New Olympus Saga (Book 4): The Ragnarok Alternative (6 page)

Off Florida’s East Coast, July 14, 2014

For nearly fifteen years, no hurricane had reached any populated land mass in the world, courtesy of the Freedom Legion’s Weather Management Program. A dedicated team of climate controllers made sure of that.

What Neos could make, other Neos could destroy, however.

The monstrous cyclone moving ponderously towards Florida wasn’t natural. Someone had seized upon a minor tropical storm and injected enormous power into it, creating a swirling mass of wind and rain, over three hundred miles wide, producing wind speeds exceeding two hundred miles an hour. If the hurricane made it to land, the loss of life would be catastrophic. The freak storm was moving too fast to evacuate most of the people in its projected path.

We’ll just have to make sure it doesn’t get there
, John Clarke thought.

It was easier said than done, however. The Legion and assorted auxiliaries had to figure out how to stop a heat engine with an output in the order of two hundred exajoules, almost a hundred times the planet’s total electrical generation, concentrated in a relatively small area. The Legion’s weather wizards had tried to dissipate the storm by the usual means of cooling the waters beneath it and sapping its power, but whoever was controlling Hurricane Thanatos was having none of it. As of the last report, Tempesta and Ocean Goddess had both collapsed after pushing themselves well past their limits in a vain attempt to stop the cyclone. The remaining weather-oriented Neos were acting as a reserve that would try to minimize the damage if the worst happened and the hurricane made landfall on schedule, less than an hour away. Tropical-storm winds and rain were already lashing Florida’s coastline.

It was up to Freedom Squad One to prevent the worst from happening.

The seven figures flying towards the mass of swirling clouds that filled the horizon were less than specks of dust in comparison. To expect them to stop the storm seemed insane.

Their plan was simple: find the Neo responsible for the hurricane’s creation and stop him or her by any means necessary.

“Twenty seconds before we hit the storm’s front,” John announced through his comm implants. The team was already facing fifty, seventy miles an hour winds even this far away from the hard core of the hurricane. Visibility and maneuvering would be severely compromised once they reached it, especially for relatively weak fliers like the Fairy Godfather. This was going to be tricky. “Anybody have eyes on the target?”

“He’s somewhere near the eye,” Dark Justice reported. “That’s where all the Source energy powering the storm is coming from.”

“Concur,” Brass Man said. “My sensors confirm the point of origin and have narrowed it down to a one-mile radius. We’ll need to get closer to give you a better vector.”

“Very well. Dark Justice, Brass Man and I will go in. The rest of you remain outside the eye wall to serve as reserve.”

Everyone acknowledged the order, even Face-Off, who would resent being kept away from his girlfriend.
Too bad
.

John led the way, spinning his body as he pushed his way through the strengthening winds to provide a wake for Brass Man and Dark Justice to follow. He and his allies pushed through the eye wall, the almost solid mass of devastating winds that surrounded the calm center of the storm. Once they were there, finding the culprit would be far easier.

Their quarry was ready for them, however.

A lightning storm erupted around the three Legionnaires. In a moment they’d all been struck by multiple bolts. Sudden agony caused John to lose control; the swirling winds of the storm wall swept him away. The pain was bad; the shock of surprise was worse. He’d been struck by lightning many times before, and been relatively unscathed. The energy unleashed by the bolts was enormous, but the human body, even the Neo version, wouldn’t absorb it; only a tiny fraction of that power should have affected him, the rest passing through him without inflicting damage.

Not these strikes. They transferred their full hundred terawatts of power right into him, encasing him in superheated air, fifty thousand degrees of Hell. And, driven by a Neo’s power and will, they were able to penetrate his protective aura in a way normal lightning wouldn’t have.

Even so, John would have shrugged off a single bolt without losing a beat. Two or three might have given him pause. Six or seven would have been enough to knock him off balance.

He was struck thirty times in under a second.

John dimly heard shouts of pain from his companions; his enhanced hearing was enough to pick up their voices from the staccato cracks of the multiple lightning strikes. The winds carried him off as more bolts struck him. The constant barrage was overwhelming. He tried to fight it, but the hits kept on coming, a relentless onslaught of electric devastation that precluded action or even thought. He…

“Got you!” Christine yelled through the comm. The relentless lightning strikes stopped and a slender but surprisingly strong arm stopped his flailing form and held him aloft.

Dark Justice was carrying Brass Man as well; Doc’s suit of armor had several smoking dimples where lightning strikes had nearly punched through its hyper-alloy plates. Dark Justice had generated an energy bubble around the three of them, protecting them from the electrical storm.

“Took me a second to figure out the best polarity to use for the force field, but now I got its number. Near zero energy transfer,” she said. “Neat, isn’t it?”

“I’ll write the commendation myself,” John said. “But let’s get the miscreant first, shall we?”

“You got it, Captain my Captain. And bonus points for using the word ‘miscreant’ without a trace of sarcasm.”

John suppressed a surge of irritation and allowed himself to be carried like one of the damsels he’d be holding in a typical comic book cover. He knew that it wasn’t so much raw power as versatility that had allowed Christine to endure the same attack that had brought him down. Being shown up still grated.

“My systems are operating at eighty-three percent capacity,” Brass Man reported. “My sensors have reduced the acquisition box to under a hundred yards. We should be able to locate our target visually once we’re there. And then…” He laughed, a very Lurker-like sound that the old Kenneth Slaughter would never have uttered.

“Thanks for the creepiness, da… Uncle Adam. Point the way.”

Dark Justice flew through the constant fusillade of lightning. Her electromagnetic field caused most of its power to dissipate harmlessly. As they pushed through to the eye of the storm, sunlight and calm weather greeted them, along with their target.

It was a woman. John’s enhanced vision resolved her features while they were still half a mile away. A beautiful Asian woman with long platinum-blonde hair. He recognized her instantly.

“Hey,” Christine said. “Isn’t that...?”

Dawn Windstorm.

A Legionnaire.

Dawn Zhang, missing and presumed dead during the cataclysmic Genocide War. A weather witch, mostly a wind controller of middling power, 2.4 in the Parahuman Ability Scale, not considered powerful enough to join the Legion’s Weather Management Program. And yet, there she was, controlling unimaginable amounts of energy and defying a dozen weather masters with ease.

Dawn Windstorm looked at John and smiled. Her voice came through the Legion’s comm system: she had the same cochlear implants they all did. She’d probably been monitoring their transmissions all along.

“I didn’t think you’d make it this far, Ulti-matey and Uber-friends,” she said. “Doesn’t matter. You can’t stop me. It’s time to avenge Larry. Where’s that bitch Olivia? I want to watch her die.”

Protocol was to never waste time in futile dialog and instead take her out, hard and fast, but this was one of their own. He had to try to talk her down.

“Dawn, stand down right now!” he shouted in his command voice.

She laughed at him.

“Take her,” he said.

Dawn struck first.

Something flew from between her outstretched arms, darting towards them, a crackling mass of ice, electricity and solidified air moving at escape velocity. Dark Justice released the force bubble and created a half-sphere of solid force, big enough to cover all three of them. John had no choice but to hunker down behind it, surprised by the surge of anger and humiliation he felt in the brief instant before irresistible force met immovable object.

The world was swallowed by the ensuing conflagration.

John had been at ground zero for no less than six multi-kiloton nuclear explosions, the last one a little over a year ago. This was just about as bad.

The next thing he knew, he was looking down on the world from the edge of the stratosphere. The hurricane was still visible, but its outline was disorganized, weaker; it was beginning to dissipate. Dawn must have spent too much energy in that apocalyptic missile to keep the cyclone going.

Time to put an end to it.

“Freedom Squad One. Move in and engage.”

It took but a few seconds to travel the eight miles or so and rejoin the battle. Brass Man’s missiles and plasma beams were being held at bay by a shield of hardened air around the rogue Legionnaire, who was countering with more lightning bolts that would eventually pierce his armor and finish him off. Dark Justice was nowhere to be seen. The rest of Freedom Squad One was closing in fast.

Artemis – Olivia O’Brian – got there first.

It was personal. Olivia had told John that she regretted not making peace with Dawn before her death. Now there was no peace to make, no quarter to offer. It was fire against wind and lightning, as both women unleashed everything they had against each other.

Olivia was one of the strongest people John knew, but she was outmatched by the traitor’s raw power. Dawn’s winds obliterated the streams of fire headed towards her, and she hammered Artemis with a barrage of lightning bolts. There was no way she would survive longer than a second or two.

She didn’t have to.

This time John didn’t try to talk. Dawn had become too powerful, too unpredictable. Olivia’s life was on the line, and countless others besides. In this world, there was only one way to deal with the likes of Dawn Windstorm.

He flew past her at supersonic speeds and cut loose with a punch that contained far more power than could be generated by mere mass and velocity. Dawn’s air shield collapsed under the impact. His fist shattered her skull like a pistol bullet striking a fine crystal goblet.

The headless body fell gracelessly towards the sea. John swooped after it and took the lifeless form in his arms. He remembered the day he’d handed the girl her Legionnaire commission, just three years ago. She’d been radiantly happy, and proud.

It all felt terribly futile.

Freedom Island, Caribbean Sea, July 14, 2014

“Two!” General Xu shouted and slammed a holographic fist on a holographic table. “Two Type Four Neolympians in ten days! Intolerable! Unacceptable!”

“Throwing a tantrum isn’t going to help,” Fox Ghost said.

“Indeed,” Adam said. “The General is correct, however. We are facing a growing crisis.”

“Why can’t you make that stubborn girl access the Source and stop it from making new Neolympians?” the General pressed on. “She did it once, after all.”

“Despite our best efforts, she remains cut off from the Source,” Adam said with heavy patience. John felt a sudden urge to fly around the world just to slap Xu around until all his teeth flew out. Even that would probably fail to knock any sense into the Councilor.

And John wasn’t even a Councilor anymore. The only reason he was in the room was to deliver a personal report on the battle off Florida’s coast. He no longer had a say in the running of the Legion, not since he’d shown just how humanly fallible he really was.

“Christine will be all right,” Fox Ghost said, turning to John. “She didn’t get too badly hurt, did she?”

“She was knocked unconscious after taking the brunt of Dawn Windstorm’s attack, but she’s recovered fully,” John said. Face-Off had fished her out of the ocean and carried her back in his arms. John had been surprised he hadn’t slung her over his shoulder like a caveman, maybe after urinating on her to mark his property. “She’s fit for duty. I’m surprised she’s not here to give you her personal report.”

“Well, this way it’s easier to talk about her behind her back,” Ali said with a bitter grin. “Like, how can we make her connect to the Source and do as she’s told? Or maybe whether or not we should kill her when she’s done, just to be safe?”

“Nobody’s proposing such measures,” Adam said, but his words seemed to be aimed at General Xu, who might just be considering them.

“Councilors, please,” Tigresa said. “This is not constructive. We need to concentrate on what we can do. Ms. Dark will eventually be able to reestablish contact with the Source. Meanwhile, we need to be better prepared for the next outbreak.” She looked at John. “Thank you for the report. Ultimate.”

Those polite words meant he was dismissed. John didn’t glare, grind his teeth or give any signs of how he felt. Instead, he nodded blandly and left the meeting room.

He could use a drink. Of course, it would take half a liter of eighty-proof to have an effect on him, so one drink just wouldn’t do.