BALTHAZAR NODD
For the first time in nearly thirty years Balthazar Nodd sat straight up in bed.
The machines designed to keep him alive and monitor his failing body shrieked in protest as he tore their tendrils free, tubes and wires and needles pulled from flesh and thrown aside in the din of their panicked shrieking. The machines were the only things in that room that dared make a sound. They had all heard Birgers report and now the doctors and nurses stood frozen like mice in a field who had just hear the cry of an eagle, hoping that maybe stillness would save them from the calamity descending upon them from above because they had no other way to prevent it.
“You all took good care of me,” the told them, his voice quiet but firm. “You did it because you were scared, but you did. I owe you something for that. Now I'm about to kill everybody on this planet, starting with this room. You've got until I'm done getting out of bed to get yourselves gone. Live a little longer. Maybe get to your families before I come for you.”
There was one more moment of breathless silence before the medical staff bolted. Some were abandoning posts they had held their entire careers. As they moved out the guards moved in, flooding the balcony above and leveling their guns. He stood, stiff with age, but once he was up he didn't look weak and old and sickly. He stood his full nine feet, his back neither slouching from weakness nor hunched with age. His skin was scarred and weathered but it held tight to his rippling muscles. His eyes were bright and clear, his beard hung as straight and smooth down his chest as his hair did down his back. There was a dignity and power to his stance even the flimsy hospital gown couldn't take from him.
He turned his gaze on the guards above. Most of the guards flinched and trembled when his glare passed over them. One did not. He wore some kind of command insignia. Balthazar had never bothered to learn the ranking system of the enforcers, but chances are the leader of his guards had been picked for either bravery or stupidity, although after almost three hundred and sixty years of life the pirate still wasn't sure exactly how to tell the difference.
“Well?” Balthazar Nodd demanded of the guard commander. “You lining up to be the first to die?”
“I don't doubt you're powerful,” the guard commander said. “But we've spent the last thirty years preparing for this. You can hurt us, but you can't win. And if you even try the Chistani have a destroyer in orbit.”
“Those losers,” Balthazar snorted.
“So if we don't get you the Chistani will,” the guard captain said. “But they're leaving. They don't know you're here. You haven't activated your Regalia, you haven't even raised your Auram high enough yet to trip the alarms. Lie back down, Balthazar Nodd. Lie down and die in peace.”
“I could do that,” the old pirate grinned, glittering auram gathering around his body as starbursts filled his eyes. “Or I could do this.”
The Indomitable Regalia wasn't much to look at. A pair of dark blue pants with a metal belt, boots with metal buckles, and a pair of bracers on each of his forearms. The metal was something like tarnished gold. His torso—when he tore off the surgical gown and tossed it aside aside—remained bare, covered only by his flowing hair and beard. But as soon as he'd summoned it everyone in the room could sense the raw power flowing off it in waves. No, every thing.The alarms screamed green then yellow then red as the auram flowed through him and the automatic guns sprouted from the walls like lethal mushrooms.
“But—but you can't!” the guard captain said desperately. “Don't you see? You can't possibly take us all!”
“Dumbass,” the pirate snorted. “Don't you know who I am?”
Balthazar Nodd took one step forward.
Everything in front of him for fifty yards was blow away in a wave of force that powdered concrete, turned flesh to batter, and ripped an enormous hole in the side of the dome meant to function as his prison.
He didn't even break his stride, although successive steps didn't have the same effect as the first. From unshattered portions of the facility guards swarmed like flies, firing everything they had at him from bullets to lasers to rockets to plasma bolts. The weapons fire bounced harmlessly off his body. He didn't even bother to kill them, just walked calmly out of the facility. When he reached the threshold, he paused.
And then he disappeared.
That was what it looked like to the watchers, to the guards firing uselessly at their former “prisoner.” One minute Balthazar Nodd was there, and then he was gone. If they'd had time to process what they'd seen they would have realized he hadn't vanished. He'd jumped, a leap that took him high and far in a matter of seconds. But they never did had time to process it, because as soon as he was gone they were vaporized in atomic fire.
He reappeared shortly later, miles away, at a place called Watch Point 27.
Watch Point 27 was a wonderfully important sounding name for a completely unimportant looking structure, little more than a shack with communications equipment in it. It was one of fifty watch points arranged in a ring around the dome, so far away the dome itself was only a shape in the distance. They were, theoretically, guard posts. Although what they could possibly be guarding way out there was anyone's guess. It was not, however, Sgt. Tamm's guess. Because Sgt. Tamm knew what they could possibly guarding and the answer was a secret.
The other 49 Watch Points existed only to mask the presence of Watch Point 27, to make it so unremarkable no one would understand it's importance. And all the watch points had alarm sirens in them to warn of Balthazar Nodd escaping. It was, however, only Watch Point 27 that was really supposed to do something about it. And the carefully chosen operator of Watch Point 27 was specifically trained in that simple but enormously heavy responsibility. Which wasn't to say he didn't feel something twisting in his gut when the red light flashed and he opened the secret compartment under the desk, revealing a bright red button.
But squeamish as he felt he did not hesitate. He pressed the button. It read his fingerprint and biometric signature, registered them as authorized, and told the eight nuclear bombs set underneath the Dome they had been given the order to explode. In the distance. Sgt. Tamm watched the dome disappear in a flash of light. For one second, Sgt. Edwin Tamm thought he had killed Balthazar Nodd.
And then the pirate landed beside the shack in a crater. All Tamm heard was the crashing sound of his landing. He didn't hear the crushing force the pirate generated by slapping his palms together in the shack's direction. He didn't even feel it. It obliterated the shack and Sgt. Tamm before he could feel a thing.
“Hell,” Balthazar Nodd said as he walked through the wreckage of the shack. “Smarter than I gave them credit for. That might have actually worked.”
Like his crewman Zashara, Balthazar Nodd had not inherited the Indomitable Regalia. It had formed inside his body, the result of training and experience on the battlefield combined with his own iron will. And while no one knew exactly what caused a Regalia to form the way it did, his will must have had more than a little to do with it. There had never been a Regalia designed to deliver it's bearer more raw, brutal, abusive power in all of recorded history. And no Regalia bearer in recorded history had ever done more to bring out every scrap of their Regalia's potential.
What the Indomitable Regalia granted its user was complete control over the magnitude of any and all energy generated by the user's body. It was a power that sounded so small and simple, at first, but hearing it at first the mind will not yet have had time to figure out the implications. Yes, there was the obvious. A punch could be amplified to the strike of a meteor, a jump amplified to a continent clearing leap. And Balthazar Nodd made use of those abilities. But the flow of energy is everywhere, in everything. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction—every blow a counterblow by the object struck. In Balthazar Nodd's body that counterblow, his body's natural return of pressure in kind to the missiles striking his flesh, became an unstoppable force that brushed aside the force of the missiles striking his body and the following blast as if he were swatting away gnats.
More than that. Every motion transferred energy, pushed the air aside. Magnified that became a wall of force more than capable of ripping apart a section of the Dome meant to contain him. If he wanted to every step could become an earthquake. And on a smaller scale, within his body, energy was being generated all the time. Cells divided, chemicals mixed, organs pumped and sieved, and by controlling the energy of those reactions within his body Balthazar Nodd had kept himself alive for over three hundred and fifty years.
That incredible power was waning now, his body finally breaking down beyond his ability to repair and renew. And even at his prime he hadn't been truly unbeatable. He had lost wars, battles, even duels on rare occasions. A nuclear blast catching him by surprise just might have ended him. But it hadn't and those defeats, particularly the personal ones, had been few and far between. And even old, sick and dying he was Balthazar Nodd, one of the few who could claim to be the strongest man who ever lived and force a listener to take him seriously.
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“Hell,” the pirate looked around. “Did he have a car? Ah I probably smashed it. Do I gotta walk the whole way now? Hell of a hike to force on a dying man.”
He set out on foot across the fields. He was still bemoaning the loss of a vehicle when the missiles screamed in. Not radioactive, he didn't feel that atomic tingle from them on his skin. But they were powerful bombs affixed to powerful rockets and guided by powerful computers, all three slamming into his body and wrapping him a cloak of blazing fire and smoke.
ENFORCER CHIEF REVINSON
“We got him!” the young enforcer shouted, punching the air. “We got him sir!”
“Are we sure he didn't jump away?” Revinson asked. “Like when we blew up the Dome? Though how in the hell he knew which shack the detonation signal came from I will never know...”
“No sir,” the young enforcer said. “All sensors confirm he was standing right there when the bombs hit. By god he'll have felt that one, sir!”
“Get everyone ready,” Revinson said. “We're moving in to finish him off as soon as the flames clear.”
“You think he's still alive in there?” The enforcer said incredulously. “Uhm, I mean you think he's still alive in there sir?”
“Son,” Revinson snarled, “every story they ever told you about that maniac is true. I won't assume he's dead until I got his head in my lap and his ass in a box across the room.”
“Even so sir,” the enforcer said. “He's old and sick. I know he's dangerous but, respectfully, wasn't all this a little overkill?”
The enforcers had chosen to hit Balthazar Nodd in a natural depression among the rolling hills of Trego. Those hills were crawling with enforcers, who appropriately to the crawling swarmed like ants. Ordinary guns and lasers had been eschewed completely—they wouldn't work too well on anybody with a regalia, pretty much not at all without mass fire, and while they had plenty of bodies to deliver mass fire they were dealing with Balthazar Nodd. If you were going to mass fire better to do it with the heavy stuff, and so every enforcer was equipped with a missile launcher, a plasma weapon, or both. The air was filled with assault fliers, the military version of a standard air car. Really only different because of a little more armor and a mounted heavy gun, but dangerous all the same.
The centerpiece of the assembled anti-Balthazar forces was a trio of Kardelian Thundertanks. Like most of the equipment available on a backwater like Trego they were ancient hulks, bought fourth or fifth hand from traveling interplanetary arms merchants, but unlike most of Trego's equipment Thundertanks were not largely obsolete in other parts of the universe.
Oh Trego had only been able to afford outdated computers and targeting systems, but the Thundertank chassis had been a mainstay of any large battlefield in the universe for the past three hundred years. From above a Thundertank was a solid, heavily armored square crawling low to the ground on massive hidden treads. At each corner of the square was a domed turret sporting a four-barreled anti personnel heavy machine gun. And in the center of the square, raised higher on a tall, blocky turret, was the main cannon, a long gleaming shaft of metal that fired a shell capable of obliterating a small town or, if necessary, and enemy Thundertank.
Chief Revinson was thinking of having one of them run the pirate over when Balthazar Nodd walked out of the fire, completely unharmed.
“Fire!” Revinson bellowed. “Everybody fire! Hit him with everything we've got!”
The enforcers opened fire. All of them. Smoke from explosins and glowing detritus from plasma explosions made it hard to see the advancing pirate, but he seemed to barely notice the assault. Then he paused and threw a punch. The air he pushed aside with his fist turned into a wave of force that crunched into the massed enforcers, digging a hole in the dirt and tossing broken bodies in its wake. He raised one arm, curled back like a snake about to strike, and extended his poinger finger. The arm shot forward and back, over and over, so fast his motion was a blur. Every time he poked the air a bullet of force blew a hole through one of the troops that dared to fire on him.
Still the enforcers didn't let up. The three Thundertanks opened fire, with guns and cannons both. The shells at least seemed to make him take notice of the incoming fire, take the time to swat them out of the air before they could reach them. He threw them into whatever large groups of enforcers he could find, scattering bits of screaming men even further across the battlefield. The enforcers were ragged but they kept up the gunfire. There was a sound almost like metal clanging against metal and Balthazar Nodd's head cocked to the side.
Veins bugled around the pirates eyes and his eyeball, red, veiny, and throbbing, protruded a little from it's socket. When he wanted too he could enhance his senses beyond the superhuman. He turned his engorged eye in the direction the attack had come. With his enhanced vision he saw a sniper, sitting behind a rifle as long as an aircar. They'd been trying to catch him off guard again. He choked up a wad of phlegm and spat it at the sniper, magnifying it's force so that it blasted through the sniper's head like a bullet, shattering his skull in a fountain of blood and brains.
“That's it,” Cheif Revinson sighed. “Cease fire. Everybody cease fire.”
“But cheif--” the enforcer with the sensor unit said.
“Regular guns aren't gonna solve this,” the chief said. “You got a Regalia, son?”
“No sir,” the young enforcer said. “Drill sergeant said I was forming a partial sir, and I might get one if I pick a combat specialty.”
“I thought I'd know,” Revinson said, activating his Deadeye Regalia, with it's complicated face cover. “If you had one, I mean. Auram's the only shot we've got to win this thing. Get out of here kid.”
“But sir!” the enforcer said. “By yourself?”
“Right now I'm all we've got,” the Cheif said. “Get out of here, that's an order. He's been beaten in a fair fight before. I guess we're about to see if I'm tough enough.”
Chief Revinson crested the hill, looking down at the pirate. Balthazar, his eye returned to normal now, looked back up.
“You the commander?” the pirate asked. “You the one who got these people killed?”
“I am,” Chief Revinson said. “Algo Revinson, Chief of Enforcement in and around the planet Trego.”
“Wasn't trying to insult you,” Balthazar Nodd said. “It was the best you could do with what you got. I respect that. Hell, the bombs and the sniper both might've worked.”
“It didn't,” Revinson said.
“No,” Balthazar rumbled. “It didn't. You planning to surrender? Because I don't plan on letting any of you live.”
“Not here to surrender,” the chief said. “I'm here to challenge you to a fight. A duel. One on one, you and me, Regalia to Regalia.”
“I haven't fought a duel in over eighty years,” Balthazar laughed. “Do you promise to at least make it entertaining?”
“I promise to at least die trying,” Revinson told him.
“All I can expect I guess,” Balthazar said. “But you'll die anyway.”
“We'll see,” Revinson said. “Me and my Deadey Regalia don't lose often.”
He drew his guns and called on the power of his Regalia.
The chief seemed to slide around the battlefield. In the wake of his eerily fluid motions he left behind afterimages, mirages, as if there were suddenly dozens of Revinson's surrounding the pirate. None of them looked solid, they gleamed and glittered a holofoil purple, but none of them looked real either. Rather than make a thousand facsimile's exact to life he'd hidden reality in a miasma of illusion.
All the shimmering Revinsons fired at once, auram bullets that screamed through the air and bounced off the pirate's body without any visible effect. In response Balthazar threw punches, blasts of force like the ones that had decimated whole units blowing harmlessly through the Chief Enforcer's duplicates.
“Neat trick,” Balthazar said. “You make all these doubles, and then your bullets home in so I can't tell where you're shooting from. You got me, there's no way I'm gonna pick out there real thing in this crowd of fakes. But that only matters if I gotta aim at you.”
With a stomp of the pirate's foot the ground shattered like a fallen plate, spreading cracks ripping the hills around them to pieces. The shockwave of the impact washed over the duplicate Revinsons, all of them disappearing in a chaotic haze of glowing energy and half formed illusion. Balthazar looked up to see the real Revinson coming at him from above, pistols blazing. The pirate brought an arm over his face like he was shading himself from the sun. Revinson's bullets exploded against his forearm. The only sign they'd hit were a few spots of steam where the blasts had boiled the pirates sweat.
Baltahzar's other arm shot out, two fingers extended to pierce Revinson through the gut. The enforcer chief gagged up bloody phlegm as the fingers pierced his belly. Balthazar pushed, manifying the force he transferred to Revinson's body and sending him flying in a high arc until he slammed into the dirt, lying in a crumpled heap.
But only for a moment. By the time Balthazar reached where he had fallen Revinson was trying to stand. He was covered in bruises and cuts, the hole in his gut seeped red, and his leg was twisted at an ugly angle, but he pulled himself to his feet and raised his guns one last tame. Balthazar moved faster than the eye could follow. One moment he stood in the Cheif Enforcer's sights, the next he was just there, standing beside him, one fist punched clean through the enforcer's gut.
“You were one of my better enemies,” the pirate rumbled. “Die in peace.”
He pulled out his arm and let the chief collapse. And with that he thought he was done with the forces sent to stop him...until a fresh crop of explosions sprouting all around him heralded the return og the Thundertanks. Balthazar didn't know if they were overconfident in their machines are just vengeance-crazed on behalf of their fallen commander, but either way this was pretty damn convenient.
The tanks split up. One parked itself directly in front of him, pouring on fire with every weapon it could bring to bear. A distraction. They already knew their weapons couldn't hurt him. The other two were making the real attack, swinging around to either side and charging in. Hoping that crushing him between their vehicles would work where missiles and gunfire and failed. Balthazar let them charge, dropping into a crouch as they approached. When they were about to crash into him he caught their bumpers, lifting a tank in each hand with a soft grunt and a strain in his muscles. Once he held both tanks he smashed them together like cymbals, over and over again until their armor flattened and crumpled and blood began to leak out the cracks. Finally the magazine in one of them—Balthazar thought it was probably the one in his right hand, but he couldn't be sure—exploded, turning the last impact into a crescendo of fire and shrapnel.
When it cleared, the other tank was trying to back away.
“Get back here!” Baltazar barked, jogging forward to catch up with the tank. He grabbed it's bumper, preventing it from moving any further. “Hey you! Open up!”
The tank stopped trying to flee and went quiet. There was a moment of silence and then the hatch opened up, a terrified enforcer in a white helmet poking out his head.
“Yes?” the enforcer said nervously.
“I've got to get to the city,” Balthazar said.
“But...we know that,” The Enforcer said. “We were...we were trying to stop you. We couldn't stop you....”
“I know that!” Balthazar snapped. “I want to get to the city, and you've got a tank.”
“Uhm...well yes, I do have a tank. But I don't...”
“A tank is a vehicle,” Balthazar said patiently. “Vehicles take people places.”
“Oh,” the enforcer said. “Oh, uh...do...do you want a ride?”
“If I don't get one your death's gonna be real slow.”
“R-right!” the enforcer said. “But uh, you're really, uhm, big. I don't think you'll fit...”
“HAH! Been a long time since anyone told me THAT. I'll ride on top.”
“Oh. Okay. Uh, right! So uh...so uh yes sir, please get on.”
“That's better.” Balthazar slammed the hatch down and climbed up onto the tank, taking a seat on the turret. “Trying to make me walk the whole way. Don't they know I'm a sick old man?”