by J D Cortese
Even with the awful tension in the room, Agdinar could sense the familiarity between the two leaders and how they'd managed to engage in small talk until that moment.
“You know,” Rychar said, “we made quite a few deals over the years. I thought we were friends.”
Major Paredes shook his head as if trying to get a fly off him. “Friends? You have taken over half the city and don't want to return it to my governance.”
“You mean the part that you and your pals abandoned after Chinatown?”
“All the city is...it should be under city government.” The Major’s voice was shaky, pushed around by doubt.
“City government is something of the past,” Rychar said, standing close enough to tower over Paredes. “The city is not yours, Eleodoro, and it will not be anyone's for long.”
The Major approached Rychar, turning away from Sarinda and getting close enough to the top Hawk's face that Agdinar saw guns being shuffled and readied for a response. When Paredes spoke, his face was red. “What do you mean, anyone’s?”
“First, I have your daughter,” Rychar said, pointing toward Sarinda without looking. “And second, there will be an evacuation of the entire city, so this whole place won't be anybody's place.”
Guns were pointed at the Major, but he wasn't paying attention. “I want my daughter, and there won't be an evacuation.”
Rychar turned away and touched the window's glass, smiling. “You would want the city empty by nightfall. This is entirely your fault, for thinking you could control everything.” He gestured for Paredes to come closer.
Agdinar felt a painful prick on his neck, and a viewer appeared above the scene at the window.
Dhern.
He now saw Paredes peering down, trying to figure what was going on at the street level.
There was a large white auto-truck parked straight down from their viewpoint. Its ceiling opened, possibly queued by a command sent by Rychar, and there was a large room inside, where three people were crowding over a set of computers and screens.
Agdinar had never seen one, but the elongated object in the truck's storage compartment, with all those cables and complex controls, had to be a very large atomic bomb.
He turned toward Tysa, now fully knowing what she'd meant by everybody's problems.
Chapter 43
“You have to get her,” Tysa said, pushing Agdinar from behind.
“I can't get inside there, not with so many guns in the room. They can hurt Sarinda, or her father.”
“I don't care about Paredes; he's a disgrace.”
Tysa had stayed near Agdinar in the hallway, struggling with both words and tears. She grabbed Agdinar's arm, with a surprisingly strong hand. “You can do it,” she said, “with your superhero's suit.”
Agdinar frowned, taken by surprise. “I’m not a superhero.”
“You are. Can you fly around to the living room?”
“I just have an intelligent suit, but I'm not a magician.”
“You are—you have been to us—and you can save her. Please, I feel responsible for what they might do to her.”
Agdinar knew what she meant. Looking at Tysa and her wounds started a twisting in his stomach that made him feel ill. He was glad that she was okay, but now felt twice the guilt. He owed her and Sarinda to do something.
“You know,” he said, “maybe you’re right. In five thousand years, everybody would be a superhero.”
Suit status, he thought.
...Not so good, my Lord.
Dhern again.
Please tell me how much power is left, he thought, pursing his lips.
...I want to say twenty percent, but I have to say barely twelve.
...And don't even think about being invisible, plus using transiency and flying on top. You'll be lucky if you can do one of these at a time.
“I will have to live with one of them,” he said.
“Are you thinking out loud?” Tysa said, touching his shoulder.
He moved as stealthily as he could back to the bedroom. Tysa followed him, her steps slow.
The bedroom seemed now larger to Agdinar; or rather, he’d wanted those window panels to be as far away as possible. A cold pool of unhappy blood was making his legs shake.
“I didn't want to...push you.” Tysa was behind him, her head close to his neck.
“You're right. We have to do something.”
“I don't want you to risk your life,” she said, and her hand waved across his face, pausing to touch the mess of his hair.
“If we don't do something,” he said, “we're all in danger.”
“You saw it? The bomb?”
“Yes, it's outside.”
Agdinar turned to the window and gave a complex, step-by-step command to the AVM. He couldn't see it—his viewers had powered down to save energy—but he would have to trust the machine with his life.
“Catch me,” he said.
…You can't be serious.
He ran into the windowpane and jumped as he turned on his suit's transiency generator. A wave of orange light swallowed him, and he went through the windows like they were not there.
As the building ended behind him, he thought that Tysa would see him fly away with the flashiness of one of her so-called superheroes.
* * *
Agdinar's elation changed to horror the moment he was out and in the air, thirty floors above the ground, with no antigravity power and nowhere close to the AVM. The wind was strong and hit him like ice thrown into his face; he started to fall, and his eyes focused on the ground below—even the huge white truck looked like a small bathroom tile.
His flank hit hard the invisible surface of the military transport, and the inertia made him roll over it. He could now see the fuselage, as the AVM had connected with the suit.
He also saw where the AVM would end, and as he tumbled over the long and curved wing, that that edge was less than a body’s length away.
Another painful bounce and, as he twisted trying to stay on the wing, his legs started to slide away and into the unforgiving abyss. Their weight dragged him down, close to where the incline of the wing led to a thin tail that resembled a scythe. There was almost no place to hold on to prevent the fall.
Something lashed at him, a whip that grabbed his right wrist with an invisible rope. And then another cord wrapped around his other wrist. It was a defensive mechanism of the AVM—the kind of tool designed to slice an incoming missile, if everything else failed—and the transport was using it to hold him. A last resort used as another kind of last resort.
Smart thing, he thought. Even his thoughts were strained by the pressure on his body, a relentless tug on his wrists as the lower half of his body hung outside the AVM.
...PLEASE, CLIMB.
The mind-voice of the AVM was powerful. “I'm trying,” he said.
...PLEASE, TRY HARDER.
A thicker whip—this one visible—wrapped around his waist, and Agdinar felt a jolt of electricity that made the hair on his head raise.
...YOU ARE IN DANGER, DRIVER.
“I can tell. And don't call me driver.”
Agdinar felt a weirdly pleasurable feeling, like a tickling. It was the machine enjoying the moment as funny. Unbelievable.
We need to take the transport closer to the building, he thought.
...PLEASE ENTER THE CABIN NOW.
“No, we don't have time to go through the steps. Do what I ordered.”
Several alternative mind-commands hit his brain, a desperate attempt of the AVM’s AI to avoid huge risks. Agdinar would have fallen off if not for the thin vines that were holding his arms. He knelt over the wing and then stood, releasing all the ropes with his mind.
He was standing on the wing, but nobody—not even Tysa, glued to the bedroom windows to watch—could see him. That didn't diminish the shakes of fear, although he was beyond worrying for his life. There were other, new fears washing over him.
His viewers told him about it, and he shouldn
't have looked down to verify it that was true; the knowing straightened him as if propped up by wires.
The truck with the nuclear bomb was leaving the sidewalk, in route to an unknown destination. It really didn't matter where.
The city was doomed.
He counted down to zero from three, and the AVM launched its nose forward as if the building wasn't just in front of it.
Chapter 44
One moment Rychar and the Major were arguing about sending a city-wide evacuation order, and the next their bodies were swept away as if carried by an ocean wave.
An immense black object had appeared outside the apartment’s panoramic windowpane, a dark protuberance that resembled a whale. The windows exploded as the AVM slid into the room, crashing furniture and blowing away a long dinner table and its expensive chairs. Washed away by invisible waters, the Hawks near Rychar tumbled, fell, and rolled over in the direction of the open kitchen.
It happened so fast that everybody collapsed, some still covering their heads in fear of the ceiling coming down.
Agdinar was still on top of the transport, hanging onto the cabin’s edge. His head had been protected by a retractable helmet the suit unfolded, but his back was covered with pulverized glass. The wind surged inside the room, and Agdinar had to make a huge effort to raise his body, propping it up on his elbows. He was shocked by the impact as the AVM shattered the windowpane, but time was short if he wanted to rescue Sarinda.
Everybody was trying to figure out what was going on. It didn't help that the AVM was reverting its tail to invisibility, and the entire transport was flickering. The AVM wasn't going to engage transiency with so many humans close; if a Hawk barged against it, the immaterial gap could envelope the body and maim it if forced by combat to disengage the engine.
Nobody had noticed Agdinar on the wing, as people took cover in the hallways and the periphery of the large kitchen. Rychar was pushing Paredes against the kitchen’s huge granite island, while the Major’s hand trembled as he checked his wrist-phone.
There was no time to deal with them, he thought. Sarinda would come first.
After going through so much during the last week, Agdinar felt he was numb to the dangers of fighting like a soldier while not being one. Perhaps that state of disinterest for risking his own life was how heroes behave in extreme danger. He wasn't sure, and in support of his hunch, he didn't care.
Perhaps those superheroes Tysa liked so much were a different animal altogether.
He unleashed the physical protection of his suit—equivalent to a full-body bulletproof vest—but not the invisibility, as he wasn't sure how much charge was necessary to rush unseen between the Hawks. His energy counters were going up, courtesy of the AVM’s power source.
He walked over the rubble left of the armchairs like he was invisible. Not the brightest idea he'd had.
A spray of bullets coming from his left confirmed that. In a few seconds, a priceless Rothko painting had been transformed into a series of square practice targets.
He wanted to fire back but considered the expense and futility of that, and thus went invisible.
Agdinar hadn't even moved beyond the main wall when more blasts from automatic weapons defaced the deformed people inhabiting a Picasso and a Modigliani. It seemed that the Hawks couldn't accept they didn't have anyone to shoot at.
“What?” Stealy released Sarinda as a strange pull took hold of her.
Possibly driven by years of training in mercenary school, Stealy stretched both of his large arms and caught Agdinar's shoulders, making him moan. He lost control and turned visible, slowly enough to scare the warrior with the view of a wavering ghost interposed between him and his prisoner.
“You,” Stealy said, taking hold of the gun on his waist holster.
“I came to take her with me,” Agdinar said, his confidence low when confronted with the twice-wide hulk.
Sarinda stepped closer to him, still stunned by the apparition and the chaos around them.
“You won't take the girl...” Stealy started talking, and then stopped. It was dawning on him what Agdinar had done to take Sarinda away from him.
Agdinar could see the wheels in Stealy’s mind spin, as he wondered what kinds of weapons a man who could vanish at will could have. Before he discovered that the answer right then was very few, Agdinar held Sarinda's wrist from behind his back and pushed her so she moved away from that corner.
He was going to talk to her when one of the Hawks, recovered from the shock, tackled him hard, breaking his grip on Sarinda.
Agdinar fell between the hallways that connected the now destroyed living room with other parts of the apartment. He was exposed to be sighted and attacked by a pack of wild animals, who had realized he wasn't much of a threat.
A Hawk quickly straddled him on the floor. The first blow on his face was easily neutralized by a cushion of energy, which flashed green in the Hawk's eyes. It was a protection that wasn't going to last him long, with his dimming set of inner viewers screaming low charge. When the other troopers joined the fun, he would be pummeled into certain death.
But then, something shook his attacker and his eyes went white; he started to suffer a convulsion. Agdinar immediately knew why: it was the AVM, its floating tentacles sending a strong discharge to the Hawk's back. The man fell unconscious over him.
A few seconds later, and while the AVM shot warning discharges from its front panels, Agdinar found himself standing and rushing with Sarinda toward the transport. It suddenly hit him, canceling the fear, the acid smoke coming from things burning around him. He coughed and jumped, trying to avoid the white cloud wandering between his legs.
He left Sarinda crouched under one of the wings and went back to get Tysa. His gait was unsteady, and he couldn't hear well after the recent sound blasts.
He jumped over two unconscious Hawks and almost crashed into Tysa, who was pointing a gun at Rychar.
“There's no time for this,” Agdinar said, and then recoiled. Rychar had a gun pointed right at the Major's carotid artery.
They could only do so much there, and still survive.
“You two,” Rychar yelled, “you’ll surrender your weapons right now.”
Agdinar knew that that would be impossible other than by undressing from his suit. “We can’t,” he said, “and you should lower your gun.”
“Come on,” said the Major. “Rychar, you don’t have a way to win this.”
Rychar smiled. “I always do. And I think you’re the one whose life is endangered. I will know those codes before I let you go.”
Agdinar noticed that now Tysa was also aiming a gun straight at Paredes’s forehead. The Major had plenty of past sins catching up with him.
“Let me...I have to,” said Tysa.
Agdinar grabbed her shoulder. “Come with me, and let them go,” he said. His voice came with enough authority to peel her off the pair. There would be time to deal with Rychar later, but with a gun still to his head, Paredes wasn’t coming with them.
Agdinar pulled Tysa away from her weak, bandaged arm, and they started to move back to the AVM. But Rychar had felt his confidence coming back and redirected his gun to Agdinar.
“Sorry,” Rychar said, “but I still need the Major. He has done a good job hiding the nuke’s codes. I’m going to have to keep searching his places until I find them. And you guys are going to come with me while I search.”
This time, Agdinar didn't even consider the possibility of hurting a prominent human of the times. And he trusted the charge he had stolen from the AVM. Agdinar extended his arm, palm open, and a mid-strength, yellow cone of light burst away and onto Rychar's chest. The Hawk leader was blown away by a windless hurricane.
Paredes rushed away, bouncing between the bodies, to hide at the other end of the room. Two guns were immediately pointed at him—the unlucky Major wasn’t going to get away that day.
“I told you,” said Tysa. “Superhero.”
"Superhero it is."
/> They had run out of time to rescue the Major. They scrambled back, reaching the AVM after jumping over the rubble left by the partially collapsed ceiling. The AVM was entertaining cover fire with the lowest setting of its weapon array—the weaker red end of a colorful rainbow.
Agdinar helped Tysa to climb the wing of the transport, while Sarinda, who had been trapped over the AVM’s fuselage during the confrontation, pulled her friend toward her to compensate for the braced arm. Another automatic weapon pierced the room, ricocheting out of the AVM's impregnable surface. They all jumped, afraid, but it couldn't hurt them, as the barrier field had been extended and it would cover them if they stayed over the fuselage.
Agdinar finally got a foothold on the slick top surface, but he ended up stumbling and seeking Sarinda’s embrace for support. It was a beautiful moment of proximity, her eyes so close to his, and a feeling of warmth radiating from her skin. He now wanted to stretch those moments, aware that each could be the last.
“Hey, watch,” Tysa yelled, standing just behind Sarinda.
Agdinar turned only to find more trouble. The Hawks had taken position all along the wall with the ruined paintings—Paredes had certainly lost millions in art that day—and they were carrying heavy loads of armory to complete the destruction of Major Paredes’s place.
One of them was pointing a rifle-like contraption straight at the young intruder, who had managed to screw up their plans.
Agdinar didn't hesitate and again extended his fingers at a place between two gun-carrying Hawks, who looked quite confident and in control of the situation.
A blinding cone of blue light projected a web of lightning against the wall, and a hole as big as a doorway opened there and sucked the room’s air into a whining tunnel. The blast sent the two Hawks flying in opposite directions, their guns traveling even faster than the bodies.
Agdinar talked to the Hawks left in the room and hoped he was also reaching the ones coming out of the elevator at the other end of the hallway. “That was a low setting,” he lied. “If you don't want to see the other side of the building, get out.”