Swiss Alps

  July 31, 22:57

  “Nice save man,” Economos chuckled while the others ughed.

  I could sense things about to head in an unconducive direction so I stepped in.

  “Alright. You heard the man. Godiva is our target. Some people in high pces prompted me about her as a sort of test. A test of what you may ask?” I said and looked about the silent room.

  “It’s a simple thing really. They want to know why we exist. They want to know if we can do what we really set out to do. I created Shield to be another line of defense against anything that threatens the peace and stability we all enjoy. And we’ve set the Justice League as the standard we want to reach.

  Think about the stuff the League handles on a regur basis. How does Godiva compare? Is she something completely beyond them, or is she a gnat they simply have to swipe aside? If your answer is what I think it is then let’s ace this test and prove our right to exist.”

  I didn’t know it was possible to get pumped by your own speech but here we are. What made it even more funny was the fact that I wouldn’t be participating in this mission. This was going to be conducted by the newly inducted STRIKE team.

  “Agent Michaels. Get your team ready. We should be at our target soon.”

  “Sir,” she stood at attention but didn’t salute. The rest of the team members did the same and I gave them a nod, something they took as the go ahead to leave. All of them save for one person.

  “Did you write that down beforehand?” Jade, the newest member of the STRIKE team asked. Now that I think about it, her story mirrored Bck Widow’s almost perfectly, especially the part of how she ended up in my SHIELD.

  That was a story for another time however.

  “Yes and no, Agent Nguyen. Is that all?”

  “....Yes, sir.”

  Soon, the command room had just me as an occupant while I worked on the team’s data, mainly their codenames, the loadout they needed for the upcoming mission, and future operations I wanted them to tackle.

  With the kind of gear and support they had courtesy of my generosity and their own improved training, we could disband cartels and trafficking rings overnight. Sure, it wasn’t exactly what they signed up for and they each had a wealth of experience prior to joining up, but a little practice wouldn’t hurt.

  Besides, we were doing the Lord’s work by scraping those shitstains off the pnet.

  Back on the matter of the team, the name Ly had chosen gave me pause, but only for a bit. I shrugged, pushing the matter to the “may or may not be trouble” portion of my mind.

  “Harbinger” certainly unearthed memories about a certain insane universe destroying monster, but I reminded myself that this was the Young Justice reality and that if the Anti-monitor did indeed target this reality, there wasn’t much I could do.

  I was certainly not going to lie down and take it, but the period for worrying and fretting had long passed.

  The next person on the list was Rene Ramirez, and his codename of choice raised eyebrows but not to the level of Ly’s. I mean, I knew him as Wild Dog from the Arrow tv show, but I didn’t expect him to choose that for himself.

  Shrugging again, I moved to the next person on the list; Rin Gideonson. Her name of choice confused me the most out of all the others, mainly because I didn’t know the story behind it. But my job wasn’t to pry into the why behind the names, so I just approved her “Leman,” and moved on.

  Jade came next and the slot beside her profile sat empty. Cheshire was obviously off the table and this was her first day, so I could understand if she had nothing— oh, she just added something.

  Tigress. Huh, her mother’s supervilin name. Suddenly this seemed a lot better than the Bck Widow I was about to suggest. Seems like letting her spend time with her mother had been the right choice.

  Without hesitation I approved the name and moved on to the st two, bringing their profiles side by side. The simplicity of their chosen aliases prompted this, with Laski choosing “Bog” from his first name Bogdan and Ostojic taking “Gss” from… wherever.

  After keying the needed info in, I simultaneously checked in on the team and the loadouts they’d chosen for the mission, though the people themselves got more of my attention.

  We had arrived at the mission site, and they were looking over realtime scans of the grounds, waiting for Ly’s pn. It didn’t take long for her to come up with something. She issued quick orders and communicated with Hoff, the pilot of the Zephyr.

  While he repositioned according to her wishes, I took full control of the holotable in the command room, separating it into two screens; one with an aerial view of the estate and the surrounding trees and the other, a grid with six different POVs.

  To complete things on my end, I tapped into their communications and watched the show. Six dark forms hovered in the sky, held up by compact jetpacks, their operation and users silent and unseen against the bck carpet of night.

  The team formed a rough circle that encompassed the mansion in its radius. This resulted in a substantial gap between their numbers, but their communication devices of course bridged this divide.

  Ly sent a go ahead to Laski and he began to descend, not onto the mansion or its grounds, but on the nd outside of it. For a short moment, I switched my attention to his body cam and watched him nd on a spruce tree with one foot.

  He banced on its very top and crossed his free leg over the straight one while bending, forming a makeshift seat at the perch he’d chosen. A spotter drone detached from a spot on his suit and flew up, hovering above him.

  Meanwhile, all I could think about was the gyro impnt he’d chosen when he joined up. It confused me at first, but watching him now, it made sense. Imagine a sniper who could perch in the unlikeliest of pces.

  Well, I didn’t have to.

  Switching my focus back to the rge aerial view on the holotable, I watched him rest the stock of his sniper rifle on his shoulder and look through the scope.

  “In position,” he informed the team. “Tagging the surveilnce systems.”

  “Fire when ready,” said Ly.

  “Roger.”

  Curious, I switched the mode of the aerial view, moving from night to thermal and stopped on electromagnetic, specifically the one that singled out electrical devices, anything that could alert our target without our knowledge.

  It went without saying there were security cameras present. So were motion detectors hidden at obvious and not so obvious points. The ones I was and no doubt Ly were interested in were those installed in the walls and various entry points into the grounds and mansion itself.

  Someone was paranoid.

  “Boss,” Laski shared what he’d scouted with the team. “These guys are wired to blow.”

  Ly and the others—myself included—went through what he’d sussed with his focused recon and got a new appreciation for the beast we’d chosen to hunt tonight.

  Underneath each and every guard’s uniform, a small explosive device sat close to their vitals, and they were all connected to each other and something in the building, likely a trigger used by the very woman we were after.

  Inside the command room, I gripped the table tightly, fighting my own strength and the urge to contact Ly. Things had entered a territory that changed this into a hostage situation.

  No, not really.

  We already expected the woman to have an army of thralls working for her, and freeing them had been included in the mission parameters. The bombs however, changed things. There were lives on the line. Every life on that property except Godiva’s.

  “We need more info on the bombs,” Ly’s voice cut off my train of thought. “Laski, send in the drone. Overwatch, patch in and show us what we’re working with.”

  Laski obeyed and sent the spotter drone forward with a mental command. The tiny, ste-like thing cut through the distance and reached the space above the mansion wall in seconds.

  It shimmered into non-existence and dived down, moving toward a guard whose patrol path required a slow pace. Again, I patched into the readings the drone took and sent to the Zephyr and analysed the data.

  The protocol for scanning bombs and other hair trigger situations like this worked in stages. First, low level scans were used, basically something that could not set off any known system be it analog or digital.

  When that threshold was crossed successfully, things would slowly ramp up from there. This is exactly what happened in this case, and the initial scare had died down now that we had a clear picture of things.

  Economos worked fast. Just like me, he’d parsed the data and provided timely feedback to the team.

  “She’s using Semtex. It’s not much in terms of rge scale damage. You could be standing right next to one of them and you wouldn’t be hurt if their bomb went off. But they certainly wouldn’t be. It’s basically a thin strip of it pstered right over their hearts connected to a detonator. That is the part you should be worried about.

  If one of them gets knocked out or dies, it triggers multiple arms and primes the bombs of everyone else. All the bombs are on a network used to monitor their vitals and locations. Thankfully for us and sadly for miss diva’s computer guys, we now have access to the network. Everything should be disabled now. Though I don’t recommend using taser rounds.”

  “What about personal triggers? Don’t tell me these guys don’t have any,” Rin asked what everyone was thinking.

  “They do. But EMPs should take care of those.”

  I released a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding and looked at Ly’s body cam, waiting for what came next.

  “Alright listen up,” she said, her voice reverberating across all channels. “The bombs are no longer a threat, but the victims are. To us and themselves. We take them down, fast and hard. Before Godiva can get a word out or they get any ideas. Laski?”

  “EMPs are in pce, boss,” he informed after firing the st specialized round onto the grounds. These EMP bullets were meant to penetrate or stick to surfaces and obscure positions according to what he needed.

  With the rifle he had, he could achieve this by controlling the speed at which the bullet flew and by configuring said ammunition itself before firing.

  Owing to his prior experience and intense training with the highly specialized firearm, it had taken him seconds to deploy a pattern of rounds that would catch every guard in its radius but leave the lights and mansion untouched.

  “Overwatch,” Ly said. “I need those cameras to see something other than us.”

  “Already done. Same for the motion sensors. You are clear on that front.”

  “Thank you. Alright, team. Nguyen, Ramirez, Ostojic. I want you on the grounds. Once those EMPs go off, you take them down. Gas rounds, takedowns, I don’t care how you do it. I want these men down and out.

  Rin, you’re with me. Our job is inside the mansion. I’ll deal with the target while you handle those inside. Work your way up and I’ll work my way down. Laski, you keep watching our backs. Any questions?”

  Rene voiced most of the team member’s concerns. “Their guns hoss. I know we’ve got all this cool gear but that’s too many people and too many guns. I don’t want no one swallowing a muzzle in front of me.”

  “That’s what the smoke I asked you to pack is for. They do more than sow confusion.”

  “They stop guns from working?” asked Rene.

  “Theirs, not ours.”

  “Nice.”

  “Anyone else have anything to add?”

  ““No boss.”” ““All clear.”” “Just give the word.”

  “Laski. Are you ready?”

  “Ready and waiting.”

  “Do it.”

  There were no fshes of light nor bursts of sound when the EMPs went off. That didn’t mean their effects weren’t felt. All the guards stopped moving and started to feel up their abdomens and chests.

  They didn’t get to do it for very long. Canisters with smoking trails nded in their midsts and came apart in silent explosions of grey smoke. From the sky, three bck blurs dropped into the storm of wispy grey and began to wreak havoc.

  Rene and Ostojic used their rifles primarily, firing in between takedowns and physical strikes, the non-lethal rounds they chose exploding and wreathing their targets in clingy green gas.

  Meanwhile, Jade forewent her pistols entirely and went ham with her batons. She’d disabled their electrical functionality and used pure bludgeoning force to y out the confused men, her elbows, knees and feet not left out of the party.

  Outside the smoke storm, Ly hovered outside the mansion, behind Godiva’s window to be precise. That entry point had of course been barricaded but it was nothing a few well pced charges couldn’t fix.

  This time instead of an audio cue, she gave Laski a visual one, a countdown with her fingers that started from three all the way to nothing, where the bombs lining the barred window detonated and pulled everything outward.

  Without prompting, Laski fired an EMP round into the room and Ly followed with a quick, powerful burst of her jetpack. Godiva sat up in her bed as if her slumber had been an illusion and instantly reached for her countertop.

  Even with the EMP, there was no need to take any chances. Ly fired up her jetpack again and barreled into the woman, dropping her entire weight on the mind controlling mercenary feet first.

  A tiny twinkle of gold fshed past her visor and she shed out with a foot, stomping the diva in the face she took so much pride in. It was an unforgiving kick, one that sent the mercenary back into the embrace of sleep she hastily vacated.

  Hastily getting off the subdued woman and the bed, she spped a muzzling device over her full lips and turned her limp form over, before restraining her wrists and ankles with cuffs, choosing the max rating on the devices.

  “Target secure. Moving down now,” she informed and stepped close to the bedroom door, silently unlocking it.

  “Ground team, status update.”

  “All the guards are down.”

  “The bombs?”

  “Defusing now.”

  “Good. Rin, I’m heading down.”

  Carefully checking the hallway through the partially open door, Ly noted the two oblivious guards and contempted luring one of them in, but what happened next proved that she didn’t need to.

  Unknowingly mirroring each other, the guards and Ly looked to the left at the source of the sudden commotion. A small masked figure with a helmet and wild hair that flowed from a wide port in the back, leapt up from the bottom of the stairs and nded at the very top.

  She turned to face the stunned duo and Ly smirked before shaking her head.

  When she stopped and looked up again, the petite woman stood in front of the two men in a striking stance, her arm outstretched and gloved hand in a fist while one of the men flew back with a pained look.

  As for the other one, a quick backfist put him off bance and the spinning kick that followed snapped his gun in half and ripped the pieces from his hand. He looked down at the firearm, his hands and then back at the one responsible and received a fist to the cheek.

  He spun into the wall with an uncomfortable sound before falling back. Ly opened the door fully, walking out of the room and surveilling her subordinate’s handiwork.

  The petite woman, Rin, put her hand on her hips and asked, “What took you so long?”