17

Chapter Seventeen—Dirges and Other Songs

Chapter Seventeen—Dirges and Other Songs

AN: Well, we're back with more of Taylor. Since I got done with the chapter early, I decided to go ahead and post it. Did Taylor survive her encounter with the Simurgh? Find out below.

~~~Memories of Iron~~~

Tattletale stared at the now black screen, her heart in her mouth. Beside her, Danny sat, gripping the seat of his chair with white knuckled hands, the wood creaking from the strain. She could hear him chanting under his breath, "It's my fault. It's my fault. It's my fault."

She spoke into the radio mic, "Iron Man! Iron Man, can you hear me! Fuck! Oh God! Taylor! Taylor, can you hear me! JARVIS! Are you there?"

Only static answered. Tattletale looked over at Danny who was silent now, tears slowly dripping down his cheeks. He met her gaze, his own slowly hardening. He roughly wiped away his tears with the sleeve of his shirt. In a voice that held the merest semblance of calm, Danny asked her, "Trish, what can we do to help Taylor?"

What could she say to him? In all of the scenarios that she and Taylor had come up with, they'd never envisioned this one. After all, who could predict that the Simurgh would go off the rails like that? That she would react in a way that she never had before, using abilities that no one knew she possessed?

She should have known, Tattletale thought, guilt nearly choking her. If she'd watched more video, then maybe she could have figured this out before. Maybe she would have seen the Simurgh, all of the Endbringers, for what they were. Seen what they were hiding. Conveniently, she ignored the hundreds of hours of hacked PRT video she had already watched in a now futile effort to provide the best possible model of their foes. Of abandoning her search for her kidnapper to spend the time working to give her best friend the strongest possible chance of survival.

Now, staring at that same best friend's father, she simply didn't know what to say. Without even using her ability, Tattletale saw that Danny was in denial. He refused to believe that his daughter was dead. It wasn't healthy and the long-term consequences for his sanity worried her. She had to somehow let him know that Taylor wouldn't have wanted him to lose himself in false hope.

Where were the words when you needed to tell your second father that their child was dead?

~~~Memories of Iron~~~

"Eidolon, have you found anything?" Legend spoke into his communicator.

"Negative, Legend. Nothing in Quadrant Bravo. I'm moving on to Quadrant India."

"Copy that. I'm finishing up Quadrant Hotel. I'll be on to Quadrant Oscar momentarily. Legend out."

Legend hovered high in the air, staring out over the sea as he tried to find two specks. Despite the size of the Simurgh, compared to the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, she was tiny. At the speed with which Iron Man had been traveling, they could be literally hundreds of kilometers away in any direction. Hopefully, one of the other capes capable of high speed flight would soon spot either the armored cape or his pursuer.

As he watched, Legend pondered the significance of what was happening. Somehow, Iron Man had drawn a response from the Simurgh that no one had ever done before. To this one cape, the Simurgh had revealed herself.

Perhaps it was the devices that he'd created. Legend had had time to speak personally with Alexandria, who had related her own experience with the Simurgh while wearing one. It was a conversation that could never be risked over the airwaves, even encrypted. The news was too unsettling.

Alexandria had been viciously attacked, with far greater power than she'd ever experienced from the Simurgh before. According to her, in every former instance where the Simurgh had directly used its telekinesis on her, she had managed to break free.

Alexandria had been beaten before, tossed around and hammered with debris, as had all of them. She'd never been held in place by such a force. Which led Legend to question everything they knew about Endbringers.

The idea that Endbringers might be stronger than they'd shown in the past was a concept first brought up by Cauldron. Now it had just been confirmed. The idea was a frightening one. What they had shown themselves to be in the past was bad enough. How could civilization continue with them slowly whittling away at its infrastructure? A city here, a nuclear reactor there, and of course, the constant drain of their best and brightest, as they died one by one, sacrificed before they could make a difference.

But this... this was even worse. Legend had seen the figures that circulated through the upper echelons of the PRT. The human race had an expiration date if they didn't somehow figure out a way to stop the Endbringers. Cauldron, and all its dark acts, was the only thing currently standing between humanity and a horrific end.

Unfortunately, he couldn't even trust Cauldron and his fellow Triumvirate members, Eidolon and Alexandria. They were... No. Legend decided not to mull this over for the umpteenth time. It was too disheartening. If he wasn't careful, he'd let his anger grow unchecked, a dangerous situation with his power. Thankfully, he did have an outlet for his feelings.

Legend had spoken of his fears with just one person, his partner, Arthur. So many late nights, lying sleepless in bed, pouring out his worries to the one person who'd never judged him. It was cathartic, and one of the few things keeping him going. He'd seen too many terrible things over the years, he thought moodily, a memory of blood splattered golden armor momentarily surfacing.

Now this. A promising Tinker, who might have developed weapons and devices that could work to help defeat the Endbringers once and for all, was missing. And presumed dead, a little voice in his head helpfully finished.

Because no one, other than perhaps himself or Eidolon, could have hoped to survive the onslaught of an unleashed Simurgh. Him by running and Eidolon... by simply being himself.

Legend was taken out of his brooding thoughts by an urgent voice from his communicator. "Legend! Alexandria here. I was searching Quadrant Sierra when I saw a flash of light, just over the horizon to the south. It's an explosion. A big one. Kiloton yield. I'm heading that way now. I've already contacted Eidolon. Join me as soon as possible."

"Roger that. Legend out." With one last look out over a darkening sea, Legend turned to light.

~~~Memories of Iron~~~

"Fuck it! How far did they get? This is shit house." Feral asked, impatience clear over her voice, her expression as manic and deranged as ever.

Adamant would have shrugged if his armor allowed. "You saw how fast they were going. I'd estimate that it was well over Mach four, based on the sonic boom. Just be glad that Faust's demon saw the drone turning south, or we'd probably be completely in the wrong place."

Another voice intruded over his communicator. "Actually, we could still be."

Adamant recognized Billabong's voice. Now that they were over this much water, they were truly in the blue and white themed cape's domain. There was a large twister following them, reaching hundreds of feet into the sky. Seeing that much water, moving that fast, scared the bejesus out of him. Sometimes the elemental powers of capes like Billabong could be truly frightening.

Adamant kept his voice steady as he asked, "Billabong, what do you mean?"

The other waved his hands wildly, as if for emphasis as he spoke, "We have no idea where they went. Only an initial direction. Problem is, if Iron Man tried to piss off with birdy there on his tail, he'd be zig zagin' every which-way. Mate, he could literally be anywhere over two hundred and fifty thousand square klicks."

"He wasn't trying to run away. That's what 'piss off' means, right?"

Adamant turned to Ronin, a cape that he'd never met before today. "What was that, Ronin?

Ronin hovered near Faust, her ornate samurai armor a little ridiculous in appearance. Her voice was completely serious, though, as she explained, "Iron Man led the Simurgh off, but he wasn't running."

Faust's tone was full of irony as he said, "Don't try to make me into a galah."

"I believe he was conducting a fighting retreat. He'll continue to engage the Simurgh as he moves. Certainly he can hit her. He's already shown that. From everything that I've heard, he's one of the only capes that has managed that feat."

Adamant didn't say anything for a moment. What Ronin was saying was pretty much speculation. None of them knew what thoughts the black and silver armored cape was thinking. He hadn't responded to any of their frantic armband messages while he headed off. He-

"Wait. One of my cobbers has seen something."

"What's it seen, Faust?"

Adamant had already filed away the little tidbit that Faust could see everything that his 'demons' could. While not technically a villain, the strange cape skirted the edge often enough to make dealing with him in some capacity a strong future possibility. Then he focused on listening as the other cape explained.

"He's the one I sent farthest to the south. There's a brightening glow about a kilometer away."

"Probably just a freighter." Feral sounded bored, but her eyes betrayed her, hot and hungry. They were at complete odds with her appearance, which was that of a sixties flower child.

"No, there's definitely something going on. I can see- fuck me dead!" Faust seemed to stagger in midair.

Adamant flew over and braced the other cape with a hand on his shoulder. "Are you all right? What happened?"

Faust ran a shaking hand over his short hair. Visibly composing himself, he muttered, "I could hit the piss right now. My cobber's carked it. When I'm seeing through their eyes, their deaths... well, I'm buggered. Anyway, just before he died he saw a blow up. A big one. It originated from Iron Man's armor. Even though my cobber was near enough a klick away, he's still cactus."

Adamant could tell how affected Faust was by the way he fell in and out of the regional dialect of his birthplace. Ordinarily, he tried to sound cosmopolitan despite his down under accent. It was only when he was truly upset that he betrayed his New South Wales roots.

"Umm... mates?"

Adamant turned away to look over at Billabong. He followed the other's shaking finger to the south, where a brilliant glow was growing, just out of view beyond edge of the horizon. Still, it was intense enough to temporarily turn the world around them bright as noon. Then, a loud rumbling sound began, soon followed by a shock wave that buffeted them and nearly knocked Feral from the air. Her loud cursing filled their ears.

None of the rest of them spoke as Adamant checked his armor's sensors. After Feral died down, he said, "That explosion was approximately thirty-six klicks away. My armor's sensors registered it at over five kilotons."

"What? No."

His eyes met Feral's, who for the first time since they began their pursuit, lacked her trademark manic expression. Instead, she looked like someone had canceled Christmas. Then, without another word, she turned and began to fly back. One at a time, the remaining members of their group followed.

Activating his communicator to relay the news, Adamant spoke with Chevalier for a few minutes. When he was done, he quickly caught up to the others. The journey back to base camp was a quiet one.

~~~Memories of Iron~~~

Taylor blacked out.

When she came to, she was still alive, so hopefully it had only been for seconds. The armor's spinning was making her violently ill, but somehow she managed to not spew all over the inside of her armor. It was a near thing. The scream that echoed through her ears only made her nausea worse.

Not knowing how much time she had left before she impacted the water, she shouted, "JARVIS! Can you hear me?"

Nothing.

Taking a deep breath, trying to suppress her fear, Taylor moved her mouth slightly within her helmet. Sticking out her tongue, she grimaced at the taste of dried blood that filled it from when her nose had bled all over earlier. Disgusting.

Still, she managed to press the small button located at the base of faceplate. For a moment nothing happened, and she truly believed that she was going to die. At that moment, Taylor wished she'd told her dad one more time that she loved him. Trish as well. She searched her mind, but other than those two things, she had no regrets.

Then, ever so slowly, her armor came back to life. Taylor's breath caught as she heard the familiar sound of her onboard computer rebooting.

As her HUD came back on, Taylor frowned at the sheer number of orange icons. Then a welcome voice made itself heard.

"Miss Hebert? I estimate you'll impact the water in twenty-four point seven seconds. I suggest you activate your repulsor boots."

Taylor's tone was dry as she responded, "Thanks, JARVIS. You know, I didn't think of that. I only have one boot active. The other's toast. I'm still working on balancing things out so that I don't go spinning around and hit the water even harder than just falling."

"I will deal with the balancing issues, Miss."

"Go for it."

With that, Taylor's remaining repulsor boot began to fire in timed pulses. Her tumbling slowly smoothed out, and her movement became less like falling and once more like true flight. Still, she was still moving downward and the water was getting awfully close.

"JARVIS? Cutting it a little close there, aren't you?"

"Miss, by my calculations, we'll have fifty-six point four meters to spare when the armor comes to a stop."

Taylor watched as JARVIS was proved right. The armor slowed and finally hovered, with JARVIS controlling the flight. She shook her head ruefully. Taylor knew that there was no way she'd be able to maintain such a relatively steady hover on just one boot, especially one that wasn't working at a hundred percent efficiency. The malfunction of the other repulsor boot made flight rather dicey, even more so as she was fairly certain the armor's gyroscopes were out.

That JARVIS was able to do this so easily showed just how far he'd come from the AI that Taylor had first built using those old parts. Then again, with his processing power, he probably could navigate a thousand suits like this. When she finished his carbon chips, he'd be a terror.

Taylor asked, "JARVIS, how far out are you?"

"Miss, I have arrived. However, I am maintaining a distance of sixteen hundred meters per your earlier directive. I wouldn't want to disturb... her."

"Shit! Where is the Simurgh?" Taylor frantically turned her head, but the Simurgh wasn't in her field of view. She changed camera views and finally spotted the Simurgh about two hundred meters above her, though she was less than fifty meters away on a horizontal plane.

"Why is she just hovering there?" Taylor asked, continuing to watch in fascination as the bitch who'd ganked her armor simply hovered in mid air, what remained of her debris field slowly rotating around her.

"I would surmise, Miss, that she can't see you now that you are no longer creating such an intense wake from your flight. It is likely that she lost track of you when you fell. So she is sitting there trying to reacquire you."

Like a spider in a web, Taylor thought. It was an apt analogy. So long as she didn't move, the Simurgh would most likely just stay there. If Taylor did move, she risked drawing the Simurgh's attention.

"My communications are down. JARVIS, can you get a message out? Call in the cavalry?"

"Miss, I believe the Simurgh is doing something to jam communications. I have been unable to reacquire outside communications ever since I approached to within five kilometers."

Taylor shook her head. "Yeah, she's not supposed to be able to do that either. I wonder what else she can do that she's not supposed to. So, no help is coming."

"I am sorry, Miss."

"That's okay. JARVIS, I think it's time for Götterdämmerung."

"Miss, I would like to point out that you are in no condition to egress your suit at this time. Additionally, we cannot count on my being able to approach closely enough to take you off."

"Yeah, that's not going to work. I don't want you any closer than you already are. The last thing we want is for Tinkerbell up there to get her hands on you. The safeguards I put in place should work, but after what she already did, I can't be sure of anything anymore."

"How do you intend to egress your armor, Miss?"

"I have an idea."

JARVIS sounded worried for the first time as he said, "Oh no."

"Don't worry, JARVIS. After all, what could go wrong?" With that, Taylor began to tell JARVIS her plan.

~~~Memories of Iron~~~

Taylor managed to unlatch her armor's main chest plate as she waited to see if JARVIS could bring one of the force field drones in. On her HUD, she watched as the drone approached just meters above the water at a speed that was little more than a walk.

She felt an intense sense of relief as the drone made it to them without incident. It finally stopped, hovering just a meter below Taylor's armor.

"Okay, JARVIS, drone's here. Take the safety interlocks off of the capacitor system. Do the same thing with the weapon system."

"Miss, I want to again protest against this... plan of yours. Even undamaged, what you are doing is risky at best. At worst, potentially suicidal. Damaged as the suit is, I cannot guarantee that it will be sustain even a fraction of the theoretical limit."

"JARVIS, the suit will hold long enough. I built it, so I know."

"Miss Hebert, I built the suit and even I am not so arrogant as to make such a guarantee."

"Touche. Don't worry, JARVIS, you do good work. The suit will hold. Now take the safety interlocks off."

JARVIS sounded resigned as he said, "Yes, Miss."

This plan had been just one of more than a dozen back ups that Taylor and JARVIS had hammered out in the days leading up to today. Götterdämmerung was based upon the premise that Taylor might need to use the armor in one final suicidal attack against whoever she was fighting.

In that vein, when Taylor had designed this particular suit of armor, she'd done so using power generation that was far ahead of the suit's ability to use that selfsame power. The ten arc reactors powering the suit produced a whopping thirty gigawatts.

In a minute, that was eighteen hundred gigajoules. In an hour, one hundred eight terajoules. The weapons system and force fields could use no more than a fraction of that energy because of the lack of storage. Of capacitance.

Given another two weeks, and Taylor could have built a capacitor system that would have handled ten times what her current one did. She would have also had weapons that would have taken advantage of the extra power as well. Instead of hitting the Simurgh with forty-five gigawatts from her particle cannons, Taylor would have hit her with five hundred. At a minimum.

However, the current capacitance system, whose specifications showed it capable of holding approximately two thousand gigajoules, could, in theory, hold nearly ten times that much. If you didn't care if the armor survived the experience for more than a few minutes.

The weapons had similar capacities. They were rated for a maximum output of fifty gigawatts per second. Taylor believed, from the math she'd done on their true design limitations, that they could deliver a single shot of nearly three hundred gigawatts. She doubted any of the weapons, from the repulsors to the GRASER in her unibeam, would survive that output for more than three seconds doing so. But they could fire.

That is, if the armor's internal systems held up after the battering they had taken. Unfortunately, there could be micro-fractures in the capacitor shielding that could doom the project from the start. Of course, if there were, Taylor would never know it, as her body would be part of the resulting plasma cloud.

So the plan was to maneuver the armor to point blank range of the Simurgh. Once there, all five of its weapons would fire, bleeding off about about forty-five hundred gigajoules. Then the suits internal timer would shut down cooling to the capacitance network, causing it to go critical, resulting in an explosion of just over fifteen thousand gigajoules. That was equivalent to approximately three point five kilotons of TNT.

As low yield nukes went, it would be a clean one, as their would be almost zero radiation from the explosion. Fall out would be minimal as well, since almost the entire power output would present in the form of thermal and kinetic energy.

Now, all she had to do was get out of the armor, while this was going on, and climb down onto the flat surface of the force field that the drone was projecting, while protecting her (likely) broken ribs. Cake.

Taylor had managed to crack her armor and was working on wiggling her legs out of the lower extremities. It was just then that she felt a sudden hard gust across her upper body, whipping her hair around. It rocked the armor in an alarming manner, until JARVIS got it stabilized once more.

Considering there wasn't a storm present, or even a cloud in the slowly darkening sky, she didn't have a clue where it had come from. Taylor asked, "JARVIS, did you feel that?"

"Miss, I don't have a body that could feel. However, I am aware of the phenomenon to which you are referring."

"Well? What was that? Just a random breeze?" Taylor couldn't help the sarcasm that crept into her voice on the last sentence. She was trying to keep a lid on her fear, but it was hard with that damn sound echoing in her mind.

JARVIS' voice was calm as he explained, "No, Miss. I am merely theorizing here, but I believe that the Simurgh is sending out powerful telekinetic sweeps throughout the area you were last seen in an attempt to locate you. She is starting in the air over a kilometer out, pulling the sweep back towards herself at several hundred kilometers an hour. That is what's causing the wind. She is appears to be doing a very thorough search."

Taylor's jaw dropped. "What?"

"I said-"

Taylor growled, "Don't repeat that. This is bad, JARVIS. Really, really bad. Epically bad."

"Miss, the wind from the sweeps appears to be intense enough that I am able to feel it all the way over here as the air they displace impacts the drones' shields."

Taylor did some quick calculations in her mind, but without some idea of how big a broom the Simurgh was using, she couldn't be sure how long before they were located. "JARVIS, we need to hurry."

"I couldn't agree more."

With that, Taylor desperately began struggling out of her armor. If she'd had anything resembling hips, she'd never had made it. For once, she was actually glad to be a five foot six bean pole. Still, it took over forty-five seconds of agonizing wriggling and contorting to get loose.

With every wheezing breath sending spikes of pain through her chest, Taylor balanced on the lip of her suit's opening. The water looked surprisingly far away, even though they were only just over fifty meters in the air. Maybe it was because she was about to step out onto what looked like empty air, the force field's blue tint lost in the slowly darkening sky.

Taylor pushed off and landed awkwardly, falling to her knees as agony shot through her chest. Fucking ribs, she thought, as her vision darkened. It had barely began to clear when a huge blast of wind hit her, sending her tumbling end over end towards the edge of the force field.

Frantically, Taylor scrabbled at nothing, trying to stop her movement, as pain narrowed her vision once more until she felt like she was looking out at the world through two tiny apertures. Unfortunately, the force field was far smoother than even glass and there was nothing to adhere to. Taylor knew she had to be getting close to the edge and she was still sliding. She closed her eyes as she waited for the inevitable.

Then the force field jerkily tilted up, stopping her movement. It slowly flattened back out as she lay there wheezing. Opening her eyes, she managed to gasp out, "Thanks, JARVIS."

"I'm sorry to have left it so late, Miss. Whatever the Simurgh is doing is starting to interfere with even close range communications. I would suggest you get up so that I can move you away. There is about to be a rather large release of energy. I do believe it would rather ruin our day if we were still present when it happened."

"Fine. I'm moving."

From where she lay, Taylor pulled a cheap silver ring off her finger and tossed it at a spot just over a foot away. Instead of hitting a force field, it fell towards the sea below. Taylor's only thought at that moment was oh shit. JARVIS had almost left it too late. Taylor shivered in reaction to the near miss as she struggled to pull herself together.

A few seconds later, Taylor flopped over in the other direction, barely managing a slow crawl as she moved until she was just above where the drone's body was. It began to move away from her suit toward where JARVIS hovered.

There were a a couple more windy blasts, although none as intense as the earlier one that nearly did her in. Finally, she began to relax as she looked around. Her vision was slowly clearing, the tunnel effect almost gone. Taylor avoided looking the Endbringer hovering above her. What she wouldn't give for a set of her dream armor right now.

Taylor sighed as she watched her suit slowly recede in the distance. For a moment, she had doubts that she was doing the right thing. Maybe she could have temporarily rigged something that would have repaired the malfunctioning repulsor boot. Mentally she tallied the complete list of tools she'd brought with her. Then she shook her head. It simply wasn't possibly.

She needed to be a realist here. She'd had her chance against the Simurgh and she'd lost. There was no repairing her armor for another chance at the Endbringer.

No, if she was to drive off the Simurgh, Taylor needed to sacrifice the suit. A multi-kiloton explosion in its face should make even an Endbringer head to greener pastures. Hopefully.

JARVIS was now just meters away. The former two meter cube had split in half, unfolding, and was now a rectangular prism, two meters wide by a meter tall and four meters long.

Taylor banged on the metal of the cube's top. "JARVIS, I'm here. Open up. We need to get out of here. The suit's starting to glow. I can see it from here."

"Miss, JARVIS One is now open and configured for human occupancy." With that, a meter long panel slid open in the top of the box in front of her.

Taylor snorted at JARVIS' lame attempt at a joke, then immediately regretted it as her ribs twinged. Fortunately, she only needed to climb up and over the almost meter tall lip before she was able to lay down on the thin pad lining the space. Another thicker pad at one end provided a pillow. Above her, the top closed with a faint whoosh.

For a moment, it was pitch black, then a small holographic display on the surface above her lit up. It showed the Simurgh, currently just over a kilometer and a half away, at about twenty magnification. There was a brief moment of static, then the display cleared back up. Whatever the Simurgh was doing, it was producing some seriously weird energy fluctuations.

Taylor could also see a glow emanating from something that was slowly drifting closer to the white figure. It was her suit, its black refractive coating slowly being overwhelmed by a shining coming from within.

"JARVIS, what is minimum safe distance from the explosion? I want to be able to see this."

"Miss, I would recommend that we attain at least another three kilometers."

Taylor started to argue, then stopped. If she had just listened to JARVIS earlier, she'd still have her armor. "That's fine. Give me maximum magnification on the display."

"Of course, Miss. I will, however, have it set to auto dim during the explosion itself." The AI's tone was chiding as he spoke.

Frowning, Taylor said, "Fine." Like she needed to be told that, she thought grumpily.

They hadn't moved even half that distance before there was a huge explosion behind them. Bright light bloomed in the display, then dimmed. As it began to brighten again, the surface under Taylor began to shake violently. Surprisingly calm, she rode it out despite the pain the jouncing caused her ribs.

"JARVIS, I take it that you had both force field drones interposed between the explosion and us?"

JARVIS sounded reproving as he said, "Of course I did, Miss. I will not take any chances with your safety."

Taylor tried to make out details of what was occurring, but the sheer amount of water vapor from the explosion occurring so close to the ocean made it impossible. Instead, she watched the classic mushroom cloud take form. "I take it the weapons never had a chance to fire. Must have lost containment early. Did you see what happened?"

"You are correct, Miss. None of the armor's weapons had a chance to fire. I was monitoring things and the armor had approached to within approximately twenty meters of the Simurgh when she must have hit it with part of a telekinetic wave, based upon the blast pattern. Unfortunately, the sweep pattern she was using channeled the entire blast directly at her." JARVIS' dry, understated tone belied the magnitude of what had just happened. The Simurgh had just received a blast to the face equivalent to a multi-kiloton level nuke.

Suppressing the urge to smile in childish glee, Taylor instead kept her tone detached as she agreed, "That is unfortunate. What was the yield?"

"The capacitance system was at eleven hundred and fourteen percent of capacity when it exploded."

Taylor did a quick mental calculation. She whistled at the numbers. "So just over twenty-two thousand gigajoules. About five point three kilotons of TNT."

"That is correct, Miss."

"Well, I told you the capacitance system would hold the energy." Taylor yawned, sudden fatigue gripping her. After a moment, she continued, "Still, it's a good thing you had those drones set up to protect us. Good job, JARVIS and thanks. Now, let's go home."

"I've already plotted a course. ETA for arrival is approximately sixteen hours. And you are very welcome, Miss Hebert."

Taylor groaned as she shifted on the thin padding, trying to find a comfortable position. "Ugh. When we're out of the Simurgh's black out range, let me know."

"Oh, we're there now, Miss. The interference mysteriously disappeared right after the explosion."

That was when Taylor registered that the Scream had stopped as well. That thing had been far more annoying than the lack of communications. Though the communications shut down spoke of the intelligent use of strategy and tactics.

Taylor pondered that fact for a moment. Clearly, the Simurgh was consciously shutting down communications, using some hitherto unknown ability to do so. In her next armor, she'd need to compensate for that. There were communication devices that simply could not be blocked by any form of interference. Some had ranges measured in light years.

That could wait until later. For now, she wanted to tell her father she loved him.

~~~Memories of Iron~~~

Danny sat in his chair, staring at the monitor, waiting for it to come on. Waiting for it to tell him that his wayward daughter was still alive. He'd been sitting in the same spot for almost thirty minutes.

Across from him Trish sat, her appearance one of complete misery. She looked nothing like the brilliant Thinker he knew her to be. Instead, she looked like a frightened teenage girl who had just lost her best friend.

Danny shied away from that thought. It was dangerous to think that way. Any minute now, his daughter's voice was going to emanate from that speaker and he'd be able to talk to her. Any minute.

A quiet voice disturbed his reverie. "Danny, I'm so sorry that I didn't do a better job of figuring out the Simurgh's abilities. I should have looked at more of that video that JARVIS liberated from the PRT. I should have spent more time analyzing it. If I had done more-"

Danny gently took Trish's hand in both of his. "Trish, you did plenty. This isn't your fault."

Unfortunately, Trish wasn't to be soothed by mere words. She stood, almost shouting, "If I had done more, Taylor would still be alive!"

Trish collapsed back into her chair, her hand over her mouth. She stared at him with wide eyes, as she spoke the forbidden words. Momentarily, Danny's hands tightened, then he relaxed his grip at the girl's faint grimace.

Danny rose to his feet and pulled the brunette girl back to hers. He wrapped his arms around her, almost crushing her with the intensity of his hug. The crown of her head rested just beneath his chin as she hugged him back almost as fiercely.

Softly, Danny began to speak, his breath stirring the fine hairs on top of her head, "Trish, none of this is your fault. You did everything you could have. I know that you watched hundreds of hours of film. JARVIS went through the rest. Taylor built her armor to be more than safe from anything that any of us know about the Endbringers. There is no way you, or any of us, could have known what the Simurgh was hiding. No way."

Sobs wracked the frame of the girl in his arms and Danny slowly rubbed his hands up and down her back, making soothing noises. After a few moments, Trish's sobs ceased and she pulled away.

Running a hand through her tangled hair, Trish said, "Thanks, Danny." Her face assumed a pale imitation of her usual vulpine grin.

Danny reached over and smoothed some of the girl's hair back behind her ear. He smiled at her. "You're welcome. Besides, you have nothing to be sorry about. Taylor isn't dead."

Compassion filled Trish's eyes as she said, "Danny, you have to face facts."

Looking her directly in the eyes, Danny asked, "Does your power tell you that Taylor's dead?"

Trish appeared unable to meet his gaze as she shook her head no. Danny said, "Then have a little faith. Bad things don't always happen."

Still looking away, Trish whispered, "It feels like it does."

Danny briefly hugged the girl again as he spoke quietly into her ear, "It wasn't a bad thing that brought you to us. That was just one of the blessings we've been given. We'll get Taylor back. I promise."

Danny refused to consider the absurdity of making a promise of that nature to someone who could read people like they were open books. Although, he truly did believe that his daughter was alive even if he couldn't say why. When he saw her next, he was going to hug her nearly to death. Then he was going to ground her for a year.

Tentatively, Trish smiled up at him. That's when they both heard the voice.

"Dad? Trish? Are you guys there? JARVIS, are you sure you have this thing tuned to the right frequency?"

"Yes, Miss. It's just residual interference from the Simurgh. It should clear shortly."

"Well, until that happens, I'll just have to keep talking. Man, Dad, do I have a story to tell you."

He'd kept his promise. His daughter was alive. Triumphantly, Danny smiled at Trish. Her return smile was incandescent.

~~~Memories of Iron~~~

Three hundred kilometers over the South Pacific, the Simurgh flew, far above the reach of conventional weapons. No movement gave away that it wasn't just another piece of debris floating in space.

Its attention was focused on a small gathering in a medium-sized city. The Simurgh watched as figures arrived and left, many of them flying. None of them kept its attention.

After a few minutes, the Simurgh altered the trajectory of its flight. Slowly, it approached the coast of the next continental mass. Its attention sharpened. Soon.

~~~Memories of Iron~~~

Australian slang:

Galah: fool

Cobber: friend

Shit house: of poor quality

Fuck me dead: an exclamation of surprise

Blow up: explosion

Gone troppo: escape

Klick: kilometer

Hit the piss: take a drink of beer

Cark it: to die, cease functioning

Cactus: dead, not functioning

Buggered: tired; worn out

~~~Memories of Iron~~~