Blaze of Glory

by Sheryl Nantus

  “Right.” Jessie walked back to the computer. He rested his elbows on the desk, smirking. “We’ve got the GPS figured out. Jammer is on the way courtesy of a friend of mine.” He threw me a saucy wink. “Used to work in a chop shop. Until you find the chip to toss it out you have to jam it.”

  “Don’t tell me too much.” I chuckled. “And the plug itself?”

  His face went solemn. “Well, that’s another whole different ball of wax. I’ve got some ideas, but let me check out some things before I present them to you. Don’t have that many surgeons on my list, but I’ve got the word out.” Jessie’s voice dropped an octave. “Do you think they’d really kill you?”

  “They’ve already been popping heads today.” I nodded towards David. “I saw the news reports of heroes and villains dying without even getting into the fight. That’s not from the aliens, that’s the Agency.”

  David frowned, biting down on his lower lip. “Why would they do that?”

  “Because no one wants to fight a battle you’re going to lose. Even the villains aren’t that stupid.” The mental image of Tan, lying there gasping his last breath, came to the forefront of my mind’s eye. “They must have said no and their Guardians pulled it. You refuse to fight, you get your plug pulled.” I waved a hand in the air. “And don’t get any ideas about us being patriotic or anything like that. It’s one thing to go into a fixed battle and another to go to what looks like certain death.” My throat felt tight. “If I had known what was going on before we left, I might have tried to talk Mike out of it.”

  “Then he would have killed you,” Jessie growled.

  “Maybe. Guess I’ll never know now.” I closed my eyes, trying not to think about the hundreds of times I had run that scenario through my mind.

  “That’s murder, no matter how you explain it away,” David said in a low, sad tone. “Especially when this Agency is supposed to be helping us fight these aliens. Killing supers who won’t fight is just…” He fell silent, unable to find the words.

  “Which is another whole problem.” I gestured towards the laptop. “Everyone thought that our arranged fights were real, right?” I continued without waiting for the two men to respond. “So what if someone or something monitoring our transmissions thought the same thing?”

  The redhead at the desk shrugged. “Probably think that you were the hot stuff like we all did.” He blushed, his attention on the computer screen.

  “So they figured that they’d take you on and win.” David rocked back and forth on the couch. “But then why stop?”

  I blinked. “What?”

  “Why stop? I mean, they’ve retreated back into their ships and are just hovering there, waiting.” He smacked his lips together. “Not a wise move if you want to invade a planet. Take out the top defenders and start moving your ground troops in, get the boots on the ground. Instead they’re just sitting there. Not a very good military position to take.”

  “Thank goodness for that much.” Jessie hummed under his breath. “There should be a parcel at the front door in a few minutes.”

  David got to his feet. “I’m assuming I don’t need to sign for it.”

  “Better if you don’t.” Jessie chuckled. “Just bring it right up here and we’ll kick it into gear.”

  I shifted my position on the thin cushions. “Think this is going to work?”

  “Of course.” The smug tone in his voice had me laughing.

  “Thank your buddies for me.” Getting to my feet, I stretched out my arms, shaking the sleep out of them. The snap, crackle and pop as I arched my back startled me, reminding me that I was off my routine. Big time. Mike had always been keen on our daily exercises. He’d be pissed I’d forsaken them for a nap. Course we’d never talked about keeping up a routine in the middle of an alien invasion.

  Jessie stared at the screen, chewing on the inside of his mouth before speaking. “You ever want to quit?”

  “Every day,” I whispered. “Every fucking day.”

  The silence hung in the air between us, the sudden tightening in my chest reminding me that I had a lot to make up for.

  “It’s here.” David’s excited voice reverberated up the stairs. Jessie smiled as I walked to the steps and reached down to help the elderly man up.

  “You should tell your friends to have better manners.” He wagged a finger at Jessie before tossing him the small box wrapped in plain brown paper. “Bike messenger drove up and threw it at me. Left without even saying a word.” He sat on the couch.

  “I’ll make a note.” Jessie ripped the paper off the box and tore the flaps open. “This should at least keep you off the radar for the time being.”

  The small black box was no more than three inches by two inches, the size of a cigarette pack with nothing more than a switch at one end. He toggled the metal stick and passed it to me. “Now you’re good.”

  I looked at it. “Seriously?” Turning it over and over, I weighed it in my hand. “Pretty light.”

  “Have to be. You’ll need to keep that within thirty feet of your transmitter to maintain the cloaking.” Jessie beamed, putting his feet up on the empty chair and rocking back, hands behind his head.

  “Don’t get too smug. If we’re lucky, the Agency hasn’t caught their collective breath and no one knows I’m here.” I tucked the box into the pocket of my leather jacket, over my heart. Good place for it. “Now, what about the plug?”

  “That…” he waved a finger in the air, “…can be dealt with.” His attention turned back to the laptop screen. “The problem here is that we don’t know the frequency it runs on. A GPS is one thing—we can get that info easy. But this, this is a bit more complicated.” A weak smile appeared on his face. “But they’re working on it. And by they I mean medical professionals looking to get a paper out of it at some point, so don’t be too shy.”

  I shrugged. “If we survive this, they can get a whole damned manual out of it. Right now I’m running on borrowed time.” My right hand tapped the plastic case in my pocket. “And this is going to help convince them of that.”

  “Good.” David reached for one of the juice cartons. “Now, what are you going to do?”

  I drew a deep breath. “What I’m supposed to do. I’m going to save the world.”

  Chapter Five

  “Did you hit your head on an asteroid or something on the way here?” Jessie spun around in his chair, turning it so he could rest his arms across the wooden back.

  “Not to mention it’s likely that when the Agency finds out you’re alive they’ll kill you.” David took one of my hands in his. “I don’t want to watch you die. My heart almost stopped, watching you in New York City.”

  “I don’t want you to watch me die either. But I can’t sit back and let this invasion continue.”

  “Except they’re not attacking anymore.” David squeezed my hand.

  “That’s not really a good reason.” I sighed. “I’ve missed you, David, but I can’t hide up here in the attic and hope that they all go away and I can start working the counter again.”

  “What’s your plan?” Jessie divided his attention between the two of us and the flashing smaller windows on the computer screen. Row after row of letters and numbers scrolled by so quickly I had no idea how he was reading them, if he even was.

  “This.” I tapped my jaw, and then my ear. “There’s a small transmitter set in the bone, a receiver just inside my ear. Allows me to talk to Mike without having to scream.”

  “Okay.” Jessie stared at me. “And?”

  “It’s a transmitter. Which means I can transmit.”

  David was the first to catch on, increasing his grip on my hand. “No, no, no.”

  “What?” Jessie frowned.

  “She wants to send out a message.” David scowled at me. “They’ll track you back here. The Agency, I mean.”

  “Yes. And no.” My index finger ran along my cheek, stopping at the little bump. “I know that it hooks into other links when I’m in the area.
That’s how we coordinate fights, team battles. Lets us set up the big finales.”

  Jessie nodded slowly, a thoughtful look in his eyes that showed his internal wheels were spinning. “How’s the distance?”

  I shook my head. “Not much—maybe eighty, ninety feet at the most.” The blank stare encouraged a chuckle. “Let’s say thirty meters. I’ve been in the Imperial system for too long.”

  “So you need a huge transmitter dish.” The young man turned the chair around and got back to his laptop, opening yet another window on the screen.

  My jaw made a popping noise as I rotated it, and I winced at the sound. “If I can get some long-range power, I can send out a message to any heroes, villains and Guardians who are still alive. Get them here and see what we can organize in the way of a resistance.”

  David released my hand. “You’re talking pretty big, considering you just walked in here this morning with nothing.”

  Getting to his feet, he marched over to the single window in the loft and looked out onto Queen Street West, his voice rising with each word. “And who’s going to answer? If they’re not dead, then they’ll be in hiding, like you.” David clasped his hands behind his back, slouching slightly as he stared down at the pedestrians walking by. “What makes you think they’re going to answer, that they even care?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “But I have to at least try to do something. I can’t just let this go on.”

  “Why not?” Jessie didn’t take his eyes off the screen. “You just told us that you’re no superhero. Now you want to be one?”

  It felt like a slap in the face.

  Except he was right. I’d spent two years pretending to be a hero. Now I was going to try and be one?

  “I used to have your poster up in my bedroom.” Jessie didn’t look at me, fingers flying across the keyboard.

  I winced inwardly, knowing exactly which one he was talking about. The Agency decided that they wanted to target the young male demographic big time, and Promotions slapped me into a tight leather outfit with a huge honking blade (read: phallic symbol) tagged onto my wrist for one of the photo shoots. It was all fine until I went to scratch an itch and almost disemboweled Mike and three cameramen. Since then the blade had stayed in the closet, the outfit not so much.

  The long slender digits paused. “Didn’t care much for Metal Mike, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

  “He was a good man.”

  Jessie’s back muscles tensed under the white dress shirt. “He was your Guardian. The guy who could have blown your head off at any time.”

  “Yeah.” The ache in my chest returned. “And a good friend.”

  He gave an annoyed huff, still not looking at me. “And you were sleeping with him?”

  “No. Yes. Sort of.” I waved my hands in the air. “It was…complicated.”

  “And it was your private business.” David cut me off with a sideways swipe of his hand. “Jessie, you know better than that.”

  “Yes, Uncle,” he mumbled in response, a scarlet flush rising on his cheeks.

  “You focus on getting her what she needs right now.” The senior turned his attention back on me. “While I can’t tell you I think this is a good idea, I can’t tell you not to do it. Because those ships aren’t leaving until someone does something.” He rubbed his chin. “Whatever you do, you’ll have to do it at night. I can’t see anyone not noticing you if you fly up to the top of the CN Tower and use their antenna to send your message in the middle of the day.”

  “The CN Tower?” I smacked myself lightly on the forehead. “I hadn’t even thought about that.”

  David smiled. “You’ve been hanging out in Niagara Falls too much, sweetie. That’s my first thought, but I’m sure Jessie can find something along those lines that you can go to and hook in somehow.” He studied his watch, an ancient wind-up that had been around probably longer than I had been alive. “Give it a few more hours and then we’ll see what we can do to get your message out.” Tapping his nephew on the shoulder, he looked around the room. “There’s an old television set downstairs, come help me move it up here. Might as well make this as comfortable as possible. And that old chair from the back, no one’s going to be sitting there drinking tea and stealing my cookies for awhile.”

  Jessie opened his mouth as if to object, then decided it would be better to just comply, making a last set of keyboard attacks before getting up from the chair.

  “You sit and rest.” David’s tone was grandfatherly with a touch of military discipline tossed in. “You’re dealing with a lot right now, and I don’t think you’re rested enough yet.”

  “Yes, Dad.” Rolling my eyes, I curled back up on the small single bed, clutching the teddy bear. As the two men walked down the stairs, I glanced over at the scrolling messages on the computer screen.

  “Mind if I check the news online?” I shouted.

  “Sure, but don’t close any windows,” the shout came back up. “And don’t answer anyone if they offer to chat.”

  “As if.” I snorted, settling into the chair.

  The main news sites had the attacks in all their glory, huge cyber headlines that filled the screen and detailed each and every movement of the military as they searched for a way to remove the alien ships.

  There had been no attempt by the aliens to send ground troops down to take possession of the cities they hovered over, making the evacuation of the civilians a lot easier. Didn’t matter where in the world they had arrived, no one had been able to even scratch the ships. After a few ill-advised artillery shells had been lobbed by the Chinese—obviously not taking their cue from the American forces—an unseen shield on the alien craft bounced them back into the waiting troops, and no one had taken the attacks further. Instead the nations had decided to just clear the cities over which the ships hovered, a mighty task at the best of times with a panicky population envisioning every alien-attack movie in their minds. Massive migrations were going on, evacuations of major cities with people streaming out to what they hoped would be relative safety far away from the skyscrapers and towers that seemed to be a magnet for these warriors. No one wanted to even hazard a guess at the number of deaths.

  And the list of dead supers. Oh, the list…

  My vision blurred as I scanned down the roll call of friends and enemies, people I had fought beside and against and many who I had never met. The Russians had Night Witch listed as MIA, as the Chinese did with Dragon Lily—no surprise there. They never liked losing, even when it’d been prearranged. The EU at least admitted casualties. And in North America we had lost CanaDragon in Ottawa and all those in New York City.

  Including Mike.

  The United Nations was having meeting after meeting, everyone chattering about sending out ambassadors and the like. The U.S. President had decided to take a “wait and see” with the ships hovering over Washington, D.C., Pittsburgh, NYC, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles, among others. All of them waiting to see what the Agency was going to recommend.

  The Agency wasn’t international—only North America. Other countries used different names, but the game was the same. Mike had hinted more than once that other nations had their own way of keeping their supers under control, one way or another.

  Some even more radical than the plug.

  I reached up and back to the scarred tissue. It had itched like a bastard for a month after they put it in, taunting me every time I brushed my hair or hopped in the shower.

  “Don’t mess with it.” Mike sat across from me in the cafeteria, nudging my tray with his own.

  I glared at him. “Fuck off.”

  “Nice mouth for a lady.” He dug into the cream corn with a plastic fork. “You kiss your momma with that?”

  “Fuck off, sir.”

  The dark chocolate hand advanced on my tray, blocking my attack on what I thought was meatloaf. “Michael Pratt.”

  “Yeah.” I ignored his offer, moving around to hack at the slab.

  “I’
m going to be your Guardian.” The hand retreated to pick up a piece of cornbread. “Pleased to meet you.”

  “I’m not.” The meatloaf tasted good, for once. Must have been the spicy tomato sauce.

  “Look, you can make this hard or you can make this easy.”

  I chuckled, pushing the peas around with my fork. “Wow, like that’s not a cliché.”

  Suddenly there was a large hand around my wrist, straining it slightly until I dropped the fork. “Look at me.”

  I met his eyes. “Okay, you’re a tough guy. So?” They were startling in their depth, deep blue and soft.

  “I like it easy.” The fingers curved around until we were shaking hands. “Mike Pratt,” he repeated, waiting for my response.

  “Jo Tanis. But you know that already.” Slowly pulling my fingers free, I picked up the fork and returned to the peas. “So you’re the lucky guy who gets stuck with me.”

  “I don’t like to think of it as that,” he whispered in a low voice. “I’d rather be your partner than your enemy.”

  “A partner with the power to blow my head off.” I gestured towards the wristband on his left arm, the small keyboard and screen waiting to be used.

  “Look, I don’t want to ever have to use this.” Mike raised his hand. “But it’s the rules. For both of us.”

  I drew in a deep breath, calming myself and trying to focus the waves circling around us.

  “That’s good. Control is good.” He smiled. “For what it’s worth you get to watch me get fitted for a big robot suit.”

  My look of astonishment garnered a chuckle from the huge African American. “I didn’t think Guardians could fight.”

  “We can, it just depends on if we want to.” He pulled his fingers into a tight fist. “Ex-military, if you’re curious. And I don’t like to be left on the sidelines.”

  “Aren’t you a little old to be playing with dolls?” I smirked, seeing the forty-something man flinch.

  “Only five years older than you, sweetheart.” His bright white teeth shone in the fluorescent lighting. “And we’re going to save the world.”