SERAPH-23: Making A Strong First Impression...

Part twenty-three of a superhero-themed story, with characters and setting made in collaboration with .
Yeah, it's another picture. Just because.

Anderson's plans for Tropic and Cat's orientation at SERAPH don't exactly go according to plan.


Cat and Tropic were both, understandably, quite surprised when they saw SERAPH’s headquarters for the first time. Anderson, smiling at their shock and bewilderment, had asked them what they were expecting.
Cat had said some kind of tower, perhaps a facility concealed in one of the city’s skyscrapers.
Tropic had thought their headquarters to be some kind of fortress, perhaps a massive underground complex beneath one of London’s landmark locations, like a larger version of Cat’s lair underneath the Tower Bridge.
As Anderson explained to them, a small but globe-spanning agency such as SERAPH needed a headquarters that was both heavily fortified and portable.
That’s why she revealed to them the fact that SERAPH headquarters wasn’t a skyscraper or a castle or an underground facility.
It was an aircraft carrier.
An extensively refitted and rearmed, almost entirely rebuilt from the inside-out to make it nigh on indestructible, Cold War Two-era Albion-class aircraft carrier. Only three Albion-class carriers were ever built, and the other two had been decommissioned and stripped for parts to refit this masterpiece of a warship.
Were it not for its unusual crew, the indomitable floating fortress would undoubtedly be the flagship of Her Majesty’s Royal Navy.
She was the HMS Sanctuary.
There was no runway on the deck anymore; everything forward of the bridge tower was taken up by four double-storey rows of, what appeared to be, living quarters. Anderson wasn’t kidding when she’d told Cat and Elsa SERAPH had accommodation for families; more than half of the units were empty, as the crew and military personnel slept in the quarters below-decks.
Astern of the tower was a firing range; clay targets were fired from hidden niches on the ship’s port flank, which the ship’s crew would use for target practice. Beyond that were three helipads, which were occupied by two VTOL fighter jets and a cargo helicopter reminiscent of the old Sikorsky CH-53E Super Stallions.
Then there was the Sanctuary’s extensive collection of armaments.
Lining the ships flanks were fourteen cannons, seven on each side; each one fired a thirteen-hundred kilogram depleted uranium slug at eight-hundred and twenty metres per second, with an individual firing rate of four rounds per minute. But, if that wasn’t enough, mounted at the very front of the Sanctuary was a revolving railgun turret, which fired sixty-ton depleted uranium rounds at speeds in excess of thirty-thousand metres per second. There was only one thing that could withstand a broadside from the Sanctuary, and that was the Earth itself.
The Sanctuary was the deadliest thing on the planet, the world’s dominant predator; being four-hundred metres in length and weighing almost one-hundred-thousand tons, it was a terrifying construct of colossal killing potential.
And yet, for the mutants and rejects aboard her, under the protection of two-thousand of the best soldiers that all branches of the British military could offer, it was home.

“What’re these?” Tropic asked from behind me. I turned; she was looking at the wall, where ten portraits were nailed up in two columns of five.
“SERAPH’s Ten Most Wanted list,” I replied. Tropic looked closer at number eight, which had a red ‘X’ painted over the picture. The name was still visible: General Angrus Wrex. Only one other was crossed off; number nine, Adoff Schäfer.
After that her eyes were drawn to the top of the list, but I felt all her hateful thoughts radiating at one portrait in particular: the one belonging to James ‘Hellfire’ Dylan.
I’ll be crossing your face off this list, very soon! I heard Tropic’s words as clearly as if she’d spoken them out loud; I then felt her anger abate slightly, giving way to curiosity.
“Why is there no name for the guy on the top of the list?” she asked.
“We don’t know it; we don’t know who that person is, or what they look like. We aren’t even sure he’s male; all we know is that he’s the head of GaiaTech’s board of directors,” I replied. I was a little ashamed at the lack of intelligence we had on him, and Cat scoffed.
“Some intelligence service,” he muttered.
“We have been working in collaboration with the Mossad and France’s DGSE; neither of them have any clue as to his identity or whereabouts,” I replied icily. Cat seemed to back down a step, before looking back up at the portrait and sniggering.
“‘The Boss.’ A fitting nickname,” he chuckled. But I turned away from this distraction as an aide rushed up to me.
“Ma’am, I thought I should bring this to your attention as soon as I heard it!” he gasped breathlessly. He didn’t need to speak further; I simply stretched out my mind and entered his memories...
I watched, paused midway through eating my rations, as a challenge was issued in the mess hall to the stunned looks of all who were eating there...
The challenge being declined with a cocky air, before being raised by the challenged party...
The mysterious woman with short-cut black hair standing up, shaking hands with Special Agent Carroway while Animal eagerly cracked his knuckles and Ghost smirked...
“Goddammit Helena!” I snapped out loud, pulling myself from the ensign’s mind.
“What’s wrong?” Cat asked.
Five minutes later, as we stood in the observation room on one of the Sanctuary’s sparring arenas, Cat got his answer.
“That black-haired girl; that’s Nyx isn’t it? She made some of that drug to turn back to human form, right?” Cat asked.
“Apparently,” I replied, glaring straight at Helena, who was doing an admirable job of shielding her mind from my mental probing.
“And now she’s fighting that woman and her pet dinosaur?” Cat asked.
“‘That woman,’ as you put it, is Special Agent Helena Carroway; my top operative,” I replied. “That dinosaur is another operative, a shapeshifter named Tyler Damon; he is aptly codenamed ‘Animal.’ But they’re not the only ones in there; Ghost is down there somewhere too.”
“Three-on-one? Nyx is either incredibly cocky or unbelievably stupid,” Cat said.
“Is there any time to place a few bets?” Tropic asked cheekily. I had never seen Nyx in action, so I couldn’t make an accurate guess as to her odds; I decided to stick by my agents.
“A fiver on my agents to win,” I said. Tropic scoffed.
“I’ll take that,” she said. A musical tone sounded through the speakers in the observation room.
“Combatants confirmed; teams set as three-to-one, as agreed upon by participants. Rounds set: best two out of three takes the win. Round One begins in 5...”
Tyler circled to Nyx’s right, and I even from here I heard him let out a deep, predatory growl. I tried to reach him with my telepathy, but his mind was that of an animal; it was too different for me to communicate with.
“4...”
Cat must’ve realised I was trying to stop this, because he shook his head at me; I saw it in my peripheral vision.
“Leave it; I want to see how your agents handle themselves,” he said.
I didn’t reply, there was nothing I could say.
“3... 2... 1... Round One begin!”