The Hidden Base

Arsenal suspected that this last site might be the right one when he felt a ward spark as he approached the front gate. He checked his communications implant, but it didn't work at all.

He looked carefully at the front gate in the crumbling, three meter high concrete wall. He shook his head, and opened the latch slowly, letting the door swing open. His left hand was balled into a fist -- hovering next to it was a glowing ball of plasma. He closed his eyes, probing the facing corners on the other side of a concrete barrier wall with his powers, but there was nothing there for him to find. Bracing his left hand in his right like a pistol, he and his glowing ball of plasma entered the courtyard.

He walked slowly, taking even, regular steps, pausing to scan behind the irregular clumps of rubble that dotted the courtyard. After a few paces, he came to an area where the dirt and debris were noticeably less weathered. With his right hand, he triggered the sound recorder on his hand-held computer.

"Arsenal here. I found a site protected by a ward, which disabled my comms implants. It appears to be deserted, but there is evidence of recent activity. I see a depression in the ground, approximately the size of a shipping container."

His eyes traced a path scraped into the ground, as if someone or something had dragged the container to the middle of the courtyard. He examined the rough, dusty ground, and then concentrated for a few moments.

"It appears that shipping containers have been moved to an underground chamber. I believe that there is an elevator platform in the middle of the courtyard, and my scans indicate a large underground area, approximately the same size at the courtyard. Entering now."

He passed through the ground into complete darkness, quickly finding the chamber. Setting down in a clear area, he used his powers to probe the darkness. He used his powers to turn on the overhead lights, illuminating the chamber with a grid of overhead spotlights.

The room was filled with shipping containers; line-of-sight was limited, even with the illumination. Arsenal walked to one of the containers, found the consignment number, and checked the number on his hand-held.

"I've found a shipping container belonging to one of the lost vessels. It looks like stolen goods were processed here. I'm going to see what's inside."

Arsenal walked to the end of the container, concentrated, and the large metal door on the end swung open. He used the plasma ball near his left hand as a flashlight to illuminate the interior of the container. A mock-up of a cockpit sat between two large pads, connected by cables to a cubical white box, which was attached to a pair of tripod-mounted projectors in the lower corners of the far side of the container.

"It appears to be a flight simulator. I see a cockpit and control yoke between two accelerator pads, a holographic display, and a control computer. I'll try to find out what scenario they were running on the computer."

He extinguished the plasma ball, sat in the cockpit and looked at the while cube, concentrating. The model cockpit rose into the air as the accelerator pads flickered to life. The holographic projectors displayed the hazy gray-blue surface of a planet as the simulated vessel accelerated, pulling away into a higher orbit.

"I've patched the simulator's state. It's an orbital attack scenario. I'm recording this now. As you see, the tactical displays indicate that the fighter is approaching the target..."

A small dot rose above the horizon, and grew larger.

"Sedgewick Station. The Corporate HQ. They're going to attack Sedgewick Station."

A few moments later Arsenal emerged into the chamber. He took his hand-held, composed a message containing he data he had acquired, and then examined it carefully. He arranged to have the message sent to Jolt, and, after a moment's hesitation, Admiral Kelmorran, who was responsible for the garrison at Sedgewick Station.

The FTL comms interface had been destroyed by the ward, but a short-range radio adapter was still working. He thought for a moment; there was a power distribution station nearby which offered an access point. He scripted for a few moments, arranging to have the message sent as soon as his hand-held could access a public network.

He looked up sharply as he finished the script -- there was a sudden change in air pressure in the underground chamber.

Someone had teleported into the room.

Arm The Homeless!

"He said what!?" The Eye was incredulous.

"He said M-Seven was arming the homeless population." Jolt led her team down the hallway to Demonslayer's holding cell.

"With what?" Thresher was also skeptical.

"He sent me a picture of one of the local hot rods with some guns stuck on the winglets. It looks really goofy." Jolt was almost laughing at the thought. "I let him go off for a while until he realizes what a dumb idea that is."

Something briefly bothered the Eye, but it passed as they came to Demonslayer's cell. A cop in armor stood guard, and relaxed visibly when Honor Guard showed up. He saluted.

"Captain Kelrast is inside with the prisoner."

"Relieved, trooper. We'll take over from here." Jolt watched as the cop walked back to his quarters. The door to Demonslayer's cell slid open, catching briefly before it opened all the way.

Jolt strode in, followed by The Eye and Thresher. Orest Kelrast sat in a folding chair at the foot of Demonslayer's bed; he looked at the heroes with a combination of weariness and wariness. Demonslayer lay on the bed, looking like a corpse at an open-casket funeral, covered by a plain brownish blanket.

"Captain Kelrast -- were you aware that a team of super-villains was active in the area?" Jolt fixed Orest with a withering glare.

"M-Seven's a charity, as far as I can tell. They made my job easier. They took care of the transients, and kept them out of our faces. We don't have the resources to deal with those druggies and losers out there." Kelrast was defiant.

Jolt continued. "We have reason to believe that there has been an unusual amount of pirate activity lately."

"Unusual? No way. A lot of ships pass through here -- and if you have a lot of ships, you get a lot of piracy. It's always been a problem. If the Fleet didn't expend all its resources patrolling the spaceport, there might be less pirate activity in orbit."

"Captain Kelrast, I have no choice but to place you under arrest for aiding and abetting a criminal conspiracy --" Jolt was furious.

"What!? No way, I've got nothing to do with them!" Orest's resolve dissolved into animal panic. He stood and gestured frantically towards the Eye. "Why don't you let Psychic Chick over there read my mind -- I'm innocent!"

"The name's 'The Eye', and I'm afraid I can't do that. Probing minds is dangerous and error-prone -- and therefore forbidden, except under controlled conditions." The Eye kept her composure, but only barely.

"Don't worry, Orest Kelrast -- they're professionals at the interrogation centers. If you want your mind read, they'll do it right." Jolt took charge of the situation as Orest sank back into his chair. "You are, as of now, relieved of duty. Your replacement is on a dropship with re-inforcements in case Demonslayer's comrades attack."

Orest Kelrast, no longer Captain, shrunk into his chair and began to tremble slightly. "You can't do this to me...."

Thresher placed a hand on Orest's slumped shoulder. "We can, and we did. You hate your job, and you did it poorly. Consider this an intervention."

We're A Happy Family

Arsenal walked out into the impound yard and began to take stock of the captured vessels. One by one, he gestured towards the impounded space-ships and levitated them to an open patch of concrete. Soon he had a line of six nearly identical one-man vessels.

He retrieved his hand-held computer from his belt and began to examine the craft carefully. After a few moments, he began to disassemble two of them, taking pictures of their internal components with his computer's built-in camera.

The vessels were modular, constructed from bits and pieces linked together with general-purpose connectors. Additional, unused connectors were present in the interiors of the one-man space-ships; he was particularly interested in the connectors on the underside of the vessels' stubby wings.

His next stop was a battered, worn terminal in the hallway of the police station. He logged in with his Honor Guard credentials, and connected to the regional police blotter database. He sketched out a simple query on the terminal screen, and synced a table of ships recently lost to pirates in the Suburbia system to his hand-held.

He stopped for a moment when he saw the record for a freighter loaded with bug bombs, lost with all hands. It was flagged with a marker indicating suspected paranormal activity. He followed the key to a list of known paranormal operatives in the area.

Four hits came up -- Demonslayer, Killotron, Bearcat, and Jinx Bubastis had all been sighted repeatedly in the last five cycles. Demonslayer's picture had her in her exoskeleton with an extra pair of robotic arms that helped her wield her energy shield and sword. Arsenal briefly boggled at how different her normal M.O. was from the spellcaster his team had just fought. Recalling the immediate hits for munitions thefts, he knew Killotron would be fully armed, possibly with tacnukes. Jinx had attacked several ships, and there were forensic and psychic traces confirmed on several scuttled and looted cargo vessels. He glanced at Bearcat's picture and called Jolt.

"Ma'am, we have a problem. Our Demonslayer may be a fake."

"What?" Jolt seemed irritated.

"There are current surveillance camera records with sightings of Demonslayer, Bearcat, and Killotron, tons of pirate activity, missing nukes, paranormal activity in the system. I think something big is happening."

"What does this have to do with a fake Demonslayer?" Jolt was impatient.

"Demonslayer usually fights with a four-armed exoskeleton and magic weapons. There's paranormal pirate activity--"

"You think the old woman we have in holding is someone else?"

"It's possible. There's a whole team of them." Arsenal flipped through the records, reading quickly. "They call themselves M-Seven. Officially, they are a charitable organization operating homeless shelters in the area around the East Pole."

"You told me you would check in with the crew working on the Nighstalker. What are you doing?" Jolt was angry.

Arsenal shrunk back, rebuked.

"Why aren't you where you said you'd be?"

"I was examining the vessels in the impound yard."

"Why that?"

"They seem a little over-engineered to be hot rods." Arsenal was rather flustered.

"Uh-huh. Arsenal, normal men like big cars with big engines. It makes them feel important, and lets them go into orbit for jobs. Concentrate on finding out what you did to the Nightstalker instead of wasting our time like this. We'll confirm Demonslayer's identity and call for re-inforcements in the meantime. Jolt out."

"Understood. Arsenal out."

Arsenal pocketed his hand-held computer, shook his head, and headed out to the spaceport. As he came outside, he stopped a moment to watch the running lights of the traffic heading out to the orbital factories, circling until they received clearance for orbital insertion. The dance of the running lights fascinated him; he watched a small personal cargo vessel shoot up through the twilight skies, now only lightly streaked with clouds.

He continued to another low concrete bunker across the dusty courtyard. A cop in powered armor stood guard before the entrance; he recognized Arsenal and saluted.

Arsenal descended into a musty corridor whose ceiling was obscured by recently-repaired ductwork. Provisional lights clipped to the walls illuminated the way until he came to a brightly-lit atrium. In the corner, a clone was cleaning the floors; he looked up at Arsenal for a moment, showing a brief flash of recognition that vanished the moment Arsenal stepped into the brightly lit room. The clone returned to his chores.

Arsenal came to a door, which opened automatically. He entered a darkened office, lit by a pair of holographic displays showing various views of the Nightstalker.

The man behind the desk could have been Arsenal's twin brother. He was dressed in loose-fitting grey coveralls, and held up one hand as Arsenal entered the room.

Arsenal took the hint and waited at the corner of the desk as the Type 350 clone saved his work and looked up at his visitor. For a brief moment, Arsenal and the man behind the desk sized each other up, exchanging subtle cues of posture and patterns of eye contact in a fraction of a second, instinctual behavior conditioned in the clone vats. Preliminary handshake completed, they hastily introduced themselves, and the man at the desk rose a little from his seat and extended his hand. "Hello. I'm Randall Cat -- chief of operations at the shipyard here. You?"

Arsenal shook Randall's hand, and Randall sat back down. "My name is Peter Cat. I used to work on the plasma weapons design team, now I'm attached to Honor Guard, codename Arsenal."

Formalities satisfied, Randall leaned back and looked his twin brother in the eye. "So -- what can I do for you?"

"How's the Nighstalker looking?" Arsenal folded his hands in front of him, trying not to invade his colleague's work area any more than he absolutely had to.

"Great! I was expecting all kinds of battle damage, but it looks really good. The initial tests have all been positive. The only big anomaly is some missing time on the ship's log, so I'm having the staff run a burn-in cycle on the computers. Assuming nothing strange happens, you should be good to go in about ten standard hours."

"That's good." Arsenal smiled a little.

"What's wrong with your team-mates? They seem to think you sabotaged the ship."

Arsenal paused for a moment, and decided to change the subject. "Have you had a look at the ships in the impound yard?"

"We're understaffed and overworked out here. Until Captain Kelrast gives us a work order, my staff has enough to do as is." Randall seemed genuinely sorry, and gave Peter a second glance.

"I've taken some pictures of the hot-rods captured in raids -- the design is... interesting."

Randall smiled a little. "I'm curious. I can give you half an hour."

Arsenal placed his hand-held computer on the desk, and Randall connected to it and began reviewing the holograms. Randall immediately fixated on the connectors under the winglets. "That looks like a weapons mount."

"That's what I thought, but it's a little out of my area."

Randall pointed at a series of small receptacles surrounding the connector. "Those are attachment points for a semi-articulated gun mount -- if it were for a storage battery or a cargo pod, they wouldn't bother putting them there."

Arsenal pulled up the cargo manifests of the ships recently lost to piracy. "Check this out. Recent losses include storage batteries, mini jump drives, a consignment of nuclear demolitions charges..."

Randall looked confused. "Bug bombs? Weird. Wouldn't be my first choice to arm a fighter."

Arsenal concurred. "Yeah, and they're no good for piracy -- who wants to loot a contaminated wreck?"

Randall frowned and looked at his desktop clock. "We don't have a whole lot of time. I'm going to make a few assumptions and see what I can put together with the stolen cargo and this spaceframe." Working together, they assembled the parts; Randall filled in the few unknowns from his considerable experience.

Randall leaned back in his chair and squinted at the hologram. "That's... not bad. It'd have about 75% of the specific impulse of a front-line fighter, which means it wouldn't be a sitting duck. It's not something I'd want to fly, but it wouldn't be completely useless in a dogfight."

"How much work would it take to get one of these armed and charged up?" Arsenal copied the simulation data to his hand-held.

"Not too much, the big problem is logistics and process. They'd need some manufacturing capability to make adaptors for the scavenged parts, and lots of space to do the assembly. Listen, I've got some test results coming in now. Can I keep a copy of your data to play with later?"

"Sure. I've got to check in with Jolt. Thanks for your time!" Arsenal left the office as Randall Cat fell back into his work. The junkyard star-fighter disappeared from the holographic displays, and the Nightstalker returned.

Arsenal proceeded back to the courtyard, striding quickly through the corridor until he reached the bunker exit. He tapped the cheap black plastic housing of his computer nervously.

"Jolt, Arsenal here. The Nightstalker will be ready in ten hours."

"That's nice. The woman we captured is Demonslayer, we've confirmed it. A dropship with reinforcements is on the way in case M-Seven tries to break her out."

"I'm going to send you a simulation I put together with the chief of staff -- I think they're building a fleet of star-fighters in the abandonded factories around here. I'd like to see if I can find any evidence around here."

"Good. I think we can manage, just make it quick. Jolt out."

Arsenal paused for a moment, relieved, before he took off into the sky, following the power conduits that stretched off into the distance.

Magnetic Girl Soldier

The corner of the bunker obviously belonged to a young girl. The bedroll was covered with clothes and overstuffed pillows, a mirror was propped against the wall, and an improvised dressing room made from a pair of curtains covered with pins and brooches was set up in the corner.

She walked out from behind her dressing screen, dressed in a simple, military-style body stocking made of brown-green fibers with the strength of steel. She looked at the mirror and frowned; her costume was, in fact, very ugly and drab.

She bore an unmistakable resemblance to Jolt; her fur and mane were the same auburn color, and her face had a similar bone structure.

Well out of her reach hung a black dress decorated with a huge reflective red five-pointed star on a hanger made of metal wire. She gestured towards the dress, and her green eyes began to glow.

The wire hanger resisted for a moment until the magnetic attraction of the young girl's outstretched palm pulled it off the hook on the wall and onto her hand. She relaxed, and her eyes stopped glowing. Her nimble fingers caught the hanger and the dress before it fell.

She pulled on her dress, pulled down on the hem, and looked at herself again in the mirror. She looked a little happier. She put on a pair of high, tight black leather combat boots with metal soles, laced them up, tied a short bright red cape around her neck, took a final look in the mirror, and smiled. She pulled her red hair into a top-knot, took one last look in the mirror, and smiled.

Her eyes glowed again, and she rose from the ground. Turning smartly, she levitated to her two comrades, waiting beneath an overhead light.

Bearcat and Killotron watched her hover towards them. Bearcat turned to Killotron.

"She ever fight before?"

"Yes, comrade, I fear she has."

The girl floated up to look her fellow soldiers in the eye. She pointed to herself and said. "Red Menace. Number Five."