Liberty Page 9

‘It looked kind of like frogspawn up close,’ Cygnus said.

  ‘Not a poor analogy.’ Ultimate used one of the command centre’s screens to display footage from Cygnus’s head-cam. It showed the clusters breaking up to crawl over her arms. ‘Each cluster consists of a number of large, bacterium-like cells. Each cell is independent of the others, but they work together, probably using chemical and cosmic energy signals to communicate. I believe, however, that these cells are unable to function when removed from the larger cosmic energy field generated by the bulk of the creature. I think what we have here is a colony of mutated cells held together by a huge, self-generated cosmic energy field. It’s fascinating.’

  ‘In a horrifically destructive way,’ Brightstar said.

  ‘Oh, quite clearly it has to die. When I have thoroughly analysed all the data, I hope to be able to suggest a method of achieving that goal.’

  ‘It’s like Ever,’ Astraea said. She had the kind of expression on her face that came with some sort of revelation: musing and shocked. She had come back to the Watchtower for a break while Miss Liberty took over the task of keeping watch on Eldritch-03.

  ‘Sorry?’ Brightstar asked.

  ‘Uh, I asked Hugh about avatars. How they’re powered and where they come from. Hugh said there was a hypothesis suggesting that, um… Well, Ever might be powered by the life in the Everglades. Bacteria, plants, and alligators can’t become Ultras, but their combined will to survive could power an avatar. Ever. This thing is kind of like that.’

  ‘That’s… weird.’

  ‘But quite possibly true,’ Ultimate said. ‘I suspect that the cosmic energy burst from Naryan Tan’s ship may have kickstarted the process, but we could be looking at a form of Avatar-class Ultra composed of mutated marine bacteria.’

  ‘The sea fighting back,’ Enhydra said from where she was monitoring the hydrophone network. There was some concern that there might be more than one of the blobs out there. ‘Pollution in Puget Sound has caused a reduction in the oxygen in the water. That’s killed off a lot of fish and other marine animals. Now we’re paying for it.’ She looked around at the assembled heroes. ‘I am so going to be saying “I told you so” on a lot of local TV channels once it’s dead.’

  ~~~

  Patterson was holding up his arm to shield his eyes from the wind caused by the rotors of a helicopter as it came in to land atop the Watchtower. The tower was something which looked vaguely like it belonged as part of an oil-drilling platform. It was basically a drum on tall, metal legs with a landing pad on top. The helicopter landing there now was not one of the three autopiloting ones the Watchmen owned, however.

  Bianca Fullerton cycled down the engines, made sure everything was off, and climbed down from the charter aircraft she had hired at Sea-Tac. ‘Jon,’ she said as she took Patterson’s offered hand. ‘It’s great to see you again, though not under the circumstances.’

  ‘Always a pleasure to see you, Bianca,’ Patterson replied. ‘What I don’t understand is why you’re here.’ He waved toward the hatch which would let them down onto the flight-engineering deck below and they all started walking.

  ‘Ah, well…’ Bianca reached out to take Cygnus’s hand. ‘I came to see this one. I was going to just call, but then I saw the news broadcasts. I haven’t been to this part of the world in a while and if there’s some way I can help… Plus, I could wait around for you to get a spare moment to chat, Cygnus.’

  ‘Now’s as good a time as any,’ Cygnus replied. ‘Hugh is busy running every kind of test he can on a sample of Eldritch three we got for him. Hopefully, he’s going to come up with a way of killing it, but until he does…’

  ‘Until he does, we all sit around listening to the reports on what this thing’s destroying,’ Patterson said. ‘It’s been a fun day.’

  ~~~

  ‘Heartbreaker,’ Cygnus said. ‘That was the codename Ghostfire and Blutadler assigned her. Adrienne Philips.’

  ‘Right,’ Bianca said. ‘And this sounds like her MO?’

  ‘Well, in as much as she could induce unexplained heart attacks with a kiss, yes. The trouble is that, as far as anyone could find, there’s no trace left on the bodies to indicate the attack was induced. Ghostfire got the autopsy results doctored in Bobby’s case to implicate me, but when you put that aside, we’d have been hard-pressed to get a conviction without the evidence they found in their base.’

  ‘It’s the lack of evidence in Cavanaugh’s case which has made me suspicious. The ME couldn’t find the usual markers for a cause. He was a fit guy who’d just had a medical. Shouldn’t have happened. Of course, that doesn’t mean it didn’t, but…’

  ‘I get where you’re going with this, honest, but Heartbreaker should be in prison. Uh, hang on.’ Cygnus tapped her ear. ‘Denny? Could you check on the current status of Adrienne Philips, aka Heartbreaker. She should be in the women’s prison in Jessup.’ There was a pause and then Cygnus frowned. ‘No one said anything about moving her there. There was no point… Okay, well. Thanks. Apparently, Adrienne Philips was transferred to the Fortress in twenty fourteen, and is listed among the dead there.’

  ‘Really? And they didn’t tell you anything about moving her? I’d have thought–’

  ‘The UID hasn’t liked me for a while. I’d imagine they forgot to mention it. That said, she didn’t need to be in there. Her powers only worked on men.’

  ‘I seem to recall you questioning why they sent Blutadler there when he was convicted.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I did.’

  ‘I think I may have to do some digging later. For now, I’ll stick around here and see whether I can do anything to help you guys.’

  Cygnus nodded. ‘If you find anything out, let me know. And if you want to stay, I’m sure Jon won’t be too worried about having the extra guest for a while. Right now, everyone’s just waiting for Hugh.’

  Kingston, WA.

  Cygnus flew slowly over the devastation that was Kingston. The sun had gone down about twenty minutes earlier and the glowing, green monster was still trashing the place.

  In truth, not all of the devastation was down to Eldritch-03. The military had tried a few other things, including napalm. That had given the creature pause for a few minutes. It had recovered from the hail of flaming death fairly quickly but had seemed reluctant to burn itself again by climbing over the burning buildings around it. A reluctance to face fire had suggested that it could be contained, so buildings had been demolished and fires set to stop Eldritch-03 from moving further inland. More destruction piled on top of what the monster had caused.

  ‘Any change, Cygnus?’ Doctor Ultimate asked over the radio.

  ‘No, it’s– Hold on…’ There was something changing. The glow was shifting, dimming a little and wavering. As Cygnus watched, it turned and started hurrying east, far faster than it had moved previously. ‘It’s… It’s heading for the water. I think it’s leaving. The glow has dimmed down a little and it’s wavering, and Eldritch three is heading for the water.’

  ‘It’s not dark yet, is it?’

  ‘No. There’s not much light in the sky, but there’s still some.’

  ‘And the first report was… No, it did not begin moving until forty-five minutes after first light. Of course, at that depth, first light would mean little…’

  ‘You’re musing, Hugh. Do you think we’re at least getting the night off?’

  ‘Follow it into the Sound, Cygnus, and keep an eye on it for a few minutes. We’ll see what Enhydra can detect on the hydrophone network. It may simply be switching targets, but I am… somewhat hopeful that our night will be quiet.’

  Seattle Watchtower, Lake Washington, WA.

  Unseen by those sitting around the Watchtower’s common room, the darkness thickened in one corner and three people stepped out of it.

  ‘You’re right,’ Heather said, ‘that’s kind of creepy.’

  ‘Told you so,’ Jacob replied.

  ‘Just see if I agree to hop you across a continent
again,’ Andrea said, and by then the voices had attracted some attention.

  ‘What are you three doing here?’ Cygnus asked from one of the sofas.

  ‘Jacob and Heather wanted to check up on the Watchmen, and I figured I might as well come over and ask whether you had found some way for me to help.’

  ‘Oh. Okay, and no, in that order. How’s New Millennium?’

  ‘Dark. Fairly quiet. I’ll do a turn around Churchton when I get back.’

  ‘How is the glowing monster from the depths?’ Heather asked. She wandered over to take a seat beside Patterson, who did not seem to object.

  ‘Currently, in the depths,’ he said. ‘It sank itself into Puget Sound around sunset and all our sensors suggest it’s dormant at the moment.’

  ‘Slacker,’ Andrea commented. ‘I’m sort of glad you haven’t found a way I could stop it. Professional courtesy and all that.’

  ‘Sorry?’ Patterson looked a little perplexed.

  ‘Well, one eldritch horror to another.’

  ‘Ah, yes. You’re Twilight. I thought you could only teleport into places you’d been before.’

  ‘That was the old me. The new me can… Well, if I have a general idea of where I’m going, I can look out of any patch of shadow or darkness in that area. Then it’s just a matter of deciding to be solid there instead of where I was.’

  ‘And travelling that way is creepy,’ Heather said. ‘It’s like… It’s like you know you should be scared out of your wits, but you’re not and that’s weirder than being terrified.’ She shook her head. ‘You’d need to try it.’

  ‘It’s totally dark,’ Jacob said. ‘No light at all.’ He laid a hand on Andrea’s shoulder. ‘She can see, and I guess Cygnus can, but the rest of us are blind.’

  ‘I thought Hugh was here,’ Andrea said.

  ‘He and Adam are down in the lab,’ Brightstar said. ‘I’d be there too, but I’m told I’m a distraction. You missed Miss Liberty. She had to leave for a while to… recharge her patriot cells or something.’

  ‘And yet I am unperturbed by not meeting our glowing new national hero.’

  ‘She’s okay,’ Cygnus said. ‘She’s a bit inexperienced and unsure of herself. That’s sort of refreshing in a national avatar. I get the feeling that there’s an unusual story behind her somewhere.’

  ‘That makes three of us,’ Andrea said. ‘I wonder what hers is…’

  San Francisco, CA, 13th March.

  There was a funny thing about the UID office in San Francisco: no one really expected anyone to break into it. Well, there were a lot of barriers preventing people from attacking the building, but prisoners were only ever there briefly, so there was little point in trying to break them out. No one thought there was anything in the building worth sneaking in for, and they were wrong, of course. The building housed a secure data server containing all sorts of information, and information was always worth something to someone.

  In this case, it was worth enough to Mink for her to be crawling through air-conditioning ducts from the roof. That kind of thing was never a pleasant experience. It was dirty, tight, and claustrophobic. But the server room, buried right in the middle of the building where it was thought to be most secure, had plenty of ventilation. Computers liked ventilation and disliked high temperatures. The ducts got her straight to the room she wanted where she managed to unscrew the grill over the vent. Putting it back in place was going to be more of an exercise, but she had tools for the purpose with her. Finding a port on one of the service terminals in the room, she plugged in one of her hacking devices and settled down to wait.

  Seattle Watchtower, Lake Washington, WA.

  ‘It’s on the move again,’ Enhydra said. She tapped keys on her console and the biggest of the display screens in the ops room lit up with a map of Puget Sound. A fuzzy sort of blip could be seen moving in the water off what had been Kingston.

  ‘Heading for Edmonds or Woodway,’ Patterson said. ‘Do we have an estimate for how long?’

  ‘Fifteen minutes and it’ll be crawling out of the water. Maybe less.’

  ‘I’ll get the evacuations started.’

  ~~~

  ‘It’s coming up on the other side of the Sound,’ Cygnus said as she walked into the lab where Doctor Ultimate was working with Adamantium as an assistant and kibitzer. ‘They’ve started evacuations. Miss Liberty is heading out there. I’m going with Astraea in a few minutes. Have we got anything?’

  Doctor Ultimate peered at her for a second. ‘It appears to be rising with the moon.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘It is not reacting to sunlight. The moon came up a matter of minutes ago. The times also correspond to the rising and setting times yesterday.’

  ‘Does that help?’

  ‘Not really. It means we can expect it to continue its rampage until after eight thirty tonight.’ Ultimate shifted in his seat. ‘Just stand there and listen while I ramble for a moment. Perhaps something will occur to you that Adam and I have missed.’

  ‘Sounds unlikely but go on.’

  ‘The DNA analysis would seem to indicate that we are dealing with a mutated form of cyanobacteria, commonly known as blue-green algae. The term “algae” is improperly used, however; these are bacterium. They have an EMX-one gene, which would appear to be how it controls the rather complex field of cosmic energy surrounding the colony. This field binds the individual cells together forming a group mind, a gestalt, if you will. There are frequencies within the field associated with psionic activity. I believe these are the “thoughts” of the group mind. Other–’

  ‘Hold on,’ Cygnus interrupted. ‘If it’s using psionic frequencies to control itself, could we jam them?’

  Ultimate smiled. ‘I considered that, but you would, I believe, have to get very close to the creature to use your jamming field.’

  ‘Yes, but–’

  ‘And it would only disable the creature, assuming that it does what we’re both thinking anyway. We would still have the problem of collecting up some ten point eight million cubic metres of acidic, toxic material.’

  ‘Yeah, okay. Uh, what about attacking the bacteria. Chemicals, maybe. Or these cyanobacteria have to have something which eats them.’

  ‘I thought of that,’ Adamantium said. ‘The problem is the volume. If you use antibacterial chemicals, we’d likely be creating a major ecological incident, and we aren’t sure it could get through this jelly the cells are suspended in. There are bacteriophages which eat cyanobacteria, but we’d need a huge volume of them and, again, we aren’t sure they could get past the suspension medium.’

  ‘Damn. That sounded like a good solution. There must be something. How do they usually sterilise things? Boiling water? No, that’s crazy. We’d need gallons of the stuff.’

  ‘Radiation,’ Ultimate said. ‘Low-energy gamma rays would seem the best method. It should ensure sufficient penetration of the mass.’ He smiled at Cygnus. ‘Do you think you can produce a beam of gamma radiation, my dear?’

  ‘Well, I can try. For God’s sake, don’t mention this plan to the military. They’ll want to nuke the thing.’

  ‘We’ll keep it quiet for now. Uh, there is one other thing I wanted to mention.’

  ‘Oh?’

  Ultimate turned and tapped at a keyboard. A graph of some sort appeared on his screen. Maybe something to do with frequency distributions. ‘This is the frequency analysis of the energy beam Miss Liberty fired at Eldritch three. She’s firing pure cosmic energy and the centre band of the frequency distribution is your principal frequency.’

  ‘Uh… oh.’

  ‘It would appear that, if Miss Liberty is a product of the American collective consciousness, that group mind has decided that it needs something to stop you should you become a threat. If she were to kill you with that weapon, I believe it would destroy your Guardian essence as Naryan Tan’s was destroyed by the reactor explosion. Of course, she can also defend the country against other Guardians, but I felt you should know.
’

  ‘Thanks, Hugh. That’s… useful information. What I wonder is whether she knows what it can do.’

  ‘That, my dear Cygnus, is not a question I can answer.’

  Edmonds, WA.

  Edmonds was a little like Kingston across the water, but bigger. There was a marina, a ferry terminal, and a lot of touristy shops. Also, a lot more people who needed to get out of the way of Eldritch-03 which had decided, it seemed, to demolish the marina as the first stage of its assault. That was delaying its movement into the town, which was probably a good thing; with only fifteen minutes’ warning and no really major roads, it was taking time to get people clear.

  ‘You’re serious about this?’ Vindicator asked as he flew alongside Cygnus and Astraea toward the beast as it crashed through boats and docks indiscriminately. ‘You’re going to irradiate it?’

  ‘Hugh gave me the frequency I need to project,’ Cygnus replied. ‘Actually, he told me all about the necessary state transitions to create a one point three million electronvolt photon discharge and I didn’t really understand most of it, but I think I can generate the beam. Eldritch three gets dosed with ionising radiation and its cells pop, or something. We might still have a bit of a mess to clean up, but it’ll be dead.’

  ‘Well, nothing else has worked…’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Miss Liberty was circling over the blob, firing off bursts of energy at it every so often. At first it looked like she was just doing it to do something, but as they got closer it became obvious that she fired off a burst whenever Eldritch three started shifting toward the town. It did little damage, but it tended to keep the monster focused on trashing the marina.

  Taking aim three thousand feet from her target, Cygnus blasted out a beam of incandescent energy, the air exploding away from it with a loud crack as she did so. Doctor Ultimate had explained another feature of gamma radiation: it was very bad at penetrating air. She would have had to get far too close to her target to do any useful damage if she was just firing photons. Instead, she had wrapped the beam in a field of cosmic energy to force the air clear and let the beam pass through vacuum.