by David Reiss
“It's a brick warehouse!” I pointed out irritably. “Undefended!”
“Wow. Even Lloyds wouldn’t insure that,” Starnyx agreed. “Failure to exercise due diligence.”
“Exactly!”
“Look, Doc. You're right. It's a mistake,” he chuckled. “Businesses make mistakes all the time. Why is this bugging you?”
“It’s insulting,” I grated out. “Stanford spent nearly fourty million dollars to dissuade Technos from attacking their powerplant. CSE is based in Doctor Fid’s backyard, and I’m not convinced that they were planning on investing in a good padlock.”
“Security through obscurity, man,” the hacker reminded me. “They haven’t publicly announced any new projects. Maybe they thought no one’d notice.”
“They’re publicly traded. Did they think none of their investors would see the expense, or the change in their monthly power bill?”
“First of all, it won’t be that large a chunk o’ change, not for them. That’s why you were watching them, yeah?”
“True.” I sighed, deflating. “They already manufacture a fair number of relevant components. CSE is the only company in the North East that has the manufacturing capability to make both their own cavity magnetrons and large volumes of bismuth aerogel.”
“Secondly, they can bury the changes in their earnings report under ‘improved internal processes’,” Starnyx continued. “There’s maybe a handful of people in the world who would have caught this and, sure, you’re definitely one of the most likely…but you haven’t been out in armor for four months and your arm was still missing then. They probably thought that ‘the Doctor is out’, and this’d fly under the radar.”
Nyx was correct; to most of the world, the construction of this Westler-Gray reactor would have been invisible. For a creature like Fid, however, finding out about this would be child’s play. A business owner might not be aware of Doctor Fid’s capabilities, but others would certainly be more attentive. And when Fid’s extended absence was factored in, a new picture evolved.
“It’s not a mistake,” I barked in laughter. “It’s not a mistake at all. I should have seen it sooner.”
“Oh?”
“It’s a staked goat to lure a tiger!” I shook my head. “Bait so obvious that I should have noticed the gift-wrapping. Someone is trying to draw Doctor Fid out of hiding!”
“Hah!” Starnyx sounded as entertained as I felt. “Sounds like someone’s about to have a bad day. Any idea who?”
“Not yet. I’ll start counter-surveillance and see what I can determine.”
“Sounds like the Red Ghost to me, Doc. Be careful.”
“No,” I said, feeling certain of my answer. “The Red Ghost’s idea, perhaps, but he’d never move ahead with it. There’s a community college football field adjacent to the CSE factory. Too much danger to civilians.”
“Remember how he caught Kenny.” Eric’s voice quieted, serious and intense. “Beazd was easily strong enough to escape. Your Ghost risked all those guards’ lives, sending ’em in unarmored. Maybe he’d risk a couple college students, too.”
“Kenta was a far, far better man than I am. The Red Ghost would know this,” I responded with equal gravity. “Beazd was a pacifist. Doctor Fid is most certainly not.”
“Yeah. Yeah, true. Just be careful of the Ghost. He's not perfect.”
“You found something damning?” I wasn’t sure that I wanted to know. “While investigating the Shield, I mean?”
“Nah, nothing like that. But he’s human, he can make mistakes.” Nyx sighed softly. “For the record, Doctor Fid isn’t as bad as you seem to think he is, either.”
“Mm,” I responded noncommittally; I disagreed, of course, but didn’t think it worthwhile to argue the point. “Speaking of investigating the Shield...How soon till your broadcast?”
“Ehhh.” He groaned softly. “It’s on hold.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We're delaying the broadcast for a while.” He tried laughing it off, but I could hear the strain beneath his forced humor.
“It’s been, as you said, four months.” I tilted my head curiously, still holding the phone to my ear with one hand. “Do you need my construction drones again?”
(Reflexively, I checked the status of my construction robots. Hmm. I could see that the drones that he'd used had been returned to my storage facility days before my surgery, but those two were still listed as unavailable. Two others, as well! Some software glitch? I’d look into it later.)
“Thanks, but nah. They were useful, though.” Now I could hear his smile, and it felt genuine again. “We have everything prepped for when we move forward.”
“If you have everything prepped, then why aren't I seeing you on the six o'clock news?” I rubbed at my eyes against a sudden headache, bewildered and angry. “Sphinx was just on The Late Show two days ago without a care in the world!”
“I know, man, but something’s come up. The FTW’s working on another project.”
“Peregrine is doing photo-ops at Comicon this weekend and you're just going to let him go?” I clenched my teeth so hard that my jaw hurt. Starnyx—a man that I’d trusted—had vengeance within reach but was refusing to grasp it? “I thought Beazd was your friend!”
“You're my friend, too,” Starnyx replied evenly. “So I’m gonna forgive you instead of driving up there ’n breaking your damned nose. Peregrine’s on borrowed time.”
Rage burst like a soap bubble and I felt unaccountably tired. The sudden migraine faded and all that was left was the strange sensation that something important had been forgotten. For a long moment, neither of us spoke.
“It's just...I don’t understand,” I said quietly.
“I know, Doc,” he commiserated. “I know what revenge means to you, and believe me...I want it too. Right now, though...that’s gotta take a back seat to living the life that my friend would have wanted for me. Honoring him by doing the things he would’ve wanted me to do, y’know?”
I could comprehend that, in theory. I could piece the words together and draw meaning from them. The sentiment, though, was alien. The dead needed justice and the guilty needed to be punished! If I doubted either of those truths for even a moment, then how could I possibly justify Doctor Fid to my brother's shade? Starnyx’s ghosts, I supposed, must haunt him differently than did my own.
That knowledge lightened my heart but also left me feeling terribly lonely.
“Is there anything that you need?” I finally asked.
“I'm good.” He paused. “Thanks, Doc.”
“You're welcome.”
“Um, hey, listen...we stumbled onto something huge, something Kenny would have wanted us to bring to light.” Nyx recovered his natural ebullient enthusiasm. “Next show in a month, yeah?”
“I'm looking forward to it.” My smile was wan, but genuine. “Take care of yourself, Eric.”
“You too, Doc!”
◊◊◊
Further research revealed that the Boston Guardians were indeed responsible for the CSE's decision to build a horrifically unsecured WG reactor. The CEO's personal email account held encrypted messages from Titan himself; the Guardians had fronted the necessary funds and further promised half of Doctor Fid's rather sizable bounty after the crippled villain was successfully captured. All, of course, in gratitude for the CSE's cooperation.
Titan was taking a dangerous risk. Superhero teams enjoyed different obligations for due diligence than did businesses, so the Guardians' investment could probably be recovered from their insurance in the event of a loss. Until that loss occurred, however, far too much of their operating capital was tied up in this one operation.
(The Red Ghost was an accountant; he must have railed against this plan and been overruled. One of my greatest regrets had always been my failure to hack into the internal security cameras at the Guardians' headquarters. Watching the conflict between Red Ghost and Titan would have been a joy.)
Handing another d
efeat to the Guardians would be demoralizing for them, I knew, but I could do more damage by sitting back and doing nothing. Or, if pure laziness was not compelling, perhaps simply introducing a few carefully targeted computer viruses to increase their IT expenditures and performing a bit of market manipulation to decrease the value of their holdings would be sufficient. I doubted that I’d be able to bankrupt the Guardians before the Red Ghost uncovered the plot, but I certainly could hurt them. Delivering a fiscal wound would be almost as pleasant as inflicting the more visceral kind of damage.
Having arrived at a strategy, the CSE and their Westler-Gray reactor slipped from my immediate priorities. I should have remembered another old adage: No battle plan survives first contact with stupidity.
◊◊◊
I awoke to pain, eyes wide and heart racing. The artificially-released adrenaline cocktail had served its purpose: I was immediately alert and focused. The world, however, tasted metallic; I was reminded, strangely, of old pennies. (Note to self: Adjust stimulant mixture and add anti-arrhythmic medications to smooth physical effects.)
Reflexively, I parsed the alerts that prompted my abrupt animation: Dozens of calls to the police and fire departments, explosions reported in Cambridge, calls for emergency medical expertise, and conflicting reports regarding a tank or armored bus. I was already running towards the rarely-used (and moderately dangerous) emergency teleportation platform hidden in my home-office when another alert pinged: the Governor had placed a brief call to Guardians headquarters. Her next call would likely be to the National Guard.
I commanded my automated systems to ready Doctor Fid’s Mk 29 armor.
“What’s going on?” Whisper called plaintively as I sped past her room.
“Technos is in my city!” I called over my shoulder, voice rough with rage. “Without my permission!”
“Oh.” The little android hugged her doll close to her chest, lookin forlorn. “Please come home.”
I stumbled.
Had Whisper looked like that when Apotheosis left for his final battle against the Paragons? Had she retreated to her room, sipping imaginary tea as she waited, helplessly, to hear her Father’s voice at the door? How long had she waited before she’d started to cry?
Taking on the role of Doctor Fid was a heavy responsibility. A sacrifice. I’d poked and prodded at my very core, torn myself apart and reassembled the remains into a creature that struck fear into nation-states. An affront like this could not be borne, could not be forgiven without damaging the Doctor’s carefully crafted reputation. That notoriety had been earned with blood and misery! The cost had been too great to easily allow Fid’s infamy be tarnished.
Terry Markham took a few moments to tuck his ward in to bed and reassure her, but it was Doctor Fid that abandoned Whisper to her worry and fear.
Doctor Fid was, after all, a monster.
◊◊◊
Monsters were not in short supply in Cambridge. The Guardians had likely been lying in wait, hoping to spring their trap on a supposedly-wounded Doctor Fid; they certainly hadn't expected Technos’ armada of combat vehicles! Nor, for that matter, had the Guardians been prepared for the sheer number of armed mercenaries that accompanied the villain. It looked as though Technos was diverted away from his target—the Westler-Gray reactor—but the battle quickly had spilled over into the Greater Boston Community College campus.
I’d never met Technos, nor even wasted much time thinking on him. He’d been a weapons designer in northern California whose project was canceled. From what I understood, he’d actually raved to the company executives that they would ‘rue the day that they fired Doctor Carl Schlumpf!’ Embarrassing. If the man had any shame, he’d have slunk into the shadows and taken up a different hobby. Instead, he followed every cliché and stole the company's prototype mini-tank.
Using that first tank, he stole resources to build a second, etc. Technos had built up an apparently successful arsenal over the last eleven years, but his greater talent was revealed to be the hiring, training and managing of henchmen. His private army was disciplined and arguably more dangerous than the armored vehicles that Technos himself brought to bear.
Floating fully-cloaked high above the chaos, I deployed a massive swarm of microdrones to map the campus and to mark targets. Even with my own heavy-combat drones—a full dozen; twice as many as had ever been deployed for a single skirmish—this battle could prove complicated.
Eleven of Technos' mercenaries had already been been subdued, but the remaining forces had split into small units and spread out to cause chaos. Veridian had been drawn away from the primary battleground to rescue a classroom full of hostages. Two more armored personal carriers careened through campus and left pain and screams in their wake. Regrowth and the Red Ghost had split up to assist the authorities in chasing down those vehicles; the local police were overwhelmed and thoroughly outgunned.
In the campus’ main courtyard, Titan and Aeon stood alone against four mini-tanks and one giant gray monstrosity that bristled with turrets, cannons and sensor arrays.
The larger tank hammered at the two heroes relentlessly; the smaller vehicles peppered the surrounding battleground with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of smoke and concussion grenades. Occasionally, the mini-tanks’ turrets spun to concentrate fire upon one of the two heroes, leading to a frenzied defense and intense destruction.
It was...devastation, like something out of a nightmare. Even soaring above the carnage, I could taste blood and ash and tears on my lips.
I summoned the Mk 29’s war-staff from subspace and dropped to a height of only twenty feet. A massive energy buildup of energy gathered among my drones; raw power arced between their towering starfield-patterned columns, brightening the sky and drawing all attention to me as I disabled the armor’s cloaking system.
“TECHNOS!! YOU TRESSPASS IN MY DOMAIN!” I thundered. “EXPLAIN YOURSELF OR BE DESTROYED!”
Titan and Aeon halted their attack, wary lest they provoke me to join forces with the interloper. Their apprehension was misguided. On this day, Technos' sins far outweighed those of the heroes. That the Guardians set a trap for Doctor Fid had been ill-advised, but not wholly unexpected. A first-tier supervillain daring to intrude upon Doctor Fid's territory, on the other hand, was an inexcusable act of contempt.
“Fid!” Technos howled from within his armored tank. The vehicle’s external speakers failed to match my own broadcast presence. “An old has-been like you can't hold a region this large!”
I was shocked into momentary inaction. This was, I thought, the oddest suicide attempt that I'd ever witnessed.
“Fly away!” he taunted further. “You tin-plated coward!”
A verbal response was, I decided, entirely unnecessary. I aimed my war-staff and fired a pulsed particle beam at Technos' battle-tank.
The air itself exploded into plasma, which was in turn projected down upon the armored vehicle by shaped energy-fields that struck like the wrath of an angry god. The impact shook the earth. Pavement fractured into rubble and buildings rocked with enough force to throw dust from their rooftops. Glass shattered and the crash echoed across the entire campus like thunder.
For a moment, all was still.
“You'll need to do better than that!” Technos crowed, triumphantly.
Clearing smoke revealed that his tank was barely damaged. A reactive deflector-shield, perhaps? I detected low-level radiation and an unexpected shift in air temperature. Interesting.
“You wanted an explanation?” the madman called, smugly condescending. “Come down here and take it!”
Extra-dimensional energy radiated from a tuned emitter on his tank, creating quantum ripples in a region the size of a football field. Anti-grav fields were disrupted like a candle snuffed by a gale.
My drones and I tumbled from the sky.
Technos’ defenses, I noted with grim amusement, were too carefully tailored to match my known capabilities to be coincidence. His attack on the W-G reactor, too, m
ust have been a ruse. I wasn’t certain if he wanted my territory, my technology, or merely the reputation boost eliminating the notorious Doctor Fid would bring…but he’d come here to take a soft target and to lure me out of hiding. Instead, he’d tripped the Guardians’ trap.
The tanks’ technology was intriguing. The tank’s pilot, on the other hand, was an amateurish imbecile.
Software algorithms reacted to make my landing graceful. I took the impact on both feet, cratering into the already-scarred pavement, and twirled my staff for effect.
“I no longer require an explanation!” I called in challenge. “Only your defeat!”
Six of my drones, spider-like walking legs deployed and bristling with exposed weaponry, formed a protective circle around me; the remainder sped off in their disturbingly alien eight-legged gallop to begin locating and subduing Technos’ soldiers.
The mini-tanks opened fire and the fight became general.
My sensors were unaffected by the artificially-created quantum ripples, so the predictive algorithms within my suit’s programming were well able to keep track of the precise direction in which my enemy’s weapons were aimed. I danced between cannon shells.
It was exhilarating. Step left, tilt head, jump, cut inertial dampeners and use the recoil from a twenty-six percent power particle beam to alter my jumps trajectory and thrust me aside...I was constantly shifting at maximum speed to avoid being targeted. A fraction of a second distraction might have meant disaster. I didn't need to be faster than a bullet, only faster than the tank's turret. Still, Technos' tanks were able to aim and reload remarkably quickly; if my own heavy-combat drones weren’t available to occasionally act as barriers, I would have remained too busy dodging to have any possibility of counterattack.
Fortunately, my heavy-combat drones were designed to stand—at least temporarily—against the likes of Valiant.
A depleted-uranium round splattered off a drone's force field and I took advantage of the opportunity to retaliate with an ion-cannon blast. Once again, the effect was minimal. I cycled through laser, maser, sonic and plasma attacks.