Prologue
Brad Buchanan sat with his feet kicked up on the console, playing a game on his phone. Another computer in the large room beeped in the distance, followed by a whir of drives being accessed and an electric hum as others switched on, doing their preliminary checks before coming online. The sudden flurry of activity startled Brad and he almost tumbled backward. He juggling his phone, trying to keep from dropping it on the polished concrete floor before regaining his balance. He scooted his chair closer to look at the monitor and pushed his glasses up his nose. The only message displayed was :
Beacon detected. Signal: weak.
A terminal nearby began to emit a pinging pulse that reminded Brad of the sonar in the old submarine war movies his dad watched. Rolling his chair over to the terminal, he saw a green world map displayed. Ripples like a stone dropped in a pond emanated from their location outward. The signal the monitoring station was trying to find was either intermittent or so weak that it was difficult to distinguish among the myriad of electromagnetic garbage from personal electronics not to mention the sun.
Brad had one job: notify his superiors if the computer detected anything. Finally, he could do something else for a change. Sure it was easy money, but with nothing else to occupy his thoughts, it made for some long days. A smirk formed on his face and Brad keyed the communicator on the display. Focusing on the signal he left a short message: "Thank you, whoever you are. We have been looking for the manor for so long. Now that we know where you are, we will be seeing you soon to reclaim what is ours!" Satisfied with himself, he paged his superiors and told them of what he had found.
Chapter 1
"Gus, proximity alert nearing the NW shore!" Nick advised.
"What? Already?!?" He grabbed Jet and rushed outside. He was startled to see that whatever robots Stuart had tasked to clean up the remains of the Dark Nth were doing an exceptional job. The grounds already looked back to near pristine condition.
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The warm, salty wind blew by as Gus used Dash to move quickly down Atlantis beach. He made a sharp left and continued to rocket down the coast, steps bouncing like a skipping stone off the lazy waves that licked the beach.
When the minimap showed he was nearing the landing zone, he moved back up the beach where the long grasses and palms grew to hide his footprints and observe the invaders. His heart sounded like a big bass drum, threatening to betray to the world his hiding space, even though Gus knew that it wasn't that loud in reality.
A bobbing blip became visible along the horizon, and Gus zoomed in his display to see a small, unremarkable ship skip into view. It was traveling fairly quickly, directly for the beach where he was hidden. He clenched his fists in tension and irritation at the thought of someone coming to take away the island. He had come to think of it as his. Even though he didn't build it, it was through his effort that it became viable for use, and no one else had been able to do that in decades of trying. Gus also was painfully aware he was still a noob compared to most supers out there, but he wasn't going to let the island and the manor go without a fight. He had lowered the bio-stasis field to free up the energy to unlock facilities. Well, that was partially true. To be honest, he wanted to get back to civilization but hadn’t thought that it would result in such a quick move to seize the manor from under him. Being alone was starting to affect him more than he would like to admit.
As the ship approached, Gus could resolve some men moving along the decks. Most were carrying automatic weapons and patrolling the decks. He could not sense any Nth with his passive Psi-link skill, which was a little confusing. Maybe these were henchmen, fodder to exhaust him and ‘soften him up’ before the real supers arrived to finish what they started. So strange to be seeing this from the other side of the equation.
The unkempt men did not wear a standard uniform and did not behave at all like seasoned soldiers. At long last, the ship neared the shore and he could make some of their shouted commands, but they were all in a different language. There was a quick warbling tone and Gus suddenly could understand the commands one particular nasty individual was barking at the others.
“You’re welcome” Nick drawled.
“Get ashore and see if there’s anything we can use. We need more water and some food would be nice. Hurry though, we need to finish here and get to be at the rendezvous point though in less than thirty hours!”
That didn’t seem like they were looking for him, per se. Gus relaxed a bit that this was probably just a coincidence and that he just needed to wait for the men to leave. The island was far enough away that he didn’t think they could see it from this part of the island and it would take them a while to walk far enough through the jungle to see it. All he had to do was wait them out. Easy. Part of him knew that was rarely the case. Nothing’s ever easy.