Sovereign

by April Daniels

  Sovereign

  Nemesis - Book Two

  April Daniels

  Copyright

  Diversion Books

  A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008

  New York, NY 10016

  www.DiversionBooks.com

  Copyright © 2017 by April Daniels

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For more information, email info@diversionbooks.com

  First Diversion Books edition July 2017

  ISBN: 978-1-68230-823-3

  For the girls who are free.

  Chapter One

  “Don’t let your wife hear you say that,” he says. A late-night talk show host is joking with someone offscreen. A smattering of laughter leaks out of the crowd. “Yeah, we’re gonna hear all about it at Thanksgiving. Anyway, moving on. I’m really excited about this next guest. Tonight is her first television appearance since the Battle of New Port. She’s mightier than a battleship and faster than a jet—ladies and gentlemen, please give a big welcome to Dreadnought!”

  Cut to the curtains opening and Dreadnought steps out. Her blue bodyglove is snug and high-necked, with a white mantle and cape that brushes the back of her knees. Her blond hair has grown out, cut in a more feminine style than the butchy haircut she made her debut with, but still short enough not to be a problem in a fight. She waves at the audience and skims across the stage, toes inches from the ground, to land gently on the couch next to the host’s desk. The applause is thunderous.

  My lawyer and publicist, a dark-haired woman named Cecilia who’s wearing a skirt suit and tie, pauses the video. “Good. That was good. They like that sort of thing.”

  “That’s why I did it,” I say, trying to keep the boredom out of my voice. Outside the window, the Southern Ocean foams against the first rocks of Antarctica. We’re almost there, finally. Since I learned to fly, riding in airplanes—even hypertech jets like this one—only slows me down. When I really want to move fast, I just go up into orbit and come back down wherever I please.

  “Pay attention, Danny, this is important,” says Cecilia. It’s been important the last three times we did it too. After that disastrous interview with Rolling Stone, we’ve had to get serious about my media strategy.

  God, I have a media strategy.

  This is not what I thought being a superhero would be like.

  Cecilia hits play and the video continues. Onscreen, Dreadnought and the host—it’s easier to do this when I think of the Dreadnought onscreen as different than the Dreadnought I am right now—trade some banter. Like she planned, Dreadnought lets the host do most of the heavy lifting for making the interview funny. The other Dreadnoughts weren’t funny, and she’s got a serious gravitas deficit as it is, so she only smiles and chuckles appropriately, doesn’t try to make anyone laugh.

  “So how have things been since that all happened?” he asks in a caring voice, the signal that the interview has moved into the Serious Topics phase. He’s referring to the Third Battle of New Port, nine months ago. The day Dreadnought made her debut. The day the Legion Pacifica was destroyed and a fifteen-year-old girl shouldered the responsibility of protecting an area of four hundred thousand square miles with seventeen million people. Alone.

  “They’ve been all right, they’ve been all right,” says Dreadnought.

  “Are you still in school?”

  “No. I was for a while, though. The ROTC guys wouldn’t leave me the hell alone.” The audience laughs. Dreadnought looks like she’s going to say something more, but then realizes this was the line of conversation that spiraled so horribly out of control when she was talking to Rolling Stone. She was quoted saying some pretty venomous things about the Pentagon’s hypocrisy—how they were dragging their feet about accommodating transgender soldiers in the military, but were willing to cut her an exception so they could get her while she was young and put Dreadnought back under Uncle Sam’s thumb, the way no Dreadnought had been since the early ’60s.

  When the story ran, the thrust of the article was “Dreadnought hates the army!” rather than the basic biographical piece she thought she was being interviewed for.

  For a moment it looked like the controversy would derail my federal caping license, which would mean I’d never be able to work outside of my home district in the Pacific Northwest. One particularly noxious anti-transgender member of the House of Representatives even suggested stripping my parents of their federally-provided witness protection detail if I kept making such “anti-American” statements.

  “You left because the army was hounding you?”

  “No,” says Dreadnought, sitting up straighter. “Not at all; the sergeant in charge was very professional. The school district gave me special permission to test out early, and I decided to do it so I could go caping full time, is all.” She leaves unsaid the context of the matter, how she hadn’t really asked for that permission, and how if she’d turned it down she would have been expelled. Superheroes are disruptive to a school environment, they had said.

  “Right, okay,” the host says. “So you’re still not a member of the Legion, right?”

  A flash of something passes across Dreadnought’s face, there and gone. Cecilia pauses the video. “You slipped.”

  “It’s a sore topic,” I say.

  “That makes it more important to be able to hide your feelings.”

  She’s right, of course. But it still sucks.

  The video starts rolling again. “Well, the Legion is basically defunct,” Dreadnought is saying. “And anyway, I wouldn’t have been able to join until I was eighteen anyhow.”

  “How’s it gone, protecting New Port without them?”

  Dreadnought pauses before answering. What does one say to that? That she’s fought twelve major battles in nine months, and as a result she gets tense whenever her phone rings? That the nightmares wake her at least once a week? That she’s had to learn basic lessons the hard way every time, and other people have paid with their lives? That she’s done it all alone? That she’s been without her family, without anyone to talk to, because Calamity changed after she was wounded, and because Doc Impossible was always drunk? That even though she’s got a place to stay, she hasn’t decorated, and it still feels like she’s homeless? That sometimes when she’s alone she starts sobbing, and she doesn’t know why?

  Or should she talk about the other side of it? About how much she loves the power, about the intoxicating thrill of her own strength? Can she explain how much better food tastes when she buys it with money earned in blood, her blood? Should she tell them about the feral joy of living at the edge of death? About how battle makes her feel dangerous and savage and complete? Should she let them know that sometimes she’s disappointed when a fight ends too quickly? Can she explain how the lattice gets more beautiful every time she looks at it? Would any of them understand if she told them that sometimes she flies for hours, in any direction, just watching all the little people with their little lives, and how she can’t tell if what she feels for them is envy or pity? How can she explain that for the first time in her life, she is free, free, FREE, and she’s never going back, and she’ll kill anyone who tries to take it away from her?

  Is she brave enough to say that for the first time since puberty started, she doesn’t daydream about being dead? That she’s wonderfully, terribly, gloriously alive? That the world is so beautiful it hurts?

  What she says is, “I think I’m
getting the hang of it.” And smiles.

  The conversation goes off on a tangent about what it’s like to run face-first into a bug at four hundred miles an hour, and then circles back around to weightier topics. The Biannual World Conference is happening this year, the closest thing to a meeting of all the world’s capes as possible. Not every cape attends. Not every team sends representatives. But officially, everyone is invited. Dreadnought has been getting emails and phone calls from other capes ahead of the conference, welcoming her to the fold—as if she hasn’t been slugging it out with blackcapes on an almost weekly basis—and despite her occasional annoyance at the tone of some of the welcomes, her enthusiasm for attending the conference is palpable. Which is why, of course, Cecilia made sure that it came up in the conversation. Dreadnought’s eyes light up, and her shoulders loosen.

  “I’m really looking forward to meeting everyone,” she says.

  There’s a little more, but that’s the meat of it. A speaker in the ceiling of the cabin clicks on. “Buckle up, we’re on final approach,” says Doc Impossible.

  “Finally!” I say. Cecilia kills the video, and I climb out of my chair to head up front.

  “You know, most kids would be really excited to fly in a supersonic jet,” Doc Impossible says.

  “Most kids don’t get up into orbit every week,” I say. The cockpit door slides open at my approach, and Doc Impossible looks over her shoulder from the pilot’s seat.

  Doc cut her thick black braid off earlier this year. Her hair frames her face now. Sharp bangs, longer at the side, higher in the back. Her round glasses flicker and glow with telemetry readouts scrolling past her eyes. “How’d it go?” she asks.

  “I need to practice in the mirror more,” I say as I slip into the chair next to her and buckle myself down. (Force of habit.) “It’s too easy to see what I’m thinking.”

  Doc presses a button to snap the door shut. “Don’t worry so much. Cecilia’s paid to obsess over that so you don’t have to. Trust me, people love you.”

  “Yeah, well.” A familiar unease settles in me. People like me because they don’t know me. Because I’m young, and pretty, and powerful. Everyone wants Dreadnought. I’m not so sure they want Danielle.

  “Don’t grow up so fast, Danny.” Without taking her eyes off the controls, she reaches over to punch me in the shoulder.

  “Says the seven-year-old,” I say.

  Doctor Impossible smiles. “And eight months, don’t forget the months.” She taps a few buttons on a touchscreen built into her armrest. “Okay, we’re ready for final approach, I’m gonna need to concentrate.” Manual flight is an eccentricity for her. Doc Impossible is an android. She could link up to the jet’s computer and fly it with her mind if she wanted to. Same with a lot of other hypertech. She never does. Manual controls all the way.

  We come over a ridge of stony hills, and there in the distance are the convention grounds. The world’s only luxury hotel south of the Antarctic Circle. It’s used once every two years. My knees are bouncing. My seat is suddenly uncomfortable. I want to head over to the jet’s door, get out, and fly there myself, because holy crap, I’m going to the world convention! All the people I’m going to meet, all the things I’m going to see—the next two days are going to be amazing.

  “Can’t this thing go faster?” I ask Doc Impossible.

  “Yes, but we need to slow down for the final approach.”

  It takes forever to come around for a landing, slow, tilt the jets to the vertical landing configuration, and touch down just outside the hangar. Then it takes another forever to taxi inside and up to the heated boarding tunnel that extends out to greet us like an expanding caterpillar. I’m the first through when the hatch opens, and Cecilia is close behind. I take to the air and do a slow pirouette as we head down the tube. On my second time around, I notice Doc hanging back at the jet’s door.

  “Come on, Doc, hurry up!”

  “Uh, maybe you two ought to go on ahead without me,” she says, not meeting my eyes.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t think I’m going to be really popular this year. It’ll go better for you if we don’t show up together.”

  Nine months ago, Doc’s mother, Mistress Malice—now working under the name Utopia—hacked her brain and used her body to ambush the Legion Pacifica. Valkyrja and Carapace died. Magma was forced into retirement because of his injuries. Chlorophyll suffered brain damage, and when he was stable, his sister showed up to take custody of him. Nobody’s heard from them since. The thing is, everyone thought Malice had been dead for fifty years. Doc Impossible was scared that if anyone found out she was an android built by a supervillain, they’d throw her in prison, or worse. So she kept her mouth shut, and the Legion died.

  I float back to her and take her by the arm. “It wasn’t your fault, Doc. It was hers.”

  Doc Impossible sighs. “Let’s say I believe that; other people won’t, or won’t care.”

  “She’s right,” says Cecilia. “It would be better if you two weren’t seen arriving together.”

  “No,” I say, with more force than I intended. “I mean, no, I don’t care. Let them talk.”

  “Danny, what did you hire me for?” says Cecilia.

  “I needed a lawyer.”

  “Okay, but I’m also your publicist, and as your publicist, I have to tell you the Doctor is right,” says Cecilia with calm, measured words. “She’s not really popular right now. Doc, if you want to talk to me about rehabilitating your image, we might be able to work something out in time for the next convention, but right now—”

  “Yes, agreed,” says Doc.

  “No, not agreed,” I say, and immediately hate how much like a whine it sounds. “I mean, look, what is it going to say about me if I won’t even be caught showing up with the woman who lets me crash in her condo?”

  “That you’re not an idiot?” says Doc.

  “Oh no, I am totally an idiot, if that’s what it takes to get you off this friggin’ jet,” I say as I get behind Doc and start pushing. She laughs and lets herself be carried along.

  “This might complicate our bid to take over the Legion,” says Cecilia.

  “Don’t worry about it. I’m a superhero.”

  Chapter Two

  And so is everyone else. Even the walk through the hotel to our room has me so excited my feet barely touch the ground. My head is constantly on a swivel. There’s Gravestone, with his high-collared cape of shadows! And there’s the Crimson Rose with her enchanted rapier! And they’re just like, chilling out, waiting around for more jets to come in. Okay, sure, there’s a lot of people out of costume too—hangers-on, con volunteers, capes wearing civvies—but I see more superheroes just in the ten-minute walk to the rooms than I have in the nine months since I started this gig. It takes a concerted effort not to dig into my bags for my little notebook and start demanding autographs right here and now.

  You’d think that after almost a year of being Dreadnought, I wouldn’t still be such a superhero fangirl.

  You’d think that.

  But what happened is my fangirldom got worse.

  “Down, girl,” says Doc, tugging at my cape until my boots touch the floor. I’d started to float without realizing it.

  “This is so cool!” And the convention site is pretty amazing too. Everything here is elegant, restrained. Polished stone floors and subtle design touches on the walls. It feels like we’re wasting money just walking through the place.

  “Wait until we get to the meet and greet,” Doc says. An elevator opens with a pleasant chime and we step in. “You’ll squee so hard they’ll hear you in New Port.”

  “Yeah, it’s gonna—well, I mean, I’ll try to keep it in check,” I say, with a guilty glance over at Cecilia. Image control is important, because without people’s trust, I can’t do my job.

  But no, Cecilia only smiles. “Just be yourself, Danny. This isn’t an interview; these are your peers. Let them get to know you.”

  M
y stomach flips over. Let them get to know me. I’m better than I used to be. A lot better. I don’t reflexively assume people won’t like me anymore, for example. But, well…sometimes it’s hard to tell if they like me, or if they like Dreadnought.

  The elevator’s walls are glass, and we slide up the side of the building, the concourse roof falling away from us. The sparse beauty of the summer Antarctic falls away from us on all sides. You think of Antarctica, and you think of ice, and in a lot of places that’s always true, but at this time of year, the land around the hotel is scrub grass and tumbled rocks reaching out to distant, snowy mountains.

  Finally, I say, “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

  “If I thought it wasn’t, we wouldn’t be here,” says Cecilia, putting a hand on my shoulder. “Some of my clients are…difficult in person, and for them, an event like this would be an invitation to disaster. You’re not that kind of client.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Cecilia nods. “Just put your best foot forward and go meet a lot of people. You’ll be a hit, trust me.”

  • • •

  The first World Conference happened in 1969. Eight years before, Mistress Malice’s campaign for world domination had ushered in a new era. Now capes were more than colorful criminals and the heroes who fought them or obedient instruments of existing state power. In the new age, superheroes were—or could be, at least—major powers on the international stage in their own right. As this new understanding took hold, some in the cape community called for greater cooperation and coordination across national lines.

  The first World Conference was attended by only twenty-three capes. The political tensions of the Cold War meant they had to meet on neutral ground, and since none of the non-aligned countries wanted to host, that meant they had to meet in Antarctica. Almost a half-century of growth and development later, the World Conference has become one of the most important trade shows on the planet. So that’s the history of it, the why, the what, and the how. But knowing that doesn’t prepare me for what it actually is.