Firing projectile weapons took a lot out of even super-powered people. They knew now that most "projectilers" – as they'd come to be called – had to recharge their "batteries" after two to five emissions. Even augmented people had to obey basic energy conservation laws. Jamie relaxed a small notch. This brat was about done.
She propelled a softball-sized rock at high-powered rifle speed into the back of his left leg. The boy cried out, grabbing his thigh and dropping to the ground. Jamie flew down and landed beside him. The rock was buried in his leg, its craggy surface protruding through a circlet of bleeding flesh. It had to hurt, but he'd live.
"I can bring you back in pieces," she said. "Or you can start cooperating with a lawful authority."
"You're no lawful authority!" the boy spat. "You're a jackbooted thug who wants to enslave us!"
"What are you talking about? I'm wearing tennis shoes."
The boy twisted slowly onto his back, shading his eyes with one hand, squinting up at her.
"What's your name?"
"None of your fucking business."
"Hard to believe any parents would name their child that." Jamie said it with a straight face. The boy's eyes narrowed in puzzlement. "Why did you shoot at that plane?"
"Because we knew the DARE fascists were flying in it."
"You're part of some augmented domestic terrorist group?"
"We're not terrorists. We're loyal Americans who believe in freedom."
"Resistance group, then. Who told you to do this?"
"I'm claiming my Fifth Amendment rights. I'm not telling you anything until I get a lawyer."
"Under the Augmented Registration and Regulation Act, as an enemy combatant you no longer have that right, or any other right normally afforded American citizens."
The youth blinked up at her, his lips starting to tremble as he breathed ragged breaths of pain. Jamie wondered if he was going to cry. The mother's heart in her performed an unpleasant flip-flop.
"I know," he said. "I'm a 'domestic terrorist' now, right?"
"Right." Jamie spoke with distaste. Not too long ago, she'd railed against President Obama for executing American citizens as enemy combatants and against the Patriot Act for destroying habeas corpus. And now here she was.
"You can torture me. Whatever." He clenched his jaw and stared up at her with hard-eyed defiance. "I won't cooperate. I won't tell you anything."
Jamie stared down at him, wondering if there was something she could say to sway him. Not likely. That would be someone else's problem now. She extended her hand.
"Let's go."
"Where are you taking me?"
"To the plane you just tried to shoot down."
As Jamie rose toward the huge fluffy cloud that hid the DARE jet, Tildie flew in with a young girl slumped unconscious in her arms.
"The Junior High Terrorist School must've let out early today," she said, eyeing the angry youth clinging to Jamie's side.
"Yeah," said Jamie. "Is she alive?"
"I think so. Little jerk tried to zap me with a particle beam."
"Join the club."
Aboard the plane, they snapped "Augcuffs" on the two prisoners. A product whipped up in a joint DARPA-World International Security Corporation project, the cuffs consisted of interlocking plates of an exotic titanium/carbon/aluminum alloy featuring a sleeve lined with diamond coated blades. Any kind of pressure – lateral, outward, inward – triggered powerful servomechanisms that ratcheted the blades inward. The stronger the freeing motion, the more the blades sliced into flesh. The servomechanisms responded in small fractions of a second. Someone with super-speed and strength might break them before the blades could respond, but any forceful separation of the cuffs triggered explosive charges which drove small darts filled with a powerful tranquilizer into the prisoner's skin. Enough to paralyze an elephant, a rep from DARPA assured her. The darts would also be activated by any large increase in body temperature – something that had been detected in every "projectile" augment.
Either deadly function could be remotely activated with a small touchpad, as could the locking mechanism. There were no guarantees of surviving an escape attempt, but that was part of their charm.
"Nasty pieces of work," Mort Anderson had described them. "I don't even want to know how much one of these things cost."
Jamie had the boy and girl set apart to avoid assisting each other. They both received explanations of what the augcuffs could do, which drew reassuringly fearful expressions from both of them.
The plane resumed forward motion, with Terry taking the telekinetic lead under supervision by the pilots, who were happily uninjured. Jamie called Mort, who listened without comment and then calmly stated he would contact the Team Two leader waiting at the Nevada Air National Guard base and that he'd be sending an "augmented interrogation unit posthaste" to the base. Mort called back a few minutes later to assure her that Sergeant Wilcox and his unit were prepared to take custody of the prisoners and that Jamie was to wait at base until the interrogation unit arrived and got some straight answers from the two teenagers.
"A straight answer from a teenager," Tildie snorted, listening in on their speaker-phone conversation. "Good luck with that."
Jamie's smile had a sickly cast to it. The idea of enhanced interrogations being performed on children was not a pleasant thought to swallow.
"I hope they try some more shit with us at Reno," Hulk Horner growled, giving the boy, who was sitting across the aisle from him, a big, toothy grin. "I will fucking crush them." He slammed a large fist into a meaty hand. "Do you believe this little pecker head here being stupid enough to take a shot at us?"
"Sure," said Jake. "But he and his dipshit girlfriend are just brainwashed kids. What I'd really like to do is get my hands on the people who gave them their orders."
"Fuck that. They're old enough to know what's right and wrong. Let me tell you something, punk." Horner had turned his harsh gaze on the boy. "If it had been me down there instead of Commander Blondie, you and your pretty terrorist princess wouldn't be sitting up here all pampered-like in fifty-thousand dollar handcuffs. Vultures would be chowing down on your body parts."
The boy paled. Jamie was surprised when he turned to her with entreating eyes. Hulk Horner had put the fear of God into him. Good. Despite his crude ways, Horner wasn't the worst person to have around when people were trying to kill you. And maybe now the youth might think twice about attempting to escape or doing something stupid.
Terry set their one-winged plane down gently near the Air National Guard building. A few agents laughingly congratulated Terry on his "three point landing." On the tarmac, the handcuffed teenagers were handed over to Sergeant Wilcox, who had them escorted to the back of a MRAP.
Team Two currently comprised eight companies of 160 agents each, divided into four forty-person platoons composed by eight squads. A full Team 2 platoon – First Platoon – had arrived at the Reno Airport two days before and had been warily attending the public protests and observing the recently seized Thompson Court House, the site for the Augmented Registration and Regulation Act mandatory registration in Reno, Nevada. Neither the local police, FBI, or the Nevada National Guard – or any conventional government force – had made any attempt to retake the ten-story building. Neither DARE nor the Morgan Administration had discussed even the possibility of relocating the registration site. The government had decreed it would be there, and no "domestic terrorists" would be permitted to alter that.
Jamie and her team cooled their heels in a closed-off south end of the airport waiting for the interrogation unit to show. They passed the time by more detailed perusal of the building schematics, the numbers and location of the occupying party, and the demands of the occupying group – Augmented Americans for Freedom – also the main suspect for the attack on their plane.
The leader of the AAF, Damon Walsh, had led the building's seizure one week before and had made daily speeches to the press along with frequent tweets and Faceb
ook posts. Jamie had watched a couple of his speeches and interviews. He was a soft-spoken man with an understated eloquence. He didn't sound or look particularly revolutionary or threatening. An older guy with full but short-cropped white hair, darker grey beard, and clear blue eyes. Certainly didn't come across as a wild-eyed radical domestic terrorist. He listed his concerns with a quiet dignity that spoke of a deep, underlying passion for liberty and truth. He accused the government of "not telling us the whole truth, yet they expect us to surrender all our rights to them without a whimper."
"What do you think?" Tilda asked her and Jeremy. "Does he have a point?"
"Sure," said Jeremy. "But not a right to take over a public building."
Jamie frowned. "No one seems to know what his powers are."
"No one seems to know what any of their powers are," Tilda grumbled.
"There are eighty-seven people in that building," said Jamie. "If they send us in, it could be a bloodbath."
"'Bloodbath' could be our middle name." Tilda dropped the mission papers on the floor beside her. "I vote we send Hulk in and let him find out what their powers are."
"That would guarantee a bloodbath," said Jeremy.
"As long as it's mostly his blood..."
The DARE interrogation team arrived later that afternoon and went to work on the two teenagers. Jamie tried not to think about what they were doing, but images kept appearing in her head: waterboarding, electroshock, hours of loud rock music such as from Saturday Night Fever. She shuddered.
A mere thirty minutes after the interrogation team arrival, Jamie was startled when Karen Clarkson walked into their area in the company of Sergeant Wilcox. Jamie rose to greet them uncertainly.
"I'm part of the interrogation team," Karen said in answer to Jamie's unanswered question. "I had no idea I'd be such a rarity." Karen gave her a wan smile. "It didn't take long to learn what the boy and girl – Valerie Sparks and Brendan Collins – knew. The most important thing they know is who ostensibly is giving the orders."
"Not Damon Walsh?"
Karen shook her head. "Someone a bit closer to home. He's not going by his name, but the image in the boy and girl's minds match one of our former neighbors."
Jamie's fist clenched and her breathing – body energy – picked up. Thomas Mayes.
"Yes," said Karen. "He ordered Valerie and Brendan and three other young friends of theirs to shoot down your plane – to kill everyone aboard. Mayes is probably also behind the seizure of the courthouse. The kids didn't see him giving that order, but he's infiltrated the organization and seems to be calling the shots behind the scenes."
"So he's the true leader, not Damon Walsh?"
"I don't know, but if I had to guess I'd say it's Walsh's brainchild, but right now Mayes is the backseat driver."
Jamie was nodding. "Thomas is just using them as pawns in his sick games." He wants all white people rounded up in plantations, with him as the plantation owner.
"I don't think it's quite that simple, Jamie."
Jamie's face colored. Having someone in her thoughts was one of the most distinct displeasures she'd had lately, and that said something. She was already wanting to back up and talk to Karen from twenty feet away.
Karen released a pained laugh, glancing at Sergeant Wilcox, who had stepped back about ten feet and was showing no desire to close the distance. "I have that effect on a lot of people."
"I'm not a racist."
"I know. Believe me, your thoughts are vanilla compared to many."
"I'm not sure that's a compliment." Jamie forced a smile. "Can you ever not read someone's thoughts?"
"I actually can kind of block them out, to an extent. I've had to learn that to keep my sanity around people. But it's something I have to work at. Maybe with more practice..." She shrugged and offered a stoic smile, glancing again at Sergeant Wilcox. "And it is helpful that a lot of people these days give me a wide berth."
Jamie's DARE-dedicated cell buzzed. Mort Anderson.
"Colonel," she said.
"Commander Shepherd. I just heard about Thomas Mayes' involvement. This puts a bit of a wrench in our plans. We have to presume these people are under his control to some degree, if not entirely."
"Maybe that's why the rioting has died down," said Jamie. "He's moved on to a new strategy."
"That would be my guess. Now we need a new strategy of our own."
Karen wandered away to a nearby coffee vending machine – Sergeant Wilcox edging discreetly clear of her path – and Jamie paced in the opposite direction from both of them. She would never have dreamed that she'd be any good at military tactics, but over the last month she'd began to suspect she'd didn't totally suck at them.
"We could go in an take out the leader, Damon Walsh," she said,
"A surgical strike?"
"I mean literally take him out. As in remove him."
"Raid the building and capture him."
"I don't think a raid is necessary, Colonel. We have someone here who could go in and bring him out without attacking anyone."
"Damn...you're right. Jay Utrecht - Telly. He can teleport a body-sized object plus himself, right?"
"I think so. The lab people told me that when he teleports himself he can take a fair amount of weight with him. The catch is, he has to be able to physically hold it." Jamie frowned. "Or be in contact with it. I'm not sure which."
"Talk to Telly. I'm gonna check with the science division and see what they say. I'd prefer not to have him bring back a headless body. Though that wouldn't usually bother me, Walsh being under Mayes' control changes things."
"I'll talk to Jay."
"Okay. I'll call you back in a few."
Jamie caught Telly and Terry Mayes' eyes and motioned them over with her to a quiet corner of the room. Karen Clarkson gave her an understanding smile, and settled down in a quiet corner herself.
"Hi," Jamie greeted the two men. "Thanks for your good work back in the plane, Terry. It's good to have someone with your talents along."
"Thanks, Jamie. Er, Commander Shepherd. Fortunately, none of the wounds were really severe."
"We got a little lucky there." Jamie turned to Telly. "Jay, I was just talking with Colonel Morton, and we have this hopefully not crazy idea of you teleporting Damon Walsh out of the courthouse into our custody. Do you know if that's possible?"
"It's ...possible." Jay's voice was heavy with hesitation. "I've never done it, but I have carried as much as two fifty pound dumbbells with me. I seem to need full contact with something to teleport it with me. The problem is that 'full contact' hasn't been too, ah, clearly defined."
"You've never carried a person with you?"
"No, ma'am. They thought it was too risky. I have carried duffel bags, a big plant, and a cat." He shrugged. "I tried carrying some large objects that I could sort of get my arms around – a large file cabinet and a table, but only part of them came with me."
Jamie saw her brilliant plan crumbling before her eyes.
"From your description," said Terry, "it sounds as though you can transport something with you that you can physically lift. That would fit the cat, plant, duffel bag, and dumbbells."
"Maybe." Jay sounded doubtful. "I wouldn't want to try it on a live person until I was sure, though."
No one spoke for a few seconds as Jamie tried to find a way around the problem.
"There's something else," she said. "Terry, the two kids we captured told us – or Karen Clarkson – that your brother's involved. He definitely ordered the kids to attack our plane, and we suspect he's controlling the augmented freedom group itself to some degree."
"My brother." Terry sighed. "He probably didn't know I was on that plane."
"Does he know you're working for DARE now?"
"I don't think so. We haven't had any contact since the first day after he broke out of prison. Even my gran's sort of angry at him, and she doesn't get angry very often."
"I wonder if he's here somewhere now. Probably not in
the courthouse – too risky." Jamie shook her head. "Jay, have you teleported any living creatures without traveling with them?"
"Yup. Dogs and cats. Even five dogs at once a couple of times."
"And they weren't injured?"
Jay's face clouded. "Once, when I tried to teleport them to a place I couldn't see. A dog ended up half-embedded in a wall."
"So if you can keep them in sight, you should have no problem teleporting a person or persons?"
"I don't think so. They would have less mass than five mid-sized dogs. I also learned that I can hold things in an, ah, 'undelivered' state." He added in response to Jamie's blank look, "In stasis – wherever you'd call the place they're in before they materialize again." He gave her a slight smile. "The Phantom Zone, I think you once called it."
Jamie worked to wrap her head around that. "So you hold someone in that 'undelivered' place, wherever it is, for how long?"
"I don't know. When I'm traveling myself, I seem to be able to hang out in that state as long as I want. I usually don't do that long because it's, well, kinda spooky."
"Then...maybe you could teleport Walsh out of the building to the grounds outside or whatever?"
"Sure. That wouldn't be hard, if I were by a window and I could see him."
"Okay. I think we're getting somewhere. Now I need to know more about Damon Walsh."
She gave a small wave to Karen Clarkson, who happened to be glancing in their direction. Terry and Jay backed away with obvious unease as she approached.
"What's up?" she asked.
"I'm wondering if you learned anything from the kids about Damon Walsh's powers – or any of the powers of the occupiers."
"Walsh doesn't have any special powers that they know about. Nothing that made an impression on them, anyway. I know their most-feared person, the person they believe has the most deadly power: Harry Farwell. He's immaterial."
"His superpower is being irrelevant?"
Karen laughed. "No. He's what our scientists are tentatively calling 'an immaterial.' That means he can decorporalize – for lack of a better term – sufficiently for objects to pass through him and him to pass through them. They don't know it works, predictably, though the leading theory is that it involves a quantum shift."
Super World Page 25
