II Crimsonstreak

by Matt Adams

  “Those looked pretty stupid, ‘Dad,’” the kid observes. “Now stop fooling around so we can get inside that cockpit and stop these morons from mucking things up.”

  The door flies open after a strategically applied burst of Crimsonspeed.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I ask a green-skinned woman who turns around in surprise. The pilot and co-pilot sit slumped in their chairs, out cold. “The Champions are taking back this shuttle,” she says. The woman—Emeralda, I remember—tries to keep her voice steady, but her trembling tone betrays nervousness.

  Typical of the Champions; boasting when things are under control and cowering when things get tough.

  “Who authorized this mission?” Warren asks.

  Emeralda goes wide-eyed, as if she’s just discovered the secret of life.

  I’m going to go out on a limb and say she probably hasn’t.

  “The Champions are operating as different autonomous cells right now,” she explains. “Just as you did when you overthrew the New World Common Wealth. We authorized this.”

  Finally, some steel returns to her tone.

  “You have no idea how bad your timing is,” I say. “You have totally picked the wrong ship to take over. I know what your orders are, but this ship needs to reach its destination.”

  Emeralda balls her fists, which pulse with green energy. “That is not our objective,” she says. Her two compatriots stand as well. I hadn’t even noticed them until they moved.

  It’s kind of like I told Commander Klem: you can trust the Champions when you’re both on the same side; when you have a disagreement, they tend to want to fry you with magical emerald blasts and other assorted powers.

  “Even though the people of Earth rejected the New World Common Wealth, they don’t deserve to be poked, prodded, and probed by an occupying force,” she snarls. Her buddies—a short, stocky, bald man who could pass for George Costanza if he’d ever lifted a weight and a woman who looks like she’d enjoy splitting me in two—grunt in agreement.

  “Ma’am, sometimes the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few,” Warren says, picking the absolute best moment to quote Spock from Wrath of Khan. “This is one of those times. We don’t intend to allow these people to be probed. We’ll get everyone off this ship safely. Eventually.”

  Warren doesn’t even sound confident enough to convince himself.

  “What my colleague is trying to say is that this shuttle presents a very convenient way to get aboard the Kiltechs’ most important ship,” I tell her. “Security will still be tight, but it’s a hell of a lot better than a direct assault.”

  A blast of green energy slams into my chest, forcing me backwards. As I’m momentarily splayed against a wall, I mutter, “Jaci, will you talk some sense into her?”

  “Sure thing, hotshot,” Jaci says, rolling her eyes. “Look, we have no intention of turning these people over to the Kiltechs. We’ll make sure they’re safe. But this is our best ticket onto their flagship.”

  “We all know it’s no goodwill tour,” Warren interjects. “But announcing it to the passengers was probably, like, the worst idea ever.”

  Emeralda doesn’t even acknowledge the kid. Instead, she moves straight toward Jaci. The other Champions follow her lead. “I wish I could believe you, Enforcer Graves,” Emeralda says, not all that convincingly. “But you strayed from the true path long ago. Now, you collude with those who wish to supplant Colonel Chaos.” The woman stands face to face with her. “And for that, it is you who should be punished.”

  Jaci responds by jacking the woman right in the jaw. The blow sends Emeralda careening over the pilot’s chair and against the flight yoke. Falcon Gray rocks the Costanza lookalike with a mighty bird punch, and Warren delivers a sweep kick that knocks the third member of the team down. The ship banks hard to the left. Warren stumbles over the downed Champions and grabs the controls.

  “You know, my only real flying experience comes from the Top Gun game on the Nintendo,” he confesses.

  I hope for the best; I could never nail the landing on that stupid aircraft carrier.

  Has Everyone Picked a Moving Buddy?

  “What are we going to do with them?” Warren asks as Emeralda and her two COJ lackeys lie bound on the floor.

  “Just leave them be,” I order.

  “Right,” Warren replies. He’s trying to hide his displeasure with the idea, but his body language gives him up. “Surely the Kiltechs won’t notice the two pilots slumped in their chairs and the three COJ members tied up on the cockpit floor.”

  “They will. And don’t call me Shirley,” I chide, unable to resist a good straight line. “But by the time they discover what went on here and they’re done dealing with a hysterical mob of so-called Goodwill Ambassadors, we’ll already be hip-deep in super-spy infiltration stuff.”

  Warren flicks a thumb toward Falcon Gray. “What about him?”

  Our traveling companion’s trench coat is ripped to shreds, his wide-brimmed fedora is probably halfway to Titan by now, and he’s no longer even making a token effort to hide.

  “We need him. It’s just… he’s conspicuous, and we need to stay under the radar,” Warren says. “I don’t think rolling ‘Grandpa Jenkins’ through the line is going to do us any good. Who knows how long it will take them to figure out that someone attacked the transport?”

  “I imagine they already know,” Jaci offers. “The course deviation alone probably tipped them off. We’re almost to the Invincible now, so they’ll radio the pilots soon. When they don’t get a response, they’ll start to wonder if something’s wrong. And when they realize the autopilot AI is engaged, they’ll go crazy.”

  “So the Champions screwed us over pretty good?” Warren asks.

  “Yeah, the Champions screwed us over pretty good,” I answer.

  “How accurate are the Kiltech scanners?” Falcon Gray asks.

  I don’t know the answer, but Falcon Gray’s irritating head bobs have temporarily stopped. The birdman must have an idea.

  I open my mouth to ask a question, but Warren beats me to it.

  “You have a plan?” he asks.

  Falcon Gray strokes his noble, feathered chin. “If their scanners search only for large objects and other ships, I believe I may have a suitable solution. We shall allow the ship to land on its own.” The birdman makes a sweeping gesture. “The four of us shall, as your people would say, make a run for it.”

  Warren lets out a nervous laugh. “‘Make a run for it?’ How exactly do you suppose we do that?”

  “We are not weaklings. Miss Graves and I are both blessed with the power of flight. We could fly away from the shuttle, undetected, and find an accessway to the Kiltech ship,” he suggests.

  Warren’s gaze shifts from Falcon Gray to Jaci to me.

  “Just a slight problem with your plan, Freebird,” I say. “You may be able to fly over the infinite universe pecking the hell out of evil, but the rest of us can’t survive hard vacuum.”

  “Maybe you can’t, Mr. Super-Speed, but I can,” Warren says, pulling pieces of his Crusading Comet suit out of his backpack. “I can seal the armor from vacuum and I’ve got a reserve oxygen tank. Dad calls it the Comet Orbital Suit Manufactured for Interstellar Commute.”

  COSMIC. Sometimes there are no words.

  “I bet you don’t have one of these in your costume,” he taunts, as he starts to get into his gear piece by piece.

  “It’s a uniform,” I say reflexively.

  “That’s great, Warren,” Jaci says. “But what are we going to do?”

  “Check under the seat,” he replies, gesturing toward the co-pilot’s chair.

  She shrugs and then crouches behind the seat, searching until she finds something. “Smart. A pressure suit.”

  Before she can say another word, I dive toward the pilot’s seat and find another suit. I’m dressed in just a matter of seconds.

  “And look what I found,” I boast. “You guys are gonna have to hustle up
and get dressed.”

  “That is definitely your color,” Warren says, covering his mouth.

  I look at the sleeves of my pressure suit. “It’s pink,” I say bitterly.

  “You’re all set, Pink Ranger,” Jaci says, getting into her pressure suit. It’s red. One could even call it crimson.

  I try to ignore the beaming smiles of Warren and Jaci. “You’re sure we can make this, Manimal?”

  Falcon Gray’s eyes close for a quick second and he gives us a formal bow. “This option is our wisest course of action.”

  It sounds nuts.

  It is nuts.

  But he’s right—it’s our best option for getting aboard the ship without picking a fight we know we can’t win.

  As a superhero, sometimes you think you’ve seen it all.

  Then, all of a sudden, you’re floating through stars and space debris in an emergency pressure suit and a re-breathing mask, holding on to your girlfriend for dear life while a possibly unbalanced birdman grips your best buddy in his talons.

  Through our radios, Warren screams like a little girl as the Invincible comes up on us with shocking speed. Falcon Gray leads us with urgency and a velocity even I find a little terrifying.

  The Invincible didn’t look all that imposing during our original approach on the shuttle, but the monstrous ship becomes larger and more foreboding as we draw near. By the time we’re halfway there, the flagship obscures everything, almost a planet or solar system in its own right. I can’t speak to scale, but I imagine that in Battleship terms, the Invincible is the carrier while Darth Vader’s Executor is relegated to submarine status. Considering the Executor spans some 62,000 feet in length, that’s pretty big.

  Sometimes, I wish I didn’t know so much about nothing.

  From all appearances, the Invincible is a large version of the Kiltechs’ other ships. From far away, it looks dull, just gunmetal gray. As we draw closer, however, a light sheen reflects the Earth’s shimmering blue surface. No saucer shape here; no wedge, either. The Invincible is sleek and stylish, with a long, pointed nose and sides that flare out like the fins of a ’59 Cadillac. Specks of light litter the surface.

  It is a frightening sight, this ship.

  It looks like, at any moment, the Invincible could conjure a powerful laser blast capable of turning Earth into just another asteroid field. I take heart in knowing the Kiltechs don’t plan to destroy the planet itself, even though they have no apparent problem with destroying what makes the planet special.

  My HUD keeps telling me I’m going to run out of oxygen soon, so I focus on slowing my breaths to stretch my supply. There’s a reserve tank strapped to my belt for emergencies. I imagine running out of oxygen qualifies.

  The ship is impossibly big now. Up close, its exterior is not as blemish-free as it appeared from a distance; outcroppings and sensor bubbles dot the surface. The exterior is tiered, too, as if someone tried to make a giant terrace garden but ended up with a starship instead.

  Falcon Gray and Jaci glide for what seems like an eternity as the surface rushes up to greet us. The ship pulls us toward it—I suspect artificial gravity’s at play. Falcon Gray and Warren have no problem stopping just before hitting a control tower. It appears the man-bird is an experienced, capable space traveler.

  Jaci, unfortunately, is not.

  She tries to decelerate, but instead of slowing down, our inertia carries us forward and we pick up more speed toward the tower.

  Crash! Bang! Boom!

  We are gonna feel that one in the morning.

  After several minutes of examining the outside of the ship, Warren uses a small blowtorch to cut an opening in one of the deck plates. It’s not a perfect cut—the circle has a few jagged edges—but it’s large enough to get all of us through, even Falcon Gray and his large wings.

  Once we’re in, I take the plate and hold it up so Warren can weld it shut. We wait several seconds as Warren checks his scanner (I still maintain it’s a damn iPhone) to confirm the atmosphere is oxygenated. When he gives the all-clear, our re-breather masks and accompanying oxygen tanks fall quickly to the ground and we go through the crawlspace single-file, with Falcon Gray leading the way. It’s good to be out of that pink nightmare.

  “Dark in here,” Warren says.

  “Make sure we write that up for management,” I reply. “‘The accommodations were nice enough, but we felt the ventilation shafts needed better lighting so trespassers can see where they’re going.’”

  Warren punches me in the arm. “The wit is even quicker than the feet.”

  “Don’t give him too much credit,” Jaci cautions. “It’ll go to his head.”

  We come to a T-shaped intersection that gives us the option to go left or right. As my vision adjusts, I can see faint light coming from the left side of the shaft. Falcon Gray turns right, and I grab his left arm-wing.

  Predictably, he warbles in protest.

  “Quiet,” I whisper. “We should go left. See the light?”

  “My evolved avian sense is pleading with us to go right.”

  “Warren?”

  The faint glow of the young Comet’s scanner illuminates his mask in the most unsettling way. “I’m not getting any service in here. America’s most reliable network, my ass.”

  “We’re in space, pal. I think they get a pass for having a blind spot up here.”

  “I thought they’d have Wi-Fi.”

  Observation: Warren is one of the few people who found the whole “Macintosh destroys the mothership” plot thread believable in Independence Day.

  “I take it you thought this mythical alien Wi-Fi would give you access to the ship’s schematics?”

  “I’m good with technology, Chris. I’d figure it out.”

  “Must you banter about like this?” Falcon Gray asks. “Time is wasting. Which way shall we go, young Comet?”

  Warren gives his scanner-phone a few more useless taps. “We go left. Toward the light.”

  To my surprise, Falcon Gray doesn’t protest, doesn’t squawk, doesn’t do anything except change direction. Sure, when Warren says it...

  The light grows brighter as we move through this section of the tunnel. We wind through a few different sections and the ambient light gives me a good look at Falcon Gray’s posterior. Though part bird, the hero does not have any tail feathers to speak of. Instead, shiny leather pants catch the light as his foot-claws click and clack against the cool metal surface.

  A few minutes later, we’re staring at a metal grate, white light filtering through its waffle-like surface.

  “What can you see down there?” I ask.

  “Take a look for yourself, Road Runner,” Falcon Gray responds.

  The shaft is wide enough for both of us, though barely, and I give the man-bird a gentle push to the side.

  The walls below are made of polished steel that reflects harsh light coming from a building-sized cylinder in the middle of the room. The glow intensifies for a second, followed by an ominous thumping sound.

  Three Kiltechs stand behind a partition glowing with banks of holographic displays. The left wall has a pentagonal opening with a grated floor. An authoritative voice sounds over invisible speakers. The language is heavily synthesized, laced with staccato clicks and another sound—imagine the electronic bleats of a fax machine combined with a sinister, guttural noise.

  It reminds me vaguely of Kilgore.

  Heck, it probably is Kilgore.

  “That doesn’t sound very nice,” Jaci observes. “Seems urgent. You think they know something’s wrong?”

  “They’ve probably received word of problems with their shuttle by now,” I whisper.

  The Kiltechs below confirm my theory by calling up a holographic display of the approaching shuttle. The ship appears to be in a slow, lazy spin to its starboard side. One of the Kiltechs reaches for the display and flares out his hands; the image adjusts to show the front of the vessel. The view changes—now we’re seeing inside the cockpit. Member
s of the Champions of Justice remain tied up behind the pilots.

  “I’m surprised the shuttle wasn’t more heavily guarded,” Warren says.

  “It’s supposed to be a tourist ship,” Jaci reminds him. “Packing it with a bunch of Kiltech guards wouldn’t make it very inviting.”

  “They could’ve been cloaked,” Warren points out.

  Good point, kid. And he’s right. Now I’m wondering why the shuttles weren’t guarded more heavily, if unobtrusively. The Kiltechs seem to think humans are docile. They obviously haven’t been paying attention.

  Warren wriggles his way between Falcon Gray and me, and then points at the glowing column in the room below. “Whoa. What’s that thing?”

  “I was hoping you had an idea,” I say.

  Warren strains to pull out his scanner.

  “That works now?” I scoff.

  Warren nods. “I was getting interference in the duct.”

  “So now you’ve got 4G?”

  Warren sighs. “Don’t be ridiculous.” He shakes his head and looks at the device. “Massive power signature. I haven’t seen anything like it before—it’s different from the usual Kiltech power waveform.”

  He turns the display toward me, revealing a series of equations and charts. This probably isn’t the time to tell Warren that math wasn’t one of my strong points in college. Or third grade.

  “What does it mean?”

  He pulls the device back toward him and makes a series of motions across the screen. “It’s an alien power source.”

  Thank you, Captain Obvious.

  “I have seen such a device before,” Falcon Gray says. “While making my journey from Aviary XII, I encountered a ship such as this. Quite a bit smaller, though. They brought me aboard the vessel and marched me through their detention area. We passed an opening much like the one to the left. I caught a glimpse of a large column of light.”

  File that under the “Things that Could’ve Been Brought to My Attention Earlier” department.

  “You’ve been aboard one of these ships before?” Jaci asks.

  “During my initial voyage off-planet, I encountered a Kiltech ship, yes. They studied me before I escaped. I tried going back to Aviary XII, but ended up here instead,” Falcon Gray explains.