New Olympus Saga (Book 1): Armageddon Girl (9 page)

Christine Dark

New York City, New York, March 13, 2013

The TV report convinced Christine she
wasn’t in Kansas anymore.

Father Aleksander had served her some
truly excellent borsch. While she devoured it, he explained that she had been
found unconscious in Central Park two nights ago and taken to New
York-Presbyterian Hospital. There, he continued as she slurped on, some Mafia
guys had abducted her. An associate of Father Aleksander had rescued her from
her captors and brought her to the church, where a parishioner who happened to
be a nurse had checked her out and dressed her in the funky pajamas. Father
Alex called her rescuer the Faceless Vigilante, which sounded rather silly, but
he had said the name very seriously.

The account matched her memories of the
dream much too closely; that almost freaked her out all over again. Somehow she
managed to keep her cool. Father Aleksander’s friendly demeanor helped calm her
down, or maybe his borsch’s secret ingredient was a generous helping of Xanax.
She was scared, but the fear wasn’t overwhelming her, and that was so unlike her
it added an extra scary layer to the whole thing. It was so weird she had to
set it aside for the moment. Christine concentrated on eating and listening and
tried not to dwell on anything right away.

Things got even weirder when she asked to
borrow a phone.

“You can use my wrist-comm,” Aleksander
said. He unstrapped a weird cell phone from his wrist and handed it to her.
Okay, so maybe that’s what they called them in the Ukraine or whatever.

The phone wasn’t like any mobile device
Christine had seen, and she had changed plans on a nearly seasonal basis since
age sixteen; between her and Sophie they had tried everything under the sun,
including all the I-stuff Apple gleefully pushed out every year. The device she
was holding was clearly meant to be worn strapped on your wrist, like an
old-school wristwatch. It was bigger than your typical smart phone, and it had
a flip cover over a screen that lit up, with the date and time on the top, a
row of icons off to one side, and a colorful background picture of an ancient
church. It had a keyboard and the screen was touch-sensitive; the whole thing
was fairly user-friendly, although not quite like anything else she had ever
used before.

Christine decided to try Sophie’s number
first, to try and find out what the frak had happened the night of the party.
It was also one of the only three numbers she had memorized, the other two
being her own and her mother’s. She really didn’t want to call Mom, not until
she figured out what was going on.

“I’m sorry,” the wrist-phone or comm or
whatever said in a pleasant female voice. “Your call cannot be completed as
dialed. Please make sure to enumerate the area code and the eight digit number
you are trying to reach.”

Eight digit number? Christine typed the
number again – and got the same message. She tried to punch a 1 before the area
code to make it to eleven digits, and she got a slightly different message that
pretty much said the same thing. “I don’t think the phone is working,” she
said.

“Are you sure? It seems to be in working
order.”

“Phone numbers are seven digits long,”
Christine said. “With the area code, that makes ten.”

Father Aleksander looked confused.
“That’s quite wrong, I’m sorry to say. Phone numbers are eight digits long,
eleven with the area code.”

Christine gently put the wrist-phone
thingy down and had some more some soup while she tried to think things
through.

Explanation Number One: The good Father
was out of his freaking gourd, kind eyes or not, and he’d probably put that
useless talking wrist thingy together with a pieces of discarded I-Phones and baling
wire. She wasn’t in New York, she was probably in some abandoned church in
Michigan, and any second now Aleksander and the Faceless Vigilante, who
probably was a leather-clad gimp living in a steamer trunk in the next room,
would grab her and do unspeakable things while they sang a jaunty song from
Oklahoma
.

Explanation Number Two: Christine’s brain
had been scrambled by some roofie combo last night, and she’d apparently
forgotten a few facts of life, such as phone numbers having one more digit than
she remembered and that the latest mobile devices had wrist straps. The damage
was probably permanent and she’d spend the rest of her life painting pleasant
watercolors in some innocuously-named institution with beautiful lawns and tall
walls where they played soothing Enya tunes in the background.

Explanation Number Three: This was all a
dream, and she was in a hospital, or lying unconscious on the frat house lawn,
dreaming of Ukrainian Orthodox priests and wrist-comms and cabbage and kings.
She would either wake up eventually, or check Explanation Two, except add more
Enya, eliminate watercolor painting or any activity and, for an added bonus,
orderlies rolling over her comatose body checking for bedsores every other
week. With her luck one of the orderlies would be called Buck and he’d be there
to… you know.

There was an Explanation Number Four, but
she didn’t want to go there. Might as well enjoy the borsch and watch the boob
tube, which was playing
Live! With Regis and Betsy
, which was weird
because Regis had retired a while back and weirder still because there was no
sign of Kelly Ripa or even Kathy Lee anywhere and she had no clue who Betsy
was. Whatever she did, she would not explore Explanation Number Four, because
that way lay madness.

The arrival of the Faceless Vigilante had
stopped her brain from shooting up into the stratosphere for a whole three
seconds or so. One look at him and she’d known several facts with total
conviction: she could trust him with her life, he wasn’t nearly as old as he
looked, and she was going to hug him like his name was Teddy and it was stuffed
bear season. Which led to discovering his real face was impossibly featureless.
Which should have freaked the frak out of her, but somehow didn’t.
The crazy
is strong with this one, this one being me.
Either she had quietly flipped
out or her weirdness threshold had been exceeded to the point that her her
freak-out engine was out of gas. Explanation One was discarded, which left
Explanations Two or Three, but Four was beginning to poke its crazy little head
from the corner of her mind she had consigned it to. People like Face-Off
didn’t exist in her world. Which meant…

The news report came in, and that did the
trick. Especially when they switched to a live report from the observation deck
of the World Trade Center. The fact that the live report also showed several
people in colorful costumes flying through the air in the best comic book
tradition was only icing on the crazy cake.

Explanation Four: She was in a different
world, where superheroes were real and Keanu Reeves wasn’t, where John Travolta
was named Joseph, and people wore their cell phones on their wrists like people
used to do with watches. Where Faceless Vigilantes could be literally faceless.
Among God only knew how many other different things.

Face-Off and Father Aleksander watched
the news intently until they went to a commercial break. For Pan Am Airlines.
Which Christine only recognized from a short-lived TV show about an airline
that no longer existed. In her world. No longer existed in her world. She had
the sickening realization she was going to be using those words a lot. Her
world. She wasn’t in her world anymore.

“Guys?” They turned to her. “My brain is
about to explode. I don’t normally do this before noon. Or at all. But could I
have something alcoholic in a glass? Or an IV bag, I’m not picky. Pretty
please?”

Chapter Five

The Freedom Legion

Atlantic Headquarters, March 13, 2013

Kenneth Slaughter rushed towards the
sound of the guns.

Off to his left, both the Freedom Tower
and the Freedom Building were collapsing under multiple missile impacts. Up
ahead, dozens of aerial platforms moved in a precise death dance, firing
missiles from external launchers and maneuvering off to let following waves
move into position for their own strikes. The swarm of projectiles reached out
towards the still-standing buildings or targeted some of the running or flying
individuals trying to defend the island. The attack was all beautifully
coordinated, human ingenuity used for efficient death dealing.

The paradox had never been lost on
Kenneth. He had become intimately aware of it in 1917, when he had been a
terrified young man forcing himself to climb up a trench wall and charge
towards massed machine guns and artillery, exquisitely crafted tools designed
for the single purpose of ending life.

Even worse, he had learned he himself was
quite capable of murder.

One night Kenneth had been in a trench
raid that ended disastrously, flares dispelling the darkness, machine guns
mowing down the rest of his squad. He had found himself alone and surrounded by
enemies. He tried to surrender but an angry and terrified soldier, no older
than he was, had stabbed him with a bayonet. The sudden agony and the outraged
sense of betrayal had overwhelmed Kenneth. The world had dissolved into a red
haze. When he regained his senses, he was the only living thing in the trench,
surrounded by the bloody remains of twenty-three men he had slaughtered in his
frenzied state. The incident had terrified him. He had resolved to forever bury
his inner beast under a rational, emotionless façade. More importantly, he had
devoted his life to seeking some form of redemption.

Over the ensuing decades, Kenneth had
applied his superhuman talents toward finding a way to bring true peace to
humanity. He had finally accepted that killing was an inherent part of the
human condition, impossible to remove without destroying humanity itself. Since
then, he had done his best to minimize the evil that men would invariably do.

The attack had found him in his
underground lab, where he had been performing a routine review of the sixteen
projects he was currently overseeing. Like all Genius-Type Neolympians, Kenneth
was given to flashes of intuition that allowed him to envision amazing
breakthroughs in a variety of scientific fields. His projects ran the gamut from
high-energy physics to biotechnology. The development process was the main
obstacle for Neolympians, who all tended to suffer from the scientific
equivalent of short attention spans. Kenneth had long learned to pass on his
ideas to teams of normal but patient scientists and engineers who would proceed
to bring his visions to fruition. He still needed to periodically revisit the
ongoing projects to make sure his subalterns didn’t miss some important detail
that could derail a project.

The reason Genius-Types could produce so
many breakthroughs in different fields was not a product of intelligence or
education, Kenneth had concluded after years of observing his own talents. It
was a psychic ability to identify the right answer without having to resort to
the game of trial and error that normal scientists had to play. Furthermore,
many Neolympian inventions were really not actual technological developments
but artifacts created by the same mysterious force that gave parahumans their
powers. Those creations could not be duplicated or mass-produced, and telling
the two kinds of inventions apart often took a great deal of work.

To Kenneth’s eternal regret, all the
technological wonders and miraculous creations of the Neolympian era had not
stopped murder. If anything, they had made killing easier than ever before.

The evidence was literally exploding all
around him.

As he emerged from the underground
laboratory, Kenneth activated his own signature artifact, the Brass Man suit
that had earned him his second code name. In the Thirties, he had been Doc
Slaughter, one of the mystery men who battled evil during the chaotic years of
the Great Depression. Under that name he had helped found the Freedom Legion
during World War Two. A generation later, he developed his suit of powered
armor, and the press dubbed him Brass Man and treated him almost as a
completely separate persona. In some ways, the distinction was correct. His
personality underwent some changes when he was behind the armor suit, becoming
even more dispassionate and machine-like. It probably was a coping mechanism,
necessary when he found himself wielding even more power than normal.

From hidden compartments in his belt, shoulders and boots, metal bands emerged and wrapped themselves around his limbs,
head and torso, the flexible organic metal hardening into unyielding armor
strips once all its pieces were in place. Doc Slaughter became a living bronze
figure, a thing of overlapping plates and decorative rivets gleaming in the
reflected sunlight and explosive flashes around him. Brass Man leaped and took
flight, the propulsion jets built into several points of the armor suit giving
him better acceleration and maneuverability than the most advanced fighter
aircraft.

Becoming Brass Man was a heady
experience. The sensor suite built into the armor flooded him with information
only a mind as adept at his could assimilate. While in his armor his strength
and durability were the equal or superior of most Type Two parahumans. He would
need all the power at his disposal to help deal with the current situation.

The attackers were using waves of
unmanned drones. A quick sensor sweep revealed their capabilities: they were
low speed but high stealth weapon platforms, each armed with half a dozen
cruise missiles. His sensors also detected the source of the attack, a flying vessel
the size of a pocket battleship; that vessel had launched the drones. Freedom
Island was guarded by one of the most sophisticated air defense systems in the
world, but somehow the flying carrier ship had managed to get close enough to
attack while remaining undetected. The first strike had destroyed or disabled
most defense systems; the second one had struck buildings full of innocent
civilians.

First things first. Twin balls of plasma
shot out of his gauntlets, hitting a pair of drones dead center and vaporizing
them. The plasma explosion also generated a large electro-magnetic pulse that
fried the electronic systems of another half-dozen pods around the initial
targets. Three more shots took care of seventeen drones. A part of him felt a
rush of savage elation and wished the drones had been piloted by the murderers
who had seen fit to attack innocent civilians. He pushed the dark emotions
deeper down, where they could not bother him.

Other Legion members were on the
offensive as well. Daedalus Smith flashed past Kenneth in his Myrmidon battle
armor. Kenneth suppressed a surge of irritation at the sight. Daedalus had
built his own armor suit not too long after Kenneth had become Brass Man.
Kenneth could not deny the Myrmidon armor was highly effective and more
powerful than his own, but the constant games of one-upmanship Daedalus
insisted on playing got on Kenneth’s nerves, not that he ever let his feelings
show. The Myrmidon soared through the drones and blew up several of them with a
barrage of charged particle beams.

Behind the two armored warriors, other
Legionnaires were dealing with the remaining cruise missiles. Dawn Windstorm
surrounded herself with a tornado that intercepted several rockets and sent
them spinning down into the sea. Hyperia the Invincible Woman chased down
another missile and detonated it before it reached its target; she emerged from
the fiery explosion unscathed and looking for more targets. From the ground, a
couple dozen other Legion members and advanced Freedom Institute students were
engaging the last remaining targets with a myriad powers ranging from
telekinesis to laser beams.

The battle was not entirely one-sided,
however. Some of the missiles were targeting Legion members. Kenneth’s sensors
coolly listed a growing casualty list, Legionnaires killed or injured by direct
hits or buried under collapsing buildings. The injured would most likely
survive; Neolympians could recover from almost anything that did not kill them
instantly. There dead could not be brought back, however.

All of the missiles and most of the
drones were destroyed after a brief but brutal battle. The few survivors headed
back to the carrier vessel, presumably to rearm. The carrier was moving as
well, continuing on a direct heading toward Freedom Island. Kenneth flew
towards the ship.

He was not alone. Telekinetic adept Mind
Hawk had picked up four other Legionnaires – Gun Bunny, Shocking Susan, the
Illusionist and Hercules Seven – and headed directly towards the flying
carrier. The assault team had pulled ahead while Kenneth dealt with the drones.
Kenneth followed them even as his sensors picked up Ultimate flying behind and
rapidly overtaking him. Kenneth felt a familiar pang of envy. It shamed him to
admit it, but a part of him was jealous of the Invincible Man. Even in his
battle suit, Kenneth would never wield the sheer power that the likes of
Ultimate and Janus had been blessed with. Perhaps it was better that way. The
temptation to use such power for the betterment of mankind, whether or not
mankind agreed, might have been too much for him to resist.

Kenneth shrugged off the unworthy emotion
and concentrated on the task at hand. One of the dozen screens glowing on the
inside of the helmet showed a schematic of the huge tender vessel. Thousands of
tons of metal were kept aloft by six anti-gravity devices. The devices had been
developed by the Dominion of the Ukraine decades ago, but remained rare and
hideously expensive; they were artifacts, each hand-made by the handful of
Neolympians with the gift to make such things. Their power requirements were
massive, and only a nuclear power plant or some parahuman-created equivalent
could meet them. Sure enough, his sensors detected the tell-tale particle
emissions of a fission reactor placed near the center of the vessel. 

Ultimate flew past him, moving at
supersonic speeds and still accelerating. A second later Hyperia also overtook
Kenneth. They would quickly catch up with Mind Hawk and his team. Myrmidon was
flying in a wide arc in an attempt to get on the other side of the vessel
should it or any of its crew try to escape in that direction. That put him out of
action for the time being, but Ultimate and the assault team would be able to
deal with anything they encountered. They would need to be careful not to
damage the ship’s nuclear power plant, however.

“Brass Man to attack elements,” Kenneth
said through his comm system. “Be advised, there is a nuclear reactor inside
the vessel. Try to capture it intact if possible.”

“Roger that.” Ultimate sounded like his
own self. John was always calmest during emergencies. It was only during the
interludes between times of crisis that his mind seemed to feed on itself.

There was a brief flurry of
acknowledgments from the other Legionnaires as they flew closer to their target
– and came into range of its defensive systems. The tender ship was more than a
carrier: it boasted its own formidable armaments. Two dozen heavy air to air
missile launchers and a storm of auto cannon and laser fire reached out towards
the approaching Legionnaires. Ultimate just flew through the barrage. Depleted
uranium slugs and megawatt-laser beams bounced off him like so many raindrops.

Kenneth’s armor was nowhere near as
resilient, so he had to maneuver around the worst of it and use his plasma guns
to knock down missiles before they could hit him. A few near misses and a
direct hit with a high-intensity laser made Kenneth grunt with pain. The armor
absorbed most of the damage, but the residual heat that got through would have
knocked out or killed a human pilot.

Mind Hawk’s attack group was shielded by
an energy bubble, courtesy of Shocking Susan. They seemed to be weathering the
attacks just fine, and had nearly reached the craft. The Invincible Man got
there first: he flew straight into the side of the ship and plowed through its
battleship-grade armor plating as if it was cardboard. The rest of the attack
group entered through the breach Ultimate had made.

The ship exploded a fraction of a second
later. The nuclear reactor aboard the vessel had been more than a power source:
it was also a weapon.