Just Cause Universe 2: The Archmage

by Ian Thomas Healy

  Chapter Sixteen

  Psionic abilities even today confound researchers. In spite of decades of investigation, we have a very limited understanding of the functioning of the human brain and how psionics affect it. And it’s not easy to procure test subjects after the highly-publicized crimes of villains like Mento or The Scream Queen. How do you tell someone you’d like to experiment with erasing their memories?

  -Dr. Grace Devereaux, appearing on MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour, April 20, 1987

  July, 2004

  Rugby, North Dakota

  The Rita’s engines roared as the jet hurtled toward Rugby. The cabin felt empty without Juice’s large, comforting presence, but he’d been forced to remain behind due to his injury. Sally sat with Jason, held his hand, and daydreamed of balloons.

  Even though she knew they’d gone over the strategy in a planning session, Sally felt it had somehow slipped away. Oh well, she thought. She’d have plenty of time to figure out what was her part when the moment came. With her accelerated perceptions, she could almost always find time to put together the puzzle.

  One piece that didn’t fit was her missing horseshoe. When she’d geared up for deployment, she’d found that the extra horseshoe she’d found with Shannon’s body, the one which had been her anchor to bring the team through time back to the present, was missing. She’d turned her entire suite inside out to find it, but couldn’t find it. When she mentioned it to Jason, he got flustered and embarrassed, and covered it up with a deep, passionate kiss. She wondered if maybe he’d taken it. He wouldn’t do anything like that to be mean. Not her Jason. He must have some kind of motive. Maybe he was going to present it to her as a gift, or had made something unique out of it. That would be more his speed. Whatever it was, she was sure it would turn up soon.

  “Ten minutes to target,” said Ace over the cabin speakers.

  Doublecharge thanked her. “All right, everyone. Sondra, you and I are tactical air support. Get to the airlock and prepare to exit on Ace’s mark. The rest of you, follow Stratocaster’s orders once you’re on the ground. We’re only going to have one good shot at this and speed is essential. Sally, you know what that means.”

  “Uh, yeah,” said Sally. “Speed is totally my thing.”

  Doublecharge nodded at her and then headed after Sondra for the airlock.

  “Jase, baby?” Sally curled up in her seat and wished she was anywhere but about to head into another fight with the Archmage. “What exactly am I supposed to do? I’m not sure Doublecharge ever told me.”

  “You don’t remember?” Jason’s brow furrowed. “You’re, uh, supposed to secure the perimeter of the assault team.” He looked over at Switchboard as if confirming it.

  “That’s right,” said the older man with almost forced cheerfulness. “Nobody better on the edges than you, Sally.”

  Stratocaster smiled at her. She noticed a change to his guitar. A discoloration that wasn’t there before. “What happened?” she asked, pointing at it.

  “Just made an adjustment for the big battle,” he said. “A little ace in the hole, you know?”

  “Is it magic?”

  “Of course.”

  “Three minutes,” said Ace. “Multiple contacts inbound. Airlock opening in thirty seconds.”

  “Stand by for immediate dispersal once you touch down,” said Doublecharge as electricity crackled between her fingers. Sondra slid a fresh clip into each of her pistols and thumbed off the safeties. She normally only carried two spare clips when going into combat; today she wore a harness with eight extra clips, and two spare guns were strapped under her arms in shoulder holsters. She winked at Sally as the internal door to the airlock slid shut.

  “Ten seconds,” said Ace. She counted down to one, and then opened the lock to let Doublecharge and Sondra out into the late afternoon sky. Dark clouds hung low and heavy, and lightning arced between them and illuminated the approaching dragons and gryphons. The Rita dipped sharply to one side as Ace shed forward velocity. “Evasive maneuvers. Stand by.”

  Outside the jet, Doublecharge added her own bright lightning to the sky. She toasted a gryphon into fried chicken with a concentrated blast of electricity. A row of bloody explosions along the flank of a dragon indicated Sondra had entered the fray as well.

  Ace slid the Rita between plasma jets from the dragons, and then opened the throttle wide for a moment to catch a gryphon in the wash from the jet nozzles. The ground rushed up at them and Sally felt her stomach trying to leap out of her mouth.

  “Touchdown in ten seconds,” said Ace. “Prepare for deployment.” She sounded almost bored.

  Sally’s perceptions slid into fast time as the jet hit the ground; massive shock absorbers in the landing gear compensated for the impact. Ace opened the bomb bay door. Thunder echoed as Ace swept the incoming horde of fantasy monsters with the Rita’s belly gun. Sally clamped her hands over her ears.

  “Lifting off now. Switching to monitoring. Good hunting.”

  The Rita roared and the vectored-thrust nozzles of the engine spat flames. The jet lifted into the air on a column of burning exhaust to head for the safety of upper altitudes.

  The Archmage’s army had sprung from the imagination of someone who saw Lord of the Rings too many times. Sally saw scimitar-wielding goblins with patched-up armor, orcs with great swords as long as she was tall, huge leering trolls that needed neither weapon nor armor, and here and there residents of Rugby or National Guardsmen who had been captured and turned by the Archmage.

  A large detachment of the army headed for the Just Cause heroes. Stratocaster played his guitar hard and fast. Uneasy energies swirled around them all.

  “Wow,” said Sally, “there are a lot of them.”

  “Easy, Sally,” said Switchboard, who had eschewed his normal blue jumpsuit for a full SWAT team outfit and assault carbine.

  An idea popped into her head like a searchlight on a dark night. “Too bad we don’t have a balloon. We could just float over the top of them.”

  Switchboard looked at her sharply, then glanced at Stratocaster, who didn’t seem to notice. “Best put that out of your mind, Sally. Our objective is to reach the base of the mountain. Hopefully Will’s presence will draw the Archmage out into the open. He can form the wedge with his powers. Jason and Sally, you clear anyone who breaks the barrier. Let’s move like we have a purpose, people!”

  They closed with the Archmage’s army. A cloud of whistling black arrows arced over the front lines, aimed to drop down among the heroes.

  “Sally,” said Switchboard. “This is your show.”

  She slipped into extreme fast-time and grabbed a discarded shield. As arrows began to fall among them, she danced around in a blur and swept away any that would have hit her companions with the shield. Instead of a hail of arrows, the team was pelted only with splinters from the shattered shafts.

  As Stratocaster played, his magical wedge of force tossed aside goblins and orcs like blowing leaves. Switchboard kept his carbine at shoulder height and swept the sides, popping a single shot off at any non-human denizen of the Archmage’s army that managed to somehow penetrate Stratocaster’s enchantment.

  Sally dispensed with the shield by hurling it like a discus at one of the trolls. It whizzed through the air like a Frisbee and whipped right through neck of the monster, who had enough time to look surprised as its head sailed away like a gruesome balloon. She unhooked her horseshoes from their clips at her waist.

  She was ready to fight.

  An orc with sharpened teeth thrust its way through Stratocaster’s tenuous magical shield. Jason ducked under the whistling blade and swung a heavy fist into the orc’s forearms. The creature yelped as its arms folded the wrong way and its sword went flying. Exhibiting a bit more grace and finesse than he normally did, Jason spun around and swept his leg into the orc’s midriff. The orc flew backward into a cluster of its compatriots, who snarled as they tried to penetrate the shield.

  Switchboard snapped a new clip int
o his weapon. “We’re not going fast enough,” he yelled. “Pick up the pace!”

  “Don’t know if I can hold them back if we go faster,” shouted Stratocaster. His fingers were torn from his intense playing and blood spattered the front of his guitar.

  “We don’t have a choice!” Switchboard concentrated momentarily, eschewing his carbine, and put a bespectacled man to sleep.

  Overhead, Sondra and Doublecharge fought to keep gryphons and dragons from attacking the group. Stratocaster’s faint magical wedge grew weaker and Sally, Switchboard, and Jason found themselves hard-pressed by those in the Archmage’s army who broke through the shield. Soon greenish gore streaked Sally’s horseshoes and Jason’s fists. Switchboard used his psionics more and more to stretch out his remaining clips, and he was clearly tiring.

  None of them were unscathed either. Jason’s uniform shirt hung in tatters and four parallel scratches across his chest oozed blood where a troll had gotten a good swipe on him. Sally had been stabbed in the leg by a goblin and was limping. Even so, she was still faster than anyone else and holding her own. Switchboard caught an arrow through his right bicep and lost his carbine. Only Stratocaster remained untouched, but he had to fight off the Archmage’s own magical attacks as they pushed closer and closer to the base of the mountain.

  A troll pushed through the shield and went straight for Stratocaster. He switched to a different theme and blasted the troll to bits with a burst of energy from his guitar. In doing so, his magical shield collapsed against the Archmage’s onslaught from the safety of his castle and the horde was on them. He managed to form a smaller shield to only encompass him and Switchboard, but Jason and Sally were stranded outside his safety shell.

  Doublecharge’s voice echoed over their radios. “Abort the mission! Ace, get us out of here!”

  “About fucking time,” grumbled Ace in reply, and from afar they heard the engines of the Rita approaching.

  Goblins, orcs, and trolls swarmed over Jason and Sally. Jason fought with no regard for his own safety, taking blades and claws across his skin and trusting to his own natural toughness to keep him alive as he tried to reach Sally. “Sally!” he cried as she was surrounded.

  Sally had run out of room to run, or hardly even to move. Her perceptions had accelerated to their maximum level and she seemed to be the only thing moving in a world filled with statues. She punched left and right with her horseshoes, desperate to reach Jason. She was better equipped to fight a group of opponents than most heroes because of her speed, but she was wearing down.

  Jason roared in fury as he picked up a goblin and swung it like a grisly club. Sally could see him, only a few feet away from her, but surrounded by the Archmage’s army. He fought to reach her, and even as she ducked under lethal blows aimed at her, she felt her heart swell with love for him. Then that love turned to fear as he was knocked down by several orcs and a troll piling onto his back.

  “No!” she screamed.

  Switchboard tried a wide-area psionic attack to give Jason the chance to get free, but to no effect.

  A great thundering chatter surrounded them all as Ace strafed the area with the Rita’s guns. The Archmage’s forces exploded into wet shrapnel as fifty caliber bullets tore through them. The engines screamed in protest as Ace dropped the jet into the heroes’ midst, bomb bay doors gaping wide. Doublecharge’s lightning blasts provided counterpoint to the chatter of the guns as she and Sondra worked feverishly to keep the dragons and gryphons off the Rita long enough for Ace to perform an extraction. Sally took a bad step on her injured leg, lost her footing, and fell. As she went down, she saw Jason battling toward her, but for every step he gained, he was pushed or pulled back two. She felt bodies pile on top of her as the army overwhelmed her and screamed in terror and frustration.

  As a troll lifted her triumphantly in the air, Sally caught a brief glimpse of the Rita as Ace lifted it clear of the combat zone. As the bomb bay doors closed, she saw Jason being restrained by Stratocaster and Switchboard, tears of fury and frustration running down his face as he tried to reach Sally one more time. She tried to smile at him, to let him know she’d be all right, but it was such a brief, fleeting instant that she didn’t know if he ever saw. She knew her friends would eventually come for her the way they had for Jack. Right now they were outnumbered and wounded and this was for the best.

  The Rita lifted straight up into the air as Ace opened the jet nozzles to full. It rose like a balloon, but it was the wrong shape and the wrong color. Sally spared a moment’s reflection to wonder about her sudden obsession with balloons. Then somebody threw a heavy blanket over her and she was spun around and wrapped up like a burrito. The foul stench of the thick cloth assailed her nostrils and made Sally’s stomach churn. She couldn’t move and could barely even breathe as she was carried.

  For a moment, the person held her perfectly still and Sally wondered if she was about to be released. Then she felt a sudden jerk followed by a rolling, twisting motion, and she realized she was airborne, probably being carried to the castle at the mountain’s summit by a dragon or other magical beast.

  Just when she didn’t think she’d be able to take it any longer, she crashed down onto a hard surface. Hands spun her around to unwrap the blanket from her. She tried to get herself under control so she’d be able to act if the moment called for it. With any luck, she’d be able to move against the Archmage directly if he chose to gloat over his latest capture.

  Except she couldn’t move at all.

  She was made to sit in a high-backed chair by two women whose waitressing outfits had been modified into dancing-girl costumes. They stood patiently to either side and behind the chair in which Sally was held fast by unseen forces.

  “What a marvelous present your rulers have made to me.” The Archmage stepped out of the shadows.

  Sally strained against the invisible bonds but couldn’t move even a fraction of an inch. She wished she could float away like a helium-filled balloon.

  “I’m keen to know what you hoped to accomplish by your foolish attack.”

  Sally could do nothing but glare at her captor. Unable even to blink, her eyes began to water, which made her furious because it looked exactly like she was crying.

  “What, tears already, my dear? But I haven’t even begun to torture you yet.” His mocking laughter echoed throughout the chamber

  One mistake, thought Sally in her fury. One slip and you’re mine.

  “But wait… I’ve thought of an even better use for you than torture. As I’m sure you know, I recently lost the General of my armies.”

  He loves to hear himself talk. Sally was reminded of an old bit of Mafia wisdom she’d read somewhere. Let a man speak; when he is finished, let him speak some more. Sooner or later he’d talk too much, say the wrong thing, and then she’d have him.

  “I’m somewhat familiar with your exploits.” The Archmage flipped a hand idly and an internet browser window opened in midair. Sally was astonished to see her personnel profile from the Just Cause central computer displayed. “I suspect you’re more powerful than even you believe. Certainly you’re the most powerful member of your pitiful little club.”

  Sally couldn’t believe what she was hearing. He had to be playing her somehow, trying to get inside her head. All blond jokes aside, she tried to make her mind all empty, like a balloon.

  “You’ll make a fine addition to my forces, suitable for command.” Wolfgang Frazier stepped closer to her and looked her over in a way that made Sally’s skin crawl. “And yet… you’re so very beautiful. Perhaps you can serve me in other ways as well.”

  A horrible gnawing sensation filled Sally’s belly. She wished for control of her mouth for just one second, long enough to spit in his face.

  “It can be lonely at the top. Ruling the world isn’t nearly as fun without someone to share it with. At some point, I’ll need to provide an heir. Or two. Or more. Because even I can’t live forever. At least, not yet. Perhaps that will change when I ta
ke Stratocaster’s magic.”

  Still paralyzed, Sally could do nothing but think an unending string of profanity at the Archmage.

  Frazier laughed at himself. “Ah, but I do go on, don’t I? I suppose I’ve been cooped up here for too long without true companionship. Well, except for my faithful Seth, of course. Seth?”

  “Yes, my Lord.” The older man that Sally remembered from her last time in the Archmage’s castle stepped from the shadows, a simple wooden flask clutched in his hand. She was positive that she didn’t want whatever was in that flask. Seth passed it to Frazier, who gestured at Sally.

  Unable to resist, Sally felt her head tilt back and mouth open. Her tongue pressed downward to open her throat. No no NO!! she screamed in her mind as the Archmage brought the flask over her lips. He upended it and Sally felt the horrible burning liquid slosh down to her stomach. She wanted to gag and vomit it back out, but even her internal organs seemed to have been paralyzed by Frazier’s magic.

  She felt the energetic liquid quiver in her stomach like a living thing. It seemed to stretch out beyond her stomach and sent tingles down her limbs all the way to her fingers and toes. It frightened her that the sensations weren’t unpleasant. It felt as if she relaxed like in the moment right before falling asleep. Shreds of her resistance leaked away like air from a punctured balloon. Something important hovered on the fringes of her memory, something about balloons, but she couldn’t focus on it, and then it went away.

  The Archmage bent down and looked deeply into her eyes and Sally felt her heart fill with love for him. She would lay down her life in an instant if he requested it. She would lead his armies, bear his children, be his anything and everything.

  “How do you feel, my dear?” he asked her, and she found she could move again. Why had she been unable to before? She couldn’t remember. It certainly wasn’t important now that he was here and had freed her.