by Matt Adams
“I have some espionage gear that should help with that,” the Comet says.
By “espionage gear,” the Comet means a fedora and sunglasses.
Warren once said his father was better at the whole disguise thing than his predecessors. You’ll have to excuse me for disagreeing.
Falcon Gray, squawking in protest, sits in a wheelchair that, along with a trench coat—yes, a trench coat—conceals his arm-wings.
It’s like signing up for an infiltration course taught by Fackler from Police Academy.
Of course, when you think about it, I guess all superheroes really are Citizens on Patrol. If only Steve Guttenberg were here.
I get off much easier with khaki slacks and a polo shirt. The Comet also insists on giving me a fake mustache and mutton chops to help hide my identity. Jaci wears a pastel yellow tank top and some capri pants the Comet insists he “just had lying around.” Poor Warren has just as much grounds for complaint as Falcon Gray; he’s in a tri-colored beanie, a ringer t-shirt, and powder-blue shorts that would make Larry Bird blush.
“I can transport you a few blocks away from the line for the shuttle,” Klem says. He snaps his fingers; a stack of papers appears in his hands. “These are boarding passes for the four of you, each with carefully researched identities that are designed to avoid Kiltech scrutiny. They are not wearing their black armored suits in plain sight. Instead, representatives of Aegis wear sky blue uniforms.”
“They’re more like something you’d find on an airline,” the Comet adds. “From what we’ve seen of the boarding procedures, they’ll look at your identification papers and wave you through. They don’t care who boards the flights, because everyone is just a lab rat anyway. So just walk,” he looks at poor Falcon Gray, “or roll up to the guards and you’ll be fine.”
“Where are we boarding?” Warren asks.
“Cincinnati.”
Ah…
Stately Cincinnati, Ohio.
Home of the Reds. The Bengals. The Bearcats.
I’ve been here a few times before, mostly because I follow the Reds and have a high school buddy who’s obsessed with Bengals football. I admire his fan loyalty; it must be hard to live with constant disappointment, fumbles, interceptions, and losses to the Pittsburgh Steelers. Those are the things the Bengals are known for.
The Reds haven’t had the best of luck either, but at least there’s hope for them.
Not for the Bengals.
Never the Bengals.
We walk a little ways before making it to the pedestrian bridge that runs across the Ohio River from the Kentucky side to the Ohio side. On a sweltering night like this, it’s not much fun, especially when you’re pushing your incognito bird friend across in a wheelchair.
Falcon Gray has impressed me on our espionage mission so far, failing to squawk, chirp, mewl, or otherwise make any other non-human sound. That doesn’t mean he’s happy, though, and he lets us know it. “Battle is preferable to this humiliation.”
“Easy, Falcon Gray,” Jaci soothes. “If I know anything about how this works, there’s plenty of fighting ahead of us.”
“We have to do this undercover,” Warren says, adjusting a backpack that contains his Comet gear and my uniform. “The Kiltechs would flag you as a threat if you just walked up there, squawked, and then started pecking at them.”
“They could use a good pecking,” Falcon Gray says. “There is no honor in obscuring oneself from one’s enemies. That shows little courage.”
“It shows that we’re willing to beat the Kiltechs at any cost,” I tell him while trying to push the pace across the bridge.
“The Orange Bands could prove useful,” Falcon Gray says. “But I would not trust them blindly to do the right thing.”
Both Paul Brown Stadium and Great American Ball Park sit across the mighty Ohio River. To make things nice and convenient, the Kiltechs chose Great American as the venue for their “goodwill tour” screening. Even aliens know not to associate themselves with the Bengals.
Poor, poor Bengals.
The line is fairly long, stretching all the way up to the stadium. There is no sense of organization here other than the single-file line, a collection of people who have no idea what they’re getting into. The Kiltechs—or Aegis, in the common tongue—plan to cattle-call these people and put them aboard a shuttle bound for one of their cruisers, for a rousing version of To Serve Man.
According to various news reports, the Cincinnati stop is heading to the Invincible, the Kiltechs’ main command ship.
We’ll get there.
Eventually.
Finally, near the front of the line.
A presumably human woman dressed in a sky blue uniform uses a hand scanner to check boarding passes. A family of four passes through without any problems. Several couples follow suit, handing their documentation over to the attendant, who then waves them through.
This is gonna be a piece of cake.
The attendant doesn’t take our papers. Instead, her head jerks back as if she’s in a trance. Then she snaps back into reality. “I’m sorry, but we are at full capacity. You will have to return tomorrow.”
“Wait a second! We’ve been standing in line all day and now you decide to close the line? I don’t think so!” Warren says. He takes a quasi-threatening step toward the woman, but I hold him back.
“I’m sorry. There’s nothing I can do,” the attendant says. She sounds remote, stilted, as if someone is reading a script to her in her head.
“My son has a point,” Jaci says as I try to remember our flimsy cover story of tragedy, woe, tragedy, and family disaster. “We have been waiting here a long time, especially Grandpa Jenkins. He’s tired, ma’am.”
“Rules are rules, ma’am,” the woman says. This time, she actually sounds like she means it.
Let’s try a different approach.
“You don’t understand,” I say. “Grandpa Jenkins here has been a survivor his whole life. World War II, Korea, Vietnam. He’s lived through the Carter presidency and the Kiltech Incursion. He doesn’t have much time left. All he wants to do is go into space and see something few people will ever get to see.”
The woman hunches forward to take a close look at Falcon Gray, who keeps his head bowed and brings the fedora down even lower to shield his features.
“He’s shy,” Jaci explains. “He also has a very bald head and fair skin.”
“That’s why we have to shield him from almost everything,” I elaborate. That’s why he was hoping to see the Kil—”
Warren elbows me in the ribs.
“—I mean Aegis. Grandpa Jenkins hopes you can cure him of his ailment.”
The woman’s eyes glisten with something akin to understanding, and she places a hand on Falcon Gray’s shoulder.
“Is that what you’d like?” she says as if she’s talking to a baby. When Falcon Gray remains silent, the attendant stands at her full height and looks at me. “Why won’t he talk?”
“He can’t talk, ma’am,” I say, sticking out my tongue and gesturing. “Lost his tongue in the Battle of Bull Run. The second one. Shrapnel. Is there anything you can do to help him? Can you make just one little exception to let us aboard? It’s just my wife and my son and Grandpa Jenkins.”
The woman looks at the scanner in her left hand and taps a button. “I don’t have four spots to give you in the main transportation chamber. However, the shuttle’s cargo bay does have enough room to accommodate you,” she says. Her gaze bounces from Jaci to Warren to me. “Speaking of cargo, you appear to be traveling light. You do realize this is a two-week stay, right?”
“Ma’am, all of our stuff got destroyed when some of those idiots decided that fighting in the middle of Washington, D.C., was a great idea. This is literally everything my parents and I own,” Warren says, holding up his backpack.
Thanks for saving my butt on that one, kid.
“You may proceed,” the woman says as Warren brushes past me. I gesture for Jaci to follow
him and push Falcon Gray through the entrance.
The woman tugs on my arm. “I still need to scan your documentation,” she says, reaching out for the papers. After a few assorted beeps, during which I try not to look nervous about the Bands’ forging abilities, we get the all-clear and she gestures for us to go through. “Please have a pleasant journey.”
Luggage comes loose from its netting—again—and Falcon Gray swats it away with a trench coat-covered arm. We’ve been trying to avoid falling luggage for what feels like forever.
“Will you keep it down?” Warren hisses as Falcon Gray erupts in another alarmed and wholly unnecessary squawk.
“This cabin is unsuitable for living beings,” the birdman says. He’s out of his wheelchair now, his coat wrapped around him tightly enough to show off his chiseled upper body.
“Could you guys do me a solid and shut up?” I snap, relishing the dirty looks from my traveling companions.
“We’re thirty minutes into the trip,” Warren says as he looks at the Comet Comm on his wrist. “Another fifteen minutes and we should reach Invincible.” He ducks to avoid another kamikaze Samsonite. “This really couldn’t go much smoother.”
As soon as the words come out of his mouth, the entire deck of our shuttle shakes and a tidal wave of duffel bags, rolling bags, and other assorted suitcases comes toward us. I brace for impact before feeling pinpricks on my shoulder and getting the sensation that I’m Christopher Walken in that Fatboy Slim video.
Falcon Gray uses his clawed feet to lift me into the air, above the luggage avalanche. Jaci grabs Warren. The sudden jolt dislodges his multi-colored hat, and he doesn’t bother to pick it up when we land knee-deep in other people’s stuff.
Good news: we didn’t get crushed by a mad onslaught of airline luggage.
Bad news: Falcon Gray ripped his trench coat in order to free his winged arms.
“Now what are we going to do?” Warren asks. “There’s no cover story for that.”
“If you’re feeling litigious, we could always claim this as a by-product of the in-flight chicken dinner.”
“I do not enjoy being compared to your clumsy Earth chickens,” Falcon Gray retorts. “Perhaps I would not be offended if you said hawk. Or eagle. Or falcon.”
“I hate to break it to you, pal, but we don’t eat hawks, eagles, or falcons. Our story would never stand up.”
“We’re almost there,” Warren says. “Maybe we can just sneak past security.”
“Klem said security aboard the Kiltechs’ ship would be considerably stricter than aboard the shuttle,” Jaci points out.
“Miss Graves is correct. It would not be so easy to slip past them, even if I had not ripped my cover,” Falcon Gray says, surprising all of us with his coherency and lack of warbling.
The ship shakes again.
An explosion. That was definitely an explosion.
“I thought the jostling was from leaving the atmosphere,” Warren says. He looks at his wrist. “But we should have left the gravity well a while ago.”
Another explosion.
“It really is a shame they don’t have any windows in the cargo hold,” Jaci deadpans. “That would kinda help right now. How long do you think it’ll be before the pilot tells us there’s nothing to worry about and that it’s just turbulence?”
I hear static over the shuttle’s PA system. A second later, I swear I hear a voice, but it quickly turns back into a blast of irritating white noise.
“I think someone’s about to tell everyone what’s going on,” Warren says.
As if on cue, an authoritative female voice echoes over the intercom. “Greetings, citizens of Earth. We are the Champions of Justice. We’re here to save the day. You should know that the Kiltechs have not organized a series of goodwill tours.”
Oh, crap.
Please don’t tell them about the experiments…
Please don’t tell them about the experiments…
Please don’t tell them about the experiments…
“We have evidence that the Kiltechs, posing as a benevolent society called Aegis, plan to run experiments on every human being who disembarks the shuttle. The Champions do not want this to happen to you.”
Crap.
Crap, crap, crap, crap, crap.
Cue the shuttle-wide panic in three, two, one…
A confused murmur quickly erupts into a full-on angry mob; I can hear it even from back here in the cargo area.
“These idiots are going to turn the shuttle around,” I realize. “We’ve gotta get to the cockpit. Sure would be nice to be able to teleport, you know?” I wait a beat, but there’s no convenient materialization, no sexy teleporting villainess on call. The comic book heroes really do have it easier.
Falcon Gray wades through the luggage and hammers at the heavy metal door until it opens. We make our way, quietly, through a vacant area until we reach the entrance to the passenger section. I’d love to slip past everyone at Crimsonspeed, but there’s no telling what’s ahead other than a bunch of panicked people who have bigger problems than worrying about the in-flight meal.
The door opens easily enough, and I get my first look at the actual compartment. The interior looks a lot like a regular passenger jet, although I think there are more rows here than on a typical plane. Only it’s complete chaos. Passengers are screaming, blue-suited Aegis representatives are telling them to calm down, and the leader of the Champions continues to tell everyone that they’re in mortal danger over the loudspeaker.
Several passengers are standing in the aisle and blocking our path to the cockpit. Other travelers sit in their seats holding one another. One poor guy sits clutching his briefcase while rocking back and forth and muttering to himself.
“It’s going to be okay,” I tell a woman who’s standing in the aisle, holding her head. She looks like she’s about ready to start pulling out her hair. “This is all a big misunderstanding.”
“What do you know?” she asks, lowering her arms to give me a good shove. “What does anyone know?” She looks away from me and appears to focus on something over my shoulder. “Oh, dear God! It’s… it’s Foghorn Leghorn. I really am going crazy…”
It takes me a second before I realize she’s talking about Falcon Gray. We’re so crammed in the aisle that the birdman can’t take flight, though Jaci’s getting a little lift. Still, the ceiling’s so low that she’s not getting very high, enabling one of the passengers to grab her ankles.
“Let go, buddy,” Jaci says. “We can fix this, but you have to let me go.”
“Supers!” a voice says from several rows ahead. A carry-on bag flies right into my chest, but Falcon Gray catches me before I can fall. I let the bag drop to the ground.
Alarmed murmurs grow louder inside the cramped cabin, and the Aegis workers stationed inside clearly have no idea what’s going on. They all turn, however, after the man yells, “Get ’em!”
One woman climbs over other passengers to get to us. A man in a nearby row rises and takes a swing at me. He gets nothing but air.
Jaci, having finally gotten free of another passenger, grabs me and tries to fly forward. It’s no use; people grab my arms and legs. It takes some effort to shake them loose.
“Save me!” one woman yells.
“Kill them!” another screams.
The people of Earth certainly love their superheroes.
The door at the other end of the cabin flies off its hinges to reveal a hearty-looking member of the Champions of Justice.
“Sit down! All of you! Get back in your seats!” the man yells. Big and burly, he wears the gray armor of an Enforcer.
“It’s one of Chaos’s goons!” a woman yells. She throws her purse at him.
The man glares at her, and I suddenly remember his name: WaveCrash or something equally stupid. I don’t even remember what his power is.
A wave of white energy knocks everyone back, and Jaci loses her grip on me. People end up stacked on each other like a bad episode of Hoarders.<
br />
So that’s what he does.
“Get back to your seats!” the man yells. “We’re trying to save you.”
A few travelers comply, climbing over other passengers in an effort to return to their seats. The majority, though, scramble to get back to their feet.
“Save us? You just blasted us with… with something,” a woman says, rubbing her forehead. “This is a hijacking!” Some of the others cheer the woman on. With renewed strength she says, “We’ve heard about you people—you’re terrorists. We’re here because Aegis promised us a new beginning.”
“This shuttle will not reach its destination,” WaveCrash says.
“It’s a suicide mission!” another passenger shouts.
For a second, the self-assured look on WaveCrash’s face dissolves. “We are the Champions of Justice. We have evidence that the agents of Aegis are not what they seem. They won’t deliver what they promise. We are here to save you from them. Return to your seats. All of you!”
WaveCrash sends another blast of white energy that jostles the ship’s interior even more violently. Most of the “goodwill ambassadors” get the message and start to make their way back to their seats.
Finally free of a fifty-person pileup in the main aisle, I burst into Crimsonspeed and stop right in front of WaveCrash. “You guys are idiots.”
His brow furrows momentarily as he points to the location where I stood less than a second before. “But you were…”
“Super-speed, genius. Now if you’ll please excuse me, I have to—”
WaveCrash conjures another attack, and it hits me in the chest, hard. Doesn’t feel too great, to be perfectly honest. Warren drops him with a Comet Star. I don’t want to know where he was keeping it.
He offers a hand to help me up. “You know, punching the guy in the jaw would’ve been a lot easier. But no, you had to say something. You always have to say something, don’t you?” He rips away my mustache.
“Ouch!”
Then he goes for the sideburns.
“Ouch! Ouch!”