XGeneration 7: Dead Hand (XGeneration Series)

by Brad Magnarella

  “Can I use your phone?” he asked.

  “Go ahead.”

  Kilmer pressed the receiver to his ear and punched out a number. It was his direct line to the president from his time as Champions Director. The odds of it still working were slim to none, but he had to—

  Ring tone!

  It went on for two minutes, but at last someone picked up. “This is the president.”

  “Mr. President, you cannot authorize a counterstrike.”

  “Who is this?”

  “Agent Kilmer. I know you have your protocols, but you have to listen to me. Prince Khoggi is baiting us into a trap. His goal is to eliminate every major power in one fell swoop.”

  “I’m in the middle of a very important meeting.”

  “Once you wipe out the U.S.S.R, China is going to think it’s next. They’ll finish the job the Soviets began. That will draw England and France into the conflict. Do you see where this is going? The Soviet launch is devastating, but it’s limited. And we still have assets who may be able to keep those warheads from their targets. We need to let them try.”

  “Agent, we don’t have time for this.”

  “We also have assets in the Soviet Union. They’re the only reason the launch wasn’t more extensive. They need time to get out.”

  On the monitor, the Soviet missiles blipped closer to Western Europe.

  “I have to go,” Reagan said sternly.

  “For the love of God, Mr. President.”

  Southwest Russia

  Scott stumbled down a final embankment and onto a lonely country road, his breaths hoarse in his chest. Though exhausting, the run had also had a restoring effect, drawing him back from the cold brink of shock. His teammate’s demise, fleeing the tunnel, the collapse near the mouth…

  Keeping to the forests, he and Jesse appeared to have arrived without detection. The question remained, though, whether his hack of the Dead Hand computer had actually worked.

  Jesse landed beside him, and the two of them peered around. Shockwave’s final blast had taken out Scott’s compass, but he recognized the stretch of road. He gestured toward a nearby bend.

  “Pickup spot is around there.”

  He and Jesse jogged side by side. They rounded the steep-banked bend only to be met by more road.

  “Sure about that?” Jesse asked.

  Scott studied their surroundings. Yes, he was sure. There were even tracks in the dirt where the van had pulled over to drop them off. But there were also a pair of deep divots and darker earth that had been spit up behind them, as though the van had taken off in a hurry.

  “Crap,” Scott muttered.

  He listened for an engine, but the Russian night was insufferably silent.

  Reginald and the driver had left without them.

  Oakwood

  14 minutes to impact

  Janis was watching the monitor, thumbnail fixed between her teeth, when the phone rang again. The blips had completed their flyover of Europe and were starting their journey over the Atlantic.

  “Talk to me,” she said.

  “Okay, listen,” Kilmer said with a tight exhale. “I recently got off the phone with the president.”

  “He’s going to order a counterstrike.”

  “Yes, but a limited one.”

  “How limited?”

  “Military and industrial sites.”

  “All of them?”

  “Yes.”

  When, she almost asked, but new dots were appearing on her monitor. They originated from the Great Plains states, and there were hundreds. A spear burned through Janis’s gut as she stood.

  “But Scott and the others…”

  “I know, Janis.”

  Her eyes flicked between the opposing sets of missiles and their projected times to impact, the rest of the bunker ceasing to exist. Even though Kilmer wasn’t saying it, she knew what he was asking.

  As if she had a choice.

  “I’ll do what I can,” she said.

  “I…” Kilmer’s voice cracked. “God bless you, Janis.”

  She hung up the phone and turned to her teammates. The thrumming that had begun in her core enveloped her senses. Her teammates became astral auras, the bunker burning lines of energy.

  “I’m going up,” she said.

  47

  Somewhere in the Pacific

  It was a perfect day, Khoggi decided as he watched the afternoon sun shimmering over the distant waves. The office in his new palace featured three glass walls with views of his lovely city and the countryside and vast ocean beyond. He activated a button on his desk, sliding the glass walls partway open. The refreshing breeze that pushed inside fluttered his white silk shirt.

  He had chosen the island not just for its size and temperate climate but for its unique position amid the global air currents. Here, they moved in tight, cleansing cycles. The island was, in every sense, an island to itself. Untainted by the major continents, unaffected by the massive clouds of radioactive debris that would soon suffocate them. Here—he took a deep breath and let it out—yes, here, the air would remain clean, the sunshine pure.

  “Now then,” he said, turning back to his computer.

  He eyed the progress of the missiles on his monitor. The launch from the Soviet side had been a disappointment, the U.S. response less vigorous than he had hoped. But soon the other nuclear powers would join in.

  He smiled around a sip of vintage Chianti—a wine he had kept more than twenty years, just for this moment.

  When he had begun amassing his fortune in the arms trade, he dreamed of transforming Saudi Arabia into a country that could compete on equal terms with the world’s great powers. But he knew the reality. No matter what he did, his brothers, his nephews, and the king himself would still see him as the runt of the family, the last child of his father’s fourth wife. He would be given a titular role, perhaps, a pat on the head, but little more. There were better ways to assure a position at the top, and that meant taking a path independent of the Kingdom.

  Over the years, his thinking evolved further. Why compete with the great powers if he could eliminate them? If he could position himself as the lone power in a post-apocalyptic world? He had already created the conditions for the vast nuclear buildup, had had a hand in most of the arms deals. It was just a matter of getting one of them to shoot first.

  Enter General Dementyev, the paranoid schizophrenic. A man Khoggi had expended a small fortune ensuring would be placed in his position. Once again, money well spent. Extraordinarily well spent.

  He took another sip and looked around for Margaret. He wanted to be sharing his moment with her. Their moment, in many ways. For without her, the Champions would have killed his plans. He should have made her a Scale member from the beginning, but he’d already had the Witch and never guessed Margaret would grow to become so powerful.

  He had been having her meet with members of his cabinet and military in recent days to ensure their loyalty—in the matter of his rule over the island nation, of course, but he was also looking to more distant horizons.

  In a few years, when the nuclear dust began to settle, he would be sending them out to take command of the world’s resources—its oil, minerals, and metals, its surviving forests. What straggling populations remained would be subjugated. For Khoggi to maintain control over those satellite lands, there could be no rebelliousness, especially as his satellites grew in size and number.

  “My goddess?” he called.

  When the mind controller didn’t answer, he returned his attention to the computer. She would come when she was ready. Lately, she had been seeking him out, which pleased him. Only days before, they had talked on the rooftop garden late into the night, just the two of them.

  Khoggi regarded the missiles’ progress as he took another sip of wine.

  “Yes,” he said, “it is all just a matter of time.”

  48

  Southwest Russia

  “What’s the call, chief?” Jesse asked.
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  Scott took another look from the chewed-up dirt left by the fleeing van to the empty road stretching away. Jesse was right, they couldn’t just stand there.

  “The Ukrainian border is about fifty miles away,” Scott said. “We should start heading that way.”

  As they set out, Jesse tried to raise Reginald on the radio again but without success. It suggested Reginald had either cut communication or someone had taken it from him. Scott was considering the implications of the second when the high whine of an engine punctured the silence. A vehicle was approaching from behind. Scott and Jesse turned simultaneously.

  “That our ride?” Jesse asked.

  Scott focused, but the bend in the road that hid the vehicle from their view was also distorting the sound of the engine.

  “I can’t tell.”

  Jesse faced the oncoming engine, legs set apart, fists balling up. “Well, it is now.”

  Scott didn’t argue. If he hadn’t succeeded in reprogramming the command missile, the Dead Hand site was going to become ground zero—one of many—in the next thirty. They needed to make distance, and if that meant hijacking a vehicle…

  Sidestepping for a better angle, he powered up his laser. The lights from the approaching vehicle swept over the fields to the right of the bend. Seconds later, one headlight glared into view and then the second. They bore down on Jesse, who had lumbered into a charge, shoulder lowered.

  “Wait!” Scott shouted.

  The headlights jerked one way and the other as the driver slammed the brakes.

  “It’s ours!”

  Scott ran up behind Jesse, who had trotted to a stop. The van’s passenger side door swung wide, and Reginald jumped out. He opened the back of the van and waved for Scott and Jesse to come.

  “Sorry about that,” Reginald said as they climbed in. He slammed the doors closed and jumped back into the passenger seat. “About thirty, forty minutes ago a convoy of military vehicles came out of nowhere.” He spoke through a small window of mesh metal. “We tried to clear out but ran into a second convoy. Russian soldiers grabbed us, took us to a nearby base.”

  He was having to shout above the noise of the van now, which was hurtling forward like a bat from the pits of hell. Scott shifted his gaze to the driver, who appeared as pale as death.

  “How’d you get out?” Jesse asked.

  “I shifted back into a likeness of Nazar here. We showed them our doctored delivery papers. When soldiers failed to find anything incriminating in the van, they had no reason to keep us. And when the Dead Hand missile launched, they couldn’t get us out of there fast enough.”

  “Did you pick up anything about other Soviet missiles…?”

  Reginald’s blue eyes met his through the window. “Limited launch.”

  “Limited? What does that mean?” he asked, already knowing: he had failed.

  “I’m not sure, Scott. We’ll have more information when we cross the border.”

  Scott sat back as the van rumbled onto a paved road, its engine rising another octave. He thought of the missiles arcing toward the United States. He thought of those that would be coming the other way. He considered his family and teammates and one young woman in particular.

  It was going to be up to her.

  I’m so sorry, he whispered.

  Oakwood

  4 minutes to impact

  Janis rose into a sky just beginning to darken, shaking with the impossibility of her task. Two dozen nuclear-armed missiles from the Soviet side. Two hundred from the U.S. side. Both sets slamming through subspace at miles per second, hundreds of miles apart. A single missile would be a challenge, but this…

  Janis peeked down at her teammates, whose upturned faces had become small and indistinct, then back to the purpling heavens, where the first points of starlight had begun to glimmer.

  So stupid, she thought. Destroying everything good and beautiful, and for what?

  Angry tears propelled her. She had told Kilmer she would do what she could, and now she felt more determined than ever. But she would need more fuel, more power. She thought about the millions of incinerated lives, the colors of the world reduced to ash. She considered everything she had seen, everyone she had known, her parents’ love, Tyler’s writing, Scott’s touch.

  All gone.

  She shot higher and higher as the thoughts shook through her head. The setting sun, having disappeared from the ground, gleamed again in the west. To all sides, the astral lines of time and space pulsed luridly.

  Janis joined those lines and began knitting them into a telekinetic shield, one that needed to stretch hundreds of miles, from the coast of Maine to south Florida, from the upper atmosphere to subspace. One that would need to be formidable enough to stop a hail of nuclear warheads coming from both directions. Never mind that the task was impossible.

  She had to do it.

  Her shield had grown to a hundred square miles when the first stab of pain knifed through her head. She staggered midflight, hands flying to her helmet. The pain it left behind was almost worse, like a toothache.

  Can’t be hitting my limits yet…

  Mrs. Fern had installed the psychic circuit breakers the year before to keep Janis’s powers from overwhelming her body, from destroying her. But what if she didn’t need them anymore? What if she had outgrown them, like one did with training wheels? Could she safely cast them away?

  Janis peered at the dwindling world between her feet. You’re probably dead either way. She hesitated and then fried the circuit breakers, opening herself to the entirety of her powers.

  An inrush of energy sent her head over heels and knocked her senseless.

  Near the Russia-Ukraine border

  “What d’ya keep holding your arm for?”

  As the van shook around them, Scott looked down to see what Jesse was talking about. He wasn’t so much holding his right arm as cradling it. For the first time, Scott noted a throbbing pain near the wrist where it had been broken years before. It was the same arm Jesse had used to pull him from the collapsed tunnel. And it was fractured again.

  “It’s nothing,” Scott murmured, lowering the arm to his lap.

  For the next minute neither spoke.

  “I was there, you know.” Jesse jerked his head back the way they’d come. “I know you did everything you could.”

  “I took too much time.”

  Jesse shrugged. “I wouldn’t have wanted anyone else down there.”

  They were kind words—the first he’d ever heard coming from Jesse—but Scott felt too broken up inside to thank him. He studied his swollen fingers and thought about the unconscionable burden he’d placed on Janis. He closed his eyes to tap into the part of her that lived in him.

  I’m here, he whispered. You’re not alone. Can you hear me? You are not alone.

  The driver spat a Russian curse, and Scott felt the van slowing. Opening his eyes again, he peered through the mesh window to find them coming on a long line of brake lights.

  “They’ve closed the border,” Reginald said. “They’re not letting anyone out.”

  Reginald directed the driver onto the shoulder, urging him forward despite the driver’s protests. For miles, car horns drilled and spanked the air in an urgent and growing chorus. Up ahead, a solid steel gate rose into view, flanked by guard towers. Giant cement blocks barricaded the road. Behind the blocks, soldiers formed a human barrier, rifles aimed at the crowding vehicles in warning.

  A soldier caught sight of their van barreling along the shoulder, its right tires thumping over grass. The soldier fired, bullets blowing a headlight and pinging off the bumper.

  Warning shots.

  The Ukrainian driver cursed and swerved to a stop. He threw his hands toward Reginald in argument. Scott wasn’t at Janis’s level, but he understood enough Russian to get the gist of what he was saying: This is suicide! You’re going to get us all killed!

  “I’ll handle it,” Reginald was telling him.

  When two soldiers ap
proached the van, rifles raised, the driver started into a Catholic prayer.

  “What are you doing?” the soldier at Reginald’s window demanded. “To the back of the line!”

  Reginald-as-the-driver’s-brother held out their papers. “Please,” he said, “we are simple Ukrainians who believe in the Soviet cause. We have just made a delivery to one of your bases and wish only to return to our family.”

  The soldier looked from the papers to Reginald and the driver, and then to the small Soviet flag Reginald had thought to hang from the rearview mirror. The soldier lowered his rifle.

  “We are in a state of emergency,” he said brusquely. “We have our orders. There is nothing we can do.” He waved for them to reverse to the back of the long line of vehicles.

  “Wait, we have gifts for you in the rear,” Reginald said, turning enough for Scott to catch his eye. “Maybe you will reconsider?”

  The soldiers looked at one another until the older one nodded. They disappeared from the windows.

  “We’ve got a border to open,” Reginald whispered quickly.

  Scott nodded and powered up his laser. When the rear doors opened, he released two pulses in succession. Each caught a soldier in the chest and drove him to the ground. By the time Scott hopped out, Reginald was already collecting their weapons. He tossed one of the rifles to the driver, whom Reginald had selected for his discretion as well as his military background.

  “We’ll cover the towers,” Reginald said.

  Scott nodded quickly. “I’ll work on the ground troops.”

  “I’ll make us an opening,” Jesse said, heaving himself from the van.

  Using their vehicle for cover, Reginald and the driver took aim at the tower. As shots popped off, Jesse lumbered into a run toward the cement barricades. Scott followed, blasts pulsing from his visor. The pulses found soldiers, blowing rifles and fragments of body armor every which way.