The Suns of Liberty: Legion: A Superhero Novel (23 page)

     An explosive charge of energy from the sleeves hit her,
and the next thing she knew she was on her knees, tears streaming down her
cheeks, and she could hear a hoarse, guttural scream bellow from deep in her
throat.

     “That’s your skin being negated from physical
reality.”

     Rachel screamed again.

     “Oh, I know, it feels a bit like being burned alive,
but I assure you, Ms. Dodge, the truth is far more delicious. You are being
erased from reality, one skin cell at a time.”

     Von Cyprus released her, and she dropped the rest of
the way to the floor. Her wrist was bright red where he had grasped it. The
skin was simply gone.

     “Now, let’s start things off easy. How about we begin
with this cloak of yours. You’ve seen what I can do. But I have to tell you,
I’ve never even tried to break the code of invisibility. Always thought it was
impossible like everyone one else, but here you have a real-life invisibility
cloak. I want to know how it works.”

     “Fuck you,” Rachel moaned, grasping her arm just above
where Von Cyprus had mangled it.

     “Oh well. I really have wanted to see what this thing
can do,” he said, wiggling all ten fingers. “Shall we try round two?” He leaned
down, and Rachel looked up to see both hands reaching for her—

     When a cell phone rang.

     Von Cyprus stopped. Frowned. Shut down the sleeves. He
leaned back up and fished the phone out of his pocket. Seeing who was calling
him, he peered down at Rachel. “Sorry to be so rude, but I really do have to
take this.”

     And with that, Von Cyprus left the room.

“Mr.
Tarleton, what a pleasant surprise,” Von Cyprus said.

     “Cut the crap, Eric. I want those mirrors on the first
truck out of there.
Ana’s
headed right at you and I don’t want any
delays.”

     “Well, then you’re in luck,” the scientist said. “They
left here over an hour ago.”

     “Good.”

     “And some even better news is I’ve already started
interrogating the girl and in the process had my first real test of the black
energy.”

     “And...”

     “And so far, so good.”

     “Batten down the hatches. I’m locking you down for the
night, and air support’s backing off until this thing blows through.”

     “Air support? What about my baby?”

     “The
Delaware
?
She’ll stay with you as
long as she can, but then she’s going to fly clear of the storm until it loses
strength.”

     “What about the girl?”

     “You can pick her back up after.”

     “She’s CIA. She’s not going to be easy to break. How
far do you want me to go?”

     “As far as it takes. The world doesn’t even know that
she exists.”  

     Outside, at that very moment, the storm clouds
descended.

Lantern
entered the room to Revolution’s living quarters through the open door. “Sir,
permission to speak freely?”

     Revolution, scanning the rough layout they had of the
facility in Trenton, nodded. “You always have permission.”

     Lantern closed the door behind him. “You’ve been
derelict in your duty, sir. You should replace me as a permanent member of the
Suns of Liberty.”

     Revolution dropped the papers to his desk. “What?”

     “The mistakes I have made are intolerable, sir. I
don’t deserve full membership. I can be support staff, or I’ll—”

     “Diego,” Revolution said sternly, and hearing him use
his first name stopped Lantern cold. “I may have been derelict in my duties. I
won’t argue that. But it’s not been by keeping you on the team. No one else can
do what you do. We’ve all made mistakes. And we will make them again. But the
Suns of Liberty don’t exist without you. Shake it off.”

     “But, sir—”

     Revolution shook his armored head. “That’s an order.”

     Lantern nodded.

     Revolution stiffened. “Dismissed.”

     Lantern nodded and turned to leave.

     “One other thing,” Revolution said. “Just how good is
X-Ray?”

CHAPTER 23

I
t
emerged from the dark like a black moon of death, covering the rain-battered
horizon. Impossibly huge. The
USS Delaware
was larger than any of them
had imagined. Lantern had already cloaked them; otherwise, the armada of drones
that was housed inside the gigantic machine would have been unleashed by now.

     They would have been overpowered in sheer numbers
alone.

     The great vehicle turned in the sky. It was fat and
oblong. Its body resembled a slightly flattened blimp, but built of solid black
steel. Large retractable wings jutted out from the sides with eight monstrous turbines
firing on each. Twin giant rocket engines jutted out of the aft end of the
ship, both taller than the craft itself, trailing powerful fingers of flame
across the black sky.

     Beside them were two enormous lateral propellers that
allowed the
Delaware
to hover like a helicopter. From this distance,
they looked like two colossal flying saucers hovering on either side of the
twin blazing rocket engines. The flame from the engines illuminated the
propellers in a ghostly glow.

     The
Stealthhawk-2
banked and turned. Sophia
engaged the autopilot and leaned over toward Lantern in the copilot’s seat.
“Try not to wreck this one, please.”

     “Funny.”

     Sophia was getting to like piloting these choppers.
She didn’t want to lose the only other one they had.  “Can you track the storm
and keep her at a safe distance?” she asked him.      

     Lantern nodded. Hurricane Ana was on his scope,
complete with the most minute weather detail if he needed it. Lantern had
learned a lot from adopting some of the innovative techniques the late Ramsey
Hollis (aka Hunley) had used for aquatic scanning. Lantern had adapted them for
wind and atmospheric measures.

     “We have to go,” the Revolution said.

     Ward glanced at the Revolution, and even through his
helmet Ward’s doubt was draped on his face.

     “The Air Force and NOAA have been doing this for more
than a century,” Revolution said to him.

     “Yeah, in big, ginormous airplanes,” Ward said,
adjusting the small backpack that was slung awkwardly over his wings.

     They each had one, packed with equipment for later.
Sophia, with the most powerful thrusters, carried twice the load of the others—Rachel’s
gear for her return flight home.

     Lantern’s Hollow burned to life in the bay of the helo,
and they all moved toward the door. Ward embraced Revolution with a sigh of
resignation; Sophia put her arms around Drayger. The Hollow turned to all of
them and said, “Remember, you’re going to have about fifteen minutes in there.
After that, the eye will close and the other side of the storm will hit.”

     Lantern opened the door from the cockpit.

     The wind blasted in.

     So Ward and Sophia wasted no time. They rocketed out immediately.
Sophia led the way.

     And then they were flying.

     Ward hardly ever thought about the possibility of
being shredded by the chopper’s rotors anymore. He congratulated himself that
he’d finally gotten used to leaping out of a helicopter.

     But flying straight into a hurricane, that was another
matter. 

     In the distance, the massive afterglow of the
Delaware
’s
great rocket engines consumed the horizon. It was an awe-inspiring
sight.

     When they were well away, Drayger asked Sophia, “So,
let me get this straight. The plan is to hitch a ride on the most dangerous,
destructive war machine ever built in the middle of a freak hurricane, using
that freak hurricane as cover by flying through it, and attacking a facility we
know absolutely nothing about—but clearly is of the utmost importance to the
Council, due to the presence of the
Delaware—
during
the brief
break in the eye of the storm. Then, after somehow defeating whatever is inside
the super-secret, super-important love shack, we’re going to escape by flying
back through the massive hurricane again.”

     Sophia wasn’t hearing a question.

     “Does this kind of thing happen often?”

     “This would be a first.”   

     They stopped talking as the oxygen seemed to be sucked
out of the air. The heat from the ship’s engines rippled over them.

     The roar was deafening, all-consuming. The amount of
power it took to rocket this monster through the sky was immense.

     The wind from the storm rose; lightning flashed in the
distance. A reminder that another equally deadly foe was stalking them.

     They approached the ship’s aft end. It was like flying
between two miniature suns.

     The Hollow told them to stay low to maximize Lantern’s
digital shield, keeping the craft’s sensors from finding them.

     The hot blasts of flame stung their faces. Sophia
could hear Drayger grunting from the pain as she soared between the massive engines.

     And then they were past them. Past the roaring,
stinging fire and gliding toward the great, black expanse of the ship. On cue,
Sophia and Ward let loose their companions, who fell to the surface of the
Delaware
.
Revolution glided, touching down gracefully. Drayger more or less dropped and
rolled, or at least that’s what he should have done. Instead, he thudded with a
loud...

    
Whump!

     It looked like it stung, but he gave Sophia the thumbs-up,
even as he lay sprawled on his back, wincing.

     Ward and Sophia landed as softly as they could, and
they all four froze. The ship undoubtedly had impact detectors. They all held
their breath, hoping Drayger had not been too loud.

     All but Revolution had been outfitted with hastily fitted
magnetic soles for their boots, the holds of which could be adjusted through
thought-commands. The howling wind made them instantly grateful Leslie’s team
had come up with them. Soon, they would be standard issue, but tonight’s hasty
mission demanded an earlier-than-planned field test.

     Lighting flashed, and the clouds loosed a downpour. The
raindrops struck with enough force to leave welts, so they raised their
protective face shields. Revolution retracted his cloak into a shoulder compartment,
leaving only the barest trace of the material along his shoulder and neckline.
It was weird to see him without the cape. Ward knew he could detach the cape,
but he’d never seen it retract.

     This was the moment of truth. Either they’d made it
undetected—or any moment from now, the concealed doors that lined the massive
topside of the ship would explode open and belch forth the world’s largest
armada of deadly robotic drone soldiers from every direction.

     They scanned the ship for any sign of them.

    
A concealed door opened.

CHAPTER 24        

A
hatch opened on the ship’s massive crown less than fifty feet behind Sophia.
Right between her and Drayger.

     Out climbed a spidery-like drone that clung to the
black steel by robotic magnetized suction cup legsThe drone was moving slowly,
fighting the increasing winds.

     They all froze.

     It crept forward toward Sophia—who, ever so slowly,
raised her right hand and readied her blaster.

     Ward did the same with the disabling darts.

     It stopped. Then it reversed course and started
crawling in the other direction—

     Directly toward a terrified Ben Drayger.

     “Shit,” Sophia breathed. Drayger had no way to disable
it. He couldn’t even blast it. Poor bastard. If he was going to stick around,
they really ought to look into getting him an all-purpose weapon. His mind
games were useless against these drones.

     Sophia noticed something else. The angle she had on
the drone put Drayger himself right in the crosshairs of her bracelets. If she
blasted the thing from here she could hit him and either kill him instantly or
knock him off the ship. There was no way the magnetic boots would hold up to
her propulsor—not at the strength she would have to use to destroy the machine.

     Catch-22.

     The drone crept closer.

     Drayger was directly in front of it, nothing he could
do but watch it, and none of them dared to move to assist or the drone’s motion
sensors might pick up on them—alerting its robotic companions.