Tag Archives: Cassie

Arc 6.4: Stardock

Stardock: Part 12

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Daniel’s dad continued, “Guardian’s giving the asteroid a quick once over, checking if the asteroid’s anything more than a big rock. We’ve got a few ideas as to how we can handle it if it’s just a dinosaur killer, but we don’t want any surprises.”

I’d set the suit to monitor Stapledon communications and the Heroes League team channel for activity. There wasn’t much of anything going on between our team. Like me, they were likely all listening to the Defenders. The Heroes League channel showed a lot of activity between Haley and Kayla at first. After that, Camille, Sydney, Marcus, and Chris all came online.

Chris? That was cool. Haley was calling in everybody. If Grand Lake had an asteroid with its name on it, they’d have a decent chance of taking it out between the League jet, Camille’s anti-gravity powers, and Chris to think things through.

If the people who were guessing that the asteroids were a feint were correct, they’d need everyone they could get. Fighting the machines had been too close, and who knew what the Hrrrna were like?

I wished I was there. I wished I had time to pay attention to what they were saying.

Continue reading Stardock: Part 12 →

Arc 6.4: Stardock

Stardock: Part 10

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I wondered what Lim thought we’d even be able to do. Sure, Izzy might be able to redirect part of a planetary bombardment on her own, but she wouldn’t be able to handle all of it. She’d be kind of redundant to whatever Guardian and the various Defenders units were likely to manage. The ones that couldn’t fly in space had ships made at Stardock to work with.

With a slightly sick feeling, I wondered what Haley hoped to do. The jet might be able to destroy or redirect asteroids. For that matter, Camille could control gravity, and I didn’t know what her limits were. If she was anything like Sean, her half brother, she might be extremely powerful.

Lim’s voice broke through my thoughts. “Everyone! Now! I’ll brief you when you’re done.”

Continue reading Stardock: Part 10 →

Arc 6.4: Stardock

Stardock: Part 9

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With that debacle over, we went back to our dorm, changed out of costume and ate. I could write more about hanging out in our rooms that night, but there’s not really much to tell. Sunday morning allowed time for people who wanted to attend worship services to do so, and then we spent most of Sunday afternoon practicing first aid.

By five, we were all waiting in an airport somewhere near NYC. I hesitate to say a “secret” airport because it was clearly used, but it definitely wasn’t commonly used by passenger planes. I don’t think I saw any, but I couldn’t be sure because we rode there in a cargo truck with no windows–just seats in the back. The roof was made of a partially transparent, but not clear, plastic.

We unloaded the truck inside the hangar. I happened to look through the mirrored windows on the door as we waited for our plane to arrive. Even though it wasn’t snowing, it still wasn’t warm. A FedEx jet landed on the runway as I watched, but it didn’t taxi in our direction afterward. I decided that watching for our jet was probably more akin to waiting for a pot to boil than it ought to be, and considered finding someone to talk to.

Continue reading Stardock: Part 9 →

Arc 6.4: Stardock

Stardock: Part 3

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Jaclyn followed Izzy in through the door. Izzy said, “Hi” as she moved out of Jaclyn’s way, and met people’s eyes as she did it–including Daniel’s. I didn’t hear any anger in her voice either. She did talk quietly, but she always did that when we were together as a group. My theory was that she still didn’t quite feel comfortable with everyone.

All the same, the fact that she was here at all hinted that whatever they’d talked about last wasn’t irreparable.

She’s not just nervous about being with the group, Daniel thought at me. It’s more complicated than that.

He glanced over at her. What’s going on with us is complicated too, but I don’t want to go into that right now.

Jaclyn lifted up her print out of the plan, a small sheaf of paper. “We’re here to talk about this, right? What did you think of it?”

She caught my eye, “What do you think of it?”

Continue reading Stardock: Part 3 →

Arc 6.4: Stardock

Stardock: Part 2

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Isaac led us through the facility, explaining generally what was going on on each floor. I would have asked a lot of questions except I knew better. He didn’t know anything worth knowing about how anything worked. Sure, he could tell us what the major activities on each floor were, but I could guess that.

What I wanted to know was what techniques they were using and if they’d made any advances over the Alliance’s standard ships.

I didn’t need Isaac to figure that one out either. All I had to do was to observe. The spaceships around me in various stages of construction weren’t quite designed to human specifications. Take the big spaceship at the bottom of the hole. When we walked through it, it was obvious to me that whatever race it had been designed for was on average about seven feet tall. Bearing in mind variation, they’d designed the size to allow people (beings?) as large as eight feet tall.

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Arc 6.4: Stardock

Stardock: Part 1

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My grandfather told me once that war was long periods of boredom broken up by moments of terror. From the stories that the original League told about World War 2 and their experiences afterward, it sounded right.

Knowing that, it’s not so much of a surprise to learn that after the Hrnnna’s disappearance, the Xiniti’s trip through the gate they normally guarded, the annual inspection of the Jay and Kay, and my own frantic call to Agent Lim saying that I had Figured It All Out nothing happened at all.

I went through the week wondering if we’d be invaded, or worse, bombed from space.

Neither occured, and we ended the week with a normal Stapledon weekend.

Well, normal for the fairly loose definition of normal I’d been living under during the last few years–the kind of normal that puts you in a position to fight evil alien space horses.

Continue reading Stardock: Part 1 →

Arc 6.0: The Unusual Suspects

The Unusual Suspects: Part 4

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I pointed at the back of the chest section. “If you could pick that up and hang it on my back, it would be a lot easier.”

Tara’s gaze followed my hand, and I realized that I wasn’t doing all that well. Almost everything was in the same place. I clarified. “Uh… The piece with the rocket pack on the back. It’ll be heavier than you’d expect.”

“This?” She picked it up without a problem, and placed it on my back.

I felt the weight, and stepped backward with one foot to brace myself. Then I started plugging cables into the stealth suit, and pulling out sections of frame that the breastplate would lock into.

Tara handed me each piece of armor, and it went quickly.

Continue reading The Unusual Suspects: Part 4 →

Arc 6.0: The Unusual Suspects

The Unusual Suspects: Part 3

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I thought about that. With everything that had happened between the two of us, I still didn’t see Sean as evil. I did think he was massively, hugely messed up. From what I’d seen, his father was close to, if not actually, abusive, and had cheated on Sean’s mom with at least one person (Camille’s mom), and maybe more. Growing up with someone like that wasn’t exactly a head start.

It wasn’t a surprise then that Sean had bullied people (I wasn’t the only one). After Haley told me about how their relationship ended, I’d overheard more stories about relationships he’d had. He’d sounded controlling, and manipulative.

Considered rationally, he wasn’t the kind of person I’d want around me.

When I was honest with myself though, it wasn’t because I’d thought things through rationally that I didn’t want him around. It was because I thought he was a jerk.

Continue reading The Unusual Suspects: Part 3 →

Arc 6.0: The Unusual Suspects

The Unusual Suspects: Part 2

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In the distance, a muffled voice said, “Dad? Are you up there?” The voice sounded like it belonged to someone male and around my age.

Lim said, “I’ll be down in a second.” Looking back at the camera, he said, “Do you have anything else? I should stop working for the day.”

“Nothing,” I said. I’d never even thought about whether he had a family. He was old enough to have kids around my age, and it was easy to imagine he might be married, but it hadn’t come up.

“Don’t hesitate to get in touch with me if something important happens,” he said as we hung up.

From all the places I’d seen in the background when I’d called him—spaceships, naval vessels, wilderness, and cities nowhere near Washington D.C., I wondered how often he saw his family, and how much he could say about his job.

Continue reading The Unusual Suspects: Part 2 →

Arc 5.9: Spin

Spin: Part 6

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“Wow,” I said, “you’re early.”

Mindstryke shook his head. “Not really. I told you the latest we’d be here was ten, and some of us happened to finish up earlier than expected.”

He was right. Now that he’d mentioned it, I remembered him saying that. I also remembered a couple other things he’d said.

“We’re still waiting on part of the current League, and one member of the board.”

I was about to ask him who that was when the words, “Entered: Accelerando, C. Retinal scan confirmed,” appeared on the bottom of my screen.

Shortly after that one of the tunnel doors swung open, and Jaclyn walked through with her grandfather. She wore her purple costume—not really more than a jumpsuit, but she didn’t need it for protection. The hard part was creating a fabric that could handle hitting the speed of sound. Continue reading Spin: Part 6 →