Read Emperor Mollusk Versus the Sinister Brain Online
Authors: A. Lee Martinez
Emperor Mollusk Versus the Sinister Brain (8 page)
Zala hesitated. They weren’t easy questions, and I doubt she’d thought much about them in the past. Venusian warrior society wasn’t given to philosophy.
“I wouldn’t know about that,” I replied. “I’m civilized and don’t understand it myself.”
She snorted, mumbling to herself.
“Don’t mind her. She thinks I’m a criminal.”
“You are a criminal.”
“Depends on who you ask,” I said.
“Who could I ask that would not consider you a dangerous menace?”
“The Terrans like me.”
“Only because you’ve brainwashed them.”
“A technicality. It’s not as if I’m imposing my will on them anymore. They’re free to go about their lives.”
“You can’t just decide not to be a criminal, Emperor,” said Zala.
“Why not?”
“Because that’s…because…” Her gray brow furrowed, and she frowned. “Because it doesn’t work that way. You have to pay for your crimes.”
“Even if I’m no longer doing them?”
“You can’t just wave a tentacle and pardon yourself from all your past sins.”
“Sure, I can. As a matter of fact, that was one of my last acts as Supreme Warlord. Remind me to show you the document sometime. It’s on official government stationery and everything.”
Zala sighed.
The ship rumbled as a tremor shook the island.
“The island has been shaking at night. Ever since the other one came,” said Kreegah. “My people fear it. They say the new tribe has enraged the volcano. But now that you’re here, Emperor, I can tell them not to fear.”
“What’s this other one look like?” Zala asked.
“He’s small. Like Emperor. And uses robots and creatures to do his work.”
“A Neptunon?”
Kreegah shook his head. “No, I’ve only seen him from far, but he isn’t like Emperor.”
The ground quaked.
“This shouldn’t be happening,” I said. “Not unless someone has tampered with the stabilizing unit. But without the stabilizer, the anomaly could collapse into a singularity that could endanger this planet and eventually the whole system.”
“Endanger how?”
“Black hole how,” I replied.
“That’s bad.”
“Very bad. We should probably do something about it,” I agreed. “Well, good night.”
“Are you mad, Emperor? You’re going to sleep now?”
“No, I’m not going to sleep. I don’t need to. But you really should because we have a big day tomorrow, and you’ll be no good to me tired. In the meantime, I’ll be studying this.”
I held up the node I’d taken from the jelligantic that I’d been storing in an exo compartment.
“What’s that?” asked Zala.
“Possibly something important,” I said. “Or just something I think is important. I’ll know after I take a closer look.”
The screws holding the blackened, half-melted node together were melted and blackened. I used a laser to carefully cut it open. The internal circuitry was damaged, but oddly, it didn’t look like they’d ever been switched on in the first place. I began disassembling the unit, laying out the parts on a clear spot on a console.
I gave Snarg the ultrasonic command to rest. She found a dark corner to curl up in. Kreegah plopped into an old chair and was immediately asleep. He could sleep or wake on a moment’s notice. Such was the requirement of his life.
Zala, despite her protests, understood this too. An exhausted soldier was a liability, and she’d slept on her fair share of battlefields.
“I understand that it annoys you to be at the mercy of an inhospitable situation with only me to guide you,” I said. “But you’ll get used to it.”
She glowered. “I don’t take orders from you.”
“Don’t think of it as an order. Think of it as a helpful suggestion from someone who should be in charge by default. Unless you think you know the best way to avoid a space-time disaster from consuming the galaxy. In which case, you’re more than welcome to rush headlong into the night by yourself.”
“I thought you said the threat was limited to the system.”
“Did I? Let’s hope so. I’ll keep my tentacles looped.”
Zala shook her head. “You enjoy tormenting me, don’t you?”
“I’ll admit to some small pleasure.”
Dinosaur Island quaked its approval.
Mutant insects were eating Kansas.
Again.
My saucer and its fleet of automated fighters waged war with the giant creatures. Huge radioactive hornets engaged in dogfights through the streets of Topeka while forty-foot fire ants belched flames, setting anything and everything ablaze.
It wasn’t as devastating as it might first appear. This was the fifth attack in as many weeks. The citizens of Topeka hadn’t moved back into their city after the second. Nor had they started repairs on the ruins. There wasn’t much left of the city to destroy at this point. Which meant that if I didn’t stop the insects here and now, they’d probably march on in search of more appealing hunting grounds. From there, they’d spread across the globe.
But the real danger of the bugs wasn’t in their ascendance to dominance, but in the radioactive waste left in their wake. It was even more difficult to contain than the insects, and if enough of it contaminated the water supply and air, the native Terran life-forms were due a painful death.
I’d rather not have my reign over Terra end with her as an unlivable wasteland. Though if the Terrans went extinct, they wouldn’t be around to hold it against me, and the rest of the system already considered me an irredeemable criminal. So it wasn’t as if I had to worry about damage to my reputation.
But it would’ve still been a lousy way to end my warlordship.
Several jumping spiders pounced on my saucer. I pushed a button and electrocuted them. A praying mantis snatched a fighter out of the air and devoured it in three bites. The ship self-destructed, blowing off the mantis’s head. I blasted the tide of fire ants, but there were more.
There were always more.
I couldn’t help but think myself somewhat responsible for keeping this doomsday from happening, and it probably had something to do with the fact that the bugs were an unintended consequence of my own entomological research. My design had been some genetic tweaking, the creation of a new breed of insect that could excrete a useful power source as a backup should the molluskotrenic ever fail. A simple splice of some Mercurial queen wasp genetic material in a few native species. A carefully controlled experiment until a few ants escaped into the wild.
I still didn’t know what caused the gigantism. The Mercurial insects weren’t this large. But some of science’s best discoveries came from happy accidents. I was ever optimistic that this research could be salvaged. Though at the moment, I was more concerned with keeping it contained.
While my automated tanks and fighters waged their battle, I hovered over the city, scanning it block by block. There had to be a queen to this insect empire, a prime carrier to infect the other creatures. There always was. Every time before, I’d destroyed the queen and hoped that was the end of the problem. It had yet to take.
If it didn’t work this time, I’d have to vaporize the state.
My sensors pinged, detecting unusually high levels of radioactivity. It had to be the prime queen’s nest. My research suggested that she was likely to be a vast, virtually immobile creature whose sole function was to spit out the mutagenic contagion. The swarm would defend her to the death, but they were outgunned. And once the prime was gone, it would be easy to clean up the mess.
The nest was under a building barely standing. I toppled it with a blast and then used a tractor beam to clear away the rubble. The buzzing of the insects grew angrier. My defense forces kept them at bay while I dug deeper.
A sonic shriek rattled the air as a geyser of dust kicked up. Sensors went wild. A shadow blotted out the sky. The prime queen was seven times the size of my own craft. And she was unhappy.
She was also far from immobile. She was too massive to fly with her vestigial wings, but her three pairs of legs worked. A volley of rockets exploded against her natural armor plating, inflicting some minor wounds. She barfed up a ball of slime that I weaved under. It exploded against the ground with tremendous force. At least the energy source idea had proven viable.
She spit a stream of unstable mucus across a row of tanks, destroying them in a burst of flames. She hunched over. Orifices along her back sprayed the air with a hundred pellets. Bugs and fighters alike disintegrated under the indiscriminate attack. My saucer shields absorbed the brunt of the force, but they wouldn’t hold up to another.
The queen turned her attention toward me, the only thing still flying after her blitz. She scuttled forward with surprising speed, but I flew up and out of her reach. The enraged prime shrieked as she belched round after round. I dropped my payload of rockets and bombs on the creature, then burned out my pulsar and blaster cannons. The queen was wounded but showed no sign of falling.
Finally, I got the creature to spit straight up. Gravity did the rest. Her mucus struck her between her multitude of eyes, and her head exploded. She stumbled through the city another three hours, rampaging blindly in the ruins, before succumbing to her injuries.
The Terrans already had banners and a parade at the ready as I set my saucer down outside the city limits. I stepped out to the sounds of much rejoicing. Reporters pushed microphones at me.
One asked, “Lord Mollusk, how does it feel to have saved the city of Topeka for the fifth time?”
“Perhaps
saved
isn’t the right word,” I replied.
“Nonetheless, the people of Terra are indebted to you once again. Surely, you must feel a sense of tremendous pride. Or are you simply too humble to realize how amazing you are?”
“I’ll get back to you on that.”
I approached the podium. A hushed awe fell over the crowd.
“That should do it, everyone,” I said. “I’d probably wait another week or two before starting any serious rebuilding. Just to be on the cautious side. Now if you’ll excuse me…”
My exo communicator beeped.
“Excuse me one moment. I need to take this.”
The voice on the other end said, “Lord Mollusk, we’ve lost China.”
“Define
lost.
”
“It’s not there anymore, sir.”
“Well, that’s no good, is it?” I said.
“No, sir. We thought you should know.”
“Yes, I’ll look into it. Mollusk out.”
“Hail Lord Mollusk!” shouted the voice in the speaker.
“Hail Mollusk,” I agreed quietly.
I waved good-bye to the crowd and boarded my saucer.
I did end up finding China, though getting it back from the transdimensional cat people who stole it was almost more trouble than it was worth.
Zala awoke to find me hunched over a console.
“One second,” I said. “I’m almost done here.”
I used the spot welder in my exo’s fingertip to finish a final repair, then closed the panel.
“I’ll need you to throw that switch over there when I give you the signal.” I pointed to a jury-rigged circuit breaker by her on the wall.
She folded her arms and glared. “You can’t command me like one of your robotic drones, Emperor, and just expect me to jump to your bidding.”
“I’ll need you to throw that switch over there when I give you the signal…please.”
She noticed the patchwork repair job, exposed wires, and rerouted systems I’d been up to while she slept.
“What did you do?”
“Got bored,” I replied. “Did some repairs.”
“Why?”
“Why not?”
“I would’ve thought the node, which may or may not be important, would’ve kept you busy.”
“It wasn’t. Only took me forty minutes to see that it didn’t work. There was no data in it.”
“Not important then.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” I replied. “There were a few peculiar components in it. Things that seemed unnecessary, though considering it wasn’t being used, the whole device could be considered unnecessary. But I saved the parts that seemed uniquely out of place.”
“Why?”
“Why not?”
Zala grunted. “That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the best answer I have at the moment.”
She appraised the mess of wires I was working on. “I’m surprised you didn’t wake me.”
“I’m a quiet worker.”
“I don’t care how smart you are, you can’t take a decayed derelict spaceship buried under the ground for decades and make it functional.”
“Well, I’m very smart,” I said. “And anyone can fix something when they have all the parts. You don’t need a genius for that. Just a skilled worker. But taking half of a broken computer and turning it into something useful…that takes talent.” I examined a few more systems. “Is there some morally questionable dilemma I’ve failed to notice from fixing an old computer? Because if there is, I’m sure you can’t wait to tell me.”
“No, there’s nothing wrong with it,” she said. “Although if you’re doing it, I do have some suspicion that it could be wrong in some manner.”
“You wound me, Zala. Not everything I do has a sinister purpose. Actually, nothing I do has a sinister purpose because
sinister
implies
deceptive
. And I’m never that. I’m up front about what I’ve done, and I was mostly up front when I did it.”
“Mostly,” she said.
“You can’t conquer a world without lying or the occasional half-truth. At least, I haven’t devised a realistic plan to do so, and if I can’t think of it, then it’s unlikely. But I do like to think I keep my deceptions to a minimum.”
She glanced around the dim room. “Where is my battleguard?”
I nodded toward another chamber. She marched over there to find her loyal soldiers locked in stasis. She came back with her scimitar drawn.
“That would be a lot more threatening if you didn’t pull it out at every opportunity,” I said.
“What did you do to them?”
“Saved them from a death by radiation poisoning,” I replied. “I apologize if that was too presumptuous on my part.”
“They wouldn’t have just allowed you to stick them in those pods.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t hold it against their honor. I waited until they were too sick to put up much of a fight. One of them, the female, did give me a kick. Considering she could barely breathe, that’s probably worth a commendation or something. Bravery in the face of foolish shortsightedness or something. I assume there’s such an award on Venus, though it probably has a less accurate name.”
“Let them out.”
“Let them out yourself.” I paused twisting wires. “Without protection, they’ll be dead in a matter of hours. I can’t claim to understand all the nuances of your particular warrior code, so I leave it to you to decide if a pointlessly agonizing death is part of it.”
Zala put away her sword. Her tail swished in sharp, annoyed snaps. “Will they be well?”
“Eventually. I had to retrofit the stasis pods to cleanse radiation and repair the cellular damage. It’s a patchwork job, but if the process is uninterrupted, they should be fine in nine or ten days.”
“That’s too long.”
“They’re in stasis. It’ll be like a light nap for them.”
She put her hand on her scimitar but didn’t draw. She chewed her lip. Her scales darkened.
“And before you ask,” I said, “no, the pod won’t transform them into mind-controlled slaves. Or implant self-destruct codes in their DNA. Or turn them into living bombs. Or transform them into cannibals. Or give them an embarrassing stutter. Or any other crazy, inane evil thing you’re about to accuse me of.”
She relaxed, though her version of relaxed always struck me as only marginally less tense, but maybe that was only while around me. “You could’ve asked me first.”
“I didn’t think I’d need permission to save lives. And I was hoping to avoid a long, unnecessary conversation about it. The kind we just had. You’re welcome.”
Zala’s lips barely moved as she forced a grunt through them. It was the closest I would get to a thank-you.
I connected one last wire. “On my count, I need you to throw that switch. If you would be so kind.”
She threw the switch. The lights went out, and the glowing green grass kept the bridge from becoming pitch black. I sorted through the multicolored tangle before me.
“Aha.” Zala chuckled. “So even the incredible Emperor Mollusk has to accept his limits.”
“Your obsession with my failures borders on obsessive. I never claimed to be perfect. Merely brilliant.”
“So now you’re only
merely
brilliant.”
“Being brilliant isn’t difficult for me,” I said. “Most Neptunons could do what I’ve done. Perhaps without the grace and aplomb that I so effortlessly incorporate, but it hardly matters. In the end, all that matters are results.”
I twisted a red wire in the colorful tangle of cables sitting before me. The bridge lights snapped on. The ship’s computer crackled to life. I hadn’t been able to fix the speakers, and a bit of feedback screeched as the computer spoke.
“Hello, Emperor. How may I help you?”
“I’ll need a general scan of everything within thirty miles,” I said. “In just a moment.”
I performed a few small adjustments on the improved sensor array I’d cobbled together from spare parts. I gave a squeaked order to Snarg. She skittered over from her corner to take the array in her pincers and dashed outside. The cable spooled out behind her. It would stop when she found a sufficiently high perch.
“Where is Kreegah?” asked Zala.
“He went out at dawn. I’m having him run a few errands.”
She used her purifier on some less rancid meat to make her breakfast. “Aren’t you hungry, Emperor?”
“I can go for weeks without eating.”
“Don’t eat. Don’t sleep. Aren’t you the veritable superbeing?”
“Actually, I do sleep. Just not my entire brain at once. Only a small percentage at any one time.”
“How convenient for you.”
The cable stopped. I ordered the computer to perform the scan.
“Pity you couldn’t fix the monitors,” said Zala.
“I was able to improvise a work-around.”
A hologram of the island projected at our feet.
“I apologize for the monochrome. Best I could do with what I had to work with.”
“Didn’t you say the island’s radiation made detailed scans impossible?”
“Not if you know what you’re scanning for. My previous experience with the space-time anomaly gave me a jumping-off point. You’ll excuse the imprecise nature of the measurements.”
I pointed to a blip. “This is us. And this…”—I indicated a second blip in the northern tip of the island—“this is the heart of the anomaly. It’s at the base of the volcano, where the tear in space-time is geographically tethered. My research on the anomaly was unable to yield the secrets for closing it, but I was able to stabilize it.”
I highlighted a few ripples in the hologram.
“Time distortion isn’t much different than gravity manipulation when you get right down to it. As you can see by these radiating deformations in the graviton spread, you’ll no doubt observe a noticeably stronger wave here indicating—”
“Yes, I can see the thing with the thing on the thing. And I’m sure it means something very important. Why don’t you just tell me what that is?”
“Time travel.”
“You have a way to travel through time?”
“My own experiments proved that this was impossible. The anomaly only works one way. Any matter from this universe, aside from a few exotic subatomic particles, is instantly destroyed if it attempts to move backward in time, as we traditionally measure such things.”
“Maybe someone has figured out something you haven’t.”
“Possibly,” I said. “Or more likely they’re poking the universe in the eye without thinking of the consequences. In either case, we need to put an end to whatever misguided experiment they’re performing and restore the anomaly to constancy.”
The computer asked, “Would you like me to commence further analysis of the pattern?”
“Do that.” I rotated the hologram to study it from a different angle. “You might want to brace yourself, Zala. We can expect a minor quake now.”
The island shuddered. It shook loose some dirt, and the lights flickered.
“We should be fine for the next few hours, though I’m estimating complete collapse in six hours.”
“Complete? What does that mean?”
“An excellent question,” I replied. “Could be anything, really.”
“Define
anything
.”
“The anomaly could repair itself, leaving Dinosaur Island permanently stabilized. Or it could lead to the eventual collapse of the universe. That’s a worst-case scenario, mind you. And it’s really not that bad because it would take a few billion years to complete the task. We’d be killed instantly, of course. As would everything within several light-years.”
“And Venus? What about Venus?”
“I’m less concerned with the planet than our own predicament.”
“There are billions of lives at stake, Emperor.”
“I’m aware. And if I’m killed then it’s unlikely I’ll be able to solve the problem. Ergo, my life is rather important.”
“I trust you have a plan,” she said.
“I’m working on one. I’m sure I’ll have something soon. Something with antigravity. Or possibly lasers. I do enjoy working with lasers.”
“Whatever you can come up with, Emperor. Just make it quick.”
I grinned.
“What is it now?”
“It’s funny, isn’t it? You’re so eager to place your trust in my scientific genius now.”
“That’s not funny. It’s a situational demand, and I’m not eager. Or even very happy about it, but a warrior adapts to her situation.” She slung her weapons over her shoulder. “I trust you’re ready to go.”
“Almost.”
I welded the casing shut on a small device, gave it a quick double check.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Portable weather machine I invented last night with a few leftover parts. Might come in handy.” I secured it via a magnet on my hip. “Did I mention I was bored?”
“Good luck, Emperor,” said the ship’s computer. “I will relay any important information my analysis determines.”
“Thanks.”
We exited the access tube to the surface. Yellow clouds churned in the glowing green skies.
“I don’t see your Jupitorn savage anywhere,” said Zala.
“Did you look behind you?” I asked.
She turned.
Kreegah waved. “Hello.”
“You really shouldn’t do that,” she said.
“Do what?”
“Sneak up on people.”
“Sorry. It’s a habit. I thought I was being quite obvious. I’ll try to make more noise if that would relax you.”
She grumbled.
“Did I do something wrong?” Kreegah asked me.
“No, she’s just out of her element and grumpy about it.”
“Should I apologize?”
“That would be ill advised,” I replied. “Better to just leave it alone.”
“I see.”
“You’d have to be civilized to get it,” I said.
Kreegah nodded. It was all the explanation he needed. Of all the beings in this universe, I liked Kreegah the most. He was without guile, good-natured but merciless to his enemies. Some might mistake his lack of sophistication for stupidity, but Kreegah was the rarest of creatures, a being perfectly fitted for his world. I envied him. All my brilliance had yet to solve that most universal of desires.
He unleashed a howl, beating his chest. His armored skin echoed with a deep bass thump. The ground trembled. It wasn’t another earthquake. A hecteratops burst through the foliage. Zala pointed her rifle at it. The dinosaur lowered its head and focused all eight of its eyes on her. It thumped the earth with its six legs, flapped its great feathered wings, and its scales shifted to a threatening shade of red.
“Unless you want to get stepped on,” I said, “you’ll probably want to lower your weapon.”
The hecteratops brayed. It shook the rattle on the end of its tail.
Kreegah put his hand on the end of the dino’s snout. He playfully tugged at the two horns on the dino’s nose, and he bleated back.