Omega Night (Wearing the Cape)

by Marion G. Harmon

  OMEGA NIGHT

  by Marion G. Harmon

  Copyright© 2013 by Marion G. Harmon

  Edited by Melvin Bankhead

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  Author’s Note: Omega Night takes place between the events of Villains Inc. and Young Sentinels. Artemis is back down in New Orleans and young Hope, the hero of our story, has recently turned nineteen.

  Omega Night

  by

  Marion G. Harmon

  The world turned into a stop-motion movie set in the middle of Julie’s punch line, which meant the hand on my shoulder wasn’t Megan’s or Annabeth’s. “We have to go now, Astra,” Rush said when I twisted to look up from my chair. I dropped my pizza slice and it froze halfway to my plate. Rush was in full costume, his red and white racer’s jumpsuit and helmet, but the unserious smirk that usually showed below the edge of his eye-covering visor was missing.

  “Bike’s outside.” His grip slid down to my arm when I stood up, and he led me away from my friends, through the frozen crowd, out the door half-opened by a guy for his date, into the cool night and up the stairs to the street.

  “What’s happening?” I focused on not bumping into anybody—not that I could hurt them in their time-frozen state. It had to be bad, real bad if Rush didn’t even have time to text me and let me get away to the lady’s room. I tried not to think what it was going to look like to a room full of diners, mostly students, when I disappeared from our table. The Bees were going to be pissed—between my patrols and new training schedule, this had been the first night in two weeks that I could go out with them.

  We hit the street outside the Pizza Cellar and headed for his custom made motorbike at a jog. Speedsters only ran everywhere in the comics; being able to accelerate their own personal time didn’t mean they wanted to run for miles. He focused on our mounting up together, never losing physical contact so I could stay in hypertime with him, waited till I’d settled behind him, arms around his waist, and got us on the road before answering.

  “Blackstone flashed an Omega Code to my epad,” he said finally, and grunted when my grip tightened. “I listened to the flash-download on the way here. Somebody’s launched a missile. A big, bad, nuclear one. Can you let me breathe, A?”

  “Sorry!” I loosened my grip as we wove through frozen traffic. All I wanted to do was turn around and get my friends somewhere safe, but where was that?

  * * *

  Instead I listened to the gut-churning download as we road through time-frozen streets, headed for the Dome. Less than fifteen minutes earlier an unidentified module full of Verne-tech robots had clamped itself to the side of one of our navy’s nuclear submarines. The robot swarm burned its way in, ignored the crew to hack the sub’s computer systems, attached itself to one of the sub’s ballistic missiles, and launched it. The sub crew had managed to radio word of the attack before the takeover was complete, so the U.S. military had the missile on radar when it broke the surface of the Caribbean.

  Close range interceptors from a nearby carrier fleet had failed to knock it down. What was a nuclear sub doing patrolling in the Caribbean? And a fleet just happened to be in range? What was going on down there? Were they protecting Puerto Rico? Keeping an eye on Cuba? (It was a rogue state and sanctuary for supervillains.)

  Regardless, the nuclear warhead-armed missile was flying faster than its specs allowed, and it was mutating as it headed for space. Nobody thought it was aimed at the Moon and the military had activated Operation Omega.

  The Pizza Cellar sat just off the University of Chicago campus, so the long ride between seconds from there to the Dome gave me plenty of time to freak out over the details before Rush bumped us up off of Michigan Avenue to park the bike on the pedestrian avenue in the middle of all the frozen after-dinner strollers. Living in Rush’s world never failed to give me the wiggins, but this time I barely noticed.

  “Your turn, A,” he said, raising his hands over his head. I reached up to grab hold so we gripped each other’s wrists and lifted off, flying us up and over the Dome to drop through the open load bay doors. We touched down and the doors lurched into motion overhead when I let go—still opening, their rumble the first outside-sound I’d heard since Rush touched my shoulder at the restaurant to take us into hypertime.

  Transit time from the Pizza Cellar to the Dome: one second.

  “The missile is still in powered flight,” Blackstone’s calm voice filled the bay. “Keep speeding—we launch in one minute.”

  Rush had the grace not to smirk when I groaned and popped the latch on my own load rack to pass him my uniform bundle. Putting his hand on my shoulder, he took us back into hypertime.

  We’d started practicing this cringe-inducing, absolute-emergencies-only, we-shall-never-speak-of-it maneuver after I’d gotten caught in civies by the Godzilla Attack; he looked the other way but kept one hand on me at all times while I stepped out of my shoes and skinned out of my Jersey top and skirt. He handed me my costume parts as I grabbed and pulled on the white tights and blue wedgy-inducing bodysuit, boots, gloves, mask and attached wig, everything but my cape. These days I always wore underwear that could double for workout clothes in a gym.

  He stopped looking at the corner when I finished. “Set?”

  I nodded and he let go. Time came back and I stepped into the new piece of bay equipment, there just for Watchman and me. Setting my feet in the stirrups, I reached up to grab the guide bars, and braced myself. Robot-arms came down and dressed me as I gritted my teeth and let it have its way with me. The intrusive machine bolted me into my harness-rigged armor and special loadout: counter-missiles, ECM modules, and the Gungnirs, the two short-range missiles that were the point of the whole thing.

  Would I need all of it? Maybe not, but the military felt the Swiss Army Knife approach outweighed the extra weight.

  Watchman burst through the door, running, Seven right behind him; they must have started down in Dispatch before Rush went to get me. Watchman had been on duty and already suited up, and he jumped into his own side of the loader to get intimately dressed. An inappropriately light-hearted ping signaled completion of my rigging and I stepped out of the loader, resisting the urge to give it a kick.

  Seven unracked my pressure-helmet. In his blazer, matching thin tie, and natty fedora he looked like a 60s crooner, but he wasn’t smiling for the audience. Leaning in, he pressed a quick kiss to my lips before dropping it over my head. His magic touch meant no adjustment needed—the heads-up display came online, and the green light told me the seal was secure.

  Watchman followed seconds later, no kiss for him. And what had that been about? A kiss for luck?

  Blackstone had to be watching the telemetry for our gear. “U.S. Shield satellite guidance linked in,” he informed us. Though this was a military operation and our payloads where under their control, operations efficiency meant the joint military-civilian force coordinated through the Dome. “Astra, Watchman, you are good for launch!”

  I “launched” with everything I had, Watchman right beside me.

  Time from Omega Code alert and one dropped pizza till launch: one minute.

  * * *

  “I hacked the nearest power sub-station for you,” Shelly whispered through the earbug attached to my mask as we shot upward into the night sky. “The Pizza Cellar suffered a power blackout the second you disappeared. Julie just called to ask what the hell happened to you, but nobody but the Bees noticed your exit. She was worried.”

  “That makes two of us. Tell me something good.” I fought to keep my course on the pip showing on my helmet as I poured on the speed and tried not to think about
the kiss.

  A reporter once asked me how it felt to fly; I told him that for me gravity was just a guideline—you might want to go here—but tonight gravity was an enemy that pulled at every bit of me as I fought upward. Watchman angled in above me so that he was at least breaking the air in my path as the lights of Chicago dropped away below our feet and we raced for space.

  Shelly slipped into her Dispatch wingman role. “Telemetry good. Green, green, green, green. Your gear is holding up to full acceleration.”

  “So nothing is going to fall off?” I gasped. “Goody.”

  Mom considered sarcasm impolite, and since being impolite could get in the way of what she wanted—which is other people’s money—she had trained it out of her verbal menu. Mine too, but it was shaping up to be that kind of night and sarcasm beat fear.

  Deciding I wasn’t going to pass out from the gees and the strain (pushing the sound barrier means pushing a lot of air out of your way), I tried reading the information being fed to me by my heads-up display. Five green triangles in a cone tipped by a red triangle, tagged by a changing number.

  “Only five launched? Who are the rest?”

  “Rook in L.A., and ArcLight and Argonaut. They’re out of Detroit and New Orleans; everyone else was outside the intercept radius or too slow.”

  Great. Our first real-life Omega Code, and only civilian capes were “rising to the occasion.” Well, Watchman sort of counted as military—he’d been an Army cape until just months ago. But the response net had worked, even if I couldn’t believe they’d made me part of it. I tried to pour on more speed; Watchman could fly faster, but was holding his speed down so I could stay in his wake.

  And I would keep up. I had to. I’d learned less than two months ago, just one missile could ruin my whole world.

  * * *

  “Seriously? I mean, seriously?”

  “Seriously, ma’am.” The presenter, a truly serious navy captain, nodded as I flushed and looked down at my ring-binder. Blackstone had sent Watchman and me to Washington to take part in three days of seminars sponsored by the Department of Superhuman Affairs, the Department of Defense, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Lots of it was a review of the national response to the Big One, the earthquake that leveled Southern California in January, and nearly two hundred representatives from Crisis Aid and Intervention “superteams” around the country were here for that. This morning I’d learned the whole conference was just a cover.

  Watchman and I sat in a room full of other Atlas-types, some military, but mostly civilian. All of us were A Class, able to take a hit from a battle-tank’s main gun and still punch it out or just bench-press it and laugh. More significantly, we could all outfly military jets (at normal thrust at least—firing up afterburners, they could leave most of us eating their fluffy white contrails).

  We were quite a picture, the military capes in their blue or green uniform jumpsuits and military berets (Watchman looked like them but without the rank flash and unit patches), and all of us civilian capes in our primary colored jumpsuits or tights, masks, and even actual capes. But the navy captain facing us was made of stern stuff; he addressed us by our superhero codenames or “sir” or “ma’am,” without the hint of a smile, and the subject wasn’t funny at all.

  Projected civilian fatalities: 50 to 150 million. Up to half the population of the United States. We’d had experience with small-scale EMP stuff. Lei Zi could do it, and it was part of the standard electrokinetic breakthrough’s power-set—but still…

  The captain looked around the room before continuing. “The threat posed by an electromagnetic pulse has been known since the beginning of the nuclear age. During nuclear tests the military shielded electronic instruments and equipment against ‘radioflash’ as early as the 50s, and high-altitude tests damaged power and communications infrastructure nearly 15,000 kilometers away.

  “The danger comes from the interaction of a high yield, high altitude detonation with the Earth’s magnetic field; detonate a one megaton warhead 400 kilometers up, somewhere over Omaha. Gamma rays hit the upper atmosphere, ejecting electrons which are then deflected sideways by the Earth's north-to-south magnetic field. The free electrons radiate EMP over a wide area, with most of the United States under its penumbra.”

  Rook half raised a hand. With Atlas gone, he was probably the strongest Atlas-type in the room.

  “Just to be clear, we’re talking about another Blackout, right?”

  “Correct, sir, but of a more permanent nature. The power blackout that was part of the Event was a worldwide power interruption, which cut power to electrical systems and instruments; an EMP creates a power spike, which damages them. Not all systems are equally or permanently affected, but we are talking about a massive assault to solid-state relays in electric substations, computer controls in power generation facilities, substations, and control centers, to power system communications, and to distribution class insulators. This would be followed by complete voltage collapse of power grids nationwide due to transformer saturation and damage to high voltage transformers from internal heating.

  “But we’re talking about more than just damage to the power grids. The problem is this.” The captain placed an innocent-looking metal box on the podium. A couple of cables stuck out of it.

  “This is a SCADA module. SCADA is an acronym for Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition, and they are industrial computer systems that monitor and control processes, often over wide geographic areas. In the case of the transmission and distribution elements of power grids, SCADAs monitor substations, transformers and other electrical assets. They also monitor telecommunications systems, manufacturing systems, water, gas, and other pumping systems. Modern cars use SCADA systems to make engines hyper-efficient. All solid-state systems, from cell phones to computers, are vulnerable—but SCADA systems are the Achilles’ Heel of our power, communications, and distribution infrastructures. Even temporary loss of SCADA control can permanently, catastrophically, damage dynamic systems.”

  Rook was quick. “So you’re saying that we’re getting more vulnerable to this kind of attack every year.”

  “Correct. The government is taking regulatory steps to guard against this eventuality, but for now we remain increasingly vulnerable to attack by any enemy capable of launching nuclear weapons.”

  I tried again, with less volume this time. “But, 150 million fatalities?”

  “Yes, ma’am, that is the outside number. The truth is, computer modeling is inexact for problems with this many intractable variables; the true number could be as low as 50 million. What is certain is that in a worst-case EMP attack, it will take weeks to months to restore power to a significant area. With our transportation system compromised, our just-in-time food distribution system will break down immediately. Grocery stores will empty in days. Power loss means loss of refrigeration, spoiling a large percentage of the available food supply as well as many vital drugs. No power means no heating or hot water, in many places no water at all. Major cities will become completely uninhabitable as sanitation systems break down. Hunger will become starvation, infection and sickness will kill those weakened by malnutrition, and civil breakdown, widespread looting, fighting over vanishing food supplies, will kill many more.”

  “But the capes—”

  “Ma’am, the lower number factors in the effective deployment of all superhuman assets, civilian and military. California’s Big One was a good model of what to expect in this kind of situation; the difference is that the breakdown was localized and the rest of the country could pour in aid and resources as fast as we could get it there. In a successful central EMP attack, with the exception of Alaska, Hawaii, and parts of Texas and Florida outside the zone, we’ll all be in the crapper together. Full and immediate international aid might save a few more million here and there, that is all.

  “Which brings us to the Gungnir Program. Everyone in this room has been approved for this program. In the case of all Crisis Aid and Int
ervention superheroes, approval includes executive approval by your state governors for full participation. If you’ll all turn to page twenty-six in your binders, we’ll review the installations…”

  I turned the pages, and groaned. Spacesuit, armored harness and missile racks. Yippy. Marketing is going to make a new action-figure out of this the day it declassifies.

  Not that I minded too much—it was just that bitching with my inside-voice over the military accessories helped me ignore my imagination’s attempt to paint a picture of what might happen. I had a good imagination, but we were just talking about a precaution, right? Like a fire extinguisher in your kitchen or a gun in your nightstand you never use.

  Right?

  * * *

  “You just went transonic!” Shelly called as the air went white around me, condensed water vapor marking the shockwave of broken air. I’d just broken my personal best speed, flying straight up in Watchman’s wake. “Now leaving the troposphere!”