Wearing the Cape 4: Small Town Heroes (27 page)

Dozer charged
again
but this time his feet slipped, digging divots out of the wet lawn, and I met him with an overhead elbow-drive into his back. He spread-eagled into the lawn, rolled, and pushed up to catch me beneath the edge of my armor. I folded around his driving shoulder, and his arms wrapped around my legs, kept me from flipping over off his back. He threw me down and swung, and I barely managed to roll my head out of the direct line of his punch as my head rang
again
. This time I
flew
, taking us both and with no sense of direction other than away. Dozer let go to fall.

I let him, trying to breathe and recover. Eric was soaking up my hits, taking it in return for the chance to work me, going for a knockout over a win-by-decision, and I didn’t know how many more hits I could take. I twisted my head to each shoulder, testing my spine and my equilibrium while Dozer climbed back to his feet. He began backing away, toward the Institute. Message clear:
you have to stop me
.

I dove.

“
Spheres!
” Shell yelled. I twisted but my world flashed into light and disappeared. I felt the hit as I crashed.

I didn’t—quite—black out, and endless hours of fight-training with Watchman turned my crash into a graceless roll that kept rolling for the crucial distance I needed to recover enough of myself to know what was going on again. No more spheres followed me, but looking up from the ground I blinked and saw Dozer coming on like a runaway train. His fingers brushed my foot as my leap into the air threw me beyond his reach. Breathing to slow my racing heart, I took the crucial moment to get my bearings, feel the battle. Galatea was
down
, in pieces like she’d forced Twist to literally tear her apart to keep her off him once her micro-missile batteries were exhausted. Grendel and The Brit staggered and rolled across the scarred and pitted field, locked in a take-no-prisoners wrestling match as The Brit hammered away with a fist or elbow when he could. He kept trying to escape as Grendel wrapped him in limb-locks.

“Shelly, is Phreak getting through?”

“
He’s seizing systems, but Shell and I are gestalting—keeping him out of the core and away from the Interdiction Field controls for now!
”

Okay, maybe Shell had just abandoned Galatea to focus on their fight to shut Phreak out—if he got to those controls then Drop could ‘port straight in and they’d be on top of their goal. “Maybe—”

Dozer ignored me now to charge for the destroyed doors of the Institute.

“We’re out of time! Wherever the bench-team is—”

They arrived in bounds that brought them through the screen of rain and trees, three big and beautiful armored Scoobies firing as they came,
yes
! Rockets and sabotted tracer rounds reached out to touch Dozer with flaming trails and darts of light, shredding his armor and throwing him across the mud-soaked field. Drones dropped from the sky to light up the scattered clusters of spheres still in the air in a brief aerial massacre.

Then the surviving spheres dropped, pilotless and dead. The Master of Ceremonies condensed from the air, dropping down out of barely-there mist to land on The Brit and bite into him like a monstrous leech. The big guy screamed once, high-pitched and cut short, and went limp. I spun in place, looking for a target, but Twist was raising his hands. Dozer had finally got smart or he’d been knocked out; either way he stayed down.

“Shell? Shelly?”

“
Phreak’s down—Jacky’s team got him and they’re not getting in!
”

And just like that it was over. It was over and we’d won.

We’d won.

“Sometimes winning just means you’re the ones left to bury your dead, other times it’s more than that, but whatever else winning means, it means you go on.”

Astra,
Notes From a Life
.

The rain shut off like someone had turned a faucet, that someone being Tsuris since for the last few minutes the only rain falling had been supplied by the lake. I looked up and realized that the stars over Cuba were different than the stars over the pocket universe that had contained Littleton.

“
They never guessed!
” Shell/Shelly laughed in echo of each other. “
Tsuris’ lake-storm covered our drop back into the real world—they didn’t even notice the hotter air!
”

And that had been the biggest gamble; if the Wreckers had noticed
we
cut power to the Borromean rings and collapsed the extra-reality pocket ourselves, they could have hit the Institute sooner or fallen back to Drop and ‘ported away before the bench-team arrived. Because of course the “bench team”—Jacky, MC, the Scoobies and the rest—had been waiting for us, especially once Crash had crossed the boundary back into the world and told them our plan.

I laughed, still spinning. “Are you two going to unlink? Because you sound really weird together.” I felt something shift in the back of my head, like unfusing the quantum-link gestalt the two of them had made changed a balance I felt through my own link.

Virtual-Shell appeared beside me, back in my head again. “That was weird from the inside, too.”

“
No kidding
,” Shelly seconded through my earbug. “
We’ll have to think about it separately when we have time, but right now Captain Lauer wants to see you
.”

The captain had to come to me; I headed for Grendel where he stood over the comatose Brit with MC. MC looked wired, the big vampire almost vibrated in place and I had to wonder what kind of kick went with The Brit’s blood in his powered up state.
Grendel
just looked half-beaten, his nose smashed, mouth bloody, one long fang snapped off and his scalp torn to pour blood into his eyes.

Through my whole desperate fight with Dozer, he’d just hung onto The Brit and taken it, letting the villain expend power with every hit and clinch; now his injuries had stopped bleeding and his changeable body was already healing. He stood and watched The Brit while Scott’s boys applied shackles and sandman packs.

I reached up to touch his swollen jaw. “Sorry.”

“It’ll heal.” He popped the broken fang out, tossed it away. “You?”

Me? My body was one big ache, and with the adrenaline high draining away I didn’t want to
think
for at least a day. If I could arrange to stay away from home for a couple of days so my superhuman constitution had time to take care of the deep bruises before my parents saw them, I would be very, very happy.

“It’ll heal?”

He smiled, wide and toothy. “Yeah. Good job.”

“Astra?” Captain Lauer dismounted from an armored personnel carrier and stepped carefully across the deeply torn and pitted lawn to join us.

“Good evening, sir.”

“Is it?” He looked at the holes in the Institute. “How did you figure out their target was the Littleton Pocket itself?”

“It’s the only thing that made sense, sir. Shelly said they couldn’t get to any of the Institute projects before we could destroy them, and they were just letting all of Littleton’s residents evacuate without trying to stop anybody so they couldn’t have come here after somebody. Unless they were inside the Institute, but—”

“But if they were, then the slow and methodical approach made even less sense,” he finished for me.

“Yes. But the one thing in the Institute we couldn’t destroy or evacuate was the thing that generates the extra-reality pocket. And…”

“And?”

“It fit, sir. The Ascendant—the Ascendancy— they think of themselves as superior beings. Shelly called them mortal gods. Well, right now they’re hiding and gods don’t hide. The Ascendant wants his own Mount Olympus, somewhere safe he can build a temple to himself and gather his followers without interference.”

“But you can only get into the pocket from its corresponding location in the real world. Wouldn’t that make it easy to find?”

I took a breath, let it out. “Ozma transported my whole team here on a tornado, sir. I think, if you have the right kind of power and a beacon to help you find it, you can get from there to here from anywhere in the world. And they have Drop and Phreak.”

“They
had
Phreak. Artemis took Crash and your other vampire and half my light-armored with her; they and their scratch-team caught Phreak with his full rig. The only ones we didn’t get were Drop and the speedster you so colorfully named Mack the Knife.”

My smile hurt but I couldn’t stop. I’d
known
Jacky would know just what to do, better than I did.

“I’m sure he has another name, sir.”

“I’m sure he does.”

More APCs came down the street, loaded with more soldiers and sailors. Sheriff Deitz and Deputy Sweet arrived in their own jeep, lights flashing, and the sheriff stopped and got out by an officer that had to be Colonel Scott. I’d never met the slight and gray-haired soldier, and he looked more like a professor than a military man, but he walked through the wreck of the field like he’d seen a million of them. He and the sheriff joined us while Angel went to talk to the soldiers handling Twist. He really needed a scar or a cigar or something to go with the black unit beret.

I shook the colonel’s hand. “So, what happens to Littleton now?” Beyond the Institute the buildings that showed above the trees didn’t show any smoke—Tsuris had drowned every fire—but I wondered how many shops and businesses had to be rebuilt.

He rubbed his face, looking at the closer devastation. “We finish evacuating. And we move all the Institute projects and files to the navy base. Ali says they’ve already started.”

“But it’s over. Isn’t it?”

“Not until we bring the pocket back,” he explained. He waved at the star-speckled sky. “You’ll notice we’re sitting open to the world right now? But we don’t know what will happen when we power up the rings again. It’s never been tried.”

“Oh. Well—” I straightened, tested my aches and pains. “Sleep is overrated.”

“You’re not kidding,”
Shelly agreed.
“I’m setting up an intravenous coffee drip down here, we’ve got to move the Oroboros’ files out of their segregated system and upload the whole thing by secure satellite uplink, and Shell can’t help at all with this— FYI, Shell processed the mask-cam footage from Jacky and Crash’s roundup of Phreak and his gear. So guess what they found? The high security flash-drive Fisher and the feds are looking for.”

“No!” I almost laughed; it was too good.

“Yes. It’s been wiped and Phreak’s not talking, but Shell figures it had code that he needed but had wanted to keep completely off the grid—must have
really
messed him up when they had to leave Chicago a bit earlier than planned last year. So that’s keeping her busy, but if you want to pick up bits of Galatea, Vulcan will be grateful. And then you could help Ali’s people load the heavy stuff.”

From Grendel’s snort, it sounded like she’d patched him in, too.

I looked at the colonel, captain, and sheriff. “Well gentlemen, it looks like I have my own marching orders. If you’ll excuse me?”

I detoured to see Jacky and Crash and get Malleus back first, where I’d left it in retreat. It felt good to have it back in my hand.

We didn’t get the last of the Institute loads out until well past dawn, and the day’s work also involved setting up shelters for Littleton’s displaced citizenry; just because we optimistically hoped to be home by nightfall didn’t mean we could be stupid about it. I found Mr. Darvish and Atifa and was able to assure Mrs. H that Shelly and Shell were both fine.

The government of Cuba had to know about the sudden appearance of Littleton, but all we got was Mr. Black dropping by to extend the Tyrant’s offer of supplies and transportation if necessary. That, and the caravan of trucks from Guantánamo City laden with meals prepared by every café and restaurant in town and probably a lot of private kitchens, too.

I still wasn’t sure about the Tyrant, but that showed class.

On my second trip to the temporary camp to bring more supplies out of Littleton
just in case
I spotted Angel and Naked Man, in pants this time. He stood near the lunch line, his curly black hair standing out
   
above most everyone around him. A circle of Cubans who’d unloaded their meals had gathered and I could hear the back-and-forth of a dialogue, fluent Spanish, or at least is sounded fluent to me. Angel stood nearby, eagle eyes on him and everyone in threat range. I scooted over.

“What’s going on?”

“He has a new audience for his message of peace and universal beinghood. It happens.”

“I don’t understand.” And really I didn’t, even if everything going on had kept me from thinking about it until just now. “Why is he in Littleton? He seems harmless.”

“He is, unless you try and hurt him.”

“What happens?”

“We don’t know. There’ve been five attempts but we haven’t found the ones who tried yet. He’s here because of the three kidnappings.”

“
Why
?”

“His message. Him. Take your pick.” Angel ‘s sharp face got a soft look that reminded me of Jacky in Holybrook Rest.

I was wondering what
that
meant when someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned and didn’t recognize the rough-looking Cuban standing in front of me, but Angel eyeballed him and decided he wasn’t a threat to her alien preacher while I fumbled for polite Spanish and finally gave up.

“Yes? Can I help you?”

He nodded respectfully and held out a letter, dropping it in my hand before I had time to think. Nodding again, he turned and disappearing into the crowd without a word.

I stared after him, and then turned the letter over. It was a folded piece of parchment-style stationary, stamped with red wax, and I broke the seal and opened it to unfold a page filled with handwriting so fine it was nearly calligraphy.

Dear Hope: I realize this mode of communication is a bit archaic, but I find that I loathe tweeting and texting and emailing and all the other impersonal modern forms. Since I am pressed for time I will skip over the usual pleasantries other than to say that you are looking very well, all things considered. I wanted to assure you that while the Ascendancy’s activities enabled my own, I was never a part of their plan and since your own family might have become involved I felt that you should be involved as well. I hope you will forgive my once-again intrusion into your sleep, but time was short and the detour to fly from Washington to Guantánamo by way of Chicago was worth the risk. I will say that the results were most entertaining; certainly you exceeded my expectations.

Until next time.

There was no signature. Turning the letter back over, I looked at the wax seal. I’d seen the stamped fox-face symbol before on a business card.

“Is there a problem?” Angel glanced at the letter to make sure it wasn’t dangerous to her responsibility.

“No, at least I don’t think so.”

I called Shelly.

“
Hmm? Kind of busy here. Ali’s disappeared, and they’re desperate enough to find out what she took with her that they’ve enlisted me and Shell to shake the sacred tree that is the Institute Secure System and see what falls out. I’ve never seen such a thick non-disclosure agreement in my life. What do you need?
”

I popped up a few feet to scan the busy crowds. Around me helicopters landed and took off, trucks unloaded and departed for the base and for Guantánamo, and…

“Never mind. At least we don’t have to wonder about Kitsune anymore. How did he escape Veritas’ mole-hunt?”

She didn’t ask how I knew. “
I think that Kitsune can transform into someone deep enough that he’s them. If he believes it, he can answer personal questions ‘truthfully’—makes you wonder if he could ever change so completely he forgot who he was. Anyway, he left a note that we’d find the real Ali vacationing in Bermuda with a faked memory of winning a vacation to a very exclusive and isolated spiritual retreat. Got to go
.”

“Go,” I laughed. It was all I could do. “See you soon.” I hung up and landed. There was still a lot to be done.

The last evacuees of Littleton were the eight militia members killed defending their town from the Wreckers.

All work stopped as the base chaplains and Littleton ministers conducted a very brief service before Naval Intelligence claimed their bodies; NavInt would provide cover stories for their deaths before sending them home to loved ones who would believe they died anywhere but here. I prayed with the Navy chaplains, and then got back to work.

The sky was dark when the Institute carefully repowered the Borromean rings and I and everyone else watched Littleton fade from sight. The crowd cheered, and then all we could do was wait.

Fortunately we didn’t wait long; the Garage’s translation system hadn’t been damaged by the Wreckers on their way through. Balini had gotten Phreak access to the system, which had allowed him to translate them through and then wreck the Garage’s computer system and power grid behind them. The Navy had finally let Shell help, at least with that, and with an installed generator and backup system from the base she was able to retune the translation system to the Littleton Pocket in minutes. An hour of testing and exploring later, they concluded the Littleton Pocket was stable as it had ever been and began shuttling us in.