Alien Arsenal: Full Metal Superhero Book 4 © 2018 by Jeffery H. Haskell. All Rights Reserved.
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Jeffery H. Haskell
Visit my website at www.jefferyhhaskell.com
Printed in the United States of America
First Printing: February 2018
Molten Press
Thank you, Rebekah, for being such a great wife. Thanks to Karen for the emergency edits. I couldn’t have done this nearly as well without you. One big thank you to the readers who buy my books time and time again. I write so others may enjoy!
CONTENTS
War may never change, but it sure changes us.
-Luke Lancaster
The light fades, and I can see again. I blink several times to clear the afterimages and give my heart a second to stop doing its level best to blast out of my chest. The creature before me looks nothing like Matahal. Where he had a flat face and oversized limbs, this alien could pass for a human. Albeit, one with an impossibly thin waist and narrower body in general. She’s beautiful in a ‘work-of-art’ sense. I assume she’s a she, since despite her otherworldliness she clearly has breasts and hips… her eyes are too large for her head, and they shine with an inner light like the sun during an eclipse. She’s dressed in a white, one-piece skintight tunic with a yellow starburst over her right breast that runs down to her feet. The tunic stretches from her neck and wraps around her whole body, feet included, like a glove. Long golden hair flows down her back, and it complements her light brown skin.
She says something I don’t quite catch. My heart is still hammering away, and my adrenaline is making every little detail stand out. Her eyes go wide, and she lifts her hands up in a too-human gesture. She makes sounds no human could ever hope to copy. A mixture of bells and chimes and somehow… light?
“I don’t understand you,” I tell her.
Not that I think she will understand me but maybe she’ll realize I’m trying to communicate with her. She gestures toward me in a ‘come here’ motion with her hands.
I don’t even know if she understands human gestures, that could mean anything, but I try to make her understand by pointing at my legs and shaking my head back and forth.
She cocks her head to the side, eyes narrowing. Okay, she doesn’t understand. At least she has an excuse, being alien and all.
“My legs don’t work,” I explain. Lifting one up, I drop it back to the deck and then do the same to the other. It isn’t like they look like healthy human legs. Even with my physical therapy and the induced exercise my armor gives me, they are still far smaller than proportional. Of course, an alien might not realize that. My demonstration seems to have explained it to her though.
She walks toward me, hands out, palms up and slides her arms under me. I wince for a second, fear coming back to me as she lifts me up off the ground with no more effort than Luke would have exerted.
Oh, God. Luke! He’s got to be freaking out right about now. I wish I could contact him, let him know I’m okay. She says something to me that I still don’t understand but I take the hint. I put one arm around her shoulder to stabilize myself as she carries me out of the cell, or room, I’m not sure yet.
We’re on a spaceship; I can tell that much. The air is dry and cold, the deck is flat and the walls curve in. If I had to guess, it’s a small ship. I’m not sure how aliens would classify vehicles, but maybe a scout ship of some kind? The metal in front of us just flows and forms a doorway into the cockpit. I need to study that. Liquid metal? That means molecular instability in structurally dense material. Rearranging molecules with nanites maybe? Or electrical frequency? I almost miss the room she carries me into I’m so busy examining the door as it flows closed behind us.
Blue light shines from in front of us. I face forward to see what it is, and I let out a gasp. We’re in high orbit. I can see almost the entire planet from the view screen. The moon hangs in the distance on its unending journey around my home.
She motions with her head and a chair forms out of the deck for me to sit. She places me gently in the new chair; it slides around under me as it conforms to my shape. I giggle from the tickling the dull metal gives me as it strives to fit perfectly. My head is spinning at the possibilities. I could have armor that flowed around me like a liquid. It would be much lighter, or maybe a second skin under the armor?
She sits down opposite, leaning toward me like she wants to share a secret. Her eyes glow fiercely in the dim cockpit casting an orange hue on everything. The light of her eyes warms my skin where it touches. The light grows even brighter, and I try to close my eyes, but I can’t. Panic grips me for a second, and I start thinking she’s going to eat me or something and then the light vanishes.
The alien’s skin flows like the metal of the ship, her body reshaping and when it finishes… she’s still a work of art, beautiful golden hair, sun-kissed skin, and eyes so blue I could mistake them for colored LED’s. She looks more than a little like me, or an idealized version of me. Small, pert, thin, but with features a lot like my own. For a heartbeat, she’s naked, perfect as a painting and anatomically correct before her uniform returns to cover her now shapely body.
“Hi,” I say with a smile and a wave.
Her mouth opens, but her perfectly formed lips just flap up and down for a second. She clears her throat and begins again…
I take a deep breath and breathe out as I speak in an exaggerated manner. “Hello. My name is Amelia.”
She breathes in deeply through her nose. “H—hello… M—my name is… Aaaah-meeeel-yuuuuh,” she says with a smile. Her voice even sounds a little like me.
“Very good. But that’s my name,” I point at my chest. “What is your name.” I point at hers. She mimics my movements for a moment. I’m still marveling at how she changed her shape. Matahal had done something similar but I’d assumed he’d used tech to do it, not that he’d been an actual shape changer.
“Ahhhh-gaaaaah-steeeeen-aaaaa.” She says as if the sounds are foreign to her. She’s a quick learner. Maybe it has something to do with taking our shape? I know the sounds she made before were nothing like human speech. Or at least very little like it. There was sound but also light, and I’d really like to know how she pulled that trick off.
I rolled her sounds around in my mind for a second before I tried repeating them back to her. “Augustina?”
She nods emphatically, a smile spreading on her lips. “Augusteeeena.” She says again, frowning. “Augustina!” She smiles. “Augustina.”
“Okay,” I chuckle. “Augustina.”
She nods. “Augustina Looo-seee-aaaaa-nnnn-aaaa.”
I think about it for a second. “I’m Amelia Lockheart and you are, Augustina Luciana?” She nods again, smiling even bigger than before.
“Augustina Luciana Maaaa-xiiim-maaaa.” She says again then pointing at me.
“Augustina Luciana Maxima?”
She nods.
“Okay, well we’re getting somewhere but at this rate, it could take a while. Can you understand me at all?” She nods a little, her smile sli
pping somewhat. “That’s what I thought. Okay, I guess this is going to take a while.”
“Take a while…” she says almost perfectly.
And it does. We spend I don’t know how long, but the fact that I hadn’t eaten since I left for Texas earlier this morning starts to become an issue about the time she puts whole sentences together. She learns exceptionally fast. I just can’t go through every possible word or phrase and their meaning with her. I don’t know how big my vocabulary is but teaching English to an alien isn’t one of my skills.
“Augustina? Can you turn off the…?” She has ECM of some kind, but I’m not sure what her people call it. I take a swing. “Shields? My friends could find me. Then we could do this a lot quicker.”
“Sheeee-iiiiilds.” She plays with the word for a moment.
“Yes, the thing around your ship hiding you.” I assume it’s hiding her otherwise Kate would be here in a New York minute, and I’d already be home watching Star Trek and having a make-up make-out with Luke!
She shakes her head, pointing to the screen. I shrug. “I don’t understand.”
A control panel flows into existence in front of her and she carefully hunts and pecks commands like she only just learned to fly this thing. The screen flickers and the moon is much larger now. She points again.
“Uh, you can’t turn off the shields because of the moon?”
She brightens for a second then deflates. Her head moves around in different directions like she’s trying to figure out the right gesture to tell me something.
“Wait… something behind the moon?” I ask. I try and mime circling the moon. I must have done a good enough job because she nods enthusiastically.
“Beee-hiiii-nnnnn-ddddd.” Her speech patterns are somewhat painful to endure. Not painful, just really dang annoying.
“Show me.”
She presses a button which immediately sounds an alarm and she frantically pushes another then another until it shuts off.
“Do you know how to fly this thing?”
She looks at me sideways as if she were evaluating my words. “Fuuu-liiiie.”
I shake my head. “Never mind. Just show me.”
She presses the right button this time and the ship starts to move out of orbit. I open my mouth to object when it swings wide to come back around the dark side of the moon. My mouth stays open in shock.
There are dozens of craft behind the moon. I can easily make out the drones, since I’ve fought so many. Pointing at one I start to ask her a question but the screen surprises me when it automatically zooms where I point. A glance at her says she’s as surprised as me. I move the screen around, there are seven more drones, two larger ships that look more like cigars than what I imagine advanced starships look like. Dozens of smaller craft, maybe screening elements? And a few boxy vessels that could be transports. No wonder NASA didn’t see them coming. They’re already here. What are they waiting for?
“You can’t turn off the shields because they will see you?”
“Yes.” She seems as surprised by her perfect pronunciation as I am.
“And I take it you’re not with them.” I look to her. She shakes her head, frowning.
“Th’un.” She points at the screen. “Lux.” She points at herself.
I glance once more at the fleet. “I’m going to need a bigger suit,” I say with a sigh. “Augustina.” I turn to her, “I need to go home. My people need me.”
“My people need you,” she replies.
“No. I mean, my people need…” Oh. I get it. “What do you mean your people need me?”
She turns back to the panel, hunting for the right buttons before she pushes one, then another. A screen pops up with my picture. Well, Arsenal’s picture then underneath it is an image of me. I don’t recognize the language, but the file is obviously a negative review. The words are in red and there is a bright red symbol over me.
“Warrant,” she says. Then she shakes her head and tries again. “Death-warrant.” She smiles.
“That isn’t something you smile about. Did the Th’un make this?” I gesture toward the screen.
“Yes. Supreme Commander signed your death warrant. I come to get you to save my people.”
A death warrant huh? I guess I’m doing something right. “I can’t leave my world defenseless to go help yours. I have to save my people first. Can you help me do that?”
“Help me,” she says.
I sigh. “Augustina, I can’t help you. I need to stop them.” I point at the enemy fleet in orbit behind the moon. There are days when I miss my biggest problems being White Rhino and Vixen.
“Help you. Stop them. Help me?” I think I know what she’s saying.
“Yes, I’ll help you once I’ve stopped them. Okay?”
“Oooo-kaaaay.” She smiles as she says the word. I guess it is kind of fun to say.
“I need to go home, though. I can’t do anything without my armor or my friends.”
“I can’t go home,” she says.
“No, I need to go to my home… oh. I’m sorry, I just realized what you mean.”
“Okay.”
“Can you take me to my home? I have friends and my weapons. We can stop them. Then we will all go to your home and stop them there. Deal?”
“Du-eeel,” she says. I hold my hand out to her out of instinct. She holds hers out but doesn’t touch mine. I grasp her fingers and squeeze lightly.
“Deal.”
The nimble little ship drops through the atmosphere like a rocket. I don’t feel so much as an ounce of added g’s, and I wonder how the tech works? I use my kinetic manipulators to absorb energy, but they aren’t one hundred percent. I still feel the effects of extreme g’s; I can just take a lot more than normal. This ship, though, I don’t feel a thing.
“Augustina, can I see your engine?”
“Ennnn-jennnnn?” she asks with a frown.
Clearly, she knows very little about her people's tech. How is that possible? Of course, I nod to myself, I know about tech because I study it, but I don’t have to understand how a car works to operate it. Are the Th’un like that as well? Maybe they steal tech from cultures and adapt what helps them and discard the rest. Like what they were going to do with Behemoth.
A fresh stab of guilt runs through me. I shake my head. She got what she deserved. I didn’t kill her, but then why do I feel so guilty? Epic would tell me I’m being illogical. Of course I am! I’m human. No one is actually logical. Everyone is just as irrational as the next person. We just happen to find moments of logic here and there.
The ship exits the upper atmosphere slicing through the air like a knife. Within seconds we’re flying over the Pacific Ocean fast enough the waves are a blur.
“I live in Arizona… but how to tell you that?”
“Air-eeeee-zo-nnnnnaaaaaa.” Great. I try pointing at the screen and sure enough, a magnified view pops up. I can see California. From there, it isn’t too hard to find Los Angeles, then we follow Interstate 10 to Phoenix. The journey only takes minutes and relief floods through me. I’ve never been so happy to see someplace in my whole life. As hot as Phoenix is, it’s home.
“That way,” I say. “Slow down.”
She gives me that cockeyed look, her eyes seeming to examine me for a second like she’s trying to figure out what I’m saying. I pantomime it with my hands, going really fast then slowing down. She nods and smiles. Hunting and pecking again she finds the right command just as Phoenix blasts by underneath. The ship slows, from what had to be Mach Six to a few hundred miles an hour, in only a few seconds. Again, I feel nothing. I need Epic to interface with this thing and spill all her secrets.
“Left,” I tell her. The spire appears in the distance, and my heart swells. She slows down more, and I point at the landing pad. The little ship can move in any direction because she slides us into a curving turn but keeps the nose pointed at the landing pad as she sits it down next to the Emjet.
“Come on. My friends are goin
g to love you.” I gesture for her to pick me up. She pulls herself to her feet, wavering a little as she adjusts to her new form. Sliding her hands underneath me, she picks me up. I put one arm around her shoulders as she lifts. She doesn’t seem as strong as before. I can’t help but wonder why? Maybe her new form is more than just skin deep?
The walls reform to an exit and stairs flow down to the landing pad. She walks forward, taking each step carefully. The moment her feet touch the ground the air pops.
“Put my friend down, or I will blow you away,” Kate says in a tone so cold even I freeze.
“Kate,” I say, shaking my head to remove the fear effect she just pulled. “It’s okay, she’s a friend. I think.”
“Amelia, she kidnapped you. Friends don’t kidnap friends,” Kate says. Augustina turns slowly to face her. Orange light leaps from Augustina to envelope Kate for a second.
“Don’t move, she’s just scanning you,” I hurriedly tell Kate.
“I don’t like it,” she says plainly. Kate has her usual uniform on with her long black hair in a braid. Her twin Ion-Pistols point squarely at our new friend. The light fades as Augustina’s body morphs underneath me. I feel flesh reforming, bones moving. She gains three inches, some muscle on her shoulders and other, um assets, grow as well. Now she resembles both Kate and I. Weird.
“She’s a shapeshifter, is she one of them?”
“I’m Lux,” she says. Her voice has more of a soprano now than my alto.
“Really, Kate, she’s okay.”
“Maybe.” Kate twirls her pistols before sliding them tightly into the custom holsters I built for her. She’s also wearing the swords I gave her. They must really be on high alert.
“Can I borrow your goggles for a moment?” Kate slips them off her head and hands them to me. I point Augustina toward the door. “That way.” She gives Kate one more glance before complying.
“Why did she take you?”
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