by Jamie Hawke
“You want her to come along?” I asked.
“How else am I going to make her suffer?” Charm grinned at the android and then walked past me to go outside.
“She seems… different,” Aegriss said. “It’s kind of hot.”
I laughed. “You’re a smart robot.”
“Not a robot,” she said. “Well, not really. I like to think of those as beneath me.”
“Right.”
“We really should get going,” Erupa said, gesturing for us to head out first.
Before I went, I turned and took Aegriss’s hand. “Welcome to the team, for now.”
15
We all convened at the ships, the other groups disembarking so that we could finally all meet each other in person. I felt relaxed as I watched the various figures step out, now that I was in control of the planet’s surveillance system and Shimmer was ensuring we wouldn’t be seen from above—in case they had other ways of monitoring us, such as flying supers. Not that we were done with our mission by any means, though we had accomplished much by this point. We had accomplished several objectives in this mission, and I had a feeling that this new one, taking down Muerta and Plague, and then Orion Corp, would all be part of some even larger strategy.
But what made me feel at peace was the team we’d acquired, and the friends we were making along the way. With Charm, Twitch, Gale, Shimmer, and now Andromida at my side, I didn’t care how outnumbered we were. Sure, we might die. We might be defeated, tortured and torn apart, never to see each other again. All of that was a possibility, given the circumstances.
Even so, I knew we were the best team for the job. We had my brother back at the Citadel working his side of the battle simultaneously, too, against those strange Nihilists and their allies.
“What the fuck are you?” Cheri, the one with the blue pigtails, asked. At first I was too busy looking at her strange getup to realize who she was talking to. She was carrying a sword with a small teddy bear hanging from it, and wearing a red sort-of armor suit with a miniskirt built in and a smiley face over her left breast. Quite the oddball, not even counting the tattoos.
And then the lady went flying back, Charm wobbling as a punch missed.
“Oh, shit,” I muttered, already charging forward to get between them. Luckily, a few others had the same thought, including Ezra and a large hybrid man who reminded me of the bear we’d fought earlier, but who had more white fur than brown.
“What’s going on here?” Letha called out, stepping up. She was an imposing figure, even when you knew she didn’t have any superpowers. Then again, I knew what she was capable of. She was wearing an ensemble quite different from the shorts and mesh vest back in her Planet Kill days. She must’ve found an outfit on the ship, because she was decked out like one of the Asylum guards, in a similar cop-look to Ezra.
“She-wolf over there tried to punch me!” Cheri said, sword pointing at Charm.
“Fuck,” Twitch said with a laugh. “Watch it.”
“Charm,” I said, stepping up next to her. “Can we try not to start a fight with our new friends the first time we get to actually meet them?”
“You hear what she said?” Charm asked, turning on me now.
“I did, and…” Turning on Cheri, I frowned, not liking the way she was pointing her blade at me now.
“Darling,” Ezra said with a glance her way.
Cheri frowned, then sheathed her sword and cracked a smile. “Ah, I was just having fun, foxy. The voices told me to say it, that’s all. They’re telling me you don’t like being called foxy, either, but guess what? I don’t fucking like flying, it hurts my stomach. So we can all be a bit grumpy, huh? And just leave it at that.”
I wasn’t sure how to interpret this lady, but a look from Ezra and I got it. Not fully there, or at least not the same style of sane I was used to.
When Charm came over and whispered, “Please, just let me punch her one time?” I had to laugh, even though I shook my head. The crazy girl kinda deserved it, but we were here for a purpose.
And judging by the look of annoyance on Andromida’s face, it was time to get down to business.
“Ignoring all of that,” I said, holding out my hands to everyone. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m called Breaker, but my real name is Chad. I take it everyone is now familiar with the concept of supers?”
Trunk was the only one to raise his hand. I was relieved to see he was wearing one of the guard outfits as well, instead of merely the loincloth he was known for. At my nod, he said, “Still trying to wrap my mind around the idea, but back there, in Abaddon, we were exposed a bit.”
“Short version of the story, supers were the colonists that left for the Oram system long ago. The sun there changed them, giving some of them powers.”
“Them, you say?” Letha assessed me. “I’m pretty sure you have powers, too.”
I nodded. “Apparently, my brother and I, though raised on Earth, were children of some very powerful supers. We can get into it when we travel again, or during our next down time. I’d love to hear more of your stories—especially, Letha and Trunk, what happened after you both ascended.”
“Technically, I never did,” Trunk said. “But yeah, story for another time.”
I nodded. Andromida looked my way, not so annoyed, at least.
“Trunk, your father will really be able to show us where Orion Corps is? Even get us in?”
“He has the knowledge and know-how. You just gotta do the convincing.”
“We’ve got that covered,” Charm assured him.
“As long as you don’t lose your temper, I guess?” Tink said, but at a look from Charm went small, fluttering next to Ezra’s shoulder.
“Right, don’t you worry about Charm,” I told them. “She’s reliable. Each of you worry about your own team when we get there. Right now we’re gonna need just a small group, including Trunk, to get his father and escape with the man. That means going with me will be Trunk, Charm, and… Trunk, you want to take one of yours?”
The man adjusted himself, clearly not used to wearing so much clothing, and shrugged. “Knowing my dad and where he’ll be, I’ll say my boy Draino there.”
“Draino?” I wasn’t sure if he was screwing with me, but a short guy with pearly whites stepped forward, rubbing his hands together.
“Reporting for duty,” Draino shouted.
“Why him?” I asked. “Some power that’ll help? A knowledge about this sort of stuff?”
Trunk laughed. “Nah, just that my dad’s the type to hang out at whorehouses, and I promised this guy I’d buy him a lay.”
“Fucking classy,” Letha said with a laugh.
“Hey, anytime you wanna come back my way for a spin, you let me know.”
The other hybrid next to Letha growled, but she put a hand on his chest. “Darnell, please. We have a history, that’s all.”
Trunk grinned, staring down the hybrid known as Darnell. I had to wonder about this whole situation, but figured it was much too complicated to get into at the moment.
Letha turned back to Trunk, glared, and then turned back my way. “And the rest of us?”
Twitch cut in. “We’ll have two ships in orbit, in case there’s trouble, and the rest can wait here, ready to go. I’d like to get some time for us all to spar, get to know each other’s strength in a fight, that sort of thing, so that we’re a cohesive unit.”
“Good thinking.” Gale gave her a respectful nod.
“I like it too,” Letha chimed in. “Just remember, we don’t all have superpowers. That said, we know how to shoot, and where a blade goes.”
“Make it fast,” Andromida said, rotating her neck and then stretching her arms. “I’m—”
“Ready to get out of here, I know,” I said, earning a couple of chuckles from my team. “Sorry, but we all are. If Draino here’s really going to visit a whorehouse, he better be a true one-minute man.”
“I can do even quicker,” the short guy said, giving me a thumb
s up. “Ten seconds, maybe thirty, tops.”
“And where would you have me, master?” Aegriss asked, earning a nervous glance from all around.
“We can watch her,” Twitch said. “If anyone comes by, she can cover for us, assure them all’s normal.”
“Good call,” I replied, then turned to the android. “Do that.”
She nodded, hands folded in front of her, and gave me a pleasant, very awkward, smile.
I laughed, waving them on. “Let’s get to it, then.”
The four of us took off at a jog, following the route on my mini-map and Trunk’s instructions to make our way to the main city, but it turned out we didn’t need either. Rounding the first outcropping of rocks, we saw the city not far off. Sparkling marble shone in the mid-day sun of this planet, and from here, I could just make out the movement of people in the streets.
We chose to go around the backside, sticking to the hills, in order to move in undetected. The landscape here was all fake, I imagined. The nature of paradise was that it couldn’t exist in perfection without being altered to be so. At least, that’s how much of humanity viewed it at this point in time. It was hard, therefore, to not look around at the swaying trees, the oversized flowers that grew out of mossy rocks on the side of the mountains, and distant waterfalls with rainbows and all.
“Eh,” Charm said, glancing around.
“Eh?” I asked at the same time as Trunk.
“I don’t know, I like my planets to have some character to them,” she said. “This place kind of has a ‘princess torte’ feel to it.”
“I don’t follow,” I admitted.
“Wait, like a princess cake?” Draino asked, and then burst out laughing. “Yeah, yeah, I see what she means.”
Charm gave him a pleased nod, then explained, “See, princess torte is a certain kind of cake, one the fancy people like to eat back home. I mean, I’ve heard they do, and even seen a couple. Finally, one day I was on this ship with my old guild, and there’s this amazing cake. Princess-style, right? Blue frosting covering it, even a little tiara-looking ring of frosting with jewels and flowers. So I say fuck it, I’ll take a bite. I was even about to take the whole thing, until I bit in and almost gagged. It’s all sugar!”
“You love sugar,” I pointed out.
“EH!” She turned and tapped my nose, like it was the button for getting something wrong. “I love the frosting from carrot cake, true. Pineapple upside-down cake is damn good—”
“And my favorite,” Trunk cut in.
“See, smart man. Good boy. But I don’t like either when they’re too sweet. The carrot cake frosting has to have the perfect cream cheese ratio, while in my opinion, the right pineapple upside-down cake gets its sweetness from the fruit, with a hint of brown sugar.”
I laughed. “I’m learning so much about you on this trip.”
“So yeah, this place is the princess kind of cake. All sugar, no yum.”
“What would that make Earth then, I wonder?” Draino laughed.
Thinking that over, I suggested, “A moldy orange?”
He scoffed. “Nah, not for me. I love Earth. I’d take it any day over this shit.”
“Deep-dish pizza,” Trunk said. “Or pizza pie, if you prefer. Earth ain’t about the sugar, it’s about the substance. The meat.” He grabbed his crotch and let out a laugh, to which Charm rolled her eyes.
Trying to change the subject, I glanced over at Draino. “And how’d you get your name?”
“Just what my stepdaddy named me.” The guy suddenly frowned. “Something wrong with my name?”
“No, I just—I mean, Trunk, we get it.” I tried not to glance at the huge bulge in Trunk’s pants.
“And Breaker?” Draino countered.
“I think it’s hot,” Charm said.
“Actually, I’ve been toying with a new name—something like Space Paladin.” I beamed, waiting to hear their adoration for the name, but was only met with silence. Then laughter from the two guys.
“Listen,” Trunk said, patting me on the shoulder. “I don’t know how the naming stuff works over in super land, so if that works, cool. But here? That’s fucking lame.”
“Oh…”
“Stick with Breaker,” Charm said, but pointed at my heart. “You can be Space Paladin in here,” and she leaned in to whisper, “and in the bedroom, if you want.”
I chuckled, waving it off. “Whatever, fine. Tabled, for now.”
At that point we were coming up on the hills that led down to the city, so we ducked low and looked for the best route in. A group of people were having a pool party, some nude and others in full robes of white and gold. It would’ve looked quite ridiculous, if I wasn’t used to these sorts of images from the propaganda posters back home.
We moved closer, the other three staying back while I snuck close enough to get a good view. I found a spot among some tall palms and glanced around, finding some inhabitants who looked a bit like us, then applied the illusion.
A glance back showed the other three looked like doppelgangers for the three I’d selected from the party, so I imagined I looked like the fourth.
“You had to choose this girl?” Charm said, patting her now very flat-looking chest. “I didn’t have much there to begin with. Now this?”
“There was plenty before, and this is temporary,” I countered, not wasting any more time. “We don’t know how long the party will last, and getting off this planet as soon as possible is a priority.”
“I gotta say, though,” Trunk cut in. “She has a point.”
“Yuck!” Charm said, and I turned to see that Trunk had lifted up his white robe to whip out his cock—or rather, a tiny little thing that didn’t live up to his name.
“Breaker,” Trunk said, glaring my way.
I laughed then shrugged. “I didn’t get a chance to see what they looked like under their clothes, so made some assumptions. Put that little thing away.”
He growled, doing so. “When this is over, if I’m missing even an inch—wait, actually, that might not be bad. Could you make that happen?”
I grimaced. “Not really, and sorry, not something I’m going to use my powers for even if I could. What if I botched it?”
“Ah, good point. Fine, when this is over, I expect to be my full self.”
“As long as you promise not to show us anything ever again,” Charm chimed in, “I’ll hold him accountable.”
“Deal.”
It was incredibly weird walking with them, talking and hearing their voices, but all of us looking like complete strangers. Charm’s fake face had a cuteness to her, but not in a way that I was attracted to. I made sure of that, because I didn’t want her thinking I wanted her to look any different than she really was. Her real self was gorgeous, but she could get a tad jealous sometimes. I’d earned her wrath once, and hoped to never do so again.
Once we passed the tall, pristine buildings, we emerged onto a street that looked exactly like all the streets on Earth should’ve looked—or would’ve, if everyone hadn’t been so poor and we hadn’t been largely abandoned by the wealthier folks moving off to other planets. It was a wide road with patterns in the streets, fountains, hanging lights and lanterns, and large holo-display ads showing off jewelry, dresses, and the newest architecture available to those on the Paradise Planets, for those who wanted upgrades.
“Sugar up the ass.” Charm nodded like she’d proven her point.
“This lady’s got a mouth on her,” Draino commented. “It still count as your gal if she looks like this?”
“Yes,” Charm and I replied simultaneously.
“Hey, just asking.” He winked at me as if I was supposed to find it funny.
“There.” Trunk indicated a building that looked slightly out of place among the rest. “You can always tell the type of place my dad would be by the red lantern hanging out front. A way to keep it classy, you could say.”
“Stay close.” I started across the street, meandering past the fount
ains and starting to feel very uncomfortable here. Halfway across the street, a signal hit me. It was weird to think of it that way, but since I was still linked to the planet’s network, it was exactly that. A warning about intruders. I looked around, using my system sight to glance over to where we’d left our lookalike friends.
No, it wasn’t telling me to look there.
“What is it?” Charm asked.
“Something’s wrong.” I scanned, searching for the source of the signal, and then I saw warnings flash in the opposite direction, far off. My sight zoomed, throwing my balance off, and suddenly I was looking at ships that didn’t seem to quite be there: ships I’d seen before, in a sense. They were rough in design, jagged like serrated blades.
Somehow, the Nihilists had made it into the Milky Way galaxy.
16
“Nihilists…?” I said, not sure if I believed it, trying to keep my focus as we moved toward the building where we’d find Trunk’s father.
“How?” Charm asked, thrown by it as well.
“Twitch,” I said into my comms, “I’m sending some images to the screen. Copy?”
“Copy,” she replied, breathing hard. “I was sparring that Letha chick. Girl can hit! Looking now…” Her breath caught. “Fuck me.”
“Exactly.”
“Guys, grab him and get back here. Um, Breaker? See if you can throw up defenses against them, though I’m not sure how that’ll work with the whole other dimension or whatever it is they use.”
“Agreed,” I replied. We took off running for the building with the red light, while I set the system defenses to full attack mode. I wasn’t sure that’s what was happening, but we couldn’t be too safe. From the knowledge I had managed to gather about them, their type weren’t supposed to have been able to access the Milky Way. But it was only a matter of time, I supposed.
“This is totally fucked.” Charm reached the door first and held it open for us. “I thought getting rid of Ranger would’ve—oh, shit…”
“What?”
We ducked inside, my eyes not yet adjusting to the dark, and Charm whispered. “What if him coming to our galaxy led the way? I mean, maybe he came to Abaddon and had something on him that plotted the course, or… or the portal left something behind. And… FUCK!”