Nuklear Age (87 page)

I swear Rachel would be writing it down word for word, but Menasavich isn’t talking that much!

“You will, in the courze of your livez, ztand on both zides. You will be oppressed. You will be oppressive. It iz a cycle. It iz Fate (that makes me kill, it is you who let me do it—go!).”

__________

The ship approached terminal velocity. Shiro grit his teeth as the craft pierced the clouds and fell to the Earth with rocket boosted speed. He watched the engine’s heat gauge climb closer to the hazardous red area. “High way to Danger Zone!” he commented to himself as Metroville rushed up at him. The little superimposed cross hairs were in the center of his Forward Viewport. The Altimeter looked like it was trying to count down to zero in record time. The heat gauge finally pushed into the red. “Danger Zone lastly at the way of height when attained from fast with speed.”

He pulled a lever and shot out of the cockpit into the the atmosphere rushing past him. Luckily, his Tetsu: Samurai Armor was sturdy enough to withstand the violence of motion. His Tetsu: Little Rocket flared to life and guided him to a nearby rooftop as gently as colliding with a solid surface at several hundred miles an hour can be. He tumbled to a stop and stared up at white fluffy clouds.

Exactly .8 seconds later the ship plunged through Nuklear Man’s hyper-dimensional box wherein the craft suffered a complete protonic reversal. Its ton of mass and fifteen gallon tank filled with whisakey, the most volatile substance on the face of the Earth, were instantly transformed into antimatter by having the engines set to Self-Destruct. The resulting matter-antimatter reaction was more than enough to obliterate the walls of the higher dimensional cube imprisoning Nuklear Man by destroying the matter they were built from. All part of Shiro’s plan. Shiro's mission was a success. The Tiny Typhoon could tell because he had not been vaporized in the explosion. Also part of the plan. He breathed a sigh of relief as clouds slowly wafted through his sight.

__________

Nuklear Man stumbled a few steps. He rest his palms on his knees and let his head hang for a moment. “Woo!” He stood up straight once again. “Man. That was messed
up!
I could see the music. Sounded kinda like Hendrix.”

Nihel growled. “Why do you things insist on fighting the inevitable!” He spun to face Nuklear Man, his red-black cape flowed behind him almost too slow to be natural. “I can see we’re going to have to do this the old fashioned way.”

“Blame Sparky?”

“Enough!” Nihel bellowed. He punched Nuklear Man.

Nuklear Man fell back a step from the impact. He wiped blood from his mouth even though there wasn’t any. “Oh, I see how it is. Resorting to genre conventions, eh? Well
two
can play at that game!”

The Climatic Fight began.

Nuklear Man flew into a rage of blows that struck with earth-shaking force. Literally. Shockwaves emanated from the power of every punch like explosions without the pyrotechnics. The ground shook, the walls cracked, but Nihel was completely unaffected. He grabbed Nuklear Man’s fist on one of its assaults and squeezed it.

“Ow, ow,
ow!”
Nuklear Man yelped.

Nihel’s free hand clenched into a fist. He pulled it back and slammed it against Nuklear Man’s jaw. The Hero sailed into the parking lot where he slammed through several stray cars before coming to a stop in a mutilated minivan. He tore through its metal frame like it was a spider’s web. He plant his feet firmly on the ground and promptly wobbled while holding on to his head.

“Okay, world. Quit movin’ around.” He blinked a few times and looked at Nihel who was still standing in the now distant Food Court Junction. “Aw c’mon. One was bad enough, but now
three
of him? All dancing around like that?” He gave a tired sigh. “This is only going to get worse before it gets better.”

__________

Ima floated up to the Scientific: Communications Panel. She wiped her brow with her lab coat. “Veronica. I am finished.”

Dr. Menace appeared in the view screen. “Are you ready to jettison the Skyjumper?”

Dr. Genius breathed deep. “Yes.”

“We have been at oddz for mozt of our careerz, but I swear that I will do what I can to bring you back down.”

“Don’t worry about that now. All you have to think about is getting that Nega Bomb of yours on the Skyjumper’s hull before it reaches the surface. I adjusted the KI Alteration Drive. Ordinarily, it makes an antigravity field around the ship about thirty meters in diameter. It should now treat the affected radius as though it was the extent of the entire universe. Anything can get in, such as your bomb and our two targets. But, once inside, nothing can get out. This should include the explosion since, to anything inside, there is nothing outside.”

“Excellent. When will you make the drop?”

“As soon as you’re ready to launch the bomb.”

“I have to get to the roof. Give me one minute.”

Ima nodded and pushed herself to the Watchtower’s Scientific: Main Computer. She punched in the Dock Release code. Lights flashed to warn personnel that wasn’t there to keep a safe distance from the Airlocks. Ima smiled. The only other person on the automated Scientific: Satellite was Yuriko. And she certainly wasn’t going anywhere.

Alone. With but one window to the world below. My world. It’s going to be a long wait for any rescue party. Things should work well enough in my absence. Überdyne’s world order is practically a perpetual motion machine. It only needs the occasional tune up. Everything will be fine. There should be enough heroes left to stop Veronica from trying to disrupt anything in the meantime.

Seconds ticked by. Her hand hovered over the Release button. She pressed it.

__________

The hot afternoon sun beat down on Menace like a giant hammer of fire. The impromptu Nega Bomb was tucked under her arm. She ran to her makeshift delivery system. It looked like an oversized mortar launcher with a little display screen and keyboard stuck to it. She stuffed the bomb into the shaft and switched on the mini-computer guidance system. “Scanning,” the screen blinked in big red letters.

The mortar beeped and reported, “Positive Lock,” at the bottom of the screen. In another corner of the small screen a mini-cam projected the image of the falling Skyjumper. She could just make out its fiery hairline of friction-fire with her own eye as it fell. The mortar adjusted itself while calculating velocity, wind, and so on.

The screen count down.

Three.

Two.

One.

The tiny missile flew into the sky. It would intercept the Skyjumper in just under a minute and attach itself to the craft’s hull. It would then set its own timer so that it would go off a microsecond before impact with the ground right in between Nuklear Man and Nihel, eradicating all traces of them forever to save the galaxy.

It was almost too easy.

__________

Walking through campus now, Rachel’s shoulder playfully bumping into mine with every alternate step. I love it.

It’s an early afternoon of Spring. Not too late in the day or season to be hot yet. But it’s getting there. We’re going back to Rachel’s car, a sporty little import. Red, of course. We’ll go back to my house and fuck our brains out. Life is good.

“Could you drive?” she yawns while putting the keys in my hand.

“I don’t really have a choice, do I?”

“Nope.”

“Why are you so tired, anyway?”

“Some of us actually wake up on
time.”
She sticks out her tongue and winks. “Now open the doors.”

“You really think twenty minutes of lying down in the car will recharge your batteries?” I open the doors and we climb in.

“You’ll find out, now won’t you.”

“Yowza.”

__________

Shiro listened to the last of the thunderous blows echo through the city. He chanced a look at the streets below. The roads were clogged with wrecks as far as he could see. The sidewalks were littered with bodies. Some of them were accompanied by helpers or scavengers, he couldn't tell which. He could hear sirens screaming in the distance from all sides. He had to look away from it all. He turned to the heavens. “From what of is? The why of being now!”

Something glinted in his vision. “Nani?” He flipped down his Tetsu: Ferocious Demon Mask to benefit from its high-tech sensory gadgetry. “Seeing Eyes of Sight. Focusing the sector of area. Ninety seven-ten.” His sensors focused on the rapidly plummeting Skyjumper. “Projection the divination time now when later at!” His suit calculated a 99.999% chance that the craft would strike down in the vicinity of The Mall. “The calamities aren’t to ending from multiplications!” he said with an exhausted gasp. He flipped the face mask back up and peered at the free-falling fireball with eyes tempered by determination.

“Hero of tomorrow is winning today before born yesterday!” His Tetsu: Rocket propelled him into the dangerous sky at nearly escape velocity with a corkscrew trail of smoke in his wake.

Shiro slapped up against the hull of the plummeting Skyjumper like a bug splattering against a windshield. The impact made him feel like his teeth had been knocked out with a hyperactive tuning fork. His ferocious demon-style mask had automatically deployed itself to protect his face from the fierce winds of speed. His limbs sprawled out to the fullness of their shortness. Shiro clung to the Skyjumper’s nose like one of those stuffed animals that always get suction cupped to the inside of car windows. “Fukazake Shiro! Action the time is being—
GO!!!”
he yelled above the cacophony of motion around him. His red oversized firecracker-looking rocket flared into action pushing against the craft to slow and stop it.

The Skyjumper was unaffected.

Shiro’s little fingers clamped against the hull. “Please! Strength from dragons on now. Ancestors which mighty when there to be forming!” he pleaded with himself. “Computing! The boost energy from powaa, that could taken Whisakey Overdrive!”

The computer in his helmet made a few calculations as requested and superimposed the results of his query onto his vision. Sadly, it would be impossible to halt the Skyjumper’s descent. All available power, plus the incredible energies afforded by his Whisakey Overdrive still wouldn’t be enough.

“Kuso,” he muttered. Shiro devoted more of his suit’s power to the rocket, but the Skyjumper continued to gain speed. The Mall raced up to him. The Mall. “With at Sparky-san and Nuklear-san and Norman-san there is. Surviving probabilities, but the standing by innocently? Many are killed the way of falling!” He grit his teeth. “Shiro, not the stand of it! Exploding action cannot to have then!”

He checked over his suit’s power levels. “If the way of cooling dragon engine becoming
instead
the way of dragon engine
fire
, adding of powaa Whisakey, the chance is heavy with smallness! Having to is the hero now. Can’t the failure!” In a matter of seconds the Skyjumper would impact the Earth and kill a hundred? two hundred? innocent people trapped throughout the Mall and its surrounding areas. He could stop it. He willed every last ounce of his suit’s power to the rocket. Including the power for the vital Cooling System that was keeping him alive. In a matter of seconds, Shiro would effectively be welded into his suit by its own heat and be cooked to death in an iron oven. He knew this. He engaged the Whisakey Overdrive. His small rocket threw out sparks and white hot flames. He could already feel his suit beginning to overheat.

“Not the matter,” he grunt as the heat increased. “Shiro are of samurai. Shiro are of hero.”

Then it happened.

He felt the Skyjumper’s nose move, just slightly, up. Which was quite problematic since it was still going down. The tremendous thrust from such a limited point on the Skyjumper’s hull caused the nose to edge up ever so slightly. Then more. And more. And more until the Skyjumper was positioned horizontally. Since it was built to be as aerodynamic as humanly possible to make it appear as though it did not indeed fly by a highly dangerous and largely untested process that was barely understood even by its designer Dr. Genius, it took off parallel to the ground several hundred feet above Metroville.

“What!” Dr. Genius screamed from her Scientific: Communications Panel.

“No!” Dr. Menace gasped from her Evil: Computer.

They watched as their plan to save the Earth, and the entire galaxy, went awry. The Skyjumper was rocketing away from the Mall at an incredible velocity while its descent was starting to level off. Even so, the Nega Bomb’s timer counted off its final seconds as planned. According to Shiro’s onboard computer, if he could hold on just a little longer, he’d be able to clear the rest of Metroville’s high-rises and then—

A giant sphere of black flashed into existence around the Skyjumper just barely long enough for the human eye to see it. The Skyjumper and all the reality that existed around it, was quite literally nothing. And though the space the sphere had occupied now looked perfectly normal, anything that touched one side found itself instantly and painlessly transported to the other side nearly a hundred feet away.

An oversized firecracker arced down from the sky, bounced along a sidewalk and into a car that had swerved off the street when its driver had simply dropped dead like so many others. The rocket was smoking and glowing slightly. Most of its paint had apparently melted off. Only a few red specks remained.

Shiro himself landed like an airplane wreck on the roof of an apartment building that had become abandoned only minutes ago in the throws of mass terror following the throes of mass death only one minute before that. Luckily for Shiro, but perhaps more so for the apartment building, he was somewhat less huge than an airplane. The damage was minimal and mostly concentrated on his body. He lay on his back, panting and sweating considerably while most of the suit’s power was involved with the Cooling Systems. He stared at the space the Skyjumper had occupied in its last moment not even a full second after he’d let go and jettisoned his Tetsu: Rocket. His suit’s computer had projected that the craft should’ve been propelled to the vastly unpopulated Irradiated Flats between Metroville and the Silo of Solitude. Instead, it had been swallowed up into nothing. “Sometimes when the dragon from void stared in, back up the depths looking,” he philosophized quietly.