Full Metal Superhero Box Set [Books 1-6]

by Haskell, Jeffery H.

  Glacier steps up, cracking her icy neck as she holds her hands out. She looks over to TK with a nod. Tessa falls to one knee, blood dripping from her nose. She’s a powerful telekinetic but everyone has limits. I know from personal experience in LA that Rocket’s fireballs are crazy powerful.

  “Do it,” Glacier yells. Domino grabs TK and rolls into the hole, followed by Fleet. Carlos hesitates but I reiterate my point with a finger jab. He nods and leaps in. I don’t know what they’re going to find in there, but we need someone who can handle physical threats with them and with us. We get Tia, they get the Protector.

  The shield falls; I brace myself for the inferno, but I shouldn’t have worried. Glacier unleashes icy hell on the fire. The flames vanish almost as suddenly as they appeared as she absorbs the heat from them while spraying blue freeze rays back the way they came.

  I have to say, it’s disconcerting to see a living ice sculpture sweat. Once the flames die down I can see who attacked us.

  I have identified them as the Death Dealers. The mercenaries you faced in Los Angeles. Rocket and Hand Cannon are the two you know, the other two are Thrash and Multiplex.

  Multiplex huh? He joined with these dorks.

  Hand Cannon is the douche dressed like a logger, with his stupid beard down to his chest. Rocket swings around wide, blasting away from us, having exhausted himself for the moment against both Tessa’s shield and Glacier’s ice.

  Multiplex looks exactly the same, down to the worn-out clothes he was wearing when we last saw him in California.

  Thresh is the unknown to me. He’s six feet tall and broad-shouldered, with a buzz cut and mirror shades. His outfit looks like it belongs in a post-apocalyptic movie—it’s all leather and chains.

  “Epic, what’s the rundown on Thresh?” I ask as Lux and I take to the air.

  He is an F5 strongman with impervious skin. He can also control any metal he touches, bend it into shapes etc. I do not recommend going hand to hand with him. That may be why he is here. If he touches the suit...

  Epic doesn’t have to finish that thought. Two supers who can affect metal; Multiplex can absorb the properties and now Thresh can control it. Yeah, this doesn’t feel personal at all.

  I pepper the ground around them with HE grenades to disperse them and drive their attention to me. The last thing I need is Hand Cannon blasting Glacier.

  “Lux, deal with Hand Cannon. Glacier, freeze up Multiplex. I’ll take Rocket...”

  “What about me?” Tia asks. I can tell she’s nervous—her vitals are all over the place. It’s one thing to be a police officer and know that bullets will just bounce off you. It’s entirely another thing when dealing with other superpowered people.

  “Epic will give you the skinny on Thresh, take him downtown!” I yell.

  Rocket swings around, blasting through the sound barrier with a roar of fire and heat as he heads right for me. If I recall, he can’t bank worth a damn at speed.

  I don’t have time to watch the fight below, I trust the team to handle themselves and communicate as needed. I also trust Epic to steer us in the right direction.

  I fly a straight line away from Rocket, leading him north and putting distance between him and the team. I don’t want any flame blasts accidentally hitting my people.

  I barrel roll over a fireball the size of a house that passes close enough to turn my world red before exploding. The temperature on the outside of the suit skyrockets as I fly through the explosion.

  “Epic, since when can he do that?”

  It is entirely possible they have come into contact with the Red Gem.

  “Awesome. We used the Kinetic Lance to take him down last time—let’s see if that works again. Also, make a note, we need a flameproof variant for the MK VI.”

  Note made.

  I spin in the air, looking back the way I came from to bracket him in the crosshairs. His face fills my view and he’s smiling?

  Oh crap—

  A hand the size of a train car slams into me. Alarms scream in my ear as the kinetic shields are tasked to the absolute limit. I hit the ground, digging a furrow in the dirt five hundred feet away from where I was.

  Amelia, move!

  Right. I shake my head and hit the Emdrive, shooting out of the place I was when a fireball explodes in the same spot, torching everything around it. Colossal has joined the fray. I should have known he was here too. Clever, hiding their giant man until I was occupied.

  “Okay, now you’re really pissing me off. Epic, go auto on the grenade launcher.”

  I reach behind me and pull out the BFG. I’m done with these guys. They are playing for keeps and so will I. Epic cycles the double barrel grenade launcher. The boom of HE grenades impacting with Colossal echoes around me, dampened by my helmet. I blast off, giving the rifle a second to fully expand. He’s tough when a giant, but he’s not indestructible.

  “Epic, give me some noise,” I say. The HUD confirms my PA set to one-hundred and twenty decibels. “If you don’t surrender right now, the gloves come off.” Please oh please, surrender. I know I can take them out, I just don’t want to.

  I glance over at Tia. The air shimmers around her as she holds up both her arms in front of her like a shield. Thresh lands blow after blow against her forearms. At first, they push her back, her feet sliding through the dirt. His sixth blow doesn’t move her, the seventh stops like he hit a brick wall. She drops her arms, a lopsided grin spreading across her face.

  “Don’t hit me again,” she says.

  “Or what?” he asks.

  “I’ll hurt you.”

  He laughs, reeling back with his fist and throwing the punch of his life at her. She doesn’t even flinch. The crack of thunder echoes across the island along with debris and dust exploding out around her. Thresh’s hand shatters as it hits her face. He takes a step back, a long keen wailing emitting from him as he clasps his broken hand. He stumbles back, falling to one knee.

  Tia takes two steps forward, holds out her hand with her middle finger trapped by her thumb, then flicks him in the head.

  Thresh flies back like he’s shot out of a cannon. Digging a furrow in the island a hundred feet long. He doesn’t move when he comes to a rest.

  Multiplex kneels down and absorbs some of the material the island is made of; his skin goes dark gray as he turns into the metal. He cracks his neck and ten of him appear, all made of the metal. They charge Tia with a howl of rage.

  I don’t have time to watch her take him as Colossal picks that moment to regain his footing. He brings a hand down on me. I roll over, shoulder my rifle, and fire.

  The grenades only distracted him; apparently, he’s upgraded his powers. But then again, so have I.

  The BFG spits out a ten-millimeter slug of nickel-iron encased tungsten at five-thousand feet per second. The whine of the discharge splits the air and fire leaps from the barrel to Colossal’s hand. The bullet hits with a deafening crack as it explodes through his palm and out the other side. His scream of pain is as big as he is. If it weren’t for my helmet it would be earsplitting.

  Rocket crashes into me, wrapping his arms around my waist as he plows us into the ground. The temperature alarm screams at me as we shoot past two-thousand degrees. Yep, he certainly upgraded his powers.

  “I’m gonna enjoy pealing you out of your melting suit, bitch,” he says. His voice sounds like crackling flames.

  “Why you got to make it about my gender, dick,” I say back. “You really shouldn’t have come in close.” I slap my hands over his ears. “Full power IP cannons!” The sandpaper staccato fills the air as they discharge directly into his brain. His big advantage was how fast he was and how hard that made it to hit him.

  He screams and spazzes, his whole body going into uncontrollable convulsions. His powers shut off immediately, followed by him letting go. I don’t; I keep pumping the energy into his brain until his eyes roll up in his head.

  “Amelia, we’ve haven’t found Strungel, but the controls
are all locked out,” Kate says. “We can’t stop the launch from here. Carlos is trying to rip his way into the launch room and disable it manually.”

  I toss Rocket away from me. He lands on the ground in a twitching crumpled mass. “Strungel has to be here—”

  Colossal isn’t out of the fight yet. He slaps me with his good hand, clearing a hundred feet of jungle and sending me flying, skipping over the water like a stone.

  The ocean splashes around me, covering my visor the second I lose forward momentum. It takes me a heart-stopping second to clear my head from the idea I’m drowning. The fear that shoots up my spine freezes my breath and forces my eyes shut. It’s okay, it’s okay. I’m not drowning.

  Amelia, your heart rate is all over the place. Deep breaths.

  “That’s kind of the problem, Epic. Get us out of the water, please,” I say almost pleading with him. I know I’m not going to drown, but tell my heart that.

  Epic takes control, shunting power to the Emdrive and blasting us out of the water. In a few seconds, it’s a hundred feet below us.

  “Oh my God...” I hear Kate say. “Amelia... this satellite isn’t an Artemis clone. Epic, can you look at this?”

  On it.

  I’m halfway back to the island when a brilliant light shines over the island and a wave of energy bursts from Colossal’s chest. He goes down with a massive hole burned through his chest. Lux. I hate that she had to do that.

  “Team, I’m having trouble here, help!” Tia asks.

  Hand Cannon is down, frozen solid like a statue, with his finger pointing at the ground. Ha. Jerk. However, there are hundreds of Multiplexes; they’ve dog piled Tia and are slamming their metallic fists into her. Glacier can’t stop to help without being hit by at least one of them, and as hard as they are at the moment, they could really hurt her. She’s freezing them solid as fast as she can, but Multiplex is making more than she can stop.

  I have an idea. “Lux, can you flare up like a star, I mean BRIGHT?” I trigger the polarization on my faceplate.

  “Yes, but it will take a lot out of me. Glacier, you should run.”

  “On it,” she replies. I see her throw out the ice beams in front of her right down to the ocean and then she’s moving as fast as an Olympic speed skater. Five Multiplex’s jump down after her, only to crash through the ice and immediately sink into the ocean.

  “Lux, Glacier’s clear. Do it!”

  Lux zooms past me, blazing a trail brighter than I’ve ever seen her do. She hovers over the island just above Multiplex’s mob.

  “Tia, close your eyes!” Lux yells.

  I want to look away… I really should... but I can’t. Lux lights up. Energy builds up within her and then it’s shining like a star. My polarization goes full black to protect me. Epic puts a lumens meter on my HUD and I gasp from the power display. The meter hits 40,000! That’s twice as bright as magnesium and four times as bright as the sun.

  After a few seconds the light goes out and Lux falls to the ground. I punch it, coming to a landing next to her. A quick scan shows her vitals are healthy for her.

  The Multiplexes are gone—all but one. I imagine he’s the original, unconscious and made of flesh. “Epic, pod him.” The puff-puff of the grenade launcher goes off, sending him floating up into the air. Once he’s high enough, if he tries to spawn any duplicates they’ll just fall to their death.

  “Tia, you okay?” She has her face buried in the ground with her hands over her eyes.

  “That was really frigging bright,” she says.

  “Yeah. Lux is out. Epic, what’s the status of that satellite—”

  The roar of the rocket fills the air as fire shoot ups out of the open hatch. “Crap!” I grab Lux and Tia and punch the jets a second ahead of the blast wave. The rocket roars for a few more seconds before the thrust catches up and it shoots into the sky.

  174

  The boat looms before me and I slow down just enough to drop Lux and Tia on the bow before I turn and burn back the way I came. Epic tags the rocket at twenty-thousand feet and climbing at a stupid velocity of Mach 3. Well, nothing I can’t match!

  Amelia, you must stop that rocket.

  “What has he done?”

  The payload is an experimental satellite of Strungel’s own design. While I cannot be sure, I see traces of your tech from Monica’s belt in it. I hypothesize that if it reaches orbit... he may be able to strip every single person of their superpowers. Forever.

  The ramifications of what Epic says rattle around in my brain. No more superheroes? No more supervillains? That’s an appealing thought.

  I don’t have time to navel-gaze about it. The decision will be taken out of my hands if I don’t punch it. I trigger the Emdrive, flooring it—

  A man in a suit collides with me, his Emdrives whine as he drives me down onto the surface of the island. We slam into the ground with a clang and roll several feet. I regain my footing only to have him open fire with a barrage of rockets. They come to a halt a foot in front of me as my kinetic shields absorb their momentum, then they explode. Fire and debris rattle over me. I put up my arms, expecting an overhead attack; he doesn’t disappoint. He slams down on me, breezing through my shields to crash his mallet into my forearms. I scream in pain as the dense metal dents my armor and sends me flying back.

  He is using his own kinetic shields to counter yours. I had not thought of that as a possibility.

  “Isn’t that what the Armory did?”

  They used the frequency of the shields as a back door, bypassing them. We changed the fluctuations of the shields. He has found a way to counter that.

  More rockets explode around me. “Epic, tank missile!”

  I spin around and come up to my knees, giving Epic a clear shot. The double barrel launcher reconfigures in a heartbeat. The whole suit vibrates as the tungsten Arrow clicks into place before firing.

  Amelia...

  “I see it, fire anyway!”

  Firing.

  The Arrow blasts out. Strungel doesn’t even try to dodge. The weapon impacts his kinetic shields and glances off to shoot up into the sky.

  “Dammit!” I leap up into the sky, forcing him to follow me. He’s in the same suit he used to kill the PNW team. If it really is a version of my MK III suit, then I am certainly faster.

  Amelia, we only have six minutes until the rocket reaches optimal orbital range for the satellite to deploy.

  “No, you don’t,” he yells, speaking for the first time since he engaged me.

  Alarms blare as local gravity goes crazy. Sensors I usually only use in space start leaping off the scale. We slow to a halt before plummeting back down to the island. As soon as we’re hurtling back to Earth, or metal as the case may be, the alarms clear.

  “What the hell is that?”I ask out loud.

  “You’re smart, for a kid. But I’ve spent my life developing weapons for the Government. It was child’s play to take your AG pod and redesign it as a shield.

  I run a hundred ideas through my brain at once. There’s just no way to do what he says he’s done.

  “Strungel. Superheroes do a lot of good, if we didn’t have them when the Th’un attacked, we’d all be dead right now.” I regain control of my fall and reverse my flight, coming to a hover. Maybe, just maybe, I can talk him out of this nonsense.

  He slows to hover fifty feet in front of me. We’re a hundred feet above the island. I sure could use some help.

  “You have no idea what you people have cost me. The pain and suffering you’ve cost everyone. The world will be a better place without superpowers. And you, Amelia Lockheart, are the reason I was able to build my masterpiece. Don’t worry, though, I’ll make sure you have posthumous credit.”

  Great. No talking him out of this. “Particle beam!” I kick in the jets, flying away from him. He dodges hard, his own jets whining as I try and pin him down with the blue beams of death. He’s fast though, and he returns fire with his own particle beams— massive force slams dow
n on me, sending me hurtling to the ground in a lump as I hit the metal deck, bounce, and slide to a halt.

  “What the hell was that?”

  Kinetic Lance. Our shields absorbed most of the energy.

  Damn, if that was most of the energy, I’d hate to see all of it. I have a lot more sympathy for people I’ve hit with it.

  “Someone want to get up here and help me?” I ask.

  “He’s activated some kind of lockdown, flooded the area with EMI. I can’t teleport, and the doors are reinforced. Carlos is trying to force them open but it’s slow going. Sorry, hon. We’re coming.”

  Strungel flies past me, peppering the area with more rockets. The explosions roll me over and I grunt from the sudden pressure.

  “Waiting for your friends? I’m smarter than you, Full Metal Superhero. I’ve anticipated this moment since I planned this little fiat against the world’s super people. Nothing is going to stop me. Nothing!”

  That’s it, I don’t care anymore. I’m taking him out. “Epic, where’s my rifle?”

  Scanning.

  While Epic searches, I lift off, firing a barrage of IP cannons at him, filling the air with the sandpaper staccato. They hit him, but as I expected they just slide right off.

  “I have a counter to every weapon you possess. I’ve been in your computers, your tech, I know it all. How do you think I called down an Artemis strike on your own base? There isn’t anything you can do that I can’t do better. And the best part is? I don’t even have to beat you. Just keep you here for another five minutes.”

  Damned if he isn’t right. Epic has a clock and a map showing me the rocket’s location. His confidence must be from knowing that the satellite will do whatever it is going to do within seconds of attaining orbit.

  I wish I could call him crazy, but he doesn’t sound crazy—just wrong.

  “Epic, could we overload his shields with our own?”

  Theoretically, but it could burn out our systems. There would be massive feedback.

  “Sauce for the Goose, Epic. The odds will be equal. Do it.”