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  Simon Rising

  After the Crash Book One

  A superhero novel by

  Brian D Howard

  Five years ago, in mid-June, the alien ship arrived. It broadcast a short message it would crash. They said they would do everything possible to reduce the impact on our planet.

  The ship blazed across the sky. The main portion crashed into the bay of Bay City. Ground shook and windows throughout the city cracked or shattered. Water slammed over the harbor, destroying buildings in the closest blocks. Several blocks beyond that suffered significant damage.

  When the dust and water settled the remains of the ship jutted a half mile above the water. No further contact came from the aliens, all dead in the crash. Government helicopters quarantined the site. Navy and Coast Guard ships rushed to the scene.

  Scientists, military, and industrial concerns flocked to the site. All manner of public debate—which quickly became international debate—raged over how to handle the site. The UN declared it off limits to everyone until a decision could be made.

  After three months a team under UN supervision attempted to enter the ship. They were unsuccessful, and couldn't even determine what the ship was made of.

  Five years later, we still can't get inside. Even where the hull had torn open, internal seals continue to block any actual entrance. Still nothing is known of the interior—even the best penetrating radar fails.

  The huge influx of people has doubled Bay City’s population, and the city is now a major scientific research hub, as many other projects have sprung up to occupy scientists still waiting to get into the ship. Most of the damage to the city has been repaired, and new, larger and taller construction continues

  The influx of population and money has also brought a fresh influx of crime. Syndicates and crime conglomerates wage an increasingly open battle for control of the city’s underbelly. As portions of the city grow shinier, other parts grow grimier and grittier.

  While the ship no longer makes headlines, crime is, as is the city’s clear inability to stop it. Also making headlines are a growing number of vigilantes and what appear to be super-powered criminals. Public outcry mounts as people want to know whether some unknown or undisclosed alien radiation might affect people. Stories and claims of alien technology recovered from other parts of the ship that broke off during the descent are being suggested as other possible explanations.

  CHAPTER 1 – THE BANK

  Friday afternoon, March 9, 4 years after the alien crash

  FBI Special Agent Rachel Moore checked and re-holstered her gun for the third time. She rested her hands on the wheel of the delivery truck, making a conscious effort not to clench it.

  Deep breath.

  Weeks of preparation and now the final waiting. All the planning was done. The cross-department negotiations were done. Requisitions and warrants were all set. Everyone was in place and knew what to do. There was nothing left to do but wait.

  Two twenty-five.

  She stared down the wet, gray street with only occasional cars parked at metered spots, past a couple huddled under a shared umbrella as they walked, past the streetlight, past the bank at the corner and the rest of the twelve story gray stone and black glass tower. Past the next light where a yellow taxi waited to turn left and a dark sedan sped across while the green light changed. She saw no sign of the van yet, but it was coming. Drizzle collected on the windshield; rain also was coming.

  A last bit of chatter sounded from the radio on her belt: Lieutenant Thorne’s BCPD team behind the bank making a final check with the rooftop sniper teams. The department was more cooperative than she was used to from other cities. More cooperative than expected, given near-ubiquitous allegations of corruption and abuse of power.

  Two twenty-six.

  The light changed, and the taxi drove away harmlessly. The van would pull up any minute. Six men plus a driver. One of those men was Officer Carter, undercover. She only new the crew was hitting this bank in just a few long minutes because of him. It had taken time—and a stroke of luck—to get him in after their last job had nearly failed and they had lost a man.

  This crew already hit six banks. Each hit went cleanly except for the last. Each had been significantly bigger takes than the average bank robbery—their smallest just under thirty thousand, six times or more than the national average. They hit at exactly the right time when a bank was at its most vulnerable. She had pursued a theory they used people inside the banks, but so far she could not find any links between the banks to support that.

  It stops here, she vowed to herself. This time she had her ace—she held all the cards. She had Carter on the inside; she knew their plan and their timing, carefully fed to her by the planted officer. Two plain-clothes officers waited in the bank along with six uniformed ones in the back of her inconspicuous brown delivery truck. Two vans of BCPD SWAT were waiting just out of sight. Thorne’s team covered the only other exit from the bank. This heist would be over the minute it started.

  She adjusted one of the straps on the tactical vest around her torso. Her chest was tight enough as it was.

  If Carter had photographs of the crew she might have been able to identify them by now but, considering the information he had supplied, at least she had the descriptions she did. Their leader, an older white male with brown and gray hair. Asian driver, the only female on the crew. Two Hispanics, one heavily tattooed. Short redhead, the youngest of the group in his early twenties. One big black man, Leon Brown—the only one Carter had identified—with a decade-long record facing his final strike.

  She and Thorne would arrest them cleanly and put an end to a string of robberies the media had enjoyed spotlighting. In a city where the news headlined vigilantism on a regular basis the last thing anyone needed was some idiot showing up to try to solve the problem by himself. But now it was about to end. She fingered the keys in the truck’s ignition, reassuring herself that they too were in place.

  Two-twenty eight.

  Police had shot and killed one of their men at the last bank they hit. They had still gotten away after killing the officer and one civilian. She mouthed a prayer for no civilian deaths today. She felt confident they would not get away this time. No need for prayer there. Fortune favors the prepared. The teams were in place and ready. She was ready.

  The van rolled to a stop at the light. A tall gray van, the kind any contractor might use. Distance and smeared rain on two windshields between her and the driver conspired to conceal the driver enough to prevent any kind of identification. The passenger seat was empty. She would be the only one with eyes on the van right now. The rooftop snipers held back out of sight. She keyed the radio mic clipped to her vest.

  “Targets arriving. Hold for signal, repeat, hold for signal.”

  A woman and child, unaware of the excitement soon to unfold, crossed the street together with matching umbrellas and rain boots, hurrying towards the end as their walk signal changed to a flashing hand. The light was about to change. Here we go. You’re mine. It stops here.

  The van crossed the intersection casually, almost leisurely, nothing out of the ordinary. Even the turn signal blinked before the van moved over a lane to stop in one of several empty, metered spots right in front of the bank. An ugly orange hatchback accelerated past it.

  Men hopped out of the van and there was no mistaking their intentions. Shotguns and handguns were already out.

  They all wore full-face gas masks.

  “Fuck.” There was nothing about gas in the plan! The masked men stormed the bank entrance as the van rolled away as if nothing out of the ordinary were happening.

  “They’re wearing gas masks,” she radioed. “Be prepared for gas or smoke. Someone get ready to ventilate as fast as possible once we
go.” The SWAT men would have masks of their own, but this changed some of her other backup options. What other parts of their plan did she not know about, she wondered as her hands clenched the steering wheel.

  Her phone chimed the ringtone set aside for one specific purpose: the ‘go’ signal.

  “We have go signal,” she radioed. “All units move in. Repeat, all units move in!”

  She keyed the ignition on the truck and threw the truck forward. It was faster than running. She stomped the truck to a stop near the entrance seconds behind a SWAT van splashing through shallow puddles on the street. Thorne’s team would go in a side entrance probably half a minute behind.

  Six uniformed officers ran around from the back of the brown delivery truck, three on each side, as she hopped out. SWAT men in full tactical gear poured out of the bulky black van, some of them still tugging gas masks into place. Their sergeant tossed her a spare mask before they stormed through the doors into the bank.

  “You six stay close and hold this entrance until the rest of our backup arrives. Should be less than a minute.”

  She yanked the mask over her head and adjusted the seal around her face on her way to the frosted glass double doors. It was a good thing they had spares, or she would have ended up left out while the arrests happened without her.

  People staggered and fumbled their way out of the bank, fleeing choking gas that billowed out with them, as she was trying to get in. She pushed past them, drawing her pistol, knowing the officers behind her would see to these people. At least they were out of danger.

  She had seen the floor plan of the bank; she knew where to head. Through the doors into an entry vestibule. Through that and right into the bank lobby proper. That would be where everything was happening.

  The reality was less clear. Gray gas filled the space like dense smoke. Visibility was shorter than the small vestibule about fifteen feet across. The gas burned where it touched exposed skin: on her hands, on her neck, on her ears. C-S gas, military-grade stuff.

  There was already gunfire going on. She pushed forward past a large man on his knees vomiting as he tried to crawl out. She had to keep going. The man was already heading in the right direction and would be fine.

  She rounded the corner towards the lobby as a shotgun blast destroyed a computer monitor at an online services kiosk she was about to pass. She ducked behind it, aiming her Glock over the top of it. Nothing but gray to see. She advanced as the gunfire continued.

  The rat-tat-tat of SWAT submachine guns. Another shotgun blast. A three shot burst from something else, something smaller. Yells of “Police!” and retching and screams of terror.

  She moved past a fallen body, “SWAT” lettered in white on his back. She moved towards the accounts section, hoping to circle around, until she could see the pair of desks. Chairs lay overturned and a dark-skinned woman in a floral dress bawled as she tried to crawl, carry a small child, and vomit all over everything at the same time. The gas was incredibly thick. It would have had to have been multiple grenades to fill the space so densely.

  “That way,” she pointed, pausing a moment to help the woman along. Sympathy for the panicked mother balled her stomach into an angry fist.

  Another shotgun blast. More automatic fire. “Two. Down,” one of the SWAT men called out. Five men plus Carter. Three to go.

  She heard more coughing and weeping, though the gas made it hard to tell where anything was coming from. But anyone coughing, or vomiting, or retching, or weeping was alive. One of her bigger concerns with this whole thing had been avoiding civilian casualties. She wanted to show the media that the FBI and the police could work together without excessive force and without endangering innocent people.

  Passing Lending she found more overturned chairs and a man clawing at his eyes and retching. The figure he had collapsed onto was not moving. Her heart sank into her stomach. Damn.

  Single shots, handguns. A yell of, “Three, secure.”

  She was nearing the teller counter. A gas-masked shadow at the end of the counter raised a shotgun. She fired three times center mass and the figure stumbled back and toppled. She rushed to his position and knelt down. The man’s dark skin covered in black tattoos was enough to identify which member of the crew it was. Her three rounds had all hit his chest. Blood bubbled out of one wound. She took the shotgun and tossed it back behind her into the lending area. The shots were becoming more sporadic now, more interspersed with yells to get down on the floor.

  “Four, down,” she called out. One to go.

  A figure came at her across the counter. She and he both raised weapons before she made out the tactical gear and submachine gun and he clearly saw her FBI vest. He gestured further along the counter and she paralleled him on her side. The gas was thinning.

  She passed a retching and coughing civilian sitting against the wall, helpless.

  The gas thinned more and the silence hung in the bank as if a haunted house. She moved along the counter to the gap at the half-way mark, not encountering other people or bodies.

  “Put your guns down or she dies,” a man’s frantic voice insisted. She advanced in small steps until she could make out a two-headed figure in the thinning mist. As she moved closer it resolved itself into two people, one holding a gun to a shorter one’s head—a woman in a dark blazer, likely one of the bank tellers, who was coughing and shaking.

  “Drop the weapon,” she ordered, not the only one to do so. Misty gray gas swirled towards the door and she made out two of the SWAT men covering the man with his hostage. She surveyed enough to see other troopers kneeling down over fallen or incapacitated perpetrators.

  The young redhead backed a step, dragging the choking teller with him. A dark figure loomed behind the man, another SWAT trooper prowling closer.

  She stepped closer, raising both hands in a less threatening manner, making the motion obvious.

  “Hold on,” she suggested and put her gun down on the teller counter. “It doesn’t have to go this way.” She gestured to the troopers to the side and a little behind her to hold back. She just needed to keep him distracted and try to de-escalate things if she could.

  “No closer or she dies!”

  “Is that really how you want this to end?” she asked him to hold his attention while the trooper closed the remaining few feet. “You don’t have to end up a murderer. It’s up—”

  The trooper pounced like a cat, reaching around and grabbing the gun and yanking that arm hard enough to pull the man off balance. Two more men were there an instant after he hit the ground, and the three officers subdued the final perp with more than minimal force. She grabbed the teller and moved her away.

  It was done. Five men plus Carter, five men down or secured. She took a deep breath that rasped through the mask.

  “Come on; let’s get you outside to some fresh air.”

  She supported the sobbing woman outside and helped her sit on the sidewalk a little distance away from the glass doors. Thin raindrops fell, helping clear the air as they went.

  More than a dozen bank customers and personnel lined up along the wall. Tears and vomit and drool ran down their faces and chests. The mother sobbed and wailed while paramedics tended to the child. Rachel moved back inside to find more.

  She found one of the plainclothes officers crawling and slipping in his vomit. She helped him to his knees and guided him out into the rain. Uniformed officers, now equipped with masks, passed her in pairs, moving in to help the rest. She waited, feeling the rain wash some of the gas particles down her chest. The air was clear enough out here to remove the mask. She could see better without its rain-streaked lenses anyway.

  A fat Hispanic man and the redhead were dragged out, cuffed and maskless and suffering for it. It was a long few minutes before a pair of officers brought Carter out, still masked, supporting him between them. A trio of paramedics rushed over and took him from the policemen. They lowered him to the sidewalk, supporting his head as the laid him down. One of them remov
ed his mask. She frowned at the bloody abdomen wound.

  “I think they knew,” he managed.

  “It’s over now, Carter,” she assured him. “We did it. Thanks largely to you. We can worry about the rest later.”

  Medics rolled a gurney out with a body on it. This one already had a small oxygen mask on and his head supported and braced in place. An older man, in his fifties, she estimatd. Brown hair with some gray sprinkled around. So this was the leader, the man who had planned seven heists. The man she had now stopped. She followed them to the ambulance. I win.

  They loaded the gurney inside. One remained inside while the other banged the doors shut.

  “How is he?” she asked as the ambulance wheeled off, lights flashing and siren whoop-whooping.

  “Two GSWs to the head, one to the neck. He might not even make it to the hospital.”

  “Let alone to trial,” she added and sighed. Well, even if he didn’t end up in a courtroom, she had stopped him. She won. That was the important part.

  Another gurney came out with big Leon Brown. “Critical, but stable for now,” one of the attending medics mentioned. Brown and Carter were loaded onto the same ambulance.

  Another one came out with a man in a sweater vest. Rachel recognized the bawling woman that came limping out with them. But she was holding the man’s hand, and as they passed she could see his eyes were open and watching the woman. Alive after all. She sighed and smiled. She was tired.

  “Rach,” Lieutenant Thorne called out loud and deep. He trotted over smiling. He carried his vest, and his rumpled uniform was drier where it had been. Rain slicked his thinning hair and dripped off his big ugly mustache and big round nose. Nobody considered the man handsome, but his people liked and respected him, which Moore could appreciate. She’d come to like and respect him during their shared investigation, as well.

  “Pat.”

  “Could’ve been better, but we got ‘em.”

  “Plenty of paperwork to do,” she conceded, “but yeah. We stopped it. And it looks like no bystander casualties.”