The hull. That implies that this thing doesn’t have a fancy sci-fi force field to punch through first, but that’s pretty much a moot point, all things considered. The ship’s sheer mass is its best protection against anything we can throw at it.
We make a pass over the dreadnought, scanning for a vulnerable point. There has to be something wrong with the ship. Even the Death Star had a convenient exhaust port. As we pass, a trio of armored goons stationed atop the dreadnought strafes us with gunfire. Everyone takes evasive maneuvers, yet we more or less remain in formation. It’s like we’ve flown together before. A few rounds ping harmlessly off the Vanguard ship. A couple of rounds hit Gorilla Rex — real name Lieutenant Bote Maasuur — also without effect (his aura can deflect physical attacks? I definitely need to learn that trick). He responds with a wave attack like Fugly used on me. The gunmen disappear over the side of the dreadnought.
“Can we take out the thrusters on the underside?” Concorde says.
I relay the suggestion to Commander Do. “The thrusters would be slightly more vulnerable,” she says, “but only slightly.”
“Trencher, are you listening to all of this?” I say.
“Little busy right now!” he says. That means the Squad’s made it back, and they’re eyeball-deep in invading aliens. They can take care of themselves, but the longer this goes on...
No. Don’t go there. Push it away and get this done.
“Then multi-task,” I say, “because we need to disable the dreadnought’s thrusters before it makes landfall, and I could use one of your crazy ideas about now!”
“Hold on.” For a few frantic minutes, I hear nothing over my comm system but Matt panting and grunting and shouting warnings to others, occasionally punctuated by the thump of his thunder gun. “Sorry, had to find some high ground.”
“No worries, but think fast. We have to cripple this thing now,” I say. “Commander Do says the best chance we have is to take out the thrusters, but we need some heavy artillery.”
“Heavy artillery,” Matt repeats. Something’s cooking in that warped little brain of his. C’mon, buddy, don’t let me down. “Hey.”
“You got something for me?”
“Maybe. How badly do your new friends need their ship?”
Matt spells out his plan, and in true Matt Steiger fashion, it sounds crazy — crazy enough to work. I repeat the plan to Commander Do, and she’s on board without question.
First Rank At Mo Ke maneuvers the Vanguard’s ship into position, and then he bails out and breaks rank long enough to deposit an unconscious Fugly on the beach. He’s out cold, so they’re not too worried about him escaping — or becoming an accidental casualty.
According to Matt, there’s a hypothetical device called a mass driver that employs electromagnetism to catapult objects at high velocity. It was conceived as an alternative to rockets as a means of launching objects into space. Edison’s been working on the tech for years but has been hesitant to fast-track it because of its other application: as a space-based weapon. Imagine the damage you could do hammering the planet with high-speed projectiles the size of an eighteen wheeler.
I hope Edison’s watching because the Vanguard is about to test the hypothesis.
The Vanguard swoops down and forms a ring in front of their ship — a living gun barrel. They pool their energies to create a small but very powerful gravity well that sucks in their ship. It hits supersonic speed instantly. The sonic boom catches the Vanguard unawares and they go flying, but they’ve done their job. The ship slams into a front thruster. The impact rocks the dreadnought, causing the entire thing to lean dangerously. The thruster explodes, engulfing the Vanguard ship in a blazing blue-white ball of superheated plasma. The Vanguard ship goes up next with an earsplitting and strangely high-pitched WHOOM. The remaining thrusters flare as they fight to keep the dreadnought aloft, but it’s a losing battle. The ship lists and loses altitude quickly, dropping nose-first toward the ocean. It hits the water with a deafening groan of straining metal. A massive cloud of steam rises as the dying thrusters submerge and, at last, go dead.
It’s a solid mile out when it crashes. Its momentum halves that distance before the dreadnought finally comes to rest. The impact throws up a roaring tidal wave that consumes the beach. The dreadnought’s shuttles get swept up and knocked into the cement retaining wall, then get sucked back out to sea as the wave subsides.
There’s a moment when the ground war abruptly stops cold, everyone’s attention drawn to the dreadnought’s death throes. I can’t blame them; it is an awesome spectacle. It’s also the turning point in the fight. The good guys get their heads back in the game first and tear into the invaders, and with the dreadnought down, the airborne fighters are free to support the ground troops. Some of the aliens make it clear they’re not going down without a fight, but they’re in the minority; many drop their weapons and prostrate themselves on the ground in surrender. Others turn tail and run, even though they have nowhere to go. The chaos subsides with each passing minute as we rally to crush the last of the resistance.
And then a silence falls on the battlefield, sudden and total. I hover overhead, waiting for some idiot to fire off a last desperate shot, but it never happens.
It’s over. We won.
5.
The peace doesn’t last long. Within minutes, a new chaos spreads over the area, one filled with fire engines, ambulances, police cars — the majority of the emergency vehicles are from neighboring towns — Red Cross vans; military transports arriving too late to the party; and to my amusement, black sedans carrying nondescript men in matching black suits. The cleanup has officially begun.
But this isn’t like any cleanup op I’ve ever been involved with. We have a lot more to do than file statements with the police and stuff the bad guys into a Byrne transport. This is hour one of day one of a recovery phase that could last weeks, maybe months. A one-mile radius around the dreadnought is going up now and is expected to remain in place for the foreseeable future, an act that will displace dozens upon dozens of families — some of which, ultimately, might not have homes to return to. Many of the houses closest to the battlefield have been outright destroyed and many more have been severely damaged, perhaps beyond the point of repair.
But those families are alive, which is more than too many good and brave men and women can say. Those who survived the fight and are healthy enough to work have been tasked with clearing the bodies. A team of soldiers hurries to erect a large pavilion tent at the far end of the baseball field (or rather, what’s left of it) to serve as a temporary morgue.
My friends all survived, thank God, but we didn’t escape completely unscathed. Stuart is riddled with bruises from hypervelocity round strikes that, thankfully, didn’t penetrate. Nina took a round to the abdomen, but it hit her so fast and burned so hot it sliced through her and cauterized the wound as it went. She’s currently in a lengthy queue of people waiting for an available ambulance to take them to the hospital. She volunteered to wait. Other people took priority, she said. Joe Quentin sits on the sidewalk while Dr. Quentin applies what looks very much like wet cement to a series of shallow craters marring his chest and back. She’s literally applying the stuff with a trowel.
Concorde is in some serious pain himself, but he won’t allow himself to feel it, not now, not while there’s still work to be done. As usual in such situations, he’s coordinating the recovery with the first responders, making sure that those who need attention first get it, and assigning jobs to whoever can handle them.
My job is to babysit Commander Do and her team, who are in turn keeping an eye on the invaders. Turns out, without their armored battlesuits, they’re nothing but a motley assortment of alien rabble with bad attitudes and not an ounce of true courage between them. Lt. Maasuur, At Mo Ke, and Lieutenant Commander Fast — a being who looks like a giant snake with spindly arms — keep the prisoners locked down under a heavy gravity field. It requires only three of them to subdue several d
ozen captives, which is impressive, even though the invaders have been so thoroughly demoralized a nun with a yardstick and a disapproving frown could keep them quiet.
While they keep watch on the prisoners, Commander Do and I have a long chat, and the first item on the agenda is, what was this all about, anyway?
It’s about me, as it turns out, and this catastrophe can be traced back to well before I received my powers. Fugly’s real name is Galt, and he’s a former member of the Vanguard (a Vanguardian?) who fell in with an intergalactic terrorist organization called the Black End. He became a hitman for the Black End, and his modus operandi was to ambush lone Vanguardians, kill them, and take the source of their power — the astrarma, also known as the weird alien thingies in the palms of my hands. He currently has in his body fourteen pairs of astrarma that he ripped out of his victims. Gross.
Lieutenant Yx was supposed to be victim fifteen. He managed to warp away but not before Galt inflicted a mortal wound. Galt had been hunting for him ever since, and Commander Do and her people had in turn been hunting Galt (the ship they sacrificed to bring down the dreadnought had been their home away from home for the past year or so).
Here’s where I unwittingly enter the story. The Vanguardians are linked to one another through their astrarma, and loaded up like he was, Galt was a living Vanguard detector. After Yx passed his astrarma on to me, I became a homing beacon; every time I powered up, Galt picked up on it. He’s spent the last year crossing the galaxy looking for me.
“And what’s this?” I say, nodding toward the dreadnought. “His RV?”
“Are vee?” Commander Do says. I guess the learning matrices are still learning.
“A mobile home,” I say. That carries over well enough.
“Ah. I believe it would be more accurate to call it a mobile headquarters. As you saw, Galt commanded a considerable strike force,” Commander Do says, gesturing toward her prisoners, “who are not capable of unassisted warp travel. This ship was a Lyztarian exploration vessel, hijacked by the Black End.”
“Yeah, about the ship. I know we grounded it, but I don’t think it’s such a hot idea to leave it parked here.”
“Yes. It’s one of several dilemmas I now face. Kylos Alliance regulations are very clear about deliberately making advanced technology accessible to inferior civilizations,” she says. I’ll try not to take that personally. “But in order to remove the Nightwind from your world, we’d need to dispatch a recovery team, and the Alliance frowns upon unnecessarily exposing ourselves to inferior civilizations.”
There’s that word again. “With all due respect, I wouldn’t worry about violating the Prime Directive. That horse has already left the barn, as my Granddad used to say.”
Commander Do squints at me. Apparently the translators need to be walked through idioms, too.
“It means it’s too late to worry about that. By now, every government in the world knows about what happened here,” I say, hoping Commander Do doesn’t push for details. I have no idea how to explain the media to her. “You might as well call for your tow truck. Er, tow spaceship.”
She nods. “Can your people be trusted to safeguard the Nightwind until we return?”
“My people can. I’ll speak to Concorde, and he’ll take care of security. You can trust him.”
She sighs. “It appears we have little choice. We’ll secure the prisoners in the Nightwind, then dispatch a recovery ship upon our return to Alliance Central.” Her expression turns stern and she looks at something over my shoulder. “First Rank Zqurrl.”
I turn around to see Squishy standing there, aiming at me something that looks remarkably like an iPhone. “Commander?” he says.
“What have I told you?”
“Don’t bioscan sentient life forms without their permission,” he says, and he looks at me with sad puppy-dog eyes. “I’m sorry, CarrieHauser.”
“It’s cool, um, Squirrel?” I say.
“Zqurrl. The ftha is silent.”
Oh, of course. The ftha is silent.
“I apologize for Zqurrl. His enthusiasm for xenobiology sometimes gets the better of him.” She tries to smile, but the expression falters. “There is one other matter we must address: you.”
“Me?”
“Come with me. I wish to show you something.”
“Okay. Give me a minute?”
“Of course.”
I weave through the maze of people and vehicles, making my way toward the line of Red Cross vans parked along a nearby side street. I take the opportunity to fill Concorde in on the plan to clear the Nightwind, and he promises he’ll arrange the security detail — as well as fill in Colonel Coffin so the military doesn’t freak out all over again when another giant spaceship shows up. That’s an experience I’m sure no one wants to repeat.
I find Sara dozing against one of the vans, her cloak draped over a sleeping Meg. I can’t help but smile. They belong together.
I kneel down and gently shake Sara awake. She gives me a crooked smile. “Hey,” she says.
“Hey, you. How’re you doing?”
“Tired. Feel like I could sleep for a year. I forgot how much using my powers wipes me out.”
“Yeah,” I say, “though I think the big crazy fight might have had something to do with that.”
She laughs. “Yeah, probably.” Her smile vanishes. “My powers are back.”
“They sure are.”
“They shouldn’t be. Mindforce took them away.”
“I know...but you know what? I’m glad they’re back.”
“You know what?” I am too, Sara says to me over the brainphone, as clear as ever despite months of disuse. I missed having you in my head.
Back at you, sis. “Hey, if anyone comes looking for me, I’ll be with Commander Do. She wants to talk to me about something.”
“About what?”
“No idea, but I plan to keep the conversation short. We still have a lot to do.”
“Yeah, but think of all the overtime.” I turn to leave. “Carrie? Do something for me?”
I don’t ever deny her anything, but there’s an anxious edge in her voice that compels me to say, “Anything. You know that.”
“Keep the channels open, okay?” she says, tapping her headset.
“Will do. Be right back,” I say, and then I return to Commander Do. “All right. Where are we going?”
“Follow me.”
She rises into the air. As requested, I follow. We accelerate as we climb. I keep waiting for her to stop or to change directions, but we keep climbing. Somewhere during our ascent, I feel my telepathic connection to Sara break, but our comm signal is still good. I give her a quick assurance I’m still here, everything’s cool. Commander Do and I punch through the scattered cover of gray winter clouds and keep climbing. The sky drains of color, fading from blue to black. Finally, Commander Do glides to a halt and turns to face me.
“Look,” she says, her voice clear over my comm system, and she points behind me.
Oh my God.
I’ve seen photos of the Earth plenty of times, from pictures taken by astronauts in low orbit to that shot of the Earth in partial shadow taken from the moon. None of them can convey a fraction of the awe I feel now, seeing it with my own eyes. I can see it all, the entire shining globe, spinning against a backdrop of black dusted with thousands, millions of pinpricks of distant light. A glowing, swirling streak cuts across it, arcing above the disc of the Earth like a halo of impossible size. The Milky Way.
“It’s beautiful,” Commander Do says.
“It is,” I whisper.
“In my time with the Vanguard, I’ve visited dozens of worlds — hundreds, perhaps, and they are all beautiful. They are all precious and fragile. They are why the Vanguard exists: to stand as defenders against anything that threatens to snuff out even the tiniest, dimmest point of light in the universe.” She lays a hand on my shoulder. “I brought you here so you could understand. By accepting the astrarma, you accept the r
esponsibilities that come with them. Your first responsibility is to your own world, which is now in greater danger than it has ever known.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Black End has found your world. Word of its existence will spread quickly enough. What your people endured today may be merely the first strike. As a member of the Vanguard, you are the first line of protection.”
“I’m okay with that,” I say, but Commander Do isn’t impressed by my bravado. Actually, she seems saddened by it.
“It doesn’t end there,” she says. “Just as the Vanguard would assist you in protecting your world, you are also responsible for protecting the worlds of the Kyros Alliance.”
“Why do I feel like you’re trying to scare me off?”
“I am. And I am offering you a choice. You wield the astrarma as ably as any I’ve seen, and your bravery is unquestionable, but you did not ask for this burden — therefore I grant you one last chance to relinquish them.” Her grip on me tightens. “Release them to me, and you may return to your homeworld that you may live a peaceful, normal life.”
A normal life, huh? Says the alien military leader as we float in low orbit above the Earth without spacesuits.
“Why are you laughing?” she says.
“Like I said before, Commander: that horse has already left the barn.”
“Then you accept the astrarma?” Commander Do Lidella Det says to me with great gravity (no pun intended). “You accept them of your own free will?”
“I accepted them a long time ago.”
She sighs. “For your own sake, CarrieHauser? I wish you hadn’t.”
“What do you —”
Sara taps her headset. “Lightstorm?” she says. “You there? Lightstorm, respond. Lightstorm? Carrie?”
“Hm? Sara?” Meg murmurs as she emerges from a deep sleep, gripped by a growing sense of dread that does not belong to her. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know,” Sara says. “Carrie went off with one of the aliens. I had her on the comm but she dropped off all of a sudden.”
Action Figures - Issue Five: Team-Ups Page 31
