Castle Jaw

It was a square expanse of overgrown grass like some neglected park, hemmed in by tall reverse-sides of surrounding buildings which one of the suns was at present throwing into shade. Alien weeds and herbs rambled unchecked, and from the centre of the meadow jutted a few broken stubs of wall which clearly belonged to a very different era. Even the noise from the city beyond seemed somehow subdued. One or two dusty rays from the nearer sun slanted across the scene.

“You’re looking at all that remains of Castle Jaw,” said Professor Grindo to Joe. “Our last link to a distant feudal past, the seat of Grindo kings for countless generations, and a shining symbol of everything we’d achieved and all we still aspired to do. But our world was strategically significant to Toothfire’s expanding empire. That’s all the wars were ever about, Joe, mere territory. My people’s one offence was that we happened to live here. Were it not for our battle-robots, Toothfire would have simply eradicated us. But because were able to defend ourselves, a never-ending round of hostilities ensued. And one day, when the Grindoes met their most devastating defeat, Castle Jaw fell.”

Prof paused.

“Do you need me to tell you who designed the bomb that dropped on this spot?” he continued. “Or have you already figured out where I’m going with this?”

“Professor,” Joe replied heavily. “I do not know what you must think of me. Suffice to say, I am more than mindful of Scientooth’s war-crimes. Phoenix however apprehended him not for these, but to heal harms inflicted by one of her own, and she did so in the name of our cause. You must see that that, I cannot allow.”

“What I see is that it’s going to take more than an old relic to bring you round to Miss Neetkins’s position,” said Prof. “I’m referring to the castle, by the way. Fortunately though we’re on the tour-route, so there’s an informative video I can show you.”

At an electronic command from Prof’s walking-frame, holographic projectors hidden about the Castle Jaw site lanced into brilliant life. The sad shady meadow was swiftly sliced up and swept out of sight by arcs of depth and colour, accompanied by a rousing orchestral prelude, as Prof and Joe became part of a four-dimension total-immersive audio-visual experience. For since every spaceflight-enabled species in the quadrant looked to Grindo manufacturing as a galactic standard, this planet’s studios could easily afford the biggest names and most cutting-edge techniques. Joe, who had become quite well acquainted with the sector’s cinema through his ceaseless scouring of its newsreels, knew that even Mini-Flashes looked forward to the latest Grindotron blockbuster and they were the demographic hardest to please in the industry’s present creative slump.

“I was thinking earlier there might be a film,” Joe told Prof truthfully.

The director was aiming for the heartstrings right from his establishing shot. Castle Jaw seemed to have been built from the soaring chords of some magisterial electric guitar, which rose in symphonic splendour through the golden Grindotronian sky and melded into virtuosic tiers. The pillars were of sunset crystal, and the archways portals to the heavens rolling wide and free beyond. Bars of music and shafts of light gracefully intersected on the perpendicular and oblique, calling the awestruck audience-member back to an eternal and unreachable long-ago.

Joe wondered if it could truly have been so beautiful. But who was to say it had not been? What had they looked like, those places to which we could now never return?

But far away in darkest Toothfire Space, the engines of doom were belching smoke and rumbling out their awful prelude to war. Five small Grindo robots scaled at frantic pace down the outer wall of an enemy stronghold, Castle Jaw’s sinister antithesis, sheer-sided, featureless and forbidding. These compact commandoes alighted together in a midnight iron forest and set at once to snapping their way through its dense barbed-wire undergrowth, while from overhead a manganese moon glared down on their efforts like some merciless eye.

Before Joe’s own eyes this smoothly morphed into the single optic sensor of Scientooth, and the cameras drew out to disclose that one holding court at his heavily-guarded laboratory deep in the Toothfire fortress’s guts. Flickering flames were less Bunsen-burners and more a myriad dancing devils, their infernal illumination hinting at half-realized shapes which loomed from every shadowy corner in tribute to the ambition of this mad tin skull which herewith began to declaim:

“Spies? Ach. Then let us put a stop to their meddling. For these Grindoes are stubborn, wilful, and that is more dangerous even than their considerable military prowess. We must crush their hopes, strike to the very core of all that they believe in. Their learning in advance of my intentions to this end is a variable I shall not tolerate.”

A microphone swung into position at Scientooth’s jaw-unit.

“Release the Fringers,” he intoned.

Dark metal jungle began to crash open at the fugitives’ heels. Desperately those robots discharged photon pistols into the blackness behind, but their persecutors bounded apart on limber leaf-spring suspension, gargling ravenously through grease-glutted carburettors as they evaded and scrabbled and pounced. The spy named Scorch, bringing up the rear, was first to be crunched by rusty radiator-grille fangs of a Fringer maw. In swift succession two of his comrades were savaged likewise amid spurts of oil and a furious gnashing of jags. Ahead lay a clearing in the forest, and escape, but even as squad-leader Beams turned his gun on the Fringer bearing down upon him and slew the beast mid-flight, its teeth sank deep into his thigh and in dying convulsions mashed their way clear through the limb. Beams’s severed leg span into the moonlight and its once-owner thudded to an elbow with the dead brute on top of him.

The other Fringers were at bay, pairs of round yellow headlamp eyes staring from the wilds, awaiting the moment of helplessness they knew was near. Beams, prone and propped-up within sight of freedom, glanced over his shoulder at the one remnant of his team and groaned out a final command.

“Badaim…the information…Prof must be told. Get to Grindotron.”

He reloaded his pistol.

“I’ll hold them off.”

Assuming his vehicular mode Badaim blasted from the clearing, even as the Fringers surged forth and ripped Beams to shreds. In a breathtaking tracking-shot Joe watched the diminutive starship wend its frenzied way through the dim and densely-crowded dominions of Toothfire space, circumnavigating armoury asteroids and prison-camp planets like some miniature mechanized Paul Revere whose silver plating shimmered as to discorporate under the effort of this hurtle for home.

The grassy pastures of Grindotron rambled far-off to every horizon. At a remote outpost amid their verdant vista, consternation reigned for three more robots Joe gathered were fondly-remembered war-heroes who had all met their end that day. Characterized in broad strokes, the trio consisted of Armspin, young and impetuous, Ultra, a lovable buffoon, and Reva, who was not one of Prof’s creations but the mysterious survivor of a robotic race which dated back to some primordial time before the Grindoes. Huge and ponderous, Reva trundled about on antiquated tank-treads and boasted a long flexible neck riveted at numerous joints, ending in a blunt-nosed toothy bullet-head like that of some cubist dinosaur.

“This can’t be happening,” blurted Ultra, as the threesome huddled round their stark telemonitor. “I’ve never seen such carnage! The Grod Sands…taken?”

“Vernderernder backstabbers came across the ocean, took ’em by surprise,” Reva reported darkly. “Scientooth musta perfected his design fer a within-atmosphere warp-gate, stiffed us with one somewheres out at sea where we couldn’t scan fer it.”

“Then…!” Armspin began. A trickle of lubricant-sweat was running down the side of his visage. For if the Grod Sands marine biology research complex truly was in enemy clutches, Toothfire had claimed a refuelling-station on the planet’s very face. Overland invasion was surely no more than hours away.

“Incoming!” Reva suddenly yelled. From out of the twin suns’ overlapping heliographs a small body was on its terminal descent, and there was barely time to scatter before it impacted with a minor earthquake on the grassland outside. But it was no bomb. Cautiously the trio approached and gazed into the earthy indentation it had made.

“Badaim!” gasped Armspin.

That one, reverted to his robot mode and outstretched amid the gored soil, was all but amorphous but from overexertion and re-entry. He had quite literally flown his molecules apart. Gone were the familiar tooled angles of Prof’s preferred anatomical aesthetic, for all was slackening to indeterminate jelly even as Badaim reached one quivering hand to his friends above and forced out the words:

“Seen plans…Grod Sands only the beginning. Castle Jaw…their target…new superweapon. Tell Prof. He’s the only one who can…”

Badaim’s croaking voice guttered, and before the optical sensors of his three brothers-in-arms he collapsed to metallic mulch.

Ultra and Armspin seemed seized-up with shock, but Reva roared: “So we just gonna sit here givin’ our circuits a rest? Let’s guzzle fuel!”

His iron tracks churned earth and turf in a prodigious spray. Ultra, rebooting out of befuddlement, leapt astride Reva’s strong back while Armspin flashed into his streamlined vehicle-mode. Together they tore off along the wide untamed prairie, flying over ditches, forging up gradients and barrelling into clear skies to thunder back down again and resume the last lap of this relay-race on which all Grindotron depended.

The Lords of Toothfire were upon them in no time. From the captured coastline they came, pursuing undeviating lines of deadly determination. Lean and faceless vultures of steel, with razor-tipped hook-beaks foremost and exhaust-pipes etching flame-trails behind, they sliced through the sky above the sea of grass and fixed targets on the taillights of their prey. Each Vernderernder was accompanied by a strange satellite orbiting in its slipstream, artillery-pods which somewhat resembled Scientooth only they were a different shade of green, mouthless, and instead of the monocle boasted two eyes from which even now murderous heat-rays began to beam.

They razed the pastureland, gouging blackened furrows and forcing the Grindo robots into frantic evasive action, until a surface-to-air shot slagged Armspin through the power-core and screaming he exploded into meteoric scrap. Vernderernders however preferred to get in close, let their talons speak for them. Eliminating the distance the squadron-leaders banked low, and in one clean slash Ultra’s head spiralled to the double suns long seconds before his decapitated carcass crumpled from Reva’s saddle. Still that one strove on, though relentless heat-beams riddled his aged treads. When these were chipped into fragments at last Reva’s bulk went down for the final time, and with sinuous neck splayed out along the field he ground to a halt on his chin.

The Vernderernders circled their trophy and one by one alighted, hunching themselves about Reva in triumph.

“Last of your kind, confidant to Grindo kings,” intoned the commander. “You will haul ore-carts at our dullivian foundries until that fabled defiance is broken.”

“Yer make it sound so invitin’,” growled Reva from the ground. “Too bad I got somewheres else to be. And you’re comin’ too.”

With that he triggered his self-destruct device and blew a crater in the prairie, throwing Vernderernder parts far and wide.

Joe had to admit, it was very solid filmmaking. For by the time the inevitable Toothfire advance was underway; by the time the spongy populace had rolled or bounced into fortified subterranean bunkers; and by the time mighty Castle Jaw against an apocalyptic swirling firmament had become backdrop to the Grindoes’ last stand, the spectator could not but feel it meant something to be there. This was not lost on Joe, even knowing as he did that this treatment was at several removes from the history it represented.

That Grindo spirit, of which the enemy had talked so much, was now to be seen. Again and again the loyal robots resisted. Prof’s warriors fell in incalculable number, and they took many a Toothfire marauder with them. Booster-class ground forces plied their way tirelessly about the crumbling city, their elevated cannons piercing the Vernderernders’ aerial element. Others of the Micro-Mallet designation, like 4-H-N’s friend, lived up to their name by speeding through gaps in Toothfire formations and administering strikes of sheer concentrated force. The Grindostater units, hulking colossi devised by Prof as a last line of defence, uprose past the rooftops and swatted down foes with their gargantuan hands. At every corner of this artificially-rendered world, Toothfire heat-beams zipped and steely Vernderernders swooped and the Grindo army unstintingly met these impossible odds in one of the most dizzying war-panoramas ever yet committed to the holo-screen.

But it was all to no avail. The Vernderernder ranks were legion, and via their warp-gate and the Grod Sands they had seized unobstructed access from Toothfire space directly to their spoils. On and on the invaders came, until the very last of the brave Grindo robots was overwhelmed. Through another gate, this one hanging in Grindotron orbit, slowly emerged the black bulkheads of a vast Toothfire dreadnought. It bore in its bomb-hatch the diabolic brainchild of Scientooth’s maniacal design.

That one, installed at command-centre on the vessel’s bridge and ignoring the repeated signals for surrender shilling from planetside, issued his order to proceed.

“Goodbye, Grindoes!” Scientooth cackled. “From the heart of the Seegs I stab at thee!”

The director pulled his focus far back, such that the castle became a distant slim pillar surrounded by choking dust-clouds and a few terminal skirmishes of stalwart Grindo troops, even as the soundtrack suddenly dropped to a few throbbing chords pulsating dissonantly amid a terrible hush. Scientooth deployed his superweapon. And in a single air-burst, Castle Jaw ceased to be.

Deep in the gloom of the ruins, splintered rafters overhead and mounds of rubble on every hand, High King Grindo lay dying from his wounds. By his side were that era’s most respected luminaries, including Tallest Grindo, First Big Chief Grindo and even a younger Prof, wearing his familiar eye-visor though far less saggy than he was now and still capable of bobbing round unassisted.

“Though I must leave you, my faithful subjects, promise me…the dream…will never leave you likewise!” weakly pronounced the King. “The dream of a Grindotron of peace…a Grindotron of prosperity…a world which will take its rightful place in our cosmos, not the war-ravaged husk we have become. Let the universe…live to see that happy day…though I…shall…not!”

Even as Joe looked on this tragic tableau, sound and motion slowed gracefully to a gentle pause. The real Prof, in his walking-frame, clicked into view from behind the holographic presentment of his bygone self.

“Yes, Joe,” said he. “I was there. I listened as High King Grindo breathed his last. A little artistic license may have been taken with what you just watched, but nevertheless, believe me when I tell you it was well and truly based on real events.”

Prof deactivated his projectors, and funereal Grindoes of long ago blinked to nothing at once. Joe was back in the shaded meadow of present-day Grindotron, looking once again on high-sided buildings encircling sad stumps that had once been of such beauty.

“I thought it might help you to know a little of Scientooth’s deeds, before you cast him as the innocent victim in any dramas of your own,” Prof continued to Joe. “Yes, Empress Ungus would have done worse. We Grindoes now admit we were wrong to join the Solidity, and we’re profoundly grateful to Neetra Neetkins for protecting our planet under the terms of the Alliance Treaty. A ceasefire from the Vernderernders is all Grindokind ever asked. But the fact remains, sometimes it’s peace not war that makes strange bedfellows. I only tell you this, Joe, because I’ve observed a tendency among The Four Heroes to rub along with Toothfire surprisingly well. For our present purposes, it’s where you situate Scientooth in relation to your cause that remains curious to me.”

Prof looked on Castle Jaw.

“Curious,” he repeated, “because it’s common knowledge in our quadrant these days that the Solidity’s founder hailed from your own galaxy. And that The Four Heroes were well-acquainted with him, long before he ever set a foot-module here.”

The Grindo’s gaze was still upon the few surviving chunks of his heritage. Joe, for the second time in their conversation, did not need any further prompting from Prof as to his point. Our hero was only too aware whose handiwork Scientooth’s so closely resembled.

“Your cause was unambiguous on how to deal with Dimension Borg, when he did things like this,” concluded Prof, and so saying, quietly departed.