The man and woman walked in side by side, looking in different directions so that between them they could scan the whole room. They made an odd couple, a towering bearded Cossack and a petite Japanese female. Archangel knew from the files he had read that they were a couple as well as a team, lovers and killers.
He examined the man most intently at first, for he was a living legend who had changed the history of Archangel’s Motherland. The newcomer was a hulking brute, well over seven feet tall, his massive physique hardly concealed under the bulky black overcoat he wore, his brown hair and beard long and casually groomed, framing a harsh Slavic face. Archangel recognized him from old black and white pictures of the man standing over the shattered remains of a Panzer IV, holding the tank’s turret over his head like a trophy.
Medved, the Bear, the man who killed Stalin and with him the Soviet Union, met Archangel’s eyes unflinchingly.
Strange. Not too long ago, as Neolympians measured such things, Archangel would have charged Medved and slashed him into quivering gobbets of flesh, or tried to. But the young boy who had grown in the dying remnants of the USSR and the chaotic Ukrainian puppet that followed its downfall was long gone now. The boy had become the man known as Archangel, and Archangel now served the Ukrainian overlord who had done as much as this hirsute giant to destroy the Rodina. Things changed. One learned to adapt or one was crushed by the changes.
“Medved,” Archangel said, nodding his head at the giant. He turned to his companion. “And Lady Shi,” he added, acknowledging the woman. “Welcome.”
If Lady Shi was offended by being greeted last, she gave no sign of it. She was beautiful like a porcelain doll, her delicate features cold and impassive. Archangel saw the way Medved looked at her, and belatedly realized she was the more dangerous of the two. He had misjudged her, a justifiable blunder given the history surrounding her gigantic companion, but a blunder nonetheless.
“Archangel,” Lady Shi said in perfect English. “The Iron Tsar’s little hatchet man. You do know my Bear has no love for Russians, do you not?” She smiled, and for a second Archangel caught a glimpse of the madness and fury behind the cool façade. Behind her, Medved tensed slightly, and violence and death became imminent.
One of the men in the room didn't react well to the insult to Archangel. Arseny Bogdanovich was a young hothead, and he instinctively began to reach for his gun. Most likely he wouldn't have pulled out the weapon – only the truly insane drew a gun on Neolympians of this reputation – but nobody had a chance to find out. Lady Shi reacted to the sudden move without ever taking her eyes off Archangel. Her left hand moved with blurring speed and a glowing star-shaped object flew from her outstretched fingers and sliced through Arseny's neck. His severed head landed with a thud on the carpet, followed a second later by the rest of his body.
“Nobody move!” Archangel shouted before things turned into a bloodbath. “Arseny shouldn't have drawn on a guest, even a rude guest.”
“My apologies for the rudeness, Archangel-san,” Lady Shi said, giving him the bow an equal bestows on another she has offended slightly. “I repay it with the removal of a man who clearly lacked the common sense not to provoke me into action.” Her grin widened.
Archangel smiled back. Here was a woman after his own heart, a stone cold killer who loved what she did. He preferred pliable and submissive bed partners, but someone like her would make for a very entertaining diversion. The damn Bear was a lucky man. “You know who I work for, and I know who you work for,” he said politely. “Circumstances have forced us to work together. I suggest we make the best of it.”
“Yes,” Lady Shi said pleasantly, and Medved relaxed minutely. “We all will be the best of henchmen. Our lord and master commands it, and my Bear and I owe him everything.”
It was odd that Medved had not ended up in the service of the Iron Tsar like so many former Heroes of the Revolution – and a few Teutonic Knights, for that matter. He would have made a good addition to the Iron Guard. The reports Archangel had read indicated the big Cossack had disappeared after the war and emerged decades later as the agent of a clandestine American organization. That organization was now working with the Tsar, so in effect the Bear was finally serving him. Lady Shi was the Bear's true mistress, however. Archangel would be sure to remember that.
A couple of men removed the mortal remains of the unfortunate Arseny and dropped some newspapers over the pool of blood he'd left behind. The carpet was ruined, of course. Oh, well; it was bound to happen eventually.
“Please, make yourselves comfortable. If you want any refreshments, they will be provided.”
“So, you are looking for the woman from another world,” Lady Shi said after they sat down and had their drinks served to them. “But she is protected from normal means of scrying, correct?”
“Unfortunately, that is true. Among my men I have a psychic sensitive and a clairvoyant, and neither of them has been able to find her.”
“I have some small skill in these matters,” Lady Shi said modestly. “But I will not try to find the girl. I will concentrate on her rescuer, the man with no face.”
“If he is with her, he is likely protected as well,” Archangel objected. In fact, he had tried the exact same thing and his psychic hounds hadn’t been able to locate him at all, either.
“My talent also allows me to see where he has been, not just where he is now,” Lady Shi explained. “I will lead us to wherever he makes his lair. Perhaps the girl will be there. Or perhaps someone there will be able to tell us what we need to know.”
Archangel nodded. “That is good. We are off to a good start.”
Chapter Twelve
The Freedom Legion
Atlantic Headquarters, March 14, 2013
He looks so guilty.
Olivia O’Brien tried to look her husband in the eye, but Larry pretended to concentrate on the report on his e-tablet. She sighed and looked out the window of the passenger jet as it prepared for takeoff. They were bound for the Legion’s Pacific Headquarters in the Marshall Islands. The hypersonic orbital plane would get them there in a few hours, faster than she could fly on her own, or than Larry could run. Larry would have probably preferred to make the run on his own nonetheless. Anything other than face her. To make matters worse, one of Larry’s floozies was sharing the flight with them. Chastity Baal was sitting near the cockpit, busy reviewing the intelligence briefings they had gotten from the Imperial defector. Olivia couldn’t even muster the energy to be angry at her. Larry was the man who had betrayed her. And Olivia herself had, by her silence, tacitly condoned his betrayal.
They had barely talked since her rescue, partly because as soon as she was free from the debris Olivia had rushed to take charge of the situation. It was only to be expected, since she was a member of the Council and Larry wasn’t, hadn’t been since 1988, when he lost his seat to General Xu. Busy as they were, however, they should have been able to find some time to spend together. All of Larry's breaks had happened to take place during times Olivia had duties she could not be spared from. He was clearly avoiding her.
Men – no, let’s be fair, she scolded herself, people – clung to their illusions with near Neolympian tenacity. Larry, for example, clearly believed his philandering had gone on unnoticed. Olivia had known for years. She even knew that Larry’s latest fling with that Dawn girl was turning into something more serious than his previous affairs.
She had known for years about his infidelity, but pretended not to. In the end, she had preferred to live a lie than to publicly acknowledge the truth.
There were many reasons for her inaction, so many good reasons. The scandal would affect the Legion and provide fodder for tabloids and blogs everywhere. Artemis was a living symbol, a role model for women and especially women of color around the world. Pride was at work as well: she could not tolerate being perceived as weak, pathetic, a victim. Part of it was simple denial. If she pretended it was not so, maybe it would not be so.
And
part of it, much as it disgusted her, was the fact that she still loved Larry. Even now, she felt sorry for him. His guilt for being away cheating on her while missiles were flying towards her office made her sad and furious at the same time. Worse yet, it also made her afraid that Larry was considering confessing to his infidelities. She had no idea what she would do if he did come out with the truth. Pretend to be surprised, and repay his lying with her own dishonesty? Admit she knew, and reveal her own complicity in their sham of a marriage? Maybe it would be best if Larry kept his secrets to himself and they marched on for another decade or three. Better to do as he was pretending to and concentrate on real world problems, the kind that could be met openly with force.
Olivia checked her own e-tablet. Daedalus Smith had uploaded the latest data on the carrier vessel. It was an Imperial Chinese model, just as he had said. A recently decommissioned one, with all three ships of its class supposedly dismantled and broken up for parts half a decade ago. Their contragravity drives alone were worth billions of dollars and should have been sold off or installed on new vessels. How had their attackers gotten hold of an entire ship? Even the notoriously corrupt Imperials wouldn’t have allowed an entire warship to disappear, no matter how many palms were greased along the way. The penalty for such a crime would be unspeakable: the Dragon Emperor prided himself in the skill of his torturers. To steal the ship and smuggle it out of the country should have been impossible.
And yet, according to the defector they had interrogated, and who was now sitting sullenly a few seats behind Olivia, that was exactly what had happened. The theft – the word didn’t do justice to the seizure of something worth close to a quarter of a trillion dollars – had supposedly happened slowly and in carefully planned stages. Key components had been taken from the disassembled vessels and smuggled to a yet unknown location where some third party had used them to build their own ship. Someone had managed to accomplish the impossible, which was not surprising in the Parahuman Era. Neolympians did impossible things on a regular basis.
If a parahuman was involved, however, why had the attack been conducted by mere humans? If any Neolympians had been on the vessel, they had left no remains, not that there was much left to uncover. A daring daylight raid against the bastion of Neolympian power was the kind of thing super-villains dreamed about. If the attackers had deployed even a small number of parahumans alongside their swarm of drones and missiles, they could have inflicted far more damage. That they hadn’t implied this was a primarily – maybe even solely – human affair.
Anti-Neolympian hate groups were as old as Neolympian themselves. Almost eighty years ago, Aldous Huxley had written a brilliant and vitriolic novel about a dystopian future where humans were the slaves and pets of a superhuman aristocracy. The future described in Prospero’s Playthings had not happened, but the fear it had engendered was all too real. A number of organizations had become obsessed with combating Neolympians. Even the Ku Klux Klan, after being targeted by Janus during the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, had switched its focus from minorities to parahumans. The US government itself was notoriously schizophrenic about its ‘heroes,’ doing its best to recruit Neos into military and federal agencies while demanding registration and monitoring powers over the rest, not to mention quietly researching ways to destroy them should they become impossible to control.
And now someone with enormous resources had engineered an attack in which a human crew willing to sacrifice their lives had inflicted severe damage on the most powerful parahuman organization on Earth. Was this a harbinger of something worse?
Confronting a threat to all Neolympians took precedence over her personal problems. It was also easier to deal with emotionally. Larry and his guilt would have to wait.
Olivia shifted in her seat, turning away from her husband, and got back to work.
Hunters and Hunted
New York City, New York, March 14, 2013
One by one, all possible tomorrows winked out of existence until only one remained. A dead world, no longer blue, spun quietly around an uncaring sun.
Most choices led down to that final fate. Cassandra would not give in to despair, however. She fought on, seeking an alternative.
Among the myriad powers bestowed over the blessed – and cursed – few, precognition was one of the least common. Not many were given the ability to peer into the unformed chaos of what yet was not and come back with coherent visions. Of those few, fewer still managed to retain their grasp on reality when confronted with near infinite possibilities. The temptation to stay and watch all the things that might be often proved overwhelming. Most precognitive talents fell into comas and never returned to the here and now. Cassandra had barely escaped that fate herself, and only by deliberately limiting her visions.
She had often tried to explain to Marco how she chose what to see. “It’s like fishing,” she had told him. “I cast my lure into a vast ocean, and try to reel in one vision at a time. Sometimes it’s a big fish, and we can stop great disasters from happening. Other times it’s a small fish, and we save a handful of lives, or even a single one.”
It had been a weak explanation, but it had served for the time being. In other conversations, she had explained how the mere act of observing the future could alter it, and how she often had to look again and again, hunting for unintended consequences before she could recommend a course of action. And why at some point she had to stop looking, lest she become lost in the vastness of all possible futures.
This time, she had caught a very big fish. Her biggest catch would also be her last.
The long struggle finally paid off. There were tiny temporal streams that led to alternate outcomes, rivulets set against the torrent aimed towards an inevitable doom. Cassandra ignored the pain growing out of the base of her skull and forced herself to look further and delve into those hopeful futures. After some time, she saw, and understood. She had felt from the beginning that some ultimate price would be required on her part, but she had hoped there might be an alternative if she looked hard enough. Those hopes had been slim even before she sent Marco away; her last vision dashed them altogether.
She didn’t want to die, but every future where she ran away and lived through this day led to that dead, lifeless world. She might as well make the most out of her inevitable demise.
Cassandra sighed as she waited for her executioners. After a few seconds, she picked up her old Stradivarius and started playing. She began with a few desultory arpeggios before settling on Chausson’s Poème. It had taken her a long time to master the E flat minor scale on that piece, and she was justifiably proud of the result. The melancholy notes fit her mood and would provide a fitting accompaniment to what was to come. The music helped ease her mind and accept her chosen fate.
She would miss the boy most of all. Marco had been a friend and ally for only a few years, but he had been a source of great comfort to her. As her partner, he had been able to do a great deal of good, averting many a vision of tragedy and death. Cassandra liked to think she had helped channel the boy’s bloodthirsty rage towards largely positive ends. How would he fare without her?
The answer to that question remained elusive. Marco’s fate was now intertwined with that of the girl from another world. Cassandra’s gift could only catch scattered glimpses of Christine’s future. The ultimate fate of the world depended on the decisions she would make in the next few days. If those decisions were wrong, the lifeless future would come to pass. Marco would be a great help to Christine, but his most likely reward would be pain or even death. Cassandra had hoped the boy would earn some measure of happiness for all the good he had done, but she knew better than to expect justice or fairness in this world.
Justice and fairness exist only to the extent we create them, she told herself, and sent forth her mind to create a psychic lure even as she played on. She would lead the hunters to her. She would fight them.
And she would lose.
The Freedom Legion
C
hicago, Illinois, March 14, 2013
“It is an honor, Mr. Clarke,” Doctor Cohen said, shaking John’s hand. The therapist was a tall, slender man, nearly matching John’s six foot three. A fringed beard and short black hair surrounded a narrow face dominated by large, kind eyes that regarded his new patient with friendly interest. Beneath his calm demeanor, however, John could sense nervousness. His enhanced hearing could pick up the doctor’s quickening pulse. While that reaction could be simple jitters from dealing with a prominent figure, John felt a twinge of suspicion.
“Please have a seat,” Doctor Cohen continued after the usual pleasantries had been exchanged, indicating a comfortable sofa; there was no traditional reclining couch in his office. John did so, casually looking around. In addition to the usual diplomas and credentials that sprouted like mushrooms in all physicians’ offices, there was a rather unusual collection of African and Asian artifacts, all of them seemingly genuine, along with several old black and white pictures showing the doctor in assorted exotic locales.
“Mementos of my misspent youth.” Cohen said. “I went on safari quite regularly back in the Thirties. I used to have several trophies on the walls, but they disturbed some of my patients and I had them removed.”
John also noticed some portraits of Cohen wearing a US Army uniform. The good doctor had done more than go on safari; during the 1940s, his traveling had been arranged by Uncle Sam and his adventures had been provided by the Wehrmacht. Knowing that his therapist had seen the elephant comforted John somewhat.
Doctor Cohen noticed John looking at his service pictures. “Yes, I was with the 29th Infantry at Omaha beach,” he said. “A bad day. It would have been much worse if you hadn’t been there, of course.”
John nodded –
He was a near-indestructible object, moving faster than a bullet. Smashing through a concrete bunker barely slowed him down. Human beings were killed by the mere wind of his passage, their limbs torn off, their lungs shredded, their very skin ripped off along with their clothes. When they were directly in his path, they splashed away like bags of red liquid hit by a cannonball. He veered up for a few seconds and looked down at the carnage he’d inflicted on the fortifications overlooking the beaches. Tracer fire and artillery shells reached for him, the impacts from direct hits as bothersome as mosquito bites. He swooped down again and reaped another hundred men in a handful of seconds. It was so easy…
New Olympus Saga (Book 1): Armageddon Girl Page 22
