Blaze of Glory (2 page)

“Drop the loot and get the fuck out of here.”

The kids stared at him as if they’d never seen a giant robot before.

“I said, drop the stuff and go home.” He raised one hand towards the sky, displaying the Gatling gun prominently placed on his forearm. “You really don’t want to be my warm-up exercise, do you?”

The looters split and ran, one tough guy holding up his pants with his right hand as the other troublemakers sprinted past him to safety.

“You’ve got a way with kids, you know?” I put my hands on my hips and scowled at the mess. “You’d think they’d have better things to do than steal coffee beans.”

“As we do.” The metal hand pointed down the street. “We’re going to rendezvous with Tan there, in the doorway.”

I didn’t try to argue. Mike had always been the tactician, mostly because he had the Agency connection. Me, all I had was a plug and orders to do what I was told.

Tan and I had met only once, at a brawl in Detroit where they had been trying to evaluate whether I could work with a partner or not. Metal Mike wasn’t really a partner for me under the rules, him being a Guardian and all, and the Agency thought that Tan was possibly a good match.

It had all the subtlety of dog breeders trying to decide which bitch to breed with which stud.

Tan had laughed about it after we had taken out the tag team composed of Smiling Mick and Dancing Damsel. Not exactly a challenge, but I had gotten pinned under Mick after he slammed a door into the side of my head, eerily reminiscent of how I got fucked up in the first place. He had been sparking up and getting ready to do a sweet little bit of electroshock therapy when Tan slammed into him with righteous fury and rolled him like a cat would a ball of string across the street and into the parked car. Ratings had been good for that one but not enough to justify making us a team. Not to mention that Tan had decided during that broadcast to come out of the closet and declare his homosexuality, live on the air. I adored him for being so honest, but the Agency had freaked and kept him single until the chance to team him up with another man had appeared.

“Hey.” Tan staggered out of the shadows. He bent over, wheezing as he tried to catch his breath and spitting out a mouthful of blood. I couldn’t do anything but stand beside him, rubbing his back as he coughed up more blood. His skin still had that deep tan that had given him his nickname despite his pleas to come up with something more…well, macho.

“This is bad.” I looked at Mike, unable to read his emotions through the faceplate. “Could be internal injuries.”

“Probably is.” Tan stood back up again, both hands on the base of his spine. He closed his eyes. “Black’s down.”

Mike turned and began to stride down the street. “I’ll see you there.”

I grabbed Tan’s arm. “What’s happening? What’s going on?”

“I don’t know.” Tan drew another pained breath, his left hand hugging his ribs. “It’s just one guy but he’s killing us. Literally.” He smiled at me, revealing the loss of more than a few teeth. “Go keep the big guy out of trouble. I’ll be there in a minute when I catch my breath.”

Levitating a few feet above the ground, I watched him, feeling tears prick my eyes. “Be careful.”

“You be careful.” He thumped his chest with a closed fist. “I’m the one with the GQ cover.” The effort bent him over again, coughing up more blood. “Don’t hold back. This guy’s got more power than anyone we’ve seen before.”

I nodded, moving away slowly. There was a screaming sound around the corner, of metal tearing and warping. A woman raced into sight holding up some sort of small video camera. She stopped upon seeing me and Tan, her mouth opening and closing without a sound.

“Take him to the paramedics.” I nodded at Tan as I flew past the astonished civilian. My gloved hands clenched into fists.

Mike was standing at the center of it all, deflecting blue energy blasts from the alien attacker who hovered about ten feet above a crater dug deep in the asphalt. I saw Black curled up in a fetal position against the side of a car, his head caved in on one side and his sightless eyes staring at me as his brains pooled on the ground.

This wasn’t even beginning to be a fair fight.

The attacker turned towards me, ignoring Metal Mike for a second. I must have seemed sort of puny, a woman in black just staring at him with a dazed expression.

Part of that was because he appeared, well, like a man. No tentacles, no spiky tail waving around in the air, nothing. He looked like a thousand other guys I’d passed in the street—blond and blue-eyed with a pretty good physique. His uniform wasn’t anything fancy, just a blue dress shirt and black dress pants—hardly the clothing of your average alien invader. Not that I knew much about the idea. But I sure as hell didn’t expect some guy out of a fashion magazine.

He looked like the barista who made my morning coffee down at the corner Starbucks.

The other aspect of seeming dazed was part of a game plan Mike and I thought up years ago. It worked best on new villains who didn’t clue into the fact that Mike was the sidekick and I was the superhero. Focus their attention on the big man in the iron suit and forget the little girl hanging off to one side. It grabbed high ratings every time we pulled it off.

With a roar Mike set off both lasers from his arms, channeling the energy of the entire small nuclear reactor on his back into two devastating shots. In the past it’d been enough to knock the bad guy on his butt and give us the win. It was a one-time-only shot—Mike would be totally defenseless for five minutes after it—but it was a game-winner. Or it had been in the past.

The dual blast caught our attacker square in the chest. I studied the alien fighter as the red light spiraled around him, enveloping him in what would probably be a lethal amount of heat and light.

The man took a deep breath and inhaled the laser attack through his open mouth.

Then exhaled it back at Mike.

I saw the blast hit Mike squarely in the center of his chest plate. The metal buckled and screamed under the attack as the humanoid robot suit fell back onto the concrete. His arms flailed in the air as he tried to roll over—it’d always been one of the suit’s problems that hadn’t ever been fixed ’cause they never choreographed anyone turning him into a ten-ton turtle.

“No!” Raising both hands, I focused all the trapped energy I had gathered into the palms of my hands. Fifty thousand volts of electricity and power and energy all aimed at one man. I’d never tossed that much at a single person before, usually only enough to send a shock through their system and shut them down like a taser blast. This was lethal, and I’d never had permission to use that much force before. I figured it was worth the extra paperwork.

The release shot me back ten feet as the blue light sprang from my palms and nailed the stranger right in the chest, ripping what appeared to be a smile from his face. The jagged bolts shattered all over his body, bouncing from one point to another, one finger to another, to his head to his nose to his teeth and hopefully across his heart, shutting it down.

I landed on my ass, gasping for air. Around me I spotted the electromagnetic waves from everything and everyone and began to suck them back into me just in case I needed a second blast to take this guy down. There wasn’t time for a full recharge. I’d never had to do this so quickly.

“Sweetie…” Mike’s anguished voice whispered in my ear. “This guy’s packing serious heat.”

“No kidding.” I snarled as the electrical cloud around the alien dissipated, leaving him in perfect condition. His damned shirt wasn’t even burned. Scrambling to my feet, I worked the waves back around me and into my hands again, feeling the sensitive metal fibers in the gloves begin to burn with the heat.

“Don’t do it.” My Guardian rolled onto his side, pushing himself upwards with a weariness that translated through the burnt and scorched metal. “Save it, Jo.”

“This guy’s got to go down.” Clenching my teeth, I fired off a blast, maybe half-strength if I was lucky. The alien rotated to stare at me, a confused look on his face.

“Jo, you’ve got to get the hell out of here.” Mike moved to a kneeling position. His labored breathing was loud in my ears. “This guy’s not alone. Just got the word, there’s alien ships appearing all over the world. And they’re all dropping guys who are killing anyone and anything that’s thrown at them.”

“What?” Scooping the waves up from around me, I raced to weave them together and into my palms.

“The Alphas are dying.” Metal Mike lumbered to his feet, one steel leg shattered to the point I could not only see the damned skeleton that held it together, I could see Mike’s ebony skin. “Every nation’s sent out their A-list and they’re all going down.”

“That’s impossible,” I blustered. “Impossible.”

The stranger was watching me intently as I tossed another blast at his head. Raising one hand, he swatted it away, ignoring me and advancing on Mike.

Mike jumped up and grabbed both feet of the intruder. “Jo, get out of here. If you stay here, you’ll be killed.”

He slammed back to the ground, his feet digging huge holes in the concrete. The suit wobbled for a second before falling backwards, leaving Mike flat on his back, both metal fists clenched around the feet of the invader.

“Mike!” I sent off another blast, the weakest yet. It bounced off the man’s head as he levitated back to stand upright on Mike’s chest.

Mike kept his grip on the black leather shoes. “Just go!” he roared. “I’m setting this baby on overload. Maybe it’ll take this bastard out.”

“What?” I moved a bit closer, sucking up another series of waves. “You can’t do that, you’ll destroy the city.”

“Limited casualties.” The wheezing grew stronger in my ear. “It’s not a full meltdown; it’s all measured out. A feature we never thought we’d have to use.”

The blond man was staring down at him with a puzzled look, almost of sadness, as the metal fingers kept a firm grip on the feet.

“Jo, it’ll take out about five city blocks. Agency says it’s a go, so get the fuck out of here and save yourself.” A beeping began in my ear. “Less than a minute.”

“I’m not leaving you here.” The weakest shot yet, barely enough to earn me a glance from the stranger.

“It’s not an option.” The voice grew fainter. “Lyon’s down; you saw what happened to Black and Tan. Don’t be an idiot, someone’s got to rally the troops.”

“The Agency…”

“The Agency’s panicking. Everyone is.” Mike coughed. “Save yourself, then save the world. That’s always been the deal, girlfriend.”

“Mike…”

“Get your ass out of here before I take you with me.” He yelled in my ear so loudly that I instinctively shot into the air, obeying my Guardian’s last order.

As I rose higher and higher I spotted the police and firemen racing to clear the area—obviously the word had gone out that something was going to happen, something bad enough that they didn’t mind sacrificing a few city blocks in order to stop these guys.

A last, soft voice in my ear. “Hey, girl…kick ass for me.”

A supernova appeared far below me, rising up to devour the buildings and anyone who wasn’t fast enough to get out of the blast radius. The shock wave rolled towards me, a shimmering ripple racing outward that I knew I couldn’t escape.

So I rolled onto my back, stared up at the sky and let it carry me off into darkness where I could imagine I was safe in bed with Mike, watching another late-night brawl in Japan between Osuki and Gojira with the bad translations and the taste of hot buttered popcorn on Mike’s lips.

Chapter Two

There was something wet on my lips, something tapping and withdrawing and tapping again at my mouth. But it wasn’t Mike—it was something cold and wet and metallic and tasted like…

I opened my eyes. A clump of grass flapped at me, anchored to a small sand dune. Right beside it a lazy wave slid up the beach and into my face then retreated, leaving an ugly green sludge beside me.

Which had me skittering to my feet as fast as I could. I knew what that particular algae was and didn’t want to get any closer to it than I already had. As it was I had an overwhelming urge to throw up and start drinking bleach to disinfect every inch of my body.

I was home. In Toronto, Canada.

To be exact, on a beach near Parkdale—one of the smaller neighborhoods in the city. And when I say beach don’t think about Florida white sand and Bermuda blue oceans, think of a foot or two of gravelly dirty sand that leads into thin grass and then to parkland. Canada didn’t have a lot of great scenic beaches, but you made the best of what you had. Which also included many days where the beaches were closed due to too much E. coli wandering up from the lake and turning the water into a biological terror for those brave enough to go out for a swim. There was a reason why public swimming pools were always full on the hottest days and the beaches empty.

Shaking my head, I forced the last of the lake water from my ponytail and looked around. It was about dawn and I was miles away from the explosion, probably auto-routed in my near unconscious state after the shock wave had hit. Darned lucky too. I wasn’t usually that good at surfing the waves, as it were.

My sneakers were soaked where they had been dragging in the water, and my feet felt like two dead fish. Squishing with every step, I made my way to the path and then up to the street corner only a few minutes from the lakeshore.

Mike was dead. Of that there was no doubt. He had told me once about the possibility of him having to overload his suit, but I hadn’t really paid much attention.

“It’ll have to be something bad,” he’d mumbled into the pillow as I watched the images on television. It was a rematch of Ace versus Downtown Brown, and I was curious to see if the Agency would change their mind and let Brown win this time. It was a long shot, but there was always a chance…

“Why would you do that?” I glanced at the set, stealing more of the sheets away from him with a twist of my body. “It’s always fixed.”

His cool blue eyes caught mine, grabbed them and held them. “Never take any of this for granted. Me, you, this…it could all change in an instant.”