The immediate aftermath of the Second Astoria Incident, as the press was soon calling it, took a full week to wrap up. But its repercussions would continue to echo for years to come, both on Earth and in the wider galaxy.
As soon as the authorities arrived to secure the site in Cathedral Park they confirmed to the Vanguard that Nemesis had, indeed, hijacked every television frequency on the planet, as well as the Internet itself, to broadcast the events on Halicon and in the park to the entire world. In the weeks to follow this would prove to be an inextricably linked mess of both blessing and curse.
On the one hand, it raised the profile of the team to heights of world-wide fame that rivaled that of the Liberty Alliance. On the other hand, a small but very vocal minority lambasted the team for “making decisions for the entire world” on their own initiative, while others somehow blamed them for “letting” Zybon learn of Earth’s existence. The armchair generals and morning after quarterbacks became an intense media focus for awhile, although the Vanguard did their best to stay above the fray.
Mostly.
When he was ambushed during a morning show interview a week after the Incident, Chilz “lost his cool” (as numerous media outlets gleefully punned afterward, endlessly), and laid into the smarmy Barbie-doll host with the unlikely name of Kiwi Sherman, with both barrels…
“Who are we to decide the fate of the world?! We were the ones on the ground, in the moment, and if we didn’t have the “authority,” we sure as hell had the responsibility! You parrot Nemesis’ claim that we doomed Earth by refusing his “gift,” but we all know that if we had allowed him to unleash a world-wide repeat of the first Astoria Incident you’d be sitting here accusing us of gross incompetence and calling for our heads on a platter. Assuming you weren’t one of the billions of people dead or horribly mutated, of course.”
No one on the team disagreed with his sentiment, and if he’d stopped there everyone would have called it a success. Unfortunately, he went on to mock the woman mercilessly, starting with her well-known anti-vaccine beliefs and ending with accusing her of being a Flat Earther. Unsurprisingly, the rest of the media focused mostly on the insults and the resultant tears, burying the legitimate argument.
Eventually the furor died down, and the debate receded to the usual background levels of conspiratorial incoherence and illogic on the lunatic fringe. The argument, by those who feared and hated metahumans, that the Vanguard hadn’t allowed the whole human race to be turned into metas was unsustainable for any but the most extreme denizens of the rabbit hole – there were always people who bought the theory that you had to burn down the village to save it.
But the justified fear that the destruction of Halicon engendered in the population was less easily laid to rest. For the first 72 hours after the world-wide broadcast of the horrifying murder of a world, spontaneous riots and other panicked reactions rocked many cities on Earth. From desperate runs on stores and banks to the irrational protesting of angry crowds picketing outside the Union embassy in New Atlantis, many people seemed to lose their minds.
Oddly enough, Astoria proved relatively immune to these transports of excess. There was concern, certainly, and fear of what might come, but no riots and no great rush to stock up on survival supplies. This later was perhaps due to the uncharacteristically sarcastic commentary by KLEC Channel 12’s beloved anchor Caleb Gardner the day after the Second Incident, when he wondered how many Haliconians survived the complete disintegration of their planet by having enough bottles of water, freeze-dried food and extra-thermal sleeping bags.
When it became clear that neither Entropy nor the Harbinger Fleet were going to make an immediate appearance in the skies over Earth, things began to return to normal. People started cleaning up the several billion dollars in property damage they’d caused, and the news cycle slowly settled back into its usual rhythms. The stunning fact that failed businessman and reality TV shill Donald Trump had become the Republican nominee for president, which had happened just a few days before the Second Incident and then been overwhelmed by the larger news, again dominated the media hive-mind.
On a more personal level, the individual members of the Vanguard dealt with the shock of witnessing the death of almost 10 billion people in their own ways. Scion and Quanta threw themselves into studying both the Nemesis’ armor and Alvaro’s matrix shard, looking for clues to leverage the advanced Seeker technology into a defense against Entropy (and against Nemesis, which seemed the more likely threat, at least in the short term). Work on the armor was done alongside government scientists and Vitruvian of the Liberty Alliance, but the research into the shard was a strictly Vanguard secret.
Artemis dove back into street-level work, both as Jane Valentine, PI and in her heroic guise. A century and a half of war in all its forms had inured her to much, but she found herself deeply disturbed by the destruction of Halicon, and she wasn’t sure why, beyond the obvious. The low-life elements of the city soon found their own angst increasing tremendously as she worked out her uncertainties on them.
It may have been a small thing in the context of the larger tragedy, but one of the things that most bothered Artemis was the fate of the Haliconian mentat, Ella-Va. She had felt the other woman being torn from her grasp just before they found themselves back on Earth, and was sure she’d been saved from the destruction of her home world. But where was she?
When she heard reports of a green-skinned woman fleeing from a hostile mob in Prague two weeks after the Second Incident, Artemis knew she had to check it out. Taking Phantom Ace with her, she shadow-stepped to the capital of the Czech Republic. In less than a day they had tracked down the mystery woman to her hiding place in the catacombs of the old city. It was indeed Ella-Va, but a confused, frightened and amnesiac woman, rather than the heroic mentat they remembered.
Fortunately the medical facilities in the AzTech Pyramid and the psychic powers of Totem’s avatar Raven were enough to restore her memory fairly quickly. Which was no real blessing, as she was forced to re-live the destruction of everything she’d known and loved… for several days she refused to leave her room as she processed her grief.
While Chilz’ own internal emotional turmoil seemed to come out mostly as a shorter temper and minimal patience for idiots, he also seemed to become more focused on the practical aspects of his chosen heroic career, working harder than ever to hone his combat skills. He continued to enjoy his celebrity, but seemed more serious about using it for furthering good causes. And if anything, his explosion on Good Morning Astoria only seemed to increase his popularity with the media.
Phantom Ace and Blue Flame seemed little changed by their experience, at least outwardly. But both spent more time talking with each other about the events of that day, as well as with both Artemis and Chilz. They also proved instrumental in the efforts to bring Ella-Va out of her shell, once she emerged from seclusion. The two delighted in showing her all the wonders of Earth, from its natural beauty to its best video games.
Totem spent a great deal of time with Meg in the days after returning to Earth, and shared every detail of his experience with her. She had seen much of the action, of course, along with everyone else on the planet, but his revelations moved her empathic nature deeply. She quickly realized that the story of Halicon needed to be told more fully.
With Cooper’s permission, even encouragement, she interviewed the rest of the team, individually and together. But it was her long sessions with the recovering Ella-Va that turned the resulting article from merely an interesting account of the battle as seen from the heroes’ point of view into a devastatingly emotional glimpse into the last hours of a world.
The story was picked up by the national media, which in turn led to a call from Manga-Tor, the Union’s ambassador-observer to the United Nations of Earth. For weeks the ambassador, mired in his own shock and grief, had been rejecting all media calls for personal interviews. The embassy would issue curt updates on events in the Union as they learned of them, but nothing more. Until the Ambassador read Meg Halcyon’s story.
He was so moved by her words that he had his office offer her the opportunity to come to New Atlantis for a one-on-one interview. Louise Lancaster, the aging ace reporter for the Daily Star and the Ambassador’s long-time favorite Earth writer, was also invited to the meeting. At Manga-Tor’s request the two woman joined forces to write an eight-part series that vividly brought to life the people, history and culture of his dead home world.
The series ran in mid-August in both the Daily Star and the Oregonian, running from Sunday to Sunday, and thereafter appeared in hundreds of other papers around the world. The impact of the story was immediate and intense, and it may well have played a pivotal role in creating the largely sympathetic public reaction to the first wave of Union refugees that arrived on Earth in early September.
With the destruction of the capital world of the Union, their enemies, especially the Stellar Protectorate and the Dramorg Consensus, had moved at once in an attempt to overrun and dismember the confederation. If the Grand Chancellor, Senate and core governmental structure hadn’t survived and successfully relocated to Kaldoryn, the oldest of the Union’s colonies, it’s likely they would have succeeded. As it was, fully a third of the Union fell to one enemy or the other, with minor border states like the Kash’rodan Empire picking off a handful of border worlds for themselves in the chaos.
Tens of thousands fled from the conquered worlds while they could, many taking refuge on planets still held by the Union. But some of those thousands, thanks to the fortunes of atsrography and spurred on by tales of her legendary heroes, made their way to Earth. While the UN dithered, with damaged ships and dwindling supplies escalating the crisis in orbit daily, President Obama acted unilaterally and granted the galactic refuges temporary asylum in the United States.
To contain the problems associated with this move, Vitruvian and Urbana repurposed the abandoned Space Control facilities on Star Island, several miles off the southern coast of New Jersey, into a holding and processing facility for alien immigrants. By mid-September over three thousand aliens were being housed there, while the governments of Earth debated the planet’s official policy.
The presence of so many aliens, so close to the East Coast, naturally sent certain groups into the stratosphere, stoking wild fears of invasion and cultural destruction in the wake of this “alien army.” Obama’s decision quickly became a major point of contention between the candidates in the US presidential race, with Trump feverishly decrying the “swamping of our borders by an alien horde of monstrous murderers and space-rapists” (although he did backtrack so far as to admit that he “assumed some were fine creatures”) and Secretary Clinton urging calm and suggesting a measured response to the crisis was both called for and in keeping with cherished American values.
Prior to the sudden arrival of the galactic refugees, in early August, JJ Astor VIII’s company, Apergy Systems International, acquired most of the physical and intellectual assets of the now bankrupt ZeroPoint Energy Corporation at auction. On 26 August, while going through one of his new warehouses, JJ came across an old crate… it contents eventually turned out to be the Vanguard’s newest member, Prometheus.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Monday, 3 October 2016, was an unusually sunny and warm day for fall in the Pacific Northwest. From the Assembly Room in the AzTech Pyramid Mt. Defiance stood brilliantly white in its new coat of snow against a pale blue sky, and the glass towers of downtown Astoria glittered. Scion had just finished welcoming Prometheus to his first meeting as an official member of the Vanguard. After appropriate applause and welcomes from the others, and seeing that there was no old business to cover, he asked the table for any new business.
“Well, my sources in Chinatown have given me an interesting little bit of intelligence,” Artemis offered. “It seems that a package recently arrived in the city from Russia, a package greatly valued by the Russian Mob. My sources didn’t know the exact nature of this package, beyond the fact that it’s apparently easily portable. They know that much because it was stolen two days ago, right out from under the Russian’s noses.
“The value can be guessed at by the level of rage the Russian’s are exhibiting in the aftermath of the theft. They have put a bounty of $1,000,000 on the head of the unknown thief, dead or alive, as long as the “package” is returned with the seal unbroken… and they’ve gone so far as to let it be known they’ll even pay the thief him- or herself the bounty IF they return the item in the same condition.”
That brought surprised looks from many of the others. As a group they’d had little interaction with the Russian Mob since the Vanguard’s formation, but they knew from Artemis and Scion’s individual run-ins about the Russian crime family’s reputation – dangerous, ruthless, and absolutely unforgiving of any slight or perceived wrong done to their honor. For them to essentially offer to be held up for a ransom…
“They must really want that thing back,” Jonny said. “Even if they don’t intend to keep their promise to the thief, they lose face just making the offer. Wait, you said your tip came from Chinatown – aren’t the Russians based more in the Outer Peninsula, especially around the docks?”
“Very good, Jonny,” Artemis said approvingly. “Yes, they are, and my tip didn’t come from anyone in the Russian’s orbit – although a few of them confirmed the details when I… questioned them about it. No, my tip is from someone in the Takazumi-gumi.“
“That’s the ruling clan of the local Yakuza,” Jonny explained in an aside to Prometheus, who was scrolling through his PADD, obviously trying to keep up.
“Yes, thank you,” Artemis said, and Jonny clammed up as she continued. “My source claims that the Steel Shogun has bid $10 million for the “package,” sight unseen. The exchange is supposedly going to happen this afternoon in an empty condo in the McDonald Tower.”
Everyone except Prometheus turned to stare out the windows and down at the building in question, a 46-story cylinder of blue reflective glass sitting not 600 feet to the southwest of them. Quanta barked out a laugh.
“Well, you’ve got to give the man credit, he does seem to have actual balls of steel,” he said, half admiringly. “Pulling off his big buy within spitting distance of Vanguard headquarters!”
“Well then, maybe we should demonstrate to him the folly of such arrogance,” Scion said, smiling cooly. “And put those balls in a vice. What else can you tell us about this deal, Artemis?”