Tag Archives: Izzy

Arc 6.4: Stardock

Stardock: Part 17

15 Comments

In my HUD, Sean’s square started blinking. He wanted a private chat. Oh, great.

I let him talk anyway.

His voice came over the connection as a shout, or if it wasn’t a shout, it had the tone of one. “Are you trying to make me look bad?”

I muted him. Then, thinking better of it, I cut our connection entirely. There was no way that conversation could go anywhere useful.

Lim’s voice, still calm and collected, came over the Stapledon channel. “Then that’s it. We blow Stardock. Everyone retreat through the portal that will open next to Flame Legion. Rocket, Aurora Bees, Patriot Jr., and Izzy—you’re last. Also, Izzy, you need to pick a codename.”

I glanced over to where she hovered next to the building. She said, “I know.”

Continue reading Stardock: Part 17 →

Arc 6.4: Stardock

Stardock: Part 15

32 Comments

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 →

Arc 6.4: Stardock

Stardock: Part 14

17 Comments

“Ghost,” Travis said, “get up there and observe. Let us know what you see.”

I made a mental note to shoot off a few of the observation roachbots when we got out from under the shield–which would be soon. Rachel faded out, her white costume turning transparent. The last I saw of her was an amused smile as she eyed Travis, reminding me of the Cheshire Cat–except that she wasn’t a cat, and I’d never been completely sure what Cheshire was.

It sounded like it ought to be a place, but why would anyone name a cat after a place in the UK when it lived in Wonderland?

Maybe it was Alice’s fault? I hadn’t read the book in a long time.

Continue reading Stardock: Part 14 →

Arc 6.4: Stardock

Stardock: Part 11

17 Comments

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.

Continue reading Stardock: Part 11 →

Arc 6.4: Stardock

Stardock: Part 8

21 Comments

Whether I liked the people I was with or not, however, it was time to practice. Brain Gang ran us through multiple scenarios and exercises, and we were okay if not brilliant. They were all based on the assumption that we had to hold off invading aliens long enough to evacuate and blow up the base. In short, we’d already lost, and it was now a question of how we’d deal with it.

At least that was my take. Basically, it was Star Trek’s Kobayashi Maru exercise but with specific orders on how we were handle the problem.

So far as I could tell, our orders required us to die a lot, but at least we won most of the time–assuming your definition of winning didn’t necessarily include personal survival.

The last exercise didn’t even go that well.

Continue reading Stardock: Part 8 →

Arc 6.4: Stardock

Stardock: Part 7

34 Comments

Brain Gang, a short man with dark skin and short, black hair, stood in front of the group of us. He wore a green suit (with matching mask and hat) that to my eye appeared to include material similar to that in my stealth suit. The material on the outside seemed normal, but the suit appeared to be stiffer and just a little thicker than normal material.

I recognized Brain Gang’s name. I’d heard it from Grandpa. Either this was a descendant of the original Brain Gang, or the original was still around. Given that this guy appeared to be in his thirties, I leaned toward descendant.

The parking lot held no cars, and for good reason. If you were going to be training a bunch of college students, many of whom were still learning to use their abilities, would you want to have your car where a stray blast of energy could destroy it?

Continue reading Stardock: Part 7 →

Arc 6.4: Stardock

Stardock: Part 6

8 Comments

“Uh…” I tried to think of a response that would calm the situation down. The honest response, “Yes, Daniel explained it to Haley and me, but not you,” didn’t seem likely to do that.

Izzy let out a breath, seeming to deflate as she did it. “Look, I’m not going to–” She paused, not saying anything. “I’d like to talk about this privately. Do you have a good sense of when we’d be out of his range?”

I had a pretty good guess as to whose range she meant.

Go ahead, Daniel told me. It’ll be okay.

Izzy raised an eyebrow, and gave a half smile. “He’s talking to you, isn’t he?”

“Yeah,” I shrugged. “Sorry. I think we’ll be out of range in a minute or so, but I’ll want to get my jacket.”

Continue reading Stardock: Part 6 →

Arc 6.4: Stardock

Stardock: Part 5

21 Comments

Sean’s faced tightened up, and he said, “I still didn’t do it, and besides, he didn’t hurt you or anything. It was just a stupid prank.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Based on what happened last fall, anyone who looks at this is going to assume you told Jody to do it, and you’ll probably get kicked out. I know you didn’t. That’s why I’m not going to say anything unless it happens again. If it does, I’ll report it, and I’ll tell them about this one too.”

Sean gritted his teeth, and said, “Then let Jody go, okay? I’m done with this. Jody, you leave him alone.”

Jody held his hands in the air. “Okay, you got it.”

The Jenny nearest me said, “I’ll let him free,” in the same tone of voice that she might have used to say, “It’s your funeral.” Continue reading Stardock: Part 5 →

Arc 6.4: Stardock

Stardock: Part 3

19 Comments

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

19 Comments

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.

Continue reading Stardock: Part 2 →