Hero

by Robert J. Crane

  “You drawing a parallel here to what happened to me?” I asked, not quite getting it.

  “I’m drawing a parallel here to show you something,” Lethe said. “The sheer power of a government in the modern age is something the Roman Empire would have shuddered at. It has never been easier to control people, to indulge the darker sides of our natures. However totalitarian, however barbaric we were in the past, the power at our fingertips here in Revelen now makes every empire that stood before look pathetic by comparison.

  “We have done bad things, both in antiquity and modernity,” she said flatly. “We will tell you all about them. Some as cautionary tales. Some from which I’m sure you’ll draw your own conclusions, and they’ll become the cautionary tales that guide you as you move into a future without us, eventually, your hand on Revelen’s tiller. There is nothing we are not prepared to discuss with you, good or ill, given enough time to cover the subject. It’s just …”

  And here she hung her head. “We barely know you yet, Sienna. Forgive us for holding back on telling you all our sins, all our mistakes, right out of the gate. Because … Hades and I … for all our faults, and they are innumerable, we …” She looked up at me. “We want you to like us. Because really … you are just about the only family we have left.”

  “Huh,” I said, a little … taken aback. “That’s—”

  The phone chirped across the room, and Hades’s voice boomed through. “Sienna? Is Lethe there with you?”

  “I’m here,” Lethe said, swooping over and hitting the speakerphone button. She’d made it across the room in less than a second.

  Damn. Grandma still had speed.

  “I need you to come to the Situation Room,” Hades said. His voice lacked its usual amusement and rang with tightness. “And bring Sienna with you. We have … well, this is ironic …” The amusement returned, but it faded quickly when he spoke again, “We have a situation.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Passerini

  The Pentagon

  “What have we got?” Passerini could read the temperature of a room as soon as he walked in, and this room was no exception. It was the Pentagon ops center, filled to brimming with bustling generals and lower ranks, all doing their assigned jobs at the edges, monitoring a variety of global situations on screens that circled the room.

  In the center stood the upper echelon of each branch of the military, gathered around a planning table replete with an electronic map. The mood was tense, that much was obvious from a cursory glance.

  General Floyd Marks, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, was the one Passerini picked out immediately. “Floyd,” Passerini said, “you guys all look like someone humped the bunk.”

  That broke the tension. “Well, we have what looks to be a problem, sir,” Marks said. He wasn’t quite ramrod straight, but close. He had lines on his face from his time as a grunt, sunburned all to hell. Infantrymen and SpecOps guys tended to accumulate that “hard use” look from about forty on. Marks wore it about as well as could be expected. “Lieutenant.” He looked to a fresh-faced lady at a console just behind him.

  Passerini moved up to the planning table, and the view on it changed as the lieutenant messed with the electronic map to bring up an overhead satellite view. It was Revelen—Bredoccia, actually, Passerini could tell from having stared at the damned place on views just like this for the last six days. The picture zoomed in tightly on something sweeping across the landscape.

  “What the hell?” Passerini muttered. Colonel Graves squeezed in next to him, and the men made room. “A Black Hawk?”

  “We’ve been tracking it for about an hour,” Marks said. “It’s almost to Bredoccia.”

  “Revelen doesn’t use our helicopters, do they?” Passerini asked.

  Marks shook his head. “Their military is a patchwork quilt of NATO and Russian gear, but near as we can tell, they use Russian birds. And this one …” Marks’s forehead crease grew deep. “It came out of Ramstein Air Base.”

  Passerini swore under his breath. “It’s one of ours? Who authorized that?” He looked up at the commanding general of the US Air Force, an incredibly serious former B-52 pilot named Donovan. His callsign had been “Thunder.”

  “Not me,” Donovan said. “We didn’t even get a whisper of it. I let fly some wrath on down the chain, but whoever authorized it … it didn’t come through the usual channels.”

  Passerini thumped a clenched fist against the table’s edge, and the built-in screen flickered. He didn’t like showing even that much emotion in front of his men, but this crap—

  He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, then opened them. Just like that, the urge to ‘drop the Hammer,’ as some of his former subordinates had jokingly called it, passed. For now. “Chalke,” he whispered, figuring he had his answer.

  “Yeah,” Colonel Graves said, and Passerini looked up in time to see him nod. “It’s not one of our Black Hawks. It’s a civilian model. The FBI has more than a few.” Graves nodded again, looking at the helicopter cutting its way slowly across the landscape of Revelen. “Dollars to donuts that’s the FBI's new Metahuman Task Force.”

  “They’d certainly have the pull to use our bases without letting us know about it,” Passerini conceded, straightening up. His back cracked as he did so; the rigors of age. The approval could have come straight from Gondry, but dammit, he might have at least mentioned it in passing to the Joint Chiefs or the Secretary of Defense … He let out a long breath. “Double check with the tower at Ramstein. Make sure this is on the level. Confirm that everything was done aboveboard. And find out who authorized it. If it was the president …” He shrugged. “Then there’s nothing we can do. I want to know if it wasn’t, though. If this was Chalke running rogue again with our resources …”

  Passerini felt a little flash of anger thinking of the last time Chalke had stomped all over the military. She’d appropriated one of their key assets, a meta and former Marine named Warren Quincy she’d turned loose in the US homeland to track down and capture Sienna Nealon. That had irked Passerini something fierce, and not just because he felt strongly about Posse Comitatus.

  “What do we do now, sir?” Colonel Graves asked, a little stiffly. Formally, too. Good, he knew the difference between a conversation in private and the tone he needed to set in public. He really was a smart kid—though he was hardly a kid as a full bird Colonel. Must have looked younger than he was. “Anyone else you want us to … check with?”

  Good guess, Graves, Passerini thought, because hell if the colonel hadn’t prompted a thought with his question. “Yeah,” he said, “get me SecState Ngo on the phone, Colonel.” Passerini straightened his back. This was going to be a fun conversation. “We should probably let her know that the US government just invaded Revelen.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Sienna

  The Situation Room was fascinating, almost like something out of the movies. Video screens were everywhere, playing news both local and foreign, with paper maps pinned on bulletin boards and on tables, with push pins and tanks and soldier figurines everywhere, reminding me of a time when I’d walked in on Reed and J.J. playing some sort of tabletop war game.

  Oh, the delicious embarrassment my brother’s flaming cheeks had proclaimed. He always did like to maintain his image, but I knew in his heart Reed was the geekiest of geeks. For my part, I said nothing. Because it was even better to pretend I hadn’t seen.

  This would have put his geekery to shame, though, being as these tables were wargames for real, the center of the room taken up by a giant table representing all of western Europe and stretching most of the way through Germany on one side and all the way through Russia on the other. Lots of little figurines stood on it, too, representing the disposition of forces in the area. There was a heavy concentration of tanks and soldiers just over the border in Russia, and I could see a pretty big clump of US forces represented in Germany as well. I took it all in with a quick glance, trying to figure out the distance be
tween them and Revelen based on the scale. I couldn’t do it in my head, though, and it was a few countries away, so I gave up and followed Lethe over to where Hades was staring at a monitor over some soldier’s shoulder.

  “The US government has sent a chopper,” Hades said, pointing at the radar screen on the monitor in front of him.

  “How do you know that?” I asked. Everyone turned to look at me. Well, everyone at this monitor—Lethe, Hades, the fresh-faced unknown soldier.

  “One of our empaths guarding the border called it in,” Hades said with a faint smile. “They picked up a heavy helping of menace emanating from this helicopter, localized it, and informed of us of their coming.”

  One of the implications of having an entire population of metas had just smacked me in the face. “You have empaths guarding the borders?”

  “Indeed,” Hades said. “And we have boosted their powers so that they can determine ill intent when it comes our way.”

  “How very Minority Report of you,” I said.

  “Criticize our defensive strategies later,” Lethe said, staring at the green dot on the radar. “What are we dealing with?”

  “We won’t know until a telepath can confirm,” Hades said, “but our intelligence suggests it may in fact be the FBI’s elite metahuman task force.” He looked at me. “They have only one target, of course.”

  “Of course,” I said, just dripping sarcasm. Yay. The FBI was sending their superpowered SWAT team after me. “What are you going to do about it?”

  Hades took a slow breath, like he was thinking it over. “We have a few options. The simple push of a button and our new Russian-made SAM defenses could bring them down in a ball of flame—”

  “Yeah, that’s aggressive,” I said. “Let’s not do that.” A vision of escalation to nuclear war popped to mind, which was the sort of thing you risked when you shot down an enemy chopper with weapons of war, even when they were invading your airspace.

  “Starting to realize the implications of being responsible for an entire country?” Lethe asked, the ghost of a smile on her face as she looked at me.

  “I agree with Sienna,” Hades said. “The US has provoked us, but we need not respond with overwhelming force. We cannot, however, allow them to land and proceed unchecked. They may have committed an act of war, but we need not respond in kind.” He smiled, too. “I think a gentler approach is called for.”

  Holy shit, look at Death being all merciful. “That’s … good,” I said, because I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  “We should meet them with some force, though,” Lethe said. “Soldiers. Guns …” She glanced at me. “Unless you have an objection to a measured response, one that offers them the chance to surrender peacefully?”

  “I don’t think they’ll go for it, but yeah, we should offer them the chance, at least,” I said, my conscience rattling. Things had taken an interesting turn here, what with US law enforcement invading a sovereign country to come get my fugitive self. My knees quivered a little at the thought of turning loose violence on what were basically cops doing my old job. “I’d really like to see us back them into a corner and make them surrender, though.”

  “I agree,” Lethe said. “For both humanitarian and political reasons.” I only frowned at her a little before she clarified: “It won’t hurt our case to be able to parade FBI agents who invaded our country around to the world. Might sway a little public opinion our way.”

  “Yes, I’m sure it will counteract the bad rap we’re currently getting for harboring a known fugitive,” Hades said, so dripping with irony that it took me a second to realize he was being thoroughly unserious. “Still, mercy seems the best course, so … let us set an ambush, shall we?” He looked down at the kid driving the console. “Inform General Krall that we require a careful ambush.” He straightened up, his eyes glittering. “And, I think, perhaps, the three of us should also participate? Just to make sure things are done to our satisfaction?”

  “Oh, you want me to—” I blinked. “Wait, you want to do this yourself?”

  He extended a hand to me. “I have never been much for waiting behind the scenes when things are happening. In this, you, I think, are the same?” He glanced at Lethe, who shrugged. “I know she is. So, yes … I think we should all go together. We should look this threat in the face and defend our country, yes?”

  Defend our country. That phrase hit me right in the belly. Again.

  It hadn’t been that terribly long ago—hours, maybe—when I would have considered riding in with this task force to apprehend a dangerous fugitive to be defending my country.

  How swiftly the times did change.

  I looked at Hades’s hand. Lethe was just waiting, watching, arms folded again. It was her default posture. “We’re not going to hurt them if we can avoid it,” she said. “And if we’re there, we can help to control the situation. We can leave it to General Krall, if you prefer, but …”

  “She’ll kill them all and let the morticians sort it out,” I said, “No. Let’s do this.” And I took Hades’s hand. He gave mine a squeeze, nodding, and off we went for the door to set up an ambush for my former countrymen.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  “There’s only one easy way in and one easy way out of the castle,” General Krall said, as we stood in the hangar bay where I’d entered earlier that … day? “At least, if they intend to board a helicopter again to leave.”

  Had it really only been a day already?

  The hangar was sprawling, but I noted that there were no guards save for a couple patrols lingering near the mouth of the bay. They weren’t even looking in the direction of the open hangar door, and seemed to be on a slow path away from it.

  The air had an oily, mechanical smell to it, which I suspected had something to do with Hades’s car collection, and probably also the tanks. They were all parked in neat rows, and no one had made so much as a move to fire one up, which suggested to me that this fight was going to be somewhat more limited than General Krall might have made it if given an utterly free hand.

  “You have sealed all the other entrances?” Hades asked. We were lurking behind a makeshift position secured with sandbags. A metahuman soldier with powers like Augustus’s had filled them as we stood there, creating a good dozen bulwarks for our soldiers to hide behind. Cover against the coming attack.

  “Sealed them and kept them under the normal heavy guard,” Krall said, smiling with sharp, flashing teeth. “This hangar will look undefended by comparison. Anyone looking from overhead will have determined it is the best and most feasible entry point.”

  That was interesting. Krall had created a supply and guard pattern to lull anyone watching from overhead—which would include only the countries with enough wealth to have satellites and stealth drones—into believing that this was the castle’s weak point. She sure seemed proud of herself, and I couldn’t blame her. Keeping in mind your opponent had technological advantages and using them against them seemed very jiu jitsu of her. Surprise.

  “We are not quite sure of the composition of this task force,” Hades said, and he was standing with a rather soldierly bearing, hands clapped behind his back, “but you will take utmost care not to kill, general.”

  If Krall was disappointed in his command, she was controlled enough not to let it show. “As you wish, your majesty. We will do our very best to contain rather than destroy.”

  “Excellent,” Hades said and carefully took a knee behind the sandbag wall. Lethe lingered just behind his shoulder. “Where is Aleksy?”

  “Out front,” Krall said with a stiff nod, “but not too far.”

  Lethe and Hades both nodded at that, which I thought was a little funny. Aleksy seemed like a nice guy and all, but …

  He must have had a hell of a power if they were putting him out front. I made a mental note to watch for that, because just looking at the guy? I hadn’t gotten any kind of intimidating vibe off of him. In fact, I’d thought he was kind of a goofball. />
  I stiffened; the whip of rotor blades in the distance prompted General Krall to shout something in whatever language they spoke here. The lights overhead went out, leaving me with a slightly dim view of the hangar. Moonlight slid in from beyond the doors, and that told me something about how desperate the FBI was to get me back. SpecOps didn’t like to attack when the moon was out. It tended to expose their helos to view from the ground.

  They wanted me back in the worst way, and I still didn’t know quite how to feel about that.

  The silence in the hangar was desperately creepy. This was what it was like being in the presence of so many metas, whose senses were turned up to hyperawareness. It felt like no one was even daring to breathe, it was so quiet, everyone so still that the chop of the Black Hawk’s rotor blades just outside was the most prominent sound, even in here.

  General Krall mouthed something, and I caught a hiss of radio static. She’d sent it to her whole team, who were probably wearing combat radios of some kind. I would have liked to have been listening in, but she sounded like she was speaking local, so it wouldn’t have done me much good.

  “Are you ready?” Hades asked, touching my forearm with his bare hand. It was a funny feeling, his rough, calloused palm brushing my smooth arm.

  It was not a feeling I was used to, being touched. His hand was strong, but not aggressive, exactly.

  Reassuring, again.

  “Ready as I’m ever going to be,” I whispered, meta-low, as the sound of the rotors reduced. The helo was parked, and we huddled beneath the sandbag wall, listening.

  “Kill the chopper,” Hades said, and Krall whispered something into her mic that sounded like it started with, “Aleksy,” and then proceeded deeper into the depths of the local tongue.