//|| //^^\\ || || .|. COHERENT COMICS UNINCORPORATED PRESENTS // || \\ || || --X--------------------------------------------- //======================= '|` ACADEMY OF SUPER-HEROES SPECIAL // || \\ || || Solar Max 2000 // || \\__// || || Copyright 2000 by Dave Van Domelen ___________________________________________________________________________ [cover shows the original Solar Max adrift in space, unconcious. Space is filled with uncountable stars, and a roughly humanoid shape blots out the stars behind Solar Max. It's raising a huge energy-bladed axe...but to attack or defend?] =========================================================================== "Log entry...968, I think. Yeah, that's right. Terran date May 23, 2000, assuming I haven't traveled in time or experienced any odd time dilation effects. Just woke up from a brief nap, during which Navi continued to try and determine our location. Unfortunately, the stars are so densely packed in this region that it's almost impossible to get a sighting on any familiar ones. Can't see the trees for the forest, or something like that. At least I'm pretty sure we're back in the Milky Way now, probably near the galactic core, to judge from the stellar density. Log pause." I take a sip of re-re-recycled water and try not to gag. I need to find a reasonably earthlike planet soon. The Safsuit may be a brilliant invention, but I never intended for it to sustain me for more than a few days at a time, never mind over two years. It can only recycle things for so long before too much leaks out and I starve, suffocate or dry out. Maybe all three at once. Damn that rogue Santari noble anyway. I'd only wanted to take a few months away from Earth, get away from all the chaos of the Godmarket and check out near space some more. Three months in, I get grabbed by the Galactic Warrior Corps to help shut down a madman with a planetkiller weapon, and end up slingshotting across the local supercluster. On the one hand, it's kinda impressive that I could travel several megaparsecs in one trip. On the other hand, getting back is proving to be a royal pain. Especially since I don't have any way of communicating with those I meet. Navi's stocked with several language banks for Planetary Confederation space, but I haven't been inside those boundaries in a year and a half...so even assuming the locals here use one of the communications modes built into my SafSuit, I lack a common language to use anyway. Funny...it doesn't matter how much of a hermit you think you are by nature. Once you're cut off from any chance of human contact, you start to miss it. "Navi, any luck getting a position fix?" "I'm sorry, Dave," the female voice intoned in a very close imitation of a certain movie computer. "No positive lock yet." "Navi, stop calling me Dave! It's starting to really freak me out." Was I wrong to be disturbed by a computer that controlled my life support systems imitating HAL 9000? "Call me something else...like Max." "Certainly, Dave." "AAAAAAAAGH...." I'm going to have to have a LONG talk with Jack Turnbull about his so-called sense of humor when I get back. A genius with artificial intelligences, but.... * * * * One thing *had* been breaking my way. Apparently, whatever hyperspace I use for my FTL jumps is the same one that most advanced races discover eventually. Or, if not most, at least enough have that I'd been able to work out a good trick for finding planets that could support life. Usually not my kind of life, but it worked often enough that I hadn't starved yet. So here I sit, drifting in hyperspace, my own powers shut down. I can't stay powered up more than an hour or so at a time before the energy starts tearing me apart. At least now that I'm closer to the stars that I draw power from, I'm back to my usual time limits...out in the intergalactic void there were occasions when I couldn't hold open the energy gates more than a few minutes a day. This made "aiming" my travel REALLY important. Fortunately, in hyperspace I can move faster than anything I've yet encountered, so it's not hard to keep up with any ships Navi picks up crossing the non-void. Aha! There's a ship. Looks pretty ratty, so I doubt I can expect super-advanced technology or anything. I keep hoping to find some exceptionally advanced race that has visited PC space so I can talk to them, but for now I'll settle for being able to follow someone to a habitable world. I power up, turning into a living energy gateway. I've had these powers for over a decade now, and I still can't use even a tiny bit of energy without "turning on" all the way. The energy I do end up using doesn't seem to put any stress on me, though...the only stressor is keeping the channels open. Just about every time I power up lately, I think about this...there HAS to be a way around it, right? Anyway, with the power flowing from the nearest star (although "near" is relative in hyperspace), I focus my warp power on moving through the grey swirls of hyperspace. Actually, it's not grey, or any color as the mind can comprehend. The human mind, anyway. But the brain tries its best, and I end up with swirling grey. Others have described it as a rainbow swirl, an impenetrable inky blackness or "blind spot", or even a sort of mottled red and black. To each his, her or its own. I settle into its trail. "Navi, start analysis." "Yes, Dave." I sigh. With the time limit on my power, I can't just track the ship until it comes out on its own. And I stopped hitching a ride on the hulls of ships when one turned out to be a living ship and tried to eat me. But most things that move through hyperspace leave some kind of trail, and once I have the "scent," I can stop when I need rest and still follow the ship to its endpoint. It's not foolproof, but it usually works. "Detecting heavy water vapor and diatomic hydrogen in the trail. Approximately 20% diatomic hydrogen by volume," Navi said after a short pause. Good news/bad news. Hydrogen-burning motors mean there's likely to be water around at the endpoint, if only as exhaust fumes. But that's a pretty poor burn performance for a starship, leaving so much uncombusted H2 around. So wherever this ship is going, it's probably the ass end of whatever trade route runs through this part of space, a place the better ships won't bother touching. Not to mention, it's probably not a very fast ship, which means a lot of track-and-wait. Sigh. * * * * I reach the end of the vapor trail. I don't need Navi's sensors to tell that the ship left hyperspace here...with all the FTL I've been doing the past two years, I've gotten to be pretty good at sensing the spatial distortions that accompany jumps into and out of hyperspace. I don't even need to be powered up to do it, which has saved my ass on a couple of occasions when something tried to get the drop on me in normal space. Common sense tells me to rest before popping out of hyperspace, I've been flying almost an hour now. But I am so sick to death of the grey swirls, I want to see stars again, even if they're not ones I know. With a golden flare, I slide back into "reality." Damn, these guys were cutting it close...I'm maybe a few hundred kay from a planet! I stretch wide my "solar sails" and start thrusting myself into orbit. No desire to re-enter right now, and certainly not like a falling rock. The thin warp membranes don't really work like sails...rather they pull solar wind from near the local star and use it for thrust, a sort of defocused version of my Solar Flare attack. And, as a teammate of mine once said, they look like flaming phoenix wings...looking cool is usually a plus in my line of work. I start to grin. Then I feel a familiar tingle along my spine, arms and legs. My grin is replaced by a grimace. Holding the floodgates open is starting to take its toll, gotta damp down soon. "Dave, I have located the starship we were following," Navi chirps. "It seems to be firing on a ground installation of some sort." Uh-oh. "Navi, any radio or neutrino beam traffic?" "Some basic radio, there is no sign of any hyperspace communications system, although that may have been destroyed," the AI offers. "No ships are rising to meet the attacker." Just with the naked eye, I can see that this was not a heavily built-up world. Probably an agricultural colony, or a specialized mining or other resource world. Or maybe just one that hadn't made it to space on its own yet. Shit. Without being able to talk to anyone, there was no way I can find out the story behind this attack. For all I know, it could be a covert government operation to wipe out someone like the Santari noble that got me into this mess. But it's probably piracy. For slaves, resources, whatever...piracy seems to exist wherever you can get your hands on a ship that isn't under government control...and a few places where you can't. Only have a few minutes before the pain kicks in, but I've got to do something to help the people here. If I could run from a problem like this, I'd still be in PC space. I arrow towards the ship, using my two biggest advantages. One, I'm insanely fast and maneuverable when I put all my power to it. Two, almost no one outside Earth expects a man to be able to fly around in space on his own. Or whatever passes for a man locally. As soon as I'm close enough to be sure of my aim, and to be sure they aren't shooting at me yet, I cut power to flight and concentrate on focusing the energy I'm getting from the local star. A bluish-white beam lances out of the space in front of me and scores a solid hit on the ship. I get lucky and see one of the ship's bombardment weapons explode in a reddish-orange fireball. Well, looks like they breathe something like what I call air. NOW they start shooting at me with their close defense weapons, most of which must have been hidden during the trip through hyperspace...the thing's a porcupine of blasters. I channel the power into forcefields, dissipating the one or two blasts that come close. Okay, three advantages...I'm really hard to lock onto with computers designed to target big metal ships. Unfortunately, I can only use my internal powers for one thing at a time, with a couple of exceptions that won't help me now. The thrusters of my Safsuit let me maneuver a little, but it's not much on the scale of a space battle. I blast off at top speed for a couple seconds, confusing the gunners who thought they'd just managed to get a bead on me, then I cut loose with another solar blast. This one just fries armor, but they seem to be devoting less resources to attacking the planet now. Fly, blast, shield...I manage to repeat the pattern three more times before I nearly double over in agony. Their shots haven't come close yet, but the power inside me is starting to rip me apart on the cellular level. It takes all my concentration to fly away from there...can't muster up the focus to get into hyperspace. For a moment, I brown out. Navi's voice rouses me. "Dave, they've turned to pursue." Damn. Feels like someone threaded red-hot barbed wire through all my nerves and then flossed. The pain's starting to fade, but there's no way I'm going to be able to power up for at least a few minutes, and even then it'd hurt like hell. "Estimated time to firing range?" There's a pause. "Based on accuracy demonstrated to date, they will reach effective firing range in three minutes, extreme firing range in two." Not enough time. Nowhere near enough time. Couldn't even power up long enough to blip into hyperspace, and there's no guarantee that they couldn't just follow and kill me there. Then I feel it. Something else is about to drop out of hyperspace. Reinforcements? Jesus Christ on a pogo stick, I hope not. Space spirals in on itself and forms a sort of whirling disc maybe a hundred meters away. Or two hundred. Hard to judge distance without knowing the size of the thing. Then a man on a flying platform of some sort emerges from the disc no more than ten meters away...unless he's a man the size of a ship. Not that he's likely to be human, but with a head, two arms and two legs, he's the closest I've seen to human in months. Could do without the demonic horns, though. In fact, this guy looks like bad news all around...my only hope is that he's not on good terms with the pirates and goes after them first. He pulls out some kind of object, which ignites into a massive energy axe that he waves over his head as he flies straight at the pirates. Score one for the away team, namely me. This guy MUST be bad news...the pirates are veering away! Wait...not away, they're turning to bring something to bear. DAMN. They're firing the remaining bombardment guns at him! I force every newton I can out of the Safsuit's thrusters. I don't know if demonic axe-swinging space knight guy can survive a direct hit from those guns, but I certainly can't! I switch to monitors so I can keep an eye on things while I run away like a little girl. Axe Guy...is throwing his weapon at the ship. Like he expects that to do any good. And maybe it will. The axe hits the bombardment cannon just before it can fire. The world goes white, and the shockwave seconds later knocks me cold. The last thing I hear as I slip into blackness is Navi saying, "I'm sorry Dave, but your life support functions have been terminated...." * * * * Either I'm alive, or my spirit has found its way to one of the more unpleasant afterlives. I must have reflexively tried to power up and block the shockwave or something, because that's the sort of pain I'm currently, ah, enjoying. Not the "smashed flat like a pancake" pain, which I've done as well. Never insult Set's taste in beer, by the way. More like the "tried to channel solar power for too long and got cooked" pain. Once I get past the pain issue, I realize that I'm naked and lying on some sort of bed. And the air isn't killing me, at least not quickly. Feels like there's gravity, but that just means I might be in a ship under burn, or one with artificial gravity. Carefully I open my eyes and stare up at a white ceiling. Then, ignoring the pain, I turn my head to see if there's anything more informative. Axe guy is standing a couple meters away, facing some console. Lights are playing over my Safsuit, and a few wires lead into Navi. I have NO idea what Axe guy is doing, but it's not the time to try and start an argument. "Hello?" I venture. Maybe I'm lucky and he has some sort of translator gadget. I certainly hope that my tone isn't one his race associates with hostility. He turns around, and I see that while he's roughly humanoid, he's certainly not HUMAN. Not even close. Also, he has a rather nasty looking...something...on his chest. For all I know, it's his race's version of chest hair, but the way he moves and the raggedness of his breath just screams "sucking chest wound" to me. He certainly doesn't seem as lively as he did out in space. I start to sit up, and instantly regret it as my head swims. "Tuge," he says. Well, that's what it sounds like. For all I know, the word has overtones not audible to the human ear and I just got the "shadow" of it. I've run into that before once or twice. But he's probably telling me the same thing my body is. Lie the hell down. He should "tuge" too. Now I'm positive he's injured. Just turning around and speaking seems to have taken more out of him than trying to sit up took out of me. I spot his armor over against another wall. The chest has a major dent in it at the same spot as the mark on his body. Hers. Its. Whatever. At this point, my body decides that passing out again would be a terrific idea. * * * * Say what you will about being a supernormal, healing is quick. I wake up again feeling nowhere near as bad as before, and I actually manage to stand up and look around. I'm still naked, but I doubt it'll bother my host. Bugs me, of course, but it's impossible to totally ditch that Catholic guilt even when you've abandoned everything else associated with the religion. Axe guy is sitting at a workbench over where his armor had been sitting, slumped over. I hope he's just fallen asleep from exertion, but something tells me that's not the case. "Hello?" I ask again. Nothing. Tentatively, I power up. If I startle this guy, I want to be able to survive his reaction. No pain, that's good. I raise my forcefields and gently tap him on the shoulder. Nothing. I channel a little of the power to strength and try to pull him up into a sitting position. There's a small pool of coagulating fluid on the bench where he'd slumped, and his eyes lack the animation they had earlier. He's either dead or in a coma or something, but he's beyond my help. Then I look at his armor. It's not the same as it was before. For one thing, a lot of the scary demonic bits have been removed...or absorbed, or used for replacement parts or something. But that's not the change that really hits me. It's been repainted in my costume's colors. I quickly look around, and don't see my Safsuit anywhere. Then I grab the helmet and peer inside. He merged my suit with his armor, somehow. Was he trying to upgrade his armor using my technology? Or did he mean to give me the armor, knowing he wouldn't live to wear it again? Perhaps he left a message on Navi, somehow. I put on the helmet. Sounds and sights and sensations and concepts and hopes and dreams and fears and memories... ...overwhelm me. I almost pass out again, but I manage to keep my footing. I yank off the helmet, noticing almost absently that there's curls of smoke coming out of it. Something burned out, and I hope it wasn't my brain. I sit down heavily on the bed and try to sort out what just slammed into my head. No words, nothing so concrete. Not that I would have understood his race's words anyway. Axe Guy here was a warrior, a hero. Not like a superhero...more like the old Greek heroes. He flew around looking for adventures, for foes to fight. He was generally inclined to protect the little guy, but wasn't terribly particular when push came to shove. Once he had proven himself, he would return home and join the army protecting it from enemies. I can't figure out what a lot of the images mean, but I'll guess it's the old hearth and home and mate sort of stuff. Like me, he's been away from his own kind for too long. Unlike me, he chose his exile...and hopefully unlike me, he's never going to go home again. His dying act was to make sure that I didn't follow him into the afterlife yet. He definitely wanted me to have the armor. And it looks like I don't have a choice...it'd take tools I don't have and time I don't have to separate the Safsuit from the armor now. I pick up the chestplate, now fully repaired and sporting my sun emblem. It's surprisingly light for its bulk, but I can't see how it could have fit my large benefactor. A memory of an image pricks at me, and I pull at the plates. They stretch apart on a substrate of some sort of flexible armor material. I pull the unit over my head like a shirt and it conforms to the lines of my body as well as the Safsuit did. Slowly I don the rest of the armor, leaving the helmet for last. "Navi, are you there?" "Yes, Dave. Operating at 90% efficiency. I seem to have been integrated into an alien system, but not all the connections were completed. And elements seem to have destructively deactivated." "The alien here must not have finished his work before he died. I think there was some kind of cybernetic interface, but it blew out and almost took my synapses with it." I look down at the body. It felt wrong to call him "Axe Guy" or "the alien." I don't know his name in words, but I can feel how he thought of himself. A proud warrior, invincible in his suit of armor, armor which in the end had not saved his life. "Rest in peace, Achilles," I mutter. * * * * "Log entry 988, Terran date June 12, 2000, more or less. After several days of trying, I've given up on getting Achilles's ship to work for me and have left it drifting in hyperspace as his bier. Perhaps his people will find it and perform whatever death rites they practice. Managed to get the organic matter reservoirs of this armor topped off, looks like I can now go about three weeks at a time with heavy recycling. Navi has completed integrating with the native systems of the armor, what little was left after the cyberlink burned out. Best yet, I found enough astrogation information in the ship's systems to pinpoint my location. About five thousand light years out from the core of the Milky Way, most of the way around the other side of the core from Earth. While I could try to make it home in a single jump, skimming that close to the hyperspace shadow of the core might throw me off pretty badly, so I'm going to cruise around the disc for a couple days. No point in jinxing it now that I'm within a week of Earth. End log." I look back at the base ship Achilles had launched his skimmer from and salute. He saved my life, saved the planet the pirates had attacked (I had popped in and checked a few days ago), and ultimately died in his pursuit of glory and adventure. I'd known too many men and women like that back home, heroes who threw themselves into trouble and didn't always come out the other side. "Goodbye, Achilles. Navi, put me on the first leg of my trip home. And don't call me Dave!" "You got it, Rob." ============================================================================= Author's Notes: When I designed the armor for JakZak to wear at the end of Academy, I used an old idea from my Champions campaign. The original Solar Max had ended up near the galactic core and had run into a warrior race that used space armor. Somehow he got his hands on a set and brought it back to replace his superhero-costume-like Safsuit (TM). Then he passed it on to JakZak in Academy #8. This is the story of how Solar Max's turn of the century wanderings finally came to an end, and how he got the armor. It may contradict minor details from previous stories, I'm not sure. But consider this the canon. Once he got back to Earth, Solar Max lay low for a few months while trying to figure out how to best help without causing a panic, given the fragile state of world politics in 2000. Eventually he contacted the remnants of the United States government and started working in secret to help rebuild the world.... Check out http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~dvandom/maxbash.GIF for a kitbash of the space armor Solar Max picks up this issue! The head inside he helmet is JakZak's. [Later notes: The URL for that image is no longer correct, just check out the Fourth Age Gallery. Also, I realized much later that if Solar Max was keeping daily logs, he had to have left Earth in late 1998, oops. I've gone back and added 365 to the log numbers to push his departure back to its proper spot in late 1997. Additionally, while this was by far his longest sojourn, he spent much of the time from 1992-1997 off on one space exploration trip or another.]