Wearing the Cape 4: Small Town Heroes (24 page)

The road turned and went up the hill and I followed, eyes ahead. Nearing the crest of the hill I slowed to almost creeping speed. Over the crest and looking down at the gate and marked-out space that translated into the Garage’s in-bound bay, I dropped and hugged the grass. I counted seven people standing where they had no right to be, clustered around two vans, and I recognized three of them by their armor and signature accessories; Balz, Twist, and Dozer—aka Gantry, Eric Ludlow. I was looking at the Wreckers.

The Ascendancy had come to Littleton.

“Johnny’s called the dance and it’s a barn burner. Let’s make ourselves troublesome.”

Atlas, at the Whittier Base Attack.

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.” I’d stayed and watched for heart-pounding minutes to observe details, but they hadn’t done anything except stand around the vans they’d obviously commandeered in the Garage. One of them worked away on what looked like an obsolete laptop sitting on the hood, and I guessed that one was Phreak. Balz had a swarm of his spheres out as a perimeter, but they stayed lower than the crest of the hill.

“Okay then.” Deitz tapped a code on his pad, and through the windows I watched the streetlamp emergency lights begin flashing green. No sirens.
 
The town grid on the main board changed, points that had to be the shelters lighting up. Four of them blinked gold.

“What’s happening?”

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

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

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

“Shelly? Where are you?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What just happened?”

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

“What about the emergency system?”

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

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

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

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

“So, the ones you’re pretty sure of?”

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

“Got it. Next?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I pulled up my hood and got going.

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

“Shelly?”

“
Yeah?
”

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

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

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

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

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

“Any supersoldiers?”

“
Nope
.”

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

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

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

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

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

“More? I hope so. Enough?”

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

“
What?
”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“
Keep watch for the spheres
.”

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

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

“Sheriff! Is anybody hurt?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Balini? Why?”

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

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