Chapter Fifty-Two
As Violet/Leo floated in the Otherwhere, Los Angeles spread out 'below' them. They didn't so much see the city itself as they picked up the millions of minds, scattered over the land and gathered into the buildings in masses, twinkling like so much diamond dust.
The rocket was yet distant, but Leo knew that it would be set for an atmospheric detonation, probably some three to five hundred meters up; it was approaching with hellish speed.
[ [ Can you see it? ] ]
[ [ Sure. Just let me … ] ]
She reached toward the missile with a field, extending it out and out effortlessly. But she couldn't seem to get close enough to it to grasp it.
[ [ Something's wrong! ] ]
[ [ You must reach beyond the veil,
to our own reality. ] ]
[ [ Uh … how do I do that? ] ]
[ [ Follow my lead. ] ]
With his perceptions guiding her she speared forward, found an opening. Breaching the planar interface, she shot out her field, wrapped the speeding thing in an impenetrable blanket and then crushed it with everything she had. The ICBM collapsed nearly to a point mass. Letting the field energies dissipate, she and Leo watched in fascination as the microscopic, blue-hot sphere hurtled to earth, striking deep, deep into the ground.
[ [ Okay, that was pretty cool. ] ]
[ [ I agree. ] ]
##
One of the techs observed, "Well at least we're far enough away that the EMP won't knock out our comms."
"Yeah," answered his neighbor. "It'll toast Presidio, though."
The colonel said, "I'm sorry, Mr. President. Looks like we're going to lose Houston, too."
"How … how long until the L.A. detonation?"
The colonel turned a questioning eye to the man at the control board, who responded, "Missile will reach L.A. in …" He put a hand to the earpiece. "Say again, Presidio?"
Joseph sat up. "What is it?"
"Lost it?" The tech's face twisted in agitation. "How can you lose an ICBM?"
The colonel came and leaned over the tech's shoulder. "Status, sergeant!"
"Sir, the missile has vanished."
"… You wanna tell me what you mean by that, sergeant?"
"Sir, you know as much as I do. The tracking station says the missile disappeared. It's gone. Vanished. Like somebody threw a breaker."
"No explosion?"
"No sir."
Joseph got up and walked over to the control center. Addressing the colonel, he asked, "Do I understand correctly that we still have Los Angeles?"
"Yes, Mr. President. Apparently the missile was inoperable."
"Thank God!"
"Yes, sir. And at this point I wouldn't rule out divine intervention."
Joseph glanced over at Synapse, a fierce light in his eyes. She giggled and said, "You jus' might turn into a prayin' man after all."
He swung back to the control console and strode over to the tech. "So are you telling me there's an un-detonated ICBM on the ground somewhere in L.A.?"
"Sir, I only know what they tell me. There was no explosion. Now there's no missile." He listened to the commlink again. "Sir, per Presidio's description, it didn't drop below the radar. It was still nearly sixty klicks out. It just disappeared."
Joseph stepped over to the tech who was monitoring communications with the Houston contingent. "Are those jets running full afterburners?"
"They are, sir."
"Are they tracking the missile?"
"… Yes, sir. But they aren't close enough to initiate a lock."
"How long?"
"Maybe another thirty seconds. Maybe twenty. This one has a much steeper ballistic than the first one. The fighters are climbing to try to meet it sooner."
Synapse had her eyes closed and was muttering under her breath.
##
Leo/Violet tracked the progress of the rocket-cum-nano-sphere as it penetrated to a layer of hard bedrock that barely slowed its descent.
[ [ That won't, like, turn into a black hole
and eat the planet, will it? ] ]
[ [ Hardly. Even considering that you nearly
compressed the rocket into neutronium, it
has insufficient mass to generate an event
horizon. ] ]
[ [ Uh … yeah, okay. What you said. ] ]
[ [ The next missile is that way. ] ]
And with a nudge that seemed to Leo to take hardly any effort, they were in Houston. They looked around for the rocket, spotting it coming down almost 'overhead'.
[ [ It is close. ] ]
[ [ Let me get positioned! ] ]
[ [ Do not be slow. It is almost here. ] ]
[ [ I'm not! There's something different
about that joint thingy!
[ [ What? ] ]
[ [ That angle-link thingy between the planes here!
I can't get it to move! ] ]
Leo guided her mind again, sensed the variation she had felt, and helped her to correct for it.
[ [ Thanks, Leo. You're a peach. ] ]
His good humor at her response broadcast clearly.
[ [ Hey! Don't laugh at me! I'm really new at this. ] ]
[ [ I am not laughing at you, Violet. In fact I
am astounded at how well you are adapting
to these very unusual circumstances. Now,
follow this path … ] ]
She reached through again. Both of them noticed the phalanx of fighter jets that were racing to intercept the missile, could see the air-to-air rockets they'd fired to knock it down, but could see as well that they would be too late. She enveloped the ICBM and …
It detonated.
##
"We have a visual."
"Can they do it?"
"Wing Commander has a lock …"
"Come on!"
"Firing Matadors … One … Two … Three … Four."
"Come on!"
Six harrowing seconds later, the tech frowned. "No copy. Say again."
Helen snapped over to stand beside Joseph. "What is it?"
The tech listened intently for several seconds. "So did you hit it or not?"
The colonel fired off a rapid series of commands to two other techs. Then he turned to Joseph and said, "It turns out they've got cameras in two of those jets. I'm patching through a video feed."
A monitor on the wall blinked to life and every eye in the room stared in utter confusion.
##
The weird dynamics of the Otherwhere skewed her frame of reference, but even so she knew instantly what had happened. Her field stretched enormously, puffing to over three hundred meters across before she could halt its expansion. She felt the unbelievably violent pressure on the inner surface of the force bubble, and noted with amazement the super-solar heat levels. The comparison between this bomb and the wild energies she'd handled at that warehouse in San Francisco was unavoidable. The difference this time was the lack of any significant strain on her system. With a thought, she shrank the sphere down to a few meters across; already she had reflexively tweaked it so that it would be opaque to radiation. The ease with which she accomplished these tasks astonished her. Leo was just as delighted.
[ [ That was very impressive. ] ]
[ [ Ya know, I think I'll have to agree with you.
But we still have a problem. ] ]
[ [ Yes. What to do with it now?
You can't release the field. ] ]
[ [ Got that right. It'd be no different
from the original explosion. ] ]
##
The colonel recovered first. "What the hell is that thing?"
The two camera-equipped jets took up a long, slow loop around the black ball.
Joseph asked, "Mrs. Incredible, have you seen any sort of weapon like that before?"
"I … think …" She studied the tableau intently. Something about the sphere was definitely making the back of her mind itch.
##
A series of air-to-air warheads had impacted the field in the instant following detonation. The fighter jets had all banked away sharply to avoid the blast that never came. They'd turned and were now circling it, obviously very confused by the large sphere of sparkling darkness that was just hanging in the air high over downtown. Leo could pick up a few of their thoughts, and chuckled.
[ [ Is it causing you any strain at all to handle
that thing? ] ]
[ [ Not that I can tell. ] ]
[ [ In that case, why not just throw it out of
the atmosphere? ] ]
[ [ … That's a great idea! ] ]
No sooner thought than executed. She launched the black ball straight up, and put as heavy a shove behind it as she could muster. It winked out of sight instantly.
##
When the ball vanished, a welter of questions filled the air.
"Whoa! Where'd it go?"
"Was that the missile?"
"How could that'a been the missile?"
"You get a radar history?"
"Was it destroyed?"
"Houston Command, do you copy?"
"Major Andrews, can you see the bogey?"
"Does anyone still have a lock on it?"
"Holy cripes! Look at that velocity vector!"
Helen flicked over to the tech in charge of the video feed. "Did you record that?"
"Yes, ma'am. You want a playback?"
"Please."
She watched on the big monitor as the missile streaked toward Houston, a twinkling dot high in the air; followed the smoke trails from the rockets the jets had fired; stared intently as they closed on their target.
"Stop! Back it up a few seconds, and then step forward, one frame at a time."
The ICBM had been falling at close to seven kilometers per second. If the jets hadn't been climbing at such a high angle, the cameras wouldn't have had any chance of tracking it. As it was, the dot had grown very quickly to something with a perceptible shape.
"There! Right there."
The jets' cameras, being designed for use at battle speeds, were set to record at one hundred and twenty frames per second. Helen worked that out in her head to something over fifty meters of distance covered per frame. At this point, with the jets' rockets better than halfway to their target, and the planes beginning to veer away, the ICBM was drifting into the lower left quarter of the screen. In the previous frame the missile was clearly visible. In this frame, it was outlined with a faint, sparkling glow.
"Okay, click it forward. I gotta see this."
He did, advancing at one frame a second. The spherical glow grew marginally brighter over the next couple dozen frames. Just as the image finished drifting out of view, the camera's receiver overloaded to white and shut off.
The colonel put a hand on Joseph's shoulder. "My God! It did explode!"
"So it would seem. Why, then, do we still have Houston?"
Helen said, "I believe I can tell you that."
Several faces turned her way. She continued, "That glow was a force field."
"… force field?" Joseph's brow furrowed in confusion. "How did it get there?"
"I don't know. But I've been around 'em enough times to recognize it for what it is." She stretched a hand down to the control console and backed up the sequence until the missile was in view again, then expanded that portion of the screen for a closer look. "That is what Shield's force sphere looks like. So either she did it, or someone else has been able to copy it … which I doubt."
"But … ma'am," objected the tech, "there's nobody in the picture. Nobody around to put the field there."
"I know. That's her field, though. I'm sure of it."
The colonel was mightily interested in this development. "What about the black ball?" He tapped the tech on the arm. "Sergeant, go forward to where the fighters were circling that ball."
"Yes, sir." He tapped furiously at the keys. The dark sphere centered on the screen. A few more taps brought up the view from the second jet.
Helen squinted at both of them and nodded. "As I thought. That's what Shield's force field looks like when she polarizes it. She must have done it to prevent radiation leakage."
"So where is she?" the colonel wanted to know.
"I have no idea. That part of the puzzle is new."
One of the techs on the comm board stood and quickly trotted over to Joseph. "Mr. President, sir? There's a call for you, sir." He passed the older man a headset.
Joseph frowned. "Who is it?" He knew that it would take a major security effort to even attempt that sort of contact with the war room.
"The Soviet Premier, sir."
All other conversations ceased as the others in the room turned at the news. Joseph paused, staring at the device in his hand for the space of a few breaths, his expression neutral. Then, without a word, he placed it on his head. "This is President Brandt."
"Anatoly Turchin. I must explain. It was mistake. Please to not send missiles. We do not wish a war. There was malfunction at missile base."
Several seconds died away in silence. The Premier cleared his throat and said, "Is good connection of telephone? You can hear, yes?"
"Yes."
"Was there … much damage?"
Joseph could hear the slight tremor in that question. Quietly, he answered, "No."
The Premier's heavy sigh echoed in the headset. "I am so glad. So very, very glad." Again, he said, "We do not want war."
"Gospodin Premier … if I may be so bold as to ask, given that your nation truly doesn't want to engage in warfare, why did you refuse to take my calls over the past several days?"
"Ah … yes, is very good question …" The Premier, in his own war room, surrounded by frantic, frenzied military officers, nervously watched a monitor that commanded a prominent place on the wall. It showed the locations of many of the NAU's ICBM silo emplacements. Three of them were blinking red. Anatoly fervently hoped that he could turn them back to the yellow they had shown in recent days … or, possibly, even to green. "Is very interesting story, you see. I am sure we will look back in time and have large laugh."
"Somehow I doubt that. But I am interested in the details."
"Yes, of course. Was this way …"
