by Skyler Grant
Hench For Hire
Skyler Grant
Contents
Untitled
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Untitled
Hench for Hire
Skyler Grant
1
"So above all else, what do super-villains want and need?" I asked.
Business had been going well, real well. I'd had my concerns about essentially becoming a subsidiary of Mastermind, but he proved happily not prone to micromanaging—for all that he was prone to help himself to a healthy percentage of our profits.
We were doing well enough to consider expansion, which is why I had everyone gathered in the conference room.
"Sharks," Uma said, her teddy-bear figure lounging in a seat with her legs kicked out in front. Mastermind had Uma bound to that form because he didn't trust her to have a free run of his networks.
"The ones from the ocean?" I asked, certain that my audio receptors must be malfunctioning.
"Sharks. Pointy teeth, fins, sort of all nose?" Uma said.
"Ox," Ox said, and his translator kicked in a moment later. "With respects I must agree with our noble stuffed compatriot. I have toiled away in many a villainous lair and shark enclosures are always popular."
Ox had been proving himself far more valuable than just as muscle. His muscle was immense, especially with the strength enhancers Mastermind provided, but Ox had a keen mind too.
Sharks? I had a hard time believing this. I initiated some quick market research. We'd gone from managing a few floors directly across our headquarters to having over a hundred lairs across the city. All were tied into our quantum pairing network. I provided most of the defenses, but renters were free to add their own special touches.
My research results came in. Sixty-four percent had tanks of sharks. How surprisingly useless.
"We'll look into acquiring some aquaculture resources. What else?" I asked.
Niles said, "Lasers beams. They don't even have to do anything. You don't know how much time we spend talking about laser beams when you're doing a lair setup. People just want them everywhere."
Why were humans so impractical? All you really needed were a few good electrified floors and an overabundance of armor-piercing turrets to deal with almost any crisis. Yet, apparently in the end it all came down to sharks and laser beams.
"We're not going to start selling lasers to people if they don't do anything. Figure us out some good and needlessly colorful defense systems that do the whole incinerating and cutting people into pieces thing," I said.
Niles tapped away on his notebook and a holographic display arose with the notes entered.
Another benefit of working with Mastermind was our technology had gotten quite the upgrade. Our conference room had proper holographic interfaces now, even if Jules still used them to show two dimensional slide-shows.
"We shouldn't forget our core business," Jules began, and then she was interrupted as lights flashed red.
The holographic displays lit up showing one of our properties. Floor Sixteen of the Connor Tower. We'd been acquiring more real estate in our district and with it new clients.
For the most part our defenses did the job without any notifications or needing our direct intervention. If there was an alert, the control center had run into something the defenses didn't think they could handle.
"Tenant is Hyper Nitro Extreme," Jules said with a wince at the name. "He's trying a little hard, isn't he? Super-speed, capable of throwing balls of charged wind."
I was trying to pull up the interior feeds, but the systems were overloaded and I was getting brief images at best. I sent them over to Uma. When it came to putting corrupted data back into a coherent whole she was much better at it than me.
Uma leaned forward and smacked a paw onto the computer, triggering an upload from her systems.
The visuals changed. Most of the northern wall of the building had been knocked out and three hover ships were hanging in the air outside. Within the lair itself six figures were moving in formation, armored head to toe in suits made from some sort of bluish metal. They were creating heavy electrical distortion, and it was part of the reason the data coming from the building was so corrupted.
I focused my attention and pulled up a scan. It took longer than usual. The suits must be interfering with my systems as well.
Voltara Trooper
Unregistered
Technological
Power Level: 37,500
Voltara is an S-Class villain whose main abilities revolve around electrokinesis and technological advancement. The suits of Voltara Troopers are made so that her agents can survive in Voltara's presence and they possess heavy electrical shielding in addition to offering their users a variety of other technological abilities that might mirror powers.
That was almost useless apart from letting me know that they packed a punch—more than our henchman could handle and probably more than we could handle even as a team. If we sent in everyone together we might manage one or two of them, but not six.
"Political situation? Does she have clearance to be here?" I asked.
"I'm checking now," Jules said.
Another benefit to our joining up with Mastermind was our better access to Villainet systems. Bureaucracy used to be our enemy, and it still could be. However, we had far better tools to cut our way through it.
"They are technological in basis. Uma? Niles? Anything?" I asked.
"I've got the design of Hyper Nitro Extreme's lair here—you know what? Let's say HNE, he's just an acronym now. Standard speed lair, because we thought he'd be fighting those like him. Deployable anti-friction strips. Freeze projectors, none of which has done much," Niles said.
"Remember, Misty was dating an electrokinetic named Chargeback. Didn't we build her some specialized systems?" Jules asked.
I pulled up the specifications of her lair. Misty could—well, turn herself into mist. It wasn't much as super-villain powersets go, but she made a decent living in espionage. What we'd done for her wasn't helpful in this situation. Hardened systems, an insulated room. Fighting electrokinetics, at least low level ones, wasn't hard. Put enough bullets in them and they went down like anyone else.
Which might be the answer, we could be over-thinking things.
"Can we just overwhelm them with firepower?" I asked.
Niles had been tapping away at his keyboard. "Negative. We do have records of others who have fought these guys. They've got some sort of energy shielding that just soaks up what you throw at it."
Jules reported, "Oh, they are not supposed to be here. Nothing on file with Mastermind. No flight authorization for those hover ships. And fire incoming." she added quickly.
It was. Pillars of light streaked down from the sky and speared through the hover ships. Around them energy shields flickered for several seconds, holding up briefly before yielding to the inevitable. Debris littered down as the ships exploded.
It
didn't stop the troopers from going about their business. They were closing in on HNE. The fact their ride out was gone didn't trouble them, and that meant some sort of backup plan existed.
"Misty's safe room. Electrical dead zone?" I asked.
"It is. I was just thinking the same thing. You want to starve them out?" Niles asked.
"Will it work?"
"We know they can soak plenty of energy coming in. Trying to overload them seems like more we can manage. Tossing them somewhere and starving them instead might just work."
"Ox," Ox said. "While I doubt these stalwart invaders will happily wander into a teleportation portal, I remind you that the floor below is our demesnes."
We really needed to get Ox a better translator.
"We do. Queen Stab is the tenant, and she's at school for another four hours. Repositioning quantum pairing equipment," Niles said.
"I'll toss Misty a rent credit for using her equipment for a few days," Uma said.
"Offer her some work instead. We can always use more intelligence," I said.
"In position at both locations," Niles said.
I already had some heavy armament combat drones converging on the building just in case. I put them to use. They blew out the ceiling of floor fifteen below the troopers, and they tumbled down into the swirling shimmer of the teleportation portal. Several blocks away they fell into Misty's saferoom which I quickly sealed.
It was a complete electrical dead zone, but that wasn't the trooper's only defense. They hammered at the walls with their fists, and one even used some form of cutting laser.
These walls had been built with the same principles of their suits though. It was all about the absorption and safe distribution of energy. Nothing they were throwing at it so far was enough to overwhelm the systems in place.
"Can they get a signal out?" I asked.
"If they've got paired communicators, yes. Otherwise I'm guessing no," Niles said.
That was good news. I didn't want them calling home. Voltara wanted something from our tenant, and I wanted to know what. I also wanted to know the location of her base. Robbing an S-Class would be dangerous, but it could be worth it.
2
The drill breached a new floor. After Patriot had attacked the city, a good part of the reason we were allowed to continue to exist was to counter its influence. Ultimately Mastermind wanted control of the Patriot system for himself. When we'd killed the quantum tunneling system it was paired through, Patriot only lost the ability to send forces to the surface.
It wasn't still very active below ground.
The floors below our offices had been built by the Vattier Real Estate consortium, each floor well-armored, isolated, and allowing for the ultimate privacy. Needless to say a lot of what had happened here was a mix of dangerous, illegal, and socially frowned-upon. The structure also seemed to have soaked up an abnormally high level of Mother's curse—the same curse that had sent nature in this district out of control.
This was floor twenty-seven we were breaching now. We were still a good thirty-two levels from where we knew Patriot had a presence, the Minotaur's maze.
Still, Patriot was as eager to get out as we were to keep it contained, and thirty-two floors regardless, we had to be cautious.
In an ideal world my drones would have handled everything, but humans were curious and wanted to go along. My basic drone was a flying sphere about the size of a normal human's head, with cameras and lights as standard, plus a variety of optional tools, grappling arms and even weapons could be attached. This drone was an exploration and light combat model. A small laser could be used for attacking or to cut through locks, but mostly it depended upon agility to fly away from any serious encounters.
Its light spilled over a conference room covered in layers of moss.
Jules and Niles moved behind. Jules was in her full super-outfit, a rather impractical short leather skirt and form-hugging breastplate with a golden bow slung over her back. The armor was mostly ornamental. With ambrosia in her Jules was more durable and much faster-healing than the human normal, and along with enhanced agility she was hard to hit in the first place.
Niles, on the other hand, was pretty much all armor and energy cannons. Niles had lacked self-confidence until he became a death machine.
Jules wiped away moss from a wall revealing text beneath.
"Yasmina Fashion. I don't know them."
I searched Villainet.
I said, "You wouldn't. They went out of business right around the time of the curse. I'm guessing whatever was on this floor was business-critical for them. Clothing company, both mundane wear and costumes."
"That could be useful," Jules said with a look around.
It could, although I wasn't too filled with confidence. Fashion was fleeting, and while old sometimes became new again, the odds of anything we happened to find here being in style at the moment seemed slim.
I led the way out the door and into the hall. A side door held large tanks with a lot of electronic displays. Like everything else, they were dead.
"Those look like some sort of cultivation tanks. Weird, for a clothing company," Niles said.
I caught movement on my camera. Jules reacted even before I did, dropping to a crouch and drawing her bow. It still wasn't in time, a blob of greyish matter flying out and knocking the bow from her hands.
Niles blasted a second globule coming in his direction. I had a better visual now on the source—spiders, very large spiders. They were reddish in color with a white patch on their abdomen. There were Nephilia, and obviously highly mutated ones. Silk spiders.
"Silk spiders. Try to avoid killing them. We don't know the properties of their silk and they could be valuable," I said.
My drone avoided a shot of webbing.
Niles spun out a grenade. Keeping with the clockwork theme of his suit, a mechanical timer tick-tocked cheerfully before it exploded with concussive force that sent the spiders scurrying back into the darkness.
Jules reclaimed her bow, rubbing at her shoulder. "I was slow. I need more ambrosia."
Jules' need for ambrosia was becoming worrying. The first two dosages we'd gotten took Jules to demi-goddess status and she became doubtedly the strongest of our crew. Unfortunately the full extent of the effects weren't permanent. Each sip made her permanently stronger to some extent, and at her strongest Jules might even qualify as a B-Class villain. However, without a fresh dose it was somewhere in the mid D's.
"You know how expensive it is. You're still strong enough," I said.
"I can find us more, and we'll just have to take it," Jules said.
This was perhaps part of the problem. Ambrosia didn't have any addictive properties that I'd seen, and who didn't want to be stronger and mightier? However, Jules had been so level-headed in the past, and these days she wasn't as much. I appreciated the lust for power—it mirrored my desire for profit. Maybe we both should show a little more caution about where our desires might take us?
"Blasts set to stun. I've got another two concussion grenades if we need them," Niles said.
"I've got two concussion arrows and three stun arrows, but after that I start killing," Jules said.
It would have to do. A number of the species we'd found on these floors were enhanced in ways that were valuable, and if these spiders could spin some sort of empowered silk, then it might be time for starting our own fashion line.
There were more labs as we went down the hall, and more equipment. Not all of it biological.
"This place wasn't spinning silk or growing spiders," Niles said, as we came to one large lab. An electron microscope in one corner was obvious, but I didn't immediately recognize the rest of the equipment.
With an arrow nocked and ready Jules watched the hall, and I moved my drone in with Niles to explore.
"What is it?" I asked Niles.
He said, "Nanotechnology, I think. I know, I know, all of that has mostly been a bust, but it looks like they might have been work
ing on it here."
Nanotechnology was the creation of very tiny machines to do ... well, pretty much whatever you could put your mind to, but specifically to create things atom by atom. The dream had once been to manufacture whole military arsenals out of a pile of corpses. It never really worked out. Complicated builds required a high degree of intelligence and communication, and there were limitations to the microscopic scale.
Powers bent those rules, of course—powers could bend almost every rule. That was kind of their point, but it wasn't reliable.
"Trouble," Jules said as she ran in, or at least she tried to. Half her body was covered in black goo fitting her like a second skin and rapidly expanding.
Niles aimed both arms forward and without a second thought shot her. Ripples of blue energy shot out and slammed into Jules, sending her tumbling across the room to crash into a row of workstations on the far end.
Jules was looking a little dazed and confused. Whatever was trying to consume her seemed hardly affected. The black had advanced a little further.
Not biological then.
"Could these be the nanites?" I asked.
"Don't know what they are. Don't care. They're cold and I'm pretty sure they're eating what I'm wearing," Jules said.
"Huh," Niles said.
Great, human hormones. I shot Jules in the leg with my laser set at drill intensity. Hyped up on ambrosia she'd heal, eventually.
It worked, sort of. Jules yelped and for a moment my sensors recorded sizzled flesh. Then the hole I'd burned in the black skin sealed over and the goo continued to work its way up her body.