by Lee Bond
Eddie spoke through a clenched jaw. “Is there anything else?”
“Wanna see the footage of Babel getting captured? It’s pretty fucking badass. They really trained those Specter guys pretty well. Like, I gotta be honest, Eddie, when I looked at Babel’s transcripts, I wasn’t all that impressed. He was like, Armageddon Troop’s face man. The guy who kept everyone transfixed while the rest of his team was running around blowing stuff up. But damn, was I wrong.”
Eddie did a quick check on the lab and cage holding the Ushbet. Hours yet. He tapped his lips. Locating and determining the possible threat or benefit levels that other players in the Garth Game might have to the asshole was important, but sounded tedious. It also wasn’t something that he could simply direct the machinery to take care of, either.
Tedium incarnate.
But watching a Specter capable of uttering words profoundly powerful enough to prevent something like what Lady Ha was becoming from an action, either covert or overt, that might result in his recapture? A Specter threatened, hunted?
“Sounds like fun.”
“Ahhh, there he is! The Dad I always wanted.” ADAM cheered loudly. “Grab some popcorn or something, Dad, because this is gonna be awesome. Well, I found it awesome.”
“Don’t oversell this, ADAM.” Eddie closed off both sections of the corridor with a simple thought, then cut it off from the main power grid so Drake wouldn’t come wandering in unannounced.
“Okay, okay, calm down, I’m sorry. We’re gonna pick this up a few seconds after Babel Sinfell climbs aboard the Shriven’s ship…”
***
Babel gulped down ‘fresh’ air by the gallon, beleaguered lungs working like bellows to a forge. The Specter looked over his shoulder every few seconds, neck set on a permanent swivel; just because the words he’d uttered had echoed and ricocheted through the psychic landscape, just because it seemed as though he’d managed to not only break free of Lady Ha’s cruel torment but that he’d also found a way to prevent her from following or sending any of her minions to follow didn’t mean a goddamn thing.
She was the Lady Ha. She was power. In ways that made no sense. If there was anyone in the Universe able to undo the powerful commands he’d laced into the very fiber of her being –and the souls and minds of every other person within a few thousand miles- it’d be a … ‘woman’ … trying to hack the very Universe itself.
Nothing. No one was coming. None of the automated defenses were targeting him or the ship.
He was safe.
He was free.
Using deep breathing exercises Garth had shown him, Babel’s heart rate and breathing finally drifting towards ’acceptable’. The diminutive Specter laughed wholeheartedly, at long last getting why Nickels kept going on about getting in some proper cardio on a regular basis, and it’s importance for overall health…
Running away from overpowered enemies was tiring work!
Laughing again just for the sheer pleasure of being able to laugh, Babel plopped his ass into the command chair and took in the control panels.
Everything was in EuroJapanese.
Babel shook his head.
Goddamn EuroJapanese. At least it wasn’t IndoRussian. He’d be fucked completely then. As it was, EuroJapanese script -delicately engraved directly into the frame of each monitor and device- somehow conspired to be even more incomprehensible than ever.
“Okay.” Babel whispered the word out of ingrained precaution. They trained you not to speak…
…Okay…
…Passable…
…Satisfactory…
The word rattled around and around the cockpit, shaking and shivering against consoles and control panels, rattled through his bones like a slowly building tornado of pressurized, empowered meaning. Babel opened his mouth to scream as the impacted word sought to burrow into his skin, into his atoms, but slammed it shut before it got too far, biting painfully into the tip of his tongue as he did so.
It was bad enough his voice had grown strong enough that the pressure of the words alone were capable of rattling machinery. What’d happen if he screamed? There was a meaning to every scream, from fear to defiance to surrender, from love to hate and sheer demonic pain. Coupled with the tangible power of the sounds issuing from his mouth, what would one of his screams do?
Best thing for now was to keep his yap shut, school himself intently on ensuring that not even a peep escaped.
If a deadly word wasn’t busy rattling it’s way up and down the control panels in the soon-to-be stolen Shriven vessel, Babel Sinfell would’ve laughed his ass off a third and final time. If only Garth and the others could see him now! They’d spent years trying to get him to shut up for one minute, one solid minute, and now?
Now his voice had become a weapon. The Specter shut his eyes and focused solely on breathing and keeping the wordnami from digging in deep enough to leave behind psychic scars similar to the ones ingrained into Ha and her horde; the last thing Babel Sinfell wanted in life was to be merely satisfactory.
He needed to get his ass in gear. Ha was behind him, somewhere, working to undo his orders …
***
“How did he even get aboard?” Eddie knew what the answer was and supposed there was no percentage in getting upset, yet he was; that Shriven vessel carried equipment and weapons a dangerous Specter like Babel Sinfell should never possess, and moreover, the ship and it’s contents were things ADAM should never even know was out there, in the field.
“You and I both know the answer to that so let’s just look at something more interesting, okay? Our man Babel can no longer speak without risk of using his power.” ADAM could barely contain his excitement. “Isn’t that the coolest? Every single word he wants to use from now until the day he dies has to be thought of very carefully. He can’t just walk around saying hi to people. He’ll need to concentrate and focus on the specific range he wants to summon. Otherwise there’s just no telling what’ll take root in the listener.”
“You made claims that he did ‘awesome’ things.” Eddie pointed mockingly at the screen, where Babel was slowly but surely working his way through the complicated EJ control panels, lips working silently as he muddled his way through half-remembered third grade EJ Language Arts. “Doesn’t even look like he’s gonna launch the ship!”
“Oh yeah, no, he’s in a real bind here.” ADAM admitted readily. “Kind of. Ha’s forces, who’re even now arriving in the loading dock, can’t do a thing to actively prevent him from departing, and that includes ‘accidental’ damage or failing to open the bay doors to let the ship out. If Ha had been thinking clearly, she could’ve ordered it’s destruction before he got there because that would’ve been a Shriven-based decision instead of a Babel-based one. No, all they can do is stand out there, Children of the Corn style, asking him politely to come back in, being all … eerie and spooky. This is all very fascinating.”
“Speak for yourself, ADAM.” Eddie checked a non-existent watch for the time. “Wow, would you look at that, it’s seven past never. Until or unless something exciting happens, I’ve got some paint I’d like to watch dry.”
But he didn’t move. Couldn’t move, because while he loathed ADAM nearly as much as he despised Garth N’Chalez, the footage the AI was so obviously proud would go far in understanding Naoko’s affliction, and even how best to deal with Garth himself; in the case of the former, Eddie believed that the more he saw the ‘N’Chalez Effect’ in action, the deeper he’d eventually comprehend what was really going on, and in so doing, come up with a cure for Naoko.
And as for N’Chalez?
With everything that the temporal incongruity was doing –keeping the thing in the box under control, modeling the Earth and it’s environment to as perfect as possible, corralling Baron Samiel enough to keep him from breaking the simulation- the chunk of protomatter was on the verge of redlining.
If that happened, no one would be having a very good day.
Seeing Babel Sinfell in action,
as a man fully enveloped by the strangeness of his ability … somewhere in there, some flaw in Garth’s abilities might be revealed, some trick to render him permanently, utterly powerless.
The opportunity –as aggravating as it was- was one you just didn’t throw away out of spite over the company.
“All right, all right, calm down. Just wanted you to see the bit with the word there. The rest of his escape is pretty boring. A bunch of ships fly after him but do nothing, that sort of thing. No, it doesn’t get interesting until he lands on Delicate Heron.”
Eddie battled with the surge of white hot anger that screamed through him powerfully enough to affect ADAM’s display on the wall. “You let him land on Delicate Heron? What the hell?”
“Well,” ADAM replied quite reasonably, “he was in space. It’s actually super difficult to capture a spaceship if it’s piloted by someone who doesn’t wanna be caught, you know. I did a load of analyses. My tactics don’t really work all that well in the inky black. At least, not yet. I mean, I’m building a bunch of space cruisers and all that, but it takes time to get them right. Besides, I wanted to see our Wordsmith in action. Everything has it’s reasons for being, Eddie.”
“If you ruined Delicate Heron…”
“You’ll do sweet eff a, dad, ’cuz you and I both know that pretense dribbled out your ass a while ago. If you’re interested in becoming God, the last thing you’re gonna be worrying yourself with are the little people, and the people of Delicate Heron are the littlest in that system. Non-Yellow Dog affiliated, under the direct protection of Emperor-for-Life Etienne Marseilles, they’re a last bastion of old world sensibilities and dedicated to growth in ancient art forms and not much else. Who gives a fuck about all that? No one. Not even them, and they’re paid to do it. For their whole fuckin’ … never mind. Now watch. This shit gets interesting.”
Eddie kept his mouth shut.
ADAM was right, damn the vainglorious AI mind’s metaphorical hide!
***
Babel wiped another river of sweat from his shiny forehead, unable to control the epic levels of nervousness shrieking inside his melon. Terror notwithstanding, Eddie remained committed to this course of action because quite frankly, there was nothing else he could do; the remaining planets in this system were all Yellow Dog Clan planets. What with how things had gone down on Katainn’s world against that fucking Enforcer and how the other Yellow Dog Elders were busy shitting bricks over Ha –a normal response to a galactic predator- those worlds –while definitely of better use for a dude trying to escape- were all the way off his list for vacation spots.
So it was Delicate Heron or … nowhere.
And it wasn’t like he could just use the Quantum Tunnel and get away Scott free, either.
Delicate Heron had granted him landing coordinates based solely on the Shriven vessel’s documentation and little else, proving how much power someone like one of the Emperor’s weird standard-bearers possessed.
Babel was assuming the Quantum Tunnel minds couldn't be so easily tricked, which was why he’d risked planetfall in the first place; a Shriven –a boldly announced and clearly identified one, at any rate- was probably as rare as a talking space unicorn, and so the Specter gathered that if he’d gone to the Tunnel in a desperate attempt to flee to a Special Services-friendly solar system, the controlling mind would’ve started asking questions.
Questions he might’ve been able to answer under normal circumstances.
A smidgeon of motion caught Babel’s eye and the small Specter rose from his chair, prepared for anything. He’d been on the ground more than twenty minutes, with fifteen of those minutes being held here, in the least secure holding facility in at least thirty Galaxies, waiting for someone who spoke passable NorthAMC; hoping to disembark before anyone caught wind of the skinny non-EJ dude hopping the fence, Babel’s luck had finally come to an end in the form of armed Port Authority guards rolling up just in time to see him strolling down the gangplank like some kind of fucking goofball.
As expected, they’d pretty much all lost their shit right there on the spot.
Babel supposed they weren’t to blame. Expecting to see a Shriven Emissary only to nearly trip across a short Specter instead was the kind of thing to get hairy about. So when they’d started screaming questions at him in EuroJapanese while pointing swords and guns at his face, he kind of … took a longer view of the whole situation than he’d normally pick.
Since the depth and range of his powers had yet to be understood, Eddie’d been reluctant to use even a simple phrase like ‘help me’ on a crew of surly dudes in old-fashioned samurai armor, so on deaf ears had their demands fallen.
Keeping mum hadn’t been difficult.
For the guardsmen.
For him, well, once he’d figured out that they weren’t going to kill him right there on the front lawn, it’d developed pretty quickly that they’d wanted him to walk in a very specific direction. Being poked in the butt with swords had cleared up any miscommunications pretty early on.
And then they’d stared playing The Game.
The Game, of course, was to see how often innocent soldiers could keep their prisoner from accidently hurting himself en route to his cell. As with all players of the game, Eddie’s retinue had been absolutely terrible at it.
At least the few holes poked into him here and there weren’t permanent.
The door opened.
Babel straightened himself up as best he could as the very important EJ man in robes that screamed ‘I am the Boss’ stormed into the room. Given he was nearly starving to death and would murder an entire boatload of mewling kittens for something alcoholic because apparently along with their souls and personalities, Shriven sacrificed their enjoyment of finer things in life, Babel wryly suspected he was about as intimidating as a dead plant.
Behind Bossman in the nice robes there were … eighty-six armed and armored soldiers. Dressed in traditional-looking samurai outfits, Bossman’s honor guard were nevertheless armed with fairly advanced weaponry for a world allegedly dedicated to peaceful stuff like origami and haiku writing.
Babel nodded. It was a good start. He’d Jedi Mind Trick everyone in the room into becoming the foundation for his new army, then move on to anyone else who was tactically valuable. Rinse and repeat throughout the whole fucking system until his plan became a viable reality and voila!
Ready-made Super-Army ready to fuck Lady Ha’s forces right the fuck up.
Once he and his honorary Specters hit her domain, Ha wouldn’t stand a chance. He and his mega-army would sweep through all of her fortifications and right past the danger, because Ha had used her powers to force him and everyone else to build them in the first place. He was a walking, talking blueprint on how to defeat Dread Lady Ha.
Minister Tsubasa Kouki snapped his fingers Imperially, the silver and black brocaded sleeves of his honorable robes fluttering like birds. The honor guard rushed forward until they were arrayed around him defensively, their weapons pointed at numerous points along the invading Specter’s body.
The Minister nodded when the small Specter’s face went sickly green. It was only right, it was only proper. It was good the man was beginning to realize the danger he was in. What had he been thinking, coming to Delicate Heron in a Shriven ship?
Kouki pulled a slender handheld device from one of the many hidden pockets built into his robes. In addition to the handheld, he also carried a small but powerful handgun capable of killing the Specter if it came down to it, as well as several rice cakes that’d get him into hot water with his wife if she ever learned of their existence.
He cleared his throat, uncertain how fluent he was in the basest of all languages in the Universe. Kouki would almost rather gabble away in arduous IndoRussian than NorthAMC. Reading from the handheld, the Minister began, “You … you are Babel Sinfell of Special services?”
Babel flashed a wan smile and nodded.
Silence under the circumstances was also proper. Though
he’d not yet gone out of his way to contact Elder Katainn's replacement –Kouki found nearly all Yellow Dog Elders a particularly odious bunch, but none were as bad as those belonging to the Katainn Clan, who were more European than Japanese, a fact no one mentioned aloud but everyone took into consideration when dealing with them - of Babel’s capture, Kouki was intimately aware of the … shenanigans that’d taken place on the Katainn Clan's homeworld.
Such devastation. Such … the Minister shook his head. There’d been a few quite lovely cherry blossom parks near the hotel that’d gone critical. Dreadful, dreadful loss.
“You were most recently on Katainn’s world? With …” Kouki flashed an apologetic smile to the Specter as he stumbled over the odd-looking and odder-sounding names, “Telgar and Cianni Wren, Dagon the … ofumonde … apologies, apologies … Offworlder and Edio Mara?”
Babel squeezed his eyes tight for a moment as he tried reaching his friends through the Soul-HUD. Nothing. As always. During his ‘escape’ from Ha’s space-compound, he’d tried more than once to see if they were there, thinking perhaps distance between them might somehow cause an attenuation of the signal, so to speak, one that Ha wouldn’t be able to intercept.
But he’d been wrong. His best friends in the world were still radio-silent. Even if he couldn’t actually communicate with them, Babel would give nearly anything at all to find out if they were okay. With Ha going through that awkward BDSM phase, it was altogether likely that the twisted bitch was exacting very weird, very specific punishments from the remaining members of Armageddon Troop Too.
After the long second of silent mourning passed, Babel nodded again.
