Blackjack Dead or Alive (The Blackjack Series Book 3) (34 page)

When her illumination faded, Lady Armada looked whole and uninjured. Her armor was heavier, her arms and legs covered in thick plates, complete with a winged shield that looked impressive. She crouched, her knees bent but loose, readying the shield so that it covered most of her torso and legs, the bend of a silver wing cut to fit the spear perfectly. Shouting a Greek battle cry, she stepped into the phalanx, matching their pace.

The tendrils froze in place as Coach stopped searching and watched her partner fight an army. Armada took the brunt of dozen spears on the winged shield, most of them sliding off or slamming into it, but none got through. One slipped past and clipped her shoulder, but the armor held. She wasn’t injured, but the press of bodies forced her back, her steps measured to prevent being thrown off-balance.

The formation swiveled in to envelope her, the phalanx moving with computer controlled precision. Armada responded by stabbing the lead bot, running through its shield and into its neck, again wrenching the spear with a twist that sliced through most of the neck. The bot took one more boneless step, fell down and was still. Pressing her advantage, she stepped into the gap, roaring a challenge, and stabbing in short, efficient movements. A second bot fell under her attack, this one with a gash where its head had been.

She was lost for a second as she stepped deeper into the phalanx, but she shouted another challenge in Greek. Light burst from the eye of the storm and I saw the spear transform into a short sword which she put to work. Shields crashed with a thunderous boom, scratching and slipping off each other, as Armada met the phalanx. She stabbed forward, catching the replacement bot in the legs, her armor deflecting every spear point that came in contact.

In time, she would kill them all; her armor tough enough to absorb almost every blow, and her spear/sword sharper than their metal frames, but the weight of the bot horde was pushing her back.

“Wait until the last second,” I told Bubu, feeling his frustration with my micro-management by his lack of response.

I had no choice but to be impressed by her approach to the fight. Everything was measured from her pace to her attacks, intent on keeping the enemy tight and using their numbers to against them. There were still over one hundred bots in the phalanx, but she never took more than a dozen attacks at any one moment. Her shield pressed hard against four or five bots. I heard a crunching and the sounds of an exploding bot, and a second later, a surprised yelp. The bots stopped as one, straightened and cleared out, their facade replaced by a mirror reflection that made them look invisible. The effect was quite eerie, and as the smoke cleared, I saw the catch-chute in the floor close, sealing Armada’s scream within.

Coach didn’t wait for me to speak, having already crossed the length of the room, she moved towards the slide that had dumped them into the room. Her gait suggested the injury was bad, but she pushed it, trying to put distance between us.

“It’s just you and me, now,” I said, walls sliding in to cut off her path. “Are you ready to listen?”

She knocked on the walls that hemmed her in, the glass was thick, though she had already proven she could break through. Straightening her back and clenching her fists, she turned to face me. Her eyes were hard chips staring and her lips twisted in frustration. “First you tell me that she’s safe.”

“They’re all safe,” I said. “The chute leads to a stasis tube. She’ll join Bamma and Slamma for naptime, with nothing but a bruised ego to show for it.”

I felt her weighing my response, those hard eyes studying me. Finally, she nodded and spread her arms in invitation. “So talk.”

“Well, I told you already,” I said, my voice rising to shout. “I told you and you didn’t care. You’ve been in here, Coach,” I said, tapping my temple. “You know what I’m about. You know I wouldn’t hurt a fly…but fuck with me and I’ll take it as far as it goes. And here you all are, tearing down the walls to my house,” I gestured to the pounding above.

“It’s not that easy,” Coach said.

“No, it’s not. It’s complicated. It’s nuanced. But you don’t want to hear that. I’m big and loud, so you put me on top of the most wanted list. You put me on top of a real psycho like Brutal.”

“You know, bringing him up won’t help your cause much, especially after what happened-“

“I’m starting to realize that nothing’s going to help my cause, as you say. And I’m fine with that. I’ll take down the bad guys I’m responsible for, and you go get the rest.”

She found that curious, cocking her head with sudden curiosity.

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean Haha,” I said. “After I’m through with him, I’m going after Brutal. Leave them to me, okay? Go after the rest of the list if you have nothing to do.”

Again, the pause as she measured my words, clucking her tongue as she did, an inadvertent tick that stopped when she realized I had noticed. She took a step closer, the tendrils poised, but not attacking. “You don’t have the whole picture, do you? I suppose Apogee forgot to tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

“Look, I’m not the best person to tell you this. I don’t understand all that science fiction talk.” She said, trying to choose her words. “It’s got something to do with you, and your little trip to outer space and-“

“Shard World,” I said, but it didn’t resonate with her.

“Wherever it was,” she said. “It changed you and not in a good way. Apogee too.”

“I know about that, Coach. We met with a…a very powerful alien. I think it’s the same species that Retcon and his people met way back.”

“If you know what’s happening to you, then you know we have to bring you back. You have to come with us.”

“What the hell for? I’m a little stronger, so what?”

She gave me the reproving glare one used on a petulant child, arguing in ignorance. She shook her head, trying to shush me with its insistence. “You’re like Retcon now,” she said. “You’re affecting people around you like he and the others did.”

Could that be possible? If she was telling the truth, not only did Apogee and I have to be isolated from other people, we were a threat to all normals.

“See? It’s not that simple anymore. You’re changing people around you. Hell, you’re affecting me, now. There’re some people in the village out there, I understand you gave them a little visit. And no, it’s not like they’re all going to turn into little Blackjacks out of nowhere – you know it’s not like that. But it changes people. I’m old enough to remember the last time, kiddo and it wasn’t pretty. Some people, like you, became super in your momma’s belly, but other people just died. I wish Superdynamic was here to explain it to you. He knows a lot more about this than I do.”

I felt the pounding of my veins on the side of my face as the anger welled up inside me, "Well where else am I going to be less of a threat that in the middle of the Carpathian Mountains?"

"Hey, hey,” she snapped, jutting her right index finger in my face. “You don't yell at me. You understand? I don’t take that from anyone."

I spread my arms wide, realizing this wasn’t going the way I had hoped. But then again, I was a fool for thinking I could get through to her. She only saw her side of the argument. A red light pinged on my right contact lens, and I saw the little swarm of drones Bubu had mobilized, my command drone included, earlier inch closer to Coach

"But there’s something else, Blackjack. Something you're just not getting, I guess. What you have to understand is that we don't trust you. Now, Apogee...Hell we all love her. You? Not so much."

"None that matters to me. I'm trying to-"

“None of that matters? None of that matters? It's because of her that we didn't use some sort of space satellite to bomb this place from orbit. It’s because of her that you and I are talking like this, why I’m even giving you a chance to talk. We’ll, we’ve talked, now it’s time to do the right thing.”

I shrugged, “I figured you would do this,” I said, but before I could do anything else, she attacked me. I felt a slight pain in the back of my neck as she speared me with a tendril and took control. I’d been through this before, and it was the same feeling, as if someone was inside your head, a passenger who had suddenly taken control of the wheel.

“I’m sorry about this, kiddo,” Coach said, and as she did, I felt her probing through my memories, like rifling through a library’s card catalog back in the day. She gave herself away with her curiosities, including a long, slow look at the memories of Apogee and I in bed a few days ago. It was curious, because most of Coach’s attention was on her supple body. The angles were strange, from above and whirling around, but it was clear that she had more than a passing interest in my companion. Coach seemed to know I was monitoring and cracked a little smile from the side of her face, but otherwise spent a good deal of time watching us go through the motions.

When she was satisfied, her probes flashed to earlier in the conflict, to the failed plan videotaping a “captive” Apogee, and from there fast to the last moments I saw her flashing off to fight Underworld.

“Goddammit with that sonofabitch,” she said. “Guy’s just obsessed with her.”

You should talk,
I thought and the smile on her face confirmed that she could understand me.

“It is what it is, kiddo,” she said.

You should have trusted me
, I told her, noticing the drones approaching silently behind her.

She shuffled through to an earlier time, a few days ago, while I was programming in front of a series of consoles. I was deep in some heavy code with a funny grin on my face. It was when I had written the protocol that was about to engage.

Coach swiveled hard, noticing the drones floating within inches of her as the memories of my trap filled her head. In the end she was too slow as four drones fired Taser darts at Coach. Her scream was choked off as spasms wracked her body, the tendrils detaching from me as they quivered, mirroring her agony. Released from her control, I caught her twitching body before it hit the ground.

“Bubu,” I said, and as if on cue, a slide appeared along a nearby wall.

“That was cutting it close, bro,” he said.

“I had it,” I said, feeling another heavy rumble. “That sounded odd.”

Bubu typed away for a few moments, “They broke out of the Napoleon room.”

“How did it go?”

“After this one, we’re full,” he said, referring to the stasis chambers. “Dude thinks it’s a joke too. He called in for backup and ten more came in, but I have them in the Labyrinth room.”

The Labyrinth room was a trap on its own, able to keep ten heroes busy for hours if necessary. It was near the surface, though, so a strong and enterprising hero might think to pound his way out.

“Are there any left outside?”

“No clue bro, but the front door is wide open, so it’s not like we’re keeping them out.”

“Where’s Epic now?”

“He’s breaking through the rocks,” Bubu said, giggling. “He’s still got two or three people with him. Way he’s going; he’ll be in the Cretaceous room soon. Should I engage Tiny?”

I smiled, watching Coach disappear. “Yeah, Bubu. It’s time to let her out. Oh, and give me a slide down there. I want to be a proper host.

“Time to finish this,” I said to no one in particular as I slid from the chute that deposited me at the entrance of the Cretaceous room.

Epic and his remaining team were ahead of me, a clear sign that they were moving fast. The big guy’s patience, like mine, was wearing thin. He wanted the face off as much as I did, and nothing he said was going to convince me otherwise.

“Where are they?” I asked Bubu, but he didn’t have to respond. A roar echoed through the room from within the swamp. Epic and his people had found the T. Rex.

A typical Tyrannosaurus Rex stood about thirteen feet at the hips and almost forty feet from nose to the tip of the tail, weighing over seven tons. I knew this from my research, and placing the 3-D model I found online next to a representative human sized figure didn’t make it seem impressive at all. I’m sure if I had faced a real one, snarling and hungry, back in the day, its ferocity would have been enough to convince me of its alpha hunter status. Sitting lifeless in 3-D mesh form on my computer, it didn’t do it for me. I figured Epic was almost seven feet tall and had to weigh 400 pounds of pure, unadulterated muscle. A real T-Rex wasn’t enough.

So I made it big.

I broke into a run across the marsh, and the beast’s shadow swallowed me whole. As I broke through the fern-covered swamp, someone went flying over me, screaming as he crashed into the ground. It was The Peacekeeper, a famous American hero, with the Stars and Stripes as part of his suit. He was pretty strong and tough, but mostly known for his leadership and his knowledge in battle. From the way he crashed, it didn’t look like he was doing so well. I stopped and ran back to him; digging him out of the mud and saw he was unconscious, with a nasty gash across his chest.

“Oh, no,” I said, ripping his mask off and checking his vitals. I wanted to beat these guys, to humiliate Epic, not kill his people. “Bubu shut it off!”

The Peacemaker slowly came to, his eyes oddly facing different directions for a moment until he gathered himself. He was suffering from the effects of a concussion and that was only the start of it. I was sure he had serious internal injuries, in addition to God-knew how many broken bones. He was alive, though, and that alone was a miracle.

“Dammit, Bubu, shut him down,” I yelled, screaming to be heard over Tiny’s roars. I settled The Peacemaker on a sandy bank, and picked up speed towards the fray. I heard more rumbling from above, but ignored it as I felt the ground quake underfoot.

“Bro, there’s something wrong,” he said.

I stopped, “Shut it all down then. The whole thing. It’s going to kill them all.”

“I can’t,” he said, and I heard a slamming of his fists on the keyboard to denote his frustration. “Everything is glitching out.”

“Dammit,” I said, firing the rockets and rising in the air. Tiny was visible once I cleared the dense foliage. He had reared back, and before I could react, his snout darted low, coming up with a mouthful. Zooming in, I saw a pair of legs kicking between the rows of teeth.

“No,” I shouted and powered my boots to full throttle.

I should’ve been more careful.

My boots are a miracle of technology – in progress. I’ve never mastered the delicate balance between the thrust and control surfaces, and often one tends to be more pronounced in a particular model. I like to go fast, and if the ailerons on the tips of the boot are too large, or if the control system is too touchy, I tend to bounce around all over the place. It’s like the first time you play a driving game on a console or computer. You bounce back from side to side, blowing your virtual car to hell. Well, here the car is my body.

The other problem can be when the throttle – normally placed above the big toe of both boots – isn’t calibrated right. It’s a process I go through for hours and hours, making sure it isn’t too responsive. When it is, I go from zero to several hundred miles an hour in the space of a few seconds. The thrust to weight ratio is enough to embarrass the Space Shuttle. Since I’m not a bird or a plane I don’t have wings, and without proper control surfaces, the thrust overcomes my attitude, sending me spinning like a bottle rocket on the ground.

I didn’t have much time in preparation for this fight, so I overcompensated in both ways. I never figured to have an emergency burn like this, so I made the control surfaces large and stable and the throttle touchy.

At full throttle, I broke Mach in a second, according to the onboard computer, tearing through Tiny on my way to the back wall. It was good that the walls were mountain rock; otherwise I might have broken through, my chaotic flight doing more damage. Instead, I bounced off the thick stone and crashed hard into the floor.

The T-Rex wasn’t designed to be friendly. I figured I could have enabled a relay transmission from my suit, and programmed it to ignore that signal, but it would have taken time I didn’t have. It turned, revealing the cave-like hole I had made in its chest, with dozens of wires sparking from the damage.

It crossed the room in two giant steps, relying less on speed than on length. I tensed as the shadow of its foot eclipsed the light around it and then stomped me. The clawed foot was large enough to engulf, as the impact drove me deep into the soft, wet earth. I felt it bear down with all of its weight, and the air was driven from my lungs as the foot ground into me, creating little swirling pools of water as I was mashed deeper into the dirt.

Thick mud clogged my ears, and all I could hear was the sound of my rushing pulse and the creak of my bones as they strained under Tiny’s weight. When it felt like my frame had been compressed to it maximum, the pressure relented. Light bled back into my world as Tiny ran towards the others, his tail swaying in stride.

Superdynamic’s bones passed the test, but I fought for air as I got to my knees, feeling the pain wearing across my chest and legs. Tiny opened and closed its gaping maw, like a pelican does to adjust a fish in its mouth, positioning it for an easy swallow. Inside the T-Rex’s mouth I saw a small figure, fighting against the creature’s tongue.

It was Epic.

He had the tongue, a massive bulbous thing, pinned under one arm, and I watched him pull it taut and chop down on it with his free hand. Blood and slime –Tiny’s hydraulic fluid- drenched him, and though the beast could feel no pain, its roar was a throaty keen. Dipping its snout, Tiny’s spindly arms clawed inside its mouth, but failed to dislodge Epic, who hurled the severed tongue away and flailed away inside the creature’s mouth. Tiny’s head shook from the beating, giving the other heroes gathered in the room a needed respite.

Gryphonette was the only one standing, checking on the unconscious Miss Starlight, The Peacekeeper’s partner also clad in patriotic red and white regalia, and a bare chested black man with a musculature so defined it ceased being human and slipped into caricature. Neither moved, but I read their heartbeats with a quick switch through the infrared spectrum.

“Bubu, divert some tubes this way,” I said. “Get them out of here.”

“I’m offline bro, almost everything is down while the system reboots.”

Tiny was shaking his head in wide, vicious arcs still trying to shake Epic loose.

“I don’t know why,” he said, apparently monitoring the Cretaceous room.

“Damn,” I said and threw myself at the monster.

Tiny was busy trying to eat Epic, and I figured grabbing the tail was a good place to start. Of course, I built and programmed the monster so naturally it was ready for that tactic, spinning in a quick half circle. It connected with a meaty whap and I was sent across the room, splashing into the marsh and skipping like a stone.

“Bubu, I need your help here,” I said.

I flew back to the fracas, hovering over Tiny to get a better angle of attack, and saw Epic’s herculean struggle inside the T Rex’s mouth. Few teeth remained intact, and the maw consisted mostly of empty sockets leaking fluid in a greasy waterfall. I didn’t see the punch, but part of Tiny’s lower jaw shattered, buckling outward. The shift in footing left Epic off balance and he slipped. Tiny spread his jaws wide and canted his head, ready to swallow him.

I felt someone near me and turned in time to avoid Gryphonette’s attack, her claws slicing the air I had just occupied as I cut thrust and fell. Her gryphon form was beautiful and terrifying, hovering on the occasional sweep of massive feathered wings. Slitted yellow eyes stared at me with merciless intent.

Those wings were good for flying, but she didn’t look that maneuverable. Diving short, I kicked in the thrusters, she tried to match me, and left her belly open for my abrupt acceleration. Leading with my fists, I speared her in the guts, the flesh of her altered shape rippling with the impact. Her screech pierced the cavernous chamber, halting even Tiny’s attack for a moment. She fell to the ground in a heap, reverting to human form as she did. I stayed airborne as she stirred, clutching at her midsection. She tried to stand, managing to find a sitting position before taking a deep breath. Her eyes turned to me, but her head perked away, listening to something I couldn’t hear. Her face twisted in pain as she shifted to her gryphon form, and I readied for another go at her, but she scooped the fallen heroes into her huge talons and took off, flying up through the hole Bamma had used me to punch in the ceiling.

I watched her go, then opened the throttle and accelerated into Tiny’s mouth, knocking the monster back on his haunches. I thought he might go down, but I felt his backwards arc stop suddenly and realized he had used the tail to keep balanced. The maw was wider than I could spread my arms, so I grabbed one ruined side of Tiny’s jaw and planted my feet shoulder width, holding the mouth open. The T-Rex arched his back in rage, but I managed to hold, feeling the structure giving way around me. Servos and motors ratcheted above, the smell of smoke joining the other acrid stenches inside the mouth, but I held firm. Tiny’s roar filled the hollow chamber, a lungless cry projected by a speaker grill, and I matched it with a defiant challenge.

There was a tug on my rig as Epic got to his feet. His expression was skeptical, but he could easily have laid into me and didn’t. Steadying himself, he opened his mouth to speak when our world jerked as Tiny’s head started whipping from side to side. Epic was thrown loose, his enormous hand tangled in my rig, holding his own mass in a firm grip.

“What are you doing?” he said, his calm tone belied the fact that he hung twenty feet off the ground, his only handhold a villain’s costume.

“Trying to stop this thing,” I managed pressing hard against the joint. The maw was starting to hyper extend, and I edged along the jaw line, forcing it wider still.

“What?” Epic said, letting go of me as the T-Rex stopped trying to shake us out. Tiny backpedaled and reached into the mouth with one of its legs, balancing its bulk on one leg and tail while it raked at us with its huge curved talons. Epic was covered in dirt, mud and hydraulic fluid, but he looked unharmed. Even his suit, while dirty, was undamaged.

“We’ve lost control of the castle,” I said as a giant talon hooked me. While not sharp enough to cut me, the force was immense and I dug finger holds into the metal frame of Tiny’s jaw. I had built Tiny to be as simple as we theorized actual dinosaurs to be, the idea of a giant, intelligent carnivore unleashed on the world was too radical, even for me. This saved me because even as he was trying to force me out, Tiny was still trying to eat me. Though I held his jaws at bay, the downward pressure kept me braced, making it nearly impossible for the talon to eject me.

“What’re you talking about?” he said, throwing a giant fist at the toe, cracking the joint and sending the whole foot flying at an awkward angle.

“I told you,” I said as he came along side me, “This place was designed to fight Mr. Haha and his team.”

He nodded, helping me press upward.

“They’re here,” I said, hearing the jaw joints grinding and about to snap.

Tiny wasn’t going to go down without a fight, though, reaching at us with his clawed foot again. The first try knocked Epic on the mouth’s bottom.

“Damn,” he said, and, before he could stand, Tiny swiped him out and sent him flopping down to the marsh.

With Epic my task would have been simple, peel the jaw far back enough to reveal Tiny’s processor core. Destroy that and the T. Rex becomes a very sophisticated pile of trash. I tried to conjure another plan, and couldn’t come up with one, so I bore down hard on the jaw and flexed every muscle like a body builder in competition. Nothing happened. My limbs, legs, and trunk were as stretched as far as I could manage. I cursed under my breath, then heard an arrow strike the roof of Tiny’s mouth. I didn’t need to look to know what it was.

The Nuke.

I almost laughed as it erupted, bathing me in fire.

*              *              *              *

The last person I expected to find helping me up was Epic. Yet, there he was brushing clumps of muddy sand off my shoulders. Tiny no longer existed, the synthetics used to animate him reduced to ash and cinder that floated through the room like grey snow.

“Who are they?” he said, gesturing to the quintet that approached us through the marsh.

“The real enemy,” I said in a concussed mumble, disoriented and nauseous. My whole body felt baked, my bare skin had taken on a red leathery texture that I didn’t have a good feeling about. My gear was gone, even the contacts had burnt out of my eyes, though they were useless without the wrist computer, and its corpse clung stubbornly to my wrist by a threaded strap. I tore it off and realized that Superdynamic’s suit remained untouched beneath. Maybe not every inch of skin had been tanned. “Where are the rest of your people?”