Chapter 1
Chapter One
It had once been a rather lovely summer nature camp right at the foot of the Longfellow Mountains. The low rolling mountains could be seen just to the west, and the trees were mostly quite lovely this time of year. There had been a rather large lake at the center of the camp, surrounded by the various main buildings of the complex with the campers cabins circling the lake at a somewhat higher elevation.
The lake was a muddy hole now, slowly refilling as the small river that fed it poured in. There were craters and scorch marks on the ground, the small snack stand that sold candy and such to campers was a blackened, charred wreck and the main hall was missing most of the roof and an entire wall. The administrative building had burned to the foundation, taking the camp records with it. Fire crews were still dealing with hotspots as a brushfire had been ignited in the forest opposite the main hall, evidently by the same thing that had destroyed the admin building judging by the presumed angles.
It looked like a warzone. Like something out of the First World War inflicted on a small nature camp in Maine. Miraculously, none of the campers had died, nor had any of the counselors. A few of the camp employees had been killed and more had been injured. But that wasn’t important.
What was important was that the Slaughterhouse Nine had evidently met the proverbial bigger fish, and that bigger fish had decided it really didn’t like them. There was so little left of them that it had taken Armsmaster several hours with a high powered tinkertech scanner to find DNA evidence proving that they all were, in fact, dead. A scorched bit of flesh here, a fragment of bone there, the crushed chassis of Mannequin. A crushed van containing the remains of Dr William Manton was parked in the employee parking lot, although all of the cars there had been crushed as well, a data point that Colin was attempting to decipher.
And one other thing that stood out like a sore thumb. A cylindrical device that, if the readouts on it were to be believed, contained Bonesaw in stasis while ‘decontamination and deprogramming’ took place. Colin had no idea how it worked, it had none of the obvious signs of tinkertech yet was clearly far in advance of anything ordinary technology could have produced. He had a feeling that the convenient user’s manual that had been left with it would answer how to operate it, but the manual itself raised even more questions. You couldn’t make a manual for tinkertech, for one thing.
For another, the apparent corporate logo on it corresponded to absolutely nothing that he was familiar with. He’d sent it to Dragon to see if she could find anything but so far she was coming up completely blank.
Several hours earlier PRT ENE had received reports of explosions and bright lights from the camp, then silence. Armsmaster had been dispatched to investigate the situation and while en-route had received word that a 911 call had been received from within the camp… that the Slaughterhouse Nine had been there and ‘it killed them!’ repeated over and over again by the young caller who seemed to be in a state of ecstatic shock.
As he rode northwest the picture cleared up somewhat as emergency services arrived. The Slaughterhouse Nine had indeed attacked the camp and appeared to be about to start their typical sadistic ‘games’ with the campers when, somehow, Burnscar and Shatterbird had both been killed simultaneously by ‘them’, followed moments later by the Siberian vanishing as ‘it’ appeared in the parking lot, then Hatchetface and Jack Slash were both killed by ‘it’ with an ‘awesome punch’, Crawler was ‘obliterated’ along with the lake by ‘it’ using a giant ‘death ray’, Mannequin was ‘blasted’ by ‘them’, and Bonesaw was captured by ‘it’ and stuffed in the stasis chamber, with the campers instructed not to touch it. By ‘it’.
What ‘it’ and ‘them’ were was incoherent, with explanations ranging from a giant robot to fighter jets to giant robot fighter jets… Armsmaster had given up trying to make sense of that, simply filing it all away. There had, however, been one other thing. A piece of an unidentified metal that appeared to be half of a highly complex electromagnetic ‘key’ that was designed to be slotted into the other half of the ‘key’ to form a whole. And a note, that the bearer of the other half of the key would report to the PRT ENE HQ to collect the bounty on the Nine in the coming weeks.
The note had been written on a piece of camp stationary with a Sharpie, evidently with the non-dominant hand of the writer considering how shaky the writing was, which didn’t match the nearly military professionalism of the content of the note. It read like a hand-written version of the memos that Colin regularly read as part of his duties as the leader of the Protectorate, the word choice was that of an experienced trooper with a strong military background.
According to the campers, ‘it’ and ‘them’ had disappeared in a ‘flash’, leaving the chamber, the ‘key’ and the note behind. And no, none of them had seen where ‘it’ and ‘they’ had gone.
One quite likely possibility was that one of the campers had somehow triggered in response to the arrival of the Slaughterhouse Nine, a powerful enough trigger that they were able to take the Nine down without training or experience. None of the kids or surviving staff were acting like they’d just triggered, but considering the euphoric situation and the emotional whiplash they’d all experienced it might just be someone hiding in plain sight.
At least whichever cape had pulled this off was kind enough to include what Colin was certain was their cape name on the note. Although for the life of him he had no idea what ‘SDF-1’ meant.
It had once been a rather lovely summer nature camp right at the foot of the Longfellow Mountains. The low rolling mountains could be seen just to the west, and the trees were mostly quite lovely this time of year. There had been a rather large lake at the center of the camp, surrounded by the various main buildings of the complex with the campers cabins circling the lake at a somewhat higher elevation.
The lake was a muddy hole now, slowly refilling as the small river that fed it poured in. There were craters and scorch marks on the ground, the small snack stand that sold candy and such to campers was a blackened, charred wreck and the main hall was missing most of the roof and an entire wall. The administrative building had burned to the foundation, taking the camp records with it. Fire crews were still dealing with hotspots as a brushfire had been ignited in the forest opposite the main hall, evidently by the same thing that had destroyed the admin building judging by the presumed angles.
It looked like a warzone. Like something out of the First World War inflicted on a small nature camp in Maine. Miraculously, none of the campers had died, nor had any of the counselors. A few of the camp employees had been killed and more had been injured. But that wasn’t important.
What was important was that the Slaughterhouse Nine had evidently met the proverbial bigger fish, and that bigger fish had decided it really didn’t like them. There was so little left of them that it had taken Armsmaster several hours with a high powered tinkertech scanner to find DNA evidence proving that they all were, in fact, dead. A scorched bit of flesh here, a fragment of bone there, the crushed chassis of Mannequin. A crushed van containing the remains of Dr William Manton was parked in the employee parking lot, although all of the cars there had been crushed as well, a data point that Colin was attempting to decipher.
And one other thing that stood out like a sore thumb. A cylindrical device that, if the readouts on it were to be believed, contained Bonesaw in stasis while ‘decontamination and deprogramming’ took place. Colin had no idea how it worked, it had none of the obvious signs of tinkertech yet was clearly far in advance of anything ordinary technology could have produced. He had a feeling that the convenient user’s manual that had been left with it would answer how to operate it, but the manual itself raised even more questions. You couldn’t make a manual for tinkertech, for one thing.
For another, the apparent corporate logo on it corresponded to absolutely nothing that he was familiar with. He’d sent it to Dragon to see if she could find anything but so far she was coming up completely blank.
Several hours earlier PRT ENE had received reports of explosions and bright lights from the camp, then silence. Armsmaster had been dispatched to investigate the situation and while en-route had received word that a 911 call had been received from within the camp… that the Slaughterhouse Nine had been there and ‘it killed them!’ repeated over and over again by the young caller who seemed to be in a state of ecstatic shock.
As he rode northwest the picture cleared up somewhat as emergency services arrived. The Slaughterhouse Nine had indeed attacked the camp and appeared to be about to start their typical sadistic ‘games’ with the campers when, somehow, Burnscar and Shatterbird had both been killed simultaneously by ‘them’, followed moments later by the Siberian vanishing as ‘it’ appeared in the parking lot, then Hatchetface and Jack Slash were both killed by ‘it’ with an ‘awesome punch’, Crawler was ‘obliterated’ along with the lake by ‘it’ using a giant ‘death ray’, Mannequin was ‘blasted’ by ‘them’, and Bonesaw was captured by ‘it’ and stuffed in the stasis chamber, with the campers instructed not to touch it. By ‘it’.
What ‘it’ and ‘them’ were was incoherent, with explanations ranging from a giant robot to fighter jets to giant robot fighter jets… Armsmaster had given up trying to make sense of that, simply filing it all away. There had, however, been one other thing. A piece of an unidentified metal that appeared to be half of a highly complex electromagnetic ‘key’ that was designed to be slotted into the other half of the ‘key’ to form a whole. And a note, that the bearer of the other half of the key would report to the PRT ENE HQ to collect the bounty on the Nine in the coming weeks.
The note had been written on a piece of camp stationary with a Sharpie, evidently with the non-dominant hand of the writer considering how shaky the writing was, which didn’t match the nearly military professionalism of the content of the note. It read like a hand-written version of the memos that Colin regularly read as part of his duties as the leader of the Protectorate, the word choice was that of an experienced trooper with a strong military background.
According to the campers, ‘it’ and ‘them’ had disappeared in a ‘flash’, leaving the chamber, the ‘key’ and the note behind. And no, none of them had seen where ‘it’ and ‘they’ had gone.
One quite likely possibility was that one of the campers had somehow triggered in response to the arrival of the Slaughterhouse Nine, a powerful enough trigger that they were able to take the Nine down without training or experience. None of the kids or surviving staff were acting like they’d just triggered, but considering the euphoric situation and the emotional whiplash they’d all experienced it might just be someone hiding in plain sight.
At least whichever cape had pulled this off was kind enough to include what Colin was certain was their cape name on the note. Although for the life of him he had no idea what ‘SDF-1’ meant.