Flash Gordon 6 - The War of the Cybernauts

by Alex Raymond

  They wandered out into the laboratory.

  “And then, Zed. I want you to be sure the antimagnetic coupling is grounded on the frame and doesn’t build up electrostatic energy on the rheostat controls. If that happens, the whole forward system will short through and burn out the dynamo.”

  “Yes, sir. I have that all down, sir.”

  The optic bug continued to surveil.

  Exactly seventy-two hours later, Zarkov pushed the button on the vidscreen hookup with General Zena’s quarters.

  “Zarkov reporting,” he snapped as the screen cleared and General Zena’s pretty face appeared in focus.

  “Yes, Alien Zarkov,” said the General. She appeared a bit lanquid. Zarkov saw Flash in the background, lying on a couch.

  “The project is finished, General,” Zarkov said.

  “Project Illkay?”

  “Yes.”

  “Aha!” The General turned to Flash. “You hear that, my love? The project is finished.”

  She turned back to the screen and faced Zarkov grimly. “It had better work, you double-crossing Alien, or both of you die!”

  “No chance of failure,” said Zarkov, stroking his beard. “When will you give the orders for it to commence?”

  “Immediately,” snapped General Zena. “As soon as you get off the vidscreen. Is Zed there?”

  “Yes, General,” said Zed, stepping before the screen.

  “I want you to take full charge,” she ordered. “Bring that Alien to me. I want both the Aliens here when we view the secret weapon and its effects on the enemy’s troops.”

  “Yes, General,” said the prog.

  Zarkov smiled.

  In the General’s headquarters, a large vidscreen spanned one wall. Here the progs of highest rank surrounded the General and Flash and Zarkov.

  “You’re made. Doc,” Flash whispered to Zarkov. “You actually think your bluff is going to work?”

  “It’ll work,” said Zarkov confidently.

  The General turned and frowned at the two of them. “Well, I’ve given the signal for the start of the mission.”

  Zarkov pointed to the vidscreen. “There. That’s the fighter escort breaking through the missiles and anti-aircraft gunfire.”

  They watched as the missiles shot through the heavens above the battlefield. Then, following the missile escort, came the missile which Zarkov had programmed for over-target signal output.

  The missile continued, sending out anti-antimissiles to combat the antimissiles sent up to destroy it.

  “It’s getting over enemy epicenter, now,” Zarkov said, glancing at his watch. “Now. It’s beginning to retransmit messages sent out from here.”

  “Messages?” the General asked.

  “The message for each cybernaut,” chuckled Zarkov.

  “Which says?”

  “ ‘Destroy the cybernaut next to you.’ ”

  “Ingenious,” muttered the General. “Now we’ll see if it works.”

  There was no appreciable change in the vidscreen. Then, quite suddenly, there was a tremendous surge of activity on the battlefield. The vidscreen scanner began monitoring ground action.

  To the astonishment of the assembled group in the General’s headquarters, cybernaut after cybernaut began turning on its companion and burning it with its weapon. The technoids joined in, one sawing through its immediate neighbor, another hammering one to ruins, yet another snipping a companion in two. Friendly tanks smashed other Orange tanks, crumbling into ruins, friendly jet-fighters struck down other jet-fighters.

  The sky was full of flame and smoke and the ground was littered with burned-out orange machinery and smoking metal.

  “The damned thing worked!” Zarkov cried exultantly. “I can turn the machine off now.”

  The voice over on the vidscreen spoke:

  “It is confirmed. The war cybernauts of the Orange army have wiped each other out. The army of the People of the Orange has destroyed itself. It is annihilated.”

  A prog next to Zarkov leaped to his feet. “It’s over! We’ve won! After fifteen centuries!”

  “Victory!” screamed the proggies.

  “Without their cybernauts, the People of the Orange are helpless,” cried General Zena, realizing the enormity of the event. “We will wipe them out to the man!”

  Flash turned to Zarkov. “I told you, Doc. You didn’t expect to bring this war to a merciful end, did you?”

  Zarkov smiled faintly. “Come, General Zena. I want you to see the laboratory where we have installed the message machine.”

  “Yes,” General Zena said. “I would like to see it. Come, Flash.”

  Dutifully, Flash and Zarkov accompanied her to the laboratory.

  Proudly Zarkov displayed the tables, the optic bug he had planted, and the storeroom.

  “We actually outguessed the cybbies,” he laughed. “Don’t you see, General? My machine destroyed the enemy cybernauts. I’m about to turn it off. Now we can discuss a suitable reward to my companion and me for my labors.”

  Zarkov went into the storeroom.

  “What’s in there?” Flash asked.

  “The main controls,” said Zarkov. He smiled at General Zena. “Here.” He indicated a cabinet in the corner.

  General Zena flipped open her waist belt and drew out a small disintegrator ray gun.

  “Hold it, Alien Zarkov!” She drew back, moving so she could cover both Flash and Zarkov. Flash stared at her in consternation. “Don’t touch that machine, Alien Zarkov! Stay away from it!”

  “But—” Zarkov gulped, leaning down to touch the machine in the cabinet.

  “I’ll blow you to bits,” warned General Zena. “Traitor!”

  “Traitor?” Zarkov echoed faintly.

  “I know you can switch that dial and beam the same message to our own War Computer and destroy our cybernauts, too. Get away from that machine, traitor. I’m in charge here.”

  Zarkov looked at Flash helplessly. “Well,” he said. “It was a good idea.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Incredibly enough, Zarkov’s plan had worked. And now Flash could see that the second phase of the scheme would have worked, if it had been allowed to. Zarkov had, of course, simply underestimated the guile of General Zena. And Flash knew that he should have been helping Zarkov rather than playing along with the General in the hopes of finding her in a defenseless moment. She had no defenseless moments. Her shrewdness in dealing with Zarkov’s little scheme proved that.

  The three of them were crowded into the small storeroom where Zarkov had built the console for the signal-output transmitter. Flash could see the controls and he knew exactly how Zarkov had fashioned them.

  General Zena held her weapon on Zarkov as the scientist glanced from it to Flash. His eyes flickered, moving from Flash’s face to the controls of the machine. Flash got the message.

  Then Zarkov moved, a diversionary tactic.

  “I won’t let you do this to me, General Zena. Peace is for the good of the whole planet. I’ve proved the ingenuity of my machine. You can get rid of all your cybernauts by the same method. I should think you’d want to be free of them.” He moved toward her pleadingly.

  She turned her weapon on his chest. “Stop, Alien Zarkov!”

  Flash chopped down with his stiffened hand on General Zena’s wrist. The weapon fired and then clattered to the floor. Part of the wall disintegrated. The girl screamed. There was a sudden yell from the laboratory in back of them. Flash kicked the door shut with his booted heel as the progs charged forward to help the girl.

  Then he was on the floor, scooping up the weapon, and spinning around to hold her at bay. He reached behind him for the controls and pulled the switch Zarkov had been reaching for.

  “Traitor!” cried the girl, tears of frustration and rage oozing out of her pretty green eyes as she saw the controls moved and held. “Traitor!”

  “That’s probably enough,” Zarkov said in a relaxed tone.

  Fists were beating on the door t
o the storeroom. “Let us in!” yelled the frantic progs. “General Zena!”

  Finally Flash stepped back and smiled, lowering the ray gun. “Well, General Zena, there’s nothing you can do about it now, is there?”

  “I can always have you killed,” she snapped, glaring at Flash.

  “But you wouldn’t do that,” Flash said mockingly. “Not when we’ve meant so much to each other.”

  She pouted. “It’s the Alien Doctor I really want to destroy,” she admitted finally.

  “Why?” Zarkov asked, spreading his hands. “I’ve freed your whole planet from the power of the cybernauts. Every robot on Errans is now completely destroyed. Your world belongs to human beings again.”

  “Poof!” She folded her arms over her breast sourly. “We’ve still got those miserable People of the Orange to contend with. They started this by being contemptible, obnoxious, and just plain awful.”

  Zarkov shook his head. “I think you’re going to have to get together with them to work this thing out,” he said. “With the cybernauts gone, you can make peace with each other, and transform Errans into a beautiful planet once again. Grow crops. Raise cattle. Live the pleasant life.”

  “Humph!”

  Flash opened the door to the supply room and the screeches of the excited progs deafened him. “Save General Zena!” they cried. “Save General Zena!”

  The girl stalked out, glowering and ruffled. “Back, you fools! I’m all right.” She glanced around. “Where is the nearest functioning vidscreen?”

  “In the next room,” one of the progs said.

  General Zena ran toward it.

  Programmer Zed appeared and spoke to Zarkov. “The cybbies and technoids are all dead, Doc. Oranges and Greens.”

  “Beautiful!” cried Zarkov. “You hear that, Flash?”

  Flash nodded. “I hear it. Now where has she gone to?”

  “General Zena?” Zed asked.

  “Right.”

  “She’s gone to survey the battlefield on the master vidscreen,” said the prog.

  Flash turned to Zarkov. “I’d better keep an eye on her,” he said. “She doesn’t seem quite rational.”

  Zarkov laughed. “We’d all better keep an eye on her.”

  They moved quickly down the corridor to the Viewing Room next door. There they found General Zena surrounded by a score of progs staring up at the wall as the screen flashed pictures of different areas of the battlefield.

  Everywhere were smoking ruins of metal machines and metal cybernauts, both Oranges and Greens. Smoke drifted into the sky. Even the three sunettes could barely be seen through the clearing haze.

  “You’ve overcome pollution,” said Flash to the General, “We’ve been trying to do that for years on Earth, and can’t seem to.”

  General Zena was scowling darkly. “Damn you, Alien Gordon. Since you’ve come here, all I’ve gotten is trouble. Now we have nothing to live for.”

  Zarkov shook his head. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you, girl. You can make this planet a beautiful place to live.”

  “Life is strife,” muttered General Zena. “And don’t call me ‘girl’! The connotations are undesirable.”

  “All right, General,” growled Zarkov.

  Flash turned to Zed. “Zed, I think you’d better contact the Oranges and arrange for a peace meeting between General Zena and General Ild.”

  The head prog smiled. “I certainly will.” He turned to General Zena. “I mean, General, if you order me to, I shall hasten to obey.”

  General Zena whirled on Flash. “You see the kind of thing that happens when you come aboard this planet, Alien Gordon? My progs begin to think for themselves.”

  Zarkov spread his hands in defeat.

  “Oh, well,” General Zena sighed, almost sobbing, “tell that rotten witch I’ll meet with her. I should be dancing on her grave, not signing a peace treaty. Bah!”

  The prog hurried out, with a wink at Flash and Zarkov.

  The sunettes were bright in the clear sky above, and for once there was quiet over the face of the planet. In a large weapons carrier which had been taken out of the supply depot for the occasion, Flash, Zarkov, Zed, and General Zena bounced along over the torn-up rocky landscape, with a caravan of progs coming along behind them.

  The girl was driving.

  “Me!” she screamed when Flash had ordered her into the driver’s seat. “Me driving? It’s a job for a cybernaut. What kind of a General drives her own truck?”

  “A victorious general, Zena,” grinned Flash.

  “I’m not a victor. I’m part of a stupid scheme to surrender us to the enemy.”

  “Well, you should have let Zed drive.”

  “A prog drive?” sneered General Zena. “He couldn’t do half the job I could with the truck.”

  The prog shrugged and sat in the back quietly.

  They bounced along, and finally in the afternoon spotted the group of Oranges in the distance assembled on a hilly slope.

  “There they are,” Zarkov said.

  “Huh!” snapped General Zena. “I never did like Orange.”

  They growled to a stop near the hillside. Flash recognized General Ild and her head prog, Alp, standing in a group of other progs, their heads gleaming like billiard balls in the brightness of the sunettes of Errans.

  “All out,” ordered Flash, and they climbed out of the car. General Zena marched over the broken terrain and stared at the assembly of Oranges.

  Flash and Zarkov pushed forward.

  General Ild’s gray eyes narrowed as she recognized the earthmen.

  “Aha!” she snorted grimly. “The two traitors who double-crossed us and brought about total destruction of our cybernaut forces.”

  “Right,” said Flash. “And because of us, the war’s over. Now neither side has any cybernauts left. There’s no need for war!”

  “Arrrgh!” snarled General Zena, behind Flash. “Who’ll do our work for us?”

  Flash and Zarkov marched to the center of the group. Flash glanced at Zed, but the Green prog stood back with no expression on his face.

  “Okay,” said Flash, as he stood there. “This is a great moment in the history of the planet Errans. This will be the signing of the first peace treaty in at least fifteen hundred years!” He turned to Zarkov. “Doc? Do you have the treaty we drew up last night?”

  Zarkov nodded, drawing the papers from his jacket. Flash took out a ballpoint pen from his pocket and held it out toward General Zena.

  “Who will sign first?”

  General Zena spat out a curse. “What’s to sign? A treaty like that is only a piece of paper!”

  “Seems to me I’ve heard that one before,” said Flash to Zarkov with a grimace. “Fellow by the name of Hitler.”

  “A piece of lying paper if it comes from her,” snarled General Ild, pushing past Flash and grabbing for General Zena’s hair.

  “Hey!” cried Zarkov. “Now, stop that!”

  “Get your hands off me, witch!” screamed General Zena, slapping General Ild’s hands away.

  “Don’t touch me, you hellcat!” yelled General Ild, beginning to use her booted feet on General Zena’s shapely legs.

  “You brute!” growled General Zena, reaching out and pulling the ruff of General Ild’s orange garment up over her head. The garment tore, and General Ild’s torso was exposed.

  General Ild grabbed a handful of General Zena’s blouse and pulled hard. Now the two women were panting and glowering at each other as Zena grabbed Ild’s hair and began tugging at her head. Then Ild had Zena’s hair, too, and the two of them were hissing at each other.

  Zarkov lurched toward the brawl. “Stop it! This is a peace treaty, not a catfight! Stop it, you two!” He reached out and grabbed General Zena’s wrists and pulled her off. Flash grabbed General Ild and yanked her back.

  “Hands off our General!” yelled one of the Orange progs, moving menacingly toward Flash and clouting him on the side of the head.

  Flash went
down. General Ild backed away, and leaped at General Zena again.

  “If it’s a fight you want,” snarled the Orange prog, baring his teeth and clenching his fists, “you’ll get it!”

  “Why not?” yelled a Green prog, launching himself toward the Orange prog like a missile. He grabbed him by the waist and hurled him to the rocky ground. The two progs went hard at it, biting and ripping at each other’s bodies.

  A second Green prog slammed at another Orange prog, and, within seconds, the two groups were enmeshed in a free-for-all.

  “General Zena,” Zarkov called. “General Zena, would you sign this paper?”

  “Paper?” snapped Zed. “Paper!” He reached out and took the paper from Zarkov’s hands and ripped it into shreds. “That’s what we think of peace, Doc!”

  “Hey, hold it!” cried Flash Gordon, waving his arms about. “Stop!”

  There was no stopping the melee. It had spread all over the hill. The Greens and Oranges were hopelessly entangled, smashing at one another with fists, and then with pieces of metal picked up from the battlefield.

  From the security of a rock outcrop, Flash and Zarkov surveyed the scene of destruction with glum faces.

  “They’ve been fighting now for an hour,” said Zarkov, “When are they going to stop and go home?”

  “Who knows?” Flash mused. “It seems that every time they get another score of progs down and out, a new group comes in from the background somewhere. I’d guess everybody on the planet—every human being anyway—is mixed in this by now, one way or another.”

  “I don’t really know what’ll happen now,” Zarkov said. “But don’t forget, a good fistfight always clears the air.”

  “You’re a very optimistic man,” chuckled Flash. “You mean you think they’re going home after it’s all over and decide fighting isn’t worth it?”

  “Why not?” Zarkov said. “They’ve always had cybernauts to do their fighting for them. It’s a lot different participating in a fistfight than it is watching one.”

  “Maybe so,” Flash admitted. “I’m willing to wait it out.”

  It was a half hour later that Zarkov, surveying the scene in front of them with binoculars, gave a groan.