Just Cause: Revised & Expanded Edition Read online

  Just Cause

  Revised and Expanded Edition

  AJust Cause Universe Novel by

  Ian Thomas Healy

  Copyright 2012 Ian Thomas Healy

  Local Hero Press Edition

  Local Hero Press Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Local Hero Press and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Cover illustration by Jeff Hebert.

  Books by Ian Thomas Healy

  The Just Cause Universe Novels

  Just Cause – Revised & Expanded Edition

  The Archmage

  Day of the Destroyer (Spring 2013)

  Other Novels

  Blood on the Ice

  Hope and Undead Elvis

  Pariah's Moon

  Rooftops

  Starf*cker (Winter 2013)

  The Milkman: SuperSekrit Extra Cheesy Edition

  Troubleshooters: The Longest Joke Ever told

  Collections

  Tales of the Weird Wild West, Vol. 1

  The Bulletproof Badge

  Short Stories

  Just Cause series

  Graceful Blur

  The Scent of Rose Petals

  The Steel Soldier's Gambit

  Weird Wild West series

  The Mighty Peculiar Incident at Muddy Creek

  Posse

  Professional MotorCombat series

  Last Year's Hero

  Rookie Sensation

  Harry Blaine series

  Bulletproof

  Young Guns

  Tuesday Night at Powerman's

  Standalone titles

  In His Majesty's Postal Service

  Bread and Circuses

  Footprints in the Butter

  Upon A Midnight Clear

  Dental Plan

  Nonfiction

  Action! Writing Better Action Using Cinematic Techniques

  All titles and more available wherever books and ebooks are sold.

  Foreword

  They’re all a little messed up, aren’t they? Superheroes, I mean. One of the truest lines from the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy, and in this particular case Batman Begins, is when Bruce Wayne says to a table of dinner guests, “A guy who dresses like a bat clearly has issues.” And of course, anyone who is familiar with Batman’s origin story (orphan of murdered parents turned lonely billionaire seeks closure and justice from beneath a cowl and cape) knows that Mr. Wayne, well, he does have issues, and he’d be the first to admit it. Alan Moore seemed to delve deepest into this particular topic with his iconic graphic novel, Watchmen. Many of those so-called superheroes weren’t particularly heroic. Their deeds seemed to come off more as compulsions to act out in a world that was well beyond saving itself. Look at the canon of Marvel and DC and everything in between, and you will see similar tropes played out time and again. Only the costumes and the names have changed.

  I’m not an expert on comic books or super heroes. I leave that stuff up to the experts, like Mr. Healy here. But I can say that his Just Cause Universe stories seem, well, different somehow. Maybe it’s because the heroes don’t have “secret identities.” Granted, he’s not the first person to do this. Iron Man is the first character to come to mind, and I guess the rest of the Avengers, but doesn’t that still seem refreshing in a way? A hero who is completely “out of the closet,” as it were. A hero who can live out in the open world without all the loneliness and deception that comes from leading a double life is, well, invigorating. They are who they are, and everyone knows it. The heroes in Just Cause are, like The Avengers, an elite special force, but they’re more regulated and organized. People love them. They’re like celebrities or Olympic athletes. Of course, this doesn’t mean our heroes don’t struggle. A story isn’t a story without conflict, both internal and external, and just because you can wear your costume and use your real name in public doesn’t mean you don’t have problems finding a place in the world, as we see Mustang Sally face in this first tale in the Just Cause Universe.

  No, I think Just Cause is different because in an era that struggles to justify even a modicum of money on investments that could move humanity forward or could perhaps save us from the increasingly oppressive climate of our own hubris, these stories portray a society that embraces justice and progress and understands that it’s worth the cost. It doesn’t force its would-be heroes to live in secrecy and become vigilantes because our government, our law enforcement, our society as a whole either can’t or is just too corrupt to care. The cynicism that underlies other comic book stories greatly reduced here, leaving in its place a sense of optimism about people and our potential to still do good things.

  Just Cause believes in a world that, while imperfect and filled with danger, still gives a damn about saving itself. I think our world needs that more than ever.

  Allison M. Dickson

  Introduction to the Revised and Expanded Edition

  “HEY DAWG, I HEARD YOU LIKE SUPERHEROES…”

  I do like superheroes. Reading about them, writing about them, and even at one time drawing them—that is, before I learned that I have no facility with a pencil, unless it’s to put words down on the page. This book represents close to a decade of my writing life, and I’m very proud of this final version. I promise not to re-revise it in a few years, like certain directors have done with their movies set in a galaxy far, far away. What you are reading is the definitive Just Cause. It has gone through several iterations over the years, from a bloated 106,000-word opus to a post-liposuction 60,000 word novella to the tome you hold today. It’s gone through name changes, three agents, two publishers, and several burro-loads of Colombian coffee.

  “… SO I PUT MORE SUPERHEROES IN YOUR SUPERHEROES…”

  The original draft of Just Cause was very different, with chapters alternating between Mustang Sally’s story and the backstory of some sixty years of history, spread across her parents’ and grandparents’ generations. All that backstory was part of the forty-thousand words I cut out in one glorious orgy of excision. I saved it, of course, because one should never waste the words one writes. Some of those stories have since transformed themselves into novels in their own right, and you’ll be able to read them someday soon. Others simply languished unattended until this edition, where I have included three of those stories at the end of the book. I call them, collectively, Those Who Came Before, and they, like the short stories available all over the internet, add more depth to the illustrious history of Just Cause.

  “… SO YOU CAN HAVE SUPERHEROES WHILE YOU HAVE SUPERHEROES.”

  I had great fun putting all this together for you, and I hope you enjoy the heck out of it.

  Ian Thomas Healy

  August, 2012

  Contents

  Copyright

  Foreword

  Introduction to the Revised and Expanded Edition

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen


  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Epilogue

  Those Who Came Before: Stories From the History of Just Cause Those Who Came Before: The Freakshow

  Those Who Came Before: Arrowheads

  Those Who Came Before: Dust to Dust

  Roll Call: the Teams of the Just Cause Universe Project Circus

  Project Shetland

  American Justice

  Just Cause

  Children of the Atom

  Just Cause Second Team

  The Lucky Seven

  The New Guard

  Divine Right

  Young Guns

  The Hero Academy

  Deep Six

  About the Author

  About the Cover Illustrator

  Chapter One

  “We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until…we have stopped saying ‘It got lost,’ and say ‘I lost it.’”

  -Sydney J. Harris

  December, 2003

  Chicago, Illinois

  “Happy birthday, dear Sally, happy birthday to you!” sang the group assembled in the Lucky Seven’s conference room. Salena Thompson hunched her shoulders at the cacophony and squirmed in her seat. She wished something—anything—would happen to cut short the embarrassing spectacle of seven adults fawning over her. Maybe aliens could decide today was the day to invade Chicago, or the Moon could slip out of its orbit, or zombies would choose today to begin crawling from the frozen ground in search of brains. Any opportunity for her to bolt from the room and do what she’d been trained to do instead of suffering the attention and adulation of the others.

  “Go on, dear, blow out the candles and make a wish.” Tremor’s fashion-model looks and height made Sally feel like a clumsy adolescent next to her. Only a shade over five feet tall, Sally had developed a perpetual kink in her neck from always having to look up at the statuesque men and women who populated the parahuman community.

  Sally leaned forward and held her long blonde braids back from the eighteen yellow candles on the cake. The frosting was the same scarlet as her superhero costume. It would probably turn her tongue the same color, what with all the food coloring. She knew Bullet had slaved away in the kitchen for hours, wrestling with recipes and mixing ingredients in his giant, ungainly hands. More than once, the entire Lucky Seven headquarters had rung when he punched a counter top in frustration. Juliet had taken Sally aside before the party and made her promise to love the cake no matter what. And to Bullet’s credit, it was a very pretty cake, with yellow swirls decorating the frosting that reminded Sally of her braids or the golden trim of her costume.

  All things considered, she’d much rather have been on duty in costume, helping to patrol the city or telling school kids not to use drugs or even filling out paperwork. Instead, she took a deep breath and tried not to grimace as Juliet snapped a picture from across the table. A moment later, she extinguished the candles to thunderous applause. She looked around the room at her friends, the privately-funded team of superheroes which had adopted her for the past six months.

  “Hey, get the gift.” Stratocaster snapped his fingers as if he’d just remembered. His vibrant purple mohawk stood proud and spiked. His guitar, the conduit for his magical power, hung at his back. He’d dressed in his nicest t-shirt for the occasion, one printed with a tuxedo shirt and bow tie, and his Doc Martens had been polished.

  “Oh, yeah… we almost forgot!” Spark made a show of searching his pockets and rubbing his beard thoughtfully. “Who has it? I don’t.” Unlike the others on the team, Spark had no innate parahuman abilities of his own. Instead he used his acrobatic skills and electrical gadgetry to hold his own. And it didn’t hurt that he ranked pretty high on Forbes 400 list either, thanks to his electrical engineering and business acumen.

  Bullet stepped forward. He was as large and imposing in his civvies as in his black-and-red costume. His craggy, scarred face split into a wide grin as he held out an envelope to Sally. “Happy birthday,” he said in his cracking, rumbling voice. A piece of rebar had pierced his throat once, and even though he had healed from the injury within minutes, it had left his voice a ruin. “I hope you like the cake.”

  “I’m sure it’s delicious. I can’t wait to taste it.” Sally took the envelope and glanced around at the others. Statues might as well have surrounded her for all the expressions displayed by the Lucky Seven. Even Carousel, the artificial being who delighted in expressing human emotions, made her face an impassive wall.

  “Go on,” said Juliet. “Open it.” She was the only one of the Lucky Seven who didn’t use a superhero name. She had wanted to call herself Jedi because of her psionic powers, but Lucasfilm wouldn’t permit it, so she just worked without any special name. Her dreadlocks were held back by a tie-dyed scarf with a batik pattern on it and her teeth sparkled like mints in the chocolatey glow of her face.

  Sally slid a finger underneath the envelope flap and withdrew two folded pieces of paper.

  “Read them out loud.” Trix shook his ‘80s rock-star hair. Like Stratocaster, he would have been far more comfortable in a ripped t-shirt and jeans with a studded belt, but he’d found a dark blue turtleneck and some chinos somewhere in the very bottom of his wardrobe.

  “To Juice, Field Commander and Administrator of Just Cause,” read Sally. “We, the undersigned, are pleased to recommend Salena Thompson, also known as Mustang Sally, for an internship with Just—” She stopped as she felt her throat tighten up. She tried again. “Internship with Ju—”

  Her vision had grown far too blurry with tears to read more.

  “There’s more,” said Spark. “Since we’d gone to all the trouble of writing this referral for you, we thought we might save you some time and effort and sent in the application on your behalf. The other page is—”

  “Shush, let her read it herself.” Juliet placed her hand on Spark’s shoulder.

  Sally flipped over to the other sheet of paper. She saw the official Just Cause stationery and the brief letter written on it. Certain words jumped out at her: interview… Just Cause Headquarters… Intern.

  “Th-thank you.” Tears streamed down her cheeks. “It’s the b-best gift ever.”

  All her life, Sally had wanted to be a superhero in Just Cause, like her mother and grandmother had been. Now she would have that chance.

  Tremor brushed her crimson curls away from her face and smiled at her with the fashion-model looks that had graced a hundred different magazine covers. “Sally…” The conference room alert spotlights illuminated and a sudden klaxon wailed from the speaker system throughout Lucky Seven Headquarters. Echoes chased up and down the halls of the building.

  The heroes looked at each other in disbelief.

  “It’s five days before Christmas. What the hell could possibly need our attention?” said Stratocaster. “Don’t supervillains have last-minute shopping to do?”

  “Maybe one of them is working a five-finger discount,” said Trix.

  Spark touched a button on the intercom that connected him to the team’s dedicated monitoring center, modeled after the much larger and more comprehensive one used by Just Cause. “Spark here. What’s going on?”

  “I’ve got the police commissioner holding for you, Boss,” reported a voice from the center.

  “Patch him through.”

  “Spark, we’ve got a giant robot thing breaking up the Science and Technology Expo at McCormick Place. I have officers down and possible civilian casualties!”

  “Understood, Commissioner. We’re on our way.” Spark turned to Sally and the rest of the Lucky Seven. “Let’s move, people.”

  They hurried to the locker rooms to change. Sally, with her super-speed, was in and back out again in costume well before any of the others. She tapped her yellow boots on the floor with a rapid-fire patter, impat
ient for the rest of the Lucky Seven to finish.

  The rest of the team rejoined her within minutes. They’d transformed themselves from civilian attire to their colorful costumes.

  “Trix, can you fly today?” Spark checked the clips which held his electro-whip.

  “Not sure, man. Let me give it a try.” Sally and the rest of the Lucky Seven members tensed as Trix rose into the air. His random powers came and went with alarming frequency. Sometimes he could fly, other times he couldn’t. More than once he’d tried to use an ability only to get something unexpected, like an explosive fireball or a tornado from a clear blue sky. He gave them a thumbs-up.

  Spark nodded. “Good. Sally, Carousel, you’re with me. Bullet, you’re on point. Trix, Tremor, flank us. Strat—”

  A whine of mystical feedback echoed through the conference room as Stratocaster turned the knobs on his guitar up to the proverbial eleven.

  “Bring Juliet along and we’ll meet you there.”

  Juliet rolled her eyes and dug her fingers into her ears. Stratocaster fingered the fretboard and with a long-practiced move, leaped into the air, swung his pick hand around in a windmill circle, and slashed the pick across the strings. He landed with his legs spread apart, pointed the neck of the guitar toward the ceiling, and stuck his other hand in the air in a pose straight out of a rock video. A wallop of solid sound smashed through the conference room. Bright energy sparks flowed from the guitar strings in every color of the spectrum. They coalesced into a violet glow that enveloped him and Juliet and they disappeared to leave only a reverberating echo of the power chord in their wake.

  Sally’s ears rang like church bells tolled in her head. She winced and hoped the damage wasn’t permanent.