The Indestructibles (Book 4): Like A Comet (40 page)

Chapter
75:

Routed

Jane, still cut off from the rest of the
team without a working earpiece, didn't need one to see the explosion that
rocked the Nemesis fleet, its brain ship shattering in a quick, bright instant.
She stopped chasing the closest Nemesis fighter in order to watch the explosion
burn out.

      "They did it," she said
to herself.

      The effect was instantaneous. Although
the fighters didn't immediately go inert like she'd suspected they would
without the brain ship controlling them, there was instant panic as they no
longer seemed to have any real directions to follow. Some went blank and just
kept flying in a straight line; others kept fighting, but sloppily, and without
spirit or purpose. Jane knocked a passing fighter off course and back up into
space, and she watched as it just kept going, as if her punch were a subtle suggestion
that it might want to choose a different path, just because.

      All around her, Billy's fellow
Luminae hosts continued to battle, though Jane could see them making the same
observation she had. The fighters weren't really a threat anymore. She frowned
with concern as a wing or two of fighters took off into deep space together as
if fleeing. Were they more sentient than the others? Was this some sort of
autopilot instinct? Why were some running and others not?

      Jane spotted the last seed ship,
still making its way toward Earth. Her fists burst into flames and she prepared
to head for it, ready to deplete herself a second time to destroy it if that
were necessary. But then, in the distance, she saw the blocky shape of the
Tower flying at an almost comical speed toward the seed ship, and watched it as
the two crafts smashed together in a soundless, powerful collision.

      Billy flew up next to her just as
the last seed ship spun off into space, the Tower burning as it fell.

      "Kate just flew our house
into the seed ship," Billy said.

      "I knew she'd figure
something out," Jane said. "Where is everyone?"

      "Hang on," Billy said,
pressing the device in his ear. He shot Jane a worried look, then tossed her
the earpiece. "You take this."

      "What?" Jane said.

      "We've got people missing up
there. I gotta go."

      Billy erupted in a white light and
shot out into space, toward the wreckage of the brain ship. Jane placed the
radio in her ear.

      "Jane checking in," she
said. "Who's out there."

      "Still stuck," Emily
said. "Jane, I don't know where Henry is."

      "Neal and I made it out,
Jane," Kate said. "We're fine. Go look for Titus. He was on the brain
ship when it blew."

      Jane's stomach twisted, the idea of
Titus alone out there sent a shock of fear down her spine. Could he survive?

      "On my way," Jane said,
racing into space. "Doc?"

      Doc Silence's comforting voice
chimed in. "Already there," he said.

      Jane rocketed out into the black,
marveling, again, at how vast outer space felt, and wondering, with a growing
fear, how they would find their friends in all of that emptiness.

Chapter
76:

Human
debris

All these heroes, constantly looking for
a way to die while saving the world, Henry Winter thought. Adrift in space, his
suit's life support systems were still operational but nothing else really seemed
to be working. Not me. I never wanted to die a hero.

      Winter actually tried to fake his
own death ten years before in specific hopes of never dying a hero. He'd pretended
to die saving the world so that he could retire early. Winter had every
intention of buying an island, marrying a woman people would judge him for being
with while they went out in public, and drinking brightly colored beverages on the
beach well into his old age. He'd live off patents and inventions he'd created
during his lifetime.

      He botched that pretty well, got
himself captured, and lost ten years of his life.

      Winter wanted his beach house and fruity
drinks and someone stunning who loved him at least a bit to hang out with. Was
that asking too much?

      Instead, here he was, lost and
alone, and fairly sure nobody would find him. The distress beacon on his suit
no longer worked. His radio lost its signal. Rocket boots? Not functioning, and
really, not particularly useful for getting home. The suit wasn't designed for
reentry through the atmosphere. He'd be human bacon even if he could get back
to Earth.

      And then he heard the voice in his
head. Which was precisely the moment he assumed the oxygen had cut out in his
suit and he worried he'd begun to hallucinate.

      "Henry Winter," the
voice of Prevention, his onetime-jailer and sort-of nemesis spoke in his head. "Fancy
meeting you out here."

      "Well, this must be the end,
then," Winter said, assuming this was the instant his brain would finally
shut down. "I'm incredibly disappointed that Prevention was the person you
came up with in my twilight moments, brain. Couldn't you have picked someone
who actually liked me?"

      "I do like you, Henry,"
Prevention said. "Always did. Sorry about the professional inconvenience
of keeping you captive. If I save your life, do you think you'll be able to forgive
me?"

      Henry laughed, unconcerned that
his oxygen was close to zero. I might as well suffocate with laughter on my
lips, he thought.

      "I'm serious,"
Prevention said. "Turn your head."

      Winter turned to the left.
Floating in space maybe thirty meters away was a small spacecraft, reminiscent
of a submarine. A United States flag with forty-eight stars on a field of red,
with blue and white stripes was printed on its side.

      "Yup, I'm so dying right now,"
Winter said.

      "You can if you want to,"
Prevention said. "But I'm serious about helping."    

      "Sure, you just happened to
be driving along in your alternate reality space submarine."

      "First of all, good guess on
what this ship is," Prevention said. "Second, I'm a telepath. How do
you think I found you out here?"

      "That really you, Prevention?"
Winter said.

      The sound of her laughter filled
his brain with just the right combination of warmth and creepiness.

      "Call me Laura if you don't
mind Henry. And yeah. I heard you were lost. And I figured since I ruined your
life, the least I could do is come out and try to save you."

      Now Henry really laughed, so hard tears
pooled in the corners of his helmet. I don't have to die a hero after all, he
thought. I feel like it's Christmas morning.

      "Come get me before oxygen
deprivation kills too many more brain cells, and I'll forgive every horrible
thing you ever did to me," Henry Winter said. "I don't want to die
out here."

      "Are you asking permission to
come aboard my alternate reality space submarine, Henry?" she said.

      "Absolutely."

      In his delirium, he couldn't stop
himself from asking one last question. "Hey Laura. What's your feeling
about fruity drinks?"

      Prevention belly laughed, her ship
cruised in slowly to pick him up.

      "I prefer my hard alcohol
neat," she said. "But if you're buying, who am I to say no?"

Chapter
77:

Indestructible

Doc Silence moved through the cosmos on
unseen waves, spells older than the planet glowing at his back, carrying him
through the wreckage of the Nemesis fleet.  

      He pushed pieces of the brain ship
aside with simple hand gestures, telekinetic nudges to make room for him to
pass. Broken armor, blackish blood and fuel, pieces of organic machinery so
complex it was hard to tell if they were organs or engines filled the vacuum
around him.

      The dead floated here, as well: enslaved
hosts of the Nemesis fleet and its parasites, aliens from hundreds of worlds,
powerful and pitiful creatures who had been dragged across light years, to die
in a war they should never have been a part of. Doc mourned for them. If they'd
learned one thing about the Nemesis fleet, it was that they chose their
captives because they were powerful and brave. All of these deceased beings
floating in space were the finest of their kind, laid low by a force they
couldn't stop. They deserved better than this tragedy, every one of them.

      Doc searched for one being in
particular. The finest of his kind.

      He saw a flash of silver and pink
behind a slab of armor, a curved wall that once must have been some sort of
vein inside the brain ship. Doc flew quickly toward it.

      Clinging to that sliver of armor
was Titus Whispering.

      Reflexively returned to his
werewolf form and unconscious, he held on to the debris with claws clenched in
silent fury. Black lines of blood and brutality covered his body; blisters and
burns marked his skin and patches of his silver fur had been torched away. The
amulet Doc had given him still hung around Titus's neck on a metal chain, the
gem in its center pulsed softly. A little bit of luck never hurt. Or nothing
more than a trinket that provided you air when you couldn't breathe what
surrounded you. A wizard's toy, really, but Doc understood all the best tricks
began as toys and gimmicks. Not everything had to come from the pages of a book
to save a life.

      Doc Silence reached out and
grabbed Titus's wrist. The werewolf's grip loosened on the slab of wall.

      "Come on, my brave friend,"
he said. "Let's get you home."

      Doc stretched out his arms, gestured
with both hands and a bluish bubble formed around Titus. Air, clean oxygenated
air, and a force field to protect him. Doc's heart skipped a beat. It's said
that magic is all transference, that you cannot make something from nothing.
But great magicians can create something from nothing, if they sacrifice a
little of themselves in return. It cost Doc a piece of himself to provide air
in that vacuum of space, but this was the very least he could do for his
friend.  

      Inside the bubble, Titus reverted
back to human form, as if his unconscious mind realized that he was now safe,
that the beast could rest while the man recovered.

      "I've got him," Doc said
softly into his earpiece.

      "Is he…?" Jane said,
even more softly.

      "Alive," he said. "I'm
bringing him home. You and Billy find the others."

      "Doc," Kate's voice said
from somewhere in the void.

      "Kate, it's going—" 

      "You don't have to say
anything more," Kate said.

      He heard something in her tone, an
emotion she rarely showed.   "I can always read through what you're
saying," she said.

      Doc smiled and flew towards Earth.

      "And what are you reading
now?" he asked.

      "That you're not afraid,"
Kate said. "And it's all I need to know."

Chapter
78:

You
wouldn't believe me if I told you

Entropy Emily sat inside a giant robot's
head in the emptiness of space, convinced she got Henry Winter killed.

This is my fault, she thought. Sure, he
built the suit, and sure, he showed it to her—which is tantamount to telling
her to use it—but in the end, she was the one flying it, the one who wasn't
strong enough to defeat that enemy ship without having to sacrifice the suit.

      Henry's dead and it's my fault,
Emily thought.

      "Where are you?" Jane
said over the radio. She'd been quiet through most of the fight, Emily
realized. I'm a terrible person for not remembering that until now. But why
would I worry about Jane? She's always okay. She's not some old crazy guy I
just sent hurtling toward the sun. Jane's made out of sunlight. She'll be fine.

      "Em?" Jane said again.

      "Hush, I'm feeling sorry for
myself," Emily said. "I need concentration. I'm not good at feeling
like this and it's really weird." 

      "Billy's out there looking
for you. I have his radio. You might have to do something to help him find you."

      "I'm in no rush," Emily
said, her stomach in knots. Just leave me out here. Y'know, like I did with
Henry.

      "What's wrong with you?"
Jane said.

      "Nothing. I got Henry Winter
killed. I'm just a horrible, horrible person."

      Bedlam, of all people, chirped in
next. Clearly their earpieces were partially dependent on the Tower to boost
their signal, because her voice sounded even more fuzzy and robotic than usual.

      But it was clear she definitely
said "Henry's fine."

      "Go again, Bedlam?" Jane
said.

      "Henry… fine… hang on,"
Bedlam said, her voice breaking up.

      A moment passed, and Emily decided
that Bedlam was having another conversation completely separate to this one and
returned to wallowing. Then Winter spoke.

      "Hey, Em," he said,
sounding delirious, or possibly drunk.

      "You're not dead!" Emily
yelled.

      "Nope. I hitched a ride with
an old friend."  

      "You're losing it," she
said. "Where are you."

      "I'm… You wouldn't believe me
if I told you, kiddo," Winter said.

      Emily pounded her fists on the
console.

      "I'm so happy you're not dead
that I'm not even going to give you a hard time about how belittling calling me
kiddo is," Emily said.

      "You need a lift?" Henry
said.

      Emily, about to answer, heard a
tap on the glass of her robot's windshield. Billy glowed bright and smiled like
a lunatic. He put both hands against the surface and made a face.

      "No, I think I'm good, Henry,"
Emily said. "I'm glad I didn't get you killed."

      "Me too," Winter said.

      Billy made a telephone with his
hands and put it up to his ear, Emily shrugged at him. Billy held up his index
finger and, using his light powers, traced a heart in the darkness.

      Emily gave him the finger.

      "Push me home!" she
said.

      He mouthed the word: "What?"

      "Push me! Take me home,
Jeeves!"

      Billy pointed at himself. "Me?"

      Emily threw her helmet at the
window.

      He made calming motions with his
hands, then darted out of sight. The robot head began to move, and soon, the
Earth was dead ahead.

      "It really does help when
someone gets out and pushes," Emily said. "Princess Leia was right."