Tag Archives: The Rocket

Arc 6.4: Stardock

Stardock: Part 20

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Given that someone in that building was making competent use of technology created by aliens more evil than the ones trying to provoke genocide on us, it was hard to imagine any kind of good news.

“What?” I asked.

“The office building is owned by Blue Sky Labs, a small company owned by Dr. Valerie Griffin, an electrical engineer by training, but a specialist in alien artifacts for the last five years.”

Lim didn’t take a breath, continuing with, “But that’s not the bad part. She’s got grants and investments from all over, ranging from businesses to the government. That’s not a surprise considering what she’s doing, but here’s the bad part. The last time I saw any lab studying alien artifacts that was this well funded, it turned out they were being funded by the Nine. They didn’t even know it.”

Seeing the alien ships hammering the building’s shield, I wondered if that meant that the Nine had their own version.

If so, I hoped it wasn’t portable.

Continue reading Stardock: Part 20 →

Arc 6.4: Stardock

Stardock: Part 19

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It made me wonder who exactly was in that building. Finding Abominator tech wasn’t that hard if you knew where to look. There were a few well known archaeological sites. Well known to some people anyway–Grandpa being one of them. He’d been brought in to look at Abominator artifacts.

Most Abominator tech found that way didn’t actually work though. To get working Abominator tech, you either had to get lucky like Cassie or whoever had originally found her gun, or get access to one of the Abominator caches found in various spots in the solar system. Continue reading Stardock: Part 19 →

Arc 6.4: Stardock

Stardock: Part 18

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I didn’t pay much attention to the explosion beyond noting that it happened. We were gaining on the ships ahead of us.

I couldn’t say that for sure personally. All my HUD showed was the city at night plus blurry areas in the sky that looked very similar to the blurred areas in the sky that I’d normally see behind a jet or a truck.

In short, it was probably the two cloaked ships we’d been chasing. Or, it was some kind of cloaked drone that generated a disproportionate amount of sound in an effort to to mislead us.

That wasn’t impossible.

Continue reading Stardock: Part 18 →

Arc 6.4: Stardock

Stardock: Part 17

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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

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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

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“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 13

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I wanted to keep on listening to Haley, but became distracted by the scene in front of me. A long, basically rectangular object appeared above Stardock. I say “basically” rectangular because it was thinner at the front than the back. On the whole, it reminded me of a troop transport vehicle, or possibly of those D-day landing craft?

It didn’t seem to have much for weapons, just one turret near the back.

Of course, it didn’t need much when you considered the company it kept. Machine race warriors appeared next to it. I say “machine race warriors” because that’s still faster than referring to them as members of the “Shiny Searchers for Extra Value Meals Clan” or whatever it was.

Continue reading Stardock: Part 13 →

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 11

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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 5.8: Chance & Fate

Chance & Fate: Part 5

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The voice on the other end barely gave me time to finish. “What kind of new information?”

“There’s a factory making a material for armor I came up with. The weird thing is that I only came up with it a couple days ago, but they’ve been making it for months.”

He didn’t say anything, leaving me to look over the jet’s glowing dashboard, and then look out towards St. Louis’ growing skyline. The Gateway arch rose just past the river, and skyscrapers on either side and behind it.

Lights from below made it stand out.

Chances were that that would be destroyed if we failed too.

My mind substituted shattered skyscrapers and a fallen arch for the scene ahead. Continue reading Chance & Fate: Part 5 →