Team Omega
Christopher Nuttall
Team Omega Cover Blurb
The next war will be a superhuman war.
Superhumans! They fly through the skies like gods; superhumans, men and women who have gained extraordinary powers. Some are celebrities, some rule entire countries, some just try to lead normal lives … and some are criminals.
Jackson McDonald, USMC, fought and killed a superhuman who threatened to tear Camp Pendleton apart. His reward is to be invited to join Team Omega, an elite black-ops military unit tasked with dealing with rogue superhumans.
But one superhuman has plans. He will save the world, even if it doesn’t want to be saved…
And no matter who tries to stop him.
Author’s Introduction
“That’s the whole point of [superhumans], isn't it? Something complicated; you make it simple, something you can hit, or else you just ignore it. You stay as far as possible from the real world - which, let’s face it, can be a messy fucking place.”
-Billy Butcher; The Boys: Get Some (Garth Ennis)
There is something of a funny story behind how this book came to be written.
When I was at university, I discovered Stormwatch - a comic that had been newly taken over by Warren Ellis - and fell in love. Stormwatch was a far darker take on both superhumans and the effect they would have on the world. Their replacement by The Authority only cemented the concept for me. As Mark Miller’s opening lines, when he took over the comic, stated, what happens when superheroes go after the real bastards?
Think about it. Superman and Batman fight supervillains and costumed kooks - this was before Injustice: Gods Amongst Us. (I actually wrote the first draft of this before Injustice came out.) They don’t, as a general rule, go after dictators, real-life criminals and suchlike. The Authority’s take was largely revolutionary at the time, at least to me. Unfortunately, it didn't last.
And then a new Stormwatch series came out. This one, entitled Stormwatch: Team Achilles, was an even better concept. A team of elite soldiers, without any effective superpowers, would tackle superhumans who were genuine threats, rather than leave them to other superhumans. I loved the series, particularly when they took on and bested the Authority; I won’t say it didn't have its flaws, but I enjoyed it. The news that the Authority was actually going to be taking over the United States - Coup D’état - struck me as an excellent storyline. There could not fail, I thought, to be a genuine test of both teams ...
Naturally, it fell flat. The almighty reset button was hit and nothing actually changed.
But what would happen, I asked myself, if real superhumans took on real bastards? What would this do to them? And who would oppose them?
This book was the result. Enjoy!
On other news, you can download a semi-prequel of this story - Superhuman: Dead America - for free from the ‘free books’ section on my site.
Chapter One
“At ease, Marine.”
Chester Harrison looked up at the young man in front of him and raised his eyebrows. “Is that as relaxed as you get, young man?”
“Yes, sir,” Lance Corporal Jackson McDonald said.
He was young and fit, with his hair shaved close to his scalp. Chester knew that the USMC had considered him one of their most promising enlisted men, with a promotion to Sergeant delayed only by his habit of picking fights and insubordination when not on active duty. Looking at him, Chester felt unfit, almost overweight. The life of a desk jockey, even a desk in the Pentagon, wasn't the same as a person on active duty.
“I need to know what happened at Camp Pendleton,” Chester said. He’d read the reports, including the one McDonald had written himself, but he needed to hear it from the man’s own lips. “What happened on that day?”
“It’s in my report, sir,” McDonald said, stiffly. He hadn't enjoyed writing the report, any more than his superiors had enjoyed reading it. Nineteen Marines dead and five more on the critical list...and no one even knew why. “You can read it all there.”
“I need to hear it from you,” Chester said, softly. “What happened that day?”
“What happened?” For the first time, McDonald showed a trace of emotion. Horror...and remembered fear. “What happened was a goddamned nightmare.”
***
Sergeant Bass considered himself to be the very model of a Marine Corps Sergeant—and that included disciplining the young men in his platoon. Jackson was rowdy, all day every day, and Bass took it as a personal challenge. After an argument in the barracks that went straight to a fight, Bass had sent Jackson out on a punishment detail- they needed sandbags. Two thousand of them, to be precise. Jackson could secure them on his own, but if there weren't two thousand sandbags filled to standard, stacked nice and neat, he'd be back at it tomorrow. And the day after. Probably the day after that, too.
All day long, Jackson had cursed his luck, hating how he'd been seconded over to the Recruit Training Battalion at Pendleton. What he would give to be back in the field. In six years, he'd done four deployments there, and thoroughly enjoyed it every time. Why couldn't he just be sent out to a Marine unit on actual operations? Being in the field was what he lived for, not coaching recruits on how to shoot the M-16A2.
He heard the explosion just as he came over the hill towards the parade deck, headed back to the barracks. It looked as if someone had smuggled a bomb into the Camp, perhaps one of the Mexican terrorist groups that kept threatening the integrity of the US border. He ran towards the sound of the blast, forgetting his anger at the Sergeant in the fear that one of his brothers might be injured. Alarms were going off everywhere as he ran into one of the PT compounds used for recruits—and saw a man tearing through Marines as if they were made of paper.
Two Marines, armed with M-16s, were trying to gun the intruder down, but the bullets were merely bouncing off his skin. Jackson realised, with a thrill of horror, that he was looking at his first superhuman. He'd heard about them, of course, yet he’d never seen one before. But any fascination was washed away by the grim awareness that the intruder had already killed a dozen Marines and seemed intent on murdering dozens more.
The superhuman roared as bullets hit his eye—it was clear that he could feel pain, even if the bullets couldn't penetrate his skin—and lunged at the two guards. He caught one of them, picked him up and threw him through the air towards a helicopter that was flying over the camp. The hapless Marine missed the helicopter and fell somewhere towards LA. His buddy backed off hastily, only to be caught and physically ripped apart. Jackson saw blood splashing on the ground and realised, in horror, that he would be the next victim...
***
“I put it all together without realising it,” he admitted. Chester listened carefully as he outlined the story. “Maybe he was strong enough to pick up a tank and maybe he was tough enough to survive a bullet striking his body, but he still needed to breathe.”
***
Yelling wouldn't get the bastard's attention, but a mattock to the dome piece? That would work just fine. Jackson threw it overhand, watching it sail through the air end over end till it slammed point first directly into the back of the asshole’s head. Slowly, he turned until he saw a Marine in dirt-and-sweat stained utilities, shovel by his side.
Seeing that he had the super's attention, Jackson raised the middle finger on either hand. Then he ran, trusting that the superhuman wouldn't hesitate to give chase. The man didn't seem to have any form of super-speed, thankfully; he just lunged after Jackson with a loping stride that suggested that he knew that he was invincible. No one would be able to stop him even if they caught him.
Gritting his teeth, Jackson looked back and saw that he'd put some distance between himself and his pursuer. Than
k you, Staff Sergeant Fischer, for making us run up and down all these damned hills with those damned mortars. We might not be the smartest Marines, but we'll damned well outmaneuver anybody.
Up ahead, the low, squat building was awaiting Jackson. He ran through the open door, then slammed it closed behind him, as if he were trying to hide inside.
A few minutes later, the superhuman burst into the chamber, lungs sucking down air in great noisy drafts. Three miles across broken road was never easy on the untrained. The superhuman looked around, puzzled: where had his quarry disappeared to?
The door behind him slammed shut. He whirled around, finding a quartet of grenades lying on the ground. The superhuman smiled, waiting for the inevitable blast.
Jackson stood outside the door, holding a gas mask in one hand while he kept a sharp eye on his watch. Part of his training during the thirteen weeks of boot camp had involved the vaunted Gas Chamber. The recruits would enter, suited up in MOPP gear, do several minutes of calisthenics and then break the seal while Drill Instructors demanded their name, platoon and all manner of Marine Corps knowledge. All in all, a miserable, god-awful experience.
He smiled, darkly. He hoped the superhuman was enjoying it as much as the recruits.
Thirty-seven seconds, he thought. Plenty of time to suck down a shitload of pain.
Picking up a fire extinguisher, he stepped into the chamber. It felt like combat all over again, a chemical cocktail of dopamine and adrenaline pumping through his body. The superhuman had fallen to the ground, twitching and coughing as if he were still trying to throw up everything in his stomach. His hands were tearing at his face, trying to claw the irritants away. It was pointless.
Quite calmly, Jackson pushed the extinguisher into the man’s mouth and pulled the trigger.
Two minutes later, it was all over.
***
“Your report stated that you made the decision to kill him without consulting anyone,” Chester said, when McDonald reached the end of his story. “Do you think that that was a wise decision?”
“I think that there was no way he could be secured and taken away before he recovered from the gas,” McDonald said, flatly. “And he had killed a number of Marines. The only thing I could do was kill him before he recovered and ripped my head off, sir.”
Chester could almost read the Marine’s mind. He had been the person on the spot, the sole person to figure out a way to end the crisis before it claimed more innocent lives...and yet he was being second-guessed by some Washington deskbound bureaucrat who wouldn't know an M-16 from a broomstick.
But there would be repercussions from this incident, even though no one had—as yet—figured out who the superhuman had been, or why he had had a grudge against the United States Marine Corps. The CIA, FBI, SDI and Interpol had all drawn a blank. It was quite possible that the superhuman had been nothing more than an unregistered superhuman, but it was equally possible that the attack on Camp Pendleton could be the first shot in the long-feared superhuman war. Superhumans had upset the balance of power between the world’s nations ever since they had first appeared.
“You’re not in trouble, Marine,” he said, as reassuringly as he could. But he wasn’t really there to be reassuring. “You kept your head when others panicked and you took down a superhuman opponent. Not everyone can make the same claim.”
He smiled at McDonald’s reaction. Superhumans weren't invincible, but they did tend to intimidate the hell out of people. The police preferred to back off and call for the military if there was even a hint that a superhuman was involved, while calls for mass registrations of superhumans had failed because there were fears that superhumans would turn on the government. Some could live normal lives, passing for mundane humans. Others were physical freaks, marked as superhuman whatever they did. Far too many of them had been driven into the underworld by suspicion and bigotry. Chester regretted that, as much as he regretted anything, but it didn't keep him from having to deal with the consequences.
“Your platoon has been scattered by the attack,” he continued. “I would like to offer you a transfer to my unit...”
McDonald gaped at him. “Your unit, sir?”
“My unit,” Chester confirmed. He looked like a Washington paper-pusher; hell, he was a Washington paper-pusher. But he served as the director of a unit that was probably more important than any other in the era of the superhuman. “Your superiors have consented to your immediate transfer, assuming you want to take up the position.”
“I see,” McDonald said. He was too young to hide his scepticism. “And what exactly does this unit do?”
Chester smiled. “We kill superhumans,” he said. “Interested?”
"You've got my attention, sir," McDonald replied.
Chester explained, as best as he could. “Superhumans show an alarming series of personality traits—almost disorders—after they become superhuman. These tend to fall into several different categories. Some believe that they are heroes and have a right to save people, some become instant assholes and decide that they have the right to take what they want, some just want to hide from their powers...and some want revenge on people who tormented them before they became superhuman. It is comparatively rare to find a superhuman who can be considered suitable for the military—and most of those who are tend to be among the lesser powers.
“This gives us a major problem. We have had superhumans turn divorce courts into murder chambers, superhuman heroes who injure or kill criminals they catch while on patrol and plenty of villains whose only concern is getting all the money and women they want in the world. And then there are the superhumans serving in foreign countries as part of their defence forces. I assume you’ve heard some of the rumours about Iraq.”
McDonald nodded. The Protector of Iraq, himself a superhuman, had created a superhuman force to defend the country’s borders. They were allowed to indulge themselves in almost any way they wanted, provided they served the Protector’s country. Some of the rumours flooding out of Iraq were downright terrifying.
And Iraq wasn't even the worst problem in the world.
“Fighting a superhuman opponent doesn't have to be a death sentence—but you know that already,” Chester concluded. “Team Omega’s task is to monitor the world’s superhumans and, should it be necessary, take them down one by one. Should you agree to join, you’ll serve as part of a small force of elite soldiers and intelligence operatives, working from the shadows to keep the world safe for humanity. You won’t get credit for your work, but you will have the satisfaction of knowing that you’re doing something that no one else can do.”
He smiled at McDonald’s stunned expression. “Your superiors have already approved a week’s leave for you,” he added. “You have that long to decide what you want to do.”
“I have questions,” McDonald said, slowly.
“I can't answer them, not until you’re all the way in,” Chester said. “Team Omega does not—officially—exist. The government fears what will happen when the superhuman community becomes aware of its existence. It is possible they will react against the government as a whole.”
He shrugged and stood up, holding out a hand. “Thank you for coming to see me,” he said, as if McDonald hadn't been ordered to attend. “Should you decide to join us, your superiors will give you your final set of orders.”
***
One week after that first fateful meeting, Jackson found himself reporting to a small military building located within Andrews Air Force Base. It looked rather more like one of the makeshift FOBs he'd staged patrols out of in Latin America instead of a proper office space, complete with bunkers sporting auto-cannons behind layers of concrete, earth barriers and sand bags. Security was tight, he noted with approval; the guards checked his ID at two separate checkpoints before they allowed him to drive into the parking lot. The interior of the base was fenced, too, making it difficult for a body to move from section to section without the right ID.
Someone was being
careful. Very careful.
He pushed through the door to the admin building and stepped inside. The secretary behind the desk smiled as she looked him over. “ID and retina scan, please.”
The machine chirped as Jackson looked into it, and then she stood.
"Please follow me." She led him down the hall to an open hatch and called to someone inside. "Sir, that Marine’s here."
"Have him report in," came a clipped voice.
Jackson pounded on the pine board nailed up beside the hatch frame.
"Enter."
Jackson stepped in, rapidly appraising the office's inhabitants. Eight men in black coveralls with the insignia of their service branch were seated on a long bench. He marched to the center of the room, heels coming together swiftly, right hand rising to the corner of his eyebrow in a salute.
"Good afternoon, gentlemen!"
"Good afternoon," the uniformed man replied. "Stand at ease."
Jackson spread his feet, hands dropping into the small of his back. He was on unfamiliar ground here, and it was best to stay stiff until he knew the terrain.
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