Just Cause Universe 2: The Archmage (10 page)

Juice’s cell phone rang. He held up his hand to indicate that the others shouldn’t leave just yet and touched the speaker button on the phone. “Juice. Go ahead.” He started to pick up his cup of coffee but it never reached his lips. A strange expression crossed his face as he listened to the voice on the other end. “Say that again.”

Chapter Six

“The Boy Scouts’ motto is ‘be prepared.’ I’d like to think that Just Cause’s motto is ‘pretend like you’re prepared.’”

-Jack “Crackerjack” Raymond, appearing on
The Tonight Show
, July 7, 2002

May, 2004

Denver, Colorado

Just Cause Headquarters

“What do you mean,
a mountain
?” Juice set his coffee cup back onto his desk. There was a pause as the voice on the other end of the connection shouted at him. Jason, Sally, and Shannon all looked at each other with curiosity. “I see,” said Juice. “We’ll check it out right away, Will. Keep me informed.” He hung up his phone, a troubled expression on his face.

“Who was that?” asked Sally.

“Your friend, Stratocaster from the Lucky Seven.” Juice drained his coffee and absent-mindedly crushed the cup before anyone could point out that it was stainless steel. “Damn. I lose more cups that way. I should just stock up on paper ones instead.” He deposited the mangled vessel into his desk-side wastebasket.

“What did Stratocaster say?” asked Jason.

Juice didn’t answer. Instead, he tapped a button on his desk phone. “Command Center, who’s running the show today?”

“
Riley, sir,
” replied the cracking voice of a man who couldn’t be much older than Sally was. “
Go ahead
.”

“Do we have any satellites that can give me current images of North Dakota?”

North Dakota?
Shannon mouthed to Jason, who shrugged. Sally glared at her.

“
Yes sir
,” said Riley. “
Target?
”

“Rugby. Or near Rugby. The geographical center of North America according to my sources. Send the feed to my office.” Juice typed a few commands on his keyboard and the large wall-mounted flatscreen monitor lit up.

The little hourglass icon on the screen performed its lazy, repeated upending as the Command Center established a link with the satellite cameras. Juice’s fingers tapped on the mahogany of his desktop as he waited. In a moment, an image appeared in a window from the camera, updated every two seconds.

What they saw was impossible.

A large mountain had sprouted from the high plains of North Dakota. It had pushed aside buildings and roads in its sudden lunge for the heavens. Emergency vehicles clustered along the roads around the mountain. The unnatural peak had a flat top upon which rested something that looked very much like a castle.

“Son of a
bitch
,” muttered Juice. “Command Center, can you tell me what exactly we’re looking at here?”

“
You’re seeing the same thing as we are, sir
,” said Riley. “
We’re starting to receive reports. The mountain apparently just grew out of the ground, but GPS can’t find it and neither can Minot Air Force Base radar. It’s got a physical profile, but doesn’t seem to be detectable by instruments. They’re scrambling Air National Guard jets from Fargo for a flyby. Hold on, sir…new information coming in…
”

“Hey…” Jason pointed at a blob on the screen that wasn’t there a second ago. “What’s that?” The camera reset and the blob had moved.

“There’s another one.” Shannon touched the screen in a different place.

“
Sir?
” Riley sounded aghast.

“Go ahead, Riley.”

“
We’re getting reports of… some kind of flying creatures circling the mountain. Sir, local law enforcement is calling them dragons
.”

Juice stood up. “Dragons.”

“
Yes, sir. Your orders?
”

The team commander took a deep breath and cocked his head first to one side then the other to loosen kinks in his neck. “Call out the troops, Riley. I want the
Bettie
on the pad and ready for departure in fifteen minutes. Briefing in ten minutes in the conference room.”

A swirl of purple energy formed out of nothingness in the middle of Juice’s office with a squalling sound of distortion and feedback. Sally recognized it from her past experience with the Lucky Seven. Stratocaster stepped out of the whirling vortex of energy. His guitar blazed with incandescence and sparks danced among the standing hairs of his purple mohawk. He looked around. “Nice office.”

“Stratocaster,” said Juice as calmly as if people materialized in his office all the time. “What do you know about this?”

Stratocaster looked at the monitor. “Shit,” he said. “It’s already bigger than I thought it would be.”

Juice glanced at Sally, Jason, and Shannon, who stood and waited to hear Stratocaster’s information. “Hadn’t you three better be gearing up?”

“But—” began Shannon.

“No,” Juice retorted before she could formulate her sentence.

“But—” added Sally.

“No to you too. It’ll come out in the briefing. I promise. Now
move
.”

Grumbling, the three young heroes trudged out of Juice’s office. The last thing they heard was Stratocaster say “we’re in big trouble,” before Juice shut the door.

Shannon became insubstantial and rose, ghostlike, through the ceiling to the dormitory on the second floor.

“I, uh, guess I better go change too,” mumbled Jason.

“Yeah, I guess you better.” Sally growled. “Try not to screw her before the meeting.” She spun on her heel and flashed down the hall to the stairwell. Part of her felt gleeful at the cutting remark, but mostly she felt bad that she’d said something so terrible to him.

She wiped away an angry tear as she threw on her costume in a blur of motion. Then another tracked down her face. Then another. For several minutes she had to just lie on her bed, hug her pillow, and sob.

Her phone beeped. “
Sally? We’re waiting on you. Is everything all right?
” asked Juice.

She wiped her eyes. “Sorry, I lost track of the time. I’ll be right there.” She rushed to the bathroom and scrubbed her face. She glared at her reflection; her puffy eyes wouldn’t hide the fact that she’d been crying. She pulled her goggles down over them. Better. She left her room in a flash of red and yellow and was at the conference room a few seconds later.

For once, Sally was actually the last one to a meeting. Jason sat away from Shannon and wouldn’t look at her. For that matter, he wouldn’t look at Sally either. Fine, thought Sally. Two could play at that game. She flopped into an empty seat between Switchboard and Doublecharge and put an expression of rapt attention on her face, focusing all her attention on Juice and Stratocaster.

Juice nodded at her. “Most of you already know Stratocaster from the Lucky Seven. He’s here to tell us what he knows about events currently unfolding near Rugby, North Dakota. Approximately half an hour ago, a mountain grew out of the geographical center of North America. He believes he knows why. Will?”

Stratocaster nodded, his tall spiky mohawk bobbing. “There’s a legend among mages that every thousand years an Archmage will rise, drawing all magic in the world into himself.”

“And do what?” interrupted Jack. “Build mountains in North Dakota? Make everyone pay more for downtown parking?”

“It’s a lot more serious than that.” The muscles in Stratocaster’s jaw stood out like cords. “The last Archmage enslaved much of Africa for almost a full generation. Were it not for her own children, mages in their own right, she might have eventually held sway over the entire world. Each millennium, the Archmage has been more powerful and more dangerous.”

“Like parahumans are evolving?” asked Doublecharge. “We’re more powerful now than our predecessors.”

“Yes, but imagine a single parahuman able to rule a continent the size of Africa. And now imagine one who has decided he is strong enough to take on North America. If he successfully conquers the United States, he’ll be able to rule the entire world.”

“
He
. You know who it is or are you just using the term generically?” Sondra flapped a wing the way someone else might have shrugged.

“His name is Wolfgang
Frazier
. I battled him in Tokyo last month. He’s incredibly powerful. I barely escaped with my life.” Stratocaster’s hands shook for a moment. Sally realized the man was
terrified
.

“What did he want from you?” asked Switchboard.

“My magic. When a mage slays another mage, he absorbs all the magic contained in the victim. Eventually he will reach a critical mass and draw all magic in the world to himself. He’s nearly there. Even now, I can feel myself drawn toward him. We have to stop him.”

“He’s built a castle on top of that mountain,” added Juice. “And has what look like
dragons
patrolling the skies around it.”

“Can’t fault him for a lack of creativity,” said Jack. “What’s next? Armies of Urukhai? Nazguls?”

“Don’t take magic lightly, Jack,” said Sally. “Maybe it’s not all super-scientific, but I’ve seen Strat in action. It’s real. He can do things parahumans can’t.”

Jack shrugged. “Whatever.”

“At the very least,” said Juice in his courtroom voice, “this person has violated American soil and airspace, and we’ve been ordered to intervene by the Director. As always, we’ll attempt a peaceful resolution first.”

“Followed by aggressive negotiation.” Jack grinned.

“The
Bettie
is on standby. We’re leaving in five minutes,” said Juice. “Will, can you join us? You’re the only expert on magic that we have available.”

“Actually, I’d prefer to cower in a dark corner, but you’ll probably need me.” Stratocaster strummed his guitar for emphasis and swirls of energy spilled off the strings and transformed into lavender-scented smoke.

“I
still
say there’s no such thing as magic,” Jack whispered to Sondra as they headed out of the conference room.

Sondra kept her wings close about her like a feathery cloak so nobody would trip over them. “Whatever you want to call it, lover, it’s certainly something we should worry about. Growing a mountain takes a lot of power no matter where it comes from.”

Outside, Just Cause’s supersonic transport jet was already powered up. The
Bettie
’s turbofans were howling at a high idle. Sally was pleased to see Ace would be their pilot. Fairuza “Ace” Bruck was a veteran from the Israeli Air Force and flew the
Bettie
like an extension of her own body. Ace, her helmet on and visor down, looked out from behind the bulletproof cockpit glass and nodded professionally at them as they climbed on board.

“I hope it’s not going to be like this all year,” said Doublecharge, resplendent in her white, black, and yellow costume as she tightened her seatbelts.

“What do you mean?” asked Sally.

“Four emergency call-outs already and it’s only June. Last year we only had two all year.”

Ace announced they had clearance to lift.

“Go,” said Juice.

The engines’ howl increased to a scream as the
Bettie
lifted vertically off the pad. For the next couple of minutes, conversation was impossible over the shriek of the turbines. After climbing for most of a minute, Ace rotated the jet nozzles aft and the
Bettie
accelerated to the northeast.

“
E.T.A. to Rugby, North Dakota, approximately forty-five minutes, sir,
” said Ace over the cabin speakers in her clipped, accented tones.

“Thank you, Ace. Give us a ten minute warning, please.”

“
Roger that
.”

“All right, Will. We’ve got some time. Can you give us all a crash course on magic theory in thirty minutes?” Juice’s serious tone quieted Jack’s amused snort.

Stratocaster leaned back in his seat, crossed his Doc Martens, and clutched his guitar like it was a security blanket. “There’s not that much to tell. A mage can do
anything
he can conceive of, so long as he can control the power.”

“
Anything
?” asked Shannon. “You think of it and it happens?”

He shrugged. “More or less.” He ran a quick arpeggio across the frets and a spinning globe of yellow and blue sparks appeared in the air in front of him. It bounced across the cabin to encircle Jack’s head.

“Hey, cut that out.” Jack waved at the sparks to no effect. They shrank to pinpoints of light before vanishing altogether.

“Most mages work with spells. Those are evocations they’ve practiced over and over until they can control them easily. Some are more improvisational, which is how I tend to work.”

“So what’s the deal with the guitar? Is it magic too?” Jason, a guitarist himself, tapped his fingers on his knees. Sally could tell he was itching to take the snow-white electric into his own hands.

Stratocaster laughed. “I’ve never been entirely sure. I can’t perform magic without it. If it’s a psychological crutch, it carries a lot of weight with me.”

“What kind of magic does this Archmage guy use?” asked Sally.

“I don’t know,” said Stratocaster. “My guess is spell-based, since he’s so good at what he does. But he’s accumulated so much magical power, he’s not really limited by much of anything.”

“How does he accumulate magic? Is that something we could block or interrupt?” asked Sondra.

“When a mage is killed, all that magical energy is released. If another mage is nearby, he will absorb it all, becoming that much more powerful.” Stratocaster looked up, worried. “A great number of my colleagues have disappeared over the past year. I believe he’s been hunting them. You can’t block or interrupt his power. It’s become a part of him.”

“‘
There can be only one
,’” quoted Jack from the
Highlander
movie.

“For all I know…” Stratocaster looked somberly at the rest of them. “I may
be
the only one left.”

“So what you’re telling us is we’re going to be facing a man with an unbelievable amount of power, who can make things happen with a thought,” summarized Juice.