Chapter 12: ADAV

Chapter 11

Steve and Alex could only stare in shock at the car that was a briefcase. It was shiny and new, and sitting there as I checked the suspension, the setting of the pieces and everything else. If something went wrong in the unpacking the thing could literally explode and kill us all. That would be bad.

“How...what...where...” Alex was saying.

“Is that what you have been working on in secret in your private forge thingy?” Steve asked. “The thing you needed me to set those boxes up for?”

“Ya,” I said, not really paying attention to what he was saying. The Armored Demigod Assault Vehicle, or ADAV for short, really needed a better name. But at the moment, the name it had was pretty descriptive. This thing could drive faster than a Pegasus could fly, shoot three inch Celestial Bronze bolts at a rate of 30 bolts a minute, and the bolts returned to the ammunition boxes after twenty seconds, making the ammunition pretty much unlimited. The armor plating should be able to withstand most of anything that could be thrown at it considering the chaos of our lives.

To keep it short and sweet, this little machine could take four demigods into any war zone and they would wreak havoc and not even break a sweat.

I finished my visual inspection and opened the back doors, signaling them to follow me into the car.

“Nobody sit in this seat here,” I indicated the closest chair to the back of the vehicle. “I haven’t finished this part of it yet.” There were three other seats in the car, two in the middle set on each side next to arrow slits and one in the direct center front of the car. I sat there and brought down the dash on either side of me.

I checked the information that was being provided while Alex and Steve ooh’d and ahhh’d at all the neat tricks I had installed. Weapon boxes loaded with various guns and crossbows were set next to them. I turned the ignition and the car rumbled to life. The doors closed.

First gear. We started moving forward.

“So Mark,” Alex asked. “What’s the plan?”

“We’re going to try and catch Caligula. If we can, we can stop his shenanigans.” I responded. Scorpions and insects were thumping into the front of the car, getting sliced to bits and dissipating.

“What if he is gone?” Steve asked. Second gear.

“Then we can’t do much about that, and we head home.” I responded. They agreed.

Third gear. More insects were piling up and getting destroyed, but before they could turn to dust they were blocking the windshield. I activated the turrets and started blasting the critters away.

“This car is so cool!” Alex was so squealing in excitement about the thing.

We shot out of the tunnel into the New York City night scape. I saw Caligula fleeing on foot away from the Empire State Building. As the car slammed into the ground I shifted back to first gear and got moving forward, quickly shifting from first to second, then second to third, then third to fourth. We were closing on him when he jumped into the sky, growing wings and flying away. I slammed the dash and downshifted, pulling into New York traffic.

“Well, at least we stopped him.” Alex told me, leaning forward.

“From the obvious goal,” I said. “But remember what he said down there? He wanted in to the Vault last time we saw him, He was just using Ares shield as a key to get in. Was his true goal this time the power of the Aloadae? Or something else?” That kept us all quiet for the rest of the ride home.

Chapter 13