A Long Time Ago....

A Long Time Ago

In a Galaxy far Far Away...

Or, to be honest, In the Milky Way

in the great United States of America, 

At the Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum,

in Colorado, a new fan event was created in the year of 1999.

It was called:

STAR WARS CELEBRATION

This weekend, the VI iteration of the event (That's SIXTH for those of you that suck at Roman Numerals) was held in Orlando, the second consecutive time that city, and the Orange County Convention Center, have hosted the event.

Once again, I was working at the event, but, due to having just started a new job, was only able to be there on the last day of the Convention, yesterday. (For a refresher on my adventures at CV in 2010 click)

I was working for Official Pix once again, and this time around, I got to spend my morning with Christopher Malcolm, whom Star Wars fans and fanatics will remember as Zev Senesca, Rogue Two, from "The Empire Strikes Back", and his wife.  Just an amazing guy to sit there and talk with.  

In the autograph hall, he was sandwiched in between Jake Lloyd (Little Anakin) and Daniel Logan (Little Boba), so the morning was not without excitement, since Warwick Davis came over on his Segway to photobomb Logon on one occasion, and Luke himself, Red Five, Mark Hamill, came over to talk to Chris for a few minutes.  And wherever Mark goes, the crowd follows.

Which begs a question of the Con organizers and the official photo company, Froggy's Photos.  Since you had Mark, Christopher, Garrick Hagon (Biggs Darklighter in Star Wars), and John Morton (Dack Ralter in ESB), all there, wouldn't you think it would make sense to do a Rogue Squadron Photo Op?  I'd steal Geoff's helmet and pay good money to be in that shot!

SPEAKING of Geoff, he was a large part of CVI for me, even though he wasn't able to be there, most of my twitter feed was filled with the exploits of his mini-doppelganger, TS-5180.

A bit of back story here.  Geoff and I have been friends since we were in HS, and he is a member of the 501st who has been known to troop in Snowtrooper  armor (such as below, at the Strategic Air and Space Museum in Nebraska.  (Credit to Dan Naber for the photo)

Unfortunately, he was not able to attend this year's Celebration, although he had been planning on it for the last 2 years.  So, being a Star Wars fan and collector myself, and having a Snowtrooper action figure, I brought that along to represent the real-life TS-5180, and photographed him around the con as well, giving him, basically, the run of my twitter coverage during the event.   While there, mini-TS-5180 managed to meet a little celebrity of his own, Lego Slave Leia, who has become something of an internet icon due to her owner taking her on exploits all over the country and photographing her there.

Admittedly, I borrowed the idea from that for the day, but it's ok, Lego Leia is owned by my friend Carie, and it didn't seem to annoy her too much.
Although I enjoyed my time at CVI, I'm not sure if holding it in the same place two times in a row was the best idea, as a few things seemed to be stale to me.  For instance, most of the large sets and props were the same as for CV in 2010, like this AT-AT you may remember from those photos.  THIS shot is from yesterday, but the big guy was in the exact spot as two years ago.

 As was the Death Star

 The Endor Bunker and Speeder Bike were in a different location from last time, but were exactly the same ones.

Same story for both Jabba's Throne Room and the Snowspeeder
 
Also, for me, there didn't seem to be as many people dressing up this time around, and, for the most part, the ones that were weren't of nearly as good a quality as I've seen before.  So much so that I didn't bother taking too many shots of costumed people (I mean, I saw too many Slave LEONs (guys dressed in metal bikinis) A chubby Tomb Raider, countless Indiana Joneses, and even a couple Anime and My Little Pony people..shudder), with the exception of this Aurra-esque Bounty Hunter (sue me, I liked looking at her)

 Chef Vader, who WAS there in 2010 but I never got a chance to run into him

 this Chewbacca (there was only one other, and I think he had the Wal-Mart of Wookie suits) with Boushh

and, of course, the official 501st Stormtroopers. (One of whom was practicing his poses, then had Carie let him kiss her in a shot you've all seen on Dune Sea Times, Facebook, or Twitter, where DST AND the 501st have posted it.  So I won't :P...Unless Carie tells me to, lol

He saw me sneak around to his left to take some photos and decided to shoot ME!!

Gotta love those 501st guys!

Part of the lack of costumes might well be attributable to a combination of factors.  One, I was only there Sunday this year, last time I was there the whole event and got to see more.  Two, Florida is in the middle of our hurricane season (not the football team, dimwit), and fear of a storm named Isaac was keeping a few more people at home than the last time, I would imagine.

Now, that's not to say there weren't parts of it I LOVED.  Hell, I loved just being there, let's get that out of the way at the start. I love the kinds of people I work with and run into there, whether it be Kent, Matt, and Terry from Official Pix at CV (and back again for CVI as well), costumers like the 501st boys and girls, many of the guests of the event (I've got a short list of the ones I didn't like), to the comic book, poster, tattoo, and book artists there, as well as those robot racing geeks from the Builder's Club.  I also run into friends from before there (Like Carie, for instance, wearing both her Geek and Reporter hats at the event) and meet new ones as well.

Also this year, they had a Fan Cars section, where I finally came face to face with the H-Wing, ObiShawn's Del Sol that I've been reading about since around 2003 or so, as well as her replacement, his newer Nissan 350Z. 

This little toy would have been useful on Tatooine....

Like trucks?  Here's a Ford F-150 Raptor SVT Empire Edition

The original H-Wing

The NEW H-Wing.  I think he might be calling this the N-Wing 9Hionda Del Sol was H-Wing, Nissan Z350 N-Wing...makes sense to me.)

An other thing that was done well were the new set pieces, like this Hoth Medical Center, complete with walk-in Bacta tank and med droids.

 

The 501st brought back a lot of the same display suits, but had some new ones, like IG-88

 and this Han in Carbonite

 Roxy the Rancor made her debut this year, and the line around her was always huge

 The 501st room again, with the Mos Eisley Dewback setup

 So, all in all, if you are to ever go to a Celebration event, take my advice....go for more than just a day, and just enjoy yourself.  While I loved my Sunday, everything seemed to be too rushed to see everything, and most of the fun panels had been done the days prior.

That being said, let's not forget about what this whole Star Wars Celebration is all about.

No, not being geeks in an acceptable forum.

Ok, maybe that too.

But what I mean is that, Star Wars Celebrations isn't about the movies, the TV shows, or all the merchandising. 

It's about the people.

More than that, it's about a massive number of people that have been inspired, in one way or another, by a vision of a Heroic Journey.

Star Wars, to those that truly get it, is more than just a movie.  Or a Trilogy. (and we'll debate the prequels till the sun burns out, it's what people that are passionate about something do).  It's about the way you see the world and how friendship, love, and adventure can be a part of everyone's life, if they let it.

And that, Ladies and Gentlemen, Ewoks, Wookies, Jedi and Sith (And you too, Princess), is my two cents.

May The Force Be With You.......Always.

 

Gotham Graveyard

I'm gonna pull a scoop on the nice sibling over at The Twitter Novel Project and post the entire Gotham's Graveyard story here, first. Since he's one of the few readers of this now private blog, I know he won't care a whit, lmao. Especially since he already has half up and Tweeted the other half last night, lol
Ok, here goes.........
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Gotham Graveyard
Brian R. Kupfer

He rests his arm against the door sill, the convertible top down, wind ruffling his open-necked silk shirt as he drives the antique Fairlane down the nearly deserted streets.

On either side of him, the skyscrapers form metal and glass walls, the sun only shining down between buildings as it dips to set over New Jersey to his right.

Before the war, he would have never thought he would be able to drive through downtown Manhattan, especially not at anything slower than a crawl, but he wheels the Ford freely down one of the two designated motor vehicle lanes, rarely ever encountering another car, and never any of the thousands of yellow cabs the metropolis used to be famous for.

No, the opening stages of the war had certainly changed things here. Sure, the lights were still on in Times Square, but the souvenir shops had all long closed, and Broadway had been dead for years.

Within weeks of the start of the war, New York City had become the world’s most technologically advanced ghost town.

The chemical attacks had seen to that.

Thinking back on those times, Former TSgt Dante Michaels shudders.

If it hadn’t been for the chemical attacks on Manhattan, and their effect on his way of life, he would have never ended up being thrown across the world and into war with Delta 3-3.

Michaels, known in Delta as Ronin, took his hand momentarily off the steering wheel and rubbed it slowly over his shiny bald head, the rich milk chocolate color of his skin a marked contrast to the peach shirt and white pants he is wearing.

Of course, if he was trying not to stand out, he wouldn’t be driving a black and white two-toned land yacht with matching black and white leather interior.

No, Ronin wants anyone visiting the city to have no doubts that he is back in town. It is his way to honor his ghosts as he drives through his old neighborhood.

Part of him wanted to see if they would be angry enough to try something on the man who had left them behind.

He wasn’t the same man who had left the city seven years ago, not by a long shot.

After all, he had been through hell, and kept right on driving.

Then came the war against the Chinks.

It had been one of the best things ever to happen to him.

It had changed and shaped him, like a forge and smith can make burning metal into a keen and cutting weapon.
He had always had the white hot fury and phenomenal strength.

What the hell of Delta life across Europe and Asia had done was focus and sharpen both, as well as giving him cunning and control.

He had entered the war a cudgel.

He came back a scalpel.

Ronin has hundreds of scars from the war. Some are even physical.

His eyes turn hard, and, while scanning the street for obstructions, also seem to get a faraway look as his thoughts drift back to the last time he had been in the Big Apple, the very day he had first laid eyes on this car, in fact.

It is as if he has noticed the car for the first time, all over again.

The car that had literally changed his life.

The Wu-Tang Clan’s “Babies” plays over the Jersey oldies station tuned in on the convertible’s radio, his body on autopilot, as the big man’s mind drifts back over the years.

As if it had happened yesterday, Dante Michaels remembers that fateful day when his old life had ended.

+ + + + + +

The morning of June 6 had dawned foggy over the greatest city on earth.

The low mists had made the concrete jungle of Manhattan seem somehow more primeval, more dangerous.

It was also spooky as hell, thought Dante, out for his usual 6am morning run.

The hair on the back of his neck had stood up at the surreal sight, like something out of a B horror movie, of the sunrise-backlit fog hovering over East 14th Street bordering Stuyvesant Town, along which he is running.

It spooked him, and he had grown up on these streets!

However, for some reason, June 6th felt a little different to the big man as he went about his morning workout.
The ear buds attached to the iPod strapped to his arm filled his head with Jay-Z and Alicia Keys’ 2009 hit “Empire State of Mind”, one of his favorite workout songs.

His feet hit the pavement in time to the bass beat, and his breathing was synchronized to the singers’ words, and, as he is often known to be, he was singing along on his jog.

Like almost everything else in life, running is made easier if you can synchronize yourself to a constant rhythm, and setting his workout to music also helps the impression that the time is going by faster.

As he jogged across 1st Avenue, his feeling of unease increased.

It came about the same time he heard a thump in the air behind him, sounding to be about the same height of the iconic buildings of Stuyvesant town, if not a little higher, though it sounded farther downtown than the edge of the Town property.

In instant later, he then heard a sound that every resident of Manhattan has learned to dread since 2001.

The growling whine could only be an aircraft at full throttle, very low over his beloved city.

Upon hearing the twin Pratt and Whitney PW4000 engines roar low overhead, Michaels turned his job into a sprint, his feet chewing up the last block towards his apartment off the corner of 14th and 2nd.

There was a “whump” sound from in front of him, sounding about ten blocks away, followed by a couple more farther uptown, which he subconsciously heard while he sprinted for home.

While he nears their brownstone, he can see his fiancé, Victoria, standing on their red-painted fire-escape, looking northeast towards where the sound of the bomber has diminished, sounding like it has flown over Harlem.

Looking back over his shoulder, Dante can see that the mist has started to clear, the ten mile an hour wind coming unusually out of the southeast today and blowing the smell of the Hudson across his neighborhood.

The breeze is refreshing, but the lightening mist helps Dante to notice that the air has taken on a yellowish-brown haze.

He thanks whatever providence and the overcast that had made him decide not to wear his sunglasses today.

With the polarized lenses on, he would never have noticed the slight tinting to the sky, it was so subtle.

Somehow, Dante also knows it is not a natural sight for his city, nor is it some weird atmospheric anomaly changing the light.

A feeling of animal panic floods up his spine, though he can’t put his finger on a reason for it. It is a totally ingrained instinctive reaction to danger.

He didn’t think it was possible, but Dante actually managed to speed up once he saw Victoria.

He knew he had to get home.

Dante Michaels sprints across 2nd Ave and angles to the black iron gate in front of his building. Hardly slowing down, he unlocks it and bulls through the main door of their building, taking the steps three at a time to their second story apartment.

Rushing into the apartment, Michaels yells out to Victoria.

“Get some things together because we are getting the hell out of the city now.”

“But D, the Bus doesn’t come by for ten more minutes, what’s the rush?” Victoria asks him, stepping back into the apartment from the window that leads to the fire escape.

“We’re not taking the bus. Grab just a few essentials, maybe a change of clothes, some food if we have to camp out, nothing else. I’ll get us some wheels. And hurry!!” Dante adds, grabbing his .357 Magnum firing Desert
Eagle and two spare clips out of his sock drawer, sliding the heavy handgun into his shorts’ waistband and stuffing the clips in his right pocket, his wallet and cell phone going into the left.

Hearing Victoria rummaging in the kitchen, Dante heads back out onto the street, noting as he does so that the yellow-brown haze has gotten closer, moving with the prevailing winds towards them.

Looking down 2nd Avenue as he exits his building’s main door, Dante can see nothing suitable just waiting to be taken, and he jobs around the corner onto 14th street.

Five cars down the street, Michaels sees an older model Ford Fairlane convertible, with the top down, parked on this side of the street and facing west, opposite the other cars parked facing towards him.

The massive two door vehicle is white on top, has a gold accent stripe just below the door handle on the door, and is black below that on the sides.

It also looks to be in great condition, and unattended.

He jogs over to it, looking around surreptitiously, but no one seems to be paying any attention to him as he nears the antique land yacht.

Coming even with the right quarter panel, Dante can see that this is the rare 500 Skyliner retractable hardtop version of the classic Fairlane.

He grins, and, after another quick look around, slips around the car and dives opens the driver’s door.

It only takes him fifteen seconds to hotwire the ancient car’s ignition, a trick he had picked up on these streets long ago.

With the classic Ford now running, Dante glances around again to see if anyone has taken offence to him claiming the car, but again no one seems to notice or care, and he sees Victoria looking around for him.

He yells out her name, but she seems not to hear, as a mutual friend of theirs, Jarrod, or J-Rod on the street, is walking towards her from across 2nd Ave.

Leaving the car running, Dante stands up and jumps over the passenger door, sprinting towards his fiancé and yelling her name.

Down 14th street to the east, Dante can see people just falling over on the sidewalks and notices cars swerving onto the sidewalks and into each other as the yellowish cloud washes over them, less than a block away from him now.

Reaching Victoria’s side, Dante grabs her arm and starts to tow her towards the still-running Fairlane, waving to Jarrod to hurry up and come with them.

While physically hauling Vic down the street with him, Dante takes the backpack from her and tosses it into the back seat of the Ford as they approach it.

As they near the rear of the car, Dante releases Victoria’s arm and heads around the big car, getting into the driver’s seat once again.

Victoria, free of her fiance’s grip, waves J-Rod over, and, when he pauses, she starts to go to him to help him into the car.

Dante, seeing them in the rearview mirror, revs the big V8 under the hood to get their attention.

It is in the rectangular mirror that he sees J-Rod fall, twitching, to the street less than forty yards away. In
what had to be instants but seemed like minutes, his nose, eyes, and mouth all started running while he convulsed, then he lay still. All down the street, hundreds of people twitched, quivered, or lay still in puddles of their own making.

Michaels screams at Victoria to run, and, as she turns to head for him and the Ford, she slips, her eyes wide as saucers in horror at what she has just seen.

When she starts to stand back up, Dante knows it is too late, as she stumbles, drooling, and reaches out for him.

Knowing in instants that there is nothing he can do, Dante Michaels slams his foot down on the Fairlane’s gas pedal, swerving into the chaotic traffic, seeing the brown-yellow haze closing over them when he is sparing a look back for his fallen compadre and fiance.

J-rod seemed small and extremely pale in death, which was strange because in life the man had been bigger and blacker than Michael Clarke Duncan. Victoria, writhing on the ground, didn’t look near the six months pregnant he knew she was.

With a last glance back, Dante shuts off his heart and lets his survival instincts take over, tears hazing his vision.

Realizing that, whatever it is that is attacking his city, it is airborne, Dante hits the switch to raise the retracted hard top, even as he is pulling into traffic.

Within moments, the black top has locked into place, grabbing the windshield frame, and Dante is rolling up the car’s side windows and checking to be sure all the blow-through vents are shut.

It is less than a mile and a quarter down 12th Street to the turn onto 8th Ave, which Dante takes nearly on two wheels, sometimes bashing other cars out of the way in his haste.

All he can think of is getting off the island and escaping the certain death he has seen behind him.

Dante soon loses count of the number of cabs, Beamers, Benzes, Toyotas, and even a NYPD cruiser that he has either sideswiped or brushed out of the way on his mad dash north, thinking only to get to the Lincoln tunnel off the island.

He notices Madison Square Garden out of the corner of his right eye as he passes it, but it is almost all he can do to keep most of his attention on the traffic in front of him while also noticing the yellow-brown cloud of death closing in both in front of and behind him as the prevailing winds blow it northwest over the most populous island on earth.

Apparently the aircraft that had dropped the gas canisters, for that is what Dante assumes has happened, did so in a line straight up the eastern side of Manhattan, all along its length.

Crossing through the red light on 34th street, Michaels almost breathes a sigh of relief as he realizes he is now in Hell’s Kitchen, and almost to his destination.

At one point in the late 1950s, someone had had the bright idea to try and rename the Hell’s Kitchen area as Clinton, and it even says that on what few maps showed the area at the time, but no one used the name, with the exception of real estate types. It had been, and would always be, Hell’s Kitchen to anyone familiar with the area.

And, thanks to Daredevil and Marvel comics, to quite a few people who had never been to Manhattan, as well.

Just before turning onto 39th Street, Dante watches one of the omnipresent tourist helicopters plunge out of the sky, obviously out of control, crash into the New York Times building.

The explosion is surprisingly small, compared to what seems to be the Hollywood conception, and Dante winces at the impact before turning his attention to taking the corner ahead at nearly fifty.

He has gone less than a block before he notices that the access to the Lincoln Tunnel is packed, so Michaels, struck by a sudden inspiration, slams the Ford into reverse, the big three hundred horse V-8 smoking the rear tires as he stomps the gas, aiming, in reverse, into the oncoming traffic before cranking the steering wheel to
the left and shifting from reverse to second gear.

By the time the big Skyliner has stopped skidding and the tires have once again gained grip to propel the vehicle forward, Dante has it aimed north on 9th Avenue and his speed is increasing as he keeps the pedal matted.

Of course, 9th Ave is a one way street, and Michaels is heading the wrong way, a fact that the Manhattanites loudly remind him of with their horns as he jukes and weaves the Fairlane 500 towards and around them at nearly suicidal speeds.

He manages to make it the two blocks to 41st street without killing himself or anyone else, and takes the turn onto 41st at sixty miles an hour, the rear end of the massive Ford fishtailing as he does so.

Instead of slowing down, Dante mashes the accelerator, letting the three hundred and twelve cubic inch engine force the rear end into obedience. He knows that this move tends to work better on front wheel drive cars, but, on the narrow streets of Manhattan, he won’t have far to slide before the Skyliner’s massive rear end would hit parked car and straighten out anyway.

His luck holds and he is able to power through the fishtail before hitting anything, but is soon sliding intentionally again, having thrown the Ford into a right turn to merge onto 10th Avenue heading north.

Surprised at the relatively light traffic for this time of morning, Dante lets the big Fairlane have her head as he aims the car uptown.

Dante stays on 10th Ave all the way until 46th street, which he slides the big car onto, seeing his destination, a famous landmark of the city, straight ahead.

Michaels roars the Fairlane down West 46th Street and slices across the startled and panic-stricken traffic on 12th Ave and the Hudson River Greenway, skidding the Fairlane to a stop beside the massive USS Intrepid.

Shutting the engine off, Dante scans the area outside the car, seeing the malicious cloud closing in but not quite to him yet.

Moving as fast as he is able, he grabs his Desert Eagle and iPod and stuffs them into the backpack Victoria had loaded with supplies back at the apartment, then opens the car’s door and sprints for the white access stairwell leading up to the Intrepid’s gangway, sprinting at full speed past the startled tourists and attendants yelling for his attention, trying to get him to pay for his admission.

Michaels doesn’t even bother to acknowledge them as he bulls his way onto the carrier, then heads deeper into the decommissioned vessel.

He knows the yellow-brown cloud had been less than a hundred yards from the pier when he had dashed onto the ship, and he knows there is possibly only one place left in the city, here, on the Intrepid, that he can survive.

There are no crowds in this part of the ship, as most people tend not to be too interested in anything outside the main flight deck and the exhibits set up in the hangar bays.

But Dante’s great-grandfather had told him stories of World War II, and how he had served on an Essex class carrier.

When he was younger, Dante had looked up all the info he could on the old ships, and had toured the Intrepid more than a few times in his younger days, as well, just after the big ship had returned to the city back in 2008.

Now outside the public areas, Dante closed and locked every hatch he came to leading to the galley.

As he locks the Galley hatch by cranking the large wheel, Dante can smell a hint of camphor, a strange smell for a decommissioned museum ship.

Tightening down the door, Michaels heads to the back of the galley and enters the freezer, locking himself in.

He hears the hiss of the gasket around the door sealing him in as he does so.

Now he knows he just has to wait.

He doesn’t know a lot about gas attacks, but is sure the city is experiencing one, and is positive he has read somewhere that all known chemical airborne agents dissipate within three days.

Sitting down on the metal floor, he looks around the massive room, larger than his first apartment, and is almost positive he will have enough air for that long.

He pulls the blue backpack off his shoulder and rummages through it to see what Vic had packed for them.

Bottled water, candy bars, some canned fruit, but, of course, no can opener, a couple paperback novels, a
flashlight with extra batteries are on the top of the pile, next to his hand cannon and iPod.

Digging deeper into the backpack, his hands touch silk, and, almost against his will, he pulls the red blouse out of the bag.

Holding it to him, Dante finally lets go and starts to cry.


He had waited for four days, just to be sure.

He had run out of candy on day two, books on day three, and water this morning.

Plus, boredom and curiosity had overcome his fear enough that he felt he needed to get outside. Besides, the freezer area was starting to stink from the corner farthest away, which he had used as a makeshift toilet.

Laboriously, as he was weak from both malnourishment and exhaustion, Dante retraced his path through the
Intrepid, unlocking the doors he had locked back on the 6th.

He had just unlocked and opened the last of the doors he had closed when a sickly sweet smell became apparent to him.

He knew he should know what the smell was, but he couldn’t place it, even though it became stronger the closer to the public areas of the ship he traveled.

He found the first body just past the machinist’s shop.

It was bloated and starting to decompose.

It was also the source of the smell Michaels had noticed.

In the hangar bay, there were dozens more.

The smell was awful, but nothing compared to the stench that assaulted him once he stepped onto the deck of the USS Intrepid.

The winds were blowing the charnel-house stench of the city directly towards him.

Dante fell to his knees and retched.

Once he had collected himself, he staggered on wobbly legs back over to the entryway he had used to board the ship, only a few days ago, but in a different lifetime.

Stepping over the bodies slumped on the stairs, Dante made it back to the Ford, bashed, dented, and scarred from his mad dash across the city.

He supposed it really was his car, now.

He pushed the body of a teen girl off the hood where she had fallen in her death spasm and gets into the Fairlane’s driver’s seat.

He checks the wires he had exposed, twists them back together, and is somewhat amazed when the car starts right up.

Leaving the Intrepid’s pier much more slowly than he had arrived, Dante carefully steers the Ford up 12th Avenue, trying to avoid as many of the crashed cars and sprawled bodies as he can. He doesn’t even try to head south, knowing that the Lincoln Tunnel was probably little more than a mausoleum now.

He is also trying not to breathe through his nose, as the mixture of decay, excrement, vomit, blood, and heat makes for a noxious cocktail.

Everywhere he looks, Dante Michaels can see the dead and soiled bodies of what had, just four days ago, been millions of New Yorkers and tourists.

Along the Hudson he can also see ferries that have run out of fuel or run into the piers, and, as 12th Ave becomes New York 9A and the Henry Hudson Parkway, he sees the first of what he knows must be hundreds of light sightseeing aircraft and helicopters crashed into the city, this one nothing more than the burnt hulk of what once might have been a Twin Beech.

Many of the buildings had been scarred from impacts with either aircraft or birds, and there isn’t one without some kind of broken or smudged window.

It takes him three hours of dodging bodies and nudging cars aside with the big Ford’s front end to get the seven miles to the George Washington Bridge.

At the foot of the bridge, he scares the living hell out of a New Jersey Public Works crew at the foot of the bridge, who are loading bodies into a lineup of dumptrucks, presumable to be taken away for burial, and had not seen another living being, certainly not one LEAVING the city.

+ + + + + +

Shaking himself slightly, Ronin pushes the memories away as he turns the completely-rebuilt Fairlane onto the Brooklyn Bridge and prepares to leave the city behind again.

The bridge is the only way into or out of the city these days, and is hardly ever busy. In fact, Ronin Michaels only passes one tour bus, belonging to Necropolis Tours, one of the few companies still offering tours of the city to the morbid, as he rolls across the bridge over Hudson River.

From security camera footage and the accounts of the crew of a news helicopter that had been flying out of the city at the time of the attack, a story of what had happened had been pieced together.

The Chinks had modified an Air China Airbus A330-200 from its normal passenger role to that of a toxic bomber, and the twin engined jet had dropped thirty Soman canisters over the eastern edge of the city. Each of the hundred-gallon canisters had been rigged for an air burst, and had detonated at three hundred feet above the city.

The ten mile an hour winds from the southeast had done the rest, spreading the Soman across the island, the steel canyons causing eddies and whorls in many areas, like all of the parks across the city, where the concentrations had been slightly higher, not that it mattered.

The city never had a chance.

Of the ten million people known to be living in New York City at the time, four thousand and fifty two are known to have survived the attack. Almost all of them had been on the west side of the city and able to get out via the bridges before they had become snarled and jammed.

Estimates are that there were anywhere up to twenty thousand tourist fatalities as well.

Nearly six hundred people remain unaccounted for but are believed to be in wrecks sunk in the Hudson river.

The US Government came in and sterilized the city over the course of two years, but no one would move back in.

Five years after the Soman attacks, Manhattan was declared a National Historic Site and is listed as both a ghost town and graveyard.

However, the business that had lived in the city went on. All the major news outlets had moved across the Hudson and set up shop in New Jersey, keeping their old names in memoriam to the dead city. Wall street and most of its associated businesses are now located in Baltimore, but still ironically called the New York Stock Exchange.

The first thing Dante Michaels had done once he had left the city was ingest as much food as he could find. The second was to enlist. He may not have had any friends or family alive anymore, but he was damned if he was going t just let the Chinks get away with killing everyone he had ever known or cared about.

in honor of the next one.......

These were originally posted on the Twitter Novel Project for the 4-7 Echo book. I am posting them now in honor of the next one coming out this week ;) I posted them in the order they appear chronologically, though I wrote them out of order ;) Enjoy, kiddies!!!

Original post date: Tuesday, November 3, 2009
This was my second supplement for Shawn's Echo 4-7 book. As you may already know:

Frying Pans Are For Pussies

“Delta 3-3. Form up in the muster area in 5,” The Gunny’s voice boomed out into the converted warehouse that the Marines had been assigned as their temporary housing.

MSgt Donald “Corleone” Lewis looked up from the digital copy of Playboy he had been perusing on his flatscreen reader and groaned. And he was just getting settled in for the night.

As the NCOIC, or Non-Commissioned Officer In Charge, of Delta 3-3, it was Lewis’ job to corral his unruly Marines into a somewhat disciplined-seeming, at least, group of fighting men.

Oh, his men were good at the fighting portion of being a Marine, no doubt about that, or they would have never survived on the front lines this long -- but they were a little lacking on the discipline and whole "respecting the chain of command" part of being in the military.

Kind of like their NCOIC, in fact.

Muttering to himself, Don Corleone stripped off the silk kimono he had been relaxing in and quickly dressed in his Marine-issue BDUs, which he had managed not to get stolen by another unit quite yet.

Just another one of the problems with today’s mostly conscript military -- things seemed to end up being community property a lot more than when Lewis had originally joined up as a wet-behind-the-ears 18 year old back in ’01, after the first September 11th attack.

He’d been fighting in one shithole or another pretty much nonstop since then, in the Middle East till 2015, then to the Asia when North Korea started their shenanigans.

And now this. His RM (Regular Marine) Delta team, scheduled to be rotated back to the States for some R+R, had been re-routed here to Russia instead.

No rest for the wicked, indeed.

“Delta Three-Three, you heard the man, now shag ass. Time’s wastin’ and there’s a war on people.” Lewis grumbled out, wandering though the area where his men had just bunked down, shaking most awake, kicking the cots of a few others, and completely upending those of two of his heaviest sleepers. “C’mon princesses, up and at ‘em. Beauty sleep is a wasted cause on you shifty bastards. Why are you not dressed and out that door yet?”

“Chill, Sarge, no need to go all FMJ on us. We’re movin, we’re movin,” One of the Corporals in 3-3 muttered as he walked by MSgt Lewis, still buttoning his BDU shirt before pulling his plated flak vest over his head.

“Oh, I’m not even close to pulling a Full Metal Jacket on you yet. Besides, we’re the kindler, gentler US Marines, asshole,” came Lewis’ response.

Long before the five minutes was up, Delta 3-3 was assembled in what the soldiers jokingly refer to as the “courtyard,” the open area between two still-standing structures where the units tend to congregate before a mission. All the units on the makeshift “base” were gathered there, awaiting orders.

Finally, one of the main men from Intel arrived with a loudspeaker to tell them why they had been rousted in the pre-dawn.

“Troops, as you may or may not know, we’re under-armed and under-equipped here, and that is a main reason we have been getting out-fought."

“Fact that the area is crawling with five billion Chinks doesn’t hurt, either,” One of the men from an Echo unit added.

Muffled laughter wove its way through the assembled soldiers.

The Intel man flashed an annoyed look in the general direction of Echo.

“Be that as it may, the powers that be have decided that if we can take the airfield at Neryugn, we will be able to start landing reinforcements and some of the freshest tech straight out of the States to help us even out the odds a little bit.”

Nearby Lewis, someone groaned.

Neryugn's airfield had been captured by the Chinese in a major offensive months before, and the place was rumored to be crawling with Chinks, Russians, North Koreans, and mercenary scum from everywhere on the planet.

What the Intel weenie was describing was basically a suicide mission, and everyone knew it.

“Our one orbiting satellite has confirmed that the Chink presence on the airfield is light at the moment, that the troops there are just a skeleton force of two hundred on guard. We don’t know why the main garrison forces there withdrew, but if we strike now, we can recapture the field with a minimum of loss.”

Yeah, maybe to you and your group, who will never get within twenty miles of Neryugn, Lewis thought, mentally growling at the Intel operative.

“Echo 4-7, you’ll be the tip of the sword. Take your men and secure the control tower. Delta, secure the northeast side of the field and clear the runway. Charlie and the remainder of Echo, perimeter security. Let no one in.”

The Intel man looked around to be sure everyone understood their assignments.

“All of you hit Weps before mounting up. Vehicles are at the gates, we need to be mobile yesterday to pull this off.”

And with that, the Intel guy walked back to where he came from, effectively dismissing the group of soldiers.

Lewis headed for the Weapons Depot, knowing without looking that his team would be right behind him.

Once they have arrived at the Depot, each of the men in his unit was handed whatever weapon the quartermaster was nearest at the moment.

He handed Lewis a Tokarev SVT38 automatic rifle.

Lewis just stared at the man for a moment.

“Really? Are you serious? My great-grandfather probably used newer equipment than one of these. You have got to be shitting me.”

The supply man just looked at him and shrugged his shoulders, as if to say, "Hey, I’ll give it to someone else and you can throw rocks at the Chinks for all I care," before slapping a grenade belt and a Daewoo DP 51 pistol with holster on the table in front of Lewis.

It was obvious to Lewis that the men are now being equipped with whatever castoffs combat units have managed to scrounge from the battlefields.

What’s next, bows and arrows? Battle axes and broadswords? Lewis grumbled internally.

Once the rest of his team was outfitted with equally archaic firearms to his, they managed to squeeze themselves into five of the stealth-equipped Razors, of which there are twenty to be split between Echo and Delta. Charlie would take the normal Razors, tanks, Jeeps, and whatever else runs in the area.

Once all of his Delta 3-3 was loaded into the Razors, Lewis personally drove the lead vehicle out of the compound, heading towards Neryugn, following the slight dust plume kicked up by Echo 4-7’s Razor ahead of them.

Less than an hour later, Lewis pulled to a halt near the ghostly image of Neryugn’s tower, backlit by the sun just starting to rise. As he was pulling his vehicle into position to unload his troops, Don Lewis saw a quick staccato flash from the top of the tower, and knew that Echo 4-7 had started their offensive.

Since this wasn’t exactly the first time Delta 3-3 had taken air airfield, or even the twenty-first, Lewis didn’t even have to do much more than point out positions to his troops with hand gestures for the unit to get into position and start advancing across the field, checking for mines and ever wary of snipers.

“Delta, UAVs incoming," One of the Echo team in the tower called down. “Might wanna find cover.”

“Belay that, Delta, UAVs are being handled. Help inbound from the west,” A voice crackled in Lewis’ ear from the command frequency.

He and many of the others in Delta 3-3, looked west, and could see a smoky haze on the horizon as something moved their direction, and fast.

Within moments, the haze was close enough for MSgt Don Corleone Lewis to notice that the haze was actually a mixture of engine smoke and dust being kicked up by the low level the fifteen jets are flying at.

When they got closer, Lewis could tell that they were a motley assortment of older tech, running through the early dawn at extremely low level with no anti-collision lights on.

As they got nearer still, he could make out four Su-47 Berkuts, three F-15 Eagles, six F-4 Phantoms, and two F-16 Fighting Falcons, all painted in a black and charcoal gray paint scheme.

He recognized the camo.

Shadow Wing. Great. He thought, watching the jets approach.

He flicked his gaze to the east, and could see the Chink UAVs approaching from that side. Just by looking at the two groups, he was pretty sure they would meet up right overhead.

Shadow Wing were a multinational group of mercenary pilots that had ended up falling on the side of the US in the opening stages of the war. Lewis knew there were a few dozen groups like them fighting for the Americans, but he could never bring himself to trust them. Their loyalty was only as good as the highest bid.

That being said, though, he knew that the members of Shadow Wing were among the best and most ruthless pilots that money could buy.

He also knew, from past experience, that they had all their radios and radar equipment, ECM, and jammers off, so that the Chinks couldn’t get a lock on and scramble them.

This was the reason the US couldn’t send their UAVs into battle against the Chink unmanneds, because the Chinks had better signal-intercept and override capabilities. They'd only had to lose about a thousand UAVs before they figured that one out.

Like watching a tennis match, Lewis’ head swiveled back and forth between the ground-hugging Shadow Wing jets and the much higher-flying Chink UAVs.

Out of his peripheral vision, he had also noticed the rest of Delta, Echo, and Charlie move in and surround the airfield.

There had been very little actual opposition.

“All teams, once the Shadows have taken care of the hostile UAVs, the C-5s will begin landing. Delta 3-3, perform tight-in security once they have landed,” Command crackled into their ears.

“Delta 3-3 copies. Out,” Lewis replied, looking behind him at his troops and shrugging. He took another look at the approaching Shadow jets and yelled out “Everybody DOWN.”

No sooner had the troopers hit the ground than the Shadow Wing aircraft rocketed over their heads, less than thirty feet off the deck, afterburners blazing before they pulled up into a steep climb, angling in on the Chink UAVs from below.

Within seconds, it was all over, and debris from the shattered drones was raining like lethal hail upon the airport’s southern side, the pilots of Shadow Wing headed back the way they had come, unscathed.

“Look alive, people. C-5s inbound,” One of the men in the tower called down, and, looking west, the men and women of Delta 3-3 could see the massive cargo aircraft coming in, setting up for a straight-in final on runway 27.

Suddenly, Lewis was worried.

It had been too easy. It was almost like they had been given the airfield by the Chinks and their allies.

Despite Lewis’ fears, the three massive C-5s all landed safely and disgorged their troops, adding an extra three hundred and sixty troops per aircraft to the forces on the ground, or nearly doubling the size of the presence at Neryugn by adding an additional 1,080 combat soldiers on the airport.

The next ten C-5s due in would be hauling equipment, but they wouldn’t be on-scene for another hour, giving the men on the ground enough time to get the Galaxys on the ground re-fueled and ready to launch again.

While he was checking on the defenses his troops of Delta 3-3 were putting together along the edges of the main runway, 27-09, MSgt. Lewis got a creeping feeling at the base of his skull.

He turned to look south, right into a sight to chill a man’s soul.

Coming right out of the ground itself, some ten thousand Chink soldiers were emerging onto the airfield grounds, already behind the perimeter forces that Charlie was providing in that area.

Instantly, Lewis knew what had happened. The Chinks had dug tunnels and underground staging spaces for their troops, just like the Japanese in WWII and the Vietnamese in that conflict. How Intel could have missed that was beyond him.

Don Lewis put his hand over his ear to call Command, only to hear static.

Of course. Their comms had all been jammed. Wonderful.

“Deltas, on me! 3-3, we need runners. Get ahold of anyone you can in Echo, Charlie, the new arrivals from the C-5s, and the rest of our Deltas to try and form some organized resistance. Brennan, I need you to figure out a way to override this Chink jamming. MOVE!” He barked out his commands, and the members of 3-3 scattered to the winds on their assigned tasks.

Many of them hadn’t gotten more than fifty yards before they were cut down by a fusillade of bullets fired by the Chinks.

The NCOIC of Delta 3-3 slammed the bolt home on his ancient Tokarev SVT38, firing and re-working the bolt until all twenty of the 7.62mm bullets in the clip were gone. He reached to his belt for the next clip, but by then the swarm of Asiatic faces was upon Lewis.

With few options left, the big man swung the rifle like a baseball bat, crushing skulls and clearing a small area around himself before the stock of the rifle shattered.

It was then that he realized these men hadn’t been firing at him at all, but were coming at him with knives and shovels.

They, too were scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Dropping his useless rifle, MSgt Lewis whipped his Daewoo from its holster, thumbing the safety off as he drew it and firing almost before he could aim it.

After he drops a dozen of them, the pistol clicks empty, but the Chinks were giving him a newfound respect, regrouping before rushing him again. He popped the old clip out and slid a new one in.

All around him, his fellow American soldiers were being slaughtered, and the soil is turning red with the blood of battle from both sides.

In the near distance, Lewis could hear the screams of some of the female American soldiers, and could only shudder to think at what abuses these heinous bastards were subjecting them to -- even here, in the middle of a battle, he knew they werenot above torture and rape.

Backing off from the swarm of Chinks ahead of him, Lewis stepped on something and slipped, falling to his knees.

While he was getting back up, he realized that it was the severed head of one of his own Delta 3-3 team he'd tripped over, staring sightlessly back at him, his face frozen in a rictus of fear and rage.

If Lewis remembered right, the kid had been nineteen.

Pushing his grief aside, “Corleone” Lewis stood back to his full six-five height and unclipped two grenades from his belt, pulling the pins with his teeth and throwing them into the massive crush of bodies ahead of him as he backed swiftly away.

The twin crumps of the pineapple grenades detonating was satisfying, the ground erupting and bodies lifting into the air from the force of the explosions.

To his left, one of the men of Charlie was being hacked to pieces by the angry swarm. Lewis fired the last of his bullets from the Daewoo in that direction, dropping Chinks in his way, and fired his last bullet straight through the man from Charlie’s brain. He then threw the useless pistol to the dirt.

Looking around, Lewis could not see a single friendly uniform still standing. Everywhere he turned his head, his vision was filled with Chinks.

If I’m going, I’m damn well taking as many of them as I can with me, he thought, unhooking another pair of grenades from his web belt.

Seemingly realizing the same thing that Lewis had about the likelihood of reinforcements coming to his rescue, the sea of Chinks closed in, even as he lobbed the two grenades.

They don’t fly as far as he had expected, and he was hit in the face by a flung disembodied arm when the latest grenades exploded.

Stunned, Lewis reached for his last two grenades to toss into the massed enemy.

After these, he will be down to fighting with fists and teeth.

He pulls the pins once again with his teeth and throws them at his enemies.

At least, he tries to. The one in his left hand sails away into the massed Chinks, but, somehow, the other grenade gets stuck on his right hand’s glove.

Frantic, Lewis tries to shake it loose as the Chinks close in on him. He hears the “crump” of the grenade he has thrown and closes his eyes while the Chinks drive him to the dirt.

------------------

© 2009 Brian Kupfer

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Original Post Date: Monday, September 21, 2009
This was my first supplement for Shawn....I called it:

Days of Night

Tick. . . tick. . . tick. . . tick. . .

Jonas looked over at the taller man, and raised an annoyed eyebrow.

“Gotta check for the best spot, man. Don’t want the alarms going off on us.” The taller man, a former Master Sergeant named Lewis, answered the look before he resumed tapping the index finger of his right hand onto the glass door.

“Twenty says the alarms aren’t even active anymore. This place has been closed since about a month after L.A., man.”

“Please, the kind of treasure they got inside here, oh, I guarantee the alarms work. Besides, Lee said we had to get this thing with as absolute little fuss as possible. Hell, man saved my life, least I can do is not pull a smash-and-grab on a historic landmark, you know?”

“Just hurry it up, my balls are freezing.” Jonas comments, glancing all around him as if there was an army about to spring across the weed-strewn parking lot.

“Man, am I glad you weren’t at the Battle of Neryugn. Jumpy little bastard,” Lewis comments with a half grin as the screen on his right sleeve beeps.

“Bingo,” the larger man comments, pulling open the metal-framed glass door with the etching of some ancient aircraft on it.

“After you, monsieur,” he comments, bowing and pointing the shorter man into this part of the building, which appears to have once been a cafeteria and gift shop.

“Some days I really hate you, bro,” the shorter man comments, stroking his slim black goatee while his brown eyes scan the room they have entered.

Lewis retracts the probes from the door lock and stows them back inside his fatigues’ pocket before running a hand over his buzzcut. He walks up behind the younger man, who seems to be looking around as if lost.

“This way, hotshot. Please don’t tell me you’re lost already,” Lewis mutters with a shake of his head, leading the other man to the connected walkway towards the portion of the site they are looking for.

Once standing in the massive museum’s fifth hangar, still in remarkably good condition considering that it has been abandoned for almost ten years, the two men split up to find their goal, flitting amongst the almost spooky forms of the aircraft on display, now shrouded in perpetual darkness.

The museum was designed to let in very little outside light, as it could damage the historic aircraft, and the indoor lights had been shut down years ago. Strangely, however, the temperature in the hangar still seemed to be in the 70s, even though it was below freezing outside.

“Did Lee tell you WHERE this thing is supposed to be in here?” Jonas asks facetiously, meeting up with Lewis beneath the triangular shape of the 30-plus-year-old B-2A, the world’s first stealth bomber.

“He said in the old Innovations Gallery. That’s this place, where all the advances and prototypes were stored when this place was still open to the public. See, there are the F-23 and F-22 prototypes, over there is the ShadowKnight UAV demonstrator. . . oops. There it is. Uh. . .” Lewis trails off, seeing the one-of-a-kind vehicle that led to the creation of the Razor line of vehicles.

Though much smaller than the current Razors, the lineage is immestakeable. Painted in a dark grey Radar Absorbing material, the vehicle has a 360 degree swiveling camera on the roof, fairings and strakes along the body to help create downforce at the 170-mph speeds it is capable of, and bulletproof glass and body panels. Rumor had it at the time of its rollout that it could be remotely controlled like a UAV or used as a rolling command post. Lewis is sure that this is what Chris Lee and his 47 Echo have in mind for it, some sort of stealthy recon vehicle.

The only problem is, the Vapor Challenger, and its counterpart X-1 Mustang, are on a raised platform some fifteen feet of the ground, directly behind the XC-99’s high wing.

“Shit,” Jonas mutters succinctly. “How are we gonna get that thing down, again?”

“Ever seen the 'Dukes of Hazzard?'” Lewis asks with a grin.

“No. I was born in 1992, jackass. You go kill yourself, I’m going to go get that access door open,” Jonas points to the southwest corner of the massive building, then starts jogging that way.

“Well, I guess I can ignore the ‘no climbing on the displays’ signs, like I always wanted to do when I was a kid and dad brought me here,” Lewis mutters to himself, crawling onto the wing of an F-35C and using its additional height to boost himself up to grab a handhold on one of the XC-99’s ending intakes.

After a few moments of groaning and clanging around, he has hauled himself onto the wing and jogs across it, leaps onto, then over the fuselage, and down the length of the other massive wing before stepping onto the platform holding the revolutionary concept vehicles.

Well, "revolutionary" when they came out in 2009, at least.

Now comes the tricky part. In order to enter the Vapor, he has to pass a biometric scan to get the Lamborghini-style scissor doors open.

And, of course, it would have to be with his right hand.

Muttering to himself, Lewis affixes diodes to the fingertips of his black gloves and syncs their wireless, sending to the screen mounted on his coat sleeve. He then closes his eyes and touches his hand to the scanner imbedded in the door frame.

With a “whoosh” right out of an Enterprise door, the Vapor’s driver’s side door rotates upward and locks open with a “click” that sounds extremely loud in the silent aircraft mausoleum.

Lewis sits in the Vapor’s cockpit, looking for a key. Nothing. There is a thumbprint scanner near where the normal ignition would be, however.

“Worked once. . .” he comments aloud before pressing his diode-equipped right thumb onto the small square.

The massively modified hydrogen-powered Hemi V8 growls to life, the noise shattering the silence in the hangar until Lewis finds the engine suppressant, or “Stealth mode” button, and the vehicle quiets down to a faint purr.

Lewis grins to himself, then looks over the Shaker scoop in the hood, estimating distances. Not liking what he sees, he looks out the door at the space behind him and grins. Another five feet before the rear end would hit the hangar wall.

Lewis rotates the door closed once again and turns on the Vapor’s proximity sensors before dropping the manual transmission into reverse.

The car, riding on its carbon-fiber bulletbroof wheels and tires, is so silent that he doesn’t even realize he is moving until the proximity sensor beeps, notifying him he is within six inches of the wall. He stabs the four-wheel ceramic disc brakes and the Vapor stops so swiftly he is almost tossed out of the seat, his hand scrabbling for a handhold and grasping the ejection handle.

As soon as he notices that both seats in the Vapor are also ejection seats, Lewis pulls his fingers slowly off the handle so as not to activate the rocket underneath him.

Taking a deep breath, Lewis punches in commands on one of the three massive plasma touchscreens in front of him, and the hangar ahead of him takes on a ghostly green tinge as the whole windshield enhances in Night Vision mode.

I’m driving a kickass KITT, he thinks joyfully while shifting into first gear and placing both hands firmly on the control yoke, his left thumb over the “boost” button.

An experienced driver, Lewis is able to do an old F1-style launch, starting the vehicle off at a high velocity with almost no wheelspin on the rear drive wheels. Within a second of releasing the brake, the Vapor is racing along the top of the XC-99’s wing, heading for the large hump of the fuselage ahead of him.

Once he's almost certain he is going to slam into the fuselage, Lewis hits the boost button, and four small JATO-style rockets under the chassis fire, lifting the Vapor into the air and over the fuselage.

Unfortunately, it is also at an angle that misses the trailing edge of the opposite wing as well, and the Vapor sails over the XC-99’s pusher propellers and into open space as the JATO pods shut off.

“Ok. . . not good,” Lewis mutters as the nose-heavy Vapor starts to drop.

“Man, he’s gonna kill it. And me,” Jonas mutters, having gotten the door open enough to walk under, and seeing the dark gray form of the Vapor hurtling out of the air towards him.

At the last possible moment, Jonas dives out of the way, landing in the grass just past the hangar, and thereby not seeing the amazing landing his partner later takes credit for.

The landing had nothing to do with Lewis, and everything to do with the Vapor’s onboard AI-driven supercomputer and its self-preservation programming. Once the Vapor’s proximity sensors calculate the vehicle is within two yards of the ground, the front and rear JATO pods underneath the vehicle ripple-fire in a predetermined order, not unlike the landing thrusters on the Apollo LM's, and straighten out the vehicle’s trajectory so that is hits the polished museum floor and continues out the door without so much as a larger jolt before Lewis slews it to a sliding stop.

“Door,” Lewis comments to the younger man, then heads the Vapor towards the front of the abandoned National Museum of the United States Air Force, pulling the sleek grey car smoothly to a stop and waiting for his partner to catch up.

Lewis pops the passenger door open nearly as soon as the Vapor has quit moving, and has gotten his breathing back under control by the time Jonas has re-closed the door and dashed back through the museum to the entrance they had come in through.

The two men settle into the Vapor’s bucket ejection seats, and Lewis starts up the onboard navigation systems and integrated MP3 player. On the nav system, he imputs the marshalling base in Indiana where the C-5 will be waiting to take them and the Vapor to Russia to meet up with the members of 4-7 Echo.

Poison’s “Stupid Stoned and Dumb” starts up over the hidden speakers in the cabin.

“You’re not seriously gonna subject me to this shit, are you?” Jonas asks, looking over the man in the driver’s seat plaintitively.

“Deal.”

“You’re such a bitch.”

Grunting a reply, Lewis moved his right arm forward, grasping his hand around the Vapor’s control yolk on his side.

Jonas just stared at the gleaming silver jutting out from the seam between Lewis’s black glove and black utilities. No matter how many times he’d seen it, the gleaming bio-prosthetic always caught his attention.

Of course, being his younger brother, Jonas knew Lewis had lost the arm back in the Battle of Neryugn a couple of months back, but, except for short cryptic replies, the older man never talked about it or the unit of convicts that had hauled his ass out of the fire.

Maybe now I’ll find out first-hand, Jonas thinks, itching to be a part of the fighting he was sure the Vapor was destined for.

If he only knew.

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© 2009 Brian Kupfer


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A little Taste.....

Of things to come. First couple pages from the new "Superhero Stanley" story........

Superhero Stanley
Part the Seventh: Into the Black

By

Brian R. Kupfer

I had to get Karen out of there.
But I knew that with the goons and the vivacious little blonde along, I was going to have to get creative.
I grabbed Karen’s right bicep with my free left hand when the vivacious blonde and I passed her, clutching her tightly to my side and whispering into her ear “just follow my lead”, before the blonde in front of us had a chance to react.
I was taking a huge chance, basing everything on what first impression my thinking head was able to gather of the nymphet that was obviously supposed to be a distraction.
What can I say, she was good at her job.
Squeezing the blonde’s hand to get her attention, I stated, as nonchalantly as I was able to, “As long as we’re in for a good night, why not make it great? You’re into three-ways, right?”
I inclined my head towards Karen while I pulled her into step with us.
The little blonde looked Karen up and down quickly, then paused in mid-step for a heartbeat before taking a longer, more appreciative look, all while the three of us wove our way through the increasingly-packed crowd towards the door.
I almost held my breath waiting for her reply.
While I was turning blue in anticipation, the “Third Knut” band finished their sound check and the bassist, a five-ten man with longish sandy hair, a goatee and thin beard, thumped the mic twice before his band mates started up.
“This is our newest song, ‘Interpretive Dance’. Hope you like it. And 2, 3, 4…”
On four, the guitarist, a man maybe five-nine with black hair and a goatee, wearing Jedi robes, slammed into a frenetic beat, which the bassist, who was dressed in a multicolored serape with a huge sombrero on his head, thrummed a counterpoint to.
Behind them, their drummer, wearing a three-piece business suit and sunglasses, his longish wavy black hair done up to look like a 60s greaser, did a passable Animal imitation from the Muppet Show, and their keyboardist, the shortest of them, wearing a racing suit and glasses, made like Jim Carrey on acid with the percussion instrument.
Strangely, the frenetic discombobulation of the four instruments worked. I found my head bopping along to the music while we walked towards the door.
All four of the men leaned into their microphones and sang in chorus on the opening line and final exclamation of each stanza, the Jedi sang the first verse, the Mexi-Can’t the second.

“Our Love’s like Interpretive Dance,
No one understands it
But you gotta take a chance.
YEAH
Our Love’s like Interpretive Dance,
I dated this Girl once
She thought she was a Man
GO!”

On GO, the bassist launched into a rumbling solo, vibrating the walls of the little club while his three band mates took a break and flirted with members of the crowd.
After that, we were out the door and past the Mr. Clean-lookalike bouncer-cum-security guard, and I was left humming along to the band’s song, thinking their style was a strange combination of the Barenaked Ladies and Megadeth.
Upon leaving the Full Moon, the blonde wiggled and jiggled her way down the street towards a white Cadillac Escalade EXT parked around the corner from the club.
Flicking a glance over my shoulder, I noted the two buddy-boys were not-so-discreetly following us.
I looked back at the blonde just as she clicked a little key fob remote, and the lights on the ostentatious luxury SUV blinked once, and I could hear the “click” of the doors unlocking.
Not really surprisingly, since I had been expecting the goons to join us, the blonde slithered her lithe little body into the rear seat, motioning for Karen and I to follow her in.
The two goons approached and opened the front doors, the larger of the two getting into the driver’s seat, the smaller thug into the passenger side.
My brain was running in overdrive trying to figure a way out of this one, and my mouth was doing its own thing, without conscious control, like it so often does.
“Hey, hey, hey. Wait just a minute. Three can be fun, but five’s a bit more freaky than I wanna deal with tonight. Besides, muscleboy fruits aren’t quite my flavor.” I rambled on, sandwiched between the two women in the back seat, filling my voice with an outraged bravado I didn’t quite feel.
The goon in the driver’s seat extended a meaty paw back towards the blonde, who wordlessly slipped the Cadillac’s keys to him.
The man-gorilla, who had enough hair on the backs of his hands and forearms to make Robin Williams envious, turned and started up the re-badged and overpriced Chevrolet Avalanche.
Pulling the white SUV away from the curb, the muscle managed not to scrape the massive car into anything before pulling out into the street, pretty much a major accomplishment for most drivers here in the downtown area.
Somehow, the residents of this metropolis had never managed to perfect, or even come close, the art of parallel parking, or, depending upon whom you asked, even driving their vehicles.
Many people, yours truly included, believed that the DMV here had been founded and the first drivers’ tests given by, Helen Keller herself.
Though that is probably unfair to Helen Keller. I’m sure if allowed, even she could have driven better than most people in this city.
While thinking about the shoddy driving in this city, my overwrought brain suddenly came up with a half-cooked plan.
It was better than nothing, which was more than I had had a moment ago, and still better than a lot of the plans I had come with since deciding to become a hero.
Putting my best lecherous grin on my face, I leaned over Karen on my right, my right hand cupping her left breast, my mouth on hers in an arduous kiss.
There were two reasons for this.
One, I wanted the blonde watching my lips and right hand and Karen’s upper body, not my left nor our lower torsos, which were hidden by the way I was twisted towards Karen.
Two, I’d really wanted to do that since day one of meeting Karen.
Karen’s respondent kiss was surprised at first, but she soon got into it when she felt my left hand pull her seatbelt down and across her waist, slipping it into place, shielded by my body from the blonde’s view.
Coming up for air, I winked at Karen before looking over my shoulder at the blonde.
“Your turn.” I commented, my right hand reluctantly leaving Karen’s chest.
The lithe blonde licked her lips and leaned towards me in anticipation.
Making it look like I was turning all the way around to give her my full attention, I used my momentum to enhance a strong right hook into the passenger goon’s temple.
The man slammed to his right, spiderwebbing the passenger side window before slumping against the door, and I whipped my now smarting right hand across the driver while wrapping my left arm around his throat. I kept the lock in place by pulling back on my left elbow with my right hand.
Reflexively, the driver took both hands off the Caddy’s wheel to try and pry my arm from around his throat, and the big SUV drifted to the right, bouncing over the curb and heading for a building along the street.
I tightened my grip on the goon’s throat with my left arm while tensing my whole body against his chair and grabbing the steering wheel with my right hand and jerking it hard to the right.
The Escalade twisted to the right, the wheels on that side trying to come off the sidewalk when the blunt nose of the SUV slammed into the mirrored glass and steel beamed front of the skyscraper.
The Cadillac crunched into the building, caroming off one of the support beams and skidding into a spacious lobby for a few feet before slamming in to a thick, decorative marble column.
The jarring impact brought the big SUV to a sudden and noisy stop, the screech of bending metal and the tinkle of shattering glass nearly deafening.
When the Escalade EXT slammed to a halt, the rear wheels lifted off the lobby’s floor for a moment with the force of the impact.
At the same time, and thanks to the same momentum, the goon in the passenger’s seat rocketed through where the windshield had been, flying past the marble column and skidding on the floor like a limp rag.
The little blonde slapped into the side of the SUV and the back of the driver’s seat before slumping to the floor beside me.
The driver had nowhere to go, and I heard a snap when the momentum tried to fling him forward, and he suddenly stopped struggling against me.
Karen seemed to be ok, but she was probably going to have a nice welt from the seatbelt.
As for myself, I slammed into the rear of the driver’s seat, hard, and it was probably the only thing that kept me from being flung out of the vehicle like the man in the passenger’s seat had been.
Even so, I was sure I’d be sore for a week.
Somewhat shakily, I pulled myself off the floor of the Escalade and crawled across Karen’s lap, trying the door handle on her door.
It took some shoving, but I finally got her door open, and Karen and I spilled out onto the lobby floor.
While Karen took a moment to steady herself, I rummaged around in the SUV, finding duct tape, blankets, and a pair of shovels in the vehicle’s bed.
Apparently I wasn’t supposed to have been coming back from this ride, and, because I had involved her, neither was Karen.
Moving quickly, because I was sure that the Caddy plowing through the front of the building had set off alarms, I used the duct tape to truss up the lithe little blonde and the surviving goon, trussing them up like Han and Chewie in ‘Return of the Jedi”, minus the Ewoks and long poles, of course.
The driver wasn’t headed anywhere but the morgue.
After helping Karen off the floor, the two of us started to head out of the smashed building towards where I had parked the Durango earlier in the evening.
While we were headed out the door, a thought occurred to me, and I held up a finger to let Karen know to wait for me for a moment.
I jogged back into the trashed lobby and picked up the bound blonde, slinging her unconscious over my shoulder.
Then I ran back to Karen and we hightailed it for my Dodge.
After unlocking and opening the passenger door of the Durango for Karen, I opened the back door and tossed my blonde bundle across the back seat.
About the time I turned the Dodge’s ignition, a pair of Police cruisers roared past, lights flashing and sirens wailing, heading for the building where the destroyed SUV rested.
I waited for them to pass before pulling out, making a mental note to call Dodge and explain the situation later.
I headed out, following the directions Karen gave me to drop her off at her place, since she had been driven to the Full Moon by a friend.
Once she was safely back in her house, with the door securely locked, I pulled out my cell phone and dialed Joeda, to see if he had made any progress with Jim’s laptop, and to tell him that we needed to meet up, and that he should bring Syn along.
We settled on his place in a little over 20 minutes.
I pulled over to the side of the road in a scarcely populated part of the city near Joeda’s place, changing from my civvies into my Stanley gear.
I also made a quick call to Sarah Dodge’s voicemail, as she was predictably too busy with the downtown situation to answer her phone.
When I pulled up to Joeda’s place, I grabbed the blonde out of the back, who was now our best bargaining chip.
Or so I thought.