My left leg hurt, like it was on fire, and was quite useless for flying. I stopped the jet on my right leg and used just my arms to stabilize my flight and turn around. When I did, the missile was long past me and headed towards Palo Verde.
I brought my legs together and using my right one for thrust, again headed towards the missile. I wasn’t going fast enough. I wasn’t going to make it.
I then flashed on the memory of Licia and how she had to climb on my back when I flew us to the hostage standoff with Toxicwasteman. She wanted to stand on my feet, and I told her I couldn’t because I needed my hands to fly. She asked why it had to be my hands and legs the neutrino jets came out of to make me fly. Back then we didn’t have time to experiment. Now, with the missile getting away, I had no choice.
I stopped the jet from my right leg and pulled my legs up. I then visualized a large yellow jet coming out of my posterior.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this is where the infamous Neutrinoman butt-thruster was invented. You’ve seen the pictures. You’ve laughed at them, I know you have. But necessity was the mother of this invention.
And it worked, boy did it work. The thrust was a little erratic at first, but the more I focused, and the more I practiced the better I got. I was quickly gaining on the missile, looking like something of a missile myself with a tail of neutronic flame five feet long shooting out of my ass. Who said saving lives has to look dignified.
I used my hands to steady and maneuver myself and was soon coming up on the missile. I hadn’t come up with a plan, being so preoccupied with this new thrusting technique, and with Palo Verde now clearly in sight, I didn’t have but seconds to act. My first thought was to just run into the warhead from the side (where it couldn’t shoot at me again) and take it out. But what if it was nuclear? Having a missile and a superhero explode at this altitude would not be a good idea. An alternate plan took shape in my head and I acted.
I thrust hard, letting my reaction grow very hot and collided with the tail end of the missile. I did this from above hoping to do two things: sheer off its fins so it couldn’t maneuver anymore; and push the nose upward so that it would miss Palo Verde.
I hit the top portion of the bottom of the missile hard, my yellow neutronic reaction melting through the tail fin, the missile casing, and the nozzle. I was awash in yellow flames and couldn’t see a thing.
What do you know about missile design? I really don’t know much but what I learned as a kid launching Estes rockets into the sky. The engine is pretty simple. You have a bunch of fuel, a chamber for that fuel to react in, and a nozzle for the gasses of the reaction to escape from. The nozzle is crucial. It lets the gasses out in a single direction in a controlled fashion to create thrust (just like what I was doing with my posterior right then).
What happens when you take the nozzle away from a rocket? Well, you might think it would explode, but it doesn’t. Sorry. If you block the nozzle and all that pressure doesn’t have anywhere to go, then it will explode. But with no nozzle, the gasses will escape in a less focused, less directed way.
Once I was clear of the missile and could see again, I saw that I had taken out two of the fins and the nozzle. The back end of the missile was ragged with fire spewing out of the back end as the missile spun slowly end over end.
As I headed back towards it, I assessed its trajectory. It looked to me like it was still going to land near Palo Verde, and just because I had disabled its propulsion didn’t make it any less dangerous.
I flew fast, my butt-thruster beginning to feel more natural, and maneuvered myself so I was under the missile as it spun and fell towards the ground.
I watched it spin, and after the cone was pointed down (and fortunately didn’t fire at me again) I moved up so that when the cone came to a horizontal position I was right underneath it. I thrust up, my shoulders hitting the midsection of the missile. I brought my arms up, fists clenched, and buried them into the missile. This left me with just the butt-thruster and my right foot to fly with. I focused first on arresting the spin of the missile and managed that. My head was down and the ground was rapidly approaching. The missile was going to impact short of Palo Verde, but depending on what the payload was, it could still be devastating.
I then used my butt-thruster to arrest the downward momentum of the missile and started pushing it back up into the sky.
What would Superman do with a disabled missile? I remember this in one of the movies. He would fly it up into the atmosphere and with a mighty shove break it free of the gravity well where it would float off harmlessly.
It made sense to me, so I set about doing just that. I flew as fast as I could, watching the Earth retreat below me becoming smaller and smaller. I had done this enough so I knew what to expect, so I didn’t freak out as I began to see the curvature of the Earth. I wasn’t sure how high I needed to be, but when it felt like my momentum was continuing to carry me away without any thrust, I pulled my arms out of the missile.
I looked at it floating in the black void of space. Inert like that it looked somewhat benign, and in examining it I could clearly see a roughness to it. As if it was homemade or hastily constructed.
The aliens. The Arcturian Alliance. They had created this. They had launched it at Palo Verde, at me. I reversed my thrust, using just my hands, and watched as the missile slowly moved away. I felt sad and angry. Sad that Sarah had either been lying or had been ineffective. It had been three days—if she were “speaking,” shouldn’t the attacks have stopped? And I was angry at these beings so like us, but still they wanted us dead.
I turned my back on the missile and began thrusting for home. My left leg was coming back so I used the more dignified foot thrusters to push me homeward. It wasn’t long until I realized the missile wasn’t the only attack on Palo Verde today.
Chapter 21
Arrogance Precedes a Fall
Late Winter 2005, Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station, Arizona
Discarding the missile took a few hours. I can fly fast, but it takes a while to get up high enough. As I got close to Palo Verde, I noticed the barest flickering of light at the power plant. Something was very wrong about that. I reengaged by butt-thruster and increased my speed. The tiny flash resolved into little tendrils of blue-white lightning.
Lightningirl was down there and she was throwing bolts of electricity. But why? What was going on?
I was well into the atmosphere now and falling fast, very fast. As the landscape resolved I could see that there were some vehicles at the front gate of Palo Verde, that Lightningirl stood in the grounds, lightning arcing from the power plant behind her, to her, and then to these vehicles. I could also see that the security booth was destroyed, there were some smoldering pits in the ground, and what appeared to be gunfire was emanating from the vehicles toward Lightningirl.
Another attack. This one by ground. Yeah, I was mad, and I was sick and tired of this. I had been pushed and pushed and now I had been pushed too far. The image of that dead alien in Yellowstone flashed in my mind and then an image of Sarah injured and bleeding in her craft. I pushed them down, it was time to get past this squeamishness I had about killing the aliens. It was past time. They were unrelenting in their attacks. They had left me no choice.
I waited until the last possible moment and reversed the direction of my thrust. The last possible moment being about five thousand feet in the air. So it was not like they didn’t know I was coming. I was going very fast, so the amount of thrust I had to apply to slow me down was tremendous. As Licia tells it, I was this huge yellow fireball descending from the heavens.
Even with that I landed hard, but my aim was good, so I crash landed between Lightningirl and the aliens. As I stood up in the crater I had created, I couldn’t see a thing. There was a thick cloud of dust that my thrusters and impact had kicked up.
“Lightningirl,” I called out, I was unsure where she was and where the vehicles were.
“Over here,” I heard her call back to me.
A barrage of gunfire erupted after we spoke. They were shooting blindly into the dust trying to hit us. Which was odd—didn’t they know it wouldn’t do any good?
As I walked to where I thought Lightningirl was, I felt a bullet penetrate my neutrino form. It hit my right shoulder and went right through me coming out the other side without doing any harm. The bullet itself would be a bit melted and slightly radioactive, but no harm came to me. The military had tested this in the early days. I wasn’t bulletproof, but bullets didn’t hurt me. I am a controlled nuclear reaction. Is a bullet going to harm the sun?
“What the hell is going on?” I said as I walked towards her.
“Oh, just some overly enthusiastic Neutrinoman groupies,” she said. “You know how they get.” At that moment I didn’t know how they could get, but with my identity revealed it was coming and soon.
“Really?” I said. “They seem to be here for you, diehard fans of the fairer q-morph.” I had to yell to make myself heard over the crackle of the lightning bolt she was drawing from the power plant.
“The missile?” she asked, serious now.
“Gone,” I said.
She smiled. I came just close enough that our forms started to interact. It felt good, real good. “You need a charge?” she asked. I nodded and she started directing the energy of Palo Verde into me. It hurt fiercely, but in a good way.
I turned from her to face the aliens. The dust was clearing, and I was beginning to make out the vehicles. With Lightningirl feeding me energy, I slowly started walking forward. The bullets had stopped and I could hear some mumbling coming from our attackers.
I could see the smoldering ruins of a military jeep and a security truck on this side of the fence. There wasn’t a lot of military personal stationed there then. Security, yes, troops, no. It looked like the aliens had dealt with them pretty easily. I saw five bodies on our side, and only Lightningirl had kept them at bay.
I studied the vehicles. They were not that impressive. Three pickup trucks and a dump truck. They all looked pretty normal, but as I studied them some differences became apparent. They each had metal welded onto the front of them over the grill. There were plates behind the cab of the pickup trucks that provided cover for the gunmen that stood there pointing their weapons at me.
They all showed evidence of the lightning bolts that had been directed at them. Blackened metal, shattered windshields, prone alien bodies on the ground.
The aliens were all of the tall, blond-haired variety. There were about a dozen of them, both male and female. As I let the dust continue to settle, I thought of what Toxicwasteman had said, about them being resource constrained. From what I saw of the missile and looking at these vehicles, that appeared to be true. Where was the spaceship raining hell on us that we would have had a hard time stopping? They had human weapons. Where were the exotic energy weapons that could take both me and Lightningirl out easily? Why were they shooting lead at us? They must know it wouldn’t harm us.
I got close enough to see the looks in their eyes: fear. I stood there, a controlled nuclear reaction with a thick lightning bolt feeding energy into me from the nuclear power plant behind me via the controlled electrical reaction that is Lightningirl. Fear was logical.
“Who is in command here?” I shouted. “Lower your weapons and send your leader out.”
~~~
I was feeling a bit cocky, I will admit it. I couldn’t see how these aliens with their conventional weapons and ragged vehicles could hurt us. Lightningirl and I were more than enough to hold them off.
They lowered their weapons and there was some whispered conversation that I couldn’t quite make out over the crackling of the lightning bolt that was striking my back. But, before long, an alien approached. He was tall and proud with long blond hair pulled back in a ponytail and piercing blue eyes.
“I am in command,” he shouted as he approached me. He stood between me and the dump truck. “My name is Kothlan.”
His command of the English language was much better than Sarah’s. He talked like one of us, with a bit of an accent that seemed vaguely European. He wore jeans and a T-shirt and he was covered in brown dust. He looked like a construction worker, not an alien terrorist.
I glanced back at Lightningirl and held up my hand telling her to stop the energy feed. The snapping and crackling of the electricity made it hard to hold a conversation. “Why do you attack us, Kothlan?” I asked.
“These are my orders,” he said. “Your people must die.”
“Why?”
He shrugged stiffly, like the gesture wasn’t natural to him, but one he had practiced. “The council has decreed it so. That is all I need to know.”
It was like talking to Marcus or Williams. They were all just following orders.
“You cannot win here,” I said. “Have your soldiers drop their weapons and come forward.”
He nodded and turned and shouted to his people. The language he used had harsh guttural sounds with clicks. Underneath his shout I heard a brief metallic groan, which I didn’t have time to ponder. His men had held their position.
“I don’t want to fight you,” I said, increasing the rate of my reaction as a display of force. And here’s the truth, my reticence here was a problem. My not being a soldier was a problem. My hesitation was a problem. And they took advantage of that.
“Very well,” Kothlan said as he stepped aside. Several things happened at once. I noticed that the front of the dump truck looked different, where the left headlight had been was now an empty hole. That must have been what happened when I heard the metallic sound. The rest of the aliens had drawn their weapons and were pointing them at me.
And, most importantly, a purple ball of energy shot out of that hole and hit me square in the chest.
My whole body felt strange, numb and tingly at the same time. My neutrino form fled and flesh returned. My knees buckled and I fell to the ground naked. I saw Kothlan grin. This was a trap. I had walked right into it. They were going to kill me.
As consciousness fled and my body fell forward, I heard guns fire and Lightningirl shout “No!”
Interlude 2
Your Turn
Summer 2025, Casita de Soledad, Central Arizona
“It’s your turn now,” I said. We were sitting at our small table in our dining area. We were surrounded by windows facing south, affording us with a nice view of our high desert home. It was dinnertime at Casita de Soledad. Tonight we dined on a salad from the garden and cheese (of course).
She shook her head. “I cooked, you’ve got KP duty.”
“No. It’s your turn to write.”
She looked up at me, chewing her salad as she studied my face. She swallowed and said, “No it’s not. This is your thing, not mine.”
She had become supportive of my project, I think she saw the good it was doing me, but had never shown any desire to participate directly. We were at a point in the story that needed to be told, but I couldn’t tell it. “We are fighting the aliens in front of Palo Verde. They’ve forced me back to my human form and are about to kill me. I can’t tell this part of the story.”
She blinked several times, her brown eyes a little wider than normal. She put her fork down, stood up, and walked away. A moment later I heard the front door open and close. I sighed, grabbed several pieces of cheese, and followed her.
~~~
I found her up near the power lines, near our launching pad, on the highest point of our property. She was sitting on a rock facing west watching the sun go down over the rolling hills.
“Can you tell me about it?” I asked as I squatted next to her. “What happened there was a crucial moment for the war… for us.”
She nodded, her mouth set in a thin line, her eyes avoiding mine as they searched the horizon.
“It won’t be hard. You can just dictate and I’ll write it down,” I offered.
“Ohh, that’s going to make it easier,” she turned and I saw the tears and the remembe
red fear in her eyes. “I almost lost you that day, Nik. I have no desire to relive it.”
I nodded. “I know it’s hard. Too many times we’ve almost lost each other, we’ve almost lost everything. I understand. But it helps to write it down. It helps to tell the story.”
“No,” she said, turning back to the sunset.
I sat next to her and silently watched the sun set over the desert. The dust in the air caught the last light of the day and turned them a beautiful orange/brown. It was a cloudless evening so it wasn’t that spectacular, but it was nice.
I knew my girl well enough to know she needed space with this. For the next three days I didn’t say a word, but I didn’t write either. It seemed silly to continue without her part of the story. And without my writing I was restless. I sat around watching movies or working in the yard. I was bored and it showed. I was going a bit stir-crazy and couldn’t hide it.
In truth, I missed the writing. I needed the writing. And I guess she didn’t. She occupied herself with her garden, with cooking, with taking care of the household. A simple life, a fine life, but it just wasn’t enough for me. She may not have needed to write, but after three days of living with me not writing, she came to the conclusion that she needed me to write.
“Okay,” she said with a sigh. She turned the flat screen off and stood in front of it, her arms crossed. “I’ll do it. I can’t stand you this way. Since you started writing you’ve been…”
“A lot more pleasant to be around,” I offered.
“Yes,” she said with a smile. “I will help you with this one part just to get you writing again. This is your thing, not mine.”
“Understood,” I said as I grabbed my laptop and sat back down on the couch. She paced back and forth in front of me as she told her part of the story.
Chapter 22
The Battle of Palo Verde
Late Winter 2005, Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station, Arizona
Nik’s note: Licia told this story directly to me, and I have recorded her words verbatim. So when she says “you” she is referring to me.
Neutrinoman & Lightningirl: A Love Story, Season 1 (Episodes 1 - 3) Page 27