The Weapon - Apocalypse - part 15
By Diana the Valkyrie
Wendy meets the British Army



Duncan:

By the time I saw her again, I was back home. Moira helped me take the babies
back, because I wanted her to talk with Wendy about how things had gone with
the Chancellor, and she was playing with them on the floor while I did things
in the kitchen; Wendy flew in through my giant "cat-flap" device. She attacked
me from behind, and there would have been curry sauce all over the kitchen
floor if she hadn't deftly caught the saucepan when I let go of it. "Mmmmfff"
I said, my face buried in her chest. After manhandling me for a while, she
finally put me down and let me breathe normally. "So how did it go?" "Tell you
over dinner."

Moira joined us for the meal, and as I burned my mouth, throat and stomach on
a fiendish Vindaloo, we grilled Wendy over what had happened.

"First of all, everyone's talking about the five lightning strikes on the
Thames, and the way the river boiled for a while after that. That was you,
wasn't it?" I asked. Wendy nodded, smiling. "I wanted something dramatic to
impress scumface."

"Scumface?" I asked, "you didn't call him that to his face, I hope?" "Sure I
did," she replied, "why not? You nearly did." I wondered how she'd known that.

"Yes," said Moira, "boiling the Thames probably did that. It certainly
impressed everyone else, and you were seen up in the clouds at the time, so
everyone knows it was you."

Wendy frowned. "I haven't gotten Pretty Flamingo into trouble, have I? No-one
got hurt, and there wasn't any property damage. Maybe a few fish."

"No," said Moira, "just the opposite. People are wondering what else you can
do, if you can do a thing like that." "Let them wonder," I said, "it's best if
we're a bit vague about the extent of her power."

Wendy smiled. "And he asked me to meet the Prime Minister. And the Minister of
Defence." "When will that meeting be?" "I said no."

"Um. Wendy. I don't think you should have said no," I told her. "But Duncan,
they just want to bash my ears with more talk. I was practically falling
asleep in there." "You don't sleep." "You know what I mean. I'd much rather
plat with the babies than meet these stupid politicians." "Yes, but, if he
wanted us to meet the PM then I think we should." "Uh, he didn't invite you,
Duncan, just me. Well, OK, I'll call him tomorrow and tell him to set up this
meeting."

"What about this stupid new tax?" asked Moira, "what's the result on that?" "I
think we convinced him that it would be a bad move," said Wendy. "I think it
was when I started talking about a trillion dollars, he made a funny coughing
noise and started being a lot nicer to me. And then when I threw those
thunderbolts and boiled the river, I think he was convinced that we could do
it."

"So he wants a piece of that trillion," Moira mused, "Duncan, I don't like the
sound of this. He'll back off on the tax, wait till we've expanded operations
to the trillion, and then hit us with it again, and it'll be a lot harder for
us to wriggle out of it." "But that's, that's underhanded!" said Wendy. We
both turned and looked at her. I sighed. "It's how they play the game, love."
"So what can we do about it?" she asked.

I turned back to Moira. "Are there any countries we can trust not to do the
dirty on us?" She shook her head. I sighed again. "Can we make a new country?"
said Wendy. "No, love. Every piece of land in the world is claimed by someone.
And they even claim the sea, out to a 200 mile distance from the land. Some
countries even claim the whole Continental Shelf adjacent to their country."
"So, if there was a new piece of land that wasn't on a Continental Shelf, and
more than 200 miles from any existing country ... ?" "But there isn't." Wendy
smiled, looking at me. "You couldn't ... " I said. "Couldn't what?" asked
Moira. "Couldn't make a new island," I said, suddenly gripped by a dreadful
certainty that she could do exactly that. "CRAKKA-THOOM," said Wendy, quietly.
"Hmmm. don't do anything just yet, love. Moira, don't mention this possibility
to anyone."

"It wouldn't work anyway," said Moira. "Some big country would make up some
claim, and send in their army, navy and airforce. We'd just get taken over."
"Not necessarily," I argued, "I think we could put up a very credible defence,
actually." "Duncan, it takes years to recruit and train a military." "Moira,
you don't need much of a military if you have a really good Weapon."

"CRAKKA-THOOM," said Wendy, licking her lips.

"Oh," said Moira.

I thought about this a bit. "Wendy, if Defence is going to be at that meeting,
it probably means they want to mobilise you." "They what?" "Make you part of
the British Military." "No way," she said. "No, I know. But you don't have to
tell them that to start with. It might be rather useful if they actually had
some idea of your capabilities. because that might stop them doing anything
... rash. At some time in the future. You know what I mean?" "I understand,
Duncan. You want me to intimidate the Army, right?" "Right, and the Royal Air
Force, and the Navy. You don't have to hurt anyone, but you might break up a
few of their toys a bit." Wendy grinned. She loved breaking things. She's a
Weapon, that's what she does.

The next day, I phoned the Chancellor, to tell him the good news. "She's
willing to meet your colleagues." "Great," he enthused, I think politicians
buy their enthusiasm in jars from the supermarket, "how about this afternoon?"

Wendy got back that evening, looking smug. "How did it go?" I asked her.
"Well, the good news is they've caved in on the taxes thing, they said they
won't be modifying the rules." "That's good, but I bet that could change
tomorrow if they saw something worth grabbing. And the bad news?" "I don't
think the British Military like me very much." "Why not?" "Well, you know how
boys hate it when you break their toys."

Apparently, it wasn't so much the fact that she broke their toys, they'd
hauled out an old tank specifically to see what she could do with it. What
they didn't like, was the way she did it. "I picked up a stone and chucked it
at the tank." "Wendy, that would have no effect at all." "It depends how fast
you throw it." "True. So how fast did you lob the rock?" "About 3% of
lightspeed."

Yow. I did the sums in my head. A four ounce pebble, thrown at that speed,
equates to about a thousand tons of TNT. Only a fraction of the size of the
Hiroshima bomb, but quite big enough. When Wendy's little stone hit the tank, 
it would have vaporised the tank, dug a huge crater around ground zero, 
pulverised the soil, heated it up and there would have been a shockwave, a 
heatwave, a light brighter than a hundred suns, a small earthquake and an 
impressive-looking mushroom cloud. Only a small mushroom cloud, but even small 
ones look impressive. Non radioactive, of course, but not exactly what you 
expect when you see someone chuck a stone at a target, and ignorant politicians 
tend to think that anything that makes a mushroom cloud must be a nuke. 

"They survived?" "We were a mile away from the target." "They were impressed?" 
"One of the army guys was so impressed, he wet himself. I offered to do the 
same to an unmanned airplane or missile, but they decided they'd seen enough. 
They asked me what distance I could throw with accuracy, and I told them quite
a long way. Then they wanted to know just how far, so I told them to pick a
star, I'd chuck a stone at it. Then the guy from the Army and the RAF guy got
into a big argument about whether I was artillery or air force. I think
they're assuming that I'll sign up with them. Oh, the Navy guy wanted to know
if I could land on an aircraft carrier." "What did you tell him?" "I told him
I used to fly ships ten times the size of his silly carrier. He said that you
don't fly a ship, you sail it, so I explained to him that maybe he sailed
ships, but when I pick up a half million ton crude oil carrier and carry it
halfway round the world, I fly it. And he stopped talking to me after that.
But the RAF guy wanted to know how I did the thing with the pebble and the
tank."

"Did you tell him?" "Sure. Put a negative charge on the stone, spin it up to
generate a magnetic field, all the rest is rail gun, even kids build those. Of
course, kids can't put as much power through it as I can. Duncan, I'm a
Weapon, I break things, it's what I do, I've got a zillion ways."

She makes it sound easy. As in, "Oh, you just hit it with a hammer". Thing is,
her hammer is pretty damn big. And she seems to have a lot of different
hammers. "You know," she said, "this superheroine thing really isn't as
difficult as it looks. It's 90% how good you look, and this white-and-gold
costume you designed for me makes them stop and stare." "Actually, Wendy, I
think they're staring at what you fill it with." She gave me a sexy smile.
"Got any plans this evening, lover?" A fairly simple plan formed itself in my
head. "So then you came here?" "No, they wanted to see what I could do in the
air, so they got me to fly in circles. Then an airplane came by, and fired a
missile at me, so I though, well, if they want to play tag, I can play tag.
And we spent the next several minutes playing tag."

"Tag?"

"Yes, you know the game? You run after me and try to catch me, and I run after
you and try to catch you. They were trying to tag me with these missiles, but
I can turn a lot faster than they can, plus I can go a lot faster than they
did and I kept coming up behind them and tagging them. And they'd try to twist
and turn to avoid being tagged, but they couldn't get away from me, and I'd
make a scratch in their tail and then soar away so they could try again. It
was great fun."

"Fun."

"Well, you know. It's great fun until someone loses an eye. One of the
missiles they fired at me, decided that what it really wanted to do, was fly
up the tail-pipe of one of the airplanes I was tagging with, and even though
he popped a flare, it wouldn't change its tiny little mind. So I tagged the
missile instead, tumbled it, and made it fly down into the ground." "So you
saved that pilot's life!" "No, actually. By the time I'd tagged the missile,
he'd ejected, and he was floating down safe and sound on his parachute. Well,
how was he to know I was going to deal with the missile? But then I thought,
there's that lovely airplane and no-one flying it, and it'll just crash into
the sea, which would be a terrible shame. So I got into the empty cockpit and
flew it myself."

"You know how to fly a jet fighter? Doesn't that take a lot of training?"

"Well, probably. If you do it their way. I didn't bother with all the controls
and stuff. I blew out the candle at the back, that was simple enough. Then I
got a good grip on the anchor points, and flew the airplane under my own
power."

"I bet they were pleased about that! Those things cost a lot of money."

"No, actually. They were very upset."

"Why?"

"Salvage. When you abandon a ship at sea, and someone else gets it back under
control, then the Law of the Sea says you own it. Duncan, you want to see our
new jet fighter?"

"Wendy, as soon as your back is turned, they'll just grab it back from
wherever you landed it."

"Not likely. They'll have to find it first. I hid it. Oh Duncan, it's really a
lovely thing, and we can use it to play tag. You know you love flying."

Tag. Wendy has so much respect for our most advanced military technology that
she thinks all it's good for is playing tag. "No thanks, Wendy. When I go
flying, it's with you, not in some machine." "Oh. Well, maybe we can get
someone else to fly the jet, and you and I can tag it."

Sigh. She really wants to play tag.

"Where do you hide a jet fighter, Wendy?" She looked at me and smiled.
"Duncan, when they ask you where it is, you can either lie and say you don't
know, or you can tell the truth and say you don't know, which would you
prefer?"

"Uh. OK. I don't want to know."

. . .