Rocket heard the sound while still descending the ladder: nothing less than Armageddon.
"Great." Sweet Pea climbed down above her. "Sounds like someone got there before us. Rocket! You've got that look on your face. Wait for me before you go charging in."
"I will, I—" Rocket reached the bottom, stepped away from the ladder. "Will."
Before her, a tunnel led off to the left, a dark area lit by torches mounted along the walls.
"For exactly one second," Rocket added. "Then you get another workout keeping up with me."
Her sister jumped off, landed beside her.
"Ready?"
"Ready."
The two knocked their fists together, and headed up the tunnel.
They arrived in the cavern just in time to see a piece of torn blazing flesh flying at them. They dove to the floor. The shrapnel hit the wall behind them and incinerated into ash.
"What was that?" Rocket, on her belly, wondered aloud.
"I think that was a monster hand." Sweet Pea squinted.
The brawl between machine and beast thundered in a storm of flames, screams of rage and the rapid-fire clattering of Gatling guns, drowned out occasionally by an exploding missile.
A voice sizzled and burst over the girls' headsets. "Rocket? Sweet Pea?"
"Babydoll?" Sweet Pea tried to glimpse her comrade through the doomsday scene. "Where are you?"
"I'm by the gate into the Ruler's quarters. Can you help Amber?"
"That's Amber in there?" Rocket tilted her head. "How'd she ever score that thing?"
"Ladies, this is important. That balrog's like a hydra. That's why it has six heads now." All roaring in a chorus like lost souls, teeth snapping at the nimble mech.
"Maybe," Babydoll went on, "if you could distract it long enough for Amber to position herself for a good shot, she can fire a couple of missiles at the door—"
"I hope you're under cover, Baby!" Sweet Pea shouted above the clamor. "We don't want to blow you up, too!"
Then she thought of something. "Rocket!"
"I got the idea first."
"Not this time, you didn't! Amber! Let me get that thing's attention..." Although, since she herself was but an insect compared to that armored behemoth, she wasn't sure if this was possible. But she ran out across the balrog's path, yelling and firing off her M-16, raking two of its faces. "Hey, hey, freak!"
Rocket, flame-thrower in hand, moved in.
"I see your toy, Rocket." Amber. "Ready?"
"Go!" Rocket had it aimed.
Amber fired one of her apparently inexhaustible finger missiles. It burst the top of the beast's outermost head, but it took a second missile to destroy the thing altogether.
Rocket ran up, hit the nozzle and fired a stream of flame at the stump. Her aim was true; when she finished (and dodged a swipe of its paw), a charred, cauterized stump remained. Five, ten seconds passed; no new head showed any sign of growing back.
"Nice." Amber withstood a blow from the thing's other hand, the mech shivering. "Let's do that again!"
It took painfully long it seemed, with the time the girls had left, and many more than five missiles. But in time Amber blew, exploded and detonated away the creature's remaining heads, and Rocket proved true with her jets of cauterizing flame.
At last the creature fell with one last earthshaking crash, twitched an arm, a leg, and lay still.
A hush, and a haze of gray smoke hung over the place. The quiet was almost eerie. To Babydoll it seemed like a year had passed since she'd been in a place that was actually quiet, where explosions and the thunder of battle weren't assaulting her ears.
Rocket and Sweet Pea ran to join Babydoll at the great gate.
"Amber!" Babydoll kept her voice even. "Hope you've got some missiles left."
"My readout tells me I have two. That should do it. Stand aside, ladies."
They scrambled for cover.
Fwoosh. Fwoosh. The weapons shot forth in clouds of white smoke. Two blasts sounded; but when the smoke cleared, the gate, though dented and scarred, stood firm.
Babydoll stood and watched, her mind a frustrating blank.
Just thirty seconds remained.
"Woah." Rocket raised her M-16. "Heads up, ladies!"
Babydoll saw it. Her training checked her jaw from dropping, or sputtering out anything like, "How did they ever get here?"
"I got the one on the right." Rocket stared down her sight. "Sweet Pea?"
"The one on the left is mine." She charged, ready to deal out another swift kick.
That left the one in the middle. Babydoll's pistol flashed out.
"Guys, guys!" Running up behind those infernal walking machines, jumping between them and her comrades, was—
"Blondie!" Amber's voice blared over all their headsets. Babydoll winced.
"What are you doing with these?" Rocket, with clear reluctance, lowered her rifle.
"Oh. I get it." Sweet Pea. "You've taken them prisoner."
Blondie pushed her goggles up a little further up on her head. "What's with you people? I thought you'd freak. You're acting like...it's almost as if you've seen them before." Then: "How come you're all gawking? Did you run into them on the way down, too? What?"
"No time," Babydoll snapped. "Blondie, we need to get through this door," she motioned with her pistol, "and even Amber's last two missiles couldn't do more than dent it."
"Ah. Maybe we can help with that."
"'We?'" Rocket looked at the chrome soldiers, that reflected her smudged grimacing face back at her.
"I'm their new master."
"What?" Sweet Pea's jaw nearly hit the floor.
"All right. Now," Blondie addressed her three minions of polished metal. "We need to get through there. Can you help?"
The robots snapped into action—they were fast, Babydoll recalled. In perfect unison they sprang to the door, bent down, and placed their hands on it. Lights red and green brightened beneath their outstretched fingers, which tapped and drummed as if playing an invisible keyboard.
The gate shivered, then began rumbling upward like a drawbridge. The robots straightened up and stepped back.
"Crap!" Rocket scrambled for cover. It was rising too fast, leaving everyone exposed. At least the smoke still drifting in the chamber would partially obscure them. She crouched down on one side.
Babydoll took up a position on the other. "What did they do?" she yelled to Blondie behind her.
The girl shrugged. "Couldn't tell you. I guess they knew the combination, or tapped into the ship's system and cracked it."
"All right, ladies." Amber's voice again; the dragon mech stomped up behind them. "Everyone ready for this?"
Babydoll waited, pistol raised.
I've been waiting for this, she thought, since the beginning. Waiting and praying and fighting for it, thinking of it day and night, since the moment I saw mother dead and him smirking with a satisfaction he didn't bother to hide.
High up on his throne, the Ruler sat and watched the gate rise. Smoke drifted underneath it into his chambers. He hated dirty, smelly things like smoke. No crewman would ever dare light a cigarette in his presence, for they knew it would mean instant arrest, execution, and being thrown over the side. Yet there it was.
By his side, the Investor was throwing a category-five tantrum. His belly, his jowls and his thousand gems jiggled; his fat arms flailed. "What did I tell you, what did I tell you what did I tell you?"
"Quiet." The Ruler was trying to think. The gate rose higher every moment, more of that awful smoke wafting in—
Forget about the smoke! Think! Think!
"I TOLD YOU, I TOLD YOU!"
That was it. No more. The Ruler felt it coming, he could not stop it, his hand reached down into a compartment inside his right armrest and drew out a .357 Magnum, raising it until it was pointed at his friend's perspiring face. The Investor screamed.
"NOOOO, DON'T!"
A shot rang out. But not from the Magnum—this report issued from across the cavern, reverberating around the vast space. A spark shot up from the Magnum as it flew from the Ruler's hand.
He turned and looked toward the direction of the shot, knowing already what he would see.
The blond girl stood there with pistol leveled. Smoke (more smoke!) curled up from its muzzle.
"He's not yours," she said. "He's mine."
Two of her fellow Amazons, wearing goggles and a thrown-back hood, stepped up to her left. Another in a field nurse's cap positioned herself on the girl's right. And marching up behind them, each step like muffled thunder—yes. Great. The dragon mech.
How could so many things go wrong?
The Investor waggled a finger at him. "I told you!"
The Ruler batted that nauseating face with the back of his hand. "Ow!" Finally the fat man shut up.
"Ladies. Delighted you're here..." he cleared his throat, stood up, swept an arm down to the dock off to his right where the Hellraiser steamed in its berth. "You're just in time. See that missile hanging over the submarine? That's the last one to load, and then my submarine is off to make history!
"To load it," he continued, picking up a crystal decanter and pouring himself a goblet of clear bubbly, "will take no more than a few seconds. All the crane has to do is slide it down into the tube. The Hellraiser's engines are running, and her personnel are all at their stations."
"Call it off." Babydoll, pistol aimed at him, advanced. The others followed behind.
"Or what? You'll blow me away?"
The man's left hand shot out and grabbed the quivering Investor by the collar, pulling the man up and in front of him. His right hand held the goblet during this time, and spilled none of it. He took a sip.
"Blow him away! Maybe you shouldn't have tipped your hand there, little girl!" It was one of the rare times when he allowed his lip to curl back, his voice to truly snarl. "Shut up," he hissed at the Investor, who was bawling like a little boy.
"Besides, ladies," the Ruler went on after draining his glass, "did you really think I'd leave myself unguarded down here?"
And he shouted, "All squads, come to attention!"
They stormed out from everywhere, from the left and the right and from beneath the Ruler's throne where more great caverns may have criss-crossed the depths of the ship.
"I know a thing or two." The Ruler poured himself another glass. "I've looked into your histories. Didn't you think I would do that? Well, ladies, now you've got yourself a reunion. Say hello to them all!"
Babydoll didn't really hear him. She didn't need to. She saw it all, the players swarming into the chamber: the steam-powered zombies in German uniforms; the filthy, slobbering orcs she had battled at the dragon's castle; and a clattering battalion of mechanized gunmen from the hijacked train, and whose ex-comrades had just let her into this place.
At least the hordes included no demon-samurai. She had vanquished all three of those.
But the dragon—well, there was more than one dragon in the world. And one came grumbling forth, stepping on and crushing a zombie-soldier or two like beer cans as it went, steam hissing out beneath its clawed feet. This made little difference, for the girl had quickly lost count of the number of foes rising to this challenge.
Then, following it, crawled a second dragon, belching fire.
Next up: the Grand Finale.