The Power of Ten Book Four: Dynamo

When that prick Bloodraven had managed to escape after a crew went in to get Lady Nox and started on a killing spree, that crew, the Boisters, had put in a lot of hours helping on the sly and finding that murderer.

They hadn’t pulled the trigger, as someone else had gotten to him first, and the resulting immersion in crimson acid had been enough to put the regenerating murderer down for good. Although his cursed skull was supposedly around somewhere, appearing to other psychopaths and starting killing sprees in other places around the world...

But aliens, now...

There was an Embassy Quarter in San Francisco, just another reason people moved to the place. San Francisco had at least forty different alien races living openly there, some as refugees, some as ambassadors, some as explorers and historians and all the crazy jobs people living in foreign lands had. They preferred to deal with The Hag, the Champions, and The High Guard, rather than the United Nations, and so San Francisco was the only city on the planet with official space alien residents.

Every unofficial alien infiltration tended to be like this. Kill and replace, wait and build up numbers, or establish a bridgehead for invasion by other terms. Military efforts or scouts, for whatever reason.

Invaders, from worlds with superior science or magic or whatnot, thinking to come here and add to their empires, round up slaves, or just make living room for themselves by taking it from the dead hands of others.

Skrulls...

His jump had been too high, but that was just to give him a proper view. Increasing gravity allowed him to force an undershoot and come down directly where he wanted to.

Lumber store, easy to see the wood piled around it, fenced-in areas. Customers coming in and out all the time, easy to hide what was going on below it.

Well, now it was time for them to Get Pulped.

He’d done a lot of study on Skrulls after meeting up with them down in Salvadora, even called up Hawkeye to get as much information as he could. There’d been a team sent down to the coordinates he gave his old corporal, reporting only cleared-out caves and traces of high-tech digging to make them, with some genetic traces in the air.

That had meant there were other Skrulls about, removing the traces and the technology, or maybe Doc Apoc or Mechanar or Max Midas or one of the Big Players had pounced on the stories he’d told to his buddies and gotten there first, making off with tech they could try to reverse-engineer for power, glory, or more money.

His idiocy. He knew better for next time. Might be why Mechanar had some morphing limbs, now...

Thing was, he was pretty sure the High Guard or the Champions, or at least the Russians, had some satellites Up There that could detect concentrations of aliens, by who-knew-what kinda tech.

A whole town of Skrulls should have popped up. That meant they had masking tech here, big surprise, hiding themselves. Just like their radio interference.

Guess where the center for that technology was going to be? Albeit not for long.

He hadn’t flexed his Weight as high as this often without feeling a bit guilty about the property damage for some time. He had to be pretty careful when brawling not to endanger people, so he usually kept it pretty tight and not so strong.

But with Skrulls? He didn’t have to hold back at all.

King Gravity got another alert on His throne, one of those calls for real attention, and came down with His x100 foot.

So did The Mountain.

One hundred and fifty tons of invulnerable mass came plummeting down at considerably over normal terminal velocity, even as the whole building, and the Skrull disguised as a Dalmatian, was slammed to the ground by the killing gravity.

He blew through the floor that was crumbling before he even got there, down through the storage areas in the basement, and hit the metal ceilings of the complex that was shuddering and shaking down below him.

Steel tore with a scream, and he kept on going, while the Weight of a Mountain fell upon this complex and all the aliens within it.

Whatever they were using for a power supply should be within range of his gravity. He had learned long ago that things using fusion power simply could not sustain themselves at high gravity, and would short out as their fuel supply went from gaseous to liquid under gravitic pressure. Their mechanisms couldn’t hold up under their own increased weight, and would start snapping and breaking. Automatic safety mechanisms would shut off the power, and everything blinked dark and then flared dimly with battery back-ups, even as glass and plastics bent and twisted and shattered all around him.

He straightened up and strode ahead after landing like a bomb burst, just as a slamming deluge of rubble and steel pounded down behind him.

Yeah, this looked like an important area. Several greenies, flattened to the ground, expiring as they tried to find something that could survive in this level of gravity and failed. He contributed by planting a heavy boot on their skulls, which flattened and didn’t pop, just crushing flat and oozing heavily in all directions under the pressure and weight.

That big thing sure looked like something important. He was aware that the Skrulls were more than willing to suicide themselves to remove traces of their tech and selves, so best to shut that down.

An emergency shut-off without a detonation order had already gone off, so just removing the control consoles should do the job. They were fritzing already, anyways, not built to take their own weight, circuit boards and the like breaking apart inside them.

He pulled the deCompressed heavy chain off his shoulder, tipped with a steel ball the size of his head. It was thirty feet long, greatly increasing his reach. Normally he’d just find something big and heavy to swing around, but Dynamo had recommended he have something he could use with him, and a ball and chain, if heavy to a normal person, was basically perfect for him.

He backed off to x10 gravity, giving himself some breathing room, and began to swing the ball and chain around with power. Computer consoles, conduits, pipes, cables, and similar vital things began to rupture and blow apart all around him as he picked up speed, moving the weighty steel far faster than any human possibly could.

He reflected that his technique and control wasn’t what it could be, and understood why Dynamo had pointed out that simply spending hours spinning the thing around was so important, taking the length in and out routinely.

Something else for him to work on. He grinned grimly as he shredded the engineering facility’s controls. Yeah, it would make things harder for those who wanted to salvage and reverse-engineer the tech, but that wasn’t his problem. His problem was making sure he wasn’t caught in a fusion bomb explosion.

Still, he was sure he got all the key areas, and he even left a couple consoles intact after he ripped through the connector cables under the floors and in the walls.

Time to kill the rest of the things, and hope they didn’t have another bomb they could set off easily around.

Maintaining the x10 field, which was still enough to flatten the Skrulls if not instantly collapse most objects, he strolled out of the room, idly swinging his ball and chain in hand, seeing what he could find.

------

There was a bit of a click, and something in the air dissipated after Mr. Hill turned the lumber yard into a crater. Either the power supply or the broadcaster had been destroyed, likely the latter, as secondary power should have kept it going. But if they were tapping the town’s power grid, those cables had just been severed when the ground collapsed.

I had picked up speed, and was racing around at nearly eighty mph, streaking down the streets and buildings wherever I could see something outside. Rayguns were popping off, trying to hit me as Red Eyes stared at them, and I zigged and zagged to get away from the shots.

Occasionally I shot back, my Card-spells having the range to do so, but the best way to fight back was just to run by them, and let the Killzone take them.

Then I headed for the school.

The threat area was greatest in the school’s middle, which I pointed out to Lania. “The auditorium,” she whispered, eyes hard, head against the back of my neck to stay out of the wind.

“Got it.”

The shatter-proof glass of the outer doors couldn’t take the Cards exploding into and through them, and the kinetic charge to the shots ruptured the doors pretty well. My Repulse took care of the rest as I crashed through them, not letting the flying shards touch us as I leapt on through them and skidded/glided across the tiled floor.

The wooden doors to the auditorium began to smoke, as did the paneling and ceiling tiles here and there.

They were meant to open outwards, but that just meant the hinges were on this side. I tapped both on one side, shooting the pins out with Repulse, touched the wood, stuck to it, and wrenched them away.

A solid steel door was in front of me.

Now, if I was Mr. Hill, I could have just gone through the brick wall to the sides, as they wouldn’t have replaced all that.

Instead, I touched the wall to the side, feeling for the power supply lines keeping these doors locked, gambling they’d use a techie electromagnetic system instead of something old and mechanical which would freeze in place without power.

There.

Lania watched as I flicked three Cards into the brick, spraying bits and pieces of stone and mortar as I cut into the power cables like the Cards were adamantine blades. The faint hum locking the two sides of steel into place cut off abruptly.

My hands slapped on either side of the seam, and Repulsed them away from one another.

The heavy steel blew apart left and right, and the auditorium suddenly opened up before us.

There were a whole bunch of human faces inside there... along with some Skrulls who had dropped the façade, dressed in some form of protective armor and wielding heavier weapons. At least half of those inside were wielding popguns, whether they looked like kids or adults, and they had them aimed this way.

Heavy plasma fire and a whole lot of raygun shots blew by below us from where I was crouched on the ceiling, Lania stuck to me and not moving either.

The administrative offices behind us were blown into flaming ruin. The Skrulls paused for just a second to see the effect of their shots, saw nothing was there, and then looked up at our faces peeking in from the top of the door.

Then the Killzone swept in, and before they could reacquire, they were burning and dying.

“Die!” hissed Lania, peeking past me as the wall of death emanating from her swept out and over them, and the Skrulls screamed as they began to burn. “Just fucking DIE!”