Confession time.
I'd sort of invented the whole teleportation thing. I'd even accidentally discovered a way to teleport things between the stars, inadvertently inventing interstellar travel.
I hadn't given up that secret to any of the governments of the world. Not when I knew there were nasty things lurking out there on the other side of the heliopause just waiting for our civilization to get technologically advanced enough to be worth picking off.
It turns out there wasn't exactly some Galactic Federation out there keeping the peace and trying to prevent primitive worlds from being taken over by isolating them. On the flip side there wasn't anything as dramatic as a hunter killer civilization out there knocking off less technologically advanced civilizations before they could get advanced enough to bust through the Fermi paradox.
There were plenty of civs out there that were just powerful enough that they liked to pick on their lessers though. Think, say a superpower that, rather than fighting other comparable superpowers, goes and fights unnecessary wars against countries that couldn't possibly hope to fight back in any appreciable way without resorting to guerrilla warfare and you sort of have the idea.
Not that there would ever be something comparable like that on earth. Right?
Yeah, totally not. Sarcasm totally intended.
I figured Dr. Lana was still early days with her own teleporter technology. Sure she'd figured out how to track me, much to her annoyed surprise when she realized that figuring out how to track me only resulted in her teleporting into a world of hurt, but it looked like she'd been doing some work behind the scenes while she was busy healing up from getting her ass handed to her by that nasty surprise.
And once again it became apparent that I'd been terribly wrong about just what Dr. Lana was capable of.
A portal opened in front of me. I could only describe it as a swirling vortex type thing. Think like the wormhole from Deep Space Nine, only it was a hell of a lot more impressive because this was happening live and in person right in front of me rather than being the best that mid '90s standard definition CGI could offer.
Hint. The best wasn't all that great. Seriously. Watching that on streaming in this day and age on a modern TV is painful. Especially compared to The Next Generation after they went through and did a full HD conversion and a revamp of the special effects.
Enough about that, though. The point is, I was looking at an obvious portal to somewhere, and I didn't like not knowing where it was going.
Also? I didn't like that there was a giant purplish irradiated lizard poking its head through the portal and giving our world a sniff. Not good. Not good at all.
I pulled out a small programmable sphere drone and sent it flying on its antigravity generators through the portal. I figured that would at least tell me something about the atmospheric conditions on the other side. Assuming the drone could still transmit through that weird special effect. Maybe it'd give me something I could use to beat this bitch.
Fialux flew up next to me. "What the hell is going on here?"
"Nothing good," I said.
I stared at the display on my wrist computer. One moment it was reading good old-fashioned earth normal background radiation. The kind you'd expect in the middle of a major city where there were plenty of radiation sources, but none of them were strong enough that even in aggregate they were much of a danger for living creatures.
Then everything shot through the roof. We're talking it went completely off the scale, and that was saying a hell of a lot considering my wrist computer was designed to measure the kind of radiation I dealt with in a professional capacity. Those numbers could get pretty damn high.
I stared and willed the number to go back down. It was entirely possible that portal Dr. Lana had created was the source of the radiation. That wouldn't be good, but it would be better than that radiation being a constant wherever that lizard had come from.
Only the number didn't go down no matter how long I stared at it and tried to make it go down through sheer force of will.
"Shit," I said.
Fialux must've sensed something about my tone. She looked at me and there was worry etched on her face.
"What's wrong?" she asked.
"She's using a teleporter to send those lizards from the edge of town out to some other planet," I said. "I don't know where the hell they're going, I can't get a read on the star patterns because there's apparently no obvious sky, but…"
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The signal cut off. The thing had gone through the portal and it was doing just fine, but it was as though…
Then it hit me what'd hit my probe. Of course. That lizard had one of those nasty tails swinging behind it, and it was definitely the kind of nasty tail that could do some serious damage. The thing must've hit my probe with a glancing blow right before it passed through to our side, and now that probe was no more even as the lizard stepped fully through to our end of the portal and bellowed.
"Fuck!" I said.
"Is this a problem?" Fialux asked.
I looked up at the giant lizard that was nothing but pure radioactive anger. It seemed to crackle with energy as it stared down at us. A strange energy that was the same kind of pink glow that had come from that ray Dr. Lana used on Fialux. It was enough to make me wonder if it was all connected somehow.
I couldn't see how, but then again…
There was something very wrong about all of this. Something Dr. Lana was pulling that I didn't quite understand yet. Thankfully when I couldn't understand something, I'd had great success in beating it out of people. Considering Dr. Lana's ability to regenerate and her new seeming indestructibility if she had Fialux's powers, I could beat on her until the cows came home.
The lizard swiped at me. I dodged out of the way easily enough. Or, rather, it would be more accurate to say my systems dodged me out of the way.
I was too busy looking at the readout on my wrist computer to worry overly much about a lizard trying to attack me. Even if it did look like it was a hell of a lot more powerful than your average lizard who attacked the city.
"Do you know anything about this, CORVAC?" I asked.
He shrugged. "I'm afraid I'm not privy to all of her plans," he said. "She cut me off when the robots did not work."
I looked at him and grinned.
"Yeah, I bet that pissed you off that the giant robots didn't work. I told you they weren't an effective way to take over the city."
"If you would pardon me mistress," he said. "I think the fact that they…"
He trailed off as one of the lizard's claws suddenly shot through him. Like we're talking one moment his chest, that super armored chest that I had so much trouble punching through, was whole and shiny. The next moment there was a giant lizard arm run through him with a clawed lizard hand holding his sparking guts on the other side.
He looked down, and I could've sworn there was surprise registering on his face, and then it was all over.
He slumped down onto the lizard's arm before we could finish yet another argument about the efficacy of giant robots. Though I did see a faint green glow in his eyes. He was still there. For a moment.
"I told you robots weren't effective!" I shouted down at him.
I really hoped the electronic pathways leading from the sensors on that robot to wherever he was hiding his consciousness were still working well enough that he caught that final parting jab before his eyes went out.
Hey, the bucket of bolts might've saved my ass on a few occasions recently, but that didn't mean I wasn't above the occasional jab. That was the foundation of our old relationship, after all.
"What the hell," Fialux said. "Those lizards aren't supposed to be that powerful. You said…"
I held up my wrist computer. Though it was difficult for Fialux to get a good look at the display because the monster swiped again. This time both our countermeasures kicked in, pulling us away from one another. That was getting really annoying, but Fialux floated in close again as soon as the danger had passed.
"She's managed to find a world that's loaded with radiation and at the same time still somehow has an atmosphere those lizards can breathe."
It was going to take me way too long to run the analysis on that. I needed to rescue CORVAC, and I needed to rescue him like yesterday so he could start running analysis on this stuff while I was out here in the city taking care of business.
"What does that mean?" she asked, her words only slightly interrupted as our automatic countermeasures dodged out of the way again as the giant lizard played a frustrating game of whack-a-mole. Thankfully it wasn't fast enough to win that game.
"Think of it this way," I said. "Those things usually grow all oversized when they're exposed to low levels of radiation left over from waste from the Manhattan project on the outskirts of the city. It's all really off the books and you wouldn't even know it was there if it weren't for the damn lizards being exposed and growing to a giant size. And now she's sent some of those lizards to a world that's being bombarded by the kind of radiation you'd expect to see falling from the sky in the black rain after a blast."
She looked at me and she was clearly confused.
"Black rain? What are you even talking about? I've never heard of black rain before."
I stared at her. Really it was more like I was staring at the terrible mismanagement of the education system in this country. I mean seriously. How could she not know what black rain was?
Though admittedly that was the sort of thing that a science geek such as yours truly would be more likely to know about.
"It's the sort of nasty stuff that comes down after an atomic weapon is used," I said. "At least after it's used on a population center."
"Right, and that's bad?" she asked.
I sighed. Yeah, this was an indictment of the education system if I'd ever seen one.
"That's bad," I said. "At least it's bad if you have the kind of living tissue that doesn't stand up all that well to radiation."
"Huh," she said. "I guess I never thought of it like that."
"Right," I said. "Because you never had to think about anything hurting you. Must be nice."
"It was while it lasted," she said.
It was at that moment that one of the claws brushed so close to me that I had to actually start paying attention to what was going on around me. Like we're talking I could feel the breeze as it flew past, and I was pretty sure I heard a buzzing that sounded like when you stand too close to a spitting high tension wire.
Not a fun experience. We'd been having this entire conversation jerking back and forth through the air as the countermeasures did their thing.
"We should probably do something about this," I said.
Only I heard a cackling. Not the kind of sound I liked to hear. I looked over and saw none other than Dr. Lana standing next to that portal, and she seemed to be glowing with the same pink glow that surrounded the lizard.
What the hell was going on here?
"Um, admittedly I was new to this whole hero thing when I started fighting you and I'm not as up to speed on what's good and what's bad in a fight," Fialux said. "But that can't be good that she's standing there laughing like that."
"No," I growled. "That's not good. At all."
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