Keri keeps one hand firmly on her side as she walks carefully back through the ship to see what happened.
The first thing she sees is Adam, alive and smiling. The relief helps mask the growing pain she feels.
William is asleep against one of the bulkheads, and Jaycee is carefully mopping his forehead and dribbling water between his lips at a careful rate. The minute she sees Keri’s injury, she rises and approaches.
Around the party are piles of scrapped robot parts. The animating intelligence seems to be gone from all of them, and the strange polygons the beings use for heads are inert.
“What happened?” Keri asks in confusion.
Space Bug gestures at Jaycee. “Coffee woman suggest engine overload to dislodge other Blockhead ship. They fall for it, yes. I shunt extra overload energy into warp. No idea where we are now.”
As Jaycee pulls out a water bottle and begins washing Keri’s injury clean, Keri raises an eyebrow. “Your idea, huh? Good job.”
Adam fills in the rest while Jaycee works. “All their energy drained into some kind of emergency system. We saw a big beam go off toward one of the other Blockhead ships just before we warped. I think they got into their version of escape pods and bailed from the ship.”
Keri jerks a thumb back toward the bridge. “Cracklesnap’s back there. I don’t think he’s gonna be much of a problem with two broken arms.”
“I have control of the ship from here,” Space Bug adds, gesturing at the engineering console. They turn to Adam. “Now what is plan, stratagem, objective?”
Adam thinks. He’s honestly sort of surprised to have made it this far. “I guess we interrogate Cracklesnap and check out the ship. We want to know what they were doing with stolen Shards. Once we know that, we can figure out our next steps.”
Adam and the others have Cracklesnap and the two lieutenants-turned-weapons hooked up to barely functional robotic torsos. They can’t move, and the auto-repair systems have been turned off, so it’s as safe as it’s likely to get aboard this ship.
Adam is hampered by the fact that as much as he idolized his dad when growing up, he doesn’t actually know how to interrogate a guy. He - just briefly - thinks about going back home and asking. He doesn’t think that will go well. But Space Bug makes an excellent suggestion, and Adam opens with that. He starts out chatty and conversational, because that’s how he’s seen it done on TV.
“So it’s like this. You can tell us what we want to know. And then you get out of this alive. Or we can take you back to the Concordance, and they can strip your ship down for parts and give you the third degree until they know everything they want to know about you, and this anti-Concordance tech you have.”
He tilts his head and shrugs, as though tossing out an afterthought. “Or, y’know, we can take you back to Enora Dralis and the Champions of Night, the Concordance’s enemies. You took shards from them too. They’ll still take your ship apart. They’ll probably take you apart. And they have some pretty serious anger management issues and they hold a grudge. They attacked us on sight, just because we were in one of your ships. So you might be with them awhile. You might not enjoy it very much.”
Adam doesn’t really have any intention of doing the latter two things. He’s hoping that Cracklesnap will talk, and that they can get on with their business.
The problem is that Cracklesnap doesn’t respond.
Adam is pretty sure he’s able to vocalize. He probes, mentally - and finds that even in such a limited state, the Blockhead is able to neutralize his efforts.
Seconds stretch into minutes.
The others, sensing that this will be a time-consuming endeavor, have scattered to attend to other business on the ship. William is waking up, and has been given a protein bar and bottled shake from Jaycee’s pack. Keri is resting and letting her injury heal. Space Bug is working at the engineering console, exploring the ship’s systems - for what, Adam isn’t quite sure.
They hear Jaycee’s voice, and what she says attracts fresh attention.
“I think they’re in touch with a sorcerer on Earth.”
Even Adam, mindful that the prisoners are basically his problem, goes to check out the call.
They find Jaycee looking in a side room, off from the main area. She’s pointing at markings on the floor.
“This is a summoning circle,” she explains. “A demon can be called forth here. If I read this right, it’s Astop, who draws down the stars and walks in the darkness. Perfect if you want a messenger to speak to someone on a spaceship–”
The team hear’s Cracklesnap’s voice at long last. “Do not tamper with that,” he calls out.
Finally, Adam thinks.
William is smiling proudly. Space Bug looks baffled. Keri is looking at Jaycee in considerable shock.
“What?” Jaycee demands, after sensing the sudden attention.
Keri stumbles. “Just… didn’t expect you to know about this kind of thing.”
“I’ve actually summoned a demon before,” Jaycee says. “I did my research. I better know this stuff.”
Jaycee’s summoning took place in “Masks 36.4 - Ascension” – Ed.
Keri tilts her head and stares at Jaycee with a mixture of respect and fear. “And all this without a fancy magic sword.”
Jaycee scoffs. “God. I don’t want to wield that thing.”
As Jaycee walks back out with the others, Keri mutters, mostly to herself. “I’m starting to think that’s the only reason you don’t have it.”
It’s part two of the interrogation, and Adam thinks he knows how to do this now.
“Tell us what we want to know, or my friend will start messing with that thing,” he says, and jerks a thumb backward toward the room with the summoning circle.
The alien considers this. Finally he speaks.
“You are unlikely to prevail against him in battle. You gain little else by knowing. Very well. He is likely to know when his name is used. He therefore may be referred to as ‘the Dread Moor’–”
Cracklesnap doesn’t need to say anything more. William draws in breath, and looks as pale as he’s capable of looking.
Adam turns. “You know who he’s talking about?” he asks in surprise.
Velasco, also known as “the Dread Moor”, was introduced in “37.1 - The Dread Moor” and made a brief visit to Charlotte’s coffee shop in “306 - The Dueling Duo” – Ed.
William slows down his breathing with an effort of will. “He was a senior member of the Grail Knights. Centuries old, they say. Best of all of us. The sword, though - it left him. Don’t know why. Nobody talks about it. Just tell me to mind my business. Even Lucius doesn’t talk about it.”
A memory comes to Jaycee. She turns to Adam, quickly. “Your friend, Charlotte Palmer, visited dad once. He mentioned that someone dangerous had visited her new place and not to go there unless I had to. Nobody scares dad like that, except…”
They turn back to look at Cracklesnap, who sounds like he’s been likewise intimidated.
“What does the Dread Moor want with Concordance Shards?” Adam demands.
“I do not know,” the alien responds calmly.
“What did you get in return?”
“Information.” The artificial voice crackles, betraying some measure of extraterrestrial gloating. “The science to absorb your energy was devised in much part from his study of those captured Shards and the knowledge he shared with us.”
Adam frowns. “And you’ve given that to the rest of your people, instead of keeping it to yourself?”
Cracklesnap’s gloating is becoming more obvious. “I have kept the best of it for myself and other allies I trust. But if I do not check in regularly, automation I have put in place will release it to all of my people. And they will have both power and reason to come after you.”
Adam frowns.
If this is true - and it feels True - then his plan to use the Blockheads as a way to gain favor with the Concordance Coordinators might endanger every Agent in the universe.
On the other hand, it sounds like that was going to happen anyway. Cracklesnap might have been using this to enhance his personal prestige with his people. He’d do a private deal with a dangerous sorcerer, then become a hero when he had the weapons to fight off the Concordance when it appeared.
He turns back to Space Bug. “We’re lost in space, right?”
The bug shrugs. “That is my fault but not my problem, Adam Amari.”
Adam laughs. “It’s fine. But figure out where we are. Get us heading back to Earth, maximum speed. Okay?”
He turns to his friends. “Alright. So, I think I can get us out of this. I think… I think if Somber is telling the truth, just telling the Concordance about the Dread Moor is gonna get them to show up on Earth in force, they way they escalated on Somber’s homeworld, and nobody wants that to happen.”
William nods vehemently. “Agreed.”
“But there’s a way I can get the Concordance to make a choice about what to do, while still giving them what they want. They might learn about the Dread Moor, but if they do that, they’ll have to give up a lot more than they want.”
“What’s the idea?” Keri asks.
Adam grins. “I’m gonna put Quinnar Gentry on trial.”
The devil birthed at the core of the Planet of Dread reaches still further.
Azlan de Borja y Velasco is relaxing in his library, reading a book he does not remember writing, when the supernatural servitor approaches.
“A matter of interest, master,” it hisses.
Velasco rises and accompanies the creature to the study.
He takes stock of the magical devices arrayed there. The portents and omens are clear.
Something new has been born, and it is reaching out. Slowly - strangely slowly - yet its power is incomparable.
He’d thought to use the reservoir of dark energy here on Earth, left behind by those strange space beings, for his master plan. But this new entity is much the same, and far more temperamentally suited to his needs.
Disaster. Dis-astrum. The word means “ill-starred”.
To take advantage of this new development would require a way to reach the site of this newborn nemesis. Velasco supposes he could contact those mechanical allies from outer space. They will certainly have ways of traveling.
In the meantime, he must study this matter further.
And he must act soon, to shackle this thing, harness it, before it comes into its full strength and becomes indomitable.