Just Cause: Revised & Expanded Edition (34 page)

“It was in the wreckage of the Destroyer suit. I found it before the military confiscated the remains. I figured you’d want it back. I hear they’re good luck, horseshoes.”

Sally smiled. “I’ve heard that too. Thanks, Jason.” She kissed him again.

“Do you want to get out of here?”

“I’ve been waiting for you to ask me that for hours.”

“Good. Change to your civvies and meet me at my truck and we’ll see about sneaking away.”

“Where are we going?” She got delicious shivers at the idea of going anywhere with him.

“Where else?” He laughed. “For pie at Lazzarino’s.”

She laughed and kissed him again. “Pie sounds lovely,” and she ran off to change.

Those Who Came Before

Stories From the History of
Just Cause
 

Those Who Came Before: The Freakshow

I remember clearly looking down the great hall and thinking to myself what a waste of Aryan blood; one hundred men—one hundred of the best soldiers in the Reich who had volunteered to die for the Fatherland. Each was strapped to a gurney, elevated forty-five degrees. At the end of the hall was Messer’s Device. It crouched like some great, hulking beast, barely containing the energies within its carefully-crafted skin.

Messer gave his usual speech—that the men had been selected for their bravery and their loyalty to Germany for a special treatment that would make them into the supermen they were destined to become. His speech was always the same. I had heard it so many times I could have repeated it word for word; so many times he had sent a group of good soldiers like these to their death.

God in Heaven, how could we have known this time he would have been right?

-Excerpt from the personal journal of Dr. Felix Dietrich, 1942

February, 1942

Aufstein, Germany

The way the castle lights dimmed and flickered worried Jim Scott. The American soldier watched the two-hundred-year-old castle through his field glasses, as he sprawled across a high rock ledge that overlooked the castle. Scott could have been a poster child for the Aryan ideal, had he not been a loyal son of America—six foot four, built like a farmhand, with a strong jaw and a shock of dirty blond hair that had grown out considerably since the arrival of his team in Germany. Officially, their team’s code name was
Project Circus
, but everybody from General Eisenhower on down just called them
The Freakshow
. 

“Goddamn Krauts don’t know a goddamn thing about wiring,” grumbled Johnny Stills next to him. He fumbled for his canteen, which Scott knew was full of cheap Swiss vodka. Stills was small, almost rat-like in his appearance and intensity. He was dark-eyed and furtive in his movements.

A few battery-powered lights flickered to life below. “Now’s our chance,” said Scott. “While they’re restoring power.”

Stills nodded, wiping his mouth with the back of a grimy hand. “Move out,” he whisper-shouted behind him. Two more dogfaces emerged from the low evergreens. William Hester and Ray Downs. Hester was twenty-four, making him the oldest of the group, and wore glasses, earning him the nickname
Professor
. Downs was the youngest, barely eighteen. His overlarge ears made him seem even younger. If it hadn’t been for his parahuman ability, Scott would have refused to take him on a mission. It was like having your younger brother along on a date. The four men had infiltrated Germany nearly three weeks earlier with help from the French Resistance and had been making their careful way to Aufstein, where Allied Command said the Nazis were working on some secret weapon.

“Did you guys hear that?” Downs tapped his ear as he attached a rope around a sturdy rock outcropping.

“What do
you
think, moron?” Stills sneered at him, making no effort to connect his own rope.

“Stow that noise, Corporal,” said Scott. “We’re going to have a hard enough time of this without you announcing our presence to the entire Third Reich. What’d you hear, Sounder?”

Downs shrugged. “Dunno, Sergeant. Sounded like they turned on a big dynamo.”

“Couldn’t have been,” said Hester. “A dynamo makes power, not drains it. Why’d they lose their lights?”

Stills muttered something under his breath that sounded something like “whyncha go ask ‘em, shithead?”

Scott ignored his headstrong second-in-command. In spite of Stills’ abrasive personality, he was a brilliant tactician and made excellent use of his particular skills. “You guys ready for descent?”

Hester and Downs answered in the affirmative. Downs even sounded eager. They hadn’t seen any real action since France, and that seemed like an eternity ago, and more than once, Downs had complained about all the damn sneaking around. “It ain’t fair. I want to kill me some krauts,” he’d say, fingering his knife.

Scott turned to Stills. “Corporal, secure our landing site. And do it
quietly.
”

Stills drew his bowie knife and saluted. “Yes sir,” he said, and vanished off the rock with a soft puff of inrushing air.

Stills was what Allied Command called an
exceptional talent
. They all were. Scott had been the first, found by a displaced French researcher named Georges Devereaux. Scott was strong enough to toss a jeep across a parking lot and tough enough to take a fifty-caliber bullet in the chest without even blinking, much less bleeding. He could also fly for almost a mile at a time, something that was more than a leap but less than actual flight. Devereaux had found Scott, thanks to his odd ability to see parahuman abilities in others, and brought him to see some men in the Army. They liked what they saw and immediately enrolled him in Basic. Then they went back to Devereaux and asked if he could find a few more like Scott, whom they code-named
Strongman
.

John Henry Stills was next. He was a teleport, able to move anywhere he could see without traversing the space between points. He simply vanished from one spot and instantly reappeared in his destination. He was a master knife-wielder, having been working in his father’s slaughterhouse. Scott had seen him slice a kraut to bloody ribbons in seconds, flashing all around him faster than could be seen. The army code-named him
Flicker
, which he hated. But they let him get away with his antics because he was a parahuman, and there were only four in all the American forces, plus the wild card of Georges Devereaux.

William Hester could imbue objects he could hold in his hand with kinetic energy and then release them with enough force to rupture tank armor. In spite of his tremendous combat ability, Hester was mostly an intellectual. The soft-spoken, bespectacled man was more likely to be found with his nose buried in a book during down time, instead of chasing women or gambling like normal soldiers. On paper, he was called
Meteor
, but to everyone else he was just
Professor
.

Raymond Downs had lied about his age to get into the army. He wanted desperately to be a soldier and to fight the Axis, joining when he was only fifteen. Four months later his mother had come to pick him up from Fort Bening just before he was scheduled to ship out. Downs had nearly died from the sheer embarrassment of it. Two months later he was back when his family doctor couldn’t explain why Downs could hear things that were too quiet, too far, and too high-pitched for anyone else. The Army doctors determined his abilities far surpassed normal, and he received a special dispensation to join and a codename,
Sounder
.

When the Army brass had showed their abilities to Albert Einstein, he said, “that’s exceptional.” The Army being what it was, the four men were referred to as “exceptional talents” from then on. They had been trained for every possible situation the G-men could devise. Eventually Roosevelt had ordered them deployed and they parachuted into France with a few thousand other dogfaces.

They’d had some success aiding the French Resistance by using their special abilities to complete missions that would have otherwise required ten times as many men. Their standard mode of operation was for Sounder to provide the intelligence via sound cues, then Flicker would secure the site, and finally Strongman and Meteor would go to work. Emplaced machinegun nests were no challenge to the four of them, and they could take out a convoy in a matter of seconds. This particular mission was going to require some different tactics. Their objective was gathering information about the project the Nazis had set up in Aufstein Castle.

Scott hadn’t been told, officially, what Army Intelligence thought was going on in the castle. Unofficially, he’d been told that the krauts were trying to make their own
exceptional talents
. Allied Command was very interested in their experiments. Project Circus was to gather as much information about the process as they could, and then permanently disrupt operations. Scott was all in favor of the mission. The idea of an army filled with soldiers like himself marching across the face of Europe gave him nightmares.

He checked his watch. Two minutes had passed since Stills had vanished and he hadn’t reappeared. If the area hadn’t been secured, he would have popped back to report. He nodded at Hester and Downs, who began quietly rappelling down the rock face. Scott watched their progress, checking the castle for any sign they’d been seen. The castle was still mostly dark. Whatever the krauts had set off was drawing plenty of power. Hester and Downs got down to the ground and took up covering positions with their rifles. There was no sign of Stills, but Scott knew he’d be around somewhere. He took one last glance at the castle, then stepped off the side of the rock, letting himself fall.

Flying took a certain amount of suspension of disbelief. Scott always visualized himself parachuting when he fell. He’d actually been tested from heights of over two hundred feet and always landed safely. Well, not
always
. He could still twist an ankle or something else painful and inconveniencing. At least he didn’t have to worry about being shot on the way down, as had happened to so many of the other soldiers. He always tried imagining he was an airplane when he launched himself into the air. After about a mile, his brain couldn’t seem to handle the impossibility of his motion, and he fell, which was just as unnerving as flying. The doctors thought that they could hypnotize him so he’d be able to fly for longer periods of time, but Scott wasn’t about to let them do that.

He reached the ground and unlimbered his own rifle. He heard a soft popping sound and a sudden breeze on his cheek announced Stills had teleported back to them. The smaller man’s knife was bloodstained and his grin was shocking and bright in the dark.

“Two sentries in this section,” he said. “Both accounted for.” He wiped his knife on an evergreen and tucked it back in his sheath.

By now, Scott was familiar with Stills’ bloodthirsty tendencies, and tried not to let it bother him. “How many other sentries on patrol?”

“I counted six. Three pairs of two.”

“Sounder?”

The youngest soldier closed his eyes, concentrating on the sounds nobody else could hear. “Confirmed,” he said in a moment. He chuckled quietly. “Two of ‘em are drunk.”

“Okay, here’s the plan…” Scott began, but before he could continue a loud explosion ripped upward from the middle of the castle, sending cobbles and tiles flying.

“Shit,” whispered Stills. “Think that’s good for us or bad for us?”

An alarm began to wail, sounding very much like the air raid sirens in London. The four men instinctively looked to the skies, half afraid they would see a flight of B-17s on approach.

“Hey, look!” Hester pointed toward the castle. People were fleeing from the main entrance. Some of them were clearly soldiers, but others were in civilian garb or wearing white lab coats. They fought with each other as they grabbed motorcycles, trucks, or whatever vehicles were available. Engines sputtered to life and headlights illuminated the large cloud of dust that was raised from the explosion.

Within moments, the surge of people leaving the castle subsided. “Krauts might have done our job for us.” Scott motioned to the others. “Let’s move in. Stay sharp.”

A ruddy glow in the smoke over the castle roof was a mute testament to a fire still burning inside. The Americans approached cautiously, rifles at the ready. The darkness seemed thick and oppressive as they reached the road, a muddy mess from the quick evacuation of the German vehicles.

The main gate into the castle hung open.

Advancing in pairs, they leapfrogged each other all the way to the castle wall. The stone was conducting a slight amount of heat. Scott figured that the interior must be like a blast furnace if the walls were already warm.

“Sounder, you hear anything inside?”

The young man removed his helmet, clapped a hand over one ear, and pressed the other against the wall, eyes shut, listening intently.

“Big fire… glass breaking from the heat… something making a shrieking sound, maybe a steam valve? Shit,
footsteps!
” He pushed himself back from the wall and fumbled for his helmet.

Stills drew his knife. Scott pulled his pistol from his holster; it would be more useful in close quarters than his M-1. They waited on either side of the doorway. A figure staggered out. Stills’ knife descended sharply and stopped short when Scott blocked his strike with the barrel of his pistol.

“What the hell, Sergeant?” Stills looked shocked.

“Look at him, Stills. He’s no threat.”

It was true. The man was badly burned. His clothes were mostly burned away except for the metal parts, which had cooked into the ruin of his skin. He tripped and fell, landing face down in the mud.

Scott had seen men burned by flamethrowers before, but this was worse than anything he’d ever witnessed. Bile rose in the back of his throat. Behind him, Downs vomited against the side of the castle. The man’s limbs trembled as if he was cold, but it was surely from the massive nerve damage he’d sustained. Choking back the bad taste in his mouth, Scott reached out a boot and flipped the man over. Carbonized flesh flaked off him in layers. The man’s face was gone, charred bone peeking through the cooked muscle. Incredibly, he was still breathing and
whispering
something through his burned lips and tongue.