Team Omega

by Christopher G. Nuttall

  He looked over at Ron. “There’s a computer in the next room,” he told them. “Get online and see what you can pull from the military network. Jackson—turn on the television in the lounge and see if you can find a reliable news channel. We need intelligence before we do anything.”

  Jackson nodded, picked up the boiling kettle, the coffee powder, and the mugs, and walked into the lounge. There was a massive widescreen television neatly mounted on one wall, a television that had been the best available in 2005. He clicked it on and started to surf through the channels, only to discover that few of them knew anything beyond wild rumours and innuendo.

  “...Reports from Washington, DC speak of a pitched battle between soldiers and superhumans,” one reporter said. She sounded as if she was on the verge of panic. “The Washington police have been keeping us away from the core of Washington, but we have interviewed refugees, and they speak of fighting in the streets...”

  He changed the channel. “...The Emergency Broadcast System has issued a warning for all civilians to stay in their homes,” a male reporter said. He sounded worried, very worried. “Reports are coming in of fighting at a dozen military bases; our attempts to raise the Pentagon to get official word from the military have gone unanswered...

  “...Bring you this footage of the downing of a military helicopter over Washington,” a third reporter announced. Jackson watched in horror as a blurred streak, about the size of a man, struck a helicopter and blew it into flaming debris. The streak flashed away from the wreck, heading towards the next helicopter before the video abruptly cut out. “Abby Winters was on the scene with a video phone, and she was lucky enough to record that footage before being ordered to leave by the police. We go now to Doug Simpson, our superhuman affairs analyst, for his take on the scene.”

  Doug was an older man, with his hair turning white. “Well, it’s obvious that the presumed missile that took out the helicopter was actually a superhuman,” he said. “Enhancing the footage hasn't produced anything useful, but in the light of Hope’s threats against the United States, we must assume that the Saviours have attacked Washington and our major military bases.”

  “Thank you,” the reporter said. “The real question is, what do they want?”

  Jackson changed the channel again. “...Governors of a dozen states have ordered everyone in the National Guard to report for duty at once,” a female reporter said. “With communications so badly fragmented, we have been asked to pass on the instruction to report for duty. This also applies to policemen, firemen and FEMA employees. If you happen to be a FEMA volunteer, you are asked to report to your nearest station at once...”

  “It isn't much better on the internet,” Ron said, as Jackson turned down the volume. “A great deal of speculation, plenty of reports of superhumans invading Washington—and little hard data. The military network is badly fragmented. All I could pull out of the system was the instruction to report for duty—and our base has been hopelessly compromised.”

  He looked over at Lane. “How the hell did they even know we existed?”

  Lane shrugged. “They caught someone who knew about us in New York? Someone telepathically picked up on the information and just kept it to themselves until they needed it? Or maybe one of the people we interacted with picked up enough information to betray us when the Saviours arrive. One of their sympathisers might have been in the SDI covert team...”

  “We have to do something,” Chris said. “Captain, we could suit up and get to Washington...”

  “Might be tricky,” Ron observed. “According to the internet, the National Guard and the State Police are closing all the main roads. If we went directly to Washington, we might have to use our ID cards—and that might tip off the bastards that we’re coming for them.”

  “There's a small army of superhumans on the ground,” Lane said, quietly. “And we have next to nothing in the way of proper intelligence to plan our operations. Going to Washington now will merely get us all killed.”

  “So you’ve turned into a coward,” Chris snapped. “Goddamn it, sir; we swore oaths!”

  Lane looked at him, icily. “I have no intention of abandoning the fight,” he said, sharply, “or leaving the country in the hands of an unelected group of morons who think that superhumans have the right to rule because they have power. But I am not going to throw away your lives for nothing. We think, we plan, we act—we don’t run in like some brightly-coloured idiot in a gaudy costume who thinks that superpowers make him invulnerable.”

  The television changed to a picture of the White House before he could continue. “Captain,” Jackson said, quietly, “I think we ought to listen to this.”

  He turned up the volume as the damage to the White House became clearer. The building was surprisingly intact, but the front windows had been shattered by the fighting and there were bodies and debris everywhere. Jackson felt a pang as he realised that many of the bodies were Marines, presumably from the quick reaction force at the nearby Marine Barracks. The camera panned over a handful of faces, but he recognised none of them. Beyond the bodies, there were a number of vehicles that had joined the fight, including a pair of modified tanks. The superhumans had smashed them as ruthlessly as they’d smashed the Marines and Secret Service agents who had tried to block their path.

  “We have been asked to broadcast a statement from the White House,” the female reporter said. Jackson remembered bull sessions in the barracks when the Marines had speculated that Lara Croft had to be the product of computer manipulation, if only because no one could have breasts that large and walk without toppling over. Evidently, the Marine recruits had been wrong—unless CNN was splicing her image over that of the actual reporter. “Right now, we’re looking at a scene from hell.”

  There should have been an American flag flying over the White House, but it was gone. As the reporters advanced, more details came into view: the damage to other buildings, the hundreds of scattered bodies, and the mutants prowling around the White House lawn.

  Jackson shuddered as the reporters finally entered the Press Room; he might not have voted for MacDougal, but he was the President, appointed by the will of the American people. How dare Hope and his allies, including a number of Americans, wage war on him and his country? Whatever the President had done, assuming that Hope’s statement was accurate, it didn't justify invading the country, or killing so many good men. He felt a low rumble of anger as the camera focused on the podium at the front of the room. The seal of the President had been removed from the wooden stand.

  Hope appeared from one corner of the room, somehow managing to loom larger than life in his golden suit. A handful of other superhumans appeared behind him, but they remained in the shadows, their faces hidden. Hope took the podium and smiled at the assembled reporters. There were people who had voted him the sexiest man in the world, with the sexiest smile of all time, but Jackson couldn't help thinking that it was a condescending expression. Hope wasn't some minor criminal with superhuman powers or someone who was out for personal power, but someone who really believed that he knew what was best for everyone. In some ways, Jackson would have preferred a power-mad supervillain. He would have some restraints on his power.

  “I know that many of you are frightened about what has happened in Washington today,” Hope said. His voice was charming, but Jackson could still hear the patronising tone behind the charm. He knew that many were frightened indeed! “You have heard rumours on the internet, each one more alarming than the last, and you have heard speculation from reporters and talking heads without any facts. They drove each other into hysteria, and that hysteria has spread across the country.

  “The American Government failed in its duty to the people, and it failed in its duty to the world,” Hope continued. “Many of you demanded that your government send help to the Congo, where the aid might finally have been effective, but the government refused. It refused because corporate lobbyists demanded that Congress attach unacceptable conditions to
each aid shipment, and because your President didn't have the moral courage to stand up to those who would warp democracy for their own ends. Many of you wanted the government to tread a sane course between extremes, between the left and the right, but your government failed to deliver what you wanted. Interests, personal and private, religious and corporate, forced the government to fail to give you what you wanted. It failed even to give you what you needed!

  “We have removed the corrupt American government from power; we have arrested the President and many Congressmen and Senators. It is our intention to put them on trial, with infallible telepathic evidence to establish their guilt or innocence, and then judge them as their cases merit. We will clean up the government, remove corrupt officials, and ensure that such a situation can never happen again. And then we will surrender control to a newly-elected government and return to our work in the less-fortunate parts of the world.

  “I was raised to believe in an America that was a shining example to all the other nations, a great symbol of what humans could achieve if they weren't burdened by the past, if they were allowed near-complete freedom to live their personal lives as they saw fit, an example that other nations would eventually seek to emulate. As I grew older, I realised that our government was often betraying the ideals of its founders and actually making life worse for people around the world. Those facts were known to the population, but the government didn't care. Who could remove them from power?”

  I thought he was no longer American, Jackson thought, cynically.

  “We have removed them from power,” Hope concluded. “I ask you all to trust us and let us solve the problems that have bedevilled the country for the last fifty years. There are those who would lash out at us because of patriotism, or because of ignorance, or because they benefited from the previous administration. To those, I say only one thing. Don’t.”

  He walked off the stage, followed by his fellow superhumans. The reporter started to twitter into the camera about The Meaning Of It All, just before Lane turned down the volume and stood up, standing in front of the television. His voice, when he spoke, was grim and determined.

  “The Saviours have taken control of our country,” he said, sharply. “They may manage to force the civil administration—all the state governments and law enforcement agencies—to remain at work, or the government may simply melt away, to be replaced by chaos. We are already seeing an exodus from the cities; I suspect that it will get a great deal worse in the very near future. Our country has been occupied by an enemy force and all of the old certainties no longer exist.

  “I won’t hide the facts from you. The military is scattered and we have very little communication with other units, even the other elements of Team Omega. We may be alone in this fight, unable to coordinate our activities with others who will fight for American freedom; we may have no more supplies than what we hid away in this basement for the day when we might have to operate as an underground force. This situation could easily see us all killed without any hope of defeating our enemy.

  “But I swore an oath to uphold the United States, and that oath hasn't been rescinded just because the country has been occupied. I won’t run away; I can't. I’m in this until we force the Saviours to leave our country and never return, or until they kill me for resisting their rule. You all swore similar oaths, but we never really considered that the country could fall to foreign occupation and that we might wind up alone, fighting an insurgency in our own backyard.

  “If any of you want to walk away,” he concluded, “this is your chance. There’s no dishonour or disgrace in walking away, not now. I won’t fight this war with anyone who isn't wholly committed to fighting until we win or we die while trying to remove the enemy from our country. You have the skills to blend into the civilian population or make it to Canada or even Mexico, if you want to run further. But if you choose to fight now, you are committed to the fight until we win or die.”

  There was a long pause.

  Chris broke it. “I didn’t vote for the President,” he said, “And I’ve been in this job long enough to know that there is a gap between our ideals and what we have to do to maintain the United States. Maybe the President is an utter scumbag and his administration are all crooks, but that doesn't give Hope the right to remove them by force. The military didn't have to remove Nixon by force; it didn't have to prevent Reagan from pushing Bush into the White House, even after the population had rejected him. I don’t see Hope’s actions as any different, or any less wrong.

  “And besides, the Sergeant would come back and kick our asses if we let him die for nothing.”

  He stood up and saluted. “I’m in, Captain,” he said. “Anyone else want to follow us until death?”

  One by one, the rest of the team rose to their feet.

  “Thank you,” Lane said, finally. Jackson wondered if he saw a tear in the Captain’s eye. It was probably just a trick of the light. “We need intelligence to act, so our first priority will be gathering that intelligence—and then we will show Hope that he cannot beat the United States of America just by capturing the White House.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  The British Embassy in Washington, DC had been spared the effects of Hope’s invasion, Matt was relieved to see. There had been no logical reason for Hope to attack the embassies—it would annoy the rest of the world, as if there weren't enough reasons to worry about Hope after his attack on Libya—but Matt suspected that Hope wasn't being guided by logic and reason. The Redeemer had pushed him into attacking Washington for reasons of her own, he’d decided, and killed someone who might have been able to talk him out of it. None of that boded well for the Saviours.

  There were several armed British soldiers outside the embassy, glancing at the plumes of smoke rising over Washington nervously as they held their weapons at the ready. Matt couldn't recall if their presence on the streets was legal or not, but it hardly mattered under the circumstances. The embassy might be besieged with former administration officials wanting out before Hope caught up with them. And parts of Washington had dissolved into chaos despite the vast police presence on the streets. God alone knew what would happen if the police decided to disband in the wake of the invasion. Matt doubted that the city would survive outright riots suppressed by superhumans.

  A trio of mutants appeared on the other side of the road and Matt watched them warily as they walked upwards towards the White House. Hope’s decision to recruit mutants—to effectively grant them full civil rights—had paid off for him, if only because few other countries granted mutants any rights. They couldn't pass for pureblood humans, even if they did have superpowers, and few considered them part of normal society. Hope might have a few tens of thousands of additional recruits once his government bedded down.

  He stepped up to the soldiers and produced his SDI pass. “I need to see the MI-13 representative,” he said. The SDI and MI-13 had worked closely together in the past and there should have been an agent in the embassy for quick communications, but who knew what would happen now that America was at war? “If he is not available, the MI-6 representative or the Ambassador.”

  The soldiers checked his ID card carefully before waving him to a security booth. Matt endured the search before being told to wait until someone from inside the embassy came to meet him. The five minutes he waited were among the longest of his life, until a young woman wearing a Muslim headscarf—and carrying a sword on her back, for some reason—finally greeted him and invited him into the embassy’s secure rooms. Matt was relieved to see that Dale Knight was still MI-13’s main operative in the United States. They’d met before during happier times.

  “Matt,” he said, with evident relief. “It’s good to see that you’re alive.”

  “And you, too,” Matt said, truthfully. “I was afraid that the Saviours might have ordered you out of the country before I got here.”

  “So far, they’ve said nothing,” Knight said. He looked up at Matt. “What the hell are th
ey thinking?”

  “I think they think they can do whatever the hell they like,” Matt said, tiredly. He wanted to tell Knight everything, but he’d have to report it to London and the Saviours might pick up the message. “Have you heard anything from New York?”

  Knight’s eyes opened wide. “The SDI building was completely destroyed,” he said, grimly. “At last report, the entire SDI overt team were wiped out—they’d apparently been on standby in case the Saviours retaliated for the assassination attempt on Hope. I’ve heard nothing since then, even through more...covert channels.”

  Matt winced. He’d liked the General—and now the man was probably dead. Or, if he’d fallen into the Redeemer’s hands, probably worse than dead. “Thank you for letting me know,” he said, grimly. “I know it’s only been an hour or so, but what’s London’s take on this whole affair?”

  “Last time I heard, the European Union Security Council was meeting in emergency session,” Knight admitted. “Ever since Warsaw, the EU has been paranoid about superhuman attack—and what they might need to do to defend the continent. London is apparently terrified about what will happen when—if—America’s nuclear arsenal falls into Hope’s hands. Do you know anything about that?”