ic Incursion: Three If By Space

[Avenger Assembled]

"They used a really big space-gun!" Sharl suddenly yelled, tension flooding into his voice at the Terran's questions. "I don't know, it was as big as Terra's moon and it fried about a quarter of the Star Knight Corps right in front of me! I barely got out before it took out the whole damned planet, I..." He took a deep breath. "I'm...I'm sorry. Is VINCE there?" Sharl asked in reply. "I can send him my audio-visual recordings and he can help process them for you." It was easier for him to think  of it that way than it was to process what he knew was the reality - Miss Americana's ability to dissect the contents of his brain as easily as opening up a can of that terrestrial fish Murdock liked so much. "Miss Americana is contacting the Freedom League right now, and I know the Liberty League and the other teams are all going on alert too." He fell silent. "She was on a flight that left before the planet-killer started charging its weapons, right for one of the orbital cities. She's probably halfway to the Rim by now." 

[Ecalsneerg]

"Good," said Geckoman slowly. "She got out then." He sat down in his chair, swivelling sadly to and fro. "A giant space cannon. Woah. Right." He spun around again, quickly typing on one of several keypads. "I'm not on Interceptors base right now, but if you just let me do some..." He called up another call interface, on the screen next to Sharl's. Weird interlocking gears appeared on the edges of each screen.

 

"Aaaaaaand dialing VINCE. He's not in my systems, but we can get him in on a conference call and you'll be able to send everything to Interceptors base. He can also alert them there until I can get some gear and get over there." He slid back in his chair and leaned towards the workshop.

 

"Sweetie, can you prepare the armoured suit? Thaaaanks!"

[Avenger Assembled]

When the message was sent (and after a brief conversation with VINCE, someone Sharl hadn't seen in far too long of a time), Sharl cut the signal and returned to Geckoman. "All right, well, just make sure you pass on that message. Right when her world was about to die, you were the ones she was thinking of." He remembered all those dead faces - all those people who had pleaded with him to remember who they were because soon no one would be left who did. "Remember her. Citizen out." He hung up the call and stared into space, lost for a moment in reverie of the horrors that had come just a few hours earlier - or was it a lifetime ago? 

[Electra]

A minute later, Miss Americana opened her eyes and looked around. "Okay, I'm good for a few more hours now. You get in touch with the Interceptors?" At Sharl's nod, she rose from her chair and went back to the wall station. "Good, that's good. I won't try Cavalier just yet, if he's still alive he surely has a lot better things to be doing. Midnight, then," she decided. "He's got a team and a spaceship, that's efficient." Tapping into one of the Liberty League's comm channels, she sent a page to Midnight's communicator. "You'd think with a name like that, he'd be up even at this hour." 

[Gizmo]

Almost immediately Miss Americana heard a soft click as the line opened but there was no answering voice. Instead the communicator relayed the rustle of air rushing swiftly past followed by a meaty impact and the unmistakeable pop of a limb being dislocated from its socket. A pained cry of surprise was joined by several shouts and a cacophony of gunshots. Heavy whumphs and whimpering groans preceded the chorus of weapons diminishing one by one until there was once again silence. A beat later a quiet for crystal clear voice demanded, "Speak."

"I'll tell you everything I know!" a panicked reply promised from somewhere nearby the receiver. "Just don't drop me! Don't drop me!"

"Not you."

[Electra]

"Midnight, this is Miss Americana," Miss A began, seeming quite unruffled by the commotion on the other end of the line. Apparently the black-clad hero's name did match his habits. "I"m sorry to bother you while you're working, but I've just received news of a disturbing new threat to Earth. Do you still have access to the spacecraft you provided for the trip to the Curator's ringworld, and does it have any advanced long-range sensory capabilities?" From what Gina recalled, the ship had been equipped with decent sensors, but the whole thing looked as though it had been made fifty years in the past by beings from a hundred years in the future, so it was something of a technological hodgepodge. She didn't want to make an uninformed guess about what it could do. 

[Gizmo]

The patriotic paragon heard something that sounded like nylon cord quickly unspooling along with more protests and begging from whomever Midnight was interrogating. The detective's footfalls were too quiet to carry but the whimpering became harder to make out, suggesting he'd moved away for a modicum of privacy. "Hhn. Americana. Have ship. Low fuel. Exotic isotopes." There was a brief conversation between Midnight and a throaty female voice that Miss Americana couldn't make out before he continued to answer her questions. "Sensor suite... variable. Describe 'threat'. Grue? Preserver tech?" As calm and level as he kept his voice the second option was pronounced a little more forcefully and the woman on the other end of the line could have sworn she heard the material of a glove clenching.

[Electra]

"I'm afraid nothing so well-documented," Miss A replied, though she could sympathize with Midnight's reaction. She wondered idly if he had connected her to his comrade on the trip to the ringworld, decided it was probably better if she didn't know. "A group called The Communion, a large fleet of extremely fast ships and at least one staggeringly powerful weapon. I have learned from a reliable source that they destroyed the planet Lor-Van approximately one hour ago. At this point I know nothing of their plans or the extent of their capabilities, but we can assume that if they choose to target Earth, they are more than capable of doing so." 

[Gizmo]

There was a significant pause over the line, followed by more animated discussion from the deep female voice and quiet but insistent tones from Midnight, all muffled by a gloved hand over the receiver. Eventually he removed the obstruction and rejoined the conversation. "Pardon. Define 'destroyed'." There didn't seem to be much room for ambiguity but standing atop the roof of a sky scraper and reflexively looking upward at the stars in the night sky, the black clad vigilante had to hope he'd somehow misunderstood even as a sinking feeling in the bottom of his stomach assured him that he had not.

[Electra]

"I haven't got a lot of details at the moment," Miss A admitted, "though I'm hoping the Freedom League or some of the spacegoing heroes will be able to tell us more soon. What we know at this point is that the Communion came into Lor-Van space and overpowered its defenses, which prompted an evacuation of the planet. During the evacuation, a large contingent of Star Knights attempted to hold off the Communion. The Communion then proceeded to unleash a planet-killer style weapon approximately the size of Earth's moon which overwhelmed the Star Knights and annihilated most of them, perhaps four or five hundred, in a single shot. It then recharged its battery for several minutes, during which time my colleague Citizen, who was visiting the planet, was able to escape by transmitting himself back to Earth. I don't know exactly what that weapon did to the planet, but there was no one fighting back at that point, and no defenses left to be mustered. My preliminary analysis of the weapon suggests that a single shot would have been enough to at least wipe out life on the surface and possibly rupture the planet's crust entirely." 

[Avenger Assembled]

A decision made, Sharl stood up and adjusting his outfit, letting the glowing symbol on his chest die away. She's probably still got the emitter in her room, he thought, she said she could use it to play video games or watch movies. She'll want to see me. We didn't break up that hard. 'I'm going out for a little while,' he told Miss Americana by flashing holo-signals in the air while she spoke on the phone. 'Just call me if you need more info.' As soon as she gave him the go-ahead, Sharl stepped away and into the kludgy network of Terra - or at least the kludgy network outside of Miss Americana's, Dragonfly's, or Claremont's network.

 

Inside the system, he flew high above the 'city' of Freedom City's network, most of his view obscured by the patchy fog where the system couldn't keep up with his perceptions. It wasn't long before he reached his destination - and dived low! Hang on, I wonder if Eliza's still awake...

[Gizmo]

Miss Americana heard a sharp intake of breath followed by something low and guttural; she didn't need to be able to make out the words to recognize it as a curse. There was more muffled, hurried conversation before Midnight removed his hand again. His voice was rougher now, the measured calm obviously taking more effort to maintain in light of the scope of what he'd just been told. "Hundreds. Hhn. Martian ship not equipped to combat that. ...need to prepare. Be in contact."

Just before the line disconnect, a voice from the distance shouted, "Hello? Hey! You can't just leave me here! He--!"

[trollthumper]

In the depths of Eliza Oxum's dorm at Freedom College, something glowed and buzzed on the far-too-crowded chest of drawers next to her bed. It buzzed for close to thirty seconds before Eliza woke, wondering if her alarm had shorted out. She reached for her phone, only for sleep to vanish when she realized who was calling. And he'd sent along a message, so she knew that answering the phone would bring him through. As quietly as she could, she snuck out of her shared dorm room and snuck into the common area, making sure that no RAs came wandering by.

 

She waited a few seconds before clicking to accept the call. She and Sharl had parted fairly amicably, by teen standards. They had just accepted the facts - she was going to college, and he was going back to his digitized alien city. These things happened. But she knew the odds were against this being a simple "So, how's it going?" call - even if he was back on Tronik, Sharl would have some connection to Freedom, and know not to call in the middle of the night. She pressed the button and set the phone on the ground, watching as he appeared.

 

"It's good to see you, Sharl," she said. "Is everything all right?"

[Avenger Assembled]

Sharl gave Eliza a wide-eyed look of frank relief. "I've had a really bad day," he told her, his voice tight with what sounded like the aftermath of crying. "And I know it's stupid, but I just thought, well, I wanted to see you." He ran his hand through his thick black hair, his projected body looking solid under the bright artificial lights of the common room. The words, when they came, came pouring out. "I finished the project. I went to Lor-Van to make my pitch, and...and..." He swallowed hard before going on. "And then the planet blew up. A group called the Communion showed up, and they just...they just blew it up! I barely made it back here before they fried the biosphere, and now a whole planet with dozens of billions of people is just..gone! There was nothing anybody could do; even the Star Knights were just speed bumps. It was terrible and I keep...the people I was with, at the end, they knew I was the only one that would make it! They asked me to remember their names and their faces!" 

[trollthumper]

This was not her world. Eliza had dealt with matters in space - the thing with Geckoman and Jill O'Cure, Seven and Iana... she found herself thinking about the latter two now. She had little experience with the Lor, but she had spent enough time in the presence of Seven's crew to know about the importance of Lor-Van. To think of an entire planet destroyed... and these Star Knights. The only ones she really knew where the one on the Freedom League, the one before her, and that green one who had been buzzing about the skies of Freedom on occasion. She didn't really know their capabilities, and did not know what it meant that this "Communion" had torn through them.

 

But she did know things about tribute, memory, and mourning. She wrapped her arms around Sharl, holding him close. "Do what they asked," she said. "I know you have the memory, the capacity. Don't take this burden onto yourself. Don't let anyone forget who these people were. Let them know the names and faces of the dead. Let the dead live on. And let the living know who they're fighting for." She looked into his eyes. "I can't imagine the things you've seen. I know you feel the gravity of all of this. But, given how you've described it, so should we. You can keep their memories alive, Sharl. And you can help us to do the same."

[Avenger Assembled]

"I've seen bad things happen before. The people we lost in Tronik when the Curator attacked. That other vibrational dimension with the National Socialists, what they did to that Tronik - but this was just the end. A whole world dead, and they barely knew why." He hugged Eliza tight, his energized holographic flesh tingling to the touch. "Miss A is calling the heroes of Earth to try and rally the defenses. I think we'll probably pull it off. We beat the Curator, right?" Not for the first time, he remembered watching that battle from the outside, wondering at what thoughts had been going through his head the day he died. He laughed unhappily. "Billions of people gone...and I just keep remembering them reaching for me, begging for me to save them, and I couldn't. The system was wrong there for my emulator, I...couldn't even touch them." 

[trollthumper]

There was only so much she could say here. Eliza had never been in a situation like this. Never seen so many died, or felt so useless while doing it. She had seen her share of problems - the Grue invasion, the Gorgon hanging in the sky, Mister Motley's attempt to give everyone superpowers, that business with the robot doubles going insane - but she had seen them from a distance. Many of them had happened before she'd even gotten used to her powers and she knew there was nothing she could do, unless she wanted to end up dead. She knew that she was almost out of encouraging words, and all the ones that she would dish out now would sound hollow.

 

So she did all she could do. She took Sharl into her arms, embracing him. "We will do this," she said. "We have seen so much worse, and done so much good. We will make these things pay." She looked Sharl in the eyes. "You did what you could for the people of Lor-Van. It wasn't your fault the systems were so different. Sharl, you know things about computers I could barely start to understand. I'm sure you can make sure it doesn't happen again. You can stop this from happening again. Because... I know you." 

 

She kissed him on the forehead and held him close. "I don't know much about computers, but I'll see if I can get some of the technological Courts to throw up interference. If there's anything else I can do to help..." She just left the sentiment to hang in the air, wondering where things might go from here... and not wholly caring where they would. 

[Avenger Assembled]

Sharl kissed Eliza, and kissed her, and would have gone on doing much more than that if her RA hadn't knocked on the common room door with a wink. "Hey, none of that in the TV room!" she said cheerfully before moving on, leaving the two startled heroes to collect themselves.

 

"I, uh..." Sharl adjusted his jacket and set it aside, the long black coat fading away into nothingness as the projected hologram left the main pattern of his body. "I need to get back to Miss A. She's gonna need a lot of help tonight. Everybody is." He looked at Eliza, not certain for a moment where they stood with each other. "Thank you for everything you said...and did. Can I see you again?" 

[trollthumper]

Eliza wondered if she should be doing this... but then realized she didn't care. If some great horror was about to descend on Earth from the depths of space, then this was the last thing she should be so worried about. All they had right now was each other, and at least they could count on that. After that... well, they would deal with it when it came.

 

It was the noise made by the RA that shook her from her reverie and made her realize just what she was doing, with who, and where. She smiled. "Go to her," she said. "Get the word out. Make sure we're ready when this thing gets here. And... you know where to find me."