by Skyler Grant
This killed some of the villains. Some were made of hardier stuff. A fire-based healer named Warm Compress barely took any damage, and her stream of tiny fireballs in response sent one of the light figures tumbling through the air to smash against the wall with enough force that the armor cracked. There were now fissures in the light they put off, revealing what looked to almost be articulated joins.
"Fire resistance is working against whatever they're packing. Calling up the fire heroes we have on retainer," Jules said.
"Put in a call to Kleo as well. Most demons have some form of fire," I said.
Jules nodded.
We'd built up some solid alliances. Some villains would take longer to get here, while demons tended to be fast travelers. Portals of hellfire sprang up as several stepped through.
Most demons were red-skinned, fit-looking, and leaned towards either wearing ludicrously little clothing or big, bulky armor with an extravagant number of spikes.
Kleo's family was less on the bulky warrior side of things. Most were mages of some kind.
Demonic runes glowed in the air as hellfire shields caught answering fire from the Endless Swarm in a furious exchange of fire.
Then the light changed. One of the Swarm suddenly became a living embodiment of blue and a hellfire shield shattered as they leapt through it. A demon burst into flame when a blue spike plunged through their heart.
"Adaptive armor?" I asked.
"It has to be, and to mess up demons like that, some sort of elemental charge too, probably water," Jules said.
I could work with that.
I targeted the floor panels beneath the blue Swarm and overloaded the local systems. Sparks engulfed the figure as the floor panel exploded, electricity and sharp metal fragments flying.
It was the electricity that did the job, the Swarm twitching violently before collapsing. The blue light faded.
The Endless Swarm were insects. The figure couldn't be fully seen given they were covered head to toe in body armor, still their shape was something like a human-sized Praying Mantis. The armor was made up entirely of small octagonal plates, a dull grey.
"Well, we can kill them," Jules said.
"Now we just need to get good at killing them. Sending in drones. We need to get a subject to Voltara for study," I said.
The villains in the entry were having some success. From what I was seeing the Endless Swarm were like glass cannons—they had a high offensive output, but if you could hit them hard they went down fairly easily. They compensated by firing first and firing often. This had worked for them in the battle in the entry hall. By the time they were done all eighty of the villains in the hall were done, along with the demonic reinforcements. Only about two dozen of the aliens had fallen.
They moved into the halls, heading for the teleportation room. That was telling—they knew where they were going and they weren't able to teleport directly in.
Once they hit the hallway they sprang the first of my traps. The power-neutralizing cannons. Blasts slammed into the first few of the Swarm and they dropped, the lights on their suits flickering madly. The line behind them opened fire.
It took only seconds for that line of defense to be overwhelmed. There were just too many of them and their weaponry too destructive.
I already had drones in the main hall dragging Swarm bodies into side rooms. Once we relayed the coordinates to Voltara they vanished in a blue electrical flash.
The Swarm moved on. They were into Partygurl's lair now, and my first vacuum traps hit them. If they were affected by the hallucinogenic fumes they gave no sign, and they didn't seem to require oxygen. A blast of their weapons tore apart the environmental containment seals.
My defenses just weren't doing anything of note, so far.
"We may need to evacuate you," I said to Gloom.
"I'm not a runner. I don't care what the little glow bugs are trying. I am the mistress of darkness! The avatar of the night! The damned queen of dark power," Gloom said.
If she wanted to change her name now, it wasn't happening.
The Swarm had moved on. They were underwater now, moving through the flooded level, and looked sluggish. They apparently hadn't prepared for that environment and weren't doing well in it.
A shark caught one Swarm with a laser blast that sent it hurtling back. They were losing more.
We had an incoming comm signal on Voltara's frequency.
When I opened the line it wasn't her. Instead a cheerful-looking young woman in a lab coat appeared.
"Don't tell me you analyzed their armor already?" I asked.
"What? No, of course not. We're good, but we're not that good. Their airships on the other hand ... We've been looking at those since they first appeared and your close scans revealed something new about their shielding. They're distributing part of the impact from your attacks through a dimensional transition. Charged physical rounds will bypass, sending you specifications."
"This is good stuff," Niles said.
"Will it help us right now?" I asked.
"Well, no. But in a day I can rig us up some gauss cannons making use of this. One of their ships comes near us, we'll take it right out of the sky."
That wasn't a huge boost when we needed help right now. The way things were looking they would push right through our remaining defenses and put Gloom at risk.
Fortunately, we knew someone that could help. It meant making a call I didn't like.
I said, "Reach out to the Council. Send them all the data we've collected. The Swarm are in danger of taking another S-Class, but with this information and an extra day we can come out ahead. It is time to deploy Yesterday."
Yesterday was one of the weakest members of STRONG, and not an A-Class. She had escaped the abductions, and her ability to travel back in time a day was exactly what we needed.
23
You don't really feel time being reset, even when you are aware that it has been. According to records provided by Yesterday we'd taken Mastermind Tower and slammed it into a hive, attacked a research lab on the hero side, and then largely failed to fend off a momentous Endless Swarm counter attack—all within a twenty-four span that had now been undone.
Instead of doing all that, which all sounded rather exciting, we were playing diplomat and hosting a large delegation of heroes. There was Cascadia Roe, acting head of the Council for our region, along with Doctor Kento who was one of their experts in dimensional science. On our side Voltara had decided to come out of hiding and within a few hours transformed an entire building into a lab and manufacturing facility. She still preferred to live on her submarine though.
What they were researching was what we'd apparently discovered about the potential of gauss cannons. Now they were building weapons to fight the Endless Swarm.
We were gathered in an underground amphitheater covered with signal blockers, invited to see a demonstration. A mixed team of heroes and villains had shown up, and Deanna was from Emmatech made an appearance as well.
I was with her, Ox, and Niles as we watched things play out.
"Thanks to what we've uncovered, we've been able to devise weapons to better take down Swarm ships and structures. While energy shielding is something that we commonly make use of, they rely on what we'll call dimensional shielding," Voltara said, pointing to a shimmering slab of green metal rigged with wires.
"This is theoretically capable of distributing all damage taken to different dimensions, although for some reason they don't seem to be doing that on a large scale," Doctor Kento said.
Deanna spoke quietly enough that only our group heard. "Good reason for that, they don't want to overload their connection. The portal in and out to this dimension is already unstable from everything they've done."
"Can we utilize that? Seal it away and cut them off?" Niles asked.
"Sure," Deanna said with a shrug. "That's the easiest solution to your whole problem, really. Of course, their forces here would still be able to fight indefinitely, and you
'd lose forever those they kidnapped."
I still wasn't entirely convinced we'd be able to get them back anyways. We'd done a lot so far, and I was pleased with the progress that we'd made, but in terms of rescuing our people we didn't feel any closer.
"Here is a section of dimensionally shielded armor plate with an extremely high distribution load," Voltara said, taking a few steps back. Electricity began to spark and writhe around her body and from an extended hand lightning flew. The enormous discharge almost overloaded all my sensors.
Voltara was an S-Class, and her powers reflected that. While she might not be the raw destructive force that someone like Disaster could be, Voltara was still incredibly dangerous. However, the armored plate appeared undamaged.
That caused gasps from the audience.
"Little bit of a lie here," Deanna whispered. "That is nowhere close to her full power. She is pulling the punch. Voltara wants the heroes to think the technology is more effective than it is."
Voltara hadn't told us that. The heroes weren't the only one that she was trying to fool.
"You're being awfully chatty," I said.
"I'm in a good mood. I think you have a real chance of resolving this whole situation without me having to call in the home office," Deanna said.
"I didn't even know you had a home office," Niles said.
"You think I headed up the entire thing? We're ... a company with a lot of moving parts. We don't want to see your reality get destroyed, but moving in the heavy guns is tricky," Deanna said.
Doctor Kento had taken back over the presentation and he was now holding a large cannon. Supporting it one shoulder he took aim. There was a loud whine as the weapon fired and a deafening clang as a massive hole was punched in the armored plate.
"With dimensionally shaped charges we can reduce dimensional distribution by almost ninety percent and focus the damage," Voltara said.
"Let me guess, none of that will actually work?" I asked Deanna quietly.
"Of course it will. They will be able to adapt to it though. Right now the Swarm is relying on that dimensional shielding when they really need it. If they know you've got a way to penetrate it, they'll use more conventional technologies."
So we needed to hit them hard and fast, before they could adapt.
"How long will it take us to make enough guns to really hit these bugs?" Gloom asked loudly.
Voltara and Kento exchanged a look and shrugged.
"We're the science people. Manufacturing is an engineering problem," Kento said.
Cascadia cleared her throat. "If we focus our efforts on it, and can keep villain incursions of our factories at a minimum, we can supply both sides with enough weapons to make a difference in around four days time."
"We can't guarantee what our people will do," I said.
"Speak for yourself. Mine will behave," Voltara said.
Well, of course they would. Relatively speaking she had an easy time of it. Most of her people were now underground in her manufacturing facility. They weren't used to robbing the heroes just to pay their bills.
"I'll put out the word that anyone who hits your weapon factories will get hit back by me, personally. Some will try it anyways. Let me know who they are," Gloom said.
I hated to waste her effort that way, but it probably would be an effective deterrent. Part of the reason Mastermind was able to keep order so well was because it was scarier to oppose him than to work with him.
"We'd rather that extended into a full ceasefire," Cascadia said.
Jules shook her head. "We just don't have enough control to manage that. We can stop some things, but you're just going to have to guard your own banks."
Cascadia grimaced. "This is exactly the sort of thing the Omega protocols are supposed to be for. Still, we'll make it work."
"What is your plan besides building the weapons?" Deanna asked.
"What interest does Emmatech have in this?" Cascadia asked.
"We're your friendly extra-dimensional invasion force. We care, sort of ..."
"Right now their hives and air force remain unacceptable risks. We'll ideally launch a coordinated global assault on all their facilities and put them all down in a clean sweep," Cascadia said.
"I'm aboard for a good fight," Voltara said.
I said, "I thought you wanted to stay out of it?"
Voltara turned her gaze towards the weapon that Kento still held. "Their technology is intriguing. If I am this interested in the few scraps you managed to gather, I'm even more interested in what I'll find inside one of those hives."
Nobody looked all that happy to hear this. Voltara was already dangerous, and with alien technology behind her she'd get even more so.
"Is there anything else we should be aware of fighting a foe like this?" Cascadia asked Deanna.
Deanna said, "The Swarm has already gotten most of what they want from your world. That they are still maintaining a presence here is something of a ... bonus for them. They're looking for some longer term gains on top of an already rich bounty. Give them the incentive, or make them feel that their off-world holdings are threatened, they won't hesitate to destroy this dimension as they leave."
"Is that something they are capable of?" Voltara asked.
Deanna nodded. "It is easier than you think. We call it reality fragmentation. Think of like throwing a fancy glass vase to the floor. The mass of it still exists, but what's left is no longer really a vase."
"What about hitting them off-world and getting our people back?" Cascadia asked.
Deanna shook her head. "I can't recommend you even try. It isn't just beyond your capabilities—it's unwise even if you were capable of it. Consider them lost and move on."
I wasn't going to do that. For one thing, I didn't much want to work under Gloom the rest of my days. We needed Mastermind back.
I thought it was possible. Deanna said it was beyond our capabilities, but Mastermind had pointed us towards Patriot. Patriot was going to be the key.
We had four days until the global assault. In that time we had to reach and subdue Patriot, master its technology, and prepare a rescue attempt. We had to do all of that without letting the heroes or Emmatech know what we were up to, because it sounded like either might stop us.
I was up for the challenge.
24
"This suit itches," Gloom complained.
We'd fitted her with the first of our new generation nanotech super-suits, a design utilizing a variation of the black goo that attached itself to Jules when we breached level twenty-seven. It wasn't just good protection, it was good advertising.
It was the first product being released from our new research division which we'd put Ox in charge of, with a fair bit of help from Niles.
We were billing it as the last suit you'd ever need to wear. Self-repairing, self-cleaning, and of course changeable into anything that one might require. The fact that we had it ready to go so soon was a result of almost all the work already being done. The only thing we hadn't been able to modify was the color shifting.
So far for Gloom, though, her suit was a constant, steady black. It might have been because of her power, but I liked to think it was because of the emptiness of her heart.
"Just try it. I spent a lot of time trying to get this right," Niles said.
Gloom rolled her eyes and said, "Mirror form."
Up and down along her body the suit rippled, becoming armor made of countless tiny mirrored plates.
"That looks good," Jules said.
"I look like a disco ball. Not even a slutty disco ball, which is the only way to make it look good. I'm allowed to show some leg, you know," Gloom said, looking herself over.
"We're trying to protect you from light-based weaponry. Not get you a date," Niles said.
"We could do both. Hogfather isn't working out. Have you tried making out with a guy with tusks?" Gloom said.
Jules winced. "That is what happens with the dating scene in this city. Do you have any idea ho
w hard it is to find a normal guy?"
"Yeah. They just don't exist."
Niles looked between them both, a touch incredulously. They didn't seem to notice.
"What about your tool settings?" I asked.
Gloom let out a long sigh and flicked her wrist. "Lock-pick."
The sleeve of her suit rippled as a lock-pick formed in the palm of her hand.
"Nice," Jules said.
"If I want to get through a door I'm just going to tear it apart with shadow tentacles. What kind of loser picks locks?"
Niles seemed like he was about to speak again and instead turned his attention back to his tablet where he studied the nanite readouts.
Gloom really was kind of insufferable, and yet she was the lynchpin of everything we needed to do here.
"You understand the plan?" I asked.
"What is to understand? See things. Murder things. Knock hole in floor and repeat process until I'm fighting war equipment forming out of midair, or unfortunately named supers," Gloom said.
Patriot had kept a team of A-Class somehow stored along with all of their equipment. Given the lack of dimensional shifts recorded in that vicinity, those supers had probably escaped abduction.
"If you get into trouble, withdraw. We'll be coming down behind you and securing each floor as you go," Jules said.
Patriot with its energy-to-matter conversion abilities could quickly bring a lot of force to bear, and theoretically could reclaim a lost level quickly. I could also upgrade a floor all at once according to a host of options.
As I thought on that a tugging sense at one edge of my awareness came.
I pulled up a display.
Power Status Updates
Second Business Acquired: Hench for Hire
Subsidiary Status Removed: Mastermind Incorporated
Subsidiary Status Added: Gloom Incorporated
Current Power Rating E3
Estimated Power Rating D5
Current Primary Power: Capitalism
Primary Power Specialty: Appraisal