Batman/Command & Conquer: Red Gotham
By Christopher W. Blaine
e-mail: darth_yoshi@yahoo.com
http://darthyoshi.topcities.com
DISCLAIMER: Batman and related characters and situations are ©2003 by DC Comics Inc./Yuri and related characters and situations are ©2003 by Westwood Games. All are used here without permission for fan-related entertainment purposes only. All original content is ©2003 by Christopher W. Blaine.
CHAPTER 8
Tanya entered Wayne Manor and could not help but be impressed by what she saw. Even though many of the more expensive pieces of art and other worthwhile items had been removed, there was still enough to keep her attention as she moved from room to room. When she finally got to the library, the sight of the computers and satellite hook-ups amid a place that should have been dedicated to the pursuit of simple reading almost sickened her.
Despite the "bad girl" exterior and a willingness to do the impossible, inside Tanya was something of a bookworm. She loved nothing better than curling up with a good novel, be it science fiction or romance. Letting her mind draw pictures for her as she read the words was the best way to pass the time between assignments.
Except maybe sharing the company of a good man.
"Commander, sir," she said with a salute and a smile. The men stationed in the room grinned at her not because she was arguably the prettiest thing they had seen in awhile, but because she was one of them through and through. All the tight-fitting t-shirts in the world could not replace the respect she garnered for her actions on the field of battle.
The Commander was obviously happy to see her but a cool demeanor quickly replaced the momentary glint of joy in his eyes. "Agent Tanya, allow me to present the Batman himself, Bruce Wayne." He stepped away to reveal the other man, whose face was returning to normal color after having been as red as a tomato.
Tanya gave him a quick once-over and decided that had she not been involved with her commanding officer, this would be a man worthy of her attentions. Bruce Wayne radiated a natural charisma and Tanya knew enough of the Batman from her conversations with the Huntress and Deathstroke to know that he was capable of doing much more than just looking good.
He offered his hand and she took it, mildly surprised that his eyes did not fall to her chest. This was a man of discipline and therefore a man of danger. Ninety-nine percent of men in the world when presented with a pair of breasts always looked. The Commander had been the first man to pass her test. Bruce Wayne was the second.
"I was just having another argument of philosophy with Mr. Wayne. Our outer defenses were probed two days ago by the Soviets and we barely held at the secondary line. In the end we had to send out every machinegun IFV we had to mow down nearly fifty Soviet troops." The Commander turned to accept a report from an aide and took a second to sign it before continuing. "Then an Apocalypse tank showed up and started chewing through everything. Damn thing took down nearly every main battle tank I had on the line."
"And hundreds of men on both sides died as a result," Bruce added. "Instead, if you used non-lethal means, you could have merely taken all of those young men prisoner."
"A noble sentiment, but to what end, Mr. Wayne?" Tanya asked. "Yuri has developed cloning chambers that rapidly create perfect copies of individual soldiers. Word has it he got the technology from S.T.A.R. Labs here in the United States."
"So because it's inconvenient we don't do it? Not in my city…"
"It's not your city!" the Commander reiterated, more loudly than he had wanted to. Several of the people in the library stopped what they were doing for a moment and looked at each other. When they thought they were being scrutinized by their commanding officer, they quickly returned to work.
The Commander indicated that Tanya and Bruce should follow him and they immediately moved to the back of the house, through the kitchen and out onto a patio that was serving as a makeshift weapons repair and storage area. Somebody called "Ten-hut" as the Commander stepped out and he immediately put them at ease.
The trio was silent as they walked across the grounds of Wayne Manor towards an area that had once served as a horse training area. Bruce's mother had ridden here. Bruce had not and seeing the Yuri clone in the electrified cage that was now there angered him. In fact, just about everything about this new situation was making him angry.
They stopped a good distance from the cage. An intelligence officer was interrogating the clone, captured when he was rendered unconscious in the battle. Four soldiers stood with their weapons at the ready. Any time the clone tried to take over a mind of one of the Allied troops and he would be shot dead.
"We don't kill them all, Mr. Wayne," the Commander announced.
"Killing doesn't solve anything. Have you tried anything…I mean anything else to try and change the way this war is going?"
Tanya snorted. "You can tell you're a civilian, you know that?"
Bruce shook his head, said good-bye and then left to go speak with his own people. The Commander watched him leave. "You look tired," Tanya remarked.
"I am tired. The one battle I end up with unacceptable losses and I've got super-pacifist watching me. All the battle the other day did was strengthen the Batman's resolve that what we're doing is wrong." He sighed and turned back to her. "You were successful?"
She nodded and gave him a wicked smile. "I covered the whole city and its like you thought, only it isn't Vladimir or that other general that's running the show, it's Yuri himself. Caught sight of him delivering a speech to the assembled masses of converted citizens."
"Interesting. I wonder why he's here."
"I asked the Huntress about it, who, by the way, agreed to act as our own little internal black ops operator if we wanted, and she said she thinks he's here to get the Batman." She stretched and yawned, their secret signal to indicate she was feeling romantic. "Believe it or not, the things that he's been doing against the Soviets has kept a portion of the populace motivated. If he ever does get the upper hand in Gotham, it could serve as a rallying point for the rest of the country."
"I know…but he's so damn rigid."
"Reminds me of you," she said before stretching one more time. When he made no comment, she shrugged and realized that the moment was gone. "Do you want the rest of my report?"
"Yes, I'm interested in this Huntress and her band…"
His voice trailed off as something caught his eye, a brief flash of movement from the tree line. Surely it wasn't another attack, but he couldn't be sure. He had read intelligence reports about the Soviet answer to the Tanya Program; it produced super-soldiers called "Boris". Tanya seemed to sense where he was looking and she pulled both of her .45 caliber pistols out and started heading towards the foliage.
Something whistled through the air and the Yuri clone was down, a green shaft sticking out of the back of his skull. The interrogator backed up and then dived for the ground as G.I.'s took cover behind sandbags. Another arrow was launched and the Commander would have taken a shot to the chest if Petty Officer Smith had not been there.
Like he appeared out of thin air, the SEAL grabbed his commander and threw him roughly to the ground, taking the missile to his own shoulder. Racing past Smith as he fell to one knee, Robin paced Tanya as they both went to investigate the latest attack. She didn't know that the man in the orange and green costume had a pretty good idea who was firing at them.
The Atom had infiltrated the Soviet camp and had seen both Green Arrow and Black canary there, obviously under Yuri's control. Robin looked over at the woman in the halter-top and fatigues. "Be on the look out for a blond with sonic powers," he warned her. Black Canary was a mutant who could emit a "canary cry" that could shatter eardrums if used correctly.
Tanya nodded and immediately broke right just as an arrow struck the ground where she had been. Robin knew that a healthy Green Arrow in possession of al of his faculties would not have missed. He broke left and just missed being shot, but a trooper behind him went down with an arrow to the leg.
The tree line wasn't so far away and both Tanya and Robin broke through the initial shrubbery and into the woods proper in seconds. The area was supposed to be guarded by security cameras, but Green Arrow would have known where they were. The Commander had relied on the cameras to serve as an early warning system while he waited for fresh troops to be parachuted in. Obviously, Yuri had counted on that.
Robin and Tanya were about fifty yards apart and neither could see anything. Tanya tracked the entire landscape with her pistols, waiting to shoot anyone who popped up smelling like vodka and caviar. Nothing happened.
A squad of Rocket Troopers came hovering in on their jet packs and began a perimeter search, but after twenty minutes, they didn't find anything. Ten minutes after that Tanya reported to the infirmary on the second floor of Wayne Manor. There the Commander was overseeing the treatment of his bodyguard and angle of mercy, Petty Officer Smith.
Bruce Wayne was nowhere to be seen but there was a remarkably fit Asian woman helping treat some wounded soldiers in the far corner of one of the rooms. Tanya tried to see her face but her long dark hair hid it. The elite soldier found herself slightly jealous of the fighting shape the other woman was obviously in. Tanya was a trained killer; the other woman was a deadly weapon.
Robin came up the stairs, his face showing his frustration at letting Green Arrow get away and he immediately went to the Asian woman. Tanya guessed she was Batgirl, the one the Huntress had told her about.
Her mission to contact the Huntress and establish a link in Gotham that was friendlier to the Allied point of view was successful, but it wouldn't amount to a hill of beans if they couldn't get it together here in the Wayne Estate. It would only be a matter of time before Yuri's Kirov airships started floating overhead, carpet-bombing the entire area. The only thing that was stopping them, Tanya guessed, was a lack of lighter-than-air gasses.
An Allied destroyer off the coast had sunk a transport that was supposed to bring that in by sea a few days before. "We're getting our butts kicked," the Commander whispered to her.
"We need to create some sort of diversion to get Yuri to concentrate on something else, something that he thinks is more important," she replied.
The Commander agreed and Smith, who was wincing as the medical corpsman worked on him, grumbled. "Can't the two of you get a room, sir?"
"We'll take yours, squidly," Tanya joked. She admired the navy SEALs, especially Smith who protected her Commander when she couldn't. "Maybe we should ask the Lieutenant what the higher ups think is worth going after."
The Commander agreed. "I'll do that while you and Smith discuss what you saw on your little excursion into Gotham City."
"Mr. Wayne, sir," Patrolman Kelly said with a raised hand, "are we going to just sit back and do nothing while these guys tear down everything we've worked for?"
Bruce, clad in his Batman costume, sans the cape and cowl, considered the question for a moment. He was under pressure from all sides to simply throw away his oath against killing and join the war effort full force. There was no doubt he could do a lot to help the Allies kill Soviets, but that was not what he wanted to do. Once you traveled down the killing road, you never wanted to come back.
"You have all worked with me for several years now, and I thank you, but the time has come for you to make a decision." He grabbed a bar stool from a workbench and sat down in it to address the men and women in blue fatigues. "Jim Gordon entrusted you to me because he knew that I would work not to just liberate Gotham City, but I would work to preserve the system of justice that made us different than the invaders. I have tried my best and despite that, many of our friends, loved ones and allies have died because we refused to kill."
He paused and took a deep breath. He saw Ray Palmer put down something he was working on and wander over, as did a couple of the Allied troops that were milling about the Batcave. "I will not kill, not even to defend myself. I hold life to be so precious that I'm willing to risk everything to preserve it. It isn't fair, in a time of war, for me to try and force you to bend to my philosophy. Maybe I am wrong, but this country and my mission are about freedom and that includes the freedom to not end the lives of young men and women who are fighting because they have no choice. These Soviet troops are children being led to slaughter by power-mad dictators. I don't believe they want to fight us, but they have no choice."
Now Robin and Batgirl joined the group, having come down arm in arm from the manor above. He waited until they drew closer. "The Commander has graciously offered to allow all of you to enlist as part of a Gotham militia. The current thinking is that the Soviet leader in charge here is after me and will stop at nothing until he gets me. By following me, I could be leading you to your deaths. I could also stop you from doing what your conscience dictates. Regardless, serving and working with each and every one of you during this time of crisis has been an honor and I hope all of you will stay with me. Know this, and I will not accept any more arguments, if you remain as part of my family, then you will not kill."
A half hour later, more than three-quarters of the former GCPD officers were still with the Batman. Most of the ones that left were former military or SWAT team members and Bruce had to admit he expected that to happen. He was surprised to see that both Batgirl and Robin had stayed, as had Ray.
"I thought you wanted to get more aggressive," he said to Batgirl as he started working on repairing a frayed line.
"I do," Batgirl replied. She gave Robin a kiss on the cheek and then strutted off to begin her third exercise period of the day.
Robin pulled a bench up next to Batman and started putting on his favorite smile. "She doesn't want you dead. Despite how much you piss her off, she respects you for standing by your position."
"It's good to know I still have some friends," Bruce said dryly.
"You hear about Ollie attacking us?" Robin asked. Oliver Queen, the Green Arrow, was one of Bruce Wayne's oldest friends. It was an odd pairing, the hippy-liberal and the control-freak conservative. Yet, they had always held the other in the highest regard.
"Yes. Oracle is on to something that might make all of this moot." He didn't go into any more detail than that and Robin respected it. He was used to being kept in the dark about such things, it was the nature of the beast when working with the Batman. "We need to deal with Green Arrow and Black Canary before we can act on Oracle's information. And," he added, "we need to do it quickly. Katana is coming home to get us and she's bringing an early Christmas present."