Vanguard: The Complete Second Season: A Superhero Serial (Vanguard: The Collected Seasons Book 2) (19 page)

Thorne found himself pausing. Every time Lee would refer to machines as if they had personalities, it made Thorne do a double-take. He found it to be a very strange thing, referring to inanimate objects as people. But then he remembered how he met Zenith—an artificial man, but one who had more intelligence and personality than many flesh-and-blood humans Thorne had met in his life. That thought was what always stopped Thorne from making any comments about Lee’s speech.

“Cerberus’ own records confirm that they’ve got a pretty big prisoner list. They’ve definitely been going after specials, Thorne.”

“Anyone we know?” asked Zenith.

“Let’s have a look…” Lee turned back to the console and worked his magic. His jaw nearly dropped when the result came up. “Oh shit.”

“What is it?” asked Thorne.

Lee hit a key on the console and the monitors showed the image of a young woman with brown skin, short black hair, and large brown eyes. A woman Zenith and Thorne especially knew very well.

“Anita…” muttered Zenith.
 

“Callus is starting to go after our people,” said Thorne. “We have to get to work. Send it out.”

“Whoa, hold on a sec.” Lee stood and stepped closer to Thorne. “You sure we can trust him? I know he used to be your guy, but now he’s one of them.”

“James Ellis only joined Cerberus because I told him to,” said Thorne. “He can be trusted.”

“Yeah, I know you
think
that but a lot can happen in—”

“Parker.” Thorne’s voice became stern. “If I say Gunsmith can be trusted, then he can be trusted. Now send him the information.”

“You’re the boss…” muttered Lee as he returned to the console.
 

“Good man,” said Thorne. “I’ll be in my office. Let me know how it works."

CHAPTER 3

A small, one-man shuttle hovered over the surface of the Earth’s moon and moved into hover mode, slowly lowering. The craft was a sleek black, and the canopy vanished once it touched down on the surface.

The shuttle’s occupant climbed from the canopy, clad in a black suit with gold trim. The helmet she wore concealed her reddish-orange skin and yellow hair and she stepped onto the moon’s surface.
 

“Log entry, J’Karra of Kothar,” she said, the helmet recording her voice. “After a long journey, I have arrived at the coordinates provided by the Matriarch.”
 

J’Karra crossed an arm in front of her body and a holographic display projected from her gauntlet in front of her helmet’s visor. Symbols of the Kotharian language appeared in addition to scan results.

“Chaknaar energy signature is faint, which means it
was
here,” she said. Something unusual appeared on the scanner and J’Karra made some alterations to the scanner through her suit’s cybernetic interface. “Other signatures here as well. Including a…temporal disturbance?”

She paused and focused on the scanner, thinking on the implications of what she’d uncovered.
 

“A temporal disturbance could be cause for concern. I’ll need to contact the armada with this new information. Pause log.”

J’Karra climbed back into her shuttle and the canopy materialized above her. Once she was safely inside, she activated a control on the side of her black and gold-trimmed helmet and it vanished as the canopy had before.
 

The long, yellow locks rested behind pointed ears. Yellow catlike eyes focused on the canopy as she opened a communications channel. Instead of seeing through the canopy and seeing the stars above, now J’Karra looked upon the face of the Matriarch of her people. A woman of a refined elegance whose people would die if she gave the order.

“Captain,” she said. “It’s been some time.”

“Yes, My Lady. I apologize for the delay in communications.”

“Quite all right. I suspect you’ve found something of note?”

J’Karra nodded. “I’ve located what I believe to be the point where the Chaknaar was unleashed. However, I’m unable to follow any sort of trail to its point of origin.”

“How is that possible?” asked the Matriarch.

“Perhaps because of the other energy signature I discovered,” said J’Karra. “There are remnants of some temporal disturbances.”

“What does this mean?”

J’Karra paused for a moment. What she was about to say seemed too ridiculous to even mention, but it was the only explanation that fit.

“Captain?” asked the Matriarch.

“Whoever unleashed the Chaknaar may have been a time traveler.” The Matriarch was silent. J’Karra lowered her eyes. “I understand how that must sound, My Lady.”

“And it may be the truth.”

J’Karra’s eyes snapped back to attention. “You think it’s possible?”

“Captain, I’ve checked the Chaknaar reserves and the levels are correct. It wasn’t stolen from us. So either there is another source of the Chaknaar or it comes from another time.”

“And if that’s the case?” asked J’Karra.

“If the thief has retreated to their own era, we have no way of following. Instead, we must focus on the fallout. Discover the extent of the Chaknaar’s spread and provide counsel on an appropriate course of action.”

J’Karra nodded. “I understand, My Lady. I will continue the investigation.”

The Matriarch’s face vanished from the canopy. J’Karra reactivated her helmet and used her shuttle’s computer systems to run scans on the planet. But what she saw flash over her eyes was a source of great surprise for her.
 

“Gods…” she whispered under her breath. “Resume log.” The helmet began recording again. “The Matriarch supports my conclusion that the temporal energy suggests the intervention of a time traveler. I have begun Chaknaar scans to determine its usage and there are some massive readings coming from the planet this moon orbits. A place that the inhabitants refer to as Earth. The readings of the Chaknaar are off the charts. If they’re correct, this means that almost the entire population of the planet has been transformed by the energies. I must investigate further.”

J’Karra entered commands into the shuttle and the thrusters activated, raising it above the moon. Once an appropriate altitude had been reached, the shuttle rocketed off towards the large, blue planet beneath her.

She would continue her investigation of the planet. Discover how the people could have possibly survived the fusion with the Chaknaar. And just what it had done to them.
 

CHAPTER 4

Lee finished the conversation with one final line. “Because I know all about you, Gunsmith. You and the rest of Vanguard.”

“Who
is
this?” asked the man on the other end of the call.

Lee hit a button on the keyboard and the call ended. He smiled as he sat back in the chair. He’d passed on the information to Gunsmith, just as Thorne had told him to, and with any luck Vanguard’s former leader would cause Callus some headaches. And Lee had to admit feeling a bit of satisfaction at playing the role of a secret informant. Made him feel like a real spy.

The sound of the door opening to the ready room brought the technopath out of his thoughts. He sat up straight and stood, meeting Zenith halfway.
 

“You said it’s ready?” asked Zenith.

Lee nodded. “But I have to ask again. Are you
sure
about this? You’ve gotten pretty used to Lucent’s powers, plus it must be nice being able to change into a regular, human body whenever you want. And transferring your consciousness into another robot means we run the risk of Lucent waking up and stirring up trouble.”

“We’ve been over this, my friend. Stripping Lucent of the ability to live his own life would be wrong. I cannot in good conscience stay in his body. I need to find one of my own.”

“And if he gets out?”

“We stopped him once, we’ll do it again,” said Zenith.

“Yeah, back when Vanguard was still together,” muttered Lee. “Okay c’mon, let’s see what we can do.”

Lee and Zenith left the ready room and journeyed through the connecting tunnel to the main area of the base, a converted ICBM silo. One of the floors housed a laboratory that had once belonged to Dr. Howard McCabe. Since Vanguard was disbanded, Lee had taken it over as his own personal workshop. His major project over the past several months was attempting to reconstruct Zenith’s robotic body, repair it from the damage caused in the battle with Lucent, and figure out just how to transfer the artificial intelligence into it.

The body lay motionless on a gurney. Zenith walked to its side, staring down at his former shell. It felt a bit surreal to look down at his own face like this. Lee sidled up next to him.

“You ready?”

Zenith gave a nod. “I hope so.”

“You sure you know what to do?”

Zenith placed his hand on the robot’s chest. “Originally, Lucent tore me from my body by draining the power source. Over the past few months, I’ve been practicing transferring energy from my body into electronics. I imagine the same principle would work here.”

Azure energy surrounded Zenith’s body, making his skin slightly translucent. Energy coursed through his body, channeled into his hand and directed right into the robotic body. Zenith pushed all the energy within his own body into the robot shell and one by one, the LED lights all over the metallic construct hummed with a blue glow.

Lee watched the body with a smile on his face. But then he saw the strained look on Zenith’s face. Was something wrong with the transfer? Little by little, the energy faded from Zenith’s body and the translucent glow turned to the normal skin tone of Terrence Gibson. He slumped to the ground and Lee ran to his side, looking down at him.
 

If the transfer was successful, it would stand to reason that the body would collapse. He looked down at the robot body, the LED lights on it still glowing brightly. But no further movement came.

“Zen? You in there?”

“Down here…” a voice weakly said.
 

Lee crouched down as Zenith struggled to pull himself up to a sitting position. He shook his head, dizzy from the energy drain. Lee watched his movements with a frown.

“Back to the drawing board, huh?”

Zenith gave a careful nod. “I’m afraid so.”

Lee took hold of Zenith’s arm, helping him to stand. Zenith stumbled a bit, bracing one hand on the gurney and Lee keeping a firm grip on his other arm.
 

“What happened?” asked Lee.

“I transferred all the energy I could muster into the body,” said Zenith. “Apparently all I’ve done is activate the power source. My consciousness still resides in Lucent.”

“We’ll try again once you’ve gotten your strength back up,” said Lee. “But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think this was a possibility.”

“What do you mean?”

Lee sighed. “There’s a lot we don’t know about you, Zen. How you were created or how Lucent was able to pull your consciousness out of your body in the first place. And if we can’t answer those questions, I’m not so sure we’ll be able to put you back where you belong.”

Zenith stared down at the lifeless body. “I had come to similar conclusions, I’m afraid. But I cannot live my life in another man’s body.”

“What are you saying?” asked Lee.

Zenith shook his head. “I’m not certain I know.”
 

Lee swung Zenith’s arm around his shoulders and wrapped his hand around his friend’s waist. “C’mon, let’s get you some food. You need to recharge somehow and I can’t think of a better way.”

Zenith weakly nodded. “Yes, you’re right.”

“Don’t worry, buddy. We’ll figure this out.”

The two men left the laboratory, climbing into the elevator in the hall and pressing the button for the kitchen on the third level. Once the door closed, silence hung in the laboratory and all the lights turned off.

Save for the lights on Zenith’s robot body. And then, without any force to explain it, the body’s hand twitched. The lights that served as its eyes took on an even stronger glow. Something stirred inside the robot shell and the body rose up, sliding its legs over the edge of the gurney. It held the hand up to its face, examining it as it moved, testing each of the fingers one by one.

“Well… this is an interesting development.”

CHAPTER 5

Leonard Thorne sat in his office, nursing a glass of bourbon on the rocks. He held a Cuban cigar in his other hand and brought it under his nose, inhaling the scent of the tobacco leaves. After another moment, he set the cigar back in the open box on his desk, right next to the framed photo of a woman with blond hair that had whitened with age.
 

His gaze lingered on the photograph, his hand hovering over the phone resting on his desk. His fingers lightly grazed the phone’s surface, but he wouldn’t allow himself to pick it up.
 

The knock on the door caused him to recoil his hand as if the phone were a hot pan. “Come in.” He leaned back in the chair, sipping his drink as Zenith entered the room.

Thorne stared at Zenith for a few moments as the man entered his office and sat in front of his desk. His movements were sluggish and unnatural. “You okay?”

Zenith gave a nod. “Yes, just a little weak.”

Thorne’s raised eyebrow was the gesture for Zenith to continue his explanation.

“With the repairs on my body complete, Lee and I attempted the transfer process. It…didn’t go well. All I managed to do was activate the robot’s power source and leave myself weakened.”

Thorne said nothing but set the glass on his desk. He rose and moved towards the liquor cabinet in the corner, taking an empty glass and filling it with ice and some bourbon as well. When he returned to the desk, he handed the glass to Zenith.
 

He held up his hand in protest. “Oh, no thank you—”

“Take it. Drink it.”
 

Zenith conceded and accepted the drink. Thorne sat back in his chair watching with an amused expression as his friend sniffed the bourbon. After a moment or two of that, Zenith took a cautious sip and his face instantly curled in disgust, prompting a hearty laugh from Thorne.

“That is truly awful.”

“Acquired taste, my friend,” said Thorne, sipping his own bourbon. “Besides, you’ve had a tough day. I know how much you’ve wanted to get back in your own body.”