Dreadnought: Chapters 14–21

The emulsion smell from Doc Impossible’s matter fabricator is almost gone, at least.

If you choose not to carry Dreadnought’s banner, you can command your suit to display heraldry of your own design.

I have heard every lie tongues can speak. Scant few can deceive me, and you are not among them.

Dinner is quiet and strained, the way it normally is for a day or so after a big blowup, but aside from some grumbling and some snide remarks, we get through it fine.

Conjugation in French is a special kind of horror, on par with the sort of things you’d need to do to call up the Old Ones when the stars are right. Reading comic books is a way more fun way to learn the language, but it’s not really going to help me on tomorrow’s test, so I’m doing my best to get through this exercise on gerunds when I hear a tap on my window.

“Yeah, like just a neutral outfit to say I’m not—”
“I know what they are. I am less certain as to why you’d fall for all that prissy whitecape crap.”

“Then they’re aiding and abetting your enemy.”

To my dismay, she obeys all the traffic laws except for the one about being sixteen and having a license. Her helmet hides her age, and she doesn’t give cops reason to pull her over. It’s as good a way of traversing the city as any for a flightless cape.

Calamity takes a turn onto a freeway on-ramp and snaps her throttle open with a howling whine I can hear all the way up here.

Calamity pulls off the highway, and then it’s another tortuously slow crawl through surface streets until we’re at the edge of the really seedy part of McNeil Island, the middle of the three islands, two peninsulas, and curving line of mainland that make up New Port City.

Calamity pulls off the highway, and then it’s another tortuously slow crawl through surface streets until we’re at the edge of the really seedy part of McNeil Island, the middle of the three islands, two peninsulas, and curving line of mainland that makeup New Port City.

She circles a block once before she pulls into a narrow alleyway between two decrepit brick buildings, kills the engine, and backs the bike into some deep shadows.

“I’ve been in remission for ten years, and I get a blood screen every other month.”

Finally, the laughter leaves us, and we clamber back over to the edge of the building.

A heartbeat later, he heaves convulsively, his bruised chest gasping for air, and he curls up in pain.

Let’s get this feller trussed up.

I don’t deserve to be Dreadnought. Hell, I don’t deserve any of this. I may be a horrible person, but I’m not going to slander the dead by pretending to be something I’m not.

I walk through the empty halls of school with a cold runnel of dread pouring down my spine.

This car reeks of money. Soft dark leather, real hardwood trim, everything. Being on an established superteam is a lucrative gig.

“Well, there have certainly been plenty of women who have become capes. I don’t see how being one precludes the other.”

“No!” I shout, suddenly livid. “I’m not giving up the mantle! I’m not going to die for you just because you asked nicely!”

A few times I try to grab the strings of their momentum, the way I did with the airliner, but I can’t quite get it to work. Maybe they’re too small, or moving too fast, or maybe it was just a fluke and I won’t be able to do it again.

Calamity clicks on a small flashlight with a red filter and holds out a sheaf of papers.

It’s a detailed dossier on Utopia. Every known sighting, every known associate, even a section on estimated capabilities and rumors.

Her fiber-optic hair is short and dark in a pageboy cut, and arms that are obviously robotic but designed to look mostly human.

“If Utopia does hypertech, why is she bothering with a baseline shop?”
“That had struck me as eccentric as well.”

(And here, my train of thought briefly segues into a bitter accounting of all the things he has provided for me. Shame. Fear. Hearing loss.)

Her gait is so fluid that even with her boots on she doesn’t clang against the metal.

“You’d attack one of your own?” Bosco says. His voice is wary, but sullen. Is this what a bully sounds like when he’s scared? He backs off, a good ten yards or so, arms loose and ready.

The impact is enormous, an almost cataclysmic smashing of bodies that jolts me all the way through.

Maybe it was just that I was a quiet, shy kid who thought all the boisterous exuberance of early testosterone exposure was somehow distasteful and uncomfortable.

Someone has to pay for what was done to me. Now, I’m strong enough to make him pay. For a heady moment I consider trying to get Bosco up into orbit for real.

He gets this confused look on his face, with an undercurrent of something that scares me, so I push on quickly to get it all out while I’ve still got my nerve.

The library is a palatial building, and even though it’s only three floors high it seems to tower over us with its soaring columns and mournful gargoyles.

“I’m fine,” I snap as I pound up the steps. She blanches, and I pause at the doors.