Arsenal (Full Metal Superhero Book 1)
Page 18
“Domino, Fleet, go help Arsenal and—”
“No,” I scream overly loud, “Civilians first. Once they're clear we fall back and come up with a plan.” I don’t listen for their acknowledgments, I have too much to handle in front of me.
A barrage of tentacles come slashing at me. I do my best to intercept them with the blade. I cut one, spin, slash another. Orange ichor splashes around me.
Toxic atmosphere forming, switching to internals.
I thought I smelled something acrid. Is the orange stuff acid? The wooden wall of the church steeple breaks my horizontal trip. One of the pods hit without me seeing it. I crash against the ground thirty feet away. Rolling and flopping I come to a halt.
“Epic, where’s the sword?” There wasn’t any way to hold on while I was spinning. He pings it on my HUD and I run for it. I scoop it up and engage thrusters. This thing is too big to hurt. Even chopping off its pods is only pissing it off.
“Civilians?”
“All clear,” Force comes back.
“Okay, I’m heading back your way to re—”
My kinetic shield howl as alarms sound all over the place. One of the tentacles wraps around my leg. Another pod slams into my side and it sticks. Thick goo sprays all over my armor followed by little suckers with hooks trying to dig into my armor. If I were flesh, even strong flesh…
“Oh my god I know what this thing does and why the Mexican team couldn’t break free. They were dead the moment these pods attach. They paralyze you with this goop they secrete on the outside and then inject your body with acid and start ‘drinking’ in the melting flesh.” I want to vomit as I say it. Knowing it, and seeing it up close sends a shiver down my spine. Lucky for me my military grade alloys aren’t easily hurt by acid. Maybe if I was to sit in a cauldron of boiling hydrochloric acid for an hour it would hurt.
It’s desperately trying to reel me in like a fish on a hook.
“Arsenal, break free!” It’s Luke yelling for me.
Oh crap. I have an idea, but it is going to suck.
“Trust me,” I say as I feel myself flying through the air. “Epic, lock me up and keep pumping power to the kinetic shields!”
Are you sure this is wise?
“Hell no!”
I hit something soft then I’m bucking around. My HUD flashes each time the thing brings its mouth down on me. My shields drop rapidly, but they do hold.
“Ars…l, d. you c..y? …enal? Amei…, get … of ..ere!”
The thing’s hide must be playing havoc with the radio. No matter. I don’t need to hear them for what I’m about to do. This is totally crazy but I’m the only one who can do it. I doubt even Behemoth could survive those acid spitting suckers. Even if she could, she’d certainly be paralyzed by the goo.
Kilopascals on my suit increase a hundred fold. If it wasn’t for me being locked up I would likely be crushed. Rigid though, with each piece supporting the next, and with the internal kinetic field working, it’s more like a bumpy ride. The pressure comes off and I’m falling. I bounce a few times as I make my way down.
“Epic, external lights, please?”
The LED’s flash to life, I have them all over the suit and I stand out like a beacon. Everything is orange and I’m surrounded by the viscous orange blood/acid.
The internal atmosphere ticks over to fourteen minutes. I don’t have a ton of time.
Amelia, even if you were to fire the particle cannon full power, this thing is too vast to hurt. Even from the inside.
“I know, unlock me.” My limbs jerk free. I reach behind and pull my sword off. I’m ever-thankful I didn’t try to use a mechanical sheath. Once the two kinetic fields lock together it’s like pulling a magnet apart. An electromagnet with an infinite power supply.
“Charge the particle cannon.” The meter starts rising on the beam weapon.
Amelia, what are you doing?
At twenty percent I fire. The particle cannon cuts through the hilt of my sword cleanly, exposing the two pieces of technology inside. My kinetic field generator and miniature Zero-Point Field Module. I wish I could work in a dry environment, but we’re dealt the hands we’re dealt. The housing for both is in titanium, it won’t last very long under this. However, I don’t need it to last long.
They’re already connected together which makes this much easier than it otherwise would be.
“Epic, access the kinetic field and invert it. I want to compress the ZPFM with the energy from the ZPFM.”
…I don’t know what will happen if you do this.
“I do, the ZPFM will compress and release more energy, compressing it more, until there is no room for the atoms to compress and…”
You’re going to create a supernova.
“Yes, once the heat reaches a point the housing can no longer sustain or acid breaches… boom. Hopefully it will be a very small supernova.”
I sit the two pieces down and stand up.
Initiating. We should flee.
“Yep.” I pick the sword up and hold it above me like a spear pointed straight up, “Full burn, now!” The acid boils around me as the thrusters kick in. The soup is thick. The sword hits something but I slice right through it and—free! The air hisses around me as the acid on my suit comes in contact. I tune it out.
“We need to get everyone out of the blast zone right now,” I yell over the radio.
“Arsenal, you’re alive!” Domino comes on the comms.
“Blastzone?” Mr. Perfect asks.
“Yes, one mile at least. Move it.”
It’s back on me; I guess I pissed it off enough. I turn south and start leading it away. The massive thing turns on its access and starts chewing up ground as it comes after me.
Amelia, there is a temperature build up inside it. I glance at our velocity, seventy-five, just enough to stay airborne and keep this thing interested.
“Fire a pod straight up.” Puff.
“Full burn, maximum thrust. We need to hit Mach one.” The roar of my jets threatens to shake me apart. I grab the pod as we pass it and stick it to my chest.
“We’re clear of the blast zone,” Force says.
“Awesome, Luke. If I don’t make it—thanks.”
The world turns into a massive globe of light. My HUD sparks and vanishes. A wall of force a hundred times stronger than a tsunami hits me. I’m thrown in a million different directions at once.
“Lock up,” I manage to yell. Epic obeys a moment before I would have broken something. The vertical G's are too much. Blackness creeps in from the sides dimming my vision an inch at a time until all I see is black.
“Amelia,” I can hear someone calling my name but I can’t see anything. Where am I? The world is nothing but blackness and silence. Except for this one insistent voice shouting my name. Louder and louder until my head hurts from the yelling.
“Quiet,” I manage to mutter. Then it all came back. I hear someone groaning and then I realize it’s me.
“Did we win?” I ask the shouting voice.
“You did it, Amelia. You did it.” A single line of light pierces my vision and I realize why everything is dark. My faceplate is covered in grime and the single line of light is Luke doing his best to wipe the gunk from it.
I move my arms to test them. They seem to work.
“Epic?”
Nothing.
“Epic?” I can’t keep the edge of panic out of my voice. I can make out Luke’s smiling face as he finishes scrubbing the gunk off.
“I can’t connect to Epic,” I tell him. He cocks his head to the side glances down at my armor.
“You have some exterior damage, a crap ton of pitting and scorch marks. Maybe your power cells have been damaged?”
Power. I must have generated a crazy powerful EMP. Even shielded I bet it took down some systems.
On cue, my faceplate lights up. Lines and lines of data scroll past my screen as Epic runs a full diagnostic scan. When the last line flashes by my HUD blinks rapidly several
times before resolving to the familiar blue glow.
Sorry, Amelia. I had to shut down a microsecond before the EMP hit, and I didn’t have time to explain.
“I can’t see your face. Is everything okay?” Luke asks me.
“Everything’s great, Epic is back.”
“Are you okay?”
All systems are functional, albeit in low power mode. I’m afraid the suit isn’t combat ready, though sustained flight is possible.
“Awesome.”
With Luke’s help I shakily pull myself up to a standing position. He wraps his big arms around me and I find myself wishing I could take the armor off so he could hold me.
“God, Amelia. I thought I lost you.” There are tears in his eyes. I do my best to return the hug.
“It’s okay, Luke, I’m fine. Really.”
We stay that way for a few minutes before the rest of the team shows up. Domino and Mr. Perfect appear out of thin air and Fleet arrives in a blur. I’ve never been so happy to see people in my whole life. I can’t stop the tears as we all hug.
“Sone of a gun, we did it,” Fleet says as we all hug.
I want this moment to go on forever. Kate flashes me a huge smile as she glances at Luke who hasn’t looked away from me since I stood up.
“Okay, Diamondbacks. Let’s go home,” Luke finally says.
“Who’s hungry, because I say we take over an Outback and party like it’s 1999,” Mr. Perfect says with his cocksure smile.
“My treat,” I add. “But I need about a hundred hours of sleep.
“Amen to that,” Kate chimes in.
I had to let Epic take the wheel for the trip home. Exhaustion seeped into me and somewhere over southern Arizona I fell asleep. It was a short-lived nap, however. Alarms buzzed alerting me to ignite my retros to slow down. Epic can lock the suit up and even steer it a little, but not control it outright.
I groan as I lift my arms, they feel like lead weights. The thrusters hit and spin me around. The boot jets kick in and slow me down enough to only crunch the gravel on the roof the of the HQ when I hit. I stagger, more than walk, the few feet to the elevator. I would have used my private entrance but I’m too tired to aim and would likely have hit the wall, not the window.
The team is still a half hour away when the armor comes off. I’m drenched in sweat from the work. The outside of my armor is blackened and pitted from both the acid and the explosion. I can fix the paint job, the pitting though… it might be time to move to a MKII.
I can’t think about it, though, too tired. I strip off my interface suit and groan as I flop on the bed. A shower would do wonders but I am too tired to care.
I gaze up at the ceiling willing sleep to take me, but there is an incessant buzzing keeping me from going over. I hit the bed in frustration.
“What?”
I glance at the nearest TV screen, Epic has it lit up with a picture of a bunker of some kind. Underneath it he says, I’ve found your parents.
Shock washes over me. He’s found them? Now? How? What… I don’t know what to do.
They’re in Boston. The latest data dump from our backdoor shows them arriving there fourteen years ago. I know where they are Amelia, and they’re alive. Those three last words lifted my spirits to new heights.
Never fear true believer, there will be a book two--or a Mark II. Arsenal was an interesting book for me to write. Technically it is my fifth novel, but the first one released under my own name. The majority of the story and the structure came together in nine days, which was pretty amazing!
I’ve wanted to write superhero fiction for a long time but I wanted to write something a little different. Don’t get me wrong, I will read Spidey all day long. However, I wanted to create someone who wasn’t just a cookie cutter hero. Enter: Amelia. Super-smart, quick witted and wheelchair bound. I did a lot of research about that. I didn't want her disability to be the subject of the story, but I wanted it to be honest, not just lip-service paid until the character finds a magical cure, the way so many 80s action heros managed to somehow 'lose' their glasses by the end of the show (and yet... not seem to mind!). I love this world and these characters, and I can't wait to come back!
If you did like the book, please consider leaving a review, it is incredibly helpful to authors. If you'd like to get in touch, you can hit up my website, www.JefferyHHaskell.com and keep up with my new releases by signing up for my mailing list HERE. You'll also get a shot at my free giveaways.
-
Jeffery H. Haskell thinks he should always be himself… unless he can be Spider-Man. Then, he should be Spidey. He’s a lifelong lover of comic books and science fiction, and he owns his geek status by quoting Aliens and Star Trek at every given opportunity. When he realized he could make a living writing about his obsessions, he jumped at the chance. With the incredible support of his amazing wife and spectacular children, Jeffery lives the dream of bringing his imagination to the page.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
EPILOGUE