Starfall Page 11

  “No,” I chuckled. “I’ve done something better. Watch the skies!”

  I relaxed in my seat; the pilot’s chair within the battle tank had been modified to adjust to support the contours of whichever powered armor I happened to be wearing when I took my place at the helm. When I’d inherited the tank, the cockpit had been a cramped affair, surrounded by panel after panel of switches and complex gauges. All of that had been stripped in my more recent iterations; I could control every last facet directly via neural interface.

  I had to admit that the flight was smooth. Valiant had spent many years carrying occupied civilian cars to safety after natural disasters. The decade of mind-controlled horror had not dulled his skill.

  “Faster!” I relayed via the tank’s external speakers. “We need to get in range before they contact their home planet!”

  “I promise that this isn’t as easy as I make it look!” Valiant replied, but he accelerated nonetheless. Good man.

  I was monitoring the alien communications systems; my ability to translate was limited, but I was able to verify that they hadn’t sent any interstellar messages yet.

  Given my tank’s limited stealth technology, they probably hadn’t recognized the massive burden Valiant was bearing. At this range, all they could perceive was their former slave, alone, making his way back towards the mothership.

  Valiant was the most powerful human being in all of history; they would want him enslaved, or they would want him dead. The alien commanders were probably breathing a sigh of relief to have him back in their sights.

  They let us get too close.

  At first, I was sure, the commanders were waiting to give their telepaths a chance to re-ensnare their prize. When that failed, there would have been a period of confusion and indecision. But then they realized their error—or else they somehow detected the almost-invisible tank Valiant was carrying—and both ships opened up with full batteries of fusion powered weaponry.

  Which sprayed off the tank’s forcefields like water.

  My external sensors detected Valiant’s grunt of effort to maintain our speed and altitude, and the entire tank shook in place…but the shield itself was unaffected. The tank’s stealth-field, however, failed under the assault. We were visible now, even from a distance.

  Purely for appearance’s sake, I returned fire and drew a vicious line through the alien vessel’s outer armor. The damage was superficial, but inflicting it still felt good. Laughing cheerfully, I weakened sections of hull and armor with subsequent shots.

  And then we were close enough for the battlecarrier to employ their neutron cannons. It was precisely this for which I’d reprogrammed the shields; immense cascades of energy flooded across the force-field’s surface and the curve quivered visibly under the assault. The tank’s cannon went silent; a full-sized Westler-Gray reactor had been installed to power this vehicle, and every erg of energy was now directed to defense. It wasn’t enough; steadily, the massive batteries were being depleted.

  “We have one minute!” I told Valiant. He grunted and redoubled our speed.

  What must it have looked like, I wondered? Two spaceships, unloading every weapon in their arsenal upon a treaded tank, held aloft by one lone figure? So much firepower brought to bear that the air itself was heated to a dull glow, but the battletank and its bearer cocooned within a small bubble of safety? The tank’s weapons must have seemed ineffective in comparison, completely useless. That sphere in which Valiant and I were trapped must have seemed only a tiny, cursed flicker of hope, an insignificant marble destined for horrific destruction.

  But the first time I’d faced this tank—when it was still under Technos’ control—it had been employed to negate the anti-gravity fields that my older-generations of armor had used to fly….and that technology had been remarkably similar to that which was keeping the alien vessels aloft.

  “Now!” I shouted. Valiant lurched forward until we were directly between the two Legion craft, and I triggered the secondary field emitter.

  For one terrible moment, there was no visible effect and I wondered if I’d damned us both. And then the ships tumbled from the sky.

  It was magnificent and horrifying, the substructures groaning as the battlecarrier and its smaller sibling twisted towards the Earth. It was purely psychosomatic, I knew, but it was pleasant to imagine that I could hear the crew’s shrieks of despair as certain doom approached. I envisioned their expressions and cackled until my throat hurt.

  A few escape pods managed to launch, but I targeted them with the secondary cannon. Once upon a time, I was sure that Valiant would have objected to the slaughter of fleeing soldiers. Today, he quietly held my tank steady while I fired blast after successful blast.

  The fall seemed to last forever, but the eventual impact was awe inspiring.

  Both ships came apart at the seams, metal squealing and complaining as the decks shattered and burned. Explosions tore through the wreckage, flickering in blue and white as fusion containment failed and great plumes of orange-tinged plasma poured into the sky.

  Valiant carried the tank to the ground and I exited, and then we both stood quietly and watched the Legion cruiser burn.

  It was glorious.

  “So.” I turned to Valiant. “I don’t have other plans scheduled for the next few hours, and hacked satellite footage indicates that there are two more of these ships within the Earth’s atmosphere. How long do you suppose it would take for you to carry my tank to New York?”

  The answering smile was fierce.

  8

  We found a high vantage point to observe the wreckage of the final battlecarrier. Valiant and I had refined our technique; this one had taken only minutes to pull from the sky. The Legion apparently relied too heavily upon their telepathy for in-ship communication; when my tank (and thus, the tank’s anti-telepathy field) got close enough, their combat effectiveness evaporated.

  But still, we watched…just in case there were any survivors in need of slaughtering.

  “Thank you,” this alternate-Earth’s incarnation of Valiant rumbled, his voice still raw from disuse. “I said that before, didn’t I?”

  “You did.”

  “It’s hard,” the large man confided. “Knowing what I actually said out loud, instead of just yelling inside my head.”

  “All things considered, I think that you’re doing very well.” The highly-modified voice that I’d created for Doctor Fid was not well-suited for expressing compassion. I made a note to improve the software at some point in the future. “I only endured a few seconds of the Legion’s telepathic control before I was rescued. That was enough to scar.”

  “Who rescued you?”

  “My little sister.” My voice clenched. “There is an interface installed directly into my brain to help control this armor; she was able to use that interface to break the Legion officer’s control.”

  “You were lucky,” Valiant nodded. “Hell, we were all lucky. I can’t imagine what those bastards would’ve done if they had access to your tech.”

  “I have it on relatively good authority that—if they’d known that I had devised a reproducible method to interfere with mind control—they would have destroyed the planet outright, just to be certain that the knowledge didn’t spread.”

  He shivered. “Worse’n what they did here?”

  “It depends on your point of view,” I considered. “A near-instantaneous ending to the species might have been less cruel. Here, they would have drawn out humanity’s torture for years while they picked through the survivors for the most worthwhile slaves.”

  “Well, that was their mistake.” Valiant lifted his chin proudly, and despite his straggly beard and unkept appearance…there was undeniable steel in his expression. “We’re free now. We’ll rebuild.”

  “I’ve been spreading the news via radio,” I informed the hero. “That should help.”

  “Is anyone out there still listening?”

  “A surprising number,” I reassured
. “News is spreading like wildfire.”

  “Thank God.”

  “There’s an encampment hidden around forty miles northwest of here. You should go…the people will want to see you.” I paused, considering. “You may wish to bathe and shave, first.”

  He laughed ruefully and rubbed his hand through the straggly brush that had engulfed his chin. “A normal razor won’t work on me.”

  “I’ll fabricate something.”

  “D’you have an entire factory in there?”

  “No…just a small manufacturing unit suited to make repairs or minor adjustments,” I chuckled. “Any large-scale projects will have to wait until I get home.”

  “Okay.” He rubbed at his beard again, then smiled. “I’ll get cleaned up, then we can go to the camp.”

  “Just you,” I said. “After so long…they’ll want to see a hero.”

  “I don’t know who you were yesterday. But today?” the large man smiled, “Today, Doctor Fid is a hero.”

  “A hero would stay to help rebuild and protect,” I shook my head. “I’m leaving in one hour and twelve minutes.”

  “I wasn’t awake every minute of the last decade, but I’m pretty sure that there’s no place much better ’n here.” Valiant forced a smile, but there was so much pain in his eyes that I was forced to look away. “They used me all over the planet.”

  “I’m…not from around here.”

  “Huh.” He looked me over, head to toe. “Even with your voice disguised, you’re too comfortable with American speech patterns to come from off-planet unless you’ve been here longer than the Legion. And you obviously know who I am. So…inter-dimensional traveler?”

  I laughed ruefully, “Heroes lead such strange lives, and I suppose you’ve been at this longer than most. This must seem old hat to you.”

  “Not exactly,” Valiant managed a chuckle. “But I did notice that you can fly but your tank can’t. If you knew you were going to fight the Legion…”

  “I’d have come better prepared, yes. The vehicle’s primary purpose is inter-dimensional travel.”

  “Some people just build a blue phone booth,” the large man noted. “You brought a battle tank.”

  I sighed, “I wasn’t a hero yesterday, either.”

  “And you seemed to know who I am ’n how to fight me. Your world’s a close enough copy that there’s a version of me there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were we enemies?”

  “Yes.” I paused. “No. It’s complicated.”

  “Life usually is.” His laughter sounded rusty and although his broad smile had seemed genuine, it faded quickly. “We could use your help. There’s a lot to rebuild, and the Legion ‘ll send more ships sooner or later.”

  I was silent for longer than was probably polite.

  “I mentioned my little sister earlier,” I finally said. It felt odd, to be opening up to a Valiant like this. Odd, yet also freeing. My world’s Valiant had always been among the best of my foes, one of the heroes I respected the most; the history between us, however, would have made this conversation…uncomfortable. “She is in danger. She needs me.”

  Valiant stared at me, evaluating. “How old is she?”

  “Eleven.”

  The big man nodded slowly. I could see in his eyes that he was considering the welfare of his world’s survivors. Like my world’s Valiant, he was a good man…but he was human, too. There was a part of him that wanted to push harder, to beg, perhaps even resort to threats to keep me here. His gaze flickered to my tank, as though he were contemplating if he could damage the vehicle before I could stop him.

  But somewhere in the multiverse, there was an eleven year old girl who needed her big brother’s help.

  “Well,” he finally said “Good luck, then.”

  “I’ve been sharing technological recommendations via radio,” I apologized. “And if I survive the next few days, I’ll see about sending construction automatons to help out here.”

  The strongest hero on at least two worlds smirked, “Your dimension’s Valiant is lucky to have you as a ‘yes-no-it’s complicated’ enemy.”

  “I broke his nose once,” I admitted.

  “I’m sure he deserved it.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh; he joined in, and it felt almost like having a friend.

  I left that damaged Earth’s Valiant with a newly fabricated razor, a clean costume and data modules containing decades worth of useful knowledge and inventions. I watched him fly northwest until he was beyond my line of sight, and then I climbed back into my cross-dimensional transport.

  It was time to move on.

  Journeying between dimensions was complicated. The physical laws that would have governed such travel had been changed significantly from the laws that had existed a few hundred years prior; that superpowers existed at all was testament to the fact that interdimensional boundaries had been fundamentally altered by alien experimentation halfway across the galaxy.

  Even with the membranes separating infinite realities weakened, the amount of energy and computational power required for safe traversal was remarkable. Finding a specific destination out of all those possibilities was even more so.

  The algorithms that I’d been able to reverse engineer from Blueshift’s craft were extraordinarily complex. Fine tuning the process would have taken weeks of work but still I’d been able to limit the possibilities to a mere handful: alternate realities which had already been the source of relatively-recent interdimensional travel, where there was no living Doctor Fid.

  The dimension that I’d left behind, the reality from which the Brooklyn Knights had hailed, had been within those guidelines. So, too, was my target: The universe that the Red Ghost had accidentally travelled to, where I expected to find a helpful alternate-version of Professor Paradigm.

  And so, too, was the new world that I found myself upon. A lush paradise, untouched by human hands.

  Great fern fronds glistened with dew, climbing into cerulean skies and casting dappled shadows upon the rich undergrowth. Vines snaked upwards around the trunks of elegantly twisted trees, sparkling and verdant and rich. The breeze, gently caressing the living canopy, was warm with the hum of insects, birdcall, and the quiet burble from a nearby stream.

  With twelve hours remaining before I could continue my journey, I left the Mk 39 within my tank and clambered out to explore upon unsteady still-healing legs. The air was moist, and every breath filled my newly-reconstructed lungs with the taste of raw, unspoiled life.

  There was no battle here to be fought, no violence to be done. It was a disconcerting shift. Unwelcome at first, but quickly drifting towards acceptable.

  Over the last decade or so, I had occasionally indulged in the opportunity to commune with nature: week long sojourns into the woods, carrying food and gear upon my back. The wild was a different world than the one I normally inhabited; away from the trappings of civilization, the part of me that was Fid had no target for its rage. And so that part of me rested, quiescent, introspective.

  Only a few moments in this new reality and already I could feel my heart rate slowing.

  My path through the brush was careful, slipping between branches or shifting tender leaves aside. To damage one of these extraordinary plants unnecessarily would have been sacrilege. Better to move slowly, to gauge each step before committing. No trace of my passing would be left save for footprints in the moss-covered loam.

  The murmur of moving water called me deeper into the green.

  Insects scattered despite my slow approach, some tiny and others heavy and ungainly as they buzzed away from their perches. A particularly curious hummingbird fluttered to hover before me, staring eye to eye, before declaring me to be of less interest than its never-ending quest for sustenance; it disappeared into the forest in a flash of bright yellow feathers.

  There was, always, the awareness of passing time. Whisper was still out there, somewhere…a disembodied spirit lost somewhere on my Earth. Every minute he
re was another minute in which my little sister was not yet saved. But there was nothing to be done; the eddies and flows between dimensions needed to settle before another trip could be managed. Here, within paradise, I was trapped.

  A tiny creek wended its way through a break in the forest, grass and moss replaced by rock and dark, rich earth. I’d found myself at one shore, eyes irresistibly drawn uphill to trace the path of the glistening liquid toward its source. Its lazy track curled about outcroppings and poured down dips in the landscape, but I could not pinpoint the water’s origin.

  When the Red Ghost had—upon his first accidental cross-dimensional jaunt—found himself upon this alternate Earth, he’d been so struck by the natural beauty that he’d wondered if he’d died and found himself in Eden. His paramour’s superpowers were connected to plant life, and he’d thought that this spectacular, vividly alive place might be her heaven.

  I inhaled deeply and held it, closing my eyes and listening to the rhythm and tone of my surroundings. For a moment, the Red Ghost’s supposition felt perfectly reasonable. And then a sudden breeze chilled my skin, and I realized the sun would be setting soon.

  I made camp near my tank’s side, cocooned within the tight warmth of an emergency bivy sack, with only a living world and alien stars for companionship.

  “Erik’s Dad is going camping next weekend,” Bobby bounces on his toes eagerly, “ ’n he invited us to go. Can we?”

  “Camping?” I don’t look up from the paper I’m grading. “You mean, like, in the woods?”

  “Uh-huh!” His small hand finds my forearm, careful not to interrupt my writing. “And canoeing, too. He has a spot by a lake.”

  I stop writing anyway. “…Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why go camping? We have air conditioning here, and lots of toys and games…”

  “It’s fun,” Bobby says slowly, as though explaining something to a particularly dense student. I take note of his tone and delivery for the next time I have a student who fails to account for pre-existing conditions when calculating trajectories. “Dad took me backpacking last year.”