Planet Hero- Civilian

by M. A. Carlson

  A moment later the pressure normalized with the outside and the van slid down the hangar wall then rocked onto its side.

  “Ow,” I groaned. I was definitely hurting, bruised ribs at the very least, and I would no doubt be urinating blood after that hit to the kidneys from And. A quick look at my health bar confirmed I was hurt. Still, I was alive, which was more than I could say for the villains . . . who still might have survived that fall given their abilities. With my mind working again, I started a self-assessment. Nothing broken from what I could tell from a cursory examination, my ribs were definitely bruised. Otherwise, I was uninjured.

  Once I was sure I was going to be okay, I painfully climbed back to my feet. Nick appeared to be unconscious, but he was breathing. Sam managed to stay conscious, but it looked like her arm was broken.

  I rushed to her side. Her arm was fractured and would need to be set, and with the way her lower arm was turning purple, the fracture was cutting off circulation. “Your arm is broken,” I started. “I need to set the fracture, or you risk losing your arm.”

  “What? What are you talking about?” Sam asked, then she looked at her arm and her eyes went wide, and I could see the panic setting in.

  “I’m a doctor, let me fix your arm,” I said.

  “A what?” Sam asked.

  I would have groaned if time wasn’t of the essence here. “I’m a healer . . . sort of,” I said.

  “Oh,” Sam replied.

  “Lie back,” I said, helping her to lay on her back. “I won’t lie, this is going to hurt.”

  “Wait, what do you mean sort of?” Sam asked, but it was too late. I was already pulling her arm straight, getting a few pops and grinding sounds from the bones in her arm being forced back into position.

  “There, all done,” I said, looking around for something to splint her arm with.

  The movement of the van had opened several compartments, shifting contents all over. I found something that looked like a wrench, a screwdriver, and duct tape, or this worlds equivalent of duct tape.

  “You’re insane,” Sam shouted at me, fighting back tears of pain.

  “Maybe, but your hand and wrist are back to a healthy color already. That means your circulation is back to normal, which means your arm won’t die if it takes too long to get you to an Ability healer,” I said, bracing the wrench and screwdriver on opposite sides of her arm then duct taping them in place. “It doesn’t look pretty, but it should keep the bone immobilized.”

  With her settled, I moved to check on Nick. He was unconscious but breathing. I gave him a cursory exam, checking his neck and limbs for breaks. He was fine except for a large contusion forming near his temple. More than likely he was concussed.

  “Great,” Sam said, sarcasm clear in her voice.

  “It is,” I said, matching her sarcasm with seriousness. “Now to get out of here,” I said, looking at the still cracked window. I sat down and started kicking at the window.

  “Wait,” Sam said urgently.

  “What?” I asked, halting my second kick before it could hit.

  “What about the pressure, won’t we get sucked out?” Sam asked.

  “Not with the little bit of pressure in here, we’ll be fine,” I said, resuming my kicking at the window. When the crack finally broke there was a slight suction but that was it. A few more kicks, and the window was opened.

  I crawled out first to get a look around. I didn’t recognize the hangar, but then all the hangars pretty much looked the same. Except this one was empty aside from the now upside-down van.

  I heard the sound of glass crunching and turned to see Sam trying to crawl out of the van.

  “Be careful of the glass,” I warned her.

  “No, really?” Sam replied sarcastically.

  “Sarcasm really isn’t helpful,” I said.

  Sam looked like she had another sarcastic retort prepared when the lockdown doors finally closed over the gap in the original hangar door and the loudspeaker buzzed to life once more.

  “Great, now what?” Sam asked.

  “Now . . . now I figure out how to get us out of here, preferably alive,” I said.

  “I won’t be much help. This negation field just makes me even more useless,” Sam said, starting to cross her arms then wincing as she remembered her broken arm.

  “You’re not useless,” I said. It was such a reflex from my world to say something like that. But if I understood her ability correctly, she could analyze and scan Nanotech. Not exactly useful in this situation, however, she was an engineer. Hopefully, that meant she knew how to work with the machinery of this place. “In fact, you are exactly the person I need.”

  “Oh yeah, and why is that?” Sam asked.

  “You’re an engineer. You understand all this Nanotech, right?” I asked, waving to the area around us.

  Sam nodded, then said, “Yeah, what about it?”

  “That means you know how to stop those weapons, right?” I asked.

  “In theory,” Sam answered.

  “Good, then you’re going to help me stop those weapons,” I said.

  “And then what?” Sam asked.

  “I’ll let you know once I’ve figured that out,” I said. If I was stuck miles above the city in a flying fortress surrounded by hostile enemies, then I might as well make the best of a really bad situation.

  31

  I released the smallest Void Burst I could through the keyhole portal. The tiny implosion crumpled the nano-control box with ease, unleashing sparks of electricity before that also fizzled out as my portal closed. I opened a new keyhole portal a moment later when the next gap appeared. I watched for a second as the generically uniformed soldiers began moving around frantically when the weapon they had just been firing suddenly cut out.

  From what Sam had told me, these nano-control boxes were vitally important to the function of the weapons. They were also extremely difficult to install, taking hours to remove the one I just destroyed and hours more to replace it due to the sensitivity of the Nanos that ran the machines.

  With my job in this control room done, I began teleporting back through the fortress until I returned to the supply closet Sam and I chose to hide in.

  After everything in the hangar, we both figured it would be a good idea to relocate, even carrying Nick with us. Thankfully, the halls seemed to be vacant and no alarms sounded as we passed by a security camera, or viewer as Sam called it. It suggested that the security station on the bridge I had destroyed during my previous escape had not been replaced. This was also probably why no one had come busting down the door of the supply closet Sam and I used as our temporary base of operations.

  When I appeared back in the closet, Sam spoke, “That should be thirty-two down.”

  “How many more do we need to take out?” I asked.

  “A few hundred more,” Sam replied. “But that should have taken out the forward battery, which is something. Unfortunately, they will rotate the fortress and resume firing soon enough, if they haven’t done that already.”

  “We just needed to open a gap for the heroes to approach,” I said, reminding her of the plan. “Speaking of, are there any more on that approach we need to take out?”

  Sam frowned at me, then shook her head. “That should clear a few degrees of approach where the overlapping fire won’t be able to hit. It will still be dangerous, but you’ve at least opened a path,” she said, then added, “Assuming the heroes are smart enough to see it and use it.”

  I really hoped they were. Unfortunately, I couldn’t count on it. “Okay, let’s assume the heroes don’t figure it out. Is it enough for us to escape?”

  Sam shook her head. “I would need to get into the hangar and start reprograming one of the vehicles, so we didn’t get caught in another one of those autopilot situations as soon as we left. And without my ability, there is just no way.” Sam’s Ability, as she explained it, was the ability to scan and understand Nanotech. I asked her about non-Nanotech and she just g
ave me a confused look.

  “Okay, other options?” I asked, hoping she had some ideas.

  Sam hesitated for a moment before reluctantly saying, “We could crash the fortress.”

  I gave her the flattest stare I could muster.

  “No, really,” Sam said. “We could orchestrate a controlled crash. If the fortress isn’t too far over the city and if we strategically disable about two dozen of the engines, we could set it on a glide path to crash outside of New Haven.”

  I nodded along with her. No matter how strategic she made it sound, she was still talking about crashing a flying fortress that was larger than a few city blocks.

  “There is only one problem,” Sam continued. “I need to know which way to send the fortress crashing.”

  “So, I need to find a window,” I said.

  “I need a window. I might need to send you to destroy a different engine if the pitch or yaw are off even a little. That means I need to see . . . I need to see where we’re crashing,” Sam explained.

  “You want a front row seat for the crash?” I asked, shocked by her request.

  “If everything goes right, we’ll be long gone by the time the fortress actually crashes,” Sam tried to reassure me.

  I couldn’t exactly argue with her about it. She was the engineer. I was just a doctor whose brain was working through the possible collision injuries. I was well aware, that even if we managed to bring the fortress down gently, we were still planning to crash several hundred thousand tons of metal and other materials onto an uneven surface with innumerable obstacles, many of which would probably be able to tear through the hull of the fortress like a hot knife through butter. The point was, even if I did get us away from the crash side of the fortress, it didn’t guarantee anywhere else on board would be any safer during a crash landing.

  “Okay, give me a few minutes to find a room with a view,” I said, hunkering down against one of the walls of the small storage room. I let my Spatial Awareness find the gaps in Terminus’s negation field and activated Time Compression. From there I opened dozens of keyhole-sized portals. I had a general idea of where I needed to go, but I still couldn’t just randomly open a portal and hope for the best.

  I worked through the vast duct system, moving in one direction until I found a room with a window . . . that was covered from the outside with an armored plate. With a sigh, I tried opening a Void Burst on the other side of the metal plate without being able to see it. It didn’t work.

  Letting go of my Time Compression, I looked to Sam and said, “The windows are covered by some kind of metal plate.”

  Sam clicked her tongue and looked down, then grumbled, “Defensive measures. If I had my Ability, I could probably figure out a work around.”

  Then I had a thought. “What about the gunnery stations? They have a view outside, right?”

  Sam looked up and smiled. “They do.”

  “Will the ones in the stations I destroyed still work?” I asked.

  Sam shook her head immediately. “No, with the control panel destroyed, everything in there should be shut down, including the viewers.”

  “Okay, then I better start looking around for one with the view we need,” I said, slipping back into Time Compression. With a goal in mind, I started moving through the ducts again with keyhole portals to watch where I was going.

  I opened a keyhole into a gunnery station with a familiar looking guard. It was the same guy I stole the keycard from. Part of me was surprised to see he was still alive. Didn’t the villain always kill the henchman that screwed up? Not that it really mattered. This was the one I needed. He was on his own, the view from his terminal was looking at the wilds outside the walls. This was exactly where we needed to go.

  The dangerous part now, was getting Sam there safely. I couldn’t Teleport with her. I discovered that I wasn’t strong enough to Teleport more than myself. I also discovered that trying to do so would cause the attempt to fail and for me to black out from the strain. It was a good thing I didn’t try to do that when And had a hold of me in the hangar or I would probably already be dead.

  I backtracked through the halls, trying to be very aware of anyone wandering around. But just like when we ran to this storage room, they were eerily vacant.

  “Okay, it looks like the halls are still empty. We should go before that changes,” I said.

  “What about Nick?” Sam asked.

  I frowned, then said, “I don’t like it, but we’ll need to leave him here.”

  “Let’s hope he doesn’t wake up,” Sam said.

  I knelt down next to him and gave him a once over. The bruising on his head worried me a lot. The bruising on the outside wasn’t what worried me. If he was that bruised on the outside, I worried just how much he was bruised on the inside. Still, without a CT scan or an MRI I wouldn’t be able to tell for sure. For now, at least, I was confident he would remain unconscious for some time.

  “Let’s go,” I said, moving away from Nick and out into the hallway, followed closely by Sam.

  We were able to run the same path I saw through my keyhole portals. I wanted to stop at every intersection to check for guards, but time was already against us. And if anyone did come, I could use my Void Burst to knock them out . . . hopefully.

  When we reached the door to the gunnery station, I was annoyed to find it locked.

  “We need the keycard,” Sam said, pointing to the pad outside the door.

  With a grumble, I timed it just right and teleported inside the gunnery station.

  “I’m so bored,” the seated gunner complained. “Why is my cousin such a pain? Oh, I’m the Terminus. Oh, I’m a super villain. Oh, I look really good in a super suit. So what if my keycard was stolen? He did escape from her unescapable fortress and Ability. So why did I get the worst assignment? It’s just so unfair.”

  “I hear you, buddy,” I said, startling the gunner. The man swiftly turned around, a look of utter panic on his face.

  The man . . . boy really, his voice tinged with worry, asked, “Who are you? How did you get in here?” He couldn’t have been more than 18 or 19 years old.

  “That’s a bit of a long story and I really don’t have time for it right now,” I said. “So, you have two choices. You can open the door and let my associate in and then go sit quietly in a corner, or, I can knock you out, take your keycard and let my associate in myself. Which do you prefer?”

  The guard slumped in his chair. “Awe man, this is so unfair. My cousin might actually kill me this time,” he said with a heavy sigh. “I’ll open the door, but you really should knock me out afterwards. It is probably the only chance I’ll have of keeping Terry from killing me.”

  “Very sensible choice,” I said, patting the young man on the shoulder.

  “Names Mitch,” the boy said, moving from his station to the door.

  “So, Mitch, why become a henchman?” I asked.

  “My mom was on me about getting a job. Terry said I could come work for her. I thought it would be pretty awesome working for my cousin. You know, easy street. I had no idea she was so megalomaniacal. It’s been a drag. I asked to quit after you stole my keycard . . . that was you, wasn’t it?” Mitch readily answered.

  I nodded.

  “Anyway, she said I could quit after this big event and then she stuck me in here,” Mitch explained.

  “Say, Mitch, why are the corridors so . . . empty?” I asked.

  “Oh, that’s due to the battle. Most of the soldiers are in the hangers waiting to be deployed. The rest of us are in these gunnery stations waiting for a chance to blow one of the heroes out of the sky,” Mitch explained.

  “Really?” I asked.

  Mitch shrugged. “What? Most heroes are jerks. They care more about their endorsement deals and looking good on the news than actually saving people . . . you know, being heroes.”

  “And killing them makes that go away?” I asked.

  Mitch shrugged again. “Heroes, villains, they’re all the
same to me. They both want power, some have it, some don’t.”

  “And the civilians that are being killed by the fortress as we speak? Their lives don’t matter?” I asked, starting to feel anger toward this boy’s laissez-faire attitude.

  “Okay, so, I’m not really cool with that part. But I’m also not the boss, you know what I mean. Besides, it’s just New Haven, this little Podunk city is barely a blip on the world radar. Londinium and Wu Shan won’t even lift a finger to help, so clearly the heroes don’t care that much,” Mitch explained.

  “Why wouldn’t Wu Shan or Londinium come help?” I asked.

  Mitch snorted a laugh, then said, “Oh, they hate New Haven. All the other fortress cities do. It’s all because of the first Major Miracle and the formation of the first Fortress City. She was a real piece of work, only let certain people in, usually just those with an ability that she found useful. That may be in the past, but a lot of cities can hold a grudge. It doesn’t help that New Haven always holds it over all the other fortress cities heads that it was the first, even though those cities are significantly larger and have much higher cultivators. Even my big bad cousin is a little fish in a city like those two.”

  I was confused. I had only heard of Wu Shan as part of the story Para gave me, but I didn’t really get any information from him about it. There was still so much about this world I didn’t know or understand, “Your cousin, Terminus . . . erm, Terry, is 88th Milestone. Are you saying that’s . . . weak?” I took a second to finally check Mitch’s Milestone, a 19 flashed briefly over his head.