Behind Distant Stars Read online

  “Always?”

  “Always. They HAVE to, ’cause they’re superheroes!”

  I’m not certain that statement is accurate, but Bobby obviously believes it with all his heart. And if there’s any statement that I know I can hold as axiomatic, it is this: my brother has a good heart.

  I muss his hair again then dodge away from his playfully irritable retaliatory swat. Together, we run to find Mom and find out when dinner will be ready.

  ◊◊◊

  Valiant reached into the blue plastic bucket, stretching out his massive hands to cup as much ice and water as he could manage; a chuffing sigh of pleasure escaped barely parted lips as he splashed the frigid mixture upon his face and head. He stood there, wet and tired, and took a deep, slow breath. In through the nose, out through the mouth. A contented expression spread across his broad features, and then he bent to grab two ice-cold beers from the pail.

  He offered me one, but I shook the Mk 35’s faceless head. He shrugged and dropped the beer back into the bucket. It clinked and rattled off another bottle, and the entire contents sloshed as the ice settled. After popping the cap with a practiced twist of his fingers, he took a slow swallow and then grinned.

  We didn’t speak; we just stood and watched as a rescue-worker carried the first child out from the pit. The crowd’s murmurs increased in volume, but the cheering didn’t really start until the dust-covered little girl was passed into the arms of her parents. I didn’t need to know the language to understand what was said. The sound of a child calling out to her mother is universal. Her father tried to be stoic, to be reassuring, but when the little girl’s fingers touched his face he bawled so hard he choked. His hands were shaking when he reached to touch the little girl’s hair.

  Then the next child was lifted up, and the ovation grew louder.

  “You should be there,” I told Valiant.

  “Nah. This moment belongs to them.” He nodded briefly towards the children and the rescuers and the eager parents crowding towards the now-stabilized disaster site’s entrance. “We did the part that only we could do. This part is theirs.”

  “The children will want to meet you. You saved them.”

  He motioned with the bottle, “You did too.”

  “I’m not their hero,” I replied, monotone. “You are. That means something to them.”

  “I’ll come again next week to make sure they know I remember them.” He waved and smiled to the children as they were reunited with their families but he made no move to join them. “Look at them. Right now, they don’t need a hero; they have everything they want. I’m not going to interfere and neither are you.”

  I looked, and I saw that he was correct. One boy was carried up, his thin arms wrapped tight around his rescuer’s neck. He too was covered in gray and brown dust, but tears had carved clean trails down his face. He blinked as he came up into the sunlight and his gaze traversed the entirety of his surroundings. His eyes paused briefly upon Valiant—still smiling and waving—but then his gaze fell upon an aged man with dark eyes and a white, bushy mustache. For the boy, the rest of the world ceased to exist as he leapt into his grandfather’s embrace.

  I turned my head away. “I should go.”

  “Don’t.” He shook his head, and I couldn’t read the emotion in his eyes. “This moment is theirs. But getting to watch it? To know you made it possible? You earned that…so stay.”

  Watching the love and relief of the reunions made me feel like a fraud and a voyeur, but I stayed nonetheless; it was heart-breakingly beautiful. I was happy for them. Of course I was! I was also so filled with rage and jealousy that I could feel my heart pounding in my chest. The urge to lash out, to punch someone—to turn my emotional torment into physical pain and inflict it upon a deserving target—was overwhelming, and I was intensely aware that Valiant was only a few feet away. I could strike him with all of my strength and he would stand up and be ready for me to hit again. But my gaze turned towards the nine families that had been pulled aside by the rescue workers and their vacant, grief-stricken expressions as the trauma counselors tried to console them. There’d been enough bloodshed here. There’d been enough agony.

  “Are you all right?” Valiant asked.

  I must have made a sound or motion, offered some hint that had gotten past the Mk 35’s algorithms that stripped emotion from my voice and made my body language inscrutable. I didn’t know what it was and made a note to review my suit’s recorded telemetry at a later date. But the massive hero’s concern felt intensely genuine; at that moment I couldn’t keep myself from replying.

  “I wish it had been you,” I told him, “when it was my family in danger. You would have saved my brother.”

  Valiant’s eyes widened slightly, and I realized that more information about Doctor Fid’s origins had just been revealed than I’d let slip for more than two decades and a television interview.

  I wasn’t particularly worried that the information could be used to betray my civilian identity; I’d long since corrupted just about every digital trail that would connect Dr. Terrance Markham to the superheroic violence that had taken Bobby’s life. The databases for every news organization in the country had incorrect names for Bobby and I listed among the victims of Locust’s attack, connected to an old and unassailable false identity that I rarely used anymore; the one I’d used to sell patents when I was a teenager. Any reporter who might remember more accurately than what was in the official transcripts had long since retired.

  What terrified me was the pity in Valiant’s eyes. That, I didn’t know how to deal with.

  “I can’t promise that,” he replied sadly. “I haven’t been able to save everyone.”

  “You would have tried. You would have cared. Perhaps that would have been enough.”

  There was silence between us. The Earth’s mightiest hero kept waving to the children and to their families, kept smiling for them, but to me he just offered brief worried glances. I somehow got the impression that he was considering offering sympathy for my loss. If he did, I wasn’t certain that I could restrain myself from violence.

  “Can I ask who it was?” he finally asked, tentatively.

  “Hm?”

  “You didn’t say you wished I was there,” he explained. “You said you wished it was me that was there. That implies there was someone else and you wish it was me instead.”

  “I’d rather not discuss this matter any further.”

  “Was it Clash?” he mused out loud. “That’d explain a lot.”

  “It wasn’t Clash,” I bit out. “And I’d rather change the subject if you don’t mind.”

  “It couldn’t have been Lycan. He didn’t even have his powers when you first showed up.”

  “It wasn’t anyone I’ve fought.” I shook my head slowly. “It was someone else, someone long dead. Not by my hand. And if you continue this line of questioning, my response will involve summoning my warstaff and doing my best to recreate last year’s most-viewed video on the Internet.”

  During the incident at the Mercer-Talon campus—when I’d saved this planet and dozens of others from a star-faring empire’s oppression—Valiant had been possessed by telepathic alien invaders. There had been moments of terrible carnage and extraordinary heroism during that battle, with almost all of it immortalized by the news-camera drones that had circled the combat zone. I’d combed through that footage for information about the heroes that participated: their strengths, their weaknesses, their actions in the face of unbeatable odds. Despite all of that, the scene that got the most views was the moment when I’d sought to neutralize the mind-controlled Valiant with a full force swing of my staff…that landed squarely between his legs.

  Some of the humorous sound effects edited into the video by amateur comedians were actually quite clever.

  “I’m sorry,” Valiant apologized, though he seemed more amused by the threat than wary. “I won’t pry anymore. I’ve just always been curious why you do the things you do.”
r />   “I suppose that I understand. I’ve often wondered what motivated you as well.”

  “You want to know why I keep at it? This. This is why.” He smiled broadly and returned to waving as another dust-covered boy was lifted out of darkness and into the light. The crowd cheered once more.

  “I see,” I replied, forced to concede that his argument was a strong one. So I reached into the bucket to retrieve an ice-cold beverage and said nothing further until the last child was retrieved.

  ◊◊◊

  “Terry, wake up!” Bobby nudges at my shoulder insistently. “It’s just like we played! You have to come!”

  The previous night had been spent improving the maths used in algorithms to simulate airflow over twisting airfoils; it was part of a project suggested by my doctoral adviser and I’d gotten carried away. The sun had already been warming the horizon before I’d finally succumbed to sleep.

  “What time is it?” I grumble, eyes still closed.

  “It’s almost lunch,” Bobby grabs at my shoulder and tugs. “Get uuuuup.”

  I blink myself awake and find Bobby’s eyes only inches from my own. In my weariness, I hadn’t felt him climb on the edge of my bed.

  “Ok, I’m up.”

  “You have to hurry,” my little brother insists and then dashes towards the door. “It’s on TV! Hurry!”

  I’d fallen asleep fully clothed, so I roll to my feet and stagger after Bobby. “What’s on TV?”

  “Chimera’s fighting the Ancient!”

  I’m not as much of a superhero fan as Bobby is but his enthusiasm is contagious. I shamble faster.

  The big television is in the living room, already tuned to a program that focuses on superhero news. There’s another TV in the kitchen and I kind of want something to drink, but I’m captivated by the images on the screen. Bobby is bouncing in his seat and I join him on the weathered faux leather couch.

  Chimera isn’t fighting alone; there are three other heroes that I don’t recognize on site. They’ve broken into pairs so that they can alternate defense and attack, and—exactly the way my game with Bobby had predicted—the winged and lioness-headed heroine joined forces with a dark-costumed strongman who travels by leaping and seems to fight primarily hand-to-hand supplemented by occasional long-distance attacks using a generic blaster rifle.

  The heroes are being swarmed by black-scaled bipedal lizard creatures, red-eyed and vicious. There is something hypnotic about the way the creatures move, their long tails twisting sinuously to maintain balance as they slither smoothly over and around each other to claw at their prey. Their scales, I see now, aren’t true black; there is an iridescence there and every explosion makes the lizards flash in purple and green.

  Chimera alternates between flying low overhead to rain energy blasts down upon the horde and dropping to the ground to help defend her partner. The heroes are making progress; the battleground is already littered with downed enemies and they’d worked their way closer to the dais from which the Ancient was monitoring the battle.

  “They found his secret hideout,” Bobby says helpfully. “It’s near a lighthouse on the cliffs.”

  Another camera is focused on the Ancient himself. The slim, white-haired man is frowning—apparently disappointed at his creations’ performance—but does not seem terribly concerned. He occasionally issues orders but most of his time is spent jotting careful notes as the assault continues. When the image pulls back, I can see the lighthouse Bobby referred to; it’s an old, heavy stone structure but still looks to be in working order. There’s a secondary building near the tower’s base and it is from atop that building that the Ancient is overseeing his minions.

  Where had he housed the scaled beasts, I wonder? Even if they were stacked like cord-wood, there isn’t enough room for an army inside the outbuilding. My question is answered when reinforcement monsters scramble up from over the cliff-face. The true base must be below where the camera cannot reveal.

  All it takes is a momentary stumble, but Chimera’s partner is overrun; he disappears under a writhing, biting mass of iridescent black scales. The felinoid champion dives into the chaos without hesitation, roaring in angry challenge. I can’t see what’s going on. Broken lizardlike bodies are thrown into the air, bludgeoned into painful shapes or rent by the heroine’s claws. The camera focuses on one such creature, the glow in its red eyes fading; its long fangs are still extended and look to be coated in fresh blood.

  Bobby is wrong. This isn’t just like the way we played at all.

  And then Chimera explodes from under the crush, shedding reptilian attackers like water. She’s carrying her injured friend over her shoulder, a frenzied effort that obviously strains her power; she’s carried civilians to safety before, I’ve seen it, but the hero in her arms looks to be at least twice her mass. She dips low and a lizard-thing stretches to open a painful looking gash in her leg. Fiercely determined, the lioness-headed heroine ignores her injury and speeds towards the building where the Ancient awaits.

  The villain has picked up a staff, twisted and gnarled and covered in mud-colored runes that pulse like a giant creature’s slow heart. Even on a television screen, it hurts to look too closely at the eerie glow. Despite his advanced age, the Ancient is still fit; he twirls the rod in a practiced motion, smooth like something out of an action movie.

  One of the heroes still fighting through the waves of reptiles shouts for Chimera to wait but she persists. The wounded, bloodied hero that she was carrying is set down atop the dais and she confronts the Ancient on her own.

  The camera cannot capture what is said, but she bares her teeth in a feral snarl and attacks.

  Chimera has the advantage. The Ancient is surprisingly adept at physical combat with his weapon of choice but the heroine is a truly ferocious brawler; she doesn’t let up, doesn’t give him a moment’s pause. Even the lightest tap from that horrific staff hits like a truck, throwing the heroine back nearly to the edge of the platform…but she scrabbles to her feet and dives back into the fray before the Ancient can escape.

  And then the elder villain shouts a word that sounds alien to a human throat and touches the staff to Chimera’s chest.

  The camera’s telephoto lens catches her expression: anger shifting to wide-eyed surprise as her body locks up like a statue. The white-haired man smiles pleasantly and makes as though to topple Chimera’s frozen form off the platform into the midst of the frenzied lizard creatures below. But he is too late: the other heroes have arrived and the aged villain is surrounded.

  Bobby cheers excitedly as the Ancient surrenders. This is, I think, the fourth time that he’s been taken into custody. Hopefully, this time it sticks.

  “I told you she’d catch him,” Bobby smiles. “I told you!”

  “Yup, you’re right,” I agree, carefully ignoring the part of me that can’t help but notice Chimera still standing rigid, expression locked in a rictus of terror.

  “The good guys always win eventually,” Bobby says, satisfied, and turns off the television.

  ◊◊◊

  It was—once again—very late when I arrived home. Several million dollars’ worth of equipment had been left behind, expended in the rescue efforts; the devices self-immolated when all danger had passed so as to ensure that no third party would attempt to reverse engineer any of my technology. I’d taken time to set my manufacturing facilities to begin the process of creating replacements before I finally used a teleport platform to travel from a deep-sea lab back to my study in the Markham estate.

  My medical nanites and other internal systems made quick work of re-balancing my neurochemistry; a few good hours of sleep and I’d be ready to tackle whatever the morning threw at me. For the most part, I was expecting for my civilian persona to work through the usual pile of relatively simple administrative tasks required of a CEO. Responding to emails and letters, taking meetings, talking with investors. In a strange way, I was looking forward to the tedious but familiar routine.

  The
re was a quiet knock as I was preparing for bed.

  “Are you awake?” Whisper asked, opening the door just a crack and peeking through. In the dim light, her soft-blue glowing eyes seemed to blaze.

  “For a little while, yet,” I chuckled. “Come in.”

  She smiled, practically skipping as she came to sit on the edge of the bed. “I’ve been watching the news!”

  “Nothing horrible, I take it?”

  “Even the ultraconservative talk shows are saying nice things about you.” She sounded smug. “And they HATED you just a few days ago.”

  “That’s a shame,” I smiled. “I was enjoying watching the mental contortions that they had to twist themselves through in order to denounce firefighting and rescuing fishing boats.”

  “My favorite was the cat,” she giggled, and made her voice gruff to imitate a famous radio provocateur: “Red-blooded Americans love dogs! This is obviously part of the ongoing Liberal conspiracy to feminize America! Unbelievable! Cats! How obvious is Doctor Fid trying to be? He’s a villain, folks, mark my words…next he’s going to be rescuing ferrets or hamsters, instead of our God-given hunting companions, dogs!”

  “…Did you practice that?”

  “Maybe a little,” the little android replied mischievously. “It’s funny!”

  “So, since Alec Whats-his-name likes dogs, does that mean that you are rescinding your request for a puppy?”

  “Fallacy of origins!” Whisper objected. “Just because a bad man likes dogs doesn’t mean dogs are bad. Besides, puppies aren’t dogs. Puppies are puppies!”

  “Puppies grow up,” I pointed out. “And puppies are a lot of responsibility. I keep odd hours, you know, and I get distracted when I’m in the lab…you’d need to be even more responsible than Dinah is.”

  “I could do it!” she insisted.

  “And no stealing my drones and programming them to clean up pet messes,” I ordered, then relented: “Or at least, not when we have company.”