Semper Fi

by Evan Currie

  Since then, well, she was more. More Tessa than she had ever been.

  “Look at how he fights,” Tessa said, gesturing to the battle below them. “So professional, so clinical. Like he doesn’t even want to be here. It’s a pitiable thing to see, you know. A man that good at something he takes no joy in.”

  She shrugged, smiling suddenly.

  “Let’s kill him.”

  *****

  Hale ducked under a swing aiming to take his head off, possibly literally if he’d been anyone else, and popped up to catch the attacker in an arm bar. He then pivoted, using the man as a human shield when a pair of blasters opened up at close range with some strange mix of concussive and heat rays.

  I need a better name for the different sorts of abilities I’m seeing, He grumbled to himself as he casually tossed his shield away and lunged in between the two blasters as they continued to fire. At just under Mach One, they didn’t even come close to hitting him, but they did a pretty good job on each other.

  He planted his feet into the road surface, hard, as the pair fell behind him and looked around him to get a quick stock of the situation. There was more odd about this than he’d initially noticed, and something was gnawing at him like a thought that wouldn’t quite float up to the top of his mind.

  It’s too easy.

  Maybe that was it, honestly he wasn’t sure. Certainly, the previous superhumans he had encountered and fought tended to be considerably tougher than this bunch, but there was variance in all things so maybe he was just dealing with the runts this time around.

  Would make for a nice change, I suppose.

  Of course, that probably meant that the real threats hadn’t show up yet.

  Or, haven’t shown themselves yet, at least, he thought darkly, thinking about his belief that the mobs of rioters were being controlled or influenced somehow.

  *****

  The probe had completed the final stage of the modified cidoforming protocols while observing the chaos in the population center and was now merely calculating the optimal delivery method. The convocation had authorized the full deployment, which mean ensuring maximum effect, and those calculations would not be easy.

  Still, there was more data to be gathered while they were being performed, so at least the time would not be wasted.

  The chaos was acceptable, however there were anomalies in the observed chaos that the probe was uncertain as to whether they were positive, negative, or neither.

  At specific points that appeared to line up with the combat directly below, chaos actions across the planet would lull. When said combat ended, that trend would reverse. The probe was quite certain that the planet’s communications system was to blame, but it was an unfortunately double edged implement.

  The communications system was what specifically allowed the probe to maximize the chaos events. Calculating specific events and timing, manipulating a few data points in one place, merely allowing others to be seen in the open as they were at others.

  The convocation had been fighting life for a long time, and was well aware of how to twist it in all ways imaginable. The easiest was to turn it on itself, something the probe was pleased to be doing in a completely novel fashion with it’s modified cidoforming protocols… but there were many ways to turn life on itself, and the convocation studied each with care when they were discovered.

  Penetrating communications systems was practically the base course.

  This time, however, it was annoyingly working both for and against it’s own efforts somehow.

  The probe wasn’t entirely certain how, it was sometimes impossible to determine what exactly went on in what passed for the crude pseudo-intelligence that life used, but somehow the system was countering its attempts at manipulation. Not entirely effectively, but somehow not at the direction of any authority either.

  Almost like the communication system itself was alive.

  The probe gave the emotional equivalent of a shiver. Life. It infected everything.

  It was time to be quit of this world and system. Let a cido-fleet finish the entire system off.

  Time to be done.

  *****

  Chapter 11

  USSOCOM Bunker, Virginia

  Every eye in the place was scanning the overhead imagery from the Predator, broken into sectors as they looked for the presumed instigators of the situation.

  “Wait,” The NRO specialist said, “Run it back to timestamp fourteen twenty three, close in on sector Bravo Twelve.”

  The image flickered, then zoomed in on a rooftop.

  “Play forward.”

  As it began to move again, the unmistakably impossible image of a hole opening up in the air above the building played out, and two people stepped out of it.

  “Got them, good work,” Pierson said, picking up her phone and hitting a single command.

  “Hale.” The voice on the other end grunted, “Make it quick will you.”

  “We’ve got them.”

  “Little less quick than that,” He said, the sound of an impact of some sort in the background causing her to flicker her eyes to the live display where he was fighting. “Need details.”

  “Rooftop, south by south west of your position,” She said, “They stopped out a few minutes ago and…”

  She snapped her fingers, pointing to the screen, until they shifted the view back to real time.

  “and they’re still there,” She went on. “Watching… what the hell…”

  “What is it?”

  “They’re eating something, I think… is that a bowl of ice cream?”

  There was a pause on the line, and she heard a loud crack.

  “Ow!” Hale snapped, “damn it. Did you say they’re eating ice cream?”

  “That’s what it looks like.”

  “Well that’s just… well, it’s just… I don’t know what it is, but it’s something.”

  Pierson agreed, “It’s definitely something. Go get them, Marine.”

  “Roger that. Hale out.”

  *****

  Hale ducked and broke clear of another attack, putting some distance between himself and the rioters, noting that more of them had come from somewhere, and they were all exhibiting signs of being changed.

  This is getting ridiculous! There weren’t this many changed at any of the reported incidents!

  Hale dearly wanted to know what in the living hell was going on.

  First, however, he needed to make a break and get some altitude.

  Making a break was the easy part, none of the rioters were remotely to his levels of speed of strength, but he didn’t want to leave the cops holding the bag when he did. Thinking it over quickly, Hale opted for a shock and awe exit, which would be a first in his book since normally he specialized in the entrance version of same.

  Hale made a mental apology to the street repair crews for what he was about to do, then waded back into the rioters. He put up a bit of a fight, enough to keep them at bay but held his ground and let the mob slowly surround him. Once they were in close enough, Hale launched himself into the air, hitting hypersonic almost instantly.

  The sonic shockwave rent the air and sent people flying as they tried to evade the blast, hands clasping over their ears at the pain. Hale reversed course less than a hundred feet up and slammed back down into the road with enough force to collapse the entire section into a crater, bringing the rioters down with him.

  That done, he took a moment to be sure they were all within the crater and more or less intact, then he launched himself back into the air and turned in the direction of the building he’d been pointed to.

  *****

  Tessa’s eyes glittered as she watched the fighting, subtly egging on the rioters with pushes from her ability to make sure their enthusiasm didn’t wane.

  The soldier, super powered boy scout that he was, was having little trouble with the fight but she’d expected that. The last time it had taken pinning him between the proverbial devil and the deep b
lue sea to actually maneuver him into a position to be seriously inconvenienced and she was far from certain that her little minions would have been able to end him in any event.

  They’re abilities were barely above human norm, as far as she could tell. Well, aside from blasting those energy beams around.

  Honestly, still not sure where those come from…

  Tessa pouted slightly, wondering why she could gift others with those sorts of powers but didn’t have them herself? It would be glorious to be able to deliver a proper coups de gras, as it were, on her own power rather than rely on others… even if only once in a while.

  Ah well, I wouldn’t trade it anyway.

  “He’s letting them surround him,” Pitr spoke up, bringing her focus back to the moment.

  “What?”

  Tessa frowned, looking closer, and indeed Pitr appeared to be right. Soldier boy was moving slower, hitting less powerfully, and unless he was far more worn than she believed from their last little playtime, he shouldn’t be as weak as he was showing.

  “What is he up t-”

  Tessa flinched back as a white cloud erupted in the middle of the rioters with a harsh blast of sound that shattered glass in all directions. Before she could do more than blink, however, the road was caved in and the entire group of rioters completely flattened.

  Soldier boy was the only one left standing, there in the middle of a crater filled with unconscious or painfully moaning people. He looked around himself slowly, then lifted out of the air and…

  Turned in their direction.

  “Oh shit.”

  “Pitr!”

  “I’m on it!” Piter swept his hand up, opening a tear in reality. He grabbed Tessa, who was watching the rapidly approaching figure close on their position, yanking her through the portal before hurriedly closing it behind them just as the uniformed man arrived on the rooftop.

  The pair collapsed on the bed of the apartment he’d portalled them into, eyes wide at the now normal wall they’d come through before they slowly looked at one another.

  Tessa giggled.

  Pitr was less inclined to laughed, “They know about us now. I don’t know how much, but someone had to tell him where we were.”

  She was laughing too hard to make any sense of, so Pitr flopped back on the bed and stared at the ceiling.

  “Well,” He said, “that happened.”

  *****

  Hale grimaced as the portal vanished, immediately tapping his earpiece.

  “Pierson.”

  “They got away,” He said.

  “We saw, fast reflexes on their part,” She confirmed.

  “How the hell do we secure a teleporter anyway?” Hale asked, honestly uncertain.

  “Yeah, that’s going to be a problem,” Pierson sighed. “Honestly, we can’t right now. All I can say is knock him out if you can, maybe we can have someone medically induce a coma? Assuming they’re actually behind all this.”

  “At the very least they chucked a flash bang at my head while I was trying to protect kids, Pierson. They may not be behind the riots, but they’re going down, one way or another.”

  “Roger that,” She sounded tired. “I’ll confer with above, and see if they can’t get the Germans in on this too. They’re likely citizens, I’d guess. German government with have to have a say.”

  “Understood,” Hale said, walking back over to the edge of the roof and kneeling to rest and look over the battleground. “This is going to get ugly, isn’t it? Most of the changed weren’t exactly nice people before they were taken. Add in a night of trauma like that, and god damned super powers… and what do we have? Criminals we can’t arrest? That we can’t hold if we did?”

  “I… don’t know,” Pierson admitted. “Frankly, no one seems to.”

  “I was a Marine, I am a Marine,” He said seriously. Retired or not, he would never give up that title. “but most of these people are just petty crooks with abilities no human should have. I don’t know how to handle this. I’m just one man, and this isn’t a one man mission.”

  “No one knows how to handle it,” Pierson admitted to him, “That’s the hell of it. You’re doing great as it stands. Hale, when you were defending those kids, riots around the world went down by over thirty percent.”

  He hadn’t been expecting that.

  “What?”

  “I’m not kidding, Captain. You’re making a huge difference,” She said insistently. “The likes of which I doubt even I know fully. People are watching, they’re paying attention… and right now, that’s more valuable than anything else we could hope to have. Just keep doing what you’re doing, Captain. If I figure out something you can do that would be better, I’ll let you know, but right now I don’t think that’s likely. You’re becoming a symbol, and right now… we need that.”

  Frankly, Hale wasn’t sure he wanted to hear that.

  A symbol? He was no Chesty Puller, that wasn’t his bag. He was a history teacher who’d served his country, nothing more, nothing less. He’d been happy being a history teacher who had some good stories that he didn’t share with anyone who didn’t already know them. It was a life that worked for him.

  He sighed, “Roger that, Pierson. Direct me to the next site, and keep an eye for the puppet master.”

  “You’ve got it, Cap. Riots eight blocks north of your position, super human presence reported.”

  “On it.”

  He lifted off the rooftop, heading North.

  *****

  Blue Solar HQ, London

  Doctor Lina McCabe walked into the upper office that took up the entire top floor of the Blue Solar building in London, eyes falling on the man himself as she did. Wesley Trenton was watching the video feed from multiple networks, unsurprisingly. It seemed most of the world was in some way keeping an eye on the events in Berlin.

  “Mr Trenton,” She said, announcing her presence.

  “Ah, Miss McCabe,” Trenton said, turning in her direction as he muted the video. “A pleasure. I’m told you have a theory for me?”

  “More a… educated hypothesis at the moment,” She admitted, “but yes.”

  He nodded, unsurprised.

  “The issue is power,” She said, “the human body doesn’t have the chemical reserves for even a fraction of what we’re seeing in our own tests here, to say nothing of what’s happening out there.”

  She nodded to the screen.

  “I am aware of that, yes,” Trenton said, frowning. “Are you suggesting you can explain the discrepancy?”

  “I believe so, Mr Trenton. Are you familiar with Quantum Mechanics?”

  “Only in passing, just enough to follow some of the reports from your division, I have to admit.”

  “Unsurprising, I’d have been rather impressed if you knew more than that,” She said, “it’s a complex field that even experts who spend their lives working to understand, realize they likely only grasp a fraction of it, and some of that is likely wrong.”

  Trenton nodded minutely, but said nothing so she went on.

  “Are you familiar with zero point energy?” She asked.

  “Yes, that I do know, aside from all the scifi references to it, I examined it’s potential as a power source once upon a time,” Trenton admitted, walking over to the corner bar. “Not possible, as I’m sure you know. Drink?”

  “No thank you, Mr Trenton,” She said, “and while you’re right, it’s not possible to harness zero point energy as it is, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible entirely.”

  “I’m afraid you’ve lost me,” He admitted.

  “Ok, zero point energy appears in a vacuum, true vacuum,” She said, “and the main reason it cannot be used as a source of power is because it appears evenly, in balance. Power generation happens when we trade one type of energy for another… potential for kinetic, for example. With me so far?”

  “I run a company that develops green power options, Miss McCabe,” Trenton smiled thinly, “You can move up a few notches from grade sc
hool theory.”

  “Right, my apologies,” She said, flustered a little as he simply saluted her with his drink, a gesture she took to mean she should continue. “To keep with the analogy, however, imagine a lake at the top of a mountain. Lots of potential energy, but unless you have a channel to funnel the water down the mountain into a turbine, say, you can’t convert the potential energy into something useable. Zero Point Energy is that lake, it contains massive potential energy but there’s never been a workable theory on how to convert it to anything useable.”

  “You think that the genetic modifications have… what?” Trenton asked quizzically, “cut a trench down the mountain?”

  “In layman’s terms, yes sir, I do,” She answered. “I believe that the abilities we’re seeing are powered by a trickle of zero point energy, and the abilities themselves are created using quantum effects.”

  Trenton thought that over slowly for a moment, then set his drink down.

  “What do you have to back that up,” He asked, “and what do you need to prove it?”

  *****

  Berlin

  “That was too close, you know,” Pitr said when Tessa had calmed down.

  She nodded.

  There was no denying that, at least. They’d very nearly come face to face with someone they were not capable of dealing with one on one, or two on one, or even three on one if Malcolm had been in the area.

  The Marine’s abilities were clearly overwhelming up close, and the only way to deal with him short of stupidly overpowering abilities on their side was to come at him from other directions.

  “I can empower more rioters,” Tessa offered. “Keep him hopping.”

  “I think we should lie low for a while,” Pitr countered. “They’re looking for us now. Someone told him we were on the roof, I’m guessing they have drones in the air.”

  Tessa pouted, but glanced up at the ceiling as though she could see through it.

  “Maybe,” She conceded reluctantly, clearly unhappy about it. “Why did he have to come to my city, Pitr? It’s not fair.”

  He winced, recognizing the shift in her emotional state.

  “Come now, fraulein,” He patted her back, “It’s a big world, and he won’t be here for long. Let him have his fun and we’ll still be here when he leaves. He can’t catch us, so he can’t stop us.”