Great news Virtual Pulp fans! You’re about to read a brand new story! It’s another tale set in the Mortal Gods universe. This one is longer than flash fiction but still short enough to read in just a few minutes.
One of the unique things I try to do with stories in the Mortal Gods universe is keep the central character, Adam White, in the background. This heightens the mystery around him. And sometimes I go even further than this. Sometimes I push all the superhuman characters into the background, which not only makes them a little bit more mysterious, but also helps ground the tale slightly closer to reality.
And that’s what you’re going to read right now. This short story features superhumans, but warfare and journalists manipulating how you think about it factor into it as well.
In fact, journalists and the disinformation they spread is what takes center stage.
So without further ado, here is “The White Supremacists.” *
*****
Cohen unfolded the note and smoothed it out. He placed it as flat as he could get it on the rock that had been covering it. He tapped the message into his phone as he silently read it.
Intelligence finally located Baghdadi and Jubouri, and a few other leaders of the revived Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Just outside of Ramadi. They’re guarded by superhumans. First time we’ve ever seen this. So we’ve made the decision to deploy our own superhumans in a special task force. First time using them against ISIL. Operation will take place tomorrow.
He finished and burned the note. He stood up and his phone rang. TransparNet, the British anti-secrecy organization.
“Better be quick,” he said. The flames consumed the note. He kicked dirt on it with his sandal, soiling the toes of his sock in the process.
“Why? You get something else?” the TransparNet contact asked.
“Yeah. It’s huge and I gotta write the story right away. I mean like before the end of the business day. And it’s going to take me some time to get back to the office since traffic is picking up. Going to be The Times’s biggest story yet exposing the war against ISIL.”
“Someone inside the government leaked me something huge too,” the TransparNet contact said. “Cache of videos detailing U.S. forces killing insurgents.”
“And?” Cohen asked.
“They’re grisly. Looks like more war crimes from our hero American troops. At least, I can’t imagine how they couldn’t be.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean,” Cohen sneered, rubbing the dirt off his sock. “Can’t wait to see what you have. But I’ve to go right now. I have to get this article in or in. Otherwise I’m going to miss my chance to expose what this fascist country is about to do next.”
*****
Houses and business centers, along with patches of trees and cornfields, mixed together and defined the landscape a handful of miles north of Fort Detrick. The unassuming building that looked like an aging business center with mostly abandoned offices blended into the background. The task force headquarters was deep within its subbasement, the command center taking up a sizable portion of the HQ.
Giant monitors covered the wall at the front of the command center, saturating the room with the multiple feeds of the Iraqi battlefield cameras covering the task force’s fight. Suddenly, violent color and raging white flashed on them again and again.
All the other superhumans pale in comparison with Adam, Amanda Langli thought. “That’s three more ISIL superhumans neutralized,” she announced, standing at the rear of the room. “How many remain?”
“Three, ma’am,” a female analyst answered. “Correction, two. Helios 3 and . . . one of our other men—can’t positively identify him right now—just took out another one.”
Helios 3—Victoria’s call sign. Can’t believe she survived the ISIL attack that killed our four other guys. Can’t believe she’s still in the fight, Amanda thought. “Where are those two right now?” she asked.
“Uncertain, ma’am. They entered the mosque earlier. Not sure they’re still there,” the analyst replied.
Both burst out of it seconds later. One flew through its roof. The other ran through one of its walls. The mosque crumbled to the ground.
Adam and Victoria attacked the flying enemy, striking him with energy blasts. They fried him so thoroughly that he appeared to have disappeared. Task force members on the ground combined and killed the enemy fleeing on foot.
“All superhuman threats eliminated,” the analyst said.
“Any other threats in the area?” Amanda asked.
“Preliminary assessment is negative,” a male analyst said. The video monitors showed a village reduced to ash and dust. “Just waiting for each of our men to verify that his sector is clear.” Fifteen seconds passed, battlefield radio traffic filling the HQ. “And they’re clear. Moving onto evacuating our casualties. Also starting sensitive site exploitation and the collection of Baghdadi’s and Jubouri’s remains.”
“Very good,” Amanda said. “As soon as our team advises of the end of the operation, we need to write a battle damage assessment and forecast who will take over the leadership of ISIL next.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the female analyst said.
“And we’re going to find out who betrayed us as well,” Amanda added.
*****
“You know who else is going crazy over your articles? I mean in a good way?” Cohen’s TransparNet contact asked. “The dissident right. Can you believe that? I thought they’d be on the side of the war criminals for sure.”
“I know,” Cohen said, munching on avocado toast. Crumbs flaked into his keyboard, greeted by the host of other debris that had set up shop there ages ago. “They’re a bunch of racists and bigots, of course. But even they can’t deny this massacre of Muslims is outrageous.”
“And they’re not just angry about the attack to get Baghdadi and Jubouri,” the TransparNet contact said. “The dissident right is crying about American imperialism and colonialism!”
“They’re going to be even madder—everyone is—when they see what I have coming next,” Cohen replied.
“Yeah, that article is going to be good with all those videos I sent you from that cache my source leaked to me,” the TransparNet contact said.
“No. It’s going to be even bigger than that,” Cohen told him. He kicked his feet up on his desk inside the Washington headquarters of The Times.
“Did that ISIL media minister get back to you?”
“He did. And so did my government source. You’re not going to believe what they told me,” Cohen crowed. “ISIL’s media minister verified the Americans inflicted a lot of civilian casualties. It must’ve been horrible. On top of that, they attacked a mosque.”
“You’re kidding me!”
“Nope. Attacked and destroyed it,” Cohen said. “We’re talking about serious war crimes here. I contacted my White House guy about it. He refused to comment on it but he begged me not to run the story.”
“What’d you say?”
“I told him of course I’m going to run it. This is why journalists exist. We protect the truth and hold the guilty to account,” Cohen said.
“So you have the videos from the leaked cache I sent you, and you have this new stuff,” the TransparNet contact said. “No one is going to be able to ignore how terrible America is now.”
“But it gets even worse,” Cohen said.
“Come on!”
“My government source—and he’s the most senior one I’ve ever had—is telling me that the superhuman task force has a lot of white supremacists in it who are on a Crusade against Islam. And he says they intentionally attacked the mosque because of that,” Cohen said, striking the air for emphasis.
“They’re traitors!” the TransparNet contact yelled. “White supremacist, Christian Dominionist traitors!”
“That’s exactly what they are!” Cohen yelled back, dropping his feet from his desk. “So it isn’t just war crimes; this superhuman task force is a massive national security threat to the U.S.!”
“Did your government source find out the identities of the superhuman task force members?” the TransparNet contact asked.
“Not yet,” Cohen said. “He’s still working on that. But their identities are compartmentalized to so few people that he can’t push too hard or he’s going to attract attention.”
“So they’re unaccountable,” the TransparNet contact whined.
“Until someone puts the pressure on the government to hold them accountable,” Cohen said.
“Man, you have to get this story published.”
“I know. I need about another hour to complete it,” Cohen told him. “Then I’m going to send it to you. Review it. Add whatever you have and get it back to me no later than three today.”
“Understood. Look forward to it,” the TransparNet contact said.
“This isn’t just Pulitzer material for me and The Times; this is going to show everyone just how big our white supremacist, Christian traitor problem is,” Cohen said.
*****
“Cohen and The Times cost us lives. They got our men killed. And they nearly caused the ISIL leaders to escape before we got there. Now they’re running articles slandering us as having committed war crimes and being white supremacist Nazis,” Amanda said to the deputy assistant. “It’s time to bring charges against them and whoever is leaking to them. Not to mention TransparNet. It’s a foreign, hostile, intelligence organization.”
“Well, I understand you anger at the leaks,” the deputy assistant said. “But your suggestion that we go after Cohen, The Times, or even TransparNet is entirely unacceptable. And you really don’t want to make things worse.”
“Sir?”
“The Times’s articles you’re so upset about,” the deputy assistant said. “They’ve leveled some pretty harsh charges against the task force.”
“And you know they’re all false,” Amanda replied.
“They got it right that the task force was going to conduct an anti-ISIL operation for the first time. And their other stories revealing other operations were on the mark too. Not happy about that. But they were accurate,” the deputy assistant said. “So their recent articles accusing the task force of intentionally destroying the mosque during the battle, slaughtering civilians, and being white supremacist Nazis are of great concern to us. We must take those charges seriously.”
“This is ridiculous,” Amanda said.
“Can you disprove the accusations?” the deputy assistant asked.
“Yes.” She pulled a binder out of a courier case she had brought with her, slapping it on top of his desk. “We’ve spent the last week assembling all of the evidence that disproves them.”
He pulled the binder to him and opened it. “Why didn’t you tell me you were working on this?”
“We know you are quite busy and didn’t want to waste your time,” she replied. “Plus, we hoped we wouldn’t have to go through the process of defending ourselves.”
“And yet you acted like you were going to have to defend yourselves.”
“Good instincts, I guess.”
“Do you know the pressure I’m getting right now to lock down every superhuman who was on that battlefield? And to reveal their identities to government officials?” the deputy assistant asked, slowly flipping through the pages of the binder. “Journalists, humanitarian organizations, politicians, and celebrities are screaming for investigations into the operation. They’re calling it another Islamophobic attack and saying a Christian, white supremacist Nazi presence in the task force would be one of the gravest national security threats we could possibly have. The ICC is actually going beyond calling for a government investigation; they want an ICC war crimes investigation.”
“There’s no evidence of a white supremacist Nazi presence. And we face pressure and danger all of the time too,” Amanda said.
“And it’s not just a one-side political pressure, either,” the deputy assistant continued. “It’s progressives, conservatives, and the alt-right—or the dissident right, or whatever they’re calling themselves now—who are demanding answers about what happened.”
“Well, we have those answers, sir,” Amanda said.
“All of this still imagery in here isn’t of much use to me.” He closed the binder. “I’m going to need to review the full-motion video. Is that uploaded to any of the classified networks yet?”
“No. We’ve kept that confined to our servers at the task force HQ,” she said. “We’re not air-gapping it to any of the shared networks.”
“Why not? I don’t have access to those servers here,” he said. “And I don’t want to drive all the way to the task force HQ to view the video.”
“As you must be able to understand, with all the accusations against us and the non-stop leaks of classified information, we don’t trust anyone enough to share our intel,” she told him.
The deputy assistant frowned. “Okay. I’ll humor you. Does it show who destroyed the mosque?”
“The ISIL superhumans did, as we mentioned in the initial debriefing.” Amanda pointed a manicured nail at the binder. “And as we reiterate in that carefully prepared report.”
“But does the video show that the task force didn’t force them inside it?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He rubbed his eyes. “I don’t know. They’re still going to question it unless we release the video so they can see it. And there’s still the issue of slaughtering civilians. And the white supremacist accusations.”
“No one is a white supremacist and no one slaughtered civilians,” Amanda said. “We didn’t, at least.”
“Do you have anything that proves that?”
“Not only that, but we have much more,” she said. She produced a second binder and placed it on his desk.
“I didn’t know you had another one.”
“We collected a lot of documents and media during the sensitive site exploitation at the end of the operation,” she explained. “We’ve exploited some of that already. Our intelligence analysts discovered that TransparNet has direct communications with ISIL through couriers. Cohen does too.”
“Cohen openly admits he has contact with ISIL,” the deputy assistant said.
“He openly admits he communicates with an ISIL media minister,” Amanda replied. “Not sure why that isn’t an issue in and of itself. But what I’m referring to—what our intelligence analysts discovered—is that, like TransparNet, he’s using couriers to communicate with ISIL.”
“Well, I’m not sure if that’s going to help us. He and The Times are just going to say they’ve never hidden the fact that they—”
“In one document from Cohen to ISIL, he specifically states how much he hates Christians. And he urges ISIL to murder as many white Crusaders as they can. That means he told them to kill American forces.”
“That’s in this binder?” the deputy assistant asked, grabbing the second binder.
“The assessment we wrote based on that analysis, yes,” she said. “We had the original documents shipped from the battlefield and they’re now secured at the task force HQ.”
The deputy assistant breathed a sigh of relief. “Okay, then we definitely should be able to refute The Times’s accusations. I mean, as soon as we can verify that no one on the task force is a white supremacist. And I’m confident that will go smoothly.”
Amanda paused. “Is that it?”
“What do you mean?”
“ISIL destroyed the mosque. We have evidence that Cohen and The Times, and TransparNet, are working with ISIL. And there’s no evidence that any of us are white supremacist Nazis or that we’re traitors,” she told him. “Is the government going to go after and prosecute them for their treason?”
“I thought I told you not to go there,” he said.
“Even with all this new info?”
“Look, Amanda, there is absolutely no way we’re going after any of them. So don’t ever suggest such a thing again. The First Amendment protects them,” he growled.
“The First Amendment doesn’t protect treason,” she shot back.
“Stop with the treason smear. You really think going after journalists and free speech organizations is going to help anything?” he asked. “We might be able to shoot down the war crimes charges, but how do you think calling them traitors is going to help quell the Islamophobia or white supremacist Nazis accusations against the task force—even if our investigations show they’re false?”
Amanda bit her lip. “Sir,” she quietly said, “America has done nothing but side with Muslims for the past few decades. We’ve set up officially Islamic theocracies for them. We’ve helped them as they’ve wiped out Christians in their nations. And we’ve ruled out ever fighting back against them—seriously fighting back—no matter how many times they’ve attacked us. So just out of curiosity, sir, how much longer do any of us have to fight and die for Muslims, and how many more Christians do we need to slaughter, before we aren’t Islamophobes and white supremacists any longer?”
The deputy assistant deliberately closed the second binder. “You know what, Amanda, we’re done here. “Good work on collecting this evidence. It will help. But we need to take a break. Or you do anyway. I’ll give you some time to settle down and then I’ll contact you again to talk about this some more.”
Amanda got up, smoothed the skirt of her tailored black suit, picked up the empty courier case, and walked to the door.
“One more thing, Amanda,” the deputy assistant said. “Work on your attitude. I put up with a lot from you. But even I have my limits.”
“Understood, sir,” she said. “And thank you for your help. I can assure you, all of us with the task force appreciate that we might not face any repercussions for Cohen and The Times helping ISIL to kill us, and for smearing us at white supremacists.”
* The events in this story take place prior to the events in “The First Transgender Superhuman.”
Artwork © Paul Hair, 2019.