The Suns of Liberty: Legion: A Superhero Novel (8 page)

     She scanned the lake. Calm and normal.

     Her awareness of the luminescent spectrum wasn’t all knowing.
She could sense things, feel them. But on a broad scale. The details were elusive.
She wondered if she would get better over time, or if like sight and hearing, it
simply was what it was.

     Her eyes probed skyward again. Then she saw it. Moving
fast, unmistakable. The missile had to be as long as a city bus. Impossibly
long for something moving so fast. As it got closer, Fiona could see it was as
long as
two
city buses.

     The Council was trying to kill her!

    
As if.

     Her mind flashed to Becky. A lump burned in her throat
as she thought of her hurt.
No, that was not going to happen.

     She teleported right in front of the missile. The bomb
itself was only about the size of a person. Its vicious fire trail was what had
made it appear to be so long. Fiona had never seen such a weapon up close and
in action.

     She lifted both arms, brought her hands together, and
blasted the missile with the most powerful beam of energy she could muster. She
would take no chances. She wanted to incinerate the thing, midair.

     She didn’t.

     Below, Becky, Arcadia, Elders, and the others had run
out to see what the commotion was. When Fiona had teleported, some in the
throng had spotted her floating far above them in the clear California sky.
That started a rumble in the crowd as everyone looked up. Then they saw the
smoke trail of the missile. The rumble of the crowd grew into a roar.

     The brilliant beam of light shot out from Fiona’s
hands. From the ground, the beam’s flash was like a long mirror reflecting
sunlight for split second, high above.         

     The flash came first.

     It was like the sun exploding across the sky. 

     Then sound. A deep, ominous BOOM. They could feel it
in the pits of their chests.

     For Fiona, it consumed her world. Fire, heat, and
unbridled energy swirled around her. For the first time in her life as the Fire
Fly she had met a conventional weapon that could hurt her. 

     The shockwave blasted her across the sky. The bomb hadn’t
burned up like she’d expected. It had exploded right in her face. The fire and
heat was but a mere irritation, but the shockwave hit her full force She had
not been prepared for it, and as she reeled, she knew that the only chance she
had of saving Becky, of saving the others, was to absorb the explosive power of
the detonation.

     It all happened in the course of single second. Fiona
blasted her energy across the sky, creating a massive shield against the deadly
energy. But the blast was simply colossal. It pushed her even as she absorbed
it into her body. There was simply too much of it. She closed her eyes and
pushed back. And to her absolute horror she realized that she was falling not
just out of the sky but out of consciousness.

     Fiona splashed into the waters of the lake, sending an
almighty gout of water and foam high into the air.

     The shockwave hit next. She had lost consciousness
only for a second. And she flew out of the waves as water geysered again—at the
speed of light. She held out her palms and built the massive wall of energy for
a second time. She literally held the power of the blast in the palms of her
hands. She pushed with all her might away from the shore, away from the Palace and
her throngs of followers. Away from Becky and Arcadia and the Connors girls.
The energy of the blast shot off in the other direction. And then, as a reflex,
she teleported back to the Palace. And collapsed.

Darkness.
She dreamed of darkness. Stars spread out above her, and the great glorious
colors of the Milky Way galaxy beckoned her. She wanted to follow them, to go
to them. To seek them out and discover the secrets of the universe.  It seemed
that all she had to do was will it and she would be there.

     But a voice was breaking the black. A voice she knew.
A voice she loved. A voice she needed to return to.

     Fiona opened her eyes. And she heard Becky scream her
name once more. But her head was throbbing and all she could hear was an awful
hiss. Fiona shook her head, tried to get the water out of her ears or whatever
was making the god-awful noise.

     Fiona spun to her feet—and realized that she was in
human form. And completely naked in front of the Connors girls, Arcadia, and
worst of all, old man Elders and the two troopers. The mayor had the good sense
to look away. But the troopers were getting an eyeful.
Wonderful.

     She transformed back into the Fire Fly. And scowled at
the troopers.

     The sound was still ringing in her ears.

     “Fiona, the wave!” Becky yelled at her, pointing to
the lake.

     “Ms. Fletcher, please, you have to stop it.”

     “What—“ Fiona turned to look out toward the lake and
saw what they were talking about.

    
The hissing sound.
An enormous wave had pulled
the water on their side of Tahoe way out, and now what could only be described
as a massive
tsunami
was headed toward the other side. Toward South Lake Tahoe. She’d protected her little enclave, but now the wave threatened the very
people who wanted to take her home from her.

      Fiona scoffed. “I’m not such an irritation now, huh?”

     “Fiona!” Becky breathed like a scandalized mother.

     Fiona raised her chin. “Drop your opposition.”

     The mayor’s face turned red, and he stammered and
stumbled on his words.

     “Fiona!” Becky was shouting now as she watched the
wave. It was approaching the first set of boats. In only moments they would be
capsized.

     “There’s no time! Please!” Elders begged.

     “Not so tough now, huh?” shot Arcadia.

     Becky seethed at her. The girl would do or say
anything to get in Fiona’s good favor!

     “Okay, anything you want, just please save my city!”

     “See, that wasn’t so hard.” Fiona teased.

    
Flash!
She was gone.

     Fiona materialized just behind the wave—and watched in
horror as it swallowed a sailboat with three on board. A luxury yacht was swept
up by the monster wave next. The big boat fought against the swell and finally
tipped. Rolling under the wave, it smashed into the bubbling water. Tiny figures
fell, slipped from the deck, as it turned, and Fiona watched as they tumbled
into freefall.

     She saw a girl no older than herself, blonde hair,
string bikini. Probably very pretty. Screaming, fighting to get inside, as if
that would save her. She slipped and rolled down the deck, slammed against the
yacht’s guardrails, and went limp, only to go spinning head over heels into the
deadly, monstrous surf. The ship and it occupants were consumed by the roiling
waters. There was nothing Fiona could do for them. There just wasn’t time. She
had to stop the wave from striking the shore and the inlet where a whole host
of boats lay helpless in the gigantic wave’s path.

     She shot out a massive wall of energy in front of the
wave, and like water sloshing in a bathtub, the great wall of water hit the
barrier of energy with an all-powerful BOOM! Water wrenched backwards with a
pounding, colossal roar.

    
Great.
But now it was headed back toward the
encampment. Fiona raised another wall behind her as the great wave passed
through her now ethereal form.
Why didn’t I think to turn to light-form when
the missile blasted?

    
The water sloshed against the back wall and headed again toward
South Lake Tahoe, but some of the water began to slosh in other directions as
well. Fiona raised two more walls, boxing the water in from all sides.

     It took twenty long minutes before the water calmed
enough for Fiona to dissolve the energy walls. But when she did, she was miles
away. Because...

     She had gone to seek revenge.

Veronica
Soto never saw it coming. One second she was sitting in her cockpit watching as
the impact spread across the target area and wondering why the signal was
coming back so goofy. It was a direct hit and yet the reverberations seemed to
be going psycho.

     The next second, the world exploded.

     The lieutenant found herself in freefall. She’d
blacked out. Her whole body was numb. When her brain finally registered what
was happening—that she was falling, from 30,000 feet, toward the Earth—that’s
when she noticed the blood.

     Her arms, her legs, she still had them, but they were
ripped to shreds. Those shreds flipped and flopped and rippled in the wind as
she fell. She should have been in agony, but she felt nothing.

     She peered down at the ground below her as she spun.
The great Sierra Nevada mountain range rising to meet her. And she realized
that the ground was coming up far too fast. She’d had no time to hit the
ejection seat. She hoped she still had a chute in her suit. She hoped it wasn’t
ripped to shreds like the rest of her.

Fiona
watched as the stealth fighter exploded in front of her. The fireball was
tremendous. She could have just burned the jet into oblivion, but instead she had
blasted the engines and waited to see what would happen. She thought the plane
would just fall from the sky.

     And when it did she was going to incinerate the
parachute of the pilot and let he or she plummet to the Earth. That seemed like
it would be sufficient payback.
Payback is a bitch.
And she was feeling
very bitchy at the moment.

     When, contrary to what she had been expecting, the
aircraft had exploded and flung the pilot free, Fiona had let out a whoop and a
laugh that she had almost felt guilty for.

     Almost.

The
lieutenant hit the ejection button on her suit with the bloody clump of flesh
that used to be her right arm and hand.

     The chute opened.

     But she kept falling. The chute was ripped and some
part of the mechanism wasn’t working right. It took it a full fifteen seconds
to fully unfurl and even when it did, the rips in the fabric were limiting its
effectiveness. Her descent was twice as fast as it should have been.

     Veronica Soto  fell to the Earth. When she hit, she
bounced. Blood splattered into the air. Limbs, already torn and burnt,
shattered. Her body lay twisted unnaturally in the green forest of the Sierra
Nevada Mountains. Bent and curved in ways no human body should be. A pool of
red gathering around it.

     It would take twenty minutes, but the rescue team that
was standing by reached her by honing in on her transponder signal. They were
astounded to find that the brash and highly gifted young pilot was still alive.
Barely.

     They immediately began administering emergency medical
aid, but it was clear she was going to need extensive and heroic measures to
save her life, if it was even possible.

     So it was particularly jarring when their classified,
top-secret communications were interrupted by the highest security clearance
channel in the system: it was the voice of the chairman himself.

     He said only two things. “Bring her to me. She’s
perfect.”

     That is how, though barely clinging to life, First
Lieutenant Veronica Soto came to be wheeled into the Freedom Rise medical
center in New York City—the most advanced and exclusive medical trauma center
in the country and reserved for the members of the Freedom Council itself—long
after there was any hope to save her arms or her legs.

CHAPTER 8

C
lay
Arbor grimaced.

     He was using his Death Stare. It could melt the back
of a man’s skull in a matter of seconds if he concentrated hard enough.

     Or at least he wished it could. In truth, all it could
really do was give him eye strain.

     Didn’t matter. He was still going to stare at the back
of Bob Bigley’s head until the fat man turned around and saw Arbor giving him
the evil eye.

     Oh, it would be worth it.

     Because this absolute utter horseshit that Bob had
gotten him into was the very last straw.

     In front of the room was a large movie screen, and
Arbor, his agent, Bob, and a dozen studio men in shiny suits from Media Corp’s
film division sat watching the new trailers for the upcoming film
The Legend
of Lithium
, in which an aging action star, who was twenty pounds too heavy
and ten years too old, was playing Clay Arbor: the man otherwise known as
Lithium.

     Arbor was a mountain of a man—a barrel-chested, late-forties,
bodybuilder type. He was clad in his armor that was part Robocop, part infantry
man. The armor was essentially an Army-green flak jacket set over dark titanium
steel—the best stuff they made. The padding was all over his body. Soft spots
at the joints allowed him a great degree of freedom of movement, which the big
man needed. He was as strong as they came, but like a lot of men who were all
muscle, he gained that strength at the expense of flexibility.