New Markets - 02 (46 page)

Rael leapt at the front of the passenger door, kicking it hard while in the air.  It slammed shut against the man while he hung mostly out of it, crushing him.  The guard slumped out of the vehicle to the pavement while Rael moved to jump over the semi.  Rael felt the jolt through his body, and found himself on the other side of the tractor.

He spun around and saw the driver looking through the vehicle, attempting to spot the hero on the other side.  Rael's tentacles jabbed at the man, stabbing him through his light body armor in the back.  The man cried out as he was thrown across the street into a building.

Amidst the constant pattering of rain on the cement and vehicles, Rael heard the back door of the attached trailer open.  The rain appeared to fall in slow motion as he sprinted to the rear of the trailer.  The door had been flung open, several pairs of legs appeared below the door as the guards jumped down onto the street.

Rael ducked under the trailer door and saw three men loaded with weaponry.  He punched the first guard in the chest before any of them even realized the enraged hero was there.  The guard flew dozens of feet back toward the other semi, skid on the cement and splashed a low wave of water as he moved.

Stephanie noticed only three mindviews actively looking around near her.  Three more floated in her vision, but the mindviews were dark.  She recognized the state of someone asleep or unconscious, but not dreaming.

She watched two mindviews run up to the trailer doors, unlock them and pull them open.  One of the men motioned for himself and the man to his right to jump down.  He motioned to the third to stand inside the trailer near the exit.  She smiled.

The doors of the trailer flew open below her and two guards wearing light body armor that matched her mindviews, stepped forward to leap down.

She thought,
Why aren’t they reacting to my pheromones?  I wonder if the rain dampens the range....  Screw it, I’ll just knock them out the hard way.
  She shifted her grip on the edge of the trailer, and swung down at the guard on the left just before he jumped down.  Her kick hit him in the left arm, knocking him out of the trailer and off to the side.  He landed with a thud and a splash in the street. 

She missed the guard on the right, who had already jumped down as she swung off the top of the trailer.

The rear guard stepped back in surprise, although he fired a burst of needler darts at the heroine.  Several hit her legs as she moved forward and grabbed him, she twisted and flung him out of the trailer as he hit her with more darts.

The second guard's head snapped back toward the heroine's movement - he had to have given himself whiplash.  He held a rifle in his right arm, and a needler pistol in his left.  He prematurely shot the rifle into the roof of the trailer near her, and was raising the pistol toward her when another mindview appeared in her vision, with Stephanie at the center.

The heroine looked back into the semi trailer as an huge whip glowing with a green light extended toward her in the mindview from inside the trailer, yet it didn't appear in any of the other mindviews.  Then it struck her.

It felt like the onset of a migraine headache for a moment, but then the light flowed into the mindviews of everyone near her.  The two guards who were still awake each grabbed their heads and cried out in pain, and even the unconscious people appeared to have a painful reaction to the energy.

Stephanie spotted of the villainess coming toward her just as the woman jerked her own head back and grimaced.  The headache barely affected Stephanie as she and the woman stared each other in the eye for a moment.

The woman had brunette hair with slight curls and a pony tail in the back.  She wore a tight-fitting black half-top that stopped at the upper abdomen.  Stephanie knew the woman was likely a super simply by seeing the woman's abdomen, arms and visible leg.  She had a matching knee-length skirt with a slit all the way up the left leg, to where a gold ring held the skirt together.  The villainess also wore black heels and expensive gold jewelry.

Her eyes were backlit with a lime green glow as they stared each other down.

She said, "So you're Psystar.  Nice to meet another telepath, it'll be interesting to see how a fledgling psionic fights.  I'm Arissa, by the way, in case you're in a position to remember it by the time I'm done with you."

Stephanie said, "Ah.  You're the one who is planning on wiping the minds of these supers before they are sold, then."

Stephanie knew that her stunts in the minds of some people might have been effective on non-telepaths, but she was concerned about fighting someone used to doing some kind of mental combat.

She also felt the effect of the needler darts already in her, her vision was already blurring, and she realized that the fight had to be very short to succeed.

The guard behind Stephanie grabbed his needler pistol again.  Stephanie heard Arissa's thought of swinging a gigantic mental version of a whip.  The picture of it was very clear in Arissa's mindview.  As the whip swung back it began glowing with the green energy, growing as the whip swung forward at Stephanie through the mindview.

She tried to think of a brick wall to block it but she felt mentally tired and wore down.  The drugs were making that sensation even worse.  Nothing appeared in her visual space before the tip of the whip struck.

The splitting headache struck again for the tiniest moment, and again the green light arced from Arissa's mindview to every other mindview in Stephanie's visual space yet again.  The pain subsided immensely.

The guard behind the heroine shot her in the back with a line of dart before the migraine struck him and dropped him to his knees onto the street.  He screamed in agony.

Arissa grabbed her own head for a moment.  Stephanie knew she was confused by her thoughts, and clearly felt the pain each of them were in through their mindviews.  Then Stephanie noticed Arissa's high heels, something she didn't imagine a super with a travel power would wear.

The heroine shook her head, ran forward and grabbed the woman around the waist, leaned back toward the exit and jabbed her knee up to kick off her fast flight.

The woman tried pushing Stephanie away, but only succeeded in separating their head and shoulders.  Stephanie's path changed and the two smashed into the side of the trailer before bouncing out into the open air.

She felt even more tired, and imagined that her continuous use of the mindviews through the day didn't help on top of the poison in the darts.

They were almost immediately out of mindview range of the guards and the victims in the back of the semi, leaving only Arissa's mindview in Stephanie's vision.

The villainess quickly thought of her options, and her mental attack was the only option she felt would separate her.  Stephanie realized the woman had no physical combat experience.

Stephanie forced their flight to head straight up into the rain as Arissa focused on swinging her giant glowing mind whip again.

For a moment Stephanie thought it was interesting that she only saw the whip in Arissa's mindview, there wasn't a physical manifestation of whatever energy it consisted of, if any.  She could hear and see that Arissa was putting forth all her effort into a massive mind whip.

The tip of the whip struck just as the pair burst through the top of the clouds into a sunny sky.

Unbelievable pain struck Stephanie's head again, although immediately half of the pain and energy flowed through the mindview back into Arissa.

Stephanie stayed conscious just long enough to register that they were miles above the cloud layer.  She then succumbed to the pain, and unconsciousness.

Arissa had no defense against the direct mental link between the telepaths.  The power of her own blast was enough to knock her into unconsciousness.  The grasp of the two women loosened, and Arissa slipped away from Stephanie, tumbling out of sight in seconds.

Stephanie's forward momentum quickly slowed to a stop when she lost consciousness, although her body continued to float on her back eight miles in the air.

Rael leaned to the side to dodge a burst of machine gun fire from the second guard, grabbed the guard's hand with his own left hand, and stabbed the third guard's trigger hand with a tentacle.

The hero slashed the left guard, ripping through his light body armor and tearing a set of deep gashes in the man's chest.  The right guard attempted to bring up a pistol in his left hand when Rael pulled him close with the tentacle and kicked him in the chest.  The man flew out of sight into the rain.

Rael growled at the remaining man as he slumped to the cement at the hero's feet. 

He hopped up into the trailer.  The kidnappers had quickly taken a standard shipping trailer and lined it with the fortified beds they had the supers locked down in.  Four people lay on the beds along the trailer.

The nearest person gleamed in the dim portable lights hanging in the trailer.  The dark haired woman with the reflective silver skin lay before him yet again.

Rael's eyes darted around the trailer, no guards remained, although one man hid just behind the chrome woman's table.  Rael's tentacles stabbed him in the leg and flung him out into the rain.  Rael bared his fangs out at the rain in the direction the man landed.

His head snapped back to look at the woman.  She was beautiful, even coated in metal.  He felt his rage seep away as he stepped forward to look at her closer.

The kidnappers had dressed her in black spandex shorts and a sports bra.  He thought it odd that they bothered before they traveled with her.

He stepped forward and touched her arm.  He noticed his claws had rescinded back to wherever they came from.  He lightly stroked her arm for a moment when her eyes opened.

His eyes opened wide and he said, "You're awake?  It's okay, let me get you out of here...."

He reached for the closer heavy metal wrist band, and was surprised when it popped open and she grabbed his right wrist with her left hand.

He shifted his hand to clasp her arm when she crushed his arm with dozens of tons of pressure.  The bones snapped and her viselike fingers dug deep into his muscle.

He screamed as she slugged him in the abdomen with her other fist.  He went quiet as he tried to breathe.  She punched him several more times in the chest with her free hand, while continuing to crush his arm with her unbreakable grip.  Each punch snapped a rib.

She swung out of the false restraints holding her down while continuing to hold Rael's arm.  The hero barely thought about a combat maneuver when she picked him up with both arms, crushing his left leg with her right hand, flung him down and drop kicked him out of the trailer.

The kick shattered the rest of his ribs from the impact, and he was barely conscious of the fact that he flew several blocks before smashing through the wall of a building, unconscious.

Chapter 27 - Awake

Rael's Perspective

Pain was the first thing I was aware of, and then the voices.

"He's coming around," said a pleasant, and familiar woman's voice.

I heard someone snap their fingers a few times close to me.  My chest, leg and arm still hurt quite a bit.  Not much time must have passed.  I slowly opened my eyes.

Two faces leaned over me.  Hellshock's glasses caught my eyes, as a hint of electricity arced across each eye.  I glanced toward the woman and saw Kim, my favorite nurse.

I grinned, although it quickly turned into a grimace.  My eyes flicked around the area - I was apparently lying in an area of rubble.

Kim said, "Don't move.  You're pretty badly hurt.  I know the muscle and bone will heal, but it would be good to ensure they heal straight."