Brian allowed himself to be dragged into the lounge before he put up a little resistance and Fleet turned to look at him. ‘What?’ she asked, laughter in her eyes.
‘Are you really sure we should be doing this?’ They had kissed. They had kissed hard enough to make Brian’s toes curl and he got the impression that Fleet had felt it too. He was pretty sure… No, he was sure that he loved her. He was also insecure enough to worry that she might not feel the same way. And there was the other thing. ‘I mean… I’ve never…’
Fleet narrowed her eyes a little. Her full lips pursed. ‘That makes two of us.’ Then she reached for the hem of her shirt and pulled it off over her head, tossing it onto the sofa. ‘And I’m absolutely sure about this, yes.’
Brian was not really sure what an appropriate answer was to that: all the blood had rushed out of his brain.
23rd September.
The Huntress’ Den was humming tonight. It was a Friday, so that was not entirely unusual, but it was also Regina Jacoby’s forty-fifth birthday, so there were more than the usual number of celebrities, which led to more than the usual number of customers. Everyone seemed to be a little more excited too. The Red Huntress was celebrating forty-five years, and it seemed like half the city was celebrating with her.
‘Good crowd,’ June said, though it was an assumption of sorts: you could not really see the crowd from the bar due to the wall of people in the way.
‘Yeah,’ Red replied. ‘Well, it’s my birthday and if I know ten percent of these people, I’ll be amazed, but I guess it’s nice to still be thought of when I haven’t been active for almost ten years.’
‘Doing the calendar reminded everyone how hot you are,’ Skadi said. ‘Even if you are getting old.’ Skadi was not quite twenty-four. She was perched on a stool beside Red, wearing a dress which barely covered her behind or her chest.
‘Not so much of the old,’ Red replied.
‘What? I’m almost the youngest one here. Zoe’s six months younger than I am. Everyone else is ancient.’
‘You’re only about two years younger than me,’ Cygnus pointed out. ‘Plus, I don’t age. Technically, I’m probably younger than you.’
‘Bringing super-cosmic ultra… something else descriptively overpowered into it is not fair.’
‘Them’s the breaks. And speaking of people who should look older than they do…’
Everyone turned to where Cygnus was looking, which was toward the club’s entrance. The dance floor was lower than the entrance level, so incoming people were obvious even over the human wall. Captain Freedom was walking in, dressed in a casual shirt, jacket, and jeans. He looked utterly unlike his heroic persona, but he was still so obviously Captain Freedom. There was a sense of presence that rolled off him, a charismatic pull which drew the eyes and made people smile.
Most people, but not June. ‘Still don’t like that guy,’ she muttered.
‘Everyone else does,’ Cygnus replied. ‘He’s bound to come over. Try to act like it’s not too much of a chore.’
‘I’ll give it my best shot.’
~~~
It took a little more than thirty minutes for the Captain to make his way to the bar and find Red. He smiled as he approached; to June, it looked entirely fake.
‘Red Huntress,’ Freedom said. ‘It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.’ He turned the handshake she offered into a kiss to her fingers.
‘Charmed, I’m sure,’ Red replied, not sounding especially charmed. ‘I think you know Cygnus and Svetilo.’
‘Of course.’ He flashed a smile at both women.
‘Then we have Zoe Quaid, Jennifer Cooper, and June Summerfield.’ Red indicated each in turn, but Freedom only seemed to pay real attention when June was introduced.
‘Ladies,’ he said, still smiling. ‘Of course, I’ve seen Miss Summerfield on those calendars that seem to be all over Andrews.’
‘That’s me,’ June said. ‘And Cygnus and Svetilo, of course. We’re all in it, plus a few others.’
‘Raising money to help regenerate Churchton. Very noble.’
‘I’m glad you think so. Some don’t.’
He waved the comment away. ‘We all make sacrifices to do our jobs.’
Purposefully, June turned her head to look at Cygnus. ‘Yes, we do.’
There was a slight pause. ‘I should mingle,’ Freedom said. ‘I’m sure I’ll see you all later.’
‘Not if I see you first,’ June muttered once he was gone.
‘It’s kind of weird,’ Cygnus said, ‘but he reminds me a little of Ultranova. Tries a bit too hard.’
‘Ultranova was a clean-cut sort of all-American type,’ Red said. ‘They have that in common. I’m sure that’s as far as it goes.’
‘Hope so.’
‘Mm. More drinks! It’s my birthday and I’d like you all drunk enough for an orgy later.’
Zoe’s cheeks heated to the temperature of a blasting furnace in just under a second. Svetilo patted her arm. ‘Don’t worry, myshka. Red is just joking.’
‘Yeah,’ Zoe said, ‘I’m sure–’
‘Probably. She’s probably joking.’
~~~
June checked herself in the restroom mirrors, decided she was probably still about as beautiful as she could be without the kind of weird aura Cygnus projected, and headed for the door.
‘Miss Summerfield, we meet again.’
June looked around, knowing who the voice belonged to before she saw him leaning against the wall outside the restrooms. That was subtle. ‘Captain,’ she said, acknowledging his existence at least.
He gave her a slightly timid smile. She was not buying it for a moment. ‘I was wondering… Well, I was wondering if I could buy you a drink. Maybe we could chat for a while…’
June put on her best professional smile. ‘I’m here with Cygnus.’
‘Yeah, I saw that, but I figured you might want to get out of here, go somewhere a little quieter. You’re really attractive. I’d love to–’
‘Captain–’
‘Alexander. I’m not in uniform.’
‘Captain, I’m here with Cygnus, who is my girlfriend. I’m a lesbian.’
His expression did not shift much. There was more amusement in it. Like he had heard that one before, sure… ‘Huh, yeah. That doesn’t mean–’
‘Yes, it really does. I realise you’ve been out of touch for a few decades. Maybe you haven’t caught up on modern attitudes yet. Believe me, it means I’m not interested. Even if I was, I wouldn’t dump my girlfriend to be with you. Goodnight, Captain.’ Turning, she stalked out onto the dance floor and kept walking until she got to the bar.
Baltimore, MD, 26th September.
Cygnus stood in a hall in the Johns Hopkins University campus in downtown Baltimore and wondered again how she had come to be there. The actual truth of the situation did not seem to make any sense, so there had to be more to it. She just had no clue what the more was.
She had been called by the Secret Service the previous evening and told that Senator Kilmer had requested that she attend the presidential debate the following night, i.e. tonight. That had seemed a little weird; if Hart had asked for her, she could have understood it, more or less, but why would Kilmer want her there. So, she had asked and been told he wanted her to suppress psionic activity in the hall. Kilmer was worried about Hart’s empathic powers. As far as Cygnus had been able to find out, Hart’s empathy was just what it said on the packaging: she could sense emotions. Yes, it might give her a slight advantage in a courtroom or a debate, but not much. Having Cygnus there to block it seemed overkill. Kilmer had to be up to something more. Unless he really was that stupid.
The producer in charge of the debate seemed more than a little annoyed that he had to have an Ultra standing there, right on the stage. Kilmer had demanded that Cygnus be where he could see her. That way he could be sure she was there and not somewhere out of range so that Hart could use her powers. It seemed that no one had explained that she could
just turn off the jamming field. It was not like he would know. Hart might know, maybe, but Kilmer was as normal as they came and would not have a clue.
In deference to the setting, Cygnus was wearing a gown rather than her working costume. The producer was happier about that. ‘Try to be unobtrusive,’ the man said, peering at her over half-specs. The gleaming white gown with the low front and to-the-hip side split did not lend itself to fading into the background. Especially when the background featured a lot of red, white, and blue in various combinations of stars, stripes, and stars over stripes.
‘I’d happily be invisible,’ Cygnus replied, ‘but Senator Kilmer seems a little paranoid.’
‘You have no idea,’ the producer grumbled before hurrying off the stage.
Cygnus reached to her right ear and tapped her earpiece. ‘How are things in New Millennium?’
There was a slight pause and then June replied. ‘About the usual. Jacob took down a mugger in Friendship Park earlier. Skadi stopped another one in Churchton. I got two guys trying to burgle a shop in Deale. I’m not sure, but I think the crime rate’s up a little.’
‘Seems like it to me,’ Jacob added.
‘Ditto,’ Skadi put in. ‘I know I’m probably getting more business because Twilight isn’t beating me to them, but it feels worse than that.’
‘Violent and property crime are up five points in Deale Harbour and Churchton,’ Denny supplied. ‘Compared to last year at the same time, obviously. Friendship is showing a two percent rise. The other city areas are up, but not by a statistically significant amount.’
‘Thanks, Denny,’ June said. ‘Nice to know I’m not imagining things.’
Cygnus heard chatter in her left ear. ‘I have to go. They’re getting started.’ They were actually letting in the public and prepping the equipment for the broadcast; Cygnus had a link to the production booth via an earbud.
‘Good luck,’ June said and Cygnus tapped off her earpiece.
‘Cygnus,’ the producer’s voice said into her ear, ‘you’re go for… whatever it is you do.’ She shuffled her powers to her social configuration and then activated her suppression field. Then she gave a nod; they had said they would see her. ‘Thank you. Let’s check for interference, people.’
Cygnus rolled her eyes and settled down to wait.
~~~
‘For all the research into Ultrahuman powers,’ Kilmer was saying, ‘we don’t know what these people can do. We don’t know how they do it. We don’t know what kind of threat the next generation of Ultras will represent, and now we’re seeing aliens coming to our world. Aliens with unknown powers. We’ve seen that aliens are hostile. We’ve seen that aliens lack any sense of honour.’
He paused. Cygnus had noticed that having said he would not do the debate if she was not there, he had spent the entire time so far not looking in her direction. She was having a lot of trouble not rolling her eyes at half the things he was saying. She was not really sure how he was coming over to the television audience, but to her he seemed to be a paranoid loser with no real policies and the audience in the hall did not really seem to be warming to him.
‘We don’t know what Ultras can really do,’ he went on, and now he did raise a hand toward Cygnus, and also toward Captain Freedom who was standing beside her, in uniform. ‘We have Cygnus here tonight to suppress psionic influence in this hall. Captain Freedom is here for added security.’ Which was, Cygnus was fairly sure, a lie: Freedom was there to watch Cygnus because Kilmer wanted her in the room but did not trust her. ‘This is why we need a mandatory registration system for Ultrahumans. We need to know who they are and what they can do. We need a secure, off-world facility to house Ultrahuman criminals. We need to start building ships in space to defend us from threats beyond our skies. We cannot be caught with our pants down again!’
Someone had decided to put Marta Hendry in the moderator seat for the evening. She was doing her best to seem efficient and fair, and her best was pretty good so far. Hendry’s auburn hair was pinned up behind her head and she was wearing one of her usual smart suits. Green eyes regarded the senator as he headed back to his podium. ‘Mrs Hart?’ she said, inviting Hart to reply.
Hart stepped forward and looked out at the crowd. Cygnus had noticed that she took notes through her opponent’s speeches. Then she ignored those notes almost entirely when she replied. When she was first to speak, she never seemed to work from anything she had written down either.
‘Perhaps the good senator would have a better idea of what we know about Ultrahumans if he actually read any of that research he mentioned,’ Hart said. ‘Then we could send Cygnus back to doing the job she is so good at. For example, he would know that, as a receiving empath, all I can do is sense emotions. That lets me know when other people are near me. It lets me sense threats. Mostly, it helps me do something any politician worth his salt should be able to do: read people. Most Ultras are like me. They have some minor ability, some talent which lets them be better at something than a normal human. Many don’t even realise they have a power, and these are the people Senator Kilmer wants to seek out and force into registration. The senator’s voting record shows that he has consistently voted against any regulation proposing universal registration of firearms. He refuses to mandate the registration and licensing of deadly weapons, but he’s happy to force citizens of this country, many of them in their early teens, to register an accident of birth.’
She paused for a second, a slight smile playing over her lips. ‘Then we come to the practical matters. How does the senator hope to enforce his registration policy? Are we to have detectors on every street corner? UID agents patrolling and constantly checking IDs? And while I’m sure that NASA will appreciate the tenfold increase in their budget, can we really afford the massive cost of developing a space station bigger than anything we have ever put into orbit? Can we afford the extensive supply requirements or the cost of sending someone into orbit just to keep them prisoner? This military force in space has similar issues. I’m not here to say that these ideas are necessarily wrong, but they will take time and a lot of money. What are we going to cut from the budget to let us forge ahead into space? There are existing, ground-based solutions for all of these problems. We need to look thoroughly at those and find them wanting before we chase after pie-in-the-sky solutions.’
Cygnus allowed herself a small smile. Yes, endorsing Hart had been the right thing to do. She glanced at Captain Freedom and found him looking daggers at Kilmer. It sort of made sense: Hart was calm and considered while Kilmer was coming over as just short of a frothing madman. If Kilmer did not get his act together, the Captain’s anti-alien agenda was likely to fail. Cygnus was sure he did have an anti-alien agenda: he had basically said so on national TV. June still felt there was something wrong with the Captain, and maybe she was right.
‘Let’s move on to another controversial subject,’ Hendry said from her desk at one side of the stage. ‘The Union of Ultrahumans, the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China, and the World Trade Compact have recently recognised Amazonia as a nation state. The United Nations are currently discussing recognition. What position do our candidates take on this matter, and other matters of foreign policy? Mrs Hart, if you would?’
‘Put simply,’ Hart said, ‘the only reason we have never recognised Amazonia in the past is a grudge we hold on behalf of another nation. Even our own Secretary of State believes that recognising Amazonia would be to the benefit of both the citizens of that region and ourselves. There’s no doubt in my mind that we should bring Amazonia back into the community of nations.’
Cygnus smiled again as Hart went on. Yes, endorsing Hart had been a good idea, no matter how much Cygnus wanted to stay out of politics.
Sêrxü County, China, 2nd October.
General Xue’s army was on the march. What they were marching through was about nine and a half thousand square miles of grassland populated by about sixty-three thousand humans and almost six hundred thousand g
razing animals. There seemed to be a lot of yaks. Andrea was not sure she had really known what a yak looked like before, but she was now very familiar with them; they looked a lot like someone had laid a fur rug over a humpbacked cow. Contrary to popular opinion, they did not smell, at least not before some idiot with an assault rifle gunned them down for meat, or because he thought they were dangerous.
Andrea had been following the army for about seven days. Xue seemed to be the kind of man who attracted a devout following. His people were not quite fanatics, most of them anyway, but they did believe quite thoroughly that their general was going to carry them forward to victory. General Xue was going to rule China and bring back a golden age of prosperity. He might even end up ruling the world, depending upon who was talking. Okay, so things were not exactly glorious right now, but they would be in the future. Oh yes, they would.
Several hours of watching the general from within her shadows had brought Andrea to the conclusion that Xue was a classic megalomaniac. He was not an entirely useless general, as it happened. He seemed to understand strategy and tactics, but his strategy seemed to follow whim as much as any specific plan. For whatever reason, he wanted to take Tibet before he obliterated all opposition in China. Andrea had been unable to uncover his reasons, but he seemed to hate the place. He was a bully and something of a letch. He had around half a dozen female officers he had promoted purely on their looks and he seemed to enjoy forcing them to justify their positions by entertaining him of an evening. He could have persuaded them in other ways, as far as Andrea could tell. He had at least some ability to control minds: he had a squad of six bodyguards he had brainwashed into fanatical loyalty. He had also persuaded Guàiwù that they were the best of friends, which was no mean feat when you were talking about a monster that seemed to care about nothing other than destruction.
Perhaps Xue’s most dangerous ability was his precognitive flashes. He saw glimpses of battle and other future events. It seemed he was able to use that talent to plot his campaign and adapt his tactics during battles. No wonder he was winning. Andrea had considered the possibility that this was why he was heading for Tibet. Maybe he had seen something suggesting a threat to him and was going there to eliminate it. It was Tibet after all: the place probably had ‘Chosen One’ types popping out of the ground amid throngs of monks spurting prophecies.
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