49. from "Victory", chapter fifteen

“Pass the time?” Gadgetmaster looked at the well-fed Zephaniah whom he’d last seen last year in Washington, then darted his eyes toward Oxygen dressed like she was on safari and the steward on his way to severing his wife’s head from her neck.

Zephaniah noted his mental struggle and walked over the unconscious Touchstone to explain, “It’s a long way to Brazzaville and Kinshasa, and we don’t want you Super-whatevers to tip our hand.”

“Why,” Gadgetmaster seethed, “am I not interested in what you think?”

“Oh, we have the same motives ... but there’s a method to the Seven Thousand’s madness.”

“That’s enough, Phoebe,” Zephaniah dismissed Oxygen using her current name and identity. He swerved back to Beacon and gave her husband a few seconds, all Gadgetmaster needed to use tiny saws to cut away the part of the railing his extensions were adhered to and strike Zephaniah with the force he took to swing toward him.

“Cindy’s gone.” Oxygen drove her glowing battle stave into Beacon’s neck. That is, she intended to burn clean through her before she was frozen in motion. Touchstone rose grudgingly to his arms and then to his feet.

“You’re a bigger pain than the one in my head right now!” Reginald Berkeley forced the words out as he faced Oxygen as a lifelike statue. The steward had disappeared to seek help. Zephaniah turned to face Gadgetmaster and avoided a blow that the hero hadn’t thought fast enough to avoid delivering completely; it only glanced him

“Now you’ve done it,” Zephaniah Colon growled as he rubbed the back of his neck where he’d been hit. Surprised at his stamina, Gadgetmaster faced him for a showdown.

“Ask me if I care.” Zephaniah whistled and two squads rushed the forecastle they were on. Gadgetmaster reversed himself, “Okay, now I care.”

“That’s him, officers!” Zephaniah pointed his wizened, strong fingers toward Gadgetmaster and Touchstone as the latter helped Beacon to her feet. “Him and him and her.” Zephaniah judiciously covered Oxygen’s frozen form behind his as he shouted, “You can take them!”

The deck beneath them then seemed to be pulled down by something below it. A deep voice raged from underneath the startled security guards. “Not in a million years.” Cadmus leaped from the crevasse and landed at the bow of the covered area. Generis and Image streamed out closely behind him in their energy forms and were closely followed by Mariner carrying his tousled wife, Transwarp.

“A little tight in here, isn’t it?” Beacon noted as she shook the cobwebs from her head.

“Not a problem,” Cadmus roared as he reached with his two massive hands and ripped the pole holding the roof from its mooring.

“Cadmus,” Generis screamed as she resumed human form beside him, “that’s not,” His fierce look at her cut off what she would say next, for that’s when the ferryboat began to lean. Dangerously lean as a result of the explosion beneath their feet.

The fervor of so many minds trying to keep steady precluded Touchstone from asking the obvious question on his heart. “Where’s Caroline?” He shook Mariner. “Where’s Caroline?”

A sound that could have come from no human tongue penetrated everyone’s ears, forcing a turf battle to become a struggle for survival. From her vantage point after having been dropped from Mariner’s arms, Zenia Sinclair saw what the commotion was below deck. “The boiler’s blown!”

Gadgetmaster heard the shout and whirled to face Zephaniah and Oxygen. They’d disappeared. “Figures,” he opined.

“That too.” She pointed, “Cindy, down there!” On the much larger main deck beneath their current location, an insect-like humanoid faced off more security and the vessel’s senior staff with pale green Caroline cradled in his arms.

Gadgetmaster leaped toward the railing and surveyed the scene with them. “Oh no,” he muttered under his breath, “they haven't got a chance.”

Although it was hard for Whisper’s insectile physiognomy to look any fiercer than it was, the riverboat captain was apprehensive. “Rush it,” the captain cried, not knowing what to make of Caroline in Whisper’s arms. Three burly east Africans obeyed their captain but were intercepted by the pot-of-gold end of the rainbow which shot down between them and their quarry.

A winded-sounding Generis voiced their suspicion: “Malika?”

“Iris,” came unexpectedly from Cadmus, “get out of the way!”

A ping came after the back of Gadgetmaster’s neck grew warm and cool again. He took no time to regard the phenomenon as those Superstars who couldn’t fly hopped down to the main deck and leaped into the rainbow. Beacon remarked to Generis, “You’d better be right!”

With the confidence of the untested, Genevieve Landeris replied in her human form as Cadmus bounded past her, “You doubt me?”

“No, but I’d hate to pass through a rainbow expecting it to be a transport!”

Some of the passengers aboard the ferry got the idea of what the rainbow on a dry day meant. Without apparent regard to those on the forecastle, they opened fire with whatever weapons they had. By sensing where the projectile fire would go, Touchstone helped everyone but Transwarp in Mariner’s arms and the flier himself avoid going in a straight line but instead outflank their assailants and dive into the rainbow, pushing the bullet- and otherwise-riddled Caroline and Whisper with them.

Gadgetmaster threw up a shield around Caroline and Whisper when he saw their dangerous position, but he was fooled by an afterimage. The rainbow had come down on top of them.

With one last look around, Transwarp complained in her husband’s arms as they reached shore with the ferry going up in flames behind them and the rainbow winking out of sight. “Superstars. You can’t take them anywhere.”

“I present myself,” the former Hiera Catherine Bothell responded as she prostrated herself before a woman shielded behind a curtain suspended off the ground, “at her holy feet.”

The subject of this obeisance laughed behind the veil. Beneath the killing gazes of her spidery servant Trapdoor and her tiger-like assassin Raksha, the Empress regarded the mutate geneticist known as Lady Hyena with not a little contempt. “Where be your jibes now?” Lady Hyena’s increasingly animal nature made her difficult for the Empress to control with her exuberance as she did all others (nearly all others, she amended). Of course, that was before the power came to her from between worlds. “Raksha, strike her down!”

The former Marlena Pinchón leaned forward and gave Lady Hyena a solid blow to her solar plexus. It hurt.

Snarling and half-crying, Lady Hyena looked with bloodshot eyes to the shadowed image of her new mistress. “Mmmm ... my Empress,” she sputtered, “my Dearest, why?”

“Why?” Chimes tinkled and jewels glittered as the Empress unseen rose and regarded the cowering half-human. “You were allowed to freely operate in Great Britain as I ruled the rest of the world. I’ve just amended the terms of our contract. I am your Empress, and it is my right.”

“It is your right,” Raksha and the former Randall Obregon hissed on cue.

“It is my law.”

“Your law, Most Precious Empress.” Lady Hyena needed prodding, but she entered the instinctive rhythm those surrounding her possessed. All once human, they were all tools of their Empress to be used for her glory.

“Now the heroes journey toward the Olympics in Brazzaville and Kinshasa.”

“Are we to kill them, Honored One?” They needed no skill to determine Raksha said this. Since Lady Hyena had transformed Marlena Pinchón at the Empress’ behest, she’d taken full advantage of the power to spill blood and life to the ground many times.

The Empress did not respond other than to say, “Don’t make it too easy for them. Do my will.” With a hidden glow from her eyes, she dismissed them to where the Superstars would eventually arrive. She then took a step into a magnificent, pillow-cushioned bedchamber where her prince Memnon had waited for her.

Upon sight of her appearing from nowhere, the three-piece-clad Memnon knelt and faced her bare knee. “My Empress Most Powerful, My Empress Most Beautiful, what is your will?”

Bedecked in a starry-glittered night-black evening gown, the Empress regarded him through cold eyes. “Arise, my prince. Please me with,” she breathed as she caressed his chin with her fingers, “your words.”

Memnon rose to his massive feet and explained, “My Empress, construction crews, athletes, and officials from all over the world are preparing the finest ceremony ever held in western Africa. This will be the ultimate Olympics.” The glee in the voice of the winning contender for the restored Ethiopian monarchy knew no bounds. He knew it was the Empress (his Empress, he corrected the thought he knew she could read) who orchestrated both the restoration and his ascension.

By all accounts, Memnon’s reign in the Horn of Africa had been one of benevolence and enlightenment. Through Beacon, Gadgetmaster, and Sunder returning from India, it was soon discovered it had been built on blood; the massacre at Ceel Dheere on Ethiopia’s new coast couldn’t be hidden forever. So hours later, on a balmy day in 2012, the anarchy of Somalia ceased to be under the Empress’ hidden direction.

“At no other time in history,” the Empress regaled him, “has the number of sovereign states gone down so quickly. That is good, my Memnon.” She cradled his massive head against her bosom. “You have done well.”

“Thank you, my Empress. But I am concerned.”

Memnon’s extended pause caused the Empress to release him. “Concerned, slave?”

“If your have the power to destroy all those who oppose you, my Empress ... why haven’t you used it?”

Memnon expected a far worse reaction than the Empress’ peal of laughter. She seated herself at the base of a four-poster bed that appeared for her and faced Memnon with unblinking eyes. “Dear Memnon,” she forced out, “my victory will come by making the Superstars and all those who oppose me realize they were wrong to do so.” She held out her left hand turned downward. As he bent to kiss it, she whispered, “And I don’t just have the power,”

A soundless fwoosh accompanied the Empress’ enveloping herself with fire that singed Memnon and threatened to burn down the chamber around them. The woman born Elisabeth Mercedes Petra rose and shouted, “I AM POWER!”

Memnon winced and forced himself to not slink away from the Empress’ burning radiance. “You are power. You are power!”

“Look to me, Memnon, SLAVE!” The Ethiopian prince’s eyes burned at her clear command. “I am your Empress, and I am to be obeyed, not questioned, not debated. My wish is your command!”

“Your command,” he screamed. “Your command, Most High Empress.”

“I am your Empress, I am your Goddess!” She took older words as her own and reached out to touch him. “You will have no others before me!”

“No others,”

“SILENCE, SLAVE!” The Empress’ white-hot anger threatened to envelop Memnon and his world. “Beg my forgiveness for your doubt.”

“I do, I do, Sweet Empress! Glorious Goddess, I do!” Memnon screamed with terror and devotion in a voice not his own as he prostrated himself and despite the pain kissed her feet. “I am yours,” he panted between slobbers.

“Yes, you are,” she regaled in the next instant as she resumed her perfect human non-heated form. “Now, my prince, would you seduce me?”

Memnon slowly raised his head but got no higher than her knees before he realized what had happened to him. “Yes, slave, I have chosen you to be blind so you can truly see me. Truly love me.” The prince did not hesitate to obey her voice.

“There’s got to be some way off this rock!” Haxe shouted in Haphazard’s ear.

“We’re on the closest landmass I could find,” the speedster complained to Haxe and the waterlogged Cycle. After the severance of the USS Harbour Island by the saboteur Anna Gonzalez, it had been assumed by Washington that the vessel was lost. A rescue mission hadn’t sighted the three super humans commandeered by Presidential directive because the vessel wasn’t technically supposed to be there. A month and a half had gone by on the St. Peter and Paul Rocks without incident – unless one counted the ‘supers fighting amongst themselves over the last of the processed food supplies that had washed over to them.

However, the speed suppressants that had been maintaining Haphazard’s normal metabolism had expired three days ago. It was a taxing effort to restrain the speedster while they still could. Cycle had finally figured out how to bind him in a protective metallic shell that flexed with him, but even that was starting to crack.

Laron Madison called out in his smaller vehicle form, “I used to have water skis, but they’re no good without a boat to hang on to.”

“And I’ve sent up flares,” Haxe said referring to her power to project energy from her arms as solid objects, “but my body needs recharging too. If Old Man Darby here,”

“Who you calling ‘old’?” Haphazard turned on her. He strutted as much as he could and regaled, “Is it my fault this gorgeous bod needs more food to keep functioning at top condition?” But even as he finished “walking the runway”, John “Haphazard” Darby lost his footing and fell against Cycle’s chassis.

“Hey!” Cycle’s vocal processor conveyed some frustration. “What’s the use?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Haxe had stored up her body’s energy conversion potential for one final shot, their last chance at getting seen and rescued.

“Hanover co-opted us as American super-agents at gunpoint, we were on a ship that officially didn’t exist, and it just happened to blow up on our way? They’re not sweating bullets looking for us!”

“Somebody is,” Haphazard barely wheezed.

“Huh?” Haxe and Cycle sounded as one.

The speedster pointed toward what they had determined to be west southwest, “That way. Something’s coming this way.”

“A shark?” Deirdre Danton, the woman known as Haxe, had sighted one coming too close to their island sanctuary and cooked and filleted it with an energy blade three weeks ago. It helped stave off starvation, but its death throes had encouraged nearly all other marine life to stay away.

“No,” Haphazard said as he felt the water with his vibrating hand and matched its frequency, “less zigzag. It’s artificial, metallic, and coming this way.”

“I’ve got it too.” Cycle revved his engine and exulted, “We’ve gotta let them know we’re here “

“Hang on, Laron,” Haxe cautioned with her hand held back to shut him up, “we don’t know who ‘they’ are. They could be smugglers, they could be,”

Portuguese which none of the super humans recognized blared toward them. Haphazard thought they might regret being sighted by a Brazilian navy ship of the line. But what could they expect now that the country had gotten around to examining its outlying territories?