8698/Undercurrents: Tragic Ripples

Undercurrents: Tragic Ripples
Date of Scene:	08 August 2019
Location:	North Kivu, Democractic Republic of Congo
Synopsis:	Lex Luthor goes to North Kivu in the DRC and learns something surprising about a small village that was wiped out.
Cast of Characters:	Aquaman, Lex Luthor
Tinyplot:	Undercurrents

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Aquaman has posed:
Village Outside Ombole, North Kivu, Democract Republic of Congo (DRC)

This border region of the DRC borders on Uganda and Rwanda. It has been a flashpoint of armed conflict in the region for decades. Ethnic cleansing, guerilla violence, religious extremists, and epidemics have scarred this region so much that the miracle is there are people are left who live there. But there are. Desperately poor, inconsistently reached by UN emergency aid and totally ungoverned, they make do as best they can.

So when a UN surveillance satellite logged what looked like multiple dead bodies lying near huts in a remote village outside Ombole, it barely reached daily briefings. Satellite imagery showed burns on some of the bodies that an analyst flagged as being similar to other village attacks in the DRC, Myanmar, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The world is a busy place and one more small tragedy was not drawing any attention.

Lex Luthor has posed:
The UN is run by a bunch of idiots with no vision, so it doesn't surprise Lex in the least they completely ignore the implications of recent events there. LexCorp satellites were tasked with tracking conflict zones in Africa for anything out of the usual. Meanwhile, Lex himself had taken one of the Lights secret wormhole portals from Metropolis to an African city nearby, his warsuit assembly truck coming through with him as he heads for the edge of the city in it.

Once out of visual range of the city, the warsuit was donned, and Lex took flight, heading for the nearest burned village. His hope was to do recon of the damage... then find the source.

Flying low to the ground and slow or fast depending on the terrain and potential witnesses, Lex slowly but surely works his way across the continent.

Aquaman has posed:
It is not a difficult journey to the village outside Ombole. Lex arrives shortly before lunch.

The village is a collection of a dozen huts in a clearing cut into the low vegetation and trees. A few palm trees are interspersed with the huts. The huts themselves have thatched roofs with mud and stick walls. The paths between the houses are packed dirt from the passing of the villagers' feet. There are no services or cell coverage out here. This is a place time and the world forgot.

It is too warm for IR, but with plain vision there is enough to see when Lex arrives. The bodies of two young men, three women of different ages and a girl lie in the dirt paths between the huts. They were gunned down while running. Cape crows take off noisily into the air at Lex's approach.

Lex Luthor has posed:
Landing with almost a 'thud', Lex scans the area with sensors for other humanoid signatures, before he steps over to the bodies. Mentally beginning to record from landing to LexCorp cloud storage.

A moment later, and one hand is brought over each body in turn as he focuses the sensor array to get detailed scans of each body, giving each one a separate PIP in his vision as he performs five simultaneous remote autopsies.

Aquaman has posed:
The people were in wildly varying states of health which is not surprising. One of the women was in the very early stages of pregnancy. They all died the same way though.

Each body had a single large burn wound in the torso, some in the front and some in the back. From the angles, there were multiple shooters. The wounds are not just burns, something melted into the torsos of these people and caused their deaths. It is consistent with focused, high energy plasma discharges. There is heat damage throughout the bodies as well, as if some of the energy dispersed through the body's liquids causing them to burn surrounding tissues.

The particular wound patterns do not fit with any known plasma weapons. There is an unusually high amount of hydrogen peroxide residue in the wounds. For the amount in the wounds, there must have been a lot more water present at extremely high temperatures than the bodies contained.

Lex Luthor has posed:
"Mercy, start scanning for plasma weapons -and Atlanteans- with the network. This was recent." Lex orders over the commlink. Then, Lex takes off again, hovering above the village just enough to start scanning the perimeter.

The attackers came from somewhere, and went somewhere. Time to see if they left footprints... and if they can be followed.

Aquaman has posed:
Mercy comes up with nothing at all. A careful look over the area finds what Lex is after. There are tire tracks, probably a jeep. Someone drove up and four people got out wearing boots. The four set up in a half circle around the village. One set of boot prints went into the village and into each hut.

The boot prints are not always clear because they are walked over going the opposite direction. The jeep made a y-turn and drove back down the dirt track it came up initially.

Lex Luthor has posed:
Nothing for it.

Lex goes low and slow once more as he starts to follow the jeep trail.

Aquaman has posed:
The trail leads back to Ombole. Ombole is a town. Not a big one, not a wealthy one, but a town and a hub for the local villages. There is a small open air market, a few buildings are made of cement bricks. The roads are still dirt, and from the looks of it, solar power does more to power the lone cell tower than the single rough looking power line coming in from the east.

There are very few vehicles. One of them is a beat up green jeep parked near a larger hut by a grassy strip. No doubt used as an airfield, though likely not often.

Lex Luthor has posed:
"Mercy, give me a top down of the layout in a PIP." Lex orders as he comes to rest just outside the town, staying inside a large tree for visual cover. Meanwhile, Lex is scanning the village for bio-signatures again... then focusing his sensors on that jeep and the large hut by the airfield.

Aquaman has posed:
There are a just over five hundred people in the town right now, though it is likely many live outside. They are spread out in the markets, buildings and sitting around, doing life. There are a few armed locals walking around in no discernible outfits, carrying ancient AK-47s, still shooting so many decades on.

Inside the hut by the airport is a single person sitting in a chair and smoking.

Lex Luthor has posed:
Typical warlord with a posse setup. Someone decided to give the equivalent of space guns to monkeys, probably.

Taking off and circling around, heads directly for the doorway to that large hut, and knocks. His sensors train on the man in the hut through the door as he does so.

Time to rattle some cages.

Aquaman has posed:
There is no door so the man inside sees Lex immediately when Lex appears in his armoured suit.

"Ironman!" the man yells. He is in his late 30's, thin, wearing an Orange Crush t-shirt and red jean shorts. His eyes go wide and he pushes up so quickly from his chair that it falls over. He holds up a hand as if ward off or forestall an attack.

"No problem here! You go, Ironman, no problem!"

Lex Luthor has posed:
"I'm not Iron Man." Lex notes, almost menacingly, with the synthetic voice modulator in his helmet. "I'm someone who doesn't answer to the Avengers or the UN." Lex starts to walk forward. "I'm someone who needs answers, and you're going to give them to me."

'Thump, Thump, Thump, Thump' Small sounds come from the metallic feet of the armor as Lex steps forward casually towards the man.

"Are you going to be cooperative?" Lex asks.

Aquaman has posed:
"Yes, yes! Ironman, you go! No problem!" the man shouts, gesturing as he could somehow shoo away the menace in front of him. He loses a sandal while backing away from Lex. The man is brought up short by the back wall of the hut.

"No, no, you go! Nothing, nothing, no problem!" he shouts, looking panicked.

Lex Luthor has posed:
"Really hope I don't need to grab this idiot to knock some sense into him." Lex mutters, just barely audible over the commlink. Then, over the helmet voice synthesizer, fluent french comes, "Understand me now?" Lex asks.

Aquaman has posed:
The man nods uncertainly, still holding his hand out.

"What do you want?" he asks in French.

Lex Luthor has posed:
"I want answers. I'm not Iron Man, so asking the Avengers or anyone else about me won't give you any answers. Or Protection." Lex informs him, "I want to know where the people who were in the jeep out there have gone, and who you are."

Lex, in fact, calls out to the LexCorp network silently, scanning the appearance of the man in front of him and doing a search on him. If the man lies about himself, he wants to know about it.

Aquaman has posed:
"Eph... Ephraim," he man answers hesitantly. He taps his own chest with his palm.

"I work here. Make sure men in from planes pay. The men from the jeep are gone. They flew away."

Lex Luthor has posed:
"Mercy, track them. There can't be that many aircraft coming out of this hole." Lex mentally commands as he stares at the man, "Who are they, why are they flying in here in the first place?" Lex asks aloud.

Aquaman has posed:
Mercy goes to work immediately.

"I don't know! I did not ask. They paid to land and for jeep," Ephraim explains, relaxing just a little. "There were four men. They went away and came back. Then they flew. In a small plane. White plane."

Lex Luthor has posed:
"Small, white plane." Lex notes for Mercy. Then, Lex walks up to the man... placing his hand into the utility compartment on his back... and pulls out a thousand dollar bill, offering it to the man between two gauntleted fingers. "How would you like to get one of these every week?"

Aquaman has posed:
Greed and caution replace fear very quickly in Ephraim's face. The money being flashed is a huge sum. He looks around reflexively as if to make sure nobody overheard them.

"What do you want? You want to know if men with plane come back? It is easy to see. I can tell you."

Mercy gets back to Lex. There is no functioning air traffic control system in a true sense out here, no radar coverage. But Mercy can tell Lex that a white Cesna took off from Goma, the capital of North Kivu the day before and landed this morning in about the window one would have expected if it had flown directly from Ombole to Goma. It is a leap, there are other white Cesnas that took off or landed, but not both, in the right time frame.

What was most interesting about this plane was the registered owner.

Hammer Industries.