by Logan Jacobs
Chapter One
“Holy Empire Strikes Back, Batman!” PoLarr exclaimed in shock.
She wasn’t the only one reeling from what the tall, fit, bearded man in his fifties who stood just in front of me had said not a moment earlier. I felt like the room was tilting and whirling as if I was on some Virtual Reality carnival ride. In fact, it was like my brain was hiccuping. I kept reliving the last thirty seconds in a stutter loop.
Moments ago, the President of the United States of America had walked into the apartment I shared with my alliance mates as we attempted to relax after what had been an insane few days even by Crucible of Carnage standards.
In the last seventy hours we’d found out that our close friend and team weapons master, Darry Dar’Tor had been killed, my trainer, Grizz, and I had set about finding out who the murderer was, I’d been trapped in a super secure alien prison and had to break out with a former enemy all while fighting vampires, we’d stumbled upon a massive conspiracy orchestrated by tabloid journalist Trillium Vou and Tyche, the AI program who essentially ran the Forge of Heroes, fought a bio-armor enhanced patsy named Rollo Toe-Massi who nearly killed me, and then the POTUS had walked in with a dude in a stylish suit who I had assumed was a Secret Service agent and told me that an alien terrorist organization known as the Skalle Furia had kidnapped his daughter and that we had forty-eight hours to find her.
Then, the handsome older guy in the suit, Colonel Thomas Havoc had told me he was my long-lost father.
So, yeah, that about summed everything up and was why my brain felt like it had been kicked in the balls. Hard. And repeatedly.
“I can understand that this must be a lot for you to take in,” Thomas said as he put his hand on my shoulder.
I stared down at it like I was watching a movie. It seemed like I was outside of myself. As if this were happening to someone else playing Marc Havoc in an over the shoulder videogame that was rated ‘M for Mature,’and had physics that where like two generations old.
Yeah. I was freaking out.
I looked from the hand to the face of the man who stood before me. His face was older, and worn, but still handsome with sharp, crystal blue eyes, and the more I looked at him the more it seemed like I was looking into my own future. Like a weird time-warp mirror.
He started to say something else, but that’s when I felt a surge of emotion that broke the damn of stunned shock. Anger welled up from my belly and spread hot blooded warmth through the rest of my body.
Without a word I punched Thomas in the mouth.
Everyone around us gasped as if on cue and then collectively held their breath.
“This is more than a ‘a lot to take in’, dad,” I said, as I practically spat the last word out of my mouth.
“I deserve that, Marc,” Thomas said as he stood and wiped a small trickle of blood from his lips.
He faced me, and I could practically feel the constrained violence held at bay as he controlled his response. I’d just been told that he was a top tier black ops specialist, so he probably wasn’t used to not retaliating when being hit. “But that is your one shot. Understand?”
“Yes, sir,” I sneered. “Also, fuck you.”
“Hey, hey, how about we all calm down just a bit,” the President said as he slid in between us. For all his bluster and bravado, the man was a politician and he knew he had to diffuse this skirmish quickly, or it would explode into a full-fledged war. “Emotions are running high, understandably, but we are all on the same team and very short on time.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. President,” I said and took a seat on the couch and took Artie’s hand. “I know time is short, but I'm not going to be able to move forward until I get a few questions answered.”
“Right,” the POTUS responded. “Absolutely. Ask away. I made my first million by the time I was--”
“Sir,” Thomas interrupted. “I believe he means to ask me a few questions.”
“Oh, of course,” the President said with a wave of his hand. “I knew that. Everyone knew that, however, I am fantastic at making money. Ask anyone.”
“Ask you questions, Marc,” Thomas said not unkindly but still with the air of someone used to being in command. “I will answer as honestly as I can. But the president is right, time is short.”
“Well, I’ve had to wait thirty years to ask some, so a few minutes is a small price to pay,” I countered. “I’ll start with the most important one. Where the fuck have you been my entire goddamn life?”
“Marc, that’s a lot to unpack, I’m not sure--” Thomas started to say.
“Colonel,” the POTUS interrupted him. “If that is what my good pal, who I knew was going to be great, needs to get to continue to be great, then that is what he will get.”
“Yes, Mr. President,” Thomas said with a sigh. He took a deep, steadying breath, and even though he was this bad ass black ops dude, I could tell opening the door to the memories was hard for him. “Marc, when your mother and I met, we were very young. I was a senior at the University of Delaware, and she was a junior. I was only there because my dad went there. I was a chemical engineering major who really just wanted to play drums all day, and D&D all night.”
“Nerd,” PoLarr blurted out before she could really help herself. It was exactly what I was thinking, which is probably why she said it. “I’m sorry, Colonel. I shared what my race calls a Soul Gaze with Marc when we first met that allowed us to share memories. My head is now filled with a never-ending stream of movie quotes, insults, and fart jokes. Oh, and sometimes I really want to comment on my teammates' boobs. Aurora, your tits are fucking spectacular. See? Sorry, Aurora.”
“Why, sugar,” Aurora drawled and smiled at her. “They are.”
“Tens,” the president added.
“It’s okay, PoLarr,” Thomas continued. “I’ve received dossiers for all of you. Okay, so, where was I?”
“You were a big nerd in college,” I reminded him snarkily. I couldn’t help it. It was like I was this angry fifteen-year-old that I had never been when I was actually fifteen.
“Yeah, I was,” Thomas said. “Your mom was an RA in one of my buddies dorms and we met one night when the two of us had gotten drunk on homemade mead while planning a campaign. We got in an argument over whether to use the Beholder or an Illithid for the finale, and your mom had to come and tell us to be quiet. I tried to charm her, but she had none of it and kicked me out of the dorm for the night. For the rest of the semester we did nothing but argue like an old married couple and then right before Christmas break we hooked up.”
“Uh, gross,” I said with a grimace. “Now I have that mental image in my head. Thanks… dad.”
“You wanted to know the story,” he said in a commanding tone and then caught himself. A nostalgic smirk played across his face briefly as the doorways into his memory continued to open. As someone who had had to start compartmentalizing things in my brain, I could recognize the effort it took to unlock the compartments.
“Keep going,” I said.
“It’s part of the story,” he continued. “For the next five months we were pretty much inseparable. Hell, I almost flunked my final semester of college. My old man was apoplectic, and he and I got in a huge fight on graduation day where he ‘disowned me’. That night, your mom told me she was pregnant, and it was this perfect storm of the real world and responsibility, and I freaked out. I remember lying awake all night as your mom slept in my arms, wearing my favorite Star Wars shirt, scared and angry at my father. Terrified that I was bad for everyone around me. Early that morning, I packed a few things, left your mom a note, and left.”
“Wow, dick move,” Tempest said from across the couch. “I mean, I would probably have done the same thing, but dick move.”
“Yes
, it was, Ms. Dirk,” Thomas agreed. “I was twenty-one years old and very dumb. I wanted as far away as I could get from any type of responsibility and I caught a bus to Seattle. I managed to pay for a month at a shitty motel before my father froze my bank account. I tried to be a struggling artist for a few weeks, but turns out I was a shitty drummer and in the summer of Nineteen Eighty-Eight there was no shortage of really fucking good drummers in Seattle. I ended up washing dishes in a hole in the wall Thai food place for three fifty an hour and I was about to suck it up and go home when I walked by an Army recruiting office. The staff sergeant who had been assigned the office must have been desperate because he came out the door as soon as I passed. I told him to buzz off, that there was no way I was joining ‘the man’s’ army, but he was persistent and he offered me lunch. I had a buck seventy five in my pocket and lunch sounded pretty damn good. Over the next hour, he managed to get out of me that I had actually been a Lacrosse player in high school and that I was smart. He told me if I went to officer candidate school I could make about thirteen-hundred bucks a month, and would have a steady job working for Uncle Sam to support my family. I had every intention of contacting your mom as soon as I was done with Basic.”
“What happened?” I asked. Thomas was a heck of a storyteller and damnit if I hadn’t gotten sucked in. “Why didn’t you?”
“As shitty as I was as a drummer was as good as I was a soldier,” Thomas said with a shrug. “Once my body was back in shape, I started to kick ass and take names in Basic and ended up in the Seventy-Fifth Ranger Regiment. Then I sailed through OCS, and before I knew it I was in Panama. Then the Persian Gulf. After that, I was recruited for Delta Force.”
“Get the fuck out of here,” I blurted out. As a kid I’d told friends that my dad was actually a spy. The story he was laying out wasn’t that far from my tall tales to my friends in third grade. If I ever saw Tommy Beaufont again I was going to rub it in his stupid face.
“I had an aptitude for what I was doing, apparently,” Thomas continued. “And years of playing twenty-four-hour long D&D campaigns actually helped me during the selection process. I could actually function when mentally exhausted and problem solve at the same time. Two years later I was a Tier One Operator. I kept meaning to contact your mother, but I didn’t know how. By then you were five, and while I had faced off against troops from South America to the Middle East, I was terrified of returning home. Somalia rolled around and shit hit the fan in a big way, and I ended up with a Silver Star. Not long after that a gentleman from the CIA’s Special Operations Group made me an offer. The rest is classified.”
“Pop, we’re on an alien planet god knows how many light years away from Earth with the freaking President,” I pointed out.
“Still classified,” Thomas replied with unwavering certainty.
“Afraid he’s right, Marc,” the POTUS added. “Don’t worry though, I’ll get you cleared after all this is over if you still want. I trust you. The world trusts you. Tremendous trust. Now, can we figure out how we’re going to get my daughter back from those alien cowards in the Halloween masks?”
“Sure thing, Mr. President--” I began to say and then I saw something out the window over Nova’s shoulder. My apartment had a balcony that extended off the main living room and the window that led out to it was practically floor to ceiling and ran the entire length of the room. It provided a freaking awesome view of Valiance city both day and night. Dusk, or dawn as it was on this planet which had twin moons that shone brighter than any sun and a perpetually eclipsed sun so that there was night for day and day for night, was almost over.
The light outside was that dull, flat, gray that lingered after the moons had set but there was still just barely enough afterglow to cast strange shadows and play tricks on one's eyes. Outside the window, as silent as satin sheets the morning after a one-night stand, was what looked like a Seventies Corvette Stingray crossed with an AH-64 Apache helicopter. It was matte black and floated on mag-lev propulsors where rotor blades should have been. Little wings extended from either side just under the jet black canopy of the craft, and they practically bristled with missile launchers. Under the canopy was a mean looking, multi-barrelled rail gun that glowed bright with energy. In slow motion I watched as a missile on either wing detached as their thrusters blazed bright tongues of blue flame into the approaching night sky. “Aurora! Shield! Now!”
My team and I were a well-oiled machine at this point and without hesitation Aurora threw a large, purple-black, dark matter canopy around the entire living room just as the fast approaching missiles crashed through the window.
The explosion that resulted from them impacting on the shield was massive and intense. The room shook as waves of high-explosive flame cascaded over the shield. The whole building seemed to shudder and shake as debris, smoke, and dust billowed into the air all around us.
“Mr. President, get down!” Thomas shouted as he pushed the POTUS to the ground and covered him with his body. A tricked out and highly modified Colt 1911 .45 caliber pistol filled his hand as if by magic and began to scan in front of him for potential targets.
“Woodhouse!” I yelled as adrenaline rushed into my bloodstream. Its electric fingers caressed my synapses and my combat mods came online at once. “Weapons!”
The cylindrical, eight armed, robotic butler spun and pressed a complex series of buttons on our over-under ovens that were built into the wall of the kitchen. The ovens slid down to reveal a hidden cubby hole full of our team’s various weapons, and his arms whirred with electronic intensity as he grabbed them and tossed them over his head toward us.
Nova Qwark, the knight errant from the feudal world of Paladin Prime, caught the pieces of her body mounted heavy plasma cannon in her orange hands and snapped them into place with practiced fluidity. In the blink of an eye, she went from velvet dress wearing maiden to locked and loaded warrior badass, the gun held at hip height on its counterbalanced harness system.
Woodhouse’s arms spun in a blur, and PoLarr pulled her Val’Keeyre jetpack rig from the air. She slapped it onto her back, and the straps snaked out with a mind of their own to secure the pack, and the holsters for her twin Equalizer pistols, into place. When the last buckle clicked home, she spinned her guns with a gunslinger twirl and held them out in front of her, ready to deal death to any enemy stupid enough to get in her sights.
Tempest Dirk, my blue-green skinned grifter scoundrel alliance mate with attitude for days, plucked a sniper rifle from the barrage of guns and gear coming from Woodhouse’s whirling dervish of destruction. It looked like a souped up, tricked out Barrett Light 50, only shrunk down and glittering with alien technology.
Aurora was too busy with the shield for any additional weapons. Plus, once the shield was down she could hurl destructive blasts of dark matter at whoever dared oppose us.
A quick glance around me revealed that Captain Har’Gitay had pulled a short-barrelled pistol from some unseen hoster, and Fallon crouched close to the floor with her cat claws out and ready. Hell, even Artie had gotten in on the action with a mean looking compact submachine gun in her fists. The wounded Baba-Tadao, Chaz, and my holographic trainer Grizz, had huddled around Thomas and the POTUS.
I didn’t have a chance to gather much more than a fast look because my own weapons sailed over my head. My hands flew up and plucked two, smooth, blue-gray, foot and a half long batons out of the air. With the press of a button curved, laser honed, axe heads appeared on the end of each baton. It had been a while since I’d used my Space Viking Axes, or, as I liked to call them, my SVAs, and they felt good in my hands. I twirled each one at my side quickly and with a stylish flourish.
Whoever the asshole was that had tried to blow my friends and I up had picked the wrong fucking day.
As the smoke cleared, the rail cannon on the underside of the attack craft glowed and began to send lightning blue blasts of energy at the anti-matter shield.
“Everyone okay?” I yelled.
My alliance mates all sounded off in the affirmative. Except Aurora.
“Not sure how much longer I can hold this, Marc,” Aurora panted. The geometric tribal tattoos that covered her body glowed and pulsed as she expended a tremendous amount of energy. The tattoos helped Aurora keep the Shriike, a sort of life force sucking space vampire that lived within her, at bay. I had no idea when the last time Aurora had “fed” or how much reserve energy she had.
“You won’t have to,” I replied. “On my mark, ha, see what I did there? Sorry, on my mark, Tempest I want you to create some multiples and get the POTUS out of here with Chaz.”
“Copy that,” Tempest said. She was able to make multiple copies of herself at will very much like Multiple Man from the X-Men comics. They were oddly sentient yet tied to her psychic control and were good for about five copies before they started to degrade and get really stupid. Before my eyes, four identical copies of Tempest shimmered out of her body and rushed toward the POTUS. Chaz and Grizz huddled around the huddled mass of my father and the President.
“PoLarr!” I yelled. “Back me up. When Aurora lowers the shield get outside and follow my lead.”
“I-firmative,” PoLarr replied like Newt from Aliens.
“Nova?” I shouted.
“I will destroy anything in my path, Marc!” She cried.
“I know,” I yelled back. “When I say, I need a boost from your kinetic blast, got it?”
“Got it!” she shouted back.
Nova, in addition to the fact that her race’s molecules were about as three times as dense as a human’s, which made her stupid strong, stupid heavy, and stupid durable. She looked like a CrossFit athlete and had been involved in a freak reactor core accident which gave her the ability to absorb ambient radiation and then expend it as a blast of controlled kinetic energy.
“Aurora, drop the shield when I say,” I commanded.
“You got it, sugar,” she replied. “And, unlike you in the bedroom, make it quick.”
“Everyone set?” I called out. I didn’t need to even look to know that they all nodded their heads. “Team Havak Go!”
