North Dakota? Shannon mouthed to Jason, who shrugged. Sally glared at her.
“Yes sir,” said Riley. “Target?”
“Rugby. Or near Rugby. The geographical center of North America according to my sources. Send the feed to my office.” Juice typed a few commands on his keyboard and the large wall-mounted flatscreen monitor lit up.
The little hourglass icon on the screen performed its lazy, repeated upending as the Command Center established a link with the satellite cameras. Juice’s fingers tapped on the mahogany of his desktop as he waited. In a moment, an image appeared in a window from the camera, updated every two seconds.
What they saw was impossible.
A large mountain had sprouted from the high plains of North Dakota. It had pushed aside buildings and roads in its sudden lunge for the heavens. Emergency vehicles clustered along the roads around the mountain. The unnatural peak had a flat top upon which rested something that looked very much like a castle.
“Son of a bitch,” muttered Juice. “Command Center, can you tell me what exactly we’re looking at here?”
“You’re seeing the same thing as we are, sir,” said Riley. “We’re starting to receive reports. The mountain apparently just grew out of the ground, but GPS can’t find it and neither can Minot Air Force Base radar. It’s got a physical profile, but doesn’t seem to be detectable by instruments. They’re scrambling Air National Guard jets from Fargo for a flyby. Hold on, sir…new information coming in…”
“Hey…” Jason pointed at a blob on the screen that wasn’t there a second ago. “What’s that?” The camera reset and the blob had moved.
“There’s another one.” Shannon touched the screen in a different place.
“Sir?” Riley sounded aghast.
“Go ahead, Riley.”
“We’re getting reports of… some kind of flying creatures circling the mountain. Sir, local law enforcement is calling them dragons.”
Juice stood up. “Dragons.”
“Yes, sir. Your orders?”
The team commander took a deep breath and cocked his head first to one side then the other to loosen kinks in his neck. “Call out the troops, Riley. I want the Bettie on the pad and ready for departure in fifteen minutes. Briefing in ten minutes in the conference room.”
A swirl of purple energy formed out of nothingness in the middle of Juice’s office with a squalling sound of distortion and feedback. Sally recognized it from her past experience with the Lucky Seven. Stratocaster stepped out of the whirling vortex of energy. His guitar blazed with incandescence and sparks danced among the standing hairs of his purple mohawk. He looked around. “Nice office.”
“Stratocaster,” said Juice as calmly as if people materialized in his office all the time. “What do you know about this?”
Stratocaster looked at the monitor. “Shit,” he said. “It’s already bigger than I thought it would be.”
Juice glanced at Sally, Jason, and Shannon, who stood and waited to hear Stratocaster’s information. “Hadn’t you three better be gearing up?”
“But—” began Shannon.
“No,” Juice retorted before she could formulate her sentence.
“But—” added Sally.
“No to you too. It’ll come out in the briefing. I promise. Now move.”
Grumbling, the three young heroes trudged out of Juice’s office. The last thing they heard was Stratocaster say “we’re in big trouble,” before Juice shut the door.
Shannon became insubstantial and rose, ghostlike, through the ceiling to the dormitory on the second floor.
“I, uh, guess I better go change too,” mumbled Jason.
“Yeah, I guess you better.” Sally growled. “Try not to screw her before the meeting.” She spun on her heel and flashed down the hall to the stairwell. Part of her felt gleeful at the cutting remark, but mostly she felt bad that she’d said something so terrible to him.
She wiped away an angry tear as she threw on her costume in a blur of motion. Then another tracked down her face. Then another. For several minutes she had to just lie on her bed, hug her pillow, and sob.
Her phone beeped. “Sally? We’re waiting on you. Is everything all right?” asked Juice.
She wiped her eyes. “Sorry, I lost track of the time. I’ll be right there.” She rushed to the bathroom and scrubbed her face. She glared at her reflection; her puffy eyes wouldn’t hide the fact that she’d been crying. She pulled her goggles down over them. Better. She left her room in a flash of red and yellow and was at the conference room a few seconds later.
For once, Sally was actually the last one to a meeting. Jason sat away from Shannon and wouldn’t look at her. For that matter, he wouldn’t look at Sally either. Fine, thought Sally. Two could play at that game. She flopped into an empty seat between Switchboard and Doublecharge and put an expression of rapt attention on her face, focusing all her attention on Juice and Stratocaster.
Juice nodded at her. “Most of you already know Stratocaster from the Lucky Seven. He’s here to tell us what he knows about events currently unfolding near Rugby, North Dakota. Approximately half an hour ago, a mountain grew out of the geographical center of North America. He believes he knows why. Will?”
Stratocaster nodded, his tall spiky mohawk bobbing. “There’s a legend among mages that every thousand years an Archmage will rise, drawing all magic in the world into himself.”
“And do what?” interrupted Jack. “Build mountains in North Dakota? Make everyone pay more for downtown parking?”
“It’s a lot more serious than that.” The muscles in Stratocaster’s jaw stood out like cords. “The last Archmage enslaved much of Africa for almost a full generation. Were it not for her own children, mages in their own right, she might have eventually held sway over the entire world. Each millennium, the Archmage has been more powerful and more dangerous.”
“Like parahumans are evolving?” asked Doublecharge. “We’re more powerful now than our predecessors.”
“Yes, but imagine a single parahuman able to rule a continent the size of Africa. And now imagine one who has decided he is strong enough to take on North America. If he successfully conquers the United States, he’ll be able to rule the entire world.”
“He. You know who it is or are you just using the term generically?” Sondra flapped a wing the way someone else might have shrugged.
“His name is Wolfgang Frazier. I battled him in Tokyo last month. He’s incredibly powerful. I barely escaped with my life.” Stratocaster’s hands shook for a moment. Sally realized the man was terrified.
“What did he want from you?” asked Switchboard.
“My magic. When a mage slays another mage, he absorbs all the magic contained in the victim. Eventually he will reach a critical mass and draw all magic in the world to himself. He’s nearly there. Even now, I can feel myself drawn toward him. We have to stop him.”
“He’s built a castle on top of that mountain,” added Juice. “And has what look like dragons patrolling the skies around it.”
“Can’t fault him for a lack of creativity,” said Jack. “What’s next? Armies of Urukhai? Nazguls?”
“Don’t take magic lightly, Jack,” said Sally. “Maybe it’s not all super-scientific, but I’ve seen Strat in action. It’s real. He can do things parahumans can’t.”
Jack shrugged. “Whatever.”
“At the very least,” said Juice in his courtroom voice, “this person has violated American soil and airspace, and we’ve been ordered to intervene by the Director. As always, we’ll attempt a peaceful resolution first.”
“Followed by aggressive negotiation.” Jack grinned.
“The Bettie is on standby. We’re leaving in five minutes,” said Juice. “Will, can you join us? You’re the only expert on magic that we have available.”
“Actually, I’d prefer to cower in a dark corner, but you’ll probably need me.” Stratocaster strummed his guitar for emphasis and swirls of energy spilled off the st
rings and transformed into lavender-scented smoke.
“I still say there’s no such thing as magic,” Jack whispered to Sondra as they headed out of the conference room.
Sondra kept her wings close about her like a feathery cloak so nobody would trip over them. “Whatever you want to call it, lover, it’s certainly something we should worry about. Growing a mountain takes a lot of power no matter where it comes from.”
Outside, Just Cause’s supersonic transport jet was already powered up. The Bettie’s turbofans were howling at a high idle. Sally was pleased to see Ace would be their pilot. Fairuza “Ace” Bruck was a veteran from the Israeli Air Force and flew the Bettie like an extension of her own body. Ace, her helmet on and visor down, looked out from behind the bulletproof cockpit glass and nodded professionally at them as they climbed on board.
“I hope it’s not going to be like this all year,” said Doublecharge, resplendent in her white, black, and yellow costume as she tightened her seatbelts.
“What do you mean?” asked Sally.
“Four emergency call-outs already and it’s only June. Last year we only had two all year.”
Ace announced they had clearance to lift.
“Go,” said Juice.
The engines’ howl increased to a scream as the Bettie lifted vertically off the pad. For the next couple of minutes, conversation was impossible over the shriek of the turbines. After climbing for most of a minute, Ace rotated the jet nozzles aft and the Bettie accelerated to the northeast.
“E.T.A. to Rugby, North Dakota, approximately forty-five minutes, sir,” said Ace over the cabin speakers in her clipped, accented tones.
“Thank you, Ace. Give us a ten minute warning, please.”
“Roger that.”
“All right, Will. We’ve got some time. Can you give us all a crash course on magic theory in thirty minutes?” Juice’s serious tone quieted Jack’s amused snort.
Stratocaster leaned back in his seat, crossed his Doc Martens, and clutched his guitar like it was a security blanket. “There’s not that much to tell. A mage can do anything he can conceive of, so long as he can control the power.”
“Anything?” asked Shannon. “You think of it and it happens?”
He shrugged. “More or less.” He ran a quick arpeggio across the frets and a spinning globe of yellow and blue sparks appeared in the air in front of him. It bounced across the cabin to encircle Jack’s head.
“Hey, cut that out.” Jack waved at the sparks to no effect. They shrank to pinpoints of light before vanishing altogether.
“Most mages work with spells. Those are evocations they’ve practiced over and over until they can control them easily. Some are more improvisational, which is how I tend to work.”
“So what’s the deal with the guitar? Is it magic too?” Jason, a guitarist himself, tapped his fingers on his knees. Sally could tell he was itching to take the snow-white electric into his own hands.
Stratocaster laughed. “I’ve never been entirely sure. I can’t perform magic without it. If it’s a psychological crutch, it carries a lot of weight with me.”
“What kind of magic does this Archmage guy use?” asked Sally.
“I don’t know,” said Stratocaster. “My guess is spell-based, since he’s so good at what he does. But he’s accumulated so much magical power, he’s not really limited by much of anything.”
“How does he accumulate magic? Is that something we could block or interrupt?” asked Sondra.
“When a mage is killed, all that magical energy is released. If another mage is nearby, he will absorb it all, becoming that much more powerful.” Stratocaster looked up, worried. “A great number of my colleagues have disappeared over the past year. I believe he’s been hunting them. You can’t block or interrupt his power. It’s become a part of him.”
“‘There can be only one,’” quoted Jack from the Highlander movie.
“For all I know…” Stratocaster looked somberly at the rest of them. “I may be the only one left.”
“So what you’re telling us is we’re going to be facing a man with an unbelievable amount of power, who can make things happen with a thought,” summarized Juice.
“That’s about the size of it.”
“Fine,” said Doublecharge. “How do we stop him?”
Stratocaster looked at her with sadness and panic evident in his eyes. “I have no idea. At this point, I think we’d have to kill him to stop him.”
“I’m not particularly keen on killing,” said Juice. “It leaves a bad taste in my mouth.”
“What if he’s unconscious or comatose?” asked Switchboard. “We’ve got Deep Six sleeper sets on board.”
“Hmmm. A coma might work.” Stratocaster rubbed his chin in thought. “But all he’d need was a flash of coherent thought to be free once again. The problem is getting to him and knocking him out in the first place.”
“Leave that to us.” Jack spoke with confidence.
“I hope it’s that easy, for all our sakes. I’ll do what I can to counteract his magic with my own, but honestly he’s much more powerful than I am.”
“Look,” said Sally, “you said he’s only limited by the power of his imagination. Well, he’s imagining castles and dragons instead of missiles and tank divisions. He’s got a thing for the fantastic. Maybe we can use that somehow.”
“That’s a good point,” said Sondra. “If he tends to think along those lines, that’s a limitation we can exploit. We play by his rules, lull him into a sense of complacency, and then we break those rules.”
“Unless by then he’s already beaten us,” Shannon pointed out. “I say we sneak in, knock him on the head, and ship him off to Deep Six.”
“Sir?” Ace interrupted them. “Ten minutes to target.”
“Thank you, Ace.” Juice leaned forward to address the others. “Okay, people. Here’s the plan. We’ll have two teams; insurgence and reserve. Doublecharge will command the reserve team, of her, Sondra, and Switchboard. Since the three of you are the only fliers, you’re in a better position to scope out the entire situation. The rest of us will attempt to enter the castle, then find and subdue this Archmage. Will, you’re with us.”
“Sure. What else am I going to do, sit here and wait to die?”
Juice rolled his eyes at that. “All right. For the insurgence team, primary mission is to locate and incapacitate Wolfgang Frazier. There is no secondary mission objective for the insurgents. The reserve team’s primary mission is to patrol the area and to assist the insurgence team if required. Secondary mission objectives are to assist local authorities in any way requested. Are there any questions?”
For once, even Jack stayed silent despite being handed a straight line. Nobody else said anything either. Sally felt pre-combat butterflies in her stomach.
“Sir, I have hostiles approaching on intercept vectors. They don’t show on radar. Only visual,” said Ace.
Juice looked sharply at Stratocaster. “Could they be illusions? Could this whole thing be some huge illusion and that’s why it’s not registering on any instruments but cameras?”
Stratocaster shrugged. “No way to tell unless they interact with us.”
“Sir, they’re not very fast but they’re angling to intercept.” The clipped tone of Ace’s voice made it plain she’d rather be talking with the Bettie’s guns.
“Hold your course, Ace. Do not fire unless fired upon. Remember that this is public airspace and there are civilians beneath us.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Give me a fly-by of the target. I want a good look at it before we deploy.”
“Roger that. Three minutes to target.” The Fasten Seat Belts indicators lit up.
Tension mounted among the heroes as they went through their various pre-combat rituals. Juice cracked his knuckles. Doublecharge made sparks jump between her hands. Sondra checked the safeties on her custom .50 caliber handguns. Jack yawned.
Suddenly, Ace shouted “Ben zona!” She flipp
ed the Bettie over and pointed her nose toward the ground in a spiraling dive. She cursed some more in Hebrew over the cabin speakers as a bright stream of energized plasma shot from the mouth of a dragon to clip the edge of the Bettie’s wing and melted one of the elevators. Heat washed through the cabin and Sally felt prickling like incipient sunburn on the right side of her face.
“Evasive maneuvers. Stand by,” shouted Ace, late on the warning.
The plane shook as a passing dragon buffeted it with its tail. The cabin lighting shorted out and alarms shrieked. Sally got a very good look at the dragon as it passed over the plane’s wing. It was enormous, with a body the size of a small helicopter and a wingspan to match the Bettie’s. Thick scales like tank armor protected it and its face could have scared Godzilla.
“Permission to return fire, sir?”
“Granted!” Juice braced himself between the seat in front of him and one across the aisle. Sally could see his arm muscles quivering.
Chattering thunder filled the air as Ace opened up with the machine guns in the Bettie’s nose. She jinked the jet left and right to avoid plasma jets from the dragons. A tremendous explosion outside the plane starred two of the portside windows.
“Scratch one bogie, sir. They explode when hit.”
“Nicely done, Ace. How many more?”
“Not sure, sir. They don’t—son of a bitch!” With a bright flash from near the tail section, a fist-sized hole appeared in the hull. The edges glowed white-hot. The Bettie shuddered and Sally felt her stomach try to leap out of her throat. Wind whistled through the cabin with deafening volume.
“Ace?” called Juice over the noise.
“I’m a little busy here, sir.” Ace vectored the jet nozzles forward to kill the Bettie’s momentum. Sally watched out a window as three dragons wheeled about and closed in on them.
A new voice came over the cabin speakers. “Attention, Just Cause. This is Lieutenant John Howard, Air National Guard. Mind if we join your party?”
“Plenty of room at the bar, Lieutenant. Don’t be shy,” said Ace.
“Happy Hooligans at your service. Let’s go, 119th!” With a roar, three F-16 fighters raced past like steel counterparts of the attacking dragons. One of the dragons turned to face the new threat and took a missile right up its snout for its trouble. The dragon exploded in a colossal fireball and sprayed cooked dragon meat across the side of the Bettie.
Just Cause Universe 2: The Archmage Page 8