Wearing the Cape 6: Team-Ups and Crossovers

by Marion G. Harmon

  What’s going on? I coughed on a laugh, a mistake. A twinge got around the pain blockers. If she wanted non-classified intel, I’d give her a history lesson.

  “The Biolords are what’s going on. Genetic supremacists. They control North-Am from the Rocks to the Pacific. We’ve been trying to keep them contained for ten years.” I waxed lyrical for most of an hour on the history of the war that any schoolkid would know. Either she really didn’t know or she was the best actress in the whole crapsack world; as I went on she looked progressively less confused and more horrified.

  “Perspective is a bitch,” she said when I wound down.

  “What?”

  “Don’t worry about it. And you’re out here because…”

  The fading stims made it hard to think. Why did she want to know? It wasn’t like the mission wasn’t blown; I’d lost my team, and the beacon, in the ambush. Game Over; the cache I’d found had been pointless—I’d just been wandering with no way of completing the mission when the lone war-twist caught me.

  She killed a war-twist!

  It had to be the drugs; there was no way she could have done that. I blinked, a long one, and she looked concerned. What had she wanted to know? Oh yeah.

  “Recon. Biolord forces made a push three weeks ago, overran five counties before we pushed them back. They emptied a bunch of small towns, and we have intel that says most of the residents are interned somewhere in this zone. The sons-of-bitches use prisoners for biomaterial. Men, women, children, it doesn’t matter.”

  The pain block was failing, but with the stims losing their grip the jabbing spikes only made me more confused. I tried to find a better position, tried not to think of the children. What had we— Right, the mission. “My team was one of three sent into the zone to try and find the internment camp. We were supposed to locate the camp and plant an LZ beacon.”

  “So it was a search and rescue mission.”

  “Was. It’s completely burned, now. Team’s gone, beacon’s gone. My team had the best shot—the other two were covering the outside bets.” I pointed vaguely in the direction of the Rocks. “The whole division is waiting for a signal, telling them where to push. That was the mission. Game Over.” Why were my eyes watering?

  The girl—Hope—patted me on the shoulder that didn’t scream hurt. “Stand down, soldier. Everything’s going to be alright.”

  “Really? Because it’s one bottomless crapsack, now.”

  “I promise. Go to sleep.” She had a real nice voice. Soft. I hadn’t heard soft voices in a while. Yelled commands, barked orders, stealth whispers, screams. Nothing soft. I made myself nod.

  “Yeah. Good idea. I’ll be okay tomorrow.”

  “Yes you will. Goodnight.” I felt a brush on my sticky forehead, permission to close my eyes.

  My eyes slammed open and I looked up at sunlight through chamo-cloth. What?

  The war-twist. The impossible girl. The ditch. We’d…talked?

  I tried to stand up, couldn’t manage more than elbows and ass as I looked around. No impossible girl, but someone had laid all my gear out neatly. Someone not me, I could see that. My med-kit was spread beside my right elbow, empty injectors lined up where I could see them. And a full canteen with a note.

  Corporal Flynn. You’re running a fever so I decided not to give you any more stims, but I administered another pain-block after you went to sleep. You’ve got four left. I’m sorry but I’ve taken your compass-map. It was very nice to meet you, and it’s never Game Over.

  Sincerely, Hope Corrigan.

  What? I rubbed my face, probed my side, and looked at the note again. If it wasn’t for the wrinkled and pressed piece of paper—she’d used the wrapping of a field-ration—I’d think that part of last night a mind-warp hallucination from blood loss, shock, and stims. What—

  The soft roar of the lifter passing high overhead told me what had woken me up. A second. A third. I scrambled, nearly passing out again, to the top of the ditch to look out from the edge of the chamo. The laughter should have hurt; seven trails in the sky, the whole airlift capacity of the division. Turning my head to look east I could see dust clouds that signaled landlift on the move.

  I ripped the chamo-away and pushed myself to my knees, waving. The drones would find me.

  “I don’t even know how to begin writing this up.” Captain Beaur scratched the back of his head, looked out the window of the command bunker.

  I smoothed out the note without looking at it, my hands shaking on the cold table. “She really did it?”

  “I don’t know about she, corporal. High-altitude drones picked up the explosion at around oh-six hundred hours this morning, analysis said it was big enough it had to be a whole Biolord munitions camp. We lost a flight of drones getting a closer look, and the heat-signatures headed east from zero said civilians. We didn’t have your beacon signal, but the general ordered go, and it was the internment camp. Also what was left of an armor camp. The explosion took out its chamo.”

  “The civilians?”

  “We’re still counting, but it looks like most of them—maybe all—are still here. They’re in a bad way, but we’re evacuating them to the rear and pushing forward now that we don’t need to worry about them anymore. We may push the Biolords all the way back into the Rocks in this sector. Do you want to add anything? A squad couldn’t have done it. A brigade might have done it, maybe. They were still shooting at something when we came in. Whatever it was ripped into a whole platoon of war-twists like they were toy soldiers. Is this some kind of rogue monster war-twist we should be worried about?”

  Not a war-twist. A war-angel. Wherever she was now. I shook my head. “Nothing to add, sir. Maybe after more sleep. When can I report—”

  “You can’t. We’re sending you home. Debrief, physical rehab, probably move you into instructing after this. This breakthrough is good, we’ll probably win the sector. Hell, the way their offensives have slowed, we may finally be winning the war.” He pushed back his chair and stood up. “But it’s Game Over for you—you’re going to help train the next wave. Whatever happened out here, good work, corporal.” He snapped a salute as I pushed myself up, held it until I returned it.

  “Thank you, sir.” I left with the note. Outside, I could see the pillar of smoke still rising from the armor camp.

  She’d been wrong; it was always Game Over for somebody. Right, Flynn, but twelve thousand live civilians is a pretty good Mission Accomplished. Be a little less cynical. Carefully folding the note, I tucked it in my breast pocket and limped back to the medical bunker.

  DSA Field Report: Agent Smith.

  Really, boss? A team of Platoons? Much as I like him—them—whatever, I’m not sure five synchronized agents is going to do it if something big and nasty comes knocking. At least if something eats all of us then the Platoon keeping your calendar will be able to tell you what it was.

  Sorry, boss. This site is giving me the heebie-jeebies; I don’t like standing beside an open door when I can’t see what’s on the other side. Sides.

  Odysseus Case File 1-J238 D.

  Astra Gets Grrl Power

  by Marion G. Harmon and Dave Barrack

  “You’d think, after everything I’d seen, I’d have expected something like that. Right? But Jump #12? I did not see that one coming.”

  Astra Cross-Reality Debrief Session, 21.8

  Nobody felt the cold but brief gust of arctic wind that blew papers and city dirt into sudden motion in the narrow service alley, and the light flurry of snow that came with it melted quickly in Chicago’s first spring heat. Nobody saw Hope blink into existence, either, like a 1960s stop-motion cinema photography trick.

  She straightened her cape, slipped the now useless snow globe into her canvas tote-bag, and studied the alley. She hadn’t changed location this time, which she decided was a good sign. But the alley hadn’t changed, either, and her shoulders slumped a little.

  Bright side, there was an alley. She hadn’t jumped into a primeval
forest again, or a landscape of flattened and scorched rubble. But the building beside her shouldn’t be there; the old residential tower was one of the pieces of Chicago landscape destroyed in The Event and replaced with something newer and shinier.

  Which meant she’d just made her last jump with Santa’s gift, and still wasn’t home.

  Pull it together, Hope. Straightening, she tugged off her half-mask and tucked it away with the globe. No Event probably meant no superheroes, and for some reason masks made people nervous where there was no tradition for it. Go figure.

  The sarcastic thought made her smile; she should probably be worried at how much her inner voice had started to sound like Shell. Compensating for the awful silence in her head where her virtual BF should be, obviously.

  Yeah, well, as long as you know it’s just you talking then you’re not crazy. Yet. Now get out there.

  Stepping carefully over the trash and oily patches that littered the alley, she emerged into what looked like the same Wabash parking lot she’d just walked through. The lot was emptier and the cars had changed, but they were still Toyotas, Fords, and other familiar brands. There were no flex-fueled Terras, and that was encouraging. No fliers in the sky, either, other than planes and a traffic helicopter; confirmation she’d jumped to another “mundane” extrareality.

  “Hey! Nice Astra costume!”

  Almost jumping out of her skin, Hope barely kept her feet on the ground. The young business-suited man heading for his car gave her a friendly laugh. “Are you headed for the convention? I’ve got tickets for tomorrow, and good thing—you can’t get them now that it’s official the Arc-SWAT team is here! Maxima! Yeah!”

  “What— Yes. Can’t wait.” Hope clutched her bag.

  He threw his briefcase in the back of his car, loosened his tie. “Well, you’ll knock them dead in the cosplay contest—I’ve never seen a better Astra. I’ll cheer for you.”

  “Thanks.” She started walking to cut off any more comments or questions, but he was slipping behind the wheel and closing his door; perfect city-etiquette, don’t ignore but don’t meaningfully engage unless obviously invited to and Hope hadn’t. He backed out and exited onto Wabash before she made it to the sidewalk. She watched him disappear into traffic. Something made her look up.

  It was a single flier, a blonde girl wearing big glasses and some kind of paramilitary uniform crossing the sky west over the city. Hope counted five glowing spheres orbiting her head, and she held two more in her hands.

  Time to find a library. Really? You think?

  The Harold Washington Library on State Street had a nice computer center, and fifteen minutes of waiting and three more compliments on her costume got Hope an open screen. One search-term told her how wrong she was.

  This wasn’t another mundane world.

  The confusing word her businessman had used was Arc-SWAT — SWAT being the unimaginative swapping of Special for Super. Super Weapons and Tactics, which made her wonder how many police department SWAT teams had objected. Arc-SWAT was the action arm of Archon, this America’s version of the Department of Superhuman Affairs.

  ARC. Atypical Resource Commission. Someone had really wanted to spell “Archon.”

  Since the word meant ruler—it came from the same root word as monarch and no less than three supervillains back home had grabbed it as their nom-de-guerre—she could only hope someone here wasn’t being that clever.

  And Archon was new. Finding a video-file of Arc-SWAT’s debut, Hope watched them beat up a tank. It gave her chills; their leader, Maxima, could easily have waxed Atlas. Or Seif-al-Dinn. A quick search of news and fansites turned up a power-scale that made her heart sink. Little Hope Corrigan might rate a 6, Ultra level here. The scale rated Maxima as a 9, Penumbra level.

  The articles Hope scanned only referenced superhumans—supers—this world’s version of breakthroughs. A bunch of bloggers speculated about the source of the superscience stuff used by a super named Dabbler (she sounded like a Verne-Type to Hope, but apparently they weren’t common here), and nobody knew what to make of Halo’s spheres. Halo, the girl she had seen flying over Chicago.

  Hope sat back and tried to absorb it all.

  So, almost no superheroes in this world, but they could be terrifyingly powerful. And superhumans had been around forever—it looked like most of the ones with truly useful abilities earned big money in the private sector. Weirdly, the one unifying feature of all superhumans was that, whatever their powers, every last one of them met the classical Greek conception of physical perfection; if they never used their powers they could all get jobs as fashion runway models. Victoria’s Secret would take every last female one of them.

  It would be nice if breakthroughs worked like that… She shook the image of a six foot tall C-cup Hope Corrigan out of her head and did a search for superhuman history. There was no trace of an Event in Archon World’s history, and she frowned.

  Without an originating Event, it didn’t make a lot of sense that no supers had been especially high-profile until recently (although lots of online sources speculated that earlier superhumans were the basis for most myths). Archon was the first publicly known association of supers—and now the first superteam was a government-run military team that could roll right over the Sentinels without breaking much of a sweat. Not good. Another search let her relax a bit; although some people were calling for it, this America had no compulsory registration of supers—her “unregistered” presence here wasn’t illegal. Archon wasn’t hunting superhumans; just acting as super-cops and coming down on the ones breaking the law. So she was safe. Although technically she was an illegal immigrant…

  Hope set that aside and entered one last search word: Astra. Despite the fact that she’d arrived physically instead of slipping into an Archon World analogue of herself, being “recognized” by half a dozen people who thought her Astra costume was great had left her expecting to find herself a member of Arc-SWAT. So, why no mention of her? The generated links told her why, and she didn’t know whether to scream or giggle hysterically. Neither was appropriate for a library.

  She was fictional. Even worse—Stacia Ellis, the young actress playing her in the new Sentinels TV show, looked just like her. Just like her; looking at the publicity stills was like looking at any news image back home. She was amazed that nobody had asked for her autograph yet.

  At least she wouldn’t need to worry about running into any Corrigans in this Chicago. Twice had been enough, and she didn’t want to risk it again.

  And I’m wasting time.

  Surrendering her station, she exited the library. Back outside, she found herself standing on the street with no idea which way to go.

  The snow globe was a paperweight now—she’d used up all “twelve days” of jumps it had in it and according to Saint Nick it wouldn’t recharge until Christmas. She’d started jumping confident she’d make it home in time for Annabeth and Dane’s wedding; now she was trying not to admit that she might not make it home this year.

  Which left her two options.

  She could try and fit in here until she could jump again.

  And that was laughable; she didn’t exist, legally, and if she tried to get a private-sector job with her powers the first thing prospective employers would do was ask for her social security number and run a background check. And whether or not superhumans had to register, this Archon entity absolutely had to investigate the backgrounds of new superhumans who popped up.

  So they would look into her background and realize she had no document trail. And that she looked like Stacia Ellis’ clone… For one hysterical moment, Hope wondered if the production studio needed a stunt-double. No.

  But regardless, Archon would still be coming to ask her pointed questions.

  Or she could introduce herself to Archon and ask for help, or even for employment until next Christmas...

  Yeah, like that couldn’t possibly go bad.

  She shushed her Shell-voice. She’d found no hint that th
ere might be other extradimensional travelers wandering around, and had no idea if Archon would even buy her story since the articles she’d scanned had only referenced superhumans of local origin. Did they have anyone like Veritas? Then they’d have to believe that she believed it, and if they still certified her sane then she might have a job. She might have a job if they thought she was crazy but functional—it wasn’t like her skill-set was that common around here (although their insurance company might have something to say about hiring a crazy person).

  Or—wild hope—they might actually have a way to get her on her way again; just because the public didn’t know about other realities didn’t mean Archon was ignorant. If they already knew about other realities then maybe Dabbler could whip her up a jump-belt or something.

  Hope started walking before she realized she’d made up her mind; the Chicago Comic Con was being held at the McCormick Place Event Center, and she’d figure out how to get in once she got there.

  Sydney was still getting used to using landmarks for navigation, but the GPS function of her wrist-com had gotten her to Chicago. From above, the City by the Lake looked just like it did on Google Earth, and she only had to check her map once before she found the convention center. “Gotcha!” she laughed when she saw it. “You’re mine, now. All mine…”

  Hovering over the roof of the parking garage across from the convention center, she let go of her violet shield-orb and it rose to join the five others orbiting her head. Her airtight force field dissipated, Chicago’s relatively bracing (and polluted) air rushing in to replace the more verdant air she’d picked up over a forest a few hundred miles back. Airtight force fields had their advantages, but it meant she’d had to stop and refresh her air supply during her otherwise supersonic trip.