Calvin flew toward us in the air in a leap that had to be getting extra force from the wind behind him, and he wasn’t alone.
Cindy and Paula jumped after him.
It didn’t work out as well as any of them would have expected.
A beam of iridescent light hit Calvin in the air, surrounding him with sparkles that kept on glowing as he flew toward us.
Gunther continued, “The paintbot rounds stand in for the suit’s lasers, and for the explosive rounds which take out most people. Non-lethal rounds are perfectly allowable for this fight, Rocket. Captain Commando, your gun counts as a laser for this. Paint them with light, and you’ll take them out. The sword works too, but don’t turn it on.”
Gunther took in the group of us standing together. “Here’s how this will work: each group fights until there’s a clear winner between the two of you. You’ll need to think about how to do that, but I’m not going to give you time to talk about it.” Continue reading Entry Assessment: Part 4
“No way,” I said, wondering how he’d gotten his powers activated. It wasn’t exactly a casual thing. The League had the first known working device to do it. It hadn’t been hard for me to make it work, but I’d had the benefit of my grandfather’s documentation.
I knew that the government had their own devices. From the news and personal experience, I knew that criminal organizations also had them. I wasn’t aware of anyone outside of those two groups owning any, but almost everything they needed was available on the internet now.
Corporate devices couldn’t be far away if they weren’t already out there.
Jaclyn’s mind obviously went along the same track mine did. She put down her hamburger, and said, “He can’t still be using power juice his uncle brewed. It’s illegal, and they wouldn’t allow him into the program, would they?”
“He’s not,” Courtney said. “I asked him.”
Haley’s brow furrowed. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said that.”
She took a piece of steak and a spoonful of a salad that appeared to be a mixture of corn, tomato and avocado.
“I had no idea. How did you know?” I kept my voice a little lower than normal. No need to broadcast this. Well, more than it must have been already. Haley wasn’t the only person with enhanced hearing, and Daniel couldn’t be the only person with telepathy or clairvoyance.
Hopefully everyone would be too occupied by eating and meeting people to eavesdrop on us.
Just ahead of me on this side of the buffet table, Jaclyn grabbed food without saying anything. I wondered if she was deliberately ignoring us. In her position, I would have. Continue reading Fresh Meat: Part 4
“It’s not impossible,” Jaclyn said. “But, I can’t say I’m excited to find out whether they’re ultimately more loyal to humanity or themselves. Lee’s deal with the Cabal gives us a year where they’ll leave us alone.”
Haley bit her lip. “That was last June.”
Jaclyn nodded. “Do you think they’ve been counting down the days?”
Haley sighed and her eyes darted between the two of us. “I hope not. I don’t even know what day it was. Do you?”
I looked over at Jaclyn and she shook her head.
“No,” I said, “but I’m sure I could figure it out. Anyway, I bet one of us knows.”
Jaclyn nodded. “Even with their descendants here, I’m not that worried about us, but Marcus and Sydney are still in Grand Lake. Even if they weren’t, all of our parents are.”
Reed showed us to our rooms, let us drop off our luggage, and led us to the cafeteria before leaving us to meet the buses.
“Find a table,” he said as he opened the door to walk out, “the buses are here. You’ll be seeing all your friends in minutes.”
I believed him. Except for us, the room was empty of students, but it was full of staff. The tables had been set. The staff were placing food on four different tables that barely seemed to have room for more.
On the stage in front of the room, a man said, “Testing, testing?” into the microphone on the podium until someone called him on the phone. Then he said, “Good,” and left the stage and room. Continue reading Fresh Meat: Part 1
Lim walked a couple steps more up the ramp, and joined me. “Keep on moving. I’ve got to get in there to thank everybody in person, and to assure them that their friends are getting the best medical care available—which is true by the way.”
I turned around, and started following Daniel for a few steps before turning back toward Lim to ask, “About those rights and responsibilities—“
Lim interrupted me. “We’re looking into it, but in the end you may have to flat out ask them. Of course, you may have a few more resources than most of us. Use them and you’ll have a head start.” Continue reading Glory: Part 7
Unshielded engines were a spaceship’s weak point in combat. That and anyplace they predictably thinned the shields—like weapon hardpoints. Anyone who’d trained on spacecraft knew it. There were a host of techniques to minimizing your chances of dying—ranging from special shields to keeping changes of direction brief. It wasn’t as if you slowed down very quickly in space.
Most of the defenses were oriented toward spaceships though because any living being that attempted to sneak past working engines would quickly become well done.
I had every reason to hope that didn’t apply to Izzy. Continue reading Stardock: Part 30
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.
Lim continued, “We’ll be using the strategies and tactics we practiced yesterday, so you shouldn’t have had time to forget them yet. There will be one additional wrinkle. We’re already evacuating Stardock just like we are the rest of the city. That means that if we do decide to blow Stardock, we won’t be looking for you to evacuate the people below. We’ll need you to watch out for each other. Don’t leave anyone in your unit behind.”
He paused, looked us all over, and then, when we thought he’d finished, he said, “There’s one more thing. Stardock isn’t the only alien technology in New York City. We fought the Abominators in the 1970’s, and we collected everything we could find. I’m not going to tell you where it is, but none of you should be surprised to discover that we’re studying it, or that we’re doing our best to reverse engineer it. When you fight, you need to use tools that can do the job. Our own tools won’t, so we’re getting better tools.That’s why we may redirect a few of you if we have to blow Stardock. Don’t hesitate if we call you in. Trust me, it will be important.