Superhero by Night Omnibus

by Jeffery H. Haskell

  “Great,” Zim replied. “Let’s go get it.”

  Bill pulled the tactical vest around his chest, sealing it up before loading it down with ammo. “It’s in the form of a two-ton bomb somewhere at Saints HQ,” he said without looking at his men.

  “Oh,” Zim said. “That sucks.”

  “That’s putting it mildly. Call the Saints military attaché. See if you can let them know we’re coming. Also, tell them Krisan and The Wraith are friendlies trying to help.”

  “I’ll tell them, but I don’t think they’ll listen,” Zim said as he rushed over to the secure sat-phone they used for all their communications.

  Ten minutes later they were loaded for bear and in the van rushing toward downtown New Orleans on a Friday night. They didn’t have lights or sirens, so they were stuck with traffic, which was bumper to bumper.

  “Dammit,” Bill said checking his watch. She’d texted fifteen minutes earlier and they were still two miles out. He opened the door and stood up on the seat to try and see what the hold up was. Some kind of traffic accident. There were flashing blue lights and a fire truck a half mile away.

  “Zim,” he said without looking at the driver. “Can you get around this mess?”

  “If this were Baghdad, sure. Here? Not without hurting or killing a civvy.”

  That’s what he thought.

  Two miles, full gear; running would be faster.

  “Rico, take the controls, follow when you can. Whiskey One-One, run your butts off. Felix, you have permission to go as fast as you want.”

  The spec-ops soldier didn’t smile, per se, but Bill had known the man for years. He was high-speed-low-drag—he always felt like everyone was holding him back. Before Bill finished the thought, Felix was out the side door and running flat out with his sniper rifle over his shoulder.

  “Zim, Sandy, let’s hoof it.”

  They took off, beating the street in their military boots. Other than their tactical vests that said Federal Agents on the back, they didn’t have any exterior identifiers; they looked like three heavily armed men running down the street in downtown New Orleans, on a Friday night.

  What could possibly go wrong. Bill knew the second he thought it he shouldn’t have. Jinxing himself was certainly high on his list of things not to do before a firefight.

  ♦♦♦

  Vaas eyed the scene from a nearby building. He wasn’t going to move any closer than half a mile—the distance his bomb maker assured him would be safe. He, Miguel, and a few of his less expendable men were there; everyone else he sent in an all-out assault on the Saints HQ to stop the wench who… who murdered his brother… from disarming the bomb and ruining their last shot at redemption.

  “Are you sure there’s no way to trigger it now, Miguel?”

  His right-hand man shook his head. “Because of Seraph’s powers we’ve never gotten a person in the inside. They have state-of-the-art jamming and signal security. Don’t worry though, the timer is the best money can buy. It’s also rigged to go off if they try to move it. If they sound their evacuation signal it will go off. Unless they have a demolition expert in there, they have no hope of disarming it. In…” he looked down to check his phone… “in just over three hours the Saints will be no more. Along with half the city’s cops, which is a bonus.”

  Vaas nodded. It was. He didn’t care about the men he had sent to their deaths. They didn’t know there was a bomb; just that ISO was making its move, and no one could be allowed to stop them.

  He rubbed his shoulder where it stung from the way she tossed him into the electrical panel. Not that he would ever tell anyone it hurt, or how badly she scared him. He’d dealt with powered people before, but ISO always had the upper hand. People were so easy to blackmail or buy that he had never worried about it. And if they were too honest, well, everyone could die. There were very few superheroes who were all but unkillable: The Protector, that armored woman in Arizona, maybe a couple of others…

  Most could die from a bullet or poison or fire… but it rarely came to that. Most often it was easier for them just to look the other way when ISO moved in. And they had… until Detroit. And now, here.

  He clenched his fist in frustration. He wanted to scream. All his hard work, all the time he spent building this little empire. Now his brother was dead, all his plans were falling apart, and nothing he did made it better. His mother would be so ashamed of him if she knew he let Peter die.

  This woman, this avenging ghost, simply refused to die. It was like she was possessed. When they moved into Detroit, they had run up against a man who called himself, ‘The Wraith’ and it had gone badly, or so Vaas had heard; very few ISO people made it out of the city. The Ghost had been one of the lucky few, until he’d gone back the second time.

  He was sure the Wraith in Detroit was a man; but here was this woman raising hell, and they didn’t even know who she was. If they had her name they could go after her family or threaten her friends. Maybe she was the Wraith reborn, reincarnated to come and punish Vaas for his sins.

  Madre Dios.

  Even if everything went well tonight, and that was a big if, odds were heavy that the council would remove him in the next few days. And the Outfit had only one retirement plan.

  Chapter 28

  This place was a maze of corridors and dead ends. Every time I thought I had the right way, it would turn away and lead into a maintenance area. I was getting nowhere, and running out of time. Sooner or later the Saints would lock the building down and start a floor-by-floor search. When they did that, I was done.

  I needed some intel—the lay of the land.

  “This way,” Sara said from behind me. I spun around, surprised to hear her voice.

  “You’re talking to me again?”

  She shrugged. “You’re not completely hopeless Madisun, just mostly. Follow this hall, take the first left then the second door on the right. It’s a security substation. You better hurry; you don’t have much time.”

  I took off running. I didn’t know what she meant but I suspected. Every second that ticked by, my arms grew heavier and my body ached. Like I had run a marathon or something. The more I used my powers the more I understood them. I gained some kind of energy from killing. The Wraith fed on that energy, sharing it with me. When energized I was stronger, faster, able to heal, see in the dark, hear better, and of course, shadow step. When I hadn’t killed anyone in a while, these powers didn’t seem as reliable. As if the energy in me was diverted. Then when I did use them, it took a while—as in a few deaths—for them to work right.

  I stopped in front of the door she had pointed out to me and pushed my ear up to it. Someone was in there—I couldn’t quite make out who. Well, time to find out. I stepped back and kicked the door open. The metal door slammed against the wall as it pivoted on its hinges and I ran in, heading for the first person I saw.

  He was out of his chair in an instant, but not quite fast enough. I kicked his swivel chair, sending him flopping back down into it. Then I stepped forward and punched him in the throat. His hands flew up to his neck reflexively. I dropped down, punched him twice in the solar plexus then landed an uppercut on his chin as he doubled over. He collapsed to the floor, moaning.

  Monitors, keyboards and other electronic wizardry dominated the wall. It took me a minute, but I was able to pull up a map of the base and—

  “Madi, come in?”

  I pulled the radio off my belt and held it to my mouth. “Go ahead.”

  “I found the truck. It’s a delivery vehicle parked in sub garage three.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked, stopping my progress for a second to focus on the conversation.

  “Positive. I tapped into the driver’s cell just as he was leaving. And Madi, the minimum safe distance is five-hundred feet… we don’t have a lot of time.”

  “Understood. You did good. Try and make your way out of here, Krisan, you won’t be any more use to me here. Find your Army friends and let them know.”

/>   “What about you?” she asked.

  I turned the radio off. I wasn’t leaving. There was no way I was going to let that bomb go off. Either I disarmed it, or I went with it.

  “I don’t like your course of action. We can’t die—not yet,” Sara said from behind me.

  “Spice,” I replied without looking at her. “I need you to trust me the way I trust you. I don’t have a death wish any more than you do.”

  When she didn’t reply I assumed she’d pulled her vanishing trick. “Bingo,” I said to myself. Sub garage three was directly under the center of the dome. It was used for delivery of essential equipment.

  Great.

  “No time like the present.” I took the guard’s weapon; a plastic pistol with a glowing mag. I had never seen anything like it before. I looked for a logo but all I found was the manufacturer stamp. MarsTech Global IPP-12. I had no idea what any of that meant—I’d never heard of the company or the pistol. I stuffed it in my belt and took off running. There was a stairwell not far from here; I could go up one level, run across the hallway there, and back down and into the garage.

  Two minutes later I was pounding down the stairs when the building shook. For a second, I was worried the bomb had gone off, but no, it was something else. Then the sound of gunfire reached me. ISO was assaulting the building—probably in hopes of stopping me. With any luck, Sergeant Farrel’s team would arrive soon and help the police deal with the gang bangers. I had other business to attend to.

  Running was starting to wear on me as I crashed through the last door to the garage. I stopped and bent over, hand on knees, trying to catch my breath. I love having these powers and I love making the people who killed my family pay… but this was exhausting.

  “Madisun Dumas, get down on the floor and put your hands behind your back,” Mach said from thirty feet away.

  Oh fantastic.

  The sub-garage was almost empty, and not particularly big. Maybe a hundred feet from end to end and thirty feet wide. A series of bay doors lined the right wall where delivery vehicles would back up and offload their supplies. If I recalled correctly, the Dome was also an emergency shelter and back-up national guard armory. This time of night on a Friday they didn’t have any deliveries. Just the one lone tractor trailer, parked along the left wall waiting to be backed up and offloaded.

  Except it had two tons of C4 in it.

  “Listen. That truck,” I said pointing at the vehicle, “is full of C4 and it’s going to detonate in a little under two—”

  “We know,” Mach said. He wasn’t alone. Seraph stepped out from behind him through a portal of light, followed by Burn. She looked like an angel, with her white robes, pale blonde hair, skin and bright blue eyes. Burn was like other elementals I had heard of; living fire. Heat rolled off him in waves as he moved apart from his team. Maybe he didn’t want to hurt them, but more likely he was going to go for the flank.

  Oh snap.

  I glanced around, looking for Sara, thinking maybe she could help, but she was nowhere to be seen.

  I stood up a little taller. “You remembered me?” I asked him.

  A couple of his team glanced at him.

  “Yes. I’m sorry about your brother, I truly am. But killing us isn’t the answer,” he said.

  Wait, kill them? I cocked my head to the side a bit confused. “Mach, I never blamed you for what happened to Charles. It was his own fault. I’m not here to kill anyone, just defuse the bomb.”

  I took a step to the left when Bull came out from a far door. He was seven feet tall with a sculpted muscular body. His dark skin was barely distinguishable from the fur on his bullhead. He snorted when he saw me, stomping one hoofed foot on the ground like he was going to charge.

  “It’s no use lying to us,” Seraph said. Her eyes glowed with a golden quality as she spoke, light shimmered off her skin and it was hard to look away from her.

  “Don’t let her touch you,” Spice said suddenly from right behind me. I glanced over my shoulder and she was hiding behind me.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “She can hurt me, Madi, bad. Don’t let her,” she said before vanishing.

  I looked back at the team and Seraph’s face turned into a mask of shock, then rage. “She’s evil, Mach, possessed by a demon. We have to stop her!” The Angel stepped forward and a shield of light and matching sword appeared in a burst of light.

  “Whoa, just stop, I’m not here to hurt any of you. I’m trying to save—”

  Bull apparently took his orders from Seraph because before I could finish, he charged right at me.

  “Son of a—” I had no time before he hit me with his thick skull.

  Chapter 29

  Bill fired off his M4 at the two men whose backs were to him. It wasn’t hard to tell they weren’t cops; police didn’t use modified submachine guns to spray crowds. The first one went down silently but the second let out a scream and required a second shot.

  The street was chaos. He slammed into the wheel of the pickup truck the two men had hid behind. He didn’t know if they were alive or dead; right now, it just mattered that they weren’t moving. He dropped the mag from his rifle and slid a new one home.

  “Felix. Sitrep?”

  “Is bad a good answer?” Sandy asked over the radio.

  It was bad. How could Bill have been so blind to an organization that could field a small army in downtown New Orleans? Last year was the first time he’d even heard about ISO-1. Now they were sieging the Saints’ HQ in New Orleans. Sieging!

  “I count five-zero-tangos split into multiple groups. Small arms, and some RPGs. Basically, it looks like St. Petersburg last year during the war,” Felix said.

  “Geez man, that’s not reassuring at all. Rico almost died there,” Sandy said.

  “Cut the chatter,” Bill ordered. Step one, they needed to regroup. The Dome took up four square blocks; the nearby streets ran parallel to each side in an almost perfect square. They were on the Westside, along with the majority of the assailants. A plan formed in his mind; he’d already called the police and with any luck they would respond soon.

  ‘Luck wasn’t a plan,’ as his old Drill Sergeant used to say.

  “Felix, weapons hot. Make sure you’re not shooting the good guys,” he ordered.

  “I’m insulted you think I would.”

  Bill shrugged off the comeback. “Sandy, run down the street and see what kind of trouble you can stir up. Zim, follow and support.”

  “What are you going to do?” Zim asked.

  “Something stupid,” he cut off his comms. It was now or never. He jumped up, shouldering his rifle as he did so, and moved around the corner of the truck. The street was alive with fire. The staccato gunfire of the gang and something else—some kind of discharging energy weapon punctuated by bright flashes of blue light.

  Bill rushed to the twelve-foot concrete wall that surrounded the Dome just past the sidewalk. The wall itself wouldn’t stop a person but the concertina wire on top as well as the electrified bits would. Ducking into a low crouch he ran as fast as he could. There was a side entrance a hundred meters down; if he could get to it, get inside, he might be able to speak to someone in there and find a way to help the Wraith. There were a lot of ifs in that plan.

  Chapter 30

  My problem was that I didn’t want to kill any of these people. They were the good guys, maybe not from the same side of the tracks as me, but they did good things.

  Apparently, they had no such compunction about me. Bull’s charge slammed into me, sending me flying sideways. I felt a rib crack when he hit and another when I smacked the concrete wall hard enough to leave a bloody streak down with my face.

  “She doesn’t seem so tough,” he snorted. Not only did he look like a bull, he sounded and acted like one. He was also frigging strong. I wobbled to my feet. Holding myself up with one hand against the wall I reached into my pocket and retrieved my scarf.

  When in Rome.

  “If I have to b
eat the tar out of every one of you to save your lives,” I said as I wrapped the scarf around my face. “Then I will.” My eyes flashed blue and my voice took on the reverberation that only comes when I use my Wraith voice. I had to say, it was pretty cool.

  “You think a little blue glow is going to scare us hellspawn?” Seraph asked.

  That was just mean.

  “Careful,” Mach warned his team, “she’s clever.”

  “Clever doesn’t count for crap. What’s she going to do to me, punch me?” Burn asked. He moved forward slowly, letting me regain my strength. Bull approached from the side and Seraph backed them both up. Mach, strangely, held back. I wondered if he believed me but was waiting to see how I handled the situation.

  I pulled out the Glock and pointed it at Burn. Only three rounds left.

  “Bullets can’t hurt me. My body is made of living flame. You should know who you’re trying to kill,” he said. His face was an eerie replica of a human face, just made from leaping flame.

  “It’s not for you,” I said. I aimed up and pulled the trigger. He had a moment of confusion before the sprinkler head above him exploded. Alarms rang and the fire suppression system kicked in, dumping hundreds of gallons of water on the parking garage.

  It also had the added benefit of switching the lights to emergency mode as the power was cut to avoid more damage. I ran forward, throwing the gun in Bull’s face as he charged at me again. I don’t think it hurt him, but the gun made him flinch, which gave me time to push off the wall and leap over Burn’s kneeling, screaming form as I head right for Seraph.

  She charged forward, putting her shield in front of her like a ram and laying the sword on top like a spear. I really didn’t know anything about sword fighting other than the pointy end goes in the other guy.

  We headed right for each other. Her smiling face betrayed her overconfidence. I think most people with powers were the same. It’s like they get this tremendous gift then forget how to do anything without it. I can thank Joseph for helping me avoid that particular pitfall.