Team Omega (43 page)

“Because you’re a fucking idiot,” Fireman said.  “You say you want to restore freedom, but you’re going about it in the wrong fucking way.  What gives you the right to make the rules?  It isn't freedom if people don’t have any say in the rules that govern them—and superpowers don’t make you all-powerful.  You’d already made plenty of mistakes before you decided to invade the United States.  Do you have any idea how much suffering your actions are going to cause right across the world?”

He took a breath.  “Ordering something to happen doesn't
make
it happen!” he thundered.  “You need to build up networks to replace the ones you destroyed, but instead you're merely trying to rule by decree.  Didn't the chaos that gripped Libya suggest the danger of your course?  You smashed everything that held the country together, and now they have a civil war, a religious war, and a refugee crisis wrapped into one.  Why didn't you just stay in the Congo instead of panicking everyone?”

“The government tried to kill me,” Hope snapped back.  “I...”

“Now we hear it,” Fireman said.  His voice grew tighter, digging into Hope’s soul.  “The injured pride.  The sense that the world should follow you because you know best, because only you can make the decisions that matter...the sense that the conflict is personal, but not because you made it personal.  You can smash, Hope, but can you build?”

He stepped closer, his voice pressing against Hope’s conscience.  “I know how you felt, the first time you looked on the world from high overhead.  I know how easy it is to fall into the trap of believing that there are simple answers to everything, that merely removing the bad men will make everything better, but the world is far more complex than that.  Did you even bother to plan out what you were going to do in the Congo properly, or did you just think that everyone would follow you as soon as you removed the warlords?”

Hope stared at him, his mind churning with stunned puzzlement. 

“Tell me something,” Fireman pressed.  “What happened to Mimic?”

“I...he quit,” Hope said.  The question worried him.  There was something about Mimic that he should remember.  “I think he went off to live in the Congo alone...”

“He died,” Fireman said.  “The Redeemer killed him.  Perhaps you should ask yourself why you never bothered to
think
about your grand plan of invading the United States.  How much of that plan came out of your brain, and how much was quietly shaped by the most powerful telepath in the world?”

“No,” Hope said, desperately.  His mind seemed to be spinning out of control.  He hadn't thought about Mimic until Mr. Harrison had raised the question—and then, once he’d spoken to the Redeemer, he hadn't thought about Mimic again.  But the man had betrayed him; he’d renounced his plan to save the world...surely he should have dwelled on the matter later, in private.  But he’d forgotten...

“It isn't so easy to control a person’s mind by force, not for the long term,” Fireman said, softly.  “But if you’re a powerful telepath, you can plant seeds and watch as they germinate in a person’s mind, convincing him that he’s come up with the idea for himself.  How could a person tell the difference between his own thoughts and those of a telepath?  No one
could
tell the difference, unless they thought about every little detail...”

Hope lashed out at him in panic, driven by a force he didn't understand.  Fireman was knocked back towards Las Vegas, leaving Hope to pull himself together and fly back to Washington, his mind still spinning.  What, if anything, had she done to him?  How much had she shaped his mind?

But it had all been his idea, hadn't it?

He still recalled the day when he'd first realised how much suffering there was in the world.  The Redeemer hadn't been with him then.  And he remembered when he’d left the SDI.  The Redeemer hadn't been with him then, either.  But after...?

Desperately, he called on all the speed he could muster.  The battle with Fireman had sapped his strength more than he’d realised, but he needed to be back in Washington.  And then?

For the first time in far too long, he realised, he had absolutely no idea what to do next.

Chapter Forty-Three

“Everyone ready?”

Jackson nodded.  He’d donned his body armour, picked up his M-22 rifle and hooked as many grenades into his belt as he could comfortably carry.  CS gas had worked before and it might work again; besides, Team Omega’s specialist grenades looked like standard HE models from a regular army base.  A superhuman might get a nasty surprise when the grenade exploded in his face and he wound up breathing the gas.

“According to our observers, Hope, Triple A and Warrior Girl have left the White House,” Lane continued.  “We must assume that the remainder of the Saviours are still present within the building.  It seems logical that they will have taken over the Oval Office as their headquarters, but we cannot rely on that.  We may have to search the entire building to find them.”

“I’ve uploaded floor diagrams of the White House into your goggles,” Polly said.  “We haven’t been able to get into the White House’s security system from here, so we haven’t been able to update them to account for any recent...changes.  We must assume that they are completely under enemy control.”

Lane nodded.  “Team One will attempt to locate and eliminate the Redeemer,” he said.  “Teams Two and Three will cause a distraction by engaging the superhumans on the lower levels and outside the building.   Team Four will use the Cybermen to provide support to the other teams if necessary.”

Jackson glanced around the warehouse, looking up at the grim armoured combat suits.  From what he’d heard, the Cybermen had been designed to give a normal human a fighting chance against an upper-level superhuman, as well as eventually replacing tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles.  Unfortunately, the models assigned to Team Four were the early test models designed by Polly and her fellow designers, ones that hadn't had all the bugs worked out of them yet.  It was a law of military affairs that the technology never functioned in the field as well as it did in the lab, and the Cybermen were no different.  Besides, they weren't exactly subtle, and Team Omega was supposed to be unnoticed by the general population.

On the other hand, they were armed to the teeth, carrying their own inbuilt sensors and warning systems to help defend their wearer against superhuman attack that were surprisingly tough.  They might just give the superhumans pause before they tried to recover the White House and destroy the puny humans who had dared to attack them.  Team Omega might need their firepower before the day was through.

Lane had taken the specialist pistol for himself after reading through Polly’s notes.  Jackson remembered Lane's cursing, all right…Jackson hadn't been able to follow the technical details, but if they had managed to scare the Captain, that pistol wasn't something Jackson wanted to touch. 

The Sergeant would probably have given good advice, if he hadn't been killed in the attack on Team Omega’s base.  Jackson missed him more than he cared to say.  Ron had been bumped up to Sergeant to replace him, at least for the attack on the White House, but they were dangerously undermanned.  Captain Yates had suggested bringing in some other SOF soldiers from other units that had managed to escape the Saviours, but Lane had vetoed the idea.  The other SOF forces weren't trained to handle superhumans.

“Activate your whispers and mind static now,” Lane ordered.  They’d tested the devices earlier, but no one was happy about having to use them.  Two of Team Three had had to be withdrawn from the attack plan after having bad reactions to the mind static.  “Sound off—now.”

Jackson pushed the switch.  He grimaced as he felt a pressure falling over his mind, like a headache that was too light to cure with painkillers.  Everyone felt the same effect, but some felt it worse than others.  Apparently, no one could read their minds while the mind static was blowing through their heads.  In the long term, the devices caused headaches and eventual cerebral trauma.  They’d just have to win before they ran out of time.  A moment later, he activated his whisper—hiding the sound of their heartbeats—and the earpieces.  They would remain in touch through subvocal contact. 

“All right,” Lane said, once they had all sounded off.  He looked over at Jane Lofting, looking alarmingly out of place among the grim-faced military men.  Some of the soldiers had started to flirt with her before Ron, trying to live up to the previous sergeant’s reputation for being a hard-ass, had reminded them that she was only thirteen and therefore jailbait.  Besides, she
did
have poorly-understood superhuman powers.  “Can you take us to the White House?”

Jane had spent the last hour studying pictures of the White House’s ballroom, which had apparently been emptied of prisoners over the last day or two.  “I think so,” she said.  Her skin, already impossibly black, seemed to darken even more, as if she was nothing more than a walking shadow.  “Are you ready?”

“Yes,” Lane said.  If he felt any qualms at using a thirteen-year-old girl as a tactical asset, his face didn't show it.  “Now.”

The shadows in the room seemed to grow and merge with Jane’s body, and then wash forward towards the team.  Jackson had a moment to realise that he was standing in absolute darkness—a moment that seemed to last forever, with eerie voices echoing all the while—before the shadows faded, revealing the White House’s ballroom.  It stank to high heaven, despite the best efforts of a team of mutants to clean up the residue of several hundred people held in the room against their will. 

The mutants had no time to react before the Cybermen knocked them down and crashed through the windows onto the White House lawn.  With Mainframe infesting the building’s near-impregnable security systems, there was no point in trying to be subtle.

“Sergeant, take Alpha Team up the stairs,” Lane snapped.  “Beta Team, with me; Gamma Team, take your positions and report in as soon as you are ready.”

Jackson heard fighting outside as he hurried up the back stairs towards the Oval Office.  The Saviours had evidently abandoned their plans to carry on with the kangaroo courts in Hope’s absence, moving out onto the lawn to see if they could support their leader—running right into the Cybermen.  Jackson tracked the battle through his earpiece as the teams assaulted the Saviours, using some of their experimental weaponry on them.

“I have no visual on Warrior Girl, Triple A, Hypersonic, or Hope,” one of the Cybermen reported.  Jackson nodded in relief.  The pre-mission intelligence briefing could have been wrong.  “Lightning is...”

His words broke off.  “Shit,” one of the other Cybermen reported.  “She just went straight through him!”

“Blow her away,” a third snapped.  The sound of firing grew louder.  “Sir, she just ran into the building!”

The lights around them dimmed as they reached the first floor.  They blew away a pair of mutant soldiers who had been running towards the sound of the guns. 

Hope should have trained them better,
Jackson thought. He picked off a mutant that was trying to retreat.  They didn't know that running towards the loudest noise wasn't the brightest idea in military history. 

A moment later, a brilliant flash of light seemed to run through the ceiling.  It manifested into the form of a glowing woman, with rage in her eyes.  The briefing had warned that she was a grownup version of Sparky from the Young Stars, with enough oomph to draw electric power from the Cybermen and turn it into a weapon.  At least the Cybermen had been rigged to make it difficult for her to draw power from all of them at once.

“Lightning,” Ron barked.  In her energy form, most of their weapons simply wouldn't touch her at all.  “Return to human form and get down on the floor,
now
!”

Lightning lifted a hand and fired a burst of light towards him, forcing him to stagger backwards as the lightning crackled over his chest. 

Jackson ducked as a second blast of lightning went over his head, and dived for the fire extinguisher he’d seen hidden away in a corner.  He'd often cursed the health and safety bureaucrats, particularly when they insisted on new safety regulations during exercises, but for once he blessed them.  Chris went flying backwards as she hit him, just before Jackson brought the fire extinguisher up and sprayed her with water. 

Lightning’s form blazed with blinding white light as she shorted out, returned to human form, and crashed to the ground.  Without the lightning protecting her, she was a remarkably young girl; Jackson pushed the thought aside as he injected her with a capture drug and cuffed her arms and legs.  As an afterthought, he dumped her in the nearest office after finding something that could serve as a gag. 

“I feel like someone hit me with a brick,” Chris growled, as he staggered to his feet.  “Damn lucky that the fucking grenades didn't detonate when she hit me.”

“You probably used your last piece of luck there,” Ron agreed.  He’d torn away the front of his webbing, along with the body armour that was supposed to protect his chest.  What remained of the armour was a molten, useless mess.  He started to report in as they resumed their path towards the Oval Office.  “We just stunned Lightning. No other contacts; I say again, no other contacts.”

“Communications with Tracker report that Triple A and Warrior Girl are both down,” Polly reported.  She was pulling double-duty as coordinator and tech expert, although they assumed that Mainframe would force his way into their system and eventually shut it down.  At that point, they’d be reduced to a handful of individual teams fighting their own little wars.  “Hope and Fireman have vanished into the distance.”

Jackson winced.  Both Level 5 superhumans were capable of hypersonic flight; they could be anywhere on Earth by now, fighting it out for supremacy.  Someone would probably be able to track it on earthquake monitoring systems, assuming that the global network was still active.  The SDI had controlled it from New York, but the SDI had been effectively destroyed.  There was no way to know who had emerged the winner until the winner arrived in Washington.

“Keep tracking anything that flies through the skies,” Lane ordered.  “Gamma Team?”

“We have multiple mutants and flyers heading for the White House,” David confirmed.  The snipers had assumed their positions around the building by now, ready to provide covering fire for the assault force.  “We are engaging with lethal force.”

Ron held up a hand as they reached a sealed door.  According to their HUDs, there was a secure office just prior to the Oval Office, one that normally belonged to the President’s private secretary.  The security systems were still defeating the best efforts of Layla to hack into them, even though Team Two had managed to link a modified router into the system, so there was no way to know what awaited them.  Ron crept forward, attached an explosive charge to the door, and jumped back.  The rest of them took cover.  The shaped charge detonated, blowing the door off its hinges and sending debris into the room. 

A moment later, a hail of blue blasts of light blew out of the room, attempting to track and kill the assault team.

“We have a visual on Mainframe,” Jackson said, as the cyborg superhuman came into view.  Unlike the Cybermen, Mainframe’s talents allowed him to link directly into his armoured suit, creating a nightmare right out of science-fiction.  His suit looked like a mutated cross between a metal octopus and one of the egg-shaped bad guy’s machines from
Sonic the Hedgehog
.  The thought made him smile just before metal tentacles lashed out, one latching onto Chris’s leg and pulling him out of cover.  “He’s armoured and ready for trouble.”

Chris unhooked a grenade from his belt and threw it at Mainframe, who batted it away without concern.  There was a flash as the grenade detonated under the nearby desk, shattering a work of art almost as old as the White House, but Mainframe was not seriously affected.  A second tentacle grabbed Chris’s leg as Jackson and Ron held their fire, unable to shoot without risking Chris’s life.  The issue nearly became moot an instant later as Mainframe lifted Chris up, almost tearing him in half.  He screamed in pain ...

“I control the vertical, I control the horizontal,” Mainframe said.  “I control this entire building; I control the security systems that were designed to protect the President of the United States.  And your attempts to hack the system or insert a virus into my mind are futile.  I
designed
the living software used to run this building.  Do you think it has any terrors for me?”

Jackson pushed his rage aside, thinking hard.  The reports they’d pulled out of Washington had been vague, but none had reported the security systems actually engaging the oncoming superhumans.  Rumour had it that Mainframe’s alter ego was a highly-successful computer genius with a string of patents to his name.  If one of them had been used to help protect the President, no wonder the system had collapsed so quickly.