Origins of a D-List Supervillain (28 page)

“So, you’re worried that the lasers trained on me from the corners of the room and that statue, which is really a modified Type A robot wouldn’t slow me down enough for you to hit the escape hatch hidden behind that cabinet three feet from you? But you’re right, I don’t want to offend your employer, but I have no interest in signing over my livelihood to him.”

That actually did slightly unnerve the man and he stammered, “Patterson’s people are already looking for you and are apparently looking to test out methods of stopping an armored opponent. The Overlord is offering you his protection because it is in his best interest that their prototypes are never put to use. You’ve already seen the place where you’ll end up when they catch you, because if you think you can win, your delusions must be greater than I’ve been led to believe.”

For a moment, I considered chucking the table at him and seeing if The Overlord would accept my apology that it was an accident. Considering it was impossible to lie to the man without him detecting it, probably not.

Instead, I shrugged and said, “I can handle Patterson’s little security force and the Gulf Coasters.”

“If you ever manage to develop into a credible threat, Ultraweapon will personally put you down. His people have watched all the available footage of your suit and have trained to it. You’re outclassed and the odds are stacked against you, but you don’t even care do you? My predecessor filled you with the idea that you’re something special, when you’re not. I guess you really are an idiot.”

Ultimately, he wouldn’t have pissed me off nearly as much if he had just left Vicky out of this.

“Oh, I care, West,” I replied. “As far as being outclassed, I’m not the only one in this room who is outclassed by the competition. Vicky could have sold me on the deal and made me glad I took it. Hell, she was so good that she could sell the Ebola virus to Africa and made them think they got the better end of the deal! You? You’re just a sad, sad imitation who now has to go back to one of the most powerful people in the world and explain how you couldn’t make this happen. I bet you served up all the latest buzzwords about how you’re a dedicated go getter, who doesn’t accept no for an answer. You’re a kingmaker, the rainmaker, and the showstopper rolled all into one, but you’re as phony as the orgasm the last woman you slept with faked. My girlfriend never talked much about her work, but she gave me the impression that your boss has a low tolerance of failure, so I wouldn’t want to be you, Paul. I wouldn’t dare harm you, Paul. He’ll end up doing that for me when he figures out that you can’t deliver on your promises. Tell the Overlord if ever gets back into the cloning business, he ought to make one of Vicky so you can see what real talent looks like. Now, since we’re just wasting our time, I’m going to show myself out.”

As I turned, he said, “You’re making a big mistake, Stringel. I’ll make sure you never work for our organization again. You’ll never be more than a bottom feeder.”

“Please,” I said dismissively. “I’ve made so many mistakes that this isn’t even in the top twenty. Piss off, West, and don’t ever lose the protection of your employer, because killing you wouldn’t bother me at all.”

I didn’t want to linger, but I still made time to spread those rose petals. Odds were that I wouldn’t be able to swing by this place again anytime soon.

Taking to the air for the trip back over the mountains where I’d stashed my van, I thought about the way I’d handled myself. Vicky would have chided me about burning a bridge and that there were any number of ways that I could have walked away without the hostility.

Vicky made me a nicer person and the absence of Vicky made me much less. I was fairly certain that I didn’t like the person I was becoming, but even if I wanted to stop it, I wasn’t terribly interested. Since I couldn’t embrace her, apathy was the next best option.

• • •

The depressing thing over the next two months was that I’d put in for a couple of “rent a thug” jobs and been turned down. It seems Joseph’s damage to what little rep I previously possessed had a lasting effect. I’d been offered one South of the Border, but didn’t like the sound of it and passed. Other than a couple of weapons gigs, things looked pretty bleak.

Deciding I needed to enhance my value, I knew it was time to go after the people who were supposedly chasing me. Defeating the Gulf Coasters would put me back on the hiring radar.

Gulfport was a nice town. Close enough to New Orleans for the Guardians to get there in a hurry. It made a nice place to lay a trap. I just needed to make a couple of things and set the stage.

I hit three jewelry stores on the first night, for old time’s sake. Also, with my connections on the various message boards, I could move metals much easier than when I was ManaCALes. Plus, it was unexpected and would probably make them wonder why I was messing with something that seemed beneath me.

Naturally, they came running out the next morning and were crawling all over the scene. I’d tapped into a nearby store’s surveillance system that used weak passwords—SAFEfromU?—seriously? It was kind of amusing watching Discus and Eyelash play amateur detectives, while Dozer looked her usual strong and useless self. K-Otica, if tabloids were to be believed, was on maternity leave—good for her, though Spirit Staff was still active on the team. It made me wonder if their son was going to be an erratic martial artist with bizarre skills. Good for her. Out of the team, Karina was the one who bothered me the least.

Several of the ASH team wandered around, doing their best “I’m a badass” impression. I counted eight total. Six had those new hoversleds I’d been reading about, which made up for the missing flying superheroine. The other two rode around in a Promethia armored van, because that’s what looks cool.

Dozer and Discus also arrived on those hoversleds. I’d heard that the East Coast team was using them, but this was the first time I’d seen the Gulf Coasties with them.

I tried not to be nervous, figuring that my new
harder edged
attitude on life and death would have gotten rid of the jitters.

It didn’t.

Preferring to put my plan into action slightly more rested, I considered letting them go on their merry way, but it came back to the old saying of “shit or get off of the pot.” I’d gotten more than my fair of shit, so it was time to give a little back.

I flew from the abandoned waterfront warehouse to the entrance of a bank about two miles from where they were. My guess was that the ones in the van would drive over, but the rest would run or use their nifty little Promethia issued toys. They’d been checking out the other crime scene for a couple of hours and would be getting bored, or hungry. I figured I’d make them run a little, spread them out a bit, and take them in manageable chunks for a while, because twelve against one seemed a tad unsportsmanlike.

Kicking in the doors, I watched the lunchtime line scatter as I walked up to the teller windows. They had a nice big sheet of bulletproof material separating us. I reached under the little slot with one hand and yanked. The owners of the bank hadn’t sprung for the armored suit proof glass and a whole section of it came away.

Pointing my hand and making the discharge nozzle of my force blaster glow, I pointed at the nearest teller, a man, and tossed him a bag.

“You! Fill! Now!”

He caught the bag and looked sufficiently frightened. I pointed at a female teller. “You, get your purse and toss it in the bag.”

The woman looked confused. “Why?”

“Because, if J. Crew here tosses in a tracking device or a dye bag, I’m going to need to come and kill someone. I’ve selected you. Old J. here looks pretty heroic and I’m sure if I told him to toss his wallet in, he’d do it, but you’ve got a ring, probably a couple of rugrats, and look friendly enough; he’s not going to sign your death warrant. Are you J. Crew?”

The horrified man dumped the bag out onto the floor and I watched the dye pack explode all over his khakis and the cash.

“Smart kid,” I said. I waited another minute while he filled and the woman brought her purse.

“Just your wallet ma’am. I don’t need the whole thing; don’t want your cell phone or the GPS inside of it. All this goes well and I’ll drop it in the mail in a couple of days. If it goes poorly, well, then I’ll return it in person. Neither of us wants that now, do we?”

It was actually kind of fun inspiring this kind of fear. I gave it a minute more before saying, “Alrighty, that’s enough! I figure my friends a few streets over will be here soon, so I need to go and greet them.”

Grabbing the bag and dropping it in the cargo pod, I guessed I had between thirty and fifty grand, lame really, but it seemed wrong to walk away empty handed. If the place had bought one of the magic trackers, it would be in the vault, because the drawers in the front would only be given to run of the mill armed robbers. They’d get dye bags and electronic tracking devices, not the voodoo that youdoo.

Jogging out through another one of the windows, I added to the property damage and ran over to the cars stopped at the light. I pushed a Ford F-150 over onto the hood of a VW and, so the people on the Chevy side of the Ford versus Chevy rivalry wouldn’t feel left out, I roughed up a Tahoe as well.

Fair is fair,
I figured. Watching people flee.

I also figured that at least one of the Coasties would stop to check for injuries, like the predictable heroes they were. Patterson’s crowd was probably instructed to ignore any civilians and proceed to the target. They were here to test weapons and not save lives and I got that, but wondered if the do-gooders understood the distinction. Somehow, I didn’t think so.

My onboard systems detected the first three flyers inbound and pulled the grenade launcher off my back and sent a few rounds of tear gas into traffic to add to the confusion, finding that people milling around made this more interesting. The launcher was one of those six-round types that the police and military, along with the criminals, have. It was disposable as far as I was concerned and the serial numbers had long since been removed.

The first three flyers circled about thirty feet from me. They wore standard Promethia security garb that consisted of a protective vest, with an internal forcefield emitter, over coveralls and a kevlar helmet. It cut down on their mobility, but offered a decent amount of protection. It looked like they could drive the sled with one hand while the other operates a weapon from a pintle mount. The arrangement didn’t exactly allow for the greatest amount of accuracy, but they looked fairly comfortable doing it.

Whatever they were shooting was colorless. The impacts on my shields were registering something and that bothered me, so I stayed on the ground, but began dodging and tossing some force blaster shots to make them interested.

What are they shooting at me? Surface temp is spiking.
I swept the low end of the spectrum first.
It’s not radioactive, or infrared. Wait! Got something around two point five millimeter wavelength and one hundred and sixty-five gigahertz. MAZERS! They’re trying to nuke me with microwaves? Oh, hell. No!

I couldn’t picture Patterson coming up with this bucket of nastiness. That meant Joe was angrier than I thought about the thing with his house; like he really spends time there anymore! I reinforced my shields, deciding not to let them cook me alive and began returning fire in earnest.

Clipping one of the sleds with a level three burst, it yawed wildly, but had shield generators of its own, probably calibrated specifically for my force blasters.

Hadn’t been expecting that! Let’s see how they...what’s that?

The two newly arrived sleds were making a beeline toward me about twenty feet apart. My scanners picked up a sizeable energy mass directly between them, some kind of energized net and they were releasing it!

I didn’t take the time to consider if it was a suit style taser or something worse. Instead of triggering my jetpack and trying to fly up, I did my best powersuit belly flop and triggered a four second burst from my flight system.

It definitely scratched the paint job, but the net hit a tree and exploded.
Plasma web, not a taser then. They’re definitely trying to kill me.

“Surrender now, villain!” Discus’ voice boomed.

“Your buddies don’t look like they’re interested in my surrender, Graham!” I yelled pulling myself off the ground. The microwave assault began anew. “You might want to ask them about Patterson’s orders.”

I didn’t wait for him to answer and went airborne, wondering what the top speed on those sleds happened to be. The two who’d tried to drop the plasma net of doom were hovering and connecting a second net to their sleds.

Let’s see if their shields can handle this! Maximum burst!

One of the pilots saw my torrent of energy coming at them and jumped. That’s when I realized these two didn’t have shields or had to drop them to hook up their net. The blast ruptured the magnetic plasma bottle and that willow tree from a minute ago was avenged in style. Both sleds detonated. The one who saw it coming was blown onto the upended Tahoe. His partner was vaporized. I high tailed it toward the warehouse near the waterfront. Things were a bit stickier than I’d hoped for and it was time to bring in my assistant.

Guess I can’t hide behind the—I’ve never killed anyone defense anymore. The other one’s not moving either, scratch two. Screw ‘em. They’re practicing for the Overlord. He wouldn’t show them any mercy.

The final hoversled arrived on the scene as I departed. It had a dish mounted on the front of it. Care to guess where it was pointed? My ECM systems screamed missile lock and my scanners detected a launch farther back.

“Missile launch detected,” Vicky’s voice said in my ear. It was one of the few sound bites she’d recorded for me. She’d giggled, trying to stifle a laugh when she did. It wasn’t the way I wanted to hear her again.

Must’ve come from the van. Launching missiles in the middle of a city. What could possibly go wrong here?

The sleds weren’t as fast as I was, but the missile was gaining on me—something I wasn’t too keen on. I skimmed the rooftop of a building and used my blasters to blow up the air conditioning unit on top of the building sending a hail of improvised chaff skyward.