For their viewing entertainment, Theseus had queued up…
On screen 1: A Medusa-headed metal-crystal-composite humanoid shooting lasers out of each of the snake heads. Shit! She was a moving battle station. No two snake heads targeted the same Theta Team operative.
On screen 2: Another one of the Medusa-headed ones—apparently there were multiple castes of these metal-crystal humanoids—used the snakes on her head to lash out at her targets as she moved throughout the ship in an entirely different manner. Her snakes could extend themselves far enough to grab up a Theta Team operative and hoist him or her off the ground as it choked them. While some of the snakes on the Medusa head continued elongating, prying the metal-glass doors leading to the chambers with the Theta Team operatives open, and reaching for the operative inside, and, unhinging the snakes’ jaws, began swallowing them like boa constrictors. Some of the snakes spat venom like spitting mambas whose acid and nanite makeup was meant to mess with your day.
On screen 3: Members of another caste of metal-crystal humanoids invading the ship—call them the Mardi Gras ones—had head dressings, arm bands and leggings and spinal ridges—all made of a chrome-like substance that extended from their crystalline bodies. Each bit of “costuming” was in fact a weapon. They were not entirely unlike the NARs or Goliath Bots modeled on Native Americans in Natty’s “doll collection” in this regard. Natty watched hang-jawed as the one with the spinal ridges that came to a point about four-inches beyond its back—the individual ridges rotating independently like cannon turrets—fired at different targets as she moved through the ship. Meanwhile, this warrior’s hands also effectively wielded chrome boomerangs.
Theseus was still throwing up screens.
“Appreciate you bringing us the night’s entertainment,” Natty said, wondering if the guy was capable of recognizing sarcasm. “We’re on our second honeymoon, you know? I can’t thank you enough for ensuring the thrill value exceeds our last honeymoon.”
“I take it that’s stress-dissipating humor?” Theseus remarked, unmoved. “There’s a lot of that going on around here. Thank Techa Theta Team is immune.” He marched out of the chamber as brusquely as he’d entered it. One look at the screens explained why. It was a bit of an all-hands-on-deck situation.
“This is supposed to motivate us,” Laney asked, staring at the screens hang-jawed, “or shock us beyond any hope of higher brain activity ever kicking in again?”
“I suggest we embrace this as another one of those opportunities to turn negatives into positives; use that void inside our minds where creativity usually takes place to hatch the really big insights we customarily don’t have the room for inside our heads.”
For a moment Natty thought only the silence would ever greet him with welcoming arms again. Finally, she said, “Yeah, let’s do that.”
***
Corin was running through the shuddering ship screaming for her son, grateful for the small mercy of the gyroscopically leveled decks which were not back on line in the hours previous. Surely it did not take three special forces teams to rescue one boy; surely at least one of them had dragged his ass back on board by now.
“Thor!” She wasn’t certain at this point what was worse, his being trapped on the Nautilus now that it was under attack, or his being trapped out there in the wilds of the planet. “Thor! Answer me!” She wanted to holler, “The curse of Ivan the Terrible is alive and well,” but she restrained herself. She needed her son, above all else, to respond, and if he was going by the name of Thor these days, and not Ivan, so be it.
There was just too much commotion out in the halls opening into Theta Team workspaces, too many alien-looking humanoids multitasking ongoing repairs of the ship and fighting off a swell of attackers for Corin to make sense of who was who in the flail of limbs, and whether they were pursuing repairs or engaged in sabotage, whether they were fighting off rivals, or simply disagreeing over the quickest fix to a damaged section of the ship.
She relaxed her mind and instead let her focus be pulled to any superhero antics that caught her eye, knowing full well the kind of mad stunts her kid would be up to, thinking it was up to him to save the ship. But every time her eyes went to some fantastic scene, Cassandra was the cause of it, not Thor. My God, look at that woman go. She was the real menace. One look at her playing the part of Custer in Custer’s last stand, and you were suddenly rooting for the Indians.
Then Corin got the real shock of her life.
She panned her head toward the central courtyard—saw there Cassandra trapped in the energy sphere. On high battle alert, the bubble of water containing Cassandra and the dolphin had switched to the light sphere of the supersentience in active-mode. So, how then to explain…?
Oh my God. Those are Cassandra’s thought projections! She’s fighting off the first wave of attackers like the Zen monks of old who couldn’t afford actual armies to repel their attackers.
Corin swallowed hard. If that was Cassandra with her hands tied… Corin shook from the horror, but just as quickly put it out of her mind. She had no choice but to prioritize her horrors. And right now that meant finding her son above all else.
***
ON THE UNCHARTED PLANET, AGEMIR
Thor collapsed on his duff, rifle in hand, huffing and puffing. He managed to lift his rifle, despite all odds, to blast the charging unicorn, only it was not a horse but a goat on this world and the horn on his forehead was as long as one of those lances in the hands of a medieval knight. Thor drew up his legs, wrapped his arms around them, turned his head, closed his eyes, and winced, as the animal continued to slide forward on momentum alone, though long since dead. When Thor finally opened his eyes again, the tip of the horn was an inch at best from his eye. “Are you getting the point of this augmented-reality game? Because I’m just not getting it. I mean, I’m digging the non-stop action. But this is mindless, escapist entertainment, even by my standards.”
Frog Doll collapsed beside Thor, his breathing no less out of control from exhaustion, both their backs pressed to a boulder. “I told you, Marvel Comics has a patent on all of creation. I say that despite the decidedly dark DC comics vibe I’m picking up on.” He broke off the tip of the unicorn’s horn still threatening to take Thor’s eye out and bit down on it with his shark’s teeth. “On the plus side, I’ve never enjoyed eating the dead this much in all my life.”
“You eat the dead?” Thor’s face was already twisting up at the thought.
“Where do you think the pet gold fish have been going all these years? I wait for the cat to stop playing with his food, and then I lunge.”
“You’re weird.”
“You’re right. These aliens have nothing on me. I say we go home and eat the cat.” He stood up and pulled at Thor’s arm, but Thor still wasn’t going anywhere.
“Give me a second to think this through.” Thor’s tone was adamant. Frog Doll released his arm. “I think we’ve been had,” Thor declared. “I fear my boyish enthusiasm has been used as a weapon against me.”
Frog Doll grunted dismissively. “Wouldn’t take much.”
“You’re right; we need to get home.” Thor pulled himself up along the boulder, using it so his arms could help him carry some of his weight until he was all the way on his feet.
“Yay! Wait, do you remember where that portal is? Because I sure don’t remember.”
“Forget the portal,” Thor commanded, “you need to reach out to the Nautilus to have her beam us aboard. Something tells me we’re never going to make it out of here otherwise. What kind of rapport do you have with her?”
“Oh, we’re like this.” Frog Doll crossed his fingers.
“Well, get on with it then.”
They started beaming out of their location. “I’ll be damned. I can’t believe she listened to me,” Frog Doll said.
“I thought you said you two were tight.”
“Oh that bitch? She hates my guts. Can’t say the feeling isn’t mutual.”
“
What’s all that about?”
“She kept me in a display case frozen solid for like a million years!”
“You haven’t been alive that long.”
“Fine, so telling time isn’t a forte. Well, I might have chewed on a few wires in her brain in retaliation. I guess she doesn’t take well to being lobotomized. Who knew?”
“Great, just great.” Thor made a sour face. “We’ll probably end up some place inside the Nautilus even scarier than this place.”
***
ABOARD THE NAUTILUS
“Whoa!” Thor said materializing aboard the Nautilus. “The ship’s under attack. And will you look at the size of this battlefield?”
“Yeah, it’s like one of those paintings in a museum that fills an entire wall that you need to stare at for a few hours to take in all the details,” Frog Doll said agreeably.
“Epic!” Thor readied his rifle. “Finally a battle worthy of me.”
Frog Doll rolled his eyes. “Why don’t I realize that every time I feel up, it’s just a setup on this roller coaster track my life is on?”
***
THE UNCHARTED PLANET, AGEMIR
“Got it!” Starhawk exclaimed. The latest tweak to his device summoned the cloud of nanites back into Patent’s body, making him once again nearly tough enough to keep up with his own madness. Nearly. Starhawk sighed at the realization that even fully upgraded once again, Patent was likely not going to survive this charge up the mountain.
The instant the nanite cloud had been fully absorbed into Patent it was no longer obscuring Starhawk’s view at what was bounding down the incline at them—the veritable avalanche of boulders, trees, animals… He screamed at the top of his lungs like some early-warning detection system that, busted, had gone off way too late.
***
Crumley leaped off the ground to get atop the boulder otherwise destined for his head. The avalanche down the mountain had started moments after they’d decided to make way for the Nautilus. Ever since, they’d been running on top of downward sliding rocks, trees… even the local animals big enough to crush them or swallow them whole had been turned into ammunition to be lobbed at them, and that didn’t stop the animals in their panicked state from taking a lucky-strike jab at them with their mouths, talons, or paws hoping to grab a free meal along with the free ride down the mountain.
“It’s like running up a downward escalator,” Crumley commented just loudly enough for his voice to carry over the roar of the avalanche itself. Even with their in-ear mikes noise cancellation technology, he wasn’t taking any chances on being heard.
“Cronos has gone native, huh?” DeWitt said, glancing over his shoulder at Cronos running up behind him. Cronos had exchanged his battle fatigues with their built-in flexible body armor for the feathers off the birds that Alpha Unit had shot down and then plucked for dinner some time back. And he’d painted a red cross over the center of his chest, as Crumley was reminded looking back at him when prompted. “And what’s with the whole Knights Templar thing?” DeWitt asked. “I thought he converted to Judaism when he was in Syria with us.”
Crumley had to think twice about what he was seeing himself. “Considering the odds we’re up against, you can’t blame the guy for looking for a little extra protection, fighting for the Lord, and all that.”
“Crumley, he’s coming at the boulders bouncing downhill at him with a sword. Does that seem remotely sane to you? I mean, I’m sure it’s a nano-edged sword, the nano recruited from his body nano, but still…”
“Mad as compared to what? Trying to blow up the boulders with grenade launchers, like we’re doing, hoping the shrapnel won’t take any of us out even more effectively?”
“Don’t try to compare our madness with his, okay. Ours has a method to it that does not rely on pre-rational ideation.”
Crumley timed his comment between blasts of his grenade launcher, “Says the guy who brought his kid to a war not even a supersentience may survive.”
“I should have known better than to argue with a philosopher. You can’t come to a firm decision on anything, even on the true nature of insanity.”
Crumley wondered if DeWitt just needed to feel right about something in his life right now, which sure as hell didn’t include being here; and if he should just let the poor guy win the argument.
The two men went back to clearing a path for themselves with their grenade launchers using the dialogue-free atmosphere to purge themselves of any mental impurities they were poisoning each other with.
Another glance over his shoulder informed DeWitt that Cronos was definitely fighting with a fearlessness not even the rest of them could muster. Maybe Cronos’s madness was more divine.
***
“We just have to stay alive long enough for Alpha Unit to hack our way aboard the Nautilus. Because we’re not getting there any other way,” Leon informed his team, using the same voice projection trick Crumley had just availed himself of to be heard over the thundering sounds of the avalanche.
“How the hell are they supposed to survive this, if we can barely keep our heads?” Crumley asked. The water-buffalo-sized creature coming at him too big to shoot out of the way or duck… Crumley blasted a hole in it with the grenade launcher under-barrel of his assault rifle, and jumped, balling himself up so he could fit through the hole.
“We should have had Alpha Unit take point so we could run interference for them. Hindsight being what it is, we’re going to have to do this the hard way.” Leon morphed so he now had a face on back of his head as well as in front, and he had arms growing out of his back as well that could man an assault rifle, which he manifested next out of his body’s nanites, upping the nanites’ proliferation and differentiation rates.
The other Omega Force members followed suit.
They were now adding a layer of protection for Alpha Unit, using their backwards-pointing weapons on anything headed Alpha Unit’s way that the younger cadets couldn’t respond fast enough to get out of the way of. Patent looked appreciative from what Leon could tell. He especially loved Leon’s idea and adapted the workaround for himself. Patent looked more like Shiva when he was done morphing, his nipples lobbing bullet-size bombs each time his pectoral muscles contracted; the high-impact explosives created by his nanites also responding to the latest dictates coming from his mind’s eye.
“Why did God even create men?” Ajax shouted, throwing his voice over the roar of the landslide with the help of their COMMS. “Because He couldn’t figure out how to make a vibrator that would mow the lawn.”
For once Ajax’s ill-advised humor might be half-decently timed, Leon thought. They were so past their breaking points now, even with this generation of nanites, they needed something to take the edge off before defeatism set in; all it took for such a sense of surrender was to calculate the odds of lasting another five seconds.
“What do you call a man who’s lost 95 percent of his intelligence?” Ajax asked, broadcasting his way into Alpha Unit’s COMMS as well, from the moment he piped up. “Divorced.” He had the teens laughing, especially Ariel. That alone was worth putting up with him all this time. Leon knew the second any of this got too real for Alpha Unit, their supremely gifted hacking minds would be offline.
Ariel was only too happy to pick up the game. “What kind of man can you actually change?” she asked. “The ones still in diapers.”
Ajax howled with laughter, as did DeWitt, Cronos; even Leon had to laugh.
“Why shouldn’t you trust a man who claims he ‘wears the pants?’ Ajax fired back at her. He probably lies about other shit, too.”
“Why does it take a million sperm to fertilize one egg?” Ariel retorted, her voice coming over Leon’s COMMS and everyone else’s. “They really are too damn proud to stop and ask for directions.”
Between Ajax and Ariel, Leon felt confident they’d get the rest of the teams up the mountain. Now, what the hell was taking Alpha Unit so damn long hacking their way back onto the Nautilus?
/> ***
Patent gazed down at Starhawk, trying not to feel overly put out by his latest poor show of conduct. Unable to piggyback on Patent anymore—considering Patent had to see out of his forward and backward facing facades as well as keep his head on a swivel, and shoot with his Shiva-inspired frontward and backward facing arms—Starhawk was forced to make other accommodations. He’d employed his own nanites to extend one strand of hair on his head which he could use as a Buckyball-strengthened rope wrapped around Patent’s waist. That way he could be dragged along in the pill-shaped capsule he had his nanites cocoon him in. Snug as a bug inside, he was no doubt taking a nap, or perhaps entertaining sexual fantasies with his robot girlfriend in VR.
As Patent continued to charge uphill at a slow trot, he discharged grenades from each of the handheld rocket launchers in his six Shiva-like arms at targets coming straight at him, and at those that had cleared him only to barrel towards Satellite, Ariel, and Starhawk. The boulders, petrified giant tree trunks, and Serengeti-like beasts coming at them like derailed train cars and flying buses were targeted to make sure they or the shrapnel from them didn’t take out those in his charge, or any of the Omega Force operatives getting in over their heads. The shells refilled the barrels of Patent’s weapons as rapidly as they left them, formed by the nanites marching from his body up along the rifles’ surfaces to congregate in the launch bays where they self-agglutinated into the explosives. “What the hell are you waiting for, Satellite? An invitation?”
“The Nautilus is working off her backup brain, sir.” Satellite didn’t even see the bus-size armadillo-looking creature bearing down on him that Patent blasted clear of his face at the last second—one set of Satellite’s eyes were on his display and the other set was looking the wrong way. “She just doesn’t have the bandwidth to beam us up right now,” Satellite explained. He’d switched screens on his multipurpose gadget to get at this latest app he was using to communicate with the Nautilus a while back, relying on his additional pair of eyes to keep him from tripping over the waterfall of rocks, which he had to kangaroo-hop over to keep from being steamrolled. “Looks like she’s busy beaming up someone else.”
The Star Gate Page 45
