Like A Comet:
The Indestructibles Book 4
by
Matthew Phillion
Like A Comet: The Indestructibles Book 4
PFP, INC
[email protected]
PO Box 829
Byfield, MA 01922
May 2016
Printed in the United States of America
© 2016 Matthew Phillion
First PFP edition © 2016
ISBN-10:0-9970248-6-0
ISBN-13:978-0-9970248-6-9
(also available in print format)
Front cover design:
© Christian Sterling Hegg featuring art by Matthew Phillion
http://www.christiansterlinghegg.com/
Back cover author photo:
© Joe Williams - JWLenswerk
Other Books By Matthew Phillion
The Indestructibles
The Indestructibles: Breakout
The Entropy of Everything: the Indestructibles Book 3
"Gifted: An Indestructibles Christmas Story"
"The Soloist"
Praise for Matthew Phillion's Work
It's refreshing to have the book's one truly indestructible hero be female . . . But there's plenty that you haven't seen before . . . Phillion ramps up the action often enough to keep things moving . . . in the end, it's the heroes' well-drawn personalities that make The Indestructibles fly . . . And [he] doesn't give the villains short shrift either . . . It's the rare young superhero fan who won't find him—or herself plowing through The Indestructibles in as few sittings as possible—and the rare older fan who won't want to scoop it up as soon as junior finishes."
—Peter Chianca Gatehouse Media
* * *
"Three cheers for Solar, Dancer, Fury, Straylight, and Entropy: the five brightest stars in the sky . . .a young woman with Supergirl-like strength and abilities; Kate Miller, who wasn't really a superhero at all; a teenage werewolf; a kid with an alien super symbiote living in his brain; and a girl who could control gravity . . .In other words, the superteam was filled with a disparate mix of monsters and freaks. Or, we suppose, they could simply be called Dr. Strange and the Furious Five . . .[an] indefatigably entertaining novel."
—Eric Searleman - Superheronovels.com
* * *
"Like the first installment, [in Breakout] superhero fans of all ages are likely to appreciate the plot's action-packed twists and turns, the pop culture references, the revolving door of special guest heroes and villains and above all the humor, which comes both from well-placed one-liners and the characters' well-drawn personalities . . . Phillion juggles the multi-pronged plotlines well, even managing to fit in a burgeoning subplot involving the resurgence of the generation of heroes that preceded the current crop. And the action is impeccably choreographed, no small achievement when you don't have panels full of artwork to fall back on . . .But the novel's strength is no doubt its characters: the superheroes of Breakout are people first, Spandex-clad adventurers second. Add in the particular depth of Phillion's female characters—heroes and villains both—and you've got a superhero saga that really does deserve to break out"
—Peter Chianca, Gatehouse Media
* * *
"Superheroes are famous for being perfectionists. Bruce Wayne, Big Barda, Natasha Romanova, Matt Murdock—they all trained diligently to reach their utmost physical and mental potential. And so it is with Kate Miller too ("The Soloist"). In two excellent novels Miller fought evildoers as a member of a superhero team called the Indestructibles. But she was the only member of her crew who wasn't bit by a spider, hit by lightning, or cursed by Galactus. She had to work hard to be a badass. They called her Dancer because she moved like a ballerina and hit like a mixed martial artists fighter. Now, in a prequel to the first Indestructibles novel, we get an insight into Miller's motivation. As it turns out, being a ballerina is excellent training for being a crimefighting vigilante. You never know when a perfectly executed grande jeté will come in handy. Coda: the author recommends listening to Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings" while reading his story.
—Eric Searleman - Superheronovels.com
Acknowledgments
For the record, this isn’t the last of the Indestructibles.
It feels a bit like an ending, though, because this story—Indestructibles… in… space!—is the last of a series of stories I already had plotted out and waiting to be told when I first started writing about Jane, Kate, Billy, Titus, and Entropy Emily, and to know that that original quartet of stories has actually seen print is amazing to me.
And it only happened because of you.
Yeah, you.
And I want to acknowledge you first. The readers. Because without all of you, we never get to meet Plague and visit the Labyrinth, we never travel into a dystopian future, and we most certainly never get to see Indestructibles… in… space! (Sorry, it’s just so much fun to type. Blame the Muppets.)
So this book is for you. Everyone who read the series. Every time you told a friend, or picked up an extra copy to share. Some of you dropped off postcards at your local comic book shops. (I got chills seeing the cards on a counter next to the latest releases, you know.) Some of you cosplayed Kate or Emily or Doc Silence or Straylight or even Agent Black, and I want to let you in on a secret—there’s a saying among writers that you really haven’t made it until someone cosplays your character. That’s when Pinocchio turns into a real boy.
Thank you for your sketches of the heroes, or naming your video game avatars after the Lady, for stopping by at conventions just to say hello and talk about the next book. Thank you for inviting me to your wedding (congratulations, Ben and Megan!). Thanks for all of it. Because writing the Indestructibles has been the best thing I’ve ever been a part of, and I don’t get to keep doing it without you.
But before the books ever hit the shelves, there’s a lot of people who do a whole lot of saving me from myself during the writing and editing process, and I should thank you as well.
Stephanie Buck has the great misfortune of actually hearing me talk to myself as I’m channeling Entropy Emily, when I get ridiculously excited about researching Saturn or time travel theories, and for those months when nothing goes on in my head except these characters. Thanks for letting me test my jokes on you. I’m sorry for the ones that bomb.
Peter Sarno, publisher with PFP Publishing—thanks once again for all your efforts, and I can’t say it often enough… thanks for taking a chance on a first-time author writing a prose comic book about super-powered kids. We wouldn’t have come this far this fast without you.
Colin Carlton, Christian Sterling Hegg, and Jen Howland—my Geek Sounding Board. Thank you for letting me ping ideas off you all day while I’m writing to make sure I’m staying true to this genre we love. And for on more than one occasion inspiring some of the one-liners inside. Double thank-you to Christian, who heads up Sterling Arts & Design, for another great cover.
Rebecca Gianotti, thank you for being one of my first readers through the whole series. You make me a better writer with your questions.
Christine Geiger and Jay Kumar, you’ve both worked incredibly hard during the series to be the last sets of eyes on the books. Your editorial expertise has always been appreciated. (And I owe you both beer.)
And of course my family—you were supportive through every crazy endeavor getting here, and you’ve been more than supportive as the series continued and the world of superheroes and nerdiness took over my adult life the past few years. Thanks for letting me be your artsy, geeky son and brother (and nephew and cousin too). And for giving me the chance to be the uncle who show
s up with the superhero swag whenever he can. I don’t plan on stopping, by the way. Ever.
For my family, both the one I was born into and the one I found.
I could never do this without you.
And especially for Adelyn. Welcome to the world, little star
Prologue:
Big sky
Billy Case landed in a field outside the City, an old playground gone to seed where his parents used to bring him on those rare days when they both could get away from work. Rusted swings creaked softly in the light breeze, the entire field cast in a dark pink light as the sun set, turning the City's skyline into shadowy spires.
Billy, the superhero known to the world as Straylight, looked up at the sky, deep blue darkened to indigo and black, stars so faint as to be almost invisible. A city sky, the sort where the ambient light devours the glimmer of stars and turns the night into a neon-bathed eternal day.
"I didn't really notice stars 'til that time Jane took us to her parents' farm," Billy said, as if to no one. But he wasn't alone. Billy Case was never alone, not with the symbiotic alien sharing his body acting as his constant companion, his conscience, his Jiminy Cricket.
This is something you Earthlings do far too infrequently, the alien Billy had dubbed Dude, much to the creature's annoyance, said. I've been on your planet a long time, and I've never understood why you look up so rarely.
"We get busy," Billy said. "Distracted. And then, I guess… then, before you know it, it's too late. The stars pass us by."
They had only recently returned from a trek into an alternate future, Billy and Dude and the rest of the Indestructibles team. None of them had come back the same. Billy, in particular, felt more pensive, more inclined to melancholy. But then again, he'd suffered a unique trauma there, sharing memories with his future self, witnessing his own death in that timeline. Things just seemed a little less funny now, though he did his best to keep those worries to himself when he was with the others.
And—just a few days ago—after returning to their home timeline, an alien had crash-landed on Earth, one sharing Billy's powers, with a symbiote just like Dude living inside him. The alien traveler had been more than half-dead, desperate to find his counterpart here, to warn him. An invasion was coming. Another species, and not the friendly and charming kind like Dude. Headed for Earth-fall. Dude called them the Nemesis fleet.
Billy spent a lot of time during the past few days looking up at the sky.
Now he saw the others approaching, Jane flying through the evening air like a ball of fire, Entropy Emily far less gracefully drifting behind her in one of her "bubbles of float." Billy knew they were looking for him. They needed to figure out what to do. How to stop this invasion. If they could stop this invasion. He sat down on a rusted swing, hoping it would hold his weight, and let himself rock back and forth, taking unexpected comfort in the soft squeaking of the chains as he moved. Jane landed nearby, then Emily. Together the girls approached him. Jane stopped in front of him and folded her arms across her chest, her hair moving and dancing like open flame. Emily plopped down on the swing next to him and began to swing for real, legs kicking to stay in motion.
"You know I'm going to have to go up there and scout things out," Billy said to Jane.
Her mouth formed a tight line of worry across her face.
"I can go with you," Jane said. "You shouldn't travel into space alone."
"Can you believe we're having a conversation about this?" Emily said. "Heading into space? I mean, seriously. Eighteen months ago I was getting in trouble for jaywalking and now we're talking about interstellar travel. Space. The final frontier."
Emily began whistling the theme song to Doctor Who softly. When Billy gave her a dirty look, she immediately switched gears to "Binary Sunset" from Star Wars.
"What?" Emily said. "Tell me that's not apropos."
Billy smiled then turned back to Jane.
"No, I have to go alone," Billy said. "You're the big gun. Everyone will need you here if I don't come back."
"I think we're both the big guns on this team, Billy," Jane said. "Especially after what happened to you in that other timeline."
She had a point. They had always been the two most powerful members of the Indestructibles, and Jane seemed to get stronger every day as her solar-powered abilities built up over time. But Billy had absorbed some of the strength of his future self while they were in that other timeline, and it seemed to be permanent. He could do things he hadn't been able to before. It had changed him physically, too; his eyes glowed blue-white all the time now, the way their mentor Doc Silence's glowed violet. They both, Billy and Doc, had scars from trying to take on too much power now. Billy wondered if he should get some signature sunglasses like the ones Doc wore.
"I'll be fine on my own, Jane," Billy said. "I won't engage them. I'm just going to put some eyeballs on whatever is headed our way and then come right back."
"Maybe the alien will wake up and give us that answer," Jane said, referring to the Straylight-like creature who had come to warn them of the pending invasion. The other being remained unconscious at the Tower. Dude told Billy his counterpart inhabiting the traveler would try to heal its host, but for now, both were in stasis, and thus unable to tell them anything else about what was headed in their direction.
Billy said nothing, listened intently to the creaking of Emily's swing, and rocked his own to create a call and answer between the two. Creak swing, creak swing, creak swing.
"The two of you," Jane said, smirking. "You can't even stop yourself from doing stuff like that when you're together."
"We're a team, yo," Emily said.
Billy leaned back and gazed into the night sky again. It felt so overwhelming. Like it went on forever.
It makes me feel insignificant, Dude, Billy thought.
It makes us all feel insignificant, Billy Case, Dude said. And it should. If outer space doesn't make you feel small, I would be worried about your ego.
You already worry about my ego, Billy thought.
True enough, Dude said.
"It's amazing how big it is, isn't it?" Billy said.
"What," Emily said.
"The sky."
"That's kind of what it is. 'Big' is its defining characteristic," Emily said.
"I know what you mean," Jane said. "On my parents' farm I used to lay on my back, look up and be amazed at how it felt so endless. Only stars and blackness."
"I was born in the City," Billy said. "I grew up there. The sky was just that sliver of blue you saw between buildings on those rare occasions you looked up. We didn't have stars. Didn't have big sky."
"This is known," Emily said. "Seriously, the first time I went somewhere without ambient urban light I thought I was struck blind."
"If you want, I can scout and you can stay here," Jane said. From anyone else it would have felt like a taunt. From Jane it was simply an honest offer to take away some of a friend's pain and fear.
"No," Billy said. "This one's my job."
"Okay," Jane said.
Billy and Emily continued their rhythmic swinging while the sun crept closer to the horizon.
"You're not leaving right now, are you?" Emily said.
"No," he said. "Got a few things I should do first."
"Like write a will?" Emily said.
"Emily!" Jane said.
Billy laughed.
"As if I have anything to leave behind," he said.
"You do," Emily said. "I, William Byron Case, bequeath to Entropy Emily sole custody of our dog Watson in the event I die tragically in a battle in outer space."
"It's all about the dog with you, isn't it, Em?" Billy said.
"Don't get me wrong. I'd rather you come home," she said. "But you better make sure the dog stays with me if you don't."
Chapter 1:
The Tower
Long ago, a young Doc Silence and his friends found a space ship in the desert.
No one could tell how long it had been ther
e buried in the sand. Years, decades, centuries, it didn't matter. It was a ghost ship, a derelict craft long forgotten, buried deep in a lifeless place.
Doc and his friends excavated it. They opened the ship up. And when they made their way inside, they found a living, breathing craft, a great and mighty machine, waiting to fly once again. But the world wasn't ready for alien starships then, not yet, and so they built a skyscraper, a tall and vapid structure, and one night, under the cover of darkness, they landed their found ship on the roof, like the world's ugliest cake topper. It became part of the building, part of this "Tower," and for many years it stayed there, home base of operations for more than one team of superheroes, a hidden starship in the City's downtown.
While living within its walls, they came to realize something: this ship was not a weapon of war, but rather a mobile hospital, a refugee ship, a rescue vessel. Someone on another world, in another time, built it to house the sick, to save the imperiled, to keep safe those who needed it. Part life raft, part floating medical facility.
They never learned how the ghost ship came to be buried there, devoid of life. Not even the corpses of its former passengers could tell its tale. After a time, it simply became "home."
Doc Silence sat in a room in the Tower's medical bay, looking at the unconscious alien laying in stasis, watching the creature's scaled skin rise and fall in shallow breaths.
The alien had crash-landed on Earth a few days before, apparently inhabited by a Luminae, the same species of symbiotic pure-energy being as Billy's companion Dude. Another Luminae, another hero from a different world, come here to warn them that an invasion was imminent. Jane, Billy, and Emily had found him there, half-dead, rasping out his final words of warning.
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