“He always expected this, you know,” the old magician finally spoke up. “He said speedsters weren’t the most robust capes around—one good hit was going to get him someday. He left instructions.”
“For what, boss?” Riptide wasn’t entirely steady, but then half the room wasn’t either.
“For this.” Blackstone waved at the spread. “He wanted a party.”
“And for us to bury the capullo who got him.” The ex-street villain scowled at his beer. “Shell? What was that poetry he got from your other guy? Ajax?”
“Hold on, checking Ajax conversations. Oh! It’s not private, I can recite the whole thing if you want.”
“Do it, girl.”
“Right. Ahem. ‘Wise sir do not grieve. It is always better / to avenge dear ones than to indulge in mourning. / For every one of us, living in this world / means waiting for our end. Let whoever can / win glory before death.’ It’s from Beowulf.”
“That’s right. Laugh it up, then find and kick the cabrónes who got him until they aren’t moving.”
“That wasn’t Ajax’ only thought on death,” Hope found herself saying. Starting her Astra career with a destroyed overpass and dead bodies all around, she’d had a lot of after-training talks with the scholarly hero. “Shell, can you get Death Is an Escort?”
“Sure.” She theatrically cleared her throat a second time. “‘Death should come when you are old, / when years and wear make him a friend. / If Death comes when you are young, / grapple your foe and never bend. / But old or young, and foe or friend, / Death is an escort, nothing more. / He leaves you at an open door.’”
Silence followed Shell’s recitation and Hope finished her beer. She’d chosen the apple-ale and it was growing on her. “It’s on his plaque, upstairs in the chapel. Ego non somnus. ‘I do not sleep.’”
Watchman tipped back his own bottle for a long draw, raised it. “Here’s to Rush, Ajax, and the rest then. And may we spit in our escort’s eye when we meet him.”
Hope shivered at the echoed toast and put her bottle down. “On that note, goodnight everyone. Tell lots of stories.”
Chapter Fourteen
“The first steps were wet with spray, and slippery, but the remainder were quite dry. A rosy light seemed to come from the interior of the cave, and this lighted their way. After the steps there was a short tunnel, high enough for them to walk erect in. and then they reached the cave itself and paused in wonder and admiration.
“They stood on the edge of a vast cavern, the walls and domed roof of which were lined with countless rubies, exquisitely cut and flashing sparkling rays from one to another. This caused a radiant light that permitted the entire cavern to be distinctly seen, and the effect was so marvelous that Trot drew in her breath with a sort of a gasp, and stood quite still in wonder.
“But the walls and roof of the cavern were merely a setting for a more wonderful scene. In the center was a bubbling caldron of water, for here the river rose again, splashing and dashing till its spray rose high in the air, where it took the ruby color of the jewels and seemed like a seething mass of flame.”
L. Frank Baum, The Scarecrow of Oz.
Platoon looked over the terrain. “Decent ground,” he said to the Platoon beside him. They all knew it, even the Platoons down in the Ruby Cave or still coming up the steep switchback trail below them, but vocalization was a good habit. Unshipping the shovels in their packs they started digging. With the packs of sandbags they’d brought up to the top, they would entrench and have a good field fortification around the top of the trail by sunset. Give them a few days and they’d have a sandbag-concrete fort and it would take an army to push them out. The wide water of the Cascades to their left meant anyone approaching was going to be coming over the low hills a decent distance in front of them or over the flat ground that followed the cliff’s edge to their right. With gun emplacements settled, they’d be able to stand off any army—tick tock, nome, Ozian, whatever, that came at them out of the City Lands.
“We’ve finished the emplacements outside,” he reported to Grendel when he reappeared in the roiling pool in the middle of the cave, crates held over his head. The big cape grunted, wading out of the pool as he continued to report. “Anything coming up from below will be covered by machine-gun emplacements outside the cave, and we’ve mined the trail for several switchbacks down. We’ve got three mortar emplacements to shell anyone who comes close to the bottom of the falls.”
“Good to hear.” Putting down the crates, Grendel looked over their interior-decorating work. Platoon suppressed his satisfaction. Ozma was invisible behind the screens hiding the portion of the cave she’d claimed for her magic lab. In a few minutes they’d have her ceiling up too, all locked down making it a half decent clean-lab. The prefabricated wood shelves were going up quick, a half dozen of them uncrating transformees and setting them on waiting shelves, and all of that left plenty of room for the CDC’s people who were following with their portable labs and equipment. Vaccine production would commence within a day. “And the cave?”
The Platoon pointed at the “door.”
“Yeah, that’ll do.” They’d blocked the cave entrance with a steel killing box with murder-holes and an armored hatch; if anything pushed them back into the cave, they’d have plenty of time to evacuate before it got through that door. He grunted. “I want to check the top, see if anything looks different from when we were here before.”
“Very good, sir.”
He growled. “I think you outrank me.”
“No, sir.” Platoon smiled. “Although some of me hold officer commissions, all of me that’s present come from various agencies and civilian posts. We all keep in shape, of course. Also, this is Oz, and I understand that you’re her majesty’s senior military commander.”
“Fine. Then as her witchy majesty’s generalissimo, I’m ordering you to consider the sky, too. She said we’re going to be here a few weeks Oz time—back home, a day or two. As soon as the witch and the nome who took over figure out someone’s here, we can probably expect flying monkeys or something.”
Platoon snapped a salute. “Very good, sir. I’m informing her majesty of your concern and she thanks you for your foresight. She also asks that, as long as you’re up top, you proceed to the hills and inform her of the condition of the Tick Tock Works. She asks that you be careful.”
“I’m always careful. I’ll take five of you with me.”
“Very good, sir.”
“And stop that. That’s an order.”
Platoon smiled. “Yes, sir.”
Instead of leading her directly to bed, Hope’s feet took her upstairs and through the quiet Dome to the chapel. Again. The cross stood vigil over the altar in the dim light, and Hope ran fingers over the plaques that shone along the crypt wall beneath Mary’s watchful gaze.
Lighting yet more candles beneath Mary of the Pagan’s nook (she really was going to have to replenish the chapel’s supply soon), she let the Prayer for Heroes fell from her lips almost without thought. Returning downstairs, she felt lighter though Shell remained as silent as she had since Hope had headed for the chapel. Or was it Shell/Shelly tonight? Hope hadn’t asked, but was willing to bet Shelly’d included herself in the impromptu wake through their quantum-link gestalt. Thinking about Shelly laughing at Rush jokes in the middle of an Ouroboros meeting further lifted her mood. Until she looked at her bed.
Her empty bed.
Dammit.
She’d done the right thing. She knew she had. And over the last few years she’d gotten great at compartmentalizing things, putting anything she couldn’t deal with in a box and closing it. Not forgetting it, but not letting it touch her until she was ready. She could be strong, but right now she wasn’t stronger than her empty bed.
She slept on her couch, managing not to dream. The grinding, bone-rattling alert catapulted her from her fitful rest.
The ear-splitting claxon cut off as Hope hit the ceiling. “Shell!”
�
�Brussels just went silent!”
“What?” She tried to make sense of the words, her head buzzing from the adrenalin spike.
“I’ve been monitoring communications systems worldwide since the Chicago Attack! Brussels just dropped completely off the map!”
Hope’s blood froze. “Quantum-interdiction?”
“I don’t know—I’m not connected to anything there!”
“Shelly!”
“Right here.” A virtual Shelly popped in, translated through Hope’s quantum-link with Shell, rubbing the sleep out of wide eyes. She might be an hour ahead of Hope in Cuba, but she still wore shorts and a pajama-shirt and her hair stood out like Medusa’s mane. “Shell’s dumping the numbers on me, the signature’s the same—”
“—chance of a new attack is—”
“—higher than Vegas odds.”
Great, they were gestalting. Hope still didn’t know if it was healthy for them or not, but it made them even faster. “Blackstone and Lei Zi?”
“They’re hearing this, too—”
“—but we’re not cleared to—”
“—go anywhere and not—”
“—getting it!”
Crap. Crap crap crap. The State Militia order—Blackstone had said he was still working on the governor to release at least some of them for emergencies elsewhere. Hope’s thoughts raced. “Have you kicked it upstairs?”
“Right to the White House—but there’s no way we can get permission from the EU to jump our supersoldiers down on it!”
“Stop merging you’re freaking me out! Dammit! Dammit!” All hell was about to come down on Brussels and nobody was going to move fast enough, they couldn’t even tell Brussels. “Tell the Continental Guard! Hack their coms if you have to but do it now!” Hope twisted her ring, going from panties and a t-shirt to fully armored with Malleus in her hand, and headed for the door. “And I need—” She had no idea what they’d be facing, but it would be aimed at capes. “Get Sifu to bring me Dad, get Jacky and Quin suited up, tell them all we’re going Heroes Without Borders!” And then she was racing for the Atrium, the largest open space in the Dome.
“But what are we doing?”
“Saving as many as we can!”
Less than a minute later her heart hurt a little when Sifu dropped out of Hypertime inside the Atrium’s open doors, her dad up on the bike behind him. She’d ridden on Rush’s “pony express delivery service” a few times when she’d had to be somewhere right then. She couldn’t imagine replacing Rush, but would Sifu come out of retirement? They needed a speedster and Crash wasn’t quite ready for the mantle of a fighting Sentinel yet. “Shell,” she whispered. “Keep an eye on Jamal? I was going to talk to him this morning.”
“I keep an eye on everyone—what you mean is poke him and you bet.”
“Yeah, that’s what I meant.” She turned at the sound of running as Jacky and Quin arrived, field bags in their hands. Quin’s ruffled harlequin skirt didn’t match the heavy weapons belt she’d slung on, and Jacky had strapped both thigh and shoulder holsters to her black body armor—they’d come ready for war.
“And the gang’s all here.” Shell arrived right behind them, wearing her Galatea combat body and with a dozen drones circling her. Astra shoved every second thought she had down deep as her dad transformed into Iron Jack and they circled up.
“Right, everybody! We’re looking at an unsupported drop into Brussels, with no tactical intelligence. Shell will develop our threat-understanding on arrival which is why it’s just us—we’re the tough nuts. Sifu, you’re not coming—”
“I’m—”
“Crash is still recovering,” Hope cut him off. “Chicago needs a speedster. Everybody, we’re going in hot and high, I’m lifting Iron Jack, Galatea is lifting The Harlequin, Artemis can ride with either or get down on her own. Questions?”
“Goals?” Quin asked.
“Get there, figure out the rest on the way down. Anyone else? No?” She opened the pouch Ozma had left her. “I love you guys. Don’t die.” Whipping the open pouch around to fling her last batch of Travel Dust over them all, she pictured them high in the sky over mid-morning Brussels. As the wind spun them about, ignoring things like pesky walls and ceilings to whirl them up into the air and into a blue sky, Sifu’s blur joined them—a move Hope almost missed over the high-pitched whine of a dive-bombing hummingbird and Shell’s “Oh, shit!”
Chapter Fifteen
At ci[ú] cach ro genair / ruad cath derg bandach. / dremnad fiach lergai fo eburlai.
I see all who are borne / in the bloody tide of battle / raging on the raven-field with unsheathed swords.
From Cath Maige Tuired: The Second Battle of Mag Tuired
Claire Byrne-Meyer, visiting lecturer, looked up from her book. Brussel’s Museum of Art and History had an excellent Celtic history section, mostly focused on the early cross-channel migration groups. Six days into her stay, she had yet to be bored, even if her lecturer duties were laughably light. No, the slight, weedy scholar had come along with the treasured Ardagh Chalice, center of the two-month Irish-European History event. At least she got to lecture on Conall Corc, the hero of Irish legend and founder of the Eoghanachta dynasty, but that was to keep her busy. Really she was there to guard the chalice. Or her other self was, and now that other self stirred.
The electric feel of something in the air moved through her, bringing a shiver and a shudder.
No, please.
She hadn’t truthfully expected Battle Crow to hear a call. Not in the heart of Europe.
“Claire?” Doctor Moore’s wrinkled face showed concern; normally Claire’s focus was total when she had a tome in her hand.
“It’s—” The fine hairs on her arms rose. “I think everyone should move to the secure rooms.” She sighed. “Now. And I wouldn’t be bothered taking anything with you.”
He blinked, not showing at all the proper alarm. “Really?”
The tingle built to flames. “No, I’m talking shite. Yes, you eejit! Get everyone in, now!” Battle Crow screamed in her head but she reverently laid down the tome, hoping it would be there and unharmed when she returned.
Looking shaken, Doctor Moore picked up his cell, stared at it. “We have no connection.”
“Go now!” Claire bolted—not for the secure rooms.
The vortex of rushing air cleared to reveal a gray clouded sky and a new city under them. For the second time in a week, they dropped towards a city under attack. Hope grabbed her dad, wrapping fingers around an iron wrist as thick as Grendel’s, and spun wildly to find Sifu. The crazy speedster in his green-and-white motorcycle suit free-fell on her right, arms and legs starfished in the approved position, and her old teacher had the nerve to grin at her as she slid sideways to grab him.
She didn’t try looking for the hitchhiking hummingbird that just had to be her equally insane ex. “Shell?”
“No quantum-interdiction yet—but we’re higher than any anchor zones would be!” Shell replied. “No communication with the local networks but solid satellite uplink to my Galatea drone-shell and I’m developing intel off all your mask-cams and my drone swarm—no attack yet but check the traffic!”
They’d come out of the vortex over the European Quarter; Cinquantenaire Park spread out directly below them, the Berlimont and Europa buildings and Espace Léopold complex close enough for Hope’s breakthrough-enhanced eyes to pick out government employees in the windows. Nobody looked alarmed and the only sign Hope could see that anything was wrong was the zone of frozen traffic spreading out from the Rue de la Loi and Rue Belliard. “You’re right! Let’s get down before—”
The retina-burning flash of impact preceded the shockwave by milliseconds, the air shaking sonic boom blending into the hammering detonation. By instinct—and long, long training against holding onto someone harder than their own tensile integrity would allow—she released Sifu as they rode the air shock. The shock past, she regained her grip without slamming the spinning speedster int
o her dad before even trying to process what had just happened below. “Count ’em, Shell!”
“Sifu—Iron Jack—Artemis—The Harlequin—costume telemetry’s good and I’ve got my pair!”
“Kitsune?”
“No idea, lost track in the bang!”
“Yell if you spot him! Keep your drones up here and follow me down to the park!”
Sometimes Saara Lajunen hated Kukkuu. Which was funny, since she was Kukkuu—once upon a time Princess Kukkuu of the Magical Kingdom of Fairy Funland. The cheerful, plucky “vigilante” of the still-popular Euro tv show was long gone, but she’d kept the purple hair, the pink-white-black color scheme, the pink plaid of her belt and bowtie, along with the name as a remembrance of a better time. Before Finland’s brief but bloody civil war. Before she’d seen friends die on both sides of the New Order Party’s attempted coup.
At least the red scar slicing down her face from her hairline to just below her ear, and the purple bandit’s scarf she wore covering her lower face, distanced her from her bubbly teenage character. People wondered what other scars of the war lay under the scarf (there weren’t any, but it was fun to watch them not ask).
The official she was dealing with today—a humorless, self-important man wielding all the authority of his position in the Continental Guard bureaucracy, hadn’t asked but couldn’t keep his eyes from wandering to the scar again and again. He’d flushed and looked away each time she caught him looking, but refused to acknowledge her point of interest as Finland’s designated envoi to the Guard. She’d spent all morning in the Europa Building—first talking to an under-secretary and now to the Secretary of Intergovernmental Superhuman Security Cooperation.
The idiot was taking refuge, from her scar and the conversation, in his desktop screen. Saara knew the precise moment when it failed him when he blinked, humphed, and reluctantly focused on her again. “Monsieur Baylor, I realize your match-four game is more interesting than I am. But I’m prepared to order lunch delivered, and if we can’t resolve at least a framework for intelligence-sharing by the time I finish dessert then I’m prepared to tell my prime minister that the EU isn’t interested in cooperating with Finland regarding our mutual security concerns.”
Repercussions (Wearing the Cape Book 8) Page 14