Solid Frodo: Hobbit Espionage Action

Chapter 7: Ancalagon the Nuke

The new building was sort of greenish inside. The looked around, and saw a large door opened slightly at the bottom, with more than enough room for a Hobbit to crawl under. The didn’t go there yet; instead, the four walked up a small ramp that was to the left of the room, and Merry picked up the ration he found. There was a window there, so they looked inside to get a better view of what they would be facing.

There were a lot of guards inside, all wearing masks of some sort. There were also a lot of cone shaped objects, stacked about three high in several places.

"I wonder what those are," Pippin asked aloud.

"Maybe we should call Mei Ling and ask?" Merry suggested.

"Let’s do that," Frodo agreed, so they all sat down next to the window and called up Mei Ling.

"Oh, hello," Mei Ling said as her face came up on the green vision. "Is there something you need?"

"Yeah...we saw a lot of metal cones in the next room over, and we were wondering what they were," Pippin said.

"Oh...why are you asking me? I think Nastasha Romenenko or the Colonel would be better people to call."

"To be honest, we don’t like talking to them!" Pippin declared. "They’re like Orcs, or worse...always insulting us."

"Oh...," she said, sounding a little sad. "I’ll try not to do that."

"See? She’s much nicer than the rest of them," Merry proclaimed.

Mei Ling sighed. "I’ll see what I can find." She disappeared for a moment, and they heard her talking to someone. Then she came back. "Dr. Hunter says they are dismantled nuclear warheads."

"THOSE? You mean those little cones are capable of destroying entire cities?!" Pippin asked loudly.

"Yes. Well...no...they’re dismantled, so they can’t really do anything. But yes, things like that, nuclear warheads, working ones, yes, they could destroy entire cities."

The Hobbits all shuddered slightly. "If the Dark Lord had ever made one of those...I don’t even want to think about it," Frodo said quietly.

"The Ring is bad enough," Sam said. "But that...blowing up cities...that’s Morgoth’s work, worse than even Sauron!"

"That’s terrible," Pippin breathed.

Mei Ling nodded. "Yes, that’s why we need to stop the terrorists! They want to launch one!"

"We’ll do the best we can," Frodo assured her. "Imagine...putting all the terrible power of a dragon into a small metal container...awful...."

Pippin said, "Thanks for answering us, Mei Ling."

"You’re welcome," she said with a smile, then cut the line.

The Hobbits decided not to dwell on the idea of nuclear warheads, thinking it would just depress them, so they decided to get on with their journey to find Dr. Emmerich. They climbed down the steps, then scuttled underneath the doorway and hid in a shadow.

Almost the instant they entered the room with the warheads, their Codecs beeped, and they answered.

The Colonel came on and said, "Don’t use your weapons in there! If you accidentally broke one of the warheads, dangerous radioactive material would leak out!"

Naomi interrupted him. "Don’t worry, I’ve programmed the nanomachines so they can’t use their weapons."

"That’s good," the Colonel replied. "Then we don’t need to worry about that. Anyway. If you are spotted by a guard, that room will seal up and fill with poisoned gas, so be very careful!"

"What? Poisoned gas? How do the guards survive?" Pippin demanded.

"Can’t you see? They’re wearing gas masks!"

"I see masks, but all that means is they are hiding their faces!"

"Well," Campbell growled, "GAS MASKS filter out poisons in the air. You’ll probably find one on the island somewhere, but not in there."

"OK, fine," Pippin grumbled.

"Get to the stairs on the other side and go through the door. There should be an elevator there that will take you to Dr. Emmerich." The Colonel then went off line.

Still hiding in the shadows, the Hobbits conferred for a moment. "What did she exactly mean by programming the nanymachines not to let us use weapons?" Sam asked.

Merry shrugged. "Let’s find out." So as an experiment, he tried to pull the FA-MAS out of his pocket, but found he couldn’t force his arm down to do it! "Oh I am NOT liking this," he hissed.

Pippin attempted the same with the SOCOM, but he too could not draw the pistol. Frodo and Sam both discovered they couldn’t get to any of the grenades. Merry tried for a ration, and found his arm worked fine for that.

"It’s official. I hate that she-devil," Merry growled.

"I feel like a puppet! How dare she? How CAN she?" Sam complained.

The Hobbits found they could get to the Scope and Thermal Goggles, and the Mine Detector was unaffected.

"Maybe they do know how to use sorcery," Frodo muttered unhappily.

Merry thought for a long moment. "You know...even if they do know sorcery, they are quite ignorant about us...I wonder if they thought to exclude our swords? Or the Ring?"

"I’m not going to try to use the Ring," Frodo stated adamantly. "But Sting...," he said, trailing off while he attempted to draw his Elven blade. He found that Merry was right, the Big People had not considered their blades; Sting shone slightly in the dim light. He quickly sheathed it, so the guards didn’t see it.

Heartened, the other three Hobbits unsheathed their Númenorean blades. The swords were all black except for some thin red and gold damask, so they need not worry about them being seen.

They were very careful moving around this room, knowing that if they were spotted they were doomed. With exceptional care they walked toward the staircase on the far side of the room, ducking behind boxes and nuclear warheads whenever a guard came near. Merry, Pippin, and Sam kept their swords drawn, but close to their bodies.

They picked up a box of Chaff grenades on the way, and avoiding the roving eye, they made their way up the stairs. It was a sticky situation; they could tell from the radar that this next guard would be tough to avoid. After some thought, they decided that the only way to deal with him was to knock him out with the broadsides of their blades and then call the elevator.

They took a few seconds to psyche themselves up, and then Frodo tackled the guard around the knees just as he passed them on the stairs, then Merry, Sam, and Pippin whipped him until he was unconscious. They ran for the elevator, and it came in the nick of time; the guard was just waking up as the doors closed. Pippin quickly jabbed a point down triangle and the elevator took them down one floor.

The elevator opened up to a nicely decorated marble hallway. Their radar detected a guard in one room, not paying attention to anything, and another wandering around a room directly across from them. They quickly made their way over there, and picked up a clip of SOCOM bullets, and found one room they could enter. It had a window, so when they picked up the item boxes inside, they crawled under the desk before opening them.

The smaller box contained what looked like fairly sizable cylinders with a cone on the end and little wings. There were about ten of them in the box. Pippin fiddled with one, examining it, while Frodo, Merry, and Sam struggled to open the second box.

When they finally managed to wrestle the large box open they gasped. This time, the weapon, what ever it was, really was bigger than Frodo. It was pretty close to the same size as Merry and Pippin.

"Holy Eru, that’s huge," Merry breathed.

Pippin looked from the muzzle of the beast to the thing he held and back. "I think that shoots these," he said, pointing at the projectile in his hand.

"What in the world would anyone need something like this for?" Sam asked, puzzled. It looked like one could blow holes in walls with it.

"It’ll probably fit in our pockets, too," Pippin muttered, again reminded of the tightness of the Sneaking Suit and discreetly attempting to pull it down a bit.

"Like as not...so who gets it?" Sam said.

"Not me," Frodo said. "I’m not pocketing anything taller than me."

"I took the FA-MAS," Merry said. "My pockets are full."

"You are such a liar Meriadoc Brandybuck! You’re pockets aren’t any fuller than the rest of ours!" Pippin howled.

"Look, I’m shorter than Frodo, so I’m not taking it neither," Sam declared.

Pippin gave in amidst much protest. "FINE! I’ll take the blasted thing!" Then he roughly yanked it out of the other Hobbits hands and shoved it in one of his bottomless pockets.

The other Hobbits couldn’t help but chuckle at Pippin’s affronted expression. "What?! It’s like you’re using me as a pack-pony!"

"We are not, Pippin," Merry said. "I’m sure there will be even bigger and better weapons that we will force our two shorter friends here to stick in their pockets."

Pippin narrowed his eyes at Merry. "You just want to hold on to all the rations, don’t you."

"How dare you accuse me of such...such...things!" Merry shouted, completely scandalized.

Frodo and Sam snickered, and Merry turned a stormy glare in their direction. "I’m not hoarding the food!"

Frodo and Sam couldn’t help it; they started laughing out loud at Merry’s expression. "Oh, oh...this is not fair. I know your bellies are as bottomless as any other Hobbits’."

The two tried very hard to control themselves, knowing that this really wasn’t the place to be laughing; it took them a while. But several false starts and splutters later, Sam and Frodo seemed to have gotten themselves under control, all the while Pippin was grinning and Merry storming.

"Calm down, Merry," Sam finally said, trying to keep his face smooth.

Merry just glared.

"We know you aren’t hoarding the food," Frodo added. "The pipeweed, yes. But not the food."

"Well, I am quite allowed to hoard the pipeweed since it’s MINE to begin with," he grumped in reply.

Sam and Frodo almost broke down into another giggling fit, but managed to control themselves. Finally, Frodo said, "Let’s get going. I don’t see anyone else here except these soldiers. Dr. Emmerich must be in the next room down."

"All right...but next weapon we find, you are carrying it, Merry," Pippin grumped.

Merry said, "Let’s wait and see how big it is. If it’s taller than Frodo, he gets it."

"Let’s just go you two!" Frodo said as he started crawling out from under the desk.

It was not hard at all to get out of the room and back to the elevator, since there was only one guard on patrol. The other guard was still showing up on their radar as not paying any attention to anything. Merry and Pippin looked at one another, and decided a side-trip was in order, just to see what the guard was so absorbed in that he didn’t have a blue field of vision cone. When Frodo saw they were not waiting with him and Sam for the elevator, he sighed and went after them, with Sam trailing behind.

Merry and Pippin cautiously approached the door, and it opened by itself like most of the doors in the fortress did. They peeked inside, then rapidly spun on their heels and sped away from the door, allowing it to close.

"Well," Sam asked, "what was so interesting in there?"

Merry shook his head, and rubbed his eyes. Pippin answered, "These Big People have strange chamber pots stuck to the walls."

Sam cracked a smile. "So you got yourself an eye-full of a Big Person relieving himself?"

Merry nodded, still rubbing his eyes, as if he were trying to rub the sight right out of them. "Yes...blast it, but that’s two times for me now...three if you count that guard Meryl stripped."

Frodo commented, "Well, I think we shan’t be trying to beat your score in that, Master Brandybuck."

Sam added, "No, no, I shouldn’t think we would."

"You two are awful," Merry complained.

Pippin mumbled, "I wouldn’t mind trying out one of them chamber pots...."

"Oh for goodness sake," Frodo groaned.

"What am I supposed to do? I don’t see any bushes around here!"

"All right, we’ll wait for the guard to finish his business then we’ll all go in. I suppose it wouldn’t be a bad idea anyway, considering we don’t know how long we’ll be here."

So they waited on the far side of the hallway for the guard to leave the room. As soon as he did, the Hobbits ran in and made use of the restroom. Just as they were ready to leave, they saw the other guard approaching.

"Now what, Pippin!" Sam asked. "Where can we hide in here?"

Pippin ran to the two doors in the back. "This way!"

The four Hobbits rushed into the farthest stall, just in case the guard needed to use one of the more conventional looking chamber pots. Then Merry whispered as quietly as he could, "Now what is that guard going to think if he happens to look down and sees eight feet in here?"

It was a very good question, and just as they were about to attempt a very precarious balancing act to get their feet out of view, the guard turned to one of the wall pots. With a soft sigh of relief, the Hobbits relaxed a bit.

"Well, this is a nice pickle," Sam muttered. "How do we get out without being seen?"

"Or seeing, if you take my meaning," Pippin added.

Frodo pulled the hood of his Elven cloak down over his head and then pulled the cloak around him. "We will sneak. We are quite capable, and the guard is rather occupied. We’ll stay low so the guard doesn’t catch our reflection in the looking glass."

"Well you and Sam don’t have to worry about that," Pippin quipped.

Sam swatted Pippin. "Enough with the jokes! Mister Frodo is tall for a Hobbit and you know it."

"Quiet!" Frodo hissed. The radar suddenly showed a yellow cone, meaning the guard was suspicious. Fortunately he was otherwise engaged and couldn’t check on the noise he heard, and soon returned to his business.

"Now," Frodo whispered, "be as quiet as you can." Then he opened the stall door and stepped out, walking out with more than Hobbit-care, meaning even an Elf would be hard pressed to hear his footfalls.

"And don’t breathe too loud, Sam," Merry said as he followed Frodo out the door.

Sam glared, but did nothing, deciding that he would kick Merry for the comment later. So he and Pippin also sneaked out of the room, carefully shielding their eyes so they wouldn’t have to catch sight of the guard.

Soon they were all safely back out in the marble hallway, and they all tossed back their hoods. Now Sam did kick Merry, but Merry knew what it was for and just gave Sam a dirty look.

"Will you three stop this?" Frodo pleaded. "It’s any wonder these guards don’t find us for all the bickering!"

Sam shuffled his feet and said apologetically, "Well, sir, I think it’s just the stress, you know what I mean? Not that Mordor wasn’t right stressful...but this is different. Nothing’s the way it’s supposed to be."

"I know Sam. You’re probably right. That doesn’t mean you three shouldn’t stop it."

Merry put his fists on his hips. "I didn’t see you scolding yourself for laughing at me a little while ago."

Frodo wiped his face with both hands. "I’m sorry! OK? Now can we get this done with?"

Satisfied that Frodo had acknowledged that it wasn’t just three Hobbits bickering, Merry nodded and walked back to the elevator. None of the other Hobbits noticed Frodo fingering the Ring again as they entered the elevator.

Go on to Chapter 8