“Ah, fear. The most delectable of all emotions.”
-Jonathan Crane, Scarecrow
Erin Bantor waited all of six minutes after getting off of the phone with Lester Collins before excusing himself for the remainder of the day’s session on the floor of Congress. He would not be missed; in his years of being a Representative, he’d learned that no less than five members could be gone during any non-voting session and go utterly unnoticed. More than that, and a few heads would turn, notes be taken.
Bantor didn’t belong to any major committees, however, except for the Hero Action Committee. Truth be told, that was the only one he considered worth bothering with. After all, it was the Hero Action Committee that had inspired him to run for a congressional seat in the first place, infatuated with the idea of working side-by-side with the superheroes he’d grown up worshipping. Some of them had turned out to be disappointments, men and women who relied on technological gadgetry and trickery to perform their heroic deeds. With time, however, he’d come to appreciate even these ordinary, mortal human beings.
Not that he would ever see any of the as the equals of the likes of Captain Righteous.
Ah, now there might be a sore spot, he thought as he got into the back seat of his Lincoln Town Car and instructed his driver to take him over to HAC headquarters. Bantor placed a call to Devereux, who assured the congressman that all of the other members of the committee were still close to hand and readily accessible. By late evening, everybody would be gathered, and they could make contact with Aberdeen Tyrannus and their own agent, Lester Collins.
Bantor still held onto the hope that Captain Righteous would show them that Tyrannus had lost some of his faculties, that the old super-scientist had, in point of fact, lost his mind. He could envision it now, the Captain in his gleaming scale-like armor on the communication screen, the drone that Tyrannus had managed to somehow bring back to operation lying in a heap behind the stalwart hero. Tyrannus would be seated behind him in that automated chair of his, drooling perhaps and muttering incoherently to himself. ‘No troubles here, sirs,’ Righteous would say with a sad, knowing smile. ‘But it breaks a man’s heart to see this once-feared man brought so low by the ravages of time.’
Collins hadn’t been quite so eloquent or comic bookish in his speech, but Bantor allowed himself these little adjustments in his daydreams. And really, why shouldn’t he? Nobody else was privy to these fantasies of his, so there could be no harm in letting them play on the screen of his internal, mental theater.
As the car pulled up in front of the long, sleek building that housed the Hero Action Committee and all of its associated staff and commanding personnel, Bantor hesitated for just a moment. Is it possible that Righteous has been taken in by Tyrannus’s bogus science? Or that he’s been compromised, forced to speak on the madman’s behalf? Surely not, he hoped, hopping out of the back of the car and sprinting inside the building.
Paranoia rarely dug its heels into the turf of Erin Bantor’s mind, but when it did, it did so with the precision of an all-star running back. He didn’t bother checking in with Devereux at the mission office, instead making a bee-line for the conference room and closing the solid double doors behind him. He swooped around the long, solid table, and pulled an ashtray over towards himself. From his briefcase he took out a pack of cigarettes, drew one out, and lit it, taking the smoke deep into his lungs.
He would wait for the rest of the council to get there, but in the meantime, he had to think over possible solutions to dealing with Aberdeen Tyrannus, especially if Captain Righteous had been convinced to join with the supervillain. A good thing we have Pitch on hand, him and the Major, thought Bantor. He didn’t want to think about having to deploy them, but in the end, he would do what he had to in order to defend his great nation.
To defend his organization, and his position in it.
Abe continued leading Lester around the underground facility on his dark red Segway, the hero following on a matching blue one. The super-scientist had teleported down with him about fifteen minutes after their conversation up in the house’s basement lab, revealing the two-wheeled riding devices in a cabinet in the receiving teleporter room.
Before they’d started touring, Abe had taken a few minutes to explain to Lester that he did, indeed, have another untouched facility hidden under the desert in Nevada, approximately fifty miles south of Las Vegas. The base siphoned power off of The Strip, drawing power from every single business and governmental structure through hundreds of miles of cords and cables run under the city. Ho wever, Abe hadn’t
They began with the primary staging area just beyond the security blast doors leading into and out of the teleporter chamber. The staging area itself was the size of a football stadium, with enormous archways leading to the other various stations of the facility. All of his bases had been constructed with the same basic design structure in mind, allowing for efficient distribution of henchmen, assault vehicles, and other equipment required for carrying out his campaigns and schemes.
Lester recognized the general design, having infiltrated several of Abe’s facilities over the decades. As Abe led him around, the only real differences he could recall from the last base he’d been in was that the henchmen’s barracks and research and development labs had been put in opposite branches off of the main staging area. Lester still found himself impressed with the level of technology and engineering that went into this place, especially considering it was built in the late ‘70’s.
The state of disrepair of the drones, however, brought reality down on the two men with a finality that few other things could. Abe might have felt depressed about the situation, but the group of henchmen that George Farris had sent him appeared to all be professionals. The only one he hadn’t met yet was this Kurt Boe fellow, who was supposed to be in charge of the entire detachment.
Abe didn’t worry about not yet meeting the man. After all, it spoke to the degree of Boe’s professionalism that he had taken to ensuring his current employer’s safety and operational stability first and foremost. He only hoped Boe’s efforts proved effective enough to give them the time they might need in the event of a full-scale assault by HAC’s forces.
He brought Lester finally back around to the primary staging area, long, neon green strips of light glowing low in the floor, to allow them to see where they were heading. “There’s never been any need to keep this place fully equipped, you see. That’s why I didn’t take you over to the testing lab. Simply put, there isn’t one in this facility. Nor is there an operational test lab at the base in Nevada, though all of the necessary monitoring equipment will be up and running there in short order.”
“You have someone helping you already,” Lester asked as they parked the Segways and headed back up onto the teleporter pad. Abe threw the switch, and they were surrounded by a field of shimmering green light. Lester flinched as once more he felt his entire body engulfed by a sudden chill, his molecules literally being torn apart and transferred instantaneously through layers of matter and energy to the receiving pad in the basement of Abe’s house aboveground. As the device reassembled his body, the aging superhero felt the queasy urge to vomit clutch his stomach and bowels, but he held himself still, even as Tyrannus, used to the technology, sauntered easily down off of the teleporter pad.
“Yes, an old friend by the name of Calvin Rogers. He’s quite the engineer and computer whiz, and he’s helped me a lot over the years. If it wasn’t for him, this smaller compound wouldn’t even be up and running at this level.”
“Which is what, exactly,” Lester asked.
“Sixty percent, roughly.” They moved together into the command chamber, where they sat at the main console, facing one another. Abe pressed a yellow button on the console, summoning the serving armature. “Two more coffees,” he said to the device, which drew away up into the ceiling, only to return with a twin, each one holding a fresh blue mug. The two old enemies sipped their drinks quietly, each one reminiscing on days gone by, when they had indeed been trying to destroy one another.
Neither one spoke for a while. Abe looked around the chamber, memories flowing past his mind’s eye as he gazed at the various machines and tools arranged around the room in a neat, precise order. I am a creature of habit, he thought, for the much larger command chamber in the underground base had been arranged in much the same fashion. The only differences he saw were scale and number of instruments present.
A walkie-talkie attached to his belt, given over to him by one of Big Three’s men, crackled and chirped as a voice came through, bringing Abe and Lester out of their reverie. “Kurtis Boe to Dr. Tyrant, Kurtis Boe to Dr. Tyrant, over,” said the voice. This was Boe’s first contact with the super-scientist, who unclipped the radio from his belt and clicked it on.
“This is Abe, Dr. Tyrant, that is, over,” he replied.
“We have incoming movement from several HAC agents on foot, it would appear that they’re tightening the perimeter around the property, sir,” Boe reported in a calm, measured clip. “I have remote command of their vehicles at the ready. What do you advise, sir?” Abe looked to Lester, who grinned and gave a nod.
“Well, those boys on foot will just have to accept that their rides have abandoned them,” Abe said into the radio. “Proceed with remote removal of HAC vehicles, Mr. Boe. If at all possible, try to avoid causing any pileups on the roads, over.”
“10-4,” Boe replied, and the connection went silent. Abe rolled his chair over to the console, and hurriedly brought up perimeter cameras in the area, including the hovering reconnaissance drones.
“Well, Lester, would you care to join me for a show,” he asked over his shoulder, looking up at the multiple-camera view on the screen above them.
“Should be entertaining,” Lester replied, pulling up his chair beside his once-nemesis.
The first panicked phone call came in approximately two minutes after Senator Wolfe joined Bantor in the conference room, the first of the other HAC committee members to arrive. His cellular trilled, the one he reserved for only a handful of operatives. He checked the caller ID window, but the caller wasn’t Collins, as he’d hoped. The name read ‘Red Leader’, and he felt his stomach twist in a knot. Had something happened at Tyrannus’s house? Had they gone in without his go-ahead? He flipped the phone open and pressed it to his ear, holding one silencing finger up to stay any questions from Wolfe.
“Bantor here,” he said.
“Sir, it’s Red Leader, something’s happened,” the man on the other end of the line nearly shouted. Bantor could hear wind whipping past the other phone’s mouthpiece, and rushed breathing, as if the man were running. “I don’t know who did it, or how, but someone’s taken control of the vans! They’re being, driven, out of the operation zone!”
“Get them back,” Bantor almost shrieked, his voice coming out high-pitched, strangled.
“I’m, trying that, right now, sir,” Red Leader replied, speaking between each lungful of air. There then came a scream, followed by what Bantor recognized as the screeching of brakes and a solid impact of metal-on-metal.
“Red Leader? Red Leader?” Silence for what felt like forever, then the operative cursing vehemently away from the mouthpiece.
“Sir, it’s team three, their van swerved into a lamp pole! I think Norris is injured, I just saw him get thrown from the side door on impact! Oh, sweet Christ, his leg, oh my God,” Red Leader gibbered. “Sir, I’ve got to go, I have men down!” Bantor closed the phone on the quiet click of a disconnection, looking at his right hand, in which sat the cigarette he’d lit only a minute before the phone rang.
It wobbled back and forth in a hand trembling so powerfully that he felt like he was looking at the hand of a man with Parkinson’s disease. He couldn’t formulate a solid thought, couldn’t get a grip on his nerves. Had Tyrannus managed this, or did he already have someone working for him, someone with the skill set necessary to remotely commandeer multiple vehicles at one time?
A better question: did Righteous know what had happened? Surely, if the superhero knew that Dr. Tyrant had just actively brought harm to HAC agents, he wouldn’t just sit idly by, right?
As General Farat stormed into the conference room, Erin Bantor realized with a chill that he didn’t know the answer to that particular question.
“That could have gone better,” Abe growled at Boe over the radio.
“I’m sorry, sir, but I took my eyes off of that unit’s camera for just a couple of seconds. That’s all it takes. Not to be too frank about it, sir, but these things happen in our world. People get hurt, people die, over.”
“Our world, Mr. Boe,” Abe asked in a snarl over the radio. Lester put a steadying hand on his shoulder and patted him, a friendly gesture that, somehow, didn’t seem out of place.
“Heroes and villains, sir. And henchmen. We live in a different world, over.” For a moment, Abe said nothing, remained perfectly still as the wheels in his mind turned. When he spoke again, his voice came out thick, heavy with both age, and the weight of everything he’d done over the years.
“We do, Mr. Boe. Unfortunately, what happens in our world spills over and affects everybody else’s world. I’m shutting off the radio on this end,” he said, turning the knob until the device clicked off. He set it heavily on the command console, and looked deep into Lester’s eyes. “When they call, remember this, Lester; Boe wouldn’t be here if those men had listened to me in the first place. If they hadn’t sent agents to my neighborhood, there wouldn’t be agents hurt, or in danger.”
“I know that, Abe,” Collins replied softly. “They chose not to trust me with coming down here on my own. I don’t have to obey their orders regarding you anymore. I decided that after that first cup of coffee you offered me.” They might have remained in a companionable silence then for a long time, but a harsh trilling sound issued from the communication console that he’d brought down from his bedroom.
“You know, I’m not much looking forward to this,” Abe confided quietly.
“I’m not either, Abe.”
“Do you know what you’re going to say to them, precisely?”
“Not precisely, but I have a few ideas,” Collins replied. “Listen, if they don’t take it well, this place is going to be overrun with whatever backup they’ve got waiting outside of the primary perimeter,” Lester said in a conspiratorial whisper. Abe blinked rapidly at him, caught off-guard. “It’s standard operating procedure for the last ten years or so. I know it sounds bad, but do you think the crew your friend sent you will be enough to hold off sixty or seventy armed men?” Abe nodded, quickly patching the information along by clicking his radio on and repeating Lester’s warning to Boe.
“I understand, and tell Captain Righteous that we appreciate the head’s up. I’ll get Big Three and his boys set up for incoming at five-hundred yards. Doctor, do you want them to go live round, over?”
“Negative, I want them kept on rubber bullets and tranquilizers, stun batons in the event that hostiles should close to melee range. No lethal weaponry unless desperate measures are required, do you understand? Over.”
“I copy,” Boe replied. Abe switched off the radio again, stood up, and straightened his lab coat. He adjusted his glasses and bow tie, Collins standing up next to him. He patted Abe on the shoulder, took a step towards the monitor with its top-mounted camera. The drone had done a spectacular job of putting the equipment back into working order. Given that it was an older, basic worker drone, Lester wondered what sort of machines Abe could put together nowadays.
He hoped that if there was something more up-to-date in terms of combat drones, that Abe wasn’t holding them all in reserve in the underground facility, or in Vegas. He looked to the house drone, nodded, and the man-shaped machine reached down and flipped the ‘on’ switch upward.
Lester Collins and Aberdeen Tyrannus, once arch-foes, now stood together, facing the commanding council of the Hero Action Committee.
Oh, shit, Bantor thought as soon as the pair showed up on the oversized monitor screen. This does not look like an apprehension. He remained calm, however, composed as he stood opposite them behind the table. He offered a beatific smile to the pair, then licked his lips. “Captain Righteous, you wanted to speak with the whole of the committee, and so we’re all here. What is it you wanted to speak with us about, Captain?”
“Gentlemen, I’ve had the opportunity since early this morning to go over all of the information that Dr. Tyrannus has gathered. Now, he’s explained everything that I had trouble with, which thankfully wasn’t a whole lot. I reviewed the numbers, watched the simulations. Congressman Bantor, what Dr. Tyrannus was trying to tell you before was true. If something isn’t done about the melting of the polar ice caps, our world will be flooded, and every trace of life that doesn’t live in the ocean will be wiped out.”
The HAC council sat in stunned silence for nearly a full minute, until finally General Farat smashed a tight fist on the tabletop, screaming at the top of his lungs, “You pathetic has-been! You’re going to be tricked by a weasel like him? After all of the years you spent putting a stop to his plans, his schemes? You’ve lost your edge, Righteous!”
“Now sir, I have to respectfully disagree,” said Righteous calmly, but before he could go any further, Bantor put a hand out to stay him. Righteous stood at parade rest, head cocked slightly to one side to hear the congressman out.
“Captain Righteous, we sent you out there to get a grasp of the situation, to try and reason with Dr. Tyrant.”
“Tyrannus,” the Captain interjected.
“No, Tyrant,” Bantor said, his voice clipped and tight. “As of right now, Aberdeen Tyrannus is hereby classified as reactivated, under the known name of Dr. Tyrant. As for you,” he sneered, jabbing a finger at Captain Righteous. “You are hereby stripped of your honor, and your ranking with this organization. You are hereby to be listed as a traitor, Captain Righteous, unless you subdue that man and apprehend him right now!” Righteous turned towards Abe, and the two whispered back and forth with one another for a moment, before turning back towards the camera, now standing side-by-side.
“Because the Captain respects the Hero Action Committee’s original mission so much,” Abe began, pushing his glasses back up his nose, “he has asked that I relay the following statement. The Freeze Ray is needed in order to save our species, and countless others. I, Aberdeen Tyrannus, am the only one who knows how to properly operate the device, and as such, I will rest it from the Department of Defense, regardless of where you’ve stored it. As for the Captain’s final bit of missive to you, sir,” Abe said, a wicked grin pulling the right side of his face tight, his dentures bared and gleaming white. “He says you can kiss the hairiest part of his ass! This meeting is over! Drone!”
As before, so again did the head council’s view become white noise. Bantor wasted no time whatsoever, using the remote from the table to turn the lights back on and unlock the double doors. As they opened, an aide stepped into the archway. “Send the word to the forward forces,” he spat at the aide. “All troops to mobilize and storm Tyrant’s residence, but non-lethal weapons first. I want them taken alive.” As soon as the aide rushed away, Bantor lit another cigarette and reclaimed his seat at the head of the table. Farat pushed the ashtray he’d taken from Bantor’s seat back over toward the head of the Hero Action Committee.
“You sure you want them alive, son,” the general asked, for once being liberal with his level of familiarity with the congressman. “Could be the best thing for those two old war horses is to put them in the dirt. Hell,” he said, looking around the room with a smile, then hooking a thumb at his own chest. “Even I could be put out to pasture in a few years, and Collins has four years on me.”
“No, I want them brought in front of us,” Bantor said, blowing out a plume of smoke and leaning back a little in his seat. “I want to be looking them right in the eye when I give the order of imprisonment.” He took another long drag, his eyes half-closing. “Or execution. That will be determined later, when we have them in hand.” The silence that descended upon the council then hummed with expectation, all eyes turned upon Erin Bantor, their leader.
Only Senator Wolfe wondered if the man had made the right decision.
As soon as the drone stomped on the camera to complete its destruction, Lester Collins began unbuttoning his shirt, and Abe took a few steps away to give the man room. Captain Righteous finished taking the shirt and pants off, standing in his gleaming armor, pulling the cowl on over his head. Only his eyes, nose, mouth and hands were now bare, and as he began taking off his boots to reveal feet also covered by the scale-like plating, Abe threw open a green metal cabinet that had remained shut since he’d stocked it several years before.
Half a dozen enormous cannons hung on hooks and braces on the doors, each one capable of mass amounts of destruction. In the center of the cabinet were around twenty pistol-grip weapons of varying size and function, and he selected two of these and a weapons belt, strapping it on his waist and holstering the pistols. On his left hip, a Sonic Disruptor, which fired a concentrated cone of sound vibration calculated to cause a human being’s bladder and bowels to release, and their muscles to tremble. In short, it could render a man helpless with a single burst. The Disruptor’s range was short, however, as the cone only affected an area of twenty feet from the end of the barrel.
The weapon in the right holster he dubbed The Deader. Firing a short, concentrated orange beam of energy up to a hundred yards, the weapon caused immediate temporary blindness, deafness, and loss of tactile sensation. The effects usually lasted four to five hours on an average victim, though Abe had once seen a volunteer henchman take a blast and get back up after only an hour. The man was still deaf for another couple of hours, but even that had faded.
“Are those non-lethal,” Lester asked, cracking his knuckles and neck with a roll of his head.
“Yes. My Sonic Disruptor, and The Deader. Doesn’t kill, despite the name. Deadens the senses completely, leaves some psychological scars, but nothing more. Hand me that radio,” he said, pointing to the walkie-talkie. He clicked it on. “Mr. Boe, inform the heavies that they may engage upon sight, but they must not damage any private property where there’s still residents. Have the outermost grunts evacuate civilians as quickly as they can before falling back for combat formations. Expect a surrounding sweep, over.”
“10-4,” Boe replied. Lester felt his heart starting to accelerate as his adrenaline kicked in a little. There would be a fight, that much was certain, but he would now be facing the very agents and soldiers he’d been fighting alongside for decades. He knew the HAC training and operational guidelines and procedures; the battle coming down on them would be grueling, and for a few men and women, very possibly fatal.
“They’ll start with non-lethal weapons, just like us,” he told Abe as they started for the staircase up to the house. “But the threshold for switching to live rounds will be low, Abe. You were always classified a Type 2 Danger, so it’s not as bad as a Type 1, but if the fight goes more than five minutes, people are going to start dying out there.”
“Then we’ll have to work quickly,” Abe huffed, starting up the stairs to his basement. “Are you willing to go ahead of me to the front line?”
“Of course,” Lester said. As they came up into the living room, Abe diverted off down the hallway to his bathroom, coming back a moment later grimacing. “Everything all right?”
“Heart medication,” Abe said, still grimacing. “Tastes like chalk. What?” Lester was snickering, shaking his head. He planted his hands on his hips, and smiled at the supervillain.
“We make quite the pair, you know. A hero with a head of gray hair approaching seventy in a hurry, and a scientist with a cardiac condition.”
“Tell me about it,” Abe said, smiling along with Lester as he saw the humor in their situation. “The world’s first geriatric super team, aren’t we the scourge of the Earth?” The pair laughed raucously, then headed outside to prepare for meeting with the agents of the Hero Action Committee. Ten heavily armed men in black and gray combat fatigues stood or crouched in postures of readiness on Abe’s front lawn. One of them, a short, stocky fellow with a black beret on his head and a face that made Abe think of a Jack Russell Terrier, turned and saluted him.
“Corporal Mirth, sir,” the man snapped, dropping his arm to his side stiffly. “Grunt division. I have word that the heaviest concentration of HAC agents has been spotted approaching from the north. Big Three recommends we concentrate the majority of our forces in that direction.”
“So ordered,” Abe said. Mirth took a couple of steps away, reaching up to a hands-free microphone clip on his lapel and relaying the order to Big Three. Abe drew out a small computer tablet from one of his lab coat pockets and started tapping away on the screen, turning his head for a moment towards Collins. “You still sure you want to go to the front line?”
“Yes,” said Lester, balling his hands into fists. “I’ll be just fine. You stay out of harm’s way as much as possible.”
“Right. I’m going to have three combat transport rigs brought up from the facility. Thankfully, I made sure the Jeffersons got an email yesterday afternoon informing them that they’d won an all-expenses-paid cruise heading out today,” he said, looking down at the screen. Lester cocked his head to one side, raised an eyebrow at the super-scientist. “This way they won’t notice their entire back yard opening up like the gates of Hell.”
Lester shrugged his shoulders, and starting jogging north. Every twenty or so yards he passed by a cluster of five or six henchmen, grunts mostly, but as he approached the five-hundred yard perimeter that Big Three had set out for the heavies, he saw more and more heavily armored men, and a couple of women, spread out around the area. Some were busy hustling confused and frightened civilians into their vehicles and making sure they got out of the area safe and sound, while others were checking weapons and body armor.
Tension thick enough to be felt on the flesh filled the area. Lester only hoped that Abe’s forces could put an end to the fight before real bullets started flying. He didn’t want any loss of life if it could be avoided, but he understood all too well that it only took one nervous or overzealous soldier to make the blood start to flow. His eyes glanced toward a gutter on the right side of the street as he came to a halt thirty yards in front of Big Three and his closest soldiers.
Water from someone’s abandoned hose ran in rivulets into a grate along the curb. With luck, he thought, it won’t turn red.
Jake Tennant had only been a trooper in the Hero Action Committee’s Green Strike Team 4 for six months, and he had yet to see a live mission. He’d been on plenty of training exercises, and had been on the reserve list for the Tiger Tank mission. He’d heard about that mission, and regretted being assigned to Green Team just before HAC authorized a strike force to engage the supervillain.
The Green Strike Teams were the lowest-ranked among HAC’s forces, usually filled by the organizations newest members and field officers looking to retire within the next couple of years. He knew the drill when it came to hierarchy, had known it since first enlisting in the United States Navy as a small arms specialist. His skill with hand-held firearms had brought him to HAC’s attention after only a year on duty, and when he’d been offered the chance to transfer to their department, he’d leaped on it.
His older brother, after all, was the Blue Strike Team Commander. Only three field officers outranked Barry Tennant, the Red Team Lieutenant, Red Team Captain, and Red Team Commander. As he was jostled by the transport vehicle’s movement, pressed on both sides by his comrades, he thought over once more the path he would have to take to get to the top. Green Team first, then Orange Team, Purple Team, Blue Team, Red Team, he thought, concentrating on the list and running it through five times in his mind, a private mantra he often rehearsed.
Though Jake was on the lowest possible rung of the ladder, he wasn’t the lowest ranked member of the team. He was already, in fact, being considered for a bump to Green Strike Team 2, which would be tremendous. Not only would it mean a bump in pay, but he would also have bragging rights with his brother, who’d been forced to go through every stage of promotion over the course of his sixteen-year career. True, he’d ripped through the ranks in relatively short order, but he’d never skipped a team like Jake might.
If he performed well on this mission, he could be well on his way, and he held to that hope with a fervor. He didn’t know, however, that someone else on his team, a fresh rookie by the name of Ernest Helms, didn’t have his act nearly as together as the rest of his comrades. None of them knew that he’d forgotten to turn on his radio until they were halfway to the operational zone.
They didn’t know that his body armor was improperly loaded. Seated on the benches in the back of the van as they all were, none of them looked quite right in their gear. Nobody noticed that he’d left his emergency sidearm unbuckled in its holster, which was entirely against protocol. When they were three-quarters of the way to the operation zone, however, Tennant pointed at Helms’s rifle, staring wide-eyed at the ammunition clip.
“Helms,” he shouted over the noise of the fast-moving vehicle’s clanging and rattling frame.
“Sir,” the man responded, eyes wide, nerves jumping visibly.
“Change out your load! You’ve got live rounds in your rifle!” Helms and all seven of the other members of the team stared at the clip for a moment, before the man quickly fumbled the clip out and replaced it with a load of rubber bullets from his belt. “This is to be a non-lethal engagement for as long as we can hold out. All five divisions have at least one team on this, and Green Six has the most men on the ground. They’re already there. We join up with them, move south to the primary engagement target.”
“Tennant’s right,” said Team Four’s commanding officer, Sergeant Bleeker. He was a hardened veteran, twelve years spent in HAC’s forces. He’d spent the majority of that time as a member of Blue Team Two, a heavy gunner with more combat missions under his belt than every member of Green division combined. Tennant admired and respected the man, but he wondered how Bleeker could have not noticed Helms’s rifle before him. But a moment later, as their eyes met briefly and the sergeant nodded, he realized that Bleeker had noticed.
The man was always testing them, it seemed. Ever the instructor, he thought. The van rumbled to a halt, and everybody visibly flinched, sweat streaking their foreheads. Bleeker squeezed his way to the back doors, threw them open, and hopped out, rifle held up in one hand. He turned and faced his team, and waved them out. “All right, it’s go time people, let’s move!”
Jake Tennant hit the ground before any of his comrades, and he took a deep breath. Time to prove myself, he thought. He and the rest of the squad linked up with Green Six, standing some twenty yards further south. Forty total men and women, thirty-eight soldiers and the commanders of the two teams, stood in a block formation, loosening themselves up for the coming engagement.
A few minutes later, they were spreading out along the street and flanking properties. Tennant took it upon himself to stick close to Helms as they moved south. He knew that, among the members of his team, Helms was the weak link. He wondered how the man had advanced from Teams Six and Five, then remembered that Helms was a skilled field medic, filling a role that Team Four had been without for five whole months.
He only had to hope that Helms wasn’t disabled before anybody else on the team.
“Son of a bitch,” Lester muttered, catching sight of the oncoming forward ranks of HAC soldiers. His enhanced vision allowed him to see the foremost troop transport truck coming to a halt a mile-and-a-half down the road. There had to be around thirty fully armored men in the back of the truck, and as he counted their numbers, jumping down from the back of the truck, he caught sight of their commanding officer, coming out of the front cab.
He vaguely recognized the man, which could mean trouble. Many of the field officers knew Collins, had worked with him at one point or another in their careers. They knew his methods, his patterns. That knowledge might now come around to be used against him, and he wondered if perhaps his coming to the front line had been a good idea after all. Nothing could be taken for granted, now, and Collins hoped that his siding with Abe was shocking enough to keep these troops off of their A-game.
If they were up to snuff, he’d have to move quickly through their ranks to keep any of these henchmen from getting seriously injured. Even if they were lucky enough to have the HAC troops using non-lethal weapons like Abe’s men, someone’s nerves would break before long. He could just make out the colored bands worn around the upper biceps of the troops, green strips of cloth sewn into their uniforms. He recalled that the Green Strike Teams were the lowest-ranking members of HAC’s forces, the freshest recruits they could get.
He had that much to be thankful for, at least, but he’d seen a handful of red bands among them, which meant at least one of the most elite teams HAC had on hand was present. He would have to seek them out among the ranks first, try to knock down the effectiveness of the enemy forces by focusing on their best men.
“Sir,” Big Three called out, marching to a point halfway between Collins and the front-most heavies. “We’re ready. Are they mobilizing?” Collins looked north, and saw another black van pulling up alongside the troop transport truck, eight soldiers hopping out and mixing with the other Green Team members. They, too, wore the green armbands, so he felt a little better about his and Abe’s chances of coming out of this situation with few scrapes or bruises.
Still, something felt off. He couldn’t pinpoint it, but Lester Collins, Captain Righteous, took a deep, steadying breath as the first wave of HAC soldiers fanned out and began their approach. He turned back to face Big Three, and gave him a thumb’s up. Big Three returned the gesture, but his jaw was set in a stern expression. It appeared that he, too, felt the essential wrongness of the situation.
For once, Lester hoped to God he was wrong.
Abe stood on his front step, watching the troops march surely and steadily towards the frontline grunts and heavies. The first shot rang out from HAC’s soldiers, and the battle began in earnest. His flying camera drones didn’t include audio, but he didn’t need them to; he could hear the gunfire from his position, as it was less than a mile distant. Automatic fire rang out, screaming, hollering. He twitched at the first sight of men falling on the tablet screen before him, and put the device back in his pocket, drawing out both of his weapons. He didn’t think he would need them, per se, but he felt a great deal better having them in hand.
He wondered how Lester was doing.
The first shot fired definitely came from a HAC operative, as Lester saw one of the grunts’ head fly back and the man crumple. No blood, he had time to think before bullets started bouncing off of his own armor, all of them rubber. A hypodermic projectile smashed apart against his chest, a thin green fluid spilling uselessly to the ground. So, they’ve been ordered to take me down alive, too. Not very comforting.
Lester let out a war cry and began to charge towards the foremost troops. Several of the smaller men, dressed in all black body armor uniforms and helmets, started to backpedal and concentrate their fire on him, but his own suit made the rubber bullets feel like flies landing on his skin for a moment before falling away. He reached them just as they were dropping their rifles to their sides on carry straps, drawing out stun batons.
As he landed a solid punch on the closest squad member’s chest, sending the man flying, electricity bolted through his side as one of the melee weapons landed against his right side, hard. The impact itself didn’t even make him flinch, but the energy hurt like hell. Snarling, he turned and landed a restrained left cross to another soldier’s jaw, knocking him instantly to the ground.
Fighting had broken out all around him, and though he kept his focus on the squad trying to take him down, Collins couldn’t help notice that the first contact seemed to be going evenly on both sides. Less than thirty seconds later, when he downed the leader of the squad he’d made first contact with and ripped the man’s rifle from his unconscious body, he saw that Big Three’s personal troops were getting the upper hand on HAC’s men. He helped by peppering several of them with rubber bullets, disabling four more agents before the clip ran dry, tossed aside a moment later. Things were shaping up well, all things considered.
Until, that was, someone’s rifle was thrown down, the man’s sidearm drawn. Collins didn’t see this, but what he heard next changed the entire flow of the battle’s ending minutes. He’d been trained in all manner of weapons over the years, and he knew the difference between rubber bullets fired from a pistol, and live rounds.
There was the sharp ‘pop’ of a live bullet being fired, a shout, and then stillness as every soldier on the street stopped and turned their attention to stare at the henchman who’d been shot in the throat. Blood sprayed in a geyser from the wound, and the young man’s hands flew to the wound as he fell back, feet kicking out as he thrashed in death throes.
“Shit,” Collins rasped as the silence was filled for a few seconds with the snap and clack of non-lethal ammunition being traded out for live rounds. The killing was about to begin.
Jake Tennant stared, unbelieving, at Helms as the soldier looked down at the pistol in his hands. Helms’s stance loosened, horror visibly running through him as he trembled. “What have you done,” Tennant whispered just before the field filled with the sound of changing weaponry.
He himself was in the process of changing out his rifle’s clip when Big Three raised his own rifle and pulled the trigger. The first two bullets of the three-round burst landed solidly in Tennant’s upper chest plating, his armor holding strong. The third round, however, found its way slightly to the right, into the small exposed portion of his shoulder between the pectoral plating and the arm protection sleeve. Pain ripped through his mind as the bullet tore through the muscle and bone, the impact spinning him around and to the ground.
The only comfort he took as he lost consciousness was seeing Ernest Helms drop to the ground next to him, a bright red hole in his forehead. Good, he thought as the world went dark around him. Good, because you fucked up royal, Helms. You got us killed.
A knife skidded across the scale-like plates, and Lester felt a moment of panic. This Red Team soldier was skilled, quick and deadly thrusts and slash swipes forcing him to dance and weave in ways he hadn’t in years. While training to maintain himself, he hadn’t been forced to work himself so thoroughly in a combative fashion. I’m rustier than I thought, he mused as he leveled a roundhouse kick to the soldier’s midsection.
The knife-wielding soldier stumbled back a few steps, but his armor had protected him from the impact, as had Collins himself, pulling back on the force used in the strike. He’d felt the armor plating crack upon impact, but if he’d thrown all of his power into the blow, he might well kill the man. He didn’t want to count himself among those taking lives in this engagement. The Red Strike Team didn’t appear to suffer the same weakness of ethics, as their five-man crew had already slain a dozen of Abe’s henchmen.
The knife swiped out at him again, and though Lester leaned back out of the way, the tip still caught him on the left cheek, opening a small cut on his face that welled up quickly. He snarled and lunged on the soldier, grabbing his weapon arm by the elbow and wrist. Comprehension flashed for a split second in the soldier’s eyes, and Lester struck, pulling down on the wrist with his right hand, thrusting up on the elbow with his left. The arm snapped like a twig in his grip, and as the soldier howled, he planted his hip against the man and threw him hard into the pavement. A grunt escaped from the man’s mouth before he started rolling around, his arm flopping about uselessly at his side.
A minute later, the combat began drawing to a close, troops from both sides of the battle drawing back. Lester stood in the middle of the road, several bullets crumpling uselessly against his armor. He surveyed the killing field, wondered if any of the residential homes nearby held civilian casualties, people who either hadn’t evacuated in time or hadn’t been awake to be warned out of the area. He began stalking slowly around the engagement area, counting bodies.
A single tear wound its way down his cowl.
Big Three limped up to Abe, blood dripping down his left leg from a bullet wound. Most of the heavies wore ceramic plate leggings, but Big Three refused such protection. He was already slower on his feet than most of his men, due to his body builder’s frame and musculature. He needed the extra maneuverability, but as in this instance, there was a price to be paid for the trade-off.
“Sir, they’re drawing away from the area. I think they’ll be back, though, and likely with a lot more men.”
“Are they taking their wounded?”
“Negative, sir,” Big Three gasped, dropping his weapon and easing himself down onto the lawn in a relaxed seated position, letting his legs stretch out in front of him. One of the grunts rushed over with a field medical kit, hastily cutting away the shredded pants from the wound in order to treat it. “Mr. Boe gave the order before I started back here to let them take their men, but they just took to their heels.”
“What about our own men?”
“Mr. Boe has them being brought back right now,” Big Three said. The medic pulled a bullet out of the big man’s leg, holding it up for examination. Big Three shrugged off his gear pack, and pulled it around to his side, opening it up. He took out a small jar and handed it to the medic with a smile. “Put it in there for me, would ya?” The medical grunt shook his head, but did as he was asked before starting on stitching up the wound.
“You keep all such souvenirs, Big,” Abe asked. He took out his computer tablet and entered in several commands. Within a few minutes, the transport vehicles would circle around the block and come up behind his forces, ready to take them out of the area. As soon as the signals were sent, he began programming all of the active drones to begin an exodus to his Nevada facility. He figured about half of them would actually make it there, but he would take any percentage he could get.
“Yeah, helps remind me what it is I’m doing with my life. I’m a henchman, sir, but every henchman is a soldier,” Big Three said with that dopey grin of his. “And soldiers keep trophies, helps them tell stories in the down times. I likes stories, sir, tellin’ em and hearin’ em.”
“I understand that impulse well enough,” Abe said as he looked up, spotting Lester coming slowly back up the street. Walking alongside him, a rifle held in the professional ready position, was a tall, wiry man Abe didn’t recognize. A red beret sat tipped to one side on his head, and the man walked with the sure, steady stride of a commander. “Is that Mr. Boe,” he asked, pointing at the man. The medic looked over, then up at Abe and nodded.
Abe tucked the pad away again and started towards Lester and Boe, wincing as a cramp threatened in his left calf. He couldn’t afford to show any weakness now, especially with shock still riding his forces. “Dr. Tyrant, sir,” Boe said, snapping off a smart salute.
“Mr. Boe, good to finally meet you, though the circumstances are less than ideal. Report.”
“We have twenty-four dead, fifteen wounded and immobile,” Boe said. “The Captain here already confirmed my count, sir. Our opposition suffered twenty-one dead, and what looks like nine wounded and immobile. Their forces haven’t bothered to pick them up. Do you want us to perform a clean-up?”
“Negative,” Abe said. “But we’re not taking them with us either. I have the transports coming to evacuate us to the Nevada base. Get basic treatment to their wounded, find one with a cellular phone to make a distress call. Those men shouldn’t be left behind like this. Lester, any objections?”
“None, Abe, but we need to get out of here quickly. Something tells me this isn’t over.” Abe agreed, and Boe sent out three of his grunts, all of them medics, to see to the wounded HAC agents who could be helped. Lester stepped closer to Abe and spoke in a near-whisper to him. “Look, there were Red Team people here with the Green. You remember what that all means, don’t you?”
“Top soldiers in HAC, outside of the Grays,” Abe replied. Lester blinked rapidly, confused. He’d never heard of HAC having any Strike Team under the Gray name; he’d have to ask about that on the trip to Nevada. “What about them?”
“None of them were among the dead, and I didn’t watch their evacuation. There might still be a couple of them around.” As if to punctuate his point, the thunderous ‘blam’ of a high-powered weapon tore through the air, causing all three men to duck down for cover. One of the field medics sprawled in a heap, his chest blasted apart by an anti-tank rifle. Screams went up from henchmen as they swept the area with their rifles, finally opening fire to the west. Lester looked that way, and spotted a HAC operative laid out on a rooftop, his hands held up over his head. After another round of shots flew at him, the man tried to stand up and run to the edge of the roof, away from them.
Bad choice, Lester thought, as another set of shots took the man in the back. The transports drew up to a halt twenty yards away, and Boe started shouting at his men to get their wounded on immediately. Big Three shoved his medic aside and got up, leading his heavies towards the transports, which appeared to Lester like huge Mac trucks layered in heavy beige armor plating.
Drones sat in the driver seat of each vehicle, far more human-like than the worker unit left inside the house. “We should get going,” Abe said, and Lester nodded, putting a hand on the older man’s back to keep him ahead of any remaining snipers that might take more shots at them. Clambering up onto the loading ramp of the rear vehicle, Lester faltered, looking at a sophisticated mobile command center housed by the trailer of the transport. No wonder he was always such a pain in the ass, Lester thought, following Abe up into the vehicle. Nobody short of a god could be this prepared.
Nobody, it seemed, except Aberdeen Tyrannus.
Two hours after Dr. Tyrant and his forces, including his ally, the traitor Captain Righteous, had fled the area, Maurice stared at the wreckage before him. The four Red Team members who’d remained behind to take pot-shots at Tyrant’s forces as they were fleeing had swept in after their departure to check on the residence, to see if there was anything useful that they could use to get a bead on where the old supervillain might be going. The order had come to Red Team Leader after his second panicked call to Representative Bantor, after the battle was over.
The Red Team officer had sent his four remaining men ahead, remaining two hundred yards up the street. Bantor had ordered him to wait for a Gray Team to arrive, and that news only brought more fear to run through him. He’d only heard stories of the Gray Teams, and what he heard could give even a veteran like himself the shakes. Four teams of three men each, the smallest division in all of the HAC organization, even in all of the Department of Defense.
As he’d watched his men enter Aberdeen Tyrannus’s house, he heard the scuff of a shoe behind him. He turned to look, and found himself facing three tall, gaunt figures dressed in soft gray suits, their eyes hidden behind black sunglasses. They stood together in a tight line, almost shoulder-to-shoulder. The operative standing in the middle took a half step forward, folding his leather-gloved hands together in front of his stomach.
“Go join your men, Red Team Leader,” the man said in a soothe, cultured voice. The man did as he was ordered, and as soon as he was inside the house, the Gray Team Leader, Maurice Franko, nodded to his two subordinates. They drew silenced pistols, then split up and approached those few troops who were sitting up and trying to get moving again. Maurice sauntered over to one of the younger-looking soldiers, a man with heavy bandaging around his shoulder who was struggling to put his gear bag together. He kept his own silenced weapon inside of his sport coat for the moment.
Maurice knelt down a few feet away from him, and the young soldier looked over to him. “Sir?”
“You may call me Franko, soldier,” he said. Something about the man in the gray suit drew all of Jake Tennant’s attention, kept him from looking off to the rest of his fallen and recovering comrades. “What happened here? Why was this mission unsuccessful?”
“Henchmen, sir,” Tennant replied. “There were some combat drones, but they weren’t armed, apparently. Not only them, sir, but Captain Righteous too. He did a lot of damage to us.”
“Did he kill anybody,” Franko asked softly.
“No, sir. I don’t think he ever would, not unless he absolutely had to. Sir, we weren’t prepared for all of this. One of our men, my teammate, Helms,” he said, pointing over at the corpse. “He fucked up, sir, had live rounds loaded in his pistol. This whole thing was a disgrace.” Franko nodded, looking around. He reached into the back of his waistband, setting on the ground before him a pistol of the same make and model as was issued to HAC troops.
“This is a Beretta 9mm semi-automatic pistol,” Franko said flatly. “It is the sidearm of choice among all divisions of the Department of Defense. It is also the sidearm of choice for all divisions of the International Henchmen’s Union. Please reach over there and give me agent Helms’s sidearm.” Tennant looked confused for a moment, but did as he was asked, wincing as he rolled back over to hand the weapon to Franko.
The Gray Team Leader handed Tennant the Beretta he’d drawn from his own waistband. Tennant looked at it, sliding out the clip and shaking his head. “Sir, there’s rubber bullets in here. One of the rounds has been fired.”
“I know. Please place that in agent Helms’s hand, soldier.” Tennant paused for a moment, but once more did as he was ordered. When he rolled back over, Franko pressed the end of a silenced pistol to his forehead. “Thank you for your service to your country, soldier. You will be missed.” Before Jake Tennant could even begin to protest, a round tore through his brain, exiting the back of his skull with just enough force to look like the shot had been taken from mid-range.
Maurice Franko stood slowly, watching as his two subordinates finished up their work, doing to the Green Team survivors what he’d done to Tennant. Such were their orders, direct from their commander. When Bantor got in touch with him, which Franko assumed would happen soon, the congressman’s fears would all be confirmed, oh yes. He approached his two men, and spoke quietly to them for a minute. After he was done, they waited in front of Tyrannus’s house for the Red Team to come out.
When they exited the house, the Red Team Leader informed Franko that they’d discovered a lone worker drone in the a hidden command center under the basement. It had been in the process of destroying quite thoroughly some sort of teleporter pad according to Red Team Leader.
“Does it look like it can be salvaged,” Franko asked.
“With the right technicians on hand, yes,” the Team Leader replied.
“Understood. Get your men into that van and make ready for departure,” Franko said, pointing up the road to one of the vehicles he and his men had arrived in. The whole Red Team saluted, then hustled off to the vehicle, settling in as Franko made a subtle hand gesture to one of his men. That agent pulled out a small black remote, and when Franko nodded, the Gray agent pushed the button, blowing the rigged van and all of the Red Team agents to Hell and breakfast.
The trio watched the flames and smoke rise into the air, the crimson of the fire matching the hue of the darkening sky as the sun began to set. Franko waited a few minutes, then tucked his weapon away inside of his sport coat. “Gentlemen, we’re done here. Let’s go,” he said.
Maurice Franko would sit in the back seat of the old sedan his team always traveled in, waiting to get the call from Bantor for a report. He would deliver a narrative that would be matched by anybody who came by the scene to check things out. Everything was already being seen to, which he saw for himself as he looked out of the rear window of the car. Another team of Grays, experts in the staging of forensic evidence, was already at work.
When the sedan drew out of the operational zone’s outermost perimeter, Franko’s phone rang. Time for the show to begin, he thought, flipping the phone open.