New Olympus Saga (Book 1): Armageddon Girl (28 page)

Chapter Fifteen

Christine Dark

Chicago, Illinois, March 14, 2013

“Okey-dokey,” Christine muttered to
herself (not that she could hear herself flying through the air) as she planned
her final descent – not too final, she hoped – onto the unsuspecting city below.
Her flying skills hadn’t improved one bit above ‘erratic;’ it was like her very
first driving lesson, when she had driven her mother crazy by having one foot
on the gas pedal and another on the brake and stomping on both nearly at
random. But she was more or less going where she wanted to go, and that was
pretty good, considering she’d had zero preparation. Stupid Condor. She was
going to lodge a formal complaint when she saw him again.

The question was not 'to be or not to
be,' but where the frak to land? If Christine went downtown, she was going to
end up on YouTube by the time she hit the ground, and if those Russians were
looking for her that would be un-good. Staying up in the air would also get her
noticed sooner or later, though; she needed to land, hopefully somewhere not
too public. She angled for somewhere a bit off the beaten path. Smaller
buildings, less traffic. She went sideways and up and down as often as she flew
forward, but she more or less zigzagged her way there.

Christine ended up somewhere off to the
south of the city. A few people lounging outside some not-so-nice looking
buildings looked at her as she descended. Well, tried to descend and ended up
shooting upwards for a hundred feet, over-corrected and darted down much faster
than she’d intended to. She clipped a street light and tumbled into an alley
behind a bodega. Or, to be more accurate, she tumbled right into the dumpsters
in said alley. Luckily, the dumpsters were locked shut – apparently people
would steal your garbage around those parts – so when she hit one of them she
made a Christine-shaped dent on it but did not end up swimming in garbage.
Neat. Not.

Christine bounced off the dumpster and
ended up on the ground. If she had to pick a superhero name, she might try and
see if Captain Banana Heels was taken. Amazingly, neither her close encounter
with the street light nor her crash into the dumpster had hurt much. No damage,
even to her clothes, as long as she didn’t count her dignity. Her defensive
shield and energy field or whatever were keeping her safe. Maybe she would have
been able to survive hitting the earth at terminal velocity. She still didn’t
want to try it unless she had to. Oh, well, at least she was back on the
ground.

An angry Asian guy came out of the back door
of the bodega wielding a baseball bat and screeched something at her in his
native tongue, whatever it might be. He seemed to have a vested interest in the
well-being of the dumpster, so he was probably the owner of the bodega, which
probably wasn’t called a bodega but the Unidentified Asian Language equivalent.

“I’m sorry,” she said as she got to her
feet – no more flying until she got the hang of it, she decided. She was lucky
she hadn’t flown into a building and killed a roomful of kitties and puppies.

“You get out now!” The Asian bodega owner
replied, making poking motions with the baseball bat. Christine backed away,
more scared of accidentally hurting him than anything else. She was clearly in
a bad part of town and the locals had little tolerance for tomfoolery or
hijinks. The poor man must not have seen her fly in, or he wouldn’t be so
confrontational. If she were a mean person, she’d take to the air for a few
seconds just to show him who he was messing with, but she wasn’t a mean person,
and she'd decided there'd be no more flying for now.

“Okay, I’m going. Peace!”

The angry store owner half-chased her
down the alley and onto the street, but after she had left his home ground he
contented himself with shaking a fist at her and unleashing another torrent of
Unidentified Asian Language at her. Christine made it to the sidewalk in one
piece.

Um. Bad part of town. You could tell from
the potholes and the boarded up buildings and the graffiti and the littering.
On one corner a group of clearly disaffected minority youths were playing loud
music on a boom box and loitering. The music wasn’t hip hop, but some weird
form of… jazz? Kind of like if you took jazz and mixed in angry vocals in
between the instrumental bits. Whatever that music was, she was sure plenty of
middle-class parents around the country were bitching about their kids
listening to it.

She would have liked to listen to it for
a while, or to any music in general; one of her most missed possessions was her
I-Phone with all her playlists.
Oh, Florence and the Machine, I miss you so.
No Tegan, no Sara. The butterflies had gotten them all. Christine hadn’t
really had time to do a thorough Hyperpedia search on the state of music in
this brave new world, but the little she had done had made it clear the musical
divergence was pretty steep. The Beatles were still touring (her mom would have
loved to hear that), and so was Elvis Presley, but that was all Grandpa music;
actually Grandpa was more of a Bruce Springsteen kind of guy, so more like
great-grandpa stuff. She’d gone through Condor’s playlist, and most of his jams
were some folk-country-rock mix that reminded her of Mumford and Sons. None of
the bands of the last decade existed here, or at least the bunch she’d Googled
didn’t, except for, of all things, The Dropkick Murphy. Bizarro Sunnydale was
Bizarro.

Christine’s attempt to appreciate the
local street music didn’t last. For one, the disaffected youths were staring at
her, and not in a friendly hugs and kisses way, unless the hugs and kisses were
on the nonconsensual side. This group hadn’t seen her fly down, since she had
come from the other side of the block, so as far as they were concerned she was
a normal girl in the wrong part of town. She looked around. Not a cop to be
seen, and the only other people she could see were an older couple looking out
a window and showing no interest in coming out and a couple of skinny teenage
girls in skimpy clothes standing by another corner under the careful watch of a
guy in a fur coat sitting in a car. Christine didn’t think they were selling
Girl Scout cookies. She hadn’t felt this out of place since Sophie had
accidentally driven them to a bad area of Detroit during freshman year.

Not as big of a biggie, sure, since worst
case she could fly away, not to mention she had enough kewl powerz to take out
the entire cast of a Quentin Tarentino movie. But she still felt very
uncomfortable. The skinny girls were ignoring her and concentrating on the
occasional slow-driving car. The disaffected youths were looking at her and
making jokes she couldn’t make out over the music. Their laughter was loud
enough to hear, though, and it didn’t sound very nice.

Okay, walking away now. Moving away from
the corner with the youths and their intriguing music. She went past the bodega
and caught the owner giving her the evil eye.
Okay, not waving goodbye to
him.
Christine walked down the street and tried to look like she knew where
she was going. That would take some acting skill, since she had no clue where
she was, where to go or what to do. Mark and Condor had been nice as hell, but
they kind of had forgotten to give her some, you know, money or a wrist-phone
thingy. And even if she got someone to lend her a phone she didn’t know who the
eff to call! The big dumb macho guys hadn’t even considered the possibility
they might get separated. She was going to have some pointed words about that
with them. If she saw them again. If they were all right.
Please be all
right, big dumb macho men. And Kestrel, too, I guess.

She turned a corner and ran into two heavily
tattooed white men wearing red leather jackets and wraparound mirror shades,
also red, with their heads shaved except for three stripes running front to
back, dyed red as well. Bikers? Earth Alpha’s version of skinheads? She didn’t
get to find out. One of them grabbed her by the waist and pressed her against
his body. He was either packing a gun or was glad to see her. “Where you goin’,
mama?” The urban slang sounded different, but the misogynistic elements seemed
to be pretty much the same.

Non-consensual hugging, check. For a
second, she froze in terror. The man spun her so her back was against a wall.
Assault, check. “You lost, mama? Need some guidance? You lookin’ for the Tower
of Power?” Huggie’s pal laughed at that.

“Please let me go,” Christine said in a
firm tone. The fear was still there, but there was something else welling up
behind it, and it wasn’t fear at all.

The man grinned down at her, displaying a
mouthful of gold teeth with dollar signs carved on them. “Oh, mama, we’s gonna
have fun.”

Christine put a hand on the man’s chest
and pushed him off her. The look on his face when he went sailing all the way
onto the street was hilarious. “I said please,” she told the crumpled form on
the pavement. He seemed to be mostly okay besides some bumps and scrapes.
Hopefully that would be the end of it.

The fear was gone, and she felt
great
.
Nobody puts Baby in a corner, or Baby’s gonna get medieval on your ass!

“Fuckin’ cunt!” Huggie-man’s friend
yelled. He was reaching for something in his back pocket, and she didn’t think
he was going to pull out anything nice and/or cuddly. And he’d used the c-word,
which she hated with a passion. She stepped towards him just as he pulled out a
gun – Holy Crap – and delivered a high roundhouse kick to his face that sent
him spinning off in a spray of blood and teeth, gold and regular. The man
landed limply on the sidewalk. She had no idea how she’d managed that kick.
Maybe all Neolympians knew Kung Fu instinctively, kinda like Vampire Slayers.

The guy she’d kicked was twitching feebly
but otherwise wasn’t moving much. “OMG!” She hadn’t meant to hit him so hard.
Christine knelt by the man and rolled him over. His jaw clearly was off its
proper place, and his eyes were rolling in his head, but he was breathing. Holy
crap, she had really hurt him. She felt terrible – but she also felt like
laughing and clapping her hands. Guilt and joy made for a crazy weird mix.
“Sorry for pwning you,” she heard herself say.

A loud metallic bang made her jump. She
turned and saw Huggie pointing a gun at her. He shot at her again – and missed
her again.

“What are you, a Storm Trooper?” she
taunted him. Huggie screamed and emptied the gun in a blaze of semiautomatic fire.
Her shield flared when two of the dozen or so bullets he fired came close
enough to hurt her, and she felt the bits of lead bounce off it. Huggie
screamed again, this time in terror, flung the empty gun at her – it missed her
by several feet; dude seriously needed some Lasik or at least prescription
glasses – and took off running.

“Oh no you didn’t!” she yelled at him.
She reached out with one hand and felt energy gathering around it. One little
blast and…

And you’ll put a hole the size of a
basketball hoop all the way through him!
 

Oh, God, no. Christine checked herself
before she wrecked herself – and more importantly, before she wrecked the crap
out of Huggie. She let him go.

That was the first time she had raised
her hand in anger, or even annoyance. Huggie’s friend was going to need an
ambulance and thousands of dollars’ worth of dental care. Even worse, people
were staring at her. Some of them had those goggle-cams. YouTube, here we go.
Way
to draw aggro, Christine.
She’d better get out of there before she made the
news.

She started running.

Thaddeus Twist

Washington, DC, March 14, 2013

The man who would save the world closed
his eyes and thought about Faustian bargains and the cost of doing business.

The conference room was rather Spartan as
such places went, especially given the rank of the men and women who would be
joining him momentarily. The chairs were comfortable but unremarkable, the
mahogany table with its inlaid computer screens stoically functional, the
paneled walls plain and unadorned. One of his staffers had put a framed copy of
his
Time
magazine’s Man of the Year cover on a wall but Thaddeus had it
taken down. Such displays were silly and unproductive, and did not help
cultivate the image he wanted to project among his associates, that of being
first among equals, not their absolute leader. The best way to lead people who
were used to holding the reins of power was to make them think they were
partners instead of followers. Lies and illusions were the strings to use with
this particular assortment of puppets.

Of course, at this level nobody knew who
the puppet was and who pulled the strings, not until the end of the
performance. Perhaps not even then.

Thaddeus Twist knew that at least two of
the men about to sit at this table thought they were the puppet masters. They
were certainly deluded in that respect, and they didn’t worry him at all. The
one person who worried him would not be attending the meeting. If his putative
peers even suspected that Thaddeus had made a deal with his secret partner,
they would tear him apart with their bare hands. This was, after all, a meeting
of the secret leaders of the Humanity Foundation. Its goal was to cleanse the
Earth of the Neolympian plague.

Thaddeus’s silent partner was Daedalus
Smith, one of the world’s best known Neolympians. Smith doubtlessly believed
that Thaddeus was his dupe, a tool to be used to further his goals. Thaddeus
believed the exact same thing in reverse. Only time would tell who was right.

News reports about the Freedom Legion
attack droned on from one of the computer screens on the table. The new Global
News Network anchorman’s voice annoyed Thaddeus. It was too bad he no longer
involved himself on the day to day operations of the network, or he would have
quietly had the man replaced. To add to Thaddeus’s dislike of the anchorman,
the news he was delivering did little to cheer him up. The damage to the Legion
had been substantial, but far less than what he had hoped for. Billions of
dollars, irreplaceable assets and several dedicated men and women had been
lost, and they had done their enemy a small injury at best. None of the major
players had been destroyed; the icons of the Legion still lived. Ideally the
carrier vessel would have reached the island itself before detonating its
built-in nuclear device, but the initial attack to disable the local defenses
had elicited a faster reaction than expected. The plan allowed for this, of
course, but he had wanted to do more, to show the world that human ingenuity
and courage could match the monstrous powers of the false gods seeking to rule
humanity.

Thaddeus had reached his epiphany in
1964, a few months after his father’s death in a hunting accident had left him
in charge of the family’s small network of southern radio stations. Thaddeus
had been twenty-two, forced to drop out of Harvard during his senior year to
take over the family business. Young Thaddeus was a staunch – some might say
fanatical – supporter of J.F. Kennedy. The man was the embodiment of the hopes
of a new generation: a human war hero, a champion of the new ideals desperately
needed by a world still recovering from global war and destruction. The hopes
for a new Camelot had been dashed that year, however. Tainted by a sex scandal
and painted as an idealistic incompetent, JFK had been cast down by one of the
very New Olympians whose influence he had tried to curb. As he heard Kennedy’s
concession speech on one of his own radio stations, Thaddeus had realized
humans no longer ruled the planet. They had become playthings, flies for wanton
boys to kill for their sport.

Kennedy had left the White House a
broken, bitter man. The dream had been crushed. The ex-President had written
books few read and retreated into seclusion, plagued by ill-health and regrets
until his premature death. His son had barely won the 2012 Democratic
primaries, only to suffer an ignominious loss in the general election to yet
another Neolympian. The destruction of the Kennedy dream had spurred Thaddeus
to craft a new vision for the future.

If something was not done, a miniscule
aristocracy of
ubermenschen
would take over. The process was less than a
century old, and already close to a fifth of the world’s heads of state were
Neolympians, including the current US President. Neos dominated the world’s
militaries, media and technology. This very conference room, its plain exterior
concealing the most advanced security systems money could buy, was a product of
Neolympian minds. Thaddeus had turned his family’s small network of radio
stations into an international media conglomerate and become one of the world’s
richest men, and yet his power and influence paled in comparison to freaks of
nature who had gained their exalted status through a mere accident of birth.
That could not be allowed to stand.

The others started coming in,
individually or in small groups. The need for this meeting’s secrecy could not
be overstated. Many of the people sitting down around the table would lose
their positions, their freedom or even their lives if their involvement in the
Humanity Foundation became known. It had taken exquisite care to
‘coincidentally’ schedule conferences on half a dozen different matters that
would explain his partners’ presence here. Fortunately Washington DC was a
natural focal point for the wealthy and powerful. Gathering them all in one
place and time had been a logistical nightmare, but for this business
long-distance communications would not do. The risks of interception might have
been small, but at this stage even small chances were too risky.

After a few minutes, nine men and three
women sat around the table, with Thaddeus at its head. No assistants were
allowed, and their absence was a clear source of discomfort to most of the
gathered VIPs. Too bad, Thaddeus reflected. They would have to take their own
mental notes, and make decisions without some flunky whispering in their ears.
If they weren’t prepared to participate in this meeting on their own, they had
no business being there.

Thaddeus waited for a couple of minutes
while his guests exchanged pleasantries or, in one or two cases, angry glares.
He loudly cleared his throat and all conversation ceased. “The operation has
begun successfully,” he said to open the meeting.

“Somewhat so,” Mitsuo Fuchida said. He
was the oldest man at the meeting, and at one hundred and ten years old, one of
the oldest humans on the planet. Fuchida claimed his longevity was due to God’s
grace; others suspected Neolympian intervention, but nobody could deny the
man’s dedication to the cause. Thaddeus thought Fuchida was something of a Jesus
freak but he was one of the most influential people of the impoverished and
bitter Empire of Japan, and a true believer in the war against Neo-humanity.
Fuchida’s epiphany had taken place on a lifeboat from the doomed aircraft
carrier
Akagi
, sunk along with most of its crew by the Neolympian Janus.
“The attack failed to do more than thirty percent of the anticipated damage,
did it not? Only a handful Legionnaires perished, and none of the greater
ones.”

“The damage is beside the point,” Boris
Chernenko answered before Thaddeus could do so. Chernenko was the son of the
last General Secretary of the Soviet Union, and he had managed to parlay his
family’s fading influence into control of Russia’s burgeoning oil and gas
industries as the Russian Soviet Republic became the plain Russian Republic.
His wealth and influence existed only on the sufferance of the Dominion of the
Ukraine, however, since the Iron Tsar’s empire controlled the pipelines that
transported said oil and gas to Russia’s European customers. Chernenko has seen
his country and his own interests suffer at the hands of Neolympians. He had
been instrumental in providing the Humanity Foundation with technology and
intelligence. He also had a Russian’s love for chess and the mindset the game
developed. “This was an opening gambit, and its success was never contingent on
the damage it inflicted.”

“Just so,” Thaddeus agreed. “The
connection between the attack and the Chinese Empire will be made very quickly
or has been made already. The stage has been set for the coming conflict.” He
turned to Fuchida. “I’m sure you have the next steps well in hand.”

Fuchida nodded. “My men are ready. They
will not fail in their duty to humanity and God Almighty.”

Thad had never quite understood how a
Christian fanatic could command so much power in largely Shinto Japan, but
there was no doubt that Fuchida always delivered. “Things are well in hand here
in the US,” Thad continued.

“Everything is going well,” Art Blood
confirmed. The former Senator from Georgia was best known for his best-selling
anti-Neo book,
Mortals in Olympus
, which in turn had led to the
highest-grossing movie documentary in history. His political career had not
been quite as successful, with no less than four unsuccessful runs at the
Democratic nomination to the presidency, the last one ending with his accepting
the role of JFK Jr.’s VP for what turned out to be the fiasco of 2012, where
the Democrats had barely gotten 30% percent of the popular vote (that they
edged out the GOP by over ten points had been cold comfort).

While Blood had been a dud politically,
his influence over public opinion was undeniable. His efforts had been
instrumental in pointing out the clouds inside any silver lining related to
Neolympians. One in every three Americans was convinced Neos were a clear and
present danger to the country, in no small part thanks to Blood’s
determination, aided by Thaddeus’ careful use of his media empire to drive home
the message. Thaddeus wished the anti-Neo poll numbers were better, but it was
hard to compete against the glamour of the costumed freaks and the rival media
empires that worshiped and celebrated them.

“We have enough votes in the House to
approve additional troop deployments to the ROC,” Blood went on. “If we can get
the Majority Leader to do his damn job, we’ll have the Senate too. The calls
and letters are pouring in. That last movie about POW torture victims during
the First Asian War has really gotten people stirred up.” Blood made an
appreciative gesture towards Thaddeus.

Thaddeus nodded modestly. He’d helped
produce that little screen gem, and he thought Richard Gere’s portrayal of a
heroic American’s torment at the hand of sadistic super-powered Chimps had been
inspired. It was a pity that the starring role of the movie had been a fictionalized
version of Daedalus Smith – he allowed himself to savor the irony for a moment
– but that was all right. As long as the movie generated anti-Neo feelings,
even if it only was towards other countries’ Neos, it still helped the cause.

“You may stink at the news game, mate,
but you can make a good movie,” Matt Braddock admitted ruefully. Braddock’s
international news empire had been at war with Thaddeus’ for decades, but the
two men agreed unconditionally on finding a solution to the parahuman problem.
“I did my part, too. Public sentiment in Europe is with us. Same in the Pacific
Rim.” The media magnate frowned. “But you knew all this, Twist. So for fuck’s
sake, why did you call this meeting? Unless you’re planning to kill us so we
don’t blab about our little projects,” he added with a chuckle.

Thaddeus laughed politely at the joke.
That was the kind of thing Neo super-villains did for any reason or none, and
one of the few things that had kept them from amassing more power than they
already had. Humans were more rational. “I have learned some new information
that I knew I had to share with all of you in person. Something that will make
the Third Asian War into little more than a sideshow when the history books are
written.”

Everyone at the table leaned forward
intently. Thaddeus, ever the showman, let the silence hang for a couple of
seconds before continuing.

“I have discovered the source of
Neolympian powers. And I have a plan to destroy it.”