Thrusts of Justice (Chooseomatic Books), page 21
A sustained search of the palatial manor turns up Thorpe in a top-floor suite. At least, you think it’s Thorpe. He’s ragged, bearded, and wild-eyed, and crusted with enough filth to make you suspect his face hasn’t seen a washcloth since the Clinton administration. You try engaging him in conversation, but he leaps onto his bed, wraps himself in a filthy blanket, and starts repeating something incomprehensible to himself beneath his breath. “If this guy is still calling the shots over at Crexidyne,” Tinker says, “their current stock price is severely overvalued.”
Before you can consider your next move, the room’s bay windows shatter and a fleet of Cosmic Guardians tackles you and your companions. Man, that big metal contraption the Ox ruined would really come in handy right now — you cover yourself in a gooey shell and start flinging gunk at your attackers, but there are too many of them. There seems to be a limitless supply of space marines, regardless of how many you incapacitate with goo.
Although that’s actually a surprising amount. You take down six alien heroes by yourself before they overwhelm you and you’re torn to tiny little pieces. And that’s pretty good. So, you know. You should be proud of yourself.
THE END
246
Hell, it’s not like you had any jet fighter experience before yesterday, right? Ocean Boy will be fine. He makes a frankly worrisome little groan as you transfer the controls to him, but then Chuck leaps out of the open hatch, and you follow. It’s business time! Hmm — that can’t be the best superhero battle cry you can come up with. Walloping time? You make a mental note to give it more thought at some point in the future when you’re not actively plummeting.
The Human Torpedo flattens himself into the most aerodynamic shape possible to pick up speed and aims straight for Lightning Queen — probably a good call, since her electrical powers and psychotic disposition make her the biggest threat. You press the button on your touchscreen that transforms your billowing cloak into a hang-gliding contraption and choose your own target: Doctor Diabolus. You glide down and plow into him from behind at full speed. It works like a charm — he provides a soft place for you to land, and the resulting blow results in just enough soft tissue damage and head trauma to put your opponent out like a light. That was awesome! As you stumble to your feet and try to untangle yourself from your cloak, however, you glance up at the sky.
The jet is falling like a ton of bricks directly above you, black smoke billowing from its fuselage. Whoops. In retrospect, perhaps you asked Ocean Boy to bite off a little more than he could chew? Either way, you’re crushed and then incinerated by the exploding wreckage of your own plane.
Which is a fairly humiliating way for a superhero to go.
THE END
247
You’re not a hundred percent sure what’s going on here, but it looks to you like a squadron of space police against Earth’s most boring villains, so at least you know which side you’re on. It also looks like they don’t actually need much help. They dispatch most of the riffraff with ease, and although the Ox appears to be giving them a good workout, after about a minute he just passes out and falls to the floor.
That would be Migraine, you realize, still camped out in his adrenal gland.
One of the other Guardians skitters up to you (it’s shaped like an enormous insect) and puts a pincer on your shoulder. “Uh, hi,” you say. Soon the slug-like one joins it, pressing some of it’s own armored flesh into your backside. You look around and see the others gathering unconscious supervillains into burlap sacks.
“Moretti?” You say as several more Guardians surround you. “You want to tell these guys that I work for you? Like, hands off the government employee and all?”
He just looks at you and smiles.
Even before they begin tearing you from limb to limb, you realize you’ve made a huge mistake.
THE END
248
They’re okay, but not great.
Click here for page 30.
249
It has to be you — it’s not that you don’t trust Dale. It’s that you don’t trust him with the fate of the entire planet. You suit up and blast off.
You break atmosphere and spot an unnatural light just over the Earth’s horizon. As you approach it, a dozen oddly-shaped creatures in armor like yours come out to meet you. They fire blasts of energy and you fire back, but there are far too many. It’s all you can do to maneuver around them and get a better look at their ship. The thing is the size of a small city, and from a bay door you spot a platoon of Guardians working like insects around a giant metal cylinder. That must be the tower!
One by one, the worker bees peel themselves off and rocket toward you. Sustained fire from the ones you’ve encountered already is taking its toll on your shielding — you can’t possibly take much more of this. If you don’t come up with something fast, it’ll be too late.
What about a suicide run? If you fling yourself at it, could you generate an explosion big enough to blow the tower up?
The primary increase delivers also bituiui momentum, your armor insists.
“I don’t know what that means!” You don’t have time to figure it out, either — Guardians are quickly surrounding you. “Ramming speed!” you say. “Go!”
You smack into the vast piece of machinery like a bug against a windshield. The impact doesn’t do any measurable damage to the equipment, but it does knock you unconscious and take your battlesuit temporarily offline.
Prying, armored appendages and the harsh ravages of space do the rest.
THE END
250
You rocket through the ocean depths with your companions, half-blind from two-century-old rum, to avenge every baby seal who’s ever met its end at the stubby little teeth of the dastardly orca.
This can’t end well.
Oh, the actual whale fighting is a piece of cake. Ocean Boy, in particular, is nothing short of magnificent. They used to say that in his own element his strength and speed were a match for Magnifica herself, and from what you witness, you believe it. You, however, don’t fare quite as well. The rapid acceleration and the excitement of a pitched battle prove too much for your poor stomach, and you suddenly find yourself violently ill. There’s no genteel way to put this: before long the inside of your helmet starts to fill up with booze puke.
Your battlesuit normally has contingencies to deal with such issues, but, alas, Sten Janssen was a bit of a teetotaller and this is its first experience with binge drinking. It’s actually fairly drunk itself just from being psychically connected to you, and is terribly confused. So your suit’s artificial intelligence completely fails to keep you from choking to death on your own vomit somewhere deep beneath the Pacific Ocean.
It’s no way for a hero to go.
THE END
251
You’re not sure if a harder or more gelatinous shell will offer more protection from the fall, but suddenly you find yourself trying to engineer one of those middle school science project egg drops on the fly.
It’s not your best work.
You create a soft shell, surrounded by a harder shell, surrounded by a medium-density shell, but before you’ve completed the third layer, the whole kit and caboodle hits solid ground with you inside. The thing is, normally your new body could easily withstand the impact by collapsing into purple goop and reforming itself. Except right now you’re pretty freaked out by that idea, and your subconscious is actively directing your physiology not to do that.
So instead it collapses mostly to the standard kind of red goop, smashing up against the inside of your haphazardly-constructed cocoon and partially mixing with its soft inner layer. It would create quite the puzzle for some poor crime scene investigator-type if anyone ever happened to stumble upon your dead body.
But no one ever does.
THE END
252
Whatever Nancy has in mind is probably better than wandering around aimlessly, which is more or less what you’ve been doing up until now. “Okay,” you say. “What’s the plan?”
“If Crexidyne really is working with the Cosmic Guard, there will be records of it,” she says. “I have passwords that should get us into their computer system. But we’ll need to get in the building, and down into the secure sub-basement levels.”
“With two-ton space armor, I’m not sure stealth is really my strong point.”
Nancy smiles. “That’s why you’re going to be the diversion,” she says. “Guardian, meet Nightwatch.”
A dark figure pops out from the hallway, nearly giving you a heart attack in the process. Seriously, how many people are hiding in your apartment right now? As the shock wears off, you recognize the same black cowl and glowing eyes that you saw in the alley behind the bank this morning. “She’s Nightwatchman’s protégé,” Nancy continues, “and we’ve been pooling our resources. Your job is breaking — she’ll take care of the entering.”
It makes sense that Nightwatchman would be training a replacement, you think — he’s been active since the early ’70s, which would mean he’s pushing 60 at the very least. You stick out one hand and introduce yourself, but she just stares at you silently. It’s a bit disconcerting. Also, it dawns on you that your visor is still open, making you the worst secret-identity-keeper ever.
Also, as far as Nancy’s plan goes, aimless wandering is starting to sound a little better. “That’s it?” you ask. “I walk into Reginald Thorpe’s base of operations and start punching things?”
“That’s stage one,” Nancy says. “Once we find out what their angle is, your mission will be to join the Guardians’ ranks and disrupt them from the inside. That will require additional preparations, however — for now, this is strictly recon. And Nightwatch — if you find any evidence of the Guard’s involvement at all, get out. That’s an order.”
Nancy’s concern for your partner is touching, but you notice that she doesn’t seem to have any similar concerns for your well-being. Decoy duty sounds pretty dangerous to you, and even if you succeed, what do you have to look forward to? A rematch with the alien creeps who tried to kill you earlier? Well, technically, it’s not too late to back out and track down that telepath (honestly, page 24 is just sitting there waiting for you — knock yourself out), but otherwise it’s time to put up or shut up. You wanted to be a hero. This is your chance.
“You know what? I love this plan. Which way to Crexidyne?”
Crexidyne central command is in New York City, and you offer to carry your new partner there, but she has her own transportation. She punches something into a little keypad on the back of her wrist and slides out the back door, firing a grappling hook and ascending effortlessly to the sleek black aircraft that’s now hovering above your apartment complex. You follow her flight path to the city and prepare for stage one: finding out if the Cosmic Guard is in league with Earth’s greatest supervillain, Reginald Thorpe.
As Nightwatch lands her jet in a secret underground hangar not far from Crexidyne, a message spits out on your visor’s display. FIVE MINUTES, it reads. COVER ME.
For your part, you figured you’d just walk into the building’s lobby and start busting up the joint. With any luck, Crexidyne corporate security will be more of the high-school-dropouts-with-stun-guns sort than the high-tech-robot-suit variety, and you can make a big ruckus without putting yourself in too much actual danger until Nightwatch sends you the all-clear. You walk in the front door and find that the building’s lobby is surprisingly quiet. A lone security guard glances up from his magazine, looks at you, and shrugs. “Rooftop,” he says, gesturing toward the elevators with his thumb.
Hmm — that seemed awfully casual. How many people in cosmic battle armor walk through those doors on an average weekday? It’s time to start the diversion — should you continue with your plan and just go crazy on the spot? Or take the elevator up to the building’s roof and see what there is to destroy up there?
▶ If you stick to the plan, click here for page 288.
▶ One distraction is as good as another, right? If you take your senseless violence act to the rooftop, click here for page 38.
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“So what next?” Tinker asks. “I’ve got some ideas on how to get the poison gas out of this thing and replace it with oxygen. You want me to get started?”
“All in good time,” you say. “First, get yourself down to the atmospheric conversion machines. I want you to study them, and be prepared to deploy by the time we reach Earth.”
He pauses. “Um… why?”
You give him your steeliest glare. “So we can use the threat of planetary destruction to force the governments of the world to surrender. What did you think we were doing here?”
“Boss,” the Ox says, “from what I know, the governments of the world aren’t real surrendery. You think we really got the muscle to put up a fight if they call your bluff?”
Vicious as they are, your supervillain attack squad has dwindled to less than ten recruits. The Ox, however, is missing the point. You’re not some posturing buffoon with delusions of grandeur and a self-sabotage complex. If you issue an ultimatum, world leaders can either accept your terms or they can be destroyed. “Look into my eyes,” you say. “Do I look like I’m bluffing?”
The Ox meets your gaze, then exchanges glances with Tinker, Suong, Cockroach, Verminator, and the others. “No,” he says with a sigh. “Sorry about this.”
He reaches out and crushes the helmet of your suit with one hand. You gasp and thick, brown alien air fills your lungs — the stuff immediately goes to work on your innards, killing you within seconds.
“We’re bad guys,” the Ox says as your insides boil. “We’re not friggin’ insane.”
THE END
256
You delve deeper. In fact, you descend as far as you can. The visions stored here are very different from what you’ve seen so far, not the product of a single observer, but ancestral memories of an alien world.
It started millennia ago, on a planet not unlike Earth. This was the Fatherworld. The inhabitants weren’t humanoid in shape, but in spirit they could have been our cousins, full of hope and ambition, capable of incredible kindness and terrible destruction. They fought wars, made peace, and lived their lives, filling their planet to the very brim. Then they set their sights elsewhere. They developed the technology to terraform a second planet in their solar system, slowly transforming the barren world into a new paradise. This was the Motherworld.
The work took generations, and the Motherworld colony grew and grew. However, their hybrid mechanical/biological technology was unstable, and the carefully crafted ecosystem began to mutate beyond their control. The atmosphere turned to poison. The entire project was deemed a failure, and rather than risk contaminating their own planet, the Fatherworld leaders cut off all contact, leaving the entire colonist society to die.
Desperate, the colonists turned their technology inward. If they couldn’t mutate the planet to suit their biology, they would mutate themselves to match the planet. They became twisted, misshapen mockeries of their former species, but they survived, and even prospered. Still, the Motherworld was slowly degenerating into the barren rock it had previously been. So, a century later, the colonists unleashed their fury on the Fatherworld that had long since forgotten them, launching a global attack and terraforming their ancestral home to fit their new needs, killing off the existing population in the process.
From there, they turned to the stars. After all, how could they trust that the Fatherworld wouldn’t betray them and turn to poison as well? They sent probes to other solar systems, looking for living worlds to reshape in their own image. When they found one, they carefully studied the native biology over a period of decades until they had the information they needed. Then they struck quickly, ushering in complete destruction within days, and grafting a handful of natives to mechanical battlesuits to act as shock troops for the next invasion.
Now they’ve come to Earth.
You’re wrenched away from the vision by a flash of pain. The alien intelligence has found you! It attacks, trying to overwhelm your intellect with its own. You don’t even know how to begin to defend yourself.
▶ If you flee, hoping to break the psychic connection before it can devour your mind, click here for page 284.
▶ If you fight, hoping to defeat Cosmo the Space Dog in psychic combat and uncover secrets that will save the world from the alien menace, click here for page 183.
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The ego is always a good place to start. “You’re probably right,” you say. “I can’t risk putting a woman of your advanced years in harm’s way. I’ll find some younger superpowered heroes to help me.”
“Reverse psychology? What are you, 12?” She pulls something from her robe pocket and tosses it at you. “You know what that is?”
It’s a dirty little black rock. Is it the secret space element that robs her of her powers or something? Fortunately, your glove computer is already at work: 76% carbon, according to the readout. Oh. “It’s coal,” you say, trying to sound like you figured that out on your own.
She takes the lump from you and squeezes it for a moment, opening her fist to reveal an enormous, perfect diamond. Holy crap. “I could give a rat’s ass what you think of me,” she says. “Now leave me alone.”
You’re geeking out over the coal-into-diamond trick. “I’ll make you a deal. Help me do this one thing and I won’t tell the world about your secret hiding place. If you think I’m a pain in the ass, try dealing with autograph seekers and paparazzi.”
