Collision: Book Four in the Secret World Chronicle - eARC

by Mercedes Lackey

  “Commissar, he’s angry because you did something he couldn’t. He’s angry because you have something he doesn’t.” There was an audible snort. “More than that, your people have a devotion to you he hasn’t seen since the Great Patriotic War. Do you think any of his tin soldiers have the kind of loyalty to him that you do from CCCP? You heard him.” The imitation was uncanny. “‘They go where they are ordered and do what they are commanded.’ That sounds like a lapdog to me, not a wolf pack. That’s training and brainwashing, not loyalty.”

  She allowed herself a small laugh. “Loyalty requires brains. Something their forebear and namesake only possessed when it came to posturing, his tinkering, and securing political position.”

  “Don’t let him guilt you or goad you into showing your hand. Remember, Overwatch 2 is effective only as long as it remains a secret. As long as I remain a secret. There never was a secret yet that Worker’s Champion didn’t want to know. And remember who he was in bed with, back in the bad old days. Ask Pavel or Georgi.”

  Now that suggestion brought an unpleasant taste to her mouth. But the girl did have a point…didn’t she? “…perhaps, Daughter of Rasputin. First, we are having jobs to do. I with commanding my people. And you are not having time to hold hand of Commissar, da?”

  “Damn right. My down-time is just about up.” There was a brief pause. “Teams Red and Blue at the LZ now. Touching down in…3…2…1. Op is go.”

  Natalya focused on the command console in front of her, and with a murmured command, brought up her internal HUD. She was directly linked to all of the information concerning her people, ready to wield them to their fullest. Her doubts all vanished to the back of her mind. This is what they had been preparing for, searching the world for, fighting and dying for. A chance to destroy the fascista where he lived. She wouldn’t waste this opportunity.

  What is it, the Victrix says? Ah yes. It is go-time.

  Blue Team: Ultima Thule

  As they made their way up the sheltered mountain pass, Bulwark noted with satisfaction how little noise eight full squads of Earth’s deadliest combatants could make. As was his custom he had placed himself in the vanguard, and he found it rather unnerving as he slowly guided them up the slope to hear little more than the blustering wind whipping around the tops of the mountains that towered above them, and then to look back from time to time and see dozens of them, right at his back, matching his every step.

  “Ow! Sonuvabitch…”

  He paused, and held a fist high, motioning them all to stop. In his ear he heard Victrix echo his command; in English, but every one of the mixed group behind him had been drilled to understand a half a dozen simple commands in English. Only ECHO, ECHO Euro, and CCCP had implants, but every one of the other teams was wired directly into Overwatch 2 as well as Overwatch 1 and the Colt Brothers via Victrix’s original gear. Earpieces, throat mics, wristbands for vital sign monitoring and lapel cameras—though some, like the Chinese team, had mounted their cameras on the front of their helmets.

  He shot a wary sideways glance at Scope.

  “Sorry,” Scope whispered. “Sharp rock.”

  Bull shook his head, and opened his fingers wide. He heard Victrix give the go command, and they returned to their silent march up the pass. Just hours before, he had been arguing with Bella over Scope’s involvement in this mission. She wasn’t ready, she was far from ready, but Bella had overruled him. Back with the main force surrounding the mountain city, perhaps, but Scope simply had no business being here, with the infiltrators. Every man and woman here was at the top of his or her game, each ready to strike swiftly and without pause, knowing what was at stake. Win all, or lose all. Victrix had given him a translation of Saviour’s “pep talk” to her group, and as insane as Natalya Shostokovaya was, most of the time, she was dead right this time. Win now, or lose all. Scope had not seen anything approaching real field duty for months. But Bella had overruled him, and he had been forced to admit his squad lacked a sniper. For all her faults, Scope could still shoot better than any of them, even with her now shaky hands.

  He frowned as he navigated a tricky ledge, strewn with jagged pebbles, and thought of his other questionable squad member. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t have even considered taking Mel along. Without her illusions, she was only as good as her training and current health, physical and otherwise. She had surprised them all, especially him, when she had come out on top in the demolitions crash course. Perhaps he shouldn’t have been surprised. She had certainly taken herself to task at her rehabilitation, pushing herself harder with each passing day to returning to fighting form. He watched as she glided up the pass with ease, despite wearing a heavy rucksack filled with explosives. She moved with practiced grace and confidence. As for her mental state, well, she was with the Djinni. That was a lunacy of its own kind, yet somehow their relationship was oddly calming for both of them. He took a few more steps before realizing that he had not counted the Djinni as yet another risky choice of squad member. At some point during their own rather rocky relationship, Bulwark had come to see Red Djinni as a valued member of his team. He wondered when that had happened. It seemed significant, somehow. He glanced back at Red, who scampered silently behind him. From time to time, the Djinni nodded to Mel, who flashed him subtle smiles in response. For the past few weeks, Red Djinni and Mel had grown stronger together, steadier; and dare he say it, almost reliable? And reliable was something he very much needed right now.

  He groaned, inwardly, as Scope nearly tripped, and he heard the detonators in her pack clink loudly as she righted herself.

  “You were supposed to strap those down,” he murmured.

  “Yeah,” Scope muttered. “My bad. Sorry.”

  “Keep them quiet,” he whispered. “We’re almost at the rendezvous.”

  “Five hundred yards, Bulwark. Just around that bend past the clearing ahead.” The map in his HUD flashed an update.

  At a small clearing, just two hundred feet shy of their destination, Bull signaled a halt. As one, his troops knelt down and waited. He scanned the bushes, and nodded in satisfaction as a figure garbed in complete black emerged from them. She was the smallest soldier he had ever met in his life. If he hadn’t known better, he would have sworn the Chinese had erroneously enlisted a ten year old child. An undersized ten year old child, at that.

  “Report, Shŏushú Shuma,” he said.

  The girl reached up, pulled off her mask, and greeted him with an impish grin.

  “A-OK, USA,” she said. “No baddy bads, no sensors, no nothing. Green light.”

  “Good,” Bull grunted. “Fall in with your squad.”

  Shuma came to attention at her full height, which barely cleared his knees, saluted him smartly, and tumbled down the pass to join her comrades.

  “Freaky little ninja,” Scope muttered, as Bull ordered them forward.

  Around the bend that Victrix had described, the valley—now more properly termed a “defile”—changed. The vegetation had been scoured from the rocks to either side, and sealed niches had been cut into the rock. Orange letters glowed above each one. At the end of the defile, was…apparently…a huge, empty valley sweeping away before them. That was the illusion that the protective bubble over the whole valley projected. It was not a hospitable looking valley and did not contain a water-source; no herder, looking for a place to graze sheep, goats, or yaks, would give it a second glance.

  “That’s far enough, folks,” Bull said and called for a halt. “No one approach that opening, unless you want to lose any limbs. Our scouts say it’s an illusion.” He gestured, signaling the approximate estimation of the disintegration field and motioned for Murdock to come forward. John obliged, reaching into his pocket and removed a round, smoothly dimpled object.

  “You sure you know how to work that thing?” Bull asked.

  “Give me a second here, Bulwark,” John said. “Vix is feedin’ me instructions right now. Might need a moment to get this right.”


  Bull nodded and watched patiently as John’s attention turned to the voice in his ear. He took a moment to scan the troops, who were taking advantage of the brief period of respite to check over their equipment. Even though the defile was wide enough to accommodate them comfortably, the prudent squadrons pressed together, wary of disturbing the glowing walls which shone with an eerie light.

  All except Scope, of course.

  With the casual air of a bemused sightseer, she strolled to one side and lit up a cigarette, feigning mild interest in the glowing glyphs that illuminated the passageway. They were incomprehensible, and she shrugged in indifference until Bulwark snatched the cigarette from her mouth and firmly put it out under his boot.

  “What’s your damage, Bull?” she demanded.

  “You are,” Bull said. He pointed at the rest of the infiltrators. “They are doing what they should, preparing themselves for the mission ahead while being mindful of their surroundings.” He pointed at Scope, his finger nearly poking her eye. “You are being a space cadet and endangering us all by wandering from the path. Mind telling me what’s going through that empty cavity between your ears?” At this moment he was as angry with Bella as he was with Scope. How could she not have seen how unready Scope was for this? He would rather have had the old Scope, the one who made mistakes because of trying too hard, than this one.

  “I’m prepping too,” Scope shrugged. “This is the first real stop we’ve had in ages, and I was jonesing. And you know how some people are about cigarettes. Get one going anywhere near them and they act like you’re vomiting tumors into their mouths.”

  “You should be inspecting your weapons.” Why did he need to tell her this? The old Scope would have already field-stripped them, inspected the parts, and put them back together again. Twice.

  “My guns are always ready.” This Scope didn’t seem to care that there was a streak of tarnish on the barrel of her rifle. The old Scope not only would have had that off, she’d have made sure there wasn’t a reflective centimeter on any of them. Bull had a nightmare moment of imagining his sniper being blown away because everything in the valley had homed in on the twinkle of light off her weapon.

  Surely she hadn’t been that careless. Yet she was careless enough to wander off the known path. “You shouldn’t leave your group. We don’t have any intel on what to expect here.”

  “What is all this, anyway?” Scope asked, jerking her head towards the glyph-lined walls.

  If he told her, would she at least go back to the others? “Our best approximation from Victrix is that this is where they bury their dead.”

  “Oh,” Scope said, exaggerating her surprise. “So we’re talking dead Kriegers behind these glowy symbols.”

  Well, that didn’t work. “That’s right.”

  “Jesus, Scope,” Victrix said with alarm, in both their ears. “This isn’t the scenic tour of Krieger-land!”

  “You ask me, Bull, I’d say this is a great place to start our run,” Scope laughed, ignoring her. “We haven’t fired a single shot, and we’ve already got a body count.” She chuckled as she lit up another cigarette, and leaned back against the passage wall.

  “Scope, no, don’t…”

  Behind her, a glyph blazed to life, accompanied by a shrill whistle of alarm. Scope jerked away from the wall, her cigarette tumbling from her lips. She looked up. Following her gaze, Bull watched as debris erupted high above them from a series of detonations along the cliff face.

  “Huddle up!” Bull roared as he raced back to his startled infiltrators. “On me, double time!”

  And in his ear, Victrix repeating the order.

  Above them, enormous slabs of rock seemed to detach themselves from the walls in eerie slow-motion, then hurtled down. A horrific sound accompanied them, the thunder of gods, as the slabs tore apart and rained certain death upon them. The squads came together, scrambling without a word, much less any screams of fright, and froze in place as an enormous nimbus of light erupted above them, catching the first jagged boulders that plunged down on them in an onslaught of stone. In the canopy of light, giant stalactites appeared to grow downward towards them, some reaching so close as to almost touch them. With a sudden and elastic release, Bull’s kinetic shield sprang back, hurling the rocky debris up, up and away. The infiltrators watched in awe as some of the boulders careened forwards, only to be atomized in the now visible disintegration field, while most of the falling rock was hurled back towards the mountain pass they had just spent hours climbing. And then darkness, as the shield dissipated and a harsh cloud of heavy dust and rubble settled around them.

  Victoria Victrix: Overwatch Suite

  As total disaster unfolded before her “eyes,” Vickie was snapping orders at Grey. She was going to need a shit-ton of help. “Overwatch: Bulwark on monitor-one. Grey, watch everyone else’s vitals that we’ve got. Send red alerts to the handlers for the other teams.” Oh gods, if anything happens to Bull, Bella will never… Even as the rocks were vaulting back in all directions, it was obvious that Bull had taken a massive, massive hit. Everything was redlining.

  No, he was crashing.

  Oh no you don’t! With a savage curse and a surge of power that burned out four of her reserve-energy crystals, sending Grey scrambling to replace them, Vickie did the only thing she could do, since she was not a healer. She put Bull’s body in “temporary hold.” It made everything in his body stay the way it was when she fired it off, and would only last for about as long as it would take to get him to the Forward Med Station. This was one of those “Heisenberg Uncertainty” things; she knew the minimum time it would probably hold, but not the maximum.

  Please, let it last that long.…

  “Overwatch: Open Moji! Moji!” she cried, her voice cracking. “Bulwark’s down!”

  “Not to worry, little sestra. Am taking command.” Somehow, some way, Molotok sounded as cool as if he was flirting with some coed in a bar. That was one thing less to worry about. With a scattershot of contacts, she made sure all the team handlers knew what was up, while Molotok bellowed over the last sounds of falling rock and the shocked responses of the infiltrators.

  “Comrades! Too late for stealth, we go, all of us, now. Murdock, get portal open, leave it open! All teams, stage at field, get in fast and hard. Team Blue, Red Djinni is now leader!” John must have gotten the portal open in double-time because the next thing she heard was—“Now! Davay, davay, davay! Go, go, go!”

  She checked back in with the other team handlers, who were on the ball so far as she could tell, and went back to Bull. Her spell was holding. “Moji, we need two flyers to evac Bull back to the Swifts. Make it the SFO for Corbie’s Euro team, they’ve got jetpacks.”

  “Da, vedma.”

  She listened with one ear while she checked on Bulwark again. His brain activity spiked. Don’t you dare try to move, you… “Bulwark!” she said, sharply. “I need you to stay completely quiet. Don’t move, don’t speak. I’ve lost one of you guys already, and I—” her voice broke and she quickly steadied it. “I’m not losing you.”

  Since Corbie was a natural flier, his entire team and their non-metahuman SFO support had been outfitted with the ECHO jetpacks, in case the field generator turned out to be someplace that was otherwise inaccessible. Now the biggest two, with the beefiest packs, separated from the SFO team and eased Bulwark onto a stretcher as the rest of their team piled through the portal. A moment later and they were in the air.

  Through Molotok’s eye-cam, Vickie got a glimpse of Scope, silent, seemingly numb, watching as Bulwark was carried off, strapped to the stretcher between the two fliers. Then she ducked her head and followed the rest of her team, the last of them to charge through the hole in the field. Then Molotok followed, and there was nothing left for her to do but keep Bull’s vitals on her monitor and follow the teams in her charge.

  Red Team: Ultima Thule

  John made sure that he was the first person from Red team, and consequently the first person of the
entire infiltration section, through the portal and into Ultima Thule. His rifle shouldered, he scanned for threats as he sprinted left to the nearest cover; he knew that everyone else would be right on his ass. So much for a covert entry; there’s no way in hell the Kriegers didn’t notice that. In moments, Sera, Molotok, Untermensch, Soviet Bear, and Mamona were all against the same cover with him. John glanced back towards the portal; all of the other infil teams were through, and were quickly spreading out on their assigned routes. With any luck, at least some of them would get to their targets and get the shield down so that the main assault could begin.

  Vix swore creatively in his ear. “There’s no way the Kriegers missed that,” she said, echoing his thoughts. “Speed is your best friend, comrades. Johnny, throw all your eyes in the air.” John let his rifle hang by the sling for a moment as he opened a pouch, shoved his hand in to retrieve all of the sensor eyes, and chucked them hard into the air. Vix must have been practicing, and practicing hard; they vanished almost as soon as they left his hand, and he just heard the faint whoosh of displaced air as they flew up and away. There were easily dozens of other such magical eyes being used by the other infiltration teams. Witch girl is gettin’ good.

  “Victrix, bringing up route on HUDs.” Molotok also had his rifle up and out, scanning his sector. They couldn’t sit here much longer if they wanted a chance.

  There was a pause. “Overhead view from eyes,” she said. “Partial map overlay.” She said it in English; probably meant this was going out to all the teams. Overwatch was “smart” enough that the Red team members showed as bright blue dots, all the others as a greyed-out blue with abbreviated team designations above them. The same would hold for the other teams. It was also “smart” enough to center the HUD map on them. Worryingly, there were some red dots starting to appear as Vickie’s “eyes” spotted Thulians. Getting crowded on the playing field.