Origins of a D-List Supervillain (21 page)

I caught the look on Vicky’s face; she’d looked like the cat who’d caught the canary a second ago, now she looked horrified.

“Cal! Wait! It’s not what you think.”

“Shit! I can’t believe I fell for your act,” I boomed through my speakers and turned my attention to Joe. “You and I go back a ways, Joe, but don’t think I won’t grease your ass the moment Patterson shows his face.”

Joe looked angry and turned to look at Vicky. “You were supposed to brief him!”

There was no hint of an Australian accent in his voice.

Vicky was stammering out an apology and looking suddenly afraid, “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t realize...”

“No, clearly you didn’t. I’ll deal with you later. Now, Mr. Stringel, be assured there will be no appearance by Ultraweapon today. Please power down your offensive systems. Keep your shields up, if you must while I explain what Ms. Wheymeyer neglected.”

“Place weapons on standby,” I said loud enough for him hear. “Increase shielding to maximum and bring flight systems online. All right, old buddy, let’s talk.”

“I’m the clone of Joe Ducie. You may call me Joseph or by my moniker, The Merchant of Death.”

The MoD? He’s The Overlord’s right hand man! Joe? Seriously...Joe? Clone Joe? They Cloned Joe Ducie...sounds like a bad science fiction movie. Weird. Guess I should say something.

The first thing that came to mind was, “Two Joe Ducies running around the world; I’m guessing there’s a shortage of scotch somewhere. Shouldn’t you have a goatee or something?”

The man cracked a slight grin. “Indeed. We did actually meet once, but I doubt you’d remember.”

“We did?” I asked.

“You were just promoted to the weapons team. I dropped by pretending to be the other version of myself and we talked and drank well into the night while you regaled me with the details of Project Force Blaster. Your drink was laced with a short term memory suppression drug.”

“You date raped me?”

He laughed. “Mentally, I suppose. Was it good for you? Patterson’s team all fell for that one time and time again. Sadly, they finally caught on a couple of months ago when one of the new members had left his web camera on, of all things. Promethia hasn’t revealed my existence to the world at large yet, but I’ll have to come up with some new tricks at some point.”

Thinking back, I remembered the morning after my promotion and the nastiest hangover I’d ever had. It was one of the reasons I never touched scotch again.

“So your boss decided the easiest way to steal Patterson’s tech was to copy the man who makes his tech work. That’s pretty...”

“Evil?” Joseph said. “It’s in his title.”

“Nah, I was going to say hardcore. I guess that explains why you figured I could finish your design.”

He smiled, “You have some talents. I acquired your force blasters from after your unfortunate capture and was impressed by what you’d built.”

That really caught me by surprise. “I thought those were destroyed.”

“My people got there first. I see you’ve utilized two of your compressors in this design to hold the charge rather than relying on powercells.”

“Keeps the weight and the price down. For defense, you can just use your power plant to keep them juiced up. I’m averaging nine point seven shots per charge. That’s more offense than you spec’d.”

“Let’s see the damage potential, then.”

Joseph went over to the cannon and activated it, checking the output on the weapon. A sheepish looking Vicky walked up next to me and said, “I guess my little joke didn’t go over so well. Sorry.”

“I’m usually the one with the dick move,” I said. “So, I should let it slide. You want me to say something to Joseph?”

“He’ll calm down in a bit—especially if your cannon makes a good impression. So, are we good, Cal?” she asked and gave me the sad eyes treatment.

“I guess so,” I said.

Glancing up at me, she smiled once more, and said, “Good. Care to explain what you meant by falling for my act?”

I was glad she couldn’t see my face behind my visor.

“Not right now,” I said, wondering how I could talk my way out of this...without letting her try on my armor.

• • •

“I’m going to need a bigger base,” I said to Vicky on the flight back. For the return trip, I was out of the armor and celebrating the windfall on my horizon, almost giddy. The Merchant of Death was suitably impressed by my capacitive pulse cannon and gave the initial production run the green light.

And by green light, I mean the Cal’s going to make a ridiculous amount of money light.

“From the sound of it, you do need some place a little more accessible.” I had a suspicion that Vicky knew exactly where Bobby’s hole in the ground was, but was afraid of her answer.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “There’s not enough space for storage, assembly and testing.”

Vicky refilled her champagne glass and sat down next to me on the couch. Private charter definitely was the way to go.

Grabbing her tablet, she quizzed me on my requirements and asked how much money I had available. All that money wouldn’t go very far when it came to outfitting another base.

After she finished peppering me with questions, I had to ask why she was doing this. “Not that I don’t appreciate the help, but what’s with the sudden interest in my accommodations?”

“Well, I suppose I need to make some kind of gesture to balance out my feeble humor,” Vicky offered. “How about I help you track down a good base and the equipment you’ll need to set up your production line?”

“What’s the catch?” I asked, casting a suspicious glance over at my empty suit of armor. “You really want to play around with my armor don’t you?”

“Not today,” she said and shifted on the couch. With that being her only warning, she turned and crawled onto my lap, straddling me. She pressed her palms down on my shoulders and looked me straight in the eyes.

“What are you doing?” I asked, throat suddenly dry even though I’d been drinking a beer just a second ago.

“I figured I’d skip past the phase where we kind of tiptoe around each other and keep flirting. Don’t get me wrong, flirting with you is a lot of fun, but you wouldn’t believe how hectic my week gets, and I want to just skip ahead to some of the other things that’re fun too. Don’t you Cal?”

“Uh, huh,” I babbled. More intelligent conversation had kind of deserted me at the moment. Leslie had been better looking, but Vicky was way more attractive and had the confidence that went deeper than skin deep. She dug me and my armor. Vicky had a wicked sense of humor and brains.

Leaning forward, she kissed me. Her arms moved up to around my head and she worked her fingers through my hair. Though not a virgin by any stretch, I wasn’t exactly Mr. Smooth Moves and Casanova; this kind of thing usually didn’t happen to me.

Breaking away and smiling somewhat devilishly, she undid her blouse, letting it fall to the side and while I’d seen her show more of her chest in a swimsuit, this blew that image away from my mind. “Don’t get me wrong, Cal. I’m still going to get into your armor, but right now, I’m only interested in getting into your pants.”

Chapter Eleven

Love and Other Clever Ambushes

A lot can change in six months, especially when there’s someone who matters in your life. That was something that hadn’t really happened to me before and it was worth savoring.

I stared out at the poorly maintained road leading to my new base and pondered just how much my life had changed and how much that had to do with Vicky. For starters, I wouldn’t have even known this place existed. She found this shuttered junkyard and provided me with the fake identity that I needed to buy the place without putting it in someone else’s name. My cover identity was the name of one of Heinlein’s heroes; her idea as well. My shell company also bought the land Bobby’s base was on from that one dancer. I’d come a long way from when I was scraping up rent money for a doublewide the last time I’d lived in Mississippi.

The junkyard was perfect. No one would care if there were vehicles taking stuff to or from a junkyard. No one would be concerned if there was work being performed at all hours of the night. There was raw material everywhere I looked.

It was my version of heaven.

Sure, there were permits to be filed and inspectors to be bribed, even with keeping it shuttered. My often delayed Grand Opening was never going to actually happen. Instead, the basement under the main office had been expanded significantly. The left half of that new area was dominated by the assembly line; a long metal bench. For the operating system of the assembly line and the base, I repurposed Tweedledee and hooked him into a larger computer.

Tweedledum? It was tempting to leave him in the Alabama base, but that was just a recipe for disaster. I’d probably come back to check up on the place and discover a deathtrap waiting for me. Instead, I gave him digging tools and had him start making my escape tunnel for this place. One of the pitfalls to the Alabama lair was only one way in or out. Besides, Dee would keep an eye on him and let me know if he started digging south again. I didn’t empty my piggy bank to buy this place only to flood it if he has another of his glitching.

“What’re you thinking about?” Vicky asked coming up next to me and sipping on a cup of coffee. She threw an arm across my back and leaned her head against my shoulder.

“I was thinking that I should look for more Type A robots to steal and put them on base construction duty.”

“If you really need them, I can get some broken out of storage and have them here next weekend.”

“But if I’m just borrowing them, it takes all the fun out of it,” I complained.

“It also takes the possibility of a deranged one damaging your base. I saw Tweedledum doing what might have been line dancing downstairs. Besides, you’ve still got to increase your production if you’re going to make your quota. Besides, I like to pull strings and make things happen. It’s probably the closest thing to having a superpower a gal can get.”

“Slave driver,” I accused. “I just don’t want to get too used to you snapping your pretty fingers and solving all my problems.”

“You know it! Maybe I’ll make you start calling me Mistress Victoria.”

I cocked an eyebrow at her. “Really? Don’t worry; I only work ten hour days when you’re around. When you’re not here I do sixteens. You’ll get your run of pulse cannons.”

“So, I only rate six hours of your time,” she said, mocking me. “I’m surprised you’re not spending more time with your armor. Before we started dating, I had you pegged for one of those
My Precious
types.”

“After getting beat, well getting run off, by the Gulf Coasters, I’ve been assessing the weaknesses of my suit.”

“Sounds like someone is thinking about upgrades,” she said in a singsong voice.

“No, more along the lines of a complete redesign. I’ve squeezed about as much performance as I can out of this suit, but I was working with Patterson’s earliest specs. My jetpack can’t even out run a helicopter if I’m carrying any load.”

“Mechani-CAL revision B? Or are you going to call it the Mark II? Can I call dibs on your old armor?”

“Mark II sounds better. After the initial production run of your cannons, I’ll begin working on it. Of course, that depends on how long you have to wait for funding for Phase Two of your robo-refit.”

“I like Rev B. It just sounds more ‘boss’. Some things have come up; it might be a few months. Unfortunately, an evil empire ends up being run like a Fortune 500 business; except the staff meetings can get downright nasty. Let’s just say that someone’s gigantic screw up has eaten into the budget and he was summarily audited out of this existence,” she said. Vicky didn’t discuss her work and I didn’t press her on it. I figured that if she needs to get something off her chest, Vicky would tell me.

“I suppose I could take a break after the cannons are finished and installed, pull a few last jobs in this suit, and then get started on a new build. I turned down the last job Eddie offered because I’m too busy right now. Refusing too many would be rude.”

“True,” Vicky commented and gave me a playful look. “Plus, Pulsive has a vindictive streak in him; you’ll want to watch out for that in the future. My plane flies out at three, what do you want to do today?”

“Well, I guess if you’re calling dibs on my old armor, I should teach you how to pilot it.” I’d broken down a month after she and I started dating and let her try on the suit. She was surprisingly clumsy in it, but determined—very determined.

“Really? You’re going to actually let me do more than walk around the room in it? Don’t tease me, Cal.”

“There’s an old school bus in the back part of the yard that is so rusted out, it isn’t even worth the scrap metal. I was going to tear it to pieces after you left, but if you want to...”

“Can I fire the force blasters?”

I smiled at her eagerness. “If you must.”

“Oh, I’m pretty sure I must.”

• • •

I usually wore a t-shirt and boxer shorts inside the suit. Vicky’s choice of a sports bra and panties seemed better, but I didn’t have the figure to pull off the bra.

Thankfully, I’d cleaned out the inside before she came down this weekend. It gets a little funky in there after a few hours. I also removed the...ahem...sanitary attachments that allowed me to take a wiz and a dump in there. She probably wouldn’t appreciate the technological equivalent of how the sausage gets made.

“How am I doing?” her digitized voice emanated from the speakers. She was still wobbly and I fought the urge to cringe with every step she took.

“The sensors are still calibrated for me. You’re body just isn’t shaped like mine; something I’m extremely grateful for.”

My comment was probably good for a smile from her behind the visor. Then again, if I had boobs, I probably wouldn’t need a girlfriend.

“So you’re saying I should slouch more when I walk and maybe scratch my ass every couple of minutes? Will that help?”

“I’ll hit the kill switch and put you in time out,” I threatened.

“Need I remind you of my rolodex of hitmen and assassins?”