by wildbow
“No weapons? Costume?”
I used my subtler bugs, but he was already packing away the rifle in record time, then swiftly moving away from the roof’s edge. He brushed away my bugs as they converged, kicked a hatch open with his foot, then climbed inside with a speed that almost made me think he’d fallen. Only the fact that the hatch closed firmly after him convinced me otherwise.
The only way he’d have evaded the swarm like that was if he’d known what I was doing.
“No costume,” I said. “He brushed away the bugs before I could get anything substantial, but I think… glasses? And a dress shirt. I think he noticed what my bugs are doing. That’s rare.”
“We’ve got trouble,” Prefab said. I realized he was using his phone. “Sniper on a rooftop nearby. Possible thinker. Barricades should make for safe elevator exit.”
“We’re on our way up,” Rime said, through the speaker. “Four capes and the containment box. Hold position, play safe. If Pretender arranged a jailbreak, he won’t have just one person working under him. Arriving in eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one…”
The elevators opened. Rime, Arbiter, Vantage and Usher made their way out, wheeling a box along with them.
“Password?” Prefab asked.
“Twenty-three-aleph-pater-newfoundland-washington-vikare,” Rime said. “Arbiter’s group is already confirmed, they haven’t left my sight. First half of your first password?”
“Eight-nine-three-scion,” he responded. “And the other two are clear.”
“Good. Let’s move. A hand?”
Prefab gave Rime a hand in moving the box. It couldn’t have been comfortable: four feet by six feet by four feet. Enough to stand in, but not enough to lie down. The thing had four wheels, and was dense enough that it took some muscle to get it up the ramp. I would have joined in, if I didn’t fear I would get in the way more than I’d help. I wasn’t the strongest person around. Fit, yes, but not strong.
Instead, I focused on bringing my butterflies back. I couldn’t get them all back in time, but a loss of a hundred or so wasn’t a tragedy.
A loss of all of the butterflies wouldn’t be a tragedy. I’d feel bad, if only because of the trouble Dragon likely went through in acquiring them, but yeah.
Gosh, if they all just happened to die or get left behind, maybe I’d have to use something else. Tragic.
They finally managed to settle the box at the center of the cargo bay, pulling a switch to close clasps at the base of it, lowering a solid metal pillar from the roof to the top of the box.
I doubted it would budge if someone crashed a bus into it.
I called back some of the butterflies closest to me, keeping others around the building with the sniper. He hadn’t set up again.
“I’m worried about that sniper,” I said. “If he was coming after us, why is he giving up so easily? If he wasn’t coming after us, who was he after? A civilian?”
“Identify the building as we get airborne.”
“Through a window?” I asked, looking forward, to the ‘head’ of the craft, that looked out onto the city.
“Bulletproof glass or no, let’s stay away from the windows for now,” Rime said. “Kulshedra, show Weaver what your cameras see.”
Monitors changed from red text on a black background to high-resolution images of the surrounding walls and rooftop, a different image for each one.
A second later, the ramp closed, and we took to the air, the craft vibrating softly.
I studied the monitors, watching, getting a sense of the surroundings and of which buildings corresponded with what I was looking at.
“Kulshedra,” I said, pretty sure I was mangling the name, “The leftmost monitor on your left side. Zoom in, a little up and left. There. Building to the left of the one in the dead center.”
I tapped the screen as the ship highlighted the building in question.
“Good job, Weaver,” Rime said, peering at the monitor.
“Was on the roof, moved below through hatch when I used my bugs. Hasn’t left the building,” I said.
Rime touched her earbud. “Vegas teams, be advised, armed individual in a building at… 125 West Sahara.”
“It’s port,” Leister murmured to me.
“Huh?”
“You said ‘left side of the ship.’ It’s port.”
“Isn’t that boats?” I asked.
“Can be aircraft.”
“Best leave it,” Vantage said. “Leister’s a little stubborn.”
“So am I,” I said.
“Maybe ‘tenacious’ is the word you want,” Vantage offered. “There aren’t a lot of people who get knocked out and still manage to win a fight.”
“Are you all this pedantic?” I asked.
Vantage only laughed, though I saw Rime glancing at me, and she didn’t look pleased.
“Alexandria was always hard on us,” Arbiter said. Her voice had a strange tone to it, oddly melodic, “Getting us to focus on grades, extracurricular stuff, on top of what we did as a part of the team.”
“We were challenged to be better than the other teams in everything, academics included,” Vantage said. “But we were the only team with a leader who cared about it.”
“Except the capes in Fresno,” Arbiter said. “I was still a Ward, then.”
Vantage smiled, “Oh yeah. The bastards in Fresno. They caught on, probably because we were complaining so much. Small team, but they started studying like crazy, just so we’d be in second place, academically. Didn’t matter why we were second, Alexandria was still annoyed at us.”
“All those sermons on being top-notch, on acting like the people we wanted to be, and… she turned out to be a monster,” Arbiter said.
“A monster slain by Weaver, here,” Usher spoke.
All at once, I felt very on the spot. Each of the capes here, Rime and Prefab excluded, had worked with Alexandria in some capacity. Except Rime and Prefab were team leaders, and Defiant had commented on how every cape in a position of power had some experience working under the Triumvirate, so even they knew her to some extent.
“Weaver did what had to be done,” Rime said. “Not pretty, not kind, but sometimes you have to use a knife to cut out a cancer.”
All eyes were on me. Nobody was speaking.
“I asked you to come along on this job for a reason, Weaver,” Rime said. “I’ve read the incident reports that involved your interactions with the PRT and the groups under the PRT’s umbrella. The bank robbery, the fundraiser, the theft of the database with the Shadow Stalker kidnapping, and your ultimate surrender, a little over a week ago.”
I nodded, not sure where she was going, not wanting to interrupt.
“On the latter two occasions, you and your team perverted the natural course of justice. You pretended to be defeated by Shadow Stalker in order to ambush the Wards, and you later surrendered, only to get off rather lightly for your crimes.”
“I think I follow,” I said. I glanced at the others, but they were all busy trying not to look like they were listening to our conversation.
Rime nodded, “It’s about—”
The ship lurched, and Rime broke off mid-sentence to catch herself before she fell to the floor. Usher fell and nearly slid across the floor, but Vantage caught him.
“Kulshedra!” Rime shouted, “Report!”
“Incoming fire. Taking evasive maneuvers.”
“The sniper,” I said.
“Not likely,” the ship reported. “Unless the sniper is capable of moving great distances, he is approximately point seven three five miles away. The missile came from a perpendicular direction.”
“Missile?” Leister asked, sounding very alarmed.
“Projectile,” the ship corrected. “Humanoid in shape.”
I saw Leister relax a fraction at that, which I found oddly charming. He was relieved it was just a person. Experience told me that small-to-medium sized explosives were less daunting than the prospect of fighting an un
known parahuman.
“Let me out, Kulshedra,” Rime said. “Before they attack again. Follow my orders on comm channel two.”
The back of the ship cracked open, and wind rushed into the cabin. Several of my butterflies were torn free of their roosts.
“Prefab’s in charge,” Rime said.
“Got it,” Prefab answered.
“Usher?” Rime asked. “Hit me.”
Usher didn’t respond, still struggling a bit with his precarious position, holding on to Vantage’s hand. He did close his eyes, and Rime began to glow, a sheen radiating over her hair, skin and costume.
With that, she was gone, pushing her way out of her seat, leaping and taking flight, flying out of the open hatch.
An instant later, the ship swayed again. Prefab used his power to create a short half-dome over Usher. The back hatch closed, and Usher was finally able to relax, with solid ground and something to hold on to.
“Projectile was rotating rapidly, along both horizontal and vertical axes. Rendering composite image from video footage.”
The monitors showed a gray expanse, but it began to rapidly take shape in what was first a distorted sphere, then a crude face, and finally a face complete with details.
Arbiter, Vantage, Leister and Prefab all groaned in unison. I suspected Usher might have joined in if he had a better angle.
“Fuck you, Pretender,” Vantage muttered. “Fuck you. You had to hire the worst mercenaries possible, didn’t you? You asshole.”
I looked at the image. Not a face I knew, but one I recognized from TV, from the internet, and one very brief encounter.
“That’s B—”
The ship swerved, but it didn’t manage to avoid the hit this time around. This time, the shifting center of gravity was compounded by a sudden impact, heavy enough to cave in the front of the craft. Each and every one of us were thrown out of our seats.
From there, things went south quickly. No longer flightworthy, the ship struggled to maintain altitude. Bugs that had collected on the outside of the ship made me aware of how the jets that had been driving the craft forward were now angling towards the ground. They worked double time to keep the Kulshedra from spinning as it fell and to give downward thrust to counteract the pull of gravity.
Rime’s power froze the Kulshedra in mid-descent, catching it between two buildings, suspended in the midst of a bridge of ice.
The projectile struck us again, from directly above. The ice to our left, our port side, shattered.
“Seatbelts on!” Prefab bellowed. “Hold on tight if you can’t get to one! Deep breath, don’t tense with the impact!”
I climbed up to a point where there were benches, and belted myself in. One over each shoulder, one over my lap. The headrest—it wasn’t there. There was only metal. My butterflies found the real headrest above me. I reached up and found the clasps to lower the softer bundle until it sat at the right height to cushion any impacts.
The ice on our starboard side cracked, an agonizing, gradual break. My heart leaped into my chest as we plunged towards the street below.
The Kulshedra hit ground, and the impact was so heavy my thoughts were jarred out of my head. For long seconds, I couldn’t think, but could only experience, could only feel every part of my body hurt, aches and pains I didn’t know I had magnified by the jolt.
It was a small relief that my passenger didn’t take the opportunity to act without my consent. I was bewildered enough without any added complications, stunned, sore where the straps had pulled against my shoulders and gut.
“Kulshedra!” Prefab shouted. “Lights on!”
“Auxilary offline. Emergency lighting failed in six attempts carried out in two seconds.”
“Uhhhh,” he said, drawing out the sound, “Damage report?”
“A.I. bank one offline. Aux offline. Propulsion offline. Weapons offline. Helm offline.”
“Why are you speaking strangely?” I called out.
“A.I. bank one offline. Advanced linguistics, memory, geography—”
“Enough,” Prefab said, cutting it off.
I almost told him to let it continue, just so we had an idea, but he was the boss.
“Protectorate, Wards, sound off!” Prefab shouted.
“Arbiter. Fine.”
“Vantage, mildly injured,” Vantage said. “My hand.”
“Usher, bleeding from a bad scrape, but otherwise okay.”
“Weaver,” I said. “I’m fine.”
There was a pause.
“Leister?” Prefab asked.
“Mostly okay,” Leister said, but his voice sounded strained. “Took a hit to the gut.”
“Let’s get ourselves sorted out,” Prefab said. “If you can reach your phones, use them for light. There’s an exec on the second page, if you haven’t mucked with them to add ten pages of games.”
“Don’t—” Leister said, still sounding odd, “Don’t diss the games, when you make us sit around waiting for stuff all the time.”
I didn’t get a phone yet, I thought. But hey, I’ve got the damn butterflies.
At my order, the butterflies that had been clustered on the outside of their cage took flight, spreading out over the ship’s interior.
I spoke, “Kulshedra. Roof got crushed, lights with them, am I right?”
“Yes.”
“No lights in floor?”
“Not at present. Standard floor fixtures in Kulshedra model precursor were removed for containment box fixtures. Lights included.”
“Any power to monitors?”
“Yes.”
“Video footage of exterior, stat,” Prefab ordered, cutting in.
Monitors flickered to life. One in three showed only the ground beneath us, and another third were broken.
“Change the focus of any monitor displaying only asphalt,” I said.
“A.I. bank one is offline. Discrimination no longer possible.”
“Monitors with video from any camera on the ship’s upper half.”
“Restate, please,” the A.I. said.
“Nevermind,” I said. “Um. Nine working cameras, four on port side, five on starboard, am I right?”
“Yes.”
I worked on unbelting myself, ensuring my legs were fixed in the bars beneath the bench, so I wouldn’t fall. “Label monitors with numbers from one to nine.”
One by one, the monitors displayed numbers instead of the video feed.
“Weaver—” Prefab said. “This isn’t helpful. We need information on our surroundings.”
“No immediate threats nearby, according to my swarm,” I told him, checking with my bugs. “Ship, monitors one, three and seven weren’t displaying a usable feed. Restore a feed to each other monitor.”
The videos reappeared.
“Monitors two, six and eight are broken and are not displaying anything coherent. Display white instead, maximum brightness, on those screens and any ones not displaying any video.”
Monitors lit up. It wasn’t much, but it was marginally better than what the Protectorate-issue phones were granting.
“How the hell do you know your way around this thing?” Vantage asked. I could see him below me, one hand outstretched, the other held behind his back.
“Defiant and Dragon have been ferrying me between the PRT and court, and between prison and these little field exercises, so I’ve gotten a sense of them,” I said. “And I fought a bunch of others back in Brockton Bay. You figure them out, kind of.”
“I saw that bit about Dragon’s visit to Brockton Bay in the news,” Vantage said. “Here, fall.”
I twisted myself around until I hung by my hands, then let myself drop from the bench. Vantage caught me with the one hand.
The others were getting themselves sorted out. A few minor injuries, but it wasn’t as bad as it could be.
My head snapped around as our opponent landed just outside the ship. She let go of her companions, setting them down on the ground beside her.
“H
ellooooo,” a girl’s voice sounded over the system. I had to turn around, checking all of the cameras, before I found the one where she was displayed, upside down.
“Ship, flip monitor, um, monitor four, one-eighty-degrees vertical,” I said.
It flipped the right way around. I could see a young girl on the opposite side. She was flanked by two other small children, one a male with a widow’s peak and a severe expression for his age, ten or so, the other a girl of about twelve, in overalls that ended at the knee, a star at the chest, and far too much makeup.
“Fuck me,” Vantage muttered. “Bambina brought her team.”
“Come out and plaaaaay,” Bambina called out. A second later, she leaped. The small detonation that followed in her wake was quenched by the appearance of Rime’s ice crystals.
“Sniper’s active,” Rime’s voice came through the earbuds. She was panting. “Deliberate, accurate shooter. I’ve taken three bullets, ice armor took most of the force out of the shots. Bambina is accompanied by Starlet and August Prince, um. Shooter’s shots ricochet. Can’t dodge. There’s wounded just outside craft. Traffic caught underneath when you fell.”
“Stop talking and get inside,” Prefab said.
“Can’t close the gap to the Kulshedra without getting shot again. He’s cutting me off.”
“Use crystals to form a wall, get inside, damn it,” Prefab said.
“Ricochets,” Rime stressed. “I—shit!”
I found her with my bugs, setting them on her costume. “She’s okay, just fleeing from Bambina and Starlet. The shooter doesn’t seem to be targeting the kids.”
“My power makes her immune to Bambina,” Usher said.
“Maybe to the explosions,” I said. “But the impact? Or something else?”
He frowned.
“They’re not on the same side,” Arbiter said. “The shooter and the child villains.”
“Good,” Prefab said. “Let’s—”
Bambina collided with the Kulshedra again. It rocked, nearly tipping over onto one side.
“Kulshedra,” Prefab said, “open ramp!”
The ramp opened, and I sent the butterflies out. Nothing substantial, but it was something.
Okay, not really. But it was an opportunity to lay out some silk. I emptied the reserves I had contained in my costume.