Silver Seraphs

  Adamantine Chronicles: Book One

  Author: D. R. Rosier

  Copyright 2019. 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

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Afterword:

  Other erotic fantasies by D. R. Rosier:

  Non-erotic Fantasy titles:

  Book Description

  Chapter One

  The New York skyline slowly receded from view as I gave a last backward glance, and then took off to the west toward Silver City, Nevada. I’d just completed moving out of my apartment, signed the papers, and it was time to move on.

  I’d had no choice, not if I wanted to continue to be a superhero in this new world.

  The heads-up display in my armored helmet showed me both a straight path to my destination, and the path I was on as I increased my speed to about seven hundred miles an hour, just under Mach one, and I matched paths. It would take a little less than four hours to get there, and barring any unforeseen accidents, I’d get there in plenty of time for the interview and practical tryouts.

  It’d been a year since the government declared independent heroes would soon be a thing of the past. The government had, with the assistance of the few mad scientists that didn’t go bad, developed weapons and tactics capable of stopping the majority of supervillains without superhero assistance. They called it the Metahuman Task Force, or the MTF which was under the umbrella of Homeland Security.

  It was the able to handle most supervillains part, that gave me any hope at all of staying a hero. All the cities were also going to sponsor and field one superhero team, under the command of the MTF, to deal with the ones still outside their ability and control.

  I was a little conflicted about the whole idea, especially because to serve on one of their teams being unmasked was one of the requirements. But a part of me also didn’t blame the government, most superheroes were rather shallow in truth, and were in it for women, money, and fame. It had been a bit of a tossup, and of course there’d been a lot of collateral damage.

  Thing was, the collateral damage had just gone up since the human agents equipped with powerful weapons or not were often too slow to keep up with a supervillain. Which told me it was just as much about control, as getting most of the superheroes off the street, and that protecting the innocent citizens was the last part of the equation.

  Still, crappy or not, it was the only game in town so to speak.

  I’d tried to join the New York team, but the MTF had recruited a pre-made team in the city with the best arrest record, including the least accidental deaths percentagewise during collars. That happened in a lot of cities, as it’d happened a year ago in the pilot program with Oracle’s Maidens in Lonestar city.

  Some cities however, had no unofficial hero teams. They just had loners that might work together during a battle, but weren’t a real team. The MTF in those cities were holding interviews and mock combat trials to assemble a true superhero team. Which was really my best bet.

  What didn’t help me was that my record wasn’t exactly spotless. I’d had my ass handed to me quite a few times. It was just a year ago when the alien ship was found and raised from the ocean floor, so it could leave Earth before the planet itself went critical, that my powers had finally quickened because of the increase of alien power introduced to our planet’s core. I hadn’t quickened at sixteen like most heroes did, I’d been quickened by the increased radiation spike when the alien ships core had lost containment for a few microseconds.

  I’d been twenty-three, and I was twenty-four the day I left New York. Perhaps that older age was one of the reasons I wasn’t quite as shallow as a lot of supers. I imagined such a heady power at the age of sixteen, along with plenty of women throwing themselves at their feet, was the cause for such arrogance and entitlement. Needless to say, a lot of superheroes didn’t like the new government system at all.

  There’d actually been a lot of that, I wasn’t the only one quickened last year. Most supers had the basic package of strength, speed, varying degrees of invulnerability, and even flight. That wasn’t me at all. I’d been obsessed with the idea of harnessing and wielding the exotic alien energy and using the radiation the energy gave off that was in our core.

  The source of all super powers on the planet.

  My powers were extremely unique, I was somewhat of a magician, but not really. There was no magic, and I couldn’t cast spells. Although, to be fair, that was probably because I didn’t believe in magic or spells, so that power wasn’t given to me. The energy may not have been magic, but it did a hell of a job at times in acting like it was. Instead, I could harness and give purpose to the power in devices.

  Sort of like an enchanter, I couldn’t cast magic directly, just give objects a purpose, but I hated that word, there was no such thing as magic. I’d liken it to creating a quantum field of organized mysterious energy humanity didn’t understand yet, and in giving that field of energy a purpose. I supposed that wasn’t really any different than calling it enchanting, because I truly wasn’t even sure how it worked, or what that alien energy truly was.

  It wasn’t magic, but it might as well have been at our level of understanding.

  Point being, it was only the last year that I’d even gotten started on being a superhero, and it’d taken time for me to work all the bugs out. Enchanting and having an otherwise human body had obviously led me to the conclusion of wearing an armored suit. I’d always been a fan of the red and gold guy, so why not?

  My suit of armor, which was made from a quite normal and easily acquired light weight composite armor that I’d had custom made for me, and thanks to me it was heavily covered with several of those quantum field enchantments. It was a dark blue for the most part, with white symbols on the helmet, chest, legs, and arms. The arcane looking symbols didn’t actually do anything, I just thought they looked cool.

  Point was, the suit had fifteen enchantments, yeah, even I call them that in my own head at times, since we don’t know what they really are, even as it drives me nuts. It was just convenient, a ready-made word that sort of fit, even if it really didn’t.

  Enchantments were self-powering through the radiation field from the magic gathered in the Earth’s core, but at that strength enchantments are relatively weak, and they’d be worthless in battle against a B-class villain, never mind A-class or S-class. Not just battle, but my gravity enchantment that allowed me to fly would be ridiculously slow.

  Oh, classes. A class was generally four abilities, B-class had three, C-class had two, and D-class one. S class could be five abilities, but more often it just meant one of their abilities was absolute. Like invulnerability, an S-class invulnerability wasn’t at all partial, it was absolute.

  Or at least, no limit had been found so far for those that had them.

  I wasn’t sure what I was, either D-class, or S-class because of the flexibility of my ability. I could do just about anything as long as I had an hour to enchant and something to attach it to. My suit was hardly my only creation or supervillain fighting tool.

  Point was, before I got off track, enchantments were generally weak on their own. It’d taken me time to figure out I could connect to the enchantments to overpower them, and to feed them my energy directly to make them far more formidable and powerful. Of course, my energy was limited as well, so it was a constant trade-off in flight, information, weapons, and defense. If I ran out of personal power, I’d be extremely weak in the suit until it regenerated, which could take hours if I was fully drained.

  Much like a B-class villain with strength, speed, and partial invulnerability. Eventually, if hit enough times, they’ll stop being invulnerable and get knocked out. Most people on the planet didn’t really even understand that much, they just knew two supers fought until one was overwhelmed, it was only me that could shape and understand the energies on the most basic level which gave me that insight.

  Even after I figured that out, controlling fifteen enchantments during a fight, just got my ass kicked, it was overwhelming to keep track of it all, much less the actual fight. So, I’d added an enchantment that was nothing but power control. I fed that enchantment the power it needed, and it figured out where it needed to go after that. A dynamic power router of sorts, that fed all of the other enchantments, prioritizing my safety, and it would warn me when my personal power started to run low.

  More than that even, my helmet had an enchantment that scans the power of my opponents, any nearby supers, and it will tell me how tough they are as well as their class in my HUD, so I’d know how hard to hit. Not just class, but type. Some had shields and weird abilities f
or instance, it wouldn’t be exact, but it would tell me if I was facing the classic four powers that most sixteen-year-old kids dream of, or if my opponent was more exotic in their abilities.

  The power management enchantment was even dynamic enough to feed that information to my weapon systems and adjust their power dynamically on the fly, so I don’t accidentally kill someone with a final blow that finally cracked their shields, or partial invulnerability. The scanner would also inform me when my opponent was vulnerable enough to be subdued by one of my cuff enchantments.

  Deaths weren’t that common in super fights, but they did happen, and I’d been determined not to let that happen to me. Killing someone on accident, I mean.

  All that had taken a lot of the maintenance and micromanagement away from dealing with my suit, and I could focus more on strategy and taking down the villain. All that had also taken about nine months of work to smooth out the bugs, and more than one embarrassing fight where I got my ass handed to me. I must’ve redone all my enchantments on the suit several hundred times trying to get it right.

  The last three months, my record had been spotless, I’d bagged every supervillain I’d fought, and killed none of them. The problem was the six months before that, my record was pretty awful, even if I hadn’t killed someone a lot of supervillains had gotten away. There may have also been a few buildings that were slightly damaged. Okay, more than slightly, and all of that was on my record, since before the MTF superheroes still had to register and all that, to be legal.

  Point was, my only hope was getting the MTF to see the truth of my learning curve over the last year, I was a superhero, and it was the only thing I wanted to be.

  Besides the HUD and scanning, my helmet enchantments also hosted the power management and variable weapons enchantment fed from my scan data. It was also able to zoom in, and give myself other angles during flight. Plus all that other stuff a HUD was capable of, including navigation in flight, weapons lock, listing nearby supers and their abilities, active weapon, and how much power I had left.

  Fortunately, flight was pretty cheap as far as power draining goes. I’d tried a lot of different flight concepts, but had eventually gone with a gravity impulse drive, since it was fairly cheap power wise until I got into multiple Mach speeds, and perhaps most importantly there was no need for me to carry propellant or some other reactive mass for propulsion. As long as I stayed below Mach one, the flight enchantment, and my own power, would regenerate as quickly as it was spent.

  The suit enchantments were responsible for flight, kinetic shields, energy shields, inertial dampening, stasis, and environmental systems capable of putting me in orbit, though I’d only gone in space the one time so far.

  The gauntlets were my weapons systems. The left gauntlet had the rail gun, the other had energy attacks, plasma, sonic, and electrical strikes similar to a Taser in purpose but more beefed up for a super. Obviously, the rail gun was dependent on rounds, and the only limited weapon I had. Logically, plasma should have been limited with needing hydrogen or some other mass to turn into plasma, but it wasn’t. Magic made up for that somehow, or whatever the energy was.

  Last but not least, I could fire the cuff enchantments, which would only be effective once the supervillain was out of energy, either for their shields or partial invulnerability. The cuff not only subdued them, but it would leach any energy recovery the villain made so they couldn’t escape, which would also serve to keep the cuff itself powered. The government had something similar, so I could release the enchantment after I turned them over.

  To be clear, the cuff enchantment wasn’t physical. It was… damnit, fine, I’ll use the dreaded word. It was a spell, fired by my enchanted gauntlets. Like a magic wand. I really hated describing it like that, but those words worked best as an explanation for the masses. It wasn’t really that of course, it was an energy field made up of organized exotic particles, possibly from another dimension, and its purpose was formed by my will and power through the objects I wielded.

  But really, magic spell sufficed as an explanation, since in truth we didn’t have the real one yet.

  I just… really hated that. I was a science geek after all, a theoretical physicist, or I had been, before I’d quickened.

  Chapter Two

  Silver city was a lot like Vegas, bright lights, gambling, prostitution, and a whole lot of people that had almost nothing to do with any of that, off the strip. I only mention it because even supervillains take vacations, which would be interesting. Apparently, they got mostly turn-over threats in Silver City, supervillains on a tear before they went home after getting their fill of sex, gambling, and whatever else made them happy.

  There weren’t really any permanent supervillains in Silver City, outside of their supermax prison that is.

  I slowed down in small increments as the city came into view. With my inertial dampening, stasis, and gravity enchantments working in tandem, I could go from Mach four to a dead stop in seconds, but doing that took a lot of energy. I wanted to be at maximum energy when I landed, so I just slowed down slowly, even feeling the G pressure of slowing down, the inertial dampening wouldn’t even kick in until I went over a G.

  Power was always a consideration, I never knew when my next fight would be, and I’d hate to blow half my energy showing off and then get my butt handed to me by a supervillain that took exception to my arrogance.

  The MTF had taken over an old government building not in use and refurbished it. From what I understood it was a three-level building, including apartments of sorts on the top floor of the building for their super team, as well as the task force’s two tactical teams. I say of sorts, because the apartments had a small living room, bedroom, and private bath, but that was it. The kitchen, casual meeting rooms, a large media room, and the workout rooms were common areas shared by all on the second floor.

  I’d never been there of course, but there’d been a lot of press over the last year, as the MTF got set up in all the different cities, including more than one live camera tour. A simple search on YouTube and I’d learned more than a bit about the building layouts for the MTF stations.

  The remainder of the other two levels of the building were more official, debrief rooms, temporary holding rooms until the supermax sent out a transport van to take them to the high security prison, communication room, command center, and other things like that.

  It would be a bit weird living where I worked, but then I also didn’t have to worry about finding an apartment here. For the moment I was pretty much homeless, my furniture and most of my clothes stuck in pod storage and waiting for a phone call to get it delivered. I hoped to get a position here, but with my record it wasn’t exactly guaranteed, even if I could kick butt now.

  I also wasn’t panicked about it yet, several more cities were holding similar interviews and try-outs over the next few weeks.

  When I got in range of the building, I saw the large field behind it, vast might be a better description. It was full of heroes, thousands of them. Apparently, I hadn’t been the only one with the idea of going to those cities. It was every hero’s last hope, even the shallow ones, who simply didn’t want to lose their marketing contracts.

  Hero marketing was big business, every product had a hero or heroine endorser.

  I froze in a panic as I got closer, and then stopped all forward movement. I was completely blinded, and I couldn’t see a damned thing. I’d thought I had all the bugs worked out in my suit, that I’d considered all the possibilities and had them all covered.

  Apparently not.

  As soon as I’d gotten in range to the thousand heroes, my scanners had started to scan them, and put their class and known abilities up on my HUD in small writing. Usually it was just a handful at most, and it took up a small part of the virtual screen. I could even zoom in on one of the boxes, and then read further speculation about my opponent based on the scan.

  In this unforeseen circumstance, I had my whole HUD covered in the scan descriptions, and I couldn’t see crap. I’d never imagined being in a situation with so many heroes before.

  I lowered slowly, and I breathed out a sigh of relief when I didn’t land on anyone, and I bent my head forward in thought.