Blaze of Glory (17 page)

“Ah. Have a good time. Keep clear of this mess for as long as you can.”

We walked out of the terminal, passing the influx of people being disgorged by the just-arrived jet. The men and women stumbled into the terminal with a few suitcases and knapsacks among them, a shell-shocked look on their faces.

“Good thing you didn’t say Pittsburgh.” Limox nudged May’s arm. “Then we’d have to have passports.”

“Yeah.” I stopped in front of the small plane, staring at the door. After pulling the nylon harness free from under my leather jacket, I shrugged into it and yanked the fasteners tight across my chest and shoulders. “Wonder if anyone’s really checking these days.”

A man appeared a few minutes later from one of the small buildings near the runway and trotted across the still-green grass with the healthy jog of a runner. He wore a brown leather jacket with the collar just touching his shaggy black hair that begged for a haircut. He couldn’t have been much older than Jessie, which was to say that he was another puppy.

“Hey! I’m Josh.” He skidded to a stop in front of us, scanning the small group. “Wow, you don’t look like supers.”

Limox puffed out his chest and stepped forward. I had instructed them to wear the same dark outfits they had for the Agency raid even though this fight would be in daylight. Figured that it’d make it easier to keep a visual on each one. Didn’t think it’d give Limox delusions of grandeur. Thank God it wasn’t spandex.

“I. Am. Called. Meltdown.” He punctuated each word with a sharp poke of his index finger into Josh’s chest. “Mess with me and I’ll fuck you right up.”

I put my gloved hand on Limox’s forearm and pushed it down, none too lightly. “Thanks for helping us out, we really appreciate it.”

“Surf, right?” He snapped his fingers. “That’s so cool… I remember seeing you and Metal Mike a few months ago against some weak-ass called Dino-Man. What a loser.”

My smile was genuine. “Well, growing spikes out of your back and looking like a T-Rex is cool but if that’s all you got…” I spread my hands, letting a bit of static discharge from the fingers. Good to impress the public.

His eyes widened at the display. “Cool.” Snapping his head back around, he nodded towards the plane with a more professional attitude. “If you want to get inside I have to check a few things before we take off.” Without waiting for us he began to walk around the small aircraft, testing various bits and pieces.

“Showoff,” Limox muttered as he climbed into the passenger area.

May chuckled. “Look who’s talking.” She watched as Peter walked up the steps and turned around to offer her his hand with a slight bow. “And then there are still true gentlemen out there.” With a nod she followed the young man inside.

I looked back towards the crowd now milling to get through the small set of doors into the terminal. The rag-tag mob shuffled back and forth. A mother corralled her two children who whimpered, one little girl holding a stuffed animal. The other, a boy, kept looking back at the horizon.

Climbing into the plane, I tugged on the harness one more time. “Right. This is how it’s going to work.” Taking the empty seat, I pointed at Limox. “You grab my left hand. May, the right. Hunter, you’re at my back. Peter…” I reached behind me, taking hold of one of the two loops. “What I need you to do is grab one and hold on for dear life. I’ll put a bubble around us to keep us in the air, but you have to hold on. If you let go, I can’t catch you in time.”

“Right.” His eyes were wide but focused.

“It’ll be fine.” Hunter patted his shoulder. “Nothing to it.”

“How come Hunter gets to ride your back?” Limox fastened the seat belt, tugging it tight around his waist.

“Because I said so. Don’t pout.” Settling into my chair, I closed my eyes and tried to focus. “Okay, here’s the drill. Peter, while we’re still in the air I want you to gather as much information as you can from the birds, the flies, anyone who can tell you what’s happening. We’re not going to get anywhere near that fat avocado before we have to bail, so we’ll have some time to find out what’s going on before we get to the actual fight.”

“Roger,” he said with a note of confidence.

“May, I want to see if we can scramble those alien minds. I saw that you could direct the attacks—can you specifically target the ship?”

“I’ll try. Be easier to just target the one fellow, to be honest.” She paused. “But it may give you all a bit of a headache. Just warning you.”

“Let’s run with that—aim for the first guy you see. If it’s like the other cities, they’ll only send out one fighter at a time. Although I’ve never seen them toss out more than one. Hunter…” A sudden lump appeared in my throat, threatening to choke the words before I could get them out. “I’m going to set you down with May. Stay undercover as much as you can, both of you. Don’t take any risks and stay clear of trouble.” I ignored the huffy snort from Limox. “And, Limox—all I want you to do is melt the crap out of anyone or anything you can and keep us safe.”

“And who’s going to save me?” he snapped back. “And where are you going to be?”

“First, don’t yell at me.” Keeping my eyes closed, I held up my hand and ticked off the points on my fingers. “Second, your job is to protect May primarily. If she can snarl up their minds, then we’re going to have a major advantage. Peter is going to rally the ground troops, as it were, to provide enough random factors to keep the alien fighters off balance. Me, I’m going to be tossing as much heavy-duty crap at him as I can and hope that it’ll be enough to keep them at bay long enough to get all the civilians out. If we’re lucky, there’ll be other supers showing up as well, but I’m not depending on that.” My skin began to tingle as I finished pulling in the waves from around me, the surge meeting maximum capacity. Just then the pilot’s door opened and Josh climbed in. “I’m thinking that they’re going to send out only one guy like they did in New York.” I started juggling the energy back and forth between my hands, releasing bits and pieces and then pulling in more. It was going to be a long warm-up, but I wanted to be as sharp as possible when we jumped out.

“Didn’t take more than one to kick ass there,” Limox replied.

“Except this time he’ll be dazzled by May’s attacks and if we’re lucky a million insect stings from Peter’s friends.” I put a smile on my face, trying to make it real. “Whenever you’re ready, Josh.”

A sense of relief went through my body when the plane lifted off from the asphalt, more that it wasn’t my own energy keeping us aloft than a successful takeoff. True, I had managed pretty well getting us to Buffalo and back, but there was no way I could do that distance and then be ready to fight.

While I had sounded pretty darned confident or had tried to in my briefing, I knew that it would be a close battle, at the least. Even if the aliens only sent out the single fighter who had devastated Mike and the others, he would be more than a match for second-liners like us. In other words, a suicide run. It didn’t need to be said, we all knew it.

“Hey, Jo!” Jessie’s voice echoed in my ear, courtesy of the imbedded electronics. “How’s it going?”

“We’re doing fine.” I saw Josh’s head turn slightly to one side, wondering who I was talking to. Tapping my jaw with the index finger on my right hand, I smiled. “Internal stuff.”

“Ah. Okay. Just didn’t want to think I’d missed something.” He returned his gaze to the sky outside. “We’re doing well. Everyone’s getting out of town. We’re the only ones really in this corridor doing an approach.”

“Great,” Limox grunted.

Jessie’s voice overrode my urge to snap back. “Good news. The scuttlebutt is that there are other supers that are going to be at Pittsburgh. Don’t know who, don’t know what they’re going to do, but there’s been reports of people flying and running and all sorts of stuff happening.”

“That’s the best bit of news I’ve heard all day. Strike that, all year. If it’s true.” I bit down on the inside of my cheek. “Anyone actually confirmed?”

Jessie sounded a bit downcast. “Not really. Mostly rumors, but if we get an actual name, I’ll let you know.”

“Jo?” Hunter said. “I wouldn’t count on too many of them showing up. Better to plan for just yourself and don’t get distracted with the idea of reinforcements.” He paused. “Just a recommendation, of course.”

“Of course.” I couldn’t help smiling. “Can’t get it out of your system, hmm?”

“Once a Guardian always a Guardian.” Hunter chuckled. “Just focus on getting everyone back safe and sound.”

My stomach lurched as I remembered Jenny’s prediction. “Yeah, we’ll do that. Call me if you hear anything else.”

I looked out the window to my side, seeing white cirrocumulus clouds around us. In my mind I was already flying down through them to the fat avocado and taking it out with a massive electrical charge. In my mind.

The next couple of hours went by quickly with mild chitchat in the cabin, mostly Peter asking Limox how he had been taken out against this super and that super, and Limox repeatedly pointing out that it was prearranged that he’d lose them all, and if he had just been given free rein he would have…

“We’re about there.” Josh nodded at me. “Better get ready to do your thing.”

Unbuckling my seat belt, I crouched down and moved towards the door. “Okay, here’s how it goes. Meltdown, you open the door and be careful about it. Everyone hooks onto me then we all go out as one, slowly and surely.”

Just as the last word left my mouth Limox flung the door open with all the delicacy of a rampaging rhinoceros. The air inside the cabin whipped around us like a hurricane. Josh let out a loud curse as the plane dipped to one side, his hands tight on the controls.

I held onto the back of the seat. Limox, however, wasn’t lucky enough. He disappeared out into the sky with his mouth flapping in what probably would have been a curse if we could hear it. I suspected my name figured prominently.

Chapter Fourteen

Part of me wasn’t shocked at the way our carefully arranged plan was already going to hell in a handbasket. Part of me wondered if he could burn a hole in the ground fast enough to delay his inevitable death from the impact. And the other part told me to get the lead out and save my teammate.

“Grab on!” I yelled at the team. The plane lurched back to the other side as Josh instinctively tried to compensate for my companion’s stupidity. Me, I just felt sick to my stomach.

May unfastened her belt first, grabbing hold of Peter who struggled with the straps. Freeing him, she wrestled his left arm through one loop of my harness. Her own right arm went through the other loop as she pulled him close, pressing them both against my back. She wrapped her left arm around his waist, prompting him to do the opposite. I couldn’t do anything but feel the tugging on my back and pray that Limox wasn’t falling as fast as it looked. Hunter moved to stand in front of me, wrapped his arms around me in a tight hug and slid his hands through the harness and under the two supers on my back. I suppressed a nervous giggle at the image we created. It was either that or throw up.

“Go!” May’s scream had me hurtling out the door, activating the bubble around us and arcing downwards at an angle that had the wind whipping by us at an incredible rate. My mind flew back to one of my first flying lessons with Mike, only a few days after we’d been paired up.

“Flying isn’t as simple as it seems.” Mike flew next to me, the oversized metal suit clunky and awkward compared to my quick maneuvers. “You’re lucky you can do this. Most supers can’t.”

Swiveling myself to move atop him, I grabbed the metal bar on his back. “So why do I need this?”

“When you’re too tired. When we need to get somewhere fast. When you forget the rules.”

“And what are the rules?” We burst through a cloud, the white exploding around us like cotton candy on a child’s tongue.

“First one is that gravity doesn’t lie.” He reached over with a thick steel fist, pushing me down, slowly but firmly, forcing me to fight back with my powers to stay level. “Don’t ever forget that.”

I felt the two bodies on my back, the extra weight slamming into my spine and forcing me almost into a vertical dive despite Hunter tucking his head into the crook of my neck in an attempt to form a counterweight. Holding up my hands, I remade the bubble around us to level off even as we arced down towards what I hoped was the conscious figure of Meltdown.

“Our Father, Who art in Heaven…” May mumbled in my head. The young man beside her stumbled over the words as he joined her. I added my own silent echoes to her words, hoping He’d take pity on this poor lot.

Limox’s body grew larger and larger, his arms flapping wildly as he tried to grab onto air and kept failing. Pushing my hands to my sides, I angled us down so I’d be directly above the panicked man.

“Are you going to be able to grab him?” Peter asked.

I shook my head, forgetting that I was probably smacking them in the face with my hair. “If he’s turned his powers on, he’ll melt through me like a hot knife through butter. Best I can do is grab him by the feet and hope he calms down.”

“Do you want me to let go?” The words were so faint in my ear I thought for a second I had imagined it. Hunter turned his head, pressing his lips to my cheek. “Do you want me to let go? You’ll be able to get a better grip on him with your hands.”

“No,” I croaked out. “No. Don’t let go.” In my mind’s eye I saw Hunter falling to his death, sacrificing himself, a non-super, to get Limox back safely. I wasn’t ready to make that trade.

The ground raced towards us as I got closer, finally able to reach out and touch the falling super’s shoulder as he flailed around in the rushing air. Limox turned quickly, eyes wide open and lips flapping wildly.

“Limox, I need you to make sure you’re off,” I screamed through the link. “Tell me you’re off. Your powers are off; your hands are off.”

His glazed eyes flashed past, around and over me.

“Right.” I looked down at the ground. Even with the first slivers of sunlight breaking over the horizon I couldn’t see exactly where the ground was, but I was sure that it’d be just as hard and unforgiving in the night as in the day. “Everyone, hang on.”