Sacrifice

by C.M. Hiebert

Peacehammer had not gone far after his exchange with Nelson. Try as he might, he couldn’t turn his back on the situation that easily, no matter what the Greater Mind told him to do. Instead, he dangled in geosynchronous orbit about fifty miles above Burma and listened.

Searching the Rangoon airwaves, he picked up sporadic emergency broadcasts filled with shouting and panicked Burmese voices he could not understand. After several minutes, he stumbled across a Burmese TV station broadcasting live images of the battle in progress. It took Peacehammer tremendous effort to hold the frequency, and even then he could only manage a jittery, grainy picture within his mind.

The first image he saw was of Danny Holt and Karen McVee hanging onto the new Allison as she flew straight up into the sky, obviously trying to shake them off. The three figures arced over Rangoon, then dropped out of sight behind a line of buildings. After that the image went blank.

Peacehammer tried to recapture the broadcast, but it had slipped away. He dropped altitude and sat on top of the hazy stratosphere to get a stronger signal. The part of him that was the Greater Mind screamed for him to back off, to leave, to flee.

But he did not. Like the Ultra Syndrome itself, the Greater Mind was designed to fit the needs and demands of another culture from another time. Although, truly, it gave him greater insight into his purpose and meaning, it was not the enlightenment that Nelson and the others believed. Imposed upon the culture and knowledge of a 21st century human, the Greater Mind revealed itself to be something else.

A chain.

Yes, it guided his actions and gave him a sense of duty and dedication, but it also controlled him. If he held the slightest thought of dissent, the Greater Mind weighed upon him with profound guilt. It made him feel as though he were violating some sacred trust. A sense of dread would hollow him.

An Atlantian would have reacted intensely to the artificial guilt, bowing to its pressure with honored submission. An Ultra from that time and place might have used the Greater Mind as a moral compass, a counter balance to the emotional whims of human nature, letting it guide his every action so that his power would not be misused.

But Peacehammer wasn't from Atlantis. So he slowly descended toward Rangoon, reducing the altitude between himself and the battle, with the Greater Mind raging the whole way down.

***

Danny Holt couldn’t feel the sheets against his legs. In fact, he couldn’t feel his legs at all. He sat upright in the bed, bracing himself with his arms behind his back, trying to get some kind of response from his lower appendages.

“I can’t move my legs.” There wasn’t even a sense of numbness. Below his waist, there was simply nothing. His heart pounded as the certainty of his condition was confirmed. Ultras were hard to hurt, but once the damage was done, they suffered as any human.

“The metal woman injured you severely,” Aung San said standing from his chair. He was slightly built with the hint of an almost apologetic smile on his face. There hadn’t been much intelligence gathered on Aung San. He had only been an Ultra for a few months, and before that, he was basically a garden-variety guerilla leader. He didn’t look like Danny expected. More like a math professor than a jungle fighter. And he bore no sign of the syndrome either. Where was his jewel? Electrics usually had them in the forehead or back of the hand.

Danny tried to control his shock and fear. He was in a bad situation and he had to keep his head on straight. He was wounded – crippled – and in the hands of the enemy. He looked around the room. It was fairly modern, utilitarian, but certainly not threatening. The sharp floral scent of disinfectant filled the air.

“I take it I’m a prisoner?” Danny asked.

Aung San’s eyebrows raised and he shook his head with insistence. “No, no, Mr. Holt,” he said. “You are free to go whenever you wish. I have no more quarrel with you than I have an alliance with General Ramsey.”

Danny was confused. That wasn’t the story he’d gotten back at HQ.

“I thought Ramsey was helping you overturn the Burmese government? Isn’t that why Allison is here?”

Again, Aung San shook his head. “No. That is not the case. In fact, his interference has forced my hand. We were negotiating with the Kahn government for a peaceful transfer of power. That cannot happen now. Although Ramsey approached me a few weeks ago, I declined his offer for help. I lived and studied in America for many years, and I know of Ramsey and his philosophies. His views of the world are not mine.”

“Yet you’re an Ultra using your power to overturn or subvert an existing government…”

“… Or otherwise performing violence against the general safety and stability of civilization,” Aung San finished the citation, showing that he’d studied the Tallahassee Accord.

“You at least know the words,” Holt said, a little too boldly for his situation.

“Yes, Mr. Holt,” Aung San said, smiling patiently as if he were addressing a well-meaning, but stubborn, teenager. “And I know the reasons they were written. But they do not apply here.”

“How do you see that?” In the end, Danny Holt was still the same kid who had risen into the sky from the barren streets of the Chicago projects. Pain and grief aside, he wasn’t going to let a line of bull stand without a challenge.

Aung San walked back over to his chair and slid it next to Danny’s bed. He sat down, settling in for the discussion.

“Very well. I will tell you,” he began.

***

In a few minutes, Peacehammer picked up another grainy newscast of the fight. Allison and Karen were now grappling in the street. Holt was nowhere in sight and Karen looked very bad. Her armor and sword were gone, and her face was bloody and swollen.

He watched as Allison Five forced Karen to the ground, obviously stronger and in much better condition than her smaller rival. He saw Allison’s mouth move as she spoke to Karen, and Peacehammer knew the metal woman was gloating in the approach of victory.

That’s when he decided to intercede. To hell with the Greater Mind, he was going in. He was not going to watch Karen McVee die without doing something to help her. Memories of Clair punched him in the gut.

Then something happened. Peacehammer felt a strange shift move through the world. Or at least the Greater Mind did. In his mind he saw that Karen had changed. In the fire of the battle, when death was upon her, the Syndrome had reached out and made her more. The reality rippled through him as he watched the telecast. He actually sensed the exact movement it came upon her.

Karen had received the Greater Mind.

As the picture played silently through his thoughts, he saw her gain traction and stand. He watched as she pushed Allison backwards. It was as if he could actually feel her new strength within himself.

He saw Allison kneel before Karen’s might; the gloating had fled her features. He watched as Karen’s bloody hands closed toward Allison’s face, going for the eyes.

Then there was blood. Karen fell backward and Allison was on her. Peacehammer saw that she’d bitten Karen’s hand off at the wrist. The cameraman lost the frame as he rushed toward the conflict for a better shot -- the picture was a confusing kaleidoscope of street and sky. Then a focused image snapped into Peacehammer’s mind at a new, closer angle.

Allison was holding Karen’s limp body in the air by the neck. Karen was quite dead. Several moments passed and finally the metal woman tossed the body aside and flew into the sky.

The universe closed around him and became a pinprick of pain at the center of his soul. It had happened again. Just like in Antarctica, he had watched and done nothing. A moment of distraction had frozen him like a fly in amber, and someone had died.

The silence of space devoured his screams.

Suddenly, consciousness left him and the Greater Mind took total control. Blackness and void were all he knew. When he regained awareness, he was flying through space at a speed he had never known before. He could have only been unconscious a few moments, but already the Earth and moon were nothing more than points of light far, far below his feet. He must be halfway to Mars.

Regaining control, he tried to stop, but his velocity was so fantastic that even that action took a hundred thousand miles to execute.

The Greater Mind sent a nauseating wave of dread and fear through the center of his chest. It wanted him to keep flying, to get as far away from Earth as possible. Now!

But Peacehammer resisted. He turned back toward Earth and moved forward. The thing raged.

The spectacle of Karen’s death had collided with memories of Clair and sent him into a spiral of grief and frustration. The Greater Mind, either by design or reflex, had used the moment to seize his body and run, almost as if it had a purpose of its own.

As he inched his way back to the world, Peacehammer looked into the heart of the superimposed conscience. He sought out its roots within his own mind. He probed his memories and let his thoughts rest with a time before the thing came. He remembered what his life had been like without it. The Greater Mind launched another storm of guilt and self-doubt, but it was too late; it could no longer use those things against him. Peacehammer knew its secret.

The Greater Mind was afraid to die.

It was not his sorrow that had made him faint and shoot into open space like a comet. It was the Greater Mind’s fear.

Karen had achieved the state only to die moments later. The thing had come into existence merely to perish, like a newly dropped calf to the jaws of a jackal. The image had horrified his own manifestation of the Greater Mind, sending it into a panicked flight for survival.

By regaining control of himself, Peacehammer had overturned the stone and exposed its underbelly, its soft core. In response, the Greater Mind retreated, withdrawing to the furthest reaches of his thoughts, leaving him alone.

With guilt and fear lifted from his heart, Peacehammer picked up speed, trying to hit the pace that had taken him this far. He did not succeed. He had no idea how to attain such velocity, so the journey back to Earth would take several hours. God only knew what had already transpired in Burma.

He thought of Allison Five. He thought of Karen. Of Ramsey. Of Nelson. Clair.

As Earth grew before him, he knew he had been wrong before. At this moment, he was a weapon.

***

It happened three years ago. Davidson had captured Clair during a Rescue and Disaster mission in Iran. As a high-level gun, Clair was a juggernaut on the battlefield. From the gems in her hands, she could generate focused beams of thermal energy that were hot enough to cut a battleship in half.

While such power made her a force to be reckoned with, it did not distinguish her for kidnapping. Davidson had other thermal guns working for him, and bigger artillery than that. He apparently didn’t need her for anything, and if he had just wanted her out of the way, killing her would have been easier. The act simply hadn’t made sense.

Because no one had put love into the equation.

Peacehammer still struggled with the source and nature of his affection for Clair. He could no longer love a woman as he had when he was a man, but that hadn’t mattered, because his feelings for her were beyond any adorned mating urges. These sensations burned with a new kind of fire. They were something strange, something he could not understand. Feelings of desire, but not of a physical nature. He wanted her presence, for her to be near him. He often told himself that it must be their souls that were in love. The description seemed to make sense.

And Clair had begun to return his feelings.

Then Davidson had plucked her out of the sky over Tehran. Three of his flying renegades had appeared out of nowhere carrying what looked like suitcases. They closed on Clair, and before she could react, they had encased her in a special capsule that formed by uniting the three cases, snuffing her power cold. Then, poof, all of them disappeared.

Nothing was heard for two weeks. No ransom. No ultimatum. Nothing. Peacehammer was consumed with worry. He would not let himself imagine what they were doing to her. She was not a strongpoint and could be tortured with the proper force. And Davidson was a psychotic who had killed two million people. He was capable of anything.

Finally, the situation snapped: Clair’s distress signal was detected at the South Pole. She had been wearing the standard-issue communications band on her forearm when she was captured. Its signal bounced off a series of satellites and found a special console at Union Ultra Headquarters, where it set off a cry for help. The alert sent the teams scrambling.

In the atmosphere, Peacehammer could fly at Mach twenty. He was always first response, and on this mission, you could count on it. Davidson had.

Making the flight to the Antarctic in minutes, he had found Clair’s com-band sitting on a small table in the middle of a flat, white, ice field. He flew down and picked it up. Stupid.

At that moment a rocket shot into the air from a location only a few hundred yards away, riding a roaring column of smoke and fire into the cold, blue sky. Peacehammer wasn’t worried. No such weapon could harm him, and it didn’t appear to be headed his way. He took to the air to for a better look.

When the rocket was directly above him, it abruptly stopped dead in the middle of the sky. The sight caused Peacehammer to halt. The physics were impossible. The rocket exploded and the next thing he knew he was imprisoned in a material from another dimension; a form of matter that had no weight and no mass, only color and density. The stuff would later be called Green Matter. It was one of Davidson’s recent discoveries.

When the rocket exploded, a mountainous cone of emerald light enveloped him, gelling to a density ten thousand times that of gold. The translucent substance was thicker than the center of the sun. Despite his almost immeasurable strength, Peacehammer could not move. He was trapped.

Others had told him what happened next.

Nelson and a dozen Ultras had come to the bottom of the Earth to rescue him. There was a bloody battle with Davidson’s renegades. During the fight, Clair managed to free herself from Davidson’s underground bunker and join the Ultras.

At some point, Nelson realized something strange about the green cone. It reacted to heat. Even the touch of a man’s hand slightly melted its surface. That’s why Davidson had set the ambush in subzero Antarctica and snatched Nelson’s only thermal gun. The bait was the only thing that could break the trap.

With that knowledge Clair went to work trying to slice the cone to bits. Peacehammer remembered watching her through the green matter. Her flying figure was diffused and distorted through the interdimensional substance, occasionally disappearing behind flashes of red from her twin thermal beams.

In the end, she failed. Wherever she cut, the material would refill like a liquid. They needed something to blow it apart, and nothing short of a nuclear weapon would do the job. Unless, of course, they had a very specialized Ultra.

Guns had a problem. Sometimes their powers could get out of control. They could overextend themselves. Overheat. Sometimes they even blew themselves to pieces.

As the battle turned against Nelson and his crew, Clair made a decision that she discussed with no one.

Peacehammer often wondered: Was it out of bravery? Even the brave wished to live, how could that word explain such sacrifice? Was it duty? Duty can only carry a man to the gates of death, not through them. Then, he dared, was it from love?

She had soared into the air, becoming a dot against the crisp turquoise sky, higher and higher until finally she stopped and began to plummet toward the cone. Halfway down Clair burst into flame and a blazing trail of fire followed her descent.

Then she struck.

The explosion vaporized everything within a kilometer radius, including two of Davidson’s slower renegades. The cone shattered and Peacehammer shot into the sky, freed from the cage.

Clair was gone forever.

Once he entered the conflict, the battle ended quickly. Only Amber Rage escaped. The remaining renegades surrendered or went down fighting. Davidson got stuck with Phase on his tail, a fate almost as desirable as prison.

And the woman he loved was now ash spread across the stark Antarctic landscape. When all had ended, he knelt alone on the ice next to the melted crater and wept.

***

Aung San continued.

“My struggle to free Burma from the Khan began many years before I acquired my power,” he said. “The Accord does not address such a circumstance. Why should I give up my beliefs because I have become an Ultra? Why should my struggle end? Are my people suddenly free? Did my sacrifices disappear?”

Then Danny remembered reading about Aung San’s family. They vanished during his imprisonment. Intelligence had evidence that the current Khan government was involved. Apparently they had used them to try and get Aung San to talk. He hadn’t.

“Yes, I heard about your family. I’m very sorry,” Danny said. He really didn’t know what the answers were.

Aung San said nothing, but a profound sadness suddenly melted his smile and darkened his eyes.

“Thank you for your sympathy,” he said. “Such a loss can shatter a life.”

Aung San stood, obviously uncomfortable with the topic, but Danny saw there was something else woven into his sorrow. With his back turned, Aung San walked over to the angle of new morning light coming in from the window.

“I should tell you, Mr. Holt,” he began. “Today, you have also experienced such a loss.”

It took Danny a second to realize what the Burmese Ultra meant.

“Karen.”

Aung San turned to him. “The metal woman is very powerful.”

With the realization that Karen was dead, Danny collapsed, physically and emotionally. Between his paralysis and this, he was drained. There was nothing left for him to fight with, nothing he could use to support the tough guy face. He began to tremble with grief and despair. A chain of sobs made his body convulse, but the pain was so deep that no sound came from him. He remembered the first day he’d met Karen . He remembered their first battle together. They’d been quite the team, even after he’d left full time status. Over the years, he often wondered if he'd loved her. And now he knew. Silently, his shoulders and head jerked in rhythm with his pain.

“I am sorry,” Aung San said.

At that moment the door opened and one of Aung San’s guerillas entered the room, dressed in civilian clothing and carrying a Chinese assault rifle over his shoulder. He spoke to Aung San for several seconds in agitated Burmese, occasionally motioning to the sky to illustrate his message. Aung San fired off a series of orders and the man left running.

“Things have become more complicated,” Aung San said, his furrowed brow revealing a new concern. “Peacehammer is here.”

***

It was a little before dawn when Peacehammer arrived. As soon as he pierced the atmosphere, he knew something wasn’t right. The power was off in Rangoon, and the city looked dead.

In a large battle between Ultras, the sky usually blazed with gun fire: red, yellow, blue, white, black, solid beams, strobes, pulses, bolts. But there was no such light show. Aside from a few small orange fires to the south, everything was dark and quiet.

As he closed on the city, he finally saw movement in the skies. Two Super Heroes, Justice Flyer and Spartan. Just last year, he had helped Spartan save a Brazilian village during a mudslide. They had worked together very well and he liked the man.

Ramsey’s two airborne heroes saw him and their shock was clear even in the darkness. Spartan said something to Justice Flyer, and then headed toward Peacehammer, his hands open before him in a sign of peace. Justice Flyer flew away, probably to warn the other Super Heroes of Peacehammer’s arrival.

“Peacehammer! Why are you here? The fight’s over,” Spartan called to him as he approached. His elaborate silver and black costume made him look something like a science fiction gladiator. He wore a Boetian helmet in the fashion of his namesake, and armor over his shoulders and chest, but the rest was high-tech 21st century aerial warrior: Kevlar and Neoprene. Peacehammer sensed that the helmet contained a built-in satlink, probably to Ramsey.

The two Ultras came within a few meters of each other. Although Spartan was Ramsey’s second most powerful Super Hero, he was not a threat to Peacehammer by himself.

“Where’s Allison?” Peacehammer asked.

“I’m not sure,” Spartan said. “Look, Peacehammer, there’s something wrong with this one. I’m the unit leader and I have no control over her. She’s already killed at least two of your guys and maybe more than that. She’s the one that pushed Ramsey into this mess. You need to get the rest of your crew and just get out of here. This one’s over.”

“Where is she?”

Spartan looked at him and said nothing.

In the distance, Peacehammer saw another Ultra hovering above the center of town. No, two more. The Gunman and Corvus Moon, masked and uniformed. They were in a defensive posture above something on the ground. He flew past Spartan toward the Union guns.

“You know if you kill her, she’ll just come back!” Spartan shouted, his voice fading in the distance.

Corvus Moon and the Gunman saw him approach. Although the Gunman wore a mask that covered the bottom half of his face, Peacehammer could see relief come over him. Corvus Moon put her fists in the air and mouthed the word: “Yes.” Peacehammer knew he was going to disappoint them.

“Thank God, you’re here!” Corvus Moon said. “I thought we were going down on this one.”

He flew up and hovered next to them. Peacehammer could feel the heat from the Gunman’s five gems. He possessed more than any other Ultra, and he’d fired all of them recently. Even the black one.

“We’ve got three of them keeping a bead on us,” the Gunman said, his low voice revealing his Texas origins. “There, there and there.”

He pointed out the three sentries to Peacehammer. The Super Heroes were standing off, bobbing in the night sky at least two miles away. Shrike, Ajax and Air War. They wanted to stay out of range of Corvus Moon’s white energy bolts. She could guide them anywhere once she fired them, and taking a hit from one was not a pleasant option. The Gunman’s black gem also kept them out of reach. None of the Super Heroes had one of those.

“Where are the others?” Peacehammer said.

“No sign of Bandog or Viceroy,” Corvus Moon began. “Skylark and Vigil are wounded. Bulwark and Zero are on the ground with them.” She paused. “Danny and Karen…”

“I know,” Peacehammer said.

“We arrived on the second ship,” the Gunman added. “The Interceptor behind us got blasted out of the sky before it got here. No one got hurt though. We lost contact with Nelson after that.”

“So that’s everyone?”

The two guns nodded, waiting to hear if he had a plan.

“Then get them all together and evacuate,” Peacehammer said.

The guns both seemed to freeze at the words. He knew they wouldn’t like that. Some Ultras despised combat. They shunned violence and dedicated their powers to rescuing and aiding those who needed it. They helped build bridges, dams and skyscrapers. They explored the depths of the oceans, the interiors of volcanoes, the polar caps, the hearts of hurricanes. Some were even pacifists whose commitment to peace would have rivaled that of the Greater Mind. Then there were the kind like Corvus Moon and the Gunman.

“I think the stakes are a little high for that, big guy,” The Gunman said. Peacehammer had no authority to make such a decision and they all knew it. Corvus Moon said nothing but kept her eyes locked with Peacehammer’s. She wasn’t going anywhere.

Silence thickened the air. What could he do? Peacehammer relented.

“All right,” he said. “But let me handle Allison. She’s dangerous. I watched her kill Karen. I don’t want her to leave without … some regret.”

The two guns agreed to the condition. They would do their part against the opposition’s firepower. At that moment, the three Super Heroes who were watching them broke their posts and flew toward the south, obviously reacting to some signal. The move called for a tactical change.

“I’m going to follow them,” Peacehammer said. “Watch my back.”

As he headed south into the night sky, Rangoon slid beneath him, buried in darkness. The strobe of automatic weapons fire flickered in the streets below.

Ahead of him, he watched as a moving orange glow from an anti-Ultra missile flashed down an abandon street, illuminating building faces in its wake. When the missile’s explosion lit up the night, he caught a silhouette of its target. It was Allison, standing straddled-legged in the street among a dozen overturned Burmese tanks. Peacehammer saw that the missile had no effect.

He changed direction and descended toward her.

She stood in front of the Sule Paya pagoda, a gigantic circular structure that took up a full city block and served as a traffic hub. It was said that a hair from the Buddha resided inside the building. Overturned tanks and armored personnel carriers littered the area around it. The vehicles were reasonably intact and there were no bodies. That meant she was going easy on the human troops. Peacehammer landed a hundred yards up the street to her left. Allison was taunting an unseen enemy and did not notice him.

“Allison!” He called.

She turned, surprised for a moment, then smiling a deep, sharp smile.

“Glad you could make it,” she said. “I’d gotten tired of holding back.”

And with that she shot at him at nearly supersonic speed, zero to 700 mph in a quarter of a second. The distance between them snapped closed and she struck him at full power. A fifty-foot stretch of store windows shattered upon her impact. Peacehammer hadn’t expected such a sudden engagement and the blow stunned him. She carried him into the sky with her arms clinched around his waist. This was his first conflict with an Allison, and he'd underestimated her.

Gathering his anger, he pushed back, pitting his power of flight against hers. The force stopped her and they lost several hundred feet of altitude in a split second. Becoming entangled, like two interlocking hands, one blue, one silver, they zigzagged erratically across the sky, gaining and losing thousands of feet in seconds. After just a few moments, they had left Rangoon far behind.

“I’ve waited a long time for this, you blue bastard,” Allison grunted. “You’ll …”

Peacehammer’s three-knuckle fist caught her on the chin. Her clinch broke and she shot toward the ground like a meteorite. She struck among a green patchwork of farmland and the impact kicked up a black column of dirt and sod. Allison was back in the air before the debris had stopped falling. Peacehammer quickly pulled away, causing her to hover for a moment.

“That hurt,” she said.

“I’ve got more.”

Infuriated, she again launched at him like a missile. Peacehammer dodged but she changed course in a flash of movement and got his back, interlocking her metal legs around his chest. Their aerial might was about equal, but Peacehammer now knew that Allison was the more agile. Confident with her grip, she dropped a series of alternating hammer fists to the temple of his swept back head. For the first time in years, Peacehammer felt pain. The blows had the force of armor-piercing artillery shells. He went slack, dimly feeling her metal arm slide round his neck and throat.

Snapping alert, he grabbed the constricting arm, keeping it from closing around his neck. Although he did not need air to survive, Peacehammer’s blood still circulated through his invulnerable body. If it were cut off from his brain, he would die like any Ultra.

But that wasn’t going to happen today.

Allison struggled as Peacehammer slowly removed her arm from its killing grip.

“I am…stronger!” He broke the hold, spun around in flight and struck her with a wild left roundhouse. She twirled through the sky like a spinning fan blade, arms and legs splayed. He fired towards her, catching her just as she was regaining control, hooking her torso into his shoulder and shooting towards the ground to crush her against the Earth. He didn’t care if she would be reborn. This one was going to die.

He had already broken the sound barrier when she spun him around at the last second to take the force of the blow. Their flight was deflected and they hit the ground at an angle, plowing a mile-long trench across the countryside, spraying a wall of earth into the air and smashing hedgerows to splitters.

They stopped moving and Allison broke into the air, getting distance so she could recover.

“That’s a trick I learned from your little friend,” she said.

Peacehammer stood, pulling himself from the berm of earth and wood that had piled before them.

“You know her name.” He launched into the air and Allison turned and fled at supersonic speed. Peacehammer followed her, bewildered by her retreat. As near as he could tell, she was not yet damaged. In seconds Allison had passed Mach three with Peacehammer only a few lengths behind. Their velocity increased. No Ultra had matched his speed before and he wondered if she could go extraterrestrial.

She was headed back to Rangoon. As the city quickly neared, she dropped altitude to a few feet above the ground. Peacehammer stayed with her, but the task was becoming more difficult. Allison followed the course of a four- lane highway that fed into the city. With Peacehammer behind her, she dropped her arm into the pavement like a rudder. A fantail of concrete debris kicked up behind her, pelting her blue pursuer in the face and head.

Peacehammer had never seen the technique before. The spraying chunks of highway did not hurt him, but they did succeed in blocking his vision. Allison suddenly stopped cold and let him jet passed her. It took him a fraction of second to realize what had happened and by then she had disappeared within the maze of buildings and streets.

He shot up a thousand feet trying to regain visual contact. The sun was now rising, painting the buildings and streets of Rangoon in glowing orange and red. After a few seconds, he saw something glint in the new light. It was her.

***

It took Danny several minutes to regain his composure. He still had a big problem and cracking up wasn’t going to help. He threw the hospital sheets and aside and tried something else. Slowly, steadily, he rose upright above the bed and floated to the center of the room.

“I may not be able to walk, but I can still fly,” he said. “Were you serious about me being able to leave?”

“Yes, but please wait for a time,” Aung San said. “The battle is over but the Legion of Heroes and some of your comrades are still here. Peacehammer’s arrival may prolong the conflict. The battle between your factions must stop immediately. I have sent Ramsey and Dr. Nelson a warning. If they do not withdraw from Burma within the hour, I will be forced to use my powers to stop them.”

Danny was a little embarrassed by Aung San's novice overconfidence. It would take more than a fledgling electric gun to chase off the Union and Legion members once they got started. Especially when the heavies were in it. Even the attempt could get a man killed.

“I’d think twice about that one, Aung San,” Danny said, floating back down to his bed. “These are the big leaguers. There’s more riding on Burma than even you know about.”

Aung San’s polite, if somewhat condescending, smile returned, making his eyes wrinkle.

“I understand, Mr. Holt," he said. "I am a ‘big leaguer,’ too.”

***

Toward the center of town, Allison stood at the intersection of three roads in plain sight. Peacehammer flew towards her. She saw him and crouched into a defense posture waiting to face him flat footed. Now he knew why she reentered the city. She had correctly assumed he would be restrained with bystanders nearby.

He landed a few hundred feet away trying to provoke her into attacking so he could get her airborne and back over the wilderness. Instead, she relaxed her defensive posture and stood straight up. A smirk tugged at the side of her silver mouth.

“Now!” She yelled.

A half-kiloton explosive proton charge hit Peacehammer between the shoulder blades. Deflected by his T-thirteen body, the blast tore a V-shaped swath down both sides of the street. Buildings collapsed to dust, telephone poles burst into splinters, streets and sidewalks folded upon themselves like accordions.

Peacehammer was almost knocked unconscious. His limp figure flew forward and was caught by Allison. Dimly, he felt her grab his left his arms while someone else restrained his right one. To Peacehammer the world was a mist of whispers and darkness.

“Damn it, Peacehammer, I told you to leave while you could,” a faceless voice seeped through the darkness and Peacehammer realized that the other Super Hero restraining him was Spartan.

A searing pain spread over his chest, pulling him back into awareness. He looked up and saw Triclops and Inferno, crisscrossing their thermal beams over his heart. The continuous red beams burned like hell and made his blue flesh blister.

Then three more airborne Super Hero guns joined in. He did not recognize their costumes. They opened fire. A rapid chain of protons punched his face, throat and chest, exploding on impact, momentarily blinding him. A kinetic bolt from another Hero caught him in the stomach and he doubled over. He struggled against Allison and Spartan, but together they were too strong. He tried to stand and felt someone grab his legs. Another strongpoint. Little Daisy, a yellow-skinned, hairless giant who was barely out of her teens.

“Heads up!” he heard a voice yell from down the street. The airborne guns scattered like a flock of pigeons and Peacehammer saw Big Boom, in his elaborate red costume with its fiber-optic piping, charging up another fusion round. A white and blue light pulsed at the center of his chest, growing brighter by the second.

That explained the devastating shot to the back. Big Boom had a slow rate of fire, but no one could match his punch.

Peacehammer realized that this was exactly how they killed Rollo back in 1968. Nelson and every gun in the Union had surrounded the ten-foot-tall Super Hero and didn’t stop shooting until he was dead. The task took over an hour. But they didn’t have anyone like Big Boom back then.

A white sphere of unstable protons erupted from the circular blue gem at the center of Big Boom’s chest. The charge struck Peacehammer in the abdomen at full force, blasting him and the three strongpoints holding him, through five city blocks of buildings. Despite the devastating concussion, his captors did not let go. They seemed to know exactly what they were doing and how to do it.

Pain – an almost forgotten sensation to him – now drained the strength from his legs. He could not stand. Peacehammer, who could lift a thousand tons, now didn’t have the strength to lift his head.

The Super Heroes repositioned themselves in the air around him and continued their barrage. Javelins of energy struck his body in a stinging rain, solid beams of heat turned his flesh red. In the distance, Big Boom worked on charging a third round.

Suddenly, the sky went mad. A blazing, rainbow volley of cutting, stabbing, piercing, tearing rods of light streaked the sky. Four of the flying guns took direct hits from white fists of energy and fell from the sky. Judging by his rough landing, Inferno was out of the fight.

The Gunman and Corvus Moon inserted themselves into the center of the battle, gems blazing. One of the Gunman’s blue kinetic energy bolts caught Big Boom in the shoulder, causing him to prematurely fire his fusion charge. It soared into the sky and exploded harmlessly over the city in a sparkling shower of light. Big Boom was not a strongpoint, and the shot nearly took off his right arm. He was out of it.

At that moment, Justice Flyer, one of Ramsey’s finest, exploded from the sunrise. Damage Resistance, T-ten. His costume was multicolored with rather elegant banners fluttering from its arms and legs. The two Union guns instantly focused their firepower on him. A flying strongpoint was a priority threat. His costume shredded and burned under their ferocious assault. The Gunman even spat death from his black gem. Justice Flyer took the shot of midnight, winced in pain, and slapped the Texan to the ground on a fly by. Although retreating, Corvus Moon fired a continuous stream of white bolts at the Super Hero with each finding its mark. Justice Flyer yelped and howled, but kept coming anyway.

A war cry suddenly came from a different direction in the sky, and Viceroy swooped in with Bandog on his back. They intersected with Justice Flyer hard. A fleshy thud resonated across the red sky upon their impact. All three Ultras came tumbling to the ground with Bandog laughing the whole way down. He was the freshest of all of them, a bad thing for the Super Heroes.

Allison decided to change tactics.

“Keep holding him, I’m going to break his neck,” she said to Daisy and Spartan as she slid her arm around his blue throat. Peacehammer was aware of her action, but did not have the strength or leverage to resist.

Then Spartan started yelling into the satlink in his helmet. “What was that, Hero One? Come again?” He let go of Peacehammer’s arm and turned his head to ensure the best satellite connection. “Yes, sir. I understand perfectly.”

Spartan took to the air, abandoning his post at Peacehammer’s right arm, and Allison’s jaw dropped.

“Legionnaires!” The high-tech Greek shouted into the sky. “Evacuate. I repeat, EVACUATE!”

“What?” Allison was dumbfounded, her head swiveled from side to side, watching as her fellow Super Heroes broke from the fight. “What!”

Spartan flew down and faced her. “You heard me, Allison,” he said, making sure she knew who was in charge. “Ramsey gave orders to retreat. He said he’d explain later. Now let’s get out of here.”

In less than ten seconds, the Super Heroes had collected their fallen and were out of sight, revealing their true opinions of the battle. Spartan floated behind Daisy and hooked his arms under the yellow woman’s shoulders in full-nelson fashion, lifting her off the ground.

“Allison, come on!” Daisy called. “Let’s get out of here.”

Allison still held Peacehammer’s limp form.

“You go ahead,” she said. “I’ve got to tie up some loose ends.”

“Allison!” Spartan called. “Leave him there and let’s go. Now!”

Allison sneered in reply and tightened her grip around Peacehammer’s throat.

“Allison!” Spartan yelled.

Then the world exploded. White light bleached color from the shattered cityscape and a deafening roar ripped all other sound to shreds. Spartan covered his eyes and dropped Daisy to the ground as she shielded her face from the searing brilliance. Allison’s grip slipped from Peacehammer’s throat and he rolled to his side. In space, Peacehammer had watched the sun for hours, enchanted by the dancing sunspots and horsetails of energy that gestured from its surface. He could withstand the blinding light.

He looked up to see a man who had become living lightning.

Great arcs of solid white light radiated from Aung San’s floating naked body like tentacles of lightning. Even to Peacehammer, the Burmese Ultra was barely visible in the heart of the radiance. He had thought Aung San to be an electric gun, an Ultra who could project electricity from his jewel. Now he saw that the man was something else entirely. Something new.

The tentacles of light reached outward, twitching and jerking, seeking any fragment of exposed metal and caressing it until it became a puddle on the ground. Streetlights bowed like candles left in the sun. Automobiles quivered and became liquid. Mailboxes, gutter grates, trash cans, building facades all abandoned their form

Allison did not fair much better.

Aung San wrapped several of his energy appendages around the metal woman and lifted her into the air. Her body twisted and contorted in a grotesque aerial dance, back arching and bucking, arms flailing out of control.

Peacehammer stood. Allison was glowing red-hot and her seizure had grown frenetic. Her arms and legs flung melted globs of flesh like molten rain.

She continued her macabre demonstration for a few more seconds, then exploded into a million, sparkling diamonds of light which disappeared before they touched the ground.

Aung San powered down and floated to the street, still crackling.

“Geez! Whoa!” Bandog said, coming up to Peacehammer. “Did you see that? Man! That was god shit, there! ”

Spartan scooped up Daisy and headed back into the sky. A hundred feet up he stopped and turned.

“Peacehammer!” He called downward. “I’m truly sorry.” With the yellow giant dangling beneath him, he sped away toward the fully risen sun.

Viceroy and Corvus Moon attended to the Gunman, who was busted up, but still able to go airborne. Peacehammer surveyed the damage to himself. His chest carapace had cracked beneath Big Boom’s second charge and a blue liquid had seeped out, hardening around the wound.

So, his blood was blue. Until now, he hadn’t known for sure.

At the end of the street, behind Aung San, Peacehammer saw another figure approaching them. It was Danny Holt, floating upright over the rubble with his legs dangling limply beneath him. His torn Fizzy Pop costume was covered with a borrowed fatigue jacket and he looked battered and beaten. But he was definitely alive.

“It’s Holt!” Bandog shouted. The others turned to see the Ultra drifting toward them.

“Yes, he lives,” Aung San said addressing the group. “My soldiers rescued him when the metal woman was distracted. But he was greatly harmed.”

Danny came up to them and stopped, hovering perhaps five feet off the ground.

“I’m paralyzed,” he said. “Allison broke my back, left me for dead.”

No one spoke for several moments.

“Sorry, kid,” Bandog finally said.

Danny shook his head. “I got off easy,” he said, keeping his eyes on the ground. “Karen…Karen…”

Corvus Moon flew to him and draped her arm over his shoulders. She had buried dozens of friends during her tenure.

“There’s no making it better, Danny,” she said. “She did what she had to do.”

A group of guerillas brought a change of clothes for the naked Burmese man. Aung San was slight of build, nearing middle age and bore no distinguishing features, yet Peacehammer now knew he was one of the most powerful beings on the planet. Judging by what he’d just witnessed, Aung San could probably even take him out. In the far reaches of his thoughts, he felt a flutter of fear from the Greater Mind. It was terrified of the man. He was the source of its panic. It actually seemed to recognize him

“I couldn’t stand to watch her kill you, Peacehammer,” Aung San said. “When I was in America I followed your deeds. You are a good man. The loss to the world would be too great.”

“Thank you. I’m certainly glad you feel that way,” Peacehammer returned.

“But now, I am afraid I must ask all of you to leave,” Aung San was still smiling and there seemed to be no threat behind the words. “You came to stop General Ramsey from asserting his will where he should not. You have done this. But my will is not the general’s. He wishes for Ultras to rule because they are Ultras. I wish to rule because I love Burma. My struggle began many years before I acquired this power. As you all know, the syndrome may give us incredible abilities, but it does not change who we are.”

Peacehammer looked over the ragged crew. Bandog and Corvus Moon were the only ones not bleeding. Viceroy was beaten to a pulp and his left arm was tied in a makeshift sling. The Gunman could fly, but he’d broken bones upon his meeting with the ground. Holt was paralyzed. Peacehammer himself didn’t have the strength to take on a T-two. Aung San wasn’t going to get much of an argument from them.

The Burmese Ultra continued. “You should know that I told Ramsey not to come. I informed him we did not need outside assistance. I sent messages to both Nelson and Ramsey, insisting they leave. Both ignored me. Now I am asking you to listen. Please leave this place and let Burma be reborn.”

The Ultras traded agreeing glances.

“Let’s pick up the others and get out of here,” Corvus Moon said.

The guerillas had wrapped Karen's body in a blanket bound with nylon rope and placed it where Bulwark, Zero, Vigil and Skylark had taken shelter.  Danny insisted on flying her out, and no one argued with him.

Peacehammer lingered a moment longer. Realizing that the fight was over, the citizens of Rangoon began coming out of hiding.

“Good luck, Aung San,” he said. Surrounded by a growing throng of soldiers and excited citizens, Aung San nodded and waved.

The injured and nonflying Union members were piggybacked out by the flyers. In loose formation, the crew followed Danny east to sanctuary. Although the Chinese government had avoided an official stance concerning the incident in Burma, they had supplied a secret rendezvous point north of Hong Kong for the Ultras to discreetly use for escape if necessary. And, as the sun grew white and bright over the quilted countryside of Burma, this is where they headed.

Read the Epilog to find out what happened to General Ramsey...and Allison.

I know this story turned out to be a lot longer than you probably expected. Thanks for sticking with it. CMH