Ancient Arsenal (Full Metal Superhero Book 7)

by Jeffery H. Haskell

  “Who knew vengeance was five cans short of a six-pack,” I say as I walk over.

  Then her eyes open.

  TWENTY-NINE

  She roars in rage, tearing through the fabric Frank used to tie her and slams him across the chest. The poor man is unprepared for the blow; it knocks him backward and he hits the wall with a thud, his head bouncing off the rock. He slumps to the floor, unconscious… I hope.

  “He better not be dead,” I say to her. I bring up the IP cannons to end this, but before I can shoot she’s up and running at me. I fire, but she slides beneath the twin beams and right past me.

  “Luke,” I yell a warning as I turn, trying to bracket her with the beams. She hits him again, knocking them both down, but this time she comes up with the spear.

  “Yes!” She raises the spear above her head and slams the butt down on the ground with a crack like thunder. I recall Carlos doing that once, and the same thing that happened to him, happens to her.

  A blast of mist surrounds her and explodes outward; when it dissipates she’s still there, but now dressed in Greek style armor.

  “Is she the basis for the chain mail bikini too?” I say as she moves to face me. I’ve seen cosplayers with more clothes.

  “Now you fools will feel the true might of Nemesis. For too long this world has laughed in the face of the gods. Humanity must be punished for its arrogance and brought low, only then will you seek the favor of your betters. And I shall start with you, Amelia Lockheart. How dare you make a machine and think yourself a god,” she says. Her voice is unnaturally loud and it shakes the walls.

  “Uh, of the people here, you’re the only one pretending to be a god,” I say.

  As she speaks, she raises the spear above her head again. I don’t know what’s going to happen this time, and I don’t wait to find out; I fire both IP cannons at her. The energy slams into her stomach and dissipates down her legs into the ground.

  “Oh darn,” I say. She spins the spear above her head, picking up speed and out of nowhere a wind roars through the cave, pulling everything in the room toward her.

  “Epic, what the hell?”

  Amelia, I do not know how she is doing this, but she is opening a quantum gate, I hypothesize that it will connect to where ever she receives her power from. If she returns to her full power she may indeed wipe out a significant amount of life on earth.

  “But... that didn’t happen, so we stop her, right?”

  This is not a philosophical debate, Amelia. I do not know what will happen, this is the here and now. Stop her, or everyone on Earth pays the price.

  I hate when he’s right. Maybe whatever she’s trying to do won’t work..., considering humanity wasn’t wiped out in 1903, but at the same time, this isn’t a game, I don’t get a do-over.

  “Full power to the particle beam!” I drop to one knee and dig my fingers into the floor to stabilize myself against the ever-increasing vacuum. Once the light on the HUD goes green, I fire.

  Hyper-accelerated silicate particles shoot out at near light speed, vaporizing everything in their way. The beam strikes her in the chest...

  If she notices, she doesn’t react.

  “That’s impossible,” I mutter. I sliced through an F5 invulnerable with this. The only person it never worked on was Behemoth. Of course, here I am in power-armor, fighting a Greek god, so maybe not throw out the “I” word.

  The energy build-up is enormous. You need to find a way to disrupt or drain it. Once it reaches critical mass… I do not know what will happen, but “bad” is an understatement.

  “Epic, could we open a channel to the ZPFMs in the suit and disperse it using the Emdrive? Force the particles through the pathways we use to generate propulsion?”

  That could kill you, Amelia, and me.

  “Us or the world, your choice.”

  There is no choice, Amelia. We will always choose to save others over ourselves. Converting reactor flow rate. Ionizing gauntlets. Do it!

  I kick in the Emdrive at full power—the kind of power I would use to break orbit. She’s only twenty feet away but I’m going one-fifty when I hit her. We slam together and I push her across the room to crash into the wall. I stick one gauntleted hand in her face and shove. With the other I reach for the spear. Alarms scream at me and I ignore them. She’s not very tall but she’s doing everything she can to keep the spear away from me.

  I drive one armored knee into her crotch as hard as I can, she screams, folding over me and I wrap my other hand around the spear.

  Every sensor in the suit goes haywire, my temperature gauge reads a million degrees, and my atmospheric sensor reads negative one million atmospheres. The suit’s reactors peg the red line at seven hundred percent and in three seconds of contact, two trillion mega-joules pass through the suit and out the Emdrive into the ground, then the suit seizes up.

  Nemesis uppercuts me, knocking me back, but my hand firmly grasps the spear and I drag it with me.

  “Epic, reboot the suit,” I yell. I slide along the floor and run into Luke, who stops me cold with a foot on my chest.

  “I’ve got this Amelia,” he says with a grin. And I swear he’s bigger than he was a second ago. The seams of his shirt have ripped open, and his pants bulge around his waist.

  Nemesis comes at me and Luke leaps right at her. His big fist catching her square in the nose. I’m not sure who’s more surprised, her or me, when she flies backward in a shower of blood and a crack of thunder.

  Rebooting, ten seconds.

  She keeps her feet and her eyes glow—not metaphorically this time. White light like a plasma beam shoots at Luke. As if he knew they were coming, he dodges to the side, slides under them and comes at her with another flurry of blows.

  “Oh my God,” I whisper as I realize what happened. “His powers are back!” I shout for joy.

  The suit comes back to life and I can move again. A list of broken systems scroll past me. The Emdrive is fried and I’m down to one reactor operating at fifty-percent—barely enough power to keep the kinetic shields up. Only one operational IP cannon, no internal atmosphere, the list goes on.

  That’s okay, though. If Luke has his powers we can clean her clock. I toss the spear aside, no reason to give her the chance to get it back, and I charge into the fray.

  I slam a fist into the side of her head. She swings back. I take it on my forearm. Luke rabbit punches her in the gut, and she turns to hit him when I hit her with a left. All that time Luke and I spent training together pays off in spades.

  We’re a ballet, when he feints, I attack, when I dodge, he attacks. We quickly push her back against the wall. I don’t know how long I can keep this up, but right now we’re winning, and we need to win.

  “Enough!” she screams. White light envelopes her, then explodes outward. Luke twists as the blast catches him, riding the wave like a surfer. Unfortunately, I take the brunt of it.

  She’s on me in a heartbeat. Her bronze armored fist hits my faceplate, knocking my helmet against the cave floor. I stick one hand up in her face and trigger the IP cannon, blinding her for a second as I try to push her off.

  Hands like vice grips rip into my chest piece like it’s a sponge and she pulls me up with her, swinging me around and slamming me against the wall.

  “Luke, the spear!” She keeps hitting me and alarms warble. The kinetic shields are on the verge of failing and when that happens, I’m dead.

  “I don’t know what to do,” he says as he picks it up.

  “Hit... it... against... the... ground,” I manage to spit out a word each time she pulls me back before slamming me against it again.

  It’s hard to see with an elephant hitting me. But I make out Luke raising the spear above his head. He holds it for a second, then slams it against the floor.

  A crack of thunder booms through the cavern. Gone are his clothes, gone is Luke, standing in his place is The Protector. From his red plumed helm to his golden shield and his sandaled feet, Luke looks every in
ch the part—and dang if he doesn’t look good.

  “Nemesis, unhand her,” he orders. Years as a marine trained Luke to speak with confidence and command, but this… this is like God came down and ordered it.

  She flings me aside. I bounce off the wall before I regain my balance.

  Luke runs at her, leaps up and comes down with the spear pointed right at her. She fires her eyebeams at him, but he has the shield up beside him and they deflect off it into the cavern ceiling. The bronze tip cuts through her arm, spraying ichor across the floor. The rock sizzles where her blood splashes.

  “Holy crap, that’s a thing?” I say as charge in at her.

  So it would seem.

  Luke spins around and slaps the haft of the spear against her. She stumbles back just as I dive in and sock her across the jaw as hard as I can.

  I stumble past her, alarms scream for my attention.

  AMELIA, FRANK!

  I spin around. Oh no. Frank is unconscious on the floor; a welt on his face shows where she slapped him but that isn’t the problem. The portal, forming above him like a storm cloud is.

  “Luke, we have to go!” I run toward Frank. I try to kick in my jets before I remember they’re toast. I fall on my face and slide across the rock in a cloud of sparks.

  I grasp Frank’s wrist just as his body lifts toward the portal.

  “Luke,” I scream. I dig my fingers into the ground for support. I manage to look over at Luke. Somehow she disarmed him of his shield and spear, but that hasn’t stopped him.

  He has Nemesis from behind, one hand around her neck, the other crossing his wrist and pressed against the back of her head in a classic choke hold. She rams her elbows into his stomach and chest, each blow causing a mini shockwave at the point of impact.

  “Amelia,” Luke cries, his eyes finding mine. “Go!”

  I shake my head. “You stay, I stay!”

  The force pulling Frank pulls me from my hold and the floor crumbles as my tungsten-titanium carbide fingers drag furrows in the rocks. I feel Frank’s wrist break in my hand, and like a turkey with its bones broken, his sinews start to stretch. The portal is full sized now; it roars as it sucks in wind and debris.

  “Amelia?” I look at Luke.

  “Retract faceplate,” I yell. It slides up and our eyes meet, and I instantly know what he’s planning. I shake my head, tears welling in my eyes.

  “No,” I say. “Luke, no. We go together or not at all.”

  “I love you,” he yells over the noise of the portal sucking in all the air. My eyes narrow trying to protect me from the flying dust.

  He knees Nemesis in the back, bringing her up and shoving her with his now boundless strength, sending her flying toward me.

  She crashes into me and that is more than I can take, my fingers rip free and Frank, Nemesis, and I fly into the temporal portal.

  As it closes behind us, I see Luke running for it, but we both know he’ll never make it.

  Epic immediately closes the faceplate while pumping every ounce of remaining power into the kinetic shields. It’s all I can do to hold on to Frank. I drag him toward me, fracturing his poor arm even more, but I lose track of Nemesis; without Frank’s powers to guide her, who knows when she’ll end up.

  I see the portal at our destination open and then we’re through it, back in Pythia’s cave in our original time.

  We hit the floor with a thud. We roll over together a few times before we separate, I slide to a halt a few feet away from him. I get my knees under me and crawl over to him.

  “Retract faceplate.” I bark. Then softly to Frank, “Wake up!” I slap him gently on the face,

  His eyes slowly open, then horror crosses his face and he screams. Rolling to the side he cradles his arm, blubbering and screaming.

  “Frank, we need to go back, we need to get Luke, we left him back there, we need to go back,” I say, shaking him, trying to get him to focus through the pain.

  He shakes his head, grimacing and clenching his teeth as he speaks. “You know it doesn’t work that way. I went back a hundred times to the same exact second; it was always the same,” he says. Tears leak out of his eyes and he starts breathing heavy. “Amelia, hospital, it hurts... oh God it hurts,” he cries.

  He’s going into shock, but I don’t care. We have to try. “Frank, try, for God’s sake, try!” I scream at him. I slam my fist into the ground. “I swear Frank, if you don’t try, I’ll kill you myself. Try!”

  Amelia, even trying could kill him.

  “I don’t care, Epic, I won’t leave Luke back there. He’ll die,” I say. I know the truth even before I say the words.

  He is already dead, Amelia. For many decades now. I am sorry, my friend. I am so sorry.

  THIRTY

  Ifeel the sobs coming, my heart clenches up and I can’t breathe. “No, no, no,” I whisper. I hit the floor again. “I refuse to—”

  Frank passes out, convulsions wracking his body.

  It is a moot point, Amelia. If Frank dies, we cannot go back.

  “Crap. I can’t fly, Epic. What am I supposed to do?”

  IP cannon. Knock him unconscious and we can go from there.

  I push Luke out of my mind, taking all those feelings, wrapping them in a box, and forcing them down to my gut—the way I know he would. For Luke to have a chance, Frank must live. I dial the remaining IP cannon down to ten-percent and blast him. The energy interrupts the ions in his nervous system and he instantly relaxes as the pain is temporarily reduced.

  “This isn’t a permanent solution; I still can’t fly him out of here. Do we have comms?”

  I am afraid not. Virtually all the circuits close to the surface of the armor were fused when we channeled the energy from the spear into the ground.

  “Yeah, that was weird. I’m not sure... Oh... oh no.”

  Amelia, we have more important matters to concern us before you lay the blame for all death and destruction of the last one-hundred and twenty years on your shoulders.

  “But... but... it was Tesla. His machine, wasn’t it?”

  No, Amelia. I cannot tell you how she did it, but she was indeed breaching dimensional barriers. When you interrupted and siphoned it off into the Earth... you caused the event that created super powers. It is the only possible explanation for why Luke and Frank immediately regained their powers. Whatever happened to Tesla may or may not relate to this, but for the scientists of the time, it was an easy thing to point to and say it was the cause.

  “It’s too much, Epic,” I say, stumbling back. It’s all too much. My heart flutters faster than I can think, my breath comes in ragged gasps and I am on the verge of passing out.

  AMELIA. If you pass out Frank dies—and with him any chance of rescuing Luke. You have to figure out a way to save him.

  I nod, trying desperately to keep everything into that box and let it sit. A coldness comes over my heart and my head clears. I can do this. I just need to get to the surface and I can call Kate and then she can come here and get him.

  Except... the elevator. I’ve never known how she does it but this cave is a dimensional pocket of sorts; once that lift door closes above us there is no communicating with the outside world.

  When we were last here, not-Luke, Chronos, trashed the elevator while we were fighting. Another idea comes to me. “Epic, am I right in thinking we saw Pythia come out from behind the waterfall?”

  Yes.

  I charge over, splashing into the water like a kid with floaties on. Epic closes my faceplate as I go through the water; after it clears from my visor I see there is another cave back here, this one lit by a brilliant blue light—as bright as the sun but somehow not blinding.

  I pass under it and gasp. The small room contains a coffin-like machine with a see-through top.

  Inside, lying peacefully, corpse-like, is Pythia. Hanging next to the coffin is a pair of skinny jeans, a white tank top, panties, a bra, and of course, a cell phone.

  I am unclear how she does this.
<
br />   “I think I have an idea. Imagine she’s you, an advanced AI, and her bodies are like my armor. There would be nothing stopping her from transmitting her program from body to body, not unlike the way I carry you around in my armor when I think we might be cut off.”

  Yes, but she died in another solar system, light years from here. How would she have come back?

  “Same way I did—or some other way. Doesn’t really matter. If this device can create tissue—”

  —Then it can regenerate tissue.

  Easier said than done. I don’t see any controls; no buttons, handles, I don’t even know how it’s powered...

  A hiss emits from the coffin and the glass lid slides open. Pythia’s large blue eyes flutter open and she smiles. “Amelia, it’s a pleasure to see you again. Please don’t hate me. I was left with no other choice…as were you.”

  “I know that, but right now we’re at the end of the loop. Frank is dying, Luke is trapped in the past, and we need this machine to save Frank so he can save Luke.”

  “Of course, bring him here.”

  I run back out, splashing water everywhere as I plow through the waterfall to reach Frank. His arm is swollen to the point it’s unrecognizable as belonging to a human.

  “I’m sorry, Frank. This is my fault,” I say as I carry him back. I should have let him go and just stayed with Luke. The cold water calms him a little as we pass through it. In the intervening seconds, Pythia has slipped into her clothes.

  She doesn’t quite look like the teenage girl with the exaggerated bosom and hips she had before. More like that girl grown up, with less baby fat around her face and a more serious countenance.

  She points at the coffin, “Put him in. Take off his shirt if you can.”

  I do. Frank is quite a bit taller than Pythia, but I manage to fold his legs over, then pull off his shirt. My suit isn’t designed for fine manipulation...

  “Epic, make a note. I want some kind of tool set that allows me to manipulate fine wires and electronics.”