|
|
Post By Racing towards resolution with everything to play from, from the Hooded Hood Wed Jun 30, 2004 at 08:23:47 am EDT |
Subject
Sir Mumphrey Wilton and the Found City of Mystery - Part the Twenty-Ninth: Prince Maximess and the Tower of Eugenics | |
|
|
Next In Thread >> | |
| Part the Twenty-Ninth: Prince Maximess and the Tower of Eugenics Forces set in motion by the Celestian Space Robots coalesced around the doorway to the Abhuman Tower of Eugenics. They poured together as two radiant winged creatures, the brilliance of their glows painting the emerald city as they sparkled. Energies that could destroy a subcontinent crackled around them as they focussed their attention on the intruders they had been summoned to destroy. “Evening chaps,” said Sir Mumphrey Wilton, tipping his hat. “Or ladies as the case may be. Sorry to interrupt your dancin’ on the head of a pin or whatever.” He held up his pocketwatch. “Official business.” Miss Canterbury nervously clutched Mumphrey’s arm. “Are these things going to recognise the Chronometer of Infinity?” she whispered. “Will it make any difference?” “As Keeper of the Chronometer it’s my office to investigate any and all time anomalies,” Mumphrey lectured. “Even ones created by deuced vast tin space soldiers.” He stared up at the glowing guardians. “So bug off, eh chaps, and let me get on with my job, what?” The glowing entities flickered a little. They seemed confused. “Oh, very well,” Mumphrey told them. “If you insist you can open the tower door for me. Seems not to want to let us inside. See what you can do, you shiny wallahs.” Miss Canterbury watched in amazement as the guardians overrode the sophisticated genetic recognition lock that denied tower access to all but the Abhuman royal family. Then the bright creatures winked out as if they had never been. “That was the most outrageous bluff I’ve ever seen,” she admitted. “Bluff?” the eccentric Englishman replied. “Come on, m’dear. Let’s see what got the Celestians so upset in the first place, shall we?” The crack in the barrier was tiny, but the Expediter had come prepared. He had studied the Black Dome for eighteen hundred years, ever since he had been Maximess, evil prince of the Abhumans, escaping the Great Relief. “You’re penetrating a Negativity Zone interface bubble,” he explained to the baffled Nazis who were helping him with his equipment. “Theoretically impossible to breach, but with an entry point created by that absurd talking knife a few years back we can get the phase neutralisation conduit wedged in there.” “What are you talking about, Amerikaner?” demanded Herr Wertham impatiently. It was now half a day since Sir Mumphrey Wilton had decimated the SS forces outside the Black Dome and somehow escaped inside. “What is this machinery?” “It’s stolen Austernal energy transference pylons,” snapped the Expediter. “You wouldn’t understand. Let’s just say it can widen that crack enough for us to get inside the Dome, shall we?” “And then we take the prize?” Wertham smiled unpleasantly. “Then we change the world,” Maximess promised. The Plot-Altering Mists rose from a deep funnel in the earth and curled up through a crystal cylinder fifty feet wide that rose from floor to apex of the mighty Tower of Eugenics. A dozen galleries of sensor and control equipment were arrayed in circles around it up the length of the construction. But the purple gases were frozen in place by the will of the Celestians, caught in the time-stop Mumphrey had detected before his pocketwatch’s charge was exhausted. And inside the great tube, swathed in the frozen gases… …was death. A beetle-black winged creature eight feet high, with an insectoid head and a carapace of negative energy. The concentrated product of exposure after exposure to the Plot-Enhancing Mists, a twisted creature far beyond the power-range of even the Abhumans, malicious and insane and lusting to kill. This was what Maximess had created for his race to win the war with the Deviates, and this was why the Celestians had intervened to prevent the genocide of all non-Abhuman life on earth. “Ugly bugger, ain’t he?” Mumphrey noted, tapping on the glass as if inspecting a goldfish. “Best if we don’t let the Nazis get their hands on him, I suspect,” Miss Canterbury suggested. “This is what got the Abhumans into trouble, isn’t it? When they dared create this thing?” “I suspect so,” Mumphrey agreed. “Now we just have to find a way of disposing of the beastie before Wertham and Maximess get in here to prod the thing awake.” “That’s a little difficult,” Miss C admitted. “The whole experiment is frozen in time, the science is centuries ahead of our own, and there’s a mad Abhuman knocking at the gate. Why isn’t there a clearly marked ‘press here to abort the mission’ button?” “Dashed appalling oversight,” agreed Mumph. “Plus I’m betting the Expediter has a control device for this thing as well.” “So we go for the traditional really big explosion method?” suggested the vicar’s daughter. Mumphrey paused and turned to beam at Miss Canterbury. “Gad, but I love you, y’know,” he told her. He kissed her then, because he could, because she was everything he had ever wanted. “I suspected as much,” Miss Canterbury told him at last, blushing as she straightened her hair. “But it’s nice to have confirmation.” “Any time you like, m’dear,” Mumphrey assured her. “I’d say those high-pressure gas tanks look inflammable, wouldn’t you?” “This won’t harm the Abhumans, will it?” Miss Canterbury worried as the last of the makeshift explosives was rigged up around the crystal tube. “The ones who are sort of spread out in their own time stops?” “Shouldn’t do,” Mumphrey assured her. “Spot of property damage I’m afraid, but better that than let the Nazis get their hands on that death thingie and these Plot-Altering Mists. Now just help me rig a long wick for this detonator…” But then the doors of the tower slid open again and the two remaining animated guard statues loped in. Herr Wertham and his stormtroopers scurried behind them. “Up there!” the torturer shouted, gesturing to the gallery where Mumphrey and Miss Canterbury stood. “Kill them!” Mumphrey dropped one of the severed capacitor conduits down upon the statues that were crouched to spring. There was a loud bang as the electricity discharged and the Abhuman guard-robots crumbled to chips or rubble. The rattle of Nazi machine gun fire echoed through the tower. Bullets struck flakes of malachite from the walls beside Mumphrey and Miss C. A stray shot hit the pressurised CO2 cylinders, which quickly spilled thick fog across the lower tower levels. Mumphrey lit the fuse twisted out of Miss Canterbury’s underslip, grabbed the garment’s donor, and raced away. He didn’t want to be in the tower a few minutes from now. “The Nazis are blocking the only exit,” Miss Canterbury warned. “Then that’s the way we go,” determined the eccentric Englishman. In a loud guttural German he shouted out, “Up there! They’re on the top level!” then hid in the dry ice mists while soldiers in jack boots sprinted past. There were three soldiers still with Wertham outlined in the doorway. Mumphrey shot the first two then hurled his empty Webley aside and hammered the third man to the ground with a fine left hook. Wertham raised his own pistol with a cruel smile. “As always, Englander, you are the fool.” Miss Canterbury caught him a splendid box on the ear then knocked the Luger from his grip. “You killed my father,” she hissed, “but you won’t kill the man I love!” “Wertham,” Mumphrey smiled like a happy wolf. “Now we get to face each other like men, what? Well, one man and one slimy excrescence no fitter to live than a weasel. Put your fists up, murderer, and see how you do when your opponent’s not tied down!” The British agent proceeded to demonstrate to Wertham that there are all kinds of ways to hurt a man without ever needing handcuffs. “P-please…” begged Wertham as he was picked up for the twentieth time to be knocked down again. “Different when it’s you, ain’t it, you repugnant bully!” sneered his opponent, and shattered his jaw. But in his savage delight at finally getting the torturer, Mumphrey had forgotten the more dangerous enemy. After completing the installation of daemonic energy projectors to neutralise the Celestians wards, Maximess the Slightly Mad strode through the foggy darkness to survey the battle. “I think you can stop that now, Sir Mumphrey,” the Expediter told the angry Englishman as Wertham fell to the floor a bloody blubbering wreck. “Your time-tricks will not prevent me placing a bullet into you and your lovely companion this time.” Mumphrey had no time tricks, but he grabbed the powerless chronometer from his waistcoat and placed his finger on a stud. “Want to see what other tricks I can do, Maximess?” he demanded. “Aging you a hundred thousand more years, maybe? Or perhaps just sendin’ part of you into the future?” “You are bluffing, Wilton,” Maximess sensed. Levels above, the smouldering rag reached the fuel tanks and there was an almighty explosion. It almost looked like Mumphrey had timed it. The eccentric Englishman leaped forward as everybody was rocked by the blast. There was a shower of burning stormtroopers from above. He knocked the weapon from the Expediter’s hand and planted a good jab on the villain’s nose. Maximess moved faster than Sir Mumphrey could have thought possible, and was stronger than he could have imagined. The first return blow caught the Keeper of the Chronometer of Infinity in the stomach. The second sent him sprawling beside Wertham, gasping and wheezing. But somehow the Expediter now held Mumphrey’s pocketwatch. “You have annoyed me enough, Wilton,” Maximess declared. He dropped it to the floor and stamped down on it hard, shattering it to random cogs. “No!” gasped Miss Canterbury, but was restrained by the pointing guns of the remaining soldiers. “Yes,” chuckled the Expediter, thumbing a remote control that he pointed towards the death being. “And your explosion has failed to destroy that which I sought, my oldest, greatest scientific triumph. And they called me mad!” The crystal cylinder split apart and suddenly the thing of darkness and malice burst into motion. Its cry was like a million insects seared on a griddle. It lashed out with tendrils of crackling darkness from its wings and half a dozen soldiers fell dead. Maximess applauded. “May I introduce my finest creation, the creature so awesome that the Space Robots themselves feared it? Sir Mumphrey Wilton, meet Anihillatus, personification of the Negativity Zone. Anihillatus… destroy Sir Mumphrey Wilton!” With a screech of dark joy, the new-born cosmic horror leaped forward at the stunned Englishman. Mumphrey tried to rise but his legs wouldn’t support him. Miss Canterbury screamed once, dragged herself free of the terrified Nazis, and hurled herself in its path. “Keep back!” Anihillatus paused, confused by the alien emotion he was sensing radiating from the noisy human. Why would it wish to die to preserve the life of another? “Get back!” gasped Mumphrey. “For God’s sake get out of it’s way!” “You will not hurt him,” Miss Canterbury declared to the death-bringer before her. “Not while I yet live.” The personification of the Negative Zone neither knew nor cared. One life was as nourishing as another. It reached forward with voracious hunger. It stepped over Miss Canterbury’s dead body and came forwards to kill Sir Mumphrey. In our exciting concluding episode: Sir Mumphrey gets angry. You wouldn’t like him when he’s angry. Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2004 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2004 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. |
chillwater.plus.com (212.159.106.10) U.S. Company
Microsoft Internet Explorer 6/Windows 2000
Microsoft Internet Explorer 6/Windows 2000
| Echo™ v2.0 Beta 7 © 2004 Powermad Software |
|
|