Super World

by Lawrence Ambrose

  "You mean a 'fifth column,' as Zane Bachman put it?"

  "Yes. That made about as much sense to me as anything else. Bachman is a shrewd dude. He has a way of cutting through the b.s., from what I've seen. You have to admit the Object and the ship have a family resemblance."

  Jamie nodded. "I wondered if I was meeting the Object's makers up there, based just on the appearance of the mother ship and its probes – the same deep, glossy black."

  "The level of technology seems similar," said Zach. "Not that we'd be able to tell."

  Jamie's private cell buzzed. It was Tildie.

  "Hey," Jamie said.

  "You're back home from Washington, aren't you? I didn't want to knock on your door to wake you up or anything."

  "Yeah. Just got back an hour or so ago. I'm hanging out with Zachary right now."

  "Is 'hanging out' a euphemism?"

  Jamie laughed. "So far."

  "You've got a lot of people down here who want to give you high-fives."

  "Maybe tomorrow. Just tell them I'm resting and recuperating. And yes, I hope those will be euphemisms very shortly."

  Tildie giggled. "Understood, Commander. Talk to you mañana."

  "WHO THIS girl say she represent again?"

  "Last Days," Tyler rumbled. "Some kind of Jesus freak movement saying we all be doomed. Funny thing, this chick askin' to talk to you by name. Mr. Mayes." He snorted.

  "Is she fly?"

  Tyler shrugged. "If you like blonds."

  "Long as she ain't the Blond Bitch."

  Thomas swiveled back in his lounge chair, eyeing the crystalline blue gem of a sky overhead, imagining the possibilities. To be honest, he was getting a bit bored with Selma, who was starting to whine about "making a commitment." Why did bitches always have to ruin it with talk like that? Couldn't they ever just be grateful for what they had?

  'Course, he could always tell her to stop that shit, but the other thing Thomas was bored with was puppets. He missed the game, testing his mettle. What kind of man can't get laid without forcing someone?

  "Okay, T," he said. "Send the Christian to the Muslim lion."

  "Send her your own damn self. I ain't your damn servant."

  Tyler retreated with a sullen scowl. Life as a white nigger didn't agree with him, looked like. Thomas considered commanding him to get the door, but fuck it. Better to stick to his rule of not commanding friends and family. He tore himself away from his 50 million dollar view with a sigh and sauntered down to the front door.

  He opened the door to a girl who banished every shred of his annoyance. She looked to be about eighteen, maybe younger, blond bangs cut in a line just above finely etched eyebrows, a face to launch a thousand riots, a full-lipped mouth like a sister's but more shapely. But it was the eyes - so clear and blue and lit up like the sun that he would've surrendered every one of his pretty new possessions to step inside the world they promised.

  Damn, this girl is beyond fine. She's a motherfucking stone fox goddess!

  "Hi," said the girl in a breathy low voice, like Barry White if he'd been a chick. "I'm Christie. Christie Knowles. I'm here from Last Days. Have you been saved?"

  "Not real recently."

  "But you're a sinner?"

  "Baby girl, I got so many sins you'd need Fort Knox to store 'em all. I'm a baaaaaad man."

  She smiled.

  "Come on in." He opened the door wide with a sweeping gesture. "My castle is your castle, as the Italians say."

  The girl laughed. A bright musical sound that warmed Thomas' heart, though he wondered what the hell she thought was so funny. He led her upstairs and out to his balcony.

  "Want something to drink, honey pie?"

  "I'm fine, thanks."

  She drew up her dress as she sat, and crossed her legs modestly. Thomas poured himself a glass of ice tea laced with vodka from a nearby pitcher.

  "Got to take issue with that, baby doll. You ain't just fine." Thomas shot her his best grin. "You mighty fine."

  "Thank you, Mr. Mayes."

  "Thomas. Just call me Thomas. How did you know my name, anyhow?"

  "I have a list." She shrugged. "Thomas was a great disciple of Jesus."

  "So they say."

  "Do you want to live forever, Thomas?"

  Thomas paused his drink inches from his mouth. He stared into the young woman's spooky eyes for what he thought was a long, soulful moment, but what he saw there stifled the charming smile he had planned: utter, serene certainty, of a kind he'd never experienced but wished he could. A frown twitched on his lips.

  "Sure," he said. "But I got a lock on that, girl. That be the promise of Muhammad, God's last true prophet, to all true believers."

  He smiled and drank, lifting his glass to the girl expecting her to contradict him, but her gaze remained serene. He took a long swallow of his vodka-enhanced iced tea. The drink both chilled and warmed him – a lot like the girl sitting in the chair facing him.

  "I've come to tell you," she said, in matter-of-fact tones, "that whether you believe in Muhammad or Jesus, the Day of Judgment is upon us. These are the Last Days."

  "So these are the last days. What'ya want me to do about it?"

  "Repent your sins, and surrender to your true faith when the moment comes. Then you need not suffer or perish, Thomas Mayes. Instead, you will live in heaven forever."

  "Already done surrendered to it."

  "Then why do you continue to sin, Thomas?"

  "Girl" – his smile hardened – "I was just funnin' with you before when I said I was 'baaaad.' Truth is, I'm doing the work of the prophet Muhammad on Earth. Hell, I'm just one small step away from sainthood, baby."

  Christie Knowles regarded him with a calmness that unnerved him. In this cat and mouse game, he was starting to feel a little like the mouse. Damn this pretty little bitch and her eyes. It was time to change the way this game was rolling.

  "Stand up," he said.

  The girl rose and stood facing him. Thomas felt his mojo slipping back into place. He smiled.

  "Take off your clothes. Real slow-like." He wanted to enjoy every second of this.

  Christie Knowles made no immediate motion to comply. Enough time for Thomas to think she was one of the privileged few he couldn't command. Just my luck.

  But then she started to undress. Slowly, just as he'd commanded, exposing her body one succulent inch at a time.

  "Damn," he said when she was finished, arms hanging at her sides, her chin stuck out in what might've been defiance or pride. "Mighty fine don't begin to cover it."

  AS IF DARE didn't have enough to worry about, Jamie thought, now they faced several new and potent threats to the already precarious social order.

  First, the FBI and DHS had confirmed that super-powered Islamic terrorists bearing the name Hibat Allah (God's Gift) were in America.

  "CIA assets have revealed a full-scale recruiting program among Al Qaeda, ISIL, the Islamic Union, and other jihadist groups," read the paper set before her and the other Team One members in the Tactical Room. The report continued:

  Only the elite of the elite in terms of augmented power are admitted into Hibat Allah. But of even greater concern is the recent theft of eight portable nuclear devices known as 'backpack nukes' from the Semipalatinsk depot in Kazakhstan. Putin claims they have 'strong evidence' that Islamic terrorist groups were involved, and the CIA agrees. The current belief is that Hibat Allah is in possession of at least some of these weapons.

  "Ooops, the Russkies just accidentally lost their backpack nukes to elite augmented terrorists!" Jake Culler cried, clutching his cheeks in mock outrage. "What a tragic and unforgivable lapse of Russian security!"

  "Yes," Mort said dryly. "Accidents will happen. But however Hibat Allah got its hands on them, it was only a matter of time before terrorist groups and sundry bad guys realized they could leverage their superpowers with nukes or conventional weapons. Even the most secure locations in the world were never designed to stop augments. And with a
ll the excitement and fear over these new powers, people seem to have forgotten that we... well, most of us" - he shot Jamie a sardonic smile – "can still be killed by conventional weapons. And we don't know of any augment who can match the destructive power of even a backpack nuke. So in the next few fun-filled days you're all going to receive training in how to disarm a nuclear device using telekinetics and other skills. A few of you with abilities ideally suited to this task will be drafted into a special nuclear response team."

  Mort pushed off the edge of his desk and paced before the gathering, humming atonally as he turned the pages of the DARE memo.

  "In other news," he said, "we have information that suggests the DARE registration office in San Francisco will be the new AAF target. As usual, we don't have an exact date, but the consensus among our DHS and FBI comrades is that it will be sometime in the next week. A Team Two unit is already in the area, and after nuclear training, some of you will be joining them in a leadership capability."

  Mort turned more pages, and released a guttural sigh that seemed to echo off the walls of the now gravely silent room.

  "And one final piece of news involves a religious organization calling itself Last Days and its 'charismatic' and apparently well-endowed – superpower speaking – leader, Brian Loving. And no, folks, that is not a fake name. We checked."

  Jamie and her teammates turned to the final page of the report, which featured a close-up of a handsome bearded young man with piercing brown eyes that appeared to have been sprayed with gold glitter. Long, wavy brown hair with blond highlights cascaded from his head to his shoulders.

  "I hope you're not expecting to arrest Jesus," said Jake Culler, drawing a snort from his pal, Hulk, and some uncertain chuckles from the others.

  "That's the image he's obviously playing to," Mort grunted. "But, unfortunately, he and his group are no laughing matter. It began with this Loving character showing up in a children's' cancer ward in Denver, and proclaiming them 'Healed in the name of my father.' Then, when all the kids were apparently healed, he asked them to follow him. Which they did." Mort paused, tossing the report on his desk and facing the group with a dark gaze. "They haven't been heard of since. A scene that's been repeated more than a few times, and not always with children. A lot of individuals have gone missing. In the meantime, the number of people in his "flock" who haven't disappeared has swollen into a multitude. Overnight, this individual has become the leader – and in many cases, personal savior – to thousands. A number that could soon become millions."

  "If some people he has contact with are disappearing," Jamie spoke up, "why hasn't he been arrested, or at least brought in for questioning?"

  "He has been questioned. He claims the children or whoever else is missing are 'with the father' and are in fine health. As to the location of this 'father,' he says it isn't a specific location but a 'realm of the spirit.' Parents and family members of missing people have so far brought no complaints and are refusing to cooperate with any investigation. Bottom line, no charges have been brought against him and his group because the authorities have failed to find any evidence of a crime."

  "So what's the real story behind this asshole?" Jake growled.

  "Got work as a model straight out of high school. Evidently, some model agency exec spotted him out jogging one day and went gaga over him. Anyhow, no signs of being a future messiah until the Object bestowed its heavenly blessings on him."

  "What are his powers?" Tildie asked.

  "He can fly – or telekinetically move himself, whatever the hell the difference is – and he can heal, better than Terry or his dad or any of our people, it seems. The guy has cured hundreds of cancer patients at once. There are rumors he's a mind-reader. Other than that, we don't know."

  "DARE could draft him," said Jeremy. "The Augmented Americans Registration and Regulation Act allows for compulsory service."

  "We're all fully aware of that, Blur. There was a time when that would've made sense. Now, with thousands if not millions of followers..." Mort held up his arms. "We could have a revolution on our hands. And we got plenty enough trouble on our plate already."

  "Not to mention the aliens," said Tildie. "Lurking out by Mars planning God knows what."

  "Thanks for bringing that up." Mort dropped his hands to grasp the edge of his desk. Jamie heard the wood creak with the force of his grip. "The President and his people are talking about creating yet another federal agency to deal with that issue. Though what they can do about it is a mystery to me."

  "Commander Shepherd might've taken them out," Jake Culler grumbled. "She could've at least taken a shot. Instead, she hightailed it back to Earth."

  "And I for one am damn glad she did," said Jay Utrecht. "What would you guess that ship could do to this planet if we pissed them off?"

  "What do think they're gonna do to us if we don't?" Jake snapped. "What do you think they're doing out there? Admiring the Martian scenery?" Jake shook his head scornfully. "We all damn well know they got their sights set on Earth. My guess it ain't cuz they want to send us a CARE package."

  "It is because of such deep insights that we made you a IED sergeant," said Mort with deadpan sincerity. "For what it's worth, I believe Jamie did the only intelligent thing possible under the circumstances. An act of war is not a casual thing – nor is self-sacrifice. If she hadn't backed off, she probably wouldn't be here to provide the intelligence she has."

  Jake muttered something that sounded a lot like "bullshit" under his breath. Mort Anderson chose to ignore him.

  "We have our hands full dealing with problems here on Earth," he said. "Let's hope we can get our own shit together before we face whatever the aliens have planned for us."

  DEFUSING A nuclear bomb wasn't all that difficult. In theory. It turned out that nuclear weapons were remarkably fragile; a number of events had to occur in strict sequence and with exact timing for one to detonate. Anything that disrupted the timing or sequence shut down the nuclear reaction. Virtually any telekinetic or beam power could interrupt those processes. The kicker was that halting the nuclear reaction didn't prevent the non-nuclear explosives from detonating – spreading highly radioactive material over the area.

  That was the finesse that troubled Jamie the most.

  The thirteen-member Rapid Nuclear Response Unit (RaNRU) comprised a mix of original and new members of Team One. The originals: Jamie, Tildie, Jeremy, Jay, Barry Apple, Joy Kamada (Mind Games) Belinda (Hot Girl), Kyle Hunt (Sandman), Hulk Horner and his pal, Jake Culler. The newer members included Denise Rogers (Ice Queen), Allen Lassiter (plasma projection and object-penetrating vision), and Kim-Ly Klein, the former Team Two psychic/clairvoyant responsible for receiving Jay's distress signal from the moon. Between them, they had a number of options for halting a nuclear detonation: they could freeze, burn, compress, or disintegrate the fissionable material. Joy Kamada could induce disorientation if not outright insanity in a bad guy, and Kyle Hunt/Sandman could put them instantly asleep. Or, with Kim-Ly's help, they might get the bad guys and capture the nuclear devices before they even had the chance to deploy them.

  And Jay could simply teleport a bomb to nowhere, which made him the first option if the weapons were deployed. Allen Lassiter, with his object-penetrating vision (they weren't sure how it worked, but it wasn't X-ray-based) would in theory be their spotter. Kim-Ly and Tildie would hopefully give them heads-up. Kim-Ly was their weak-link physically – minimally gifted telekinetically or strength-wise, lacking flight and projectile powers - but she was a rising star in IED who got more consistent "hits" on predictions and psychic connections than any of her competitors.

  And it was Kim-Ly who had urged Mort and Director Boltman to send a team to San Francisco. "Urged" meaning that she had mentioned the possibility in her soft-spoken voice, eyes carefully averted, which for her amounted to an urgent demand since she virtually never initiated any interaction or conversation.

  The Rapid Nuclear Response Unit (RaNRU) was selected by Mort and
Director Boltman with considerable input from Jamie and the other team leaders. They not only needed the skill-set to defuse the nukes but after that to take out the bad guys, who were likely to be formidable. As usual, how they'd match up with super bad guys was speculative. Battles between elite augments was chess – maybe even three-dimensional chess - compared to checkers: the match-ups between similar powers were hard enough to calculate but when the powers were dissimilar it was a classic case of scissors-rock-paper, with some powers fairly easily defeating others. Except there were far more than three variables.

  The only real disagreement they had was over the inclusion of the "Mayhem Twins," Greg Hulk Horner (he actually preferred "Hulk" to his real name) and Jake Culler. Tildie, particularly, objected to the hotheaded Hulk, and Mort wondered if Jake would try to assume command instead of following orders. "His ego is bigger than his powers," Mort observed. But Jamie argued that he had a good balance of powers and had more battle experience than anyone but Horner. And Horner might be an asshole, but he was the kind of asshole you wanted on your side when things went to hell. In the assault on Rodriquez and his Brown Devils, when everything was going up in flames and team members were being incinerated left and right, he took the fight to the Devils to devastating effect. Jamie still remembered him standing there with his clothes hanging in burned shreds smoking like an overdone steak at a barbecue with a crazy "What's for dessert?" grin on his face. He might not have flight or projectile weapons or much telekinetics, but he made up for that with sheer brute strength. Like his namesake he was so damned tough and determined that he could walk through a wall of beams and flame to get to you. Jamie wasn't sure she could defeat him in a purely physical fight herself. He'd be damn hard to kill even for her, she was sure about that. And Jake – who was well-rounded but not exceptional in any power - had value if only because he could control Horner probably better than anyone, and as a team they'd fight even harder to protect each other.