The Suns of Liberty: Legion: A Superhero Novel (4 page)

     The wise guys leapt into the open doorway they had
just ambled through and could feel the heat of the flames roar overhead,
shrapnel ripping into them. 

     “Told you I had a bomb,” the Hollow said. And then
blinked away. The holograph was gone.

    
In New York City, still affixed to the side of the
skyscraper, fighting the frigid high winds, Lantern smiled and turned his attention
back to
Freedom Rise
. 

     Back in the Counting Room at Marconi’s stash-house,
the blast threw everyone to the floor and knocked over the tables. Flames and
energy rushed into the room. Cash scattered everywhere. Smoke, dust, and
currency filled the air. When it cleared, the men lay bloodied and moaning,
choking from the smoke. A few tried to pick themselves up. Someone bolted to
the door and swung it open, hoping for air. The dust and smoke billowed out the
opening in the roof, and the room began to clear. They were all gasping for the
clean air when someone said, “What the hell is that?”

     Those who could looked in the direction the guy was
pointing, which was up and through the gaping hole in the roof of the now demolished
Weapons Room.  In the grey sky, a small dark object was diving straight toward
them.

     Finally, someone yelled, “Spider Wasp!”

     Above the smoking stash-house of the Marconi crime
syndicate, Paul Ward made a final calculation as he dove. Ward was clad in a
tight blue body suit of hard plastic-looking metal material. So dark it looked
black. He’d gotten the color from his old antique Toyota Celica he'd fixed up a
few years back. They’d called the color “midnight blue” back then.

     On his back was a set of large orange wings, spread out
wide, flat against his back. Long vertical lines that ran down their length
gave them a slight “accordion” look. They were an ingenious cross between
insect wings and a miniature jet. The wings were powered by a non-explosive
chemical combination of hydrogen and oxygen. As long as the circulating
hydrogen supply didn't leak, oxygen in the atmosphere was enough to power the
engines. Oxygen was the input and oxygen was the output. The wings gave him
unlimited flying time.

     The dark-blue helmet he wore on his head was formed to
fit and had a bit of a gladiator curve to the back of it where it met his
shoulders. His eyes were covered by a protective orange lens; his mouth was exposed.
He called it his bug suit.

     He raised his arms in front of him and took aim. Large
cuffs on his sleeves whirred to life as they rotated like the canister of a
machine gun. All he had to do was think about it—and the Neural Transmitter,
implanted at the base of his brain, did the rest.

     Thwap! Thwap! Thwap!
 

     Darts zipped out from the rotating canisters and
struck the men as they tried to scramble for cover. 

     There had been ten of them. In one pass he’d hit all
ten.

     Within a single heartbeat they collapsed. The paralysis
serum shot through their veins, hastened by the blood accelerators. All the
darts needed to hit was a capillary just below the surface of the skin and the
accelerators would take it to the heart in a single beat. The Marconi crime
syndicate was history.

     Ward took the honors of calling it in, and the boys in
blue, now working in full cooperation with the Suns of Liberty, headed out to
the locale. The city’s last gang had fallen.

     Well, not quite. Ward had one more target left.

The bus began to slow, the engine stalled. At first,
Bruiser had the audacity to look confused. And then he realized that the EMP
had taken out the engine. Revolution hadn’t moved, so he was out too, Bruiser surmised.

     Okay, so a little miscalculation there, but nothing
too bad. They could always call the stash-house for a new vehicle. There was a
whole second unit of goons at the stash-house, after all. Mr. Marconi would
never have to know about this little mishap, Bruiser hoped.

     “Find out who he is before that suit reboots or
whatever it does,” he told his men.

     Six men went to grab him, and suddenly Revolution
sprang to life. He tossed them away like ragdolls. They slammed into the sides
of the bus, shattering the windows, and one them actually crashed through, out
into the street.

     Traffic swerved around the stalled bus. The thrown man
crunched on to the street. Vehicles narrowly veered by him. He sighed.

     He had bigger problems anyway...

    
Sophia.

     He stood up to run and slammed right into Helius, who
was glowing—with fusion power radiating all around her. She had covered her
body in a protective shielding of Helium-3 power. The woman basically had a
nuclear reactor on her back. It was like running into a steel wall—that was on
fire and hit you back.

     In other words, it hurt.

     To make matters worse for him, just as the man started
to be repelled off of her, she slugged him for good measure. If he’d had full
control of his senses he would have noticed the uppercut didn’t even fully
connect. It was augmented by the fusion force field covering Sophia’s gloved
fist.

     Such was the power of Helius. She was, in some ways,
the Suns’ most powerful member.

     The force of the blow lifted the man up off of his
feet. His legs splayed and arms trailing out in front of him, he slammed back
up against the bus, denting the metal from the impact. He slumped into the
street.

     One more down.

     Inside the bus, Revolution was taking them down one at
a time. His arm was throbbing from the injuries he’d suffered three months ago
when a large chunk of it had been literally ripped out. His suit was sending a massive
rush of pain killers into his blood stream, numbing the pain as best as
possible. But his arm still felt as if it were burning in a pit of cinders.

     Fortunately, the small aisle between the rows of seats
made his task easier than normal. His would-be attackers could come from behind
or in front of him, but his 360-degree onboard camera lens saw it all, and he
simply smashed them with his fists or elbows. One blow took them out and sent
them flying across the seats.

     The remaining three men, including Bruiser himself,
fled out the bus door—

     Only to be met by Sophia. Who blasted them with a gust
of blue energy that erupted out of her bracelets. The bracelets pulsed with
light as the energy coursed through them, then fell dark again. “Set my phasers
to stun, General, but those guys are still gonna be out for hours,” she said
with obvious delight, a gleam in her eye. Had she wanted to she could have
burned them to oblivion.

     Sometimes, Revolution wondered if she liked this job a
little too much. 

CHAPTER 4

“T
hey
want a war, we’ll give ‘em a fuckin’ war!” Marconi yelled. “And why the hell
can’t we talk to anybody?” he screamed as he slung his useless cell phone
across the room. It slammed against the wall, the cover spiraling off into the
far corner of the room.

     The six grown men standing in the plush penthouse
office at the top of the high-rise apartments that Marconi’s men controlled all
cowered at the temper of their famously violent boss. The shortest of the six,
so high-strung he simply couldn’t help but answer, was the only one to blurt
out even a peep.

     “Something’s blocking us, sir!” Nerves said.

     “Yeah, no shit! Now go find out what the hell it is!”

     The men turned, eager to leave the room—

     “Wait a minute. Let me tell you something, boys. You’s
boys scared? You’s scared they gonna take us down?” 

     Marconi rose and walked over to Nerves and
unceremoniously shoved the barrel of his Glock into Nerves’s mouth. “They ain’t
gonna take us down. You know how I know?”

     Nobody said a word. Marconi hadn’t risen through the
ranks of criminality because he was a genius. He’d risen on the strength of his
brutality. And they all knew it.

     “Cause they need us. They need rats like us. To get in
the sewer and do the dirty work. The dirty work the clean people won’t lower
they pretty, prissy asses to do! We carry the shit for them! So that those
motherfuckers can keep their precious little innocent hands clean!”

     Marconi looked straight into Nerves’s eyes. “Now you’re
scared, aren’t ya? Cause you know I’ll do it. I’ll pull this trigger.”

     BOOM!

     Marconi had only yelled the word, but Nerves had
nearly soiled himself. Marconi laughed like a man possessed. Then his face fell
deadly serious and he looked at all of them one at a time, the Glock still
planted firmly in the little man’s mouth.

     “Now, let me ask you’s. Would you’s rather die out
there on the street with dignity, with purpose, knowing you gave
everything
for the lives of your brothers, your sisters, your little bitch mamas? Or would
you’s want to die like a cock-a-roach smashed under my heel just cause you
pissed me off by being scared? Out there you got a chance.”

     Marconi took the gun out of the poor man’s mouth.
“Look at that! He ain’t shakin’ like a leaf no more! How ‘bout that?” Marconi
cackled like he was going to piss his pants. The others all laughed with him.

     Even Nerves laughed. And it was true. He
wasn’t
shaking anymore. None of them were. Marconi’s words had sunk in...in a manner
of speaking—if they all
seemed
brave, they might get out of this room
alive.

     “Now go out there and give those motherfuckers hell!”

     The men barreled out of the room, ready to kill...in
order to survive. 

     Marconi stalked back to his desk, grabbed up his
scotch, and downed it in one motion. He let it burn going down—

     He stopped dead in his tracks.

     His cell phone.

     Back on his desk.

     The cover was back on it. But he’d had his eyes on all
of the men the whole time. How the hell had it gotten there? None of his
bodyguards had come in, had they? He’d tossed it all the way across the room.
They would have had to cross his field of vision to pick it up, let alone also
pick up the cover, put it together, and then lay it back on his desk.

     “The fuck?” he exclaimed. And sent the phone hurtling
across the room again. It smashed against the wall, the cover spinning off to
the other side of the office. “There. That’s better.”

     Suddenly the curtains behind him covering his large
ceiling-to-floor window
opened
about a foot.

     The sudden movement in the quiet office made Marconi
jump straight out of his chair. “Shit! What the hell’s going on ‘round here?”
He approached the curtains and checked the window. He felt for a draft but
there was nothing. The window was shut tight. There was no knot or anything
that looked out of place on the curtain’s cord that might have caused it to
open.

     Everything was just as it should have been. Marconi
rubbed his fingers though his thinning hair and turned back around.

     What he saw made him pull his Glock out again.

     The cell phone was back on the desk—cover and all.

     “Who’s there?” he yelled. 

     “Who’s asking?” said a female voice. It was a teasing
voice.
A she-devil!

     Marconi screamed. He spun, aiming the gun anywhere,
everywhere. Where the fuck was she?

     “What are you?” he screamed.

Paul
Ward was standing in the doorway now, entertained by Rachel’s invisible antics,
which he’d been watching by peeking through the crack in the barely opened
door.

     The two goons who were supposed to be guarding the suite
lay just behind Ward’s boots, darts jutting out of their legs.

     Marconi was so distracted he hadn’t even noticed Ward
enter.

     “She’s actually a hot, hot woman.”

     Marconi turned in a panic and fired at Ward. The
bullet hit dead center of his chest and bounced off, lodging itself in the wall
beside him. Ward winced, but kept his cool.

     “She’s invisible,” Ward said. He took a tone as if he
were talking to a child, “That means you can’t see her,” he said, pretending to
be bored. “I-n-v-i-s-i-b-l-e,” he said again, slowly. “Oh, do I need to spell
it for you?” he said in mock pity.

     Doors on either side of the room burst open and two of
Marconi’s machine-gun-bearing thugs piled in.

     Ward was ready for them.

     He fired two darts that hit the men right in the
chest. But they both pulled their triggers. The bullets slammed into Ward and
he stumbled backwards. The violence of the gunfire had been so shocking, so
loud, so...

     Nothing.

     He’d barely felt the bullets.