by Lee Bond
“Whut in the goldang hell’re ya’ll doin’ over there?” Griffin jetted sideways a few feet because he rightly didn’t feel like takin’ one of the cyborg’s rapidly flapping elby-bones in the side of his head.
“You is not ‘ear that?” Chad looked all over the place. They couldn’t see anything that might be the cause of the weird humming vibrating through all their bones. A bunch of himselves wandered off into whatever metaphorical or hypothetical plane they existed in, intent on hunting down the source on their own, while another pile of themselves settled in to play a long game of Go Fish. “Is like some kind of noise. A … noisy noise.”
“Well now,” A smile split Griffin’s Texas-sunburnt face from ear to ear, “sounds lahk edumicated you’s is on vacation somewhere at th’ moment. A noisy noise? Ain’t never heard o’ nothin’ lahk ‘at afore.”
Chad abandoned all efforts at wiggling the sound from his ears. It were clear that it weren’t comin’ from th’ inside o’ ‘is addlepated noodle factory, which meant it were comin’ from th’ outside. “Your Granda a fan o’ sonic weaponry or anyfing like that?”
“Son, ya’ll ain’t gotta shout. Whutever it is ‘at’s buggin’ ya’ll, I ain’t hearin’ it.” Griffin thought back to the many times Antal had gloated about the various ways and means he intended on deploying to teach Garth a lesson or two before destroying the Universe one final time.
There were many.
Thousands and thousands and thousands of different tortures awaited the Prime Kin’kith, but not a one of those listed by the crystalline douchebag during ‘Let’s Flay the Skin From Griffin’s Back’ mentioned sonic anything.
Chad pursed his lips, wishing they’d not finished their ciggy so quickly. This were the kind of brainbender where a cigarette –or possibly a cup of tea- would be not only appreciated but appropriate to the scene. He stared unthinkingly up at Sauron’s Second Eye –reader-him didn’t like the moniker, oh no, he didn’t, not at all, but all complaints were squashed by Chad Himself because he were drivin’ the Winnebago - and just let his multiple minds wander.
Even the card-playing hims, because this were summink as needed proper solving.
When Chad didn’t say anything for a solid five minutes, Griffin decided to break the silence. “Still botherin’ ya’ll?”
It took another thirty seconds before Chad heard the question, and when it did finally trickle into his conscious mind, the cybernetic Platinum Brigadier nodded. “Oh, aye, ‘tis clangin’ and bouncin’ ‘round ‘tween temples like glass cymbals, innit just? Noisy as all hell and twice as insistent, only we is not find any source or cause as far as we is able to look.”
“And how far would that be, man?” Griffin asked as casually as possible. He suspected that Chad didn’t trust him, and that was all fine and dandy so long as he didn’t give the Arcadian reason to actively do so; any information on the capabilities of the bizarre being was solid Intel, and worth the risk.
“I is not terribly good at maths and things.” Chad admitted readily.
“How in the hell d’ya’ll shoot things at a distance then? Lahk with sniper rifles an’ such?”
“We is just shoot.” Chad shrugged their shoulders. “We is the by-product of summink like twelve fousand years o’ selective breedin’, chum. On top o’ that, we is suspect we is birfed by the Engines o’ Creation on the off chance that your da Nickels hain’t be up to the task o’ bringin’ a breath o’ fresh air to this shitehole. Besides all that, we is a Platinum Brigadier and there’s several hundred thousand impossible me’s as does toss down when it’s bed time. Shite like ‘where is me bullet goin’ and ‘what are the best place to put these ‘ere explosives to bring down this buildin’ so it comes down in a rush’ are basically automatically done. It’s like I is got … a whatsit. Cheat codes. Yeah. We is reckon it hain’t terribly fair for everyone else, but everyone else is unfortunately not uz, so they is fuck off.”
Griffin wanted to press the point, but decades of being duplicitous told him to keep his yapper zipped. It wasn’t like he’d be able to do anything to acquire Chad’s powers, after all, and regardless of how much more powerful he’d become under Antal’s ‘tutelage’, the native Texan by way of genetic manipulation wasn’t even entirely certain he’d be able to do more than mildly irritate the overpowered space assassin.
“Welllllllll.” Griff dragged the word through molasses, making certain to put a load of extra twang into the recipe, hootin’ and hollerin’ on the inside when he caught sight of the tiniest twitch on one of Chad’s pale ears. “Ah reckon then if it ain’t comin’ from inside here, and it ain’t sumthin’ mah Grandaddy whipped up t’turn ya’ll brains inside out, only place it’s gotta come from is on t’other sahd o’ this here Cordon. Don’tcha think?”
They pursed their lips as Chad contemplated The Cordon. “I suppose it is possible. I mean, we were shoutin’ for all sorts o’ help and whatnot as we were yanked in by Granda Antal’s bullshit Galaxyship, hey? But what kind o’ help is on the other side, hey? That’s what’s got all of me in a bind now.”
“Who’d be capable of hearin’ your shout for help, man?”
Chad shook their head. “Nah. Not fuckin’ possible.”
Well, that had Griffin all kinds of interested. “Whatcha talkin’ ‘bout?”
“Worl.” Chad struggled to find the right words. “Out here in the Outside, by which I mean everywhere that hain’t ‘neath The Dome, which is prolly done for, I is mean the Unyverse, there’s only one fing as could hear that kind o’ shout. We is discount it because, strictly speakin’, it hain’t s’posed to be possible. To be honest, squire, when we were shoutin’ for ‘elp, we were just sort of … Doin’ summat to, er, well, do summink. Din’t really expect it to get this far along, hey?”
“Go on with it, man, spit it out.” Griffin was afire with excitement. The two of them had been stuck by this stupid chunk of wall for days now, trying incredibly unsuccessful methods of breaching it, and now that there might be someone on the other side capable of helping them, suddenly getting through The Cordon seemed possibly attainable. “Who could it be?”
“The only fing,” They pushed nearly all their focused existences at The Cordon for the first time, felt something … shudder, almost like … like a giant marshmallow pillow, at once resistant yet giving, “as could hear our plea for help would be an Enforcer Suit. And th’ only way a Suit could get here to give us aid is if one of me souls as is inside said Suit were sparked awake, and the only way that could be possible is if the Enforcer as were s’posed to be wearin’ it all the time had stopped. Which is impossible because you and I is both know Trinity hain’t let that happen. The one lad we is know about as did it an’ lived are about twelve quintillion light years away. I is shout loud, hey, but not that loud.”
“Wait.” Griffin held up a finger. “What? Enforcer Suits have your souls inside? What? That doesn’t sound … sanitary.”
“Wrong part o’ the sentence, squire.” Chad maneuvered his way over to The Cordon and pressed their forehead against it, then redoubled all of himselfs efforts at pushing, intellectually, as it were, through the Universe-spanning blockade. “Crikey. If it are Gwy as is on t’other side, that’d be well wicked…”
***
"Hush." Chadsuit held up a finger, summarily hushing Gwy once more; the insectoid Enforcer were clearly upset about being talked to in such a way, and had Chadsuit more time and schooling in delicacy, he might very well have found some other way to silence his partner more appropriately, but they hain't 'ave the time and he sure as shite had never been to no delicacy school, hey?
Gwy wished he were human, or at least not his own species, and for one good reason; of all the motions and gestures human beings got up to, rubbing your eyes with the palms of your hands when you were stressed out and tired was one of those perfectly understood unspoken statements.
The two of them had been going back and forth now for nearly half an hour, arguing the different sides of
what was proving to be an unbeatable conundrum: how to get to the other side of The Cordon.
Gwy didn't necessarily mind an honest and forthright exchange of opinions and ideas, but all of Chadsuit's offerings leaned heavily towards 'build a laser death planet, fire laser death planet at Cordon until Cordon breaks' variety, refusing to accept just how bad an idea that might really be, especially when, you know, Kith Antal and his Harmonic Horde was lurking around there as well.
Gwy was more … practical. His belief that if some form of MegaTunnel had failed -and quite spectacularly- to breach The Cordon, it was that a laser death planet would hardly do any better.
There was, for instance, Nodal manipulation. Gwy knew through reading portions of the documents revolving around the Tannhauser Incident that an entire Node had been repurposed to keep the Bruush permanently at bay, leading the Empator-Tyrene to believe that if it could be done once, it could be done again.
Just as he had punched holes in Chadsuit's dreams of enormous laser-belching planets of doom, so too had Chadsuit been quick to remind Gwy that there wasn't a single soul who knew where the Nodes were hidden.
Trinity knew, and t took precisely zero brain power to know It'd never give up that information.
Five minutes passed, all with Chadsuit standing oddly in the middle of the engineering room, head cocked to one side, precisely as he'd done when something inside the Suit had detected the Tunnel's signal frequency.
At least this time there was no screaming or shouting or ridiculous behavior.
Eventually, Chadsuit shook his head. "Nah."
"What's nah?" Gwy pushed, unconvinced that there was nothing going on.
"Worl, it's prolly nuffink, yeah?" Chadsuit tapped his fingers against his leg. "'s not like it were last time, wiv the Tunnel…"
"Are you hearing something? Something else?" Gwy stepped closer to Chadsuit, excited. "What is it?"
Chadsuit wished he were real. Then he could do something dramatic, like lick his lips or chew on a fingernail or summat similar. Helped with the whole emotional bit of fings, right? Set the scene better. As it were, he were an autonomously self-aware Enforcer Suit as were forged o' metals and all that, so unless he felt like goin' through a whole long rigmarole, Gwy weren't getting nowt but mute silence and stock-still body.
The finger tapping helped, but there were better ways.
"I is like, fink that there's someone on t'other side o' this 'ere Cordon." Chadsuit hummed tunelessly to himself for a few seconds. "Like, I is almost 'ear what they is finkin' or wotever. Is this wot's it's like to be tellypafic?"
"You went out of your way to mispronounce that word as poorly as you could." Gwy chided gently. "No one, anywhere, ever, has said telepathic like this before now."
"I may 'ave, I may not 'ave." Chadsuit retorted smugly, crossing his arms high on his chest. "Fact remains, yeah, I is near cert I is 'ear someone finkin'. Weirdest part is, orl right, I is pretty sure 'e is hearin' me."
Gwy poked and prodded a few buttons on the nearest control panel, rerouting what paltry data the forward sensors were detecting in the hopes that they were sensitive enough –or that The Cordon had been damaged enough by the MegaTunnel’s failed firing- to glean something.
As always –even in light of Chadsuit’s explicit belief that there was something or someone close by- the information was about as useless as hoping they could just walk right on through.
“I’m not detecting anything.” Gwy offered, feeling lame; Chadsuit had his head off to one angle as if somehow physically having his head higher up would allow him to hear the unhearable.
“I need to be closer.” Chadsuit announced suddenly. Before Gwy could even have a chance to stop the machine intelligence, he was out of the engineering room and near the bulkhead doors that’d put him in the airlock.
Gwy followed quickly, wondering if Chadsuit had at long last lost what little mind he’d possessed in the first place. He hated to admit it –even to himself- but there’d always been a smoldering bit of concern about the dangers of something as powerful as an Enforcer Suit attaining self-awareness.
Was this the first sign of madness?
“You shouldn’t go out there.” Gwy challenged as Chadsuit stepped through the threshold. “There’s no way of knowing what the conditions are like, not really. The Cordon’s power may be influencing everything aboard this ship, including you.”
“Like as not,” Chadsuit’s voice came over the speakers without the usual clicking buzz that seemed to be an intentionally installed design flaw on most Trinity ships, “I is goin’ out there anyways, yeah? You is fink I is hallucinate, and that is all well and good squire, but you is forget one important fing about all of this.”
The small panel on the side of the door indicated that Chadsuit had primed the airlock cycles. Gwy couldn’t see any way to keep his companion inside the ship, and wasn’t willing to use their relationship as a weapon to do so. The Enforcer Suit was self-aware, and was close to a frenzy; as he stood inside the airlock waiting for everything to pressurize, it was clear that Chadsuit was taking every single ounce of patience to refrain from blowing his way out.
“What’s that?” Gwy asked.
Chadsuit rapped the side of his head with a fist just as the airlock pressure balanced and the outer doors popped open. “We is ‘ere on account o’ wot I were ‘earin’ the first time ‘round, right? We took a leap of faith then, Gwyleh Ronn, and to do less right ‘ere an’ now don’t sit well wiv me. You is stuck inside the ship. There hain’t no fookin’ way you is find an Empator-Tyrene-based EVA suit. Let me do this, orl right? If wot I is ‘ear is in me own ‘ead, I’ll learn it soon enough. Ciao for now.”
Gwy watched on, helpless, as Chadsuit –his only true companion for a terribly long time- clambered awkwardly free of the airlock. Once he was situated properly in space, it was a matter of seconds for the Enforcer Suit to begin maneuvering his way towards the very center of the Tunnel-burned wound.
“Good luck, my friend.” Gwy commanded the external airlock door to be closed, then made his way to the main cabin.
The least he could do was watch on, using both the sensors of the vessel and his own extremely considerable telepathic powers.
If there was a conscious mind on the other side of The Cordon, one that was capable of communicating with Chadsuit, it might not be who the he believed.
It might very well be Kith Antal, and if that was the case, someone was going to have to be bold enough to destroy Chadsuit before the situation grew out of control.
Gwy settled down as comfortably as his insect body would allow on human-based furniture and stared at the monitors. Out there in the inky blackness of space, with The Cordon looming so close, one of the most feared things in all of Trinityspace looked about as threatening as a gnat.
Against his better judgment, Gwy thumbed the comms. “You okay, Chadsuit?”
“Oh yes, we is quite fine, old chum. We is floatin’ through space ‘eadin’ towards smack dab center of wot might very well be a Kith trap, feelin’ all sorts o’ ‘umble as we is just realize we is roughly the size of a babby’s persqueeter and not terribly threatenin’.” Chadsuit grumbled to himself for a moment. “On the plus side, though, it do seem as though wot I were ‘earin’ is getting’ louder. Like tunin’ in one o’ them old-fashioned radios, yeah?”
Gwy nodded. “Good. Keep your wits about you. This might not be …”
“I got it, squire, I got it.” Chadsuit paused for a moment, and somehow, Gwyleh felt concern emanating from the suit. “Erm. You is got your ‘and on the button sort of fing, right?”
The Empator-Tyrene dipped his head in sorrow for a moment. What was Chadsuit becoming? Had he been this way the whole time, just hiding behind the brash, almost gauche ‘Chad personality’? “I do. It won’t come to that.”
“It fucking better well not, you bleedin’ space bug, else I is be severely disappointed. When I is in cybernetic purgatory, I is spend all my time an’ effort figurin
’ out ‘ow to haunt you if it turns out I is bein’ conned by Antal. Now, I is close and I need to concentrate, so keep an eye on fings. If it looks like I is bein’ possessed or overridden or wotever, you is know what to do.”
“It won’t come to that.” Gwy hissed, reluctant now to even consider the possibility that the intelligence Chadsuit was detecting was anyone other than Chad.
But Chadsuit didn’t respond. He was too busy listening to the other side.
***
“Ah don’t really know if ya’ll should have yer goldang head stuffed right up taght like that agin this here Cordon, son.” Griffin wasn’t gonna get anywhere near that thing until or unless they figured out some way to get through it or they had to shuffle off right quick to some other place; on the off chance that his Grandaddy was pullin’ some kind of scam to get them to stand still while he come around the other side, the Kin’kithal was presently embracing a considerable amount of fire-borne power and was ready to rip open another Fire Vortex at the smallest sign of actual danger.
Downside to holding on to all that power was that he was giving Antal a GPS location accurate enough to know right where they were down to the millimeter, but it was either that or risk getting caught with their pants down.
When Chad didn’t respond, Griffin shifted a little bit closer, eyes still on the horizon behind them. Moving through the Galaxyship was more difficult than moving through actual, empty space; at least in proper space, you could use ships and things, but here, inside Antal’s vast vessel, the laws of physics suffered from just about every violation you could imagine. This was forcing the Harmony clones to literally lay down light year lengths of road at hypervelocity, which they were accomplishing with the aid of side-mounted columnar machines that towered above them, spitting out matter to be used.
Griffin had never seen this particular tactic employed before, but the Harmony clones were proving to be the masters of the trick. “Fuckin’ Harmony. Goldang fuckers got to be movin’ at close to the goldang speed o’ light, they movin’ so fast.”
