Avalanche: Book Five in the Secret World Chronicle

by Lackey, Mercedes

  Natalya brushed the front of her uniform off, her eyes meeting Boryets’. “No big battle. No great speeches. You don’t get to save the world, Uncle. You abandoned it long ago, after all. Now, it will abandon you. Dead on an alien street from a cheap bullet. I only hope that memory of you and your betrayal fades until no one even remembers who you were.”

  Soviette again stepped forward, leveling the pistol at Boryets’ head. He ignored her, his eyes boring into the Commissar. “Natalya…” The rage was completely absent. The only thing she saw in his eyes now…was sadness, maybe a little bit of gratitude. She felt her throat close, choked with emotion. He was a bastard, a cowardly traitor who had turned on everything he believed in before she was even born, and who had killed her best friend. But still…No, she told herself, clamping down on her doubts. No forgiveness for this one. She promptly spun on her heel, her back turned to Boryets as she walked away. She heard the hammer of Jadwiga’s Makarov cock, and waited for the gunshot…but it never came. Natalya spun around to witness the scene. Despite everything that awful, traitorous bastard has done, I didn’t want to watch him die. What the hell is going on?

  “I can’t. I can’t kill him…” Sovie was trembling, and not just from exhaustion. A flood of emotions crossed her face, and acute distress shone from her eyes. “I know I told you how much I wanted to, Natalya, but now that the moment comes, I cannot.”

  Thea stepped away from Boryets and took the gun from Soviette’s unresisting hand. “Of course not, my sestra. You are a healer.” She pressed the barrel against Boryets’ forehead. “I, however, am not.”

  Thea pulled the trigger. The light fled Boryets’ eyes as he crumpled to the ground; Natalya flinched at the sound of his dead weight hitting the street more than she did from the gunshot. He didn’t look like the giant from her childhood, the hero from the old propaganda reels, or even the traitor that had murdered her best friend. He just looked like an old man, finally resting.

  Thea handed the gun back to Soviette; Jadwiga looked at the gun in her hands as if it was made of plutonium. She couldn’t look away from it, either. “Comrade Doctor. You and I should go help those who deserve your care. I cannot hold onto his life-force…his vitality, for very long. There was quite a lot of it.” Natalya noticed that Thea was shivering where she stood with barely contained energy. “There is no redemption for him, but using his life to save our true comrades is some reparation.”

  That seemed to snap Jadwiga out of her trance. Gingerly, she holstered the gun, nodding to Thea absently. “Da. Da. There is work to do, still.”

  “I’ll come with y’all,” Mamona piped up. Natalya had initially harbored misgivings about the American metahuman. But in the end, she had turned out to be a sturdy comrade, and it was never more evident. She’s truly one of us. A moment later, all three were gone, running to find people to help.

  Natalya lingered for a few moments longer, looking at the body of the man that used to be Worker’s Champion, the pride of the Soviet Union. Like that grand experiment, Worker’s Champion was dead. Natalya left him there in the street, just another body amongst the others.

  * * *

  With a grunt, Red picked himself up off the ground, his mind growing clearer as his burnt flesh sloughed off and was replenished by growing ropes of muscle and connective tissue. He came to his feet in time to see Vickie dodging Barron’s increasingly frustrated attacks. He knew Vickie had faced large opponents before. Given her diminutive stature, it was safe to say most of her opponents had towered over her, and she obviously knew how to take advantage of that disparity in size. But the larger opponents were usually brutes, ones laden down with bulky muscles that delivered slow and clumsy blows. Barron was different. She was fast, her strikes precise and deadly, and it was all Vickie could do to keep moving, to keep dodging out of the way. Red wondered why Barron wasn’t striking with her lancing heat attacks, but a few wisps of smoke trailing off Vickie’s singed hair revealed she had. If Red had to guess, Vickie’s armor was fireproof. Or maybe she’d even woven magic fire resistance into her own skin. It made sense. The last thing Victoria Victrix would ever allow herself to suffer again was fire.

  Red glanced to his right down a corridor that seemed to stretch on forever. The chamber with the doomsday missile lay beyond the next portal. It was part of the unspoken plan, that one of them had to get to it, to stop it from launching. He knew what was at stake here. Whether or not their forces outside were able to overcome the ship’s defenses, it wouldn’t matter much if there wasn’t still a planet left to stand on. But this was Vickie. Everything that they had endured, everything that had brought them to this point, she was the one who had kept them going. They couldn’t lose her. Not now. He couldn’t lose her.

  As far as he was concerned, there wasn’t any choice in the matter. He willed the mass to come, to expand until he was almost as large as Barron, as surprised as the first time, how easily he could control his new body. He supposed he knew that it was remnants of Karoline that allowed him to do so. Something deep, muscle memory perhaps, as he drew from her history of sampling meta-abilities to instinctively grasp the fundamentals of his new talents. When he needed to be bigger, he was. When he needed extra layers of protection, be they fire-resistant or dense enough to absorb impact, he simply willed them to spring up around himself. He was still learning what he was now capable of, and what little he knew he called forth. He charged, and by the time he was barreling into Barron’s flank, he was a twelve-foot-tall behemoth clad in a black, rubbery coating.

  Again, her speed surprised him. With a quick feint towards Vickie, Barron ducked out of Red’s charge and spun away, but not before leveling a massive blow to his knee. Red felt his leg crack under him, and he wobbled down to one knee in front of Vickie.

  “Red!” Vickie screamed.

  But Red was already rising, wincing from the pain as his leg reset itself. He risked a glance down, and saw extra padding forming around his vulnerable joints. He couldn’t say if it was a conscious effort or something deeper, instinctive, but he seemed to possess some rather handy adaptive capabilities now. With a mere thought, he willed the same protection around his shoulders, his elbows, wrists, hips and ankles. With an afterthought, he thickened his skull for good measure, interlacing an ultraresilient bone with shock-absorbing membranes.

  “Go for her throat, her eyes, her heart if you can manage it,” Red whispered. “I’ll do what I can to keep her attention.”

  Vickie nodded, and together they turned to face their adversary.

  Barron stood before them, waiting, patiently flexing and stretching in place. She cocked her head to one side, and sized them up. “You may prove amusing after all. A morsel, before the feast.”

  Vickie rolled her eyes. “You are such an asshole,” she said, and brought her blades to the ready. Red could feel her anticipation, her relaxed stance a mere facade. He felt it coming off her in waves. Despite it all, despite what was on the line here, she was enjoying herself. It seemed crazy, but he supposed he understood it. Victoria Victrix had been a prisoner in her own body for years now. There had been pain with every step, with every breath, with every thought. Once upon a time, she had been the warrior. When someone needed saving, she had leapt to the call. Ever since she had been scarred, she had retreated into a shell of herself. It wasn’t her on the frontlines anymore, she was the one who had needed saving. Oh, how she must have loathed that. But now here she was, in the heart of the dungeon, clad in her armor once again, nimbly dancing around her giant opponent, her weapons in hand. Whatever she had done to get here, to this place, she had once again earned the name of Warrior.

  “Time to kill us a dragon,” Red murmured.

  “Damn right,” Vickie snarled. “I’ve got point.”

  “Like hell you do…”

  Together, they leapt into the fray. Barron watched them, bemused, as they flanked her. Red grunted as Barron jabbed at him, catching him with a deft blow to his midsection. He staggered back and
Vickie darted away, Barron’s swift and deadly fists forcing her to keep her distance. The jab had been nothing, a fraction of Barron’s enormous strength, but he felt a part of him screaming. He took a breath as he felt the bulk of his guts liquify, then shudder, then regenerate. It occurred to him that it wasn’t the trauma that might do him in. If he had to guess, he could continue to take blows like that for hours…but her strength! What could she do to him if she managed to get a grip? He imagined being ripped to shreds, his parts hurled to the far reaches of the room…

  He watched, in horror, as Vickie executed the same Parkour stunt she had against Doppelgaenger, flipping over the head of the monster and lashing out with her sword—

  —neatly slicing the tip off one of Barron’s upraised claws before she landed and scuttled out of the way of retaliation.

  But there was no retaliation. Barron was momentarily in shock, staring at the black viscous blood that flowed freely from a newly exposed appendage.

  “Impossible,” Barron gasped. “You cut through my armor! Nothing of this world could possibly…”

  “Like I said,” Vickie panted to Red. “Still sharp. Just not nanoblade sharp.”

  “Alright, alright…” Red muttered. “You’ve got point.”

  Barron stared at him, snarled, and completely turned away from him. He wasn’t the threat, after all. The small woman with the really, really sharp blades was, and Barron clearly was not used to anything being a threat. She watched Vickie intently, her stance dropping to a cautious prowl as she slowly began to close the distance to the defiant mage.

  “Really?” Red called after her. “You don’t want to play anymore? Just with her? This a girl power thing?”

  “You are of no moment,” Barron hissed back, her eyes fixed on Vickie’s blades. “Your inexperience with your new body betrays you. You have not even touched your potential. You cannot possibly hurt me. You are…”

  Barron hissed as Red Djinni rushed her from behind, locking her two fighting arms behind her in a sudden hold, her remaining arms flailing about in protest. He struggled with her, almost losing his grip as she thrashed against his weight, until he brought his arms together and willed them to fuse, and to expand. This time it wasn’t flesh or reinforced bone. He almost stopped, amazed at himself, as he watched strands of webbing erupt from the pores of his skin, flying into place until he was bound to her, her huge arms caught in a reinforced cocoon of silk.

  “I am, it turns out, adaptable,” Red grunted. “Vickie, would you be a dear and decapitate this thing for me?”

  “With pleasure,” Vickie snarled, and backed up as far as the wall to give herself more room for a rush. As small and light as she was, she would need momentum to make up for a lack of mass behind her blow. Red felt Barron go still, and then her remaining arms began to lash out at him. While they were smaller, this was still Barron, and Red grit his teeth as each delivered a series of rabbit punches to his chest that might have caved in a steel door.

  “No hurry,” Red wheezed. “I think my spleen’s still intact.”

  “What about your brain?” Vickie asked, braced against the wall, planning her move. “Never mind. That’s not the important part of you.” And she launched. It was a launch; she moved faster than Red had ever seen her run before. And from Barron, he felt—tension. There was something about the way she was holding herself, bracing against an attack that she knew might cut deep, and perhaps even kill her. Red felt the alien giant twitch in place. No, it was more than that. It was a shiver. Barron was trembling.

  Barron was afraid.

  I don’t think she’s faced a real threat in…a long, long time. She’s had things her way for so long she’s forgotten she’s mortal.

  As Vickie closed in, Red felt Barron sag in place, and he fought down an urge to crow in triumph. Instead he dug in, bracing for impact, when he felt a building pressure in his arms. Elation turned into a growing sense of alarm, as he realized Barron was not giving up after all. She was bracing herself too, but not against Vickie’s strike. Red watched as the muscles in Barron’s shoulders bulged. She was straining against the confines of Red’s reinforced hold. She was strong, but was she strong enough to…?

  It was an awful sound, like a guttural snarl, only louder, amplified, as Barron pulled her left arm free, tearing Red’s makeshift arm shackles apart, the silk strands snapping and cracking apart in bunches. With a final push, Barron screamed, pulling her arm away, and Red’s arm along with it, tearing it away from its moorings, leaving only a bloody socket at his shoulder. She screamed her fury, swung her right arm forward, and Red yelped as he found himself dragged along and suspended upside down in front of her, a human shield to Vickie’s charge.

  He watched as Vickie tried to slam on the brakes, her look of fierce determination replaced by one of horror and dismay, and felt her bounce back off his rubbery frame, rolling away to absorb the impact. From his perspective, it was almost funny. He nearly laughed, until he felt himself smashed to the ground, a heavy boot planted on his stomach, and his other arm tearing away as Barron pulled herself free from him. Red closed his eyes and heard himself groan. The floor shook. It was Barron, he supposed, her heavy steps thundering away into the distance.

  “Red!”

  Looking up, Red saw Vickie enter his field of view, peering down at him, her eyes wide and frightened.

  “Jesus Frog on a pogo stick,” she gasped.

  “Enough of your spring-loaded, messianic amphibians, woman,” Red heard himself mumble. “I’ll bite her freaking kneecaps off.”

  “You have no arms!”

  “It’s only a flesh wound.”

  With a fierce frown, Vickie pointed to her left. Red glanced over, and saw his detached arms lying in ruined strands of silk and growing pools of blood.

  “Right,” he sighed, and came to his feet gingerly. He hobbled over to them and knelt down. “Help me out here?”

  She obliged, heaving each arm up to his shoulders, grimacing as they made odd squelching noises as they reattached themselves.

  “You’re weirded out,” he said, rising and testing his range of motion.

  “I’ve seen weirder,” she assured him. “Trust me, this rates as a few ripples in the sanity pond. No irrevocable damage done, at least not yet.”

  “Just for future reference, what would rate as the irrevocable variety…?”

  “Y’know, fight first. Relationship talk second. She’s heading for the missile room!”

  Red spun around in time to see Barron disappear through a portal. He cursed and raced after her. Glancing around, he was surprised to see Vickie right beside him, matching his long strides with a face full of determination and a surprisingly fast sprint.

  “Your swords are sharp,” he said, turning back to the closing portal, “But can you really get enough force to cut through her neck guards?”

  “Honestly, I’m not sure,” Vickie replied grimly, and motioned for him to open his arms. “But I’ll have better luck there than driving them into her chest.” She leapt for him.

  “I might be able to,” Red offered, catching her in a rough grapple.

  “You ever use a sword?” Vickie countered, balancing herself on one of his forearms. “Throw!”

  “Can’t say that I have,” Red admitted, and hurled her forward with a smooth cast, as if they had been doing this together all their lives. She tucked her knees to her chest and landed in a nimble roll. She came to a precisely calculated stop, leapt up in a sudden lunge with her sword, and neatly thrust the point across the threshold, blocking the sliding door before it slotted into place. Red caught up to her, slid his fingers into the narrow groove between the door and the bulkhead, and with a bellowing howl, forced them apart.

  Vickie squeezed inside while he was still forcing the door open, leaving it for him to maneuver himself into the room. He let the door go, snapping his arms back as the door closed behind him with a weighty thud. Only then did he turn.

  The round room was bathed in tha
t orange light the Thulians seemed to like so much. In the floor was—something. It looked like one of those irising portals he’d seen elsewhere, with a low balustrade around it. Above it, surrounded by a circular, grated catwalk, the bomb hung like the evil fruit of the plant that was this ship. Not that it looked like a bomb. The front end was all the machinery for digging its way through the Earth’s mantle to get to the liquid core, the back end was smooth and mirror-finished. The whole thing gleamed with an oily sheen, as if even light was repelled from it.

  On the other side of the pit was the control station. Barron stood over it, her visor open, her main arms raised in victory as she pulled one of her lesser hands away from the interface. Black fluid continued to leak from her injured claw, but she ignored it. Red felt the floor beneath him start to hum, and with a steely rasp, the portal beneath the bomb slowly opened.

  “Too late!” Barron laughed. “Your pitiful planet is doomed!”

  Somewhere, a Klaxon began to ring and the room was plunged into momentary darkness, and then bathed in a pulsing blue light that seemed to come from everywhere. It flashed on and off, and Red cursed in dismay as the control panel sank into the floor and a terrible rumbling sound ramped up above them.

  Barron had activated the Burrower.

  “How do we turn it off?” Vickie screamed.

  “We can’t!” Red yelled back. “The controls are seconds away from eating themselves! That thing is their ultimate juggernaut! It won’t stop until it reaches the core, then game over!”

  “We have to try! There must be something!”

  “Its hide is tougher than anything on this planet!” Red screamed. “It’s completely self-contained, and it repels energy!”

  “Not helping!” Vickie said, and screamed in frustration. “Give me something to work with here!”

  “Like what?” Red screamed back. “You want me to pull some miracle out of my ass?”

  “This can’t be it,” Vickie whispered, her face gone deathly white. “This can’t be how it ends. Can it? After everything we’ve endured, to just be wiped out of existence?”