One moment, they’d been driving along, less than a mile away from their destination. The next, the world had become a thing of sudden movement, breaking glass and all-encompassing fire before disappearing altogether. Some time after that, Daedalus had found himself lying amidst burning wreckage. Blood was seeping out of his ears, mouth and nose, and probably his asshole for all he knew. His skin was covered in second-degree burns, despite the protective force-field medallion he never left home without. He was seeing double, his head ached with the all-too familiar feeling of a massive concussion, and he had several contusions, a broken arm and, from the way everything from the knees down felt, two broken legs as well.
Daedalus spat out a mouthful of blood. “Those stupid motherfuckers,” he growled.
“Ah, there you are,” Mr. Night said. He lifted a twisted metal axle off Daedalus. “You probably shouldn’t move.”
“No shit, Sherlock. Get my briefcase, willya?”
“Of course, sir.”
While Mr. Night went looking for his briefcase, which should have survived the explosion but had probably been tossed who knew where, Daedalus had nothing to do but try to assess the situation. From the screaming and the roar of flames around him, the convoy had been decimated by the impact. There were more explosions in the distance. He recognized the roar of tank guns; 150mm hypervelocity cannon made a very distinctive sound. He saw something like a shooting star flash by overhead, and he understood what had happened. Somebody had started shooting depleted-uranium penetrators at an invulnerable Neo, and a bouncing round or a piece of a round had hit his car. The odds of a randomly-falling ricochet taking out his limo were astronomical, but probability always got a bit funky around Neos of a certain power level. All of that, and the chaos and mayhem he could hear in the distance, meant only one thing: the fucking girl had managed to break out and was kicking ass and taking names. Or, if she had managed to access the Source, was about to eat everyone’s lunch, including Daedalus’.
If the worst had happened, there was nothing he could do about it, of course. He, along with the rest of the planet, would be at the mercy of some little redhead who until very recently had been a hapless coed in a world without superpowers, which made her the least qualified Queen of the Whole Fucking Enchilada ever to receive the title. If she still hadn’t managed to pull that off – and there were no guarantees she’d ever be able to pull it off – then something might be salvaged from this mess.
Mr. Night was back. He handed Daedalus his briefcase without further comment, which was just as well, or Daedalus might have just tried to find out if anything in his bag of tricks could take out the Outsider meat puppet right then and there. Instead, he opened the case, which as expected had ridden out the explosion intact, pulled out an injector full of Doc Slaughter’s healing serum, and gave himself a double-shot. The stuff would bring him back to full health in a few minutes.
“Take me back to Hungary,” he ordered Mr. Night. Meeting with the Tsar was no longer a good idea. Either the metal-headed dictator would manage to put down the little bitch – taking her alive was no longer an option – or she would run away, and in either case Daedalus would be of no use to the Dominion. On top of that, his Bucket-Headedness would likely be unhappy at the failure of Daedalus’ disruptors to rein in the captives.
Dark’s escape proved that they just didn’t have enough disruptors to bring her down. Outsider energy didn’t grow on trees. Daedalus had managed to build one, count it, one production plant, right there in the Dominion, and it had produced a whole sixty-odd canisters of the stuff in the nine months or so it had been in operation. A dozen had been sent to the US in the ill-fated attempt to take out the Lurker, where they were all destroyed or missing in action. Another six had been sent to Hong Kong, and they’d been put to good use before being destroyed in turn. The rest were in the facility and most of them had probably been taken out as well. Without the disruptors, the best they could hope for was to kill the girl, and he wasn’t expecting that, not by a long shot.
Pushing through the nearby anti-teleport wards wasn’t easy, but Mr. Night managed, although by doing so the Dominion would know who Daedalus had brought into its borders, which would just about put a final nail on the coffin of their special relationship. He forced himself to endure the disturbing process as Mr. Night took him back to the workshop in Hungary. It was time for plan B.
The Humanity Foundation would blow up New York and disrupt the Source. Their bomb, big as it was, wouldn’t destroy the Source; the power requirements for such a feat were immense. The bomb plot’s device was off the mark by at least three orders of magnitude. The massive radiation dose would short out Neo powers worldwide, however, hopefully just as the Third Asian War had started. His calculations indicated that close to a thousand Neos would be killed outright; even a temporary suspension of their powers would turn their bodies into death traps. Then, as a little capper to the festivities, he’d push a notional kill button and cause two hundred little Legionnaire heads to explode like some many firecrackers. The ensuing chaos and mayhem would give him some breathing room, and plenty of free time to take another run at the Source and hopefully get it right this time.
He gritted his teeth as he let the serum repair his damaged body. So be it. He’d tried to things the easy way, and failed. Now, the world would burn, and it would serve the world right.
The Freedom Legion
Freedom Island, Caribbean Sea, March 29, 2013
“All done,” Doctor Rashid said. “Your cochlear implants have been removed. Now if you would care to explain...?”
“I can’t,” Ali Fiori said. Not yet, not while the physician still had cochlear implants of his own, not while all two hundred active members of the Legion were so many walking bombs. For all she knew, Daedalus had booby-trapped everyone’s implants; the treacherous bastard might be able to wipe out the entire Legion with the push of a button, just like he’d done to Doc Slaughter. You couldn’t be paranoid enough when dealing with a Neo genius who had enjoyed the full trust of the Legion since its foundation.
She looked at the tiny metal disks that until a few moments before had been residing behind her earlobes. Ali thought about having them analyzed, to confirm if they were indeed booby-trapped, but quickly dismissed the idea; what if scanning the devices alerted Daedalus? The bastard was a master chess player, always seeing a dozen moves ahead. She needed to think like him, or she was going to be checkmated before she could accomplish anything.
Doc should be doing this, not her. Except Doc had been outmaneuvered and checkmated right out of the gate, and damn the mixed metaphors. She was a checkers kind of gal, she was the Legion’s unofficial dumb blonde, and she had no hope of winning a battle of wits with Daedalus Smith.
Cut it out, you coward, she chided herself. Plenty of people had underestimated her before, and most of them were dead or in prison. Dumb blonde? Screw that. She’d better stop making excuses for herself and start getting things done.
Daedalus was in Hungary, and would likely stay there for another four to six hours, according to his last report. That gave her a window of opportunity. She thought about Jason Merrill’s ghost. Jason, acting through Kiera Henderson, had tried to contact John telepathically, and had encountered a set of psychic wards blocking all access to the prisoner. He’d been able to confirm that John’s unconsciousness was being artificially induced. Doing something about it might alert Daedalus, of course. Doing anything could get a lot of people killed, and doing nothing would mean the traitor’s plans would be carried out, which likely would get even more people killed.
She had to do something, and something decisive.
She made a call on her wrist-comp. “Nebiru? We need to talk.”
* * *
“This is troubling,” Ibrahim al-Said, code name Nebiru, said after Ali finished her story. He glanced at the cochlear implants laying on the coffee table between them as if expecting the tiny devices to come to life and attack.
Nebiru was a handsome
middle-eastern man who bore more than a passing resemblance to his more famous nephew, Ghazi the Second, the current King of Iraq. Born of Heshemite royalty, the family that ruled most of the Arab world, Ibrahim’s powers had developed during his early twenties while attending Oxford University. He’d served in the Legion for fifty years, and the only reason he hadn’t been elected to the Council was his steadfast refusal to serve in any sort of political capacity. He’d eschewed politics shortly after the disastrous Weekend War of 1963 between the Arab League and Israel, concentrating solely on the development of his Neolympian abilities and their application in the service of humanity.
Ibrahim looked sharply at Ali, as if trying to divine her thoughts. Nebiru had some low-level telepathic abilities, but they could not pierce her inborn psychic defenses. “This better not be some sort of power-play within the Council,” he warned her.
“Come on, Ibrahim,” she replied. “Since when have I been interested in Legion politics? I don’t want to be in the Council, even as a temp. I don’t care who sits there, as long as they have the best interests of humanity at heart. Do you think bombing Freedom Island and dragging us into a war with the Empire is mere politics?”
Nebiru shook his head. “No. This madness is something else. Very well. First things first.” He closed his eyes in concentration, and a second later winced slightly when his own cochlear implants tore free from their bone housing and floated away from his head. He gently levitated the blood-covered devices until they lay next to Ali’s. “Now I will examine the implants, and yes, I will take precautions to prevent alerting our alleged enemy.” He turned his piercing eyes onto the implants, and a reddish haze appeared over his eyes; that power, jokingly called his ‘rose-colored glasses,’ would perform a passive scan down to the molecular level.
Ali felt a surge of relief. Nebiru was the most powerful Legionnaire currently on the island, and having him on her side meant the battle was half-won already. At least, he would be on her side if it turned out there was something wrong with the implants. If not, he’d probably be more than a bit pissed off at her.
Ibrahim frowned. “Something isn’t right.”
“I could have told you that.”
“No, there is more to this than even you thought. Although, yes, you were right, there is an explosive device in both sets of implants, a matter-antimater nano-device with a yield of about fifty pounds of TNT in a shaped-charge configuration designed to inflict maximum damage on living tissue. But there is something else, a form of energy I’ve never encountered before, suspended in a miniaturized electro-magnetic field. It’s… poisonous; no, more than that, it is hostile to life, to reality itself! It’s an abomination in the eyes of God and Man!”
“I thought you were a confirmed atheist, Ibrahim,” Ali said.
Nebiru shrugged. “I am. I only believe in the Powers we’ve been granted by more advanced intelligences, even if I use the metaphors of magic and sorcery to describe them. But I’ve never before encountered energy imbued with motivation, with intentionality. The energy hidden inside those implants hates us, and it seems to react as a corrosive substance when in contact with Neo powers. Combined with the explosive devices, I think it might have been able to kill even Type Threes like ourselves.”
“Do you believe me now?”
“Of course, yes! This is terrible, Alessandra! If the entirety of the Legion has been implanted with these tainted devices…”
“Welcome to my world, Ibrahim. I figured if anybody could help, it would be you. You’ve got a 3.5 PAS score. You’re the biggest gun I could find.”
“My score is grossly exaggerated by the breadth of my abilities, you know that,” he countered modestly. “When it comes to raw power, you have me at a disadvantage. So did Janus,” he said, wincing at the memory of the drubbing he’d recently gotten at the hands of the alleged renegade. He considered the situation. “Having said that, I think I can concoct a ritual that will allow me to extract all the devices from every Legionnaire in a single stroke.”
“Seriously? You can reach into the skulls of two hundred and seventeen active members scattered around the world?”
“It’s a simple application of the laws of sympathy and contagion, although applied on a very large scale. The process will only affect the sabotaged implants. And the ritual will take me several hours of complete concentration inside my sanctum, during which I will be unreachable and unaware of the outside world.”
“That’s still damn impressive, Ibrahim.”
“The physically weaker Legionnaires will suffer some serious injuries in the process, I’m afraid. Nothing lethal, but debilitating for some.”
“It’ll hurt them a lot less than having a few sticks of dynamite go off inside their heads,” Ali replied. “Go get started. I’ll keep a lid on things until you’re done, and then I’m going to find Daedalus and beat him to a pulp.”
“A pleasant prospect,” Ibrahim said. Daedalus’ casual racism had been a constant annoyance to every non-white Legion member. Unmasking him as a traitor was going to make a lot of people very happy. “I will contact you when the ritual is completed. Wish me luck, Alessandra.” He left.
One problem solved, or on its way to being solved. Removing that multi-pronged Sword of Damocles would allow Ali to breathe freely once again. She’d free John from his artificial coma, end that charade of a trial, and save the day.
Assuming Daedalus didn’t get a whiff of what was going on and push the kill switch.
Well, no sense worrying about it. Ali stepped out of her quarters at Freedom Hall and headed to the Situation Room. She was on the elevator heading up when the general alarm went off.
Now what?
The Great Escape
Freedom Island, Caribbean Sea, March 29, 2013
Lady Shi lowered the unconscious form of the security guard to the floor, looking around in case someone else decided to show up. This operation was an exercise in frustration, beginning with the strict admonishment not to kill anyone: rendering a human unconscious without inflicting serious damage was not easy. The lack of pre-planning was another, far more important problem. Even with two former Legionnaires providing information, it was too easy to miss patterns they could have noticed after a few days of studying their target. The guard she was hiding behind a computer desk was a case in point: he’d shown up early, while Lady Shi was still seeing to the man he was supposed to relieve, and if she hadn’t moved fast – and non-lethally – he would have sounded the alarm.
She disliked working with do-gooders; their scruples and optimism were vexing at best, and downright dangerous at worst.
Not all of her current partners were sticklers to rules and morals, though. As she secured the guard, Lady Shi reminisced about her time with Condor and Kestrel. They had been rather amusing, even if they were mere dilettantes when it came to the ways of pain. They had limits, and were afraid of crossing them. Even better, now that he’d had her, Condor felt some measure of obligation towards her, which might make him hesitate at a crucial moment down the line. That suited her just fine. She’d used her body as a lure, bribe and trap before, and the two vigilantes had kept her entertained, especially Kestrel. Of course, the real fun would begin the day Lady Shi had that little bird in her power and she showed her victim that limits were for the weak.
Lady Shi knew that she might never get the chance to indulge in such things, unfortunately. They were all likely to die in the next hour, or be captured, which under the circumstances meant death as well.
Nichevo, as her dead lover used to say. It didn’t matter. Satisfied that nobody else was about to enter the cubicle, she sat down by a computer terminal and punched the access codes she’d been given. A biometric scanner came to life, and she dutifully positioned herself so her retinas could be read. A few hours ago, her identity had been entered into the Legion’s databases; the scanner accepted her as a high-ranking functionary, and let her access the Legion’s security systems.
A few keystro
kes later, her main task was completed. Security sensors along several sectors started transmitting a doctored video loop showing empty corridors and rooms. It was a pity all the security protocols she’d breached would be changed as soon as this escapade was over, but even so, the information she’d collected about the Legion would be worth a fortune in the black market. She’d easily quadruple the fee she was getting from Condor. After completing her primary objective, she began disabling other systems, to ease their escape. A few minutes later, she leaned back on her chair with a satisfied smile. The vaunted Legion’s defenses were down. Now she could…
“Step away from the computer.”
Someone had managed to sneak up on her, which rarely happened. She should be dead, but of course her opponents were do-gooders as well, and their kind wouldn’t attack without announcing themselves. It would be rude to do otherwise.
Lady Shi rose to her feet and turned to face the newcomer. He was a large man, almost as large as her Bear, with neatly-trimmed light-brown hair and beard, and strong Nordic features. He was wearing a t-shirt and jeans, but she recognized him nonetheless: Berserker, a Legionnaire of some renown.
“You’d better not have killed Sergeant Ivarsson,” he said. “The man owes me money.”
“Both guards are alive,” she replied.
“Good. I will do you the same courtesy, then.”
He moved, and he was fast as well as quiet.
* * *
The alarms were shrill and piercing, not at all the kind of sound you want to hear while setting up a fairly delicate piece of pseudo-technology. Neo Artifacts might be just expressions of the will and desires of their creators, but you still had to deploy them properly or the damn things would refuse to work. Kyle Carmichael gritted his teeth and continued putting together the device, the first collaborative effort of Hiram Hades and Doc Slaughter (with an assist by good ole Kyle himself) in history.
New Olympus Saga (Book 3): Apocalypse Dance Page 11
