Nineteen
Fright Zone
Planet Etheria
3 September 2017
Deep in the heart of the barren wasteland that was the Fright Zone, the woman once known as Lorina Lightspinner studied the footage transmitted back to base from the patrolling scout drones. All the drones carried cameras in the crown of their heads and transmitted the images back to dedicated computers. It was the scouts who provided the most information.
A creature with red skin, teardrop-shaped eyes with the irises of a cat, and pointed ears approached. Modulok, Hordak's chief technician, had arrived in time to study the footage along with Hordak's head magician.
"Anything good?" Modulok asked, not really concerned about the answer.
"What do you want, Modulok?" Shadow Weaver hissed.
"The same as you. To see what happened to the scouting party sent out to find the starship that entered our atmosphere."
I doubt that, Shadow Weaver thought. Modulok was after technology to add to his collection so he could play with new designs. New weapons of war. The new drones Modulok had constructed were the most advanced yet. They would give those infernal Val-kyrie fits once they were deployed. Shadow, on the other hand, was after magic. Specifically, anything that would enhance her own powers.
Back when she had trained with Castaspella under the great mage Norwyn, Lorina had yearned for greater power. She had betrayed the Council of Kings to the Horde in exchange for being imbued with powerful dark magic. Norwyn had managed to disrupt the power transfer, but not without cost. Lorina had been hideously deformed as a result of only having a third of the dark power transferred. Over the years, the woman now calling herself Shadow Weaver had regained her beauty, but she was still irrevocably changed by the experience. With the restoration of her appearance, gone were the loose-fitting red robes. Shadow had adopted new robes that were more form-fitting, incorporated stiff plates that resisted magical attacks, and exposed dark gray skin from upper chest up to her chin. Many humanoids would find Shadow Weaver desirable. Her black heart and lust for more magical power dissuaded potential suitors.
Shadow Weaver did not like Hordak's tendency to favor technology over magic. He used his own innate magical abilities to create technological weapons. Ever since barely surviving his brief rebellion against Horde Prime a couple years back, Hordak's quest for technology had only been magnified. She had no doubt that once he saw the footage transmitted from the drones, he would want whatever technology these people from Earth were rumored to possess.
The pair watched as the footage began rolling on the central display monitor. Angles from the other drones in the scout force were similarly displayed on the secondary monitors to either side of the main one.
Horde troops turned out the villagers and gathered them in center of the small town. General Drax interrogated them about the location for the alien ship that penetrated Etherian airspace the previous evening. The villagers denied having any knowledge of an alien ship or visitors from another world. Drax did not believe them. He issued the usual threats against family and friends unless someone came forth with information about the intruders.
Events progressed in their usual fashion. Since no one spoke up in answer to Drax's demands, a menacing scout drone stepped forward to grab a villager who would become the first example. The metallic hand never landed as a globe of blue energy hurtled out of the tree line and impacted the drone's center mass. Tendrils of lightning crackled and sparkled all over the six-foot frame. The machine's electrical systems overloaded, the gyro used to balance and control its movements seized. It was left a dead statue.
Modulok and Shadow Weaver blinked when the pair of humans stepped from the underbrush. It took a few moments for them to realize that the woman was, in fact, the Sorceress of Grayskull. It wasn't readily apparent since she wasn't dressed in the red-orange, white and blue costume the guardian of Castle Grayskull was known for. Modulok gawked when the pair tapped the medallions hanging around their necks, causing the power armor to form around their bodies. It looked as if they were being swallowed up by some mechanized disease.
That's when the attack really began.
Other humans opened up from the perimeter while the Sorceress and her companion shredded the troopers and drones on their side of the village. Shadow Weaver watched the Sorceress' movements and use of the magic staff, now broken into two pieces and wielded like battleaxes. Watching her arch rival crush a drone in an impressive display of magical ability sent a shiver down Weaver's spine.
Where does she get such power? The witch wondered.
Shadow Weaver and Modulok jumped when a deep rumbling voice came from behind the duo.
"That is very aggressive even for the Sorceress," Hordak said softly, taking in everything unfolding from the different perspectives displayed on the monitors.
"With her on Etheria, that means Castle Grayskull is undefended," Modulok pointed out.
"Fool," Hordak snapped. "The castle was secure after He-man vanished for five years. It is even more secure since what King Hiss calls the Battle of Castle Grayskull. No one is exactly sure how, but the Sorceress managed to use energy artillery cannon blasts to re-energize the castle's defenses." The chief technician winced at the scolding.
Hordak continued to watch the drone footage in silence. Modulok and Shadow Weaver resumed watching as well, but their silence was an awkward one.
"What is that?" Modulok suddenly blurted.
The playback had reached the point where a trooper was propelled backward out of a shack. Moments later, a bipedal creature with carapace-like armor stomped on the prone robot, finishing the job. That was bad enough; watching as the creature shrugged off a flurry of laser bolts meant to disable it was even more disturbing. Watching in horrified amazement as it defeated a ring of a dozen robots that had switched to swords after a laser salvo had done exactly nothing, Modulok vowed to find out where this creature came from and see about weaponizing it for the Horde as these inferior humans from a backwater world had apparently done.
The soldiers spread out around the village and finished off the remaining Horde scout force in short order. The final playback ended with a brief shot of the clawed power armor transforming into an impressive fifteen-foot battlesuit, which took off in pursuit of something. Or someone.
"So, they have returned," Hordak rumbled.
"Who are they?" Modulok ventured to ask.
"They call themselves Guardians. They are high tech battlesuits that had been designed by a race of people now gone from the galaxy. It was thought that Horde Prime had destroyed them in the final year of the Great War," Hordak explained, uncharacteristically informative.
"How do you know this?" Shadow Weaver asked. "That would have been during our imprisonment in Despondos."
Hordak nodded. "After Horde Prime released us, I dug through the records of Horde activities while we were…away. Especially those that he thought no one knew about or knew to go looking for. King Hiss underestimated their power. But powerful as they are, these Guardians do not have the power to defeat all of the Fright Zone."
"How many are there?" Shadow Weaver asked, already planning to investigate the suit apparently commanded by the Sorceress.
"There are supposed to be six."
"We only saw one in the battle recordings," Modulok replied.
"Did we?" Hordak countered. "We saw the clawed one transform into its true form. I remember the form from the old records. The other two armored warriors are undoubtedly Guardians." Hordak paused to consider what he knew about these weapons. "It would appear that they have developed new abilities."
Modulok stared at the frozen image he had called up of the clawed battlesuit. "What is known about them?"
Hordak grunted. "Not much. Horde Prime considered them more of a nuisance than an actual threat. He still does."
"The technology they have could be valuable to us, My Lord," Modulok pointed out. "If we could capture one of them, take it apart and examine the technology, I could add it into the new line of trooper I have been working on."
Shadow Weaver suppressed a growl of irritation. Hordak and Modulok were concerned only with the technology, as usual. She was interested in the Sorceress and the suit she apparently commanded. Shadow had heard the rumor that the Sorceress could exist outside of Castle Grayskull using either her own abilities or some magical artifact, but only for short periods. Now it seemed that she could exist, in human rather than form, for a lot longer than that. Was it the castle? Had her status as guardian of the castle changed to the point where it did not need her on a regular basis? And what of the suit? What was its capabilities? Was its design centered around enhancing magical abilities? If so, Shadow Weaver absolutely had to have it. Such a suit could help her to achieve the goal of finishing what the great mage Norwyn had interrupted all those years ago.
Shadow Weaver snapped out of her musings and looked around. Modulok and Hordak were engrossed in speculation about these Guardians, so she slipped away to her chambers. They would not notice her absence. They never did.
Once inside her sanctum, Shadow Weaver walked over to her mystic pool, a full twelve feet in diameter of stygian darkness. The witch activated it with a wave of her hand. For the briefest of moments back in the command center, Shadow Weaver had sensed something. The touch had been too brief for her to even begin to get a grasp on it, much less localize it. One thing she did know, however. Something - or someone - powerful had entered the Fright Zone.
Using the magic pool, Shadow Weaver scanned the length and breadth of the Fright Zone. The scan was slow, methodical, careful. Nothing was overlooked, no matter how slight. There were creatures of magic roaming the lands, imprisoned in the dungeons or being 'interrogated' by specialists. None exhibited the surge in power Shadow had fleetingly sensed.
An hour later, Shadow Weaver had come up empty, but, then, she expected that. "She's here," the witch whispered to herself. Turning away from the pool, Hordak's prime witch walked over to the desk upon which sat the one bit of technology she allowed herself. The computer terminal was linked to the database Modulok maintained for his research. She sat before the machine and turned it on. Unconsciously, Shadow wiped her hand on her robe as if simply touching the device somehow soiled her. If the armor the Sorceress wore did what she suspected, then Shadow Weaver had to possess it. By whatever means necessary. Nothing else would be acceptable.
Miles away, near the archipelago where the planetary cannon was located, the object of Shadow Weaver's search crept along the dark and winding caverns north-east of the massive weapon. She was accompanied by two others. Hawk paralleled her as they made their way toward the weapon that had to be destroyed. Her job was to download a detailed schematic of the cannon for the Val-kyre and assist in pinpointing the area Adrian would have to shoot at in order to blow it off the face of Etheria. Adrian was the third member of the team, currently scouting ahead in one of his creature forms. Adrian was on the lookout for Modulok's monstrous failures rumored to be wandering the dark and dank caverns lining the southeastern border of the Fright Zone.
Hawk and Falcon utilized their passive sensors and motion detectors to probe the darkness. Starlight systems amplified what little light there was from native plant growths and the infrared lights mounted on each suit's right shoulder. The AIs coordinated with each other, using a secured network to compile and build as accurate a map of the caverns as possible. They knew the general direction in which they had to go. The problem was there was no direct route to get there. The growing map would primarily aid the trio in getting out faster than they got in, should their presence be discovered.
The Sorceress had to briefly reveal herself in order to activate the armor. It was no more than a split second, but it would have been more than enough to signal Shadow Weaver. However, the witch would not be able to locate her unless the Sorceress allowed it. The variable would be in whether or not Shadow Weaver raised the alert based solely on a feeling. Sorceress felt certain the witch would remain quiet and try to locate her for her own nefarious ends.
She and Sonya discussed this quietly over a private comm channel while warily probing the twilight cast on the inside surface of the helmets for enemies. Nothing moved. They had yet to encounter any of the denizens rumored to be prowling around the caverns. There were the occasional faint sounds of movement, but the way those sounds bounced around, the source could have been feet away or hundreds of yards distant.
A sudden blip of movement detected by their motion trackers cut off further conversation. The pair froze close to an intersection with two more tunnels. Whatever was moving around, it was heading in their direction. Sorceress settled her left eye on the icon to increase the volume from the external mic. Nothing. Yet, there was something moving around in the left-hand tunnel. Both Guardians tensed as the blip closed to within fifty feet of their position. Still nothing on the audio pickups.
Sorceress readied herself for attack as the potential enemy finally shuffled into view. She relaxed instantly upon recognizing the shape of the huge mass standing in the intersection.
Adrian Cobretti transformed into the CHUD creature.
Impatiently, he waved for the women to follow, wheeled about, and shuffled soundlessly off into the gloom.
"That's not fair," Sorceress said aloud even though she was in telepathic contact with the man. "It wasn't all gossip. Sonya asked a perfectly good question as to whether or not Shadow Weaver can sense my presence." In the greenish twilight of the helmet display, the creature stopped long enough to turn and peg her with a look that told her he did not believe her before resuming his prowl of the tunnel.
Now reunited, the trio slowly continued on in the general direction of the planetary cannon. They stopped several times to allow some of Modulok's denizens to move away on their aimless wanderings of the tunnels. Neither Sorceress or Sonya could see the creatures, but they could hear them over the audio pickups. Adrian, with his heightened senses, heard and even smelled them long before Falcon and Hawk registered movement on their motion trackers.
Potential disaster struck when the group neared the exit General Drax indicated would bring them within a few miles of the cannon. The CHUD rounded the final corner and walked straight into a motionless abomination of flesh and machine. Both reacted instantly, but Adrian was just a hair faster. And bigger.
Cyborg and CHUD wrestled like two prize fighters. Each slammed the other into the walls repeatedly. Sparks flew, and linkages bent every time the CHUD got his turn at the body slam. The creature got the opening it needed to get around behind the cyborg and capture it in a powerful bear hug. The harder the CHUD squeezed, the more desperate the cyborg became until something popped, sparked and the abomination suddenly went slack.
Adrian reverted to his natural human form clad in War Wing's combat power armor. He turned to the women, a little embarrassed. "I think I broke him."
"We just can't take you anywhere," Sorceress said.
"I do believe he said the same about you once," Sonya returned. "Which would even out to not being able to take either one anywhere."
Hawk agreed with her operator's assessment. Falcon and War Wing objected, naturally.
Adrian dragged the cyborg over to a natural alcove and stuffed the thing inside as best he could. "I guess I need to call Ripley's Believe It or Not. Sonya finally got in a good slam," Adrian said, impressed.
"Could we get back on mission, please?" Falcon requested. "We're not particularly thrilled being in the territory of an enemy who would tear us apart for our secrets and technology."
No could argue with that. They found the egress to the surface in short order. Adrian suggested using the retroreflective masking system to cloak their forms in order to cross the open territory to the cannon.
The Sorceress had used the time reaching this point to come up with a better idea. Instead of using an untested system for the first time on such an important mission, she recommended using a bit of magic to turn them into Horde Troopers. That would enable them to move about freely as long as they stayed in character. The suits could mimic the mechanized voices with no problem.
Sometimes the Sorceress' logic was inescapable. And annoying. "I really hate it when you make sense," Adrian replied.
"No, you don't," Sorceress smiled. "You think it's one of my endearing qualities."
"That's an understatement," War Wing chimed in.
"Why don't we discuss this later? Much later," Adrian suggested. "Will Shadow Weaver sense your use of magic?"
Sorceress nodded. "Yes, but it will be so brief that she will not have any idea where to look until after we are safely back to the Eternia."
It was a lesson from Captain Takamora's combat training. Take what you have and use it to your best advantage.
At Adrian's nod, the Sorceress opened herself to the magical energies created by all living things on all worlds where life could be found. It was no more than a couple seconds, but the effect was profound. All three turned into spitting images at Horde Troopers.
"Okay," Adrian said, sounding like a trooper. "This is…disturbing."
"Da," Sonya added. "And wrong on so many levels."
"Remember: troopers don't speak Russian or have a Russian accent."
Hawk promised to fix that.
With the team set, Adrian led the way out into the world above. It was still several hours until dusk. Activity around the exits from the caverns was minimal. After all, who would be foolish enough to attempt to penetrate the Fright Zone through them? There was the occasional guard post here, a heavy weapon emplacement there, but nothing more substantial than that. Adrian mused that Colonel Markson would have a field day planning a penetration from the caverns, if the assault force survived the horrors roaming those dark tunnels.
Adrian paused at the sight of the massive planetary cannon looming over him. The base was still several miles distant, but the scale of the thing defied reason. The cannon's muzzle could have swallowed the starship Eternia whole. The amount of energy that would pour forth from a discharge would be staggering. He figured that the grounds around the weapon had to be cleared before firing much like the decks of an Earth battleship having to be cleared; the discharge from its guns could blow a person literally off the deck and overboard.
Shaking off his shunned amazement, Adrian followed the others to a pair of ground cars behind the guard shack. Waves were exchanged as the trio passed by. This further confirmed the information given up by General Drax concerning regular patrols of the caverns at least within the first few hundred yards of the exits.
It took only a few moments for War Wing to figure out the controls, and Adrian put the vehicle in motion. The trip to the weapon took almost twenty minutes. Falcon discovered a file of maps in the navigation computer; with it, she pinpointed the control bunker for the cannon a half mile to the west behind the weapon. With a firm destination now on the board, it took an additional fifteen minutes to find the entrance to the underground structure despite the map pointing to the location.
Hawk discovered the cleverly hidden entrance facing west in an innocuous rock formation. Motion sensors detected the trio's presence. There did not appear to be visual devices to along with the motion sensors. That was a good thing; the Sorceress had not tested her illusions on mechanical eyes. While the illusion worked on the troopers and organics they had encountered thus far, she worried monitoring devices might see through the illusion to what lay beneath. Adrian tried to reassure her, pointing out that if the troopers had not reacted up to this point, any surveillance devices they encountered would likely be fooled, as well.
After a moment of indecision about what to do, a grinding sound came from the hidden doorway. A rectangular section of stone sank into itself and slid to one side. Evidently, their presence had not set off alarm bells inside the bunker. Adrian led the way into the small chamber. The hatch closed, lights snapped on and the cubical began to drop.
It was a hidden elevator servicing the bunker.
Within thirty seconds, the lift came to a halt. The doors parted to reveal a reception chamber approximately four hundred square feet in size. A pair of doors opposite the elevator led deeper into the bunker.
No one was waiting for them.
The doors parted at their approach, revealing banks of computers lining both walls of a short corridor, only fifty feet long. The trio passed through the doors at the other end of the corridor, entering the control center for the planetary cannon.
A rather unremarkable chamber, the control room was spartan in appearance. A large monitor screen dominated the wall on the left. Another pair of doors on the right-hand wall likely led to the service areas of the bunker. It might even allow access to the inner workings of the cannon buried deep in the ground. They didn't need to enter those areas; all the trio needed was a complete download of the design specs on the cannon's structure. The Val-kyrie wanted it all, and Adrian would be only too happy to provide it as part of the effort to acquire the data Mirriam needed to determine which starship should make the attack run and how to go about doing so. And which part of the cannon to attack, of course.
The humanoid manning the master console facing the wall display turned to regard the new arrivals, while the three troopers manning the substations continued their work
"What are you doing here, trooper? Is this another one of Modulok's flash inspections?" The man sighed. "I'm getting really tired of his interrupting my work here."
The trio of troopers remained silent, taking in the situation. Before the bunker commander could demand the purpose of their presence in the bunker, Adrian pointed his left arm at the man and fired the multi-purpose energy projector mounted on his gauntlet. As the man crumpled to the deck, stunned, Falcon and Hawk dropped the other troopers with well-placed EM bursts. The clatter of robots hitting the deck rang loudly in the cramped chamber.
"You know what we need, Hawk. Go to it," Adrian said.
While Hawk worked her magic on the primary control console, Falcon and War Wing made detailed visual scans of the chamber for the Val-kyrie to review later. They included slow pans of the control stations, to determine the functions of each as they related to the operation for the massive cannon.
The whole operation was completed in a matter of minutes. Hawk crowed with glee about how pathetic Horde security protocols were. Sonya shushed the AI, telling her to save it for later. Hawk verified that she had left no trace of the intrusion into the computer banks. The visual footage of their entry into the chamber and the following events was also destroyed.
Having accomplished the mission, the trio now had to get out and get back home without anyone being the wiser.
The soft probe behind enemy lines ended hours later with a dropship swooping in to meet the captured scout vehicle fifty kilometers east of the eastern border of the Fright Zone. The Horde vehicle was left behind as its purpose had been fulfilled.
On the return flight, Sonya made two copies of the captured data. One would be given to Commander Mundu at the completion of the operation. They already knew the Ladyhawke had the firepower, speed and maneuverability in and atmosphere. The hard data would only confirm it.
The dropship soared into dead village where the temporary base had been set up and executed a perfect four-point landing in line with the other two dropships. Adrian took the data crystal over the partially cloaked starship to upload the information. He promised to meet up with Sonya and the Sorceress in the Eternia's galley after all three had freshened up.
All-in-all, it had been a successful mission, a hopeful prelude to the main event tomorrow. Alpha Platoon's APC had already been ferried across the Singing River via dropship, since none of the bridges spanning it were wide enough or sturdy enough for the heavy vehicle to cross. Colonel Markson would take a small unit in the APC to a position roughly where Adrian's team had been picked up. Their purpose would be to observe the aerial attack on the cannon and call out changes, if need be.
This was the critical part of the operation. The battlestar Defiant could not come anywhere near the planet until the cannon was disabled. Adrian and the Sorceress had to get the job done on the first go. If not, the attack would stir up a veritable hornet's nest that would make it impossible to make a second run on the weapon.
A lot of what ifs and unknowns would be determined in the next twenty-four hours. At the end of the day, either the operation would continue, or it would end in a firestorm in which few if any of the Earth people were likely to survive.
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