T H U N D E R B E C K 2 :

S O N
O F
T H U N D E R B E C K

Chapter Bleu

September 1949

My expectations for this particular adventure with my old space friend were not high. I had not enjoyed his company for several months, for though he had always exempted me from his icy, dour way of interacting with people, I had been, of late, on the receiving end of his ubiquitous brutality. As his sidekick it was his prerogative to beat me, as he did, sparing me nothing of cold reality: the beatings made me feel more real, and the common space villains' swinging fists were cheap and harmless parodies of my master's. Those beatings made me hard. When our adventures finally came to an end in later, blander years, I know that it was the absence of those beatings that made me weak. One had to be strong for Dane Thunderbeck.

So, this particular adventure took us across the void to far off Galaxy-B, home of his one-time love, Queen Audra. It had been six years since they had last seen each other. It was the connection between galaxies, cyclic, six-year cycles. They had a son together. He would be nineteen.

We emerged from that state of quasi-dimensional compress, back into the reality of her throne room. The queen looked a little older than I remembered. She smiled at us with her old kindness. Thunderbeck took her hands and dutifully kissed them. She laughed at the tenderness. She was always too kind for his taste. Me, she embraced as an old and dear friend. And there standing slightly behind his mother was a tall, thin boy with dark hair and dark eyes: Rhone Thunderbach. He greeted his father with all due awkwardness. Thunderbeck shook his son's hand.

He had some ninety-odd children, and Rhone was the only one who had never risen up against him. There was no more love for the mother, but I suppose that this was the reason he was so fond of this son.

The queen led us through glass halls overlooking dark and beautiful gardens. Thunderbeck gave her his arm, and she talked and laughed with him as an old friend. Rhone walked behind, and I talked with him.

“You've grown.”

He looked at me with the dark eyes of his father. “My father's magician. I can't believe you're still alive.”

“Luck, young master, More often than naught.”

“You were with him at the siege of Planet Ten?”

“I was. That was a terrible day.”

“Is all of the talk true?”

I sighed. “Planet Ten is gone. World-Captain Aulis's kingdom is no more.”

“And my father's title?”

“He never cared for it. He still has his army.”

Rhone smiled at me, mocking. “Oh?”

“All of the people who mattered.”

“What, you and a few hundred men?”

“Me and a few dozen.”

“Merde. He's weaker than I thought.”

I looked at him gravely. “He's weaker than anyone can possibly know, right now.”

Queen Audra and Thunderbeck had stopped. “Rhone,” said my master. “Come with me.”

* * *

Thunderbeck told me of their conversation years later. They went to Audra's study, the grand library room that she so adored. He closed the vault door behind them.

“Your mother said you have a matter to discuss with me.”

Thunderbeck only surrounded himself with the self-sure and forthright. He was glad his son was one of these. “I want to go to Earth,” Rhone said.

“Why?” said Thunderbeck.

“Because I won't be pampered there. It's the only place where your name and my mother's are unknown.”

There was a cold grin in my master's eyes. “They know me on Earth.”

“You flatter yourself, father.”

Thunderbeck glared. “Earth is a terrible place.”

“I would imagine so.”

“You would not be able to see me. There is not a man of power in the solar system who is not my enemy right now.”

Rhone looked implacable.

“So be it, then, if you wish. I will transport you to Earth. Interplanetary passports are not being issued at this time. I'll contact my allies in Customs. They can be paid off.”

“Very well.” Thunderbeck turned to leave. “Father?” Rhone said.

“Yes?”

“Do you think I'll grow to be a failure like you?”

Thunderbeck pivoted one one heel and struck his son across the face in one motion, without hesitation, knocking him to the ground. Then, very calmly, he said, “Whatever do you mean by that son?”

Several moments went by before Rhone lifted himself off the ground. His mouth bled.

EPISODE ONE:
DANE THUNDERBECK STANDS UP

CHAPTER 99 - THUNDERBECK SITS DOWN

He was trapped in an anticipatory state as reality redressed itself. The martian scientist's box protected him, but only a little bit. Memories of things that had never happened still seeped in as he crouched there; some of his old one's went away.

Eventually, the roaring stopped. He opened the lid of his measly box and stood.

He had been Dane Thunderbeck. Now he was nobody very important. And this new Thunderbeck, not a living legend, not a warlord of worlds, hadn't the strength to make things that way again.
He shut the lid of the box and had a sit down. Covered in the dust of a nameless moon, he had a sit down. And he just didn't get back up. When he tired of sitting, he went to the ground, and curled up in the thin air, and went to sleep.

There was, of course, no morning. He lay there, and dreamed a long fractured dream, and that dream was the last reason he had to exist.



CHAPTER 1 - THE MAN WHO ROARED

I was young, and I loved my world, and hoped, and marvelled at the magnificent adventures that filled my own life.

I had been a soldier and it destroyed me. But destruction was as boring as peace, and so I spent three years in Paris as a magician. It was slightly more satisfying;

but only the last trick was real, all of the other times, I was a liar, and I gave them the salve: a way to live through their otherwise bland lives.

Except for that last time.

I came across a piece of dust.

It was a grey afternoon, and I sat with my friends at a Turkish-styled coffee house of the slums. We were enjoying our occasional opiate, and as I brought the black, sticky tincture to my lips, I saw a glinting flake, a shaving of metal. Unable to afford quality narcotics, my friends and I were not unused to such impurities. I picked the flake out with my fingernail, and suddenly felt transformed.

Though I had yet to partake that afternoon, my mind was on fire, and still, simultaneously From the tingling in my finger I deduced that it was the strange metal that was affecting me.

Intrigued, I toook my leave of my friends and retired to my cupboard apartment. My aunt was a chemist in Lyon, and so I set off that night to impose upon her.

Two days later, she and I stood in her modest laboratory running electrical currents through my little flake. I misunderstood much of what she explained to me, but apparently the metal emitted electro-waves, radio signals both very high and very low. As to the metal's composition, my brilliant aunt could not say. We split the piece in two, and she agreed to test further.

I returned to Paris, the half-flake pressed between my forefinger and thumb, giving me thoughts such as I'd never known. I conceived of a marvellous illusion - a magic trick that was not a trick, for I felt as if genius had overtaken me.

And so I stood in that little theatre. Before my audience, I spoke, not with a showman's austentation, but very calmly.

"My friends," I said, "I have before me a simple mechanism. It is a wheel, as you see, like the wheel of roulette. Here is a ball, a metal bearing, that I shall cast upon the wheel in a moment. On the turn of this wheel shall hinge the course of your life. And mine. Red. Black. Black. Red. You see the copper wires that run from this wheel."

The wires of which I spoke ran from the turnwheel to the underneath of a tarp.

"Watch," I said. I pulled away the covering, revealing the dynamite sticks. Piled as high as a man. There where gasps of panic from the crowd, and yet no one bolted to leave. How completely they misunderstood. I spun the wheel, I cast the ball. It was such a quiet explosion.