Player's Guide - Ravaged Planet

RAVAGED PLANET:

THf BRAVf NEW WORLD PLAYER'S GUIDE

BY MATT fORBECK

CREDITS

Written and Designed by: Matt Forbeck

Editing: Hal Mangold

Cover: Paul Bonner

Cover Background: Zeke Sparkes

Interior Art: Don Hillsman, Michael Phillippi, Justin Long,

Eric Polak, Richard Pollard, and Curt Shoultz

Computer Coloring: Chuck Croft, Chris Impink, Zeke Sparkes, Matthew Tice

Graphic Design: Matt Forbeck and Zeke Sparkes

Proofreading: Ann Kolinsky and Pat Kolinsky

Special Thanks to: Amber Bucheit, Rachel Butterworth, Ken Carpenter, Frank Chafe, Martin Forbeck, Marcello Figueroa, Leticia Hayler, Michelle, Caden, and Shane Lacy Hensley, Christy and Jolm Hopler, Ann Kolinsky, Ray Lau, Jim Pinto, Dave Seay, Matt Tice, Jennifer Wick, Maureen Yates, John Zinser, and Jo1m and Mary Zinser.

Playtesting and Advice: Shane Lacy Hensley, Aaron McConnell, Hal Mangold, Ashe Marler, Zeke Sparkes, and John Zinser

Dedicated to: Ann, the light of my life .

Pinnacle Entertainment Group, Inc.

PO. Box 10908

Blacksburg, VA 24062-0908

www.peginc.com

[email protected]

(800) 214-5645 (orders only)

Stop by www.peginc.com for regular, free updates!

Printed in the USA.

Brave New World, Defiants, Defiance,

Bargainers, Patriot, Superior, Truth, the

Yankee, Triumph, Inc., Evil Unlimited,

delta, alpha, ovenant, Delta Prime,

and all character names and likenesses

depicted herein are Trademarks of

Pinnacle Entertainment Group, Inc.

1999 Pinnacle Entertainment Group,

Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Brave New World created by Matt Forbeck.

TABLE Of CONTENTS

WELCOME TO DELTA TIMES .............. 4 LIVING IN AMERICA ..................... 12 CHAPTER ONE:

Patriot's Journal: United States HEW POWER PACKAGEs......... 109

An Introduction ......... 5 of Anarchy ... .......... .. . 73 The Power Packages .. 109

Patriot's Journal: America the Battered ... 74 The Covenant .. ......... .. 110

The Final Days ........ ... 6 Atlanta ... .... ...... .. .. .......... 75 Covenant ... ....... ..... ... ... 117

June 16, 1999 ......... .. ... ..... 6 Boston .... ........................ 76 Defender ... ... ... ....... ...... 123

The Beginning ........ ........ 6 Crescent City ........ ... ... .. 76 Genius .. ........ .... ........ .... 123

My Awakening ..... .......... 8 Dallas ........... .... .............. 77 Hot Shot .............. .. ...... 125

Drafted .......................... 11 Detroit ........ .. .... .. .... .. ...... 79 Screamer ........ .... .... .. .... 125

Back to School .... ......... . 12 Denver .............. .. .. .. ....... 79 Shrinker .. .............. .. ..... 126

Delta Squadron .. .......... 13 Los Angeles ........... .. ...... 80 Sneak .... .. ................ .. .... 126

Dallas .... .... .. ................... 14 Miami .......... ..... .. ........... 82 Telekinetic .. .. .. ... .. .... .. .. 127

My Decision ............ .. .... 15 New York City .... ........ .. 83 Teleporter .. .. ................ 128

Regrets ........ .. .......... .. .... . 17 Philadelphia .... ........ .. ... .85 Tough ............ .... ........... 128

My Delta Prime Days .. 18 San Diego .............. .. .. .. .. 86

The Bicentennial San Francisco ................ 87 ARCHETYPES ........m ................... 129

Battle .............. .. .......... 20 Washington, DC ........... 88

The Cold War The State of the Union . 90 THE GUIDE'S HANDBOOK ....u ..... 145

Heats Up .... ............... 21

Ufe in the Cold ........ ..... 22 AWORLD Of HURT ..................... 92 CHAPTER TWO:

The Great This Ravaged Planet .... 93 THE TRUTH Of THE MATTER .. 141

Mistake of '88 ........... 22 Africa .... ............ ...... ....... 93 Guides Only ................ 147

A Career Change .. ........ 24 Australia ............ .... ... .. .. . 94 Patriot's Journal ... .. .... 147

Life on the Run .... .... .. ... 25 Canada ...... .... ............ .. .. . 96 Death of a Hero .. .. .... .. 149 Working for China .... ... .. .... .............. .. 97 Crescent City ............. . 150

the Family .. .. ............. 26 Europe .................. .... ..... 98 United States Leaving the Family ...... 27 Middle-East .......... .. .... 101 of Anarchy ...... .. ...... 151

The Defiant Years .. ....... 31 India .. ...... ....... ........ ..... . 102 Ravaged Planet .......... 152

Redemption .......... .. ...... 34 Japan .... .. ........ .............. 103

America, South and Central THE AUTHOR'S

July 4,1999 ............... .. .. . 37 Soviet Union .. .. ........... 106 Wh t" N ? 155

Right or Wrong .. .. .... 35 America .. .......... ....... 104 AHERWORD .......................... 155

a s In a arne ...... My Trial .......... ..... .......... 38 The United Nations ... 107 What's the

August 4, 1999 .. ...... .. ... .46 Game About? ... .. .. .. 155

My Thoughts .... .. ........ 156 REQUIEM fOR PATRIOT................ 48

Sources of Inspiration 156The Death of a Hero ... .49 Many Thanks .. ............ 157

CRESCENT CITy ............................ 54 INDEX........................................ 159Ufe in the Big City ....... 55

The Early Days .... .. ....... 56

The City Today ........ .. ... 58

The Government .... ...... 60

Major Buildings .. ........ .. 67

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WWW.DELTATIMES.COM The truth can't be silenced!

WELCOME TO DELTA TIMES

iI Features II Memorial I I Archives I

I ~Crew IEventsl,b inks Feature II Menl rial II Archiv s II few II Event II Links

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PATRIOT'S JOURNAL:

AN INTRODUCTION

If you've been living under a rock in some God-forsaken part of the third world for the past few months, let me fill you in on the biggest bit of news since the Great Mistake.

The Defiant known as Patriot was captured in the streets of Crescent City this spring while attempting to rescue a newly awakened young delta woman from a Delta Prime recruitment team.

This was the kind of thing Patriot did all the time. Ever since he left Delta Prime back in the late '80s, he's struggled to redeem himself in the eyes of the Defiant community.

For doing so, the goverrunent has branded him a villain of the first order and spared no expense or effort in hunting him down. Despite that, whether through luck or planning, he always managed to stay at least three steps ahead of them.

Unfortuna tely, this June, his long, one-man assault on Kennedy's America came to an end.

Thankfully, the young woman got away. Patriot would have wanted it that way. He was never afraid to risk his own freedom for that of innocents. This time, though, his luck finally ran out.

My fRlfND THf HfRO As the editor of the Delta Times, I've

known Patriot for many years. When I was younger, I remember hearing about his exploits on behalf of Delta Prime. Even then, long before he joined the Defiance, I admired his heroic efforts to help those in need, whether they were deltas or regs .

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When I heard Patriot had left Delta Prime, I cheered, although quietly. Lots of people had left the Primers in the past, mostly moles sent to infiltrate th.e Defiance. I said a silent prayer that thIS wasn't the case here.

When I finally had a chance to work with Patriot, it was easy to see where the fire in his belly came from. This was a man who believed in America.

I'm not talking about the America you and I grew up in, the fract~red nation that's torn itself apart WIth fear and loathing. I mean the America we all dream about, the one our teachers told us about in school, the country the framers of the Constitution always intended for their descendants-both literal and figurative-to inherit.

Here are some words of Thomas Jefferson's that Patriot was fond of quoting:

"We hold these truths to be selfevident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness .-That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among M en, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,-That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to eff ect their Safety and Happiness. /I

You might recognize this quote. It's from the Declaration of Independence.


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PATRIOT'S JOURNAL:

TH fiNAL DAYS

JUN 16, 1999

It's been a danm good run, but it

looks like it's finally coming to an end. Here I am, rotting in this cell in New Alcatraz in the center of Chicago Bay. I've been in a lot of hard situations so far, but nothing this bleak.

I'm not a man of words, but I've decided to resort to them now. In the end, they're all I have left.

The warden came down to talk to me yesterday. Making this record was his idea. He thinks I'm going to give him something he can turn around and use against me in court, I'm sure. Not that it matters. They've already got plenty of evidence. I'm headed for a face down with a firing squad either way.

I wonder how many bullets it's going to take?

I'd guess that not too long after ~'m turned into fertilizer, this record wlll get published. If the feds print it, you can be sure tha t a lot of it's going to be rewritten. I can only hope that Truth gets her hands on a copy before it's mangled by the "free press."

People deserve to hear the truth. Of course, what I'm writing here

may not be the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I only know what I know, and that's my truth. That's what I'm trying to set down here. If I hadn't been captured by that

Delta Prime strike force yesterday, I'd still be out there fighting for the truth instead of trying to write about it. I'm done with that now. If you're reading this, the fight is up to you.

TH BGINNING

Where should I start? I know, I

know: the beginning. But which beginning?

Do you care that I was a scrawny kid from Chicago before I became a delta? Do you want to know what it was like to fight alongside Superior and the rest of Delta Squadron in the early days of my career? Or what it felt like to miss out on the Bicentennial Battle? Or what it was that finally got me to toss aside all my years of senrice with Delta Prime to join the Defiance?

I'll get to all that in a minute. First, let me tell you about the

Yankee. When I was a kid, he was my first

and greatest hero. Joe DiMaggio, Bob Cousy-you can keep them. Sure, I loved sports as much as any other redblooded American boy, but the deltas always did it for me, and the Yankee, in his star- spangled costume, he was the best.

Yeah, looking back on it, the costume was pretty damn goofy, but it was a product of the times, a more idealistic era. Most of the heroes dressed that way in those days.

You could always tell the good guys. They were the ones in bright, primary colors, wearing symbols that hit you like a club.

Of course, the bad guys were almost as goofy. I mean, the worst villain of all time was a guy named the Devastator. How corny can you get?

I know, I've been guilty of that myself. When I started out, I was a bright-eyed kid with delusions of bringing Americans-style justice to the world. I believed in my country, right or wrong. That's why I called myself Patriot.


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RAISED BY UNCLl SAM From a very young age, America was

the most important thing in my life. My father had been killed storming the beaches of Normandy, while I was just a baby, and my mother passed away from grief soon after. I was made a ward of the state and turned over to St. Savio's Orphanage in Chicago. So even from the beginning, the feds weren't just my government. They were my parents.

When I was a kid taking classes at St. Savio's school, the civics classes were always my favorite. I memorized the entire Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, not to mention the Gettysburg Address. I knew their words backward and forward, and I vowed to live my life by them.

Maybe that's why the Yankee was always my favorite. Most kids my age worshipped Superior instead. And why not? No one ever beat Superior. Sure, they might get away for a while, but in the end, he always got his man.

To me, though, Superior's superiority was always a bit suspect. It's easy to be sure of yourself when you can kick anyone's ass. How much bravery does it take to waltz into a hail of bullets when you know you can't be hurt? Just because he was lucky enough to be given such incredible powers, he was the idol of millions, the Atlas with America on his shoulders.

Me, I stuck by the Yankee. In those days, he was getting older, but he never seemed to let it slow him down. Sure, he was strong and fast and he hauled in more than his share of evil deltas, but for him it was a real risk.


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Remember that time back in '62 when he got shot? We almost lost him that day, and it shook me to the bone. While he was recovering, I realized that this was a man who laid his life on the line every time he put on his costume. Tha t earned my respect. When he got back on the streets as soon as the doctors would let him, that got my admiration.

When Chicago disappeared, America mourned the loss of Superior most of all. I wept for the Yankee.

My AWAKENING

Just about every aspect of my career

as a delta's owes something to the Yankee, right down to my red, white, and blue mask. Even though he never knew it, he even had a sort of hand in my awakening. Well, it was less of a hand and more of an inspiration, but I was a pretty impressionable kid.

That's what we call it when a delta finally gets his powers: awakening. According to the eggheads I've talked to, a good chunk of the planet's population has the potential to become a delta. It's locked away in our DNA, that code of life that tells us who we are. At the moment a delta awakens, the DNA morphs into something new.

Of course, not everyone realizes that potential. It takes a lot to get those acid chains fluxing-usually some kind of near-death experience-and most candidates don't pass that final exam. In my case, I was hustling through

downtown Chicago, on my way back to the orphanage from a date. It was past the nationwide curfew for kids, and I knew I was going to get it from Sister Mary Victoria. And if the police caught me on the street, it was going to be worse.

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It was my last year at St. Savio's. Graduation was coming up in a couple months, and I was due to be kicked out on my ass to make room for the next class of parentless punks. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, but the Army was going to be waiting there for me as soon as I stepped off the stage at the graduation ceremony. Just like these days, back then no one ever got out of serving his four years. And this was back in '62, before the DRA was even a twinkle of a bill in JFK's eye.

AfATEfUL ENCOUNTER As I jogged through the nearly

abandoned streets, I heard a choked scream from up ahead. I turned the corner, and I spied four people standing under the glow of an old streetlamp. Three of them were a family: a mother and father in their 50s and a boy not much younger than me.

As I later found out, these were the Billingtons, a wealthy family that had been downtown to catch a production of Camelot . They were on the way back to their car, and they'd taken a wrong turn. At the time, they didn't realize how wrong the turn would be.

The fourth person was a man named Wilbur Jeffries. In those days, we'd have called Jeffries a hobo or a bum. He was as homeless as they come. One of those sad and lonely people that somehow fall through the cracks.

Jeffries was also a delta with a power he barely knew how to control, and he was using it to rob the Billingtons. The awakening doesn't always come to those who deserve it. If Jeffries had been able to pull himself together long enough to approach the proper people, he could have mastered his powers and turned his life around. Instead, he was wasting his abilities on petty crime.


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To this day, Jeffries just boggles my mind.

I mean, I can understand someone who can make his body parts explode using it to rob banks or mastermind plots to take over the world. This Jeffries guy, though, all he wanted was enough cash to pick up a bottle of cheap scotch.

In his constantly intoxicated state, it never occurred to Jeffries to knock over a liquor store. Instead, he was going to mug an innocent family.

Jack Billington IV, the father, was doing his best to protect his wife and kid, but he saw that Jeffries was agitated, so he was trying to talk some calm into him. Apparently he spent his last moments doing that instead of reaching for his wallet, and the money didn't show up fast enough for Jeffries' taste.

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Jeffries' temper wasn't the only thing about him that was unstable. Billington reached out a hand to calm the mugger down, and Jeffries stepped forward and poked the well-dressed man in the chest with a grimy fist.

Jeffries' hand went off like a gunshot, and a gaping hole appeared in Billington's chest. From where I stood, with Jeffries' back to me, it looked like the greasy man in the tattered coat had just shot the sharp-looking man dead.

fiNEST HOUR OR BIGGEST MISIAK? Barely even pausing to think "What

would the Yankee do?", I sprinted straight for the killer.

Looking back on it, it was one of the dumbest things I ever did in my life. I attribute some of it to my nearworship of people like the Yankee.


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After hearing story after story about their bravery in the face of incredible odds-all in the name of saving their fellow Americans-I couldn't see myself doing any thing less.

I was 18 years old. Like most men that age, I was confident in my immortality. I was going to take this murderer down and save the day. I never gave it a second thought. I can only guess what went through

the Cynthia Billington's head in those last moments. There she was, standing there with her teenage son behind her. Her husband lay dead at her feet, and their attacker stood there in front of them, staring at a smoking stump where his hand used to be. And then this idiot kid runs out of

nowhere to tackle the bastard. Honestly, it was the turning point in

my life. I hit Jeffries from behind and just to

one side, knocking him away from Cynthia and young Jack and wrapping my arms around him, reaching for the gun I thought he had. Mother and son took the hint and ran for safety, he pulling her along as she tripped along after him, screaming for help .

Meanwhile, I wrestled Jeffries over onto his back. I hadn't found the gun yet, which scared the hell out of me. Sure the man was going to pump me full of bullets, I laid into him with both fists.

A few frantic swings later, I had pulped the man's face, and I still wasn' t dead. Still sitting on the man, I grabbed him by the front of his filthy shirt and looked around for the gun. That's when I saw the stump of his hand, still smoking even then.

Shocked by the sight, I goggled at the man for a moment. As I looked into his mad eyes, he grinned up at me, spat out a tooth, and said, "Boom."

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1m: AfURMATH The explosion shattered every

window on the street and left a crater in the asphalt like a meteor had landed there. Bricks fell from the facades of the buildings. The streetlights popped like overfilled balloons.

In short, it was a disaster. I came to in the front of a darkened

drug store across the street from the crater. I was lying in a heap of broken bottles of lotions, potions, and pills. The sirens and the flashing lights woke me up.

By all rights, I should have been dead, dead, dead. I was covered with bruises and cuts from the glass 1'd landed on, but I was breathing just fine. I struggled to my knees and peered out the broken window. The street was filled with Chicago

police in their old black- and-white squad cars. They'd cordoned off both ends of the block and were poking around, interviewing people, and trying to piece together what had happened.

Jack the V and his widowed mother were off to one side, tears spilling down their bloodied cheeks, the red and blue lights strobing across their faces. A detective was asking them questions, but it didn't look like he was getting much out of them. They were in shock, emotionally and physically.

There were beat cops poking their noses into different places on the street, making sure everyone was all right. For a moment I wondered why they hadn't come into the shop to check up on me. After all, the place was a complete wreck.

Then J realized that every place on the street was a wreck. They just hadn't gotten to picking through the closed storefronts yet.

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At the time, I didn't really know what had happened-I just thanked God I was alive-but I was dead sure that if I ended up going back to St. Savio's in a squad car, Sister Vic would toss me out of the school right then and there. I was still hoping to get my diploma, so I let myself out the back door of the pharmacy and slipped off into the night.

DRAFTED

When I got to St. Savio's, Sister Vic

was up and waiting for me, her face beet-red beneath the white halo of her wimple. I told her I'd gotten into a fight, which was close enough to the truth that I didn't bother confessing it as a sin after mass the next day. She gave me the tongue-lashing of my life, but none of it hurt any worse than the bruises I was carrying.

Two months after that, I graduated from St. Savio's, and sure enough, Uncle Sam was there before my tasseled cap even touched the ground. I was drafted into the Army, and during my physical, the Army doctor realized there was something different about me.

For one, every time the nurse tried to give me a shot, the needle bent or broke. The first time it happened the doctor chewed the woman ou t for being incompetent. After the second time, he pushed her aside and told her he'd handle it himself. The third time, he stared at the broken needle and then at me, then murmured to the nurse, "Get me the colonel."

An hour later, a pair of MPs escorted me into Colonel Drake's office. He gave me the lowdown on who I was and what was going to happen to me from there on out. I was a delta, and as a


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delta, I was going to be assigned to the Delta Academy, effective immediately, as in right then and now.

The next morning, I was on a plane for Washington.

This was back before the passage of the Delta Registration Act, although only by less than two years. If tha t kind of thing happened these days, I'd have been tossed in jail for failing to register. If I'd been lucky, someone might have believed that I really didn't know I'd become a delta until that moment in the doctor's office. Otherwise, I'd have been sent to the Fortress for sure. Maybe I'd have even been transferred to New Alcatraz eventually and ended up right here just the same. Of course, I'm not looking at life in

prison this time around. No, the only penalty for my crimes-such as they are-is death.

BACK TO SCHOOL

As it was, I was bundled onto the

next troop transport back to Chicago, and I reported for duty at the Delta Academy the next day. Since I already had my high-school diploma, I wasn't required to take any of the regular classes, but I was put through a crashcourse in how to handle my powers.

After extensive testing, the quacks at the academy's infirmary determined that my skin had gotten tough enough to bounce a low-caliber bullet off of. Also, I could fire blasts of plasma energy out of my fists . Not a bad package overall. They had just the training regimen already set up for me, and I started in on it right away.

I remember my days at the academy fondly. When I got there, I was a scared kid, new to my powers, and all alone against the rest of the world. At the

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academy, I found a bunch of other scared kids doing their best to keep moving in a world that had suddenly been turned upside down.

To this day, some of them are my closest friends.

My coaches there worked me like a three-legged mule, but they taught me a lot. I think they'd call it II tough love," without any of that love stuff.

These days, life at the academy's a lot more rigid than it was then. I was in a crash course for deltas discovered during their draft physical. These days, if you' re found out that way, you've got a one-way ticket to the Fortress. The only students the academy gets are those who tum themselves in right away- or who are turned in by their parents.

Since Delta Academy students are by definition minors, they often aren't held responsible for not registering themselves. Their parents are. These days, more than one student studying at the academy has to send letters home to a federal pen.

IHTfR DUAHfY Anyhow, the academy's where I met

Delaney Cadre, the woman who would one day be my wife. And yes, she was in Chicago the day the Devastator destroyed it.

Remember- before when I said I cried for the Yankee on that day? Well, I mourned the loss of a lot of friends on that day, but none more than Delaney. She was my life.

Delaney was a senior a t the Academy while I was there. We were sparring partners for a brief while, and we even had a date or two, but we knew it couldn't last. Soon enough, the coaches told the Army I was ready, and off I went.


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DILTA SQUADRON

Ever since its founding in World War

II, Delta Squadron had a reputation of having the best and brightest deltas in its ranks. Those are the top-ranked deltas, of course, the ones the public saw. I was a grunt, just another rookie hoping to make a name for himself among the greatest deltas of all time.

In those days, Superior was the de facto leader of Delta Squadron, despite the fact he was outranked by Yankee. Even though the Yankee was nominally in charge of us all, he was in his 50s then, just a bit older than I am now. He was past his prime, and he knew it. He'd given over the position of ranking field commander to the seemingly ageless Superior, contenting himself with taking a strategic position behind the scenes instead.

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Anyhow, I stepped into uniform all starstruck by the names I was going to get to work with. In addition to the Yankee and Superior, the Silver Ghost was still kicking around (in a semiretired, advisory capacity), plus Warband, the Old Soldier, Mary Hartless, and Jack Magruder were team leaders there, and they were in their pnme.

I was looking forward to working with them all. I thanked my lucky stars for giving me my powers, for leading me into such a life.

I had no idea what I'd gotten myself into.

WAR IS HUL The fact is that Delta Squadron, like

most military institutions, is in the business of war.

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After Superior put a sudden end to World War II, it quickly became clear that America was the superpower in the world, in more ways than one. We tossed the noninterference Monroe doctrine out the window and quickly got involved in every government you could think of. We were the policemen of the world .

Most people think of that as a figure of speech, and for most Americans it is. Not for us in Delta Squadron. We got sent off to prop up every little petty dictator in the world, anyone who paid lip service to the idea of democracy as opposed to communism, even if they were ruthless fascists.

You've got to remember, this was before we had a ruthless dictator of our own. The idea that freedom-loving Americans were willing to fight, die, and kill to keep oppressors in office was a bit strange to some of us thencertainly to me---but I was a soldier, and I supported my country, right or wrong. I did what I was told. In the end, we kept the Soviets out of

a good portion of South America and most of Africa and Europe. We had to sell our souls to do it, but KeIUledy told us it was worth it.

We believed him.

DALLAS

Do you remember where you were

on November 22, 1963? If not, you were probably too young. There's no other excuse.

The day Jackie KeIUledy died was a turning point for our nation. Up until then, we were still a democracy, at least in name.

Although it wasn't official until many months later, that idea died in Dallas with the First Lady.


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I'm not going to go over that story here again. You can read the Warren Commission Report if you like. As far as I can tell, it's pretty accurate. A team of Dreadnauts zoomed in and took out the Presidential motorcade before the Delta Squadron soldiers working with the Secret Service could even react.

Afterward, Superior hunted each one of them down. Two of themDonna and Dennis Krueger-didn't survive arrest. Of the three others, Bill Houseman is doing time in solitary confinement in the Fortress. Jack Ruby got killed by another prisoner soon after being transferred over to New Alcatraz. No one shed a tear.

To this day, Lee Harvey Oswald is still at large. Delta Squadron-and later Delta Prime-claims to have nearly captured him a dozen times, but somehow he always gets away. These days, he's got to be at least as old as I am-probably more. But he's still out there, and I'm finally in here.

MISSING THE ArnON Ironic, isn't it? I was nowhere near

Dallas that day. I was part of the occupation force in Cuba that had put down Castro's attempted rebellion. We were stuck there in the Caribbean, making sure that Fulgencio Batista Zaldivar kept his job as leader of the country.

The funny part was that Batista actually called on the US for help. We helped him out all right, but I don't think he was too excited about the price he had to pay. Either way, at the end of the day, he was out of power. Sure, once we took care of the rebels, he was still sitting in his office in the capitol, but it didn't really matter.

From that point on Washington was calling all the shots.

Hamel

Of course, just because we'd captured Castro and disbanded his revolutionary force years earlier didn't mean we could go home. The Cuban people were discontented for a reason, and that still hadn't been resolved. To this day, we've still got forces there centered in Guantanamo Bay. No matter what Kennedy may try to tell you, people want to be free-and they're willing to fight for it, no matter how long it takes.

Even so, I mourned for the First Lady-our last First Lady, it seemsright alongSide the rest of the country. And the rest of the world, for that matter. In retrospect, it was Jackie that held Jack Kennedy together. Once she was gone, he fell apart, and so did the rest of the country.

My DICISION

It wasn't long after JFK recovered

from the "cowardly delta attack" that the Delta Registration Act was rammed through Congress. As a member of Delta Squadron, I was one of the first people asked to register my powers.

Since I was already working for the government, it didn't seem like much of a choice, but I still wrestled with it. The patriotic boy I'd once been knew I was giving up some of my most cherished Constitutional rights when I signed on that dotted line, but at the time I was prepared to make that sacrifice. It was for the greater good, I told

myself. There were deltas running wild out there, bad ones. If I wasn't part of the solution, I was part of the problem. At least that's what my CO in Delta Squadron told me. You might have heard of him.

His name was Superior.


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THE HORNS Of ADILEMMA When that red, white, and blue

soldier put that dreaded piece of paper in front of me, it already had all my vital data on it. All it needed was my John Hancock.

The government knew all about who I was, of course. When I got my security clearance for Delta Squadron, the FBI had crawled into every dark corner of my life, and they'd pronounced me clean as a shiny, new, silver whistle. Just about everyone I knew of in Delta Squadron, all my delta buddies, had already registered without even asking many questions. To them, this was just a formality.

To me, though, it meant something. Sure, there wasn't any direct harm in me admitting to information about myself that the government already

had. But it was the first encroachment on my rights as a human being. It was the first step toward officially segregating hvo peoples that were really one. Once that happened, it would be a simple matter to keep chipping away at those rights until lor those like me-suddenly had no protections at all.

But at the time, it seemed harmless. And Superior personally asked me

to comply with the law-this in a country in which I'd sworn to uphold the laws and even enforce them. This was the man who'd killed Hitler, who'd single- handedly put an end to World War II. He was the foundation of America as I knew it, my beloved country.

I took the pen he handed me, and I did something I'd always regret.

I signed the damned thing.


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REGRETS

Yeah, like the song says, I've had a

few, but some of mine are worth mentioning.

Right after I registered, I felt a great relief, as if the world had suddenly been lifted from my shoulders. I should have known it was only repositioning itself before it really came crashing down.

Soon after it became apparent that only about 50% of the delta population in the United States was going to register voluntarily, Delta Prime was formed. Its mission: to protect the United States against delta threats both foreign and domestic.

Who else was better to police the deltas than the deltas themselves? At least that was the theory. Given how well the regular government agencies had handled the situation over the years, it seemed like the right thing to do. At least, the thought went, we couldn't do any worse.

Little did we know how wrong we were. In the end, all we did was escalate the situation to a fever pitch. A lot of innocents have died in the Delta Wars, as they've been called over the years by the less-judicious members of the press. And it's at least partly our fault.

Sure, there are lots of deltas out there who are just crooks who happened to luck into their powers, but we didn't stop with them. No, we had to tum. every innocent kind and hard workmg American who somehow ended up with powers into a criminal just for wanting to live their own life.

Most of these people didn't ask for their powers. Given half a chance, they'd get rid of them forever. It's just not that simple.

Home I

My NEW EMPLOYER Unlike Delta Squadron, Delta Prime

came directly under the jurisdiction of the Department of Justice. Back in those days, it was headed up by Attorney General Bobby Kennedy, none other than Big Jack's very own little brother.

That particular move pissed off J. Edgar Hoover, then the head of the FBI, like you wouldn't believe. His G- men. were now second-class citizens when It came to federal law enforcement, and he didn't like it one bit. Rumor has it he spent the next several years building up his own secret FBI delta tea.m set to take his side in any open conflICt.

In fact, rumors persist to this day that Hoover was behind RFK's assassination in '68. Sure, a delta by the name of Sirhan Sirhan did the actual deed, but he was blasted apart by delta Secret Service agents before Bobby's body even hit the ground. We may never know who was really behind the attack. Either way, you can be sure that Hoover shed no tears the day Bobby Kennedy was put in his grave. Hoover or no, as soon as my term

with Delta Squadron was up in '66, I was asked to join Delta Prime. I'd had enough of military life, I told myself. Putting down insurrectionists in foreign lands had always left a bad taste in my mouth. With the draft, though, I hadn't really had much of a choice. It was Delta Squadron or Leavenworth.

I chose freedom over jail. I was only 18. How could I have

known there was any other choice? Since then, I've learned a lot about

life. It's not so much about taking the choices that are presented to you as it is in coming up with your own course of action.


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THf NOT -SO-NOBLf XPfRIMfNT Joining Delta Prime was pretty much

the same kind of choice. Again, it took Superior himself to convince me that joining up was the right thing to do. In the two years the DRA had been in existence, the Primers had only managed to get an estimated 25% of the unregistered deltas to change their tune-forcefully or not.

The remaining three quarters of the rogue delta population was now firmly entrenched in their lawlessness, or so it was described to me. It was the government's responsibility to protect its people against any threat, from without or within. Given the number of delta-related disasters we'd seen over the past two years, it was pretty obvi~us the people needed protecting.

I sIgned up. I told myself it was the right thing to do. I could protect the innocent and drag in the guilty. Never mind the only thing some "villains" were guilty of was not complying with the Delta Registration Act.

WORKING FOR THf MAN I also told myself that the best way

to effect change is from within. If there was no way to fight City Hall, I sure wasn't going up against the federal gov.ernment. That would mean going agamst everything I'd fought for and believed in my whole life. It would also mean going against

Superior, a man who'd become a real father figure to me, the orphan from Chicago. I knew he had his own agenda, but I trusted him as much as I ever trusted anyone.

I told myself I wasn't being cowardly.

I was being practical. I didn't believe it either.

Hamel

My DILlA PRIMI DAYS So I put up with it. I had my job, and

I did it. While mobsters ran amok around the country, while the Catholic Church kept the masses opiated with all their talk from the Pope's Covenant of peaceful coexistence between deltas and regs and uniting against larger, common foes, I was busy hunting down and locking up /I dangerous deltas," some of which were barely out of diapers.

Bringing in the kids was always the worst. It wasn't their fault they hadn't registered. Their parents just didn't want them hauled off to the Delta Academy, vvhere they'd never see them again.

The problem, of course, was that the law didn't care. As a duly deputized representative of that law, I couldn't care either. I wasn't allowed to .

TRUTH AND (ONSfOUfNCfS Did it really matter that those kids

were being torn from the only homes they'd ever known to spend their childhood as wards of the state? Did it matter that their parents weren't going to be able to see their kids again? Not because the academy doesn't allow vi itors. It does.

No, the parents were going to jail for harboring a fugitive. If they were lucky, they'd get out in time to see their children graduate from Delta Academy. Then they 'd have all of about three days before the kid was shipped off to do her manda tory four years in Delta Squadron.

Ni~e kn~wing you, kid. Don' t forget to wnte. Still, I closed my mind and h~rdened my heart and did the job wIthout question. That was my life, and it wasn't a bad one either.


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DELANEY AGAIN I met Delaney again in Delta Prime,

and we got assigned to the same unit. Within a few weeks we were dating. A few months later, we were engaged. We were married within the year.

Those were years of bliss. I was young and in love, married to a wonderful woman. I had put the doubts of my job behind me, and I was doing the right thing to bring peace and prosperity to my country. I was willing to die for my country. More to the point, I was ready to kill for it.

DOING MY JOB Despite how strange that kind of life

might seem to you, it wasn't all tearing innocent children away from their parents. Delaney and I actually worked in the Special Forces division of Delta

Prime, the blue shirts. Unlike the Primers in red, we didn't spend our days tracking down people whose only crime was not registering as deltas.

No, we spent our days investigating delta crimes and then bringing in the mad dogs who corrunitted them. There's not a cell block in New Alcatraz that doesn't have someone on it who I put away. And nearly all of them deserve to be there.

For hauling in the terrorists and the criminals, I feel no shame. Being a delta might make you faster, stronger, or tougher than most people, but it doesn't make you any better than anyone else. If you were a greedy, murderous

bastard before your awakening, then afterward you're still a greedy, murderous bastard. You're just more dangerous than ever.

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THE BICENTENNIAL BATTLE

Actually, doing my job and doing it

right is why I missed the Bicentennial Battle. Delaney and I had been investigating a series of mysterious drowning murders in the Arizona desert-which is what made them so damned mysterious-when I found myself on the wrong end of a blast of water strong enough to knock me into a wall and crack my skull. Fortunately, Delaney cornered my assailant and cleaned his clock.

It wasn't the first time I'd been hurt in the line of duty, and it wouldn't be the last. Over the years, I'd almost come to expect it.

With the success rate of delta healers these days, especially those who are part of the Covenant, breaking a bone or two is no big deal. You're pretty much fine unless some part of your body suddenly goes missing or you're DOA.

I was under the care of a delta healer in Tempe when the word that the Devastator had taken over Chicago came down. Delaney was on the next flight out.

I didn't even ask her not to go. Nothing would have stopped her.

SIDHIHD The healer told me that because of

my wounds I wouldn't be going anywhere for a couple days. Delaney assured me that she could handle herself just fine, and I believed her.

From what it sounded like, most of Delta Prime and even a number of dogooder Defiants had taken up the Devastator's challenge. For Delaney, this was her chance to finally work alongside the legends she'd always heard about.

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I'd been one of the lucky ones, top of my class. In Delta Squadron, I had been part of Superior's handpicked team, the people assigned to the most dangerous missions of all. Even as a "mere"-I always preferred "pure"delta, my skills helped me stack up well against some of the alphas. Delaney had been good herself, but as one of the Bargainers, she wasn't really suited for frontline battles. She was one hell of an investigator though.

Anyhow, Delaney hadn't even met Superior or most of the rest of the members of myoid squad. This was her shot.

KISS IT GOOD-BYE I never should have let her go. I was

still in the hospital when the reports about the Chicago disaster started streaming in. At first, no one could tell what happened. All communications in and out of the city were just cut off. Nobody knew the city was gone. That was simply inconceivable.

Pictures of the damage pretty much fit that description too. They were just impossible to believe. The destruction could be summed up in one word: total.

I've seen pictures of ground zero at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Chicago was much, much worse. Literally millions of innocents died in mere moments, most of who never even knew they were in danger.

We lost the Yankee. We lost Superior. We lost most of Delta Prime and Delta Squadron, including just about every good-hearted alpha on the planet.

And I lost Delaney. I still remember her last words to

me: "See you on the other side." If I get the death sentence I'm

expecting, I'll finally get the chance.

Hame l

THI (OLD WAR HIATS UP

The Bicentennial Battle was the

worst disaster in the history of humanity, but the destruction wasn't over yet. The disappearance of the most powerful people on the planet created a power vacuum. Suddenly the USA wasn't the home of the most dangerous person on the planet.

The balance of power tilted back and forth like a seesaw in a hurricane. At first it looked like the Soviets were the new world power, then the Chinese, then India or even France or Britain. Of course, the US was right in there with the rest of them, fighting like a punchdrunk boxer that had taken the sucker punch of his life.

My LlH, My WORK Those were strange days, but I threw

myself into them-hard. I suppose I was trying to get over my grief, but this was a cause I could get behind. America was no longer the unassailable fortress it had once been. Before the Bicentennial Battle, no one would have dared attack America for fear of Delta Squadron wiping them off the map. All you had to do was look a t Korea or Vietnam to see what our deltas could do.

Now, with the alphas-the cream of our delta crop-gone, we'd been cut down to size, and everyone wanted a shot at us.

Kennedy was the worst. He absolutely refused to believe that the country he was in charge of was suddenly knocked from the top of the world. He seconded a lot of us from Delta Prime into the CIA. If we weren't the undisputed top country in the delta race anymore, we had the best espionage organiza tion by far.


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Of course, the rest of the world wasn't going to stand by and watch the CIA run rampant over the entire planet. It was a golden age of spy versus counterspy. It seemed like every month or so you'd hear about some spy or another getting caught in a foe's country and being executed for his trouble.

Well, I heard about it, but then, I was on the inside. After the Bicentennial Battle, I had what the shrinks called "survivor's guilt." I knew all about it and why it was irrational and all that. I just needed a way to rechannel it. When Kennedy asked Primers interested in "serving overseas," we all knew what that meant.

I didn't just step forward. I ran.

LIfE IN THE (OLD Technically speaking, I was still part

of Delta Prime, but I answered to the CIA. If you haven't figured it out by now, the CIA isn't a nice bunch of guys-more like a gang of thugs with the power of the US government behind it.

Sure, most of the directors over the years had the best interests of the country at heart, but they really didn't care who got hurt in the process. So hurt a lot of people, I did.

The rationale was that the communists were out to bury us. Belt Kruschev actually came right out and said it. It was our job to make life at home safe for the innocents there. If some of us had to get our hands

dirty to leave the rest of the country with a clean conscience, that was a price we were willing to pay. Of course, we weren't the ones who actually had to cough up. That duty fell to the people we captured, tortured, or killed.

GHTING My HANDS DIRTY That's a part of my life I'm not

terribly proud of. I managed to avoid a lot of the wetwork myself, sticking mostly to the espionage side of things, but there were times I got blood on my hands . When it comes down to killing a man or spending the rest of your life in a Soviet gulag, the choice becomes a lot easier than you might think.

I spent the next 10 years jetting around the globe, infiltrating different government and criminal organizations wherever I went. It was a real James Bond kind of life-without the pretty women or the amazing gadgets.

kay, there were some beautiful women, and some of the people I worked with had some truly astonishing pieces of technology, but that's not the point.

The point is that there was a lot of work for a spy with armorlike skin and an undetectable weapon in the form of a handblast as deadly as any gun. Like the song says, I got around.

In the end, I think I did some good for America, even though it was at the expense of our rivals around the world. And that's enough said about that.

THE GREAT MISTAKE Of '88 I worked for the CIA for 12 years. I

wouldn't say I was happy, but it took my mind off the pain I was still suffering from the fallout of the Bicentennial Battle.

Chicago was gone, but Crescent City was thrown up on the rim of the Windy City's watery grave like some kind of skyscrapered phoenix. We had the Russkies on the ropes, and it looked like the Iron Curtain might crumble at any time. In the intelligence community, we were riding high.


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1m LAnST RUSSIAN RfVOLUTION It all fell apart in '88. That's when the

Soviet Union really started to dissolve. The long-term effects of communism and decades of steady battering from us capitalist pigs finally caught up with the country, and the people demanded a change in leadership.

They got it. Unfortunately, they got the leader

they truly deserved in General Mikhail Tretyak. "Mighty Misha," as they called him, took over the country in a bloody military coup in which he personally killed every member of the politburo that wouldn't pledge his unswerving support to the new regime. He was, you see, a delta, and with the support of Crimson Pride behind him, there was no stopping him.

Tretyak lived only by one rule: Might makes right. And he had a lot of might on his side.

Within weeks, Tretyak had the mighty Soviet Empire rolling along like the troubles of the early '80s had only been a speed bump. It seemed he kept the whole thing going through only the force of his own iron will. Without him, the Soviet Union would have crumbled.

IHf RUSSIAN SOLUTION Of course, that meant Tretyak had to

die. The CIA's long-standing policy had

been that it was in America's best interest to keep matters in the Soviet Union as unstable as possible. The thinking was that, as long as the Russians were busy dealing with problems in their own backyard, they wouldn't have time to be a threat to us. Tretyak had put an end to all that, so we needed to put an end to him.


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That's what we in the trade call a tragic miscalculation. The CIA made a clumsy attempt to assassinate the Soviet leader. The backup plan was supposed to put the blame for the botched killing on Beijing, pitting the Soviets against the Red Chinese.

Best case, we waxed the premier. Worst case, the Chinese took the fall instead. Of course, we were wrong.

THE REAL MISTAKE Not only did our field agents blow

the assassination, they literally got their heads handed to them by Tretyak's personal guard. Our agents were deltas themselves, and no slouch at their jobs either, but they never really had a chance.

Worse yet, the Soviet investigation managed to pretty quickly pierce the facade pointing at Beijing. It wasn' t long before Mighty Misha knew who had written his name on the bullets his would-be assassins had been carrying.

Tretyak was mad as hell, and he wanted to make a point. We even gave him the excuse when a number of Delta Primers were caught in Chernobyl right before the reactor melted down. Before cooler heads could prevail, he actually ordered the launch of a limited nuclear strike against the United States.

While the first missile was still in the air we retaliated in kind. When the gl~wing dust finally settled, millions were incinerated, and millions more lingered in radioactive suffering before giving up the ghost. In the Soviet Union, Kiev, and Minsk were gone. In America, San Francisco and Atlanta were inaugurated as nuclear graveyards for untold numbers of innocents.

The world wept bitter tears and dreamed of vengeance.

Hame l

ACAREER CHANGE

The Great Mistake was the last straw

for me. Kennedy trea ted the American

public like mushrooms: He kept them in the dark and fed them shit. Most people thought the US had been the innocent victims of an unprovoked Soviet attack, and no lying, pinko commie was going to tell them different.

Of course, that's just what Kennedy told the reporters, which they turned around and fed to the public.

I knew better. It had been bad enough when

Chicago was destroyed while I lay healing in a hospital, but at least then I'd been innocent myself. This time, that wasn' t the case. I'd hadn't been one of the agents that

had set up the Tretyak assassination attempt, but I damn well could have been. If the CIA had sent me thereand if my Russian had been a little better, they might have-I'd have gone. It could just as easily have been my fault.

As it was, I felt guilty as sin. While rescue workers were swarming around San Francisco, Houston, and Atlanta, I was making up my mind to leave Delta Prime, to join the Defiance Movement, to go rogue. In short, to betray my beloved country.

MOVING ON I didn't tell anybody about it. That

would have been suicide. Worse yet, if I'd told one of my friends he'd have only had two choices: turn me in right away or become an accomplice to my crime.

No, I didn't tell anyone. I just walked off the job.


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LlFI ON 1"1 RUN The first couple years after I tore up

my registration card, I was pretty much on my own. I was a man caught between worlds. I had given up on the legal, government-sponsored path I'd followed my entire adult life, but with that kind of history there was no way the Defiance was going to have anything to do with me.

Over the years, I'd made a name for myself. I'd taken pains to keep myself disguised-some fantasy about someday having a private life, I guess-but my mask was nearly as famous as Superior's face. Even so, everyone in Delta Prime knew what I looked like. It was an open secret.

It wasn't long after I lit out on my own that Delta Prime put out an allpoints bulletin on me, alerting every

Home I

law enforcement agency in the country to the fact that I'd gone from authority figure to wanted man.

Of course, the Defiance did the same damn thing. They'd seen a number of Primers"defect" over the years, only to eventually reveal themselves as moles and turn in every Defiant they'd come across.

Before you register, it's easy to become a Defiant. Hell, to some of the Defiant leadership, simply refusing to comply with the DRA is proof enough of your sincerity. Once you've been inside the government, though, you've been tainted, and it takes a long time to wash the blood from your hands. I didn't really care. Primer, Defiant, it was all the same to me. I knew there was a demand out there for a delta of my unique skills and powers. It was just a matter of finding an employer.


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WORKING fOR THE fAMILY I worked for the Crescent City mob

for a short while, mostly on a contract basis. The only problem was I didn' t feel like 1'd really moved up in terms of my employer.

Sure the pay was a bit better, but the hours were nearly as bad, and I was working what I had always though of as the wrong side of the fence. Still there were more similarities between the two than I was comfortable with. Just like the Primers, the Mafia expected me to follow orders without question, believe fanatically in my bosses, and kill to further the organization's ends.

I didn't much care for it, but it was a paycheck. And at least the mob never asked me to haul in other deltas for forcible recruitment.

Home I

Well, most of the time. In fact, it was just such an incident that led me to leave the Gabriels, the family I was working for in Crescent City.

Don Paolo Gabriel, the family's patriarch, had gotten word of a young man in a friendly family who'd suddenly come into his powers. The poor son of a bitch had his awakening when a delta battle tore through his high school, leaving a wide path of destruction in its wake. He'd been on the run ever since.

The Don asked me to find the poor kid and offer him a job. If he wasn't interested in the job, I was to make it clear to him that refusing wasn' t really an option. I reluctantly agreed.

When I found the kid, I got the shock of my life. He was a delta all right. He was also only six years old.

I just couldn' t do it.


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THE TURNING POINT On the other hand, I couldn't just

walk away. If I did, the Gabriels were sure to send someone else after the kid. If I could find him, so could whoever

followed me. Now that I knew where he was, I had to actually do something with him.

The way I saw it, I had two choices. I could take the kid with me and live on the run from the Gabriels for the rest of our lives. Or I could make them leave us alone.

I was already on the run from the government. I didn't want to add the Mafia to the pack of hunters. I decided to make the Gabriels the prey instead.

OPEN SEASON I actually gave Don Gabriel a chance

to leave me alone, but the old man didn't see the wisdom in my offer. To his mind, letting me openly defy his orders meant that anyone else in his employ might think she could get away wi th telling him off. He couldn't allow that kind of

insubordination, so he put my name at the top of his hit list. Before long, I had lots of dark-haired guys in nice, Italian suits knocking down the door of my pad.

Of course, I was expecting them. When it was all over, I sent flowers to their widows.

LEAVING TH fAMILY This went on for a couple of days

before I finally managed to sneak my way into Don Gabriel's fortress-like house one dark night. The place was crawling with guards and all sorts of electronic security, but I'd seen a lot worse in my spookshow days.

I left a trail of unconscious bodies behind me on my way in. When I got to Don Gabriel's inner sanctum, he was actually waiting for me there.

He was sitting in that overstuffed leather chair of his, right behind that huge mahogany desk that had been polished to a mirror finish. His hair had gotten gray over the years, and he'd put on a few pounds, gotten soft. His eyes, though, were as hard as ever. He looked at me like a lion sizing up his next meal.

"Come in," he said. "I've been expecting you." He waved toward a chair in front of his desk. I'm not quite that stupid. I ignored his offer.

"I know what this is about," he said, leaning over his desk, talking to me like we were two old friends in on some kind of secret, "and I can't tell you how angry I am about it. You had a good life with us here. We treated you well: money, clothes, women."

With that he leaned back into his chair and looked at me with disgust. /I And now you're going to throw all that away. Over what? A pissant kid. Some snotnosed brat you don't even know."

I kept my mouth shut and let him rant. I wasn't there to talk, and he wasn't the kind who would have listened.

"Jesus, Patriot, what were you thinking? That the punks just an 'innocent child'? Are you on drugs? Nobody's irmocent!/I

He was standing up now, slamming his hand down on his desk. He stared at me for a long moment, his steely eyes blazing at me.

Just then, a door to the left opened up, and Vito Gabriel walked in. Vito was a delta like me-very much like me, in fact. Our powers were almost identical.


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"I guess that's my cue." Vito smirked as he sauntered into the room. He flashed me a wide grin full of perfectly straight, white teeth. His dark hair was oiled back, and he wore a sharp, black Versace suit.

His right fist glowed softly in the dimly lit room.

I looked over from Vito to his uncle Paolo. The Don was wearing the same shit-eating grin.

"1 don't know what you're smiling about," I told them with a calm I barely felt. "Neither one of you is getting out of here alive."

The Don barked a sharp laugh. "Be serious, son. I know guys like you. I've been working with them my whole life. You've lost your edge. You've gone soft. Anytime a killer starts worrying about saving kids, he's not much good as a killer anymore."

I glowered at him. He was right. I was trying to put that part of my life behind me, but he wasn't making it easy. 1'd killed many times for my employers, but 1'd never killed for myself. This time, ] couldn't even say I was just following orders.

My hands started to heat up, but as I brought them up, Vito leveled a hotly glowing fist straight at my head. "Don't even think about it," he snarled. "1'11 drop you like a brick." He had me cold, so I let my hands

cool down. Guys like Vito rely on their powers too much. They get cocky, careless. He would slip up eventually. I just had to wait for my chance.

"Smart boy," said the Don. I wanted to reach out and wipe the smug look off his face-along with most of his teeth-but now wasn't the time. I needed to be patient.


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The old man looked me in the eyes, serious now. I'll remember his words until my dying day-which may not be all that far way, I know.

I'm all too aware of that. "Patriot, I've been following you

now for many years. I keep track of all the important people in my town, delta or no. And now I've had the pleasure of working with you for the past few months." He paused for a moment to wring

his hands. "This little job I sent you on, it was a test. And I have to say, you failed it horribly. All you had to do was bring in one kid-show me that you would follow my orders without question.

"Instead, you defy me openly. You know, if you had come to me and tried to talk to me, honestly and in private, none of this might have happened. But no. You have to turn it into an 'issue' between us.

"You known the situation I'm in. You know that there are people who would like to see me fall from power. To lose face in front of these vultures is to court death."

He really seemed like he'd given the whole matter a lot of thought. I looked closer and saw the bags under his eyes. This was not a man who was sleeping well.

"Now, I don't have a choice. It's either you or me, Patriot. You or me.

''I'm afraid," he said, his voice heavy with regret, "it's going to have to be you."

With that, he leaned back in his chair and gestured from Vito to me with his hand. He kept his eyes on me the entire time. Don Paolo Gabriel knew the blast

was coming, but he never saw it. It caught him in the side of the head and nearly took it off his shoulders.

I looked up at Vito, stunned. He stood there, his fist still smoking from the blast.

"Uncle Paolo was right, Patriot," Vito grimaced. "There are lots of people who wanted to see him go down. He was getting old, soft. Time passed him by." He looked down a t the old man's

body. It lay slumped over the desk, blood still spilling from its head, creating an ever-widening crimson pool that was beginning to drip onto the floor.

When he looked back up at me, I had my fist pointed at his head. It was glowing hot. He winked at me. "You don't really

want to do that, sport. As it is, you've already got one murder on your hands." He motioned toward the Don's

swiftly cooling body. "The man who led a manhunt against you is going to be found dead in his house from a delta blast. Who do you think the cops are going to be looking for after that?

"After all, you're the one with the registered powers. I'm just the griefstricken nephew who---as far as they know-is a reg.

"You've got the power, the motive, and-thanks to you breaking in here tonight- the opportunity." Vito smiled at me broadly. "I couldn't have planned it better."

I kept my fist leveled at him. "Tell me," I asked flatly. "Since I've got his death on my plate, why don't I go for two? Either way, the penalty's the same. They can't execute me twice."

Vito mulled that over for a moment, but he already knew the answer.

"Two reasons, actually. First, Uncle Paolo was right: You're getting soft. I'm not threatening you at all, and you're not the kind to kill in cold blood.


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"Second, I've just done you the favor of your life."

I looked a t him hard, confused. "Think about it, Patriot. I've just

killed the man who was leading the charge after you. After this, there's going to be a battle to see who gets to take over the Crescent City operations. I've got my money on the right horse, and if we win, I can guarantee we won't bother trying to settle an old score Uncle Paolo had with you.

"You're free. "As far as I'm concerned, you can

walk away from here tonight and never look back. Sure, the cops are going to pin the murder on you, but with all the other charges they've already got on you, that's the least of your problems, right?

"At least you know the family isn't after you any more." He paused to look me dead in the

eye. "You're free to go, pal. But you'd better hurry. Some of those guards you took out are bound to start waking up soon-and if they find you in here with Uncle Paolo's body, well, who knows what might happen."

I lowered my fist for a moment, and it was then that Vito began to laugh. It started out as just a chuckle at first, but it got louder and louder until it grated on my nerves.

"Hey, Patriot," Vito said as he walked over to the picture window behind his dead uncle's desk. "I always knew you were a smart guy."

With that, I brought both fists to bear on the man and blasted him right through the window. He tumbled out from the second-story in a shower of shattered glass, a hole smoking in his expensive suit. He cursed me all the way down. I

was pretty sure he'd survive the fall, but to tell the truth, I didn't really care.


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THI DlflAHT VIARS After the papers told the world that

I'd assassinated Don Paolo Gabriel, I instantly became more infamous than ever before. As with most events in my life, there was an upside and a downside to this .

The downside was the public was now screaming for my head-loudly. Delta Prime was already doing its best to find me though, so I don't know that this really made my life a whole lot worse.

The other problem was that Vito actually survived the fall. To this day, I don't think he's ever forgiven me for blasting him out the window, and that's just the way I like it.

The main bright spot was the fact that my having supposedly killed the head of the Crescent City mafia apparently turned a lot of heads in the Defiance too. These people, though, knew what a bastard the old Don was, and they thought that anyone who killed such a dangerous, old bastard must be okay in their books.

As a result, I was contacted by the Defiance for the first time. In fact, it was Truth herself who sought me out. I guess she figured that with her special talent she could size me up better than just about anyone else. Apparently she liked what she saw, because she soon after offered me a probationary membership into her little club .

The first direct benefit of this was I was able to find a home for the little boy 1'd rescued. He seemed to enjoy being on the road with me, but it was no life for a child . Truth placed him with a truly wonderful family who was willing to care for him and-more . importantly-risk jail to cover up hIS true nature.

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THE DHIANCf MOVEMENT AND ME I've got to admit, despite the fact I'd

been part of the government for m~st of my adult life, I never really felt lIke much of a joiner. The military wasn't a social club. It was a job and a dead serious one at that.

Joining up with the Defiance fit me just fine. More than I though it would. After all, as organizations go, it's not much of one. It's mostly just a bunch of deltas who use the internet and other means to coordinate a loosely run resistance movement against the United States government.

I knew all about the Defiance from my days in Delta Prime. I'd hauled ill more than one Defiant in my day, and I'd sat in on the interrogation of a few of those. Whenever I did, one thought always

struck me: These are the people we're so afraid of? Dear God, most of them could barely string three sentences together, much less mount a massive, coordinated campaign against a powerful, popular, and entrenched government.

In those days, I didn't think the Defiants had a chance. Of course, I'm not so sure if I'd

change my tune these days. Over the past few years, the Defiance's influence and power has grown by leaps and bounds, but it's hardly ready to turn the world on its ear.

All rumors to the contrary, the Defiance will not be la unching a massive sneak attack on the world at the end of the millennium. That kind of undertaking requires all sorts of skills, ordnance, and intelligence that only the government of a large country could possibly supply.

Let's just put it this way: It ain't gonna happen.


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MYTH MANAGEMENT The other common misconception

people seem to have about the Defiance is that it's one, large, well-oiled terrorism machine. That's what the papers tell you, after all, so it must be true, right? If there's one thing I've learned over

the years it's that you can't trust anything anyone ever tells you. It doesn't matter if it comes from the lips of Dan Rather or straight from the mouth of el presidente himself. People only tell you what they want you to hear. That's true of the President, your preacher, your family, and yourself.

That's doubly true for me, so be careful when you're reading this. For one, are you sure this piece was actually written by Patriot? Who told you that? And who told them?

And how do you know that what I'm writing hasn't been edited? A smart censor would actually leave in text like what I'm writing now-or maybe add in some herself-just to make the whole piece seem that much more authentic.

It's a twisted world out there, troopers, and there are days when you shouldn't even trust yourself. For me, those are the best ones, because at least I know I'm ready for whatever cards the world has to deal me.

fACTS AND fAnlONS The truth is-if you think you can

trust what I say-the Defiance is really a loose conglomeration of several different resistance movements, each of which tells you that it's the heart of the Defiance. Getting all of these factions to agree on anything is like trying to talk sense to your dog. It only wastes your time and annoys the dog.

Hame l

There are factions that think that blowing up the White House is the first step toward peace. There are others that think Kennedy's doing a great job of keeping the regs in the dark, it's just that they want the reins of power for themselves. Then there are those that just want to be left alone but find that they can't peacefully convince the Primers to do that.

Most, if not all, of these factions use the forums and chat rooms at the Delta Times website to relay information back and forth to each other. Lots of people try to use all sorts of crazy codes to communicate with each other. It's a website, after all, which means it's not exactly a private venue.

Others freely speak their minds, giving details on where they are and what they've been doing. Most times they do this because they're confident they'll be moving on before anyone from Delta Prime could use the information to track them down. Other times, they're just desperate enough for help to not really care too much about who answers their call.

My SIDE When it came to choosing sides, I

stuck with myself. If you're a new Defiant, I suggest you do the same. Sure, there are factions within the Defiance that you could do a lot worse than fall in with, but once you do, you become a target for every other faction. It's best to step back from the whole politically twisted thing and take your time before you declare any alliances. Of course, I didn't take that advice to

heart myself. What was it Sister Cabrini used to tell me? "Do as I say, not as I do!" I can see her point now. Looking at myself, I'm a pretty lousy example of how to do things right.

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I fell in with Truth pretty quickly. She's a powerful woman, and I'm not talking about her delta abilities. Being able to figure out if someone's telling the truth or not isn't much good in a firefight.

No, Truth's just a forceful personality. When she's convinced of something, she argues for it like Moses bringing down the 10 Commandments from Mt. Sinai and smashing them at his people's feet.

When she talks, you listen. At least I do, and if you're reading

this on the Delta Times website, you probably agree with me.

Truth's one of the few people that actually manages to stay above the fracas that's always going on between the different factions. She's got no interest in anyone's agenda but her own, and hers she wears on her sleeve.

THE TRUTH Truth's all about the truth. She wants

to drag it screaming and crawling out of the backrooms and boardrooms and into the harsh light of day. She figures that if all the regs really knew what was going on in this country-if they could really see how much we're all alike-we wouldn' t be in the state we're in.

"Knowledge is power," she's always telling me. "Right now, the people have given Kennedy and Delta Prime all of the power. The government's got a stranglehold on information in this country. When that's broken, the people will be able to free their minds . Like the song says, if they can do that, the rest will follow." I like Truth a lot, but I don't know if I

always agree with her. In my


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experience, there are some matters that can' t be settled by talking it out. Of course, she'd fight to the death to defend my right to disagree with her. Or fight to take that right back.

No matter whether you agree with the woman or not, she's worth listening to. She's been at this Defiance thing a while, and people have a way of seeing the honest goodness in her and opening up to her.

There's not an important Defiant in this country that doesn't count on Truth as a reliable source if not actually as a friend . I'm talking about real Defiants, of course, not crooks or killers who simply wrap the title around themselves as a cloak of respectability. Those posers toss around words like "freedom fighters" or "rebels" when all they really want to do is rob, riot, and kill for the sheer "pleasure" of it.

RIDIMPTIOH

I bear a lot of guilt for the things I

did when I was a member of Delta Prime. I was a willing party to the atrocities the President visited upon the American people. Even I wasn't always the one committing the actual crimes, I was complicit in them.

I knew what was going on, and I let it happen. Worse yet, I had the power to stop it, and I didn' t. Once I got in with Truth and the

Defiance though, that changed. It was like I'd been reborn, given a second chance to make things right, and I didn' t waste any time trying to make up for past mistakes.

I spent a lot of my time avoiding the Primers that had been assigned to hunting me down. They were a dogged bunch, always just a step or two behind


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me. Still, I managed to keep them guessing about my whereabouts and my motives for a long time.

Unfortunately, that didn' t last.

SAVE THE (HILDREN There's that old saw that says

something like, "If you want to change the world, start with the kids."

I took tha t to heart. Under Truth's guidance, I made it

my mission to find young deltas and contact them before they were hauled in by Delta Prime. Sometimes it was a thankless job, with more than one brainwashed kid wanting to turn me in as soon as he saw my mask.

I can hardly blame the kids for being afraid. After all, the papers had been telling them for years that Patriot was the kind rogue element that would rip open your skull and eat your brains with a golden spoon. You can see why they might not have been happy to see me.

Others though-most of them already on the run from the Primerswere ready to discount what they'd heard about me. It's easy to think that the government might have lied about someone else when you've got a platoon of Primers hauling in your family for questioning and hunting you down like a rabid dog.

I hauled a lot of young bacon out of the fire and turned them over to Truth. She tells me she's managed to place them all with sympathetic families willing to risk jail to give a poor, scared, innocent kid a second chance.

Of course, some of those kids aren't in this country anymore. A few of them have even escaped to places like Australia, where there are no laws against having delta powers, and people like us can live free.

DOWN UNDER A lot of deltas dream about making

it to the land down under, but it's not all it's cracked up to be. All kinds of deltas-good and bad-run rampant around the place, which makes it a dangerous place to live, delta or not. The people who are afraid of deltas

aren't all wrong, you know. There's a lot to be afraid of.

Sure, you can leave your country behind for a life in another land where you've got rights. Given the current state of affairs in the USA, there's no shame in giving up and heading out. All I'm saying is if you're looking for paradise, there's no place that qualifies on this ravaged planet.

AMERICA, RIGHT OR WRONG

That's the phrase that my instructors

in Delta Prime pounded into my head over the years. The idea behind it is that you always do what your country asks of you because it's your country, no matter what you might personally believe.

That's a crock. Abe Lincoln said it best. We're

supposed to be a democracy. "Of the people, by the people, and for the people."

We're not here to serve some crazed despot just because he's in charge. America's about the people, not the power. I believe in that catchphrase though.

"America, right or wrong." America might be wrong these days, but I'm not about to abandon her. This is my country, dammit, and I'm going to stick with her, no matter what.

For some people, that means they should stay in their jobs and do what they can to change things with what


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little power they have. You see this when a Primer hauls in a kid and falsifies the report to show that the poor rookie's only had her powers for a few days, all so she can avoid a free trip to New Alcatraz.

That might have been enough for me at one point, when I was able to fool myself into thinking that my superiors-all the way up to the President himself-knew better than I what was in the country's best interests.

Not anymore. I stopped doing that a long time ago.

WE THE PEOPLE In the end, it all gets right back to

that preamble to the Constitution: "We the people."

We the people give the government its power. That's one thing that's never changed in America, even in the last 40 years.

Think about it. When Kennedy pushed the Delta Registration Act through Congress, was there a hue and cry from the people? No, we let it zoom right on through. Hell, we couldn't get that bill passed fast enough. And when the President declared

martial law 36 years ago, did the American public complain? You might thjnk we would have, but no.

Why? We were scared. We were scared, so we surrendered

control of our own destiny and put it in the hands of a power-mad man with aspirations of ruling over us like royalty.

Back in the early '60s, the media used to call Kennedy's White House "Camelot." At the time, I'm sure they never realized how prophetic they were being.

Hamel

PROfiLES IN COURAGE Kennedy himself wrote a book once:

Profiles in Courage. It was about standing up for yourself and your country and what you believed in.

You should go back and read that. It rings more true today than ever before.

You don't see a lot of courage in America these days. No, you see people cowering in fear of atomic annihilation and delta-caused mayhem.

The American public is frightened out of its collective mind. It's easy to see why. Never in the history of humanity has the future of the world ever been so uncertain. Never has so much hung in the balance.

This isn't a time to be scared though. When the days are darkest, that's when you need to look deep inside yourself for the light.

In this new world, it's the time to be brave.

THE WAY BACK As a people, we can put an end to

the fears that put a stranglehold on our freedoms. We can restore democracy to our land once again. We can make our country right. All it takes is courage. If we're not afraid of the "Soviet

threat" or the "Delta threat" or any other threat the government might manage to come up with; if we take each day knowing that it might all come to an end and stand our ground, preferring that it end well rather than go on so badly; if we truly share the values of our founding fathers-that we have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness-then nothing can stand in our way.

Well, that's not exactly true. Nothing can stand in your way. By

the time you read this, I'll be dead.


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JULY 4, 1999

My trial ended today, on our nation's

birthday. As I sit here writing these words, I can hear fireworks exploding in the distance. I can 't see them from the tiny window in my cell, but I can imagine them in my mind's eye.

The Fourth of July was always my favorite holiday, even when I was a kid. As an orphan, lots of the other holidays didn't mean a whole lot. Sure, at St. Savio's they always made a fuss over us kids during Christmas and Easter and even our birthdays, but it wasn' t like celebrating with a real family, if you know what I mean.

When the Fourth rolled around though, the entire country got together and congra tula ted ourselves and our founders on being brave enough to stand on our own.

It was one of the few times in my life that I really felt like I was part of a family, and my brothers and sisters were everyone else in the country. And, of course, the President was our benevolent father. That all changed when our country's doting mother got blown to pieces in Dallas in 1963. If there's one thing I could change in

all of history, it would be that one moment. I'd have Superior sweep in just minutes earlier and mop the floor with the entire Dreadnaut team.

Better yet, I'd do it myself. And then I'd continue on to find the Devastator and put him in his grave 13 years before the Bicentennial Battle.

The seeds to that tragedy-to the whole downfall of our nation-were sown on that fateful November morning. But there's really no such thing as a second chance.


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My TRIAL I've never really been much on

second chances myself. If you do things right the first time, you don't need them. That's not to say that I always did

everything right. But I always did my best.

I don't regret saving that girl from the DP recruitment team. Sure, I knew they'd be hot on her heels, and I knew there was a good chance they'd be ready for me. I did it anyway. Why? Because she needed a hand. I mean, isn't that why you help

people?

THf (HARGfS Still, that's not wha t I was on trial

for. Actually, helping the girl" flee justice" was one of the charges, but there was a laundry list of others, most of them a lot more serious.

The worst charges were things like "espionage," "dereliction of duty," and so on. Technically, I was AWOL from Delta Prime too, since I never had my resignation approved. Anyone of those charges would

have been enough to give me a lifetime pass to the New Alcatraz cafeteria . That wasn't enough for Walter Mulroney, the federal prosecutor on my case. No, he wanted me to go down for a capital offense: murder.

Now, I've killed a lot of people in my time, almost all in the service of my country. I almost couldn't believe which one Mulroney decided to charge me with: the death of Paolo Gabriel.

To me, it's the final insult to my country that the federal prosecutor couldn't come up with a real crime to hang me for.


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I had always been pretty careful about committing crimes in the past. Part of the training I got at Delta Prime and with the CIA concentrated not only on what to do but how to get away with it clean. That was my job, and I was good at it.

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Player's Guide - Ravaged Planet