Just Cause: Revised & Expanded Edition (7 page)

“Does he have asthma?” Sally asked.

“No,” said Jack. “Most of our emergency medication is delivered orally or via inhaler. Some of us—like me, for example—can’t be injected with anything. And in the field, it makes more sense to have a universal delivery system instead of one customized for each of us.”

“Can you tell us when and where this event might happen, Jay?” Doublecharge knelt down next to him.

He nodded, his face white as a sheet of paper. “Here. Denver. Soon. Maybe by tomorrow.” He swallowed the rest of his tea. His shakes started to subside as the drug from the inhaler worked into his bloodstream. “There’s something else. Right before it hit me, I sensed a powerful psionic usage. Someone used a heavy-duty power. Like, with global reach.”

“Can you tell what kind of power?”

“Not sure. It was targeted at a region. Maybe teleportation?”

The lights in the conference room flickered. Several beeps emanated from the walls and a recorded voice announced emergency power had been activated.

Juice yanked his phone from his belt. “Command Center, Juice. What’s going on?”

The reply came over the speaker, loud enough for everyone to overhear, drenched in static and distortion. “
Just about to call you, sir. We have a catastrophic failure of the local power grid. It’s dark from Idaho to New Mexico, west to Utah and east into Nebraska
.”

“Complete power failure?” Juice was aghast. “That should be impossible. The grids are all connected for redundancy.”

“
We’re working on it now, sir. No answer yet. Only the fiber optics communications lines are working. Something’s interfering with regional telephone and cellular networks, including our own
.”

“Get the
Bettie
on hot standby. We may need to move in a hurry.”

“
Right away, sir
.”

“There are going to be a lot of very cold, frightened people if we don’t get the lights back on,” said Sondra.

The Command Center beeped the team’s phones. “
New information coming in. Surrounding power grids report an abnormally-heavy draw from our region. It’s not that the power’s gone, sir, but something is siphoning it off. They’ve severed connections to us until we resolve the problem or else they might risk going down as well
.”

“Well, at least it isn’t serious.” Jack’s joke fell flat.

“Is there any information about a possible cause?” asked Doublecharge.

“
Not yet. Wait a moment… stand by…
”

They waited, impatient. Sally’s foot tapped like a drum roll.

“All right, people,” said Juice at last. “Sondra, Jason, and Jay are on standby. The rest of you are with me. I want everyone geared up and at the hangar in five.”

The hangar doors rolled back as the team assembled. A jet with the sleek angular lines of a stealth bomber sat under the lights. Its turbines spun with a whistling roar. A painting of a posed pinup girl gleamed beneath the canopy window. Sally shivered as a blast of icy wind and displaced snowflakes circled through the hangar. The storm had worsened, and Sally didn’t relish the prospect of having to be a hero in the dismal weather.

“
We have a report from a Wyoming State Trooper. He says there’s some kind of bright, glowing figure in the vicinity of the Medicine Bow Power Plant.
”

“Relay that information to Ace,” said Juice.

“
Yes, sir
.”

“Well, Mustang Sally, it looks like you’re going to get to see some action on your very first day.” Juice smiled, his teeth as white as the falling snow outside. The bomb bay doors underneath the jet swung open and a heavy ladder lowered. “Everyone on board.”

The heroes climbed the ladder. Sally found it led to a spacious, executive-style cabin with plush seats and plenty of legroom.

A diminutive pilot stepped through the door from the cockpit. She wore a fully insulated pilot suit. Her dark olive skin gave her an exotic look, offset somewhat by her boyish hairstyle. She stepped forward and extended her hand to Sally.

“Hello,” she said in a rich, accented contralto voice. “I’m Fairuza, your pilot.”

“Pleased to meet you, Fairuza,” said Sally.

“Call me Ace. I just wanted to take a second to meet you, since I’ll probably have to save your life someday.” The woman spun around and hustled back into the cockpit.

Sally looked around at the others, who grinned back at her.

“Don’t worry about Ace,” said Forcestar. “She’s always like that. There’s nobody better behind the stick than her, though. She’s a veteran from the Israeli Air Force.”

The engine noise increased from a whine to a scream as the jet taxied out of the hangar. Sally expected the plane to turn and head for a runway, but instead the engines powered up even more and the jet lurched straight up into the air like a helicopter. Clunks sounded underneath the plane as the landing gear retracted. The plane continued to rise almost vertically and Sally could see only darkness and blowing snow out the window.

“Nice, huh?” Jack called to her.

“What?” she yelled back.

“The
Bettie,
” he said. “Company in Vermont built her custom for Just Cause.”

“Is it always this loud?”

“Only at take-off and landing.”

The plane accelerated and replaced vertical thrust with horizontal. True to Jack’s word, the engine noise diminished to a tolerable howl. Ace swung the plane around onto a northern heading and poured on the power.

Chapter Six

“These men and women in their colorful costumes; they charge toward danger when a sane man would flee. They hold the line that cannot be held. Why else do we call them heroes?”

-Dr. Georges Devereaux, 1953

January, 2004

Medicine Bow, Wyoming

“Ace, what’s our ETA to Medicine Bow?” asked Juice.

“
That depends upon whether or not I have permission to exceed the sound barrier, sir,
” said the pilot over the cabin intercom.

“Permission granted.”

The plane shuddered as it blew through the sound barrier. Noise levels in the cabin diminished as an electronic sound-dampening system came online. “
Twelve minutes to point of last contact.
”

“Notify me when we’re T minus two minutes.”

“
Roger.
”

Juice turned to face Sally and took on the tone of an instructor. “We don’t have much information to go on, so our first priority is to gain intelligence. We’ll do a flyby first to see if there’s any sign of our mysterious glowing figure. The
Bettie
has some advanced sensing devices that will also help beyond visual identification. If we find our target, we’ll deploy after the initial flyby. Deployment is hot, so get out fast. I want you to stay by Jack at all times unless I give you other orders. Put these on.” He handed her a featherweight earpiece and throat microphone with a small magnetic plate backing.

“Yes, sir.” She fit the earpiece as comfortably as possible beneath her tight-fitting cowl. Doublecharge showed her how to slip the magnetic plate inside her costume so the throat mic would sit outside it.

“Once we get your costume up to Just Cause standards, the plate will be incorporated behind the fabric so you won’t have to feel it,” she said. “It’ll probably seem a little strange at first. We’re all tied into the same frequency so you can hear everyone and we can all hear you, including Ace.”

“Assuming the network interference doesn’t knock these out too,” said Forcestar.

“I’m an optimist,” said Doublecharge.

“In that case, we’re all doomed,” said Jack under his breath.

Juice continued, “Forcestar and Doublecharge, stay aerial and provide containment and ranged attacks if required. I will handle any brute physical needs. Jack and Sally, stay on the periphery and provide additional intelligence and support as needed.”

Sally nodded as she tried to take it all in. She felt like her body was stuck in thick, hot glue while her mind raced in circles.

“First priority is to contain any damage and protect any civilians threatened. Second priority is to remove the individual to a safe and secure location by whatever means necessary and to determine if the individual is in fact responsible for the power failure. Third priority is to secure the area and to ensure no additional threats remain. Finally, we provide whatever assistance we can to bring power back online.” Juice ticked off each point on his fingers.

“
Two minutes to Medicine Bow,
” said Ace over the cabin speaker. “
No sign of the contact yet
.”

“Stand by,” said Juice. “Stacey, charge me up.”

Doublecharge placed a hand crackling with electricity on Juice’s arm. He absorbed the power to fuel his strength and toughness. When he nodded at last, she stopped. The air inside the cabin smelled of ozone. Juice didn’t seem any different except for frequent pops of static electricity as the charge he’d absorbed slowly bled off. He would be powered up for about fifteen minutes before he would need to be topped off once more.

“Stacey, Eric, get to the lock.”

Doublecharge and Forcestar moved to the rear of the cabin and through a double-hinged door into a small chamber beyond.

Jack swung the door shut and dogged it tight. “It’s an airlock,” he said to Sally. “It lets the fliers deploy without landing the plane.”

“
One minute,
” said Ace. “
I have visual confirmation of the target. Humanoid, estimated height ten meters, radiating energy of some sort.
”

“Bring us around to port. Give me one complete circle so I can see it. Stand by on the lock.”

“
Trust me, sir, you can’t miss it
.” Ace banked the
Bettie
hard on her right wing. Juice, Jack and Sally all pressed their faces against the windows to see. The figure was pudgy and devoid of details, like an unfinished clay model of a person. It glowed a bright yellow-green. Purple-white energy bands arced across its surface. A shapeless dark mass lurked at the center of the torso. The figure lurched through a stand of snow-covered trees, which exploded in clouds of steam from vaporized snow.

“What is it?” Sally asked. “Is it a person?”

Juice said, “It’s humanoid, at least. We’ll figure out details as we go. Right now it’s a threat and we have to treat it as such. Ace, open the lock, then bring us down.”

Sally heard a thump from the rear of the plane. A moment later, Doublecharge and Forcestar cruised past the windows, she with electricity crackling around her and he surrounded by a blue energy nimbus.

The
Bettie
’s engines howled as Ace brought her down to hover at zero altitude. The bomb bay doors folded open, aligned to protect the heroes from the blast of the angled jet nozzles. “Go,” said Juice, and the heroes jumped to the steaming ground. Juice led Jack and Sally past the front of the plane. “Ace, get clear.” The pilot powered up the engines and lifted the
Bettie
back into the air once more.

They had landed in free-range territory, with no dwellings or roads nearby. Six inches of snow covered the fields, and it fell steadily from the thick clouds. The glowing figure trudged slowly about fifty meters away and did not seem to take any notice of Doublecharge and Forcestar overhead.

“Sally, give me a sweep in a quarter mile radius around the thing. I want to be sure we are in open country and there isn’t a town or anything just over the next rise. Also, report on its trail and heading.”

Sally peeled out across the snow, leaving a pair of frosty rooster tails in her wake. Everything was happening very fast, even for a speedster like her. She told herself to stick to what she knew—
running
. Sprinting through the snow with no path or road was hard work when she was used to pavement. She stepped lightly to keep her feet off the ground as much as possible. If she turned an ankle on something hidden beneath the snow, she would be useless.

She made her circuit around the thing in less than a minute. Its trail led in a straight line to the north, and it continued to plod in the opposite direction. The surrounding area was just open range with a few scattered stands of evergreens and rocky ridges. She skidded to a stop by Juice and Jack, who had taken cover behind a large rock to formulate a plan.

“Nothing around for miles,” Sally said. “It looks like the creature is heading straight south from Medicine Bow.”

Juice frowned. “Jack, where does that take it if it stays on course?”

Crackerjack consulted the GPS strapped to the back of his left arm. “Cheyenne, then towards Denver.”

“Stacey, any change in the creature’s behavior?”

“
Negative.
” Doublecharge’s voice on the radio was overlaid with static, which Sally figured was caused by the creature. “
It’s moving slowly but steadily.
”

“Give it a warning shot. Get its attention.”

Juice, Jack, and Sally moved around the rock to get a better view. Doublecharge hummed with electricity, and lightning arced from her to strike directly upon the creature.

“I said a warning shot!” Juice shouted.

“
I did,
” Doublecharge said. “
The thing drew in my shot like a magnet.
”

“Eric, try to confine it.”

Forcestar created a glowing blue dome of energy around the creature. The being ignored his barrier and stepped through it as if it didn’t exist. He tried again, but his field seemed to have no effect whatsoever.

“Regroup,” said Juice. “All right,” he said when Doublecharge and Forcestar dropped to the ground by the others. “Analysis. Stacey?”

“It absorbs electricity, like you do,” she said. “And it’s destroying things it encounters explosively, although not the ground beneath its feet for some reason.”

“Eric.”

“I can’t contain it. It’s the first thing I’ve ever encountered that I can’t hold inside a field.”

“Jack, your thoughts?”

“Putting some wildly disconnected ideas together, I’d say that it teleported or was teleported by an external agency to the vicinity of Medicine Bow. It must require electricity because it drained the power plant and absorbed Doublecharge’s blast. The military base in Cheyenne has its own power plant that is not connected to the local grid. If the creature needs electricity, that’s the next closest major source. Given its course, it either can sense the source or has been programmed. I’m not yet convinced it’s alive and not some kind of machine.”