Mysterious Cairo (24 page)

With the sound of clanking gears and humming servomotors, a great paw raised itself up and maneuvered itself over Havoc's head. Sand fell onto the brim of the Major's black hat. "Surrender, Havoc! Join my organization, or become part of the sand!"

In reply, Havoc drew his twin .45s, aimed at the eyes of the huge robot, and pulled the triggers. Nothing happened. Havoc noticed with alarm that his automatics were filled with sand. "Oops," he muttered.

"Ooooo, I am
so
sorry! Wrong answer!" Mobius cackled as the paw came thundering down, smashing Havoc flat into the sand.

"Nooooo!" Corey screamed, calling Mobius and the crowds' attention to her little group of Knights.

"Whatever we do now, we must destroy that Sphinx!" Daremo shouted over the roar of the crowd as tears filled his own eyes. "Avenge Havoc! We shall do honor to his name, or fall!"

A maniacal laugh issued from the Sphinx's mouth. "Kill the stormers!"

Marcel was already one step ahead of the crowd. In order to cause a distraction, he had made his way to the war dogs' cages. Leaping atop the cages, the Hospitaller drew his sword and flicked a button, causing the weapon to flare with electrical energy. With a loud scream of "Havoc!" the Knight sliced through the kennels' mesh and let loose the war dogs. The dogs, kept hungry and without their handlers nearby, began hurling themselves into the crowd. Marcel himself, with his powersword in one hand and his GodMeeter in the other, jumped into the crowd like an avenging cybernetic angel. With a cry of "Ave Maria, Ave Jesu!", he began harvesting the dark souls of the followers of Mobius, his CSI Eyekill methodically picking out the targets which posed the greatest threat.

Many in the crowd, in an effort to escape Marcel's wrath, began swirling towards the remaining Knights, cutting off any clear path to the Robosphinx. In reply, Kayla's sword and Daremo's 13mm Chunyokai pistol were unleashed upon the homicidal masses. "Whatever you do, don't let Corey or yourself fall into the grip of this land's laws!" Daremo called out to Kayla. "If we are to win, we must remember who we are and cling to it! We must not lose our realities. We must not disconnect from them!"

"So, this so-called disconnecting would be bad?" Kayla asked as she struck down two shocktroopers.

Daremo took out another three gun-wielding cronies and turned to Kayla. Four troopers were sneaking up on her. In a single motion, Daremo let four shuriken fly, embedding them in the four mens' foreheads. "Absolutely." he called back. "If you see one of us change appearance or bearing, chances are they have disconnected. Bring them back by reminding them of what they once were or did."

Corey, meanwhile, still stood at the spot where she was when she saw Havoc die. Her camera continued recording. She could not stop looking at the ground where Havoc lay, no doubt buried under the sand. That is no grave worthy of a hero like that, a voice in her head spoke. He died trying to save a land that is not even his. He was a true hero.

Hero. The word burned in her mind. In Corey's America, the America of the 1990s, the word was almost obsolete. Cynicism and suspicion had killed the concept of a true hero. There were no heroes left to fight Evil. But that's alright, the voice in her head replied sarcastically, because the whole idea of Good and Evil, and the lines that separate them, seem to have been deliberately blurred these days. People can be Evil, then just write a book or give lectures about what they did, and they'll just become richer. Some punishment!

The idea angered Corey. Life was unfair! This place, the Nile, seemed to have the right idea! Either you are Good, or you are Evil! No in-betweens! 'And what are you?' the voice in her head asked, 'Whom do you serve?'

Corey was so lost in her thoughts that she did not see the Sphinx's eyes focus on her. "I am Good!" she screamed as bolts of electricity struck her, hurling her to the ground.

The stunned woman got up and shook her head. She was still alive! In fact, she felt odd. "Feels like I stuck a wet hand in a VCR," she mumbled, then realized that she no longer knew what the initials stood for. An odd itching began manifesting itself as she felt something moving under her khaki desert clothes. Instinctively, she knew what it was, for she was no longer Corey Jones, American telejournalist (whatever that was), no, she was .

"Electronic Media!"
she shouted, ripping off her clothes to reveal a red, white and blue bodysuit with a lightning bolt on her chest. Grabbing her pen, which now flared with electrical energy, she leaped into the air and realized that she was flying. "Now, Mobius! Feel the power of the free press! The pen is mightier than the sword!" A bolt of electrical energy shot forth from the fountain pen and struck the Robosphinx, causing the mammoth machine to stagger.

In the meantime, Marcel managed to carve a path to his two friends. The three Knights, Daremo, Kayla, and Marcel, formed their usual defensive circle and continued to take on all who were foolish enough to fight them.

Marcel's sword arm rose and fell with a steady rhythm, which reminded the young Christian warrior of a machine. A machine. His mind reeled. In fact, wasn't that was he truly was? A machine? He was not human, not anymore. No, now he was a machine. Marcel's mind snapped as he began flailing about, now no longer caring who he hit, including his friends, since after all, machines have no friends.

"Marcel's gone berserk!" Daremo called to Kayla. "He's become psychotic!"

The barbarian woman seized the cyberwarrior and was amazed at his strength. "Marcel, it is us! Your friends!"

In response, Marcel growled and hurled Kayla into the crowd, which immediately fell upon her. Daremo, who was busy trying to keep the crowd back, witnessed the attack and despaired on how he was going to save Kayla and stop Marcel. A loud crackle of electricity and the smell of ozone filled the air. Daremo looked up at the Robosphinx, only to see Corey dressed in a gaudy costume, firing bolts of energy at the robot and actuailly damaging it.

Corey, too, saw Daremo, and saw what had happened. Breaking off her attack on the robot, the newly born heroine swooped down on the crowd and pulled Kayla out from their murderous clutches.

Daremo's sigh of relief was cut short by a cybernet-ically enhanced punch to the back of the neck. Recovering quickly and landing on his feet, Daremo spun around to face Marcel, whose eyes gleamed with electronic madness.

"Marcel!
Marcel,
we are your friends, for God's sake!" the ninja pleaded, while still using one arm to swipe at any of the crowd that got too close.

The word "God" struck a chord in Marcel's brain. The word echoed, and grew in intensity as it began to drive out the madness. The word grew into a whole chain of associated words, each with its own power to heal some part of the stricken Knight.
GodSpiritChrist TrinityResurrectionGraceForgivenessRedemption ...

"Salvation!"
Marcel screamed as his soul shook of the last of the madness.

Daremo let out a whoosh of air in relief. "Glad to have you back, friend," the ninja nodded. "Let us attend the matter at hand. In fact, the tide turns in our favor. Corey seems to have flipped over to the Nile, and she has become a Mystery Woman. If she stays that way a while longer, we may actually win this fight."

At that very moment, Corey touched down in a safe place, carrying the shaken Kayla with her. "There, fellow Storm Knight! You should be safe now!" she said in a commanding, heroic voice. "I must make Mobius pay for his crimes! For I am ... Electronic Media!"

The barbarian realized that her friend was no longer her usual self. "No, no! You are Corey Jones! Do you not remember?" Kayla replied, shaking Corey by the shoulders and ignoring the pandemonium around them.

"Corey? Corey Jones?" the heroine replied, uncertainly.

"Yes! That is your real name! You are from a land called America. You used to carry this odd device called a 'minnecamb.'" The barbarian picked up the damaged minicam, which, unknown to her was the cause of Corey's disconnection.

"You mean a mini-cam," Corey replied, and suddenly she remembered what a mini-cam was. The electricity coursing through her began to fade, and so did the costume, as all the information about Core Earth rushed back into her head, making her stagger. "Wh-What? What am I doing! Where are my clothes?" Kayla removed her cloak and wrapped Corey in it.

"Oh, no! Kayla! What did you do?" Daremo admonished as he and Marcel rejoined the women. "We needed her to stay that way for a while longer!"

"She had, what you called,
disconnected,"
Kayla, ignoring the hordes closing in, answered defensively, angrily jabbing her finger at the ninja's chest.
"You
told me that it was wrong!
You
said that we must not disconnect!
You
said we must remember who we are! It's not my fault!"

Out of the corner of his eye, Daremo saw a bald man write furiously, then whisper to a sword-wielding shocktrooper. Before the ninja could call out, the shocktrooper rammed his sword into Marcel, who screamed in pain and fell to his knees as blood gushed from the wound.

In a fluid motion, the ninja beheaded the shocktrooper and grabbed the panicked mathematician. A mad plan raced through the ninja's mind. Looking away from the bald mathematician, Daremo spat on his dagger, then turned back and held it up to his victim's throat. "Who knows what will happen to you if the fluid on my dagger enters an open wound," he hissed to the sweating scholar, who felt the moist blade on his neck. "Calculate the weak spot of that robot, just like you did to my friend's armor, and I will spare you."

Panic-stricken, the mathematician quickly calculated the location of the vulnerable spot, and informed Daremo. Striking the man unconscious with the pommel of the knife, Daremo rallied his friends together. "Aim just behind its left front leg!" the ninja instructed.

Mobius, who had finally gotten Robosphinx stable after Electronic Media's assault, charged the four Knights, sending the crowd scattering away in a panic.

Kayla's flaming arrows, Daremo's Chunyokai, and Corey's .38 all struck the weak spot at the same time. The Robosphinx kept charging at the Knights.

"Keep firing!" Daremo urged, as the steel behemoth closed range rapidly, its huge feet making the very ground tremble. He fervently hoped that the mathematician had not lied nor made an error.

A second salvo, and a third, and still the robot charged relentlessly. Marcel, still in great pain from his wounds, rose up and staggered over to join his friends. "Once more, friends, unto the breach!" he hissed as he took aim with his GodMeeter. The others prepared for one desperate, all-or-nothing attack.

Corey felt betrayed. Finally, she possessed power, but she could not use it to save their lives! It was so frustrating! What had she done to summon the power?

Instead of her .38, Corey raised her fountain pen. She pointed it at the weak spot and willed for, she knew not what, to happen.

Something did. Power flared in her arm and carried into the pen. A burst of lightning shot from the tip . right into the Robosphinx's weak point!

Sparks and smoke began pouring from the seams of the body as the robot began to fall to its "knees," the machine's momentum forcing it into the sand scant feet from the four Knights. Overcome by his wounds, Marcel collapsed to the ground. Corey rushed over and knelt by the fallen Knight, checking his wounds.

"'Tis not as wide as a church door ." he groaned.

"Oh, stop it!" Corey mumbled as she tried to stop the flow of blood. "Just don't die on us!"

With a loud boom, the head of the Sphinx detached itself and began climbing into the sky. "You may have stopped my creation," Mobius snarled over the loudspeaker. "But I shall have the final say! Look to the sky!"

The Knights looked up and saw, to their horror, a dirigible with Mobius' seal upon it. "Yes, stormers, it's one of mine! I shall rendezvous with it, while my remaining followers on the ground finish you off!"

On cue, the remains of the crowd rallied together and began closing in on the four Knights. The dirigible's Onslaught machine guns also aimed downward at the battle site.

The dirigible's Onslaughts opened fire, and the four Knights watched in amazement as members of the crowd collapsed to the ground. Another Onslaught fired at the Robosphinx head, causing it to veer away from the airship and spout black smoke.

Marcel looked skyward with curiosity, then his face broke into a grin. "By the Holy Trinity! Look up there! On the ladder of yon airship! 'Tis a bat!" Exhausted from this effort, the Hospitaller collapsed into unconsciousness.

"It's a ghost!" Kayla shouted, making a ritual hand symbol to ward off evil.

"No, it's Major Havoc!" Corey laughed with relief.

"But how?" Daremo wondered, though he, too, was delighted.

Indeed, hanging on a rope ladder that was being lowered to the ground, was the dark avenger, blazing away with a machinegun, clearing any of the remaining horde away from the four Knights. "Come on you guys, we have transportation out of here!" he shouted.

Kayla hefted the unconscious Marcel over her shoulder as Daremo and Corey climbed the ladder. In a short time, everyone was safely inside the airship. Havoc set a course north for the Mediterranean, and wounds were tended.