Collision: Book Four in the Secret World Chronicle - eARC

by Mercedes Lackey

  “Tell me what you need. Other than a miracle. And throw my eyes in the air please.”

  “What we need is a do-over,” he muttered as he released the latch on his rucksack and let the eyes fly up and vanish.

  “No can do. Map on HUD, you guys are blue, Kriegers are red. You’ve gotten behind them. You’re the only ones who have. Everyone else has been spotted. Do you see your objective?”

  “Yeah, about that…” Red popped his head out of hiding and gave his surroundings a quick once over. “You realize now that your secret Nazi Utopia schematics were… incomplete, right?”

  “I realized that from the get-go. I didn’t have a lot of data-mining time on the first pass. I’m map-correcting on the fly.”

  “Don’t be too hard on yourself,” Red said. “Looks like the overall layout’s about right. The city’s sectioned off like you said, but they’ve made a few changes to Hitler’s wet dream.”

  “Hence, eyes. Keep checking your HUD, I’ve got them spread out in a cone along your probable route. Alleys. Hitler didn’t think of them, these guys did, good place for sneaking. See here and here? Guess is that’s what alleys are usually for, which means low traffic.” The map in the HUD was changing even as he looked at it. “If we figure efficiency, I’m thinking these buildings here are probably combined waste handling and warehouses. Maybe they’ve got something that can take waste and recycle it into food and parts.”

  “Okay, those make sense, but what do you make of the giant towers they’ve got circling the middle ring?” Red could actually see one, rising over the rooftops, from where he and the others were huddled under an overhang. A tower, not unlike an elongated pyramid shape, surmounted with a half-globe. It looked rather like a mushroom. The half-globe itself was covered with a skin of something…white. Matte, rather than shiny.

  “They could be anything,” Vix said. “Their spacing suggests communication towers, defensive centers, or…”

  Red heard her gasp.

  “I’m afraid to ask,” he said. “You know you tend to squeak when you give me bad news.”

  “Then I better show you,” Vix answered.

  The video sprang up on his HUD, and Red watched in horror as the video feed from one of Vickie’s eyes, now high above the city, gave him a startling aerial view of one section of the ring of towers. From the base of each, dozens of Thulian foot soldiers and robot wolves came streaming out and began to fill the streets. And from the tops, giant robotic eagles took flight high above, directing the ground troops towards the various skirmishes that raged around the city.

  “Defensive centers,” Red muttered, grimly. “Barracks, by the looks of them. Okay, how about we avoid the giant structures that are spitting out robots and other assorted Nazi-flavored bits of trash?”

  “Good plan,” Mel whispered, her eyes wide with fear.

  Scope looked…well utterly unlike herself. Stricken, sick, and very, very guilty. Red couldn’t blame her for feeling guilty; hell, she should feel guilty! If it hadn’t been for her, none of them would be in the situation they were now. If Bull died…

  Bella won’t let him die, he told himself. And he told himself that if Bull hadn’t made it, Vix would have said something, so every minute that went by meant that Bella and her team were fixing things and every minute that went by meant Bulwark was that much closer to being healed up.

  If Bull was gone…Vix would have told at least him, wouldn’t she?

  Mind on the job.

  Knight, on the other hand, had that stance that said he was ready to kick ass and take names. And maybe do without the name-taking part.

  “Juggling. Back later. Watch HUDs.” The silence in his ear was deafening, and he suddenly felt…

  …alone. And not in a good way.

  Dammit, she’s got dozens of people to handle, she can’t hold your hand through this one. Suck it up, Red.

  “Watch your HUDs, people,” he said, through the link, rather than loud enough to actually hear. Mel and Scope weren’t hardwired, because Vix had run out of sets before she got to the two people who had been last on the “need to wire”list, but Vickie had given them special headsets that projected something really close to his own in-eye HUD into their left eyes. “Knight, keep up the good work. Looks like we have the best chance. We’re going in deeper.”

  Belladonna Blue: Forward Medical Unit

  The spell let go, eventually, but not before Bella had healed the worst of the worst. Then it was a race not unlike one she had run before—the race to save him from what she had triggered when she’d tried to strengthen his bones and nearly killed him. Once again, she tasted the metallic flavor of terror, knew in a place outside of what she was concentrating on that her hands were shaking, felt the agony of what losing him would mean. Only it was worse, now because now she knew they really were a couple and…oh God, if I lose him…

  This time, it was a race to stop all the hundreds, the thousands of places where he was bleeding. The mending would come later, when the battle was over, if they all survived, if she and he got somewhere safe, if there were no more dying demanding her skills.

  If it hadn’t been for Upyr and her volunteers, it would never have been possible.

  She finished just as Spoonbender was starting on Bull’s left leg. For whatever reason, it had been only the leg and arm bones that had bent. Maybe he’d instinctively taken the weight, the hideous pressure, on his arms and legs, as if he had been physically holding the rock from the teams. She still wasn’t sure how his force-field ability worked. As she leaned on the operating table, panting and sweating as much as if she had been running a marathon, she felt how much this was hurting him, even with Panacea doing pain management. She grabbed a towel and mopped her face and neck with it, as Upyr transferred her attentions to Spoonbender, who was sweating, himself.

  “You can do this, Axel,” she said, quietly, putting confidence in her voice. He looked up at her, and she saw the bewilderment in his pale grey eyes, the fear in his thin, angular, Middle-Eastern face. She was struck by how young he was.

  “But—”

  “It’s just like working with metal inside something else where you can’t see it. Here,” she moved over to his side of the table, put one hand on Bull’s leg and the other on Axel’s forehead. “I’ll show you. Upyr will give you all the energy you need.”

  She showed him; showed him what she “saw.” Felt his bewilderment turn to sudden understanding. Understood at that moment, herself, what part of his meta-gift was; not only did he shape metal, gently, with his mind and will…he understood at an instinctive level when something was not right with that metal, and made it be right again. Micro-fractures, impurities in the metal; he didn’t just bend metal, but acted as a sort of self-corrective cold forge for what he was working on, as well. She couldn’t do that…but she could guide him. And Upyr could give him the energy he didn’t have on his own.

  Slowly at first, then faster as he gained confidence, the bones went…back. Back to the shapes they should have been. This was easier for her, she didn’t need the boost from Upyr to guide him. And Mary Ann and Gilead had already been doing the same work on Bull’s arms and legs that she had done on his torso, his organs. As she had done, they had been forced to prioritize; Bull was going to feel as if someone had been doing extensive surgery to his entire body, as well as feeling as if he had been beaten to within an inch of his life. He’d be feeling that way for some time while he healed naturally. And he would probably have to heal naturally for a while. There would be other casualties besides Bulwark. They all knew this. Had he not been the first…had the Med Unit not been empty…

  Triage. I’d have black-tagged him myself. There were only the healers they had, and no way to recruit more. To take four of them out for a single patient, plus Upyr, at a time when there would have been casualties pouring in, would not have been right, and Bull himself would have told her so. They had to save as many as they could. Bulwark would have had to wait until they had taken car
e of the worst they could do fastest. He would never have made it.…

  She let none of that leak over to Spoonbender, who now was riding on a wave of elation that he was doing something important. For the first time ever in his life, he was the only person in all of ECHO, maybe in the whole world, who could have done what he was doing. She was not going to do anything to spoil that euphoria. Among other things, it was boosting his ability, and she needed every bit he could do.

  And when he backed away from the table, having put everything to rights, she took his head in both her hands and kissed him. “Axel Nadir, you are my hero,” she said, and meant it. And he blushed, and stammered, and the waves of happiness and—for the first time ever for him, a sense of real pride and accomplishment—buoyed every one of the healers with her. Even Einhorn stopped looking panicked.

  She sent Spoonbender off, and they finished the job, as much as it could be finished. Because there was still a war going on out there, and she had left the well-being of her teams solely in Vickie and Arthur Chang’s hands. This wasn’t over. This had barely begun. Soon more casualties would come in. She would have liked to pray No one I know, please, but she knew that was impossible.

  “Are we done here?” she asked, looking at her team, each in turn. And each in turn nodded.

  “Overwatch: ping standard med team on standby for Bulwark,” she said. They must have been waiting just outside the curtains, for they came in immediately. “There’s going to be some internal bleeding,” she told them. “At this point the only thing that isn’t bruised is his hair. Treat him as if he just rolled down a mile of mountain cliff.”

  “Good God, Blue, he’s almost the same color you are,” said one of the physicians, Dr. Shahid, half in horror and half in amusement.

  She wanted to touch him. And she didn’t dare. For a while, any touch was just going to make the pain worse. “Sovie?” she said instead.

  “I am being put him in twilight sleep for now. There will to being no brain swelling, but there will to be some effects of concussion. Am thinking he will wake in half an hour, no more than hour.” The beautiful Russian, who was an actual physician as well as a healer, explained what they had done to the conventional medical team, as Bella caught up on the status of the infiltration.

  Because Gairdner was only one man. The man she loved with a passion that hurt, sometimes, but only one man. The rest of her people were still out there. And they needed her too. If he had died…

  If he had died, she would have buried her heart with him, and carried on. He would expect no less. And he deserved no less.

  Red Team: Ultima Thule

  John was getting worried. Red Team’s luck fully ran out after three more blocks. They had easily taken out another small group of Thulians while on the move, but quickly became involved in a running battle with first one, then, in rapid succession, three more groups. According to Vix’s technomagical eyes and the map on their HUDs, more Kriegers were coming to join the party. All of the approaching enemies were blocking escape routes that the team could use. John and Sera could fly, but that would leave the rest of their comrades stranded, not to mention the possibility of being shot out of the sky. Naw, we’re goin’ to stick together. Only way any of us are gettin’ out of this.

  “Hey, boss,” John said as he blasted a running Krieger once with a burst of plasma, sending the man crashing to the ground. “I don’t mean to worry you, but we’re surrounded.”

  “Da, poor bastards. They have nowhere to be hiding from us now.” Molotok paused for a moment, apparently reviewing their options. “Up ahead, one block over. Hardpoint; looks to be a wall. We will hold up there, attempt to punch through the Kriegers when their line thins out.”

  Mamona cleared her throat as she finished reloading her rifle with a fresh magazine. “How do you know for sure their line is gonna thin out?”

  “Because we are going to kill every neschastnyy one we see, tovarisch.” He grinned. “Also because if they do not, we will die where we stand.” Mamona gulped hard, but didn’t have anything to add to that. The team moved out again, John in the lead. They wouldn’t have much time once they reached the square with the wall; the Kriegers definitely had a fix on their position now, and it wouldn’t be long before ground troops reached them, even with the slow Krieger armor.

  The “wall” that Moji had spotted turned out to be a monument of some sort in the middle of a square. On both sides it was carved with a relief sculpture of a beefy-looking woman holding a wreath over her head, flanked on either side by an equally beefy looking man holding a sword and a shield, with two chunky horses framing the lot. There were obelisks at either end of the wall. As a hardpoint it would certainly do, at least better than the open street. It would take even the energy-canons of the Krieger Death Spheres a while to burn down that much marble.

  “Even this may not be enough,” Sera said, her voice pitched so low that the only reason they heard it was because it came in through their Overwatch link. “We will soon be attacked on all sides.”

  “She’s got a point, Moji.” John looked around; all of the buildings nearby seemed to only have one entrance; while that’d mean they’d only have to cover one way in, it also meant that they wouldn’t have a way out. Molotok must have surmised the same.

  “No other options, and we are running out of time. There’s nothing more to do at—”

  Bear brushed past John and Molotok, letting his PPSh hang on its sling. John could faintly pick up the sound as the old Soviet’s gyroscopic heart ramped up as it pumped plasma from his internal chamber into his gauntlets. The first blast he fired hit the base of the obelisk on the left, obliterating a chunk of it. The obelisk began to lean, then completely toppled over. Bear took a moment to judge the position of the first obelisk, then adjusted his angle before firing on the second. With a tremendous crash and a huge cloud of dust, the second obelisk fell to the ground. The result was that they now had additional cover on their previously unprotected flanks.

  “So much for fascista erections!” the old man cackled. John noticed Bear wince at the end; whenever he used his internal reserves for such a powerful blast, it weakened him a little, until he would have no more plasma left except what was needed to power his mechanical body. The rest of the team, silent and internally face-palming, ran to the wall. Molotok positioned each of them in such a way that they were covering all of the avenues of approach. John’s job was to focus on armor; wherever trooper armor popped up, he was to flame it down so that the others’ weapons would have better effect on target. Still, even with the cover…this looked like it was going to turn into a shit sandwich fast, and they’d all have to take a bite.

  John checked his rifle, making sure that his magazine was full and that he had a round chambered. “Vix,” he said, “What’s the disposition of the other teams? Anyone nearby that can link up with us, help get us outta this jam?”

  “Negative. No one nearby, everyone’s getting pinned down except Team Blue. We’re taking casualties.” He heard her spout off something that sounded French. “Sec.”

  Though she said nothing else, his HUD lit up with new information, none of it good. Moji, who must have been getting the same thing, swore. “We should have aborted missions when idiotskiy Amerikanski made rocks to fall!” he spat.

  But Sera shook her head. “Red Saviour was right,” was all she answered, but John—and surely everyone else—knew what she meant. They’d had no other choice. Red Saviour, for all of her faults, and they were many, was right. Their only chance was now, win all, or lose all. If they had aborted, the Kriegers would have still been alerted, and the battle would have been on their terms. If they could just get the field down—

  “Heads up, comrades! We’ve got company.” That was Mamona. John turned to look at her sector just in time to see four Kriegers, all in trooper armor, come around a corner. They took a second to orient on the memorial wall and fallen obelisks, then started firing. Chunks of the obelisks were blown away by the actinic b
eams, sending shards of marble and dust flying, and filling the air with the stink of burnt ozone. John sent a burst of fire in their direction, engulfing all of the armor at once. After letting them burn for a moment, the rest of the team opened up with their rifles, starting with the joints and moving on to center mass shots as the armor weakened.

  Things became a blur of fire, energy beams, explosions and gunshots after that first squad. John was only able to keep up because of his connection with Sera; able to anticipate where the armored troopers would show up, combined with his Overwatch HUD, he kept his fires going and their enemies weakened. Occasionally he would send a blast of plasma to take out a few targets completely, but for the most part he was busy augmenting the team’s firepower. Mamona was deep in concentration, pausing in between volleys to direct her powers outward, extending them further than she had ever attempted before. The closer groups of Kriegers were disoriented by her meta ability, some vomiting violently, others knocked off of their feet as their equilibrium was lost. All of this served to make easy targets for the rest of the team, especially against the unarmored Kriegers. Bear fired his PPSh in long bursts, laughing and cursing in Russian, only pausing long enough to charge up his gauntlets and send a concussive plasma burst to destroy whatever the enemy was using for cover or to sometimes take down a vulnerable trooper. It was starting to wear on him, though; he couldn’t keep it up forever.

  Sera’s “rate of fire” was much slower; it took her longer to manifest a fire spear than it did to level a volley of bullets. But once she did so, she cast the weapon with all the effectiveness of Zeus’s lightning bolts, unerringly hitting her target. Usually she struck for the throat of the armored Kriegers; that seemed to hit some extremely weak spot, for they would suddenly seize up and shake in place before dropping to the street, unmoving. But twice or three times she pinned two or more together, sometimes to a wall or the ground, making them easy prey for the rest of the team.