New Olympus Saga (Book 1): Armageddon Girl (4 page)

The Freedom Legion

Atlantic Headquarters, March 13, 2013

It once had been an insignificant island
in the Caribbean, somewhere off the coast of Haiti. Now it glittered with half
a dozen skyscrapers, a permanent population of over ten thousand people, two
universities, and one of the most sophisticated communication and sensor
networks on the planet. Overlooking it all was a neoclassic monstrosity on a
hill. It loosely resembled the Parthenon but was many times larger; the
structure had been called ‘the mother of all city halls.’ The huge building was
the Western Hemisphere's headquarters for the Freedom Legion. Freedom Island
was a living symbol of the greatest accomplishments of humanity and
parahumanity, working together for the welfare of all. At least that was what
all the brochures said. He even believed it on his good days.

Watching from the viewing room on top of
the tallest building on the island, the hero of the ages took it all in. After
a while he closed his eyes and vividly recalled the ground-breaking ceremony,
back in 1953. Europe was still recovering from the war, and the world was still
struggling with the war’s aftermath. The theme of the ceremony had been ‘Never
Again.’ Never again would the good people of the world allow the horrors of the
previous two decades to be unleashed on the helpless and innocent. The Freedom
Legion would be beholden to no nation or vested interest. It would be a truly
transnational organization dedicated to the benefit of the entire planet. In
his mind’s eye he saw the gathered leaders and dignitaries of all the great
powers. Winston Churchill, who had just regained his seat as Prime Minister,
watched the proceedings with a jaundiced eye. Dwight Eisenhower’s smile was
forced and stiff, and Chiang Kai-shek had not bothered to conceal his scowl
while the ceremony concluded and Freedom Island became an independent territory
bound by no law but the Legion’s. Only the Soviet Union had refused to send a
representative to the ceremony, but that failing empire was on its way to
irrelevancy even then.

None of the victors of the war approved
of the Freedom Legion’s internationalist program, but they could not stop it,
not when all but a handful members of the Legion had pledged their support to
its independence. The will of thirty-three Legionnaires was backed by more raw
power than any nation state could command. Without the Legion, Nazi Germany
would still dominate Europe. The Legion would ensure no other nation could
become a threat of that magnitude ever again. It had been a lofty goal, and on
that day he had felt the thrill of possibility, the promise of a great future
almost within reach.

“John?”

John Clarke snapped out of his reverie
and turned around to greet his old friend. “Kenneth. I thought you were going
to skip the press conference.”

Kenneth Slaughter, a.k.a. Doc Slaughter,
and more recently Brass Man, shook his head. “Artemis asked me to un-skip it.
As you know, she can be very persuasive.”

“That she is,” John said wryly as he
shook hands with his friend. The two men were very similar, tall and powerful,
broad of shoulder, narrow at the waist, sporting the muscular build of
professional athletes. Even the cast of their faces was similar, with firm
square jaws and chiseled features generally set in calm and confident
expressions. Slaughter’s pale blonde hair and sky-blue eyes contrasted with
John’s dark brown and green, but otherwise they could have been brothers. In
all the ways that counted, they were. “Why did she insist on you being here,
though? It’s going to be the usual dog and pony show.” The monthly press
conferences at Freedom Island were fairly boring affairs unless some crisis was
developing. John suspected he knew the reason, but waited for his friend to
confirm those suspicions.

“Artemis – Olivia – is worried about you.
As am I,” Kenneth said, not wasting any more time on pleasantries. John wasn’t
surprised. He hadn’t spoken with Kenneth for three weeks and had been avoiding him
for even longer than that in order to prevent this very conversation. Now he
understood why Kenneth had showed up for the press conference: he wanted to
make sure John was up for it.

“
Et tu
, Kenneth? I thought a fellow
oldster would spare me the touchie-feelie stuff.”

“Watch it, youngster. I’m a good decade
your senior, and you know it.” Kenneth’s smile was brief, and his tone became
serious again. “We’ve all noticed it, John. We all feel the temptation to dwell
in the past, but of late people have noticed you going into full-fledged fugue
states. You were in one just now, weren’t you?”

“I was reminiscing, yes,” John admitted.
He realized with some concern he could not remember how long he had been lost
in thought.

“Even when you are paying attention to
the here and now, there are other worrisome signs. You seem unusually unfeeling
and disengaged. ”

“Disengaged? I have been anything but for
close to eighty years, Kenneth. You want to worry about disengaged, worry about
Janus. He’s the one who went on a twenty-year walkabout in outer space.” Janus
had gone on a twenty-year walkabout in outer space and on his return had chosen
not to reveal anything about what he had seen. John didn’t know what that
meant, except it couldn’t possibly be anything good.

“Cassius… yes, he also worries us all.
And when we worry about two of the mightiest beings on the planet, we’re truly
worried. But this is not about Janus. Right now, you are worrying us a great
deal.”

John shrugged. “I wish you hadn’t waited
until half an hour before a press conference to bring this up.” Underneath the
calm façade, he was very worried himself. What Kenneth did not know was that
the cold demeanor John was affecting concealed a growing sense of anger and
frustration. John was scared of acknowledging this, even to himself. He had
managed to repress those feelings, and if the price was to be seen as
emotionless, he would gladly pay it.

“Lately it seems like there’s never a
good time, John. And yes, I know most of that is due to things beyond our control.
There’s always some crisis to tend to. But the Legion has over two hundred full
time members. You can afford to take some time off if you need to.”

“Can I? Can I really, Kenneth? Most of
those two hundred kids are Type Ones and Twos. Things I can shrug off will
kill
them. Do you want to tell a widow or orphan that their dearly beloved bought
the farm because I had to take some time off?”

“All true, but how many will die if your
problems get worse?”

John bowed his head, acknowledging
defeat. “All right. You win. You are right. Yes, I’m not feeling one hundred
percent. And yes, we’ll talk about it. Say, dinner at six today?” He had been
trying to deal with his troubles on his own, and it clearly wasn’t working.
Maybe talking to Kenneth would help.

Doc Slaughter visibly relaxed. “I’m glad
to hear it, John. Maybe it’s simply our version of shell shock. We certainly
have experienced enough things to warrant it.”

“We called it ‘combat fatigue’ in my
day,” John replied.

“Yes, and now it’s PTSD, unless they’ve
replaced it with something even more harmless-sounding when I wasn’t looking.”

“People are softer nowadays, aren’t
they?”

“In no small part due to our efforts,”
Kenneth admitted. “I tend to think it’s for the best.”

“Probably true. See you downstairs?”

Kenneth nodded. “Let’s go make our grand
entrance. Artemis should be doing the same.”

They shook hands, and Kenneth called
forth his Brass Man suit of armor. John watched his friend take off, waited a
few seconds, and leaped off the balcony.

John let himself fall for some time. He
tried to feel the way a normal human would if he was plunging towards the
ground a hundred stories below. Fear was a province of mortality. He felt
nothing.

A minor act of will, and he soared
towards the sky. That had once been a source of elation. He could fly higher
and higher and leave the blue planet behind. Once, like Icarus, he had gotten
close to the sun, close enough for the heat of its corona to envelop him. He
had almost died that time; his internal temperature had risen well beyond the
melting point of any earthly material and he had been forced to flee for his
life.

Of late, the sun called to him. If he
went back, he didn’t know if he would turn away from it.

John Clarke, a.k.a. Ultimate, the
Invincible Man, flew through the sky, his metallic silver, gold and scarlet
costume glittering in the morning sunlight. Once he’d had a cape that fluttered
after him, but he had given it up as too childish. The damn thing would get ripped
up all the time. No matter. Cape or not, his appearance over the waiting crowd on
the ground was greeted with cheers and waves. Amazingly, people never tired of
the spectacle of watching a man fly. Brass Man and a woman surrounded by a
fiery nimbus joined him in the air. Artemis, the Living Goddess, waved and blew
him a kiss as she passed him by. She looked magnificent in her golden breast
plate and tiara, her trademark fiery spear held high in her right hand. John
smiled. Artemis – Olivia O’Brien to her friends and relatives – always managed
to cheer him up. Sometimes he wondered what would have happened if the lady
wasn’t spoken for, but she was all too married, and to another friend to boot.

It didn't matter anyway. John had not
truly wanted another woman since Linda’s death.

John dutifully performed some aerial
acrobatics with his fellow Legionnaires, to the elation of the spectators
below. Other than the press corps there was the usual gathering of tourists –
whose financial contributions helped the Legion’s ever-growing budget needs –
and a number of local residents, who despite working with Neolympians day after
day seemed to retain their appetite for the pomp and pageantry of it all. Was
he a source of inspiration, or merely titillation? He was no longer sure.

Time to come down to earth and mingle
with the mortals.

Ultimate and his companions floated down
to the podium and waited for the outburst of applause (mainly from the
tourists) to die down. He did the usual dog and pony show, greeting everyone,
introducing his fellow spokesmen – spokespeople, he corrected himself – and
then ceding the floor to Doc Slaughter for the main fluff pieces: reports of
progress assisting the victims of Japan’s earthquake, the capture of a cell of
anarchist terrorists, and the release of three new pharmaceutical patents (one
developed by Kenneth Slaughter himself, the other two by fellow genius inventor
Daedalus Smith) into the public domain. One of those three drugs would soon
make the HIV virus as irrelevant as smallpox or the common cold (the latter
cure being another Daedalus Smith breakthrough).

Artemis took over and delivered
statements dealing with some not-so-bright spots. Things in Iraq were getting
nasty, with a neo-pagan movement led by several mythology-inspired Neos
clashing with the Islamic Brotherhood. A joint Legion-UN mediation team had
been beset by assassination attempts from both sides of the dispute. Things
remained chaotic in several countries in Africa, thanks to Neolympian warlords
stirring old tribal feuds into life. And of course there were the two great
bogeymen of international politics.

“Will the Legion support new trading
sanctions against the Empire of China?” one of the reporters asked as soon as
the floor was open for questions.

Imperial China was one of those
nightmares that refused to go away. Four hundred million people lived under the
tyranny of the Dragon Emperor. Famine and repression had led to the deaths of
millions, and only two brutal wars had prevented the Empire from overrunning
the Republic of China.

John found himself flying over a burning
city, helplessly watching thousands die under unrelenting artillery fire he was
too late to stop. He saw a little girl run into a house seconds before a shell
erased it from existence…

“… new sanctions will work?”

John shook his head and returned to the
here and now. Those episodes of lost time were becoming more frequent every
day. His mind wandered off without warning, especially when he wasn’t
concentrating on something. John noticed some of the people in the press
watching him intently. There already had been rumors circulating that Ultimate
was losing it, mostly in the blogosphere, but that was becoming more and more
important every day.

Hell, he
was
losing it.

“We are doing our best to build the
international consensus needed to deal with rogue nations like the Empire and
the Dominion,” Kenneth said smoothly. Too smoothly by half. John had been
growing steadily more cynical about the two evil empires of the 20th century as
they endured and prospered into the 21st. The Dominion of the Ukraine
languished under the Iron Tsar, and its influence over Eastern Europe, Russia
and the former Soviet states had only grown over the decades. The Chinese
Empire had become more cunning after the Second Asian War, and now it could
garner several dozen UN votes among smaller countries in Asia, countries that
viewed the growing power and influence of the Republic of China with envy and
trepidation. When the Dominion and the Empire cooperated (something that was
happening with increasing frequency), they often had the votes to render the UN
helpless. There was even a movement underway to grant the Empire a seat at the
Security Council.