“It looks like an anti-tank rocket just exploded in the middle of Times Square! I’ll… wait… Midnight is engaging the militia in Times Square. I don’t see any of the others.”

  Walker hadn’t heard back from the group moving refugees to the stadium for a bit, but Jack Hammer’s last reply had been, “keep the info coming, we’ll be along as fast as we can.”

  So, he kept up his stream of information, hoping that the rest of the Blue Bloods or maybe the Chessmen would use it to help bring the ill guided insurrection to an end. “Frostfire just emerged from the same subway tunnel. She’s moving to… Holy Mary, mother of God, they’ve got an Abrams.”

  He watched, helplessly, as the tiny ice woman stepped in front of the main battle tank. It drove forward until it bumped into her, at which point it just… stopped. He pulled up his binoculars to get a better view, and a grim chuckle forced its way out of him as he realized the tank’s treads were spinning in place, scraping across frozen ground as it pushed against the seemingly immobile ice sculpture.

  The tank reversed course, pulling back until it could lower its main gun to point directly at the tiny woman. Walker screamed into his radio, “somebody get down here, fast! Frostfire, do not…”

  The tank fired. A cloud of smoke and vapor obscured the front of the tank. Walker glanced around the rest of the square, spotting Midnight as she flipped another of the mortar trucks on its side. She hadn’t even reacted to the tank entering the fray until it fired, and even now she didn’t bother to do more than glance over, then leap to the far side of the mortars to continue her one-woman assault on the terrorists lighting the city on fire to ‘liberate’ it.

  When he looked back at the tank, a wedge of… something… covered most of the tank and the area behind it, starting with where Frostfire had been standing. The smoke in that area was just gone. The tank itself had a patina of frost across its carapace. Everything in the area seemed hard to see. Dark, almost like someone had lowered the lights. Red tinted, and Walker tried not to think why that might be.

  Then something like a tiny cyclone sucked the remaining smoke and steam into itself, spinning around Frostfire where she stood, one foot half a step in front of the other, leaning forward just a touch as if she’d been screaming at the tank. The hatch atop the tank sprang open, steam blasting outward from it as it did. Before the obstruction cleared, strobing flashes lit it up from within. Sparks flew as bullets ricocheted off the tiny ice woman for a moment.

  Then the whole area in front of her ignited. When the smoke cleared again, the remains of the tank collapsed, huge sections of armor sloughing off to reveal the inner workings of the armored vehicle just missing.

  “Holy Mary, mother of God. What… what did she do?”

  ***

  Midnight’s ears popped again, and she leapt atop the mortar carrier she’d just flipped up on its side. A quick scan showed her most of the militia starting to break, the ones further away from her finally realizing that most of the vehicles in Times Square had been flipped, smashed, or in one case tossed into one of the surrounding buildings. She didn’t even remember doing that, but she’d been a little pissed off. Maybe she did need those anger management courses after all.

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  “Hey! Frostfire! You okay over there?”

  The little Asian woman’s voice sounded odd, an echo sliding around it, sometimes seeming to precede her words. “I… I am not sure. I’ve never killed a man before.”

  Midnight shook her head, then shouted at the remaining militia, “our newbie, a musician, just took out your tank. Lie down with your hands behind your head and I won’t kick your ass.” Without looking to see if they’d take the advice or not, she leapt over to where Frostfire stood, frozen. “Hey, you gonna be okay?”

  “I… I do not know.”

  After a quick glance at the remains of the tank, Midnight shook her head. “Honestly, I don’t think you killed him. Not sure what you did, but I heard some gunfire then an explosion. Almost like he set off some kind of grenade or something. Not like you have any explosive powers.” She paused. “You don’t have explosive powers, do you?”

  Frostfire blinked, then her whole posture shifted. Bits of cloudy, cracked ice flaked away from her, revealing a Grace perfectly formed from clear ice underneath. She smiled sadly, and the echoes returned with reinforcements. “In the end, I have only the one power. Like most of us.” She chuckled. “She said, speaking with one of those exceptions with two.”

  “Uh…” The woman standing in front of her looked like Grace, sounded vaguely like Grace, but didn’t move like her, didn’t hold herself with the subtle tension of a woman ready to flee at a moment’s notice. Midnight barely remembered a course she’d taken on dealing with people who’d had a psychotic break. De-escalation. That was the key. “Okay. Uh, I think they’re mostly surrendering.”

  Frostfire nodded, and then nodded again, this time to indicate something behind Drew. “I agree.”

  Midnight turned, ready to deal with whatever new threat had appeared, only to see a wave of the Chessmen’s Pawns swarm over the remaining militia, enveloping them and locking them down. She took a deep breath and let it out, trying to let go of the worst of the rage that had gripped her, while not letting go so much she’d pass out or miss some last minute forlorn hope last stand by the militia and gang members.

  “Would you like to get a pizza?”

  She turned back to Grace. “What?”

  “It’s been a long time since I had pizza. I wonder if any of the places around here are still open.”

  Midnight shook her head. “Sure Grace. Let’s go find some pizza.”

  ***

  Jack flew down the subway tunnel right behind Angel, who still had that big wedge of stone hovering in front of him. Not long before they’d all heard an explosion. They’d done their best to double-time it since then, Angel flying ahead, Jack right behind him, the others lagging further behind as they navigated through the last of the refugees and an inexplicable thin coating of ice all over everything. Okay, not entirely inexplicable, but Jack couldn’t figure out why Frostfire had coated everything.

  When they came out into the station, Angel nodded to Widget and Flex in passing before flying up the stairs. Jack stopped and asked, “what’s the situation?”

  Widget looked over at him, distracted, shaking her head as she muttered and poked at the controls on the big sarcophagus thing she’d summoned up again. Flex, who looked smaller than he remembered, perched atop the sarcophagus. “She’s trying to get it to work. I think the armor she summoned has some of the same tech, and some kind of AI translation, maybe?”

  It only took Jack a second to catch on. “Who?”

  “Charlie. He… I’m not sure how, but I think he took a hit for us.”

  “How bad?”

  She shuddered. “Bad. I… I don’t know why she’s even trying.”

  “Because the regeneration chamber has settings to heal anything short of complete disintegration. If there’s DNA remaining, it can fix it.”

  “Holy crap. That’s…”

  “Not Terran tech. Given what I’ve deduced from a few things Captain Walker didn’t say, not to mention some similarities between the meteorite Axeman recovered for me, my armor, and the regeneration chamber, I suspect it belongs to whoever’s driving the asteroid that bombarded us.”

  Jack froze, staring. “Does that mean we’re at war then?”

  Widget just shrugged. “No idea. That’s somebody else’s call.” She nodded to the big sarcophagus looking thing. “Maybe Charlie will have some input on that. But one thing I can tell you.”

  Jack waited, then said, “what’s that?”

  “We’ve got just under a year before that thing loops around the sun and comes back around.”