Part Eight

As it turned out, they were too late. Even as they were trying to arrange for a watch on Cong, an alert came in from the base hangar that the strongman had taken a hopper with no explanation. He launched at full throttle, too, bringing noise complaints from several fronts.

"We better get after him," said Mesa, with a tired sigh, when Steel Lace used their personal coms to tell him about this.

"He didn't file a flight plan, but I don't think there's any doubt where he's going."

"Well, we have other hoppers."

Steel Lace selected herself, Mesa, Andrea, Lungfish, Cumulous and Tiger (semi-blaming him for Cong going AWOL) to go on the trip. That was about all the hopper she selected could comfortably carry.

They made a less noisy takeoff, using the fanjets on high-bypass mode and moderate throttle. Once high and fast enough they switched to the rockets for the suborbital hop. With the later and more conservative start they were behind Cong, but not by a huge amount. The distance was not all that far or nor the time long for a hopper trip.

As they traveled, however, Steel Lace began making calls. One of those was to Brade at the Bureau of Special Resources. Each call was terse, as there was not a huge amount of time available. Several of those called promised help, but it would be a while arriving.

* * *

Vic was rather surprised when Drake hurried into the combined office of her and the other two employees. The usual procedure was for him to call her to his.

"We have an emergency," he said, a bit unnecessarily. He gave a digest version of the problem with Cong. "Brade says she's calling Tricorne. If they agree to help, they'll stop here to give you a lift to the island. Note that the official reason for sending anyone there is to stop Cong from creating an international incident. However, if, in the process, you find anything suspicious..."

"I get it," said Vic, nodding. "I better get my armor on, then."

She grabbed the case from the shelf behind her desk and hurried to the women's restroom.

* * *

"I am very glad you folks could give me a lift," said Vic, in her armor, as Tricorne's large apergy pod climbed past the von Kármán Line. "I'm also glad to have people I know along for this. There could be dozens of potentially hostile supers on that island, plus who knows how many security guards."

"I'm just glad some folks from the Bay Area Guardians will get there before us," said Energia. "Having to face that many supers - even if most are supposed to be low level - is not going to be fun."

"There's a lot more heading there besides us and some of the Bay Area Guardians," said Blue Impact. "Like the Planetary Guardians, some may beat us there. I just wish we were all going to come in at once. It would be more intimidating that way. Intimidation could be important in this matter."

* * *

Steel Lace and those with her watched their destination grow rapidly larger through the front windscreen. Reentry over, they had a clear view, in part because any dirt or smudges on the outside of the transparent ceramic had been burned off.

"I'm getting the airport beacon, but no response to calls," said Andrea, who was in the copilot's seat.

"They're probably busy," said Steel Lace, with a sigh. "So, it's see and be seen."

The Super Battle Federation facility actually occupied one medium-sized island and several smaller ones. Multiple structures could be seen on the largest island of the group. There even appeared to be a network of roads. Several of the smaller islands also had one or more structures, with trails, some of which might have been paved. One island even had what appeared to be a small, though dormant, volcano. Many of the buildings were obviously new construction, but some were older. A few appeared to be much older.

"I can already see the hopper Cong stole," said Andrea, as they dove for the facility's airport. "There's still no response from the local air traffic control."

"Okay, Cumulous, get ready," said Steel Lace.

"Roger," he replied, unbuckling his harness.

He moved deftly to the small airlock and shut the inner door, then began equalizing pressure. This wasn't his first such bailout; he got the pressure to ambient just as they passed two thousand meters, as planned. He shut the valves and cracked the outer door. Steel Lace, seeing this on her instruments, momentarily pulled up to bring their airspeed close to zero. Cumulous exited, made sure the outer door was closed and latched, then flew up and away from the hopper. Steel Lace dropped the nose and resumed the descent.

"There!" shouted Andrea, just before they would have flared for a conventional wheeled touchdown. "I see Cong! He's down, and there are supers and guards all around him!"

"Then we forget a roll-out landing!" yelled Steel Lace.

She pulled the nose of the hopper up, used the fanjets in VTOL mode to completely kill their forward speed and dropped straight down. At the last moment she did a brief, full-throttle burn of the belly rockets and stuck a hard but bounceless landing.

"Everybody out!" she yelled, taking just enough time to flip enough switches to make the hopper safe.

Because of this she missed the next part of the excitement.

* * *

The sudden change to a vertical drop by the hopper threw off Cumulous' personal descent schedule. Because of that, the flying super was still in the air with a good view of the landing area when he saw not only the precipitous touchdown, but also what happened next. He watched the hopper stop - tarmac half-molten and smoking under it - and the first of the occupants exit. He saw them convulse after traveling only a short distance and drop as if being attacked by something unseen. He also saw a three-man team on the catwalk of the control tower manipulating an odd device with a mesh, dish antenna. Said dish being pointed at the hopper.

Mesa, Lungfish and Andrea piled out of the hopper even before the turbofan engines shut down. The trio hit the pavement and began running towards the group around Cong. They didn't get far. The two male humans showed signs of distress, both of them staggering and collapsing. Mesa managed to rise back to his knees before vomiting and dropping again, this time staying down. Andrea, the fastest and in the lead, simply quit running and dropped, rolling to a messy stop.

Tiger popped out next, with Steel Lace right behind him. Tiger immediately staggered, and veered to one side. Steel Lace appeared unaffected, and hurried past him to check on the closest of her fallen comrades, Mesa.

The men at the control tower who were pointing the device at the arriving supers were startled when a strong gust of wind shoved them down. They were very startled when a man in a colorful costume landed beside the device and heaved it over the balcony railing. The were even more startled when he then began subduing them with great vigor and enthusiasm.

"What... hit me?" said Mesa, as Steel Lace knelt beside him.

"What did you feel?"

Mesa still felt horrible, but his EMT training kicked in.

"Severe headache, nausea, blurred vision, ringing in the ears and loss of balance," he said, succinctly.

"According to my sensors, we got hit by a pulsed, directed microwave beam," said Steel Lace. She looked up as Tiger - already mostly recovered - moved past them to check on Lungfish. "It came from the direction of the airfield control tower. Cumulous destroyed the device generating the effect. My armor protected me, Tiger was hardly affected, and you and Lungfish are already coming around. I'm worried about Andrea, though."

"We have a more immediate worry," said Tiger, leaving the already reviving Lungfish, and moving past Andrea towards the guards and supers headed their way.

With Mesa now capable of sitting up and Lungfish actually standing, Steel Lace moved quickly to Andrea and plugged a shielded communication cable from her armor into the port behind the android's left ear.

"She should be alright in a bit," said Steel Lace, after a moment. She looked at Mesa as she unplugged. "You watch her while she's rebooting. Call me if she takes more than another few seconds. I'm going to help Tiger."

Steel Lace was not normally a brawler, preferring to stand back and use ranged weapons. However, with Tiger already intimately involved with the hostiles her options were limited. She fired a few bursts from her stun guns, laid down an arc of smoke just beyond those already caught up in the melee to hamper reinforcements, then charged in.

Tiger was "only" staff at the Bay Area Guardians, but long before he took the position of chief engineer with them he was an experienced combatant. Moreover, his fighting style was so flexible that he'd had opponents complain that he kept changing how he fought. A few had even accused him of having multiple personalities. Still, having Steel Lace move smoothly in behind him so they could protect each others' backs was a definite help.

Meanwhile, Cumulous finished restraining the men he had engaged and entered the control tower. Inside he glared through his goggles at the personnel running the equipment.

"Why did you attack us?" he demanded.

The three men on duty in the control center looked briefly at each other, then as one bolted for the stairs. Cumulous tried to cut them off, but they all made it through. He decided not to chase after them, but instead barred the door with a chair. That done, he sat at one of the consoles and began monitoring the radar and radio. There was a surprising amount of air traffic approaching the island group. Hopefully, at least some of that was help.

* * *

"Hey, that's Cumulous!" said Blue Impact, after her third attempt to contact the control tower was finally successful. "He says some of the Bay Area Guardians are already there, that they were attacked on landing with some sort of mad science gadget, and we should consider everyone on the island hostile. Oh, and to land at the airport, near the two hoppers! The team is already in the process of securing that area, but could definitely use some help."

"Well, that's one concern out of they way," said Vic, sourly, "and a whole bunch more now active!"

She accessed the brilliant phone function in her armor's helmet and notified her boss. After a few moments Vic sighed and ended the connection.

"He says he'll notify Brade. For the rest, we should use our judgement."

"I've already done that," said Energia, putting down the earphone and microphone set she had donned while Vic was making her call. "Contacted Brade, I mean. Word is already spreading that it's become a super-involved event. She says that our primary mission is still to keep Cong from causing an international incident, but that beyond that we should use out own judgement. So I guess it's confirmed."

"From what Cumulous is saying, there's already a full-blown super battle going on, and they started it," said Blue Impact, firmly. "So, we go in hot and ready. If they want a fight, we need to be generous and give them more than they want."

There was unanimous support of that plan among those in the pod.

* * *

By this time Mesa and Lungfish were mostly recovered and Andrea was fully operational. They moved in and quickly helped Steel Lace and Tiger finish subduing the costumed supers and security personnel whom they had engaged.

"Ow," said Tiger, mildly. "Those stun batons hurt! On the other hand, I didn't even need to use my claws."

"This was much easier than it should have been," said Andrea. "The security guards were as much trouble as the costumed supers!"

"You better believe it, sister!" one of the guards shouted, from where he was hogtied face down on the tarmac. "There's more on the way, too! You're not getting away with this!"

She didn't bother asking what he thought they were getting away with. She'd learned long before that arguing with people who had such attitudes was pointless.

"The supers were all low level, and probably mind controlled," said Tiger, as he put the high-strength polymer, fiber-reinforced restraints on another of the defeated costumed figures. "Their hearts weren't really in the fight, either. Or maybe their brains."

"Why hasn't Cong revived, yet?" said Steel Lace, turning to Mesa. "Nothing they used on us should have had that long an effect on him!"

"I'm checking," said Mesa, obviously concerned. "Okay, from the pressurized injector syringe with the armor-piercing needle on the ground beside him, it looks like they dosed him with something while he was out from that beam. It's not labelled, either, so I don't know what they gave him, but he seems stable."

Further discussion of Cong's state was interrupted as Tricorne's apergy pod plopped expertly down between the two hoppers. Energia, who had bailed out at altitude much as Cumulous had before her, hovered over the far side of the Bay Area Guardians from the pod, keeping watch for more hostiles.

"Welcome to the party!" Mesa called out as three of the new quartet hurried over to join them.

"I'm glad to see that you're in your armor this time," said Steel Lace, to Vic. "You will probably need it, unfortunately."

"What's the brief?" Blue Impact asked Steel Lace.

The leader of the Bay Area Guardians had just begun to relate the events since their arrival, when they were informed by Cumulous of another hopper about to land. An Assembly vehicle arrived soon after that notification.

Their hopper also made an expert, vertical landing. Moments later, five people in familiar costumes exited and joined the throng. The largest members of the Bay Area Guardians and the Assembly greeted each other warmly.

"Hey, Hiram!" said Maciste, arms spread wide.

"Hello, Milo!" said Mesa, likewise postured.

The two entered a brief embrace which would have flattened a small car if one had been caught between them.

"You two know each other?" said Steel Lace, as they parted.

"You didn't know we're cousins?" said Mesa, as Maciste smirked. Mesa's expression quickly soured. "Unfortunately, so is Cong."

"I knew he was related to you." Steel Lace frowned as she walked around the pair of strongmen. "Well, there is the obvious resemblance, that being your size, muscularity and powers. Otherwise... you're different colorings, have differently shaped faces..."

"Cong looks different from either of us," said Mesa, with a careless shrug. "Anyway, right now we need to focus on business."

He turned to his cousin.

"So, we have nearly half of the active Bay Area Guardians field team with us plus Tiger, and Tricorne and Vic Peltior, with some of the Planetary Guardians on the way. Who do you have?"

"The entire Assembly field team, with Dr. Gorgeous left at headquarters to coordinate," said Maciste. "I think everyone here who is on the side of the angels knows all the others on that side. By sight, if not from meeting them."

"So who is in charge?" said Steel Lace. "We don't need another Chicago incident. Right now we're too vulnerable to an area attack, so the sooner we start dispersing the better."

"You're the first team leader on scene, so it's you," said Champion, flatly, with Blue Impact nodding in emphatic agreement. "We'll set our earbuds to your frequency. Which I guess we better spread the word about."

"Please do. Or, rather, I'll have Cumulous spread the word, and continue doing it for new arrivals. Meanwhile, I'll try and figure out what we're all going to do while we're here."

"I just hope everyone brought plenty of super-rated restraints," said Vic. "Oh, and I don't have time to deputize all those who might need it, so if someone needs arresting call me."