//|| //^^\\ || || .|. COHERENT COMICS UNINCORPORATED PRESENTS // || \\ || || --X--------------------------------------------- //======================= '|` ACADEMY OF SUPER-HEROES #39 // || \\ || || City of Lights III: Starlight // || \\__// || || Copyright 2002 by Dave Van Domelen ___________________________________________________________________________ [cover is overlaid with a rainbow-hued bullseye that renders all behind it in monochrome. The figure behind the bullseye is Doublecross, sitting atop a throne of blazing light.] ACADEMY OF SUPER-HEROES ROLL CALL CODENAME REAL NAME POWERS STATUS -------- --------- ------ ------ Solar Max Jonathan Zachary Spacetime Control ACTIVE "JakZak" Taylor Comet Sarah Grant-Taylor Superspeed, Ice Body ACTIVE Green Knight Salvatore Napier Strength, Regeneration ACTIVE Contact Aaron Zander Psi, Mind-over-Body ACTIVE Scorch Scott Handleman Pyrokinetic ACTIVE Essay Sara Ana Rodriguez Gadgeteer ACTIVE Peregryn Howard Henderson Jr. Elemental Mage ACTIVE Lightfoot Tom Dodson Velocity Control ACTIVE Breaker Christina Li Telekinesis ACTIVE Fury Arin Kelsey Concussion Blasts PROBATION ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ [January 28, 2025 - The Network] As the crimson humanoid pulled itself together out of data from the walls of the crudely-rendered searing desert canyon, Lightfoot spared a very brief moment to reflect on how he'd gotten into this situation. Nate "Netwalker" Walker, a student at the Academy, had the power to create temporary "cyberspace" realities that could look like anything he desired, but which remained tightly linked to events happening in the computer networks of the world. This let him (and others, thanks to a gadget built by another student) travel into the networks like in old cyberpunk fiction. The fact that Nate could create universes, even temporary and limited ones, sometimes scared Tom. A year ago, a copy of TwenCen archvillain Doublecross had been freed from the computer where it lay imprisoned. Doublecross had gone on to do a lot of unpleasant things, and was now impossible to find, so Tom had decided to take advantage of Nate's powers to check out a few cold leads on the hunch that they might not be so cold. On the plus side, he was right. On the minus side, the "cold lead" had been a hot trap. The tracks he'd been followed had turned out to be false, and their energy was now assembling into a giant humanoid figure with a vague resemblance to David Warner, the old movie actor. The figure glowed balefully red, and its movements were starting to speed up as it gained resolution. Lightfoot hurled the blue disk in his hand with all his might, hoping the attack program Nate had given him would be able to destroy the construct. "Warner" merely held up a hand and the disk bounced off an invisible barrier. The barrier flared for a fraction of a second in an X shape as the energy of the attack was dissipated along four directions. The disk wobbled back through the air to Lightfoot's hand. "So, program, your run cycle ends now!" the giant boomed, reaching down to grab Lightfoot. He dove to one side, barely evading the grasp. Maybe he could try to run with the setting? "I'm not a program," he shouted defiantly. "I'm a User!" "Is that supposed to frighten me?" the giant sneered. "Program, user... in the end you're all just data to feed my circuits!" A quick foot stomp nearly caught Lightfoot napping, and left a deep crater in the low-resolution digital landscape. This is bad, he thought. No helpful distraction is going to be coming to save him, not unless Nate's actually paying close attention right now. And the disk can't get through that thing's shield. Maybe if he threw it harder, using his speed powers to accelerate his arm? That didn't make any sense...it was a program, not an actual projectile. A metaphor. A glancing blow sent Lightfoot rolling, and he almost dropped his weapon. Tom mentally slapped himself. First rule of the Magene...if it doesn't make sense, stop thinking so hard! The Magene is all about breaking the rules. And so what if the disk was just a cybernetic metaphor...as long as it felt real to him, his powers would work on it. Somehow. Didn't matter. Lightfoot hurled the disk again, putting all the force of his supernormal gift behind it. It streaked upwards like a shaft of azure light, shattering the giant's shield into glittering reddish shards before smashing into the target's aquiline features. The giant fell with a crash, and started to fade. "Oh no, you don't!" Lightfoot leapt over to the fallen form and grasped it in both hands. "You're just data too, and I'm going to download you." As the ruddy light faded, the circuitry imprinted on Tom's body as part of the setting started shifting from blue to red. He knew he'd only gotten part of the data before it was lost, but he knew one thing for sure.... This monster had been planted on the path less than two months ago. Doublecross was actively covering his tracks, which meant he was worried about being found via the networks. Time to give Nate a new class project. * * * * [February 14, 2025 - Near Earth Orbit] JakZak floated in the fiery void, the Sun baking him mercilessly. Well, it wasn't that much stronger out in space than inside the atmosphere...air blocked maybe a third of the Sun's energy. But with little other matter to conduct heat away, only the high polish on his armor kept him from getting uncomfortably warm as he searched for more of the strange satellites like the one that had impacted a comsat a while back. Not that he wasn't burning up inside anyway. Radner was having his royal wedding, broadcasting the staged festivities around the world. People who had conveniently forgotten the devastation wrought by both groom and bride were eating up the pageantry. JakZak just didn't want to be around people right now, as a result. Of course, having time alone to brood wasn't the best idea either, and he found himself spending more time than he should second-guessing the decisions made by Coulter...aka Challenger. It was a real devil's choice, to be sure, with no "right" answer, but.... His sensors pinged, and he sighed. Time to see if the latest bit of uncharted space garbage was worth investigating. * * * * [February 20, 2025 - Chicago] Julie snuggled up against Scott in the slowly cooling bed...for Scott, the "heat of passion" was pretty literal, and there'd been a few close moments when it seemed like he might lose control with painful results. But for all the warmth around her, a cold knot of doubt and guilt sat in her stomach as she listened to Scott's slow, even breathing. Not guilt over the general fact she had had sex with Scott for the first time, no. Whatever "Midwestern Values" she might have absorbed from her parents were blasted to pieces within her first year as a fashion designer. And they hadn't really ever intended to wait for marriage anyway, given how far off that day seemed. It was just...she felt like she'd done this as...an apology. Or to stop a fight from happening. Because she'd continued working for Radner even though she knew it made Scott uncomfortable. She couldn't help but worry that her motives would come back and haunt her. Oh, they'd shared a bed before, even gotten to what the old folks would call "third base." Despite herself, she had to stifle a chuckle at the thought of a different sort of "paraball". But this was still a damn big step for both of them. Why couldn't it have been for the right reasons, and not the wrong ones? * * * * [March 2, 2025 - Belem, Brazil] It was unseasonably hot, and that was saying something considering the equatorial position of Belem. Fortunately for Contact, he was about as insensitive to the heat of Brazil as he was to the cold of Baffin Island, when he wanted to be. And he was glad to be out of the emotional chill in any case. MetaPsych's director, Gene Clark, was still giving him the cold shoulder, carrying a grudge over his initial turning down of her affections. Her body was (barely) adult, but her emotional core was still in arrested adolescence, hiding behind a shell of borrowed skills and assumed personalities. And while his only serious relationship had been with Paul, there was something about her that he couldn't stop thinking about for long. Still, it was good to get away from her for a while, and this little stakeout was just the sort of thing he needed. Netwalker's computer searching had been pretty boring and mundane after Tom's little adventure, but it had turned up a number of electronic transactions Doublecross had apparently been trying to hide. Such as a number of large purchases of biomod-bacteria-grown sheets of modern mylar analogue from Rivermouth Biotechnics. The ultra-thin reflective polymer sheets were grown by a large number of firms, which had made tracing the purchases difficult after the debris Solar Max had recovered had been identified. Netwalker had narrowed it down to only three firms with suspicious electronic orders, and this was one of them. One of the shadier outfits, it had a no-questions-asked delivery policy, but a quick telepathic surface scan revealed that the manager didn't even know how the shipments were picked up...they would vanish from the warehouse, payment being received almost simultaneously with the loss. No wonder he wasn't keen to talk about it. The sensor rig Essay had given him pinged softly. Something was moving inside the warehouse. ++Breaker, Green Knight...we have movement,++ he psi-spoke to the other two ASH members with him. ++STRAFE agents, prepare to support.++ The baseline STRAFE crew along for the ride wasn't using Essay's glitterguns, because she hadn't gotten them to work for non-supernormals, but a clever tech among them had worked out a modified netgun of sorts using sheets of the pseudo-mylar from the warehouse. The same tech had also rigged several windows and doors to slam open on command, so when Contact and the other two burst into the warehouse they didn't need to break anything in the process. He was sure breakage would happen anyway, but it always paid to try to reduce collateral damage. A half dozen green humanoids clearly made of solid light were in the process of loading up a pallet with shrinkwrapped rolls of the product. It looked like they planned to fly it out through the skylight another of their number was opening. "FREEZE!" Contact shouted, reinforcing it with a telepathic push. He nearly stumbled when he felt no resistance. "Everyone, these things are mindless! Open fire!" Three glitterguns belched clouds of highly reflective chaff, filling the air with green reflections. Four of the figures dissolved into splashes of color, while the other two grabbed up single bolts of reflective material and made a break for the skylight. Their airborne companion had paused for a moment, and then flew down and threw himself onto Breaker, grabbing the glittergun she held and melting it. She gasped and telekinetically threw the gun from her hands before it could burn through her gloves. Contact and Green Knight caught the construct in a crossfire, dissolving it. But the other two had taken advantage of the distraction to escape. "Damn. We should have brought a flyer along on this one. I can still see 'em going," Sal commented. "Guess they can't go lightspeed when carrying something." "We aren't totally empty-handed here," Contact noted, holding up Essay's sensor. "We have data Essay should be able to use to make a new tracking device, and we know for sure it's Doublecross behind the satellites." "Too bad we don't know what he's using them for," Breaker added wryly, stripping off her scorched gloves. Aaron could clearly hear her thinking, "Maybe it's time to try a different approach to fighting these things...." * * * * [March 8, 2025 - Chicago] Tempers on the road were flaring hot, traffic was snarled all throughout downtown Chicago as a three block radius around the ASH Building was cordoned off. It could have been worse, of course, but such events had been planned for when the headquarters was built, and roads improved to handle the diverted traffic. It was still a pain in the butt, Essay noted, as she finished running her scanners over the flatbed trailer and its cargo of oversized crates. The smooth-faced robot behind the wheel of the truck jauntily tipped its hat to her, a panel snapping open to reveal a glowing smile. Tall concrete barriers had already been placed by Contact to keep the truck from moving...assuming that it couldn't transform into a jet and fly away, or something. "Looks like the crates are full of those crab robots Radner used in Egypt," Essay shouted over to Solar Max, who was conferring with the one STRAFE liaison on site. "Some assembly required." Satisfied that it wasn't rigged to explode, Essay pulled the bill of lading from its pouch inside the cab of the truck. The robot was still grinning eyelessly. Creepy. Tapping on the cheap "electronic paper" clipboard, she scrolled down and saw the schematics for the "Lunar Crabs" in the crates, plus detailed instructions for assembly, in addition to the simple list of contents. An entry marked "MESSAGE FROM SENDER" caught her eyes, and she brought it up. Derek Radner's insufferably smiling face appeared in crisp grayscale on the clipboard. "Greetings, O heroes of ASH!" Radner's image spoke in clear tones. As Essay had suspected, the clipboard had been souped up...Radner's ego wouldn't let him appear in a jerky and crackly image. "Please accept these Lunar Crabs, miniature spacecraft, as a sign of my support in the struggle against Doublecross, who has been my enemy as surely as he is yours. And as a token of thanks for not attempting to make my recent nuptuals...awkward. Well, the public side of the festivities, anyway. The rest was all in good fun. Or bad fun. Some sort of fun," he chuckled. "Tell Scorch that his fiancee does excellent work, and I cannot wait to see their wedding. On the networks, of course, as I wouldn't dream of crashing his ceremony, and I somehow doubt I will be on the guest list. I may have something for the bachelor party, though. Well, enjoy the cases of Crabs...and if you have any trouble assembling them, feel free to call!" With that the image flickered out. "Bastard," Essay spat. The robot kept grinning. * * * * [March 16, 2025 - Near Earth Orbit] For once they had a hot lead, Scorch thought as he channeled thrust through his exoarmor. They weren't just randomly trolling the orbital lanes in hopes of finding something, they actually had good reason to think there was something *to* find...Essay's recalibrated sensors had picked up one of those green goons from Brazil flying up to this part of space. That was the good news. The bad news was that the new sensors had found where Doublecross was hiding: the People's Republic of China, the world's biggest tinderbox. The fact that the continent hadn't already erupted into complete chaos still amazed Scorch, although he supposed the different cultural norms of the Chinese and most of their satellite states helped keep things from blowing up immediately. They may no longer have believed in the Mandate of Heaven, but they still waited for a good reason before rebelling. Add to this the fact that there were far fewer paranormals "revealed" in the wake of the Premier's death than statistically expected, and China's government was just barely able to keep a lid on things. What was left of it after the nuking of Beijing, of course. Still, the situation was still lousy, and an incursion of ASH would have caused far more problems than almost anything Doublecross could be planning. The boys upstairs were still debating whether to even tell the Proccies about Doublecross...if they knew already, they wouldn't appreciate us finding out, and if they didn't know, they'd assume it was a trick on our part. No good outcome there. "Y'know," Scorch said over his comlink to Solar Max, "this would be easier if more of us could do the searching." "We're still not sure if those Lunar Crabs are clean," was the clipped reply, reminding Scott that however much ill will he bore Radner, it was a candle to JakZak's bonfire. "Well, at least now that Essay's solved the tracking problem, we can have Howie check to see if Glyph's left a signature on any of them. They seem to be technologically clean, according to Essay." "I'm picking something up," Solar Max changed the subject with more than a hint of relief in his tone. "No hits on radar or lidar, but I'm getting a bit of a 'tug' where there shouldn't be anything," he explained. He'd been working on his gravity sense pretty extensively the past few weeks, mostly time spent in orbit. Scorch had spent his orbital time refining control over his armor's thrusters, and working on ways to use heat when there was no air for fire to feed on. A nice side effect of his practicing was the removal of some of the uncharted space junk that didn't turn out to be what they were looking for. Scorch vectored in on Solar Max's position and drifted out a bit so that whatever it was would be silhouetted against the Earth. And there it was, a slender black rod, maybe two meters long and as thick as his leg. "Looks like the case is stealthed, designed to break away at the right time," Solar Max observed, and Scorch nodded. On closer inspection, he could see that while the substance seemed to be cheap black plastic, it was shaped more like a cactus than a smooth cylinder, with an accordion-pleated surface that would confuse radar. "Well, let's get this down for analysis," Scorch replied. "Time to figure out what the heck this is all about." * * * * [March 19, 2025 - Jodrell Bank, England] "Nothing like hot coffee on a cold morning," Dr. Spees observed as he plopped down into his swivel chair. After a pause, he quirked an eyebrow at his colleague. "What, no jokes about vulgar Americans and coffee instead of tea?" Dr. Chakrabarti shrugged. "Can't stand either. I find a disciplined sleep schedule works better than stimulants anyway. Found five more of the orbital units while you were out." Spees nodded. Like every other radio telescope bank on the planet that was under United World influence, Jodrell had been taken off its normal research schedule for a few days to help scan the skies for orbital nasties. Just one of those things that came up every so often in the life of a radio astronomer, he could remember his old thesis advisor talking about the time Big Ear helped find an extradimensional fleet that was massing out near Luna. This time, it was an easter egg hunt for black packages that had turned out to be stealthed against everything but a specific radio frequency, as if they'd been deliberately left visible to that part of the spectrum. Probably so their creator could keep an eye on them, Spees reflected. Chakrabarti scowled. "What is it?" Spees asked. "I've been forwarding our data to the Combine for analysis as we've been asked, but I also decided to run some projections on what we had ourselves. Look at this," he maximized an animation that had been running in the corner of his monitor. The paths of some fifty or sixty objects were plotted. At first they seemed to be orbiting completely at random, but then they started to settle down into very similar orbits. And suddenly they came into perfect formation and the animation stopped. "Tomorrow morning," Chakrabarti said. "Tomorrow morning they will form a double cross formation in orbit. And if the rumors I've been hearing about them containing reflectors are true, they would form a giant mirror capable of focusing a beam of concentrated sunlight anywhere in Europe." "Um," Spees swallowed hard. "Not to sound cowardly or anything, but should I run like hell for the airport?" Chakrabarti tapped a few more keys, looking a lot calmer than Spees thought anyone should be. "It's hard to say for sure, as the elements could be aimed just about anywhere. But if the simplest geometry is used, it looks like the target is central France." * * * * [08:03 GMT, March 20, 2025 - Paris, France] The warmth of the morning sun had burned off the fog that had blanketed the city during the early hours. Llyr glanced to either side, wondering what Arc and Hotspur could even do in this situation. He had already shifted to lightform, but if Doublecross's intention was to fry Paris in a beam of solar devastation, his teammates would just be two more rapidly expanding clouds of plasma. At the hurriedly convened meeting last night, Grind had claimed that mass destruction was simply not part of Doublecross's profile. This particular madman's goal was the "elevation" of humanity to the level of photonic entity...he was simply messy about how he went about it. There would be death and destruction, yes. But that wasn't the goal, just an unfortunate side-effect. Technicians from both STRAFE and EUROPA's equivalent branch were scouring the city as quietly as they could, looking for any hint of the device it was assumed the reflector array would be powering. It had been too late to evacuate by the time the target city had been confirmed, but the truth could only be hidden for so long. Everyone on the streets was nervous because of the heavy presence of superhuman agents. And now that the morning fog had burned off they were getting more nervous as they looked to the west. Glittering specks in the sky were winking into sight, like morning stars that didn't know when to go to bed. And as more flared to life, it became clear that a giant "XX" was formed against the vault of the heavens. A double cross. Llyr shuddered. If Grind was right, and this massive solar mirror was intended to power a device that would convert the populace of Paris into photonics, it was NOT going to be pleasant. He had already been halfway to being a photonic himself when he was put through the meatgrinder of Doublecross's conversion process along with the "Understudies" of the CSV. One of the few memories of that time that Suspir had left him was the excruciating pain of that process. If he'd been a normal human, the pain would probably have driven him completely insane. Just what the world needed...hundreds or thousands or even MILLIONS of insane French photonics created all at once as Paris burned around them and everyone else died agonizing deaths as they were ripped atom from atom. The double cross in the sky was now as bright as a full moon. With luck, it would soon be smashed to ribbons by ASH. With *bad* luck, it would be focusing its energy on central Paris very shortly, and they still hadn't figured out what, exactly, the target of that beam would be. "Be careful what you ask for," Llyr muttered to no one in particular as a bit of motion caught his eye. The Eiffel Tower was slowly, impossibly, unfolding like a blooming flower into a tremendous receiver dish.... ============================================================================= Next Issue: Doublecross's fiendish plan comes together, in the final part of City of Lights: Equal Light! ============================================================================= Author's Notes: David Warner played Sark (and the evil CEO) in Tron. He also voiced Ra's al Ghul in Batman: the Animated Series and its successors. He's all over cheap SF and Fantasy as well. Big Ear is a radio telescope in Ohio that was recently torn down and replaced by a golf course. Its most notable claim to fame was the reception of the "WOW!" signal, the best candidate we've ever had for possible extra- terrestrial signal. In the ASH universe, of course, extra-terrestrials have been known for a long time, but there's an equivalent program to SETI that keeps an eye out for suspicious orbital devices or invasion fleets.