SG: Rad #99: The

[Gary W. Olson]

                                 RAD
                             Episode 99
                  [ Rad Returns, Part Nine of Ten ]
                  "The Internet is Full of Wonders"
                                 by
                            Gary W. Olson

                                 ***

     The world around Rumiko Moroboshi felt frozen.  Before her was a
gorilla-sized bonobo in a badly-scuffed black limousine driver's
outfit, an expression of cold consideration on his scarred face.  The
consideration was not for her, however; it was for the two teenage
boys behind her.  He did not completely disregard her, though--the
large and intimidating laser rifle he had aimed at her was proof of
that.  Though his attention seemed fixed on the boys, she sensed that
he would react in time to shoot her if she--or they--moved.
     His name was Erasmus Fancy, and he was dangerous.  So Akane
Moroboshi had claimed when identifying Fancy as one of the occupants
of a flying metallic sphere in the vision Rumiko had experienced
earlier in the day.  In the vision, he had been wearing a white lab
coat, and had been in the company of a Reptiloid, a Burrolan, and two
demon monkeys.  He had a massive scar on his cheek that ran through
the empty socket that had been his left eye.  Now, the coat was gone,
the scar was still there, and the missing eye had been filled in with
a bronze-gold orb that gleamed in the meager corridor light.
     Beside Fancy was Dana Wader, outfitted--as Rumi had seen some of
the agents in this underground base--in a black business suit with
white dress shirt and black tie.  Her bottle-blonde hair was
disheveled and blood-spattered, and there was a malevolent gleam in
her eye that was at odds with the calm control that Rumi thought one
wearing such a staid outfit ought possess.  Wader had no particular
regard for the boys, and looked further up the corridor, as if
expecting attack.  When not peering into the darkness, her attention
lingered on Rumi, in a way that made Rumi's flesh crawl.  Her parents
had told her of Dana's past as an Empress of a conspicuously evil
empire, and of some of the things she had done.  Rumi was not eager to
learn if she could live up to her reputation.
     The boys behind her were Esteban Veracruz and Lemon Rydell.
Esteban was in Los Pantalones, the oversized, rococo-trimmed battle
pants that he had been working on when she first met him.  He had come
to help rescue his captive brother.  Lemon was in black cargo shorts
and a 'Wile E. Coyote' t-shirt--said t-shirt currently wrapped around
his upper left arm, which had been wounded in a battle she had not
been around to see.  He was here because he had barged into the wrong
magic circle at the wrong time and had been translocated here in place
of Shadebeam Moroboshi, the spell caster.
     Rumi had happened upon Esteban and Lemon by chance, during her
escape from a group of demon monkeys.  The boys had been talking.
They had also been... but the light had been very low.  Had they
been...?  Well, they either had been or had not been, and she had seen
or had not seen and then Fancy had shot at her and she had fallen into
the corridor and here they all were.  There would be time later--she
hoped--to sort through implications and meanings.  Besides, there was
this distracting ray gun pointed at her.
     "You know who this is?" Wader asked, gesturing at Rumi.  "It's
one of Glum's brats.  No doubt on a rescue mission."  Her grin grew
feral as she reached toward Rumi, and Rumi took a step back.
"Hostages keep falling into our laps, don't they, pretty-pretty?"
     "Don't touch her!" Esteban exclaimed.  Rumi saw he was now
hovering a couple inches off the ground, and had likely trained
whatever on Los Pantalones passed for weaponry on Fancy.  She would
have replied, but the sight of the laser gun barrel compelled her to
be quiet.
     "Power down, El Guerrero," Fancy instructed, his voice low,
unstressed, and authoritative.  "Wader will not harm this one--"
     "Rumiko Moroboshi," Wader said.
     "--this Rumiko Moroboshi, if you obey.  Nor shall I.  She was not
the bargaining chip I had in mind to obtain Los Pantalones from you,
but as she is here, and you clearly care for her... well.  Power down.
Now."
     "Este," said Lemon.  "He's not bluffing."
     "But---"
     Lemon did not interrupt again.  Esteban's face shifted from
determination to frustration to resignation.  Then Los Pantalones
settled to the corridor floor, him with it.
     Wader touched Rumi's cheek with her nails, causing Rumi to
cringe.  Fancy kept the gun on Rumi's ear.
     "I've thought about many things since being stranded on Earth,"
said Wader.  "Your father and mother amongst them.  If they had been
on Earth, I'm sure I would have paid them a visit.  As they weren't, I
had plans to drop in on their friends... to find some way to pass the
time.  To soothe the memory of the Empire that they stole from me, a
whole pocket dimension reduced to an unbreakable pearl and locked far
away.  Then the Director contacted me and... we arrived at an
understanding."
     "Secret Secret Agent Wader," said Fancy.  Wader stiffened upon
hearing this.  "You have often said your Director is the one who gave
to you your sense of discipline, which you have not always possessed.
Now would be a good time to exercise it."
     Rumi felt Wader's fingernails move to her throat.  There they
paused, for a long moment, before Wader pulled them away.
     "Right," said Wader, voice calm and even.  "We've got leverage,
now, but no one to use it against."
     "So we go to the hub," Fancy replied, "as we were before fortune
so kindly smiled upon us.  El Guerrero... get out of Los Pantalones.
Now."
     Esteban grimaced, but made no attempt to leave his armor.  Fancy
pushed the barrel of his weapon hard against Rumi's forehead.  Rumi
concentrated her psychokinetics, readying a pulse to knock said weapon
away.  She did not like the angles she had to work with, and was
concerned that any push would cause his trigger finger to tighten.
Moreover, she recalled her father's warning that psychokinetics did
not fare so well against ray-based attacks.
     "Okay," said Esteban.  He placed his hands on the waist edges of
Los Pantalones, and pushed.  His legs emerged from the liquid-looking
metal in the center.
     "Um, guys," Lemon interrupted.  "Not to spook anyone,
particularly anyone carrying large guns with itchy trigger fingers,
but... the demon monkeys are back."
     Wader sneered.  "That, boy, is amateur at best.  I was ignoring
ploys like that when you were still squirming in... what?"  She gave
an annoyed look to Fancy, who had been tapping her shoulder.  Fancy
jerked a thumb in the direction Lemon was looking.  Wader looked.
Rumi did as well.
     The darkened corridor held a startling number of glowing red
eyes.  Granted, glowing red eyes in a darkened corridor are startling
enough, regardless of number, but this was a number that added further
start to the startle.
     Then, the owners of the eyes swarmed.  Rumi felt the barrel of
Fancy's gun get knocked away, as well as the hair-singing heat from
the beam as the gun went off.  She blasted it out of Fancy's hand with
a psychokinetic pulse that sent it skittering into the darkness.
Moments later, incoming demon monkeys sent Wader's gun flying as well.
     Three demon monkeys teleported onto her--one on her left arm, one
on her right leg, and one on her belly.  As she had been maintaining
her psychokinetic shields for a possible last-ditch gun-deflection
attempt, they proved unable to get a good hold, and a psychokinetic
pulse knocked them away.
     Erasmus Fancy roared, swatting at the monkeys as they swarmed
over him.  Rumi flew back, barely missing the wide-arcing knife swung
by Dana Wader.  At first, Rumi thought the blade had been directed at
her.  But two monkeys fell to the ground, clutching wounds and
screaming.  More monkeys appeared around Wader, only to immediately
teleport away before she could cut them.  Wader grinned through the
new spatter of blood on her lips.
     Rumi turned to see how Lemon and Esteban were faring.  Lemon was
on the floor, pounding away at a writhing, monkey-shaped lump beneath
his cargo shorts.  Esteban was upside down in Los Pantalones, his
Gorillaz shirt now in shreds thanks to repeated attacks from three
demon monkeys.  She hit one with a psychokinetic blast, startling the
other two enough that Esteban could knock them away.
     "Stop that!" Lemon exclaimed, as he rolled on the floor.  "I...
aah!  That's cold!"
     A panel opened up on the side of right thigh of Los Pantalones,
and a half-inch-diameter tube slid three inches out.  It swiveled on a
bearing, aiming one end at Lemon.
     "Hold still!" Esteban exclaimed.  "I think I can get it!"
     "Wait!" Lemon replied.  "Let me... hey!  Leave that
aloooiiiieeee!"
     A beam of bronze-gold light sizzled from the tube and hit the
monkey-sized lump.  Rumi heard a demon monkey screech before it
vanished.  The beam vanished at the same time.
     "Lemon," said Esteban, his voice rising.  "You okay?"
     "I think so," Lemon said, through deep, fast breaths.  "That
was... a fresh sensation."
     "Can you move?" Rumi asked.  She risked a look back at Fancy and
Wader, on whom most of the monkeys were concentrating their efforts.
     "I think... look out!" Lemon yelled.
     A demon monkey appeared an inch from Rumi's face, screaming at
the top of its lungs.  It clawed at her psychokinetically-shielded
face for a couple seconds before Rumi pulsed it away.
     Three more monkeys were on Esteban's upper torso, avoiding his
arms.  Lemon leapt up and grabbed one away, though it disappeared from
his hands.  Rumi readied a shot for the other two.
     Before she could take fire, Coco emerged from the left thigh of
Los Pantalones.  The bronze-gold metallic bonobo was a bit smaller
than the attacking demon monkeys, but he did not seem to care as he
flew up and knocked them away.  The monkeys fell to the ground, looked
up, and blinked.
     Rumi expected them to renew their assault, but they did not.
Instead, they simply stared at Coco, who was hovering in mid-air,
waving his arms in some kind of aerial-judo-like way that seemed
inauthentic at best.
     *Leave us,* Coco telepathically ordered, *before you get some of
this up in your business!*
     Perhaps it was the actual order, or the spaced-out boyishness of
Coco's voice, but it failed to compel the demon monkeys to leave.
However, it did incapacitate them, as they clutched their sides and
emitted a screeching kind of laughter.
     Coco gave the demon monkeys a look of consternation, then
shrugged and flew back into the left thigh of Los Pantalones, which
rippled once as he melted in.
     "What just happened?" asked Lemon, who had gotten back to his
feet.  Rumi remembered that he was not part of the telepathic network
between Esteban and Coco, a network she had inadvertently joined
earlier that day when Los Pantalones took a good quantity of her
bioelectricity to recharge.  A network that now, apparently, included
demon monkeys.
     "Coco... bought us some time," said Esteban, as diplomatically as
he could manage.
     *They fear the golden bonobo way!* Coco added.
     "Right," said Rumi, taking another look behind her.  Fancy and
Wader were still occupied with demon monkeys, though fewer were
swarming them than before.  "Then I suggest we get out of here."
     "I don't think I can run..." Lemon started.
     "Who said anything about running?" Esteban asked.  He swooped in,
picked up Lemon, and flew down the corridor.  Rumi followed, listening
to the sounds of combat fade into the distance.

                                 ***

     "How can this be?" asked Capella.  It was, Rad considered, a
pertinent question.  He and she were on the deck of the _Subtler Than
Light,_ a two-hundred-yard-long bronze-gold metallic airship somewhat
resembling a 19th-century ironclad with wings.  That the ship was
crewed by demon monkeys--many now surrounding them--was a fact less
alarming to Capella than to him, as she was their commander.  Rad had
been about to be taken back into the ship when a force of eight
flight-capable goats landed on the deck and claimed that Capella and
her crew were under arrest.  'How can this be' was a question that
could cover a lot of historical, technical, biological, and
philosophical grounds.
     Captain Silas, the black-furred lead goat of the invaders, took
what Rad thought was a narrow tack on the question, deciding it was a
direct question to his previous declaration that Capella--or the 'Lady
Capella Sandoval Ookanaptra,' as he had formally addressed her--and
her crew were under arrest.  "You have already falsely claimed that
you represent the Hidden Empire in its quest to bring Erasmus Fancy
back to our dimension," Silas answered.  "Do not deny it!  We listened
in on your conversations with the humans' battle fortress... um...
thing."  Silas looked up at Rad.  "What's it called again?"
     "The _Vander Harkness,_" said Rad.  "'Fortress thing' sounds
about right to me, too."  Again, he winced at the lack of 'likes' and
'dudes' and 'y'knows' in his speech, and hoped the goat could
comprehend what he was saying.  He knew that the lack of those words
in his speech meant that the _Subtler Than Light's_ aether field--the
bubble it projected so that the ship could operate in the aetheric
environment it was made to use--was functioning.  But the _Vander
Harkness_ had a means of nullifying that field, and Rad hoped they
could find a way to reapply it soon.
     "I am on a top secret mission given to me by the Emperors
themselves," Capella replied.  She kept most of the anger Rad could
sense out of her voice.  "Sector Nine High Command has no
authority---"
     "It was the Emperors who ordered your arrest," Silas cut in.
"All seven signed the warrant."
     "But I almost have him!" Capella exclaimed.  "Fancy is below, and
my advance troops are flushing him out.  He took over one of the old
bases of the Pneumaphilic Convergence, did you know that?  If they
ever found out---"
     "I can only imagine," said Silas, his voice sardonic.  "They
would expressing their rage by sending angry letters zipping around in
those tubes of theirs, would they not?"
     Rad looked away, trying to find where the _Vander Harkness_ was.
It was about three thousand feet directly in front of the bow of the
_Subtler Than Light,_ still unable to avoid being in the line of fire
of the electro-vortex cannon mounted there.  A blurred movement caught
his eye.  Purple, orange, midnight blue...
     "Like, um, dudes?" he said.  "We might, like, want to, y'know,
brace for impact, and, like... hey!  I'm, like, speaking right again,
like, y'know?"
     "What?" both Capella and Silas asked.
     Rad never got a chance to answer.  The blur struck the side of
the _Subtler Than Light,_ ripping through the back end.  Everyone on
the bridge was jolted, though most, including Rad, managed to stay
upright.  Rad, who knew the blur to be Mighty Guy, watched as he shot
out from the _Subtler Than Light_ and plowed into a distant
mountainside.  The thunder of the impact reached them a second later.
     "What the hell was that?" Silas asked, eyes wide.
     "That," said a voice familiar to Rad, "was my husband."  Key
Clark, aka MeltDown, landed on the deck of the _Subtler Than Light._
The silver french-cut bikini that served as her costume--though what
it was supposed to disguise Rad had never figured out--seemed bronze-
gold in the light reflecting from the deck and the turrets.  "You got
your powers back, Rad?  Gigawatt doesn't know how long they can
suppress the aether this time."
     "I think, like, I'm functioning again, like, y'know?" said Rad.
He tested this by using his psychokinetic abilities to lift into the
air.  "Like, yup, check on that.  But, like, I don't think, like, that
the ship is, y'know, doing so well."
     The _Subtler Than Light_ was listing to the port side.  Rad could
now see the nectarisite lake that filled the playing field of Dodger
Stadium, glowing in the stadium lights.  The ship, Rad realized, was
also spinning, though far too slowly to have been the direct result of
Mighty Guy's strike.
     "He must have hit one of the magnagravitic-vortex engines!"
Capella exclaimed.  The icy-blonde commander of the _Subtler Than
Light_ looked around the deck, as if inspecting something Rad could
not see.  "Damn it all!  I have not come this far to fail!"
     "Indeed you have!" Silas roared.  "You are under---"
     Capella gestured at the goat, and a beam of bronze-gold light
shot from her hand.  It struck the gunbelt around Silas's midsection,
causing one of the fake-looking tubes attached to it to spark and
hiss.  Several other tubes spat darts that took down demon monkeys on
either side of Capella.
     "Abandon ship!" Capella exclaimed.  "To the pods.  Extraction
plan B!"
     "Like, what's extraction plan B, goat dude?" Rad asked.
     Silas looked him over, as if evaluating how much to tell him.
     "What a cute billy goat!" MeltDown exclaimed, as she reached down
to scratch under Silas's chin.
     "I am a Captain of Sector Nine High Command, madam!" Silas
declared, dignified offense giving his words added gravity.  "I am on
a mission to catch a criminal wanted by the Hidden Empire for many
heinous crimes and---"
     "Hey," said the white-and-grey furred goat next to Silas.  "I'll
take some of that if the Cap's too good for it."
     "What?" Silas roared.  "I never said---"
     "What's your name?" Key asked, as she scratched the white-and-
grey goat's chin-fur.
     "Barnaby, ma'am," the goat replied.  "And you...?"
     "Like, this is Key, y'know?" Rad said.  "And, like, it looks like
Capella's, like, totally getting away!"
     "After her!" Silas declared.  Barnaby rolled his eyes and gave a
wink to Key before he joined his fellow force of armed goats in moving
towards Capella, who had made it as far as the edge of the _Subtler
Than Light's_ deck.  Capella made a screeching noise, and six demon
monkeys teleported to her.  A second later, they teleported her away.
     "She's makin' a break for it, lads!" Silas yelled.  "Over the
sides!"
     Rad and MeltDown looked over the port-side railing and saw
numerous bronze-gold spheres--each about twenty meters in diameter--
shooting out from the hull.  As they watched, Silas's goats galloped
for the railing.  They leapt, and the back ends of the tubes on their
gunbelts lit up a bright blue, sending them rocketing into the night
sky...
     ...except for Silas.
     "Blast!" he exclaimed as he dropped, his tubes sputtering.
     Rad took off, arcing over the railing and flying down to the
flailing goat captain.  He caught Silas by his gunbelt and arrested
his descent.
     "Aha!" Silas replied.  "Capital, capital!  Now, I say, could you
turn me so the ground is not my sky?  There's a good lad!"
     Rad flipped Silas over, then looked up at the _Subtler Than
Light._  It appeared to be done with ejecting escape spheres, and now
had a strange, pockmarked look.  A large part of its rear section was
in tatters, and its tilt was more pronounced.
     "Like, why isn't it crashing, goat dude?" Rad asked.
     "That ship uses two magnagravitic-vortex engines, lad," Silas
replied.  "One was 'taken out,' as Capella said, and it looks like she
was more literal than she could know.  As for the other, it seems to
be more-or-less functional, though it may too have taken some damage.
Amazing that it functions without the aetheric field--though I suppose
it's possible it was designed that way, eh?"
     "Rad!"  Rad looked around for the source of the familiar voice,
before remembering that he had left the implanted receiver in his head
tuned to a preset radio frequency.  He identified the voice as
belonging to China Kyoko Moroboshi, calling from on board the _Vander
Harkness._
     "Like, yah?" Rad said.
     "Oh, yes," said Silas.
     "Not you, dude," said Rad.  "The voice, like, in my head,
y'know?"
     Silas absorbed this, remaining silent for a long moment.
     "As you say, lad," he replied.  "Would you terribly mind setting
me down?"
     "Rad," said China, "don't worry about the _Subtler Than Light._
Bhossi and Cla'rabhelle are using the scalar vibrational generators in
the _Vander Harkness's_ engines as a kind of tractor beam.  We don't
have enough power to tow a ship that size very far, but we should be
able to set her down somewhere unoccupied."
     "Like, affirmative, y'know?" Rad replied.
     "Oh, good, good," said Silas.  "If you could, the parking lot of
that stadium, where all the fighting is going on.  Good lad, steady
on!"
     "Who is that with you?" China asked.
     "Like, Silas," Rad replied.
     "Yes?" Silas asked.
     "Not you, dude," said Rad.
     "Of course, of course," Silas said, his goat-grin looking a bit
strained.  "Voice in your head again, yes?"
     "Silas is this goat-dude who, like, led those other goat dudes
in, like, attacking Capella's ship, y'know?" said Rad.  "He was, like,
undercover, like, working for Templar in, like, his new movie, I
think, like, and---"
     "And it would have been my big break, too!" Silas roared.  "Even
better than the bit part Barnaby got in that Sam Raimi movie!  Blast
it all, why did Capella have to make her move today?"
     "You know what?" China said, after a few moments of pondering
this outburst.  "I'm just going to put this in the 'maybe it will make
sense later' file and move on... hey, check out the lot."
     Rad checked out the lot.  The light from the nectarisite-filled
stadium dominated the surrounding area, giving buildings and roads a
bronze-gold sheen.  In the stadium's parking lot, a great deal of
fighting was taking place between a small group of armed goats and a
large group of teleporting demon monkeys.  Closer to the stadium
entrance, he saw his ex-CalForce friends standing between forty or
fifty pseudo-zombies/ninjas and the fighting.  Though the demon
monkeys seemed more interested in protecting their hold on a one-
hundred-by-one-hundred-foot open shaft in the lot--one that led down
to a secret underground base of some kind, eight-and-a-half miles
below--the chaos of the battle was such that they had to stay back to
protect both the civilians who had been unwitting participants in
Erasmus Fancy's mind control scheme and the civilians who had showed
their free market sense--and very little common sense--in coming in
to sell concessions to the combatants.
     Descending toward the lot were a dozen or so of the bronze-gold
globes that had ejected from the _Subtler Than Light._  The remaining
spheres headed over the stadium wall and down toward the lake.  The
spheres struck the lake and quickly disappeared beneath its surface.
Rad, remembering that the lake was actually a portal to the aetheric
dimension of the Hidden Empire, knew they were now beyond his reach.
He returned his attention to the parking lot.
     "We'd, like, better get down there, goat dude," Rad said.  "I,
like, don't know what, like, is going on, but, like, it seems most
totally heinous, like, y'know?"
     "If you're talking about entering the fray, old boy," said
Silas, "I've been trying to get you to do that.  Let's have at
them!"
     Rad flew down into the fray, carrying Silas by his gunbelt.

(continued in part two, following...)
--
Copyright (c) 2009 by Gary W. Olson.  All Rights Reserved.
--
Gary W. Olson
swede at novitious dot com
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