The Good Fight 4: Homefront

by Ian Thomas Healy

  * * *

  J. William Medal, Esq. rolled into Spire City Superior Court Three followed closely by his bodyguard Nils Zilcher. Nils was invaluable because it often seemed like criminal enforcers were anxious to take pot shots at the crusading attorney. Will was in court today to deliver a signed and notarized affidavit by Johnny Saturn about a trafficker in black market human tissues the vigilante had busted.

  Nils took his customary seat just behind Will’s chair in the courtroom. The Honorable Judge William Strathmorne threw Will a hard look. Something was up, and the judge was not happy to see the wheelchair-bound attorney.

  “Counselor, I’d like to speak with you in my chambers now.”

  Will followed the judge out the court’s back door, down a short hall, and into his offices. Will had been here many times before, and he admired the beautifully polished oak woodwork, Italian marble-topped desk and end tables, and custom leather furnishings. He wasn’t concerned about being separated from Nils, because what could happen here? This room was a superior court judge’s chambers, after all. Even if trouble did present itself, Will had had a panic button installed on his chair’s arm, one that would set off Nil’s pager if he were needed.

  Judge Strathmorne took his seat behind his desk, and Will rolled close.

  “What’s up, Bill? What have—”

  “Can it, Will!” replied the judge angrily. “Why couldn’t you have just played nice? Instead, you had to go all hotdog on us, prove a point, and make waves.”

  A cold chill crawled up Will’s spine. “What’s this about, Bill?”

  The judge sat back, a look of guilt, shame, and conflicted emotion crossing his face for an instant, after which his look of stern disapproval returned.

  “You’ve pissed off all the wrong people, Will. Why you felt the need to do this is beyond me, but now you’ve done it.”

  “And your point is?” asked Will, growing angry himself.

  “You don’t get to be a superior court judge without powerful backers, Will. You’ve ticked off my biggest supporter one time too many.”

  “Damn it, Bill! I respected you! Who is it? Who pays your bills?”

  The judge did not reply directly, instead saying “Don’t bother to hit that panic button on your chair, Medal. I've had this room electronically blocked. What happens in these chambers stays in these chambers.”

  The judge pressed a button on his desk, and a section of wooden paneling on one wall popped open, revealing a secret door.

  Out stepped an aggressive looking woman.

  Will had never seen anyone remotely like this person. She looked as if she was the thematic love child of a porn actress, dominatrix, and an alpha predator. Her outré appearance suggested that she could have fake porn sex with you while she multitasked and flayed you alive with her teeth.

  “Will Medal,” announced the Judge, “allow me to introduce you to Vox Malaise, leader of the Scavengers. Whatever happens now is out of my hands.”

  The woman raised a small object that might have been a can of mace but was not. She blasted Will in the face with the aerosol weapon in a perfunctory manner. “Call me Vox, dear. Everyone else does.”

  Will could not reply because then the lights of his world went out, and he went far, far away.

  * * *

  “That’s the last of your appointments today, Nicholai,” said Skorn.

  “Good. I am tired of all the idiots,” said Nicholai Demetr, aka Tactical.

  Skorn drew close to her boss and put her hands on his shoulders. Her impersonal movements were those of a masseuse or caregiver, not a lover. He shrugged her away and instead chose to light up one of those foul, unfiltered Eastern European cigarettes he loved so much.

  “Get out,” said Tactical. “I can’t stand to look at you! Get! Out!”

  This treatment was nothing new to Skorn, and her face did not betray any emotion. It always had been their sex partner, Alaric, that Tactical had loved, not her, and he had kept Skorn in his ménage a trois more for Alaric’s entertainment. The giant brute had been a vigorous bull of a man, after all. Now Alaric was gone, and Skorn and Tactical had been forced to find a way forward without the great beast.

  Tactical no longer acknowledged Skorn’s presence as she excused herself. Once she was gone, he sat alone for a time, rolling delicious tendrils of acrid smoke around his mouth. He felt something with Skorn was not right since he had come back from near death. Something, but he was not sure what.

  Tactical was Spire City’s reigning crime lord and master of his own, private metahuman army. Like many metavillains, the crime boss had an incredibly convoluted history. In his Balkan homeland he had been a patriot, a general, and then a war criminal; in America, he had been a terrorist for hire, a crime lord, and the leader of Spire City’s Iron Brigade, and most recently an invalid and coma patient.

  Tactical was six foot two, with a full head of blond hair, and a handsome but cruel face. He had not always been so. Until recently, he had been a short, one-eyed, bald cripple with half his body covered in scar tissue and all but disabled by a stroke. After a disastrous battle with Tactical’s archenemy, the Utopian, Tactical had been burned beyond recognition and kicked off a skyscraper to be splattered across the street below. It had taken an army of nanobots, extensive 3D bioprinting, and genetic vats liberated from a military black site to rebuild him from the cellular level up. In a rare show of vanity, he had a few genes activated here and there so that his rebuild gave him a full head of hair and his substantially increased height. No more was he the grotesque burn victim or broken-tongued stroke victim. Now, he was a Luciferian beauty and a rakish heartbreaker.

  Tactical owed his rebirth to Skorn. She had rescued his charred, mutilated remains and collected most of the outlandish medical gear needed to rebuild him. She had kept the Iron Brigade together during his “convalescence” and returned the organization to his hands when he was reborn. She showed little ambition for herself, and commendable loyalty and resourcefulness in bringing him back to health and power.

  Was Tactical brimming with gratitude for her fidelity? Hardly. If anything he resented her for it. He couldn’t stand being in another’s debt, yet he owed her everything. Tactical barely could tolerate his surviving enforcer, and he scorned her at every turn. Truth be told, he had always hated her, and giving her the codename “Skorn” was an excellent example of his unsophisticated yet blacker than black humor.

  Tactical despised Skorn, but he also needed her. She was his strong arm, the iron-fisted enforcer that kept all his riotous followers and enemies in place. She protected Tactical and his reign over the Iron Brigade with ruthless efficiency. Theirs was a complicated relationship, a potent mix of need and hate. In Tactical’s mind, Skorn was his property. She was the dog that you kicked and abused at will, yet it would still kill for you unhesitatingly.

  What had changed with her? She still performed her role with merciless economy. She still attended to Tactical’s needs. Was she distracted by something else? Tactical could not tell. Her old enthusiasm for violence and mayhem seemed intact, as did her copious appetite for smoking high-grade cannabis.

  Somehow, something about Skorn was different, and Tactical realized that he really did not know her all that well. She was a mystery to him. He did not know her because he did not care. He never had.

  * * *

  Will snapped back to reality with a jolt, instantly awake and hyper-alert. He was face up and restrained on a hospital gurney by heavy, blood-stained straps. The chamber that he now occupied was built of stained cinder blocks, and the buzzing fluorescent lamps hanging above gave the room and everything in it a dirty, greenish cast with zombie-pale highlights. In the near distance, maybe just down the hall, cries of torment rose and fell in a hellish cadence. Will hoped it was the television turned up too loud, but he knew better.

  He was at the gates of some private hell.

  Near Will, Vox Malaise adjusted the intravenous drip that was inserted into his arm. He
did not know what was in the IV, but it had snapped him wide awake, made him feel flush, and produced a strong, chemical aftertaste in his mouth.

  “Blargh,” coughed Will. “It tastes like melting tires and model glue.”

  Vox Malaise shot Will a predatory smile. It was more the kind of grinning leer one would associate with a repeat sex offender than most women.

  “This is the weirdest kidnapping ever,” said Will.

  This failed to elicit a response from the criminal overlord.

  Vox Malaise ran her hands down Will’s supine body. She wore finger jewelry that ended in long, vicious looking claws, and their contact seemed simultaneously sexual and imminently threatening. Her touch made him want to squirm out of his skin.

  Vox Malaise loosened Will’s shirt and exposed his chest. She stuck out her impossibly long tongue and ran it down his stomach, tasting him. The end of her tongue was forked like a lizard’s, and Will could only guess that she had gotten the surgery to cut the frenulum, the tissue that restrains the tongue from extending too far.

  “J. William Medal, Esquire,” she said. Her voice had the sibilant, lisping quality.

  “I wonder if this still works?” said Vox Malaise, sliding her clawed fingers over Will’s genitals. “Maybe we should find out.”

  “Let’s not,” said Will. “Why should you care about my, um, capacity anyway?”

  “Care? I do not care at all, Mr. Medal. Your erectile functionality is beside the point, as far as I am concerned. What I do care about is the damage you and Johnny Saturn have caused my supply network.” All the teasing and assumed coquetry had fled her voice. Now she sounded pissed.

  “Do you think it is easy to obtain the constant supply of human test subjects, tissue samples, illegal drugs, and radioactive isotopes?

  Will said nothing, looking at Vox Malaise with contempt.

  “It is not cheap, I promise you. You and Johnny Saturn have made a point of confounding me at both the street level and in the courts. I am not a happy businesswoman, Mr. Medal.”

  “So that’s it then,” said Will. “You plan to kill me, or use me to get your hands on Johnny Saturn.”

  “Good try,” replied Vox Malaise. “But, we have not reached that stage yet. Instead, this is the part of the dance where I offer you a job.”

  Will could hardly believe his ears—a job?

  “While I am sure that working as a crusading attorney is quite, ah, lucrative, I think you would find working with my legal team more to your benefit. I can make you a full partner, pay a salary that would make most American C.E.O.’s blush with envy, and offer you and your dependents an excellent health care package, including sight and dental. Oh, and I would use my magic to restore your mobility. Would you like to walk again, Mr. Medal?

  “The alternative is death, I suppose?” said Will.

  “You are so impatient! No, not yet,” said the Vox Malaise. “I’m going to give you a week to think it over. I am supremely confident that you will accept my offer.”

  “You’re insane,” retorted Will. “You know I won’t play along!”

  “You will,” snapped Vox Malaise, “because of this.”

  She produced an unmarked DVD and flourished it before Will’s face. When Will said nothing, she continued.

  “This DVD contains footage of your many romantic trysts with Michelle Breemer, aka Skorn. Can you imagine how much my wasp-sized drones were able to record? Everything, I can assure you.”

  “You vile bitch!” Will swore, struggling futilely against his bonds.

  “Accept my bargain, or I deliver this DVD to Skorn’s master, Nicholai Demetr. What will he do to her? What form will his vengeance take? What will he do to you?”

  Will had never been so enraged, and frightened, in his life. He had finally seen Damocles sword, and it had taken the form of a simple DVD. Will struggled to rise, to get his hands near the woman’s throat, but he could not. The straps were too thick, and he was immobilized.

  “I have you, well and truly, counselor. You are mine, now. You will work for me, and gain the world, or you will refuse and lose everything. You have one week before you report to work at my private law firm, Grim, Gravel, and Samuels. Or, should I say, Grim, Gravel, Samuels, and Medal?”

  “You bitch, you bitch,” swore Will, his voice now dry and cracking. His face was red with anger, and his eyes were shot with veins. He was more helpless at this moment than he had ever been in his life.

  “So it’s ‘no,’ then,” said Vox Malaise. “You are so stubborn that you would rather die by Tactical’s hand than play along with me. Impressive, but stupid.”

  She regarded him for a moment, giving him one last chance to change his answer, and then she shrugged.

  “I still win,” she said. “Tactical will kill you and his lieutenant. This act will weaken his hold on the Iron Brigade, and give the Scavengers the opportunity to wipe out Tactical’s little meta army. You might have been a useful tool, but I still get what I want, and that’s all that matters. “Goodnight, Mr. Medal.”

  Vox Malaise smiled sweetly, and then she adjusted a valve on Will’s IV, and he was instantly unconscious again. Almost as an afterthought, Vox Malaise tucked her copy of the incriminating DVD into Will’s pocket.

  “Don’t worry, dear—I’ve got a copy for Tactical as well.”

  * * *

  Tactical watched the DVD. It had arrived at one of the Iron Brigade-owned banks by special courier earlier that day, and then it was delivered to him by one of his men.

  Tactical ejected the DVD from his computer. He had seen enough. Initially, he did not know who Skorn’s wheelchair-bound lover was, but the DVD included helpful captions between scenes. The paraplegic man was J. William Medal, Johnny Saturn II’s attorney.

  “Interesting,” thought Tactical. “Unexpected and interesting.”

  Tactical was known for his sudden, violent temper. To call him mercurial was a gross understatement. He was more volatile than a bottle of nitroglycerin tossed around by blindfolded drunks in a powder keg. He had killed dozens of men in fits of red rage. He had shot them, strangled them, blown them up, tossed them off buildings, thrown them down elevator shafts, tossed them under trains, buried them alive, and smashed their skulls open with stones. If the resolve and grit to kill were fossil fuels, Tactical could have drained the world’s dinosaur deposits in a matter of days.

  This time was different. Now Tactical seemed thoughtful, at ease with the situation. There was a glacier forming in the ice-glazed cavity of Tactical’s soul, and it had been freezing into Skorn’s likeness for a long time.

  Could Skorn have betrayed him to the enemy? Was she an informer on the Iron Brigade?

  Tactical had chosen not to jump to conclusions. This was just the type of trick a bitch like Vox Malaise would pull to destabilize the Iron Brigade and make him destroy his most formidable henchwoman. Upon further reflection, Tactical remembered that Vox once had owned a successful pornography studio and that she had easy access to all the performers and technicians needed to fake such a DVD with ease.

  Something this serious called for independent verification. Tactical reached for his phone. He hit speed dial and whispered a command into it.

  “Bring En Camera to me, now.”

  Soon the hapless metavillain arrived.

  En Camera looked like a cross between a robotic human and a digital camera. Not an expensive DSLR camera, either, but one of those silly looking compact cameras that kids and tourists used to take lots of appalling, fuzzy pictures. He had a big, telescoping lens for a face and a meek, downtrodden posture that betrayed his painfully low self-esteem. In an age when everyone carried digital cameras in their phones with them, how did being a hybrid android/camera make him anything but worthless? En Camera looked ridiculous, and his fellows in the Iron Brigade never let him forget it. To them, the sad-sack robot was a half-assed idea made stupid. The bullying and teasing never stopped.

  En Camera’s tormentors were wrong. He may have
had the unfortunate distinction of being an anthropomorphized camera, but his outer form was an expression of something else. Something valuable. En Camera was the manifestation of accurate, repeatable remote viewing. He could look across time and space and see anything. If he had a mind to do so, he could have perused the Hall of Records hidden beneath the Sphinx at Giza, the mind-blowing vistas of Mars, and futures beyond all comprehension. He could record what he saw in mind-boggling high definition audio and video, and he could project his findings for others to view.

  Tactical looked at the pathetic android camera. The crime lord understood all the implications of En Camera’s abilities. He knew that Iron Brigade’s most useless member was, in reality, its most useful.

  “I’ve got a task for you,” said Tactical. “So, don’t screw this up!”

  “I. . . I. . .“ stuttered the brow-beaten robot.

  “Shut up,” said Tactical. “I have heard enough of your pathetic mewling for two lifetimes!”

  Tactical steepled his fingers and gathered his thoughts.

  “Skorn has been ‘off’ since I came back. I can’t put my finger on it, but something has not been right about her. I want you to use your worthless powers and check what she has been up to in her free time. I want details, and I want you to project the results for me. Do you think you can do that without screwing it up, or are you truly as worthless as I’ve always suspected?

  “I c-can do-dd—”

  “Shut up and do it now,” said Tactical. “If I hear one more excuse, I’m going to blow you to bits and put you out with the recyclables. You disgust me, and I have no idea why I’ve put up with you this long.”

  En Camera collected himself as best he could and cast his gaze across space and time. When done correctly, this ability took advantage of the non-locality of the universe at a quantum level as well as the causal power of observation. What the robot saw surprised him, and it scared him as well—would Tactical destroy the bearer of bad news? En Camera did not have a choice.