hang of supervillain banter. “C’mon guys!” She willed her widgets to scroll through the menu of arsenal choices. Radiation and biological assaults were out because they’d kill her too. But after the massacre above Alice found she had no problem whatsoever selecting high frequency tight-beam sonics. The concentrated beams rattled through the Avarmour and liquefied the fighters inside the shells. The battle turned. Exemplary seemed to catch a second wind, slamming into the remaining Avawarriors with a savage abandon. His entire body was caked in blood. Only some of it was his. He moved with lightning precision and implacable hatred and he eliminated his opponents methodically and efficiently. And then it went quiet. Exemplary looked round the room. “A trap,” he realised. “All for nothing…” Alice caught him as he staggered. His biogenetic field manipulations could only keep him going so long with such critical injuries. “Come on,” the Widget told him, wincing under his weight and feeling his blood soaking onto her. “Let’s get you out of here.” “Little Alice,” Exemplary recognised. “Fancy that. Who’d have thought that you would be the one to save my plans.” “Your plans?” Exemplary grinned a gory grin. “Standard’s dead. I’m going to lead the Terminus Team programme.” His smile became a leer. “I’ll enjoy having you under me, Alice.” “No,” said Joe Pepper, coming from the elevator. “You won’t touch her. You’re done!” “ManMan?” Exemplary didn’t seem that surprised. “Oh dear. I surrender. I’m so badly wounded fighting the good fight that I couldn’t even lick your aunt again right now.” He looked up slyly. “Maybe later.” “Joe…” Knifey warned as ManMan moved in. One swift slash gutted Exemplary from groin to neck. A second skewered his heart. A third slice hacked his head from his neck. “You stay away from my aunt. You stay away from Alice. You just… stay away,” ManMan shouted at the corpse he stood over. Alice screamed. “Stormfront,” Knifey noticed. “They’re sending Donar to pull us out.” “’Bout time,” grumbled Anvil Man. “This whole outing was bad from the start.” “You’ll be okay,” CSFB! told the Widget. “Everybody gets the shakes after a battle like that. It’s normal.” Trickshot looked unhappy. He twisted his bow around in his hands and finally made his decision. “Joe,” he called. “I’m real sorry about this, ya know, but… ManMan, I’m arrestin’ you fer murder!” “The battle lines are setting,” the Parody Priest reported. “Soon the humans will be counting the cost of their first day’s strife.” “A minor success,” judged the Avatar. “And now they are bloodied. Continue.” “We stopped their advance,” Hatman summarised. “We held them back while two million people were evacuated. We denied them a sea port. But we lost almost a hundred thousand troops, killed, wounded, or captured. An estimated million civilian casualties in Beijing. Most of the Terminus Team gone.” He paused then added bleakly. “And we may have lost a Legionnaire.” Next Time: From desperate battles in the orient to desperate battles in Faerie. George vs the Dragon, Ruby and Asil open the wrong door, Miiri’s marriage, and a few surprises. And Johnstantine goes out for coffee. Untold Tales: Mything, Presumed Dead And then: The court-martial of Joseph Pepper; all character reactions and viewpoints gratefully received. Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2006 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2006 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. |
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