Emperor Mollusk Versus The Sinister Brain

by A. Lee Martinez

  I did the polite thing and waved back.

  I studied the statue, a twenty-foot-high depiction of me built into the square just beyond the tree line. The granite monument seemed ridiculous right then, and I wondered why it hadn’t seemed so before.

  “Have that destroyed tomorrow,” I told a servant.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Have them all destroyed,” I said.

  “As you wish, Lord.”

  I thought about ordering him not to call me Lord, but they’d eventually figure that out on their own.

  “Except maybe that one in Moscow,” I said. “I’ve always liked that one.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And the St. Louis statue. It’d be a shame to destroy that one after they took down the Arch to make room for it. On second thought, don’t destroy anything just yet. Not until I’ve had some time to think about it. Can’t hurt to keep a few mementos around.”

  “Very good, sir.” He bowed and left.

  I stood there on the balcony and thought about things. For all my intelligence, I rarely wasted time contemplating. I was usually too busy researching and building and experimenting, but in that moment of self-analysis, I realized how dissatisfied I was with my accomplishments, grandiose as they might have been.

  But then I grew bored, went to the lab, and started designing a better death ray.

  19

  We left the Everlasting Dynasty with a few ounces of undying water and the blessing of the queen. As I expected, she had no information on the current location of the Brain or his larger plans.

  We stopped at Cairo, where the Terrans were more than happy to allow me access to a state-of-the-art lab for a few hours.

  The lab door opened, and Zala entered.

  “I thought you were going to get some rest,” I said. “You’re not much good to me exhausted.”

  “It’s been nine hours, Emperor.”

  “Has it?” I studied the latest batch of spectroscope readings. “Must have lost track of time. Wonders of scientific exploration and all that. Have a nice nap?”

  She stretched. “That couch left a kink in my shoulder.”

  “You could’ve used a hotel,” I said. “I wouldn’t have left without you.”

  “I’m not leaving you unprotected.”

  “Very dedicated of you.” I glanced up from the readout. “If you’d like, I could set you up with some basic cybernetic augmentations that would reduce your need for rest. Wouldn’t take more than a day and some simple surgery. Just think of how much you could accomplish with a built-in chainsaw and eyes able to scan the entire electromagnetic spectrum.”

  “I’ll pass.”

  “Pity. Though let me know if you do change your mind.”

  Zala leaned over the table where I had placed all the components we’d gathered on this adventure. The half-assembled catalyzer from the moon incident, the unfathomable extraneous bits from jelligantic. The fluid sample from the Great Gynoecium and the vial of undying water.

  “I’m sure you can’t wait to tell me what your keen observational mind has gleaned from these odds and ends, Emperor.”

  “If you insist…” I joined her at the table. “My data suggests that all these parts can be put together in the following manner. Observe.”

  I took apart the catalyzer, putting aside most of its parts. But with the few left over, I screwed and snapped them with the bits from the jelligantic node. Then I screwed the sample of Gynoecium sap and mixed a few drops of undying water with it. The black sap turned a fresh white color. I handed her the device, just big enough to be held in one hand.

  “This is it?” she asked.

  “Were you expecting something more?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know what I was expecting. What’s it do?”

  “I don’t really know,” I replied. “But it’s the only configuration that makes the slightest bit of sense.”

  “How can you not know what it does?”

  “Because it’s only a component,” I said. “It’s like looking at a screw and knowing what model of spacecraft it belongs to.”

  “Surely, you can make one of your educated guesses,” she said.

  “Surely.” I took the device and turned it in my hands. “It depends entirely on the function of the Gynoecium sap. It could be a power source. Or it could be artificially stimulated to generate its own psionic effect. It’s really quite fascinating how the sap responds to the undying water. It doesn’t merely preserve the sap, but also has a positive energy yield. It’s low output, but properly manipulated, it could produce enough energy to power a larger device for a minute or two.”

  Zala tried and failed to appear interested.

  “I don’t know why you insist on asking for explanations that will just bore you,” I said.

  Her scales darkened. “I don’t know either.”

  I opened a slot in my exo and tucked the mystery part away.

  “What do we do now?” she asked.

  I went back to studying data. “I don’t know. The disc has no more information.”

  “Perhaps you missed something. If this is truly the work of an inside agent, then possibly there’s something hidden even more obscurely.”

  “There’s nothing else on the disc, Zala,” I said. “I checked. And then I checked again. And then I checked one more time. I ran it through every data recovery method I know as well as several new ones I invented today. If there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s that this disc has nothing else on it.”

  “Then what’s your plan?”

  “We wait.”

  Her tail whipped around. “That’s not a plan.”

  “It’s a plan,” I said. “Just not a very good one. If you have a better one, please share it.”

  Zala’s feathers ruffled. She waved her arms in a sweeping gesture around the lab. “Use this. Do something. Notice some tiny detail. Jump to some ridiculous conclusion. Do what you do, Emperor.”

  “What I do isn’t as easy as I make it look,” I said.

  “Easy? Since embarking on this mission, we’ve had one narrow escape after another. You’ve yet to convince me that the Brain hasn’t been five steps ahead of you at every turn. I’m charged with guarding you, but you refuse to tell me everything I need to know to do so. Half the time, you treat the lives of those around you as assets to wager recklessly. And other times, you’re willing to risk your own life for the protection of this planet you no longer even rule.”

  “This is why I prefer robots,” I mumbled.

  Zala hissed. It was a sound reserved only for the most absolute levels of Venusian disgust and frustration. She was midway through storming from the lab when I stopped her.

  “When we were leaving the Gynoecium cave, you asked me if I believed if there was really an inside agent working against the Brain. Do you remember that?”

  She leaned against the doorframe and narrowed her eyes. “Yes?”

  “When I gave you my answer, you laughed.”

  She half smiled. “I remember.”

  “When I asked, you wouldn’t tell me why.”

  Zala chuckled. “And it’s been bothering you ever since, hasn’t it?”

  I paused long enough to hopefully appear disinterested. “I’ll admit to some nagging curiosity.”

  “You can’t stand it, can you? Not knowing.”

  Her eyes flashed with a sinister light.

  “Deal with it, Emperor.”

  She turned to leave when a Terran military officer appeared on the lab’s main screen.

  He said, “Lord Mollusk—”

  I interrupted. “Please, General. It’s Emperor.”

  “Yes, Lord Emperor Mollusk. You requested that we alert you to any unusual activity reports. We have reports of unidentified craft descending on Paris.”

  “Thank you, General. Order your defense forces not to interfere, evacuate everyone within ten square miles of the Champ de Mars. I will handle this personally.”

  He saluted. �
�By your command, Lord Emperor Mollusk.”

  “Emperor,” I said. “Just Emp…Oh, forget it.”

  Zala and I hurried to my saucer.

  “Is it the Brain?” asked Zala.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised. And it can only mean one thing,” I said. “He means to steal the Eiffel Tower.”

  20

  We arrived in Paris in under twenty minutes. That was still more than enough time for the Brain’s ships to have surrounded the tower. Three heavy towcraft employed tractor beams in an effort to uproot the monument.

  I took aim and blasted one of the craft. It floundered, struggling to maintain its equilibrium.

  The towcraft spit out several dozen fighters. They came roaring toward me. I blasted them out of the sky while engaging in evasive maneuvers.

  The Brain appeared on the transmission screen. “Emperor, where do you come from?”

  “Didn’t see this coming?” I asked. “Even with your anti-time radio?”

  My craft zipped low over the city. I fired off a volley of rockets. Pursuing fighters exploded.

  “I don’t need absolute knowledge of the future to defeat you,” said the Brain. “You’re only one saucer against fifty fighters.”

  I came to a sudden stop, and the fighters flew past. They buzzed like a school of hungry piranhas. Beams burned against our shielding. Zala eyed the rapidly draining power levels.

  The Brain cackled. “Surrender, and I just might let you live.”

  The saucer sounded the warning klaxon.

  “Shields at thirteen percent,” added Zala unnecessarily.

  I hovered while the fighters continued their barrage.

  “If you have one of your superweapons,” she said, “you should use it now.”

  A backup squad of my own robotic fighters zoomed over the City of Lights. They shot a few of the Brain’s ships out of the air. The struggle broke into pitched aerial battles as our forces waged war.

  “You don’t give up easily,” said the Brain. “I can respect that about—”

  I hit the comm mute.

  While our fleets kept each other busy, I blew a towcraft in two. Its flaming wreckage came crashing down. The other two craft struggled with their cargo beams.

  I opened communications. “You aren’t getting the tower.”

  “I’ll admit I didn’t know you’d interfere,” said the Brain, “but that doesn’t mean I didn’t come prepared.”

  Something tore its way out of the broken mass of metal of the towcraft I’d shot down. A six-story automaton stepped from the debris, none the worse for the crash. It was a standard Martian combot design. Four legs and four arms mounted on a cylindrical body. There were a few cannons mounted on it, but it was mostly designed to inflict terror on the enemy by stomping its way through their ranks. At the top of the cylinder, a clear dome showcased a huge Terra Sapien brain that glowed a bright emerald.

  “Tremble at my most fearsome weapon.” The Brain on my screen howled with laughter. “The radioactive mind of Madame Curie!”

  Shrieking, the Curie bot smashed nearby buildings with her flailing limbs.

  “You can stop me from capturing the Eiffel Tower. Or you can save Paris from her rampage. But even you can’t do both.”

  The Brain’s image faded from the screen.

  I hesitated.

  “You can’t be debating this,” said Zala. “If he gets that tower…I don’t know what will happen. But it can’t be good.”

  Fires burned as fighter craft crashed around me. Paris had always been my favorite Terran city. But I couldn’t live here anymore. Whenever I looked across the City of Lights, I remembered the day necessity had forced me to destroy half of it. I’d rebuilt it, but now, seeing pockets of it ablaze with damage and Madame Curie demolishing it beneath her terrible claws, I discovered that I couldn’t let it happen again.

  I ordered my squadrons to focus their attack on the robot. They broke off and strafed Curie without effect. Her brain radiated a sharp green flare. The superior shielding on my saucer was able to protect us from her disruptive pulse. My fighters weren’t so fortunate. Most dropped from the sky. Several zipped around in random flight patterns until colliding with each other or the ground. One or two outright exploded.

  Curie demolished a city block in three stomps.

  I zipped toward her and shot her with the full assortment of blasters and death rays on my craft. They had no effect. The mutated brain powering and guiding the combot was some kind of energy sponge. Every blast I threw at her was absorbed and channeled back into her.

  “They’re escaping with the tower,” said Zala.

  “I’ll deal with that later.”

  I launched an assortment of ballistic weaponry, ranging from missiles and rockets to explosive neutrino spheres. They met with limited success. Most exploded at a distance from Curie when they were disrupted by interference generated by her. Others veered off target, exploding around the city.

  An alien force seized control of the saucer. Curie wasn’t only giant and radioactive. She was also telekinetic.

  My attempts to counter proved pointless after she drained the saucer’s power. The engines went dead. As did my exoskeleton. Snarg gurgled as her cybernetic parts shut down. She could function without them, but it did take the zip out of her step.

  Curie pulled us into her arms and clamped her claws into the hull.

  “Do something, Emperor,” said Zala.

  “I’m open to suggestions.”

  “Reverse polarity or reconfigure something. I don’t know. Do some of that scientific magic you’re so adept at.”

  What I said then must have shocked her. It certainly shocked me.

  “I’m out of ideas.”

  With a triumphant howl, Curie hurled us away like a Frisbee. We sailed helplessly, bounced around without the inertial dampeners, skipped across the street twice, before grinding to a crashing stop.

  There wasn’t enough power left for even the emergency lights to work.

  I sat in the darkened cockpit, in my own nonfunctional exoskeleton. It couldn’t have been long. A few minutes at most. But in the black quiet of the cockpit, I sat and thought about nothing.

  “Emperor?” Two pinpoints of light, Zala’s eyes, appeared in the dark. “Emperor, are you alive?”

  “I’m alive,” I said. “But I can’t move.”

  “Hold on.” She grunted and groaned as she dealt with her own problems. “Your pet rolled over on me. I’m almost free.”

  Snarg gurgled.

  “Don’t get mad at me, you stupid bug.” Something clanged against something else. “There!”

  Another light illuminated the darkness. Zala had a small flashlight. It wasn’t very bright, but a hungry sea slug takes what it can get. The cockpit was steeply tilted. Zala managed to climb her way toward me.

  “Are you hurt?” she asked.

  She shone the light on my dome. I’d unplugged myself from the exo, and it was now little more than an unwieldy aquarium.

  “I’m not dead, but I’m unwilling to commit to anything more at the moment. Are you?”

  “I’ll live.”

  Her face was cut and bruised, and it obviously pained her to move. As could be expected. Neptunon physiology, aside from our highly developed brains, was relatively simple and difficult to traumatize.

  I didn’t comment on her pain. It would have only insulted her.

  “We need to get you out of here. You’ll have to let me carry you.” She ran her fingers along the cracked dome. “Is there an emergency release on this thing? Or do I have to break it open?”

  “Perhaps we should wait for help,” I said.

  “We can’t stay in this saucer, helpless and exposed.”

  She was right, but outside of my exo, I was just a squishy genius exposed to a dangerous world. And Zala was one of my worst enemies.

  “Damn it, Emperor. You’re just going to have to trust me.”

  “I’ve never been very good at trusting,”
I admitted.

  “Maybe this would be a good time to start. Do you feel that?”

  Few sounds penetrated the cockpit, but a slight shudder ran through it. One right after another. Each tremor stronger than the last. The advancing footsteps of Madame Curie.

  I pushed the release. The dome popped open, spilling water and nearly causing Zala to slip. She reached down, and I wrapped my tentacles around her arm.

  “My gods, Emperor. You are slimy.”

  “I like to maintain a healthy mucous sheen.”

  I secured myself to her arm. But not before I opened the exo compartment and removed the mystery component.

  She grunted. “Not so tight, Emperor.”

  “Sorry.” I pointed toward a lever. “That’s the emergency exit.”

  The tremors intensified. She pulled the lever. A section of cockpit wall fell away, and she jumped out as Snarg dragged herself behind us. We cleared the wreck just as Curie wrapped her metallic hands around it. She lifted it off the ground, studying it like a broken toy.

  Curie discarded the saucer, tossing it aside. The combot cast a bright red spotlight on Zala and me.

  Zala turned to run, but Curie slammed a leg in our way. The giant robot bent closer. Her monstrous green brain flickered with atomic energy. Loyal Snarg, though barely able to raise her head, growled.

  I held the device in my tentacles. It was useless. I might as well have been holding a hunk of scrap metal.

  The shadow of the towcraft rolled overhead. Curie trundled away, and the craft tractored her into it. And then the two towcraft and their remaining fighters flew away, along with the tower. The air shimmered as they vanished behind a stealth field, disappearing in their triumph without even bothering to crush me underfoot.

  And there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to stop it.