ANCIENT ARSENAL
FULL METAL SUPERHERO: BOOK SEVEN
JEFFERY H. HASKELL
ANCIENT ARSENAL © 2019 by Jeffery H. Haskell
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
Cover designed by www.VividCovers.com
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales, is entirely coincidental.
Jeffery H. Haskell
Visit my website at www.jefferyhhaskell.com
Printed in the United States of America
First Published: Feb 2019
Molten Press
ISBN:
GLOSSARY
The Protectors:
Arsenal/Amelia Lockheart: Genius engineer, metallurgist, computer scientist, the list goes on.
Domino/Kate Petrenelli: Empath. F3 athlete. Super powered artificial arm. Amelia’s best friend.
Fleet/Thomas Anthony Shaw: Speedster
Glacier/Monica Pavlenco: Ice Elemental
TK/Tessa “Tess” Harper: Telekinesis and Force-field generation. Former criminal.
Lux/Augustina Luciana Maxima: Alien with the ability to control light. Home planet destroyed by the Th’un.
The Doctor/Teddy Contee: Regeneration in others and himself.
Major Force/Luke Lancaster: F5 strong man. Amelia’s boyfriend. Once possessed by the Red Gem.
The Protector/Carlos Rodrigo Dominguez: Amelia’s longtime friend. F5 strong man with super powered spear and armor.
Epic/None: Amelia’s personal AI and friend.
Milton/None: AI created by Epic. English accent.
Other Heroes:
Catia “Tia” Tichenor: Affiliated with the Buenos Aires Police. F5 mass/density altering powers.
Locations:
The Spire: Former home base of Amelia and the Protectors.
UltraMax: The special prison in North Dakota for super powered criminals.
Villains:
The Th’un: Aliens that tried to strip mine Earth. Home planet destroyed by Arsenal.
The Red Mage/Ricardo Rico Rafael (D): Wanted to destroy all supers in the world. Last seen in Unbreakable.
The Armory/Unknown: The team that beat the snot out of Amelia in ‘Unbreakable.’
The Engineer/Unknown: Built the suits for the Armory and the giant bank robbing robots from Unbreakable.
The Red Gem/Chronos: The Titan. Existed on Earth before humans.
Government Agents:
Major Tony Nelson/None: The Airforce officer who is Amelia’s liaison in the Pentagon.
Special Agent Brown: FBI agent with a vendetta against Amelia.
Other Characters:
John and Hope Lockheart/None: Amelia’s parents. World class engineers.
Frank Parker/Tempus: Time traveler whose wife and child were killed.
Technical Stuff:
ZPFM: Zero Point Field Module.
IP Cannon: Ion Pulse (Amelia’s super-Taser).
Emdrive: Electromagnetic propulsion (Google “Impossible Drive” for more info).
Emjet: Amelia’s private jet, outfitted with her Emdrive.
HUD: Heads Up Display.
ECM: Electronic Counter Measures.
EMI: Electromagnetic Interference.
RF: Radio Frequency.
EW: Electronic Warfare.
Computronium: A nano-particle with atoms that form processors allowing Epic to fully load himself into any of Amelia’s suits.
Faraday Cage: A copper or iron metallic surface with a low-level electrical current running through it blocks all radio transmissions.
GPS: Global Positioning System.
Sword O’ Doom: Monomolecular blade, can cut through anything.
Lockheed: Small flying drone first seen in Alien Arsenal.
ONE
DELPHI, GREECE– Sometime in the past
Math is a funny thing. There are people who are good at it and there are people who are bad at it. I happen to be very, very good. And even I can’t calculate how screwed we are.
“Amelia, explain to the nice gentlemen with the guns that we aren’t desecrating their ruins?” Luke asks me.
“I don’t speak Greek,” I say with a shrug. Two local militia men with revolvers stare us down on the peak of the Oracle hill at Delphi—which is really nothing more than a series of stones left over from two thousand years ago. It’s strange; my brain knows this is 1901, but as far as my senses can tell, there is no difference. It seems like there ought to be.
They gestured with their guns again, presumably to have Luke stand up. He’s still cradling me in his lap, sitting on the ground where I found him.
I try pointing at my leg so they will know I’m hurt… that I can’t walk… but it doesn’t seem to translate well. “Frank... if we change things here, will we go back to our own time?” I ask him.
Frank Parker—father, analyst, time traveler, and distraught husband—is with us. He shrugs. “I’ve never gone back this far before... but every time I return, I always return to my time, with nothing I’ve done affecting the present,” he says. He has his hands up, like the smart cookie he is.
I should do the same.
Spreading my fingers out I raise my hands until the palms face the two officers. “Epic, if you please.”
Sandpaper staccato sound fills the air as two bolts of ionic energy short circuit the officers’ nervous systems. They collapse to the ground, unconscious, their guns dropping harmlessly.
“How long until they wake up?” Luke asks.
I shrug. “Ten minutes?”
He pushed me gently off before standing up, then reaches down to help me. I can only use one leg, so it isn’t easy to stand un-aided.
“We should find Pythia before more come,” he says. I put an arm over his bare shoulders and I just want to stay here forever. I can’t shake the grin from my face. I know we’re trapped back in time... but this entire last year... last two years really, has been one giant kerfuffle into another. Here I have no enemies: no aliens, no mind controllers, no FBI, just me and Luke— and Frank. This will be like a vacation. What could possibly go wrong?
We make our way to the spot on the hill where Sydney first showed me the secret entrance. One of these days I need to build a secret entrance to a base carved out of the side of a mountain. I wonder how expensive mountains are to buy?
“Is this it?” Luke asks. I nod. I reach up to the spot where the stone is and press down...
A loud click echoes in the air as the stone depresses under my palm. We wait a moment, then the ground shakes as it descends.
“This is so weird,” Frank says. “Domino and the Protector told me about this lady, but... this is weird.”
“You travel through time,” Luke says with a raised eyebrow.
“Yeah, but that’s superpowers. This is... I don’t know what this is.”
I chuckle. “Yeah that was pretty much my reaction. Bear in mind, the moment we arrived here in this time she likely saw us and knows things about us, so don’t let that scare you. Also, try not to talk about the future too much—not just with her but with anyone.”
“My powers keep this from affecting our future,” Frank says. Then his eyes widen just a little bit. “Don’t they?”
“Normally? Yes. But you don’t have your powers
right now, do you? Odds are you’re correct, and nothing we do will change our present. Causality will kick in and everything we do will have already happened and won’t change our present. Worst case, we won’t even know, because when we return to the present it will be our past and—”
“It will already have happened,” Luke finishes for me.
“Head of the class,” I tell him with a pat to his cheek. He’s so cute when he’s smart.
“My head hurts,” Frank says, rubbing his face with both hands. “I’ve done this a hundred times, but this time, because I don’t have my powers, I have no idea how any of this works.”
“Trust me, I’ve been thinking about this my whole life and I still don’t have an answer for you. Welcome to time travel,” I say to him with a smirk.
The lift descends below the rock ceiling, revealing the Oracle of Delphi’s cave—without the influence of a Protector. To my utter astonishment, it looks vastly different. Gone are the modern furnishings; it looks like we have descended into a Greek epic. The waterfall fills the room with mist and a constant splash of water, and the eerie blue light, like a small sun, shines through it as before. But the rest of the room... small stone benches line the pool, a massive bed of pillows dominates one wall, and everywhere I look there is silk hanging from the ceiling. If I didn’t know this was a cave, I couldn’t tell by looking at it.
Classical music plays softly from some kind of gramophone if I had to guess. I don’t recognize the song, but that’s not exactly a newsflash.
The most alarming thing is Pythia. She sits idly on a stone bench, holding a book and eating an apple. She doesn’t look anything like either of the Pythias I’ve met; not the little girl, and not the seventeen-year-old temptress. This is more… a woman. Maybe twenty-five, or possibly as old as thirty. Long black hair wraps around her shoulders in an elaborate braid. Her smooth olive skin is flawless, and her figure... simply beautiful.
The thing that is so different about her is her air… her presence. She’s strangely confident, yet power fills the room in palatable waves. Her face contorts as she sees us.
“Who are you and how did you know to get down here?” she asks with her voice like tinkling bells.
I shake my head; confusion rattles around, clouding my thoughts.
“You don’t know who I am?” I ask her. How can she not know? I step off the ramp and she immediately jumps up. A spear appears in her hands out of thin air, the bronze tip pointing strait at me. Her white robe hangs loose about her, flapping as she moves and revealing far more skin than I’ve ever seen from her.
“You are intruders. You have five seconds to convince me not to kill you,” she says. My first thought is that she’s pulling my leg but... she never had much of a sense of humor.
“You’re Pythia, the Oracle of Delphi, left here by the dimensional traveler who went by the name Apollo.” I refuse to call them gods. They may have pretended, but in reality they were just beings with immense power, meddling with people not their own. Heck, with a working MK VI Combat Suit I could take over the world in this time period… not that I would.
“Dimensional traveler?” Confusion crosses over her face. She opens her hand and the spear vanishes as if it were never there. “How do you know these things?”
“Uh, aren’t you the Oracle?” Luke asks. “I mean we only ever met once but that time you seemed to know everything about everything before we ever met you.” I glance back at him with a cocked head. I told him not to talk about the future. He shrugs and nods.
I look back at Pythia. “You’re her, right?”
She slowly nods. Her eyes glow with a brilliant light that fades as fast as it came on. Faster than I can lift my arm to block out the light.
“Oh!” she says suddenly. “You’re from the future?”
“That’s the Pythia we know and love,” I say. It’s a bit bittersweet seeing her, since the last time we were together she saved my life. Part of me wants to tell her not to do that, but clearly, since it already happened, even if I did tell her she wouldn’t listen.
“I can’t see you,” she says with a frown.
“We’re right here,” Frank interjects.
“That’s not what—” Pythia and I start to say at the same time. We stop with our mouths half open and she breaks into a giggle that I can’t help but copy. Oh boy, my emotions are all over the place.
“What I mean is, I can’t see your fate. Which means you don’t belong here. Will you be returning to the future soon?”
“You mean, go back to the future?” I can’t help myself. Luke groans behind me.
“Yes, that is what I mean,” Pythia says, cocking her head to the side ever so slightly as she gazes at me.
She gestures for us to come in and sit down. Silver platters appear on a small marble table. They’re filled with fresh fruit, cheese, ham, and wine. What I wouldn’t give for a Coke.
Pythia cocks her head sideways, her eyes searching me for something... then a bottle of vintage Coke, cork stopper and all, appears on the table.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Luke says. “They had Coke back here?” He shakes his head as I slowly make my way over to the table and sit down.
“Pythia, you are a godsend,” I tell her. There is nothing like a real cold Coke after a long day; this is as long a day and as original a Coke as it gets. I untwist the metal prongs holding the cork in place and take a long pull of the sweet syrup. It tastes considerably different, and better, than I’m used to. Right. I remember something about them changing the formula in the 30’s or so.
She comes over and sits with a plate of grapes. She puts one between her plump lips and slowly bites down, heedless of how effortlessly sexy it is. Luke very purposely looks away from her and I can’t help but smile at my beau.
“How may I help my future friends?” she asks after we’ve started eating.
“We need a place to crash for a few years,” I say between bites.
“What happens then?” she asks.
I’m too stunned to speak. My mouth opens and closes almost of its own accord while I process this.
“How can you not see what happens then?” I ask her.
“I haven’t been able to see more than a few days in the future since... oh... 400AD? And only then if I’m touching someone. I haven’t had a visitor here since then. To say I’ve been lonely is an understatement, but I do what I can to serve.”
I look at Luke; he’s clearly as bewildered as I am. She can’t see the future? She doesn’t know what’s going to happen?
We’re in so much trouble.
TWO
Alot of things could have gone wrong up to this point. It never occurred to me, and it really should have, that Pythia was as dependent on the Tesla incident as everyone else with superpowers.
“Let me get this straight. You’re saying that in a few years I’ll be able to speak to Apollo again? Are you sure?” Pythia asked in a strange mimic of my own dialog.
I nod. “In our time you are a prophetess of sorts. Helping people when you can,” I say. It’s hard because I want to tell her certain things, but I’m not sure what will happen if I do. Can I even change the future? I seriously don’t think I can. Whatever I do, succeed or fail, it’s already happened. Trying to wrap my brain around that distracts me from what she says next.
“What was that?” I ask her, returning my attention.
“I said, I’ve pretty much stayed here at Delphi since he created me twenty-four hundred years ago. My sole purpose was to help guide mankind in the absence of the gods—”
“Let me stop you right there. We know who and what Apollo and his other friends really were. Certainly advanced and powerful, but please don’t call them gods; they are no more gods than I am.”
Pythia quirked her head to the side and smiled ever-so-slightly. “As you wish. I didn’t think anyone on Earth would ever come to accept the idea of other dimensions of existence—not parallel but vastly different. Where my lord comes fr
om they harness the power of the stars to travel through time and space. When there were no more places to explore, they started visiting different dimensions. It was here they discovered that their differences made them powerful.”
Luke lets out a sigh and stands from the table to stretch. “Amelia, we need to talk about the thoroughness of your mission reports. This is a lot to take in,” he says.
Frank, though, is dumbfounded. “I... I thought you were crazy,” he says looking at me. “Or that there was some other logical explanation for this but... the Greek gods were real?”
I shake my head in a definitive no. “They weren’t gods, just advanced beings. If I had a working combat suit I could conquer this time period. Same thing as them,” I frown, looking down at the broken leg piece. I suppose I could patch it and have it work well enough. I doubt I could make the suit space-worthy, though. I just don’t have the tech to effect the needed repairs.
“Is there someplace I can lie down?” Frank asks. Pythia stands, a smile on her face as she shows him to the bed. She pulls the covers back and gestures for him. Frank sits on the pillows, uncertain how to proceed on the unfamiliar bed. Pythia Waves her hand over his head and I swear, for a second, I can see a golden light pass from her into him. He falls back on the bed and she pulls the covers up over him.
“Sleep now,” she whispers to him. She turns to me with a smile. “He will sleep, undisturbed and safe until I wake him.”
“You can do that?” I ask. Clearly she can, and I drop my face into my hands and close my eyes for a second. “Never mind, stupid question.”
She returns to the table, sitting closer to me now. “I have to ask, what made you travel back in time?” She glances over at Luke, who has wandered over to a chair and sunk down. His eyes droop and slowly he nods off. Within a few seconds his chest is rising and falling regularly.
Ancient Arsenal (Full Metal Superhero Book 7) Page 1
