The briefing was held in a half-circle amphitheater. About twenty Pilots were sitting in the tiered seating, chatting quietly amongst themselves.
Everyone was wearing the ubiquitous military-issue jumpsuits that made up off-duty Pilot fashion, but none of them had any masks on, and their chests bore their real names.
That was, so I’d been told many times, the norm for factions, where you often lived alongside your fellow Pilots so much that a secret identity was nigh-impossible.It was another way that I didn’t fit in. I was standing up near the back of the room, leaning against a wall. I didn’t have an olive-green jumpsuit with a Guild patch on the shoulders, or my name emblazoned across the chest. Just my black body-glove, what other people might have called a stylish wetsuit with a few changes and additions for privacy and modesty.
I wasn’t fully comfortable even with that level of showing off my body, so while the garment wasn’t too skin-tight, I’d elected to put on a short brown jacket over the top, keeping it unzipped. My eyes were covered up by a PRT issue facemask, which was a polite way of saying that I didn’t want anyone to look at me too closely and little more.It itched. Not the mask, not physically, but the isolation. The other Pilots were sitting comfortably with each other, rubbing elbows and shoulders, and they seemed to all get along, whereas I had chosen to seclude myself up in the corner of the room and look down from above. I couldn’t have made it clearer that I was a loner.
I don’t belong here, a voice whispered to me in the back of my head. It makes sense not to mingle, that would just invite more questions.The lights dimmed, and a grizzled older man stomped into the room, every other footfall sounding out with a dull clang instead of a thump.“Attention!” one of the Pilots barked out at the sight of the man.
They all stood, a few with a rushed movement that betrayed military training, and most of the others in a more hesitant, imitative fashion.“You’re not in the military anymore, Samuels,” the veteran said, shaking his head as he descended the stairs towards the center of the amphitheater. “You will find that the Guild is paramilitary in more ways than one. I appreciate the respect, but getting the job done is more important than stopping everything the moment a superior officer walks into the room. Don’t do that again in the future.”The new Pilots sat down slowly. The Guild veteran got to the front of the room and turned on a projector with the help of a remote control in his hand. The screen displayed the Guild’s logo, an upright spear with a long, thin banner waving from it; the kind of thing you might have seen a medieval crusader carry into battle on an old tapestry.“Welcome to the Guild,” the veteran said, panning his gaze around the jumpsuited crowd, and ignoring me in the back. “My name is Mark Cline, and today, you’ll be getting an introductory briefing on what, exactly, you’ve all just signed up for. You know the basics, and you’ve passed all our tests. Many of you have fought for other factions, and we respect your time and service with those factions. But from this moment on, you’re not going to be fighting Hell’s Angels, or the Cartel, or even the Elite.”The projector’s screen changed to a picture of a battle. I didn’t recognize it off the top of my head, but it looked nasty. There were easily a dozen destroyed Suits in plain view, some with blood and gore emerging from penetrating hits, and at least one that had been completely blown open like a pinata. Even the intact Suits were missing limbs, seeping hydraulic fluids, and were limping around with battle-damage hampering their movements.“Our opponents are some of the deadliest and most powerful individuals in the entire world,” Cline continued. “On any given operation, you may be fighting alongside the Triumvirate. That is a not good thing.”A few of the new Pilots stirred at that. Most of them were adults, as was the statistical norm for Pilots, but there were a few younger ones, including a teenager that looked only a year or two older than me. None of them could be truly innocent, not here, but I still got the sense that they hadn’t been Pilots for more than six months.
That was the unofficial hierarchy of Pilots, based on how cumulatively long you’d been on an active combat roster. The first couple months, you were a rookie. Reach half a year, and you were a ‘regular’. Reach a full year, and you were a veteran.
Year and a half, and you were either becoming an elite Pilot, or you’d been so chewed up that you were on your way to a morgue or a non-combat posting.
If you lasted more than two years on an active combat roster, you were either insane, or a living legend.
But even legends died, as shown by Oscar. He’d been an ace with three years of combat experience. And then the Dragonslayers killed him.Of course, that was for combat pilots. Not every Pilot was able to handle combat in the first place, and many believed they were, up until they got a real taste for it. There were plenty of uses for such Pilots, and their Suits. Usually it was security or transportation for their factions. Some had become PR slaves, talking about their faction to drum up support and donations – usually those who had the misfortune to find and get stuck with the cheapest, simplest, non-flying Suits that required the least amount of maintenance.
Almost every Dragonsuit was designed to fight in some way, but few of them had ever been designed to deliberately fight other armored combatants. Dragon hadn’t exactly needed many designs to fight other Dragonsuits. Most of her fighting was against the variety of monstrous and powerful enemies that the Guild had hunted even then, back in her day.
The sheer number of Suits and the variety of their designs meant that every suit could still be useful, but some were far too specialized. Add in the fact that even the most generic bipedal Suit could still greatly enhance your strength, speed, and durability, and there was always a non-combat use for a Suit.
The factions didn’t tend to like it, but it was also a good way to keep their rosters high in case of an emergency, all hands on deck situation. On the flip side, however, if they ever had to use those reservists, the casualty ratios would be very bad.“The Guild is tracking at least half a dozen S-class threats around the world,” Cline continued, clicking his controller and moving the slideshow along. “In addition there are, at any given time, approximately one to two dozen A-class threats that are either conducting operations, or have just emerged. Make no mistake, ladies and gentlemen, when the world is about to end, it is our job to prevent it.”
The projector’s next image was a more general one, showing a map of the world with several icons for danger scattered around it. I scanned it on reflex, but it seemed more of a demonstration piece than an actual source of intelligence. There was, for instance, a danger sign pinned directly to Antarctica, which was absurd… I hoped.“On a good year, the Guild ends an S-class threat, and up to a dozen A-class threats,” Cline said, as bright red letter X’s were stamped across many of the danger signs. “Despite that, more threats will appear, and they’ll continue to appear for as long as you’re here with us. You will be rotated on and off the active duty roster as your Suits require maintenance, and our doctors recommend for your personal well-being… but sometimes, things get out of hand too quickly, and we need everyone.”
Cline looked up to me, and I frowned. I didn’t like the sudden attention on me.“Today, we have a guest from outside the Guild,” he said, gesturing up to me with an open hand. “This is Wraith, a notable Ace who has helped put down some of the worst monsters that the planet has ever seen.”
The rest of the Pilots turned on their bench-seats, and looked back up at me. Their eyes were searching, inspecting. It wasn’t the same as the college boys that I detested, looking at me like I was a piece of meat, but it still wasn’t friendly. Some of them were looking at me with cold, distant expressions, while others had a harder time covering up their sour frowns or squinting eyes that were raking me from head to toe.I kept myself motionless, still leaning against the back wall with my arms cross over my chest. I didn’t give them the pleasure of showing any sign of my irritation at their eyes. There was a heat in my chest, the same old indignation, but I snuffed it quickly with the benefit of long practice. Screw them, and screw their disdain. I didn’t need to prove anything to these kids.“I don’t care where you were before now,” Cline said, bringing their attention back to him. “Now that you’re with the Guild, you’ll be operating in conjunction with heroes and Pilots from all over the world. Tomorrow, you may fly with Wraith. The next week, you might be supporting the Kingsmen. The week after, you might be working with the Elite – either side of them – or any one of a dozen potential organizations. So get these feelings out of the way right now. Because in the future, anyone who stands by your side is an ally, no matter where they came from.”The new Pilots didn’t seem happy to hear that, but nobody spoke up in protest. A couple seemed thoughtful, at least.Yeah, that’s right, use me as an example, I thought to myself bitterly. You never know what kind of trash you might have to work with, so here’s Wraith.
“Good guys, bad guys… it gets real muddled out there, real quick,” Cline warned them. “The Guild’s policy is avoid any longer relationships with anyone outside a few select groups for that specific reason. For you Pilots, it’ll be simple. If you’re defending a base when it comes under attack, anyone without authorization is to be destroyed, no matter who they are or who they’re with. If you’re on an offensive operation, focus on killing your target, or doing your job, and don’t worry about the diplomatic shit. If anyone tries to talk to you about it, they’re probably trying to trick you, so don’t listen.”I kept my face blank, and listened with stony silence as Cline’s briefing marched onward.
“Welcome to the operations center,” Lurch said, as he led me down the final flight of stairs and into a large underground vault.
He’d dismounted his Heavy-weight Dragonsuit, and was wearing one of the common olive-green jumpsuits, but he was still a huge figure, towering over me at nearly seven feet of height. He was also, I noted, one of the Pilots who’d clearly been affected by Dragon’s experimental medical nanotech. At his size, it was hard to tell, but his ears had little points to them, which was the best giveaway.He had led me into the original Guild headquarters after the end of the newcomers’ briefing, and we’d ridden an elevator for nearly a minute as we descended deeper into the Earth’s crust. I suppose no paranoia was too great for the people who made a habit of picking fights with the biggest threats to the planet.Compared to the situation room at the Robin Hood Brigade’s base, I was surprised to find very little technology in the room. There was no large screen on the back wall, no banks of computers.
Instead, the room was neatly divided into a squarish central section that was occupied by an enormous physical map of the world on a huge table, and two smaller sections to each side, one with an advanced holo-table of some kind, and the other with a set of chairs around an old, hardwood conference table. It was well-lit by old incandescent lights, and there was enough brown on the furniture and the walls to give it an old-timey, World War 2 kind of vibe.“Lurch,” came a strong female voice from near the map.
I looked over, and realized that I’d missed something at first. A woman with a long head of pale, glossy hair that was even taller than Lurch had been bent over, inspecting the map. I’d mistaken her for part of the North Pole, with her hair color.The off-duty Pilot stopped walking, came to attention and nodded formally to Narwhal, the head of the Guild.
I stopped as well, though I’ll admit it was a little less formality and a little more shock.
Narwhal was one of the most powerful parahumans on the planet, and I’d seen her forcefields tear Dragonsuits and capes alike into shreds of meat, but she was also known for her more… eccentric appearance.I’d grown taller over the last few years, but I was still a few inches short of six feet, whereas Narwhal was an even seven feet tall, the same height as Lurch, which put my eyes at a very unfortunate level. For all the power and reputation that the Guild’s leader had, she was also quite famous for one specific quirk – she usually walked around garbed only in her forcefields. Thankfully I couldn’t see anything… specific… but the woman still looked like a naked fashion model that had been dipped in diamonds just enough to cover her modesty, and it was impossible to avoid noticing her frame beneath the forcefields.“Narwhal,” I said, my voice a little stiff as I raised my eyes higher, away from the natural – and awkward – placement. “Good to see you again.”
“Wraith,” the hero acknowledged, with a nod of her own. “Likewise. Voyager tells me that you’d like to learn more about our operations, and I’ve got a few minutes, so come on over, and I’ll fill you in.”I approached the map table, and frowned as I got a better look at it. There were little models spread across the map, placed on top of it like they were playing Risk. There were dozens, and they were all symbolic, not literal. A manor-house, or maybe an old Greek temple, was placed on Toronto, for instance, probably representing their home base.
I could understand some – an archer in central Nebraska for the Robin Hood Brigade, a red cross over New York for the Panacea Clinic, a suited politician in Washington D.C… but others were a mystery to me.Old-fashioned. Why didn’t they just use a flat screen, like the Brigade did? Or some kind of holographic display, given how much Tinkertech they had in the rest of the base? I guess with physical models, Narwhal could use her forcefields to move models around the map quickly. On the other hand, if she was out of the base, then they’d have to get some gigantic pool cues or something. It was a very interesting decision. Very Battle of Britain, I suppose.
I frowned, but kept looking down at the map, trying to puzzle it out.“Things are still pretty tense here in North America,” Narwhal said, sweeping a hand over the map. “Despite our best attempts, we’re still stuck with only four major heroic factions on the continent, leaving us at an advantage against the criminal factions, in theory.”
With a minor display of her power, small, glowing forcefields emerged, like shimmering discs, hovering above some of the models. Most were over the existing areas I’d already noted, the home bases of the Guild and the Robin Hood Brigade, respectively.
But there was also a disc hovering over the model of a birdcage in the Canadian Rockies, with a blue-painted prison guard nearby, at Vancouver. That was easy to recognize. The Wardens, who guarded the Birdcage and kept Saint and his Dragonslayers away from it.
“As you probably already know thanks to the lack of sirens, the Wardens have managed to keep up their vigil. Saint’s goons have not yet breached the Birdcage,” Narwhal told me, with a bitter, unhappy tone. “Not for lack of trying, though. The bastard’s getting desperate, and he keeps throwing waves of Dragonsuits at both the ‘Cage and the Warden’s base. We don’t think he’s gone crazy enough to try to destroy the prison, but it’s still puzzling, because it’s not like he can just walk in. Not with how it’s designed.”I furrowed my brow, and Narwhal glanced over. She looked like she was going to say something for a moment, but then refrained, and turned her attention further south.
“The Brigade’s holding the Midwest, and I hear you just visited them, so you’re already familiar,” Narwhal continued, as one of her forcefields glowed and then shrank above Nebraska.“That just leaves Armsmaster, and his group,” I said.“Correct,” Narwhal said, drawing my attention towards a model of a knight in armor, wielding a halberd. It was placed just a short ways to the south-west of the Robin Hood Brigade’s base.I leaned in, and squinted a little.“Armsmaster’s based in Colorado?” I said, disbelievingly. “I thought he and his groupies were operating out of Nevada?”“They were,” Narwhal acknowledged. “About a year ago, Saint threw a couple heavy raids his way, and wrecked a lot of the old airbase they were using. They managed to keep their maintenance infrastructure intact, but they needed somewhere more defensible. Your Air Force decided to make him an offer.”
“Colorado Springs,” I read out from the map, before a realization hit me. “Wait… he’s not… in NORAD, is he?”“Cheyenne Mountain, but yes,” she said, with the smallest hint of a smile on her face. “I haven’t been there yet, but I hear it’s cozy. The Air Force is determined to keep their relationship working, probably to keep their Congressional funding coming.”I chuckled. I could see that.
Four years ago, Armsmaster had been a rising star in the Protectorate, and the leader of my hometown’s team. He was a great Tinker, able to deploy technology across a wide spectrum of specializations with very few issues. He was driven, motivated, and as a girl growing up in ‘his city’, I grew up admiring him.
It said a lot about the man that he didn’t do the typical Tinker fighting style of hanging back and blasting away with cannons and lasers from a distance. Instead, he charged into close-combat with no enhanced strength or durability, just the armor and weapons that he’d built, and the skill he’d trained.
His rising status in the Protectorate, his command of Brockton Bay’s branch... that had all changed when Dragon died.
Within two days of her death, Armsmaster had held a press conference, where he’d announced his retirement from the Protectorate, effective immediately. When asked why he was making such a radical career change, the Hero had said only one thing.“I am going to bring Saint to justice.”Over four years, I had fought alongside him once, and only once, during the Endbringer attack on Brockton Bay. My big public debut, even though it wasn’t actually the first time I’d gone out. We hadn’t met, hadn’t talked. I don’t think I got closer than a hundred meters to the man, but for a little bit, when I was hovering over the battlefield and trying to contribute what little I could, I saw him.
I saw him fight Leviathan.
I would never forget the sight. A normal human, without any Brute powers, had gone into melee combat with that monster, and he’d come out alive. His halberd had been a whirling blur of some bizarre energy field, and he’d carved slices of Leviathan’s flesh off like he was carving up deli meat.
He should have died, like Kaiser, Bastion, Dauntless, and dozens of other Heroes and Villains had, no matter their physical strength.
But he hadn’t.
Armsmaster survived the fight that flattened Brockton Bay… a sign of what was to come for him in the near future.
In the years since he’d torpedoed his career and blown up his sponsorship deals, Armsmaster had become more well-known and more powerful than ever.
The forums and the news channels alike both considered him to be the greatest living Tinker in the entire world. People debated about how he would fight members of the Triumvirate, what ingenious solutions he would have for each one. Some people thought it was a bit much to rank the now independent Hero so highly… but for the Pilots of the world, there was no question.
Armsmaster didn’t have a Dragonsuit. He didn’t go into battle in a masterpiece of Dragon’s design. The parahuman Tinker stomped out into battle the same way he had in the old days, in his now legendary suit of midnight-blue power armor, and carrying a halberd.
It should have been suicide to do that against Pilots. Some parahumans, like Narwhal or Alexandria, were so tough that they could fight a Suit as easily as any other opponent, but Armsmaster was just a man. Even if his armor had been invincible, the repeated hammer of blunt impacts from any number of Suit-borne weapons would have reduced his body to pulp inside of it.
And yet, it had never happened. Armsmaster fought in more Suit brawls than almost any Pilot in the world. With my repair cycles, I averaged one fight a month at my best. The average Pilot on combat duty averaged one every two weeks. Armsmaster averaged four in a week. He got in more fights in a single month than I did in a year – and he was still alive. Still fighting. Still leading from the front, at every opportunity he got.
From what I’d heard, and the few videos that surfaced on the internet, Armsmaster did not fight like a Pilot, nor like a Hero. When he arrived on the battlefield, everything stopped, like a needle scratching on an old record-player. It was an open secret that the man had been close friends with Dragon – perhaps something more, the rumors insisted – and he knew her technology better than anyone else, even Saint. He could disable Dragonsuits with a strike from his halberd, a toss of a jammer, even just a glance at some Suits that lacked a full suite of electronic countermeasures. The man fought like a teacher descending on a schoolyard fight to break it up. Something I’d only ever experienced at Fenway, and never at Winslow. There was a sensation that some of the other Pilots talked about, like they’d disappointed their father, even though he was on their side – that the games were over, the fun was at an end, and the sheriff was in town.
At the start of what the news now called the Armor Wars, it was chaos, with pods of power armor descending at random all around the world. The first criminal Pilots had enjoyed a level of relative superiority that was far beyond the typical parahuman. Established, veteran Hero teams had taken losses to as little as a single enemy Pilot. There had been a real risk of all Pilots, even the heroic ones, being demonized for the actions of those criminals.
Armsmaster was the reason that hadn’t happened. Throughout the first few months, he took charge of the slowly developing community of Pilots.
It was Armsmaster who had created the unlisted, uncharted, Pilots-only messaging system that was housed in US military satellites. It was Armsmaster who coordinated missions, gave objectives, and took command in battles personally. It was Armsmaster who had served as a banner pole, a rallying cry, an inspirational pillar to all the Pilots looking for purpose.
Nearly every single faction of Pilots in the world had the same shared origin story. They’d been confused and stumbling in the dark, and then Armsmaster had come in, taught them how to fight, given them direction, and led them to victory after victory. After a time, they’d figured out what they wanted to do, the wrongs they wanted to right, and they’d split off from Armsmaster with his solemn nod and a handshake of approval.These days, Armsmaster still had one of the largest factions in the world. He took in Pilots of all nations, all skill levels, all weight-classes, all body-types. He pitched in at the big group battles, the Endbringer fights, the S-class throwdowns, but he wasn’t like the Guild, making that his sole purpose.Everybody knew that when you joined Armsmaster’s nameless faction, you were joining the only mission that the man personally cared about.
They hunted Saint. The Dragonslayer.Armsmaster and Saint were the twin juggernauts of the Piloting world. The two greatest sources of experience and knowledge on Dragon’s technology, both on how to maintain it, and how, potentially, to make more of it. Even more tempting than the continuing joy of being a Pilot, those two Tinkers offered a shining hope for the future – a world where this technology was widespread.Nobody really knew how Dragon had done it, originally. How she’d made so many Suits in the first place. It had been far more than anyone had ever seen, even counting up every single sighting of every single one of her Dragonsuits before that day.
Some people speculated that it was the secret shame of the reclusive Canadian Tinker. That despite her public self-control and impeccable manners, she’d had the same manias and fugues as any other Tinker. They claimed that whenever she was struck by the obsession, she built a new Suit and then she hid the results in some vault or lab.
If you assumed that she had a manic phase every couple of days, or maybe even once a day, or twice a day, and you calculated it based on how long she’d been active as a Hero, the numbers just might work out… but it was still so difficult to know for sure. Those who knew Dragon the best, people like Armsmaster and Narwhal, didn’t talk about it.
But with those two Tinkers… maybe they could figure out the secret. Maybe they could fix this world, with one last gift from Dragon. Maybe the world could finally climb out of the tailspin that everybody knew about, but nobody wanted to admit.The Suits were more than just weapons. They were the most maintainable Tinker-tech that had ever been created. Nobody knew how Dragon had done it. The more complex things, sure, they needed the leftover remnants of Dragon’s infrastructure, but ordinary people could learn to repair them with it. The less complex ones could be maintained like fighter jets.
If we could learn more about the Dragonsuits, if we could mass produce them…
The solar chargers alone would solve the inevitable energy crisis without using expensive nuclear reactors. The containment grenades, both EMP and improved Mark 3 confoam, could revolutionize law enforcement even more than Dragon’s initial, bulkier Mark 1 confoam had. Pocket dimensions, humanoid drones, implantable skills and languages… and that was the simple stuff.
Fully capable Artificial Intelligences. Suits that could dive to the deepest depths of the ocean, soar to the void of space and travel to the Moon and the asteroid belts. Medical nanites capable of fully restoring health, curing every disease known to man, granting the ability to regenerate. Even rumors that the ones would make you live for hundreds of years and give you elf-like ears.Dragon’s legacy… it was a phrase that got used a lot, these days. Some people used it for this dream. A world of Tinkertech, where all our problems would be solved with technology.
Narwhal’s forcefields flexed, and the shimmering disks over the map disappeared, and new symbols formed, hovering over North America. Question marks, three of them, made of thin crystalline fragments that roughly lined up. I jerked, trying my best to pretend that I hadn’t just lost focus for a minute in front of the woman.“Right now, the three major criminal Pilot factions on the continent are the Dragonslayers, the Elite, and Hell’s Angels,” Narwhal said, ignoring my lapse of attention. “With the hopefully complete eradication of the Machine Army last year, and the collapse of the Fallen’s attempt to maintain their scattered Pilots, that’s an improvement, but not much of one.”
“Hell’s Angels?” I asked, doubtfully. “The biker gang? Are you serious?”“You’ve already encountered some of them, just last week,” Narwhal informed me, to my considerable surprise.
“I thought that was the Elite,” I said carefully.“The team that hit Aerotech was with the Elite,” Narwhal said in an agreeing tone. “But the extraction team wasn’t.”“Squealer,” I realized, as I remembered the monstrous train with its gothic design. I’d recognized it as one of Squealer’s designs, but I hadn’t given it much more thought than that. “I thought she was just selling her vehicles to the factions.”“That’s what we thought too, up until a few months ago,” Narwhal nodded. “It looks like a lot of the supposedly ‘disorganized’ criminal Pilots over the last few years were actually associated with Squealer. We’ve always suspected that she’s one of the few Tinkers capable of maintaining a Suit, but now, we’re starting to suspect that she’s actually capable of improving them as well.”“Shit,” I muttered. “And she’s… what, gathering up every thug with a Suit? Well, whoever the Elite didn’t take, and refused to join the Dragonslayers. That doesn’t seem possible. Squealer’s a good Tinker now that the Merchants are gone, don’t get me wrong, but she always plays second-fiddle. She doesn’t have the chops to build a group like this.”“We’re not really sure how she’s done it,” Narwhal replied with a shrug. “At the moment, we think it’s a loose, cell-like structure. Possibly the same kind of organizational style as the Fallen, with over-arching commands being distributed down from a hidden and secure command post. Regardless, they don’t use the same iconography, the same colors, or even the same tactics. That’s why they’ve managed to stay under the radar, we think. We didn’t see them as a faction because they don’t act like one. It’s possible that Squealer isn’t in charge at all, and she’s just the glue holding someone else’s gang together.”“It might not be so organized,” I proposed slowly, rubbing my chin as I looked at the map, over to New England, where my home used to be. “She could be running off the old playbook the Merchants used to use in Brockton Bay. Squealer herself alternated between couple different workshops, she didn’t have a single big one. Same thing with the drugs.”I looked around, and underneath the table, I found a long wooden pointer-stick, the kind that my Mother might have used back at the university. I pulled it out, and started tapping dispersed points around the continental United States.
“Smaller safehouses dedicated to one or two dealers, and supply runners that only know a couple cells, so that one bust couldn’t roll up the whole gang.” I explained, tapping several major cities, and tracing routes between them. “The changes would be doing it without having gang colors to give the game away. Then swap the dealers for Pilot squadrons, and the supply runners are the maintenance crews who can do the basics. Anything more than that, and they call in Squealer herself to fix it. It doesn’t have to be a master plan, so long as the low-level dealers send the bosses their cut. They could be happy enough just making money.”“Oh, they’re making plenty of money,” Narwhal said darkly. She pointed down on the map to Mexico, where smaller models of medieval archers in green paint were scattered around, along with models of… leaves? With some kind of bright red berries? “Ever since the Brigade started fighting the Cartel, drug shipments from South America have been disrupted. Good news for the crime rates, but bad news for the junkies, who went looking for a new supply for their fix. Hell’s Angels stepped in, and now they’re up to their old tricks.”“Hard to track small groups of bikers,” I mused, eyes tracing the spiderweb of roads that made up the US highway system. “And so long as they keep moving, the PRT’s too focused on longer term problems, like entrenched villains. If they’re moving around, but not drawing too much attention…”“Got it in one,” Narwhal agreed unhappily. “We got a flash with the information a couple months ago, from an old acquaintance of yours.”
“Who?” I asked, frowning. I had few people left that could be called ‘acquaintances,’ but almost all of them were parahumans, not Pilots.“Emily Piggot,” Narwhal told me.“Piggot’s still alive?” I said, repeating the name in surprise. “Jeez. I didn’t really know her, Narwhal. I think I talked to her maybe… once? I thought she retired after Brockton was condemned, and died from all the stress in the time since.”The Guild’s leader gave me a searching gaze, as if checking me for deceit. I wasn’t lying, of course.
I hadn’t even thought about the PRT Director from Brockton Bay in years. Unless you’re involved in local politics or law enforcement – and the unholy mix of the two – nobody really knows their elected leaders. The Mayor, the chief of police, the PRT Director, if you had one… they were all kind of vague, distant.I’d only known Piggot’s name for maybe a couple weeks before the Endbringer attack that had trashed my city, after I’d found my Suit and started thinking about how I could help, what I could do with my new gift. I think I talked to her, after the second attack, but I was in such an injured and hazy state that I didn’t really recall much of it. Just that she was a real bitch, and I wasn’t very nice back to her.“She did retire,” Narwhal said, with careful phrasing. “More than that, I couldn’t tell you. You’d have to ask her yourself.”Something wasn’t right. I held back my instinctive desire to raise an eyebrow, to ask a question. Narwhal wasn’t the kind of person to play games, so this was out of the ordinary for the habitually blunt woman.I kept my mouth shut, and nodded slowly. When Narwhal acted casual with you, it was normally a sign of respect or affection from her. Formality was a barrier she used to screen out people that she didn’t really care about. In some ways, this was actually demonstration of trust.“Thanks for the update,” I said, reaching out a hand and biting my lip as I spoke. “I don’t know if I’ll join up. It’s a bit… much for me, emotionally. But next time you go hunting, call me. I’ll join you. Anytime, anywhere.”“We appreciate that, Wraith,” Narwhal answered with a smile, extending a hand to shake mine.
The moment we shook hands, a red light flashed over the map table, and an alarm started to blare.I flinched back on instinct, my off-hand almost itching to reach over and touch my bracelet, where my Suit was normally stored. But while the bracelet was there, the Suit wasn’t, at least at the moment. I’d left it up in the hangar, both out of politeness, and because I didn’t like giving away the secret that I had a collapsible Suit at all. Still, instinct was hard to stop, and I kept my immediate reaction from blowing it just barely.The holotable off to the side of the command bunker flashed with light. One of the Guild’s employees was already standing next to it, and he quickly punched a string of inputs into it.“Major attack on Singapore by Dragonsuits,” he called out, his voice ringing throughout the bunker as the alarm was silenced. “Current estimate on numbers is fifty-plus. Attacker identity is unknown. Targets unknown, but they’re committing a lot of collateral damage. Casualty numbers are at least a hundred-plus dead already, and growing.”“Get the Fortress-weight dropships ready to deploy!” Narwhal ordered, pointing a finger at the employee, before turning back to us. “Lurch, how many have we got ready at the moment?”“Three,” Lurch replied. “With the Aces we have on standby… we can bring about five Lights, ten Mediums, two Heavies, and three parahumans or Meshes. Twenty combatants, total.”“Update from ASEAN!” the Guild employee called out. “It’s Khagan, and his Raiders. Intel says that his total identified forces previously only numbered thirty, so he’s gotten more from somewhere. Targets thus far include all four RSAF airbases, and they say Khagan’s Suits are fighting very carefully around them. They think he’s going after their infrastructure.”“He’s looking a new home,” Narwhal said, her lips pursed. “We were wondering who was backing him… but this? Is he going rogue on his backers? Or was he actually independent the whole time?”Narwhal stared down at the map table for a moment as she visibly pondered. Her forcefields appeared and disappeared as she shuffled brightly colored arrows across the table. A red arrow stabbed downwards from Mongolia, across China, towards Singapore. Two green arrows were placed to indicate the Guild – one leaving Toronto, and one aiming at Singapore.
“We’ve only got two parahumans I’d trust against that many Suits, in a defensive role,” Narwhal said, frowning. “Wieldmaiden and me. Do any of our Aces on standby have a collapsible Suit? Squeeze one more into the dropship?”“No,” Lurch said, shaking his. “We’ve got five Aces with collapsible Suits, but they’re all on R&R cycles right now.”I coughed politely, and took a step forward. My heart was a little clenched as I did, and Lurch and Narwhal both turned to look at me.
This was a secret that I’d tried pretty hard to keep quiet. It was a lot of the reason that I’d been able to be so stealthy over the years. If people tried to find me, they’d be looking for places where I could stash a Medium-weight Dragonsuit. That meant warehouses and shell-companies, old barns with rental records, or just searching property sales and square footages.
If they’d known that I could hide my Suit away in a pocket-dimension, they’d start searching for me, personally… and after four years of total secrecy, my general appearance was now a known factor to the Robin Hood Brigade and the Guild. I was no longer a question-mark in those files.But I had to do something. I had to be better. Even if that meant exposing myself to much greater risk. I hadn’t been doing enough over the last four years, and the guilt was only piling up higher and higher.“My Suit is collapsible,” I said. “I can take that third slot.”The two Guild members glanced at each other. It was a little intimidating. Even though I was taller than a lot of people, these two both had a foot of height on me. It made me feel like I was a kid again, surrounded by adults.“We appreciate it, but you don’t have to,” Lurch started to say, before his boss spoke up and cut him off.“Done,” Narwhal said, nodding to me. “We’ll brief you on Khagan and his Raiders on the way. Welcome aboard, Wraith.”“Glad to help,” I said, nodding back to her.
It wasn’t a lie. As soon as I’d spoken up, the ball of pain in my chest had eased.