Semper Fi Read online

  Hale held up one hand, “Enough said, I know your sense of justice and I do not want to hear anymore.”

  He looked around at the few eyes that were staring widely at them, mob members, cops, and not a few reporters who’d braved getting closer to the scene.

  “I still can’t help but wince everytime I think of what you did to that guy in Tehran.”

  Lana smiled sweetly at him, “You mean the one we caught with the eight year old boy?”

  Hale nodded, “That’s him.”

  “You’re one to talk, you wanted to shoot his dick off,” She snorted.

  “That would have been kinder,” He objected.

  “Exactly!”

  Hale almost broke down laughing when he heard a few undisguised whimpers from the men laid out on the ground. He just grinned instead, looping an arm around Lana’s shoulder.

  “I never did figure out why someone as vicious as you went into medicine,” He admitted as they walked off.

  “Easiest way to get paid to cut on people.”

  *****

  USSOCOM Bunker, Virginia

  Silence filled the room as they watched the video of Hale and Mcpherson as the two walked away from the pile of moaning bodies the medic had left in her wake.

  “I knew it.”

  Mostly silence.

  Pierson looked over to where one man was punching another in the arm and telling him to shut up.

  “What? I knew medics were all sadists. It’s not like it’s some big secret.”

  She sighed.

  Sometimes, she swore, sometimes it just felt like boys never grew up. Then she glanced at McPherson on the video stream and knew it wasn’t just the boys.

  I Swear, it’s like half the military is filled with people who wanted to be play army and never grow up. The Pentagon is probably never never land.

  “If either of those two were still on active duty, I’d be having a word with them about speaking out of turn in front of cameras,” Isaacs said wearily. “as it is, I’m pretty sure that was intentional.”

  “Of course it was intentional, General,” Pierson said tiredly. “Hale enjoys playing the part he’s drawn, and it seems so do his friends. They’re leaning into the image because they get a kick out of it.”

  Isaacs agreed with a nod, “I suppose I’d best warn the Pentagon PR staff that they’re about to be buried in requests for whatever made it into the reports about that incident in Tehran.”

  “Likely a good idea,” She said, “though they won’t find anything.”

  “You’re familiar with the incident?”

  She shook her head, “No, and that’s why I know they won’t find anything. I reviewed all their joint records, and there’s no mention of any incident that matches that story. They were either making it up…”

  “Or they covered it up in the field,” Isaacs nodded irritably. “You don’t think anything will be found?”

  “It’s Hale and his little cadre,” She said, “They don’t make mistakes like that, and if they do they sure as hell don’t talk about them later in front of news cameras. If it happened, it’s completely off the books.”

  “That makes it easier, I suppose,” He said. “Alright, I have some calls to make. ETA to the Sled?”

  “Thirty minutes, General,” an Air Force Lieutenant said without turning around to look at them. “Just completing a refueling now, we have them scheduled for one more over the Channel before they’re feet dry over Europe.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant.”

  *****

  “Where’s Ogre?” Hale asked as they got out of range of the cameras.

  “Mission in Egypt, near the border with Isreal,” She answered. “I was with him on the JFK task group, supposed to be available for cleanup when they called for backup up here, so I hopped a black hawk and here we are. The group is steaming up the Med toward Venice, just in case they need to deploy more assets into the region.”

  “Glad you have you,” Hale said with feeling. “because there’s something odd about the situation here, and I feel like we’re still missing pieces.”

  “Odder than powers we’ve never seen before?”

  “We’re bound to keep running into those,” Hale said, “we’ve not had enough time to really get a handle on what was done to us, but it’s safe to say that there are a lot of less obvious abilities that probably manifested at the same time as our own but have gone unnoticed because people like myself and China’s Dragon grabbed all the attention.”

  She grimaced, but couldn’t help but nod in agreement, “Makes sense. I probably would have gone a while without noticing my own changes if they hadn’t called us back up after you went all tv famous on us.”

  “That wasn’t my fault.”

  Lana snorted, “What part of singing the Marine’s Hymn while walking into a fight wasn’t your fault, exactly?”

  “Shut up, Corpsman,” He growled, “pointing out the obvious logical holes in a superior’s argument is a corporal offense.”

  “Planning on spanking me, Captain? Ogre might want to have words with you about that,” She retorted coyly.

  “Nope!” Hale threw up his hands, “Not going there, don’t want that imagery. What you and Ogre do in your spare time is your concern, I don’t need to hear about you getting spanked.”

  “Who said I was the spankee?”

  “Double nope! Red light, Corpsman!” He held his hands up in the signal for a time out. “flag on the play. I am officially bailing on this conversation!”

  “Pussy.”

  Hale rolled his eyes.

  “Anyway, as I was saying,” He went on, trying to force the conversation back from that particular abyss, “There’s more odd here than I think we’ve fully seen. There’s a lot of changed, more than there should be, and they seem to be oddly intent on rioting.”

  “Hmm,” Lana said, thinking about it as she looked over her shoulder. “That is a lot of them to be in one group, isn’t it?”

  “Especially without an apparent leader,” Hale said, “it’s somehow more… random this time?”

  “Take your word for it,” She said, “you’re going to look for more trouble, I assume?”

  “That is the mission,” He confirmed.

  “Alright, I’m going to ensure we have samples from all the idiots back there,” Lana said, “You let me know when you find the bad guys. I’d like a word, up close, if you know what I mean.”

  Hale winced, but nodded as he began to drift upwards. He saluted back at her, “Yes ma’am.”

  “Get out of here you damn boy scout.”

  Hale laughed and accelerated up into the night sky, leaving Lana to turn around and head for her medical bag. Filling out the database on changes would be one of the most valuable things she could accomplish here tonight.

  *****

  Chapter 10

  Blue Solar HQ, London

  It felt like he was spending more nights like this lately, staring at reports that made no sense, signing checks for things he wasn’t sure he needed. Wesley was tired. Exhausted would be a better description, to be honest. None of it made any sense, not one bit.

  His company had reached out and hired the world’s foremost experts in gene editing, snapping them up before other companies managed to get traction and, as a result, had landed several rather large military contracts from major nations. That brought a lot of paperwork, and even more was on the table because of his insistence that he understand what the hell was being done.

  That was a requirement that was far easier said than done, however, since none of his so called experts had any clues.

  The best geneticists in the world looked at what the edited DNA was doing and all of them, to a man and woman, shrugged and said “we dunno”.

  It would be hilarious if the damn world wasn’t burning. He’d been watching the reports grow by the minute, riots tearing the world apart like a pandemic. Nothing he had even considered could do a damn thing to stop it.

  Then
what happens? The Marine gets in a fight, and the world calms down in order to watch.

  All the money, all the power, everything I control and can reach out to grasp, and a goddamn flying brick manages more good by accident than I can on purpose.

  It was damn well galling, that was the only word for it.

  “Sir? We have test results and… one of the researchers requested to speak with you?”

  Wesley grabbed the remote and flicked off the screens, turning to face his personal assistant.

  “The results?” He asked, extending a hand.

  “Similar to before, Sir,” the young man said, handing him the information.

  Wesley nodded absently, flipping through the pages to read the summaries. He’d look at the rest in depth later. There was nothing much there, thought, just more of the same bullshit.

  “What did the researcher want to talk about?”

  “She… uh… thinks she has an idea what’s going on.”

  That brought him up short, his head came up from the reports and he looked his assistant in the eyes.

  “Which researcher?”

  “Doctor McCabe.”

  Wesley had to think about that one, he didn’t remember her, which was strange. He’d made a point to familiarize himself in depth with the new geneticists he’d poached for the project.

  “She’s not a geneticist,” Wesley said after a moment, “Isn’t she with our high energy research division?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “How did she get read into this project?” He asked, curious and hoping that they hadn’t fouled their security procedures. He didn’t care much, but the government branches administering the contracts they had would be in a snit.

  “Already had clearance, and did a minor if applied genetics while she was at MIT, Sir. She was read in just as an extra set of eyes for the most part,” His assistant explained.

  “And she thinks she has the answer?” Wesley handed back the papers and walked over to his desk where he flipped the laptop around and called up the good doctor’s employment record with his companies.

  Impressive enough record, He had to admit. Doesn’t appear prone to jumping in without a good idea of what was going on. Alright.

  “Have her sent up, I’ll speak with her.”

  “Yes sir, I’ll make the call.”

  *****

  Berlin

  Hale flew easily over the rooftops, eyes scanning the streets below him for anything he might need to get involved with.

  He was letting the cops handle everything that they could handle without help, they didn’t need him butting in to stop minor crimes and the like, and wouldn’t likely appreciate it if he chose to. What he was looking for was, as before, super humans making trouble.

  The thing above the city, it was attracted to the fighting for one reason or another.

  Maybe it was analyzing the effects, watching its little experiment play out, maybe it was just a sick puppy who enjoyed the violence. Either way, they knew that one thing about it, and not much else.

  Motivations, goals, little things like that were still a mystery, however. Not to mention methodology. They knew it used something like CRISPR to affect genetics, but the effects seemed all wrong, like they couldn’t happen.

  He didn’t know much about genetic engineering, of course, but he knew enough to say with some confidence that short of engineering some wings, no amount of bio-tinkering was going to let a person fly.

  Says the guy flying under his own power a couple hundred feet over Berlin, Hale thought wryly.

  Whatever the truth, it almost didn’t matter from his perspective.

  Hale case a dark look at the clear night sky above him.

  He couldn’t see the target, but he knew it was there, just as he knew it was hostile… whatever its motives were in reality, its actions where those of an enemy. It was going to have to die.

  “Captain.”

  Hale tapped the earpiece, “Pierson.”

  “We have a target for you, three blocks due west of your current position. Riot just turned violent, and the rioters are acting atypically according to our models.”

  “On it.”

  Hale turned in space, looking to the west. Finding the riot wasn’t a difficult thing to pull off, it was making a fair bit of racket. He wasn’t as concerned with the riot itself this time, however, and so he took a slower approach.

  “Any signs of our shy hosts,” He asked after a moment.

  “Still scanning the rooftops,” Pierson told him. “As before, there are actually quite a few people up there, watching. They could also be on any of multiple other spots with decent line of sight, and we can’t get good imagery from some of them.”

  “ok, let me know if anything pops, in the meantime I’m going in.”

  “Good luck, Captain.”

  Hale acknowledged that and closed the link, lining up with the closest street and diving down below the tops of the buildings as he poured on the speed while keeping it below Mach One. There was no reason, yet, to blow out the neighborhood’s windows, after all.

  *****

  “Oh look, soldier boy is back,” Tessa broke away from Pitr, gasping for air as she pushed him off her.

  Pitr sighed, rolling to one side. “How did you even notice that?”

  “I was watching the video stream of course.”

  Of course, Pitr sighed. “How silly of me to think you might be focused on other things at the moment.”

  She patted him on the arm, “Oh don’t feel bad, you have nothing to be ashamed of… well, nothing much.”

  He rolled his eyes, by this point well used to Tessa’s little peculiarities even if he didn’t particularly like some of them. He got to his feet and checked the news feed briefly before he walked over to the window and glanced out at the riot below.

  Malcolm had found them a nice empty apartment to use this time as they were closer to some residential sections, but once they got started proper it would be back on the room for the lot of them because visibility from the window sucked.

  “There he is,” He said, “looks like he’s coming in soft again. Interesting, I’d have bet that he would have stopped messing around after the last time.”

  “He joined the army, Pitr love, how intelligent could the man possible be?”

  “Marines.”

  “What?” Tessa had a confused look that he rather liked.

  “He joined the Marines, fraulein,” he said, “not the army.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  Pitr shrugged, “No clue, to be honest. Something to do with water and boats, I suppose.”

  “Then same difference. Who cares?” She shrugged, “If he were smart he’d be doing something meaningful, not flying around the world beating people up.”

  Pitr smiled thinly, amused but willing to let the point drop.

  “Let’s move up to the roof,” She said, “get a better view.”

  “Popcorn,” He suggested as he opened a portal to the roof.

  She waggled her hand, “I’m feeling a little sick of popcorn.”

  He held the portal as she walked through, her voice wafting back.

  “Do you know any good ice cream parlours?”

  *****

  Hale landed just ahead of the line of riot police, causing the crowd to pause slightly at his sudden appearance.

  “Be careful,” He said over his shoulder in German, “If they have abilities, find cover. I will handle it quickly.”

  He could barely see the police behind their shields and armor, but as none of them were inclined to shoot him in the back or anything of that nature, Hale turned to put his focus on the crowd.

  “Please disperse,” He said, again using German, “The streets are not safe. Please return to your homes.”

  For a moment he almost thought that might do it. There was a clear wavering in many of their eyes, like they wanted to do as he asked, but then… it was gone.

  The transition was so fast that H
ale was certain he’d have missed it entirely if he wasn’t looking and thinking about it. He’d seen it earlier too, he realized, his memory jogged by what he just saw, and he mentally nudged the probability of there being a puppet master of some kind nearby up several notches.

  “Pierson,” He said, tapping his earpiece. “There is a controller, and they’re close. Find them.”

  “We’re on it, Captain. Good luck.”

  Hale didn’t respond, he just closed the channel and got read for a fight.

  “Sorry about this everyone,” He said in German, “but I’m afraid I can’t take it as easy on you as I would prefer.”

  The mob roared in response, and then charged.

  *****

  “Ouch.” Pitr said as he stood on the edge of the rooftop, looking down. “Maybe he has learned a lesson or two.”

  Tessa nodded absently, licking her lips, “So it seems.”

  The Marine was tearing through the rioters with a bloody mindedness that one normally didn’t see outside of an action film, and there was no doubt in either of their minds that the men and women below were being put down hard.

  Even so, it was also clear that he wasn’t killing anyone despite the nature of the fighting.

  That was both quite impressive, and also one of the stupidest things the pair had ever witnessed.

  “Amazing how much a man can be convinced to handicap himself, if you brainwash him enough growing up,” Tessa said, amused. “Morality, civility, ethics. Such horseshit. It’s all a construct, invented by those with power to keep those without from usurping their positions.”

  Pitr shrugged, “True enough, I suppose, but it has its benefits too. A constant game of king of the hill would be a lousy world to live in, I think. What’s the point of taking over the top of the heap, if you’re constantly fighting until you lose? I want to enjoy my time at the top.”

  Tessa snorted, “You’re such a pansy boy, Pitr. The real world is fighting, learn to enjoy that.”

  He ignored her, preferring to watch what was happening below.

  There was no point in telling Tessa that he did enjoy the fighting, she knew that. She just didn’t understand that sometimes a man wanted to relax. Even before that night, Tessa had been high strung. Controlling, demanding.