He brought up a picture of the shattered Hoover Dam.
“Hoover Dam is more than two million cubic meters of concrete. It was one of the biggest dams in the world. The Gungnir’s graser struck it with almost one-hundred percent of the force of the bomb’s detonation, focused into a width of less than a meter. The beam transferred enough energy to the targeted portion of the dam to flash-vaporize the concrete. Explosive expansion of the vaporized concrete shattered the dam with the radiated shock.”
“Good lord.”
Shelly understood the general’s reaction perfectly; the upgraded Gungnirs were God’s Own Bunker-Busters; if the sheer concrete mass of Hoover Dam couldn’t stand up to them, there wasn’t a hardened site on Earth that could. And somebody had managed to get their hands on them—an unimaginable security breach.
But General Arun Rajabhushan was made of stern stuff; recovering quickly he turned to the next Ouroboro. “Dr. Ash?”
Vivian rose from her chair to deliver her report. “The green zombies didn’t appear in any of the future files.” A click brought up a new image, a close-up of a dead zombie soldier. The green that covered its half-desiccated skull looked fuzzy, organic, because it was a kind of moss. “However, preliminary analysis of zombie remains reveals a link to someone we know.” A second click brought up an image Shelly knew all too well; a leering face made of leafy foliage, the Green Man’s symbol.
“The ‘zombies’ appear to be human cadavers whose muscle and nerve tissue have been colonized by organic fibers. On cellular analysis, they match samples of the hyper-evolved plants animated by the Green Man in his attack on Chicago two years ago.”
The general rubbed his chin. “Is the DSA leaning towards the theory that the Green Man is alive, and has ‘evolved’ himself somehow?”
Shelly raised her hand, Shell whispering in her ear. “If they’re not, they’re going to. Shell says street-camera footage of the attack shows the zombies acting as cohesive units, even coordinating at a distance though they were pretty sloppy. They didn’t act very well trained, but what one of them knew, all of them reacted to, like they were all parts of one organism. That’s the Green Man’s signature.”
Vivian nodded. “So far as we know, the Green Man is unfortunately one of those breakthroughs triggered post-Teatime Anarchist. He appears in none of the potential futures we have records of and has surprised us from the beginning.”
“Thank you.” Arun nodded courteously. “Dr. Humphries?”
Kelly followed Vivian’s example and stood, keeping his eyes on his monitor. “The mini-tanks are another Gungnir situation. They’re mini-tahks, developed by the Russian Federation using a Verne-tech enhanced powertrain. The enhancement supports its extremely heavy ‘mushroom’ armor and six independently steerable wheels. It was sized for urban combat, and armed specifically for response to highly maneuverable Atlas-Types and other toughened breakthroughs. One lucky hit from a mushroom put Watchman out of the fight with shattered ribs and a cracked sternum.”
Arun grunted. “Is there a reason we don’t see them as a major component of future militaries?”
“Simply, they’re not fast enough. With warning, mobile superhumans can avoid the main gun fairly easily. And while their armor is more than enough to handle most infantry-carried weapons, anti-tank missiles will pot them. Also direct hits can easily disable their main and secondary weapons, as SaFire proved.”
“So they’re tougher and more heavily armed than a modern infantry squad, but not significantly.”
“Yes. They’re essentially land-drones, and so are immune to biological, chemical, and mental attacks as well, but most of the enemies the Russian Federation faces don’t use chemicals or biologicals. The RF built several thousand of them, most of which are ‘warehoused’. These schematics are from the future-files—we can expect to see more of them as they get sold out the back door to smaller armies that want heavy ‘peacekeeping’ units.”
The general pinched the top of his nose where all the deep creases in his brow were getting together. “And unless we’re to believe that the Russian Federation just attacked the United States, which they never did in any potential future-histories we’ve seen, someone else has gotten hold of them as well. Thank you. Ms. Hardt?”
Shelly cleared her throat and tugged her blazer smooth. “No background on the Chicago attack’s Big Bad Guy yet, but he could be any number of known high-class Ajax-types under that massive flying suit of armor. The armor is absolutely Verne-tech, but there are a number of Vernes who could have built it. Video analysis of the attack—” And wasn’t that fun to watch. “—also suggests some kind of psychic assault. Astra has yet to be debriefed on it, but something dropped her response time and effectiveness considerably from the second the BBG attacked.”
Bushy black eyebrows climbed. “A brick with a mental attack?”
“If the BBG is the source. But focusing on the method of his arrival and departure showed me how all the attacks were carried out.” A click of a key changed the image to show her fellow Ouroboros a tall pale woman, face partly veiled by wavy brown hair, wearing a lab coat and a grimace.
“Everyone meet Dr. Anna Kreiski of the Warsaw University of Technology. Dr. Kreiski broke through on schedule last year—none of the divergences in post-Teatime Anarchist history derailed her focus, I guess—and her main line of research is quantum-physics and multi-dimensional geometry. In all the future-histories she appeared in, she put her talent in the service of the European Union. In actual history, she’s disappeared.”
“And what has she built?”
“These.” Shelly clicked to the next image, a pair of machine schematics. “Dr. Kreiski developed a new teleportation device she dubbed a ‘magnetobridge.’ Yeah, I know, sounds pretty silly.” Click. She expanded the left schematic, the one that looked like a huge silver plate. “The bigger machine’s the projector. This one’s an anchor. It’s not small either, but it’s got an internal power supply and you can bury it, it’s easy to hide. Its size varies depending on how big an anchor zone you want to create, but the projector needs at least a 100-megawatt plant for power to bridge any significant distance.”
She clicked to an image of a cage-schematic with a single boxy node on one side. “When the anchor is powered, the anchor-zone becomes ‘attractive’ to a tuned node. When both the projector and anchor are powered, the node will jump to the anchor side of the bridge. The cage allows the node to take whatever it contains with it in the jump, and detuning the node will return it to the projector zone. So will depowering the anchor.”
Arun nodded. “Range? Limits?”
“Planetary. Power requirements go up exponentially past a few thousand miles, though. Also, nodes burn out on return, so they need to be replaced. Payload limit is determined by cage volume, not mass. The cages don’t need to look like cages. They can have solid walls, and I’m pretty sure our Big Bad Guy had one built into his suit—that’s how he popped out of nowhere and disappeared as quickly. Also, the anchor zone is detectable by its interference. It’s the source of the quantum-interdiction that got dropped on Shell. The Dome was within the Michigan Avenue anchor zone.”
“How was it used in the potential futures it appeared in?” Vivian asked.
“The EU mostly used it defensively. It allowed them to establish two dozen or so anchor bases in different cities, to which they could quickly move their ‘on watch’ capes in shielded delivery cages. The anchors don’t take much work; the projectors require much more time for Dr. Kreiski to make, and the EU only ever had one active projector base with a single backup base.”
“The doctor must have been one of the most well-protected Vernes in Europe,” Kelly observed. “Why didn’t she wind up with the EU this time?”
Shelly sighed. “No idea.” With nearly three years of multiplying changes since TA and DA’s two-man timewar had ended with a murder-suicide, Leiman’s observations about divergence were all too accurate and this time she’d come up with zip,
zilch, nada, bupkis.
“I’ve made finding her Europol’s top priority,” she finished. “I’m sure she’s securely held now by whoever mounted this attack, but she’s the best lead we have besides the Green Man and we’ve never figured out who he is. I’ve also passed US Army Intelligence, Homeland Security, and the DSA the file on Kreiski’s work with READ NOW instructions.”
The general grunted. “Well done. So, everyone, any theories? Our oracular powers are wearing thin.” When all three of the others turned back to Shelly, his grim smile deepened into weathered dimples. “Ms. Hardt? Given your twin’s additional resources, do you care to speculate?”
Gee, thanks. She rubbed her nose, caught herself mirroring the general and stopped. “Shell’s kind of preoccupied, so her main focus isn’t here.” Not even close; she was busy thickening the security environment around Hope and the rest of the wounded Sentinels. “But we think it’s Deep Green.”
“Environmental terrorists? Not the Ascendant?” Vivian sounded incredulous. “They blew up dams. I understand the Green Man connection, but wouldn’t violent deep environmentalists go after different targets? Like gas or coal-fired power plants? Or nuclear power plants?”
“Not necessarily. Little-known fact, deep environmentalists hate dams as much or more than they hate ‘dirty’ energy sources.” Taking a deep breath, she launched into the lecture. “Big dams hugely impact their local and downstream environments. They block fish migrations, trap sediment needed by downstream habitats, create environments local plants and wildlife aren’t adapted to, lower groundwater, generally disrupt natural ecosystems for thousands of square miles. Dam-enabled irrigation turns deserts into more farmland, artificially boosting the population carrying capacity of the Earth. Deep Environmentalists believe that humans have no right to exist at the cost of biodiversity—they call it ecocide. You know, like genocide.” She looked around the room.
“Yeah, genocide. Mass casualties and a bucket of new trauma-induced breakthroughs is the Ascendant’s M.O., so we can’t rule him out. With the intelligence Hope brought back from her extrareality trip, we’ve rolled up practically all of his network, but Deep Green wants mass-death events, too. They want it all gone. They think we need to abandon industrialism and agrarianism and reduce the ‘surplus population’ to no more than a few million human beings worldwide. And they want it done now.”
Giving everyone a moment to absorb that, she concluded. “Power grids are one of their prime targets since cities can’t live without them, but blown-up nuclear plants are environmental catastrophes. Blown-up dams are just local catastrophes, and from their twisted perspective, restoration of the natural order. And to them the natural order is a world mostly without us. No cities, no farms, just us ‘living lightly’ off the land without changing it any more than grazing ruminants. Less, actually.”
“So, genocidally fanatical environmentalists,” Kelly said. “Well, shit.”
“Shit indeed,” the general agreed. “Shelly, please widen the list of agencies receiving this information and analysis to include the appropriate ears of all League states. And let us break on that note, start fresh tomorrow.”
The others thought that a grand idea and Shelly herself felt utterly wrung out, but as she straightened up her station and prepared to leave—the Bees expected her report soonest (and when had she taken responsibility for them?)—the general caught her eye and nodded towards his office.
What now?
Arun didn’t keep her wondering long, and neither did Shell. As soon as Shelly stepped into his office, her twin lit up one of the general’s wall screens with her serious face so they could both visually relate to her. Shelly’s brain actually stuttered; yes, she and Shell could connect directly through her quantum-neural link again, even in Littleton, but the Institute’s electronic security kept Shell completely out of its systems.
It was like they didn’t trust the Goddess in The Machine AI or something.
The old general smiled. “We’ve established a hardwired audio-video link to a relay through the Garage. Our gatekeepers assure us she can’t hack her way in through it.”
“Right. . . .” She shook it off. “So what’s going on?”
“I’ve run tactical analysis of all of Chicago’s street and mask-camera footage of the attack,” Shell piped up. “Like, a million times.” Her twin sounded . . . scared? “We’ve got a problem.”
“Shell texted me her conclusions directly,” the general said softly. “She thinks Astra was a target.”
Chapter Five
“Reports are still coming in from around Chicago, and while the city has yet to release any official statements, it is known that the Chicago Sentinels and Guardians teams experienced different degrees of success against the attacks. Unofficial word is the Southside attack overwhelmed the Southside Guardians, but reporters on the scene say that it was stopped by the district’s heavily armed civilian population, including members of the Brotherhood and Sanguinary Boys, two local street-villain gangs whose numbers have somewhat recovered since many of them were arrested and jailed three years ago. The Chicago Police Department has refused to comment on the unexpectedly high number of armed civilians.
The final death-toll from all the attacks has yet to be determined.
Associated Press Report
Megaton wasn’t just hurt. He’d lost his legs and Hope didn’t hear about it until the next morning after Dr. Turnbull, Northwestern Memorial Hospital’s superhuman-medicine specialist, did a new CT scan on her head and decided that her poor bruised brain had recovered enough that she was safe from hammer wielding 8-year-olds. Yay to the perks of being an Atlas-Type. A normal person with her broken head would have stayed in the ICU for more than a day or two, and in bed a lot longer.
She could tell the doctor wanted to keep her anyway, but the hospital needed the beds.
Back in her Galatea cybershell, Shell broke the news about Megaton after helping her into a fresh costume—minus the mask which wasn’t going to touch her still swollen and purple face—and helping her slide into a wheelchair with a dead-asleep Kitsune in her lap. And after making sure she wasn’t gripping anything crushable.
Hope felt like she’d been kicked in the solar plexus. “What happened?” she finally forced out.
“You said the last thing you remembered was the ‘sunrise’? That was Mal. He saw you go down and hit the BBG with everything he had. Knocked him for a loop but just splashed off his armor, so Mal stored up an extra charge and made the follow up shot point-blank. No, I’m not going to show you the video.”
“He got him?”
“Nearly shattered the BBG’s armor. But the bastard caught Mal with that ginormous sword. Took his legs off just above his knees.”
Don’t pass out, do not pass out. Hope sat and concentrated on deep breaths as her vision tunneled and her skin turned to ice. “And?”
“Variforce threw his fields over you both, kept the BBG off you, and Lei Zi hit him with a jillion volts of lightning. His suit might have been insulated before but it wasn’t after what Megaton did to it. The guy just disappeared.”
“He teleported?”
“Yup. Then all the mini-tanks blew up. Turns out all of them came with that one last surprise.”
Hope took another deep breath, made sure her voice was steady. “Is that when Variforce was hurt? How bad?”
“Bad,” Shell said, voice flat. “A blast caught him from the wrong vector, where he wasn’t shielding. Rush got Chakra to him in time to save his life, but he’s got major rehab ahead once he’s out of the ICU and healed. It could have been a lot worse—that was the plan.”
“What do you mean?”
“The second and last wave of bombs was aimed at first-responders, capes and non-capes. And the BBG didn’t show up until after all our toughest capes were in play. Sure the whole thing was a big hit to our national infrastructure—but the Chicago side of it focused on us. The whole Chicago attack was stacked to kill capes—that’s
why I’ve got all our down and walking wounded under guard. I’ve got our Bobs arming for anti-Atlas operations. I don’t think this is over. It feels more like step one.”
“Well don’t say that to anyone outside our need-to-know. Mal—they can’t reattach his legs?”
Her BF shook her head. “They were too shredded in the last blast. But Crash got a field kit out there fast, got tourniquets on him and he came through surgery fine. He’ll be all right.”
Hope knew that was a total lie but she nodded, wrapping arms around herself and resisting the urge to pick up and hug Kitsune like a stuffy. “His family?”
“His dad’s here. His mom and sister . . . well, you know.” Hope did; his parents had been Humanity Firsters. His dad had stuck with him after his breakthrough but his mom had left and taken Sidney to Oregon with her—her breath caught and Shell talked faster. “I checked as soon as I came back online—they weren’t in any of the flooded zones, and they’re being moved now with the rest of the civilians.”
Relief made her dizzy. “Thanks. Does he know they’re safe?”
“Duh.”
“Sorry. Mal never wanted to be a cape, you know? Not really, he just—” She clamped down on the growing quaver in her voice, forced herself to swallow the knot in her throat.
“Let me know when he’s awake again, please?” she whispered when she could trust her voice again, and then she focused on the door. She’d have to go through it in a second, be stoic for everyone waiting down the hall—though not her mom, who’d left her last night with a kiss on her undamaged cheek and a promise to return.
Sitting straighter, she carefully gripped the sides of her chair. “Okay, let’s do this.”
The drive to the Dome was excruciating. Shell/Galatea turned her over to a discreetely armed Bob at the door of the hospital, launching to fly overwatch while Hope slipped into the back of one of the team’s just-as-discreetely armored cars. Lei Zi joined her in the back seat, and didn’t say a word as they drove home through what had been the Michigan Avenue attack zone.
Repercussions (Wearing the Cape Book 8) Page 5
