‘War. War Never Changes.’
-Ron Pearlman, Fallout Series
In the magical forest, a bunny hops along with a smile and a heart full of joy. Meanwhile, in one of the work chambers of the vehicle load-out zone in the Nevada base, Kurtis Boe lay sleeping on a mechanic’s crawler under a freshly updated LAV (Land-Based Assault Vehicle). He hadn’t intended to fall asleep under the mammoth armored vehicle, but as usual, Kurt pushed himself to the brink of collapse working to improve his current employer’s chances of running a successful campaign.
He hadn’t yet been briefed by Dr. Tyrant on what, precisely, the aim of this campaign would be. He hoped it was something suitably grand; the career of Dr. Tyrant was the stuff of legends, after all. And the old super-scientist had only become more brilliant and admirable as the years went by. Boe knew everything there was to know about Aberdeen Tyrannus that could be learned by anything short of speaking to the man personally.
He knew because Kurt had spent his entire youth, adolescence and young adulthood learning about and worshipping the man.
Kurt knew his worship bordered on obsession, which was why he took great pains to ensure that he kept up with other, more practical and acceptable studies and pursuits over the course of his life. Most of his passions centered around technology and military training, including weapons, tactics, and history. He was a consummate outdoorsman, could ride anything with wheels, treads or hooves, and had put himself through numerous grueling survival studies and exercises. True, most of his motivation for doing so was to one day be of the utmost use to Dr. Tyrant as a #2 some day, but these pursuits, he’d found over time, were their own reward, each bringing its own joy to his life.
Working on the LAV had been a final task he’d given himself for the evening before, but as he yawned and stretched, waking up at the ungodly hour of five in the morning, he realized that his worship of Dr. Tyrant had resulted in his entire body being wracked by stiffness and pain the likes of which he hadn’t experienced since his first year of college. He rolled out from under the LAV, cracked various bones and popped his joints, and grunted in satisfaction.
As Kurt shuffled a few minutes later into the barracks zone of the base, grabbing fresh clothes from his footlocker and heading toward the shower room, he thought about the list of men he’d put together, held against the front of his standing locker with a small magnet. He would entrust the mission headed by Captain Righteous to the men he’d written down there, though he in truth could only hope that the superhero didn’t abuse their trust in him.
After all, Kurt didn’t trust the aged Ultra-Soldier entirely. While he respected the man to the utmost, he couldn’t trust him, not after he’d so mercilessly brought down Dr. Tyrant so many times throughout the years. Kurt also knew about the brutality that Captain Righteous was capable of at his peak, killing, maiming, crippling and battering to a pulp so many upright, faithful henchmen over the years. It just didn’t seem right that he should now be working beside Dr. Tyrant.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, Boe thought. As he climbed out of his clothes and let the warmth of the water flow over his head, he realized that he might feel better about working with the superhero if he admitted his misgivings and explained his motivations. Kurt may not have liked knowing how hard Lester Collins had fought against Dr. Tyrant once upon a time, but he had to admit that Captain Righteous had himself become more stable over the years, a quieter and more thoughtful hero as compared to some who worked with the Hero Action Committee.
He just needs to hear my explanation, Kurt thought. I need to tell him why, and hear his response to it, so that I can know whether or not to trust him. Because if we can’t trust him, I’ll have to tell Dr. T. that we have to get rid of him. In Kurtis Boe’s life, there was only one way of getting rid of people- the permanent way.
When Lester heard the knock at the door of his chambers, his first instinct was to roll off of the bed swiftly, landing in a combat-ready half-crouch. Reflexes honed from decades of engaging in long-term campaigns against supervillains, coupled with his naturally combative nature, resulted in such absurd moments as this; a sixty-something superhero taking up what looked like an offensive lineman’s three point stance in nothing more than a pair of boxer shorts.
He might have laughed at himself if he could have but shrugged off his embarrassment. Silly to feel so put off, really, but for Lester Collins, the size of an audience witnessing such things mattered not; a man was his own audience, in his estimation.
Pulling himself upright with a grunt, he shook his head as he approached the door to the quarters. “Never would have made a sound like that twenty years ago,” he muttered to no one. “Hell, would have heard footsteps approaching the door before knocking back then.” Without preamble he pulled the door open and found Kurt Boe standing before him in the corridor, a fresh gray long-sleeved shirt and black jeans worn over military boots polished to a shine that Collins hadn’t seen since his early years of basic training for the Army. The younger man stood poised, his hands folded together at the small of his back at parade rest. Collins nodded. “Mr. Boe.”
“Captain Righteous,” Boe replied with a friendly grin. “I’ve wakened you. If you’d like me to return in a couple of hours, I can.”
“No, no,” said Collins, flapping a hand dismissively at the notion. “Come on in, Mr. Boe, please,” he said, closing the door as Kurt slid with uncanny grace to one of the two plush leather chairs arranged facing each other in the center of the room. “I’ll just throw on the guest bathrobe and join you in a moment.” Collins nipped quickly into the chamber’s private attached bathroom, returning a moment later in a ratty old blue bathrobe, tied around the waist. He took the seat opposite Boe, leaning slightly forward, elbows on his knees and chin balanced on his cupped fists. “Is this about the platoon that will be accompanying me to New York?”
“Uh, no, not precisely,” Boe began, a trace of nervousness in his tone. Collins found himself pleased by the inflection, much to his own surprise. It only took him a moment to realize why he should be pleased by any hesitation in Abe’s lead henchman. From the first minute that he’d been assigned to Abe’s command, the young Kurtis Boe hadn’t shown much more than a couple of flashes of emotion beyond stalwart confidence and efficiency, leaving Collins to wonder if the man were either a mindless drone, or perhaps something worse, bordering on the sociopathic. The hesitation, the minor but clear discomfort with whatever subject it was he wished to discuss here privately with Collins, showed that Kurtis Boe was, in fact, very human.
That reaffirmed for Collins his initial enthusiasm for the young man. He offered a soft smile and held a hand out to indicate that Boe should continue. After clearing his throat quickly, Boe proceeded. “Captain Righteous, I’ve come this morning to share something with you about myself, something that Dr. Tyrant doesn’t yet know about me. It’s something that I hope, in due time, I will be afforded the chance to share with him, but his time is precious and his attentions are needed focused upon this campaign.”
“I agree that his time is precious,” said Lester evenly. “As for this campaign of ours, well, Abe shouldn’t be saddled with the task of worrying over every detail. That’s why he has you and Big Three, and myself as well.” At that, Boe visibly relaxed a little more in his chair, his shoulders slipping to a more natural posture.
“I’m quite glad you said that, Captain,” he said, finally showing a wry grin that made him seem more his own approximate age. “My father would have been glad, too. He was a proud man, my father. Worked as an engineer and mechanic all of his life, since he was just a young teenager. In fact, he rebuilt his first car when he was just fourteen years old. That was back in 1962,” Kurt said, a far-off look in his eyes.
“Your father’s sixty-four years old, then,” Lester said, half to himself. “Kurt, how old are you?”
“Twenty-five, actually. Yes, my father was nearly forty when he had his first child, but my mother was ten years younger than him.”
“Was?”
“Yes,” Kurt said, looking away momentarily and wringing his hands. “She passed away three years ago. Lung cancer.” There came then an awkward silence for a minute, after which Boe looked Lester squarely in the eyes. “You see, my father and mother were both smokers. Back when they first met, they were working for a man who was quite revolutionary at that time. The facility they were employed at had a separated chamber for smokers in each sector, because their boss believed that non-smoking workers should be protected from unwanted exposure.”
“Ahead of his time,” Lester commented.
“Indeed. Well, my mother and father, being ten years apart but working in close proximity on very much similar jobs, well, they discovered that they were quite compatible with one another. They enjoyed many of the same hobbies and pastimes, read largely the same authors, took delight in rousing and thoughtful conversations on everything from religion to sports to politics and everything in between. They enjoyed a natural affinity, and that led to courtship, which ultimately, led to marriage.”
“Which led to you being alive, of course,” Lester said with a smile.
“Yes indeed,” said Boe, heaving a sigh. “And Dr. Tyrant made that all possible.” Lester blinked rapidly at the younger man, dumbfounded by the statement. How on earth could the aged supervillain have anything to do with Kurtis Boe’s existence?
“And how, pray tell, did he do that?”
“Simple,” said Kurtis Boe with a broad smile. “He employed the people who would become my parents.”
It had taken about fifteen minutes after Boe left Collins’s chamber before the aged superhero could completely process the implications of everything he’d been told. Kurtis Boe, it turned out, stood as George Farris’s top agent. He was the most sought-after henchman in the entirety of the supervillain community, commanding top-dollar for the Henchmen’s Union, for starters. Secondly, with his parents both working for Dr. Tyrant, he was a second-generation henchman employed by the same villain as his parents. Such a thing had never happened before, so far as Lester could figure. The average supervillain, after all, didn’t span two generations of potential employees.
There had been several facts and a few observations made by the much younger man which had done far more than inform by way of surface-level statement as well. Boe had made certain to include a brief history of his martial arts and weapons training, including chemical and experimental weapons that could bring down the most hardened of super-powered beings still working for the Hero Action Committee. Lester could read between the lines, and he knew there had been more to Boe’s visit than a simple revelation of his lineage.
Kurtis Boe spoke to inform, engage, and take measure of Captain Righteous. If Lester had given any indication or response to leave Boe feeling uncertain about his motives or trustworthiness, during his visit or in the near future, the lead henchman fully intended to try and kill him. Strangely enough, this didn’t bother Lester in the slightest; he actually found it rather flattering.
They’re still afraid of me, he mused with a certain vicious glee. Good. Kurt had been tactful with his inferences, subtle, and for that Lester found himself impressed yet further with him. If Kurt hadn’t followed in his parents’ footsteps as a henchman, he might have at some point become a great villain in his own right. Or hero, Lester thought. God knows the world could use a couple of good ones.
Kurt had returned only an hour later to drop off a list of names of the operatives who would be accompanying Lester to his old base in New York City, along with a sleek black stealth suit that would slip on over his armor. A one-piece zipper suit, it had a tiny pair of studs at the elbows, neck, knees, and several around the waist. One stud of each set was a camera, the other a projector. This pairing allowed for the suits to act as an active chameleon skin, the cameras taking in visuals from the surroundings of the user and projecting them a few inches around the suit itself. While not a perfect device, it did extremely well in clustered urban environments during field testing.
In New York City, it would be perfect for the entire company going with Collins. The biggest drawback, Boe explained, was that the user couldn’t move faster than a slow, measured walk if they wanted the suit to continue optimum performance. Any excessively rapid movement would cause what the younger man referred to as a ‘blur tear’, visible to anybody paying attention. A severe enough blur tear could deactivate the suit entirely, leaving the user an easy target.
Lester pulled the stealth suit on over his scale-like armor, doing up the zipper and thanking the nameless, faceless engineers responsible for both suits that the crotch of both came with a secondary zipper for easier access to the facilities, in the event such a need arose. Finished suiting up, he exited the resting chambers to head for the armory. He needed to equip himself for the trip to his old headquarters, then meet with the unit, and have one last quick conversation with Abe before departing.
Grabbing the gear he felt best suited his purposes took little time, after which Lester decided he should speak with Abe prior to meeting with his subordinates for the mission. He hadn’t seen the grizzled old supervillain since arriving at the Nevada base, and his mind kept returning to the vision of Abe standing there at his most ancient drones’ sides, reminiscing of the olden days.
He wanted to make sure that Abe was holding up all right. They may have been rivals for a long time, but such a relationship could, apparently, make for an equally intense friendship if and when such time came around. As he approached the main control chamber, he could hear Abe’s gravelly voice echoing around the domed room.
“There will be nothing short of perfection in that garage bay by this afternoon,” Abe groused at a team of six narrow, gangly technicians and mechanics standing before him. All around them, computer engineers frittered about, updating and installing new equipment, putting the final touches on a complete overhaul of the facility’s primary inner workings. Just under twenty-four hours, which, by Lester’s estimation, had to be some kind of record, considering the size of the Nevada base of Dr. Tyrant. It was easily one and a half times the size of most of Abe’s bases over the course of his career. “New parts have been teleported in to the freight pad just a few minutes ago, and you lot have every blueprint available on your tablets. Grab whatever hands are able and not busy doing something else, and put them to work on my authority. I want at least four of those new LAV’s up and running tonight.”
With a final nod he dismissed them, and the grumbling mechanics hustled off, shaking their heads almost in unison. They were professionals, yes, but Dr. Tyrant wasted no time in pushing them to their limits. As the old super-scientist turned to walk away, he came up short, spotting Lester nearby. He offered a pleased grin, folded his arms behind his back. “Still giving them hell, Abe?,” Lester asked kindly.
“As ever. I can’t afford to let them get lazy, or think that I’m off of my game in any way. These people have a certain impression of me, you know.” Lester nodded. “Something you need to discuss, Lester?”
“Actually, nothing major. I just wanted to let you know that I’m about to go muster my team for the mission to my New York base. I was, however,” he said, pulling a small metal box from his gear bag, “hoping you could show me how this return device works.” He handed it over to Abe, who adjusted his glasses and looked at the device, which was festooned with buttons and switches.
“Here, you put in the coordinates you’re at and then punch in the dial back code,” Abe said. “It’s four-three-three-seven. Then you just throw this here switch, and it’ll bring back every life signature that came from the sending pad.” Abe handed the box back and rummaged in one of his lab coat pockets as Lester put the device away. When Collins stood back up and faced Abe, the older man was holding a small glass magnifying lens on a silver chain out towards him.
“What’s this,” Lester asked, taking the offered chain.
“Just a silly superstition of mine, really,” Abe said, rubbing his head awkwardly. “That was my first scientific instrument. Got it as a Christmas present when I was six, from my father. He was an aviation engineer, did a lot of design work, fine parts and such. He hoped, I think, that I might take up something in the fields of science too when I was little.” Lester slipped the chain on over his head, tucking the glass under the neck line of his armor suit. “I used to think it brought me luck, helped me keep a clear head, that sort of thing. You could use a little extra luck, I think.”
Lester patted the object hanging between his skin and the armor. “Thank you, Abe. Stay safe, old friend,” he said, putting a friendly hand on Abe’s shoulder. The old super-scientist patted it.
“I’ll try. You do the same, good Captain.” A moment of companionable silence, then, before Captain Righteous headed off to assemble his team, and make for New York City. Abe watched him go, and hoped in his heart that his old rival would come back in one piece. If he didn’t, who else was Aberdeen Tyrannus to reminisce with?
Lester’s experience with teleportation technology was limited. Standing on the sending platform with thirty armed men, all equipped with their own stealth suits and gear bags, he could feel his heart rate ramping up. It was always like this just before heading into an operations zone; the rising adrenaline through the bloodstream, the sweat slowly building up under the armpits and at the back of his neck. He could feel muscles tensing all over his body, most of them involuntarily, smell the crackle of atmosphere as the teleportation device began powering up.
The whir and hum of the engines required to power the device, which took up most of the chamber he was standing in, rumbled in his skull. His teeth clamped together, Lester closed his eyes, tried to ease his nerves by concentrating on the darkness behind his eyelids.
It didn't help much once the platform's engines cycled up into their final phase. The pulsing white-blue light coming from beneath him was intense enough to be blinding even through his eyelids. There stole over him a dreadful cold as his body was instantly broken down into streams of energy and molecules, then flung across the country at the speed of light.
Aside from the deep iciness and a thunderclap silence, though, there was no particularly strong sensory input until he and his men arrived at their terminus point. Dizziness and nausea fought for control of his stomach, a battle he won by the slimmest of margins, tottering on wobbly legs.
Someone behind him vomited explosively. One of the other henchmen snorted derisively. "Rookie," the unseen man muttered. Lester took a look around, finding that he and his group had been transported to a long, wide alleyway a block south of his old headquarters. He recognized the area from his halcyon days as the world's premier superhero.
He walked around several of the henchmen, who were all now activating their stealth suits, blending seamlessly with the surroundings. His slow, measured strides took him to a spot in the alley where, once upon a time, he had stopped every couple of days to offer a few dollars and a meal boxed in a styrofoam container to an old vagrant calling himself Ragman Bob.
Lester had been a young and idealistic hero then, hoping to one day convince Ragman Bob to go downtown to get on an assistance program. Bob had told Lester, when he'd first come by this alley, that he was a businessman once. He'd lost everything in a bitter divorce with his ex-wife, who'd been having an affair with his business partner. When they split, she took half of his share in the company, a small insurance firm, and together with her new beau, they'd forced him out of the business altogether.
Lester had been too young and full of sympathy then to question Ragman Bob's story. He'd offered the homeless man a place to stay, but Bob had just told him no, just some cash would do, that he'd get his own life straightened out.
But Ragman Bob had still been living in that alley when Lester stopped using the New York base in the early 90's, a decrepit old beggar who reeked of piss and whiskey. Lester knelt down and brushed his fingers over the brick alley wall where he'd so often seen Ragman Bob sitting, bottle in hand. "What happened to you, Bob," he whispered, thinking back on the last time he'd seen the beggar. "What really left you living on the street?"
A grunt behind him. Lester rose, turning around and activating his own stealth suit. Before turning it on, he couldn't see his men. Once his own field came on, he was able to make them out perfectly well. He gestured with hand signals for his men to fall in behind him.
Captain Righteous led his men into the operations zone.
"There's been a massive power spike, sir," one of the technicians said from his console in what used to be Captain Righteous's main living room in the three story Brownstone. Major Patriot, wearing his costume and gear kit, came stalking through the entryway from the kitchen area. His outfit looked like an American flag worn over his body, loosely fitted to accommodate a suit of segmented armor much like the one worn by his predecessor, the traitor, Captain Righteous.
But where Lester Collins was athletically built, the Major moved like a muscled tank, burly and surrounded by an air of violence. Even these HAC soldiers appeared uncomfortable around him. The technician looked up at the Major from his computer, a thin line of nervous sweat tracing its way down the side of his face.
"Where did the spike come from," the hulking Ultra Soldier intoned.
"External source, sir, somewhere outside of the city. I can't peg down the location of arrival, but it had to be within fifty miles. That's our perimeter range."
"How long until you can tell me what the spike was?"
"Um, ten minutes, s-sir," the young tech stammered. His arm itched under the blue band worn around it, but he dared not take it off to scratch. He barely wanted to move with this beast watching him. Major Patriot unslung his AR-15 rifle from his back and held it across his body at the ready.
"Get it done," the Major said in that same flat, steely tone. He turned his attention to a soldier nearby wearing heavy combat gear and a red armband. "Tell the others to make checks on their gear. I suspect we'll have company within a couple of hours. No slacking." The red team member saluted and rushed away to carry out his orders, leaving only the technician and one other soldier in the living room with Major Patriot.
The tech started his analysis program, wondering what might happen to him if he couldn't get a clear analysis. Somehow, he suspected he'd become a 'casualty' of a later firefight.
The stealth suits worked marvelously, and with the benefit of being able to see clearly other users on the same frequency, Lester had been able to lead all thirty of his men to an alley across the street from his old headquarters without incident. They had snuck past three patrols of HAC troops undetected, and now were in sight of their goal.
There would, of course, be a much heavier presence of soldiers inside the old Brownstone. One level was below the street, so entry onto the ground floor was actually entrance to the second level. On the top floor was nothing but a couple of bedrooms, a bathroom, and a study. What they were after here was below the lowest level, set in a case in a secondary basement level the Hero Action Committee had known nothing about.
Even heroes have their secrets, Lester thought.
With a quick snap of his hands, two of his smallest men came forward. He leaned in close to them and whispered. "I want you two to go across the street and around the house, to the back yard. It isn't much of a yard, but there's a tool shed back there. Inside are control panels for the base's security systems and a backup power generator. Leave the systems alone, just take out the generator silently. Can you do that?" They both looked to each other, then nodded in unison. "Good. Do that, then come back."
The two henchmen moved across the street in a low crouch, their movements perfectly matched in the way only professional soldiers or cops could achieve. There was a slight hesitation from the one on the right as they both came to the sides of the house, but they continued on.
Lester hated the idea of waiting with the rest of the unit in the alley, but wait he would. He turned toward the group, signalling for them all to gather around him a little way back down the alley.
When he felt certain they were far enough away for him to speak at a normal volume without being overheard by any patrols, he let out a sigh. "Okay. When they get back, we will split into six groups of five. Four groups will take box corners around the base on opposing street corners, keep patrols off. One group will go through the front with me leading as a breach. The last team, those two scouts leading, will go through the rear door and take the ground and upper floors. The group with me will follow down and then to my hidden basement level. Understood?"
Twenty-eight sets of eyes were locked on him as they all nodded. One of the larger combatants pushed to the front of the rings of men around him. In his hands he held a flat white brick of some sort. "C3," the man said. "Smaller blast than C4, but it'll shock the shit out of them."
"Can you place it and hide it?"
"Sure. I can reshape the charge and set it at the foot of the front doors to blow up and in," said the henchman.
"Do it," Lester said. As the big man was weaving out of the crowd, the scouts wove in toward him.
"Sir," rasped the smaller of the two men, his face a papery shade devoid of color. "There's a problem."
"What problem," Lester asked, rising to his full height.
"We were able to knock out the generator, that was easy enough. But on our way back, I caught a glimpse of someone looking out a back window of the house, and I swear to Christ I think he saw us, sir. It was that new Ultra Soldier, Major Patriot. He's here, and I think he's expecting us."
Lester and the rest of the henchmen soon had proof of that. As the heavy combat henchman was approaching the house slowly to allow his stealth suit to continue keeping him blended with the environment, the front door flew open and two HAC soldiers with automatic weapons stepped out onto the porch. They crouched down, and without even pausing to aim, swept a burst in both directions, up and down the street.
The henchman flopped dead in the middle of the road. In both directions from the house, six other people had been killed, but this mattered not to the HAC. According to the story they'd sell to the public, all civilian casualties were at the hands of the evil Dr. Tyrant's forces.
Major Patriot saw the carnage from his vantage point on the top floor of the house, and as he finished thinking on this, he said quietly, "God Bless America."
In the wake of this opening salvo (which mercifully did not hit anyone else in Lester's group), there came shrieks and cries of terror from the civilians all around the area. These calls of panic were joined by the barking shouts of patrolling HAC soldiers around the block, and finally by Lester howling like a madman as he led the charge out of the alley, towards the house.
The stealth suits failed as soon as he was in broad daylight, and the sight of the screaming, armored man whom both HAC agents on the porch had regarded for so long as one of the good guys took them offguard. This temporary confusion allowed Captain Righteous the window of opportunity needed to leap up onto the porch, cup their heads, and smash them together in a collision that sounded like two rocks being smacked together.
Gunfire behind him, as a patrol of HAC soldiers came onto the street. Abe's henchmen were old hands for the most part, though; they'd already begun taking up defend-and-approach tactics, downing the first HAC squad in under a minute. Lester pushed ahead into the house, four heavies behind him.
The first bullet to hit him glanced off the armored cowl he wore on his head, knocking Righteous off balance. One of the heavies quickly shoved him forward and gunned down a Red Team member to the left of the front entryway, in a large dining room. The three-round burst caught the HAC agent in the throat and face, sending him to crash into a cabinet of fine china.
Good thing I didn't want those anymore, Lester thought with a grimace. The heavy who'd covered him after the shot tapped him on the shoulder. "Where to?"
"Through there," Lester said, leading the way into the dining room. Without hesitation he flipped the large, heavy oak table dominating the room over onto its side and crouched behind it, pushing it forward and to the right, toward the next entryway. On the table's underside was a thin sheet of a synthetic alloy, a defensive measure he'd had installed after foolishly inviting one of his enemies to dinner to try and reason with the villain.
Lester had learned not to trust a man who could transform his arm into any weapon he'd ever touched. The villain, Weaponsmith by name, had learned nothing from the encounter. After shooting Lester in the gut and trying to move in for a finishing blow with an arm morphed into a claymore, Lester had found the strength to trip him and choke him to death on the floor with his bare hands.
The lesson served here, though. The heavies couldn't see what lay beyond the dining room from the angle in the entryway, but bullets slammed and sluiced into the table. The first heavy dropped to the floor and crawled over toward Lester, followed shortly by his comrades.
"Nice detail," the heavy grunted, popping up out of cover with just his arms and gun, firing blind over the table. "Thing must weigh about five hundred pounds, though."
"Four hundred, actually," Righteous breathed, chips of wood flying overhead from the table's surface. "Still, a good guess."
"Sage," the heavy said, firing another blind volley but rewarded with an injured grunt and drop. "Theo Sage."
"Well, Mr. Sage, this hallway goes all the way back to the rear of the house. There's only five doorways, and we want the third one, it's on the left. It goes down to the first level."
"Roger that. Kopek!" One of the other heavies brought his chin up off the floor. "Lights!" The man named Kopek, a tall, gangly fellow, snapped something off of his belt and tossed it up and over the table, into the hall. A couple of seconds later, the flash bang went off, and Sage sprayed ammo down the hall mercilessly.
Even through the smoke, Lester could tell three men dropped under Sage's barrage. He hopped over the table, bringing his own rifle up from where it was slung at his side. Movement in the smoke, and he fired a quick three-round burst, taking down another HAC agent. He called for the others to follow him.
Lester's mind could have frozen fire then, cold, calculated logic spurring him forward. He had no time to mourn for the men he and the heavy, Sage, had gunned down. There was a mission to be completed, an objective to be obtained. He would think of the fallen later.
As he ducked into the small alcove that half-hid the stairs leading down to the first level of the house, he distantly heard gunfire, shouts, and thuds coming from upstairs and outside. These too he pushed aside in his mind, frozen icicles of knowledge to be thawed out and considered later.
A face poked out from around a corner in the stairwell, and Captain Righteous thrust his heel into it with the force of an 18-wheeler doing seventy miles an hour. The crunch of bones and spray of blood signaled another death. But it was them or him and his men; he did not enjoy killing these HAC agents, but they had already almost done for him with a bullet to the head. If not for his armored cowl, he'd already have been slain.
As he took the corner, another HAC agent went running down the steps, away from him, weapon dropped. As Collins followed him to the den the stairs opened into, he scooped up the rifle and hurled it like a spear, braining the man with the butt of the gun. He would live; the headache would be awful, but he'd survive it.
The lower den was precisely as it had been when Lester moved out permanently in 1994, with only one alteration. The giant box television he'd had was replaced with a flatscreen digital unit. Otherwise, his 'man cave' shrine to the New York Giants was still intact. Two large recliners sat across from the set, Giants-themed blankets draped over them. Before these, three feet away from him, was a sturdy coffee table covered in football trading cards and sports magazines with the Giants on the cover. Some were newer.
The HAC had done some updates for him. He wondered if they'd been expecting to need him again. That didn't matter. What mattered was that nobody had moved the coffee table, thus revealing the trap door he'd installed. Righteous planted his foot on the coffee table and heaved it across the floor with a half-strength shove.
There, in the carpeting, was the cut outline of the door, in the center, the steel ring. He knelt down and grasped it, pulling it open. Before he could descend down the ladder, bullets sprayed into the room, and one of the heavies fell down the hole with a red welt bullet wound in hi forehead.
Lester stood and whirled to find the remaining three heavies firing at and killing three more HAC agents. Coming down the steps behind them was a hulking figure in segmented steel armor, a modern twin to Lester's own. The armored soldier held a limp henchman in each hand by broken necks, letting the heavies pump round after round into their lifeless companions.
Lester almost succumbed to similar impulses to empty his magazine at the oncoming soldier, but to do so would be fruitless. As his companions' guns clicked on empty clicks, the large soldier hurled the bodies at them. Lester began to raise his weapon, but the collision of the bodies with his allies pushed them into his path.
Major Patriot was on him before he could weave clear of the stumbling heavies. The younger Ultra Soldier had time to flash his hands out and break one of the heavies' neck before snatching Lester's gun away, tearing the sling strap with a single yank and pulling Lester off his feet.
Captain Righteous hadn't been on the receiving end of a kick in a long time. To say the one hitting him now was worse than every other time combined would have been the understatement of the century. Since being infused with the Ultra Soldier serum, Captain Righteous had suffered only two broken bones, and they'd been delivered by a robot in one case and a mutant in the other. The robot had broken his arm, the mutant his leg.
Major Patriot broke two of his ribs with a single blow that launched him clear across the den, landing in a heap atop the HAC agent he'd knocked out. The diminutive size of the armor scales worked fine for bullets and blades, and some energy weapons. But against the sheer force of Major Patriot's enhanced strength, they helped not at all.
As Lester got to his feet, he watched as Sage's left arm was torn from his body in a wash of blood, the jagged bone swiftly rammed through his face. The last remaining heavy took a knife, drawn so fast from its sheath that Lester hadn't seen Patriot move, to the throat, a single deep slash cutting across.
Lester dropped down the hole into his secret basement level, landing gracefully but wanting to scream at the jarring agony his drop caused in his ribs. The motion-sensor activated lights were still on, showing him he'd missed landing on the dead henchmen who'd dropped down the hole.
Ringing the room on each wall was a large set of heavy wooden shelves, and it was on the wall to his left that he spotted the object he'd come for. Lester took a step in that direction before his ears pricked up, and out of sheer instinct, he spun and hooked a cross punch outward.
The punch connected with Major Patriot's left cheek with the precision of a laser-guided missile, and roughly the same impact. Caught unsuspecting, Major Patriot grunted loudly as he was thrown back through a section of drywall and into the tiny office Lester kept down in his secret area of the house.
A tooth lay on the floor where Patriot had been, knocked clean out of his mouth.
Lester stumbled over to the shelves, grabbing the Freeze Ray component from its spot. On its own, the component didn't look like anything special. But Lester Collins, Captain Righteous to the wider world, knew better.
He was pulling out the return device control when the small desk from his office slammed into him, flying through the hole Major Patriot's body had made. Lester shouted more from shock than from pain. The desk down here had been a flimsy, lightweight thing, cheap but easy to assemble and suited to his purposes.
He didn't even fall down as it broke apart over him, though he did stumble. Even staggered, however, Lester turned and ducked in time to avoid having his head taken off by a haymaker punch leveled at his face.
Another duck as Patriot swung, and the Captain pumped out two quick uppercuts with his free left hand into Patriot's gut, though the younger man's armor absorbed a lot of the impact. A raised left leg blocked the follow-up shin-level hook kick Patriot threw to back him off.
After blocking the kick, Righteous countered with a stepping thrust kick that pounded Patriot in the chest, putting him through the wall once again. Not waiting for more back-and-forth, Lester took out the returner controller and activated it. In a flash of yellow light, he was gone.
When he looked around the teleporter chamber in the bowels of the Nevada base of Dr. Tyrant, he saw that only four other men had returned with him. Twenty-six of their thirty men had died.