Gord Zajac - Major Karnage

Karnage smiled. “That was some shot, Corporal. Shame that kind of marksmanship got wasted in the C&E. You’d have made one hell of a sharpshooter.”

Stumpy grinned. “It’s good to see you again, Major.”

“You, too,” Karnage said. “You got some solvent to get me outta this thing?”

Stumpy turned to the figures on the worm and shouted. “Get me some solvent!”

“Is it him?” a voice shouted back excitedly. “Is it the Lightbringer?”

“Yes,” Stumpy shouted.

“The Lightbringer! The Lightbringer has returned!” The worm riders jumped up and down excitedly, then disappeared from view as they ran down its flank.

“Lightbringer?” Karnage said. He eyed Stumpy’s clothes suspiciously. “What the hell, Stumpy? Have you hooked up with them Spragmites?”

Stumpy watched the figures coming down the ladder. He leaned in to Karnage. “I’ll tell you about it, later, Major. On the way back to the compound.”

“Compound? What compound? What the fuck is going on!?”

Stumpy looked up at the figures running towards them. He waved and smiled at them, and spoke out of the side of his mouth at Karnage. “I’ll tell you later, Major. Trust me, it’s all right. I’m workin’ with Tristan. She explained it all to me. I’m on her side.”

“And who’s side is she on?” Karnage said.

Stumpy gave Karnage a startled look. His mouth opened to say something, but the bounding figures of the two Spragmites coming within earshot forced his mouth shut again. They stopped before Karnage, eyes wide and blazing, and dropped to their knees to bow. “Ma-ma-oo-pow-pow,” they chanted.

They freed Karnage from the goober, and the Spragmites led Karnage and Stumpy back up the rope ladder onto the worm, all the while chanting, “Ma-ma-oo-pow-pow.”

A pair of tents had been erected on the worm’s back, tied to the worm’s hairs. Stumpy led Karnage into one of the tents while the Spragmites lowered a rope to bring up his flightpack.

The worm’s body ebbed and flowed beneath Karnage’s feet. Stumpy walked across the worm effortlessly, his legs adjusting to every roll. “You get used to it after a while,” he said. “You just need to get your worm legs.” He sat in an armchair beside a coffee table, and motioned for Karnage to take the chair on the other side. The table was covered in bits of technology. It rolled back and forth on the table as the worm’s body moved beneath it. A lip running around the edge of the table prevented any of it from falling off.

“This is too weird.” Karnage sat down. “Last time I was on one of these things, it was trying to kill me. Hell, every time I’ve seen a worm it’s tried to kill me. And yet here we are, riding on the back of one like it’s a goddamn elephant. How’d you figure it out?”

Stumpy grinned. “That was me. Once Tristan explained how things went down in the WTF, it got me to thinking. Seemed kind of stupid to have a horn on your head that’ll kill you if it breaks off. Unless it was bred that way on purpose.” Stumpy grew excited and leaned forward. “The horn’s like a steering column. Lean on it to urge the worm forward, pull back to get it to slow down, push left and right to get it to turn. And if the worm’s getting a little too ornery for your liking, you just give it a good hard yank and it snaps off, and the worm dies. Like a kill switch, or a self-destruct. Works like a charm.”

“You’re one resourceful trooper, Stumpy.”

Stumpy shrugged. “I just like to know how things work, that’s all.”

The ground shifted and the worm’s undulations became more pronounced.

“Feels like we’re on our way. Shouldn’t take us too long to get back to the compound. You should see how fast these babies can go. It’s something else. I haven’t had the guts to let one go full out. I don’t know if I could hold on! But one day, maybe. One day…”

“How did you end up with the Spragmites?” Karnage said.

“Well, I did like you said,” Stumpy said. “I got the array up and running, and, well, frankly, Major, I don’t know what that array picked up, but the controls started goin’ crazy! Lots of weird squiggling all over the monitors and—well, I don’t even know what it was. But I just kept those dials hummin’ and that array going, like you said. And then there was this blast of green light, and it all went quiet. All of it. Not a peep. Nothin’. Dials were up, and the array was still hummin’, but whatever had been sendin’ those signals was gone. I couldn’t find ’em again.”

Karnage nodded. “Probably ultra-violent transmissions.”

Stumpy gave Karnage a funny look. “Ultra-what?”

“Never mind,” Karnage said. “Go on.”

“Well, anyway, I stayed holed up in there, and kept listenin’ for anything goin’ on, and the next thing I know I hear this knockin’ on the door! And I go and I peek out the window, see? And there’s this woman standin’ there! And not just any woman. She was beautiful! I’ve seen some lookers in my time, but this one… so graceful and elegant. Anyway, she sees me lookin’ out at her, so I duck back inside. And she starts talkin’ to me through the door. Askin’ me to let her in. And I tell her I can’t, cuz I gave my word and…” Stumpy frowned, puzzled.

“And what?”

Stumpy shook his head. “Well, I don’t know. I mean, she just kept talkin’ to me, see, and I kept listenin’, and she said she knew you! And the more we talked, the more it seemed like she knew all about you—like I mean everything! Like stuff you wouldn’t be able to guess, right? So I ask her if you told her the password, and she said you did, but she got so scared that she forgot it—and she’s tellin’ me all about the Spragmites and how she got roped into bein’ part of it all by this Melvern fella—he sounds like one right mean sonofabitch, let me tell you. And so she tells me how you gave her the strength to go on. How you helped her to stand up and fight back and together the two of you knocked that Melvern bastard from his pedestal, and brought him to his knees. But then that ship appeared in the sky, and you told her to get away and find me, and so she ran and then there was the green flash, and when she got up there was nothing left of you but a giant smokin’ crater in the ground.

“She was sure you were dead, but I kept remembering what you’d said about your troopers, and I figured whatever had happened to them had happened to you. And if you had reason to believe they were all right, then I figured you were probably all right, too. I just had to find you!

“And then you know what she did? She turned you into like a messiah for her people. The Lightbringer, she called it. And then she put me in charge of tryin’ to find you! And that’s what I’ve been doin’ ever since. I been workin’ with this group—they call themselves the Illuminati. They say it’s got something to do with light, but it just sounds like a load of horseshit to me—and we’ve been lookin’ for you. We were gettin’ reports of demons and the apocalypse from some of our contacts in Dabneyville, then one of our members sends us D-Pad footage of somebody in a hoverpack carryin’ you out of the city. I hacked into the globesat network and traced the flight path, and… well, here we are.”

“That’s one hell of a story,” Karnage said.

“It’s been a hell of a ride,” Stumpy smiled. “But it’s all workin’ out, isn’t it? I actually found you. Tristan didn’t think I would. I could tell. She was tryin’ to let me down easy, I suppose. But boy is she gonna be surprised when we come walkin’ back into the compound. I can’t wait to see the look on her face!”

“Yeah,” Karnage said uncomfortably, “that should be a sight to see.”