The Indestructibles (Book 4): Like A Comet (36 page)

Chapter
66:

Lunch
in the park

While a near-hurricane raged over the
City, while panic washed over the streets, while monsters from other planets
stormed downtown, a well-dressed woman with eyes made of fire sat down in the
park on a tidy gingham blanket and looked up at the sky.

      The Lady Natasha Grey wasn't
particularly happy to have left her sanctuary by the sea. But, she thought, we
must all do our part.

      A thousand years ago, a hundred
years ago, maybe even as recently as a few decades ago in her long life, if
asked, Natasha would have said she'd rather let this world burn. A grumpy
little world, bereft of wonder, with scant magic—a gruff place absent of hope
or joy. She was born here, yes, but she'd been to other places, storybook lands,
heavens and hells. And Earth, she thought, was a drab little hole in the wall.
Let it burn.

      Funny how things change.

      You get attached to a place. You
make it your own. You find things to care about. You settle down. Or, instead,
you want to keep it safe for other people who care more about it than you do.

      No, she thought. Admit it. This is
home, and you like it the way it is. Dirty face and all.

      The Lady placed a series of
objects on the gingham blanket, which remained, like the Lady herself, untouched
by the pouring rain. She arranged an amulet, a dagger, a bag of sand, a glass
ball, a torch, a bag of tiny bones, in a fussy, deliberate manner, and then
started chanting, a sing-songy poem in a language few on Earth would understand.

      The ground in front of her opened
up, and things climbed out. Winged creatures, each and every one, some gray and
misshapen, like gargoyles, some lean and scaly like dragons. Little monkeys
with wings like bats, angry angels with blackened feathered wings. Demons and
monsters and beasts. They all looked to her for a command.   

      "You summoned us here?"
said one, a fork-tongued thing with burnt red skin.

      "I did," she said. "Would
you like to go home?"

      The creatures exchanged confused
looks. The red one, acting as some sort of spokesman, nodded.

      "We're bound. Not by you. But
other masters. Dead wizards. All of us. Bound to objects or the will of dead
men," he said.

      The Lady Natasha Grey smiled
warmly, showing her teeth between bright red lips.

      "What if I told you I'd
acquired all those old bindings and contracts, and that I could set you free
and send you back to the worlds from which you were stolen?" the Lady
said.

      The red creature quirked a thorny
eyebrow.

      "What is your price, woman?"
he said.

      Natasha pointed to the sky, where
the first of the alien ships were appearing, headed for the City. Tiny things,
now, but enroute to the City, more than enough to lay waste to the metropolis.

      "Destroy my enemies and you're
all free," Natasha said.

      "This seems too simple,"
the demon said. "No black mage would give up our freedom so easily."

      Natasha laughed, hard, her belly
tightening and eyes glowing brighter.

      "Let's just say I'm in a
generous mood," she said. "Defend this place from those flying
machines, and when the battle is over, I'll break every talisman and untie
every spell holding you here. All I ask is your help right now, and that you
remember who set you free."

      The creature bared his teeth.

      "In case you need further
favors," he said.

      "Come now, you know I'll have
no power over you," she said. "Maybe someday you'll want to return
the favor."

      The demon laughed, the sound of
rocks cascading downhill. He looked at his peers, some nearly human, others not
at all. He turned back to Natasha.

      "You have a bargain, little
wizard," he said.

      "Then fly, my pretties,"
she said, amused at her own phrasing. Maybe this world did have its charms.
They knew how to tell wonderful stories here. "Fly, and you'll be free."

Chapter
67:

The
barbarian

and
the magician

Doc Silence drifted in space, never
quite losing consciousness, but so drained by the massive effort of casting
those huge spells he felt drugged and dizzy. He closed his eyes, trying to
focus on meditative techniques he'd learned from a vampire in Siberia once upon
a time, and pulled himself inward, concentrating on his center. Instead of
regaining strength, though, he blacked out.

      When he woke, reality had erupted
into chaos. He watched in the distance as, with dreamlike imagery, one of the
seed ships went up in flames like a match. He knew that had to be Solar. Only
Jane could ignite a fire like that in outer space. Swarms of Nemesis fleet
fighters, little nasty crafts like flying claws, zipped around in the distance,
throw into panic by the loss of one of their ships.

      He watched Billy even further
away, a beacon of white light destroying another seed ship, so bright he left
streaks in Doc's vision as he darted around.

      But closer to him, Doc saw what
should have been a terrifying sight. Instead, he almost laughed.

      Doc had known Korthos of Aramaias,
the Truthbringer, the immortal, for half of his adult life. He liked the brute,
enjoyed his enthusiasm, and nobody quite knew how to throw back gallons of beer
the way he did. But Korthos had always, always, always found a way of biting
off more than he should be able to chew and had a special talent for annoying
his enemies. So Doc wasn't too surprised when he saw the big man getting tagged
by dozens of Nemesis ships, fighters and bigger warships alike, concentrating
their fire on him as he raged and hacked at them with that halberd of his.

      Korthos gave as well as he took,
destroying at least one fighter with each swing, sometimes two at once, but he
was completely outnumbered and, while he didn't seem particularly hurt, he was
also thoroughly trapped. If it weren't a life and death situation for everyone
else, Doc might have compared it to a dog walker who had taken on too many
canine companions, all of whom just realized he had a cookie in his pocket.

      Doc realized Korthos could handle
it. He understood they wouldn't destroy him. An immortal from a time before
modern men existed, his story was as old as the planet. Still, he felt bad for
his old friend, bound up in laser beams and swinging his poleaxe wildly. So Doc
shook off the cobwebs, flexed his fingers, and called up his favorite
transmutation spell.

      He turned half the ships into
tapioca pudding with a sweep of his hand.

      Korthos was, seconds later, covered
in tapioca pudding.

      Somehow, this made the barbarian
even angrier. He lashed out at the remaining ships, sundering them with blow
after blow, roaring into his earpiece—they'd forced him to wear a small mask
that would let him talk into it in space, though hearing the language coming
out of Korthos's mouth, Doc kind of regretted it—and, his enemies slain,
floated in space, out of breath, eyes raw with anger.

      "Nice job, Korthos," Doc
said.

      "You! Magician! You transformed
these ships into a dessert with an alarmingly lumpy consistency! I knew this
was your foul magic," Korthos said.

      Doc floated over, offering a hand
to help the immortal steady himself while he spun in zero-g.

      "Your culinary assistance
was, in fact, appreciated though, wizard," Korthos said. "Your choice
in spells notwithstanding."

      Doc got his bearings again, found
the brain ship in the sky, tried to count the buzzing smaller ships. There had
to be a thousand. More. So many standing in their way.

      "What are we going to do
about this?" Doc said. "This is insane."

      "We are going to smite them,
my friend," Korthos said. "I must return to battle."

      "You do that," Doc said.

      This was why he'd goaded the
barbarian into the fight. Tactically useless from a finesse standpoint, he was
tireless and, if aimed in the right direction, a real destructive force. "Don't
hurt any of our friends by accident."

      "To victory!" Korthos
said, flying, in his inexplicable way, toward the center of the fleet. He didn't
travel far before he'd once again attracted the attention of too many enemy
vessels, but he was keeping them off the backs of the other Indestructibles, so
Doc let him continue. That's when he noticed something out of the corner of his
eye.

      "Is that a giant robot?"
he said.  

Chapter
68:

Canceling
the apocalypse

Smashing starfighters out of the sky
with giant robot hands was fun for a while, Emily thought. Until they started
to gang up on her.

      The more of them she knocked out
of commission the more seemed to swarm her. She swatted at biplanes attacking
her like King Kong on the roof of the Empire State Building.

      "This is stupid," Emily
said. Another ship hit her with some kind of laser beam and the suit rumbled.

      "Keep heading for the seed
ship," Henry Winter's voice said into her earpiece. "We can do this."

      Emily generated a wall of slam to
smack a bigger Nemesis ship out of the way, then batted a handful of smaller
fighters with the back of her metal hand. The suit grew sluggish, though. Or was
it her? She created little pockets of gravity to move the limbs. Was it
draining her strength?

      "Is this thing slowing down?"
she asked.

      "It's taking a beating,"
Winter said. "Things are getting damaged."

      "I thought you made this
yourself?" Emily said.

      "Yeah, and it's a prototype,"
Winter said.

      "This is your test drive?
What am I, a gravitational car dealership?" Emily said while punching
another enemy out of the way. They had nearly reached the seed ship, which
looked like a cross between a missile and a drill. Emily watched enough sci-fi
movies in her life to have a terrifying image of what terraforming looked like.
She knew that thing couldn't be allowed to reach the planet.

      "We're almost there,"
Emily said. "What do we do?"

      "Hit it," Winter said.

      "That's so scientific."

      "Can you suggest something
else?"

      Emily used a bubble of float to
throw the giant metal suit at the seed ship, slamming into it shoulder first
like a football player in a spear-tackle. The shell of the ship cracked
underneath the blow, but the suit did too. Pieces grinded and creaked with the
strain.

      Emily reared back one robotic arm
and punched the surface of the ship, trying to get to its innards, hoping to
find something to shut it down. But, like a living thing, a fungus or a plant,
fibrous and organic, it didn't make sense to her.

      "Are there any weapons on
this giant action figure? A hidden sword in the arm? Missile launcher in the
shoulder?" Emily said.

      "Sorry," Winter said. "Didn't
have time to put a laser cannon on here."    

      "What good are you?"
Emily said.

      "I made you a giant robot,"
Winter said.

      "Okay, you can stay."

      Outside, the small Nemesis
fighters picked her apart. Wasp-stings disabled armor, scored the robot's hull.

      "I can't hit it enough,"
Emily said. "It's too much machine to break by hand. Do we have fire? Can
we kill it with fire? What about nuking it from orbit? It's the only way to be
sure."

      Winter grew quiet.

      It worried Emily that he might have
been offended by her Sigourney Weaver reference.

      "Emily, throw it," he
said.

      "Ha. Ha. Ha."

      "No. You're stronger than the
suit. Your powers are so much more powerful than this robot. It got us here,
but destroying this thing is all you," Winter said. "Use one of your
bubbles of float and just toss it at the sun."

      "Won't that… terraform the
sun?" Emily said.

      "Pretty sure you can't
terraform a ball of gas," Winter said, a slight trace of humor in his
voice. "Kill it with fire?"

      As if on cue, Emily spied a flash
of light in the distance, and watched as the seed ship Jane had been fighting
burst into a ball of flames. Always trying to show me up, Emily thought. Or
perhaps showing me the right thing to do. Thanks, Jane.

      "Here we go," Emily thought.
She tried to push off the seed ship to get some distance from it, but something
hit them hard from behind and rammed the entire suit against the ship. "What
was that?"

      "Dammit," Winter said. "They're
just throwing themselves at us now. They're flying suicide missions right into
the body of the suit."

      Another boom echoed in Emily's
ears and a second ship battered into them. She tried to turn around to whack
the next one out of the air before it could crash into them, but the suit
groaned mechanically and could not pull away.

      "Are we stuck?" Emily
said.

      "We are," Winter said,
fear rising in his voice. "That last collision must've caused some of our
armor to lodge in the surface of the ship."

      "Would it help if I got out
and pushed?" Emily said in her best Carrie Fisher impression.

      "It might," he said.

      Emily tried again to dislodge the
robot from the seed ship. She shook them, but it was like trying to move an
object much too heavy for them to lift. The chest of the suit was lodged in
multiple spots, and the right arm of the robot was hooked as well, with some
part of the elbow shoved deep into the ragged surface of the ship.

      "We got this," Emily
said. "We're gonna…"

      "Em, you're going to have to get
out and push," Winter said.

      "I was kidding about that."

      "I'm serious," Winter
said. "The head of the robot is an escape pod. You're going to eject, and
when you're at a safe distance, you'll bubble of float this thing right into
the sun. You'll be a big damned hero."

      Emily smiled.

      "You understood my Firefly
jokes this whole time?"

      "Locked away for ten years,"
Winter said. "I had nothing but time. I watched so much TV. I get all your
jokes."

      Emily looked for the eject button
on the console which—covered in lights and dials—seemed more like a Jackson
Pollock painting than a computer to her.

      "Big red button at the top,
the one with the protective cover so you don't hit it by accident," Winter
said, reading her mind.

      "Thanks," she said. And
then realized: "Wait, how are you getting out of here?"

      "I'll figure something."

      "You can't tell me you didn't
build an engineering compartment in this thing without an eject button,"
Emily said.

      "There really isn't an
engineering compartment," he said. "The section I'm in wasn't
actually meant for passengers, just repairs."

      "You're an idiot," Emily
said. "I'm not leaving you here."

      "Yes you are," Winter
said. "I'm going to rig the suit to blow up. Just in case. Nuke it from
orbit, only way to be sure, right?"

      "Don't start using my jokes against
me, Henry," she said sternly.

      "The suit I'm wearing has
limited oxygen. You'll eject, aim this thing at the sun, and then I'll crawl
out and wait for you to find me later. Okay?"

      "I don't believe you."

      "Have some faith in your
scientist."

      Another fighter crashed against the
robot and the suit shuddered again.

      "I'll give you time,"
Emily said. "I'll eject and then wait sixty seconds or something for you
to escape."

      "Don't you dare," Winter
said. "Those things'll be on you in seconds once you break free. You make
your move immediately."

      Emily chewed on her lip, almost
biting through it when another attacker smashed outside the suit.

      "How strong is your armor?"
she said.

      "I'll be okay. I'm sealed up
in this thing. I'll have some time."

      "Okay, well," Emily
said, before slamming the free fist of the robot into the space around its
belly, dredging the surface of the seed ship like fingers through mud, trying
to put a little room between the machine and the alien vessel."

      "What was that?" Winter
said.

      "Trying to give you a
fighting chance. May the Force be with you, Henry Winter."

      "You too, kid. Good luck."

      Emily nodded and pounded her fist
down on the eject button. Instantly, hydraulics hissed and release valves
clicked. Suddenly she was free floating. The head of her giant robot detached
and drifted off into space, leaving her behind as the seed ship maintained its
trajectory toward Earth.

      She stretched one hand out toward
the ship, envisioning a bubble of float, the biggest bubble of float she'd ever
created, bow to stern, and almost smiled as she watched the ship's forward
momentum waver while becoming locked into her gravitational manipulations. She
looked toward the sun, the protective glass of the robot's cockpit making it
seem less bright, less hot.

      She pushed.

      The seed ship's course altered
immediately, drifting even faster than before toward the waiting sun. Emily
couldn't watch the whole trip. The head of the robot started to spin
nauseatingly out of control. But she saw the craft's shadow flicker across the
sun and the little fighters chasing it, trying to save their master from
imminent destruction. Seconds ticked by. Emily waited for some sign. Maybe the
suit would break free. Maybe…

      In the distance, the suit exploded
in eerie silence, a ball of fire with a bigger ball of fire, the sun itself,
waiting to consume it. And then it disappeared.

      Emily sat in her spinning life
raft, suddenly very tired and lonely.

      "We did it . . . I guess,"
she thought, unsure of the cost.