Sovereign

by April Daniels

  Great strategy, Danny. Really, you should go pro.

  “If one of you’d finish your side of the dance and come give us some air support, I wouldn’t tell you not to,” says Calamity. The sound of gunfire is evermore hectic over her comms. “Codex, how we doin’, partner?”

  Gunfire is a bit muffled, but still an obvious baseline under his reply. “It’s one of those good news, bad news things.”

  “Bad news,” says Calamity.

  “Graywytch set up some more magical booby traps. I need to untangle them.”

  “And the good news?”

  “They’re not very good booby traps. I think I can do this without getting my head blown off.”

  “Wait, that doesn’t make sense,” says Doc. “Are you sure?”

  “Pretty sure,” says Codex.

  “Gift horses, Doctor,” grumbles Calamity. “Keep going, Codex. Tell us when—SHIT! DOC, THE LEFT! WATCH THE LEFT!”

  Meanwhile, Sovereign and I are trapped in a tight, spiraling dive of punches, kicks, locks, and counter-locks. He’s better at the lock stuff than I am. A lot better. But arm and leg locks usually assume that the target isn’t in midair, and so far I’m able to keep finding ways to escape. Being as flexible as an entire gymnastics team helps a lot too.

  Kinetiq and Panzer are throwing more fireworks at each other than the Fourth of July. Everywhere they go, windows shatter and pavement explodes. Force fields sparkle against fusillades of tracer fire. Gleaming ablative armor appears an instant before concentrated heat beams evaporate it in a shower of yellow droplets.

  Every so often our duels cross paths, and I manage to take a swipe at Panzer or Kinetiq lands a sucker shot into the back of Sovereign’s head. And the reverse happens about as often. It’s hard to track Calamity and Doctor Impossible’s fight over the radio, but we seem to be holding our own.

  The problem is that holding our own is only a polite way of saying not quite losing yet.

  We’re grinding each other down to a bloody pulp, and the first side to break will get chopped to pieces in a matter of seconds. It’s a fair fight, the worst sort of fight, and the first side to figure out how to cheat absolutely—

  Sovereign’s boot catches me in the gut and sends me through two walls. While I peel myself out of a bent and twisted commercial-sized refrigerator in the kitchen I smashed through, he darts through a door and disappears. I lift my leg high to step through the hole I plowed on the way in, scanning the lattice, alert for an ambush.

  What the hell are you—oh shit. There he is again, with two men who look like they were cooks hiding in a walk-in cooler. Holding them by the back of their jackets, Sovereign floats out over the promenade and beckons me to the fight with his head.

  It’s too risky to throw more bricks at him; I’ve got to close and engage. But when I drive a hard punch at his face, suddenly an innocent cook is in the way to block me. I manage to pull the attack just in time to catch the back of Sovereign’s boot with the side of my head. The cooks are screaming, pleading, and he doesn’t care. Another kick erupts from between the two of them, and I barely turn the blow with my shoulder—the wounded one where Panzer shot me. Crimson spikes of agony stab up and down my arm and I cry out.

  Back up, back up fast to get distance and reconsider.

  “So that’s it? Stalemate?” I call to him across the chasm between the towers. “That’s your big play?”

  Princess Panzer tears between us on jets of pink flame, Kinetiq right behind her, cobalt beams lashing from their eyes.

  “I don’t see a stalemate, little girl,” Sovereign says, an instant before he charges. My heart clenches—baseline humans can’t take acceleration like that! That moment of horror is all Sovereign needs. He lets one of his hostages go—

  —the poor man keeps flying—

  —and Sovereign clenches a fist that explodes a galaxy behind my eyes. Cool ocean air on my cheeks, and my eyes snap open while I’m still falling. My eyes ransack the sky until I find the hostage, still falling. Not for much longer. I’m dimly aware that Sovereign is closing with me, but I set that aside and focus on the lattice.

  The man’s momentum is terminal; he’ll never survive impact with the bricks of the promenade below. I can use that. In the lattice, I wrap the strings of momentum around me, focus and redirect them.

  Sovereign has seized my arm, is pulling me.

  A few feet above the ground, the screaming hostage seems to bounce in the air. His momentum killed, I release my hold on him and let him tumble safely to the promenade.

  The other hostage is falling now. There’s no time to be confused or sense any other danger. This is all happening on a timescale of eyeblinks. It’s instinct and reaction speed, not planning, not thinking.

  I’m grabbing the second hostage, arresting his fall—

  The bones in my arm twist and shatter into red, grinding ruins. I am stunned breathless by the pain. Sovereign has locked my arm against itself and given me a new joint. His elbow catches me in the throat and fastballs me through a window and two walls of sheetrock. Clouds of white dust kick up around me as I come to rest, crumbly bits of wall skittering away. I push myself to my feet and then he’s in here with me.

  It is a very different fight now. This isn’t fighting with one hand behind my back. This is worse. This is fighting with one arm as a weak spot, a place that beckons for more punishment, which I can’t even hold and protect without jiggling up little explosions of pain to distract me.

  Block and twist, counter and spin, I do everything I can to keep distance between us, to keep more blows from falling. It’s not working. I check the lattice—the walls behind me are thin. When I hunch my shoulders and fly backwards into them, I’m able to punch out the other side of the building without hitting any structural girders. Once in open sky, I flip around and push for speed.

  “I’m in trouble,” I say over the radio. “Kinetiq, can you help me?”

  “Tied up,” is all they say, voice clipped and tight.

  “Get out to her,” says Calamity.

  “Not hap—” Their transmission cuts off in a grunt of pain. “Panzer’s pushing me too hard. I don’t feel so good; hard to focus. Sorry, D.”

  Shit. I glance behind me, and Sovereign is right there, coming hard after me as I bend my course around the outside of the towers and come back through the center space of Cynosure. Crackling forks of lightning chase me, strike glancing blows that make my legs and back sting. Think. I need to think.

  What can I do that he can’t? He’s not as strong or fast, but that’s not holding him back. He’s as tough, but I’m wounded. We both fly, and his ranged attack is better than mine. If I press him too hard, he can just take more hostages. (Press him too hard? With this arm? Who am I kidding?)

  Well, let’s see how good his acrobatics are. With a hard bite on the lattice, I slam myself into reverse, catch him in the nose with the heel of my boot as I flick past. It’s a good hit. A solid hit. It tells me he still doesn’t grasp the full range of superhuman flight.

  And it’s not even close to enough. He snorts blood and comes at me again, only now he’s wary, he’s watching, and that trick won’t work twice.

  A bolt of lightning tags me right in the chest and my back arches tight with pain. It shakes me enough that Sovereign slams into me, catches me around the waist. We angle down to the grassy field in the center of Cynosure, far beneath the suspended mansion. A pillar of grass and sod geysers up from where we land, my arm screaming, fear wringing my heart tight. The blows come like hammers, on my face, my arm, my neck, my shoulders.

  A plan arrives.

  He’s about to push my nose in flat and I jerk my head to the side—he goes wrist-deep in the ground, and I whip my head back to pin him there while my legs slither out from under him, wrap and lock tight around his middle. With my good arm I gouge my thumb two knuckles deep into his eye socket and use the distraction of the pain to get us airborne again.

  If this doesn’t work, I’ll
probably die here in the next few minutes. Either way, this son of a bitch is going to know he was in a fight.

  My shoulders smash through the broad stairs leading to the field like a ship’s prow, tossing up a spray of stone and dust. My thumb squelches in his eye, and I’ve hooked it around to get a grip on his skull from the inside.

  His punches are frantic, wild. My nose crunches, my molars are loose. My broken arm is one glowing brick of pain. It doesn’t matter. Because I’ve remembered something important.

  There was a group photo taken after the Northern Union superteam stopped that asteroid from hitting us three years ago. I remember I bought a glossy copy because I was hoping to get it signed someday. In that photo, Thunderbolt was wearing a pressure suit, unlike the old Dreadnought. That’s because Dreadnought could hold his breath for hours on end. So can I. Thunderbolt couldn’t. And Sovereign is using Thunderbolt’s powers.

  We hit the water at nearly the speed of sound. Half-delirious with pain, struggling to keep my hold on the lattice, I didn’t fly well. It feels like I hit every wall and piece of furniture I could on the way off the island. But it doesn’t matter, because my legs are still locked around his waist, and my hand is still locked into his head, and we are headed as far down as I can drag us.

  The water is cold. It’s heavy. The salt stings my wounds. In a matter of moments we’re in darkness, and the pressure is a vice grip. The water slows his punches—they hurt, but not so much. My thumb comes out of his eye with a blooming black cloud, and I make a steel band of my arm around the back of his head, lock him in tight to my chest and throat.

  Down, down, deeper we go. The anchor cables for Cynosure slide past, a dark bamboo forest reaching down to infinity. High above us, daylight winks dimly through the rippling scales of the surface.

  I can tell the moment he figures out what’s going to happen. There is a horrified stillness, and then he begins to thrash. Electricity floods out from him, as much as he can make, but in his panic he can’t focus it to make it behave unnaturally like he normally can. It flows over my suit’s insulation and heads to the sea floor, harmlessly. My broken arm is as far out of the way as I can get it, and I clench tight to him with every other muscle I have. You’re down here with me, Sovereign. You’re down here until I decide to let you go. You don’t get to hurt anybody else. It’s over.

  Flickering bolts of power squirm up and down his arms as he tries to shock me loose. The first bubbles escape his mouth, and just for a second I loosen my thighs so that I can slam them back down and turn the trickle into a geyser. A lungful of air bloops out of his mouth and races to daylight. He’s clawing at me now, fingers digging for purchase against my screwed-shut eyes. I turn my head to deny him leverage and hold on.

  I watch his heart slam in his chest. I watch his legs thrash and twist. Not much longer now. He’s still hurting me. His attacks still land. But I’m tougher than he imagined I was, and more deliberately cruel. They never see it coming. They never expect that someone who looks like me could have so much calm, considered malice at her disposal. By the time they figure it out, it tends to be too late.

  The last handfuls of breath escape his chest. He spasms, seawater rushing into his lungs, plumping them out tight. He thrashes again, harder than ever, and then goes still. Cautiously, I loosen my legs. He stays limp in the water and begins to sink.

  I am not undefeated.

  I am undefeatable.

  • • •

  Up, up into the air, water streaming off my shoulders, pouring off my cape, Sovereign’s ankle clenched in my good hand. His face is pale, his eyes half-lidded. It takes some effort to shake the water out of his lungs, and when I drop him onto the promenade he lands with a wet smack. First things first, I pull one of Codex’s trinkets out of the low-profile cargo blister on my thigh and use it to tie his wrists. It’s tricky with only one hand, but I’ve still got most of my teeth, and I manage. The magic makes the necklace chain as strong as titanium wire, and it should dampen all his powers—including his power-dampening field. Magic is weird. When I roll him onto his back he’s still not breathing. A roll of nausea twists up my throat, and I move straight into CPR.

  The chorus of “Staying Alive” by the Bee Gees happens to be the perfect rhythm for the chest-pumping part of CPR. With a cold, urgent fear driving me, I push his ribs in to the beat of the song I’m whispering under my breath. (I’ve heard that paramedics hate this song. Now I know why.) Please. Wake up. Doc was right. Please, wake up. I blow into his mouth. With my ear down at his lips to listen for breath and watch his chest, a little voice in my head screams, the lattice, you idiot!

  Right. Duh. Most of the water is out of his chest, but his heart is spasming, and spasms don’t pump blood. Uh, crap, what the hell am I supposed to do about that?

  Before I’ve got time to come up with an answer, Princess Panzer comes screaming out of the sky. She lands in a flurry of vernier thrusters and unfolding weapons platforms that gleam in the sun. In a half-second I’m staring down a tank platoon’s worth of firepower.

  “GET AWAY FROM MY DADDY!” she shouts, rigid with terror. At least three railguns are pointed at my head, their capacitors crackling with stored charge.

  “He’s inhaled a lot of water. I’m trying to save him—”

  “MURDERER!” Two of the laser pods floating behind her paint me with targeting beams. In the shape I’m in, if all that firepower hits me at once—well, at least it wouldn’t hurt for too long.

  As calmly as I can, I raise a placating hand. “The CPR isn’t working. He needs a defibrillator. Is there one of those on the island? Do you know where to find it?”

  Tears are rolling down her cheeks. Panzer looks from me to her father and begins to shake. “I don’t—I don’t know,” her voice is tiny. “Please, Dreadnought, you can’t let him die.”

  “Can you make one?” I ask.

  She nods, more a spasmodic jerk than anything else. The railguns fold up and disappear into the nowhere they came out of.

  “You need to have the right amps and volts or else—”

  “The magic does all that,” she says distractedly. Panzer’s eyes are unfocused as a pair of silver paddles edged in gold appear from folds of light. With a quick yank I tear the front of Garrison’s suit open and then sit out of the way as the paddles float down to rest on his chest. A thump of electric charge, and his body jumps. Another. Another, and he’s taking a breath before vomiting. He groans as all of his ribs that I broke while trying to resuscitate him make themselves known. The defibrillator paddles evaporate along with the rest of the ordinance as Panzer throws herself at her father.

  “Daddy!”

  Garrison grunts back a cry of pain as she fastens her arms around him. With his arms tied behind his back, the best he can do is lean his head into her. “Lilly…”

  “Fire in the hole,” says Calamity over the radio link. A moment later, a muffled bang echoes against the sky.

  Panzer looks up sharply. “What was that?”

  “The fight’s over. Calamity just blew up the ritual room,” I say.

  “You—you what?” shrieks Panzer. She bolts upright and begins summoning more guns.

  “The fight’s over, Panzer,” I say in my best hardass voice. “Look around, kid. You lost.”

  And it’s true. Cynosure has seen five different kinds of hell in the past—crap, two hours? How’d we lose two hours? Broken glass and shattered concrete are everywhere. Fire sprinklers have popped all over all three towers. Emergency lights swirl amber, and only now with the absence of fighting can the alarm sirens be heard.

  Panzer takes a step forward, murder on her face.

  “Princess,” rasps Garrison. She stops dead, and looks down at him, her face stricken. “No. I can’t lose you. Not after everything else.”

  Panzer collapses into sobbing. Garrison sits up as best he can, leans against the lip of a long, low planter box. She crawls to her father and curls up in his lap. Garrison whispers to her, says th
at it’s going to be okay.

  For a moment, I don’t understand why I am stabbed with envy.

  Chapter Thirty

  A clean salt breeze blows in through the shattered windows. Calamity leaps up on a chair and sticks two fingers between her lips to bless us with an ear-cracking whistle. Everyone is congregated in the triage ward next to the infirmary. Dozens of prisoners look up at the sound, and the (very) few muttered conversations in progress wither and die. Helmets are off, weapons thrown overboard. Those who gave us trouble got their hands tied, but most are cooperative. The mood in the room is defeated, low.

  “Doc says she needs nurses,” shouts Calamity. “Who here is a combat medic?”

  A few of the prisoners raise their hands, including one whose wrists are zip-tied together. Most of the prisoners and walking wounded were escorted over by Calamity and a bemused Codex, who looked incredibly uncomfortable to be holding a submachine gun. A few of the more serious injuries were strapped to stretchers so I could airlift them directly into the surgical bay.

  One of these was Kinetiq. We found them collapsed on the steps of the mansion, bleeding heavily from the gut where one of Panzer’s bullets had gotten in under their armor. Letting Kinetiq’s stretcher dangle from my good hand while one Doc rode me piggyback and the other clamped onto my legs, we got Kinetiq across the gap and into the surgical bay in one of the towers in a matter of moments.

  Just before they went under the anesthesia, they turned to me and said, “I can’t believe I got smoked by The Littlest Princess.”

  And then Doc was stripping off their armor without bothering to cut it, just tearing the fasteners apart with inhuman strength. Her other body tied my cape into a sling for my arm before it shooed me out of the surgical bay and told me to set up a triage point in the lounge outside.

  That’s how we came to organize an olly-olly-oxen-free for every Silver Mountain goon who hadn’t been taken out in the fighting. Calamity got on the PA and told them what was up and that they had ten minutes, and then she was going to personally shoot every goon she could find who hadn’t surrendered or fled. Further, she informed them that she’d run out of everything except plain old lead bullets. It turned out to be a powerful motivator.