Just Cause: Revised & Expanded Edition

by Ian Thomas Healy

  The second group’s task was to ensure the reactor could be safely decommissioned. Because it was a nuclear facility, it couldn’t just be broken apart. Blueshift of the New Guard was the only nuclear power expert they had, and he was given responsibility for that task. Jason and Juice were on that team.

  The rest of the group would engage the opposing army and incapacitate as many of them as possible. Juice hoped that their psionic conditioning could be broken and asked that the battle team try to refrain from causing fatalities. But, he’d said, if it comes down to survival, I’d rather bury one of them than one of you.

  Thirty-four heroes.

  The Bettie flew at top capacity. Besides the five members of Just Cause, all the Young Guns and half the New Guard were on board. The Marilyn was just as full, and held the rest of the New Guard and half the Lucky Seven. The rest of the heroes rode in an Air Force transport jet. Unlike the Just Cause planes, the transport jet couldn’t hover, so the occupants would have to make their own way to the ground. Matthew of Divine Right had enough telekinetic ability to lower his team safely as well. The remaining members of the Lucky Seven on board the transport jet could fly on their own.

  Sally heard a rumble under the noise of the Bettie’s engines and looked up to see Jason was sound asleep. She gave him a gentle shake. “Better get ready,” she whispered. “We’re almost there.”

  He yawned and looked around the cabin. All the Young Guns slept except Surfboy, who had produced a Gameboy from somewhere and was deeply engrossed in electronic mayhem. Chrome’s eyes were shut, but Sally thought that perhaps he was meditating. The New Guard’s Javelin conversed quietly with Juice and planned strategies in her soft contralto.

  “Ten minutes to target,” Ace reported from the cockpit.

  “Ace, coordinate our approach with the other pilots,” said Juice. “I want as close to simultaneous deployment from all three planes as possible.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Juice turned around in the cramped cabin to face the others. “Okay, people. We’re certainly expected today, but I don’t think they’re anticipating this many of us. Ace will get us down safely, but she’ll come down hard, so expect a real jolt. The Bettie’s overbuilt enough to take it. Once she pops the hatch, everybody out of the pool. As soon as we’re clear, the Bettie will go airborne and provide what support she can. When you’re on the ground, rendezvous with your team leader. Above all, watch yourself. We’re dealing with an unknown quantity of parahuman adversaries with unknown abilities. I’ve already lost one teammate to this place and I don’t want to lose anymore. Any questions?”

  The cabin was silent.

  “Jack’d have something smartassed to say if he was here,” muttered Jason.

  “You have been recruited by the League to defend the Frontier against Xur and the Ko-Dan Armada,” Sally quoted. She smiled a little. “I’ve been saving that one for him.” She was met with blank stares from everyone in the plane. “The Last Starfighter. Oh for God’s sake. It was one of the first movies I ever saw!”

  Tension filled Ace’s voice as she warned her passengers. “Incoming missile. Stand by for evasive maneuvers.”

  At that moment, Ace stood the Bettie on her port wing and the engines howled. A series of thunks sounded from somewhere near the aft as she released anti-missile flares. Sally glanced out a window and saw a missile streak past only a few yards off the wing. The engine pitch changed as Ace flipped the Bettie upside-down and rolled into a screaming power dive.

  Sally’s stomach pushed upward against her throat as the Bettie raced toward the ground. Something banged hard somewhere on the upper fuselage which caused the entire plane to shudder and vibrate.

  “Ace?” Juice sounded worried.

  “Took a cannon round,” said the pilot. “Minor damage. Permission to return fire?”

  “Granted.”

  Minor explosions surfaced on each wing as Ace fired a pair of air-to-ground missiles. “Firing,” she announced. A few seconds later she added, “Target neutralized. Stand by for hard landing in fifteen seconds.”

  The Bettie began to level out of her dive. The landing gear hydraulics thumped as they lowered the wheels into position. The jet nozzles angled until the plane plummeted flat; its wings vibrated as they cupped the thick air. The engines screamed as they tried to slow the descent.

  “Touchdown in six… five…”

  CLANG!

  Another cannon round holed one of the wings and left a fist-sized impact crater in the armor. Ace muttered something venomous in Hebrew before she resumed her countdown. “Three… two… one… impact!”

  The Bettie smashed down into the clearing. All the windows on one side of the cabin cracked. Sally gasped in surprise; the shock felt like she’d fallen two or three stories. The rear hatch popped open.

  “Go, go, go!” Juice exhorted. The heroes poured out of the hatch and got clear as Juice slammed the hatch shut. The Bettie’s engines howled in fury and the hardy vessel took to the sky again in a blast of fiery exhaust.

  Forcestar wrapped them in a sturdy shield to protect them from the bullets and parahuman energy attacks that started to come their way. A few seconds later, the Marilyn slammed down to the ground to discharge her passengers in similar fashion. Like Forcestar had, Stratocaster whipped up a magical force field around them. Above them, Matthew of Divine Right, hands clasped in prayer, lowered himself and the rest of his team to the ground inside a telekinetic shield.

  Enemy combatants charged at them on foot and through the air. Juice shouted, “Take them down!”

  The battle proper began in earnest.

  Later, Sally would only recall the battle as a series of disjointed still images. She was so hyped up that her accelerated senses made the world seem oddly still around her. She had to concentrate even to be able to speak or listen to the others.

  “Can you get a fix on them?” Spark asked his teammate Juliet.

  “Wait,” she said as she concentrated on locating the mental patterns of Jack and Doublecharge.

  Enemy soldiers attacked. Bullets and beams of energy lanced toward the heroes. While Juliet focused her psionic powers on the search, the others leaped to her defense.

  Sally ran on adrenaline and anger. Every enemy she encountered got a horseshoe in the face. Some of them fell with broken jaws or noses. Against others, the horseshoes merely glanced off impervious skin or flesh made of other, harder materials like stone and metal. Although she knew she moved too fast for her voice to even be heard, much less understood, it felt very satisfying to scream “this is for Jay!” with each blow. She didn’t even feel the pain in her feet.

  Juliet called out, “Got them!” She pointed at a fortified building across the clearing.

  “Couldn’t have been a little outhouse or something, right?” Spark shouted as he curled his lash around the neck of a soldier and transmitted fifty thousand volts through the copper wiring braided into the leather. “All right, people… The building across the way. Move it!”

  They made it to the building where Jack and Stacey were held. Seahawk of the New Guard grabbed the edges of the door, flexed her powerful shoulders and ripped it right out of the wall. A single large room with a dirt floor formed the building’s interior. Jack and an unconscious Doublecharge, stripped naked, hung suspended from chains attached to the roof. Doublecharge had suffered a bad beating; lacerations oozed blood and competed for space on her skin with bruises and welts.

  Jack remained unhurt but looked exhausted. He managed a smile as the rescue group moved in to secure the building. “Hi guys,” he said. “If I’d known you were dropping by, I’d have dressed first.”

  A strum of his guitar and Stratocaster turned the chains into smoke.

  Alloy reshaped her metallic body to support Doublecharge’s unconscious form.

  Seahawk from the New Guard caught Jack as he fell. “Thanks, gorgeous,” he said, a ghost of his carefree personality.

  “What’s-your-name, uh, Surfboy…
you and Luke watch the door.” Spark barked out orders. “Esther, can you get them out of here?”

  “Of course,” said the woman from Divine Right who could teleport people and things away. She raised her hand.

  “Not yet,” said Spark. “Juliet, can you find Ruth? We’d better make sure Doublecharge here is stabilized enough to move.”

  The Lucky Seven psi nodded and closed her eyes to seek Divine Right’s healer telepathically. Sally scooted out of the building in a blur and returned a moment later with the uniforms of two soldiers that were either unconscious or dead and handed one to Jack.

  “Thanks, kiddo,” he said, “and thanks for bringing out the cavalry. It sounds like World War Three out there.”

  “What did they do to Stacey?” Sally asked.

  Jack swallowed and his voice grew husky. “They were a little… upset about losing their psi. We apparently threw quite a little wrench into their plans.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “They didn’t even ask her any questions.”

  “Who were they?” asked Spark.

  “Harlan Washington. Destroyer, out of his battlesuit,” said Jack. “He didn’t get his own hands dirty, but I could tell he really enjoyed watching the thugs work her over. It was the other guy who scared me, though.”

  “Kaiser?” Sally asked.

  “Yeah. Heinrich Kaiser. He talked to us for a while before turning his dogs loose on Stacey. He wants to take over the world.”

  “Just another petty third-world dictator.” Seahawk waved a hand. “They all have big dreams.”

  Jack shook his head. “This guy can do it. He’s a fanatic, no question, but there’s something about him that makes me think he’s capable of pulling it off. It’s like this was just a setback in his grand plan, like all we did was test his patience. He left hours ago, I think, and now Destroyer’s in charge.”

  Ruth came into the room at a dead run. “Things are bad out there. We’re outnumbered three to one. I’ve got more injured outside.” She stopped by Stacey and crossed herself as she stared in horror. “God in Heaven!” She knelt down, took Stacey’s hands between her own, and bowed her head in prayer. Stacey’s wounds began to close and bruises began to break up.

  Juliet suddenly shrieked, “We have to get out of here right now!”

  Everyone turned to look at her.

  “Esther, get everyone out now!” Juliet cried again.

  Esther didn’t argue. She raised her hands and the others vanished, except Sally, who ducked out of Esther’s line of sight so she could stay and fight some more. They all heard a terrifying roar of heavy weaponry outside the building, louder even than the raging battle.

  Destroyer had arrived.

  Red anger washed across Sally’s eyes and she headed for the door in half a heartbeat with the intent to tear Destroyer apart bolt by bolt if she could. A missile passed over her head into the building. As she turned, it burst apart in slow motion to her accelerated perceptions. Sally looked back at Esther in horror. Their eyes met. In Esther’s eyes she saw the reflection of an expanding cloud of burning plasma.

  The building exploded in a colossal fireball. Sally turned away so she wouldn’t have to see the flames overtake Esther. It happened so quickly that even she couldn’t have saved the woman.

  She blinked away tears of fury and rounded the corner of the reactor building. There she stopped to catch her breath and figure out what she was going to do. Several of her allies had taken cover near her. Bombshell of the Young Guns winced as she fingered an angry red mark on her side where a laser beam had burned through her denim top. The beam hadn’t penetrated her skin but it looked like she’d suffered a third-degree sunburn. Her teammate Toxic cowered in terror as beams passed through the building overhead, her pale skin covered in a fine sheen of sweat. Mark, too, had flung himself to the ground—his so-called angelic strength wouldn’t stop him from being holed like a carnival target.

  Sally crawled to the corner of the building and risked a glance at Destroyer. The fifteen-foot-tall battlesuit stood in the middle of the compound. It had extended all four arms, which pointed in various directions and swept back and forth. Two of the arms sported the repeating laser cannons that had made everyone scramble for cover. The other two fired a barrage of explosive shells like the ones that killed Glimmer. Missile racks perched on the battlesuit’s shoulders, and occasionally it fired one to whiz around after the flying heroes. She didn’t see any of the enemy soldiers still fighting; those who could still move tried to crawl away from Destroyer’s massive firepower.

  “He’s gone crazy,” she whispered. “He doesn’t care who he kills anymore.”

  Several of the heroes risked their lives to battle the impervious battlesuit. Bullet cracked the speed of sound as he plowed into a spot between two of Destroyer’s arms and staggered the behemoth. In reprisal, one of the medial arms bent at an unexpected angle and hurled Bullet into the ground hard enough to leave a small crater.

  Superconductor and Mosaic from the Second Team as well as Tremor and Trix from the Lucky Seven laid down a withering crossfire, blasting electricity, vibrational energy, particle beams, and what looked like steam at Destroyer. Somehow, Trix’s attack was the most effective as the innocuous-looking vapor stream sliced off a chunk of the dark blue armor. Trix seemed as surprised as anyone that it happened, and he got a shell in the face for his trouble. His body hurtled backward, with nothing left but ragged strips of flesh above his shoulders.

  Forcestar wrapped a sphere of blue energy around Destroyer. The battlesuit’s head turned slightly, as if it examined its new prison. An arm extended to brush the edge of the field, which caused sparks to streak from the edge of the metal. Forcestar, his costume ripped and his face bloodied, snarled, “Got you, you asshole.” The sphere began to contract as Forcestar tried to crush the battlesuit inside it.

  “SO IT WOULD SEEM,” said Washington’s modulated voice from external speakers. “I’M COMPLETELY AT YOUR MERCY.PLEASE SPARE ME.” Instead of pleading, the tone was mocking.

  “Stand down, Destroyer,” shouted Juice. “It’s over!”

  “IS IT, NOW?” The underlying venom in the words made chills run down Sally’s spine. “THAT’S THE PROBLEM WITH YOUJUSTCAUSE LOSERS.YOU CAN’T SEE BEYOND THE ENDS OF YOUR OWN NOSES.WHEREASI, ON THE OTHER HAND, HAVE HAD YEARS TO PLAN FOR THIS EVENTUALITY.”

  A screeching tone erupted from Destroyer’s speakers; to Sally’s sped-up perceptions it had a distinct pattern that was eerily familiar. He was transmitting an audible data stream, and Forcestar’s field couldn’t contain sound waves.

  Alarm sirens began to hoot around the power station. Liquid sprayed out of several pipes around the reactor building.

  “Oh no,” cried Toxic in panic, “that’s coolant!” She tried to force the fluid back into the reactor with her powers, but to no avail.

  “If enough of it all drains away, the reactor will go, and then it’s over,” said Blueshift.

  “IT’S OVER,” mocked Destroyer. “WELL, IT’LL BE OVER SOON ENOUGH, ONE WAY OR ANOTHER.REMEMBERCHERNOBYL, KIDS?THAT’LL BE LIKE A PUFF OF SMOKE COMPARED TO THIS BABY.YOU PREPARED TO LETCENTRALAMERICA BE UNINHABITABLE FOR THE NEXT FEW THOUSAND YEARS,JUICYFRUIT?” Destroyer burst out in laughter.

  “Let him go, Forcestar,” said Juice through clenched teeth. “He’s right, and we need you more here now.”

  “Son of a bitch!” Forcestar released his force field. Destroyer instantly opened fire with all four main weapons and ignited his rockets in a blast of flame. Heroes ducked and dodged to avoid the deadly hail of lasers and cannon shells.

  A laser pierced Forcestar’s chest, and he fell twenty feet to the ground, a look of shock frozen on his face.

  “No!” Sally crossed the yards between her and Destroyer in a fraction of a second, and as the battlesuit rose into the air on a column of flame, she grabbed onto one of the arms and held on with desperate strength.

  “Hold your fire!” called MetalBlade as heroes raised their arms in attack.r />
  Sally closed her eyes as the ground fell away from her. Destroyer tried to shake her off, but her perceptions let her adjust to his every motion. “ARGH!” he shouted. “GET OFF ME, YOU LITTLE BITCH!”

  Sally struggled to maintain her grip on the giant blue battlesuit. Destroyer’s arms weren’t designed to scrape over one another. She kept her hold with dogged tenacity. One way or another, she vowed, she would find a way to stop him. “You have to land sometime!” she shouted as wind tore at her.

  “NOT BEFORE YOU DIE OF ASPHYXIATION.” HE accelerated even faster. They climbed high enough that Sally could see both the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean as Destroyer spun to try to shake her loose. Late afternoon sunlight glinted off the armor.

  But not in one spot.

  The place Trix had cut with his steam jet trailed some wires and tubes. Sally saw her opportunity and knew she had to act now before he took her high enough that it wouldn’t matter whether she died from freezing or lack of air first. For one perilous second, she let go with one hand, fumbled at her waist, and finally got hold of one of her grandmother’s steel horseshoes.

  The entire universe went silent and stopped cold. Her perceptions sang like a high note drawn across a violin string. She crawled up to the exposed section, moving through a thick syrup of atmospheric molecules that grudgingly moved aside so she could pass. Time had virtually stopped for her as she braced herself. With a wordless scream, she plunged the horseshoe deep into the cavity, twisted wiring around it and yanked.

  A powerful electric shock made her recoil and she lost her grip on the horseshoe. It stayed buried deep in the components of the battlesuit. Her senses reeled as time sped up to its normal breakneck pace. Sparks shot from the orifice in the armor and something flared deep inside.

  “WHAT DID YOU DO?” shouted Destroyer, and his voice rose in panic. “OH SHIT, WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY BATTLESUIT?” The suit’s boot jets flickered and died.

  Sally smiled in satisfaction despite the black spots that swirled in her vision. “That’s for killing my daddy, you son of a bitch.”