Sovereign

by April Daniels

  “Give it about forty seconds and check again,” says Doc. “In the meantime, stow the lip and put your goddamn parachute on.”

  “Uh, hello, can you hear me?” says Codex over the radio. “Kinetiq has a concussion. I don’t think I can get them into a chute in time.”

  “Dreadnought, can you catch the jet?” says Calamity, cool as September rain.

  “On my way!” Wind pulls hard at my hair and squeezes my shoulders as I leave the sound barrier far behind me.

  “Doc, fix Kinetiq. Other Doc, get those avionics back.”

  “Calamity—” Doc’s voice is strained. Calamity might be the shot caller, but Doc is the oldest and most experienced. If there’s going to be a mutiny, now’s the time.

  “Dreadnought, how close are you?” Calamity asks.

  “I’m almost there!”

  “Doc, do it,” says Calamity. And then, “Danny, you’d better catch us or I’m gonna look like an asshole.”

  Simple interception isn’t the problem. I’ve got to catch them in such a way that their momentum doesn’t smear them all against the walls.

  “Backup power links are severed—rerouting,” says Doc. “Damnit! There’s some kind of mechanocite infection in the flight computers.”

  I snap hard over to match the tilt-engine’s course and speed. It’s all but vertical, nose-down, racing to the ocean at terminal velocity. My fingers brush the fuselage, find a handhold, and then slip away. The damn thing is covered in low-friction hard gel to help boost its speed during flight. It’s almost impossible to get a firm grip.

  “Avionics are back,” says Doc. “Hey lookit that, we just passed five hundred feet and falling. Any fuckin’ time now, Danny!”

  “Dreadnought, sooner is better,” says Calamity.

  “I’m working on it,” I mutter. Aw, screw it; Doc can chew me out later. I punch a hole in the bottom of the fuselage. A few more shrieking impacts and I’m wrist-deep and groping around for something solid to grab onto. We’re low enough that I can see the waves below.

  The weight of the tilt-engine settles on my shoulders, and I start pushing it into a gentle curve back to horizontal. We’ve still got a few hundred feet of altitude to burn and I don’t want to hurt anyone inside with a hard-G turn. “Tell me if I’m going too fast.”

  “Faster, turn us faster,” says Codex as the jet continues hurtling to Earth.

  “How’s Kinetiq doing?” asks Calamity.

  “It’s not fair that I have a hangover,” says Kinetiq. “I didn’t even get drunk first.”

  We pass horizontal and the weight of the jet begins to pull up away from me as the wings bite air and generate lift.

  “Altitude is going back up,” says Doc with considerable relief in her voice. “Dreadnought, bring us ten degrees to starboard and we’ll be back on course.”

  “What’s going on?” says Kinetiq.

  “Panzer started things early,” says Codex. “Calamity, what does this do to our plan?”

  “Blows it to hell, mainly,” she says. “Dreadnought, get us to Cynosure as fast as you can. We’re going to have to force a landing and fight through the hard way.”

  “What does that do to our ROE?” asks Kinetiq. ROE stands for Rules of Engagement, another one of those little things that bleeds into cape culture from the military. Where a cape stands on what’s become known as the Killing Question has a bunch of really big implications about where they stand on a lot of other political issues within the superhero community.

  Calamity is silent on the radio for a long moment. “Listen up. We’re not lookin’ to kill nobody, but these are hard men, and they ain’t gonna roll over only because we ask nicely. If it’s them or us, we pick us. Don’t hesitate. We clear?”

  “We’re clear,” says Kinetiq, sounding more and more alert with every moment. Whatever Doc did to push aside their concussion seems to be working, but I wouldn’t want to bet on them getting out of bed for at least a few days after this is all over. Hypertech medicine is cool, but it’s not that cool. “Where’s Panzer?”

  “Radar shows a contact on our six, fast and closing,” says Doc. “I’m trying to get the engines lit back up to give us a push.” The engines whine and cough and flame back out. “Uh…let’s try that again.”

  A huge bloom of thermal energy pulses through the lattice, and I throw my shoulders hard into the tilt-engine. We’re only a yard or two out of the way when a scalding purple beam lances past us.

  “She’s gaining,” says Doc.

  “I can’t fight her and carry you at the same time, guys,” I say. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Number one, do not drop us,” says Calamity. “Kinetiq, can you fight?”

  “Try and stop me.”

  “Sit the hell down,” says Doc. “You’re not good to go for at least another ten minutes.”

  “You want to fight Panzer, be my guest,” says Kinetiq. “Otherwise, I’m going.”

  There’s a lot of cursing and grumbling as I heave the aircraft hard over again, another powerful lance of energy zipping past and leaving floating green ghosts in my vision. Apparently Doc has no more objections after that, because a moment later the hatch opens, and Kinetiq tips out into the sky.

  They give me a thumbs-up and then rocket back towards Panzer on twin pink funnels of light. A few moments later, distant flashes of light, green to blue to red to yellow and back again.

  “Doc, get those engines back online,” says Calamity. A few moments later, they come wheezing to life, and with the extra boost we make good time to Cynosure. The battle between Kinetiq and Panzer falls further and further behind us, until it’s finally just an occasional flicker beyond the horizon.

  A few miles out from the seastead, a dozen white smoke trails leap towards us from the roofs of all three towers. “Hoo boy, here it comes,” says Doc. Small hatches on each side of the tilt-engine’s fuselage pop open and eject a fizzing blizzard of flares and chaff to either side of me. I don’t need to be told to lean hard over and yank us onto a different course. Anti-air missiles hiss past us to the left and right. Nearby airbursts slap me with blast pressure and scour the hull with shrapnel. The armored blister mounted on the chin of the tilt-engine pops open, and Doc’s particle cannon swivels out.

  “I choose me,” she says a moment before it starts hurling cobalt fire at Cynosure. The top floor of the nearest tower is obliterated in a cascading series of explosions. A huge black and red cloud rises into the sky while plumes of shattered glass fall from the tower like pollen. Please tell me there were no civilian staff members on those floors.

  “Hope they got the message,” says Doc, “because the gun’s overheated.”

  Men on top of the other two towers throw down their weapons and sprint for the roof access doors. “Yeah, I think they heard you,” I say.

  Doc cuts the engines as we soar between the towers of Cynosure. There’s one of those strange moments of quiet that you get between bouts of violence during a battle as I bring us down onto the lawn surrounding the mansion suspended between the towers. The ocean breeze tugs gently at my cape and hair, the air salty, damp, and clean. The grass is a deep, healthy green, clipped to a tight, even height. As the side hatch hauls open and everyone jumps out of the stricken jet, I can’t stop wondering what it would feel like to lie out here on the ground with Sarah.

  Then the bad guys open up with the machine guns, and that idyllic moment evaporates. Muzzle flashes wink and spit from the upper windows of the mansion. Codex and Calamity hit the ground as bullets tear into the sod around us, spang and crack against the hull of the jet. The two surviving Docs bring weapons that look like oversized shotguns to their shoulders and fire. An instant smokescreen explodes between us and the house, muddy brown clouds that sit heavy in the air, strangely resistant to the stiff ocean breeze.

  “The smoke won’t slow the bullets for very long, come on!” one of her shouts as the other begins bounding forward to find cover behind a stone planter.

 
“Smoke don’t stop bullets!” shouts Calamity as she hauls herself to her feet and draws a revolver.

  “Mine does,” says Doc before firing another smoke round. “Let’s go!”

  I take to the air as the ground team disappears into the cloud. I’m angling forward to go ruin the machine-gunners’ day when a bolt of yellow lightning thunders out of the clear blue sky right in front of me. The flash clears, and Garrison floats in front of me. He’s wearing the most blunt, obvious, I’m-here-to-rule-you-peasant supervillain getup I’ve ever seen: a black bodyglove with a white cape that’s got the huge flared collar and is edged with gold—he’s even wearing a circlet, an actual literal crown.

  “Dreadnought. Why aren’t you falling to your death?”

  “Because you’re not actually the smartest person in the world, Garrison,” I reply.

  “You may call me Sovereign.”

  “I’m gonna call you Dingus.”

  Here’s the thing: supervillains have a greatly exaggerated reputation for monologuing when they should be fighting. In the real world, this doesn’t happen too often. But it does happen. It happens just enough to keep the myth alive, and I’ve got a feeling that Dingus here is going to be one of those special capes who simply cannot escape the lure of tradition.

  So even as he’s wrinkling his nose at my disrespect (Can I not see that he’s wearing a crown? Where’s the genuflection, the subtle terror? Kids today, honestly!) I continue: “You stole Thunderbolt’s powers.”

  Not a question. Not even an accusation. Bait.

  Beneath us, Calamity’s grapnel fires out of the smoke. It finds purchase just above the window where a machine gun is spitting fire, and she comes zipping out of the cloud. A moment later she’s kicked her way into the window, and the gun falls silent. Doc is taking turns with herself to lay down covering fire for Codex as he takes advantage of the lull in the fighting to sprint up the grass. His leg wound from the other day still forces him into a hopping limp, but adrenaline is a powerful fuel. I see all this in the lattice without turning my head, and my chest unclenches fractionally.

  Garrison shrugs extravagantly. “When he came into my employ, he should have read the fine print. In a way, it’s your fault. If you’d simply agreed to be my spokeswoman, a lot of unpleasantness might have been spared. But no, you rushed the timetable, so now we’re doing things the ugly way.”

  He’s not really into it enough yet. His eyes are still darting around, still expecting a shift in bodyweight to clue him in to an attack. But he should be throwing punches by now, and he’s not. I only need to wiggle the lure a little bit more: “I like the ugly way. The ugly way works for me. It’s about to suck for you though, I’m not gonna lie.”

  Sovereign chomps down hard on it: “You’re too late, you know. We’ve broadcast the press package already. People will be dancing in the streets for me now that I’ve gotten rid of all the supervillains. Order is preferable to chaos, even the peasants understand this—” And then Sovereign makes a truly adorable noise, a sort of grunt and a squeak at the same time, when my fist smashes into his solar plexus hard enough to crumple steel. As he rockets backward from my first hit, I stay with him, and my second fist cracks a nasty hook through his jaw, snapping his head over, spinning him ’round just in time to meet my first fist again as it comes the other way.

  The first rule of combat is to get in the first shot.

  The second rule is that cheap shots are the best shots.

  I really like the second rule.

  Rich boys can’t fight. This isn’t going to take long. There’s no way he—

  —except that I am now soaring end-over-end, the sky and the world tumbling about me, and there’s an incredible pain in my throat, and all I’ve got to explain it is this ephemeral flashing image of a wicked punch snaking in through my guard. When I catch myself in the air, Garrison is right in my face, and the world shrinks down to a frantic defense against punches, kicks, headbutts, and more. My rhythm has gone right out of my mind, and now I’m running on equal parts improvisation and desperation. Powder kegs of pain explode against my forearms, my thighs, my outer ribs as I do everything I can to protect my vitals and claw back some initiative.

  This doesn’t make sense. After a scything kick that folds me around his foot and slingshots me most of the way through one of the towers before I come to an abrupt stop against a steel girder, I start to think that maybe this is going to be harder than I expected. I peel myself out of the Danny-sized crater and peer through the tunnel of shattered glass and torn drywall. Sovereign isn’t following me in. He’s floating out there, arms crossed, a punchably smug grin on his face.

  Another segment of drywall I was using to haul myself to my feet cracks and crumbles under my grip as that rage I need so much finally arrives. I’m gonna feed you your teeth, old man. Maybe I haven’t figure out how yet, but you’re going to a hospital one way or the other.

  “Kinetiq, how’s it going?” I ask through the radio link.

  The roar of wind is heavy on the other end. “Little busy right now.”

  “Bring the fight over to Cynosure.”

  “What?”

  “Get over here.”

  “Not a—shit!” A high-pitched keening sound, and then several detonations. “Panzer’s not surrendering; I can’t get close without going full power.”

  “Don’t bother with surrender. Bring her over here, and then put her down hard.”

  There’s a long silence. Or maybe not that long. Time gets funny when people want to kill you. “Danny, she’s twelve.”

  “If she’s old enough to fight, she’s old enough to lose.” Sovereign shouts something down the tunnel at me, and part of me dimly logs it as boastful blackcape nonsense, but another part worries maybe he’s about to come in here after me. “Garrison stole Thunderbolt’s powers and he’s kicking my ass; we need to psych him out.”

  Calamity cuts in over a background of gunfire and Doc Impossible’s screaming profanity. “Gotta agree with Dreadnought here. You don’t have to kill her, but this ain’t the time for kid gloves.”

  “Shit. Fine. Shit,” says Kinetiq.

  I leave the tunnel with as much dignity as I can. How the hell is this guy punching so far above his weight?

  “Oh, I forgot to mention,” Sovereign says with a sneer I’m sure everyone loved in high school, “I’ve got three black belts.”

  Oh.

  Well, poop.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  All right, screw it. Round two, shithead, let’s go.

  You can have your kung fu and your Krav Maga or whatever else you got, I don’t care. Utopia had an antireality cannon and look what happened to her. I blast in close and start laying out the hammer blows. Dollars to dog shit says he doesn’t know how to deal with attacks that come from directly above or below. I bet his expensive senseis didn’t have much to say about chicks who can fly.

  This twists the fight into a swirling, looping thing, each of us diving, climbing, swooping for position. Sky, tower, and ocean are an almost interchangeable blur around us. The snap-flap-cracking of capes in the wind. The grunt and wheeze of bodies pushed far, far beyond human limits. Crashing glass, crumpling concrete. The slap of fists to meat that comes off like gunshots.

  And hey, did I mention he’s got lightning powers? Because he’s got freaking lightning powers, and it’s really pissing me off. My suit is a powerful insulator, which is the only reason I’m not dead yet, but even so, his lightning burns and stings and makes every punch land harder.

  Sovereign pivots backwards as I loop above him and snaps a pair of neck-breaker kicks at me. With my arms up to take the blow, I get close and ram him ten floors straight down into the brickwork of the promenade. He catches my arm and tries to break it, so I ride with the torque and whip him through a concrete column. Searing electric bolts leap at me from the dust, and I’m tearing up brickwork from the ground to fire back.

  We close in on each other for another blistering round o
f attacks and counters. It’s too many hits—I need to break contact—but he grabs my ankle as I’m taking off and whips me into the ground. Dust and shattered brick explodes beneath my cheek, a boot like doomsday stomps on my spine. I bend backwards to lock my ankles behind his knee, yank on the lattice to spin him into the ground, and pivot back to my feet. As I’m gripping his leg for the ol’ stomp-and-twist that’s supposed to shatter his pelvis and end the fight, he blasts me with a white bolt that sends me flying backwards in buzzing pain.

  And it just keeps going like that. This isn’t outer space—there’s not unlimited room to run and endless options for maneuvering. We get stuck in and we stay stuck in, an endless back-and-forth that’s grinding us both down to a nub.

  Time dissolves. No space for thought, no room for plans, only instinct and rage. I love it. I am alive down to my toenails, and I can’t stop smiling.

  Detonating an uppercut into his chin and taking a diamond-hard knee to my ribs in exchange. An explosion of dry splinters as I tumble end for end through an unused sauna. Cascades of shattered glass as I run him face-first across a tower’s windows, machine-gunning punches into his kidney as we go. Scalding bolts heating the air as they tear past me, blowing a marble fountain’s statue to gravel—

  —tumbling through a wall together, jewels of shattered glass spinning from our bodies, and for a still moment noticing that beneath us Calamity is taking apart a tactical team with her bare hands. Doc has dropped her guns, is firing energy blasts from her palms—

  —and then through the mansion and tumbling across the sod, great ribbons of grassy turf thrown into the sky as Sovereign and I savage each other again and again.

  Kinetiq and Panzer streak past us, a flying lightshow of lasers and muzzle flash. Kinetiq gives Sovereign a burst of crimson energy right to his face as they pass, but Panzer’s got the same idea, and I catch a rocket with my gut.

  “Kinetiq, that psych-out would come in handy any time,” I call over the radio.

  “Working on it!” they reply, voice labored, breathing heavy. “The brat got a second wind!”