by Logan Jacobs
Aurora dropped the shield, and everyone burst into action.
I didn’t have a chance to check on how the rest of my friends were doing because I had laser focus on the canopy of the attack copter.
My legs pumped furiously as I sprinted toward the shattered window. Laser and gunfire rang all around me like fireworks. I thought I saw the glimmer of Chaz’s antennae as they glowed blue and then the bamf of black, brimstone smelling smoke that signalled teleportation. The bright blue exhaust wings of PoLarr’s jetpack flared in my periphery.
Still, I kept running.
I ate up the short distance to the edge of my balcony that had been blown away in the initial missile blast.
“Now!” I cried out as I launched myself from the edge of the balcony.
I felt the soft WHOMP of Nova’s concentrated concussion blast as it detonated just under my feet and flung me forward, SVAs outstretched as I hurtled through the air.
The pilot of the attack copter must have been taken by surprise, not expecting a counter offensive to come so fast, if at all, and especially from a dude carrying two space viking axes, so he didn’t start to try to turn the craft until it was too late. Just before I slammed into the canopy, I brought the SVAs down as hard as I could with all the force I could muster while flying through the air. One sliced into the polycarbonate glass of the canopy and sent shards of it all over the pilot who I noticed was clad all in black and had the now familiar face mask with an alien skull painted on it.
He was a Skalle Furia, and now he was going to die.
My other SVA slashed into the mag-lev housing with dramatic results. Sparks flew and waves of concentric electro-magnetic energy washed over the copter which began to twist on its axis and lose altitude.
I had to hang on for dear life to keep from getting flung off out into the sky.
The Skalle Furia pilot tried to work the controls frantically, but whatever damage I’d managed to do was too much for them to get the craft back under control. So, he decided to try to shoot me instead. The pilot pulled a proton pistol from a holster on his chest and attempted to blow my brains out, but I was able to duck out of the way, and the blasts tore more chunks out of the canopy.
I really didn’t feel like getting shot at that particular moment, so I pressed a button on the SVA that was still wedged in the broken glass of the canopy. The blade sank back into the handle. I yanked it free and twirled in my fingers so that I held it like a psychopath in an Eighties horror movie. Just as the pilot brought the pistol around so that I could see right down the barrel, I reared my left arm back and then drove the tip of the bladeless SVA right into the pilot’s crotch. I very much hoped whatever physiology he had was similar to humans and that I’d just smashed his junk into oblivion.
“Aghhhhh!!!” The pilot screamed in a rather high-pitched wail.
Yup. I’d smashed his junk.
The Skalle Furia pilot dropped the pistol as both hands went to cradle his mashed bits and pieces.
The copter had lost most of its altitude at this point, and we were quickly coming up on a small, elevated, city park full of purple hedges and wispy, orange, pussy willow looking trees. It would be better than crashing into concrete… but not much.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw a flash of bright blue exhaust in the shape of angel wings from PoLarr’s jet pack as the copter spun faster and faster. When it was about fifty feet from crashing, I let go.
I flew out from the spinning craft that acted like a massive centrifuge and tumbled through the air, a Marc missle headed right for the side of a very unforgiving looking building.
I hoped I’d judged the distance right and I held my hands out over my head. Sure enough, right at the last minute, in true Havak fashion, PoLarr grabbed hold of me and with a burst of blue rocket thrust pulled me out of the tumble and away from the building where I would have surely squished on the window like a bug.
“Don’t worry, I’ve got you,” PoLarr said like Christopher Reeves in the Seventies Superman movie.
Still the best Superman movie in my humble opinion.
“You’ve got me? Who’s got you?” I blurted out Margo Kidder as Lois Lane’s response before I could help myself.
“Nice,” PoLarr said and smiled down at me.
We didn’t get to continue our stroll down movie quote lane because there was a loud crash from below us.
I looked and saw the copter as it finished smashing through the bushes and trees of the park. The tail broke free as dirt and debris were flung into the air. It careened through the formerly serene park as it dug a huge trench in the grass and trees until it finally came to a stop.
“Get me down there, PoLarr,” I yelled up.
“Copy that,” PoLarr replied, and we swooped down low over the park.
I let go of her hands just as we passed over the wreckage of the attack copter, hit the ground in a roll, came up running, and was soon at the mangled cockpit of the craft. I was prepared to yank the pilot from his seat and pummel him into next week, but as I peered in I realized it was very unnecessary.
The Skalle Furia pilot had a tree branch lodged through the middle of his chest like some kind of terrorist meat skewer.
“Shit,” I muttered to myself. I had hoped he’d be alive so that we could very politely ask him a few questions. And by politely I mean with great vengeance and furious anger.
“Dead, huh?” PoLarr commented as she landed next to me.
“Yeah,” I replied with a shake of my head.
Then the comm-link crackled and buzzed from the sparking control panel of the craft.
“Argo… come in… Argo? Was the mission a success?” The staticky voice asked from the comm. I leaned in and grabbed the small hand held comm mic that worked very much like a CB radio.
“Hey, how’s it going?” I asked into the comm as I depressed the little talk button. “So, some bad news for ya. Argo is dead.”
“Who is this?” the voice asked, suddenly very wary and cautious.
“Marc Havak,” I answered simply. There was a stunned silence for a long moment.
“That’s too bad,” the voice finally replied.
“Not for me it’s not,” I shot back as I tried to keep the anger from getting the better of me.
“You’ll never find her,” the voice continued. “Do as we say, or she’s as good as dead.”
“Listen to me very carefully,” I said in a slow, deliberate, modulated voice. “My friends and I have a very particular set of skills. Skills we have acquired that have kept us alive in the most dangerous contest in the universe. Skills that make us a nightmare for people like you. If you let the President’s daughter go now that will be the end of it. We will not look for you, we will not pursue you, but if you don’t, we will look for you, we will find you, and we will kill you.”
There was another long moment from the other end. I could hear whoever it was breathing as they decided on what to say next.
“I’ll make sure to pass that up to my boss,” the voice finally said with more than a hint of arrogance. As if taunting me. That’s when the dam on my anger broke.
“You tell your boss I’m coming,” I growled into the comm-link. “And hell’s coming with me. You hear? Hell’s coming with me!”
Chapter Two
“Then he went full Liam Neeson though, dawg!” PoLarr said loudly in a surprisingly passable Keegan-Michael Key voice. “And then, and then, seamlessly into Kurt Russell. Man, it was glorious… and I have no idea why I am so excited about it.”
“Oh, a double penetration, nice!” Artie said excitedly and patted me on the back.
“Artie, that’s not… ah, nevermind,” I sighed. Artemis V-5 was my super sexy, co-trainer, triage doctor, attache, and all around Jane-of-all-trades. She was a complex AI program that had been downloaded into a smoking hot, bio-engineered human body when I first became the champion for Earth about six months ago. She still struggled with the idiosyncrasies of the English language, though.
“You mean fingercuffs, sugar,” Aurora clarified. “It’s when a woman has one in her mouth and one in her—”
“But when it’s Marc and two of us, what is it called?” Artie asked innocently.
“Ahhh, let’s just focus on the whole terrorist attacking and kidnapping of the president’s daughter,” I interrupted. “How is everyone? Are we all accounted for?”
“I am here and very well, tremendously well,” the POTUS said from the head chair at our Command Center table in our private gym at the Hall of Champions.
Chaz had teleported the non-combatants here right after I had leapt out the window. The rest of us had met up here after giving statements to officers from the Champion District Police Department. In fact, Captain Har’Gitay was still on a very heated call in the corner of the gym with some of her officers.
“Very glad, sir,” Thomas said from his position just behind the President. “I believe everyone is present, accounted for, and operationally sound.”
“Good.” I nodded. The rest of my team as well as Falon, Har’Gitay, Baba-Tado, and Chaz were all gathered around the Command Center, each one dealing with the adrenaline come down in their own way. We were all still a bit shell shocked, literally, from such a brazen attack on my apartment.
“As I suspected,” Har’Gitay said to the group as she walked over, “the pilot of the attack copter is not in any of our data bases and had no ID. My team is still trying to trace his DNA through various other offworld known criminal systems, but that could take days.”
“That was an overtly bold and risky move to attack a champion’s home,” Grizz commented as he paced slowly back and forth. “I have never heard nor witnessed anything in all my years as champion or as a trainer.”
“That’s because it’s never happened before, Grizz,” Artie chimed in. “Like, ever.”
“What does that mean?” Tempest asked from where she lounged in one of the oversized leather chairs that surrounded the table. “The Skalle Furia are many things, but dumb isn’t one of them.”
“No, they are not, Tempest,” Har’Gitay said. “Not by a long shot. They had to have known that an attack like that would have minimal chance of succeeding.”
“It was never meant to succeed,” I finally said.
I’d been thinking about the nature of the attack since getting to the gym. It, combined with the revelations over the last few days about a cabal of highly influential people, including Trillium Vou and Tyche, using the Forge of Heroes, or the Crucible of Carnage as those of us who fought for our lives called it, for their own personal gain.
“It was a distraction,” Thomas completed my thought for me.
“Yeah, and so far it’s working,” I continued. “We’ve already wasted two of our precious forty-eight hours on this instead of planning on how we get the President’s daughter back. We need to get to Earth. How do we do that?”
“Yeah, that’s going to be a big problem, Marc,” Artie said, her face a mask of worry. “None of you are allowed to leave this planet without getting permission.”
“Okay, who gives us permission, sugar?” Aurora asked.
“Tyche,” Artie answered with a grimace.
“Well, I doubt dad is gonna let us go party with our Earth pals,” I said.
“No, no he will not,” Artie echoed. “Especially not with the next match scheduled in seventy-two hours.”
“Our ticking clocks have ticking clocks,” PoLarr commented. “Great.”
“Come on guys,” I urged. “There’s got to be a way.”
“Marc,” Artie continued. “You’re nano-chips are all linked to the central computer. They can track you wherever you go. If you go offworld, the computer will send out an alarm.”
“Is there any way to mimic the signal?” I asked. Thankfully I’d watched a shit ton of Alias and Mission Impossible movies. “Trick the computer into thinking we’re still here?”
“Hmm, maybe,” Artemis replied as she absently bit her bottom lip. She did it when she was thinking. “Actually, yeah. I could route your signals to new chips, but they need a biological host that matches each of your body's electro-chemical makeups.”
“I may have a solution for that,” Har’Gitay said with a sneaky little grin. “Let me make a call.”
“Okay, so, let’s say all this works, and we can trick the computer,” Nova began from where she had started to lift weights in our workout area. At the moment she was in the process of back squatting close to five hundred pounds as if it was a warm up. Her molecules were three times denser than that of a human’s, so while she looked as svelt as a fitness model, she actually weighed close to three hundred pounds and was stupid strong. “How are we going to get off world?”
“You can come with us,” the POTUS piped up. “Through the wormhole thingy that looks like a big space anus.”
“Yeah, that is heavily monitored,” Artemis replied. “There is no way all of you would be able to sneak through the giant space anus.”
“Shame,” Aurora drawled with an evil smirk.
“Behave,” I chided her. “Chaz, can’t you just, you know, bamf us to Earth.”
“Ho, ho, oh, boy, Marc, sweet, sweet, attractive Marc,” Chaz said as he shook his head. “My teleportation only works reliably within the confines of a celestial body. Trying to break the gravitation field of an entire planet would make it… well… we could end up floating popsicles in the icy expanse of space.”
“Okay, well, then, scratch that,” I said. “One problem at a time.”
“The President and I will head back as soon as we leave here,” Thomas said with authority. “That way we won’t raise any more suspicions, and we can get a head start on trying to locate one of the Skalle Furia sleeper cells. After the DOTUS was taken, we did a wide sweep of known alien agitators, and came up with some intel. Apparently, after the failed attempt on the President’s life, Skalle Furia embedded several sleeper cells all over the globe. We believe the DOTUS is being bounced between them so that she can’t be located.”
“Well, then,” I said as I stood up from my chair, “we need to get ourselves in between and intercept the package.”
“Psst, Aurora,” Tempest whispered. “Havak said, package.”
“Oh, don’t I know it, sugar,” Aurora replied and winked.
“Good lord,” Thomas groused. “How do you all ever get anything done? You’re worse than a bunch of teenagers.”
“My team gets the job done when it counts,” I bragged. I didn’t like my alliance being scolded. Especially not by my newly found dad.
“Excellent, because the clock is still ticking,” Thomas needlessly pointed out. “Come on, Mr. President. We need to get back to Earth.”
“Absolutely,” the President responded as the two of them got up to leave. “Can’t be gone too long. Golf game and hotels to manage.”
“Don’t you also lead your people?” Tempest smirked.
“It’s a tougher job,” the president said. “Especially with my daughter missing. She’s quite a beauty. I’m an amazing man, truly a gift to the people of my world, but I’m still human and need to relax a few hundred days out of the year.”
“Yeahhhh,” I said as glanced at my father.
“We’ll see you soon,” Thomas said.
“Colonel,” I said just before they were about to go. I walked over to where they stopped just before leaving. “One last question. Why now? Why didn’t you try to contact me after I was named champion? From what I understand the whole planet knows.”
“Boy do they,” the POTUS smiled. “I’ve made sure of that. Everyone knows what good friends we are. Tremendous friends. The best.”
“At the time,” Thomas started to reply. “That there was first contact, I was in the middle of, how shall I put this, a lovely several month stay in an ISIL cave on the border of Syria.”
“Yeah, he was in deep, deep, deep cover,” The President chimed in. “Only just got back last week.”
“I guess I
just thought that with all the new advances that stuff would have been a thing of the past,” I said with a shrug.
“Marc,” Thomas said, and I could hear the years of battle fatigue in his voice. “There’s always someone who likes to ruin for it everyone else.”
“Word,” I said. It was all that I could think of right at that moment. It had been a long day at the end of an even longer week.
“See you soon, Marc,” Thomas said and held out his hand for me to shake. There was so much I wanted to say, but it just didn’t seem the right time, so I shook my father’s hand for the first time in my life.
“Yeah, see you soon,” I finally said as the two of them walked out of the gym.
“Hey, you okay?” Artemis said as she slid up next to me and gave me a big hug.
I hadn’t realized how much I needed it until her body was pressed into mine and I could smell the shampoo in her hair.
“Probably not, but I will be,” I said as I tried to inhale all that she was or ever would be. She smelled like heaven, and I wished the moment could just go on and on forever. “Okay, so… what’s next?”
“We should all get over to the precinct,” Har’Gitay answered. “I think I have a solution to one of our problems.”
“CDPD R&D department coming up,” Chaz said excitedly.
“Wait, how did you--” the Captain started to say but was drowned out as we were all engulfed in a black cloud that smelled like brimstone.
When the smoke cleared, we were in the sub-basement of the CDPD station house with a very confused alien in a lab coat looking at us through large, oversized glasses that made his eyes seem as big as saucers.
“--know that I wanted to go there?” the Captain continued. “And… here we are?”
“Sorry, Captain,” Chaz said as red flushed his cheeks. “I didn’t mean to read your mind, but everyone has said again and again and again how time is of the essence so… I figured it couldn’t hurt. Please don’t arrest me.”
“I won’t, Chaz,” Har’Gitay said as she shook her head and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “This time.”