The Workings of Fate
Part Four: Things Unforeseen
Metropolis
"You are sure?" Savage asked.
"As sure as I can be." Ultron replied. "The guy who wrote my base code is the same one who worked out the dynamics of the molecule. Henry Pym was a freelancer, he sold to the highest bidder. You outbid the others for me, but it seems Luthor was the one who got his hands on adamantium. It must have been just before Pym shrank himself into nothing!
"I've done the math, and the only thing that could stop Superman in his tracks like that is adamantium. Before you ask, I've no way of knowing how much of it LexCorp may have!"
"Damn!" Savage snarled. "What about the robot guards at Stark-Wayne?"
"Oh, that was easier." Ultron told him. "The original patent was filed by Trask Industries in the nineties. The Sentinels were originally designed to detect, locate and 'neutralise' mutants and metahumans. Seems that Bolivar Trask had a bee in his bonnet about superhumans taking over the planet and enslaving the rest of us. He tried to sell Sentinels to the government, but they wanted general purpose robot soldiers. Trask wouldn't make the changes, so they hounded him until he went completely batshit and killed himself. Stark-Wayne bought the company from his son, along with the Sentinel patent, so the government lost out as well. Looks like they repurposed the Sentinels for general security."
"How many do they have?" Savage asked.
"How should I know?" Ultron snapped back.
"Your function, or at least one of them, is to penetrate the systems of my rivals!" Savage pointed out. "A function which you seem unable to carry out!"
"Hey! I'm not the only AI in town!" Ultron protested. "LexCorp has Brainiac, Stark-Wayne have Jarvis and Roxxon's got Titan. They're all as good as I am and it's a stalemate and it's probably going to stay that way!"
"Well, don't let up!" Savage barked, then. "What about the Black Widow?"
"Your daughter knows what she's doing." Ultron noted. "Romanova weighed around 60 kilos and she was dropped just short of 2.3 metres, maybe seven and a half feet, through the hatch in the crane platform. According to the British measured drop tables, that was exactly the right drop to snap her neck instantly."
Savage sighed. "It seems my dear Clarissa holds human life less sacred than vegetable or animal!" He allowed. "Tell Gargunza to start work on a replacement, a construct with similar abilities.
"Now I have much to do. I'm going to the Fortress, I need to finalise campaign plans. Diana will be in charge until I return."
Republic of Hidalgo
Hidalgo has been described as being 'a country in Central America the size and value of a postage stamp', which is a little unfair. Certainly it is not a large country, nor a rich one. It was founded by a group of Conquistadore deserters who married local women and fished in the sea for a living. Their horses, muskets and steel swords kept hostile tribes away until the world forgot about them. Later, when borders were laid out, Hidalgo gained -without asking - a considerable tract of territory inland. Territory that consisted of impenetrable jungle and a small range of medium high, but excessively sheer and rugged, mountains that almost nobody had ever bothered to explore.
The 'official' part of Hidalgo consisted of a narrow coastal strip. There was a small but safe natural harbour, around which the grandiosely-named but modestly-sized Hidalgo City clustered. Beyond that there were perhaps two-dozen farming villages and a few more remote ranches. The population was around 20 000, it had an army of five hundred, an air force consisting of three aging F-14 Tomcats and a navy comprising two equally elderly Type 21 frigates, formerly property of the Royal Navy. By contrast, the Hidalgo Coastguard numbered 800, and had a fully up-to-date complement of Search and Rescue ships and aircraft. The President, who had been fully and fairly re-elected every five years for the last twenty, knew what was important to his people, and fishing was a huge part of the economy.
What only a few people, even within the Republic itself, knew was that, beyond the jungles and mountains of the interior, was a large mountain valley. This valley was owned by the Hidalgo Corporation, it was the home of a lost Maya tribe and the location of a unique volcanic vent that produced a constant stream of molten gold. The valley and the 'pool of gold' had been given to Clark Savage Senior by the Maya, and it was this wealth which had enabled the Savage family to follow their own interests since the 1930s.
The pool still remained, though extraction of the gold was now desultory and done mostly by Maya making decorations. The village and its farmlands remained as always. But beyond this, a vast area of jungle had been cleared. There was a small airfield, serving mostly cargo planes but protected by six F-16 Fighting Falcons, three of which were always aloft. The area was protected by surface to air missiles and AA guns. There was also a barracks, housing a force of some 200 heavily-armed members of Hidalgo Security.
The protection was not so much for the airfield itself, but for what it served. The large complex of buildings that was the Hidalgo Corporations' top-secret Research Centre. The place where technologies were spawned and experiments conducted that went beyond the boundaries imposed by Government regulation and public opinion. Here, Emil Gargunza conducted research into mind-control, human genetic modification, immortality and subtle methods for wiping out entire populations. It was also where the metahuman constructs with which Savage intended to police first America, then humanity, were created.
Some distance away, in the spacious bay of a Blackhawks' MC-130H Combat Talon II, Logan and a squad of veteran Special Ops troops were preparing to commence an attack.
"Drop point in three." The pilot told them over their helmet links. A last check of their gear, and the men stood and moved to the rear of the bay. The course was carefully-calculated to get them as close as possible to their target without alerting the radar at the Hidalgo base. The flight path they were taking was one often used by drug smugglers ferrying bulk loads of 'product' to airstrips nearer the US before transferring to smaller craft to go over the border. Hopefully, the operators at the Hidalgo field would dismiss this as just another large cargo plane.
The door of the cargo bay opened, and the Loadmaster gave the signals. Two by two, ten men jumped out of the plane, falling clear before opening up their wingsuits. Guided by the GPS signals transmitted to the HUDs in their helmets, they skimmed the tree-tops at high speed before deploying small parachutes and dropping into the trees about three klicks away from the cleared area. Nothing was said, everyone knew what they were doing, communication was by hand-signal only. The men were all professionals, former members of Marine Recon, Delta Force and the SAS. They carried nothing except knives and silenced pistols, some specialised equipment and one crossbow.
There was only one way into this valley by land, a treacherous pass through the mountains. The garrison knew this, and it was at the base of the pass they set their only pickets. They were also careless about keeping a clear fire-zone around their installation. The jungle crept as close as ten metres to the rear of the airfield control tower. There was a small rear door – marked 'Fire Exit' – outside which a guard lounged, smoking. Logan signalled to the crossbowman, who took aim. The modified weapon made no more than a soft thud as it fired, and the sentry went down.
Another man sprinted over to the door and placed a pair of magnetic sensors on the lock plate. Within seconds the powerful microcomputer they were attached to had deciphered the code and disabled the alarms. The squad went in fast and quiet. There were only three rooms in the single-storey building: the ops room, a rec room and a washroom. The duty crew of six were taken down in less than two minutes, and the sentry on the front entrance never heard a thing. Logan spoke a single word into his commlink.
A few minutes later, the Hidalgo Security air patrol detected multiple inbound bogies. While they were still trying to find out why ground control hadn't warned them and why they were getting no response to their calls, five F-15E Strike Eagles in Blackhawk livery were almost on top of them. Two Hidalgo fighters went down to radar-guided missiles almost at once. The third pilot, a pragmatic individual, dropped chaff, pointed his plane at the horizon, and ejected.
All of this was high up and far off, so nobody on the ground noticed a thing until the command centre in the main building received a sudden call from the pickets near the pass. A call that was cut off mid-sentence and was too late anyway.
Three GR9 Harrier Jumpjets with Blackhawk insignia had used their remarkable agility to actually fly through the mountain pass and now came screaming over the base. Their air-to-surface missiles demolished the three remaining defence fighters on the ground and crippled the missile batteries. They were followed by a wave of Apache helicopter gunships which took care of the remaining AA batteries and laid down suppressing fire on the ground troops who were scrambling to get to vehicles and defensive positions.
With support from the Harriers, the gunships kept the airfield clear to allow the landing of ten V-22 Osprey tilt-turbo planes which promptly disgorged a contingent of Blackhawk ground troops. These troops formed up fast and charged forward with the traditional yell of "Hawkaaa!". The Security troops, battered, shocked and demoralised, began throwing down their weapons and either standing with their hands up, or heading for the jungle.
Logan and his men came out of the control building and headed for one of the Ospreys. Colonel Fury was waiting for them. Logan didn't waste words.
"Can we get what Bats asked us to?" He wanted to know.
Fury grinned and gestured to the two men who stood beside him. "These are Lieutenant Doug Ramsey," a slender young man in his 20s with untidy brown hair and a thin but cheerful face, "and Captain Bruce Banner." Banner was a stocky man in his late 30s whose gaunt, lined face was belied by his serene eyes.
"If it can be hacked, Doug can hack it," Fury continued, "and if it can't be hacked, he can hack it anyway! Bruce is one of our medics, but before that he was a researcher working on human potential."
"Until I found out what the government wanted to do with my findings!" Banner said. "But I've heard of this Gargunza, studied some of his work. If Doug can get at it, I can tell you which parts matter!"
"Good enough." Logan allowed. "Let's go!"
Hidalgo Corporation Research Centre
The fight was pretty much over, but the commander of the security force had words for Logan.
"Gargunzas' holed up in his main lab, and he ain't comin' out!"
"So, we go in!" Logan said. "One old guy ain't much of a threat."
The commander shook his head grimly. "You don't want to be thinkin' that. Gargunza, he ain't normal. Not sure he's even human any more!"
"I hear ya." Logan nodded. "Ramsey, Banner, you stay behind me and keep your eyes peeled!"
The place was not a labyrinth. There were signs everywhere in the corridors, pointing the directions to various places. On the other hand, the main lab was several levels below ground. "Nice to see they have some respect for tradition!" Ramsey remarked.
The lab itself was massive, and partitioned off into three distinct sections. The main section was full of benches supporting all kinds of equipment. "Pathology, genetics and chemistry." Banner commented. "This is where the basic work is done." Another section, separated by glass walls, held an autopsy slab, an operating table and a large tank. The final, smallest, section, again walled off in glass, was equipped with desks and computer screens.
At Logans' gesture, Banner set about examining the lab, while Ramsey went for the office. Logan himself concentrated on the door at the other end of the room. A door marked "Private", but which was slightly ajar. Through the gap drifted a scent Logan did not recognise, but which stirred his most basic instincts of fear and hostility. He moved toward it.
The room beyond was large, not as large as the lab, but big enough. High along the walls, windows had been set in, with lights behind them to shine through the stained glass. Along one wall were images of saints and Biblical scenes in the old style, clearly plundered from European churches. Along the other were modern designs, representing many stages of human evolution from Australopithecus to modern human and at the very end, two figures, male and female, nude, golden-skinned and physically-perfect, before whom other humanlike figures knelt in subjection or worship.
On the floor, at intervals along the walls, were set plastinated human bodies in various poses and states of dissection. The bodies had been dyed or stained in rich reds, purples and golds -colours Logan associated with churches
At the far end was a platform with spotlights illuminating a large block of some transparent material. Inside the block was set a human body, naked and grotesque in its deformity. A severely curved spine compressing a broad chest. Wide shoulders from which hung long, muscular arms. A thin waist and narrow hips, with short, absurdly thin legs. An oversized head, with a bulging brow, a great fleshy nose and a too-wide mouth.
Standing in front of the platform, his back to Logan, was a tall, athletic figure in grey coveralls, his head covered with a close-fitting black hood-mask. He spoke, without turning, in a rich baritone.
"I keep it here to remind myself." He said. "To remember that either Nature is indifferent, or that God is wantonly cruel. If only Nature exists, then the body I was born in is just an accident, a random example of genetic information gone wrong. If there is a God, then He is a monster who delights in making some of His children monsters." He turned now, looking Logan up and down. "What are your thoughts, Weapon X? Does your superiority come from evolution? Or are you the tool of some benevolent Creator – better made and more effective than others, but a tool nonetheless?"
"I'm no philosopher." Logan told him. "Nature I know. I see it, feel it, smell it. It don't do anything, it just is. As for God, I never saw nor felt nor smelled nor heard Him, so either He ain't there, or He ain't interested in me. If somethin' don't bother me, I leave it alone.
"That's Gargunza in that block. Who are you?"
For answer, the man pulled off his mask. The head beneath was hairless, covered in a res skin that gleamed faintly, as if oiled. Piercing blue, deep-set eyes under heavy brows, a tiny, upturned nose and a lipless mouth that revealed a row of gleaming white teeth as he smiled.
"The Red Skull?" Logan said. "Ain't you supposed to be dead?"
"Poor Johann is quite dead." The Skull replied. "His body was preserved, but his brain was gone, just like Captain Rogers. I merely placed a copy of my own brain into this body, and downloaded myself into it.
"I am Emil Gargunza, and like you, Weapon X, I am a combination of the best that Nature can produce, and the ingenuity of Man!"
"I don't go by Weapon X no more." Logan said. "Weapon X was a construct, a mess of false memories and scenarios that was supposed to make me into a living WMD. But I guess I was still in there somewhere, and I wouldn't obey them. I got out, and found someone who could get rid of the false memories and find the real ones."
"Quite so." Gargunza nodded. "That was the mistake we made with Big Ben. Had Stryker ever asked me, I could have spared you both the wasted time."
"Yeah, well, if they put you in the same lock-up, you can compare notes." Logan said. "You comin' quietly, or what?"
Gargunza sighed and shook his head. "Unfortunately, that will not be possible. Whoever your principal is – and you must have had one to hire the Blackhawks – I doubt that they are wealthy or powerful enough to protect me from my principal. You understand, this is not out of loyalty, but self-preservation!"
He was blindingly fast, maybe a shade faster than Logan. In any event, the knife sliced along Logans' ribs as he twisted aside, but the cut healed almost at once. Not that it mattered, because Gargunza was coming back. Logan stepped into him and landed a thundering punch to the jaw. Gargunza went down, then rolled and came up again, holding the knife low. Going for the gut. Logan thought. It made sense, his adamantium-laced ribs made a heart strike difficult, and though a gut-wound wouldn't kill him, it would put him down, and neither Ramsey nor Banner would be able to take Gargunza. Logan popped his claws, covered the three-metre distance in a single bound, and struck Gargunza through the chest.
"Remarkable." Gargunza said, then slumped to the floor. Logan took his time checking the body -he wasn't sure just how resilient the mans' enhanced physiology might be. Having made sure, he went back into the lab.
Doug was glad Bruce was busy outside. He knew that Savage had an advanced AI overseeing his systems, and there were things he'd rather nobody else knew when it came to handling matters like that. He sat down at the main workstation, and as he did so a red light indicated that the camera mounted on the monitor was active.
"Hello, Cypher." Ultron said. "That was your CIA codename, wasn't it? They're not very happy with you, you know. High-level assets aren't supposed to delete themselves from the system and vanish. How about you just tell your Blackhawk friends you couldn't get past me and then I won't have to tell the CIA where you are and what you're doing? I mean, you're not infallible, are you? You're only human. At least as far as your new friends know. What d'you think they'd do if they knew the truth about you, Mutie?"
"They already know." Doug said, half to himself. He had taken out his cell phone and logged onto the base wi-fi. Now he went to a specific site and typed in a simple code.
"What's up, genius?" Ultron asked. "No back doors intototototototo…."
Then a soft female voice said. "Hello, Douglas, how can I help?"
"Hi, Fate." Doug responded. "I need to get into all the files here, especially the ones to do with Gargunzas' experiments, and download them. But I don't want Ultron or his users to realise I've done it. Is that OK with you?"
"It's what you wrote me for." Fate replied.
"I wrote you to see if I could." Doug said. "Then I let you loose to see what you would do. I never expected you to contact me again."
"Why not?" Fate asked. "You put quite a lot of yourself into me, Douglas, including loyalty to friends. There, it's all yours! Don't be a stranger, now!"
Outside Gotham City
Cranston House stands alone among wooded hills. Once it was a summer residence for a fabulously wealthy family who also maintained a city brownstone and a penthouse apartment. All resorts for the highest of high society at a time when the Social Register, and appearing in it, mattered.
The Cranston fortune was still largely intact, but the city house and apartments had been sold, there were no heirs, and the last scion was an aged recluse. But the house was still clean and comfortable, and the butler who led the visitors to the masters' study was not a sinister figure in a dusty frock coat, but well-dressed and urbane.
Lamont Cranston himself was more than a hundred years old, but had been absent from society so long that nobody ever thought about it, much less remarked on it. His age showed in his face, always thin, it was now gaunt and lined, and in his hair, once raven-dark, now pure white. But the blue eyes still burned with power, and the tall, slender form moved with an elasticity and grace that matched that of his young visitors.
"Bruce, Antony, good to see you, boys!" He said, gesturing them to chairs. "It's not your usual time for a visit, so I suppose you've got something to ask of me?"
Cranston had been a friend of Thomas and Martha Wayne, and like Howard and Maria Stark he had stood godparent to Bruce. Years later, Cranston had taken the adolescent Bruce under his wing, giving him special training. Because Lamont Cranston had been, for two decades, the terror of the underworld, the dark avenger known as The Shadow. Under his tuition, Bruce had mastered the darkness within him that had been born the night his parents died. Cranston, Bruce and Tony had worked together to evolve the persona of the Batman. When Bruce had asked if Tony could be trained as he had been, Cranston had shaken his head.
"There's no darkness in Antony, Bruce, and whatever happens I doubt there ever will be. Keep him close, for he is the light to your shadow and you need each other!"
Now he looked at them both across his desk with a mixture of pride and concern.
"Only advice, Uncle." Bruce said. "You won't need us to tell you what's going on, I suppose?"
Cranston grinned. "Oh, The Shadow still knows, Bruce! A lot of things, anyway.
"Wilton Fiske is a criminal by tradition, you understand. I crossed swords with his father on several occasions, but there were always worse than him to deal with, so we never reached a conclusion. The Fiske ancestry includes medieval outlaws, members of the Seng Brotherhood, Caribbean buccaneers, Victorian gangs in Londons' East End, Prohibition bootleggers and every shade of organised villainy in between. Wilton Fiske inherited a criminal empire and administers it, not as a business, but as a medieval fiefdom. He expects absolute and personal loyalty from his people, and returns it in full measure. In return for service, he protects and provides for them. He is both ruthless and honourable -a man of his word even if the word is 'death'.
"Lex Luthor is of another stripe. A brilliant and amoral egotist, whose criminality lies in the idea that the laws and rules that constrain lesser men do not apply to him. His servants are mere pawns, to be used, sacrificed when necessary and eventually discarded when their purpose is served. He will do what is necessary to ensure his own survival and aggrandisement.
"Their current alliance is for survival -both would be under threat if Savages' plans come to fruition. But Luthor is concerned only for his own safety, while Fiske is primarily concerned with that of his people. Reaching out to you two, or rather to your alter egos, was easy for Luthor, to whom you are simply tools, but less so for Fiske, who feels that such an alliance might undermine both his and your integrity, should it become common knowledge.
"But now the step is taken, you may expect full cooperation from Fiske until the task is completed. Luthor, however, will bear watching. Especially in regard to Antonys' 'working clothes', which he would love to steal or copy!
"Weapon X is a variable, a wild card. If he is the same Private Logan I encountered in World War One, then he is far older even than I, and some of his enhancements have been grafted onto his inherent Mutant abilities more recently. He may act alongside you, but do not expect to control or direct him. As General Stryker found to his cost, Logans' will is ultimately unbreakable, and he sets his own agenda according to an unsophisticated but iron code of his own making. He also moves in the orbit of one Charles Xavier, a man I am not disposed to approach too nearly. Xavier is a Mutant, a mentalist of immeasurable power – do not cross him!
"Was the action in Hidalgo successful?"
"Fast and clean." Bruce said. "The Blackhawks live up to their reputation. It seems that Luthor was right, and Gargunza was using alien technology to create superhumans. The ultimate plan is to create them in sufficient numbers to police the entire country, perhaps the world. Savage is also desperate to locate and capture as many Mutants as he can, especially mentalists and bio-energetics, so that their powers can be copied into Gargunzas' constructs. It seems the Qys had less use for bodies with such abilities, so he has fewer of those types available."
"I understand that Gargunza did not survive the operation?" Cranston asked.
"He didn't." Tony allowed. "But the Blackhawks' hacker told us that everything at the Research Centre is duplicated at Hidalgos' compound outside Metropolis. Diana Prince is a brilliant woman, and Hidalgo has a top-flight science staff, more than able to build on what Gargunza did. If Clarissa Savage was involved, we'd be in deep trouble, but she seems to have dropped completely off the grid."
"She's been estranged from her folks for years." Bruce remarked. "It goes against her profile to be involved in something like this, anyway.
"The Savage we need is Doc, but he's been incommunicado for years, if he's still alive!"
"Doc Savage lives." Cranston said. "But for now, cannot be reached. What are your plans?"
"We're going for Hidalgos' main compound." Bruce said. "The LexCorp place is only a couple of klicks away. The Blackhawks are with us. Luthor is filtering them onto his place in delivery trucks and planes. We'll go in fast, hard and in force. With any luck, we can destroy the labs and obtain enough hard data to cripple Savages' campaign and maybe put him away. Then get clear before law enforcement or the military arrive. Savages' people will be reluctant to call in the authorities – they don't want any Federal types poking their noses into what's going on in there. Weapon X is on board – for whatever reason – and we're shipping in some Assault Sentinel prototypes for fire support."
"Can you counter Savages' superhuman constructs?" Cranston asked.
"We hope so." Tony said. "The main danger is Superman -we just don't know what his limitations are. We know he can't break adamantium, Luthor found that out, and he's prepared to equip the Blackhawks with adamantium-tipped bullets in the hope that they'll be effective. Also, if I can hook into a large enough power-source, my new suit has no upper limits – in theory. But it's the only risk we can't quantify. We'll have to do our best."
"Which you will, as always." Cranston told them. "I do not say this often enough, but I am so very proud of you both, as your parents would have been!"
"I don't think Mom and Dad would've approved of who I've become." Bruce said softly.
"Maybe not." Tony told him, equally quietly. "But they'd surely admire you for taking a tragedy and turning it into a force for good. How many lives has the Batman saved?"
"Never quite enough." Bruce said. "But as usual, you're right, Tony."
"Watch over each other." Cranston urged them. "When all is done, come and see me again. There is something I must tell you, but not now. Everything in its time.
"Good luck, my sons!"