Chapter 42
Lisa, followed by 5 men, stepped out of a portal near the base of a Ratte, and went up to Boz, who'd been standing on the grass gazing at the super-tank.
Lisa wasted no time, saying, "I'll look at your tanks if you look at mine."
"You have tanks?" he replied.
"Some were abandoned, unclaimed, in my city, so they're mine by right of conquest, more or less" she replied.
"You have a city?" Boz asked.
"I's a bit complicated. They still have an elected mayor and all that, but I've declared it a hub for the CAPES organization. As such it is under my organization's protection, and thus the spoils of conflict there belong to me. There are 30 tanks there - all banged up but some are probably repairable, and thank you so much for helping me with that." she smiled.
"What city?" he asked, trying to catch up.
"Brockton Bay of course, which, thanks to you, had a unique power-vacuum I could step into. All the former gangs and power-blocs are broken or entirely gone, including the PRT. Even the Protectorate transferred their remaining capes to other cities, which was a great opportunity, allowing me to hire some away from them. So, with no power-blocs remaining in the city, I stepped in and will be buying up everything there that I can and rebuilding it as a major shipping hub. It's a prime opportunity - much of the city is abandoned but repairable, and the rest is economically depressed, so they're desperate for the jobs I can provide as I refurbish the docks and infrastructure to support shipping, both by sea and rail. The workforce there is even remarkably well-adjusted mentally, thanks to you, so I'll be hiring most of them before others figure it out and try to get in on the deal."
"I knew your organization was making a profit, but it must be a lot more than I expected to be expanding so much so quickly," Boz mused.
"Yes, yes, and yes," Lisa replied, grinning, "Yes - we are making a profit. Yes - it is bigger than you thought. And yes - I will be happy to accept your help in making these purchases. You didn't say that, but you meant to. Don't worry, Boz dear, it'll just cost you a few tanker cars full of diesel fuel, teleported to 3 major cities which have agreed in principle to give me credit in exchange for them."
"Is that all," he asked wryly, then realized he probably shouldn't have, as she grinned very broadly.
"Actually, there is more, we'll need several teleportation portals to help my organization make arrangements for the big changes to come. And likely we'll need more diesel fuel as we make more deals. Oh, and of course more repair robots..."
"Fine, fine," he cut her off, "Let's get started."
Lisa grinned again and made shooing motions towards two of the five men that had come with her - the two wearing expensive suits. "Lawyers, you heard him - we have a deal. Go be lawyerly and make it all happen. Boz, send them back to Chicago - they charge by the hour."
The lawyers got sent back to their work, then Lisa introduced the other three men as two automobile mechanics with experience in big trucks, and a Tinker specializing in mechanical apparatus.
Then Lisa, her three assistants, and Boz all got busy exploring the Landkreusers.
They spent quite a while going through all 7 Landkreusers, examining, exploring, and searching them for information.
Lisa then found all the information they could wish for when she hacked into the Landkreusers' computers.
They got repair and maintenance manuals, operations manuals, blueprints, schematics, and miscellaneous build notes, for all three variants - the Ratte, model E and F, and the Monster.
Lisa helped load that information into the repair robots, and those got to work fixing the super-tanks, while the group then went to go check out the 30 wrecked tanks in Brockton Bay.
As the group stepped through a teleportation portal into a park, Boz looked around.
The park was trashed, having clearly been the site of a tank battle. That was obvious just from the damage, not to mention the wrecked tanks scattered about, and clustered near the possible exit routes.
Shrapnel had damaged everything, and there was only a single, lone, bush in a grass expanse that appeared to be undamaged. Everything else had been chewed up by shrapnel and explosions.
A testimony to the strength of some of those explosions was the upside-down tank, as well as a few tipped up onto their sides.
As the portal closed behind Boz's group, Boz saw a group of 30 men in hard hats sitting around to one side of the park.
One large man with a US Marines sticker on his hard-hat was wearing a t-shirt with a USA flag on it, emblazoned with the slogan, "I bet they did Nazi that coming."
He stood and approached, calling out, "Are you the boss? The lawyers said to expect a blond girl."
Lisa called back, "Yep, and the password is 'San Dimas high-school football rules!'."
"Excellent," the man replied.
"OK, she's the one," the De-Facto spokesman called back to the other men, who all got up and approached.
While they did, Boz quietly asked Lisa, "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure?"
"Of course," she replied, "It's a classic. Plus, there is absolutely no way a random person here on the east coast would just happen to say that by accident. So it made a good password. And having a simple password, to establish who I am, is so much better than a stack of paperwork."
Boz, who was watching for it, noticed a minor tell-tale clue from out in the park, indicating another little joke they'd discussed was now set up and ready to go.
Lisa spoke loudly to be heard by all 30 of the hard-hat wearing men who'd approached, "OK, the lawyers should have sent you all the details, did they, and did you bring the maps."
"Yes, and yes," replied the big spokesman in the flag t-shirt.
"Good," she said, "To summarize, we'll be rebuilding Brockton Bay as a major port and railroad trans-shipment point. I want to start with getting the docks refurbished and ready, and with refitting some recently-repaired ships we have. They are intact but still need engine fluids filled, batteries charged, flares and charts and such restocked and things like that, plus testing out in the bay. Any questions so far?"
"Yah," yelled one man in particularly worn clothes, "That's big talk but it will cost a lot to do. Show us the money!"
The spokesman hastily added, "Don't mind Larry - he's a good man. Just had a hard week. But his point is that the lawyers said we'd get a day's pay in advance."
Lisa opened a briefcase full of cash, took out one of the stacks of bills, and closed the briefcase. Then she handed the stack to the spokesman and said, "This is the amount agreed upon, please distribute it among your men now."
"Hey," Larry called, "Maybe you're not from around here and don't know. But carrying around that much cash is just begging to get mugged. I want to work for someone who has enough sense to still be alive and able to pay us tomorrow. What's to prevent us from just grabbing that briefcase and leaving?"
The spokesman yelled, "Shut up Larry. Don't spoil a good thing. It's a day's pay at least."
He turned to Lisa and added, "We're the kind of men who work for what we get, not the kind that just try to take it. That kind have had it really rough the last couple weeks and there are a lot fewer of them now. But there is still a danger in carrying around lots of cash like that."
Some of his men agreed, saying "Yah," or "That's right."
"It's good that you're willing to work - there's a lot to do," Lisa replied, and added, "And it's a valid question. So I will demonstrate the value of not being seen."
Her voice got louder and she called, "Mister Bradshaw, will you stand up please?"
A man holding a rifle and wearing a stealthed DragonSuit stood from behind the one intact bush remaining in the park, to which he'd quietly been teleported after Boz's group arrived.
Immediately after standing, he fired off his rocket boosters, launching himself into the air. Then he flew over to a nearby building, landed on top, and concealed himself again.
Ron had wanted to assist the rocket take-off with some additional explosive burst from the Illusion Console. It would have made a better joke -as if the man had been blown up like in the Monty Python skit - but they'd decided not to, since most of the value in being able to make illusions came from folks not knowing that you could.
Lisa said, "That was a rather obvious bit of cover, but you get the idea. We have folks around town to keep the peace - some obvious, and some hidden, like Mr. Bradshaw was, to keep people unsure of whether they can get away with things. You can't have a busy and prosperous port amid anarchy, can you? But that brings me to the next point - there is much to be done, and we need a lot of workers. Each of you will be a foreman. Your first act will be to go recruit as many other workers as you feel able to manage. I am not a micromanager. I will leave it up to you to make decisions within your areas of expertise and experience. We will judge by results. If you hire your cousin and he slacks off or has no ability to do the job - you will be held accountable. On the other hand, there is nothing wrong with hiring your cousin if he's a good worker."
She paused, then pointed at three of the men, "You, you, and you, will be my team-leads. Workers will report to foremen, who will report to team-leads, who will report to my assistant, Jeff here," She gestured at one of the mechanics she'd brought along. "And until the rest of you learn how, Jeff will also be directing these," she gestured to a building, and out from behind it came marching rows of repair robots, from a teleport portal concealed behind the building.
The repair robots immediately set to work sorting out the mess of destroyed tanks.
Lisa announced, "That's the end of my speech. It's time to get to work. Jeff and I will be available for a little while to answer questions and arrange what you need, while my friends look over the tanks. OK, who is first?"
Several men raised their hands.
Lisa and Jeff got busy talking with the dock workers, while Boz, the other mechanic, and the Tinker mechanic, started working with the repair robots to sort out and examine the wrecked tanks.
It was probably half an hour before Lisa and Jeff came over to Boz and asked, "So what have you learned?"
The other mechanics came over as Boz said, "You wanted to know how many are repairable to help keep order in the town. Not to be Captain Obvious here, but they are junk."
"You're not Captain Obvious," Lisa said," besides, he is dead."
"What?"
"Captain Obvious was a cape. He had no secret identity, he was too obvious for that to ever work. He was also very unpopular, and is now dead."
"Was his power to make things annoyingly obvious?"
"Obviously!," Lisa grinned. "Actually, strictly speaking, it was mind-control, which he could not turn off. Everyone within a hundred feet of him was compelled by his power to say whatever was on their mind - to speak their surface thoughts. Constantly. Most of it was obvious stuff, but that's only part of how he got his name. He also grabbed everyone's attention, as if he was 50 feet tall, and lit up like a glowing neon sign assisted by a disco ball and theme music. That, too, was something he could not turn off. So you see why he could not have a secret ID."
"That could potentially be very useful," Boz mused.
"Potentially," Lisa granted, "But he got off to a bad start and never recovered. Just before he triggered and became a cape, he was suing someone for fraud. Everyone in the court room was lying and ignoring him, to the point where he triggered and got the powers I mentioned. Triggering knocks you out, and when he came to, he was tied up and just about to be thrown into a lake by an angry mob, led by lawyers and judges, who, under the influence of Captain Obvious's power, had all been talking nonstop about their various misdeeds."
"I thought you said they had to speak whatever was on their minds?"
"True, and that started out random, until one mentioned taking a bribe about this case, then that brought bribery to the minds of others, and they all spoke about that. And that brought other corruption to their minds, and so on." Lisa answered.
"I could see that." Boz sighed, "And what a way to go - get so frustrated you get super-powers, then get killed within moments of waking up. Sad to see that potential go to waste too."
"Yup," Lisa agreed, "except that being thrown into the lake didn't kill him. He managed to survive somehow and go live in a cave. But he came out every so often to try to do super-hero-types of things, and on his third trip an angry mob finally caught him and killed him, less than two months after he triggered. Apparently, to that point he had not known about the second power - the one which makes him obvious. So he tried to sneak up to a courthouse and lurk outside to make the corrupt folks within reveal their crimes and incriminate themselves. That had become something of an obsession for him. He had a really good hiding place too. But the mob found him anyway."
She shook her head, "But back to the topic - you are definitely not Captain Obvious. And yes, these tanks are made out of junk. So? Which ones can be repaired?"
"I pointed out their junk construction because, with each one being unique and effectively hand-made, we won't have any schematics or blueprints to feed to the repair robots. They can still help in repairing the tanks, But it will be a lot more manual process. That's why I judge only these seven," he handed her a list," to be repairable. The rest would take so long that it'd be faster to build new ones."
"Fine," Lisa replied," what else?"
"The other side of that sheet I just handed you lists the Tinker tech we found, as you requested. It includes lasers, heat-rays, plasma guns, and some very interesting steam engines I think you should take a look at. The rest is standard tech."
"Great," she said, "I'll want the seven tanks repaired. I'll get them crewed and then they'll help keep order in the city. The guns - Tinker tech and otherwise - from the rest I want removed and used to arm trains and ships run by CAPES. The rest is scrap and will be used as such. Now let's look at that steam engine you mentioned."
They did, and a few minutes later Lisa had a twinkle in her eye as she said, "This could be big. Right now diesel fuel is as good as cash, since there's never enough of it and everybody needs it. By the way," she turned to Boz, "I need a few more tanker cars at the railway junction filled with that. We have deals to make. One of which," she hastened to add, "is with Dragon. She owes CAPES a favor, for protecting one of her shipments - we happened to come across it while it was being attacked. I don't know if it's a big enough favor for this, so we'll sweeten the deal with a dozen or so tanker cars full of diesel fuel, which even she needs. In exchange for that, I can get her to look into this steam engine. It doesn't have much in it that's strictly Tinker tech. Most of it can already be built and maintained by regular people, rather than just Tinkers. The mechanical parts are an intuitive leap in their design, but still simple in their function and easy for anybody to duplicate. Even the flame catalyst in the burn box can be built by non-Tinkers, now that it's known. It's just a mesh made of of certain chemical compounds, with no moving parts nor electronics at all. If Dragon can get the remaining Tinker tech - the very cold re-condenser - re-engineered to be buildable and maintainable by non-Tinkers, then the whole engine can be mass-produced by anyone, at any scale. And it can efficiently burn any fuel - anything that burns. Trash, leaves and lawn clippings, old tires, whatever. Fuel would cease being an issue. And the burn is so hot that basically all of the fuel is consumed, meaning there are very little emissions or pollutants. This could revolutionize our transportation industry!" she exulted.
"Neat," Boz said, trying his hand at understatement. Judging by the looks on their faces, he'd achieved it.
He added, "Can we also get her to look at that Bose-Einstein Condensate launcher we captured in the one Ratte? I think that could be useful too."
"Sure, Boz honey, just throw in maybe 20 more tanker cars of diesel fuel and I'll ask. Though I don't know why it matters to you - you've been scanning everything into your Replicator unit as we went. So you can make more whenever you want. But be that as it may, I need to point out that all dealings with Dragon have to be through me. We have to be very careful to avoid giving any evidence suggesting I have an association with you, other than occasionally hiring each-other for some temporary task. She has orders from the government to destroy you or capture you - the battleship, specifically - if she can, and we don't want to get her started on that - trying to get at you through me. She's a useful associate but would be a vexing opponent. Right now everybody knows I have worked together with the battleship on occasion, like in collecting the bounties for the Slaughterhouse Nine. But lots of people hire out for a job here and there - that will be overlooked as a transient task - a simple business arrangement, as long as we don't suggest it's anything more than that. She doesn't know I have anything more than that to do with you, and we'll keep it that way."
Boz was disappointed, but agreed.
Lisa's assistants and the robots got to work.
Boz and Lisa teleported back to the ship, where each gave orders to their respective organizations.
Then, once Lisa said that purchases had been made and arrangements were ready, Boz teleported teams of repair robots to points every 100 miles along the railroad track from Kansas City - CAPES's westernmost outpost - to Long Beach California, where Lisa would be doing just as she'd done with Brockton Bay - buy up the derelict, mostly-abandoned town, fix it up, and make it into a major port and rail facility.
And she was negotiating options to buy the ports at Los Angeles and San Francisco too - they were cheap at the moment, but would not remain so.
Boz also launched several Reset missiles at Long Beach - easily within their range - to help Lisa prepare the local supply of workers. People who are well-adjusted mentally make better workers in just about every way.
When that was done Boz teleported Lisa with some assistants from CAPES, to an office in another country - the first of several offices she'd visit in that way that day.
The plan was to send another teleportation portal in half an hour to pick her up, then send her and her team to the next city on her list.
During that half-hour, Boz and his crew shrunk two Rattes, loaded them on the deck with telekinesis, and made a quick trip to Mars Colony in Dimension 1, stopping first at Venus to get another load of atmosphere.
Then, at Mars, they made a new dome for each Ratte, and filled them with air from Venus. Each dome included a ridiculously big airlock - big enough for the Ratte to drive through, so it could serve as a mobile exploration vehicle once repaired and adapted to local conditions.
They made some quick explanations to the Martian colonists, left some repair robots working on the Rattes, and headed back to Earth-Bet in Dimension 29.
They got there in time to pick up Lisa's group and send them to the next country on her list.
Then they repeated the cycle, taking two Monsters to Mars Colony this time.
So they spent the afternoon, transporting Landkreusers to Mars in Dimension 1, and sending Lisa's group all over Earth-Bet - first to her existing offices in other countries, then to Dragon, then to various other places, including a spot just north of Brockton Bay.
For that trip, she went with a hundred robots - mixed GP and combat types - plus 5 dozen volunteer DragonSuits, and they all assaulted a group of warehouses, including 7 where the Landkreusers had been assembled.
The few Nazis the Empire had left there didn't put up much of a fight. The ideologically zealous ones had all gone with the Landkreusers, leaving behind the ones who were not so committed to Nazi principles, and even some who belonged to the organization for other reasons entirely, such as feeling a need to belong to a gang and not having other workable options.
Sorting them out would be Lisa's problem.
She had heard about their presence there and wanted to both clear out a threat, and capture materials she could use, including the warehouses themselves.
In those warehouses, they captured a bunch of machinery that had been used to help build the Landkreusers, more machinery that was for maintaining and repairing them, and more for making ammunition for them, plus some stockpiles of that ammunition including some made of Osmium.
Of course, Boz got scans of it all for his Replicators.
In addition to all her trips via teleporter, Lisa also made a lot of calls. One of those was to Dragon, asking for an update.
It turned out that Dragon was willing to work on both the steam engine, and the BEC launcher. But she wanted a teleportation portal maintained for 30 minutes between her factories, and each of three suppliers of raw materials, so she could get caught up on backlogs.
Boz supposed that would give Dragon evidence that Lisa was working with the battleship. But Lisa assured him she could fake the evidence so that Dragon would decide the portals came from Chariot, a local mobility Tinker who could do that and was hiring out.
Boz wanted to be extra sure, so in the end they just had Lisa hire Chariot to make the portals for Dragon.
Dragon was so pleased with getting caught up on raw materials deliveries, that she gave Lisa, gratis, a short document outlining how to convert the Tinker tech lasers Lisa had, into standard tech maintainable by anyone. Pyrotechnical of ToyBox had been selling his lasers for a long time, and Dragon had long since worked out how to standardize them like this.
That change would make Lisa's tanks safer, as well as the ships and trains she mounted the other lasers on.
And it would also keep the Rattes safer, since they used the same ToyBox lasers.
The lightning guns on the Rattes were already simple enough to be maintainable by anyone.
As the afternoon passed, more and more repairs to the battleship got completed.
Among those, Boz had the repair robots make the ship actually look like the appearance which Ron had been maintaining using illusion.
Boz had decided he liked the gray camouflage paint scheme. Although "paint" was the wrong word, in this case. HMS Agamemnon was not painted, it was enameled, which is a process often done to cookware meant for camping, for instance, to keep it from rusting. Enameling something involved melting a coating at high temperatures so it could flow over the piece being enameled, and that worked fine for cookware, which could fit into an oven, but was totally impractical for battleships - except when you had the Shape Matter power to spread the coating for you.
So, where most other ships had to continually run a process of painting, scraping off old damaged paint, and re-painting, Agamemnon only needed to be coated the once. Regular corrosion and use didn't bother the enamel. But being shot did. And since it had to be re-done anyway after taking so many hits from the Rattes, Boz took the opportunity to change the 'paint' scheme while he was at it.
Late in the afternoon, Boz's group tested the forcefield in offensive mode.
They started simple - just turning it on, then off again. The icon to do so looked like a squirrel that had been blow-dried, but was apparently supposed to be a hedgehog.
They tried other simple things, like switching modes with the forcefield already on - both actively on, and set to automatic, where it would turn on in response to a threat. Nothing broke, so they launched a replicated PT boat and had it try its light weapons - machineguns, 20mm cannon, and 40mm cannon - against the battleship.
Then it tried a practice torpedo - loaded with concrete rather than explosives.
They analyzed the results and determined that, if the regular forcefield was like a simple wall, then the offensive forcefield was like a cloud of razor-blades maybe ten feet thick.
With either one, an attack had to penetrate the same total amount of forcefield to get through. But with the offensive one, the attack was getting sliced and diced as it did so - like it was being put through a blender.
That destroyed the smaller weapons, including the 40mm.
The practice torpedo got through, but it looked like a potato that had been attacked by a cheese-grater.
So they expanded and tried some planes, having them fire practice missiles and bombs at the battleship, with the same result as with the practice torpedo, except they learned the the faster something was going, the more shredded it got.
Then a Duplicate of Abe, volunteering in a Replicated Komet, skimmed the top surface of the offensive forcefield, as if trying to land on it. That cheese-gratered the bottom of his plane rapidly, eating it away until the plane lost control, crashed into the forcefield, and got turned into confetti.
They were about to try that again, with a much more stoutly built Skyraider, when Lisa called and dropped her next bombshell.
"I want a couple Rattes," she said. "Sea-going shipping is about to make a huge comeback, and we've been working on getting ready for that. We have ports and ships being worked on. But we need a shipyard. Most of those went out of business long ago. I've bought one - in Norfolk Virginia - which we will refurbish, along with the port, but repairs there will take a long time. I know of only one shipyard currently in operation and I want it. But it is run by drug lords, specifically, Emil Vargas of Columbia, who owns Seagoing Holdings Limited, which in turn owns Los Santos shipyard in Venezuela."
'How do you plan to get that?" Boz asked, "Countries tend to get upset when invaded by foreigners, especially when those foreigners intend to keep what they take."
"Oh ye of little faith! Boz honey, you should know me better than that. Not only will I invade them without government opposition - they'll actually pay me to do it! You may now congratulate me and express well-deserved admiration. A little awe may even be appropriate." Lisa replied smugly.
"That does sound like an impressive achievement. How will you do it?" Boz asked.
"That's effusive praise indeed, coming from you, Captain Self-Control, which, as far as I know, by the way, is not yet the name of any cape, so is available for you if you want it, and happen to get super-powers." Lisa snarked.
"But to answer your question, the summary is this: the police can deputize others, including on a temporary basis and/or a contract basis. So I'm negotiating with both countries to get my team hired as temporary, contract police deputies with the special commission to take on big drug gangs. And we're making sure to include in the contracts, language guaranteeing that the existing right of police - to seize for their own use the assets of drug gangs they defeat - will still apply to us! So they'll hire us to come in, beat up the drug gangs, and we get to take and keep their stuff, including the shipyard."
"Impressive. No wonder your organization is doing so well: you can find ways to not only be allowed to do what you want, including looting bad guys, but also get paid to do it. Tell me, where do you find the time for it all?" Boz asked.
"Easy," Lisa's smirk was audible somehow, "I hire competent people and offload to them as much of the work load as I can. Of the many hours of labor spent on this particular shipyard shenanigan - to figure it out, investigate it, work out the details, and negotiate it - I haven't personally spent more than an hour, mostly in the initial brain-storming session and then some spot-checking. That's the only way I could ever keep up with this explosive expansion. Although," she added thoughtfully, "after you leave tomorrow with your food and manuals, I will be looking forward to catching up on sleep as things slow down a lot. You and your battleship are a tremendous catalyst for change."
"Thanks." Boz said, "That was our hope - to change things for the better. So when do you need the Rattes? I believe they still need a few more hours of repair before they'll be even marginally serviceable again."
"That will be fine," Lisa responded, "We still have a few hours of negotiations left before the agreements are to our liking with both governments. I'll let you know." Lisa answered.
-0-0-0-
Wanda Perkins was on fire.
No, she corrected herself, better to use the term 'on a roll' instead. "On fire" was what she would be if Rebecca Costa-Brown ever came back. In that case, Wanda would be "On Fire", or worse, given all the decisions that she was making as if she were Costa-Brown, for whom she'd spent years working as her double..
But that was OK, she was certain now that Rebecca, aka Alexandria, was never coming back.
Major events had happened that Alexandria would absolutely have shown up for if she was able - like the super-tanks advancing on Washington DC.
She hadn't shown up, so she almost certainly couldn't. And that freed Wanda's hands to do some of the things she'd felt desperately needed doing.
The investigations she'd previously ordered - looking for proof of incompetence or corruption for Director Piggot and Director Tagg - had borne fruit.
Wanda had fired both of them, with cause, and plenty of proof.
Then, feeling good about having made a difference, she'd set about 'cleaning house' and firing all the other incompetent or corrupt folks in the PRT, from the top on down, with criminal proceedings being prepared where appropriate.
Wanda had been a De-Facto member of the PRT for a long time, and had been 'keeping her eyes open'. She knew about a lot of incompetence and corruption. But she had not previously felt able to act upon that knowledge.
With that kind of a head-start, change was very rapid.
Wanda was also giving promotions within the organization, where they were deserved.
For example, she'd promoted that nice young Lieutenant Beechum who had done so well defending Concord from the Rattes.
He was now a Captain in charge of a small tactical response unit.
And his former bosses were all getting criminal charges prepared against them.
Another man she'd promoted had been Major Bigelow, the commander of the PRT forces around Eagleton Tennessee, which were there to keep Machine Army bottled up in the walled-off city.
His was an interesting case.
Wanda knew that his second in command, Captain Finch was really working for Cauldron. But she knew that from things overheard from the Triumvirate, not from things she could prove. So she couldn't move against Captain Finch yet.
Still, it had interested Wanda that Cauldron had subverted Captain Finch and worked through him, rather than the local commander, Major Bigelow.
It would have been much easier for them to have worked through Major Bigelow, when controlling Machine Army.
So the fact that they had not, suggested that they could not.
That had warranted a personal interview, so Wanda could judge things for herself.
And indeed, Major Bigelow had impressed her. Not that he was particularly impressive in any way but one - but that that one thing was invaluable: his integrity was as solid as they come. He was honest and absolutely reliable when it came to doing his duties.
Dependable people like that are the solid foundation of any good organizational structure. So Wanda had promoted him to Colonel, and he was currently in charge of doing what she'd started out doing - cleaning up the PRT as an organization. That included both hiring and promoting good people, and getting rid of the bad ones, or jailing them as needed.
He could not be bribed, though he could be fooled, as his former second in command, Captain Finch had done. Finch had explained some things away with plausible theories, falsified some documents, hidden other things, and generally managed to keep Bigelow unaware of Finch's activities with Machine Army.
Finch had been setting up Bigelow to take the blame for when Machine Army finally broke free and went on whatever rampage they were planning.
Setting up the Major as a scapegoat, if successful, would have protected the Captain, and possibly gotten him promoted. That seemed to have been one of Cauldron's goals - helping their people rise higher in the organization.
Wanda didn't yet have the proof to go after Captain Finch, and, in promoting Bigelow to Colonel, she had needed a new commander for Eagleton. So she'd put Captain Finch in that position temporarily.
It was a calculated risk.
She figured that, by so doing, she'd made it much harder for Finch to blame things on anyone other than himself if Machine Army did rise and escape. And, because that was true, she hoped that thereby she'd delayed that rise - that Captain Finch would put off ordering Machine Army's escape until he had arranged things somehow to keep himself safe from the aftermath.
That was her hope, but it wasn't a very strong one.
She'd had some general investigations going, and, in the course of those, had found a very disturbing item.
In the break room at Eagleton Base, was a notice board, where people posted messages and announcements.
Captain Finch had recently stopped at that notice board, and paid particular attention to a message, posted about a week earlier, about someone finding a lost dog.
Reading such a message is not by itself suspicious - except that Finch was known to dislike dogs.
But what is more, Finch had copied the message on a nearby photocopier.
So Wanda had also arranged to get a photocopy of that message, which she'd then passed on to the Thinker capes who handled code-breaking for the PRT.
It had indeed been code, and said:
"At first opportunity, use M.A. to end battleship frequenting Brockton Bay. Then expand your area of control as much as able."
It was signed "Contessa", who Wanda knew to be a highly placed operative in Cauldron.
Even decoded, the message wasn't proof.
Nor was the fact that Finch had then hired a mercenary cape known as Zap, a Mover type of cape whose main power was to turn himself, and anything he touched, into lightning, then travel at the speed of lightning in a straight line up to a cloud, near, or far, then down again at any angle he liked, for nearly instant travel to distant points.
Wanda figured that Cauldron, through Contessa, had ordered the Machine Army to destroy the battleship - the one she'd been told was just an illusion by the former briefing officer Willoughby.
Since being told that, she'd learned a lot about that battleship's actions - speaking of it and it's crew as a unit.
Officially, she was supposed to oppose the battleship - it had been branded an outlaw by over-zealous local officers. And technically, it had been central to a number of crimes. But in reality, those had mostly been varieties of resisting arrest, when there had been no valid reason to arrest them in the first place.
Sure, they had done things such as fire deadly weapons within city limits, which were technically crimes, but hadn't really been enforced since the advent of capes.
And in things that mattered, the battleship had very much been doing what heroes did - opposing villains. And they'd done very well at it.
So Wanda was conflicted.
She needed and wanted to oppose Machine Army, and get them destroyed or back under control somehow.
But she couldn't do much about that officially - at least not yet, since what she knew, she knew by means that would get her killed if revealed.
And she wanted to protect those who were doing good, including that battleship.
But, with her hands effectively tied, she was looking at the possibility of just staying out of it - letting Machine Army go up against the battleship, to do what damage they could to each other, and hope the warship won, while being ready to step in if Machine Army was winning.
She was still looking into options, but that was all she could think of at the moment. She hoped there would be time to think up and act on a better option.
But she had plenty of other things to think of as well.
The entire population of Madison Wisconsin - driven insane by The Simurgh and walled off in that town - had gone missing somehow.
Wanda had people out looking, to hopefully find them before the crazies went out of control and caused all sorts of trouble.
And that reminded her of even worse troublemakers.
The Fallen were stirring up trouble.
They were an extremely problematic group of destruction-worshipers, and included many capes among their numbers.
They worshiped the endbringers as gods, and hoped to bring about the end of the world.
Their lowest ranking members were quite 'unruly', so to speak, though they didn't usually risk committing really big crimes, but the high-ranking ones, and their capes, had little hesitation in doing so.
They were primarily built around three interconnected families - the McVeays, the Mathers, and the Crowleys.
They routinely kidnapped, brainwashed, and even mind-controlled other people, to add to their numbers
And those Fallen around Wichita were currently stirring each-other up, preaching up fiery sermons about 'cleansing' others, meaning destroying them.
Possibly worse, they were trying various things to see if they could spur more endbringer attacks - such as inviting endbringers in various ways.
They disgusted Wanda, who thought that such groups gave religion a bad name.
In her mind, they were not really religious - just using the trappings of religion, and some of its methods, to achieve their own ends: in other words they were classic 'wolves in sheep's clothing'.
But a wolf in sheep's clothing only works because sheep really do exist. In other words, there really were honestly religious people out there who were trying to do their best to be good, and help others while they were at it.
She herself, was quietly religious - she believed, and attended church through online broadcasts, but she didn't advertise the fact.
She'd long since stopped mentioning anything about religion to any but other religious folks, or those who asked about it, since she was sick of getting gratuitously attacked by those she thought of as being 'anti-religious'.
That group seemed to have a knee-jerk response where they verbally attacked anytime somebody mentioned religion, as if it was some kind of sacred duty of theirs to prevent any discussion of beliefs they did not share.
Wanda smirked at the hypocrisy of them thinking they had, not just the right, but the duty, to expound their beliefs at all times and in all places it came up, while denying the same right to those with different beliefs.
If she could keep her thoughts to herself, even in the presence of those she disagreed with, then so could they.
Her smirk turned into a broad smile as she thought of how things always went - eventually - for wolves in sheep's clothing.
And, in some ways, that was happening to The Fallen.
They'd recently tried to rob a train headed into Kansas City.
They'd known that it was being run by that new organization - CAPES - and that, as such, it would have protection.
So they'd brought a group of capes with dynakinetic powers, who would be protected from the machineguns, small cannons, and missiles that CAPES' trains were known to have.
That hadn't worked out for them.
They'd shown up, full of the bragging and bluster of overconfident folks, and approached the moving train.
Then, out of the train's caboose, had flown Purity - the second strongest Blaster type cape in the country - maybe the strongest now that Legend was missing.
Purity used to be with a gang, but had quit and gone independent, then, like so many other capes, had gone to work with CAPES when they'd offered her a better deal.
The Fallen dynakinetics, who could have manipulated machinegun bullets and similar, had had nothing they could do to prevent themselves from being blasted with lasers.
All The Fallen in that encounter had quickly perished - CAPES did not fool around with 'catch and release'.
Purity having been there was either incredible luck for CAPES, or confirmation that they had Thinkers working with them to predict attacks and prepare for them.
And if any more confirmation had been needed, then the next attack - where The Fallen had tried to avenge themselves upon CAPES by attacking another train, had provided it.
In that attack, they'd brought several Master type capes, with various mind-control powers.
The train had responded by releasing attack-robots, who, not coincidentally, were immune to mind-control.
The deaths of those mind-controllers had hurt The Fallen, and they'd backed off from other attempts to attack CAPES's shipments, at least for now.
But it looked like they were re-directing their urge for revenge outwards - towards the world at large.
And that was keeping Wanda up at nights, even though she had skilled people - like Captain Beechum - looking into what the PRT could do about it.
It would be bad enough if The Fallen just used their own membership - especially the capes - to do something like riot on a grand scale. They seemed to be gathering for that.
It would be far worse if they managed to actually convince - somehow - an endbringer to attack.