Avalanche: Book Five in the Secret World Chronicle
Page 1
Table of Contents
DEDICATION
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO INTERLUDE
CHAPTER THREE INTERLUDE
INTERLUDE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN INTERLUDE
INTERLUDE
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN INTERLUDE
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR INTERLUDE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN INTERLUDE
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE INTERLUDE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Avalanche: Book Five of the Secret World Chronicle
Ultima Thule has been destroyed—but somehow the Thulians mounted an even bigger force to destroy Metis. The Metisians that escaped the carnage and destruction of their secret city now must somehow find somewhere safe to go—without getting snapped up by various world governments. And now the Thulians have changed their tactics to “blitz guerilla warfare,” sending wave after wave of their ships and troops to attack vulnerable targets all over Earth, with no clue for ECHO as to where these things are coming from
John Murdock and The Seraphym have become a force of nature, but they can’t be everywhere at once, and if they were regarded with suspicion before, now they are regarded by ECHO’s allies with fear as well.
You could say “things can’t get worse.”
You would be wrong.
Red Djinni’s past is about to catch up with him.
So is Victoria Victrix’s.
BAEN BOOKS by MERCEDES LACKEY
Bardic Voices
The Lark and the Wren
The Robin and the Kestrel
The Eagle and the Nightingales
The Free Bards
Four & Twenty Blackbirds
Bardic Choices: A Cast of Corbies (with Josepha Sherman)
The Fire Rose
The Wizard of Karres (with Eric Flint & Dave Freer)
Werehunter
Fiddler Fair
Brain Ships (with Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball)
The Sword of Knowledge (with C.J. Cherryh, Leslie Fish & Nancy Asire)
Bedlam’s Bard (with Ellen Guon)
Beyond World’s End (with Rosemary Edghill)
Spirits White as Lightning (with Rosemary Edghill)
Mad Maudlin (with Rosemary Edghill)
Music to My Sorrow (with Rosemary Edghill)
Bedlam’s Edge (ed. with Rosemary Edghill)
The SERRAted Edge
Chrome Circle (with Larry Dixon)
The Chrome Borne (with Larry Dixon)
The Otherworld (with Larry Dixon & Mark Shepherd)
Silence (with Cody Martin)
Historical Fantasies with Roberta Gellis
This Scepter’d Isle
Ill Met by Moonlight
By Slanderous Tongues
And Less Than Kind
Heirs of Alexandria Series
by Mercedes Lackey, Eric Flint & Dave Freer
The Shadow of the Lion
This Rough Magic
Much Fall of Blood
Burdens of the Dead
The Secret World Chronicle
Invasion (with Steve Libbey, Cody Martin & Dennis Lee)
World Divided (with Cody Martin, Dennis Lee & Veronica Giguere)
Revolution (with Cody Martin, Dennis Lee & Veronica Giguere)
Collision (with Cody Martin, Dennis Lee & Veronica Giguere)
Avalanche (with Cody Martin, Dennis Lee & Veronica Giguere)
To purchase these and all other Baen Book titles in e-book format, please go to www.baen.com.
Avalanche: Book Five of the Secret World Chronicle
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2018 by Mercedes Lackey, Cody Martin, Dennis Lee, & Veronica Giguere
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.
A Baen Books Original
Baen Publishing Enterprises
P.O. Box 1403
Riverdale, NY 10471
www.baen.com
ISBN: 978-1-4814-8322-3
eISBN: 978-1-62579-654-7
Cover art by Larry Dixon
First Baen printing, August 2018
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
Electronic Version by Baen Books
www.baen.com
Dedicated to our patient fans.
Knowing you were waiting kept us going.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
* * *
Once again, most of our chapter titles come from music. So think of this as the playlist for the book. Many thanks to the artists who defined the shape of these chapters.
Find a Way (Nico and Vinz)
Inner Universe (Yoko Kanno)
Who Can It Be Now? (Men at Work)
Hang on to Yourself (David Bowie)
Deep Rapture (Sammy Fain)
Going out Strange (Rollins Band)
Get out Alive (Three Days Grace)
Ebb Tide (Righteous Brothers)
Keep Your Distance (Richard Thompson)
Peekaboo (Devo)
Breathing Underwater (Metric)
Hurt (Nine Inch Nails)
Lost Cause (Imagine Dragons)
Stand and Deliver (Adam Ant)
Head of Medusa (Otep)
The Snake (Al Wilson)
O Fortuna (Carl Orff)
Requiem (VNV Nation)
Nightmare (Avenged Sevenfold)
You Always Hurt the One You Love (Mills Brothers)
Forty Six and 2 (Tool)
Hospital Beds (Cold War Kids)
Left Behind (Slipknot)
Between the Lines (Sara Bareilles)
Kingdom (VnV Nation)
The Greatest (Sia)
The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore (Righteous Brothers)
I’ll Keep Coming (Low Roar)
Giants in the Ocean (Sky Eats Airplane)
Season of the Witch (Donovan)
All Along the Watchtower (Jimi Hendrix)
Too Far Gone (Sixpence None the Richer)
Stone in My Hand (Everlast)
Running on the Rocks (Shriekback)
Long Time Gone (Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young)
INTRODUCTION
* * *
Victoria Victrix pinched the bridge of her nose. Her jaws hurt, she had been clenching them so hard. She began to type again.
I need to backtrack, to before Metis fell. That’s okay, Reader.
It’ll get you up to speed.
CHAPTER ONE
* * *
Find a Way
Mercedes Lackey and Cody Martin
The last few days had been a whirlwind of action for John and Sera. From the assault on Ultima Thule, their near defeat and final victory there, to being immediately thrust back into the “real world” of Atlanta as soon as they were conscious enough to be shoved onto an ECHO transport plane, there hadn’t been a moment to pause for a breath. It all seemed entirely too surreal: one moment, fighting for their lives in a strange re-creation of Nazi Paradise. Collapsing, thinking that they were dead—at least they had fought on to the end, trying to save as many as they could—and then being saved themselves at the last moment by the Metisians. There had been the arguments and meetings, afterwards: what to do with the prisoners, how to split up the spoils of war in terms of recovered Thulian tech and materials, and so on. Bella and the Commissar both had thought it best that John and Sera get back to Atlanta, to HQ, stat; an uncomfortable amount of those arguments had been what to do with John and Sera themselves. The troops on the ground were for the most part thankful, or just in awe, of what had happened during the fighting. The top brass, however…they conveyed Fear, Envy, and worst of all, Greed when it came to just who was going to be able to call on the fiery duo. Three of the Seven Deadly Sins, if John’s memory was correct. Of course, his memory might not have been; he’d never been all that conversant in religion before, and Sera didn’t seem inclined to spout Bible verses and doctrine so much as cryptic responses or things that were, well, more universal than Biblical. All the same, the feeling in the air back at Ultima Thule was decidedly not friendly for John and Sera, so back to Atlanta it was. Even their comrades had been on edge, until Old Man Bear had broken the tension. Since then, things had been more relaxed at HQ.
There had been another thing John was contending with. He was picking up on the emotions of others, and not just in a natural, “able to read people” sort of way. He could actually feel what others were feeling sometimes. It had taken his breath away, the first time, and still rocked him to his core whenever it happened now. But he was getting used to it…with Sera’s help. He wasn’t surprised as much anymore when it happened; he was beginning to be able to control when he let the emotions of others in. It was still the depth of it all that overwhelmed him; maybe because he was used to regulating his own emotions, and was habituated over his life to react to them. With other people…it wasn’t so much as colors mixing and melding, as much as it was two different strains of music coming together, and not always in harmony. It was the best way that he could think to describe it. Some people were a lot easier to be around, all the healers and empaths, for instance; shielding other people out meant they kept their own emotions in. Bulwark, strangely, was completely unreadable. John figured it might have been an extension of his other powers, but didn’t have much of a chance to pursue the answer to that question.
And then there was Vickie, who had some sort of barrier of her own. She wasn’t a psychic of any sort, so it had to be magic. He still got the heebie-jeebies when it came to magic, despite how much of his gear—even his HUD and Overwatch rig—ran on it. John kind of wondered how the heck that worked though—magical/emotional shielding. He hadn’t even gotten anything out of her when he’d inadvertently zapped her, and you’d have thought being hit by a “Celestial” bitch-slap would have made her feel pretty damn strongly…but the only time she’d slipped was when she’d thought about Red Djinni.
That had been a painful exchange. He and Sera both had been lapped by waves of grief and longing that had come off of Vickie; it was only Sera’s moderating influence, John suspected, that kept him from being completely overwhelmed. He did his best trying to counsel Vickie, and comfort her without being patronizing; he’d had enough experience with doing that when he was still Big Army, being a team leader and helping the Joes under his command. Still, she seemed mired in her own pain; it particularly stung him in that it reminded him of when Sera was going through her own trials while his memory was gone. In the end, Vickie had closed up…those weird shields of her own coming up, and completely cutting off the feed of her emotions to John and Sera. She said she was fine, but it was clear that she just wanted to end the interaction. It was probably for the best; pushing things too far, too fast would have more than likely been counterproductive. She was his friend, and he would offer her whatever help he could give, but she still had to find her own way, in the end.
Besides the troubles that Vic was going through, something else had stuck out to John about that night. When she had tried to do her magic “reading” on him, to determine if he was going to be a danger to others, something now intimately a part of him had reacted badly, before he was even aware of it. Celestial. That had been the word that she was trying to finish when she got thrown into a wall by whatever defensive impulse was building, before I clamped down on it. He’d done his best to seem nonchalant about it, but in reality he was scared to death. It only got worse after he saw the raw, unedited footage of himself and Sera during the fighting in Ultima Thule. Although he had been there, and had done all of those things…seeing it from the outside perspective, what it must have looked like to other people…that, more than anything, shook him up. They were awesome. And terrifying. More than anything, the footage conveyed to him how fast they were together; the amount of destruction they could dish out in a short amount of time was staggering. John had seen artillery—and experienced it, on the wrong end—and airpower, and those two things were frightening enough. But that wasn’t just a single person, or even a couple, that were capable of those things. It was teams of people, coupled with technology and entire logistical trains. Take one piece out of that puzzle, and it all fell apart.
The footage drove home that “John and Sera” were a power unto themselves, and a different one from anything the world had seen so far. And, so, John was frightened.
There was temptation to look at the footage again—easy enough to do, since he and Sera were officially on “detached duty,” playing Vickie’s bodyguards while the VIPs and select ECHO leads were in Metis itself. All he had to do was give Overwatch a couple of commands and he could view it again as many times as he wanted. But there was fear and even a little revulsion, too. He had detonated bombs that had leveled entire buildings, and called in airstrikes that had done the same or more. He had once cooked an entire hangar filled with Kriegers and Krieger armor. When he had seen what he and Sera had been capable of, when they were completely drained…it was beyond. He didn’t want to be—well, that. Whatever that was. Tapped into raw, unfettered power. It set them apart in a way very few metahumans had been before…and the world hadn’t been kind to those metas.
Sera interrupted his musings with a hot cup of tea. “You are troubled,” she said simply, sitting down beside him. “May I help?” They were sitting on the couch, back in Vickie’s apartment again, generally taking up space and making sure she had whatever help she needed. Most of the time, Grey and Herb already had Vickie’s needs taken care of, so John and Sera spent their time talking, drinking tea, and keeping an eye out for…anything.
He did his best to smile wanly. “I imagine you’re the only one that could, darlin’.” He took his cup of tea, transferring it to his left hand before pulling her closer with his right. “Guess I can’t hide anythin’ from you.”
She blinked at him, slowly. “You could, if you chose. I am glad that you do not choose to do so. What troubles you so?”
John thought for a few moments. “Me. You. Us. All of this.” Effortlessly, he called flame to the arm that was wrapped around her; he already knew that their fires could never hurt each other. The ease with which he could call his fires, now, and keep them going…before, control had been his biggest issue. He had learned breathing exercises, even meditation, to keep his fires from going nova on him; every time he had decided to use his flames before his…transformation, he had needed immense concentration t
o prevent the fire from ramping up and going wild, like it had when he had escaped from the Facility. He’d been close to losing it like that a few times; if it hadn’t been for Vickie, he would have probably unintentionally cooked his friends and teammates alive by accident a couple of those times. “It’s a lot to deal with. That, and the…other stuff. The Futures, our battle-sense, feelin’ things and being able to just ’bout read people’s thoughts…I don’t know how you did it all on your own.”
To his relief, she laughed a little. “Because I was not human, beloved. I could not handle it alone, now.”
“Well, there is that, I suppose.” He shook his head. “Still. How are we goin’ to deal with it now? I mean…what can we do with all of this power? It’s makin’ my head spin, if’n I’m bein’ honest.”
Her brows creased, as she thought, and there was some uncertainty in her voice. “I moderate what you can do. I am the—the gauge through which the power flows. Vickie was right, we have mapped the limits of our abilities, there at Ultima Thule. That is as much as we can bear; attempts to manipulate more will…not end well.” She offered a tentative attempt at a smile. “I sense this does not comfort you.”