Blackjack Villain (41 page)

How we could breathe or the reason for the high oxygen and nitrogen content within the gas cloud, I couldn’t explain. Nor could I find a plausible justification to how there existed gravity that kept us planted to the ground on the island. There was enough of the damaged and volcanic central planetoid to have a substantial gravitational pull on the island shards that surrounded it. By all rights, we should be plunging to a molten death, liquefied by pressure. Instead we sat on the grass, buffeted by a mild breeze.

This place followed none of the rules of physics or science and it was disconcerting to all of us. Apogee slumped to the ground, head hung low in despair, mumbling over and over, “fucking idiot,” which I’m sure she directed at me. Zundergrub laughed at first, cursing my name in his language, and flailing wildly at the strange swirling skies. Later, he realized his demonic imps had not made the trip he grew despondent, walking off on his own. Cool’s emotions wavered from ebullient to dispirited, sometimes within the same sentence, screaming and shouting so many obscenities that I feared he’d draw the attention of one of those floating beasties. Some of them were big enough to eat our island whole within their vast mouths.

It was here that Mr. Haha showed his true colors. While the rest of us were overwhelmed with emotion to some degree or other, the robot set to work, trying to organize us behind a simple purpose: getting to the larger peninsula below. He also did something quite peculiar, gathering samples of everything we’d encounter, from a blade of grass to a bit of dirt. I was sure his internal storage would soon burst from all the crap he was storing, but he seemed unaffected.

Haha reconnoitered our new home, and was the one to discover a way to the larger island below by going over the side. He descended with the skill of a Himalayan mountain climber, producing thick synthetic rope from within his folds, and securing it to the rocky wall with pitons and carabineers. Our shard of land looked as if someone had ripped a slice out of a planet and it trailed off bits of rock and debris beneath us for almost a mile. It turned out to be shaped like a ragged ice cream cone, tapering to a point. I had to squelch a bitter smile as I thought of us as sprinkles on a scoop of rocky road.

I peered over the side, expecting Haha to stop or even come back, but the robot continued until he was far beyond audible range, and when he looked up and saw me, waved for me to follow.

“I’m not going down there,” Cool Hand said drawing my attention back to the group. Zundergrub was walking casually in the distance, kicking up dirt, while Apogee still sat on the dirt, shaking her head when my our eyes met.

Below, Haha had made remarkable progress, already halfway down the rock face. He left a trail of pitons and rope wherever he went. The length of rope required to reach the bottom, plus going down from there to the peninsula below, would be close to two miles, and far exceeded anything Haha could be carrying onboard his storage compartment. Baffling as it might seem, he had to be manufacturing equipment from his components, or perhaps from the materials he was gathering. The theory of transmuting and refining the material made me want to unplug my brain. Haha’s abilities were endless.

I tested the rope, dangling from the nearest piton and it held well enough. It was strong, and slightly flexible. His idea, I suppose, was to lower a long rope, perhaps a mile or more, from our floating island to the much larger one below, but the winds were too strong and I couldn’t see a secure way to traverse the distance between the floating islands.

“Cool,” I started, waiting for the explosion, “I’m going to head down with Haha.”

“You’re crazy!” Cool protested, throwing his arms wide as if the air supported his assertion.

“We can’t stay here, Cool, and I think rabbit head is onto something.”

“Dude, it’s Haha’s fault were here!”

“I doubt that,” Apogee spat, favoring me with a look that could crack diamonds.

I looked back down to Haha, so far down and moving so fast I couldn’t imagine catching up to him.

“Well, you can either come with me, or you can stay here with him,” I motioned towards Zundergrub and swung over, following the Haha down the proverbial rabbit hole.

* * *

The first thing to know about climbing is that it’s real hard, especially if you’ve never done it before and in particular, if you’re going down in a reverse decline, where you would find footing was farther inside, or at an angle away from where you had your hands. The natural tendency is to slip back and as an absolute rookie, I almost fell a few more times.

Haha’s rope, which I discovered was elastic webbing surrounding a metal wire, was what kept me from falling to my death more than once. I could have used gloves and spikes on my boots to keep my sweaty hands and feet from slipping.

Looking down, Haha had reached the farthest point of rock that was still attached to the main face, with dozens of massive boulders trailing off behind it like floating satellites.

It took me twice as long to reach Haha as it took him to get down there in the first place, and it wasn’t until I was within earshot of him that we were attacked.

A massive creature swung close, interested by my movement against the rock wall, looking for a quick meal at my expense. I never realized the danger; my attention was on not slipping, and keeping my grip on Haha’s rope. Then he yelled something unintelligible in the distance and wind between us, and opened fire with his plasma weapon.

I gripped tight and turned away from the wall to my horror.

The monster was the size of a city block and looked like what you would get if you crossed a manta ray and an amoeba, with the wide wingspan trailing pseudopods behind. Its eyes were about my size, atop its head, and stared at me as if trying to comprehend what I was. When it decided I was edible, the creature split open its cavernous mouth revealing a great maw, wide enough to fit a dozen men my size standing side to side, lined with thousands of ten foot tall, rear-hooked teeth.

I had nothing to defend myself with, or anywhere to go. I could let go, but then death would be a slow descent into an endless abyss. There was a boulder, a few feet from me, jutting outward and almost self-contained. It was a different material, some sort of granite instead of the rock around it, stuck to the rock face. If I could reach it, and pull it out, the boulder would make a decent weapon. But it was too far, I had no time.

Haha’s plasma bolts and machine gun fire bothered the beast, but it still carried its forward momentum toward me, the mouth widening at the prospect of an easy meal.

Then something dropped from atop it. I couldn’t tell what, as all I could see were teeth and pink flesh, and that reeking smell of imminent death. But the beast recoiled violently, turning away with quickness I didn’t think it had. A figure lay atop the beast, beating on one of its eyes with a magnesium softball bat.

Cool Hand.

But the beast still had some tricks up his sleeve, reaching forward with its trailing pseudo pods to pull Cool Hand off its back. I yelled a warning, but Cool Hand couldn’t hear me.

Instead, I released the rope, and climbed over to the massive boulder next to me. I tried shifting it, but I had no leverage, so I climbed above it and stamped my feet to loosen it. Suddenly, the beast turned back towards me, crashing into the rock face above me and shaking the ground like an earthquake. I lost my balance and fell, grabbing the boulder I was trying to free from the rock face. Dirt, rocks and more boulders fell all around me, as the creature’s impact caused a mini-avalanche. More importantly, I felt the boulder I was grabbing start to give way fast, rotating outward thanks to my weight. I hurried, climbing up the rock with what few handholds I could find. The rock dropped suddenly as I reached the pinnacle, and a widening gap opened up between the boulder and the churned up rock wall behind it. I got an idea and hopped over into the dark pit behind the rock. I braced myself on the back wall and pressed my chest against the boulder, which was slowly rolling out. I waited for the right moment, when the boulder was mostly free of the wall, but hadn’t yet begun to fall, and pushed with all my might. It was like the combination of a military press and a shot-put, but with a rock that probably weighed ten tons.

Amazed at my own strength, and that it had even worked, the rock raced away from me towards the beast. The creature saw it, and twisted to avoid the boulder to no avail. Cool Hand ran like an Olympic gymnast across the beast’s length, up a raised wing and hurled himself towards my location. He bounced off the boulder as it flew at the huge monster, and landed next to me in the huge open pit. His time-warping power kept him still from falling out until he found his hold. The boulder struck the beast dead on, and the beast recoiled in pain, darting away to find an easier meal.

“Pretty cool,” I said, covered in dirt and mud.

He looked over with a wide smile on his face. “You know it!”

* * *

Cool and I made our way back to Haha’s rope line as Apogee and Dr. Zundergrub neared. They had decided that following me and an insane robot was a smarter idea than dying of hunger and dehydration atop a barren mountain.

“What was that thing?” Apogee asked.

“I don’t know but it almost ate B here,” Cool said, motioning to me.

I punched him in the shoulder as thanks.

“Surprising that it would want to eat something that smells so foul,” she half joked.

“You know you like my man smell,” I said, drawing a smile from her and a chuckle from Cool. Zundergrub’s expression didn’t change and his face was in a permanent sneer.

I ignored him and started down, leading the others towards Haha. The going was easier now, as the angle between the handhold and footholds was less extreme and we were able to make good time towards Mr. Haha.

“There’s always a bigger, badder monster out there,” Haha said as I neared the rocky ledge where he stood.

“Good plan, Haha. Now what?”

“Now comes the suicidal part,” he said as the others came up to us.

“Let me guess,” I said. “You tie a rope to my ankle and dangle me down. Hope I can get to the other island.”

I looked back at Apogee, who showed true concern when I revealed the plan.

“No, no, no. I’m sure there’ll be plenty of random opportunities for you to get yourself killed on this adventure,” Haha said. “But not this time.”

The robot asked us to grab a good hand hold, and recalled the rope he had laid out, all mile or so of it, into his chest. Behind him were anchored a series of pitons in a circular pattern. Each was part of a circular anchor rig holding fast a central loose-pivoting six-inch carabineer. It was all attached to Haha’s chest by two thick ropes, about twice the diameter of the rope we had used to climb down here.

“You’re the craziest sonofabitch I’ve ever met, Haha,” Cool Hand said, seeing what the rabbit robot had in mind.

“It’s actually a pretty sound plan,” the robot countered. “I hope the winds aren’t so strong that I can’t ride them across.”

“As long as it’s you and not me, whatever,” Cool said.

“You do understand that if he makes it across, we have to follow him, right?”

Cool raised one eyebrow at Apogee’s revelation.

“You serious?”

Haha cocked his head and shrugged.

Apogee laughed, “if only one of us could fly…”

“It was either a flyer guy or Blackjack here,” Mr. Haha said. “And Retcon went with smelly and hairy as opposed to a fellow with more utility.”

His humor was lost on Cool Hand, though. “Hey, can’t you fly, Apogee?”

“You should have kidnapped Superdynamic,” she said.

As Mr. Haha reeled in the last few feet of rope, I took a glance at Apogee, studying her dirty and sweaty form. Even though she was covered in grime and filth, she looked so good. Madelyne avoided my gaze as long as she could, but finally her big green eyes shot back at me.

“What?”

“Nothing,” I said, turning back to Haha, who was pulling two new lengths of rope from his chest, cutting one off at about ten feet, and the other at about three. He handed the ropes and a few carabineers to me.

“Can you work a harness out of this?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I nodded. “Let’s hope that big bastard doesn’t come back for seconds.”

Haha nodded, “and let’s hope I’m not as crazy as Cool Hand Luke seems to think I am.”

Without another word, he hurled himself off into the abyss, held only by two lines of rope and the swiveling carbineer. By producing more and more rope from his chest, Haha floated away from us. The heavy winds caught him, carrying him off in the direction of the large island below. After he was satisfied with his progress, Haha sped off even faster.

I grabbed the piton to secure it, and saw that I had a small measure of control over Haha’s movement. Haha looked up at me, sensing the alteration of his downward movement and stopped a moment. But once he saw it was me testing the piton, he shot me a thumbs up and continued.

I had some time, until he got closer to the lower island, so I set to work on the harness. The easiest thing I could do was a simple harness made out of a Spanish Bowline tied to a piton, then attach a piton to one the two ropes that Haha had left behind.

It was a crazy gamble, and the chances that this would work were minimal. The idea was to tie someone with the harness I was making to the rope and bring them across one at a time. The problem was the distance, which could be no less than a mile. Pulling the rope, and the person attached to it, would require incredible strength, so I suppose it was left to me to pull the others and hope Apogee was in the mood to pull me over.