by Alyc Helms
It was a daunting sight.
La Reina and her jetpacked warriors were the only troops to take to the skies, but they formed only a small contingent of Argent’s amassing might. Along the length of the tarmac, units in standard-issue fatigues drilled, wearing the silver-grey berets and arm-bands of Argent’s ground forces. In the grassy field across the runway, a cavalry troop rode maneuvers, led by two figures in mail. To anyone else, they might have looked like reenactors from Medieval Times, but there was no mistaking those twin winged helmets of silver and gold.
“Mayhawk and Summerhawk,” I said to my companion, nodding at each rider in turn.
“Of the Round Table?” Tsung’s sunglasses – and his cool – were back in place. “Doesn’t that qualify as foreign operatives on American soil?”
“Camp Argent has special dispensation as the private holding of a supranational organization,” said a crisp voice behind us. I turned. Sylvia Dunbarton and her entourage had snuck up on us while we were gaping. She stood in the doorway of the hangar, flanked by two dark-suited men with earpieces, sunglasses, and blank faces, and a younger version of herself who must have been a personal assistant of some sort.
I suffered through Sylvia’s cheek kisses. “I thought they spent all their time searching for their Arthur.”
“They agreed that the world’s hour of greatest need trumped Brittania’s.”
“Lovely.” The whole show made me more grumpy. I didn’t want to become involved in things at this level. It was too big and too complicated. There were no right answers here, just making the best of a bad situation. “Please tell me you’re not amassing an army for an attack on China once the New Wall goes down?”
“An Army? This is a peacekeeping force.”
“Pardon me if I can’t tell the difference.”
“Stop being tiresome and introduce me to Mr Tsung.”
I shouldn’t have been at all surprised that she’d discovered his identity. She’d likely known even before we hit the first security gate.
“David Tsung, Sylvia Dunbarton.” They nodded, but there were no cheek-kisses for Mr Tsung. Must be a special torture she reserved just for me.
“So these are my passengers?” drawled a young man as he emerged from the shadows of the hangar.
“And here’s your pilot. You know Tom, yes?”
Clean-cut, all-American poster boy for the Aces – he’d smiled down at me from more than one box of Wheaties, but photographs muted his ineffable charm. Tom Carter was a walking campaign for the Silver Age, and he didn’t disappoint. He wore a beat-up WWII bomber jacket and loose khaki pants. His sky-blue button-down, complete with crisp white undershirt peeking at the collar, echoed the blue of his eyes. A playful breeze toyed with the ends of his hair. He was leading-man pretty, and everyone knew it. Why else would Sylvia thrust him so often in the spotlight? I knew Tom. Everyone did, though most people knew him as Skyrocket.
I offered my hand, and he took it and shook it once. A man’s shake.
“Not in this incarnation. It is a pleasure to finally meet you, my boy. Samuel would be proud.”
Sam. His grandfather. The original Skyrocket. Back in the day, Sam and Mr Mystic had been good friends and sometimes friendly rivals. Forums speculated more, but I’d never found any proof of it. Also, Sam Carter’s homophobia had been as sincere as his racism and sexism.
Tom smiled, teeth white and straight. I pondered whether Colgate had him under contract, too. If they didn’t, they were idiots. “No, he wouldn’t, sir. But you’re kind to say so.” His soft drawl was an echo of Shimizu’s. Pure, corn-fed Oskaloosa, Iowa.
No question, Tom was the total package. The PR reason Sylvia could get away with her private army and her special dispensations. I gritted my teeth so my smile wouldn’t falter.
Sylvia looked to be doing the same. “Don’t believe it, Tom. Mitchell is many things, but kind isn’t one of them. Sam would be proud of the way you’ve carried on his legacy. We should all be so lucky in our progeny.”
Only the fact that she didn’t look at me when she said it kept me from blanching. That, and the sight of Tom’s loose and easy smile tightening, just at the corner of his mouth and eyes.
Now we were all smiling, and none of us meant it.
Lovely.
“The Kestrel’s fueled and ready to go, ma’am. Is it just Mr Masters and Mr Tsung, or will you be flying with us?”
“No, Mitchell was adamant about going alone, and I have meetings with the security council. Someone has to keep the dogs on their leashes and to make sure their tails wag properly after you boys save the world. I leave Mr Mystic in your capable hands, my dear. Good hunting, Mitchell. I expect you’ll have this all sorted within a week.” She patted Tom’s arm, then my cheek, like the boys she’d just called us.
She clicked across the tarmac in the direction of the control tower, trailing blank-faced bodyguards and a fresh-faced assistant in her wake.
Tom turned back to me, his smile subdued, but genial once more. He gave a rueful chuckle. “She’s quite a character, isn’t she? A firecracker, as my grandpap might say.” He led us around to the hangar door.
“I believe Samuel would have used more choice language, of a kind not fit for mixed company.”
Tom grimaced. “Yeah, well…” He used the excuse of punching in a security code on the door pad to hide his pause. “He may have had his flaws, but he had a good heart.”
I suffered a pang of sympathy. Poor Tom. Skyrocket had been a man of his time, for both good and ill. It had to be hard, fighting to recover the tarnished legacy of a grandfather he’d loved and respected, even as he knew Samuel had been in the wrong. At least my own legacy of prejudice was overshadowed by the rumors of Mr Mystic’s presumed homosexuality. Though he shouldn’t have been given a pass on the basis of that.
But then, I didn’t have many illusions about the kind of bastard Mitchell Masters was.
I was?
Hell. I pulled down the brim of my fedora and fussed with the shadows, reminding myself who I was. It was Tsung’s fault. His presence made me self-conscious. Even when he kept silent, I couldn’t shake the feeling of being evaluated.
This was why I worked alone.
“He was a good man and a good friend, and though it guts me to admit it, Sylvia is right. He would be proud. Samuel was the last person to admit that he was wrong, but he was often the first person to realize it.”
Tom laughed and pushed open the hangar door. “Now isn’t that the God’s honest truth. Cussed as mules, the both of us.”
Tsung and I followed him into the hangar. My steps faltered as I took in our transportation.
“We’re flying across the Pacific in… that?”
I’ll say this for Argent, they work their branding. Sylvia Dunbarton’s cultivated studio-system glamour was just one facet of that marcasite jewel. There was Skyrocket’s WWII charm, the Antiquarian’s Howard Carter persona… and now this.
The Kestrel gleamed a burnished silver from the curve of her snub nose to the arch of her slender tail. Evenly-spaced rivets were the only interruption to her sleek lines. There weren’t even engines tucked under the wings, or windows to mar the length of the fuselage. She looked like Howard Hughes’s wet dream, and not at all air-worthy.
Tom, bless him, grinned at my skepticism. “She’s a beauty, isn’t she? Flies like a dream.”
“She… flies?” How?
He answered my unasked question with a shrug. “Same tech as my rocket pack. Stuff my grandpap helped develop, though they’ve gone way beyond that, now. Argent’s tech people… those guys are whip smart. Could probably solve world hunger.” He frowned. “If world hunger could be solved with aviation technology, I guess.”
If there were more power in solving world hunger than in letting it strategically continue. But a seam opened at the rear of the Kestrel, interrupting any sour comment I was inclined to make. A gangplank lowered to the ground. Tom hopped up the slope and held out a hand to help me
up. I ignored it. I was old, not decrepit.
The ramp led to the cargo bay and jump deck. Tom gestured to a pile of gear held in place with netting.
“‘Chutes and suits are back here, plus a supply drop and an inflatable raft. You can suit up later, I reckon.” He opened a pressurized door and led us through a small cabin and to the cockpit. Everything was primed and lit. Maybe he’d done his pre-flight check before our arrival. Though I was still skeptical about the flight aspect. There were no engines. How could the blasted thing fly with no engines?
Tom sat in the padded flightseat and flicked switches on the console, doing lord-only-knew what. “Should have us in the air in about twenty minutes. It’s pretty spacious back in the cabin. Just make yourself comfy. Have a drink. A snack. Grab a seat up here and chat if you feel like it. It’s a milk run until we hit Chinese airspace. The company’d be nice.”
Tsung took the co-pilot’s seat. I shook my head. Between the glances Tsung kept shooting at me and Tom’s youthful vigor, I was beginning to feel every year of my presumed age. “Perhaps later, when things get interesting. I think I’ll try to sleep just now.”
Tom chuckled as I returned to the passenger cabin. “Those old-guard types are all the same,” he told Tsung, as if I couldn’t hear him. “Sleep when they can, cause who knows when they’ll have the chance again, right?”
“So it would seem,” David Tsung murmured.
I settled into a chair I suspected was Sylvia’s favorite and pulled my hat down over my face. I feared those words would prove to be prophetic.
* * *
“So, why did you leave Argent?”
I’d woken from my nap and headed back to pull my jumpsuit and parachute on over my clothes. I exchanged my fedora for a helmet, and stashed it in a bundle that included my trench coat and the knife. I’d jump with them, but be damned if I was taking that woodcarving knife to the leg because I’d landed wrong.
I took David Tsung’s abandoned co-pilot seat while he went back to change. From the extended weight of silence that had descended as Tom and I watched the blue go by, he’d been trying to figure out how to blurt that question for a good while.
“Technically, I didn’t.” Even more technically, I didn’t know. There were gaps the size of the English Channel in Mr Mystic’s journal entries regarding Argent. “I had matters to see to, and seeing to them took longer than expected. When I came back, I simply neglected to contact the agency. We’d both changed so much in the interim, there didn’t seem to be a point.”
“But you don’t like them.”
“‘Them’ is a collective of individuals, some of whom I like very well. But no. On the whole I do not approve of the course that some of those individuals have charted for Argent.”
“But we do good work.” Tom had an earnestness that couldn’t be feigned – another reason he made such a good spokesman. I had no doubt he believed in Argent’s mission statement. “We do drives for charities, act as ambassadors and peacekeepers all over the world. And when some terrorist with a few magic tricks up his sleeve or a couple of fancy gadgets comes along, bent on world domination, we’re there to stop him.”
“You know, there’s some who argue that the existence of Argent invites such opposition. That if you didn’t exist, neither would they, and the world would be a safer place all around.”
“Well, that’s just stupid talk.”
I chuckled. Tom’s eloquence was all the more effective for being homespun. “I’m inclined to agree.”
“I mean, what do those folks think? If we weren’t around, those terrorists would still be out causing trouble, and we might not even know about it.”
I placed a steadying hand on his shoulder. “As I said, I agree. But the corollary to that argument is that as a result, Argent has been given broad, unchecked powers. They’ve become a force to be reckoned with, on a par with any nation. Witness the fact that in this current crisis, Argent has a seat at the table. A private corporation, with nobody to answer to, no mandate from any people. That is what troubles me.”
“There’s shareholders.”
“Who care about the bottom line, which is hardly the kind of a line a hero should be drawing in the sand, wouldn’t you agree?”
But Tom’s strength as a spokesman was that he believed in his heart what he couldn’t quantify in his head.
“We do good work,” he insisted. “And we get things done. You have to admit that, at least. You wouldn’t be here now if it weren’t true.”
“Lord, you’re much like your grandfather,” I said, as much to change the topic as anything.
“Thanks. I – Jesus H!” The Kestrel rocked as a muffled whump sounded from somewhere outside. Tom pulled the control yoke, sending us into a steep climb. I tumbled from my seat. A cry and a thunk came from the back as David Tsung and gravity made their acquaintance.
“You all right, sir?” Tom’s hand shot down to help me up. I waved it away.
“Fine. I’m fine. Keep… driving. Or what have you. Tsung, you all right?” I glanced back down the length of the windowless fuselage. David Tsung was suited-up and scowling. He crawled up the aisle and strapped in to the cushy seat I’d abandoned.
“I’m fine. What the hell was that?”
I had no clue, but Tsung’s idea was a good one. I clambered back into the co-pilot’s seat and strapped myself in. “Tom?”
“Hold on.” Seeing us safely belted, Tom nudged the Kestrel into a dive. My stomach flipped as I slammed into the restraints; I closed my eyes to fight back nausea. Correct that. Not a dive. A Kestrel dive. I wanted to demand what the tactical logic of that was, but I was too busy struggling to keep my lunch.
“We got two bogeys at six and eight.”
“Bogeys? Do you seriously call them that?”
“I’m old school.” Another grin. Another moment of stomach flipping terror as he did something that only belonged in an airshow. I recalled liking flying, once upon a time, and on a flimsier craft than this. But then, I’d trusted that pilot with my life. I barely knew Tom.
“Are they after us specifically, do you think?” I asked through gritted teeth, “Or just taking potshots at whatever they’re running across?”
“Don’t know.” He flicked some switches on the console. “They’re speaking gobbledygook.” Another switch, and Mandarin poured from the cockpit speakers.
Perhaps Tom wasn’t completely free of his grandfather’s ethnocentrism.
“Shenyang J-15s off the Liaoning,” Tsung said for Tom’s benefit as the pilots chattered with their controller. “Sounds like they’ve got orders to herd anything they see into an early demise.”
Tom shook his head. “They must have been blue water when the Wall went up. Can’t get Argent command on the com. We’re too close to the New Wall.”
Even worse. “How close?” The footage of that cargo hulk crunching into the Wall like a tin can had become one of the signifying images of the current crisis. What would the New Wall do to a plane?
A few more switches flipped, and another rocking whump from outside. The control yoke rattled in Tom’s grip, and for a moment he struggled to keep it steady. “Closer than we were a few minutes ago. They’re herding us toward it. Shit. Shit.”
“We have to jump,” I said.
Tsung, who’d been leaning as far forward as his restraints and our aerial acrobatics would allow, choked on a laugh. “Are you crazy, old man? What’s to stop them from taking us out, chutes and all, and then herding the evidence into the ward?”
“I ain’t abandoning ship,” Tom said with a firming of that lantern-jaw. “Not letting them get ahold of her tech.”
“You have to take us across to the Shadow Realms,” Tsung said to me.
“Who is the crazy one now?” If Tsung knew the Shadow Realms as well as I suspected he did, he had to know the effect they’d have on the Kestrel’s engines. “We’ll be dead in the water… sky… within a few moments.”
“We’ll have long enough for
all three of us to jump, nobody will get access to Argent’s tech, and we can cross back over once we’re on the ground.”
Assuming nothing found us and ate us first. “It’s too dangerous.”
“This is more dangerous. Take us across.”
“You are mad if you think I’m going to.”
“Take. Us. Across.” And unspoken behind Tsung’s glare: If you don’t, I will.
As much as I didn’t wish to cross over, I wanted even less to be dragged across by someone else. What if he wasn’t as powerful as I was? What if he lacked my control?
“Mr Masters, sir? I don’t usually disrespect my elders, but if you don’t do as the man says, I will pop you one when this is over. Assuming we survive.”
“Fine,” I snapped, leaving the rest of what I wanted to say hanging. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. “When I say go, put out the interior lights. You’ll only have a few moments of power before the Realms start draining it. Can you make it to the bay to jump?”
“I’ll make it. You two head back. I’ll see what I can do to give us some space before pointing us in the right direction.”
Any further arguments I might have made were silenced by another whump and a burst of alarms from the console. Tom cursed and struggled with the yoke.
I unstrapped and followed David Tsung to the jump bay as the Kestrel bucked and swayed and threatened to send me bouncing back towards the cockpit.
“This is a seriously bad idea,” I muttered to Tsung, grabbing my little satchel and holding on to a carabiner so I wouldn’t go hurtling out the back of the plane before I was ready to hurtle myself.
“You’re just saying that because nobody likes us over there.”
“You fellas ready, or you want some private time?” Tom called.
“I just assumed you needed to kiss your girl goodbye,” I shouted back. “Give the word. We’re ready when you are.”
“I’ll remember you were making fun, Old Man. OK, go!”
