Crossover Earth '98
Emergency Session Jay Shaffstall
A dozen influential men and women met in a well lighted conference room. The chairman called the meeting to order without ceremony.
"We have a problem." He looked around at the assembled faces. "Armature is not under our control, and has an unknown agenda. I want some options."
"Quartz," one man said, "has no idea how to react. They're trying to blow smoke, but they've already thrown their best at Armature and come up empty. Poison gas, injections, neural stunners, plasma rifles, nothing seems to work."
A woman nodded. "Omega Corp is in pretty much the same boat," she said. "We don't have anything that can touch him that won't also destroy much of Kansas."
The chairman raised an eyebrow. "Acceptable losses?"
Those around the table looked at each other.
"Let's start with some limited air strikes." The chairman motioned toward a man at the other end of the table. "You start priming the military for the idea, and I'll get the political wheels turning. If the air strikes don't work, then we can talk about acceptable losses."
"Any other business?"
"Yes," a slim woman spoke up. "The Truant has been getting more and more unstable, ever since he managed to have Avalon killed. We'd intended Avalon to take him down as a red herring, but now he's a loose cannon."
"I can cover that," another man said. "I have an operative in New York on unrelated business. I'll have her help one of the other crime bosses get rid of the Truant."
"Anything else? No, well meeting adjourned."
As the others left, the chairman let his thoughts go over the possible solutions to the Armature problem. He personally had no compunction about initiating a nuclear strike on Kansas, but many of the others on the Council would balk. He wasn't quite ready to take complete control from them, not yet.
But soon...