by James Maxey
I held up my hands. “In case you haven’t gotten the memo, I’m officially one of the good guys again.”
“I never doubted you were,” John said, straightening up. “I knew there was more to the story. Good job on saving the world from Technosaur.”
“No hard feelings,” I said, offering him my hand.
“Of course not, you big ape,” he said, slipping past my handshake to give me a full on hug. It was a much better hug than the one I’d given Echo. I started to ask how his tongue was, since the last time we’d met Jenny had jabbed a big ass dart into it, but decided now wasn’t the time to broach that subject.
The Hoboken gate flashed. A blonde woman hopped through, wearing only one boot. She had her left leg hooked up over her right knee and was fighting with the zipper of that boot. Her mask was stuffed into her belt and her hair was sopping wet.
“Has anyone else noticed that the apocalypse alarm always waits until you’re in the shower before it goes off?” she grumbled.
“Good to see you again, Blue Bee,” I said. “I don’t think we’ve worked together since taking down the Zoo King.”
She eyed me warily as she finally got her boot zipped and stood up. “I thought you were a villain now? Maybe? Honestly, it’s hard to keep up with the briefings these days. I’ve been kind of busy with this whole ghost ninja clan war crap.”
“That’s no excuse for not staying on top of the updates,” said Retaliator, sounding angry. I mean, he always sounds angry, but there was an odd level of passion in his voice considering all that Blue Bee was guilty of was not checking her email often enough.
“Fighting ghost ninjas is an awesome bullet point on your superhero résumé,” I said.
“Not as cool as wresting the Doom Raptor,” said Blue Bee. “I saw the videos. Man, you were amazing.”
“We’ll have time to pat each other’s backs later,” said Retaliator, his voice even more of a growl. “Nimble still hasn’t acknowledged the alarm.”
“I bet she’s in the shower,” said Blue Bee.
“We’ll do this without her,” said Retaliator.
“Shouldn’t we wait for She-Devil?” I asked.
“No response from her either,” said Retaliator. “She’ll show up if she needs to show up. This can’t have escaped her attention. Go.”
Without waiting for anyone to acknowledge his command, Retaliator jumped through the San Diego Gate.
Atomahawk’s jet vents whined as he zoomed through the gate.
Blue Bee paused to pull on her mask. She looked nervous.
“First time fighting the Fourth Horseman?” I asked.
“He’s a little bit out of my league,” she confessed. “My career so far has mainly been busting up organized crime cartels and taking down d-list villains like the Zoo King. The Fourth Horseman can kill you by saying your name. I talk to bees. Why isn’t Golden Victory handling this?”
“He’s busy rescuing the moon from aliens.”
“Man,” said Blue Bee. “I gotta start reading my email.”
She jumped through the gate. I followed, emerging in San Diego a picosecond before I actually stepped into the gate, thanks to the faster than light travel the tachyon tube provided. We were atop a skyscraper overlooking the waterfront. Explosions thundered through the air from the naval base as the military let loose with big guns at a target I couldn’t initially spot, as the blasts lit the clouds of smoke left by the bursting shells like a strobe light.
“Does anyone see him?” I asked.
“He’s visible in the infrared,” said Atomahawk, pointing.
I followed his gaze and watched the horseman emerge from a cloud, his horse trailing smoke and flames as it galloped down the sky toward the sub. The horse and horseman always strike me as an odd mismatch. Despite being an android, the Fourth Horseman looks like he’s stepped out of some medieval woodcut of Death, nothing but bones and rags, with a big scythe with a wooden handle and jagged metal blade that looks like it was yanked out of some old barn. The horse, on the other hand, is straight up robot, with metal skin and LED eyes and steel hooves with razor edges.
“Fry him,” growled Retaliator.
Atomahawk said, “Yes sir.” His superheated exhaust staggered me as he rocketed off the roof, zooming toward the horseman. With any luck, this might be easy. If you’ve paid any attention to the news reports from the last half dozen times the Fourth Horseman tried to destroy the world, you probably know that, despite his antiquated appearance, his body is made of nanites, tiny, invisible machines that come together into a cohesive humanoid shape and act as one unit. Since every one of these tiny machines contains all the code for recreating the Fourth Horseman, he’s almost impossible to disable. Golden Victory can punch him, Jenny can set him on fire, or Arc can shock him into a pile of glowing ash, but as long as one of the nanites is intact, the bastard just reforms. His one vulnerability is that all these tiny machines communicate via radio waves. You know what’s really good at disrupting radio waves? Radiation. Atomahawk can beat the Horseman with static, basically.
The Fourth Horseman turned at the sound of Atomahawk’s roaring rocket boots. He held his scythe in John’s direction. His skull jaws opened wide, preparing to shout John’s name. Atomahawk pulled up short and released a burst of broad spectrum radiation. The whole sky lit up like midday, the light reflecting dramatically off the smoke clouds. The Fourth Horseman’s form shimmered and grew hazy as Atomahawk’s radiation blast tore it apart.
“Woohoo!” I shouted, pumping my fists in the air. “Kick his ass!”
Then the horseman’s robotic steed kicked its hooves against the air, releasing bolts of lightning. Horse and horseman vanished, and Atomahawk suddenly blinked out of the sky.
“Crap,” I said, looking down. John sprawled at my feet, bleeding out, a hole punched in the belly of his armor. I turned to find the skull faced form of the Fourth Horseman directly behind me, his horse still giving off smoke from where the shells had burst against it.
“The horseman time jumped!” Retaliator shouted, pulling a knife from his belt. “He killed Atomahawk before he ever took flight!” He threw his knife hard enough to bury it right between the horseman’s empty eye sockets. The horseman didn’t even flinch. Retaliator called out, “Hit him with all you’ve got!”
All I got was fists, so I used them, lunging at the horseman to land two solid blows straight to his chin, POW! POW! I knew I didn’t stand a chance of actually hurting him, but physics is physics and I’m an 800 pound ape and he’s a dried up skeleton in rags. I probably outweighed him ten to one and my fists landed with enough force to knock him backward from his saddle. This would at least keep him from time jumping again.
Of course, his horse was still dangerous as hell. I don’t know if it’s possessed by a demon the way the rider is, but it is in possession of those steel hooves with razor edges I mentioned. It reared up, kicking out, and it took a lot of ducking, dodging, back flipping, and sheer luck not to get sliced to ribbons.
Not that my evasive actions were going to matter. The horseman rose back to its feet, glared at me with its dark, empty eyes, opened his jaw and said, “Harry Morzzzzzz!”
His attempt to speak my name turned into a droning buzz as a tight swarm of bees flew in and out of his mouth, disrupting whatever vocal apparatus he used to speak. The horseman didn’t really have a tongue or even lungs, so the Blue Bee was probably just as surprised as I was that the gambit worked.
She didn’t look surprised when the horseman came after her with his scythe, slicing through the air where she’d just stood. Anyone with normal human reflexes would likely have been skewered, but the Blue Bee uses some sort of radioactive pollen super-vitamin to make her stronger, tougher, and faster than the average Joe. Of course, we were on a rooftop, so her available space for keeping out of the way of his blade was somewhat limited, especially with me jumping and flipping around trying to keep away from the horse.
I decided to stop avoiding the
horse and try a different tactic. As the robotic beast charged me, nostrils snorting flames, I leapt straight up. With a midair twist I landed in the saddle and grabbed the reins. I pulled back with all my might to stop the horse. It didn’t work. It ignored my attempt to steer it and reared violently, doing its best to throw me. But, what’s the point of having freaky long ape fingers if you can’t hold onto shit? I held on for dear life, in the most literal meaning of that phrase.
From my saddle, I noticed that Atomahawk’s body was gone. So was Retaliator. Maybe Retaliator had taken Atomahawk back through the tachyon tube to try to perform CPR without having to worry about getting trampled. I suppose there really wasn’t much he could do here. Smoke bombs and karate weren’t going to stop the Fourth Horseman. For that matter, bees and my superhuman clinging skills weren’t going to win this fight either. Man, we were screwed.
Realizing it wasn’t going to shake me, the horse galloped straight toward the Fourth Horseman, who turned his attention from trying to skewer the Blue Bee to focus on me. If I jumped away and the horseman got back in his saddle, he could just ride off across the sky to go back to his original plan of stealing nukes and there wasn’t anything Blue Bee or I could do to stop him. My only chance was to try to catch the scythe by the wooden shaft before the tip connected.
Then, with maybe two yards left between me and the horseman, a figure clad in black dropped down from the sky right in front of the horse. Things happened pretty fast, but I could see the figure was a young female with an gymnast’s build. An eyeless black mask covered her face entirely. Who the hell was this?
The mystery woman drew back and threw a punch at the horse so hard and fast it caused a sonic boom. The next thing I knew I the horse’s head was vanishing over the horizon while its body jerked out from under me. Momentum carried me forward until I crashed into the woman. I’m bigger than a gorilla and she probably weighed no more than a high school cheerleader, but I slammed into her like she was a brick wall and didn’t even budge her.
I bounced off her, landing on my ass, staring up. Even with her face hidden, I was close enough to catch her scent. A full face mask doesn’t really hide your identity from someone with a chimp’s sense of smell.
“Smash Lass!” I cried out.
“Not anymore,” she said, in the deepest, most gravelly voice her teenage throat could muster. Fists clenched, she spun to face the Fourth Horseman. “Call me Paingiver!”
Chapter Seven
Paingiver
Harry’s Story
Watch out!” I cried as the Fourth Horseman raised his scythe to chop Smash Lass—sorry, Paingiver—in half. Odds are, he was going to bend his blade, but that didn’t matter. Just grazing the blade would kill any living thing.
Paingiver—man, that still doesn’t sound right—lifted her hand, catching the scythe by the shaft. Apparently, the instant death curse didn’t extend to the wooden parts of the scythe, since she didn’t topple over.
“Micazzz Dyzzzonzzz,” the Fourth Horseman screamed, trying to say her real name, Mica Dyson. The bees still distorted his voice enough that this didn’t prove fatal.
“Mind if I borrow this?” Smash Lass—Paingiver—oh hell, Mica said, as she ripped the scythe free of the Horseman’s grasp.
With a swift violence that left me slack jawed, she used the scythe to lop the Horseman’s head from his shoulders. As his skull toppled toward the ground, she kicked it like a soccer ball. There was another boom of an object breaking through the sound barrier as the skull zoomed heavenward, heading for orbit.
Mica chuckled as the self-replicating nanites swarmed to replace his skull. “Awesome,” she said. “I was worried this fight might be over too fast! I don’t feel like I’ve given enough pain!” She laughed maniacally as she tossed the scythe aside and grabbed the horseman’s arm. She ripped it from its socket. The Fourth Horseman’s new mouth wasn’t yet full of bees, so he cried out, “Mica Dy—” but he never got to finish her name as she shoved his broken humerus into his mouth and out the top of his skull.
“Rarrrrr!” she growled in incoherent rage as she punched her fist into the horseman’s rib cage and grabbed his spine. Holding it like a handle, she whipped the horseman back and forth, slamming him into the rooftop again and again, until all that was left of him was a cloud of dust. I coughed and backed away. The dust reeked like a dumpster on a hot summer day.
Mica clapped the dust from her hands, before noticing the fallen body of the robotic horse was trying to get back on its feet. She leapt on it, jerking the steel legs out of their sockets, snapping them over her knee, and throwing the severed pieces out beyond the horizon. Then she turned to me, fists clenched.
“You fucking son of a bitch,” she said.
I was more shocked by her words than I had been by her decapitating the Fourth Horseman. I mean, I’ve worked with Mica on a dozen missions and never once heard her use profanity. She yanked off her black mask. Her afro had been buzz cut. Her eyes were full of tears as she screamed, “It’s your fault! It’s all your fucking fault! If you hadn’t decided to take the law into your own hands to go after your damned mother, Elsa would still be alive!”
I grimaced. Right. Elsa. Mica’s first and only girlfriend, had been killed because she’d decided to join me on an off-the-books mission in Venezuela, where the Legion couldn’t lawfully travel.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “Also, watch out!”
By now the dust cloud that had been the Fourth Horseman had formed back into a skeleton and was picking up the scythe again.
“On it,” Blue Bee said, pointing her hands toward his skull, filling his mouth with bees again.
“I can do this all night,” Mica said, charging the Fourth Horseman, clapping her hands together around his head so swiftly that his skull vaporized. A few more punches to his body and once again he was a cloud of dust.
“Doing this all night might not be enough,” said the Blue Bee. “I mean, you have to sleep some time.”
“I’m open to fucking suggestions,” Mica snapped. “Smashing him to dust is pretty much the only idea I’ve got.”
“I can go back to the Sea Base to find a vacuum cleaner,” I offered.
“Are you an idiot?” Mica snarled. “You seriously fucking think a vacuum cleaner bag is going to imprison the fucking Fourth Horseman?”
“I’m just joking,”’ I said. “Christ, you don’t need to bite my head off!”
“I wouldn’t bite it off. I’d crack it like a fucking eggshell.”
“No you wouldn’t,” I said, crossing my arms.
By now, the dust cloud had starting to form back onto the shape of a skull. Mica pulled the jaw free and ground it to dust between her fingers. She shook her head. “Are you really so sure about that? You have no idea how much I hate you for taking Elsa from me.”
“Look, I know you’re hurting—”
“Because of you!” she shouted.
“I didn’t invite Elsa on the mission. I was completely surprised when she turned up. And, Christ almighty, I’d give anything to have kept her from getting killed. I was with her when she died. I was holding her hand. I’ll always have to live with the guilt of wondering if I might have been able to save her with any of a hundred different choices. But she also made choices. She chose to die a hero, and saved my life with her last few minutes in this world.”
Mica turned from me, clapping her hands through the dust as it chunked up back into bones, pulverizing it again. She turned back to me, wiping the tears from her cheeks. “I… fine. Whatever. I mean… I know it’s not all your fault. It’s my fault. She asked me to go. She said that justice was more important than the law, but I… I wouldn’t budge. She was so… I mean, she could be so… dumb. Why the fuck didn’t she listen to me? And when I knew she was going to go no matter what I said, why the hell did I dig in my heels and refuse to go along? I could have saved her!”
“You can’t know that,” I said.
“You… you held her han
d?”
I nodded. “I was with her at the very end. I was about to get ripped apart by an army of animal men, but with her very last bit of energy she made an illusion that saved my life, and that gave me the chance to save the world from a genetically engineered plague my mother planned to unleash. She might have been working outside the team’s charter, but she died a Legionnaire.”
“Oh Harry,” Mica said, sobbing.
I stepped forward, embracing her. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered, choking up, both from emotion and from the fact that the dust around us was getting pretty thick and starting to take on a skeletal shape again.
“Guys,” said the Blue Bee, nervously watching the Fourth Horseman forming from the dust, “I think it’s great that you’re both working through these emotions, but, seriously, do we have any idea at all what we’re going to do to really stop this thing?”
I cleared my throat. “Right. Radio waves? That’s how the nanites communicate. We jam them somehow?”
“Great! How?” asked Blue Bee.
“I dunno,” I said. “I’m not an electrician.”
Mica shrugged. “I got nothing. Smashing stuff is pretty much my only talent.”
“Okay, let me call Robert,” Blue Bee said, taking her phone from her belt pouch. Robert was the original Blue Bee. He was a polymath genius who’d invented the vitamins and pheromones that gave the new Blue Bee her powers and an engineering whiz who’d designed half the gadgets our team used. Unfortunately, he was also, like, ninety, so it wasn’t a huge surprise when his phone went to voice mail. Retired vigilantes usually went to bed early to make up for all those late nights they’d spent skulking around in alleys.
“I could let him rematerialize and throw him into orbit,” said Mica, though as she said so she clapped her hands around the nearly reformed skull, pulverizing it.
“That’s not a bad idea,” said Blue Bee.
“It doesn’t really solve things in the long term,” I said. “I mean, the cold and lack of air aren’t going to hurt him. Eventually he’ll fall back to earth.”