Tracer

'I must stay low,' he thought, Las Vegas dwindling behind him. 'No matter how advanced they are, it'll be harder to spot me if I'm hugging the ground than if I'm flying high. The curvature of the Earth's surface'll help me a little there, too, even though they're only a few hundred kilometers away.'

He descended until he was less than fifty meters above the ground. Over flat desert, a fast pace would be easy to maintain. He stretched his arms out in front, and concentrated entirely on accelerating to his very limit. Then, imperceptibly at first, but soon with mounting visibility, his speed increased to flickering proportions. The rumble of the air around him steadily loudened until he travelled at just below the speed of sound.

After a few minutes, the sandy, level ground of the desert gave way to the Sierras. Now, unlike the smooth acceleration he put himself through before, his flight would be fraught with rocky obstacles; he'd have to dodge the mountains at angles and speeds he preferred not to think about.

The first mountain-obstacle leapt into his path. He jogged to the left just barely in time to miss the mountain, putting him on a head-on course with a second hill. Side-slipping to the right, he slalomed around that rock as well.  Each swerve was accompanied by an instantaneous roaring of air as the energy-armor field surrounding him cut past what little resistance the air gave.

Flying less than fifty meters above the surface of the ground was too dangerous in the mountains, he realized. Tracer gave himself a little leeway and ascended to a hundred meters, still too close to the ground to avoid hitting the hills without swerving, but not quite as lethal as fifty meters. As soon as he completed the climb, another hill popped into being that was so close he had to call on the super-human agility of the alien armor to move him to one side.

He was glad now that he'd once thought of being a dancer. When he was still young, he had taken a few courses over a couple of months, but thereafter lost interest. Yet the lessons had done one thing to him: they'd molded his muscles into lean, agile coordinators of his body, giving him a degree of physical control he had never before posessed. Now, those seldom-used muscles were again called into action.

He jerked left around another obstacle, then right, then came to a bulge so large he couldn't move to one side of it. Ignoring the risk of being spotted, Tracer angled upward and soared over the minor peak. The solitary observer below experienced something like a jet fighter flying low and fast overhead, leaving behind an eerie, glowing contrail. The observer waved a vain hello to the armored super human; Tracer probably wouldn't see it, but at least he was there.

Within a minute, all but the low, hilly, western region of the Sierras was behind him. The only thing between himself and the space ship now was about two hundred miles of sand and cities. The sandy areas passed quickly, and he was upon the towns of mankind's construction. He was unnerved a bit when he saw the high buildings approaching at just below the speed of sound, but he quickly overcame his fear. The only thing on his mind now was stopping the Empire's craft from destroying humanity.

He skimmed above the building tops until he found a major east-west thoroughfare, then followed it for ten seconds until he was completely across the town.  Everyone present watched the yellow and listened to the roar and hiss as his energy field cut through the atmosphere. These people knew his intention, for ten minutes earlier the Empire's flag ship had passed swiftly and silently above their heads. And although the backgrounds of those present differed immensely from individual to individual, nearly all of them had the same thought: "Go get 'em!"

He was well beyond the one city, past another, and through a third before he knew it. But now his determination began to falter by the slightest twinge of doubt in the back of his subconscious. He quickly banished this, though, as he weaved ever-closer to the California coast.

Finally, less than three minutes later, the coast sprang up before him, and he realized that his navigation had been slightly off. He hadn't flown far enough south, and had hit the ocean closer to Santa Barbara than Los Angeles.  As he rotated southward, still fifty meters off the ground, the doubt surfaced again in his conscious mind; but this time he accepted it. Slowly, he descended to the beach.

His body lost the smeared nature that meant he was flying and gave way to the calm swirling of energies. He was between two large, rust colored rocks that reflected the midday sun with a kind of late-afternoon light. Staring at the ground, he briefly went over all that had happened to him recently. He'd gone from being vice president of a non-profit organization to being a super-powered hero because of a rebel alien and its technology. Now, he had to stop an empire he'd never even seen before. And even though the empire was currently man's enemy, how could he hope to destroy a warship hundreds of times his own size?

And there was one more problem. 'Jeff Boeing,' he thought, 'Is supposed to be me. But if I appear in front of anybody when my energy-armor is turned on, the "me" gets lost in Tracer, the trans-human armored wonder who saves the world and flies off into the sunset.'

"Double personality"; the words resounded in his mind. Though his powers had been exposed to the world even before he chose his pseudonym, Jeff Boeing was rapidly losing his identity. The headlines were all crammed with "Tracer," but hardly a hint of Jeff remained.

But the fact that he'd always liked humanity and had always liked helping humanity as best he could still stuck out behind him. That was why he'd been vice-president of a nonprofit organization, and that was why he decided to keep the energy armor and use it to stop crime, save the world, and even crush an empire. And now he was obliged to carry out the two most demanding of those three duties.

No, obliged wasn't the word; he had to carry them out, and he wanted to carry them out! He couldn't afford to reminisce any longer. With determination on his hidden face, he called the flight power of the box back into action. The yellow energy patterns smeared, his weight became meaningless, and with a shove from his right leg he took off.

After climbing about two hundred meters, he stopped to get his bearings. He needed to follow the coast, which he was facing, southeast to reach Los Angeles. He pivoted left and once more brought himself up to full speed while dropping back down to fifty meters altitude. A myriad of people and a string of lifeguard towers flickered by, almost invisible with speed. Hundreds of strangers waved their greeting, and hundreds more worried because they knew what was soon to happen.

And at last, Jeff glimpsed it. It first appeared as a black speck against a blue-gray sky, which any airplane would have looked like, but from its distance and shape Jeff could tell that it was what he'd come to get. He altered his course, still hugging the ground at fifty meters, and threaded among the boulevards toward the ship. Keeping low kept up his hope that his presence had not yet been detected, yet he knew that if they could single him out over the entire planet they should be able to pick him up at this close a range.

In the distance, Jeff could finally see what the ship was doing to Los Angeles. This couldn't have been the way the empire "destroyed the world," what with firing only a few weak weapons at a gigantic city; they couldn't have been giving more than a sample of their power. They were firing the same red energy weapons at the city that they'd fired at him when they first met, and these caused only moderate devastation at best.

Soon, very soon, the hovering space craft was so close he could make out its contours. It was time to strike. Without slowing, he tensed his entire body and angled straight toward the ominous rectangular slab, charging his fists with the might of his energy field.

The next instant, Tracer rammed into the ship with the full force of his near-sonic momentum and his armor's channeled energy. He rebounded from the hull considerably. His armor would have absorbed most of the impact had he not directed its energy into the blow along with his velocity. Jeff was stunned, but only for a couple of seconds, afterwhich he inspected his space-faring adversary.

His blow had done considerable damage, but not as much as he'd hoped for.  Where he'd struck, he'd left a crater that plowed through nearly a meter of hardened and reinforced metal; but it wasn't deep enough to penetrate this armor to the delicate interior of the ship.

"Well," the emperor said. "Our first little attack didn't finish him.  Oh well, at least now he's gotten a taste of our hull."

Three or four of the guns on the ship pivoted and began firing on Tracer's yellow form. Startled, Tracer began dodging, evading most of the shots that came near him as he edged his way closer to the big ship. Once, a single shot hit him, but that only hammered him back a few meters and reflected off his armor with a yellow flash and a loud "Ktang!"

The emperor stared at the scene in disbelief. "Impossible!" he stammered. "Nobody can be that agile, even aided by one of the homeworld's charge boxes!"

"Or at least," interjected his second-in-command, "None of us can move like that. Have you seen the agility of this planet's inhabitants? We're only sloths next to them!"

"Are you suggesting that this isn't the last armored warrior?"

"Precisely," the second-in-command replied as he smoothly punched a string of commands into a computer terminal. When the display returned a fraction of a second later, it revealed that there was definitely a human inside the glowing armor. "It's confirmed — the original armored warrior is gone. I thought the fall must have killed him!"

A dull thud sounded against the hull of the ship, the effect of Tracer whacking the ship's armor while channeling energy into the blow. The emperor took casual note of it, then turned back to his second-in-command.

"So all that's fighting us is a human who found the box and figured out how it worked. The last armored warrior died before he could spread any of his technology to these bipeds."

"That's right. And that means . . ." A look of happiness swept over his form. ". . . That means we have nothing to fear from these people! We don't have to destroy them!"

The emperor hesitated, but then his voice boomed back: "NO! These people already know about the armor, and if we leave them alone they'll probably discover how to duplicate it!"

"But sir —"

"And with any luck, the armored warrior's weapon and stargate-opener probably survived the impact too. But most importantly, we've already begun the attack on these people. We can't back out now; the empire would never hear the end of it! And think what an effect a miscalculation like this would have on me! They'd take me out of the seat of power in an instant! Stop that armored biped, I command you!"

Silently, the second-in-command turned and instructed the tactical computer to concentrate all the ship's firepower on the human armored warrior. He felt that the emperor was slowly approaching insanity by continuing the attack, despite the fact that this was the only way for him to stay in power. There was even the possibility of mutiny if the crew ever found out exactly what was going on. But whatever would happen, the second-in-command was going to stick by the not-quite-stable emperor's side; he'd been sworn to serve him to the death, and he still preferred that duty.

Tracer zoomed in on one of the turrets and disabled it with a half-strength blast. Backing off, he inspected his opponent. The armor on the outside was impenetrable; the only real damage he could do was against the the ship's weaponry. Yet the ship bristled with gunning turrets everywhere, all of which looked approximately equal in strength and several of which were still firing at him. There were a few turrets, though, that didn't look like the others.

A distant whistling noise caught his attention. He looked to its origin, and saw a squadron of four F-15 Eagles fast approaching. A cheer crossed his face as he raised one fist in triumph. The F-15 was the most advanced fighter plane the Air Force had; if they couldn't stop the empire, then presumably nothing could.

The fighters split off their formation and almost immediately fired missiles at the ship. Jeff's smile grew as the missiles rocketed from their under-the-wing housings toward the motionless rectangular craft, but shock replaced that smile when every last missile was struck down by jolts from the ship's turrets. And once the turrets finished off the missiles, they turned to face the fighters.

Only one fighter managed to get off a couple seconds of vulcan cannon fire before it was blown apart, and these bullets merely bounced off the stubborn armor casing. Jeff froze for a few seconds, both from shock and despair. If that floating hulk wiped out the best fighters of human technology without even getting scratched, how could he hope to do better?

This shock waned after a few seconds, though, when he remembered that he was using the product of a technology far greater than humans'. He could take hits from their guns without any personal injury, and could incur real damage on their ship without being stopped. "Now," he told himself, "I'm going to knock out every bit of firepower this thing has, piece by piece!"

Accelerating to a higher battle speed, he closed in on the ship and downed his second turret. Three seconds later, he downed his third. Studying his foe for one lethal moment, he glimpsed some motion off to one side. He turned just in time to see a spotlight-shaped object aim directly at him and activate, capturing him in a greenish shaft of gravitation that froze him in place.

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