Teen Titans #49 "The HIVE War" part 2

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The HIVE War, part two
Story by Jay McIntyre
Edited by Brian Burchette
Art by Jamie Rimmer

“You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.”
Albert Einstein


“Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”
Hermann Goering

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The highest ranking surviving HIVE officer sent to kill Deathstroke was in one of the two remaining armored units, scanning the rubble. They were three man affairs; one man manned the guns, one drove the tank, and one observed the scanners and status screens. The officer was the scanner and status observer.

"Life signs still present," he said now, looking up from his instruments in the blood-red light of the unit's interior.

"Should we get out and remove his body from the rubble?" the driver asked uncertainly.

"Don't be an idiot," the officer snapped. "With his healing powers, he'd be up and killing us before we knew what was going on. High command isn't going to make the mistake of underestimating him--or the Titans--ever again. Run the unit over the rubble."

"And then?"

"And then we do it again, and again, and again, until his life signs cease! Move!"

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Dimly, as though from a great distance, Deathstroke heard the heavy treads rolling towards him. He tried to get up, but he was still too dazed from the explosions and the building falling on top of him.

But luck was with him yet. The heavy treads missed him, and the armored unit passed directly overhead. He had lost his sword in the rubble, but he had other weapons; smaller blades not least.

But instead of any weapon, he took out two climbing claws. Designed to climb the roughest rocks, slickest surfaces, and even the most secure skyscrapers in the world, it was no difficulty for him to shove them upwards, biting into the underbelly of armored unit. He painfully pulled himself out of rubble, clinging to the underside of the armored unit like a tick on a mammal. Shaking his head clear, he simply hung on like grim death for a few moments, waiting for his body to heal sufficiently; as he did, the HIVE armored units continued plowing over the rubble, over and over, trying to kill him, while they themselves were ironically keeping him safe.

There was no time for amusement, however; sooner or later the police would come, or heroes. Probably not the Titans; he had surmised this was a two pronged attack. Bold, if overambitious. No, the Titans would not come. But other heroes might; certainly he wouldn't want the Justice League to show up just now.

He waited only two minutes more, counting down the seconds in his head, and then clambered up onto the side of the armored unit.

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"Sir!" a panicked voice came from the other armored unit. "He's climbing on top of you!"

The commander didn't hesitate. "Fire on us! Now! The armor will protect us! Blow him away!"

Another half-second of hesitation from the other armored unit; then their discipline (and desire to kill Deathstroke) kicked in and plasma bolts slammed into the first.

Deathstroke had vaulted up on top of the unit; as it's guns tracked him, he ducked behind it's own turret, between that one's plasma guns. The second unit stopped firing.

Removing a set of burglary tools, he began to work on opening the turret of the first armored unit.

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"Shouldn't we open it and kill him?" the driver asked uncertainly.

The officer felt a dull rage behind his eyes; surely the HIVE recruited smarter people than this? "Yes, let's go up there where he wants us, outside the safety of our armor and weaponry, and let him pick us off one by one! No; we use countermeasures!" So saying, he stabbed a blue button on his console.

The entire exterior of the armored unit began to heat up. Deathstroke grit his teeth and hung on. An ordinary man, even a finely trained and conditioned one, would have given into the pain, fallen off, and then been run over.

But Deathstroke was no ordinary man. He had suffered pains no mortal man had suffered and survived; what was more, he could heal from almost any injury in a relatively short period of time.

Even so his vision swam as the heat built up; but as the temperature increased, he remained atop the unit.

He willed his fingers to stop feeling the heat and got back to work on the turret. He knew the HIVE and their technologies; it wouldn't take long for the heat to reach the point of frying.

There was a sharp click as the turret opened; almost instinctively, he ducked as a jet of poison gas shot over him, right through the place where his head had been. He shoved the turret back and bullets rang out from below; and the other unit opened even fired one more plasma bolt.

Then he heaved himself over the edge and inside.

They stomped on him, kicked at him, shot at him; but his armor held and even in those cramped quarters they were no match for him.

Forty bloody seconds later, they were dead.

Deathstroke shoved the driver aside and took the controls, turning this unit to face the other.

"Unit one, give us command!" a voice came over the radio.

Deathstroke didn't answer, nor did he fire the weapons; he simply strapped himself in and charged the other unit at speed.

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Three more armored units were approaching Titans Tower, and over two dozen soldiers were with them. No other super groups had yet intervened--no doubt the Justice League were busy--but riot police were arriving on the fray.

Nightwing was not smiling.

"Cyborg," he said, "Tell the police to back off; they're liable to try to use them as hostages or human shields."

"I'll tell them," Cyborg answered. "But you know what they'll say."

"I know. We have to take every chance to minimize casualties."

Nightwing was not smiling for a number of reasons. Not least of which is he understood the HIVE strategy. They had lost patience; they had already injured several of their members, and they would keep throwing their armed forces at the Titans until they fell.

The HIVE was through playing games; they wanted to win.

At all costs.

It reminded him of what Gotham had been like after Bruce's.....departure. Even the attack by the Squad on Gotham had been small scale compared to this. And there had been understandable, if misguided, cause for their actions. This was an absolute grab for power by technocratic fanatics of the worst sort.

Cyborg broke off connection in his implants. "No dice; they say they have to do their part to defend the city." Sure enough, there was already an exchange of fire between the NYPD and the HIVE.

Nightwing sighed. "Kid Flash, run interference for them, if you could."

Wally vanished in a gold-and-scarlet blur. Raven, meanwhile, finished up healing Scarlet Wing and Dagon from their injuries.

"Chucked in the deep end, huh Red?" Terra said.

"It is harder than what I'm used to," Scarlet Wing admitted. "But I shouldn't complain. The principle is the same; only the names change."

"Enough reflection," Starfire said. "The enemy approaches."

Kid Flash had done what he could, and was helping the police keep one of the armored units busy; the two remaining war machines and their accompanying troops were approaching.

Starfire and Troia flew at the enemy, the others close behind.

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Police were beginning to close on Deathstroke's location also. He ground his teeth, even as he continued to ram his stolen armored unit into the HIVE's; after this all of his safe houses were compromised. He would have to start anew.

Then again, there were always his connections with the Society. They could prove useful now in ways he didn't originally intend.

He wasted no more time thinking about it. He rammed his stolen unit into the opposition for the fifth time.

When he had first commandeered this unit, he had hoped to destroy the remaining HIVE personnel and then ride this one all the way to Titans Tower. But with police--and possibly the army eventually--joining the fray, he would have to improvise.

The police had brought their armored SWAT vans, and even one bazooka-wielder, but they were still no match for the HIVE.

At least, not one on one. But they would try the same overwhelming tactics that the HIVE had used against himself, and were presumably still using against the Titans.

Deathstroke was many things, and while he was not a heartless monster, he was no hero, either. He only acted to save close family, and even that didn't always turn out well. Irritably, he shut away the memory of his second son that such a line of thought produced.

He waited a few more seconds, until the police had fully engaged them, then he simply shut his unit's power down and waited. Assuming he was done, the police focused their fire on the remaining HIVE unit, which in turn focused on them. Deathstroke popped his turret, took a grenade off the body of one of the HIVE soldiers, and tossed it under the treads of the other, and ran.

Ignoring the explosion behind him, he scrabbled around in the wreck of his safe house for his gun and sword. Once he found them, he continued on at a fast walk.

One thing the HIVE could not do was freeze his assets. He could by transport to New York easily enough, an it wasn't that far; by the time he got there, the Titans would be sufficiently weakened by the HIVE attacks for him to finish them off.

It was an accounting long overdue.

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At first, Nightwing was in the thick of the fighting with the others, whirling and leaping and kicking and throwing back-handed fists. The sound of his fist or boot connecting with a HIVE goon's head was very satisfying.

But as it went on, and Raven formed an ominous cloud over the HIVE soldiers, he realized he was making at least one serious tactual error.

An error the HIVE were counting on.

they were behaving like heroes, meeting their enemy in the field, in open combat. Where the HIVE could keep throwing numbers at them to the point where, eventually, they would fall.

That simply would not do. Especially when they had a fortress to hand. A fortress that one of their old enemies had ironically helped to give them.

The current Titans Tower had originally been designed by Silas Stone, Cyborg's father, and their enemy Deathstroke. Silas had wanted to keep tabs on his son; Deathstroke had wanted to spy on the Titans more generally, and perhaps be able to track or kill them with greater ease. They had purged the Tower after discovering this; and then been forced to reprogram it's defenses once more after Circe's attack. Certainly the HIVE had never had any data on it, not even when Deathstroke had been working for them. Nightwing felt sure of this.

"Raven. Scarlet Wing. Dagon. Begin a retreat to the Tower."

"What?" Scarlet Wing stared at him.

"You have a plan?" Raven asked.

"We have a home base we can defend from. Territory and defenses we can turn against them. Let's use it!"

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In the HIVE base in Portland, three of the high command were disappointed, but not really surprised, to observe that Deathstroke had defeated their forces.

"What a pity they did not give him some sort of serious wound he could not immediately heal from," the first of them said. "That would at least have slowed him down."

"Or at least allowed the police to capture him for a time," said the second. "That would be...interesting."

"Also too bad that he didn't commandeer our tank permanently so we could monitor his movements," the third said.

"That would attract too much attention," the second pointed out.

"And besides, it is no tactical assumption to guess where he's going," said the first. "He will take advantage of our own attack on the Titans to finish them off himself."

"That will not save his life where we are concerned," the second said, somewhat irritably.

"Of course not," the first answered. "That thought does not even occur to him. After all, did he not already slay almost all we sent after him?"

"That is my concern," the third said. "We must have no more embarrassments or defeats. Deathstroke must die. The Titans must die. No more exceptions or excuses."

"On that we are all agreed," said the first.

"We have no metahumans to commit to the fray at this time?" the second pressed.

"No, the loss of Trident was greater than it seemed at the time. And the actions of the Society and it's rivals have snapped up most other available recruits."

"Another foe we must eventually face," said the second.

"Just so. But that is for later. Those coming up through our own recruiting program are still untried; some are not even fully indoctrinated yet. That does not mean," and here he smiled with steel replacement teeth, "That we do not have additional weapons available to us."

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Cyborg and Troia were the last ones to retreat. Starfire had wanted to stay with them until the end, but she understood they had better ability to withstand damage.

She wasn't sure of her lover's strategy though, as she flew into the Tower foyer. "Is this not an act of cowardice?" she pressed him, frowning.

"I'm sure the police outside fending for themselves will think so, which is unfortunate." Nightwing still wasn't smiling. "Which is why Kid Flash is still helping them. But if we remain out there in the field, we run the risk of them killing one or more of us before they run out of reinforcements. Because it's pretty sure more are coming."

"Honor is only valuable if it does not result in your destruction," Starfire nodded. To Nightwing it sounded like a quote; and probably was, too. "My people learned that one the hard way." She shuddered a little, and Nightwing put a hand on her shoulder, knowing that she must be remembering certain events of her own past.

"But we are not simply running or hiding," he went on, as Cyborg and Troia retreated into the foyer. "Cyborg, can you confirm their reinforcements?"

Cyborg moved into the lounge and plugged himself into one of the casual Internet ports. It wasn't as ideal as going up to the actual monitoring stations, but they didn't have time to waste. He sucked in an angry breath. "GPS confirms massive HIVE movement towards us," he said. "And we'll have to hold out for a while before any other heroes notice."

"Except we're not just going to hold out," Nightwing said, grinning. "We've worked on defensive contingencies since Circe's attack; let's use them."

Cyborg smiled. It was not a pleasant smile. "Which stratagem? We designed four, as I remember."

His own mood improving, Nightwing waved a hand. "Indulge yourself. We'll probably wind up switching between them, anyway."

"Boss is getting sneaky," Terra said. "I like it."

"One small point," Raven said. "I dislike leaving Wallace out there alone."

"Well technically he's not alone, he's helping the cops. Besides, with his superspeed he should be fine."

"He wasn't fine all that long ago," Raven said. "I don't want him suffering another injury and then being left alone out there."

Nightwing knew that part of Raven's concern was due to her increased intimacy with Wally; given how he felt about Kory, he couldn't really blame her. "Wally's injuries were due to various Flash Rogues collaborating; and from what I understand, one of them was that time traveller, Professor Zoom. Special circumstances that I very much doubt the HIVE has access to."

"They could have studied his weakness when they held us captive," Raven pressed. She wasn't arguing exactly; just very worried.

And Nightwing was no authoritarian drill sergeant. "They didn't have the chance before Rose helped us escape. Besides, I'm sure you're monitoring him. If anything happens, you can teleport to him quickly, grab him, and bring him back inside."

Raven nodded unhappily, her hood shadowing her face more than usual.

The HIVE were approaching the Tower itself now, and the first of Cyborg's countermeasures--a forcefield--snapped into being. "To the basement," Nightwing said. "Except you, Dagon; you climb as high inside the Tower as you can go."

"You have a plan?" the vampire asked.

"The start of one. Let's move."

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Deathstroke had changed out of his uniform for the moment and was driving a rent-a-car north on Interstate 95 at a respectable speed. At the legal limit, but not exceeding it. Wouldn't do to be pulled over at this juncture. He could fight his way out if so, or better yet surrender and then escape whatever city or county jail he was put to with relative ease; but better to avoid the whole mess in the first place. Between the Apokolips Invasion, the Eclipso crisis, the Starro invasion, the Black Sun event, and more mundane attacks by political extremists, security was tighter these days than one might guess.

Of course, a full scale super powered battle was another matter. Police were already on the scene at Titans Tower, the radio was saying, and while no other super teams had yet shown up--the Justice League was busy elsewhere, thankfully--but it was only a matter of time until Checkmate got involved. Not that Deathstroke couldn't handle himself regardless, but the fewer distractions from killing the Titans there were, the better.

On the other hand, while he didn't truly believe the HIVE could kill all the Titans, they might kill one or two, and weaken the rest enough for him to finish them off. While he would like to finish off all the Titans himself, he was not so proud as to insist on the credit for each and every death.

As for the HIVE, his combat with them was mostly self-defense to his mind; except that he knew that they would keep coming after them. When this was over, he might have to hunt them down in their new base; find them and kill their leadership.

But the Titans were the first priority. Finally, this embarrassing--and infuriating--chapter of his life would come to an end....

To be continued...

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