The Naked Weapon Pt. 08

"But this doesn't make any sense," Ebony said, crossing her arms over her chest. "How is their technology so much more advanced than ours?"

"Maybe they skipped the dark ages," Tycho said.

I scowled. "Okay, firstly: There's no such fucking thing as the dark ages! They're called the middle ages now, and while the collapse of the Roman Empire did radically transform the geopolitcs of Europe, it didn't reduce them to barely literate savages. And even if it had, there were still other places on Earth, doing science things! Your so called dark ages were when the Islamic world was flourishing and inventing shit like zero and telescopes and really good poems. And there was China! China was making guns, for crying out loud. Well. Gunpowder."

Tycho lifted her hands. "Chill, dude."

I leaned back in my seat. This had the effect of causing me to start to float up into the air, fuck you microgravity. I pushed myself back down and actually strapped in now. "Sorry. It's just a freaking pet peeve of mine."

Slowly, Opal leaned into my line of sight. Her eyes were narrowed. "India."

I blinked.

"India invented zero." She did that thing where she pointed at her eyes with two fingers, then pointed at me.

I blinked again. "Right. Sorry." I sat up. "Holy shit! They're the Tolen!"

"The who now?" Said literally everyone.

I put my hands on the sides of my head. "In Stargate, the Goa'uld-"

"Bless you?" Ali asked. "Wait, no, gesundheit! That's what you say when humans say gibberish words, right?" She grinned at the others.

"I've only seen the movie," Opal said. "It was garbage. But it was fun garbage."

"You take that back." I hissed.

"It...wasn't fun garbage?" Opal's brow furrowed.

Tycho slammed a foot into the deck. Since she was belted down, this didn't send her rocketing upwards. Instead, it merely produced a resounding thump that shut everyone the fuck up. Which was pretty much exactly what Tycho said. "I don't care what fictional fucking story they look and sound and act like based off three photographs and a guess. I want to know what we're going to do? Assuming, of course, we don't follow the fucking regulations and go back to base and inform high command of what the fuck is going on. That's why we were sent on this fucking mission."

My gut knotted. Every instinct in me screamed: No! Don't! Bad! Danger!

I shook my head.

"Oh for fuck's sake," Tycho muttered.

"Precog flash?" Opal asked. "What did you see?"

"Nothing," I said. "I just...felt that...we shouldn't." I rubbed my temples. "Okay. Give me a second. I don't want to do stuff based off my feelings and just assume every feeling is precognition. If that was the case, I'd have made a pass at Tycho back on the surface and, uh...I said that out loud, didn't I?"

Ebony sighed, loudly. "Just as a note, I'm asexual, so you're not going to fuck me. Ever."

I put my hands over my face, trying to ignore the mortified expression on Tycho's face. "I got it," I said into my palms. "We know that the Doyen jumping any further than a hundred light years gets whacked, right? It's the limit that has kept their expansion slow and contained. We also know that Dr. Oblivion is able to teleport and open up warps like we can, even if he doesn't do it the same way." I slid my hands down to my chin. "These guys? They're containing the Doyen. And if we warp back to headquarters, maybe Dr. Oblivion follows us and blows PsiCom HQ into chunklets."

Opal frowned. "That sounds...distressingly plausible. PsiCom HQ is mostly protected by being hard to find. The actual ship's defensive systems are mostly just loads of steel plating and ablative armor. If any serious attack from the Doyen attacked it, it'd be fucked. And the best defenses we have wouldn't work against a single dude the size of Dr. Oblivion."

"Why not?" Vicky asked. "Yes, he can evade war-forms, but your psychics can still engage him on a smaller scale, can they not?"

"Well, our last line of defense isn't the warforms," Opal said, glancing at me. I inclined my head. I wondered, now...how far ahead was my precognition playing? Like, it hadn't warned me that banging Vicky was a bad idea. But the only reason why Vicky had switched sides was because she had been there to see how evil and underhanded Dr. Oblivion was. And the only reason I had been able to get through to her was by kissing her, reminding her of the dicking I had given her. So, had my precog powers led me into a trap because the end result was better? Holy shit, I also hadn't worried about going to the freaking beach planet, and that water had ended up literally saving my life in that trap that I hadn't known was coming.

I was starting to feel ill. Opal, meanwhile, had dropped the thermonuclear bombshell that the PsiCom headquarters ship was armed to the gills with thermonuclear cruise missiles.

"Why was I never told!?" Ali asked, angrily.

"Paranoia," Opal said.

"Well, you should have told me, because I'd have been quite upset!" Ali said, crossing her arms over her chest. "When Doyen destroy planets, they do it with the World Burner, not with this grotesque atomic weaponry."

I slowly looked at her. "What's the difference?"

She looked back at me, then scowled. "The World Burner doesn't leave radioactive material in the atmosphere that will keep killing for centuries."

"You could see the radiation?" I asked.

"Of course. You can't?" Ali looked honestly confused. "How many colors do you see, anyway?" She leaned forward, looking into my eyes. This led to us both being distracted by remembering how pretty the other's eyes were. At least, I think she thought my eyes were pretty. It was pretty clear on her face. I flushed and felt my heart start to race.

"If we're not going home, where do we go?" Tycho asked, kicking me in the shin.

"We go there!" I pointed at the astrometric data that had popped up on the screen again. "To Keppler-138b. We go there and we ask them who the fuck Dr. Oblivion is and how we can stop them. Because if that guy isn't a whacked out nutcase - one of the secondary government warlords - then I'm a monkey's uncle."

"More precog feelings?" Opal asked.

"No. Logic." I tapped the side of my head. "He's operating in secret, concealing himself, and talking to Doyen. But we already know that something whacks Doyen that move beyond their territory. So, either Dicktor Oblivious was responsible for every single Doyen exploration mission being whacked, which is unlikely, or that's a governmental policy that has loads of money behind it. Right?" I nodded and everyone else nodded. Though Ali was looking a bit cross at the idea that her glorious empire was like a virus being contained. Then she looked irritated at herself for being cross. She hated the Doyen Empire. I wondered what it was like, constantly being caught up on ingrained impulses towards reverence...

I continued: "So, if the government's policy is whacking Doyen, and Dr. Oblivion is working with Doyen, then he's clearly some kind of criminal. So. If we go there and go: 'Hey, boys, we're your long lost human cousins and we have this spot of trouble with Dr. Oblibion?' and they'll go, 'Holy shit, we hate that guy, come on, lets team up and punt him into a black hole.'"

Tycho's grin was fierce. "I do like the sound of that idea."

Ebony frowned. "I wish you'd stop being so logical. It gives me a headache when you make logical points like...that."

"With goofy wordology?" I asked.

Ebony started rubbing her temples.

Tycho started to crack her knuckles. "It's going to be a series of jumps. And we're going to be moving out of Doyen territory, which means we might get whacked." She frowned. "Got a plan for that?"

"Yes," I said. "I'll choose a random moment to go and hope my precog powers pick the exact right moment for us to start jumping."

"Oh joy."

***

The Angel Grove shot from a warp and into orbit around Kepplar-138b with a searing roar of a chemical rocket. Now, since we were in space, literally no one heard that roar but us. But as we stopped accelerating and dropped into a stable orbit, I quickly unlatched and shoved myself into the sensor booth at the top of the life support cabin. Once I was there, I shouted. "The rest of you, do a double check on the mecha. Make sure everything is working that can work."

As the rest of the team struggled into their space suits, I brought up the telescopes. There was the planet. And there were the cities. Looking through the clouds, I took a moment to close my eyes and try to fight back a massive swell of homesickness. But...looking at those cities really took me back. They looked so...human. Sprawling. Technological. Some were built on nice, sensible grids. Others were confused snarls of knotted up tiny paths, indicating when they had been constructed. Many were on coastlines or rivers, leaving the vast center of the continent as dark and quiet, like some kind of nature preserve. I slowly shook my head, then started to wonder. Their technology looked on par with Earth's, if not better in some ways considering the flying freaking cars.

Why was their population not as high?

Maybe they used condoms sensibly like sensible people.

Then I spotted the massive dark shape under the waves near one of the cities that we were orbiting over. I focused the camera, frowning slightly. Our telescopes were fucking great. I had heard rumors that during the cold war, a spy satellite could read the print on a newspaper in Moscow. That was most likely bullshit, but even from orbit, I could spot the building sized head emerging from the waves. The head. The shoulders. I could see the waves cascading off its body like streamers of glittering sapphires. I could see the cargo ships bobbing and thrashing in its wake as it strode towards the city.

It was a fucking kaiju. Not like a building sized spider, like Vicky. Like, I'm talking a Godzilla sized fuckoff lizard. Its body was muscular enough I could count the abs from space, and it was striding purposefully towards a city that looked to be as populous as San Fransisco. I shoved myself down, then shouted.

"Guys! We're about to meddle in some geopolitics we don't understand!"

"We what?" Ebony asked.

***

The warp opened and I came first, my war-form gleaming in the morning sunlight, just as the screams really started to fill the air. People were fleeing in massive, desperate strands away from the waterfront property, while Knockoffzilla - Knockzilla! - was stepping fully from the water and onto a massive warehouse, which flattened with a resounding crunch. Down on the ground, it started to hit me the differences in scale between me and Knockzilla.

I was fifty feet tall and armed with an A-10 Warthog's main machine gun, the GAU Avenger. It was a minigun that fired depleted uranium slugs. It was normally used to blow away tanks. Like, not just one tank. Lots of them.

Knockzilla was three times taller than me. He towered overhead, a massive wall of rippling muscular scaled flesh. His tail was long and lashed the water, sending cascading waves frothing through the harbor and causing ships to bob. His head was narrow and triangular, and he walked fully erect and upright, more like a prize fighter than a lumbering monster. He didn't even seem to notice me, slowly sweeping his head around the city. Then he clenched his hands and started to draw in a deep breath. A glowing energy was building up at the center point between his jaws - which, I now saw, were tipped by huge crystals that were ringed with metal.

Cybernetic implants?

Cybernetic implants currently building up charge. Fuck.

Behind me, the rest of Bravo Squad emerged. Vicky was the last out, and the least armored. But she also wasn't in a warform. She was in her big-ass girl form, and we had tossed her a spare GAU and told her to do her best.

"Shock him!" I shouted over the radio - and hoped to god that Vicky's jerryrigged ear piece would work. Technically, her ear piece was jammed into her head and surrounded by a pseudo-ear that would only listen to it, giving her the best chance of hearing. And it seemed to work because Vicky lifted her palm and sent a blast of biokinetic lightning at Knockzilla. The blast slammed into his jaw, jerking it upwards.

The energy blast that Knockzilla had been charging shot into the sky. It clipped the edge of a skyscraper, blowing massive chunks of building into the air and filling the blue sky with smoke. The crowds, though, had stopped fleeing quite so quickly. Many were stopping, and tiny Neanderthals were starting to scream and jump up and down. I heard the chant a moment later and, thanks to my psychic powers, translated it.

"League! League! League!"

Then all I could focus on was flying up and to the left, because Knockzilla had brought his foot up and was bringing it right back down. IT smashed into where I had stood, wind buffeting me. I lifted my GAU and fired it into Knockzilla's chest. Depleted uranium slugs tore through scale and flesh as if it was tissue paper. Bubblegum pink blood exploded from his chest and back as Knockzilla staggered and twitched, clutching at the wound. I kept up the fire, blowing off fingers and chunks of hand, revealing bone. The GAU whirred to a stop as it ran out of ammo. Knockzilla was looking somewhat shocked - well, as shocked as a hundred and sixty foot tall fucking lizard could look.

Then Ebony leveled her repaired cannon and shot an armor piercing shell into Knockzilla's eye. His eye exploded in a rain of pink gore and the cannon shell detonated against the back of his skull, causing his head to explode and rail massive chunks of brain and bone into the harbor. Slowly, Knockzilla tumbled backwards into the harbor, sending up a huge splash. It washed into the harbor district and bowled over a few ships that had been moored there. As the waters settled, a vast pinkish haze started to spread as his body continued to pump blood out.

"...you know," I said, over the radio. "On the one hand, I shouldn't be shocked, since scales aren't on par with hardened steel armor and this thing shreds tanks like they're candy. But on the other hand, I am kind of surprised."

The chanting had stopped. Everyone was just looking at us with shocked expressions on their faces. Even from a distance, I could see that. I slowly landed before the biggest mass of the crowd, and Bravo Squad landed behind me. Vicky, who hadn't been flying, leaped from the lower harbor district to the raised road that we were standing on. I shrank my warform and then scrambled out of the neck hatch as my armor's interior struts deployed to keep it propped upright without my warform. I stood and looked down at the neanderthals, backlit by the sun like Stacker Pentecost after he saved Mako in Pacific Rim.

Holy shit, though. Stacker Pentecost? Where did I go to get names as rad as that?

The crowd continued to gape at me. I hopped off the shoulder of my warform's armor, slowing myself telekinetically as I landed on the warm asphalt. I hardened the soles of my feet with a thought against the heat, and then spread my arms.

"Hi," I said. Then, coughing, I added: "Uh, long time no see, uh, neanderthals. I'm Abby. I'm, uh, homo sapiens. I guess. Your great great long lost cousin? Yeah." I nodded at the silent, gaping people.

An older looking neanderthal woman clapped her hands over her daughter's eyes.

I blinked.

Then I clapped my hands over my junk, flushing as I remembered something that had gotten real easy to forget. I was fucking completely buck naked. I coughed, loudly, then squeaked: "T-Take me to your leader? ...and bring me some pants? Please?"