Trailblazer – Dream of Eden
It had been years since they'd all be gathered in the same place at the same time.
Laughter was retired, though Lafter did stay in touch and up-to-date on what was going on. Dragon and Colin were leading members of the Guild. Lily and the Travelers were always around, but usually off doing something like Trevor and Charlotte were. Lisa had her own deal going on and it had been half a decade since Dinah had last seen her. She looked tired.
Never mind Lafter had three daughters. Charlotte and Trevor had a son now. Even Alice went and had a kid. Richter's other programs actually grew up and started making their own decisions. Everyone was busy and they all had their own lives going on.
Dinah often found herself missing the early years when they all saw one another almost daily. She knew the memories were blurred somewhat. She mixed the years where Taylor was around with the aftermath of her departure when everyone was scrambling to make up for her absence.
And there was the guilt too, because Taylor had been right.
It was only after she'd gone that Forecast could come into her own.
Growing up sucked sometimes.
"We're all here," Hilling declared.
"What's the rundown?" Lily asked.
Dinah looked up at the monitors as they switched to showing the faces of multiple capes. A bull of a woman with a fitting bull-themed mask. A shrouded cape in a cloak. A suspicious young man in a crowd. And of course—at the center—a young girl maybe Dinah's age in a silver mask.
"In the past nineteen hours," Veda began, "Dragon, Bring, and I have identified a dozen separate attacks perpetrated by this group of capes."
"A dozen?" Lily asked. "I heard about the thing in Sanc. What else?"
"Connections only became obvious once we started looking," Dragon explained. "Many of the incidents were small. A disruption of a protest in Miami. An attack on a Protector's outpost in Nigeria. A sudden turn in the sectarian conflict in the former Sudan."
"The most immediately concerning are the attack on the AEU parliamentary meeting," Veda continued, "and the theft of tinker-tech from a former PRT storehouse."
The images on the monitors shifted as Veda spoke, and Dinah tapped her finger against the desk as they went by.
It didn't quite add up in the end.
"Numerous capes, gangs, and criminals have been involved," Hilling interjected. "Many have loose connections to West Africa as immigrants or beneficiaries of black market connections."
"West Africa's become a hotbed," Lisa added. "Half my job these days is putting out fires there, but I have no idea who some of these capes are. I've never seen them before or had any reason to know who they are."
"That does narrow it down," Dinah declared. She kept her face straight and tapped a key. The monitors shifted, highlighting an area of northern Nigeria. "There aren't many places this many capes can run around unnoticed. It has to be somewhere Number Man isn't and that hasn't drawn much international attention."
Dinah squinted at the geography of the region.
"This area is mostly populated by a large number of small tribes and ethnic groups."
"It's also a leading contender for a place to build an orbital elevator," Veda revealed.
"Relena's been working in the region for years," Lisa mumbled. "I've been keeping an eye on it. I have no idea who these four are."
She pointed when Veda went back. The bull mask cape, the cloaked cape, the man in the crowd, and Silver Mask.
"These guys are new," Lisa affirmed. "And I can't tell what they want." She indicated the cape in the crowd. "And this one we captured. It's really hard getting anything out of him."
"Even for you?" Colin asked in surprise.
The cape looked like a normal guy. He'd been hiding in the crowd. A lookout of some kind. Maybe a coordinator who helped with the escape plan.
And they'd had an escape plan.
Silver Mask definitely counted on being caught.
"Yeah," Lisa answered. "He's got extra-sensory perception or something. Supersight. Super hearing. Super smell. Guy is basically me but with the senses instead of clues. And he can use it. I try asking him questions and he already knows what I'm trying to get out of him and throws out interference in his face and tone."
"It's not that hard seeing their goal." Dinah looked at her. "I can."
Lisa frowned. "Going to make me play twenty questions?"
"No." Dinah nodded to Veda and Veda altered the monitors back. "Look at it. The protest they disrupted was in Miami and centered on issues of development around the spaceport the government just finished. The AEU meeting was about orbital development. Nigeria is the most likely location for a third pillar, and if not there then Sudan."
Lisa's face scrunched up, which Dinah had expected. Lisa probably hadn't seen the pattern because she didn't know a key detail.
"Keep going," the other thinker sighed. "I'm listening."
"Relena's plan is going to work," Dinah declared. "I've checked. Repeatedly. She's targeting ethnic leaders in Nigeria, trying to convince them to work together before they become targets of opportunism. If they don't stand as a united front now the AEU will pick one to prop up and crush the others when they object."
"Colonialism," Lafter quipped. "Yey."
"More or less." Dinah turned her attention back to Lisa. "All of these disruptions have been targeting the new world order, and I don't mean any Illuminati crap dreamed up by a loser with low self-esteem. I mean the way the world is changing because we changed it."
Lisa nodded along. "I get why you'd think that, but I don't see how all of this comes…" She glanced away and Dinah nodded.
Lisa wasn't dumb and even if she was she had her power. Once you started looking the pattern wasn't hard to see.
"Silver Mask said she wanted to send a message." Lisa sighed. "Shit. How did I miss this?"
"You really have no idea who these capes are?" Colin asked.
"There's a bunch of smaller groups and elements I don't personally know much of anything about," Lisa admitted. "This isn't a city cape scene. It's a sectarian warzone that stretches from the Atlantic to the Red Sea. The whole place is chaos."
"Sue us," Stella added cheerily. "We just foiled one tinker's plan to build a dirty bomb. We've been busy."
Lisa nodded. "We didn't even know about the Parliament attack until Dinah got us looking at Frost."
"Yes." Veda changed the image again to a picture of the man. Dinah had to admit, he did have an Azrael vibe. "Olba Frost is the source of the mobile suits used in two attacks; the AEU parliament and the distraction that helped enable the theft of the F-Driver."
Lisa grimaced. "You think that these guys want to blow up the moon."
"I think they want us to know they want to blow up the moon," Dinah affirmed.
She'd had years to hone her power and how she used it. With David in a cell for his crimes and Taylor absent, the Endbringers dead, and the tug of war between heroes and villains increasingly becoming a thinker's game… Well, Dinah had practice.
Lots of practice.
And she'd learned that the best check on any thinker going down a rabbit hole was to ask someone else.
Dinah looked right at Charlotte, and waited.
The girl—girl, she was twenty-six—woman stood tucked into her husband's side while looking at her phone.
"Who are they talking to?" she asked.
Trevor tilted his head. "The idioms right?"
Charlotte nodded. "Not to presume, but I doubt the intended audience is in Africa. It's too cryptic to be anyone in the West. This is like viral marketing, and it is working like it, but I'm not sure who the specific message is for."
"If they blow up the moon, it'll be obvious," Dinah guessed. "Which explains why when I ask about the moon I get nothing but blanks. Even asking a few steps removed, which usually gives me something."
A chill swept through the room, which she'd expected. Dinah hadn't gotten a slate of blanks in years.
"They're going after the moon?" Lafter asked.
"We think so," Veda affirmed.
"Fuck'um then."
"How many mobile suits do they have?" Lily asked.
"At least thirty to start with," Lisa answered. "We were tracking the shipment but lost it. This group definitely has a thinker. A strong one too. Precog of some kind. Silver Mask herself is my bet."
"That tracks with how they seemed aware of Weaver's presence in Portland," Veda said. "And the confidence displayed in the excessive way they're operating."
"They want us to know they're doing this." Charlotte nodded. "They're teasing us to come after them."
"It is an interesting strategy." Hilling pinched her chin and glanced to Tieria at her side. "Perhaps they want to coax Celestial Being into coming after them? Enhancing the profile of what they're doing? The way the theft of the F-Driver was carried out was very brazen."
Tieria nodded. "They hardly needed the distraction, yet they prepared one anyway and one that revealed elements of their own abilities. They want us to respond in a particular way."
"They could be overconfident," Colin proposed from the back of the room beside Dragon. "Thinkers often are."
"True enough," Lisa agreed. "But they can't be utterly moronic. If they stole the F-Driver they have a plan to use it, either as a distraction itself, bait, or to actually shoot the thing. We don't have anywhere near enough information to know for sure… I'm going to have a migraine before this is over trying to figure it out."
"No rush."
Dinah tapped another key.
"I already used my power." Her headache attested to it, though she'd gotten better at enduring them with time. "I've narrowed potential targets down and I think I know exactly what they want to do. As a first step at least. I did mention that I asked about the moon and got blanks."
"You always get blanks asking about the moon," Marissa pointed out.
"I do. But I got blanks asking about the colony too."
That got everyone's attention, as Dinah expected. She turned to the keyboard and typed a few commands. The monitors switched again, displaying an exterior view of the US Government's brand-new spaceport in Miami.
"They're going to try and take a shot at the moon," Dinah declared. "And I think they're going to try and get into space to do it."
She felt the tension in the room shift instantly.
"How long?" Trevor asked.
"Sometime tomorrow morning," Dinah said. "Though if they have a precog it might be earlier. I don't get blanks from other precognitives but we can fizzle each other's predictions. It's safe to assume their precog knows I'm looking. That's part of why I think any attack on Miami will likely be fake."
"Guam?" Lisa asked.
Dragon's head turned. "How do you—"
Lisa looked at her and waved.
"Right. Nevermind."
"What's at Guam?" Luke asked.
"The United States Air Force's secret spaceport," Veda answered, earning a look from Dragon.
Technically they weren't supposed to talk about that. National secrets and all.
"We have a spaceport on Guam?" Jess inquired.
"We do now," Dinah answered. "The islands were abandoned in the wake of the Kyushu attack but it's still US territory. With China still a mess, the government took the chance to build up a naval base there but there's also a series of rail lines for linear acceleration. Officially it's for satellite launches. Unofficially, it's an experiment in the weaponization of space."
"Space war," Lafter quipped. "Yey."
"That's their real target," Dinah said with certainty. "Or it's a false flag. We're going into 'I know that they know that we know that they know' territory here. Probably best to assume nothing is off the table."
She'd checked with her power, consulted other thinkers, and thought it through logically with Veda and on her own.
Surety was the lie of the desperate and the arrogant. There was no certainty in the real world.
"Guam makes more sense as a target. It's isolated from the public. The government wouldn't let Londo Bell on it even if it were under attack."
"The Guild would be asked," Dragon said, "but we would struggle to get there in time without help from movers outside our group."
"And it's the kind of place where a thinker could stroll right in with the right support." There was a feeling too. A feeling she hadn't had in a long time. "They could move the F-Driver here and launch it into space to take a shot at the moon. Even if they fail, it'll start something."
"What?" Lily asked.
"No idea," Dinah admitted. "It's hard to know from the vague idioms and attacks to know what the end game is to them. I don't think it matters though."
She turned, looking up at Veda.
"We can't take the risk."
"No." Veda set her lips into a line. "We can't."
"The Shards may interpret even a failed attack as aggression," Colin warned. "They've been isolationist since making themselves known."
Even trying to get Marida to talk to Future, and to reach Taylor, hadn't worked.
That part still puzzled Dinah. Taylor hadn't—couldn't have—planned for it to go like this. The Shards weren't talking. They'd revealed themselves, started altering the mechanics of trigger events, and yet they weren't doing much. When Marida tried to talk to a Shard, she got a weird look and just shut up, refusing to answer questions.
Dinah didn't like how she'd refused to answer any and all questions.
She didn't know what it meant or how to feel about it. If she should worry or not.
The Shards were silent, and they refused to say why.
"At least we're here now," Dragon said. She turned to Colin. "We can get a team ready nearby."
Colin nodded. "Quicker response if the attack does happen, though it could be a reverse feint."
"Maybe," Veda agreed with a quick glance at Dinah. "But it's the path of least resistance. We'll have Londo Bell on standby in Miami and assist Preventer in tracking down these capes' base and origins in Africa but in less than a day we think the attack on Guam will happen."
Dragon nodded, then offered a wave to Tieria and Hilling.
The two waved back.
It had seemed weird to Dinah at the time, but she sort of got it. It was like children growing up and being eager to get out of the house. When Tieria 'woke up' he followed Lily. When Hilling did she followed Veda. When Regetta did she declared her neutrality and continued managing the Birdcage in full.
They were all trying to figure out their own places in the world and where they belonged.
Dinah turned back to the monitors, looking at the images absently while thinking.
It was, ironically, a thinker's greatest weapon. Just thinking. No powers. No tinker-tech. No nonsense.
Just sitting and thinking about the world, and what she wasn't seeing.
It had all grown so much, and she'd grown up with it. A few more years, she'd have lived longer in the world Taylor created than the one that preceded it. That was so strange for her to think about. That in a single span of not even two years, the entire world had changed. She'd watched it change, because one person threw her foot down and dared it to.
And it had changed so much… And it hadn't changed so much at all.
As soon as Dragon left, Dinah glanced back, looking at Trevor.
He noticed her gaze and paled slightly. Charlotte was still at his side but she was talking with Lafter with a smile. No doubt discussing the kids as a distraction from the situation.
And it wasn't a situation.
Dinah nodded before looking away and didn't wait to see his reply.
"So we're on standby until morning?" Lily asked.
Lisa checked the time. "Maybe you are. I'm not sure we want to put our eggs in any basket right now. I have descriptions. That might help narrow down who we're dealing with."
That was an important question, and one Dinah hadn't managed to get any good answer on. She was out of questions for the day. Damn limits.
"We've done what we can for now," Veda said. She looked over the room. "Danny and Orga send their regards by the way. There isn't much they can do, but they're watching."
Dinah nodded. "Lily. Luke. Jess. Mars. Get some rest. Veda can wake us up if anything happens early."
They all nodded and started to file out. Trevor joined Lafter and Charlotte in talking about kids, which was fine. Dinah knew his reservations.
"You don't think this is so simple, do you?"
Dinah turned her chair toward Lisa. "Probably not, but you know how it is. We have to tease out the answers as much as our powers give them to us."
"True enough," Lisa agreed. "I'll—"
"You should get some rest," Veda said without looking. "You look tired."
Lisa started to speak when Stella interrupted her by tapping the face of the watch on her wrist.
Lisa grimaced. "Fine. I'll take a nap."
"We have at least ten hours." Veda folded her hands behind her back. "I'll send out warnings if that changes."
"Right." The blonde's eyes shifted to Dinah. "She knew my name."
"I saw," Dinah acknowledged. "There's almost no one out there who knows your name and none of us would have told her."
"The way she dropped it." The woman shook her head.
Dinah still struggled with that word. Woman. She didn't feel like a woman. A lot of the time she still felt like a kid.
"What?" Dinah asked.
"Just uncomfortably familiar."
"You should get some rest," Veda reiterated, more forcefully than before. "Both of you."
Lisa nodded and turned. As she did, she abruptly stepped to the side as a pie dropped from the rafters above and splattered the floor.
Lafter, Charlotte, and Trevor turned, blinking as Lisa pointed her finger up and 'pewed.'
There was a crash and a clattering, followed by the sound of little feet scuttling over the beams.
"Seriously?" Lafter asked. "You're still—"
"I'm not dead yet," Lisa replied, "and the little bastards have yet to offer me terms of surrender."
"Did you booby-trap the ceiling?" Trevor asked.
"You're not basketball-sized and under twenty pounds, you'll be fine."
"Dinah," Veda whispered as the others slowly left the room.
"I know." She did feel tired and she'd been up for nineteen hours now. Tieria left with Lily and Hilling with Lafter. By that point, it was just Veda and Dinah.
It had been Veda and Dinah a lot for the past few years.
She typed a few keys and pointed at the resulting images.
Almost four dozen people arrested so far, and it was odd.
"These guys have no connections to each other, but most have some kind of indirect connection to Africa. Arms or origins or relations. Something." Dinah typed again, bringing up a map she'd made. "But in Africa it doesn't make sense. This line goes to the Congo. This one to Egypt. Morocco. Rival factions in Ghana. Africa is a hotbed of sectarian conflicts right now and someone is getting all these people to work together."
"Dinah."
"There's something else going on here. Charlotte was right. Who this group is talking to isn't clear. They're garnering all this attention but they're being so cryptic and unclear that it's all coordinated and at the same time they seem to want us to st—"
Veda sighed. "I—"
"I know," Dinah insisted. "I'm going. Just look into this. There's something else going on here. The kind of thing that usually hits us where we're not looking and then we scramble. You know. One of those days."
Veda blinked. "You're going to rest?"
"Yes." Dinah sighed. "I have learned my limits. There's a whole ten hours before anything should go down. Probably longer because I don't know how long it would take them to move the F-Driver, assuming that's not a ploy. Which it could be."
"I'm sorry."
"Sorry for—" Dinah stopped. "No. No, Veda—"
"Well if you don't want me to come visit you then you should visit me!"
A weight dropped into Dinah's lap and she frowned as Riley kicked her feet in the air. Dinah tried to push, but Riley leaned back and pressed her into her seat.
"Now," Riley drawled. "We can sit here until your legs suffer paresthesia from my sitting on you, or we can get up and put you in bed where you should be because you've been awake for nineteen hours."
Dinah groaned, giving up on pushing Riley off because Riley had actually grown up and gotten tall while Dinah had stayed on the petite side of things. Plus, Riley just chemically gave herself super muscles so there was that. Damn cheater.
"So, what's it going to be?" Riley asked.
"Riley!"
"That doesn't sound like surrender," she sang.
This was what she got. This is what she got for being friends with Bonesaw. "I was going to sleep on my own!"
"Good, 'cause I was just gonna spritz you with something to make you sleep if you refused." She jumped up, and Dinah gave her a level stare as she turned. "Oh please. You've been awake for nineteen hours! Do you know what that's doing to your health? Cause I do! I went to MIT!"
"I know."
"Yeah, you went to MIT too. At the same time, I did even! Amazing how only one of us really spent any time enjoying the college experience."
Dinah recalled, "Half the school was terrified of you from the moment your admittance was announced."
"Yeah, but the other half loved me and no one died. Literally. No one died the entire time I was there. Not even the kid who got his head smashed in when we went to the Rose Bowl—Go beavers!" She pumped her fist in the air. "They're welcome! And you're welcome because I'm going to save you from heart failure whether you like it or not."
Dinah groaned and pulled herself up.
She honestly didn't feel like sleeping but breaks were important. Maybe she'd watch Rush Hour Five.
Looking back as Riley went off talking about some earthquake she'd been helping with, Dinah watched Veda stand by the monitors alone.
She always looked a little alone ever since Taylor went away.
"I'm here," Dinah reminded.
"I know."
Dinah nodded and walked to catch up to Riley.
If she was right, then this whole thing was going to go wrong. Somehow. Somewhen. Somewhere. Something would happen. She'd need to be there when that possibility occurred.
No one was smart enough or capable enough to stop every bad thing in the world from happening.
Not even people with alien superpowers that predicted the future.
You face possibility head-on and deal with it as it comes.