Once I noticed I was on fire, I decided to relax and enjoy the fall

Something I wrote a while ago…

October 26, 2003 at 8:32 pm (Uncategorized)

I feel bad that I haven’t posted anything new in a while, so here’s something. It’s a story I wrote back in the day…sort of Johnny Quest meets Iron Man.

Zanji Dunfree stood near the entrance with the assault rifle at the ready, not expecting it to do any good at all if the Suits found them. His dark hair and naturally dark skin were tinged with yellow and red lights coming from any one of the dozens of computer consoles surrounding him, readouts he didn’t understand and didn’t pretend to.

“Chris…hurry it up!”

“Doing my best.” The voice was tinny and hyper-distorted, feeding into the control room from the superforge in the vast complex just beyond the windows; in that room hung the atrophied body of Zanji’s oldest friend, in a harness of
recently-scavenged wires that kept his nervous system from collapsing. Zanji’s twenty-year shame flooded him again; he could see the plane on fire again, feel the yoke twisting in his sweat-slick hands, and then turning to shout a warning to Chris…only to see a shard of metal jabbing out through the grey and blue silk of Chris’ shirt, and a bloody smile on his face like his favorite saint, the martyr Sebastian who’d been his confirmation choice.

It’s okay, Jam-face…I don’t feel a thing.

“Well, you’d better do it faster! Angst’s people are…” The proximity alarm went wild, howling at Zanji. “They’re on-site.“

“How long will the auto-defenses hold?” That strangely warm tone, the most human a simulated voice had ever sounded, made Zanji wince despite himself. Chris was one of those people most at home wrapped in technology; as the time since the crash passed he’d become almost fond of machines. Now this last bastion of Anvil’s empire was almost totally automated, leaving Chris feeling happy and protected…and Zanji isolated and alone. “Should you get out of here, Jam-face?”

“Yeah, I’ll just run away and leave you to their tender mercy. Which won’t be any, in case that matters to you.” Zanji felt a chill down his spine at the
sound of a voice-simulator calling him by his old childhood nickname. It was an odd one; Zanji’d always assumed he would outgrow it, or that Chris would, but
neither seemed to be happening. Down in the electric cradle, Chris’ slack, bristle-bearded face was covered in sweat that dripped down the ten feet to the floor and evaporated in the heat of the superforge. “Even if I could, I wouldn’t. You know that.”

“Yeah, I do. It won’t be long, pal. Just got to make a few adjustments. Look, if they get in…don’t be a hero, okay?”

“That’s your job. I just stick around to keep you in one piece.” Zanji adjusted the power-flow; he divided the output of the Southern California Anvil Complex into two systems. One was the automated defense grid that was slowly falling apart under the Suits’ attack; the other was the superforge chamber, where Chris Anvil was attempting to go to the well one more time
and pull a miracle out, in the best family tradition.

Zanji, sweating and nervous, couldn’t stop himself from remembering and didn’t want to.

When they were kids, it had been the best possible life.
Zanji had had it even better than Chris had. After all, Zanji’d had both of his parents, whereas Chris’ mom had died in childbirth. Sarah Mullalley-Anvil had been the kind of woman who in her death had somehow managed to create a bond between father and son that nothing had been able to break.

Aeson Anvil was from a different time. He’d been the last of a breed of scientist-adventurers, in the tradition of the shudder pulps of the 1930’s and the
literature of men like H.G. Wells and Jules Verne. Zanji and Chris had grown up on board the old Anvil Delta-Wing, and their childhood had consisted of archeological digs in the lost city of Oman, undersea dives in the Marianas Trench and constant run-ins with men like Arbot Soylent and Doctor Chun Tsang, Doctor Anvil’s greatest rival. Zanji’s mother Rani and his father ‘Ace’ Dunfree were always involved, and the boys had somehow always tagged along. Zanji was the contemplative one, and Chris the daring risk-taker;
people sometimes remarked that it was as if the boys had somehow switched parents. Zanji’s favorite memory of that time was the adventure on Surtsey.

Dr. Anvil had been kidnapped by Arbot Soylent and his
mercenaries, and ‘Ace’ had gone in after him. But it had been Chris’ idea to sneak into Soylent’s submersible monster via the ballast tanks, and it had
been Zanji who’d used the sub to barricade Soylent’s men inside the volcanic caverns, leaving Doc Anvil and ‘Ace’ to stop Soylent before he could trigger the
experimental Volcano-bomb he’d stolen from the Soviets. It was great; they were heroes! Even their dads had said so.

When Zanji and Chris were in their teens, things got grimmer. Doctor Tsang became insane after a Lemurian artifact, the Amulet of the Rainbow, grafted itself to his chest. Arbot Soylent and Doctor Anvil died in each others arms as they battled over the Goliath Falls in a Zeppelin. This left Chris the sole heir to the Anvil fortune,with little time for worldwide adventures; unlike Doctor Anvil, Christopher had a liking for the engineering side of the Anvil business. Ace and Rani retired, spending their time between the Dunfree farm in Texas and the Ushurnipa properties in India.

Except for birthdays and holidays, Zanji and Chris didn’t see each other for five years. In that time, Zanji developed into an expert marksman and pilot, and Chris…Chris tore through several incandescently volatile relationships with women he probably should have avoided, grew a goatee, picked up a bit of a
cocaine habit, and made Anvil Industries into a world class multinational.

Their reunion, on Chris’ 21st birthday, was Zanji’s greatest failure ever.

In two decades of globe hopping, Ace Dunfree had never allowed Doc Anvil to so much as scratch himself (Well, except for the day he died). In two
hours, Zanji Dunfree was forced to watch his best friend take a shrapnel shard to the spinal column. Outside the Delta-Wing, so long the Anvil symbol of
pride and exploration, flew a clunky metal shape. Zanji had no idea why it had shot at the Delta-Wing, and as it crashed, he really didn’t care.

In the passengers seat, Christopher Anvil had laughed all the way down.

Zanji came out of his memory with a jolt. The alarms were going nuts. The surface defense field was down, and most of the automatic laser batteries
were on fire. Probably that goddamn Ace of Hearts. I
hate that guy. Each of Angst’s Suits had a playing-card motif and were seemingly legion; there were the Hearts, the Spades, the Clubs and the
Diamonds, each led by an Ace with a bigger, better armor and some kind of specialty. The Ace of Hearts did fire, the Ace of Spades had his entire armor
covered in wicked vibroblades that could cut through most anything, the Ace of Clubs created force fields with his armor and the Ace of Diamonds was practically indestructible. Chris had fought them all, and had come up even most times; of course, Angst wasn’t exactly playing fair, as while the Suits were
attacking Chris’ armored alter-ego, Angst had found his human side’s Achilles heel and had pressed it.

Hard.

“Chris…” Before Zanji could say anything else, the door to the control room began to throb inward from a combination of intense heat and impact; then it folded in and apart.

In walked the Aces. Hearts swiveled his armored head, the twin ocular sensors staring directly at Zanji with a hideous maroon radiance.

“Where is he?”

“Go to hell.” Zanji’s dueling accents were at peace now; when he swore, he swore as a Texan. Maybe I can buy some time. “Get it over with.”

“Fine by me. Spades?”

“Sure thing.” The sword-like forearm blades popped out of Spades’ armor, and the vibrations started. Behind him, Diamonds and Clubs waited, their own
hulking armor less ornate but no less menacing. Zanji braced himself, using a trick his mother taught him a long time before to kill his tactile sense; torture
him or not, he’d say nothing. “You sure you don’t want to talk? I could cut your tongue out…”

“Zanji, get down!” A high pitched whine burst through the glass of the booth as Zanji dropped to the floor and covered his head with his hands. He could hear the buzzing of Spades’ armor become the sound of metal against metal. Hot fluid, possibly hydraulic liquids and possibly not, sprayed onto his exposed neck and hands. Finally, he looked up.

Spades’ supersharp blades were driven though Diamond’s durable armor. Hovering in the window was an unfamiliar armored shape. It lacked the old-world charm and style that Zanji was used to; they had been sacrificed on the altar of power, which it conveyed in every bulky joint and humming conduit. The familiar red color was gone, replaced by blue and gold, but the face was still the same; the single oval tracking sensor and the flanged mouth.

“Boys, I’m afraid we have a new dealer.” Chris’ voice was the same modulated tones Zanji’d had over a decade to get accustomed to, but meaner, harsher. “Meet Crucible, Mark Ten.“

As the weapons systems powered up, Zanji dropped down and remembered the first time he’d heard that line.

“Meet Crucible.“

The red metal man stepped through the hole he’d punched in the wall. Zanji’d already slipped his chains and had completed preparing to jump the guard outside the cell when the rules had changed. He cocked his head to the side and looked at the suit, an unholy fusion of Renaissance-era Field Plate, a Victorian Locomotive, and modern-day Fighter planes. Steam hissed from the joints.

“Chris?”

“You know it, Jam-Face.” Zanji had never known if that odd nickname had any racial overtones and had long since stopped caring. “Come on…we don’t have that long before Slovo and his goons come after us. And while I’m practically bulletproof in this thing, you aren’t.“

On their way out, Chris explained what had happened. After the crash, a small-time member of the Hungarian Mafia named Slovo Gulasek had saved their lives. In exchange for hiding them and keeping Chris alive, Gulasek had wanted help with an attempt to create a powered armor suit to compete with the new Russian program that, ironically enough, had been behind the thing that had shot the Delta-Wing down in the first place. Not seeing a lot of options and unable to move his legs after the injury, Chris had agreed.

“Of course I was planning on double-crossing him. Do you know what that idiot Gulasek wanted the suit for? He wanted to take over the world. Moron.“

From a small evil man overreaching himself, a hero was born.

By wearing the armor, Chris could keep pace with the dazzling new people, with their fantastic super-powers and their strange ideas. Crucible kept Chris, and by extension Zanji, in the game.

It would have been simpler, Zanji often thought, if Crucible actually had been just a robot designed to protect Christopher Anvil’s life. Certainly would have saved them both quite a few beatings.

Of course, it only made sense that the threats faced by Crucible would also be on a different scale. The Integral, pinnacle of the decaying Soviet Union’s
powersuit program, was Crucible’s most persistent foe. He matched his blue steel armor against Crucible’s red suit on more than one occasion.

Also lined up to kill him were villains like Northeaster the living winter, the great demon-idol Kan Tsan Tiki, crime lord Stefan Malevelia, Abraham Mallet and his industrial spies and saboteurs. Even Tseri Perrovin himself, the grand old man of Soviet robotics, had felt the need to put on a suit of battle armor and challenge the Crucible who’d bested his Integral so many times. Perrovin’s Molybdenum-alloy suit was no more successful than the rest.

Then came the man who called himself Huang-Ti and proclaimed himself the Emperor of the World. Even now, Zanji thought, the last time he’d seen that maniac haunted him…

“Do you yield, automaton?” The cackling voice was painfully familiar; Zanji hung onto the cliffside and watched as Huang-Ti kept pounding at the Crucible with some alien kind of coherent light unlike anything he’d ever seen…or was it? It looked strangely familiar. “Do you yield at the last to the Emperor of the Living Light?”

“You know what always bugs me, Huang? If I’m a worthless machine, unfit to bear the weight of your vengeance, then…why do you talk so damn much?” Crucible did something, although what it was Zanji couldn’t tell, and the strange light beams Huang-Ti was using suddenly burst into a spectrum around him, highlighting the epaulets and crenelations of the
brand new armor Chris had donned for this final battle. Turning his attention away from the fight for a moment, Zanji climbed up the mountain to where Liam O’Shea was lying, half-pinned under a boulder in the older suit of Crucible armor he’d stolen to confront Huang-Ti in. Hopping over the ledge, Zanji bent his head.

“You okay, Liam?”

“Crushed…my…chest.” Several panting breaths came from the faceplate, and Zanji looked down at the ears coming off of the helmet, one of Chris’ quirky designs that he’d abandoned years ago. Inside it, the former head of security for the Anvil plant on Kill Van Kull sounded like he was asphyxiating. “I guess…Mister Anvil…wasn’t
kidding about…the control interfaces.“

“Nope. The suit’s calibrated for him. Why, Liam?”

“Had…to…try. For Bobby…” Liam’s left side was pinned under the rock, and Zanji didn’t want to try and move it. It was going to take Chris’ fancy
electric muscles for that. Looking down the mountain, he saw that Huang-Ti and Crucible were throwing wild energy blasts at each other.

“Do you feel it, machine? Not one, but two of you miserable playthings come all the way here, to the plains of Leng themselves, to be destroyed!” Huang-Ti’s snarling face made Zanji gasp, but not as much as that last reference. He’d heard it once before…just as the Ion Cannons so much the
calling-cards of the Crucible armor pulverized the rock face next to Huang-Ti’s face, Zanji finally recognized him. But it couldn’t be him now…”Now you taste death, and then there will be nothing left to protect your accursed creator from paying his father’s debt to me!”

The weird light slammed Crucible in the chest, smashing him backwards through the mountainside and half-burying him in stone. Unlike the suit Liam was wearing, however, Chris’ new gear seemed prepared for the impact. Zanji swung the microphone from his earpiece down into position.

“Chris?”

“Teensiest bit busy, Jam-Face. What’s up?“

“Huang-Ti…don’t you recognize him?”

“Course I do…he’s the same lunatic whose been
punting me around for years…“

“No!” Zanji shouted to cut through Chris’ usual bravado. “You aren’t hearing me, and you really weren’t listening to him either. The debt your father
owed him? The last time we saw Tsang…the Lemurian Amulet of the Rainbow?”

“Holy shit.” Chris’ voice became hushed. “No
wonder Liam wanted revenge so bad. He blamed Huang-Ti
for Bobby’s drowning!“

“Come to that, Liam’s going to die if we don’t do
something, slugger.”

“I’m on it. Take cover, Jam-Face.” Zanji barely had time to do just that before the whole mountain shook, as Crucible used some kind of magnetic field to fling the rubble back out onto Huang-Ti. The self-proclaimed Emperor of the Living Light managed to pulverize most of it.

“Is that your best effort, manikin? You waste my time.”

From his vantage point above the fight, Zanji saw Crucible coming out of the rubble first, before even Huang-Ti could. He held his breath in shock and
dismay, expecting Huang-Ti to take the chance to kill Chris right there and then…because he’d taken off his helmet!

“Hello, Doctor Tsang. It’s been a long time. The lost city of the Lemurian Sorcerer Kings, off the coast of Madagascar, right?” Chris smiled, his narrow beard making him look more like his father than he had ever in his life. “You look more demented than ever.”

“I…you…” For once the Emperor of the Living Light, rightful heir to the Lemurian master-magicians, Sovereign of the known world was struck dumb. He stood there, seeing the face of his oldest enemy cast anew, and he didn’t seem to know what was going on. “You…Aeson Anvil, alive. and still so…young?”

“Nope.” Chris’s smile was wicked, a gambler who knew his bluff had been swallowed whole by the other sharps at the table. “I’m not Aeson Anvil. Meet Crucible, Mark Six.” A shuddering burst of vibration from Crucible’s chestplate, and the Multi-Ray blasted Huang-Ti directly where Chris knew the Amulet of the
Rainbow had to be, causing Huang-Ti/Tsang to howl in agony as the crystals in the necklace were shattered. Then, the rock-ledge above them both began to shear away from the resonances unleashed.

“Chris!” Zanji could only stare in horror as the mountain began to fall on the both of them. Hundreds of tons of rock collapsed, and the dust rose up and
obscured the collapse so that there was nothing for Zanji to see. One minute passed, then two. “Chris!”

Then the rocks began to shift. Slowly, so slowly Zanji had time to wonder what could possibly have survived that and to fear the answer, they moved aside until finally, with a tremendous impact, a metal fist forced its way up through the rock. Red and silver, a human form wrapped in armor forced itself up through the hole it had dug for itself, and when Zanji saw the familiar helmet back in place on the head he grunted in relief.

“Hey, Zanji. Give me a second to catch my breath.” He wriggled out of the hole, panting even inside the armor. “I never want to do that again.“

Even as Zanji remembered it, he wondered; what had happened to Huang-Ti? Had he died, or did the Amulet somehow save him? It seemed likely, somehow.
Crucible’s enemies never seemed to stay dead.

Through it all Zanji had been Chris’ confidant, one of the few people in the world who knew that he and Crucible were the same person. When Crucible was one of the founding members of the Justicars, Zanji’d watched from the audience, wondering how his old friend felt standing next to people like Oberon and The Vast; they were, after all, the new breed of gaudy costumed heroes that had pushed out his father’s generation. And all the time, Crucible changed as Chris kept pushing past the edges of technology. Eight new designs in all, each the pinnacle of the armorer’s craft, even that one with the ears.

When Crucible had to fight The Quintesson, Zanji had been one of the few people Chris had trusted with a suit of Crucible armor, and he still remembered the sight of that gargantuan constructs’ foot trying to smash his friend through the street in front of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with the National Guard watching helplessly.

Monsters and saboteurs and Russians with grudges; It had been one hell of a ride. By day Chris led the life of an international playboy, as he’d managed to devise sophisticated linkage technology that allowed him to regain the use of his legs. Women like Countessa Cryptos, Avril O’Hare, and Courtney Cutler, the love of Chris’ life and eventually another enemy in her secret identity as the ESPionage Expert, came and went. If Zanji even tried to remember it all, it would probably be in a full-color spread with thousands of floating heads watching the constant changes in the Crucible armor.

Then came the Suits.

And behind them, Sebastian Angst, the Wild Card.The only person in the world who’d hit upon the perfect way to defeat Crucible; destroy Chris Anvil. Many people hit Crucible in an attempt to kill Chris, but until Angst and his Suits, no one ever tried the inverse. Using the information on Crucible that the
ESPionage Expert provided, Angst devised his colorful minions and fought the Crucible to several standstills.

Meanwhile, Sebastian Angst made absolutely sure that Chris Anvil got all the cocaine he could use. And that was a lot of toot, enough to ensure that Anvil
Industries wasn’t even remotely prepared for the corporate takeover that transformed its president into an addict and turned a once thriving company into Angst International, a name that Zanji still had a hard time believing in.

It had been a long six months since then. Zanji had taken on the role of Crucible for a while, destroyed the Crucible Archive with the various suits of armor and the design lab before Angst could get his hands on it, and tried to carry on as well as to find Chris.

Chris was wandering around the country, his artificial spinal cord failing and his coke habit helping to rapidly kill him. And even when he finally got clean, the spasms caused by his degrading nervous system made it almost impossible for him to get back into the lab. When Zanji finally found him, he was barely capable of walking and was trying to make peace with the world before his inevitable end. Zanji convinced him to finish the trip cross-country, to
come to the old Anvil Industries plant in Oakland, and to make one last stab at stopping Angst before he managed to decipher what few bits of Chris’ notebooks he’d managed to find.The only thing that’d been missing from that drive was a lost gold mine haunted by the lost souls of the Death Valley 49er’s or perhaps a bottomless cavern that led to a land of monsters ruled by a Morlock-like overlord class.

Something tame like that. Like when they were kids.

Zanji looked around the destroyed control room. He’d worn the Mark 9 Crucible suit himself, had felt the enormous power the thing had possessed, and yet had never managed to beat one of the Aces. Now, after ten minutes, all four had gone down before the new Mark 10. It proved one thing; Chris might have fallen, but he’d definitely gotten up again.

“Well, so much for the appetizers.” The carefully modulated voice sounded strange coming from a blue and gold suit of armor; it was as if Crucible and the Molybdenum Man had somehow fused into one. Zanji checked the Ace of Diamonds. The damn thing was a robot.

“Chris, look at this…”

“I noticed. Ironic; I go around in a suit of armor that I tell everyone is a robot, and Angst pretends his robots are people. Did you notice the reaction
time?“

“Uhm…”

“Don’t sweat it. I think they’re controlled by telepresence links.” Crucible pointed to several circuit paths that meant nothing to Zanji as if they
were important. “Looks like it was based on the Mark Seven’s neural feedback system…no wonder they screamed like that. Pilots must have felt like they really were being torn apart. I’m going to go find out, anyway. You hold tight.” Even as Zanji attempted to forestall him, the Crucible leapt out the hole in the facility the four Aces had left behind and roared skywards.

Chris smiled from inside the helmet. God, I’ve missed this. The suit was taking the place of his damaged nervous system and his addled senses were being enhanced by the sensor-web; it was electricity hammered into a lover, metal made flesh, and as always he loved it. In the air above the old plant were some four dozen of the Suits…now that he knew what they were, it was the action of a few moments to shut them down.

He sent out the jamming wave, and they fell from the sky. The new Crucible processed sensory information in an entirely different way, giving his mind an additional set of senses. Besides the five all humans had, Crucible now gave his brain access to 360¯ Radar and Ladar, Targeting laser imaging, ultra/hypersonic hearing, enhanced multi-spectrum vision and the best one of them all, a special magnetic resonance scan. It was that last one that detected the gigantic object flying his way over the empty Liquid Natural Gas tanks.

“Dunfree. Still playing the hero?“

Chris said nothing. Let him think what he wants. Zanji’s probably more deserving anyway. The large black figure was wearing a suit of armor extrapolated from an old sketch of the Mark 9 he’d left in one of his notebooks; it was twelve feet from armored head to armored toe, with the elaborate joints he’d once taken so much pride in designing. It was impressive and probably lethal too, if it was anything like the Mark 9. And he knew, now that he’d seen the Suits up close, who had to be flying it.

“Angst. Decided your robots weren’t going to cut
it?“

“I have to admit, I wasn’t aware that drug-soaked wretch had anything like that in storage out here, but as you can see, the boys back in Chicago managed to design this. I call it the Crux Martial, a little play
on words. How do you like it?“

“I don’t.“

“I didn’t expect you would. Where is the ruined man? I know you saved him from my people in South Dakota…I want him to watch me destroy you with his own work corrupted, to know that I’ve beaten him.” The deep imaging scan told Chris that his original guess was correct; it was just a beefed-up Mark 9.

He knew the Mark 9.

Hell, he’d designed the Mark 9. Angst was a thief, but Chris Anvil was an inventor. Like his father before him.

“You want to know where Anvil is? He’s dead. But Crucible…he’s still here.” The blue and gold armor was suddenly twenty figures floating in the air, and Crucible shot forward while Angst tried to sort them out. Even as the Mark 9’s reliable radar picked out the solid object, a pulsating electrical arc blew out the main sensor grid by targeting the triangular shield-shaped projector mounted in the upper chestplate. Then the enhanced Ion Cannon, the
trademark of the Crucible armor, blew the now-blinded Angst out of the air and into the rusted LNG tanks. Chris angled himself so that the sunlight would be
coming from directly behind him and flew down after the overlarge armored suit, easily dodging Angst’s return fire.

“Where are you!?“

Chris said nothing. Instead, he engaged the new X-Ray Laser and melted the joints of the Crux Martial suit where it stood, locking the legs in place.

Then he flew up to it and punched its helmet off.

Angst’s sweating face stared up at him. Chris thought, and the faceplate of the Crucible slid open. “Anvil? But I broke you?”

“Funny thing about breaking people…sometimes, they get fixed. Forged anew, if you’ll forgive me the joke. You underestimated Zanji, even when you overestimated me.” Chris smiled and dropped the faceplate.

“Indeed.” Angst suddenly smiled. “Time to end it.”

Angst triggered the Ion Cannons on his armor. Chris could hear the familiar whine of the energy collectors setting to overload, could almost taste the ions creating ozone in the confined air of the tank. At this range, Angst knew he couldn’t miss. Chris diverted all of his armor’s power to the reinforcement force field that helped keep the person inside the armor from being pulped by outside impacts. Because there was something Angst’s engineers apparently didn’t tell him about the Mark 9’s Ion Cannons.

Or maybe they did.

From outside the tank, all anyone could see or hear was a bright blue flash of light and a sound of thunder. Standing in the hole where the superforge had
been, Zanji Dunfree didn’t know what had just happened, and he found himself waiting to see who came out.

When it was the blue and gold armor, he exhaled. It was slow and even and very, very tired. At least I don’t have to wear the damn thing anymore.

“Chris?” Zanji spoke into a scavenged headset mike set to the old Crucible frequency. “Are you all right?”

“I’m alive, anyway. And that’s worth something, isn’t it?” The armor landed in the hole, letting Zanji see his own face reflected in the faceplate. “Thanks to you.“

“Hey…like I said, you’re the hero. I just stick around to keep you in one piece.” Together they stood and watched the fire from inside the split tank. “So,
are we done, Chris?”

“I can’t quit now, Zanji.” Chris’ faceplate popped back up. He was sweating, and his upper lip was split, probably from the force of the explosion in the tank. “I almost did, I admit it. But now I can’t. Who knows what Angst did with that little bit of my work? Who knows what his company…the company my father built…is doing now? No. It can’t end like this, and it won’t. I won’t let it.”

“All right, then.” Zanji put his hand up on the armored epaulet covering Crucible’s shoulder joint. “If that’s the way it is, I’m with you.”

Chris exhaled.

“Thank Christ for that. I was scared shitless you’d want out…”

“And miss the adventure? My dad would kick my ass.” Zanji shouldered his rifle. “C’mon, tin shorts, let’s get going. We’ve got a long way to Chicago. And maybe we can do some exploring on the way.”

“Sure. There’s a series of interconnected caves in Death Valley my dad always thought might have some connection to the El Dorado legend.” The faceplate slid down into place. “I’ll drive, Jam-Face.“

Zanji blanched as Crucible’s jets whirred on-line. It was too late to get out of it at that point, however.

Something I wrote a while ago…

October 26, 2003 at 8:32 pm (Uncategorized)

I feel bad that I haven’t posted anything new in a while, so here’s something. It’s a story I wrote back in the day…sort of Johnny Quest meets Iron Man.

Zanji Dunfree stood near the entrance with the assault rifle at the ready, not expecting it to do any good at all if the Suits found them. His dark hair and naturally dark skin were tinged with yellow and red lights coming from any one of the dozens of computer consoles surrounding him, readouts he didn’t understand and didn’t pretend to.

“Chris…hurry it up!”

“Doing my best.” The voice was tinny and hyper-distorted, feeding into the control room from the superforge in the vast complex just beyond the windows; in that room hung the atrophied body of Zanji’s oldest friend, in a harness of
recently-scavenged wires that kept his nervous system from collapsing. Zanji’s twenty-year shame flooded him again; he could see the plane on fire again, feel the yoke twisting in his sweat-slick hands, and then turning to shout a warning to Chris…only to see a shard of metal jabbing out through the grey and blue silk of Chris’ shirt, and a bloody smile on his face like his favorite saint, the martyr Sebastian who’d been his confirmation choice.

It’s okay, Jam-face…I don’t feel a thing.

Read the rest of this entry »