Sentinels

by Darius Brasher

  Technically, it was of course illegal for Vaughn to use his powers as he was not licensed to do so. As humanity was under an existential threat, none of us Heroes quibbled about encouraging Vaughn to use his powers to help us. We needed to do what had to be done.

  Thanks to Vaughn’s powers and him burrowing into the aliens’ minds, we learned much about the menace we faced: The aliens called themselves the V’Loths. In English, their name translated into “The People,” which says just about all that needs to be said as to how the V’Loths viewed every race that was not them. To them, humans were little more than mold that needed to be cut off the loaf of bread that was Earth.

  Like many wasps and ants here on Earth, V’Loth society had a hive-based hierarchical structure. When a new V’Loth queen was born, she left the world she was born on along with a V’Loth armada that was under her telepathic control. The V’Loth queens were the only V’Loths with any real intelligence; the drones in their armadas were little more than cannon fodder, as intelligent as fingers moving at the command of a brain. A newly born V’Loth queen would then find a suitable new world to make her own. In that fashion, the V’Loths had conquered numerous worlds through the galaxy. Unfortunately, Earth was the planet this particular V’Loth queen had set her colonizing sights on even though our atmosphere was toxic to her. If she left her spacecraft, she would have to wear an elaborate life support suit to survive. The V’Loths planned on terraforming Earth to make its atmosphere more palatable to them after humanity was taken care of.

  If you killed the queen, the rest of the V’Loths would be crippled, Vaughn’s powers told us. It would be like cutting the head off a snake—the rest of the snake’s body might continue to twitch, but it would no longer be a threat.

  Based on what we learned from Vaughn, what we needed to do was clear: Find the V’Loth queen and kill her. With the rest of the V’Loth fleet around the world rendered impotent, we could then mop them up at our leisure. Heroes normally didn’t kill, of course, but this was not a normal situation. The information we gleaned from Vaughn about the V’Loths made it clear there was no way to resolve this situation peacefully. You couldn’t negotiate with a race of people who did not even view you as a sentient person. If a gnat buzzed around your head, did you try to reason with it, or did you simply swat it? That’s how the V’Loths saw us: annoying gnats to be swatted.

  Vaughn sensed that the V’Loth queen was in one of the ships hovering over Baltimore, Maryland, but he could not tell exactly which ship without getting closer to her. So, the plan was to take Vaughn to Baltimore. His parents did not even blink at us putting him in danger this way. As James Conley II—my and Neha’s son—was about Vaughn’s age, I could appreciate how terrified his parents must have been at us needing to take Vaughn to Baltimore and put him in harm’s way. But, they were both former Marines. They knew both what was at stake and about making sacrifices for the greater good.

  Once Vaughn pinpointed the ship the V’Loth queen was in, we planned to take it out. We assembled the greatest Metahuman force the world had ever known to do so. Every Hero we could get a hold of participated, along with several Rogues who were deemed trustworthy enough.

  As plans went, it seemed a good one. It was nice and simple, as all the best plans were, since that meant there were less things to go wrong. Step One of the V’Loth plan: Go to Baltimore. Step Two: Find the V’Loth queen. Step Three: Kill the queen. Step Four: High-five each other.

  The plan went to hell the moment Wormhole simultaneously transported all of us to various points in Baltimore near the alien ships. An energy pulse from one of the spaceships vaporized Vaughn the instant he materialized. I knew because I was one of the Heroes assigned to guard him. I witnessed the 13-year-old’s death with my own horrified eyes. The pulse had sailed through the force field I had erected around Vaughn as if it did not exist. Vaughn was reduced to flecks of ash in an instant. I couldn’t inform the rest of the Metahuman assault force because the communications system Mechano had designed was useless, presumably jammed by the V’Loths.

  After Vaughn was killed, the next energy pulse killed Wormhole, another of the bodyguards assigned to Vaughn. Wormhole was supposed to transport us all out of Baltimore if things went sideways.

  They most definitely had.

  I wasn’t sure what had happened. My best guess was that the whole thing had been a trap, and that the V’Loth queen had let Vaughn into her thoughts to lure us to Baltimore so the aliens could eliminate most of the world’s Heroes in one fell swoop. With us gone, no one would be able to stand between the V’Loths and world domination. But that was just a guess. It was not as though the V’Loth queen would have me over for a spot of tea so we could braid each other’s hair—assuming she even had hair—and gab about world-conquering strategies.

  At any rate, that was why I was swooping around the skies of Baltimore, surrounded by total chaos, trying to avoid the fate Vaughn, Wormhole, and too many others had suffered.

  * * *

  I wondered if Neha was still alive. My side, singed by the energy pulse I had just dodged, felt like it was on fire. Teeth gritted, I tried to put the pain out of my mind and focus on evading the continuing blasts from the V’Loth ship that pursued me. It chased me the way a cat chases a mouse, matching my shifting path through the sky. Despite the fact it was as big as a box truck, it was as agile a flier as I was. It was as hard to shake as a bad cold.

  Normally, in a situation like this, I would use my telekinesis to immobilize or crush the object that pursued me. I couldn’t get a solid lock on the spaceship following me, though. Whatever super-dense material the silver ship was made of resisted my powers. Trying to grab onto it was like trying to cling to a fistful of air.

  Everything around me was a blur. I dodged and weaved, trying to shake the pursuing craft so I could take stock of the overall situation and help my fellow embattled Metahumans. I spotted another V’Loth ship ahead and above me. Though I could see it only hazily through the smoke, that didn’t prevent me from seeing it blast an airborne Hero out of existence with an energy pulse.

  A few Heroes had managed to destroy or incapacitate some of the ships, but there were far more of them than there were of us. They were killing us at a greater rate than we were killing them. In this battle of attrition, we were winning some individual battles, but we definitely were losing the war. Somebody had to do something, and do it soon before all was lost.

  Since communications were down and I couldn’t coordinate strategy with anyone, I guess I didn’t have a choice. That somebody was going to have to be me.

  Fantastic.

  Before I could step back and look at the big picture though, I’d have to deal with the ship on my tail. It clung to me like a dog’s tick, matching my aerial maneuvers with disheartening ease, spitting energy pulses at me all the while. In fact, the ship matched my movements so precisely, I wondered how much intelligence went into the ship following me. The V’Loth queen was the only one with real intelligence and the drone ships were essentially dumb brutes. Maybe this drone staying on my tail like this wasn’t the result of deliberate thought but instead instinctual, like a dog chasing a car.

  It gave me an idea.

  I knew from a previous collision that, though my force field was ineffective against the ships’ energy blasts, it would protect me from a direct impact with the ships. I changed my trajectory, arcing up at full speed toward the ship that had just vaporized the other Hero. The spaceship pursuing me of course followed.

  I slammed into the ship above. It felt like I had just driven a speeding car into a wall. Thanks to my force field, I did not turn into smeared Theo on the ship’s hull. Rather, I bounced off it like a smashed tennis ball.

  As I hoped it would, the spaceship on my tail followed my flight path. It collided with the other ship I had just bounced off. There was a terrific crunching sound. The ships exploded. A shockwave hit me like a brick wall. I fell out of the sky. My tattered cape fluttering around me like
the broken wings of a falling bird.

  Seconds later, I crashed through the roof of an already damaged mid-rise building. I tore through its floors like a bullet through a house of cards. I hit the bottom floor like a dropped bomb. The floor cratered around me.

  Debris fell around and on me. I lay in the crater’s center like a dead fish. Like a dead fish, but I was not in fact dead. Though I felt like a half-gutted catfish, I had managed to keep my force field up all this while. It had prevented me from turning into Theo-flavored pâté. I was playing possum, hoping the V’Loths would think the collision and explosion had killed me and they didn’t need to pursue me further. I needed breathing room to take stock of the overall strategic situation before the V’Loths exterminated every one of us Metas on the scene.

  I closed my eyes and raised my hands a little. Using all the energy I had absorbed from my impacts with the V’Loth ship and the collisions since then to boost my normal telekinetic touch range, I used my powers to survey the massive battle raging outside. The Metas I sensed were far fewer than the ones I had initially shown up here with. I prayed one of the survivors was Neha. I shoved thoughts of her aside. If something wasn’t done soon, there would be no survivors. First things first.

  Since killing the queen was the key to ending this whole thing, I used my powers to look for any sign of her in the chaos swirling around me outside. My touch couldn’t penetrate the ships’ hulls, but maybe I could figure out what ship she was in simply from how it behaved. I figured that someone as important as she was in the V’Loth hierarchy would not be in a ship that directly engaged in combat.

  Minutes that seemed like eternity passed. Finally I thought I’d found what I was looking for. A V’Loth ship was on the periphery of the main battle, accompanied by a small phalanx of other ships that moved when it moved. It was the only V’Loth ship behaving this way. There was no way I would have spotted the pattern of its movements with the naked eye due to all the smoke and chaos swirling about outside. This had to be her.

  But what to do with my newfound knowledge? My powers had no direct effect on the spaceships. What was I supposed to do to the queen? Wag my finger at her and give her a piece of my mind? There were probably Heroes still alive who had offensive powers that could pierce the hull of the V’Loth queen’s ship. Laser Lass, for example, probably could. I feared that by the time I found one in all the confusion outside, it would likely be too late.

  A flash of inspiration hit me. My powers could not directly affect the V’Loth queen’s ship. But, my personal force field still worked when I collided with the ships. I could use my body itself as a weapon.

  I locked onto what just had to be the V’Loth queen’s ship with my mind. With my force field around me, I zoomed up, back through the floors I had crashed through before. In seconds, I had cleared the building. Choking smoke swirled around me. I rose straight up like a rocket, hoping the V’Loths would be so busy with the remaining Heroes that they wouldn’t notice me.

  In moments, I was so high up in the sky, the smoke from the burning city thinned and then cleared. I glanced down as I continued to shoot straight up. The city got smaller and smaller underneath me. Soon the dark smoke rising from it made it look like a scabbed-over wound on the landscape. No V’Loths were in hot pursuit of me. Seconds later, the blue of the sky changed, deepening to shades of violet and purple. The blackness of space appeared overhead.

  I slowed to a stop. It was freezing this high up. The air was thin. Fortunately, there was enough oxygen and warmth trapped in my force field to sustain me for now.

  I took a quick moment to savor the view. Even at a time like this, I got a lump in my throat at the beauty of the world. My world. For a moment, I had second thoughts about what I was about to do. I didn’t want to die. If Neha was already dead, I didn’t want James to finish growing up as an orphan. Sure, his Uncle Isaac would take care of him. Isaac, though he was not James’ biological uncle and in fact not blood at all, was my brother in all the ways that mattered. Other than James, Isaac was the only non-Meta who knew Neha and I were Heroes. Though I knew Isaac would take good care of James, an honorary uncle was no substitute for an actual father.

  I pushed the selfish thought to the side as soon as I had it. I would not have the heart to look my son in the eye ever again if I turned tail now and ran. There were worse fates than death.

  My resolve hardened. Even at this vast distance, I still had a lock on the V’Loth mothership with my powers. With my force field still around me, I started to fly back down to Baltimore. The queen’s spaceship was centered in my mind’s eye like a bull’s-eye.

  Faster, faster, and faster I dropped. Gravity helped me achieve a velocity I never would have been able to reach with just my powers. My experience bouncing off the V’Loth spaceship earlier had taught me that I and my powers alone couldn’t pierce the tough, otherworldly metal of the V’Loths’ ships. But maybe, with gravity helping me fly exponentially faster, I could pierce the hull of the V’Loth queen’s ship and kill her. Kill the queen, save the world.

  Whether I succeeded or failed, I was under no illusion that I would survive this. The physics of the situation were clear. Force equaled mass times acceleration. Though my mass was relatively small, the speed I was traveling was immense. I would hit the queen’s ship with enormous force. My powers wouldn’t be enough to shield me from the monstrous forces at play. If the impact with the V’Loth ship didn’t kill me, the impact with the ground an instant later surely would.

  I still didn’t want to die. But better for me to die than for another kid like Vaughn to die. The world was full of kids like Vaughn and my son James. It was my job to protect them.

  Almost there. I was vaguely aware of the ship I shot towards scrambling to get out of the way. Its escorts moved to block my path. Mute evidence my target was the correct one. I adjusted my course a tad. The ships weren’t moving fast enough to stop me. It was too late for my target to avoid me. Too late for her. If I weren’t concentrating so fiercely, I might have smiled.

  My last thought was of James and Neha. Collectively and separately, they were my everything. I had lived a good life. I had loved, and been loved. Who could ask for anything more?

  I hit the V’Loth queen’s ship like a bullet hitting a watermelon.

  CHAPTER 23

  So this is what Heaven is like, I thought. Pretty dark. You’d think there would be better lighting. Why wouldn’t a god who created the sun, moon, and all the stars spring for some fluorescents? Oh well. At least the joint’s quiet. I’m glad to see all that stuff about harps, hymn singing, and non-stop hosannaing was made up bullsh—uh, malarkey. Most people can’t stand that stuff on Earth. Why in the world would a loving god make it such a prominent part of the afterlife?

  I had opened my eyes moments before. I was lying down, flat on my back on a hard, waist-high platform. There were no lights other than two torches which guttered and hissed. They were mounted in torch holders attached to bluish-gray brick walls that looked like they belonged in a medieval castle. The walls were tall, swallowed by the darkness above. If there was a ceiling, it was somewhere high above, far from the reach of the sputtering torches. The light from the torches dimly illuminated only a small part of the area I was in. The air was foggy and thick. There was a hint of incense in the air, far more pleasant than the acrid smoke smell I had just left behind in Baltimore.

  The afterlife isn’t so bad, I decided as I stared up into dark nothingness. Boring though, if this was all there was to it. Maybe some harp music wouldn’t be so bad after all, to break up the monotony of the silence. I really wished I knew if I had succeeded in killing the V’Loth queen. If she had been killed, I wondered if the world would know I was the one who had done it. Not that I sought acclaim. Nevertheless, I had to admit that Kinetic Kills Queen made for a nice headline. Maybe Mr. Langley would use it in the digital edition of the Astor City Times, or something similar. He had a flair for coming up with punchy headlines.

  I b
linked, suddenly confused. Wait. How had I just been fighting the V’Loths in Baltimore in 1966? I wasn’t even alive back then. Omega Man had killed the V’Loth queen, not me. Neha and I weren’t married. She wasn’t even in love with me. And we certainly didn’t have a teenaged son named after my Dad.

  The last thing I remembered before I had inexplicably found myself fighting the V’Loths was searching for the Omega weapon with Isaac. I had touched the cape hidden under the neutronium spear. Then I suddenly found myself in the skies over Baltimore, with my head full of memories of a life that wasn’t really mine. Also, I had been injured badly before I had touched the cape. Yet I seemed to be perfectly fine now.

  What the hell was going on?

  I sat up. I was shocked to find that I was suddenly standing. I didn’t remember getting to my feet. The hard platform I had just been lying on was gone, as if it had never existed.

  Starting just a few feet in front of me were lined up two rows of chairs. They faced each other across a narrow aisle. The rows of chairs extended far off into the distance, well past the dim illumination affording by the torches. Each chair was occupied. Despite the dim light, I recognized some of the seated men and women. Avatar and Omega Man sat in full costume in opposing chairs closest to me. There were a couple of other people sitting here I knew from historical pictures. Most I did not. And yet I somehow knew, without knowing how I knew, that each person here had been a vessel for the Omega spirit.

  Everyone in the chairs had their heads turned, facing me. I felt the weight of countless eyes. It was though they peered straight into my soul.

  “You have proven yourself worthy of wielding the Omega weapon,” they all said at once. The room was filled with thousands of voices. Their words came through as clear as a bell despite what I would have thought would be a babel of noise from so many people speaking simultaneously. “The Omega weapon and the Omega spirit will once again be combined in one host, as is only meet. We chose wisely when we imbued you with our spirit.”