by Ben Bequer
“So we can’t count on them,” I continued. “Do they have any ideas of how to fight them? Or anything we can use to our advantage?”
Zundergrub turned back to us, with a big smile and nodded slowly.
* * *
“You can count me out,” Cool Hand spat, once Zundergrub had finished explaining his idea.
“We can’t seem to count on you for much,” Zundergrub snapped back. “You are but a flea on a camel’s back, a parasite.”
“Fuck off, Zee.” Cool said. “Like Blackjack said, you haven’t done shit.” He turned back to us, to me specifically, “Let’s work the machine and get the fuck out of Dodge.”
“Everyone be calm,” Haha said. “Perhaps we can find another way to help these villagers.”
Zundergrub waved his arms aggressively, “There is no other way! Within the hour an army of thousands will cover this field and swarm all over the village. And we will be responsible for every death.”
“So?” Cool said. “Why are we even talking about this?”
The doctor’s eyes were alit with rage as he stalked towards Cool Hand Luke, intent of striking him. Only Haha’s quickness, physically interceding between the two men, stopped Zundergrub in his tracks. “I have no quarrel ending the lives of every human being, you included Cool Hand, if it means saving our planet from despoiling corporations and overeager governments. But this is different. These people are innocents. They are blameless in this.”
“Wait a second,” I started.
“Come at me, bro!” Cool shouted at the doctor, his arms spread wide and full of daring.
“The Lightbringers have destroyed their worlds,” Zundergrub continued unabated. “And this Mist Army has gathered them here like slaves. Now they face destruction, brought upon by our actions. We must act, damn you!”
“Then you save them, if you’re so brave,” Cool Hand said dismissively.
Zee pushed off Haha and stomped back. “I will. Alone if I must.”
“I said wait a second,” I repeated, and this time much louder, forcing them to pause their bickering. “Maybe Haha is right. Maybe there’s another way.”
“I would love to listen to alternatives,” Zundergrub said.
“Because what you just proposed...well...it sounds like madness.”
Zundergrub sat down, frustrated.
“I mean, one of us has to go into that lake and wake some ancient beast. Come on!”
“I am merely exploring the possibility,” he said defensively.
“What about ‘exploring the possibility’ of fighting THEM?” I said, mocking him. “Yeah, let’s man up and waste those guys when they land. Aren’t we supposed to be super?”
“They have thousands-“
“You said you’d do it alone if you must-“
“Yes, but I won’t commit suicide,” Zundergrub snapped matter-of-factly. “We must find a more reasonable method to do this.”
“I like my chances in any fight,” I said, hoping he’d catch the underlying meaning. He raised an eyebrow and shook his head.
“It’s folly to go out against a horde. We could barely defeat a small group.”
“Barely? We kicked their asses.”
“And you were seriously injured.”
“I’d rather stand and fight, than wake some sleeping monster. Besides, we’d need to build a scuba system,” I continued. “And I know that Haha’s pretty handy here, but that doesn’t guarantee that whoever goes down won’t become live bait for the ‘ancient beast’ you’re talking about.”
“That is precisely the point, Blackjack. We bait this monster into coming out and engaging the army, perhaps frightening it away.”
That was the gist of Zundergrub’s plan. Someone piss of a huge beast that slumbered deep in the lake’s waters, and bait it into the enemy army when it arrived.
In his talks with the villagers, Zundergrub discovered that the Mist Army liked to land their battleship on the other side of the lake, in full view of the village for maximum effect. The idea was to lead that huge beast towards the battleship, which appeared organic from a distance, and hope the beast felt threatened and attacked it. The army would be forced to defend their ship and during that distraction, we could escape.
Haha stood and strode away from us, gazing into the distance where a few manta-ray riders flew high overhead. “Our time is limited,” he said pointing at a dot in the sky that could only be one thing.
The huge battleship was approaching.
I didn’t mention that we had no focusing crystal for the machine, in part because I didn’t trust them anymore. Zundergrub and Cool Hand were rather hostile with each other, but if things got hot, and I was in trouble with the beast, they would leave me in a heartbeat. And Haha…well, I’d gotten the gist of his threat well and good.
The best part was the last detail about Zundergrub’s plan. I was the bait. In theory, it couldn’t hurt me, but I knew the doctor saw an opportunity and the others were growing more and more apathetic about me. This was as good a chance as any to leave me behind and be rid of me forever. But if they tried that, they’d be in for a big surprise.
“I have one question,” I asked. “What happens if this uncontrollable monster does the unexpected? What if it attacks the village?”
He shook his head, “It shouldn’t. Not if you lead it away. And once it sees the enemy force, it will feel threatened and attack. I have assurances from the villagers, from Saraji in particular, that the beast is benevolent unless provoked.”
“Which is precisely what we plan to do,” I said.
“Who the fuck is Saraji?” Cool Hand wondered. “I’m telling you, this dude’s gone native on us.”
Zundergrub blushed, “She is a lovely creature, but merely a friend, and a great source of comfort. This was once her home, a world ripped apart by the Lightbringers and she is now the last survivor. The beast beneath the waves was one of many but now last of its species like her. It was a peaceful behemoth roaming the plains of her world. It now hides in shame in the lake.”
“If it’s intelligent,” I said. “Maybe we can reason with it.”
Zundergrub shook his head. “I don’t think that would be possible, even if we knew how to communicate with it.”
“Get your girl to talk to it, then,” Cool Hand suggested, eager to get any plan in motion that didn’t involve him being in danger.
“So we’re counting on me being fast enough to get away from it,” I said, ignoring Cool.
Apogee, standing next to me, shook her head incredulously.
I looked over to Haha, “Guess it’s time to build a scuba tank.”
“And put the worm on the hook,” the rabbit joked.
* * *
Time passed strangely on Shard World. There was no relative day or night, so we had no way of knowing the time other than Haha’s internal chronometers. We were working desperately to complete a scuba tank, so I pushed harder than I should have and at one point, Haha stopped me and sent me off to rest.
I wandered around the village until I saw Apogee, talking to some shambling mound creature, that looked like a sniper’s ghillie suit come alive. She excused herself and came over to me, a silly smile on her face.
“That is by far, the weirdest experience of my life.”
“New friend?” I asked.
She turned back to the alien creature, which was watching us.
“That thing learned to speak French and English from a five minute conversation,” she said, pointing back to the alien.
“That’s not bad,” I said, impressed. “Maybe now we have our own translator so we don’t have to depend on Zundergrub. You should ask him about the Mist Army and the Lightbringers and all that stuff. See if Z was lying.”
“I did,” she told me. “Sounds like the old man was legit for once. Are you seriously thinking of doing it?”
I shrugged, “I don’t know.”
“The machine is almost done, right?”
“Yes,” I sa
id, and looked around to make sure none of the others were nearby. We walked through the village, and were surrounded by alien creatures of all types imaginable, but even only a few hours after our dramatic arrival; they paid no attention to us.
“There’s a catch, Madelyne.”
“What?”
“The machine won’t work without the red gem. You know the one that Haha had on the Moon. The one we stole in L.A.”
She walked a few moments, giving it some thought. “So what do we do?” she asked finally.
“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “The crystal has to be from here. I’m sure of it. But where we can find a source for more, I don’t know.”
“Maybe on another one of the shards?” she asked, motioning to the myriad of floating islands that surrounded the Lightbringer’s shattered world.
“I’m not sure. The point is the machine won’t work yet.”
“That’s great,” she scoffed.
“I’m sure we’ll find it,” I told her, trying to soothe her frustration. “Do me one favor; don’t tell the others.”
Apogee smiled, shaking her head, “You don’t trust anyone, do you?”
I frowned, not saying anything for a moment, waiting for her to understand that I had trusted her with the information. She finally looked at me and nodded.
“I won’t say anything.”
“Good.”
“I tell you what,” she said after a desperate laugh, “This is going to make a great chapter in my memoir.”
“You being literal or figurative?”
She stopped and looked at me, confused.
“Are you really writing one?”
Apogee sighed and looked back on the village. “No, not really, but I should. A good friend suggested I do it.”
“What friend?” I said, sounding more jealous than I wanted to.
She smiled, “Superdynamic.”
“That guy? That guy’s a douche.”
“He’s only like that to bad guys, Blackjack,” she said exploding into her magnificent laughter. “Besides, he figured it was more of an exercise, so I could explore some…”
“Some what?” I asked, but I saw her bashful expression and guessed she had said more than she wanted to. “Sorry, didn’t mean to be that nosy.”
Apogee brushed her hair back and looked at me for a long time, trying to make up her mind whether to tell me or not.
“After The Revolution broke up, I had some bad times,” she admitted finally. “He thought if I were to write about it, it might help me get through it.”
“The whole thing with Steeltoe and Matchstick?”
She nodded.
“I always wondered,” I said, not wanting to pry, but utterly curious.
“What happened?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s real simple,” Apogee said. “They were dirty as hell. They were extorting money out of some low-level villains instead of putting them away, and they were making the rest of us look bad. When you’re in a group, Dale, the bad things the others do tarnishes you too. And I worked my ass off to get to where I am. It’s not easy being a woman in this business.”
I wanted to joke, as is my manner when I get nervous, but I restrained myself and let her go on.
“It was hard, you know? None of the other guys wanted to do anything. Pulsewave even tried to back them up. The whole thing started because Steeltoe got hurt fighting this nasty old timer called Razor and he was out of commission for almost a year. His medical bills were through the roof, and we had no sponsorship in The Revolution. We’d only been around a few years when he got hurt.”
I thought of crazy old Razor back at the bar, and how powerful he must be to have hurt a guy as strong as Steeltoe.
“So he did it for the money, like that’s a perfect reason to totally throw your morals out the window.”
It stung to hear her talk like that, and I wondered how much of that was a veiled insult directed at me.
“Must’ve been tough,” I said.
Apogee was silent, looking away, and I saw her face break as she blinked back her tears. She looked so fragile at that moment, I wanted to reach out and hold her, lend her my shoulder to lean on to.
“They were my friends,” she managed and walked away.
I let her go, watching her tall form wade through the crowds of strange aliens, and thought about how hard it must have been for stand up for her convictions and turn in her two friends. But while I was empathizing with her, another thought came to mind. Maybe that’s why she was behaving in such a measured fashion towards me. Sure, Zundergrub had planted the suggestion to “save him” in the New York fight, but I was starting to notice that Z’s powers tended to fade over time. And I had interrupted the last mind job, so he really had only time to ignite her anger towards me momentarily. He hadn’t wiped her mind clean as the team had wanted.
Yet, her attitude with me showed something else; caring. Could it be that she saw this as a chance to redeem herself for being too impulsive with her former partners?
Chapter 20
I stood waist deep in the murky water, making small waves with my hands while cool hand adjusted the straps for our makeshift scuba tank. I could hear him bitching under his breath, he was shorter than me by a good foot and the water was freezing. Every once in a while frustration would get the better of him and I’d feel a sharp tug on the tank. Apogee stood on the shoreline, smudged and bruised and beautiful, arms crossed under her breasts, overseeing the process.
The tank was her brainchild, and she looked none too happy for that. I knew nothing of the inner working of a first or second stage regulator. Stupid that I wouldn’t know how to scuba dive, living in California, but learning never occurred to me. I was never a beach guy. I grew up outside of landlocked Sacramento, with lakes and ponds much like the one I was about to commit suicide in, but no sandy beaches. I’d lived in that beachfront Malibu house for two whole years before Atmo had tossed it on my head and only recently had decided to learn to surf.
Spending five minutes wondering what went into building a scuba tank was enough to make me wish for another Dr. Retcon enigma machine to copy. Haha, disconnected from his data core, was no help. We were thus left with Madelyne’s limited diving experience, which was far from technical, and a whole lot of guesstimation and conjecture.
The tank was made of pounded out pieces of hard metal soldered into a semi tubular form with a high pressure valve stem to which I had attached a flexible rubber tube. It was ugly and only semi-functional, and we had no time to test how it would respond to the extreme pressures at depth. Instead of a regulator, the air flowed freely and I’d be forced to bite down on the cable while at the same time leaving my mouth partially open to relieve the air pressure. Filled to an almost dangerous (as in explosive) level of air, we still estimated that I had no more than fifteen minutes of air. The tattered, hole-riddled scrap of a plan that required me to swim down and piss off some huge beast, then bait it into attacking the massing army.
“You can’t possibly believe he cares for these people,” Apogee scoffed from her perch overlooking Cool Hand and I.
“It’s crazy,” I told her, “and real stupid-”
“Unbelievably stupid,” she added, disgusted and bewildered, but I could figure no other alternative, no idea of how to face and defeat 10,000 alien warriors.
The more I thought about it, the more foolish the plan sounded, the more likely it was I wasn’t going make it back, making Zundergrub a very happy man. I guess that was what was motivating me now; I wanted to see the look on Zundergrub’s face when I brought that big bastard out of the water, destroyed the alien army, and saved his stupid village. I was beaming already, imagining the surprised look on his face.
Cool checked the straps one last time, his complaining muted and slapped my shoulder, “Glad it’s you and not me. That’s all I have to say.”
“Cool why don’t you go see if Haha has any other parts for the tank?” Apogee asked.
“A good luck quickie? Hell’s yeah!” Cool said and walked off leaving us alone.
“This will work,” I said in almost drone-like fashion.
“Just saying it won’t make it so,” Apogee scoffed.
“I’ll make it work.”
“Can I say something here? Why the hell aren’t they helping with this,” she motioned to Haha and Zundergrub watching us from a hill that overlooked the lake as Cool sped up to join them. “Why is it you that has to do everything?”
“Well, who else is going to do it? Cool’s a fucking coward, Zundergrub is trying his hardest to not do a damned thing.”
“What about Haha? He’s perfect for this. He doesn’t even breathe, and he’s near indestructible.”
“He said something about his avatar being disconnected to the core and it would end him forever or something.”
“It’s the same thing that would happen to one of us,” she said, her frustration bubbling over. “Maybe he’s programmed to be yellow.”
I shrugged. “It’s all on me, Madelyne. I have to do it”
“No you don’t,” Apogee snapped. “You want to do it. You’re dying to get killed out here, aren’t you? Or are you trying to show off to me?
“I’m trying to get us back,” I said, glad that the shadows were concealing my blushing. “You ever think of that? I mean, what the hell do you care about me anyway? Hell, the other day you were dying to kill me.”
She crossed her arms and cocked her head to one side. “Really? Now you’re mad at me now? I’m trying to keep you from doing something stupid.”
I softened my tone, “You ever talk Superdynamic or Epic our from doing something because it’s dangerous?”
“It’s not the same thing and you know it.”
“Why, because I’m a villain?”
Apogee walked into the water and came up to me.
“I don’t see another way around this,” I said as she checked my straps.
“You should let me go.”
I reached for her and took her face in my hand, “What kind of gentleman would I be?”
