"I got here as soon as I could," Professor Rosenbaum said above the din of the crowd. "What's the situation?"
"Not too good," an FBI agent replied. "He looks like he's caught in some kind of tractor beam, or something, that keeps him from moving."
"I thought those things were only around in space operas," the cryptographer mumbled to himself as he pulled a 12-centimeter disk from his car. He fished in his back pocket, and took out a folded piece of yellow note paper.
"What is that?" asked the FBI man.
"That," the cryptographer replied, opening the piece of paper, "Is the access code to this thing." He began punching buttons on the grid of the disk according to the paper's specifications. "I finally figured out how this energy gun works. Only problem is that if it hasn't been used for more than about 38 hours, or if it changes owners, the access code has to be re-entered."
He tapped the last key with a gallant finger. "There. The energy bolt generator is armed and operable."
I can't move, Jeff thought. I. Can't. Move. Though he pulled with his every muscle, he couldn't budge an inch. Then he saw what was turning in his direction and momentarily forgot to strain. A huge searchlight-shaped something on the ship's hull, three times as big as the spotlight-shaped thing immobilizing him, rotated until he was looking straight into it. Jeff tried to swallow, but that damn green beam petrifying him made even that nearly impossible.
He could guess what would happen next, and his courage left him. Energies would converge at the spotlight's focus, bounce off the parabolic dish, and leap right at him with hundreds of times the power of the ship's main-battery turrets. His armor would cave in, and his body would instantly fry. He'd be dead, and soon after, so would the whole human race. And none of this would have happened had he not found the fallen alien that fateful night a few months ago.
The High Mandarin smirked in his own alien way. At last, the armored warrior — or at least his human counterpart — would be destroyed beyond any doubt, and that hated homeworld energy-field generator would probably go with him. He looked casually at his private compu-display to check on how well the charging process was going for the Devastator. The display registered a time equivalent to ten seconds before it would be fully charged and ready to fire. He began to count down with the display, waiting in anticipation for the moment when he would shout, "Fire!"
The cryptologist lowered his binoculars, and made his decision. He had to do something to help the man in yellow, even if it was only distracting the 27 Empire for a few seconds. Determinedly, he raised the disk with its flat side facing the bottom of the ship, aimed for the spotlight that was holding Tracer still, and put his thumb over the right-hand button on the disk's top. "This one's for you, Jeff Boeing," he said to himself, and pressed the button.
A white-hot ball of energy sprang from the front of the disk and thundered into the craft's underside. He'd missed the green beam generator by only meters.
"What!?!" yelled the High Mandarin when the report reached him a second later. "Who's doing this? Who has a homeworld energy gun?"
Each second the disk fired another bolt, and each time the shots impacted nearer and nearer to the suspension-beam projector. Finally, on the fifth shot, the bolt hit its mark, and the green projector flew apart in a shower of sparks. Tracer seized the opportunity, shot straight up, and cheered, "I'm free!"
He looked down to where his salvation had originated. There was the unmistakable form of Professor Rosenbaum wielding the disk like a weapon he'd known about for years. Jeff flipped his thumb up on his left fist in a modern salute.
"Nooooooo!" screamed the High Mandarin. His voice was near agony. "Get the Devastator on whoever did that! Wipe out every trace of that . . . primitive's . . . existence!"
The searchlight-shaped Devastator traversed to face its new target, still fully charged and ready to fire. The professor, now panicking, tried to take aim at the weapon, but was cut short. A meter-and-a-half wide shaft of blinding blue light bridged the gap between the Devastator and the ground, enveloping the cryptographer and the FBI agent standing next to him in an opaque cloak of energy.
For three endless seconds, Jeff stared open-mouthed at the scene below; then the Devastator shut off. He needed only a fraction of an instant to see the destruction. He shut his eyes and gritted his teeth in anguish. Nothing remained within the blue shaft's area of effect, and the street's asphalt within that radius was a melted red-hot puddle.
Tracer maintained his rationality through his confused rage, but just barely. He hardly knew Professor Rosenbaum, yet the professor had just sacrificed his own life for him. His belly cringed in emotional pain. Seething, he zoomed up to the searchlight that had killed the cryptographer, and punched it with not only the full energy of his armor field, but with every dram of strength in both his fists as well. In a violent flash of yellow, the Devastator turned to dust.
And when that was done, he began punching out the armor around the Devastator's housing, making wide dents in the ship's surface. Yes, killing was wrong. Jeff knew that. The thought of killing another man to avenge the death of someone he knew would have made him sick to the solar plexis. But these . . . these sub-living, spiteful, murderous imperial aliens . . . No. Mercy.
But inside the motionless, battle-damaged craft, the High Mandarin felt the same way about Tracer.
"In this thick nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere our main batteries can't even penetrate his armor," the High Mandarin growled. "Our Devastator and our tractor beam are destroyed."
"Well," suggested the second-in-command, "There's always the —"
"I know," the High Mandarin cut him off. "The slicers. The latest and most effective anti-armored-warrior weapons yet devised. We only use them in desperate situations when surrounded by armored warriors. Against one? Never!"
His compu-display lit up with the updated damage report. The numbers didn't look good.
"Oh, all right," the High Mandarin acquiesced. "Switch on the two forward slicer beams. Take him out with whichever."
Several nods came from the high-ranking weapons officers in the emperor's dimly lit chamber. The computer lights against the dark walls hid their features, but the nods were easily seen.
"Sir," the second-in-command lowered his voice, "There are also reports of . . . unrest coming from some decks. The crew has found out that this isn't a homeworld armored warrior, and some of them are upset that you're not calling off the purge. They consider it a waste of the local species. A few are even chanting 'Enslavement, not erasure!'."
"Oh, for crying out loud!" the High Mandarin cursed. "Just deal with them, too." He took a deep breath, and started reminiscing. "Ah, for the battles when we gunned them down with our main batteries. A few blasts in the right places, and their armor generators would fall — or they would. Now, we have to use the slicer beams against a single, agile local, just because it happened to get ahold of a later model of armor. I hope the Emperor won't look down on this, considering how much I've botched it already."
Tracer twisted out of the Devastator's housing in a small arc, his rage relieved. Now, he could plot how to destroy this flagship. Yet while he plotted, something nagged at him, trying to warn him that something was wrong. The ship's main battery had been firing at him constantly during the battle, but now the guns had stopped, and the ship had taken on a deadly silence.
Tracer caught a motion on the ship's surface, and jumped to the left just in time to avoid a white plane of energy aimed at him. Another similar beam followed the first, coming from the far side of the ship; Tracer had to curl clockwise around this one to avoid it.
It was only out of arrogance and overconfidence that he made his next move. Believing his armor to be as invincible against these planes of energy as it had been against the main guns, he came about and flew head-long toward the source of the beam. As he approached, the source resolved into a long rectangular box with a flat nozzle on the front, housed in a setting similar to the main turrets'. Just as he came up to deliver the disabling blow, the weapon fired again, and its beam intersected his left side before he could evade it.
He fell from the air, doubled over in pain. His left hand passed through both layers of energy-armor and pressed hard against his injured waist. Slowly, he managed to straighten out and come to a hovering stop, his will for survival outweighing the pain in his side. For the first time ever, he was genuinely wounded while in his Tracer armor. He looked up to the adamant monolith once more, seeing its new weapon in a new light.
The weapon itself wasn't all that powerful. It was deadly because it was designed specifically to cut through an armored warrior's energy field. It simply matched the field's energy, convincing the armor to ignore it just like it let his own hands pass though. Then the beam went right on through to injure his side.
He scanned the craft with a keen eye, looking for more possible origin points for these armor-penetrating weapons. He knew there were at least two, but from this distance he couldn't discern any more. There were so many tiny items protruding from the hull. The only way he'd be safe would be to take out all of them. And even if he did, there was no guarantee that any of these hardpoints were responsible for the city-killing effect that had taken out Barstow. That might come out of some intertal bay, or be generated deep beneath all that metal armor. They could still unleash it on L.A. at any moment. What to do? Did this flying brick even have any weak points? All he could see was a myriad of unremarkable housings, the place where the Devastator and tractor beam used to be, the first dent he had made when he rammed into the ship, and the dim blue-white glow of the engines.
The . . . engines? Of course! Why hadn't it occurred to him sooner? The engines were the sole places on the craft that couldn't be covered with indestructible armor. Sure, they weren't rockets in the conventional sense — they didn't expel reaction mass, right? — but each of them still had some kind of aperature in the middle. If he could fly into the ship through one of these aperatures . . . and maybe make the engines explode . . .
He made up his mind. He looked over at the blue-white glow that was his target, and said to himself, "Energy armor, I hope you can hold out against what I'm gonna put you through."
He sped off.
A single slicer beam tried to hit him, but its tracking just couldn't match his flying dance moves.
"There are rumors of mutiny, sir," the second-in-command had been telling the High Mandarin. "The protestors within the crew aren't calming down. They really don't like the idea of us committing genocide for no reason."
The High Mandarin held up his third hand to silence his second-in-command, and pointed alarmingly at one of his displays with his fourth hand. "He's going for the engines!" he shouted. He bit the fourth finger of his fifth hand for a fraction of a second, then said, "That's just where we can get him. Our rear slicers have twice the power of either of our forward ones. Weapons officer, fire the rear slicer beams!"
"Yes sir!" replied the weapons officer at his computer terminal. He leaned over the input board, examined the display above it, and was about to enter the command to fire when he was knocked out by a makeshift club.
"No!" came the lower-pitched shout from the female mutineer who'd hit him. She and several others had breached the bridge. "Stop charging the city killer! You know that isn't a homeworlder, you know the locals can't be a threat, so stop trying to wipe them out!"
The mutineers started chanting "Enslavement, not erasure! Enslavement, not erasure!".
"Are you suicidal?!" the second-in-command bellowed as he shoved her away from the unconscious weapons officer. "That console's not the city killer controls, it's for the slicers!"
The High Mandarin pulled out a gun from his belt. The lethal kind of gun. He pointed it directly at the mutineering female who'd knocked out his weapons officer. "I am the will of the Emperor. Disobedience is death!"
There was the crack of a fired shot. But the mutineer didn't fall. Instead, the High Mandarin collapsed with a hole through his head. The second-in-command had fired a gun of his own.
The second-in-command had just become the first-in-command. He pointed at an officer in front of another console. "Shut down the city killer," he ordered. Then as quickly as any member of his lethargic species could manage, he holstered his gun and pulled the unconscious weapons officer off the rear slicer controls. Now he could see the display, and it made him panic. The armored local was closing in on the engines, and approaching the edge of the rear slicers' firing arcs. He typed in the aiming command with shaking tendrils, and without breaking stride, entered the well-remembered command to fire the weapons. But by then the delay was too great. There was nothing to stop Tracer from reaching the engines now.
Straining to see through the electric-blue glare, his senses gripped by the stench of ozone, Tracer could just make out the three huge nozzles that directed the ship's reactionless thrust. Each was the same size and circular. He picked the center engine to enter, since that would probably have the most devastating effect on the whole ship.
He plunged into the ionic inferno.
The flowing patterns of light on his armor gave way to hundreds of sparklike flashes. The alien armor was under massive stress from all sides. Did his protective energy curtain have a breaking point? All he could do was hope that the alien engineers who'd built his chestbox had thought of such a scenario. But the ravening forces outside were increasing. . . .
The sea of onlookers quickly realized what might happen, and desperately tried to clear the area beneath the spacecraft. They feared for their lives should Tracer succeed before they could get far enough away, but in the backs of their minds they also feared for what would happen if Tracer failed. If this trick didn't work, humanity would most likely be doomed.
Agonizing seconds passed, and then the once-motionless ship started to shake. Whatever Tracer was doing in there, it was working. The glow of the engines rapidly grew dimmer as tiny, imperceptible faults began to emerge in the armor plating.
An awful, groaning crack rent the air, and then the enormous hovering vehicle heaved and erupted. With its last breath, it threw thousands upon thousands of tonnes of scrap metal outward in all directions. The people below cowered from the rain of space ship parts, most of which glowed an incandescent red; but the pieces had held together enough that there were few of them, and only bare concrete streets and a couple of parked cars ended up smashed.
As the explosion subsided, the smoke and the light lingered, along with everyone's last remaining fear. Was this finally Tracer's last battle? Could his energy armor deflect the full power of the explosion?
But as the scene resolved, the outcome was plain for anyone to see. There was no mistaking the yellow, humanoid form descending from where the ship used to be, fists raised in triumph. Since he caused the explosion, he had been at its very center — the eye of the storm. What little explosive force had pummeled him, his armor had absorbed. He had survived.
The crowd cheered as loudly as before, only now it was the whole world that was cheering and not just Las Vegas. They were cheering for Tracer, not Jeff Boeing, of course; but that didn't bother him as much right now. Thoughts of the 27 Empire bothered him more. But he turned it over in his mind, and grew optimistic. When the rest of the empire received word of what had happened — if the ship had managed to transmit any kind of message at all — most likely they'd realize their error in attacking the human race. He couldn't fathom the mind of a space alien, but even they might judge their late High Mandarin as insane. The High Mandarin must have known that the armored warrior they were fighting was a human and not one of them, yet the attack on humanity continued. With their interstellar communications limited to light speed, the 27 Empire wouldn't be back for a long time, and maybe by then it would have simply fallen apart.
As he descended close enough to see and hear the crowd, a general of the Air Force pulled up in his staff car and got out, accompanied by a young lieutenant. The general meant to congratulate him, but Tracer had another thing in mind. He flew up to the two of them, and said, "Sorry I have to save the world and run, but I have to go find a sunset to fly off into."
And with that, he lazily drifted away into the air.
The general gave a quick salute in his direction and said, "There goes a fine American."
But Tracer heard that remark, even over the din of cheers. He doubled back and ground to a halt less than a meter from the general.
"I am not your 'Fine American.'" Tracer's eyes were steel. "I belong to humanity first. No nationality can trump that. This country is a good one — the best in the world, in fact — but it's far from perfect. Or else . . . why would I be here?"
Once more, the glowing yellow figure turned and left. In the background, the lieutenant turned to his general, shrugged, and said, "There goes a fine human being."
Tracer heard this, too, and smiled. That would do. He felt a warm feeling in his stomach as he gained altitude. What he'd just told the general, that grand declaration of humanity — that was Jeff Boeing, all the way.