Continuing on from Episode 98
The members of the Balance picked themselves up off the floor as the nearby explosions caused the entire BASEment structure to vibrate with each new strike on the surface above. X-Ray clambered into his costume before flying as fast as he could to the surface.
He immediately tuned his radio senses in to any emergency broadcasts and confirmed that both London and Wessex was under attack from unknown assailants whose assault crafts had just materialised over the two cities. He looked up and sure enough there were a dozen grav-ships attacking the city with more appearing in the sky to the north of the city, somewhere close to the picturesque village of St Mary Mede, if he had to guess.
The three of them were contacted by their A.I., Frankie, who hypothesised that the ships were appearing through trans-dimensional portals located in the sky above Claremont Academy as well as the Challenger-Wildeman tower, which also meant they were likely an invasion force from Terminus. She further suggested that the location known as the Well of Souls, in the disputed territory between the Babylonian Caliphate and the nation of Akkadia, was likely also the scene of an invading force. There were other interdimensional breaches around the world, but these were the only known locations where the dimensional breaches were big enough for such large troop movements as these. This was a full-scale invasion.
Suddenly Frankie interrupted herself to report that London was already successfully fighting back with the resistance being primarily composed of the Challenger-Wildeman family and staff supported by London Watch trying to close their portal and fight their undead ground troops. The Omega-Drones were also facing an army of Metas emerging from London Below wearing power armour. Seems their caches of power suits were coming in handy.
He looked closely at the attacking ships and confirmed that they were not of any known Terran design. So, they likely originated on Terminus…
A shimmering troop carrier materialised high above the city centre and dropped a missile-like object from a great height even as Akira with his force field up and Banshee in her insubstantial form appeared beside him. No time for elaborate counter plans, there was something about this bomb that worried X-Ray and his exotic senses confirmed his worries. It radiated the wrong sort of energy indicating it was some sort of electronic device, not explosive. Could it be intended to unleash an Electro-Magnetic Pulse and depower the city’s defences?
Akira immediately teleported to about a hundred metres beneath the falling bomb-like device and tried to synchronise his levitation so he was dropping at the same speed as the device and threw a force cage around it, hoping to prevent it from hitting the ground and possibly either stopping its activation or block its effect, whatever that might be.
As this was going on, Banshee turned invisible and headed up towards the ship that had dropped the device whereupon she phased herself inside the hold. Inside were twenty Omega-Drones seated, not moving, not even breathing – seemingly as dead as corpses could be. Akira had once jokingly referred to them as ‘armoured pigeons’ and Banshee could understand why. She immediately unleashed a Wail that echoed around the sealed chamber, sundering their electronic components that turned them from corpses into moving, shooting undead soldiers, rendering them offline.
Outside X-Ray was attempting to use his gravi-kinesis to reverse the gravitational field flow around the bomb in the hope of sending it back up to the ship that had dropped it. He failed; there was some form of interference that prevented him. Frustrated he looked up and saw a fleet of gravsleds, each piloted by an Omega-Drone heading towards them and they were targeting him!
Several shots bounced off his shields and thankfully, the rest missed. It was clear that these zombie soldiers were all graduates of the Star Wars Stormtrooper school of accurate shooting!
He looked around and saw that there were literally hundreds of the sleds materialising from the shimmering hole in the sky to the north of the city, confirming Frankie’s hypothesis that they were originating on this Earth from the portal above Claremont Academy. These new attackers were focusing their attention and attacks on the two of them and Akira was forced to dodge whilst still maintaining the force cage around the bomb, which seemed to have managed to slow its descent, clearly, it was intended to be deposited on the ground rather than crash, whatever its purpose.
Several of the piloted sleds were firing at them and hitting the troop ship that Banshee was on and the pilot was clearly struggling to control the ship’s descent as a result. Banshees phased through the bulkhead between the cockpit and hold and saw the pilot was a muscular female dressed in battle armour and clearly very much alive. Thankfully, Banshee’s invisibility prevented the Amazonian pilot from realising she had a trespasser onboard. She was shouting something over the radio in an unknown (to Banshee at least) language.
The pilot was struggling to maintain the ship’s trajectory as Akira used his Theurgical-Kinesis to spin the ship round just as it was about to land causing the ship to smash into several sleds before it crashed hard into the ground even as the missile or bomb in its force cage reached ground level. There was a massive electronic pulse emanating from it but instead of EMP, a shimmering field of energy sprang out of it, growing ever larger, erupting into a bright rainbow as it hit the street below before launching an energy beam back up into the sky which formed into an umbrella shape over the city.
This passed straight through Akira’s force shield as though it didn’t exist and they all felt a tingling as the energy ‘umbrella’ engulfed them and continued to expand out until the entire city was enclosed under it. Up above Terminus ships and sleds were clearly able to travel through the field unharmed, though the torrential rain and storm couldn’t.
They heard a static-filled report from Frankie that several European cities such as Paris and Brussels had suddenly lost contact after reporting that their attackers were erecting similar energy fields over the cities. She again confirmed that London was being successfully defended by London Watch, The Challenger-Wildeman’s and a ragtag army from London Below all suited up in their stockpiled battle armour. Claremont Academy had managed to erect a force beam around the school and its powered students and teachers suited up in power armour were defending the school successfully but were unable to prevent the invaders from attacking the city itself.
X-Ray landed beside the device and tried to send it flying up and into the fleet of troop carriers coming through the shield but something was apparently interfering with his powers as he couldn’t move it with his kinesis abilities even when Akira added his TK ability in a joint effort. Akira reached out and touched the field only to get a massive electrical burn to his finger tip and felt his heart momentarily stop before restarting with a jolt.
The wall of the umbrella clearly burnt hot and dangerous yet the cylindrical dropships passed through its glittering walls untouched. Where it touched the ground, it appeared to spit raw electricity like a frayed wire. Akira unleashed a torrent of mystical blasts at the generator but the blasts passed through it as though activation had turned it insubstantial!
The sky rained shots from the increasing number of attackers and they were forced to take cover even as Akira wondered what had happened to their insubstantial partner. Then they saw a giant robot appear above the rooftops heading in their direction; a Terminus Probot would soon join the attack!
Inside the pilots cockpit of the crashed carrier Banshee turned substantial and rendered the now stunned pilot unconscious with a series of corrupting touches before leaving the transport in time to see several of their ships unleash several tanks of a silvery dust over the city. She immediately realised what it was: Silver Storm nanites intended to violently activate any inactive meta genes in those who breathed in the dust-like microbots. Next, they will unleash the control bugs and thereby totally subjugate the newly powered Metas. Outside, they could see the nanites effect on one fleeing person as they activated his meta gene and he was transformed into a human sized wasp-like creature before their eyes.
They had no time to do anything to help him at the moment as dozens of shots were fired at them, thankfully most either missed or were deflected by their force fields though it was only a matter of time before they got lucky and landed a serious shot.
X-Ray made a dash towards the generator and tried to modulate his Gamma radiation blast in such a way as to potentially affect the now insubstantial generator though probably not as powerfully as his normal blast, as some of the energy he unleashed would likely bleed through it.
He unleashed his blast and tried to match the generator’s molecular frequency. He was rewarded with the shield above their head sputtering as the field flickered on and off. A sled trying to pass through the field suddenly exploded in the sky.
No time for another shot, X-Ray was forced to turn his attention to their attackers as several of the sleds soared in close enough for an accurate shot only to be blasted by Akira even as the three of them could clearly hear Frankie again. The darkening electrical storm coupled with the invaders failing generator unleashed the equivalent of an EMP pulse, draining the city’s energy sources leaving the streets in total darkness before the field died completely.
Thankfully, the teams’ resources such as Frankie, were shielded against just such an attack. They noticed that the Omega-Drones were deliberately targeting capturing people over attacking them unless provoked. Those who didn’t try to resist were captured and marched towards open areas of ground such as parks where they were pushed into energy domes identical except in size to the energy umbrella that had covered the city. These cages were without any facilities, forcing the prisoners to sit or fall sleep on the grass or concrete.
They deliberately prioritised rounding up any Silver Storm conversions, forcing them to have a control bug inserted into their brain. Only those that attempted to flee or fight back were being shot at by the invaders, for the moment at least.
As a result, the streets were deserted with people primarily cowering inside the buildings – a strategy that proved to be successful as long as they avoided the roof or ground levels as it turned out the Terminus mecha-zombies were extremely unsteady on their feet climbing stairs.
Given that the storm had now breached the collapsed energy umbrella, it gave Akira an idea how he could stop the subjugation of any more potential Metas. He clambered inside an abandoned bus and began to make the hand movements and mouth the words that would summon forth the Great Gale of Ghorummaz. A minute later a massive storm appeared in the sky over the city and began to blow the nanites and any uncrated control bugs into the sky towards the reasonably less populated area to the North of the city. The powerful winds combined with the natural storm, swept the city clear including of the odd Omega-Drone caught out in the open when the storm manifested, only for it to disappear as suddenly as it had arrived, having scoured the city clean of its nanite infestation.
They saw the man-wasp being subjugated by a control bug during the storm even as the rest of the bugs companions were blown out of the city.
Blasts and sonic attacks by the team caused several of the sleds to crash into grounded transports still carrying crates of control bugs and the subsequent fires were almost sentient in the way they seemed to deliberately target the other crates.
The giant mechanical robot was now close enough to fire and picked Banshee as its initial target and it unleashed its energy cannons on her. The blasts passed through her insubstantial form and hit the buildings behind her, causing serious structural damage and part of the façade to collapse onto the empty streets below. It suddenly staggered to a halt as X-Ray manifested an energy construct, shaped like a fiery sword, inside its chassis and it suddenly collapsed to one knee on top of one of the transports carrying control bugs. Whatever was inside the now crushed ship resulted in the wasp-man regaining control over his own mind and he suddenly ran towards the bus that Akira was sheltering inside. It was clear that he was in shock but Akira felt they needed all the allies they could get asked him if he felt able to help fight back against the invaders. He reluctantly agreed as he sprinted across to a nearby building to attack an Omega-Drone shooting at something inside the entrance.
Akira had no time to evaluate what was happening as another of the giant robots was heading their way only to stop midstep before collapsing to the ground as some unknown force caused its limbs to fold like a pretzel. What the..?
Whatever had just occurred, that was one less megabot for them to deal with. That was when they realised that there was a prison dome nearby. Frankie was trying to inform them about something but Akira ignored it for the moment as he considered how to free the hundred or so prisoners trapped inside. He elected to teleport himself inside the dome and kept the portal open so that the prisoners could flee through to the entrance of a nearby building. Several people took a second or two to thank him as he murmured with a smile, “Freedom is my middle name, that’s Steadman, Akira Freedom Steadman…”
As he jumped back with the last of the now ex-prisoners, he finally realised what Frankie had been trying to tell them. Frankie had confirmed that the Terminus portals manifesting above London, Wessex and presumably the Well of Souls were responsible for the main invasion fleet. The three beams transporting the Omega-drones, Terminus troop carriers and sinister war machines all seemed to share an identical energy signal as though all three beams were being generated by the same device on Terminus.
She confirmed reports that Terminus control bugs were being released at all of the other penetration points but were struggling to manifest or control existing Metas given so many were wearing power armour and those that weren’t were being protected by those who were, stamping the little beggars into oblivion. Medics were stunning and getting hands on training using the handheld tractor beams and bug extraction devices that were being handed out with the spare suits.
Meanwhile Banshee had taken down another of the prison domes using a shattering shriek as she and X-Ray covered the escapees as the Omega-Drones tried to target them as they fled towards a nearby building with X-Ray using his gravity powers to deflect their aim.
They rushed back to join Akira and discuss what to do next. As things stood, there was no way they could win as more and more Terminus warriors arrived through the portals. They needed to close the portals and these were being generated from the other side apparently.
Akira suggested that they needed to destroy their portal generators and suggested he try and transport them using the Airts of Ahgrazul to guide them and his blade pendant to cut a path to their destination. The other two agreed as Akira called forth the guide and used his pendant to cut between dimensions.
As they were about to step through the watery-looking portal a weird feeling flowed over X-Ray and Akira as all of their meta powers suddenly stop working mid-action. This applied equally to controlled Stormers as a group of armoured people including Granite, Singularity and Death Metal as well as the telekinetic youth Lance and a familiar face that of Jack Taggart, owner of the Endeavour Pub, dressed in a Hotshot costume appeared from the direction of Dragon’s Gate. They had the pub’s Neutralising Equipment on the back of a truck and it was removing all powers, meta and Technological within a 1000 metre radius of the truck. On one of the rooftops a portal was being opened by Lady Door and armoured figures were jumping out firing on the sleds and Omega-Drones trying to attack the Balances’ current location.
They stepped through and reappeared on the inside of the Dyson Sphere, the ground curved up and around as far as the eye could see. The peculiarities of Terminus’s geography caused by the concave curvature of its surface meant that there was no horizon, the further distant an object was, the higher it appeared to be, until it was finally lost in a void of atmospheric haze.
It was lit by its sun suspended at the centre of the hollow sphere, so it was perpetually overhead and gave a sensation of eternal noon. It did not change in brightness and would never set. As no radiant sunlight or solar wind escaped the sphere, its sheer size created massive gravimetric interference with sensors.
One settlement that could be seen near the portal was a vast metropolis by a large body of water and bordered on one side by a mountain range. Massive machinery like three pronged tuning forks towered over the settlement, radiating energy from their tips.
Nearby was a massive circular building that was filled with thousands of drone warriors and transports, flying up towards four dimensional breaches in the sky above the structure. There was no obvious location of where the portal generators were located though X-Ray assumed that the nearby three-pronged tuning fork-like structures might be responsible while Akira assumed the four circular structures on the outside of the building might be what they needed to target.
In the end, they elected to target the main building as they linked hands with Banshee and she turned them all invisible and insubstantial and phased them inside the nearest section of the structure. Inside it was a maze of tunnels and corridors filled with Omega-Drones going about their mysterious business. This was clearly the originating point for the invaders but nothing stood out as the location of the portal generators. They focused on locating a corridor leading towards one of the four circular structures on the outside of the building.
Several minutes later they found a sealed door that they assumed led to one of them and X-Ray unleashed a blast through the wall that resulted in one of the portals spluttering though only temporarily. It seemed the facility beyond the door must boost the power needed to hold the portal open but didn’t actually generate the dimensional breaches. They started to turn round, only to discover that several Amazonian warriors were on their trail with two large beasts, twice the size of a human, tiger-like with large canines and white fur obviously tracking them though by scent or possibly able to see through their invisibility, they couldn’t be sure.
Akira multi-attacked them both with mystical blasts, injuring one and dazing the other whilst X-Ray attacked their handlers allowing Banshee to unleash a Shattering Shriek at the externally-mounted amplifier so that smoke filled the corridor allowing them to phase through the walls and escape.
One of the portals in the sky above closed as they escaped towards a crowd gathered around a robed figure that had a lion-like head and clawed hands. This was someone last seen on their Earth several years before when they had apparently ‘died’ with his teammates the Protectors, at Ground Zero of what had become known as the Birmingham Incident.
This was Wildcat (previously known as Chat Noir) who had supposedly been killed when a crater had mysteriously occurred in a large part of Birmingham when a perfect sphere 2.6 kilometre in radius, had just vanished apparently killing thousands in the process. It seemed as though Terminus had been responsible after all.
He turned to them and said in English but with a French accent, “If you want to live, come with us now!”
To be continued
Superhero Adventures, UK Style 