Revolution: Book Three of the Secret World Chronicle - eARC

by Mercedes Lackey

  Covered with the very materials they’d used to make their base, he was protected from any harm they could do him. But they had no such protection from him. Motu began blindly battering and crushing the Thulians that had taken position behind the team, more plating from the hallway replacing his armor wherever it was damaged. Then again, the corridor was narrow enough that he didn’t have to see to hit them. “My brother will cover our retreat! Let’s get out of this damned place!”

  Red caught Bulwark’s eye again, and nodded. Bulwark nodded back.

  “That’s the turn. Right, right, right. I’m taking you out the way you came in, start praying no walls have caved in.”

  “Is our ride still there?”

  “So far. You better get there before someone jacks it.”

  * * *

  John was grateful that Unter had memorized their route; he was too out of it to remember. The hallways all looked the same; scrambling Nazis, electrical fires, and other assorted chaos. This entire place is going to go up. Hope we didn’t do our job too well, an’ become toast with it. John whirled to his left, snapping off a burst of rifle fire at a Thulian that had raised a pistol. The man crumpled, dead before he hit the floor.

  “We are getting close, Murdock; there are more Nazis.” Unter grunted, pausing to fire several long bursts from his rifle. “Many fascista.” The team kept running. John could see his vision going black around the edges; he shook his head to try to dispel it, but to no effect. This is it. I’m runnin’ on empty. Christ, they’re gonna have to carry me soon enough.

  “Infil Two, Infil Two, do you read?”

  Unter responded. “We read—Victrix? What is happening?”

  It was Belladonna Blue’s voice.

  “Vick’s down, I’m on the comm. I have her map with you and your path on it. Right, left, right, then up the stairs on the right again. You’re about to meet up with Infil One. Don’t strafe each other.”

  The team came to the intersection, everyone taking a sector and covering it with their rifle. Mamona shouted, “Look!” John heard a lot of gunfire; rifles, same model that his team was carrying. He could also see the glow of Thulian energy weapons being discharged, the ambient light splashing off of the hallway panels. Bulwark’s team careened around the corner and into the intersection; several members from both teams leveled rifles at each other, lowering them an instant later when recognition registered, or Bella yelled at them.

  John coughed, more blood coming up onto the back of his glove; he wiped it off on his pant leg, nodding to Bulwark. “Good to see y’all are still alive.”

  “You aren’t going to be if we don’t get you out of here,” Bulwark said grimly, looking at the blood trickling out of the side of John’s mouth.

  John nodded, shouldering his rifle. He gestured with his off-hand. “Blue says that the exit is thataway. Shall we, gents?” Motu was still at the mouth of the corner where Bulwark’s team had come from. The Thulian ray guns were firing almost constantly, picking at his armor. The hallway reacted to his powers, tearing itself apart to replenish his protection.

  “WILL YOU MOVE YOUR BLOOMIN’ ARSES?” Bella shouted. “This is no time for a tea break!”

  The team responded by running as fast as possible, while allowing Motu’s bulky form to provide them with a moving shield. They reached the hangar bay without having to kill too many more Nazis; few of them were willing to put enough effort into fighting, as opposed to saving their own skins. John surveyed the situation in an instant; there were a few officers ineffectually shouting orders, and even fewer people listening to them. Almost all of the base personnel were trying to find a vehicle, or running with a weapon. “So, straight up the middle? Kill anybody in the way?”

  “Straight ahead, your ride is parked at your front left of the hanger. Uh, your 10 o’clock?”

  It seemed as if the entire base bucked sideways like an angry bronc, right then. Everyone hit the floor, their footing taken out from under them, with Motu being the exception. “Base is giving out,” John said, hoarsely. “If’n we’re goin’, now’s the time.”

  “Copy that, Vick’s sensor packs are all redlining. You don’t have long.”

  He looked to Mamona and Silent Knight. “Care to give the opposition somethin’ to think ’bout?”

  Both of the metas nodded. Mamona bent down at the entrance to the hangar, closing her eyes. Silent Knight braced himself, being careful to point his helmet with all of them behind him. Bulwark tapped them both on the shoulder at the same time saying, “Now.” Dozens of Nazis doubled over instantly, puking their guts out or going into seizures. Those still in armor vibrated; the Knight was using either a frequency too high to hear, or too low; whichever, maybe both at once, it was rattling anyone in metal to pieces. Sparks flew from the joints as the armor malfunctioned.

  “Move it!” John shouted, lurching forward and almost tripping over his own feet. The base was shaking itself apart, the vibrations were so violent now. Explosions sprayed shrapnel and debris everywhere, and those Thulians still able to stand were scrambling frantically. Some of the Nazis noticed the teams running for a Death Machine. Most didn’t care, but a few were well trained enough to try and shoot at them. Soviet Bear took a plasma blast in his left arm; he spun with the impact, leveling his PPSh at the offending Thulian and unloading the rest of the drum magazine into the man. “That was being made by genius of Soviet science, kulak!” His mechanical arm melted to the deck, cut off at the elbow, and he kept running.

  Matai took a conventional rifle round through the thigh; he didn’t even have time to fully crumple to the ground before Motu had scooped his brother up in a fireman’s carry, shielding him with his massive form. John switched his rifle to his off-hand, chucking a grenade with the other. The explosion had satisfying effect on a group of Thulians trying to take cover behind a stack of weapons crates.

  Djinni’s hands grew long claws, and he launched ahead of them, grimly slashing at unarmored troopers.

  Luckily, the area immediately around their transportation was clear of threats. Untermensch and Djinni were the first into the Death Machine. There were two Thulian troopers, their plasma pistols on the floor, at the controls prepping the craft for flight. “Good afternoon, fascista,” said Untermensch. “Thank you for preparing our escape for us.” The two metahumans leapt for the Thulians, impervious hands and wicked claws removing the opposition before the Nazis had time to reach for their own weapons. The rest of the team scrambled onto the ramp of the Thulian Orb, throwing the Nazi bodies out. Motu hefted his brother into the craft; his armor sloughed off with a clatter. He ducked below a plasma blast, inches above his head, clambering into the hatch just before it closed.

  Bulwark plopped down into the pilot’s seat, his arms reaching into the control sleeves; he didn’t even bother to attach his safety harness. “Bella, time?”

  “GO!” Bella screamed. “It’s going crit in there!”

  The Death Machine lurched forward, no pretense of being damaged. Bulwark gritted his teeth; they clipped several support struts for the hangar, bouncing off of another fleeing Orb as they shot out of the hangar. The Orb shot forward at incredible speed. John’s vision was going out. He felt a cold chill creeping over him, and fought for breath. “Are we clear?” he managed to choke out.

  “Yes—CRAP!” A massive shockwave slammed into the Orb. John felt weightless for a moment, and everything slowed down. He saw Mamona’s face, drawn tight and pale. He could see the blood from Matai’s leg seeping through his brother’s fingers. Untermensch looked unconcerned, and Pavel looked like he was having the time of his life. Time sped back up, and everyone was thrown forward, crashing into each other. John blacked out.

  * * *

  Natalya panted for breath, the dust and smoke thick in the air clinging to the roof of her dry mouth. So damned many of the swine. She collected her strange energies, blasting the head off of a Thulian that had left cover too soon. Since the Nazis had slowly awakened to the fact that they
were taking more casualties than they should, they had pulled their numbers back to cover. Their advance was stopped, but the fighting was still brutal. Most of her forward rocket teams were dead; overrun or blasted by Death Machines. The toll was not as bad as it had been in Red Square, or in Atlanta, but any loss was one too many.

  Without the furthest rocket teams, the Orbs had been getting closer; one had chanced to try to drop a squad of troopers directly on top of Saviour’s team, behind their lines. Luckily, due to the proximity to the ECHO broadcaster, they were able to finish the assaulting Nazis before they could do too much damage, collect too many kills. The Commissar called the Blue Angels off of Close-Air Support, retasking them to focus solely on make runs against the Orbs. The decision had probably saved the entire valley from getting a thermite bath.

  “Sestra,” Molotok called, throwing an armed grenade with fast-ball accuracy. “Might be thinking of doing something about our party guests, da?” His question was punctuated by the exploding grenade; a chorus of Thulian energy cannons answered, splitting the air and pulverizing boulders around Molotok’s cover. “At least they can’t shoot. Being hard when your targets shoot back, nyet!”

  Enough. She cued the “egghead” channel. “Comrades. Is time for second surprise. Deploy Shi—Xi—Zho—” she stumbled over the designation. Curse these people for naming something after an Aztec god!

  “We jest call it th’ TDR Miz Commissar Ma’am,” drawled the tech. “Tesla Death Ray deployed.”

  It really wasn’t called the “Tesla Death Ray”; that was just the affectionate name that the techs that set it up and manned it had mentioned. It’s technical name was the “Xotol Heavy Armor and Light Armored Infantry Suppression Cannon,” one of the space-age wonders garnered from ECHO. The camouflaged emplacement was on the military crest of the peak at the ECHO and CCCP’s back; it gave a commanding view of the entire valley where the fight was still raging, and was one of the only places with flat enough ground to mount it. It took three of the rare and expensive portable ECHO broadcasters to power it. Moments after she gave the command, the camouflage netting was stripped away; it was some sort of LED blanket that helped mimic the background. Silly to see up close, but at a distance it was a fairly convincing illusion.

  The contraption looked like two oversized pincers on a cannon mount. Natalya spared a glance over her shoulder to watch; it was spitting forks of electricity, and she could feel the hair rising on her arms. “Heads down!” Even with her eyes slammed shut, she could see the terribly bright flash. There was a thunderous popping sound that hurt her ears; it sounded like an angry power line sparking out its vengeance.

  The sorceress had worked her unsettling magic, implanting one of the HUD devices in her eye…somehow. It worked. And Victoria’s method had not required surgery…but Natalya wondered if she ought to be disturbed that she was coming to accept the intrusion of magic into her life.

  Still one could not deny it was useful. And the wretched thing understood Russian, too. “HUD,” she commanded, and the system activated. “Battlefield overlay.”

  An image within an image played over her HUD. She was watching the entire valley from five-hundred feet up. It occurred to her that she could have probably been miles away in the sky, and still have seen the “TDR.” It looked like a gigantic, brilliant blue-white bolt of lightning, a strike that would not flash away. It twisted and turned, tearing through the ground and the enemy at the rear of their formation. The beam seemed haphazard; it didn’t fire straight, and was constantly writhing. It lashed left and right, and where it struck, Nazi troopers exploded, utterly decimated even where they were not close to the ECHO broadcasters. The weapon-crew canted the device skyward; the beam shifted, cutting through a formation of two Thulian Orbs, and setting fire to a third. What a person could do with ten of these…

  As suddenly as the murderous barrage had begun, it stopped. The lightning cannon sputtered off with a final thunderous pop; the Commissar could swear that everyone in the valley would probably have some sort of hearing damage.

  Saviour swore. Then mentally shrugged. There had never been a guarantee of how long the thing would work. At least it had cut a decent swath in the fascista numbers. The advantage didn’t last, however. Some of the surviving Thulian Orbs had risen high above the battle; their energy cannons lashed out, destroying all of the closest ECHO broadcasters. They’re softening up our positions for a push! Several of the ECHO metahumans that used tech powered by the broadcasters found their devices powerless; an energy shield fizzled into nonexistence, a bionic arm froze, a set of flying powered armor dropped out of the air, and so on down the lines.

  “Comrades! Vse ognennie sili na peredovuju! All fire powers to the front lines!”

  They would do this the hard way.

  Where was the sorceress? Until now she had been more than adequate at steering the Infiltration teams and giving the external force help. She had even coordinated with the Hammer at taking out that new Orb at the mouth of the valley. So where was she—

  As if on cue, the sorceress’s channel crackled to life. But it was not her voice.

  “Nat. Vick’s passed out cold. Handling Infil from her console, it’s all I can do.”

  Bah. But she infused her voice with confidence she in no way felt. “Spasibo, Bella. Infil is first priority. We are handling things out here.” All right; she was trained and honed as a battle commander. Time to do things the old-fashioned way.

  A new voice came over the comms. “Commissar, we are, ah…in position. There’s not much cover here.” It was Zmey, the tinkerer. She had anticipated a potential need to make large numbers of the enemy vulnerable at once, in case their air support was no longer operational. This looked like a necessary time to use her last trump card; three metahumans, Zmey and two ECHO Op2s, hidden safely where the Thulians would pass them without notice.

  “Fire on my Mark. Full power.” She waited until she knew she had no choice. “Mark.” There was a momentary pause, and then a huge cloud of flame belched from where Zmey and the others were positioned. The cloud extended over the massed Thulian ranks; it contorted, and then came slamming down. The heat was enough to make a fresh sweat break out over the Commissar; it felt like she was in a kiln on a hot day in Hell. Thulian energy beams shot out, going wildly into the sky or the mountains; switching to her bird’s eye view of the battlefield, she saw that nearly all of the enemy were bathed in flames. The firecloud contracted, dissipating into whisps of flame.

  “Strike completed, Commissar—Nasrat!” A Thulian Orb climbed over the hiding place for Zmey’s squad.

  Involuntarily, she gathered her energies and shot at the Orb; she might just as well have been lobbing rocks at it. It ignored her in favor of the real threat, shooting twice, not at the squad, but at the face of the mountain beneath them. The entire section collapsed with a roar that swallowed up her own screamed curses. In her ear, Zmey shrieked, the sound cutting short as the thousands of tons of rock and earth crushed him and the two ECHO Ops with him.

  The firefight intensified; dozens more missiles and rockets slammed into the Thulians. They pushed forward, firing their energy cannons, ignoring their mounting losses. If we die here, we die fighting. We die killing our murderers. She threw a grenade, waited for its explosion, and then swept around the side of the boulder she had been using for cover. “Davay, Comrades! Za rodinu! In defense of the motherland!” It was the old battlecry, first her father’s, now hers. He had used it at the Siege of Stalingrad that no one had expected to survive. CCCP knew it well. “Come my wolves!” she shouted in English over the open comms. “Let us show them our teeth! Podhodite, volki, pokashem im nashi zubi!”

  The entire world chose that moment to open up. A flash brighter than the lightning cannon lit the sky and washed the color out of everything; Natalya was thankful not to have been staring directly at whatever had done it. The fighting completely stopped as the entire valley began to shake itself to near pieces. The quake became so inte
nse, even the Nazi troopers were taken from their feet; she saw one crushed under a falling piece of mountain.

  It took the Commissar a few heartbeats to convince herself that she was still alive, after the shaking had stopped. Standing up, she scanned the battlefield, looking for what had caused the devastation. Some new weapon? Some terror device?

  Bella Parker’s voice called out over her comm. “Red Leader, Red Leader. Infil scored. They’re out there in one of the grounded Orbs, please don’t frag them.”

  Some of the Nazi troopers had begun to run. Others were surrendering, climbing out of their suits. All of the Orbs had already changed their flight paths, and were climbing high into the sky. Very few of the remaining Thulians were still ready to fight. It was this last group that Red Saviour cared about. “Exterminate the svinyas,” she ordered, harshly. The surviving CCCP members growled or cheered raggedly, and waded in.

  * * *

  When he came to, everyone was a jumble of limbs and groans. “If anyone is being dead, take a number and being wait in line,” said Untermensch, slightly muffled. “Is correct Soviet way.”

  Bear piped up. “Reminds me of time I was in harem in Tuscany.”

  “There are no harems in Tuscany, old Bear,” growled Unter.

  “Schto?”

  John untangled himself from someone’s leg. “Can it, you two. Is everyone all right?”

  Mamona groaned, shifting so she could sit up. “I think my arm’s broken.” A pause. “Yeah, definitely broken. Ow, sir.”

  Bulwark was next. “All of my teeth are loose. Besides that and some scratches, I’m fine.”

  “That was a helluva A ticket ride. I wanta get back in line and do it again.” Red was completely unscathed. He slapped the orange square that irised the hatch. It was now on the “side” of the Orb, and next to John. “Anybody with me?”