Full Metal Superhero Box Set [Books 1-6]

by Haskell, Jeffery H.

  Not that I think she will understand me but maybe she’ll realize I’m trying to communicate with her. She gestures toward me in a ‘come here’ motion with her hands.

  I don’t even know if she understands human gestures—her motion could mean anything—but I try to make her understand by pointing at my legs and shaking my head back and forth.

  She cocks her head to the side, eyes narrowing. Okay, she doesn’t understand. At least she has an excuse, being alien and all.

  “My legs don’t work,” I explain. I lift one leg, drop it back to the deck and then do the same to the other. It isn’t as if they look like healthy human legs. Even with my physical therapy and the induced exercise my armor gives me, they are still far smaller than proportional. Of course, an alien might not realize that. My demonstration seems to have explained it to her though.

  She walks toward me, hands out, palms up and slides her arms under me. I wince for a second, fear coming back to me as she lifts me up off the ground with no more effort than Luke would have exerted.

  Oh, God. Luke! He’s got to be freaking out right about now. I wish I could contact him, let him know I’m okay. She says something to me that I still don’t understand but I take the hint. I put one arm around her shoulder to stabilize myself as she carries me out of the cell, or room, I’m not sure yet.

  We’re on a spaceship; I can tell that much. The air is dry and cold, the deck is flat and the walls curve in. If I had to guess, it’s a small ship. I’m not sure how aliens would classify vehicles, but maybe a scout ship of some kind? The metal in front of us just flows and forms a doorway into the cockpit. I need to study that. Liquid metal? That means molecular instability in structurally dense material. Rearranging molecules with nanites maybe? Or electrical frequency? I almost miss the room she carries me into I’m so busy examining the door as it flows closed behind us.

  Blue light shines from in front of us. I face forward to see what it is and I let out a gasp. We’re in high orbit. I can see almost the entire Earth from the view screen. The moon hangs in the distance on its unending journey around my home.

  She motions with her head and a chair forms out of the deck for me to sit. She places me gently in the new seat; it slides around under me as it conforms to my shape. I giggle from the tickling the dull metal gives me as it strives to fit perfectly.

  My head spins at the possibilities of a metal that can reshape on the fly! I could have armor that flowed around me like a liquid—it would be much lighter. Or maybe use it as a second skin under a hardened surface? The possibilities are limitless.

  She sits down opposite, leaning toward me like she wants to share a secret. Her eyes glow fiercely in the dim cockpit, casting an orange hue on everything. The light of her eyes warms my skin where it touches. It grows even brighter, and I try to close my eyes, but I can’t. Panic grips me for a second, and I start thinking she’s going to eat me or something, then the light vanishes.

  The alien’s skin flows like the metal of the ship, her body reshaping, and when it finishes… she’s still a work of art: beautiful golden hair, sun-kissed skin, and eyes so blue I could mistake them for colored LED’s. She looks more than a little like me, or an idealized version of me. Small, pert, thin, but with features a lot like my own. For a heartbeat, she’s naked, perfect as a painting and anatomically correct, before her uniform returns to cover her now human-shaped body.

  “Hi,” I say with a smile and a wave.

  Her mouth opens, but her perfectly formed lips just flap up and down for a second. She clears her throat and begins again…

  I take a deep breath and breathe out as I speak in an exaggerated manner. “Hello. My name is Amelia.”

  She breathes in deeply through her nose. “H—hello… M—my name is… Aaaah-meeeel-yuuuuh,” she says with a smile. Her voice even sounds a little like me.

  “Very good. But that’s my name,” I point at my chest. “What is your name.” I point at hers. She mimics my movements for a moment. I’m still marveling at how she changed her shape. Matahal had done something similar but I’d assumed he’d used tech to do it, not that he’d been an actual shape changer.

  “Ahhhh-gaaaaah-steeeeen-aaaaa.” She says as if the sounds are foreign to her. She’s a quick learner. Maybe it has something to do with taking our shape? I know the sounds she made before were nothing like human speech. Or at least very little like it. There was sound but also light, and I’d really like to know how she pulled that trick off.

  I rolled her sounds around in my mind for a second before I tried repeating them back to her. “Augustina?”

  She nods emphatically, a smile spreading on her lips. “Augusteeeena.” She says again, frowning. “Augustina!” She smiles. “Augustina.”

  “Okay,” I chuckle. “Augustina.”

  She nods. “Augustina Looo-seee-aaaaa-nnnn-aaaa.”

  I think about it for a second. “I’m Amelia Lockheart and you are, Augustina Luciana?” She nods again, smiling even bigger than before.

  “Augustina Luciana Maaaa-xiiim-maaaa.” She says again then pointing at me.

  “Augustina Luciana Maxima?”

  She nods.

  “We’re getting somewhere, but at this rate, it could take a while. Can you understand me at all?” She nods a little, her smile slipping somewhat. “That’s what I thought. This… is going to take a while.”

  “Take a while…” she says almost perfectly.

  And it does. We spend I don’t know how long, but the fact that I hadn’t eaten since I left for Texas earlier this morning starts to become an issue about the time she puts whole sentences together. She learns exceptionally fast, but I still can’t go through every possible word or phrase and their meaning with her. I don’t know how big my vocabulary is, but teaching English to an alien isn’t one of my skills.

  “Augustina? Can you turn off the…?” She has ECM of some kind, but I’m not sure what her people call it. I take a swing. “Shields? My friends could find me. Then we could do this a lot quicker.”

  “Sheeee-iiiiilds.” She plays with the word for a moment.

  “Yes, the thing around your ship hiding you.” I assume it’s hiding her; otherwise, Kate would have been here in a New York minute and I’d already be home watching Star Trek and having a make-up make-out with Luke!

  She shakes her head, pointing to the screen. I shrug. “I don’t understand.”

  A control panel flows into existence in front of her and she carefully hunts and pecks commands like she only just learned to fly this thing. The screen flickers and the moon is much larger now. She points again.

  “Uh, you can’t turn off the shields because of the moon?”

  She brightens for a second then deflates. Her head moves around in different directions like she’s trying to figure out the right gesture to tell me something.

  “Wait… something behind the moon?” I ask. I try and mime circling the moon. I must have done a good enough job because she nods enthusiastically.

  “Beee-hiiii-nnnnn-ddddd.” Her speech patterns are somewhat painful to endure. Or maybe not painful, just really dang annoying.

  “Show me.”

  She presses a button which immediately sounds an alarm and she frantically pushes another then another until it shuts off.

  “Do you know how to fly this thing?”

  She looks at me sideways as if she were evaluating my words. “Fuuu-liiiie.”

  I shake my head. “Never mind. Just show me.”

  She presses the right button this time and the ship starts to move out of orbit. I open my mouth to object when it swings wide to come back around the dark side of the moon. My mouth stays open in shock.

  There are too many ships to count hidden behind the moon. I can easily make out the drones since I’ve fought so many. Pointing at one I start to ask her a question but the screen surprises me when it automatically zooms where I point. A glance at her says she’s as surprised as me. I move the screen around; there are seven more drone
s, two larger ships that look more like cigars than what I imagine advanced starships look like. Dozens of smaller craft, maybe screening elements used to defend the bigger ships from close in assault? And a few boxy vessels that could be transports. No wonder NASA didn’t see them coming; they’re already here and with the moon hiding them, they might as well be invisible. What are they waiting for?

  “You can’t turn off the shields because they will see you?” I ask her.

  “Yes,” she says, jumping at the sound of her own voice and pressing a hand against her throat like she was surprised she could speak. She’s not the only one.

  “And I take it you’re not with them?”

  She shakes her head, frowning.

  “Th’un.” She points at the screen. “Lux.” She points at herself.

  I glance once more at the fleet. “I’m going to need a bigger suit,” I say with a sigh. “Augustina.” I turn to her, “I need to go home. My people need me.”

  “My people need you,” she replies.

  “No. I mean my people need…” Oh. I get it. “What do you mean your people need me?”

  She turns back to the panel, hunting for the right buttons before she pushes one, then another. A screen pops up with my picture. Well, Arsenal’s picture, with an image of me underneath it. I don’t recognize the language but the file is obviously a negative review. The words are in red and there is a bright red symbol over me.

  “Warrant,” she says. Then she shakes her head and tries again. “Death-warrant.” She smiles.

  “That isn’t something you smile about. Did the Th’un make this?” I gesture toward the screen.

  “Yes. Supreme Commander signed your death warrant. I come to get you to save my people.”

  A death warrant huh? I guess I’m doing something right. “I can’t leave my world defenseless to go help yours. I have to save my people first. Can you help me do that?”

  “Help me,” she says.

  I sigh. “Augustina, I can’t help you. I need to stop them.” I point at the enemy fleet in orbit behind the moon. There are days when I miss my biggest problems being White Rhino and Vixen.

  “Help you. Stop them. Help me?” I think I know what she’s saying.

  “Yes, I’ll help you once I’ve stopped them. Okay?”

  “Oooo-kaaaay.” She smiles as she says the word. I guess it is kind of fun to say.

  “I need to go home, though. I can’t do anything without my armor or my friends.”

  “I can’t go home,” she says.

  “No, I need to go to my home… oh. I’m sorry, I just realized what you mean.”

  “No going home for me,” she says.

  “Can you take me to my home? I have friends and my weapons. We can stop them. Then we will all go to your home and stop them there. Deal?”

  “Du-eeel,” she says. I hold my hand out to her out of instinct. She holds hers out but doesn’t touch mine. I grasp her fingers and squeeze lightly.

  “Deal.”

  90

  The nimble little ship drops through the atmosphere like a bullet. I don’t feel so much as an ounce of added g’s, and I wonder how the tech works. I use my kinetic manipulators to absorb energy, but they aren’t one hundred percent and I still feel the effects of extreme g’s; I can just take a lot more than normal. This ship, though, I don’t feel a thing.

  “Augustina, can I see your engine?”

  “Ennnn-jennnnn?” she asks with a frown.

  Clearly, she knows very little about her people's tech. How is that possible?

  Of course, I nod to myself, I know about tech because I study it, but I don’t have to understand how a car works to operate it. Are the Th’un like that as well? Maybe they steal tech from cultures and adapt what helps them and discard the rest. Like what they were going to do with Behemoth.

  A fresh stab of guilt runs through me. I shake my head. She got what she deserved. I didn’t kill her, but then why do I feel so guilty? Epic would tell me I’m being illogical. Of course I am! I’m human. No one is actually logical. Everyone is just as irrational as the next person. We just happen to find moments of logic here and there.

  The ship exits the upper atmosphere slicing through the air like a knife. Within seconds we’re flying over the Pacific Ocean fast enough that the waves are a blur.

  “I live in Arizona… but how to tell you that?”

  “Air-eeeee-zo-nnnnnaaaaaa.” Great. I try pointing at the screen and sure enough, a magnified view pops up. I can see California. From there it isn’t too hard to find Los Angeles then follow Interstate 10 to Phoenix. The journey only takes minutes and relief floods through me. I’ve never been so happy to see someplace in my whole life. As hot as Phoenix is, it’s home.

  “That way,” I say. “Slow down.”

  She gives me that cockeyed look, her eyes seeming to examine me for a second like she’s trying to figure out what I’m saying. I pantomime it with my hands, going really fast then slowing down. She nods and smiles. Hunting and pecking again she finds the right command just as Phoenix blasts by underneath. The ship slows, from what had to be Mach Six to a few hundred miles an hour in only a few seconds. Again, I feel nothing. I need Epic to interface with this thing and steal all her secrets.

  “Left,” I tell her. The spire appears in the distance, and my heart swells. She slows down more and I point at the landing pad. The little ship can move in any direction and she slides us into a curving turn but keeps the nose pointed at the landing pad as she sets it down next to the Emjet.

  “Come on. My friends are going to love you.” I gesture for her to pick me up. She pulls herself to her feet, wavering a little as she adjusts to her new form. Sliding her hands underneath me, she picks me up. I put one arm around her shoulders as she lifts. She doesn’t seem as strong as before. I can’t help but wonder why? Maybe her new form is more than just skin deep?

  The walls reform to an exit and stairs flow down to the landing pad. She walks forward, taking each step carefully. The moment her feet touch the ground the air pops.

  “Put my friend down, or I will blow you away,” Kate says in a tone so cold even I freeze.

  “Kate,” I say, shaking my head to remove the fear effect she just pulled. “It’s okay, she’s a friend. I think.”

  “Amelia, she kidnapped you. Friends don’t kidnap friends,” Kate says. Augustina turns slowly to face her. Orange light leaps from Augustina to envelope Kate for a second.

  “Don’t move, she’s just scanning you,” I hurriedly tell Kate.

  “I don’t like it,” she says plainly. Kate has her usual uniform on, with her long black hair in a braid. Her twin Ion-Pistols point squarely at our new friend. The light fades as Augustina’s body morphs underneath me. I feel flesh reforming, bones moving. She gains three inches, some muscle on her shoulders and other, um assets, grow as well. Now she resembles both Kate and I. Weird.

  “She’s a shapeshifter; is she one of them?”

  “I’m Lux,” she says. Her voice has more of a soprano now than my alto.

  “Really, Kate, she’s okay.”

  “Maybe.” Kate twirls her pistols before sliding them tightly into the custom holsters I built for her. She’s also wearing the swords I gave her. They must really be on high alert.

  “Can I borrow your goggles for a moment?” Kate slips them off her head and hands them to me. I point Augustina toward the door. “That way.” She gives Kate one more glance before complying.

  “Why did she take you?”

  “Her people intercepted a communiqué from the Th’un calling for my death.” Kate’s eyes go wide. “I know right? So cool,” I say with a grin.

  She shakes her head. “That isn’t the word I’d use.”

  “Anyway, they sent her to collect me, thinking I could help them defeat the Th’un on her world,” I say over her shoulder. “I think we’ve come to an accord.”

  “Mm-hmm.” Kate’s eyes narrow and I can tell she doesn’t buy it. That’s my Kate, su
permodel, ex-CIA agent, superhero.

  I slip her goggles on and Epic’s words leap onto the augmented reality.

  Amelia! Are you okay?

  “Hi, Epic. I missed you too. And yes, I’m okay.” Augustina hesitates for a moment at the elevator door when it slides open instead of flowing apart. She looks at me and opens her mouth, but I interrupt.

  “I’m not talking to you.” She cocks her head to the side. I shake mine. How to explain that I’m talking to Epic? “Listen, I want you to—” I look at Augustina for a second. She can understand my words and maybe some of my meaning but there’s no way she could understand movie references “—I want you to go Mr. Scott on our guest’s ship. Understood?”

  Affirmative. I will figure out what makes it tick.

  “That’s my boy. I’m giving Kate back her goggles. We’ll talk soon.”

  “Luke’s here,” Kate says. “He came running, sounding the alarm when you vanished. He’s worried sick.”

  “Oh, good.” The elevator doors slide shut behind us. “Where is he?”

  “Conference room.”

  I nod to the control panel. Kate takes the hint and slaps the button.

  “Might I say, it is agreeable to see you again, mum,” Milton says from the speakers. I smile. At least I know my AIs miss me.

  “You too, Milton. I’m starving. Can you have the kitchen whip us up some ham and cheese sandwiches?”

  “Of course.”

  The doors slide open and Luke is there. He’s a wreck, bags under his eyes and his clothing looks slept in.

  “Amelia!” He charges in and takes me from our guest. I push my face into the crook of his neck and just breathe in his scent. He holds me tight against him and I feel home.

  “Ahem.” Kate interrupts.

  “Right. Luke.” I pull my face back to look into his crystal blue eyes. “This is Augustina.” I nod at our guest. “She’s an alien from a planet called Lux.”

  Luke’s eyes narrow at the blonde alien as if he’s calculating exactly how much force it would take to throw her through the wall.

  “Down, boy. She didn’t mean any harm by it, and if I’m right, she might just be the key to stopping the Th’un. But first, a change of clothes and some food, then we need to call the team together. There’s something I have to share with everyone.”