Wearing the Cape 4: Small Town Heroes Read online

  “What’s happening?”

  “We’ve opened the shelters. The blinking ones are the armories—just about one in ten of our citizens are military or retired and a bunch like to keep their hands in. Your friends are about to get a welcome from close to two hundred veterans.”

  “The battle-hardened kind.” Angel had opened a closet and pulled out the big tri-barreled dinosaur gun I’d first seen her with, and stood snapping on a heavy set of blue body armor; for the first time I wondered if she might be an Ajax-type. The touch of a button brought the familiar clicks and latches as doors and windows sealed themselves up again.

  “The question is, what do they want?” Shell—Shelly—asked from my earbug.

  “Shelly? Where are you?”

  “I was home. Now I’m headed for the Institute. The place is one big bunker underground and it’s got stuff I need.”

  “Shelly, no—the Institute has to be their target!”

  “Well duh. But it’s got backdoors, Director Ali will make sure we don’t get mousetrapped.”

  Sheriff Deitz cleared his throat. “Would you mind sharing?”

  “Shelly— ” I took a breath, recited an access code. Angel did something on her computer, and Shelly’s voice came through the main board’s speakers.

  “—to get to the Oroboros’ files,” Shelly was saying. “Best source of current superhuman intel we’ve got and we need to know our enemy.”

  The lights on the main board blinked out and the emergency lights outside died.

  “What just happened?”

  Angel started swearing, hitting keys. “You said one might be Phreak, the Wrecker’s hacker? Well he just locked down our security systems. We’re blind.”

  “What about the emergency system?”

  She hit more keys. “He’s denying access, but it looks like he can’t use any of the system himself—he can’t use our cameras or send out the stand-down. Everybody’s still headed for safety.”

  “And I’m still here,” Shelly said. “So he hasn’t gotten to the Institute’s secure communications network.”

  “Okay.” Sheriff Deitz abandoned the board. “So just what are we up against?”

  “Their strongest guy is Gantry—Dozer,” I said before Shelly could start. “I think. I’m only guessing about two of them, and even if the maybes are Phreak and Drop then I’ve got nothing on the last two. And there could be more in the vans.”

  “So, the ones you’re pretty sure of?”

  “They’re all at least A Class, naturally or because the Ascendant boosted them. Besides Dozer, who’s a straight up Ajax-type, you’ve got Twist. He’s a powerful telekinetic who moves things with his mind, but he’s got zero range—he has to be touching it; he uses his TK to support his armor so that it works like military-grade powered armor, and he has a spool of heavy carbon-weave cable attached to each arm that he projects up to thirty feet and manipulates like whips. Or super-strong steel tentacles.”

  “Got it. Next?”

  “Balz.” I had to think about him. “Also a telekinetic, with a global effect within his range. He’s capable of moving and manipulating dozens of objects at once—kind of a telekinetic super-juggler. He wears lighter armor, but he uses his TK to maintain a cloud of flying softball-sized spheres around him. It’s anybody’s guess what each sphere can do. I’ve seen them used as flash-bangs, but others have worked as tasers and sensors. They’re all high tech, and for all we know some might be Verne-tech.”

  Angel just smiled, turning back to her closet. “Target practice. Cool.”

  “My two guesses are Phreak and Drop. You’ve seen some of what Phreak can do, and I’m surprised Shelly’s able to talk to us—his specialty is creating signals dead-zones.”

  “We have a more ‘robust’ system than most.”

  I nodded. “Drop is their driver. He’s a teleporter, able to ‘port multi-ton payloads, but his targeting range is zero so he has to be on top of whatever he’s moving.” I chewed my lip. “I have no idea how he’s going to get them out of… Oh, crap.”

  “Crap?” Angel lowered the mini-howitzer she was checking and laughed. “Watch your language, missy!”

  Sheriff Deitz folded his arms. “What is it?”

  “Hope means that the only way out of here is to cross the boundary and drop out, and since we stopped the Four Horsemen for all they know every gun from the base is going to be waiting for them out there. But if Drop is their driver, to use him for the getaway they have to shut down the extra-reality pocket that is Littleton.”

  “And they’d be insane not to use Drop as their driver,” I finished. “A strong enough Atlas-type could fly everyone out, but could he outfly the Navy’s jets and missiles and whatever crazy Verne-tech defenses the base has? But Drop can ‘port them anywhere with a range of miles, so they could have a safe-house in Cuba.”

  “More likely offshore, even a local fishing boat would do it. They could have a string of boats ready for them to leap-frog to the Bahamas or Florida. We’d be looking for a needle in a haystack halfway to the horizon.”

  “Either way, unless they’ve completely neutralized the navy base then they have to at least take the ground floor of the Institute and shut down the whatsit rings.”

  “Borromean rings,” Angel supplied. “And the Institute is covered by an Interdiction Field, a Verne-tech defense against teleportation. They’re going to have to fight their way in.”

  “So, they’ve burned their bridges. No retreat, got it.” Sheriff Deitz pulled out his cell, hit a number. “Carl? We’ve got news for your boys. Yes, this is for real. And it’s going to get interesting.” He moved the cell away from his face. “Astra, I’m going to need you back in the air. You’re the only really mobile pair of eyes we have left.”

  I pulled up my hood and got going.

  * * *

  I tried not to think about Atifa, or about Shelly heading right for what had to be the point of the Wrecker’s attack. Or wonder what had happened to Jacky. Brick and the Three Horsemen had to have been a planned diversion for the base—did that mean the Wreckers had come in without a diversion? But if they had, they’d still have blown the translation system in the Garage behind them to seal the gate; we weren’t getting any help from outside.

  “Shelly?”

  “Yeah?”

  “What do they want? And can they get it?”

  She didn’t answer for a long minute. “I still don’t know. There’s so much going on here, stuff even I don’t know about. But the most dangerous stuff is outside, at the base. Phreak isn’t getting into our systems, not without taking the ground floor and seizing a terminal. To carry anything out of here they’d still have to get into the Well, and the battleship-plate armor hatches have all closed up. While they’re getting through that, everything here can be burned, dumped, scrubbed from the computers—that’s what everyone here is doing now, prepping to “wreck” whatever the Wreckers could steal.” I could hear the mounting frustration in her voice; she hated not knowing why.

  “They should have come in fast and hard, before we had time to get in and close up! Then they could have gotten something so why—”

  Time to think of something else. I looked down at the town. “Tell me about the Littleton Militia.”

  “Um. They’re a heavy infantry battalion, two companies divided into eight fire platoons. Lieutenant Colonel Carleton Scott is their commander.”

  “Any supersoldiers?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then they’re toast.” I should have stayed on the puzzle; now my stomach knotted and I blinked fast to clear my eyes.

  “Probably.” She didn’t sound any happier. “It’s going to be bad.”

  I could see the soldiers by their body heat, spreading out from the armories. It looked like the colonel was assigning a main force to the Institute, but the rest were grouping into coordinated teams that could move to cover the shelters as needed. Some of them helped straggling citizens along, but it looked like nearly
everyone was safely in. Looking back up the hill I couldn’t see the vans yet.

  “They’ve made one mistake already. They should have come straight in after translation, they’d be inside the Institute by now and we’d be fighting our way in to them.”

  “Maybe they didn’t know. Think they’ll make more mistakes?”

  “More? I hope so. Enough?”

  She didn’t answer that and I didn’t say anything until “There they go.”

  “What?”

  “Our guys just launched drones.” An even dozen rose from the grounds and yards around the Institute. Quadracopters, they spread out to cover the nearest streets. “It looks like Phreak isn’t getting a total blackout this time—”

  The drones started disappearing in bright flashes and Sheriff Deitz cut in. “Astra, what’s going on up there?”

  “I don’t know! Something is… I think Drop is sending Balz’s exploding spheres up to take the drones! Where…” Now I saw the watching spheres, a swarm of dark and cold objects above the trees halfway into town. “Balz and Drop are in town! Halfway between me and the lake!”

  “That’s around Fillmore and Vine, damn it! How— Drop could have moved one of the vans, couldn’t he?”

  “Maybe both—he doesn’t have to go with them.” Below me a couple of platoons peeled away from their positions to head for the streets beneath the swarm. The sphere cloud shrank, most of them sinking below the trees, and then the remaining spheres dropped like they had been dropped. Like their puppeteer had abandoned them.

  “And I think they just ‘ported again,” I told Deitz. Looking around the sky I could only see four lonely Littleton drones left.

  “Keep watch for the spheres.”

  “Roger.” Would I keep both vans together if I was the Wreckers? Or maybe hopscotch, ‘port one forward then ‘port up to it when it reported clear? No, I’d…

  A downtown business blew up in a red fireball, throwing burning pieces of wall and roof into air the buildings around it.

  “Sheriff! Is anybody hurt?”

  It took Deitz a moment. “Nothing on platoon chatter, but it’s close to one of the shelters. They’re moving.” He didn’t say who and I didn’t care. I dove hard, looking for the source of the explosion.

  I found it. It found me—I heard the roar a fraction of a second before the rocket hit me, catching me in the chest, and exploded. The second impact was the ground, a backyard with a hedge and a swing set.

  “Hope!” “Astra!” Both my current wingmen chimed in.

  “I’m okay! Just stunned.” I shook it off, climbing to my feet. Looking down, I groaned. My chameleon-cloth suit was shredded, I was about to engage, and I’d left Malleus in the Sheriff’s Office. I took off, but swung over the hedge and flew low around the house I prayed was unoccupied—and jinxed barely in time to miss taking the next rocket. It exploded against a young oak that wasn’t going to get any older.

  “Woah! Astra!” The voice cut into my earbug, open channel.

  “That’s some piece of camo-gear you had—too bad it didn’t hide you from lidar!” An air-ripping swarm of armor-piercing rounds tracked across my chest and kicked me into the wall of the house. A third rocket punched me through it but not before I saw who was hitting me. I knew the Scooby armor, knew the voice, and knew who’d let the Wreckers into the Garage.

  “Balini? Why?”

  “Because I can! They’ll give me power! Do you have any idea how much it blows to enlist, go through hell in boot camp, get a breakthrough and wind up being barely stronger and tougher than human? To be nothing more than a freaking weapon platform?”

  “You don’t—” I bounced off the ground dodging his next shots by luck, put my back to an unshredded tree, and saw him. He stood in the middle of the street now, in full Scooby armor, shoulder mounts clicking to track me. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “And you don’t have to move, Astra. Look, I’ve painted you.” He had; three red dots made a tight triangle on my battered breastplate. “You’re a nice kid. Sit this out, it’ll be over soon. You move, I’ll end you.”

  He turned his head, the dots not moving. “And that goes for the rest of you!” he shouted at—I guessed—Colonel Scott’s men. “I hear a ping, she’s gone!”

  “Hope, move!” Shelly screamed in my ear. “Do something!”

  I heaved a laugh. “Sorry, Shelly. I’ve got noth—” Not true. My right hand crept in from the tree, along my hip and now I tried not to breath. My armor’s pocket sat by the lower catch, and in it… “Shelly, I need a D.”

  “How big?”

  “Big.”

  Two heartbeats later a Littleton drone crashed into the street between us as I grabbed the challenge coin in my pocket, flew, and threw. The same shape as my old throwing disks, the challenge coin cracked his helmet as his first salvo roared by under me, laser-lock broken by the drone. Before he could do more than stagger back I dropped on him with a full gravity assist.

  Armor shrieked and crumpled as I grabbed and smacked him down face-first to get at the weapon mounts. Hooking his helmet, I popped it from the suit’s neck ring and found the release-catches that had to be there. The thump of boots on pavement almost launched me until I saw the fire-platoon sprinting my way.

  “I’ve got him!”

  “And we’ll keep him.” A young corporal in blue jeans and armor pulled up beside me and saluted, holding up a set of Blacklock restraints. Another produced a sandman pack. Balini swore incoherently, his bloody face twisted, and I wondered if I’d broken his jaw.

  “Okay then.” I yielded my prisoner, keeping him pushed against the cracked pavement as they cuffed him.

  “You won’t win!” He ground out before they hit him with the extra strength sleepy-time pack. “You can’t keep them from getting what they want!” And he slumped.

  “Well that was clichéd,” Shelly commented.

  “But not wrong.” I stood, looking around. Half the businesses and homes on the street were on fire, and I heard explosions from two directions. It was happening. It was all happening and there was no cavalry riding to the rescue. The Wreckers had brought more in the vans, maybe every Scooby, maybe more wild-cards, and there was nothing, no plan…

  I looked at my left hand, started laughing.

  “What? Hope, are you cracking?”

  I fumbled to pull off my glove. “She said not to take it off until I had to!”

  “Take what off?”

  “This!” I got the glove off. Fingers bare, I stared at the moonmoth silk ring for a breath, then grabbed one of the ends and pulled the bow open, yanking it off my hand. It fluttered to the ground.

  “No eyes, here, you’re going to have to tell me.”

  “Ozma’s ring,” I said weakly. It just lay there on the ground.

  “Still not getting it.”

  “She told me I was traveling, gave me a lace ring. So what—”

  The tornado arrived.

  Chapter Twenty Six

  “I have the best friends!”

  From the Journal of Hope Corrigan

  * * *

  Tsuris’ tornado paused over the lake, thickening its twisting water spout while spinning off tiny figures and one…dragon?

  “That’s not possible!” Shelly yelled.

  “That’s Ozma! She came from an extra-reality world—why can’t she get into another one? Especially with Tsuris’ tornado to ride! Wait, how are you seeing this?”

  “My neural link with Shell! The bio-seed in my head didn’t have time to fully grow into the link before I moved to Littleton, but we’re together now! She’s here!”

  “You bet your sweet booties I’m here.” Shell ghosted into existence beside me. She wore a black athletic shirt that read Orwell’s Little Sister in white. “Ozma kitted up a poppet powered link to cover the extra-reality leap to you and Shelly, and Vulcan fabricated a quantum-signaling booster to cut through the base’s interference field—didn’t you wonder how I could talk to you at the ba
se yesterday when before I couldn’t reach you unless you were in Guantánamo?”

  I mentally face-palmed. How could I have missed the significance of Shell’s “shipping” commentary about Jacky and the Master of Ceremonies and Darren and me last night?

  “And I’m here flying Galatea, too! So, see you! Have to conserve bandwidth!” She popped like a rainbow soap bubble, showing off. I looked up at the night sky, just on time for the rain to hit.

  It hit hard and I could guess how; Tsuris was scattering the funneled lake water into instant water-laden cloud—he’d probably brought a big load from Lake Michigan too—and it was like being under a rainshower head. I doubted he could cover more than a few square blocks, but that was all he needed to put out the fires. I couldn’t see anyone in the rain, then spotted Megaton’s signature flare arrowing down towards me. He roared in, went vertical to kill his descent, cut his blast and dropped to the steaming pavement in a showy three point foot-knee-fist landing.

  Megaton had lost all of what he’d called his Geek Weight over the last months of hard training and looked more like a track and field athlete now than a wrestler, but even if he’d still been soft and round with his first-day weight, standing there in red and black leather he was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. He pushed his goggles to the top of his helmet and looked me over.

  “Hi, boss. Where’s your cape?”

  I could feel myself grinning like an idiot. “Back at the office with my big metal club. Let’s go get it.”

  Shelly fed Shell/Galatea a grid-map of the town and the others arrived as we did. Crash and Grendel rode Terreflore, sitting behind Kindrake. Tsuris and Galatea flew in above them, Galatea using a shoulder-harnessed quadricopter wing I’d never seen before—two interlocked propeller rings to each side. She ditched the wing attachment on landing, leaning it against the wall and stepped up to stand beside me. Her blue and silver chrome form, slick with rain, shown in the streetlamps.

  “Where’s Ozma?”

  “Sorry boss.” Megaton shrugged regretfully. “She couldn’t send Tsuris’ tornado and ride it at the same time. Said it’s like flying a kite—one of you has to stay on the ground.”