The Daedalus Incident Revised

by Michael Martinez

  And one day, he thought, with or without the help of this mysterious alchemist, France will know the name Napoleone di Buonaparte.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  It would be impossible to list everyone who had a hand in the genesis of this novel, but I’ll do my best with the space I have. If you’re not listed here, I assure you the omission isn’t intentional!

  My mother always encouraged a love of books and writing, and bought me my first copy of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons books before I even turned 10. And my late grandfather always told me that hard work and determination would pay off. Thank you, Mom and Pop.

  More than 20 years in journalism and communications has left me with a ton of people to thank for making me the writer I am today. If you ever edited anything I wrote, know that I was listening—even when it seemed I wasn’t—and that you helped me get to the point where I could write this book.

  My fantastic agent, Sara Megibow, believed in this book before it was even any good, and taught me so much about the art and business of writing. She is an outstanding agent and a better human being. Never has there been a more determined advocate, and I firmly believe you would not be reading this without her efforts.

  I must also thank my old friend Andrew Montgomery, a fantastic writer in his own right, for his ideas and critiques of this book over the past decade. Likewise, Jason M. Hough has been very generous with his time and thoughts on this project, even while working on his own novels. And John LeMaire not only lent his name to a pirate, but used his art to plant amazing visuals in my head so many years ago.

  Jeremy Lassen of Night Shade Books continues to take chances on debut writers, and for that I am most grateful. I learned so much from my editor, Ross E. Lockhart, about what works and doesn’t work in fiction writing, and his patience and encouragement were amazing. Thank you to both of you, and to everyone at NSB.

  Then there are the two people who make everything in my life worthwhile. My amazing daughter Anna is the soul of kindness, encouragement and love. I hope this book shows her the power of following your dreams and working hard, just like my grandfather’s example showed me. You can do it, kid, whatever “it” is.

  My wife, Kate, has truly helped make me the person I am to today. Without her patience, support, faith and love, I wouldn’t be anywhere near the man I want to be, and this book just wouldn’t be here. I love you, Kate.

  Finally, to whomever is reading this book, thanks for giving it a shot. I hope you like it!

  Michael J. Martinez

  COMING FALL 2016 FROM MICHAEL J. MARTINEZ AND NIGHT SHADE BOOKS

  A team of superhuman covert operatives emerges from the ashes of World War II in a Cold War-era paranormal espionage thriller from acclaimed genre-bender Michael J. Martinez.

  It is a new world, stunned by the horrors that linger in the aftermath of total war. The United States and Soviet Union are squaring off in a different kind of conflict, one that’s fought in the shadows, where there are whispers of strange and mysterious developments . . .

  Normal people across the United States have inexplicably gained paranormal abilities. A factory worker can heal the sick and injured. A schoolteacher bends emotions to her will. A car salesman alters matter with a simple touch. A former soldier speaks to the dying and gains their memories as they pass on.

  They are the Variants, controlled by a secret government program called MAJESTIC-12 to open a new front in the Cold War.

  From the deserts of Nevada to the palaces of Istanbul, the halls of power in Washington to the dark, oppressive streets of Prague, the Variants are thrown into a deadly game of shifting alliances. Amidst the seedy underbelly of nations, these once-ordinary Americans dropped in extraordinary circumstances will struggle to come to terms with their abilities as they fight to carve out a place for themselves in a world that may ultimately turn against them.

  And as the MAJESTIC-12 program will soon discover, there are others out there like them, some with far more malevolent goals . . .

  August 6, 1945

  Cities shouldn’t be silent.

  Berlin, however, felt nearly dead, figuratively and literally, and the thought sent chills up Frank Lodge’s spine as he led his men on night patrol through the U.S. administrative area of the former Nazi capital. There was a strictly enforced curfew, of course, so in the middle of the night there were no civilians on the streets, which were still clogged with stone and debris from the bombings. The only cars to be seen were the ones half-buried under rubble.

  There were no streetlights either: the Allies—and the Soviets as well—were still struggling to restore even the most basic of public services. Sanitation was a disaster, and the smells from the summer heat lingered well after midnight, especially here near the Landwehr Canal, which had become both a watering hole and an open sewer.

  Because of all this, the silence was practically audible in its own way, a distinct lack of sound that seemed to fill Frank’s ears with an eerie ring. He struggled subconsciously to find something—anything—that might give off a sign of life in this battered city. Sounds would’ve given Frank’s men something to react to, something to follow, something that would alleviate the creeping dread that accompanied each step through the hollowed-out streets.

  He got far more than he’d asked for. The gunshot cracked out from the darkness without warning, and a soldier fell almost before the sound was heard.

  Frank instinctively hit the deck, the cobblestones jutting into his ribs as he pulled his pistol and aimed at the darkness across the canal. There was nothing there, just a battered, pock-marked bridge serving as a no-man’s-land between where the Americans holed up and the Soviets hunkered down in the ruined heart of occupied Berlin.

  To Frank’s right, the downed man made a gasping, choking noise. One of his soldiers. Again. And yet, the sound caused his heart to race, cleared his thoughts. Immediacy gave purpose.

  “Everyone down! Hold fire!” Frank yelled, even though the squad was already prone and scrambling for cover. Rifles were trained across the canal, ready to respond.

  “Are the Reds shooting at us, lieutenant?” one of his men asked. His voice was a mix of bewilderment and raw panic.

  “Shut up,” Frank growled. “Keep down.” He needed to think. Maybe the shot did come from across the canal, which was Soviet territory. If that were the case, they would need to be extremely careful. No use in starting another war so soon after wrapping up the last one.

  Frank crawled over to the downed man. It was Private Tony Abruzzo, one of the newer guys who’d come over in the spring, brought in to replace all the casualties in the Ardennes. Good kid, he thought. Funny, just turned twenty a few weeks back. Shit.

  The medic was already there, practically laying on top of Abruzzo, poking around at the wound in his chest. He listened to the private’s breathing, then looked up at Frank with a resigned shake of his head. Frank was far from a doctor, but even he could hear it: shot in the lung, damn thing was collapsing. From the angle, looked like it probably got into his gut, too.

  The private didn’t have long.

  “Hold positions!” Frank ordered. “Doc, give me a hand. Let’s get him off the damn street.”

  Together, the two men quickly moved Abruzzo toward the rubble on the side of the Schöneberger Ufer. The squad hunkered down behind the piles of brick and wood and peered into the darkness across the street and canal. The silence settled back down onto them like a pall, except for Abruzzo’s labored, final breaths and the labors of the radioman upstairs in the ruined building; he was trying for a clear signal in order to report in and, hopefully, get some help.

  Frank settled the dying man down with the medic and quietly ducked over to his sergeant, a grizzled vet by the name of Sam Grogan. “Sarge?” he asked, trying to keep his cool as he waited for his orders, even as his mind reeled and urge grew in his belly telling him the only sane course of action would be to simply turn tail and get out of there.

  “Seems like a one-off
,” Grogan replied grimly, quietly, as he squinted off in the distance. “Pissed off German or drunk Ruskie. Take your pick.” He paused. “They’re going to want someone to investigate, sir.”

  Frank frowned. “Yes they are, sergeant,” he said quietly. “Find me a path across that bridge that doesn’t have our asses exposed.”

  Grogan nodded, and Frank returned to the medic. Abruzzo was breathing quickly, shallowly, labored. He was going quickly now.

  Frank knelt down next to the dying man and took his hand. “Private Abruzzo. This is Lieutenant Lodge. You hear me OK?”

  Abruzzo’s eyes shifted toward his lieutenant, and that would have to be enough. Frank leaned in.

  “Listen, Tony. You’re getting out of this shit-hole. Not the best way out, but it’s out. I’m gonna see you off, and it’s gonna be OK. You hear me, private? It’s gonna be OK.”

  Abruzzo gave a ghost of a nod and tightened his grip slightly on Frank’s hand. And with a rattle in his chest and a small, quick convulsion, he was gone.

  “Mark the map for retrieval,” Frank said simply as he placed Abruzzo’s hand gently on his chest. “If we can’t get him later, we’ll make sure someone does.”

  The medic nodded and pulled out his tattered map of the city, already stained with someone else’s blood. “Every time, you do that,” he said. “You think it helps?”

  Frank shrugged as he got up. “Nobody should die alone.”

  There was no good way to get across the Landwehr Canal with any kind of real cover. Worse, no one could identify the usual Red checkpoint on the other side of the bridge. The last thing Frank wanted was to cross over into Russian-occupied territory, only to run into a Soviet squad, especially if Grogan was right and they’d been hitting the vodka. The Reds were fanatics about their turf in Berlin; every bridge and street had a well-armed, well-staffed checkpoint. And even if the Russians didn’t have enough men to staff every little intersection, this was the Wilhelmstrasse, one of Berlin’s biggest thoroughfares. So where the hell was it?

  Grogan ducked over to Frank’s position to report. “I got nothing over there, lieutenant. All dark. Seems like there’s some kind of emplacement there, but it’s unmanned, far as I can tell. I don’t like this one bit.”

  Frank nodded in grim agreement. “Anything from base?”

  “Yeah,” the sergeant said, holding up the “handie-talkie” radio. “No friendlies out here. We’re trying to reach the Russians now, but it’s now official: we’ve been ordered to investigate.”

  Frank clenched and unclenched his fists as he stared out across the canal, into the pitch-black night. Orders and were orders, and one of his men was dead. Despite all the horrors Frank experienced in fighting through France and Germany, he couldn’t let that stand. Frank didn’t care about which country held which city block, but he’d be damned if he was going to let some drunk Russian get away with murder.

  Grabbing Grogan by the arm, Frank ducked over to where the rest of his squad was huddled. “All right. Weapons out but not aimed. Form up, stick to the sides, and double-time across. Cover on either side, unless we run into the Reds. Then hands up and say ‘Preyviet.’ Got it?” Frank said. The men nodded. Grogan led the way across, with Frank taking up the rear, keep an eye out for trouble behind them.

  There was none. And there wasn’t any at the other side of the bridge, either. Two piles of sandbags on either side of the street marked the checkpoint, but it wasn’t manned— damned odd. Beyond that was an intersection, ruined buildings on every corner. There were a handful of guttering lights in the windows, but otherwise total darkness and a deathly silence. The streets were barren; after midnight the Reds were just as strict about curfew as the Americans, British, and French were. Nobody trusted the Germans.

  The squad took cover behind the sandbags, peering off down the dimly lit street, looking to Frank to lead. “I don’t like it,” Grogan repeated—this time, loud enough for the rest of the squad to hear. “We’re in Red territory but they ain’t here. Something’s wrong.”

  Several of the men nodded in agreement, and Frank couldn’t blame them one bit.

  “I don’t like it either. But Tony’s dead and we’ve got orders. So let’s go take care of it,” Frank said, squaring his jaw. “Same two groups. Stick to the sides of the street, use rubble for cover. We head up Wilhelmstrasse until we either find our shooter or meet up with some Russians. Let’s go.”

  The men moved out, but Grogan waited a moment behind and sidled up to his lieutenant. “You know we’re about three or four blocks from the Reich Chancellery,” he said quietly, so as not to worry the men. “That place will be crawling with Reds.”

  Frank nodded; the Russians were the ones to take the city back in April, and they had held on to the best parts of it since, including all the Nazi government buildings and Hitler’s headquarters. Nobody Frank had spoken to really trusted the Soviets. They were in bed with Hitler before they got screwed over, for starters. Their troops all looked desperate and malnourished, yet mean as hell and drunk off their asses more often than not. Some of the horror stories from the Soviet occupation zone were tough to think about—food and property stolen from civilians, women and girls raped, men killed for no goddamn good reason. Allies was too good a word for ‘em, Frank thought.

  “Then I guess we better step lively, Sarge. Let’s go.”

  The men started up Wilhelmstrasse as ordered. Every murmur and footstep echoed off the silent walls, every bit of rubble kicked up skittered across the street like an avalanche. Frank gritted his teeth. With each step, he became more convinced that they were sitting ducks, caught out in territory that, while not strictly enemy turf, wasn’t exactly friendly, either.

  Another block went by at a slow crawl. For a moment, Frank saw a shadow move across a window three floors up. He raised his pistol, but by then it was already gone. He fought back the growing feeling of frustration, the urge to storm the building, barge in, take prisoners, protect his men at all costs. But they weren’t, strictly speaking, soldiers anymore. They were kind of like cops now. Frank heard that the Russians were pretty cruel to the Berliners in their quarter of the city, and the United States was determined to act better. Frank could only hope that the shadow at the window was merely a curious onlooker, just as nervous as he was.

  It wasn’t the window Frank should’ve worried about.

  The first bullet zipped all too close to his head, and then sound of multiple shots and muzzle flashes filled the street around them. Frank ducked behind a pile of rubble and got low, barking a quick “Cover!” to his squad. He risked a quick glance out into the street, and saw two of his men were dead already, crumpled in the middle of the thoroughfare. And the shots were still coming.

  “Return fire!” Frank yelled as he readied his pistol. He eyed the M1 that one of the downed men still had in his hands and cursed himself for not grabbing a carbine before joining the patrol. No way this was coming from the Russians, but where were they? This area was supposed to be pacified.

  Shots and flashes turned the dark, silent streets into a cacophony of sound and light. Frank couldn’t see or hear much. He fired blindly ahead, hoping they could at least buy themselves enough room to retreat back across the bridge. But they were under constant fire, and it was coming in heavier now.

  Radio. Frank looked around for the signal corps man who kept the radio handy. He spotted him on the other side of the street, slumped lifelessly against a pile of rubble, blood pooling around him. Of the eleven men he’d crossed the bridge with, Frank could only account for five still shooting.

  A flash of light from above startled him; he looked up and saw more fire from the second and third floors of the ruined buildings around him.

  Ambush. He should’ve worried about the windows after all.

  “Inside!” Frank shouted. “Get inside!” Entering a building with known combatants wasn’t the best plan, but it was better than sitting in a shooting gallery. Frank crouched down and rushed toward a door-s
ized hole in the wall of an old townhouse, grabbing the arm of one of his men as he ran past.

  The soldier fell lifelessly over on his side.

  Reaching cover, Frank allowed himself a moment to gather his wits. Maybe four or five men left. No sign of Grogan. Limited ammo. And the goddamn radio was out in the open on the street. From the sounds of gunfire he still heard, he figured there had to be at least six snipers still firing. Six! And where the hell are all the Russians?

  Frank looked around desperately, trying to work the problem and find a solution rather than give in to panic. He was in the ruins of a townhouse. The furniture in which he guessed was the front parlor was half-crushed with rubble and covered in dust, and there was a gaping hole in the ceiling where a nice chandelier had probably once hung. It looked like someone punched a hole in a Better Homes & Gardens magazine. There was movement in other buildings, glimpses of light and shadow he could catch from the ruins of the doorway. But friend or foe? He couldn’t say.

  Moments passed. Frank was about to edge toward the doorway, prepared to shout for retreat, to have his men stay moving within the gutted ruins for as long as possible, then regroup where they left Abruzzo’s body.

  Before he could take another step forward, he felt cold metal press against the nape of his neck.

  “Guten abend, herr leutnant,” the voice behind him said.

  At the same time, an older man in civilian clothes emerged from the shadows in front of Frank—training a rifle at his chest.

  His heart sinking, Frank dropped his pistol and slowly raised his hands. “’Evening, boys,” he said, tired and defiant all at once.

  The man behind him threw a sack over Frank’s head, and Frank wondered if he’d ever see light again.