Full Metal Superhero Box Set [Books 1-3]

by Haskell, Jeffery H.

“Safeties off, we can’t let them get her onboard.”

  No kill?

  I hate to do it, but this is future of mankind stuff. “Rescinded.”

  “Dammit woman, you don’t know what you’re interfering with,” Matahal screams. “Get the subject on board, I’ll handle her.”

  “You’ll handle me? You’re a creep in a lab coat. One who’s not going anywhere.” An Emdrive assisted jump puts me between them and the ship. The grenade launcher barks to life, spitting out AG pods at the people pushing Behemoth.

  Matahal slaps his hands together, his entire visage shifts. Whatever tech disguised his appearance vanishes, leaving his true form.

  I believe the word you’re looking for is, ‘crap’.

  Right, that’s the word I want. Matahal is gone, replaced by an eight-foot, gorilla-looking alien with no fur, a flat face, and power armor. And he’s fast. His fist hits me hard enough to knock the suit back against the wall. The kinetic shields keep me from hurting, but he can still wallop us. I dodge the second punch. The wall spiderwebs where he hits.

  I blast away at him with the IP cannons, I figure they won’t have an effect but better to start small. The ion pulses wash off of him dissipating in the ground. Annoying.

  “I’ve had almost a year to study your tech, Amelia.” His voice is somewhere between a barking dog and a dolphin. Weird. “You’re smart, for a human.” I fire off an HE grenade, he slaps it out of the air before it can arm, sending it to explode harmlessly against the wall. He’s not Fleet fast, but he’s fast.

  I take off but he grabs my boot and slams me face first into the ground, jarring my teeth. “Kinetic lance!” I roll over. The lance fires off, smashing his cheek and sending him spinning. At least he can’t defend against that.

  Ten seconds to recharge.

  “Particle beams.” I have him bracketed as he crawls back up, green ichor flowing from his… well, nose, I guess. I fire. The beam hits his armor dead center and refracts off in a brilliant, but useless light show.

  “Like I said, I’ve studied you.” He whips out two pistols in lightning fast fashion and opens fire. Epic kicks in the Emdrive, shooting me into the air. At least this landing bay has room to maneuver. I take a second to get the lay of the land. The gurney is still gliding toward the ship, either on autopilot or because of momentum.

  Clearly, I can’t take this guy alone. “Epic, open a channel to Kate.” I dodge another bolt from his plasma cannon while returning fire with the lance. Invisible force strikes the ground in front of him, exploding the concrete floor.

  I can’t connect to the team. Try your empathic link with her.

  Right. If I can jam them, they can jam me. I bank hard putting the ship between us. “Try and see if we can disable the ship.”

  Kate? Nothing. Usually, I can feel her if she’s looking for me. I try again, screaming as loud in my head as I can. Kate!

  “Epic, they’re jamming her somehow.”

  Probably the same way you do.

  “Are you trying to reach your little friend, Amelia? You have only yourself to blame for that. Imagine my surprise when your ECM gadget worked on Ericsson. You are clever, but only human. I am Th’un, and we live to conquer.”

  The lance works good against him but it won’t stop him and it takes too long to recharge. But… I draw the sword and hit the ground in a slide that carries me out from behind the ship. Brackets pass over him and Epic fires the lance. The beam catches him in the legs. He hits the ground face-first and I’m over him as fast as I can move. The blade arcs through the air… I’m not fast enough. Sparks and concrete fly from where it hits the ground.

  He backhands me across the room. I slide on the ground for thirty feet before I come to a stop. He’s already in the air flying toward me.

  “Grenades, rapid fire!” The puff-puff of the launcher fires followed by three explosions and the last of my AG pods.

  He’s blown backward through the air. The AG pods catch him and momentum carries him across the room to slam to a stop against the wall. I shake off the effects of his punch and shakily stand.

  You have re-injured your ribs and have several contusions on your legs.

  “Thanks.” I don’t have long. He’s already shorting out the pods with some kind of power surge. If Behemoth makes it on to the ship… I lift my arm to point at her. I could flip over to the mass driver and incinerate her… maybe… but… I told her they were going to kill millions on the hope of saving humanity. I won’t do the same. The ship though… I smile.

  “We need to get on board the ship.” I launch into the air, flying right at Matahal. He falls from the wall, landing in a crouch and bracing himself for impact. I veer hard enough to make my stomach double flip and fly right up the landing ramp into the inside of the ship. I crash in a heap at the end of the hall.

  “Epic, charge the EMP.” Powers may follow their own laws of physics, but this is a spaceship. Rules are rules. It may be shielded from the outside, it would have to be, but from the inside?

  I just have no idea which way to go. Matahal’s roar of anger reaches me and I move. I guess it doesn’t matter which way I go. The EMP hits fifty percent as I fly toward the ‘aft’ of the ship.

  “Particle beam.” I slice open a wall to no avail. Everything looks like the next. No doors, or signs. Do they see in a different spectrum that I do?

  “Epic, a little help?”

  I can hear the alien pounding the decks behind me. As far as I can tell we’re simply circumnavigating the ship. One big square hallway that runs the entire length.

  I have no frame of reference. The EMP is ready.

  “Fine, set it to detonate in one minute and eject.” The EMP pops out and I spin and grab it. The next wall I cut open has something behind it and I jam the rigged ZPFM through the hole, pop my last smoke bomb, and floor it.

  Just as I thought, we’re back to the boarding ramp and out into open area. I don’t see Behemoth or anyone but the humans I podded.

  “Do you think he’ll fall for it?”

  No sooner do I speak than the ramp slides noiselessly shut and the ship lifts off, rotating in silent engines. The far wall grinds open, revealing a tunnel with light from the outside. As soon as the doors are open far enough it shoots out at incredible speeds. The shockwave of its passing knocks me to the ground.

  “Go, go go!” We floor it. The Emdrive blasts us after the ship. Epic has the vessel’s passing on sensors, but the ship itself is invisible to radar. “Where is it?”

  Seventy-five miles and climbing. Amelia, we need to go faster.

  “Do it!”

  The Emdrive flares as Epic dumps energy into it. I’ve never had it going this fast in the atmosphere.

  He is breaking orbit.

  “How long till the EMP goes off?”

  Six seconds.

  “Range?”

  Fifteen miles. Energy fluctuations are off the charts. He may be trying to use some sort of quantum drive.

  We slip the bonds of the atmo into space. Normally, I love this part but we don’t have much time… “SDF-1, now!” The suit whirs as plates move around. My arm shoots straight, locking into place. The one-inch wide barrel clicks together, forming three feet of mass driver.

  Aiming. EMP has detonated. The energy fluctuations have vanished.

  Good. I watch the mass driver power up. Of course, firing it in space is entirely different than when I’m on the ground. I have nowhere to bleed the kinetic energy to.

  Which means I am going to go very fast in the opposite direction.

  Amelia… we do not know if the kinetic absorption will protect you. Firing the SDF-1 in space could result in you reaching velocity too fast for the kinetic manipulators to protect you. You could die, Amelia.

  “I can always die, Epic. But if they get away with Behemoth, we all die. Target the ship.” I don’t think a near hit will kill the big psychopath, and I know she can survive in space.

  SDF-1 primed, shot in the barrel.

&n
bsp; I can feel the vibration from the tungsten ball as it pre-speeds up. The suit vibrates from the strain, my energy levels fluctuate wildly and cold seeps in. Most of the suits power shifts to the mass driver.

  Ready.

  I take a deep breath. I wish I could have talked to Luke one more time.

  “Fire.”

  24

  Amelia. Amelia? Amelia, wake up!

  “Five more minutes, tio.” Wait, I’m not at home. I blink several times, trying to clear the sleep from my eyes, then I see it. The moon. Looming large on my faceplate. Rangefinder shows three hundred kilometers to impact and I’m going really, really fast.

  “Full power to Emdrive, Epic.” I swing my feet around, pointing them at the moon as the drive winds up. It’s a mostly silent propulsion but when I really pour on the power, it whines. In space, I hear nothing.

  Thankfully, the speedometer shows us slowing down. If I’d hit the moon at the speed I was going… pancake city.

  “Okay, the moon. Wow. How am I at the moon?”

  The g-forces from the mass driver rendered you unconscious and accelerated us to three-point-eight miles per second.

  “That explains the moon.” Altitude is down to only a few feet when relative velocity hits zero. Before I step where no one has gone before, I need to know what happened.

  “Did it work?”

  We hit the alien craft dead center. The resulting explosion tore the ship in half. It did not make the gateway it had tried to form.

  “Thank goodness. So they don’t use FTL, then?”

  It would appear not. Some kind of bridge-way or wormhole.

  “Cool. Okay, let’s do this then head home. I have a feeling things are going to pick up from here.” I look down at my feet, dangling weightlessly above the surface of the moon. What I wouldn’t give to have someone, anyone here with me. I’ll just have to enjoy it enough to make up the difference.

  I set down, my boots sinking into the lunar dust. “Epic, record.”

  Of course

  I smile, yeah he would. Wow.

  “Okay, enough sightseeing. Blastoff.” The Emdrive kicks in with a swirl of disturbed lunar dust and we’re flying back toward the Earth.

  “Epic, any chance she’s still alive?”

  A very good chance. However, it may have been kinder to kill her outright. She will be floating in space for a very long time.

  “Hopefully. Prison is prison and she belongs where she can’t hurt anyone. Plot us a course for home, maximum thrust.”

  Plotted.

  “Punch it!”

  25

  It only took a lifetime to debrief the Pentagon about the alien ship. Now that we know what to look for, Epic has created an algorithm for searching space for alien craft. He generously shared it with NASA. With no more drone touchdowns, the team’s on a short break before we resume training. Which gives me just enough time to right a great wrong. Kate is right, of course, it isn’t too late.

  I didn’t know his family owned a ranch in Texas. I know he fancied himself a cowboy, with his truck and boots, but then again, so do most men in Arizona. He is one, though. The ranch isn’t huge, a few acres and maybe a hundred head of cattle.

  I bank around to do another pass, my fourth. The altimeter reads a steady eight thousand feet. I don’t want him to know I’m here. Not until I’m ready to go down. Which I’m not.

  You need to land eventually.

  “Thanks, I didn’t know that. I thought I could fly forever.”

  Technically the suit can, you would perish relatively quick.

  “Yuck, yuck,” I mutter. One part of my HUD shows Luke riding a palomino pony. His clothes are far more practical here than they were in Arizona and his black Stetson obscures some of his face.

  I sigh. How could I have been so stupid? Of course, the world is never going to be safe. I can’t hide the rest of my life. Not living my life. I’m just sorry it took me so long to see that. Now, though, I don’t know if I can overcome the barrier between us. I hurt him.

  Bad.

  What if he doesn’t want to see me or what if he tells me to leave? Oh god, what if he just doesn’t care? What if he’s seeing someone else?

  Amelia your heart is racing. I recommend deep breaths.

  I try, I really try. “Epic, what if he doesn’t care about me anymore?”

  I am not an expert on human emotions. However, I find it highly unlikely, in the space of one month, Luke would go from willing to propose marriage to not caring.

  “Don’t use your machine logic on me,” I say with a smile. He’s right of course. Luke may be mad at me, but he isn’t going to hate me or anything. This was so much easier when we just ate pizza and stayed in my lab all the time. Part of me wished I could go back there.

  “You can never go home again, I guess. I never understood what that meant until now, not really.”

  There is a measure of regret in your voice. Are you rethinking your decision to rekindle your relationship with Luke? If so I highly recommend against it.

  “No… just… things used to be a lot simpler.” I take another pass before looking for a suitable place to land. I don’t want to scare his cattle or anything. I don’t know how any of this stuff works. Do cattle scare? Or would they just keep eating and ignore me?

  The main house is a small, one story with an L shape. I can make out the barn and the parking area. The driveway from the road is paved, but everything else is dirt and scrub brush, not exactly wheelchair-friendly.

  The driveway it is. I drop down behind the barn and hover next to his truck before setting the suit on the pavement.

  “Epic, call Luke.” My faithful AI promptly calls my former beau. When the phone passes three rings, I think he isn’t going to answer.

  Then he does.

  “Yes?”

  “Hi, Luke. It’s uh, it’s Amelia.” Idiot! Of course, he knows who you are. Caller ID and the sound of your voice. Why is this so hard?

  “Yeah,” he chuckles, “I can tell. Congratulations, by the by.”

  “Thanks, we’re not out yet, though.”

  “I hope you didn’t call me to ask me back. I think I’m done with that part of my life.” Sheer terror grips me and I seriously consider blasting off into space right then and there. “I was never much good at being a superhero. I treated it like being a Marine but it just… it never felt right. The only part that ever did… was you.”

  My throat swells and I choke on it for a second. “Luke I… I’m sorry.”

  “Me too.”

  Dammit, he’s not making this easy. I walk toward the barn, keeping the building between us. “I know I panicked. I panicked and I took it out on you. I don’t know how not to, though. It just seemed simpler to not do anything, than to do something. Hiding in my lab, where I’m the most comfortable anyway, well that was an easy choice to make. So easy in fact, I didn’t make it.” Pythia’s words come back to me. Often people make the decisions that affect their lives the most when they aren’t even paying attention.

  “I wasn’t paying attention, Luke. Just operating on autopilot. I’m sorry. Truly.” He’s silent for a moment. I can hear him breathing on the other end. I decide to take a chance and put it all on the line. “I’m ready to choose differently, if it…” Here it goes, brace, Amelia. “If it still matters?”

  I can see him now, on his horse, not a hundred feet away. He doesn’t see me yet. I walk toward him, armored feet crunching the ground.

  “I don’t know. I don’t want you to change just for me, Amelia. I like you the way you are. I’m not going to be the man who forces you to be afraid. I won’t do it.”

  “You’re not forcing me to do anything. I’m choosing to live my life, not hide from it.”

  “I don’t think you’ve ever hidden from anything.” His voice perks up.

  “Yes, I have. I hide behind my lab, my suit, even behind Epic. I hide because I feel vulnerable all the time. I don’t want to feel that way anymore.”

  �
��Amelia, you don’t—” He sees me. I wait for him to smile, please God let him smile. “You came here, huh? Now I feel silly talking to you on the phone. Wait right there and I’ll come over.” He hangs up the phone and with an aw-shucks grin, rides his horse over to me. Hopping down, he tethers it to a bush before coming to stand before me. I still have to look up, even in the armor.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You said that already,” he replies.

  Here goes nothing. One… two… three… “Epic, initiate.” The first thing that happens is my helmet splits apart, flipping behind me. Then, the front of the suit pops forward and shifts up, before wrapping around. Within a few seconds, I’m sitting in my wheelchair. Except it has no wheels. In order to make the suit something I could take on and off, I had to ditch a few things. The Emdrive stays active, pulsating beneath me. It isn’t the most comfortable chair that ever was, but it will do.

  He stares at me, a slow grin spreading on his chiseled five o’clock shadow covered chin.

  “You wore a dress,” he states. I never wear dresses, I hate them. Kate made me. It’s a blue frilly thing with sequin butterflies over my right side. I didn’t even wear my synthsuit, relying on Epic to run most of the functions. It would have spoiled the look. She curled my hair too, but I’m pretty sure the helmet ruined it.

  “Surprise. You like it?”

  “I do,” he says, kneeling in the dirt next to me. “You came all this way just to say you’re sorry?”

  “Yes and—”

  “And what?” He’s grinning now, trying to extract more from me than I’m giving.

  “Jerk,” I mutter.

  “That’s an apology?”

  “No, this is.” I reach out and pull him to me, kissing his lips and running my hands through his hair. I don’t know how long we stay embraced, but long enough to leave me breathing heavy. When we break, I hold my forehead against his.

  “Well then,” he says, “What next?”

  “I was hoping we could go inside and—” Luke vanishes, everything vanishes.

  Quantum nausea, the effect I get when I’ve been teleported, rolls over me and I want to puke. It felt exactly the same every time I traveled in the damn elevator under the Diamondback HQ.