Mage among supers 4, p.1
Mage Among Supers 4, page 1
Mage Among Supers 4
Dante King
Copyright © 2023 by Dante King
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
v001
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Contents
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Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 17
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
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Immortal Swordslinger
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About the Author
Chapter 1
It was only an hour since the aliens had arrived in Caliber City, and for me at least, the novelty was already starting to wear off. Sure, the news feeds were still screaming about it, the muted screens around me filled with images of talking heads and alarmed headlines worrying that this was the start of an invasion, but as someone who’d spent time with the aliens, and who had the attention span to remember that an alien had been living among us for years, it was already old hat.
Besides, this was a city with hundreds of super-powered heroes and villains, myself and my team, the Offenders, included. Next to that, it would take a lot more than green skin and a couple of small antennae to make me sit up and pay attention.
“You drink coffee?” I asked as I slid cups across the table of our briefing room. Mel had insisted that I use one of the new machines in a shared kitchen, not the old device in my private eye office, and I had to admit that she had a point. I might like my coffee to taste like an accident at a chemical plant, but if we were catering to the first new ambassadors from off-planet in years, I shouldn’t make them think that we were trying to poison them.
Suha, the leader of the aliens, took one of the cups and sniffed at the steam coming off it. Aside from his green skin, antennae, and pale eyes, he looked an awful lot like a human.
I mean, sure, no one I knew would wear that metallic jumpsuit outside of a costume party, but maybe he’d seen our shows and thought that humans liked fancy dress. If you ignored the color scheme and those small antennae, he was basically just some guy with unfortunate taste in fashion, and those were two a penny in the big city.
He took a sip of the coffee.
“That is... enlivening,” he said. “Thank you, Ben Blackridge.”
“Glad you like it,” I said.
“I did not say that.”
Next to him, one of his two companions took a drink, then pulled a face. She said something I couldn’t understand, but it couldn’t possibly have been good because she put the cup down and pushed it as far as possible across the table with a look of disgust. I decided not to point out that, on the muted screen behind her, a commentator was pulling a similar face at the thought of her arrival.
Suha said something back to his companions. The other one was spinning a donut around his finger and grinning in amusement. Suha took another sip of coffee and nodded.
“I thought you didn’t like it,” I said.
“I did not say that either,” Suha said. “I have not decided yet, but it would be rude not to at least try what is offered to me. I am grateful for your hospitality.”
“And I’d be grateful if you could explain why you’re here.”
“Of course. As I said, we have come to speak with the leaders of your city.”
I kept my face carefully blank. As a gesture of goodwill, I’d pulled back the cowl of my superhero outfit, revealing my face to these new arrivals, but there was a world of difference between sharing my face and sharing my truth. In this case, the awkward truth was that my companions and I weren’t the leaders of the city, but we might still be the folks these strangers needed.
From the moment the mayor had pointed the finger of responsibility at me in my role as the superhero Codex, I’d suspected that his panicked reaction had been smarter than he realized. There was something in Suha’s expression that spoke of worry, and as both a superhero and a PI, I found that I was often the person worried people needed to see.
Jade Cho, sitting to my left in her Crypto superhero outfit, started to speak.
“We’re not really—”
“We’re not used to dealing with aliens,” I said. “But we’ll help if we can.”
Jade scowled at me for a moment, eyes piercing beneath her purple fringe, and she rolled up the sleeves of her outfit, with its circuit board print, revealing the tattoos on her arms. But a look from Mel Wagner, aka Mind Game, made her hesitate.
Blonde and shapely beneath her brightly colored outfit, Mel sat smartly at the end of the table, showing the poise of a professional lawyer meeting a new client. She understood the importance of judging what to say and what not to say. Given her mind-reading powers, she might even know what these new arrivals were thinking, and the fact that she was backing me up counted for a lot.
Next to Mel sat Anne Trigo, who had recently joined our team, the Offenders, under the name Boost. Dark hair spilled over her white lab coat and a bandolier full of syringes. She’d put her goggles back over her eyes, and the way she was looking at the aliens, I suspected that she was using some sort of scanning lenses to learn more about them. It might be considered rude, but it might turn out to be invaluable later, so I wasn’t going to make an issue of it, especially not in front of our guests.
The last two Offenders stood at opposite ends of the room, each guarding a door. Sophia Makris, aka Hoplite, stood to statuesque attention like a good soldier, her bronze body armor gleaming, and her hand resting on a handgun at her hip. Hers was a steady, professional stillness.
The vigilante Stiletto, by day waitress Ria Jackson, had a different sort of stillness, tense and deliberately watchful. A knife slid slowly back and forth between her fingers, making clear that she was ready to use it at any minute. Unlike the others, she had kept her face hidden throughout, the mask of her skintight gray body suit firmly in place.
The alien with the donut reached out his hand. A soft beam of light ran from his fingers, lifted a cup off the table, and brought it into his grasp. If I hadn’t met Far Flight, that little display might have taken me by surprise, just like my own magic could catch most people on this Earth off-guard. Context made all the difference between what was normal and what counted as a superpower.
Suha shook his head.
“Excuse my lieutenant,” he said in his fluting alien accent, “he is showing off and does not mean to imply aggression.”
“Don’t worry about it.” I nodded to Ria. “We all manage the situation in our own way.”
Ria, suddenly self-conscious, put her knife away.
“Have you come far?” I continued.
The question sounded absurd, the sort of thing you asked to fill time at an awkward social event with colleagues from the office, but the very mundaneness of the question was why I had chosen it; I wanted a chance to make things feel more normal, to help Suha and his people open up.
I wasn’t a diplomat, and I didn’t know how to run a formal negotiation, so a casual chat would be far more productive. It was tempting to go fish the bottle of bourbon out of my desk drawer, but that felt like a step too far. Besides, who knew what alcohol would do for an alien constitution? Sophia, who’d served in Prime Guard with the alien Far Flight, might have answers, but I didn’t have time to take her aside and ask the question.
“We come from the Nethestin Empire,” Suha said.
“I knew a Nethestin,” Sophia said, her voice not giving away her feelings. “Far Flight.”
“Ah yes, your Earthling name for Colonel Ferrefiel,” Suha said, nodding. “She was indeed sent from the Empire. In fact, the Emperor Ralt himself sent her as an ambassador from our people to Earth. Though I gather that this did not entirely work.”
“We don’t exactly have a single government here,” I said. “I don’t even know who an ambassador to Earth would go talk to. The United Nations, maybe?”
“A single planet with multiple nations.” Suha chuckled. “How delightfully archaic.”
Trying to work out whether he was insulting us or failing at a compliment, I glanced at Mel, but her expression gave me nothing to work with. I’d just have to assume that it didn’t
“Some of our people became very worried when Ferrefiel did not return,” Suha said.
“It was her choice,” Sophia said firmly. “She liked Earth. She chose to stay and enjoy what we have to offer.”
“So I understand. Her curious tastes were part of what made Ferrefiel such a useful representative of our people.” Suha frowned. “But you keep talking about Ferrefiel in the past tense, and we have had no response from her communicator during our journey here. Has something happened to her?”
“Isn’t that why you’re here?” Sophia finally faltered, a hint of sadness breaking into her voice. “Don’t you know?”
“I do not.” Suha looked at me. “Ben Blackridge, what has happened to our emissary?”
Not having known Far Flight as well as Sophia, it was easier for me to keep my cool, but I’d assumed this was part of why they were here, and now I had to rethink my approach. I also had to find the right words for a very delicate topic.
“I’m very sorry,” I said, “but Colonel Ferrefiel died.”
“How?” Suha’s short antennae stiffened. I didn’t need a book on alien body language to realize that he’d seen something like this coming, but it still upset him.
“In battle,” I said. “Defending our city from the schemes of a mad scientist and a necromantic wizard.”
Better for now not to mention that the wizard had once been my mentor, even if I was the one who’d taken him down in the end. That was a complication for another day.
“I see.” Suha nodded slowly. “At least it is the way that Colonel Ferrefiel would have wanted to go. She was always a powerful advocate for the defense of the innocent and for our playing a stronger role in the universe around us. That was part of what brought her here.” He sighed. “Unfortunately, finding her was part of what brought us here.”
“Why come to find her now?” I asked. “Far Flight’s been here for years, longer than I’ve been in Caliber City.”
Longer than I’d been in this reality, but again, that was an issue for another time, not a complication I needed to throw in now.
“She spoke so highly of Caliber City and its heroes, of your courage, your capabilities, and your willingness to aid those most in need. The Empire is in need now. We hoped to persuade her to come back with us, to face the terrible challenge threatening us, and that in bringing her, we might bring others as well. A return on our investment as a banker might put it. Your help for Ferrefiel’s people after all the help she has given you.”
“What is this danger you face?” I leaned forward over my coffee like I was trying to coax details out of a nervous client. In some ways, I was. It was just that this time I wasn’t being hired to spy on a cheating partner; when emissaries of an interstellar empire came calling, you knew there was more at stake.
“The Nethestin Empire is in turmoil,” Suha said. “Space Marshal Gerdrun, our greatest military commander, has shown that his morality is not so great. He has assassinated Emperor Ralt, locked away Ralt’s heir, and seized control of the Empire.”
A military coup. Hardly novel territory, either back home or on this planet, but bigger stakes than I was used to playing with.
“What can you tell us about this Gerdrun?” I asked, using the familiar routines of a client interview to carry me through while I settled into a new sort of territory. With Prime Guard broken, the Offenders were Caliber City’s top super team, for now at least. We were going to get the big cases, from the planet-ending natural disasters to the bids for global domination and the unexpected interplanetary threats. I was going to have to get used to facing this stuff, at least until Prime Guard’s sponsors found a new roster of eager young supes.
“Gerdrun is a man too fond of violence, even by the standards of soldiers.” Suha stared down into his cup. “A brutal authoritarian, he rules through cruelty and terror, arresting and executing any who oppose him. His soldiers have replaced the police on our streets, and they respond to the least shadow of resistance with deadly force.”
“Hard to resist a thing like that.”
“It is. Of course, not all resist. There are some who already have power and wealth, who accept his authority because it further strengthens them. Others, too, dream of the wars he will inevitably lead us into, the glory and the plunder they could gain through conquest. But for most, this is a time of dread.”
“And so, you’re resisting?”
“I am part of a group, the first tentative shoots that I hope might grow into the full fruit of opposition. But to grow, this opposition needs to be fed. It needs the bright light of hope. It needs a symbol.”
“Which is why you came for Far Flight—sorry, Ferrefiel—and for us.”
“Indirectly, yes.” Suha looked at me. “I’m sorry if this deflates your pride, Ben Blackridge, but our people could hardly be expected to rally behind such strange and disturbing creatures as yourselves.”
“No need to keep using my full name.” I laughed. “And hey, no offense taken. I’m a PI with a shabby office and a toxic coffee machine. I don’t expect to be anyone’s idea of inspiring. But if not us, then who?”
“Princess Tedila—the heir to Emperor Ralt. She is much-loved by the people, and Space Marshal Gerdrun could not risk killing her when he seized power. Instead, he imprisoned her, probably in the hopes of using her to control others—either through threats against her safety or by persuading her to join his side.
“But the princess is strong and righteous. If we can liberate her, then she can unite the resistance and lead us to victory.” The eagerness that had filled Suha’s expression faded to sadness. “It would have been a perfect mission for Ferrefiel, with all her cunning and gifts, if she was still in the Empire.
“Many in the army had loyalties to her. Loyalties that we could have used to win the Princess’s guards around, and failing that, Ferrefiel could have broken her free. That was part of why I came here first in my search for aid. But in Ferrefiel’s absence, we need the help of people with special abilities, ones who Gerdrun’s troops won’t be ready for. We need people like you. We need superheroes.”
I looked around the room at my own team, not only as cunning and gifted as Far Flight but every one of them a beauty. If you wanted to give people on Earth hope and inspiration against a dictatorship, this was exactly the sort of team you would recruit. And sure, we might not quite be to alien tastes, but we could certainly get stuck into the fight. Still, that didn’t mean we could just go charging in.
“What do you think?” I asked.
“We should obviously help them,” Anne said. “I mean, that’s what superheroes are for, right?”
Past her, Mel tipped her head to one side, then the other like she was balancing weights in her head.
“It is,” she said. “But this city needs its superheroes, too, and right now, we are those heroes. Prime Guard are down, several of the other teams have taken a beating, and Caliber’s counting on the presence of the Offenders to deter big threats or deal with them when they turn up. If we run off to space, we’ll be leaving people here in the lurch.”
“Not to mention the fact that Lord Lector is still out there,” Jade said, looking at me. “I mean, unless there’s something we don’t know?”
I shook my head. I wished there was some reason why we didn’t have to worry about Lector, but I knew better than any of my colleagues how great a threat he was. The vampire lord had launched a devastating war across my version of Earth, showing all the same cruel tyranny as this Space Marshal Gerdrun, but with the added menace of dark magics.
We’d only just discovered that he was here on this Earth, and he’d been behind all the big attacks Caliber had faced recently. We didn’t know what he was planning, and in some ways that made the situation worse because, after a cyborg army, a gang of zombies and martial artists, and then a horde of mutant monsters, it could be almost anything. We couldn’t exactly leave instructions for how to fight off what came next when it could be literally anything.
But thinking of those monsters reminded me of Far Flight. She had given her life to protect Caliber City, and without her, we might have failed. We owed her people a special debt, and that meant we couldn’t turn our backs on them either.
So, we couldn’t leave Caliber City undefended, but we couldn’t ignore this cry for help either. As far as I could see, that left one option.
