Shutdown

A stand alone story about the Akkadian Knights

Kansas, somewhere in the Heartland of America…

Detective Brown stared out at the cow pasture, or what was left of it, in wonderment. He’d never seen anything like this. The FBI goons had warned him to stay back, outside the pasture, but he couldn’t resist. The sight before him was just too amazing. In the early morning hours, the only light was coming from inside the meteor before him.

Now he’d seen space rocks before, mostly in museums, so the fact that a piece of the

sky had fallen and killed a couple of bovine when it hit wasn’t all that amazing unto itself. What was truly amazing is that the chunk of rock, dark grey, ashen in complexion and the size of a SUV, was hovering over the field! It had literally hit the ground and immediately floated back up into the air as if it was repelling Mother Earth herself.

Deputy Kyle stepped up beside him on the edge of the crater. “Do you suppose it’s a

spaceship?” The deputy was about 5’9 and sleight of build. Next to the detective’s

massive 6’5’’ height and build he was a rag doll. Brown looked down at his partner and

shook his head. “I have no idea.”

They stared at the rock for a while before Brown took a tentative step into the crater. Kyle grabbed his arm, “I don’t think that’s such a good idea buddy.”

Brown turned to face him. A few steps down in the hole, they met eye to eye. “Stay

here. Be ready to call for backup.” With that, he descended into the crater.

In Orbit around the Sun…

Wyldecard checked the instrument panel at the science station in the Defender carefully. The digital readout showed a black and white relief of the star in front of them. A few taps on the screen and the image changed to a brilliant purple. Yet another showed the surface of the sun in varying shades of green. As he studied the surface of the star, Captain Stumpy was watching through the front windows as gigantic plumes of energy shot forth, arced back and disappeared into the inferno in graceful, fluid motion. Even looking through the shaded and shielded glass, he still decided to wear his John Lennon style sunglasses.

“Well, at least we’ll get a good tan out of this!” he chuckled back at Wylde. Finding his companion engrossed in his work, he sighed and went back to his observation. “Remind me why we’re out here anyway?”

“We’re out here because some poor country officer was fried by an extraterrestrial egg floating in Kansas. The egg is shooting a concentrated beam of tachyon particles at the Sun and is causing sunspots. We want to know why.”

That sent Stumpy chuckling… “So… the Sun is getting freckles?” Both heroes started chuckling at that thought. It was then that the display on the science panel started blinking. It wasn’t warning anything, it was just having power fluctuations. A second later, it went out entirely and the power to the ship started to falter.

Before the heroes could figure out what was going on, the power was restored and the computer system started the re-boot sequence. Wylde looked at Stumpy then they both looked out the front window. Wylde didn’t need an instrument panel to see what was happening on the surface of the sun, “get on the horn, Stump. We’ve got problems.”

Back on Earth…

Eron and Caledonia surveyed the wreckage at the crash site from a safe distance. The

moment that poor detective had stepped foot in the crater his life was over. The “egg” had opened and a large beast had stepped out. It was much larger than the egg, implying that the vessel had a dimensional pocket inside. It was about 10 feet from head to toe, humanoid in appearance, and made of what appeared to be molten rock. The heat it emitted was measureable from a hundred feet away.

The federal agents on site were startled and opened fire on it with small arms. That only served to irritate it. Raising a large paw, it shot a column of heat at them that burned them alive, melted their vehicles and managed to set several trees on fire.

The Akkadian Knights were called when Deputy Kyle managed to flee to a nearby farm

house and call in backup. It didn’t take the team long to figure out the origination point of the vessel and send the Defender to check it out.

Since then, the creature had been walking around the vessel in lazy circles. It’s feet left glowing footprints as it walked around and it was beginning to leave a melted dog run in the ground.

Eron’s communicator sprang to life and Wylde’s voice came over the comm, “Boss,

I know what that beam is. You have to shut it off ri…bzzz…” Eron tapped the communicator on his throat a few times as the signal faded away. He looked at the noontime sun directly overhead, wondering what had cut off the transmission.

Caledonia sent her backhand lightly into his chest, getting his attention, “look.” Pointing down, she directed him to the creature. It was now doing something to the outside of its ship and large, spider like legs shot out of the side into the ground. It was “landing” for lack of a better description. As it did, the beam of tachyon particles intensified. Although it wasn’t visible to the naked eye, Eron’s Ultravision gave him a good look at it. He’d never seen such raw power coming from something so little before.

His comm. crackled to life again as Wylde’s voice came over loud and clear, “Eron…

you there boss? Can you read me?”

“I’m here.”

“It’s a massive space elevator. Something is literally coming out of the sun towards

Earth and it looks like a huge version of the thing on the ground in Kansas. You have to shut it off. This may be an invasion.”

Eron shut off the communicator. Not on my watch, he thought. Caledonia was already

in motion and was summoning storm clouds from the East. Eron built up his power and

allowed the atmosphere around him to drop to near freezing temperatures as he absorbed the heat out of the air. Within moments, both heroes were emitting visible puffs of air as the temperature continued to drop.

As the sky darkened, the creature looked up. It spotted the two heroes in the air above it, seemed to ponder what to do for a moment, and returned to its work, determining that they weren’t a threat. An arc of lightning crossed the sky and it looked up again. A light rain began to fall but the tiny drops of water never reached the beast, turning to steam inches away from its body.

It turned away from its work once more as the temperature reached -20 degrees and once again faced the heroes. Sensing the threat they truely posed, it raised its paw and its eyes blazed to life. A blast of heat erupted from its appendage and shot through the air.

Caledonia was ready. She summoned a funnel of water from the clouds above and ran it right over Eron’s head. As it passed through the coldest temperatures he could muster, it turned immediately to a column of ice and met the searing heat head on. Although the ice melted and evaporated in a giant cloud of steam on impact, it stopped the attack completely.

Strange thing about water is that it expands in the realm of 1,700% when vaporized.

When firemen are trained to enter a burning building, they are told to aim their hoses at the ceiling to allow the fire to vaporize much of the water. The vaporizing water actually does more to put out the fire than hitting the fire directly with a hose. In that way, the fire defeats itself much faster by heating the water until it is out.

The creatures’ eyes grew wide as it sensed the true danger now. Pouring on the heat, it attempted to stop and hit the heroes as the vapor continued to expand but only succeeded in accelerating the expansion. Within seconds, the entire area was bathed in a dense fog of water vapor on top of the freezing rain that was now falling. The creature’s attack weakened and, as the stream of superheated air diminished, Eron and Caledonia allowed their own powers to subside.

The rain started coming down in sheets. In the freezing temperatures, it quickly turned to sleet before hitting the ground. The creature fell backwards on the earth and quickly turned a dark black color before ceasing to move as the heat was drained from it. Now, the only light one could see from it was a faint glow in the sockets that would house eyes.

Eron and Caledonia descended towards the device. It was simple in design, with few

obvious controls. The creature was pushing and prodding on knobs on the outside of the device and it was still emitting an almost visible ray towards the sun, but neither hero

knew which ones.

Caledonia looked at Eron with a wry smile on her face. “All this little thing needs is

some love…” With that, she blew a frosty kiss at the device. With the freezing rain, it

was cold enough that the cold air began turning the surface to ice. Within seconds, the whole thing was encased in a thin layer of ice.

Eron looked at her with a puzzled expression as if to say, ‘what’s that going to do?’.

“You know, freezing this thing may not be the best thing to do. It may explode.”

“Hold on boss, wait for it.”

Moments later, ice began breaking off around the device in patches. The knobs that the creature had been touching with its superheated carapace were still hot enough to melt the ice. They were now looking at the few knobs it had moved to start the device. Eron smiled and gave her an approving nod.

One by one, the two moved the knobs back to their initial positions. The device retracted its legs and floated back up in the air as the beam shooting forth from it stopped. His comm. device crackled to life.

“Whatever you did worked boss. The space elevator stopped and the thing coming out of the Sun fell right back into it. Good work.” Wylde sounded almost giddy.

“Come on home. I have a delivery for you to make.”

Hours later…

The four heroes were standing in the cockpit of the Defender, looking out towards the Sun. They had returned the creature back to its home at the center of their solar system.

“Back to normal,” Wylde said with an audible sigh. “I’m still confused as to why they

were invading. I wonder if we’ll ever know?”

“Well, not all of us are left in the dark,” Caledonia chimed in with a sing-song

voice, “someone came out of this a little ‘enlightened’…”

Everyone followed her gaze and turned to stare at Stumpy. They couldn’t help but

chuckle.

“What?” His eyebrows were arching over his glasses in confusion.

He took off his sun glasses. His eyes were, of course, not sun burnt, but the rest of his face certainly was somehow reminiscent of a raccoon in reverse.

“What?”

Caledonia held up a mirror. He started chuckling too.