 |
|
|
Post By The Hooded Hood's interlude amongst the stars Mon Jan 23, 2006 at 01:23:34 pm EST |
Subject
#252: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: All Of Your Base Are Belong To Us | |
|
|
Next In Thread >> | |
#252: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: All Of Your Base Are Belong To Us Author's Note: It's a bad sign that the plotlines are proliferating into extra episodes this early in the arc. Hence this chapter contains just half the stuff promised in the last issue. The other story strands will appear in UT#253, and I'll try and get it done later this week if board activity warrants it and time allows.Previously: The all-powerful Parody Master is marching his conquering armies across the Parodyverse. The Lair Legion sent Yo and the Librarian to gather allies who will join the heroes of Earth to oppose him – but the mission has been betrayed! The Skunk Confederacy is amongst the space empires the Parody Master has claimed, and he demands Prime Princess Annar as his tribute-bride. Earth-born elementalist Liu Xi has been taken by sorcerer supreme Xander the Improbable to the Skunk homeworld to befriend and comfort Annar in her last days before marriage. Cast and locations are at Who's Who in the Parodyverse and Where's Where in the Parodyverse. Previous chapters are found on The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom.  The Type Nine Lozir Enterprises Nebula Galactibus was something of a collector’s item these days. Interplanetary vehicle fanatics appreciated those classic lines and retro fins, its pink and purple bodywork, its wood-panelled dashboard and its distinctive chunky silver trim. And as they said, the things were built to last in an age when solid state engineering really meant solid. It wasn’t a flashy vehicle, but it got to job done. In this case, the job was dropping out of the transwarp continuum that allowed ships to skirt regular space through distance-distorting short cuts and coming to a halt near Astrovid Deep Space Transmission Station Vizlo Kolumbar. “Kolumbar was a pioneer amongst the Astrovids,” Lee Bookman explained to his travelling companion Yo. “He was the first technician to encode faster-than-light transmissions, enabling what eventually became the Astrovid Galactic Broadcasting Net. Of course, that was nearly five hundred years back now, but he’s still revered as one of their pioneers. The IOL has his original papers stored in the Great Respository.” Lee Bookman was a scholarly-looking man with thick round spectacles. He wore the standard uniform of a Moon Public Librarian, an employee of the Intergalactic Order of Librarians, but he had again defied regulations by customising it with a long topcoat and a few extra pockets for useful things. He was quite enjoying the field trip with Yo. The deputy leader of the Lair Legion was good company, and seemed endlessly interested in the things that the Librarian had to tell him. Yo was a pure thought being, a genderless entity from a planet of concept, wrapped into a human shape. Yo variously elected to be male or female, and could take on any ability or skill s/he believed that s/he had. And Yo got on with people, which was probably why Legion chairman Sir Mumphrey Wilton had sent him/her as ambassador to the remaining free races of the galaxy. “Poor spacing station is not to be looking too good right now,” Yo pointed out as the Galactibus decelerated towards the Vizlo Kolumbar. Yo could do many things, but had yet to master colloquial English. But Yo was right about their destination. The platform’s main ring had been blown out. The broadcast dish was a wreck. Debris hung in space around the bulk of the destroyed base. The lifeless transmission station rolled end over end in its catastrophic new orbit. There was no power, no light, no life aboard the vessel. “Proton cannons,” assessed the pilot behind the Galactibus’ wheel. “Very distinctive scorching. You just can’t get that layered effect with anything else. No matter how much you practise.” Another of Lee Bookman’s irregularities that brought him into conflict with his IOL superiors was his maintenance of a refurbished Automated Life Form – a robot – from the infamous RED series. It was this entity who spoke from the pilot’s chair. A.L.F.REDs tended to work very effectively as major domos, butlers, chauffeurs, bodyguards, and heavy duty combat machinery right up to the moment where they went insane and slaughtered everybody around them. It was probably only a hope that one day Bookman’s A.L.F.RED might do that to him that had kept the Governors of the IOL from demanding the robot be destroyed. “What happened here?” Lee gasped as his ran his hands over the Galactibus’ sensor boards. “There should be almost a million people operating that platform.” “Seems pretty clear, boss,” A.L.F.RED answered. “They got taken out.” The robot pointed to half a dozen places on the diagnostic imagery flashing up on the monitor screens. “Look, multiple attack angles. They got pounded from all directions at once. They were surrounded.” “Is terrible!” Yo fretted. S/he had instinctively shifted to male form to express belligerence, and now the tall handsome figure in a black silk Zorro costume (complete with mask, hat, and rapier) was using the expertise in sensor operation s/he believed she had to check for survivors. There were none. The Galactibus’ sensors did detect a thousand or so emergency escape pods that had ejected from the station when the atmosphere had been compromised. All of the lifeboats had been picked off afterwards one by one. “Was this just co-incidence?” the Librarian wondered. “A random attack by pirates or some local territorial aggression? Or a really bad movie critic. Or is this related to our appointed meeting here with the Astrovid Defence Minister to discuss alliance and mutual support against the aggression of the Parody Master?” “Yo is thinking is to be unlikely is just co-incidence,” the pure thought being answered. “Yo is to be thinking that somehow, some uncute murdering somethings are to be knowing that we are coming.” “If we can get the Galactibus into a landing bay over there I could perhaps find the remains of a data core in there and use my abilities to read what happened,” the Librarian offered. “We know what happened,” A.L.F.RED argued. “Six or seven really huge ships appeared out of nowhere, surrounded the station, pounded it until its force fields shattered, then blew it to hell.” He pointed to the main monitor screen again. “A bit like that.” Around the Galactibus, half a dozen Z’Sox Stealthships decloaked in attack formation, their spiky black shells all pointed towards the ambassadors from Earth, their weapons charging up. Almost a week had passed since Liu Xi Xian had arrived on the Skunk Homeworld in the Andromeda Nebula, and Prime Princess Annar still hadn’t been saved. Every day Annar dreaded that the Parody Master, conqueror of the Skunk Confederacy, would arrive to claim her. And every day Liu Xi Xian kept vigil with her. “There has to be some way to fight back,” Liu Xi urged her new friend. “There has to be.” “The Parody Master defeated us,” Annar replied. “It was a fair fight, but his Avawarriors are nigh unstoppable. And he sent the Singularity Riders against our elite forces. No-one can stand against them.” “That doesn’t mean the resistance is finished. We could…” “Liu Xi… My mother gave her word. There was a peace treaty. A surrender treaty. And I was part of it. The Confederacy gets to remain self-governing under the overlordship of the Parody Master. We supply troops for his army. And he is given a bride of his choice to add to his wives. That’s me.” “Wives? He has more than one?” “Yes. They are trophies, I suppose. Powerful, beautiful, significant women from the worlds he has overcome. He sometimes deploys them in combat, and they are almost as formidable as the Singularity Riders themselves.” Liu Xi wasn’t impressed. “Why doesn’t one of them just put a dagger in his eye while he’s sleeping. I would.” Annar shook her head. “It doesn’t work that way. Before I become the Parody Master’s new consort, I will be… conditioned. Trained. Tortured, really. Broken to obedience. He has people who are very good at it.” She shuddered. “By the time I go to his bed, I’ll be a good, loyal, obedient bride to him. I’ll want to serve him in every way. They’ll make me want to do it.” Liu Xi wasn’t convinced. “Resist,” she urged. “I’ll try,” agreed the Prime Princess of the Skunks, “but I imagine every one of his women intended the same. As I say, his High Priest and his Imperial Reconditioners are the very best.” “Why you? I mean, if he could pick anybody?” “Because I am the Prime Princess, of course.” Annar gestured to herself. “How much do you know of us Skunks?” “Only what I’ve found out since Xander brought me to you. You’re a race of shapeshifters…” “Not all of us,” the Princess explained. “As on many worlds, the unfathomable Celestian Space Robots came here at the dawn of history and left three races: a genetically advanced race of so-called Perfects, a genetically-variable race of Deviates, and a control population who were unaffected. As on your planet.” “Really?” Liu Xi was fascinated. “And as on many worlds, there was war here between the three tribes. On this world the Deviates prevailed, wiping out all others. And so the Skunks gained the genetic capacity to alter their forms at will.” Annar pointed to the teeming city outside the palace window. “But this power is stronger in some than others. Many can hardly shift their basic shape and colour. A few poor souls cannot morph at all, and are the object of pity and scorn.” “Okay. So people here judge someone on their shapshifting abilities the same way some people on Earth judge others by how they look,” Liu Xi reasoned. “I suppose so. In our culture most of us can alter our appearances at will, to a greater or lesser degree. We do not allow ourselves to be seen or touched in our true forms, of course. That would be like…” “Like a human walking around naked?” suggested the elementalist from Earth. “Yes. Shameful and disgusting. So you can imagine how much the bodybound amongst us are disregarded. Conversely, the talented shapechangers are held in high esteem. The greatest of them are bred with the princesses of the royal house, to improve the genome, for we women of imperial blood are keepers of the genetic heritage of the Deviates, preservers of the purity of our race. And I am the best of my generation of shapeshifters, even as my mother the Empress was the greatest of hers.” Annar stood up and span around, and suddenly she was a perfect copy of Liu Xi. Then she was Xander the Improbable, then an Avawarrior, then a huge bristling armoured combat monster. Then she was her customary self again. “I see,” Liu Xi said. “So the Parody Master wants you because you’re powerful, and because you represent the greatest treasure of your race.” “Our war leaders, our generals, our rulers, all gain their status because they are joined to women of the imperial house,” Annar explained. “In wedding me, in breaking me to be his slave, the Parody Master sends a message to the whole Confederacy.” “All the more reason to resist, then,” Liu Xi argued. “Do you think your people want to see you sacrificed like this?” “I think that they want to survive, Liu Xi Xian, of Earth. A princess is sometimes sacrificed to keep the monster satisfied. Do you not have those stories on your world?” “I guess so. But don’t you have heroes who’ll come and fight the monster?” “Our heroes are all slaughtered,” Annar said in a half-whisper. “Now all we can do is surrender and survive.” The intimate conversation was interrupted by a blare of trumpets from outside. Both the girls jumped. “What’s that?” demanded Liu Xi, peering out into the parade ground below. A huge man in shining red, gold, and black armour was stepping through the transfer gateway. He carried a glistening black war-axe that seemed to scream in Liu Xi’s mind. “My husband,” shivered Princess Annar. “He’s come for me.” “High Assassin K’Lakh of the Z’Sox Sanction Ship Silent Termination to the emissaries of the Lair Legion,” came the message over the communications array. Ironically it was using the faster-than-light transmissions method first pioneered by Vizlar Kolumbar. “I will speak with the victims Yo and Bookman.” “Well there goes any question about whether we were expected,” breathed the Librarian. “Hello. Is to be Yo speaking, uncute Z’Sox killing thing. Is shame for what you have done to poor space station people.” “Sure, tell ‘em off,” growled A.L.F.RED. “It’s not like they have us surrounded and outgunned by a magnitude of… well we don’t have any guns on the Galactibus.” “Victim Yo, you will power down your force field and you will surrender yourself and your crew into our custody.” “Yo is thinking not,” answered the pure thought being. “Yo is thinking you are too naughty to be trusting of.” “How did you find us?” Lee Bookman asked the Z’Sox. The Librarian was always ready to gather new information. “You were betrayed,” hissed K’Lakh. “We know of your attempts to conspire with the Naicluv, the Crystaxians, the Shankaru, the Xnylonians, the Dramatis, the Draumid Hegemony, the Prospecti, the Clayhog migrants…” “There’s no way he could have got our itinerary from any one source on our route,” Lee Bookman scowled. “None of them knew all of our destinations.” “Is true,” agreed Yo. “Unless he is to be getting of information from Earth, from Lair Mansioning itself.” “Is anybody worried that he’s giving us free information because he’s about to kill us?” A.L.F.RED pointed out. “He doesn’t want us dead,” Lee Bookman argued. “We’re far more valuable alive for torture. They know where we’ve been, what we’ve been trying to set up. They don’t know how successful we were.” Yo nodded. She was in female form now, still in the sleek black silks but with auburn hair tumbling to her shoulders. “Yo is to be saying thank you,” she answered the Z’Sox, “but Yo is not to be wanting to be surrendering today.” “You have no choice, thought being,” K’Lakh gloated. “I have your vessel bracketed. There is no escape.” The Galactibus shuddered as something made contact with it. “And now I have my boarding party on your craft,” added the High Assassin. “We’ve got Z’Sox on the hull,” A.L.F.RED warned. “They’re forcing the air lock. Do I have permission to ask them to leave? I’ll be really polite. Honestly.” Yo smiled happily and took the robot’s place behind the controls of the space craft. “What are you going to do?” the Librarian asked Yo nervously. “Oh, Yo is going to be going out fighting,” the pure thought being promised. The Parody Master, the most powerful being in the Parodyverse, strode into the Skunk palace’s Hall of Victories as if he owned the place; because he did. The conqueror stood well over six feet tall, even without the heavy combat armour and stylised helmet. He was also dressed in an aura of absolute authority, a confidence and capability so vast it was almost a tangible thing. He was so compelling that it took Liu Xi a moment before she noticed the other details of his arrival. The Parody Master carried two weapons, a sword at his hip and a great black axe. The axe was still screaming in Liu Xi’s mind. The axe bound the souls of those it had slaughtered and channelled their power to its owner. Flanking the Parody Master were some of his minions. Holy Taus, High Priest of the Parody Cult that worshipped the Parody Master as a god was austere and impressive in his crimson robes. He would conduct the ceremony that united Annar to her lord. Avatar II, General of the Avawarriors, wore armour similar to his master although less elaborate, and carried the molecule-thick blade common to the chosen elite soldiers of the war host. A huge golden throne had been erected in the centre of the hall, and it was there where the Parody Master strode. As he sat down, guards brought forward a wretched, chained old man to kneel at his feet to act as a foot stool. “Who..?” wondered Liu Xi. Annar was almost paralysed with fright, her skin more grey than green, but she’d been well trained in galactic politics. “Kor-Al,” she answered with a shudder. “War Lord of the Maxellians. Every one of their race is impossibly strong, fast, invulnerable, able to fly… They convert solar energy to enhance their metabolisms. And Kor-Al is the proudest of their race.” She stared in horror at the broken, quivering old man in the adamantine shackles. His hands were gone, mere gory stumps. His tongueless mouth drooled slackly. “Or he was.” “Maxel fell five days ago,” a courtier explained to the waiting princess. “The Parody Master stopped the source of their powers by blowing up their sun. Their planet did not survive. Neither did the Maxellians.” “Blew up their sun?” Liu Xi swallowed. “He has weapons that can do that?” “He has them,” the courtier replied. “But in this case he did it personally. Then he led his Avawarriors against the Maxellian Elite Squads that had been off-planet. This old man was the sole Maxellian survivor.” Annar looked even more unhappy. Liu Xi stood beside her, wishing she could think of a way to save the girl she’d become close to in these intense few days. There had to be some means of stopping the forced marriage, of halting the inexorable march of conquest. Annar fumbled with a thin silver chain round her neck and pulled a tiny crystal pendant loose to look at it. “Liu Xi, this little trinket… It’s completely valueless.” And yet the princess caressed it as if it was the most precious thing in the world, her eyes glistening with coming tears. “What is it?” the elementalist asked. “It’s just a silly thing. My old nurse used to hang it over my cot at night, to quieten me. I’ve always had it.” “Then it has a value.” “It won’t have,” Annar said. “Now when the Reconditioners are done with me. I won’t be me any more.” She pushed the little crystal into Liu Xi’s hands and closed them around the trinket. “I want you to take it.” “It has a beautiful lattice,” the elementalist sensed. “It vibrates with love.” “Please keep it. If you keep it, and remember me sometimes, I won’t be completely gone. Please.” “I will keep it,” Liu Xi promised, her throat tight. “I will remember.” “How strange to find so unlikely a friend in my last days,” mused the Skunk girl. “How blessed.” “Let Princess Annar come forward,” Holy Taus announced. “The Parody Master wishes to inspect his bride.” The Z’Sox were an decapod arachnid race, trained from birth as assassins and warriors. Their culture had some similarities with Earth’s ancient Japanese clans, with strict social roles, elaborate rites, and a complicated code of honour. Much of the code related to the sacred nature of the kill. In matters of stealth and murder the Z’Sox were the finest terminators in space. They over-rode the air lock security in the Galactibus in less than fifteen seconds, bypassing illicitly-copied IOL defence systems with contemptuous ease. The first of the assault force scuttled into the single internal compartment of the little spacecraft ready for anything. Well, anything except an angry A.L.F.RED who had unshipped his weapons array. Now the robot did not resemble an old-fashioned Earth butler so much as an unfolded Swiss army knife; assuming Swiss army knives came with proton rippers and molecular disassembler cannons. “Trespassers will be prosecuted,” A.L.F.RED warned them as he went into extreme combat mode (allegedly he had other combat modes too, but Lee had never found them). As robot and assassins came together in a gory ballet of squashed spider, Yo jumped the Galactibus forward, spinning it with impossible precision between the tractor threads of the stealthships and plunging for cover amongst the debris of the broken broadcast station. “Good one,” Lee Bookman agreed. “I don’t suppose you could actually get inside the wreck, could you? Somewhere near the remains of their transmission dish?” “Yo is thinking so,” Yo replied, jinking the Galactibus away from a second incoming cadre of close combat sanction officers and somehow manoeuvring right through one of the big scorched holes in the side of the Vizlo Kolumbar. “Is to be cute-Lee is having of clevering plan?” “You know I can absorb and transmit written information to and from my brain as a necessary part of my Librarian duties?” Lee Bookman reminded the genderless thought being. “And if I squirt it into an unprotected mind too hard, all that literature can be a bit overwhelming, knock them out? Well what if I could amplify my ability through the Astrovid transmission array? Beam the complete works of Issac Asimov right into every Z’Sox out there?” “Is to be good plan,” agreed Yo. “Is to be making of it to happen.” A.L.F.RED stepped back packing away his weapons into his metallic shell. “Those guys will know better to come in without wiping their feet in future,” he muttered. “In their next lives.” The Z’Sox had launched one-man flyers now, and the chase was taking place inside the wrecked chambers of the Astrovid station. Yo concentrated hard, grinning as s/he twisted the Galactibus through sundered bulkheads with inches to spare. “Is to be exiting, yes? Aaaghh!!” Yo suddenly winced and clutched his/her forehead. The Galactibus caught a corner of a jutting piece of wreckage and shook sickeningly. “What’s wrong?” the Librarian demanded, grabbing the secondary control yoke and steadying the vehicle. “Yo?” “Is to be okay now,” the Zorro impersonator assured his friend. “Uncute Z’Sox are to be deploying of concept field to be stopping of Yo taking us out of here to the Happy Place.” Another of Yo’s abilities was to shift to a conceptual dimension when things were getting too traumatic; except that route had just been blocked by an assassin fleet which had come prepared. “Some of these bad guys are getting awfully close again,” A.L.F.RED warned. “And this time they’re aiming to cripple the Bus, not us. That way they can crawl all over us at their leisure.” “Nearly there,” Yo called, twisting the vehicle through a gap made by a blast from one of the pursuing ships. “How near is to be we must get to transmission array?” “Into it,” Lee Bookman said, pressing his hands to the metal wall of the Galactibus. “I need to be in physical contact.” Yo tangled the vessel in the broken spine of the massive broadcasting dish that had once served to relay the Astrovid broadcasts across the galaxy. “Is this?” “Fine,” agreed the Librarian, and released his knowledge. Princess Annar walked slowly up to the throne where the Parody Master waited for her. Every eye in the crowded court was upon the sacrificial princess. Liu Xi noted the Empress, Annar’s mother, watching with a stony face from a high balcony. “Here I am,” Annar told the Parody Master. “My lord.” “Oh please,” purred the conqueror. “All my brides call me Master.” The princess shuddered. “Yes, Master,” she replied. “You are beautiful, Prime Princess,” approved the Parody Master. “A fitting tribute from your fallen people. Show yourself to me.” “Master?” “Your true form. Show yourself to me as you naturally are.” Annar looked around desperately. “Here? There are people…” “The whole of your empire watches our meeting, princess,” the Parody Master assured her. “Now show yourself to me unchanged, your real shape.” Liu Xi remembered Annar’s horror as she’d discussed Skunk taboos, of the shame of being seen unpolymorphed. She felt a rage swell up within her as the princess blushed and trembled, at the Parody Master’s cruel gloating. The Earth girl took a step forward, summoning up her elemental gifts, commanding fire and water and earth and wood… A hand dropped on her shoulder. “Don’t,” Xander the Improbable told her. “It’s not a good idea.” Annar stood miserable and mortified in her true shape, a thin pale green waif. The Parody Master pulled her forward and inspected her, running his hands across her bare skin, enjoying how she winced. “He’s defiling her!” Liu XI spat. “I’m not going to…” “I brought you here to observe and learn, and to offer poor Annar a little comfort while it could still be given,” the sorcerer supreme of the Parodyverse said. Xander was a rumpled-looking man in faded red scholar’s robes, his modest frame seemingly weighed down by the cares of his office. Today he seemed more tired and world-weary than ever. “There is nothing you can do to spare her.” “She’s weeping.” “Yes. The Parody Master will destroy her. This is only the beginning, a public show to demonstrate to the Skunks who is in charge now. He’s hoping to provoke rebellion, to find out who the trouble-makers are likely to be. I wonder if there is any passion behind his actions at all, or if it is just cold calculation?” “You are acceptable,” the Parody Master told Annar. “You may kneel here at my feet. No, remain in your natural form. There will be no deceptions between us, my bride. Push that broken old Maxellian fool aside. I’m going to have him stuffed later. His mad whinings are beginning to irritate me.” “I thought you were supposed to be a big sorcerer?” Liu Xi said, turning angrily on Xander. “I thought it was your job to fix things like this?” The master of the mystic crafts shook his head. “My job is… complicated. And sometimes it involves hard choices. Sacrifices. I hope you’ll understand one day.” The Parody Master stroked Annar’s trembling head, brushing her cheek so he could catch some of her tears on his glove. “Take my bride away, Taus. Train her in the ways of obedience to me.” “With pleasure, your holiness,” the High Priest assented. “Bring forth the chains for the Prime Princess of the Skunks!” “Make sure that the princess’ instruction is transmitted live across the Skunk Confederacy,” the Parody Master ordered. “It is important that her people learn submission even as she will.” Annar looked up at the Parody Master. “T-there are no words in our language to express my contempt for you,” she told him. “These are not the acts of a warrior, but of a bully. A coward.” And she spat on him. The Parody Master backhanded her across the court. Liu Xi tore forward, erupting the ground at his feet, searing the flesh beneath his armour, transmuting his blood to molten metal. She hurled aside High Priest and Avawarrior alike and went straight for the conqueror. The Parody Master gestured and caught her in a barrier of force. He willed the elements to return to their former state, and they did so. He hoisted her up for inspection, curious about this sudden and powerful interruption. “And what is this?” he asked mildly as Liu Xi Xian struggled against the will that held her spread-eagled in the air. “Ah, your majesty,” called Xander the Improbable, shouldering his way through the agitated crowd, pausing only to whip a cape off one of the courtiers and drape it over Annar, “May I introduce Liu Xi Xian of Earth, a young woman with a gift for elemental empathy? We were just on our way to see you, but she’s an impulsive sort.” “A Terran?” the Parody Master noted with interest. “Au wui waht lei dui an chut lei yuen hau bai ju hai lei go see fut dau, sau yi lnei hau yi geen do au teck do lei go see fut biu C!” Liu Xi swore. “A tribute,” Xander smiled. “The peoples of Earth send you this bride for your, um, your pleasure, and they ask that you leave them to their peaceful existences.” The information wave swept out over the Z’Sox stealthships, wiping computer drives, sending the pilots surgically wired into the navigation systems into epileptic fits, stunning the warriors poised to cross the void and attack the ruptured space station. Not all were taken down, but many. “Is to be time to be making of a run for it,” Yo called to the Librarian. “Is to be everything ready for big getaway to next destination?” “I have no idea,” Lee Bookman admitted. The engineering manuals he’d absorbed earlier didn’t cover emergency diagnosis of systems damaged by giant ninja space spiders. “Is to be time to be finding out,” Yo suggested. S/he patted the console of the Galactibus. “Come on, cute busing, is to be all downing to you now.” “I think a couple of those stealth-ships are still moving,” A.L.F.RED warned. “The pulse didn’t quite shut down all their systems. So watch out.” “Yo is thinking Yo can avoid them.” The galactibus crashed out of the transmission station through a cracked plexiglass viewing bubble, twisted to avoid incoming plasma fire from the Sanction Ship Silent Termination and headed out for deep space, where the gravity shears wouldn’t interfere with opening a transwarp conduit. The other six Z’Sox stealth ships decloaked. “Ah,” breathed Lee Bookman. “We should have known. These people are the masters at concealment and deception.” Yo calculated the odds of escape through the assault formation. They were too small for even him/her to believe in. The thought being shifted to male again. “Well then,” s/he said, “Here goes.” And Yo pointed the Galactibus straight at the bridge of the Silent Termination. S/he brought the vehicle up to ramming speed. “Now you’re talking,” approved A.L.F.RED. “Give them something to cry about.” “Er, you do know we’re going to be split open like an eggshell?” the Librarian advised. “Lair Legion, stand down or you will be destroyed,” warned K’Lakh as his vessel’s weapons systems came back on line. “Is to be a no,” called back Yo, gunning the engines for more speed. “Fire.” Seven Z’Sox stealth vessels loosed their plasma cannons simultaneously. The Galactibus vanished in a flare of sun-bright energies, leaving nothing but free-floating vapour molecules to mark where it had been. “NO!” Liu Xi struggled against the psionic threads that held her. Somehow the Parody Master held mastery over everything he was near. The elements slipped from Liu Xi’s control to his as he approached. She could sense the power he exerted even over the components of her body. “Hmm,” the conqueror considered, stroking a finger across the elementalist’s lips. “I am pleased. You have done well, Xander.” “I live to serve, Master,” the sorcerer supreme bowed. A cold chill ran down Liu Xi’s spine. “What?” “Why do you think I brought you here?” the master of the mystic crafts asked her. “Weren’t you listening to what I said? Sometimes sacrifices are necessary. Sometimes we have to do things we’d prefer not to.” “You betrayed me!” “No,” the little man in the dusty red robes denied sadly. “Betrayal requires free will. Those who have received the Obedience Brand have none.” “Did you think I would allow the sorcerer supreme of the Parodyverse to remain free to oppose me?” demanded the Parody Master. “My Singularity Riders brought Xander the Improbable to me months ago to join my forces.” “Fight it, Xander!” Liu Xi shrieked, trying to control her panic. “You’re the master of the mystic crafts. You have to be able to overcome this!” “The Obedience Brand locks onto one, flesh, mind, and soul, through means technical, psionic, and mystical,” Xander replied. “It is empowered by the will of the Parody Master himself, backed by his inexhaustible energies. Nobody has ever broken free.” “I do not Brand my brides, however,” the Parody Master told Liu Xi and Annar. “They serve because they are taught to love me.” The elements around Liu Xi would not respond, so she dug deep into the ground, as far as her senses would allow it. There, far from the Parody Master’s domination, were forces she could command. She bent her will to the telluric tides in the bowels of the planet, fifty miles deep, a hundred miles below that. She slammed her mind into them with all the rage that choked her. The earthquake shook the capital and rocked the palace, setting off automated force screens designed to protect against transnuclear attack. Everyone but the Parody Master was knocked off their feet, then sent scattering as plasterwork fell from the roof of the hall of victories. Liu Xi reached for the void now, that mysterious fifth element that governed distance and nothingness. The Parody Master had blocked all the usual ways she might slip through dimensions and escape his bonds; but Xander had shown Liu Xi the narrative understructure and she had barely glimpsed the possibilities of skirting it as a means of transit. It was insanely dangerous. It was going to hurt. Liu Xi didn’t even stop to calculate the odds. She just jumped. At the last moment she hesitated. She reached back and stretched out her arm to the Princess Annar. “Come on!” The Prime Princess twitched her hand forward then pulled it back. “I can’t,” she answered miserably. “My people…” The Parody Master cut through the dimensional barriers and grabbed for Liu Xi. The elementalist screamed once then concentrated on dropping through the planes, weaving and dodging to avoid the grasping will of her pursuer. She didn’t know what she crashed through, except it left her cold and stunned and bleeding. She kept on running. Into the void. Into the dark. Into whatever was beneath it. Hunted. Xander the Improbable brushed himself down and helped Annar to her feet. “She got away,” he told the princess. “For now, at least.” “She got away.” The Parody Master did not seem displeased. Rather he sounded as if he had found a new hobby. “Taus, add the elementalist onto the list of brides I require as tribute from Earth in exchange for my forebearance.” The High Priest nodded. “Along with the Dancer and the Sorceress, the Priestess of Order, the goddess, the Abhuman princess, and the Celestian Madonna,” he noted. “And Jury,” added the Parody Master fervently. “Always and foremost the Lady Shaper. She shall be mine.” He looked hard across worlds and dimensions to where Liu Xi was running, “But that one will keep me entertained while I lay my plans for her.” He glanced down at Annar, shivering beside Xander. “And this one will occupy me while the elementalist is found.” Xander the Improbable closed his eyes. Next time: Dan Drury and Fin Fang Foom, Chronic and the Doomherald, Hacker Nine and the Hooded Hood, and some of the nastiest places on Earth and under it: Untold Tales #153: Living Hell Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2006 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2006 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. |
| Echo™ v3.0 alpha © 2003-2006 Powermad Software |
|
|