The penultimate peril
Monday, December 19, 2011 at 12:23PM Uliaris is ensconced in his mountain headquarters, his rebel group hunted to the verge of extinction, the steel-helmeted, jack-booted, yellow-jerseyed stormtroopers of Emperor Foster closing the noose ever tighter … The ape is not concerned. Shaitan is with him. The world will soon get exactly what it deserves for having conformed to the twisted vision of Uliaris' old schoolmate, Sargon. For having invited back the Ancient Evils.
- - - -
The two scouts hunkered under cover, gathered their borrowed robes about them and craned to observe the cave mouth around the corner.
"So that's it?" Gualterus queried.
The fusion device is in the center of the cave's outer chamber, the Dumbarton unit reported, its red sensor diodes winking as it floated between Inspector Gualterus and Cornet Selonel. It is surrounded by at least five heavily armed enalu. There was a pause. I can now confirm six enalu. Automatic slug-throwing weapons, loaded and locked.
"About what we expected," Selonel replied grimly. "Weapons check."
Gualterus shook his head ruefully and produced his pistol. "Three rounds," he said. "After that, it'll make a pretty pathetic club."
Selonel grunted lightly and shouldered her own weapon, a pulse-firing "man-buster" liberated from one of the soldiers they had encountered in the foothills. 
"Well," she replied, working the action and eyeing the weapon's power readout, "at least we have this. Looking at the charges this throws, it ought to put down a fair suppression fire."
Gualterus squinted up toward the cave mouth. "Yah," he exhaled. "But six of them against two tired, lightly armed pilgrims wearing penitent robes of Kúru ... Not quite the battle scenario I would have preferred."
Selonel slung the man-buster and regarded him coolly, her mech eye probing Gualterus with an uncompromising stare from its ruined socket even as her brown, natural left eye took on an uncharacteristically wistful appearance.
"Not much to do about it," she replied. A faint smile played across her lips as she glanced down at her frayed, brownish-gray robe. "And regardless of the uniform -- we are Dominion soldiers."
Gualterus smiled tightly and turned his pistol in his hand. "We are indeed." ;)
Selonel held his gaze for just a moment longer. Then she turned, fixed the hovering Dumbarton unit with a baleful glare, took a deep breath, and began snapping out a terse command sequence.
"Dumbarton. Assume cortical control on my mark and execute Attack Pattern Selonel-gamma. Disable safety override protocols."
The Dumbarton unit actually seemed to hesitate a second before broadcasting an acknowledgment. And the acknowledgment, when it arrived, took on more of the form of a protest.
Cornet, Gualterus heard in the buzzing of his zygomatic arches. A gamma-pattern attack with safety protocols disengaged is highly inadvis --
"Voice command override, Selonel Alpha," the young woman enunciated crisply, anticipating the response.
Standing by.
She turned to Gualterus. "I'll ask you to stay behind me, Inspector," she said, in a tone worn with many years' routine. "I get paid to take point."
Gualterus chuckled humorlessly, his mouth dry. "I'll try to keep clear of your fire lanes, if that's what's worrying you." He snapped his pistol shut and chambered it. "All right," he breathed. "Ready whenever you are."
Selonel unfolded stiffly from her seated position and gathered her feet underneath her. She flexed her neck muscles and arched her good arm behind her in a stretch before returning to a coiled crouch, the robe gathered tightly at her waist. The spray of scars on her face stood out a vivid red. She bounced on the balls of her feet -- once, twice.
"Cortical control. Attack Selonel-gamma," she repeated, glancing over at the floating droid.
"Mark."
_______________________
Uliaris gazed blearily up at Cornet Selonel, wincing as a cough bubbled up from his ruined chest. He regarded the Crohn officer with sad, tired eyes, his gaze drifting across her scarred face, down her scar-riven chest … to rest on her metallic cybernetic forearm.
"You obviously have suffered a great deal," the elderly enalu sighed. "I am sorry." His eyes lowered and slowly closed. "I am sorry for all who have suffered in this conflict. So many ..."
"More than you can possibly imagine," Gualterus interjected, with some heat. "And it all would have started with what you were planning to do. Our mission was to stop you. And we've succeeded — the Crohn be praised."
Uliaris' head had sunk to his chest. But at the sound of Gualterus' words, he blinked and labored to raise it.
"You did not stop me," he whispered. "Indeed ... you've accelerated matters."
Gualterus stared. "Please explain," he prodded.
Uliaris blinked slowly. "Dead man switch," he murmured. "Built in ... to cardiac nerve plexus. When my heart stops ... " The old Enalu roused himself slightly and sat up a bit straighter. "When my heart stops, which it should do soon, the circuit will close."
A small chuckle was strangled in a wince of pain. "I would urge you to run away -- but really, don't bother. Shaitan will ignite the atmosphere. This world will be cleansed."
At these words, Cornet Selonel made her way over to where Uliaris sat slumped against the crate and lowered herself to the ground, gathering her tattered robe about her in a kneeling stance directly across from him.
To Inspector Gualterus' utter astonishment -- and for the first time since he'd known the cornet -- he watched as she spoke directly to an enalu.
"Let me understand you," Selonel said, tightly. "The detonation switch is wired directly into your nervous system?"
That is correct, the Dumbarton unit communicated, the words vibrating in Gualterus' cranial receptor as its sensor diodes swept the enalu's crumpled form.
"That is correct," Uliaris echoed. "I die ... and Shaitan claims us all. As is his due. You yourselves have seen to it. Nothing can prevent it."
The enalu's breathing was becoming labored. A wry smile played fitfully across Selonel's battered features as she slowly turned her faithful phased-polaron pulse blaster from side to side in her cybernetic right hand. Her left hand hung slack, blood coursing off it in a steady drip.;)
"I suppose I see your point," she commented, in a casual, almost playful tone. "Although I don't suppose you know what this is, then."
Uliaris' dying eyes flickered, fought to focus. "Just another ... ornament for your graves ... Irrelevant," he murmured. But then his head froze and his eyes widened slightly. Their focus riveted on the weapon.
"You really are a walking pestilence," he whispered. "Human to the end."
"Not my end," Selonel countered brightly. Her mech finger coiled tighter.
Caution, Dumbarton signaled, the general distress frequency buzzing in Galterus' cranium as well as Selonel's. Polaron cascade in progress. Seek available cover immediately.
_______________________________
"Where are we?" Gualterus began, hesitantly. He squinted into a blinding white glare and felt that the question seemed somehow to miss a point that should have been obvious.
I'm not sure how to answer that, a voice answered from somewhere nearby. Or perhaps it was all around him. You are where you have always been. Though not, I sense, where you probably belong.
"If there is a common language matrix between us," Gualterus mused, "we're not close to it yet."
Language is only one tool which you put to strange use, the voice replied. Gualterus could not associate it with any specific direction; it was neither before him, nor behind him, though he instinctively felt it came from both directions. For you to disarm the primate's neural detonator switch against his will was ... not a development we anticipated.
"You almost sound disappointed," Gualterus replied. Mainly to stimulate conversation; in fact, the voice carried almost no inflection at all.
That statement is without evidentiary basis, the voice replied.
"Sorry."
If anyone should react to the development with emotion, it might perhaps be you. We suspect ... Relief might be appropriate. Against all rational probability, you have accomplished your very strange mission.
"But no one will ever know," Gualterus said. "We disrupted the timeline."
No one will ever know. The voice paused a moment. When it resumed, Gualterus almost sensed a slight hum of humor. Depending on how you choose to define 'no one.' And 'ever.' And 'know.'
;)