“We veto the original agenda!” snapped Felicity from her seat at the Council table.
“Veto!” echoed her brother from the next seat.
“I agree,” purred Owain. His chair had been removed but he still looked distinctly uncomfortable sitting where it had been. He towered over everyone else at the meeting except for the former leader of the beastfolk faction in the UK.
“Noted.” Mindscar’s voice was icy. “The work the Carnival has done freeing up resources from the SA Line and the Sahara is commendable. No one here wants to punish them.” The lie was clear in her voice but everyone present was immune to psychic control, it was a requirement for earning a seat, so there was no way for her to bend things in her favour.
“Then what are we doing here?” demanded Param from the opposite side of the horseshoe shaped table to Owain. He was stretched out with his feet up on the table. Next to Param, John’s chair was empty, he was standing with his team in front of the other most powerful humans alive.
“We must bring this rampage back in line with existing policy,” ground out Belisarius. “Levelling opportunities are reduced and this is causing discontent among the civilians.”
“Essence farming is reduced, you mean!” grumbled Sylvia. “I condemn the wanton destruction of native and novel wildlife but now we are able to focus on developing a working relationship with the wasps and the Thing. Of course we wouldn't dare try to help you learn to live with the New York tribulation.”
“North America is my territory. Any acts against the NY tribulation that aren’t sanctioned by my team will be met with hostility,” Belisarius growled at the insectile woman who waved a hand and settled back in her chair.
“The non combatants aren’t unhappy,” Bob interjected. “They see it as us finally getting a win. A number of surveys have been carried out-”
“By you,” muttered Belisarius.
“By me,” Bob conceded. “But the questions and algorithms are public domain. Most people see this as a win for humanity.”
“Nevertheless you have acted outside our remit. We maintain the peace and sweep the Lines. We do not just burn half of fucking South America to kill a few ants!” snarled Mindscar.
“More than a few. And now SA is open for reclamation. Once they get their act together they’ll have that place safe in a few months!” snapped Evie. Never the most diplomatic member of the team, John sent her a message via his implant to stay calm. Her response was a string of invective followed by a “fine”.
“And where else do you plan to establish a new normal?” asked Mindscar.
“Our next move will be against the Thing,” said Flash. His sister glowered at him from her chair next to Owain. He determinedly ignored the venom in her gaze. Owain put a paw on her shoulder and she settled back.
“No one has even approached it. It’s contained and static. Why risk disturbing it?” asked Param. Some of the other Council members nodded in support.
“It’s a threat. No one dares approach the damn thing and it’s occupying a huge swath of central Africa. I’ve got a bunch of the local fighters on side to assist. They’re pissed off that no one has bothered to send them any real support, by the way. The hands off approach has bred resentment, Sarah.” John began, enjoying watching her flinch as he used her real name. “When the void comes we need to be able to respond all across the globe. No go zones will only help the real enemy.”
“If they ever come,” Mindscar replied coldly.
“Has the system lied to us before?” snapped Evie angrily. Felix and Felicity nodded in approval. “When has anything it said not happened?”
“Identify is apparently not infallible. Wiser minds than yours have been questioning many assumptions recently, girl,” Belisarius rumbled. His battle suit adjusted position so the shoulder mounted weapons were aimed slightly more in Evie’s direction than before. The Carnival closed ranks slightly, despite the insanity of him trying anything in what amounted to a fancy tin can half way between the moon and Earth.
“Are you even in that battle rattle? Don’t try and flex on me. Let’s see how it works without power, or far too much of it!” Evie barked. “Yeah, some human has figured out how to fuck with Identify but did Fashtaal ever say anything that was a lie? Anything the system promised failed to happen? The Void is coming and we need to be ready for them!”
“I agree!” the twins said simultaneously. “We will assist Carnival in dealing with the Thing. Will anyone else join our crusade?” Owain glanced at Claire who scowled back at her father.
“I will. As will the Dragon,” he said softly. Claire shot him an angry look and stood up.
“I’ll take no part in any action that will destroy so much native life,” she said softly. “I will wait and see how truly hostile the Void is before I make a decision on them but the native animals around the Thing will be collateral damage in any attack you make.”
“Then help us, move them away before we attack,” suggested Sam.
“I want nothing to do with this. That area is so rich in biodiversity. The Thing ignores anything that isn’t a human. Other monsters, animals… Sylvia, you won’t aid in this madness will you?” The giant woman chittered her mandibles briefly before speaking.
“I will not assist. If I could I would spawn a nexus beast for each of the remaining threats but I am not high enough level. Getting those levels by murdering the beasts is not something I can accept. I will abstain.” she rested her chitinous arms on her lap.
“What will happen if we refuse your request?” asked Belisarius.
“We’ll do it anyway. There’s no need for this to fracture the Accords, Bel,” Bob replied. Belisarius didn’t move at the use of a diminutive of his name but the air seemed to thicken in the room.
"We cannot be held to ransom. You are powerful, more importantly you’re useful but the Bobnet and the portals aren’t necessities. We could live without them,” said Mindscar.
“But you don’t want to. We don’t want to take them away either. We need the Accords to keep the peace between the factions. How long would it be before the Khan and the Caliphate and the Raj were at each other's throats if we dissolved this council? Or the Imperium and Wintersreich? Even the old US is split into half a dozen major factions.”
“Stay out of my territory,” snarled Belisarius.
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
“It’s not any of our territory. We swore to protect the planet against the void and humanity from itself you thief!” snarled Bob. The atmosphere in the room became even colder than before.
Slowly the twins stood up and rested their hands on the table in front of them, leaning down to glower at the armour opposite. They had hardly aged over the last decade. They looked to be in their mid twenties and as similar to each other as any non identical twins could hope to be. Raven black hair reached each of their shoulders and sharp aquiline faces turned to the metal form of Belisarius with dangerous expressions.
“We forsook our church to join this organisation. Was that a mistake?” asked Felix in an unusually deep voice for him.
“Mistake?” Felicity repeated in a hiss.
The mech raised his hands and leaned back.
“No, it was not,” he said softly. The twins alone could deal with the rest of the council and since the Carnival had reached level forty two none of them could hope to survive a straight up fight. Especially not in a space station controlled by Bob.
“Then we’re in agreement, however reluctantly in some cases. The signatories will begin taking active roles in ending the threats that remain on Earth so we can truly prepare for the coming darkness. John, please let us know when you intend to move on the Thing so we can join you.”
John nodded to Felicity solemnly. Being viewed as a religious icon had its perks sometimes.
***
“So how will we do this?” asked Felix. The twins stood in the sky on black and white rectangles, off to one side of Flash and Evie’s platforms. Winston was doing everything possible to avoid the notice of the twins. He was essentially hiding behind Evie, much to her irritation.
“Dude,” she snapped as she bounced off him when she turned to address Gemini. “Start with a bombardment to clear the jungle. Once we can see what we’re dealing with we work on the fly to put the thing down.”
“These BFOs are going to be helpful?” asked Felicity.
“They came in handy before,” said Flash. “How do we get the ball rolling?”
“I’ll clear the brush,” said Vic. She moved lower, balanced on a column of fire. She glanced down at the jungle below and waves of heat began to roll off her, descending into the greenery which blackened and curled as it was reduced to carbon before the wind caused it to fall apart.
Vic flew along clearing the jungle across a huge area as the rest tagged along behind her. She was moving in an inward spiral towards the place they believed the Thing made its nest. As they left the ruined jungle in their wake, the circle began to contract around the monster they had come to slay.
“No sign yet,” said Bob. “I’d have expected some reaction by now.”
“Maybe it’s asleep and if we’re really careful we can sneak up on it and kill it before it wakes up?” asked Flash, half jokingly.
“Can’t you feel it? The Thing knows we’re here. Bring in the Dragon now. We’ll need him!” snapped Felix.
“Need him!” echoed Felicity.
The BFOs flew slightly lower before settling into position three miles up. Pete appeared between them and roared at the sky as he tucked his wings and dove down to join the other humans.
“This will be difficult,” he snarled.
“How do you know?” asked Sam from Flash’s platform.
“Can’t you feel it? It’s like walking in a jungle and the tiger has found you first.” He beat his wings to hold his position.
John reacted almost as fast as the attack but he wasn’t quite fast enough. Vic only survived thanks to the intervention of both Flash and Evie who threw up shields in front of her. The metallic snake smashed through them but was only able to glance off Vic as a result. John blipped her back to Evie’s platform, took one look at her and saw lines of silver tracing their way up her arm where she had blocked the attack. He blipped her back to the medical facilities in Bob’s Bunker.
Rocks that he had held up high began to arrive as he brought them down on the point the metal arm had reached out from. The twins wound their weird magic together and began to rip apart the limb with black and white lines.
“Bob?” John asked as he continued to bring down ten ton rocks to batter at the remaining jungle, throwing dust and trees into the air.
“She’ll live. The nanomachines have been held back by the healers.”
“Nanomachines?” screamed Winston as Evie began evasive manoeuvres to avoid follow up attacks lunging up from below.
“Yes. It’s some kind of biomech. The thing is a series of machines all linked together. Some biological, some mechanical. We need to get some altitude. The BFOs can hit it while we pull back, then we need to focus on grinding it down at range. We can’t get close. Even a glancing blow could be fatal.”
The rattle of the cannons on the BFOs firing was overshadowed by the instant lines of appalling brightness that led the way from Bob’s machines. As the jungle glowed, becoming almost transparent, torrents of alien metal fell at hypervelocity, shredding anything that hadn’t yet burned.
Whenever a tendril of flowing silver reached for them John opened a portal that sent the offending limb into the sun. No point messing around leaving the stuff floating about in space when it could be shipped to hell directly. The portals, opened for a fraction of a second, produced blasts of plasma that incinerated the limbs but seemed to be absorbed. They didn’t propagate in the air like usual.
As he worked he queried Bob for updates on Vic. Bob confirmed the nanites had been stopped but they were having trouble pushing them back. It might require amputation and replacement. John cursed and redoubled his efforts, throwing portals and increasingly large rocks at it.
The ground below them was now a quagmire of churned soil and choking smoke. Nothing could survive under this barrage but somehow the thing kept throwing out its silvery limbs to attack them. A hundred Sam’s were blasting it with beams of energy as lightning and rocks fell. Raoul was pacing back and forth feeling frustrated and impotent in the face of this threat. Flash wasn’t any happier, he excelled in close combat but was reduced to throwing up shields to protect his friends and brother from errant strands of the monster.
The twins began to walk lower despite Bob yelling at them not to. A sphere of black and white light expanded around them that held the tendrils at bay before rapidly expanding and obliterating everything on the ground below them. The smoke was blasted clear and a huge depression was pressed into the soil, creating a crater nearly a mile across. At the bottom a metallic sphere gleamed for a moment before a torrent of spiky tentacles shot out at the siblings.
John snatched them away and opened a portal to the sun above the sphere. Without Vic they wouldn’t be able to quell the flames, it would have to burn out on its own, but the plasma that blossomed out was sucked into the sphere which seemed to grow slightly as it absorbed the raging energy.
“We might have bitten off more than we can chew on this one,” grumbled Reg as he ringed the thing with beams of his power. Tentacles that flicked out became heavier than they should have been and either fell to the ground or missed by a large margin. “More firepower ye Sassenach wankers!” he grunted as he built a web of gravity beams around the orb.
John reached out and did something he had sworn he’d never do. He ripped a thousand ton chunk of the Himalayas away and put it in an unstable low earth orbit. It began to fall, building up a halo of fire as it began to bite into the atmosphere.
Pete shot lower and bathed the Thing in dragon fire before being snatched back out of range by John. Despite the intricate web Reg had encased the thing in some of it’s limbs managed to weave their way through and one had nearly caught the Dragon on a wing.
More lines of white and black coiled down to smash into the Thing, seeking to unmake it. Any damage was almost instantly healed, the silvery surface flowing back together and showing no sign of damage.
Name: The Thing
Level: 75
“Well that’s a pain in the arse. It’s eating everything we throw at it!” snarled Flash.
“Brace yourselves!” John called as he blipped them higher. Winston began gasping for breath at this altitude but no one was paying any attention. John brought the largest rock he’d ever dropped down right on top of the Thing. For a moment their vision of the monster was blocked by the small mountain, glowing faintly red from re-entry, before the world shook and everything below went white.
John watched as the shockwave travelled away from the impact, a bubble of force passing through the air and knocking over trees for hundreds of miles outside the perimeter Vic had burned.
As soon as it passed he blipped them back down and was shocked to find the damn Thing was still sitting there, floating at the end of a silver spire that reached down below it. The spire thickened as it grew away from the sphere until it disappeared into the earth hundreds of metres below; now visible in the giant crater John had made.
He blipped more rocks into the sky at the same time Winston gasped a solid breath.
“Fucks sake! What have you disturbed?” Winston croaked from his prone position.
“Not sure. We might be here for a while though,” John snapped. “I’m happy to help you fuck off if you want?”
As more rocks and blasts of energy fell on the seemingly impervious sphere, Winston didn’t dare to reply.