The Invincibles (Book 1): The Invincibles

by Lee, Tristan

  Peter is a drug dealer. There is nothing even relatively legal about it, but the police force in Capital City have better things to do than crack down on the drug trade. Most of them are regular customers at Peter’s shack of needles, cigarettes, and powders, so he has leverage over more than half the force if they ever decide to bust his hideout. Although selling LSD, heroin, ecstasy, and marijuana is quite profitable, Peter lives in Section 8 housing because he spends most of his money on cocaine.

  None of these paydays compare to the amount of money offered by S.A.B.R.E.

  “So twenty thousand dollars a month, twelve months a year,” Peter says thoughtfully. “So twenty times twelve, that’s . . . um . . . twenty-four . . . twelve . . . um . . . “

  “Two million, four hundred thousand dollars a year,” Dr. Pryce cuts him off.

  “Thanks, doc,” Peter says. “You know, I think I should apologize to my third grade teacher. I never believed her when she said that we’d need long division in everyday life.”

  “That was multiplication,” Sandor corrects.

  Peter frowns, “What the hell?”

  “Multiplication is adding a bunch of times at once, division is seeing how many times one number will fit into another number,” Belle explains.

  “No, not that,” Peter says, pointing to the window. “What the hell is that?”

  Peter is pointing to the rift that is opening in the sky. It is identical to the one that the Aotiuer fled into in San Francisco, only this time Aotiuer ships are emerging from the portal instead of retreating. There are thousands of the small fighters and hundreds of larger crafts that deploy the fighters from their underbellies. The Aotiuer ships do not attack, but they deploy bruisers and drones into the streets. Civilians either floor the accelerator on their cars, or if they are caught to densely in the standard Haven City traffic, get out of their cars and start running. The Aotiuer do not engage the civilians, they simply march down the streets towards the tower.

  “Is it just me, or does it sort of seem like they’re coming for us?” Anna asks.

  “I noticed,” Dick says. “Suit up, people.”

  Any qualms the Invincibles may have had about changing in front of others are instantly forgotten; they are in their field uniforms and combat-ready in less than a minute.

  Sandor pulls a gun out of a holster at his hip and pulls out a walkie-talkie, “All personnel, report to your defense stations. We are under attack, this is not a drill. I repeat, this is not a drill.”

  He puts the walkie-talkie away and takes his phone out. Sandor taps on a contact and holds the phone to his ear, “I’m going to call in the military.”

  “No!” Dr. Invictus cries.

  “Why the hell not?” Nightshade asks. “We could use an army with a huge chunk of the Aotiuer fleet bearing down on us.”

  Dr. Invictus does not answer, instead he fires an electromagnetic pulse at Sandor, knocking him off of his feet and disabling his phone, “I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t let you make that call.”

  Sandor is too stunned to speak, so Dr. Invictus continues, “The U.S. military is not powerful enough to stop the Aotiuer, and any force that the president can muster would likely be killed. If that force is killed, then the president and his advisors will turn to the only thing they think can stop the Aotiuer.”

  “Nuclear weapons,” Ronin says softly. “My God, he’s right. We can’t call in reinforcements or they’ll nuke the city.”

  “That’s crazy!” Sandor protests. “The government won’t just drop a nuclear weapon on a densely populated city!”

  “What would you do?” Defender asks. “If it was the lives of millions against the lives of billions, what would you do?”

  Sandor opens and closes his mouth without making any sound, like a fish desperately trying to breathe out of water.

  “Like it or not, we’re the only thing standing between those ugly critters and the rest of the city, possibly the world,” Ronin says.

  “So what’s the game plan?” Fastball asks.

  “We can’t take them head-on,” Dr. Invictus says. “We’ll be overwhelmed. Our best bet is to keep them divided and take out smaller squadrons instead of taking on the whole army at once.”

  “Cool beans, but how?” Demoness asks.

  “It would normally be a horrible tactical choice with a force this large, but we have to split up,” Dr. Invictus says after a long moment. “Just like in San Francisco, only now we’ve got a lot more than two hundred people to take care of. There are half a million people in this city and it is our job to protect each and every one of them. It’s going to be hard, I can guarantee that. Don’t expect reinforcements, or some kind of deus ex machina to help us out. Some of us might not even survive. But that doesn’t matter, does it? Someone paid these ugly grey bastards to wipe out our planet. They were hired because they are the best in the universe. Let’s go show the best in the universe what Earth has to offer.”

  “That speech was shit,” Nightshade says bluntly.

  Some nervous laughter ripples through the Invincibles, but it does not last. A few moments later, an Aotiuer fighter opens fire on an apartment building.

  “That’s our cue,” Defender says. “Remember, split up and take as many of the bastards with you as you can.”

  The Battle of Haven City

  August 9th

  Titan scoops Demoness up into his arms and she shatters the window with a red bolt of light, allowing them to fly through. They catch the attention of an Aotiuer fighter by clipping one of its wings and manage to get the fighter to chase them, albeit with its weight lopsided. Dr. Invictus follows them out of the window and Ronin leaps off the edge of the landing pad, sword drawn. Defender gives his sister a quick nod before firing his grappling hook, snagging onto an Aotiuer fighter that yanks him away and into the fight. Fastball starts screaming at the top of his lungs and runs straight down the side of the tower to engage the Aotiuer infantry on the ground.

  “Fuck!” Nightshade yells in frustration. She has no powers and no way to get down safely without the use of an elevator.

  But then again, who ever said she needed to go down?

  Nightshade realizes this as well and sprints towards the Falcon. She boards the craft, situates herself with the controls, and is about to take off when Sandor burns joins her in the copilot’s seat. He sets an M4A1 assault rifle with an under-barrel grenade launcher down and puts on his headset.

  “What?” he asks. “Are we going to shoot Aotiuer with this thing or what?”

  “Hey, can I ask you a question?” Titan asks as he and Demoness evade fire from a large swarm of Aotiuer fighters.

  “Sure, what’s up?” Demoness asks, still firing red bolts of light at the Aotiuer.

  “What does ‘deus ex machina’ mean?”

  “It’s like a god or superpower or something that just appears and solves whatever impossible problem was going on,” she explains. “Sort of like the ghosts in Lord of the Rings.”

  “So we’re the deus ex machina.”

  “Well . . . yeah, sort of.”

  The ringing of a phone is audible over the Aotiuer cannon fire. Demoness looks at Titan questioningly, “Is that your phone?”

  “Yeah. It’s in the same belt pocket where I keep my air freshener, could you pick that up for me? Might be work.”

  Demoness rolls her eyes but fishes the phone out of his belt and answers it, “Hello?”

  “Demoness?” a mechanized male voice responds.

  “Who’s asking?”

  “It’s Airstrike. Where’s Titan?”

  “He’s giving me a ride.”

  “Is it a bad time?”

  “In a nonsexual way, dumb-ass. Do you really think I would have picked up if it was the other thing?”

  “I saw what’s happening on the news, do you need me?”

  “Let me ask.”

  Demoness covers the receiver to talk to Titan, “It’s your buddy, Airstrike. He wants to know if we need help.�
��

  “Uh, I don’t know. Ask the Doc,” Titan responds.

  “He’s not connected in our heads, dummy.”

  “Shoot. We really need little communication devices.”

  “Yeah, we can tell Burns later. Do we want Airstrike or not?”

  “Tell him to hold back. If we lose, we’re going to need some kind of backup plan.”

  As Demoness relays that message, an Aotiuer fighter lets out an ear-splitting shriek as a missile is fired at them. Once the missile is deployed, the Aotiuer fighters give up the pursuit, turning back around towards the tower.

  Titan dives down suddenly and the missile passes harmlessly overhead, but it flips over and comes back at them. Demoness tries to shoot the missile down, but compartments on the missile open to fire smaller missiles that neutralize her bolts. The missile is bearing down on them faster now, picking up speed to make a head-on collision all the more lethal.

  “Shouldn’t we be dodging or something?” Demoness asks as the missile gets closer.

  “Do you trust me?” Titan asks.

  “What does that-“

  “Do you trust me?”

  “Of course. With my life.”

  “Good. I’m sorry, by the way.”

  “About what?”

  Without responding, Titan drops Demoness as the missile approaches.

  “What the frick-frack-frackity-whack?” Demoness screams as she falls.

  Titan continues to fly straight at the missile, but seconds before impact he rights himself so the missile hits his more heavily armored torso. The explosion is far more powerful than any conventional human weapon; the force of it is strong enough to shatter the windows of buildings hundreds of feet away. There is no fireball as a result of the explosion, only a bright white light and the blast of heat that comes with it. When the light is gone, however, Titan is still standing. He immediately dives straight down with all the speed available to him until he levels out with Demoness.

  “Fancy seeing you here,” he says with a grin.

  “That was bitching,” Demoness admits as she wraps an arm around his neck. “But I wish you gave me a heads up or something.”

  Titan laughs and uses one arm to support her back while placing the other one under her knees and resumes their usual flying position.

  “I dropped your phone, by the way,” Demoness says. “Sorry.”

  On the city streets, Fastball is dodging the Aotiuer infantry’s cannon blasts with less effort than to dodge a charging snail. He positions Aotiuer in front of their own blasts so they are vaporized by themselves.

  “Too easy,” Fastball comments as he sprints down the street, an entire Aotiuer squad decimated.

  The Aotiuer are no match for Fastball, at best they see a silver and red blur whizzing around, but that probably is not for long since he does such a good job of killing them. As he is running, Fastball spots a baseball bat lying on the front porch of someone’s house. He picks up the bat and gives it an experimental swing at a bruiser’s head. The baseball bat obliterates the bruiser; black blood and chunks of brain explode out of where the head used to be, forming a wet cloud of gore.

  “Not bad,” Fastball says to himself. He swings again and makes an utter ruin out of another bruiser’s head. Fastball dashes around the battlefield with his baseball bat, making Aotiuer heads explode like water balloons.

  The Aotiuer desperately try to shoot Fastball, but he evades and swings his baseball bat until it snaps in half over an Aotiuer’s head. Fastball drops the broken bat and kicks the Aotiuer in the neck, but before he can turn around and kill another Aotiuer, he feels a pulse pass through his body, like when one is walking and can feel the vibrations of a passing car’s loud music. He thinks nothing of the pulse until he finds that he can no longer run at supersonic speeds.

  “Shit!” Fastball yells. The Aotiuer shriek in victory and raise their rifles at him. “Someone give me a hand!”

  “What’s going on?” Defender asks. “Fastball?”

  “They dropped a negative field!”

  “Can you get out of range?”

  “It’s a God-damned negative field, man, how the hell am I supposed to get out of its range without being shot now that I don’t have my powers?”

  “Does it look like they’re going to kill you or take you prisoner?”

  “How the hell am I supposed to know what these twats are thinking? All I know is that they are pointing guns at me and if they decide to shoot I’m going to die.”

  “Keep them busy. I’m on my way.”

  Moments later, Defender’s hijacked Aotiuer fighter comes into view of Fastball. Defender opens fire on the Aotiuer, vaporizing them while avoiding Fastball. Fastball dives behind a car for cover and pokes his head out just enough to watch Defender decimate the Aotiuer. However, a heavily armored bruiser soaks up Defender’s cannon fire like they are water balloons. The bruiser unslings a three-foot silver tube from its back and raises the tube to its shoulder. Once there, the tube expands to at least eight feet as a targeting reticle and a stabilizing bipod extend from it.

  “Shit, that’s a missile launcher,” Fastball realizes. “Defender, watch out, this one’s got a rocket lau-“

  The bruiser fires its missile at Defender. He pulls upwards away from the projectile, but it has already locked on to the fighter’s heat signature and starts to follow Defender. Defender does his best to evade it, swerving suddenly and doing surprise barrel rolls, but the missile catches up and impacts the fighter’s left wing. With his air support down, Fastball is once again vulnerable, especially since he still does not have his speed.

  “Damn, damn, damn,” Fastball mutters, racking his brain for any way to get his speed back.

  As he thinks, the armored Aotiuer slowly starts to turn the rocket launcher, searching for a new target. The launcher emits a red light with a six foot range that seems to x-ray objects. If the light passes over Fastball and he does not have his speed, he will have no way to outrun the missile.

  “Cocaine,” Fastball says, eyes widening. The light is getting dangerously close to the car Fastball is hiding behind.

  He opens a compartment in his harness and removes the lone occupants; a clear, plastic packet with six grams of cocaine inside. The powder is white and would seem like the powder for gelatin, but to cops or junkies, the difference is unmistakable. Fastball snorts all six grams at once; he spasms slightly as the cocaine hits his system and begins to break down. Instead of feeling the regular rush of dancing elephants and scantily clad women, Fastball feels like he got struck by a bolt of lightning. It hurts like hell and he bites down on his lip so hard it starts to bleed in order to avoid screaming, but once the pain passes, he feels energized and he knows that his speed has returned. Just about the same time, the red light passes over the car he is hiding behind, revealing his position to the armored bruiser. The bruiser shrieks and fires a missile at Fastball from a mere ten feet away.

  The missile accelerates at one-hundred-eighty feet-per-second towards Fastball. Fastball accelerates at eleven-thousand-two-hundred-fifty-three feet-per-second. At that speed, he can run about one-hundred-twenty-eight miles in one minute. He’s out of the missile’s blast radius in less than a millisecond and back to punch the bruiser in the face before it can even register that he had left. The punch does not cave in the bruiser’s head like Fastball’s punches usually do because of its armor, but the bruiser’s head spins one hundred and eighty degrees around.

  “Now would you look at the swing on this kid; that is some major league talent right there,” Fastball says in his announcer voice.

  He starts to sprint away when he remembers that Defender got shot down, “Damn, I should check on him.”

  Ronin wipes black Aotiuer blood off of his sword with a piece of vulcanized rubber ripped off of car tire. The Aotiuer squad that had decided to ambush him had been a very, very unlucky squad indeed; they were eviscerated like food in a blender. He drops the piece of rubber and scans his surroundings
for more Aotiuer. Not with his sight, though, instead he fires off gentle, telekinetic waves that operate like a sonar. Using these waves, he detects nothing in his immediate vicinity, nor in a two-mile radius. He increases the strength of the waves and widens his search radius until he has the entire city mapped out.

  He can “see” everything in the city now, Fastball racing towards a crashed Aotiuer fighter, Demoness and Titan devastating three Aotiuer squads at once, and Dr. Invictus as he weaves in and out of buildings, dogfighting with Aotiuer fighters. With this new omnipresence, Ronin pinpoints a healthy-sized Aotiuer battalion that none of his teammates are dealing with yet. Composed mostly of drones, the Aotiuer battalion only has one bruiser for every twenty or so drones. There are two hundred drones. The Aotiuer are not patrolling the streets or slaughtering civilians, which is good for Ronin, but bad for them. The drones are getting restless from waiting in one location for so long with nothing to do, and although the bruisers are more disciplined, they too show signs of boredom.

  Ronin uses this to his advantage and is able to teleport directly into their ranks without any of them noticing him until he chooses one of the bruisers to decapitate. Once his sword passes through the bruiser’s neck, a drone screams loudly and gestures wildly to Ronin with an outstretched hand. Another bruiser responds with a similar shriek and the drones swarm Ronin while trying to punch and claw him. He tears through the drones with his sword, black blood spraying all over and the dying wails of the Aotiuer making loud enough to make even the most terrified resident of the city poke their heads out of windows and doors to see what is happening.

  The dance of steel continues for a while longer until a bruiser, an armored one like the one Fastball faced, manages to block one of Ronin’s swings without having its arm cut off. Stunned momentarily, Ronin is open for a punch that the armored bruiser delivers to his face. Blood spurts out of his nose as he is thrown backwards and hits the asphalt hard; he rises to his feet when he realizes that he has dropped his sword.