“I do not want to do this,” I state.
“Quiet,” Roamer tells me.
“I do not think you want to do this, either, Galadoran,” I say, looking at him. He is unreadable.
“That interpolator device you use,” I say, studying and recording the Timely unit bolted to his back. “It has taken you to me every time you used it. Because of its ability to place you in precisely the correct dramatic moment to affect destiny and universal continuity.”
“That is its purpose.”
“And each time, in effect, you saved me, or helped to bring me closer to my goal. Where is your place in the cosmic narrative, Spaceknight?”
“Shut up.”
“I -tik! - said that to him,” Gruntgrill calls out breezily. He makes a little false laugh. He is using a wall panel to operate a hoist that lowers an Adamantium cage from the ceiling. I know that I will be placed into that cage and then dipped into the Datacore, where my individual essence will be lost, and my stored data—which I now appreciate is vast beyond all measure—will be added to the map.
“I said that the flarking interpolator keeps reading him as a hero,” Gruntgrill continues, working. “Even though he pretends to be a soulless -tik! - merc. Oh, well, he still got the job done in the end.”
“Are you a hero?” I ask Roamer.
“Shut up.”
“Are you a heartless being? Do you not care about the future that awaits us all?”
“Shut up.”
“Time was, the Spaceknights of Galador would have fought to the last to prevent this from happening.”
“Shut up now,” Roamer snaps, the red light of his visor pulsing angrily.
“Very well. But do me one favor, if you will. Use the interpolator again. Right now. See where it takes you. See where the dramatic urges of creation believe you should be.”
“I told you to be silent,” says Roamer.
“Yeah, give it a shot,” Rocket calls to him. “I’m a no-good ne’er-do-well, and even I found it in my hardened heart to give the doofus a helping hand.”
“Be the flark quiet!” Xorb tells him, with an unnecessarily vicious gesture of his pistol.
The building shakes. Even down here, at sub eighty-six level, we feel it shudder. Almighty war is taking place above us. The cage swings, and Gruntgrill leans out over the guardrail to arrest it.
“Careful you don’t fall in,” laughs Xorb. “We don’t wanna become morons instead of gods.”
Gruntgrill shoots him a look.
“Flark off, Xorbux! You have no idea what’s going on here! You -tik!- are only after the power!”
Xorb Xorbux aims his Subduematic at Gruntgrill. He clicks it to “kill.”
• CHAPTER FORTY-TWO •
THIS IS WHAT THE -TIK!- FLARK IS GOING ON UP THERE
“Get it done. Get it done now, you Kaliklaki waste of space,” he says. “Or I waste you.”
“Would you -tik!- -tik!- step into the cage, Recorder?” Gruntgrill asks me.
Another blast shivers the building. The cage rocks again.
“I would rather not,” I say.
“He’s going to -tik!- kill me,” Gruntgrill stammers.
“That would be preferable to what is about to happen,” I reply.
“Please, get into the -tik!- cage!”
There is another shudder. The cage swings again.
“What the -tik!- flark is going on up there?” Gruntgrill asks.
ROBED in red and maroon, the Crusaders of the Universal Church of Truth transmatted to the surface and charged into the Timely Corporate HQ wielding hatchets, swords, pikes, and blasters. The reception-desk staff stood little or no chance.
At the head of the invasion came the armored Faith Cardinals, towering cloaked figures of great power, who wore malevolent spiked-and-crested helms. They wielded ornate power blades and staves, which cut down or atomized anyone in their path.
“Matriarch!” said their leader, High Cardinal Navorth, as he used his ornate, triple-bladed power sword to rip aside a security shutter that was trying to close.
An image of the Universal Church’s figurehead appeared before the High Cardinal in hololight form. The Matriarch was a supremely beautiful woman, the latest in a line of supremely beautiful women who had been elected to lead the zealots of the all-powerful Church. Dressed in a long, sumptuous gown and a veiled wimple, she sat beatifically on her throne in the command Templeship above.
“Speak, my Cardinal,” she said.
“The outer areas have been secured, but there is blasphemous resistance,” said Navorth. “Request permission to deploy the Black Knights.”
“Request granted,” said the Matriarch. “In the name of the one life, everlasting, nothing must stand in the way of our acquisition. The Church has waited too long for the appearance of a messiah who will conquer the Galaxy for us. Control of the Datacore will allow us to wield the Power Cosmic and rule the Universe for all time. Even the great Cosmic Abstracts will be obliged to bow to us in obeisance.”
“I believe!” Navorth replied and sent a signal.
An instant later, the cohorts of Black Knights appeared in a series of transmat blinks. The Crusaders howled rallying cries of “I believe!”
Large, muscular, and powerful, the infamous Black Knights were drawn, like the Faith Crusaders, from many different races of the Cosmos. They were dressed in form-fitting black outfits and carried all manner of vicious close-combat weapons. They were the Universal Church’s fanatical warrior elite—the most valiant Crusaders elevated to super-mortal power so that they could serve on the front lines and crush any and all unbelievers.
Bounding forward out of the swirling T-mat haze that had delivered them, the Black Knights cut into the ranks of the Timely security officers who blocked the entrances. The Black Knights soaked the walls with blood. They understood nothing about the concept of surrender.
Parts of the massive building exploded. The circle of Badoon megadestroyers had opened fire on the Templeships. The Templeships fired back. Two megadestroyers were hit. One sank limply, on fire, in a vast cloud of smoke. The other exploded and dropped onto downtown Alpha C, crushing buildings beneath it as it rolled and burned out.
The Templeships riddled Timely HQ with precision barrages. The Pride of Pama and the Conscience of Sharra fired at the Templeships, but they were pinned and took heavy return hits. The Nova heavy gauzed itself in an immaculate shield-robe of gravimetrics and its commander started to demand an immediate cease-fire.
Vicious fighting ripped through many floors of the immense Timely Inc. tower. Sub-Praetor Arach had called in reinforcements of Imperial Guardsmen and Metal Wing troopers from her ship. They arrived by transmat, as did elite Kree soldiers and Sentry units summoned by Sharnor. Nova Corps officers flew like rockets from the Xandarian heavy at Yaer’s desperate command and swept down into the stricken building to engage all hostiles. The golden-helmed Corpsmen sent shock waves down corridors and hallways as they swept in, targeting anything and anyone with a weapon.
Ugly blisters of light formed and burst as Badoon teleport systems sent in fire-teams of War Brotherhood warriors. Intense shooting and power-blasts took out floors, blew down walls, and exploded vast windows, shattering picturesque, calming vista views.
On the Executive Boardroom floor, the fighting was especially intense. Sharnor the Accuser slugged it out in monumental hand-to-hand combat with three titanic Cardinals. Her Sentry units and troops fought back the waves of Faith Crusaders. Timely personnel fled in all directions.
“Find it, Una-Ren!” Sharnor yelled to her spy. The former Pama Harnon had drawn a long-barreled laser disruptor and was shooting into the waves of attackers. “Find it and bring it to me!”
Una-Ren nodded and, catlike, slipped away.
“The Kree spy is taking off!” Centurion Clawdi yelled. She, Grekan Yaer, and Corpsmen Starkross and Valis were locked in a brutal fight with a host of Black Knights and a Sentry unit that had decided anything not Kree
was fair game. The fight had taken them through several walls and into the main hallway outside the Executive Boardroom.
“She’s onto something! Get her, Grekan!”
“But—” Yaer began.
“We can hold this off! Go!” yelled Clawdi.
Yaer dispensed gravimetric power through his gauntlets and put two Black Knights into a wall. Then he turned and blasted off after the Kree agent, moving like a heat-seeking missile along the hallway. He smashed several combatants out of his way.
The Shi’ar Guardsmen and their Metal Wing support were taking the brunt of both Badoon and Crusader assault in the annex to the Boardroom. Sub-Praetor Arach reared back and fired blue photon pulses from her spinnerets. Badoon War Brotherhood soldiers flew backward and fell hard. Warstar 34 was unleashing his full battery power at an oncoming, crimson-robed Cardinal who seemed to shrug off each blast with a twist of his energized staff. Dragoon and Ebon were battling face-to-face with marauding Crusaders and Black Knights. There was barely any space to use their powers.
“The leading Nova Centurion has just broken from combat!” Arach linked. “Ebon! You’re the fastest! Find out where he’s going!”
Ebon ducked a Black Knight’s swinging dagger, punched him in the face, and looked helplessly at Dragoon.
“You heard her! Move, girl!” Dragoon told her, torching three Crusaders with a burst of pyrotech.
“On it, Sub-Praetor!” Ebon yelled, and lofted at once, knocking a Black Knight out of her way with a bolt of dark-matter. She zoomed into a corridor that had been badly shot-up. A Badoon fire-team loomed in her path, firing their rifles at her. She shuddered and created a dark-matter shield that absorbed the lethal, dazzling shots, then sent the Badoon tumbling as she flew into them.
She tried to scan for traces of gravimetrics. Where was that Centurion? Where?
HANXCHAMP, Rarnak, and Wivvers had made it to the elevator banks.
“This isn’t happening, this isn’t happening,” Hanxchamp kept saying to himself, trying to ignore the gunfire, explosions, and screams rattling through the building behind him. “In the name of Timely, someone solutionize this for me!”
“We have to get down to the Datacore, sir,” said Blint Wivvers. The lift arrived with a ping.
“We can hide there,” said Sledly Rarnak. “It’s secure.”
“And we can help Xorb and Gruntgrill finish the work,” agreed Wivvers. “With the Datacore up to power, we can take out all of this craziness!”
“Good, yeah, good. Excellent,” Hanxchamp nodded. They got into the elevator. Muzak was playing. Hanxchamp punched in his executive security codes.
“It does sound like a good idea,” said Una-Ren, slipping into the car with them just before the doors closed. She aimed her elegant pistol at them. “Let’s do that, shall we?” she smiled, cocking her head.
Blint Wivvers threw himself at her. Una-Ren fired twice, and the M’Ndavian head of Legal was hurled back into the corner. He slid slowly to the deck and expired.
“You shot him?” Hanxchamp gasped.
“A demonstration of what will happen to you if you don’t cooperate from this point,” she replied. “Take me to the Datacore, or I burn you both.”
“Never trust a Kree,” said the Skrull Rarnak acidly.
“Literally,” Una-Ren agreed with a toxic grin.
The elevator began its rapid descent. As it traveled, muzak almost exactly like “The Girl From Ipanema” began to play.
GREKAN Yaer reached the elevator banks just as the doors closed. He had glimpsed Hanxchamp—and the Kree agent. And a gun. He ripped the outer doors open and prepared to dive into the shaft in pursuit of the descending express elevator. A disk of dark-matter blocked him, and he rebounded back onto the carpet outside.
“You’re in an awful hurry,” Ebon said, landing beside him, her arms raised to unleash another dark-matter blast.
“You damned Shi’ar,” Yaer said, getting up. “Hanxchamp’s making a fast getaway. I think the Kree agent has him.”
“Where are they going?” asked Ebon.
“Well, take the same wild guess that I did, Miss,” said Yaer.
Shots hailed at them, peppering the front of the elevator bank, blowing chunks of wall and frame fascia out like confetti. They turned together, Centurion and Guardsman, and fired blasts that leveled the dozen War Brotherhood Devastation cadre warriors rushing at them.
Ebon looked at Yaer.
“I propose…how can I put it…cooperation?” she said.
“In the spirit of protecting the entire flarking Galaxy for our mutual good?” the Korbinite replied.
He held out his hand. They shook.
“Guardsman Ebon.”
“Centurion Yaer.”
“Let’s go guard the Galaxy,” she said.
“We’d better,” he replied, “because no one else is doing the flarking job.”
Side-by-side, they jumped into the yawning elevator shaft.
IN A side office, Mrs. Mantlestreek was crouching under a desk. It was comparatively safe down there. She had brought a tray of nibbles with her from the Executive Boardroom, just to keep her going.
• CHAPTER FORTY-THREE •
ONE WITH EVERYTHING
“I’m sorry,” she said politely into the handset she was holding, “Senior Vice Executive President (Special Projects) Odus Hanxchamp can’t take your call right now. He’s in a war zone.”
OF course, gentle reader, Centurion Grekan Yaer was wrong. Other individuals were indeed trying to guard the Galaxy. To the best of their handcuffed abilities.
“Get in the -tik!- cage,” Gruntgrill says to me.
I sigh.
“Do it, robot-boy!” Xorb Xorbux cries, aiming his Subduematic.
I look back at Roamer one last time.
“Please,” I say, “my final request. Try your interpolator.”
His answer surprises me.
“I have,” he says. “Three times. I have remained here.”
“You see?” I ask, encouraged.
“I see nothing,” replies the Spaceknight. “Get in the cage.”
I step into the cage. I am shaking, gentle reader.
“Oi!” calls Rocket from behind us.
“What?” asks Xorb angrily.
“Steady with the gun, pal,” Rocket says, raising his cuffed, disconcertingly human-like hands. “I just wanted to tell my pal there to stop singing.”
“Ah yes,” I reply. “Indeed. “Jump-ship Ju-ju” by the Lite Year Brothers. I just realized I was doing that. Sorry. Thanks for pointing it out. It wouldn’t have been very dignified, going to my transcendental demise humming that.”
“Just looking out for you, pal,” says Rocket.
We share a last exchange of looks.
“You have been a good friend, Rocket Raccoon,” I say. “A good and loyal friend, if an odd one.”
“I am Groot.”
“And you are, and always shall be, my Groot,” I reply.
I suddenly realize something. Though our captors are humoring it because they take it to be a simple leave-taking, this last exchange has a deeper meaning. Rocket is talking about tenderly soaring and heartwarming soft rock, but his eyes are darting to the left, as if to indicate something.
I record. Unnoticed by the security guards surrounding Rocket and Groot, Gamora is no longer lying on the deck unconscious. There is no sign of her, except for a pair of open handcuffs on the deck.
Hope rises inside me. I play for time.
“Is this thing safe?” I say, shaking the cage around me so that it swings.
“Whoa! Don’t -tik!- do that!” Gruntgrill cries.
“It doesn’t feel safe,” I say, doing it again. I keep waiting for Gamora to do whatever it is she’s going to do.
Instead, Xorb Xorbux does whatever it is he’s going to do. To wit, he punches me in the face with the butt of his pistol.
I fall back into the cage. He slams the door and presses the lever, and I start to des
cend toward the swirling Datacore.
I feel the heat of the Core. My entire casing starts to glow with painful energy. A nimbus of hot pink light surrounds me and grows more powerful.
I am about to become one with everything, my exploding data-load boosting the Timely Core to unprecedented levels.
“Look at this!” cries Gruntgrill, consulting a tablet. “It’s already rising to ninety-one percent! It’s incredible! -tik!- At this rate, we may even achieve the full one hundred percent!”
“Is that verified?” asks Odus Hanxchamp as he enters the chamber. Sledly Rarnak is by his side.
“Yes, sir, it’s—” Gruntgrill begins. He stops. He sees the dark-eyed Kree agent he once knew as Pama Harnon. He sees the weapon she has aimed at the back of Hanxchamp’s head.
“Is it confirmed, Arnok?” Una-Ren asks. “Make the answer accurate, or I will splatter Hanxchamp’s brains—such as they are—across this entire chamber.”
“-tik!- Yes.”
“Lose the weapons, or Hanxchamp dies,” says the Kree spy.
Xorb Xorbux curses, then drops his pistol. The security guards around Rocket and Groot slowly lower their pistols and Subduematic autoguns to the deck.
“You, too,” says Una-Ren.
Roamer drops his blaster and sword.
“Excellent,” smiles Una-Ren. “Now I think—”
She pauses. An odd look crosses her face. Then she falls forward.
The leering Black Knight behind her drags his blade out of her back as she topples. There are eight Black Knights in the shadows behind her, accompanying Cardinal Navorth and the Church’s deep cover agent inside Timely: Allandra Meramati.
“The Datacore is ours, Cardinal,” says Allandra. “And at an appropriately auspicious moment, too.”
“I believe,” he growls back. “Kill them all,” he adds, as an afterthought.
“Now wait a moment!” Sledly Rarnak cries, leaping forward. The Cardinal’s power sword takes the poor fellow’s head clean off his shoulders. The Skrull in charge of Corporate Pamphlets lands on the deck in two pieces.