Issues, Chapter Two

High-stepping it over Big Grin's abandoned exo-frame Carmilla plunged through the doorway and hit the spiral stair, Blaster-Track and his Commander skimming doggedly at her heels. For the latter duo even the uppermost level of this ancient Toothfire outpost had felt like it belonged far back in their quadrant’s bleak antiquity, and now each each corkscrew twist they traversed round the gloomy brick pillar seemed to be burying them ever deeper in that bygone age of interstellar violence. The ad-hoc munitions laboratories crowding every dungeon arch were straight out of Grindotron cinema’s most shocking historical blockbusters, or at least that was what some Mini-Flash of today would have had the luxury of thinking. Both man and jeep remembered when such weaponry was real, as here it apparently still was. Those glistering spectral exhalations which moaned from the machines’ gaping valves had their place in the olden days too, if spacefarers’ tavern-tales of The Back Garden were to be believed. Nothing but a nightmare along these lines could have come of conspiracy between Scientooth and Prince Agaric. Within the bounds of this pit from the past it was as if the present peaceful epoch had never occurred, and two of the galaxy’s most infamous expansionist empires revelled forever in a microcosm of their horrific heyday.

Putting a stop to it ought to have taken precedence over every other concern, but Carmilla’s shaming rebuff preyed on organic and electronic minds alike. She for her part could think of nothing else – that, and her big talk to Agaric on the supposedly elevated moral stance her species occupied. As if. The truth was this latest betrayal from Blaster-Track Commander was the only one in a long line which might fairly be blamed on what her other sister Phoenix called “autre pays, autre moeurs.” Joe and Dylan, betraying The Four Heroes’ cause by fighting among themselves. Phoenix herself, betraying every principle of the same by capturing Scientooth. She’d dragged her whole family into that one, until Carmilla wasn’t able to look in the mirror with her Four Heroes uniform on and Phoenix Prime’s unbearable guilt had driven her to create the mess the galaxy now was in. Wanly Carmilla wondered whether there was even such a thing as standards anymore?

Just as long as there was Neetra, our heroine guessed. It was a comfort indeed to remember one of her nearest and dearest could be counted on. No matter what, there’d always be Neetra.

They had reached their destination. On the last circle of this cellarage clustered the densest concentration yet of cast-iron control-boards and crackling cathodes, presided over by a skull of green tin which hovered above the stone flags at eye-level to Carmilla and Blaster-Track Commander. Scientooth would have had his back turned on the intruders and his shoulders hunched if he’d possessed any of these, but the noise of footfalls quitting the stairs and skidding to a halt were his cue to commence a slow mid-air rotation along his vertical axis. By the light of raw electrics and open flame Scientooth’s death’s-head features swivelled into view, one lens-like telescopic ocular and a mouthpiece tooled to resemble square teeth which slid open and closed when he talked.

“Carmilla Neetkins,” were the words from this mobile metal plate. “We meet again.”

Our heroine rolled her eyes. What was this, round two?

“Your diabolical plans are at an end, Scientooth,” declaimed Blaster-Track Commander, sounding more like himself now the situation he faced was one he knew how to deal with. “No longer shall you mastermind this mad campaign against the galaxy and its living populace.”

Scientooth’s chuckle was a low synthesized buzz.

“Does it not trouble you, my dear Commander, that these relics of the tyranny you once opposed should have become your source of security and respite?” inquired the robot. “Something is surely amiss when I am your preferred alternative to negotiating the emotional complexities of today. As for you, pretty,” he continued to Carmilla, his optic sensor whirring as it switched angles, “I regret that you have thus far encountered only the least competent of my spies. Big Grin’s confederates are for the most part pleasingly professional in keeping me abreast of Grindotron’s goings-on. You have fled that world, have you not? For where your peers felt it possible to adopt Alliance politics without hypocrisy, you perceived these as incommensurable with that emblem upon your garb. Reason enough for me to suspect the cessation of my schemes referred to by our good Commander shall not come to pass.”

“It’s been a long day, Scientooth,” Carmilla began wearily.

“Then I shall come to the point,” said the obliging one. “Join me, or watch the Alliance doom those multitudes you ventured here to save.”

Blaster-Track’s computerized thought-processors had always been quick to compensate for speechless incredulity, so once again it was he who made the rejoinder.

“That genius artificial intelligence has got to be showing its age, buddy, if you think we’re only going to need your word on that. Is our expecting you to prove it a variable you even considered?”

“You would ask that of me?” Scientooth demanded. “I, whose knowledge the Alliance plundered without consent, in the name of restoring their so-called Four Heroes representative to full working order? Tell me if such conduct is easy to reconcile with the much-vaunted cause that he, and you, profess to follow.”

Again the monocle zeroed-in on Carmilla, accusingly.

“I was against it from the start,” she said quietly. “And you’ve already reminded me it’s why I’m a self-appointed outcast from the ones I love. But don’t put your servos on pause waiting for me to grovel, Scientooth. There’s more at stake here than you wanting an apology. Besides, it’d be less of a stretch to believe the Alliance are the bad guys if I wasn’t staring at the weapon of mass destruction you and Prince Agaric have obviously been keeping yourselves busy with.”

Scientooth’s transistors heaved a theatrical sigh.

“Is it ever to be thus with you, Carmilla Neetkins?” he implored her, in tones that groaned under the weight of insincere long-suffering. “Is self-defence, like freedom, a right you are bound and determined to deny me? Moreover, if you envisage the galaxy’s sorrows stemming from some weapon, you comprehend nothing. My people, Toothfire, shall begin it. And they shall do so merely by marching on this place.”

Scientooth was right, Carmilla reflected grimly. She didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. Blaster-Track Commander, however, clearly did.

“Then…” he whispered, thunderstruck for the second time that hour.

“Then we stand,” Scientooth finished for him, “within that same solar system where the First and Final War was waged.”

“Preposterous,” breathed Blaster-Track Commander. “Such knowledge is lost to time.”

“Lost to all but the participants in that war,” retorted Scientooth, and something about his die-cast dentures was starting to suggest a sinister smile. “You will find that we and the Verandas are adequate archivists on the subject of our own affairs. What of the Toothfire military installations that catacomb this planet, Commander, all of whose locations I am familiar with? And what of the ancient names, Drenthis and Nereynis? Do not attempt to convince me you never wondered.”

Carmilla was no expert on this sector’s history, but the First and Final War had repeatedly come up in conjunction with the present mission and our heroine had a feeling that couldn’t be coincidence. Nor was it any time for herself and Blaster-Track Commander to not be talking. She looked to him at once.

“Eternities ago, what you would call a blood-feud fought on this spot between the Vernderernders and a related machine-race all but wiped out the galaxy,” he explained. “It was never known why. Some mysterious wasting, fatal to all forms of life, seems to have been sparked by the conflict itself. The only way to save civilisation was for Toothfire and these kindred foes to observe armed neutrality from then on, and agree they would never return here.”

Carmilla’s eyes were wide. “So,” she attempted in a hush, “what we’ve been trying to prevent...”

There would have been no point completing the sentence. Blaster-Track Commander had already made it clear neither he nor Blaster-Track was in any position to confirm a war between Toothfire and The Back Garden on this battleground was certain to bring about the same lethal side-effect as the far earlier war between Toothfire and the Verandas. Everything our heroine had learned however indicated this would be so. Psiona’s predictions were just one page in a dossier of evidence which also included the Vernderernders’ unqualified refusal to join the Arch of Titus expedition, and the proclamations of Professor Grindo, who Carmilla now realised must also have unlocked the secret of this star-system, that his race would be safe from their one-time adversaries in a colony founded on one of its worlds. Carmilla and her comrades however, even before they knew of this, had seen well enough that were Toothfire to discover their renegade Scientooth was backed by Prince Agaric’s forces, it would be open hostilities. For that reason our heroes had striven to keep all awareness of the state of play from the Alliance, even though this had meant Carmilla could not return home until she averted the crisis, but from the sounds of things their cover-up was on the brink of being blown. When Vernderernders discovered where rising resistance lurked, they went, no matter the consequences. Now it emerged that these might be graver than Carmilla or any of her company had dreamed.

Two humanoids and one mini-jeep turned slowly to where Scientooth waited, wordless, allowing his guests to place the final pieces together. Incredible as it seemed, and though outright trust would have been going about a light-year too far, he was correct that their one choice was to side with him. He alone had accurately anticipated the worst-case scenario, and he alone had prepared some manner of insurance against it. Scientooth, presiding fiend-like over his flickering anachronistic underworld, was the galaxy’s last hope.

A sudden noise alerted them all. Upon the weapon’s operational flatbed a spongy face had alighted with a splat.

“Big Grin!” barked Scientooth. “What is this?”

“You’ve not seen how it’s going out there! We’re losing!” shrieked the Grindo. “But if we’re to be dragged back to the Alliance in chains it won’t be until after I’ve evened the score!”

Clearly he had overheard none of the conversation which immediately preceded his entrance. Oblivious too to the cries of Carmilla, Blaster-Track and the Commander that he desist and listen, Big Grin pressed a fold of his flesh against the targeting-mechanism to take aim at Grindopolis.

“So, Professor Grindo,” were his manic words. “A lifetime of watching from the sidelines while you trotted out one technological masterpiece after another. Scientooth, how did you yourself put it? From the heart of the Seegs…!”

And with huge teeth clamped in emulation of his namesake, this diminutive bouncing Nemesis dropped the full weight of his flabby mass upon the fire-button.

END OF CHAPTER TWO