The Indestructibles (Book 4): Like A Comet (33 page)

Chapter
60:

A
sky full of heroes

Billy watched the firestorm of Doc's
spells explode in the distance. The brightness caused his eyes to water and
left echoes in his vision.

      Well that was intense, he thought,
watching the armada scatter, its spiraling, tightly woven pattern broken by Doc's
trap. Tiny fighters spun, out of formation and out of control, as heavy warships
took evasive action. The central figures, the three big spires they called seed
ships, still flanked the biggest vessel, the brain-ship.

      Before the fleet could fully
reconstitute itself, the rest of the team launched an attack of its own. Billy
laughed, remembering a scene from
Braveheart
, or any other battle
scenario where a group of lunatics took on a much larger force. To his left, crazy
Korthos flew, pointing that ridiculous axe on a stick weapon of his, somehow
making sound in space, contrary to scientific principles Emily had drilled into
Billy's head. Nothing Korthos did should be possible, he realized, but then
again, Doc said much of the big barbarian's powers came from old, old
magic—they shouldn't expect it to make sense.

      Still, watching a guy in a kilt
with dark blue hair screaming a war cry in space as he charged against
insurmountable forces was pretty funny.

      To his right, Seng flew in stoic
silence, the alien and Billy's fellow Luminae host entity grimly seeking
revenge for the world he lost. Billy hadn't realized just how much what
happened to him and Dude in the future had changed them both until he watched a
normal Luminae at work. We really do glow brighter, Billy thought. And fly
faster. Everything is amped up.

     
It's true
, Dude said.
Our
power is nearly doubled, Billy Case. I don't know what else might have been
effected by this but…

      I'll take being extra fast and
extra strong, Billy thought. I don't see how that's a bad thing right now.

      Billy caught a flash of flaming
light out of the corner of his eye and saw Jane streaking into the sky like a
fireball, gaining on them.

      "Good to have you back, boss,"
he said. "Always you and me flying around at the end of the world, isn't
it?"

      "Wouldn't have it any other
way, Straylight," Jane said. "We'll need to thin out some of those
attack fighters in order to get close enough to the seed ships."

      "Got it," Billy said. "Seng
and I will engage the fighters since we're fastest. Korthos?"

      "To victory my young friends!"
Korthos yelled. "We shall give them no quarter!"

      "Yeah, okay, um. But can you
take on the warships?"

      The demigod raged ahead. Billy's
jaw dropped when he watched Korthos point his axe at the fleet. A bolt of
energy lanced out of the edge, crashing into one of the closest enemy ships and
split it in half. Korthos roared again and dove into the crowds of Nemesis
vessels, swinging his axe in huge, broad strikes, half-dance, half-berserker
rage.

      "So I guess we're
improvising?" Billy said.

      He dove into the fray, conscious
that Seng flanked him and had been watching his back. Billy, far more confident
than he'd been with his first encounter with the fleet out near Saturn, went on
the offensive, easily dodging blasts of light from cannons mounted on the enemy
ships, moving with incredible speed and agility. He zipped past one fighter,
and before it could bank to attack him, Billy fired a light-bolt through its
armor, making it glow from the inside as the blast gutted the organic machine.

      He felt like bird of prey. Or
maybe a dolphin. Something fast, moving smoothly through this alien
environment, as if this were exactly where he belonged.

      I'm good at this, Billy thought.

     
This is what we've waited our
whole lives to do,
Dude said. The alien sounded focused, but not stressed.

      How are you holding up with all
this extra power? Billy thought.

     
I don't know how long it'll
last, but let's enjoy it. We're cutting through these ships like they're
nothing.

      Billy certainly enjoyed it. He
took out two more fighters with quick blasts to their hull, and when a bigger
craft, a twisted thing larger than the wasp-like fighters but not a
full-fledged warship, drifted up to block his path, Billy felt a surge of power
from Dude and rammed his way through it like a bullet. He risked a glance over
his shoulder to witness it splitting apart at the seams.

      "I'm a cannonball,"
Billy said.

     
I said enjoy it, don't revel in
it,
Dude said.

      But Billy was off, not slowing
down, smashing through the shells of fighters too slow to get out of his way, leaving
a wake of destruction in his path.

      "I love being a superhero,"
Billy said, joyfully flying through the battlefield, arms outstretched like
wings.

      He watched in the distance as
Korthos, barely visible in the chaos, fought maniacally, gutting ships like
fish with his axe. The more he destroyed, the more the ships seemed to swarm
him, trying to stop his devastating onslaught.

      Billy attracted a bit of a
following as well, with ships pursuing him, barely able to keep pace. They
fired null guns and suddenly Billy refocused. It was one thing to smash his way
through regular fighters. But he needed to watch out for those that had been
outfitted specifically to kill Luminae hosts.

      "Head's up, Seng," Billy
said into his radio. "Null guns."  

      "Nothing you just said made
sense, Earthling, but I think I know what you're trying to tell me," the
alien responded.

      "Hey," Jane's voice
chirped in. Billy spun around, trying to locate her in the chaos of the fight. She
set a warship on fire, her arm outstretched and spewing flames like a dragon's
maw. "Speaking of people who love being superheroes, where's Emily?"

      "Em?" Billy said. "You
out there kid? How's things on the ground?" 

      "On my way," Emily said.

      Billy surveyed the carnage, his
stomach sank as he spied the seed ships drawing close but flanked by more
attack ships than he could count.

      "Not that I'll turn down the
assist, but Em, you can't breathe up here like the rest of us, I don't know
what you're planning—"     

      "—Oh Billy baby have I got a
surprise for you," Emily said. "You're going to be so jealous you're
gonna puke."

      Billy wanted to be annoyed, but
the truth was, now he really, really wanted to know what his best friend had up
her sleeve. 

      "If you have an X-Wing I'm
going to be so mad," he said.

      "Even better," she said.

      And then Billy saw it. He didn't
want to believe it, but there it was.

      A giant robot, monstrous and
cartoonish, rose out of the Earth's atmosphere.

      Not simply a giant robot, Billy
thought—it resembled the sort of machine that nearly killed him in the future,
something out of an anime, a big mecha-thing with exaggerated human
proportions, arms a little too long, shoulders a little too wide, feet lit up
with rocket boosters, its face an impassive helmet studded with antennae.

      The robot was painted in blue and
glossy white, the signature colors Henry Winter wore on his armor as the hero
Coldwall. In fact, the scheme itself looked entirely like Henry's old armor,
blue boots, chest, and gloves, white piping, bright spots of red on the hands,
feet, and face. But hastily spray-painted on the mech's front in black was the
unmistakable trifold image of Entropy Emily's nuclear fallout symbol, the one
she wore on the chest of her own uniform.

      "Are you freaking kidding me,
Emily? Are you serious?" Billy yelled.

      "I have a giant robot Billy.
Look look look! I have a giant robot!" Emily yelled, her voice causing
everyone's earpieces to squeal with feedback.

      "Do we even want to know
where you got that?" Jane said, sounding somewhere between tired and
incredibly amused.

      "And more to the point—do you
know what you're doing with it?" Billy said.

      Instead of talking, the robot
attacked, sweeping one giant arm in a huge arc through space, swatting two or
three fighters with such force that they spun off into the black. The other arm
swung as well, capturing a fighter and grabbing hold, crushing it between giant
metal fingers. A warship turned to attack, but the robot held out its palm,
and, though Billy couldn't see it—Emily's powers shimmered in the air a bit
like heat on pavement, but in space, they were imperceptible—the warship was
struck by what had to be one of Emily's Walls of Slam, caving the vessel in.

      "This is amazing!" Emily
yelled.

     
That is the most terrifying
thing I have ever seen
, Dude said.
And I say this knowing we're actively
fighting the Nemesis fleet.

      "How are you even doing all
of this?" Billy said.

      "It's a long story,"
Emily said. "So… who do I smash next?"

Chapter
61:

The
long story

You've got a giant robot," a
surprised Emily said to Henry Winter the morning before the attack. Hours later
she would join the rest of her team in space piloting the three-story high suit
of armor standing in front of her.

      "Technically, it's a giant
armored suit, but I guess robot works," Winter said. The two of them were
standing in a hidden silo beneath the Labyrinth, an area where, for years,
Henry Winter had been locked up by Prevention and forced to design new
technology for her more militarized version of the Department.

      "Beside the obvious answer,
which is, 'because if you can have a giant robot, you build a giant robot,'
why, um, do you have a this thing?" Emily asked.

      Winter tapped the foot of the
machine with his cane.

      "Remember my story? That I was
the superhero Coldwall, and used mechanized suits designed for security and
crowd control when I served with Doc?"

      "I grew up in the Internet
age," Emily said. "I Googled everything about you."

      "Except the fact I have a
giant robot suit," Winter said.   

      "Everyone is entitled to some
secrets," Emily said.

      "So I had different
variations of the suit," Winter explained. "Underwater, deep space,
fire-proof models—versions that were built to be more maneuverable while
flying, versus the more heavily armored types for big battles."

      "And this is the one you wore
when you were cosplaying Voltron?" Emily said.

      "My last big project,"
he said. "I always knew we'd confront something big again. You've seen the
giant mole monster that we hid under the Tower? That wasn't the only giant
monster we ever faced."

      "So you built this… to fight
genormous creatures?"

      "It's a prototype,"
Winter said. "I actually wanted something bigger."

      "Just in case Godzilla ever
attacked."

      "You joke, but…There are some
huge things out there, Emily," Winter said.

      "You sure this isn't just
because you watched a lot of anime growing up?" Emily asked. She walked up
to the giant mech's leg and rapped her knuckles on its shin.

      "Well, like you stated,"
Winter said. "The real reason to build a giant robot is because if you can
build one…"

      "You do it," Emily said.
"So why's it down here?"

      Winter sighed and put a hand
affectionately on the robot's metal leg.

      "It's heavy. It's impossible
to build this thing to be quick and mobile. It's just not feasible to be
equipped with that kind of armor and weight and make it maneuverable,"
Winter said. "It can go very fast in one direction with boosters, but then
you're carrying rocket fuel, so you're essentially driving a bomb."     

      "We saw giant robots in the
future," Emily said. "They were pretty quick."

      "They were also—"

      "—Powered by me," Emily
said.

      "So Doc told me," Winter
said. "Which is why we never showed you this before."

      "Are you asking me to drive
this thing? Because I've seen what happens when my powers are misused. I won't be
at fault for the apocalypse," Emily said. She stared longingly at the
robot. "But maybe just this once…"

      "No," Winter said.

      "It's funny. We recruited
Keaton Bohr because we didn't want him to develop dangerous theories that would
put you in harm's way. But you know what he figured out?" he said.

      "How to put me at risk?"

      "That you wouldn't need to
power this thing," Winter said. "You'd be a puppeteer and not the
battery. You've learned to control gravity at a very precise level."

      Emily belly laughed.

      "Sure, if you think so,"
she said.

      Winter shook his head
disapprovingly. "You're sloppy when you don't pay attention, which is all
the time," he said. "I've seen the footage. You're better than you
let yourself be."

      "Footage? You watched
footage?"

      "Of all of you," Winter
said. "Believe it or not, all, five of you could use more training. You're
still young. And while you think I'm an old fart, I did the same job you did
for a very long time, and I made a lot of mistakes so you don't have to."

      "I'm judging you so hard
right now," Emily said.

      "Fine, judge me," Henry
Winter said, sniffing in mock insult. "If you don't want to drive the suit
you don't have to."

      Emily slapped him on the arm.

      "I'm driving this suit if I
have to kill someone to do it," Emily said, her eyes huge with excitement.
"I want to drive a mech. This is a lifelong dream. Do you have any idea
how much I want to do this?"

      Winter let out a boisterous, giddy
laugh.

      "Suit up. We'll get you in
the cockpit," Winter said. "If I'm telling the truth, I've wanted to
see this bird fly for years now. I'm as psyched as you are."

* * *

      Emily returned to the silo where
the robot waited for her. She wore a jumpsuit designed to maximize her ability
to work the controls and to let her seal herself in should the cockpit lose
air. She was appalled to find Winter waiting in a lighter version of his
Coldwall armor. It wasn't a full suit, more like select pieces, a chest plate
and gauntlets, a helmet in his hands.

      "Why are you also suited up,"
Emily said, deadpan.   

      "You're going to need a
copilot," Winter said.

      "You lie."   

      "If something breaks in
space, are you going to be able to fix it?"

      Emily stared him down, then
acquiesced.

      "Okay fine. But you are
copilot.
Co
-pilot. Not pilot."

      "I wouldn't have it any other
way," Winter said. "Look up."   

      Emily followed his gesture and
felt her little heart grow three sizes too big. Sure, it was sloppy and rushed,
but there, in dark paint on the chest of the giant robot, was her nuclear
fallout symbol.
Her
symbol. Her robot.

      "I think you're just about my
new favorite person," Emily said.

      "You really do weave back and
forth pretty violently with your moods, don't you?" Winter said.

      "It's my specialty,"
Emily said. "Okay Stacker Pentacost, show me how to run this thing." 

      He led her to a ladder, but Emily
skipped climbing and bubble of floated herself up to a cockpit, located in the
head of the machine. She hopped in, pulling the helmet she found there over her
head. Winter, with his bum leg, followed slowly up the ladder, and when he got
to the platform, he plugged Emily's suit into a few cables in order to monitor
her vitals, and ensured that her helmet was sealed. Then he pointed to the
controls. 

      "For any other pilot, you'd
need these," he said. "But I want you to—"

      Emily reached out with a bubble of
float and took hold of the robot's arm. She thought about it in the same way
she would think about moving her own and rotated the shoulder, bent at the
elbow. Suddenly, one huge metal hand was held out in front of both of them. She
wriggled the fingers.

      "Can you do that with two
arms at once?" Winter asked.

      Emily repeated the endeavor with
the other arm. She waved them back and forth like she was putting on a puppet
show.

      "Emily, I'm so disappointed
in how much you've held back with your powers until now I almost want to throw
you out of the cockpit," Winter said.

      "I just need proper
motivation," Emily said. "Trick me into working to my potential."

      She made one of the hands wave
coyly at Winter. He couldn't help laughing.

      "You're not getting into the
cockpit with me, are you?" Emily said, looking around at the cramped
space, even for her.

      "No, there's an engineer's
chamber in the chest," Winter said. "So try not to get me killed."

      "I make no promises,"
Emily said.

      "I heard that about you,"
Winter said. "So here's the deal. Bohr will be here in the lab, trouble
shooting. He'll look for indications the suit is in the red, or if either of us
is in distress. He'll help me if we run into any mechanical problems that I can
fix when we're in battle."     

      "This is nuts," Emily
said. "Are we staying on Earth or going up into space?"

      "I wanted the suit
environmentally sealed for undersea duties or outer space," Winter said,
tapping the armor on the head of the vehicle. "And we've said all along if
we can keep the fleet from reaching the planet, we stand a better chance of
winning, so…"

      "I'm going to be flying a
giant mech in space against an alien invasion," Emily said. "This,
Henry Winter, is the greatest day of my life."

      "Let's hope it's not your
last," he said. "How about a test drive?"

      Emily turned her helmeted head at
Winter and pounded her little fist against the console.

      "Get thee to engineering,
Scotty! We have a world to save."

* * *

      Emily had done a lot of fun things
in her life. But none of those involved a giant robot, so she would put 'learning
to drive a mech' into her top three life experiences.

      She and Winter took the vehicle
out, via an underground tunnel beneath the Labyrinth, and traveled to an unused
and abandoned industrial park located outside the City. Emily knew someone,
somewhere, had to have seen them. But the Department blocked off the area
quietly to keep gawkers away, and three stories was not too enormous, so walking
between old mill buildings didn't leave them overly exposed.

      But still. I'm piloting a giant robot,
Emily thought. I'm a Gundam. Battletech. Mechwarrior. Best day of my life.

      Also, Winter explained, he and
Bohr had rigged the hands of the robot to let her use her walls of slam like
the gloves they'd loaned her earlier. Though definitely not precise, they
helped her focus her powers while she used bubbles of float to control the
vehicle's limbs.

      She wasn't crazy about needing to
concentrate to keep the suit balanced, but a benefit of controlling gravity was
that when she fell, a quick bubble of float would catch her and put her right
back on her feet again. Henry told her it would be easier in outer space, when
her self-created artificial gravity would be used strictly to move, not to
maintain equilibrium.

      "Does she have a name?"
Emily said.

      "What?" Winter said from
his unseen compartment inside the robot.

      "The suit?" Emily said. "Gipsy
Danger? Blue Destiny? Hellbringer? Something?"

      "You're the pilot, you pick."

      "Can we call it Hideaki?"
she said.

      "I… guess?" Winter said.
"Why?"

      "He's one of the creators of
Neon Genesis Evangelion—y'know. Oh, never mind. Trust me. Hideaki is a good
name."

      Winter laughed.

      "We'll call the robot
Hideaki," he said.

      Emily was almost disappointed when
their communicators beeped at the same time with an incoming call from the Tower.
They both understood what the call could mean. Emily wasn't ready to stop
playing yet. Although, she thought, if it was time for action…

      "Go for Emily," she
said, activating her headset. "I'm listening."

* * *

      And now, in the present moment,
Emily moved with shocking grace through outer space, controlling Hideaki like
an expert. She realized what she was doing—mimicking with her bubbles of float
the sort of movements she'd watched Kate perform thousands of times, sweeping
kicks, powerful punches, forever in motion, causing destruction with each swing
and step.

      Imitation is the most sincere form
of flattery, Emily thought. She wished Kate could be here to witness her giant
robot impersonation of the dancer.

      But listening to Billy yell "Are
you kidding me!" into her headset was reward enough.

      Emily saw him—a bright white
streak tearing through enemy ships in the distance.

      "This is what you get for
taunting me in the future, Billy Case," Emily said, knocking another
fighter out of the sky.

      "Listen up," Jane said,
cutting them both off. "The seed ships are on the move."

      Emily turned the giant robot's
head to scan the center of the fleet as the seed ships—strange terraforming
vehicles designed to tear into the planet like a spade into a garden—started
breaking away from the brain ship.