Ex-Superheroes

by A. J. Markam

  Harding shook his head. “Antimatter’s cut a deal with the major clans of the Yakuza. They’re his foot soldiers.”

  “How many?”

  “Best estimate is 3000 men.”

  “And only two guys with powers? Well, shit. Tokyo it is, then,” I chuckled, then pointed at the metal collar around my neck. “Now, how about this?”

  Harding stared me down. “I’m warning you now: if you try to make a run for it, Lt. Smith will kill you.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I already heard the first verse of that song. Come on.”

  Harding pulled a small control device out of his pocket, typed out a long code – and suddenly my collar clicked and loosened around my neck.

  Sensation from my powers flooded back into my head, along with a dump-truck-sized load of pain – but it wasn’t as bad as the agony that had hit me back in Karkarin, thank god.

  Harding saw me grimace. “You alright?” he asked.

  “I’m fine,” I said as I yanked off the separated collar and tossed it to Harding’s camouflaged butler. “Couple of aspirin and I’ll be good.”

  “How are we going to get into Tokyo?” Nova asked me.

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Seeing as we might get shot down on approach, I am going to worry about it,” she retorted.

  “I’m a smuggler, babe. My entire line of work is getting into places undetected.” I turned to Harding. “Are you sure I can’t fly the damn plane?”

  “I’m sure.”

  I looked at Nova. “Then just do what I tell you and we’ll be fine.”

  She glared at me but didn’t say anything.

  “Well,” Harding sighed, “I would tell you good luck, but you’re going to need a lot more than luck.”

  “Naaah,” I chuckled. “I’d rather be lucky than good any day.”

  “Mrm,” Harding murmured, then turned to Nova. “Godspeed, Lieutenant.”

  “Thank you, sir,” she said as she saluted.

  “Come on, let’s go,” I said, and headed for the rear cargo door of the plane. “I got some superpowered assholes to kill.”

  “McNeil,” Harding called out just as I was climbing onboard.

  “Yeah?”

  “Stick to the plan.”

  “Of course,” I said with a smile. “You know me – when have I ever gone off the reservation before?”

  “McNeil – ” Harding warned.

  “You worry too much,” I called out, then disappeared inside.

  7

  Whoever had decked out the interior of the sparkjet had done a pretty good job on short notice. Lots of cargo storage space, a row of five jump seats on either side of the hull, and even a cot welded to the floor with straps that could hold you in place during evasive maneuvers. With a two-man crew, one could nap while the other flew the plane.

  Speaking of flying the plane –

  “All that back-and-forth with Harding was bullshit – you know that, right?” I asked Nova as I buckled myself into the co-pilot’s chair beside her. She’d already taken the left seat. “I’m flying the plane.”

  “No you’re not,” she said as she went through the pre-flight check.

  “Yes I am,” I said as I reached over for the release that would transfer control from her flight stick to mine.

  Without looking at me, she held up one hand and FWOOSH lit it up like a blowtorch.

  I withdrew my hand from the release.

  “You know what?” I said in my most magnanimous voice. “I guess I’ll let you fly the plane.”

  “Mm-hm,” she just murmured as she extinguished the fire and went on checking the instruments.

  While she did, I checked her out. She was fantastic head-on, but looking at her in profile, with that magnificent rack jutting out from her suit –

  Well, I had to adjust my own flight stick, if you know what I mean.

  “Fire One to tower, requesting retraction of hull,” she said over her headset.

  Whatever they said back, I didn’t hear it through her headphones – but I heard the metallic groaning and shrieking as the hull of the submarine retracted above us.

  Sunlight poured in where formerly there had only been fluorescent lights, and water from the hull dripped down on us like a light rain.

  Nova rattled off a bunch of take-off patter, fired up the engines, and within seconds we lifted off into the air.

  As we cleared the outer hull of the sub, I looked around. Nothing but oceanwater all around us in every direction.

  I looked at the bank of video monitors on the console and found the camera for the underside of the fuselage. The submarine was displayed clearly beneath us, the front third of its hull open. Seconds after we cleared the doors, they began to slide back along their curved tracks into place, until the hull was one unbroken, smooth surface again. Once they magnetically sealed it and pressurized it, the sub could dive underwater again.

  At a thousand feet above sea level, Nova turned the jet from take-off mode to flight mode, and we accelerated towards the horizon and began to climb.

  “Setting course for Tokyo, ETA 2100 local time,” she said aloud, then added, “Why Tokyo?”

  “Cuz there’s a really great whorehouse there.”

  She looked at me like I was some sort of intestinal worm.

  “Hey, I’ve been in prison for a year. Time to get laid.” Then I grinned. “Unless you’re willing to do the honors.”

  “Fucking pig,” she seethed. “I should turn this jet around and – ”

  “Relax, church lady. It’s not about the whorehouse, it’s about who visits it. Every lowlife SPC I know hangs out there when they’re in Tokyo. It’s the best place in 10,000 miles to find the contacts I need.” I grinned again. “Although I wouldn’t mind getting laid, either.”

  Before she could say anything, I continued. “But FIRST we’re going shopping. I’m not walking around wearing a Nickelback cover band shirt.”

  I looked Nova’s red and black skintight suit up and down – a very pleasant activity, but I wasn’t ogling her rack anymore. I was making sure she wasn’t wearing any US military or S7 patches.

  She wasn’t – at least not on the front of her suit or the arm closest to me. Guess there hadn’t been any change in policy since I’d left. The Army didn’t want the dirty deeds of the SPCC to be found out immediately, in case there were any survivors of said dirty deeds who could identify them.

  “No insignia on your suit, right?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “We should probably get you some new clothes anyway, though.”

  “No, I have to wear this suit. It’s designed for my powers.”

  “Well… you’ll stick out like a sore thumb, but I guess that’s fine. In the circles I run in, there’s always plenty of flashy assholes flaunting their superpowers.”

  She glared at me. “Thanks.”

  “No problem. What’s your name?”

  “Nova.”

  “That’s your fuckin’ code name. What’s your real name?”

  “Lieutenant,” she said humorlessly.

  “Well then I outrank you, Lieutenant, so I think I’ll fly the plane now.”

  “You outranked me before you were court-martialed, stripped of your rank, and imprisoned. Not anymore.”

  “So we’re back where we started from. Let’s try again: what’s your first name?”

  “You can call me Lt. Smith, Nova, or Lieutenant. That’s it.”

  “Fine. Nova.” I unbuckled my seat harness and stood up. “I’ll be in the back.”

  “What are you going to do?” she asked suspiciously.

  “Whack off,” I joked. “Gotta make sure I get the most bang for my buck – literally – when we go to the whorehouse.”

  Nova started bitching again. “You’re a real charmer, you know that? Chauvinistic piece of – ”

  I just grinned, closed the bulkhead so I didn’t have to hear her, and made my way to the back of the jet.

  I did a quick
review of the inventory. Some good gear stowed away – binoculars, a sniper rifle, a couple automatic weapons, lots of ammo. And there were several dozen foil-wrapped MREs (Meals Ready-to-Eat) in a locker. But that wasn’t the reason I’d come back here.

  It was time to get to work.

  I strapped myself into one of the jump seat harnesses and began to concentrate.

  Barring something like smoke in the air or special lasers, I’m the only one who can see my forcefields. To me they look like slightly blue-tinged glass, but to everyone else they’re invisible. If Nova had eyes on me through a camera in the hold, all she would see me doing is staring into thin air.

  First I imagined a sphere about two inches in diameter. That gave me a headache, but I persevered. Then I visualized cubes, planes, pyramids, cylinders, spirals. By the time I’d moved onto multiple shapes at one time, my head felt like somebody had hooked up my brain to a car battery. I’d also sweated all the way through my Army-issue olive drabs.

  Not good. Not as bad as Karkarin, and getting better by the minute, yes, but definitely nowhere near where I needed to be if I was going to take out a couple of supervillains and thousands of Japanese mobsters.

  So I rested for a minute… gritted my teeth… ignored the pain… and started all over again.

  8

  A six-hour flight, and not once did Lt. Hot Chick cede control of the jet.

  Oh well. I got a shit-ton of practice in, even if my head did feel like it’d been run over by a pavement roller.

  I had a couple of MREs while I practiced – kung-pao chicken and Salisbury steak. Not most people’s idea of good, but after a year in Karkarin, they tasted like fine dining to me.

  Nova put the sparkjet on auto-pilot, came back, ate an MRE, and never once spoke. I didn’t hear her voice again until it came over the loudspeakers a couple hours later.

  “Approaching Japan. ETA 15 minutes.”

  I changed into the jeans and t-shirt, took the wet camos into the cockpit with me, then buckled up for the descent.

  By 2105 local time, we were approaching a smuggler’s airstrip about two hours’ drive from Tokyo.

  No problems with invading Japanese airspace, luckily.

  “One of Antimatter’s demands was for the Japanese Air Force to stop patrolling,” Nova informed me. “Which makes it easier for us to slip through.”

  “Thanks, Hiroshi,” I chuckled.

  Suddenly there was chatter in Nova’s headset.

  “Tower, do you speak English?” she spoke into the mic.

  They must have said something that confused her.

  “Tower, please hold.” After punching ‘mute,’ she turned to me. “They’re saying there’s a chemical spill and we have to go somewhere else.”

  I held out my hand. “Give me the headset.”

  “No.”

  “Do you speak Japanese?”

  “They’re speaking English!” she protested.

  “Yeah, but my password’s in Japanese, so unless you can speak Japanese, give me the fuckin’ headset.”

  Nova hesitated, then reluctantly handed it over.

  I held the mic up and spat out a phrase.

  There was a pause, then the guy on the other end started giving landing orders in Japanese.

  “Tell the lady – in English,” I said, and handed the headset back over to Nova.

  Nova put the headset back on and looked surprised. “Copy, tower.” Then she said to me, “They’re letting us land!”

  “Of course they are.”

  “You had to have a password?”

  “This is a smuggler’s airfield, Lieutenant. What the fuck do you think, they let just anybody in?”

  Nova griped a bit, but brought us in for a smooth vertical landing.

  As soon we touched down, I held up the damp camos I’d been holding. “Burn these.”

  She looked at them distastefully. “Why?”

  “Because if somebody searches the ship while we’re out, I don’t want them finding a United States Army uniform. Burn it.”

  While Nova was busy disposing of the evidence, I looked over the hardware in the back of the plane and took a couple of commlink earpieces and a pair of small binoculars I could fit in my pocket. I figured the commlinks would be valuable in case Nova and I had to separate, and you can always use binoculars.

  As Nova and I walked out of the plane we saw Fumito the ‘harbormaster’ waddling out to greet us, followed by a couple of thugs with submachineguns.

  Not only did Fumito run the airstrip and serve as a broker between smugglers and clients, he could also get you just about anything you wanted – for a price. Seventy and bald as an egg, Fumito was a friendly guy, but it was a good idea to keep your hand on your wallet whenever he was around.

  “Hunter-san, you’re back!” he called jubilantly.

  “I am. Good to see you, Fumito.”

  He looked at me slyly. “Are you part of the… situation?”

  “You mean what happened three days ago? No.”

  “I see, I see. Last I heard, you were in Karkarin.”

  “Then I guess the news hasn’t gotten around. There was a jailbreak yesterday.”

  “Really,” he said, looking surprised.

  “Yup. So I hooked up with an old associate of mine, and now we’re here to party.”

  Fumito looked at Nova. “This is the associate?”

  “Yup.”

  “Nice associate,” he grinned.

  “Yeah, and she’s mine, so keep your paws off, you old horndog.”

  He laughed. “Of course, of course. So… you need business?” he asked with another sly smile.

  “Not yet. Pleasure first. Is Madame’s still open?”

  “Things haven’t changed that much since you were last here, Hunter-san.”

  “I’m assuming Madame’s is the whorehouse,” Nova said drily.

  “Well, it ain’t Sunday School, that’s for sure. Can you change 25 grand for me into yen?”

  “Of course. Ten percent fee, though.”

  “Five percent,” I snapped.

  “I say eight, you say six, let’s meet at seven. Those are long-lost friend prices.”

  “Yeah, I’ll bet they are.” I handed over the bankroll Harding had given me and waited as Fumito counted out a couple of million yen. “Keep another 200,000 and call a driver and a car for me and the lady. A human driver, not a fuckin’ self-driving car. I’m going to need some new threads, too, so make some calls and get somebody to open up a men’s shop for me. A good men’s shop.”

  “Of course, Hunter-san,” he said as he handed over the remainder.

  “How much to gas up the sparkjet?”

  “$50,000 US.”

  “Let me guess – those are long-lost friend prices, too,” I said sarcastically.

  Fumito grinned. “I have a lot of long-lost friends.”

  “I’ll bet you do.” I rattled off the Swiss bank account number, which he jotted down on his computerized pad. “They won’t release funds until I authorize it, and they’ll be expecting exactly $50,000, so don’t get cute. And Fumito?”

  “Yes, Hunter-san?”

  “Take care of my plane, or it’s coming out of your hide.”

  “Of course, Hunter-san,” he laughed, and gave a little bow.

  Nova and I went out front to wait for the driver.

  “I assume you’ve got some way of contacting our guy?” I asked her, meaning Harding.

  She pulled a tiny flexible screen out of a hidden pocket in one of her gloves.

  “Encrypted?” I asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Tell him we’re going to need more money.”

  As she tapped a message out on the screen, she remarked, “Well, at least there was some good news.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “That word about the jailbreak hasn’t spread yet.”

  “Oh, it has.”

  Nova frowned. “But he said – ”

  “He knows. Everybody
knows by now. Fumito was just keeping his options open.”

  “What options?”

  “Whether he can sell me out to somebody for top dollar, and whether it’s worth the risk.”

  Nova looked shocked. “Sell you to who? The authorities?”

  “Well, considering that Anti and Spike are the local ‘authorities’ now, probably not.”

  “Wouldn’t Antimatter want to know you’re here?”

  I shrugged. “My guess is that there’s a couple dozen local SPCs doing business in Japan. As far as Anti’s concerned, I’m just another lowlife here on a score.”

  “That old guy wouldn’t tell the Japanese government, would he?”

  “Were you asleep when Harding talked about what I do?” I asked sarcastically. “Fumito’s entire business relies on hiding criminals from the authorities. If he sells me out to the cops, word’ll get out and he’ll lose his entire clientele tomorrow.”

  “So who would he sell you out to?”

  “The Australian cartel, or any of the other guys I double-crossed in the Karkarin jailbreak. But Antimatter’s probably nixed any other groups coming in without his say-so. If the Australians do come and Anti finds out that Fumito was the one who tipped them off, then Fumito’s fucked. Not to mention if I find out and manage to get away, Fumito’s double-fucked. If Fumito’s smart, which he is – you don’t last long in his line of business without knowing who to pay off and who never to cross – he’ll leave me alone.”

  “How sure are you about that?” she asked.

  “70 percent. Maybe even 80.”

  “Those aren’t bad odds,” she mused.

  “They’re probably the best we’re going to get this entire trip.”

  The car drove up and the driver took us to a high-end men’s shop in downtown Tokyo. The shop owner had come back after closing time and opened up specifically for me. Like I said, Fumito could get you just about anything… for a price.

  I paid the shop owner the equivalent of two grand to compensate him for his time, and the clothes were an arm and a leg, but whatever. I had a rich uncle named Sam who was paying for it all.

  As I looked at my new clothes in the mirror. Nice.

  Black shirt, black pants, black leather boots, and a black duster jacket that came down to my knees.