He was wedged into the concrete ridges that formed the stylized gothic exterior of the American International Building at 70 Pine Street. Far enough away from, but within sight of, the towering Freedom Rise: the headquarters of the Freedom Council.
As usual, he was multitasking.
He was standing on two steel-bladed mountaineering pitons that were used to scale rocky ridges of mountain slopes but also worked extremely well for scaling the outer skin of a concrete skyscraper. A third piton was lodged into concrete directly behind him and was attached to a safety harness that was clasped to his waist. American International had been originally constructed in 1932 and the limestone exterior, so common for buildings of the day, was ideal for the brand of pitons Lantern was using.
His perch was precarious, not to mention the stabbing spear-points of pain shooting up his not-yet-healed broken right leg. He said a silent prayer for the armor-cast that kept his leg protected, stable, and almost as movable as normal. He’d snapped the leg in two places during a fall from a cliff back in Boston three months ago. Something he was trying hard not to think about at the moment.
He’d never had a fear of heights, but he’d recently discovered that falling is not much fun. Right now, he needed a direct line of sight to his target in order to penetrate the firewalls of the most sophisticated digital defenses on the planet.
That was his first priority...
Second on his list was Boston: stopping the city’s last remaining gang of mobsters from executing their most important heist to date. Twenty billion in untraceable digital reserves straight from Boston’s largest account with the International Banking Consortium.
Considering that the IBC was the Freedom Council’s creation and that ultimately it was Council money he was, in a roundabout way, protecting, the Council ought to be thanking him. That, of course, would never happen, he knew.
“They did it, sir. The whole thing went down in less than a minute.” Lantern paused, dreading what he had to say next. “And I’m afraid we have a casualty.” He knew the boss would not be pleased to hear about the death of the security guard happening right under their noses.
Lantern was relieved by the response he got back.
“Good work,” the Revolution’s voice said on the other end of the line. “Let me know what else you see.”
Lantern just smiled. Seeing was his thing.
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS.
09:45AM
The Revolution and Sophia Linh sat in the cockpit of the U.S. Air Force’s latest marvel: a Sikorsky UH-1200 Stealth Hawk helicopter, dubbed StealthHawk-1. Dark, sleek, and angular. Invisible to radar. One half of a generous gift from sympathetic officers at Hanscom Air Force base in the days just after the Council’s evacuation of Boston (StealthHawk-2 still sat in a hangar bay on standby). No doubt a group loyal to John Bailey’s far-reaching Special Division S-1of the CIA, better known as SHADOW. Bailey had been the second-in-command of the Suns of Liberty, behind the Revolution, and had gone by the call sign Saratoga. He was one of the many who had given his life to free Boston.
A scarlet cape was draped across the Revolution’s back. Body armor of bold blue. Sleek metal snug tightly to his body, with grooves and curves built into the steel. Prominent shoulder plates lay under the spots where the cloak attached. A red star on the chest, covering his solar plexus, and another across his forehead. Boots, forearms, gloves shining royal red in the dancing afternoon sunlight. A silver-white belt with a blue star on the buckle was clamped around his waist. The only part of his body that was visible was his eyes, protected by thick, clear eye shields. Over the mouth and nose section of his helmet was a vented system that both allowed air in freely and filtered it. All of it made of a nearly indestructible titanium alloy called TO-4.
No one knew his true identity. The last man to know had been the man who had created him. And he had died long ago.
At first, the symbolism of the armor, the costume, had been a hard sell for the man who would become the Revolution. He'd needed convincing. But the Freedom Council was a creature of media birth. So must be its adversary.
It would take something that would make an immediate impact to compete with the twenty-four-seven power of the Media Corp propaganda machine. A superhero would make that immediate impact. People had always yearned for a superhero. So he had become one.
He had chosen to end his personal life. He had given up being a normal human being a long time ago.
One life ends, another begins.
He had no friends, no family left. He devoted himself to the cause. There was only one catch. To be the Revolution, he knew he would have to be willing to die…and to kill. Had to be ready to make the decisions few could ever make. The decisions of a perpetual soldier.
The only thing he had left that meant anything to him was his country. His duty. And he would see them through to the bitter end, no matter the cost. The ancients had believed that the greatest life lived was that which ended in a glorious death. He could only hope that his glory would be the restoration of the Republic.
Other Americans had paid with their lives to secure freedom. Was it really so strange, the choice he had made? To be a soldier, a public servant? That’s all he was.
And now he had enlisted help for his one-man war. The Suns of Liberty were born. If a war was to be waged in the name of the people, they would have to wage it. If the Republic was to be saved, it would fall to them to do the saving.
Sophia banked the Sikorsky hard right and the duo descended from the cloud bank in a steep dive. They dropped down to the rooftops of Boston’s skyscrapers. Down into the steel canyon of the streets.
Sophia’s code name was Helius. She wore a shiny, rounded, black glider's helmet that came to a point in the back; a face shield covered her down to the chin and was bright-blue reflective. She could see out, but no one could see in. Bright-blue bracelets that matched the face shield were built into the arms of her all-black flight suit. The bracelets were actually fusion weapons of enormous power. She painted quite the contrast sitting next to the bold red and blue of the Revolution.
She was barely five foot two, which disguised her lethality. Her father had pounded martial arts training into her brother and her from an early age, so not only did she carry a fusion reactor with her, she could also engage in “nuclear karate.” In her early thirties, she was the youngest of the Suns. She was also short-tempered, egotistical, and tough as nails—with a Ph.D. in engineering to boot.
Dr. Linh was an astronautical engineer as well as an astronaut, though she’d never gotten the chance to go up. She had been a top NASA engineer and, in more sane times, would have been one of history’s most famous inventors. But the Council had sent gang assassins to murder her father and to try to steal the Helium-3 engine she had invented with him. So she’d become Helius instead. The elder Lihn had been the CEO of Lihn Industries and a bit of an activist in San Francisco during the early gang wars there. He had paid for that with his life.
Surprising to many, she had declined to carry on the company after his death. Unbeknownst to the rest of the world, she had suited up as Helius and secretly exacted her revenge on any and all Bay area crime syndicates she could find. An indirect attack on the Freedom Council, since they had long used gangs to do their dirty work. Now she fought the Council directly as a member of the Suns of Liberty.
Sophia had taken only a few weeks to learn to fly the Stealth Hawk and, most importantly, to learn the protocols for putting the vehicle into its advanced autopilot mode that allowed it to essentially fly itself, according to certain defined parameters.
The Revolution, on the other hand, sat uncomfortably in the copilot’s seat. Fearless as he was, his one trepidation was flying. And it seemed he was always flying.
Revolution probed the street ahead with his telescopic visors. “Lantern, do you have a lock on the getaway vehicle?”
“Yes, they are in a city bus. The BPD are not following.”
“Can you track it
?”
“Searching for a lock now,” Lantern said.
Another hard dive and they were flying just above the streetlights. Revolution cursed to himself.
“General, no offense,” Sophia said, “but I’ve seen you leap out of a helicopter with no parachute. How can you possibly be afraid to fly?”
For a reason that had to do more with habit than anything else, the Revolution was referred to as “General” just as often as his superhero moniker by the members of his team. To them, he was their field general.
“I’m not afraid to fly, I just don’t like to.”
“I’ve got it. Sending you the tracking now,” Lantern told them over their coms. “And we’ve caught a break, sir,” he added. “The driver just put a location into his GPS. I have a firm lock on their destination. Looks like the stash-room.”
A remarkably detailed 3-D display of Boston superimposed in the HUDs of the duo, and they could easily see the disguised bus dressed up in digital red against the aqua blue of Lantern’s real-time scan of the city. Then the locale of the stash-room beamed to life in a split-screen image, complete with the highlighted path the getaway bus would take to get there.
“Good work, Lantern,” Revolution said.
“Has anyone heard from Spider Wasp?” Sophia asked.
“Paul Ward is still M.I.A,” Rachel Dodge spat back. Rachel’s call sign was Stealth because she had the ability to turn invisible, thanks to the world’s first and only fully functioning invisibility cloak.
“Call signs only, please,” the Revolution reminded.
“Sorry, General. Spider Wasp has not called in yet,” she said, and then added, “the little fucker.”
Revolution leaned toward Sophia, speaking not into the com, only for her to hear, “This is a gang we’re taking down. He’ll be here. Give him some time.”
“He doesn’t show for anything else,” Sophia said, just to him.
“He’ll show for this.”
Five minutes passed before a familiar voice broke the silence over their coms. “Where you guys been? I’ve been waiting on you.” Before anyone could answer, the voice added, “So, why do you think these guys turned on the Council?” It was Paul Ward’s voice booming over the com. Sure enough, Ward had shown. He had a particular dislike for the gangs in Boston. Revolution knew there was no way Spider Wasp was going to miss out on taking down the very last one.
Ward was referring to the not-so-well-kept secret that the big gangs had all been bought off by the Council a long time ago and did the Council’s bidding. This hadn’t stopped gangs from fighting turf wars. In fact, it had increased them in many cases, upped the stakes, as they competed for Council business.
But to turn against the Council itself was unusual. In the post-depression world of banking, the gangs stole from the deposit accounts of customers instead of the reserve accounts of the banks.
It wasn’t much of a distinction, in reality, since most depositors’ money was insured by the full faith and credit of the US government, but the distinction was one of high symbolic importance.
It was one big Fuck You to the Council. A public flouting of the rules.
“The Council left Boston,” Revolution said, nodding slightly to Sophia as he said it, as if to say, See, I told you he’d show. That was about as close as you got to a ribbing from the man in the metal. “And they took their business with them. These guys probably feel like they have nothing left to lose.”
“That makes sense,” Ward said.
“Of course, they’re wrong,” Revolution said.
Presently...
09:56AM
Revolution stood in the center of the bus waiting for the nearly two-dozen men around him to make their move. There was no danger for him there. Their bullets would be repelled by the titanium alloy of his armor. They would do more damage to themselves than to him. He was counting on that. If they bum-rushed him, he could easily overpower them all. This was going to be very satisfying.
Several of the men reached for weapons, placed their aim, and began to pull their triggers—
But just before they could fire, a voice called out from the front of the bus, “That’s enough!” It was Big Bruiser Gunzy.
Bruiser walked forward as the men parted to let him pass. He was not armed. Instead, he held a strange metal cylinder that the Revolution did not recognize.
“Oh, you think you’re so clever, don’t you? Scare the shit out of us, make us fire on you. Take us all out without having to raise your pinky. Let us do it for you.”
The Revolution said nothing.
“I’ve got news for you. I know all about you. I came prepared. Let’s see how you fare without all that armor.” Bruiser pointed the EMP device at the Revolution. The same one he had used to fry all the electrical power in the bank.
And pulled its trigger.
CHAPTER 3
At that exact moment, halfway across town, at the location the bus driver had programmed into his GPS, a tall skinny bagman for Marconi’s boys was pulling Uzis down from a shelf in the gang’s Weapons Room. His nickname was Stimpy and he was alone in the room. Left to do the shit work—yet again.
Stimpy’s job was to lay the guns neatly out on the table for the two-dozen men who were presently in the adjoining Counting Room. They’d received the distress signal from the bus and were getting ready to mobilize.
As Stimpy had his back turned, a ghost appeared in the center of the room. The ghost was Lantern. He simply materialized in the middle of the room.
As he’d made absolutely no sound, Stimpy hadn’t even noticed him.
Lantern watched him for a while and then finally spoke up. “You look busy,” Lantern said calmly.
Stimpy nearly jumped straight out of his socks. “What the fuck?” he breathed, too startled to even scream. “What the fuck are you, man? How the fuck did you get in here?”
“You shouldn’t curse.” Lantern took a step closer to Stimpy, and the lanky man stumbled backwards, ramming his back into the shelf with the Uzis.
“Stay right where you are!” Stimpy scanned the room. There were weapons everywhere, but this stranger hadn’t gone for any of them and his hands were empty.
Stimpy made the fastest move he’d ever made in his entire life, spinning, grabbing an Uzi, and spinning back around to point the deadly weapon straight at Lantern. “Don’t fucking move or I swear to God I’ll take your fucking head off.”
“Oh, see now, I asked you not to curse.”
Stimpy took a good hard look at the stranger in front of him. It sure looked like he had no weapon on him. But there was no way. Nobody would come in here with no protection. You’d have to be completely off your rock—
Stimpy blanched. He noticed the MagCharges right behind the stranger. A whole bunch of them lined up on the shelf. Marconi liked to use them to open vaults and upscale jewelry boxes. Marconi seemed especially proud of them because they were military grade and came courtesy of the Freedom Council itself. Haven’t heard much from the Council in some time, Stimpy thought.
They were powerful, programmable charges that could be magnetized to any metallic object for an easily mobile time bomb. And they were small. They could fit in the palm of your hand—if you had big hands. Did the stranger have big hands? He strained to see.
And that’s when he noticed it. Something just wasn’t right about the stranger. Not right at all. But what the hell was it? He couldn’t put his finger on it.
Lantern took another step forward.
“Stay where you are, goddamn it! I’ll blow your head off!”
“You’ll need to be a good shot.”
“No, I won’t, you’re standing right there. And besides, I am a good shot,” Stimpy said.
“Well, I have a bomb.”
Stimpy’s heart stopped cold. He had grabbed one of the MagCharges! But where the fuck was it?
“Of course, you could just shoot me before I detonate it,” Lantern said.
“Maybe I will.” S
timpy so wanted to call in the others for help. But he was already on “probation.” If the others found out he’d let somebody into the Weapons Room, he was afraid he’d be “let go.”
“Take your best shot. Right between the eyes,” Lantern said.
Stimpy was sick of this. He spun back to the shelf, and that’s when he saw the Desert Eagle .50 caliber. Sitting right next to... the sound suppressor. Perfect.
He grabbed them up, and when he turned around Lantern was—
Doing nothing. What the hell was wrong with this guy?
Stimpy screwed on the silencer and locked it down, clicked off the safety, and strode forward with purpose. Aimed the big shiny silver Desert Eagle right between the stranger’s temples. At this close range, one .50 caliber round should literally take his head off. That ought to make up for letting the guy get in. “All right, you asked for it!”
From across the large room, a group of wise guys in the Counting Room had heard the noise and strolled in to see what all the commotion was about. The light played differently from their side of the room than from where Stimpy was standing. It took them a millisecond to size it all up. “No!” one of them screamed, but it was too late.
Stimpy fired the shot, and just as he did, it finally dawned on him what was wrong with the stranger, what had bothered him about the way he had looked from the start.
The stranger was just slightly transparent.
And although he was generally considered one of the dimmest bulbs in the grow-house, Stimpy was an expert shot.
Too bad.
The thing about MagCharges is that when they are unprogrammed they are just as dangerous as a stick of dynamite. Their explosive charges are raw and volatile. A gunshot, for instance, could blow them to kingdom come.
Stimpy’s bullet was right on target—right between the eyes, and it zipped through Lantern’s Hollow, like the hologram it was, and slammed into the rows of MagCharges. The explosion ripped the brick wall away and sent fire, shrapnel, and energy mushrooming across the open space.
The Suns of Liberty: Legion: A Superhero Novel Page 2