“Push the button, Control,” Haley talked at a normal volume, but the intensity in her voice made it seem louder.
Kayla’s voice came through. She started to say, “I…” hesitated, and said, “You’re all right there.”
“We’ll be fine,” Haley said, sounding just as intense as before. “Now!”
Man-machine’s voice came over the comm at almost the same time, “Now, dammit!”
I’d noticed clouds forming since the fight started, and as I was about to press Theo on exactly how bad he felt, lightning erupted in front of the building.
Travis had told the glass cannons (mobile artillery, if you wanted to be formal) to help us, and now they were. I’d have taken help earlier, but Daniel was in the group, and he’d probably been responsible for the timing. That meant that this was probably the best possible moment, whatever I might think.
Thanks to my observation bots, I had three different perspectives available. All of them showed essentially the same scene.
As our group dived behind the old factory to get out of the machine race soldiers’ line of fire, the remaining robots split into two groups, some of them heading for the building that we’d started at, and the rest spreading out as they aimed for our building. No matter what direction we turned toward we’d be in some robot’s sights.
At least that’s the way it would have gone. Continue reading Stardock: Part 15
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.
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.
Talk about loaded questions, and not one I could lie about either. Haley could tell when I was lying by smelling my reactions and hearing my heart speed up.
Izzy, I knew, had a sense of hearing that could substitute for sight, and not just sight—X-Ray vision. I couldn’t lie. I also couldn’t tell the truth. This was Daniel’s relationship. He should talk about it with her.
As I thought about it, my heart sped up. Haley gave me a sidelong glance, and frowned.
I said, “He’s talked about you. I can’t say much about it since he told me in confidence, but yes.”
That was pretty much the ideal response. She couldn’t demand I tell her what he’d said. Well, not politely anyhow.
Haley swung forward, and at first it looked as if she might hit the ground, but she retracted the line, giving her more space. Then more quickly than I could see, she set the line to detach, retracted the line entirely, holstered the gun, and hit the ground in a series of flips.
At any rate, she had to have done that. I missed it because once the line detached, I flipped myself over, using the rocket pack to slow down, and finally hover in place.
I saw Haley’s last couple flips, and then she came to a stop standing, facing the trees.
Clearly the years she’d spent in gymnastics hadn’t gone to waste.
Still feeling a little disoriented from my own aerial acrobatics, I glanced at the HUD. The feeds from the roachbots showed that the remaining two machines had driven through the clouds of my bots, destroying a few.
The moment they cleared the trees, they were firing. Continue reading Chancy Connections: Part 15
They hit me several times even as I gave the rocket pack more fuel, and twisted, shooting upward and unpredictably (I hoped) to the left.
Meanwhile, I gave each of them a full blast of the sonics, hoping that the way I’d tweaked my grandfather’s algorithm would find a resonant frequency that would break alien tech.
Nothing started smoking, and that was bad because Haley needed help.
She hadn’t stayed inside the van. She’d ducked around the corner, using the van for cover—which wasn’t a bad idea. It was better than staying inside until the alien machine burned through, but it didn’t stop the machine from hammering the van and everywhere around it with lasers.
I had no idea how she survived, but she rolled out from under the van on the near side—away from the road.
“Okay,” I said, “but, they can practically disintegrate you with a shot, and I’m thinking they’re machines, so their reaction times are going to be faster than we’d expect. Plus sneaking past them will be harder. I mean, it depends on their design, but—“
Haley sighed, sounding more irritated than anything else. “I know. I’ll be fine.”
I wasn’t going to change her mind. “So,” I said, “I guess I’ll fly out and get their attention, and you’ve got the van and everything in it to work with after that?”
She gave a brief smile. “Don’t worry about it. Go. I’ll help if you get in trouble.”
I’d noticed before that she seemed more confident after she’d fully transformed.
“Alright.” I put my hand on the door, and we looked at each other.
“Good luck,” I said.
They’d be here in seconds, and at the speeds they were moving, we’d have no chance of outrunning them. My modifications to the van would help with off-roading, but not with speed. And yes, I’d made it so the van could fly a little, but the conversion took time, and we couldn’t fly that fast or that long, and at the speeds our pursuers were moving, we’d never outfly them.
We had absolutely no chance to escape.
None.
I pulled to the side of the road, and put on the brakes. The van’s tires rumbled as we crossed the white line.
When we came to a complete stop, I pressed the screen, starting one of the protections that I’d built into the van.
The boring one. Boring but vital. Continue reading Chancy Connections: Part 12
“No way of knowing,” Daniel said. “I couldn’t read their thoughts very well. I got brief flashes of what happened to their home world—which was horrible. I can see why they’d hate the people who did it, but we’re not them.”
In a low voice, Izzy said, “They were telling the truth, then. Genocide?”
Daniel nodded. “Technically xenocide, but yes. Coming here does make sense in that light. As long as we’re around, the Abominators’ former servants can’t come here.”
“Except there really are aliens who want to destroy us just because the Abominators used us as a genetic base to create their servants,” I said. “So we can’t rule out the possibility that the Hrrnna are among them, but as they said, they’re here. I suppose they might be willing to destroy all life on a planet they’re living on, but I’d do it from a distance myself.”
Haley pursed her lips. “What did the creatures that killed them look like?”