Stellar Frost: Origins of Supers: Book Nine, page 1
Stellar Frost
Origins of Supers: Book Nine
Author: D. L. Harrison
Copyright 2023. 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
Afterword:
About the Author
Other books by D. L. Harrison:
Book Description
Prologue
My name is Caroline Rush, and I am Stellar Frost.
Where do I even start? Yes, I’m the mean girl, the frenemy of Jenna Burrows, but that was seven long years ago, back in high school.
Yes, seven years. I’m a special snowflake that way. Every other homo-potens quickens before the age of nineteen, and very rarely did they quicken at eighteen. Every other person my age and up to seven years younger had already quickened.
My twenty-fifth birthday had come and gone, and I still had no powers, neither my mother’s power over water nor my father’s flames, may he be resting in peace.
The last seven years had been hard for me, to know I was destined to be a superhero, ridden by my parents to be the best, only to not get a power at all. Well let’s just say it took me a lot of time to come to terms with the idea I might never quicken. The first one not to quicken at all since the first generation of supers almost two hundred years ago.
Some might even say that was Karma at work, for being such a brat back then in high school. For shoving my expected future into the faces of others, while at the same time mocking them for their lack of powers and the dissolution of their dreams. Damn, I really was a witch back then, but it was all the pressure of growing up as a superhero brat, there’d been expectations and pressures.
Of course, I’d been really wrong about Jenna and Maeve having worthless powers. They were both pretty amazing, actually.
While I was nothing, or at least I had been. After my father’s death, and me not quickening, to say I had a fallout with my mother was an understatement. She’d been more obsessed with getting to the bottom of it than I was, sending me to endless doctors, but they all said the same thing. I was perfectly healthy, and they had no idea why I hadn’t quickened yet.
Eventually I’d put my foot down, and that had initiated the fallout I’d mentioned earlier.
As a result, my mother and I had hardly been talking for years, save holidays and birthdays we avoided each other. There was too much bitterness, disappointment, and resentment between us, all because I couldn’t be the daughter she’d wanted and tried so hard to mold me into.
Despite her flaws, I still respected her, she was a hell of a superhero and water wielder. She was the leader of her quad. The super teams always patrolled in two pairs, and she had seniority and command over hers. Her record was among the best, only shadowed by Lady Aegis herself.
Rachel Rush, my aforementioned mother, was a woman with strong convictions and a need to use her power to serve and protect society, but she’d also had a burning ambition to see me do the same. It hadn’t just been my dreams of the future shattered when the years went by, and I didn’t get powers.
Still, I’d had come to terms with the idea I’d never be a superhero, life goes on even with the loss of that dream. I had to come to terms with the idea that I’d be the first homo-potens not to get powers in almost two centuries. It was a bitter thing for me to swallow, to be a special snowflake in such a negative way.
It took a few years and a whole lot of psychologist visits, but I’d gotten there. I’d also gone to college, graduated with a three-point-nine GPA, and passed the bar six months later.
I was a lawyer that specialized in business contracts, corporate law, and international business laws, and I’d been working for a loosely associated coterie of mad scientists. All they wanted to do was research and development, but the six I worked with had decided to join them if they couldn’t beat them, so they formed a large corporation to horn in on the government contract business. They wanted nothing to do with the details of it, and had hired lawyers, salespersons, and managers, while they the workers in the trenches, ultimately owned it all.
With a mere two years of experience, I was the junior member of the two-person law team taking care of the company’s law issues and contracts. A small team, but we had a few other private law firms on tap to contract out some of the work if our plates got too full, like the almost endless stream of patents, for instance. My boss was Hiram Black, and he was easy enough to work for and get along with. He kept it professional, and I’d earned his trust in the first three weeks, and after six months he’d stopped auditing my work with a fine-tooth comb. He was a bit of a perfectionist, but I could admit I was kind of one too, so it worked out.
I had a cute little condo just outside the city, not all that far from Jenna’s superhero HQ. I even saw the two of them on occasion, we were still kind of friends in fact, given Jenna had married my cousin. Anyway, I commuted into the city daily via the public teleport terminals, and I worked on the forty sixth floor of a high rise, which housed the corporation.
Which is where I was when it finally happened, the moment I’d been waiting for, had stopped waiting for, because I was twenty-five years old, and I’d finished puberty at sixteen. Nine full years later, and it would be a while before I learned why it had taken so long.
It’d also been seven long years since the last attack from the Meer’ette, and that day they’d decided to try again. My trigger was an alien attack. I almost couldn’t blame them, if it wasn’t for all the deaths they caused. Humanity was still a basket of contradictions as well as a violent species, and the Meer’ette were timid isolationists that no doubt thought we were a rabid species by comparison that could turn on them any second. Add in an unhealthy dose of xenophobia and it was no wonder they’d want us gone.
Our species were too close together in the galactic neighborhood, the second closest species was thousands of light years away. Still, understanding their point of view didn’t mean I was giving them a pass for all the death and trillions of dollars in destruction they’d caused last time around the world in twenty cities, never mind this time around. They’d started this war, not us warmongers. How was that for irony?
Enough rambling, I just wanted to fill in a bit, since it’d been seven years since high school. I was no longer the shallow and self-absorbed young woman in high school, who had been casually cruel and thoughtless toward others.
In case you forgot, I suppose I should describe myself. I was five foot nine, with fiery red hair and green eyes, very fair of skin. I was overall lithe in body at that height, more than athletic, and like Jenna also top heavy in proportion, though not nearly to her extreme.
Let’s get this account started. I’m going to dive right into the good part, since the lead up to that moment earlier in the day was kind of boring…
Chapter One
The window in my office had a hell of a cityscape view from the forty sixth floor. The building was uptown, and the wall sized window faced downtown so most of the city was within view from my office. At the moment I had my back to it, as I typed out a quick message to our patent attorney with the attendant patent application.
Which is when I felt the building shake, as an explosion reverberated throughout the city. I swiveled my chair and frowned as I gazed out the window, just in time to see the round plume of blue energy, interdimensional energy, swallow the bottom half of a building. The top half fell into the now empty space and disappeared into a billowing dust cloud.
I stared in disbelief, frozen for a moment until I saw two Meer’ette fighters fly over, shooting beams that cut into the buildings, as well as launching a small missile that nonetheless packed a very large punch in an interdimensional explosion of energy. A large surge of adrenaline and fear had me jumping to my feet, but then I was at a loss, since I couldn’t do anything.
I was powerless.
The fighter didn’t look the same as last time, the fighter craft was bigger, and was slightly redesigned to accommodate missile ports, but still looked enough like a squashed hourglass for me to be certain it was Meer’ette and not human built. Plus, no human would be crazy enough to use interdimensional energy weapons in such a brazen manner.
Two more buzzed by, then another two, then four more from two different directions in pairs crisscrossed the city, as the super teams took to the sky. Lady Aegis was shielding almost all of them, including my mother. Only two other supers on the city’s super team had shields that could take a dimensional energy hit and survive to tell the tale.
I stared out the window while doing a search on my enhanced reality interface through the watch. The aliens were attacking the same twenty cities they had seven years ago, so I supposed they had them all listed in a database somewhere and were determined to do them in order, at least they were consistent.
Their con
sistency was little comfort, as the building shook alarmingly, and I was fairly sure our building had been hit with a beam. If it’d been a missile then I wouldn’t be around to consider it.
I briefly wondered how they’d gotten past our defenses, but that could wait. The only thing that mattered in that moment was that they had. Some new technology, that Spatial Distortion was no doubt countering, but there was nothing on the public news about a space battle yet so I couldn’t be sure of that either.
My heart was pounding as several ships fired multiple beams at the super team, and Lady Aegis glowed like a sun as all that energy ran to her, and was fired back out, cutting through the ship’s shields and the ship itself was cut in twain. So far nothing else was effective, but their own weapons.
Where the hell was Jenna?
A second attack staggered Lady Aegis. She was powerful, arguably one of the strongest in the world, but those weren’t hand devices, they were extremely powerful ship beams, and she was absorbing ten ships firing two each at once.
Once again, she took another of their ships down, then she passed out. Her projective shields died, as her partner caught her.
The super team scattered, going for cover save the two others who could take the beams. My eyes automatically followed my mother despite our estrangement. I loved her, she was my mother. The beams reached out again as the ships turned and raced over the city again, and my mother dodged, but the beam strafed. The gap closing fast.
Which is the moment it happened, at that surge of fear for her, added to the horror of what was happening and the fear for my own life as the building I stood in strained to stay standing. Nothing mattered more to me in that moment, than stopping it. I couldn’t lose her, not now, not when we were still estranged. I’d lost my father to the Meer’ette, I couldn’t lose her the same way.
I just couldn’t, it would destroy me.
I’d heard accounts my whole life of what it felt like. A buzzing sensation, electrifying, like drinking a pot of coffee and getting the jitters times a hundred, or the overwhelming rush of power as meta-energy flooded their body for the first time. The sharp awareness of surroundings, as the world came to life around them.
It wasn’t that for me, the special snowflake had to be different.
It was that, but so much more than that. The descriptions a pale imitation of the profound reality, as I felt every life in the city and time dilated. It felt like I could feel everyone, which made no sense. Fire and water powers had no life detection.
It was a second later when I realized I was feeling the ships, and the large reactors powering the city, that I realized the truth. I wasn’t feeling life, I was feeling power. I couldn’t feel the old-style humans, but I could feel every single homo-potens that had quickened and had meta-energy in their body. I could feel the ships and the reactors because I could detect the power within them.
It was a feeling and intuitive leap, that understanding, more than a thought process, because my only thoughts in that moment were stopping that strafing beam from catching up with my mother.
I didn’t even feel the window get demolished, as that wish was transformed into action by my power. It wasn’t teleportation, I’d simply moved five city blocks in a split second, and the entire trip was indelibly etched on my mind as my body interposed itself between the beam and my mother.
For a brief moment I wondered if I was about to die. My mother’s water was certainly no protection from the beam, and it had been what killed my father. But I didn’t even feel it as it raked across me.
Instinctively, I struck out, and it wasn’t fire or water, it was something new. The stream of energy was as fast as a beam, but it burned with a bright light blue fire sheathed in flames of that color. The only thing in nature I could compare it to was a blue giant’s corona. It scintillated as it cut through the sky and then bashed against the shields of the fighter.
For a whole millisecond or two.
Then it kept going, cutting through the shield like a razor across a wet paper bag. The ship burned. I mean, metal doesn’t burn, but it did. The ship exploded into that bright blue flame, and when it cleared there was nothing. No reactor explosion, just dust that blew away in the wind.
My power ate the interdimensional energy, it was the only thing that made sense, why there wasn’t a secondary explosion I mean.
What the hell was I? Was my first thought. My second thought was the other nine Meer’ette fighter power signatures I felt. I rocketed up into the sky, then fire exploded out of me in nine directions at once, my sense of the ships’ locations, or more accurately their interdimensional energy reactors, guiding the lances of bright blue flames.
I didn’t need to look at them to hit them, and I knew when they were gone.
I felt a moment of shock in the sudden quiet, the cool breeze a bit too cooling, which is when I looked down at myself for the first time since quickening. I blushed furiously. I mean, I wasn’t exposed to view, not really, but I was naked. Sans clothing, which had apparently been burned off my body without me noticing. The flames sheathing my body were supportive, my chest I mean. They weren’t entirely opaque or uniform, but the bright glow of the flames prevented me from giving the city a free show.
Still, the embarrassment and need to be wearing clothes, made the flames smooth out and cover up my body, like a super suit. A glowing blue super suit, once the flames were completely gone. It felt cool against my skin, and it looked like a super suit. It hugged my body and was substantial enough to feel like I was clothed, and that little bit too cool breeze was only hitting my face now.
I also realized it would be my super suit, my power. Even the advanced materials of a super suit wouldn’t hold up against my shield’s destructive power. As to why it didn’t burn my skin, I couldn’t say. With another application of cautious will, my hands to forearms, and my feet up to my calves started to burn again, licking bright blue flames roiling over the surface, making it look like I had on gloves and boots. They were also slightly brighter, then the smooth matte finish of my power at rest.
Much better, looked like a real suit now, fully I mean.
My mother rose up in front of me, looking at me in shock, “Caroline?”
I shrugged, “No idea, just happened. Where the hell is Jenna?”
She said, “Her power isn’t working on them this time.”
It took my shocked mind a long moment to absorb that fact.
“How is that possible?”
She shrugged, “Her power works from a different phase. It’s how she defeats a shielded super. The power goes around the shield by being in another phase, then phases back inside the super to phase them. These new fighters had multi-phasic shields, presumably they got readings of her power last time, and found a way to defend against it.”
“Oh, I suppose that’s okay then. Umm, can I go to the other cities then?”
I wasn’t a registered superhero, and there was no more danger to my person. I wasn’t supposed to go looking for trouble. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to be a superhero anymore, I’d worked hard for five years to get my law degree and pass the bar. It was all too new, and confusing. I just knew I was different, and my mother would demand we run tests to find out why.
But my drama wasn’t important right now, not with nineteen cities still being bombarded and torn apart.
She nodded, “Invasion, state of war, technically all supers with offensive or defensive powers are part of the militia, remember? Certified or not you can participate in a war.”
Oh, duh. I knew that, let’s call it the shock of the moment that made me forget.
“Second problem, my power ate my watch phone, and I’m fairly sure it would eat another one. I can fly there, but I have no HUD and no way to set a course. It ate my contacts too. We don’t have time to figure out alternatives for me right now.”
She said, “Open up wide.”
I blinked, then opened my mouth, and I felt something land on my tongue. Some kind of micro-drone, probably.
“Okay,” I mumbled a bit, not wanting to accidentally swallow the drone.
Harmony must’ve been listening, because suddenly I was standing in HQ, and a moment later we were bounced to the sky over the new city.
