And just like that, he forgot about me, going back to a disassembled whatever-it-was. Astra had said goodbye to a weirdly polite Galatea robot who stood around holding his tools, then taken me up to the load bay. I’d been wondering about leaving blast-marks with my takeoff, but she’d wrapped her arms around my waist and launched us. A couple thousand feet over Lake Michigan, she’d let go and I lit off, climbing on my own roaring column of flaring light.
“Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!” The roar vibrated my bones as the gees pushed back along the vector of my blast. Saturday and Sunday had been full of careful tests measuring my blast strength and control against Variforce’s fields. Cool enough, but this —
“That’s a yes?”
“Yes! It’s — ” I made the mistake of turning too far and flipped hard. The world turned into a spinning roaring confusion as I flailed around with no idea where the ground was.
“Cut it! Stop blasting!”
I pulled the heat in. The roar stuttered, died, and then I was just falling. And this is so much better. Shit shit shit shit shit!
Astra flew close and fell beside me. She smiled brightly, ignoring the fact that we were plummeting headfirst towards the lake.
“Okay, ignore the bright sparkly water, we’ve got plenty of room until we hit. So, feet down, arms in, look up. Ready? Go.”
I lit off again, starting low and ramping it up as I felt the push dig in. It was like — it was — balancing on top of a rocket as it thrust; all the force in one direction and small changes in position making big changes in attitude while fighting angular momentum.
“Got it. I’ve got it.”
“So, what have we learned?”
“Don’t rubberneck? Stay away from the ground?”
“Those are good. Now keep up.” She poured on the speed and turned us out and away from the city.
“How far are we going?”
“At least to Canada! Watchman says to stay up until you run out of juice or get hungry!”
* * *
We didn’t make it to lunch or Canada, but only because we didn’t fly a straight line. Astra pushed me into corkscrews, reverse burns, climbs, drop-and-pops, and every other tight trick she could think to have me try. We scared lots of birds, I spun out a lot, and she showed me one cool thing that just about made everything worth it. Unassisted skydiving.
Free-falling from high enough I almost needed oxygen.
“Yeeeah!”
“I know, right?” She fell beside me, arms wide like she wanted to embrace the world. “I finally get why people jump out of airplanes for fun! Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? You’d think as a species we’d be genetically programmed to absolutely hate having miles of air below us! It’s like our brains evolved for flying but our bodies had other plans.”
“I could stay up here forever!”
“I know. But there’s lunch and Willis’ sandwiches. And the news cameras that tracked our outbound flight. Sure you’ve got the hovering down? Ready to meet the public?”
“I won’t go down in a flaming ball of fail. Maybe.”
She turned us back towards the city. “So, truth or dare?”
“Um, dare.”
“Call your parents. Shelly tells me you haven’t talked since the first day.”
“I can’t.”
“C’mon. You must honor the Dare — if you don’t then Shell and I will play horrible horrible tricks on you until you’re afraid to open a door or even use the bathroom. You’ll be hiding in bushes and your life will be a living hell. Breaking the Dare is baaad.”
When I didn’t laugh, she sighed.
“Okay, here’s why. I know all about contingent futures and stuff like that. Anything, anything, can happen, and someday your dad’s going to stroke out doing an all-nighter at the office. Tax attorneying is high-stress stuff. Or your mom’s going to catch a nasty bacteria from all that raw natural food she eats, and you’re going to be standing at their grave hating yourself because you didn’t forgive them. Or it’ll be the other way around and we’ll be wearing black and handing them a folded flag — since Sentinels are state militia members, you’ll rate one — and they’ll be devastated because they never made up with you, told you how much they were sorry. Or you’ll take a chance years and years from now, you’ll talk, all will be forgiven, and you’ll kick yourself for not doing it a zillion years ago. Or — ”
“Stop. I’ll call them, just — Just leave it alone.” All the fun was gone, and I swallowed around the block in my throat.
“My parents are Humanity First activists.” In my peripheral vision, I saw her look at me. “Not really — they just go to their meetings and read their stuff and donate — but they believe all that crap. They think I’m freaking dangerous, and they want me out of the house and away from my sister.”
That shut her up, and I got a quiet minute with only the roar and wind. Not that it was anybody’s freaking business, but I could live through another shouting fight with Dad. And maybe he’d reconsider. Maybe the Pope wasn’t Catholic.
“So, my turn. Truth or dare.”
“...truth.” I could practically hear the flaming mortification in her voice, but she didn’t take it back or try and apologize, which kicked her up a notch in my book. “Last time I said ‘dare’ I was ten and Shelly made me decorate my hair with wet gourmet lollypops and take a picture.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously. I was almost crying for the awful waste. I loved those, especially the strawberry and cream ones. So, truth” — she paused, touched her earbug — “and you’ll get a while to think about it.” She cranked up the speed. “I’ve got a call to go see some Paladins.”
* * *
Chicago came in sight over the flat, sparkling plane of the lake and she took us lower, closer to the water so we flashed over the tops of late-season sailboats and yachts as the still-early sun threw our shadows ahead of us. I managed to come to a credible hover over the load bay, but panicked and cut off when my blast column started to singe the floor, barely missing Galatea. I dropped the last ten feet, awkwardly, but Astra didn’t laugh as she helped me up. Neither did Galatea. She looked locked and loaded with enough boom to fight a war.
“We’ll have to work on that. Takeoffs might need an acrobatic toss to get you high enough for safe ignition.”
“A what?”
“Later. Gotta fly!” She grabbed her maul and Galatea’s harness handle and was back out through the bay doors. I just stood there. What did I do now?
“Mr. Scott,” Blackstone said in my ear through the Dispatch link. “If you would be so good as to join me in the City Room.”
This time only Blackstone remained with the Dispatch staff to watch the screens.
“Did you have a good morning, Mr. Scott? And have you chosen a codename yet? You should hurry.”
“Huh? I mean, sure,. Andrew had one, I think...”
He nodded, eyes on the screens. “Megaton. His instincts are good. Do you like it?”
I shrugged. “Sure. What’s going on?” The main board showed a drone’s-eye view of a building in a business park, surrounded by glowing icons.
“Detective Fisher is leading a joint CPD-DSA team to serve warrants for the arrest of the president of the local Paladins chapter and four of his associates. The warrants arise from a discovered link between the Artist’s Café shooter and the chapter, with strong evidence that someone there passed him information and ordered the attempted hit on you.
“Since the suspects are not superhumans and are not likely to employ superhumans, Detective Fisher would normally not require our help. However, we are talking about the Paladins, and one of their rogue action-arms struck Astra with an anti-tank missile last spring. The good detective doesn’t want to take chances and we need to get them into police custody quickly, specifically, into the protection of the closest CPD hardcells.”
“Why?”
“Because, Mr. Scott, the press has already speculated on a Paladin link to the café
shooter, and a police standoff at their offices will only confirm it. Need I remind you that the last two people with a high public profile for directly attacking superhumans are now dead?”
“Oh. That’s not good.”
“Indeed. Galatea may get to try out her new teleport-interdiction module.”
Astra
I’d never wanted to be a time-traveler so badly in my life, and it had to be a sin how happy I was for the possibly bad situation going down with the Paladins.
Watchman could have taken Mal flying as easily — should have, but he and Riptide, Seven, Rush, and Variforce were out of town dealing with a major tanker-truck spill and fire, and Blackstone was already looking ahead to my leadership position with the cadet team. The Hillwood picks would be here tonight.
And I’ve started so well.
Mal had been a surprisingly fun break from obsessing about my own problems (I’d missed Sunday Mass for the first time in months because I was scared to show my face at Saint Chris). Fun right up to the moment I jumped in where it wasn’t my business.
I filled Shelly in as we flew, since otherwise she’d be back on him about it as soon as she got over the distraction of trying to track down whoever had outed me so we could wreak hot, hot vengeance — her words.
Guessing from the emptiness of its parking lots, pre-lunchtime on a Monday, the business park the Paladins leased their building from had seen better days. Detective Fisher and his joint team timed their approach so that they pulled into the lot outside the office as we landed.
“The CPD thermal drone shows five occupants in the building,” Shelly whispered in my ear as we dropped to join Fisher’s team and the ten Platoons the DSA had sent. Platoon wore dark-visored helmets so you couldn’t tell at a glance that all ten were the same person, but if you knew a Bob or a Tom long enough, you could tell. Were they part of the same Platoon team that had helped us in the spring?
I put on my game-face and gave everyone a nod. “Fisher, Jenny, Wyatt, Bobs. Galatea says five in the building. How are we going to play it?”
“Agents Robbins?” Fisher waved the Platoons ahead. Armored like a SWAT team expecting to dance, five peeled away and the rest stepped around me as we walked so I found myself behind their wall as we advanced on the door. One opened and the other four moved in behind, still paired to keep me out of line of sight of any cameras.
The front lobby was a secure room — no inside windows or easy access to the rest of the office, just a thick door, waiting chairs, and a phone. One Bob blocked the camera in the corner with his badge while another picked up the phone and punched the receptionist button.
“Ma’am,” he said to whoever answered. “This is Agent Robbins and Detective Fisher of the DSA and the Chicago Police Department. We have warrants to search these premises and detain members of your organization. You have ten seconds to open the inside door or we will make a breach.” He hung up, looked at me, and counted down curling his fingers into a fist.
Right. At “ten” I gripped the doorknob and pushed. The heavy lock snapped with a loud pop and the agents went through ahead of everyone, guns up and yelling “Down, down, down!” Nobody was taking chances with the Paladins deciding their war with superhumans extended to the government.
The hall on the other side of the door opened into offices and a large bare meeting room, folding chairs set up for maybe fifty. The place was all threadbare carpets and water-stained ceiling tiles. Framed posters lined the walls, anti-cape stuff mixed in with motivational posters — which was just weird, like finding a cute cat picture at an Aryan Brotherhood hangout.
“‘Catch on fire with enthusiasm and people will come for miles to watch you burn.’” Shelly read. “Now that’s seriously wrong.”
I laughed, but at least the accompanying picture was just a rock-musician waling on his axe, not any of a half-dozen absolutely awful images my Shelly-corrupted sense of humor conjured up.
“Storm troopers! You have no right!”
“Debra Gardner,” Shelly whispered through my earbug. “Office administrator and agitprop writer.”
Aaand there went the fun.
A Bob talked the hysterical lady down and his team pulled our catch together in the meeting room. I set up five folding chairs so they could at least have their backs to a wall and see each other while we waited, all the Bobs facing outward and Agent Robbins talking on his earbug to the outside team. Detective Fisher’s team pulled the hard drives from the office computers, dumped their phone logs, looked for anything stupidly incriminating to take with us on the first sweep.
I watched our suspects, trusting the Bobs to alert me to anything incoming like the Wreckers. And they watched me. Ms. Gardner looked like she wanted to spit.
“The great Astra.” The handcuffs made her lean forward, but she kept her back straight, ignoring Galatea. “So now you don’t even pretend you’re not the government’s bitch.”
I rested Malleus on my shoulder. “Funny. Go on and poke me some more — nothing can hurt as much as a missile. You do know that if superhumans ever take over the government and put all of you patriots in camps, I and my friends will be dead, right? Because they’ll have to go through us to do it.”
She actually managed a sneer, more than any of the rest seemed up to. “So you believe their lies.”
And just like that I was tired of it. Last year, Ajax had tried to give me some historical context for the anti-superhuman groups, and I thought I understood them, but the lens of the Paladin worldview would never let her see me as anything but the enemy.
And am I any different?
“I know all about acting as your conscience requires, Ms. Gardner. And I’m not here for you — Galatea and I are here in case somebody tries to kill you. So you do what you do, and we’ll do what we do, and we’ll trust God to sort us out. Can I get anyone a drink of water?”
* * *
Fisher’s team moved fast, and we were only there for fifteen minutes. We used the DSA vans to transport the Paladin staff downtown to the CPD hardcells, the cells normally used for keeping superhuman detainees in. Vulcan met us there with cases of gear and he and Shelly got to work making the cells even tougher.
I followed Fisher out to where he could light up. “What are you going to do now?”
“We’re done, here.” He took a deep drag. “We’ve got closers to handle the interrogations, and my team doesn’t do normal-on-superhuman cases, which is what this is; their only connection to our case is someone in their office conspiring with the shooter.”
He looked back at the doors. “If they’re smart, they’ll throw us the guilty one. He’s the only one we want and the only one we need to protect — if the Wreckers were just going after anyone with a loud hate on for superhumans, they’d be wading in blood already.”
Ugh. An image I so didn’t need. “Think they’re that smart?”
“No, but we’re good. Don’t worry, we’ll nail the bastard who sicced the café shooter on your friend, maybe more than one. So we file everything, get back to working on the Wreckers. I’m going to want you with us in the next couple of days; we need to pay a call on the Foundation of Awakened Theosophy — we’re just waiting for the warrants.”
What? I’d completely forgotten about our search of Mr. Ludlow’s place and it took me a moment to figure out what he was talking about.
“You think this foundation is part of it?”
A shrug. “No idea. More likely Ludlow met fellow travelers there — which means we want to see membership records, that kind of thing. It might be nothing, but that’s detective work; pull on every string until something pulls back.”
He stubbed out his cig. “Kid? FYI?”
“Hmm?”
“Sorry about your getting outed. I thought you should know, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed story chasers are already interviewing your old schoolmates going back to preschool.” He shrugged. “They know about your friend’s origin-chaser ‘suicide’ and it’s going to be in every backgr
ound piece on you along with her memorial portrait. The footage from the café shooting isn’t public, but you might want to tell Galatea to be more careful in the future.”
Chapter Seventeen: Astra
Celebrity superheroes are like Hollywood stars: we have entourages, agents, image and publicity people, legions of fans, and we get into trouble any time we don’t speak from a script.
Astra, Notes From a Life.
* * *
My life had become an after-school special, and any moment now people were going to break into song. The whole Best Friend Dies Origin-Chasing and You Got the Breakthrough story had filled the Internet with a collective “Aaaaw!” Quin was fielding multimillion-dollar offers for the rights to my biography, and letting Shell take over the Internet was sounding better and better. Together we could bring down civilization and they would stop talking about me.
Nobody was talking to me — Quin wasn’t letting me near any newsies after Sunday’s interesting session with Terry. It hadn’t gone badly, exactly, but only because Terry was cool — his first question, off the record, had been what I’d like to do to the person who’d outed me, assuming we ever found out who.
The Bees were texting me messages of support, which was nice even if Annabeth’s included bloodcurdling suggestions I could have used to answer Terry’s question. She’d become my most vocal advocate; according to Julie, she almost made one opportunistic journalist eat his recorder. Megan just insulted the guy in ways he only vaguely understood.
I finished my one patrol of the day before returning to the Dome, ignoring the crowd of protesters outside as I flew in. This morning they mostly looked like Shankman’s partisans — word of the investigation into his office had got out and his pet-newsies were spinning it as persecution.
Young Sentinels (Wearing the Cape) Page 14