Absolute Power (The New Heroes, Book 3)

by Michael Carroll

  “Then that means…” Laurie paused for a moment. “Victor, it means that they’ve thought of something that you haven’t.”

  Cross shook his head. “That’s impossible. The plan…”

  “It looks to me like they’ve got plans of their own.”

  25

  IN SAKKARA, BUTLER Redmond stood to attention in Impervia’s office as she interrogated him.

  “You don’t know where they’ve gone?”

  “No sir.”

  “Are you lying to me, Butler?”

  “No sir.”

  “Why didn’t you go with them?”

  “Sakkara is a likely target for the Trutopians. There are civilians here. I stayed to help defend them.”

  “What did Renata and Danny take with them?”

  “Unknown, sir.”

  Impervia nodded slowly. “You understand that I cannot possibly trust you, Butler?”

  “Sir?”

  “You sided against a commanding officer. That’s a court-martial offence. The only reason you’re not in irons right now is that we might have need of your talents. When this is over, you will face a full investigation.”

  Butler swallowed. “I understand that, sir.”

  “Now get out of here.”

  Butler saluted, turned on his heel and marched out of the office. He made his way down to the machine room, where Razor was working at his bench.

  “She didn’t ask me if I knew what they were doing,” Butler said. “That’s good. I didn’t want to have to lie to her. You know that there’s no going back from all this, don’t you? No matter what happens, our lives as we knew them are over.”

  “What choice do we have? Sit back and let the Trutopians take over the world?”

  “But this plan of yours, Razor…Danny could be killed.”

  “I know that.”

  “Steph? Wake up!”

  Stephanie Cord turned over in the bed and mumbled. “Just another five minutes.”

  “Now, Stephanie!”

  She opened her eyes. I know that voice! She sat up and stared at the young man standing next to her bed. “Danny?”

  “Razor told us where to find you,” Danny said. “Your sister let me in.”

  “What do you want? Shouldn’t you be out there fighting the Trutopians?”

  “That’s where we’re going. And that’s why we need you. You can fight.”

  Vienna Cord leaned in through the doorway. “Daniel Cooper. I hope you have a good explanation for this!”

  “Mrs Cord…Hi. I was just—”

  “Come with me. Now.”

  Danny followed Mrs Cord outside, and Stephanie quickly pulled on her T-shirt and jeans, trying not to listen to her mother shouting at Danny.

  She picked up her boots and went out into the sitting-room, where Alia was sitting on the couch, her legs tucked under her, as she ate a bowl of cereal. Grant Paramjeet was asleep in an armchair, snoring quietly.

  “They’re in the kitchen,” Alia whispered. “So what does he want?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  Alia shrugged and turned her attention back to the cartoons playing on the TV.

  In the kitchen, Mrs Cord was still giving Danny hell while at the same time she was putting a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon in front of him. “We saw it on the news, Danny! If you had just gone to the UN without threatening them, then…Well, I don’t know. But that would have been the better thing to do.”

  “I know that now. But…We were annoyed.” Danny picked up a fork.

  Stephanie sat down and pulled on her left boot, then glanced up to see that Danny had already finished eating and was putting his fork down on the empty plate.

  “Thanks. Who’s the guy in the other room?” Danny asked.

  “A would-be superhero,” Stephanie said. “Long story. But he can’t go home yet because of the curfew.”

  “Superhuman?”

  “No.”

  “Then he’s no good to us,” Danny said. “Renata’s waiting in the StratoTruck. For all we know, they might have a tracking device on it that Razor wasn’t able to find, so they could be coming for us. We have to get out of here as fast as we can.”

  Vienna said, “Stephanie is not going with you!”

  “They need me, Mom! I can’t just turn my back on them.”

  “I promise we’ll keep her safe,” Danny said.

  Vienna stared at him coldly. “No. Do not make promises like that. Stephanie, I forbid you to do this.”

  “I know, Mom. But I have to do…I have to do the right thing.”

  As the StratoTruck soared into the air, Renata glanced over her shoulder at Stephanie. “Good to see you, Steph. Are you ready for this?”

  “I don’t know that I’ll be any help.”

  Danny said, “Yes, you will. Follow me.” Steadying himself by grabbing on to the backs of the seats, Danny led Stephanie to the rear of the StratoTruck, where two large crates had been stored. “Can you open those? You need two hands to do it.”

  “Sure.” Stephanie unclipped the nearest crate, and pulled the lid off. “Oh.”

  “Yeah…Try the other one.”

  The second crate contained a helmet, a large object wrapped in canvas, and one of the New Heroes’ black uniforms.

  “It’s your size, I think,” Danny said as Stephanie held up the uniform. “Bullet-proof, fire-proof, insulated…Everything you’ll need. The helmet has an audio filter that will strip out the controlling frequencies from Yvonne’s voice. Just don’t forget that she’s still very smart and incredibly strong.”

  Stephanie dropped the uniform and stepped back. “You’re kidding. You want me to go up against Yvonne?”

  “Not alone. But the more people we have the better. Butler’s stayed behind in Sakkara, because he’s got the best chance of protecting the others. So it’s just the three of us.” He pointed to the canvas-wrapped object. “You’ll need that, too.”

  Stephanie reached into the crate, removed the object, and unwrapped it.

  “Razor gave it a complete shakedown; it’s in perfect working order. You know how to use it, don’t you?”

  “Yeah…Where did you find it?”

  “Some guy picked it up off the street in Topeka, tried to sell it on eBay a couple of months back. General Piers’ men tracked him down and made him an offer.”

  “What, they threatened to break his legs or something?”

  “No, I mean a real offer. Like, they gave him twenty thousand dollars for it.”

  Stephanie paused. “I’m not sure I’m ready for this.”

  “You’re more ready than anyone else. You father trained you for years. I think he’d be pleased to know that his daughter was using his jetpack.”

  26

  YVONNE STARED AT the giant monitor in the Trutopian control room. It showed a map of the Earth overlaid with thousands of blue, red and green dots.

  The blue dots indicated where a battle was taking place. The green dots – far fewer than Yvonne would have liked – showed where the Trutopians had won their battles. Their losses were indicated in red.

  “Show me the enemy’s movements,” Yvonne ordered the man standing next to her.

  “Actual or projected?”

  “Both.”

  A series of yellow and orange arrows began to appear on the screen, showing the position and directions of the enemy armies.

  There’s an awful lot of them heading this way, Yvonne thought.

  The door below opened and Colin walked in. He didn’t bother climbing up the stairs to the gantry: he flew instead.

  “So how are we doing?” he asked, hovering in the air on the other side of the railing.

  “They’re converging on our location. Our defences should be strong enough to hold them back.”

  “Should?”

  “That depends on whether or not they have Danny and Renata with them. Our last report says they stole the new StratoTruck from Sakkara and disappeared with it.”

  “Th
en it doesn’t seem likely that they’re coming here.”

  “Perhaps not, but I’d like to know what they’re up to.” Yvonne finally took her eyes from the screen. “Whatever happens, do not let them get close to me. Understood?”

  Colin nodded.

  “According to the projections, their first strike craft could be here within minutes. Our surface-to-air missiles will deal with them.”

  Colin said, “Yvonne, you can put an end to this now. No one else has to die.”

  “But I don’t want to stop it, and I don’t care whether people die.”

  Colin paused for a moment. “You do know that if I can find a way to break your programming then it’s all over for you, right?”

  “That won’t happen.”

  “You can’t order me to kill. I’m able to resist that, so maybe I’ll develop a resistance to the rest of your programming.”

  “Then I’ll just have to go to Plan B.”

  “And what’s Plan B?”

  “I call it the Colin-Killer Plan.” She smiled. “You don’t get to be as intelligent as I am without having a lot of back-up plans.”

  “Like Victor Cross did?”

  “Exactly.”

  Someone on the floor below shouted, “We’ve got two radar-blips incoming from the north!”

  “Activate the defences!” Yvonne ordered. “Shoot them down!”

  Colin could only watch in silence as the large screen showed a pair of white points streaking towards the Trutopian base, to be met with a barrage of missiles. The white points disappeared.

  “Targets are down,” the man next to Yvonne said. “Pilots ejected. They’ll land just outside the perimeter.”

  Yvonne shook her head. “No, they won’t land at all. Target the pilots!”

  At the StratoTruck’s controls, Renata Soliz said, “Acknowledged, Razor. I’ll report back.”

  Stephanie asked, “So?”

  “The army is definitely concentrating their firepower on the Wyoming base. They tracked Colin there, so they’re going to forget about the rest of the country until they find a way to stop him.”

  “Then we have to get to him first,” Stephanie said.

  “They’ve already shot down over a dozen fighters,” Renata said. “We’ll never get close enough.”

  Danny said, “We get as high up as we can, I’ll jump out and you solidify me before I hit the ground.”

  “Danny…I don’t want to use my powers on anyone else! I’m not even sure I should be solidifying parts of my body – every time I do it the pain gets worse.”

  “OK. Just fly us towards their base and we’ll try to come up with something else. But that might be our only option.”

  Colin didn’t know much about military tactics, but he was pretty sure that one of the most important things a warrior could do was cause the enemy to panic. A scared soldier would fight harder, more desperately, but a terrified soldier would be much more likely to make mistakes, or simply drop his weapon and run.

  Yvonne had ordered him to kill the attacking soldiers, but so far he’d managed to avoid doing that. How is it that I have to obey all her other orders, but not that one?

  One of the gunships came roaring up over the roof of a deserted multi-storey parking lot, straight towards him.

  Colin aimed his right arm and a powerful lightning bolt arced out and struck the copter. It shuddered and began to drop, and Colin could see the pilot struggling with the controls.

  He resisted the urge to blast the copter again. Instead, he ran towards it. The gunship crashed to the ground, its rotors still spinning.

  Immediately, a team of five soldiers leaped out and opened fire on Colin.

  He felt the bullets pounding against his chest; they hurt, but they didn’t do any damage.

  Yeah, I’m definitely bullet-proof now.

  He charged at the soldiers, who scattered and ran.

  Colin leaped at the helicopter’s cockpit and punched his fist through the glass. The pilot was desperately fumbling with his seat-harness’s release catch, muttering, “No no no no no…!”

  “Relax!” Colin yelled. “I’m not going to hurt you!” He swung his fist again and punched another hole in the glass, then grabbed hold of the joystick and ripped it out through the cockpit.

  The pilot finally managed to free himself and scrambled from his seat.

  “Well done. Now…Run away.” As the soldier ran after his colleagues, Colin jumped back from the copter, and rose high into the air.

  All around the perimeter, the US army were encroaching. Strategically-placed heavy weapons covered every possible approach.

  Yvonne had told him that there was no way that the Trutopian defences could be breached. She was wrong about that, Colin thought, because they’re definitely getting in.

  Half a block away, enemy soldiers smashed through the blockade with an armour-plated half-tracked truck. The huge vehicle easily scrambled over the debris and headed straight for a platoon of Trutopian soldiers.

  Colin saw this and swooped down to ground level, darting through the streets.

  He blasted the half-track with a bolt of lightning, but it had no effect. The vehicle hit one of the Trutopian guards, sent him spinning into the air, and kept going.

  Colin raced after it, but before he could catch up with it he heard the roar of a second engine.

  He turned to see an even bigger and faster vehicle bearing down on him. A missile streaked from the armoured car, straight towards him. Colin dodged to the left, clipped the side of a building, hit the ground and rolled. The missile slowed, turned about, and aimed itself at him again.

  The vehicle charged past, and a second missile was launched at him. Colin ran, and glanced over his shoulder to see that both missiles were right behind him.

  Damn! Heat-seekers!

  As he ran, he concentrated on his own body-heat, forcing it to dissipate into the surrounding air.

  The missiles were still coming.

  Maybe they’re not heat-seekers – some sort of image-recognition!

  Then the vehicle fired again, and a fourth time. Ahead, Colin spotted an unfinished office building. He crashed through the glass door and raced through the lobby, up the wide stairwell.

  He focussed his hearing on the armoured vehicle. A man was saying, “I see him! He’s heading to the upper floors!”

  Another voice said, “He’s trapped. Detonate the missiles!”

  Colin raced up the stairs four at a time, and smashed through the wooden door leading to the roof.

  A deafening boom erupted from somewhere on the ground floor, and the entire building quaked.

  He made a run for the edge of the roof, and jumped just as the office building collapsed beneath him.

  He caught hold of a window ledge on the building opposite, and in one move pulled himself up and through the window. He and realised as he was falling that the building didn’t have any interior walls or floors. It was an empty shell.

  Colin landed in a shower of glass fragments and rolled to his feet. One of the walls was clearly fake and the large track-marks on the ground showed that the building had recently housed one of the Trutopians’ heavy weapons.

  The soldiers think that there are civilians here, so they’re not using their heavy guns!

  The building shook as something exploded against the outer wall.

  Colin flew up to the roof and crashed through a window, then allowed himself to fall straight down, landing feet-first on top of one of the armoured cars. He dropped to the ground and ran, making sure that the enemy soldiers were following. If I fly, they’ll know they can’t follow me and they’ll give up the chase. I have to lead them away…

  Yvonne’s voice came over the radio. “Colin?”

  “Bit busy getting shot at!”

  “Never mind that. We’ve got something incoming. We don’t know what it is, but it’s big and fast. We’ve hit it with everything we have, but it’s still coming. It should hit just south of Pythagoras Square.�
��

  “I told you, I’m busy!” A bullet ricocheted off the back of Colin’s head. “Ouch! Man, that was a good shot.”

  “This is an order! Find out what that falling object is!”

  27

  RENATA HAD TAKEN the StratoTruck as high as it could go, flown it directly over the centre of the Trutopian town, then pitched it straight downwards and rammed the engines to full speed.

  Seconds before they were in range of the Trutopians’ weapons, Renata turned the StratoTruck solid, as well as herself, Danny and Stephanie, and everything inside the vehicle.

  Now, as the vehicle screamed towards the ground, Renata Soliz felt like something was hacking through her brain with acid-covered knives.

  This isn’t right! I’m solid so I shouldn’t be able to feel anything!

  She had hoped that by turning herself solid at the same time as the StratoTruck and her friends, she would be able to avoid the murderous headache.

  Oh God, I hope I have the strength to turn us all back!

  A barrage of missiles exploded against the side of the crystalline StratoTruck, knocking it off-course. It ploughed through the side of a building, demolished a large sculpture and smashed into the ground, showering the area with fragments of paving slabs.

  We’re down! Renata thought. Change back, change back!

  The sun exploded behind her eyes as the StratoTruck and its crew rippled, changing from invulnerable crystal back to their normal state.

  The StratoTruck’s engines – which had been running before the change – were now inactive.

  Renata slumped in the pilot’s chair, blood pouring from her nose, ears and eyes.

  As if from a great distance, she heard Danny’s voice calling her name, but she was unable to answer.

  “She’s alive,” Stephanie said, “but…she’s not in a good way.”

  Danny stood looking down at Renata. “Oh Jesus…Then we have to abandon the plan and get out of here!”

  Renata stirred. “No…” Her voice was weak, and cracked. “No. I’ll be fine. Danny, you have to do it.”