“TAKE THEM DOWN!” The call roared through both their cochlear implants and the Myrmidon’s loudspeaker system. It overrode the shock Ali and everyone in the Special Squad felt. She went into motion, dreading what she must do but letting her training take over.
The Legion attacked.
They had all trained for an eventuality like this. They had practiced the moves over and over again, in psychic simulations and in the real world, out in remote rocky islands where they could cut loose and unleash enough energy to level mountain ranges. The Special Squad moved like a well-oiled machine, its opening gambit as carefully choreographed as a dance number.
The problem was, Ultimate and Janus knew the steps to the dance just as well as their opponents.
Ali rushed forward under a volley from Meteor and Sun Knight, with Berserker following on her tracks. Their target was Ultimate. The Invincible Man was already on the move, flying toward Myrmidon, but Ali intercepted him, two flying humanoids moving several times faster than the speed of sound. Ali felt the collision from her head to her toes. Her protective aura buckled under the impact, several of her ribs cracked, and she bounced off Ultimate and crashed into the rocky soil at an angle, carving a trench hundreds of feet long and half as deep. She had managed to deflect Ultimate’s charge, however, and the lunge that would have destroyed Myrmidon as thoroughly as Brass Man missed its target. As Ali struggled to her feet, ignoring the itching as her damaged bones healed, she saw Berserker struggling with Ultimate in midair. That didn’t last long; John’s hammer blow sent the Norwegian plummeting to the ground at supersonic speed; he landed in an explosion of dust and debris.
That exposed Ultimate to more ranged fire: Myrmidon transfixed Ultimate with a burst of particle beams. A moment later Meteor enveloped the Invincible Man in a boiling inferno, superheating the air around him into something ten times hotter than the surface of the sun.
She would have been crippled or killed by that double-whammy, but Ultimate emerged from the conflagration alive and still ready to fight. He flew at Meteor and with one punch knocked British Legionnaire out of the sky. By then, Ali was back in the air. She didn’t have time to check on her teammates; that was the Faerie Godfather’s job.
The backup squads had joined the action from behind the hills where they’d been kept in reserve, twenty-five Legionnaires, all high Type Twos, all capable of flight and ranged combat. They swarmed around the two renegades, deluging both of them with a storm of lethal energies in a myriad different wavelengths: lightning and lasers, arrows and micro-missiles, psychic spears and high-speed fireballs. As Ali maneuvered to reach Ultimate, she caught a glimpse of Janus, his golden shield glowing brighter than the sun as it absorbed and deflected the deadly maelstrom. She hoped the attacks would keep him busy while she dealt with her primary target.
Ultimate was knocked back to the ground by the barrage. He engaged the returning Berserker in hand to hand combat, ignoring the continuing potshots from the Legionnaires hovering overhead. The Norwegian Legionnaire swung his fabled axe at Ultimate. The Artifact bit into the Invincible Man’s – and shattered from the force of the impact. Blood flowed from Ultimate’s chest, but the wound was not mortal or even disabling. Berserker roared in fury and moved in with his fists. Ultimate took a couple of punches before delivering his own, doubling the Norwegian over with a shot to the guts and then knocking him back with an uppercut that sounded like a thunderclap when it connected. Berserker grew stronger and tougher the longer he fought, but even at his full strength he wasn’t in Ultimate’s league. Ali arrived just as Berserker’s limp form went flying in a ballistic arc.
She went for a direct and brutal attack, focusing all her power into a punch aimed at the back of John’s head. If it had landed squarely, it might have stunned him for long enough to end the fight, but he was in motion as she struck, and the blow glanced off his skull, knocking him off balance but not inflicting enough damage to matter. He turned and parried her next punch with a sweeping forearm. Her eyes met his: she saw anger, sorrow and desperation there. He didn’t hesitate, however.
Ali managed to partially deflect his counterpunch with her raised arms, but he wasn’t holding back either, and his fist beat its way past her block. Things went dark for a moment or two. When she regained consciousness, she was half a mile away, buried halfway into a hill. Her ears were ringing with the sound of the thunderous impact, her left forearm was broken, and she couldn’t see out of her left eye. Gritting her teeth against the pain, she crawled out of the hole and took flight.
From her distant vantage point, the chaos looked like a beautiful fireworks display, if one didn’t mind the deafening roar of dozens of explosions echoing throughout the desert. Ultimate flew past the hovering Legionnaires, and brightly clad figures dropped from the skies like so many dead sparrows. On the other side of the battleground, Janus floated over Nebiru, hammering through the Iraqi hero’s eldritch shields with a torrent of golden energy; the Faerie Godfather was lying face-down not too far away, dead or unconscious. Only a handful others were still in the fight, and none of their attacks seemed to make any difference. “Fuck,” Ali said in a soft tone. They were losing. Thirty to two odds, and they were losing.
As Ultimate knocked Sun Knight out with another deafening thunder-punch, Myrmidon emerged from behind a hill and struck the Invincible Man in the back.
The energy beam that came from the center of Myrmidon’s breast plate was something Ali had never seen before. The continuous energy stream was a dark eggplant color, and it flowed with an oily liquid motion that made her vaguely ill just from looking at it. The beam actually twisted towards its target, catching Ultimate in mid-flight and staggering him. The Invincible Man went after Myrmidon, but his flying became slow and ungainly, and Daedalus maneuvered to keep his distance while he continued to focus the dark stream on his target. John kept moving, pushing through the onslaught like a man trying to walk against a hurricane wind, but he was moving slowly, too slowly.
Ali crashed into John from the side. To her horror, she realized his defensive aura wasn’t there; she felt his bones break as they hit the ground together. He lay so still that she was sure she’d killed him until her enhanced senses heard a faint heartbeat coming from his chest.
The Myrmidon flew closer. She could see the gun port on his chest plate beginning to glow darkly once again.
“Ultimate’s down,” she said, waving Daedalus off and stepping between him and John’s unconscious figure. “I will secure him while you handle Janus.”
For a second, she thought Myrmidon was going to fire on her, but after a brief hesitation Daedalus muttered “Roger that” and flew off. Ali quickly shackled Ultimate with the Class X restraints they all had been issued for this mission. John didn’t stir. His broken bones remained broken. What the hell had Daedalus hit him with?
As she called for the few Legionnaires still on their feet to come take John into custody while she rejoined the fight, Ali realized she was more concerned about what the Myrmidon was doing than about Janus.
* * *
Daedalus bit off a curse. He wanted John dead, not restrained. He thought that Hyperia’s attack after the disruptor had shorted out his defenses would have been enough to kill the big guy, but the Invincible Bozo was just too dumb to die. And then the fucking super-bimbo had stepped into the line of fire before the Myrmidon weapon systems could finish him off.
For a second, he thought about blasting them both, and damn the consequences. The temptation to just wipe out all of them was hard to resist, but sense reasserted itself. This wasn’t the right time. Killing John would have been nice, but there was still a chance to go back to the original plan and get some use out of the lumbering oaf.
On top of that, his suit systems were in bad shape. Using the disruptor did a number on anything Neo-related, including Artifacts like the Myrmidon suit. The two sustained blasts he’d fired had nearly fried the armor. Outsider energy was noxious, toxic stuff. Nobody could handle it saf
ely for long, except for Mr. Night. That was one reason he’d waited until he absolutely had to before using the disruptor. The other was that if any Legionnaires were paying attention, they would note the similarities between his new gizmo and the mysterious beam weapons that had killed Chasca and nearly killed Artemis in Hong Kong. It was going to take some fancy footwork to tap dance around that.
Daedalus thought the suit could handle one more disruptor burst, That should be just about enough to take down the Superior Homo. If not, life was going to get very interesting.
Yet another problem with the disruptor was that its range wasn’t very long. He needed to get into knife-fighting distances – under three hundred yards – to make sure the blast would be effective. Beyond that, the anti-energy dissipated harmlessly: Outsider emanations just couldn’t survive for long in contact with normal matter. Daedalus grimaced as he maneuvered towards Janus. The big black bastard was pounding Nebiru into the ground; time to nail him from behind, even though he might just enjoy it.
Just seconds before he reached optimum range, Nebiru collapsed. “Fuck me,” Daedalus hissed, knowing what was going to happen next.
Even as he mouthed the curse, he saw Janus disappear in a flash of golden light. The bastard had teleported as soon as Nebiru’s containment field had gone down. Damn it all to Hell. The stupid sand jockey had let the faggot get away!
Cursing under his breath, Daedalus gained some altitude and monitored the situation. Twenty-three of the thirty or so Legionnaires were injured to some degree or another, but other than Doc Slaughter nobody had died. Trust John and Cassius to be kind and considerate even while fighting for their lives. That was too bad; the lack of a body count would provide John’s apologists with some ammunition. It probably wouldn’t matter in the long run, but it would have been nice if things had gone according to plan, for once.
Meteor was back in action, and in a killing mood. Daedalus caught the end of his argument with Hyperia.
“Ultimate’s too dangerous to keep alive,” Meteor was saying. “And he murdered Doctor Slaughter!” Too bad the limey hadn’t reached Ultimate before Hyperia; he would have taken care of the problem by frying Dear John to a crisp before his powers returned.
“And he’ll pay for that,” Hyperia said firmly. “But we’re not going to summarily execute him, not when he has been subdued.” That was stretching the letter of the law: under the circumstances, the Legion could summarily execute Ultimate right then and there. It was one of those things that could go either way, and which would be Monday-morning quarterbacked to death, both by the Legion and every pundit and expert you could put in front of a camera. Hyperia was the nominal team leader now that Kenny had bit the big one, though: what she said went.
Daedalus didn’t even try to argue the point. For one, he didn’t want to sound too eager to kill Johnny-Boy. For another, arguing with Hyperia never led anywhere. You could kill the stupid bitch, but you couldn’t make her back down, and killing her would be impolitic at the moment.
This was going to be a challenging situation. Ultimate would start babbling as soon as he woke up, and although his accusations would sound crazy, they had the virtue of being true, and if somebody decided to take John at his word and took a good look at things, Daedalus’ schemes might be uncovered. John would stay unconscious for as long as Daedalus could manage it, though. If they could get the Dreamer back inside John’s head, everything would be fine. It was doable.
Janus running away presented a much worse problem. A teleport who could cross astronomical units in a single bound was impossible to find unless he let himself be found. On the other hand, an at-large Janus would provide a perfect continuing crisis. Hunting the big bastard would keep the Legion too busy to try and think things through. The best thing to do with a liability was to turn it into an asset. He’d have to do some fast tap-dancing, but he was up to it.
In a few weeks, none of this would matter. He’d either have the girl in custody, or Plan B would be underway. If Plan B went off as planned, New York City would be a smoking hole in the ground, both Chinas would be burning, and the Legion’s role in the world would have changed dramatically.
All he had to do was keep tap-dancing for few weeks, and the world would be his.
Christine Dark
New York City, New York, March 16, 2013
Back on the Condor Jet, and this time Christine wasn’t even worried about it. The last time had been more than a bit nerve-wracking; she’d never been fond of flying. After having had to learn how to fly under her own power, while falling to her death from twenty thousand feet up in the air, flying wasn’t an issue for her anymore. Too bad she’d collected a few dozen new issues along the way.
The Condor Jet was cruising over New York in stealth mode. She was kind of glad to see the Big Apple again. It still looked much like the city she had visited and loved since she was a little girl, except for things like the Twin Towers and a couple of unfamiliar skyscrapers, including one that looked like the Empire State Building’s older brother.
She would have been even gladder to see New York again if the city wasn’t the likely headquarters for the Big Bads who had dragged her kicking and screaming into this universe.
Mark had been fairly quiet the entire flight. He’d mostly spent his time poring over Condor’s police files on the Russian mob. Christine had given him his space and played around on the Hypernet. She’d gone on Hyperpedia for a good while and gotten a few more answers to her million questions about the world.
The history stuff had been interesting. Much as she’d expected, things had been very different after World War Two, although there were some weird similarities that were pretty creepy. Presidents, for example. Ronald Reagan had gone from Bedtime for Bonzo to the White House in both worlds; her mom would have been pissed about that, since she hated Reagan. But the Reagan of this world had come after President John Glenn, whose name sounded familiar to her although she couldn’t quite place it, and the 1980 Democratic candidate who’d lost to Reagan had been Cassius Jones a.k.a. Janus, the guy John had gone to see last night. Bill Clinton was another two-fer; her mom would have loved that, since she liked Clinton. None of the other names matched, though: Gary Hart and Bob Dole, and now John Colletta, the second Neo president.
She’d only done a quick skim of historical events outside the US, and things were very different there. With a weak and eventually doomed Soviet Union hemmed in by the Dominion, which wasn’t interested in charging down the Fulda Gap, there had been no Cold War. No NATO, either; the US attention had been mostly on Asia. She’d noticed a lot of former European colonies in Africa and Asia had remained colonies quite a bit longer than in her world. India had gone independent at about the same time, and a few decades later had ended up in a war with Pakistan that had gone nuclear, led to millions of deaths and would have gotten worse if the Freedom Legion and the United Nations hadn’t intervened. There was a lot more, but she got depressed after a while and switched to something a bit more cheerful, like pop culture.
Music, she’d already discovered, was very different. There was this thing called Hep Jazz that kind of occupied the same niche as hip hop and R&B back on Earth Prime. Country music was more popular and country-rock and country-jazz mixes were pretty common. The butterflies had erased almost all of her favorite bands. No Yeah Yeah Yeahs. No Florence and the Machine, no so many others. She sampled some tunes and found some stuff she liked, mostly by these two singers, Kate Micucci and Riki Lindhome, who apparently had started out as a singing duo before splitting up and becoming competitors and frenemies. Their stuff was funny and sarcastic, kind of like a funkier Lily Allen. Their names were vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t place them; she’d have to Google them when she was back on Earth Prime, if she ever made it back. She downloaded a bunch of their stuff onto her wrist-comp so she’d have something to listen to when she wasn’t busy trying to stay alive.
She even got to put a few movies on her to-watch list. Nicholas Cage
had starred in a bunch of flicks about Ultimate, despite the fact he looked nothing like John Clarke, even with a lot of heavy makeup. She was looking forward to checking them out on her new wrist-thingy and goggles combo, which could project video straight into her retinas so it felt like she was watching it on a fifty-inch TV screen.
Christine finally had a wrist-comp of her own, after she pointedly reminded Mark and Condor that when she’d gotten separated from the group she’d had no way to communicate with them. Condor had gotten her a nifty wrist-comp with a holographic screen and keyboard, along with Tru-View goggles. Now she could wander the Xanaweb, watch LOLcats videos and otherwise be a functional human being once again. Now if she could get another change of clothes and a handbag, she’d be almost normal, for some values of normal.
She looked up from the holographic screen when the Condor Jet gently slid underwater. At some point she was going to have to ask Condor how he’d managed to build a submarine docking area off Brooklyn without anyone noticing. Somebody in the government had to be in on it. That worried her. So far the authorities were only looking for John and her. If Condor became associated with Christine Dark, Federal Fugitive, would his city contacts turn him in? Just one more thing to worry about.
They were going to go hunt for information the next day. Christine was worried about that. She also wondered what she would do in the meanwhile. Chilling out sounded nice, but she doubted that was in the cards.
* * *
“Come on, stay frosty and watch your six!”
PE class all over again. Mark was being downright mean to her. She was hot, sweaty and getting pretty peeved just about now.
They’d been in the Condor Lair training room for over two hours now. Mark was running her through her paces, using Condor’s gizmos to throw all kind of nasty stuff at her, including machinegun bullets, energy beams and noxious liquids. She’d caught most of it with her shields, but he kept figuring out ways to blindside her and smack her around. One of the hits had really hurt, as in one of her arms was on a sling while it regenerated after getting broken in two places. Mark had tended to the injury with barely an apology. Pretty d-baggy of him. Sure, the arm would heal in a couple of minutes, but it had hurt like hell.
New Olympus Saga (Book 2): Doomsday Duet Page 14