Just Cause: Revised & Expanded Edition

by Ian Thomas Healy

“Stow that noise, Corporal,” said Scott. “We’re going to have a hard enough time of this without you announcing our presence to the entire Third Reich. What’d you hear, Sounder?”

  Downs shrugged. “Dunno, Sergeant. Sounded like they turned on a big dynamo.”

  “Couldn’t have been,” said Hester. “A dynamo makes power, not drains it. Why’d they lose their lights?”

  Stills muttered something under his breath that sounded something like “whyncha go ask ‘em, shithead?”

  Scott ignored his headstrong second-in-command. In spite of Stills’ abrasive personality, he was a brilliant tactician and made excellent use of his particular skills. “You guys ready for descent?”

  Hester and Downs answered in the affirmative. Downs even sounded eager. They hadn’t seen any real action since France, and that seemed like an eternity ago, and more than once, Downs had complained about all the damn sneaking around. “It ain’t fair. I want to kill me some krauts,” he’d say, fingering his knife.

  Scott turned to Stills. “Corporal, secure our landing site. And do it quietly.”

  Stills drew his bowie knife and saluted. “Yes sir,” he said, and vanished off the rock with a soft puff of inrushing air.

  Stills was what Allied Command called an exceptional talent. They all were. Scott had been the first, found by a displaced French researcher named Georges Devereaux. Scott was strong enough to toss a jeep across a parking lot and tough enough to take a fifty-caliber bullet in the chest without even blinking, much less bleeding. He could also fly for almost a mile at a time, something that was more than a leap but less than actual flight. Devereaux had found Scott, thanks to his odd ability to see parahuman abilities in others, and brought him to see some men in the Army. They liked what they saw and immediately enrolled him in Basic. Then they went back to Devereaux and asked if he could find a few more like Scott, whom they code-named Strongman.

  John Henry Stills was next. He was a teleport, able to move anywhere he could see without traversing the space between points. He simply vanished from one spot and instantly reappeared in his destination. He was a master knife-wielder, having been working in his father’s slaughterhouse. Scott had seen him slice a kraut to bloody ribbons in seconds, flashing all around him faster than could be seen. The army code-named him Flicker, which he hated. But they let him get away with his antics because he was a parahuman, and there were only four in all the American forces, plus the wild card of Georges Devereaux.

  William Hester could imbue objects he could hold in his hand with kinetic energy and then release them with enough force to rupture tank armor. In spite of his tremendous combat ability, Hester was mostly an intellectual. The soft-spoken, bespectacled man was more likely to be found with his nose buried in a book during down time, instead of chasing women or gambling like normal soldiers. On paper, he was called Meteor, but to everyone else he was just Professor.

  Raymond Downs had lied about his age to get into the army. He wanted desperately to be a soldier and to fight the Axis, joining when he was only fifteen. Four months later his mother had come to pick him up from Fort Bening just before he was scheduled to ship out. Downs had nearly died from the sheer embarrassment of it. Two months later he was back when his family doctor couldn’t explain why Downs could hear things that were too quiet, too far, and too high-pitched for anyone else. The Army doctors determined his abilities far surpassed normal, and he received a special dispensation to join and a codename, Sounder.

  When the Army brass had showed their abilities to Albert Einstein, he said, “that’s exceptional.” The Army being what it was, the four men were referred to as “exceptional talents” from then on. They had been trained for every possible situation the G-men could devise. Eventually Roosevelt had ordered them deployed and they parachuted into France with a few thousand other dogfaces.

  They’d had some success aiding the French Resistance by using their special abilities to complete missions that would have otherwise required ten times as many men. Their standard mode of operation was for Sounder to provide the intelligence via sound cues, then Flicker would secure the site, and finally Strongman and Meteor would go to work. Emplaced machinegun nests were no challenge to the four of them, and they could take out a convoy in a matter of seconds. This particular mission was going to require some different tactics. Their objective was gathering information about the project the Nazis had set up in Aufstein Castle.

  Scott hadn’t been told, officially, what Army Intelligence thought was going on in the castle. Unofficially, he’d been told that the krauts were trying to make their own exceptional talents. Allied Command was very interested in their experiments. Project Circus was to gather as much information about the process as they could, and then permanently disrupt operations. Scott was all in favor of the mission. The idea of an army filled with soldiers like himself marching across the face of Europe gave him nightmares.

  He checked his watch. Two minutes had passed since Stills had vanished and he hadn’t reappeared. If the area hadn’t been secured, he would have popped back to report. He nodded at Hester and Downs, who began quietly rappelling down the rock face. Scott watched their progress, checking the castle for any sign they’d been seen. The castle was still mostly dark. Whatever the krauts had set off was drawing plenty of power. Hester and Downs got down to the ground and took up covering positions with their rifles. There was no sign of Stills, but Scott knew he’d be around somewhere. He took one last glance at the castle, then stepped off the side of the rock, letting himself fall.

  Flying took a certain amount of suspension of disbelief. Scott always visualized himself parachuting when he fell. He’d actually been tested from heights of over two hundred feet and always landed safely. Well, not always. He could still twist an ankle or something else painful and inconveniencing. At least he didn’t have to worry about being shot on the way down, as had happened to so many of the other soldiers. He always tried imagining he was an airplane when he launched himself into the air. After about a mile, his brain couldn’t seem to handle the impossibility of his motion, and he fell, which was just as unnerving as flying. The doctors thought that they could hypnotize him so he’d be able to fly for longer periods of time, but Scott wasn’t about to let them do that.

  He reached the ground and unlimbered his own rifle. He heard a soft popping sound and a sudden breeze on his cheek announced Stills had teleported back to them. The smaller man’s knife was bloodstained and his grin was shocking and bright in the dark.

  “Two sentries in this section,” he said. “Both accounted for.” He wiped his knife on an evergreen and tucked it back in his sheath.

  By now, Scott was familiar with Stills’ bloodthirsty tendencies, and tried not to let it bother him. “How many other sentries on patrol?”

  “I counted six. Three pairs of two.”

  “Sounder?”

  The youngest soldier closed his eyes, concentrating on the sounds nobody else could hear. “Confirmed,” he said in a moment. He chuckled quietly. “Two of ‘em are drunk.”

  “Okay, here’s the plan…” Scott began, but before he could continue a loud explosion ripped upward from the middle of the castle, sending cobbles and tiles flying.

  “Shit,” whispered Stills. “Think that’s good for us or bad for us?”

  An alarm began to wail, sounding very much like the air raid sirens in London. The four men instinctively looked to the skies, half afraid they would see a flight of B-17s on approach.

  “Hey, look!” Hester pointed toward the castle. People were fleeing from the main entrance. Some of them were clearly soldiers, but others were in civilian garb or wearing white lab coats. They fought with each other as they grabbed motorcycles, trucks, or whatever vehicles were available. Engines sputtered to life and headlights illuminated the large cloud of dust that was raised from the explosion.

  Within moments, the surge of people leaving the castle subsided. “Krauts might have done our job for us.” Scott motioned t
o the others. “Let’s move in. Stay sharp.”

  A ruddy glow in the smoke over the castle roof was a mute testament to a fire still burning inside. The Americans approached cautiously, rifles at the ready. The darkness seemed thick and oppressive as they reached the road, a muddy mess from the quick evacuation of the German vehicles.

  The main gate into the castle hung open.

  Advancing in pairs, they leapfrogged each other all the way to the castle wall. The stone was conducting a slight amount of heat. Scott figured that the interior must be like a blast furnace if the walls were already warm.

  “Sounder, you hear anything inside?”

  The young man removed his helmet, clapped a hand over one ear, and pressed the other against the wall, eyes shut, listening intently.

  “Big fire… glass breaking from the heat… something making a shrieking sound, maybe a steam valve? Shit, footsteps!” He pushed himself back from the wall and fumbled for his helmet.

  Stills drew his knife. Scott pulled his pistol from his holster; it would be more useful in close quarters than his M-1. They waited on either side of the doorway. A figure staggered out. Stills’ knife descended sharply and stopped short when Scott blocked his strike with the barrel of his pistol.

  “What the hell, Sergeant?” Stills looked shocked.

  “Look at him, Stills. He’s no threat.”

  It was true. The man was badly burned. His clothes were mostly burned away except for the metal parts, which had cooked into the ruin of his skin. He tripped and fell, landing face down in the mud.

  Scott had seen men burned by flamethrowers before, but this was worse than anything he’d ever witnessed. Bile rose in the back of his throat. Behind him, Downs vomited against the side of the castle. The man’s limbs trembled as if he was cold, but it was surely from the massive nerve damage he’d sustained. Choking back the bad taste in his mouth, Scott reached out a boot and flipped the man over. Carbonized flesh flaked off him in layers. The man’s face was gone, charred bone peeking through the cooked muscle. Incredibly, he was still breathing and whispering something through his burned lips and tongue.

  “Hester,” ordered Scott through clenched teeth. Hester was the only one who spoke German. The Professor spat to one side and kneeled down next to the man, disgust leaching from his pores.

  “He keeps saying übermensch, over and over,” said Hester after a moment, getting back to his feet.

  “What’s that mean?” Downs wiped his mouth. His face had gone as pale as the moon.

  “Super man,” Hester answered. Mercifully, the man stopped moving as his injuries overcame him.

  Scott felt all the strength drain out of his legs. “Holy Christ. What if they did it?”

  Stills’ lip curled in disdain. He was undoubtedly still upset about Scott stopping him, since he believed the only good kraut was a dead kraut, no matter the circumstances. “Did what?”

  “Made someone like us,” said Hester.

  “Bullshit! How could you make a parahuman?” Stills shoved his knife back into its sheath.

  “Nobody knows how we got our powers,” said Scott. “I didn’t really know about mine until I hit eighteen. You found out about yours by accident, Stills, and Downs didn’t get his until after Basic Training. The Nazis have scientists; maybe they figured something out.”

  The four men were silent for a moment as each considered the possibility of a Nazi parahuman.

  “Okay, let’s move in,” said Scott finally.

  “What, in there?” Stills was adamant. “No way.”

  “That’s an order, Corporal. Salvage any documents you can find.”

  Rifles drawn, they moved into the castle.

  The entryway was filled with smoke. A smoldering Nazi flag hung in the middle of the hall. Somewhere ahead, they could all hear the sounds of a fire.

  “How come it ain’t burning out here?” Downs asked.

  “Stone don’t burn, kid,” said Stills.

  They passed through another doorway into a courtyard. There was the remains of a building in the middle of the courtyard where the explosion must have occurred. Some of the cobblestones around the ruin glowed white hot. The force of the explosion seemed to have blown out most of the fire, leaving behind only the charred inflammables in its wake.

  “It does if it gets hot enough.” Hester coughed through the acrid fumes in the air. “I never heard of anything making this kind of heat except a volcano.”

  Shattered Klieg lights and warped scaffolding surrounded the courtyard. Scott looked around intently. Up on the castle wall was a steel and glass booth that was in just the spot he would have picked for an observation gallery. The glass was melted and blackened.

  “Stills, can you get up there to check that out?”

  “Affirmative.” Stills winked out of the courtyard and appeared up on the wall. Rifle out, he kicked open the door and peered inside. In a moment, he called out from the doorway. “Sergeant, you better get up here!”

  Scott took as deep a breath as he could in the smoky air and concentrated. His feet left the ground and he flew up to the top of the wall. A reek of charred flesh emerged from the booth. Scott swallowed hard, then stepped into the enclosure.

  Everything in the room from window height and up had been charred black. Ash eddied in the air currents. Two people had been seated in chairs, presumably to watch the events unfolding in the courtyard below. Their legs and lower bodies were relatively unharmed, but from the waist up, they were essentially unrecognizable lumps of charcoal.

  “What is this?” Scott asked, disturbed at the strangeness the scene entailed.

  “Some kinda observation tower. I figure there might be some notes or something here, but I didn’t want to touch nothin’ without your approval first.” Stills glanced at the two smoking corpses. “Shitty way to go. Must have been one hell of a burst to cook ‘em like that!”

  Scott clicked on his electric torch and began searching for anything he could take with him back to Allied Command. A shelf of notebooks might have been promising, but they had been turned into lattices of ash that disintegrated when he touched them. He began rooting through drawers in a low file cabinet. Nothing. No notes, no binders, nothing to show but death.

  “Sergeant!” Downs’ voice was urgent from down in the courtyard.

  Scott leaned out of the observation booth door. “What, Sounder?”

  “Heartbeat, sir, and it isn’t one of ours.”

  A sudden rush of air and ash behind Scott informed him that Stills had just teleported out. Sure enough, he appeared an instant later next to Downs, already drawing his knife.

  Scott vaulted the edge of the wall and dropped the twenty feet to the courtyard. For a trained paratrooper, even one who could fly, it was like any other landing. Hester had his pistol out and was slowly circling, like a hawk preparing to strike. His left hand clutched a fist-sized chunk of rock that vibrated with barely-contained kinetic energy.

  “Where is it, Ray?” Scott grasped his own pistol at the ready.

  Downs turned around slowly, using his ears like a radar set. “Through there.” He pointed to the stone building in the center of the courtyard. It was long, stretching nearly two-thirds of the length of the courtyard itself. A large portion of the roof had been immolated in the explosion. “Sounds like he’s inside a metal box by the echo of it.”

  “Maybe he can tell us what happened here,” said Hester.

  “Move in,” said Scott. “And watch yourselves. It’s still damn hot in here.”

  The four men advanced to the building. The entry doors had been blown off their hinges and lay smoldering on the courtyard cobbles. Two by two, they entered the building.

  Inside was a long, low-ceilinged hall. Strange metal implements lined each wall at regular intervals, twisted into unrecognizable shapes by the heat. Small metal boxes were bolted down by each sculpture. Scott approached one cautiously and flipped open the catch with the tip of his rifle. Inside it was a smoke-stained Germa
n army uniform. He looked back down the hall, trying to picture it before the accident.

  “Beds. These were beds.” Hester stepped up next to him. “That’s why the footlockers are here.”

  “That doesn’t make sense. Was it a hospital?”

  Hester looked grim. “Not a chance. This looks like a lab of some sort. These poor guys were subjects.” They glanced down and saw charred bone fragments amid the ash remains of flesh and bedding.

  “Sarge, in there.” Downs motioned to a bank of heavy clothing lockers against one wall. He and Stills stepped up to them. The young man closed his eyes, listening intently next to each door. He stopped at the third locker, opened his eyes, and nodded. Stills took up a position on one side of the door, Downs the other. Scott and Hester raised their weapons, preparing for the worst. Stills nodded and raised his fingers in a silent count. One… two… three!

  Downs yanked open the door and a man pitched forward onto the charred floor. He coughed and choked, rolling onto his side. A rope of mucus and blood trailed from his mouth. His skin had an odd, waxy sheen to it. With horror, Scott realized his eyes had been burned out; their remains leaked down his cheeks.

  In his hands, he was clutching a notebook.

  “This him?” Scott asked. Downs nodded, eyes wide. “Professor, check him out and confiscate that book. Downs, Stills, check the rest of the lockers, including the footlockers.”

  Hester dropped to his knees and started to pull the notebook away from the man. The man started and closed a desperate hand around Hester’s wrist, babbling something in German. Hester kept his cool and asked the man a question. The man stuttered as if he was drugged.

  “Give him some morhpine,” said Scott. “Maybe it’ll help us get some answers from him.”

  As the drug kicked in, the man became somewhat more lucid. He spoke rapid-fire German, as if he was trying to get all of his thoughts out before he perished from whatever it was that was eating him up inside. Hester took frantic notes in the man’s notebook. Most of the man’s speech was so jumbled and incoherent that he couldn’t make heads or tails of it.