Just Cause Universe 3: Day of the Destroyer (6 page)

“So what do we do?”

“Mostly we just make ourselves visible,” said Faith. “We’re a visual deterrent to street crime.”

“Street crime? We don’t go after parahuman villains?” Irlene stared at the passing New Yorkers who took in the colorfully attired women with typical aplomb.

Faith laughed. “I hate to burst your bubble, Irlene, but Just Cause hasn’t run across any parapowered criminals since early ’75.” She bent in and whispered, “We think we might have got them all.”

Irlene’s eyes widened behind her pink mask. “Really?”

Faith shrugged. “No way to tell for sure until someone new surfaces, but we’ve tracked down all the parahuman offenders we know of.”

“Does it happen often, someone new showing up?”

“You did. Lucky you chose to be one of the good guys.”

“Lucky?”

“Lucky for you.” Faith winked at her. “Come on, let’s head over to Times Square. Maybe we can catch a purse snatcher or something.”

“Do we take a cab or something?”

Faith grinned. “Something. I’ll run. You fly. Try and keep up.”

Irlene bowed her head, no blush apparent behind her dusky skin. “I’m sorry, I still ain’t used to—”

But Faith winked and took off at—for her—an easy lope of forty miles per hour. She glanced back over her shoulder and saw Irlene flying ten feet over the ground, a few yards behind her and catching up. “You meanie,” called the teen over the sound of wind whipping past them. “I wasn’t ready.”

“You’re in Just Cause now, kiddo. You have to be ready all the time. You never know when you’ll have to respond to something at a moment’s notice.” Faith dodged around a bicycle messenger and hurdled a sawhorse blocking an open manhole cover with a bored-looking Con Ed crew standing around it drinking coffee.

Times Square was bustling, even so early in the day. People hurried through on their way to work, early lunch, or loitered and transacted shady business deals. A man selling watches out of a briefcase closed it up and hurried away when he saw the Just Cause heroes arrive. Faith watched him go. She’d spoken to him once and knew he was harmless, but just the same she appreciated the gesture on his part. The flesh trade was already underway. People—mostly men—slipped into theaters and other houses of ill repute. Others talked to prostitutes, negotiating terms and leaving together. Pimps loitered in doorways and solicited business with passersby. Most people gave only token respect to the heroes’ authority. Despite having police powers specifically in New York City granted by the governor, lawbreakers knew that for the most part, they were well beneath the attention of the superheroes.

“I can’t believe this,” Irlene said. “Doesn’t anyone care who we are, or what we are?”

“Not really,” said Faith. She glared at a beat cop as he walked out of a peepshow, adjusting his Sam Browne belt. “Let’s make the rounds. It isn’t very hot yet. Maybe everyone will behave themselves today.”

Faith knew she’d spoken too soon, for they heard a woman shriek near the bus station. She and Irlene glanced at each other, and then hurried toward the sound of the commotion.

Faith arrived first, zig-zagging through curious onlookers to find an elderly black woman sprawled on the cement. She knelt down to carefully help the woman to her feet. “Ma’am, are you all right?”

“That young son of a bitch stole my purse.” The woman rubbed her hip. “Knocked me down.”

“What he look like?” Irlene dropped out of the sky to land next to Faith and the elderly woman.

“Spic with greasy hair and a hat. Oh my, I did take a tumble.”

Irlene flew upward and scanned the area. “I got him,” she said. “He’s running.”

“Go after him, Imp. I’ll catch up.”

“Okay, uh, Pony Girl.” Irlene shrank down to the size of a Barbie doll and sped away; she could fly faster when small.

Faith turned her attention back to the woman. “Ma’am, do you need a doctor or anything?”

“You just catch that son of a bitch and bring back my purse, young lady, and God bless you.”

Faith nodded and ran after Irlene. The cityscape blurred around her with her speed. She overtook Irlene in a matter of seconds and spotted the fleeing purse snatcher. Faith poured on the speed to pass by him, then skidded to a halt, turned, and braced herself with her arm outstretched.

The purse-snatcher clothes-lined himself right across her forearm. The shock of impact jarred her senses, but not as much as it must have his. His feet flew up into the air and he crashed to the cement.

Faith grinned. Sometimes it felt good to do the right thing. “Mister, you are under arrest.”

#

Harlan hid the vagrant’s body in the trunk of a crushed Ford. He looked askance at the trail of blood that remained along the path where he’d dragged the carcass. It hadn’t rained in days and didn’t look like there would be much relief coming anytime soon. It didn’t matter so much, though, because anyone who came into the junkyard and didn’t disarm the security systems would suffer the same fate. That thought gave Harlan a cheerful shiver.

He ambled across the clearing to his makeshift workshop, a disused Volkswagen bus with the side door ripped away. It hunched on rusting, naked rims. The broken headlights gave it a somber, almost wistful expression. He’d tacked canvas sheeting to the van’s roof and stretched it out to poles hammered into engine blocks for a makeshift roof. It flapped in the warming breeze. Various half-done tinkering projects littered the dirt around his workshop. Many were pieces he’d started without really understanding what they were or even their intended purpose. Others had been begun, ripped apart, and rebuilt in different ways many times over. Trial and error was Harlan’s format of creation. Sometimes he worked on a component for months until he understood that it was ready and installed it. Often it was at the installation that he realized what it was he’d built. It was like a teacher lived in his head. Not one of the cranky old ladies at the school Momma made him attend, but like a scientist and engineer and chemist all rolled into one. Harlan listened to that voice, and it taught him how to make things.

He was pretty sure that none of his work had been disturbed, but went on to check his masterpiece, to make sure the unscheduled visitor hadn’t damaged it in any way. It hulked in a back corner of the yard, surrounded by numerous wrecks that Harlan had moved with the ingenious crane arrangement he’d built from scrap parts.

Anyone who didn’t know what it was would have only seen what looked like two semi truck cabs stacked on top of each other with some parts sticking out at random. But Harlan knew better.

He’d built a suit; his own
Mechagodzilla
.

Not just any suit, either. This one was
big
. It crouched on four heavy hydraulic legs powered by the Diesel engine in the lower truck cab. When he powered them up, the rig would raise itself up to a fearsome height, nearly twenty feet tall. Numerous layers of rubber, cut from rotting tires, padded the suit’s feet. The upper cab boasted four arms, designed for no other purpose than destruction. Two housed mobile versions of the belt-fed Eggbreaker guns, one of which had killed the vagrant. Another carried a powerful flamethrower with a large tank of pressurized fuel. The last held a huge circular saw blade. Harlan had found it in a disused corner of the junkyard. It must have belonged to a timber mill at some point, but now it ran on Diesel power from the upper cab. Heavy armor plating protected the engines and hydraulics, and the pilot’s cabin at the very top of the suit was armored like a pillbox.

He had no name for the suit. He didn’t even know for certain why he’d built it, except he was compelled to. When he dreamed, gears and pistons and hoses filled his thoughts. The only time he truly felt good about himself—happy, even—was when he was working on the suit. It was an extension of himself, like he was building a second skin to go outside of his own; something to make his dreams a reality. Nobody who saw it would tease him, or tell him to do chores. They’d scream in terror and run away.

He longed to instill that fear in others.

He’d never switched it on, but when that day finally came, he’d crawl into the machine’s belly and become a part of it, and he would feel complete for the first time in his life.

His father would have been so proud of him.

He checked connections, fuel levels, hydraulics. Everything seemed to be in order; he could find no sign that the suit had been disturbed in any way. The last thing he checked was the heavy insulated cables running from a nearby power pole. Making that connection had come close to killing him, late one night when he’d sneaked away from the apartment to work under cover of darkness. He’d brushed against a live power lead and caught a minor jolt of electricity which made him slip and fall from a precarious perch fifteen feet above the ground. When he hit the ground, it had felt like the current still ran back and forth throughout his body, seeking an exit but finding none. He’d lain in agony without moving or breathing, knowing his spark of life was fading away like a candle flame under a glass jar. And as he sprawled on the pavement, damp from Fall rains, staring without seeing up at the murky clouds overhead, something had arisen within him. It shocked him with bright pain and hate, startling his autonomic nervous system into action once more. He drew a ragged, shuddering breath as his heart thudded behind bruised ribs, and groaned out his agony. For the better part of that night almost a year ago, Harlan had lain helpless on the ground, full of pain and hate and blaming the world for it. As the sky began to lighten over the Atlantic, he’d found he could move once more, and staggered home in an exhausted, hateful fugue.

The next day he’d gone back, his head still spinning, and connected the line to the bank of car batteries ensconced deep inside one of the semi truck cabs. The tired old batteries needed a constant charge either from the grid or the onboard engines or else they’d simply die, and then Harlan’s suit would lose everything that didn’t run via direct drive or hydraulics.

Satisfied the vagrant hadn’t disturbed his masterwork, he pulled the tarpaulins down again around the suit.

He frowned at his current project. It needed something that he didn’t have. He screwed up his face in deep concentration. He knew there was a word for it. If he could only remember it. Harlan’s blood pounded in his ears and he felt faint and realized he’d been holding his breath. He blew out a lungful of stale air and as he inhaled, it came to him.
Thermocouple
. He needed some thermocouples. He grinned in relief.

Gonsalvo would have some. Gonsalvo always had what Harlan needed.

#

Sundancer grabbed the Steel Soldier and made for the air-access balcony, leaving Tommy stuck with Javier once again. Tommy sighed as he watched John Stone and Lionheart walk out of the conference room, bound for the elevator. Just Cause protocols dictated that whenever possible, the heroes would operate in teams of two. With four fliers, it meant Tommy wasn’t ever paired up with one of the ground-pounders, although he figured that would change with the addition of Imp to the mix.

Bobby clapped him on the shoulder. “Sorry, man,” he said quietly. “Really.”

Tommy put on his bravest smile. “It’s all right. Into every life a little rain must fall.”

Bobby chuckled. “We could use a little rain in all our lives. This weather is ridiculous. It’s making people crazy. As if we didn’t already have Son of Sam out there looking for his next victims.” The serial killer had wrapped up the city in a grip of fear and paranoia.

“We’ll catch him,” said Tornado with confidence. “It’s only a matter of time.”

“Time for what?” Javier re-entered the conference room in his burnished bronze armor. “I hope you meant time for a smoke. I’m dying for a cigarette here.”

“I’ll catch you guys later,” said Bobby. “I’ll be in the monitor room. I’ll call you if anything comes up.” The monitor room was where Just Cause scanned police and emergency radio bands and the coordinator, normally Bobby, would dispatch the heroes around the city to where they needed to be.

“Yeah, yeah,” said Javier. “You ready to go, pretty boy?”

“I suppose so,” said Tommy.

They went to the airlock balcony, an open-air entrance designed for the flying heroes to enter and leave headquarters. Tommy punched in the code on the electronic lock. They’d installed it after a drunken civilian at a party had wandered out onto the windowless room and would have fallen to his death had Tornado not been alert enough to see him tumble out.

Sundancer and the Steel Soldier had left the louvers open so the wind whipped through the chamber as Tommy and Javier entered it. It smelled of dust and faint automobile exhaust from nearly a hundred stories below. Tommy let the wind billow out his cape as Javier swung his half-helmet up over his face and latched it.

“Where do you want to head first?” asked Tommy.

“Central Park,” said Javier without hesitation. “After that, I don’t care.” He whooped and leaped between the steel louvers into the open air beyond. A moment later, his boot rockets flared and he began a spiraling descent toward a more reasonable altitude. Tommy followed him out, letting the winds buoy him after his patrol partner.

Javier flew fast enough that Tommy had to summon a minor gale to catch up to him. The Puerto Rican man headed for Central Park as if possessed.