Team Omega (31 page)

“Maybe we should start with the fact that any Level 5 superhuman who decides to be a bad boy is going to do a hell of a lot of damage before he gets stopped, if he gets stopped,” Chester said.  “Do you think that the general public would be happier knowing
that
?  Or that the only ways we have to stop him involve using another superhuman, which can cause earth tremors that can be picked up around the world as well as massive property damage, or a nuclear weapon in the middle of one of our cities?  Maybe we should tell the public that they’re all rated as expendable if a Level 5 decides to hide among them.  I’m sure that wouldn't lead to rioting in the streets.

“Or we could point out that we don’t have a good way of checking for telepathy unless the telepath decides to cooperate,” he added.  “You remember as well as I do the hearings Congress had when telepathy was first proven to exist.  I was there when you argued that telepaths should be held to the same standards as other superhumans, even though their powers were far more...intrusive than any other superhuman ability.  There may be laws against telepathic blackmail, but actually
proving
that it took place isn't easy.  And a newly-sparked telepath may read every mind in the area before gaining control of his powers, if he ever
does
gain control of his powers.

“Or maybe we should talk about the monsters in the Pit?  There’s the madman with superhuman strength who killed nearly a hundred black folks because he was convinced that they were all suffering under the Curse of Ham.  Or the woman who could manipulate ice and killed the three wealthy men she’d married before we finally figured out how to prove that the fatal seizures they’d suffered were anything but natural.  What about the telepath who is so powerful that people are nothing more than puppets to him, and so mad that he doesn't even understand the difference between reality and his imagination?  Or the person who can seed himself into another person’s mind and take over his body?  Or the woman whose body is a living incubator for disease, diseases that don’t even have a cure?  I’m sure the general public would be happier knowing that they exist.  And for everyone we know about, there are some we don’t.  We still don’t know who was responsible for manipulating a number of bank employees into opening up a safe and handing over the cash, before vanishing into the shadows.  Would you like to tell the general public that, too...?

“And then there’s the super-soldiers the Soviet Union trained who went underground when Russia started to collapse into a pariah state.  We don’t know where half of them ended up, but it wasn't anywhere good.  Or we could tell them about the super powered fundamentalist who tore up Saudi Arabia because the House of Saud weren't fanatical enough for him.  Or we could mention the slight fact that Iraq has been serving as a clearing house for an alarming number of mutants and also controls a large chunk of the Earth’s oil reserves...”

Lee held up a hand.  “You’ve made your point,” he said.  “Although I do think that there’s a difference between not telling people important facts and lying to cover up your own failings.”

Chester smiled.  “Our successes are never public because that’s how we know they’re successes,” he said, ruefully.  He glanced at his watch.  “I’d love to stay and talk about old times, but I need to know where you stand.”

Lee considered it.  “Where I stand is where I always stood: superhumans are human too, not something different from the rest of the human race.  If you want me to stand up and tell Hope that he’s going too far, I will.  I don’t think he will listen to me.”

“It has to be tried,” Chester said.  “Sooner or later, someone is going to try something against him, and then the shit will really hit the fan.”

“You mean that the government will try something,” Lee said.  He wouldn't have been fooled by Chester’s casual tone.  “I remember those games from when I wore the spandex.  Just remind the government, from me, that an idealist can cause more damage than someone willing to work for what he wants who has the patience to do it properly.”

Chester nodded, walked outside and tapped his cell phone, calling for Jumper to come pick him up.  There were several others he wanted to visit before time ran out.  By now, the assassin should be in place, ready to deal with Hope.  And if it failed...?

He’d been working for the government ever since he'd graduated from college, first as an intelligence spook and then as a caretaker for Team Omega.  And yet he’d never felt as if they were losing control before, even when dealing with Level 5 superhumans.  But Hope had changed all of the rules. 

Who knew where the pieces would fall if things went badly wrong?

Chapter Thirty-One

“Are you telling us that the world will see many more such interventions?”

“Yes,” Hope said, as patiently as he could.  The attack on Tripoli and the death of one of the world’s most notorious dictators had brought a new flood of reporters into the Congo, all intent on demanding answers about what he intended to do next.  And some of the questions they asked were utterly
insane
.  “This is a very bad time to brutalise your own people, spread terrorism beyond your borders and generally repress everyone who disagrees with you.”

He stared down at the reporters.  “I intend to ensure that this project works and that the people of the Congo have a chance to build new lives for themselves without interference from outside,” he continued.  “I led the strike against Libya in response to discovering that Libya had been shipping money, weapons and supplies into the Congo to make life unpleasant for the local population.  The evidence we extracted from their agent’s head proved that the decision to meddle came directly from the Colonel himself.  I executed the Colonel to make it clear that such interference would not be tolerated.”

Another reporter jumped up, waving her hand in the air.  “Ah, Mr. Hope...in an interview yesterday morning, Jennifer Horton claimed that your intervention had actually
prevented
the distribution of aid to Africa, as well as raising the spectre of Libya
also
requiring such assistance,” she said.  “How would you respond to her statement?”

It took Hope several minutes to remember who Jennifer Horton actually
was
.  An English-born pop star with a gift for self-publicity, she had become the public face of a number of charities that did what they could to help the poor in the Third World.  Hope would have been more impressed if they’d actually seen any return consummate with the vast sums of donated money they’d poured into the continent.  As far as he could tell, they would have done better if they’d spent the money on mercenaries and used them to overthrow a few of the warlords who prevented food distribution to the needy masses.  She’d spent more time lobbying governments to do something to help than Hope himself, but she’d had far less return on her investment.  It probably didn't matter as long as she claimed her huge salary and her managers collected their kickbacks from the warlords.

“With all respect to Miss Horton,” he said, sharply, “I must note that we have achieved more in three weeks than she has achieved in ten years.  If she wishes to assist more people than she has in the past, she can help us streamline aid into the Congo and out into the other needy states. 
We
don’t take bribes and we don’t brutalise aid workers who refuse to supply warlords with weapons and vehicles.”

A third reporter jumped in before the last one could ask a follow-up question.  “The United Nations has formally condemned your attack on Libya as an unprovoked attack on a sovereign state,” he said.  “Do you have any response to the UN?”

Hope would have liked to have a few words with Jefferson about it, but the Secretary-General hadn’t called him since the Libya operation.  “I hardly think that an international organisation that numbers the former Libyan Government among its defenders of human rights is in any position to preach to us,” he said, coldly.  “We are here to save lives, to remove bad governments and to allow democracy to flourish.  If non-democratic governments find us threatening...they should.  We will deal with them in due course.

“Throughout history, democratic governments have been forced to make deals with the devil and work with non-democratic states.  The West worked with the Soviet Union during the Second World War, and then with a whole array of undemocratic warlords during the long struggle to contain the Soviet Union.  Such measures were demanded by the cold demands of politics; they held their nose and worked with people who allowed the West to get the blame for their harsh repression of their own constituents.  It was argued that there was no choice; if the West didn't support the dictators, the dictators would fall and their countries would turn red.  And, after the end of the Cold War, there was no willingness to pay the price for bringing down those dictators.

“But now we exist to spearhead their removal,” he concluded.  “We can invade rogue states, destroy their weapons programs that threaten the safety of the entire world and clear the way for international aid.  Dictators no longer need to be tolerated, or coddled; we can finally ensure that the entire human race sees the blessings of democracy.  And that is what we intend to do.  To those nations nervous about supporting us, fearful of blowback from the rogue regimes, I say this.  There will be no better chance to ensure safety for their people in the future.  Democracies do not go to war with democracies.  An era of peace and prosperity awaits us if we reach out our hands and take it.  There is nothing to fear, but fear itself.”

***

“Nice monologue,” the Redeemer said, thirty minutes later.  “I think you even convinced a couple of them.”

Hope scowled at her.  “Why are so many people so...parochial?”

“How many people can see the world the way you do?” the Redeemer asked, dryly.  “How many of them can fly above the mundane world and look down from a great height?  Like it or not, we are not all created equal.  You can afford to shrug off concerns that would tear down their entire lives.”

She smiled, leaning closer to him.  “I could change their minds for you...”

Hope hesitated.  “No,” he said, finally.  The thought of the Redeemer turning the reporters into his cheerleaders had a certain appeal, but it would be wrong.  Besides, the signs of telepathic tampering on such a scale were easy to notice, if someone thought to look for them.  “I don’t think that that will be necessary.”

“I’m starting to wonder,” the Redeemer admitted.  “While you were out there looking good for the cameras”—she winked at him—“and very good you looked, too, I was out looking for corrupt officials.  You know that some of the locals have started to believe us when we promised to remove those who demanded bribes in exchange for doing something?”

Hope nodded.  Running the Congo would have been harder without what remained of the government’s bureaucracy.  Unsurprisingly, most of the paper-pushers had switched sides whenever it seemed convenient, offering to assist the new warlord to extract the largest amount of graft from the helpless population.  By Hope’s count, some smaller villages had owed thousands of dollars in taxes to a dozen different warlords.  Anyone who wanted to set up a business of any kind had to cross the local bureaucrat’s hand with silver, as well as paying bribes to the secret police and to anyone else with a little power.

“Guess how many I found?” the Redeemer asked.  She kept speaking before Hope could answer.  “I scanned over fifty people who were named and shamed by their victims, and forty-five of the complaints were genuine.  Forty-five!  Between them, they extorted money, land and even a pair of daughters from their victims!  A couple of them even wanted to claim first dibs on a girl’s virginity in exchange for a marriage licence.”

“Jesus,” Hope said.  How could
anyone
run a country where local enterprise, even local life, was stifled by bureaucracy?  No wonder the foreign aid workers hadn't managed to get much done; some of their money would have vanished into the bureaucracy’s pockets, while they’d be directed towards the people who paid the biggest bribes, instead of people who genuinely needed help.  “How deep does it
go
?”

The Redeemer snorted.  “One of the people named was the chief of a committee in one of the disputed zones,” she said.  “Between them, four warlords had uprooted everyone from their homes and installed their favourites, only to see their favourites driven out in turn when the tide turned and they were pushed back by their enemies.  Right now, every single house in the area has at least four different people claiming ownership, all of whom are linked to tribes who will be very unhappy if they don’t get their papers.  The committee is meant to settle the issue once and for all, but they take bribes from everyone—and he who has the biggest bribe wins the case.

“So I sent the entire senior leadership to the camps, but the ones left behind were just salivating at the mouth, thinking of all the bribe money that could go to them instead.  God knows that there isn't any solution that will satisfy anyone, yet those bastards aren't going to make it any easier.  I could just reach inside their minds and they would behave...”

Hope shook his head.  “We can't start doing that,” he said.

The Redeemer ignored him.  “All over the world, governments are making decisions that are good for the government, not good for the people,” she said.  “We could do a much better job, Hope.  I could walk into a government building and force them to confess to all their crimes, or make the bureaucracy actually function properly, rather than slowing things up at every opportunity.  Even the best-run countries in the world have huge imbalances between rich and poor.  We could change that forever.

“Think about it,” she insisted.  “There are troops that could help us stabilise the Congo, Libya and a dozen other nations that really need saving from their own leaders.  Those troops would have to obey us if we took over and started issuing orders, rather than having to kowtow to governments to convince them to unlock the purse strings.  What about engineers, or builders, or doctors, people who could make a real difference.  We could have them sent here to actually do some good.  And we could bring in people who didn't have any local ties to disqualify them from actually settling disputes between tribal factions here...”

“Nice monologue,” Hope said, dryly.  “Don’t you think we have enough problems with just the Congo?”

“But if we had the rest of the world, we could use those resources to solve the problems here,” the Redeemer said.  “Think about it.”

“I will,” Hope promised.  He stood up.  “And for once, I need a rest.”

“Take a shower too,” the Redeemer advised.  “The stench of those reporters is clinging to you.” 

Hope was still laughing when he entered his room.  He carefully removed his costume before climbing into the shower.  Fixing the city’s water supplies had been one of their first priorities, if only because the aid volunteers would insist upon proper sanitation facilities—and it was good for public health, too.  Before the Saviours arrived, the sewers had been wrecked and great piles of garbage had piled up all over the city.  Between the workers, who had cleaned and repaired the sewers, and the involuntary labourers who used to be part of the warlord’s army, they had actually made a start on improving the city.  There was a long way to go before it matched a First World city, but it was on the mend.

Water washed down over his chest and he sighed, relaxing as best as he could.  His superhuman body didn't seem to suffer from aches and pains, unlike a mundane body, but he could be mentally tired even if he could physically go on forever.  Back when he’d been with the SDI, some of the doctors who’d poked and prodded at the superhumans had wondered if they still needed sleep because their minds still thought of themselves as merely human, yet Hope found that hard to believe.  A mundane human couldn't have planned and executed an operation intended to take over and rebuild an entire continent.

Something...
moved
at the corner of his eye.  Hope spun around, moving so fast that his arm clipped the side of the sink and sent it crashing to the floor, but saw nothing.  A cold tingle ran down the back of his spine as he gathered himself and stepped back into the bedroom, searching for...
something
.  And yet there was nothing there.  His eyes weren't as sharp—or as wide-ranging—as those of some other superhumans, but...
something
was wrong.  He closed his eyes, concentrating on his hearing.  An invisible person would still need to breathe, or move if they wanted to get close to him...

He felt something reach out towards his head.  Hope lashed out, only to see a ghostly illusion standing next to him.  A girl, her wide eyes staring at his naked body...her hand intersected with his arm, and Hope screamed in pain.  He hadn't felt pain since he’d fought one of the other Level 5 superhumans during an SDI exercise, but now his arm felt as if it had been broken.  His entire body seemed to be shuddering in pain, even when the girl moved back.  Just for a moment, Hope was convinced that he was seeing things; he seemed to be able to look right
through
the girl.  His eyes flared with heat, setting the room alight, but passed harmlessly through her ghostly body.  She reached for him again and he managed to stumble back, trying to walk or fly...but his mind refusing to work properly.