Wearing the Cape 4: Small Town Heroes Read online

  I was so used to having Shell pop up with a snarky comeback at a moment like this that my thoughts spun, completely unbalanced.

  “Camp Necessity is a town, right?” I asked, feeling my way.

  He nodded. “Certainly a special town, but yes.”

  “Then there are civilians there. Bystanders. If… if whatever might happen happens, someone should be there for them. Not to protect projects or secrets. Someone needs to be there for them.”

  He tapped his chin some more (I wondered if he knew he was doing it or if it was his “tell”) then gave a quick smile. This time it looked more natural.

  “That will do.” Reaching into his suit jacket, he pulled out a silver disk and dropped it in my hand. “Veritas will brief you on your way there.” He rose and buttoned his jacket, nodded to his bodyguards, and they all vanished in an eye-twisting motion that seemed to yank them beyond the horizon without leaving the room.

  I turned the disk over, and almost dropped it.

  It was a deputy ’s badge.

  Episode Two

  Chapter Nine

  “Expertise is only good for what you know. The problem is that experts think they know more than they do about stuff that they just don’t.”

  From the journal of Hope Corrigan

  * * *

  As Iron Jack, Dad had been a deputized US Marshal for the first months after the Event. Then-President Kayle had federally deputized all the early capes as an end run around uncooperative state governments, but the temporary measure lapsed as things got organized and the Crisis Aid and Intervention team system made it unnecessary. And this wasn’t a marshal’s badge; it was a deputy sheriff’s badge for some place called Littleton.

  Turning the badge over and over in my hands, I realized that its back had been designed to clip to my left shoulder where my cape joined my suit. They’d made it for me.

  “Where you’re going, your CAI certification and militia commission are irrelevant,” Veritas guessed my thoughts. “You’ll need it for as long as you stay, which could be awhile.”

  “What is going on?” My voice sounded as small as I felt, and I cleared my throat. He shrugged.

  “How much do you know about the Most Serene Republic of Cuba?”

  “That it’s an island? That the Tyrant is a mysterious superhuman nobody knows anything about? Only what’s available in public news sources; Cuba hasn’t come up in Blackstone’s threat assessments.”

  “No, it wouldn’t.” Veritas made himself comfortable where his boss had sat. “The US government has never changed Cuba’s ‘rogue state’ status, but the Serene Republic’s new government doesn’t vocally threaten us or, so far as we have been able to determine, sponsor international terrorism aimed at America. But it does refuse to allow extradition, and it harbors international fugitives and their money and gives material support to superhuman revolutionaries as long as they’re not targeting the US.”

  “Why?”

  Veritas shrugged. “No idea. The Tyrant has pretty much transformed Cuba in the short time he’s ruled it. He’s liberalized its command economy to something approaching American capitalism. He released all of the old regime’s political prisoners, he allows freedom of the press, he’s made local government completely elective, and he’s opened Cuba’s borders for international observers, tourists, free trade. He even allows Cubans who want to, to emigrate. But he is a superhuman autocrat and dictator.”

  He actually smiled, a stunning first for him even if it wasn’t a nice smile.

  “At least he’s honest about that—he did name himself ‘The Tyrant’ after all. He’s just not a totalitarian tyrant; so long as you don’t break the stripped-down law code he’s imposed, you have nothing to worry about. Stay inside the lines he’s painted, and it’s almost libertarian. But break any serious criminal laws, or convince the Tyrant that you’re a threat, and you may find yourself visited by the Upright Men. If that happens you will disappear, and you may never be seen again. There is no legal due process and no appeal.”

  He opened a bottle of his own, a fruity soda I never would have guessed for his preference, and took a sip, lounging back.

  “So the Serene Republic prospers. It’s been less than two years since the Second Revolution brought capitalism and ‘democracy’ back in, and the average Cuban’s income has increased more than five hundred percent. Now they’re just poor instead of desperately poor, but unless something changes they’ll catch up with the rest of the developed world in a decade or two. Naturally, most Cubans fanatically support the Tyrant.”

  “Then—I don’t understand. If his government is popular, and he’s not threatening us, why are we worried about him?”

  “It’s simple, really. Camp Necessity is vital to our security, and it’s on Cuban soil. Its mere existence is an affront to Cuba’s sovereignty. The Tyrant has refused to recognize the Perpetual Lease, and we have no idea what he, or his Upright Men, are capable of if he decides to try and seize it.”

  He took a long drink, stretched out his legs. “In my opinion, the Tyrant’s playing a long game—he knows if he tried to take Camp Necessity then he’d be at war with us, but so long as we don’t know if he could actually take it then we’ll leave him alone so that he’s not encouraged to try. But he’s not the only threat, especially with the conference coming up, and he would benefit from any event that closed it. So here you are.”

  “So here we are,” I echoed, determined not to ask about this conference. “I need to speak to Blackstone.”

  “There’s a phone that can call out in front. Satellite uplink.”

  “Thank you.” Standing and making my way forward, past the hatch we’d come in through, I found a tiny room with a desk and screen. It had no instructions, just a pad, so I dialed Blackstone’s cell. One ring.

  “Astra, good. Just one moment.” A second later the screen lit as he forwarded the connection to his desk. “And how are you?” His smile fought with the deep lines on his brow, but I couldn’t read any anxiety there.

  “I’ve been deputized, sir, and might be gone awhile.” We were certainly being recorded, and I took a moment to match his calm. “Will that be possible, given everything?”

  He scowled thoughtfully, nodded. “The Sentinels are staying south for a few more days, but given your performance this morning I think that as long as we don’t allow you to disappear from Chicago we should be able to keep the public reassured.”

  “But I am gone.”

  “And I am a magician, my dear. Trust me on this.” He smoothed his beard, considering. “Public calm aside, I don’t think we need worry unduly about a few days.” He looked through the screen at me for a long moment. “Yes, we can cover your responsibilities here for the days you need. So, go with my blessing. And be careful. Hope? I would miss you should anything happen.”

  I nodded, swallowing around a suddenly tight throat. “Yes, sir. I’ll be careful.”

  “Until later, then. God bless.”

  He hung up, and I sat for a minute before making my way back to the lounge room. Veritas sat reading an epad, and he set it aside to show me the rest of the jet’s amenities, especially the freshly stocked pantry—but he wasn’t interested in speculation and wouldn’t tell me more about the camp. I made a roast beef and provolone sandwich and managed to eat most of it, but I spent most of the flight playing with my new badge.

  * * *

  I felt the damp air the instant they undogged the hatch, both inside and outside hatches this time since we’d landed. And the heat; Chicago was warming, but it was obviously sweaty shirt-sleeve weather in Cuba. Two Navy sailors boarded the plane and one opened a cabinet to heft what had to be Veritas’ luggage. The other—

  “Don’t—” I said too late to stop him and he fell over my go-bag when it didn’t come up. I helped him up, picked it up and slung it over my shoulder. “Sorry! Do you need to take it through security?”

  “No ma’am. You’re clear.” He shook himself, watching my bag like i
t might do something. I smiled apologetically and he shook his head again. “Right this way.”

  The Caribbean sun beat down on the runway as we climbed in the jeep that pulled up beside our ride. I half expected Shell to pop up once we pulled away from the jet, but she didn’t. How good was the government’s anti quantum-signaling tech, really? Back at the beginning of everything, the Teatime Anarchist had told me that he’d been carefully “seeding” the present with future-tech to speed scientific progress. Or maybe the government had actually managed to recover something from the Dark Anarchist’s secret lair in Nevada—or had they broken his network and found other bases? Of course it could always be Verne-tech at work, and probably was.

  And the silence in my head seriously bothered me; even when she’d been Galatea instead of just piloting her, Shell always been able to link with me through my earbug and mask-cam. Doctor Mendel would probably have something to say about my dependence when I got home.

  I expected them to take us to the big naval base I’d seen as we landed but instead they drove us towards the hills, in the opposite direction. Five minutes on a well-paved road took us past three checkpoints with nothing to see beyond them but fencing, pill-box barracks, and the next checkpoint. Passing the last dropped us into a valley with one long garage bunker at its near edge.

  We pulled into the open end, through doors big enough to pass loaded semi-trucks, and they passed us off to armed and armored marshals looking like the ones that had guarded Director Kayle on the jet. Our new escorts brought out pallets for our bags and whisked them away, then led us down a hallway with suspiciously heat-active walls. My super-duper vision picked out weird and changing infrared patterns along the entire hall and I snuck a glance at Veritas, but he kept his shades on even in here. The doors at the end opened before we got to them, letting us out into another bay, and I blinked. The marshals had loaded our stuff into the back of a dusty red… pickup truck? What?

  They’d parked the truck on top of a steel grid that sat flat on the concrete but was framed so that it could be raised if they needed to get at whatever sat underneath it. A matching grid hung suspended over the truck, holding up a machine that looked vaguely like a generator. Veritas accepted the keys from a marshal and waved me in.

  “Say cheese,” he said as soon as I closed the door.

  “What—” Flash! “Hey! What was that?” I blinked automatically, realized that the flash that had whited out the world hadn’t left any after-images burned into my eyes.

  But the bay we’d sat in was gone. The truck sat in the middle of a dusty road, and the only thing in sight was a big wood gate with a wood sign painted in big white letters that said “Welcome to Littleton.”

  I read the sign twice, looked around.

  “Gee, it’s kind of small. And unpopulated.”

  “Smartass.” Veritas actually laughed—one short “ha!” but I was too busy looking around to score a victory point. The air was dry, no hint of coastal humidity or smells, and almost as cool as Chicago’s. Beyond the gate the road wound over a low hill, and I firmly sat on the impulse to scramble out of the truck and launch myself to get a better view—somehow I knew I wouldn’t see the blue Caribbean, but I had no idea what I’d see and it was unnerving. Veritas climbed out and opened the gate, then got back in and started the truck. He pulled far enough forward to close the gate behind us then drove us over the hill, and now I was well and truly freaked.

  Well, there’s the water tower.

  Big and white and proudly painted with the US Marshals seal, it stood over a town that could have been lifted out of the Iowa heartland. A grid of tree-lined streets with shops and community buildings surrounding a town square in the center, it looked like the kind of small but close-packed township laid out before cars came along and replaced feet for urban transit.

  “Population five thousand, give or take,” Veritas supplied.

  I nodded. “Uhuh.” It was like staring at a Thomas Kinkade painting. Or a Christmas town in a snow globe, minus the snow. “Does it have seasons?”

  “Yes. Midwestern and like clockwork. You can set your calendar by them.” Downshifting with a grind of gears, he drove us down the hill and into town.

  Up close it didn’t feel any less surreal. Evening shadows angled across sleepy streets, and even Main Street wasn’t busy enough to merit a stoplight. People we passed waved. I waved back; it was so completely and utterly Mayberry that I was hearing the whistled Andy Griffith theme music in my ears.

  No, I was actually hearing something; a high, thin percussion barely on the edge of my super-duper hearing’s aural range. So soft that birdsong drowned it out, it came from everywhere—or from the odd looking lampposts, white globes on top of white poles under wide white metal bonnets. Besides the cars, they were the only things that didn’t look like they belonged in the 1930s.

  Right, officially weird now.

  “You can take off the mask,” Veritas said. “The US Marshals Department contracted with a big Merlin-type for an added layer of security. Photographs or video files that might identify Littleton or anyone in it just turn into gray screen or fogged shots when taken out of here—you won’t be spreading images of your naked face around.”

  “I’ll think about it.” I looked out at the sleepy streets. “What am I doing here?”

  He gave me his usual bland look, but his lip twitched. “What do you mean?”

  “If this was a Sentinels operation, I’d have had a mission briefing by now! Not ‘Here’s a deputy’s badge, Astra’. What am I supposed to be doing here?”

  “You invited yourself, remember? Director Kayle just thought you should have something to do while you’re here. Idle hands and all that.”

  “Yes, but—” I shut my mouth. The man was laughing behind his poker face and what had I expected? To be shown right to a situation room, read in on Camp Necessity’s security measures, handed a role in their threat-response plans? Littleton had to have the best security and best security people available to the government and I was just an independently contracted cape with less than two years’ experience. And I’d had a dream, one really short on details; what could I offer beyond “I think something’s coming?”

  I was lucky they’d even let me in.

  We turned a corner and drove down a street that ended in open gates, brick pillars topped by an ironwork arch. The plaque declared the redbrick and white trim buildings beyond to be the Harper Institute. The main building we parked in front of wasn’t that big, only three stories, but with more buildings behind it. It looked like a tiny but very elite university.

  We got out and reached I back for my bag.

  “Leave it.” Veritas squinted at the building in the late afternoon sun.

  “Unofficially? You’re the gun in the nightstand, the fire extinguisher in the car trunk. Officially? You’re here to consult with the Oroboros Research Group.”

  “The what now?”

  “The Oroboros Research Group. Your Teatime Anarchist adventures exposed you to future knowledge, which means you’re aware of their field of research. Besides, you know another member of the group already. C’mon, let’s get you introduced.”

  I stumbled and almost took a chunk out of the curb with my foot. What?

  Chapter Ten

  “I have a vampire for a friend and another who’s a computer AI and her twin. I’ve talked to time-travelers and been to space. Now I’ve been to a town that isn’t there. How strange can the world get? Oh let me count the ways.”

  From the journal of Hope Corrigan.

  * * *

  The inside didn’t match the outside, but the chrome and smart-screen glass entry hall was the least interesting thing about it; the most interesting thing was the lady who greeted me. She was a cat.

  Well, not a cat, not even a smiling Cheshire Cat, more an anime cat-girl except that the Japanese fashion for anthromorphs was big-eyed and cutesy. This lady was what would happen if you took one of the performers from Andrew Lloyd
Webber’s most successful musical and put her in a business suit: a corporate Jellicle Cat.

  “Good morning, Astra.” She shook my hand without hesitation. “I’m Director Althea Shaw. Call me Ali.” Her slightly inhuman features made it hard to tell if she was happy to see me, but despite her welcome her voice sounded flat. Opening the folder in her other hand, she handed me a gold security pass to hang around my neck.

  Veritas abandoned me to her care with a parting “Astra.” I blinked, watching him walk away until Ali cleared her throat. She led me to the elevator bay, a row of glass-sided tubes next to an open well in the center of the entry hall. We rode the elevator cab down three floors; through the glass I could see that each floor opened to the well with hallways branching off in a starburst pattern.

  “We stacked the complex deep instead of high to preserve the small town feel outside,” she explained when I looked down and tried to count the levels below us. “Twelve stories deep, most of the facility is underground.”

  “How long has it been here?”

  “Seven years. It started with the labs, but expanded for data storage and then for the think-tanks and research groups. We almost held the Omega Operation briefings here—we did design and build the Gungnir Platform in-house.”

  That got my attention. “Was that safe?” The anti-missile Gungnirs I’d helped deliver to target in last year’s attempted Electro-Magnetic-Pulse attack—a near save the public still knew nothing about—had been nuclear-bomb pumped gamma lasers. Small nukes, but still nukes.

  “Safe enough; we tested them elsewhere. Right this way.” She took me down a wide glass-walled hall. Everyone we passed gave her a nod and me a look but left us alone. Stretches of the walls were frosted, but others were clear and looked into conference rooms and offices.