DVANDOM _____ ______ _____ _______ THE SIG.FILES PART 2 [ ]__ [ ] [] [ ]__)) [ ] ` [ ]__ #67 - "No Trouble Atoll?" [ ] [ ] [] [ ] \\ [ ] [ ] copyright 1996 Dave Van Domelen [_] [_]__[] [_] \\ [_]___/ [_]____ -------]==+ <*> +==[------- [cover shows Kid Pocky in the darkness, looking around him in fear while hundreds of pairs of red eyes pierce the black.] -------]==+ <*> +==[------- Rapidly, Kat shifted her optical scanners to adjust for the new light levels, but it was too late. The mysterious figure was gone before she could do so. Of course, being a computer intelligence is not without some benefits, not the least of which was the ability to manipulate data stored in memory far more easily than organics can. Kat called up her sensor logs while she flowed towards the door, carefully looking for signs of an ambush. Standard cliche tactic...shock someone by claiming to know something about her, then strike in the confusion. Kat was finally starting to get the hang of this place. No one was out there. Thermal traces showed no one HAD been out there for some time. No signs of holgraphic transmission or other sneaky methods of image-casting...and she knew a lot of them. There was still the possibility of magic, of course, but she really had no direct way to measure that. A little voice in the back of her head told her the sensory logs had been processed as fully as possible "in head." She turned her attention to them, sealing her door with care. The shadowy figure was still a shadowy figure, only lighter. Still no discernable details, as if he (and it was a reasonably masculine outline) were using some sort of cloaking technology. While there was always the possibility it was some technology she couldn't crack with her future science, this did tend to point at magic. The voice was a dead end. Synthesized, and almost obviously enough that a normal human could tell...too flattened and atonal. Kat stopped herself abruptly in mid-analysis. She'd been ignoring something very important...someone either knew or suspected what she had been doing these past few weeks. In her old life, her first reaction would be to figure out who it was and kill them...which is exactly what she'd just been trying to do. But she was a hero now, supposedly. As harmless as she told herself her actions with Doug had been, the "track down and kill" thing was no longer an option if she wanted to stay in her current life. She had two options. One, confess to Doug and hope he understands. Two, figure out who the mysterious figure was and...well, do SOMETHING. Whoever it was may not *know,* but only suspect. And Kat was a very old hand at explaining things away when the truth was not the only way to fit the known facts. The first was right out. Even Kat wasn't totally comfortable with what she'd done, and she'd managed to excise most of her own scruples ages ago. She'd leave it as a last resort. If nothing else, she wanted to tell him before the mysterious figure could. Hmm. Someone who might be in a position to know things Doug's own conscious mind didn't have access to, and who could use magic to conceal things from Kat's sensors. Time to pay Lynk a visit. -------]==+ <*> +==[------- In the darkness of an air-conditioning conduit, something skittered. Red eyes blinked open, casting a baleful faint light on the aluminum surface. -------]==+ <*> +==[------- "So, how's Doug doing on the meditation thing?" Kat asked. Rule number one of flushing out someone you're not sure is blackmailing you. Don't give them anything to use if they *aren't* the one. Lynk looked up from her book. "About the same as he was yesterday when I gave you a full run-down. No breakthroughs today. And unless we have one, he's probably gotten as much good as he can from our efforts. I don't see any reason for you to continue manipulating his brain chemistry if there's no significant change by the end of the week." Cool as a nitrogen bath, Kat noted. Either Lynk didn't have a clue, or she was a lot better at verbal fencing than she used to be. Lynk started to turn back to her book, then put it back down and added, "Frankly, I'm not sure what you're doing is in his best interest." On the inside, Kat froze. But long practice kept her external appearance unfazed. "His nervous system is already partially artificial, and has suffered major imbalance during his years as a heavy drinker. I'm no neurologist, but I don't think altering his brain chemistry is totally safe." Inwardly, Kat sighed. Unless this was a double feint of some sort, Lynk didn't know about what she'd been doing aside from altering Doug's brain chemistry. "Actually, I stopped doing that a while back," Kat replied, dangling a leading statement in front of Lynk. "Then what have you been doing?" Lynk asked, as Kat had planned. "Monitoring. Very minutely. I made as many changes as I felt I could safely make, then started watching for any problems." Anticipating the next question, she added, "I told him I was still tweaking things because I hoped psychosomatic effects could boost the effect without the need for more direct manipulation." Lynk nodded. "All right. I suppose that makes sense." Kat started to walk out, satisfied that she'd planted the seeds of an alibi if she needed one. The difference between "careful monitoring" and what she'd really been doing in his head was slight enough to work with. "Wait," Lynk said. "One last thing...Doug's dreams have been rather, ah, 'charged' lately. Is this a side effect of your monitoring?" "Maybe," Kat hesitated for effect. She knew from Lynk's tone what she meant by "charged," and it could mean Lynk was the mysterious stranger after all. Still, better to be careful and stick to her alibi. "Although with his whole thought process sped up now, he probably just has to purge via dreaming at an accelerated rate. And who wouldn't have a few extra nighttime fantasies after spending his days in close contact with beauties like us?" Kat cocked her head, tossing her simulated hair to the side. When Lynk let out a small giggle, Kat knew she'd taken care of this angle. -------]==+ <*> +==[------- In the recesses of the Dvandom Force HQ's main storage area, chewing could be heard. Something with far too many legs moved quickly from one pool of shadow to another without ever breaking into the dim light coming from under the door. -------]==+ <*> +==[------- "Okay, people, we've notified the Loonited Nations people that we plan to go to Andale Atoll. Strangely, it's been in the same place for some time now, unlike its usual wandering behavior. I'm not sure what to make of this, although it could mean the atoll has been abandoned," Squidman ventured. "Or Acton Lord's latest plan requires staying over some important location...or under one," Sidewinder suggested. "Maybe. It's too far from the equator to be lining up with a geosynch satellite, though. It's not unreasonable to think the atoll might be over Alt.lantis, it's in the right area of the North Alt.lantic to be in the legendary city's location." "Wait," Kat interjected. "I thought all comic book universes had an active Atlantis of some sort. Wouldn't we know for sure if it's over the city?" Squidman shrugged. "As far as I know, no one's bothered to write one into the Looniverse, so it's still undiscovered. It might have shown up in a title the writer doesn't follow, though." Pressing a few buttons on the terminal set into the table at his position, Squidman called up an aerial view of the atoll. "As you can see, it looks totally deserted, but it always does. The real activity is underground in the gradgnome warrens and Acton Lord's fortified base. What worries me is that infrared scans," he toggled up another image, "are at abnormally low levels, indicating either less activity or increased anti-detection measures. The former would agree with the hypothesis that the base has been abandoned. But the latter could be an attempt to hide some bold new plan from view." "If Acton Lord is really the new Warlord, and his activity is centered in Perth, then it would make sense for the base to be at least at low ebb, if not totally shut down," Kid Pocky suggested. "Exactly," Squidman nodded. "Still, this will be a voluntary mission. None of you has to go if you don't want to. The only exceptions are you, Kid Pocky, and VAXX. Neither of you is really ready for a full assault on someplace as dangerous as Andale Atoll. Stan?" Squidman turned to the moneybags of the operation, Stanley King, the former Cheeez Arrow. "Yes?" "Try to keep VAXX out of trouble, okay?" "Hey," Lynk interjected. "I resent the implication that the VAXX is a troublemaker." "Anna, last time we left him alone, he rewired the TV so it'd only get reruns of the Cosmic Plot Device Caper," Squidman reminded her. She sighed and slumped back in her chair, patting the VAXX on his massive shoulder. "I smell bunnyrabbits," the VAXX noted. "Whatever. So, who's in?" Squidman asked. Predictably, (this is a superhero-type series, after all) everyone not specifically excluded from the mission raised their hands. -------]==+ <*> +==[------- Oh, you know the drill by now. Strange sounds, red eyes, menacing skittering sounds...go rent Aliens. Hey! Not right now! Get back here and finish reading the issue! -------]==+ <*> +==[------- The others were still mainly on the surface, but Kat had already moved into the tunnel system. She'd already infiltrated this place back when it was undoubtedly active [see Dvandom Force #42 - Ed, who has certainly been getting around lately], and the layout didn't seem to have changed significantly. The tunnels extended to a surprising depth, considering that the atoll was theoretically free-floating...she suspected a possible teleportal arrangement between a floating surface and a fixed (and hidden) understory, but her sensors couldn't confirm anything. What they *were* telling her, however, was that not only was this place empty, it was utterly deserted. No one had used it in weeks, if not longer. "Confess, before I have to tell him." Kat whirled about to face the blurry figure. This time he (she?) didn't leave right away. "Who are you?" "I'm that nagging little voice that tells you when you've done something wrong," he taunted. "Sure, Jiminy," Kat replied, snaking out her arm in an attempt to capture the figure, but he vanished before she could make contact. "Come now, you can't grab your own conscience, any more than you can run from it. It's always faster than you are," sneered the voice from behind her. She lashed her tail at the figure, almost connecting this time, but it was gone. Kat waited a moment, but he didn't return. Was she going insane? If he was really just a projection of her own guilty conscience, that would explain many things. But she didn't have a conscience, guilty or not...she'd spent decades fighting hard to lose it. Maybe this was related to the stubborn lump in her abdomen. If a secondary mind was forming there, it would possibly have access to her memories. She shuddered. The idea of the lump being just a simple construct of the nanomachines, an expression of their self-awareness being raised up a notch or two, had been frightening enough that she tried to avoid thinking about it too hard. But what if the nanos were already fully self-aware, building themselves a new body to inhabit so that they wouldn't be dependent on her? That was not something Kat really wanted to seriously consider. The implications were far too extreme. Like having a cancer that actively hated you...the idea was the stuff of horror novels. Forcing these thoughts aside, Kat headed back for the surface to report her findings on the base. -------]==+ <*> +==[------- As he passed the television in the main lounge area, Stan did a quick check to make sure all the channels were still there. "Hi, Mr. King," Kid Pocky said as he strolled in, helmet in his hands. He had short-cropped black hair and a faintly asian cast to his features. Probably a quarter or so Japanese, given the nature of his powers, Stan mused. "Anything good on?" Kid Pocky asked. "Hmm? Oh, just making sure VAXX hasn't modified the set again. And call me Stan." "Okay, Mist...Stan. I suppose since I'm 'off duty' you can call me Al." "Short for Alan?" Stan asked, remembering the stories of Doug's new origin, and always on the lookout for coincidences. "Er, no. Algernon...mom liked to read science fiction sometimes, and dad wasn't able to convince her that it wasn't the best name in the world to saddle a kid with. That's why I ended up studying martial arts as a kid," he grinned, in a somewhat embarrassed way. "Let me guess...in your path of martial arts study, you stumbled across some ancient technique involving Pocky?" Al laughed. "Sounds good, but unfortunately my origin's a bit more boring than that. I was eating Pocky while riding my motorcycle down the highway and dropped a piece. When I saw the explosion in my rearview mirror, I went back and checked. Sure enough, if Pocky hits something hard enough, it explodes." "Whoa. And I thought cheeez could be a dangerous food." "Oh, you'd have to move your mouth at Macroman-level speeds before having to worry about it exploding in your mouth. Anyway, after I made this discovery, THEN I sought out ancient baked-goods-related techniques that I've modified to let me summon Pocky out of thin air. I heard from one of my teachers that your former leader, Sig.Lad, had mastered some aspects of this art." "Yeah, his bagelwiz stuff...hey, do you hear that?" "Sounds like chewing. Maybe the VAXX is into the munchies?" Al ventured. "No...as far as I know, he doesn't actually eat...that monitor he wears as a helmet is sealed to his head magically. He runs on some kind of retcotheric energy on an elemental lev...GAHH!!" Suddenly, the flow of exposition was cut off as an eight-legged horror leapt out of the air duct and attached itself to Stan's face! "It's...it's a techno-organic eight-legged...rabbit?!?" Kid Pocky gasped, pulling his helmet on and summoning a huge meter-long stick of Pocky. "GERRIOVVAME!" Stan shouted, stumbling back against the couch. Kid Pocky cycled his wrist launchers up to speed and fired a barrage of hypervelocity Pocky at the facehugging...thing. Shrieking in that hideous way only rabbits can, the creature blew apart into dust. "BUNNYRABBITS!" came a bellow from the other room. "It's VAXX! He must have sensed these things earlier!" Stan realized as he sprinted for the closet. "I hope those things haven't gotten to my bow...." He opened the door as Kid Pocky rushed to help the VAXX. The odor of concentrated Cheeez wafted out of the hermetically sealed chamber as he cracked the seal. The things had gotten to his weapons, but had made the mistake of trying to eat one of the arrows...they all lay dead at the bottom of the closet. Still, his most potent arrows had been used up in the process...he'd have to kill them one at a time now. Grabbing the bow and quiver, he followed Kid Pocky into the kitchen, where VAXX was all but covered in techno-organic lagomorphs. "WHAT'S UP, BUGS?" VAXX bellowed as he smashed one of the things against the stovetop. Kid Pocky's high-explosive strawberry and almond projectiles blew another trio of bug-things off VAXX, reducing them to a mixture of metallic dust and blood. Stan pinned another two to the wall with well-placed arrows. "I fought and I fought, but they kept coming. Savagely I smashed another Bugs against the floor, but it hardly made a dent in the horde which threatened to wash me downstream into an ocean of pain," VAXX narrated as he disposed of another creature. Then Stan saw something that made his blood run cold. One of the techno-organic rabbits was splitting into two. Within seconds, both were running about and eating pieces of the room. "They're multiplying like...like rabbits!" Stan shouted over the staccato bursts of Kid Pocky's attacks and the occasional CRUNCH of VAXX's blows. He spared a moment to look into the hall. There were more. "We're getting surrounded! We have to make a break for it, if they pen us in here, we're rabbit food!" VAXX mooshed the last of those currently clinging to him. "I'd seen this sort of thing before, when the Biszes were getting bored and ready to form a huge wave of flesh and teeth. It wasn't pretty then, and it didn't look like it would be any prettier now. Running looked like a good idea." "Glad you agree!" Kid Pocky shouted as he blew a hole in the group that was trying to block the door. "Where to?" "The roof!" Stan shouted. "If they're this high in the building, they probably have all the lower floors infested as well. Our best bet is to go up, and hope they haven't eaten through the CheeeZipline down to the roof of the building next door!" VAXX didn't need any more encouragement, and plowed into the horde of rabbit-things while quietly narrating the events under his breath. The others followed in his wake...and it did indeed seem like a wake through water, you couldn't even see the floor anymore. Or most of the walls and ceilings. The lights had shut off already, the power cables eaten through and the bulbs themselves cracked...but the red pinpricks of light from the eyes of their foes lit the way well enough. Kid Pocky had stopped trying to blow up the monsters and was swatting them aside with his Pocky staff, concentrating on clearing away any that got past VAXX. Suddenly the VAXX stopped. "No stairs." Stan peered around the massive VAXX's shoulder. True enough, the creatures had eaten the stairs. "And no way am I even thinking of trying the elevators," he added. "Don't you have, like, a rope and line arrow or something?" Kid Pocky asked. "I never managed to get the String Cheeez Arrow to hold even my own weight, and I don't think it'd even come close to holding VAXX here." "Then what about the CheeeZipline?" Kid Pocky asked in frustration. "Well, ah, that's not really made of Cheeez," Stan admitted. The trio stood in front of the stairwell, a sheer 4 meter rise to the next floor and technobunnies closing in on all sides, their buck teeth dripping with acid and other vile fluids. "DIE, WABBITS!" the VAXX shouted as he started smashing anything within reach. Kid Pocky joined in with rapidfire Pocky blasts and Stan added his remaining arrows to the mix. None of them spoke another word, they knew this was a last stand. A last stand they couldn't hope to win. The enemy was numerous and getting more numerous all the time. Soon Stan would be out of ammunition and be dead weight for the others to defend. And while the VAXX might be able to do this all day, Stan doubted Kid Pocky could...maybe he could run halfway across the state, but even that sort of endurance was finite. Stan checked his pocket communicator, but none of the rest of the team had gotten close enough to be in range to call...and the main communications room was on the other side of the building. A mere few dozen meters normally, but it might as well be in Net.ropolis now. He felt like the defenders of the Alamo must have, only infinitely more silly. Stan smashed at the invaders with his bow, dropping back to try and stay between Kid Pocky and the VAXX. "Not to be a pessimist, guys, but it looks like this is gonna take a...?" Suddenly a small rope unrolled from above and thwapped against Stan's face. And then another rope snaked down. And another. A familiar musical sting filled the air. "Ooohhowwohhhowww! It's Nick Bludnock and the Agents of LURGI [Legal Undercover Reaction Group Inc. - Ed] to the rescue!" shouted a thin, mustached man in a pith helmet and skintight blue jumpsuit from the top of the stairwell. Oddly, there was an eyepatch on his pith helmet. Blue-jumpsuited penguins fell like rain, chasing the techno-organic rabbits around with really big hammers and smashing them flat. In the distance, the sound of two-stroke engines could be heard as penguins on LURGI-issued Flying Scooters strafed the massed forces in other parts of the base. Even the VAXX just stood there, agog, watching the spectacle before the three. Paramilitary penguins versus eight-legged cyborg bunnyrabbits. "How am I going to explain this to the insurance people?" Stan whimpered. -------]==+ <*> +==[------- "Well, it seems like this base has been abandoned," Squidman concluded after all the searchers had returned. "If Acton Lord is still using it, he's being very careful about it." "If anything, he's using it as a diversion," Kat added, watching Lynk out of the corner of her eye. "You may be right. A big, fat, red herring to make us waste time while he mounts an attack elsewhere. Lynk, anything in the mystic range yet?" The team's magician looked up from the small window she'd created in the air and shook her head. "Nothing good, anyway." "Explain, please." "Well, there's not *currently* any magic around, at least not any more than the general background level. But it looks like something really major happened a few weeks ago, about the same time we and Team M.E.C.H.A. defeated DeFacto V [Dvandom Force #60, and you readers should all know what major thing happened here, yes? - Ed]. A powerful spike, then nothing. If I were in an optimistic mood, I'd say Acton Lord tried playing with forces he couldn't control, and they got him," Lynk finished, closing the window by tapping one of its corners. "Hey, the communications link to the HQ's been severed," Sidewinder said, poking his head out of the Slipstream. "Probably VAXX," Squidman said, earning a dark look from Lynk, "but we'd better hurry back just in case it isn't. I don't think we're going to find anything else here." -------]==+ <*> +==[------- Even with much of the bulk of it taken up by weapons, engines and transformation mechanisms (that were no longer needed), the Slipstream was still fairly spacious inside. Thus, it was possible to get a little privacy during long trips. Doug wanted to spend some time meditating on the trip back, so he'd found one of the small side rooms to hide in. Of course, Kat could easily plug into the ship's systems and know exactly where he was, but she didn't need to, not really. Spacious it may be, but it didn't have infinite hiding places. She knocked on the door of the room Doug was in, then walked in. "Hello?" Doug blinked as he came out of the self-imposed trance. "Oh, Kat. What's up?" "Well, ah, damn. This isn't going to be easy. You know how I am, I spent decades looking out for number one, and then the last couple of years pretty much isolated from my own kind...." "Yes...?" Doug stood up, a suspicious look on his face. "And, well, Skysabre wasn't interested either, so...." "Kat, where exactly is this leading? If you're trying to get help from me in your troubled love life, you're asking the wrong person. I've had even less luck than you have, remember? Heck, the only women I've been involved with were either drunken one-night stands or the one I was retconned into a relationship with." "And me," Kat all but whispered, sounding much more ashamed and guilty than she really felt. Actually, she hardly felt any shame, but she figured showing that would be a Bad Idea. "Huh?" Doug's jaw slowly dropped as realization dawned. "Wait, you mean all those times you were in my head you were...." "Oh, it wasn't just that," Kat hastily said. "I really was doing what I told you I was doing. But that part only took a few minutes at a time. The rest of it, well, I was going through your memories of all those 'drunken one-night stands.' I figured you'd never consciously know I was doing it, and it's been so damned LONG since, well..." she trailed off. "You RAPED me," Doug said flatly, as if he didn't really believe it yet himself. "I let you into my mind and you took advantage of me. DAMN it, Kat...why didn't you ask? I might have said yes...." "And you might have been freaked out by the machine that was coming on to you," Kat countered. "You have to understand, habits formed over decades don't die easily...I'm used to taking what I want and leaving my... victim...none the wiser for his loss. When I realized that your artificial nervous system would let me interface with you as if you were a MAC, I didn't want to take the chance that you'd say no like 'Sabre did, so I...." "You took what you wanted. But why tell me now? Like you said, I would never have known," he sneered. "Call it an attack of conscience. I really am trying to break the old habits, Doug, it's just not easy all the time. Do you...do you think you can forgive me?" Silence filled the room like a fog, and hung over the two for a moment that seemed to stretch into infinity. Kat hung her head in what she hoped looked like contrition, lowering her eyes. "I...don't know. I mean, I should be a lot more angry at you, but since I don't even remember it happening, some of the impact is lost, you know? Maybe it's just shock, though...having a teammate admit to raping you covertly isn't the kind of thing normal life experience prepares you do deal with," Doug said, at last. "Maybe once I've had some time to sort all of this out, I can find it in my heart to forgive you." Kat didn't notice at first, because she was still looking down. But she could feel the air humming slightly, and glanced up to see Doug starting to vibrate. Then she realized, too late, what was happening. Doug's voice changed tone and flattened out as he turned into a shadowy blur. "Maybe HE can forgive you, but I CAN'T!" the figure which had been Macroman shouted as it drove a rapidly vibrating fist into Kat's chest. She could feel her body being torn apart as everything went black.... =========================================================================== Next Issue: Wouldn't YOU like to know? Let's just say that no one's dead yet (Kat's not getting off that easily!), but Dvandom Force's days could be numbered even before Warlord puts his plan into motion! Author's Note: Recent readers may have no idea who this Bludnock person is. He's a character from the Goon Show, an old BBC radio humour show. I've been using him off and on as a supporting character since #37. So, yay, this is his 30th anniversary issue appearance!