by Mia Archer
The clone’s eyes went wider as the air shimmered around her, then she was gone.
"There you go," Natalie said. "Bleeding heart. You should've left her out here as an example for all these other assholes."
"They're not assholes," I said. "They're me.”
I raised my voice. I wanted this next bit to be heard by everyone floating around out here. Aliens, clones, and Natalie’s friends alike. It was time to make a statement.
"Did you hear that?" I said. "You might all be a copies of me, but I know you all have the same spirit I have. You want to do the right thing. I know it might be difficult to imagine that what I'm doing right now is the right thing, but this is for the greater good!"
"The greater good," Technomancer said in a singsong monotone that left me with the feeling she was quoting something, but that was clearly a movie or TV show that hadn't been included in the mind synchronization I got when Sabine pulled that Wrath of Khan on me with her wormy friend.
"This city is in danger of being destroyed!” I continued. "The military has used Dr. Lana’s stolen teleportation technology to plant nuclear weapons all around the city, and they're all going to go at the same time and really mess up our day!"
I stared a challenge at the gathered clones. If this was going to go pear shaped then this would be the moment when everything got good and fucked up. Those clones could fly, after all, and if they wanted to get the hell out of Starlight City before it was blown to pieces then they could totally do that.
Of course they’d be running straight into the blockade from the US military that was in the process of retreating to a safe distance if what I saw from up here was any indication. There was a chance the military types might be too busy to bother with the clones, but then again maybe not. They had to be weighing that.
“So who’s with me?” I asked. “Because with your help we might be able to get all the nukes before they blow this place up.”
To my surprise none of the clones left. I mean I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that none of the clones left considering they were my clones and that wasn’t the sort of thing I’d ever consider doing, but I’d seen enough back in that chamber of horrors that I wouldn’t blame them.
“Where do we start?” one of them asked.
I grinned. This was more like it!
25
Big Bag o’ Nukes
“This is the last of them,” Night Terror said. “At least as best as I can tell.”
“Right,” I said. “I expected them to be a hell of a lot bigger, to be honest.”
The pile of nukes wasn’t nearly as big as I’d been expecting, for all that it’d been a real bitch to track everything down. It turns out when Uncle Sam has access to a teleporter that lets him hide his nukes wherever the fuck he wanted to it could be a pain in the ass to dig them out. Especially when we were digging them out of the kind of rubble that could only come from a city that’d been under constant attack for a couple of months.
“So what are we going to do with them?” Natalie asked.
“You could disable them if you wanted to be boring…”
I stared down at the nukes. Then I turned and looked off in the distance. Off to where I could see a dust column all around the city that showed the military retreating to what they thought was a safe distance.
“Or?” Natalie asked.
I looked up. Sure I could do the whole lame hero thing and fly the nukes up outside the atmosphere and save the day. It was a scene that was a favorite of so many Hollywood movies, after all, and I’d look pretty badass flying the net of nukes up there and letting them go at the last possible moment while I dropped me back to earth.
There was a reason that sort of imagery was so popular with the Hollywood types.
“Don’t tell me you’re thinking about the atmospheric nuke removal,” Natalie said.
“I was thinking about it,” I said. “But I don’t plan on doing it. Why?”
“Good,” she said. “That’s such a lame cliche.”
“You’ve got that right,” I said. “I was actually thinking of pulling a Scotty.”
“A Scotty?” she asked, arching her eyebrow.
“Well yeah,” I said. “The military was nice enough to loan us all these nukes, after all.”
“Nice enough to loan…” Natalie clearly didn’t get it.
“So I’ll give them back to the military!”
“You’ll give them to the military?”
“Sure! It’ll be no trouble at all!”
She giggled and pulled me in for one hell of a kiss. It wasn’t the kind of kiss we had time for, but if she was going to shove her tongue down my throat then I was more than happy to play along.
When the kiss was over I pulled away. Wiped some smeared lipstick off of my face. Of course she’d be vain enough that she’d go into a fight like this made up to the nines.
“You’re beautiful,” she said. “I want you to know that.”
“Thank you,” I said, then turned to everyone else. “I’m going to be taking these now. I’d advise all of you to get down under something that’ll be able to save your ass if this goes wrong.”
“What’s she talking about Natalie?” Nancy Norris asked.
“She’s talking about giving the nukes back to the military,” Natalie said, an unhinged grin splitting her face that almost had me reconsidering this plan considering how much she loved it.
“You’re going to…”
Nancy Norris cut off whatever she was about to say as she realized what the fuck was going on here. Her eyes went wide and her mouth formed into an “o” shape as it hit her exactly what the fuck it was we had planned here.
“She’s going to give them back!” Technomancer cackled, looking even more delighted than Natalie about my plan. “Isn’t that rich!”
“How much time do we have?” I asked.
“You have as much time as you need now that we have the things right here where CORVAC can have his way with them,” Natalie said.
“Good,” I said. “Because I need you to send a little message to the unfortunate bastards driving all that military hardware.”
“I need to what?”
“You heard me,” I said, my voice hard. “We’re going to do this my way.”
There was some grumbling, but five minutes later a broadcast was going out on all channels letting everyone driving a bit of military hardware know that they had an hour to throw down their weapons and move into the city where they would be treated well and in accordance with all laws of war. The alternative being they could still be driving their fancy weapons when I started dropping nukes on them.
Hey, I might’ve taken a turn for the villainous, but I wasn’t totally heartless.
An hour later I had my big bag of nukes ready to go. I shouldered it and gave Natalie another quick kiss.
“You sure you don’t need some help with this?” Natalie asked. “I can probably withstand whatever the fuck these nukes are throwing out. They’ve got to only be measured in the kilotons at most.”
“Yeah, and kilotons were enough to destroy a couple of Japanese cities once upon a time,” I said. “Or are you forgetting your history?”
“I’m not forgetting my history,” Natalie said. “With my systems I could’ve been hanging out right under the Genbaku Dome at 8:15 on August 6, 1945 and I’d be fine.”
“I’m assuming you’re talking about when the atomic bomb went off,” I said. “And that doesn’t change the fact that it’s not happening. I’m doing this on my own.”
“You realize that you’re going to be dropping atomic weapons on troops representing the duly elected government of these United States, right? Not all of them are going to surrender,” Natalie said, placing a hand on my wrist and causing me to pause for the first time since this had all started. “If you do that you’re not going to be a hero anymore. I just want to make sure that’s something you can live with.”
I took a deep breath. Let it out in a long si
gh. This was something I’d had a lot of time to think about.
“I’ve seen what those assholes are capable of,” I said. “And if that’s what they’re doing to their own citizens then maybe they don’t deserve to be running things. Maybe it’s time the world came under new management.”
I didn’t have time to react. Natalie pulled me in for one hell of a kiss. It was the kind of kiss that had my toes curling, and when she pulled away we were floating at least ten feet above the flying saucer we’d been floating on.
It was also the kind of kiss we totally didn’t have time for considering the whole city was on the verge of being blown the fuck up by the atomic weapons I needed to bring back to those military assholes if anyone in the city was going to have any chance of surviving.
“Right,” I said. “It’s time for me to get to work.”
“Good luck,” Natalie said. “Because when you get back we’re totally going on a date that involves trying to take over the world!”
“Oh we’re going to do a hell of a lot more than try, Night Terror,” I said, grinning and giving her a good slap on the ass.
She let out a yelp, blushed as she looked at all the people all around us who’d watched me slapping her on the ass, clones and aliens and her new posse of villains alike, and then she turned back to me and blew me a kiss.
“Go get’em,” she said.
I caught that kiss. Then I grabbed the massive net we’d been using to gather up all the scary nuclear weapons and took off.
It was time to give them back to the assholes who’d put them there in the first place!
I picked up speed as I moved out over the city. It’s not like I was worried about them being able to take me out with any of their anti-air, but they could do a number on the nuclear payload I was carrying.
Best not to give them that chance.
“You ready to go Natalie?” I asked.
“Ready as I’m going to be,” she said. “CORVAC played around with those a little while we had that hour break. We can set them off as soon as they get to the proper altitude over the target.”
“And that other thing I asked you to look into?” I asked. “I’d really like to find that guy if we can.”
“He’s still working on it,” Natalie said. “But it’s going to take time to search all the soldiers coming into the city.”
“They are coming into the city?” I said.
“Most of them,” she said. “None matching the description you gave me so far though. There are holdouts manning their weapons, so you need to stay frosty out there. Your boy might still be with them fighting the good fight.”
“Got it,” I said, grinning like a madwoman. I still owed that asshole who’d cared more about equipment than men.
A distinction that seemed a little absurd now that I was dropping nukes on some of those men, but we had given them a chance to get the hell out of there before certain doom came to visit.
And that certain doom was just the first step. We were going to take over the world and make it a better place. A big part of that meant taking out the competition. It was unfortunate, it was a downright villainous thought, but these bastards should’ve thought of that before they decided to capture my clones and torture them.
I pulled one of the nuke suitcases out of the net and regarded the thing. I was acting like the world’s most fucked up Santa right about now. Delivering the kind of death and destruction that no one wanted to see coming down their chimney.
Well that was tough fucking shit.
I dropped the suitcase. It flew through the air, but it didn’t make a satisfying whistling noise like your typical bomb was supposed to make. I tossed it so it would land just a little to the front of the column of tanks and helicopters and other smaller vehicles that had moved well beyond the suburbs.
Some were still moving, but most had been abandoned like toys strewn about a kid’s room.
I wanted to make sure that thing was right in the middle of all that equipment when it went off. I’d already moved on, tossing more of the suitcases down on the ring of military hardware that’d mostly been abandoned while they were making their way away from the city.
“About to set off package number one,” Natalie said.
“You sound like you’re almost happy about that,” I said.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” she said. “The US military has been doing their best to steal my shit for ages. Looks like they finally sort of made that happen by having Dr. Lana do some of the stealing for them. I owe them one.”
The communication line scrambled as a flash of light appeared behind me. I turned around just in time to see a mushroom cloud rising behind me. The thing was a decent size, but it wasn’t nearly as big as those things could get.
Though my only experience in judging the size of mushroom clouds had been watching videos online with military stuff in the foreground for testing purposes that’d happened decades before I was born. Back when the government was assuring everyone that it was totally safe that they were spreading radioactive dust all over the breadbasket of the country.
Yeah, it was high time this world came under new management.
A second flash nearly blinded me. If I was anyone but me it would’ve blinded me. As it was I was only blinded for a moment, but blinking a couple of times chased away the pain from the flash.
I threw my head back and laughed. I couldn’t help it. It was downright villainous, and damn it felt good to be a villain!
26
Stay on Target
I picked up the speed as I pulled bombs out and tossed them. I was mostly over farmland and I figured I didn’t have to worry all that much about civilian casualties.
At the same time I had a hard time bringing myself to care too much about civilian casualties. I knew it was another downright villanous thought, but I was also having trouble bringing myself to care too much about how villainous the thoughts in my head had gotten.
Not when it seemed like the world could use a little villainy to set things right.
“Y’know my only regret with this whole thing is I don’t have a big old nuke to ride down on these bastards,” I said.
“What are you talking about?” Natalie asked.
“Y’know, riding the bomb? Like that old black and white movie about all the bombs going off? Dr. Strangelove?”
“You’ve heard of Dr. Strangelove?” Natalie asked.
“Well duh,” I said. “I am a journalism major. I keep up on stuff like that.”
“Yeah, that sounds like the kind of intellectual crap a bunch of wannabe writers would sit around fellating,” Natalie said. “Give me a minute and I’ll see what I can do.”
“What are you…”
“Give me a minute and keep tossing those bombs down on the military assholes like a good girl,” she said. “By the way, the fireworks are pretty damn impressive from here.”
“But you’re not supposed to look directly at the nuclear blast!” I said. “You’ll go blind!”
“One, I have equipment on my suit that keep me from going blind if I have a large flash like, say, from a nuclear weapon going off. It’s the kind of occupational hazard you want to avoid in this line of work.”
“One?” I said.
“Yup. Two, where the hell did you learn that? Another one of your journalism things?”
“Actually I picked that one up from True Lies,” I said.
“True Lies?” Natalie asked.
“Yeah, it was an old Schwarzenegger movie from the ‘90s that James Cameron did. About a guy who keeps his whole secret agent life from his wife and…”
“I’m aware of True Lies,” Natalie said. “I’m just a little surprised to hear that you’ve heard of it too.”
“Well color yourself surprised then,” I said. “Because I fucking love that movie.”
There was a pause on the other end. I thought maybe I’d said something wrong by admitting I liked that movie. It wasn’t the usual science fiction stuff
Natalie preferred, but it was cheesy fun and…
“We’ve got someone trying to reach you,” Natalie said.
“What?”
“Listen in,” she said.
There was some static as CORVAC no doubt worked his magic on the other end of the line, and then I heard a familiar voice ranting over the airwaves.
“…down here and fight like a man!” the voice screamed into the mics. “Only a coward would drop bombs like that! Only…”
“Friend of yours?” Natalie asked. “Because he’s talking like he knows you. I guess he’s been ranting since the nukes started dropping.”
“We met when I first encountered the military blockade,” I said.
“Guess he decided to go down with the ship after all,” Natalie said.
“Oh?”
“Yup. I’ve triangulated his position. You should be coming up on it soon enough.”
I grinned. “I was hoping he’d decide to stay behind and die for his country.”
“Right, we should almost be ready with your special order. How many of those bombs do you have left?”
I looked down to the net and was surprised to realize there were only a couple left. I looked at the path of destruction in a circle around the city, to all the mushroom clouds that were slowly rising in the air for all that they’d just rapidly converted a bunch of matter into dust that would be turning nice and radioactive as bits of the nastier parts of the bomb got attached to them and then fell down.
Right over the city, actually, if the way the prevailing winds were going right about now were anything to go on. I frowned. I’d have to do something about that, and fast.
“One more left,” I said, tossing the next to last one down to the ground over a column of tanks and what looked to be missiles of some sort that’d been mounted to the back of some sort of truck or something. Those missiles might’ve been able to do something if there’d still been anyone down there to fire them.
“Okay, we’re good to go here,” Natalie said.
The air shimmered, and a casing appeared around the last briefcase nuke. Bits of netting embedded in the side of the thing where the molecules had formed around it.