Collision: Book Four in the Secret World Chronicle - eARC

by Mercedes Lackey

  He had turned on his heel and left at his usual fast walk. “Uh…I’d apologize for telling him where you were, but I think it’s a good idea,” Vickie had said in her ear. “We need some red meat to throw to the masses. You know, ‘ECHO is your friend, not just the people who sometimes wreck your neighborhood.’”

  Bella had just shaken her head.

  So, now she was coming out of the quantator room with, yet again, no material help, but at least some useful information and a handful of schematics.

  Ramona waited down the hallway, the plastic coffee carafe and ceramic mugs safe in her hands. She raised the carafe in greeting. “Little bird mentioned that you might need a cup and a chat. I’m ahead of my paperwork duty. Did you know you can request two-ply in triplicate?”

  “I’d be happier if that was single-malt,” Bella half-sighed, and half growled. Then she shook her head. “Stupid. Last thing I need to do is turn into a lush. Thanks sweetie.”

  “Least I can do.” Ramona poured both cups full enough to walk and talk. “Someone needs to look out for your caffeine levels, especially after dealing with the Metis Odd Couple. I guess they still don’t want to do more than sit on their non-existent hands and wait?”

  “That was pretty much a sure bet.” Bella downed about a third of the cup. “Oh, want to hear the latest brain-fart from Spin? He wants us to do another photo-shoot and interview. This time for Harpers.” She rolled her eyes, and then…stopped right there in the hallway. “I will be damned. I wonder if he thought of that?”

  “If who thought of what?”

  Bella eyed Ramona without replying, then stood back a couple of paces and eyed her some more. “I will be going to freaking hell,” she said out loud. “It could work. It could just—”

  “I think he thought what you’re thinking, Boss,” piped Vickie in her ear and in Ramona’s. “The lineup he just sent me included ‘Ramona Ferrari aka Steel Maiden.’”

  Ramona pursed her lips at the meta moniker, her mouth twisted as she tried not to laugh. “Points to Spin for an original name, but last I checked, Ramona Ferrari is dead.”

  “Listen, hear me out. Verd’s been the original Invisible Man since we outed him. Which is logical, he’s good at strategy and you can’t fight a million shadows when you don’t know which one he’s hiding in. We need to draw him out, but not in such a way that he’s sure it’s you, so he has to start poking at us to try and find a chink in our intelligence armor.” Bella smiled a little. “So, Vix, what’s the lineup?”

  “He says the theme is ‘glasnost.’ The lineup is you, Bull, Yank, Southwind—that’s the girl if you’re forgetting—on one side, and Saviour, Unter, Chug and Upyr on the other, with Ramona in the middle, taking the place you used to have as the liaison.”

  Bella shook her head. “Freaking brilliant. Two strong female leaders, their backups, a couple rankers, two of whom are pretty weird looking. All-inclusive. Though we are never going to make Chug look sexy.”

  “Chug is Chug,” Ramona pointed out. “And you’ll have a better chance for sexy from him than Natalya. But getting me out there is…” She stopped, searching for the right word. “Questionable?”

  In answer, Bella grabbed her wrist and pulled her along the corridor until they reached the door of the female comrade’s changing room. She shoved the door open and pulled Ramona along until they came to the room’s sole, foggy, full-length mirror, a narrow strip of glass that Ramona was sure wouldn’t reflect all of her zaftig bulk.

  “Look,” Bella demanded. “Look!”

  Ramona looked. Reluctantly, but looked. She’d avoided mirrors since—well, since she woke up with metal instead of epidermis.

  A stranger stared back at her. And the mirror reflected all of her.

  Bella stood behind her, one hand, and one coffee-cup, atop her shoulders. “Do you see Detective Ramona Ferrari there?”

  “I…” Ramona nodded slowly, then shook her head back and forth.

  “Hear me out. We’ll get you some kind of honest-to-god armor, with a helmet. Plastic of course, so you don’t absorb it, but it will look like real metal. Something that shows only your eyes and a little bit of your face. That’ll be for the first shot. The second shot—that’ll be where we do something to bring up the metal epidermis on your face. Scare your skin by threatening it with a needle or something. We’ll put you in a silver lame catsuit. That, and that new body of yours, will leave enough doubt that Verd is going to have to check this out personally.”

  Ramona tilted her head to the side. “And we want Verd to come out to see what’s going on.”

  Bella nodded. “He won’t trust this to just anybody. It will be him or someone he trusts, someone close to him.”

  “So we’re betting on Khanjar first, and maybe Verdigris to follow.” Ramona mused. She studied the reflection with a critical eye. “This is going to require stiletto heels. And no cutouts on the catsuit, if we can help it?”

  “We can put in the request, but the best I can promise is that you’ll never have to actually fight in the catsuit. One of the many perks of nanoweave is that, unlike lycra, it can breathe.” Bella came around and held out her mug for a refill. “Verd might be a top competitor for hide and seek, but we’ve stayed a few steps ahead. With this kind of news, he’ll have to peek out and see what’s going on.”

  Ramona topped off both cups and turned away from the mirror. “And Verd being Verd, he’s not going to be content with just peeking out. Once he sees something, it’ll consume him.”

  “Exactly.”

  * * *

  Karma, payback, cosmic order, whatever it was called, it had the strangest sense of humor. Not terribly long ago, Ramona had stood next to Bella and worked her charm to convince the healer to pose for the first Echo photoshoot. Bella had warmed to the idea out of necessity, as had the chosen representatives in CCCP. Now, the roles had reversed and Bella watched while Ramona tugged and tweaked her own custom outfit in preparation for the camera.

  Under the right circumstances, Ramona thought, this could be a lot of fun. The Echo tailors had carried out Bella’s promise for the first outfit to the letter. The “armor” resembled scales, thin polymer plates the size and color of half-dollar coins attached to a modified nanoweave undersuit. Something not unlike an overbust corset in a lighter shade of gray provided shape and support, the color matching the pale stiletto boots that Ramona had predicted. The mask to cover her face had covered everything but her eyes and mouth, and the effect had worked on those who knew she was alive. Even Spin, who did not surprise easily, had appeared suitably impressed.

  The second half of the photos involved the sleeker outfits. Ramona could hear Natalya grumbling on the other side of the curtain while Bella cajoled and reasoned. Southwind had actually liked her outfit; Bella had a modified version of her first blue and white one-piece. Rather than be on the side of the whiners, Ramona took a deep breath and began to swap out her “nine to five” look for her “after five” look. There wasn’t enough fabric for a pillowcase, let alone decency, but complaining wouldn’t make things better.

  Taking a deep breath, Ramona—Steel Maiden, she reminded herself—slipped out of the changing area to wait for the photographer. The pale silver one-piece squeezed the more squishable areas into place. Parts of the outfit had enormous slashes for cutouts to allow her skin to come through; a quick dusting of iron filings over the skin triggered the metal carapace to show through. On her face, Ramona had used the same powder across her eyebrows, cheeks, and the bridge of her nose. Combined with a touch of white makeup, the effect was almost alien.

  “Damn.” Vickie’s approval came immediately as Ramona surveyed herself in the mirror. “Serving extra-terrestrial realness.”

  “What can I say, I try.” She poked at the metal patch on her cheek to make sure it would stay. “Everyone else is ready?”

  “Almost.” Bella poked her head out of the changing room. “Everyone else get in place please.”

  Ramona could eas
ily hear Bella continuing to talk to the one hold-out—Red Saviour. “Look,” the healer finally said. “It’s propaganda of the most visceral kind!”

  “Shto?” Although Ramona couldn’t see Saviour, she could hear the sudden interest in the Commissar’s voice. “Keep talking, blue girl.”

  “It’s propaganda on three levels,” Bella said. “Men first, and you know what these outfits will appeal to.”

  “Da.” That came out as almost a growl. Bella cut her off.

  “That’s on purpose,” Bella continued. “I’m hitting back both at the meatheads here in the US and at the ones in Russia. When they see us parading around like supermodels, what will they think? We’re shallow. Mindless. We’ve caved in to decadent pop-culture. They’ll dismiss us as irrelevant. Which means while they are ignoring us, we can run circles around them and actually get things done, which we couldn’t do if they were eyeballing us all the time.”

  “Huhn.” There was a long pause. “I wonder if this will fool my father and Boryets…”

  “You know them better than I do.” Bella let that sink in a moment, then moved on. “Then, propaganda to the women. I know you know women in the West dress more to impress other women than they do to impress men. Well these outfits tell other women that we are powerful.”

  “In these shoes?” Saviour burst out. But Bella interrupted her again.

  “Yes! Because we are not afraid to wear things like this! That we can kick ass no matter what we wear! The first shoot tells women we mean business and we are both the bosses of our respective organizations. The second one tells them we are still the bosses and can wear whatever we feel like.” She must have been getting through to Saviour, because Ramona could hear the note of triumph in her voice.

  “And this third level of propaganda?” Saviour prompted.

  “Ramona.” Bella practically purred. “She’s the liaison, and as the metal woman, she looks the part. Tough as a Russian, slick as an American, and fronting for both of us. That tells anyone, whether or not they actually read the article, that when they mess with one of us, they mess with all of us.”

  “Huhn,” Saviour said again. “All right. For propaganda I can wear ridiculous outfit. Davay! I wish to be climbing out of boots as soon as possible.”

  When the two emerged, Ramona could see why Saviour objected. Her outfit was another catsuit—a cut-out version of the CCCP dress uniform—with thigh-high boots with higher and more ridiculous stiletto heels than even Ramona’s outfit sported. In contrast, Upyr’s gothic-lolita version of the CCCP uniform looked positively Victorian.

  The two respective heads of the organization took their places. The photographer made some…suggestions, rather than giving orders. He was the one from the calendar shoot, so presumably he remembered how unwise it was to give Red Saviour anything that sounded like an order.

  About a half an hour later, the shoot was over, and Ramona headed for the locker room to peel herself out of her outfit. But she stopped dead, hearing Saviour accosting Bella in there.

  “I know what you did, blue girl,” Saviour said, in mingled tones of admiration and irritation.

  “That I manipulated you? I won’t apologize. You’ve done the same.” Bella sounded calm rather than defiant. “Don’t try to claim I used empathic projection on you, though. Upyr will be the first one to—”

  “Psssh. I know you did not. No, but you did manipulate me. And it worked. This time. You won’t be so lucky again, unless I choose to let you.” Ramona heard the Commissar’s footsteps heading towards the door and skittered a bit down the hall, so as to make it look as if she was just now approaching and hadn’t overheard that exchange. The door flew open, and Saviour stalked out. She spared a glance for Ramona, and a harsh chuckle escaped her. “You are lookink like sex-bot,” she said, and continued on her way.

  Ramona edged inside the locker room. Bella was fastening the last snap on her ECHO uniform, and glanced at her. “Huh. She’s right. Which, for that shoot, was not a bad thing.”

  “I want my sneakers,” Ramona replied, and sat down on the nearest bench. “So, now what?”

  “Now we wait for three days until the story hits the website.” Bella heaved a long sigh, and rubbed her forehead. “I’m glad we won’t have to wait for the print version. I don’t think I could stand the tension for a month.”

  “And then?” Ramona asked.

  “Then we see what shakes down out of the trees.”

  * * *

  Khanjar’s intimate knowledge of the office building that ECHO was using for its headquarters—gained when it had belonged to Verdigris—had been of immense use in avoiding the guards and the traps. The ventilation ducts had been wired up to a fair-thee-well when Dom had installed himself here, and she was fairly certain Bella Parker had had that augmented, but she had discovered there was enough room in the areas between the ceilings and the floors outside the ducts to move in. You just had to know what parts would support a human’s weight, and she had explored the entire building until she knew that intimately and in the dark.

  So when she dropped down softly behind Parker’s chair, she was not expecting to be addressed calmly.

  “You could have just used the door, you know.” Parker swiveled the chair to face her, cradling a gun in one hand.

  “But that would have been so…declasse,” Khanjar replied. “I assume those are armor-piercing bullets in there?”

  “A little more than that, but I’m hoping I won’t have to use them.” Bella nodded slightly to the side. “Do have a seat. I was hoping my ploy with Steel Maiden would give you an excuse to show.”

  Khanjar glided gracefully to the offered seating; it was one of her favored chaise lounges, and she appreciated the effort. She arranged herself on it as Bella swiveled the chair to follow her movement. “What gave me away?”

  “Now you really don’t expect me to tell you that, do you?” Bella asked, with a hint of throaty chuckle. “I will tell you that you should never, ever expect to be able to sneak up on an empath unless you’re wearing a psi-damper the size of a filing cabinet.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind, in the future.” Khanjar was beginning to enjoy this. It was refreshing to be treated as an equal. Insofar as she could “like” anyone, she was starting to like Belladonna Blue. And she didn’t think it was the blue woman’s projective empathy at work, either. “Well. Obviously you got my message.”

  Bella nodded. “Obviously. And I’m very interested in why you decided to turn on your boss.” She leaned forward a bit, and her demeanor turned…purposeful. “It’s not an idle question. Before I can even begin to consider trusting you, I need to know your reasons. And I will be weighing them for truth, believe me.”

  Khanjar had no doubt that at this point Belladonna Blue was a walking lie-detector. The only way anything would get past her was if the person in question actually believed the lie being told herself. And for all her self control…I am not that good. Khanjar was many things, but that was not one of them.

  “I have several reasons. Some are very personal, and I would rather not go into them. The one that is important to you, is that I am a believer in reincarnation, and karma, and I have no intentions of being reborn as a goat. Or worse.” Khanjar raised her chin and looked Belladonna straight in the eyes. “Dom is…engaged in a matter which, if I continue to be a willing party to, will be impossible to counter in this lifetime.”

  Belladonna’s face went cold. “You’ve murdered for him, you have helped him with the Bombay debacle. What could be worse than that?”

  “It involves meddling with the Celestial.” She licked her lips. “It is not wise. It is not even remotely wise. He has allied himself with a Chinese…creature.”

  Bella’s eyes narrowed. “People’s Blade?”

  “Not anymore,” Khanjar corrected. “Whatever is inhabiting that body calls itself Shen Xue. It is not mortal. I am of two minds whether it is demonic. It is certainly far more ruthless even than Dom imagines. I researched the name
; it belonged to a great Chinese General who engineered massacres without turning a hair.” She shook her head. “In order to gain its will, it would not hesitate to put half the world in flames.” Of course, that was only part of the truth, but it was still the truth. Khanjar was not yet certain she wanted to reveal Dom’s obsession with the Deva. It would be a good card to hold for a while.

  This seemed to satisfy Belladonna. “All right, I can see how that’s a motivator.” She raised her voice. “Vix? Bring the MacGuffin in.”

  One of the doors into a side-office opened, and a tiny woman dressed in head-to-toe nanoweave entered. Even her hands were covered. Khanjar recognized her immediately, of course, and was a little surprised. Victoria Victrix Nagy was supposed to be a minor operative, allegedly a magician—Dom didn’t believe in magic, of course—and of no great importance except as a friend to the new Head of ECHO.

  It appeared the intelligence on her was wrong.

  The tiny blond was carrying a small, hardened case with her. She set it down on the corner of the desk nearest Khanjar. Khanjar could smell the fear on her, and yet she managed to move without showing it.

  “This is where I explain what you’re going to have to agree to, if this association continues,” Victrix said, her voice trembling only a little. “I assume, unlike Verdigris, you believe in magic.”

  Khanjar nodded brusquely. Of course she believed in magic. There was the Deva, of course, and that monstrous thing Shen Xue. That Dom didn’t believe was a weakness on his part.

  “I integrate magic and tech,” Victrix continued. “And if you are going to work with us, you will have to agree to be implanted with something I’ve come up with. It will work as an undetectable way to communicate with us. It will also work as a way for us to keep track of you.”

  Khanjar felt her eyebrows shooting up in surprise. This…was completely unexpected. She had anticipated some form of “wire,” perhaps a communicator of some sort. But an implant?