"I wonder what happened to that little girl?" Dr Girlfriend said as they slid behind the shelter of a low wall around the front of the entrance they had been racing for. Rocket propelled grenades had followed them in their mad dash from the foxhole in the front lawn but none had landed close.
"What girl?" Gary asked. He had pulled out his hand-gun and looked around for minions on the ground. There weren't any, so he put it away. It was just as well. The gun was a tranquillizer dart pistol. It didn't offer much protection.
"A little blond girl. Dean sent her over to find out if I was OK. Trinity? Teresa?
"Tiffany?"
"That's the one. Dean must have thought I'd come here to cause trouble. I told her I was on holiday today." Dr. Girlfriend chuckled. "I told her that if there was anyone who was going to make trouble today, it would be you. No offense intended."
"None taken. So what happened to her?"
"I don't know. I'd turned away to go into the author's talk when the grenades started falling. "She seemed like a nice kid. I'd hate to think of our feud with Dr. Venture falling down on her head.
The explosion had come unexpectedly, loud, ground-shaking, pelting the air with shrapnel of small concrete bits blown from the roof into the workroom below. People had froze for a moment, stunned, unsure what had happened. Only as pieces from the roof started falling to the floor did people panic, running every which way to avoid the falling debris. Most were successful. Some were not.
Dr. Girlfriend shoved the book she had been fingering back into her tote and ran for the door. She had to fight her way through crowds of people fleeing from the door, which didn't bode well.
She had to run to the vast lawn in the front of the Venture Compound to see what was going on. She stopped next to the burly man already out there, little noting or caring that it was the former Henchman 21. All she saw, all she cared about was the sight of the Cocoon coming over the range of mountains to the north. Lights flared along its side and she could see with an eerie disconnect slow-moving rockets that soon turned into lightning fast rocket propelled grenades.
A shower of them exploded on the lawn throwing dirt and sod everywhere. As another wave of RPGs came hurtling their way, Dr. Girlfriend jumped into the nearest crater made by the last salvo. She was surprised by the soft landing and painful "Oof"
"Gary?" She said in surprise. Just great. She thought to herself. The Monarch is Arching on his own. He's shelling the convention she never told him she'd be at, and if he found her in a foxhole with 21 he'd blow a gasket. "Sheila, old girl, you should have 'stood in bed'."
"Right," Gary said absent-mindedly as he left the shelter of the low wall and headed towards the door. Dr. Mrs. The Monarch followed. "Down that corridor until it ends," Gary told the woman, "then take a right and follow that hall until it ends. There's an outside door there. It'll get you outside the building on the other side from here. From there you'll be on your own. The razor wire on top the fence is new. You might have to sacrifice that coat of your to get over."
"Where are you going?" she asked as Gary turned in the other direction and opened a door into one of the basements.
"Going to get something to drive away the Cocoon."
"Really? This I've got to see!" Gary didn't realize that she meant it until her shoes started click-clacking down the stairs behind him.
"I thought you were afraid the Monarch would see you fraternizing with the Ventures?"
"If you think you can bring down the Cocoon - I want to be there. I designed that thing. It's invulnerable. At least to anything Dr. Venture has ever thrown against in it the past."
Gary pushed into a small lab with a target range along one wall and several benches in the middle. The benches were piled with assorted pieces of half-finished gadgets. Gary passed them and went over to a locked cabinet and opened it with a key from his belt. He took out a device that looked like kind of like a pistol with tubes and coils and a large stock.
"What's that?" Dr. Girlfriend asked. "Or is this one of Doctor Ventures trademarked secrets?" The Guild of Calamitous Intent did not believe to trademarks when it came to weapons of major or minor mass destruction. Stealing secrets from the enemy - or from each other - was expected. But Gary seemed unconcerned.
"It's a wireless Taser." He went over to an open shelf and started filling his pockets with blocky looking devices about the size of a D cell battery. "Grab as many of those as you can," to told Dr. Girlfriend. "Take then in groups of three."
"What are they?" she asked
"Some kind of battery the old Dr. Venture invented. The way the boss tells me, his father filled a warehouse with these and since they seem to still work every thing he makes is built to use them. Come on," he motioned back to the stairs they had come down.
Dr. Girlfriend piled a half-dozen of the batteries into a pouch she made in the T-shirt she was still wearing. Then she dropped extra one into her tote bag. You never know what you might learn. She turned to follow Gary back up stairs.
He had stepped outside and opened the end of the grip and dumped out a trio of the blocky batteries and was stuffing three new ones into the slot. Dr. Girlfriend stacked the six batteries on the top of the wall next to him.
"So how do you plan to bring the Cocoon down with a - taser?" she asked.
"A wireless taser," Gary corrected. "The boss had a pretty good idea. Use an infra red laser to blast a path of ionized molecules through the air, then pump 50,000 volts through the conductive, ionized path. In theory it would give the police the ability to electrically disable someone from a much longer distance than ordinary tasers which are connected by wire to the power supply on the launch platform. But there was one teeny tiny problem with the idea. Ionized air still isn't as conductive as copper. So Ok, you turn up the amps to get more current flowing down the ionized path, hoping that by the time it hits the target the actually current will have dropped below the lethal level. But it doesn't always work that way."
"Can't control for the random resistance of the air?" Dr. Girlfriend asked. She actually had a doctoral degree - in advance physics, no less. She could have made a career in Super-Science if Super-Villainy hadn't seemed more alluring.
"Exactly. So it's more of a death ray then a Taser. Can't sell it to the police and the Army is only interested in non-lethal forms of aggression these days. So here stands one of the few times Dr. Venture actually accomplished something and nobody wants it."
"I'll take it," Dr. Girlfriend volunteered.
"Like hell, you'll get this baby. You don't need a Class 5 weapon against Dr. Venture who has long been rated a Class 1 nemesis."
"A girl can dream. But even a death ray isn't going to have any effect on the Cocoon. It's too well armored."
"Yeah. But you remember why we don't fly the Cocoon into a thunderstorm?"
"Lightning interferes with the anti-gravity field."
"And in the end all this thing is is chained lightning." Gary made some adjustments on a panel on the side of the weapon. Dr. Girlfriend tried to see what he had done but couldn't make it out. Gary drew a bead on the Cocoon and pressed the trigger. Infrared light is light a octave below visible light. It's passage through the air is invisible. But the effect of its passage varies with the consistence of the air. A little moisture ...sparks burst in a line from Gary to the Cocoon.
Dr. Girlfriend found herself holding her breath waiting for, she wasn't sure what, for the Cocoon to explode or something. But all that happened was a brief flare around the surface of the Cocoon. Then it dropped ten feet. Caught itself and rose again to its previous hovering height.
"That didn't do much," she said.
"Didn't it?" Gary replied mysteriously as he opened the batter pack, dumped out the old batteries, crying in pain from the heat as they fell to the ground. He stuck another three until the holder and snapped it shut.
He squeezed off another shot, again with a few sparks leading out to the Cocoon which again dropped, this time twenty feet before recovering. He opened the battery case, dumped the used cells out without touching them this time and reloaded with the last of the cells from his pocket. He held the gun pointed at the ground for a long minute before pointing at the Cocoon again and firing. It dropped once again but instead of returning to its previous position it dropped lower and retreated a bit.
"I never said I was going to bring it down. I just wanted to discourage it a bit." He dumped out the used batteries and picked up some of the ones Dr. Girlfriend had brought. he fired as soon as he loaded. Dumped those batteries and loaded in the last set. "Think for moment. You're inside the command center, minions piloting the Cocoon to its destination when all of a sudden it drops out of the sky. Only for a second. But that one second you're in free-fall and wondering if the drive generation are going to kick in again. And then it happens again and again and again. What do you think is happening?"
"Mechanical failure," Dr, Girlfriend with a bit of awe in her voice.
Gary waited. And after a minute the Cocoon began driving backwards, away from the Venture Compound and behind a small ridge in that direction. Just before it disappeared Gary fired off his last set of batteries. The Cocoon dropped slightly but there was no sound of it crashing. "They won't move it again until they've had time to test of the drive components. And that will take hours,"
"They'll just send out ground troops, you know," Dr. Girlfriend reminded him.
"True. But it will take them at least twenty minutes to hoof it here. That should give me plenty of time to complete the evacuation of civilians. That's all I was counting on. Once we get the innocent out of the way - that's what these are for!" He clicked the button on his arm which extended the curved knives he kept strapped to his forearm. Light glistened on their polished and oiled blades.
Another click and they disappeared up his sleeve. "then it will be Old School."
"Old School," Dr. Girlfriend echoed. "What a pisser. I never got to get my book signed!"
"Can't do anything about that. I'm getting civilians out of there. You want to look for this Pettigrew guy you have to help with the evacuation." Gary insisted.
Dr. Girlfriends mouth pursed unpleasantly. She looked indecisive for a moment then stretched up to kiss Gary on the cheek. "It was nice knowing you, Gary. I don't see you coming out of this alive, though you always had a knack of surviving the worse of our raids. If there is an afterlife I'll look for you in Valhalla. She stripped off his t-shirt, then remember the razor wire atop the fence kept it in her hand as she ran through the door and down the hall.
After a moment Gary was running in the other direction, towards the chaos of Venture-Con 1.
The convention room was, to be expected, a vast confusion. Children were huddled in groups around the edges of the hall, crying, while father were milling around calling for their sons and daughters. As much as a quarter of the room ceiling had collapsed following the RPG explosions. Debris was scattered across the floor. Some bodies could be seen under the rubble. A few victims were being pulled out by the uninjured. Blood was every where. Things needed to be organized.
"Hey, Everybody!" he hollered and though his voice seemed to echo off the plain cement brick walls of the room no one stopped to listen to him. He tried hollering again to no more effect. He needed a bullhorn he decided but hadn't thought to bring one from the Guard Shack. He hadn't thiught he'd need it. But now he really needed one and there was no time to run down to the guard shack and get one. Then he wondered if the programming area Dean had rigged up included a microphone. That would work.
He loped to the far end of the room, vaulting the velvet rope that surprisingly still stood. Chairs were piled every which way as people had scrambled to get out of the room. Gary had to pick his way to the head table. And there, laying on its side, was the holy grail - a microphone. He picked it up and tapped the side. The lack of an overhead thud was discouraging. "Is this thing on?" he spoke into it but his voice didn't boom out into the room. Gary started tracing the microphone back to the amplifier, hoping to find an easy to fix break.
"I say, young man," a quavering voice called out to him. Gary looked back and saw Winston Pettigrew sticking his head out from under the dias table. "Something seems to have gone wrong with the convention and I seem to be stuck here. Can you help?"
"Can you fix a microphone?"
"Never use the things."
"Find your driver and get out of here," Gary told him.
"I'm afraid my driver is over there, under that pile of rubble."
"Try running. We've got about 20 minutes of quiet."
Pettigrew started sputtering then another head appeared from under the table. She had kinky hair pulled back into two pigtails and large frightened eyes that shone starkly against her dark skin. "Mr Gary, is that you."
"Yeah, who are you?"
"Heather Calmback, sir. On the Con-com. What's happening."
"Long story, no time. You know how to fix this?" He held up the microphone.
"Did you turn it one?" the black girl asked?
Gary cursed himself for an idiot and found the on-off button on the barrel. He slid it to On and tried again. This time his voice carried across the room.
"Everybody! I want everybody to come up here. Right now. Drop what you're doing and move. We've got a small window of opportunity to get out of here and the only way its going to work is if we get organized!"
He looked around to see if anyone was listening to him. Most of the faces were turned his way. That was good. He took a breath and continued. "I want the drivers to come up front, next to the dais and form a single line. I want all the kids who came with these drivers to line up with them. Everyone else I want to form a single line a little father back."
When no one moved he cried out, "come on people! Move! Move! Seconds count and there are no do-overs!" Like molasses the crowd started flowing his way.
While the crowd was forming Gary turned to Heather and asked, "Where's Dean?"
"I don't know," she said. "I was here to introduce Mister Pettigrew when those bombs started going off. I think Dean was at the Registration Table."
"Damn," he growled, then apologized to the girl and thanked her for the information. He wasn't used to fighting henchmen in the presence of civilians.
He pointed to the first adult to line up in front of the dais. "Are you a driver?" The man nodded. "Is your car still here?"
"Yes."
"Got all your children with you?"
"Yes."
"How much more room do you have in your car?"
The man looked confused for a moment, checked to see how many kids he had with him, "Two," he told Gary.
"OK, someone can sit on a lap. Back there. You three . The kid in the blue shirt and the two behind him. Go with this guy." Turning back to the driver, "when you get to the gate on the grounds turn left. Do not turn right . Go left and go as fast as you can for about five miles. You should be out of danger by then. Do what you want but don't come back here. Got it?"
The man nodded and herded his children towards the door.
"What about the injured out there. We can't just leave them there?" someone shouted.
"We don't have time. The window of opportunity is down to 15 minutes. Next driver? Got your kids? How many more can you take?"
"Three."
"You three. The girl with the braids, go with this guy."
"I've only got a smart car. There's only seats for my daughter and me," the next driver complained.
Gary looked at him sourly, then spotted a small boy, maybe only six in the back of the room. "Do anyone know where parents of that boy is?" he asked. When no one answered he pointed to the man with the Smartcar. He can sit on your daughter's lap. Now get him and go."
He dealt with a couple more drivers, before a loud crash caused him to looked around. From over the top of the curtains he could see someone had tipped over one of the dealer's tables and was pushing it near the door. With a shock he realized that it was Dean.
"Dean! Why aren't you in the panic room?" he called over the PA.
"I'm setting up a barricade for when the Monarch attacked."
"No, you go to the Panic Room. I'll take care of the Monarch!"
"This is my convention. It was my idea. I organized it. It was going great until the Monarch attacked. I'm not going to let VentureCon 1 go down in flames without a fire!"
While Gary had been arguing with Dean another driver had stepped up and shouted, "I've got room for five more!" Five kids peeled off the crowd and joined him running out of the room.
"I've got a minivan! Uh, maybe ten!" Another said. They left.
The next guy hesitated until Heather pointed to him. "What about you, sir," she asked in a commanding voice that she hadn't had a moment before.
"Dean," Gary was saying into the microphone, "this isn't about protecting the honor of VentureCon. This is about keeping you alive. So move! Now! And where's your brother?"
"Hanks over there putting stuff away." Dean dragged another table and tipped it on its side and pushed it in next the first.
Gary looked into the corner and sure enough Hank Venture was packing away his supply of soda pop, candy and doughnuts. "Hank Venture!" Gary announced over the PA. "Put the produce down and go to the Panic Room!"
"Not till I get my inventory put away. HankCo is not going to take a lost today." The large beefy kid Gary vaguely knew as Dermott something was helping Hank pack up. Did Brock have trouble like this getting the boy's to safety Gary wondered?
He turned back to the people in front of him and discovered that Heather was handling things surprisingly well. There were only a couple drivers left. But about fifty kids more. Could he get all of those into the Panic Room? It would be the safest place for them. But a single glance told him that there were too many. Time for Plan Z. "Everybody else, if you don't have a ride out of here I want you to run down to the front gate and over across the road into the hills on the other side. Climb over at least one set of hills and stay below the top of the ridge. Stay there for at least three hours, or until the sheriff department comes and tells you it's OK? Got it? Now, go, go, go!"
He looked at Heather, "that includes you to."
"I'm not leaving Mr. Dean when he's in trouble."
"Jesus, girl, this isn't a cartoon! Anyone left here is going to get hurt, maybe killed. Get the frick out of here!"
She looked at Gary for a moment furiously, then jumped off the dais. "Fuck you," she said quite plainly and rushed over to where Dean was piling up more tables.
"Where's the other two girls?" Gary asked as he joined Dean at the improvised barricade.
"Tiffany got hurt when the roof fell in on her. She's over there," Dean pointed to a corner where the two girls were huddled on the floor. "Gloria's looking after her."
"How bad is she?" Gary asked.
"Collarbone, maybe an arm. Not a lot of bleeding." Dean was talking while he moved more tabled into a pile. Now that they were in a crisis he seemed to running on autopilot. Working without thinking. Even the injuries to Tiffany were just a datum for him at the moment.
"Dean," he began, thinking to make one last attempt to get him into the Panic Room, but realized that Dean wasn't leaving. He had taken this attack on his convention personally and was going to see it to the bitter end, like a Captain on a sinking ship. Deal with it, Gary, he thought. What would Brock do? The movie "300" was his answer.
"Make two piles of tables reaching the walls and ending here in the center with a narrow opening so only one or two minions at a time can get through. Pile tables on top of table so they can't go over the top. And weigh down the tables with as many chairs as you can. I'm taking Tiffany to the Panic Room." Without waiting for Dean to reply, Gary crossed over to where the girls were huddled and picked up the injured blonde. She screamed as he picked her up, the jostling putting pressure on her injuries.
"Come on," He told Gloria. "We're going to get her to safety but she'll need your help. OK?"
Gary led the way through the back corridors to another workroom. A door with a glass window was mounted in the back wall. Dr. Venture could be seen staring through the (actually bullet-proof) glass.
Gary punched in the over-ride code and swung the door open. Dr. Venture stepped back as Gary and the two girls entered.
"Is he - gone?" Dr. Venture asked.
"Hardly."
"Then what are you doing bring civilians here? This isn't a charity!"
"She's hurt," he said, nodding towards Tiffany. The Panic Room was filled with every sort of bric-a-brac imaginable. Shelves lined the walls, except for one spot where mattresses spotted the floor over a series of large chutes. He laid Tiffany on the mattresses and pulled it off the pile on to the floor near by.
"There's some bottle water back there," he told Gloria, "and the First Aid kit's on the wall over there. I don't know if there's anything in it that will help her but it's there." Gary got up to leave. As he passed Dr. Venture he stopped and said, in a conversational voice. "She was hurt on Venture Enterprise property during a sanctioned Venture Enterprise activity. I'd take good care of her." And he left.
Dr. Venture pales, even more than his usual pasty complection. "The liability..." he said with a choke. Gritting his teeth and forcing his lips into the facsimile of a smile he bustle over to the two girls. "So what seemed to be the problem?" he asked. And when Gloria had finished listing Tiffany's injuries, Dr. Venture pulled out a cell phone and pressed #1 on his speed dial.
"Hey, Billy," he called into the phone when it was answered. "How are you doing. What's up. It's your old friend Rusty. You wouldn't happen to have a few spare minutes, would you."
"... Yes, it's the Monarch. ... No, he hasn't left yet. How did you know he was here? ...You were here? And you didn't drop in to say 'hello?' Giant Boy Detective. Oh, come on now, I was bigger than Giant Boy Detective ever was. ... Well, yes that was thirty years ago. ... Ok, ok, ok, I get it you're fleeing from the Monarch who is once again blowing the crap out of my buildings. What's it going to take to get you to turn that Conjectural Technology bike around and come back here. ...Oh, it's an SUV. How much car do you really need, Billy? ... Sorry, Dr. Billy. But really, I've got this little girl who was hurt during the attack..."
"The roof fell on her," Gloria interrupted.
"... the roof feel on her," Dr. Ventured echoed into the phone. "I think she broke an arm..."
"And her collarbone" Gloria reminded him.
"...and her collarbone. ... No, blood isn't spurting out of anything. I think I've been seriously injured enough times to know that's important. Look, expense is no problem... How much? God, that's pretty steep. I won't get the royalty checks from Dad's inventions for another month..." Dr. Venture looked down at the little girl who was groaning as she lay on the mattress. "Well, she did get injured at Dean's convention and if they go after Dean they'll just be going after me. So, OK, whatever it will take. But - Peter White is no anesthesiologist. If anyone is going to pass gas I want to see a real medical degree attached to their name! ...Well, if he wears a dress I'll let him pass as a nurse. ...No, it's got to be a dress. Don't make me insist on the hat! OK, great. So Gary is off to met the Monarch so, let's' say a half hour- 45 minutes. We'll either be all dead, or the Monarch will be gone. See you then."
He hung up. Tiffany had started wailing when she heard Dr Venture joke about them all being dead soon. "What?" he asked. ":It was just a joke. We're perfectly safe in here." When that failed to console the girl he walked back to the front of the Panic Room and stared out of the window in the door.
