Crossover Earth '98
by Christopher Shea, Scott Couchman, and Paul Cocker
Aliens taking human slaves? Is this really happening? Dynamo said inwardly as he pulled the brim of his fedora lower on his head. Am I really going to sneak on board a spaceship, just to destroy it?
The plan was relatively simple. Dynamo, Blur, Milo Tagelohn and the Guardians would sneak aboard the Los Angeles alien craft by posing as regular people and allow themselves to be captured. Then they would break out and take over the craft and get it away from the city before destroying it.
Yeah, sure, simple, Dynamo thought sarcastically.
But at least stage one of the plan appeared to be going well. Dynamo glanced around, identifying members of the team on the slave transport. He saw Blur huddled with other civilians along the shuttle-barge's starboard. Brainstorm, was against the port hull, his lips pursed, his eyes always observing. The Guardians' resident genius obviously let his subconscious get the better of him for he was dressed like a University professor. The electric hero rolled his eyes ever so slightly.
Dynamo's scanning stopped enviously on the Gnome. It must be nice not to have to hide your identity, he mused. Sometimes this double life can be murder.
Milo Tagelohn, meanwhile, wiped sweat from his face as he glanced around the interior of the alien transport. Wearing a coat over his heavy pilema shirt in Los Angeles, even in the spring, was just too warm for comfort. But even though his costume was less attention-getting than most superheroes', it was still recognizable -- and no one knew how closely the aliens had been monitoring Earth's media. Hence the need for disguise, even though he still felt as conspicuous as an ink splotch on a bathtub. Well, it must have worked, anyway... the aliens had shown no hesitation in herding him into the transport with the rest of the crowd from the Los Angeles streets. The ones who had it really easy were the Quartz agents in the group, who had no costumes to hide and were trained for this sort of thing.
Blur, on the other hand, didn't worry about altering her appearance. Since her work clothes consisted of running shoes, a spandex bodysuit, and sunglasses, she figured she could pass off as just another jogger or a high school track star. In fact, the whole idea of putting a disguise over a disguise seemed almost surreal to her.
Blur saw Stronghold at the far back of the barge. She sat among the wretched prisoners, knees together, back straight, looking studious and not desperate. She was tall, rigid, and very much exotic. She wore a Mexican poncho to hide her multiple arms. A cybernetic being, there was something unsettling about her lack of emotion.
"This is too spooky," Blur whispered to Anomaly, hoping he shared her uneasiness. "I just finished reading War of the Worlds in my English Lit class."
Anomaly was dressed in a baggy shirt, shorts that drooped past the knees, and Airwalk runners. Like Blur, the Guardian was young, and so he had much in common with her. He looked at Blur and shook his head. "And I just rented Mars Attacks for my fifth time yesterday..."
Blur took a deep breath, let it out slow, and shook her head with a sigh. "If only this was a Tim Burton movie..."
The two pushed the thoughts from their minds as the shuttle lurched to a halt. This was no time for fictional novels and movies; now they must deal with something that was all too real.
Dynamo, poorly hidden in his fedora and trench coat, shuffled out of the slave barge into a docking bay. He waited anxiously for the signal as their alien captors forcefully guided the captured Angelinos to the holding cells.
Blur took in another deep breath. Okay, here we go. She immediately fell to one knee and began to wince and moan. She held onto her side, pretending to nurse a cramp of sorts. A reptilian guard grunted a sibilant order, a forked tongue lashing out, punctuating the outlandish languange. Blur could only imagine what he said, guessing it was "Get up, you incompetent welp!" or something to that effect.
Seeing that Blur persisted on holding up the line of slaves, the alien then marched to her, readying the butt of his rifle to the back of her neck. Again, he hissed at her, but she remained kneeling. The alien grunted in what seemed like frustration and swung the butt of his weapon down. Blur pounced back to her feet, pivoted out of the way, and the rifled clanked off the floor. Almost instantly, the speedster whirled around her assailant. Hyper-accelerated limbs struck out -- a punch to the small of the back, a kick to the knee, two slaps to the face, followed by a Three Stooges-like poke to the eyes -- and the lizard man dropped his weapon.
Civilians gaped at the teenager's expedient act of defiance.
That's my cue. Dynamo spun around, touching the weapon of the guard beside him, and pumped a huge electrical charge through it, zolting the guard. To ensure the guard's unconscious status, Dynamo followed up with a throw, crumpling the lizard man into the bulkhead.
Dynamo tossed his hat and coat on the KOed guard and moved to help his colleagues.
Milo was glad to leave the effort of hand-to-hand combat to the two speedsters and the Guardians, preferring to assist in his own way. He found himself standing beside Anomaly, the two of them working their little interferences on the melee. Alien weapons shimmered and dissolved into clouds of nitrogen where Milo gestured, alien feet were encased in blocksof lead, leaving them defenseless before the punch or blast or static bolt that put them down. Not that such interference was really necessary, since the aliens were taken by surprise and seriously outnumbered. The last reptilian's chin slammed to the deckplates, propelled by a punch from Blur, a little over a minute after the signal had been given. Milo only hoped that the rest of the rescue effort would go so easily.
When the dust settled, Dynamo guarded one hallway while Stronghold did her "thing" with the ship's computers. Milo turned to the crowd of terrified civilians huddling in the back of the shuttle. "Your pardon for the scare," he said, raising his voice to be heard over theirs. "We -- the Guardians and, uh, adjuncts -- are here to liberate you and, it is to be hoped, eliminate the threat this ship poses. Please be patient, and we will see you returned to your homes."
"Gimme a gun and I'll help you!" yelled a red-faced young man near the front of the crowd.
Milo sighed. "Please, sir, this is not Independence Day. We have the situation well in hand. As soon as Stronghold deciphers the means by which these shuttles can be operated, we will be transferring all of you -- and those humans who are currently held prisoner on this ship -- back to Earth." He glanced over at Stronghold, who was joined to the computer panel in the wall by half a dozen cables. Her eyes were slits as she muttered to herself in binary code. "Which should be any moment now," Milo temporized, but Stronghold didn't look up from her work. "I'm certain there will be no trouble... "
The cables dropped away, and Stronghold straightened up. "I heard you, Doctor Tagelohn," she said. "You may feel at ease for I have circumvented the bay's security parameters."
Dynamo couldn't tell what she did from his vantage point but remembered to breathe only after she said she had the shuttle codes.
At least these prisoners can get away now, he thought.
Stronghold then looked directly at a group Quartz agents. "I know you are all well-versed with the latest aero-space technology. Let us hope that you gentlemen can improvise at whim, for these shuttles are unlike any aircrafts designed by human engineers..."
"Okay, now what?" Blur asked, her eyes shifting about the unearthly interior of the space vessel.
Brainstorm answered, "I need to get to the engine room. It's only from there that I'll be able to effectively dispatch this ship."
Blur scratched her head. "Oh."
"According this vessel's online schemata," Stronghold raised, "the engine room is on this level." One of her four arms then pointed to a portal on the far side of the bay, revealing a lengthy strip of hall. "Down that corridor."
Another arm, a bionic one, then pointed towards another entryway to yet another corridor. "Down there leads to the holding cells. I will accompany the other Quartz agents to them. Together, we will free any civilian captives." The female cyborg began heading to the hall, with the Quartz agents following suit.
"Very good," Brainstorm said. "Stronghold and the agents will work on the cells, then they'll return here to designate an equal number of civilians to a piloted shuttle. The rest of us will head to the engine room. Let's go."
Blur took point, followed shortly by Dynamo, and the rest were grouped together. Everyone took caution as they made proceeded. The corridor was polygonal, an eight-sided expanse that was a constant thirty yards wide by roughly twenty yards high. The walls were oddly ceramic, looking like a massive strip of snake skin. There was no ceiling, just a network of beams, cables, and plasmic tubes. The group walked for nearly half a mile, but a distant pinpoint of light finally grew into the entryway of the engine room.
Blur and Dynamo rushed in first, trying to disable any aliens who looked like they could pull a switch or hit a button.
Wind sluiced off Blur, her legs pumping like pistons in overdrive, as she sped through the room. She wafted by a reptilian leaning over what resembled a communications board. The alien frantically punched his fingers across a flickering panel, his other hand worked itself across another exotic keyboard. The teenaged heroine sideswiped him, buffeted him with a rush of wind, and downed him with a series of rapid-fire hand strikes.
Dynamo failed to keep up with the younger, faster speedster, but he handled his share of damage. With electric-juiced reflexes, Dynamo straight-armed a nearby alien, then turned and fired a static bolt into another across the room, reaching for what looked like a communications device. At least that's what Dynamo assumed it was.
Anomaly finally entered the room. He saw his compatriots zig-zagging about in streaks of spandex and lightning, pushing aliens this way and that, maneuvering themselves by consoles and monitors, obstructing the humanoid technicians with such blistering speed. He took a single split second to compose himself, putting himself through a routine mental exercise so brief it nearly seemed instant. Even as he finished, his hands were inscribing an intricate pattern in the air, and then they pointed themselves at an alien working on a nearby computer.
Almost instantly, the computer sparked. Flashing lights upon its keyboard died, slight tendrils of smoke escaping vents along the console, and the alien jumped back from a sudden electrical shock.
Another alien charged the Guardian, this one wielding a rifle. Anomaly smiled slightly and gestured again. Hissing, the alien aimed and pulled back on the trigger. But nothing happened. Without a detailed examination, there was no way to tell what exactly Anomaly did to the rifle, but the alien through the weapon to the floor in frustration.
After the initial struggle, the aliens within the engine room surrendered. Dynamo stood in a ready stance, tiny forks of lighting coursing about his tight fists.
Blur stood with her arms folded before her bosom. "Alright, ya buncha Jurassic mutants," she announced. "Any quick movements and my buddy here'll show ya who's in charge."
Anomaly smiled at the teenager. Dynamo sighed.
Milo reached into his belt pouch and came up with a golden headband etched with a flame motif. Fitting it around his brow, he set his gaze on the skinny alien who seemed to be a leader of sorts. The alien looked back uncomprehendingly, then gave a squawk as it felt the telepathic probe impinge on its consciousness. Milo delved steadily yet cautiously through the layers of the alien's mind. He was not an experienced telepath, and he was uncertain as to how well he could interface with a nonhuman mind. But to his surprise, the alien's thoughts were not so different from a human's -- certainly more similar than a dog's, or a hive of bees'... There were interesting speculations there, but Milo forced himself to focus on the business at hand, working downward until he reached the layer where resided sense-memories, learned knowledge, all the little minutiae of the alien's work. He spread himself out, studying the span of the creature's life, all the time it had spent operating and repairing the great machines around them. Yes, this would do.
"I believe I can supply you with the information we need," Milo said to Brainstorm. "But please make your questions specific, because I have little understanding of these matters and need to know exactly what I should look for."
"Okay," the Guardian said, holding a coil containing a gaseous substance. "Let's start with finding a way to override the bridge controls from here. Is there one?..."
Dynamo watched as Brainstorm worked with the information Milo fed him. He tried to follow what the Guardian was doing, after all Mark Swift still had to report back to his job with information on the power benefits of these alien craft. But Brainstorm moved too fast for Dynamo to follow while also watching the prisoners.
When Brainstorm announced that the ship was safely away from the city and that the self destruct mechanism had been activated, Dynamo turned to the aliens.
"If you understand English, I suggest you run," he said as he backed out of the engine room. He made what he thought was the universal sign for an explosion -- hands raising and moving outward in slow motion -- complete with sound effects.
With that, he turned and ran with the others back to the shuttle bay.
Brainstorm yelled out a countdown as the heroes made their escape. Dynamo was relieved to find that all the human prisoners had escaped on shuttles. Stronghold held the bay, standing by the open hatch of the last shuttle.
"Agent Marlow is ready with the aerial barge," the cyborg said, looking at the fellow Quartz move about the cockpit.
A sudden clamor arose from a nearby corridor, and then the heavy sound of footfalls was heard, growing louder.
"What thuh --" Blur began. Fine streaks of energy exploded off the floor as the sound of weapon fire erupted about the bay.
"We've got company!" Dynamo's hands immediately charged up, and jagged streaks of light lanced down the corridor, warning shots bursting and crackling. "Let's blow this pop stand!"
Brainstorm counted louder as the team boarded the slave barge.
Engines whined as the systems powered up, thrusters starting to fire out an incandescent exhaust. The Quartz pilot took off before the barge's hatch was completely closed. The ship waggled out the bay doors as the pilot fought with the foreign controls.
Brainstorm counted, "7... 6... Better punch it! 4... 3..."
The pilot fought with a lever and tried to find how much abuse the shuttle could take. The sudden acceleration rocked everybody around within the hull.
Brainstorm yelled, "ZERO! EVERYONE BRAAACE!!"
And the explosion reached the escaping shuttle, throwing it around like a leaf in a hurricane. The airship rocked so hard that several civilians were tossed in all directions. Between the acceleration and the fireball buffeting, Dynamo was also knocked off his feet. He barely managed to keep his vice grip on the hand hold. The situation wrenched his hand in the stirrup. That hand would be out of commission for at least a week.
Blur found herself atop the Gnome. "Sorry, Doctor Toolittle."
Milo rubbed his arm as he rose from the floor. "It is quite all right, Blur." The enchanter's eyes were fixed on the view screen, beholding the Los Angeles landscape speeding towards them. "But, please, prepare yourself. We still have to land."
The shuttle-barge buckled under the pressure of the turbulence. Gravity pulled it ever faster toward the surface, clouds stirring from its terminal velocity, and the pilot struggled to slow ther vessel. The Quartz agent was good, however. Somehow he managed to pull the shuttle out of its uncontrolled dive, and only gently crashed it in the Mojave Desert.
The pilot wiped the beads of sweat from his forehead. "Woo!" he sighed. "Any landing you can walk away from, people."
The passengers climbed out of the singed and abused shuttle. To the west, a pillar of smoke rose high into the sky. No one knew where it started, but soon everyone was cheering and congratulated each other on a job well done.