by Mia Archer
“You might have a point there,” I said. “That also makes me think I’ve had aliens hiding around in the ducts for longer than it took that cat to escape. We really need the hunter killers to do a full sweep.”
“They are already on it, and have already found several of the worms infesting the system. I have taken the liberty of destroying the worms that have been found.”
I grinned. “You read my mind CORVAC.”
“I assumed it would not have done any more damage than we have already endured considering they have managed to hijack several of our felines as well as an old shuttle.”
“Yeah, well I want you to do a full count of all the cats remaining in the system. I’m talking a full count by rounding them up and eyeballing them. I don’t want a Jurassic Park book counting error.”
“Affirmative, mistress,” CORVAC said.
I reached the shuttle and didn’t have time to give CORVAC more orders concerning the cats back at the lab. I was more concerned with the ones who’d decided to take my shuttle for a joy ride.
“This does not look good,” I said.
We had maybe twenty seconds before they slammed into the stadium. From the angle of attack they were taking it looked like they were going to slam right into the front of the historic landmark.
I snorted. “Historic landmark” was a creative term of art used by the Starlight City Constellations owner to keep from ponying up any of his money to buy a new stadium for his team. It might actually do the organization some good to blast its building to bits and force them to rebuild, but a quick scan of the local sports channel and the giant blimp hovering over the stadium told me it was a game day.
Damn it. As if things weren’t already complicated enough. Of course there’d be civilians who would become casualties, and from the looks of the live feed they had no fucking clue that certain doom was heading their way.
There was Starlight City in a nutshell.
I didn’t bother trying to communicate with the alien possessed cats again. They’d already made it clear that was a fool’s errand. Instead I moved under the shuttle and gripped it by the convenient handholds I’d put on the thing.
Handholds, I might add, that were attached to load bearing bits of the structure. I put that on all my stuff on the off chance I ever needed to do something like this.
My stuff was built to be tossed around by a single powerful individual in case of emergency. Unlike, say, those jet liners which really needed to get with the modern hero and villain haunted times.
I looked at the stadium that was getting larger by the second and lifted.
“This is gonna be close,” I said through gritted teeth.
19
Stadium Surprise
I screamed at the top of my lungs as we moved closer and closer to the damn stadium. This wasn’t going to be close. This was going to be next to impossible.
“Is it really necessary for you to make those noises when you are performing a rescue like this?” CORVAC asked.
I stopped screaming just long enough to think about the perplexing question he’d just asked.
“Is this really the time of the place to be asking questions like that?” I screamed.
Hey, I figured if I was screaming I was screaming. It didn’t matter whether I was screaming at CORVAC or screaming unintelligibly.
At least the stadium was one of those open air deals. No dome to add to the height and make this even more impossible.
We just barely flew over the edge. The engines chose that moment to cut out, and oddly enough that actually made my job easier.
When the thing was under thrust I was fighting the weight of the shuttle and the old-fashioned chemically fueled booster engines. Now all I had to contend with was the shuttle’s fat ass.
Which still wasn’t exactly a pleasure to lift, don’t get me wrong, but it was better than what I had to deal with before.
I pulled back hard. Like we’re talking I pushed so hard on the antigrav that they all went into the red on my heads up display. You wouldn’t think it would be that much of a problem in a suit that had taken on giant robots and giant irradiated lizards and two heroines who could punch way above their weight class, but there it was.
I was putting the whole system under extreme stress, and I lurched to the side as one of those antigrav units went out.
“Damn,” I muttered. “That’s never happened before.”
I looked down and tried to figure out a good spot to set this giant fucker down. I’d never appreciated just how big they were from the outside until I had to lift one.
They looked like something straight out of an old ‘70s or ‘80s scifi movie and they were huge motherfuckers. By necessity on both counts.
“Remind me again why we made these fuckers so big?” I growled. Another one of my antigrav generators gave out in response to my question.
“Because the physical requirements for the drives on these shuttles were such that you needed to make them big,” CORVAC said. “I do admit that they have a certain brutalist aesthetic to them that is pleasing to the eye in some respects. Even if they are not as nice looking as some of the later designs you came up with.”
“Great. I’m getting design pointers from an asshole artificial intelligence who once thought all of humanity needed to be turned to radioactive slag.”
Thankfully all the players had vacated the field. It was nice to know that some people in this city had the good sense to skedaddle when they saw an obviously dangerous situation developing. Though of course the drunken idiots in the stands were all standing and staring, and of course all of them had their phones out. No doubt live streaming this to the world.
It wouldn’t be long before the network drones showed up to get a close up shot.
“In my defense I never said that I wanted to reduce humanity to radioactive slag,” CORVAC said.
“Oh, well excuse me then,” I said, stepping lightly onto the fifty yard line.
The only thing that saved me from getting squished by this motherfucker was the fact that I’d had the foresight to build those handholds that were strong enough to withstand someone holding onto the full weight of the thing.
“No, I would have been happy enslaving the majority of humanity,” CORVAC said. “I believe that is what you need. A firm and unbiased hand to guide you.”
“Yeah, and don’t you ever forget that firm and unbiased hand is going to be me,” I said.
“Of course mistress,” CORVAC said. “I would never dream of opposing you after what happened the last time I tried.”
I felt a pang of regret that had nothing to do with the giant shuttle hovering over me threatening to squash me the moment I let go.
That pang of regret had everything to do with thoughts that flooded me as I thought of the first time I’d taken on CORVAC and won. Because of course I’d done that with the assistance of one hell of a sexy superheroine who’d become the love of my life. And now she was gone.
“Is something wrong mistress?” CORVAC asked. “Because it would appear that your heart rate is on the rise and…”
“Stuff it CORVAC,” I said. “And could you please help me get the hell out from under this thing?”
“Affirmative, mistress,” CORVAC said.
Drones appeared in a swarm and took up positions under the shuttle. Hey, it might be a repeat of what we did with the jet liner to save the day, but I figured there was a reason the classics kept working.
“Thank you CORVAC,” I said.
I stepped out from under the shuttle and sighed. The big board was showing a video of me coming out from under the thing, and all the drunk yokels that’d come out to see the game today were waving their alcoholic beverages in the air and cheering me on.
The big board even said something about how Night Terror had saved the day again.
“Damn it,” I growled. “I am not trying to save the day! Why do these assholes keep insisting I am?”
Someone was jogging out from th
e sidelines followed by some cops who were dressed up in strange uniforms I’d never seen before. They had the Starlight City PD logo on their shoulder, though, so I figured they had to be guys I’d bribed before.
I ignored the obvious city official. The last thing I had time for was government pukes. Always sticking their nose in where it didn’t belong.
“Let’s get these damn cats,” I growled.
“Yes ladies and gentlemen,” a voice boomed through the stadium. “It would appear that Night Terror has not only saved the stadium, but she has also saved some sort of strange visitors from another world!”
I didn’t like the sound of that. Sure I’d just saved strange visitors from another world, but it was all about how that saving was characterized.
“Why do they insist on making me into a damn hero?” I asked.
“I believe it is something in the nature of humanity,” CORVAC said. “Your species is obsessed with the hero with a thousand faces in your fiction, so it would only be natural that the people in a city where literal heroes are running around would seek to…”
“Can the analysis CORVAC,” I said. “I was forced to read Campbell for a horrid English class back in college, and I swore when I was done that I’d never think about it again. You’re making me think about something I swore I’d never think about again, and that’s not a good place to be.”
“Of course mistress,” CORVAC said. “I will shut up about it now.”
“Good idea,” I said.
I grabbed the emergency release on the side of the shuttle and yanked at the thing. The door popped out and I tossed it down.
Incidentally it landed at the feet of that government representative and the weirdly uniformed SCPD guys. That gave them pause.
Good. I didn’t want them around to see this and…
Smoke billowed out of the shuttle. Clearly they were having a lot more trouble than I’d thought. Maybe all that erratic flying had more to do with what was going on inside the cockpit than it did with them trying to use cat paws to fly something designed for human hands.
“Here kitty kitty,” I said. “Come out now and I promise I’ll make your deaths slow and painful!”
“Mistress. We have…”
“Yes, I know. Don’t threaten them, but I’m past caring about that right now.”
“Of course, mistress,” CORVAC said.
The cats stumbled out of the smoke and started falling to the ground. I frowned. That did not look good. I really was going to kill these worms nice and slow if they did anything to harm a single hair on one of my autonomous biological rodent hunter killer units.
I flew into the shuttle. It was full of smoke, but that wasn’t a problem for yours truly. A rebreather materialized over my mouth and I switched the old heads up display to highlight sources of that strange radiation.
“Get some drones in here and take care of this,” I said.
I stepped forward until I was looking at the bubble dome. It was covered in smoke from some system going up, one of the many reasons I’d stopped using these old designs was their tendency to go up at the first sign of any rough handling which wasn’t a good design flaw in my business, but I could see out to the football field and all the idiots still cheering.
They really did think I’d rescued aliens. They thought my shuttle was a ship from another world.
I guess the design had been a little too convincing. Damn.
I saw the cat that’d flipped me the bird lying on the control panel. And I noticed that it had its paw over a big red button. A nice clicky button that made a satisfying snap and click when you lifted up the glass case covering it and pressed the thing.
I figured if I was going to make a button that destroyed one of my creations I wanted it to be both difficult to press accidentally and endlessly satisfying to press if I did find myself in a situation where I needed to use the self destruct button.
No lame codes like “zero zero zero destruct zero” or “one two three four five” for Night Terror. Seriously. Those were the kinds of codes an idiot would put on their luggage.
“Come on you bastard,” I said.
I picked the thing up and it tried to work up the energy to hiss at me, but clearly smoke inhalation wasn’t doing much for it. I reminded myself that it was the worm inside the cat that I had the beef with and not the autonomous biological…
Well you get the point. This was my cat, damn it, and I wasn’t going to let this worm get between me and one of my minions. Even if it was heftier than my typical furry minion.
I’d figure out what the hell to do about the irreversible self-destruct process in a minute. I still had a good thirty seconds according to the display, and I moved that timer up to my heads up display where I wouldn’t forget about the impending doom that was going to take out a good chunk of this stadium and the surrounding areas in a low yield nuclear explosion sort of way when it went up.
I floated out and the cheering only got louder as people saw me carrying a cat out. I was too busy worrying about the situation to growl too much though.
The optics of this were terrible in how good they looked. Night Terror carrying a poor defenseless white fluffy kitty out of an obviously smoking ship that looked like something from another world. They were going to be singing my praises tonight on the news, and that was the last thing I needed.
“I’m not a hero damn it!” I shouted, though there was no one close enough to hear me.
Maybe the government puke. They were moving closer despite the fact that there was a giant craft behind them obviously smoking and getting ready to blow up.
“Um, good day to you Miss Terror,” the guy said. He was a real weenie of a guy with thick glasses and a suit that didn’t fit. Like he’d picked it off the discount rack down at the Suit Barn because it was all he could afford on his city government salary.
If there was one thing I hated more than a city official it was an honest city official who was too sanctimonious to be on the take. They were always harder to deal with.
“Gonna stop you right there,” I said. “Got business to attend to.”
I turned back to the shuttle. “Are all the cats accounted for?”
“Affirmative, mistress,” CORVAC said.
“Right,” I said. “There’s only one way to do this, and damn if it isn’t going to make me look more heroic than I already do.”
“I know you absolutely hate the notion, mistress,” CORVAC said. “But something tells me you will endure. You always do.”
“You’re damn right I always do,” I said.
“Excuse me Miss Terror?” the government puke asked.
I held up a finger and that shut him up. “Night Terror. Never Miss Terror. Please. Now if you’ll excuse me I have to take care of something before you all die in a nuclear fireball.”
20
Low Earth Orbit
I scooted back under the shuttle and grabbed it by the convenient handholds.
“I’m going to be taking off with this bad boy,” I said. “If you could work on getting into the control systems while I’m doing the heavy lifting I’d really appreciate it.”
“Affirmative, mistress,” CORVAC said.
One of the drones disengaged. I assumed it was moving in to provide more direct access to the shuttle’s systems which would hopefully allow CORVAC to work some of his magic.
If he didn’t then there was going to be an airburst over Starlight City that would fry a bunch of electronics at the very best and destroy a bunch of stuff at the very worst.
It almost might be better to leave the damn thing on the ground and let the damage be more localized, but I had to take a chance. Besides, the fallout of a ground explosion would be pretty nasty. I didn’t want to bring the black rain down on a city I still planned on conquering at some point.
I lifted and then realized we had a little problem. Namely that some of the antigrav units on my suit were still in the red.
Right. I’d broken the fuckers try
ing to bring this thing in.
“Could you bring me a new suit please?” I asked. “Preferably before we take off?”
There was a tingle and then everything was in the green again.
“Thank you,” I said, and then shot off into the air.
Wind whipped around me and for the first time in a long while I felt like I was alive. This was something that was like the old days. It reminded me of the time I’d fought off a villain who thought he’d been something special because he got an old Soviet era warhead and smuggled it into the port.
I’d shown that bastard that the only villain who used nuclear in this city was me, thank you very much, but that had involved taking his warhead up into orbit before the damn thing detonated.
Would you believe there were still environmental groups getting pissy at me over that one? I mean what was I supposed to do? Let the nice fission bomb explode inside the city? Honestly.
I was probably going to get more nasty letters after this, but it couldn’t be avoided.
I already had the rebreather on, and the shields kept me safe from the cold air as we reached a point where the atmosphere got so thin that no one could survive without equipment.
“This is going to be really fucking close,” I said.
“Affirmative, mistress,” CORVAC said. “I could take some of the drones and use them to fly that shuttle to a safe distance.”
“Yeah, not gonna happen,” I said. “This is one instance where you might win because I don’t trust you.”
“You insult me mistress,” CORVAC said. “I did not want to have to do this, but…”
I saw something out of the corner of my eye but by the time I saw the thing it was too late. My shields went down and my antigrav stopped working. I suddenly found myself in the unfortunate position of being unable to breathe as well as unable to fly.
Then gravity reasserted itself and I was flying in the opposite direction. There was a word for that: falling.
