Chapter 8
Coil - or, as he liked to think of himself 'the magnificent super-villain Coil', watched his monitor intently.
It was displaying real-time video from one of the drones he had flying above the parts of the city where his latest operation was unfolding.
He had almost scrubbed the operation a few minutes ago, when some idiot jogger had machine-gunned all five - and their little dogs too - of the bank-robbers Coil had sent out as a distraction.
That had been such a setback that Coil had trashed part of his own office in rage.
It had taken him a long time, and a lot of effort, to set up this complex, multi-part operation, and to have one random jogger ruin it all was just intolerable.
Coil still planned to torture someone to death - preferably the jogger if he could be captured - to help him get over it.
But, to his surprise, the Undersiders - Coil's bank-robbers for this operation - had gotten back up and commenced to fight: first with the bank guards, and then with the Wards, as they started showing up.
They would probably not get any money from the bank, but that was trivial.
They might all get arrested or killed, but they were disposable and really didn't matter anyway.
But they were successfully being the distraction he needed: government forces - the few still left in the city after all the other distractions Coil had arranged - were converging on the bank.
So he had not scrubbed the mission: his mercenaries were even now arriving to grab the target and bring her back here.
Their target was Dinah Alcott - a 12-year-old girl who Coil had identified as having one of the most potent "Thinker" super-powers ever.
With her in his possession and forced to work on his side, he would be nearly invincible!
Thinkers usually had limits on how much they could use their powers, but Coil had a way around that.
His own super-power would help him out a lot there.
Coil could split reality into two timelines, and the copies of himself in both timelines each knew everything the other copy experienced. And they were the only ones who knew that two parallel timelines existed. Whenever he chose, he could dismiss one of the two timelines and keep the other. The dismissed timeline had effectively never happened, except in his own memory.
He could have only one or two timelines at once. He had to dismiss one in order to split off another one.
And, whichever timeline he kept, time had still passed, so he didn't like to throw away time spent in prep-work by scrubbing missions unnecessarily.
His power may not sound like much, but Coil had found ways to make it quite potent.
For instance, he was using his power right now, to make sure this kidnapping operation was successful.
He had split the timeline in two before ordering the start of the operation. He liked to think of the two resulting timelines as A and B.
In timeline A, The operation had not been ordered. His troops were still in his hidden underground lair practicing. The Undersiders were playing video-games in their hideout. And Coil was catching up on paperwork.
Timeline A was the one Coil could keep if the kidnapping operation failed, in which case nobody anywhere would even know it had been attempted, which made it easier to try again later, since his victims would not know to be on their guards..
In timeline B, Coil watched eagerly as two armored trucks - painted like parcel delivery vehicles yet actually armored SWAT team trucks - pulled up to the side of a nice house in a quiet neighborhood.
Heavily armed men - mercenaries in Coil's employ - rapidly bailed out of each truck, leaving each driver in place as a lookout and to be ready for a quick getaway.
The ten mercenaries hurried to the house, with 5 going around front while 5 went around the back.
Each group kicked in the door they faced, and hurried in.
Coil knew they each had maps of the house, and plans for how to coordinate the search and grab the unwilling victim when they found her.
He knew from surveillance that she was home alone right now.
He knew that nothing had been left to chance, so nothing could go wrong.
And yet he was still antsy, waiting with great nervousness for the next steps to play out on his monitor.
The memory of that random jogger was still in his mind.
He made a mental note to work off his stress by torturing someone to death - preferably Lisa of the Undersiders, since it was her job to prevent things like random crazy machine-gun joggers.
He would do it in the usual way - splitting the timeline and having his fun in one of them while keeping the other one 'normal'. That way, he didn't run out of followers, nor lose their loyalty, such as it was, since they had no idea he had abused them in a dismissed timeline.
He really enjoyed having the super-power he did.
And suddenly, there they were: his monitor showed all ten men leaving Dinah's house with one carrying the target. That would be her in the large burlap bag with two little-girl legs poking out of it and kicking wildly.
Coil held his breath as the men got into the two trucks.
He held his breath as the trucks started up and began to move down the street.
Then he let it out.
Success!
He had her.
Well, almost. He had to make sure nothing interfered with the two trucks as they drove her back to Coil's base.
He decided to send the trucks by different routes, so that if one chanced to work out poorly, he could dismiss that timeline and keep the other one.
So Coil dismissed timeline A, where there had been no kidnapping operation ordered.
Then he split the timelines again.
In Timeline A, he ordered the trucks to turn left at the intersection they were approaching, and follow a certain route back to base.
In Timeline B, he ordered them to turn right and follow a different route back to base.
-0-0-0-
Ron and Simon stood on a sidewalk across the street from a park in a nice residential neighborhood.
They were apparently arguing about possession of a Frisbee they had both chased here.
In reality, they were closely watching the approach of two delivery trucks full of armed men that had just kidnapped a little girl.
When the trucks had arrived, just under 2 minutes ago, Ron, Simon, and 6 girls from the ship's crew had been sitting at a picnic table in the park, enjoying a nice lunch.
They had seen ten men carrying weapons kick in the front and rear doors to the house and rush in.
And they'd been concerned.
So they'd called the ship and asked Beth for some scans.
She'd said the 10 men invading the house and 2 more in the trucks all registered high on the Affinity for Hurting Others console, and reasonably high on the Danger console.
But the sole occupant of the house - a child - was neither dangerous nor liked to hurt others.
That was all they felt they needed to know, and they started making plans.
None of the 6 girls with them had brought guns - only two even had pockets in their outfits and they didn't want unsightly bulges in those - but that wasn't a problem. Simon had brought out a case holding enough laser pistols for everybody. It was a good choice for a novice shooter and he spent a moment explaining how they worked, how to reload, etc.
He emphasized that, without clouds of smoke or mist or similar, the beam would not be visible to anyone.
So if the girls were careful, they could provide very helpful fire-support while not looking like they were involved in the fight at all.
Two of the girls had gone to the small nearby building containing restrooms. They planned to use the lasers from bathroom stalls, standing on the toilets and firing out of the ventilation gratings.
Two planned to stay at the picnic table, as if still eating.
Their hands and weapons would stay under the table.
They planned to use the laser on sighting mode until the dot was on target, then fire, all without having to do any aiming in the traditional sense, so it would never be apparent they even had weapons.
One chose a tree to sit under and pretend to read, while firing from under the book like the picnickers would be firing under the table.
The last would be kneeling behind some bushes, feeding squirrels, yet holding her laser under a handkerchief and firing the same way.
Instructions had been given to the two GP - general purpose - robots they had been using as drivers, and who currently did not look like Robocop, because Ron had, for a joke, dressed them in the black hoodies and black jeans that seemed to almost be a uniform for this city. He'd added fake beards and sunglasses when he realized what a poor job the hoodies did of concealing their faces. Even still, they would be attracting a lot of attention except that they'd been left in the driver's seats and the cars they were driving had tinted windows.
When they got the signal, or when combat started, they had been told to emerge, move towards, and attack the kidnappers, but be careful not to let stray fire hurt the kidnapped child.
While Ron had instructed the robots, Simon had made arrangements with the battleship.
Some 9.2 inch cannons were prepared to fire special rounds in support - the 12-inchers had been judged too much: their shells weighed 850 pounds each, a little more than twice the 380 pound shells the smaller guns fired. 380 pounds was still a lot, but these would be air-burst chemical rounds, so they should be safe.
Basil's grandpa had searched for a safe tranquilizer - one with no chance of overdose and a 100% knockout rate.
He hadn't found one, but he had found a few interesting things, including a chemical which usually caused debilitating nausea, and had no problems from overdosing. These shells contained that, and another overdose-proof chemical which caused varying degrees of tiredness: fatigue like having had only an hour's sleep last night, up to exhaustion such as having had no sleep the last 2 nights, on up to unconsciousness in some cases, all depending on how an individual target reacted.
They figured that, the more they could impair the dozen kidnappers, the better, since they were obvious professionals, and were well-armed.
Simon had also arranged the use of the 3 "cheat consoles" as he thought of them.
Determine Destiny had been set to give them the best luck it could in the minute or so it had.
And the Probability Control console had been set so Brenda, the girl Ron liked - the one under the tree - would have the best luck from about a dozen possible outcomes. Basil had said something about quantum probabilities in co-terminus parallel dimensions and selecting the best result from among them.
It didn't make sense to Ron, beyond the idea that, among all the random factors involved in whether or not your shots hit as desired, she would have quite favorable luck.
She may or may not hit things, but random factors like itches, glints of light or other distractions, breezes etc would be as favorable as possible.
After her first shot, if it was a good shot, they'd "lock it in" with the Order Console. That one - again through quantum shenanigans of some type - could "lock in" certain variables so they didn't vary anymore. So if her first shot was a good one, so also would be her 2nd, third and so on.
It was limited to only one person and one task at a time, so the rest of them would only be as good as their skills actually justified.
But for this combat, Brenda would seem to be a highly expert markswoman.
Once she got in a good shot and that luck was locked in, they would switch the Probability Control console over to giving their opponents bad luck on their shots. Spread out on a few opponents, the luck wouldn't be impossibly bad. Each, if he understood it, would just have the worst result from two or three alternate realities.
It wasn't a guarantee, but it should help.
And they would need every bit of help against such a group.
But they couldn't make themselves just ignore the situation and be idle bystanders.
This was - more or less - exactly what they had set out to do. They'd planned to use the battleship to do the work of superheroes: righting wrongs and protecting the innocent etc.
And here was a chance to do so.
Ron and Simon had tossed a Frisbee a couple times, then both chased it across the street and argued about it.
They'd put on the show in case the drivers of the trucks were paying attention, as they probably were.
They actually were arguing, but about timing, not a Frisbee.
"We can't wait much longer, man. They're getting close. Distance is our best defense," said an agitated Simon, who nevertheless seemed as calm as could be, since he didn't like to show any weakness to anyone.
"I've almost got it figured out. I'm timing the drift to compensate for the wobble of the truck's motion and There!" Ron pressed the trigger of the laser he was holding and aiming from under the Frisbee.
The man in the passenger seat of the lead truck got his chest carved up a bit by the laser beam, in continuous mode, which hit him, and wobbled around a lot due to the truck's motion.
But in that wobbling, it also passed, several times, over the grenade hung on his tactical webbing. That grenade had been Ron's target.
After passing across the surface of the grenade a couple times, the laser had burned away enough of the outer metal casing to get to the explosive inside, which then exploded.
It had been a flash-bang grenade, meant to be non-lethal, but in the close quarters that were the cab of truck one, it still made a mess.
Simon fired less than a second after Ron did.
The basketball-sized blob of super-hot plasma from his gun impacted truck 1's front grille and rapidly burned and melted its way halfway through the engine block before its energy was expended.
With half the engine missing the tires ceased rotating and that truck slid to a halt.
While it did so, Simon's second plasma shot was doing the same thing to the second truck.
Both Ron and Simon then dove for cover behind a convenient car. They hoped it would absorb any incoming shots while they reloaded, and, more importantly, while the GP robots charged the enemy and drew their attention.
Before the GP robots were even fully out of their cars, two 9.2 inch artillery shells - fired from the battleship about 10 miles offshore and guided in by the laser, in sighting mode, held on them by Brenda - detonated with amazingly loud explosions as airbursts directly over the target trucks.
Men bailed out of the trucks, and though their weapons were up and clearly seeking targets, they were just as clearly in various states of impairment. Some retched. Some moved slowly and deliberately, as if very tired. But they all moved to take up the best combat positions they could to engage the two obvious oncoming robots, each of which already had a weapon out and firing.
With the men's attention mostly on the robots, they didn't even seem to notice the constant stream of laser fire coming at them from the park - what they thought was a 'safe' direction, since no obvious threats had manifested there.
A hail of rifle bullets bounced off the GP robots, shredding their hoodies, and ricocheting in every direction.
Those bullets didn't even dent the armor on the GP robots, at least until the kidnappers switched to armor-piercing rounds. Then their hits left small little dents in the advancing robots.
By the time the kidnappers switched to using their lasers, the two robots both resembled golf-balls, as far as having little round dents all over their surfaces.
The lasers could and did damage the robots, and those started accumulating cuts here and there, with the edges of the cuts glowing red-hot.
By the time the few remaining lasers ran out of power, the robots resembled zombies - lurching along oozing fluids through cuts and tears all over them, with some pieces dangling and others missing, all under the flaming remnants of their hoodies and jeans.
All the while the kidnappers were focusing on the GP robots, their own numbers were dwindling. They assumed it was due to fire from the advancing robots, and some of it was.
But the 8 explorers from the battleship's crew had been busy the whole while as well.
While doing their best not to get noticed and killed, they had each been taking as many shots as they stealthily could.
The hits they got added up.
The continual approach of the seemingly unstoppable robots apparently motivated the last 2 kidnappers to 'pop smoke and run', since a smoke grenade went off at their feet.
Smoke billowed out and hid the area around the two disabled trucks, but anyone could tell that it wouldn't last, since it was a breezy day.
Some of the battleship's crew took the opportunity to reload.
Ron and Simon both sprinted down the sidewalk, heading closer to the smoke, then took cover behind other parked cars.
The last parked car they had used for cover was shredded and not much good as cover anymore. Plus the new positions would give them better angles to shoot from, and a shot or two before their opponents figured out where they were.
The briefest moment after they each dove for cover, the smoke cleared enough to reveal one of the kidnappers standing on the left of the second disabled truck. He was holding a military LAW - for Light Antitank Weapon - rocket launcher, aiming it about where he expected the robots to be.
The moment he could see past his own smoke, he quickly adjusted his aim and fired the LAW.
The rocket streaked the short distance to the closer of the 2 robots, hit a shoulder, and blew it into smoking ruin.
The robot paused, considered its severed arm laying on the ground, then resumed its advance, though more wobbly than before.
As the kidnapper reached for a second LAW laying at his feet, Brenda hit it with her laser and it exploded.
In the brief silence following that, a voice near the second truck yelled "You win. Take the girl and go. If you try to pursue to capture us, we'll shoot her."
Before the voice had finished speaking, a girl-sized burlap sack, sprouting two little-girl legs, ran out of the smoke, stumbling and uncertain, but determined.
Simon was closest to her, so he called out "over here, behind the white sedan" and waved to her, in case she could see through the burlap at all..
Through a cut or tear in the sack, she saw him, and ran to him.
When she reached the car, he scooped her up into a hug - not easy while staying behind cover, but he didn't trust the other side, and there were still pockets of smoke they could be hiding in - and offered what comforting words he could, "it's OK honey, you're safe now and you'll be home real soon."
To Simon's surprise, a small but determined voice from within the burlap sack said "no."
Simon spoke calmingly while he started removing the sack, being extra careful so as not to scare the girl.
"It's OK. You're safe. I'm getting you free from this sack while my friends make sure that the bad-guys are all done and not going to do anything bad again. We're not going to hurt you. We'll let you go home to your family and life will be normal again."
The short girl with straight dark brown hair who emerged from the sack surprised him again, by saying "No. If you send me home, they will try again, with an 82.6% chance of success within the next two days. I can't go home. Not soon anyway."
"But where..."
"I need to come with you. If I do there's a 96.7% chance I'll be safe. That's the only option I know of that has better than 40% odds." The girl looked determined.
"But," Simon began, and paused, unsure how to put it delicately - she looked only 11 or 12 after all, "But these men are not going to bother you again. They're not going to bother anyone again."
As if to emphasize his point, he heard the sound of a gunshot ricocheting off a GP robot, followed by the sound of the robot's machine-pistol.
"No," she said again, "There are more than these. They only sent some of their group. The rest will try again."
"How do you know that?" Simon tried.
"Oh, not this again!" the exasperated girl wailed. "Look, I can explain later and show you why you should believe me, if you'll listen. But for now I'm not leaving your group and you can't make me!" She wrapped her arms and legs around his leg in a tight hug as little kids will sometimes do.
Ron coughed for their attention, "Wow, you make friends fast," he joked.
Ron was standing, out in the open, next to the car that was Simon's cover.
His right hand was holding some paper napkins to a bullet wound in his upper left arm.
Ron continued "Look, the short form is that the bad guys are, ah, done, some of us are hurt, and we're getting a portal out of here in," he checked his watch, "two minutes. Meet over by our cars, or rather, where our cars were. They got shot up pretty bad so we dismissed them. The 2 wounded - one pretty bad, are already there & the rest are helping them, gathering our stuff, and so on. Brenda is standing guard just in case - can you believe she was shooting their guns like in the movies? Ha ha. Normally impossible but she just does it. I'll have to explain that to her later."
There was the sound of a large heavy metal object being moved, a GP Robot yelling "Halt", a large crash, and two kinds of gunfire, ending with the sounds of a GP robot's machine-pistol.
Ron, looking in the direction of the disabled trucks, said "And that's why we didn't dismiss the robots yet. The count said there may be one more enemy somewhere, though the explosion of that rocket made it hard to be sure. Anyway, it looks like he went down a manhole and our robot found him and went in after him. So as soon as we take the portal out, we'll dismiss the robots too, since their job is done."
Ron grinned, "One last thing. I made that shot - you owe me 5 bucks."
He started to hold out his hand, saw the watch on his wrist, and said "Pay me later. Gotta go now. Don't be late, they won't be able to send a portal just for you, they're too busy."
Ron's voice dwindled as he hurried away.
Simon, his normally-impeccable suit rumpled, torn, dirty, and creased, got there just before the portal arrived, moving slower and more awkwardly than he'd have liked, since a 12-year old was fastened with all her might to his leg.
They all arrived at the battleship moments later.