Configuring. Try not to get hit for the next ten seconds; shields will be down while I switch over.
“Easy for you to say.” I leap up, full burn, grunting as the G’s push against me. With the shields down, I’m really feeling the thrust, limiting me to a few hundred mph.
Incoming fire!
Hard over and I cry out as the pressure in my chest pushes me down at four times my own weight. I’m gonna be covered in bruises as soon as I get out of this.
“Did I break something, Amelia? You’re turning like a drunk turkey!” Strungel’s cry of joy annoys the crap out of me.
“Are you ready yet?” I ask Epic.
Rockets fly right by me as I turn hard again, back over, and clench my jaw and do my best to tighten my stomach, keeping the blood in my torso.
Yes. Ramming speed.
“Hey! That’s my line.” Regardless, I throw everything in reverse, letting out a sigh as the shields return absorbing the G’s. I fly right at him, faster than he can turn and I put everything into it. At the last second he flips over into a barrel roll and we miss each other by a hairsbreadth. “Dammit.”
I flip back over, fire off a half-dozen HE grenades at him. “Epic, pop smoke.” Panels in my shoulders slide open, canisters of potassium chlorate, aluminum filings, and purple paint eject. A second later they explode, filling the area around me with vision and thermal obscuring smoke.
He will not come in here. He does not have to.
“I know, I know, but he won’t see me when I come to him. Punch it.” We shoot out of the smoke, aiming for his last trajectory, and sure enough, he circled back around to hover. Just like he’s done the last two times there was a lull in our fight. Even if he knew I was coming, at six-hundred miles an hour, I cross the measly three hundred feet in less time than it takes to blink— twice.
Our armors collide in a horrendous bang of metal and exploding circuitry. All the alarms in my suit go crazy and the HUD blinks out as we crash into the ground a hundred feet from where we collided.
There’s no way for my suit to catch on fire from the inside, but the smell of burning plastic is bad enough that I have to trigger the faceplate not to gag.
“You bitch! What did you do?” He shouts as he rolls up to his hands and knees. He’s sluggish, not moving nearly as fast.
“Necessity is the mother of invention, Strungel.” I put a hand on my knee and lift myself to a standing position, taking a deep breath. Epic should reboot any second.
Any second...
Strungel manages to stand, reaching behind his shoulder he wraps his metal fist around the mallet magnetically attached to his back. “I’ve improved your design in every way. Even without my shields, I can still keep you here long enough to win.” He runs at me—the mallet crackles with electricity as he swings it at me. I leap back, stumbling over debris and barely escaping being squashed.
I reach behind my own shoulder and unlatch the Sword O’ Doom, bringing it up in front of me in a two-handed grip to defend myself. I still have power, and the suit’s autonomous functions still work, like strength.
“Ha. You don’t even know how to use that thing properly.” He charges forward, screaming as he brings the hammer up to swing it down on me. I dive sideways and bring my sword up. I aim for his arm, but miss, hitting the haft instead. The Sword does exactly what it’s supposed to do; its mono-molecular blade cuts right through the haft, sending Strungel falling forward as his momentum is untethered by the mallet head flying through the air.
I spin around and pounce on him, slamming my foot into his chest and holding the blade to his throat. “Don’t think for a second this won’t slice through your armor, because it will,” I growl at him. I hear a beep, notifying me Epic is in the process of rebooting. Just a few more seconds and I can close the faceplate.
“Ha!” His suit whines, a plate slide up over his chest and light explodes in front of me, sending me rocking back in a desperate attempt to cover my eyes and clear my head.
“Epic, I can’t see!” No response. “Epic?”
“He can’t help you now, Amelia. Say goodbye.”
My vision clears and he’s holding my BFG... Oh no. “Strungel, no!”
Too late. He pulls the trigger. My self-destruct on the weapon doesn’t account for Epic being offline. We’re screwed. The weapon whines as the ZPFM powers up. I can’t see his face through the helmet, but I can imagine he’s confused. I turn and throw myself to the ground. My faceplate slams shut.
White hot fire covers me as the ZPFM ignites like a small nova. I’m moving as Epic blasts us forward, trying to escape the shockwave.
Oh God. Kate? Carlos? I clear my head. “Epic, how much damage did that do?”
Considerable. However, we have more pressing concerns.
“Kate could be hurt, turn us around and—”
Amelia, you have two minutes to intercept a rocket with a two-hundred and fifty-mile head start. If we stay to save them, then all superpowers on Earth will be gone.
“I... would that be so bad? No more supervillains? Kate could live a normal life...”
Or it could kill all of them. We do not know the ramifications of stripping them of their powers. It would also be a net sum of zero. If the Th’un, or a race like them, were ever to come to Earth again, we would be defenseless.
“Right, of course, your right. It’s just... Kate...”
I know. Plotting course, brace for acceleration. The kinetic shields are at 20% I am afraid this is going to hurt.
175
Locking armor. I am afraid you will blackout; hold on. The G’s slamming into me pile up quickly and my vision fades to a tunnel as swatches of darkness encroach on it from the outside. I tighten my stomach and grit my teeth as best as I can but it’s a losing battle. As the airspeed indicator shoots past four-thousand miles per hour, I pass out.
Amelia!
Epic calls my name but the darkness and the fog that cover my brain makes it hard to respond. I try, but my mouth won’t move.
Amelia, wake up!
Right. Orbit. Killer satellite. Things come back in bits and pieces. Adrenaline hits my system as the urgency of the moment catches up with me. I am wide awake.
“W— where, I mean, how long do we have?” My voice sounds weak, even to my ears. My entire body aches like I’ve been beaten with a stick for half an hour.
Less than fifteen seconds to deployment; follow the yellow brick road.
Three-dimensional triangles pop up on the HUD, showing me the path. I can make out a glimmer in the distance that Epic puts a circle around—that must be the satellite... but it’s so far away! I kick in the Emdrive and floor it, navigating the triangles to line us up. The distance drops like a rock, from fifty miles... thirty... twenty...
Only five seconds left. “Epic, Tank Missile!” I can add three thousand miles an hour to my speed.
Armed. In the pipe. Locked on.
The plates on my back shift locking the launcher into place just as the counter hits one. “Fire!”
The suit shakes as the electromagnetic weapon fires. There’s no trail of fire here, nothing to see, even if I had high-speed cameras recording I doubt I would catch more than a shadow of it.
The rocket carrying the satellite explodes in a million pieces, the kinetic energy of the Tank Missile decimating its relatively fragile frame. Debris impacts the suit with a dull thud as the vibrations transfer to me...
Wait. Nothing should be hitting the suit. I check the shields, they’re down to ten percent. Oh no.
“Epic, did we get it?” I ask, worry and fear creep into my voice; I can’t help it.
Scanning. There does appear to be the right amount of debris. I do not see any large objects, rocket thrust, or anything else that would indicate a satellite. I think we did.
To be on the safe side, I jink around the debris field for a moment, letting our momentum carry us around the Earth.
“You better notify NASA and the DoD about this. I can’t ima
gine it’s going to miss everything. Also, let’s tap into the news feeds and make sure it didn’t go off. If it did, the reports would be instantaneous.”
Kate... She and the rest of the team are still stuck down there on the island. A laundry list of damaged components appear on my flickering HUD. With the shields down and the suit’s power so low, there’s no way I’d survive re-entry. I’m stuck up here and there isn’t anything I can do to help them. I hope they’re all right. I pray they are.
There is no news of lost superpowers. Nothing to indicate the satellite worked. I have notified NASA and the DoD. They are not happy about the path of the debris.
“Boohoo. I’m not happy about being stuck up here. How long is our life support good for?” I ask him.
Twelve hours. However, if the team survived the island we should not need that long.
“I’m sure they’re okay… right Epic? I mean, with the damage to his island they should have gotten out easily, right?”
While I do not have all the variables, past experience indicates they will have escaped.
I glance down at Earth. From orbit, she’s as beautiful as can be. Big, blue, peaceful. We’re coming up on Africa and I can see the dark continent. It stretches on forever.
“How long until we’re back around in radio communications?”
Thirty minutes.
Thirty minutes until I find out of my friends are alive. Awesome. I can’t sit here and do nothing for that long, but I can’t go home, and I certainly don’t want to go farther out. That leaves only one thing to do...
“Awesome. Okay, put on a movie, break out the popcorn, and hope they don’t have blasters.”
Your sense of humor remains intact, I see.
“If a girl can’t laugh while marooned in orbit... when can she laugh?”
In the movies, people exposed to the vacuum of space explode, or instantly freeze, or any number of horrid things. The truth isn’t as dramatic or as immediately deadly. Of course, the human body is filled with gasses, and without pressure to hold those gasses in, they start to expand. Our skin holds it all in, though.
If a person could leave vacuum within a few seconds of entering it, they probably wouldn’t feel any ill effect at all.
Probably.
Kate appears in front of me. Eyes closed, hands on my armor and then the world goes white and my stomach hurries to catch up.
I fall to my knees on the deck of the boat, the warm Costa Rican sun shining down on me.
“Retract faceplate,” I say to Epic. The faceplate slides back, revealing my face. I roll over, looking up at the sun and letting the warmth massage my skin.
“I take it you stopped the satellite?” Carlos asks.
“Welcome to the conversation, Captain Obvious,” I say with a smirk.
“You just had to get yourself stranded in orbit... again!” Kate says, waving her hands in my face. “I swear Amelia, it’s like you don’t even know how to save the day without almost killing yourself.”
I smile. “I have to keep Teddy employed, don’t I?” I close my eyes for a second and just breathe. I could do with a few less close calls in my life. I open them, look at Kate, and say, “Uh, speaking of Teddy...” I glance down at my body. “I feel like one big bruise.”
“Sure thing, hon. Can I get a volunteer to return the yacht?” Kate asks. Six hands shoot up in unison.
“Tell you what...” I let out a long sigh. “Take the boat for a couple of days, charge everything to the company—you all earned it.”
“No way!” Fleet says. “For real?”
I’d nod, but now that I’m laying down my neck is killing me. I signal Kate to get a move on. “Yeah, have fun. See you all back at base in three days. Uh, Carlos?”
Kate kneels down next to me, putting her hand on my shoulder. Carlos kneels opposite her.
“Yeah?”
“We have some other time-sensitive business to attend to,” I tell him.
“Oh, right.”
“Not today we don’t, Amelia. We’re going home to see Teddy and then you can figure out the rest of this after a few days of rest,” Kate says, pinning me to the deck with her piercing green eyes.
She’s right, of course. I need to sleep for a week. I should be elated at our success. The Armory is down, Strungel is down… but Luke is still out there. It all feels so hollow without him.
“Besides... I want to come back here and enjoy some sun,” she says throwing Carlos a bold wink as her luscious lips curve into a smile.
“Oh...” Is all he says. “Oh!”
“Right. Enough. Doctor please.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
176
Teddy has, once again, left me with stern instructions to stay off my butt for a few days. And, as usual, I’m ignoring him. Forty-eight hours is more than enough rest. Besides, if we don’t move to help Frank soon, he might decide I didn’t mean what I told him and keep trying to do this on his own. No, I need to do this. Need to help him. With the rest of the team down in Costa Rica for another day, this is the perfect opportunity for us to do this without involving everyone.
And I couldn’t be more giddy. Time travel... we’re going to travel in time!
I wheel out of the lab into my apartment, swing by the couch and grab my coat before heading for the elevator. I drum my fingers on the arm of my chair while I’m waiting. Carlos and Kate should be back by now and if Frank keeps his word, he’ll be showing up on the landing pad of the Spire in twenty minutes.
The elevator doors open on a swirl of air as a vortex of energy forms in front of me. He’s supposed to meet us up top. If he’s coming in now, it’s because there is a problem. I wheel back to avoid his landing while signaling Epic to call Kate.
Frank comes out of the swirl of air as if he’s falling, only to right himself as gravity re-aligns once he’s out of the vortex. He lands with a thump. He looks exactly the same every time I see him; haggard, shabby clothes, five o’clock shadow.
“I thought we were—”
He waves me quiet as he turns around and focuses on the portal. It closes… I can almost see something behind him... but then it’s gone.
“Someone is following me, I had to come now or risk not coming at all.” He takes a deep breath after speaking, his hands shake as he exhales.
“Do you know who it is?” I ask him.
Kate and Carlos are five minutes out.
He shakes his head. “No. Tall, muscular, square-jawed, that’s about all I saw before I leaped back.”
No. No way. “Uh…, “did he have blue eyes?” I say. I’m trying to keep calm but I can’t help but shake a little.
Frank looks at me for a second as if I grew a second head. “How did you know?”
“Is this him?” I reach into my bag I keep attached to the chair and pull out the photo of Luke and me. We took it right before I went off to fight the Th’un. It was the last time we had a proper date.
Frank takes the photo from my hand and examines it for a second. Oh please, let him say no. Please say no.
“Yeah, that’s him. He’s different, but not that much different. You know him?”
We’re interrupted by Kate and Carlos popping into existence behind me. Fear flickers through Frank’s eyes and I can see his instincts kick in. He holds it together, though, and stays. Good man. I glance back at them, Carlos is in his Protector garb, which is just as impressive as it was the first time I saw it. Kate is in her black form-fitting catsuit, with all her gear ready to go.
“How did you run into him?” I ask. I show the picture to Kate and nod to Frank. She picks up on what is happening immediately.
“I thought maybe I could see if we succeed or not, so I jumped a few months forward. It... it wasn’t what I expected,” he says, wiping the sweat from his brow. “The future isn’t set. I’ve seen a hundred different timelines—each time I go forward it’s different—but this...”
“But what?” I prompt him.
“Armageddon, is all I
can think. The city was burning, people were staked on pikes like some kind of house of horrors. The sky was full of black smoke... I wasn’t there five minutes when he showed up, landing in front of me like a boulder. The whole ground shook. The way he looked at me, it was like he knew I was going to be there. I jumped back as fast as I could... then he jumped through the portal after me.”
“You mean he’s here?” Kate asks.
“No, I closed it but... I have no idea what will happen to him. He might keep going back, or be deposited in whatever time I left. I just don’t know.”
I nod. Whatever that thing is that controls Luke, it has to go. “Okay, focus. We’re still doing this. Luke doesn’t know what we're planning in the now, so he can’t interfere. If everyone will join me in my lab, I will show you what I whipped up and we can get this show on the road.”
I wheel around and throw a smile at Kate to let her know I’m okay. Her green eyes flash worry at me and I shrug. There isn’t anything I can do about that future. However, I do have a plan for Luke. I think. I’m terrified of how it will work and what he will think of me if it does work. It’s just… the only thing I can think of to save him.
The lab slides open, revealing my gadget. “Frank, if I understand you correctly, as long as you’re touching someone, you can go back in time with them, correct?”
“Uh... in theory.”
That stops me cold.
“What do you mean, in theory?” Carlos asks as the lab door slides shut behind us.
“I took an entire car back in time. It should work, but... I just can’t be sure,” he says, eyes nervously leaping about the room as if he’s trying to look every way at once.
“We’ll deal with that bridge when it’s on fire,” I say, to stop any argument. “Frank, we had a deal and I intend to honor it. You’re going to need help, though.”
“Help?”
“You said yourself you can’t control the exact moment you come out, and the farther back you go the harder it is to control, right?”
He nods. It’s funny—now that I have him here, he seems so much older than before. “Okay, so here is what I have. This pod will hold four people. Two adults and two kids.” For all intents and purposes, it looks like a Photon Torpedo made by Apple computers. All white, with a mesh of my special alloy wrapped around it. “It’s powered by a ZPFM and has the most powerful version of my kinetic absorbing tech I could make. It can protect someone well past a hundred g’s.”
Full Metal Superhero Box Set [Books 1-6] Page 94
