Book Title Copyright © 2018 by Jeffery H. Haskell. All Rights Reserved.
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Jeffery H. Haskell
Visit my website at www.jefferyhhaskell.com
Printed in the United States of America
First Edition: May 2018
Molten Press
As always, to my wonderful wife and children. Thank you for letting me play for a living.
I think some people have a fundamental misunderstanding of what I do. Sometimes I just want to grab them by the shoulders and say, “That’s not how the Force works!”
-From the journal of Amelia Lockheart.
Amelia…
Amelia, wake up.
Fog covers my thoughts as I drift up toward Epic’s voice.
“Where— Epic, where are we?”
I do not know. We were hit with an EMP weapon upon exiting Q-space.
I shake my head and immediately regret my decision. “You’re shielded against EMP…” I let it hang out there while I try to recover the memories of where we are.
You are correct. However, whatever hit us shut me down as if I was not shielded. I cannot explain alien technology without some form of reference, which we do not have at this time.
It slowly comes back to me as the fog lifts. Pythia shoving us through the gateway into Q-space and then exiting a few hours later. A ship with strange markings approached us and then… I blink several times in an attempt to get my bearings. Everything is black, though, and I can’t see anything.
“Epic, lights please.”
LED’s embedded within the suit flash into existence leaving little spots dancing around my vision. I’m in a pod of some kind. A glass plate covers the front and bands trap me like an operating table. At least I’m standing up. I resist the urge to struggle, just yet. I don’t want to tip my hand. The lights stretch out far enough to see the immediate area. Where ever we are it’s huge. For fifty feet in front of me I can see other pods, crates, cages, and a mess of equipment I don’t recognize.
“Okay, time to leave.” My muscles feel like they haven’t moved in a month as I press against the bands. However, I don’t rely on my own strength. The suit does the vast majority of the work. The bands are strong, made of some kind of thickly fibered material I don’t recognize. They’re no match for the MK V. I can bench press Luke’s truck in this thing. I grunt as the lower bands snap. With those gone I just sink down a little, bending my knees sideways and come out from underneath the top one.
This is not glass, bear that in mind. I am not sure what the material is made of. It is sure to be stronger than we expect.
“I’m not worried about that. Now that I can move… Sword of Doom.” I don’t actually have to speak to have the blade snap into existence. It sure is fun though, to say it out loud.
The black blade forms in my hand, three feet long and one molecule thick at the cutting edge. Whatever the translucent material is made of, it can’t withstand the cutting power of the sword. The glass shatters almost immediately as the blade cuts up the middle. Stepping out I take a good look around as I stretch my aching body.
“Epic, how long were we out?”
I cannot imagine much longer than twenty-four hours. However, whatever they shot us with dampened all my systems. When I came back online my internal clock had not progressed.
“Well, I’m not any hungrier than I was when we came out of Q-space, which is to say I’d eat a horse, hoof and all right now. But beyond that, yeah probably a day or so.” The room is full of empty pods just like the one I came out of. The ceiling is a hundred feet up and I can’t locate the walls. “Switch to echolocation. Maybe we can pick up something.”
Affirmative.
“Oh, and Epic?”
Yes?
I grin as I speak, “One ping, one ping only please.”
Very funny.
The suit pings and I watch the sound spread out on my heads-up display, bouncing off various outcroppings and walls. It doesn’t go far enough for a complete map. Walking forward I trigger another ping. This completes the picture a little better.
Keep walking to your right. I think one or two more pings will complete the map.
The place is huge and if we’re on a ship, it has to be some kind of cargo hold. If we’re on a planet, a warehouse. The last ping fills in the missing pieces. The room is three hundred feet by two hundred feet, with a hundred-foot ceiling. It is jam-packed full of weird stuff. A hundred pods like the one I was in. Fifteen vehicles that look like some kind of farm equipment? A few hundred crates of organic matter Epic identifies as a nutrient paste. I almost want to crack one of those open. With my luck, it would be paste for a silicate-based life-form or something. The list goes on with no rhyme or reason. It’s like someone flew through the universe and picked up whatever passed…
“They’re salvagers, Epic. Or some kind of bizarre free trader. That has to be it.”
Their cargo appears consistent with your hypothesis. Then I recommend we find a way to leave. I’d imagine an alien not present in this part of the galaxy would make for a good pay-out. Since they seem to have weapons capable of taking us out, I would hate to be knocked offline again. We might not wake up.
A chill runs up my spine. Heart racing, I numbly nod at his proclamation. “Okay, stealth mode; keep the ZPFM at minimal power. If we can find a terminal maybe we can hack it and figure out exactly where we are?”
Good plan.
With a best guess, I go right, staying close to the wall and doing my best Mission Impossible imitation moving from cover to cover. Epic kills the LED’s and switches my vision to purely a map overlay from the sonar. With no active signals emitting from the armor, we should be all but impossible to detect. I guessed right. The back of the room has a massive door split in two. Next to it is a console of some kind. Ducking down beside it, I place my hand on the front and let Epic do his thing via induction.
The good news is, the console is not hardened. The bad news is, it has no power.
I flick through the menus to the ZPFM and reroute power to the glove. Epic handles the flow and within a second the panel lights up.
Amelia, we have a problem.
“I see it… who the hell built this tub?” The console isn’t a computer. Or at least, not the kind I would think of. It has knobs, switches, even a large lever. There are no controls to hack because all the controls are analog. Which…
“This is actually better. We won’t set off any intrusion countermeasures while we toggle things.” Making sure to continue to give it juice, I pick a knob and turn it. From the back of the room, a loud screeching noise echoes in the big chamber.
Not that one.
“Some kind of gantry?”
Possible.
If I were designing this thing, the lever would open the door… I wrap a hand around it and pull. It won’t budge.
Perhaps there is a safety toggle to flip first?
“Good call. I think it’s safe to have some light. The helmet light flares to life allowing me to scan the buttons. There are indeed two shielded buttons. I flip the
m both and press the buttons underneath.
A massive klaxon blares as red lights flash in the interior. “I like the sound of that,” I tell Epic over the noise. I take a deep breath and pull the lever again—
Amelia, stop.
My hand freezes on the lever. “What?”
I think this is an automated cargo vessel. Hence the manual controls. Someone would have to board her to open the cargo doors. Plus, if it is automated then we can—
“We can commandeer her! Oh, Epic! Are we going to go home?”
Even if their encryption is as good as the Th’un we should still be able to crack her in a few days, at most.
“Epic? Make it so.”
San Diego
Luke winced as the massive robotic arm crashed through the facade of the five-star restaurant. Rolling under the swing he regained his feet in a dead run as debris came down.
“TK, keep that mess from hurting anyone,” he yelled over the comms. The roar of the robotic monster drowned out all sound for a moment as it recovered from swinging at him.
Luke leaped over a car, hitting the pavement on the other side to drop into a slide and the car he just passed exploded into bits.
“You’ve pissed it off now,” Kate called over the radio.
“Not sure how I did that. We could really use a Protector right about now, Kate!”
Rolling on his shoulder, Luke came up with a manhole cover, spun, and let it fly. The iron Frisbee shot through the air like a bullet to clang off the creature’s jaw. The six-story-tall mega-Dinobot had the body and head of a t-rex but the arms of a gorilla. Arms it had used to breach seven banks so far. It wasn’t bothering with tellers. The thing ripped the vaults right out and swallowed them whole!
“He’s in Chile helping with the earthquake, he can’t come here for a glorified bank robber when so many lives are in jeopardy down there,” Kate, the hero known as Domino, told him.
Ringing the Dinobot's bell seemed to refocus it for a second, giving Luke a moment to breathe.
Think Luke, think! What would Amelia do? She’d say something relevant to pop culture and then blast it with science. He let out a sigh, it wouldn’t do any good to sink into despair at this particular moment. He shoved all thoughts of his missing girlfriend aside in order to come up with a plan. It walked on two legs, but it used the arms for balance. Shifting armor plates and reinforced metal made up its exterior but it had to see, right?
“Fleet, how’s the evac going?”
Fleet’s voice came back over the radio in bursts as he raced throughout the battlefield rescuing civilians. Of course, this was the week Lux went home to check on her people. Both his heavy hitters were out of town, so to speak.
“Another three minutes… and I will have them… all in the green-zone… with the Doctor.”
The green-zone was the call sign they used for the evac spot. A place for The Doctor to set up and treat the wounded. Not only was Teddy a world-class physician but his own powers accelerated a person's natural healing ability. More than one time in the last year he’d seen miracles happen with Teddy around.
“Luke, look out!”
He blinked, clearing his thoughts. It was too late. A massive three clawed foot stomped down on him with enough force to flatten a dump truck. Luke grunted from the pain and pressure. The ground beneath him cracked before exploding down into the sewer pipes. Water pipes exploded under him followed by electrical conduits. For a brief second Luke managed to regret not paying attention. Then the pain hit him as tens of thousands of volts coursed through his system.
His vision went red as his heart rate tripled. A roar of pain ripped out of him as his powers kicked in. Muscles and bone expanded, and strength flooded his system. With it, he lost virtually all rational ability and ran on instinct alone.
The monster hurt him, so he was going to hurt it.
When the giant foot lifted from him, he leaped up, latching onto the toe and climbing up over the top of it. He balled his fist and slammed it down as hard as he could. Maxed out as he was, his fist hit like a jackhammer being held by a Bull Elephant. Reinforced steel buckled as he slammed his fist against it over, and over again.
Laser focus and unwavering force held Luke to the foot as he worked on breaking the armor. He didn’t notice the creature looking down, nor did he feel the heat as molten fire built in its belly.
Kate did, though.
“Crap,” she muttered. When Luke got like this, there was no warning him. Sure, his danger sense might protect him, but it worked much better against smaller threats. He couldn’t dodge a wall of flame.
At least, not without her help. She slipped her pistol into the custom holster freeing up her one arm. She didn’t wear the prosthetic when she suited up, even with its advanced electronics, it wasn’t useful. She started running. Leaping upon a red sports car she pushed off with all her might. At the apex of her jump, twelve feet off the ground, she ‘ported. In a blink, Kate vanished from one point, and re-appeared two feet from Luke. The momentum of her jump carried through the teleport and she crashed into Luke and triggered her power again.
The two landed hard on the grass of the small park a half a block from where they had been a moment before. Luke twisted out of her grip, springing to his feet, chest heaving as his breaths came in massive gulps.
“Calm down, tiger, look,” she said, pointing. A massive gout of flame erupted from the Dinobot’s mouth, turning the street to slag.
As he breathed in his body relaxed and two inches flowed off of him.
“Thanks,” he said with a grin. “I’m glad you came out of retirement to help.”
“I didn’t. This is a one-time thing. Once we track down who’s making these things, I’m out. I’m a liability in most cases. I won’t risk the team on me.” She pushed herself up, wiping off her black form-fitting pants. “Come on, we still need to find a way to stop this thing before it gets away like the one in New York.”
Luke nodded, “Let’s regroup.”
“Unmanned, huh? Great call,” I say, ducking behind the bulkhead as red beams of energy lash out from the security drone.
Technically I am correct.
“You mean like, technically Mass Effect 3 had different endings?”
I see your point.
The security drone had come out of nowhere firing at us with a barrage of laser weapons melting the bulkhead where it missed. When the last beam fades I leap out, rolling on my shoulder and come up firing my particle beam. The blue hyper-accelerated silicate lashes out, splashing against its black, crab-like hull for half a second before eating through the armor to the soft gooey interior. The crab explodes in a shower of sparks and debris. Metal bits ping off my armor and the walls, filling the hall with super-hot pieces of drone.
“Score!”
I would wait to celebrate until we can get through the door to the bridge.
I sigh, my elation taken from me by the facts. The bulkhead door leading to what we believe is the bridge is made from some form of metal I don’t recognize. The panel to the side is another one of these hardwired controls with a keypad. We could try running permutations but it’s a twelve-digit keypad with a possible 8,916,100,448,256 solutions. Even if I punched one every four seconds, it would take me one thousand three hundred days and change, to try them all. I’m not sure I have that kind of time or patience.
“Let’s try the particle beam again. We’d just gotten started when the drone attacked, maybe that’s the only one?”
As one of your favorite fictional characters stated, “If wishes were horses we would all be eating steak”.
I can’t help but laugh. It’s a great line and I fire up the beam with a smile on my face. In my old suit, the heat of the particle beam would limit its use to three-second intervals. With the MK V, I have no such limitation. The beam lances out striking the door in a shower of energy.
Locking the armor to focus the beam on one spot.
“Roger that.” While Epic takes over the
firing systems, I use the sensors to scan the ship. It doesn’t have any wireless signals, and whatever conduits it might have, are shielded. Whoever built this thing didn’t want there to be the possibility of a wireless takeover. Smart, too. Since the only way to prevent something from being hacked is to make it not accessible. Otherwise, hackers gonna hack.
I glance back the way we came, a fifty-foot-long corridor leading to the hatch we discovered. I have no idea how big this ship is, but it was easy enough to find the bridge. It can’t be too big?
Being in control of the ship before it reaches the next jump point would be ideal. I don’t want to meet whoever put me in the pod. Especially since they have weapons that can shut me down like an off switch. I glance at the hallway again.
“Epic, I have an idea.”
Is it a really good idea? Or a really bad one?
“Some days there isn’t a difference. Any progress on cutting it?”
Negative. Whatever this hull material is, it seems impenetrable to cutting.
“Free up my arm.” He does. For science sake, I extend my sword and swing it against the door. I’m not sure how they could manufacture a metal resistant to my Sword O’ Doom, but they have.
“Damn. I didn’t really expect that to work anyways. Come on,” I tell him as I head for the back of the hall.
I am right behind you.
The hall splits into a T, one way goes toward the cargo hold, the other toward some kind of temporary bunk area that hasn’t been used in a very long time. Hiding most of my body I bring up my arm with the mass driver.
Amelia. This is a VERY bad idea.
“Define bad?”
Worse than when you allowed yourself to be swallowed by the mutant sea creature?
“Nah, that was awesome. Spin up the SDF-1 por favor.”
Spinning up.
Hidden away in the thicker sections of my suit, the ZPFM tasks more power than required to run the Empire State Building to my supercapacitors. The amount of electricity needed to fire the weapon is far too much for a regular superconductor. I circumvented this by building two supercapacitors capable of storing an immense amount of energy for a brief while.
Unbreakable Arsenal (Full Metal Superhero Book 5) Page 1
