by James Maxey
“Maybe he’ll burn up on reentry?” said Blue Bee.
“And maybe the ash will rebuild and we won’t have a clue where he’s at,” I said.
“I think I remember reading that the nanites are possessed by a demon? Is that right?” said Mica.
“I heard that to,” I said.
“So, what if we somehow got rid of the demon? Would the nanites still be evil?”
“None of us even know how to jam radio waves,” said Blue Bee. “What makes you think any of us can perform an exorcism?”
“Don’t get snippy,” I said. “There are no bad ideas here.”
“Not many good ones, either,” said Blue Bee. She shook her head. “Sorry. Nerves. I’ll try to stay positive.”
“Speaking of which,” I said, looking at Mica, “seriously, Paingiver?”
“I know,” said Mica, wincing. “Look, you’ve had, like, nine different code names. You know it’s hard to find a good one.”
“You already have a great one. Smash Lass is awesome!”
“Yeah, when I was fourteen.”
“Smash Woman, then?” I asked.
“That just doesn’t sound right to me,” she said.
“We’re getting off topic here!” said Blue Bee, practically shouting.
“I like the name Paingiver,” said a deep gravelly voice behind us. I turned to find Retaliator standing in front of the tachyon tube. He was carrying a rifle. It looked like an antique from the Victorian age, with the barrel trimmed with filigree swirls of lacy silver. If a bride ever desired to carry a rifle down the aisle instead of a bouquet, this would be the perfect rifle for the occasion.
“Let’s end this,” said Retaliator. “Allow the Fourth Horseman to rematerialize so I can shoot him.”
“What the hell is that gun going to do?” asked Blue Bee.
“That’s the Angelic Rifle,” I said. “Some old pope had an angel’s sword melted down and made into a gun barrel. It can kill demons!”
It’s hard to get any reaction at all from Retaliator, but I swear he looked impressed that I recognized the weapon.
“I know stuff,” I said, shrugging. I decided not to mention I knew this bit of weapons trivia because I’d helped Reverend Rifle try to steal this gun from the Legion’s undersea weapon vault.
“Atomahawk’s on life support,” Retaliator said. “I got him defibrillated the second I got him to the med bay.”
“That’s good news,” I said. I looked at Mica. “Speaking of med bays, whatever happened to Gator?”
“He was still alive when we got back to the vault after the whole Doom Raptor fiasco,” said Mica. “He’s healing up in a top secret hospital for injured supervillains.” By now, the dust was coalescing in front of her once more. “I hope this works,” she said, stepping away from the swirling cloud. “I’d hate to have the emotional progress I’ve made today get wiped out by the end of the world.”
“Should I bee up his vocal works?” asked Blue Bee.
“Won’t be necessary,” said Retaliator. “Let him think, for a fraction of a second, there’s hope of victory. It will hurt more that way, once he’s back in hell.”
The ghostly form of the Fourth Horseman congealed to sufficient solidity that he once more cast shadows. He extended his skeletal fingers and the scythe flew into his grasp. He turned to Retaliator and said, “Eric Gr—” then, BLAM! Retaliator blew his damned head off.
There was a howling wind as a dark cloud rose from the horseman’s torso, spiraling into a tornado that was sucked up into a ring of fire. As the last of the dark cloud passed into the ring of flames, the flames flickered out, leaving the night eerily dark and silent. The horseman’s skeletal body still stood before us, not moving. Then it toppled forward, landing with a clatter.
“It’s over,” said Retaliator.
“It was almost over for everyone,” said Blue Bee, sounding angry.
“You have a problem?” Retaliator asked.
“Yes,” Blue Bee said, poking him in the chest with a finger. “What the hell kind of stunt was that? You almost let him say your name! Do you have a death wish? What right do you have to gamble with the fate of the world?”
Wow. I’d never, ever seen anyone yell at Retaliator before. He didn’t move a muscle, just stared at her. Blue Bee took her finger off his chest and put her hands on her hips. “I mean, okay, you did stop him. Yay. Good job. Just, I dunno, let us know your plan next time?”
“There won’t be a next time,” said Retaliator. “He’s back in She-Devil’s realm now.”
“Which is another thing,” said Blue Bee, throwing her hands into the air. “I mean, what the hell is She-Devil on the team for if not to handle crap like this? Why the hell do we put up with the fact that nine times out of ten she doesn’t bother to answer the alarm?”
“Maybe she was in the shower,” I said.
“She-Devil rules hell,” said Retaliator. “Her responsibilities keep her busy.”
“What, she’s so busy doing all the paperwork in hell she can’t find time to come save the world?” Blue Bee rolled her eyes. I’d never seen her get so worked up.
She wasn’t going the find the next thing I said funny, but I had to say it anyway. “It’s hell. Of course there’s paperwork.”
Retaliator snorted. Then he let loose a second sound, almost but not quite a “hah.”
Then he was quiet again. We all were. We’d just fought the demonic harbinger of the apocalypse, but Retaliator laughing was the spookiest thing that had happened all night.
Chapter Eight
Secret Origins
Echo’s Story
Iwas caught off guard by the interior of the flying saucer. It didn’t have a science fiction or futuristic feel at all but looked more like an RV, sort of one big room that was living room, kitchen, and bedroom all at once. Up near the front windows there were two seats that looked like they’d come out of a passenger van. In front of the one on the left there was a steering wheel, gear shift, brake and gas pedals.
“This looks like something you’d take camping, not fly to the moon,” I said.
“I retrofitted it with gear from my old RV to make a human controller comfortable,” said Golden Victory, strapping himself into the driver’s seat. “About ten years ago London was attacked by aliens that looked like big purple blobs. I chased them off and captured this ship. The interior wasn’t really designed for human habitation, but all the important tech was in the shell of the saucer itself. I hauled it back to my father-in-law’s barn in Kansas, gutted it, and fitted it up with salvage parts from my RV. The transmission was completely shot.”
“On the spaceship?” I asked.
“On the RV,” said Golden Victory. “Fixing it was going to cost a fortune. My wife didn’t really want me spending the money.” He gave a gentle smile. “She hated that I spent all my spare time on fishing trips. Back then, she didn’t know I was secretly sneaking off to save the world evenings and weekends.”
“What happened if aliens invaded during normal business hours?” I asked.
“That’s one of the big reasons I helped found the Legion,” said Golden Victory. “Many hands make light work.”
“Your wife really didn’t know you were a superhero?” asked Prodigy. “That doesn’t seem like a very strong foundation for a marriage, to conceal such an important part of your identity.”
“I’m shocked by your rudeness, young lady,” said Arc, taking a seat by the window.
“It’s okay,” Golden Victory said, not sounding offended. “I understand it’s hard for the younger generation of heroes to understand the world we grew up in. I had my powers when I got married, but I wasn’t a costumed crime fighter. I didn’t see any reason to tell Laura about my powers, since I never used them.”
“You never went out flying just for the fun of it?” I asked. This was even harder to believe than the idea that his wife hadn’t noticed she was marrying a superhuman.
He shook his head. “Honestly
, for a good part of my life, I lived in denial that I even had powers. I thought I might be crazy, that I was hallucinating the time I’d fallen off the roof and didn’t hit the ground, or the time I slipped while mowing the grass and the mower blade bent when it hit my foot. Even after I accepted I could fly, I mostly kept my feet on the ground. It’s hard to believe now, but I used to be afraid of heights.”
“Get out,” I said.
“Seriously,” he said, grinning. “I mentioned falling off the roof, right? That happened when I was nine. I was nervous in high places after that well into adulthood.”
“So you had your powers as a kid?” I asked. “How did you get them?”
He shrugged. “Born with them, I guess. I realized very early on that my inhuman strength made me different, and that it made my parents sad that I wasn’t normal. So, I learned to repress my powers from a very early age. I grew up with a quiet, bookish personality, kind of shy. I never played sports, or put myself in situations where I might have shown other people I was invulnerable. Everyone thought I was a coward because I wouldn’t do anything even a little dangerous. They didn’t know that I wasn’t afraid of getting hurt, but afraid of finding out once and for all that I couldn’t get hurt.”
“Think of all the money you missed out on by not becoming a stuntman,” I said.
“But I would have missed out on all the prestige and glamor that comes from running a small town newspaper,” he said with a chuckle. “I guess it seems strange to you younger heroes, since you’ve grown up in a world where people more or less have gotten used to the idea that there are people who can fly. Back then, people with powers were mostly feared. The first Blue Bee spent as much time running from the police as he did chasing down bad guys. I did occasionally use my powers for good when I could, pulling people from burning buildings, rescuing the occasional cat from a tree, but I tried to stay hidden. Still, when blurry photos of me started turning up, and after a few close calls where my fingerprints became imprinted in bent metal, I started wearing a mask and gloves. Not long after that I heard about this guy named Arc fighting crime in Chicago and figured, you know, if he can operate more or less openly with a costume and code name, why shouldn’t I? In retrospect, I should have gone public sooner. And, yes, I really should have been honest with my wife. We’re solid now, but the roughest days of our marriage came after she found my costume hidden in the attic.”
“My wife knew from day one,” said Arc. “We were both pursuing degrees in electrical engineering. She was the only girl in the program, and felt like she had to work ten times harder than the rest of us. She decided to build this newfangled electrical generator that could draw power from the background radiation that’s part of our everyday world. We’re constantly bombarded by radio waves, infrared, and UV from the sun. She’d designed a type of microscopic, dust-like transistor that could capture this background radiation and turn it into electricity. Long story short, I wound up accidentally falling into a tub of this stuff and turning into a living dynamo. Would have completely fried my cells and died inside a day if Mary hadn’t been bright enough to figure out how to make me an insulated containment suit. It was the start of a long and beautiful partnership.”
“Must be nice,” said Prodigy. “I’ve never made it all the way to the end of a real date. I’ve given up on the idea that I’m ever going to find a man who’s comfortable with the fact I’m smarter than him.”
I furrowed my brow, unable to tell if she was joking, or just that full of herself.
“Mary’s smarter than me,” said Arc. “By a hell of a lot. But, Prodigy, you haven’t been on the team long. I don’t think I’ve heard how you came by your powers.”
“My super-learning manifested not long after the first Sterngeist invasion, when the lawbreaker drive triggered a lot of people’s latent powers,” she said. She stretched out her robotic arm. “I lost my arm following the asteroid impact in Charlotte. Also lost both my parents. While I was still in the hospital I started reading up on prosthetics, robotics, and artificial intelligence and two weeks later I’d built myself a new arm. I never intended to be a superhero, but after Tempo read my paper on temporal loops he contacted me to work out some glitches in his tachyon tube technology. Eventually, he talked me into joining the team. I never dreamed I’d one day get a chance to go after Sterngeist himself.”
“Maybe we should table the talk about secret origins and start planning strategy for when we reach the moon,” said Anyman. He sounded nervous, and looked a little pale. He’d been quiet ever since we got onto the ship. Was he actually worried about this mission?
“Aw, strategy, smategy,” said Arc, waving his hand dismissively. “We’ve beaten Sterngeist twice. I recognize most of the alien races in his new posse. We’ve kicked their asses at one time or another. I told Mary I should be home in plenty of time for dinner.”
“Let’s not go into this overconfident,” said Anyman. “If we’re going to the far side of the moon, I’ll be stuck as Tempo until this is over. His powers are versatile, but I’m not going to have access to any other bodies.”
“Why?” I asked.
“I won’t be able to get a signal from my teleporter on the far side of the moon.”
“You have the power to teleport?”
“Actually, no. When the Legion did its first big round of expansion, they needed a better way of getting around the world quickly than the jump jets they were using. I’d just patented a small teleporter, and had started my own company intending to make a fortune by revolutionizing transportation. Unfortunately, my process had a duplication error rate of .0023%. Not much, but enough to kill most living matter. Also, the tech more or less worked for sending mice across my garage, but the second I tried to scale it up to any real distance, the power requirements went through the roof. The Legion threw a lot of money my way to help me work out the kinks. In preparation for teleporting them, my computers mapped out their bodies down to the atomic level. Not long after, Tempo perfected his tachyon tubes, rendering my research moot. The Legion stopped funding my inventions. Desperate to prove that I’d worked out the kinks, I decided it was time to test with a human subject. Morally, I couldn’t risk sending anyone through but me. But processing all the data of transmitting me across my lab turned out to be too much for my system. When the computers rebooted, they pulled data from the first alphabetical folder in memory, and rebuilt me using Arc’s atomic template. It took me weeks to figure out how to perfect the system enough to change back into my real self. I still haven’t found a way to make teleportation an economically viable form of transportation, but hope I do at least a little good using my ability to change bodies to help out the team.”
“Holy cow!” I yelled out.
“My story isn’t really that amazing,” said Anyman.
“No!” I said, moving to the window, my eyes wide. “We’re in space!”
Outside, the moon was close enough to fill up almost a quarter of the sky. You don’t get a feel for it from pictures, but the moon is really beaten all to hell. Up close, all those craters looked jagged and cracked. Of course, we weren’t really up close. We still had to be thousands of miles away.
“I didn’t even feel us take off,” I said.
“The purple guys build some amazing inertial dampeners,” said Golden Victory. “We can accelerate out of earth’s orbit without even sloshing a cup of coffee. The artificial gravity is part of their original design, too. The only big tweak I had to make to their life support systems was to jury rig it to pump breathable air instead of ammonia.”
“I noticed the ship smelled like you’d just been cleaning,” said Prodigy. “Traces of the old atmosphere, I take it?”
“Yep,” said Golden Victory. “Never could get all the stink out of the duct work.” He tapped the pine scented air freshener dangling from a string taped to the windshield. “It took a few hundred of these to get it to something tolerable.”
“This is all very interesting,” said Anym
an, “but I still can’t help but notice that we’re not talking about the most pressing issue. The gravitational anomaly data I analyzed doesn’t exactly pinpoint Sterngeist’s location. The dark side of the moon is a vast area to search. What’s our plan for finding Sterngeist?”
“I’ve got a hunch where we should look,” said Golden Victory, as he piloted around the moon. My mouth dropped open. The top of a vast tower could be seen against the backdrop of stars. It kept growing taller and taller as more and more of it was revealed as the moon’s horizon moved beneath us. At last, the full tower could be seen, looking slender as a needle, though it had to be at least a mile across at the base. It just appeared skinny because it was, just guessing, maybe a thousand miles high.
Golden Victory unbuckled his seat belt and pushed the gear shift into park. He stood and said, “Why don’t I go see if this thing has a door?”
Chapter Nine
The Real Deal
Jenny’s Story
Tell me again why you have the gun?” asked Nimble as we clung to the shadows in the alley across from an abandoned shopping mall outside of Arlington, Virginia.
“Originally I bought it to kill myself,” I said.
“How?”
“What do you mean, how?” Her question made no sense. “I was going to put a bullet through my brain.”
“I mean how did you buy it? Aren’t you, um…”
“Crazy?”
“I mean, they run background checks, don’t they?” she asked.
“That only kicks in if you’ve been involuntarily committed. As far as the government knows, I’m as sane as you are.”
“Okay, but why did you bring the gun on this mission?”
“To shoot people?” I couldn’t get why she was asking such dumb questions. “I mean, if other Legionnaires get in our way, I’m not going to beat Retaliator in a fistfight.”
“You’re not going to beat him with a gun, either,” said Nimble. “And I don’t want you to shoot any of our teammates anyway. I just want to know the truth. But my real question is, why bother with a gun when your vocal cords are a deadly weapon? I asked you back at the trailer, but you never really answered me.”