Hench for Hire

by Skyler Grant

  "Err ..." Doctor Kento said.

  Jules slid a tablet in front of him. It was already starting to fill with data as Amy accessed our network.

  "This is brilliant work. Who did this?" Doctor Kento asked.

  Amy said, "You did—that is what we're going with. You are the super-genius who figured out this technology you totally aren't ready for and probably shouldn't have."

  "Err ..." Doctor Kento said again.

  "Just go with it, Doctor. You've also been abducted by the villains to assist with their plans. You'll find I am completely ignorant of this fact and what you are doing," Cascadia said.

  Gloom said, "Do I get to pretend to not know things too? I want to pretend to not know things."

  "You are already pretending to forget everybody who knows and cares about you. I'd say you have a head start on this whole thing," Cascadia said.

  Gloom glared at her.

  "You two can tear each other apart later," I said.

  "Pretty sure that is all one-way," Gloom said with a cocky grin.

  "Tell me what you are looking at, Doctor Kento," Jules said.

  "It seems to be a way to encapsulate and overload a dimensional rift. Think of a mining operation working above the walls of a quarry. This is meant to shove everything off the edges and then fill in the hole,"

  "Trapping them outside this dimension," Jules said.

  "Ideally," Doctor Kento said.

  Deanna gave a tiny nod. She might not be willing to help much, but it looked like she was happy to let us know when we were correct.

  "We're going to need more than the science. We're going to need design blueprints in order to build anything," Lady Justice said.

  "I can't just throw those together. At least a day, probably more, and that's if you can provide me a team that has some idea of the science," Doctor Kento said.

  Jules looked to Deanna.

  "Nope, uh-uh, we're done, done, done," Amy chirped.

  "What she said. You've got more than we should give," Deanna said.

  It would be enough.

  It would have to be.

  Jules said, "Ox has a research team and we've been working on the dimensional science too. You are already used to working with him."

  "We didn't keep a science team with us. We figured rebuilding after an apocalypse meant the sum of current human knowledge would do. We can still help you to rapidly prototype though," Lady Justice said.

  Doctor Kento rubbed at his eyes. "I need a lab coat, and a lab. We'll get it done as quickly as we can. Even with everything it will be at least twelve hours."

  Doctor Kento underestimated his own abilities. It took him seven hours and forty minutes from stepping into Ox's lab for a functional prototype to be created. From there it was simply a matter of providing the designs to Patriot and we soon had over two hundred underwater drones equipped with the technology.

  Voltara's defenses were formidable, but she wasn't anticipating an attack like this. She probably didn't even know an attack like this was possible. The very energy shield that was meant to protect her ship became the tool that made it possible to take her down.

  Drone after drone fired at it, the charges overloading the shield with dimensional energy. After the first few shots Voltara couldn't have shut the shield down if she wanted to, and as fire continued to pour into it her submarine began to shrink. The entire mass was collapsing inward, drawn into the dimensional singularity. In less than hour it was half the size. Another thirty minutes later both ship and singularity were gone. What remained was empty ocean.

  Perhaps Voltara was alive, somewhere on the other side, or perhaps she'd died in the transition. Either way Voltara was no longer here, and her way back to this reality was sealed.

  One problem was down, the next wouldn't be nearly so easy to handle.

  29

  Mastermind Tower. In an alternate timeline we'd turned it into a giant bomb and used it to take down a hive. Now we needed it as a ship.

  The building had the largest portable power reactors of anything in the city, and it was the most able to power Patriot's abilities.

  A week of nonstop fighting had left the tower a ruin. It was still flying, only on two thrusters, and most of the vaults had been looted so the place was near deserted. That at least made it easier for us to take back, especially with Gloom flying ahead of our airship. Nobody in their right mind wanted to mess with her.

  We had teams going over every inch of the structure, all trying to improve different aspects. Niles and an engineering team were working on repairing the native systems, getting the hover thrusters back to full power. Doctor Kento and Ox were trying to build a unit into the building's shields that would let us cross a dimensional rift safely.

  We also needed weapons—we needed a lot of weapons. It seemed like everything was in short supply. A disaster that seemed somewhat under control had transformed into one out of control, and people shifted from robbing into full-on hoarding for survival.

  That was proving a problem.

  Ox called together a small meeting. Myself, Gloom, Bouncy.

  "Ox," Ox said. "Our grand plans fail because the fields wither with neglect. We need the glittering prizes the earth holds that our villainous lands are lacking, without which we may not breach the barriers of worlds."

  "Anyone got a translator for the translator?" Gloom asked.

  "He needs stuff from the heroes. Which is really unfortunate, because they just aren't playing along," Bouncy said.

  "Ox," Ox said. "I have made lists of shopping, long and resplendent for the ocular senses to consume."

  I looked over the file. Unlike Ox's usual methods of communication it made a lot of sense. Kento had probably compiled it for him.

  I sent it to screens so that both Bouncy and Gloom could have a look.

  "I might be able to find some of this on the black market, but not everything," I said.

  Right now money wasn't much of a problem. The normal henchman system remained in chaos and if you wanted muscle you came through us. Our own payroll was still fairly slight, we had around five hundred on staff, but contracted out around the city we now had three hundred thousand deployed. Even with the expenses of equipping them and providing their life insurance, I was charging fees enough that we had a comfortable operating cash flow.

  "The Council won't cooperate with us, but Cascadia cut us some slack last time. Maybe she will again," I said.

  Bouncy said, "She won't. I still have connections on that side and the situation is pretty dark. Lots of people want to do an all-out assault on the villains now. Maybe not us, because of Gloom, but the other cities without an S-Class. Plus most of them thinking attacking the Swarm in a rescue attempt is a terrible idea."

  Gloom sent tendrils of ebon darkness drifting through the air with casual strokes of her fingers. "STRONG might be willing to give us something, if I ask. Not the new people, but some of the old ones."

  "The vigilantes are probably a better option. Even if it risks destroying the world, they'll do what they think is right. That is kind of their thing," Bouncy said.

  "Reach out, both of you. Get us some contacts and let's see what we can do," I said.

  It was another two days, then the leads that Gloom and Bouncy got started to pay off. Before when we'd dealt with the CCC it was as enemies, and there was still no love lost between us, but they agreed to assist. They had a lot of engineering students and given their connections they were able to acquire almost anything.

  There was a curious situation on the hero side that I'd never fully realized before. Power was out there in some way for anyone with the resources, from a powered suit to enhancement serums. Wealth could give you abilities, and a lot of wealth could give you a lot of them. Many of those abducted were from the wealthiest of the hero families, those who all their lives had the greatest access to resources.

  In theory wealth and privilege didn't matter to the heroes, and they were fond of saying how much it didn't. On a p
ractical side, it was usually the rich who became the A-Class and in charge of everything.

  The whole shift in power dynamics, with the abduction of the higher class heroes, had thrown that structure into chaos. Finally the lesser heroes were living the lives that they always claimed they deserved. It was true egalitarianism, and the wealthy didn't like it.

  The rich wanted to get their missing sons and daughters back as much as we wanted our S-Class villains back, and not just because of familial bonding. Without them, the wealthy found their influence was sharply diminished.

  Once the right calls were made and connections established we had a steady flow of unmarked airships crossing the channel and carrying skilled personnel.

  Mastermind Tower had been one part administrative center, one part airship before. Now it was becoming something else, a trans-dimensional ship designed so that we could project force even into another dimension. So that we could attack the Swarm on their home turf and get our people back.

  With the aid of dimensional technology from Ox and Doctor Kento, four huge reactors had their power output increased over seventy percent. All offices, store rooms, and administrative facilities had been replaced with weapons, ammunition storage, and crew quarters.

  Windows that had once looked out over the city had been removed and replaced with armor plating, and shield projectors overlaid on that.

  Patriot had been madly scanning and incorporating every design upgrade since it had originally gone underground. It could manifest the latest and best military aircraft, especially those that had been customized to better take on Swarm vessels.

  The new dimensional engine was designed to allow tuning into and crossing a dimensional rift into a whole other reality.

  The goal was a smash and grab, to snatch our people back and get out of town. But I wasn't going to have that as our only option.

  If Mastermind headquarters had seemed a decent bomb in that alternate timeline, it was a far better one now. We'd rigged shaped explosions and energy amplifiers around the reactors. If we had to, the building was now capable of monumental destruction on a massive scale.

  If we weren't getting our people back, and weren't able to get back home, I was intent on making the Swarm pay dearly for interfering in our reality.

  My own processes were secure, of course. I didn't need to worry about anything destroying me unless I took the quantum sphere on the trip. That wasn't going to happen. I'd send a copy of my software along.

  I'd consulted with Deanna and she assured me that we could get our life insurance to function for our employees, it wasn't even a problem. Just because we might be outside of our dimension didn't mean that we were outside of Emmatech territory. It was rather the opposite, in fact. Apparently their resources were actually stronger out there than in our own world. If things were so dire and pressing, I would have liked the time to think long and hard about that.

  The final construction had come together quickly and it was a work of destructive art.

  In addition to the core personnel to operate the tower, we were taking as many people with us as we could. Patriot was deconstructing a lot of them, storing them as patterns to save space.

  I only hoped it would be enough. A force like this might be enough to overwhelm any of the hero cities in the world, but an alien dimension? An alien world that by all indications would be both more advanced and more powerful.

  There was only one way to find out.

  I had our whole team together in the control room. Gloom sprawled in Mastermind's old throne as we sailed across the harbor towards the hive on the outskirts of New Londonarium.

  Hero hover ships lined our way, but none opened fire. They knew we weren't coming for them. They were only prepared in case we did.

  As we drew near the hive our new dimensional shifter hummed. We were tuning into the dimensional singularity inside the hive, bringing our shields in sync and then using that to transition to wherever this hive was connected to.

  With a rainbow shimmer the world dissolved around us.

  30

  The space where we materialized didn't have much in common with Earth. There was no obvious planet surface—perhaps no planet at all. Only large clusters of globular clumps connected with thick and heavy strands of webbing, all stretching above and below us. The air had a faint illumination, pink and purple light. The temperature was with human tolerable limits, although the atmosphere was testing at over ninety-eight percent argon. Argon was the third most common gas in the Earth's atmosphere. It wasn't toxic to the humans, but they couldn't breathe it in isolation and survive.

  I sent the information along to Patriot. We'd planned for this. The first waves of our defenders started to materialize outside, along with breathing masks and tanks. We'd prepared for full atmospheric suits if necessary, although that would vastly limit the forces we could deploy. And quite a few supers had powers that simply would not work effectively in a suit.

  Patriot was preparing our first batch of combat drones as well and I was already locking into their sensors. We were using broad audio-based searches, adjusting for the differences in the atmosphere that would affect sound waves. If our people were anywhere, and able to speak, we'd find them.

  "Incoming," Niles said.

  There were attackers approaching us. They weren't the ships we'd seen on Earth. Each of these was around twice the size of a human. Armored, winged, and not any sort of natural carapace. Insects in power armor.

  "I'm getting out there," Gloom said.

  She'd hear no objection from me. Even with the potential of turning the ship into a bomb, Gloom might still be the single strongest, offensive force if she really set loose.

  The Swarm opened fire. Their weapons were also unlike any they'd used on Earth, giant electrical arcs that left purple and pink flashes in the air on their way to their targets.

  The first few supers hit went down, but Patriot was already bringing in electricity-resistant drones.

  A few of the Swarm bypassed our defenses and came straight at the tower. Between our shields and cannons they quickly went down. The Swarm would have to do better to really threaten us, and I was sure they were working on it.

  "We've got a location on Disaster. I'm not picking up any others," Niles said.

  "Is there a reason for that?" I asked.

  Niles shrugged. "The lady literally rips big giant holes in things with the power of her voice. I'd think if we are going to pick up anyone, it would be her."

  That was fair.

  The location Niles had wasn't in the closest cluster, but it wasn't far.

  I ordered the tower to move.

  There was a ship appearing on the edge of our scanning range. It looked almost like an octopus, a central body and multiple long extrusions ahead of it like tentacles. From what we'd consider long-distance it fired a massive beam weapon in our direction. Gloom flew into its path and the energy was disrupted as it hit a shadowy mass.

  Our reactors started straining as Patriot put a major drain on the power. It was a good-sized army that it was creating out there. Already there were something like two thousand drones surrounding Mastermind Tower and more appearing every moment.

  Then the humans on the bridge all screamed and clutched at their heads.

  Outside the ship it was happening to the supers as well, almost all of them disabled except for Gloom—and even she was weakened.

  I opened up a line to her comm.

  "What is happening?" I asked.

  "Screaming. Inside my head. It must be some sort of psionic attack. I can funnel it into the dark, but I still feel it passing through," Gloom said, her voice pained.

  That was helpful. Unfortunately I didn't have the least clue how to stop something like that.

  I wasn't the only AI aboard. There was Uma and Patriot as well, even if Patriot didn't usually deign to talk to us directly.

  They'd have to get over it. I pulled everyone into a three-way conference on the datanet.

 
"This doesn't knock us out, but it weakens us. I need solutions," I said.

  Patriot said, "They need liberty. The greatest force in the universe, the seed from which all great things are born."

  Well, now I wished it just stayed silent. It was almost like talking to Ox.

  "I'm playing with our shield harmonics. If this is some sort of resonant frequency maybe we can block it or provide a counterforce," Uma said.

  "Certain anti-psionic designs exist. Testing options to determine effectiveness," Patriot said.

  Around the ship's control room a number of helmets manifested on the humans. Most kept screaming, and a few gasped for breath and looked a little shell-shocked.

  There was a shimmer and different helmets appeared across the crew mirroring those that had worked. All through the tower the screaming stopped.

  "That was fast," I said.

  "Innovation is our lifeblood. Advancing is our creed. With freedom of the mind, press, and speech, all things are possible," Patriot said.

  I wasn't going to argue when he'd just solved a problem for us.

  I ended the conference.

  Gloom was flying off to deal with the octopus ship now that she was apparently feeling better, dark swirls flying from her hands and thousands of them pelting against the Swarm hull.

  We were above the cluster where Disaster at least was supposedly being held. It didn't look like any sort of building. It appeared almost like the surface of an alien planet—if a good bit more slimy. Pustules covered everything.

  I was scanning the surface. Where were our people? Was this thing hollow? Organic? I just didn't have enough information or time to figure it out.

  Fortunately, I didn't have to, that was what humans were for.

  "Disaster located," Niles said.

  The readings pointed precisely to one of the pustules. Not hollow then.

  "Send out drones to cut her free, and then start with the other pustules. Our people must be there," I said.