War Stories I: 'Conference Call'
A/N: First look into the midst of the Injustice War! (Extensive canon notes at foot.)
In the small underground cavern most of Gotham's insurgents called 'Rebel Base,' Jokester was pulled out of his narrow-eyed contemplation of a city map dotted in colored pins, when the comm he had clipped to his ear crackled to life. It was the voice of The Computer, who'd spent the last six weeks remotely running the wartime underground communication and surveillance infrastructure from a bunker so hidden, none of his allies had any idea where to look.
"Jokester!" Computer called out, distractedly, over the sharp clatter of his own typing. "Videocall for you on channel four!"
"No need to shout, Noah," Jokester muttered, tapping his ear with a wince. The comm had already gone dead again. Channel four, huh? From outside the Northeast, then. Not an emergency line, but pretty darn secure, so somebody important or somebody really paranoid. And they'd gone through Noah directly, so it was probably pretty important. Strategy meeting? J shuffled over to the only unoccupied console in this half of the Ops room, and tapped in the appropriate code.
"Fishface! Caveman!" he exclaimed as a picture flickered to life, pleased as always to see familiar faces and incapable as ever of anything closely resembling formal manners. "Hey, how's it going?"
The immortal Vandar Adg huffed in badly-concealed amusement at the other end of the line, but over his shoulder Ocean Keeper couldn't quite muster either a smile or a scowl. He was leaning visibly on his trident. "West Coast operations are fine," Adg said. "But communications with Metropolis cut off abruptly. Have you heard from Luthor in the last half hour?"
"No." Worry was showing nakedly on the mad clown's face as he turned from the screen. "Hey, Ed! Can you raise Metropolis?"
"Already trying!" Enigma called back. J had long since passed his bad habit of eavesdropping on to all his closest friends.
"At least you're still operating," said Orm. His round dark face relaxed a little with his words, but he was still obviously weary. Jokester hadn't seen him that grey since the Death Valley Incident of '02. "We were having visions of mass nuclear strikes."
"The League of the Rhine hasn't spent fifteen years sabotaging the world's nuclear arsenals for nothing," replied J with a shrug. "Not to brag or anything. Kahndaq got hit yesterday by twelve missiles without payloads, and Adam got the one live one into space before it blew—and we need someone to back Good Samaritan and Seventeen up in Russia, by the way, while I have you on the line."
"I need to get back to Atlantis soon," Orm demurred. Privately J thought he needed to rest. "I've finished my business on the raincoast, Star and SanFran are fully onboard, and Manta can't manage both the capital and New Venice operations much longer, even with Ventura City in open rebellion."
Well, that explained some of the exhaustion. Black Manta and Ocean Keeper in theory considered each other respected allies against the brutal and expansionist King Orin, but in practice they couldn't be in a room together for more than five minutes without descending into increasingly strident argument. J was pretty sure Dave didn't try to be offensive and Orm didn't try to take offense, but it always seemed to happen.
"Stop by Gotham on your way to New Venice, couldja?" he asked, because commenting on relations with Manta wasn't likely to improve them. Past experience had shown. "I've got a package for Ducard Sr., and last I heard he was organizing the Italian resistance."
America was in many ways lucky thus far—so many of the Society's members were already in positions of power there that the conquest had been relatively bloodless. In Gotham, it was almost as though nothing had changed, apart from the police force losing its collective mind. Well, and the National Guard units. And the curfew. And Owlman's mark being stamped over everything. And the media broadcasts, and the sheer volume of fugitives Jokester's network had been evacuating ever since the Society made their move. Still. The Amazonian occupation of most of Europe, on the other hand, was getting out of hand, and Atlantis kept invading everywhere else with a coastline that hadn't already been pacified.
Orm bit his lip thoughtfully. "I'll see what I can do," he said, which was fair. The Atlantean home front was one of the most important in the war, and depending on what was up with Metropolis, he might not be able to risk stopping on the East Coast, especially here in the Owl's nest. J could get a carrier down along the coast, if necessary.
"And I will do what I can about Russia," Vandar declared. Ten thousand years ago, he'd lived somewhere east of the Black Sea, and he still took an interest in the general region. "Have you told Al Ghul?"
The League of Shadows was deeply embroiled in the war on all fronts, and Ra's was a priority assassination target, so he'd been hard to pin down for some time now. And he was still giving J the cold shoulder, as much as they could afford with the world in this state, from that thing right before the war. Most of their mutual allies hadn't noticed, and kept expecting him to be in close cahoots with the Demon's Head.
Jokester shrugged. "His people know; I talked to the Tbilisi cell, and they called Baku. They don't have all that many heavy hitters, though, and nobody to spare."
Vandar snorted. "Nobody has anyone to spare," he retorted. "If the enemy do not turn on one another soon, we will have to begin withdrawing from some areas of the fight, or be slowly crushed."
"That is not new information," said Harvey Dent, stepping abruptly into the view of the camera, just behind Jokester's shoulder. He didn't have his mask on, and even the black half of his suit was starting to look worn, and the mostly-paralyzed muscles around his right eye had been locked into their most world-weary, sardonic slant for days now. "Unless you want us to conspire about who to abandon, let's move on."
Ocean Keeper's jaw clenched, but after a second Vandar's face split into a grin full of big blunt teeth. (Immortality was impressive and all, but J had always had particular respect for his immortal teeth; most parts of a person were slowly replaced over time, but ten thousand years of chewing had to make those the closest thing to an indestructible substance known to man.) "Very well, then. You will have to hope the rest of us do not conspire to leave you to your own devices."
Harvey's mouth twisted. The thing was, it wasn't a real threat; Gotham was too much of a nerve center of the counterinsurgency to be anything but a final redoubt, in spite of the great weight of Owlman's power there. The ancient was making a point about responsibility, and the luxury of focusing on the immediate and neglecting the long-term—and of relying too much on any alliance.
They could hardly tell him they had enough to worry about already, though Harvey might want to. Jokester knew Vandar wasn't as indifferent as he acted, and knew that it was important to have someone with his perspective, someone who could take the long view and still be prepared to act in the present for the greater good. It was just...hard to keep that in mind, when every heartbeat tried to spend itself on counting the names of those you loved who were out of sight, and therefore might be dead before you saw them again. Red Hood, for one, had missed his last check-in, and if J let himself he would be sick with worry.
Just as Jokester put a steadying hand on Harvey's elbow, an interruption from behind removed the need for him to run interference.
"I know what's happened to Metropolis."
Enigma instantly had everyone's attention, but he made them wait the few seconds it took to get comfortably in-frame with the conference call and meet the original querents' eyes from under the brim of his hat, before continuing.
"The news is better than it could be," he announced. "I got through to Tigress, who got cut off heading up into Metropolis from Baltimore at ten thirty-three exactly, and saw the whole thing. Ultraman's erected some sort of Kryptonian energy shield. Purple dome, five miles across. Nobody in or out but him."
"So Alex is rattling him," said Jokester, focusing on the positive. Hadrian's Wall, to take an example from history because he had too many geeky friends and it had clearly worn off on him, might have been a declaration of authority, after all, but it was also a blatant admission of that authority's limits.
Although, unfortunately, he couldn't say that either Metropolis or its environs were overrun by fiercely independent Picts and Scots who refused to bow to the power of the House of El. Bah. Close enough. Alex would be a redhead if he had hair. J had seen the one surviving baby picture.
"What kind of control measure is a force field?" demanded Livewire, squinting up from the workstation she'd taken over to run their internet-media presence and public information dispersal. J had known she was listening, but Enigma jumped a little, and Vandar on the screen looked him dryly askance, as if to say exactly how many people are listening in on your average secure communication? Jokester ignored him. Leslie was from Metropolis originally; she automatically had a personal stake in this. "If he was only controlling the city, that would be one thing, but stopping people moving in and out of it, when he's got the whole country? That's hinky. Maybe he is planning to nuke the East Coast and wants to keep his favorite city clean."
"I was thinking...some kind of purge," said Harvey, and J scowled at them both.
"Negative thinkers, that's what you are." It was true, though, that if Ultraman was feeling pressed he was much more likely to do something crazy. "He's probably just trying to make sure Alex can't run away. Like he would anyway."
"Heh," Ed chuckled. "Luthor'll be fine. He's got Henshaw and that Bob clone locked in there with him. And the rest of those crazies."
"And Lois," pointed out J.
Orm said, "Let's hope they're all fine." Shook himself, and focused on J again. "I have to go."
J gave him the only thing he could right now: an understanding smile. "Yeah, okay, Gills. We'll be in touch."
Livewire hit one last key and flickered to her feet. "There aren't many energy barriers that can hold me," she stated, accurately. "I'll head south, scout Metropolis and report back if I can."
"Good," pronounced Vandar Adg, and with more than due gravitas reached out and cut the call.
Under Gotham, a clown snickered, and let his thumbs-up pose drop. "He does that," he informed his comrades. "I think he wants us to think he's so old he doesn't understand how to be polite via technology or something."
Harvey snorted; Enigma sniggered. Leslie rolled her eyes.
A/N: So many characters! :D
Ocean Master is always Aquaman's half-brother Orm, but his background changes wildly with every retcon. This universe pulls from the second post-Crisis variation, where their shared parent is an immortal royal Atlantean wizard, but Orin's mom is Queen Atalanta and Orm's is a nice girl from a traditionalist coastal Inupiak community. The Atlantean city of Ventura was rather poorly ruled by the early Wonder Woman villain Queen Clea. (She of the many slave girls.) Atlantis itself appears to be the seat of an empire composed of subject city-states.
Black Manta is, fun story, the only comic character I know of who was called 'Black Something' long before he was a black guy, by virtue of not showing his face for about twenty years, and it took even longer for them to name him. He still only has a first name. David is David. (Also, he's autistic. His villain origin is evil brain-torturing Arkham autism 'treatments.' My research has left me with all kinds of new respect for Black Manta.)
Vandar Adg is Vandal Savage's real name; Noah Kuttner is Calculator; Hank Henshaw is Cyborg Superman. Bonus point, Tigress III is Artemis Crock. ^^ Livewire is a very minor and recent electrical Superman villain who's been drawn into the peripheral Gotham Rogues' Gallery; she used to be a radio jockey. Bad Samaritan was a Georgian Outsiders villain with a Hitler fixation; Subjekt 17 was born in Soviet Kazakhstan, after his parents' spaceship crashed and his pregnant mother was seized by the government. The one in this universe managed somehow not to blame the human race as a whole for evil science.
