Avalanche: Book Five in the Secret World Chronicle

by Lackey, Mercedes

  She considered the options. While Mercurye could get her there faster, she wondered if this was better suited for a solo mission. “I’ll take the rocket, kiddo. It’s a short flight. Is there any way you can let him—Bill, I mean—let him know that I’m on my way?” The excitement made her voice waver more than she expected. “Just in case.”

  “Absolutely, Miss. I am in continuous contact with the Dockmaster. I’m telling him now. The other entity you saw is the metahuman known as the Goddess Amphitrite. She herself assumes she is the goddess, so it would be well to keep that in mind when you address her.”

  “Noted. I will do my best to not be smited where I stand, sit, or swim.”

  * * *

  Flying high above I-16, Ramona gritted her teeth and leaned to compensate for the slight headwind coming from the east. She could see the blue of the Atlantic in the distance and the winding blue-green of the Savannah River. Hope and excitement bubbled up in her throat with each passing minute. Was it really Bill? Bill, one of her first recruits in the middle of the Invasion, whose footsteps had left a path of broken buildings and class action lawsuits through the middle of Atlanta, and yet, who had saved more metahuman lives than she wanted to think about, and had turned the tide in the fight for the ECHO campus. Bill, called the Mountain, who had walked out into the churning waters of the Atlantic and who had disappeared from all of the satellites and surveys. Her great success…and her terrible failure.

  She swallowed hard and tried to make herself more aerodynamic while giving the jetpack an extra boost. The rush of superheated air over the backs of her thighs triggered a fresh layer of carapace that kept her from an embarrassing swath of burns. The combat engineering team had finally made her a pack that would keep her in the air and at speed, but the amount of heat it released would have roasted anyone else. At this point, she’d endure the burn if it meant seeing Bill again.

  And with a goddess, no less. Had he found her somewhere in the bottom of the ocean? Had he rescued her, or had she rescued him like one of those fairy tales with mermaids and drowning sailors? Ramona’s mind churned with possibilities as the number of streets and buildings below her increased. She called up a street map overlay on her HUD to guide her, figuring that even a small port would be busy enough to make finding them a challenge from the air.

  She flew over an elementary school, a note in the HUD marking the building as on lockdown given the current set of circumstances. Ramona started to ask Eight to give her the coordinates for Bill’s location, but she hit the reverse thrusters on her jetpack as she saw two massive figures looming over the container ships docked at the port. Given their relative size, the Savannah River might have been a bathtub with the tugs as rubber toy boats. She sucked in a breath and decreased her altitude, trying to figure out what to say when she met them face to face.

  But Bill solved part of the problem when he spotted her in the air. He must have been watching for her. “RAMONA!” he boomed, and held out his right hand, palm flat. “COME LAND HERE!”

  His voice shook the air, forcing her to recalculate her speed as she came in at a slightly awkward angle. She managed to touch down at the base of his index finger. Ramona cut the jetpack and turned the overlay off so she could see him clearly.

  Bill’s face loomed above her, familiar, but not. She knew it had to be him, but she didn’t remember Bill’s features being so smooth or well-defined. When she had first found him at Stone Mountain, he had resembled broken concrete, with hard edges and uneven patches of rock and gravel. The creature who held her had the appearance of a classic statue, something that would have stood guard at the mouth of a great seafaring empire, carved from a single massive stone. The eyes that studied her had none of the anguish that she remembered from before, but she still squirmed under his gaze.

  Ramona raised a hand in hesitant greeting. Tears already threatened to spill down her cheeks, so she drew a deep breath before speaking. “I didn’t remember you being this tall,” she offered with a smile. “You…you look good, Bill. Really good.”

  Bill smiled and modulated his voice down to what, for him, was probably a whisper. It was still…loud. “You mean, you don’t remember me looking like a Greek statue. That’s Amphitrite’s doing. And we’re calling me ‘Atlas’ now. You’ve changed too, Ramona.”

  She grinned, a dorky sob escaping around the smile. This high up, only Bill would see the ugly-relieved crying if it came to that. “An accident. Bella says it helped trigger a metagene or something. We came up with ‘Steel Maiden’ on account of my new heavy metal persona.”

  “So you’re a meta, and at least an OpThree now? Wowsers.” He raised his free hand to scratch his stone hair. “Well, look, we can catch up later. Amphitrite and me want to help with the Space Nazis. We know where they are, out in the ocean. We checked the place out. ’Te is really pissed about them messing up her ocean and even more pissed about what I told her about them. So, how can we help, other than showing you where they are?”

  Her mouth hung open. All of the information, it was too much to process in such a short space of time, Ramona sat down hard on Bill’s hand, her still-metallic backside scraping the stone. She blinked rapidly at him and scrubbed at her face with one hand. “Help? Of course, I’ll let the folks at HQ know, they’d be more than happy for the information, and I’m sure they can use the help, but…” Her throat burned, but she pushed the words out. “But you’re here, and you’re alive, and you want to help?”

  Another face loomed over her: the unnaturally beautiful and enormous face of Amphitrite. Her voice, at least, was at normal speaking tones. “Atlas has pointed out to me that although these…creatures…have as yet only meddled in small ways with my realm, they will no doubt turn their attentions to it, and to me, now that they are moving to world conquest. And as damaging as you mortals can be to my realm and my creatures, they would be infinitely moreso. Therefore, yes, we will help.”

  Ramona smiled at the sea goddess, then remembered the goddess part and lowered her head. Her only experience with anything deitylike had been through conversations with Sera, and the creature here was infinitely more terrifying. There was probably a rule about eye contact. “Thank you, ma’am,” she said, standing but keeping her head bowed.

  “Oh, please do not grovel,” the sea goddess said impatiently. “I am not some tedious god that expects prostrations. It is very difficult to hold a conversation when one of the two people in it is lying flat on her face.”

  Ramona snorted and lifted her head. “Fair enough, ma’am. Like I told Bill, er, Atlas, I’m sure that we’d be more than happy to have your help beyond simple information. I’m not the one in charge of logistics, but I know who is, and I can pass along your offer immediately.” She checked the appropriate channels and flagged the Colt Brothers. While Eight could track all of the minute details regarding her dual-deity conversation, she needed those two to work alongside the prodigy. “So, you said they’re out in the ocean? How far out? And what kind of scale are we talking about? Bigger than a sea goddess, smaller than a continent?”

  “’Te and I did a walkabout. The whole shebang is about fifteen clicks end to end, and seven and a half wide,” Bill said. But Amphitrite had something to add.

  “It is wrapped in a…magic curtain,” she said. “That makes it invisible. But we can ‘see’ it, or I can, by the water it moves.”

  “That’d be a force field and the water displacement,” Bill said helpfully. “I don’t know any news about these goons since I walked away from Atlanta, have you seen something like that before?”

  Ramona grimaced. “Unfortunately. The fortress they had at Ultima Thule had a shielding system that matches your description. Considering how we were able to get through it, they’ve probably modified this one to account for how our teams were able to take down its predecessor.” Her stomach knotted as she recalled that it had been Djinni’s team that had gotten the job done. One hit, and the entire thing shattered like some enormous alien eggshell. �
��Multiple power sources in secure locations throughout the area. And…” She did some more mental math with Bill’s estimate of the base’s size. “Fifteen kilometers from end to end puts it barely inside the Loop back home. That’s a lot of area to search and hold, even with a sizeable force and advance knowledge.”

  Amphitrite leaned in closer. “The…object…is shaped like two halves of a fully opened shell,” she said. “If it were two halves of a sphere, each half would be as deep at the deepest point as it is wide, but it is not. The halves more closely resemble shallow bowls, joined at one point. That means you would be forced to cross from one to the other at the point where they joined. Or have two groups, each searching one half.”

  “Ramona, Eight pinged me and updated me.” The hoarse voice was Vickie, as usual sounding as if she was burning her candle in about six places at once. “I’ve got a question. Will either Amphitrite or Atlas or both agree to being wired for Overwatch Two?” There was a sound that might have been a laugh if there had been anything like humor in it. “Nice thing about them being so big, I don’t need to give them one of the miniature sets. And if you lay out the target I gave you, I can send the stuff straight to you now.”

  “We’ll see, won’t we?” She took a deep breath and regarded each of the massive metas in turn. “Our resident techno-shaman thinks that bringing you on the team would be great, but it would be easier if we could have you wired onto our secure communications network. It’s a little involved, but worth it.” Ramona gave a quick rundown of the three implants, doing her best to relay use and placement without resorting to complex descriptions. “The best part,” she finished with a smile, “is that you’re barely a breath away from any updates or changes to what’s going on in the field. Instant information.”

  Amphitrite held up her hand. “Are these things you describe derived from the workings of Hecate of the Full Moon or of the Dark?”

  “Tell her Full Moon,” Vickie said immediately.

  “Full Moon,” Ramona repeated. “Why?”

  “Then I accept. Atlas may also if he chooses. There is no harm in accepting the fruit of gifts bestowed by my fellow goddess, and much benefit may be derived therefrom.” Amphitrite gave Bill a long look that might or might not have included some unspoken communication.

  Bill shrugged. “I’m game,” he said. “Be nice to have a way to talk to you folks without blowing your eardrums out.”

  “Take that square of cloth out of your far right belt pouch and unfold it,” said Vickie. “This is funny, I’m actually using the prototypes we created for testing before we miniaturized. Never thought I’d use them for anything other than doorstops.”

  There was a pumph of displaced air, and six ovoids about the size and shape of footballs appeared on the unfolded cloth: two red, two green, and two blue. “We’ll start with the vocal component first. Have our friends pick up the red ones on the tip of a finger and put it on the soft palate above the tongue.”

  A very few minutes later, minutes Ramona remembered vividly from her own experience, and “Testing, one, two, three,” whispered in her head in Bill’s voice, followed by “This is…fascinating” in Amphitrite’s.

  Ramona beamed at the pair of them. “Isn’t it? Just wait until you start to experiment with the mapping overlays. One dive underwater and you’ll literally flood the database with all sorts of new information…” She trailed off, eyes widening as she realized what she had said.

  But she got an unexpected response from Amphitrite. “Good. I can finally show you mortals where your poisons have been dumped and are harming my ocean. I expect you to help me clean up your messes now, and no excuses.”

  On Ramona’s channel came Vickie’s whisper. “Goddess. Remember that. Goddess. I do not want to have to tell Yank to retrieve a squashed disk with your face on it.”

  “The information would certainly help, and we can relay those locations to people who are far better suited to that kind of assistance,” Ramona responded smoothly. “But if we don’t know more about the location of this floating double-shell base and how it’s affecting the immediate area, I don’t know how much longer there’ll be anyone on the planet with the resources to help with that kind of cleanup. I can promise you that whatever you’re seeing, it’s getting sent back and cataloged.”

  “I can track you; all you have to do is walk out to it,” said Vickie.

  “Or maybe even beneath it?” Ramona faced Bill with a thoughtful expression. “Just how deep are the waters where this thing is located?”

  “It’s in a shallowish spot; ten thousand feet, give or take.”

  “And how tall are you these days, Bill?” Standing on his hand, she didn’t have any reference for height. From where she stood on his finger, his wrist was almost thirty feet away.

  Bill squinted at the Savannah skyline. “Thirty, forty stories, give or take? About a thousand feet, I guess. But don’t worry, I’ve been deeper than that. And ’Te has ways of fixing things so I can swim. Dunno how it works, I just know it does.”

  She ran the rough calculations in her head. “Vickie, double-check me on the math, but even if this floating fortress is fifteen kilometers wide and we’re looking at something about nine thousand feet deep, it’s possible for them to have plenty of clearance underneath it, right? Unless—” Ramona frowned. “Does that force field go all the way down?”

  “It does not,” Amphitrite said instantly. “We have been beneath it. The magic shield follows the contours of the bottom of the objects. In shape it is not unlike the symbol of omega, with a very fat middle. It does touch the bottom at the deepest point of the bowls, but only just. There is plenty of room for us below it, even to swim rather than walking along the bottom.”

  “I don’t think they’re paying any attention to anything under the ocean that’s not made of metal,” Bill added helpfully. “Plus, ’Te can mask us with lots and lots of fish.”

  “Lots and lots” likely added up to hundreds of thousands, given their size. Ramona steeled herself for the ask, keeping Vickie’s goddess reminder at the forefront of her mind. “We’re still trying to get a plan together, but we’re short on time. Having both of you able to see the base and send that information to us could be the difference between success and failure. We share a common desire to rid the planet of this menace, and your involvement can help us put together a plan that can minimize the impact to your oceans.”

  Amphitrite smiled. “I trust you, and the votary of Hecate who speaks in my ear. And we are…Atlas says, ‘In this for all the marbles.’ I know you must attack these Space Nazis where they hide, and we will be a part of that. But let us accomplish what we can in this moment.”

  Bill chuckled. It sounded like thunder. “That’s our cue, Ramona. We’re gonna go take a walk. See you when we get back.”

  Ramona beamed and kicked her jetpack into gear, careful to push backward and away from the massive stone palm. She hovered at nearly eye level with him, her grin impossibly wide. “You look better. You look wonderful, and not because of the whole sculpted thing. You look happy, Bill. Really and truly, y’know?”

  He chuckled again and turned, small waves rocking the boats that had surrounded the pair in the river. Ramona hovered in place as they walked out through the channel, Amphitrite leading the way through the comparably shallow water. Once they disappeared around the bend and the waves subsided, she kicked the pack into gear and headed back toward ECHO’s campus.

  But Bill had one last quip for her. “Hey, Ramona, when this is over? ECHO needs to hire ’Te as a shrink. She’s nicer than you are at it.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  * * *

  Season of the Witch

  Mercedes Lackey, Cody Martin. Dennis Lee and Veronica Giguere

  Now we had the location of the Thulian World Ship verified by not just one, but two sources. In fact, when Amphitrite and Atlas finished their initial survey, we had verification of the location by GPS coordinates, and you couldn’t ask for anything better t
han that.

  Which meant it was time to organize for what we hoped would be the penultimate battle to drive the Thulians off our planet. But because this was humans we are talking about…that was easier said than done.

  Assuming this is being read by other humans, and not mutated radioactive cockroaches, I am going to skip all of the negotiations, cajoling, blackmailing, and yelling that went on. Fortunately, even the most recalcitrant leaders were terrified and desperate, and ECHO really held all the cards at this point.

  It was pretty obvious that there were a lot of nations that were not going to be able to contribute substantially to this battle. Rather than humiliate them, Spin Doctor had the brilliant plan of making them our “fallback”—if the combined forces lost this fight, it would be up to them to carry on for humanity. To that end, they all went off to put their “end of the world” plans into motion. Spin encouraged diversity of plans. “Try everything,” he said. “This is not the time to put too many eggs in too few baskets.”

  For the rest of us, it was obvious that the Russians, the Chinese, the US, the UK, and the Euro block were going to field their own separate armies. The rest, like the Euro block, organized under whoever had the largest force in that particular area, which led to the incredible sight of the Indians, Pakistanis, and all the other forces of that part of the world cooperating and agreeing that India would represent them.

  There was a lot more yelling and unnecessary argument before that was over. And whether you are a human or a cockroach, Reader, I will spare you all of it, and as Bella would say, cut to the chase; the final meeting where ECHO presented the battle plans.

  “So.” Bella looked around the tables. If there was ever an incongruous setting for what might be the most important meeting in the history of the world, this was it.