Inescapable Arsenal

by Jeffery H. Haskell

  The Emjet dropped the team off a few miles away, and from there we’ve taken it easy. Fleet made sure the town evacuation caught everyone, which it didn’t. He managed to rescue almost a hundred people in just a few minutes. The Doctor is at our fall back point helping the wounded. His power set is incredible. Just being around him makes life flourish. Even though he’s using his hard-earned medical skills to save lives, his very presence aids in recovery too.

  That leaves the rest of us on front line duty. Every day this feels more like a war and less like a superhero job. This monstrosity wasn’t designed to take prisoners but decimate… which begs the question— “Epic, have you figured out why the hell it is attacking a town of a few thousand?”

  The city of Platteville is not the primary target. Based on course and speed it will come into range of the Fort St. Vrain Generating Station. It produces the majority of electricity for Colorado. Beyond environmental concerns, its destruction would hamper several key industries.

  “Are you saying it is going after infrastructure?”

  Affirmative.

  “Great, what’s next, the bridges?”

  I cannot foresee that with any degree of accuracy

  Ignoring him, I turn to the team huddled behind me. “Okay, this thing is big and mean but this is what we’ve spent the last three weeks training for. Glacier, focus on the tracks, freeze them, ice them, do whatever you can to slow this thing down. If it gets within a half mile of the power station Epic says it’s targeting, those plasma cannons will light it up. Got it?”

  She just smirks at me, like this is the easiest thing in the world for her.

  “TK,” Tessa chose a super original codename, but it has the blessing of being short. “Keep a shield around Glacier, those plasma guns will wreck her. Secondary to that, do what you can to gum up the works.”

  “Got it,” she says, rolling her shoulders. She looks considerably better than when we found her. Good food, time around the Doctor, and rest have done wonders for her.

  “Fleet, Domino, scout ahead, see what you can do to slow this thing down. Also, make sure no one is in the path.”

  “Got it,” Tony says and Domino just nods.

  “Okay, get to it.”

  Fleet vanishes in a blur of speed and hail of dust. Kate disappears with a pop. Glacier glances at TK, “You ready?”

  “Waiting on you, Frosty.”

  Glacier growls at the older girl, “I have a name and it isn’t Frosty.” Without waiting for a reply she charges out into the fight. Blue beams of light leap out from her hand, freezing everything they touch rock-solid. TK heads out after her, and I can see the distortion of light above Glacier that her shields create. She may have a bad attitude but she does the job. Not that I can begrudge her the bad attitude.

  Luke is calling.

  “Right now? Put him on,” I wait for the green light to indicate connections. “Kind of busy at the moment honey.”

  It’s now or never, I leap into the air at max acceleration. The air around me condenses into a cone as we break the sound barrier in ten seconds flat.

  “I thought you’d want to know. Three more of these things landed in Russia, Germany, and Japan. It looks like they’re going after power plants. The one in Russia already destroyed their largest Nuclear plant.”

  “Good to know, send updates to Epic. Thanks.” I cut the line to focus on the here and now. I can ponder what all this means later on.

  Four plasma weapons swivel, spewing out green balls of superheated death at me.

  “Epic… for the love, that looks an awful lot like the weapons Cat-7 developed.” I return fire, silicate particles won’t penetrate the main hull, but with the weapons, they blast through them after a few seconds of concentrated fire.

  That is because, other than the amount of power required to use them, they are identical. If I had to make a guess—

  “Please do.”

  I would say Cat-7 has an as yet undiscovered location with alien tech.

  “Where? We’ve scoured Shai-Hulud. Did we miss something?” More plasma flings my way as the drone’s onboard computer senses a threat. Epic counts twenty-nine plasma turrets. That is too much for me too—

  Launch detected. Maximum acceleration. The Emdrive kicks me in the butt as it blasts me straight up. Epic puts a pip on my HUD, showing me a cylindrical missile coming right up behind me.

  “Flares, hard over!” Hundreds of flares spit out of my hips, burning at a thousand degrees each. The missile blasts right through them as if they didn’t exist.

  “Radar?”

  Negative. I do not know how it is tracking us.

  “HE grenades!” Rolling over, I line up the targeting pip of the grenade launcher with the missile. “Fire!” I can’t hear the puff of the grenade, but I see it. Even if Epic misses, he’ll remote detonate it. Fire explodes around the missile and for a second I don’t think it worked, then the missile vanishes in green fire.

  Rolling back over toward the battle, I can see what progress we’ve made. Fleet has pilled a ton of debris in the way, it looks like a ramp more than a wall. Probably good since it would just crush a wall. Glacier’s blue ice beams encase the tracks but they break free as fast as she can ice them up. With the drone distracted, now is the time to use my mass driver.

  “Epic, prep the SDF-1.”

  Affirmative.

  I hit the ground a half mile in front of the drone. That should give me plenty of time to prepare. The plates on my shoulders slide around as the suit reconfigures to take the energy transfer. Energy builds up in the superconductors as the ZPFM wines with the strain.

  “Epic I want you to—”

  Alert! Alert! I can’t unlock the suit fast enough. Green balls of death zero in on me from every turret the thing has. The world slows down as I try to issue an order that will save my life. But nothing comes to mind. Plasma will rip right through my kinetic shields and cook me like an egg in the microwave. My vision waivers for a heartbeat and I hear the explosion a few hundred feet away. Kate’s smiling visage fills my faceplate, “You’re welcome!” Then she’s gone.

  “Epic reroute power, blast off!” I’m in the air seconds before another string of plasma rips a line from where I was to where I am. “How the heck is it tracking me?”

  There are no active sensors as far as I can detect. No radar, lidar, or sonar. Amelia, the last one was unmanned. We have to assume the possibility of an AI. An AI far more advanced than I, capable of adapting to the situation. The last one ignored you until you attacked. This one attacked the moment you made your presence known.

  “What are you saying? It knows who I am?”

  More probable it knows you are the threat. We cannot cycle the mass driver any faster than twenty seconds. Even if we land on the horizon, I do not think we will have time to fire before the drone can fire back.

  I dodge more incoming fire while the team continues to whittle away at the tracks. Most of the turrets track me, a few go after Glacier, but they completely ignore Fleet. Almost like they can’t see him. In fact, as far as I can tell, Fleet and Domino haven’t taken any fire…

  “Kate, you up for something crazy?”

  “Always. What do you have in mind?”

  “Port to me.” I no sooner finish the words then I feel her weight on my back. Epic shifts the main backplate aside and a handle locks into place for her to hold on. If she’s traveling on my back my speed is limited to two hundred. Which is more than enough for dodging.

  “Amelia, what are you doing?”

  “Epic, give her the sword.” The thunk of detaching metal vibrates through the suit. Kate is the only person, besides me, who can wield it. After our little infiltration of Cat-7, I realized she could use it better than me. I try not to let that bother me… at least too much. Kate’s one of those people who’s just naturally talented at virtually everything she does.

  “I’m gonna do a fly by, port to the right ‘T’ and hack away at it. Got it?”

&nbs
p; “Hack away? Is that the technical term?”

  “Everyone’s a critic,” I mutter. “Hang on!” Up we go, straight up at two hundred miles an hour. This is going to be tricky. “Cut thrust!” The suit isn’t aerodynamic in the least, it also weighs five hundred pounds (plus Kate’s one-sixty). My climb speed drops rapidly, reaching zero in seconds. Kate teleports away with a pop and I kick the thrusters back in as the turrets fire away at me. I hope those plasma guns are limited in range as the green balls of death flyby me. Kate carried her momentum with her when she ports, so I can’t exactly drop her off at a hundred miles an hour.

  Epic opens a screen for me, showing Kate’s progress. She’s hacking away for all its worth at the arm of the ‘T’. The sword cuts through the material like butter, thank God. I was starting to wonder if I had anything that could hurt it.

  “Epic, make a note, let’s make a pair of swords for Kate.”

  Note made.

  Piling on the G’s, I push the suit into tight, high speed turns in an effort to dodge attacks and keep it off balance. An idea hits me, “Epic, can you run the math on an Arrow strike?”

  I do not advise that course of action?

  “Why?”

  The drone is traveling along the transmission lines for the power plant. An Arrow strike would decimate the lines and cause the same kind of havoc destroying the plant would.

  “Dang-it. So much for my bright ideas. You have anything?”

  Other than wearing it down, no. In seven minutes it will be in range of the plant. We do not have much time.

  I just don’t have another gun to throw at it. I thought for sure my mass driver would do the trick. I just need a little time to deploy it. Time the drone won’t give me.

  “Arsenal,” TK says over the comms, “Glacier is about spent and not doing a whole lot. Evac her and let me go on the offensive.”

  She’s not wrong. The drones speed has only dropped a half mile an hour since we attacked. But right now I can’t know what kind of effect TK’s powers will have on it. She’s not nearly strong enough to rend the metal or cause significant structural damage.

  “Negative, it’s about to hit Fleet’s barricade and—” I don’t finish the sentence as the drone suddenly grinds to a halt. All the weapons swivel toward the power stations.

  It appears we were wrong about the range.

  “Ah, crap.”

  A bright star of light falls from the sky, burning past us so fast I can only vaguely make out the feminine form within, and creates an afterimage in my vision I have to blink away.

  “What’s that?” Fleet asks.

  My mind kicks into gear as the drone fires its remaining twenty-nine plasma turrets on one concentrated point.

  “Kate, get off it!” I shout.

  The horizon lights up like a nuclear blast but just as quick vanishes. I’m as surprised as the drone when there are no secondary explosions. My mind catches up with what I’m seeing. “Was that Aeon?”

  A concentrated beam of fire a hundred times as bright as the plasma weapons and as hot as the sun cuts through the sky from the power station to the drone.

  “Fleet, evac!”

  The beam slices through the drone, cutting it neatly in half from base to top. Then it explodes.

  I’m not sure what I feel first. Numb, or pain. Maybe both? “Epic?” No response. I can’t see anything, my HUD’s dark and the faceplate has polarized to the max.

  “Epic?” I cough out his name. My lungs hurt. Light flashes in my eyes as the HUD emerges in sections as each piece of the armor runs a system check before turning green.

  I apologize Amelia. I required a moment to reboot.

  “What happened?” The faceplate de-polarizes and I can see for myself. The burning wreckage of the drone, a half mile away at least, erupts in a fountain of flame and molten metal. The area around it is devastated. The ground blackened and cracked. There is a perfect circle of vaporized particles out to a hundred feet.

  Kate! “Epic where is the—”

  All team members accounted for and are relatively injury free. You, however, have a broken rib. I have immobilized the torso to prevent further injury.

  The sky lights up and a translucent star of energy lands beside me. Her feet only ‘touch’ the ground in the sense they are even with it. But not so much as a mote of dust is affected by her passing. I’ve only ever seen her on TV. Aeon. Like Glacier, Aeon is an elemental. However, where Glacier’s powers are based on an earthly element, Aeon isn’t. She’s pure energy. Whichever kind she wants to be.

  “You okay?” Her voice sounds distorted like she’s talking through a radio.

  “Yeah, thank you for—”

  “Whatever. You’re just lucky I was here to save your sorry ass.”

  “Uh, excuse me?” I’m a little stunned at the anger I’m sensing from her.

  “You let Sydney die. And now here you are, not even a real super, trying to stop these things. He said you were smart and that I should appreciate that. But as far as I can tell, you’re just a pretender in a toy. Sydney was a real hero, not you.”

  Before I can disagree with her she vanishes in a flash. Her words hit me like a ten-ton hammer. I fall back into the dirt letting my head rest on the inside of my suit. Sydney was a hero. He died defending me and the rest of the world from a maniac. If he’d been here… he would have smashed that drone to smithereens.

  Amelia, I am detecting distress. Are you okay?

  “No. Call Kate, let her know I need a pickup. Then get the jet ready, we’re going home.”

  An hour later the Emjet slows to a hover above the landing pad. It was a very quiet trip home. We failed. If not for Aeon we would be going the way of Russia. They had to nuke their drone to stop it, but not before it destroyed their largest nuclear reactor. The German super team Das Boot, managed to take out theirs but at the cost of two of their team members. Japan’s Team Valkyrie had the best success, bringing down their drone in under ten minutes. In total only one drone succeeded. But that didn’t mean there weren’t going to be more. And if this is any indication, they would learn from their mistakes.

  I had to take the armor off for The Doctor to look at me. He wrapped my ribs and sat close for the whole trip home. I was exhausted, but at least comfortable.

  “Penny for your thoughts?” Kate asks as the team disembarks.

  “Nothing you don’t already know.”

  “All in all I thought it went well,” she says with false cheer.

  “If not for Aeon we would have lost.”

  “So? We tried, sometimes Amelia, you can’t win. You go left, you go right, it doesn’t matter. If you let every failure bog you down… What?”

  I shake my head. “That wasn’t a failure, Kate. It was a disaster! We might as well have flung harsh language for all the good we did.”

  “That’s not true. Your sword worked well. Glacier may not have slowed it down but I think if she were to ice up other parts we might have more success.”

  “Are you saying I should learn from this and move on?” I ask. I know it sounds stupid. Of course, that is what I should do. Why then, do I feel like a five-pound bag of sand sits squarely on my chest? Of course, it isn’t all the failure.

  She looks at me for a moment and I feel like her green eyes penetrate into my very soul. Cocking her head to the side she sighs. “It wasn’t your fault, Amelia. He knew the risks. You didn’t make him jump into the fight with Behemoth.”

  As usual, she’s right. But her being right doesn’t change the way I feel. Sydney died, and even Aeon can see it was my fault. That is what is really bothering me. Yes, we lost and I’m sure we can do better. But what Aeon said… it was my fault he died and no amount of ‘he made his own decisions’ changes the fact that I ignored Pythia and pushed forward on my own. And because of that Sydney died.

  “Come on, Luke is waiting for you and seeing him always cheers you up.” The sentence is barely out of her mouth before she stops cold to look at me. Even if I
wasn’t already feeling awful, I’d feel worse. Luke hasn’t really spoken to me in two weeks, not since our argument. I keep meaning to call him but every time I try, my hand freezes. What do I tell him? I’m not sorry I didn’t want to go out but… I don’t know.

  “What happened and why didn’t you tell me?”

  “We’ve been busy. With training, and orienting the new team then this… I just… he…” I don’t know where to start. I try to wheel off the plane but each movement makes my rib hurt. Kate takes the handles and pushes me to the private elevator and then in when it arrives. Once the doors shut she looks at me in the mirror surface, waiting patiently. I bet she never has any problems figuring out what she’s feeling.

  When the doors downstairs open she spends a few minutes collecting a few things for me, a blanket, soda, and then whips together a ham and cheese sandwich. All the while letting me sort through what I’m feeling. What am I feeling? Panic. Panic at the thought of losing Luke. He’s my first real boyfriend. He’s the only guy I’ve ever kissed. We’ve been through a lot as a team and I don’t want that to go away either but… I think about that day. What happened? I got so mad at him pushing me, far more angry than I should have. Then I panicked and didn’t say anything as he left, all because… oh.

  “Figure it out have we?” She asks from the couch. She’s lounging with her feet over the arm and a beer in hand. I nod. “Good. Now tell me.”

  “You’re an empath, don’t you already know?”

  “Amelia, you of all people should know that nothing is ever known, only suspected. You need to say it more than I need to hear it. Why did you two argue?”

  “He wanted to go out. He said he had plans and I was so tired from our trip I just wanted to stay in and when… I panicked.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean when he started pushing me toward the door I had a straight up panic attack. I didn’t realize it ‘till just now but… I freaked out at the thought of leaving.”