Heroes' League "Jet." 1000 Feet Above The Nine's Island. Checking the feeds from the jet's cameras, I broadcast my announcement to our allies in addition to our cabin. "We're beginning our final descent. Sensors show that the Nine's forces are busy fighting around the outside of the main building as well as the courtyard inside. We're going to drop out of the hatch and enter via the roof. You'll find the intended spot on the map. It appears to be close to Magnus' quarters.

"Let's hope that's true."

I let the anti-gravity take us down, letting us fall slowly enough that we'd be silent as well as cloaked. The podjets weren't as well hidden, but we'd worked out how to get everyone down—a combination of flight and small anti-gravity units that worked as parachutes (my design).

The Cabal soldiers fighting vampires in the courtyard were losing, as far as I could tell. Unable to hit beings that turned into mist at the first opportunity and not carrying any wooden stakes, the millennia-old soldiers were unable to make their massive strength count.

They could shatter a vampire's bones, but then the creature would turn to mist and reform somewhere else, hypnotizing another Cabal soldier and latching on to feed and heal.

It wasn't long before the Cabal soldiers were running for the doors along the side of the courtyard or simply launching themselves out of the space. The Nine's normal human soldiers had either died or retreated inside, firing their rifles from the windows.

Their bullets didn't do much. The vampires hissed as bullets went through their bodies, but it didn't slow them down.

I knew how I'd fought vampires, and they weren't doing any of it. That said, holy water and blessed weapons were probably in short supply on an island full of evil.

Still, they had salt. Emptying a single salt shaker (or bag of rice) could force hours of counting on the vampire's end. That said, it was impossible to prepare for everything, and when you're under attack, you don't have time for research.

On the other hand, I couldn't help but notice that the vampires never even tried to go through the doors outside the courtyard or even through the open windows. Either they weren't very smart, or something was keeping them back.

I decided to remember that. Having vampire shock troops or Dr. Transylvania's direct assistance might not be an option in the main building.

As I noticed all of that, however, I kept most of my attention on the main task, getting everyone out of the jet safely.

That had its wrinkles.

The roof of the main building was flat with battlements on the sides, not unlike a medieval castle, including holes for resting rifles on both the outside and the courtyard side. There were also mounted guns in enclosures that pointed outward toward the ocean.

We came to a stop and began to hover over the roof as doors opened at the corners of the building and even from the mounted gun enclosures. Soldiers in black uniforms poured out, rifles pointed ahead.

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They shouldn't have detected us. They hadn't detected the jet two days ago when we'd last been here. We'd done our best to make it look as if the villains we'd impersonated had been teleported in and out.

They shouldn't have realized that the jet had been here, much less figured out a way to detect it.

Then I noticed something else. They weren't looking up at the jet at all. They were running to the walls to crouch behind the battlements and fire on the vampires and Prime's people from cover.

That was good news, if inconvenient.

On my right at the weapons console, Marcus laughed, "They don't know we're here."

"They don't," Haley said, unbuckling and standing up from her seat. "Ready the anti-personnel weapons for landing. We're going in once the area near us is clear."

Marcus glanced over at me from his side of the cockpit, "Love the upgrades. You don't use this enough. Seriously, I'd be using it all the time."

From behind me, amid the clicks of seatbelt clasps, Vaughn said, "The brown note?"

Nodding, Marcus said, "When else am I going to get the chance?"

Glaring at him, Haley held a finger to her lips and addressed everyone via comm, "We're about to go in, but we're starting with anti-personnel. Don't get close unless you like lasers and… gross stuff."

Not needing to move to do it, Marcus activated the weapons through his implant. In that moment, more than a dozen laser beams raked up and down the roof of the building, targeting the Nine's soldiers. The beams weren't calibrated to kill so much as burn and intimidate. We could use them to kill, and even without pumping up the power, we could blind.

The primary purpose of our anti-personnel weapons was to clear a space, and you didn't always need to kill to do that, and thus, the other part of our armament—sonic weapons. Grandpa added sonics that generated massive amounts of noise. Deafening people was intimidating enough, but I'd added a new tweak.

The sonics could now cause massive discomfort in the human digestive system. If you were trying to be stealthy, that was even better because the necessary frequencies weren't within human hearing.

Haley could hear them, but my current suit redesign did a great job of blocking those frequencies.

I could only guess how the Nine's guards experienced it, but from what I could see through the jet's sensors, we were a floating fortress of demoralization. In the dark, they could see a faint shimmer around the spots where the lasers and sonics cut through the shield and nothing else.

People screamed in surprise as the lasers swept across their bodies. They'd push themselves off the ground to fire back at the threat only to see beams originating from a dark spot in the sky that blotted out the stars.

Instead of the fight below, the Nine's minions concentrated their fire on us. In that, they did better than Imperial Stormtroopers; they hit. It didn't matter because the jet's shields were effective against small nukes--not to mention bullets and grenade launchers-- but still, they were well-trained. They didn't instantly break in the face of burning lasers from an invisible source.

Instead, they broke when the sonics hit.

They'd already begun to drag the wounded back down the stairs and run for cover, but when the noise broke out, all they could do was bend over. Stumbling or even crawling toward the stairs, they only seemed to be concerned with escape.

Should professional soldiers be able to push through intestinal issues? Maybe, but we put a lot of power behind the sonics. They hit everyone on the roof, even the far ends. It wasn't limited to the roof either. People fighting in the streets bent over to retch or whatever.

The vampires were fine, though, and Dr. Transylvania knew it was coming and seemed to have folded it into his anti-Dominator sound defenses for the "hidden Cabal." Prime's people ignored it, bashing the Nine's mind-controlled Cabal soldiers without mercy.

I could only guess at the effects inside the building, but it looked like we'd get to find out.

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