The Suns of Liberty: Legion: A Superhero Novel (42 page)

     It made perfect sense. The back of the building was
protected by the river. And if they knew about COR, they’d probably already
discovered the secret underwater entrance. There was no more Hunley to protect
the waterway, and even if there were, the Council would have known that he’d
have been in Boston Harbor expecting an attack on the Suns’ HQ.

     So, the troops had gathered in the large open tavern
floor and now they were headed out to take on the Minutemen. Revolution juiced
his servos and raced forward, and with all his might he leaped up into the air and
slammed down on the midsection of the line of Guardsmen. They crushed beneath
him like ripe tomatoes. In front of him, the secret door to the Hall of
Chambers was open, and he stood in front of it. Six Guardsmen tried to take him
down. Six Guardsmen died.

     “Retreat!” one of them yelled, and the remaining Guard
high-tailed it for the front entrance. Evidently deciding they’d rather take
their chances stepping out into the massive firefight. 

     Revolution peered down at the stairwell leading to the
Hall of Chambers. It was time to rescue the members of COR.

A
huge explosion erupted behind the Minutemen. Lantern and Drayger turned—to see
one of the Sikorskys crashing to the ground in a ball of fire.

     On the roof, Fiddler and Fang were high-fiving over the
incredible shot.

Off to the left of that horrible duo, Spectral began firing
optical blasts into the oncoming troops, sending them flying from the powerful
impacts.

“We’ve got to get closer!” Drayger yelled.

     Up on the roof, Lithium spoke into his com. “Send the
Spores.”

Revolution
burst into the Chamber ready to fight, ready to kill. Instead, he found the
members of COR all gathered around. As he stepped forward, he saw why. Rachel
was there—in her new costume, such as it was. She had subdued the Guards that
had been assigned to the room by using a small gun Ward had given her filled with
his Paralysis Darts.

     He saw the hole that had been ripped into the center
of the floor.

     “Thank God!” someone said as he entered.

     “Is everyone okay?” he asked. He met Leslie’s eyes.
She shook her head no. She was unusually somber. And he knew. Not all the
members of COR would be returning home.

     Some of the members made faces as he came into the
light. And for the first time, Revolution took note of what a collection of
horrors his armor had become. Gore had dried on his arms and was splattered on
his cape.

     “I apologize,” he said. “It’s been a bit—”

     Suddenly…

     The room began to shake and tremble. Leslie grabbed
the wall for balance.  “What the hell is that, another sub?” she asked.

     “I’m going to find out,” Revolution said, and he leaped
down the hole in the center of the room.

     He thudded onto the concrete below and raced along the
walkway, at the edge of the water, in the shadow of one of the Council’s submarines,
until the walkway reached the end. The concrete created what was essentially a
large pool of river water. Normally the room seemed expansive, but now, with
five mini-subs and one large submarine, the room was crowded indeed. At the end
of the walkway, Revolution flung open the door to the outside and bounded out
onto the rocky banks of the Delaware River.

     And that’s when he saw it.

     The riverbank was vibrating just like the Chamber. He
braced himself as the shaking increased. The water began to bubble and boil. The
river glowed white. A long line of alabaster spread across the waves, from one
end of the compound to the other. Revolution took a step back.

     A river monster rose from the Delaware. At least
that’s what it looked like. Row after row of silver spikes jutted out of the
roiling water. Shiny steel orbs with bright spotlights built into their faces,
covered in spikes, launched out of the river with a pounding roar—each of them
the size of a compact car.

     Intercontinental Spores.

     The water spewed over the Revolution as he watched
them sail above him and disappear over the compound. Robotic and precise, they
were built for only two purposes: to intimidate and to kill.  But these were
ten times larger than any intercontinental Spores he’d ever seen. A
normal-sized Spore had killed John Bailey, the great Saratoga. What the hell
could these things do?

Kendrick
Ray knew exactly what they could do. Ray had slipped away.

     He’d been ordered to by Chairman Howke himself. Unseen
by everyone on the Legion or the Suns, Ray had snuck down the street and found
an abandoned warehouse where he had kicked in the door and set up shop.
Shop
being an old but sturdy chair. And there he sat, controlling the massive
Spores. Twelve of the coolest toys he’d ever gotten his hands on.

     He didn’t have much time to play. Howke had sent a van
to pick him up. It seemed that the Council’s top Locator was too important for
this kind of open warfare. Which was okay with him. He valued his skin too much
to just wade into a suicidal slugfest.

     But he was going to miss playing with these Spores.
Each Spore already had a prime directive that it had to follow, so Ray just let
them rise on their own and get into position. Then he was going to splatter
some melons! All over Beach Street, he hoped.   

     As the Spores rose above the compound, he saw all the
juicy melons: droves of Minutemen, just waiting to be picked off.

Lantern
and Drayger were sprinting for the wall.

     It wasn’t much of a wall. More like a fence, a concrete
hedgerow. Built to create a boundary for the Passport office when it had been
here decades ago. Now all that was left of the entire building was this small brick
fence.

     They fired their pistols as they ran. Lantern had been
an expert marksman in his days in the CIA. Now, he picked off the riflemen one
by one as he charged forward. Drayger had his eye on another target. At the top
of the roof, he could see Fiddler and Fang firing their own projectiles into
the onrushing Minutemen. Fiddler’s horrific mini-harpoons lanced into their
numbers, and the acid splattered out from the awful wound the blades made, taking
out two or three Minutemen at a time. Fang’s spears carried with them an
electric charge that guaranteed death to any they struck.

     Drayger wanted the Legion. He wanted Lithium. But
these two thugs would do for now. He fired the laser pistol, and the luminescent
bullets streaked out toward the roof.  Both shots missed, but they did paint a
target on Drayger’s head. Bullets strafed the area, and soldiers fell
everywhere. There was nowhere to hide.

CHAPTER 45

T
hey
all heard the rumble. It was coming from the compound itself. Their jaws
dropped. Rising above the compound, the giant Spores emerged as a long line of
death—and then immediately split into four groups of three. And as Lantern’s
spine turned to ice, he saw three of them drop from the sky and head right for
him.

     The spores opened fire with searing red lasers that
cut deep valleys into the earth and ripped any human being they touched into
gory fragments. The entire squad dove for cover—that was nowhere to be found.
The result was chaos. The lasers blasted all around them. Lantern snapped his
head around to find Drayger, only to see the man next to him take a wrong turn
and pop in a red, frothy spray of gore, but the young Neuro was nowhere to be
seen.

Drayger
kept running. The Spores would either kill him or they wouldn’t. Either way,
trying to dodge them was stupid. He kept aiming at the men on the roof, and as
he got closer, he realized that laid out across the edge of the roof was a
whole squad of snipers. He’d not been able to see them until now.

     No one had.

     “Hey!” he yelled to anyone who could hear him, “Take out
those guys on the roof! The roof!” he repeated.

     “Run for your life, kid! Are you crazy?” someone
shouted, ignoring his plea.

     “Who the fuck are you to give me orders?” another
demanded.

     It was a good question. He wasn’t even an official
member of the Suns yet. Something that irked the shit out of him. Hell, he
wasn’t even an official member of the Minutemen!

     Drayger growled in response. He stopped running—and raised
his left hand. Two Minutemen narrowly avoided plowing into him and cussed him
as they sprinted past.

     Drayger didn’t care. His eyes scrunched in concentration—even
as bullets whizzed by—and laser impact craters opened all around him, rock and
dirt raining down all over him.

     He opened his eyes and saw what he wanted.

     Across the compound, the Guard began to cease firing.
They gazed around at each other, confused. Fear on their faces. Drayger knew
what they feared.

     The Fire Fly.

     And he fed it to them with as much power as he could
mentally muster.

     “Fire!” Drayger screamed as loud as he could and let
loose an entire clip of the laser pistol, taking out a dozen Guards in the process.
A cheer rang up from the men around him, and they began to fire on the
Guardsmen as well. Across the front line of the compound, the Council Guard
began to fall.

     Fiddler and Fang felt it, too. A creeping dread that
made them scan their surroundings. What the hell was wrong with everyone? What
did they know that he didn’t, Fiddler thought. Fang thought. Everyone within
the range of Drayger’s neurolyzer had the same thought.  

     Back in the field, those close to him had all stopped
to stare at Drayger. “Who the hell are you, kid?” one of them asked.

     Just then Drayger saw another group of Guardsmen burst
out of the front door, guns blazing. “Look out!” he yelled to the Minutemen
around him and raised his hand, squinted hard, and the Guards all stopped
firing and took up defensive positions against the front wall, searching the
sky. Giving Drayger enough time to reload, charge forward, and start firing
again. “The name’s Neuro!” he yelled back at the others. “And I’m with the Suns
of Liberty!”

     “Well, I guess so!” someone said, and the whole group
followed Drayger toward the front door of the compound, guns raised, bullets
flying. They overwhelmed the Guards out front in a matter of minutes.    

Dust
clouds were everywhere. Kicked up by the Spores’ laser blasts. Lantern could
see nothing. He’d lost Drayger, and the kid wasn’t responding over the com.
Looked like he’d switched his off.

     Suddenly a light in the sky, emerging out of the dust
cloud, startled him.

     Lantern dove for cover as two Spores headed right for
him. Dirt flew up from under him as he skidded across the ground, waiting for
the horrible impact from the lasers.

     Instead, the Spores just zoomed right over him. They
blasted past the interstate, and as they reached the first row of businesses on
the other side, they opened fire. Flames and explosions rose into the air.

     “They’re going civilian!” Lantern screamed over the
com.

     Up top, Sophia froze, her boot-jets stabilizing into
hover mode. “Shit!” she breathed. She knew exactly what they were doing.  They
wanted to her to follow, to be drawn away from the main fight. But the light
industrial area they were targeting was largely empty. They might well be
blowing up vacant buildings. They’d have to do better than that if they wanted
to pull her away!

     But then, she instantly regretted having that thought
as she saw the Spores move further into the city, nearly on the horizon now.
More explosions rose up, and she knew they’d flown out to the low-rent residential
area just beyond the industrial sector.

     She had no choice now.

     She juiced the boot-jets and rocketed out to face
them.         Fires were rising in the neighborhoods. “Let’s hope Media Corp
puts
that
on the evening news!” she said.

     Suddenly, Sophia’s com crackled in her ear and a very
welcome voice chimed through.
“Hey, Blue, ya miss me?”

     It was Ward.

    
‘”I figured as long as I was getting high, I might
as well come out here and do it with you,”
he said.

     “You know, bug boy, I’m starting to see why you and
potty mouth get along so well,” she said.

     Ward dropped in beside her, and she slowed her engines
to make it easier for him to keep pace.

     “I’m sorry I left you hanging. It won’t happen again,”
he said over the roar.

     “You can make it up to me by taking out the one on the
left,” she said, pointing ahead to the giant Spores.

     “Hey, that’s what I live for! A day isn’t complete
until I wrestle a giant, homicidal robot.” Ward shifted his darts to Disabling
Mode, and he felt them slither into place inside his armor. “You know,” he
continued, “I said to my mother when I was a kid: Mom, you know what I really
want to do when I grow up—”