#320: Untold Tales of the Parody War: More Total War
Go straight to Part Six
Go straight to Part Seven
Go straight to Part Eight
Previously: The Parody War has reached its climax. Aboard the Parody Master’s flagship Inevitable Destiny, Yo, Dancer, and Sorceress face off against the conqueror of the Parodyverse himself, with the aid of Lisa’s spirit trapped inside the Parody Master’s soul-stealing axe. Danny Lyle has claimed control of Herringcarp Asylum, the Portal of Pretentiousness, and the Purveyors of Peril to retrieve the kidnapped Kerry Shepherdson. The Lair Legion’s long preparations for final combat are now over and they have gone to battle. All that remains are those last final confrontations.
A cast list for this and last episode is included as a footnote.
Previous chapters at The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom.
Descriptions of cast at Who's Who in the Parodyverse.
Locations explained in Where's Where in the Parodyverse.
***
5: The Morality of War
The Bloody Genocide was an Avawarrior troop ship. Smaller and faster than the bulky dimensional dreadnaughts, it was also better armed and was occupied by well over fifty thousand genetically and technologically augmented battle-armoured elite warriors of the Parody Master.
It was to this ship that the cream of the conqueror’s soldiery was brought, selected from the billions the Parody Master now had under arms. Many came willingly, fervent in their desire to become the last word in combat soldiers for their Master’s army. Willing or not, all went under the surgeon’s blade to alter their brains, to implant biopsychic circuitry that enhanced their co-ordination and obedience, introduced improved reflexes, dulled pain centres. Then came the regimen of strength-enhancing drugs and cybernetic implants which granted them massive physical capacities. Last of all came the training, in metahuman combat techniques, in advanced weapons such as the avasword and avashield, in using terror and brutality as tools of war.
One in three candidates survived the transformation. The average lifespan of a successfully transformed soldier was reduced to a little under ten years.
The result was the Avawarrior, a red and black armoured imitation of the Parody Master himself, a heartless, fierce, dedicated killing machine identical to his hundreds of thousands of brothers, ready to be teleported anywhere across the Parodyverse to bring death and ruin.
But even Avawarriors were allowed downtime, to return to their barracks and exercise or practise or worship. And because all Avawarriors were male – although many were neutered as part of their transformation – they also looked for entertainment from the Comfort Deck where the captive women of a thousand worlds were shipped to serve their recreational needs.
The average lifespan of a woman on the Comfort Deck was a little under ten months.
Kerry Shepherdson was not taken directly to the Comfort Deck. First she was escorted to the Punishment Zone.
“I don’t know how she did it, but somehow she managed to detach a fuel feed pipe on the avashuttle,” one of her guards reported to the Painmaster. “We damn near lost the whole ship before we were able to void the atmosphere and quench the fire. And even then she grabbed a photon rifle and was trying to gimmick the power pack.”
“Put her in cell sixty-four,” the Painmaster grumbled. “We’re a little backed up here. Don’t you know there’s a war on?”
“Avatar Squadmaster instructs that she receive level three discipline,” the soldier reported. “He says make it specially painful.”
The Painmaster watched as Kerry was hurled hard into the mesh-frame cube. “I always make is specially painful,” he boasted.
“You think you scare me?” Kerry shouted as the door slammed on her. “You’d wet your pants against the Chain Knight! You’d hide under the bed if you saw the Devil Doctor! You’re toast, hear me? Charred ashes! A dark smear on the floor! When I get out of here…”
“Don’t provoke them. Please!”
Kerry swung round. She hadn’t realised that the pile of rags in the corner of her cell was another person. “Who…?”
The cell’s other occupant stirred painfully. Kerry spotted the ugly welts on the woman’s wrists and ankles, the red gashes that showed beneath her tattered clothes. “Mircandalee Tremensalor,” the prisoner said, failing in an attempt at a smile, failing even to get up. “Of the Dramaatis, Maskalyndor’s Company. Currently playing a long season as the tortured captive.”
Unwelcome lessons in Visionary’s classroom flashed through Kerry’s mind. “Transworlds Challenge,” she remembered. “The Dramaatis are… wandering space-actors, going round from planet to planet doing shows?”
“Well, we were,” Mircandalee admitted. “I don’t think the Parody Master is a patron of the arts.” She looked away again. “I think I’m the last of my troupe to survive. That’s why I’m here.”
Kerry was checking the cage for ways out. She was keeping busy so she could ignore the growing gnawing fear in her guts. “What did you do?” she asked.
“When Tircandaselle died, when those six Avawarriors… when she died, I knew I was probably the last. I had to declaim the Epilogue for her. To bring the curtain down properly for them all. I… I knew then I’d be punished for it.” She huddled into a smaller ball. “I couldn’t imagine how much. I didn’t know that anything could be worse than working on the Comfort Deck.”
“Well, you’re… you’re going to be okay now, okay?” Kerry stammered. “Because we’re getting out of here.”
Mircandalee would have laughed if it hadn’t hurt too much. “There’s no escape from the critics here,” she warned. “Only return to another kind of pain and shame.”
“There is a way out,” Kerry insisted. “I’ll find it. I have to.” The doubts were pressing in on her now, the fears for the future worming through her brain eating her courage. But she had to stay strong, for Mircandalee, to survive. “And… I have friends. Family. They’ll be coming. My sister, she’ll be pissed. And Vizh. You don’t want to mess with Vizh about family. And… and Danny.”
“You poor thing!” the Dramaatis sympathised with her. “There’s no rescue for you here.”
“They’ll come,” Kerry said, clenching her fists until her nails bit into her palms. “You’ll see.”
***
The alert warnings went off across the Bloody Genocide as news came in of insurrection on Reticulum Prime. In short succession similar alarms were sent from a dozen other locations, then a hundred.
Avawarriors hastened to their combat stations aboard the vessel. Many raced to the mass transit space-folding chambers from which they could be deployed anywhere within a hundred thousand light years. They prepared for combat drop.
Then the Purveyors of Peril appeared from the Portal of Pretentiousness and fell upon them.
Gromm the Living Flatulence went first, exploding his gaseous form around them, searing his caustic essence through armour joints and weak seals. Then came Razor Ballerina, her psychic blades slicing even through tempered ava-armour, and Appendage Man, sprawling out to huge size as he spawned more and more intrusive limbs to overwhelm to downed soldiers.
“I know it’s wrong, but I can’t look away,” admitted Mary Prankstar. “It’s like watching roadkill.”
“We need to get going,” VelcroVixen called out. “This place is packed full of elite guards. We need to take them while we have surprise on our side.”
“Do not fear, chica,” Xatroc grinned at her. “You have El Futbalista Atomico at your side.” He demonstrated by generating a supercharged sphere and using it to kick an Avawarrior through the next bulkhead.
“This ship is powered by radioactive decay,” observed Dr Roentgen. “I am now shifting the particle acceleration away from its usual course. This will cause power loss to primary systems and will fry the technicians on the engineering deck like microwaved maggots.”
“I’ve overridden the emergency compartment controls on the ventilation systems,” reported Brass Monkey. He had gained command of an open control console by transforming the ava-armour of its guardians into solid brass. Since brass wasn’t anything like as impenetrable as ava-armour, Voodoo Vicaress was occupying herself pushing five inch needles through the faceplates while chanting a song to bind the dead to their flesh.
“Brick,” prompted VelcroVixen.
“Yeah, yeah, I know what I’m doing,” objected Grit, the Granulated Man. He shifted to his sand form and swept through the airways of the ship, bringing the equivalent of a Sahara sandstorm to the corridors below. Avawarriors could move through such hostile environments but they were slowed and hampered.
“Here come more of them,” UltiMAX-TremeMan shouted. “I’m gonna kill me some Parody butt!”
“Can you believe these bozos gave the Lair Legion a hard time?” demanded Anvil Man as he trod the enemy into the ground. “I say after this we pay the Legion a call and show them what a real unit can do. Assuming somebody pays.”
“Smiteth!” said Clonar, cloned hemigod of thunder. He dropped into the largest cluster of approaching avawarriors, ignoring any wounds he took from their slicing avaswords, and battled on.
“I wonder if Danny has any plans for this lovely ship after we’ve killed everybody?” wondered Mary Prankstar. “Can we keep it?”
“Interesting thought,” agreed VelcroVixen.
“Hey, we’re getting kind of outnumbered here,” Appendage Man called. “So many orifices, so little time. These lovely boys are getting organised.”
“We’ll have more on our side soon,” Voodoo Vicaress promised. The first of her ava-zombies shambled up into the fight.
“Too slow,” criticised Dr Roentgen. He concentrated, animating the charred corpses of the technicians on the engineering deck, now his rad-puppets. “Dance, little fleshlings, dance,” he gloated.
“That is not dancing,” Razor Ballerina criticised, pirouetting overhead. “This is dancing, the ballet of blood and screams in perfect harmony.”
“How many of these &*$£^ are there?” demanded UltiMAX-TremeMan. “We’re getting hedged in here.”
The Ava-blades had still failed to penetrate Anvil Man’s rusty steel coating, “I’ll make us a new opening there,” he indicated, focussing his detonation powers. “I think that’s the way to the bridge, yeah?”
“Yes,” Brass Monkey agreed. “You can tell on account of that being where they’ve positioned the heavy weaponry against us.”
Xatroc detonated the arsenal with a well aimed shot. “Goal!” he celebrated.
“They’re attempting airborne nanite attack,” Gromm noted. “I’m digesting them now.”
“They’re attempting radiation weapons,” gloated Dr Roentgen. “How quaint.”
“And you know those destruct grids hidden all over the ship?” Mary Prankstar giggled, “Did you know they can be reprogrammed?”
“Don’t get overconfident,” VelcroVixen warned people. “These are serious adversaries. We can take down ten thousand and there’ll still be a half million more.”
“Oh good,” enthused Appendage Man.
“Do we get overtime?” asked Anvil Man.
Just then an Avasword cored a hole in the side of the ship, venting the atmosphere – and Gromm – into deep space. An avashield caught Xatroc’s energy football and deflected it to detonate around Razor Ballerina and Brass Monkey. As the Purveyors tried to hold on in the decompressing compartment a smart bomb detached itself into a hundred component parts and latched onto Anvil Man, Clonar, UltraMAX-TremeMan, and Appendage Man, tasering techno-mystic energies to bring them down.
The Avatar had arrived.
“I dibs him,” called Grit the Granulated Man. He didn’t realise that the Avatar’s avasword could emit a normalising field that temporarily transformed Brick Basalt back to his human form. By the time he realised it was too late to avoid the neural charge that brought him down.
“Oooh, not good,” winced Mary Prankstar. “Hey, Mistah A, pick on someone your own size. I mean not me!” She managed to cobble a temporary force shield patch on the gaping hole to vacuum just before she passed out from lack of air.
VelcroVixen tumbled aside as the Avatar hurled more neural darts to take down Xatroc and Voodoo Vicaress. “Grott, Roentgen, stop him!” she called. They were the last Purveyors standing.
“I’m a genius,” Brass Monkey pointed out – and vanished through one of the holes in the interior bulkhead.
Dr Roentgen focussed his atomic energies on the Avatar. The Parody Master’s prime warrior caught them on his shield and returned them scrambled and magnified. Stanislaus Roentgen grunted and increased his efforts.
“You contend now with my Master’s power,” the Avatar spoke. “Your might is great, but not sufficient.” He angled his shield differently and the radiation-suited mad scientist went down in a flash of energies.
VelcroVixen held up her hands in surrender. “You win,” she simpered. “Do with me what you will.”
The Avawarrior looked over the field of battle where thousands of his elite troops lay broken and bleeding. “Where is your leader?” he demanded.
***
The Painmaster looked up in surprise as his support staff began screaming. Danny kicked him in the balls and caught his chin with a knee as he went down. “And now you don’t have voluntary control of your nervous systems either,” Danny denied, glaring round at the Avasoldiers and Inquisitors of the Punishment Zone. “You can still keep feeling the agony I arranged though.”
“Wha…” gasped the Painmaster before he had to vomit onto the floor grating. “Who…”
“Where’s Kerry Shepherdson?” demanded Denial. “She’s not been harmed. Otherwise you’re gonna be sobbing apologies from what’s left of your rotting pulped body a thousand years from now.”
“Prisoner 934487…” croaked the Painmaster.
“Kerry. She’s no prisoner of yours. Where is she?”
“Torture… torture room seven.”
Danny snapped the Painmaster’s neck with a quick easy motion he’d learned from the Heck Fire Club and moved on. His heart was in his mouth as he limped as quickly as he could manage to the grim rooms with the blood-drainage channels on the floor.
Kerry was hanging from some kind of rack, but her would-be tormentors had rushed away when the alarms began.
“Danny!” she cried out. “Whoah, I’m glad to see you.”
Denial found the release controls and dropped Kerry into his arms. “Firecracker,” he coughed. “You’re okay?”
“Sure, never better,” Kerry lied. “You picked a good time to bring the Lair Legion, though. Things were about to get painful and personal and these bastards are inhibiting my powers.”
Danny felt the shiver that ran through the girl as she hugged him, the sob she bit back. “I came as soon as I could. But I didn’t bring the Legion.”
“The Juniors are back?”
“Er, no. I’m kind of running the Purveyors of Peril right now. I needed muscle.”
“The Purveyors?” Kerry looked at her boyfriend more critically. “Danny, what have you done to yourself? You look a right mess.”
“I’m fine, Kes-luv,” he lied back to her. “Used the old Portal of Pretentiousness and it was a bit rough is all. I think I broke it. Dad’ll probably make me pay for it.”
“So what’s the escape plan?” Kerry asked. “There’s big big boyfriend points for rescuing me from torture, by the way. You really want to get me home fast while I’m feeling grateful.”
Danny coughed up some more blood. “Well, the plan kind of runs out at about this point, but I’d say our best chance was to boost this warship and drive it to Caph.” He staggered a little. Kerry had to hold him up.
“Danny?” She stared at his unfocused green eyes. “You’re not okay, are you? Danny, tell me!”
“Pushing myself a bit, that’s all. Now we need to get back to my team. I brought them here, I’m responsible for them.”
“They’re villains.”
“I’m their archvillain. We don’t leave our people in there. Well I don’t.”
Kerry cuddled him again. “You don’t, do you?” She thought again. “Danny, we can’t just escape here. There are all kinds of prisoners. There’s a girl called Mircandalee, she needs our help. We have to save all of them.”
Danny chuckled. “You know who you sound like?” he teased.
“Don’t you dare say it,” flared Kerry. “I’m nothing like her! Not a bit! For starters, my boyfriend’s still there in the morning.”
Danny didn’t answer. He could feel the energies he’d provoked welling up inside him, burning away at him. He was glad to pay the price if it meant Kerry went home safe.
They’d almost made it to Mircandalee’s cell when the Avatar caught up with them.
***
“Ah, the Hooded Hood’s son,” Avatar noted as he cornered the escaping couple. “I was concerned for a moment that it might be somebody dangerous.”
Danny shrugged. “Dangerous enough to know how to take down a loser in Power Ranger armour. Firecracker, your powers aren’t inhibited any more.”
“Oooh,” murmured Kerry, “Daniel Lyle, I love you!”
The Avatar surged forward. “I’ve been shielded from your powers. Both of you.” He swung his avablade in a wide beheading arc.
Kerry blew out the flooring from beneath the warrior’s feet, tumbling him down into the garbage disposal deck below. There he was engulfed in thick black fumes as the waste spontaneously combusted. Every security device and cell lock on the Bloody Genocide burned out simultaneously, freeing Purveyors of Peril from the power-inhibitors they’d been fitted with.
“Tell me again about how protected from me you are?” Kerry shouted.
Avatar sprang up from the inferno of the lower decks, straight at Kerry.
“She’s not there,” Denial said, leaving the Avatar to slam into a bulkhead.
“Bang!” snarled the probability arsonist. A high-tension conduit ruptured where the leader of the avawarriors had crashed through the wall, searing him with the entire accumulated energies of his warship. Power went out again and artificial gravity failed.
Avatar shook it off. “Your problem, children,” he warned, “is that there is nothing on this ship that can harm me. Your powers cannot affect me directly. Nothing else could stop me.” He span around and moved towards his prey. “And I can manoeuvre in zero-G” he added.
Kerry blew out the side of the ship so the escaping air hammered him outside.
“The wall’s not breached!” Danny gasped, clinging on to a torture device for sheer life. “Kes, tell me you knew I was going to save us like that!”
“He’s going to burn!” Kerry shouted. “He’s going to fry!”
The solar flare that had been building for hours erupted out and washed over the avaship, melting the detail of its surface, slamming the Avatar with superheated plasma at 16,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The Avatar’s armour went from the deep chill of absolute zero to cherry hot then back again.
An avasword cored through the hull. Avatar ignored the second decompression and climbed aboard. Emergency systems were restoring light, temporary gravity, life support. The telltale warning lights inside his armour warned that the ship was failing and the Avawarriors were falling. They could fight the Purveyors, but not in this erratic hostile environment without leadership.
Kerry and Danny had retreated down to the holding cells and were freeing captives.
“Very touching,” spat Avatar, catching up with them. “Very heroic.”
“Don’t say that!” screeched Kerry, detonating more equipment at the oncoming warrior. Avatar caught the explosions on his avashield and redirected them to destroy the exits from the holding platform.
“Run!” screeched a terrified Mircandalee. “Nothing can stop the Avatar!” But there was nowhere to run.
“I’m not nothing,” denied Danny. His power allowed him to duck under Avatar’s guard and slam a stolen avasword right at the crack where the solar flare had damaged the armour.
The Avatar smacked him down with a bone-crunching swipe of his shield then looked in mild surprise that a blade had impaled him. “Is that supposed to stop me?” he asked scornfully.
“No,” snarled Kerry Shepherdson, standing over her fallen boyfriend. “This is.”
She detonated the avasword. A thousand fragments of blade willed by the Parody Master to cut through anything slashed their way through Avatar’s innards.
The Avatar made a kind of disgusted gurgle, tried to reach for his killer, then toppled over dead. At about the same moment, VelcroVixen and Dr Roentgen reached the Genocide’s bridge and took command.
Kerry opened her eyes again, surprised to find she’d shut them, horrified to find she’d been crying. “We did it?” she asked. “We did it!”
She looked round for Danny. He was lying on the floor staring at her, corpse-pale except for where the blood covered his t-shirt. “Always wanted… a red jacket,” he said.
“Danny!” Kerry called out, rushing to him.
“Oh no,” whispered Mircandalle, watching the scene with a dramatist’s eye. “Great victories always require great sacrifices, don’t they?”
“Danny!”
“Firecracker,” Danny Lyle said, smiling up at his girlfriend. “Love you.”
Then he died.
***
6. War Crimes
The obscure constellation used to be known on Earth as Vulpecula et Anser, the little fox with the goose, located in the Summer Triangle asterism of Deneb, Vega, and Altair. Notable for its lack of bright suns, swathed in the murk of the Dumbbell Nebula, that miserable part of space relies on huge dark stars of 4th magnitude or dimmer to light sullen, barren worlds with frozen lifeless moons. The dour Shankaru dwelled there on the third planet of the blood-orange sun Tallardia. The conquered Shankaru’s ice-moon made the perfect home for the Re-Education Centre of the High Inquisition of the Parody Master.
And what the Inquisition educated their subjects to do was to scream.
When rebellion and disobedience flared across the Parody Master’s empire the experts in pain and subjugation travelled back to their main installation to prepare for the influx of new subjects – and to await attack.
“Others may panic in a crisis,” declaimed Grand Inquisitor Flay, “but we are prepared. He looked at the three senior Inquisitors in his office. “The humans have launched strategic guerrilla assaults on key empire infrastructure. It’s obvious that they will be coming here. Unlike those other places, we at Tallardia will be prepared. We shall neutralise and confine the intruders. And then gentlemen, we shall do what we do best.”
Inquisitors Maarn, Lok, and Vespalin nodded agreement.
“I hope they send Hatman back here,” noted Maarn. He was still nursing a throbbing head from his earlier encounter with the Sorceress and the nerve cluster specialist was in a savage mood.
“He’ll be back,” Vespalin promised them. “With that psyche profile? He’ll take it as a holy crusade to come and avenge those who perished here, to shut us down or die trying.”
“I trust all is in readiness for his homecoming?” checked Flay.
“We’re ready,” assured insult trauma specialist Lok. “For him and his whole merry band.”
***
“They’ll be expecting us,” Hatman told the team aboard LairJet Four. “Those Inquisitors love to profile and predict people, and they think they’ve got us pegged.”
“They’ll certainly know that you’re unlikely to use tactics that would deliberately hurt their captives,” admitted Knifey. “They’ll know you won’t just attack and carpet-bomb the detention centre. They’ll use human shields.”
“That’s why we picked this squad for this mission,” noted Yuki Shiro. “This isn’t about raw power. It’s about skill.”
Trickshot preened. “And don’t forget smarts. And good looks.”
“I’m reviewing the data of how many people have been processed through those horror-camps below,” Lee Bookman noted, looking up from the ledger on his knee with a sick expression. The volume was one of the Lunar Public Library data feeds, and text filled its pages dependent on the Librarian’s need. “They even have some captured humans down there.”
“It’s not enough to just shut these guys down,” ManMan argued. “We have to get the prisoners out of there too.”
“Easier said than done,” pointed out Yuki. “These aren’t just prisoners of war. They’re torture victims. How many could just walk out?”
“That’s why we’ve got the plan, folks,” Knifey reminded them. “That’s why we need to be inside the installation.”
“I still want ta know what happens if the plan don’t work, though,” Trickshot worried. “We’re taking kind of a risk here, Hatty.”
“That’s my problem to solve,” Hatman told his team. “But we have to take these villains down.” His eyes narrowed and became cold as ice. “Let’s go.”
***
“There are disturbances down on Shankaru, at the spaceport,” reported Inquisitor Maarn. “Some kind of Terran rodents with jet packs.”
“A diversion,” replied Vespalin. “Hatman will be coming here.”
***
The Librarian interrupted the constant stream of data-chatter to Security Drone T8335. Trickshot stunned it out of the air with an EMP arrow. ManMan carved through the tellurium plating to get to the circuit boards beneath. Yuki Shiro jacked into the operating system and added the rootkit that would replicate across the entire system for the moment she’d need it. Hatman pulled on an engineer’s helmet and patched up the robot, sending it wobbling on its way oblivious that it had just become a Trojan horse.
***
“Alert message from the Inquisition LabShip Tears of Regret,” noted Lok. “They’re under assault from some genetically-modified ruminants and a woman wearing a cow’s head. She’s not just taking them down, she’s critiquing them.”
“Not relevant,” Vespalin assured them. “He’s on his way.”
“Are all the hostages wired in to the pain net?” Grand Inquisitor Flay checked. “I’d hate for the chorus of screams to be missing any voices. We wouldn’t want the Lair Legion to hesitate to sacrifice themselves for the want of a few baritones.”
***
“I’ve got the specs on those security towers,” reported the Librarian. “Sophisticated stuff. They have active energy weapons tracking, remote artillery guidance scramblers, point-specific precision lasers…”
“In other words they can protect themselves against guided missiles, spot high-tech weaponry, and zap anything that gets too near,” ManMan translated. “And their weak spot?”
Yuki studied the specs that Lee had provided. “Primary cooling vent underneath the main tower housing,” she answered promptly. “A detonation there backflashes into the main weapons array, with hilarious consequences.”
“Of course, their defence systems would detect and deflect any high-tech missile aimed at those vents,” Knifey noted drolly.
“Oh yeah,” grinned Carl Bastion, unslinging his bow and selecting an arrow. “We’re lucky then that Br’er Tricky don’t need no batteries to play.”
***
“We have an incursion!” called out Inquisitor Maarn, forgetting his professional detachment for a moment in his eager excitement. “Discipline Dome Four. One of the electrotherapy workshops, I believe.”
“Who do we have?” asked Lok. “CrazySugarFreakBoy!, maybe? Or that ridiculous archer?”
Maarn checked the computer readout again. “The identifax… well, it says the intruders are… a space pirate, a Jedi knight, and a Wookee,” he frowned.
“A what?” puzzled Flay. He was not amused.
“I’m getting another warning of an attack in Dome Nine. Identifax recognised a species designated Vulcan and several Terrans. One has a torn yellow shirt. And there’s another intrusion in Dome One where, um, ranting genetically mutated beings in bonded polycarbide armour are apparently exterminating our enforcers.”
“Run a systems check,” snarled Maarn. “I thought we’d sealed our database from Al B. Harper’s interference.”
“We did,” agreed Vespalin. “These attackers are figures from Earth popular culture. At least I’m assuming the halflings and wizard vandalising Dome Six are not actual. I think we’ve got intruders alright, but not these. I believe Librarian Bookman has made his way to a records terminal.”
“I’m initiating a Level One Escape Search,” Lok called out. “I’m releasing the bio-hunters and letting the punishment droids go weapons free.”
“Non-lethal only though,” cautioned Flay. “I want live subjects for later.”
“Soul catchers are in place if there’s an error,” noted Vespalin. “And I think I’ve isolated where those spurious data packages are coming from. Bookman has displaced a chunk of actual sensor input with…” He paused then as he realised what the scanners would have otherwise reported. “Look out!” he shouted. “They’re…”
Then the meteor shower hit.
***
Hatman wore his Manasota Meteors cap and a grimace that was only in part due to the strain of such a radical use of his powers. He tore in from deep space, dragging with him a shower of tumbling asteroids, blurring towards the Re-Education Centre on Shankaru’s moon.
The last hundred miles was the hardest, as he slammed the meteors down across the force-field around the base, overloading the defences as the giant rocks burst into shrapnel dust on the energy dome. Jay Boaz wanted the defence fields gone but he didn’t want civilian casualties.
At last the force-field burst, flaring as it burned out, leaving the way open for his team-mates to enter the main complex.
Hatman landed hard on the bare rock of the desolate moon, but dragged himself up again. He had a message to deliver, and the main power generation plant of the base was still intact. Jay Boaz changed hats and prepared to demonstrate what his Cleveland Comets cap could do.
***
“Lair Legion,” called Grand Inquisitor Flay over the internal speakers of the complex. “Mr Boaz, Mr Bookman, and whatever other little friends you brought with you. I’m sure you’re feeling very pleased with yourselves to have come this far and caused this much damage.”
“Damned right, bunkie,” snarled Trickshot, taking down the first avawarrior he encountered with a high-density glue arrow. The elite warriors were almost invulnerable, but stuck in fast-drying silicone cement was as good as knocking them out. “We’re gonna make you pay fer all the crap you pulled here.”
“And I must congratulate you on your creativity,” Flay continued. “We’re very much looking forward to you being our guests so we can show you how imaginative we can be in turn.”
“Activating the Trojan now,” Yuki told her team-mates. “Now I’m controlling the security drones. I’m sending them after the ava-troops.”
“You probably have all sorts of wonderful plans to ensure truth and justice and so on,” Flay noted, his voice echoing across the whole complex from the dissection labs to the penitence cells. “Whereas what we have is many, many hostages. Some of them even come from your own little Earth. Let’s hear what they have to say.”
The Inquisitors voice was replaced with audio feeds from elsewhere in the station.
“No… Please! Aaaaahhhh!”
“Eeeeeiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!”
“Stop… Oh %&$£*… oh please just stop…”
“Uhhh! My arms… what have you done…?”
“Nuhhh nuhhhhhh nuuuu…”
“That bastard!” shouted ManMan. “When we catch you you’re dead! Dead!”
Flay chuckled. He was enjoying this. “Now my operatives are going to start termination procedures on the youngest and most vulnerable of the quarter of a million captives currently in our care. We shall slaughter one prisoner every ten seconds until such time as you elect to surrender yourselves to us, starting one minute from now.”
“Well,” sighed Knifey, “we knew it was likely to come to this. Lee?”
“On it,” said the Librarian, laying his hand on the computer terminal they’d captured when they’d taken down Neuro-Research Lab Two. “I just hope I can isolate the data in time for Yuki to use it.”
“Hurry up,” ManMan called. “We’re getting to deadline.”
“Very well, I’ve found the program packets that activate the emergency evacuation teleports,” the Librarian reported. “They’re supposed to be a secret escape route for the Inquisitors in case of a mass prisoner breakout. I’m erasing the Inquisitors bio-signatures from the teleport lists and substituting the prisoners.”
“These are short-range transporters designed to dump people down on Shankaru,” Yuki noted. “But they’ll get the hostages away and leave us free to deal with the Inquisitors.”
“Evacuated to a planet being liberated by Racoon People,” added Trickshot with a shudder.
“Suffering is relative,” commented Knifey.
“Ten seconds,” warned ManMan.
“Activate!” called Yuki, sending the signals.
Nothing happened.
“Oh, did I mention that we took the emergency teleport system offline?” Inquisitor Flay asked over the speaker system. “Physically dismantled it so it couldn’t be electronically gimmicked. Our psyche-models suggested that you would seek a means of quixotically saving our subjects.” He laughed again. “Still, full marks for trying. What do you say, Corporal Dawson of Kneebend, Ohio?”
“Aaaaaakkkkkkkkkkkkkkk…..!”
“Oh, he’s dead! Ten seconds to say goodbye to Registered Nurse Docherty of Fresno California.”
“It didn’t work,” Lee gasped. “They anticipated us.”
“We can try again,” Yuki said. “If we can find the teleport centre and fix the mechanism…”
“No time,” Trickshot decided. He dropped his bow. “They got us. We surrender.”
***
“Quite a haul,” admired Inquisitor Maarn as he looked at the four Legionnaires kneeling in shackles before him. “It’s going to take years for us to dredge all the exciting information out of that Librarian’s mind. Such as where he’s hidden the date from his Intergalactic Order’s Grand Repository.”
“I’ll die before telling you,” Lee Bookman shouted.
Vespalin smiled thinly. “If only I had an imperial for every time I’ve heard that!”
“And the Master’s going to be specially pleased to receive this little toy,” Lok noted, turning Knifey over in his hands. “He’s been wanting to grind this blade into dust for a million years.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” answered the talking weapon.
“Leave him alone!” ManMan challenged. “He’s with me!”
“Before I send him to the Master I’ll be using him to carve you open,” Inquisitor Lok promised.
“And Yuki Shiro has a human brain inside that shell of steel,” Maarn noted, continuing to diagnose his new subjects. “A human brain entirely dependent on whatever sensory stimuli are fed through a sophisticated Technopolitan neural interface. Do you know how many possibilities that opens up?”
“Do you know how dead you are when we escape?” demanded Yuki.
“And yet there’s one missing,” noted Grand Inquisitor Flay. “One more surrender due. Where is Mr Boaz, your glorious leader Hatman? We have unfinished work there.”
“Jay?” snorted Trickshot. “The boss is too busy doin’ important stuff ta come and take down small-time losers like you. He’s out there spanking your Parody Master’s butt like a red-headed stepchild.”
“He’s lying,” concluded Vespalin, the expert psychologist. “Boaz is nearby. He wouldn’t send in his comrades to this situation without being personally involved. He’s weak like that.”
“They’re too good at this,” the Librarian frowned. “And now they’re going to use their hostage threat again.”
“Very clever, Mr Bookman,” approved Vespalin. “I assume you have an encoded means of communicating with your commander?”
“Comm-card,” admitted ManMan sullenly. “We’ll call him. Don’t kill anyone else.”
“You’re going to pay fer Corporal Dawson,” Trickshot warned them. “Fer everybody.”
“Kindly open up communications with Mr Boaz,” instructed the Grand Inquisitor, returning a comms card to Joe Pepper. “Explain to him that it is time for him to nobly sacrifice himself again to save the innocents.”
ManMan accepted the card and opened a channel. “Jay,” he called. “We’re here. They fell for it.”
“Okay,” replied capped crusader. “Showtime.”
***
Hatman reached into his hatility belt and pulled out a black, broad-brimmed Zorro hat with a bright red plume attached to it. He looked at Yo’s hat and smiled. “Help me, old friend, wherever you are.”
He put it on and his grin widened. “Now is to be moving of all unhappy people in this complex to where they can to be being happy! Now is time for all prisoners here to be deciding if they would rather be in their Happy Place!”
Every captive in the Re-Education Centre sparkled and vanished away.
***
“Hostages safe,” Hatman told the Legion. “Take the bad guys down.”
“On it,” agreed Yuki. She scissored forward, ignoring the shackles that bound her hands behind her, and kicked a foot through Inquisitor Maarn’s stomach. Trickshot rolled forward and spat the arrowhead he’d kept concealed in his mouth right into Vespalin’s eye. ManMan hooked Lok’s feet from under him, retrieved Knifey, then fell heavily on the torturer, blade first.
Grand Inqusitor Flay watched in shock for a moment, then fled through the concealed exit behind him.
“I bet he wishes they hadn’t disabled that emergency teleporter now,” the Librarian noted.
“Did they really think we’d rely on their teleport evacuation tech?” snorted Yuki. “Didn’t they realise we had to be face-to-face with them when we sprung our trap to stop them pulling something else?”
Trickshot leaned over Vespalin, the only survivor of the trio of senior Inquisitors who had been supporting Flay just a few moments before. The irritating archer didn’t believe in killing. “You’re under arrest. You have the right to remain silent,” he told the shrieking theologian who was clutching at his ruined eye, “but on the whole I’m kind of enjoying hearin’ you scream.”
***
Grand Inquisitor Flay ran mindlessly in panic back towards his private chambers. There were weapons there, and a final emergency teleport that could get one person away if everything turned bad.
Behind him the security doors crumpled and burst as steel fists slammed them aside.
Flay scattered random pain mines from his concealed pockets, and he heard them go off behind him. The roar of a jet rocket didn’t falter and was catching up.
Flay got to the door of his chamber and inputted his personal security code.
The Librarian had changed it.
There was a crash of masonry as Hatman came through the wall.
“Get back!” shrieked Flay, firing a flesh-disruptor at the incoming superhero. Hatman in his Steelers cap ignored it.
Jay Boaz took Flay by the neck and held him up against the wall. He pulled back a solid steel fist that could punch through a battleship and snarled at his tormentor.
“D-don’t…!” begged Flay, losing control of his bodily functions. “Don’t hurt me!”
Hatman pounded his fist forward straight into Flay’s face; but at the last minute he reverted to flesh, so it was only knuckle that shattered the torturer’s jaw and smashed the back of his skull into the plasterwork.
“You’re under arrest,” Hatman told the fallen Inquisitor. “For war crimes. I hope they hang you.”
***
7. The War of Hearts and Minds
The Public Accosters had maintained the discipline and morality of the Skree Star Empire for over four thousand years. With their Rods of Importance and their advanced citizen surveillance drones the Accosters ensured that the men of the Skree remained pure and dedicated.
After Galactivac and Dancer destroyed Skree-Lump, their homeworld, and after the Supreme Interference fell, it was the Accosters who rose to power to rebuild the fragments of the shattered Empire, to conquer New Skree-Lump and eradicate the former inhabitants so that the Skree might live again. It was the High Accoster Dronon himself who had determined that his people’s future lay with alliance with the all-powerful Parody Master.
Now Dronon was the most trusted of the Parody Master’s alien allies, the Skree first amongst the loyal races whose armies fought beside the Avawarriors for the master’s glory. If any on New Skree-Lump wondered at the mighty Skree acting as subordinates to another conqueror they were careful not to speak it. The Public Accosters had the right to make immediate judgement and their punishment was final.
Dronon was obedient to his Master, but he had trouble masking his disappointment at not being there for the kill when Earth was destroyed. The champions of Earth were responsible for three great defeats that marred the record of Skree achievement: they had beaten off an attack of conquest by the Fifth Armada, forcing retreat in the face of the Skunks; they had led Galactivac to Skree-Lump to consume it; and they had robbed the Skreemen of a new victory in the Transworlds Challenge. The annoying CrazySugarFreakBoy! had defeated and humiliated former Skree Admiral Roxx-Hoff in single combat before a watching universe. Dronon would have enjoyed watching the Earth heroes weep for their ravaged planet.
Consequently Dronon was already in a bad mood even before Visionary convinced the Reticulum Matrix to broadcast his call to sedition, before the Earth whore Meggan Foxxx made her scandalous suggestions and speculated about Dronon’s masculinity to a galaxy-wide audience.
“Prepare the Accoster fleet,” Dronon commanded his lieutenants. “Alert every officer. I want there to be no disharmony on Skree-Lump. Accosters are authorised to use extreme force. Initiate punishment to all kin and contacts of any dissident. We will drown this insolence in a tide of blood.”
Just then a dimensional dreadnaught warped into normal space in orbit above the Citadel of Discipline. The Parody Master’s personal communication code that flashed across the monitor screen. The Parody Master’s fierce armoured shape filled the image. “Dronon? What are you doing here? I ordered you aboard my ship an hour past. Or are you part of this foolish and futile disobedience as well?”
The Public Accoster blanched. “Master? I received no message! I would have come at once if I had…”
“Teleport here now! I will brook no further insolence or delay!”
“At once, Master!” Dronon turned round to the technicians beside him. “Do it!” he snapped, “Or live out the rest of your lives as stump-limbed beggars!”
The technicians hastily made the necessary arrangements to transport the High Public Accoster aboard the dreadnaught Cruel Deceiver.
***
“So where did you hide the dimensional dreadnaught?” CSFB! demanded of Baroness Elizabeth von Zemo. “Even your copious bulk isn’t enough to conceal a mile-long renegade warship.”
“The Deceiver elected to defect after the Hooded Hood showed them some possible futures where the Parody Master wins,” Al B. noted. “But why they should think they have to work for Citiz… for Elizabeth von Zemo I don’t know.”
“Her excellency is an ally of the Hooded Hood,” noted Captain Kahn, pushing his long silver locks from his forehead. “In his absence we have agreed to follow her lead.”
“And why didn’t we use this warship when we took over the planet a while back?” demanded Silicone Sally, currently back doubling for Beth von Zemo’s superhero outfit. “It seems it would have been kind of useful to stop us, y’know, losing?”
“Our systems detected and rejected the digitisation of the Movie Gun process,” Kahn explained. “Much as I’m told the mystic resonances about your allies from the Swordrealms and Esperine did, sending them back to their native planes. In our case we merely remained behind and made a hasty exit since we were outnumbered by the forces still serving our former Master.”
“You ran away,” Goldeneyed summarised.
“And now they are back,” the Baroness pointed out. “You sought a way to penetrate to the heart of the Skree Star Empire, I have provided it.”
“Dr Harper’s faked transmissions got us this far,” Mr Epitome judged. “But we do now have a tactical advantage. We’re inside the Skree defence perimeter with a ship superior to any they have.”
“And I’ve isolated the over-ride codes the Supreme Interference left embedded in all Kree security systems so he’d have a back-door in case of trouble,” added Al B. “Now I’m teleporting the Detonator Hippos down to the imperial dockyards.”
“And they say I’m evil,” noted Beth von Zemo.
“And now the big bad’s teleporting up to us to get his ass kicked,” CSFB! grinned. “Let’s go do this.”
“Most satisfactory,” agreed Captain Kahn.
“Kaaaaaaahhhnnn!” screamed CrazySugarFreakBoy!
“I suppose that was inevitable,” sighed Goldeneyed.
***
Dronon the Public Accoster teleported as instructed to one of the cargo holds of the Cruel Deceiver. He was surprised to find one of the great enemies of his people waiting for him there. “Hey, Drony!” called CrazySugarFreakBoy! “You’ve been framed, ass!”
The Accoster took everything in at a glance. “This is the errant dreadnaught that betrayed the Master. You are making an attack on New Skree-Lump and now seek to overwhelm their greatest defender by main force.”
CSFB! pointed to the empty hold. “Ain’t nobody here but us chickens,” he pointed out. “Just you and me. And my mom’s live video feed. I wanna conduct an interview for the history books.”
“You believe you can triumph against me alone? You?”
“So how does it feel to have the PM bedding your fiancée? Did you suggest it in the first place? Does he let you watch? Just how prime is Prime Mistress Uma?”
The Public Accoster touched a stud on his armour to alert the fleet of the incursion.
CSFB! tapped his wowie-zowie walkie-talkie. “Static pulse,” he explained. “This is just between you and me - and an audience of zillions. Let’s see what you’ve got.”
Dronon raised his Rod of Importance and set it to annihilate. CSFB! went in with the combat candy and silly string.
***
The Skree military were based around the dockyards on the twin moons around New Skree-Lump. Since the destruction of the Parody Master’s great space-base at Mayall III months before, the Skree-Lump yards had become the key ordinance production factory of the war machine. It was a well-defended base manned by well-trained, well-disciplined troops.
Captain Angus MacHarridan and Sergeant Grievous MacRabble led the Detonator Hippos of Earth in taking it out. They used a moderately-drunk company of bipedal tartan-kilted hippopotami whose genetic modifications allowed then to explode and reform at will and who thought combat bagpipes were the highest form of artistic expression.
“Awa’ th’ lads, Sergeant. Gi’em some knuckle.”
“Ye heard th’ Capt’n, ye scunners. Get in there an gie yon manky lannarks a seein’ tae they won’t forget!”
“Hoots and crivens, death a’ glory!”
“Hae ye e’er seen a sight like that coomin’ down th’ Gallowgate?”
“Does yuir mother sew?”
“Come an’ have a go with th’ Hippo aggro!”
There was nothing in the Skree training manual about Detonator Hippos. The Parody Master was all-powerful, but when it came to being surreal then Parody-Earth beat him hands down.
***
The ground forces of the Accosters were arrayed around a great dimensional fold arch not unlike those the Legion had recently used to mass-transport troops across planar gulfs. Goldeneyed teleported himself, Mr Epitome, and Glory to the far end of the vast parade field, fully eight miles from their technological target.
“I can get us much nearer than that now,” G-Eyed noted. “Now I’ve got line of sight.”
“I don’t want us nearer,” Dominic Clancy told him. “From here we walk.”
The first watchmen spotted the intruders and turned perimeter defence ordinance on them.
Goldeneyed teleported the weapons far away. “But if we walk there we’re going to have to go through every soldier on the planet to… ah!”
“Yes,” agreed Mr Epitome. The paragon of power picked up the first tank and slammed it down on top of the second. “We have a message to send.”
Glory chewed through a massive combat robot, hackles raised. “They must learn to fear us,” the mutt of might reasoned.
Mr Epitome lifted up a shattercannon and sent it spinning across the battlefield three feet from the ground, crashing through soldiers and ordinance alike. “They should,” he answered. “These people planned a war of aggression against my country, my planet. Now they get to pay the penalty.”
“Oh yeah!” enthused G-Eyed. “Where were you when I was running the Legion? Let’s do this!”
The Skree began to realise they were under heavy attack. No order was coming from the Citadel of Discipline. In the absence of other commands they sent in the Guardbots.
“I’ve fought these robots before,” G-Eyed warned. “They’re tough and they have an anti-teleport field.” He shifted molten lava from the planet’s core to wash over the first rank of them, melting them to slag. “Not that tough, of course.”
Epitome picked up one of the Guardbots to use as a bat against the others. “You’ve honed your powers during those months in the dimensional doorway,” he noted. Behind him Glory shook a robot forty times her mass like a rat.
“I guess so,” agreed Bry Katz. “Range teleportation was always harder than this before.” He demonstrated by shifting the combat armour of the next rank of Accosters to their moon, leaving them both embarrassed and vulnerable. “Is that really regulation Accoster underwear?” he asked one of them.
The forces of the Skree piled in, piled higher. The battle became more brutal. Mr Epitome continued his inexorable progress to destroy the transport arch.
From the distance curious eyes watched him, saw that the Accosters were not unstoppable, not indestructible. The first rocks came in at the keepers of Skree morals then; but not the last.
***
Al B. activated his over-ride virus just as the Cruel Deceiver came into range of the Skree Star Armada. It took less than thirty seconds for most of the ships to bypass the archscientist’s cobbled codes but that was enough. The dimensional dreadnaught’s batteries could reduce most vessels to plasma with a single barrage, even the Skree carrier platforms.
The skies were filled with flashes as ships were seared out of existence. Captain Kahn sat on his red-lit bridge contemplating the massacre and working out a chess problem on the board next to him. “Life is fleeting and space is cold,” he murmured.
“We’re within range,” Al B. noted, looking up from the operations board he’d been tinkering with. “Let’s go.”
Beth von Zemo didn’t look happy. “Must we?” she demanded. “We could probably destroy the Academyship from here.”
Dr Harper shrugged. “Well, it’s your choice whether you come with me to deal with the Science Elite. The so-called Science Elite. But you might remember that your implant will cause your head to explode if you get too far from a Legionnaire, and the only one you’re near right now is teleporting over there.”
“Hey, don’t explode on me!” Sally yelped. “I don’t want bits of Baroness staining me!” She sighed deeply. “I mean staining me worse.”
“And what makes you think you can anticipate and overcome the complex muti-phasic encryption on the Academy’s teleport screen, independent from the Skree codes you have used, product of the finest geniuses in the service of the Parody Master?” challenged the Baroness.
Al B. sucked on his bubble pipe. “I’m me,” he explained. “But we’ll soon find out if I’m right. If we get our molecules spread across the Parodyverse as we bounce off their barrier you can say ‘I told you so.’
“You and all the Lair Legion are going to die,” the Baroness promised as they teleported out.
***
“Is that the best you can do?” CSFB! asked Dronon as their fight progressed. “I mean, energy zaps, neural net fields, laser blades, and that big overcompensating-for-something Rod of Importance? At least when I battled Roxx-Hoff he gave me a good fight!”
The Public Accoster was livid with outrage. The champion of chaos was spewing filth and innuendo, mocking the first man of the Skree, dancing just beyond range of weapons which would make him regret he was ever born.
“Getting a bit flabby, maybe?” the wired wonder suggested. “Too much time spanking away at all those monitor feeds you Accosters slip into people’s bedrooms to make sure they’re doing it in regulation fashion?”
“Die, abomination!” shrieked Dronon. He sent out another impact pulse but CrazySugarFreakBoy! just rode the wave, bounced off the ceiling and came back to slam himself into the Accoster’s face.
“Too hard for you to fight somebody who’s not strapped into an inquisition chair with your goons to hold him down?” Dream continued. “Or is too floppy the problem?”
Dronon slammed his Rod of Importance round and finally caught his enemy in the stomach, slamming him away to sprawl on the floor. “Now…” he hissed vengefully.
He was so intent on payback that he didn’t notice the moisture working its way down inside his armour until it was too late.
“Rocket fuel soda pop,” CSFB! explained. “Usually I use it for a bit of extra propulsion. But it is pretty explosive when exposed to air.”
Dronon the Public Accoster almost said a forbidden word as his shorts exploded.
***
Mr Epitome strode over the rubble of broken building and the pile of fallen warriors and reached the high flagstaff of the Skree Star Empire. He snapped the steel pole and used it as a spear to jam into the delicate workings of the dimensional arch. The parade plaza was illuminated by the firework flare of exploding technology.
“Pretty,” woofed Glory, her tail wagging.
Goldeneyed channelled the rogue teleport energies released by the arch’s destruction and shifted out the bottom eight floors of the Citadel of Discipline. The sixty upper floors obeyed the laws of gravity and toppled down into heaps of wreckage.
“People of the Skree!” shouted Mr Epitome – he’d learned their native tongue on the way here – “If you want your liberty you have to earn it. Struggle for it. Sacrifice for it. Fight for it. If you want your liberty you have to act now.”
And suddenly the revolution began by the rocket’s red glare.
***
“Breeched our teleport barrier?” scorned Genius Protovek. “Impossible. I designed those codes myself.” He listened further to the identifax report from his technology staff and stiffened. “Al B. Harper?”
The monitor switched channels and showed the thin dark bearded shape of the Lair Legion’s archscientist. “Who were you expecting?” asked Al. “I’m e-mailing you some corrections to your barrier codes, by the way. You fudged the Heisenburg delineator coefficients, and after that getting past was easy with a simple inverse algorithm based on the Riemann hypothesis.”
Protovek was not so easily academically cowed. “Your methods are notoriously sloppy, Harper. You make grand assumptions without submitting to peer review, substitute inspiration for analysis, and squander your intellect on shallow attempts at wit and amateur social interaction.”
“I have friends and I’ve had sex, yeah,” agreed Al. “So that’s two up on you right there.”
“Please stop bantering with the insecure senior nerd,” Baroness von Zemo called. “And apply your alleged intellect to these robot drones that are surrounding us.”
“Yeah,” agreed Sally, ballooning out from her employer to bounce the automatons away for a moment. “And soon. These things sting.” The pliable playmate sighed then made a decision. “This is no use. I’m sorry Baroness but I can’t envelop and choke these things properly while I’m morphed around you. I’ll be right back.”
“Wait!” commanded Elizabeth von Zemo, but by then Silicone Sally had become a shapeless sprawl of tentacles and bags rolling across the battle drones, choking intake vents and data ports. The Baroness was left naked holding her disintegrator pistol and a disrupter sabre. “Damn.”
“Damn,” said Al B., whistling softly.
Genius Protvek was so distracted that he almost missed Al inputting data to infiltrate the Academyship mainframe. “What?”
“Just looking for the technical over-rides and self-destructs you guys are bound to have built into your arsenal for your control-freak Master,” the archscientist noted. “That way we can shut down most of the PM’s operation just like that, and leave the rest to the outraged people he’s victimised.”
Protovek’s fingers danced over keyboards of his own design. “You think you could penetrate systems I have designed, you sad Terran fool?”
“Uh-huh,” answered Al B., his own fingers at work on his portable datapad. “But really I don’t have the time for these college games. So I’ve just copied your database and sent it to Hallie over on the Reticulum Nexus so they can take it to pieces instead.”
“What?” yelped Protovek.
“Well, they have the processing power,” Al B, pointed out.
“I shall destroy them!” shouted Genius Protevek. “You think I have not already laid hidden virii in their precious Matrix? That I cannot wipe them and your pernicious pet artificial intelligence with but a keystroke?”
“I think you couldn’t wipe your backside without an instruction manual and help from your mother.”
Protovek triggered off the contingency programs he’d prepared against Al. B Harper long ago, product of many long committee sessions. Al B. invented a new paradox to confuse the instructions and reset them to default. Protovek designed and activated point-singularity termination measures to wipe the troublesome archscientist from the universe. Al B. halted and graded the work and struck back with a virus that decompiled Protovek’s operating systems. Protovek neutralised the intrusion and loaded up a new hacker-proof firewall to keep Harper busy while the flesh eating viruses could be teleported to the right co-ordinates.
He was so het up battling the Earthman that he failed the notice his office lock being over-ridden. He didn’t realise anything was wrong until the Baroness slide her blade into his back and out through his chest. He fell dead onto his computer screen without ever understanding what had happened.
“And I imagine that’s the closest you’ve ever got to a naked woman,” noted Beth von Zemo.
***
“Epitome here,” called in Dominic Clancy. “Co-ordinated ground resistance neutralised on Skree-Lump. Plenty of city-wide weapons discharge and street-fighting, but that’s part of the liberation movement. I have access to the remaining Accoster security systems.”
“Jolly good,” replied Sir Mumphrey Wilton, back in the Lair Mansion on Earth.
“CSFB! here too. I just spanked Dronon’s shiny red butt. Literally.”
“Hmph. Well, doubtless the blaggard enjoyed it.”
“MacHarridan here. Yon shipyard’s are secure fae now.”
“Thank you, Angus.”
“Baroness von Zemo speaking. I have conquered the Science Elite.”
“Indeed. Well done, Dr Harper.”
“Hold it.” Mr Epitome cut in again. “I’ve got the Parody Fleet tactical readouts now! I’ve located the dreadnaught fleet.”
“Very good, Mr Clancy. And where are they, please?”
“They’ve located where we shifted Earth to.” The paragon of power winced. “Sir Mumphrey, they’re heading for Caph. You have six thousand one hundred and forty dimensional dreadnaughts incoming, right now.”
***
8: The Air War
Dimensional dreadnaughts were unlike other space warships. Many races had constructed vast vessels to act as deep space troop and fighter-ship carriers, had taken advantage of sheer size to fit vast engines that could claw their way through the subspace realms or skid on the hyperspace curve better than small underpowered crafts ever could. No other warships were powered by the will of the Parody Master.
The dreadnaughts were. Their deadly efficacy as weapons of war was only in part because they were city-sized killing platforms packed with avasoldiers and carrying ordinance that could explode stars. The rest came from the direct energy feed from their Master which allowed them to perform beyond anything any opposition could hope to pit against them.
Usually the Parody Master deployed three or four such dreadnaughts to conquer a planet. Against Earth, he sent over six thousand. It was a mark of his respect and of his fury.
“Hallie’s plugged into the Reticulum Matrix,” Visionary reported across the sub-space comms line that crackled all the way through to the Lair Mansion Operations Room on Parody Island, Earth. “You’d be amazed how good their tracking systems are. You have not one but two incoming armadas of dimensional dreadnaughts, roughly three thousand in each.” The possibly-fake man swallowed. “We did have a plan for this, right? In the Plan, I mean?”
“The dreadnaughts are the last major element of the Parody Master’s war machine,” noted Sir Mumphrey Wilton. “They have to go.”
***
Subspace is to space what foundations are to a house, a necessary underpinning component of reality. It isn’t really conducive to life, because that’s what the material universe is for, where things like gravity and time and mass can mesh co-operatively. Moving through the substratum is like riding in the engine compartment of a car rather than the body. That doesn’t stop travellers punching holes through to move in sub-space, of course, like rats running below the floorboards, making shortcuts. It just means it can be a dangerous route to choose.
Even dimensional dreadnaughts need to keep a weather eye on the hazards of subspace. Beyond the murky red soup that composes the majority of the realm are gravity threads that could slice a vessel in two, time bubbles that age a ship a billion years in a second, energy waves powerful enough to create galaxies. There are unchartable tides and occasional shoals where an unwary vessel might be cast back into reality in the heart of a blazing birthing nebula.
And there are storms.
“Particle tempest detected, sir,” a tech-officer reported to his commanding officer. “Grade nine, dead ahead, advancing to this position.”
Admiral Durendan was not dismayed. Even a storm that vast could not resist dispersal by so mighty a fleet of dreadnaughts. “Signal the vessels in alpha squadron. Forward plasma burners targeted on the front wave of the phenomenon. Full power on my mark.” Two hundred particle beams that could slice planets could rip even a subspace tempest apart; and the fleet was in a hurry.
“Fifteen seconds to tempest impact, sir. I’m upgrading the storm to level ten. It’s vast, sir. Never seen anything like it.”
“Fire on my mark,” commanded the admiral. “Mark.”
There was a shudder throughout the maasive vessel. The lights dimmed for a moment as the power was drained to the forward battery. There was a high hum as energy poured forth to destroy its target.
“Report,” commanded Admiral Durendan.
The tech officer rechecked his readout. “Sir, we missed,” he reported. “The storm… it ducked.”
“Ducked?” drowned the admiral. “How can a storm…?”
Then Donar’s goat chariot impacted with the front of his flagship, pounding through thirty feet of solid metal so that the Ausgardian hemigod could get inside and begin the smiting. The storm’s leading edge slammed into the dreadnaught fleet, raining destruction amongst the vessels, slamming them into each other like chaff on the wind.
A dreadnaught flared and exploded, then a second, then a third. It took the remaining ships too long to locate the source of the destruction, a lone human hanging in the eye of the storm detonating transnuclear cores simply by pointing his hand. It took too long to set up shielding waves against pyrokinetic assault. By the time they did, Premiere had stopped attacking like that anyway and was slamming dreadnaughts together, pushing a pile of city-sized ships before him as he powered through the storm-disordered fleet.
“Ho, minions of the Parody Master!” Donar shouted, and somehow his voice boomed across the maelstrom to a thousand ships. “Thinkest thou are hard? Cometh and have a go! Taste the kiss of Mjalcolm for the nonce!” His enchanted baseball bat with a nail in it slammed out across the void, carving an impossible arc through bulky warships and returning to its owner.
Premiere increased his speed to avoid the incoming energy pulses. Even the near misses made him feel like he’d been toasted in front of a raging fire but he ignored the discomfort and took down another pair of vessels. As the briefing analysis had shown, the best place to engage the dreadnaught fleet was in a hostile environment where the Legion’s heavy hitters could finally cut loose.
But the element of surprise was being lost and the enemy’s numbers were telling. “Time to get out of here,” he called across to Donar. “They’re regrouping.”
“But there art still over two thousand of them!” argued Donar aggrievedly. His hair was scorched, his skin blackened, and part of his beard was on fire, but he appeared to be enjoying himself.
“That’s the problem,” pointed out Victor Brooke. “Dying doesn’t help Earth. We need to go.”
“This art the sucky part of the plan,” Donar gumbled as Premiere joined him on the goat chariot.
“They’re pursuing us,” Premiere noted. “I think we’ve annoyed them.”
“Good,” grumbled the hemigod of thunder. “Hold the rains of yon chariot for a moment whilst I droppeth mine pants at them…”
***
If the substratum was the loam where the roots of reality burrowed, the dimensional hyperspace was the thin sheen that formed the surface of the bubble round the material realms. Vessels intruding there can slide along the interior of the curve at enormous speeds well beyond those available to realms limited by the speed of light.
But that close to the very edge of existence travellers must beware the sudden turbulence that spits matter beyond the perimeters of creation, the unseen shears that can sweep a vessel a million light-years off course in a heartbeat, and the accreted islands of dark matter that form like clots, spinning and wheeling as asteroid belts, attracted to mass and energy like iron filings to a magnet.
Right now the most powerful attractor for that debris was the protector of the Parodyverse. Amazing Guy was one of the very few humans who could propel himself along the hyperspace curve, surfing the plane in a sheath of quantum paradoxes that lasted exactly as long as his willpower did. He shimmered across the silver ocean at tremendous velocity, and his wake dragged the tumbling boulders of dark matter behind him.
If anything other than the Void Spectre had been able to live outside the bubble of reality and look down on that lucent skin they might have seen the v-shaped turbulence forming, a quarter of a million miles wide and growing all the time, hurtling behind one lone person who kept ahead of the tide of destruction only because he thought about it.
“Dreadnaught fleet from Amazing Guy. Are you receiving me? Over.”
Burning across hyperspace the second ava-fleet was larger than the first. It included not only an accumulation of dreadnaughts dragged from their usual duties of conquest but also hundreds of support ships, science vessels, troop carriers, inquisitor sloops, templeships, and even a mining vessel to gather up the pieces of Earth after it was demolished for ore. Some of the dreadnaughts had only just returned from far reaches of space after Xander’s order to them on the first day of the campaign against Earth. All of them received the communication from the protector of the Parodyverse.
“We hear you, human,” replied Admiral Karik Thay. His voice was high and contemptuous. “Where are you hiding?”
“I’m heading straight towards you, on a course of 1138 by 9443 as measured by the Jodlar co-ordinates system,” answered Amazing Guy. “I’m calling on you to surrender.”
“Surrender?” Thay snorted. “Another Terran bluff? We go now to conquer your planet, human. Your world shall burn and your women shall weep and I shall slaughter your children for my amusement.”
“I mean it. Last chance. Power down your ships and I won’t have to destroy you. Although I’ve got to say you’re making this a lot easier for me.”
“Your master, Eggo, is dead,” the Admiral mocked. “Soon your world will join it. Challenge the might of the dreadnaught fleet, last protector, and you will soon understand what power really is. Beg and perhaps I will allow you to live on as my pet.”
“So that’s a ‘no’ to you surrendering, then,” AG surmised. “I insisted on giving you the chance. Sir Mumphrey was hard to convince.”
“We have located you now, human. One tiny speck daring the might of the greatest avafleet ever assembled. Soon you will not be begging. You will be screaming.”
Amazing Guy sighed. “I tried. Now I’m warning you. You are on a mission of genocide, serving a mad master who is a clear and present danger to the Parodyverse. By the powers vested in me I am shutting you down.”
Karik Thay chuckled. “Bring it on, ‘protector’.”
“Bringing it. Amazing Guy out.”
“Prepare all forward batteries,” commanded the Admiral. “I want this Terran vaporised from my skies.”
There were no human terms to describe how fast Amazing Guy was going, or how hard it was to do it. Even the deep-distance monitors of the dreadnaught fleet had difficulty tracking the incoming belligerent. Before the scoutship Sight of the Victims had even time to report the danger AG was past it and the leading edge of the debris-wave was upon it. The vessel was snuffed out in an instant.
AG kept on. The blood was singing in his ears but more powerful than that was the song of the Parodyverse, coursing through him, allowing him knowledge, telling him precisely where to will every single packet of energy at his disposal to keep him alive at the apex of that vast seething avalanche. The nearest dark matter globules were now eight feet behind the protector of the Parodyverse.
Then the main fleet was in sight. Amazing Guy clenched his teeth and kept going, his quantum shields staving off the few shots that locked onto him in time. It was harder here to manipulate energy, but harder for the compressed-particle cannons of the dreadnaughts to batter through his protective screen as well.
He threaded between the fleet, and the wave of asteroids followed him.
The shower smashed into the dreadnaughts like the hand of God, a hundred million masses moving at indescribable velocities. The first asteroids split apart on the protective shields of the city-sized warships. Others were shattered by automated defence systems. But others pushed the dreadnaughts out of formation, scattering them, knocking them into each other.
The mighty defence screens of the dimensional dreadnaughts were powerful indeed, but they were fending off debris that had a hundred or a thousand times even their huge mass at a velocity that was literally terminal. As shields buckled the ships drew upon the power of their Master to shore them up.
But the Parody Master was distracted. The energies came, but slowly, reluctantly; and sometimes too late.
The front line of dreadnaughts exploded into clouds of dust, smeared across the polished crystal surface of hyperspace. The precise formations of the fleet became a ragged cluster of desperate vessels hammered by tempest, under siege, swept along by the wave.
“Drop from hyperspace!” screamed Admiral Thay. “All vessels, I repeat…”
A couple of thousand ships got the message. Two thirds of them managed to manipulate trans-space rifts to escape the devastation.
Except…
“Where the hell are we?” demanded Thay. “This isn’t normal space.”
The ships were lodged like flies in honey in some gooey gelid medium.
Well, it depends on how you define normal, noted the Manga Shoggoth. I try not to judge.
Thirteen hundred dimensional dreadnaughts floundered inside the loathsome elder being, their navigation systems useless, their propulsion systems baffled by the non-Euclidean nature of the entity that had snared them at that critical junction between hyperspace and reality.
“Signal to all vessels!” shouted Thay. “Weapons free! Use of thaumaturgical charges authorised. Blow our way free from this monstrosity!”
Monstrosity? echoed the Shoggoth. It’s too late for compliments to help you now.
The dreadnaughts loosed their arcane cannons, shredding great swathes of Shoggoth into ribbons, vaporising their way loose from the turbulent gelid mass.
Ouch, said the Shoggoth.
“Dreadnaughts fitted with the captured Narrative Bombs are authorised to launch them!” the Admiral called. “Take this thing down! I want it totally destroyed.”
That would not be a good idea, the Shoggoth advised. In fact that would… aaaaggghhh!!! The elder being shuddered and ripped as half a dozen new realities were detonated inside it. His whole structure shook as the dreadnaughts managed to burn their way free.
Then they saw where they were.
There at the heart of the Parodyverse twists Azafroth the Insane, a nebula-sized cancer in the biology of creation, greatest and most terrible of the Fairly Great Old Ones that infected reality in its first moments of existence, sleeping but not dead, howling with a billion mouths, surrounded by gibbering noisome rugose bagpipers fluting blasphemous tunes to squamous ichored line-dancers in eldrich cyclopean gavottes that twist time and space for their obscene pleasure.
The enemy of my enemy, noted the Shoggoth who had won free from slavery to his Elder God creators, is my other enemy.
The dreadnaughts burst free of the Shoggoth to be caught in the gravity shear of mad blind Azafroth. World-thick tentacles whipped up to seize the shining new toys and drag them down to its seething many-angled interior. Those occupants of the warships who went mad then were the most blessed.
I told you that breaking out of me wasn’t a good idea, the Shoggoth sniffed. He hastily pulled his scattered globules together for departure before Azafroth stopped being fascinated by his new dates and noticed that his errant servitor was nearby.
“All vessels, back to hyperspace!” shrieked Admiral Thay. “All vessels! Right now!”
A few of the surviving dreadnaughts were able to comply; those that hadn’t already been dragged into the space twisted by the mad elder being where the stars were different and the Parodyverse was reordered and refurnished to the Fairly Great Old Ones’ tastes and requirements.
Thay in the Immense Triumph was one of the few that staggered back to see what had become of the tempest-washed hyperspace fleet. He found a scattered remnant of his mighty force, less than seventeen hundred ships remaining after the assaults by the Terran and the elder entity.
It didn’t matter. One dreadnaught was enough to conquer Earth.
“Are you okay?” Amazing Guy asked as the Shoggoth globbed in beside him. “You look kind of… drippy.” He willed a helpful energy bucket for the creature to drop into.
“I’m not feeling very well,” the Shoggoth admitted. “That took a lot out of me. Quite literally.”
“Orient all weapons on the protector of the Parodyverse,” Karik Thay ordered. “I want him destroyed! Destroyed!”
“Excuse me,” AG winced as the first ranging shots seared his energy barriers. “I think it’s time to run for our lives.”
***
“Goat chariot in range, sir! We can fire as soon as you give the order.”
Admiral Durendan was not in a good mood. He’d evacuated aboard the Seething Malice when his flagship the Torture of the Vanquished had suffered from terminal hemigod. He’d spent the last ten minutes of frantic sub-space pursuit trying to work out how to tell his Master that he’d lost over half his command to just two enemies. He took out his wrath on his subordinates. “I never want to hear the phrase ‘goat chariot’ on this bridge again! Refer to it as ‘enemy transport carrier’.”
“Yes sir. Sir, the enemy transport carrier’s droppings appear to be corrosive on our outer plating, sir.”
Admiral Durendan shot him. “Destroy those people,” he hissed at his gunners.
Then the goat chariot twisted its course and with a lurid red flash and a crack of thunder vanished out of the substratum back to normal space.
“Give pursuit!” shouted the Admiral. “Hunt them down and evaporate them all!”
***
“Sir, we’re gaining on them,” reported the tracking officer aboard the damaged but operable Immense Triumph. “Target designate: Amazing Guy seems to be flagging.”
“He is but one man, bending his will against the might of the dreadnaught fleet,” Karik Thay scorned, conveniently overlooking the massive losses he’d taken in the last twenty minutes. “Close on his position and blow him away.”
Then AG dropped out of hysperspace with a silvery wink.
“He can’t lose us that way,” Thay crowed. “Just, um, check we’re nowhere near that Azafroth anomaly, then take us after him. He can’t escape us now.”
***
Admiral Durnedan’s fleet materialised into common space somewhere amidst the protostars of the Eagle nebula in the area Terrans had categorised as M16 or NGC6611, or more romantically as the Pillars of Creation. And they materialised into a trap.
“Naicluv warfleet directly ahead, sir!” shouted tactical control. “Powering up their weapons and commencing attack”
“We are the Parody Fleet!” snarled Durendan in sudden rage. “Enough of this! Commit full batteries to assault. Fry every single one of those miserable turncoat ships out of our Parodyverse!”
***
Admiral Thay’s fleet materialised into common space somewhere amidst the protostars of the Eagle nebula in the area Terrans had categorised as M16 or NGC6611, or more romantically as the Pillars of Creation. And they materialised into a trap.
“Naicluv warfleet, sir!” shouted tactical control. “Straight in front of us. They’re coming in weapons hot on an attack vector!”
“They dare?” raged Kalik Thay, “Those pathetic peacenik nonentities with their pretence of neutrality! We’ll make them wish they’d never ventured out past their defence screens. Engage the enemy. No prisoners! Do not leave a single ship of theirs intact.”
***
“Seven minutes,” said Ziles, sitting on her stealth vessel and checking the readouts that Roboti kept updating her with. “That’s not bad. I thought they’d see through the Xnylonian illusion field long before that and work out they were battling each other.”
“That’s the problem with these ultimate power types,” Amazing Guy pointed out. “They’re used to being able to bull their way through anything, so when they come up against a problem that they can’t just smash through…”
“They end up blowing themselves out of the skies with more and more power drawn from their Parody Master,” concluded Premiere with satisfaction. “Ideal. But they’re wise to us now. I think you’d better withdraw back to your people, Ziles, and thank them for their planetary telepathic effort on our behalf. You’ve been invaluable.”
“Glad to help the LL one more time,” the former Legionnaire grinned. “Oh, and if you happen to see Finny give him my love. Tell him if it’s a boy I’ll name him Andy.”
“What?” Amazing Guy choked.
Ziles giggled. “Just kidding. Probably. Try to tell him as he’s drinking coffee.”
“There are still seventeen operating dimensional dreadnaughts out there,” Premiere warned, scanning the region with his enhanced vision.
“Goodeth,” declared Donar Oldmanson. “For I hast yet more whomping to do ere the day ist done.”
***
The dreadnaught Deadly Venture hadn’t had the chance to hook up with the Parody Fleets. It came directly to Caph where the scriers had now determined that Earth was orbiting. It dropped out of the skies and made straight for Parody Island where the Lair Mansion was located.
The new SPUD helicarrier rose to intercept it, firing a broadside of nuclear missiles that a dreadnaught could easily ignore.
“Swat that irritating bucket out of my skies,” scorned Captain Voule.
Then the temporal contingency that Sir Mumphrey Wilton had placed on the AGM-129 Advanced Cruise Missiles cut in, displacing them through time so that they effectively slid right past the dreadnaught’s force fields and thirty foot thick hull-plating and only reappeared a microsecond before detonation in the primary engine compartments of the city-sized war machine.
“You yahoos just don’t learn, do you?” shouted Colonel Dan Drury as he jumped up and down on his helicarrier command deck and watched the dreadnaught crash. “We don’t just git madder, we git smarter! Take that and stuff it up your Parody Master’s wazoo! Waaaahhhooooooo!!!!”
***
9: The War To End All War
The Parody Master overcame his enemies again, slamming them away with vicious abandon, willing them to defeat, and he rose to face Yo and the Sorceress.
“You do not have the power to summons others to your aid,” he accused the women.
That was when he realised that his soul-axe wasn’t screaming any more. It was chuckling. And he recognised that throaty female laugh.
“Waltz!”
“Yo is to be helping of Yo’s friend,” the pure thought being noted. “Yo’s friend is not to be as beaten as uncute Parody Master was to be thinking. Yo’s friend is to be having power given to her from sneaky Hooded Hood to be doing of this. Yo is to be first of people cute-Lisa is to be calling over to be helping. And now Yo is saying for cute-Lisa: Lair Legion, Line Up!”
And Yo summonsed the whole Lair Legion to face the Parody Master one last time.
From across the universe they came, from the battles they had been fighting, from the victories they had claimed. Although the summons was not part of the Plan, each Legionnaire recognised the familiar, impossible call. The Lair Legion would always answer that urgent tug from their first lady.
And so they appeared, ranged around the Parody Master for final battle: Hatman, CrazySugarFreakBoy!, spiffy, Visionary, NTU-150, Yo, Donar, Goldeneyed, Sorceress, Trickshot, Dancer, Amazing Guy, Premiere, the Manga Shoggoth, the Librarian, Mr Epitome, Yuki Shiro, Al B. Harper, ManMan, Elizabeth von Zemo (hastily climbing back into Silicone Sally); and as Lisa’s power dredged deeper joined by the Dark Knight, by Sersi, by Exile, by a rather surprised Josh Clement, by a very hung-over dull thud.
“What?” demanded Champagne, looking round her in alarm at her sudden teleportation. “Hey!”
The Parody Master hurled his axe from him and gestured in rage. His power spread out from him in waves, to contain the Lair Legion in chains of power as he had done before, but radiating out from there to wash over the whole Parodyverse.
“Enough!” he shouted, and his voice was heard on every world. His power caught every enemy, every dissident or rebel, every soldier struggling for freedom, every being that harboured a disobedient thought even in his pr her heart. Every one was jerked up and wracked in the air, bound by the Parody Master’s almighty will.
“Enough,” proclaimed the conqueror of the Parodyverse, holding a hundred billion beings pinioned by his power.
“Enough,” said the Parody Master as he brought the Parody War to an end with one sweep of his hands.
Then it was over. The Lair Legion hung before him, ready for his punishment.
“And now,” he said, in a voice that knew no humour or joy except at the conquest of others, “the reprisals.”
***
To Be Concluded… Join us next time as the stakes get as high as they go, for triumph, tragedy, shocks, revelations, romance, horror, Kerry’s fate, Jury’s valentine, Mr Papadapopolis’ final stand, the Parody Master vs Sir Mumphrey Wilton one last time, and most of all… The Winner.
***
Who’s Who of the Parody War: The Cast List
In order of appearance or reference in UT#319 and 320:
Sir Mumphrey Wilton, Keeper of the Chronometer of Infinity, leader of Earth’s combined defence force
Katarina Allen, a weaver, Mr Epitome’s girlfriend, helping out at the Lair Mansion
Hallie, the Lair Legion’s resident artificial intelligence, keeper of the virtual realm
NTU-150 (Jamie Bautista) millionaire industrialist inventor, Legionnaire
Tandi 3000, former sexbot turned waitress, helping out at the Lair Mansion
Amazing Guy, protector of the Parodyverse, honorary Legionnaire
D.D., computer intelligence responsible for administration at the Lunar Public Library
Premiere (Victor Brooke), last science hero from the alternate universe of Technopolis
Bernice Teschmaker, embedded reporter at the Lair Mansion
Miss Framlicker, scientist and administrator at Extraordinary Endeavour Enterprises
Colonel Dan Drury, Director of S.P.U.D.
Cody Harper, teenaged son of Al B. Harper
Kara Harper, teenaged daughter of Al B. Harper
Amy Aston, engineer at Extraordinary Endeavour Enterprises
Contessa Natalia Romanza, S.P.U.D. superspy
Marie Murcheson, formerly a banshee at the Lair Mansion, now resurrected
Hagatha Darkness, crone and witch
Ebony of Nubilia, high priestess of the Manga Shoggoth
Manga Shoggoth, loathsome elder beast, Legionnaire
The Abyssal Greye, dean of the scholar-ghouls under Gothametropolis
The Word of Logos (Gideon Book), servant of Order, a villain against the Parody Master, father of the kidnapped Pelopia
Visionary, a possibly-fake man, Legionnaire
Urthula Underess, party ghoul
Con Johnstantine, irritating English occult expert
Xander the Improbable, master of the mystic crafts, sorcerer supreme
The Necromancer General (Bogdan Vladivock), an evil necromancer, Urthula’s uncle
Herbert P. Garrick, “Bad News Herb”, Presidential advisor on metahuman issues
Amber St Clare, government liaison to the Lair Legion
Fleabot, a robot espionage flea
Sergeant Argus MacHarridan, detonator hippo, security chief at the Lair Mansion
Denial (Danny Lyle), the Hooded Hood’s son, current master of Herringcarp Asylum, boyfriend of kidnapped Kerry Shepherdson
Globetrotting Guardians, a team of reformed supervillains
Giant Hero Six, young Japanese heroes in morphing giant robots
FMRC C-Team, former trainees of the Federal Metahuman Resource Centre, now independent under the tuition of retired hero Gordon Summers
Frightsome Four, violent villain team
VelcroVixen (Vicki Vee), villainous aide-de-camp, field leader of the Purveyors of Peril
Terminus Team, a national service rehab programme for offending metahumans
spiffy (Mark Hopkins), president-for-life of the rogue nation-state of Badripoor, a Legionnaire
Nats (Bill Reed), vanished former Lord of Hell, former Legionnaire
The Abhumans, a reclusive powerful genetically bred secret race
The Morshlocks, degenerate tunnel dwellers deep below Paradopolis
The Outcasts, sewer-dwelling metahuman rejects below Paradopolis
The Hole Man, subterranean emperor of the Holeoids
Thighmaster, eccentric villainous ruler of the tiny European state of Barovia
Granny Grimness, headmistress of the Hog Soldier training academy on brutal Apocalyspe
Cleone Swanmay, an exile for Faerie, Xander’s familiar
Queen Annj, Ausgardian goddess, Donar’s wife
The Faerie Queene, queen of, um, Faerie
Oldman, All-Pappy of the Ausgardian gods
The Yurt (Vlastimock Bogoff), radioactive rampaging Russian peasant hut
Kerry Shepherdson, probability arsonist kidnapped by the Parody Master
Goldeneyed (Bry Katz), teleporter, Legionnaire
The Reticulum Matrix is a gestalt electronic civilisation allied to the Parody Master
Nexus 935 is one of their primary code nodes, and a bride of the Parody Master
The Astrovids were a communications and entertainment-obsessed alien race eradicated by the Parody Master
Beverly Campbell is PA and girlfriend to Badripoor’s President for Life, Mark “spiffy” Hopkins
Temptest and Nightslide are members of the Shee-Yar elite Imperium Guard
Dr Weed Wrichards and Brick laird are two of a team of four adventurers and scientists who explore the multiverse
Appendage Man (Milton Freebish), body-part-growing pervert, Purveyor of Peril
Anvil Man (Brendan MacGillicuddy), unstoppable demolitions juggernaut, Purveyor of Peril
Razor Ballerina (Mindy Kovkoski), razor-sharp terpsichore murderess
Mary Prankstar (Mary Louise Pfeffercorn), psychotic joker
The Fairly Great Old Ones are sanity-mangling Lovecraftian elder gods
Roni Y Avis is the scheming entrepreneur who pioneered internet spam
Aunt Sally, sentient Austernal exploration vehicle
Clan Heir Broto, young heroic leader of the spacefaring Clan Klayhog
Seeress Yesmin, prophetess of Clan Klayhog, Broto’s lifemate
Galactivac, the Living Death That Sucks, Hooverer of Worlds
Zo and Quke Klayhog, just two good ‘ol boys never meaning no harm
Slave D’Rothy, psychometrist child rescued by Hatman from the Inquisition
Professor Blargelslarch, political exile archaeologist and anthropologist Reptiloid from Frammistat Eight
Sir John de Jaboz, Knight Commander of the Knights Improbable from the alternate reality of the Swordrealms
Princess Lileblanche of Salem, of one of the royal families from the alternate reality of Esperine
Assassin-Queen S’Tab, arachnid clan mother of the Z’Sox V’nmm Guild, a bride of the Parody Master
Akiko Masamune, the world’s pinkest crimelord, mistress of Mangatown.
Frankie, of the Zoot Suit Gang, leader of a cabal of 40’s-themed criminals
Chiaki Bushido, the Psychic Samurai
The Idiom (Leticia Gahagan), unconventional scientific genius public menace
April Alice Apple (a.k.a. the Groovy Gecko Girl) CSFB!’s new wife
PsychoAcidPervGirl! (Gwendolyn Lyons), CSFB!’s twisted sister
Meggan Foxxx (a.k.a. Action Figure), CSFB!’s porn star mom, the LL’s occasional P.R. officer
Sister Bartok (formerly known as Brother Bartok), a cultist acolyte of the Parody Master
The Broob, a voracious species of alien predator
Champagne Cacciatore, beautiful international jewel thief
The Devil Doctor, an undead Makluan dragon in the form of an Oriental mandarin, now deceased
Uuuuukelele, Princess of the Sea Monkeys
The Slimy Slaver Lovetoad (Blackwallet Bugwallah), new supreme leader of the Slaver Lovetoads of Frammistat Eight
The Joad Majanu, a hologram species conquered by the Parody Master
The J’Minti, hippy space monks conquered by the Parody Master
The Shankaru, pirate monkey denizens of the smuggler havens of the Coalsack nebula, conquered by the Parody Master
The Observers, ancient watchers of events in the Parodyverse, conquered by the Parody Master
Selinda Saxmendim, a Crystaxian trainee Librarian of the Intergalactic Order of Librarians
The Naicluv, an advanced but indolent species who value perfection who have remained aloof and shielded from the Parody War until now
The Xnylonians, telepathic dwellers on a hidden planet of concepts led by former Legionnaire Ziles
The Painmaster, responsible for discipline and punishment aboard the warship Bloody Genocide
The Chain Knight (Sir Lucien), deceased leader of the villainous Hellraisers
Mircandalee Tremensalor, spacefaring actress of the Dramaatis
Gromm, the Living Flatulence, Deviate gas entity
Razor Ballerina (Mindy Kovkoski), razor-sharp terpsichore murderess
Appendage Man (Milton Freebish), body-part-growing pervert
El Futbolista Atomico (Xatroc), Brazillian super-powered football star
Dr Roentgen (Stanislaus Vladim Roentgen, PhD), Candian nuclear scientist turned radioactive entity
Brass Monkey (Gorilla Grott), genius scientist metallic ape with freezing powers
Voodoo Vicaress (LeVeau M’Tumbe), houngan pristess
Grit, the Granulated Man (Brick Basalt), sand-based mercenary
UltiMAX-TremeMan (Martin Lillard), drug-fuelled superman
Clonar, brain-damaged clone of a hemigod of thunder
Anvil Man (Brendan MacGillicuddy), unstoppable demolitions juggernaut
The Heck-Fire Club, an exclusive and evil gentleman’s club whose cadet contingent once trained Denial
Grand Inquisitor Flay, head of the Parody Master’s Re-Education Service
Inquisitor Maarn, specialist in nerve cluster torment
Inquisitor Lok, pioneer in insult trauma
Inquisitor Vespalin, theologian and psychologist
Hatman (Jay Boaz), leader of the Lair Legion, the capped crusader
Knifey, ManMan’s sentient talking knife
Yuki Shiro, cyborg private investigator, Legion tactical officer
Trickshot (Carl Bastion), irritating archer, Legionnaire
The Librarian (Lee Bookman), of the Lunar Public Library, a Legionnaire
ManMan (Joe Pepper), Elvis-impersonating wielder of Knifey, a probationary Legionnaire
The Racoon People, genetically-modified amorous hidden sentient race from Earth
The diabolical Dr Moo, geneticist villainess, Lisa Waltz’s sister, not a fan of the Parody Master
CrazySugarFreakBoy! (Dreamcatcher Foxglove), the wired wonder, deputy-leader of the Lair Legion
Corporal Dawson of Kneebend, Ohio, a murdered hero
Registered nurse Docherty of Fresno, California, a rescued prisoner of war
Yo, a pure thought being able to project troubled people to an extradimensional Happy Place, a Legionnaire
The Probability Dancer (Sarah Shepherdson), one of the Parody Master’s intended brides, sometimes herald of Galativac, a Legionnaire
Dronon the Public Accoster, high keeper of the Skree morals police, the Accosters, servitor of the Parody Master
Skree Admiral Roxx-Hoff, former commander of the Fifth Armada
Dr Al B. Harper, archscientist, joint owner of Extraordinary Endeavour Enterprises, a Legionnaire
Baroness Elizabeth Dewdrop Sweetwater von Zemo, thirteenth Baroness of Saxe-Lurkburg and Shreckhausen, a villainess who infiltrated the Lair Legion as Citizen Z
Captain Kahn Vaantagion Khaur, commanding the defected dimensional dreadnaught Cruel Deceiever
Silcone Sally (Sally Rezyliant), pliable silicone henchman of the Baroness, recent volunteer in the war against the Parody Master
Goldeneyed (Bry Katz), teleporter, a Legionnaire
Mr Epitome (Dominic Clancy), paragon of power, man of might, a Legionnaire
Prime Mistress Uma, Skree bride of the Parody Master, formerly betrothed to Dronon
The Detonator Hippos, a genetically-bred offshoot race with the ability to explode and reform at will
Captain Angus MacHarridan, commanding the Detonator Hippos, older brother of the Lair Mansion security officer
Regimental Sergeant Major Grievous MacRabble of the Detonator Hippos
Glory, the mutt of might, Mr Epitome’s super-powered dog
Genius Protovek of the Science Elite, leader of the Parody Master’s technician corps
Admiral Durandan, dreadnaught fleet commander
Donar Oldmanson, prince of Ausgard, hemigod of thunder, a Legionnaire
Admiral Karik Thay, dreadnaught fleet commander
The Jodlar, a race of galactic hauliers and teamsters
Eggo, the Living Waffle, the cosmic entity that appoints and empowers protectors of the Parodyverse; now deceased
Azafroth the Insane, leader and greatest of the Fairly Great Old Ones
Ziles, spiritual leader of the concept-world of Xnylone, retired Legionnaire
Roboti, Ziles’ robot servant
Fin Fang Foom, a Makluan dragon, former leader of the Lair Legion
Captain Voule, commander of the dreadnaught Deadly Venture
Sorceress (Whitney Darkness), a Covenant witch, a Legionnaire
Lisa Waltz, first lady of the Lair Legion, currently confined inside the Parody Master’s soul-axe
Dark Knight (Greg Burch), shadowy extreme crimefighter, former Legionnaire
Sersi D’Aea, Austernal matter-rearranger, former Legionnaire
Exile (Derek Foreman), energy manipulator, G-Eyed’s cousing, former Legionnaire
De Brown Streak (Joshua J Clement), former mutate-rights vigilante, former Legionnaire
dull thud, host of the former Legionnaire sentient tapeworm Cressida
Oh, and did we mention the Parody Master, Conqueror of the Parodyverse?
And that’s all.
Where’s Where for the Parody War:
In order of appearance or reference in UT#319 and 320:
The Lair Mansion on Parody Isle, home and headquarters of the Lair Legion
Off-Central Park, green open space in the heart of the city of Paradopolis
Gothametropolis York, the crime-riddled grimy city across the river from Paradopolis
Paradopolis, the massive East coast urban city from which most of our heroes operate
Tiny Greece, a suburb of Paradopolis known for its markets and craft shops
The Virtual Realm, a computer reality in which Earth was recently hidden from the Parody Master
Caph, a star in the constellation Cassiopeia, usually home sun to the planet and denizens of Caph IX
Caph IX, home of the green-skinned Caphans, currently shifted forward in time to escape the Parody Master
The Moon Public Library, local branch of the Intergalactic Order of Libraries
Extraordinary Endeavour Enterprises, a Gothametropolis-based weird science consultancy and dimensional transit business
Sheldon, the waterside and dock district of Paradopolis
Old tunnels under Paradopolis, filled with Morshlocks, Outcasts, sleeping elder beings etc.
The Twin Parody Tower, highest building in Paradopolis
Willingham Lighthouse, a dimensionally displaced tower whose light shines across dimensions, Visionary’s home
Reticulum Locus, a primary database of the computer race of Reticulans
New Skree-Lump, the homeworld of the conquered Skree Star Empire
Chalastis Core, a bleak swamp world turned into a prison camp
Skelvis, homeworld to the Shankaru, weaponmakers extrodinaire
Skunk Prime, the throneworld of the Skunk Confederation
Shee-Yar Alpha, the capital planet of the conquered Shee-Yar Imperium
The Great Relief , home to the Abhumans, formerly shut off behind a Negativity Zone barrier
Shankaru, conquered jungle homeworld of the Shankaru space-monkey pirates
Astrovidia, former homeworld of the Astrovids, wiped out by the Parody Master
Draum, conquered homeworld of the gastronome Draumids
J’Rondrus, conquered home of the insectoid J’Rondri mining corporations
Prospectis, conquered home of the galactic PR partnership of the Prospectii
Apocalyspe, contested brutal and terrifying home planet of Dark Thugos
Bloodworld, conquered planet ruled by vampires
Mount Shasta, California, mystical haunted second-largest mountain in the Cascade range
Ausgard, Mythlands home of the Antipodean Ausgardian gods
Faerie, the many-coloured realm
Herringcarp Asylum, bleak former base of operations of the archvillainous Hooded Hood, location of the dimension-linking Portal of Pretentiousness
The Reticulum Matrix is a vast spacefaring datanet, home of the electronic Reticulum sentiences
The Bloody Genocide, warship and training academy of the elite Avawarriors
The World-Ship of Galactivac, a massive vessel currently held in stasis by the will of the Parody Master near to the Caph system
Frammistat Eight, tropical homeworld of the Reptiloids, ruled by the Slimy Slaver Lovetoads
Z’Sox, shadowly web-covered world of the Z’Sox assassin-spiders
Plxtrazar, shattered rim world recently conquered by the Parody Master
Hughlong Dao (Dragon Island), a storm-tossed rock in the South China Sea, formerly headquarters to the insidious Devil Doctor
The Watchpoint, home of the ancient race of cosmic Observers, conquered by the Parody Master
The Great Repository, the Central Library of the Intergalactic Order of Librarians, conquered by the Parody Master
Xnylonia, homeworld of Ziles’ people, the elusive telepathic Xnylonians
Tallardia III, in the Dumbell Nebula, home of the dour humourless Shankaru
The Re-Education Centre of the High Inquisition, based on an an ice-moon of Tallardia III
Inquisition Labship Tears of Regret
The Happy Place, an extradimensional plane of joy and peace - and bunnies
Skree-Lump, former homeworld of the Skree Star Empire, destroyed by Galactivac the Living Death that Sucks
The Cruel Deceiver, dimensional dreadnaught commanded by Captain Kahn which defected to the Hooded Hood
The Swordrealms, an alternate universe where Earth developed along chivalric mystical lines
Esperine, an alternative universe where Earth developed along pagan occult lines
The Academyship of the Science Elite
Subspace, an underpinning plane of Parodyverse reality
The Torture of the Vanquished, Admiral Durendan’s dimensional dreadnaught flagship
Hyperspace, the delicate skin bounding the outsides of the Parodyverse
The Void Spectre, an unpleasant and mysterious entity with malicious intent to the Parodyverse
Azafroth the Insane, leader and greatest of the Fairly Great Old Ones
The Sight of the Victims, Parody fleet scout ship
The Immense Triumph, Admiral Thay’s dimensional dreadnaught flagship
The Seething Malice, Admiral Durendan’s second dimensional dreadnaught flagship. Oops.
The Deadly Venture, a dimensional dreadnaught
The SPUD Helicarrier, new flying operations centre of the Super-menace Principal Undercover Directorate
The Inevitable Destiny, the Parody Master's own super-dreadnaught flagship
***
Hippo-English Translation Service
Visionary: I loved the hippo scene. No idea what they said, mind you, but still.
HH: I'm sure there'll be an online translator somewhere, but just in case there isn't here's the English version:
“Awa’ th’ lads, Sergeant. Gi’em some knuckle.”
Deploy the forces, senior non-commissioned officer. Commence a stern assualt on the enemy.
“Ye heard th’ Capt’n, ye scunners. Get in there an gie yon manky lannarks a seein’ tae they won’t forget!”
Take cognisance of the senior officer's expressed orders, you somewhat common but all the same tough and worthy soldiers. Engage the opposition and deliver stern remonstrance to the dishevelled foreign naifs in a manner whichthey will retain in their memory.
“Hoots and crivens, death a’ glory!”
Goodness gracious and gosh, let us achieve either substantial notable victory or suffer terminal casualties in the attempt.
“Hae ye e’er seen a sight like that coomin’ down th’ Gallowgate?”
Have you ever witnessed something looking similar to this proceeding along a well known thoroughfare of a certain economically deprived area of Edinburgh? [Reputedly the words spoken by Sir Colin Campbell to his 93rd Highland Regiment troops who formed the Thin Red Line that stood against hordes of incoming Russian cavalry at the Battle of Balaclava, 25th October 1854. It is recorded that as the 2500 strong cavalry retreated from the 300-man double line of infantry thereafter some wag in the lines shouted out "Sir Colin, did ye e'er see a sight like that running awa' doon the Gallowgate?"]
“Does yuir mother sew?”
Does your maternal progenitor undertake domestic tasks with needle and thread? [Traditional question usually followed by a butt to the head and a recommendation that the said maternal progentitor should therefore "stitch that".]
“Come an’ have a go with th’ Hippo aggro!”
Move forward and engage in hostile exchange with the hippopotamida aggression seeking expression.
I hope that helps clear things up.
***
Parody War: The Interview
Generic Interviewer Guy: It’s been a while since we caught up with HH and talked about Untold tales – not since Interview Week years ago in fact – so we’re back now to discuss where things are at the end of the Parody War.
IW: Good evening
GIG: So, the Parody War turned out to be, what, a seventy-two chapter story in the end?
IW: Yes. Or ninety-seven if you include the preliminary skirmish around Special Resolution 1066. Ninety-nine if you elect to also count the two set-up chapters a while before that. It will be no surprise to most people that I never expected it to go on that long.
GIG: So why do it? What made you want to do a huge sprawling war story?
IW: Well, back in summer of ’05 I felt we were probably reaching the end of the current life of the Parodyverse. Posting and storytelling was down in numbers, though at an all-time-high in terms of quality. The Parodyverse was a mature creation, which made it harder for some new posters and new storylines to come forward but opened up possibilities for directions that wouldn’t work in a continuity with less depth and history.
GIG: So you planned a last story?
IW: I decided I needed to do something different which might be a last story, something that allowed for different kinds of plots and different kinds of interactions. I’d done two hundred and fifty superhero chapters of Untold Tales – with a few forays into horror and SF – but war stories have a different rhythm to them. I felt the Parodyverse needed a shake-up to keep people interested. Untold Tales did, anyhow.
GIG: Was SR 1066 always part of the plan?
IW: I saw it as the opening act, maybe six issues or so to do a different kind of storyline again before I got to the Parody War material.
GIG: But it turned out to be twenty-five issues. And by the time it was done, Marvel has announced its plans to do the similar Civil War.
IW: We got there first. This is one time the Parodyverse Board sensed the zeitgeist before published comics did. We’d already started SR 1-66 before Marvel announced its plans. And of course, our storyline went quite differently than theirs. It became apparent to me early in plotting that there wasn’t any way to have any of our cast supporting pro-registration without misrepresenting the characters. That’s why I had to resort to Obedience Brands.
GIG: What’s different between a superhero battle and a war?
IW: There’s overlap, of course, but a war is about whole campaigns. Its about whole cultures clashing, not just a few mega-powered blokes in spandex. It can be a lot more visceral because we’re hooking into powerful emotions and values: home, freedom, sacrifice, tragedy, atrocity, endurance. When I planned out the Parody War I had all those 40s noir war movies in my head and I wanted to push things further than I could get in a simple superhero battle. The Legion’s weeks-long vigil with little sleep and diminished resources when the Parody forces were testing the Celestian barrier is an example. The China campaign is another.
GIG: What are your favourite and least favourite parts of the storyline?
IW: I haven’t been back and read it so I’m a bit fuzzy about it all. I remember being very happy with #300 and 301. I enjoyed the Mythlands stuff although in retrospect it should have been hived off into its own story arc and detached from the Parody War. I’ve really enjoyed some of the excellent tie-ins. I don’t think the Swordrealms/Esperine stuff lived up to its potential. I’m not happy that the story’s dragged on so long in real time. I feel its had a negative effect on the community and people must be heartily sick of it.
GIG: Did you find the massive cast list a problem?
IW: That’s a perennial problem for Untold Tales. I remember complaining in 2000 when I had to cope with upwards of thirty characters! But the nature of the series requires the breadth of cast, so it’s a necessary evil. I know it’s a flaw but it’s the price required for an inclusive shared-continuity shared-universe ongoing series. At least with a war there’s good reason to include people and plenty of fronts to deploy them on so they can all be useful. In some ways a war is the ideal storyline to engage and handle such a massive cast list.
GIG: A while back you listed the plotlines that didn’t make the Parody War cut. Are there any things you really wish you could have included that you didn’t?
IW: Plotwise I’d have loved to do a Colditz story, a Great Escape. Maybe a Bridge Over the River Kwai. Maybe a Casablanca. Characterwise I’d have loved an excuse to do more with Dark Knight, Finny, G-Eyed, Sorceress, spiffy and Yo. but then the series would have dragged on even longer.
GIG: Is this the Resolution War, then? The last battle to end the Parodyverse?
IW: The Parody Master thinks it is. We won’t know for sure until the end of UT#322.
GIG: Is there an #323?
IW: Probably not for a while anyhow. I’d like to write some other things without feeling the burden of a regular series with a vast shared cast. I’ve got a few Parodyverse stories on my hard drive that feature my own characters that I’d like to finish and post. I need to finish that Hooded Hood / Herringcarp tale. I want to get back to Boss Deadeyes. I want to write Tom Black #1. I’d like to finish a novel I started a couple of years back. Maybe I’ll even get back to that Avengers: Underground series.
GIG: Are we ever going to get to read The Da Visionary Code then? That was your suggestion for another Untold Tales arc.
IW: Could be. Not yet. My intention on that though is that it’s not a Legion-focussed storyline. It would probably star whichever poster-characters have active posters at the time, plus two or three supporting cast who are key to the storyline. It would cover the secret history of the Lair Legion, the things they didn’t tell you when you joined up, what happened right back through history with the League of Improbable Gents, the Improbable College, the Knights Improbablar, why Vizh’s tomb is under the Lair Mansion, all kinds of things. But not yet.
GIG: Where do you think the Parodyverse is going to be after the Parody War then?
IW: In continuity or outside it?
GIG: Answer for both.
IW: In continuity I think we need a time of simpler, shorter, cleaner tales. It’s the sweet air after the thunderstorm. It’s the chance to take off the boots and dance on the grass. I expect we’ll have a smaller core Lair Legion – very small for two or three months until their recruitment drive kicks in, maybe six or eight members. I think there’ll be a new growth of a new generation of heroes coming forward.
GIG: And on the PVB?
IW: Hard to say. I think I’ll wait and see who takes the initiative and how. I’d like to be surprised.
GIG: We’re almost finished, but before we sign off have you any hints about how the Parody War might end?
IW: I’m looking forward to finding out myself, since it’s not written yet. But I will say that throughout the War I’ve tried to make each of the massive major battles have a different rhythm, location, and payoff. We’ve already seen the PM and the Legion stand in the middle of a ruined neutral battlefield and slug it out, so we won’t do that again.
GIG: Cast deaths?
IW: No comment. Good night.
***
Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2007 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2007 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. |
Update and Comments - HH - Mon Aug 27, 2007 at 08:26:04 am EDT