“‘Jennifer Touches Clouds, President of the United States, to all who shall see these presents, greetings: be it known that, in pursuance of an act of Congress on this day, I have commanded and by these presents do commission the private force known as Joyeuse Guard, led by Astra, to pursue, to seize, and to if necessary eliminate the named persons making war upon these United States, our friends, and our allies, wherever you shall find them. This commission to remain in force at the pleasure of the President of the United States. Given under my hand on this day, in the City of Washington, President Jennifer Touches Clouds.’”
Shelly solemnly folded the letter. “She lists our known enemies. Karl Langer, the Green Man, the Ascendant, their so-far known agents. Questions?”
Grendel beat Hope to it. “Girl have I got questions. What is that? Presents? And, Joyeuse Guard?”
Hope’s BF gave one of the most dramatic eye-rolls she’d ever seen. “Jeeze, does nobody know their history? Presents is the presented letter, and it’s a Letter of Mark, spelled M-A-R-Q-U-E, and Reprisal. It’s a power written into the US Constitution—Congress can authorize the writing of Letters of Marque and Reprisal. They’re commissions to private organizations giving them permission to wage limited war. It was used to commission privateers, allowing them to attack and seize enemy ships, even crossing national boundaries to do it.”
“And they’re giving us one? How is this not like the US Army going in?”
“It’s really not, but the key is in the really. I haven’t told Touches Clouds where they are. Diplomatically, the US will be able to say that they gave no specific orders—and then the politicians and diplomats will fight about it for the next few years and the US may need to make an apology. Also,” she shrugged, “international law turned against the usage of Letters of Marque and Reprisal back in the 1800s. They haven’t been used by the US since the War of 1812, so this might be the only one we’ll ever see. Or they might be regularized for issuance to fast-moving teams like ours. Who knows? But this one will work.”
“Team like ours,” Jacky repeated. “What exactly is Joyeuse Guard?”
Shelly looked defensive. “I had to come up with a name for the letter and the contracts. It’s a PMC, a private military company.”
“We’re mercenaries?” Hope blurted. “Who’s paying us?”
“The US government, duh. Multimillion-dollar bounties have been put on everyone on the list. Dead or alive. It’s all in the letter.”
“That’s not our objective, though,” Hope realized.
“They roll up into our town, kill our friends three different ways, do it again all over somewhere else—you bet it’s our objective.”
“No.” Hope looked around. “What’s making these guys so dangerous is their mobility. The magnetobridge Verne-tech. We need to free Dr. Kreiski. And smash the stuff she’s built for them. Then it doesn’t matter if we miss a few on the list. All of the Main Three—The Ascendant, The Green Man, and Langer—could get away clean and we’d still have ended their smash-and-dash cycle. What?”
Shelly laughed. “You said we. You’re in. Which is awesome because Shell and I think there’s a non-trivial chance Michael—whoever he is—intended you to take Joyeuse into this. His enemy’s the Mikaboshi, and why do you think it’s sticking to you like it is?”
Hope felt like an idiot. “Okay, fine. I’m in. And we’re doing this right. How much time do we have?”
“Vegas odds give us less than twenty-four hours. Look, here’s how it was supposed to go down. They hit us here, it ties up most of our deployable assets in defense and recovery. Then when we’re supposed to be up to our eyeballs in homicidally insane capes and cops running amok, they hit Brussels. If the world had seen us get hit by a berserker plague, there wouldn’t have been a rush to restore power and order in the EU—the rush would have been away from the supposed infected. At the very least, total chaos while we were still figuring out what the hell the BV outbreak is. It didn’t go entirely as planned, but Brussels still happened on their original schedule. So the next—”
“They’d have planned to hit their third target in two or three days,” Jacky said.
“Yup, while the first BV outbreaks in the EU are supposed to be happening.”
“But will they attack, now?” Kindrake—Ellie—asked. “Also guys, nobody’s said anything about us regular Young Sentinels—am I stupid thinking you expect Grendel and I to drop our memberships for this?”
“Duh,” Shelly shot back. “Got a problem with that?”
“I will be doing the same,” Ozma serenely interjected. “I’m sure Mal and Jamal would do the same if they were fit to participate.”
Kindrake and Ozma’s staring match ended when Kindrake looked away. “Cool—just wanted to make sure we’re all on the same page.”
“Awesome,” Shelly said. “And yeah, we expect them to continue with their plan. My bet is they planned a minimum of three strikes, as many as five. London. Tokyo. Sydney. Moscow. Hong Kong. Washington. Who knows? If I was them I’d assume I was only going to get one more good strike in, if that, and use up everything in my reserves on it.”
Hope rapped the table. “Fair enough. So, tell us about all these extras you’ve invited. Why do we need to work with people we’ve never trained with before? That’s asking for trouble.”
“Right, here’s the rundown. Eric is coming just because he owes you one and he’s ex-military—he knows the Ajax-Type weapons platforms so we can throw him into tin can armor and loadouts. Shell will be able to direct him almost like a Galatea—of which we’re bringing three. Morrigan is likely immune to Langer’s Mikaboshi-stuff—she’s practically an avatar of battle-fury and righteous vengeance, at most Langer might enhance her determination to kill him. Kukkuu’s tough and mobile, perfect for hitting hard and fast. Malmsturm—you haven’t seen what he can really do yet, but he’s why everyone we put at the point of the attack is going to be toughened. Sif is key to our first hit. You’ll see.”
“We’ll see now,” Hope agreed. “We’re all going to hear your plan, then we’re going to do our best to pick it apart and put it back together. Everyone, there are no stupid questions or suggestions at this table. One hour, then we break. Go, Shelly.”
“No worries, Shell ordered pizza.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Operation Marque and Reprisal: Possible Opposition
The Evil Alliance: Green Man, The Ascendant, Karl Langer, (also Amatsu-Mikaboshi, The Dread Star of Heaven).
Supermax escapees identified in Brussels: Beatdown: C Class Speedster/Ajax-Type. (boosted) Fastball: Able to accelerate objects he throws—prefers to throw golf ball-sized lead balls filled with nitroglycerin compound. (boosted now to speeds that could hurt Astra.) Lash: sensory telepath, neurological attack—excruciating pain (boosted). Hellix: pyrokinetic (boosted). Bullet: shoots bullets with your name on it (boosted).
Teen Supermax escapees potentially present: Breaker and Bone: C Class Ajax-Types (boosted). Hot-Shot: C Class Pyrokinetic (boosted). Sleek: “slippery” dodger, basically unhittable. Dog: classic werewolf.
Identified Mercenaries (from CDC attack): Capacitor (charges his batons to release concussive shocks), Cracker (concussive/pyrotechnic bursts), Slip (psychically invisible, extendable to group), Scales (transforming scaled Ajax-Type).
Also: Russian mercenaries variously armed. Minions, and possibly bears
The massive cargo plane sat in its lit bay, bright white under the lights that turned the night outside impenetrably black. Hope hadn’t realized O’Hare International could house something that big, although in retrospect she shouldn’t have been surprised. “Sixty-five thousand cubic feet of cargo space,” Shelly said beside her as everyone filed past with their go-bags. Sif had said goodbye to her DSA agent at their car. Hope’s dad had taken Sif and Hope’s go-bags aboard with him; she stood over the large sack of Travel Dust, the entirety of Ozma’s replenished stash.
“This is nuts.”
Her BF
laughed. “That’s the beauty of it—they’ll never see it coming. I wish I could go with you.”
“I don’t. Your plan doesn’t allow for non-combatants and this might go south faster than Custer at Little Big Horn. We don’t really know what’s over those hills. Well, in them.” At least they knew where the hills were. Kitsune had arrived with Eric and another surprise—the Green Man sample he’d picked up in Brussels. Any GZS sample might have worked as well, but it was fresh and it gave a fresh connection to the Green Man for Ozma’s Compass Fish to sample. Hope had used a special-design GPS compass racked with it to fly a hundred miles north and south of Chicago, taking sightings a dozen times, to get an exact latitude-longitude by triangulation.
Shelly’d already guessed it; with Shell’s help to follow Ceres’ electronic footprints, face-recognition searches through hundreds of databases, and actuarial analysis of cash-flows, they’d come up with a target. She’d even been able to get satellite images—a decommissioned RF military depot, power supplied by a Russian “pocket-plant.” They were headed deep into the Russian Federation, north of Kazakhstan.
“Anyway, Ozma won’t be at the front of this, it’s not her kind of fight either and— Morrigan, Herr doctor,” Hope nodded to the man in the chair wheeling up to them from the private jet parked outside. “Thank you for coming.”
“It is my pleasure, Astra.” Doctor Konrad Kardinal, aka Malmsturm, grinned up at her from his rounded slouch. “Your people have taken great care to ensure my secret, danke shoen. And it’s been my pleasure to meet this glorious Amazon.” Morrigan chuckled where she strolled along beside him, easily keeping up with his chair with her huge spear casually slung over her shoulder.
Shell’d told Hope that the scarred battle-goddess was a transformer with a non-powered civilian identity, but Morrigan had explained that she wasn’t going to be giving her body back over to Claire until their enemies had been dealt with. The tall woman gave Hope a lazy nod. “Thanks for inviting us, Astra. They will pay the honor-price.”
“Why do I think she’s going to come back with heads on her belt?” Shell whispered in Hope’s ear. “No wonder Claire needs therapy.”
Kukkuu came behind the two. With the bandit-scarf covering her lower face it was hard to tell what the purple haired veteran cape thought of the pair in front of her heading up the ramp, but she stopped to shake Hope’s hand. “Glad we could come for this. Your little ketu was very persuasive.”
“Ketu?”
“Fox. Your little fox.”
Hope blinked but she nodded. “Yes, he can be.” She watched the Finnish cape lope up the ramp—already storing kinetic energy for the coming fight. “Shelly? Seriously, why did—”
“Tokyo just blacked out!” Shell yelled in all their ears.
“Board, everyone! Sifu, get them all onboard and belted down! Bob, close her up! Sif, lock up the jet when Bob says it’s closed!” Hope snatched up the bag at her feet and leaped into the air to land atop the jet. Below her Shelly scrambled to get some distance. She opened the bag and recited Ozma’s instructions in her head. “Shell, get me that image!”
She heard the hatch dogging below her and a HUD image of the old Russian base from far, far above sprang onto her new helmet visor.
“Closed up, belted in, Sif-locked, we’re good to go!”
Crouching to grip the jet’s top hardpoint, eyes and will focused on the image, Hope spun in a circle to heave the bagful of Travel Dust wide around them and then grabbed tight with both hands as the wind descended.
It hit like a wall and the hanger disappeared. Stars and city lights spun in Hope’s vision, then clouds, then red then grey then blue sky as she hung on grimly. It went on forever, and then they were in clear open sky and falling without power.
Sylvia had decided these people were insane. Well, Ozma clearly was but she’d expected that. She hadn’t expected the op she’d signed up for to be put together by a girl who should really be in school and coordinated by a “twin” a few years older—and who was, apparently, a robot. A trio of robots, the other two blue-and-silver chrome, and they all sounded like Power Chick.
And the op! Explained to her twice by the freckled redhead, it still didn’t make any sense but the crazy people around her were all on board with it, including Astra. Her pitch to Sylvia had pretty much been “We might die, some of us, anyway, but this is what we do and we want you to help us do it.” And she’d been cheerful about it, like, of all the things she could be doing right then absolutely nothing could be better than this.
Sylvia couldn’t believe the girl had survived three years of this.
And now she was back in a powerless jet falling towards the ground. I’m insane. I’m certifiably insane. If I live through this they’ll have to pin the medal to my straightjacket. It took everything she had to unlock the plane.
“Everyone alright in there?” Astra’s voice came over the coms the second Sylvia let go of the lock. Her stomach climbed into her chest as loose bits in the cockpit began floating. “We’re golden!” Robot-girl answered back without checking with her to see if that was true. “They’re ready in the hold!”
“Do it! Fill the hold!”
And Insanity Part Two rolled out. On a closed-circuit screen Sylvia watched them “fill the hold.” Facing into the open hold from her flight-seat, silver-armored Kindrake summoned her big dragon friend—Terraflore and what kind of dragon name was that? Belted in beside her, Ozma handed her something she put in her mouth and Oh My God the dragon grew, expanding like an inflated zeppelin to fill the huge hold like stuffing in a turkey. Sif was pretty sure if the plane had been flying rather than falling its wings would have snapped off under the stress of unbelievable dragon-tonnage.
“Sif!” Astra’s voice snapped her back to attention. “Lock the jet till impact!”
Insanity Part Three, but she’d agreed. Turning her eyes back to the cockpit windows—Is the ground any closer?—she locked up the huge jet and all of the insanity inside it.
Falling beside the plane, Astra heard the difference. One second the frame of the fat and now seriously overloaded jet was groaning in the air-stresses across its hull and wings as it free-fell towards the ground, the next it fell frozen, the only sound the scream of the air across surfaces that didn’t warp and bend at all. It was like it was carved of solid diamond, adamantine crystal. “Shell?” She tested.
“They’re locked,” Shell answered in her ear. “It’s like everything in there’s time-frozen—which they can’t be since they’re aware they’re frozen but, hey, that’s cape-powers for you.”
“This is insane.”
“Yeah, yeah, couldn’t think of a better way to knock, could we? Impact in thirty seconds.”
Hope restored her grip in the upper hard-points, sighted on their green target like she was pointing a missile—which she was—and pulled. The plunging aircraft angled and the ground leaped up at them as she brought them into the virtual bullseye on her visor.
Shell’s analysis of the satellite imagery said that the old World War II depot—really a massive equipment and troop shelter covered by tons of earth and concrete—had been made tougher as well as hidden by an artificial hill of earth and woods. It might be resistant to anything short of bunker-buster bombs, not something they could shake loose from the military. Good thing they’d improvised their own.
It had worked at Whittier Base, after all.
“Eight, seven—”
Hope broke away, pulling herself up hard against the plunge as the jet fell below her.
“—three, two, one—”
The Sif-locked jet hit the tree-covered hill.
The hill exploded, the concussion hammering Hope’s ears as it absorbed the kinetic energy stored up in an oversized jet carrying more than one hundred tons of super-sized dragon. Whole and shattered trees fountained up with the dirt and concrete. The earth-shock blasted outward as she dropped into the debris cloud. Below her the jet bounced off its nose, coming down a second ti
me in a belly flop that threw up more earth and shattered trees. With a final bouncing, grinding skid, it came to rest—utterly undamaged under raining dirt and soil.
Crap—she won’t be able to see they’re down! Hope shook off her own shock, unstrapping Joyeuse from her back and dropping onto the nose of the canting jet to wave as hard as she could in front of the cockpit windows. Come! On! The jet’s unlocked wings creaked with its change in attitude. Yes! “Sifu, deliver Sif!”
The crew door in the jet’s nose cracked open and she watched Sifu throw himself and Sif out together, the woman locking them both until after they hit the ground. Unlocked, they disappeared in a blur as behind them the jet’s cargo hold cracked open, ruptured, and came apart like an egg suddenly too small for the life inside. Kindrake’s dragon rose above it in a billow of impossible wings and roared to shake the ground anew.
It’s showtime.
Insane insane insane insane—woah. Sylvia had never worked with a speedster before, and the first time he sped them—out of the cockpit and down to the hatch—she’d barely had time to think as she stumbled along in his grip. He’d launched them out the hatch trusting her to lock them both and now he tugged her along as they walked through a frozen world—utterly the opposite of the effect Sylvia normally experienced. Dirt clumps and particulates hung frozen in the air, floating gently out of their way as they pushed through brown fog towards their goal—a pocket nuclear powerplant!
“How can you see?”
“I’m navigating by Shell’s GPS,” he answered without looking at her, eyes on the ground ahead.
“And we’re not running because?”
“Why run? We’ve got three miles to go—covered or not Shell made damn sure the powerplant wasn’t going to be anywhere close to our LZ.”
“And why did they put it that far away?”
Repercussions (Wearing the Cape Book 8) Page 24