That was when John “felt” Sera with him, and felt her reaching to Moji too…and together they somehow touched him. “Fear not, brave one,” he “heard” in his mind, and knew that Molotok heard it too. “This is not an end, and your comrades will take up the fight and never forget you. See the door? It waits to welcome you.” John couldn’t see it, but he sensed Molotok could, and sensed that Sera had muted the Russian’s pain as well. He willed Moji to “hear” him. This was—it was anything but natural for him, but he willed Molotok to sense that he was there, too, a friend that he trusted, and that the friend was letting him know that this was…all right. And that it was okay for him to let go.
The despair ebbed, then drained away. John tried to continue willing that support for his comrade. He thought he was succeeding when there was a strangled shout, full of fury and pain and desperation, and Moji turned his head.
It was Natalya, staring at her bolshoi brat with horror and outrage.
“She will finish this, I pledge you,” Sera breathed gently.
“I know this. It is her nature; she only knows how to succeed.” Behind that single thought, John and Sera felt everything that Molotok—no, his callsign was too impersonal for such a deeply personal interaction—everything Moji felt for Natalya. His sestra. But more than that…the love of his life. He was the perfect Russian metahuman. Darling of the media, a ladies’ man as well as a respectable gentleman, when the situation dictated. A dedicated soldier, but also well-rounded and well-read. And the only thing he had ever wanted was Natalya’s love and companionship. Wanted it enough to stand by her even if it was only to be as her “brother”; when she was right, when she was wrong, when she wouldn’t take bribes like everyone else, when she fought for truth, when she was exiled to America. When she was certain to die—he would always stand by her.
He stood by her now, for who she was. For the woman he loved her as.
A smile creased Moji’s cracked and bleeding lips, and he felt no more pain. Only comfort, and certainty. Vengeance; this will not go unanswered. There will be rest.
Distantly, John felt another surge of terrible grief.
Vickie.
The part of him that was still in Atlanta—detached but still whole—moved the two steps it took to reach her, took a shoulder in each hand, and squeezed them gently, reassuringly, as she shook with silent sobs.
He felt himself saying, “We’re with him. He’s not alone,” and knew the words were his and Sera’s both. So surreal. Needed, necessary. Kindness always is.
Moji’s camera registered Worker’s Champion picking him up until his battered face was level with the old Russian’s—which showed no more emotion than it had before. There was movement as Worker’s Champion pulled back his arm.
The feed cut out, leaving only Red Saviour’s feed, as Natalya watched the man she and Moji had called “Uncle” murder her best friend in the coldest of cold blood.
John and Sera both felt Moji move on. It wasn’t violent, like his death; more of a letting go. There wasn’t the despair, or grief that he had been feeling. Still that calm satisfaction. In that final moment, a single thought that encompassed so much more emotion rang out in both of their heads.
“I love you, sestra. Keep going.”
Then the moment was gone. John and Sera both fell to the floor at the same time; John behind Vickie’s chair, Sera still in the doorway. They both felt as if they had run back-to-back marathons on no sleep while carrying double their body weight in rucksacks. This was another first for them, and another extension of their new powers. Vickie wasn’t the only one with tears streaming down her cheeks; both John and Sera were crying, with no shame in it. They had not just watched, but felt a loved one, a comrade, pass on.
Vickie was already talking again; after all, she had a job to do and couldn’t focus on any one crisis. No one had to tell her she had to go on, and that what she felt didn’t matter. Already she was telling Bella what was happening, and breaking that off to snap directions at Ramona and Merc.
John was the first to talk, murmuring gently to Sera.
“We still have a job to do, too, darlin’. Up an’ at ’em.” There wasn’t any feeling behind his words, despite trying to sound sanguine. Still, Sera nodded her assent, and took his hand when he offered it to help her up from the floor.
It was everything that they could do to push their sense of the Futures out far enough to cover the building. They were still vaguely aware of Vickie, coordinating the evacuation of Metis in the background. Like John had said, they all had a job to do, so the two of them focused on theirs so that Vickie could concentrate on hers.
They had regained some of their strength as the minutes stretched on; they kept their focus on the building, making sure that nothing untoward was going to happen to Vickie. Still, from what they could hear…the news was not good. Arthur Chang, dead, as well as a number of the delegates. Thousands of Metisians had also been lost. The city destroyed. Most of their people—save for poor Moji—had escaped, though none of them were unscathed.
It was going to be a long, long day.
* * *
Vickie’s hair was plastered to her scalp with sweat, and she shook and shivered with shock. How could everything have gone so wrong, so quickly? “Oh gods, what do we do with them?” she wailed aloud. “There’s not enough secure ECHO bases on the planet to hide all of—”
Eight-Ball was pinging like a crazy thing. “Yes, I know!” she screamed at it, without looking at it. “The shit has hit the industrial fan! Leave me alone!”
And just at the moment that she felt as if she was going to crack wide open and lose it all…a pair of hands settled on her shoulders, and calm and renewed energy flowed into her, like nothing she had ever felt before.
“Steady, little sister,” Sera murmured from behind her. “You do not face this alone. One more minute, two, or thirty will make no difference. We will find answers now, and more answers later.”
Right. It doesn’t matter if we patch something together that won’t hold, as long as we start on something that will hold right away while the patch buys us time…
“Okay,” she said aloud. “I’ve got twenty or thirty, no more than forty Metisian saucers in the air with various numbers of refugees, most of them from Metis. Metis is toast and no point in worrying about it right now, put that out of our minds for the moment. Right now I need to find someplace to stash the Metisians and their saucers where the Kriegers won’t find them and they also won’t get abducted by our dear allies.”
“So…that’s what, ’bout a thousand Metisian refugees we’re talkin’ ’bout?”
“Give or take. The thing is, near as I can tell, even a kid knows enough about Metisian tech to make him valuable.” She clutched both her hands in her hair, as she listened with half an ear to Bella’s speech.
“Between what is in the saucers themselves, and what even a child knows, yes,” Sera confirmed.
John shook his head. “The problem isn’t how valuable they are—well, no, that is a problem—the bigger problem right now is that there’s so damn many of ’em. I’ve got some places that are out of the way, but not for nearly that many folks. We need somewhere to bed ’em down, where they’ll be accessible, but safe at the same time.” John chewed on his lower lip, his arms crossed in front of his chest. “I don’t trust any military with ’em, not ours or anyone else’s. So, landin’ ’em at a military airstrip is outta the question.”
“I’ve got Alex Tesla’s secret list of bug-out bases and they could handle maybe a hundred,” Vickie confirmed. “You know what will happen if they land anywhere open.”
“Let’s keep at least some of those bases in reserve, for Metisian VIPs. Best to shuttle them there after we’ve got all of the rest of ’em secure. Problem is, how in the hell do you hide ’bout forty flyin’ saucers? Without Area 51, or anyone possibly connected to it?”
“If I trusted Mom and Dad’s bosses…but I don’t. They’d have to report something thi
s big upstream and poof!” She made a little explosion motion with her fingers, “Here come the Men In Black to haul them away.”
“Exactly; same problem as Big Army. We’re keepin’ these people out of government hands for as long as humanly possible; let ’em decide what suits ’em best, when it’s safe for ’em to come outta hidin’.”
Eight-Ball’s pings had turned into a kind of warble. Vickie had reached out a hand to dial down the volume, but it was obvious that either the program had malfunctioned or it thought it had something important.
“Are there wilderness areas we could put them down in—” Vickie shook her head at her own suggestion and giggled with an edge of hysteria in it, as Sera sent out another wave of calm. “Dear gods, can you imagine Metisians trying to camp?”
“Not enough bleach to keep those jumpsuits blindin’ white. Maybe they have gizmos for that, though…” John started pacing, shaking his head with a look of consternation on his face. He paused midstride, glancing over at the monitor that was hooked up to Eight-Ball. The screen was flicking through a series of black and white images: group shots of men in lab coats and suits, rockets in flight, schematics, profile shots of individual men, views of laboratories…
Smart little bastard!
“Vic, Sera—hold up a second.” John turned to face the women, pointing at the monitor. “Your gizmo, it’s got it: ‘Operation Paperclip.’ Not Nazis this time, though. Metisians.”
“Wait, what?” Vickie said, looking at him in confusion, then following his pointing finger to Eight-Ball’s monitor. “Operation—” Her face remained locked in confusion for a moment. “Oh, okay, I…but that’s the problem, not the solution! Where do we send them?”
“Is it the problem, though? Think around it, switch the parts. Everyone wants ’em ’cause they’re Metisians. How do we fix that?”
Suddenly Eight-Ball’s screen blanked. Then it showed the map of South America. A red dot on that map that was in the location they all knew too well now, Metis. Eight-Ball zoomed in on the map, showing the outlines of the countries of South America, and the Peruvian Andes. And out. And in. And out. And in.
The third time, both Vickie’s hands flew to her mouth. “Oh. My. Gods. Ohmygods! That’s it!” She whirled and her hands went to her main keyboard. “Overwatch: Open Metis: All. Bella, I need your ECHO diplomatic override. I need to talk directly to the president of Peru.”
Bella’s reply came immediately. “You’ve got a bypass to his secretary in the diplomatic protocols, patch me through. Explain what you need to both of us at the same time.”
Vickie’s fingers flew again, and a moment later she was speaking in Spanish. John’s Spanish was just good enough to understand that she was convincing the Peruvian president’s secretary that this was enough of an emergency to put her through to his desk, interrupting whatever else he was doing.
Since his skies—at least those over Metis—were full of Thulian ships, that probably was a given.
“Señor Presidente—” Vickie began.
“English, please,” he replied. “For brevity. The Thulians appear to be leaving our airspace. Are we to expect them back?”
“Not that I know of. I am calling about a different matter. ECHO CEO Bella Parker is also on the call. We have several hundred Metisian refugees—”
“One thousand, three hundred and twenty four,” Bella interrupted.
“—in the air, in stealthed craft that cannot stay up there forever. Every one of them is a valuable asset. Every one of them has basic knowledge of Metisian science and access to more information. Every nation on Earth will want them. They were all born on Peruvian soil. Do I have to make myself plainer?”
“…Madre de Dios…”
Bella’s mind worked as quickly as Vickie’s had. “Mister President, I am fairly sure I can get a substantial percentage, if not all, of the Metisians to agree to work on behalf and for the benefit of Peru, no matter what country they end up working in. But they need the protection of actual, physical, Peruvian papers and passports, and they need these things yesterday.”
“Without that protection, they’ll end up like the German scientists at the end of World War II—in the hands of whoever grabs them first,” Vickie added. “Once they’re Peruvian citizens I am fairly sure that all of South America, and probably whoever doesn’t manage to get one of them in their countries, will take serious offense at any of them ‘vanishing.’”
“Not to mention that if they vanish, there’s not a lot of incentive for the other countries of the world to do anything if the Thulians come looking for them. Give them Peru’s protection, keep them sovereign and free with ECHO’s help, and you have a young, inexhaustible gold mine on your hands in the form of what they’ll part with, or what other countries will pay for their services. Plus, whatever they can decipher from what you guys get out of the wreck of Metis.”
“Señorita Parker, you are a powerful negotiator.” The president laughed shakily. “I see your points. Give me perhaps half an hour to determine logistically how many people each of our embassies and consulates can process, and how many we can process how quickly here. Then you and I can begin sending these…stealthed craft…to land directly where it is most expedient.”
“Okay, I am cutting out of this conversation. Good luck, Parker, Señor Presidente.” With a flick of a key, Vickie cut her connection to the negotiations going on…somewhere in the air.
Sera looked from Vickie to John in bewilderment. “What has just occurred?” she asked.
“Security for the Metisians, with any luck. Just gotta hope that none of the other governments out there get shit-scared an’ try to brazen through gettin’ some of the eggheads. I don’t think it’ll happen, but it’ll be up to Bella an’ Spin Doctor to calm those waters.” John grinned, his eyes flitting back and forth as he was thinking about the possibilities that this new arrangement had opened.
“And Saviour, and Pride. They’re all up on international diplomacy…and have none. And Saviour is sneaky. She’ll point out all the ways kidnappings could happen and we’ll get the Metisians to safe harbors once they have their papers,” said Vickie, looking wilted and exhausted, but no longer in despair.
“Still, what is this…’Operation Paperclip’?” Sera looked back to John.
“Grab by the US government an’ some cloak an’ dagger types to get as many Nazi scientists after WWII before the Soviets could snag ’em. Big operation to whitewash their pasts, get them US citizenship, and bring them over here. It was all done to sidestep a law that said we couldn’t have anybody associated with the Nazi party doin’ work for us, essentially.”
“That was what Eight-Ball was trying to show us. That this was what was going to happen unless we got them some other kind of citizenship to protect them,” Vickie added, patting Eight-Ball’s keyboard. “Then he showed us that they actually, already had citizenship. Metis was hidden in the Peruvian Andes, and has been since…geez, I dunno, the 1920s at least. So every Metisian we saved was certainly born there, born on Peruvian soil. We just had to make that absolutely official. Best way to do that was cut straight to the top and talk to El Presidente.” She spread her hands wide. “Now every country on the planet that wants Metisian tech is going to have to talk to Peru. And every country on the planet has a vested interest in protecting Peru—from Thulians, and everything else.”
“Eight-Ball is a pretty handy little toy, Vic. You an’ Bella have done good. Try to relax until we hear back from the blueberry. I’m sure that there’ll be plenty to do once we have the details ironed out. Best to try to figure out probable landing sites now, so we can plot out the best way to get our birds down without too many people takin’ notice.”
“Roger that.” She turned back to her keyboard. “Overwatch: Open: All Metis craft. Open: Private: Bella.”
It’s still FUBAR. But maybe we can dig our way out, after all. Thank god for the firebombs…if they hadn’t been here…She didn’t finish that thought, because at that po
int; El Presidente and Bella had their plan.
* * *
Within twenty-four hours, Vickie and Bella had done the impossible: registered all of the surviving Metisians as Peruvian citizens with appropriate paperwork and passports, and gotten them all into (scattered) hiding places. John, all too well aware of how slowly the wheels of bureaucracy ground, could only marvel. That miracle alone would have made him a believer in the Infinite.
So now…they were waiting. He and Sera most particularly. Waiting for the next Thulian move on the shattered chessboard. Some shadow of that brief look at the Futures told him it was going to be bad.
Everyone was on high alert back at HQ. Battening down the hatches, as it were. Preparing to mobilize and move out—again. They were still nursing their wounds from Ultima Thule, and now the fall of Metis. And in deep mourning for Molotok…he and Sera had quietly discussed what they had inadvertently learned, and had agreed they would not tell the Commissar of the depth of Moji’s feelings for her now. If ever. She was already devastated; the revelation that he had been deeply in love with her would probably destroy her. After the war is over. If it ever is. If we survive it. Somehow, deciding to put the revelation off made him feel more relieved than guilty. Usually keeping a secret had the opposite effect; he’d rather rip the Band-aid off and be done with it, then let things fester beneath the surface. But this situation…was more delicate than that. Given the Commissar’s distrust of him, not only as an American, but now as…well, whatever he and Sera were, holding off on telling her about Moji was probably the wisest course of action.
Yet the attack, when it came, surprised even John and Sera.
They were both still guarding Vickie. They had put in their time at HQ, helping with preparations and readying everything in case they had to move out to defend the city, or go on the attack elsewhere. There was an air of anticipation everywhere. If the Thulians had hit Metis with such a large force, how long until they moved that force into the surrounding area? More questions, like how had they even managed to get that many troops and that much war material to Metis undetected. Where had they gone after? By what few probes or sensors remained, the Thulians had wiped Metis off the map, and then…disappeared. Hardly anything stood where Metis had been, and there were absolutely no survivors. That much was clear.
Avalanche: Book Five in the Secret World Chronicle Page 3
