Collision: Book Four in the Secret World Chronicle - eARC

by Mercedes Lackey

  And now, to complicate matters, they were moving into an area of heavy fog—or maybe it was clouds, they were certainly high enough for the thick mist to be clouds. It obscured everything, shutting down their range of vision to a few yards ahead at times, and rendering the entire landscape into a scene that could have been pulled from the opening to a horror movie.

  John felt the Krieger’s presence before he saw the man. John immediately signaled for the rest of the group to drop, go prone and still. And a few moments after his feeling of a presence alerted him, Vix confirmed it. “Heads up! Bogie at 11 o’clock! 521 meters.” John shifted slightly from his prone position, bringing up his rifle to look through the Trijicon ACOG scope. He could see the tiny figure clearly, when he wasn’t moving in and out of fog. Definitely a Krieger, and one that was trying to be sneaky for whatever reason. At this range, the Krieger was just inside of John’s engagement envelope for his rifle…but it would have to be a perfect shot. Better not to chance it.

  “Molotok, I’ve got eyes on the Krieger. He’s alone, armed. No signs of any other enemy presence; this guy’s alone out there in Injun country. He’s tryin’ to sneak around, it looks like. What’s the call?”

  There was a short pause on the comm. “We need to find out what that fascista is doing out here; if your ‘feelings’ are correct, he isn’t going to be alone for long. Intercept him. Victrix, can you block his communications once we are getting close?”

  “Da, comrade.” He could hear the glee in Vix’s voice. “Moron is broadcasting a carrier-wave. Making my job easier. Jamming in three…two…one…engage. He probably won’t notice he’s jammed until he tries to call home.”

  “Intercept and record any transmissions the svinya attempts. Murdock, move in and engage the target. Team, keep dispersion, and hold on Murdock’s signal.”

  John waited a few moments, observing the Krieger’s movements and the likely paths that he would take based upon his direction of travel. Studying the terrain, John quickly outlined in his mind the way he would go, where he would take cover, likely positions that ambush could come from, and so forth. The mist would help to conceal the team; with Vickie’s “eye” and his “sense” of where the Krieger was, he’d be able to track the Thulian without needing to maintain a visual. The Krieger was further down in the valley from them; John would need to be particularly careful that they didn’t get caught on the slope of the mountain, since they’d be exposed to any sort of counter-attack.

  It was slow going, since John paused often to do a listening check, but he was still able to close the distance to the Krieger. When the team was roughly fifty meters away from their target, John signalled for everyone to hunker down. Looking over his shoulder to confirm that everyone was in good cover, he continued forward, alternately crawling or in a low crouch, using the mist, trees, rocks, and vegetation to keep himself concealed. As he got closer, his sensitive nose picked up the burnt cinnamon, musk, and rancid oranges scent that characterized Thulians. Peeking out from behind a large boulder roughly ten meters away from the Krieger, John saw that he had stopped and was fiddling with a device, muttering occasionally. Finally noticed that Victrix broke his walkie-talkie. John took the time to sling his rifle, unholstering his pistol and checking its suppressor; the supersonic crack from the rifle, even suppressed, would travel a lot further in this valley than that of the pistol.

  Crouched low, with his pistol trained on the back of the Krieger’s head, John moved forward in complete silence. He was rolling his feet with each step, going from the ball of the foot to the outside edge, keeping his movements deliberate and smooth. Despite his approach being as near to perfect as was possible, dumb luck had the Krieger turn his head at the last moment. His enhancements already keyed up, John made a snap decision; he holstered his pistol, took a step while unsheathing his knife, then clasped a hand over the Krieger’s mouth as he stabbed the man underneath the solar plexus with the blade angled upward. With a sharp tug to the right, he bisected the Krieger’s heart, killing him almost instantly. As the light faded from the Thulian’s eyes, John set him down softly, scanning the immediate area for any other threats. There was something…else. He felt the Krieger’s presence fade as the being died, and he knew that Sera could feel it, too.

  It was…uncomfortable, for John. He had never liked killing, and still didn’t. He saw the necessity of it, sometimes, in his job; before, when he was in the military, and now, in his role as a metahuman fighting against a genocidal menace. But this…this felt like a dissonance in the Song. Something needed, but wrong at the same time. He didn’t shake the feeling, but he didn’t have time to process it at the moment, either.

  “This is Murdock; Krieger neutralized. Move everyone up, slow.”

  “Bugger, that’s a complication. Johnny; ground, bare hand, please. We don’t want anyone finding the dead rat.”

  “Had to be done. Gonna strip him of gear and any intel.”

  “Roger that, but I need to make a big enough hole so no one is going to find him and that takes time and energy. Give me the loc with your hand and I can take it from there while you search him.”

  John stripped off one of his gloves, placing it against the ground. As before, two mounds of earth heaved up and parted, as if someone was digging up from below. This was going to be a deep one, though; Vix would have to bury the body deeper than, say, a dog could find it. Just in case the Kriegers had something like a body-sniffing dog. Of course, once the body began to decay, that bet was off, but they should be well gone before that happened.

  “One thing’s for sure.” Vix sighed. “I’m burning energy like a fiend and I’m never gonna gain weight as long as you keep this kind of thing up.”

  “So, this will make you less-sturdy comrade?” Molotok quipped. “If you grow any smaller, we will never be finding you!”

  John had already begun stripping the Krieger down to his clothing. One of their energy pistols, the comm device he’d been fiddling with, some assorted kit that wasn’t particularly interesting, a couple of devices that he didn’t recognize, and an honest to god Hitler Youth knife. John piled all of the regular gear together, and separated out the Thulian tech. Once that was done, he rolled the body into the hole that Vickie had created; almost immediately the earth that she had moved started to roll on top of the body, burying it. Once again, the earth packed itself down, and what little had been displaced, scattered itself. Then the detritus of the forest floor rearranged itself until there was no sign that the earth had ever been dug up.

  Vickie’s four “eyes” came back into visibility, hovering above the pile of Thulian tech. They quivered and rotated as Vickie worked her techno-shamanism.

  “Johnnie, separate out this thing, will you?” One of the “eyes” landed gently on the top of a rhomboid-shaped object that had odd dimples in it, as if it was some sort of dingus to exercise your hand with.

  John obliged, turning it over and around at Vickie’s direction. “Done. Whatcha think it is?” The others on the team had spread out around John, keeping a watch on the perimeter while Vickie performed her magic show.

  “I think I’ll know in a minute…” The thing popped its top, right in John’s hand. Inside were what looked like a couple of tiny gauges with a button between them. “I think it’s a key. Like, I am 80% sure it’s a key. You’re supposed to go where he was going, and when both those gauges redline, you push the button, Max. The indentations are so you get a better grip on it. I think having a good grip on it…means you’re alive or something.”

  John turned the device over in his hands, then looked at the other two. “What ’bout those gizmos?”

  “One’s his comm. You’re too far from me to get a good read on the other. Maybe a storage device? Get your mind out of the gutter, but I don’t have the right equipment out there to stick into it to find out. I wasn’t anticipating having to do a remote access and debug.” Her voice turned a little grim. “Besides which, I know they have viruses that can infect our stu
ff, and I don’t want to find out they put JIC booby traps on their equipment the hard way.”

  “Right. Let’s just hope that this gizmo doesn’t blow up in my hand, then, Miss Eighty Percent.” John stood up, grasping the Thulian device as Vickie had instructed him to. “Alright folks. I guess we’re followin’ wherever this thing leads us.” Molotok adjusted the team so that he was covering John, freeing John up to operate the device. Untermensch and Sera were set to guard the flanks and rear, alternately. As soon as they started moving again, the gauges became active. It took John a few minutes before he found just the right way to hold the device and to find the proper heading, but they were soon on their way to…whatever that Krieger had been trying to find.

  They had come to top of a pass looking down into the next valley that gave the team a good vantage point for the rest of it when the device’s gauges redlined just as Vickie had predicted, and the device itself started vibrating in pulses.

  “I think this is it. Y’all ready?”

  “The presences are very, very strong, beloved.” Sera’s voice trembled just a little. “They are all ahead of us.”

  “I am seeing nothing but an empty valley full of trees,” Molotok said doubtfully. “Perhaps is large population of monkeys?”

  “I doubt it, but let’s be prepared for anythin’ once I push this button. Vic, you recordin’ this?”

  “Continuous since you hit the ground.”

  “Roger. Let’s rock an’ roll.” Everyone tensed, bringing their weapons to the ready. John pushed the button…and everyone collectively gasped, Vickie included.

  In the center of the pass the air…solidified in a circle. Then a kind of portal irised out of the center of that circle. And what showed in that circle was nothing like the empty, tree-filled valley that seemed to be there if you looked outside the circle.

  “Svyatoye der’mo…” It was one of the few times John had seen Unter lose his composure. He felt that it was a rather appropriate moment for it.

  “Comrades, I have the distinct feeling it would be extremely unhealthy for anyone to try and go over this pass anywhere but through that doorway. Someone chuck a rock to one side of it, would you?”

  Molotok picked up a small round stone and obliged the mage. The stone sailed through the air to a point just past the portal…then slowed…then stopped in mid-air. John noticed that there was a slight distortion in the air around the stone a split second before the piece of rock disintegrated in a fizzle.

  “Uh yeah. Not particularly fussy about collateral damage, are our Nazi Friends. And I know I have seen those buildings before.”

  As Vickie had said, the valley was filled with buildings. Not just “buildings,” but monumental structures. Romanesque in design, impossible in scale. John, too, had a disconcerting sense of familiarity, as if he had seen this urban landscape somewhere before. Did they actually flatten the valley floor to build that? It certainly looked as if they had, because John couldn’t see anything that looked as if the Thulians had built to follow the contour of the land. The entire…city, it had to be a city…was laid out with precision. Somehow, he knew that if he measured anything in there, it wouldn’t be off by a micron. The centerpiece of the city was a huge domed structure that was so far away that more of the wisps of mist, or floating cloud, obscured it. And every single structure was pure marble. Or at least, some white substance that looked from this distance like marble.

  “I knew I’d seen that before.” In place of one of the information screens in the upper right of John’s HUD, was a picture. It matched the city he saw before him almost perfectly, with one exception. Instead of the arena, it looked as if the builders had substituted a giant parade-ground.

  “What—” Molotok asked, hesitantly.

  “Germania. Albert Speer’s planned supercity for the Reich. What was going to take the place of Berlin when the Nazis won the war. Some bright young things found the plans and did a digital mock-up of it. There was even a television program about it. That’s where I saw this.”

  “Question now is…do we go in? If’n nothin’ else, we probably ought to send some eyes in there. Start mappin’, cataloging…I mean, just look at this goddamned place.” John was awed by the spectacle of it. But not so much that he lost sense of purpose; they had a job to do here, and time was of the essence.

  “We don’t need to map it. Near as I can tell from where you are, it’s an exact copy except for that parade ground,” Vickie pointed out. “I think you need to GTFO as fast as your feet will take you.”

  “Nyet.” Molotok’s gaze was hard. “We will go inside. This is what we came for. The more intelligence we gather now, the better.”

  “It’s official. You are freaking insane. You do realize I cannot do much of anything for you in there, right? Other than what I’m doing now. No giant rock man, no escape tunnels, not much in the way of rock barriers between you and Very Bad Fatal Things. You are a long, long way away from me, and the farther you are, the harder it is to do the earth-magic stuff that keeps your asses intact.”

  “Understood, Victrix. We will make do.”

  John saw the logic behind it, but even he had some doubts about the course of action. He knew through his connection that Sera felt the same. He thought he heard Vickie mutter something under her breath about calling in some favors, but his attention wasn’t on her at this moment. This was going to take some doing to get right. Even with the map of the layout, they wouldn’t know if the buildings would have the same purpose as they did in the plans. There were a lot of unknowns, and they were about to dive right into the middle of them.

  “Vix, how many Kriegers could this place house, hypothetically?”

  “Millions. The stadium that was supposed to be there was supposed to hold 400,000. Eight million? Ten million?”

  “Let’s hope they’re underpopulated, then. Molotok, y’mind if I take the lead on this? I’ve got some experience gettin’ in an’ out of places quietly.”

  “I am experienced in making a great deal of noise. Lead us, Murdock.” The two Russians looked grim. This had to be a nightmare come true for Untermensch; John knew that he had been held in Nazi captivity during WWII, and that the Nazies weren’t exactly the most humane captors. It was anyone’s guess what Molotok was thinking; having been raised by parents that fought in the war, in a country that had been personally hit hard by it, it was a testament that he was keeping it together as well as he was.

  “Alright, stay low and behind me. We want a small signature on this one. We don’t engage unless there’s an unavoidable risk of discovery otherwise. An’ once we’re done, we’re gettin’ the hell out of here, fast. Stick together, no matter what; we don’t want to get lost in this godforsaken place.” With a final nod, John took a breath…and stepped through the portal.

  * * *

  Just like that, the entire team was through. It was just like stepping through an open doorway. No fanfare, no special effects. Save for the temperature and the air; the interior was completely climate controlled. Where it had been damned cold and the air was thin outside, inside it was only mildly cool, with crisp, dry, sea-level air-pressure. The power requirements to keep a space like that perfectly conditioned was staggering in and of itself, not to mention all of the other wonders that the Kriegers had to be powering.

  The area of the entrance looked like a small gate, definitely off the beaten path from the main thoroughfares, at least according to Vickie’s map in the HUD. John quickly got the team to cover in the doorway for a squat building to the left; the doorway itself was easily large enough for three sets of powered armor to walk through abreast. The ground itself was…strange. Pale grey, it contrasted slightly with the pure white structures around them. It wasn’t stone, or asphalt, though. It felt different, like some sort of hardened rubber. If nothing else, it helped to mute their steps.

  It also helped to mute the steps of the Kriegers. John was just about to give the team the signal to move out when Vickie came in over the c
omm.

  “Take cover. Try the door behind you and get into the building if you can. Now!”

  Molotok and John both put their shoulders into the massive doors; after a second of straining, both of the massive doors swung inward. The Unter and Sera followed them in, and shut the doors behind them. Everyone immediately leveled their weapons…on a completely empty room.

  White floor, walls and ceiling. No windows. The entire ceiling glowed softly, with an indirect light just like daylight. No furniture. Nothing on the walls, or the floor.

  “The hell?” The building looked like it had never been used…for anything. There would be time to figure out what that meant later. “Vic, what’s the sitch? Why are we camped out in here?”

  “Patrol.”

  “Patch video of it through the HUD?”

  “Was already on it. This area is uninhabited but they must patrol it regularly.”

  An image formed underneath the map in the upper right of John’s HUD. Three Krieger troopers in armor, they were marching down the street towards the gate. Three corresponding dots appeared on the map, matching their progress. The middle trooper advanced ahead of the other two, looking somewhat confused as he approached the open portal. He punched a series of commands into a control panel on his gauntlet, and the portal irised shut. The Krieger then turned back to his two subordinates, and began conversing with them in German.

  “We could take them…” John glanced back; it was Unter. He had steel in his voice, and his desire to kill the Thulians was palpable.

  “Yeah, and alert the rest of the freaking city. You die, then they accelerate whatever plans they have to march over the world and everybody else dies.”

  “Witch is being right, tovarisch. We are here to observe, no more, unless absolutely necessary.” Molotok fixed Untermensch with a stare until the other relented, sniffing and fiddling with his rifle.

  “I have seen this,” Sera said in a low voice that vibrated with emotion. “I have seen this world ending in fire and death, and only the Thulians and their slaves left. I did not know how such a thing came to be—but—I can see it now. This is one of the paths that can end in fire and death. We must not be detected, or…” She didn’t need to complete the sentence. And when John turned in surprise to look at her, he saw that her blue eyes had turned gold again, that same featureless gold that had marked those features when—