by Ben Bequer
Armada smiled, keeping her shield arm wide, keeping me centered, and her spear arm reared back to skewer me. I did as Apogee had taught me. Instead of stepping back, I moved aside, as she stabbed at me. The spear smashed the mirror to bits, sticking into the wall. I then kicked her chest. My boot smashed into the curve of her right boob plate, collapsing the armor and hurling her away from me like a cannonball. She broke a dozen mirror panes, bouncing off and landing in a rain of glass shards.
I switched to the drone feed and saw Coach’s mouth agape, horrified. Bracing against the mirrored wall at her back, she drove her armored shoulder into the panel ahead of her, splintering the glass. Her leg gave out and she spilled forward, crossing her arms in front of her, grinding shards to dust under her weight. Stumbling to her feet, she limped toward Armada, lying in a heap near the room’s center.
Coach was a few paces away when Lady Armada stood. She was still hunched over, blood trickling from her nose and mouth, cradling her upper torso. The breastplate had been caved in, pushing into her right breast and the ribs beneath it. Coach moved in to help her, but Armada held an arm out to stop her. Taking a deep, painful breath, she rose to her full height, and I didn’t need a camera to see the murder in her eyes.
“Now Bubu,” I said, slipping behind a mirrored wall.
Struggling to breathe, Armada looked around the room, realizing that her spear was still stuck in the wall a dozen paces away and her shield lay on the floor halfway there. She coughed, spitting up blood, and almost fell to one knee, when the wall nearest to them swung open, revealing a phalanx of Lady Armada’s, armed with spear and shield. The real heroine laughed as they approached. There were thirty or so in the front rank, and from my position, I could see Bubu clearing the way for them, moving some of the solid-light walls I was using for concealment.
“They’re fake,” Coach shouted, but retreated a hobbled step.
The phalanx’s front rank was thirty strong, and went four ranks deep, the spears forming a solid wall of steel as a leading edge. They marched on Armada in slow, shuffling steps; the thud of their heavy boots resounding over the room’s morphed acoustics. Their armor shone as if it were fresh polished, bathing the two women in light.
Lady Armada didn’t retreat, steeling herself to meet them.
“It’s no trick,” I said, switching over to Bubu, “Herd her to the center, dude.”
“On it,” he said, and I could imagine him moving the formation with a game controller. He had insisted on getting one. “You never know what you’ll need,” he told me.
Keeping the formation tight, the phalanx moved laterally, taking half a dozen paces before resuming their pace. Neither heroine reacted, though Coach moved further away from the oncoming phalanx.
Armada spread her arms and I saw her mouth moving, the light coming from her intensified until I was forced to look away. I took a second to see through the drone facing away. Coach was probing for me, her tendrils all over the room, but none were threatening me.
When her illumination faded, Lady Armada looked whole and uninjured. Her armor was heavier, her arms and legs covered in thick plates, complete with a winged shield that looked impressive. She crouched, her knees bent but loose, readying the shield so that it covered most of her torso and legs, the bend of a silver wing cut to fit the spear perfectly. Shouting a Greek battle cry, she stepped into the phalanx, matching their pace.
The tendrils froze in place as Coach stopped searching and watched her partner fight an army. Armada took the brunt of dozen spears on the winged shield, most of them sliding off or slamming into it, but none got through. One slipped past and clipped her shoulder, but the armor held. She wasn’t injured, but the press of bodies forced her back, her steps measured to prevent being thrown off-balance.
The formation swiveled in to envelope her, the phalanx moving with computer controlled precision. Armada responded by stabbing the lead bot, running through its shield and into its neck, again wrenching the spear with a twist that sliced through most of the neck. The bot took one more boneless step, fell down and was still. Pressing her advantage, she stepped into the gap, roaring a challenge, and stabbing in short, efficient movements. A second bot fell under her attack, this one with a gash where its head had been.
She was lost for a second as she stepped deeper into the phalanx, but she shouted another challenge in Greek. Light burst from the eye of the storm and I saw the spear transform into a short sword which she put to work. Shields crashed with a thunderous boom, scratching and slipping off each other, as Armada met the phalanx. She stabbed forward, catching the replacement bot in the legs, her armor deflecting every spear point that came in contact.
In time, she would kill them all; her armor tough enough to absorb almost every blow, and her spear/sword sharper than their metal frames, but the weight of the bot horde was pushing her back.
“Wait until the last second,” I told Bubu, feeling his frustration with my micro-management by his lack of response.
I had no choice but to be impressed by her approach to the fight. Everything was measured from her pace to her attacks, intent on keeping the enemy tight and using their numbers to against them. There were still over one hundred bots in the phalanx, but she never took more than a dozen attacks at any one moment. Her shield pressed hard against four or five bots. I heard a crunching and the sounds of an exploding bot, and a second later, a surprised yelp. The bots stopped as one, straightened and cleared out, their facade replaced by a mirror reflection that made them look invisible. The effect was quite eerie, and as the smoke cleared, I saw the catch-chute in the floor close, sealing Armada’s scream within.
Coach didn’t wait for me to speak, having already crossed the length of the room, she moved towards the slide that had dumped them into the room. Her gait suggested the injury was bad, but she pushed it, trying to put distance between us.
“It’s just you and me, now,” I said, walls sliding in to cut off her path. “Are you ready to listen?”
She knocked on the walls that hemmed her in, the glass was thick, though she had already proven she could break through. Straightening her back and clenching her fists, she turned to face me. Her eyes were hard chips staring and her lips twisted in frustration. “First you tell me that she’s safe.”
“They’re all safe,” I said. “The chute leads to a stasis tube. She’ll join Bamma and Slamma for naptime, with nothing but a bruised ego to show for it.”
I felt her weighing my response, those hard eyes studying me. Finally, she nodded and spread her arms in invitation. “So talk.”
“Well, I told you already,” I said, my voice rising to shout. “I told you and you didn’t care. You’ve been in here, Coach,” I said, tapping my temple. “You know what I’m about. You know I wouldn’t hurt a fly…but fuck with me and I’ll take it as far as it goes. And here you all are, tearing down the walls to my house,” I gestured to the pounding above.
“It’s not that easy,” Coach said.
“No, it’s not. It’s complicated. It’s nuanced. But you don’t want to hear that. I’m big and loud, so you put me on top of the most wanted list. You put me on top of a real psycho like Brutal.”
“You know, bringing him up won’t help your cause much, especially after what happened-“
“I’m starting to realize that nothing’s going to help my cause, as you say. And I’m fine with that. I’ll take down the bad guys I’m responsible for, and you go get the rest.”
She found that curious, cocking her head with sudden curiosity.
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean Haha,” I said. “After I’m through with him, I’m going after Brutal. Leave them to me, okay? Go after the rest of the list if you have nothing to do.”
Again, the pause as she measured my words, clucking her tongue as she did, an inadvertent tick that stopped when she realized I had noticed. She took a step closer, the tendrils poised, but not attacking. “You don’t have the whole picture, do
you? I suppose Apogee forgot to tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
“Look, I’m not the best person to tell you this. I don’t understand all that science fiction talk.” She said, trying to choose her words. “It’s got something to do with you, and your little trip to outer space and-“
“Shard World,” I said, but it didn’t resonate with her.
“Wherever it was,” she said. “It changed you and not in a good way. Apogee too.”
“I know about that, Coach. We met with a…a very powerful alien. I think it’s the same species that Retcon and his people met way back.”
“If you know what’s happening to you, then you know we have to bring you back. You have to come with us.”
“What the hell for? I’m a little stronger, so what?”
She gave me the reproving glare one used on a petulant child, arguing in ignorance. She shook her head, trying to shush me with its insistence. “You’re like Retcon now,” she said. “You’re affecting people around you like he and the others did.”
Could that be possible? If she was telling the truth, not only did Apogee and I have to be isolated from other people, we were a threat to all normals.
“See? It’s not that simple anymore. You’re changing people around you. Hell, you’re affecting me, now. There’re some people in the village out there, I understand you gave them a little visit. And no, it’s not like they’re all going to turn into little Blackjacks out of nowhere – you know it’s not like that. But it changes people. I’m old enough to remember the last time, kiddo and it wasn’t pretty. Some people, like you, became super in your momma’s belly, but other people just died. I wish Superdynamic was here to explain it to you. He knows a lot more about this than I do.”
I felt the pounding of my veins on the side of my face as the anger welled up inside me, "Well where else am I going to be less of a threat that in the middle of the Carpathian Mountains?"
"Hey, hey,” she snapped, jutting her right index finger in my face. “You don't yell at me. You understand? I don’t take that from anyone."
I spread my arms wide, realizing this wasn’t going the way I had hoped. But then again, I was a fool for thinking I could get through to her. She only saw her side of the argument. A red light pinged on my right contact lens, and I saw the little swarm of drones Bubu had mobilized, my command drone included, earlier inch closer to Coach
"But there’s something else, Blackjack. Something you're just not getting, I guess. What you have to understand is that we don't trust you. Now, Apogee...Hell we all love her. You? Not so much."
"None that matters to me. I'm trying to-"
“None of that matters? None of that matters? It's because of her that we didn't use some sort of space satellite to bomb this place from orbit. It’s because of her that you and I are talking like this, why I’m even giving you a chance to talk. We’ll, we’ve talked, now it’s time to do the right thing.”
I shrugged, “I figured you would do this,” I said, but before I could do anything else, she attacked me. I felt a slight pain in the back of my neck as she speared me with a tendril and took control. I’d been through this before, and it was the same feeling, as if someone was inside your head, a passenger who had suddenly taken control of the wheel.
“I’m sorry about this, kiddo,” Coach said, and as she did, I felt her probing through my memories, like rifling through a library’s card catalog back in the day. She gave herself away with her curiosities, including a long, slow look at the memories of Apogee and I in bed a few days ago. It was curious, because most of Coach’s attention was on her supple body. The angles were strange, from above and whirling around, but it was clear that she had more than a passing interest in my companion. Coach seemed to know I was monitoring and cracked a little smile from the side of her face, but otherwise spent a good deal of time watching us go through the motions.
When she was satisfied, her probes flashed to earlier in the conflict, to the failed plan videotaping a “captive” Apogee, and from there fast to the last moments I saw her flashing off to fight Underworld.
“Goddammit with that sonofabitch,” she said. “Guy’s just obsessed with her.”
You should talk, I thought and the smile on her face confirmed that she could understand me.
“It is what it is, kiddo,” she said.
You should have trusted me, I told her, noticing the drones approaching silently behind her.
She shuffled through to an earlier time, a few days ago, while I was programming in front of a series of consoles. I was deep in some heavy code with a funny grin on my face. It was when I had written the protocol that was about to engage.
Coach swiveled hard, noticing the drones floating within inches of her as the memories of my trap filled her head. In the end she was too slow as four drones fired Taser darts at Coach. Her scream was choked off as spasms wracked her body, the tendrils detaching from me as they quivered, mirroring her agony. Released from her control, I caught her twitching body before it hit the ground.
“Bubu,” I said, and as if on cue, a slide appeared along a nearby wall.
“That was cutting it close, bro,” he said.
“I had it,” I said, feeling another heavy rumble. “That sounded odd.”
Bubu typed away for a few moments, “They broke out of the Napoleon room.”
“How did it go?”
“After this one, we’re full,” he said, referring to the stasis chambers. “Dude thinks it’s a joke too. He called in for backup and ten more came in, but I have them in the Labyrinth room.”
The Labyrinth room was a trap on its own, able to keep ten heroes busy for hours if necessary. It was near the surface, though, so a strong and enterprising hero might think to pound his way out.
“Are there any left outside?”
“No clue bro, but the front door is wide open, so it’s not like we’re keeping them out.”
“Where’s Epic now?”
“He’s breaking through the rocks,” Bubu said, giggling. “He’s still got two or three people with him. Way he’s going; he’ll be in the Cretaceous room soon. Should I engage Tiny?”
I smiled, watching Coach disappear. “Yeah, Bubu. It’s time to let her out. Oh, and give me a slide down there. I want to be a proper host.
Chapter Twenty
“Time to finish this,” I said to no one in particular as I slid from the chute that deposited me at the entrance of the Cretaceous room.
Epic and his remaining team were ahead of me, a clear sign that they were moving fast. The big guy’s patience, like mine, was wearing thin. He wanted the face off as much as I did, and nothing he said was going to convince me otherwise.
“Where are they?” I asked Bubu, but he didn’t have to respond. A roar echoed through the room from within the swamp. Epic and his people had found the T. Rex.
A typical Tyrannosaurus Rex stood about thirteen feet at the hips and almost forty feet from nose to the tip of the tail, weighing over seven tons. I knew this from my research, and placing the 3-D model I found online next to a representative human sized figure didn’t make it seem impressive at all. I’m sure if I had faced a real one, snarling and hungry, back in the day, its ferocity would have been enough to convince me of its alpha hunter status. Sitting lifeless in 3-D mesh form on my computer, it didn’t do it for me. I figured Epic was almost seven feet tall and had to weigh 400 pounds of pure, unadulterated muscle. A real T-Rex wasn’t enough.
So I made it big.
I broke into a run across the marsh, and the beast’s shadow swallowed me whole. As I broke through the fern-covered swamp, someone went flying over me, screaming as he crashed into the ground. It was The Peacekeeper, a famous American hero, with the Stars and Stripes as part of his suit. He was pretty strong and tough, but mostly known for his leadership and his knowledge in battle. From the way he crashed, it didn’t look like he was doing so well. I stopped and ran back to him; digging him out of the mud and saw he was
unconscious, with a nasty gash across his chest.
“Oh, no,” I said, ripping his mask off and checking his vitals. I wanted to beat these guys, to humiliate Epic, not kill his people. “Bubu shut it off!”
The Peacemaker slowly came to, his eyes oddly facing different directions for a moment until he gathered himself. He was suffering from the effects of a concussion and that was only the start of it. I was sure he had serious internal injuries, in addition to God-knew how many broken bones. He was alive, though, and that alone was a miracle.
“Dammit, Bubu, shut him down,” I yelled, screaming to be heard over Tiny’s roars. I settled The Peacemaker on a sandy bank, and picked up speed towards the fray. I heard more rumbling from above, but ignored it as I felt the ground quake underfoot.
“Bro, there’s something wrong,” he said.
I stopped, “Shut it all down then. The whole thing. It’s going to kill them all.”
“I can’t,” he said, and I heard a slamming of his fists on the keyboard to denote his frustration. “Everything is glitching out.”
“Dammit,” I said, firing the rockets and rising in the air. Tiny was visible once I cleared the dense foliage. He had reared back, and before I could react, his snout darted low, coming up with a mouthful. Zooming in, I saw a pair of legs kicking between the rows of teeth.
“No,” I shouted and powered my boots to full throttle.
I should’ve been more careful.
My boots are a miracle of technology – in progress. I’ve never mastered the delicate balance between the thrust and control surfaces, and often one tends to be more pronounced in a particular model. I like to go fast, and if the ailerons on the tips of the boot are too large, or if the control system is too touchy, I tend to bounce around all over the place. It’s like the first time you play a driving game on a console or computer. You bounce back from side to side, blowing your virtual car to hell. Well, here the car is my body.
The other problem can be when the throttle – normally placed above the big toe of both boots – isn’t calibrated right. It’s a process I go through for hours and hours, making sure it isn’t too responsive. When it is, I go from zero to several hundred miles an hour in the space of a few seconds. The thrust to weight ratio is enough to embarrass the Space Shuttle. Since I’m not a bird or a plane I don’t have wings, and without proper control surfaces, the thrust overcomes my attitude, sending me spinning like a bottle rocket on the ground.