The fleet passed across that line like a foot crossing a threshold, and the trap was sprung.
A crisscrossed barrier of radiant netting leapt into existence, directly in front of the fleet, its ships moving too quickly to avoid passing through it. It resembled a fisherman's net, but the ships were not trapped so much as severed, their hulls splitting like cheese through a metal wire, no, through an infinite number of wires, crumbling and splintering, exploding in fire and whatever bloodlike fuel the ships used to sustain themselves.
Immediately, the rest of the armada took evasive action, banking up and above or down and below the barrier where Doc's limitations prevented him from making the trap any larger. He sensed the fear and panic as the fleet felt the loss of its numbers, the spell triggering feedback into his mind, letting him know exactly how much death he'd caused. This is the price of war magic, he thought, and why its practitioners are the way they are. You either need to have no conscience at all, or the ability to sacrifice yourself to the greater cause, to experience such horror over and over again. He hated it. Nauseous, his skin began to crawl and tears welled up in his eyes even as he knew these enemies were the ones bent on destroying his world.
Doc fought off these gruesome feelings and prepared another spell. He unfolded his legs from lotus position and moved his arms in a smooth, slow arc, speaking the phrases of another war spell, one of pain and destruction, not a poem now but a war cry, one that demanded the death of enemies. He felt oily and awful saying the words, greasy thoughts poured across his lips like a bad meal, but the spell worked as a red whip of light formed from his hand, and also, in the distance, a remote representation of that weapon he'd conjured in his palm. He lashed out with the whip, and the distant version, a massive thing, moved as if wielded by a giant, carving a swath through the fleet, splitting warships in two, scattering fighters. A dreadnaught positioned itself to become a martyr for one of the spear-like seed ships, and crumbled under the cracking scourge.
Once again, the cries of pain echoed from spell to caster, traveling down Doc's arm like a heart attack. His fingers grew cold, his pulse spiked, and his body reacted in cataclysm to the violence it caused.
Doc reached into his mind, searching for another spell, trying to find more to give, something else he could throw at the oncoming alien fleet. But his thoughts, like lightning bugs, danced in the dark, without pattern and completely beyond his control.
"That's it," Doc said, his voice cracked and rough.
"What. The hell. Was that?" Billy said.
"A mighty strike, my old friend," Korthos said, his voice ridiculously energized by the display of destruction.
And then, Jane. "Are you okay, Doc?"
"I'll be fine," he said. "Go get them. I'll join you in a minute."
Doc's chest spasmed. Not a heart attack, but an electric jolt of pain as his body rejected the dark magic's feedback. He bit back the hurt, realizing his microphone was live.
"We could see that from the ground," Kate said.
"Good," Doc said, his breathing ragged. "That means it worked."
His consciousness faded and he fought to remain awake and an unexpected question rose up from his cloudy mind: Where was Emily?
Chapter 60:
A sky full of heroes
Billy watched the firestorm of Doc's spells explode in the distance. The brightness caused his eyes to water and left echoes in his vision.
Well that was intense, he thought, watching the armada scatter, its spiraling, tightly woven pattern broken by Doc's trap. Tiny fighters spun, out of formation and out of control, as heavy warships took evasive action. The central figures, the three big spires they called seed ships, still flanked the biggest vessel, the brain-ship.
Before the fleet could fully reconstitute itself, the rest of the team launched an attack of its own. Billy laughed, remembering a scene from Braveheart, or any other battle scenario where a group of lunatics took on a much larger force. To his left, crazy Korthos flew, pointing that ridiculous axe on a stick weapon of his, somehow making sound in space, contrary to scientific principles Emily had drilled into Billy's head. Nothing Korthos did should be possible, he realized, but then again, Doc said much of the big barbarian's powers came from old, old magic—they shouldn't expect it to make sense.
Still, watching a guy in a kilt with dark blue hair screaming a war cry in space as he charged against insurmountable forces was pretty funny.
To his right, Seng flew in stoic silence, the alien and Billy's fellow Luminae host entity grimly seeking revenge for the world he lost. Billy hadn't realized just how much what happened to him and Dude in the future had changed them both until he watched a normal Luminae at work. We really do glow brighter, Billy thought. And fly faster. Everything is amped up.
It's true, Dude said. Our power is nearly doubled, Billy Case. I don't know what else might have been effected by this but…
I'll take being extra fast and extra strong, Billy thought. I don't see how that's a bad thing right now.
Billy caught a flash of flaming light out of the corner of his eye and saw Jane streaking into the sky like a fireball, gaining on them.
"Good to have you back, boss," he said. "Always you and me flying around at the end of the world, isn't it?"
"Wouldn't have it any other way, Straylight," Jane said. "We'll need to thin out some of those attack fighters in order to get close enough to the seed ships."
"Got it," Billy said. "Seng and I will engage the fighters since we're fastest. Korthos?"
"To victory my young friends!" Korthos yelled. "We shall give them no quarter!"
"Yeah, okay, um. But can you take on the warships?"
The demigod raged ahead. Billy's jaw dropped when he watched Korthos point his axe at the fleet. A bolt of energy lanced out of the edge, crashing into one of the closest enemy ships and split it in half. Korthos roared again and dove into the crowds of Nemesis vessels, swinging his axe in huge, broad strikes, half-dance, half-berserker rage.
"So I guess we're improvising?" Billy said.
He dove into the fray, conscious that Seng flanked him and had been watching his back. Billy, far more confident than he'd been with his first encounter with the fleet out near Saturn, went on the offensive, easily dodging blasts of light from cannons mounted on the enemy ships, moving with incredible speed and agility. He zipped past one fighter, and before it could bank to attack him, Billy fired a light-bolt through its armor, making it glow from the inside as the blast gutted the organic machine.
He felt like bird of prey. Or maybe a dolphin. Something fast, moving smoothly through this alien environment, as if this were exactly where he belonged.
I'm good at this, Billy thought.
This is what we've waited our whole lives to do, Dude said. The alien sounded focused, but not stressed.
How are you holding up with all this extra power? Billy thought.
I don't know how long it'll last, but let's enjoy it. We're cutting through these ships like they're nothing.
Billy certainly enjoyed it. He took out two more fighters with quick blasts to their hull, and when a bigger craft, a twisted thing larger than the wasp-like fighters but not a full-fledged warship, drifted up to block his path, Billy felt a surge of power from Dude and rammed his way through it like a bullet. He risked a glance over his shoulder to witness it splitting apart at the seams.
"I'm a cannonball," Billy said.
I said enjoy it, don't revel in it, Dude said.
But Billy was off, not slowing down, smashing through the shells of fighters too slow to get out of his way, leaving a wake of destruction in his path.
"I love being a superhero," Billy said, joyfully flying through the battlefield, arms outstretched like wings.
He watched in the distance as Korthos, barely visible in the chaos, fought maniacally, gutting ships like fish with his axe. The more he destroyed, the more the ships seemed to swarm him, trying to stop his devastating onslaught.
B
illy attracted a bit of a following as well, with ships pursuing him, barely able to keep pace. They fired null guns and suddenly Billy refocused. It was one thing to smash his way through regular fighters. But he needed to watch out for those that had been outfitted specifically to kill Luminae hosts.
"Head's up, Seng," Billy said into his radio. "Null guns."
"Nothing you just said made sense, Earthling, but I think I know what you're trying to tell me," the alien responded.
"Hey," Jane's voice chirped in. Billy spun around, trying to locate her in the chaos of the fight. She set a warship on fire, her arm outstretched and spewing flames like a dragon's maw. "Speaking of people who love being superheroes, where's Emily?"
"Em?" Billy said. "You out there kid? How's things on the ground?"
"On my way," Emily said.
Billy surveyed the carnage, his stomach sank as he spied the seed ships drawing close but flanked by more attack ships than he could count.
"Not that I'll turn down the assist, but Em, you can't breathe up here like the rest of us, I don't know what you're planning—"
"—Oh Billy baby have I got a surprise for you," Emily said. "You're going to be so jealous you're gonna puke."
Billy wanted to be annoyed, but the truth was, now he really, really wanted to know what his best friend had up her sleeve.
"If you have an X-Wing I'm going to be so mad," he said.
"Even better," she said.
And then Billy saw it. He didn't want to believe it, but there it was.
A giant robot, monstrous and cartoonish, rose out of the Earth's atmosphere.
Not simply a giant robot, Billy thought—it resembled the sort of machine that nearly killed him in the future, something out of an anime, a big mecha-thing with exaggerated human proportions, arms a little too long, shoulders a little too wide, feet lit up with rocket boosters, its face an impassive helmet studded with antennae.
The robot was painted in blue and glossy white, the signature colors Henry Winter wore on his armor as the hero Coldwall. In fact, the scheme itself looked entirely like Henry's old armor, blue boots, chest, and gloves, white piping, bright spots of red on the hands, feet, and face. But hastily spray-painted on the mech's front in black was the unmistakable trifold image of Entropy Emily's nuclear fallout symbol, the one she wore on the chest of her own uniform.
"Are you freaking kidding me, Emily? Are you serious?" Billy yelled.
"I have a giant robot Billy. Look look look! I have a giant robot!" Emily yelled, her voice causing everyone's earpieces to squeal with feedback.
"Do we even want to know where you got that?" Jane said, sounding somewhere between tired and incredibly amused.
"And more to the point—do you know what you're doing with it?" Billy said.
Instead of talking, the robot attacked, sweeping one giant arm in a huge arc through space, swatting two or three fighters with such force that they spun off into the black. The other arm swung as well, capturing a fighter and grabbing hold, crushing it between giant metal fingers. A warship turned to attack, but the robot held out its palm, and, though Billy couldn't see it—Emily's powers shimmered in the air a bit like heat on pavement, but in space, they were imperceptible—the warship was struck by what had to be one of Emily's Walls of Slam, caving the vessel in.
"This is amazing!" Emily yelled.
That is the most terrifying thing I have ever seen, Dude said. And I say this knowing we're actively fighting the Nemesis fleet.
"How are you even doing all of this?" Billy said.
"It's a long story," Emily said. "So… who do I smash next?"
Chapter 61:
The long story
You've got a giant robot," a surprised Emily said to Henry Winter the morning before the attack. Hours later she would join the rest of her team in space piloting the three-story high suit of armor standing in front of her.
"Technically, it's a giant armored suit, but I guess robot works," Winter said. The two of them were standing in a hidden silo beneath the Labyrinth, an area where, for years, Henry Winter had been locked up by Prevention and forced to design new technology for her more militarized version of the Department.
"Beside the obvious answer, which is, 'because if you can have a giant robot, you build a giant robot,' why, um, do you have a this thing?" Emily asked.
Winter tapped the foot of the machine with his cane.
"Remember my story? That I was the superhero Coldwall, and used mechanized suits designed for security and crowd control when I served with Doc?"
"I grew up in the Internet age," Emily said. "I Googled everything about you."
"Except the fact I have a giant robot suit," Winter said.
"Everyone is entitled to some secrets," Emily said.
"So I had different variations of the suit," Winter explained. "Underwater, deep space, fire-proof models—versions that were built to be more maneuverable while flying, versus the more heavily armored types for big battles."
"And this is the one you wore when you were cosplaying Voltron?" Emily said.
"My last big project," he said. "I always knew we'd confront something big again. You've seen the giant mole monster that we hid under the Tower? That wasn't the only giant monster we ever faced."
"So you built this… to fight genormous creatures?"
"It's a prototype," Winter said. "I actually wanted something bigger."
"Just in case Godzilla ever attacked."
"You joke, but…There are some huge things out there, Emily," Winter said.
"You sure this isn't just because you watched a lot of anime growing up?" Emily asked. She walked up to the giant mech's leg and rapped her knuckles on its shin.
"Well, like you stated," Winter said. "The real reason to build a giant robot is because if you can build one…"
"You do it," Emily said. "So why's it down here?"
Winter sighed and put a hand affectionately on the robot's metal leg.
"It's heavy. It's impossible to build this thing to be quick and mobile. It's just not feasible to be equipped with that kind of armor and weight and make it maneuverable," Winter said. "It can go very fast in one direction with boosters, but then you're carrying rocket fuel, so you're essentially driving a bomb."
"We saw giant robots in the future," Emily said. "They were pretty quick."
"They were also—"
"—Powered by me," Emily said.
"So Doc told me," Winter said. "Which is why we never showed you this before."
"Are you asking me to drive this thing? Because I've seen what happens when my powers are misused. I won't be at fault for the apocalypse," Emily said. She stared longingly at the robot. "But maybe just this once…"
"No," Winter said.
"It's funny. We recruited Keaton Bohr because we didn't want him to develop dangerous theories that would put you in harm's way. But you know what he figured out?" he said.
"How to put me at risk?"
"That you wouldn't need to power this thing," Winter said. "You'd be a puppeteer and not the battery. You've learned to control gravity at a very precise level."
Emily belly laughed.
"Sure, if you think so," she said.
Winter shook his head disapprovingly. "You're sloppy when you don't pay attention, which is all the time," he said. "I've seen the footage. You're better than you let yourself be."
"Footage? You watched footage?"
"Of all of you," Winter said. "Believe it or not, all, five of you could use more training. You're still young. And while you think I'm an old fart, I did the same job you did for a very long time, and I made a lot of mistakes so you don't have to."
"I'm judging you so hard right now," Emily said.
"Fine, judge me," Henry Winter said, sniffing in mock insult. "If you don't want to drive the suit you don't have to."
Emily slapped him on the arm.
"I'm driving this suit if I have to kill someone to do it," Emily said, her eyes huge with ex
citement. "I want to drive a mech. This is a lifelong dream. Do you have any idea how much I want to do this?"
Winter let out a boisterous, giddy laugh.
"Suit up. We'll get you in the cockpit," Winter said. "If I'm telling the truth, I've wanted to see this bird fly for years now. I'm as psyched as you are."
* * *
Emily returned to the silo where the robot waited for her. She wore a jumpsuit designed to maximize her ability to work the controls and to let her seal herself in should the cockpit lose air. She was appalled to find Winter waiting in a lighter version of his Coldwall armor. It wasn't a full suit, more like select pieces, a chest plate and gauntlets, a helmet in his hands.
"Why are you also suited up," Emily said, deadpan.
"You're going to need a copilot," Winter said.
"You lie."
"If something breaks in space, are you going to be able to fix it?"
Emily stared him down, then acquiesced.
"Okay fine. But you are copilot. Co-pilot. Not pilot."
"I wouldn't have it any other way," Winter said. "Look up."
Emily followed his gesture and felt her little heart grow three sizes too big. Sure, it was sloppy and rushed, but there, in dark paint on the chest of the giant robot, was her nuclear fallout symbol. Her symbol. Her robot.
"I think you're just about my new favorite person," Emily said.
"You really do weave back and forth pretty violently with your moods, don't you?" Winter said.
"It's my specialty," Emily said. "Okay Stacker Pentacost, show me how to run this thing."
He led her to a ladder, but Emily skipped climbing and bubble of floated herself up to a cockpit, located in the head of the machine. She hopped in, pulling the helmet she found there over her head. Winter, with his bum leg, followed slowly up the ladder, and when he got to the platform, he plugged Emily's suit into a few cables in order to monitor her vitals, and ensured that her helmet was sealed. Then he pointed to the controls.
"For any other pilot, you'd need these," he said. "But I want you to—"
Like A Comet: The Indestructibles Book 4 Page 28