Dr. Mauser Short: Rocket Man

The whole Dr. Mauser setting allowed for so many ideas that wouldn’t fit into the central story, so I wrote shorts just to get them down. Ideas for Anti-spy traps and gadgets, and how a genre-savvy mad scientist would turn the tables on the “Heroes” coming after him.

In this case, Thorson Hammarskald, an Agent who totally believes his own press releases, meets a gruesome fate along with his team for believing in first appearances.

Bonus points if you get some of the references.

Rocket Man

“He went this way! Don’t let him get away!” Agent Thorson Hammarskald of S.M.A.S.H. shouted to his teammates as he pounded down the hallway after Dr. Mauser.

Hammarskald was the best they had, strong and intelligent, and a natural leader. He was the one who noticed the flashing amber strobe lights of the intruder alerts actually flashed in a sequence indicating escape routes. Dr. Mauser was a slippery bastard, always eluding the Forces of Justice that set out to capture the Evil Scientist, often turning the tables on his foes in tragic and humiliating ways. But not this time, he swore.

He was giving them quite the chase though. The ordinary S.M.A.S.H. troopers were having trouble with Mauser’s Minions, who seemed to be remarkably well-trained, disciplined, and not at all like the cannon-fodder typically in the employ of the Side of Evil. And the defenses were subtle, but strong.

As he rounded the corner, he caught a glimpse of the fleeing scientist, bald and leather-clad, more like a biker than an egghead. Then he saw what the madman was doing and stopped his remaining crew short. Mauser had flipped open an ordinary fire alarm pull on the wall to reveal a hidden switch, and when he toggled it, one of the fluorescent light fixtures on the ceiling dropped down on hydraulic arms. Atop the fixture, machine guns, and what looked like a grenade launcher, of all things! Mauser flipped a switch on the thing and continued down the hall, while the turret tracked in on Hammarskald's face peeping around the corner and unleashed a volley from twin Calico submachine guns. He jumped back just in time as the slugs ate away at the corner of the wall.

No simple auto-gun was going to stop the pride of S.M.A.S.H. though! He gathered up his strength and dove across the hallway to the other side of the T-intersection. A hail of bullets stitched their way across the wall. “Too Slow!” he shouted. “Oscar! Attack Plan Delta!”

“That’s the stickybomb?” asked the team’s munitions expert.

Hammarskald slumped his shoulders and rolled his eyes. He tried to set the standard for the rest of his men, but they couldn’t all live up to his image of ultimate Nordic manhood. Oscar was perhaps the least heroic member of the team, but he could work magic with explosives. “Yes, the stickybomb.”

In a moment, the diminutive demoman produced a grenade wrapped in a tacky plastic explosive, and tossed it to his boss, who spun across the hallway again and whipped the device at the turret. It adhered to the arm just above the guns, and a second later, blew the machine to pieces.

Unfortunately, Dr. Mauser was nowhere to be seen, but the hallway ended with a single reinforced door. “Lucky,” he said, addressing the team’s tech expert, “can you pick that?”

Lucky carefully studied the electronic keypad, and then pressed the green button that caused the door to slide open. “It wasn’t locked.”

Hammarskald burst into the room, his gun leveled and ready to bisect anyone with a hail of bullets. The room, however, was empty of people. What it did contain was a sort of rail station. On the far side was a glassed-in control room, and precisely in the middle, a rocket sled, with the numeral 2 prominently displayed on the side. The smoke in the air made it immediately apparent what had happened to the sled marked with a 1.

“Quickly, everyone strap in! We’ve got him now!” and the four men scrambled into the seats, pulling the restraint bars over their shoulders like a modern roller coaster. Thorson looked over at the last man on the team, their driver/pilot/sub commander and said, “Think you can handle this thing?”

“It’s on rails and the only control is this big red button. I think so.” He looked rather insulted at the question.

“Just push the button, Frank.”

With an explosive burst, the sled rocketed down the rails into the tunnel bored directly into the side of the mountain.

---

A few moments later, a panel of fake blinking lights opened in the control room, and Dr. Mauser stepped out. He moved over to the control panel and activated the blower to clear the room of the toxic clouds of rocket exhaust. A few more switches were thrown and the blast door at the back of the room opened, and a new rocket sled, again with the number 2 displayed prominently on its side rolled into place. He was nearly done rigging a new smoke bomb at the mouth of the tunnel when the door opened and the sound of some very intimidating boot heels percussed from the floor.

“Are you done playing with enemy agents?” the new arrival asked in an icy, heavily Russian-accented voice.

“Hey Kitten, yeah, and it worked perfectly. How’s the rest of the battle going?”

Major Anya Mikitenko, formerly of Russian Intelligence, bristled at the nickname. She always projected an aura of intimidation that apparently only Dr. Mauser was immune to. But it wasn’t her job to lecture him, only to do her best to keep him alive. “Enemy troops are being eliminated. There is no penetrating beyond first perimeter.”

“Cool. Hey, check this out,” Dr. Mauser said, indicating a monitor with a still video image on it. “Remember Professor Dorney?”

“The one living under amusement park? Da.”

“I got the idea from his buzz-saw flume ride.”

She looked, and barely containing her disgust, said, “You are sick man.”

“I figure I can get the IT boys to stick this on S.M.A.S.H.’s recruiting site. That should help cut them down to size.”

The screen image was of the rocket sled and its passengers, their faces stretched back by the immobilizing g-forces of their acceleration, but clearly showing the terror in their eyes as the floodlights illuminated the red and white bulls-eye painted on the solid granite wall at the end of the tunnel.