Of Masks and Marvels
By Bek D Corbin
edited by Steve Zink
Chapter Twenty Three
I walked into the party, and every eye was on
me. I was wearing a clinging black strapless gown that was slit up the side,
showing off a flash of creamy thigh. My hair was done just right. I looked
fabulous, and I knew it. This was MY party. It was all about me. All my friends
were there, everyone that I cared about, letting me know how special I was, and
how much I meant to them. Even Jessie was there, looking like a little princess
in a pink gown.
Ted was there, looking studly in a tuxedo. He
held out his hand, and I took it. He gallantly kissed my hand, and pulled me
close to him. I didn’t feel the slightest hesitation or embarrassment. This was
right. It was more than right, it was fun! We began to dance, our bodies moving
together in rhythm. And it felt right. It didn’t matter that everyone I knew
was watching us. I was Lady Lightning. I was female, I was beautiful, and I was
free.
Then something changed.
Ted pulled away. He was looking at my face in an
odd way. I reached up, touched my face and felt something on my lip. It was a
mustache. But I haven’t had a mustache in months! I don’t even have to shave
there anymore!
I looked around, and everyone was looking at me
aghast. I started to say something, but my voice came out as an unpleasant
foghorn. Then they all started to laugh.
Ted pulled away from me. I tried to get closer,
to explain somehow, but he just kept me at arm's length. The laughter grew
louder.
Then the falsies in my dress popped out. I
haven’t needed falsies in months!
Suddenly, my dress, which was already pretty
tight, got even tighter. I was getting fatter! I literally grew out of my gown,
splitting its seams. And there I was, practically naked, fat Dan Maxham,
exposed for all the world to see.
And the laughter grew louder. I could see Kurt
Baumgartner, and his family and all of his buddies, leading the laughter.
Dammit, I wasn’t gonna take this shit! I
_deserve_ better! I generated a powerful electrical charge. I wasn’t sure what
I was gonna do with it, but I knew that I wasn’t gonna put up with this
anymore!
Then, just as I was about to cut loose, a black
gloved hand grabbed my arm. There, from out of nowhere, was Thunderbolt, the
Thunderbolt that I always wanted to be, as I’ve always imagined him: tall,
buff, masculine, competent and powerful. With his other hand, he reached into
my chest and pulled The Power right out of me. The Power coursed through him,
as if he were its rightful owner. Everyone applauded the downfall of the
Impostor and the restoration of the True Hero.
“Who Are You?” I gasped. He opened the visor of
his helmet.
It was Hughie.
*****
I woke up drenched in sweat. I clutched at
myself in a near panic. I wasn’t wearing the shreds of a evening gown, I was
wearing a simple nightgown. I felt my B-going-on-C cup breasts, and my smooth
hairless face. Okay, I wasn’t quite female, but I was still on my way. I turned
on the light and went over to the mirror. I didn’t see fat ugly old Dan Maxham,
I saw trim, lovely Maxine Fitzgerald. Pale, and covered in sweat, but still a
damn good looking woman. And that comforted me. But why did it
comfort me?
And why did that dream scare me so much? This
was the third time that I’ve had that dream, and each time, it's scared me
halfway to death. My unconscious is trying to tell me something, but for some
reason, I just ain’t buying it.
I slipped out of my nightgown, pulled on a
bathrobe and took a long shower to get the stink of the nightmare off of me.
After I showered, I went down to the kitchen and made some coffee. I really
didn’t want to go back to sleep. Thunderbolt might still be waiting for me.
Ma found me in the kitchen when she went down
for breakfast. “Maxine! You look terrible!”
“I had a really bad dream.”
“The dream with the dance and--- Thunderbolt,
again?”
I nodded.
“What’s this? The Third time?”
“Yeah. And, No, you don’t have to nag me into
talking to somebody about it.”
Ma gave a deep sigh of relief. “Oh, Thank God! I
was afraid that I’d have to get that Reyes woman to help me drag you to a
shrink!”
“I’m not gonna go to a shrink.”
“But-”
“Next time that I’m at AEGIS, I’m gonna talk
with Ms. Hex about it. This way, I don’t have to waste time convincing the
shrink that I really am Lady Lightning, that I really used to be Dan Maxham,
and No, I don’t wanna be a fascinating case study.”
Ma nodded. “Good. You’re handling this like a
responsible, grown-up woman, Maxine. Dan would have stuck his head in the
ground and insisted on ‘handling it’ himself. Now, go back to bed and get some
sleep, dear. You look terrible!”
“But-”
She laid a comforting hand on mine. “Don’t
worry, dear. Thunderbolt won’t be waiting for you. Those kinds of dreams only
sneak up on you when you’re not looking for them. Besides, you need the sleep.
Go on, mother knows best!”
I smiled, and thanked her with a kiss on the
cheek. Then I trudged up the stairs and actually managed to get a few hours’
sleep.
*****
Eli walked into the kitchenette at the station
and gave the refrigerator a good swift kick.
“What’s the matter, little brother? Schroeder
sand-bagging you on your expenses again?”
“No! Well --- he is, but that’s not what I’m
pissed about.”
“So, don’t drag it out. What?”
“I just heard from Vic Czernick that Kurt
Baumgartner and his buddies are out on some kind of bail, and the word is that
they’re gonna walk.”
“You’re KIDDING! We got them on tape,
stealing the Chief of Police’s CAR! What do they hafta do to stay busted, hack
a Nobel Peace Prize winner to death on National TV? Oh Gawd, MISSUZ Baumgartner
isn’t out, too? Ma would go ballistic!”
Eli shook his head. “Nope. No matter what sleaze
Kurt and Silas pulled to get out, there’s no way that Missuz B. or the lawyer
are walking.”
“Oh, thank God for small favors! At least with
her on ice, the Baumgartners won’t be quite as quick to pull any fast ones.” I
paused. “Still, I’d love to know exactly how they managed
to walk.”
Eli perked up. “Y’think that maybe Reyes could
find out?”
“Hey, this smells like someone cut a deal with
somebody. Of course she’d like to find out! Or at the very least, it would keep
her off OUR backs while she sniffed around!”
“Sounds like a Win-Win arrangement to me!”
With that, we went to find Reyes, and tell her
that we had a hot piece of information that was just begging to be looked into.
*****
We were in the News Lemon, trying to figure out
what Baumgartner could have sold to the DA that was worth looking the other way
to helping to rip off the Mayor’s car. Anyone that Baumgartner could sell out
wasn’t worth letting him walk. Then Eli and I started buzzing in stereo.
It was my AEGIS communicator. I looked at Eli.
“When did you get an AEGIS communicator?”
Eli gave an embarrassed grin. “Ah, Bernice
insisted.”
I took a moment to adjust my voice and answered
the call. “Lady Lightning here. What’s up?”
“Hey, L.L.!” Tigress answered back. “Get Tech
Support and get over to HQ STAT!”
“What is it?”
“Can’t take the time to explain. All that I can
say is that it’s a Full Member Alert! If you got plans for t’night- cancel
‘em!”
“Right!” I signed off. “Okay, Eli, break out
your ‘Tech Support’ suit! There’s what sounds like a Five-Alarm Emergency, and
they want all hands on deck.”
Reyes gave me that news hound look.
“Sorry, she didn’t say what the emergency
was, just that there was an emergency. Okay, bro, do you have one of your ‘Tech
Support’ suits in the News Lemon?”
“Better.” He hit a button on his AEGIS
communicator, fuzzed out, and was suddenly dressed in his ‘Tech Support’ togs.”
“WHAT? They gave me shit for months about being
an ‘Affiliate’, and waffled about getting me into their instant-change system,
but YOU get in right away? You’re not even an Affiliate!”
“Hey, take it up with Bernice.” He handed Reyes
a clipped phone adapter. “Would you slip this onto the line of the payphone out
there?”
“Why?”
“We need a land line to teleport to AEGIS HQ,
and I can’t go out there looking like this.”
“What? Those clothes changer thingies don’t need
a land line, why does the teleporter?”
“I’m not totally sure, but I think that an
imprecise signal like you’d get from a cell phone results in a rougher ‘jump’.
Clothes and equipment can take the strain, but I wouldn’t want to send anything
living - let alone ME - through it.”
Reyes gave him a nasty look. “I didn’t go to
Journalism school, just to do this.” But she went outside. When
the signal said go, we did, and in the blink of an eye, we weren’t in the News
Lemon anymore, we were in the teleportation room of AEGIS HQ.
“Well!” Bernice snapped. “You finally got
here!” Come to think of it, she was being even snarlier than normal.
Eli advanced with a snarky grin on his face.
“Oh, so you needed me THAT badly?”
“Of course I do! Chuckles, the brain-damaged
chimp is down with the flu, and I need some other barely sapient anthropoid to
stand around drooling while I do all the REAL work!” Ooohh, that was nasty,
even for Bernice!
Eli started to say something, but I rapped the
side of his head with a knuckle. “Sweet talk later. Bernice, Sherry said
something about a Five Alarm Alert?”
“Right. A few hours ago, a few guys from the
Federal Emergency Management Agency called, and Sherry had me teleport them
in.”
“FEMA? It must be nasty for them to be involved.
Who’s on deck?”
“Oh, they really called out the reserves on this
one! Everyone’s already here, except for Iron John, Sapphire and Titan, and
they all called in and said that they’d be here in a few minutes. Now you two
move along so that I can work this extremely delicate piece of equipment
without being distracted!”
Eli started to make a snappy comeback about
‘being distracting’, but I grabbed him by the ear and dragged him into the
hallway. “Snappy dialogue later! We’re here for a reason!”
<Hmmpphh!> “You were never this
bossy back when you were a guy!”
“Shush! Put it on the Internet, why don’t
you?”
Without any further chit-chat, I lead Eli down
the hall to the Conference Room. As Bernice had said, most of the rest of AEGIS
was seated there, and there were three men in suits, who had ‘Bureaucrat’
written all over them. “Hey, Guys! What’s all the fuss about?”
Power Woman glowered at me. “We’ll wait for the
rest to show up, so that we don’t have to go over the same ground repeatedly.
And what is HE-” she all but snarled at ‘Tech Support’, “-doing here?”
“Oh, Bernice was so impressed by his work on the
Teleportation system - which is back up and running again, may I point out -
that she asked him here to help her out the technical aspects of this
operation.”
Hex looked at me. “Bernice
_said_ that?”
“Well, maybe not in so many words,
but the implication is obvious - I mean, she called,
didn’t she?”
One of the Federal types cleared his throat.
“Excuse me, but exactly who is this person?”
“This is ‘Tech Support’, part of my backup
organization. He’s here to help with the technical end of things.”
“This is a very sensitive matter. Can he be
trusted?”
I raised my left hand and put my right across my
heart. “I’d trust him with my life.” And I would, too. Ma would kill him if he
let anything happen to me.
“Well, I’m afraid-”
“Oh, give it a break!” Hex interjected. “You’re
just playing useless little mind-games! He’ll be useful, and Iron John is
already here, and Sapphire and Titan should be here in a few minutes - we don’t
have TIME to waste!” The bureaucrat backed down. Hey, it’s good to know
a psychic!
Sure enough, Iron John, Sapphire and Titan
arrived in a few minutes, and we were finally able to get down to brass tacks.
As Diego settled into his chair, and made the
near- pro forma question about ‘Tech Support’, the other bureaucrat
cleared his throat. “Ladies, Gentlemen, I thank you for your swift response. We
have a very dangerous situation that’s heading this way and could possibly lay
waste to large parts of this city.”
“What are you talking about?” Power Woman asked.
“The only kinds of situations that could do that sort of destruction that would
lay under your jurisdiction would be an earthquake, a meteor, or a hurricane
level storm. I haven’t heard anything on the radio about a storm headed this
way, a meteor headed this way would have been spotted months ago, and we still
can’t predict earthquakes! Well?”
The third bureaucrat cleared his throat. “Well,
there IS another sort of phenomenon that falls under our jurisdiction - Titans.”
“Ex-CUZE Me?” Diego asked.
“<ahem!> “ ‘Titans’ is the generic
term for what you might call ‘Giant Monsters’, such as are generally associated
with Japanese Monster Movies, such as ‘Godzilla’ and ‘Mothra’.”
“You mean that you were approached by two tiny
singing Asian priestesses?”
“Hardly. With beings of such immense destructive
capability, the nations of the world have formed Titan Monitoring Bureaus, much
like the Storm Tracking Services that follow the paths of hurricanes and
tornadoes.”
“Hey, how hard could that be?” Sapphire offered.
“Just follow the trail of wreckage!”
“It’s harder than it might seem. Like whales,
the larger and more powerful a Titan is, the smaller the food it eats to
survive. So, most Titans spend the vast majority of their time in the deeper
parts of the oceans. And since the regions that they live in are so large -
almost 25% of the world’s surface area - and the depths that they move in are
so deep, keeping track of them is actually very hard. By and large, the Titan
Monitoring Bureaus keep track of them by watching for secondary and tertiary
signs, such as abnormal tides, deviations of the migrations of marine-life
schools, beachings of deep-sea creatures like Giant Squids, and occasional
‘processionary minor tremors’.”
“Now HOLD ON, a second!” Diego blurted out. “How
can these things even exist? I mean, I know that they exist, but HOW?
The damned things ignore the Inverse Square Law and several laws of
hydrodynamics and Structural Physics! Heck, even if they didn’t, there’s no way
that they should be able to move on dry land! Things that BIG should barely be
able to move, let alone rip up steel girder buildings!”
The first bureaucrat raised one eyebrow. “That’s
an odd statement to come from someone who violates several of the
very laws that he cites.”
“Hey, _I_ have The Power!” Diego retorted. “And
while I somehow violate those laws on a personal level, I still have to cope
with them! For instance, when I shrink after a long time being real big, I tend
to shed lots of heat. So, even I can’t completely ignore the Laws of Physics.”
Diego paused. “Are you telling me that these
‘Giant Monsters’ have The Power?”
<ahem!> The second bureaucrat
cleared his throat. “Well, at least some of them do. We have a classification
system that I think might help you understand.”
Gee, a bureaucrat has a classification system.
Color me surprised.
“At the lowest end of the scale, we have ‘Class
D’ Titans. These are animals or animated plants that are extraordinarily large
for their type, but don’t exceed the Rule of Thumb limit of a mid-sized sedan.
A couple of examples might be the ants from the 1950’s movie ‘Them’, or the
carnivorous blobs that occasionally pop up down in the sewers. They
occasionally happen when a life form is exposed to high doses of radiation or
certain combinations of chemicals. At this level, they rarely have any exotic
abilities beyond their extraordinary size. They’re large enough to be dangerous
to individuals, but they aren’t anything that SWAT or a small National Guard
unit couldn’t handle with conventional weapons. At this level, they barely
warrant being called ‘Titans’.
“At the next level, we have ‘Class C’ Titans. These
are those animals or animated plants that exceed the mid-sized sedan standard,
but don’t exceed twenty feet in height. Your classic example of a ‘Class C’
Titan would be the Giant Octopus that practically every superhero has faced off
against at one time or another.”
“Yeah,” Iron John grumped, “you’d think that
biology students would have gotten tired of throwing live octopuses-”
“Otcopi.”
“Whatever - live calimari into
microwaves.”
“Now, at ‘Class C’, while they still tend to not
have any really interesting powers, we do begin to see the real beginnings of
the ‘Titan Effect.”
Twist elbowed Diego. “Hey, you got an effect!
Beyond the usual stampede for the powder room.”
The third bureaucrat cleared his throat. <ahem!>
“Yes, the ‘Titan Effect’, as the, ah, Hero, pointed out, these
creatures do appear to violate several biological and physical laws, especially
the Inverse Square Law, which states that when you double something’s height,
you cube its mass.”
There was a general ‘hunh?’ at this.
Eli cleared his throat in a mockery of the
bureaucrats. “What he’s trying to say is that if you took a man who’s six feet
tall and grew him to twelve feet in height, the rest of him would also expand
to the same scale. The problem with this is that you’ve cubed, or
expanded to the third power the amount of heat that he’s generating, but the
amount of surface area that he has to expel that heat has only doubled, if
that. The man would literally bake in his own heat. You’ll note that really big
critters like whales and elephants either live in the water, which absorbs lots
of heat, or they spend a LOT of time dealing with the heat.”
“Thank you, ah, ‘Tech Support’. We believe at
this level, a creature which is growing in size out of control to its nature, dies
from being burned up from its own heat, or being crushed by its own weight, or
failing to pump vital fluids to its body parts, or some other breakdown of the
natural Laws of Biology and Physics. Or, the ‘Titan Effect’ kicks in. We think
that it somehow takes all that biologically generated heat and uses it to keep
itself standing and its blood and other fluids flowing properly. And it creates
an ‘aura effect’ that increases its strength and durability, and also creates a
method of venting some of that heat.”
“So,” said Diego, who was obviously thinking
furiously, “instead of a giant creature burning itself to a crisp or collapsing
under its own weight, you really DO have a creature that, the bigger it gets,
the stronger and tougher it gets.”
“Exactly.”
At this, there was a generalized ‘oh, shit!’
“The ‘Class C’ is large enough to pose a
significant threat to large groups of people and should be dealt with by either
a superhero or a good sized unit of National Guard or Marines.
“At the next level, the ‘Class B’ Titan, the
‘Titan Effect’ is in full bloom, as it were. The smallest ‘Class B’ Titan on
record was the Giant Octopus that attacked San Francisco in 1952, and it was as
large as a three story building. While they usually don’t have any fantastic
powers, the creatures are large and powerful enough to pose a material threat
at the Municipal level. At this point, we usually try to coordinate Police,
National Guard, standing Military and local superhero groups to deal with the creature,
and keep casualties and collateral damage to a minimum.
“And finally, we have the ‘Class A’ Titan. This
is the classic super powered behemoth that wades through cities, leaving swaths
of destruction in their wake. We believe that ‘Class B’ Titans somehow develop
The Power, and this somehow allows them to both manifest the fantastic
abilities that they display and to grow to even larger sizes.”
Ted raised a finger. “So, are there any theories
as to why these things seem to be drawn to large metropolitan areas, just to
walk through them causing mayhem and destruction?”
The second bureaucrat cleared his throat.
“Actually, there are several. Currently, the favored theory also explains why
they seem to be so confrontational, and why they seem to seek out other Titans
for those incredible slugfests that they appear to enjoy so much.
“Titans spend the vast majority of their time
down in the lower depths of the ocean, as we’ve said. The theory is that when
they’re down there, they build up incredible charges of energy within their
bodies. They usually use these charges to help them deal with the pressures of
the deep ocean. But these charges build up to such a point that the Titans find
them actively uncomfortable, and probably quite irritating. Moreover, any other
energy signature would probably rile them up rather badly. So, when the charge
gets so bad that the Titan can’t stand it anymore, it rises up out of the
depths to seek out other energy signatures - ocean going vessels with radio
equipment, radar installations, communications dishes and so on. Once they’ve
dealt with the immediate nuisance, the Titan seeks out the greatest source of
annoyance.”
“Which would be the nearest large city,” I
offered, “with its thick blanket of electromagnetic ‘smog’.”
“Exactly. And then we puny humans call out our
Armed Forces and shoot it with everything we’ve got, in order to protect our
cities. Now, the reason that Titans don’t learn to avoid human cities, is that
this is almost exactly what the Titan needs. The energy that’s driving the
Titan crazy is expended by the protective personal force fields that envelop
them, and in the energy bursts that they use. The more of this excess energy
that gets used in this manner, the less irritation it feels and the better the
Titan feels.”
“So,” Power Woman asked, “it’s like these things
have really bad itches that are driving them crazy, and we’re helping them
scratch it?”
“More or less. When the city isn’t producing as
much electromagnetic energy and/or it’s ‘scratched its itch’ enough, the Titan
waddles back into the ocean.”
“Then why do these Titans seem to be drawn to
each other?” Ms. Hex asked.
“Well, a combination of things. First, we think
that most Titans are extremely territorial. Even at the ocean’s bottom, there
is only so much food, and two Titans in an area would badly over-tax the
region. Secondly, we think that Titans send out energy signatures that are even
more irritating to each other than a city’s is. Down at the ocean’s bottom,
this probably acts as a territory marking mechanism. But when they’re up on dry
land, it’s an open challenge, and they come at each other boiling for a fight.
They use each other to shed their excess energy, and maybe to establish some
kind of territorial dominance.”
Iron John nodded. “And that would explain why
two Titans slugging it out way out in the boonies seems to draw more Titans who
seem to want to get in on the fight. They heterodyne their energy signatures,
drawing all the Titans in the freaking hemisphere who want a fight.”
Then Iron John paused. “Which is all very
interesting, but it doesn’t get to the real point. Are you telling us that one
of these ‘Giant Monsters’ is heading this way?”
“Yes.”
“Which one?”
The third bureaucrat took the question. “We
don’t know. So far, all that we have are several secondary and tertiary signs
that a Titan approached the coast some time yesterday. We now have direct
confirmation that the Titan entered the river at its mouth about six hours ago,
and has been travelling upstream in this direction.
“And here is our problem: we don’t know which
Titan it is, we don’t know what it wants, we don’t know where it’s going to
come out of the river, and we don’t know what direction that it’s going to go
in when it does come out.”
“It’s travelling up the river?” Sapphire asked.
“I’ve never heard of a ‘Giant Monster’ travelling up rivers. And from what
you’ve told us, it makes a lot more sense for it to crawl out of the ocean and
head for the nearest coastal city or town, the way they usually do.”
“You’re right,” the second bureaucrat said.
“Normally, a Titan latches onto a specific signature and keeps after it. That’s
why we think the same Titan keeps coming back to the same city, time after
time. And we’ve never had a Titan enter a river and travel up it, as this one
is doing. And to confuse things worse, it’s keeping a very low profile. The
only way that we’ve been able to keep track of its progress is by the water
swells that it causes as it passes and a few wrecks of very deep hulled river
craft.”
The third bureaucrat took the ball again. “Our
strategy is to put the entire region on a low level alert, until the Titan
finally makes its move. We have sent people to all the superhero groups in the
region, and we’re asking them be ready to move the second that it breaks out of
the water. Besides that, we have called out the local National Guard units,
claiming that it’s an ‘Emergency Preparedness Drill’. Also, all the Police
Departments, Rescue Services, Fire Departments, Hospitals, Red Cross outposts,
and Military bases in the area on low level alerts. We’re even asking the local
Pro Sports franchises to hold off on their games until the Titan passes their
city, so that the arenas can be used as Emergency Hospitals and Homeless
shelters. We’ve gotten a remarkable amount of inter-jurisdictional cooperation
on this, on the Local, State and Interstate levels.”
The first bureaucrat took over. “Besides being
ready to protect your city, the Federal Emergency Management Administration is
asking you to be ready to move in support, if the Titan surfaces in some other
city. When the Titan finally shows itself, we want services in the cities not
threatened to send what forces they can afford to, to help with the defense
effort.”
Battalion raised his hand. “So, exactly what are
the City’s protocols for dealing with a Titan?”
The bureaucrats looked uniformly uncomfortable.
“Ahhh…we don’t have any. We haven’t had any Titans head our way before. But we
have protocols from Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Miami and New York.”
“Okay, using these protocols, what do you want
from US?”
“Well, from you super-types, we basically have
four tasks: First, there’s what’s called ‘Clearing’. You reduce the amount of
casualties and damage by preceding the Titan, removing as much from its path
that can be saved as possible. People are, of course the first priority, but
things like power conduits, gas lines and trucks full of volatiles are also
pretty high on the list.
“Your—Bricks, I think is the term, would
be best for the heavy duty ‘Clearing’. We need people who can get large objects
out of the Titan’s way as quickly as possible.”
Battalion said, “And what about Sapphire? Her
telekinesis is powerful enough to lift a good sized truck, and she can do it
from a distance.”
Sapphire shook her head sadly. “Sorry, no good.
My ability to manifest solid energy forms isn’t what it was. I haven’t been
able to create my ‘Power Gems’ in months.”
“Oh?” I asked, “When did this happen, honey?”
“Some time about after that brouhaha with
She-Devil and the Egg. I’ve been having problems concentrating, too.”
The lead bureaucrat cleared his throat. “That’s
for later. But I’m afraid that Miss ‘Sapphire’ is right, she wouldn’t do very
well on the ‘Clearing’ detail.
“Then there’s what’s called ‘Steering’. Those
will be the ones of you that actually fight the beast. Your job will be
basically to get its attention and try to get it to go in directions away from
vulnerable targets, like hospitals or power plants. By the way, they seem to
love power plants. We’ll shut down as many power lines in the Titan’s immediate
vicinity as we can, but we can’t shut down the power plants.
“I think the energy projecters in your group
will do best as ‘Steerers’. Besides being able to attack at a range, they are
all very mobile, and the Titan might react to their energy signatures as it
would another Titan.
“The third task is called ‘Sweeping’. That’s the
job of dealing with the damage immediately after the Titan passes. The sooner
that fires are put out and people are gotten out of rubble, the better. Your
job will basically be to keep a lid on things until Emergency Services gets
there, then get right back after the Titan to put out the next fire. Your Ms.
Hex, with her telepathy and telekinesis, should definitely be on the Sweeping
team.
“The last group is called ‘Pacification’, and it
should be the most familiar to you. In the wake of the Titan, there will
probably be looters and other opportunists. Your job will be to assist the
Police and National Guard units in dealing with that.”
Iron John heaved a sigh. “Yep, there’s always
some ratsass looking to take advantage of the chaos.” Then a look crossed his
face. “Any chance that supervillains might try to join in the fun?”
The first bureaucrat shook his head. “Unlikely.
Studies in the wake of Titan Attacks and other disasters show that professional
criminals rarely take part in looting. And, most supervillains are, at some
level, professional criminals. Professional criminals accept being arrested and
going to jail as a ‘professional risk’ that they all run. But under Martial
Law, Military and National Guard units have the authority to summarily execute
looters and other ‘dangerous elements’. And they’ll be taking on trained
soldiers, using MilSpec weaponry, not just average cops on the beat. To a
professional criminal, what they can pick up looting isn’t worth the risk of
getting shot. No, the average looter is either a very low-level street thug or
an unprincipled civilian reacting to the breakdown of normal social patterns.”
The third bureaucrat pointed to the situation
room’s viewing screen, where a map of the town was displayed. “Our overall
strategy is really very simple. Here-” he pointed at a section just outside
town, near the river. “-is a very large and very powerful microwave
communications dish. Even as we speak, we have technicians desperately working
to adjust the dish’s moorings so that it can be turned and aimed. Our plan is
to steer the Titan toward the dish, and bombard it with microwaves. The
microwaves won’t hurt the creature, but they should irritate it so that it
should come in that direction.”
He hit the remote and the display zoomed to
where the microwave relay was. “The 343rd and 531st Armored
Divisions are already on alert, and have moved into position near the highway.
If the Titan surfaces here, they’ll move into position between the Titan and
the microwave dish. In addition, we’ll have the 72nd, 91st,
105th and 117th Mobile Artillery Divisions will be in
positions to achieve a constant bombardment on-” he went on to a very technical
description of the artillery technique. “We are hoping that once the Titan gets
its ‘itch scratched’, that it’ll take the short route back to the river that
we’re providing here, instead of retracing its steps.”
I didn’t really follow the description of the
bombardment technique, but Wendell did. (Figgers). “Hold on, with the array
that you’re talking about, you’ll never be able to get the kind of concentration
of firepower that you’ll need to kill the Titan.”
“Well, that’s rather the idea.”
“Why? So that the damn thing can come back and
tromp on us again, now that it knows where we are?”
The first and third bureaucrats both looked at
the second bureaucrat. “Well, there’s a reason for that. One of the reasons why
we developed the Titan Rating system was that it is actually very important to
know what kind of Titan with which we’re dealing.”
There was a generalized ‘why?’ from around the
table.
<ahem!> “Well, as I said before,
one of the criteria for being a ‘Class A’ Titan is a demonstrated possession of
The Power. Besides their size and the strange attacks and powers they display,
‘Class A’ Titans pose another threat - in 1966, the French fleet in the South
Pacific discovered a Titan moving deep under the surface, near the Muruoa
Atoll. They had good reason to believe that it was Raidnazera, a Titan that had
devastated Manila about a week before. On orders from Paris to keep Raidnazera
from posing a threat to French Polynesia, the fleet began an intense depth
charge bombardment. They managed to kill the beast, but in doing so, they
triggered a catastrophic detonation that, while non-nuclear, was equal in force
to a Twenty Megaton bomb.”
The phrase ‘Twenty Megaton Bomb’ echoed around
the table.
“You mean these things are fucking atomic
bombs?” Iron John asked incredulously.
“No, as I said, the blast was non-nuclear and
non-radioactive. Even so, the French chose to advance the story that they were
testing an underwater nuclear device, and the UN Security Council backed them
up in a secret session. While most of the French Atomic tests in the South
Pacific are genuine weapons tests, the French have taken advantage of this to,
<*ahem!*> ‘eliminate’ several Class-A Titans underwater.”
Iron John stuck to his point. “So, you’re saying
that if we kill this thing, that it’ll explode like an A-bomb, only without the
fallout?”
The second bureaucrat sighed heavily. “Yes.
That’s why it’s so important to identify the Titan as soon as possible. Right
now, we don’t know if the Titan passing this way is Class A or Class B. If it’s
Class B, then there’s no danger of a detonation. Then your job will be to keep
it in one place while the conventional forces close in and finish it off. The
sooner it’s dead, the better for everyone.
“BUT, if it’s Class A, then we have to follow
the program that we’ve outlined, and get it to return to the ocean as soon as
possible. The International Disaster Relief Agency maintains and constantly
upgrades a database on all known Class A and B Titans, so we should have a
positive ID within a few minutes of it breaking the surface.”
Either way, I thought that it was going to be a
visual extravaganza. Reyes was going to have full grown cats when she heard
that we knew about this, and didn’t give her a sneak warning----
REYES! If that thing broke the surface here,
then every TV news crew would be on the job! She MIGHT be able to get by
without me, but there’s NO WAY that she’d be able to explain away not having a
cameraman!
I turned to Eli, and even through the mask and
visor, I could tell from his pale expression that exactly the same thought had
occurred to him. I leaned over and whispered, “D’you think that you could
explain to yer girlfriend why you can’t be on hand for the crisis?”
“She’s not my girlfriend! And, NO,
I can’t think of anything!”
Like a teacher catching two kids whispering in
class, the third bureaucrat asked, “Is there something that you’d like to
contribute?”
Oh well. “Oh, just a Secret Identity issue.
‘Tech Support’ here has a commitment that might keep him busy, if the Titan
surfaces here. We were just trying to figure out how to handle it.”
<Harrummfph!> “I don’t see
how-” The bureaucrat’s pomposity was cut short by a universal cold glare from
around the table, even Power Woman. If there’s anything that superheroes
understand, it’s ‘Secret Identity issues’.
“Hold on.” Eli jumped in. “When is the general
public going to be informed about this? I mean, talk about having a Right to
Know!”
The third bureaucrat cleared his throat. “Well,
ah, due to the, ah, uncertain nature of the situation, informing the
general public will only be done when and where the Titan finally surfaces.
There are no less that seven different cities that the Titan
could choose to surface at; warning all of them would cause unnecessary alarm,
and maybe even panic, in six cities where there is absolutely no risk. It would
require usage of manpower to maintain order, which is badly needed elsewhere.”
As usual, the weasel managed to make covering
his own ass sound like civic responsibility. Par for the course.
*****
By One in the Afternoon, the Navy helicopters
that were tracking the Titan verified that it was well out of range of the town
just down the river from us and was coming into City Limits. It was our turn in
the barrel.
Eli and Bernice had worked something out where
he could blip back and forth from a remote transmitter (maybe a solution to our
landline problems?) and switch outfits at the same time. Of course, this meant
that we had to let Reyes in on the secret. Thank God, I wasn’t there to have to
deal with her. All we AEGIS members positioned ourselves in our civilian
clothes, all along the length of the riverfront near phones with landlines. If
the Titan surfaced near us, we’d call in and let Bernice know. She’d alert the
others and teleport them to that location. Scarapelli had five squads of SWAT
cops on reserve with a landline to AEGIS, ready to back us up.
I had Reyes on the phone, and was blatantly
breaking security. “What?” Reyes bleated, “You mean something major’s going
down right now? What?”
“I can’t tell you, ‘cause it might not go down
in this town. But wherever it does go down, it’s gonna be BIG!”
“So, what are you telling me?”
“That Eli will be sort of blipping back and
forth for the next few hours. He should be able to handle the camera for you
most of the time, but there will be times when he’s badly needed elsewhere.”
Reyes growled. “I can’t believe that I’m
bankrolling your entire operation, and all that I’m getting for it is THIS Bee
Ess!”
“Reyes, I’m-” Then my AEGIS pager went off.
‘CONTACT!’ “OH SHIT! It’s going down right now! Reyes, get into
the NewsLemon, get moving south and wait for Eli to contact you!”
I slammed the phone down and dialed AEGIS and my
code number.
A blurry second later, I was in my Lady
Lightning costume at the loading docks along with Battalion, Sapphire and
Titan. The loading dock workers were looking very surprised at the collection
of long-john wearing weirdos in their midst, but we were all looking at the
ominous hump in the water that was still growing without managing to show what
it was.
I snapped out of it first, and set off one of my
dazzling flashes. “LISTEN UP, PEOPLE! THIS AREA IS ABOUT TO BECOME A WAR
ZONE! EVACUATE NOW!”
Sure enough, most of them showed the good sense
to scatter. “Titan, start clearing away those trailer hitches. Battalion,
Sapphire, power up and build up to as heavy a burst as you can image. Hold it
until the water clears and we can get a clear shot!” I started powering up a
hellacious charge.
As we stood there for an improbably long time,
the dock foreman charged up, yelling, “What the hell are you freaks doing here?
What do you think you’re doing threatening my workers?
Straining to keep the charge contained inside
me, I glared at him. “You! Are there any natural gas lines in this area?”
The foreman gave me a ‘wha?’ expression,
and “Ah, No.”
“Any gasoline tanks or other explosives?”
“No! What the fuck are you-”
“Any kind of hazardous waster, or anything else
that might be dangerous if it spilled?”
“Hey, you are NOT going to drag one of your
stupid super-fights into MY-”
“We’re not dragging anything, mister! It’s
coming here, whether we want it to or not!”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“THAT.” I indicated the enormous swelling of
water that somehow still hadn’t broken.
The Foreman turned his head and finally saw the
hump. Even from behind, I could tell that he went white as a sheet. “Oh. My.
God.”
“Don’t just stand there with your teeth in your
mouth!” I snapped at him. “Clear the area! Shut down the electricity, if you
know where the junction box is!”
He jumped like I’d stuck a pin in him, and was
off screaming orders left and right.
Meanwhile, the hump in the water kept growing
and growing. It raised a full three stories up in the water. I was amazed that
surface tension had that much hold. Finally, the tension holding the water up
broke.
“ah---Bernice---It’s a snail.”
“_what?_”
“It’s a snail. A thirty-something foot high
univalve with a spiraling shell with long spiky things jutting out of it. The
shell is sort of purple and neon orange striped, with streaks and flecks of
gold in it. It looks like the tourist souvenir that Liberace wouldn’t bring
home. Okay, it’s sticking its head out. The skin is a sort of fruit punch red
with a big black splotch on the head between the eyes, and it's sticking out
its eyes. And it's sticking out more eyes. And more eyes. Dear God, it's got
eight eyes, and they’re looking all around---“
Suddenly I snapped out of the awestruck reverie.
But give me a break, you don’t see that much bad taste outside Las Vegas. “ Oh
Shit! Open fire, people!”
Sapphire, Battalion and I all let fly at once,
and hit just under its mouth.
Tink.
Nothing. It didn’t even flinch.
Now, normally in the monster movie, this is the
part where the giant beast lets out a bellowing roar and takes a swat at a
curiously shoddy looking building that’s conveniently chest high. Nope, not our
boy. He just sort of surged out of the water and started crawling forward.
Titan grew to his maximum size of sixty feet
high, pounded a fist into his other hand and said, “Well, all right! Time to
wrassle!”
But I was watching where the snail-ossus was
going. It didn’t climb over the truck that was in front of it, it flowed
through it. It didn’t crush the truck, it melted it. The damn thing was dissolving
everything in its path!
“TITAN! NO! Stay BACK! It’s Acidic!”
But it was too late. Diego had one hand on it,
and if he hadn’t been wearing those gawd-awful thick armored gauntlets of his,
he would have pulled back a stump. As it was, he barely managed to rip his
gauntlet off in time, and he had some really nasty chemical burns as it was.
Battalion and Sapphire tried to buy Titan some
time by blasting it, and I flew between them to give it one of my patented
blinding electrical arc flashes.
Which, may I say was remarkably more effective
than I personally would have guess. It pulled in all eight eyestalks and pulled
back its head a bit. I guess snails don’t like bright lights that much,
especially those that spend the majority of their time twenty thousand leagues
under the sea.
I’ll give Diego this - he’s a real scrapper.
After almost getting burned like that, most people would have held back and tried
to think of a safer way of handling this thing. Figuring that the acid only
came from the fleshy part, Diego came at from the side and tried to grapple its
shell, maybe to try and tip it over so that it couldn’t move.
Good idea.
But then the spiral of the shell began to spin -
literally spinning! - and those spikes started ripping into him. There was an
actual buzzsaw sound as the spikes tore through his chest armor
“Justiciar! Power Woman! We need an
intervention! Get Titan away from that thing! He’ll kill himself!”
[Heads up, Crew! I’ve got a positive ID! It’s
Whelkera-]
“Bernice, if you don’t mind, we’re
sort of in the middle of something here!”
[Well, whatever you do, keep your distance! It
secretes a powerful acid!]
“Tell us something that we don’t
know!” Diego snarled.
[Okay, besides secreting that acid, it can also
spit it up to 500 yards away, in amounts that can dissolve a good sized tank!
Also, it says that it can emit an ear-shattering shriek. Hey, don’t you need lungs
to shriek? Do snails even have lungs?]
“Not really an issue, Bernice!”
Sapphire said as she swooped by to knock out one of the spines.
[Okay, I don’t know how relevant this is, but
ol’ Whelkera shouldn’t be here.]
There was a resounding ‘WELL, DUH!’
[He’s native to the South Pacific, and his usual
stomping grounds is Djakarta, though he’s been known to crawl through Singapore
as well.]
“Yeah, so?” Battalion asked.
[Well, he’s a giant mutated PACIFIC mollusk!]
“Ooohhh, I get it!” I said. “If he’s a Pacific
Ocean boy, what’s he doing Here? The river doesn’t open into the
Pacific!”
[Hah! Not so smug and condescending now, are
you?]
“Ah, Bernice, since you have the down-load
anyway, would there be anything like a chemical analysis of that slime that he’s
melting that Burger Clown™ with? Like maybe you could compound a counter-agent
that you could teleport to Battalion, so that we can at least keep the damage
to a couple of billion?”
[Uhm, well, I’d need Tech Support for that.]
“What?” Power Woman and Ted had finally finished
up whatever they had been handling and were pulling Titan off Whelkera. But
Brenda was still up to eavesdropping. “Lady Lightning, didn’t you give me your
word that that little weasel was reliable?”
“Yeah, and I also told you that he was having
Secret Identity conflicts! Bernice, buzz him and see what you two can arrange.
But, in the meantime, Bernice, you still haven’t answered the 64,000 Dollar
Question: Is that thing a Class A Titan, or can we get it drunk on some beer and
kill it?”
[Weren’t you listening? It has super powers and
it’s a repeat rampager! Do you think the Indonesian military would let that
thing keep tip-toeing through their tulips, if it weren’t a Class A?]
“Oh. Right. Good Point, Bern. Well, what’s the status
of that Microwave Irritator Dish?”
[Half a sec. Okay, they say that they need at
least twenty minutes to get it aligned. They want you to keep that thing from
passing map coordinate J- 14.]
“Battalion…?” I asked resignedly.
“That would be roughly Union and 24th,”
he immediately replied.
“Street or Avenue?”
[Street. Also, one of the out of town Armored
Divisions says that they’re on the Interstate and encountering very light
traffic, so they should be here in about a half hour.]
“Cool. Nothing like heavy armor to really send
collateral damage up a few brackets. What about the Midnight Watch, the Legion
of Steel or the Nine Just Men?”
“MAN,” Sapphire muttered, barely audible over
the link, “who comes UP with these names?”
[Half a tick. Lesse now; the Legion has their
hands full with a group of wise ass supervillains who’re counting on every
superhero around hauling ass over here. The Watch and the Nine say they’re en
route.]
“Of course they are. And I’ll hold my breath
waiting for them. After all, I look spectacular in blue. Okay, people,
we know what we gotta do! Hey, Hex, I realize that controlling that thing is
too much to expect, but what are the chances that you could-”
“‘Read its mind’?” Amy finished for me. “You’re
assuming that its GOT a mind to read. And, even if I could, it’s running on raw
irritation. The very best that I could do was get a rough idea of what was
pissing it off.”
“Hey, that beats staggering
around in the dark!”
"Enh, it couldn’t hurt, I
suppose.” A few minutes later. “This is weird.”
“What’s up, Hex?”
“I can’t get any reading off of
it. I should be getting at the very least be getting an impression of animal
rage, but all I’m getting is sort of a blank wall.”
I watched as the huge mollusk plowed
through an office building. “Hey, listen up, crew! There’s something weird
going on!”
“There’s a six story