“I’m sorry. If you want to take a second, Dr. Gibb—”
“So many had similar experiences,” she said finally. “We want nothing more than peace, but right now, that simply isn’t an option. We fight because we have to. Believe me, those of us in hiding want to come out of the shadows, to come home to our children. We want those children to come home to us. And as for that legislation, it was signed into law after the democratically elected president was killed, along with nearly all of the civilian, legislative, and military leaders of the Unity Party, in a highly suspicious plane crash.”
Now Castel really became animated. His eyes went wide, and he leaned forward in his chair. No longer sympathetic, he pounced on a chance at making headlines. “We’ve heard these accusations before, but just let me clarify and get this on the record. You are saying that you believe that the downing of Air Force One ten years ago was an assassination of the President of the United States and all those aboard? And that this was carried out by the members of, or agents working for, the Freedom Council?”
Leslie looked him straight in the eyes. She did not skip a beat. “Yes, I do. And yes, that is exactly what I am saying.”
Castel cleared his throat and sat back his seat, looking satisfied but a bit shaken. Leslie guessed he hadn’t expected this interview would get so hot. Or he was simply playing for the camera. Either way, she liked it.
“Now, Dr. Gibbons…” Castel for the first time seemed almost lost as to where to go next with the questions. “Uh, a few days ago,” he stammered, but quickly recovered, “there was an attack on the secret facility in which your organization, COR, was housed. The Freedom Council maintains that they were defending the facility against a malfunctioning weapon that accidently sought you out and attacked. They claim they’d known for years of your facility and had never intruded. What do you say to that?”
Leslie leaned in, sensing her moment, and aimed her remarks as much at the cameras as at Castel. Her voice strengthened, her resolve burst through; even Castel began to nod in agreement as she spoke, something he had notably not done so far.
“Those are not true statements,” she said calmly. “They have already changed their story several times. In fact, if you go back and review broadcasts from that night, you’ll see that Media Corp itself billed the attack as a raid on Resistance leaders. The Council attacked our facility and tried to hold all of us hostage in exchange for the Suns of Liberty turning themselves in. The fact that they failed simply illustrates the fact that they will fail to hold our country hostage to their own economic interests. The people will rise up eventually and help us take back the country we once knew. A country for the people and by the people.”
“Ah, the Suns of Liberty, let’s talk about them, shall we? Are they terrorists?”
Now Leslie looked directly in the camera. “They are freedom fighters, pure and simple, just like the founders of my country. They want what I want. The republic to rise again.”
CHAPTER 7
NORRISTOWN, PA
“So, how does it feel?” Rachel asked.
Ben Drayger was standing on his metal leg. Robotic sensors were shooting signals into his brain, calibrating his central nervous system to the leg’s own CPU. He flashed her a nervous grin. “Weird.”
“Calibration complete,” came a robotic voice from the large medical computer console behind them.
“Well, here goes, beautiful,” Drayger said, shooting Rachel a sly smirk. “I’ll be sweeping you off your feet in no time.”
Drayger took a step.
And crashed face first onto the floor.
“Shit!” he yelled.
“We need help in here!” Rachel shouted, and two med techs came running in. With Ward and Sophia both in surgery, the staff was spread thin, leaving Drayger to try out his new leg with only Rachel to help him.
They pulled Drayger to his feet.
“I thought you said this thing was ready,” Drayger said, grimacing down at the silver appendage.
The techs scanned the data bleeping on the console. “Looks like it’s having a hard time communicating with your CNS,” one of them said.
“What’s a CNS?” Rachel asked.
“Central Nervous System,” the other tech answered flatly.
“That damn machine said the calibration was complete,” Drayger barked.
“It is complete, sir. It’s just not communicating well. The nerve endings were damaged severely and—“
“I know the fucking nerve endings were damaged severely!” Drayger shouted back, his face red, the hair dancing on his forehead. “You think I need you to tell me that the fucking nerve endings were damaged severely? What kind of a moron are you?”
“Sir, I’m just trying to tell you that this is going to take some time, that’s all.”
Drayger took a deep breath, his voice softening. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. How much time?”
“It’s very hard to say. No two of these fittings are exactly alike. With the amount of damage your...” The tech thought better than repeating the offending phrase one more time. “With this amount of damage, it’s hard to say. Like the doctor informed you, it might not take at all. I’m sorry.”
The techs scooted out of the room and back toward where Sophia and Ward were having surgery.
Paul Ward was dreaming. Alison Mitchell was lying warm in his arms in the morning light of his bed. It was a nice fiction. They had just made love and were nuzzled together in post-coitus bliss. Although, she had the somewhat troubling habit of shape-shifting into his dead wife, Lori, every now and then, and most disturbingly his late son, David, would come to the bedside and ask him questions about the night sky they were also simultaneously peering up at.
You can do that kind of thing in dreams.
So, it was not without some relief that Sophia Linh’s voice began to shatter the illusions of his subconscious and his eyes fluttered open to the harsh lights of the post-op recovery room. Gray walls, your standard ceiling tiles, and lots of empty white gurney-beds. Hospital antiseptic assaulted his nose. Why couldn’t you wake up to a beach scene or a tropical waterfall? Ward mused groggily.
“Ward,” she said again.
He rolled his head over and squinted at her. “You look like hell, Blue.”
Sophia grinned at him. No, she didn’t. She looked like she always did. Except for the roll of gauze wrapped around her forehead. How could she look so chipper when he felt like hell had taken up shop in his forehead?
“The boss is on his way,” she told him.
Ward lifted the sheets and scanned the bevy of bandages bound across his torso, and when he did so his head swam. That was when he realized for the first time he had his own bandage wrapped around his throbbing skull. Great, another concussion, he thought. He became aware of the cool icepack embedded in the gauze. “You heard any reports on how bad we were hurt? I can’t remember anything after we got in here.”
“Yeah, you pretty much just passed out.”
“It’d been a long day,” Ward protested.
“Call up your records,” Sophia said.
“Huh?”
“You got a Neural Transmitter upgrade. We both did. Just call it up. It takes some practice, but it’s worth it.”
Ward tried, but nothing happened.
“Close your eyes. That helped me at first.”
Ward closed his eyes, but after a second a thought hit him and he opened them grimacing. He was suddenly feeling very competitive.
“Hey. Wait a minute. Just how long have you been awake, anyway?” he sulked.
“A lot longer than you, snowflake.” Sophia grinned in a way that made Ward think if they were out of their hospital beds she would have smacked him on his ass.
Ward snorted. He knew he was not as tough as Sophia. No reason to get jealous of that. He shut his eyes and tried for the records again. Sure enough, his med chart materialized behind his eyelids. He opened his eyes, and it remained there, floating in front of him. As he f
ocused, he realized he could control the size, scale, focus, and details of the chart. “Wow,” he breathed.
“Not bad,” Sophia agreed. “Now Lantern’s got a twenty-four-seven uplink right into your brain.”
The chart blinked away. Ward snapped toward her. “What?” Uplink into my brain? That sounded horrific!
But she was smiling. She didn’t seem to have any problem with the thought. Ward thought about questions of civil liberties, privacy, and a few other issues more close to home. He decided humor might be the best line of attack. “Not that I have anything to hide, of course, but I am a single guy, and a hardcore Catholic with psychic powers prying—”
“You’re both awake now, good.” Revolution marched into the room with purpose, his cape fluttering behind him. It made Ward snap to attention. The past twenty-four hours had seen a sea change in how Ward felt about his one-time hero.
He had to admit, the guy was kind of back to being his hero again. And from his gait, Revolution meant business.
“I guess you could call it that,” Ward said with a grin.
“We were afraid you might be out another day.”
“Another day? Wait, how long have we been out?” Ward pleaded.
Sophia shook her head sympathetically. “Not we.”
“We have a situation that only the two of you can help us with,” Revolution said gravely, ignoring the banter.
Ward was still shell shocked with the “another day” ego-destroying revelation. “Well, if you need us to get shot out of the sky again, I guess we could always fall on someone,” Ward quipped.
Sophia shot him a quick I-am-not-amused glance.
“We are running out of our reserve funds, and you two are our wealthiest members. We’ve now got about fifty Minutemen with traumatic injuries downstairs, and we are going to need to get more supplies for them soon.”
Ward smirked at Sophia. “He only loves us for our big bank accounts.”
Sophia nodded. “I can get you funds, but I’ll need some very secure phone lines to put me in touch with my people,” she said. “The Council still watches Linh Industries carefully. Or I could do it in person. I need to get back home to see if I can find more H3 supplies, anyway.”
“I’ll arrange it with Lantern,” Revolution said. “But before you go anywhere you’d better fix that suit. I don’t want you going out unarmed. Council Guard are looking for you everywhere,” Revolution said to Sophia.
“The suit does me no good without H3.”
Revolution nodded.
She clearly has a point there, Ward thought. Maybe Revolution was still not feeling one hundred percent; losing focus wasn’t like him.
Ward brushed the thought aside and shook his head. “I’m afraid it’s not that easy for me, Rev. Everyone knows who I am. You think they’re watching the Linhs, you ought to see how they eagle-eye the Ward family fortune. I’m just lucky they haven’t frozen it.”
“Or confiscated it,” Sophia said.
“Yeah, or that,” Ward said, more worried than ever.
Revolution shook his head. “You’re too high profile for that.” Revolution cocked his head at Ward. “What would you need to get it done?”
Ward shrugged. “Plane ride back to Boston?”
Revolution stiffened. Ward could tell something bothered him about that idea. His cape billowed as he spun to go. “You’ll get a Lantern.”
CHAPTER 8
Two long days passed. Revolution kept in close contact with Leslie in Baltimore. The only regularly allowed daily communication the facility produced, still wary of the constantly searching Council Locators like Kendrick Ray. Leslie in turn, conversed daily with someone from the European Union. The fifty-five men and women of the Minutemen continued their healing process, and Revolution checked on them regularly, keeping their spirits as high as he could. Ward and Sophia slowly recovered, though both remained in enormous amounts of pain. Their whole bodies ached. No position standing, sitting, or prone was comfortable. And while the conventional painkillers the medical staff kept on hand helped, Ward began to seriously miss his serenity serum. First, because of the pain-killing effects it could deliver; and second, because his body began to crave it.
On day three, the shakes began. Day four, the chills. Ward locked himself in his quarters and gave strict orders that he was not to be disturbed.
Sophia threw herself into her work, repairing her damaged flight suit and wishing for more Helium-3 to power it. Without the H3 she felt useless. She had gotten careless letting her supply run so low. Her frustration with herself and the symptoms of her concussion made her more irritable than normal, so she had the good sense to keep to herself.
Drayger continued to struggle with his artificial leg. The nerve endings were simply not linking with the leg’s CPU. He knew that if he ever wanted to have a fully functioning bionic leg that could boost him past normal performance, the nerve endings were going to have to start talking to the leg. So far, he couldn’t even walk like a normal amputee.
Scarlett and Spectral were given free access to the entire facility, though they had to be escorted everywhere they went and request permission first. While they were never denied access, they were often told to wait. This was to protect Sophia’s and Lantern’s identities. But it still pissed Scarlett off royally. Something the others were not unaware of. “Do we really want to piss off a woman who can kill us with a thought?” Rachel had asked.
By day five, Scarlett had had enough.
The Revolution scanned Lantern’s real-time projection of the facility in Trenton, NJ. It was being piped into his computer monitor in a rudimentary 3D. A rough mini-version of Lantern’s digi-sphere. Repair of the Council’s research facility had begun the moment the Suns had left the place, it seemed. Revolution was guessing this was still where Von Cyprus was housing most of his toys, and more importantly, where he was building his new ones.
Revolution cocked his head and listened. He was standing in the Communications Room, with its floor-to-ceiling bevy of monitors, computers, and various communications devices. It even housed an old-school telegraph machine.
But he wasn’t listening to anything in the room itself. His armor’s parabolic hearing detected footsteps coming up from the hallway. One pair was unmistakable. The heavy footfalls of Spectral, the android. To most, he made only slightly more noise than an average person, owing to his 350 pounds of synthetic weight. But to Revolution, the sound of his steps were unlike those of anyone else at the facility and immediately recognizable.
A moment later the buzz came through his helmet-com. “Sir, Spectral and the Lady Rage are headed to you. Be advised, the Lady is angry.”
“Understood,” he replied.
Spectral, Scarlett, and a young Minuteman volunteer with an Uzi strapped to his hip stepped into the Console Room behind him thirty seconds later.
“So, are we your prisoners now?” Scarlett huffed.
“Sir, I informed them…” the volunteer looked nervous, like he was afraid he was about to get in trouble with his famous general.
“It’s fine, son.” Revolution motioned to the young Minuteman, and he backed away, giving them all some room.
“Being able to go anywhere we want—as long as there are armed guards babysitting us—is not freedom of movement,” Scarlett grimaced. “Frankly, we’re getting sick of it.”
“You have to expect that we’d take certain measures. You of all people should know that we live in a world of spies. There is no being too careful.”
“General, if we wanted to do you harm, your escort here”—Scarlett pointed to the young man with the Uzi—“would offer no resistance to us, and you know it.”
“We’re watching you, not trying to kill you, Scarlett. We need your help, but until you give it, and maybe even then, we’re still going to keep an eye on you. Both for your protection and our own.”
“We asked for asylum, not to be treated like we’re in one. I think we’ve earned that.”
“We have team members here who would like to keep their identities secret. Surely you can understand that. We can’t just let you go around unsupervised. You have freedom of movement as long as it doesn’t jeopardize our operations here.”
Finally, the android spoke.
Revolution blinked. “I’d appreciate it if you’d keep any speculation on that to yourself, Spectral.”
“This isn’t a negotiation. If you want to stay here, you stay on my terms.”
Scarlett steeled her gaze and stalked closer. “We aren’t part of your army. You don’t get to give us orders.”
Revolution brought his arms to his sides, the cylinder grenade launchers in his red armored sleeves activated, set on the ready.
“If you want to stay here, I do. If you want more freedom, then sign up.” Revolution turned and motioned toward his monitors. “Out there, good people are dying to secure the freedom of an entire nation. If you’re truly the heroes you claim to be, you should be helping us, not hiding.”
The android’s hand clasped Scarlett’s arm, and she gave him a side-glance then returned her glare to Revolution.
She shook her head. “I’ve seen the so-called freedom you’re talking about. Explain to me how the history you're fighting for is so much better than the Council? Your idols started a damn war in Africa because the nations there put aside their hatreds and hostilities to join together. And how did your sacred democracy respond? They attacked. They tried to stop it! All for oil and diamonds and gold! If you really were interested in justice, you would have been there then. Fighting for a real democracy.” She turned on her heels and headed for the door. Spectral followed.
The Suns of Liberty (Book 3): Republic Page 5