“Plot a course for the park,” I tell Epic. My faithful AI brings up a GPS overlay. At two hundred MPH, I can be there in under five minutes. I dial my thrusters up to max and bank for the west.
I can’t feel the air against my skin, but the suit buffets like mad, even with its friction-light coating. I feel the little plates on my shoulders and back shifting to compensate for air flow while the computer does its best to keep a non-aerodynamic form flying. With my arms out wide and slightly behind me, the two main flight stabilizing thrusters keep me level, while the rest work to keep me pointed in the right direction.
When I first designed the suit I had no idea getting the human form to fly would be this hard. It’s a wonder Supers like Protector and Aeon can do it with their powers, let alone go as fast as they do.
I have two unfulfilled goals with my suit, supersonic flight, and a really big gun. Something powerful enough I could punch through a battleship. I think I have the defense covered. Between the kinetic shielding and the alloy of the actual armor, I’m pretty sure I can survive anything. At least once I find a way to amp the shielding up. Probably not a nuke, but almost anything else. I’m pretty sure your average criminal doesn’t keep nuclear weapons lying around.
The map says I’m thirty seconds out when Epic pings me. Footage from YouTube pops up showing Rhino barreling through the main ticket stand at Enchanted Island while Vixen takes down the guards with her usual grace. The way those claws sparked off the suit, I can only imagine what they would do to flesh. I hope none of the guards are dead, but I can’t see how they wouldn’t be.
Being late and having people die because of it puts my priorities in place. When I return to the workshop I’m going to find a way to increase my speed. Until then, I bring up all systems and charge my shields and weapons.
I hit the concrete with a ground shaking landing. Little spiderwebs run out from where my feet hit. The suit isn’t actually heavy enough to do anything like that. Landing with my thrusters going does. I’m going for awe factor here. I bring up both my arms with my palms out.
“Rhino, Vixen, STAND DOWN,” Epic makes my voice much more authoritative than it would otherwise be. It also broadcasts in fifty decibels. Not enough to damage hearing, but enough to get their attention.
They laugh.
“You up for round two, tin-girl? Well then, get ready.” Rhino’s thick New York accent is almost too much to understand. Him stomping his feet and scratching at the ground isn’t. They can’t see my smile through the smooth silver faceplate. Vixen continues loading cash into what looks like a backpack made for someone as tall and large as Rhino.
The ground shakes as the twelve-foot tall behemoth charges me. Each foot fall shatters the concrete beneath his feet. It isn’t really his fault if I recall right. A government program to create super soldiers running in a federal prison did this to him. I don’t know if he was this messed up before, but he certainly is now. His skin is alabaster white and thick as a tank. His feet resemble telephone poles and his body is three times as wide as a normal human.
Epic calculates he’s moving at thirty-five MPH, perfect. The grenade launcher flips into place over my right shoulder. Targeting cross-hairs spring to life and overlay Rhino’s chest. He must think I’m scared stiff for not moving.
“Fire,” I say. There is hardly a noise as the pod flies through the air. The six-ounce piece of metal impacts his chest an instant later. I’ve got it covered in a lightweight epoxy which explodes on contact, sticking it to his chest. The light clicks on letting me know it’s active and suddenly Rhino lifts up.
I wave at him as he stares at me incredulously from twenty feet up. With no weight and only friction to stop him, Epic estimates he will go several miles before halting.
The park guests smartly stay back, but I hear gasps and mutters of glee as Rhino is removed from the equation.
I turn back to Vixen, expecting her to attack. Instead, she’s running.
“Thrusters, charge IP cannons.” The suit takes off and I direct it through the air. I can do a pretty good job at speed where velocity can carry me through mistakes and I can push off the wind resistance. At low speed, the suit isn’t maneuverable at all. Vixen, on the other hand, is like a world class gymnast who decided to take up parkour and juicing. I have one shot before she’s gone.
“Epic, full power cannons, proximity shot, fire when ready.” I lift both my arms and point my palms directly toward her. It’s hard to do while flying because it pulls my stabilizers offline and I have to sort of hover. Both cannons fire. The sound they make is somewhere between a battery suddenly discharging and sandpaper on wood.
I’m flipping backward and my breakfast threatens to come up when I crash into the ground. The kinetic shielding reduces it to nothing more than if I had fallen while standing, but it shakes me up.
“What happened?” I ask groggily. Epic shows me the math. At full power, while sustaining the most difficult form of flight, the energy from the cannons, which is usually nullified by my forward momentum or me standing on the earth, was enough to spin me in the air and then into the ground.
“Duly noted, no cannons while hovering.” Yet another issue to deal with. If there were any way to have my hands free during flight, save having wings, I would do it. I don’t want wings. I did a design with them and it looked awful.
“Did we get her?” I ask as I pull myself up.
Unknown.
I resist the urge to dust off the suit. I pull up the full sensor suite and scan for Vixen. I annihilated the fence she was leaping over, but I missed her. Great.
“Epic, are paramedics inbound?”
Affirmative.
I hope they’re in time, but there isn’t anything I can do. I ignite my thrusters and head off in the direction of White Rhino.
He’s easy enough to find. The pod carried him up a thousand feet and nearly two miles away. Air currents must have grabbed him at some point. It’s good to know. If I forget to collect someone with these they would eventually suffer from hypoxia and die. I make a mental note to add air traffic control access to Epic. That should cover weather and any planes. I’d hate for a 737 to crash into something I’d podded.
He’s spitting mad when I get to him. I picked up some rope on my way and lasso his foot, then I tie it to my waist and ignite my thrusters. He has no weight, but boy, he has wind resistance. Flying while towing him is all but impossible. The problem is the local police can’t handle him. I have to drop him off at the Buckeye State Prison, almost thirty miles away. To make matters worse, I can’t slow down without him crashing into me. It’s going to be a long trip.
He curses at me the whole way. When he starts describing how he is going to violate me I turn off my external feed. Intellectually I know he can’t, but the emotional person inside of me doesn’t. I hadn’t thought about the consequences of catching criminals. What they would do and say when they were caught, or if they ever got out. All the reason to never, ever, tell anyone it’s me.
I’m breathing heavy from the exertion when I pull us to a stop over the Buckeye yard. Their alarms are blaring and I see AA cannons popping up from hidden turrets. I can’t imagine they receive a lot of flying guests who aren’t here to break someone out. I hold up my hands and ignore the alarms on my screen showing targeting vectors. Suit sensors pick up scattered radar and infrared beams trying to lock onto me. Good luck with that. If they do fire I’ll just pull the pod on Rhino and fly off.
They don’t fire. On the tower nearest me a door opens. A Hispanic man in his fifties dressed in a nice suit steps out. He is all smiles as he walks to the railing closest to me. He reminds me of my father a little bit, and the beating my heart has already taken today increases a little more.
Epic’s automated process does facial recognition on him through the Internet. His picture, along with a complete bio pops up. My preprogrammed algorithms put him at a trust level of over seventy percent based on all available data.
“Hello,”
he says politely. I decide to take a leap of faith and shakily maneuver next to him and land. Well, fall less than gracefully. I almost make it without going to a knee. When I recover I catch myself smiling at him. He has an infectious personality. He can’t see my face.
Epic modulates my voice when I speak, and I sound nothing like me. “Warden, I’m sure you know who this is. Do you have a facility I can put him in?”
“We do… I’m not sure who you are, though?”
I ignore the question; I don’t have a name yet and I’m terrible at coming up with them.
“Can you take charge of the prisoner?” Listen to me speaking all cop talk. He smiles at me again. Even in the armor, I’m not imposing. End to end I’m five-six. The armor adds two inches bringing me to a whopping five-eight. My under-suit is formfitting, it has to be, but the armor is bulked up in areas to give me more protection. I end up looking a little bulky more than svelte. I can’t help it, components take up space. I can’t have a one-nano-meter thick armor and have anything in it. I need inches.
“Okay, play it coy if you like, but I’m trying to help. The DMHA is going to come calling and what I tell them can either hurt you or help you,” he says. I’m not the only armored person flying around. There are at least a half-dozen heroes and villains who use armor. Most of them have superpowers of some kind. I’ve researched them all. However, you don’t have to have superpowers to fall under the domain of the Department of Metahuman Affairs.
“Tell them I’m not a meta-human,” I say, trying to sound more confident than I really am. The DMHA is the one group I don’t want to tangle with yet. If they don’t think I have powers it may buy me a little time.
“Okay, if that is how you want to play it,” he sighs, “Drop Rhino over there,” he points at a pit opening up. By now Rhino had calmed enough to handle. He still gave me the death gaze as I pulled the pod. He falls thirty feet down into the hole.
Once I know he’s secure, I wave at the warden and activate full thrusters. I watch the prison shrink behind me on my HUD.
“Okay Epic, plot a course for home. Can you order a pizza from Bianco’s?”
It’s Friday.
“Right, okay, well pick one of the others I like. I need a little me time and some Star Trek.”
Affirmative.
I glance at the UHD TV I keep on the far wall. Rhino is being moved to the super-max prison in North Dakota today. It’s the only long-term facility capable of handling him. Apparently, he has stamina enough to slam his head against the wall over and over for several days. Even the strongest concrete would give after a while. I’m not too worried about it because the Diamondbacks, Arizona’s premier super team, are on hand. I don’t have any sound on, which is good. I need to focus.
I still don’t have a solution for my flight stability problem, but I think I came up with another weapon. My kinetic shields absorb energy and then dissipate it from my suit’s vents. Essentially, it ends up being converted to heat energy and then wasted. I can use it to power something else. I’ll still lose about thirty percent in the conversion when it is all said and done, but I will have one more weapon to add to my arsenal.
I can fire the kinetic force beam from my head by adding an emitter. It’s easy enough and it is what I’m delicately doing now. It’s a perfect weapon, not unlike my grenade launcher. It is completely powered by absorbing energy being used against me. The only downside is If I want to do more than a strong shove, I need to be hit hard. I put the last piece into place and carefully solder the line. I’m working at a magnification strong enough to see nanometers. Even the slightest movement could hurt the process. I hold my breath until the computer gives me the okay.
I put the helmet back on the field which holds it in place. Epic runs his diagnostics and it is time to take a break. I’m sweating hard enough I need a shower. I run a comb through my shoulder length black hair. It used to be longer, but anything past my shoulders doesn’t fit in the armor. The armor has to be as snug as humanly possible or I could be seriously hurt by even a minor shift in velocity.
Thirty minutes later I finish drying off and I’m back in my chair. I feel ten times better.
The TV flashes a Parker alert. The code they use when telling civilians to be careful of superhuman activity. I don’t have to read it to know what it will say. Someone is trying to break Rhino out of jail.
I grab my synth suit and pull it on. It’s a struggle while sitting in the chair. Normally I would lay in bed and do it, but I don’t have the time. The black material covers me like a glove and allows me to interface with the neural links in the suit. It’s what allows the armor to respond to my nerve impulses. I move like normal and the armor responds with the same amount of speed as if it were my own limbs. It’s what allows me to walk even though I’m paralyzed from the waist down. Essentially, the suit acts as an external nervous system, bypassing the damaged ones in my lower back.
Once my black leotard is on I roll under the pull bar and line up the chair with the marks on the floor. The bar lowers to where I can grab, then it pulls me up.
“Epic, initiate,” I order. The AI complies, the armor flies off the wall as one piece and wraps around me like a second skin. The whole process takes less than ten seconds and my HUD boots up.
“Show me the action, I want live footage.” The prison is forty miles away. At top speed, I could be there in twelve minutes. I don’t even bother to shut the skylight as I blast away. I accelerate as fast as I can. The wind bangs me around as the computer tries to compensate.
The pip pops up letting me see the fight from the reporter's point of view. The Diamondbacks are seriously outclassed. It isn’t Vixen alone trying to free White Rhino, but her, dozens of men with guns, and four supers from the wrong side of the tracks.
“Identify threat levels,” I command Epic. His main housing is back in the workshop. There isn’t any feasible way I could put the necessary components to run him inside the suit. We use tight beam UHF radio for most of our work. He can also track me through the Internet and keep logged in. Hacking most wireless signals takes him less time than it takes to say, ‘wireless signals’. This way the computer housing he lives in can be supercooled back at the house. Plus, with him not in the suit, the power requirements are far less than they would be otherwise.
The four villains pop up on my screen. My timer says I only have a few minutes to figure these guys out. Frostfire is categorized as the most powerful. The database says he’s an F4. He can generate fire and ice blasts and has limited control over the elements. He uses the ice as armor and his fire to keep himself warm while doing it. I may need to take him out first.
Grappler is your basic strong guy. He’s not as strong or as invulnerable as Rhino, but he’s agile and can fight.
Tess Harper, a telekinetic who can form shields, there isn’t a lot of information on her. She doesn’t even have a codename.
Finally, there is Deadman, a gun-toting lunatic who is determined to rid the world of super people. A real Psychopath. It is unclear if he has superpowers or if he is just highly skilled.
Time’s up. I can see the battle ahead. A large military style transport with a flatbed has Rhino strapped in place and likely sedated. The Diamondbacks are pinned down. They don’t really have any heavyweights. It’s not like people want to be in Arizona when they can pick somewhere else. Major Force is their physically strongest guy, the other two have more utility powers.
Frostfire has the soldiers pinned down with gouts of flame. Grappler is going hand to hand with Domino and Mr. Perfect. Domino can teleport and fight, Mr. Perfect is a so-called ‘mage’. Vixen is trying to cut through the straps holding down Rhino and Harper is—I slam hard into something and deflect straight down. I put my arms up and yell as I crash into the ground. Dirt and sand cover my display and play havoc with my sensors. I must have hit one of Harper's shields. My heart thumps in my ears making it hard to focus.
I push myself up only to be slammed back down. I didn�
�t realize she could use her powers like a battering ram. The kinetic shields are holding but she’s still putting enough pressure on me to override my own strength. I watch the power cells drain noticeably.
“Epic, maximum horizontal thrust!” I can only imagine the blast of dirt and sand behind me as four thrusters go to full burn at once. Will this even work? I slip past her telekinetic barrier and am free in a second. I spin around, flying backward, I scan for her.
“I think your categorization of threats might need work.” The good news is my kinetic force beam is now at 100% power. Someone is going to have a bad day and I think it will be Harper.
The suit’s sensors ping her. She’s standing behind Frostfire, an ice shield slowly melting in front of her. Frostfire has two streams of flames like mini tornadoes spewing seventy feet in front of him. The soldiers are all face down in the sand trying to stay under it. I don’t know how long they can last, but it won’t be long. Lives come first. The DB’s are going to have to handle Grappler on their own.
“Charge IP cannons, maximum yield area effect.” Shooting them over an area diminishes their capacity, but it will get attention. I need to be less than thirty feet to use them. I put my head down and bank around. Epic does the calculations for me and I decide another header at two-hundred miles an hour isn’t a good idea. My shields are still recovering from the first one.
I brake hard and come down to highway speed. I’m flying right at them and they don’t see me—
Epic fires for me. The Ionic Pulse charge spreads out and smacks into them. They both scream. Would it be enough to knock them out? Harper falls immediately. Frostfire turns his attention to me. I smile. This is going to be good. I land twenty feet away and pipe my voice over the PA.
“Surrender now and you won’t have to go the hospital.” I don’t know where I come up with these lines, god they have to sound cheesy.
Arsenal (Full Metal Superhero Book 1) Page 2