Fid's Crusade

  FID'S CRUSADE

  David H. Reiss

  Fid’s Crusade Copyright © 2018 by David H. Reiss.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  Cover designed by Hampton Lamoureux, TS95 Studios

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  David H. Reiss

  Visit my website at http://davidhreiss.com

  Please consider leaving a review wherever you downloaded this ebook!

  Dedicated to Bubby and Poppy

  I learned to stand on my own two feet,

  but I always trusted that you’d be there if I stumbled.

  You were.

  I will be forever grateful.

  Also to my most patient and tireless pre-readers:

  John, David, and Mom.

  Thanks for putting up with me!

  CHAPTER ONE

  The ground trembled and great clouds of dust were shaken from the rafters above…but the silver-clad hero’s fist was stopped cold by an invisible barrier only inches from my armored head. The impact echoed, a bass thrum that filled the chamber like a physical force.

  Emotions flickered across his face: surprise first, followed swiftly by disappointment. For a moment, I knew, Titan had believed the battle won. Rage quickly followed, and further blows fell like thunderous rain as the hero explored the unseen shield’s capabilities. Despite his size and awe-inspiring strength, the man was no mere brawler; he was a well-trained and highly skilled martial-artist, yet even his fiercest attack made no progress.

  Sensor readings indicated minor structural damage to the floor, but the force-field emitter hidden below was in no immediate danger. Energy levels were excellent and the increased strain continued to fall within projected tolerances. The new force-field design was a masterwork!

  Already, my mind was swirling with ideas how to alter the device; to miniaturize components and improve efficiency, and to make the entire system portable. Behind my helm’s featureless faceplate, I was grinning like a fool.

  Titan himself looked more-or-less human, with a complexion and features that implied a Mediterranean heritage. His eyes glowed white with raw power, wisps of energy trailing away like strange smoke, and he stood nearly seven feet tall with a broad and muscular physique that would make facing him a daunting concept even without knowing of the supernatural forces that coursed through his body. When he’d first appeared a decade ago, his charcoal-black hair seemed akin to a lion’s mane, but he now wore it cropped short in a military ‘high and tight’ style and shaved away the perpetual 5 o’clock shadow that had once practically been his trademark. It was an improvement, I thought; he looked more intense now, more serious. Truly, the nigh-indestructible hero was a worthy adversary.

  “Doctor Fid! I should have known.” He backed a few steps away from the force-field and smirked. “I’d recognize your foul stench anywhere.”

  Titan was also a bit of a dick.

  Three years past, one of Titan’s fellow Guardians—the Red Ghost—bypassed my defenses and managed to shoot me in the abdomen. I’d required a colostomy bag for months while replacement organs were being cloned, and the silver-unitard-wearing jerk had been teasing me about my odor ever since. It was petty and small. A schoolyard taunt! A reflexive regression, I imagined, to the childhood days when he must have victimized smaller students and stolen their lunch money.

  Every once in a while, I really did consider killing him. But not today.

  “Titan.” I nodded slightly in acknowledgment, carefully hiding any evidence of irritation. There were multiple news-camera-drones within range, I was certain, and it would have been unacceptable for any recording to indicate that the hurtful banter had found purchase. Fortunately, my voice was modulated electronically to maintain an emotionless tone. “I was expecting you sooner.”

  The truth was that I hadn’t been expecting him at all.

  There’d been a myriad of intentionally-left clues at the biotech facility that I’d robbed earlier in the day, and any competent hero would certainly have been led to this facility...but my research had indicated that this particular opponent would be in Arizona training a young hero who went by the nom de guerre of ‘Brute’. It appeared that Brute traveled to New England instead, and was now fighting alongside the Guardians as they battled their way into the auditorium-sized throne room of what they would certainly believe to be my current lair.

  The force-field emitter test had originally been intended for a lesser challenge than Titan’s full strength. It was fortunate that the device had been designed to operate with a significant safety margin.

  The other heroes were at the opposite end of the room still, keeping a few of my low-tier combat automatons occupied while their leader had advanced to confront me. The sounds of combat raged on even as Titan and I exchanged words: explosions and worried shouts, the shriek of tortured steel and the dull roar of growing flames. The conflict would look glorious when video was leaked to the Internet.

  Brute, the visiting teen powerhouse, was acquitting himself well; he’d provided protection for both Veridian and Regrowth and even managed an impressive offensive combination-attack alongside Aeon. I planned to comb through the footage more carefully at a later date to evaluate his performance and determine any useful weaknesses. Fighting the younger hero might make for an interesting diversion someday.

  I was currently sheathed within my Mk 33 light-combat powered armor. This suit—my most recent design—was the fastest flier in my current arsenal, with the best augmented-reflexes and combat programming...but it afforded less protection and overall strength than other versions. This model wasn’t particularly appropriate for a hand-to-hand battle with an entity like Titan or his current trainee.

  Even so, I knew that I made for an imposing figure.

  The armor was form-fitted and so thoroughly non-reflective that I seemed a silhouette, a six-and-a-half-foot man-shaped hole in the world. There were stars visible inside that blackness, pinpricks of light and color; looking upon me was gazing into the clearest night sky, entire galaxies encompassed within my being. Only at the armor’s seams were any hint of a three-dimensional form offered: from there an angry red glow seeped, as though something infernal was trapped inside. It was a disorienting effect that I’d spent years perfecting.

  I summoned my scepter—a slim and deceptively-simple-appearing black rod with a round red stone at its pommel—from its subspace storage location, and the powerful weapon’s weight felt comforting in my hand. Even as the last of my smaller combat drones were felled in the distance, I maintained a relaxed and impassive mien. Greater than the armor, more powerful even than the force-field, I was protected by Doctor Fid’s grim reputation.

  Titan fell into a wary half-crouch.

  “Your robots are destroyed and we have you surrounded,” he declared; the Guardians scattered to make Titan’s statement into reality. “Surrender, Doctor. You can’t hide behind your force-field forever.”

  “Hide?” I motioned lazily with my scepter’s tip towards the destruction that they’d left in their wake. “It took you four and a half minutes to fight your way to me, and we both know that I could have escaped in a fraction of that time.”

  Titan was steady, but several of his compatriots took a step backwards or glanced around warily. Good. Their fear had been hard-earned.

 
“Then why are you still here?” asked the Guardians’ leader, finally.

  “I’m not,” I lied, “This is a hologram. I brought you all here so that I could watch your expressions while this base self-destructs around you. In five...four...three-”

  “Maneuver seven!” Titan barked, his eyes closed to angry slits. The expression looked practiced; did he glower at a mirror every night, I wondered, attempting to hone an expression that would strike terror in the hearts of evildoers? If so, the effort had been wasted. Honestly, he just looked constipated.

  The superhero team leaped into action like a well-oiled machine. Whatever Titan’s faults, he trained his people well.

  Aeon’s power-set included the ability to produce force-fields more powerful even than my new design...but only for pre-set short periods and only in a sphere about nine feet in diameter. Regrowth, Veridian, and Red Ghost converged around the slender woman and she powered up her famous milky-white energy shield around them. Titan was sturdy enough that he knew he could withstand any of the explosives that I’d used in the past, so he just tackled Brute to protect the younger hero with his own body.

  Feeling smug, I lifted my scepter and aimed; a blast of emerald-hued energy surged from the pommel to strike both Titan and Brute with sufficient intensity to drive them through my temporary fortress’s thick walls and out into the courtyard. The entire room shook from the thunderous impact, debris visibly shaking on the ground, and sparks flew as electrical wiring within the walls was torn asunder.

  Titan had always been somewhat vulnerable to blows to the back of his head; it would be perhaps thirty seconds before I could expect him to recover.

  "Alternately, this base may not have been equipped with an escape capsule, and I’m not a hologram at all," I floated towards the hole in the wall, gloating cheerfully. "In retrospect, that seems significantly more likely. Until next time, Guardians!"

  (The ruse had only been successful because my prior two fake-bases had been equipped with unnecessarily ornate self-destruct mechanisms that the Red Ghost had only barely disarmed in time to avoid catastrophe; the next one would have a built-in escape route, shaped explosive charges and a mocking hologram ready and waiting. Forcing Titan to make the wrong call under fire was one of life’s true joys.)

  Laughing mockingly, I launched into the air with my armor’s flight systems shifted to maximum and stealth capabilities enabled. Any of the more esoteric technology left behind would melt itself to slag; it simply wouldn’t do to leave any resources behind for my enemies to examine. By the time Aeon’s shield dropped, my lead would be insurmountable.

  ◊◊◊

  The news broadcasts, I was amused to discover, were quick to declare that the Guardians had forced the notorious Doctor Fid to escape empty-handed with all materials stolen from AH Biotech safely returned, and that—thanks to the Guardians’ valiant efforts! —the battle resulted in not even a single civilian casualty. Property damage had been restrained to the mostly-abandoned city block surrounding Doctor Fid’s secret lair and even the heroes themselves suffered no significant injuries. The event was being treated as a clear win for the Guardians, despite the fact that Doctor Fid had, once more, eluded capture.

  But the footage of Titan and Brute being blasted through a wall was replayed over and over again, as well as a beautiful shot of the remaining Guardians watching helplessly as Doctor Fid flew off to safety. One camera drone captured a glorious image of the Red Ghost dropping to his knees, shoulders bowed in defeat. His red cowl hid his eyes, but his lower face was visible, and the setting sun cast deep shadows upon the lines of his face; it was an illusion, but in that moment he looked terribly old and weary.

  Technically speaking, the Red Ghost was among the most dangerous of my regular opponents. Titan’s greater experience and calm under fire made him an effective leader, tactically, but the Red Ghost was a more creative thinker. He’d begun his heroic career by making a name for himself as an investigator, fighting crime while wearing a highly protective (but unpowered) crimson and black tactical armor of his own design. Over the years, he’d added to his arsenal using equipment reverse-engineered from villains who he’d fought (It’d been one of my own shaped-plasma gauss cannons that wounded me. My own invention, painted red to match the Ghost’s costume! Damn the man.) and he maintained an impressive regimen of acrobatic and combat training. But those factors weren’t what made the Red Ghost dangerous to my current plans.

  Before fate granted him the power to shroud himself in blood-red mists and become incorporeal, the Red Ghost had been a forensic accountant.

  Doctor Fid’s dastardly plan may have been foiled by the heroic Guardians, but Terrance Markham was (through dozens of shadow holding companies) heavily invested in construction and real-estate firms that stood to earn a fortune from the properties damaged by the combat. Also, as the founder of AH Biotech, my shares and stocks would surely gain a boost from the media coverage surrounding the supposedly ‘foiled’ crime.

  Sometimes, I wasn’t certain which identity was my mask and which one was real. Or perhaps both identities were masks; if so, I wasn’t sure what lay beneath.

  Doctor Fid had never before committed a crime that intersected with my civilian life, but in this case the ruse had been too tempting to discard. The success of AH Biotech was crucial for other long-term plans and the publicity was particularly beneficial at that moment. Among the media elite and policy wonks, it was accepted as fact that Doctor Fid deigned to steal only the most dangerous, most advanced technologies...and suddenly every potential customer or investor would be curious as to what wonders AHBT was hiding. There were government contracts to be acquired, and a receptive Senator had recently been maneuvered into place. Public goodwill always served to make lobbying an easier task.

  This latest incident could not, however, be labeled as a complete success; the scenario had originally been intended to test Veridian’s willingness to follow orders when Titan was absent and the Red Ghost was leading the Guardians into battle. In past confrontations, I’d seen hints that the slender, emerald costumed Veridian resented taking orders from anyone whose offensive powers did not rival his own. Confirmation of that character flaw would have opened up further avenues of attack in the future.

  Titan and Brute’s unexpected presence had thrown the original plan into immediate disarray. Still…several secondary goals had been accomplished, and the new force-field design was successfully tested against a more powerful physical attack than expected.

  It was remarkably tempting to send the Guardians a “thank you” card.

  ◊◊◊

  Now and then, some reporter looking to make a name for themselves attempted to put together a dramatic expose: the True Story of Doctor Fid. The narratives all felt similar; they described the same battles, the same victories and the same defeats. One woman who was within the crowd at my first bank robbery is quoted in just about every article.

  “I don’t think that he wanted us to die,” she always said, “But I don’t think that he wanted us to live, either. He just...barely noticed us. Like we were beneath him. There was this little girl screaming, so loud that we were all terrified that he was going to hurt her just to get some quiet. But the Doctor just walked past her like she wasn’t there—like she didn’t matter. I’ve never been so frightened in all my life.”

  Those were the bad years, but even then I had nightmares about that little pony-tailed girl’s wails. When I’d walked into that bank my gut had roiled with so much anger that I could have set the world on fire, but those cries snaked past the rage, infected me, haunted me. I remembered forcing myself not to look at her directly; if I’d looked her in the eyes, I would have been compelled to take off my mask and comfort her and then all my plans would have fallen to pieces.

  It always felt strange that none of these so-called reporters ever followed up on that portion of the story. They never looked for the girl, never tried expanding on her tale. They only cared about the tears and not
the aftermath.

  (Melissa Halden had grown into a talented art student at Berkeley, attending with a full scholarship that I may have quietly influenced. She was happy and well adjusted.)

  The articles all failed in the same manner: when attempting to guess at my motivations. They analyzed my name, my targets, my actions. They’d harassed every family in the United States with my sobriquet’s last name while seeking clues, and psychologists who’d never met me pontificated endlessly about my pathology. The authors guessed and made up stories, each more outlandish than the last. I’d once found those fables humorous, but the amusement had long since faded.

  There’d been a plan and that plan would have ended in self-immolation.

  The whole play had been scripted in my imagination: I would become a villain so feared that people would barely dare whisper my name, and, when I was sufficiently infamous, I would engage in battle with the hero named Bronze. He would gaze across the destruction that I’d wrought and ask me what could possibly have motivated me to perform such atrocities. And I would take off my mask, crying, and inform him that I was his creation.

  In the theater of my mind’s eye, I would tell him what he’d done and I would watch his world collapse as he realized the gravity of his sin. In that moment, we would both get what we deserved for surely there would be no future for either of us. I dreamt of that scene for years until every morning I would wake and still taste the battle’s blood and ash and tears on my lips.

  In a final and unknowing act of vicious spite, Bronze drank himself to death before I could ever confront him.

  He could not have been aware of his connection to me. Doctor Fid had never mentioned Bronze in public; the eventual revelation was supposed to be epic—Shakespearean in proportion! Whatever demons drove Bronze to the bottle, it wasn’t worry regarding Fid’s actions. There was a vicious part of me that hoped that he’d fallen into despair over what he’d done to Bobby, but I would never know.