Chapter Seventeen
Superhero vs. supervillan fights are often short but seldom brutal. Lots of confrontations start and end with “You know who I am,
do you really want to do this?” If the hero has a formidable reputation, often it’s enough. If it isn’t, neither side is
usually trying to kill the other; villains who become cape-killers don’t prosper, and heroes who kill villains have to fill out
all kinds of paperwork and appear in front of unsympathetic review boards. And then there’s the other kind of fight.
Astra, Notes From a Life.
* * *
“Dispatch!” I yelled. “Civilian evac!” Galatea froze, jerking, in the oddest attack of controlled epilepsy I’d ever seen, but
people began disappearing in blurs of red as Rush arrived and started clearing the deck, staff and customers first. Fisher drew
his gun before a sweeping claw threw him into the sports car behind him. He bent the wrong way, but before I could even react Rush
whisked him away as well.
The metal monster—a serpentine Chinese dragon built out of scavenged and spot-welded parts—focused on me as I leaped upward,
hoping to draw its attention. It twisted about with a thumping crash, flattened a shiny showroom car, craned its head to follow my
flight, and shot me with the artillery piece sticking out of its open mouth.
“Hope!” Shelly screamed as the sabot-round blew me through the roof. I barely heard her, or anything else until my arc ended in
the windshield of a BMW parked in the outside lot.
I pulling myself out of the car dashboard, and gasped as agony flared. Broken ribs?
“Clear?”
“Geez! Rush got everybody but Galatea and K-Strike, and you’re hit! Wait for backup!”
“Can’t!” I launched myself back through the frameless windows, coming in high. “We need to keep it here!”
The critter spun to face me, impossibly fast, its scything tail neatly decapitating Galatea where she stood. A second sabot-round
whumped out as I jinked, blowing another hole in the ceiling. K-Strike darted forward to push on its left foreleg with his field
and stressed metal joints screeched as it lurched. I dove for its wildly swinging head as it turned to look for him.
Whang. It staggered as I struck the base of its skull, grabbing hold and pulling up with stinging hands. Weaving, it flattened
another show-car as I forced its metal head back. Its tail hit K-Strike and sheared off against his kinetic field.
Whump. It fired again, adding a third hole and bringing down bits of burning ceiling. My ears rang and I couldn’t understand
Shelly. Damn super-senses.
It swung me into the wall, knocking me off in a shower of cement. I sat up, shaking my head. “Everybody’s coming!” Shelly
yelled through our neural link. Then it stepped on me.
I screamed as my ribs ground together. Pinned under tons of steel dragon, no leverage, I pushed back uselessly, taking sobbing
breaths in time with each lance of pain. Its head swiveled around, mouth open, barrel down, and I knew it was going to blow its
own foot off to take the shot. I could see down the barrel to the chambered shell, and I closed my eyes.
“Astra!” Its knee-joint exploded, then Rush was there. He grabbed my shoulder and the world slowed. I pushed again as he pulled.
“Move!” he yelled, and hung on as I flew up and back. The gun fired and I saw the shockwave propagate through the showroom
floor, shattering tiles in a wave that passed under us.
I pulled him up to a better position on my back, cringing as the move lit a fire in my ribs. “What was that?” I yelled over the
stretched-out echoes of the blast. The expanding cloud of fragments slowed and then stopped as he took us completely over the Wall
into hypertime.
“Shaped charge to the knee! I always carry a few on my bike just in case!” He sounded like he’d run a marathon. How many
transitions had he made? Focus. “Got any more of those?”
“One.”
“Bike?”
“Outside on the curb.”
We flew out through the glassless windows. Traveling in Rush’s freeze-frame world always gave me the wiggins (I’d closed my eyes
on the bike ride this morning), but I didn’t have time to think about it. I landed beside the bike and he dropped us out of full
hypertime into a slow-moving world of dopplered sound. Not letting go of me, he cracked a case behind the bike-seat and pulled out
a truncated steel cone, bigger than both fists.
He took a steadying breath and the world froze again. “You got a plan?”
I grinned savagely. “Off with its head.”
“That’ll work.” He wrapped his arms around my neck and I took off. We found the frozen dragon, head still bent groundward for
the shot. K-Strike hung suspended mid-leap, his target another of the critter’s legs. I landed us on the dragon’s neck, right
behind where I’d hit it the first time, and Rush slapped the shaped charge onto the joint where neck met head.
Rush grunted as it sealed, set it. “On go, take us away fast. Three, two, one, go!” I launched us as Rush brought us back into
realtime.
Bhwoom! The crashing explosion shattered the massive steel neck-joint, and I took us to the ground even as the screech of more
distressed metal announced K-Strike’s own attack. The headless dragon fell across the last of the show-cars and lay still.
The floater arrived minutes later, Lei Zi, Seven, The Harlequin, and Riptide on board. While everyone else maintained distance, I
checked the remains to make sure they weren’t rigged to blow like the robot had been. Aching all over, ribs burning and light-
headed, I wanted to laugh. I was alive. We had won. Then I nearly wigged when Detective Fisher stepped back into the glass-covered
showroom; I’d seen him bend backwards, in a direction no human was designed to go.
“Good job kid,” he said, lighting up.
“But—” I shook my head. Later. “Shelly?” I said. “Can you locate Galatea?”
“Her transponder puts her north of you. Looks like she went the distance.”
I found her head, eyes blinking up at me, behind a half-collapsed display wall. Picking her up, I started giggling uncontrollably
as she looked around.
“‘Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him well,’” Fisher said behind me.
“I do not understand your comment, Detective Fisher,” she replied. “Unless you are asking if I am well. I am incapacitated.
However, my cranial battery should sustain my higher functions until I can be serviced.”
“Good to hear.”