Seven Wonders (35 page)

  Aurora reached down and touched a dull square on the table which Sam hadn't noticed. The panel flicked to a bright red with a beep; looking at the table top, Sam saw that the whole surface was actually covered with touch-sensitive displays. It was an impressive piece of tech.

  Aurora spoke into the air as the comm link opened. "SMART, report ConSat surveillance log and confirm transmission records." The comm beeped off, and Aurora waited for the reply. None came. He pressed the link again.

  "SMART, are you back online yet? Report please."

  
Beep
. Silence.

  "Hephaestus, what is your status? SMART is offline."

  
Beep.
Silence.

  Linear vanished in a silver cloud and reappeared at Aurora's side. He waved a hand over the controls on the table in front of the leader's chair. Several colored panels lit, including a larger rectangular screen that seemed to be an internal security camera. Linear waved his hand, flipping through several views as Aurora watched over his shoulder.

  There was a bang, loud enough that Joe and Sam stood and looked instinctively to the door behind them, past the immobile form of the Dragon Star. But the sound had come from Linear's surveillance panel. He and Aurora looked at each other, then Aurora punched another panel on the table.

  "Bluebell?"

  The link hissed, then her voice came through with a pop, halfway through a sentence.

  "… response negative. Aurora?"

  "Aurora reading."

  "What's going on in the dome? SMART is undertaking unscheduled systems maintenance. I just had the lights go in the infirmary."

  "Bluebell, are you still there? Where are SMART and Hephaestus? Have you seen them? They should be in the workshop."

  "Goddess protect me."

  Aurora and Linear turned at Sand Cat's exclamation. She was standing at the observation window. She looked over her shoulder at the others and pointed to something outside. Aurora and Linear were joined by Joe, Sam and, at a distance, Conroy. Sam edged over to place Joe between her and the ex-supervillain.

  On the lunar surface, the perfect, sharp lines of the landscape were marred by a gray and white cloud that hung low on a flat plain, just outside one wall of the Apollo Fortress that curved around and out of sight.

  "Dust?" Linear asked. Sand Cat shook her head.

  "Look."

  The dust was fine and would take hours to settle completely, but had already cleared enough to reveal another shape. Something long, bulky, its pink and brown color contrasting sharply with the monochrome of the lunar surface.

  It was a body.

  Aurora's aura flared deep red, causing Sam, Joe and Conroy to recoil from the sudden flash of heat.

  The comm fizzed again and Bluebell's voice echoed digitally through the room.

  "Aurora, it's SMART. I think it's killed Hephaestus."

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

There was movement outside, near the cloud of dust settling over the body of the dead god. Sam leaned in on the window, its ice-cold surface prickling her fingertips as she touched it.

  There, just around the corner of the building, in the bright Earthlight something white flashed.

  "There's something out there," she said.

  Aurora nodded. Sam found Sand Cat squeezing in beside her for a better view. The warrior's rich, earthy scent filled her nostrils. Outside, another brilliant stab of light reflected off the white object as it moved away from the steely gray of the fortress.

  "It's SMART. What's it doing?" Aurora's question was more to himself than the others in the room, but the words reflected what everyone was thinking.

  The robot walked toward the body of its creator, paused, and walked back to the airlock which lay just out of sight. As SMART moved out of view, the faint sound of the airlock door being closed and locked echoed, the slight vibration carried not through the airless vacuum outside but through the fabric of the Fortress itself. A moment later and Sam thought she could hear its footfalls echoing through the base, but it might have been her own heartbeat.

  Then the group heard the sound of the airlock being opened. Joe glanced at the ceiling.

  "What's it doing?" he asked.

  Aurora was scanning the view outside. "SMART is still outside."

  Linear buzzed around the room, investigating every possible viewing angle offered by the observation windows, before returning to the group. He stopped next to Aurora and looked up at their leader, who stood nearly a full foot taller than he.

  "Maybe it's bugged? It killed the Justiciar and now Hephaestus, against all superhero code and international law… maybe it's stuck in some kind of error loop?"

  Sand Cat raised an eyebrow. "SMART is a machine intelligence, a digital mind all of its own. It is one of us. If it has broken the laws of Earth, it was its own decision." She didn't take her eyes off the robot as she spoke.

  Aurora flicked the comm on his belt. "Bluebell, are you still in the infirmary?"

  The comm fizzed with static, making Bluebell's reply difficult to understand. "No, I'm in the lower control room near the workshop. The power went out in the infirmary so I went to check the systems. I just walked in when I saw SMART blow the workshop airlock and throw Hephaestus out."

  "Are you able to fight?"

  More static. "Yes, I'm fine, really."

  "Check on Blackbird and make sure the detention zone is secure. I'm sending Linear to assist you. All superheroes are to work in pairs until we have the situation contained."

  Bluebell's voice briefly replied, then clicked out with a pop and another burst of static. A new voice entered the conversation, recognizably male but oddly accented. Synthesized.

  "All members of the Seven Wonders will remain where they are until I can attend to them." There was something in SMART's voice that made even Aurora's face tighten. Sam felt Joe's hand on her shoulder, and they exchanged a worried look.

  Aurora clicked the comm. "SMART, this is a priority command. Return to the workshop and set power to standby. Initiate systems backup and shutdown. Confirm, please."

  The channel was filled with empty static.

  "SMART, confirm, please."

  The static cleared. "All members of the Seven Wonders located.

Please await assistance," came the robotic voice. The calmness of it was dreamlike.

  Linear swore and tore his glasses off. Without them, he looked even older. Sam was fascinated – morbidly, she realized. The price he paid for his accelerated life.

  Outside, SMART finally broke its looped routine and thudded back to the airlock, the vibration of its footfalls declining in amplitude as the artificial gravity field of the fortress compensated for its weight. Aurora swung away from the observation windows and returned to his position at the head of the conference table. Without sitting, he swept a hand across the touch panels embedded in the glass surface. An alert sounded and a series of scrolling red characters spun across the table top.

  "I've locked the inner airlock door, permanently," Aurora said, tapping the display. "It won't keep it out, but it will slow it down." He flicked on the comm on his belt. "Bluebell, Linear will meet you in the cells. Stay there to ensure the safety of our prisoner. Sand Cat and the Dragon Star will secure the workshop."

  Conroy stepped toward Aurora. "Ah, Aurora? You're sending the Dragon Star with Sand Cat? Don't you think, ah, we should keep an eye on…
her
?"

  Sam looked at Joe, and together they looked at the Dragon Star. For once, the hero was holding her head high, allowing the deep, wide white hood to fall back slightly. She looked young, just a teenager, half the age of the second youngest person in the room, which Sam realized was probably her. Sam remembered the odd way in which the Dragon Star was detached from the previous conversation, and the look that Aurora had given her. What else did Conroy know about the impending invasion? More to the point, what did the Seven Wonders know but weren't saying?

  "The Dragon Star's powerstaff will be needed to contain SMART. She and Sand Cat will secure the workshop." Aurora spun on his heel and looked down at his temporary recruit. "It is you and I who need to talk, Mr Conroy."

  Conroy looked around the heroes in the room, then back at Aurora, his eyes squinting with confusion. "Aurora, the Dragon Star–" he indicated the superhero standing nearby, waving a hand up and down her length like he was a used car salesman "–the entity that animates this body, anyway −
is
Thuban. You guys never got the transmissions, yet I picked up two-way coded messages exchanged between the Seven Wonders' surveillance network and the Thuban themselves. What's going on, Aurora?"

  Finally Aurora let his emotion slip. Sam understood totally − the very foundation of the superheroes and their declaration of protection, not just over San Ventura, but over the whole world − had been badly shaken by the death of Tony. Now SMART's malfunction was confirmed, the robot killing its creator and now intent, apparently, on doing the same to everyone else in the Apollo Fortress. And to top it off, the world was being threatened by an alien menace linked somehow to the Dragon Star, which only Conroy knew about, and only because he intercepted secret transmissions coming from within the Seven Wonders themselves.

  Only Conroy… and Aurora, Sam realized with a start. Their own leader, keeping secrets.

  The superheroes had been shaken to their core, so perhaps it was no wonder Aurora blew his stack. Metaphorically speaking; if it had been literal, chances were this side of the lunar surface would have had a brand-new crater smoking in the Earthlight.

  The leader of the Seven Wonders turned on Conroy, his plasma aura flaring bright scarlet fringed with magnesium white. All in the room recoiled from the sudden glare, and Conroy stumbled backward as the edge of the energy field threatened to lick him. Aurora's eyes, those featureless, blank ellipses, flared white with the same limelight intensity. His characteristic enigmatic smile twisted into a snarl.

  "Don't presume to instruct me, Cowl!" The volume of his voice was almost as shocking as his flaming appearance. Sam noted how he had slipped and referred to their new recruit by his old supervillain name. Sam had seen many superhero battles − hell, battles between Aurora and the Cowl, the pair now standing just a few feet from her in the same room − but had never seen a superhero lose their cool. And she never wanted to again, glimpsing as she could now a tiny fraction of the power the atomic superhero had at his disposal. The power of the heart of the sun itself.

  Aurora took a step towards Conroy, who fumbled behind him with one hand as he hit a conference chair, and tumbled to the floor. The Dragon Star shuffled slightly, and Sam noticed her hand was gripping her inert powerstaff like a vise, stretching the thin white fabric of her elbow-length gloves tightly over the back of her knuckles.

  "Sand Cat, with me." Out of her usual silent character, the Dragon Star's assertive instruction seemed to catch even Aurora and the other heroes by surprise. Aurora's blaze faded back to an angry, but more usual, level, while Linear and Sand Cat just stared at her. Her wide hood shifted as she regarded her compatriots. She tapped the end of her powerstaff loudly against the floor and the length of the weapon lit with energy. Sam's nose crinkled as she smelt something hot and electrical and her mouth was filled with the taste of battery acid.

  The Dragon Star lifted off the floor and flew across the conference room, disappearing through the main door. Sand Cat leapt into the air, tumbling gymnastically as she did before landing back on the floor as a vast, spectral cat. She galloped out of the room.

  Ignoring Conroy, who hadn't moved from the floor, Aurora turned back to his control board.

  "Linear?" he asked, without turning.

  "On my way," said the older hero, placing his thick-framed glasses carefully in the breast pocket concealed under his sprint suit. He buzzed to the table to collect his gloves and mask, then was gone.

  Beside Sam, Joe sighed in relief, perhaps happy at least that the room now had fewer angry superheroes in it. Conroy clattered a chair clumsily as he pulled himself to his feet. Aurora continued to ignore him, his attention instead on the large display in the table surface, which now showed an aerial view of the workshop and airlock bay.

  A deep metallic smack resonated through the base. Joe darted to the observation window, then waved for Sam to join him.

  As the pair watched, clouds of dust billowed up from the lunar surface in slow motion as the walls of the base shook. Sam walked back to the table and looked down at Aurora's display. On a security feed trained on the workshop inner airlock, the doors started to buckle as SMART attempted to punch its way back into the base. The Dragon Star walked into the view of the camera, and they watched as she angled her powerstaff and threw up a green and blue cone of energy over the door, trying to keep the powerful robot out, while the spirit animal form of Sand Cat paced impatiently back and forth behind her.

  Joe looked over his shoulder at Sam, almost to check whether she was still there, and then looked up at Aurora. Aurora's face was less angry now, although his expression was firm. The white eyes of his mask flickered occasionally, almost as if he were blinking.

  "We don't want to be in your way," Joe began slowly. He was nervous, and Sam couldn't blame him. She was downright terrified, not just because they seemed to be right in the middle of the disintegration of the Seven Wonders, on the moon, with a homicidal robot trying to kill everyone in the base. She'd seen the rage in Aurora's eyes.

  "But," Joe continued, "is there anything we can do?"

  Aurora stood from the table, his composure restored in a second. "Indeed there is, detective.
Detectives
." Aurora stood and joined Joe at the observation windows, motioning for Sam to follow. "We will be able to secure the base, have no fear. But Paragon and I will be needed presently. We are below strength now, and I meant what I said about cooperation. If you would join Bluebell and Linear in the detention zone, I would be much obliged."