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

by Mercedes Lackey; Steve Libby; Cody Martin

She nodded. “Davay. We have been delayed enough.”

  ***

  John had received the call from HQ shortly before his shift ended. It’d been a long and hot day, so he double-timed it back in order to have a shower and change. Beer’ll have to wait for later. Hope Jonas has something cold in stock. Quickly ducking into the head facilities, John made himself presentable, throwing on the standard working jumpsuit. The call had requested that he show up at the Commissar’s office; for what purpose, he didn’t know. It seemed that the Commissar only called him in to assess an after-action report, or to chew him out, or both. Jogging through the hallways, he came to the door for her office. He braced himself, then knocked and waited.

  “Come!” Saviour called impatiently. John opened the door and quickly stepped into the room. Saviour wasn’t alone, as he’d expected. Bella was there, leaning over Saviour’s desk as she examined something. Flanking her was Yankee Pride, one of the more visible faces for the metas of Echo. Well, then. I wonder what these three’ve got brewing?

  “Reportin’ in as requested, Commissar.”

  The Commissar looked uncharacteristically sober, with a poker face that was giving nothing away, so he relaxed a very little; he’d discovered that he personally needed to start worrying only when she smiled. “Comrade Murdock, Operative Blue has evidenced great confidence in you. Despite your destructive habits, you perform almost with the efficiency of a Soviet. What you are about to see is not to be discussed except among those in this room, and Daughter of Rasputin.” Vic. Saviour doesn’t cotton to magic almost as much as me.

  “We good to go?” Bella asked.

  Saviour nodded and got up from behind her desk. “Follow me.”

  John did so, holding the door open for the three of them before exiting himself. This is getting more interesting by the minute. Blue is vouching for me…but for what?

  Saviour led them to the part of HQ that she hadn’t made any plans for yet; these had probably been storage rooms once, since they were inside and had no windows. It was strangely quiet here, the only sounds were a few distant footfalls and the faint sound of the Soviet Bear shouting at the television. Saviour tapped on one of the closed doors.

  Vickie cracked it—at least, the bright blue, bloodshot eye peering through the crack between door and jamb was at the right height to be Vickie’s—

  Then the door opened. The Commissar shooed them all in. Vickie closed the door behind them.

  In the light from the single naked bulb in the ceiling fixture, John saw that there was only one thing in this room. One of the ancient desks, and—some sort of techy thing on top of it along with a portable Echo broadcast power unit. It looked…odd. Simultaneously as if it had come from some time in the future, and as if it had been built in the 1930s. Incongruously, the little Echo broadcast power unit used to supply juice to tools that was sitting next to it looked far more high-tech.

  “Okay, JM, this is what Vic and I were babbling about the other day,” Bella said. “And I’d ask you to sit down, but…there aren’t any chairs.” Quickly she filled him in on just what it was he was looking at. And its background.

  John held up a hand. “So, lemme get this straight. There’s a super ‘science city,’ with all sorts of outstanding tech. The verifiable ghosts of Enrico Marconi and Nicola Tesla exist and direct this joint. They’ve got crazy shit that does things people have only dreamed of. Right?”

  “Yep. And from what we saw the last time we saw this thing, they weren’t going to help the rest of us,” Bella said grimly.

  “Good, good. Now that we’re on the same page ’bout that, I have one other question. Commissar, permission to speak freely?”

  “Da, da, I would not being have you here if I did not want to hear what you say,” the Commissar said impatiently.

  “Thank you. My question is, where the hell were these bastards when the Invasion happened? Why are they sitting on their asses now?” He wasn’t making any effort to hide how pissed off this revelation made him. Millions die, and these sons of bitches did nothing to help?

  Bella shrugged. “My impression is they got caught with their pants down by the Invasion too. The rest? Mercurye didn’t have time to tell us, and if Alex knew, he never told anyone.” She took a deep breath. “We’re hoping to get some answers by getting this thing to work.”

  “It’s a communication device of some sort, then? An’ here I was hoping for a really high-tech scoop of ice cream.”

  “Boy thinks he’s a wit and he’s half right,” Vickie muttered under her breath. Then she straightened—as much as she ever did, when she was hunched over and trying to stay invisible—and headed for the desk. “Yank, one of the things I need is you.” She pointed to a chalk circle on the floor. “Stand there. This shouldn’t take long. Now that I know what to do, anyway.”

  She licked her begloved finger, and “drew” in the air with it. A glowing trail followed the finger as she sketched signs. Each time she finished one, it disappeared; she moved so fast all he got was an impression of geometric shapes and strange “letters.” But then—she “drew” a rectangle, and said, “Fiat apparatus di Tesla.” And—

  Something like a ghostly PC, only one that was just a kind of glowing drawing of a PC appeared floating in the air in front of her. Complete with keyboard, which she proceeded to type on. Somehow. John got the hair-standing-on-end feeling whenever Vickie did obvious shows of magery like this; it was worse than Bella’s touch-healing, and something that he didn’t think he’d ever fully get used to. Metahumans could do some amazing and oftentimes unbelievable things, but something about magic just bugged the hell out of him.

  “I can’t use my own computers; the comm will reject them. All I can do to talk to this thing is give it something it’s convinced is Alex’s computer,” she said as she typed. “That’s what had me so stymied. Hold still, Yank, it’s going to scan you in a second.”

  Part of the apparatus suddenly unfolded and a beam of light transfixed Yankee Pride.

  “Okay, now ID yourself and say ‘Commence Inheritance Protocol.’”

  “Yankee Pride. Commence Inheritance Protocol,” Yank said obediently.

  The response was immediate; the thing unfolded itself on top of the desk; unnervingly, it did so without a sound.

  “Now say ‘Initiate Emergency Contact Protocol.’”

  Yank did so. There were two slender antennaelike things thrusting up from the object itself. A field sprang up between them; blue with little sparkles in it.

  Vickie stopped typing. Bella held her breath.

  After a long time, Saviour frowned. “Is working?”

  “As far as I—”

  And the blue field shimmered. “Alex?” said a strangely flat, yet accented voice. “Alex, my boy? Where have you been? What has been happening?”

  Shitfire. Whoever this is doesn’t know.

  They all froze. Finally it was Bella who answered.

  “I’m very sorry, sir. It was Yankee Pride that opened contact. Alex was murdered two weeks ago.” She took a long, shuddering breath. “And you are—?”

  There was silence again. Then a strange, thin sound for a moment. It wasn’t anything recognizable, but it sounded—like grief.

  It stopped. “Forgive me. I assume that Yankee Pride must be with you or the quantator would not have responded to you. This is Nicola Tesla.” John glanced at the others. Bella and Saviour nodded. Vickie just left the ghostly PC and sat down in a far corner on the floor, wrapping her arms around her knees. Yankee Pride looked stricken.

  “What happened?” the voice asked.

  Pride shook himself out of his fog and explained, belatedly introducing everyone in the room. When he had finished, there was silence again.

  “You will not like what I am going to say,” Tesla replied, the voice somehow conveying an impression of someone laboring through grief. “This changes nothing. Metis is governed by a pure democracy, and the majority have voted not to come to your aid or defense. If they knew a
bout what has happened, and I have no reason to think they do not, they have not even had the decency to tell me, so their minds have not been changed.”

  Saviour and Bella looked as if they were about to explode. John beat them to it. “Bullshit.”

  “Pardon?” said the voice, sounding startled.

  “You heard me. I said that that’s utter bullshit.” John walked forward a few paces, crossing his arms. “We’re facin’ the greatest threat that humanity has ever been exposed to, aside from itself. Space Nazis, Thulians, Kriegers—whatever y’wanna call ’em. They’ve got numbers, they have technology, and they have a ruthlessness that enables them to use both to burn down the world. The Invasion stopped only ’cause they wanted it to, not ’cause they were losin’.” He paced back and forth, waiting for Tesla’s response.

  “And you, my impetuous young communist, are dealing with a city full of ivory-tower scientists, certain that they are the pinnacle of human evolution, and desperately frightened that the Thulians will destroy them if they get involved,” said a new voice—also synthesized, but with a different accent. “Our citizens here believe that it is best that they simply wait this matter out, then assist the survivors. Personally, I think that they have been overly influenced by that Wells movie…what was it, Nicola?”

  “Shape of Things to Come,” said the first voice, sounding broken.

  “Who’s the new guy?” John stopped to face the projection again.

  “Mi scusi,” said the second voice. “Enrico Marconi. Allow Nicola his moment of grief. I will answer your questions.”

  “Well, my name’s John Murdock. I’m not a communist, but I am with the CCCP. I’m with them because they’re doin’ somethin’ to fight the Kriegers. You’re still wrong, an’ it’s still bullshit that y’all aren’t helping. Y’know, they say that history repeats itself, an’ that’s what it’s doin’ right now.” He jabbed a finger at the projection, bulling ahead. “When the Nazis first tried to pull this shit, no one else wanted to try an’ stop ’em. Everyone figured it was a European problem, that it’d sort itself out. An’ then when the next country got swallowed up, they figured that it still wasn’t their problem. An’ so on, an’ so on. These suckers aren’t gonna stop until they get the whole world. Sittin’ on the sidelines now doesn’t mean jack, other than you’ll be the last ones to get chewed up an’ spit out.”

  “Un moment, my dear hothead,” said the second voice. “We never said that we agreed with the majority. After all, we have the perspective of having lived through what you just described. Twice. Nicola and I will do our best, but unless and until your colleague Rick—Mercurye—manages to persuade the Metisians otherwise, what we can do is rather limited. It isn’t as if we have bodies to go out and do things, after all, and this is our sole line of communication with the outside world.”

  Bella and Pride exchanged a look, and both of them glanced to the Commissar, who nodded and gave a little hand gesture indicating they should reply. It was Bella who spoke. “Well, you have more problems than just that. Echo is now in the hands of someone we are fairly sure engineered Alex Tesla’s assassination.”

  That required more explanation. When it was over, there was silence again. Finally Marconi spoke.

  “Can you keep this device secure?”

  Saviour snorted. “Firstly, thanks only to good fortune, svinya Verdigris is not being aware it exists. Secondly, if he becomes aware, he would have to go through all of CCCP to get it.”

  Not to mention the near literal wall of lead the CCCP would throw in his way, John added mentally.

  “Ah, good,” Marconi replied. “One less thing to tell to self-destruct.”

  “Forgive me,” Bella said, her voice gone very hard indeed. “But you seem to be taking this all a little too casually for my liking. The casualty rate out here is astronomical. It’s only going to get worse. And all you’re worried about—”

  “Mi scuzi, bella donna. Nicola and I—we have been electrons whirling in circuits for fifty years, and before that, we spent decades with parts of us being replaced by gizmos and gadgets. It is difficult to maintain one’s humanity, and emotions become a thing of memory.” The voice managed an inflection of genuine humility, and Bella’s expression softened a little. “Nevertheless, we, at least, are with you. Insofar as we can feel grief, feel horror, we do feel them on your behalf. We do not mean for you to think we take all this lightly. These are perilous times and though our citizens would like to believe they are somehow homo superior, the fact is they are pure children of the human race, as you are. We will do our best to awaken them to that, you have my word as a gentleman. And I trust you will forgive me, if I seem to be as detached as they. I assure you, Nicola and I are not, and we are committed to aiding you.”

  “Well, what can you do?” Bella demanded.

  “Since you have secured the quantator, what we can do is this. Nicola and I can send you plans for things you will find useful, without Metis being aware. They will be tricky to build, but I have confidence you can do so. We can also use Metis resources to do limited research for you. I say limited because we are going to be confined to using and transmitting information. We cannot do anything physical, for instance, such as metals analysis. But anything that can be done in the realm of the theoretical or mathematical—”

  “I have something,” Vickie suddenly piped up. She got to her feet. “Can you make that thing extrude a data port or something like one?”

  In answer, another appendage unfolded from the contraption which appeared to end in a standard USB port.

  Vickie scooted nervously across the room to behind them all. There was a laptop bag there; she fished a USB drive out and scuttled over to stick it into the port. “That’s some of the intel we got thanks to the op in the Goldman Catacombs,” she said. “I got what I could once my stuff came back online while the wolves and eagles were still active, there was a microtransmission my system managed to capture. I can’t make head or tail of what looks to me like coded communications, and I don’t have enough number-crunching ability to unravel it. I know they must be using their own stuff, their own means to communicate, because they aren’t using our Internet or landlines.”

  “Un moment,” said Marconi. “Number crunching, we can do. And if you can give me access to several terrabytes of storage, I can transmit some plans to you now.”

  “Give me another port, and I’ll give you access to my servers,” Vickie replied. When another appendage unfolded, she stuck in a wifi dongle, then typed some more on the ghost-computer. She seemed very confident that Marconi—if, indeed, this really was Marconi—was not going to frag her system. John was disposed to leave that to her best judgment.

  “And…there. And now we have their information decoded, I think. We will shortly have a full language base for you—for the nonhumans. There is enough duplicate communication in German and Thulian to give us a satisfactory lexicon.”

  “Well, that’s good,” Vickie sighed. “It’ll make reading anything else a lot easier.”

  “And right now, I believe we have a location for you to investigate.”

  Now something appeared in the projection. A map, with a dot highlighted. “This seems to be where the orders for that staging zone were being issued from. I assume this is useful? It cannot be Ultima Thule, there was not enough, how you say, traffic. So, one assumes, some sort of command or relay post?”

  John looked at the map. “Vic, can you extrapolate some more data from this? What the site is, the surrounding location, an’ so on?”

  “Oh, she does not need to,” Marconi said. The map zoomed out. “It is an old missile silo in the middle of Kansas.”

  “Deactivated, I assume? An’ which of the series was it?”

  “Deactivated, yes. It was previously an ICBM staging platform for the American Titan I. And it is in private hands. Echo bought quite a few of them when we could. Useful staging and storage areas. This one never came up on the open market; presumably the Thulians felt the
same and managed to get this one before it was offered openly for sale.”

  “What’s the purpose of this site? It’s secure, and secluded enough, an’ presumably not on anyone’s radar; the Thulians seem to like keeping their operations innocuous until they strike.”

  “From these communiques, I would say it is a command center for individual units, as well as larger forces in that area,” Marconi replied. “I would expect this sort of thing. Their organization is probably pyramidal, based on cells. Each cell knows only about the command module above it, not each other. Well, my allies, are we satisfied with one another?”

  This time it was Saviour who replied. “For now,” she said. “You have yet to actually prove your worth.”

  “I am aware of that, Commissar. Shortly you will have your proof. I have instructed the quantator to respond to any of you, but I recommend that we keep our communications brief. The Metisian majority is perfectly capable of removing access from Nicola and myself if they suspect we are meddling.”

  “Understood,” replied Pride. “We’re grateful you’re willing to risk it.”

  “It is only our duty, young man,” Marconi answered. “To you, and to humanity. And now, I think we are about to exceed our safe time. Good luck, and arrivederci.”

  The field between the two antennae faded. Vickie retrieved her thumb-drive.

  “Well?” asked Pride.

  “We are having location to investigate,” Saviour said. “Clearly, Echo cannot do this without alert of Verdigris, so it must be CCCP.” She almost looked smug. “Shoe is being on other shelf.”

  “Foot,” Vickie said automatically. “I think this had better be with Overwatch.”

  “An’ I think this better be a one-man recon, Commissar,” John put in. “If it turns out that the location is bogus or a trap, only leaves one dead comrade as opposed to a team. Forgive me if I’m in the minority here, but I still don’t trust Metis.”

  “Agreed. And you are volunteering, Comrade Murdock.” It was not a question.

  John grinned lopsidedly. “Hell,” he said, “Anythin’ I destroy down there ain’t gonna be CCCP property. An’ Vick an’ I work pretty well t’gether.”