Funny how things change.
You get attached to a place. You make it your own. You find things to care about. You settle down. Or, instead, you want to keep it safe for other people who care more about it than you do.
No, she thought. Admit it. This is home, and you like it the way it is. Dirty face and all.
The Lady placed a series of objects on the gingham blanket, which remained, like the Lady herself, untouched by the pouring rain. She arranged an amulet, a dagger, a bag of sand, a glass ball, a torch, a bag of tiny bones, in a fussy, deliberate manner, and then started chanting, a sing-songy poem in a language few on Earth would understand.
The ground in front of her opened up, and things climbed out. Winged creatures, each and every one, some gray and misshapen, like gargoyles, some lean and scaly like dragons. Little monkeys with wings like bats, angry angels with blackened feathered wings. Demons and monsters and beasts. They all looked to her for a command.
"You summoned us here?" said one, a fork-tongued thing with burnt red skin.
"I did," she said. "Would you like to go home?"
The creatures exchanged confused looks. The red one, acting as some sort of spokesman, nodded.
"We're bound. Not by you. But other masters. Dead wizards. All of us. Bound to objects or the will of dead men," he said.
The Lady Natasha Grey smiled warmly, showing her teeth between bright red lips.
"What if I told you I'd acquired all those old bindings and contracts, and that I could set you free and send you back to the worlds from which you were stolen?" the Lady said.
The red creature quirked a thorny eyebrow.
"What is your price, woman?" he said.
Natasha pointed to the sky, where the first of the alien ships were appearing, headed for the City. Tiny things, now, but enroute to the City, more than enough to lay waste to the metropolis.
"Destroy my enemies and you're all free," Natasha said.
"This seems too simple," the demon said. "No black mage would give up our freedom so easily."
Natasha laughed, hard, her belly tightening and eyes glowing brighter.
"Let's just say I'm in a generous mood," she said. "Defend this place from those flying machines, and when the battle is over, I'll break every talisman and untie every spell holding you here. All I ask is your help right now, and that you remember who set you free."
The creature bared his teeth.
"In case you need further favors," he said.
"Come now, you know I'll have no power over you," she said. "Maybe someday you'll want to return the favor."
The demon laughed, the sound of rocks cascading downhill. He looked at his peers, some nearly human, others not at all. He turned back to Natasha.
"You have a bargain, little wizard," he said.
"Then fly, my pretties," she said, amused at her own phrasing. Maybe this world did have its charms. They knew how to tell wonderful stories here. "Fly, and you'll be free."
Chapter 67:
The barbarian
and the magician
Doc Silence drifted in space, never quite losing consciousness, but so drained by the massive effort of casting those huge spells he felt drugged and dizzy. He closed his eyes, trying to focus on meditative techniques he'd learned from a vampire in Siberia once upon a time, and pulled himself inward, concentrating on his center. Instead of regaining strength, though, he blacked out.
When he woke, reality had erupted into chaos. He watched in the distance as, with dreamlike imagery, one of the seed ships went up in flames like a match. He knew that had to be Solar. Only Jane could ignite a fire like that in outer space. Swarms of Nemesis fleet fighters, little nasty crafts like flying claws, zipped around in the distance, throw into panic by the loss of one of their ships.
He watched Billy even further away, a beacon of white light destroying another seed ship, so bright he left streaks in Doc's vision as he darted around.
But closer to him, Doc saw what should have been a terrifying sight. Instead, he almost laughed.
Doc had known Korthos of Aramaias, the Truthbringer, the immortal, for half of his adult life. He liked the brute, enjoyed his enthusiasm, and nobody quite knew how to throw back gallons of beer the way he did. But Korthos had always, always, always found a way of biting off more than he should be able to chew and had a special talent for annoying his enemies. So Doc wasn't too surprised when he saw the big man getting tagged by dozens of Nemesis ships, fighters and bigger warships alike, concentrating their fire on him as he raged and hacked at them with that halberd of his.
Korthos gave as well as he took, destroying at least one fighter with each swing, sometimes two at once, but he was completely outnumbered and, while he didn't seem particularly hurt, he was also thoroughly trapped. If it weren't a life and death situation for everyone else, Doc might have compared it to a dog walker who had taken on too many canine companions, all of whom just realized he had a cookie in his pocket.
Doc realized Korthos could handle it. He understood they wouldn't destroy him. An immortal from a time before modern men existed, his story was as old as the planet. Still, he felt bad for his old friend, bound up in laser beams and swinging his poleaxe wildly. So Doc shook off the cobwebs, flexed his fingers, and called up his favorite transmutation spell.
He turned half the ships into tapioca pudding with a sweep of his hand.
Korthos was, seconds later, covered in tapioca pudding.
Somehow, this made the barbarian even angrier. He lashed out at the remaining ships, sundering them with blow after blow, roaring into his earpiece—they'd forced him to wear a small mask that would let him talk into it in space, though hearing the language coming out of Korthos's mouth, Doc kind of regretted it—and, his enemies slain, floated in space, out of breath, eyes raw with anger.
"Nice job, Korthos," Doc said.
"You! Magician! You transformed these ships into a dessert with an alarmingly lumpy consistency! I knew this was your foul magic," Korthos said.
Doc floated over, offering a hand to help the immortal steady himself while he spun in zero-g.
"Your culinary assistance was, in fact, appreciated though, wizard," Korthos said. "Your choice in spells notwithstanding."
Doc got his bearings again, found the brain ship in the sky, tried to count the buzzing smaller ships. There had to be a thousand. More. So many standing in their way.
"What are we going to do about this?" Doc said. "This is insane."
"We are going to smite them, my friend," Korthos said. "I must return to battle."
"You do that," Doc said.
This was why he'd goaded the barbarian into the fight. Tactically useless from a finesse standpoint, he was tireless and, if aimed in the right direction, a real destructive force. "Don't hurt any of our friends by accident."
"To victory!" Korthos said, flying, in his inexplicable way, toward the center of the fleet. He didn't travel far before he'd once again attracted the attention of too many enemy vessels, but he was keeping them off the backs of the other Indestructibles, so Doc let him continue. That's when he noticed something out of the corner of his eye.
"Is that a giant robot?" he said.
Chapter 68:
Canceling the apocalypse
Smashing starfighters out of the sky with giant robot hands was fun for a while, Emily thought. Until they started to gang up on her.
The more of them she knocked out of commission the more seemed to swarm her. She swatted at biplanes attacking her like King Kong on the roof of the Empire State Building.
"This is stupid," Emily said. Another ship hit her with some kind of laser beam and the suit rumbled.
"Keep heading for the seed ship," Henry Winter's voice said into her earpiece. "We can do this."
Emily generated a wall of slam to smack a bigger Nemesis ship out of the way, then batted a handful of smaller fighters with the back of her metal hand. The suit grew sluggish, though. Or was it her? She created little po
ckets of gravity to move the limbs. Was it draining her strength?
"Is this thing slowing down?" she asked.
"It's taking a beating," Winter said. "Things are getting damaged."
"I thought you made this yourself?" Emily said.
"Yeah, and it's a prototype," Winter said.
"This is your test drive? What am I, a gravitational car dealership?" Emily said while punching another enemy out of the way. They had nearly reached the seed ship, which looked like a cross between a missile and a drill. Emily watched enough sci-fi movies in her life to have a terrifying image of what terraforming looked like. She knew that thing couldn't be allowed to reach the planet.
"We're almost there," Emily said. "What do we do?"
"Hit it," Winter said.
"That's so scientific."
"Can you suggest something else?"
Emily used a bubble of float to throw the giant metal suit at the seed ship, slamming into it shoulder first like a football player in a spear-tackle. The shell of the ship cracked underneath the blow, but the suit did too. Pieces grinded and creaked with the strain.
Emily reared back one robotic arm and punched the surface of the ship, trying to get to its innards, hoping to find something to shut it down. But, like a living thing, a fungus or a plant, fibrous and organic, it didn't make sense to her.
"Are there any weapons on this giant action figure? A hidden sword in the arm? Missile launcher in the shoulder?" Emily said.
"Sorry," Winter said. "Didn't have time to put a laser cannon on here."
"What good are you?" Emily said.
"I made you a giant robot," Winter said.
"Okay, you can stay."
Outside, the small Nemesis fighters picked her apart. Wasp-stings disabled armor, scored the robot's hull.
"I can't hit it enough," Emily said. "It's too much machine to break by hand. Do we have fire? Can we kill it with fire? What about nuking it from orbit? It's the only way to be sure."
Winter grew quiet.
It worried Emily that he might have been offended by her Sigourney Weaver reference.
"Emily, throw it," he said.
"Ha. Ha. Ha."
"No. You're stronger than the suit. Your powers are so much more powerful than this robot. It got us here, but destroying this thing is all you," Winter said. "Use one of your bubbles of float and just toss it at the sun."
"Won't that… terraform the sun?" Emily said.
"Pretty sure you can't terraform a ball of gas," Winter said, a slight trace of humor in his voice. "Kill it with fire?"
As if on cue, Emily spied a flash of light in the distance, and watched as the seed ship Jane had been fighting burst into a ball of flames. Always trying to show me up, Emily thought. Or perhaps showing me the right thing to do. Thanks, Jane.
"Here we go," Emily thought. She tried to push off the seed ship to get some distance from it, but something hit them hard from behind and rammed the entire suit against the ship. "What was that?"
"Dammit," Winter said. "They're just throwing themselves at us now. They're flying suicide missions right into the body of the suit."
Another boom echoed in Emily's ears and a second ship battered into them. She tried to turn around to whack the next one out of the air before it could crash into them, but the suit groaned mechanically and could not pull away.
"Are we stuck?" Emily said.
"We are," Winter said, fear rising in his voice. "That last collision must've caused some of our armor to lodge in the surface of the ship."
"Would it help if I got out and pushed?" Emily said in her best Carrie Fisher impression.
"It might," he said.
Emily tried again to dislodge the robot from the seed ship. She shook them, but it was like trying to move an object much too heavy for them to lift. The chest of the suit was lodged in multiple spots, and the right arm of the robot was hooked as well, with some part of the elbow shoved deep into the ragged surface of the ship.
"We got this," Emily said. "We're gonna…"
"Em, you're going to have to get out and push," Winter said.
"I was kidding about that."
"I'm serious," Winter said. "The head of the robot is an escape pod. You're going to eject, and when you're at a safe distance, you'll bubble of float this thing right into the sun. You'll be a big damned hero."
Emily smiled.
"You understood my Firefly jokes this whole time?"
"Locked away for ten years," Winter said. "I had nothing but time. I watched so much TV. I get all your jokes."
Emily looked for the eject button on the console which—covered in lights and dials—seemed more like a Jackson Pollock painting than a computer to her.
"Big red button at the top, the one with the protective cover so you don't hit it by accident," Winter said, reading her mind.
"Thanks," she said. And then realized: "Wait, how are you getting out of here?"
"I'll figure something."
"You can't tell me you didn't build an engineering compartment in this thing without an eject button," Emily said.
"There really isn't an engineering compartment," he said. "The section I'm in wasn't actually meant for passengers, just repairs."
"You're an idiot," Emily said. "I'm not leaving you here."
"Yes you are," Winter said. "I'm going to rig the suit to blow up. Just in case. Nuke it from orbit, only way to be sure, right?"
"Don't start using my jokes against me, Henry," she said sternly.
"The suit I'm wearing has limited oxygen. You'll eject, aim this thing at the sun, and then I'll crawl out and wait for you to find me later. Okay?"
"I don't believe you."
"Have some faith in your scientist."
Another fighter crashed against the robot and the suit shuddered again.
"I'll give you time," Emily said. "I'll eject and then wait sixty seconds or something for you to escape."
"Don't you dare," Winter said. "Those things'll be on you in seconds once you break free. You make your move immediately."
Emily chewed on her lip, almost biting through it when another attacker smashed outside the suit.
"How strong is your armor?" she said.
"I'll be okay. I'm sealed up in this thing. I'll have some time."
"Okay, well," Emily said, before slamming the free fist of the robot into the space around its belly, dredging the surface of the seed ship like fingers through mud, trying to put a little room between the machine and the alien vessel."
"What was that?" Winter said.
"Trying to give you a fighting chance. May the Force be with you, Henry Winter."
"You too, kid. Good luck."
Emily nodded and pounded her fist down on the eject button. Instantly, hydraulics hissed and release valves clicked. Suddenly she was free floating. The head of her giant robot detached and drifted off into space, leaving her behind as the seed ship maintained its trajectory toward Earth.
She stretched one hand out toward the ship, envisioning a bubble of float, the biggest bubble of float she'd ever created, bow to stern, and almost smiled as she watched the ship's forward momentum waver while becoming locked into her gravitational manipulations. She looked toward the sun, the protective glass of the robot's cockpit making it seem less bright, less hot.
She pushed.
The seed ship's course altered immediately, drifting even faster than before toward the waiting sun. Emily couldn't watch the whole trip. The head of the robot started to spin nauseatingly out of control. But she saw the craft's shadow flicker across the sun and the little fighters chasing it, trying to save their master from imminent destruction. Seconds ticked by. Emily waited for some sign. Maybe the suit would break free. Maybe…
In the distance, the suit exploded in eerie silence, a ball of fire with a bigger ball of fire, the sun itself, waiting to consume it. And then it disappeared.
Emily sat in her spinning life raft, suddenly very tired and lonely.
&nb
sp; "We did it . . . I guess," she thought, unsure of the cost.
Chapter 69:
Do androids dream of
electric sheep?
Bedlam ran through the downtown area, discovering the occasional alien straggler, hoping to take them out before the Department guys did. Part of her wanted to do so because she knew she was better equipped for the physical challenge of the task; part of her just wanted to keep hitting stuff.
Dark things flew in the cloud cover created by Val. Things with wings. An uneasy feeling stewed in her Bedlam's guts at the sight of them. Her skin crawled, even though she couldn't really make out their actual forms. They destroyed enemy fighters, though, so she shrugged it off and kept running.
She found two more parasite-infected creatures smashing open a shop window, trying to attack civilians hiding inside.
Beldam whistled. The pair, identical insect-like monsters, turned their multi-faceted eyes at her. She searched for where the parasites had taken hold, since knocking the spider-like thing out of commission had been the most effective way of taking out the other aliens. But both of these critters had parasites hanging on their undercarriage, not an easy spot to reach.
That just meant she was forced to improvise. Bedlam scrambled towards one, full speed ahead, metal feet banging against the pavement. At the last second, she dropped, slid under the waiting pincers of the creature's mouth, and grabbed hold of the parasite. Her feet pressing against the ant-like alien's underside for leverage, she pulled with all her strength.
It shook violently, in pain or frustration, and tried to knock her loose. Bedlam held on tenaciously, even as her back and head banged again the pavement.
The alien reared back giving its companion a chance to bite Bedlam with its sickle-like teeth. She held on to the first, but punched upward, catching the second creature on the jaw with an uppercut. Not her strongest hit, but it knocked the second alien back slightly, allowing Bedlam to continue her attempts to free the first of its parasite.
Like A Comet: The Indestructibles Book 4 Page 31
