Just Cause Universe 2: The Archmage (7 page)

Jack leaped down to the printing floor. Another man might have broken his legs in the drop, but Jack’s invulnerability protected him from harm. He set his guns on the ground and kicked them gently aside, then undid the clasps on his combat harness and let it fall to the floor. He smiled, put his hands on his head, and took a couple of steps forward. “Let the hostages go.”

“I don’t know, Pistola. He’s got something planned. I don’t trust him.” One of the cowboys was actually another cow
girl
, Sally realized, but with a butch haircut and square jaw.

“Quiet, Espada. I’ve got it under control.”

Jack waited patiently as Azote extended another energy ribbon around him and soon he lay on the ground next to Sally, trussed up like a rodeo calf. “How are you?” he whispered.

“Hurt.”

A worried expression crossed Jack’s face. “You going to be all right, kiddo?”

“I don’t know.” She was glad her goggles were cracked; Jack wouldn’t see her tears of fear and frustration.

“You shouldn’t have run off like that,” he chastized.

“I’m a speedster. Running off is what I do best.”

“Good point. So what’s the plan?”

“What do you mean,
what’s the plan
? Don’t you have a plan?”

“No.” Jack gave her his best infectious grin. “Do you?”

“Idiot.” Sally grumbled. In spite of her dismay, Jack’s indomitable
spirit made it difficult for her to remain miserable.

“You people get out of here right now,” Pistola shouted at the hostages. The hostages, stunned, looked around helplessly. “
Mierda, tengo que tirarlos para hacer que entienden?
Move it before you get shot, dumbshits!”

The prisoners headed for the exit, first tentative, then in a mad panicky rush. Pistola watched them go, and then turned to look critically at her new hostages. “
Llévelos, Puño. Vayamos a los caballos.
” Pistola slipped some printing dies into her belt.

The largest of the cowboys easily lifted both Sally and Jack under his arms as if they were no more than bags of charcoal. Jack looked up at him pleasantly. “Hi, handsome. In town long?”

“
Qué? No… no entiendo,
” stammered the huge man.

“
No hable con él, Puño,
” ordered Pistola. “
Consiga listo para luchar.
Get ready to fight.”

The five robbers activated their various parapowers. Ball bearings whizzed around Pistola like miniature planets. Fresh ribbons of red energy crackled from Azote’s hands. The bonds he’d laid around Sally and Jack showed no signs of weakening. Sally wondered how many ribbons he could maintain before his control started to waver. Espada’s forearms lengthened and stiffened into bony, razor-sharp blades. Puño’s hands were full of Sally and Jack, but he was probably just as tough as he was strong and wouldn’t shirk from fighting when it erupted. Cañón, who was almost as big as Puño, hefted the large roll of paper as easily as if it had been a balloon.

“Going to just ride off into the sunset while the closing credits roll?” asked Jack. “Retire to Bolivia and have a whole flock of little pistoleros?”

“Shut up!” Pistola screamed.

“Are they outside?” Sally mouthed to Jack. He winked back.

“Do you see anything?” Espada whispered to Pistola as she scanned the street outside.

“No… that’s what worries me. Escudo and Cuchillo are gone. So are the horses.”

A cool breeze played across Sally’s face. She didn’t think much of it until she also saw a trail of mist float past as well. Jack’s smile grew wider as he saw it as well. “Well I sure hope nothing bad happens to you guys.” He spoke with emphatic clarity. “
Especially
to the guy holding the red energy whips.”

Sally got the hint and gathered herself for a quick getaway. Even tucked under Puño’s meaty arm, she could still shake herself free of his grasp by shifting her weight at top speed. All she needed was a moment of freedom from Azote’s bonds. She knew Shannon was in the room with them; an ace in the hole, but without any offensive powers. All she could do was become invisible and insubstantial. Sally didn’t see how Shannon could possibly be any use, or what Jason could see in the little slut for that matter. Her temper rose quickly through the dull roar in her head.

Shannon materialized suddenly to one side of Azote. She faded into vision and solidity, already spinning around in midair, one leg tucked underneath her and the other whipping around toward Azote’s head. She caught him by surprise before he could react with his whips. Shannon’s foot connected with his jaw. It sounded like a baseball bat striking a punching bag. Azote’s eyes rolled back in his head as he tumbled to the floor, unconscious or maybe dead. Sally caught a glimpse of a superior grin on Shannon’s face before she faded from view again, just as one of Espada’s arm-blades cut through the space in which she’d stood.

“Wow,” said Jack, just their bonds faded into nothingness. Sally shook herself free at super-speed. For Puño it would have felt like trying to hold onto a jackhammer. She dropped to the ground and immediately ran to the far end of the lobby to get her bearings. Her head still buzzed from her collision with the printing press. With a crash of glass, Jason smashed through one of the arched windows into the lobby. Sally smiled. He loved to break stuff and lived for good brawls. From the look of excited anticipation on his face, he was ready to go toe to toe with whoever dared stand up to him.

Doublecharge flew in through the broken window. Electricity spat and crackled off her hands. “Just Cause,” she announced. “Surrender now.”

“
Entrega, amigo,
” suggested Jack to Puño. “
Usted lo sentirá si usted no hace.
Give it up, dude.”

“We can take them, Vaqueros,” cried Pistola.

Shannon appeared right behind her, one of Jack’s guns touching the back of Pistola’s head. “I’d reconsider if I were you,” she said.

Puño released Jack and put up his hands. “Don’ shoot, I give up!” he managed in heavily-accented English. Espada and Cañón realized they were outnumbered and out-powered and likewise surrendered.

Pistola spat on the floor in fury and put up her own hands.

“Babe,” said Jack with a cheerful lilt, “You should have just stayed in bed.”

Several minutes later, Switchboard supervised the administration of sleeper sets to the would-be bank robbers. Sleeper sets were a safe way of keeping parapowered prisoners unconscious. They transmitted a signal into the wearer’s brain that induced a coma. The bandits would be kept safely asleep until a Deep Six transport could collect them and take them to the prison where they would await their trials.

Sally sat off to one side and suffered a paramedic’s examination. He checked to make sure she hadn’t suffered any overt ill effects from Azote’s powers or her hard collision with the printing press. As he worked, she watched as Jack recounted Shannon’s takedown of the energy whip-wielding villain to Jason. Jason shared in conspiratorial laughter with Shannon and Jack. Each guffaw felt like an icy dagger in Sally’s heart.

“Well, miss, you took quite a knock on the head,” said the paramedic as he shut his diagnosis case. “I’m calling it a mild concussion. Have you ever had one before?”

“Yeah,” she replied. “A few months ago.”

“You need to follow up with your own doctor. Multiple concussions can get pretty severe over time. You might think about wearing a helmet and mouth guard to reduce the risk of further traumatic impacts.”

“Okay.” She had no intention of doing any such thing, but the paramedic didn’t need to know that; he was only doing his job.

“I can’t find any injuries related to the… whatever you called them. Energy whips?”

She nodded. Her broken goggles dangled loosely from nerveless fingers.

“But if you notice any kind of ill effects,” he continued, “you make sure to check in with your own medical staff.”

“Thanks,” mumbled Sally.

A shadow fell across her face. She looked up to see Doublecharge standing over her. The older woman glared through her mask. “Okay, let’s have it,” she said without preamble.

Insolence rose up in Sally. She swallowed hard and tried to keep control of her ire. Shannon’s attention to Jason and his apparent reciprocation had her so angry she almost couldn’t see straight. “You said speed was of the essence.”

“I assigned you to a team.” Doublecharge’s voice was icy calm.

“But nobody got hurt,” said Sally, “and somebody might have if I hadn’t gone in. One of the guards fired his gun.”

“Yes, and it seems to have worked out well, but that doesn’t change the fact that you disobeyed an order.”

“I ordered Sally to go inside and scope out the situation,” said Jack from behind Doublecharge. “I was worried about the possibility of hostages.”

“I don’t recall hearing you give that order,” said Doublecharge.

“My headset is damaged,” said Jack as he held up a frayed wire for evidence. “I didn’t notice until after our cowboy friends surrendered and I got my gear back.”

Doublecharge considered Jack’s story. Sally could see she didn’t believe a word of it. “Very well,” she said. “I’ll include that in my report. See to the loading of the horse things.”

Sally nodded. Jack flashed one of his famous radiant grins. “Of course.”

Doublecharge headed for the
Bettie
to supervise Switchboard and Jason as they loaded the comatose prisoners.

“Why’d you do that?” Sally asked Jack in a low voice as they went over to where the robotic horses still stood.

“Didn’t figure you’d want to be in Juice’s office again so soon,” he replied. “What’s on your mind, sweetheart? You’re hardly your usual chipper self.” He walked around one of the horses and examined it from all angles.

“I’m just… dealing with some issues.” She wished Sondra was off-duty; Sally could talk to her about anything.

Jack whistled at the engineering of the horse. “I wonder how those zeroes got hold of these, and where they’re from anyway?”

“I don’t know.” She watched as a Just Cause semi pulled up. They would load the horses onto it so technicians could examine them back on the base.

“I wouldn’t expect you to. It was a rhetorical question.” Jack stepped up next to her and put his arm around her shoulders. Sally swallowed hard to keep from breaking down, but a single tear managed to escape onto her cheek nevertheless.

Jack, for once, didn’t seem to have anything to say.

Chapter Four

“Love is a perky elf dancing a merry little jig and then suddenly he turns on you with a miniature machine gun.”

-Matt Groening,
Love Is Hell
, 1994

May, 2004

Denver, Colorado

Just Cause Headquarters

“I’m not sure, but it certainly looks like the same technology,” said John Stone as he straightened up after peering into the inner workings of one of the robotic horses. The man who looked like a granite statue come to life leaned on a heavy titanium steel cane. Although his mind was as sharp as ever, sixty years of fighting against gravity in a body which weighed seven hundred pounds had taken its toll. He had been a heavy hitter for Just Cause back in the Sixties and Seventies and was now the Vice Principal of the Hero Academy.

“You think these came from the same place that built the Steel Soldier?” asked Jack. The robotic horses were tethered in one of the hangars. They stood calmly where they’d been tied; indeed, they’d barely even moved when Jack and a couple of technicians had removed some of the plating from one of them to expose the internal machinery.

“Possibly.” John Stone readjusted his hat, a fedora which had been his affectation and trademark for decades. “The technology is similar, but the components look brand new. It might be someone who worked on the Soldier program or had access to the blueprints. I suppose someone could have reverse-engineered the technology from the wreckage, except all the Soldier’s remains were lost on 9/11.”

“Or someone who’d seen the Soldier close-up,” prompted Sally, who’d tagged along with Jack. Normally she’d have been hanging out with Sondra, but after a long stretch in the Command Center, the winged woman had begged off for a nap. On one hand, Sally dreaded letting Jason out of her sight for fear that Shannon would be on him in a heartbeat; on the other, she didn’t want to smother him, and at some point she just had to trust him.

“You mean Destroyer, of course. Or rather, the man inside the suit.” John Stone rubbed his jaw thoughtfully with a sound like cinder blocks scraping together. “Young Harlan Washington did repair the Soldier after the first time they fought. It was part of the bargain we struck with him in return for a lighter sentence. He certainly would have had the chance to learn about the technology, and he had the skills to apply it.”

Jack and Sally watched as the techs replaced the armor plating on the horse. “Why horses? And how did these losers get them?”

John Stone shrugged. “Horses are useful creatures and fairly simplistic compared to something like the Soldier. I imagine their central processors aren’t very complex. If Washington actually built these, he might not yet have reinvented the technology required for the higher brain functions of the Soldier.”

Switchboard walked into what the team members were already calling The Stable. “
Los Vaqueros—
” He referred to the robbers, whose name meant
The Cowboys
“—said they bought the horses online, if you can believe that. Apparently they robbed several Guatemalan and Mexican banks to obtain the funds for them.” He held up a hand to forestall Jack’s interruption. “We’ve already checked. The website is gone, and the only cache we’ve found is of a password-protected entry page. Homeland Security’s got their computer division on it, but they’re not optimistic about retrieving much more than that. The seller covered his tracks very well.”

“All right,” said Jack. “Let’s make several assumptions here, and yes, I know exactly what that means. Suppose these idiots did manage to acquire these highly-advanced devices using stolen funds. And let’s further suppose that they were in fact built by someone familiar with Steel Soldier technology. And just for kicks, let’s suppose it was Destroyer. My question is why? The man builds top-of-the-line
battlesuits
, using technologies far advanced over anything else out there. Why mess around with goddamn
robotic horses
?”