Chapter 146: Chapter 140

A tall, heavily bearded human peered down his nose at me on the phone, one eyebrow raised. Before he addressed me, he leaned back and spoke with a faintly Spanish accent to someone else in the room with him. “His helmet is mirrored, come see,” he quickly muttered, before turning to me with a big smile. “Hello! What can the brothers Delvago do for you, my good sir?”

I frowned, a facial expression thankfully covered by my mask. “Can you kill a tsunami?” I asked.

The first man in the frame scowled deeply, a comical expression with his oversized beard. The motion brought some of the jeweled beads in the man’s lower beard into frame. “A what now?”

“That be a wave, Dario, a big wave. What size are we talkin’ bout, specifically?” A thinner man with similar eyes moved into frame. His face was covered in stubble, he wore thick, stained, simple linen clothing, and was wiping dark grease from his hands with a rag as he entered the frame.

“So it’s possible, get here. Now,” I said. “The wave is currently slated to come ashore at roughly five hundred meters high.”

“What does he mean, Izan?” Dario asked. “He orders us?” His accented voice rose slightly in pitch.

“No Dario,” Izan answered, again off frame. “There is no time. Come, let us go, hurry! BuyMort!” Izan started shouting an order to BuyMort but was cut off by the phone disconnecting. A billion morties left my account, paying for the contract.

The psychic deity in the phone stared at me for a long moment. “Good luck,” he whispered in my mind.

“Boss!” Rayna grunted from my side. “Hovercraft in ready position. Need to deploy bombs, now.”

“Could you stop? We’re not nuking the coast, tell Tollya we’ll find another way to use her bombs. I have a specialist team coming in, they’ll handle this,” I told her.

The hobb saluted, turned, and started talking rapidly into her own comm unit. We had repurposed a bunch of Dearth communications tech. It was essentially radio, but tied into the central vehicle in our unit, where Cube lived, and allowed us to communicate home, without the giant MortMobile bill. Having all our hobbs on it that first week without paying attention had led to one hell of a phone bill.

Given the sizable increase in our recruitment since then, I couldn’t imagine running my affiliate successfully using MortMobile. That was for emergencies or high level secure communications. Or TV. The psychic creature that hosted the multiverse spanning network was held in check by tight BuyMort controls, but seemed potentially friendly to our affiliate and its continued survival.

A BuyMort pod warped in at our side and shined its beam over an empty area. Two swarthy humans stepped out. The first, Dario, was rotund and with a glossy black beard that reached nearly to his belt. He smiled massively at me, from behind his gem studded beard.

“My friend! My friend, thank you for choosing our service, this wave will trouble you no longer,” he jabbered, gesturing wildly with one hand. The other held a heavy looking pack in place on his back, squashing one shoulder of his crimson admiralty coat.

The second man, Izan, stepped from the portal carrying a large, round object encased in a cloth bag. He nodded at me and knelt to begin working his device out of the bag.

Dario groaned and heaved his own bag around to his front, setting it on the floor next to the ceiling rubble with a heavy thud. He looked around and frowned. “Grandmother in the grave, what happened to this expensive Dearth office?”

“I did,” I said, stepping forward and offering him my hand. I mentally commanded my helmet to recede, and it did, nanites slipping inside my pores in streams of silver liquid. Dario’s eyes widened as he watched. “Tyson Dawes, Silken Sands,” I said, the transformation complete.

Dario’s eyes lit up, even as Izan shook his head and sighed. “I tell you, Izan, I tell you! It is him! Wowa! What a day, to meet Tyson Dawes, bane of the Dearth Conglomerate.” Dario grabbed my hand with both of his and smiled warmly as he shook it vigorously.

Izan nodded at me when I looked his way, and I nodded back. He was busy, easing a large round object with smooth sides from his bag.

Dario finally let go of my hand and jumped. “Oh! Big wave, right. We never killed a soo-nah-me before, this I must record for posterity. The Delvago legend grows, brother!” One of the gems in his beard, woven into his chin’s hair, flashed as it began recording.

I stepped back and reactivated my helmet. I’m sure recordings of my face were out there, but everyone knew me as the silvery reflective mask thanks to some recent media appearances, and I wanted to keep it that way as long as I could.

“The Delvago legend always grows, brother,” Izan sighed. “It does not need your help to do that, I wish you would stop.” He got the orb out of the bag, and I stared at it.

The transdimensional pulse ion cannon was a large, dark ball, with a series of shallows that lead deep into the center dug into one side, giving it a layered, tunneled appearance on the business end. The darkness of the orb was not simply coloration, or pigment. It was dark.

The cannon seemed to leech the light from the air around it and was simply covered in gloom at all times.

Dario whipped his part out of the bag and flung it across the floor with a flourish.

A railed track clicked and clanked out to form itself, connecting into a solid object that led from the window-sill back to nearly the elevator doors. It deployed spiked feet, digging into the building’s structural supports, deep beneath the marble flooring.

“Ah good, it fits. You see that throw, Izan? I’m getting better at that,” Dario said with another smile.

Below us, screams sounded from the city, especially along the coast line. The sound was faint, tinny, but audible. Masses of people, aliens, animals, and whatever else was crawling around down in Long Beach were all screaming, and as I watched, I saw why.

From my vantage point, I could see the sheer speed with which the ocean withdrew, and the shocking volume of water that fled across the ocean floor. All up and down the coast, the wind shifted as the ocean was sucked away, drained. Miles of wet sand and gasping fish were visible from the tower, and millions of sea-birds fled east, flying as high as they could. My new cargo vessels all sunk down into the mud, settling in the bay as the water fled from beneath them.

In the distance, just at the horizon, the ocean swelled. Izan stopped adjusting the ion cannon to watch for a few seconds, as a wall of water rose to cover most of the sky. The stubbled man smiled, only from one corner of his mouth.

“Simple program this time, just needs a LOT of power to shunt the kinetic energy in the wave. Take more than one charge, Dario,” he said to his brother.

Dario nodded and turned to face me. “So sorry, Mr. Dawes. I hate to be rude, but we have business to discuss.”

“Hit me,” I said, still staring out the window at the encroaching tsunami.

“Your buy-in only good for one charge of the cannon. This take two,” he said, raising fat fingers covered in rings.

“Three,” Ivan corrected him.

“Three charges? Wow, okay, three. So sorry, Mr. Dawes. I am a big fan of your work, but I must charge you commensurate rates. Only the first charge is included,” he finished, sweeping his over coat tails back with a bow.

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“How much?” I asked.

“Two billion. Per charge,” Dario answered immediately. His face twisted up in sympathy after the amount was announced.

“Dario,” I growled. “That wasn’t our deal.”

“Ooo,” he giggled, excited. “I think he's going to threaten us brother! This is so exciting, please, give me your best. You must terrify the Dearth lackies, no?”

“We all die if that wave hits,” I said, pointing out the window. “And you want to haggle?”

Izan set the cannon onto the track. Small portions of it folded down to encompass the track, gripping around it tightly. He slid the cannon directly up to the window and then knelt at its side. The man slid his fingers into the darkness of the orb and began manipulating something inside of it.

“I do not wish to be prick, you must understand. Big fan, I watch all your appearances on CTV,” Dario answered, his hands raised defensively. CTV was the church's primary network, it played their news on various networks throughout the multiverse.

“I am a little sad that you did not threaten us. But,” Dario said, a small smile returning as he raised one bejeweled finger. “You have no understanding of this weapon, what it is, what it can do, or, most importantly, what it costs to recharge.” He raised his eyebrows at me, as if wondering if I would lash out, and when I did not he continued.

“The cannon has internal charges, but to recharge them costs many morties, you understand? Not as simple as plugging it into the wall here in the office, no. No, this is a relic!” Dario said, enunciating the word.

Izan sighed again. “Stop telling everyone that, Dario. You'll get us killed someday!”

“Bah!” Dario waved his hand at Izan, and for the first time I noticed the faint shimmer of his personal shield. It was extremely high quality, to have been absent during the handshake, much more expensive than what our hobbs used. “Mother always said you worry too much.”

“And mother was killed by the church for finding this relic,” Izan suddenly snapped, looking up from his cannon. “You, the fool that she always told you are, brag about it to every customer.”

“Stop fighting, please. I’ll pay,” I said, interrupting the brothers. “Four billion, agreed. Just kill that wave.” My hand pointed out the window to the growing tsunami. It was becoming audible, even from such a distance, the roar of moving water carrying easily across the open air. Time was running out. I swiped the morties over to Dario, and he smiled widely as they came in.

“You worry too much, little Izy-weezy,” Dario teased his brother. “Shoot the wave for the man, he paid his morties.”

Dario stepped back, turned, and took three very large steps away from the cannon. Izan pressed his hand deep into the cannon’s surface, twisted it, and leapt away. “Back,” he shooed us, waving both hands at our group. “Back, away.”

We moved back.

The wave was close now, and we couldn’t hear the screams rising from the city anymore, over the sheer sound of it roaring toward us. A new sound grew, as light began to emanate from inside the cannon. Its layers and intricate internal mechanisms became visible as the light grew, and suddenly I was grateful for the darkening effect of the object's skin.

It grew white hot on its tracks, as a hollow thrum filled first my ears, then my bones, and finally the relic metal attached to them. The first three internal rings glowed brighter than the rest. Then the transdimensional pulse ion cannon fired.

The western facing side of the building erupted in broken glass, as the windows ten floors below us all blew out. A ball of writhing light erupted from the end of the cannon and hurtled across the empty bay over the Pacific Ocean.

The cannon itself screamed back on the rail tracks, sparks flying from its own internal brakes.

The shot sailed straight toward the wave and connected with a brief flare of light and an eruption in the water. Across the entire tsunami, for miles in either direction up and down the coast, light washed through the massive wall of water, as quick as the blink of an eye. Then the tsunami blasted away from shore, falling heavily back onto the sea bed.

The sea rushed back in, flooding into the Los Angeles River and crushing the immediate shoreline with a brief slosh of shallow water. Most of it appeared to have simply fallen back into the ocean, though terrible, violent waves roiled up and down the coast. My new cargo vessels bounced and heaved, as rescue operations to remove the crews began. One had sunk too deeply into the bay, and didn’t rise when the water came back in.

I took a long breath, pleased to have kept any shudders out of it, and turned to face the Delvago brothers. “What the hell was that?” I asked. My Knowle operations manager eagerly nodded, reinforcing my question.

“Ahh, you see, but do not know,” Dario teased.

“Oh, this you keep secret,” Izan muttered. He moved to the cannon and rested his hand on its surface, already cooled. “Ignore him, the cannon is transdimensional.”

I nodded at him to continue. Axle started taking notes.

“It is a big gun, no doubt. But so much more,” Izan said, reverently. “This item can pulse ions across quantum entangled realities, gaining access to any connected universe. It can determine what atoms have what energy, moving in whichever direction we chose, in different universes at the same time. What we did to the wave is simple, really. We programmed the cannon to reverse eighty percent of all kinetic energy in your wave. Send the rest to the next closest Earth. So wave fall down instead of coming ashore. Barely splash your . . .” He looked out the window at the smoldering ruins around us. “Your very lovely city.”

“What about the other Earth, now they have a tsunami to deal with? Twenty percent of that is still massive, that wasn’t the job,” I said. “Why not just reverse one hundred percent?”

“No. Other Earth . . . gone,” Izan said. He looked at me strangely, shook his head, and began packing up the cannon again, stretching the bag’s mouth to fit over it. “Kinetic energy from wave go into rubble. Disrupt dust in space. Is fine, is nothing. Cannot reverse all kinetic energy in something, or you destroy all atoms entangled with it. Like pressure outlet, it must go to another universe or cause a very bad explosion in this one. Really quite important to read the instructions on this item, energy control through cannon shot is tricky.”

Axle nodded at my side, licking his nose. His ears were flat against his skull.

“Oh,” I said. I knew other Earths existed within BuyMort. At least two, I had met humans from. The nearest Earth to us was where Dr. Miles came from, it had become part of the BuyMort system in the early 1800’s, by our calendar. The other, from what I had been told, was absorbed around 600 BC, so a pretty wild swing in time difference between our three worlds. Still, it was a blow to hear one of them had been destroyed outright.

“Call us again, Mr. Dawes, anytime. It has been my honor to meet you.” Dario flourished into a bow, leaning one foot forward. He had gems braided into his hair as well, I noticed, near the scalp. The big-bellied man leaned down and gripped one end of the track, which had dragged a furrow into the floor, as it softened the cannon’s recoil.

The track flipped up and arranged itself into a portable square formation, which Dario hurriedly tucked into his pack and shouldered.

“Again, a pleasure,” he said, saluting me with a fingertip to his forehead and a smile. Then their pod beamed the brothers Delvago away and left us looking out over the Pacific Ocean as it calmed from our recent activities.

I sighed and looked around at the destroyed office, hands on my hips. “I better go take a shower. CTV will expect an interview.”

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