Pax Omega

by Ewing, Al

  Jack Scorpio felt the mental pressure ease, and breathed a sigh of relief before once again aiming his gun between Jason Satan’s near-luminous white eyes.

  But this time, he flipped the safety off.

  AGONISING STRUGGLE

  “Nothing has changed, Scorpio,” Satan sneered, hissing the words through his rotting teeth. “By all means, shoot me, stab me – I’ll take all of you with me! I’ll shower you with my beautiful bleach-white blood and drag you down with me to the lowest pit of Hell!”

  At his words, El Sombra backed away! Had Mexico’s greatest hero turned coward in the face of a man who could kill with a single touch?

  “Very sensible, masked man. Just turn your back and let me slip away. You have business in Germany, I understand. You’ll be far away from the action, I guarantee.” Satan giggled, his eyes flickering between Savate and Scorpio, then looking down at the pale, jaundiced face of Doc Thunder, savouring his triumph!

  Once Thunder had been a veritable superhuman – now he shivered feverishly on the cold ground, blind and deaf to the struggles above, every breath an agonising struggle for his very survival! How long did America’s Greatest Hero have left to live?

  “Your turn now, Scorpio. Lower the gun and walk away. Perhaps you can get the good Doctor to a hospital before it’s too late.” He giggled again, but Jack Scorpio refused to lower his weapon. “No? Then we all die – here and now!”

  The madman tensed, readying himself to spring! All his attention was focussed on the leader of S.T.E.A.M. – and delivering the one touch that would end his life! The time for talk was over – now was the time for action in the mighty manner only the Daily Clarion can deliver!

  It was time – for Savate to strike!

  PURIFYING FIRE

  He leaped forward, aiming an expertly-delivered kick to Jason Satan’s jaw, hard enough to split the monster’s lip! A single drop of noxious white blood flew past Scorpio’s ear, deadlier than a bullet – then the Man With The Touch Of Death crashed to the ground, the force of his momentum sliding him across the dusty floor – and underneath the exhaust of the rocket!

  Savate turned to El Sombra and yelled: “Yours, mon ami!”

  “Gracias, amigo!” El Sombra shouted back. Then be reached to the wall of switches he’d been backing towards – and pulled the lever for launch!

  “Noooooooooo!” Jason Satan’s inhuman scream was cut off by the roar of engines – and then the hydrogen peroxide ignited, consuming Satan and all his toxins in a pillar of purifying fire!

  The rocket soared up through the shattered window before detonating high above the city – but without the deadly payload of poison gas, Untergang’s deadly firework proved no more than a damp squib!

  With two merciless master-villains dead, and Savate rumoured to be working closely with the American government to pay off his debt to society, New York can finally breathe a sigh of relief. Or can we?

  Untergang’s latest foul plot may have been smashed – but their Uncle Adolf is still waiting for his turn! And America’s Greatest Hero is still lying at death’s door!

  Buy the Clarion tomorrow for a pulse-pounding front page special on Doc Thunder’s fight for life – and the looming conflict receiving unanimous support in Congress! It’s all under tomorrow’s heart-stopping headline – “If War Be Our Destiny!”

  “WHY ZE HANDCUFFS, mon ami?” Savate grinned as the police pushed him into the back of a waiting van. “Surely you do not think ze great Savate will perform ze daring escape?”

  “Not if ze great Savate knows what’s good for him.” Jack Scorpio flicked the wheel of his lighter, sparking up another of his special cigarettes. “And by good I mean profitable. Stay cool, Savate. I’ll be in touch.” Savate stared at him for a moment, and nodded, and then the van doors closed and he was driven away.

  Doc Thunder had already been taken away in an ambulance. Most of his hair had fallen out, and he seemed somehow shrivelled, as though someone had opened a hidden valve somewhere and let a little air out of him. The paramedics wondered privately if he’d last the night.

  Scorpio took a long drag. “That’s what happens when you just blunder in without backup, true believer.”

  El Sombra raised an eyebrow. “Alternatively, that’s what happens when someone blunders in on you.”

  Scorpio shrugged. “Either way, if we’d all been together, things might not have gone the way they did. Stolen hydrogen peroxide’s something S.T.E.A.M. should have known about from the start. Folks like us need to hang together, or we’ll sure as hell hang separately.”

  “Who said that?” It sounded to El Sombra like a quote from somewhere. For some reason, the thought disturbed him.

  “Someone in a dream,” Scorpio said, and smiled that infuriating secret smile. El Sombra had a feeling he’d be learning to hate that soon enough. Scorpio was right, he knew. The USSA was going to war, and he’d have a better chance of killing off the Ultimate Reich and all their bastards if he took advantage of that. Which, for the time being, meant joining whatever team Jack Scorpio was forming.

  Scorpio sighed heavily, breaking El Sombra’s train of thought. “God damn it.”

  “What?”

  “Untergang finally won one, even if they hadn’t planned it. We figured we had Doc Thunder on board for the war effort, but that didn’t look like a man who’s going to be storming any bunkers any time soon.” Scorpio tapped a little ash out onto the ground. “So much for it all being over by Christmas. Except maybe for him.”

  “You think he’s really going to...” El Sombra couldn’t bring himself to finish it. The idea seemed too outlandish. He’d only met Thunder recently, but he’d been under the impression you could throw just about anything at him and he’d walk right through it. To see him shrivelled up and going bald like that – it seemed almost sacrilegious.

  “Maybe. Unless we can find an antidote. Even then...” He shook his head. “Well, at least I’ve got a line on Savate now. I was wondering when I’d get a chance to bring him on board.”

  “Wait, you’re recruiting him?” El Sombra blinked. “A guy who kicks people for money?”

  “Well, I already got a guy who stabs people for free. I like variety. Anyway, you guys seemed to work pretty well together back there...”

  El Sombra had to admit that. “I suppose. So who else have you got lined up in this merry band of yours?”

  Scorpio inhaled, held it for a second, then blew out a ring of smoke.

  “Trust me, true believer. You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

  THE LAST STAND OF THE YODELLING BASTARDS

  OFFICIAL RECORD CONCERNING EVENTS OF 07/12/2004: “OPERATION FALSE FLAG.” THE FOLLOWING FILE CONCERNS THE FINAL MISSION OF THE EXPERIMENTAL COMMANDO UNIT YANKEE BRAVO SEVEN AND IS THUS CLASSIFIED ABOVE TOP SECRET.

  “GENERAL ZITRON, SIR!” Major-General Allen marched up to the desk and snapped into a salute almost vigorous enough to knock his hat off. Matt Zitron rolled his eyes and tried to suppress an irritated sigh.

  “At ease, Hal. Take a load off.” He indicated a chair with his pipe.

  “I prefer to stand, General, sir.” Allen clicked his heels together for emphasis, then threw in another salute for good measure. Zitron thought about chiding him for his failure to stand at ease – but then, for Allen, this was at ease.

  Well, so be it. The USSA needed men like Hal Allen – he might be wound tighter than a termite’s tuchus, but he was a good man for admin work and he did possess a certain gift for strategy. Just so long as nobody was ever dumb enough to put him in the field, that was all. He belonged right here in sunny Italy, in the rear with the gear.

  “That’s fine, Hal. You go ahead and stand.” Zitron blew out a long plume of smoke and nodded towards the office door. “You got Jack Scorpio out there?”

  Allen winced. “Permission to speak freely, General, sir.”

  Zitron knew what was coming. “Go on, Hal, let’s hear it.”

  “In my opinion, sir, Colonel Scorpio
is completely wrong for this mission.” He licked his lips nervously. “Now as you know, sir, I cannot quite bring myself to credit the, ah, otherworldly elements involved in the mission brief –”

  Zitron nodded stoically. “You don’t believe in time travel, mysterious portals or Leopard Men. Duly noted.”

  “– but I respect that this could be a pivotal operation. One that – if even half of what we’ve been told is true, as opposed to some bizarre fantasy – could possibly turn the tide of this whole war. And, to be quite frank with you, General, sir” – Allen scowled – “I just don’t believe Yankee Bravo Seven can do the job.”

  “You don’t, huh?”

  “No, sir. They’re just not soldier material, sir.”

  “Seems like they’ve done all right so far. Ask Von Hammer,” Zitron grinned, dropping the name of the enemy Luftwaffe commander – one of the most feared names in the war – who Yankee Bravo Seven had captured alive, and in possession of the latest top secret Nazi wing-pack design, the previous week. Cavorite was still in short supply on the allied side, which meant they were stuck with Rocketeer squadrons for now, but it was still a hell of a coup.

  “Sir...” – Allen drew in his breath, as if trying to control his temper – “...regardless of any... flukes of performance, these men do not and cannot possibly function as a proper military unit. I mean, the organisational structure alone – it makes no sense. In the same squad, we’ve got a Colonel, a Captain, an OSS Captain, a Navy Captain, a French mercenary, two civilians, one of whom is still wanted for crimes against Magna Britannia and the other of whom is a conscientious objector, for Christ’s sake, and a... a... I don’t know what he is, but he’s naked –”

  “Half-naked. His junk’s covered.”

  “That’s hardly the point, sir! He’s an escaped lunatic from Mexico on a revenge mission! He’s about as far from being an American soldier as you can possibly get!” Zitron couldn’t help noticing how red Allen’s face was getting. Yankee Bravo Seven had a habit of causing that reaction in him.

  Well, at least it loosened him up a little. “Major-General, since you’re actually standing at ease for once, how about sitting down?”

  Allen snapped back to attention. “No, thank you, sir. Since I brought up the nudity issue –”

  “Half-nudity.”

  “– I should say that I find it abhorrent that these men do not understand the simple concept of a uniform. Even Colonel Scorpio refuses to dress in a manner befitting his rank – and this is a man who used to wear a skintight white jumpsuit to command a top-secret Black Ops division –”

  “Anti-camouflage. That‘s another thing you don’t believe in, right?”

  Allen fumed for a moment. “What I believe, sir, is that as a leader, Jack Scorpio seems completely incapable of controlling the men under his command.”

  “Colonel Scorpio,” Zitron gently reminded Allen, “led S.T.E.A.M. for forty years.”

  Allen took a deep breath. “In a skintight white –”

  “Anti-camouflage. If I had my way, we’d be using it in the field.” He leant back in his chair, fixing Hal with a stern look. “And try moderating your tone a little, huh? The day you get your fifth star, that’s the day you get to raise your voice to me.”

  “Sir...” Allen forced himself to calm down. “S.T.E.A.M. under Scorpio was practically a one-man operation, and an irresponsibly expensive one at that. I am given to understand that a significant portion of his operating budget was used to... for the purposes of” – he flushed a deep shade of scarlet – “of smoking reefer and copulating with fetish models. There, I said it.”

  “Not reefer, Hal. Some kind of special herb from the mountains of Zor-Ek-Narr. Keeps him young, or so I’m told.” Zitron watched Hal turn a deeper crimson, almost purple. “It’s a Leopard Man kind of thing. And that ‘fetish model’ you’re talking about is a respected member of the Yankee Bravo team with over fifty confirmed kills to her credit. Not to mention one hell of a driver.”

  Allen took another deep breath. After a moment, his face made some progress back towards a normal colour. “Sir – he is simply not capable of the degree of command necessary for this man’s army. Yankee Bravo Seven is... Sir, I hate to say it, but it’s a terrible unit. They’re undisciplined, anti-authoritarian and at least three of them have recognised mental problems.”

  “You’re exaggerating, Hal.”

  “Sir, Cohen is under the delusion that he’s Blackbeard the pirate.”

  “Well, perhaps he is, Hal. We’re living in interesting times.” He leant forward and whispered. “Leopard Men.”

  “Sir, I do not believe in Leopard Men. I never have believed in Leopard Men.” A manic tremble was creeping into his voice. “If a Leopard Man were to walk in here right now and offer me a cigarette made of ‘special herbs’ – I would still not believe in Leopard Men.”

  Zitron smiled. “Well, you don’t have the clearance to anyway, so it’s probably for the best. Is that everything, Hal?”

  “Just... please, sir. Give me one platoon of real soldiers. We can still do this the right way. The Army way.”

  “Mmm... no, I don’t think so.” Zitron shook his head. “This one’s a little too crazy to try it the Army way, Major-General.”

  “Sir –”

  “No, I think this one, we do the Yankee Bravo Seven way.” He smiled. “You’re dismissed, Hal. Send Jack in on your way out.”

  Allen stared at him in fury for a moment, then saluted sharply. “Sir!”

  Zitron watched him storm out of the office, and wondered when exactly Allen would have his heart attack and be done with it. Ah, well. Right now he had bigger fish to fry.

  A moment later, Jack Scorpio entered the room.

  PERSONNEL FILE: JACK SCORPIO - COLONEL (FOURTH EARTH BATTALION, STRATEGIC TACTICAL ESPIONAGE AND MANOEUVRES) - SKILLS: LEADERSHIP, ESPIONAGE, UNCONVENTIONAL WARFARE, ELONGATED LIFESPAN - PREFERRED WEAPON: S.T.E.A.M. ISSUE COLT X-007 MAGNUM CALIBER HANDGUN WITH MULTIPLE AMMUNITION CAPABILITY - WEAKNESSES: SEX, DRUGS, MAGICAL THINKING

  Jack’s uniform had changed since he’d left S.T.E.A.M. to form Yankee Bravo Seven. The white jumpsuit was gone, as well as most of the gadgets – his only concessions to the secret agent life were his S.T.E.A.M.-issue multi-ammo Magnum pistol, and a pair of shades which he never removed. The left lens was simple smoked glass, functioning as a replacement for his eyepatch, but the right lens had – allegedly – been specially treated to perceive human auras. Like a lot of things about Jack, it was hard to say whether or not that was on the level.

  When you came right down to it, Jack was a very strange guy.

  These days, he wore fairly standard military combat trousers, albeit a little baggy in the hem, a flak jacket – usually open to the waist – and little else. Instead of wearing the steel-toed boots of old, he walked barefoot, and the soles of his feet had developed a hard layer of callus. Where the S.T.E.A.M. insignia had dotted his old uniform, he wore tattoos of pentagrams and other more mysterious symbols – images of bats and circled lightning, serpents coiled inside heraldic shields.

  There was a scorpion branded into the skin at the base of his skull that hadn’t been there before. Matt Zitron had once, in the mess after a particularly gruelling mission, asked what it represented. “My nature,” Jack had said, and smiled his unsettling smile.

  Jack had originally trained with the First Earth Battalion, before taking Jim Channon’s ideas into newer, weirder directions. His offshoot, the Fourth Earth Battalion, had eventually mutated into S.T.E.A.M. in order to find favour with the establishment; now it seemed as though Jack had gone back to his roots.

  It was no wonder someone like Hal Allen didn’t like him. Hell, it was a wonder Zitron liked him, but he had to admit he had a soft spot for the creepy bastard.

  If they were going to win this war, it was Jack that would do it.

  Zitron stood, offering Jack Scorpio his hand. “Jack. Good to see you.”

  “Matthew.” Jack gri
pped the General’s hand as though he was about to arm-wrestle, squeezed tight, then let it go and offered his fist. Zitron looked confused. Jack smiled. “Greetings from the dream world. Go on, bump your knuckles.”

  Zitron looked at him for a moment, then gingerly bumped his fist against Jack’s. For a moment, he felt strange, insubstantial. Jack’s occasional ‘dream world’ talk always made him feel weird.

  “How’s the boy?” Jack asked, smiling widely.

  “Isaac? Oh, he’s doing great. Growing like a weed.”

  “All part of the circle of life. So, I hear you’ve got some action? Something regular army can’t handle, is that right?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  Zitron took a long puff on his pipe.

  “It’s one for the Yodelling Bastards.”

  “AHEM. FIRST SLIDE, please.”

  Jack Scorpio sparked up another joint and inserted the next slide – a photograph of a bearded, nervous-looking man in round spectacles. The flickering of the oil lamp that projected the image onto the wall made him seem even more frightened, as if he kept some secret that horrified him.

  Standing in front of the photograph, Captain Richard Reed puffed gently on his pipe. “Thank you, Corporal.”

  “Aaar,” snarled Lev ‘Blackbeard’ Cohen, in the broad Cornish accent he’d had ever since his ship was sunk from under him by a Nazi U-boat in the Atlantic. “What’s this lily-livered son of a swab have to say to us? Captain, he calls himself! Yet he’s never stood on the deck of a ship in a ragin’ storm o’ cannon-fire, urgin’ his lovely lads on to th’ work o’ plunderin’ –”