That turned out to be a fool’s dream. Agent 957 barked out a command that my implant translated as, “Target him!”
“Him” in this case meant me and the four remaining soldiers ran at me, the front two firing their weapons, hitting my armor. I felt the warmth. Even as I began to aim the sonics directly at the nearest soldiers, one of them fell over, taken out because Tikki recycled one of their own shots.
By shots, I mean burning blasts of energy and technically they didn’t ring out so much as sizzle through the air. Of course, a technicality of description wouldn’t make their weapons less lethal.
Marcus flattened out against the wall—though not before Tikki stood in front of him with her bubble of time distortion filling the tunnel. I was on the wrong side—the unprotected side. That wasn’t bad. I wanted to be able to do things, but it was inconvenient for Marcus.
That said, head on fights with people using energy weapons weren’t his strong point. Like Jaclyn, he’d inherited some level of toughness from their grandfather, but it worked better against physical hits. Continue reading Unhidden: Part 5→
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→
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→
It had been an utter disaster. Agent 957 couldn’t see it any other way.
The sun beat down as he stood at the edge of the field, outwardly supervising the marines and the few spacers who’d survived as they ransacked the ships, trying his best not to let anything show.
If the marines had lost respect for him, he didn’t see it, but helmets covered their heads so it wasn’t as if he could read their facial expressions. Besides that, Ascendancy policy was to keep soldiers as compliant with authority as possible. They could be screaming inside and he’d only know it if he deliberately asked.
Hideaway, Landing Starport (Which Was Normally an Empty Field)
Agent 957 watched as the last of the ships from the Annihilation landed in the empty field the colonists used as a starport. Their fiery exhaust lit up the night. Since they’d filled up the slope between Landing and the colonists’ next town with fighters, dropships and marines, they now had no choice but to use the field.
Ten shuttles left almost no room in the space within the shielded area. They’d considered landing outside, but they’d had seen footage of the planet’s native megafauna. Some of them were larger than a shuttle. It wasn’t worth the risk. Continue reading Release the Hounds: Part 1→
The implant’s information on the channel was that it was used to make announcements—a one way channel that ran recorded warnings except on the rare occasions that matters moved too quickly for recorded emergency information to keep up.
“I’m recording it,” I told everyone. Everyone back in the cavern needed to see it too.
Jaclyn nodded while Katuk peered into the distance, watching his own copy of the same scene. Continue reading Reap: Part 2→
Jaclyn spoke through the implant, “Do you see anything?”
As the person with the better overall view, I flew north of the town, avoiding the burning field where the starport had been. Flying upward, but still below 200 feet, I followed the land as it rose, but I didn’t have long before I did see something.
The starport field lay closest to the ocean, south of the long rocky cliff with the tunnels. On either side of the town lay open fields and more fields lay further inland, up the hill that Kals and I had climbed while looking for Katuk. In the fields between Landing, the town we’d stayed in and the colony’s other two towns, I saw the Human Ascendancy’s ships. Continue reading Retreat: Part 10→
Agent 957 of the Human Ascendancy’s Genetic Management Office, Hideaway
Orbiting the only world in the system that showed signs of life, Agent 957 checked the sensors for humanity. Because the world had been seeded with lifeforms with genes the Abominators had gathered from humanity’s birthplace, this took longer than expected. The planet’s lifeforms were numerous and in many cases, massive. Agent 957 filtered for signs of technology. Ignoring the Abominator ruins (remnants of the planet’s terraforming), the agent found what he was looking for on the dark side of the planet.
The sensors showed three settlements, all within walking distance of each other. The computer estimated six thousand people between them. It was hard to say precisely. Continue reading Retreat: Part 1→
Agent 957 of the Human Ascendancy’s Genetic Management Office, System 2411, Edge Sector
Two ships flew through space. One, a long cylinder bristling with laser turrets in addition to its main gun, led the way. The other, a wedge-shaped ship not even a tenth of its size, followed off to its side.
Knowledgeable observers would have recognized the larger ship as the Human Ascendancy Extinction class warship named Annihilation. The smaller ship would have been recognized as a Stinger class heavy fighter number 1123 of the Far Hunter Squadron. There were no knowledgeable observers or even sentient creatures in the system except for those on the ships themselves. The only other being that could have observed them was busy and while she would have recognized the technology and purpose of the ships, her interest in science was great and her interest in fighting only marginal unless it presented an interesting technical problem.
Human Ascendancy warships were conservative in design and offered no interesting technical problems. Therefore, her attention lay elsewhere. Continue reading Complaints: Part 1→
The Legion of Nothing: A Series of Online Superhero Novels (Updates Monday and Thursday)
