David Robbins - Armageddon Run

But he was wrong.

Lynx landed on the cab and froze, his hair bristling.

“Surprise, surprise!” said a tall figure in black outside the cab to his left, the man’s cape covering his left arm, a 45 automatic pistol in his right hand with tendrils of smoke drifting upward from the barrel.

“Hello, Lynx,” greeted the apish hulk outside the cab to his right. “Long time no see.”

The Doktor and Thor.

Lynx glanced from one to the other in astonishment. They must have just gotten out of the cab of the half-track!

“What’s the matter, Lynx?” the Doktor chortled. “Cat got your tongue?”

Thor laughed and raised his right hand, revealing his sledgehammer.

“Got a little present for you, Lynx,” he said baiting him.

Lynx glared at the Doktor. “This must be my lucky day.”

“And why is that?” the Doktor queried.

“Because,” Lynx growled, “I’ve been looking to rip you to pieces, and here you are, delivered on a silver platter!”

The Doktor waved the 45 in his hand. “You’re forgetting something, aren’t you?”

“You think that peashooter of yours will stop me?” Lynx taunted.

“It stopped him ,” the Doktor noted, nodding at the tailgate.

“Why’d you waste your own man?” Lynx asked, stalling.

“I can’t abide cowards,” the Doktor said, “and he was fleeing.”

Lynx started to inch forward.

“Hold it right there!” the Doktor warned, his voice hardening.

“Why don’t you shoot?” Lynx teased him. “What are you waiting for?”

The Doktor sneered. “I want to savor this moment. And there are a few things I want to say to you.”

“It figures,” Lynx quipped. “You’re plannin’ to talk me to death.”

Smiling, the Doktor shook his head. “I’ll be brief. First, I want to compliment you.”

“Compliment me?” Lynx asked incredulously. “Have you been sniffin’ glue again?”

“Do you have any conception of the damage you’ve caused?” the Doktor inquired. “You have set my work back decades.”

“I tried my best,” Lynx said.

“I want to thank you for what you’ve done,” the Doktor stated.

Lynx looked at Thor. “What’d you do? Whack him on the head with that hammer of yours?”

“Initially,” the Doktor went on, as if Lynx had not spoken, “I viewed the destruction of my Biological Center as a great calamity. It wasn’t until last night that I recognized the real significance of what you had done.

Certainly, you’ve delayed the implementation of some of my plans, and you’ve ruined my laboratory, my precious laboratory!” The Doktor paused.

“But, as Clarissa said, I can always rebuild my laboratory. I’ll continue to live on indefinitely, so long as I have access to a fresh supply of blood and can synthesize my unique dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate—

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Lynx interrupted. “What’s all of this got to do with me?”

“Don’t you see?” the Doktor replied. “You’ve taught me an invaluable lesson. I had grown complacent over the years. After ten decades without any resistance or competition, I’d allowed my sense of self-preservation to atrophy. To utilize a quaint colloquialism, what good is it to be king of the hill if there’s no one around to challenge your kingship? Do you understand?”

“I understand, all right,” Lynx snapped. “I understand that you’re looney-tunes! You think the whole world should do what you want it to do. You believe you can do anything you want.”

“I can,” the Doktor stated smugly.

“And hang the consequences, huh, Doc?” Lynx retorted.

The Doktor appeared puzzled. “Consequences?”

Lynx pointed at his own chest. “Consequences, you bastard! You fiddled with the laws of nature, and look at what you’ve done! Look at what you’ve done to me!” Lynx hissed.

“Is that what’s bothering your meager intellect?” the Doktor asked. “Is that why you rebelled against me? Because I created you as a special being with exceptional talents?”

“Special?” Lynx exploded. “You made me into a freak! Me and all the rest of your misfits!”

The Doktor sighed. “You fail to see the light.”

Lynx leaned forward. “Oh, I see it, all right! I see that you’ve got to be stopped, no matter what it takes!”

“And you think you can do it?” The Doktor laughed.

Lynx noticed Thor was grinning. “What’s with you, lunkhead? Do you like being the Doc’s pet monkey?”

The Doktor stiffened. “Thor is my close associate,” he said, correcting Lynx.

“Your ass!” Lynx snapped. “Thor is an expendable flunky, just like all the rest of us test-tube freaks!”

“He is not,” the Doktor declared indignantly.

“Oh, yeah?” Lynx pointed at Thor. “Tell me you wouldn’t kill him in a minute if it suited your demented mind!”

“Don’t listen to him,” the Doktor said calmly to Thor. “He’s raving.”

“Am I?” Lynx gazed at Thor. “Think! Use your pitiful excuse for a brain! Do you really think the Doc gives a damn about you?”

Thor glanced from Lynx to the Doktor, his sloping brow furrowed.

“This conversation is terminated,” the Doktor said brusquely. “Thor, finish him off.”

Thor hesitated.

The Doktor’s left arm moved under his cape.

Thor suddenly clutched at the metal collar around his squat neck, his powerful body arching, as a jolting surge of electricity jarred his senses.

The Doktor’s left hand emerged from under his cape, his fingers grasping an odd black box about six inches in length and four inches wide.

There were a number of silver toggle switches and blinking lights on the upper surface of the black box.

Thor dropped his sledgehammer and fell to his knees, his lips curled back from his prominent teeth, his entire frame quaking.

“When I give an order,” the Doktor said, “I expect it to be obeyed.”

Lynx was staring at the black box. It had to be one of the portable control units the Doktor was known to secret on his person. Without it, the Doktor would be unable to activate the transistorized electronic circuitry in the collars. Without it, the Doktor would not be able to compel his genetic aberrations to passively submit to his commands.

A crackling sound arose from the metal collar as Thor continued to tremble.

Lynx was thankful his own collar had been removed weeks before, shortly before the Warrior known as Yama had rescued him from the Citadel.

The Doktor was concentrating on Thor, watching his “associate” struggle to resist the collar.

There would never be a better opportunity.

Lynx voiced a strange trilling sound as he launched himself from the cab of the half-track and sprang at the Doktor. His maneuver caught the Doktor unaware. He swung his right arm, knocking the control box from the Doktor’s hand, and lunged for the Doktor’s throat.

The madman was endowed with incredible reflexes. His right arm swept upward, the barrel of his 45 connecting with Lynx’s forehead and sending him sprawling.

Lynx tumbled to the earth, rolling with the blow, and bounded to his feet, his claws clenched, ready to pounce again.

The Doktor was pointing the 45 at Lynx’s head. “Before I conclude this fiasco, there is a question you will answer.”

“Eat dirt!” Lynx retorted.

“What have you done with the rest of the thermos?” the Doktor demanded.

Lynx did a double take before he understood: the Doktor must believe that Yama and he had stolen several of the thermonuclear devices when they fled the Citadel. Truth was, they hadn’t, but there was no reason to let the Doktor know. Lynx grinned. “I’ll never tell.”

The Doktor’s eyes narrowed. “I need those thermos! What did you do with them?”