“You’re tougher than you look,” Behemoth growls.
Pierre and Luke are in serious condition. Both are unconscious and have sustained life-threatening wounds. Glaciers status is unknown.
This is not how I imagined the day going. Behemoth alone is all but unbeatable, but now it’s me against their three most experienced members.
“Is anyone up?”
“Arsenal, I got some distance when Behemoth did her thing. What do you want me to do?” Fleet asks.
As fast as he is, he can’t turn the tide, but he can save Luke and Pierre.
“Evac the wounded, then Glacier.”
“Roger.”
“Glacier,” she turns to me when I speak, her body is filled with spider web cracks from the sonic attack. If Luke hadn’t leaped in front of her, she would be dead. “Freeze that big piece of crap.”
“With pleasure.”
The blue girl rolls her ice shoulders and slaps her hands together not unlike the move Behemoth did. Freedom and Mariposa are still recovering from the friendly fire when blue light flashes from Glacier’s palms and strikes Behemoth dead center. The woman howls and starts marching forward, each foot falling with the force of a small earthquake.
“Epic, pod Freedom, go full automated attack against Mariposa, we can’t let her control anyone while Tommy gets the team to safety.”
Affirmative. Amelia, the jig is up and the lab is lost… do you want me to enact Enterprise Refit protocol?
Dammit, no I don’t want him to. A quick glance at the situation tells me that no matter how this turns out, I’m done with the Diamondbacks.
“Do it.”
Verbal confirmation code required.
“Zero-zero-zero-destruct-zero.”
Glacier pours on the power but Behemoth is somehow closing ground. The puff off my launcher signals Epic going after Freedom. Mariposa is on the ground fifty feet away. She’s shaking her head trying to clear it from the shockwave her teammate smacked her with.
Initiating fire alarm. All personnel are evacuating.
The suit bucks as I slam into the ground next to the butterfly-winged woman. I’ve never really looked at her before but I see it now, she’s beautiful in an elegant way. Everyone in the media is always going on about how wonderful she is. To me, she’s just another despot trying to take over the world.
I snag her tunic and lift her off the ground.
“If you so much as flinch I will shatter every bone in your face, understand?”
She nods and her eyes snap open, clearing of confusion immediately. The shield on my gloves sparkles like a live wire arced against it.
“I’ve developed defenses to your powers, they won’t work on me. You people… it never occurs to you that if you can do it, so can I. Now give me a name!”
She shakes her head, “You don’t understand, Amelia. We’re trying to save the world.”
“I don’t care what brand of crazy you are. Tell me who’s in charge, a name Mariposa, I want a name. Who messed with my parents’ minds?”
I shake her to focus her thoughts. If she so much as glances away from me I’m blasting her with my kinetic lance. At point blank range it will likely shatter her face.
Building evacuation confirmed. Safeties off. Artemis is locked on. Adjusting orbital parameters…
“Arsenal, Force, and Perfect are in the hospital, what next?”
“Tommy, get Glacier out of here. You two lay low for a few days. I’ll contact you and let you know where to go from there.”
“Amelia, we’re not leaving you,” he says.
Mariposa smiles as if she can read my thoughts, but I know she can’t. She thinks I’m being indecisive, the truth is I’m multi-tasking.
“Tommy, seriously. There’s a lot going on here you don’t know. I need you two to vanish for a few days, can you do that?”
“What about helping me? You promised,” Glacier asks.
Epic shows Behemoths progress on the split screen. The monstrosity that is the unstoppable woman takes one earth-shattering step after another. Glacier is visibly weakening and I’m out of time.
MKI Arrow locked. Firing in seven seconds.
“Monica, I will. I know I can, it will just take some time. Go with Tommy and I will explain when I can.”
I put my full attention back on Mariposa.
She glowers at me, “They can’t hide from me, you know. Or from us. We’re everywhere. Controlling everyone who matters. You only slipped through our net because we thought you were dead. He thought you were dead. You’re only one woman, Amelia. You can’t outsmart all of us…”
“The hell I can’t,” I fire the kinetic lance. I let the energy carry her away from me in a vortex of broken bones and blood. She crumples to the ground a few feet away. She’s going to need serious plastic surgery if she ever wants to show her face in public again. The life signs on my HUD tell me she’ll live. I’m tempted not to let her. They’re building a world where life and happiness mean nothing. I can’t fight against that by being like them.
Glacier vanishes in a blur of speed.
“Epic, make sure they’re taken care of. Divert funds from Mars if you have to. Legal, and everything. I don’t want any of this coming back on the team.”
Affirmative.
With Glacier no longer actively freezing Behemoth she is free to come after me. Freedom is floating up into the sky trying to contort himself to reach the AG pod on his back.
In the pipe.
I nod. The ground shakes as the massive woman sprints toward me. I feel like a herd of elephants are bearing down on me. I fire off full IP cannons just in case as I blast off. The blue energy envelopes her and flashes down to the ground with no effect. Just White Rhino and every other invulnerable person I’ve fought.
She can’t fly, but she can throw things at me. I just need a little time. I check the clock.
On the way.
Thirty seconds until impact. I fly to the building, Behemoth tossing everything from cars to robot parts at me. I land in front of the main doors. I know what’s coming and I try not to think of my Xbox inside. My game collection is digital but still, it pains me to know I’m about to trash it all.
Holding my arms out wide Epic triggers my PA, “I’m right here, Bitchamoth. Come at me bro.”
“Like I’ve never heard that one before. You know what’s wrong with you. You think you’re smarter than everyone else. You think you have it all figured out and no one could possibly be one step ahead of you.”
She’s not wrong. I do have that problem. Reinforced by the fact that I’m almost always right.
“You know you’re being manipulated right? There’s someone controlling your thoughts and motivations. He’s controlling everyone and when he’s done this isn’t a world any of us are going to want to live in,” I tell her.
She shakes her head, “This is what I mean. You think that given the facts any decent person would agree with you.” She’s walking calmly forward as she speaks, not at all angry or raging the way Luke does. “But that isn’t true. Can’t you imagine being shown the end of humanity and then deciding to do whatever it takes to make that not happen? There’s something coming, something you can’t fathom. And we’re the answer, Amelia. We’re the next step. If you knew that a billion people were going to die tomorrow and all you had to do to save them was kill a few million, wouldn’t you? You’re the math genius, right? Tell me the numbers.”
It’s the ultimate catch-22. Do you kill one life to save two? She’s close now, only ten feet away but she doesn’t look like she’s going to attack.
“The only problem with that calculation is you don’t have all the variables. You aren’t killing people to save lives, you’re killing people on the chance it will save lives. You’re trying to stop something awful by being awful. What does it matter if we win and there’s nothing left that makes us human?”
“It only matters that we win,” she says. She towers over me, standing this close. She
could reach out and crush this suit like a discarded soda can if it weren’t for my shields.
“That’s the difference between us, Behemoth. For me, it matters how I win.”
She grins, “The difference between you and me is I’m alive and you’re not.” She reaches out in a heartbeat and grabs my helmet with both hands. The alarms scream at me from the pressure. The ZPFM kicks into overdrive flooding power into my kinetic shields keeping her fingers only inches from my skull.
“No, Behemoth, the difference between you and me is I’m right and you’re wrong. Also, yeah, I’m smarter than you.”
Her eyes go wide when the suit doesn’t pop. If it were just the metal she would totally break me in half. But with the kinetic shields powered by a ZPFM, I’m a lot stronger and tougher than she thinks. Still, I can’t stand here forever and take it. I plant a foot in her gut and throw myself backward with an Emdrive assisted heave. I’ve read she can manipulate her mass. However, she isn’t ready for this. Epic slams me back and to the ground using both the kinetic emitters to temporarily adjust my weight and the Emdrive to ‘push us back. She flips over me and crashes upside down into the building, turning the entryway into a symphony of shattering glass and rending steel.
“Up!”
Three seconds.
“Full burn.”
The Emdrive kicks in and I see Behemoth crawling out of the debris just as a strobing yellow light flashes down on the whole area.
I didn’t name Artemis on a whim. Not only is she a spy satellite, but she also carries twenty-four osmium filled tungsten carbide ‘arrows’. Dropped, not launched. They hit the earth at five miles per second with the force of three thousand pounds of TNT.
The arrow burns through the air leaving a trail of ionized gas behind before striking the Diamondbacks HQ. The flash lights up the sky and the entire building is consumed in a massive fireball that rockets hundreds of feet into the air.
I’m a half mile away when it happens and I can feel the force wave pass over me. The mushroom cloud climbs high into the night fading as the wind carries the debris away.
Where are we going?
“Stealth mode, let’s go see a friend one last time.”
I try not to look back. I almost succeed.
In full stealth mode, the MKII is all but invisible. If I stay under three hundred feet and keep my speed at a few hundred miles an hour no one will ever see it. Which is exactly what I do as I head East toward my old neighborhood. I never sold the house; I just hadn’t gotten around to it. Of course, that is the first place they’ll look. However, a few houses down should be safe, for a while.
Epic goes over the lowdown for me while we fly to Carlos’ house. No casualties, though the Brigade is seriously hurt. Currently, the news is blaming me for the explosion saying I was working on an unauthorized reactor experiment. They’re right, I did cause it and not just the arrow. My investigation into Cat-7 and the Cabal is what brought the Brigade down on us. I shouldn’t have been surprised when they did it legally. Whoever is behind all this mess is certainly forward thinking. I feel like they’re just out of my grasp. Regardless, they are close to their end game. They wouldn’t be making moves like this if they weren’t.
I pull up the footage of the aftermath of our fight. The news has a spectacular shot of a very naked Behemoth crawling out of the crater my arrow made. I didn’t think it would kill her, but damn she’s tough. The rest of the team was rushed to the local hospital. The Governor is on TV demanding to know why the federal team was in Arizona without her permission. Interesting.
I have Epic check the hospital, I can’t risk calling in case they’re watching communications. Pierre and Luke doing fine. Good thing too, if Luke was hurt badly or killed… I don’t even want to think of that.
Our destination is ahead.
“Thanks, buddy, land us in his backyard.”
I come down in the sandy yard full of discarded toys and sun-bleached lawn furniture. The suit’s propulsion doesn’t make any noise but there is a plume of dust when I hit the ground.
I text Carlos.
In your backyard. Come out.
What?
Come outside and bring a Coke.
A minute later I’m awkwardly leaning against the side of the house with my faceplate up. I hadn’t realized how thirsty I was until I asked him to bring a drink. It isn’t easy to put anything in my mouth, the helmet wraps around my chin and face to make sure an impact doesn’t spin the armor around. However, Carlos is very thoughtful and brought a straw.
“I saw the news, damn, niña, was that your satellite or did you build a nuclear weapon into the suit?”
I snort, trying to swallow the soda before it goes out my nose. “Funny, no it’s the satellite. Kind of an emergency back up if I ever had to destroy something down to the foundation.”
“Can you use it again or is it a one-shot?”
“Assuming Cat-7 hasn’t found it yet, and I won’t know until tomorrow, I can use it again. Right now Artemis is in stealth mode, folded up to make herself smaller. On top of that, I used the latest infrared and radar absorbent paint to keep her invisible. I did a lot of math to make sure her orbit wouldn’t put anything in danger up there nor would she collide with the twenty-thousand something pieces of debris floating around.”
He smiles taking a pull from his own Coke. “Well, you surely did it. I take it this means you know who’s behind all this?” He asks with a wave of his hands.
“Not yet, I mean, I know what. But I don’t have a name yet. I’m close though.”
“Too bad there isn’t a directory, like a Facebook for bad guys—”
A directory… of course there’s a directory. “Carlos, you’re a genius!” He looks nervously at the house when I shout.
“How so?”
“I can’t go into it, but I promise you I couldn’t have figured it out without your help.”
“Is there anything I can do? I don’t have powers and I’m not a super spy or anything. But if I can help…” He’s sweet to ask and I wish there was… wait there is.
“Can you go to Maricopa County General, check on Luke, Pierre, and Monica?” His stature perks up at the mention of the ice queen. “Let them know I’m all right and I’ll contact them as soon as I can. Let Luke know…” I want to say more but I just don’t know what I would tell Luke.
Carlos puts his hand on my shoulder, “It’s okay, I’ll tell him.”
“Thanks, amigo, I appreciate it. Close faceplate.” I hand him the Coke as the suit pressurizes.
“Amelia, will I see you again?”
“I sure hope so. If not, you’ve been a good friend—”
“None of that. You owe me a rematch on Halo, so you better make it through this.” I can see in his eyes what his Hispanic upbringing won’t let him say.
I step back off the porch, lock up and blast off.
There is a warrant out for your arrest, publicly now. A Parker alert has been issued in all fifty states plus Puerto Rico. You’ve even made it to the top of the FBI’s most wanted list. Well done.
“They want to stop me and since they have total control of the government it seems, they will use any means necessary. That’s okay though because Carlos gave me an idea.”
May I inquire as to your brilliant plan?
“We can’t extract Shai-Hulud because they’ll shut him down before we could get anything useful, right?”
That is correct.
“However, if we were in physical contact with a network hub he had access to…”
Then we could transfer the data far quicker than they could counter. Excellent thought. The only problem is we don’t know where a data center is.
“Don’t we, though?”
Portland?
“Portland. Seriously, you never actually thought they would build those awesome underground bases for state militias, right? There had to be another reason for them. I think they’re the network. They’ve got teleporters, total access to the team
s, heck they could have telepaths down there at any given moment playing ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ on people and no one would ever know. It has to be. We break in, steal the info, and get out. If we do it now, they shouldn’t even have time to prepare for us.”
How do you suggest we get in? You vaporized the Arizona entrance.
Vaporized…, yes I did. I can’t help but smile at the thought.
“There are four bases that we know of, Portland, Montana, Florida, and DC… but every state militia has an entrance.”
Montana is out unless you are planning to attack the UltraMax. So is DC.
“Florida is too far away, that leaves just Portland. Since I don’t want to fly to Washington that leaves only one other team.
Which is the team with a high probability of having their ass kicked by you…
“Bingo, California it is. Set a course, keep stealth mode on.”
Course set. Stealth mode directive still in play.
“Engage!”
Los Angeles is almost due west of us. We fly low over the Joshua Tree national forest then Palm Dessert. I have to keep it under three hundred feet, which limits me to sub-sonic speeds. Which is still pretty darn fast. Five hundred miles an hour and we’re past Riverside and looking at the outskirts of L.A. and it isn’t even two in the morning yet.
“I’m gonna need a rest after this. Do you have our mobile lab going yet?”
Almost. Should be ready by the time we return to Phoenix.
It isn’t anything fancy, just a semi-truck with everything I need to take off and put on the armor. Plus a bed, food etc. I had it set up as a contingency but I don’t actually know how it works. I let Epic do the legwork. This way if anyone was able to read my mind they wouldn’t know where it was or anything about it other than the fact that I had it.
We turn south as LA approaches; I want to skirt LAX. Risking a collision with a jumbo jet isn’t worth the extra time I would save.
The So-Cal team has their base on the water in Long Beach. I just hope not too many of them are home this time of night.
Unstoppable Arsenal Page 10