The split screen showed two very different scenes. The view from the jet showed the spread of the cloud creatures. In moments they would have her completely surrounded in roiling white, gray and black sphere.
Izzy’s side of the screen showed only creatures, mythological and real, as far as the eye could see.
“Shift? Railgun? Whichever of you has the com,” Izzy said. “Get the jet on the other side of the creatures. I’m going through and I’ll need a fast exit.”
Izzy’s speed had slowed down from more than the speed of sound to practically nothing. Russian Victory had righted himself and his sidekicks were following him in.
Marcus’ voice came over the air. “You’re sure you can go through?”
“I’m sure,” Izzy said quickly. “No time to talk.”
The jet’s view changed as it flew to the other side of a growing sphere of phantom creatures.
“Railgun,” Marcus said, ” have the anti-personnel lasers ready in case something follows her.”
“You want me to shoot them?” Sydney barely sounded like she believed him.
“Well,” Marcus said, “not really. A blast of scary, bright lasers would be good enough.”
On Izzy’s side of the screen, the man on the flying carpet held up his hands and said a word.
Marcus asked, “Hey Hal, can you translate?”
Haley turned to me, frowning. “He’s not asking me, is he? I don’t know Russian.”
A computer voice said, “The translation is ‘Halt’.”
Courtney started to laugh. “Your AI’s name is Hal?”
I stared at the screen. “It wasn’t.”
Of course, I’d never asked the AI what it’s name was, and it hadn’t formally introduced itself either. For all I knew, it’s name might actually be Hal.
Hopefully it wouldn’t start pointlessly killing everyone on the ship any time soon.
The man on the flying carpet said something else. The AI supplied a translation.
“He says, ‘You’re flying through Russian airspace. Identify yourself and explain why you’re here’.”
Izzy didn’t say anything, and my program noted that her comm had been set to mute.
I’d figured out why even before she started, but not much.
The center of Izzy’s screen changed as she turned her head to the right, putting the man on the flying carpet and fiery bird woman off to the left.
What was now in the center of the screen was a dragon–all black with glossy scales, grey claws, and white teeth. It dwarfed anything near it, crouching as if about to attack, wings ready to unfurl.
Then the camera started to vibrate, causing everything on the screen to turn blurry. For a moment it wasn’t obvious if this meant turbulence in the air or something else.
Then it became very obvious.
The dragon disintegrated, turning from a recognizable form into nothing, bits of a gooey substance scattering into the sky.
Izzy had screamed, her own internal sonic weapon making the ones in my suit look like a car horn by comparison. My grandfather had been very aware of the difference when he’d fought Dixie Superman.
The man on the carpet held his hands to his ears while the carpet carried him further away. The flaming bird woman’s flames went out for less than a second and she began to fall.
Then her body erupted into flame, and her wings grew, but Izzy didn’t wait for it. She flew forward toward where the dragon had been. She’d annihilated everything around it, leaving a hole fifty feet wide.
As she flew through, the creatures turned toward her and tried to close the gap, but they didn’t have time.
She was free, flying upward toward a glowing hole in the sky. She reached the hatch of the League jet and stepped inside as the door slid shut behind her.
“Blue’s on board. We’re on our way home,” Marcus said, and the jet began a long burn, accelerating so quickly the Russians had no chance to catch them.
I leaned back in my chair. It was over–finally. Well, at least this stage of the project was over. From this point forward we’d only have to worry about the bugs.
“Whoa,” Vaughn shook his head. “Glad she didn’t use that against us back when she was doing the supervillain thing.”
Amy raised an eyebrow and looked at Vaughn. “Supervillain? That’s hard to imagine.”
Vaughn grinned at her. “I know, right? Izzy’s not supervillain material even if her grandfather was. She got mentally influenced by Evil Beatnik, and flew to Grand Lake to get revenge.”
“Exactly,” Jaclyn said. “Except you’re wrong about that one. When she broke into the county jail, she used it while she was fighting the Rocket and I. Sean and Jody were there too, but they weren’t much use.”
Vaughn nodded. “I remember hearing about that now.”
I sat up in my chair again. “I think we met up outside afterward. Be glad you missed out. With all the concrete falling, you might have died,”
Haley backed away from the table. “Sometimes I wish I hadn’t been on vacation and missed all of that.”
“I don’t,” Cassie said. “I had a great time that summer. It’s time to think about now though. Do you think the fight with Russians messed the plan up?”
Escape…
I suppose the question our heroes are trying to answer is “What did the Russians (and anyone else) learn from this encounter?”.
From the Russian point of view there was a stealthed power suit in their air space, capable of more than just trans-sonic flight speeds and (non-lethal) hand-to-hand combat at those speeds. When cornered, the suit used an incredibly powerful (potentially lethal) sonic attack to escape, then ‘disappeared’.
Whether the jet was picked-up when Izzy entered it is the question, and whether it could be detected/tracked when it flew away. Otherwise, the impression might be that the power suit did everything, including the final disappearance, which might be interpreted as a ‘stealth teleport’.
What the Russian make of the apparent restraint, in combat, showed by the power suit could be interesting.
Typo(s):
“in roiling white, gray and black sphere”, is an ‘a’ missing?
“everything to on the screen to turn blurry”, the first ‘to’ is unneeded.
That depends on weather there were any “Verifiable Evidence”.
If “Intelligence” Agencies were involved, it becomes a case of I Know You Know I Know.
If Politicos get involved, it just becomes:- PR bullshit, mudslinging and finger-pointing that gets real loud for a while and then fades into the background when:-
1. The “Next Big News!” comes along.
2. Election campaigns goes into full swing as candidates mouth a lot of buzzwords & sound bytes regarding domestic issues or
3. The viewing public get distracted by videos of cute animals.
Hey! I resemble that re….OOH, kittens doing backflips!
> From the Russian point of view there was a stealthed power suit in their air space, capable of more than just trans-sonic flight speeds and (non-lethal) hand-to-hand combat at those speeds. When cornered, the suit used an incredibly powerful (potentially lethal) sonic attack to escape, then ‘disappeared’.
This sounds uncomfortably close to the Rocket suit.
Eli, it sounds like a very upgraded version of the rocket suit. He might be getting an uncomfortable phone call soon.
Something uncomfortably close to the Rocket suit, which then boarded something uncomfortably close to the jet used by members of that group that the Rocket belongs to.
And now if the Russians complain about it to the US government, and the US government checks what sort of network activity the Rocket had going in his government-sponsored lab at the time, and where packets were coming from, well… this may not go over very well for the Rocket. Can the Rocket even prove that he was there in his lab at the time? Sure, Hero’s League membes can vouch for him. Wait, the whole Hero’s League, who have been slowly drifting apart except when there’s some sort of critical thing that involves them all, were all gathered together at that exact time? Even his alibi makes it sound worse, especially if they figure out where Izzy was doing things, and find one of the roachboats, or notice increased electronic traffic coming out of the area that Izzy was in.
Or it is all hush hush covered up because it is embarrassing how the suit evaded and escaped, no country likes to advertise that there are holes in there air screens
It boils down to how well they can spin it. There will be a strongly worded letter to the US embassy in Russia, but whether the letter is secret or we’ll publicised will depend on how confident they can be to 1. Pin it on the US, and 2. How it would look.
Keep in mind, the local heroes did manage to “scare away” or “force to abandon its mission” the “foreign flyer”, and detected it despite stealth technology. If you spin it right, then that’s not a bad showing for an air defence network in peacetime.
Of course, I get to find out what actually happens soon…
If anyone contacts Rocket about this power suit, then, he can quite honestly say that he can’t build one that can do the things described. He can also say that he’s very interested in any sensor records or video that anyone has of the suit in action. He can also say that he’s not familiar with anyone building upgraded version of the Rocket suit, but, he’d certainly be interested to hear about anyone who seems to be working in that direction.
See? Not a single lie there! [grin]
Should there be a comma before “though”?
>>It’s time to think about now though.<<
Thanks for the chapter! ^_^
typo: “With all the concrete falling, you might have died,”
Ends with a comma rather than a period.
“I’d figured out why even before she started, but not much.” (Something about that sentence scans funny to me. But not much more? But not by much? Or maybe the problem is I’m not sure if ‘started’ refers to started the mission or the maneuver.) Also agree with Dreamer, needs an ‘a’ there.
Hal, eh? Marcus has a sense of humour. Since the League barely used the AI (as noted by, I think C) what with it being a late addition, I’m guessing it never got named until now.