Unstoppable Arsenal

by Jeffery H. Haskell

  She raises an eyebrow at me, “What do you mean ‘do anything’? Believe me, I’ve had enough tests to see what I can do, I don’t need anymore,” her demeanor switches to match her outside, cold. Didn’t Cat-7 try to fix her? No… of course they didn’t. They just wanted to know how she could be best used as a weapon. I make a mental note to have Epic look for info on her tests.

  “I am going to go out on a limb and say Cat-7 never even talked to you about the possibility of reversing your transformation?”

  Monica goes still as a corpse. Frost spreads quietly out around her hand on the table.

  “Don’t joke with me Amelia, it isn’t funny.”

  I shake my head, “I never joke about science… in the morning on,” I turn to Kate, “What day is it?”

  “Tuesday,” she says with a raised eyebrow.

  “On Tuesday. Not ever.”

  She cracks a smile and nods, “I’ll come by sometime then. Maybe.”

  “No rush, like I said, I can’t promise anything but I wouldn’t mind a shot at trying.”

  She stands up, cold air eddies around her and little bits of frost fall from her like snow.

  “Maybe I will, thanks.”

  I watch her leave and my heart goes out to her. I’m stuck in a chair but I still get to eat, drink, sleep. I still get to feel the warmth of companionship, the kiss of another human being. What does she get? More ice.

  “That was sweet, what you said. But careful, I don’t know about her emotional state,” Kate says stepping up behind me and pushing on my chair.

  “My powers have no influence on her. I can read her emotions slightly better than a non-empath can, but as for influence,” she shrugs, “I have none.”

  “Understood. Where are we going?” I ask.

  “To get you some real food. Soda and chips doesn’t a meal make.”

  “Clearly you’ve never played Battlefield all night long.”

  The alarm, high-pitched and shrill, goes off and I immediately slap it. I haven’t slept. I wish I had but I’m too… something. Nervous, eager, excited, scared…? Pick one. After fourteen years I will finally have my parents back.

  I showered and cleaned up after today’s events but I went to sleep in my synthsuit. It isn’t uncomfortable and it certainly speeds the process up if I am already dressed. It’s easy enough to slide into the chair and wheel over to the marks on the floor. I glance up at the monitor to make sure Epic is ready. He did a full diagnostics with no hiccups.

  “Epic, how’s Artemis coming along?”

  He changes screens and shows my new baby. I’m constantly thinking up things, my mind is a raging inferno of ideas and often times simply writing them out or slapping some blueprints down will do the trick. This one, though, wouldn’t leave me alone.

  On the screen is the launch site for Blue Origin, it’s a private space agency founded by the second richest person in the world. When I first had the idea for Artemis I thought it would be impossible to launch my own satellite. Here it is, however, two months and three million dollars later, and she is only a few hours away from launch.

  Technically she’s a private communications satellite for Mars Tech Global. Blue Origin will put her in geostationary orbit above the equator with a direct line-of-sight to North America. Along with the cost of the launch, I have to pay transponder fees and orbital rent to the US government. What they don’t know is she’s far more than a comsat.

  Now that I know she is safe and about to launch I refocus. Time to put an end to my quest.

  “Epic… initiate!”

  I never quite liked the old way the suit came together around me. This is much better. The chair stands me up as plates slide into place. My helmet flips over my head as the HUD boots up and with ten seconds I am fully functional and ready to go.

  “Open the window,” I order. If I go to the roof there is a chance one of the other team might see me if they are still here. I don’t want anyone knowing what I’m doing. I know they would help and I love them for it, especially Luke. But what I am about to do is illegal and dangerous and my responsibility.

  The Emdrive kicks in and I shoot out the window. I love how silent the new propulsion is, barely more than a hum at full power. Ten thousand feet pass in the blink of an eye as I approach the speed of sound. There is something about the roar of jets that is exhilarating, but the advantages of stealth and speed of the Emdrive far outweigh hearing the sound. Besides, jet fuel was expensive and the process to compress it was inherently dangerous.

  “Course plotted?”

  Plotted.

  I’ve always wanted to say this… “Punch it!”

  The suit locks up and the drive goes to full power mode. The wind buffets the suit like mad and the closer I get to Mach One the worse it is. Thank goodness I’m just a passenger. I imagine the boom in my head as the readout passes Mach One followed a few seconds later by two, then three. As we approach eighty-thousand feet and Mach Four Epic evens out our trajectory. With Arizona air being dry as it is I don’t leave a vapor trail or a shock cone.

  No Orbit today.

  “I know, not the mission. ETA?”

  37 minutes.

  “Show me the most recent footage?”

  A window opens up on the HUD. The camera angle is an ATM across the street. A few other windows open up with red light camera footage, CCTV and even a few pictures posted on the Internet. Part of why I want Artemis is if I have to do anything like this in the future, I want my own spy satellite.

  Then it hits me… will I do this in the future? With Mom and Dad back there won’t be a need for Arsenal anymore. A hollow pit forms in my stomach. Clearly, I didn’t give this any advance thought. To this point, my life has been about finding out what happened to my parents and saving them if I could. Here I am on the cusp of doing so and…

  Amelia, I am detecting elevated heart rate and respiratory duress. Are you okay?

  “Minor panic attack, buddy. Just thinking about the future and my place in it.”

  To be or not to be, is that the question?

  “Ha. I guess so.”

  A new window opens and washes all the other windows away. The opening bars of Star Wars start and I am instantly more relaxed. Epic’s ability to read my emotional state and help me through trials is borderline unbelievable.

  Thirty minutes later, and a daring escape from Tatooine, I’m closing in on Boston. It’s six a.m. local so the city is waking up and coming alive with activity. Though, I don’t think this city ever truly stops. The place I’m looking for is near the harbor off of Dorchester Street. A big white warehouse with no signs, just a chain link fence, and the standard private property stay out message. Epic highlights the location on the HUD as we come down toward the city. At twenty thousand feet he cuts the thrusters and I’m free falling.

  Wind rushes around me as I dive toward the ground. The airspeed indicator on my HUD slows down as friction and atmospheric density drag me toward terminal velocity, which is quite a bit slower than Mach Four.

  “Stealth mode,” I tell him.

  The HUD switches to soft blue. Radar signature, ECM, and thermals all pop up replacing speed and altitude. With JFK airport nearby there are tons of signals flying around. Epic reconfigures my kinetic shields to disperse the radar waves, making my already small cross signature non-existent.

  I am detecting quantum radiation ahead. It appears this is the correct place.

  I don’t have an official name for it, but my Zero-Point Field Module gives off a radiation that doesn’t exist. It doesn’t fall into any bands from alpha to x-ray that I can quantify, and believe me, I’ve tried. Epic coined the idea of Quantum Radiation and we’ve been using it ever since. As far as I can tell it is harmless to biological tissue. All Zero-Point energy units give it off. However, the half-life is brief and it decays rapidly. Which makes tracking it problematic. The only reason I even know it exists is the base under Portland. If Cat7 hadn’t shown me the ZPFM they had I would never have g
otten mine working.

  But they did.

  I grin as we pass five thousand feet. We’re now falling round seventy meters per second.

  “Deploy flaps.”

  I put my hands up and let my knees bend. The shoulder units flip up and panels all over the suit lock open to create as much drag as possible slowing me even further. If radar does see me I need to look like a bird diving or something. Coming in hot at 2,000 miles per hour will turn far too many heads and alert the enemy to my presence.

  Two-thousand feet.

  “Zoom in on the warehouse, please.”

  The optics in the suit flash as they click over to a digitally enhanced view. I wish I could have real optics, but there isn’t a way to have a telescope in my helmet. However, with an AI manning the electronic enhancements I get a pretty clear view of the warehouse.

  “The roof looks like aluminum but the way the light reflects off of it is a little weird. Anything on passive?”

  We’ve got about thirty more seconds until we hit and I need to decide what to do. Land elsewhere and watch? Or go full bore.

  “You know what? I’ve waited long enough. Kinetic shields to full strength, we’re going right through the roof.”

  Affirmative.

  Without knowing what it’s made of, this could be a little risky, but even if I hit the ground flat the shields will absorb at least ninety percent of the impact.

  This doesn’t ease my mind as the roof looms larger in my field of view.

  “Stealth mode off, prepare for combat.”

  The HUD flashes red and all my weapon and defensive systems go to full power.

  The roof shatters under the impact. I crash through a few feet of rafters before I’m in open air again, only to slam into a concrete slab a few seconds later. I bend at the knees to absorb what little impact there is. The shields worked beautifully.

  The only problem is, the place is empty.

  “Full scan, make sure you hit the walls with the IR.”

  Roger.

  The warehouse is easily four times the square footage of our HQ. Something about it…

  “For a place that looks well-used, shouldn’t there be, you know, boxes or something?”

  The place is empty. Not only are there no crates, there’s no office or holding area just a big empty room. Rather than stand still and be an easy target I stride toward the back where I think an elevator should be. Maybe they’ve got a hidden…

  Four loud pops echo in the cavernous room behind me. I spin to face whoever just teleported in. Vaguely humanoid in shape, I’m face to face with four honest-to-god robots. Their left arms end in cannons with the same funky thermal reading as the plasma guns from Tucson. I knew the Cabal and Cat-7 were the same.

  Amelia, they are powering weapons.

  “Right, thrusters on full!”

  I soar up as balls of green plasma burn through the air where I was moments before. I line up the far one with my particle beam reticule and fire. Hyper-accelerated silica flashes through the air in a blue beam to splash against the hide of the ‘bot. For a second I think it isn’t going to work… then the beam bursts through the outer skin and the robot explodes in a shower of debris and parts.

  “Scan these things,” I yell as I roll hard over.

  Scanning.

  I don’t have a ton of room to maneuver and I certainly don’t want to take the fight out on the streets. All I need would be for the ‘Sons of Liberty’ to show up and then I would have to explain why I was in Massachusetts trespassing on private property. It might be unavoidable though, each time the ‘bots miss they vaporize another section of the wall.

  I fire another particle beam, cutting off the non-plasma arm of a bot. It doesn’t seem to notice but I can tell they are engaging in defensive routines. Their speed is picking up. I snap fire my secondary beam and the particles slices through the wall and I pray I didn’t just cut someone in half.

  “Okay, no more range weapons and let’s assume they’re immune to the IP cannons.”

  I reach over my shoulder and grasp the hilt of my sword. The blade comes free as I dive down toward another. The plasma guns have a six-second recharge window and they seem to explode on whatever solid item they hit first. Keeping the bot in front of me, in the same line as the others, allows me to land for a second and engage with my blade… assuming they won’t kill each other.

  I step forward and swing my sword up from the side. The diamond-coated blade cuts cleanly through the ‘bots chest cavity, revealing the internal workings. A mix of fluids, gel packs, and optic circuitry. Whatever these things are they’re advanced.

  With their compatriot disabled the other two open fire. I grab the top half of the ‘bot I just slaughtered and toss it at the looming balls of plasma. The ‘bot is vaporized along with the plasma stream.

  Move!

  I count in my head as I run toward the first one. I get to three when I cut off its arm, spin and lop off the head unit. I don’t know if I will ever build a robot, but I won’t make it look human, too easy to destroy.

  One.

  “Full burn!”

  The suit leaps into the air just as the ball of plasma vaporizes the space I cleared.

  “Ramming speed!”

  We swoop down, scraping the concrete as the suit crashes into the last robot at a hundred miles an hour. The human hand reaches for my head and pushes me back with surprising strength.

  “Kinetic lance,” I yell as I push the thing down into the ground.

  The hand explodes from the impact of kinetic energy. We slide to a halt as the bot struggles to line up its cannon. I manage to stand, put a foot on the plasma arm and ram the sword down the center of its chest. The thing dies slowly and powers down.

  “Epic, where the heck did they come from?

  Scanning. While it is impossible to detect quantum teleportation I can say with ninety percent accuracy it was used from somewhere below.

  “Based on the Portland base, how far down?”

  Clever. Calculating.

  While Epic calculates I use my eyes to flip through the screens on my HUD. As I thought, the fight drew attention and the Sons of Liberty are on the way.

  The Portland base is seventy-five feet below the surface. The building on top of the base is a maintenance facility housing parts and equipment.

  “Okay, reroute power to the particle beams. You’re going to need at least two point one megawatts to each, can we do that?”

  That exceeds the maximum power the particle beams were designed for… I don’t advise it.

  “No risk, no reward. This is my parents, Epic. If we don’t succeed today we will never find them.”

  Power rerouted.

  Based on the Portland base I move to the center of the warehouse. With my legs shoulder width apart, I point my arms straight down.

  “Here we go.”

  I flex my arms, firing off the beams. The heat level in the suit immediately spikes. Normally the beams are active for a maximum of three seconds. The power capacitors and heat exchangers are designed around brief spikes of heat. Even when I added the second beam on my other arm I didn’t think about using them as a cutting tool.

  Eight seconds pass. Epic puts the local news and police band on the HUD. They are only seconds away.

  The hyper-accelerated silica particles burn through the floor vaporizing concrete as they stab down. I’m hoping there will be an air pressure—

  Penetration. Fifty feet down, rotate at a rate of ten degrees every six seconds.

  Epic draws the pattern over my HUD so I can see exactly how I need to turn. I manage to spin in a circle at almost the right rate. The floor begins to glow red as the concrete heats up. The temperature master alarm flips into pre-warning mode and my HUD flashes a bright orange, letting me know the external temp is reaching dangerous levels.

  Three-thousand degrees is the max the suit can take. With the way titanium and tungsten interacts, there is no give. Two thousand nine hundred and nine
ty-nine, I’m fine, three thousand and the suit melts. I’ve got the master alarm setup to warn me in five hundred degree increments. At twenty-five hundred the suit screams at me.

  Ten more seconds.

  We can’t make it, I was hoping to burn a hole through the ceiling but the heat level is climbing too fast and the Boston PD is almost here.

  “Epic, change of plans,” I shut down the particle beams with a hundred degrees to spare. “Scan the building for network cables…”

  Northwest corner.

  I kick in the thrusters and we’re there in a second. I punch a hole in the metal box and rip off the door. Inside, there are about a hundred cables. I press my hands up to the master switch. Normally I have Epic break into a wireless network. However, when that isn’t possible he can interact with the magnetic field of wires if there is physical contact. “Epic, scan their network for the quantum teleporter and get us in there!” I can hear sirens now, along with the approaching whine of hoverbikes.

  I’m in. Hacking. Their security protocols are incredibly advanced. Five seconds.

  “Smoke!”

  Two compressed canisters of potassium chlorate and aluminum coated fiberglass explode outward from each hip, spewing purple smoke behind me. The room quickly fills with the obscuring screen. I’m gonna have to scrub the suit when I get home, that stuff doesn’t come out easy.

  System secured, activating quantum teleportation. Hold on to your lunch.

  The world goes wonky. My vision bends as the wall in front of me vanishes and I am standing in a room with six circular pads. I drop to one knee and almost have to open the faceplate to vomit. I manage to choke it down with a few gasping breaths.

  “Why was—” I gulp a few times, “Why was that so disorienting?”

  Unknown.

  “You’re helpful.”

  I believe you mispronounced, “Thank you Epic for saving me.”

  “Everyone’s a critic,” I say as I stand… I don’t believe it.

  “Epic is this a… a transporter room?”