Seeing Sera and John before her, now, was the first time she had personally been confronted by such raw, unfettered power. If Natalya had been religious, it would have inspired that sort of terror in her, a rising mania. No. No. They are our comrades. For all of Murdock’s faults, and the fiery woman’s religious delusions, they have remained sturdy comrades. They stand with us!
“You shall not pass.” The voice—calm, beautiful—made the words a simple statement rather than a declaration. The woman spread her wings, making it clear that the Thulian was going to have to go through them to get to its goal.
For the first time, the Thulian made a sound.
But it appeared that it was not in response to Murdock and his woman.
It suddenly tilted its head skyward and…growled, as if in reaction to something else only it could sense. And then—
It stiffened up, until it looked like a pillar of sculptured metal. Its feet began to glow with the orange of the Thulian propulsion drives.
And then it launched itself skyward, in a missilelike arc to the east and a little south, vanishing into the clouds. About ten seconds after it took off, a quartet of fighter jets streaked after it, firing missiles. The Air Force has finally arrived. Good on them for trying, at least.
After several moments of stunned silence from everyone present, John’s fires disappeared with a muffled pop. He turned to look at the Commissar.
“Did anyone know that those damned things could do that?”
* * *
Saviour paced restlessly outside the medbay. Inside were Sovie, Bella, and Gilead…and Vickie. All of them working slowly, and methodically, on Chug. As soon as the strangely armored Thulian had vanished, Mamona had made a sprint for where it had been and picked up Chug’s arm. Nat would have remonstrated with her on that, for surely there was no possibility of reattaching such a thing, but she had already sped into the building by the time Saviour opened her mouth. So the Commissar had turned her attention where it was most needed. She supervised and assisted in retrieving Rusalka’s body. They would have to arrange for transport back to Russia, naturally. Natalya already knew that she would insist that Rusalka be buried with all of the other fallen metahumans from the Great Patriotic War. Given her final sacrifice, it was only right. After that, she had seen that the comrades began repairs on the building and the street outside immediately; an assessment for how they could mitigate such an attack in the future would have to wait until later, but right then they still needed to use their HQ.
Now with all the fires, literal and metaphoric, out, she had gone to the medbay only to discover there was no room in there for her. So she paced, as she heard Sovie murmuring without being able to make out the words, Bella and Gilead answering equally softly, and then—
“I think the asbestos is what we needed.” Vickie’s high voice carried over the sound of machines muttering and beeping. “Look at that…he can move his fingers already.”
Shto? Room or not, Saviour opened the door and squeezed herself inside.
Chug rested on three of the gurneys pushed together. Vickie was troweling something that looked like grout over the place where Chug’s arm now once again joined his shoulder. Gilead and Bella, faces set in masks of concentration, were obviously exercising their healing powers, while Soviette supervised.
But most surprising of all, the lumpy little stone creature was standing on Chug’s chest, chirping what appeared to be directions.
Vickie used the tip of the trowel to inscribe things in the wet grout, then waved her hand over it. Steam rose from the material, and the little stone thing nodded with satisfaction.
“Okay,” she said, brow furrowed and eyes closing. “Hands off, Bells, Gil. Give me a few to get the magic going, then you can fit the healing in.”
Jadwiga had been closely inspecting the work that Victrix had been doing. Her head bobbed up, and she noticed Natalya. Somehow, she effortlessly wove her way through the crowd to stand in front of Natalya. “Commissar, you must leave. We have enough bodies in the way already, and gawking tourists will not help heal our comrade.” Natalya was about to protest, when her friend held up her index finger. “He is in good hands, sestra. Trust us.”
Natalya was put out, but saw her friend’s wisdom. “What of Murdock and Sera? Couldn’t they heal Chug without all of the worrying?”
It was Victrix that answered, calling over her shoulder. “Their energy would just…confuse things in here, and I need all of my concentration to do this right. Besides, healing takes more out of them than what I’m doing takes out of me; I’m just doing earth magic, which seems to work on Chug, and I can use my—call them ‘storage batteries.’ If there’s another attack, we don’t need the Murdocks passed out on the floor. Also,” she added, “talking to you is taking up effort I could be spending on healing Chug. I’ll be in the briefing room soon enough to fill in some details. So…please leave?”
Normally, Natalya would have bristled at such insolence, and been quick to rebuke her subordinates for it. Right now, all she could feel was gratitude that Chug was going to be all right. She nodded curtly to Jadwiga. “Keep me informed; I want to be updated at any change in his condition.”
She could see the relief in Jadwiga’s eyes. “Da, Commissar. We will keep you apprised.”
Bella looked up. “Hey, Nat, can you send Mamona out for about twenty gallons of ice cream? When we wake him up, I want to give him something to soothe his tears.”
“You don’t think we are already prepared for this, sestra? Already have freezer stocked.” She turned to go, then stopped. “Will pet hamster help?”
“Very much so. I didn’t know he had a pet.”
“Will have it brought at once. I’ll be in the briefing room. And…be gentle with him. He will likely be very frightened when he awakes.” Natalya quickly strode out of the medbay, allowing herself to cry only once she was out of earshot. By the time she reached the briefing room, she had dried her eyes and composed herself; she was the Commissar, and she had to be the pillar that her comrades leaned on. John and Sera stood together in one corner. John had his arms crossed in front of his chest; Sera turned her bright blue eyes on her Commissar with a sympathetic nod and an expression of empathy and understanding. Natalya knew of the couple’s abilities, when it came to reading emotions, and suppressed an involuntary shiver; even with good intentions, such powers set her on edge. Untermensch was hunched over the table, a map spread before him.
“Commissar,” he said as he stood up from the table, nodding to her. “We are having report on encounter and are awaiting your input.”
Saviour frowned. “This was nothing like we have seen before,” she said slowly.
Sera held up a hand. “May one speak, Commissar?” she asked politely.
“Da, I am seeing no reason why not.” Saviour was curious; the winged woman seldom said more than a few words in debriefings, preferring to let Murdock speak for both of them.
“We were able to feel the mind of the creature in the armor today,” she said, nodding to John. “That was no Thulian mind, in that thing. Nor human, either. Nor hybrid.” Sera’s brows furrowed. “It was closest to whatever was piloting those dragons, at Ultima Thule. Except this one was…if not precisely sane, certainly saner.” She paused, searching for words. “Not a profane creation, like the dragons, but…more deliberate?”
“Whatever it was being,” Untermensch interjected, “we were not able to track it. A wing of F-35s engaged the fleeing armor, but were unable to keep pace with it. Missiles and guns were having no effect.” He gestured to the map on the table. “Damage to base was, decidedly, minimal. Losses total three Supernaut suits, exterior damage to HQ, three hydrants, some damage to streets, and…” His eyes flicked up to meet Natalya’s. “One comrade, KIA. Rusalka.”
“Da. See to it that her body is being sent home for proper burial, with full honors. She was a true tovarisch, right to the end.”
It was at this point that Vickie came in. She was wea
ring an oddly grim smile. “I have good news and good news and good news. Which would you like first?”
Natalya stared at the witch. “Blin. Wanting cigarette, then all the news.” She patted her pockets for a pack and a lighter, then looked up to see Georgi holding up a cigarette for her. John, obligingly, lit it for her with a flame from his thumb. “Da. So, news?”
“I’ll start with Chug. The reattachment of his arm went great. I’ll short-form this; sometimes I can pull off a kind of magic that tells things be the way you were X amount of time ago. Thanks to Herb and a pile of batteries, I made everything that passes for nerves and circulatory system and ligaments and other attachments do that, backdating it to this morning. I generally can’t do that with human beings. I think this worked—and so does Herb—because he’s more ‘earth’ than he is anything else, but…” she threw up her hands. “Hell if I know for sure. None of us really know how Chug works. He’s a mystery even to Jadwiga, and she’s treated him the longest. Anyway, what he’s left with is the equivalent of muscle tears and deep, deep bruising. He’s about halfway into his first ten gallons of ice cream, his hamster is snuggling on one shoulder and Herb is doing the same on the other. That’s the good news there.”
“And that means that there’s…more, right?” John uncrossed his arms, looking to each person in the room in turn. “’Cause, I’m damned glad that Chug is doin’ better. But we’ve still lost someone, an’ turnin’ this into a win looks mighty difficult.”
“That’s good news number two. I’ve been holding off on this until—there she is.” Vickie pointed at the door as Bella entered, looking a little ashen. She gave a shrill, short whistle, making Bella look up, pulled a bottle out of a pocket and threw it to the ECHO leader. “All right, folks, you might have noticed I’ve been looking a bit less like I was a hair short of throwing myself off a building over the past couple days. There’s a reason for that.” She took a deep breath. “We’ve got a mole inside the Thulian Earth HQ, feeding us info.”
Natalya’s jaw dropped. And she took a breath to scream at Victrix and Bella.
“Saviour, WHOA!” Vickie shouted, somehow managing to amplify her voice enough to startle the Commissar. That was…command voice. Where—
“Bella didn’t know. I’ve been keeping this to myself because, quite frankly, I did not believe it. It was too good to be true. But that’s my third good news. While Sera and Fireball XL-5 there were facing the Dread Beast out there, Eight piloted one of my eyes at the thing, and lodged the eye where the Beast wasn’t going to notice it. We tracked it right to where the mole says the HQ is, verifying that whoever it is, he’s telling us that much of the truth.”
Natalya fumed. “Fine! But is leaving questions! Why did svinya come here? Why did you not share information with us? You are thinking that you are the only one with resources, witch, but you are not! This—this is being intolerable!” Natalya, for lack of anything more to say, furiously puffed on her cigarette. She hated being left out of the loop. It reminded her too much of being home, and not in a pleasant way.
Vickie merely raised an eyebrow. “If you’ve got resources that can find an invisible ship in the middle of the ocean, I’d love to hear about them. That’s what I mean about all this being too damn good to be true. Until five minutes ago, I didn’t believe in any of this. So what good would it have done to blab out a fairy tale? As for how the damn thing found us…and why it came here…it was an accident on the part of the Eggheads. They were messing around with radio links and pinged out a Metisian…something or other. I can follow their science to a point, but the further away it gets from conventional math and physics, the more baffled I get. Whatever they did, they alerted the Thulians that they were still alive, and that they were here. I suspected something of the sort which is why I let Eight take over and headed for the basement like a scalded cat.”
“Can electric ghosts be made to feel pain? I need to know…for reasons.” Natalya took another drag from her cigarette, and wondered if anyone would question her. Marconi and Tesla’s “experiment” had cost the life of one of her comrades, and nearly her own. She was not amused.
“Physical pain, no. But I’ve been taking lessons in excoriation from the best in the business,” Vickie nodded at Saviour. “Believe me, their ectoplasmic hides have been scorched, and they know the next time they play around without vetting it with you, Bella, or both first will be the last time they get to do anything but float around in the equivalent of solitary confinement for as long as we care to keep them isolated. Will that do?”
“For now. I will not promise that they will not beink have wires flayed…or whatever they find unpleasant.” Natalya snubbed out the cigarette butt, and Georgi was ready with a fresh one, with Murdock providing the fire. He or his woman could send us all to Hell right now without a thought, and here he is lighting my cigarettes for me. Life is full of the strange and wonderful, truly. “We know where they are, da?”
“I have complete control over their environment, yes. And complete control over whether or not they get to interact with the real world. I intend to link that control to you, Bella, and a couple other people, in case something happens to me.” The storm simmering in Vickie’s eyes convinced the Commissar that she was just as enraged about this as Saviour was. “There will be no repeat of this…incident.”
* * *
“Nikola, could she cut us off?” Marconi asked his oldest friend, alarm spreading across his ghostly features. “Would she?”
Tesla could not chew his lower lip anymore, but his simulacrum made the motions. “She was very angry. It is just as well we pretended it was an accident. We meant well, but…”
“But a comrade died and there was a great deal of damage,” Eight pointed out. “You, who are virtually immortal now, forget how terrible a thing that is. And the Chug creature…I do not think you are aware how dear he is to all of the CCCP. Even Untermensch, who keeps replacing his hamster pets secretly with new ones when they die, due to their short life spans. He was very badly hurt—something which they have never before witnessed—and it is only thanks to a great deal of good luck and the intervention of exactly the right mix of talents that he is repaired and recovering. You should count yourselves lucky that Vickie decided to take your tale at face value.”
“You will not betray us?” Marconi asked, alarmed that the Artificial Intelligence was so completely aware of what he and Tesla had been up to—with the best of intentions, of course! They had only wanted to lure one of the Death Spheres here so that they could tag it, and give Victrix the verification she desperately wanted. How could they have known that an entirely new and terrifyingly invulnerable creature would have come instead?
“Provided you promise me that you will do nothing like that again, unless you confer with me and Vickie first,” the AI replied.
“I think perhaps we should leave the espionage attempts to others altogether from now on,” Marconi said, after a moment.
Tesla nodded. “I agree. We seem to have no talent for them.”
INTERLUDE
* * *
Giants in the Ocean
Mercedes Lackey and Veronica Giguere
And more good news. At the time when we needed it most.
“Miss Ferrari?” The voice over Ramona’s in-head Overwatch Two rig was the very diffident one of Eight. “There is a situation at the piers in Savannah that requires your particular attention.”
Ramona didn’t pause in her review of Mercurye’s reports of the kids he was training. If this was another instance of kidnapped children, then she’d have to see how to change the little fellow’s algorithm to not have her as primary contact. They already had their hands full with all of Mel’s former roommates. “Savannah? All right, give Gilead a heads-up that we’ve got incoming. At this rate, we’ll need someone specializing in pediatrics.”
“It’s nothing to do with children, Miss Ferrari. Perhaps it would be best to show you.” Before Ramona could object, a window opened up
, seemingly in front of her (although she knew it was really part of her in-eye HUD rig) showing one of the docks at the port. Standing waist-deep in the water a reasonable distance from the dock were two enormous…people. One was a woman, stark naked except for a headdress made of titanic shells. The other was…well, it looked like an amazing stone statue of a man. A particularly gorgeous man in the style of the ancient Greek sculptors. Except the statue was moving.
“Like I said, sir,” a dock supervisor was bellowing over a bullhorn, “I’ve been told Miss Ferrari is being contacted right now, but I can’t tell you when she’ll get back to us—”
“TELL HER BILL WANTS TO TALK TO HER,” the giant statue replied, making the surface of the water around him tremble. “THAT SHOULD SPEED THINGS UP A LITTLE.”
Ramona yelped and scooted back in her chair, window blinking out in an instant. Papers left in disarray, she grabbed her badge out of habit and jogged down the hall. “We’ll need to get one of the cars ready, I’ll be at the garage in five minutes.”
“I would suggest using a rocket pack, Miss Ferrari. The Quartermaster has one upgraded to suit your new weight. Or perhaps Mercurye can carry you if you are unsure of your flying ability.”
Avalanche: Book Five in the Secret World Chronicle Page 57
