I considered if we had any alternatives to making a last stand in the tunnel. We could run to the next intersection and take another tunnel, but if they were managing to track us anyway, that wouldn’t help.
I could try to bring down the tunnel behind us. The Rocket suit could do it, but I’d have to punch the wall or ceiling. It might land on me.
My laser was powerful enough to punch holes in the ceiling, but I’d still have to be close to cut any appreciable amount of rock. Continue reading Unhidden: Part 4→
I called the bot back and started running faster. It didn’t take long to catch up. Their group was only walking at a normal human rate.
I slowed as I caught sight of them. Marcus’ suit had to be registering my presence, but caution meant lowering the chance of accidentally fighting each other.
Marcus’ voice filled my helmet. “Nick! I was wondering if you died. That earthquake was massive.”
Far behind me, the cavern fell into itself. I felt the rumble as I ran, followed by cracking noises, a lot of them. It seemed like they stretched out for minutes, but doubted that was true. I wasn’t checking the time.
However long the quake went, it was too long. The floor shook along with each rumble and crack, finishing in a loud but muffled thump that may have been the end of the cavern, but wasn’t the end of the noise. Smaller crashes continued behind me, blowing fine dust upward into the tunnel.
He didn’t know where he was in the endless caves around him, but his implant had kept track of his every step, so he had a limited map. The soldiers within range fed their information into his implant as per instruction, giving him an overall picture of everything within range.
He open up a communication channel with the soldier at the front of the line. “Are we close to them yet?” Continue reading Unhidden: Part 1→
“No,” I said, straightening my hand and then thrusting it like a spear through the top of the device, smashing its internal computer and separating the power from the main mechanism.
Lines of electricity surrounded my arm, but I didn’t feel it. The suit’s systems for handling massive amounts of electricity had been in advance of anyone else as far back as the 1950s and had only improved in the versions created since then. Continue reading Warriors: Part 13→
Tunnel Four wasn’t far away—just two buildings down the same street. We ran at a comfortable pace, thirty miles per hour or so. We didn’t have enough space to go faster. Kals didn’t have any problems keeping up.
Tunnel Four sat between two buildings that weren’t much different than the buildings at Tunnel Three—except that we didn’t see anyone here. Wherever the plant had gone, I hoped he was safe. My bet was that he’d gotten the last people out over here and gone with them when he realized that he’d missed Kamia and the others.
Katuk turned toward Kals. “Do you know how the colonists are escaping? If we can’t find her, it seems that our first duty would be to attend to their welfare.”
He had a point. I didn’t think that we should leave without telling Jaclyn, and was just about to try to use the comm, but I didn’t have to. Jaclyn jumped out the second floor window and landed next to us.
Superheroes don’t kill (most of the time). There are reasons for that, ranging from moral to legal to practical. Legally, most of us aren’t empowered to do it (even if we can get away with it). Morally, killing isn’t something you want to do unless you have to. Practically, society would come to regard us as a menace if we did it a lot even if it was justified.
Here almost none of that applied. We weren’t vigilantes. We were the law, empowered by the Alliance as part of the Xiniti Nation to do whatever was required to protect the colony. Continue reading Warriors: Part 10→
I formed the suit’s helmet and set the suit to triangulate the source of the sound. Then I pulled the cavern’s map out of the implant’s memory. Though it took longer than it would have with the implant’s network connection, I knew where the voice came from and how it happened.
I tapped my palm, going live on the League’s communication system, “They’re coming out of Tunnel Three.” Continue reading Warriors, Part 9→
“Crap,” I said, “implants? We’re going to have to turn them off or at least the communication part.”
I queried my implant to find out if we could turn them off. We couldn’t, but we could turn off outside communications. While I was at it, I checked what the Xiniti experience of fighting Kamia had been.
