“My friends.” Roosevelt was excited, confident. “Welcome to the first night of the last days of the Freedom Council!”
The crowd cheered.
“Ten years ago tonight,” he continued, looking up at the brightly lit offices of the local Council, “in the midst of the Second Great Depression, the twenty-five largest corporations in America convinced Congress and the president to violate the Constitution and put themselves in charge of overseeing all three branches of government.”
The crowd's jeers soared into the electric night air.
Standing beneath the once proud towers of concrete and steel, Roosevelt connected with the crowd immediately. ”For most of us, time has simply stopped or gone backwards.” He peered up at the high-rise office of the Freedom Council and pointed skyward. “The wealthy few enjoy high-tech goodies only they can afford.” Then he glanced back down at the mass of people. “The rest of us barely get by. The middle class has shriveled. The rich get richer; everyone else stays poor.
“A century ago my great-great-great-grandfather used the tools of government to 'prime the pump.' To get the economy moving again.” He pointed back up at the tall buildings. “But they tell us we can’t afford that anymore. They tell us to trust them. Because they know what’s best. They are the best.”
High above the mass of people, the X-1s banked hard and rolled, all in tight formation. Their sleek black steel glimmered in the moonlight. Far below, the crowd made a distant target. The square seemingly teemed with insects from this heavenly perch. The turbines burst again, and the choppers hurtled forward, their noses dipped slightly, their blades singing in the black. High and hot, the X-1s slammed across the dark sky, lining up the people below as their mark.
“Well, we know the truth, my friends!” shouted Roosevelt. “The big banks and Council companies only loan money to each other. No one else. And only then for uses of which they already know the outcomes. The Council claims innovation is too risky. And risk is what caused the Depression. But what is really at risk are their profits!” The crowd erupted in applause.
“They tell us there’s no money for inventors. No money for universities. No money for federal grants. And what’s been the result? Innovation has slowed to a crawl. We the people are worse off, while they bask in the sunlight!”
Employees of the Council looked on from their lighted windows as the crowd erupted in applause. They paced to and from their bright roosts, watching for a moment then turning away. Soon others would take their place, and the process would start again.
The Revolution clung tightly to the aircraft's landing gear, staying out of view of the pilots as they adjusted for the pitch and roll of his extra weight. The irony of hitching a ride to an anti-Freedom Council protest on a Media Corp Chopper was thick indeed. But he did what he had to. He was as famous for his close calls, inventive entrances, and lucky exits as he was for his star-spangled battle armor. He was an opportunist.
As the chopper approached State Street Square, he let go, plummeting the eight hundred feet to the roof below. The servos in his leg armor braced for impact. They were calibrated to respond to his muscles, tendons, adrenaline, and a whole host of other internal bioindicators—how this occurred was his closely held secret.
Still, his descent was rapid. His cloak—like the rest of his armored disguise, a calculated symbol of insurgency resistance—had a more practical purpose. It was also a glider. Though, as he had found time and again, that function was highly overrated. In real life, he rarely flew over Gotham City like a bat. Instead he tended to do what he was doing right now...
Fall. Hard.
The roof loomed larger and larger below him as he plummeted. The rest of the world blurred. The cloak snapped rigid, slowing his descent. The last thing he needed was to actually crash through the roof. Not the kind of headlines he wanted. So the cape slowed his fall. Still, this was going to hurt.
CHAPTER 6
He slammed down on both feet. The cape balanced his landing, and with one step backwards for good measure, he was on the roof. A landing he would feel the aftereffects of for days. But you would not know that to look at him. He was, by design, a one-man army. The scientist, whose life he saved all those years ago in the shadows of that office, had served him well.
Below, Roosevelt seethed. “The trappings of progress exist! Look around you, my friends!” He waved his arms about at the half-dozen giant monitors that, on this night, reflected his own image back at the throng like giant Jumbotrons. “Media Corp's digital billboards are everywhere. They broadcast WebTV all over every major city. In almost every home. And as the billboards go up, so do their profits. There’s plenty of money for that! Yet they handed over basic services to private companies. They told us this would fuel economic growth. Instead, we pay through the nose for things your parents got for free—even clean water! While your children eat spoiled meat...”
Above the throng, the Revolution took in Roosevelt’s words. At first, the symbolism of the armor, the costume, had been a hard sell for the man who would become the Revolution. He'd needed convincing. But the Freedom Council was a creature of media birth. So must be its adversary.
It would take something that would make an immediate impact to compete with the twenty-four-seven power of the Media Corp propaganda machine. A superhero would make that immediate impact. People had always yearned for a superhero. The subject of so many books and movies. The idea was to draw on that desire and create one of the most incredible technological feats ever known. A real Iron Man.
The people could not raise an army to fight back. There was just too much power arrayed against them. The Revolution would become that army. A one-man army.
The scientist, Dr. James C. Scott, whose life he had saved all those years ago in that dark office, conceived of a walking military base, with everything from an onboard medical center to satellite communication. The viability of the project relied on two of Scott's greatest achievements: the titanium-osmium alloy he had dubbed Titanium-O4 for its ability to quadruple the strength and resistance of normal titanium; and his creation of bioluminescence. By supercharging conventional weapons, like the whip and the shurikens, with luminescent properties, the Revolution would seem almost magical to opponents.
That magic would be draped under an unmistakable image of the old Republic. “Darth Vader wrapped in a flag,” one paper had quipped. Not a favorite comparison, but it would do in a fix.
The living symbol of the resistance was the result. A scarlet cape in contrast to the dominant blue of the Council's Freedom Flag. All of the armor made of the scientist's new near-indestructible alloy. The name, that was his idea. Every time someone saw the Revolution, the image would scream “superhero!” Every time someone said the name, a mental frame of the insurgency’s desire for the country—a revolution—would burn across the mind's eye. But the “iconic legend,” the “mythic hero,” was just that. A myth.
The reality was just a man inside a machine. A soldier commanding a mission. The armor was hardware, a weaponized vehicle with functions and limitations, parameters and boundaries. A “high-tech prosthesis.” Wasn’t that how Tony Stark had described it in the old Iron Man movie? Scott had taken the idea to its logical conclusion. Superheroes didn't really exist, but the illusion of them, for the first time in history, was alive and well.
Speaking of superheroes, it was time to look the part...
He burst into a run. The adrenaline pumped in his head. The leg servos roared to life again. Though they were essentially silent to an onlooker, he could hear them plainly inside his armor. They propelled him forward faster than any normal human.
A yawning gap stretched between the buildings as one of Boston's major avenues cut through below. The servos screamed in his ear as he approached the ledge, and with a blast of power, he leaped. Up into the open night air. His cape snapped into a glider, and it caught the wind like a sail, lifting him, just enough so that as the arch of his trajectory fell, his titanium boots t
hudded on the concrete of the far roof. He had made it.
Below, the crowd was energized; they were clearly ecstatic to be there together. This was more a pep rally for the insurgency than a protest against the Freedom Council. Old Glory waved everywhere. It made him proud, even relieved. He had feared trouble tonight, but as he peered out at the crowd, those fears began to melt. In an earlier time the sight below him would have been typical of the most ardent patriotic event imaginable. Red, white, blue were ubiquitous. That this was an illegal protest spoke to just how much the country had changed.
And just below the surface lay an anger. An anger that could boil over at any moment. Left alone, this crowd would be no threat, but challenged, they could explode. Desperation does things to people. It makes them take actions they would never otherwise consider. Events like these can relieve that pressure. If a people have no way to vent, they will often build up their anger to a boiling point. The outpouring of solidarity among the crowd was a welcome sight. No doubt about it.
The shouts from the crowd rose up, careening through the steel peaks and concrete spires to fall with echoed deference at his titanium-plated boots. He was in so many ways, despite the aloof, desperado image he had cultivated of himself, the leader of this movement. And he was a man of control. He may have called for a revolution with regularity, but he did, in fact, desire a peaceful, controlled transfer of power.
He knew how quickly the resistance movement could spiral out of his control. And as he proudly scanned this disciplined, organized crowd, something small caught his attention. Just a ripple in his enhanced peripheral vision.
The scanners in his helmet caught it a millisecond later.
He turned to see small blips of light high in the sky to his right. Now he focused his eyes as his onboard telescopic lenses sealed over his eye shields. They zoomed in. The analysis of the blips, which scrolled across his eyesight, confirmed his fears: Apache X-1 attack copters. The vehicle of choice for Freedom Council Guards doing crowd control...
Inside Apache One, Commander Trent “Night Hawk” Preston scoped in on the mob. They filled most of the square. This was going to be messy, Night Hawk could feel it. But he'd been here before.
Just a day at the office.
Typically it took more than one flyby to move a crowd. In the old days, one show of force from the Apaches would intimidate a crowd and disperse them. But now, it was more difficult.
And if he had to fire on them, his “cold ammo,” made up of nonlethal rubber bullets, usually did the trick. And his orders were clear. This rally was to be stopped. Period.
No one in the crowd was aware of the Apaches yet. Roosevelt was hitting his fever pitch now. “In their desperation to find a path out of these terrible economic times, they turned to the very men who plunged us into ruin in the first place. Since those days we have seen our liberties wither away, our jobs disappear, our infrastructure and our safety crumble.”
The crowd oozed with displeasure, leering up at the Council windows. Roosevelt was hitting close to home. As his topics turned more serious, the mood in the square began to change. The throng of protestors began to seethe.
CHAPTER 7
NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK
A room of aristocratic opulence. Hardwood floors covered in the finest Persian rugs: royal red, deep gold, and silver. Intricate hand-carved wooden walls ran along the sides of the great room. Rare, priceless artwork adorned the walls. Pure gold and platinum statues, urns, and planters stood all around. In contrast, high-tech devices were built (hidden) into the room’s various sitting areas.
At the very center, in the throne seat, a lone figure sat silhouetted before a main wall of television screens. All on the same channel. He was Chairman Thomas Sage. The CEO and largest shareholder of the Freedom Council. Referred to by most simply as “The Chairman,” he was the most powerful man in America. Well-groomed. Early fifties. Black hair, slicked back, gray at the temples. A man in top physical condition for his age. He was accustomed to the finest things in life and kept himself in the finest shape. He wore a designer suit that cost more than a month of take-home pay for the average American worker. And these were his scrubs. Work clothes.
As the CEO of Media Corp, the largest single company in America, Chairman Sage had risen to power along with the Freedom Council. There were no rules making it so, but the understanding was that the CEO of the largest company would lead the Council. Anyway, the Council had been his idea. He was the only chairman it had ever known.
The Chairman watched the protest with amusement. Sage knew these things were necessary. His long years as head of Media Corp had taught him well that to truly maintain control one needed to hold on with a loose grip.
But a loose grip can slip through your fingers at times. The Freedom Council was his idea, yet he had lost control of it during the Purge.
In those early days things turned ugly. Intimidation, sabotage, even assassinations. The elements of the country that would resist Freedom Council rule were crushed. Legally if possible, but by any means necessary. And Sage regretted it all. He brokered deals, not death.
But he was also a pragmatist. He came to realize that the Purge was inescapable, and that it might have to happen again. He didn't like it. He thought it was just the kind of thing the Freedom Council had to publically avoid. But it had been needed to get things moving in the right direction. He just made it his mission to minimize the Council's role in it.
He made sure everyone on the Council had plausible deniability.
In fact, plausible deniability was built into the very structure of things. Orders with no words spoken. Secret programs with multiple layers of oversight, none of which knew enough to be compromised if discovered by the public. The system worked well. The Chairman didn't even know if the hit on the president and the Democratic-Republicans was called by the Council. Come to think of it, he wasn't even sure if it was, in fact, a hit.
Sage rose from his chair, lost in his thoughts. He ambled over to his small wet bar and poured himself a martini. He glanced up at a painted portrait of the former president and took a sip.
“Things were so chaotic in those days. A real power outage could have occurred,” he said to the picture. He hadn’t expected a response.
“Excuse me, sir?” It was a female voice. Chairman Sage spun to see the young woman who was in charge of the room. She had been so quiet he’d forgotten about her.
“Nothing...” Sage realized he’d forgotten her name. Christy, Chrissie, Chrystal, something like that. “Angel.” She couldn’t be a day over twenty-two. Just old enough to serve alcohol.
The girl smiled. “Yes, sir,” she said back proudly, with a little silk in her voice.
Why not? The most powerful man in the country just called her “angel.” Sage smirked.
“Isn’t there anything I can get you, sir?”
“I can take it from here.” Another female voice, but this time it was Sage’s wife, Marguerite, who glided into the room, drink in hand, wearing a satin evening gown that caressed her slender form like a second skin. Her dark chestnut hair piled elegantly atop her head with curls falling gently down across perfect cheekbones. She gave the term “trophy wife” a considerable upgrade. She made her way to Sage and kissed him softly on the lips. A quick side glance toward the young woman met with an instant response.
“Yes, ma’am.” The young woman left with a bow of deference.
Marguerite was accustomed to politics. She had grown up around it all her life; her father had been mayor of New York when she was young. She saw the tension return to Sage’s face.
“You trying to convince him it was an accident again? I don’t think he listens,” Marguerite said.
“The dominoes could have fallen in just such a way as to bring down Air Force One. Unlikely, but possible,” he said with a simper. He ran his hands under the water of the wet bar’s small faucet. “Technology’s not always perfect. Not even communications.” He smiled at her.
All Sage knew for sure was that the people he needed out of the way got out of the way just when he needed them to. He dried his hands and turned away from the painting.
The Democratic-Republican Unity party, they had called themselves. Unity Party for short. The party leaders were on that plane. Stroke of luck? Devious plan? Only one thing Sage knew for sure. They all died in the crash. They were all gone.
Then he appeared all over the media and led the country through the nationwide period of mourning. He gained the trust of the people. His popularity assured the passage of the Freedom Council Act. The timid new president—himself, a man of great pragmatism—saw the writing on the wall. He signed the act into law. Sage didn't like the idea of killing a president. Let alone the leaders of Congress and even some of the military. The regret began to show on his face.
“They had to be stopped,” she said, nodding.
Sage remembered it like it was yesterday. The Democratic-Republicans had laid out a plan. Scrap the Fed. Print money interest free. Pay off the old debts with this new free stuff. They were crazy.
Since its formation, the Fed had created money. Money it then loaned to the government with interest. The Chairman knew why this was a good thing. It kept the politicians out of the money creation business.
“Much better to leave it to the experts. Bankers know money. They know risk. Debt keeps people honest.”
To do away with debt would pry open Pandora's box.
“No one would care what the money was spent on. The printing presses would run night and day,” he said. Prices would rise. Savings would dry up. Jobs would vanish.
“You weren’t going to let that happen.” Marguerite said it like she was recounting a touchdown pass he’d thrown in the state championship.
The Suns of Liberty (Book 2): Revolution Page 4
