Chapter 1
The dock yards of Izumbard had built ships for the Shi’ar Empire for hundreds of generations. The planet was a giant factory complex where intellect, experience and all the technology they could employ create the wonderful star cruising ships from the Apocalypse-class destroyers all the way down to shuttle craft. The ships soared through the black exploring every inch of the Imperium and space beyond, there was one ship however which was flying its last flight.
It was little more than a class 6 inter-stellar shunt ship, a puddle jumper, but it was on its very last voyage through the stars. It was not a smooth one.
“Damage report,” barked Oracle. She was the leader of this branch of The Imperial Guard. The Guard were the greatest warriors that the Imperium had to offer, they were peace keepers, soldiers, humanitarians and the wall which held back the darkness.
Oracle glanced across the screens which she could see herself, her dark red eyes taking in what they could. Her pale skin with the slightest hint of pink was died a deep blue by the flashing lights from the console. Her silver hair took on a nice colour which her Ex always commented suited her.
“We’re Flarked,” barked Starbolt. He was typing on the machine to his right. “Sections twelve through 10 are destroyed pouring atmosphere into the void. Sections 9-7 are burning, six vital systems have failed and we’re running on back-up impulse engines.”
“How far to Earth?” she asked.
“Nav computer is down,” replied Manta, her voice echoing in the way that vocalisations of her species did. Her gold face turned to look at Oracle as her long billowing gliding wings rippled behind her, a sign of tension. She glowed a gentle white, normally she was able to keep her glow totally under control but under the current stress she shone like a lightbulb. “Close enough that if we can prevent more damage and keep the inertial dampeners online for entry we can make it...most likely,” She informed.
“Starbolt,” Oracle turned the flaming powerhouse of the team. He was a long serving member of the Imperial guard and had a long service history even before that. He was often known as the ‘locker room general’, highly respected and looked up to with a reputation for being as tough as a Kree battlecruiser’s shell. She had been a new recruit under his command years ago and respected him deeply, even if his attitude and devil may care style had stopped him progressing to the rank which he truly deserved. “You need to go to the burning sections and absorb as much heat as you can. Stop it from spreading.” He nodded as he burst into a run from the cock pit and dropped down the shaft which lead to the main access points to the rest of the ship.
“Nightshade,” Oracle spoke over the communicator to their fellow Guardian who was currently elsewhere on the ship. “You need to get to section 10 and seal it with Darkforce.”
A little holographic projection of Nightshade appeared flickeringly over the communications hub. Her skin was a pale white which had accents of blue. Her ‘hair’ and facial markings a pitch black made from Dark force. She was hovering above the floor in a meditative pose trying to strengthen her powers.
“If I leave Vrill Rokk he will certainly die,” she responded, there was a tone of anger in her voice. She and Vrill were close having been on many missions together, once they were stranded on a desert planet for a whole month with only one another to pull each other through. There was much talk in the Imperium that they were actually closer. The gossip magazines on a dozen pleasure worlds claimed to have proof, they never published it however once their office had mysteriously tumbled into another dimension.
“If you don’t do this then we are all dead. The imperium will die, we cannot allow that”” she barked. “That is a direct order!”
“Yes, Praetor,” said Nightshade with resignation in her voice. The communication cut out.
Oracle scanned with her telepathic prowess across the ship. She felt Nightshade saying a farewell to Smasher as he lay in the room where she had managed to drag his body, she removed the Darkforce with which she had been holding him. Oracle suddenly felt a spike of pain spreading outwards. Smasher probably would have died anyway, but now it was a certainty.
“Vrill, I am sorry. Let me ease your way to your Gods,” she offered.
“Thank you Sibyl,” Smasher spoke without formality. He had always been relaxed, happy and confident. Even now facing his own death he seemed at peace. “I served the Imperium well, didn’t I?”
“You were one of the finest Guardsmen I have ever had the pleasure to meet; your name will live on and your legacy will be honoured.”
Smasher nodded and smiled. “I knew I was going to die. The Exo-Specs have already began searching out a replacement….they’re searching Earth. This means we’re close enough. You’re going to make it…you’re going to save them all.” He paused for a second “Huh, just think…a Terran member of the Imperial guard. I wish I could live long enough to see Starbolt’s face when that happens.”
They said their goodbyes. Oracle hid her teary red eyes for a second while she tried to limit her emotions.
“Neutron,” Oracle spoke commandingly to the Stygian who was currently standing to the side awaiting instruction. He was primarily a field operative and was not certified to operate many ship systems. “I need you to get the symbiosis pod, link up to the ship’s hull”
Oracle trailed off for a second as the sight of Earth on the screen came into view. Her heart skipped a beat as she believed for a few seconds that they were truly going to make it.
“I need you to channel as much of the energy from entry, cosmic radiation and the like into yourself,” she commanded quickly.
“Astra,” she commanded to the Shi’ar woman who had been working on the distress beacon. “Go with Neutron and set him away, get yourself into Symbiosis pod II. I know you can’t make a whole ship intangible but any level of buffering you can provide will be a Rilur sent miracle.” Astra was not a full blooded Aeirie, her long brown hair which sprung from her head rather than a ruff of feathers showed this to all who cared to see. She was hyperactive, never stopped talking even in the heat of battle and despite her ‘lower position’ due to her birth had been the apple of her father’s eye and given everything she had ever wanted on her homeworld….she could be bratty. She could however be trusted in a situation to not lose her head.
The two guardsmen moved quickly.
Now left on the bridge was Oracle and Fang. Fang was a curious one, he was both the oldest and youngest of the Imperial Guard. He was the latest iteration of the Fang line of cloned super-soldiers, when one dies another is called to take their place. It was part of a pact with his species going back over a thousand years. Each new iteration had a subtle telepathic imprint, an instinctual engram of the predecessors.
“Orders, Praetor?” He asked. He to her eyes was just a teenager and even with his engramic experience and how much Oracle knew about his past lives experiences she could notice his palpable nervousness, he had been part of the Imperial Guard for just a few days, nearly all of which had been spent on this ship. Oracle hadn’t yet fully gotten a grasp on him, he sometimes looked like he didn’t know what to do with himself, sometimes he launched into a situation with an air of confidence and other times he had already managed to show a cocky teenage streak which was not unknown to the adolescence of a million species.
“Keep us in the air as long as you can,” she instructed, the previous Fang was one of the best pilots in the Imperium and she hoped that the skill had passed to his successor in the ways that it sometimes did. “I’m going to get us a lock onto each of the Super Guards and get the teleportation up and running in case we need to eject.”
She paused for a moment. “You could pray to all our Gods for us, too.”
Fang grinned, it cut through his nervousness and she saw the concern disperse from his face. “Sorry Praetor, I don’t have any Gods, life of a clone grown in a vat. I only have The Imperium….and the thought of sitting in some bar with some fine filly telling them about this adventure.”
Oracle let a small smile creep across her face. She too believed in The Imperium with everything she had. “That may be more than enough….prepare for entry”.
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Days later, The Kane farm, Iowa…
Isabel Kane walked through the dusty pathways amongst the corn kicking up the dust as she went, her eyes were red and streamed with tears. This was her grandfather’s farm, he had managed and ran the place since he came back from the second world war. He had died yesterday morning.
She remembered walking through these fields as a kid or up in the orchard where her grandfather would simply reach out and pluck her something nice to eat. It was out here wandering that she felt closest to her grandfather.
He was Dan Kane A.K.A Captain Terror, he was a superhero before there were superheroes. He fought in the Spanish civil war and had fought alongside Captain America and the Invaders during WWII. It was some sort of adventure during that involving Nazi magic which had helped give him such a long life.
He would tell her exciting tales of the adventures that he went on. When she was young he would make them swashbuckling comic book like adventures and she would tell him about all of her fantasy adventures and the things she would do as a hero. When she was a teenager he would tell her about some of the darker sides of the adventures, hard choices and why they were important and she would talk about her college prep classes and the adventures of a teenage girl. Then when they were both older he would talk about when she was a little girl and she talked about college. Now they couldn’t talk anymore.
The adventures of Captain Terror had massively impacted on her life along with the other superheroes who started appearing when she was younger. She saw the Avengers fighting the Kree on the news, The Fantastic Four fighting the Skrulls and every other combination she could think of. Her life was set, she had a plan.
She studied two degrees, Izzy was always the bright one in the family, social sciences (Psychology, Sociology and Economics) and Astrophysics. She was ahead of the curve she was sure, when she was a young teenager suddenly there were superheroes again and then there were aliens and alien invasions. The future of human space exploration seemed obvious…but for some reason it never came. The heroes never shared the technology with the rest of the world and the great expansion of humanity which she had prepared for never seemed to occur. She instead worked in a restaurant, not that there was anything wrong with that, she often corrected herself whenever the thought crossed her mind.
It was then that she stumbled across the crater.
It was about the size of a manhole cover and was a few feet deep. Lying in the bottom of it were a large red pair of goggles. She bent down and examined them before stretching her hand out to pick them up. They hummed gently and warmly in her hand like they were alive.
She held them up to the light and looked through them. “Wonder if grandpa lost these,” she stopped for a second and began to cry again. She had forgotten about her grandfather for the few seconds that she had discovered the weird goggles, guilt washed over her.
Izzy held the goggles and headed back to the house. She suddenly didn’t feel like being along anymore.
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De Moines, Iowa….
Fang and Oracle walked down the street their arms full of bags of shopping. They watched the people walking along the streets carefully. It was the reflexes of a soldier, even though they weren’t expecting any trouble, to always be alert.
Oracle was casting out a mirage to the minds of any people around them. They perceived the pair not as a tall pink skinned, red eyed and silver haired alien and her short animalistic companion but rather as a willowy women dressed in a smart business suit and a small balding man wearing a well-tailored suit and a loud tie. Anyone who was watching on CCTV however would see a very different picture.
Oracle had been working her psionic powers overtime since arriving on Earth. Nightshade had managed to use her shadow teleporting powers to move them to where she could sense a ‘large’ populations, though nothing compared to the billion citizen populations of the ‘mega-cities’ where Oracle herself had grown up or the ones on Chandalar with De Moines only having 209,000 citizens. Once they had arrived Oracle began to work immediately.
She picked information from the minds of the humans while the others hid so that she could build disguises, find out information on geography, finances and other information that they might need. They had managed to get them cloaked so that they could move freely in the city for a short period of time and then had made their way to a nearby hotel, she made them see the group as visiting business colleagues, making sure to flavour her story with references to De Moines booming business in auto-insurance before making them think she had paid for the suites with an acceptable amount of Earth money. The last part had been a point of contention for Manta whose strict moral religious code saw that as unacceptable, Oracle had to promise to pay back the business with interest in gold once they had access to a replicator unit.
Oracle and Fang turned into their hotel lobby and waved a small hello to the woman on the front desk before making their way to the elevator with their bags in hand.
“Does anyone suspect anything?” asked Fang. He had not been able to sniff any heightened emotions or scents which would be out of place in the environment (other than the scent of their own people).
“No, extra-terrestrial incursion is one of the last things on their minds,” she nodded. “They are a strange species humans,” she said with a wistful smile. “They are capable of so much wisdom and spiritual depth, they believe in truth, fairness and will power…..but then they’re so hung up on petty differences, on their avarice. It’s a roller coaster.”
“Primative but generally good at the core?” Fang twisted his face before nodding appreciatively.
They exited the elevator and moved towards their room. They entered and immediately snapped into their jobs. “Starbolt, how’re you doing?” asked Fang as he moved towards his friend, his fires had dulled to only a small flicker and was a deep ember like red. He was not able to draw heat and energy as much as he would need to be 100% whilst stuck indoors on Earth, sunlight would get him quite far but normally he would have had a lavabath or immersed himself in an external flame by now if he’d had the choice.
“We got you this,” Fang reached into the bag he was carrying and pulled out six large canisters of lighter fluid. “I don’t know if fuelling your fire would help or deplete you more?”
Starbolt grinned (as much as a flaming skull can) as he took the canisters and slowly pressed one against his body pushing it through the plasma layer which made up his skin. It glowed brightly under the surface of his skin before erupting outwards as a wave of colour through his body. His fire and plasma keeping the explosion contained. The alteration of colour spread through his system changing his hue. He made a groan of enjoyment. “Kid you just got yourself into my goodbooks,” he said with a gasp. Everyone thought that he was referring to Fang but Oracle had a sneaking suspicion he was talking to her, she found it hard to pinpoint his thoughts with telepathy at the best of times so she wasn’t exactly sure.
“How are Astra and Nightshade?” Oracle asked to Manta who was sitting perched on the edge of the sofa unit.
“Nightshade’s darkness is growing, she lapses in and out of consciousness,” Manta said with a concerned tone in her voice. She hovered into the air with her wing flaps undulating gently “Astra is being…difficult.”
“Please tell me that you’ve brought something which can help!” bellowed Astra as she stumbled from one of the suite’s adjoining rooms. Her talons clawed at her skin trying to scratch the impossible itch which was covering her body. She was having an allergic reaction to something here on Earth. “This is worth than when I was stung by a Nirabo during my first molting,” she grumbled as she yanked the bag from Oracle and tipped it out on the floor.
Astra was not a soldier in the same way that the others were. She had not trained from a young age to serve the empire as some of the other guards had but as a member of a Aerie family who thanks to her mixed heritage had developed extra-normal abilities and had drafted herself. She was a competent fighter and had been through the extensive training needed to be an Imperial guardsman but she was not as disciplined outside of battle as others would be.
She looked through the products of the bag. She threw them back on the floor and rocked back to lie flat on her back. “I can’t read human!” she sulked.
Oracle crouched and grabbed a tube. “This should offer some comfort,” she said as she handed it over “We can’t be sure though, it might have a different reaction with your physiology.”
“Well that’s just great isn’t it,” she huffed before launching into another scratching fit.
“Neutron, how’re we doing with tracking down some of Earth’s superteams?” she asked to Neutron who was sitting at a table with a number of maps that they had ‘bought’ from a nearby book store.
“Superheroes all in New York,” he paused for a moment “New York very far on foot. We need Nightshade,” he said it a solemn nod. Neutron to anyone listening sounded slow witted and unintelligent but really he was a bright man, he had experience in a number of fields and was a great battlefield tactician but his people were not accustomed to vocalisations and language. His species spoke with pulsating light and waves of radiation and energy. In any verbal conversation he would come across as struggling.
“I’ll go and check on her,” Oracle nodded, “If we don’t see an improvement by tomorrow we will have to try and commandeer an Earth vehicle and make our way to New York over land.”
“We could fly there in a fraction of the time,” Starbolt advised. He did this almost passive aggressively letting it be clearly known that this is what he would like to do.
“No,” Oracle shook her head “too risky. Earth may be somewhat accustomed to flying humanoids but they are not yet at the point that this wouldn’t draw attention and with Nightshade as she is now I wouldn’t want to draw that kind of attention.”
Oracle moved across the room and opened the bedroom door before slipping in through as small a gap as she could. The room was oppressively dark, pitch black. She couldn’t see Nightshade but approached her based on her telepathic signature. She sat on the edge of the bed where her friend lay groaning and restless, the Superguard had taken care of her as best they could but none of them were physicians especially for her species.
She brushed against her mind but found nothing but a confusing jumble of emotions and snatches of thought everything ranging from childhood images to the battles she had been in most recently. Vril Rokk appeared frequently in there.
Nighshade had fallen sick this morning as they prepared to venture out into the city. She had seemed off, her pale skin darkening to a dull grey and not confident on her feet before she finally collapsed in a burst of darkness. She had lay on the floor with tendrils stretching out of her in all directions, they undulated and pulsed with strength.
They had moved her to the bedroom to get her comfortable and tried to keep her temperature down to its normal low levels. It was there best guess that she had succumbed to some Earth virus or bacteria which she was apparently very susceptible to.
Now they just had to play the waiting game to see if her system could fight this off quickly enough. Oracle knew well that there were those with higher technology and some knowledge of xenobiology on this planet such as The Fantastic Four, The X-Men and The Avengers but to get to them would be a dangerous feat.
“Come on, Miatas,” said Oracle with a sigh as she replaced the wet cloth with a fresh load of cold water. “You’re strong, you can pull through….I don’t want to lose another friend due to this war.”
Oracle’s mind drifted for a moment. She thought of the Imperium and the dire straits which it currently found itself in. The friends that they had lost, those that had died….and those who had not.
She turned her mind back to Nightshade in the darkness as she convulsed. Oracle sensed the psychic scream and then felt the tendrils of darkness surround her. Grabbing her tightly. She momentarily sensed the alarm of the other Guardians in the next room as the darkness erupted from the room.
Oracle was dragged down into the darkness. She felt cold, both physically and spiritually. She had never felt more alone as she simply hung there. Tendrils so cold that their slightest touch froze her skin wrapped tightly around her, she could barely breath as the air in her lungs froze.
She tried to reach out telepathically as best she could. She called to Nightshade. She instead felt something moving in the darkness. Some giant creature as black as the Darkforce which it inhabited. She felt it’s breath tracing across her skin as it moved through the darkness around her.
Under its gaze her mind moved back examining all of her greatest faults. She knew that she was too distant, a defence mechanism from her telepathic prowess but it pushed others away. She remembered the thoughts and emotions of her ex-husband as they parted for the last time. She felt every error that she had ever made in battle and diplomacy and the deaths of all the friends that she had witnessed.
She tried again to reach out and touch the creatures mind to once again find only darkness and nothingness. She realised quickly that it was actually the darkness itself which was attacking her.
The darkness suddenly shrieked and receded. Its shriek changed as it shrunk back to be that of Nightshade herself. Oracle’s red eyes opened to see Manta and Starbolt standing in the doorway both throwing out as much light as they could. Their light drove the darkness back into Nightshade’s body. She writhed and screamed in pain as this happened.
“Stop before you kill her!” demanded Oracle. Her eyes were closed and she pressed her hands tightly over them…yet she could still see the light. The two guardsmen stopped their attack and moved quickly to the side of their friend.
“She’s cold to the touch,” said Manta as her hand pressed onto Nightshade and withdrew quickly “She absorbed the energy from our attack…like an endothermic reaction.” She paused, her face unreadable as always beneath her calm golden face. “I think we may have ‘broke the fever’,” she said unsure of herself. They had experienced battle manouvers together enough to know that their light powers hurt Nightshade, perhaps in this situation however it had been like a fever to other species, her body was taken to breaking point in order to kill the infection.
“What now?” asked Starbolt. He was not sure of Manta’s diagnosis, he was worried that he would have killed her.
“She needs to rest, needs to charge. I think darkness is what she needs. It’s what her body was trying to instinctively do before, shroud her so she could heal but it wasn’t having the desired effect since she was injured.” Manta dragged the covers of the bed over Nightshade’s body. “We wait for night, see how she reacts to the setting of Sol.”
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That night….
Izzy lay on the bed in ‘her room’, it was actually just the spare back bedroom where all of the grand kids stayed when they visited but she had always considered it her room. She was dozing lightly surrounded by photographs and newspaper clippings that her grandfather had kept in a box in the back of a wardrobe. She had looked through them all before but now they were even more important, she had read the kids comic from the 40’s which featured her grandfather cover to cover before she finally succumbed to sleep.
She awoke now thanks to the blinking light. She looked at the corner of the room letting her eyes adjust to the light before she stood up and walked towards the red glow. She hesitantly reached for the goggles and inspected them before sliding them onto her face to look through them.
Symbols danced wildly across the screen for a few seconds and some lights blinked wildly into her eyes before it flashed off for a few seconds plunging her back into darkness. They flashed back to life again and now had an English display.
“New user accepted, welcome new user.
You have been chosen as the new user of Smasher level exo-specs. Representatives of the Shi’ar training force will contact you imminently. In the meantime would you like to have basic user operations demonstrated.
Verbal commands enabled. Would you like your training uniform activated?”
Izzy smiled.
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The next morning….
Izzy stepped out onto the yard of the farm and moved towards the barn. She was alone on the farm, her dad having been called back out west to work on an emergency. The other grandkids wouldn’t arrive for a few days.
She had barely slept last night and was up at the crack of dawn nervously deciding what to do, in truth she had known all along that this was going to happen, her grandpa always used to say that fortune favoured the bold.
She slipped on the Exospecs and commanded the training uniform to activate as she had done last night about three or four times. She felt a warmth wash over her like sliding into a bath as the amazing plastic like cloth slid over her body covering her.
It had a blue cowl which covered the upper portions of her face only revealing her mouth. This went along her shoulders and down to her stomach in a large V shape, her arms and sides down to her thighs were covered in white. In the centre of her chest was what looked like to her a stylised red ‘T’ but given its alien nature she somehow doubted it was the letter she was familiar with.
“Exospecs activate strength,” she felt a tingle spread across her body as she walked into the barn. It was hard to explain but her muscles now felt like steel, she could feel the power as she tightened her hands into fists. She moved over to the old beat up van which had sat in the barn for about 20 years gathering rust. “Okay let’s try this out,” she grabbed the side of the van and bracing her knees lifted. The metal groaned and then screeched and then the door detached.
“Not what I intended,” she sighed as she looked at the door in her hand “but does prove the point.”
“When using strength remember that objects often have points of structural strength and weakness which will affect how you are able to manipulate the material.”
“God it’s got its own paperclip,” she laughed. “Okay get a better grip,” she said to herself with a nod and bent down. She slid her arm under the bottom of the van before grabbing the side where she had just torn the door free.
She lifted the van easily. It lifted like it was an empty box, oddly she could feel its weight still but it was like it wasn’t important…a distant feeling. She balanced it carefully before removing one of her hands and held it above her head straight up with just one hand. “This is ridiculous,” she said with a smile.
She walked from the barn carrying the van. She made sure she was careful, putting it down as gently as she could.
“Ok what about….enhance durability,” she commanded.
“Activating durability will deactivate strength. Power enhancements can be lethal when used in unison and can strain energy consumption to critical levels. Do you wish to proceed?”
“Okay I get it, yes activate durability….uh, don’t warn me about that in future, I’ve got it” She walked across the yard and grabbed a lose brick which had tumbled away from the pile of masonry which her grandpa always seemed to have laying around somewhere on the farm. She gripped it as tightly as she could and tapped it with a decent amount of force on her thigh. She again felt the pressure but it was dulled. She nervously exhaled and then slammed it as hard as she could onto the same spot….it didn’t hurt a bit.
“Exospecs, exactly how strong is this enhanced durability?”
“Enhanced durability allows you to endure six paxilobars before the system becomes taxed.”
Izzy smiled and shook her head. She shouldn’t really have expected it to work in imperial units. A paxilobar certainly sounded like a big measurement anyway.
She moved back to the van. “Strength activate,” she commanded before lifting the van. She looked upwards and then hurled the van skywards. She watched as the van hurtled into the air at least 50 feet and then kept her eyes on it as it began to hurtle back towards her. “Shit…speed!” she sharply commanded and launched herself sideways.
The world seemed to move in slow motion. She kept her eye on the falling van which now inched along at a crawl towards the ground. She was twenty feet away before she turned around and stopped. She watched it moving at a crawl towards the floor.
“In for a penny,” she asserted to herself with a solid nod before launching herself back into the pathway of the van. She looked up towards it and issued the command “Durability!” the van seemed to suddenly shift to fast forward, she couldn’t help but close her eyes.
It felt like a beach ball bounced off her head. She felt the ground shake as it collided with the ground off to her side. “Specs, can you tell me about how many paxilobars that was?”
“Impact was 0.1 paxilobars.”
“Okay so 60 vans can fall on my head….right,” she felt butterflies of excitement in her stomach as she prepared for the next test. “Activate flight!” she smiled as she began to soar.
To be continued….
It was little more than a class 6 inter-stellar shunt ship, a puddle jumper, but it was on its very last voyage through the stars. It was not a smooth one.
“Damage report,” barked Oracle. She was the leader of this branch of The Imperial Guard. The Guard were the greatest warriors that the Imperium had to offer, they were peace keepers, soldiers, humanitarians and the wall which held back the darkness.
Oracle glanced across the screens which she could see herself, her dark red eyes taking in what they could. Her pale skin with the slightest hint of pink was died a deep blue by the flashing lights from the console. Her silver hair took on a nice colour which her Ex always commented suited her.
“We’re Flarked,” barked Starbolt. He was typing on the machine to his right. “Sections twelve through 10 are destroyed pouring atmosphere into the void. Sections 9-7 are burning, six vital systems have failed and we’re running on back-up impulse engines.”
“How far to Earth?” she asked.
“Nav computer is down,” replied Manta, her voice echoing in the way that vocalisations of her species did. Her gold face turned to look at Oracle as her long billowing gliding wings rippled behind her, a sign of tension. She glowed a gentle white, normally she was able to keep her glow totally under control but under the current stress she shone like a lightbulb. “Close enough that if we can prevent more damage and keep the inertial dampeners online for entry we can make it...most likely,” She informed.
“Starbolt,” Oracle turned the flaming powerhouse of the team. He was a long serving member of the Imperial guard and had a long service history even before that. He was often known as the ‘locker room general’, highly respected and looked up to with a reputation for being as tough as a Kree battlecruiser’s shell. She had been a new recruit under his command years ago and respected him deeply, even if his attitude and devil may care style had stopped him progressing to the rank which he truly deserved. “You need to go to the burning sections and absorb as much heat as you can. Stop it from spreading.” He nodded as he burst into a run from the cock pit and dropped down the shaft which lead to the main access points to the rest of the ship.
“Nightshade,” Oracle spoke over the communicator to their fellow Guardian who was currently elsewhere on the ship. “You need to get to section 10 and seal it with Darkforce.”
A little holographic projection of Nightshade appeared flickeringly over the communications hub. Her skin was a pale white which had accents of blue. Her ‘hair’ and facial markings a pitch black made from Dark force. She was hovering above the floor in a meditative pose trying to strengthen her powers.
“If I leave Vrill Rokk he will certainly die,” she responded, there was a tone of anger in her voice. She and Vrill were close having been on many missions together, once they were stranded on a desert planet for a whole month with only one another to pull each other through. There was much talk in the Imperium that they were actually closer. The gossip magazines on a dozen pleasure worlds claimed to have proof, they never published it however once their office had mysteriously tumbled into another dimension.
“If you don’t do this then we are all dead. The imperium will die, we cannot allow that”” she barked. “That is a direct order!”
“Yes, Praetor,” said Nightshade with resignation in her voice. The communication cut out.
Oracle scanned with her telepathic prowess across the ship. She felt Nightshade saying a farewell to Smasher as he lay in the room where she had managed to drag his body, she removed the Darkforce with which she had been holding him. Oracle suddenly felt a spike of pain spreading outwards. Smasher probably would have died anyway, but now it was a certainty.
“Vrill, I am sorry. Let me ease your way to your Gods,” she offered.
“Thank you Sibyl,” Smasher spoke without formality. He had always been relaxed, happy and confident. Even now facing his own death he seemed at peace. “I served the Imperium well, didn’t I?”
“You were one of the finest Guardsmen I have ever had the pleasure to meet; your name will live on and your legacy will be honoured.”
Smasher nodded and smiled. “I knew I was going to die. The Exo-Specs have already began searching out a replacement….they’re searching Earth. This means we’re close enough. You’re going to make it…you’re going to save them all.” He paused for a second “Huh, just think…a Terran member of the Imperial guard. I wish I could live long enough to see Starbolt’s face when that happens.”
They said their goodbyes. Oracle hid her teary red eyes for a second while she tried to limit her emotions.
“Neutron,” Oracle spoke commandingly to the Stygian who was currently standing to the side awaiting instruction. He was primarily a field operative and was not certified to operate many ship systems. “I need you to get the symbiosis pod, link up to the ship’s hull”
Oracle trailed off for a second as the sight of Earth on the screen came into view. Her heart skipped a beat as she believed for a few seconds that they were truly going to make it.
“I need you to channel as much of the energy from entry, cosmic radiation and the like into yourself,” she commanded quickly.
“Astra,” she commanded to the Shi’ar woman who had been working on the distress beacon. “Go with Neutron and set him away, get yourself into Symbiosis pod II. I know you can’t make a whole ship intangible but any level of buffering you can provide will be a Rilur sent miracle.” Astra was not a full blooded Aeirie, her long brown hair which sprung from her head rather than a ruff of feathers showed this to all who cared to see. She was hyperactive, never stopped talking even in the heat of battle and despite her ‘lower position’ due to her birth had been the apple of her father’s eye and given everything she had ever wanted on her homeworld….she could be bratty. She could however be trusted in a situation to not lose her head.
The two guardsmen moved quickly.
Now left on the bridge was Oracle and Fang. Fang was a curious one, he was both the oldest and youngest of the Imperial Guard. He was the latest iteration of the Fang line of cloned super-soldiers, when one dies another is called to take their place. It was part of a pact with his species going back over a thousand years. Each new iteration had a subtle telepathic imprint, an instinctual engram of the predecessors.
“Orders, Praetor?” He asked. He to her eyes was just a teenager and even with his engramic experience and how much Oracle knew about his past lives experiences she could notice his palpable nervousness, he had been part of the Imperial Guard for just a few days, nearly all of which had been spent on this ship. Oracle hadn’t yet fully gotten a grasp on him, he sometimes looked like he didn’t know what to do with himself, sometimes he launched into a situation with an air of confidence and other times he had already managed to show a cocky teenage streak which was not unknown to the adolescence of a million species.
“Keep us in the air as long as you can,” she instructed, the previous Fang was one of the best pilots in the Imperium and she hoped that the skill had passed to his successor in the ways that it sometimes did. “I’m going to get us a lock onto each of the Super Guards and get the teleportation up and running in case we need to eject.”
She paused for a moment. “You could pray to all our Gods for us, too.”
Fang grinned, it cut through his nervousness and she saw the concern disperse from his face. “Sorry Praetor, I don’t have any Gods, life of a clone grown in a vat. I only have The Imperium….and the thought of sitting in some bar with some fine filly telling them about this adventure.”
Oracle let a small smile creep across her face. She too believed in The Imperium with everything she had. “That may be more than enough….prepare for entry”.
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Days later, The Kane farm, Iowa…
Isabel Kane walked through the dusty pathways amongst the corn kicking up the dust as she went, her eyes were red and streamed with tears. This was her grandfather’s farm, he had managed and ran the place since he came back from the second world war. He had died yesterday morning.
She remembered walking through these fields as a kid or up in the orchard where her grandfather would simply reach out and pluck her something nice to eat. It was out here wandering that she felt closest to her grandfather.
He was Dan Kane A.K.A Captain Terror, he was a superhero before there were superheroes. He fought in the Spanish civil war and had fought alongside Captain America and the Invaders during WWII. It was some sort of adventure during that involving Nazi magic which had helped give him such a long life.
He would tell her exciting tales of the adventures that he went on. When she was young he would make them swashbuckling comic book like adventures and she would tell him about all of her fantasy adventures and the things she would do as a hero. When she was a teenager he would tell her about some of the darker sides of the adventures, hard choices and why they were important and she would talk about her college prep classes and the adventures of a teenage girl. Then when they were both older he would talk about when she was a little girl and she talked about college. Now they couldn’t talk anymore.
The adventures of Captain Terror had massively impacted on her life along with the other superheroes who started appearing when she was younger. She saw the Avengers fighting the Kree on the news, The Fantastic Four fighting the Skrulls and every other combination she could think of. Her life was set, she had a plan.
She studied two degrees, Izzy was always the bright one in the family, social sciences (Psychology, Sociology and Economics) and Astrophysics. She was ahead of the curve she was sure, when she was a young teenager suddenly there were superheroes again and then there were aliens and alien invasions. The future of human space exploration seemed obvious…but for some reason it never came. The heroes never shared the technology with the rest of the world and the great expansion of humanity which she had prepared for never seemed to occur. She instead worked in a restaurant, not that there was anything wrong with that, she often corrected herself whenever the thought crossed her mind.
It was then that she stumbled across the crater.
It was about the size of a manhole cover and was a few feet deep. Lying in the bottom of it were a large red pair of goggles. She bent down and examined them before stretching her hand out to pick them up. They hummed gently and warmly in her hand like they were alive.
She held them up to the light and looked through them. “Wonder if grandpa lost these,” she stopped for a second and began to cry again. She had forgotten about her grandfather for the few seconds that she had discovered the weird goggles, guilt washed over her.
Izzy held the goggles and headed back to the house. She suddenly didn’t feel like being along anymore.
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De Moines, Iowa….
Fang and Oracle walked down the street their arms full of bags of shopping. They watched the people walking along the streets carefully. It was the reflexes of a soldier, even though they weren’t expecting any trouble, to always be alert.
Oracle was casting out a mirage to the minds of any people around them. They perceived the pair not as a tall pink skinned, red eyed and silver haired alien and her short animalistic companion but rather as a willowy women dressed in a smart business suit and a small balding man wearing a well-tailored suit and a loud tie. Anyone who was watching on CCTV however would see a very different picture.
Oracle had been working her psionic powers overtime since arriving on Earth. Nightshade had managed to use her shadow teleporting powers to move them to where she could sense a ‘large’ populations, though nothing compared to the billion citizen populations of the ‘mega-cities’ where Oracle herself had grown up or the ones on Chandalar with De Moines only having 209,000 citizens. Once they had arrived Oracle began to work immediately.
She picked information from the minds of the humans while the others hid so that she could build disguises, find out information on geography, finances and other information that they might need. They had managed to get them cloaked so that they could move freely in the city for a short period of time and then had made their way to a nearby hotel, she made them see the group as visiting business colleagues, making sure to flavour her story with references to De Moines booming business in auto-insurance before making them think she had paid for the suites with an acceptable amount of Earth money. The last part had been a point of contention for Manta whose strict moral religious code saw that as unacceptable, Oracle had to promise to pay back the business with interest in gold once they had access to a replicator unit.
Oracle and Fang turned into their hotel lobby and waved a small hello to the woman on the front desk before making their way to the elevator with their bags in hand.
“Does anyone suspect anything?” asked Fang. He had not been able to sniff any heightened emotions or scents which would be out of place in the environment (other than the scent of their own people).
“No, extra-terrestrial incursion is one of the last things on their minds,” she nodded. “They are a strange species humans,” she said with a wistful smile. “They are capable of so much wisdom and spiritual depth, they believe in truth, fairness and will power…..but then they’re so hung up on petty differences, on their avarice. It’s a roller coaster.”
“Primative but generally good at the core?” Fang twisted his face before nodding appreciatively.
They exited the elevator and moved towards their room. They entered and immediately snapped into their jobs. “Starbolt, how’re you doing?” asked Fang as he moved towards his friend, his fires had dulled to only a small flicker and was a deep ember like red. He was not able to draw heat and energy as much as he would need to be 100% whilst stuck indoors on Earth, sunlight would get him quite far but normally he would have had a lavabath or immersed himself in an external flame by now if he’d had the choice.
“We got you this,” Fang reached into the bag he was carrying and pulled out six large canisters of lighter fluid. “I don’t know if fuelling your fire would help or deplete you more?”
Starbolt grinned (as much as a flaming skull can) as he took the canisters and slowly pressed one against his body pushing it through the plasma layer which made up his skin. It glowed brightly under the surface of his skin before erupting outwards as a wave of colour through his body. His fire and plasma keeping the explosion contained. The alteration of colour spread through his system changing his hue. He made a groan of enjoyment. “Kid you just got yourself into my goodbooks,” he said with a gasp. Everyone thought that he was referring to Fang but Oracle had a sneaking suspicion he was talking to her, she found it hard to pinpoint his thoughts with telepathy at the best of times so she wasn’t exactly sure.
“How are Astra and Nightshade?” Oracle asked to Manta who was sitting perched on the edge of the sofa unit.
“Nightshade’s darkness is growing, she lapses in and out of consciousness,” Manta said with a concerned tone in her voice. She hovered into the air with her wing flaps undulating gently “Astra is being…difficult.”
“Please tell me that you’ve brought something which can help!” bellowed Astra as she stumbled from one of the suite’s adjoining rooms. Her talons clawed at her skin trying to scratch the impossible itch which was covering her body. She was having an allergic reaction to something here on Earth. “This is worth than when I was stung by a Nirabo during my first molting,” she grumbled as she yanked the bag from Oracle and tipped it out on the floor.
Astra was not a soldier in the same way that the others were. She had not trained from a young age to serve the empire as some of the other guards had but as a member of a Aerie family who thanks to her mixed heritage had developed extra-normal abilities and had drafted herself. She was a competent fighter and had been through the extensive training needed to be an Imperial guardsman but she was not as disciplined outside of battle as others would be.
She looked through the products of the bag. She threw them back on the floor and rocked back to lie flat on her back. “I can’t read human!” she sulked.
Oracle crouched and grabbed a tube. “This should offer some comfort,” she said as she handed it over “We can’t be sure though, it might have a different reaction with your physiology.”
“Well that’s just great isn’t it,” she huffed before launching into another scratching fit.
“Neutron, how’re we doing with tracking down some of Earth’s superteams?” she asked to Neutron who was sitting at a table with a number of maps that they had ‘bought’ from a nearby book store.
“Superheroes all in New York,” he paused for a moment “New York very far on foot. We need Nightshade,” he said it a solemn nod. Neutron to anyone listening sounded slow witted and unintelligent but really he was a bright man, he had experience in a number of fields and was a great battlefield tactician but his people were not accustomed to vocalisations and language. His species spoke with pulsating light and waves of radiation and energy. In any verbal conversation he would come across as struggling.
“I’ll go and check on her,” Oracle nodded, “If we don’t see an improvement by tomorrow we will have to try and commandeer an Earth vehicle and make our way to New York over land.”
“We could fly there in a fraction of the time,” Starbolt advised. He did this almost passive aggressively letting it be clearly known that this is what he would like to do.
“No,” Oracle shook her head “too risky. Earth may be somewhat accustomed to flying humanoids but they are not yet at the point that this wouldn’t draw attention and with Nightshade as she is now I wouldn’t want to draw that kind of attention.”
Oracle moved across the room and opened the bedroom door before slipping in through as small a gap as she could. The room was oppressively dark, pitch black. She couldn’t see Nightshade but approached her based on her telepathic signature. She sat on the edge of the bed where her friend lay groaning and restless, the Superguard had taken care of her as best they could but none of them were physicians especially for her species.
She brushed against her mind but found nothing but a confusing jumble of emotions and snatches of thought everything ranging from childhood images to the battles she had been in most recently. Vril Rokk appeared frequently in there.
Nighshade had fallen sick this morning as they prepared to venture out into the city. She had seemed off, her pale skin darkening to a dull grey and not confident on her feet before she finally collapsed in a burst of darkness. She had lay on the floor with tendrils stretching out of her in all directions, they undulated and pulsed with strength.
They had moved her to the bedroom to get her comfortable and tried to keep her temperature down to its normal low levels. It was there best guess that she had succumbed to some Earth virus or bacteria which she was apparently very susceptible to.
Now they just had to play the waiting game to see if her system could fight this off quickly enough. Oracle knew well that there were those with higher technology and some knowledge of xenobiology on this planet such as The Fantastic Four, The X-Men and The Avengers but to get to them would be a dangerous feat.
“Come on, Miatas,” said Oracle with a sigh as she replaced the wet cloth with a fresh load of cold water. “You’re strong, you can pull through….I don’t want to lose another friend due to this war.”
Oracle’s mind drifted for a moment. She thought of the Imperium and the dire straits which it currently found itself in. The friends that they had lost, those that had died….and those who had not.
She turned her mind back to Nightshade in the darkness as she convulsed. Oracle sensed the psychic scream and then felt the tendrils of darkness surround her. Grabbing her tightly. She momentarily sensed the alarm of the other Guardians in the next room as the darkness erupted from the room.
Oracle was dragged down into the darkness. She felt cold, both physically and spiritually. She had never felt more alone as she simply hung there. Tendrils so cold that their slightest touch froze her skin wrapped tightly around her, she could barely breath as the air in her lungs froze.
She tried to reach out telepathically as best she could. She called to Nightshade. She instead felt something moving in the darkness. Some giant creature as black as the Darkforce which it inhabited. She felt it’s breath tracing across her skin as it moved through the darkness around her.
Under its gaze her mind moved back examining all of her greatest faults. She knew that she was too distant, a defence mechanism from her telepathic prowess but it pushed others away. She remembered the thoughts and emotions of her ex-husband as they parted for the last time. She felt every error that she had ever made in battle and diplomacy and the deaths of all the friends that she had witnessed.
She tried again to reach out and touch the creatures mind to once again find only darkness and nothingness. She realised quickly that it was actually the darkness itself which was attacking her.
The darkness suddenly shrieked and receded. Its shriek changed as it shrunk back to be that of Nightshade herself. Oracle’s red eyes opened to see Manta and Starbolt standing in the doorway both throwing out as much light as they could. Their light drove the darkness back into Nightshade’s body. She writhed and screamed in pain as this happened.
“Stop before you kill her!” demanded Oracle. Her eyes were closed and she pressed her hands tightly over them…yet she could still see the light. The two guardsmen stopped their attack and moved quickly to the side of their friend.
“She’s cold to the touch,” said Manta as her hand pressed onto Nightshade and withdrew quickly “She absorbed the energy from our attack…like an endothermic reaction.” She paused, her face unreadable as always beneath her calm golden face. “I think we may have ‘broke the fever’,” she said unsure of herself. They had experienced battle manouvers together enough to know that their light powers hurt Nightshade, perhaps in this situation however it had been like a fever to other species, her body was taken to breaking point in order to kill the infection.
“What now?” asked Starbolt. He was not sure of Manta’s diagnosis, he was worried that he would have killed her.
“She needs to rest, needs to charge. I think darkness is what she needs. It’s what her body was trying to instinctively do before, shroud her so she could heal but it wasn’t having the desired effect since she was injured.” Manta dragged the covers of the bed over Nightshade’s body. “We wait for night, see how she reacts to the setting of Sol.”
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That night….
Izzy lay on the bed in ‘her room’, it was actually just the spare back bedroom where all of the grand kids stayed when they visited but she had always considered it her room. She was dozing lightly surrounded by photographs and newspaper clippings that her grandfather had kept in a box in the back of a wardrobe. She had looked through them all before but now they were even more important, she had read the kids comic from the 40’s which featured her grandfather cover to cover before she finally succumbed to sleep.
She awoke now thanks to the blinking light. She looked at the corner of the room letting her eyes adjust to the light before she stood up and walked towards the red glow. She hesitantly reached for the goggles and inspected them before sliding them onto her face to look through them.
Symbols danced wildly across the screen for a few seconds and some lights blinked wildly into her eyes before it flashed off for a few seconds plunging her back into darkness. They flashed back to life again and now had an English display.
“New user accepted, welcome new user.
You have been chosen as the new user of Smasher level exo-specs. Representatives of the Shi’ar training force will contact you imminently. In the meantime would you like to have basic user operations demonstrated.
- Enhanced Strength
- Enhanced Speed
- Enhanced Durability
- Penta-Vision
- Energy protection
- Flight Patch
- Space flight-Locked
Verbal commands enabled. Would you like your training uniform activated?”
Izzy smiled.
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The next morning….
Izzy stepped out onto the yard of the farm and moved towards the barn. She was alone on the farm, her dad having been called back out west to work on an emergency. The other grandkids wouldn’t arrive for a few days.
She had barely slept last night and was up at the crack of dawn nervously deciding what to do, in truth she had known all along that this was going to happen, her grandpa always used to say that fortune favoured the bold.
She slipped on the Exospecs and commanded the training uniform to activate as she had done last night about three or four times. She felt a warmth wash over her like sliding into a bath as the amazing plastic like cloth slid over her body covering her.
It had a blue cowl which covered the upper portions of her face only revealing her mouth. This went along her shoulders and down to her stomach in a large V shape, her arms and sides down to her thighs were covered in white. In the centre of her chest was what looked like to her a stylised red ‘T’ but given its alien nature she somehow doubted it was the letter she was familiar with.
“Exospecs activate strength,” she felt a tingle spread across her body as she walked into the barn. It was hard to explain but her muscles now felt like steel, she could feel the power as she tightened her hands into fists. She moved over to the old beat up van which had sat in the barn for about 20 years gathering rust. “Okay let’s try this out,” she grabbed the side of the van and bracing her knees lifted. The metal groaned and then screeched and then the door detached.
“Not what I intended,” she sighed as she looked at the door in her hand “but does prove the point.”
“When using strength remember that objects often have points of structural strength and weakness which will affect how you are able to manipulate the material.”
“God it’s got its own paperclip,” she laughed. “Okay get a better grip,” she said to herself with a nod and bent down. She slid her arm under the bottom of the van before grabbing the side where she had just torn the door free.
She lifted the van easily. It lifted like it was an empty box, oddly she could feel its weight still but it was like it wasn’t important…a distant feeling. She balanced it carefully before removing one of her hands and held it above her head straight up with just one hand. “This is ridiculous,” she said with a smile.
She walked from the barn carrying the van. She made sure she was careful, putting it down as gently as she could.
“Ok what about….enhance durability,” she commanded.
“Activating durability will deactivate strength. Power enhancements can be lethal when used in unison and can strain energy consumption to critical levels. Do you wish to proceed?”
“Okay I get it, yes activate durability….uh, don’t warn me about that in future, I’ve got it” She walked across the yard and grabbed a lose brick which had tumbled away from the pile of masonry which her grandpa always seemed to have laying around somewhere on the farm. She gripped it as tightly as she could and tapped it with a decent amount of force on her thigh. She again felt the pressure but it was dulled. She nervously exhaled and then slammed it as hard as she could onto the same spot….it didn’t hurt a bit.
“Exospecs, exactly how strong is this enhanced durability?”
“Enhanced durability allows you to endure six paxilobars before the system becomes taxed.”
Izzy smiled and shook her head. She shouldn’t really have expected it to work in imperial units. A paxilobar certainly sounded like a big measurement anyway.
She moved back to the van. “Strength activate,” she commanded before lifting the van. She looked upwards and then hurled the van skywards. She watched as the van hurtled into the air at least 50 feet and then kept her eyes on it as it began to hurtle back towards her. “Shit…speed!” she sharply commanded and launched herself sideways.
The world seemed to move in slow motion. She kept her eye on the falling van which now inched along at a crawl towards the ground. She was twenty feet away before she turned around and stopped. She watched it moving at a crawl towards the floor.
“In for a penny,” she asserted to herself with a solid nod before launching herself back into the pathway of the van. She looked up towards it and issued the command “Durability!” the van seemed to suddenly shift to fast forward, she couldn’t help but close her eyes.
It felt like a beach ball bounced off her head. She felt the ground shake as it collided with the ground off to her side. “Specs, can you tell me about how many paxilobars that was?”
“Impact was 0.1 paxilobars.”
“Okay so 60 vans can fall on my head….right,” she felt butterflies of excitement in her stomach as she prepared for the next test. “Activate flight!” she smiled as she began to soar.
To be continued….