Revolution: Book Three of the Secret World Chronicle

by Mercedes Lackey

  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. Its 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 fashista 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’ 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 OpTwos, 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 wisps 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 battle cry, 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 intense, 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.

  “Shto?”

  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?”

  The teams fell out of the hatch, those on the outside first helping everyone else out. Mamona and Matai were the toughest to get out, with special care attended to their injuries. Finally, everyone was out of the craft. John could see that there were large scars from the shrapnel of the explosion, with jagged tears in the hull.

  “Guys, look.” Mamona used her good arm to point back towards the Thulian base. “Just look at that.”

  A very large portion of the mountain where the Thulian North American Headquarters had occupied had exploded and then imploded, collapsing on itself. A gigantic cloud of dust had formed above where the main base was; plumes of black smoke streamed up from the crater itself where underground fires must still be burning. The nearest thing John had ever seen to it was the destruction caused by the Mt. St. Helen’s eruption. Luckily, aside from the blast wave, the destruction was localized; after all, they weren’t dead. There were dozens of Thulian Death Spheres streaking into the sky; he thought that a couple were actually on fire.

  “Oh, dear God in heaven.” Bella sounded exhausted. “Stand down, Infil. Most of the remaining Thulians are either running or surrendering. CCCP can mop up the rest . . . I think Echo had better concentrate on holding the Russian wolves off the ones surrendering if we want to collect any intel from prisoners.”

  “We did it,” Bulwark said, sounding as if he didn’t quite believe it. John nodded, then swayed on his feet. He collapsed to his knees, the world around him spinning and going dark.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Where There is Light

  MERCEDES LACKEY AND CODY MARTIN

  I didn’t find out about any of this until long after—like most of what went on between Johnny and the Seraphym. I’m just as glad . . . because what in hell would I have been able to do? This wasn’t a hack, and that sort of power . . .

  Let’s just say it is way above my pay grade. In the astronomical sense.

  * * *

  Seraphym had left him as long as she could. This was important to him, to his decision. Though it had cut her and flayed her with pain, she refrained from interfering so that he could earn what he needed.

  A victory.

  She looked up at Bella; linked closely as they were, Bella felt it too. She nodded. Before she had finished, Sera was already gone.

  Traveling as fast as thought, she was at his side. She felt the shock, then the awe, of those who saw her, but these things were not important.

  He was.

  She scooped him up in her arms, wrapped him in her wings, and they were gone.

  * * *

  It was not often that she . . . well, she supposed that mortals would call what she did “teleportation” although that was not it exactly. It was more that she held still and let the world move . . . but she didn’t do it often. She had, the day of the Invasion. She did, occasionally, when she almost had to be in two places at once.

  But she did so now. She folded herself and him inside time and space and unfolded them in his squat, letting him down on the mattress on the floor, then kneeling beside him and pouring life-force back into him. It was altogether like pouring water into a bucket that had very little bottom left.

  John was ragged. His face was covered in ash, dirt, and a horrifying amount of blood. His stealth uniform was similarly covered, and he looked like the walking dead. His complexion was growing more and more pale, and he had stopped sweating; this was not a good sign for someone as sick as he was. John was conscious, if only barely; he was fighting for every moment, soon every breath.

  She simply thought things into existence: a cool cloth to clean his face with, a cold glass of water to hold to his lips. When she had done everything she could do to make him physically comfortable, she simply took him in her arms and held him, cradled him, while she waited for some sort of equilibrium to happen. This was the crisis. He couldn’t last past dawn. He looked up at her with glazed eyes, tried to speak.

  Shh. Just think. I will hear it.

  John, holding onto his stubbornness even now, chose to speak aloud. Each word was a struggle, with long pauses in between sentences; his sickness had particularly affected his lungs. “We did all right, didn’t we? Got ’em good?”

  She brushed damp hair out of his eyes. “You did, beloved. Every . . . what is it? Every mission goal accomplished. You did not even lose any team members.”

  He nodded, a small part of him comforted by her assurance. “I’m glad. It won’t be enough though. Not just today, alone.”

  “This is at most a beginning.” She knew he would not thank her to be any less than honest. And he knew this, already; this was no attempt on her part to influence his decision. It was, at most, verification. And that was critical. This had to be his own decision, with no outside influence from her. That had been made very clear to her.

  It had been made clear to her . . . but it was also a choice. You, too, have Free Will, Seraphym. This was new and dangerous ground. In all this time, it had never occurred to her that she had such a thing, could make such a choice. Could make a wrong choice.

  Could make the sort of choice that had led to some of her Siblings becoming the Fallen.

  But he was at his weakest, and for her to exert that kind of influence . . . that would be wrong. Terribly wrong. If he chose against his own nature to please her . . . then he would not be, or not become, whatever it was he needed to be. Assuming he made the choice for life. And if he did not?

  It was tempting to think of this as a test. But the Infinite did not test anyone; circumstances might test and try someone, but these were not tests contrived to weigh and measure them, to see if they passed or failed. The Infinite, which saw all things, which saw the paths that she could not, would not force a path. And perhaps John, despite their love, would choose to die. And she would continue here, the Instrument, and try to find a new path. That would be his choice, and she, as Instrument of the Infinite, would honor it. That was the truest, best face of love; that one honored the choices of another. So the Infinite showed its love for its creations, by honoring their choices.

  Even, especially, when the choice hurt more than she had believed until now was possible.

  Tears slipped down her face. She let them. “I think you will see the sun rise, beloved . . . but not more. It is time for you to choose.” The room was slowly falling into darkness; she was the only light in it. It was dusk, here in Atlanta. His eyes were locked with hers, as if he was taking strength just from looking at her, concentrating fiercely, as if her face was the last thing he would ever see.

  He was still struggling for breath. “I choose life, and you’re cut off from everything you’ve ever known. Somethin’ bigger than I could imagine.” He paused, trying desperately to compose himself. “I die . . . an’ that’s a different sorta loss, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” she replied, softly, sadly. “I will be alone, without you. I . . . I knew of love, but you . . .” She could not articulate what she meant. Not without putting pressure on him. “I love you. And you will go on, somewhere.” She thought a moment. “I have never been mortal. While I have knowledge of mortals, of mortality, I do not understand it. Here.” She put his hand over her heart. “I know, but I do not feel, except when I live for a moment in the thoughts of a mortal. But that is only an instant, and then it is
gone. And I do not have that understanding of how you think. What decisions you might make, in the absence of knowledge of the futures. By myself there might come a time when that knowledge . . . where the cost of continuing to fight is more than mere mortals are willing to pay. How long does one fight in chains when there is nothing in the future but more chains?” She shook her head slightly. “I am not saying this well.”

  “Well, if you ain’t got freedom, what’s the point in livin’? Does that cover it?” He coughed, harsh and rasping, into his hand.

  She nodded. “I think, something like that. And I do not think—no, I know that as I am, I cannot tell when that point has come. Nor can I make that decision, not even for one person, much less a world.” She sighed. “But I will have to try. I accepted the task to be an Instrument. It is my duty, and it can only be taken from me, I cannot give it up. That is my nature. Without that, I would not be what I am, what you love.”

  John thought on this. He still had duty. He had his comrades in the CCCP that depended upon him. There were the people of his neighborhood as well. A long time ago, it seemed, he’d also taken an oath to defend his country, from enemies “foreign and domestic.” John wasn’t quite sure where the Thulians fell in that continuum. Overall, he had a duty to see this conflict through and make sure that people made it. Humanity. If nothing else, that there were still free and somewhat happy people to continue on. And, failing that, he still had his own wrongs that, while they couldn’t be righted, might be able to be corrected for in the grand equation.

  And then there was Sera. He had found happiness, again, in his own way. Happiness with her. It was something he’d been missing for years on end. Years of nothing but disgust, self-loathing, and unrelenting fear and rage. To be with Sera . . . it was something he wasn’t sure he was ready to give up.

  “Darlin’?” John suppressed a cough, looking hard into Sera’s eyes.