The Indestructibles (Book 4): Like A Comet (15 page)

Chapter
22:

Where
monsters come from

The chieftain used to remember his name.

He recalled many things from his life
before the invasion, before he was kidnapped by this terrible armada; though,
with each passing day, those memories became foggier and foggier. He reflected
on the times with his wife, their litter of children, and a pre-technological
world, with high trees, and clear skies, and bloody battles between nomadic
tribes.

      Finally, he remembered being a
warrior.

      Here, aboard this starship, the
cold emptiness of space all around, his home world felt like a dream. It was a
dream, in any way that mattered, he thought. Gone, a desiccated husk of a
world, eaten alive by these creatures, the Devourers, as his people had come to
call them, and all that was left behind—every ally, loved one, mountain and tree—gone
with it.

      The chieftain had not forgotten
pain. Perpetual pain. His life had been one of battle and blood, and every
waking moment there were aches—old injuries, hardened scar tissue, even just
the heartache of growing old in a world where every day was a struggle. He hurt
because he had been a warrior, and he hurt because he had lived.

      This thing on his chest, this
parasite, it took away the pain. He did not feel hurt, cold, or warmth. Yet it
was not true numbness, not precisely, but it was a barrenness, an absence of feeling,
a disconnect between his body and his mind.

      Disoriented and completely
separated from his actions, it was as he viewed himself from afar.

      His brother walked by, in a slow,
aimless shuffle, recognizable in the dark by the cracked and broken horn growing
from the left side of his head. They did not speak to each other any longer.
They'd tried, at first, but the parasites sent waves of agony through them, as
if to stop them from communicating. Now they stared at each other with dimming
yellow eyes. My brother, the chieftain thought, his heart breaking at the
emptiness he saw in that green, scarred face. The mightiest of us. The
strongest. Reduced to cattle. Like me.

      There were others here, as well,
not just from the chieftain's planet, a menagerie of freaks and monsters,
reptilian and furred, six-limbed and twelve, things that walked on two legs and
things that moved on many. All seemed dim and distant, wearing these
decorations of flesh on their chests. There was a strength to them, though, and
the chieftain had come to realize this was what they all had in common—the
Devourers kept the strongest from each world they destroyed, enslaved them,
making them their own warriors and servants, leaving the rest behind when the
world no longer had anything left to feed them.

      But even this dull life was not
forever. He could see the cycle. The strong become stronger, but then, like
everything else the Devourers touched, they would be consumed, worn down,
undone by the monstrous touch of these creatures. They were many when the
Devourers took the chieftain's world, dozens of warriors captured, but their
numbers dwindled, disappeared, fed into the machinery of this place.

      At least the numbness kept the
worst of it away. Suffering is not noble, he thought. Suffering is not brave.
Not like this. Not in this place.

      Sometimes he dreamed—or perhaps it
was something else, a hallucination, a prophetic vision—of his wife, or his
children, or his home. His tribe, his entire people, did not marry for love,
nor did they have children for love. Everything was for the betterment of the
tribe, to ensure survival, and all activity and efforts were directed toward
that one goal, to be stronger, to be more powerful.

      But when he dreamed, and
envisioned the hollow outlines of his wife's cheeks, when he saw the
yet-unscarred skin of his newborn son, held in his hand like a toy, he
remembered love. Even in the battle to be strong, love will find a way to
exist. Love is born where lives intersect.

      He missed his wife and his many
children. In the darkness, he silently recited their names. It became more
difficult with each day, though. He wondered if that meant he was fading. If he
would soon be fed to this infernal machine and discarded like a bone picked-clean.

      All I wanted was a warrior's
death, he thought, sitting in the darkness, the silence around him oppressive
and deafening. A blade in my hand, face to face with some grim beast, and we
would know, that creature and I, that we would fight, and one of us, or both of
us, would die in that place. I just wanted to die on my feet. Brave. To feel my
death, fang or claw opening up my veins. I hoped to smell the wilderness of my
home world once more before oblivion came for me.

      This is no death, the chieftain
thinks. He tries to recall his father's face, his first battle. These things
slip around the edge of his consciousness like tiny fish. He looks once more at
his brother, lumbering and heavy-limbed, and wonders if he could free him, if
they could free each other. Perhaps together they could find a way home.

      Except home is gone, he reminds
himself—broken-hearted that he'd forgotten. There's no home to go back to. Only
this waiting, this cold passivity, this horror clinging to his chest, filling
him with strength and devouring his spirit.

      He closed his eyes and wished for
oblivion, hoping, on the other side of that darkness, his family might be there
waiting for him.

Chapter
23:

An
elemental force

Jane monitored the faces around the
table as much as she watched the alien reveal his story. How he'd crossed the
stars as a messenger to their world, to try to get here in time for Earth to
prepare. Seng was clearly exhausted; the act of speaking alone seemed to take
all of his effort, and he frequently paused to cough, or to grimace and hold
his ribs in pain.

      Doc, of course, listened intently,
quietly, taking everything in from behind those red glasses. Emily leaned
forward, fascinated—this is what she dreams about, Jane knew, science fiction
as reality, aliens and spaceships and everything strange. Titus wore a mask of
worry, which, Jane understood, would mirror her own. We're the caretakers she
thought, the watchers. She knew the werewolf would have a gnawing sensation in
his stomach, fear and concern and anxiety chewing away at him.

      Bedlam, the newcomer, looked
blatantly overwhelmed. With each new fact Seng uttered, her mouth would drop
open, often with some vile combination of curse words that even turned Emily's
head a few times.

      And then there was Kate. Unfazed,
unconcerned, all business, listening and plotting. Jane wasn't sure what she
could be planning—this was so far beyond anything they'd done before, after
all—but there she was. Fearless and ready for a fight.

      "Okay, so what I don't
understand," Emily said, resting her chin on one hand thoughtfully, "is
what they want?"

      "I think Seng is saying that
they want to eat our world," Titus said.

      "I mean big picture wise,"
Emily said. "It has to lead to something, right? Can't just drift from
world to world, munch munch munch burp, moving on, forever and ever, right?"

      Seng made a strange gesture with
his hand. Jane realized as he performed it that it seemed to indicate
agreement.

      "This is something the beings
your world calls the Luminae have pondered for ages," Seng said. "Because
they, like we, demand a purpose to things. We want—"

      "—A reason," Kate said.

      Seng bowed his head to her.

      "But from what we have seen,
from all of the battles, all of the dead worlds, we think they are…" Seng
tilted his head as the Luminae sharing his body the way Dude shared Billy's
helped him find the words he was looking for. ". . . an elemental force.
They simply exist, and this is simply what they do."

      "That. Is messed. Up,"
Bedlam said.

      "So what do we do about a
force of nature?" Jane said. "Have they ever been defeated before?"

      "There have been worlds where
the Nemesis have been driven off," Seng said. "Not many, but it is
not unheard of."   

      "Well that's good. What are
we talking about, a twenty-five percent chance of survival?" Emily said.

      "We can recall… perhaps three
or four incursions when the Nemesis fleet has been repelled," Seng said.

      "Okay then, never mind, we're
screwed," Emily said.

       "Well, they're already here,"
Titus said. "Whatever that means."

      "Fortunately," Seng
said, "what you've encountered are only seedlings. They grant power, and
they do the bidding of the fleet, but they are stoppable, as you've shown."

      "If those are hardly a
threat, I want to know more about what's coming for us," Kate said. "Because
if those are the average foot soldier we'll be dealing with, we're going to
need more help."

      "Your main concern is to keep
the seed ships off your world," Seng said.

      "Oh, that sounds fantastic,"
Bedlam said. "Seed ships. Let me guess, they crash and thousands of those
things we fought come crawling out like baby spiders and start taking people
over."

      Seng looked at her as if she'd
taken the words out of his mouth. Bedlam's eyes widened. "Tell me I'm
wrong. Tell me I'm wrong, man, I don't want to be right," she said.

      He looked around the room, his
alien expression unreadable.

      "The seed ships are their…"
again, Jane watched as the alien conversed with its Luminae symbiote for the
right word. "You would call them their terraforming device."

      "I have no idea what that
word means," Bedlam said.

      "You need to read more,"
Emily said.

      "You need a punch in the
mouth," Bedlam said.

      "You both need to shut up,"
Kate said. "If one of those seed ships lands, how long do we have? Can we
stop the process once it starts?"

      Seng stared at Kate with huge,
unblinking eyes.

      "It would be recommended that
this not happen," he said.

      "What about Billy?" Jane
said. "What are the chances he's already dead? We sent him up there to
investigate."

      "If the Straylight did not
choose to engage the fleet alone, he should be able to outrun them," Seng
said.

      "Like you did?" Emily
said.

      "I was ambushed," the
alien responded, not taking the bait in Emily's taunt.

      Doc spoke next, and everyone, even
Kate, turned to listen.

      "Then we need to make sure
these seed ships don't get here," Doc said. "I'm going to go scare up
some help for us. Emily, you and I are going to head over to the Labyrinth. I
hate to admit it but they might have something there that might help you if we
have to go toe to toe with these things again."

      "Field trip!" Emily
said.

      Doc looked at Jane.

      "I'll come with you,"
Jane said. "I'm kind of curious what they might have for all of us."

      "And the rest of us?"
Titus said.

      "Eyes on the sky, Titus,"
Doc said. "Let's hope we hear from Billy soon."

Chapter
24:

The
toy box

Henry Winter met them at the gates of
the Labyrinth, smiling broadly as he leaned on his cane. He led Doc, Jane, and
Emily inside with the light playfulness of a millionaire showing off his
bungalow. You'd never know, Jane thought, that he had been a prisoner here
himself for almost a decade.

      The trauma was still fresh enough
in her own mind that she felt an electric creep of anxiety crawl up her spine
just by walking inside. From the sour look on Emily's face, Jane guessed the
younger girl felt the same way.

      "I can't believe I'm saying
this," Doc said. "But we need to get a look at that item you showed
me the other day."

      Winter's face displayed genuine
surprise.

      "I thought…" he said.

      "We're dealing with an alien
invasion," Doc said. "I'm trusting you to tell us the truth about
what it does."

      Winter nodded solemnly.

      "Of course. You know I wouldn't
lie about something like this," he said.

      "Something like what?"
Emily said, an edge to her voice. She was dancing around as she waited for the
men to finish talking, indicating she was either getting very bored or had to
pee.

      "Come on down to the toy box,"
Winter said. "I'll show you what we've got."

      The toy box was what Winter had
taken to calling the lab where he'd once been put to work developing tools for
the Department under Prevention's watch. An open room littered with tables and
half-built inventions, it looked like a mad genius's workshop. They walked past
what had to be several prototypes of the armored suit Winter used to wear when
he was a hero like they were, a dismantled "null gun," the type of
weapon that had been employed to knock Dude out of Billy's body, and other,
more esoteric items Jane couldn't quite place.

      And then they saw the man who
could have destroyed the future, puttering away at a work station.

      Keaton Bohr. The scientist who, in
another timeline, turned Emily into a battery to power weapons of war, had
somehow tinkered too much with Emily's powers and turned her into a
world-destroying bomb, and who, in the end, found nothing left for himself but
death and oblivion. Jane had a difficult time looking at him. It was because of
him the future versions of herself and Emily from that other timeline were
dead, why that version of Billy was dead, why that other world was a
cataclysmic disaster.

      None of those things would come to
pass here, they hoped. When they returned to their own timeline they had two
options—put Bohr down to prevent him from making the same mistakes, or target
the genius he clearly possessed in better pursuits. And so the Department took
him in, and told him to make a better world.

      It turned out a genius is a
genius, and given the right tools and the right motivation, Keaton Bohr stood a
chance of redeeming himself in this timeline, of being a hero and not a
villain, or at least, Jane thought, building a better battery. Leaving the
world a better place for having been in it. Which is all anyone should really
strive to do in life.

      But still, when she looked at
him—this mousy man with his lank hair and glasses, looking so gleeful and proud
in front of his inventions—it was hard not to see the man who played a huge
part in ending an entire timeline. She wanted to be more gracious than hating a
man for what he had not yet done, but it was hard to forgive him for the things
she'd seen.

      Emily barely looked at him.
Somehow, his reaction to Emily ignoring him actually broke the tension, because
Keaton clearly wanted to be liked, and could not understand why she seemed so
bent on giving him the cold shoulder. Jane, at least, made an attempt at being
polite.

      "I was tinkering with the
suits the Department developed based on the kinetic-energy powered armor
confiscated from that young drug dealer," Keaton said. "The
Distribution suits."

      Jane actually smiled a bit at
that—Distribution, a low-level supervillain and all around sleaze—was the
target of the Indestructibles' first mission together. It was a disaster. A
successful disaster in that they apprehended him, but, as Billy liked to say
when they talked about that first fight, they were like kids in a bouncy
castle, not superheroes.

      "Yeah, I didn't do too well
against those," Emily said, picking up a mass of wires and circuit boards
which Henry Winter promptly removed from her hands and placed back down on the
countertop.

      "Because they absorbed the
kinetic energy you used against them, right?" Keaton said. "You used
some sort of reversion of your floating spheres—"     

      "Bubbles of float, yo,"
Emily corrected.

      "Bubbles of float,"
Keaton continued. "And turned it into an outgoing kinetic force."

      "A wall of slam," Emily
once again corrected. "Dude, this isn't hard to remember. I use very small
words."

      "Speaking of your wall of
slam," Winter said. "I've been meaning to ask. When I took over, I
had a structural analysis performed taking a look at the whole Labyrinth, and I
found several locations on the detention level where entire sections of wall
looked as if it has been moved forward several inches, doing severe damage to
the integrity of the—"

      "So you were saying something
about my bubbles of float?" Emily interrupted.

      Winter looked at Jane and winked.

      Jane just offered him a wide-eyed
expression—lying had never been Jane's specialty, and she'd been right there
when Emily, pitching a fit, moved an entire prison wall with her mind.

      "I understand you have
trouble with precision," Keaton said.

      "Not true," Emily said. "I
can pick your nose with a bubble of float."

      "But with your… offensive
abilities?" Keaton said.

      "I call it wall of slam for a
reason," Emily said.

      Keaton pulled a black plastic
cover off an object that had been sitting on the worktable and drew out a
metallic glove, robotic and segmented like armor.

      "This might help,"
Keaton said.

      "We've discussed," Doc
said. "Nothing that draws power from her."

      Winter waved a hand reassuringly.

      "All this does is let her
point that wall of slam with more precision," Winter said. "It lets
her concentrate it into a smaller wall. One the size of her hand. Like a long
distance punch."

      Emily picked the glove up and
promptly slid it on. Everyone at the worktable, including Jane, took an
involuntary step away from her.

      "You guys are such wimps,"
Emily said. "So this'll let me basically…"

      Emily aimed the glove at a glass
beaker on another table and flexed her fingers. The beaker shattered.

      "It's a wallop of smash!"
Emily said.

      "Those beakers actually cost
money, y'know," Winter said.

      "Wallop?" Jane said.

      "Ha ha," Emily said
dramatically. "I have my own Infinity—"

      "No," Jane said.

      "Power glo—"

      "I think that one's taken
too, Emily," Jane said.

      "My own Iron F—"

      "Taken," Jane said.

      "I call it the gravity glove,"
Keaton said.

      Emily gave him a sidelong glare,
pursing her lips.

      "It pains me to say this, but
I like it," Emily said.

      Jane had removed the earpiece she
and the others used to stay in touch, but she heard it chirp from where she'd
looped it on her belt. She tucked it back into her left ear.

      "Jane, get the others on the
line," Kate said.

      Jane motioned for Doc and Emily to
join in.

      "What do you have, Kate?"
Doc said.

      Titus answered instead.

      "We've got some kind of
message going back and forth," Titus said. "It's coming from the
RIETI institute. Either there was another sleeper agent we missed, or they got
wind of Rice-Bell being taken out and sent someone to finish the job."

      "Do we know what it's saying?"
Jane said.

      "We can't be a hundred
percent sure, but Neal thinks it's landing coordinates," Titus said.

      "Oh, awesome," Emily
said.

      "And what does Neal think
those coordinates are?" Jane said.

      "Hey Titus, what's this
thing?" Bedlam's voice chimed in.

      Jane heard Titus ask Neal to zoom
in on something, and then all three of them, Titus, Kate, and Bedlam, started
swearing at the same time in a cacophony of curse words. Together, they covered
a huge expanse of foul language in just a few seconds.

      "Well that sounds fantastic,"
Emily said.

      "Yeah it's landing
coordinates," Titus said.

      "We've got something inbound,"
Kate said. "It hasn't come through the atmosphere yet but it's definitely
some sort of craft."

      Doc and Jane exchanged a look.

      "Send us the location,"
Doc said. "Can the three of you get there in case they make it to the
surface?"

      "Already on our way, boss,"
Titus said.

      "Okay. Jane and I are going
to try to keep it from landing," Doc said.

      "And I'm just going to watch?"
Emily said.

      "You are going to practice
with that thing," Doc said.

      "The heck with that,"
Emily said. "What better way to practice than on actual bad guys, I mean
seriously Doc. There another one of these?"

      "The other isn't fully
operational yet," Keaton said.

      "Want me to suit up?"
Winter said.

      Doc shook his head.

      "No, you get your people
ready in case this is the big one," Doc said. "Kate, Titus, we'll see
you there."

      "How are we going to get
there before them?" Emily said.

      Doc waved a hand, and a purplish
sphere of emptiness appeared on front of them. On the other side was nothing
but blue sky.

      "Through the looking glass,"
Jane said. She waved at Henry Winter and stepped past Doc, through the portal
and into the waiting sky.