Earth Takes a Stand
Chapter Eight: Back to the Scrapyard
by Anonymous
At 4:00 in the afternoon, Lisa woke up. She looked to her left, and saw
Raymond and Joy in bed with her, still sleeping. Memories washed over
her of the hours before. She had just made love to these two people, two
of her best friends in the world. She suddenly hated herself for it.
She knew exactly what happened, but at the time she just didn't care.
She let her emotions and the pheromones take her someplace she never
wanted to be. Days of resisting the pheromones at work had been
extremely difficult, even when it was just accidental exposure every once
in a while. Now, she felt like all her restraint was for nothing because
she had finally given in. She felt dirty.
She got out of bed, waking the other two up when the mattress shifted.
"Don't say anything, just let me go." There was no inflection, no
emotion in her voice. She wasn't ready to deal with her feelings yet so
she simply didn't. Raymond started to reach for her, but thought better
of it. He respected her a great deal, and made no further attempt to
reach out to her or stop her.
When she was gone, Raymond turned to Joy. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be." Joy smiled. This was not what he expected from her! "I
don't regret anything, except that Lisa had to be a part of it. Be sorry
for her, not for me." She reached over and kissed him. "You opened up a
whole new world for me."
Raymond didn't know what to say. Joy went on. "I had no idea what it
would be like with another woman. It was wonderful, it was soft, and
sweet, and she knew just how to touch me. I'll never forget this as long
as I live!"
A concerned look spread over Raymond's face. "Are you saying..."
"No, no I'm not saying that at all. I love you, Ray. You opened up a
new door for me, you didn't close any." She kissed him again. It was
times like this that her high, ditzy voice just didn't fit, she really
could be insightful at times. "It wasn't any better, it was just...
different. Something I'd want to do again some time if the opportunity
came up."
"Are you sure about this? It's not the effects of the alien pheromones?"
"I'm sure. I can't believe I never really thought about this before. Or
tried it. Maybe things would have been different."
Raymond glanced at his watch. "Oh geez, it's 4:00? I have some work to
do. I have to get that pheromone into my armor and finish the
hypodermics. Did Dave drop off those disks I asked him for?"
"Yes, he did. What's on them?"
"He improved the PCHs. I told him what the PCSs found about the way the
aliens were destroying them, and he made a few adjustments to the
programming. Shoot, that's right, I still have to fix that too, the
software isn't any good without the improved machinery." Raymond got up
quickly, dressed, and headed to the basement. This was probably going to
take the rest of the day.
*
When Lisa got home she was almost startled to see Steve and Jennifer
there. "What took you so long, Lisa? We've been waiting for a long
time."
"I don't want to talk about it. Not right now anyway. Everything's
going to Hell right now, and I don't know if I should blame the aliens or
Raymond or myself or what. I just don't want to deal with it anymore."
Steve and Jennifer looked at each other for a moment. "Um, Lisa, we have
some more bad news."
"Oh God now what." Lisa was getting sick of this. Her entire world had
been falling apart ever since Raymond decided he was going to play
superhero a few months ago.
"The police came by. They were looking for me, they know I have
something to do with all this. Jennifer answered the door and pretended
to be you so we could get rid of them. I don't know if they'll be back
or not." There. He said it.
"Oh. Great. Perfect. Now I'm not me. I can't go to the police anymore
if this gets out of hand. I can't answer my door if it's someone I don't
know. Why is this happening to me! All I wanted to do was help out
Raymond!!" Lisa ran into her bedroom and slammed her door.
"Well, that could have gone better."
*
Shortly after leaving Frank's place, Laura and Chris were back on the
roof of another building. They were
still no closer to finding Fairchild than before. On the plus side, they
hadn't run into Bob yet either.
"So what do we do if we find him, anyway?"
"Hmm? What was that Chris?" Laura hadn't been paying attention.
"What if we run into Bob? What do we do? We've seen some of what he can
do now. He held his own against Fairchild, two Arions, and three Kintzi.
How are we going to stop him?"
"Well, he's got to have a weakness somewhere. Like, I don't know, he
is only a Terran in that armor."
Chris looked at her disapprovingly. It wasn't all that long ago he was
"only a Terran." She was right though, that was a major weakness of
his. "Well, that would mean that if he ever accelerated too sharply,
he'd black out like a fighter pilot pulling too many G's."
"That shouldn't be too hard to pull off. He's only got those two little
jet engines. I could overpower them easily and get him going at about 50
G's without breaking a sweat. And you said those walking cars were easy
enough to break once you know the trick. They don't turn real fast."
"Plus, he's completely dependent on the armor. Without it, he's just
like anyone else. If we could catch him without it, or find some way to
deactivate it..."
"Yeah, I'm sure it has a big off switch on the back. I'll hold him down,
you push it." Laura was still bitter about not being able to find
Fairchild, and was taking it out on Chris.
"That's not what I mean and you know it. Remember when the Guardian was
around? The Arions tried an electromagnetic pulse to shut down his
armor. Only it didn't work because it wasn't that kind of armor. Bob's
armor is. If we could get our hands on one of those devices, hey,
Black Ops has the ones that they took from that fight, don't they?"
"I think they do, Fairchild only mentioned it once or twice real quick.
We could probably get one or two from them."
click
They both turned around, and saw another of the metal spheres that Bob
kept sending out. "Hey you! Get back here!" Laura flew after the
sphere, temporarily forgetting about Chris.
"Hey! Laura! I can't... Aw shit. This, this is going to sting."
Chris looked over the side of the building. There was no one below him.
The funny thing about suddenly being transformed into a virtual superman
is that you never quite get rid of the primal fears engraved in
everyone's mind. For instance, the fear of plummeting 30 stories onto
unyielding asphalt and concrete. Chris held his breath, and jumped off
the edge. He was right, it did sting.
Chris followed Laura and the sphere as well as he could. Even though his
40 miles per hour were nothing compared to her power of flight, she was
following a zig-zagging sphere and all the side to side motion slowed her
down. There are three scrap metal yards in Los Angeles. Aurora fought
the first walking car in one, Laura and Chris found the second in
another. They found Bob in the third.
"Welcome to my parlor, said the spider to the fly." The sphere flew
behind the armor and hovered for a moment. "Tell me where Aurora is."
Bob had his familiar overly calm demeanor back. Still, there were two of
them, and only one of him...
"We were about to ask you the same thing, Bob." Laura started.
She adopted a fighting stance in front of Chris, protectively, Chris
guessed?
"You may call me Raymond. I assume from your question she hasn't
returned from the moon yet. Maybe she never will."
"You bastard! What do you mean by that?" Laura noticed that the armor
looked a little different, especially around the arms. He'd probably
modified it recently.
"Aurora flew the two of us to the moon in our last battle. I made it
back. She apparently never did. I can only assume she suffocated."
Raymond did not return Laura's threatening tone of voice or fighting
stance. He simply stood and talked. There was something about that
attitude that could put off a fight for a while.
"If I find out she's dead, I'll kill you with my bare hands, do you
understand me? Kill you!" Laura was turning red with rage. She felt
her heat vision power welling up in her eyes. Tears could wait, it was
time for fire, not water.
"She brought it on herself. I had no intention of taking this to the
moon and back. If she dies, it was by her own stupidity. We never asked
you aliens to show yourselves on Earth. We never wanted to turn our
planet into your battleground. She got what she deserved."
"You son of a bitch! Don't talk that way about Aurora! How dare
you!" Chris had to make a token effort to hold her back, or she would have
flown into a violent
rage then and there. Raymond remained calm and as unmoving as a statue.
"Aurora does not belong here, and neither do you. Allow me to introduce
you to the Pheromone Chemical Hunter Mark 2. It's faster and deadlier
than the ones you destroyed before. Everything can be improved."
The familiar mechanical screech came from behind a pile of scrap, and
another car on legs emerged from behind it. It screeched again and began
to walk toward the three of them.
"Do you like the screams they make? It's a new sound I made myself. A
little on the symbolic side, I'll admit. It's a sheet of metal being
torn in half digitally combined with a hundred Terrans dying in agony. I
took the sounds from news footage of your battles."
Chris let go of Laura and decided that they needed some answers. "Where
do you get off fighting us? We're only here because the Arions are.
We're trying to get rid of them. We're on the same side here, damnit!
Open your eyes!"
Instead of answering, Raymond fired his claw-cable from his left hand.
Neither Laura nor Chris had seen him do this before, and were caught by
surprise. The claw caught Chris by the arm and closed sharply around
him. "Beta command prompt 4, KILL." The cable reeled in with so much
force that Chris was lifted into the air, and thrown toward the PCH when
the claw released him.
"I'll kill you!!" An enraged Laura rushed toward Raymond with every
ounce of strength and hate she had. Her hate blinded her, and Raymond's
Tai-Chi training saved him. He rolled around her when she threw a wild
punch, planting his elbow in her back. He followed up quickly with a
quick blow to the back of her head.
Chris got up quickly after he landed. He saw the PCH walking directly
toward him, and rushed out of the way just in time to avoid a hail of ion
cannon fire. That was twice he'd nearly been hit by them. He tried
rushing behind the behemoth again, but this one turned much more quickly
than the previous one, meeting his rush head on with its halogen stare.
Chris dove for another pile of scrap as soon as he realized that wasn't
going to work this time.
Laura was in no condition to fight. She was frustrated, and angry, and
threw nothing but wild punches. She couldn't think straight, and Raymond
was taking advantage of all of this. "I hope Aurora is dead. That would
make one less of you freaks to have to kill." He was trying to keep her
enraged, and it was working.
Laura was backed into a wall before long. Liberal use of his laser and
physical blows managed to trap her between himself and a pile of crushed
cars. Instead of attacking him directly though, she turned and kicked
the bottom of the pile, sending the 20 foot pile of steel, glass and rubber
toppling over onto Raymond!
Raymond raised his arms to try to stop the avalanche, but it was a futile
effort. There were too many cars, and the one he stopped meant nothing
to the other five that hit him. He was buried before he even knew what
was happening.
Laura rushed over to try to help Chris, but as soon as she got anywhere
near the PCH, it turned its attention away from Chris and began firing at
her. She flew into the air, hoping that it would confuse the PCH, but it
tilted upward to continue firing. She dodged to the side and the ion
blasts missed her by inches.
An enormous crashing behind her distracted her for an instant as Raymond
freed himself from the twisted wrecks that held him. She was nearly hit
by the blasts again, but managed to get out of the way in time.
Still half buried in the steel and rubber, Raymond opened fire with his
machine gun. But instead of aiming high, for Laura, he seemed to be
aiming for the PCH. A painful cry told her why. Chris must have been
sneaking up on the thing while she was taking it's attention away from
him.
Laura flew down to Chris, hurt badly by the burst of .50 caliber fire.
"Chris, look out!" The PCH had turned again and was already ready to
fire at Chris! He might not survive that kind of assault!
Laura shielded Chris's body with her own. "Get out of the way!" Chris
rolled behind a mountain of metal to recover, and saw that death look in
Laura's eyes again.
As the PCH continued to pummel Laura with it's cannons, she turned, not
dodging, not moving. Twin violet streams shot from her eyes, every fiber
of her being feeling nothing but rage and hate. Her heat vision
enveloped the PCH, turning it red hot. The halogen lamps exploded, the
metal began to soften. Soon the cannons had heated to the point where
they became useless and stopped firing. Finally, the fuel tank ignited.
The top of the PCH exploded into flame, standing motionless for a moment
before toppling over noisily.
Laura turned to see Raymond, now free of the cars, fire his claw-cables
at her. She twisted out of the way of one, but the other caught her.
Raymond reeled her toward him, and before she could get her bearings to
fly, he turned, flipping her around like a human wrecking ball on a steel
cable. She collided time and time again with the scrap metal all around
her, unable to get her bearings or do much to save herself. Finally,
Raymond brought her to a stop at his feet. "You and your kind must die.
I'm going to see to it that no more innocent human lives are lost in your
war!"
At that, six small squares flipped around on his armor, revealing a
glowing red void beneath them. "This is the pure heat of the nuclear
fire that drives my armor. It's powerful enough to hurt even you. Say
hello to Aurora in the next life." Despite all her invulnerability,
Laura felt like she was being cooked alive. The scrap metal around her
first glowed, the softened, the began to melt around her. The ion blasts
hadn't done her any favors, and combined with the radioactive heat from
Raymond's armor, she was unable to get up and fight back!
"You get the Hell away from her!" Chris found himself saying those words
to Raymond for the second time as he threw the remains of the PCH at
him. He was badly bruised by the .50 caliber, but he had to save her.
The PCH body hit Raymond full-on. It sent him sprawling across the scrap
yard and into another pile of stacked wrecks. Chris ran head-on toward
Raymond, colliding with the bottom of the stack of cars and bringing the
whole thing down on the armor. Regardless, he could hear the sounds of
Raymond struggling to get back out of the pile.
"Laura, get up! Get up! We have to fight! We have to win! Our lives
are at stake here!" Laura slowly got up, her Velorian healing abilities
trying desperately to repair the damage she had taken. He was shaking
her, trying to get her back to reality, when Raymond's arm poked out from
underneath the pile of cars.
Chris turned just in time to see Raymond's particle beam cannon begin to
fire. The "palm" of his claw glowed briefly, telegraphing the attack.
He twisted out of the way in time to avoid the actual blast, but it hit a
pile of garbage behind him. The chain reaction increased far too rapidly
in the scrap and caused an explosion from within, knocking Chris about 70
feet away, where he lay unmoving.
Laura, once again fueled by rage, got to her feet and rushed toward
Raymond, who was still buried up to his waist in the cars. She took a
swing at him, but he caught her arm in his claw. She tried with her
other hand, but with the same result. In her weakened state, Raymond was
able to twist her around and apply a wrestling hold on her. As he
continued to pull himself from the wreckage, Laura became aware of the
scent of honey and wildflowers.
*
"What do you think, Brok?" Detective Whitely was going over the clues
and leads they had when they got a call about the fight in the scrap
yard. The squad cars couldn't do anything about a fight between
super-powerful beings so they were just trying to keep people away from
the site. "Do you buy the Jencott story?"
"Not in a million years. Too nervous. And we would have seen something
about her wedding ring or her missing arm. I don't even think that was
Lisa."
"That means it was Mrs. Iwikos. She already got there by the time we
stopped by to question Jencott. Jencott must have been gone."
Another man approached the two at their desk. "Bad news on the
carbo-metal. We can't find any trace of the sales records on the
chemicals used to feed it."
"How can you not find records on them? They're harder than hell to come
by, three of them can only be purchased in the United States, two of
which are heavily controlled substances that someone must have
records on, and four of them can only be purchased from three companies
worldwide. Are you sure you've checked all possibilities?"
"In triplicate. I don't think he's actually buying any. He either stole
a stash of the original formula that was thought destroyed, or he's not
feeding it."
"Well the armor's still in good shape, so we can rule out that he's not
feeding it, can't we?"
"But the chemicals need to be stored in liquid nitrogen once they're
mixed. It's unlikely he has a stash somewhere."
Detective Whitely was flustered at this point. "Then somebody tell me
what's going on!"
Officer Brok didn't want this to get out of hand, so he spoke up. "Um...
maybe we should try to find Ms. Jencott again and bring her here for
questioning."
*
"We can't stay here, Jennifer. The police have already been here,
they'll probably be back. We just need a place to go."
Jennifer was about 2 more things going wrong from hysterics. "Why are
they coming after us? We're not who they want. Why don't they just
leave us alone?"
"We're their only link to Raymond. If they find us, they can find
Raymond. What they're going to do with an eight foot suit of power armor
once they find it, I don't know. But they want him."
Just then, Lisa came into the room. "I've made a decision. I need you
two to leave. I can't deal with this anymore. I need out of this whole
deal."
"It's okay, Lisa. We were just planning on leaving ourselves. Where
should we go? Do you have any ideas?"
"I don't know. A hotel, Raymond's place, any family who can take you
in?" Their conversation was cut short by the sound of a car pulling into
the driveway, followed by a knock on the door. "Shit, you two go hide."
"But..."
"GO!" Lisa went to answer the door. "Hello?"
"Who are you?" Detective Whitely demanded.
"I'm Lisa Jencott. Who are you?"
"My name is detective Joseph Whitely. I have some questions for you.
Can I see some ID, miss?" Lisa handed him her driver's license. "This
checks out. Have you had anyone in your house in the past 24 hours?"
"No, no one. Why?"
"When we came here earlier another woman answered the door. She was
about 5 foot 7, brown hair, missing her right arm, apparently married.
Do you know who she might be?"
"No, I have no idea. There was someone in my house!?" Lisa tried to act
surprised. "I didn't notice anything missing."
"We'd like to take you downtown for a few questions if that's all right
with you."
"Oh, that won't be..." Lisa remembered Steve and Jennifer in her
closet. "I... yes, that would be better."
Detective Whitely showed an instant of suspicion, and then walked out the
door with Lisa. Moments later, Steve and Jennifer came out of Lisa's
closet. "That was close. She's right. We do have to leave. Just,
where?"
*
Kayne was outside of Captain Thaylen's quarters, trying to calm himself.
He knew that he couldn't walk into his quarters burning with rage as he
was. Captain Thaylen's race was deeply psychic, and he could sense
Kayne's stronger emotions with little effort. One was not allowed to be
seething with anger when confronting the captain. Another of his race's
ridiculous regulations.
After counting to 10 for the fifth time, he figured he was as calm as he
could get. He knocked on the door but received no answer. He knocked
again and still received no answer. He felt the anger welling up again
despite his best efforts to suppress it. Why did the captain have to be
so... so damn un-Arion? An Arion captain would never leave his position
without informing at least all those directly under his command.
Following the only course of action he could think of, Kayne stormed onto
the bridge to get some information. "Where is Captain Thaylen!?" He
demanded of the entire bridge crew.
A beta at the helm was the first to answer. "The captain left for
Earth's surface shortly after the Velorian was brought aboard, sir. He
gave no explanation." That was just like the captain. He told those
under him only what they absolutely needed to know, and what they asked
him directly. Few had the audacity or the rank to address the captain
directly.
*
Meanwhile, in a partially ruined Arion communications base in San
Fransisco, Bacstin was hard at work trying to get a clear signal from the
Arion communications network. When she finally did, she found out a few
surprising things, all useful to her. The opportunity to hurt the Arion
military back had finally presented itself. "Hey, Tabral?"
Tabral woke up from his nap. "Hmm?"
"I think it's time to put operation Chess Match into action."
"Where's the game board?"
"Orbit. Come on, we've got to pick up some pawns in Los Angeles."