Part Six

The quartet of supers met with the mixed team of law enforcement personnel at the headquarters of shipyard security early the next morning. A branch of the Port Authority, the security people had arrest powers, but for a much smaller territory and narrower range of offenses than the city police. There were the usual problems when Vic identified herself as federal LEO, despite both groups of non-supers being informed ahead of time that someone from the Bureau of Special Resources would be there. Not only did both groups think she was too young, but the head of shipyard security didn't know that the Bureau had any law enforcement authority. Still, these matters were quickly settled.

"Are you certain about this?" said the plainclothes police sergeant Blue Impact was talking to.

Vic, Energia and Gadgetive weren't certain - in that order - but maintained straight faces as their leader nodded.

"According to several of my contacts - including Mano Dura - this one particular dock received a ship of the right type days before the Storm Defiant was reported missing. A ship which had the name covered with a tarp. The dry dock - which is supposed to be out of service pending repairs - has also been blocking entry to local workers. Only people from outside the area have been allowed to work there, and they are all bussed in and out by the owner. They aren't allowed to speak to anyone or leave the dry dock area. They're practically prisoners."

"We have confirmed that the dock is supposed to be out of service," said the head of port security. "So, yes, that is suspicious. As well as illegal."

"If you'll support us before the judge, we shouldn't have any trouble getting a warrant for a raid," said the sergeant, to the security head. He then turned to the four costumed figures. "I would also definitely like super help with this. Not just because Constantine may be involved, either."

Normally, such a joint operation would not even be seriously considered. However, when told that Tricorne was looking for the ship carrying Moldaria's treasures both city police and port security were very eager to not be seen as impeding the investigation.

As was the judge. The warrant was quickly granted, and the three teams readied themselves. It helped that some of the members of Port Security remembered Tricorne - and Energia, especially - working to save lives and property in the aftermath of the Tritonicus II attack. It also helped that they now accepted Vic as a valid federal LEO, after calling to verify her status.

Preparations for the raid began. With luck, they would have the entire dry dock and surrounds under their control before lunch.

"You won't need those," said the city police sergeant, dismissively, as he saw Vic issue neutralizer counters to the members of Tricorne, before fastening one to her own belt. "Neutralizers are illegal."

Vic thought that was an odd position to take, given that the cops had all strapped on full riot gear, including heavy ballistic vests. It was illegal to resist arrest, too, as well as to shoot cops, yet he felt no hesitation about using those protections.

"We're talking about people who stole from one of the most powerful supers on the planet," said Vic, as she finished securing her counter unit to the belt on her armor, and making sure it was on. "Of course they're going to have neutralizers."

"They're illegal!"

"These people are criminals. They do illegal stuff all the time."

Vic ended the discussion by closing her helmet's visor with a distinct snap.

Energia wondered why this man - a cop who obviously was still working on the streets - was so adamant that because something was illegal criminals wouldn't have it. This wasn't the first time she had encountered the attitude, but it was usually found among purely administrative types. Bureaucrats who thought that if you passed a law against something, that would keep people from having or doing it.

Well, never mind. She focused on the job, as did the others in their three-lobed assault group. Each member of her own team - Tricorne plus Vic - was ready to go, and the two groups of LEO would be right behind them. The supers would be in the lead, mainly to draw any fire away from the two groups of cops.

The goal was to catch those working on the ship by surprise. They knew this might not happen; all it would take was one person on a smoke break seeing them approach and spreading the word. The quartet of supers therefore came in on foot, moving carefully from cover to concealment to cover. The ship was small in comparison to the dry dock. Even though it was on blocks, only the top of the smokestack and parts of some of the antennae were visible above the edge of the concrete-lined excavation.

"This is wrong," whispered Vic, as they used stacks of crates and tarp-covered piles to approach the open area around the dry dock. "There's no sign of anyone. No noises of people working, either."

"Yeah," said Energia, also quietly. They stopped behind a stack of crates, the last concealment before an open expanse of concrete between them and the midship gangplank. There were more crates and some idle equipment on the dock nearer the ship, flanking each of the gangplanks, but those were too far from other cover to help anyone approaching covertly. "This is creepy. Do you think they all left?"

"No," said Gadgetive, checking her instruments. "I'm getting several human-sized and -intensity heat sources from various hiding places on the dock and the ship, including just across from us. That may be why they have those things around dock ends of the access points. To hide the ambushers waiting there."

"Yeah," said Energia, nodding slowly. "I'm getting them too, now that you've pointed them out. I'm also thinking these other stacks of stuff near the ship are meant to channel people as they approach."

Gadgetive sent stealthy, flying drones around from either side to expand her scan.

"About twenty guys with guns," she noted. "All handguns, too. No rifles or shotguns. No neutralizers. I also see clubs and knives. They're on the ship in the middle, and behind the crates on the dock at the front, middle and back."

"I don't think those are professional gunmen," said Blue Impact, scowling uncertainly as she peered over Gadgetive's shoulder, trying to interpret the composite image. "They look like nervous but determined laborers."

"Could they be expecting someone else?" said Energia, frowning. "Not us or the cops, but some sort of gang attack?"

"Doesn't matter. We told the cops we'd go in first, so we go in first."

"What's our move, teach?" said Gadgetive, actually sounding eager.

"Intimidation. Energia, you up for Operation Rolling Lightning?"

"Just give the word," she replied, smirking. "I'm at full charge."

Blue Impact made sure each member knew her role, then gave the word, and they began. As Energia went high the others walked boldly out from behind the pile of crates they had been planning behind.

For a moment there was no response, and Blue Impact hoped that they might resolve this peacefully. Then someone yelled, and the shooting began.

Since all four were protected from such relatively minor attacks - Blue Impact by her dense tissues, Gadgetive and Vic by their armor and Energia by her plasma wall - none were particularly alarmed. As long as the bad guys stuck to handguns...

"Ow..." said Blue Impact, scowling at the shooters, and increasing speed.

"Ow," said Vic, pulling out her pair of tonfa and starting towards the shooters on her left.

"Ow." Gadgetive pulled out a net launcher, heading right.

"Wimps," said Energia, loudly from above and behind them, smirking and posturing.

The bad guys were already having morale problems. Then the lightning started.

Energia held out her hands away from her sides, as she flew with her body vertical, well above the concrete. Thin, snapping bolts of electricity shot down from her fingers, forking and sweeping rapidly around to leave a wide swath of smoking tracks on the pavement. Vic absently noted - as she veered to attack the aft group of defenders - that the sound of Energia's lightning changed depending on whether it hit concrete, metal or wood. Since that electrical display was behind the other three as they advanced, it helped distract the defenders from the charge of the ground-based attackers. It also gave the impression that the supers weren't going to let anyone escape.

In less than a minute, all the gunmen who hadn't already been physically subdued were frantically surrendering. From remarks they were making - mostly in Spanish but with smatterings of other languages - Blue Impact had the impression that the four supers were, indeed, definitely not who they were expecting. In fact, the gunmen expressed surprise and even outrage at super involvement in what they expressly said - once the city police and port security moved in and took over - was a "business" problem.

The quartet secured the gunmen with zip-ties and Energia guarded them from the air while the other three did a quick inspection of the ship. They confirmed that it was, indeed, the Storm Defiant, and that it was being prepared for full demolition, but discovered little else.

"Nobody home," said Vic, puzzled, as they emerged back onto the deck. "Not even anything in the hold."

"Likely, if anybody was still inside when we started our approach, they left by another route while we were busy," said Gadgetive, with a shrug. She smirked at her teammate. "Energia, I love ya', but your powers do sometimes get noisy."

"We should have had someone watching all the exits," said Vic, sourly, "instead of just hoping our raid would catch all of them before they could get away. Ah, well; locking the barn after the horse is gone."

"I think our priority was to seize the ship and its contents," said Energia. "The cops should have been the ones interested in making arrests."

"Yeah, but technically 'the cops' includes me!" said Vic, wincing. "I really need to learn to think like someone in law enforcement, rather than a costumed crime fighter. Brade has criticized me about this before."

"Well, our assigned role was to make it safe for law enforcement to enter; not to arrest anyone," said Blue Impact. "Technically, we didn't have to even capture these guys. We're not supposed to actually search the ship, either, but leave that for the port security folks. So, now that we know it's clear we wait for them to officially search the ship."

"Right, teach," said Gadgetive. She looked around. "Shouldn't they already be here, though?"

The quartet spent several increasingly impatient minutes guarding the prisoners before they saw the mixed force of city police and port security personnel finally approaching.

"What kept you?" said Vic, mildly.

"A bunch of heavily armed men," said the senior port security person present. "The mostly had clubs, knives and chains, though I wouldn't doubt some had firearms concealed. They actually outnumbered us. Took us a while to convince them that we were here for the folks working on the ship and that they needed to leave. Finally had to make a show of calling backup. We waited for our help to get there, then told them to guard the approaches to the dry dock while we moved in."

"That's probably a good idea," said Vic. She gave a tired sigh. "The folks here also had guns and clubs and knives. They obviously were expecting the trouble you chased off. The reinforcements you called can check for people trying to get in or out."

Fortunately, the city cops and port security had, indeed, thought ahead of the assault to place people around the dock to catch anyone trying to leave. Vic relaxed a bit. After a quick check of the situation, the head of the port security contingent approached Blue Impact.

"Damn. It looks like we almost walked right into the middle of a war between union and non-union workers. Would have if not for you."

"Things seem to be peaceful, for now," said Blue Impact, looking around. "Take these guys officially into custody, and then give the ship a thorough search. We need to report whether the Moldaria treasure is aboard or on the dock as soon as possible."

* * *

"A dead end," said the sergeant from the city police, sourly, hours later.

The delay was understandable; they had to make certain the cargo container with the valuables hadn't just been moved elsewhere on the ship, or onto the dock or into one of the surrounding buildings. It hadn't. The ship had actually been emptied well before the raid. Not just of things like the cargo, forgotten personal items, bedding, remaining food stores and the like. Rooms had been stripped bare, and even many partitions removed. There was barely enough infrastructure left for a skeleton crew to take it overseas for final scrapping. There was only one functional toilet left. In fact, from what the LEO and supers were seeing, it was almost ready to leave. Their raid had been just in time, from that respect. They still wished they had been here earlier.

There were no records of what had been removed. When asked what they had done with the missing items the captured workers were very vague. When pressured, they claimed that when they were brought in to work on the ship there was no cargo in the hold.

"Makes sense," said the head of the port security team. "Get those who know the ship and cargo are stolen goods out of here as soon as it docks, and then have a separate group come in to remove the cargo; then bring in the team to strip out everything else. To minimize who knows what at each stage. You don't even let the separate teams meet. I just wish we had learned it was here sooner."

"I'm sure the city's forensic team will find some clues," said Blue Impact, confidently. "If the people behind this theft weren't worried about it havingclues, why would they go to the trouble of cleaning it out this thoroughly? Whoever is behind this just didn't count on it being found so quickly."

"I hope you're right."

"Of course," said Vic, once the four supers were alone, walking on their way back to Tricorne's travel pod, "if the thieves really were worried about clues on that ship, they'd have just sunk it somewhere."

Gadgetive and Blue Impact could actually summon the flyer to their location with a remote command, but rarely used that function. Not only was the pod's autonavigation still a bit uncertain, Blue Impact didn't want to advertise that capability needlessly. For the same reason, Gadgetive rarely ran the pod by remote control from her pad... Though she often remotely accessed its sensors. So, this time - like most times - they went to the pod instead of calling it to them.

"If they weren't greedy, they wouldn't be stealing," said Blue Impact. "I suspect that the people behind the hijacking of the ship were hired by those actually after the treasure. The cargo could even have been taken off while it was still at sea, with another crew put on board who were told to scuttle it out past the continental shelf. They brought it here, instead, to recover money from the scrapping, beyond what they were already paid."

She sighed, and rubbed her head through her wig.

"That's just one possible scenario, of course. We may never know the details. Even if we find the treasure."

* * *

"I'm trying to figure out whether this is actually a mastermind plan," said Vic, later, not long after they arrived back at Blue Impact's bakery lair. "Sometimes it seems like it, sometimes it doesn't. It doesn't have the odd little touches, the flair..."

"I was thinking the same thing," said Blue Impact, nodding. "I suspect the actual hijacking is the work of a non-super criminal gang. A very competent, careful criminal gang. That doesn't mean there's no mastermind behind it all, though. Someone could be working through intermediaries to reduce the chance of the crime being tracked back to them. With Constantine involved, that's a reasonable precaution."

"There's just too much we don't know about this case," said Energia, scowling.

"That's why we are being so diligent about sharing info with other teams," said Blue Impact.

In fact, that sharing was the reason they were all gathered in the den of Blue Impact's lair just now, after a quick, late lunch. Another large video conference call was scheduled for that afternoon, US East Coast Time. Again, Constantine would participate. Which worried some of the others involved.

Still, the conference call went well. Tricorne - and Vic - were praised for finding the ship and encouraged to keep looking for the treasure. Meanwhile, the other teams were motivated by this success to increase their own efforts. Unfortunately, there were few new leads from anyone.

As the session neared its end, Constantine directed his gaze to those in Blue Impact's lair.

"I want to extend my personal thanks to you four. You found the ship. That brings us one step closer to ending this matter."

He signed off with no further comment. Some of the others participating in the conference video were obviously irritated by this, though others were just as obviously relieved.

* * *

After the conference call there wasn't much for those at the lair to do for the rest of the evening. Off-duty heroes were often left with nothing to do but the routine of patrol, wait, eat, train, socialize with each other and look for clues. Just now, it was too late for most of those. Given the activities of The FX, the quartet didn't really even need to patrol. The four supers in the old bakery were left with socializing. They wound out their day watching TV in the lounge area. However, as Gadgetive went through the listing of upcoming program contents she found something super connected.

"Ooh, here's a segment coming up about that new no-fly law," said Gadgetive. "Heh. Guy's name is Adam Koren, which keeps getting Autocorrected to Korean. They even have a note about that in the listing."

"I thought most people were just ignoring it," said Energia, puzzled. "The new law, I mean. Including the police and courts, since it's being challenged on constitutional grounds."

"Shhh!" said Gadgetive, changing channels with the remote and leaning forward.

The interview wasn't on, yet. They had to sit through commercials and a couple of unrelated segments, first. Then the studio announcer introduced the interview, which had been recorded earlier that afternoon. The scene cut to a nice-looking living room. The man being interviewed was middle-aged and looked fit, except that he sat in an obviously expensive chair - which Gadgetive later told them was a commercial model designed for orthopedic support - and moved very carefully.

"Look, I have a spine injury which makes walking and even standing painful," said Adam. "I can fly, though, which is great. However, because of problems with the law they passed last Summer nobody is supposed to fly until they figure out how to tell who is doing it legally. I risk breaking the law every time I go outside. I'm being punished because those idiots in the state legislature passed a stupid law and won't admit it, and now can't figure out how to enforce it!"

The interview was short and to the point. The recording closed with the interviewer back in the TV studio, live with her co-host.

"There you have it," said the interviewer. "Putting a human face on what most would consider an abstract point of law. Tom?"

"We do have a response from the sponsor of the bill," said the other program host. "It doesn't really answer any of the objections to the new law raised by Mr. Koren, or even address any of the problems it is causing, however."

The feed switched to a prerecorded video made at the state capital's foyer.

"All these people are whining about how it inconveniences them. This isn't about them! It's about public safety! For the good of the community, this guy needs to just suck it up and quit flying! Think of the children!"

The feed switched back to the studio. The two hosts were professionally straightfaced.

"We will have that interview in full at ten tonight."