Team Omega (30 page)

And he crushed the Colonel’s head like a grape.

***

“Jesus Christ,” the President said.

“That’s one way of looking at it,” the General said.  “I’m afraid that Hope is very definitely out of control.”

“Tell me about it,” the Secretary of State said.  Gayle Hepburn looked tired and worn.  “I've been hearing from the Europeans; they’re going absolutely ballistic over Hope’s destruction of the Libyan regime.  No one will mourn for the dictator, but they don’t want another influx of refugees crossing the sea to Italy.  Apparently, Italy has already started deploying its navy to turn back refugees and Spain and France are expected to join them within two days.”

She shook her head.  “There’s also an emergency motion being drawn up for the UN condemning Hope’s actions, mainly by Russia and China.  It wouldn't be that much of a problem, apart from the minor detail that the various European powers are likely to join it this time.  Europe’s been paranoid ever since Warsaw; God alone knows what’s going to happen if the chaos in Libya spreads across and into Europe.”

General Kratman nodded.  “I'm afraid the reports from Libya are quite clear,” he said, grimly.  “Hope destroyed much of the regime’s enforcement arms, but he didn't even
start
putting anything in place to replace them.  The Congo saw a very clear presence from Hope and his superhumans right from the start; Libya is back to tribal militias and what army units escaped destruction in the operation.  I think we’re looking at an outright civil war within the next few days.”

“So I’m told,” the President said, softly.  “What the hell is he
thinking
?”

“He’s thinking that Libya organised an attack on the Congo, on the uneasy peace he created where warlords once killed thousands of innocent people for fun,” Chester said, quietly.  The last report from Matt Tracker had come in just after Hope and his allies departed for Libya.  By then, the news had already started to hit Washington.  “We only have his word for it, but under the circumstances it hardly matters.  Hope just shattered another government and killed their dictator on live TV.”

“That will only add to the chaos,” the General put in.  “When a state is run by a dictator, there is always a...personality cult built up around the dictator, helping to convince his population that he’s invincible and any attempt to bring him down is doomed to inevitable failure.  The news is never uncensored, so even if there's trouble in one part of the country it doesn't necessarily spread to the rest of the state.  But now everyone with a television will have seen the Colonel’s death, right in front of their eyes.  They will
know
that the Colonel is dead.”

He shook his head.  “I’d be surprised if the civil war hasn't started by tomorrow,” he concluded.  “All it proves is that we need to be ready to deal with Hope as soon as possible.”

Chester nodded.  Not everyone in the room was cleared to know that an assassination attempt was already underway, but by now the President would probably be having second thoughts.  What if they were wrong about the Saviours fragmenting without Hope?  And how would the rest of the superhuman community react if the United States was blamed for Hope's death?

“With your permission, I will put the SDI on full alert,” the General said.  “I suggest that we also start calling up the reserves and preparing for outright war.  We have to make it clear to the world that we will not stand for this.”

“It isn't fair,” Gayle commented.  “How can we reasonably complain about the regimes he’s chosen to target?”

“We can't, but he’s replaced them with chaos,” the General said.  “Do you think that the oppressed masses of Libya, given a chance at freedom, are going to forgive and forget everything that was done to them by their former dictator?  Of course not; they’re going to want a little revenge.  And so Hope’s well-meaning action has opened the doorway to genocide on a scale fully matching the genocide in the Congo.  I think we’ll be very lucky if
only
a few million humans die.  And what will Hope do then?”

Chapter Thirty

“You know, this place was meant to be unreachable,” a voice said from behind him.  “How did you get up here?”

Chester refused to allow himself to panic, even though he was on top of a mountain that was incredibly difficult to climb, at least for an ordinary human being.  A superhuman like the one he’d come to see would have no problems flying onto the mountain peak and entering the small hut that had been built into the rock.

“I called in a favour from Jumper,” he said, shortly.  The view really was stunning.  “She told me that you were...”

“Friends with benefits,” Michael Lee said, wryly.  “I should never have allowed her to visit the Fireman’s Rest, but it gets lonely up here sometimes.”

Chester nodded.  “You’re looking well, for someone who has spent most of the decade sitting up here,” he said.  “Did you ever manage to write the sequel to your memoirs?”

Lee shrugged.  “I have writer’s block,” he admitted.  “It was easy talking about Slaughter and just how enraged I was when I discovered...well, you know.  But writing in more general terms?  I write a couple of pages, and then I throw them away as trash.”

He shook his head.  “You’d better come inside,” he said.  “I make a mean cup of coffee, if I say so myself.”

Chester followed him into the small hut and was surprised to see that it was reasonably comfortable, large enough for a dozen people to share without becoming too cramped.  A single small generator humming in the background provided power for a cooker and the lamps hanging from the ceiling, as well as a computer and television.  The wastepaper bin was surrounded by crumbled pieces of paper that had been thrown there with great force. 

“This isn't a social call,” Chester admitted, as Lee passed him a cup of coffee.  “I’m afraid I have serious business to discuss.”

“I thought as much,” Lee said, dryly.  “You do realise that I have no intention of returning to the SDI?”

Chester nodded, slowly.  “I know,” he said.  Lee’s memoirs had made shocking reading for an American public that preferred to believe that the government was always above reproach.  As the first true superhero, the man who had saved countless lives in New York and across the globe, his word carried weight.  The CIA’s reputation certainly hadn’t survived what Lee had told the world.  “But things may be getting out of hand.”

Lee sipped his own coffee, thoughtfully.  “Hope,” he said.  It wasn't a question.  “I do hear the news from time to time.”

“He’s...convinced that he can smash his way to forcing the world to behave,” Chester said, flatly.  Lee had once been cleared for everything, but now...Chester hadn't bothered to ask permission to talk with him, knowing that it might not be granted.  “Two days ago, his force raided Libya, killed the dictator and left the country in chaos.  Right now, they’re killing each other over petty disputes or fleeing the country into a Europe that isn't proving welcoming.”

“Hope always was something of an idealist,” Lee said, after a moment.  “I only knew him for a brief while, but he kept saying that we had the power to change the world for the better and that we should
use
that power.  He probably got his powers too early...he that is not a socialist at twenty, as the saying goes.”

Chester nodded.  He who was not a socialist at twenty, according to someone whose name he couldn't recall, had no heart.  But if they were still a socialist at thirty, they had no brain. 

“You have to understand how maddening it was, at times, not to intervene,” Lee admitted, slowly.  “I knew that there were more sins in this world than I could handle.  And yet...what would happen
after
I intervened?  Even when I meddled on a small scale, the results weren't always what I wanted to happen.”

Chester lifted an eyebrow. 

“I killed a woman who was abusing her children,” Lee elaborated, grimly.  “The children still loved her, and they hated me.  I believe they joined Pure Humanity in the end.”

He shook his head.  “Hope has bitten off more than he can chew,” he said, flatly.  “I don’t dispute that something had to be done about the Congo, but salvaging as much as possible from the wreckage would be a very long term project.  He should have asked for help from us before launching his operation.”

“Help won’t be forthcoming,” Chester said.  “Whatever Hope had in mind when he launched his operation, he upset the balance of the world.  And then hitting Libya only convinced others that he was a threat that had to be stopped.”

Lee nodded, thoughtfully.  “Have you thought about defying the rest of the world and sending aid to the Congo anyway?”

“Congress wouldn't stand for it,” Chester said.  “Right now, lobbyists from a dozen corporations are busy convincing Congressmen that if they don’t prevent aid from being sent without certain preconditions being met, they won’t get any more campaign contributions for the 2016 elections.  And then there’s the religious nuts who think that superhumans made deals with the devil, or are devils...and then there are the people who think that it’s all part of a superhuman plot to take over the world.  Even if the President burns all of his remaining political capital, it's unlikely that Congress will accept it.”

He shook his head.  “Besides, you know how antsy the public is about taking casualties in foreign wars,” he added.  “One dead soldier, and they will start demanding that we pull out before someone else breaks a fingernail.”

“I always thought that that was just the elites,” Lee said.  “The average American would understand, if the justification for the operation was put clearly and the soldiers properly equipped for their role.”

“I think that Bill Jefferson is trying to put together a consensus in the UN that would allow some peacekeepers to be sent,” Chester said, “but that won’t move unless Hope agrees to the preconditions.  And I doubt that he will.”

“He never saw the value of compromise,” Lee agreed.  “What sort of preconditions do they have in mind?”

“Contracts were signed with the warlords for mining in the Congo,” Chester said.  Lee was shaking his head before he finished.  “They want those contracts honoured, without having to pay another round of massive bribes.”

“I can’t see Hope going for that one,” Lee said.  “He’d want to make sure that the people sitting on top of the mineral mountain received a major share in the profits—and make sure that they actually get invested effectively.  Pity he doesn't have a major vice of his own, or there’d be a lever someone could use to convince him to change his mind.”

Chester shrugged.  “Our best psychologists say that Hope is likely to lash out, time and time again,” he said.  “We may need your help.”

Lee looked at him for a long moment.  “You know as well as I do why I left the world behind,” he said.  “Even if the SDI wanted me back, I’m not sure that I would
want
to go back.  Besides, there’s another Fireman now.”

“You were the first real superhero,” Chester said.  “We may need someone with your stature to stand up and tell Hope to stop.”

“Right,” Lee said.  “Do you believe that Hope will listen to me?”

Chester didn't know for sure, but there weren't many other ideas.  Lee had been the second superhuman discovered, the first to spark in America.  As a former fireman in New York, he’d donned a bright costume, christened himself Fireman and set out to save as many lives as he could.  Later, he'd joined and led the first American superhuman team, one of the few teams that had truly lived up to its claims. 

And then the CIA had unleashed Slaughter on Latin America, and Lee’s faith in his government had been irreparably shattered.

He’d flown south, located Slaughter, and beaten him to death in full view of the watching TV cameras.  Afterwards, he’d told the newsmen everything he knew, starting with the fact that Slaughter should have been inside a specially-designed prison for superhuman criminals.  But the CIA had offered him his freedom in exchange for working for them, an offer that Slaughter had been in no position to refuse.  He’d left a trail of murder, rape and destruction as he’d walked south, daring the locals to stop him.  In the end, Fireman had had to stop him permanently.

The CIA had been gutted in the aftermath of the debacle.  Congress, desperate to avoid any traces of the blame falling on them, had savaged the CIA.  The analysts who’d come up with the whole plan were sacked, tried, and put in prison, but it hadn't been enough to repair the CIA’s reputation.  It was a minor miracle that it hadn't been disbanded completely and replaced by something new; even so, the SDI had taken responsibility for superhuman affairs from the CIA and gone on to do a better job.  And Fireman, having resigned from the team, had vanished into the countryside and never been seen in public again.

“I think that there aren't many people who can convince his followers to listen,” Chester said, quietly.  “This is getting out of hand.”

“One of my relatives was black,” Lee said.  Chester blinked at the odd statement, but said nothing, content to wait for Lee to come to the point.  “She had family over in Sudan, family who were at risk from the chaos gripping the country.  I remember her telling us tales of a girl who had burned down her entire village when they tried to kill her for some imaginary offence.  No one believed a word of it.

“And then I fell off a building that had caught fire and discovered that I could fly,” Lee added.  He chuckled, humourlessly.  “They used to think that fire triggered superhuman abilities, somehow.  There were a dozen organisations that used flamethrowers in the hopes of triggering an inner superhero.  And hundreds of people got burned; I don’t think they created a single superhuman.”

Chester nodded.  The companies that promised to put someone in a position where they were bound to spark into superhumanity were still in existence, their methods growing ever more sophisticated as their knowledge improved.  But, outside of Dr. Death’s research program in South Africa—which killed two-thirds of its victims, not counting the superhumans who had to die to give up their organs—no one had come up with a genuine process for bestowing superhumanity.  It was a matter of luck rather than anything else, although genetics must play a part.  Marvin Lofting had had kids, and
they
had developed powers of their own.

Lee smiled, coldly.  “The world changed the moment people started developing superhuman abilities,” he said.  “I think we spent the last thirty years closing our eyes to that single fact, you know.  We put superhumans in teams intended to bind them to Uncle Sam—the other nations did the same with their own—in the hopes of avoiding the simple fact that controlling superhumans was easier said than done.  Are they still compromising justice to deal with rogue superhumans?”

“I’m afraid so,” Chester admitted.  Secret courts were hardly constitutional.  But if the Young Stars had wanted a public fight, it would have torn open the facade of control surrounding superhumanity.  And no one knew what would happen after that.  “You know as well as I do that there isn't any choice.”

“Keep telling yourself that,” Lee said, ruefully.  “I did...

“And then they used Slaughter as a Person of Mass Destruction,” he added, a moment later.  “Can we really trust those who work in the shadows, who classify everything they do and use threats, force and bribes to hide it when it surfaces into the open?  I used to believe in my country, right or wrong, but how can I believe when my country authorises such acts and then hides them from the population?  When does protecting National Security become covering up misdeeds and outright mistakes?”

Chester shook his head.  “I don’t blame you for being bitter,” he said, finally.  “And I would understand if you refused to return to the SDI as a full-time operative.  But we need your help with the Hope situation.”

“And there’s Hope, hiding nothing,” Lee said, almost as if he hadn't heard a word.  “He kills the Colonel on live television just to make the point that he isn't hiding anything.  Even when he fucks up, it’s public.  Does that make him inherently more trustworthy than a government that hides everything from the taxpayers, the people it is supposed to be accountable to?”

Chester sighed.  “Do you think that the general public would be
happier
knowing everything I know?  Really?”

Lee lifted one eyebrow, inviting him to continue.