Just Cause Universe 3: Day of the Destroyer (28 page)

Bobby appeared to come to a decision of some sort. “Come with me. If you’re going to be out in the field representing Just Cause, we can’t have you looking like that. You either,” he added as he looked at Shane’s shirtless torso.

“Wait, what are you doing?” asked Shane as he and Gretchen hurried after Bobby to the team locker rooms.

“I’m trying to keep your girlfriend out of prison,” said Bobby. “We’ve got to get the public’s opinion on her side. If she’s out there fighting fires and saving lives, it’ll be very hard for the Feds to quietly put her away.”

“I don’t understand,” said Gretchen.

Bobby thrust some coveralls like he wore at her and Shane. “Congratulations, you two. I’m officially inducting you into Just Cause.”

Chapter Sixteen

July 14, 1977, 12:00 AM

Faith danced away from the machine’s chattering guns. She’d discovered that they fired not bullets, but heavy bolts that tended to leave large, ragged holes in whatever they struck. Whoever had built the machine had optimized it for combat.

She ducked behind a parked car for a few seconds to catch her breath. She’d lost her radio and had no idea where Irlene was, or if anyone else was coming to her aid.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” taunted the machine’s driver.

Faith looked around for something, anything to use as a weapon against the machine she’d begun to think of as a walking tank. She’d never before felt so helpless against an opponent. Her super-speed, normally so formidable against mundane opponents, was rendered useless against this armored behemoth.

“Eeny, meeny, miny, mo,” said the driver. The buzzsaw ripped downward through the car in front of the one Faith hid behind. She yelped as hot sparks showered her and burned tiny holes in her costume.

“Catch a tiger by his toe.” Napalm splashed across the car to the rear. The palpable heat made her gasp for breath.

She didn’t wait for him to finish taunting her, and made a dangerous rush across the street, darting between the walking tank’s legs where it couldn’t shoot at her.

Faith’s heart hammered in pure terror. She had no idea how to battle an opponent like this. When she and the rest of Just Cause trained, they bantered with each other and sparred a little. It had been years since any of them had to fight a parahuman opponent.

In a blur of gray, yellow, and blue, Tommy flashed past the walking tank. A powerful gust of wind staggered the machine but failed to topple it. “Are you okay?” he called to Faith.

“Just singed,” she shouted over the din. “Watch it!”

The tank’s upper section rotated around to bring the bolt guns to bear on Tommy and Faith. He went one way, she the other.

The Volkswagen Beetle beside Faith vanished. She flinched at the unexpected disappearance, but then an intense, raspberry-colored hummingbird whirled about her head.

“Pick it up,” screamed a six-inch-tall Irlene, trying to be heard over the sounds of destruction. Faith looked down to see a football-sized car near her feet. “Throw it,” urged Irlene.

Faith realized what the girl wanted to accomplish and bent to pick up the tiny automobile. It had a nice heft to it and fit in her hand. She hurled it at the machine as the bolt guns tracked around to her.

Irlene returned the car to return to its normal size as it spun through the air. In a heartbeat, it became a sizable missile, but as it gained size and mass, it shed momentum, and the tank’s driver whirled the buzzsaw arm around to deflect the small car into the second story of a nearby building.

The saw blade didn’t survive the impact. The housing bent and the blade shattered at the tank’s arm. Tommy tried to press the advantage by buffeting it with powerful winds, but the driver splayed the tank’s legs and kept it upright.

“That was good. One arm down,” said Faith over the noise. “Can you shrink another car?”

“No, all the others are too big for my powers,” cried Irlene.

“Go find some more,” said Faith. “We need more firepower.”

Brilliant light from overhead defined everything on the street in sharp relief. “More firepower, coming right up,” called Sundancer as she circled once overhead.

The machine stopped moving for a moment, its arms hanging like they’d been disconnected in a mechanical impression of surprise. Then Sundancer cut loose with a beam of radiant energy against the tank’s armor and the machine backed up several steps, arms raised to protect itself.

The wash of heat from Sundancer’s attack made Faith scamper back several yards. She squinted into the glare and wondered what she could do to help. Tommy circled overhead and used the massive rising heat from the machine as an engine to form a powerful, swirling dust devil in the middle of the street. He steered it like a remote control toy, smashing it again and again into the tank.

Faith glanced around her and realized she was right in front of a hardware store. Broken glass littered the front sidewalk and most of the window displays were empty. She ducked inside, found a large adjustable crescent wrench and hurried back outside again.

If nothing else, she’d try to take apart that tank piece by piece.

Javelin flew in, firing a steady barrage of particle beams from one hand. Faith realized that his other hand wasn’t even armored. She stood well away from the team’s heavy hitters as they brought the full force of their offensive abilities to bear against the walking tank.

The machine’s thick armor soaked up a lot of punishment, but the steady assault by the parahumans was taking a toll. The engine noise had become arrhythmic and strained. A hydraulic line burst in a shower of blood-colored fluid and left one of the machine’s legs dragging and inert.

The heroes pressed their advantage, and that brought them trouble. An innocuous servo angled outward with a mirror on its end. The tank driver thrust it into Sundancer’s energy beam. It melted in the directed radiance, but not before reflecting some back at her. She shrieked and covered her eyes. Her hair became ash and her skin boiled with blisters.

Tommy rushed to cushion her fall but flew too close to the tank. The damaged arm, having once wielded the saw blade, still functioned well enough to knock Tommy hard across the street where he crashed into an awning. It collapsed around him like an undignified net.

As Javier descended to check on Sundancer, Faith hurried to help free Tommy. The tide of battle had turned in only a few seconds.

“I’m gonna mess you all up.” The tank took a step toward Javier and Sundancer.

“I’m okay,” mumbled Tommy through the fabric. “I’ll be out in a second.”

Faith turned and ran back to interpose herself between the tank and her teammates. “That’s far enough,” she shouted. “I’ve got a wrench and I’m not afraid to use it.”

#

Harlan gasped for air in the sweltering confines of Destroyer’s cabin. That bitch with the sunbeam had fried or overheated half the suit’s systems. He’d been fortunate to think of the trick with the mirror. Otherwise he might have only had seconds to live.

Then the guy in the inferior armor had shot out a hydraulic line with some kind of beam and left Destroyer limping. The man flew faster than Harlan’s bolt guns could track, and if he went on a full offensive, Harlan was in trouble unless he got lucky.

Overall, he was very pleased at how Destroyer had handled the world’s premiere superteam. Pony Girl had presented almost no threat, although the trick she and Irlene had pulled with the car caught him off guard and cost him the saw. Tornado had proved ineffective as well; he may as well have been using a hair dryer on Destroyer for all the good his air powers did.

Pony Girl stood before him, challenging him with, of all things, a crescent wrench. Harlan would have laughed in her face if Destroyer wasn’t in such rough shape already. He was starting to think about how to escape back to the junkyard.

But first, he had to deal with the annoyance before him. He lowered the bolt guns at her. “Leave.” The vocoder sounded staticky and distorted in his ears.

Pony Girl shook her head. “I’m going to take you apart piece by piece unless you surrender right now.”

“That’s hardly a threat from where I’m standing,” said Harlan.

An unfamiliar shriek over the cabin speakers made him check all his monitors. Less than half of them still worked. He’d address that fragility in the Destroyer Mark II suit.

“Maybe I’m not that imposing,” said Pony Girl, “but he is.”

With a blast of blue flame and exhaust, the Steel Soldier settled to the street. Delta wings sprouted from the android’s back. In its left hand, it held a multi-barreled machine gun with a cartridge feed running from an ammunition box on its torso. Its right arm had been replaced by a four-inch cannon with a long, rifled barrel.

Both weapons were pointed directly at Harlan.

“You are in so much trouble,” said Pony Girl.

“Cease all offensive actions, shut down your systems, and exit the vehicle,” said the Soldier at top amplification.

Harlan winced at the noise and incipient threat of the cannon’s gaping maw. He stared unabashed at the Soldier. He ached to get a look at its technical specifications, to dig around inside it and find out what made it tick.

Harlan fired his napalm, igniting a long strip along the street and torching the remaining parked cars. He hoped to confuse the robot long enough to get a telling shot at it from the bolt guns.

The Soldier’s cannon fired, making an odd chuffing sound. Harlan’s ears popped and he became disoriented as his screens lost their vertical or horizontal holds. He felt an impact, then another, and Destroyer fell backward with noisy debris raining down upon the cabin. His engines stalled and sparks shot through the cabin as most of the electronics failed.

Harlan realized Destroyer had fallen back into a building, which had crumbled atop him. A hole the size of a dinner plate poked through the cabin wall. The Soldier’s cannon round had blasted right between Harlan’s legs. The control sleeves had warped, and he was trapped.

The temperature rose. He realized his napalm had spilled and ignited, and if he couldn’t get out, he was going to die. His one remaining monitor screen showed wreckage shifting as the Soldier dug through to get to him.

Harlan wouldn’t accept rescue under those circumstances. He still had hydraulic power in the pincer arm, and one bolt gun. As the Soldier moved into range, Harlan worked his controls with feverish desperation. The pincer lashed out to close on the Solder’s cannon barrel, crimping it to uselessness. Then with his last power, Harlan fired the rest of his bolt magazine point blank into the Soldier’s torso.

The Soldier twitched and danced in Destroyer’s grasp as the bolts chewed into and through the android’s chest plastron. Sparks flew and the light in the robot’s eyes died. Even in his grim situation, Harlan had to smile; he’d beaten yet another top-level superhero.

He turned his attention to trying to extricate his legs from Destroyer’s control sleeves. They’d become bent, either from an impact or the Steel Soldier’s shell, and Harlan didn’t have enough purchase to yank either of them free.

The cabin temperature was so hot from the burning fuel that Harlan couldn’t breathe. Perspiration lent him lubrication, and he got one leg to slip free. The other wouldn’t budge at all, and he began to wonder whether he’d die from suffocation, heat, or fire first.

Cool air blew in through the hole in the cab. Harlan gasped at it. A bird-sized figure in raspberry and cream darted through the hole and Harlan groaned.

Why did it have to be Irlene?

“Harlan?” she squeaked in surprise. “What on Earth are you doing in here?”

“Go away,” he shouted. “I’m busy.”

Irlene ignored him. She grew in size and reached for him.

“Leave me alone,” he cried.

“There’s a building on top of you and a fire all around,” she said as she took his hand. “The only way out of here is through that hole.”

The cabin loomed larger and larger around Harlan until a gargantuan Irlene lifted him. She carried him the way Reggie did her stuffed elephant. Harlan struggled in her grasp but to no avail. She passed him into a waiting blue-gloved hand that poked through the hole. Harlan looked up into the colossal face of Tornado and knew he’d failed.

#

The doll-sized boy struggled in Tommy’s grasp as he flew up and away from the burning building. Fire now engulfed the machine the boy had been piloting, and it was almost too bright to look upon.

He kept tight hold on the boy to keep him from wriggling free as he dropped down to the ground where Faith and Javier were tending to Sundancer. “I’m fine,” said Gloria, but with her uncontrollable shivering it was clear she was going into shock.

“We need to get her to a hospital,” said Faith. “Those burns look bad.”

“What about the Soldier?” asked Javier.

“I can get him,” said Irlene.

“Be careful,” said Tommy. “That fire’s really hot, and there are all kinds of weird air currents from it. You could get slammed into a wall or the ground at any moment.”