Wearing the Cape 4: Small Town Heroes (25 page)

“
And you don’t have to move, Astra. Look, I’ve painted you
.” He had; three red dots made a tight triangle on my battered breastplate. “
You’re a nice kid. Sit this out, it’ll be over soon. You move, I’ll end you
.”

He turned his head, the dots not moving. “
And that goes for the rest of you!
” he shouted at—I guessed—Colonel Scott’s men.
“I hear a ping, she’s gone!
”

“
Hope, move!
” Shelly screamed in my ear.
“Do something!
”

I heaved a laugh. “Sorry, Shelly. I’ve got noth—” Not true. My right hand crept in from the tree, along my hip and now I tried not to breath. My armor’s pocket sat by the lower catch, and in it… “Shelly, I need a D.”

“
How big?
”

“Big.”

Two heartbeats later a Littleton drone crashed into the street between us as I grabbed the challenge coin in my pocket, flew, and
threw
. The same shape as my old throwing disks, the challenge coin cracked his helmet as his first salvo roared by under me, laser-lock broken by the drone. Before he could do more than stagger back I dropped on him with a full gravity assist.

Armor shrieked and crumpled as I grabbed and smacked him down face-first to get at the weapon mounts. Hooking his helmet, I popped it from the suit’s neck ring and found the release-catches that had to be there.
 
The thump of boots on pavement almost launched me until I saw the fire-platoon sprinting my way.

“I’ve got him!”

“And we’ll keep him.” A young corporal in blue jeans and armor pulled up beside me and saluted, holding up a set of Blacklock restraints. Another produced a sandman pack. Balini swore incoherently, his bloody face twisted, and I wondered if I’d broken his jaw.

“Okay then.” I yielded my prisoner, keeping him pushed against the cracked pavement as they cuffed him.

“You won’t win!” He ground out before they hit him with the extra strength sleepy-time pack. “You can’t keep them from getting what they want!” And he slumped.

“
Well that was clichéd
,” Shelly commented.

“But not wrong.” I stood, looking around. Half the businesses and homes on the street were on fire, and I heard explosions from two directions. It was happening. It was all happening and there was no cavalry riding to the rescue. The Wreckers had brought more in the vans, maybe every Scooby, maybe more wild-cards, and there was
nothing
, no plan…

I looked at my left hand, started laughing.

“
What? Hope, are you cracking?
”

I fumbled to pull off my glove. “She said not to take it off until I had to!”

“
Take what off?
”

“This!” I got the glove off. Fingers bare, I stared at the moonmoth silk ring for a breath, then grabbed one of the ends and pulled the bow open, yanking it off my hand. It fluttered to the ground.

“
No eyes, here, you’re going to have to tell me
.”

“Ozma’s ring,” I said weakly. It just lay there on the ground.

“
Still not getting it
.”

“She told me I was traveling, gave me a lace ring. So what—”

The tornado arrived.

“
I have the
best
friends!
”

From the Journal of Hope Corrigan

Tsuris’ tornado paused over the lake, thickening its twisting water spout while spinning off tiny figures and one…dragon?

“
That’s not possible!
” Shelly yelled.

“That’s
Ozma
! She
came
from an extra-reality world—why can’t she get into another one? Especially with Tsuris’ tornado to ride! Wait, how are you
seeing
this?”

“
My neural link with Shell! The bio-seed in my head didn’t have time to fully grow into the link before I moved to Littleton, but we’re together now! She’s here!
”

“You bet your sweet booties I’m here.” Shell ghosted into existence beside me. She wore a black athletic shirt that read
Orwell’s Little Sister
in white. “Ozma kitted up a poppet powered link to cover the extra-reality leap to you and Shelly, and Vulcan fabricated a quantum-signaling booster to cut through the base’s interference field—didn’t you wonder how I could talk to you at the base yesterday when before I couldn’t reach you unless you were in Guantánamo?”

I mentally face-palmed. How could I have missed the significance of Shell’s
 
“shipping” commentary about Jacky and the Master of Ceremonies and Darren and me last night?

“And I’m here flying Galatea, too! So, see you! Have to conserve bandwidth!” She popped like a rainbow soap bubble, showing off. I looked up at the night sky, just on time for the rain to hit.

It hit hard and I could guess how; Tsuris was scattering the funneled lake water into instant water-laden cloud—he’d probably brought a
big
load from Lake Michigan too—and it was like being under a rainshower head. I doubted he could cover more than a few square blocks, but that was all he needed to put out the fires. I couldn’t see anyone in the rain, then spotted Megaton’s signature flare arrowing down towards me. He roared in, went vertical to kill his descent, cut his blast and dropped to the steaming pavement in a showy three point foot-knee-fist landing.

Megaton had lost all of what he’d called his Geek Weight
over the last months of hard training and looked more like a track and field athlete now than a wrestler, but even if he’d still been soft and round with his first-day weight, standing there in red and black leather he was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. He pushed his goggles to the top of his helmet and looked me over.

“Hi, boss. Where’s your cape?”

I could feel myself grinning like an idiot. “Back at the office with my big metal club. Let’s go get it.”

Shelly fed Shell/Galatea a grid-map of the town and the others arrived as we did. Crash and Grendel rode Terreflore, sitting behind Kindrake. Tsuris and Galatea flew in above them, Galatea using a shoulder-harnessed quadricopter wing I’d never seen before—two interlocked propeller rings to each side. She ditched the wing attachment on landing, leaning it against the wall and stepped up to stand beside me. Her blue and silver chrome form, slick with rain, shown in the streetlamps.

“Where’s Ozma?”

“Sorry boss.” Megaton shrugged regretfully. “She couldn’t send Tsuris’ tornado and ride it at the same time. Said it’s like flying a kite—one of you has to stay on the ground.”

I nodded. Too bad, but we still—

“Hey Astra, who’re your friends?”

I turned and realized we had company. Deitz and Angel stood in the doorway, Angel with her tri-barrel over her shoulder.

“Sheriff Deitz, Deputy Sweet, please meet Galatea, Megaton, Grendel, Crash, Kindrake, and Tsuris. The Young Sentinels. Everybody, Sheriff Deitz and Deputy Sweet, the law in town.”

“When we’re not at war,” the sheriff corrected. “Carl is in charge of the proceedings right now, and my authority only extends to the shelters. Come in out of the rain.” Another explosion lit the night from the direction of the Institute. “And all that.”

We trooped inside. Shelly’s face was already on the big board, and she beamed at us.

“
Hey guys, welcome to Littleton! The bang you just heard was one of the two vans, a scouting platoon lit it up but it was empty. The Wreckers—yeah, the Wreckers—are taking their own sweet time
.”

“Why?” Jamal asked. “Not that we’re complaining since we got here in time for the show.”

I finished clipping my cape on, complete with deputy badge, and raised my hand for attention. “They think they have all night, guys. They’re all boosted by The Ascendant, and they think no help is coming. And with Drop moving them around, Balz scouting for them, and—Sheriff, they may have all of the heavy Cerberus unit, three of them anyway—they think they can handle everyone in here with them.”

Sheriff Deitz nodded at my little summation. “And you think you guys can turn it around?”

“We can try. But, Sheriff? I think if the fighting is focused right now, we should begin evacuating everybody who’s not shooting.”

“Already on it. As soon as Scott’s boys nailed down the points of contact we began walking and shuttling from the shelters furthest from the action.
 
With the night and now the rain, the Wreckers may not even know.”

“
Or care
,” Shelly said from the board. “
They haven’t tried attacking civilians or taking hostages—I think they think they’re the Good Guys
.”

“And Good Guys have rules.” I nodded. That fit with how my fight with Dozer had gone last year, even my stay as The Ascendant’s guest.

“
Yeah they do. Guys, they believe breakthroughs are the next step in humanity becoming ascendant beings—so they’re mortal gods but in their book that means
benevolent
gods. They’ll show mercy when they can, and won’t harm anyone normal who isn’t fighting them
.”

“When they’re not executing norms for killing or trying to kill us ‘ascendant beings’,” Tsuris added.

The floor shook and the night outside lit up. Shelly looked away from her screen, turned back.

“
So here’s the deal, guys. Colonel Scott has half his troops dug in at pre-prepared points in a covering pattern around the Institute. Most of the rest are moving outside the perimeter, looking for contact so they can call in the brilliant-missiles Scott has for artillery. They’re not playing around, Hope—their nastiest pieces could kill
you
. But so far they’ve got no confirmed kills, and we’ve…lost a few. So let’s
end
this
.”

And they all looked at me.

“Hey, Hope,” Shell ghost-whispered in my ear. “That’s your cue.”

We can’t, can we?
 
I looked around at everyone and my Blackstone-trained internal tactician kicked in, whispering
maybe we can.
For all our training, half of our team was what Rush liked to call new and shiny and Lei Ze called
green
—the Green Man hadn’t been a real battle so much as an unnatural disaster—and with the exceptions of Grendel, who’d been “born” in an insane horror of psychotic bystanders and twisted and rampaging breakthroughs, none had seen a
battlefield
. I had no idea how half of them would react to deadly, mortal, man-to-man combat.

But… Grendel was almost unkillable
if
they could stop him at all. Galatea was a
drone
piloted by Shell, she’d brought racks of ordnance, and even getting blown up didn’t mean the end of what
she
could do. Tsuris and Megaton…both could work it from standoff-range and support each other. Crash was in some ways the most dangerous of all of us as long as he didn’t get stupid, and he was the most careful of us, too. Kindrake…
No idea, keep her safe, let her improvise around us.
So, the Young Sentinels vs. the Wreckers?

Two unknowns to deal with, but we could win. If we can’t win we can find that out and work the edges, evacuate Littleton, maybe even keep them from completing their mission.
And Shelly was in the Institute and not alone—we couldn’t
not
try. I felt the smile growing across my face. We were here to save Littleton.

Crash knew the look, and pumped his fist. I heard a “Yes!” from Tsuris, an almost sub-sonic growl from Grendel.

“Give me a moment, guys.” Staring at the board, which Phreak still kept mostly dark, I looked blankly at the overlayed streets while my thoughts raced.

“Three points—we need to find the Wreckers, we need to keep our own side from shooting at us as we move, and we need to identify and counter two unknowns. Once we have a target I can lift Grendel. Crash can speed in. Kindrake, I’m sorry but Terraflore is too big and…he’s too big a target. Can you divide him into your flight of drakes? Crash can get you and them around if he’s got a bike. You two are a team for the rest of the night. Sheriff? Do you have a handy motorcycle?”

“Take mine,” Angel offered. “It’s a Yamaha ultra-light—I’ve driven it around most of Cuba.” She fished in her desk for her keys, looked back at us. “What? A girl has to have a hobby.”

I blinked away the image of Angel driving from town to town, bar to bar. She probably had drinking songs about her now.

“Okay, we’ll coordinate with Colonel Scott first, get the likely contact points. Crash will scout on the bike and tell us where the Wreckers are, we’ll go in as I said. Shelly? Can you and Galatea coordinate to act as Dispatch for this? We need threat-recognition as we go, especially for the unknown two or three we’re dealing with.”

The sheriff started talking to the colonel. Angel took Crash out to show him her bike. Everyone else pretty much relaxed, taking the whole thing like the prep meeting for a hot-range exercise. All except for Kindrake, who looked more than a little lost. Watching her with Grendel, I knew he didn’t see it; he was in his zone, his body changing as muscles bulked and adjusted themselves for the coming fight.

He looked up at me. “I want Dozer.” A troll staking out his fight. The biggest, of course,
Eric
. Mr. Ludlow.

“You can have him.” I crossed my arms, looked away and caught Kindrake’s eye where she leaned against Angel’s desk. I had no idea why Kindrake was
here
, but I could only be grateful.
And now she’s your job too, so suck it up little girl.

Tilting my head at the coffee machine got a nod from her and she joined me. I wasn’t Jacky—
don’t think about Jacky—
but the Littleton Sheriff’s Office kept a decent cupboard and the pot was fresh; I poured and made mine while she decided what to put in hers, turned to lean against the counter beside me and watch the room. I turned my head so she could see my smile. “Are you okay?”

“Sure.” She shrugged. “I just— I’m CAI certified, but that was mostly search-and-rescue, emergency support, stuff like that.
You
guys…”

“Yeah. We mostly do emergency response, too, but the Sentinels are a fighting team. And the Young Sentinels are, too, or we will be once we’re all old enough to qualify. Half of us have a few more months.”

“How can you fight
here
?”

“I don’t think the American Superhero Association is going to hear what happens here, do you? And we’re a little out of their jurisdiction.” I leaned in closer, bumped her shoulder. The goth-girl was older than me, taller too, just like everyone else, but I felt like the big sister. “Stick with Crash, you’ll be alright.”

“Thanks.” She watched me for a moment while I sipped, then paid attention to her own cup. “That’s not—” She blew on her coffee, looked back at me. “
Why
are you fighting here? I mean, it’s not your town—from what I get, it’s a place that’s not even
here
, so nobody will ever know.”

I looked at her, and didn’t even have the words.

“Astra?” Sheriff Deitz got my attention, stepped over to the board.

“Stick with Crash,” I repeated softly. Straightening I gave her shoulder a light squeeze and crossed the room without looking at anybody, feeling like a complete fake.

“Scott thinks they’re somewhere here,” the sheriff said when I joined him. He pointed to a block of houses with deep backyards close to the Institute. “They keep making and breaking contact in the streets around this block, and he thinks that Drop is sending the Wreckers out, making hard contact, then jumping out and picking them up. Which we think he can do as long as he has relative coordinates to his arrival zone.”

“And he’s getting that here from Balz’s spheres.”

“Yup.”

“Confirmed threats?”

“Just the ones you’ve told us about. Dozer, Balz, and Twist, and they’re bad enough when they drop right on a platoon. No contact with the two unknowns and no sign of any more of our own Cerberus team.”

“Okay.”
Please God, let Balini have been the only traitor
. We just couldn’t face the Wreckers
and
three more hard-trained Scoobies working together. “Crash, your turn. Do
not
drop out of hypertime anywhere near the area—go through and come back. Remember what Balz did to Rush last year.”

“Yes, boss.” He pulled on his red racer’s helmet and was gone through the open door. And then he was back. We never heard the bike. “The general’s right. They’re in back of one of the homes, operating out of a big van. I saw three, Balz’s spheres all over, but couldn’t see in the van. He can move the whole thing if he wants, right?”