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Supernova: Premiere Issue
May. 28th, 2024 08:22 pmThere was nothing official about Nova City's media district, just a cluster of news sites and traditional media with their offices on the boundary of Downtown and the Novasector tech hub. The centre of the district off Broadway held the headquarters of Nova City TopPod Newsgroup, 24Global, and RENN World, all on the same block. None of them were in the Big Five of news companies, and RENN World and TopPod Newsgroup were both owned by the same media group, but they were conveniently located and had decent reputations in the industry. Journalism student Laurel Jordan decided that was good enough.
She cut thrust about thirty metres above a plaza and let herself drop to the ground, landing next to a fountain shaped like a concrete boomerang. At just over 50 kilos and a velocity of 24 metres per second she didn't hit hard enough to crack the pavement. Laurel still absorbed the impact by flexing her legs a bit, to stay in habit.
She would have thought that dropping out of the empty sky would draw attention, but there were only three people in the plaza and they were all absorbed in their phones. None of the cars going by stopped either.
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Supernova: Premiere Issue
May. 17th, 2024 09:26 amA drone's camera caught her in mid-flight approaching King Tower, and the owner had sold the eight seconds of video to a news outlet. Now Laurel got to watch herself in flight, the first time she'd ever done so.
She looked ridiculous. Humans weren't built for flight, and rocketing through the air on beams of energy didn't look at all like the standard superheroic pose of flying flat. Instead she looked like a downhill skier leaning into a curve, cape flaring behind her as she balanced on twin beams of energy. At least the beams were impressive, all intense blue Cherenkov and bremsstrahlung radiations as the highly charged pions burnt through the air.
"For this they cancelled classes?" Laurel's normal speaking voice was down towards the deeper end of her contralto range, with just a bit of a burr.
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Supernova: Premiere Issue
May. 15th, 2024 05:40 pmShe'd never expected to actually fight anyone. Or anything.
Segmented tentacles and grabbers slid around her, struggling to find a grip. A metal pincer closed tight over her cape and yanked hard, trying to drag Laurel out from under the robot's body. Ignoring it Laurel punched up into the robot, through its steel shell. Her fist hit something hard inside the saucer-shaped machine, something that buckled and lifted as her punch plowed through the robot's machine-guts.
Metal screamed as it ruptured. The robot stalled, underbelly tentacles dropping loose around Laurel.
Shoving the robot aside revealed the sky and another machine above her. A metal cylinder, bent and broken. Laurel braced herself, waiting for a new attack. After an instant of watching the complex cylinder she realized it wasn't a missile or drone. The robot's power turbine. Launched clean through the robot's body by the force of her blow.
Did I hit it too hard? Laurel wondered as she watched the turbine fly through the grey sky. The turbine, trailing smoke, arced up and over, tumbling as its rise turned into a fall.
Laurel realized its fall was taking it towards a nearby police car, parked lengthwise across the industrial road. The cops, watching from behind the car, realized the same thing and ran.
A bit too hard, maybe, Laurel decided. The turbine came down fast onto the hood of the police car, the hard smash almost inaudible over the sound of fire and safety alarms. Well, I'll know better for next time.
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