38. The Horse and His Rider
[Last Time: Susan, Cockroach, and Renee have managed to disable the weapon while Monger and the rest crippled the ship's engines. Now Gallaxhar has appeared, in a power suit a hundred feet tall, to take his revenge….]
"Renee, get out of there," Susan yelled as Gallaxhar's power suit slowly advanced on them. "And the rest of you! Take cover!"
"Nuh-uh, we're here to help," Link said. "By the time we're finished with him, Gallaxhar's going to need a walking frame for real!"
"Indeed," Cockroach said. "Time to turn that oversized walking frame into a really dented oversized walking frame! Uh, that's just a phrase I picked up somewhere," he added quickly when no one laughed. "Sorry."
"No!" Gallaxhar shouted. He punched a control, and force-field beams flickered into life, confining the other monsters. "This is between me and Suuuusan! If any of you interfere, I shall press this button on my console and your friend Xalthazar will die!"
"Xalthy! He's alive?" Susan gasped.
"For now," Gallaxhar said, cackling. "He's not as mobile as he once was, unfortunately. Not after the removal of all but two of his tentacles. He likes you bipeds so much, I made him one!"
Susan felt ill. "You… you sick sadistic bastard!" she shouted. Hefting the massive beam in her hands, she hurled it like a javelin at Gallaxhar's exoskeleton. The alien made a quick move, and a huge robotic arm grabbed it out of the air.
"Oh, Susan, Susan," he said. "That was foolish. Here, catch!"
He whipped the beam back at Susan, and she barely had time to duck out of the way as it whistled past her and slammed into the floor, penetrating half its length. She glanced at the beam, still quivering where it was stuck, and blanched.
"Impressive, don't you think?" Gallaxhar called. "I had this exo-suit made specially, you know. It weighs six hundred tons, has foot-thick armour, and punches harder than even you can! I was going to use it to play with you once your planet was demolished, but never mind—I get to enjoy that pleasure now, instead!"
Scowling, Susan grabbed the beam and wrenched it out of the floor with a tremendous screeching of metal on metal.
"Believe me, the pleasure will be all mine," she snarled. "General, stay back! You too, Renee!" she added, glancing back at her friends. She aimed a quick reassuring smile at Cockroach, who was chewing on his cuffs from nervousness. "Don't worry, Jacques. I can take him."
"Such confidence," Gallaxhar purred. "We'll see how long it lasts…."
Darting to the side to avoid a lunging robotic claw arm, Susan swung her beam at one of its legs. She yelped in pain as the beam hit, stinging her hands and bending under the force of the blow, but the leg of Gallaxhar's exo-suit was only slightly dented on one edge.
A massive blow to her back sent her flying, winded, as one of Gallaxhar's robotic arms smacked into her. She tucked and rolled, then bounced up instantly, trying to ignore the pain. She would have to keep a better watch on those, she realised. But she couldn't affect him by throwing things. She would have to get in close. Speed was key. Speed and precision. She would unleash the monster inside her, but remain in control.
Darting to one side, she dashed forwards, then side-stepped behind Gallaxhar. The top part of the suit spun around, rapidly followed by the long powerful arms. One missed her by mere inches as she threw herself out of the way, rolling quickly as Gallaxhar attempted to stamp on her. The floor buckled under the robot's massive weight, and Susan leapt up, flinging herself onto the robot's body, where she tried to climb higher, jumping aside as the robot claw snapped at her. She flung herself to one side and just managed to stop from falling down again by grabbing a projection, hearing Gallaxhar's laugh in her ears as she slammed back into the side.
Ignoring his taunting, Susan started to jump up to try and reach the robot's head, but suddenly found herself caught, grabbed by the massive pincers of the robot. Before she had time to react, she found herself being thrown bodily across the chamber. Twisting desperately, she was just able to brace herself before she slammed into the wall and fell to the floor, groaning in pain.
Glancing up, she saw Gallaxhar striding towards her and made a dash between his legs, grabbing one of the arms as she did in an attempt to pull it under and trip him. However the power suit torso merely spun around vertically at the hips, Gallaxhar laughing like a madman as he rose to the top again.
"Susan, really! I've thought of everything! You cannot defeat me!"
"I can," she retorted, breathing hard. "And I will!"
She sprang out of the way of one of the arms, then jumped on it, avoiding the claw. Pounding on the armour plating, she tried to knock it loose, expose the inner workings, but she could barely even dent it. Then she found herself being picked up by a leg and ripped off the robot. Before she could react, she was slammed bodily onto the floor, lifted up, and thrown onto the floor again. Brutal, merciless pain exploded over her. Aching all over, she tried to push herself up, but her left arm gave way as a fresh jolt of agony shot through her. Her shoulder was not working—dislocated, she suspected. The throbbing spread from her shoulder throughout her body, and her arm hung uselessly as she scrambled to her feet, desperately avoiding the powerful arms of Gallaxhar's robot suit.
"You're doing great!" Bob called, giving her six simultaneous thumbs up.
"I know I am," Gallaxhar purred. "I should have done this ages ago!" he screeched, cackling. "Oh, this is so much more fun than just leaving you tied up, don't you agree?"
Susan just glared at him, trying to spot a weakness in his suit. Rushing across the floor, she grabbed the bent beam and, dodging the flailing arms, managed to ram it into the knee joint of the power suit's right leg. Gallaxhar took a step, then stopped with a great grinding of gears. For a moment, Susan stood still, hoping, but then the beam shook and snapped, crushed and broken. Gallaxhar pulled out the remains, and laughed as he twisted the beam into a pretzel.
"Power! Such power!" he shouted, raising his foot and slamming it down where Susan had been standing half a second before. "Ah, Susan, I finally understand how why you resisted me so; how much you must love your power! I finally understand why you went on that rampage, killed all those people! They were vermin, bugs beneath your feet, like you are to me!"
Susan bit her lip, furious but determined not to rise to his bait. Her shoulder was still throbbing painfully, her left arm useless. But she only needed one arm to punch his bulbous jellyfish head in. Taking a step back, she suddenly jumped high, soaring into the air and landing awkwardly on the head of Gallaxhar's robot suit. Trying to balance, she pounded her right fist into the neck joints, probing for a weakness.
The head spun, catching her hand and dragging her, pulling her off balance, and then she found herself grabbed again, and pulled off. Her hand was still caught in the neck mechanism, and for one terrible instant Susan felt as if it would be ripped off, but it pulled free, scraping out bloody and raw as stinging agony shot through her. She let out a scream of pain, holding her injured hand close as Gallaxhar spun her about by the leg, faster and faster, and then suddenly stepped forward. Susan's body slammed into a support rib so hard the metal dented, her head smacking against it with a sickening crack. Dazed, she crashed awkwardly to the ground, almost blinded by pain.
"Susan, are you okay?"
"Renee?" she whispered. "I can't see you…."
"I'm invisible," the ghost said. "Don't give up, please! Cockroach is working on taking the force field down, so the others can help."
"No..." Susan whispered. "What… about Xalthy?"
"You're more important, Monger said."
Susan managed a faint smile. "Not really…."
"Monger says so. And so does the world. You're our hero. And you'll win, I know you will! Look! His robot thing's damaged!"
"I think… I am too…" Susan got out, slowly getting to her feet as Gallaxhar advanced on her, the feet of his exo-suit slamming heavily on the ground. Then she saw some fluid leaking from the robot, and smiled grimly. Renee was right. She had done some damage, after all. She could win… if Gallaxhar did not get bored with playing with her, like a cat a helpless mouse.
She coughed, spitting up blood, and stared warily at him, wondering which way he would strike. One robot arm swung down, reaching for her. She dodged it, keeping an eye on it, then let out a strangled scream as the other arm grabbed her. The claw fastened around her neck, and lifted her off the ground. Her left arm useless, her right hand raw and tender, she was powerless to resist as she was brought up to the power suit head, where Gallaxhar was sneering at her, his bulbous blue face almost close enough to touch.
"Oh, this was too easy," he said. "Just a small squeeze, and you will be decapitated! Do feel free to beg for mercy—not that it will be granted, mind. I just want to hear you beg."
Unable to speak, she glared from reddened eyes, and spat out a mouthful of blood at him. Gallaxhar hissed in fury as it splattered over his face. Wiping it off, he made a quick motion over the controls, then bared his teeth in a twisted smile.
"Time to end this game, Suuuusan," he snarled. "Take a look! I shall throw you into the sun you were so desperate to save!"
He started walking his power suit, and Susan was able to see, out of the corner of her eye, a large hatch on the floor opening up. As they got closer, she could see that the hatch opened into a deep vertical shaft, with another hatch at the far end. With a jolt of horror, she suddenly realised it was an airlock, and he was going to throw her out into space.
Susan could feel her neck constricting, the pressure on her throat increasing. She twisted desperately, then spotted some hydraulic control cables snaking around the robot's wrist. Forcing her throbbing right hand to move, she reached over and ripped them out, and then, trying to ignore the fresh agony, she smashed her fist into the relatively weaker joint area.
She let out a brief scream of pure pain. Her hand felt like she had set it on fire, but she managed to pull out a hydraulic cable, and the claws loosened enough for her to drop down. Susan crashed onto the floor by the airlock, fighting for breath, lying there hunched over and hugging her injured hand to her chest. She coughed again, spitting out more blood, its familiar metallic tang filling her mouth. Her breath was coming in rasps, and she felt light-headed.
"Susan!" Renee screamed. "Look out!"
She twisted around just in time to see Gallaxhar's massive robot foot, nearly twenty feet long, come down on her, crushing her. The pressure was immense, and she struggled to force it up with her right arm, trying to breathe. Her arm was pressing a great dent in the thick metal. She could prevent it crushing her, but found herself unable to force it back. And her arm was gradually weakening. Slowly, inexorably, his right foot came closer and closer, hovering right above Susan's head. It couldn't end like this. It just couldn't…..
As her arm finally gave way she twisted around, blinding pain exploding in her as the foot come down on her skull with a horrendous pressure. She could feel the floor buckling under her head, then splitting apart, the sharp edges lacerating her face. Desperately kicking, she managed to hook one of her legs around the robot limb. Pulling with her leg and pushing at the sole of the foot with her arm, she was able to slowly twist the power suit leg. The sound of stressed metal and motors filled the huge chamber as Susan drew on every last reserve of her strength to stay alive, and then, with a tremendous bang, the knee joint sheered off and Gallaxhar slowly toppled over sideways, tumbling over the edge into the deep airlock chamber, shrieking in fear as he went.
Susan felt the pressure lift, and heard the din as he fell. Gasping in relief, she pulled herself up as the others came rushing across. Her entire body was in agony. throbbing, and she found herself weeping from a mixture of pain, relief, and delayed fear.
"Susan! Susan!" Cockroach was shouting. "You did it!"
"We need medical aid immediately!" Monger called into his microphone as he flew towards her. "Somebody! Anybody!"
"It's all right!" Link yelled. "It's over!"
Susan started to smile, then was suddenly yanked over the edge, a power suit claw around her ankle. Scrambling to find a grip, her right hand found the hole her head had made in the floor and held on as the immense weight of Gallaxhar's power suit, hanging off her ankle, threatened to rip her limbs from their sockets. Terrified, she desperately tried to move her left arm, and found, to her relief, that she could, with effort. But as soon as she tried to put any of her weight on it she was almost blinded by the sudden shooting agony.
"You… thought you had defeated me!" came Gallaxhar's voice. "Think again!"
Horrified, she looked down and watched as a hatch opened on the power suit head and Gallaxhar clambered out, dressed in a spacesuit. He hopped over to a ladder, and started climbing it. When he reached level with her face, he looked over and smiled. He was so close she could have reached out and choked him if her right hand had been free. She glared at him in pure fury, seeing every little detail of his repulsive face.
Gallaxhar just smiled even more broadly, and winked at her with his leftmost eye.
"Hang in there!" he said, laughing, and slapped a hand over a control panel. An alarm started blaring, green and purple lights strobing, as the outer airlock doors slowly opened. The air started rushing out, its speed increasing rapidly until it was a gale, sucking down at the six-hundred ton power suit, the claw still locked around Susan's ankle. Unable to pull herself up, unable to catch the alien, she was utterly helpless as the infinite blackness yawned open beneath her. And she felt herself gradually slipping further down, her grip weakening. Terrified, her mind almost paralyzed by fear, she could only watch helplessly as Gallaxhar reached the top of the ladder and climbed carefully out of the airlock, bracing himself against the gale. Then he leaned back over and smiled.
"Goodbye, my dear Suuuusan!" he called, the radio in his suit carrying his voice to speakers in the chamber. Then he glanced around. The Earth monsters were trying to haul Susan up, but to no avail. Unholstering his gun, he shot at them, causing them to flatten themselves on the floor behind Susan's arm like the pathetic cowards he knew they were. Susan was the only adversary he was concerned about. And soon she would be gone as well, and he would be free to fulfil his destiny and rule the cosmos. He could see her hand gripping the steel floor, which was slowly, inexorably peeling away under the strain. She was now only holding on with two fingers. Smiling, he skittered over to her bloody hand and gave it a kick, laughing as he heard Susan yelp in pain.
Jolted by Gallaxhar, her hand released, and slid over the edge as Susan let out a scream of terror. The alien laughed, carefully moving to the edge as the wind whipped past him. Then he hissed in frustration. Susan had managed to rip a hole in the airlock wall with her battered hand, a long bloody streak leading to it. She was still there, still taunting him with her existence. It was so completely infuriating. Every plan he had, she was always there, foiling him. He would not permit that again. She had to die. Now.
"Oh, Gaaaaallaxhar," came a soft voice behind him.
He turned, puzzled, seeing no one. Then a blinding white light exploded in front of him, swiftly fading to reveal a young human girl. Except she was not a real girl: this was the small female he had inadvertently managed to transform into an energy being. A most interesting phenomenon, and one he would have to study more, experiment on more. Once Susan was dead.
"You? What do you want? Have you come to say goodbye to your friend?" he sneered.
"You killed my father," the ghost said in a soft voice, barely audible over the wind. She smiled, her eyes glowing red. "You killed me. And now… I will kill you…."
Gallaxhar snorted. "You? An energy being? You can't touch me! You can't hurt me!" He broke off abruptly as she changed her appearance: before his eyes, her face transformed into a skull, grinning at him as her eyes blazed red, then she suddenly jumped towards him and vanished.
A strange tingling sensation shot through his body. He tried to move, but found himself paralyzed. He started to say something, but found his mouth wasn't working properly. Then, to his horror, he found his tentacles slowly moving, taking him to the edge of the airlock. Unable to scream, to cry out, or to do anything, he watched, utterly powerless, as his body slowly walked to the edge, paused for a moment as the gale howled past him and out into the void, and then jumped.
Falling, he got a glimpse of the dead girl again, then her face faded, vanishing completely. He could feel his body again, and, almost insane with fear, he lunged out with a tentacle. He just managed to catch a projection on the side of the shaft, swinging down and crashing painfully into the wall.
"Nooooo! Help me! I command you!"
Startled, Susan looked up, seeing him dangling. He was hanging off the shaft wall with one tentacle, but was slowly slipping off under his weight, dragged down by the howling gale. Almost instinctively, she reached out her left hand, seeing him stretch out to grab it, fear and desperation, mixed with hope, on his face. Then she stopped, hesitating, and slowly, deliberately, pulled her hand back.
"Suuuuuusan!" he screamed, his grip finally giving out. She watched, her face cold and dispassionate, as the wind took him and sent him tumbling down, past his power suit, and in less than a second he was at the end of the shaft and whirling in the infinite blackness of space.
"What the hell just happened?" Link asked, standing dumbfounded, bracing his feet as the gale whipped his fins about. "Did he just jump?"
"Sure looks like it," Renee said, appearing behind him.
"Shut the airlock!" Monger shouted. Link vaulted down the ladder and slammed his hand onto the airlock control, while Cockroach scrambled down to Susan's ankle, and started ripping out control cables and hydraulics. After a few moments the claw finally loosed its hold, the power suit tumbling out into the vastness of space, lost for ever. The gale started to die down, but then Susan finally lost her grip and fell backwards, down towards the open airlock. It was closing, but too slowly. She got a final glimpse of Cockroach's horrified face, still clinging to her leg, before she tumbled around and all she could see was a sea of stars.
Then she felt a gentle pull, and found herself bathed in a bright glow. Susan's body slowly rose up, floating in the air, scarlet blood dripping down and sparkling like rubies in the light. She realized that she was caught in a tractor beam, generated by a hovering vehicle of some sort, and it was pulling her up, out of the airlock chamber. She was safe. She was… finally… safe. She let herself go limp, and swiftly lost consciousness in the tractor beam.
"Gallaxhar to the Vaalbaran ship! Gallaxhar to anyone! Respond! Launch a rescue probe immediately!" he shouted into his radio. "I demand you obey me!"
There was no answer. He called again, and again, and again, but there was never any answer. There never would be any answer. It was just him, and the darkness that surrounded him. For ever.
Several hours later he was so far from the ship that he could no longer see it against the blackness. He was utterly alone, spinning gently as he drifted through space, far beyond any hope of rescue.
Susan's eyes fluttered open. "Where… am I?" she asked, looking around. She was in a large room, lying on a huge soft mattress of some sort. The others were gathered around, talking to some aliens.
"You're awake!" Cockroach called, leaping up from his chair and bounding over to her. "How… how do you feel?"
"Fine, I think," Susan said, gingerly flexing her shoulder. She looked at her healed hand, and gave a bitter laugh. "Once again, I get the shit kicked out of me then get healed by alien doctors, just in time to get it kicked out again."
Cockroach laughed, beaming at her. "Not this time! We've won! You've won!"
Susan looked at him sharply, then over at Monger, who was standing a few paces behind Cockroach. "For real? What happened to Gallaxhar? Did you capture him?"
Monger shook his head. "He's out in space somewhere, being pulled down into the sun. The Vaalbarans estimate he'll reach it in a week. If his air lasts that long."
"We can't rescue him?"
"Rescue him? Are you mad?" Link asked.
Monger shook his head again. "The Vaalbarans won't send anyone out. And Meihem can't track him. I'm afraid he's escaped justice, after all."
"No, I think he got exactly what he deserved," Renee said, and gave a short laugh.
Susan looked at her young friend with a puzzled expression. "So just what happened to him?"
"I'm not sure," Cockroach admitted. "It looked to me like he just decided to jump. He suddenly walked to the edge, and jumped."
"Very strange," Renee agreed. "I don't know what got into him," she added, giggling.
"At any rate," Monger said, looking at Susan, who was staring at Renee, her eyes wide. "You need some rest. Monsters, with me."
"Wait," Susan called. "Uh, Renee, could you stay for a minute?"
Renee glanced at Monger, who nodded, then left with the others.
"What is it, Suze?" Renee asked, floating on her back level with Susan's head.
"You didn't happen to… uh, possess Gallaxhar, did you?"
"Possess him?" the ghost asked, her expression one of complete wide-eyed innocence.
"You know what I mean. Did you make him jump to his death?"
Renee shrugged. "Maybe. So what if I did? He deserved it! What, after everything he did to you, you would let him go?"
"Uh, no," Susan said. "Of course not. He would have been tried, and imprisoned."
"Imprisoned?" Renee spat. "He deserved the death penalty! He had to die!"
"So you just decided to kill him?"
"He killed me!" Renee looked over at the recumbent giantess. "Are you mad at me?"
Susan sighed. "No, not mad. Not as such. But… once you kill someone, once you take a life in hatred… it changes you. You can never go back to who you were."
"I'm dead," Renee spat. "Fat chance of going back to who I was."
"That's not what I mean," Susan said. She looked over at Renee, and sighed again, remembering how she had snatched away the hand that could have saved him. She was as guilty as Renee, or more so. She was guilty of murder, cold-blooded murder. And… she could live with it. She told herself that. She could live it. She would live with it. They would live with it together. Because that was what it meant to be a monster, to do those terrible things that had to be done to protect the world.
She gave the small ghost a quick smile. "Never mind. Forget it: you did what you had to do. Can you leave me now? I'm still really tired."
"Okay, catch you later," Renee said, and drifted out. What on Earth was Susan on about? Not going back? Being changed? She didn't feel any different. She was still who she always was.
Then she shuddered as she remembered Gallaxhar's screams, and how it had felt teetering on the edge of the abyss with him. The abyss where the monster dwelled. Perhaps… she had changed. Just a little.
His spacesuit had been warming up for hours, unable to radiate all the heat pouring on him from the sun. Soon it would be hot enough to cook him, literally roasting him alive. Already he could feel the burning pain starting, and his air was getting thin and stale. He was covered in sweat, desperately thirsty, and faint from lack of oxygen. Almost insane with anger and hatred, he knew that he would cook before he died of carbon monoxide poisoning.
Desperate to live, he held on as long as he could, screaming Susan's name in fury into his useless radio, gasping in pain, until the heat and burning became unbearable. Every moment of his life had been spent in the pursuit of power, but now he only had the power to make one simple choice: how to die. And even that was being taken away from him. He had nothing. There was only one final act of defiance left, defiance to a universe that he had hated all his life.
With a final wordless shriek of impotent rage, Gallaxhar took a deep breath and cracked open his helmet. Pain consumed him as his lungs ruptured and his damp skin boiled. His eyeballs froze over, leaving him staring unblinking into space. The last thing he saw, as his body slowly rotated into its blinding glare, was the sun, slowly growing larger as it dragged him to his doom; ensnaring him with the mercilessly cold equations of physics, which he had spent a lifetime trying to subvert for his own power.
And which had, in the end, finally claimed him.
.
KNOWTES:
The title is taken from the Bible, KJV, Exodus 15: "Sing ye to the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea." About how Moses had lured the poor innocent Egyptians into a trap, killing them just because they wanted to get their rightful property back. It references triumph, and it also references Gallaxhar as the rider of his "horse" now "thrown into the sea" of space. Along with the "horse" (of corse)…. I love trying to find the perfect quote to use for a chapter title….
Yes, the final battle and victory is blatantly pinched from Aliens, but treated very differently. The main thing was how Gallaxhar dies—Renee leads him to his death, and Susan very deliberately does not save him (inspired by Xena not saving Callisto). I didn't want her to actually kill him—I felt that was a little out of character. But she is angry enough to not save him. And Renee, of course, hates him for killing her father (and her) with his pumpkin experiment.
The green and purple alarm lights are just a different culture's idea of emergency colours.
While Susan's been terribly battered in this battle (as in all her others: I'm not a Susan-hating sadist, I swear!), her falling unconscious in the tractor beam is something that seems to have been established in canon, and certainly has been established in my own works. I assume it's a side-effect of the energies or something.
The phrase "cold equations" is taken from the famous SF story of that name, about how physics in space doesn't care who or what you are. It's a slightly flimsy premise, but a powerful story. Read it.
Now that we have finally seen the end of Gallaxhar (and he is dead, very dead indeed, don't worry), we can get into the denouement and then have some serious heart-warming fluff to wrap the story up. No more fights for Susan!