//|| //^^\\ || || .|. COHERENT COMICS UNINCORPORATED PRESENTS // || \\ || || --X--------------------------------------------- //======================= '|` ACADEMY OF SUPER-HEROES #35 // || \\ || || "Giants Among the Stars" // || \\__// || || Copyright 2002 by Dave Van Domelen ___________________________________________________________________________ [cover shows a giant golden figure stepping from the Earth to the Moon, both of which are smaller than it is.] ACADEMY OF SUPER-HEROES ROLL CALL CODENAME REAL NAME POWERS STATUS -------- --------- ------ ------ Solar Max Jonathan Zachary Spacetime Control ACTIVE "JakZak" Taylor Meteor Sarah Grant-Taylor Superspeed, Ice Body ACTIVE Green Knight Salvatore Napier Strength, Regeneration ACTIVE Contact Aaron Zander Psi, Mind-over-Body ACTIVE Scorch Scott Handleman Pyrokinetic ACTIVE Essay Sara Ana Rodriguez Gadgeteer ACTIVE Peregryn Howard Henderson Jr. Elemental Mage ACTIVE Lightfoot Tom Dodson Velocity Control ACTIVE Breaker Christina Li Telekinesis ACTIVE Fury Arin Kelsey Concussion Blasts PROBATION ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ [3734.1.28 - Ruins of Old Chicago, Earth] They pursue me, but they will not keep me from my mission. I know their thoughts before they do, I evade their attacks, confuse their perceptions... all while searching, searching. It is here, on Earth, the slumbering spirit of vengeance I felt even as far away as my lonely prison adrift in interstellar space. It dreams even now, dreams of destroying its enemies, fulfilling its purpose. Those dreams called to me, gave me the strength to cast my own mind out beyond the limits my gaolers had decided would pen me in. Beyond the limits of my own horizons, forced to push myself beyond my self. But I succeeded, and secured my release. And now I seek a union with the slumbering giant. Warning lights on the control panel scream. The ship has been crippled, and automatic systems are forcing me to land. No matter. I am close enough now. Close enough to cast my mind from its mortal shell and into the incorruptible form inhabited by the spirit of vengeance. Together we will wreak bloody revenge on both humanity and the Santari, for they all had some part in my imprisonment. My shell falls behind me, and for a moment I fly free. Free of the weaknesses and demands of the body, free of the politics and social mores and all the things that bind us all in one way or another. But I cannot yet allow myself to stay free, I must trade the prison of flesh for a gilded cage. A very powerful gilded cage. I enter! THIS IS MY BODY, the sleeping giant rumbles. MY TOOL OF VENGEANCE. No! I shall claim this form! I see in your memories that your enemies are *only* memories now...the grave has surely claimed them. Give yourself over to my purpose, and together we shall have vengeance against all who live! NO. ONE OF MY FOES YET LIVES. How is this possible? It has been nearly two thousand years since your creation! I CARE NOT OF POSSIBILITIES. I ONLY KNOW WHAT IS. I AM THE WEREGILD, AND MY ENEMY STILL LIVES. Where, then? VERY FAR AWAY. BUT COMING NEARER. If we destroy your enemy, will you surrender control to me? YES. Very well. Let this one's death be the first of many, and the universe will tremble before Tacitus! * * * * [October 23, 2024 - Outside of Columbus, Ohio Sector] "This would be a lot easier if Peregryn was here," Breaker grunted as she strained to hold back thousands of liters of water with her telekinetic powers. "He could just ask the water to go away for a while." Essay snapped, "Hey, he's got his own problems right now, no?" Lightfoot held up his hands. "Let's just cool it, okay? Hey, Contact's back...let 'im in, Tina." There was a gush of water as Aaron Zander entered the telekinetic bubble. He took a deep breath, having held his for several minutes. "I think I got all the breaches sealed. Essay got the pumps working yet?" "Yeah," she nodded somewhat sourly. "Let's go back topside and wait for 'em to do the job." About an hour later, the foursome returned to the installation hidden under Griggs Reservoir to see what was left after thirty years of submersion. Water was pooled everywhere, in corners where drains were plugged by algae or debris. "What a hole," Lightfoot commented. "Well, it's not a black hole, since light escaped from it," Contact tried to joke. "Why are we looking here, anyway?" Breaker asked. "Wasn't this the last base Doublecross used *before* becoming a photonic? There really wouldn't be much in the way of signatures, right?" "Wrong," Essay replied. "Somewhere in this base should be the teleporter DX tried to use to escape from the Raiders back in 1993. The fact that one of the heroes destroyed the transmitter on the way in forced DX to stay in energy form long enough that it stuck permanent-like. If we can find the teleporters, we might be able to get a better lock on Doublecross. And we might even be able to figure out how to reverse the process." "So, where do we look?" Breaker sighed. She hated the wet, she hated being underground if she could avoid it. At least the Academy had been dry, and decorated to minimize the feeling of enclosure. "I doubt there's any traps, so I'll do a quick recon. Essay can poke at the computers, see if any of them will give up anything useful. You guys just wait a minute," he nodded to Breaker and Contant. A few minutes later, Lightfoot and Essay had come to the same conclusion. "Someone was here recently," Essay said. "There's missing memory modules." "And the teleporter hardware looks like it was removed recently, there's very little gunk growing on the exposed parts." "And somebody's been eating MY porridge," Contact added. "Not unless photonics need to eat," Essay corrected him. "We've got shiny-sign," she held up a pinging sensor. * * * * [October 28 - Chicago, Illinois Sector] "I never thought I'd miss Chicago weather in the late Fall," Scott chuckled as he sat down in the rec room next to the Taylors. "Between Sultry's tantrums in Monaco and the side effects, the south of France has been pretty nasty lately." JakZak rolled his eyes. It was possible that Sultry was the single most dangerous person on the planet right now, in a purely destructive sense, but politics was keeping him from doing anything about her. Or her lover, Derek "Triton" Radner. Still, while a few months ago that might have filled him with a burning rage, now it was just...annoying. The reason for his milder mood snuggled up against his left side, wrapped in highly insulating synthetic fabric. Not because she needed it to feel warm, but because everyone around her did. "I got caught out in some rain the other day," Sarah commented. "Froze on contact with me. I hope I don't have to face Sultry directly, I might end up rimed beyond reason," she chuckled. "So, ah..." Scott waved his hands around vaguely as he tried to broach the topic. "How are you two, um..." "Could be worse," JakZak shrugged. "Sarah's alive, in no danger of melting away or anything, but she's still made of 'elemental' ice. Which, um, makes intimacy difficult." "To say the least," Sarah smirked. "And while I can still have a sense of touch and temperature, it's muted, like through a layer of thick cloth," she plucked at the thermal outfit she wore. "Maybe because my ice body includes my old uniform, maybe because my senses are just magical analogues. Howard's tried a few spells, but they haven't done anything for me." "Aaron offered to try a telepathic bonding," JakZak added, "but we decided that would feel too much like a threesome. Or foursome, kinda. We're not ready to try that yet. But we're coping, like I said. We just get to settle into comfortable old age-style marriage earlier than we'd planned. It beats the alternative, though." The alternative, of course, being Sarah's death, following every one of Cockatrice's other victims to the grave. "Speaking of the Man With Two Brains," Scott decided to change the subject, "what's he up to now?" JakZak seemed just as glad to talk about something else, and said, "He's joined Tom's team looking for Doublecross. They got some information through Cook's United World office, of all places, suggesting possible activity down in South America." "Hm, maybe I'll head down there myself, something to do other than fret about wedding plans," Scott mused. "Although Howie's been suggesting I should try to help find Mr. Strings, since I seem to be immune to her power. Anything to avoid the wedding planner," he laughed. "Decided on a city yet?" Sarah asked. "No, but we've narrowed it down a little. I wish it was as simple for me and Julie as it was for you two...but we're both public figures. We have to consider politics, both national and career-style. Because I'm a representative of the Combine, it has to be somewhere in North America. Because she's a fashionista, it has to be somewhere with at least some fashion street cred, and Chicago hasn't had that for years. Plus, vacationing in France made us think that Sultry might try to crash the party, so anywhere that a hurricane could form is right out...a pity, since Miami would have been perfect otherwise. We might have to go for some sort of compromise and have the wedding in the middle of nowhere, so everyone's equally inconvenienced." Sarah leaned across her husband, and Scott imagined her icy eyes might have held a mischevious gleam. "As long as we're on the topic of romantic entanglements, have you heard about Arin and Sal?" Scott raised his eyebrows. "Well, I know Arin's officially joined up, and she's in Mexico City now, but...." "It's just amazing," Sarah confided. "I've never seen Arin so vibrant, so forceful, so ALIVE." "Peter the Satyr seems to have been a positive influence on someone, for once," JakZak added. "Wait...I know Sal had a thing for her in the Academy, but I thought she was interested in Grind," Scott replied. "ALL the women were interested in Grind," JakZak sighed. "Not ALL of us," Sarah hit her husband with a couch cushion. "But, okay, most of the women. And some of the guys. But I think in Arin's case it was more a matter of aiming for the unattainable, so you don't have to worry about what happens if you succeed." "And now that she's got her head together, she must have decided to go after a more attainable guy," JakZak shrugged. "Although, to be honest, if Grind wasn't with Jen now, I'd put money on Arin being able to get him. She's scary driven now, but in a non-psychotic way of course," he hurriedly temporized. "Anyway," Sarah took back the thread of conversation, "I don't know if she and Sal are shaking the rafters yet, but it's pretty clear they're an item now." Scott chuckled. "Looks like just about everyone on the team is getting it lately...." * * * * [November 5 - Porto Genetico, South American Redevelopment Zone] "Okay, I don't get it," Lightfoot waved his hands to take in the city around them, full of a weird hyrbid of old colonial structures, 20th Century urban renewal and 21st Century "company town" buildings complete with corporate logos and themes. "I read the internal reports, they were all over the net back in May. CostaGenCo was put out of business for what amounted to crims against humanity. Why is the company town still running like nothing happened?" Breaker pointed to one of the logos. "Look more carefully. That's not CostaGenCo's logo." "GenAmeriCo," Essay helpfully read aloud. "Okay, but..." Lightfoot started. "Welcome to realpolitik, Tom," Breaker shrugged. "The company was put out of business, a few executives got sent to jail or quietly killed, but the assets remained. Some of the worst stuff was impounded or even destroyed, but you can't impound the entire rainforest. Someone bought the assets, including the city, and moved right in. Of course, they promised the locals that things would be better, but they just changed the small details and went back to business as usual. I mean, if we'd been here in June or even July, it would have looked different. But GenAmeriCo has had plenty of time to clean up the place and get the wheels moving." "And this is the system we're defending." Lightfoot sighed heavily. "Don't try to tell me this sort of thing didn't happen in the 1990s," Breaker snapped. "You probably just never went to the right places to see it." "Also, this isn't the system we're defending," Contact broke in. "This place is what happens when the system has broken down too much, when the government doesn't have the resources to keep an eye on the corps. We're fighting to make the world a place where this sort of thing doesn't happen. At least, not as often." "Yah," Essay nodded. "You got to miss the worst of it. Things might not be as good as you remember, but they're better than any of the rest of us remember. An' at least GenAmeriCo is being a little more careful about following the letter of the law, since there's a precedent. Even the corporales were willing to help us out, and I hear they really busted on Teller's ass when he was down here." Lightfoot shrugged and acquiesced. The company security liaison, a Mr. Borgstrom, was solicitous to the point of being a royal pain. A lot of that was no doubt part of the smokescreen. On the other hand, GenAmeriCo probably didn't want any supervillains running around trying to turn their investment into Khadam West, so the enthusiam may have been mostly honest. A case of "Please get the obvious criminal out of our country so we can continue doing our own subtle criminal projects in peace." "This way," Contact gestured, referring to the map in his head. "The transshipment warehouse should be down this street." Part of the help Mr. Borgstrom had given them was information that a number of shipments of equipment and raw materials that matched the profile of someone doing work on photonic conversion had been sent to a particular "post office box" warehouse in the past few months. All from different companies and individuals, but corporate security was quickly able to flag the transactions as likely belonging to one project. Probably because they had used similar methods to hide their own projects, Lightfoot mentally smirked. "Bingo," Essay stage-whispered. "Photonic trace." * * * * [November 13 - The desert east of Khadam] "Smile for the camera!" came the slightly tinny voice from the speakers on the remote video drone that hovered a few meters away. Conflicto was certainly no longer the complete buffoon that Terrastar's researches had suggested, but that didn't mean he'd totally given up his old ways. Polla flashed a winning smile, then returned to the task at hand. Scattered throughout the ground out here in the desert were the fragments of a meteoroid that contained naturally occurring collapsiron, iron from the cores of supernovae that had been forced into a higher density electron band structure, sharing more electrons and thus being stronger and heavier. It was in the form of dust, for the most part, but even collapsiron dust was useful. Maybe not useful enough that the CSV had put a premium on recovering it lately, but worth pursuing now. Her job was to mine it for them, as her audition. "Look, Terry," Conflicto had said, "brutes are a dime a dozen. I can tell you can handle yourself in a fight...and other places, I bet. But that's not enough. Kaliban demonstrated he's just too sneaky to say no to, but I don't think Khadam can survive another audition like that. So...what can you do that makes you an asset worth adding to our little portfolio?" A braggart and a fool might have demonstrated her entire range of skills at once, but Polla was neither. Her father had taught her well the value of keeping your tiles hidden until it is time to play them. She was a sorceror of some accomplishment and versatility, perhaps powerful enough to displace Glyph from the team. But something told her that Glyph's presence would work to Polla's advantage, so she kept that tile out of view. She would play only the tile that was her birthright. "My power is petromancy," she explained to those viewing the remote feed. "I have an affinity for earth and stone that is enhanced by my GeoMace," she hefted the collapsiron weapon. It would have been simplicity itself to use sympathetic magics to draw the meteor fragments to her, already purified. But that would reveal too much. "Collapsiron itself is not within the scope of my talent," true enough when referring just to the petromancy, "but I can sense it by the 'holes' it leaves in the earth. And I can control the ground around these holes. As I will now demonstrate." Polla held up her GeoMace and concentrated, reaching out with the senses that were part of her Gift, focusing them through the supernaturally hardened fist-sized diamond hidden within the head of the GeoMace by layers of even harder collapsiron. It was another of her birthrights that let her even hold up the mace, strength she had inherited from her father Arn, strength augmented by armor patterned after his own. She felt the ground start to shift, as stone and sand gathered together the precious grains of collapsiron at her feet. A column of mottled brown and gray stone rose before her like a termite mound built by petrified insects. As she felt the final grains coming into place, she topped the column with the three tines of a trident and smirked at her own double entendre. Then she waved the GeoMace and the trident collapsed into a roughly ovoid shape. "I have reconstituted the meteoroid," she said, her voice betraying the effort she had just expended. "Great," Conflicto applauded politely. "Now bring it back to SkyHaven so we can refine it." Polla looked west, to the horizon. Well, at least this would be an easier use of her Gift.... * * * * [November 14 - Porto Genetico] They'd all been looking forward to some straightforward butt-kicking after days of following false leads and deliberately confused trails through the city of Porto Genetico and its surroundings. Even with Essay's sensors, it had been incredibly frustrating, as if whoever was operating out of the city knew he might be detected and laid down multiple dead end paths. The plan from this point, however, was pretty simple. Burst in, fire a few mirrorbombs to weaken any photonics in the place, then have Contact telepathically shut them down so they could be bottled and taken back home for study. Too bad that even simple plans can go wrong, Contact reflected as he squirmed beneath the immense glowing hand that held him to the bedrock-backed steel floor. The other three had already been laid low by an obvious telepathic assault, although at least whoever was running the show hadn't made them turn coat and join the fight on the other side. That, and the lack of humming from Llyr's body (it looked like Llyr, anyway, and was huge like Llyr could become) suggested that the mind in control wasn't Mr. Strings. Thank goodness for small favors. "A pity you found me," a voice whispered in Aaron's head. "I had not yet found a cure for my...condition. If only I could truly understand all the science I assimilated from the minds around me I could have left earlier, but I have to be relatively near a mind to fully access its understanding." The pressure increased. "I can sense your strength of mind...too bad that diverting it to assault me would leave you crushed," the whispering voice chuckled. +-Okay, what time is it?-+ Aaron asked that part of himself that held the memories and personality of his dead lover Paul. -+Howdy Doody time?+- +-Paul....-+ -+Right, right. It's multitasking time!+- For months after the death of Paul's body, Aaron thought he'd saved his beloved by pulling the man's spirit from his body and absorbing it into himself. He later found that Paul really was dead, and only a copy of his memories had entered Aaron's body. Still, while Aaron now understood that he was only one person, he still could use "Paul" as a second brain, doubling his talents and letting him split his attention. Most of the physical talents stayed with Aaron's "core" mind, and most of the telepathic ones went with Paul. Thus, Aaron kept the gigantic hand at bay while also taking the fight to the enemy on the plane of the mind. "Knock, knock," Paul called out, floating before a gated door that symbolized the opening to his enemy's defenses. The representation was a blend of Paul's own expectations and the image that the enemy wished to project. A soft sussuration filled the mindscape, coming from everywhere and nowhere at all. "Away with you, fragment," the whispering wind hissed. "Wrong answer!" Paul shouted as he launched a savage kick at the door, shattering it. "Time I got my foot in the door," he smirked. "NOW who's having trouble dealing with the mental and the physical at the same time?" He could sense thoughts leaking out through the doorway. His opponent was named Suspir. He was a Shadowmonger, one of the secret rulers of Khadam. He had been trapped in Llyr's body when Doublecross triggered a trap to turn failed CSV members into photonic beings. He was... "ENOUGH!" Suspir shouted, and the door withdrew into itself. "You will not have my secrets..." the wind gasped before dying down. The massive doorway was gone. Paul looked down. A trapdoor had formed in the "ground" behind where the gate had been, locked and barred. Paul casually snapped the hasps and pulled open the wooden slab. Aaron gasped and drew in his first full breath in a few minutes as Llyr staggered back and assumed a more normal size. -+Miss me?+- +-Every second. Too bad we couldn't find out more about Suspir.-+ -+Llyr might know,+- Paul suggested, but didn't sound too hopeful. "Are you okay, Llyr?" Aaron asked as he moved to start rousing his fallen teammates. "Only for very forgiving definitions of 'okay,' I think," the EUROPAn staggered to support himself against a rack of computer equipment. "Let me guess: my half of the shared mind got pushed aside by Suspir?" "Essentially," Aaron nodded as he used a slight telepathic nudge to wake Lightfoot. "What do you remember?" "Not a lot," Llyr sighed, straightening up. "I think Suspir went and edited my memories once he had complete control, just in case he ever let me go. I have some vague recollection of serving Doublecross and trying to play double agent, but..." he shrugged. Essay and Breaker were awake now as well, wincing from the headaches Suspir had given them. "If we're lucky, we can recover some of those memories," Aaron reassured him. He didn't say that the fact Llyr was a photonic now meant the memories were probably gone for good. Organic brains have a lot of messy redundancy, but crisp digital minds in photonic form might be significantly easier to permanently clear. "Guys, take a look at this," Essay pointed to a bank of equipment. "There was something in here, according to the readouts. A photonic, as far as I can tell. But it's gone, and it doesn't show any trace on my sensors." "Which means Suspir has a new body, and he masked it against detection," Contact concluded. "Terrific," Lightfoot sighed. * * * * [3734.1.29 - Light Carrier Atlatl-B, Earth Orbit] "Listen, Major Sanders, the only reason I'm giving you the time of day is because my two-eyes teep says that your man Jenkins really has had some kind of personality overlay. That doesn't mean I believe Pilot Jenkins is the reincarnate of some ancient Hero." "Granted, Admiral Rodrik," Sanders nodded. "I'll be brief. The man running Jenkins's body is George Sylvester, who died in 2024 and had his spirit thrust through time by a powerful extradimensional entity." No need to call it a god, Sanders thought. It wouldn't help their case. "He knows what that thing down Earthside is, and how to defeat it." Rear Admiral Rodrik turned to face George. "So?" "It's the statue of Phaeton, made in 1998 and sunk below the ground in 2023. I don't know how it came to life, although I have some suspicions. It's made of Collapsed gold, or Collapsauron." "Collapsed? What do you mean?" Rodrik snarled. His aide, with the insignia of a Colonel and the two eyes surmounting it that indicatde a very powerful telepath, stepped forward. "It's an esoteric state of matter that is VERY rare in nature, Admiral. There are indications that during the Heroic Age the technology existed to manufacture it, but that knowledge has been lost. It seems impossible to generate such a large quantity of any Collapsed metal in one place, much less gold, but so far the creature has proven resistant to all attacks. So it could very well be Collapsauron." "And you said he knows how to destroy it?" the admiral glared at Sanders. "In general terms, yes," Sanders nodded. "George?" "Every type of Collapsed matter has a characteristic frequency of light that will pump its atoms back into a more normal state. This means that it slowly dissolves in sunlight, evaporating over the course of, oh, centuries I'd guess. And before you say we don't have centuries, if you know the right frequency you can just tune a laser to it and start boiling the statue away." "Right," Rodrik nodded. "It's not really going anywhere, so we can afford to give this theory a try, even if your man IS insane," he glareed at Sanders. "Colonel Kroft," he turned to his aide, "Get people on it. We're heading back to HQ." Just then, every klaxon and alert on the ship blared to life. "Ops! What's happening?" Sanders shouted into his wristcom. "Major, we have incoming!" the officer of the bridge replied. "Echoing sensors to your ready room!" All eyes turned to the holographic screen that sprang to life. A glittering dot was visible on optical sensors. As interferometry booms were extended, the image became sharper and larger. "It's the statue," Sanders gasped. "And it's heading for us," George added. So much for a leisurely orbital bombardment. ============================================================================ Next Issue: If Channel doesn't defeat the Weregild fast, he's dead! Of course, even if he wins, he's still dead, isn't he? ============================================================================ Author's Notes: Relevant issues to check for backstory are, in addition to recent issues of ASH and CSV: Warden #8-9: The Weregild ASH #5: Phaeton's statue STRAFE #13: Porto Genetico CSV #8-12: Suspir and Giantstar, plus Doublecross Spear Carriers #1-3: The 38th Century Back when Spear Carriers was still a going concern and the Weregild had just been "destroyed for good," it was suggested (I forget by who) that the spirit of the Weregild might inhabit the sunken statue of Phaeton and then spend centuries taking it over. It would emerge as part of the Telepath Threat that would be attacking both the United Worlds and the Santari in a planned future arc in Spear Carriers. But Spear Carriers sort of stopped, and the idea was shelved. Then I got the idea of using Channel's wandering spirit to revisit the 38th Century, and dug up the Weregild idea again.