Solid Frodo: Hobbit Espionage Action

Chapter 2: Codec Moments

It was hard on Merry, swimming through the icy Alaskan water with three Hobbits clinging to him for dear life. But somehow he managed, and they all surfaced in a small room full of boxes. As soon as air hit them, Sam, Frodo, and Pippin all scrambled and splashed haphazardly for dry land as fast as they possibly could, while Merry took a little time treading water and looking around. Then he too climbed out of the water. They all dropped their SCUBA gear there.

Suddenly, they heard beeping in their ears. They all looked around, dumbfounded, trying to find whatever it was making the strange noise. Then they heard voices in their ears!

It took all their effort not to squeak in surprise when they heard Roy Campbell talking to them...inside their ears!

"I don’t suppose any of...WAIT! Don’t say anything yet!" they all heard Colonel Campbell shout. Somehow all of them knew no one but them could hear his voice. All of them nodded as one, quite put out of their reckoning.

"OK, see, here’s what you do. If you put your hand just below your ear, you can talk to me and we can even have some visual connection without anyone else hearing. Try it."

Tentatively, the Hobbits put their thin fingers just below the ears Naomi had so unceremoniously stuffed with Codecs. Then Frodo said, "Like this?"

"Yes, just like that." They knew it was working because they could see Colonel Campbell faintly in a green flickering vision just in front of their eyes.

"So what is this...thing? Is it Elf magic or is it evil sorcery?" Merry asked the green image.

"Gah, er...Elf magic," Campbell bluffed.

"You know, for a Big Person, you sure know a lot of Elf magic," Sam pointed out.

Campbell spluttered a moment then decided to pass the buck to someone else. "Well, actually, this Codec, as we call it, was invented by Mei Ling. She’s...a...she’s the Elf helping us here."

The Hobbits heard a startled female noise of surprise, and suddenly another person was in the green vision. "Uhhh....hi, I’m Mei Ling...," she floundered. Her voice had a pleasant accent.

Sam’s voice was full of awe. "So you’re an Elf?" Pippin elbowed Merry and muttered something under his breath about how she didn’t look much like an Elf.

"Ah," she giggled, "yeah, I’m...I’m a Chinese Elf."

Frodo sounded concerned and more than a bit suspicious. "I’ve never heard of Chinese Elves."

They saw Mei Ling’s expression turn consternated, and then they saw her give a dirty look to someone off-screen. The Hobbits thought that a little odd for an Elf to do, as all the Elves they had met were, well...a little more noble than that. Although Legolas had been seen to give Gimli a similar look now and then.

Finally she turned back to the screen. "Well, do Hobbits know all there is to know about Elves?" Her voice was a bit petulant, more than a bit haughty...and yet still a bit shaky.

The Hobbits murmured amongst themselves for a moment, each having to admit to themselves that no, they didn’t...but it still felt wrong, especially to Frodo. "Well, no," he finally admitted, "but I am an Elf-friend...and I have done a lot of study...."

"Well obviously not enough," Mei Ling grumped. "I’m a Chinese Elf and that’s that!"

Frodo put his hands up in defeat. He still didn’t believe her, but he would let it slide. The situation was unbelievable enough as it was. "All right, all right," he said, then added in High Elven, "Elen síla lúmenn' omentielvo", which translated to "A star shines on the hour of our meeting."

Mei Ling blinked. "That sounded really pretty," she said.

Frodo sighed. If Mei Ling was an Elf, she sure was a rustic backwoods hick of an Elf...

"Anyway, now that we have that settled, let me explain the Codec—" Suddenly a hand clamped over her mouth. Hushed and hurried speech was heard, then Mei Ling tossed off another dirty look. Then she composed herself and said, "I’ll explain the Soliton Radar system instead. See the four bright dots? Those represent you four. See the blue dots? Those are the enemy. Their field of vision is the blue cone you see..."

"What," Pippin asked suddenly, "if I jumped out like this," and he did so, right into the field of vision of a Genome soldier, "he’ll see me?"

The soldier’s eye’s flashed and a large exclamation point appeared over his head. "What was that!" he shouted, and brought his rifle up to aim at Pippin. Six Hobbit hands grabbed him and six Hobbit hands were this close to throttling the Took, but they had more important things to do, like hide.

The Hobbits scrambled around to the other side of a pile of boxes, holding their cloaks close. Mei Ling nearly shouted, "YES! Then the radar will be useless until the enemy is certain you are gone!"

"Well, Peregrin Took, let us make sure they can’t find us," Merry hissed at his friend. They didn’t feel safe next to the boxes; their excellent Hobbit hearing caught the sounds of footfalls coming closer, so they all quickly ran to occupy several different shadows. They pulled their Elven cloaks over their heads, and after several hectic and heart pounding moments, a beep was heard and the Soliton Radar cleared. A confused "Huh," was heard nearby.

Merry stepped out of his hiding spot long enough to grab Pippin by his cloak and shake him. "What did you do that for! Gandalf was right, you are a fool of a Took!!"

Pippin raised his hands, "Sorry! It’s just really hard to believe all this queer Elf magic, all right! It’s nothing like Frodo and Sam told us about Galadriel’s Mirror!"

Sam and Frodo also came out of hiding, careful to avoid the sight of the guards. "Look," Frodo whispered, "it’s obviously not Elf magic or sorcery. I don’t know what it is, but let’s just go along with it, OK? The faster we do that, the faster we get out of this ridiculous situation."

Pippin hrumphed. "And the faster I get out of this Wedgie of Doom..."

"Right," added Sam.

Pippin’s shoulders fell and he sighed. "OK, I’m sorry, I won’t do it again."

"Good," Frodo said, patting Pippin on the shoulder. "Now...er...I think Mei Ling was trying to explain something?"

Suddenly the Codec screen came on again. "Yes I was. I think you all know about blue cones now," she said, her dripping sarcasm obviously directed at Pippin. "Anyway, as I was saying, the cones turn yellow if a guard is suspicious, like if you make a noise or he sees footprints."

"Oh, we won’t make no noise, Miss Ling, and we don’t leave no tracks, leastways when we don’t want to," Sam added with great assurance.

"Well, anyway," Mei Ling continued, somewhat irritated, "When you are near the DARPA Chief you will see a green fog on the radar, OK?"

All the Hobbits nodded, and Mei Ling went off line.

That left the Hobbits without much to do, so they decided to explore, carefully of course. They went together in a row, with their swords unsheathed. Sting was polished silver, without the faintest of blue anywhere on it, so they knew there were no Orcs nearby. Soon, Merry found a small round, brown object. "I wonder what this is," he said to himself, and picked it up. He sniffed it, then passed it to Pippin.

"Huh. Looks like cram. I’ll warrant it’s not even close to lembas..."

"Like as not. Let’s have a bite."

So the four Hobbits sat down to share the meager Ration, and all were uniformly unimpressed. Sam muttered, "This is worse than cram. But I guess it’s better than nothing."

"Fills the insides anyway," Pippin remarked. "Not a proper second breakfast though."

Frodo scratched his head. "Did we even have a first breakfast?"

"I don’t rightly know, sir," Sam answered, also a bit confused. "Well, I guess this is it if we didn’t."

After a few moments, carefully watching the strange radar thing, they peeked up over the boxes and looked at what appeared to be a giant moving floor. There was a Man on it, wearing a long brown cloak. "Hey," Sam asked, "Who’s that?"

"Maybe we should ask Colonel Campbell," Frodo suggested.

"There’s a plan," Merry nodded. "But...um...how?"

Frodo sat in thought for a long moment. "Maybe if we press our ears, it turns that Codec thing on?"

"Might as well try it," Pippin shrugged. So they all pressed the spot right under their ears, but instead of seeing Colonel Campbell or the self-proclaimed Chinese Elf Mei Ling, they saw a selection of names to choose from. The names were written in Cirth runes, which all the Hobbits could read.

"Now what?" Sam exclaimed, as quietly as he could.

"How in all Arda should I know?" Merry asked. "It’s not like this Elf magic gadget thing came with instructions."

"Well...let’s just say a name. There’s one we haven’t talked to yet," Frodo said, pointing at the air, as if the green vision existed in space. "Miller," he said, and the Codec beeped.

A man with dark sunglasses and blond hair pulled back into a ponytail came on the ‘screen’ "Hello Sna...ke...?" Miller answered, but his voice trailed off. Then his accent changed rather abruptly. "Wait, who are you?"

"I’m Frodo Baggins, and this is Samwise Gamgee, Peregrin Took, and Meriadoc Brandybuck. We were just trying to figure out how to use this Codec thing that the...Chinese Elf made."

Master Miller appeared at a loss for words. After several moments of working his jaw, he answered, in his original accent, "Ah, OK. Well...you can call me if you need any help with the terrain or something." Then he quickly cut the line.

"Well, he wasn’t very nice, sir," Sam commented.

Frodo shook his head. "No, he seemed a little surprised...I think we put him out of his reckoning."

"We put everyone out of their reckoning," Merry complained. "No one has heard of Hobbits."

Pippin scanned the names. "Let’s call this Nastasha Romenenko!"

As soon as he said her name, the blonde Russian came on screen, smoking a cigarette. "Oh! I thought I was going to provide backup for Solid Snake! I’m a little surprised Colonel Campbell sent a bunch of children into this." Her accent was quite thick, and reminded the Hobbits of the few Big People they had met who were Dorwinrim.

Pippin huffed. "We aren’t children. We’re HOBBITS. Full grown Hobbits at that!"

"Some of us are full grown anyway," Sam muttered, referring to the fact that Pippin hadn’t come of age yet, although physically he was as full grown as any Hobbit was ever likely to get and then some.

Merry was more interested in the cigarette. "Is that a new way to smoke pipeweed? It doesn’t look like you can make smoke rings that way though...."

"Pipeweed?" Romenenko asked. "Oh, you mean tobacco. Yes, it is."

"Longbottom Leaf?" Merry asked conversationally.

"Uh, no, Marlboro."

"Oh, I’ve never heard of them. They must be in Bree somewhere."

"Gets the job done. Now, you said you were Habits?"

"HOBBITS!" all four shouted in unison.

"Oh, sorry. Hobbits then. My job is to provide the operative with information regarding nuclear weapons, so if you have any questions, feel free to call." She was just about to get off line when Sam interrupted her.

"We do, we do! What are nuclear weapons? They sound awful, especially if they can destroy Mount Doom."

Nastasha cleared her throat. She spoke as if it were her favorite subject. "Yes, nuclear weapons are a terrible thing! Just one can level an entire city, and the radioactive fallout can last for years."

"Oh dear...I had no idea the Dark Lord had managed to create such things. They must be like dragons except worse," Frodo answered.

Romenenko laughed. "Dragons?! This isn’t a fairy tale we’re talking about! Nuclear weapons are very very real, and very dangerous."

Sam spluttered in indignation. "Dragon’s aren’t fairy tales, ma’am! Why, Mr. Bilbo even saw one once!"

Romenenko blinked. They could see she thought they were all quite insane. "Anyway, be careful, you are in a nuclear weapons storage facility, there is a stockpile of warheads without detonators there. Don’t shoot anything near one, it would be dangerous for the radioactive material to leak. Call me if you need more information." She did sign off this time.

"Well," Sam huffed, "I don’t want to call her again! Fairy tales indeed!"

Pippin nudged Sam. "I don’t think these Big People know much of anything if you ask me."

"They do seem to talk about very strange things, anyway," Merry added, not quite in agreement.

"Anyway, we wanted to know about that Big Person with the brown cloak, so I think we should call the Colonel now," Frodo said, bringing the conversation back to its original purpose. So this time they called the Colonel, and his face came up on the green vision.

"Is there something you need?" he asked, somewhat wary.

"Well, yes, actually," Frodo answered, "We saw a Big Person with blond hair and a brown cloak. Do you know anything about him?"

"Oh! Yes, indeed. I forgot to tell you about the terrorists. They are all part of a black ops military organization known as FOX-HOUND. The one you just saw is their leader, Liquid Snake." When the Colonel said this, a short dossier of information and a picture of Liquid Snake came up on the Codec screen. "He actually looks exactly like Solid Snake, and we were a little concerned that there might be some confusion, but I doubt anyone will mistake you Hobbits for Liquid."

"No, I don’t suppose," Pippin agreed, thinking Liquid Snake looked like a rather mean Big Person.

"There are several other members of FOX-HOUND involved in this terrorist take-over. There is Decoy Octopus," a picture of someone who didn’t look much like anyone came up, "a master of disguise. Vulcan Raven, giant and shaman," a picture of what the Hobbits were certain must be either a real giant or perhaps a very Mannish looking Troll came up, and he had a bird tattooed to his forehead. "Sniper Wolf, a deadly assassin." A picture of a woman, who the Hobbits figured must be a Lossoth, since it was so cold and she wasn’t wearing much of a jacket, accompanied Colonel Campbell’s statement. "Psycho Mantis, a master of telepathy." The picture showed a Big Person all in black and the Hobbits were more than a little concerned he might be a Ringwraith. "And lastly, Revolver Ocelot, a master of guns with a penchant for torture." The Hobbits didn’t think much one way or another about the picture, except that maybe this Revolver Ocelot would look a little like a wizard if he grew a beard.

All in all, the Hobbits were unhappy about what they saw, certain these must all be minions of Sauron...especially Psycho Mantis and Revolver Ocelot.

"OK, now that you know that part, you should go up the elevator to the heliport above," Campbell informed them.

"If you don’t mind my asking, sir," Sam replied, "why did these evil people come all the way to the Forodwaith, so far from Mordor, to take hostages?"

The green vision of Campbell blinked once, but he seemed to decide to ignore all the talk about places he’d never heard of. "They’re demanding the frozen remains of Big Boss, the greatest soldier to have ever lived."

Merry whispered to Pippin, "I’m sure he wasn’t as good as Strider."

"Certainly not as good as Eärendil or Beren...," Pippin agreed.

Frodo frowned deeply. "They must be up to some deep Morgul sorcery if they want a dead body." He shuddered. "I don’t even want to think about it."

"Er...it must be something like that," Campbell dodged. "Anyway, you should really be getting on with your mission." He signed off, leaving the Hobbits to think for a second.

"We might as well," Pippin said, standing. "Better get this over with so we can get out of here."

The other Hobbits agreed, and they sneaked past the guard Pippin had alerted before and got on the elevator.

It was a rather strange sensation, riding an elevator...they were not at all used to how fast they moved up, and as soon as it stopped, they all stumbled off, reeling a little, lightheaded. Once they got their bearings, they slowly wandered to the side of a large structure and peeked around. What they saw nearly shocked the hair off their feet.

A gigantic metal...THING...with huge swords spinning on top of it, started flying up and away. "Oh Elbereth save us!" Pippin gasped as he fell back under the force of the wind the giant steel behemoth made with its whirling swords.

"What is that?" Merry wondered, also flat on his back. "It’s like a dragon! I hope it doesn’t breathe fire!"

Sam was huddled against the side of the structure, scared out of his wits. "I didn’t want to see no dragons, no, I didn’t, and that one Big Person said there weren’t no dragons...."

Frodo, being somewhat quicker on the uptake than other Hobbits, said, "I think it’s a...what...a...machine...like Saruman would build. I didn’t think he could build flying ones like that though! I hope we don’t have to see it again!"

"Oh Frodo sir! You don’t mean Saruman is involved in this too?!" Sam cried.

Frodo, who had also managed to be laid out by the steel beast’s wind, sat up and sighed, "I hope not...maybe this FOX-HOUND stole one of Saruman’s new inventions."

Pippin and Merry both stood as well. "This is getting rather complicated, I say. I wish we could go back to the Shire...." Merry moaned.

Pippin looked around, and bounced once as he found another ration. "I think we need another bite after that scare, don’t you?" he asked as he retrieved the round canister.

"Yes, yes!" Merry agreed, though he didn’t care for the taste of rations any more than the rest of them.

"We can finish first breakfast now at least," Sam said as he walked over and took his portion of the ration. Frodo said nothing, but took a piece to eat as well.

They sat there in silence for a while, attempting to get over the fright of seeing the flying metal monster while munching away at the rather bland ration. After several minutes sitting in the snow, Frodo said, "Well, we best be going now. We have to find some way into the fortress, anyway."

"Oh, all right, just when I was getting ready to have a smoke," Merry complained. The rest stood and went back to the side of the structure they were near, and again peered out, fervently hoping no more flying things were there to greet them.

Much to their relief, there weren’t, just guards in white wandering around. Just as they were about to set off, the Codec beeped in their ears and they all ran back to hide behind the structure.

"Who is it?" Frodo asked. He was answered by a green vision filled with the face of Colonel Campbell.

"I called to explain how to use your equipment. First, you have the Scope," he said, and one of them pulled out the aforementioned after seeing a little picture of it. Pippin looked through them from the wrong end and scrunched his face up.

Merry grabbed them and turned them around. "Oh!" Pippin exclaimed, "This is interesting...like a Palantír except without...er...," he suddenly shuddered at a dark memory and passed the Scope quickly to Sam, who looked at a wall far away with them.

"There’s a door there we might go through," he said quietly, adjusting the Scope’s zoom.

Colonel Campbell seemed to be looking through their Inventory, whatever sort of magic place that was. "What’s this?" he asked, when he saw Merry’s pipe and his pipeweed. "A pipe? Aren’t you too young to smoke?"

"WHAT?!" Merry shouted into the Codec. "I’m nearly forty!"

The green vision’s eyes went wide. Roy Campbell gaped for a moment, then shut his mouth. "W-well, OK then. Um." He sounded like he was going to say something else, but decided against the ‘smoking is bad for your health’ bit. For all he knew, it wasn’t for Hobbits, and anyway, if Merry was almost forty, he was certainly old enough to make his own decisions about it. "Well...I suppose ‘pipeweed’ doesn’t have as many additives in it anyway."

He continued through the Inventory while Sam handed off the Scope to Frodo. Campbell decided to skip the four swords, but he did notice something amiss. "You know, you should have found some rations by now...."

"Oh, we did," Pippin replied, "they don’t taste very good, but I guess they’ll do in a pinch."

"You are supposed to save them for when you need them! They replenish any health lost if you get wounded!"

"But we did save them! We needed first breakfast, and after that giant dragon-thing scared us half out of our wits, we needed something to make us feel better...besides, one isn’t enough to call a good breakfast for four Hobbits."

They saw Colonel Campbell rub his face. "‘Giant dragon-thing’? That was a helicopter, you ninnies!"

"Now hold on a second!" Sam shouted. "We don’t take well to bein’ called ninnies by Big People that don’t even know as much as a little Hobbit-lad about dragons and Mordor and whatnot! So don’t be callin’ us names just ‘cause we ain’t as ignorant as you."

It took every single scrap of willpower Colonel Roy Campbell had at his disposal not to respond to Sam’s insults. "Look. It’s called a HELICOPTER. I don’t care what you think it was, it is a HELICOPTER."

Frodo intervened before the tense situation got any worse. "I think we have something of a misunderstanding here. We’ve never heard of...of...."

"Hecilopters," Sam provided, still glaring at the green vision of the Colonel.

"HELICOPTERS," the Colonel ground out.

Frodo sighed. "Well, we’ve never heard of helicopters or anything like that. That’s not ignorance, we just are not where we are used to being, Colonel. And I know you’ve been lying to us about Elf magic...so you know we aren’t where we should be either. But since we’re stuck here, and since we agreed to help you, can’t you please be nicer about it? I’m sure we’ll all be better off not shouting at each other."

Campbell was visibly grinding his teeth. Frodo turned to Sam and said, "And you know we’re not where we’re supposed to be, so you shouldn’t shout either."

Sam shuffled his feet and muttered out an apology, though he was obviously still smarting from the insult.

"OK, fine. I will...do my best...to deal with this situation with as much diplomacy as I can." It was equally obvious that this was a huge strain on the Colonel’s pride and that he would rather be dealing with anyone and anything other than Hobbits at the moment.

Frodo sighed in relief. "Well, we should be going, now that we know how to get inside."

"Make sure you explore carefully for on-site weapons you might need, and try not to eat all the rations," Campbell added, then signed off.

Pippin and Merry looked each other, clearly having no intention of saving the food if they were hungry, but they all followed Frodo as he carefully made his way to the door Sam saw with the Scope. Not a single guard saw them or their footprints, for while Hobbits can’t walk on the top of snow like Elves can, they leave nearly invisible tracks that disappear quickly in fresh falling snow.

On the way, they found something lying in the bed of a wagon of some sort. It was rather big for Hobbit hands, and it had what looked like a handle, a small trigger (at least, they thought it was a trigger, as it looked something like a crossbow trigger), and a small round opening on one end. The letters SOCOM were emblazoned upon the side, but since Hobbits don’t know Roman letters, they couldn’t read them.

"I wonder what this is," Sam asked, picking it up with both hands. "It has strange letters on it."

"Maybe it’s like a crossbow," Merry offered.

"Then where’s the bow?" Pippin asked.

Merry gave Pippin a dull look. "Like a crossbow, the same way that...um...hecilopter was like something Saruman would make. It probably shoots things, but I can’t imagine what."

Sam pointed it out the back of the wagon. "Look! It makes a little red dot on the walls!"

Pippin put his hand in front of the SOCOM, and the red dot was on his hand. "Huh. That’s strange."

Frodo grabbed Pippin’s hand. "If that does shoot things, you don’t want to be sticking your hand in front of it, do you?"

"Why don’t we test it?" Merry suggested. "Then we can see just exactly what it is and if it would be useful."

"Well, OK," Sam said, a little nervous. He pointed it at a wall in the distance, then pulled the trigger. The thing made a loud noise, and the Hobbits covered their ears while Sam found himself shoved back a few inches and his hands hurting. A little puff of smoke and debris appeared where the red dot had been pointed.

There were also a rather large number of "Huh? What was that noise?"s being said by numerous guards who had heard the SOCOM go off.

"Oh no! This thing is too loud!" Sam cried, then, still carrying it in both hands, he jumped out of the wagon and tried to find somewhere to hide. Frodo motioned to him from under the wagon, and Sam quickly scurried under it. Merry and Pippin were hiding there as well...and it was a good place to hide, for it would be very difficult for a Big Person to get under the wagon as quickly as the four Hobbits had.

They peeped out, with their cloaks pulled close, watching several boots stomp around the wagon. They felt someone climb up in the wagon, then after what felt like an eternity, the guards all left and returned to their regular patrols.

Waiting a few minutes longer just for good measure, the Hobbits finally crawled out from under the wagon, Sam still holding the SOCOM. They looked at one another and then at the SOCOM, and without saying anything, they all agreed they would rather use their swords and Sam put the SOCOM in a pocket.

They continued to make their way to the door Sam had found, pausing near the top of the stairs and watching a thing with an eye on it move back and forth.

"I’d rather not be seen by that roving eye there, sir. It makes me nervous, like its dead," Sam whispered to Frodo, who nodded.

"I think if we go one at a time, and quickly, we can sneak under it while it’s not looking."

The other Hobbits nodded, and Merry volunteered to go first. When the eye was pointed away, he scurried up the last of the largish steps and stood right beneath the eye until it was looking away from him, then he ran for it. It seemed to work, so the other three Hobbits followed the same pattern, Pippin, then Sam, and Frodo last. Finally they were all past the watchful eye, and at the door.

"Oh, hey, look, there’s something else here," Merry said while picking up a box. There were three cylindrical objects inside, each with something that vaguely resembled a tongue on one side.

"I think we should ask somebody about that before we try to use it," Pippin said cautiously, taking the box out of Merry’s hands.

Frodo smiled at him. "How unlike you, Mr. Took, to think before you act!"

Pippin stuck his tongue out at Frodo and pocketed the cylinders.

"Well that wasn’t nice, either of you, (even if it is true about Master Peregrin)" Merry grumped. "I found them."

Pippin rolled his eyes and handed one cylinder back to Merry and one to Sam. Frodo just shook his head, still smiling, while Merry was only slightly pacified.

"Well, let’s go already," Pippin said, and they all went through the door...a magic one, they guessed, since it opened by itself before they got a chance to look for a knob.

Go on to Chapter 3