from "Victory", chapter eight

[The book's due eight weeks from tomorrow. Welcome to the world of October 2023. -- David]

“I don’t understand this at all.” Melody Thomason grumbled on the dilapidated tanker that had skirted the Arabian Sea in late October. Image stretched out on deck. “I mean,” she turned in the rags she now wore to face the former member of the Menagerie and current Superstar, “if we’re trying to sneak up on the Empress, she’s more likely to smell us coming.”

“Feeling seasick?”

“Not sick,” Miss Twirl admitted as she forced herself to not heave under the tropical sun. “But what happened to fast strikes? You know, the rush in, bash a few bad guys, rush out again types?”

“Don’t be so eager, young lady. If Beacon’s right about this, we’ll get plenty of fighting before we’re done.”

Miss Twirl snapped and tossed her hair back as she did so, “Beacon says this, and Gadgetmaster says that. I’m not that old,” she professed in mock humility, “but I seem to remember the Superstars and the Menagerie weren’t the best of friends. What’s with your profession of faith in them?”

“Oh, it’s not faith,” Image recalled. He quoted in Kazakh, and then translated into English for his dumbfounded listener, “‘The substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen’ hardly applies to me.” To underscore his statement, Image in his workingman coveralls faded from view. Reflexively, Miss Twirl felt in the area where Sergey Paretsky had stood with her charged baton and assumed a defensive posture.

“Her name was Kyra,” Image announced as he faded back into view in something better suited to sunning himself on the deck. “When the Cold War wound down in Lviv, another Menagerie operative – sweet, silver Moonbeam,” he lingered on saying, “Lieutenant Rostov, the Kremlin’s watchdog, and I got the dubious privilege of flushing out a nationalist movement. With the American and Soviet nuclear arsenals pointing at each other, even if they could blow up the world only a couple of dozen times then, we couldn’t ‘keep a lid’ on breakaways within our own borders.”

Despite the heat, the man known as Image shook as he related: “A safe house with a bird’s eye view of the town square had been compromised. Two of the Superstars, our old friend Gadgetmaster and Mirrorimage, had been brought in on Aeroflot special to apprehend NATO defectors. One misunderstanding led to another, and we each thought the other was apprehending them.”

“I overloaded Gadgetmaster’s extension as Mirrorimage made Moonbeam fight her own shadows. Our political officer, Rostov, aimed his pistol toward Moonbeam, I thought at the time.” Image mimed his action into the water with his hand. “I leaped toward Rostov away from my opponent. Gadgetmaster deduced my electrically-charged form could be grounded, and so he did.”

“The year after Chernobyl,” he continued as he raised his hand for Miss Twirl’s silence, “neither ‘side’ was inclined to be gentle, even with its own. But Gadgetmaster got them out, the missile guidance designer Kriyalov, his daughter Kyra, and lovely Helena,” he heaved out, “along with his teammate. I knew twenty seconds later why he was in haste.”

Image clenched his fist and pounded it into his open right hand. “The Supreme Soviet had decided we were political liabilities and wanted to make our deaths for the motherland our patriotic sacrifice. When Rostov activated the explosives in the foundation, he was willing to sacrifice himself for the death of two expatriates and four super humans.”

“Gadget told me,” Beacon called from behind them on deck, “that just as the bomb was about to go off, he used his extension to grab the trigger out of Rostov’s hand. But it left him open for Moonbeam’s gravity-control power to affect him, Rostov, and everyone else on the floor and send them through three more to ground level. Hard.”

“Speaking of hard,” Miss Twirl snapped, “it is that hard to find your hubby?” Melody Thomason gesticulated, “He and the mind-reader,”

“Touchstone,” Image and Beacon contributed.

“And that guy with the mustache disappeared and you’re not looking for them?”

“Danny can take care of himself,” his wife Cindy Gallatin affirmed. “He has most of his life.” She footnoted, “You’re forgetting Iris and Blaze.”

“Noel?” Miss Twirl laughed at the thought of her fellow St. Louisian in possible peril. “About time that bully girl got in over her head!” Miss Twirl felt the heat of their disdain. “Come on! She needs to be taken down a peg anyway.”

“Well,” Cadmus thundered as he towered over them, “that’s not your concern.” He folded his arms and pronounced, “Malika can handle whatever lies ahead.”

“Your concern is touching.”

“The fire-girl’s replaceable. Malika isn’t.”

Toward the sunset-colored horizon, the starboard side of their vessel was suddenly under fire.

Generis raged as she came topside and assumed her energy form. “ ‘A simple cruise to Victoria, then hit a shipping lane to Mombasa,’ you said.”

“I’m not the one steering this thing,” Beacon turned on her as she formed a field in front of her. “Wait a minute. I thought you were!”

“Zenia’s got it, barely,” Generis admitted. “Now what?”