Doomsday Warrior 19 - America’s Final Defense (20 page)

Then Rockson spouted formulas that were the derivations of a religion of pure mathematics on Orion Alpha Seven. His words were in English, and the identification of these worlds were in human terms. The asteroid apparently had roamed far and wide in the universe. The Karrakans had visited many worlds, probably never returning to them. The immensity of the knowledge stored in the Neuro-dancer became evident to them all when they realized this.

“Imagine,” Cohen said, “a billion or more years of interstellar travel! No wonder that accumulated knowledge was too much for Rockson to stand. Chen, you
sure
you’re getting all this on that recorder? Is it working?”

“Yes. It’s turning, at least. I hope to God it works well enough. The recorder took lots of bangs on the way here.”

Suddenly Rockson stopped talking, right in mid-sentence. He jerked and then blinked rapidly. He more readily supported himself on his two feet. He looked around at them, and his eyes unglazed, and he mumbled something like, “Hi—what’s up?”

“Rock,” Chen asked. “Are you all right?”

“Sure—I guess so. Where—oh, now I remember. I was in the Neuro-dancer. I learned . . . yes. I still remember it. I have a message for Earth. What are we walking around in circles for? We have to get to the saucer. Let’s go.”

Chen smiled, snapped the mike off Rockson’s lapel, and attaching it to his recorder, shoved the recorder into his belt-pack. “Explain
that
later,” he smiled.

Rock took the lead as they rushed for the saucer.

Killov and Tekkamaki, meanwhile, were walking in a path that would intersect with Rockson and his men’s in a matter of minutes. Killov stepped rapidly over the pink sands, moving toward the rough-shaped pyramidal mountain half obscured by a dune ahead. Tekkamaki scrambled on his short legs to keep up. His master was eager to get to his goal. Because of their haste, Killov didn’t notice several objects half-buried in the sands that he and his servant traversed. That is, he didn’t notice until he stumbled on one of them.

Cursing, Killov fell to his knees, and as he rose he saw a dull metallic gleam. He mumbled, “What the—” and dug the object from the sands, picking it up. It was a sculpted piece of dully gleaming black metal, incredibly light to the touch. It was a seven-pointed-star about a foot wide.

Killov’s mind clicked. He remembered a dream he’d had in Peru. Yes! This object was the power thing he’d seen in his dream. It had to be.

“Master,” Tekkamaki pleaded, “what are you doing? No time for souvenirs. You said we must—”

“Shut up, Tekkamaki. This thing has a power of some sort. It is a weapon. I sense that.” He turned it over and over in his hands. “So lovely, so powerful . . .”

“How does it work, Master?”

“I—I can’t remember,” Killov admitted, “but it was in my dream. It seemed
easy
to use in my dream. We’ll take it along with us to the pyramid. Perhaps I’ll remember on the way there. Or maybe the Neuro-dancer can tell me how to use it.” The KGB leader zipped the object into his black leather jacket and again rushed toward the pyramid with Tekkamaki following.

At the top of a rolling dune, the pair were suddenly face to face with a party of earthlings who were coming up the other side of the dune.

“Rockson,” Killov said breathlessly. His eyes fixed like black marble bb’s on the tall, tan leader of the group of khaki-clad Americans.

“Killov,” Rockson gasped, almost as nonplussed as his nemesis. The Doomsday Warrior, though, spent no time thinking about the how or why of meeting with Killov; instead he drew the weapon strapped to his belt and began firing.

But nothing happened.

The other Freefighters opened up on the pair confronting them with liberator rifles and shotpistols.

The weapons clicked and clicked. Still nothing.

Killov, who had been shrinking and wincing, expecting an ignominious end, for he had no weapon, now stood up and smiled. Killov understood now. He remembered his dream about the black star-shaped metal object. This
was
a weapon he held. It had no trigger; it had no mechanism; but it responded to the wishes of its owner. The black star was a
thought-weapon.
It could manipulate matter with the mind. Killov had hoped against hope that the weapons of his enemies wouldn’t fire—and they hadn’t. It was that hope that had activated the black star. He’d be quick to capitalize on this fortunate event.

“Now,” Killov said, triumphantly, “it’s time for some fun.”

“What is this,
magic?”
Chen asked. “Well, maybe magic doesn’t work against
my
weapons.” Chen threw a spinning
skuriken
star-knife at the chest of the man holding the strange black object. And despite Killov’s desire for the star-knife to disappear, it didn’t. Killov would have been killed for sure, but his servant Tekkamaki dived in front of his black-clad lord and took the hit himself. The star-knife exploded, severing his jugular vein, and the servant fell onto the dune, gurgling out his life essence on the sands.

Killov thought of his loss for a mere instant, then decided he’d better do something fast, before another star-knife was unleashed. Evidently the black star “thought-weapon” worked only against mechanical objects—guns and such. It could manipulate the mechanical weapons, move them . . .

“That’s it,” Killov said. “I command all those guns, and the people attached to them, be blown away,” he yelled. “Away with Rockson’s men, but not Rockson; he
stays.
It will be I against Rockson.
I will it!

“I am the most powerful warrior the ancient ones of this world ever knew! So be it!”

And with these words from Killov’s lips, there was a terrific wind, and the sand blew around, obscuring all. When the wind stopped, Rockson faced his opponent alone. All Rockson’s men, and the body of Tekkamaki, were gone from the scene. Killov still stood there, however.

But Killov was transformed. The KGB leader was barely recognizable. For one thing, there was the matter of his size: he’d been an emaciated figure of a man, stringy, almost skeletal. Now Killov was a muscular nine-foot-tall creature. In place of his two beady dark eyes were three bright yellow ones, like an awful nightmare.

Somehow Rockson could still recognize, in that drooling, green-skinned alien creature’s face, the essential features of Killov. There was no mistaking that voice from the bony-ridged lips of the monster. The voice belonged to Killov: “You see, Rockson,” the Killov-thing rasped, “you see now how strong I am? Do you realize how much fun I will have killing you? This is the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me. You should
feel
the power, the
immense
speed of this new body of mine. I have become Mu-Temm, the Great Warrior. Prepare to die, puny one.”

Rockson couldn’t help but gulp. Somehow his nemesis Killov had neutralized the Rock team’s guns, swept his men God-knows-where, and become some fantastic overmuscled green creature. How? The KGB man had shouted something about becoming an ancient warrior of the asteroid people, and then the winds blew.
Magic,
Chen had said before he’d disappeared. It must be!

The three yellow eyes of the nine-foot-tall creature called Mu-Temm stared down at Rockson. The thing was biding its time. Rockson looked it over for a weak spot. It had clawed hands and feet, folds of armorlike bones and flaps of steel-hard skin all over its lizardlike body. Its muscles flickered with energy. He didn’t see anything he could call weak.

Rockson took a step back, involuntarily, as the thing Killov had become laughed a harsh, raspy laugh and stepped forward.

Twenty-Two

K
illov moved forward slowly, speaking out words of his glory: “Yes, Rockson. A miracle, is it not? By merely wishing so, I am an invincible fighter. I am Mu-Temm, champion of old. Now you die, in a most horrible way. Maybe dismemberment!”

Rockson had no time to think about it; the nine-foot-tall horror was coming at him, trying to back him against a dune.

“I will amuse myself,” Mu-Temm’s voice boomed. “You will not die fast, like Tekkamaki
died.
Oh, no. Not that easy!”

Rock fired, spraying the giant, gleaming metal thing with the rest of his cartridges, hitting every part of the thing’s body.
Nothing.
It smiled. “Time to die, Rockson, but you die slowly, slowly. I
let
your gun fire this time, to show you my strength.”

Rock threw the gun down and dived toward something he saw jammed into the sand a few feet away—a substitute weapon? He prayed that it was. He grabbed the handle. It was a heavy, picklike thing. Surely it might do some damage to this monster confronting him. Primitive, but Chen’s star-knife had worked.

Rock hefted the big pick in his hand. Mu-Temm just stood there, waiting. Rock wondered if Mu-Temm might be slow.
Maybe.
In that case, he could just run around it—no use fighting, if he could just dodge the damned monster.

Mu-Temm moved toward the Doomsday Warrior through a swirling blur of sand that started to pile up around them. Rockson hefted the pick. He braced it against his forearm, knowing that to do any real damage to his enemy he would have to strike quick, hard, and often.

“Give up, Rockson,” the grating-gravely voice came from Mu-Temm’s lips. “You cannot beat me. No human can. Do you not understand?” His slit mouth rose and fell, a poor facsimile of real lips. The eyes blinked, all in unison.

With all his might Rockson swung the pick at the monster’s chest, hoping he’d picked the right moment.

Despite the fury with which it was delivered, the blow did little damage to the monster. He swung again. The best Rockson was able to do was keep the thing off balance.

Every time Mu-Temm reached for Rockson, the Doomsday Warrior dodged back a step and then pushed in again, slamming the business end of the pick up against the shieldlike, hard-skinned chest, managing only to scratch the surface and knock his opponent back a step or two.

“You waste your time, human. Come to me, come and die, Rockson.” To show his ability to inflict that death, the Killov-thing ground his left heel against a stone protruding from the ground. It crumbled to dust. He moved forward more rapidly. “I will squeeze you into pulp,” he intoned maniacally, reaching forward.

Rockson dodged the wildly grasping clawed arms and thudded the business end of the pick against Mu-Temm’s shoulder. But Killov braced, and the weight of the attack did not move him.

Mu-Temm reached forward with incredible speed and caught Rockson’s left shoulder. Digging in, he forced the Doomsday Warrior into screaming agony. The metallic fingers pressed bones, muscles, and nerves together, bugging Rockson’s eyes with pain. The pick slipped from his fingers, bouncing twice and stopping with a thump in the sand several feet away. Rockson did not care. The pain tearing through his shoulder was too immediate, too real, to allow him to worry about anything else. He was caught, which meant he was dead.

Mu-Temm maintained an even pressure, his fingers never tiring. He did not break the skin, not yet. It would be too soon. He wanted to tear the puny human’s shoulder, crush the clavicle and its surrounding deltoid muscles. But that, too, would all be too easy—there would be no fun in that for Colonel Killov.

Rockson’s mind swam through the pain clogging his system, looking for a way out of his situation. Automatically his jerking body thrashed out at Mu-Temm. His right fist struck again and again at the hard skin, and became numb. His feet kicked repeatedly. He knew none of this could help him. Rock tried to see a real way out. His breath came in wild gasps; the cool air tore at his throat as he sucked each lungful in and out, his brain fought against the agony lancing his body. Finally he saw his only chance to break the hold his enemy had on him and put himself back in the ballgame as a player, and not just a memory.

“Shall I kill you now, Rockson?” The KGB leader sounded amused.

“Maybe,” choked Rockson through the pain, “and maybe not just fuckin’ yet, Creep-o.” He put his plan into action.

He hooked his left foot behind the Killov-thing’s right and jerked with all his remaining strength, pulling the monster-man’s foot across the sands, causing him to lose his balance. The pair teetered for a second, then went crashing down, slipping across the landscape. The hold on Rockson’s shoulder loosened. The metallic fingers closed only on torn fabric.

The instant Mu-Temm fell, Rock pulled away, rolling away across the ground. The pain throbbing throughout his body lashed at him, trying to force him to give up. And before he had even stopped rolling, Mu-Temm was on his feet, circling around to finish Rockson off.

Rock dived across the sands, sliding to the ancient pick, and grabbed it with his right hand. Rockson made to stand, but without thinking began to push up with his left hand. The pain shot through him again, dropping him on his stomach. He bit his tongue as his head hit the gritty ground. Through a veil of wildly dancing lights, Rockson could see Mu-Temm coming again for him.

“Get up, Rockson. Get up so I can tear your fingers off and feed them to you, one bloody little human lump at a time.”

Rock scrambled to his feet. “I doubt it, Scuzzball,” he said with bravado. Rock tried the pneumo-pick against Mu-Temm’s joints. Maybe he could disable Mu-Temm even if he couldn’t kill him. Maybe he could break his joints, if not his body. Rockson swung his pick and drove it into Mu-Temm’s right knee joint with all the force he had. Sparks flew from the knee joint; the monster took several involuntary steps back and then fell to his knees.

“
Gotcha,
you KGB bastard,” Rock yelled, encouraged for the first time. “It’s time for the monster mash.”

Pressing his advantage, Rockson drove the pick forward again and again. Rockson varied his attack this time, tried every joint he could find, swinging at the waist, the knees, the flap plating over the ribs—but nothing gave. By now Mu-Temm’s fleshy armor was in shreds, only flapping tatters remained. The pick had torn half a dozen of the monster’s joints. But though damaged, Mu-Temm stood up. No joint had broken, unfortunately.