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Post By The Hooded Hood resorts toi a triple-length chapter to finish these plotlines Fri Mar 17, 2006 at 09:06:05 pm EST |
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#263: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: The Price of Resistance, or The Hammer Falls | |
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#263: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: The Price of Resistance, or The Hammer Falls And It Came To Pass: that the sundered worlds of Swordrealm and Esperine were united by the travellers Yo and the Librarian and cast off the yoke of the Parody Master; and great was that tyrant’s wrath. Elsewhere, in the transdimensional vortex, Lisa, Al B. Harper, Kinki the Conqueress, and Liu Xi encountered Cleone Swanmay, familiar of the now-Obedience Branded sorcerer supreme Xander the Improbable. They fled from the Parody Master’s chilling Singularity Riders and allowed Cleone to direct them towards danger and adventure.On Earth, Trickshot followed the trail of his missing friend, superspy Contessa Natalia Romanza, even when that trail took him across time. With the help of a device from Professor Justin Tyme, and with unwilling comrades Fetish Lad and George Gedney, the irritating archer vanished to whatever location the Contessa had escaped to. This chapter particularly follows up plots and characters referred to in UT#258 War and Peace The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom Who's Who in the Parodyverse Where's Where in the Parodyverse The Borers broke through in the Burnham Wastes above the ruins of Dunsinane, on a dark moonless night when the mists rose up from the fens and obscured the broken muddy ground. Their first dimensional rift was less than a hundredth of an inch wide, but sufficient for the molecule-sized robots to swarm through and begin construction of a larger portal. They worked efficiently, two million of them converting their own bodies and any useful local materials into a transit arch. The dark metal spires rose up seven feet from the damp turf. That second portal was short life also; the transdimensional layers of Esperine were tangled and damaged after the recent war and it took a lot of energy to sustain even the simplest transfer point. But before that arch melted into uselessness the spearhead force had passed through. Now a dozen red and black combat-armoured Avawarriors took point, assisted by hovering security drones. Behind them the imperial engineers in their bottle-green rubber suits laboured to construct a conduit pad that could bring the legions of the Parody Master to this world in force. Then the punitive mission could begin. The Confederacy of Esperine had defied the Master. It had withheld its tribute, the Princess Elsinore, lawful bride of the Parody Master. And when the Master’s archdeacon had brought the Prime Avawarrior to compel obedience both of them had been killed. Now Esperine and the parallel world of Swordrealm with which it was inextricably dimensionally tangled required pacifying. Every creature on both halves of the planet was to be slaughtered to the glory of the Parody Master. The sentients would die slowly and painfully. Less than two hours after breakthrough the transit platform was ready to power up. There in the obscure frozen swamp the doom of a people was beginning. “Sir,” warned the rubber-clad engineer attending to the perimeter sensor banks. “Vessels are incoming. Sky ships, riding local telluric currents.” The first of the war machines was rolling off the pad. The Avawarrior commander gestured to it. “Set psi shields against telepathic interference. Deploy Behemoth One to destroy incoming craft.” The black and red battle tank was the size of a house. It glided forward off the pad, its three turrets silently revolving to scan the skies. But the threat came from the ground. “Hello!” called Yo, stepping out of the mists, waving. “Yo is to be here! Yo is to be asking of invading Avawarriors to be going home please.” The surprised engineers realised that a single entity with no energy weapons might not show up on their major threat searches; and for some reason their organics detectors weren’t registering the pure thought being. The equally surprised Avawarriors reacted even faster, drawing their plasma rifles and firing to evaporate the intruder. Yo somersaulted up and over the stream of weapons fire and began to run in at a charge. And then the Knights Improbable of the Swordrealm closed in from all sides as well. “An ambush!” warned the Avacommander. “Defend the perimeter. Slaughter them at will!” The unleashed Avawarriors moved in with their molecule-thick blades to personally dispatch the first line of intruders. The lead knight, clad in silver and blue, caught the first thrust on his antique combat sword and held the weapon at bay. Knights Improbable had the gift of dulling extraordinary powers and technologies that were used against them. That made the combat much more even. “In the name of all that is good,” called out Sir John de Jaboz, “we shall defeat you!” Behemoth One span around and focussed its weapons on the incoming troops. Then it paused and wobbled a little as its control interfaces were disrupted by Esperine war-telepaths trained to overcome anti-telekinesis fields. “Strike now,” Princess Lileblanche instructed the cabal at her back. “While all the men with pointy weapons are posing.” The engineers realised that somehow the telepaths had shielded the approach of the ground assault element from sensors. But that required both a strong force of espers and a remarkable talent to co-ordinate them. “Sir,” Engineer One called to the Avacommander. “The woman at the front. Take her down!” “I do not take orders from a mere engineer,” responded the commander, cutting down another knight before glancing at the woman pressing back his Behemoth. “But her I shall destroy,” he agreed. “I think not,” Sir John declared, stepping firmly between the invader and the princess. “Have at thee!” “I don’t need rescuing, John!” objected Lileblanche irritated. “Too bad,” the young Knight Improbablar told her. “Because you just have been.” The Avacommander enhanced his strength sixfold, tripled his speed, and went in against the arrogant fool who dared oppose him. Sir John de Jaboz damped his opponent down to human levels of ability and made it a contest of skill instead. The Avacommander shouldn’t have relied so much on his physical enhancements. A second Behemoth shimmered into being on the transfer pad. “Well that’s enough of that,” noted the Librarian. He reached down and grabbed a handful of the micro-robots that were maintaining the rig. He used his gifts to absorb a copy of their programming code into his memory for later consideration, then overwrote their cores with a copy of Karl Marx’s Das Capital and an instruction to liberate their brother nanobots from slavery to the imperialist capitalist forces of the Parody Master and form a new collective based upon sound communist principles. Two minutes later the transfer grid went down. The war drones already on site were activated. The gunmetal steel battle robots unpacked themselves and rose up to stride into the throng. They targeted knights first, then battle mages, their chain guns and chainsaws wreaking bloody havoc against enemies who had never encountered the like. “A.L.F.RED,” called Lee Bookman across the chaos. “Your department, I think.” “Do I have to use restraint?” the Librarian’s major domo and probably insane robot companion asked, switching to combat mode. “Just kill their side,” Lee specified. “Only their side, please.” “Aw.” A.L.F.RED ploughed into and through the first battle robot. “Hey kiddies, I hope you kept your warranties…!” Yo vaulted up onto Behemoth One, his/her thin rapier easily carving through three foot thick plate armour as s/he buried down to the power core. A hatch opened and a pair of Avawarriors jumped out to stop the pure thought being. Yo parried hyper-fast blows and flipped them off the side of the machine. John de Jaboz plunged his sword through the cracked Ava-armour of his opponent and killed the Avacommander. He hadn’t expected the release of Parody Master energies that followed though, and the shock sent him stunned to the floor. Two more of the Avawarriors stepped over the dead knights around them and closed to finish him off. Lileblanche hurled them away telekinetically by lifting the turf beneath them. The Parody Master’s troops had come shielded from telekinetic assault, but the ground they stood on wasn’t. “Now John, that is how you save somebody’s life,” the princess pointed out. But she’d been identified now. Behemoth One’s primary cannon glided round to target here and the fallen Knight Captain. Its telepathic suppression screens were at maximum. Yo cut out its power core. The explosion sent the remaining combatants hurling into the battlefield mud. Yo executed a neat barrel roll but ended stunned and dizzy, trying to summon the belief to rise again. Behemoth Two targeted the fallen genderless alien from Yo-planet. The Improbablar Flagship the Sword of Justice shot over the horizon, twisting on telluric waves, and blew the war machine to pieces. Sir John de Jaboz stood up painfully and helped Princess Lileblanche from the mud. “You have to admit that my father has an excellent sense of timing,” he admitted. There was a secondary explosion as the nanobots passed back through the older jump portal to pass their new doctrine on to their unliberated brethren back on the Parody Master’s dreadnaught and destroyed the gateway behind them. A dull sun dawned over the smoky battlefield. Thirteen Avawarriors and twenty engineers were dead, and Yo was preventing the execution of three captured soldiers. Thirty-two Knights Improbablar and eleven Esperine war-telepaths and combat mages had died to stop them. The battle of Dunsinane had been short but costly. “We have word from Hunter Wylde,” reported Sir John. “He and his rangers have located and neutralised the Parody Master’s scout element. This incursion is contained.” “I… I have the frequencies that they’re using,” Lee Bookman said, trying to ignore the sight and stench of the slaughter. “A.L.F.RED can patch into the Galactibus, use that as a sensor array to try and spot the next attempt to break through the dimensional barriers. We can’t rely on Esperine prophetesses to be 100% accurate all the time.” “Or ten percent of the time,” muttered Princess Lileblanche. “Anything that can help, Sir Lee.” The Sword of Justice alighted to allow support staff to swarm the battlefield. It seemed strange to see Esperine healers disembarking from an Improbablar ship. “We can’t sustain casualties like this every time we have to plug a soft place,” Sir John worried. “I know this was the first, a trial run, but it won’t be the last. Even with the tangles our two worlds are in dimensionally there must be a hundred, a thousand more locations where the invaders can get through.” Lileblanche watched her sister, Prime Princess Elsinore, kirtle her skirts and bend to tend to the first wounded warrior. “ “Is not to be so glum,” Yo consoled. “Is to be great sadness to be losing of so many people, but you should to be looking more closely at what is left, yes?” “What’s left?” Sir John sighed. “Barely half our assault force, and most of them wounded or…” Lileblanche caught his head in her hands and turned it. “Look again,” she chided him. “Think how it was before the battle. The bickering between your troops and mine. Esperines wouldn’t accept orders from male officers, your soldiers scorning to even speak to witches and warlocks. And look now, how they carry each other from the field of combat. How they joke with each other through their pain.” She glanced at the knight. “This battle began with three armies. Perhaps it has ended with two.” “Well that,” agreed Sir John, “I would count as a win.” Then A.L.F.RED spotted the next incursion point building up, a continent away in Swordrealm at Ercildoune. “Would sex help?” Kinki the Conqueress asked Al B. Harper. “To keep you awake and motivate you to get this combat ship’s systems working again, I mean?” Al B. Harper sprayed his coffee over the console he’d been working on. “I mean, it wasn’t bad before,” Kinki explained. “Back when we first became lovers. But I’m sure we could improve. And danger is a great aphrodisiac.” “You mother wasn’t Princess Uhunalura of the Abhumans, was she?” Al checked. “No, she was Courtney Zusten, of Starcross,” the future-daughter of Wang the Conqueror answered, puzzled. “But I suppose we could role-play.” “That’s not necessary,” Al assured her, wiping down the circuit board and continuing with the amendments. “Well, maybe later. Right now the problem with danger of discovery sex is the danger that we’ll be discovered.” “That’s what makes it…” “I mean, discovered by those horrible things that ride those horrible winged things that nearly got us before, when we plunged into the deep Vortex,” clarified the archscientist. “The Singularity Riders,” Kinki told him. “Or Doomwraiths. Yes, they’re not nice. You have to torture then chain together the souls of an entire species to create one of the them.” “You what?” “So I hear. There are nine of them. S’Chen the Empty, V’Zel the Pious, T’Vorkh the Cancerous, W’Lure the Bitter, K’Soth the Cruel, M’Rak the Vicious, T’Tharn the Lurid, E’Koor the Vengeful, and Great Br’Kath.” “Charming.” Kinki shuddered. “Not really. I understand that the Parody Master wanted agents capable of defeating the Heralds of Galactivac when the time came, so he had them made. They can suck energy and life out of anything. And the lives they take go into them, become part of them.” She hugged herself. “Maybe later for the sex, eh?” “Sure. It’s a date,” agreed Al. “Although I should perhaps tell you that…” The archscientist’s revelation was interrupted as Lisa, Liu Xi, and Cleone hurried onto the command deck. “They’re coming!” warned Liu Xi. “I can feel them. Those things that chased us before. I can feel them closing in round us like an icy fist!” “It’s been the better part of a week,” Lisa pointed out. “Al, isn’t it about time you did something very clever?” Al B. thought about what he’d just heard from Kinki, and about how pale Liu Xi looked, and about how it had taken less than half a minute for three of the Singularity Riders to take down the Parody Master’s dimensional dreadnaught. “Yes,” he agreed. “Kinki, pull that big red lever there, would you?” As the time-traveller did so the entire command deck lit up again. Massive engines whirred into life. And a small box cobbled together out of the ship’s very delicate and expensive artificial intelligence system began to ping. “Is that a good ping or a bad ping?” asked Lisa. “That,” Al B. grinned, “Is a good ping. That’s an I’ve-detected-an-Earth-dimensional-transfer-signature, someone shifting to or from our own world. And I can possibly use that to pilot this dreadnaught right back through the Vortex to that point.” “Assuming we don’t get caught and consumed by these Doomwraiths,” added Cleone. “Well yes,” agreed Al. “Strap in. This takeoff’s going to be rough. The main propulsion vents are stuffed up to the crystalline axis of this rock.” He glanced over at Cleone. “Er, you didn’t need this dimensional island any more, did you?” “It’s a thing of beauty corrupted to vilest evil,” the swanmay told him. “Carry on.” “I can lock onto that signature you found,” Liu Xi realised. “It’s complicated though. Not just void. I think I can amplify it.” “I was counting on it,” Al B. agreed. “Do what you can.” “Actually,” Cleone advised, “I’m not sure if Liu Xi doing all she can is such a good…” Liu Xi yelped as her abilities flared. She’d caught the signal. Now she became the end point for the time-transit it represented. She toppled back as a woman in a black SPUD combat jumpsuit fell on top of her. “Well,” noted Contessa Natalia Romanza. “This is unexpected.” The White Lady of Salem sat in the gypsy wagon she’d inherited from her grandmother, a humble decorated horse-drawn wooden box that had been the mobile command centre of half the recent war with Swordrealm. Yo settled down on the silk cushions and accepted a herbal tea. “Is to be very nice to be meeting of you at last,” the Zorro impersonator grinned. “It is unexpected to be meeting you,” the White Lady admitted. “And not much surprises me these days. My mystic defences are supposed to be impregnable. Then again, I thought all the pure thought beings had withdrawn from this dimension.” “Yo is to be visiting,” Yo explained. The White Lady turned over her tarot cards. They all seemed to have more rabbits on them than she previously remembered. “My people and the other tribes of Esperine do not want another war,” she said. “We have already lost too much.” Yo had seen the devastated towns and villages, the charred scorched earth where the ancient forests had stood, the desolate wastelands where nothing would grow for a hundred generations. “Is to be true,” s/he agreed. “But is to be more to be losing, Yo thinks.” “We had a solution,” the White Lady warned. “My daughter sacrificed to the Parody Master. You prevented that.” “Yes. Is to be because it was being wrong.” “And now you sound like my other daughter,” the mother of Elsinore and Lileblanche snapped. “Thanking you,” Yo beamed. “I didn’t mean it as a compliment.” “Yo knows that. But Yo is thinking is to be compliment anyhow.” Yo looked over at the woman in the white samite. “Yo has met of another version of you in another world,” the pure thought being revealed. The White Lady frowned. “There are some few people who have versions of themselves in both Esperine and Swordrealm,” she conceded. “Mostly they died when our two worlds crashed together. I am not represented in their history. They burned their witches.” “Is other world again,” Yo explained. “Where cute-Whitney is to be Yo-friend, and hero, saving of planets.” “I am not she,” the White Lady replied. “I had seven sons and daughters when the conflict began. Now I have two. There is no more fight in me.” “Yo is thinking that there is. Yo is thinking that you still have two daughters to be striving for. And now you are to be looking after not one world but two.” The White Lady snorted. “You expect me to care for Swordrealm? Our enemy?” “Swordrealm is victim of Parody Master just like Esperine,” Yo pointed out. “Now is time for survivors to be standing together to be fighting of big bully.” “We will be crushed.” “Is that what cute Queen’s cards say?” The White Lady sighed. “No. They say I’m going to meet some bunnies.” “Then is good, with hoping for the future, yes? White Lady will be joining sides with Sir Jabes de Jabos and witches and knights will stop being to kill each other and start being to be heroes together.” The dimensional dreadnaught Conquest of Destiny roared to life. Its powerful engines blasted the rock where it rested into fragments, sending thousands of razor-sharp crystal shards at the approaching Singularity Riders. Then the vessel itself twisted down into the fastest currents of the transdimensional vortex so it was washed away from the Parody Master’s minions. “Nice,” applauded Lisa, leaning a hip on the main control console and scratching her cat between the ears. “I don’t think we’re going to get our damage deposit back though.” “I’m only a thousand three hundred and seventy technicians short of an operating crew for this thing,” Al B. Harper pointed out. “I’m having to take a few shortcuts.” To illustrate the point he drove the city-sized vessel through another huge chunk of rock washing in the narrative tides. “This is a very interesting piece of ordinance,” admitted Contessa Natalia. “But hard to park,” Lisa pointed out. Liu Xi was still dividing her attention behind the Singularity Riders who still screeched at the edge of her perceptions and the anomaly who had unexpectedly appeared on the command deck. “I don’t understand how you travelled here through my void folding,” she admitted. Kinki held up the fused and useless piece of technology that Natalia Romanza had been clutching when she appeared. “She used this,” the daughter of Wang the Conqueror explained. “It’s some of my father’s short-range time-shunt technology. And it’s been badly disassembled by somebody who doesn’t know what they’re doing then even more poorly reassembled. It’s a miracle it worked at all.” “We could use some miracles,” Al B. admitted. “Given that I had to take the control computers off line to discourage them from annihilating us we’re kind of flying blind, and with no navigation points.” “I was being chased by Exemplary, who has taken control of SPUD to promote your government’s Special Resolution 1066,” Natalia explained. “Cornered on the helicarrier I had no recourse other than to time-jump with this captured experimental technology to escape. I had no idea I would end up… wherever this is.” “Oh, that was probably Xander,” suggested Cleone. “He likes to set up little surprises like that.” “You said you know where we’re supposed to go?” Lisa prompted the swanmay. “Where Xander the Improbable wanted us to go, anyhow, before he was Branded and joined the Parody Master.” “I don’t quite know where to take you,” Cleone admitted. “But I do know what Liu Xi has to look for with her elemental sensitivity in this maelstrom.” Natalia Romanza looked around the unlikely collection of people on an alien battlecruiser ploughing through a storm of ideas in the space between realities. “I’m going to need footnotes,” she announced. “This… special council will come to order,” declared the Grand Chancellor, looking uncomfortable. Yo waved at him from across the round table. “We… welcome our special guests and allies.” “Well I for one am glad to meet the White Lady in common cause rather than across a battlefield,” declared Sir Jados be Jaboz, Marshall of the Knights Improbablar. “Her presence and that of the other remaining Nine is what gives this council any hope of success.” “There is no hope of success,” hissed the Magus of Byzantium. “The Parody Master’s forces can invade our worlds at will, with uncountable troops bearing weapons for which we have no counter.” “That’s not quite true,” the Librarian interrupted. “I’ve been checking records and doing some calculations. There’s been a lot of meticulous work done in both your worlds mapping dimensional soft spots, likely incursion points. Fortify the weak spots and you could keep a major invasion force out for some time.” “For some time,” the Chancellor repeated. “And then?” “And then we stand and fight like knights,” Sir Jados declared. “To the last man if needs be.” “How many soft points?” demanded the White Lady. “How much must we defend?” The Librarian handed round scrolls and maps he’d prepared earlier. “Well, the dimensional bombs have actually helped you in this one way. Teleportation and interplanar gateways are a real nightmare here now. I think there’s probably less than nine thousand places the Parody Master could get through like he did at Dunsinane.” “Nine thousand!” exclaimed the Grand Chancellor. “How can we possibly defend so many passes? Even one incursion claimed some of our best troops!” “We must sue for some kind of settlement,” suggested the Duke of Spango. “A separate peace from Esperine if we have to.” “So now we see the value of this proposed alliance,” spat the White Lady. “We have no right to make an alliance with our enemies anyhow,” the Mage of Byzantium argued. “The Nine are not complete, and have no authority…” “I will not allow us to be dragged into a war we cannot hope to win,” the Grand Chancellor complained. “In the absence of a king…” “If you do not defend your borders,” Lee Bookman warned, “if the Parody Master gains a foothold on either of your worlds…” “If we had a king he would lead us into this war,” objected Sir Jados. “We would not be sitting around a table bleating like craven sheep…” “But there is no king,” Spango pointed out. “No Council of Nine either. So there is no need for me or my forces to follow…” Yo slammed his hands down on the round table. “Be silenting!” s/he called. And a surprised hush fell on the room. “Yo is to be being your king,” the pure thought being announced. “Yo is hereby telling of you that Yo is to be conquering of your two realms, yes? Yo is to now be King of Esperine and Swordrealms, and anybody who is not liking of it will be fighting of Yo in trial by combat or sorcery. And then when Yo has been beating of them, Yo will be in charge, yes?” The Librarian frantically looked through his agenda for the bit where Yo announced he was taking over the planet. “The Knights Improbablar follow King Yo,” announced Sir Jados de Jabos. “Just so you know. Long may he reign.” “As do the Witches of Salem,” the White Lady found herself saying. It was a long time since her sense of mischief had thawed, but she found a grim smile escaping onto her face. “Well then,” swallowed Lee Bookman, “can I suggest we skip ahead to item seven?” “He what?” demanded Lileblanche, Second Princess of Salem. “He took over the planet,” Sir John de Jaboz repeated. “There was about three hours of successive trials by combat and whatever you psi people do in those staring matches of yours, and when all the people objecting had been carried off to the hospital Yo was king.” Lileblanche reached for her cloak. “I have to go now,” she declared. “I can’t allow some alien usurper to conquer my people.” “Your mother supported him,” the Chevalier revealed. “It’s her coup as much as his.” “Mother? My mother?” “Yes. So now we’re all united in common cause against a common enemy.” Lileblanche pushed her cloud of blonde hair from her face. “Oh.” “So we’re not enemies any more, my lady.” “Oh.” “And King Yo wants to see us.” “Oh.” “Shut down all the systems,” Liu Xi shouted, clutching at her forehead. “Now!” Al B. had learned over the last three days to trust the young elementalist’s instincts. He hammed the control he’d cobbled together to send the whole dreadnaught dark. The vessel lurched wildly as it was caught by the dimensional currents. “Not again,” complained Lisa, waking from a cat-nap to land lithely as she was toppled from her couch. “What is it this time? Another dreadnaught, or hero feeders, or Doomwraiths?” “There was nothing on the scanners,” Natalia Romanza reported. “Nothing since we skirted past those deep probe vessels that the Parody Cult had sent looking for that mysterious weapon.” “There are still Singularity Riders following us,” Liu Xi admitted. “Following me. Still screaming in the back of my mind. But that’s not what I sensed. There’s… a message? A beacon?” Cleone stepped forward. “This is near the place that Xander would have me bring you,” she noted. “A crossroads, he said.” “Bring scanners back up very slowly,” Kinki commanded. “Concentrate them on trying to look for patterns against the background narrative noise.” Al B. ignored his perhaps-girlfriend. He’d already begun diverting data to the operations table where Contessa Natalia was squatted. “Anything?” “Yes,” the spy reported. “Very interesting. A homing beacon. And you won’t believe who it’s coming from!” The ninth invasion began just after midnight over Dunluce in the Swordrealm; but unlike the others the transit nanites broke through at twenty thousand feet and began to construct the dimensional portals in mid-air. Weakened by the previous attack in the volcanic caves under Minos, the defending forces were slow to respond to the warning relayed by A.L.F.RED from the Galactibus’ sensor array. By the time the first skyship arrived there were already a dozen weapons platforms hovering to defend the incursion point. The commander of the Dream of Glory had been on the go for forty-eight hours, and he made a fatal misjudgement. He didn’t wait for back up but instead moved close to bring his arcane cannons to bear on the nearest of the hovering saucers that formed the defensive perimeter of the infiltration zone. The four cloaked fast-attack suicide darts appeared from nowhere and his vessel was shattered into matchwood by their sudden attack. It was another forty minutes before the Sword of Justice arrived under the command of the Sir John, Compte de Jaboz, and by then the forces defending the site had tripled in strength. “Is it a beach-head if its high in the air?” Princess Lileblanche wondered. “What do we do?” “Talk to your mother with your mind,” the knight commanded. “Tell he we’ll need the fleet. Send in the reserves.” “If we do that we won’t be able to defend against another entry point.” “If we don’t then this entry point will be enough. I need my father here with the whole of our air forces. Get those dragons of yours here too. And we’ll need Sir Yo and Sir Lee, and their armoured servant.” The young joint commanders of the allied forces were forced to stand off and watch as the invaders expanded their incursion site to five miles of airspace. Then there was a pink and purple streak and the Galactibus skimmed over the horizon and spiralled up to land on the deck of the Improbablar ley-skimmer. “Yes, we got it fixed,” Lee told them, stepping out of the eccentric vehicle and lovingly stroking its paintwork. “And it’s faster than anything you’ve got.” A.L.F.RED clanked onto the skyship’s deck in heavy combat mode. “I don’t like the way those drones are looking at me,” he muttered. “I’m just going to have to tear them a new interface socket.” “What do you recommend we do, Sir Yo?” Sir John asked anxiously. “By making this an aerial battle they place the emphasis on their technology, which is superior to ours. They always beat us at range, where our knights suppression fields are less useful.” “Take it up close,” suggested Elsionore. “And personal.” Just before dawn the Sword of Justice began its attack run, to slow the dimensional transit preparations long enough for the Improbablar fleet to arrive. The weapons platforms were well prepared for the ship’s incoming glide, having already analysed the telluric energies its silver sails harnessed to shift through the air. Then the skyship jinked wildly to port, dropped a thousand feet, and moved forward at four times its maximum speed, smashing through the hidden suicide darts, sending them spinning to oblivion. “It’s working,” Lee Bookman called from the driving seat of his Galactibus. The space vehicle had been lashed to the Sword of Justice, so now it was the eccentric vehicle that was propelling the ship. Princess Lileblanche grunted as she set her teeth and furrowed her brow. She telekinetically seized one of the remote weapons platforms and bowled it into the next one. “You can do that?” gasped Sir John. “Apparently,” she gasped. “Now, you impress me.” “Right,” agreed the knight, pulling his sword and dropping over the side of the ship onto a passing Parody Cultist outrider. He disabled the vessel and sent it slamming into another, vaulting aside to grab the edge of a weapons platform and plunge his sword into its control centre. As it too faltered he leaped again towards the next one. “That is showing off,” breathed the princess as A.L.F.RED tractor beamed the knight back to his vessel. The Sword of Justice had breached the outer cordon, so now the knights and marines could bring their cannons to bear on the vulnerable dimensional transit equipment. The edge of the defence perimeter collapsed as the Parody Master’s forces were pulled off station to cope with the intruders. “We’re taking a lot of fire, sir,” warned the skyship’s captain. “We’re drawing a lot of fire,” pointed out the Librarian. “That’s the idea.” “Yo is hoping of getting of cute-reinforcements soon,” Yo worried. The pure thought being somersaulted off the skyship to do more carnage with a rapier against the advanced weapons batteries that hovered a fraction too close. A.L.F.RED used the confusion to emit an electromagnetic pulse to down the anti-telepath screen that confounded the battle espers. “Better,” declared Lileblanche, slamming aside another remote platform to explode beside an avawarrior troop carrier. The dawn broke over the horizon, revealing the Improbablar fleet hurling forward in attack formation. “Yes!” hissed Lee Bookman. “We’ve done it!” Then the dimensional transfer grid lit up. Something huge smacked into the side of the Sword of Justice, splintering its hull and slapping it aside like a giant’s toy. The gravity enhancements failed, toppling sailors and soldiers from its decks to plummet to their deaths below. Sir John grabbed Lileblanche with one hand and a deck rail with the other as the whole ship reeled. The dimensional dreadnaught Rage and Vengeance completed its jump into the Swordrealm. Four miles long it hung there, the ultimate war machine, carrying three quarters of a million troops ready for battle, along with their transport, artillery, and support staff. “Aw crap!” complained A.L.F.RED. “Cheats!” Lee Bookman desperately tried to control the Galaticbus as systems went haywire in the dreadnaughts interference field. The vehicle plummeted with the skyship it was strapped onto. The rage and vengeance of the Parody Master has caught up with Esperine and Swordrealm. “Divide the formation!” called Sir Jados, staring at the massive gunmetal slab filling the skies ahead of them. “Tell them to use evasive manoeuvres, harry that thing. Don’t cluster!” “Have the weatherpaths direct tempests to destabilise the rear of that behemoth!” the White Lady telepathed. “Sent the dragons in close, seeking access ports.” But the Rage and Vengeance simply activated its exclusion screens and began to pick off its attackers. It took a single shot for each enemy vessel or attacking beast. In half a minute the tide of the battle had turned, and the defenders were being massacred. Lee Bookman managed to bring the Galactibus to a soft landing on a shattered headland below. The lower parts of the skyship Sword of Justice protected those in the Librarian’s vehicle from being more than shaken up. “We are having to be getting back up there!” Yo worried. “Is to be having we to get inside of that thing. Is only chance for fleet!” “I’m gonna need some bigger guns,” Predicted A.L.F.RED. “Give me forty eight hours and a good galactic junkyard and then let’s talk.” Sir John climbed over the wreckage of the fallen skyship, followed by Lileblanche. “The fleet is being cut to pieces,” he noted. “They have telepaths up there,” the princess added. “The Parody Master’s side, I mean. I can sense it. Many minds, chained together, deflecting our attacks.” “And the hatches along the sides are opening,” Lee Bookman warned, checking the Galactibus sensors. “They’re launch ports. That thing carries other combat vehicles. An awful lot of them.” “Then we fight to the last,” Sir John de Jaboz decided. He turned to rally the surviving knights and mariners. “If this is the last battle of Swordrealm, let us fight it as true men and die striving got what is right!” Lileblanche looked at him incredulously. “Or we could not waste our lives and get into the thorn forest where we could plan some ambushes,” she spat. “Idiot.” “Yo is not ready to be fighting of last battle yet,” Yo told them. “Unstrapping of Galactibus so we can be going back there, please. Yo is thinking that Yo can be getting past of uncute forcefield around nasty spaceship.” “You know the Galactibus is unarmed, right?” checked Lee Bookman. “A-hem!” said A.L.F.RED. They worked to hack through the chains that fasted the Galactibus to the skyship. It was clear that they were going to be too late. Someone aboard the dreadnaught had marked their landing, and now one of the vast ion disruptor dishes was turned in their direction to scorch the headland of all life. The skies flashed with fire as other Knights Improbablar died. The heavens were filled with the discolouration ripple of another major dimensional transit. The second dreadnaught appeared. “Two of them!” swallowed Sir John. He tightened his grip on his blade as the disruptor dish powered up. “So be it, then.” Then the Conquest of Destiny hard-slammed nose first into the top of its sister ship, moving at ramming speed, MACH-2. The force wave hammered everything out of the skies, flattened trees, and sent a wave of water forty feet high out across the ocean to crash onto distant shores. The momentum of the incoming dreadnaught was sufficient to break the back of its target, cracking the superstructure of Rage and Vengeance. It snapped like a twig. A second explosion battered the sea and land as dimensional jump engines were breached. There was a searing white light like the end of galaxies and a deafening sound that followed a couple of seconds later. The two dreadnaughts were tangled together now and they free-fell into the shallow ocean below. They sent up another tsunami and then a great bowl of steam as the blazing fires hit the water. There were more explosions as munitions systems failed. And a voice crackled over the Galactibus radio. “Hello, Mr Bookman,” said Lisa L. Waltz. “You called?” “This isn’t over,” Hunter Wylde told his rangers. “The enemy is down, but not out, and nor are we. The enemy is now on the ground, lost in the woods, stranded on the shore, separated from their command structures. They’re still dangerous. But so are we. So we go in now, fast and silent, and we show them what Esperine special forces can do.” The archer pulled his dark green hood up over his head to shadow his face. “We’re the best there is, boys and girls. So let’s show these Parody Master worshipping bozos that they picked the wrong damn world to mess with, okay?” “Al, my love,” said Kinki, picking herself up from the grilled floor of the dreadnaught control deck, “You have to learn how to park these things.” “I thought I parked it pretty well,” the archscientist grinned. “Now we just need to, um, get out of here before we sink, survive the angry troops swarming around outside, join up with Yo and the Librarian, and defeat an army of the Parody Master’s crack troops.” Cleone was crouched in one corner, staring into nothingness. “And we have to free the enslaved,” she added. “The what?” Al asked. “The enslaved,” she replied. “Their minds are bound together, their bodies stolen. I can hear them crying out. We must free them.” “PM’s psi-batteries, I’m guessing,” Kinki shrugged. “There’s this technique the Apocalyspians use, involving limb amputation and…” “I have to free them,” Cleone insisted. “I have to sing to them.” “And that’ll free them?” Al checked. “Because I can still rig something with the ship-to-ship communications array and the external speakers.” “Then I shall soothe them to peace,” the swanmay promised, “and set them free.” “Be sure to point out who it was did that stuff to them,” Kinki advised. “Did I say that I didn’t sign up for this?” Fetish Lad objected as he trailed behind Trickshot and George Gedney through the interminable tangle of fallen trees. “About six hundred times,” the irritating archer agreed. “I’m wearing the wrong kind of boots.” “Do you maybe carry some kind of gag in that equipment of yours?” George Gedney glanced around the grey waste. “Maybe we time-travelled to Russia?” he speculated. “The Tunguska think back in the early nineteenth century? That big blast we heard, and that flash of light…?” “Assuming that device your nutty professor friend send didn’t cause it,” Fetish Lad pointed out. “If it did, by the way, I want a separate lawyer from you people.” George looked at the now-inert time-travel chip. “Maybe it malfunctioned. I don’t see any Contessa around here.” He tried to will it to recharge faster. Then something caught his eye, a tiny glitter of gold hanging there in the shadowy tangle of broken branches. “She’s nearby,” Trickshot assured them. “Things are blowing up. There’s extreme danger.” “Oh good,” Fetish Lad sighed. “I’d hate to think we had to travel in time and space and end up having nothing but fun. If only…” Then he fell silent, because Trickshot had held up his hand in warning. And then the three avawarriors broke from cover and ran in to kill them. The ground rose up in two great shelves and clapped together, pulping the advancing battle droids. Lithium cadmium batteries became dull lead, dropping weapons platforms from the skies. Solid rock turned to lava beneath the incoming avawarriors feet. And Liu Xi kept moving forward. “That way,” Contessa Natalia advised. She’d borrowed a wrist-mounted neural disruptor and was directing the elementalist and Lisa over the wreckage of the tangled dreadnaughts to the remaining active command centre of the Rage and Vengeance. “And be careful. They’ll have identified metahuman activity here by now.” Lisa nodded grimly as three lobotomised Maxellians burst through the hull and surrounded them. “That’s why we need more metahuman activity yet,” she noted, shuddering at the indestructible super-zombies. “I summons Yo!” “And Yo is here!” the pure thought being called out happily, tumbling to intercept the first of the warriors with a deft rapier parry. “But not for long. Is to be these poor creatures will be happier in the Happy Place. Scusi.” Then the pure thought being and the three lobotomised alien fighters vanished; and only the pure thought being reappeared a moment later. “To me!” called Sir John de Jaboz. “To me! We will yet turn this tide of invasion. Let all brave hearts and true heroes gather to my standard and we shall assault the very heart of darkness.” A half dozen wounded knights and three battle telepaths rallied to his call. The Librarian read the key code device on the dreadnaught’s security door and it hissed open. Lileblanche neutralised the remaining alarms with her telekinesis while A.L.F.RED dropped inside and neutralised the defence drones. He was singing opera as he did so. “Are we really going in there?” the princess asked the Knight Improbablar. “It’s probably suicide.” “It’s my duty,” Sir John shrugged. “The battle is still in the balance, and somebody has to…” “I know. It’s my duty too. How strange, to find a fellow fool. Lead on then. And do not die.” “I shall do my best not to, your highness.” “Are you people coming down or what?” demanded A.L.F.RED. “Only I’ve run out of things and people to break in this section.” “What I want to know,” George Gedney demanded, panting at the pace Trickshot was setting over the broken ground, “Is how those ava-thingies were able to follow us through time.” “They didn’t,” the archer replied. “They were already here. Which means we got us a little Parody Master war goin’ on around us.” “This is the future then?” Fetish Lad concluded. “Only I’d hoped for more bistros and art house cinemas and less post-apocalyptic wasteland. Not that I can’t do a wonderfully kinky Mad Max if I have to – or a Tina Turner – but really, I was hoping for the more stylish bits of Blade Runner.” “I dunno where we are yet,” Tricky admitted. “But those three Avawarriors probably weren’t alone, and I’m getting low on taking-out-unstoppable-armoured-soldier arrows.” Fetish Lad nodded. “And I’ve not got any more self-inserting…” “Enough,” George shuddered. “I get the point.” “You wish,” smirked the kinky knight. “Hold it again!” hissed Trickshot, dropping to the floor. “I thought I heard somethin’ else. But not Avawarriors. This wus real quiet.” The party joined him in cover, the Trickshot nocked an arrow and crept cautiously forward. He found himself facing a hooded bowman with an arrow nocked at him. “Okay,” said Trickshot and Hunter Wylde together, “Who the hell are you and what are you doing here?” Liu Xi Xian carved through the bulkheads so they could climb up to the computer core. Lisa and Yo coped with whatever resistance they encountered. Contessa Natalia attached the device Al B. Harper had designed to the data banks. “The infiltration is successful for now,” she reported. “What next?” “Now I get in touch with the Librarian,” Al replied. “What you’ve attached is a very crude homemade version of the devices he uses to clone data. With that in place he can remote-read the dreadnaught archive and get the materials we want.” “And then?” demanded Kinki, back on the Conquest of Destiny with the archscientist. “And then we’re going to try some dimensional engineering,” Al promised. “Quickly then,” the Contessa urged. “From what I can milk from the intel here in this secondary core dump the enemy are planning to bring in reinforcements very soon. I don’t think we could cope with another dreadnaught.” “I’m getting Lee’s reformatted collation now. Just hold on while… yes, that’s it. Ask Liu Xi to touch the device so the Librarian can upload this knowledge to her head.” The young elementalist reluctantly laid her palm on the transfer interface. Her eyes widened as the dimensional anomaly maps for Swordrealm and Esperine flooded her brain. She struggled to hold all the concepts together, gasping as a wave of dizziness flooded over her. “You can be doing it,” Yo assured her. Finally it was all there, burning in the young woman’s brain. “Think you’re ready?” Lisa asked her. “Only this is getting a bit time-sensitive.” “I’m not ready,” Liu Xi assured her. “Let’s start.” The elementalist reached out through the void, bringing her mind into contact with a dozen of the greatest soft spots across the dimension. There was so much scar tissue there in the collapsed geographies, so many clotted point to build on that at first it seemed easy. Then came the next fifty points, and the hundred after that, and the next thousand. “Aah!” Liu Xi whimpered as the pain lanced through her. She’d have fallen to the floor except for Yo holding her, willing his/her strength into her. She’d have lost her mind except for the organised clarity of the Librarian’s information. And now she was holding two thousand, five thousand, ten thousand dimensional weaknesses together, linked by her control of the mysterious Chinese element of Void, and she had to fold them into just one space, one singular point; so there weren’t ten thousand ways the Parody Master could break into this dimension, only one. “Seal it,” Lisa urged her. “Bring it home.” “It hurts!” Liu Xi fumbled in her tunic and her hands closed around a cheap medallion that had belonged to a friend. “It hurts.” “Yes,” agreed Yo, sharing the agony. “Is hurting to be doing of right sometimes, you thinks.” “They’re breaking through the security door,” Natalia Romanza warned. Lisa went to stand beside her and defend the entrance. Liu Xi screamed as her mind forced the dimensions to do what she wanted. In the skies above the fallen dreadnaughts the last of the plane-gating technology ruptured and exploded as the fractures they exploited were torn away, taken elsewhere. All of the soft spots of Swordrealm and Esperine were concentrated together into one singular point right there in the computer core of the Rage and Vengeance. The security door was blown off its hinges, slamming into Lisa and Natalia. The first forces through hurled neural grenades, shutting down the minds of everybody in the room. And then it went quiet. Major Devlynn stepped into the computer core over the fallen forms of the intruders. “What’s happened here?” he demanded of his Parody Cult chaplain. “Quickly?” “They… they seem to have somehow shifted the dimensional architecture around this planet,” the priest replied. “That glowing circle there, that’s a raw unformed dimensional portal of immense potency.” “A portal? Could we use it? Harness it to bring reinforcements through?” “Oh yes. And far faster than with the nano-drones building things from first principles.” The cleric looked down. “We will be rewarded beyond all others for this. For lo, here is the Bride of the Parody Master, the Earth girl who speaks with the elements. And the Keeper of the Booke of the Law, and a pure thought being that is an abomination unto the Parody Master.” “And you will step away from them,” commanded Princess Lileblanche, arriving through the rift in the bulkhead that the other intruders had entered though. “Sir Yo is under my protection.” “A telepath?” mocked the cleric. “The blessings the Parody Master grants me protect me from such as you.” “You’d better hope you’re pretty damn blessed,” Lileblance warned, her eyes flashing dangerously. “Does the Parody Master protect you from me too?” Sir John de Jaboz demanded, stepping between the telepath and the priest. “I protect him, in the Master’s name,” Major Devlynn warned. “I and my elite squad of combat fighters.” “This is what they’ll be after,” The Librarian warned, indicating the little glowing dimensional portal that was the key to taking the planet. “Suddenly the whole conflict has become about possessing this.” “And it is ours!” proclaimed the cleric. “Not yet,” Lileblanche told him, overcoming his psi-shields and snapping his staff in two. And then there was a battle. Lileblanche, John, and their followers poured down into the computer core. The light assault elite with Devlynn broke in from the other side. From there the battle radiated outwards, onto the wrecked dreadnaught, into the seas and skies around it, onto the mainland amongst the tangled forests. The battle of Dunluce would be the turning point of the campaign. Lee Bookman tried to avoid the major carnage and pull his fallen friends out of the way. Then the chained telepaths in the bowels of the dreadnaught broke free, responding to Cleone’s song with their own cried for freedom. Half the remaining avawarriors tumbled to the floor, mindwiped and helpless, before the mindwalkers abandoned their bodies and escaped their slavery forever. Sir John and Princess Lileblanche slowly pushed the remaining invaders back from the computer core, but every victory cost the lives of the knights and war-mages that fought beside them. Sir John finally faced Major Devlynn. “This is not your world,” the Knight Improbablar announced. “It never will be.” “It’s not yours either, little knight,” Devlynn sneered. “Nothing but ruins now, and wounded to death.” “Ruins can be rebuilt, and wounds healed,” Sir John proclaimed. “Well, except for this one.” And he gutted the Major. The priest of the Parody Master scrambled away from the mêlée and fumbled for his talisman. It was time for the Dread Curse. He scraped away the rune engraved on the back of his ceremonial amulet. The Breath of Br’Kath filled the chamber, blossoming out like a black flower of smoke. And wherever the midnight cloud went the combatants on both sides alike tumbled to their floor, their strength gone, their blood chilled, shaking in horror at what was coming; for the cleric had summoned the captain of the Singularity Riders, and soon he would be there. Sir John tried to resist the effect. His gifts, his willpower, allowed him to take nine steps and tumble down atop Lileblanche, as if trying to shield her. The Librarian tried to contact Al B. for backup, but his commlink had no power and his fingers wouldn’t respond to his commands. “Thus the power of my Master triumphs at the last,” the priest shrilled, shivering as he felt his own death growing in his body. The curse had a price. He could feel the tumours inside him spreading and multiplying. He reached out for the dimensional sphere that Liu Xi had created. Through that would the Doomwraith appear. With that he could bring the legions of the Parody Master to cleanse this apostate world forever. A pair of arrows pinned his hand to the wall. “Hey, that wuz my shot!” complained Trickshot. “My grandmother could shoot better than you,” proclaimed Hunter Wylde. Both men rushed in, bows to the ready, shielded from the black mists by thick coverings of a jelly from Fetish Boy’s bag of tricks. “Lisa?” Trickshot recognised the first lady of the Lair Legion sprawled out on the ground. “Yo? Liu Xi? Bookman? Natalia?” he rushed over to clutch the fallen masterspy in his arms. “Anyone still answering these things?” crackled his comm-card. Al B. Harper sounded worried. “Yeah, Br’er Trickshot here,” answered the arrogant archer. “Howdy.” There was a pause at the other end of the line. “Trickshot? Trickshot?” “Hey, Al! Nice to hear ya, egghead! Yeah, I just won your little war fer you. Well, I had an assist from some bozo called Hunter Wylde, but basically I just ended your fracas. Why?” “Listen carefully. There’s a dimensional hole in the room with you, and something very very nasty’s trying to get through. You have to plug it, okay? Find something and plug the hole!” “That’d be this little glowing golf-ball thing hovering here by Liu Xi?” George Gedney guessed. “It’s sucking all the heat from the room.” “No problem,” Fetish Lad said, rummaging in his utility pack. “About three inch diameter, would you say? This should plug it nicely.” “Is that…?” George shuddered. “I’m too modest to say who it’s modelled on, of course,” Fetish Lad winked. He forced the large rubber object into the dimensional rift until it was well jammed. “We, uh, we got a temporary solution,” Trickshot reported. “Now would someone please tell me what in Sam Hill’s going on here?” “He’s asking us?” said Kinki the Conqueress. Cleone smiled softly to herself. This had all the hallmarks of a Xander plan. “It was a beautiful plan,” Xander the Improbable told Holy Taur, High Priest of the Parody Master. “You’d already done most of the work by transnuking the rest of their galaxy, so the only dimensionally stable access points were around Earth. Then you complicated it more by tangling Swordrealm and Esperine. You were just asking to create a world that could fortify against you.” “The legions of the Master cannot be denied,” Taur frothed. “In less than a year the defences so hastily piled up by the Earth elementalist will collapse to nothing, and then the vengeance of the Master will be written large in blood!” “Well that’s something to look forward to,” Xander noted. “But I expect it’ll all be over by Christmas anyway.” “You betrayed us, mage! Because of you the Brides of the Master have escaped us for now, and we have lost two dreadnaughts.” “No, that was old free-willed Xander who outsmarted you,” the master of the mystic crafts explained. “I must have hidden it from me. I probably gave some of my memories to Cleone to hold. That’s what I’d do if I were me.” “Then devise a way to reverse this defeat,” commanded Holy Taur. “Can’t be done,” Xander warned him. “Not without compromising the main objective. On the other hand, you can pretty much guarantee that Al B. Harper will use that dimensional portal they’ve got to amplify Professor Tyme’s homing time-teleport and establish a link between Parody Earth and the Swordrealm so they can all get back to the Lair Mansion. So just conquer Earth as planned then use that route to go sort out the Improbablars.” The High Priest of the Parody Master considered this. “I like the way you think,” he decided. “Yes. Let us take the Earth.” “Thinking,” Xander nodded. “You should try it sometime.” “It is our custom,” Sir Jabos said, down on one knee before Yo. “You conquered us in fair combat, then spilled blood to defend what you had won. Even if you are no longer to be our king, there must be a ransom.” “Yo does not need to be there is a ransom,” the pure thought being assured the Knight Commander of the Order of the Improbables. “Oh, don’t be so hasty,” Lisa advised him. “Yes, there’s a ransom, Sir Jabos.” “What?” puzzled Liu Xi. “Why should…” “We’ll be sending you technicians,” the amorous advocatrix announced. “Artisans who can repair the Conquest of Destiny from the salvage of the Rage of Vengeance. They’ll be led by a comrade of ours, Sir NTU-150. Get that dreadnaught working again and join us in our fight against the Parody Master and your debt is paid.” “She’s very good,” admitted Kinki into Al’s ear. “It’s not her first time taking over a planet,” the archscientist explained. “Nor her second.” Kinki the Conqueress looked envious. “I love that leather and armour look they’ve all got going here,” Fetish Lad offered. George Gedney moved further away. Occasionally he slipped his hand into his pocket to finger the object he’d found shining in the woods. “There is more to our custom than that,” the White Lady replied. “Until such time as the ransom is paid, we must give hostages who will stay with you as surety for our payment.” “That’s not necessary,” the Contessa assured them. “Just so’as it’s not that Hunter Wylde bozo,” said Trickshot. “Hey, who’re you calling a bozo, bozo?” objected Hunter Wylde. Sir Jados looked over at the Galactibus that A.L.F.RED was preparing to attach to Tyme’s recall device. “Take my son,” he decided. “My heir, Sir John. He has much to learn if he is to lead our people against the Parody Master, so his time as your captive will not be wasted.” “What?” objected the White Lady. “You think that Esperine can furnish no hostage of rank to uphold our honour in this matter? Elsinore shall go as hostage beside your boy, as guarantee of our pact.” “No!” objected Hunter Wylde. “Great lady, I…” “Elsinore isn’t going, mother,” Lileblanche interrupted. “She’s needed here. I shall take her place as hostage to Earth.” “Is good,” approved Yo. “Is to be good idea of cute-Lileblance and cute-Sir John to be meeting of other Yo-friends!” “Well, we wanted allies,” Lee Bookman admitted. “Now we just need to get home to use them.” “I can get us back,” Liu Xi assured him. “Now that I know where we are and where we have to go, and with the help of a little push from this time-device of Trickshot’s.” “You found me,” the Contessa said wonderingly, looking at Carl Bastion. “Well sure,” he shrugged. “You asked.” “All aboard the Galactibus!” called A.L.F.RED. “Next stop: kicking the Parody Master’s butt back on planet Earth!” Next time: Well let’s see. We have Meggan Fox, Pelopia, April, Katarina, Citizen Z, ManMan, Knifey, Ebony, eleven Caphans, Hallie, Captain Courageous, Glitch, Cody Harper, Ham-Boy, the Juniors, the EEE crew, Danny Lyle, Fleabot, Gamona, Asil, the diabolical Dr Moo, Davidowicz, Quoth, and doubtless a few people I’ve forgotten staying at the mansion. Probably best to devote an issue just to that. Plus the LL needs a new deputy leader and there’s those new members to decide on. And the Galactibus gets back. We might even squeeze a bit of plot in somewhere. That’s in Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: Bless This Mansion, or Houseguests. 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. |
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