Supers - Ex Heroes 4 Page 9

Finally she was up, heard the noise, and alertness kicked in. We charged out of there.

  “Twitch,” I said, running in to find her dodging shots. “I thought you said you’d cover our arrival.”

  “I’m not fucking perfect!” she countered. “FUCK!”

  Another shot nearly hit, then an explosion in the sky. This didn’t look good.

  13

  “We need every ship to land unharmed,” Twitch said, slamming the side of her seat with a fist before returning to her pink screens, then her main controls. “Shit!”

  “Have any ideas?” Andromida said, looking pointedly at me. “Because if you don’t, I’m going out there to tear them some new assholes.”

  “Shimmer,” I said, turning her way. “Why haven’t you made it look like we’re not here? Or—”

  “Tried that,” Shimmer replied. “Problem is, it doesn’t matter. My best guess is it’s all A.I.-based. They’re sensing us, not seeing us.”

  “So throwing up a storm won’t do much good either, then,” Gale said, frowning.

  “And we can’t very well target their A.I. if we don’t know where it is,” Twitch cut back in. “I’ve been trying to locate the source, but no luck.”

  “And our friends in the other ships?” I asked.

  Twitch glanced back, then pulled up the comms to talk with the other vessels in our unlikely fleet. Immediately the images of Letha, Ezra, and a new guy with dreadlocks and a head bobbing up and down in his lap appeared on our screens. Jeesh. Apparently, I wasn’t the only sex-crazed one on these ships, though at least I wasn’t doing it in the middle of battle.

  “Any ideas would be welcome,” Twitch said, dodging again.

  “Trunk, really?” Letha said, frowning.

  He grinned, shrugged, and said, “It isn’t hurting anyone.”

  A lady lifted her head up, unfortunately giving us a view of Trunk’s humongous cock in the process. “Hurting me a bit, but I love it.”

  “Fucking hell,” Ezra said. “We’re all gonna die.”

  “Exactly,” Trunk replied. “That’s why I’m going out in style!”

  “IDEAS!” Twitch said.

  “Retreat,” Erupa, the demon lady with Ezra said.

  “How’s that help us?” I asked.

  “We don’t actually retreat,” she clarified. “Just make it look like we are. Turn the ships back, exit atmosphere, but not until several of us have made a break for it. We get down there, shut down their monitoring equipment, and the ships come back to join us.”

  “Us, meaning you’re in?” Ezra asked from her side.

  “Best way to get in, I figure, is with my shadow strike. Me and Gale—Gale, you can use your wind power to let us fall and then swoop us up at the last minute so we don’t die… right?”

  “Well, shit,” Gale said, massaging her chin. “Maybe?”

  “I’ll take maybe,” Erupa said.

  “And I’m going,” I said. “I can make some useful illusions, and if we get into a tight spot, I’m good at fighting my way out.”

  “While the rest of us hang out, hoping you three can take care of it?” Charm scoffed. “No way, right, Twitch?”

  Twitch tilted her head left, then right. Then left again. “Do it. And,” she swiped her screen toward me, so that my mini-map appeared with a blinking dot, “best I can tell, the attacks are coming from there. Signal might be as well.”

  “Got it,” I replied, happy to at least have a target.

  “Shit,” Charm said, and then whipped her tail about in frustration. “I’m coming too!”

  “You—” I started, but she shook her head, eyes going wild.

  “Another fighter, and one who can cloak?” She stared, waiting for me to say something. When I didn’t, she added, “Exactly what I thought. Let’s go.”

  “You all have the fun down there, I’ll keep making it happen up here,” Trunk said, already starting to pull back up with his ship, his left eye twitching as he did so.

  “Turn his display off already,” I said, realizing he was likely about to orgasm. “What the hell’s wrong with people?”

  He laughed as he disappeared from the display.

  “He was on Planet Kill too long,” Letha said. “Can’t blame him, not after that.”

  I didn’t know what to say there, knowing her background with the place. Giving her a nod, I motioned to Charm and Gale and said, “We better really need this guy.”

  “Trust me,” Twitch said. “Whatever they have waiting for us at Orion, this will be cake compared to that.”

  “Carrot cake,” Charm said with a grin my way, then licked her lips as we headed for the door, then to the ramp.

  “Do I want to know what that was about?” Gale asked, joining us. “Carrot cake?”

  “Just… Actually, no, no spoilers.” Charm clapped her on the shoulder. “I’ll let you find out first hand, next time.”

  “Hmm, just for that…” Gale pulled open the ramp and then ran and grabbed us both as she threw herself out, carrying us with her.

  “Fuuuucccckkk!” I shouted as we descended through open sky, bullets and explosions zipping past us. A shimmer of the ship’s shield showed it had been hit, but Twitch managed to turn it around and was shooting back up into the sky. Charm was shouting with joy, laughing, and suddenly vanished—cloaking, and then there was a flash of darkness, as if the shadows around Gale had shifted, and Erupa appeared there, grinning wickedly before pointing herself down for a free fall.

  Seeing her up close like that was an intimidating sight. She was straight up Xena Warrior Princess buff, but with curved horns coming out of the top of her head and red, glowing eyes. If I’d been back on Earth before knowing about supers and seen her, I’d have been convinced I was having a nightmare.

  “Enjoy the ride!” Erupa said. “And you better save us, Gale! Don’t you pull that shit like last time.”

  “Last time?” I shouted, realizing I probably wasn’t going to get an explanation about how they knew each other until we landed.

  Gale shouted, “Focus,” and then fell past me, descending quicker with an extra push of wind, I imagined. Maybe she meant to land first, then use her powers from there. In the meantime, I did focus, but on the topic of what sort of illusions I could use to help us here if Gale’s wind powers weren’t enough.

  Could I change the ground to water? Even if I could, not sure that would help. Make it a trampoline? I laughed, thinking back to this classic game I’d found in the system called A Boy and His Blob. It was a game where the boy gave jelly beans to his blob to make the blob into things, like a trampoline. In this case, sex helped fuel my powers, so… I was basically the blob, with sex as my jellybeans.

  Dammit, now I was craving jellybeans.

  And the ground was coming up fast. I considered growing wings and doing the dragon thing again, but that had drained me and I needed to be ready. Instead, I chose to trust Gale would have this figured out.

  Something tickled my ear and I freaked out, then heard Charm laughing as I noticed the shimmer of the sun on her in her cloaked form, and shouted, “Please don’t distract me when I’m trying to stay alive.”

  “I wouldn’t let you die,” she shouted back. “And if you did die, I’d come with you and bring you back. Don’t you know anything about me yet?”

  “Talk about clingy!”

  Whack! This time she had apparently whipped me in the ass with her tail, causing me to let out a yelp.

  “Watch what you say.” She appeared momentarily and then vanished again.

  The ground was really getting close now and I wanted to shout, to suddenly become the dragon, to turn the rock to cotton balls, something, anything, but then the gust of wind hit and I saw Gale among the rocks below, bracing herself and moving her hands in circular, sweeping motions.

  Erupa was there one minute, then popping up behind Gale a second later, grinning up at us as we passed.

  “Coming in hard,” I shouted, and then Charm was there at my side, uncloaked
, grabbing my hand and screaming. I had to hope nobody was around to hear that.

  Another gust of wind hit but I could tell Gale didn’t have this quite to the point where we wouldn’t get at least a little hurt, so I said fuck it, swung around to grab Charm, and busted out my dragon wings.

  We caught the wind. Gale saw what was happening and let it die down. As we glided to the ground next to them, Erupa stared at me, wide-eyed.

  “That’s something else.”

  “He’s taken.” Charm glared.

  Erupa laughed. “Girl, I got a man. Ezra keeps me satisfied in more ways than I can count.”

  Charm grinned. “We’ll have to compare notes sometime.”

  “How about we not,” I said, but the ladies were too busy laughing, Gale included. “Mission, remember?”

  They all nodded, laughter dying off, and glanced around. I pulled up the mini-map Twitch had set up for me, and indicated the route we had to take. We started off, running and leaping through the rocks. Soon the shots into the skies and explosions had died off, telling us our ships had left atmosphere.

  “Clear,” I mumbled, only a moment later seeing several fighter craft—round but for a crescent edge at the front—go zooming up into the air, coming from the direction where my mini-map showed us as going.

  “Quickly,” Erupa said, and she pushed over a rock, looked back and said, “Try to catch up.”

  A moment later, she was gone. I saw the compound ahead. It was mostly built into the ground, it seemed, judging from parts of it we could see where rocks gave out to lower levels in the terrain, but it had several layers of white metal above the surface. Turrets swiveled, clearly ready for more action.

  Erupa appeared in a window, motioning us to get our asses in there, then vanished again. Damn, keeping up with her might actually be a challenge.

  “Here we go.” I took off in a sprint.

  14

  When we entered the outpost, Erupa already had three bodies on the floor. She stood in the entryway to the next room, waiting for a response.

  “I don’t know how you all do it,” Gale said, shaking her head. “But these people—”

  “Aren’t people at all,” Erupa cut in.

  “Excuse me?”

  Erupa knelt down next to the closest one, grabbed the corpse by his hair, and pulled up. Sure enough, where the throat had been cut open there was what looked like blood, but in fact was a synthetic material.

  Charm sniffed, and nodded. “Not real blood.”

  “So… like androids?” I said, kind of geeking out. People had androids on Earth, but not me. Hell, I’d even heard of some people with sex bots at home, basically paying for high-end android sex ladies. Not my thing, but having seen a few of them being advertised, I could certainly understand it.

  She nodded, and motioned me on. “And there’s more.”

  We entered the next room and I saw what she meant. It led down via a circular staircase for a several floors, lined with all sorts of server racks and monitors set up. Mostly, though, they were plugin spots.

  “It’s like with the pyramids,” Gale said, taking it all in. “This whole place is controlled centrally.”

  “Right, but instead of a super controlling the core, it has an A.I. system, likely channeled through all of their planets.”

  “Maybe,” Erupa said, shrugging. She glanced back at us, nodding. “Hey, I didn’t know if you could really pull off the fall. That was impressive. And you made it in good time, too.”

  “You doubted me?” Gale guffawed.

  “Maybe it’s best if we stay focused,” I said, but Gale continued, asking what would’ve happened if they hadn’t made it, and how the rest of them would get along then. Whatever, I was tuned out, because I’d noticed something below. Movement.

  Going to the edge I crouched, held up a hand for silence… but didn’t get any.

  Well, whatever was down there would know we were here at this point anyway, so I leaped down the first set of stairs, ran and then went for the next set. When I landed, I came face-to-face with a tall Asian woman, the type that would appear in ads about transcendence, about escaping the shithole that was Earth.

  At first I looked around to see if she was in danger, but even before she attacked I processed what this was. Why have a model when you could have the perfect specimen? Of course she was one of the androids!

  I dodged her strike and then pushed back when she pulled a blade.

  “Got something down here,” I shouted, and a moment later Erupa was with me in the fight, the other two following close behind.

  A good kick sent me flying through a nearby wall, where an image flashed with the shape of three people and a machine whirring to life. I didn’t have time to see what it was, because the android seemed intent on attacking me more than the ladies.

  “Chad Bostwick, you have not earned the right to Ascend,” she said, coming at me again. When I dodged this time, I saw a face—only it wasn’t attached to anyone, yet. It was moving along a belt part of the machine, and looked very much like one of the ‘dead’ androids upstairs. This thing was building new ones!

  Something had to be done about this place.

  “Keep her busy,” I told Charm, and went for the machine first. My thought was to simply stop it, but when I pulled up a screen with my troubleshooter active, another idea came to mind. If I could adjust aspects of it—and I already knew I’d been able to work as the station’s core with the pyramid, before—maybe that could work here too, somehow?

  Not sure how to do it, I pulled out my blaster, shooting through wires. Then, with a deep breath and hoping to all that was holy that I wasn’t about to kill myself, I grabbed the wires and shoved them to my temples, focusing on all those powers at once. To be careful, I also brought down the Heavenly Light, to heal myself in case any damage was done.

  “What the fuck is he doing?” Gale shouted as the android leaped for me, but then froze as I screamed out, feeling all of the planet, the energy of the whole place and all of the androids there. I could sense them all, and it was like I was in them, like I was everywhere—at least, everywhere on planet.

  My vision was replaced with images of men and women in white robes playing an ancient form of chess, others eating, two fucking, and one standing on a rooftop, staring off into the distance at nothing.

  Then I was back, staring straight into my own eyes. That was odd, I thought, and with a flash I was back, staring into the android’s eyes as she stared into mine.

  Holy hell, I’d just been inside of her. Not in the way I tended to like being inside of women, but it was like I had been her.

  “What… did you do?” Erupa asked, looking very confused.

  “I think…” I pulled the wires away, let them fall, but felt energy surging in me still, even saw sparks emerge from my hands. Apparently, my Heavenly Light skill had helped keep the power and connection into the system. “I just took over the planet’s A.I., maybe.”

  To confirm, I closed my eyes and was back in the android looking at me. Next I had her turn around, wave sheepishly, and then pick her nose.

  Returning to my own body, I laughed. “Is this some O.P. shit, or what?”

  “O.P.?” Charm asked.

  “Yeah, you know. Like overpowered. When a character in a game gets too strong, nobody can fuck with him.”

  “I’m still not following,” Erupa admitted. “You… are the planet?”

  “Yes. Right now, anything the A.I. could do, I bet I could take over, if I wanted.” I could feel the power surging through me, like I was one with the system… but it was temporary, I was pretty sure. Already I could feel it less powerful than when I started. First things first. I sent out a message, hoping Twitch would be able to receive it, that my powers through this system were strong enough. “The coast is clear,” I told her.

  Second, I turned to this android in front of me. The twelve-year-old trapped in me wanted to tell her to strip, curious as to how detailed the system made these
things, but that wasn’t my purpose here.

  “You fight for us now,” I told her. “Whatever programming you have to make you think for yourself, to serve the planet’s A.I. or however the fuck this works, all of that goes out the door. Understood?”

  The android nodded. “Of course, master.”

  “Yeah…” Gale looked from the android to me, then laughed. “This should make the whole thing go down much smoother.”

  My comms beeped on a second later, followed by Twitch’s voice saying, “I got some strange message saying all was clear?”

  “That’s us,” Gale replied through the same channel. “Apparently, our boy here’s finding new skills for his hacking powers.”

  “I wasn’t sure the regular comms were going to work,” I said.

  “Nice work, Breaker. We’ll come find you all and then determine the best place to lay low—Shimmer will set up illusions, so don’t worry if you don’t see us.”

  I focused on my new sight through the planet’s system and was able to see the sky, blue lines forming the shapes of the ships as they descended. If the system were still in control of itself, this is what it would be seeing. As it was, I had control.

  We moved to the exit, but I paused, seeing the android following us. “You have a name?”

  “Before, I was Aegriss,” she said. “Now, I can be whatever you want me to be.”

  The way she eyed me up and down with those words caused Charm to guffaw, then step up to her, ready to throw down. “Watch it.”

  “Charm—you’re talking to a robot,” Gale said. “Hardly a threat.”

  “Am I not?” Aegriss said.

  “Enough from you,” I told her. “Aegriss will do fine, but I don’t want any more flirting from you. Nothing that would upset Charm. Got it?”

  “And Charm would be this animal-hybrid woman?” Aegriss asked.

  A twang sounded when Charm punched Aegriss in the face, and then shouted, “FUCK!” as she held her hand. “That hurt!”

  “Maybe we leave the robot behind?” Gale said.

  “Nah, fuck that,” Charm countered, while Erupa watched all this with amusement.