The Suns of Liberty: Legion: A Superhero Novel (40 page)

     And she was circling back for more.

    
“Helius, how far out are those helos?”
Revolution said over the com.

     Sophia gazed out at the horizon and saw them
converging on the target landing spot: the closed down interstate.

     “Landing now,” she said.

    
“Keep thinning the ranks,”
he said.
“I’m
going in to rescue COR.”

Revolution
charged the Guards, firing the cylinder grenades right, left, and straight
ahead. All they could do was try to dodge them. His speed increased: forty mph,
forty-five mph, fifty mph, scrolled across his visor. And then he was in the
thick of the crowd. The grenades had done all they could, now it was just about
brute strength. And the armor gave him plenty. He was like a bull in Pamplona charging into a crowd of children.

     They never stood a chance.

     Bodies flung left and right. Revolution mused to
himself that Arbor had set up these Guards as mere fodder. Probably hoping to
wear the Suns down before they all had to face his big guns. Revolution just
hoped that whatever secret defenses Bailey had built in to the Hall would kick
in fast and be just as effective as his message had promised.

     Finally, he reached the edge of the compound, having
left a trail of broken Guardsmen behind him. A thin tree line separated him
from the building itself. He stepped into the foliage...

     ...and saw movement in his peripheral vision. A new
squadron of Guards rounding the corner of the building from behind, weapons
drawn and clearly gunning for him.

     “Fire!” a voice shouted.

     The voice came from above him, and Revolution peered
up to see the face of Clay Arbor in his Lithium armor grinning ear to ear.

     Revolution stopped. A jolt of terror shot through him
as the new squadron opened fire with luminescent rounds. They streaked by him
as he dove for cover in the tree line. The glowing projectiles zoomed overhead
as they loosed another round. But Revolution kept moving. He rolled and spun
and leaped back to his feet.  There was not much other choice than to confront
the Guardsman. If he fled they could just pick him off, so he charged them.

     The Minutemen, camped out on the street behind him,
opened fire, trying to provide cover. The volley of fire they received back
from the Guards’ laser-rifles ripped through anything they were taking cover
behind. There was no cover.

     Revolution heard the cries of dying men and women and
knew the Minutemen could not last long against this kind of power.

     Instantly, another round of fire came his way, and he
did his best to dodge it, but a round pierced his shoulder—a glancing blow, but
it sliced clear through—through TO-4 armor, through flesh, through bone.
Another round caught the edge of his inner thigh, again ripping right through.
Burning pain shot through his body, and he could instantly feel the painkillers
swim into his bloodstream in response.

     And to his utter horror, Revolution saw the Guards aim
their rifles again, this time with no obstacles in their way, and too much of a
distance between them and himself for the Revolution to have any hope of
stopping them.

     He knew this had been going all too well. He’d let
himself get overconfident and now he was going to pay for that mistake with his
life. He winced, braced for the shot, as the men pulled their triggers. They
had stopped, planted their feet. The shots were aimed right at his head and—

     A massive beam of blue energy
shoomed
from the
sky, shaking the Earth with its ferocious power, and wiped the Guards out of
existence.

    
Sophia.

     The Guards in the front were just vaporized; the ones
she had missed dove for cover. Revolution watched as she arced up into the sky
and dove back at them for a second pass. They raised their rifles and fired,
but Sophia was far too fast. She dodged them and let loose another deadly beam.
The Guardsmen scattered, and by the time they finished hitting the ground,
Sophia had swooped down and took out the rest.

CHAPTER 42

M
ichael
Crustac opened his eyes. He had no idea where he was.

     It was a small room. No windows. He wanted to turn, to
see  more of the room. He fought the machine he was attached to. But doing so required
constant effort.  Like trying to grab something in a dream, it remained just
out of reach. 

     And then he heard the voice again. Much louder, much
clearer.

    
“Michael,”
the woman’s voice called.
“Michael!”

     The voice was coming from behind him. The direction he
wanted to turn. Finally, he found a rush of will and the machine turned.

     His jaw dropped. Or at least he felt like it should
have. His muscles failed to respond.

     Peering down he saw Fiona Fletcher. Unconscious and
strapped to a hospital bed. She was dressed in a patient’s gown and tubes were
attached to her arms, pumping anesthesia into her veins to keep her
unconscious.

     Instantly it hit him. The voice. It was hers. Fiona
Fletcher had been calling to him! Some part of him must have known it because
he had teleported to her. And it had nearly killed him to do so. “F-F-Fiona?”
he called out, fighting the control the Krill programming had over his mind.

    
“Why did you do it?”
Fiona’s voice asked.

     He knew what she meant. The Krill program ordered him
to resist this line of questioning.
You need to get back to the Hall of
Chambers. You need to eliminate the Philadelphia Police Commissioner
, the
program
told
him in his mind.

     “No!” Crustac screamed. “I won’t do it!”

     Crustac’s mind swam back to his previous life. The
memories kept flooding back. His days as an Army Ranger. His rise through the
ranks. His selection into the leadership of the Council Guard. He remembered
the drone, the hurricane, his near death.

    
“Michael!”
Fiona’s voice called to him again.

     Crustac felt his strength return, his willpower
revive. He stepped over to Fiona’s bedside.

     “F-Fiona. You...must stop them. They
will...kill...everyone.” Crustac shook his head. More control coming back.
“They’ve taken this way too far,” he said clearly. “Von Cyprus, Arbor, Tarleton, Howke. They’ve all made me do things. Terrible things.”

    
“You can stop them, Commander.”
It was Fiona’s
voice, but she had not spoken. Her lips did not move. She was speaking to him
in his head.

     “No, It’s too late for me,” he told her. “I can feel
them. Little cockroaches in my brain. Scheming, digging, trying to find a way
to shut me down, regain control.”

     Crustac walked the Krill over to the machine that was
pumping the drugs into Fiona’s veins. “I’m going to shut
them
down.” He
raised his arms and brought them down on the machine, rending the metal in a
loud screech. Sparks flew, the steel ripped, and the machine split in two.

     The flow of anesthesia stopped abruptly.

     Crustac spun. Back to her bedside. “Promise me, you’ll
stop them. We are on the edge...” And then he felt his mind slipping again. The
cockroaches had found a way back in. Putting him back under their control.
Cockroaches seated somewhere in New York City. In Freedom Rise
.
He shook
his head, blinked. “On the edge of permanent fascism.”

     In his head he heard the voices now of the three techs
in New York.
“Burn him,”
one of them said.

     Crustac concentrated as hard as he could. “You just
need to unleash your power from the darkness.” Crustac leaned down and put one arm
under her legs and the other under her back and lifted the frail teenager from
her bed.

     He swooned. His control was ebbing away. He had only seconds
left. He pushed with his mind for all he was worth and a field of glowing
energy grew around the two of them. Crustac could feel the luminescent energy
burning through his nervous system. Blood gushed from his nose, ran from ears,
trickled out the corners of his eyes.

    
Flash!

     They were in the Fire Fly lab again. He scanned the
room and breathed a deep sigh of relief. It was deserted.
Finally a break!

     But he was out of time. The bioluminescent circuits of
the machine literally began to burn away the neurotransmitters of his brain,
and the blood in his veins began to boil.

     Crustac screamed out in pain. He dropped to one knee,
nearly losing his grip on the still unconscious, very mortal teenager. With
every ounce of remaining strength and humanity he had left, he lowered her to
the floor and let her go.

     And then, no longer in control of his body, he felt
his blood burn into pure energy. The last conscious thought Michael Crustac
ever had was a realization that the Krill program was focusing on returning to
the Hall of Chambers. He peered down at Fiona and realized that before the
Krill returned to Philadelphia it would murder Fiona Fletcher. He knew he
needed to teleport away—and his world went black. 

CHAPTER 43

R
evolution
turned and saw his great rival round the corner of the building, grinning with
malice.

     “Lithium, release the hostages,” he yelled to Clay Arbor.
“Or we will take this place by force.”

     “There’s no turning back now, sweetheart. I gave you a
chance to change your mind, remember? Do you understand how much firepower I
have behind me? End this now. Your revolution is over. This city is mine.”

     Revolution said nothing, just stood his ground.

     “We have our own Fire Fly now, did you know that?”

     Revolution flinched inside his armor. The thought made
his blood run cold. He hoped Arbor was bluffing. He knew firsthand how hard it
was to find a Compatible. In all his years of searching he had only found
Fiona.

     “We call him the Krill. Rhymes with
kill
, if
you know what I mean. Did a hell of a job on the mayor’s office. A shame his
career had to be cut so short. Now, no one will ever know of his treachery. You
lose again.”

     “I haven’t lost yet!” And with that, Revolution fired
a cylinder grenade at Arbor’s head.

     The big man had little time to react. He raised his
arms, crossed them over his face—and the explosion threw him to the ground.
Arbor scrambled to rise, but Revolution leaped into the air and brought a tremendous
thudding crack of an elbow smash down on the big man’s head, and he crunched to
the ground once again. 

     Lithium responded by aiming both wrist-turret
flamethrowers at Revolution’s head and firing.

     Revolution’s faceplate snapped down over his
ventilation system just before the powerful, lithium-charged beams lifted him
off his feet and slammed him to the turf. But Revolution was ready; he dropped
and rolled and was back up. And without a moment’s hesitation, he did something
Arbor had never experienced before. He sent a gush of fire and energy right
back at him. A taste of his own medicine.

     Once he absorbed a blast, Revolution’s armor could
release energy from anywhere. Usually he chose his hands for precise aim.  This
time, to really piss Arbor off, he unleashed the energy in a star pattern
straight out of the bright red emblem on his chest. The blast slammed Arbor
against the concrete wall of the compound. Cracks ran up its stone facade.

     Revolution leaped forward, giving his adversary no
rest. As he landed, spikes came jutting out from his forearms, and Revolution
swung the right arm spike directly into Arbor’s titanium-plated midsection.

     Arbor tried to dodge the blow, but of the two of them,
Revolution was the most agile, the fastest. And though Arbor shifted his body
and tried to turn, the wall behind him limited his motion. Revolution’s speed
did the rest.  

     The spike’s near-indestructible metal smashed across
the ultra-titanium encasement of the Lithium armor. And the armor dented. Revolution
heard what sounded like a rib crack, and the big man howled in pain.

     “Give up, Captain. I’ve brought an army to stop you.”

     Arbor grunted and fired his jet-boots, hurling himself
into the Dark Patriot. “It’s Colonel now. And your army’s outmatched!” he said
as he slammed the Revolution across the turf.

     Revolution rose and charged him again. Arbor responded
in kind. The two great warriors sped toward each other at breakneck speed, the
ground shuddering beneath them.

     But at the last moment, Revolution leaped into the air
with all his might, his servos screaming in his ears. Arbor could only watch as
he sailed above his head.