War Games

Part Four: Legend

I took stock of the young man I was carrying. He didn't seem to be wounded, but he was shaking just a bit. "Are you all right?" I asked.

"I – yeah, I'm fine," he assured me. "That was … that was really, really close." Pausing, he took a closer look at me. "Uh, you're one of the, uh, superheroes, right?"

I smiled. "That's right. You can call me Legend. What gave me away? The flying, or the lasers?"

"Pleased to meet you. My name's Reynaud." He paused. "Actually, it was neither one. Grav harnesses and pulse weapons are pretty common where I come from. It's the skin-tight costume and the mask that sort of gives it away. That and you're not wearing an aug."

"I don't know what an aug is," I confessed. "Though I can guess what you mean by grav harness. And a pulse weapon sounds like something a Tinker would dream up."

"Tinkers – oh yeah, Sean pulled down stuff from your Grid – I mean, the internet," he told me. "Tinkers are kind of your super-powered inventors, right? The guys who build the really weird one-off stuff?"

"Weird one-off stuff is about right," I sighed. "Actually, talking about one-off stuff, I don't mean to be rude, but are you … uh, normal where you come from?"

"Uh, one second," he stated apologetically. "Captain, is it okay if I talk to him?" I presumed that he wasn't addressing me, but whoever was in charge of the ship, via some sort of communicator. While I awaited the answer, I considered his appearance.

I had already noted the scaly skin and the thick-lipped slits on either side of his torso, which I had tentatively assumed to be gills. There was also a fin-like crest that was now lying flat on his hairless head, as well as the fins doing likewise along his arms and legs. I suspected the presence of a similar crest down his back, but the low-profile backpack-like device that he was wearing would be covering it.

His face wasn't ugly, just … odd. Almost no nose, ears flat to his head, thin lips on a wide mouth, large round bulging eyes with silvery membranes that wiped across them regularly from side to side. Also, no fingernails that I could see, nor any toenails, though there was prominent webbing between his fingers and also between his unusually long toes. His voice, though perfectly understandable, had a breathy tone to it.

If I hadn't known better, I would have figured him for a Case Fifty-Three; of course, I did know better. He was connected in some way to the strange craft that was paralleling our course, almost certainly a spaceship, now sadly battered from its encounter with Leviathan. Who these people were, where they came from, how they spoke English so readily yet looked so odd, were questions that were going to have to be answered at one point or another.

Of course, the fact that the crew of the ship had assisted in driving off Leviathan, keeping the numbers of injured and dead to a record low, meant that we were going to be treating them as friendly, as far as I was concerned. And given that I was the leader of the Protectorate capes, here and across the country, my word would stand for quite a bit.

A moment later, he looked back at me. "Okay, it's all fine. She says, and I quote, I don't know enough to cause problems."

"I'm glad to hear it," I replied, amused.

He nodded. "Yeah, me too. You were asking if I was normal? Well, I guess I'm more normal than some. It's not like I'm a hooper or a true human or something. Those guys don't leave their home planets much. People tend to stare."

I frowned. "True human?" I wondered if we had divergent vocabularies. Then I wondered how much of our vocabularies were divergent.

"Native to a planet called Cull," he explained cheerfully. "The original colonists had themselves adapted to suit the local conditions and now their descendants consider themselves 'true humans' and everyone else to be weird and strange." He rolled his eyes; given their size, he could do that very effectively. "Mouth tentacles. I ask you."

"Mouth tentacles?" I tried to visualise that.

"Mouth tentacles," he confirmed. "Like I said, they don't get out much. Me, I'm a seadapt, but I was born baseline human, right here on Earth."

I stared at him. "Wait, back up a moment," I demanded. "You were born on Earth?"

"Uh, yeah," he confirmed, looking at me doubtfully. "Didn't they tell you?"

"Didn't they tell me what?"Is he a Case 53 after all? But what's this talk about races from other planets?

"Uh, we're from the future," he replied, as if that explained everything. "About five or six hundred years, Sean says."

"The future." I looked over again at the spacecraft. "Did you come back to help us? To warn us about something? Should you even be here? I mean, you have to be changing your past by intervening to this extent -"

He shook his head. "No, uh, this isn't our past. We never had superheroes."

"Oh." I blinked. "Are you sure?"

"Sure I'm sure." He nodded earnestly. "I think that's something we'd remember. Plus, I've dived around Kyushu. It's still there, where I come from. So's Newfoundland. And Honolulu."

I decided to accept what he was saying, for the moment. "So what you're saying is that you're from the future of an alternate Earth. One where all this never happened." It made, I supposed, for a certain kind of sense.

"Yeah. That's what the Captain told me anyway and it sounds about right."

"You mentioned the Captain before."

"Yeah. Her name's Geneva Hastings and she's awesome." The amount of hero-worship in his voice was obvious even to me. "She rescued me from space pirates."

"You have got to be kidding." I looked at his face; I still wasn't quite used to his features, so his expression was a little hard to read, but as far as I could tell, he wasn't kidding. "Space pirates? Really?"

He shrugged. "Well, we were in space and Captain Kramer did talk about doing piracy every now and again, so yeah, I guess?"

I sighed. "I guess some tropes just never go away." Ahead, Alexandria was coming in for a landing next to the PRT building. Damage in the area was minimal, which was a blessing; the area was being cleared even now for the ship to land. I watched carefully, but there wasn't any jetwash as the vessel eased itself down for a landing, just an odd distortion in the air beneath it. As we watched, it settled gently to the ground, coming to rest on quite ordinary-looking landing struts.

Once the ship was at rest, I landed beside it, letting Reynaud down on his feet. A hatch opened in the side of the craft, a short ramp extending downward. Looking up, I half-expected to see someone as equally striking as Reynaud to emerge, but the people who climbed out and gingerly descended the ramp looked decidedly normal, not to mention somewhat bedraggled.

"Uh … who are you people?" I asked.

"We got rescued," a middle-aged woman told me bluntly. "By this guy. After the wave dragged us out to sea." She stepped past me and hugged Reynaud fiercely. Oddly enough, the crest on his head rose erect as this happened. "Thank you. Just … thank you."

Awkwardly, he hugged her back; apparently to his relief, most of the other dozen or so people who emerged from the ship seemed happy to just say the words, or pat him on the shoulder. I had seen the ambulances when we arrived, but not paid much attention to them; the paramedics began attending to the rescuees, ushering them over to the waiting vehicles.

"So that's what you were doing down there," I realised. "Rescuing people."

"Yeah," he agreed. "And alerting Sean to the tsunamis."

This was not the first time that he had mentioned the name but before I could ask, another person started down the ramp. She was just as striking as I had expected earlier; platinum hair cut to a shoulder-length bob and large silver-blue eyes in a triangular face. This, along with her distinctly pointed ears and petite frame, gave her a certain kind of elfin beauty.

Her utilitarian clothing, being a black and orange overall in some synthetic material with a pistol belted to her hip, did nothing to detract from her appearance. I've never been attracted to women, but I could see how some men would be drawn to those kind of looks. However, I also figured her to be about nineteen, far too young to be the commander of this craft. Who's this? The captain's daughter?

"Geneva Hastings," she greeted me as she reached the bottom of the ramp. "And you'd be Legend. Pleased to meet you." She held out one slim hand.

Blinking, I grasped it, feeling the strength in her grip. "You're Captain Hastings?" I blurted. "Aren't you a little, uh, young for the job?"

She snorted, amusement dancing in her eyes. "That's sweet, but I take anti-ageing treatments. I suspect I've got a couple of decades on you."

"I, uh, sorry," I told her, trying to regain lost ground. "I apologise if I offended you. Reynaud here speaks very highly of you."

"Well, given that I rescued him from my idiot ex-husband, I'm not surprised," she observed dryly. "Thanks for saving him, by the way. I'm kind of getting used to having him around."

"Well, it was the least I could do when Dragon told us that he was in trouble," I pointed out. I looked around at the growing circle of onlookers, which included capes and civilians alike. They were standing a ways back from the ship, but not by choice; PRT troops were working to establish a perimeter as we spoke. "If you want, we can go and talk in a more private setting."

"We can do that," she agreed gravely. "Just as soon as I get an assurance from you that nobody's going to be so stupid as to try to hijack my ship as soon as it's out of my sight."

"Uh, no, that's definitely not going to happen," I assured her. "Those PRT troops will make sure of that."

One silver eyebrow hitched upward. "And will I be allowed to go back to my ship once we're done here?"

"Of course, of course," I agreed. "You did us a huge favour with Leviathan."

"That never stopped people from being idiots before," she pointed out. "Just be aware that it wouldn't be as easy as it might seem."

I nodded, no longer inclined to think of her as a teenager any more. No matter her outward appearance, she was no naïve kid. While her clothing and accoutrements went a long way toward dispelling that initial impression, her attitude settled it once and for all. "I'll make sure of it," I promised her.

"Good." Her lips curved in a smile. "Now, is this the point where I say 'take me to your leader'?"

I had to chuckle; that line was as old as science fiction and definitely older than space travel. "It would be. But aren't you missing a member of your crew?"

Turning her head, she glanced at the ship; as she did so, her hair moved aside, revealing a kidney-shaped metallic-blue object of uncertain purpose, an inch or so across, attached to the side of her head, just behind her ear. "Oh, you mean Sean? No, he's the ship's AI. He's one of the several reasons that it would be extremely stupid to try to hijack it."

"Sean? Really?" I didn't dispute the concept of an artificial intelligence. After all, it was a spaceship, there were two people who had almost certainly been heavily modified from their original appearances right in front of me and I wouldn't have been surprised if some Tinker had already created one in a lab somewhere already. "That's a kind of … prosaic name for an artificial intelligence, isn't it?"

"It most certainly is not, lad." External speakers had come to life on the ship and I belatedly realised that the AI had probably been listening in on the whole conversation. Also that this 'Sean' had a strong Scottish burr. "After all, I chose it for myself."

"Oh, I see," I replied hastily. "Sorry about that."

"No matter, lad," it – he – replied. "Geneva, lass, you run along now and talk to the locals. I'll see to what repairs I can."

"Okay, Sean," she told him. "Let me know if anything comes up."

"You know I will." As he spoke, the ramp retracted and the hatch closed.

She turned away from the ship and back to me. "Well, where do we go from here?"

"We go talk to the people in charge around here." I already knew that Alexandria had slipped away; I also knew why. So I looked around until I spotted the man I needed to see and walked in that direction; Geneva and Reynaud followed me.

Armsmaster looked up as we approached him; his lips had been moving silently, no doubt sub-vocalising to someone on his helmet radio. I noted to my interest that he had two halberds on his back, instead of the one he normally carried; perhaps he had decided he needed a spare in case one was damaged in the fighting against Leviathan? It wasn't a matter that I was concerned about; I didn't know Armsmaster all that well, but he was a highly-regarded hero and a well-respected Tinker. If he wanted to carry two halberds, that was his business and not mine.

"Legend," he greeted me. "These are our visitors, I presume."

"You presume correctly," I replied. "Captain Hastings, Reynaud, this is Armsmaster. He's the head of the local Protectorate contingent. Armsmaster, this is Captain Geneva Hastings of, uh … " I hesitated as I realised that I didn't know the name of the ship.

"Of the Bond James Bond," Captain Hastings finished smoothly. "And this is my rescuee and currently my ward, Reynaud James Klovis VII."

The implications of the ship's name, coupled with the name of the AI and the Scottish burr, hit me all at once. I tried not to choke as Armsmaster replied. "What do you mean by 'ward'?"

"I mean," Captain Hastings responded sweetly, "that Reynaud is under my personal protection, right up until I can return him safe and whole to his family."

"I see," Armsmaster commented; he seemed to be sizing Reynaud up. "What's that you've got on your back, son?"

"It's a filter-lung, sir," Reynaud told him. "I can breathe underwater. Other people can't."

I thought Armsmaster was being a little abrupt with them, but I didn't want to undercut him in public. "Reynaud was in the water, rescuing people and alerting Captain Hastings to the tsunamis," I explained. "He's the reason we only suffered one of them."

"Hmm." Abruptly, Armsmaster nodded. "The Director is waiting." A nod indicated the pistol on Captain Hastings' hip. "You'll have to leave that behind, of course."

She folded her arms; that was an indication in any language that she wasn't willing to go along with his directive. "Really. Are you going to disarm as well?"

"I'm not required to." He indicated the ship behind her. "You've obviously got access to high-end technology and you're a stranger in town. You show up just as an Endbringer attacks. That could be a coincidence, or it could be something more."

Enough was enough; I cleared my throat. "Armsmaster, you're out of line." Although my voice was mild, I thought I saw Captain Hastings wince. "She put her ship in harm's way to protect this city and she is our guest. You will show her the appropriate respect. Am I clear?"

Armsmaster paused for a moment; I wondered if we were going to have to have a longer discussion behind closed doors. But then he nodded. "Perfectly," he replied. "If you will follow me, Captain, Mr Klovis." Turning, he led the way toward the PRT building. The automatic doors opened before him; Geneva shot me an appraising look, then followed on. Reynaud was trying not to grin as he entered behind the Captain. I brought up the rear and the doors closed behind me.

Director Piggot sat in her office, watching her monitor screen; I stood behind her. On it, the second in command of the local Protectorate forces was seeing to the comfort of our guests in a conference room. Armsmaster, possibly still smarting from my reprimand, was outside, overseeing the security cordon on the spaceship.

I knew about Miss Militia, of course; she was well-known both inside the Protectorate and out of it. However, it was still more than a little jarring to see her offering tea and coffee to Geneva and Reynaud with a nineteenth-century cavalry sabre slung at her hip.

"Uh, no, thanks," Reynaud demurred. "I can't have caffeine. Kinda allergic."

Captain Hastings accepted the tea, but eyed the milk suspiciously as it was poured in. "Is that … natural?"

"I believe so, yes," Miss Militia confirmed. "Is this a problem?"

"I don't know," Captain Hastings replied. "I've never had natural milk before. Most everything I grew up on was biocultured."

Piggot cleared her throat; I looked at her inquiringly. "Yes, Director?"

"You spoke at length with the boy," she pointed out. "Brief me on what he said."

"He says that they're from the future, at least five centuries," I recited. "Or rather, a future. But not ours. One belonging to an alternate."

"Like Earth Aleph?" She wasn't stupid, not by any stretch of the imagination.

"Like that, yes." I paused. "But not Aleph's, specifically. He said they didn't have superheroes in their history."

"A different alternate then. Right." She paused, frowning. "Are they a threat?"

"I … don't consider them so, no," I told her honestly. "They are dangerous, yes; their ship did more damage to Leviathan than all of the rest of us did today -"

" - and turned Captain's Hill into a goddamn crater in the process," she pointed out acidly. "Not to mention the damage to the city from those weapons. Buildings down, streets torn up, a hundred foot wide crater that keeps filling with water -"

"I've attended dozens of Endbringer fights," I reminded her, my voice hard. "What they did was nothing to what Leviathan would have done, if they'd given him the chance. Believe me, it could have been alot worse."

My words hung in the air. She had to know I spoke nothing but the unvarnished truth; following the examples of Newfoundland and Kyushu, Leviathan's true capacity for destruction had never been in dispute.

"... granted," she conceded. "This story he told you; do you think he was being truthful? Is there any proof that she's not just some Tinker with a penchant for heavy weapons and wild stories and a Case 53 boyfriend?"

"Well, for one thing, the ship is apparently equipped with an AI," I told her. "I spoke to it. Or rather, him. He was quite personable."

Her lips thinned. "True AI is supposed to be impossible."

"Tinkers do the impossible on a daily basis," I reminded her.

She pounced on that. "So you think she might be a Tinker?"

"I think that what a Tinker can produce today, a civilisation that's had five hundred years of technological progress might devise in the normal run of events," I argued. "Besides, from the future or from right now, what they did is what matters. People are alive, the city is as intact as it is, because of them."

"It's still something that has to be faced," she muttered. "The truth needs to be determined, dealt with, one way or the other." Abruptly, she stood up. "Well, talking about them isn't going to help, until we get more data on the situation. I'm going in there to talk to them, face to face."

I followed her from the office; while I was the leader of the entire Protectorate and she was a regional Director under Rebecca Costa-Brown, the truth remained that the Protectorate was subordinate to the PRT and thus she was nominally my superior officer. While I didn't necessarily trust her attitude in the upcoming confrontation, I wasn't overly worried; I had an ace up my sleeve.

As we entered the conference room, Captain Hastings was holding back her hair from the metallic nodule attached to the side of her head while Miss Militia examined it closely.

"So what's it do, exactly?"

"It's an aug," explained Reynaud; he seemed to think that this was sufficient explanation, but Miss Militia looked blank.

Uh, that's short for cerebral augmentation," explained Hastings. "It's a computer, gridlinker, communicator, onboard datastore, you name it. They're pretty well ubiquitous in the Polity."

"The Polity?" asked Director Piggot. "What is that, exactly?"

"Where we come from," Captain Hastings told her, letting her hair fall back into place and turning to face the Director. She stood, offering her hand. "Geneva Hastings. You're the person in charge here?"

Piggot shook it. "Director Emily Piggot, Parahuman Response Teams. Yes, I'm the person in charge here. Tell me more about this 'Polity'."

"It's … well, it's a multi-planet nation," Geneva explained. "Each world is self-governing, of course, but the Polity oversees them all. Earth is the centre of it. We're not the only one out there, of course, and things aren't always smooth running, but … " She quirked a grin. "Anyone messing with the Polity tends to end up regretting it. Badly."

"I see." Piggot's tone was flat. I pulled out a chair for her; she sat down. I took a seat next to her, while Geneva sat down again as well.

"Uh … are we in trouble?" That was Reynaud. "All we wanted to do was help."

I cut in before Piggot could speak. "No, son, you're not in trouble. As leader of the Protectorate, I can tell you that no legal problems will befall you as a result of your actions today."

Piggot didn't look thrilled. "Legend, a word?" She jerked her head toward the door into the corridor.

"Of course, ma'am."

She stood and led the way into the corridor; without being prompted, I closed the door behind us.

Her expression as she turned to me was coldly furious. "You can't just say that!" In deference to the fact that the door wasn't particularly soundproofed, she kept her tone down, but there was a certain amount of intensity there all the same.

"Certainly I can," I replied, striving for a voice of reason. "If nothing else, there's the Endbringer Truce to consider. The very worst of villains get a pass on a day like this if they fight alongside us. Why not these people?"

"Because by their own admission they're not from Earth Bet. What if they choose not to abide by the Endbringer Truce, because they've never heard of it?"

"You've met them," I pointed out. "Do they look or sound hostile to you?"

"That's not the point," she insisted. "You don't just make sweeping statements like that, not without checking with me first. You don't get to make calls like that."

I could see something that she couldn't and I tried not to let myself smile; however, she must have spotted something in my expression. "What?"

"You're correct, of course," Director Rebecca Costa-Brown stated from behind Piggot. "He doesn't get to make calls like that. But I do."

Back in the conference room, Costa-Brown seated herself opposite the petite captain of the Bond James Bond. It was an odd name, with startling implications; I couldn't wait to hear that explanation.

"I am Rebecca Costa-Brown, Chief Director of the Parahuman Response Teams," she stated without preamble. "You are Geneva Hastings, captain of that craft out there. Is that correct?"

Geneva nodded once. "All correct, ma'am," she responded. She tilted her head, the skin around her eyes crinkling very slightly. "I'm guessing that you want to know what we're doing here and what our intentions are."

The Chief Director raised her head slightly, seeming to come to a higher level of alertness, although I couldn't quite see why. "That's correct." She levelled her gaze at Geneva. "Would you mind enlightening us?"

"Well, to start with," the elfin newcomer observed, "I'd like to take the opportunity to ask you to pass on our thanks to Alexandria. If she hadn't tackled the monster when she did, Reynaud may well have died."

"I can do that," I offered. "After all, she helped save me as well." Or at least, she had saved me from a very hard decision, I amended silently. Had Leviathan struck me, I could have shifted to my energy form to save my life, but that would have left the boy at his mercy. Alexandria had taken the decision from my shoulders, for which I was profoundly grateful.

Chief Director Rebecca Costa-Brown – otherwise known as Alexandria, as I well knew – nodded, seeming to relax very slightly. "I'm pleased that she was able to help," she commented. "Now, about the other matter?"

Geneva leaned back in her chair, clasping her fingers loosely in front of her. "We got kicked back here from the year twenty-five eighty-four solstan," she began.

Miss Militia tilted her head. "Solstan?"

"Solar standard, I presume," Costa-Brown noted.

Captain Hastings nodded. "Correct. Young Reynaud here is the heir to a multi-billion dollar fortune; I took the contract to get him back when he was abducted for ransom."

"Wait," I objected. "Reynaud, you said she rescued you from space pirates."

"I did," Geneva told me. "The abductors handed him off to a bunch of spacefaring morons, run by my idiot ex-husband, to keep him out of the way until the ransom was paid. Kramer dabbles in piracy occasionally; in poor light he can pass for a dashing rogue. I intercepted the ship and pulled Reynaud out of there. Kramer objected, up to and including tossing a CTD at me."

"And a CTD is … ?" asked Miss Militia.

"A contra-terrene device." She paused. "That's what we call -"

"An anti-matter bomb." Costa-Brown's voice was flat. "Correct?"

Reynaud looked deeply impressed; Geneva's expression was respectful as she nodded. "Yes, ma'am. That's correct. It went off just as we entered U-space -"

I cleared my throat. "Sorry, but could you explain that term?"

"Underspace," Reynaud filled in helpfully. "I'm not really up on the theory, but if you enter U-space, you can get places a whole lot faster."

I could think of equivalent terms from the science fiction of my youth; subspace, hyperspace, and so on and so forth. "All right. So you entered underspace just as this anti-matter bomb went off."

Miss Militia frowned. "Wasn't that a little on the extreme side? I mean, if this bomb was as powerful as it sounds, it should have destroyed your ship and killed the both of you, thus depriving him of any share of the ransom."

"Yeah." Her voice was dry. "You may recall, I referred to him as my idiot ex-husband. He never was one to think things through."

"I see." The Chief Director's tone was equally dry. "I've known people like that. So I presume that the explosion of the CTD disrupted what would have been a smooth transit through U-space, somehow popping you out in our universe and our time."

"That's the long and the short of it," Geneva agreed. "Sean is of the opinion that we've undergone a variation of a time-inconsistent jump, which U-space physics actually allows for, but like Reynaud, I'm not up on the theory. Personally, I'd be dubious, but the evidence is kind of overwhelming."

"Still, it does tend to strain credibility that you ended up right near Earth when you did come out of the jump," I pointed out. "A random jump across time and between universes that lands near a civilised planet – any civilised planet – would be hard to believe, but you appeared near Earth. That can't be a coincidence."

Geneva's eyes lost focus for a moment, then she blinked. "Well, Sean says he has a hypothesis on that."

"Sean?" Costa-Brown's voice was sharp. "Who is Sean?"

"He's the ship's AI," I told her. "I've spoken to him."

"The ship has an artificial intelligence in it?" Director Piggot looked startled. "So it could be capable of independent action, even now?"

"Well, yes," Geneva told her. "He's the ship owner. I'm his partner. He has full autonomy at all times."

"Very well," Costa-Brown decided, in the tone which said we will visit this again later, "what is this hypothesis?"

"That the U-space disturbances which surround this planet somehow drew us here."

Silence fell in the conference room following Geneva's casually-delivered bombshell. Each of us stared at her in varying degrees of consternation, save for Reynaud, who seemed to know what she was talking about.

"Huh," he muttered. "That'd kind of make sense, wouldn't it?"

"Explain." Costa-Brown's voice was hard and flat. "What U-space disturbances?"

Geneva drew a breath. "It's possible to detect disturbances in U-space. This lets us know when a ship's about to emerge. Really handy, in wartime situations." She paused. "When we arrived, we detected numerous traces of various strength, all around the planet. Literally hundreds of thousands of them. Including several really, really powerful loci. There are two that we have directly observed. One was the Simurgh and one was Leviathan. I'm going to go out on a limb, and assume that Behemoth is another one."

"Wait," Miss Militia broke in. "You're saying that we get our powers from this U-space?"

"Sean doesn't think so," Geneva replied. "He thinks the powers come from elsewhere, but the connection comes viaU-space. And the uses of your powers that effect changes over a distance also propagate through U-space. Thus creating disturbances, which we can easily pick up. And which may have drawn us here, given that we didn't know which way was up after the CTD hit."

" … huh." I rubbed my chin. "Can your instruments tell if someone's got powers? Are they emitting a U-space disturbance even when they're not using them?"

"If so," Director Piggot stated, "that would be incredibly useful as a cape detector. Especially if it could be used at a distance."

Geneva nodded. "Yes, it would be. Which is why I'm not going to answer that question. Nor are we going to hand over specs for a U-space detector."

"What?" Piggot leaned forward. "Why not?"

"Because I'm making an executive decision. You're not ready for that sort of technology." Geneva Hastings, I discovered, could almost equal the Chief Director in icy tone of voice.

"That doesn't make any kind of sense," Piggot stated, sounding almost bewildered. "We already have Tinkertech that bends and breaks the laws of physics in ways that I don't even pretend to understand. You've stated that you're not from our future, so there's no chance of paradox. Why are we not ready for it?"

"Because it makes a mockery of the entire 'secret identity' concept, that's why." Geneva's tone was unbending. "That's an integral part of your culture. I'm not going to overturn that."

For a few seconds, I wondered why Director Costa-Brown had not weighed into the argument, then I realised what was going on. The earlier byplay between the two women had concealed a great deal of information trading hands; Geneva being informed by Sean that Costa-Brown was Alexandria, Costa-Brown realising that Geneva knew who she was, then Geneva reassuring her that she would not betray the secret. Alexandria would not, of course, want such technology to fall into the hands of the PRT. Geneva knew this and was thus holding out.

"She has a point," Miss Militia offered diffidently. "As a cape, I would vastly prefer that someone not be able to point some device at me in my civilian identity and determine that I have powers, thus putting my family at risk."

"Me neither," I agreed. Arthur was the only family I was close to, but I loved him dearly.

"I'm inclined to agree with Miss Militia and Legend," Alexandria noted; I had to admire the almost casual tone of her voice. "This is not a technology that we want in the public domain."

"But it wouldn't be," insisted Director Piggot. "If we kept it deeply classified, passed it off as Tinker tech … "

"Which would work right up until it didn't, yeah?" That was Reynaud. Piggot glared at him and he shut up.

"No, he's right," Geneva stated flatly. "Unless you bury it so deep that nobody even hears of it, which kind of defeats the purpose if you ever want to use it, people will see it and hear about it. Pictures, sensor readings, analysis, theft … can you tell me for a fact that not one single person on your staff is immune to bribery or blackmail?"

"Or, you know, super-powers." Reynaud shrugged. "Pretty sure some of them could be used to get the information."

"They're right, you know." I made my tone almost apologetic. "Right now, we six are the only ones who know of this. I'd like to keep it that way."

Piggot nodded reluctantly. "Fine. But given that the technology is contained on a damaged craft, I think that it should be at least sequestered until the craft is repaired and made more secure."

"Nope." Geneva shook her head. "Nobody messes with the Bond James Bond."

"The … what?" Piggot stared. "Please tell me that you're kidding."

"I've been meaning to ask about that," I put in, glad that the conversation had moved on to a less touchy subject. "The name of the ship, the name of the AI, the accent … does that mean what I think it means?"

Geneva shrugged. "What can I say? He likes the classics."

"You do realise that the man is still alive, right?" I had no idea how the veteran actor would take to finding out that a sapient starship from half a millennium in the future had taken him as an inspiration. But I truly did want to see the look on Mr Connery's face when someone told him.

From the look on her face, Geneva apparently had not yet made that connection. Oh god …" She began to chuckle. "No, I didn't … and nor did Sean. I've never seen him so utterly stunned."

"Wait, you're saying that those films are still considered 'classics' in five hundred years' time?" Director Piggot was trying hard to regain control of the conversation. "Because I find that hard to believe."

"No, they're around, but just part of popular culture where I come from," Geneva noted. "However, they were classics when Sean was first constructed. He's over two hundred and fifty years old, solstan."

"And you've been with him all that time?" Miss Militia asked curiously

"No, I'm only sixty-four." Geneva shrugged. "Like I said, anti-ageing treatments, body mods and so on. I've been partners with him for the last twenty years or so. We get along."

"Wait, two hundred and fifty years?" Reynaud frowned, then his face cleared. "Oh, yeah. He did say something about -"

"Yes," she confirmed. "He was in the Prador wars. Doesn't talk about it much."

"I am going to have to ask him about that sometime." Reynaud looked around at the rest of us. "Uh, sorry. Didn't mean to interrupt."

"Hm. Well. As fascinating as a full discussion of your future history might be," Costa-Brown observed, "we need to stick to the relevant details here. For instance, I've been advised that you used what's been described as a pair of tactical nuclear warheads to break up one of the tsunamis. I need more details, please."

Tac nukes? This was the first I'd heard of this. I sat up, as did Miss Militia and Director Piggot.

"Yes, we used them," Geneva admitted readily enough. "Dial-a-yield fusion devices. No fallout, negligible EMP and radiation. Clean bombs. Just big enough to break up the wave without showering all of Brockton Bay with boiling water."

"That's going to have to be independently checked, of course," Piggot noted. "Irradiating the ocean could produce heavy water, which can cause problems in the environment."

"Only in significant quantities," Reynaud interjected. "Sorry, but my area of study is the evolution of marine biota and man's influence on it. The effect of heavy water is one of the things I've looked at. You already had a crappy ecology out there in the bay, even before Leviathan came here; a dose of heavy water, in the quantities that we're talking about, isn't really going to have much of an effect."

"Fine," snapped Piggot. "What about that other thing you did, over Captain's Hill? You could have blinded half the population."

"Unlikely," Geneva told her. "And in any case, it was necessary. Leviathan was hanging on to the ship. The monster was quite literally tearing it apart around us. So we lit off the fusion drive. And then, when it let go, we gave it everything else we had."

"Which blew some of the debris far and wide," noted the Chief Director. "There have been injuries, I understand."

"For which I am sorry," Geneva responded. "But when you're fighting a superweapon like that, you don't use half-measures and you don't hold back. It's just not feasible."

I looked at her sharply and so did both Miss Militia and Chief Director Costa-Brown. Piggot was already not happy with either one of them, so I wasn't sure if she caught the significance of that particular word.

"What do you mean, superweapon?" Miss Militia asked carefully.

"I mean, its U-space trace was in no way the same as any other cape we spotted," Geneva explained. "Like I said, the Endbringers seem to show up as huge U-space loci and wield massive powers. And Sean says that one of his sub-minds picked up something weird during the fight."

"Weird? What kind of weird?" That was Costa-Brown.

She shrugged. "Just 'weird'. If I know him, he's subjecting it to deep analysis before talking to me about it. I'll find out when I find out."

"But you're saying the Endbringers weren't originally human?" Director Piggot didn't look as though she wanted to ask the question, or get the answer, but was doing so anyway.

"That's exactly what I'm saying," agreed Geneva. "When you get really high-end tech, you get superweapons. Things that are far more dangerous than they first look and are an absolute pain to put down once and for all. Back in the Polity, they've discovered that there were several star-spanning races before humanity. One has been named the Jain." She spelled the word, then went on.

"They died out because they developed a technology that infected living things and tech alike, turning it all to one end; producing more Jain tech. Think of it as a living, malevolent virus that could decimate a city, subsuming the population into itself, in a matter of hours. When this tech resurfaced in our time, it posed a serious danger to the Polity before it was put down again. That was a superweapon. The Endbringers fit the same pattern."

"But we didn't build them," I protested. "Nobody did. Behemoth showed up in ninety-two. We didn't even know what he was, then."

"Endbringers have attacked all over the world, since," the Chief Director noted. "Every continent, multiple times. No-one's been spared. It's hard to believe that someone's actively controlling them to do this." But I could see that she was thinking. And while Chief Director Costa-Brown was known as a sharp operator, Alexandria was a Thinker par excellence.

"Which would indicate one of three options," Geneva suggested. "One, the controller isn't human. Two, the controller is psychotic. And three, the controller doesn't know he's doing it."

"Unfortunately," mused Costa-Brown, "we do actually have nonhuman intelligences on Earth, as well as enough psychotics to write several large volumes on the subject. As for your third option, you think that it might be a cape doing it all unawares?"

"It's just a possibility," Geneva pointed out. "But I thought you didn't have any AIs here?"

"Oh, I didn't say we had artificial intelligences," the Chief Director told her. "But several of our more unusual capes probably don't count as human any more. Unfortunately, we have far too many suspects in all three categories to start narrowing it down to useful levels. But it's useful to know, at least, that they aren't human in and of themselves."

"I'd start looking to see who could have built them," Geneva suggested. "If they're superweapons, then they're tech of some sort. What Tinkers do you have who could create something like that?"

I blinked. That was an interesting line of thought. But it quickly came to a crashing halt.

"While we do have some very high-end Tinkers, including some in the Birdcage," Miss Militia noted, "none of the ones I can think of who could possibly have created something like the Endbringers were active before two thousand two, which was when the Simurgh appeared, much less ninety-two."

"Might be worth doing a bit of digging, though," I suggested. "There could be some who flew under the radar for a while before making their marks."

'What if a cape created them with his powers?" asked Reynaud. "I mean, just as a hypothetical."

"That would require him to be either psychotic or incredibly stupid," Miss Militia noted. "I mean, why would anyone even do that, unless they wanted to prove themselves to be the greatest hero of all time, by defeating them single-handed? And nobody's been able to do that yet."

"Hmm. There's something in that," murmured Costa-Brown. "But we're arguing in circles now. Are there any other problems that we want to bring up?"

"Yes," Director Piggot stated. "Health. Specifically, diseases."

I could see where she was coming from, with the earlier mention of superweapons. Cultures meeting for the first time after long isolation could harbour diseases, each deadly to the other.

"Actually, that's the least of our problems," Geneva noted. "I get a boost to my immune system every time I get my body mod updated, and Reynaud's genemod is top of the line, so I'm guessing that you got the same?"

"Sure," Reynaud agreed. "Submerged, my mucous membranes are exposed to any pathogen that might have leaked into the water from a thousand different sources, so Mother and Father made sure that I didn't have any genetic weaknesses and that any bug that bit me was going to die."

"Also," Geneva went on, "as a freelance spaceship operator, I've got to have my booster shots up to date, just in case I go someplace that's got something virulent going on. And Sean keeps the ship clean as a matter of course. If either of us had anything infectious, he'd know about it."

"Still, I'd like a second opinion," Piggot stated. "With your permission, Chief Director, I'd like to bring Panacea in on this."

I saw Reynaud shoot a glance at Geneva – whom I still couldn't see as being over sixty, miraculous future tech or no – and she went introspective for a moment. "Oh," she stated a moment later. "The healer."

"Believe me," I assured them, "she's the best there is when it comes to healing." There were those who said that Eidolon was better, though I had seen them both at work and I sometimes wondered if she could have saved Hero where he couldn't. I glanced over at Costa-Brown. "Though she still might be busy with the wounded."

"I'm not sure that it's the best idea to bring more people in on this," the Chief Director mused. "She's not Protectorate, so we can't just order her to not talk about it."

"No, but she's discreet and I've had her in before to deal with injuries to the Wards," Piggot told her. "She knows the identities of at least some of them and has never let that slip."

"There's a world of difference between keeping someone's secret identity and not telling anyone that the Tinkertech craft that helped fight off Leviathan is actually a time-travelling spacecraft," Miss Militia pointed out. It wasn't a sentence that I had ever thought I would ever hear anyone say out loud.

"Well, we don't need to tell her that," the Brockton Bay Director stated impatiently. "Just that a couple of people need checking out. She's almost certainly met people stranger than these two."

"So you'll lie to your healer." Geneva's voice was cutting.

Piggot gave her a level stare. "We won't lie. She just won't be told all the information. Need to know. Surely you're familiar with that concept."

"You have a point," Geneva agreed. "And she can check me over to her heart's content. But there's no way on Grant's World that she gets to go near Reynaud."

The Brockton Bay Director thinned her lips as she matched gazes with Geneva. "Health concerns -"

"So check me out. Check out everyone he's come into contact with. Reynaud is my ward. If you want to put it in financial terms, he's worth millions to me. In any other terms, he's my responsibility. And he will remain so, right up until I deliver him back to his family. Which means I don't allow any medical attention that I don't personally believe to be absolutely necessary to get near him." By the time she finished her speech, Geneva had both hands flat on the table, as if ready to leap to her feet.

I cleared my throat. "Let's take it easy now. Director Piggot, this doesn't sound like consent to me, or anything like it."

"He'll have to go into quarantine then." Piggot's tone was final.

"Sure, that works for me." Geneva's tension was easing off. "He can get back on the ship. Simple as that. We have an adequate autodoc."

"Captain Hastings," Miss Militia asked. "What's your problem with Panacea checking out Reynaud? Healing is literally her power. She's saved thousands of lives."

She took a deep breath. "Okay, let me put it this way. Legend, suppose an Endbringer attacked your centre of government and you had to swoop in to save the President's kid, then some weird power thing happened and you found yourself in my time. You'd set yourself the job of getting the kid back home in one piece, right?"

I nodded. "Certainly I would."

"Okay, then," she went on. "Suppose the people you met in my time insisted that the kid, who wasn't even injured, needed to be looked over by an autodoc, which just by the way looks like someone built a two-metre spider out of scrap metal and scalpels. Would you consent to that, not knowing anything about how it worked?"

"Well … okay," I conceded. "I can admit that I would be just a little concerned in that situation, yes."

"Well then." She stood up. "If there's nothing more …"

The Chief Director cleared her throat. "Captain Hastings, I understand that your ship is in dire need of repair."

"That's true." Geneva nodded to Costa-Brown. "We can handle most of the minor stuff. As for the major repairs, I'll discuss that with Legend, if you don't mind. Once we're back at the ship."

"Legend?" Costa-Brown raised an eyebrow. "He's not in your chain of command. He's in mine. Once I leave Brockton Bay, and Legend with me, Director Piggot will be the ranking PRT officer in this city." Implicit in her voice was an unspoken statement: You don't give orders to me or mine.

Geneva folded her arms. "Okay …" she replied cautiously. Her tone stated quite clearly that it would be a cold day in hell before Emily Piggot set foot on her ship, ranking officer or no.

Costa-Brown hadn't finished. She turned to Director Emily Piggot. "Director Piggot. I am assigning Miss Militia the job of liaison with Captain Hastings, up until her ship repairs are complete. She will be sending her reports directly to me. You don't need to worry about the matter at all."

Director Piggot nodded jerkily. "Understood, ma'am."

"Good to hear. Now, this young man needs to enter quarantine immediately and I find myself curious about your artificial intelligence – Sean, was he called?"

Geneva nodded. "Yes, ma'am. Sean."

Costa-Brown smiled slightly. "Well then. Legend, would you care to escort us down so that I can meet him?"

I stood and pulled out the Chief Director's chair. "Ma'am, I would be honoured."

Meanwhile, in Toronto

"Mags!"

"What's up, Geoff?"

"Look! Look at this!"

"Dragon's chat logs for the Endbringer fight. So what?"

"Chat logs recorded at a ten to one rate. Nobody talks that fast."

"You mean, nobody but Dragon."

"Or another artificial intelligence."

"Uh … you have heard about the spaceship that helped out against Leviathan, right? Chased him off with fuck-off heavy weapons."

"Spaceship? With heavy weapons?"

"Yeah. I saw it on the news. They say it's crewed by a pointy-eared girl and a guy who looks like a fish. That might be where your AI is."

Geoff Pellick leaned back and looked at the screens. Slowly, he steepled his fingers. "Really."

End of Part Four

Glossary of Terms

Autodoc: Automated drone that can carry out any surgical need with speed and precision.

Grant's World: A planet that was rendered utterly uninhabitable during the Prador War.

Jain: Now-extinct race that engineered a horrifying technology that eventually wiped them out.

Solstan: Solar (Earth) standard, usually referring to years.