World Divided: Book Two of the Secret World Chronicle-ARC

by Mercedes Lackey; Steve Libby; Cody Martin

  “Good jo—DAMN IT PRIDE, DUCK!—Ferrari. Tell hi—incoming, Blaze!—that this is just a frickin’ hit squad same as they sent after Saviour a couple weeks ago. Yank, I’m running out of steam, here.” There was more chatter, much of it from Bella, who seemed to know this neighborhood like the back of her hand, and was telling people the safe corridors to evacuate the civilians by. Yankee Pride’s comments were a few tactical, the rest backing up Bella.

  Ramona addressed her boss. “You can sit there and suck it up, maybe grow a pair while you sit in here. This is a hit squad, same as the last one that popped up a few blocks over.” Ramona folded her arms across her chest as she glowered at Tesla. “But don’t you pull that ‘we’re all gonna die’ bullshit in here, because I will smack you again. Your people are out there, doing the best they can, to save you and the rest of us in here. The least you can do is act like they have a chance.”

  Because, she thought as she sat back down on the box of frozen veggies, there’s not much else to do while we wait in the freezer.

  ***

  Somehow, Bella had managed to direct the rest of the patrons and diner staff through the back streets and alleys to get away from the attack. Now she considered her job as DCO to be done with. She cast a significant glance at Upyr, who gave her that Mona Lisa smile. “Is to be second SMG on Ural, blue girl,” the Russian said. Upyr looked at Yankee Pride.

  “If you dare to tell me that healers don’t hit…” she warned.

  “Healer?” He looked directly at her, the gold aura coming to life about both gauntlets. “I don’t see a ‘healer’ anywhere. Sort of a backwards designation anyway, if you ask me. Load up, Parker.”

  That was all Bella needed. Crouched over, she sprinted to the Ural and got the second SMG that had been strapped to the saddlebags, and loaded up on ammo. Untermensch had been drilling her on the care and feeding of Soviet arms ever since she started moonlighting with CCCP. This felt like an old friend in her hands now.

  Hard to believe no more than five minutes had passed since the first response team arrived. The front of the diner had erupted in flames, the Kriegers’ plasma cannons superheating the foundation and supports. Scope and Acrobat were on one side of the parking lot, with Bruno zipping over the still-intact cars and the stone barriers that Vickie had thrown up in the first assault. He taunted the machine, bringing it closer to one of the smoking cars. The other Echo Op, Jamaican Blaze, watched Acrobat pull the Krieger into the fire. Soon, it was knee-deep in flames. The meta brought her hand up, and the fires intensified around the joints. When they were glowing white-hot, Bella put a good long burst into the right knee, while Upyr concentrated fire on the left. The Krieger collapsed, and the flames intensified until parts of the metal sagged. Then Scope put two rounds in the head. The whole suit spasmed and was still.

  “Nice shootin’, Tex,” drawled Bella.

  “You too. Looks good on you,” Scope called back. She motioned to Blaze, who was now pulling the fires down to manageable flicker-flames. “Same as before, your nine o’clock. Follow Acrobat!”

  Pride moved next to Bella. “That’s Bulwark’s team, is it?”

  She nodded. “Half of it. Red Djinni and Harmony are the other half; Djinni and Harm are still on med leave. I’m their off-again, on-again DCO. Overwatch is wired to all of us. I can only assume the reason Bull didn’t have his set on—”

  “Shower,” Scope said briefly. “Butt naked and covered with soap when Vic scrambled us.”

  “I gotta figure out a way to implant that stuff,” Vickie said on the common channel.

  “I’m not sure if I’d be entirely comfortable with you in my ear twenty-four, seven, Miss Victrix. But I certainly can appreciate the thought.” Pride motioned to the area where the Sphere had regrouped with two of the other metal men. “What’s the damage ratio they’ll take before they retreat?”

  Vickie’s tone turned grim. “The ones that went after Saviour were a suicide squad. They didn’t stop coming until everything was paste.”

  “Thank you, Overwatch.” If the news fazed Yankee Pride, it didn’t show. “What’s the construction on the diner, including the specific area in question?”

  “Plans to your PDA, Team Lead.” Pride’s PDA chirped. “The freezer is dual-purpose, they just installed it after the Invasion. Intended to serve as a hardened safe room. I think I have enough in me to give it a layer of rock and dirt as well and I can make sure the electrics going into it are protected.”

  “Sounds like a lovely plan, Overwatch. Go ahead with that, and we’ll join the program in progress with Bulwark’s operatives. Scope, Acrobat, and Blaze, you’ll need to move away from the building to allow Overwatch to work.” He flashed Bella a warm smile and took off at a jog toward the Sphere.

  The ground around the diner began to shake and erupt. Vickie was doing a bit more than just protect the freezer; Bella saw some additional activity going on that would make it appear to the Kriegers that she was erecting a wall between the two with the Sphere and the two still engaged with Scope, Blaze, and Acrobat. Good, she’s not creating an obvious target for them.

  “This is not authorized! Kidnapping, wanton destruction of property, involvement of illegal and undocumented workers in highly sensitive operations!” The janitor ran towards Pride, badge in one hand as he reached for his sidearm. “I order you to cease all operations until assistance from a regulated agency can arrive!”

  The asphalt split less than twenty feet from where Yankee Pride stood, and the rising ground prompted the man to slow to a fast walk. “Or what? You’ll report me and the rest of this team?”

  “Yes! You and that healer with the cannon on her shoulder!” He thrust a hand in Bella’s direction as she and Upyr targeted the crumbling joints of a second Krieger. “Order your team to stand down!”

  Vickie sounded breathless and exhausted. “Team Leader, he knows Tesla is in there. It’s in his interest to see he doesn’t come out except in a bag. I have him linked to a military black budget program. If you tell him to stick it, he can’t do anything without exposing that interest.”

  Yankee Pride stared at the man, even as shots rang out from Scope’s rifle and the Krieger gave a final mighty shudder. “I’ll politely decline your request that I acquiesce to your formal command, sir. And in the patriotic words of my own father…go stuff yourself.”

  The man stared as Pride punctuated his father’s words with one of his mother’s favorite hand gestures and took off towards the Sphere.

  The walls of earth and stone held as a third Krieger collapsed. Acrobat bounced on his toes, giddy with success, as Scope reloaded. “This is amazing! This is the real thing, y’know! That’s frickin’ Yankee Pride out there with us!”

  “What, and the Catacombs were a walk in the park?” Vickie reminded him, panting hard. “You’re in the bigtime, kid, and rightly so. And…that’s it.” A forlorn little mushroom of dirt pushed up and sagged back. “No more juice.”

  “You’ve done great work, Miss Vickie.” Pride’s voice was warm. “Before I forget, I must say that it’s an honor to work with someone of your caliber.”

  “You say the sweetest things, but my heart belongs to my cat.” There was a pause. “Heads up. The Sphere is powering up. Now things are going to get ugly. And Gamayun says your backup is at least five more minutes out.”

  Scope peeked over the edge of the stone barrier. “Looks like it. What’s the first target?”

  “We’ll need to hit the Sphere. The sooner we get that down, the sooner we get our people out of what’s left there.” Pride paused. “Miss Vickie, I don’t suppose…”

  Regret and exhaustion made her voice ragged. “I’m dry. I could fling pebbles, maybe. Uh…huh, wait a sec. There might be something I can do cybernetically. I’ll tell you when I know if it’s feasible.”

  “She is so cool,” Acrobat whispered in fanboy fashion. Scope let out a laugh even as she tapped the back of his head out of reflex.

  “Bruno, hon?” Vickie
said quietly. “Outside of my safe room, I am a freaking basket case. But you, kiddo, are a real hero.”

  “I’m a spaz, in or out of a room,” he answered with a goofy grin. “Scope’ll tell you just as much.”

  “And he makes great bait,” Scope added. “If we’re going to bring down that Sphere, then we’ve got to pull it away from the building. That’s going to be all him.”

  “Aha. That was what I needed. Okay, Bruno. You and I are going to play tag team with the Beach Ball. You’re going to have to plot your path very carefully. I want you to touch down on your Le Parkour jumps behind stuff I can overload electrically. Transformers, streetlights, anything I can make a flashbang out of. We’ll have to time this really well. I am pretty sure based on all the data that we can temporarily blind whatever they use as sensors and cameras with a flashbang, and that will keep them from being able to target you. Capiche?”

  “Totally. Man, this is gonna be fun.” He rubbed his hands together and turned to focus on the lot and the surrounding businesses. “Yeah, this should work. You want me to call it?”

  “You’re wired, so, yeah, you cue me when you want the flash—unless I happen to see something zeroing in on you first. I’ve got the schematics for everything cued up on my compie and I have control of a five-block-square area of the electrical grid now.” She sighed. “Some people are gonna be very unhappy until the power company gets here. On the other hand, beats being toasted.”

  The subsonic whine of the Sphere filled the air and it swiveled toward the remnants of the diner. Bruno took the motion as a cue to get moving, darting into the mess of broken concrete and overturned cars. He let fly a small hook and line to get the Sphere’s attention, the thin cable wrapping around one of the arms. It snapped as the Sphere turned, and Bruno lobbed a small flash grenade at the machine to secure its attention. The taunting worked, and the kid laughed as he took off over a broken stone barricade towards the first set of power lines.

  “Hey, Scope? Remember, there are sensors in the ends of the tentacles and they are vulnerable, not armored. Your target, Annie Oakley.”

  “Okay, first target is the pole at my two o’clock, but there’s the second behind and to the right of it. After that, there’s the neon sign at the car dealership.” Acrobat leapt to the top of a dumpster as he spoke, then flung himself toward the pole and grabbed onto one of the utility handles. He barely had enough time to get a foothold on another handle when a metal tentacle cut through the wood. The force flung him forward to a taller concrete piece that held a second transformer.

  Bella held her breath. Vickie swore and blew the streetlight before the wires had a chance to snap and she lost the power. “Bruno! You okay?”

  “Yeah! Forward momentum like that lets me bridge a gap up to thirty-six percent wider than I could do with a regular jump. Only with the wood, though. Concrete and metal don’t have the same ‘oomph,’ y’know?” His arms went slack for a split second before he launched himself toward the neon sign. Behind him, the Sphere lurched to one side and steadied itself with a tentacle on the ground. It reached out for where Bruno had been, the claw scraping the side of the concrete pillar.

  Vickie blew the transformer. It went up in a satisfying white flash and a shower of sparks. The Sphere drew back the tentacle that had been closest, the others flailing wildly to compensate for the explosion. It regrouped quickly, moving towards Bruno with a renewed vengeance.

  “Ranger doesn’t like that, Yogi,” said Vickie. “Get clear, neon signs make shrapnel.”

  Acrobat scrambled up to a window ledge. “Cool! Okay, alley, another sign, and then the box on the corner. That’ll get him across the street.”

  Vickie hadn’t been lying. Bella winced as the neon sign blew. The pop and flare of light happened as Bruno leapt to the ground and bounced through the alley. With a clumsy groan and the sound of metal scraping against asphalt, the Sphere tried to follow Acrobat’s path as he crossed the street.

  “Boss,” Bella said quietly to Yankee Pride, “what’s our move when Bruno gets the thing downrange?”

  Pride glanced at the assembled metas, then focused on Upyr. “What’s your ammunition, ma’am? Anything more than just standard issue?”

  “Is being standard incendiary rounds in SMGs, but bolshoi special loads in grenade launcher,” she said with pride. “Zmey is being to make them. Like napalm, only hotter and very sticky. Only problem is only one in four work. Three in four being duds.” She shrugged. “Is being in beta, nyet?”

  He nodded, frowning. “One in four. Not great, but not bad. You said it’s like napalm, though. Are those pieces live before they fire?”

  “Is being two stage. Zmey is to tell me duds do not mix properly. Launcher goes boom, is to shatter barrier inside grenade. Then grenade is to hit, small impact charge goes boom, liquid is to spread, proper mixture ignites when contacts air.” She eyed Scope speculatively. “I am to being think rifle devushka should be to handle launcher. One of these on house would be very bad.”

  “Yeah, very bad indeed. Scope, you get the grenade launcher and we’ll move downrange. That Kreiger looks like it’ll follow us, since Acrobat and Miss Vickie are giving that Sphere hell.” Pride motioned with a gauntlet across the street. “If you’ll be so kind as to remind it that we’re here, then we can start to wrap this up and get our folks home.”

  Upyr offered that same Mona Lisa smile as she took careful aim at the Krieger’s knee joints with her SMG. The hit and explosion caused it to wobble before it changed direction and charged at the group. As Pride turned to follow the rest of the group, a nasal officious voice cut through the air.

  “That’s it, Pride! You, Tesla, that blue commie mole, all of you! You’re ordered to stand down and wait for proper backup to assist!” The janitor walked toward them, this time with a small bullhorn.

  “He can’t issue orders,” Vickie said, blowing the next sign behind Acrobat. “Not without authorization from higher up. He’s bluffing. Only reason he could order Echo around about the Mountain was because he’d gotten that authorization for that specific circumstance.… Oh, he should have gotten some plastic surgery. You would be amazed what my face recognition software is turning up.”

  Pride drew himself up to stand in front of the man. “And I ordered you to get back in the damn car, you sniveling rat. This is not your command.”

  The janitor stopped, walked back a few steps, then took off in a run towards the remains of the diner. “I’m authorized to speak with Alex Tesla, which is what I’m going to do right now while the rest of you play with the toy soldiers.” The words came through the bullhorn. They sounded canned and tinny in the air.

  “Ramona, if he comes busting in there somehow, shoot him,” Vickie said instantly. “He’s armed, he’s clearly irrational, and you have no way of knowing he’s not with the Kriegers.”

  “You don’t have to tell me twice.” Ramona’s voice was dry and strangely calm on the channel.

  The man climbed on top of the stone fortress that surrounded what was left of the diner and began kicking at the layers of rock and earth. Dull thuds could be heard through Ramona’s headset as he tried to get in. “Which one of you made this happen? Was it the commie Goth? Is she the one helping you protect Tesla? Is she the one enabling all of you to commit treason?”

  As he continued to pound on the stone, the Krieger slowed in his pursuit of the Echo ground team. The body swiveled toward the mound of debris and the “head” cocked to the side, as if analyzing the frenzied actions of the tiny irrational creature. At almost the same time, the Sphere slowed its pursuit of Bruno and spun to focus on the same area.

  “Oh shit,” said Bella in a small voice.

  Both machines charged toward what was left of the diner. Yankee Pride took off in the same direction, but it wasn’t soon enough to keep the Krieger from confirming what they all knew. The ground shook as the machines turned their full attention on the janitor and his attempts to unearth the diner. Pride reached the man fir
st, grabbing him by the jacket and flinging him to the ground several feet from Upyr. He landed in an obviously uncomfortable position and looked up to see her frowning at him.

  “Is being a very bad decision on your part.” She pulled off a glove and placed her hand against the man’s cheek for a few seconds, just long enough to ensure that he wasn’t going to meddle in anything critical for the time being. He sagged to the ground, the bullhorn next to him.

  The Krieger pounded a metal fist into the stone barrier that Vickie had thrown up around the walk-in freezer. There was another crack and pop of electricity as the diner sign blew out and the freezer hum through Ramona’s headpiece went dead.

  “That’s not a good sign,” said Bella. “Silence bad.” She bit her lip and felt the blood drain from her face as she saw the Sphere bearing down on the wreck of the diner.

  Then Ramona reported, “We’ve lost power in here. Advise?”

  To his credit, Yankee Pride answered in a calm and collected drawl. “Sit tight, ma’am. Keep the boss safe, and we’ll get you out.”

  Yankee Pride had spent the better part of his time following the Invasion behind a desk or in front of a podium, part strategist and part figurehead. During the actual hits on Echo, he’d been charged to take care of Tesla as a sort of bodyguard, someone for Spin Doctor to put in front of a camera to show the public that the metahumans of Echo were invincible in the face of this new threat. “Too valuable” to be on fighting teams, they said. Now he knew what Yuri Gagarin and Alan Shephard had felt like when they were sidelined for the same specious reason.

  Leaders didn’t sit behind desks and throw other people at a problem without regard for health and safety. Or if they did send folks into harm’s way, they did it from the front lines, like that Commissar over in the slums. He was really beginning to like that woman. Alex Tesla could have taken a page from her little red command book, that was certain.

  “What next?” Scope hoisted the grenade launcher and nodded in the direction of the diner. The Krieger stood with its metal hands clasped in a giant fist, and it brought them down upon the rock fortress with the same force of a pile driver.