Supers rise guardians bo.., p.1
Super's Rise: Guardians: Book One, page 1
Supers’ Rise
Guardians: Book One
Author: D. L. Harrison
Copyright 2024. This is a work of fiction. Names, Characters, Places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Epilogue
Afterword:
About the Author
Other books by D. L. Harrison:
Book Description
Prologue
President May Parsons was slightly irritated as the secret service all but manhandled her to the elevator that led to the underground bunker. She wasn’t quite thrown in, but it was close, and if not for the secretary of state, Brian Caruthers, and the head of the joint chiefs, General Maxwell Bennington lightly grabbing her arms to steady her, she’d have likely tripped and face planted against the back elevator wall.
She turned and glared at them as the doors closed, and the elevator started going down.
“What the hell is going on Maxwell?”
As she thought it better be World War Three or she’d skin those agents alive, all while thinking it sure as hell better not be World War Three.
A few minutes ago, she’d been meeting with England’s ambassador discussing a sensitive matter, when she’d been pulled out of the room and frog marched to the elevator.
Maxwell said, “Our observation satellites picked up something alarming. A large ship half the size of Manhattan appeared out of nowhere, next to the moon, and it’s currently accelerating toward the Earth far faster than it has a right to. We also can’t identify the method of propulsion, as far as we can tell it doesn’t have engines for thrust.”
She reluctantly decided she wouldn’t fire those secret service agents, but she would have a firm word with them, later. She wouldn’t argue about their unilateral decision to put her in the bunker, but decorum was important as well, not to mention the dignity of the office of the President of the United States, the leader of the free world.
“Out of nowhere, a ship that big got to the moon and no one saw it sooner?”
Maxwell said, “Yes, maam. Out of nowhere, literally. Not there one second, and there the next. No incoming track. Either it was cloaked, or it arrived instantly by a method unknown to us.”
She sighed, she really should’ve had a second coffee.
“Options?”
The elevator door opened, and they moved through the thick steel door that closed behind them, and into the war room, which had the approaching ship on the large main screen against the far wall. She took a seat while her eyes were glued to that screen.
The ship was… well, it was ugly. A uniform and depressing dark gray, in the shape of a bug. It had six protruding and curved arms underneath a bulbous and gigantic main section, and a smaller bulbous section in the front connected by a thin segment, which if the general had been right, she estimated at almost a quarter mile in diameter.
It was nothing that a human would ever design, much less build.
Her first thought, which was absurd, was to get Orkin on the phone.
Maxwell said, “Realistically we should wait and see what its intentions are first, but we should increase to Defcon two and get the military on high alert.”
Brian replied, “We should also fuel the missiles capable of reaching orbit.”
Maxwell nodded in agreement, “Reasonable precautions, if they wind up being aggressive invaders.”
The president nodded, “Do it,” as the huge ship smoothly slid into orbit at around two hundred kilometers up.
Then the president heard a loud voice in her head, and the way Brian and Maxwell held their hands over their ears, she knew she wasn’t the only one hearing it. She would only find out later, that every man, woman, and child on the face of the Earth had heard it in their minds. Off it as well, the Earth that is. The scientists on the space station had heard it as well.
At first it was absolute gibberish, a language she’d never heard before, much less one she could translate, then it said in English, “People of Earth. Do not trust the Liq’at or the Vrax. You must prepare for their coming. Prepare for war.”
Then to her absolute shock, the ship exploded. The satellite that had been tracking it went offline, as the ship literally became an expanding sun, as had several other satellites currently over the mid-Atlantic. A small sun, that would linger for days before burning out.
She blew out a breath, “Suggestions?”
Brian said, “Get a clean set of underclothes?”
She snorted, “No joke.”
General Bennington said, “Give us some time to analyze it. For some reason, I trust what was said. More will follow, two alien races, and neither are our friends.”
She bit her lip, “I agree, the telepathic contact, I think I’d have known if he was lying. Of course, that feeling and belief could’ve been impressed upon us telepathically, so take it with a grain of salt.”
He replied, “Yes, maam.”
The general’s phone rang, and he picked it up. He listened for a moment, then hung up, and moved to the console controls for the screen.
He brought up two of their spy satellites in a side by side view, which were still functional and had been aimed toward the alien ship. After a moment he paused the replay on both, side by side screens, then zoomed in on two different edges of the explosion.
In one, there was a small beetle looking ship, in the other there was a humanoid figure glowing brightly.
Bennington said, “NORAD said both the ship, or maybe a life pod, and the humanoid figure, made for the surface directly. They lost track of both.”
The president shook her head, “But that was a person. A human person.”
Brian said, “Maybe they’re wearing a really advanced space suit, that can land on a planet during emergencies? Like the master chief in Halo.”
They both looked at him.
He cleared his throat, “A video game, maam.”
She shook her head, “Well, I suppose science fiction is our best data right now. Alright, I want that ship and that person found. I also want linguistic experts to try and figure out what the alien speech was before he miraculously switched to English. I’m also going back to my office.”
Of course, it wasn’t a suit on the person at all, and it would be days later before that seeming impossibility became clear to her.
The general asked, “Is that a good idea?”
She shrugged, “The alien warned us to prepare for war, and the coming of two untrustworthy alien races. Well, if we only have thirty minutes, we’re screwed, so let’s assume that being made a reasonable request, and we have some time. That means my office is safe enough, and I need to address the nation before the coming riots get out of control, and I’d like to do so in the oval office. Not to mention getting in touch with our allies.”
Brian got a text, and frowned, “One of our experts already translated it, since it was a human language. Just… an ancient one. It also just adds questions, and doesn’t clarify a thing,” he handed the phone to the president.
She read the text.
The gibberish was him saying, “I’m sorry, but you brought this upon yourselves. I will not allow such a horror to be forced upon this world.”
Brian was right, that just prompted more questions they couldn’t answer.
As for the language itself, it was of all things, Proto-Mayan, a language not spoken in five thousand years, though several modern Mayan dialects existed and were in use to this day.
Chapter One
The college bar was packed that Monday night, more so than any night in her remembrance, including the weekends. It’d gotten so bad campus security had been called in to manage the door, so occupancy wasn’t violated. She’d also called in the other two bartenders who usually only worked on the weekends. She was fairly sure everyone on the campus had come out to get drunk that night.
It’d been a week since the mental voice heard across the world, which had sparked riots across the world. Businesses and schools had basically shut down for a whole week of craziness, and it was the first day her college had reopened, so tonight’s craziness was definitely related. Everyone was celebrating the return to college and normalcy, and likely that nothing horrible had happened yet.
Samantha Cross was a part time bartender, working her way through school. Cute enough that it was worth dealing with all the bad flirting from drunk college guys, for enough tip money to pay tuition as well as add some spending money to her pocket. She had curly golden blonde hair down to her shoulder blades, blue eyes, and a cute heart shaped face if not one that was classically beautiful. She was lithely athletic at five foot seven, except her breasts which were more proportional to her height than the rest of her gentler curves.
She was also at wits end, she’d been going non-
So, she told herself to suck it up, and also looked forward to receiving the biggest pile of tips she’d ever accumulated in a single night. It was sparse comfort in the moment, but it would pay off at the end of the night, she was sure. Even sharing those tips with two other bartenders and two servers.
She’d also never been one to shrink from a challenge. Her energy seemed to be bolstered by the excitement of the crowd as well, and she’d always been a positive person in the main, truly enjoying her friends’ successes as much as she enjoyed getting ahead on her own. She wouldn’t describe herself as a perky person, but she definitely enjoyed life for the most part and enjoyed supporting others.
A win-win mentality.
Still, outside of being a little hungry and tired of the grind, she felt remarkably well. She didn’t really dwell on it, but she was surprised her feet and body weren’t getting sore at her breakneck speed as she assembled drinks one after the other without pause or break, doing her best to match the rhythm of the music. A bit of fun she used often to motivate herself, putting on a bit of a show attracted both customers and bigger tips. It also made it easier to maintain her genuine smile and good mood.
She also wasn’t sweating, at all. An oddity she dismissed in the crush of business.
She was twenty-two and a senior, so had only been working here a little over a year, during which time she’d seen two minor scuffles. She was a year behind because she’d taken a year break after high school. Not to travel the world, but to work hard to build a nest egg, because her parents couldn’t afford to send her to college.
Bar fights weren’t really a thing she’d ever had to deal with, since it was a good way to get expelled from the university most could control themselves with those dire consequences over their heads. If they really wanted to fight, most took it off campus.
Which was why, at ten after ten, the enraged scream and sound of breaking furniture totally broke her rhythm, and she froze as she looked over. What was even more shocking was who it was. Jack Rhodes. She recognized him because he was a regular, a bit of a geek, but a handsome enough one for the type.
Jack seemed to have ripped the table top off the thick central bar, as well as the flat three legged bottom part, and he was now swinging the heavy metal central leg and base of the table like it weighed nothing, as he advanced on Stephan Johnson, the school’s handsome and talented, if a bit arrogant, football player. He was one of the receivers, and one of the top scorers in the college league.
The whole bar was looking at Jack, and not just because he was swinging a table pole and bottom like it weighted nothing, it was that his eyes were glowing. And not just with insanity, his eyes were actually glowing, putting off a swirling brownish red light.
Stephan tried to duck around the swing and close, but he was far slower than the eye glowing Jack.
Jack’s earlier test swings had been deceptively slow, because it was barely a silver blur when he slammed the metal bar into Stephan. The sound of Stephan’s arm shattering, as the bar blew through it and hit Stephan’s torso, was sickening. Stephen went flying across the room, and he would’ve hit the far wall, if several other students hadn’t been in the way of his trajectory.
Even if Stephan was alive, which Samantha thought unlikely, the man’s football career was over.
She was in shock, as she watched two of Stephan’s buddies try to take down Jack, using the stools they’d been sitting on.
Jack blocked the hit coming in from the front, stopped it cold with the metal table leg. The strike from the back he didn’t see coming. The chair slammed into his upper back, and it broke into splinters.
But… Jack hadn’t even moved an inch, and he looked more annoyed than in pain by it. Which, was just one more sense of impossibility in the whole thing.
Jack pushed the chair to the side, and kicked the guy in front of him in the chest, sending him flying across the room as well. She didn’t know his name.
The shock was turning to anger. Impotent anger, as there was nothing she could do to help. She was limber, athletic, but not a fighter, much less against a guy that seemed impossibly strong and tough. She was also still confused, because glowing eyes, super strength, and shrugging off bar stool hits only happened in the comic books.
Plus, she was all the way across the room and behind the bar. She just, wished she could help, as her whole being winced as Jack wound up and spun around, the metal bar leading, heading right toward the head of the one that had blindsided him.
Which was too much. It was all too much of course, but she could understand the young geek must’ve been seriously wronged by the school’s arrogant football star, but that young man was about to cross over into being a murderer in retaliation for taking a hit he’d barely noticed.
She knew if that strike connected, it would shatter the young man’s skull, if not rip his head right off his body. The swing was impossibly fast, like the first, except she seemed to track it easily, and she seemed to have all the time in the world to watch it. Like it was in slow motion, and the rest of the room was positively glacial in appearance, like Jack was the only one moving.
Samantha really wanted to help, but it was a shock when from one short moment to the next she was standing between that deadly swinging metal pole, and the drunk jock that it was swinging for. She didn’t remember moving across the room, or even taking a single step. She was just there.
She’d wanted to help, but she was also at a loss at what to do next, since she hadn’t planned the first part either and didn’t understand it, and she wondered if she was about to die as she lifted her arm to protect her own head.
An arm, that to her surprise, was sheathed in white light. The same bright white light that was burning in her eyes.
The bar struck, though she didn’t feel it. When it hit the light, it… well it was gone. The part that hit her arm anyway, it shaved off about a foot of the end of the metal bar.
“Stop!” she yelled, hoping he wouldn’t hit a girl. Umm, again, but she doubted he’d even registered her sudden presence during that swing.
The used to be shy yet cute geek growled at her like an animal, and he tried again with a backswing. So much for not hitting a woman.
Her arm moved much faster, as with a surge of annoyance, she grabbed the bar with her left hand and the rest of it disintegrated, even as she struck Jack in the chest with her other hand, in a rather clumsy palm strike.
It’d been reflex, fortunately Jack didn’t disintegrate, apparently it only did that to things she didn’t want to exist anymore. There was however, a bright explosion of white light where her palm hit his chest, adding a lot more force to the hit than she was capable of with muscle alone.
Jack definitely noticed that, as his chest deformed in a circle wave away from the point of impact, and it sent him flying across the room, through the brick wall, and tumbling helplessly on the ground for about fifty yards through the quad until his forward movement arrested abruptly against a tree.
She said calmly, in the very quiet room save for Stephan’s whimpers of pain, “Someone call an ambulance for Stephan.”
The crowd melted out of her way, several reaching for cell phones, as she headed for the hole in the wall, which made her blush. She was in shock, but also feeling a little confident, if horrified. What was she, how had she done any of that?
Still, Jack was incredibly strong, fast, and tough, and she’d just put him down and out for the count without even really trying. That there were freaks out there with powers was terrifying, that she just might be one of the more powerful freaks, countered that new fear.
She’d be surprised to find out later, that similar scenes were playing out all over the world that night. That about one of every ten thousand humans worldwide were suddenly displaying impossible abilities. About eight hundred thousand humans with super abilities worldwide.
