The Suns of Liberty: Legion: A Superhero Novel (38 page)

     On screen, Bailey leaned forward and pressed a switch
and the screen went black.

     They sat in stunned silence. Rachel had large tears
hanging just on the lips of her eyelids, ready to roll.

     Sophia stared over at the Revolution and blinked.
“What the hell?”

The
concrete exploded. A starburst of masonry showered the air. The Krill stalked
forward into the hallway.

     Its eyes focused. A closed door at the end of the
hall.

     At least fifty officers had barricaded themselves
inside the main meeting room of the City Council, Michael’s onboard sensors informed
him. He could know this and he could know that he was there to eliminate them.
That was as far as Crustac’s conscious mind could intervene in the process.

     The Krill lifted its arms and fired at the doorway. It
exploded.

     Crustac saw the room full of officers huddled inside,
now all aiming their sidearms at him in a completely futile gesture to try to stop
their inevitable deaths.

     But Crustac’s immediate reaction was to see the
officers as friendlies. A reaction quickly overridden by the exoskeleton’s programming.
These men were simply targets that must be eliminated as quickly as possible.

     Bullets pinged off his armor as he strode forward, but
he did not feel a thing.

     The Krill opened fire.

     Somewhere deep inside the melding of circuitry and
brainwaves, Commander Michael Crustac mourned for the lost lives of the men he
was murdering. Beams of energy shot out of his hands and ripped straight
through the men. They might as well have been ripe tomatoes. Foul geysers of
blood erupted as the Krill used the beams to shred the men apart from the
inside out. It was a shooting gallery.

     Soon, the ornate room was bathed in blood. Staining
the carpet, slashed on the marble pillars, caked over the tables and chairs.

     It was over. They were dead.

     The fog over his mind lifted slightly. He surveyed the
room, the horror around him. Had he really done all this?

     He knew he had. He wanted to mourn, but something in
his mind, in his emotions, wouldn’t let him.

     Suddenly a voice called to him. A woman’s voice.
Saying his name. The voice was pleasant, soothing, yet urgent.

     He spun to find her, no resistance from the machine.
Moving on his own.

     Other voices rang out. Very different. Shouting. They
registered on some other level.

     The machine responded, and he could feel himself
turning back toward the door, but this time not under his own control. 

     The Krill spun to see another twenty cops were opening
fire on him. Crustac was vaguely aware of the hyper-charged bullets clanging
off the armor, but they did not hurt. He could have just as well been dreaming,
watching someone else’s actions.

     The Krill’s arm glowed with power, and with a sweep of
its powerful hand a wave of bioluminescent energy caught a dozen cops at their
midsections and ripped them in half.

     The others dove for cover.

     But the machine could read their movements. Their
locations popped up on his visors and his programming took over. The Krill
simply aimed at the hiding spot of each police officer...

     And fired.

     One behind a desk, one under the great meeting table
of the City Council, one behind a great stone pillar. The beam of deadly light
ripped through the pillar to take the head off of the officer. She fell, blood
spurting out of the opening in her neck.

     Again the room fell quiet.

     And Crustac stared at the bodies. Some now piled on
top of one another. The onboard CPU counted seventy-three corpses in the room.
The mission was highly successful. Somewhere in the recesses of his mind—the part
he had no control over—he felt like celebrating.

     The other part wanted to die.
What had he done?

     He heard the woman’s voice again. Calling his name. He
heard his voice try to answer, but he couldn’t tell if he’d formed a word or
simply groaned.
Where was she?
He closed his eyes and tried to follow
her.

     He knew he shouldn’t, though. It was embedded deep
into the Krill’s programming. Authorized teleports only. Not until the exoskeleton
had more time to acclimate to his internal organs, to his central nervous
system.
It could kill you.
A voice told him inside his head.

     Willpower. The chartreuse energy began to encircle the
exoskeleton. The entire chasse began to vibrate. There was no external order commanding
him to leave. To teleport. This was his will, his decision.

     He shut his eyes harder. Lines dug deep into the
corners of his eyes. Tears streaked down his cheeks. His head ached. A single
drop of red ran down his lip from his nose. And then more. He felt the warm
liquid on his chin. Tasted it.

     A blinding flash of light.

     The Krill was gone.

CHAPTER 39

“S
ir,
I can’t confirm Bailey’s weapon. I just can’t find it.”

     Revolution peered over at Lantern. “Well, you knew his
methods better than any of us. What’s your feeling?” Revolution said.

     “Sir, I can’t give you a reliable judgment on things I
can’t see,” Lantern said.

     Revolution smiled under the bold-blue grill-plate of
his armor. Lantern was all about observation. He didn’t like to rely on
instinct. He was a man of evidence and observation. “Then...from what you
saw
of Saratoga in the past, what conclusions would you draw about his reliability?
We’re kind of flying blind here, like it or not.”

     Lantern nodded. “John could rarely be honest with
anyone. Nature of the job. When he could, he was as trustworthy as they come.”

     “And if it’s not from John? If it’s a trap?” Rachel
asked.

     “That would make no sense,” Drayger chimed in. “Why announce
a trap that you don’t give any details about? Why say anything at all? Makes
more sense that this is just what the message says it is.”

     Revolution had yet to turn away from Lantern. He’d
never taken his eyes from him, reading his body language. You couldn’t read his
face, hidden mostly behind the helmet’s golden reflective visor.

     “So, we trust him,” Revolution said with finality.
There was really no debate. He had no doubt the message from Bailey was genuine.
But it was also vague. So real or not, it forced the Suns to develop their own
plan anyway.

     Actually, it made perfect sense. Bailey would never
know what they were facing. Only that COR had been overrun. Whatever the secret
weapon was, it would reveal itself at the proper moment. He had to make sure
the rest of their plan was in place. Bailey knew he wouldn’t rely on such a
generic promise from beyond the grave, so Bailey didn’t arrange it to work that
way. Brilliant, if you thought about it.

They’d
all gathered in the Hangar—the large, makeshift airplane hangar where they
housed the choppers.

     Revolution stood upon the bay doors of the
Stealthhawk-2
to address everyone. As he peered out at the mass of humanity crowded into the
large hangar—Minutemen, the HQ staffers, and the other Suns—he could see it on
their faces, the loss they all were feeling. The threats against COR had made
the rounds by now. Why had he never thought of this before? Everyone assumed
the Council would come for them, that they’d come for the Suns. But it was COR
that represented the ideal each and every one of them was fighting for.

     The entire Resistance, all represented by those fifty
people, still exercising the thing they had all lost.

     And the impact had been just as the Council had hoped.
       Humiliation, fear, resignation.

     He had to reverse this and fast. The symbol of the Resistance
wasn’t him, it was COR.

     And COR could not be allowed to fall.

     “The trip to COR will take five hours by car. They will
be expecting us to make that trip. We aren’t going to. A few weeks before the
Man-O-War, our old friend John Bailey visited Hanscom Air Force Base and called
in a few favors,” Revolution said.

     “Can we get into Hanscom?” Rachel asked, incredulously.

     “No, but we can get into the airport.”

     Sophia’s jaw dropped. “Logan?”  

     “We have our own hangar there as well, thanks to Saratoga.”

     “Do we know how much backup we’ve got from PPD?” Sophia
asked.

     “PPD? You mean the Philly cops?” one of the Minutemen
asked.

     Revolution nodded. “We have a friend in the mayor’s office.”

     “Who’s that?” one of the Minutemen asked.

     “The mayor.”

     “Sir,” Lantern said suddenly, “we’ve got another
problem.” Lantern hit a button on his RDSD and its image holographed above them
as a two-sided screen. They all scrambled to be able to see it clearly.

     An image of Philadelphia’s regal City Hall in ruins
filled the screen. Smoke billowed from the elegant building’s tall tower. The
great statute of William Penn at the top was shrouded in smoke.

     A middle-aged blonde woman read the type in front of
her from a Media Corp studio. “
This just in from our Philadelphia bureau. A
massive bomb has exploded in City Hall. We do not have any details on the
health of the mayor himself, but early reports are that there are multiple
fatalities in the mayor’s office. Repeat, multiple fatalities in the mayor’s
office...”

    
“Shit,” breathed Sophia. “So much for our friend in the mayor’s
office.”

     “General!” The thin but very familiar voice of Willard
rang up from the crowd, and Revolution saw the tall young man pushing through
to get to him.

     “General, we worked on a defense against that awful
Lady Rage person. But...” Willard seemed nervous, like he didn’t want to tell
them what he had to tell them.

     “We sheltered in place,” he continued. “There wasn’t
time to develop an anti-serum or sufficient digital defenses. We’ve done the
best we can, General. The shielding is being uploaded now. But given enough
time, she’ll get through these defenses.  And if she does...”

     “I understand, Willard.” Revolution reached down from
his perch and put his hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Thank you, son. You’ve
given us a chance.”

     “Good luck out there, sir.”

     Revolution stood, so that he was once again towering
over the small army that was assembled. “They wanted to kill our spirit by
cutting off our head. They made one fatal error. By creating a diversion here,
they forced us to concentrate all our power. Minuteman and Suns of Liberty
alike. Today we fight side by side. Today we take back what they’ve sought for
so long to take from us. 

     “I can’t tell you what we’ll face out there. They have
an overwhelming force. But I do know that we have Saratoga with us today. Even
in death he gives us strength! And we are unified in our purpose. The stakes
are clear: we fight for freedom!” He raised his arm, closed his fist. “Freedom
or death!”

     The room roared its approval.

The
members of COR had all retreated to their chambers as ordered.

     All but one.

     Leslie Gibbons sat upright in her seat, hands clenched
on the podium in front of her, a vein pulsing across her forehead. Defiance exuded from her. She rose to her feet. “Let them go, I’m the one you want,” she
said, stalking forward.  “I’m the president of COR.”

     Spectral turned toward her, and the android’s eyes
glowed white.

    
Noted biochemist. Employers: Harvard, California-Berkeley. Officially listed as
Missing.>

     “Stop right there,” Arbor barked.

     “Or what? You going to kill me too? Is that your plan?
Just kill each of us? What good will that do you?”

     “Not all of you,” Tarleton said. “Just enough to get
you all talking.”

     “Let the others go and I will tell you what you want
to know.”

     “No you won’t,” Arbor said. “You haven’t even heard
our demands.”

     “Don’t need to. But if it makes you feel better, go
ahead. Tell me.”

     Tarleton stepped right up to her, face to face—which
made Arbor nervous. He scanned the room for trouble and noticed both Scarlett
and Fiddler staring at the dead body of the old man. They probably both wished
it could have been them who killed him.
Surrounded by fucking psychopaths!

     Tarleton’s grin was menacing. “Locations for every
insurgency headquarters. Access to the master list of all members.  The
identity of the Revolution, and the bank accounts used to finance the whole
goddamn thing. That’ll be good for starters, and it ought to save the lives of
your colleagues. At least for now,” he hissed.