The Suns of Liberty: Legion: A Superhero Novel (3 page)

     She was barely five foot two, which disguised her
lethality. Her father had pounded martial arts training into her brother and
her from an early age, so not only did she carry a fusion reactor with her, she
could also engage in “nuclear karate.” In her early thirties, she was the
youngest of the Suns. She was also short-tempered, egotistical, and tough as
nails—with a Ph.D. in engineering to boot.

     Dr. Linh was an astronautical engineer as well as an
astronaut, though she’d never gotten the chance to go up. She had been a top
NASA engineer and, in more sane times, would have been one of history’s most
famous inventors. But the Council had sent gang assassins to murder her father
and to try to steal the Helium-3 engine she had invented with him. So she’d
become
Helius
instead. The elder Lihn had been the CEO of Lihn
Industries and a bit of an activist in San Francisco during the early gang wars
there. He had paid for that with his life.

     Surprising to many, she had declined to carry on the
company after his death. Unbeknownst to the rest of the world, she had suited
up as Helius and secretly exacted her revenge on any and all Bay area crime
syndicates she could find. An indirect attack on the Freedom Council, since
they had long used gangs to do their dirty work. Now she fought the Council
directly as a member of the Suns of Liberty.

     Sophia had taken only a few weeks to learn to fly the
Stealth Hawk and, most importantly, to learn the protocols for putting the
vehicle into its advanced autopilot mode that allowed it to essentially fly
itself, according to certain defined parameters.

     The Revolution, on the other hand, sat uncomfortably
in the copilot’s seat. Fearless as he was, his one trepidation was flying. And
it seemed he was
always
flying.

     Revolution probed the street ahead with his telescopic
visors. “Lantern, do you have a lock on the getaway vehicle?”

    
“Yes, they are in a city bus. The BPD are
not
following.”

     “Can you track it?”

    
“Searching for a lock now,”
Lantern said.

     Another hard dive and they were flying just above the
streetlights. Revolution cursed to himself.

     “General, no offense,” Sophia said, “but I’ve seen you
leap out of a helicopter with no parachute. How can you possibly be afraid to
fly?”

     For a reason that had to do more with habit than
anything else, the Revolution was referred to as “General” just as often as his
superhero moniker by the members of his team. To them, he was their field general.

     “I’m not
afraid
to fly, I just don’t like to.”

    
“I’ve got it. Sending you the tracking now,”
Lantern told them over their coms.
“And we’ve caught a break, sir,”
he
added.
“The driver just put a location into his GPS. I have a firm lock on
their destination. Looks like the stash-room.”

     A remarkably detailed 3-D display of Boston
superimposed in the HUDs of the duo, and they could easily see the disguised
bus dressed up in digital red against the aqua blue of Lantern’s real-time scan
of the city. Then the locale of the stash-room beamed to life in a split-screen
image, complete with the highlighted path the getaway bus would take to get
there.

     “Good work, Lantern,” Revolution said.

     “Has anyone heard from Spider Wasp?” Sophia asked.

    
“Paul Ward is still M.I.A,”
Rachel Dodge spat
back. Rachel’s call sign was
Stealth
because she had the ability to turn
invisible, thanks to the world’s first and only fully functioning invisibility
cloak.

     “Call signs only, please,” the Revolution reminded.

    
“Sorry, General.
Spider Wasp
has not called
in yet,”
she said, and then added
, “the little fucker.”

     Revolution leaned toward Sophia, speaking not into the
com, only for her to hear, “This is a gang we’re taking down. He’ll be here.
Give him some time.”

     “He doesn’t show for anything else,” Sophia said, just
to him.

     “He’ll show for this.”

     Five minutes passed before a familiar voice broke the
silence over their coms.
“Where you guys been? I’ve been waiting on you.”
Before
anyone could answer, the voice added,
“So, why do you think these guys
turned on the Council?”
It was Paul Ward’s voice booming over the com. Sure
enough, Ward had shown. He had a particular dislike for the gangs in Boston. Revolution knew there was no way Spider Wasp was going to miss out on taking down
the very last one.

     Ward was referring to the not-so-well-kept secret that
the big gangs had all been bought off by the Council a long time ago and did
the Council’s bidding. This hadn’t stopped gangs from fighting turf wars. In
fact, it had increased them in many cases, upped the stakes, as they competed
for Council business.

     But to turn against the Council itself was unusual. In
the post-depression world of banking, the gangs stole from the deposit accounts
of customers instead of the reserve accounts of the banks.

     It wasn’t much of a distinction, in reality, since
most depositors’ money was insured by the full faith and credit of the US government,
but the distinction was one of high symbolic importance.

     It was one big
Fuck You
to the Council. A
public flouting of the rules.

     “The Council left Boston,” Revolution said, nodding
slightly to Sophia as he said it, as if to say,
See, I told you he’d show
.
That was about as close as you got to a ribbing from the man in the metal. “And
they took their business with them. These guys probably feel like they have
nothing left to lose.”

    
“That makes sense,”
Ward said.

     “Of course, they’re wrong,” Revolution said.

Presently...

09:56AM

Revolution
stood in the center of the bus waiting for the nearly two-dozen men around him
to make their move. There was no danger for him there. Their bullets would be
repelled by the titanium alloy of his armor. They would do more damage to
themselves than to him. He was counting on that. If they bum-rushed him, he
could easily overpower them all. This was going to be very satisfying.

     Several of the men reached for weapons, placed their
aim, and began to pull their triggers—

     But just before they could fire, a voice called out
from the front of the bus, “That’s enough!” It was Big Bruiser Gunzy. 

     Bruiser walked forward as the men parted to let him
pass. He was not armed. Instead, he held a strange metal cylinder that the
Revolution did not recognize.

     “Oh, you think you’re so clever, don’t you? Scare the
shit out of us, make us fire on you. Take us all out without having to raise
your pinky. Let us do it for you.”

     The Revolution said nothing.

     “I’ve got news for you. I know all about you. I came
prepared. Let’s see how you fare without all that armor.” Bruiser pointed the
EMP device at the Revolution. The same one he had used to fry all the
electrical power in the bank.

     And pulled its trigger.

CHAPTER 3

A
t
that exact moment, halfway across town, at the location the bus driver had
programmed into his GPS, a tall skinny bagman for Marconi’s boys was pulling
Uzis down from a shelf in the gang’s Weapons Room. His nickname was Stimpy and
he was alone in the room. Left to do the shit work—yet again.

     Stimpy’s job was to lay the guns neatly out on the
table for the two-dozen men who were presently in the adjoining Counting Room.
They’d received the distress signal from the bus and were getting ready to
mobilize.

     As Stimpy had his back turned, a ghost appeared in the
center of the room. The ghost was Lantern. He simply
materialized
in the
middle of the room.

     As he’d made absolutely no sound, Stimpy hadn’t even noticed
him.

     Lantern watched him for a while and then finally spoke
up. “You look busy,” Lantern said calmly.

     Stimpy nearly jumped straight out of his socks. “What
the fuck?” he breathed, too startled to even scream. “What the fuck are you,
man? How the fuck did you get in here?”

     “You shouldn’t curse.” Lantern took a step closer to
Stimpy, and the lanky man stumbled backwards, ramming his back into the shelf
with the Uzis.

     “Stay right where you are!” Stimpy scanned the room.
There were weapons everywhere, but this stranger hadn’t gone for any of them
and his hands were empty.

     Stimpy made the fastest move he’d ever made in his
entire life, spinning, grabbing an Uzi, and spinning back around to point the
deadly weapon straight at Lantern. “Don’t fucking move or I swear to God I’ll
take your fucking head off.”

     “Oh, see now, I asked you not to curse.”

     Stimpy took a good hard look at the stranger in front
of him. It sure looked like he had no weapon on him. But there was no way. Nobody
would come in here with no protection. You’d have to be completely off your
rock—

     Stimpy blanched. He noticed the MagCharges right
behind the stranger. A whole bunch of them lined up on the shelf. Marconi liked
to use them to open vaults and upscale jewelry boxes. Marconi seemed especially
proud of them because they were military grade and came courtesy of the Freedom
Council itself.
Haven’t heard much from the Council in some time
, Stimpy
thought.

     They were powerful, programmable charges that could be
magnetized to any metallic object for an easily mobile time bomb. And they were
small. They could fit in the palm of your hand—if you had big hands. Did the
stranger have big hands? He strained to see.

     And that’s when he noticed it. Something just wasn’t
right about the stranger. Not right at all. But what the hell was it?  He
couldn’t put his finger on it.

     Lantern took another step forward.

     “Stay where you are, goddamn it! I’ll blow your head
off!”

     “You’ll need to be a good shot.”

     “No, I won’t, you’re standing right there. And
besides, I
am
a good shot,” Stimpy said.

     “Well, I have a bomb.”

     Stimpy’s heart stopped cold. He
had
grabbed one
of the MagCharges! But where the fuck was it?

     “Of course, you could just shoot me before I detonate
it,” Lantern said.

     “Maybe I will.” Stimpy so wanted to call in the others
for help. But he was already on “probation.” If the others found out he’d let somebody
into the Weapons Room, he was afraid he’d be “let go.”

     “Take your best shot. Right between the eyes,” Lantern
said.

     Stimpy was sick of this. He spun back to the shelf,
and that’s when he saw the Desert Eagle .50 caliber. Sitting right next to...
the sound suppressor. Perfect.

     He grabbed them up, and when he turned around Lantern was—

     Doing nothing. What the hell was wrong with this guy?

     Stimpy screwed on the silencer and locked it down,
clicked off the safety, and strode forward with purpose. Aimed the big shiny
silver Desert Eagle right between the stranger’s temples. At this close range,
one .50 caliber round should literally take his head off. That ought to make up
for letting the guy get in. “All right, you asked for it!” 

     From across the large room, a group of wise guys in
the Counting Room had heard the noise and strolled in to see what all the commotion
was about. The light played differently from their side of the room than from
where Stimpy was standing. It took them a millisecond to size it all up. “No!”
one of them screamed, but it was too late.

     Stimpy fired the shot, and just as he did, it finally
dawned on him what was wrong with the stranger, what had bothered him about the
way he had looked from the start.

     The stranger was just slightly
transparent.

     And although he was generally considered one of the
dimmest bulbs in the grow-house, Stimpy
was
an expert shot.

     Too bad.

     The thing about MagCharges is that when they are
unprogrammed they are just as dangerous as a stick of dynamite. Their explosive
charges are raw and volatile. A gunshot, for instance, could blow them to kingdom
come.

     Stimpy’s bullet was right on target—right between the
eyes, and it zipped through Lantern’s
Hollow
, like the hologram it was,
and slammed into the rows of MagCharges. The explosion ripped the brick wall
away and sent fire, shrapnel, and energy mushrooming across the open space.