Blackjack Villain (79 page)

Chapter 1

Now I know how Dr. Retcon felt when they took his daughter, and his dream, when he turned from a maligned man, trying to make amends for his ill deeds to a true villain, the monster. I understand him now more than ever.

He was so close to fulfilling his lifetime goal of saving the world from the menace he himself had brought upon us. He had tinkered with space and time, and transported himself and his companions to another world, ruled by a timeless alien species so powerfully corrupt, that they collected planets. Well, not really planets, just pieces of them, sloughed off with their unlimited powers, to leave the rest of the planet to implode in world-ending cataclysm.

Exposure to our culture had drawn their attention, and we were to be next on their proverbial list. Retcon had spent his life trying to avert the destruction of our planet, and in the end, he had succeeded, creating a Nikola Tesla-inspired device that formed a planetary shield so formidable even the aliens had to respect our civilization. We had driven off the alien scout, saved the world, and as thanks, they had killed his daughter.

It mattered little that one of our companions had betrayed us, turned on the whole plan at the last minute. At the very moment where he should have been celebrating the success of a lifetime’s worth of effort, all his hopes and dreams were squashed by a well-placed sniper’s bullet, by the death of his child.

I had seen his anguish wracked face, unwilling to believe his daughter was dead. I saw the dark rage set in, the madness overwhelm him, and in an instant, he gave the world what they had always feared;

“They want a monster, and I shall give them one!”

And with that he reversed the device, and set upon the destruction of the world.

It was good fortune, and impeccable timing that allowed me to save us from his madness. The last vestige of my former villainous-self lay within my pockets, an arrowhead so powerful I dubbed it “The Nuke”. I had started as an archer villain, and now it was all that was left of my original suit and gear, and the only thing that stood between Retcon and annihilation.

A lucky throw, a bright flash of light, and the threat was over. I had saved the world. And as thanks, I was convicted of over 1,400 charges, including crimes against humanity, genocide and destruction of Japanese sovereign property (a whole island). I was the only one standing at the end, so they threw the book at me, intent on sending me off a super’s prison in the North Atlantic called Utopia for the rest of my life.

But they had the last laugh. Their prison for me would be more creative. They didn’t want me put away, they wanted me gone. And since you can’t just kill a guy as powerful as I am, they came up with a clever alternative.

See, the whole thing started about fifty years ago when Retcon had built a device to peer through space into Bok globule near Lambda Centauri, some 2 kilo parsecs away from Earth. Boks are basically regions of space that follow none of the rules of space, being very cold and also allowing almost no light to penetrate them. Some think they’re the precursors to stars, but Retcon had other ideas, and he proved everyone right by discovering the home of an alien species more grand and magnificent than anything anyone could have imagined. Ultimately, more dangerous and threatening than warranted the original experiment. But then again, Retcon was a guy who lived on the edge.

In any case, the machine he built, again based on Tesla technology, was a particle accelerator, designed to create an aperture in space, a wormhole between Earth and the interior of the Bok globule. The theory being to create a telescope through space, and the raw data he could collect would revolutionize our knowledge of space and time. Little did he know that the device would transport him and his companions to the world within the Bok, to a civilization known as The Lightbringers.

Well, it was this machine they used to banish me. I’d like to know the name of the guy that had the bright idea, who found the original Retcon device in the moon base of another hero, Nostromo, who found this machine and had the clever idea of sending me through space and time with it, of banishing me from Earth.

They sent me back to Shard World.

The day after the trial ended, I was flown on an AC-130 under heavy guard to a small island somewhere in the South Pacific, where, in a secret installation, they had built a replica of the Retcon portal device.

With little ceremony, they put me inside the device and fired it up. The machine was larger, maybe by a factor of ten, than the one I had built in Shard World, so at first I had no idea what it was. There were few similarities, in fact, and one important thing that was missing altogether was the cradle to hold the focus gem. The new device had more in common with mad scientist equipment from a low-budget 1940s movie, loud and sparking with excess power. It had a small chamber with a tiny chair where they stuffed me and slammed the door closed.

I looked around desperately as the technicians fiddled at the dials, and one of them came to a large turn knob, spinning clock-wise as the power surged and in a flash, I was gone. The memory was familiar, and only at that moment, I discovered what they had done to me.

When blinding lights faded, I found myself atop a small strip of rock, maybe a quarter mile long and half again as wide, floating in that black/orange inky sky, surrounded by other mini-islands, torn from their host planets, all of which were like satellites to the foundering world of the Lightbringers.

This floating shard was new to me, and guiding by where the Lightbringers citadel lay, I was far from the island where the small alien village lay, where we had defeated the Mist Army. Smaller even than our original arrival point to Shard World, my new home was a barren patch of rock, devoid of any plant or animal life. Or water. Instead of killing me outright, they had banished me to a place where I would survive only a few days before a slow and painful death by dehydration.

But I refused to die. I refused to let them win. Maybe I’m obstinate, or maybe I’m a fool, but I wasn’t going to die on that small sliver of rock in far-away space. That wasn’t going to be my end. I had to find a way back, to stop Dr. Zundergrub, to save Apogee, and the small fact of being marooned in a distant Bok globule wasn’t going to deter me. Mr. Haha and I had built a machine to return us to Earth, and while I lacked his near-limitless abilities now, I still had everything I needed to build another. Or maybe the first one I had built was still there, waiting for me to find it floating on some distant shard. Either way, I was getting out of this shithole, and making it back.

The first thing I had to do, though, was find my way to that village.

There was little in the way of materials, just what I wore: an orange prison jumpsuit, white cotton shirt and briefs, and the metal manacles and chains that bound me. Freed from the ever-present power dampening field generators they always kept nearby, I could exert my full strength for the first time, and I was soon unencumbered. I tore the top of my jumpsuit, crumpled it into a ball, and used the twisted metal braces as flint and steel, lighting a small fire. I searched the rocky ground for minerals and found enough carbonized ores to make the bonfire pretty respectable and to keep it going for some time.

My idea was to attract one of those whale-manta ray things and somehow subdue it as we had some of the smaller ones. It wasn’t much of a plan, but I was desperate, and in my mind, nothing was going to deter me.

About ten minutes after, one of the bigger whale things flew near, but rolled off, uninterested. I made a huge ruckus, hoping the creature could see and hear me hopping and hollering, but the beast turned fast away, scared by something that approached.

I turned to see what it could be, and felt a turning in my stomach by what I saw, an open decked ship, teeming with armed warriors, held aloft somehow, and soaring along wind power that billowed into its many sails.

The Mist Army had found me.

The sleek ship circled me twice before slowing, intending to stop alongside the rocky island. Lined along the gunwales were dozens of warriors, all formidable and bristling with weapons, eyeing me like hungry pirates staring down a fat merchantman in the age of sail. The ship was actually similar to a sailing vessel from Earth, with a wooden hull some one hundred feet in length, painted jet-black and adorned from bow to stern with brass and copper. She was three-masted and square rigged with three outrigger masts jutting from the hull to each side and below. She was a fine ship, elegant and fast, and from her open deck, she boasted half a dozen cannon on each side, and a pair of long guns jutted from the foredeck.

As the ship came to a stop a few hundred yards from the floating shard, the crew began a terrible chant, accompanied with the banging of a hundred weapons or belaying pins on the bulwark from fore to aft-castle. It was a terrible sound, which I knew translated to “death” in the alien’s horrible languages. Like the Mist Army I had encountered almost a year ago, the crew of the ship was a motley gathering of many species, from reptilian to mammalian, from bipedal to floating beings to slithering worm-like creatures. They all slammed on the sides of the ship rhythmically, roaring in their different languages in a symphony of death. A few of the crew busied themselves, unloosing a longboat from the main deck, and bringing it alongside, where a dozen warriors boarded, let by the ship captain. I could tell little of the man, save he was bipedal, tall, and wore a traditional embroidered long blue coat with white facings and scarlet epaulets, blue breeches and long white socks. Atop his head he wore a tricorn hat of similar blue material, all in all giving him a very traditional Royal Navy look.

As they boarded the small boat, I ran towards the highest point on the shard, a small rocky outcropping that would serve as my last stand. Then again, if they had ranged weapons, I was done for. But hopefully this would appeal to their warrior instincts, to their desire to defeat “Brackshock” as they had butchered my name. I watched them approach and ‘beach’ their longboat and disembarking. As they came closer, led by the formidable captain, I noticed the soldier’s garb was uneven, and no two men wore the same clothing, nor wielded similar weapons. In fact, they appeared more like slovenly pirates than a crew of Mist Army warriors. Of them all, only the captain wore full formal clothing.

Though, as he came closer, flanked by his fearsome crew, I realized that he was in fact, a she. Humanoid in most respects, save for reversed lower legs, more like those of a satyr, and a pair of twisted horns that jutted out of the sides of her head. Her skin was lilac but her facial features were otherwise normal.

The captain stood at the base of my rock and shouted up at me, pointing a cutlass in commanding fashion. The others rumbled their death chant, low enough to not disrupt the captain.

I took a quick headcount. There were fifteen soldiers, four of which looked quite formidable, as well as the captain herself. The toughest fellow was a ridiculously massive, green reptilian biped, with malformed lower limbs so he basically walked with his hands. Atop his brawny shoulders was a formation of eye stalks that gazed in every direction. For weapons, he had the equivalent of a brass knuckle in each hand, which I’m sure also doubled as shoes. His arms were trunks though, as wide as I was in my shoulders, and each hand was the width of my hips.

Taking a few steps down, I pointed at their biggest warrior, then at me.

“Him and me,” I told the captain, hoping she would understand and welcome the fight.

Laughter broke through the contingent, a strange combination of wheezes, whistles, and guffaws.

“You’re afraid I’m going to hurt your boy?” I taunted, hoping someone would understand my language, but none did, and the merriment continued at my expense. Stepping closer, I came right up to the captain and pointed at the big fellow again, then at myself. Then I smashed two fists together.

“I fight him,” I said. “I win, you let me go.”

There was no emotion from the green thing, just more of the eye stalks concentrating on me.

The captain smiled and cocked one eyebrow, revealing a playful streak. She spoke in a strange and melodic tongue, somewhat reminiscent of the French language in how elegant and fluid it was. But it wasn’t a tongue I had ever heard before, and I couldn’t understand anything she said. The crew laughed as she finished, then, explaining to me with physical gestures as one would a small child it seemed as she agreed, but she pointed at the big green bastard and shook her head, instead stepping aside to reveal the meanest sonofabitch I have ever seen in my life.

The Captain’s champion was a creature of death, its face stricken in a rictus grimace of partially denuded bone, lacking lips to cover his toothy maw, appearing like an angered skull with a trio of emerald eyes that burned with rage. While not as imposing as the warrior I had chosen, this fellow was almost as tall as I was, with a mane of stringy black hair pouring out the back of his head, and streaming down like a cloak behind him. His armor was more medieval than futuristic, unpolished and damaged from countless wars, with shoulder spikes that jutted forth, embedded with the rotting skulls of several fallen enemies. His brawny right arm wielded a two-handed mace, carved from heavy bone and adorned with bits of dried blood and flesh. The handle was wrapped skin, and a ten inch spike projected from the working end. His other arm was vestigial; half the size of his muscled right, but wielded an armored claw that was almost camouflaged by his chest armor, held back deceptively, as if inviting me to attack from that direction. But it was his mouth that was most disturbing, perma-drooling a brownish pasty mass, like a mixture of peanut butter and crackers, all over his beard, chin and chest. The congealed goo spittled as the creature attempted to talk in a hissing gruel, more like two rocks crushed against each other than a form of conversation. He had a go and stop gait, with an odd neck bob, where his upper body was still every half step, while his feet rushed to catch up.