“Talk!” Bella shouted, and Gero screamed as she brought her power down on his mind like a hammer. He shuddered, his cries falling to pathetic whimpers, and nodded in surrender.
“We take what we need,” Gero began, stuttering as he struggled to control his fear. “Sometime in the past, we…we lost something. Something vital to our progression. In our lust for power, for knowledge, we became reckless. We changed. We extended our life spans greatly, but at a heavy cost. Most of us grew frail physically. We could no longer conceive children, or invent new technology. Creativity, in all its forms, was lost to us. We had to resort to…novel means.”
“Novel means?” Vickie heard Bull’s voice echo from around them.
“Experimentation,” Gero gasped. “On you. On the others before you. Only when we are sure, when our gathered Collective is sure…will we dare risk exposing ourselves to the procedures to give us back what we lost.”
“I take it you’ve been largely unsuccessful,” Vickie heard Ramona snarl, another faceless voice, powerful and everywhere.
Gero nodded frantically. “Our earliest attempts killed many of us. Only Barron and I were improved, albeit greatly, but the rest fell to horrific mutations and died horribly. Without children, our numbers began to dwindle. We could not risk losing any more.”
“Monstrous!” Normally the voice of calm restraint and reason, the outrage in Unter’s cry seemed all the more terrible as it rang endlessly throughout the mindscape. “You crossed the boundaries of decency, of nature itself. You chose to become a parasite on all existence? You should have died out!”
“I suppose you would have chosen the noble path,” Gero muttered.
“I would have, yes.” Unter’s voice trailed off in disgust. “There is a time to let go your claw clutch on life. You did not learn the lesson of Tithonus.”
“So I have you to thank for the fact that I am not still a starving beggar in Mumbai,” Khanjar’s voice boomed. “And I also have you to thank for the deaths of three of my friends, whose mutations ended their lives in painful ways. I wonder how Karma judges that.”
Gero cowered, unable to answer.
“What is this ‘Collective’ you speak of?” Yankee Pride demanded.
“The Collective is a host of intellects,” Gero said. “The best and brightest of all that we have enslaved. With each new mind, the Collective has grown stronger, has brought to fruition many technological advances, and with each step bringing us closer to…to…”
“Immortality,” Red muttered.
“Yes…” Gero sighed. “We have prolonged our lives, but we are not immortal. With humanity, we thought we had finally found our event horizon. So many possibilities. Your minds would have surely tipped the scales. Even with the loss of Tesla and Marconi, surely Verdigris and Victrix would have sufficed. And if they didn’t…” Gero glared at Red, and grimaced. “One of you offered another option. She promised us another way, a new test subject whom she promised would be immortal. Herself. After she was done with you, the Red Djinni.” Gero closed his eyes, and shuddered. “So many options, so many possibilities. We came so close, after so long…”
“You saying I’m immortal?” Red asked.
“Only experimentation can answer that,” Gero said. “You very well may be. Doppelgaenger’s reasoning was quite sound. But only the Collective could know for certain, after a full series of tests and a barrage of torturous experiments.”
“Been there,” Red scowled. “Done that.”
“Moot point, anyway,” another voice said.
Vickie looked around, surprised.
“Paris?”
“Yeah, it’s me,” Scope answered, the dead yet amplified tone of her voice sounding odd as it reverberated throughout the mindscape. “The Collective’s gone. We took care of it.”
“Gone?” Gero asked, his voice now breaking.
“Yep,” Scope said. “That giant room of boxed brains went blooey. If you mean the place that looked like the ‘lost luggage’ section of Robots ’R’ Us surrounding that really big ball of light. We shut it down.”
“Impossible!” Gero exclaimed. “Destroying the Collective is beyond you, it is even beyond us! You could not have…”
“But we did,” Scope interrupted. “It actually wasn’t that hard, y’know, once they showed us how.”
“Once who showed you?” Gero demanded.
“Them,” Scope said. “The Collective. Didn’t I mention? They wanted to die, just like your big ship wanted to die, but couldn’t do themselves in. So they showed us. Hey, Vix, this going to take long? Khanjar and I have this thing we gotta do, remember?”
“I—don’t know,” Vickie managed, when Gero interrupted her.
“We deserve immortality!” he bleated. “We want to live forever! Wouldn’t you? Don’t you?”
“No,” Bella said flatly. “Not all of us, anyway. Better, yes, but not forever. When you can live forever, you start getting timid. You’re afraid to try anything that might risk that immortality. Like Tesla and Marconi: they’re scared witless every time they think they might die.” She smirked when Gero gasped. “Oh, that’s right, they’re still alive. I guess you didn’t know that.” She glared at him. “And even after all this…if I let you go, if I let you run away with your toadies…you still won’t stop, will you? You’ll just keep coming back here. You’ll enslave someone else to do your dirty work, and you’ll come back for revenge. Won’t you? Won’t you?”
Gero shrank away from her, but didn’t answer.
“Answer me!” Bella screamed, and brought the full force of her will down upon him.
Gero screamed, writhing in her grasp, and nodded fearfully.
“Yes,” he croaked finally. “Yes, I would. I would find a way…”
Bella put one metaphorical foot on Gero’s chest. “I’m not going to kill you, Gero,” she said, her voice flat. “That would be too merciful. I’m going to make an example out of you. I’m going to lobotomize you, and then I am going to tell all your flunkies to get the hell off my world and take you with them and if they come back, they can expect to be given the same treatment.” She glared down at him. “And I hope they seal you in a room and let you rot.”
Vickie had been pouring the collected power of the gestalt into Bella and had watched her temper building as Gero cowered. The idea that all they had ever been was…a reality show for the Masters…was infuriating. That they had been lab rats was doubly, triply infuriating. And to hear from Gero’s own mouth that Bella had been right, that the Masters would never stop, never give up trying to get their revenge…
And that, in the end, was what sent Bella over the top.
“You don’t kill my world!” Bella snarled. “NOT ON MY WATCH!”
And around them, every voice, every being echoed the battle cry.
Bella struck, the spear-tip of the collective anger of their united will.
And Red saw the danger to Vickie before even Vickie did. “Vix! The mindscape is coming down! If the connection snaps back on you, you’ll—Let them go!”
Oh God, he’s right! In a blaze of fear, she severed the connections that held them all together.
And the world went white with pain.
* * *
Vickie snapped back to herself as a tremor shook what was left of the dying ship, knocking her on her ass. Her head hurt worse than she ever remembered it hurting before. It felt…bruised inside, deep, purple bone bruises. And there was just barely enough energy left in her to be able to breathe. “Bozhe moi,” she groaned, and looked up at Red, who looked as disgustingly healthy and healed and full of energy as she felt battered and exhausted. “If I didn’t love you, I’d hate you right now.”
“Less talking, more booking.” He lifted her to her feet, then kept right on lifting until he had her in his arms. “Last call for the Titanic lifeboats.”
She was too tired to object to being carried. “Roger that,” she sighed, putting her head against his chest. “Eight, plot us a course ou
tta here.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
* * *
Long Time Gone
Mercedes Lackey, Dennis Lee, Cody Martin and Veronica Giguere
Red Djinni was not wrong. The ship was in its death throes. This, paradoxically, was the most dangerous situation our people had faced yet.
Ramona shook herself out of that weird, split-second vision of Bella, the Thulian commander, and the horrible things he had confessed. She’d think about that later—if they all made it. Blackened buildings had started to crumble into the charred alien landscape. Ramona stumbled forward as the ship shuddered and heaved. A rancid odor met her nose and she gagged. She and other ECHO forces had moved forward to provide support to the others still deep inside the city and the main buildings. Much of the chatter had ceased, with Eight keeping communications to an efficient minimum. Ramona appreciated the near-emotionless instructions and updates alongside the ever-shifting overlay on her HUD. If she focused on the information there, she didn’t have time to think about what was happening back on the carrier in the spaces they’d reserved for triage. And she didn’t have time to think about that weird, shared hallucination they’d all had. If it had been an hallucination. Until she got a chance to talk to Bella…
There would be time enough for that later.
Another tremor shook the foundation of the city. A deep crack opened up along the street to Ramona’s left and the same foul smell escaped into the air. Corbie saw the fissure at nearly the same time she did and leapt into the air, his injured wing putting him off balance. He landed awkwardly on one foot and sucked in a quick breath. “Whole place is fallin’ to bits. Thought it smelled bad on the outside, wot.”
“It’s not just falling apart. It’s dying.” Trina adjusted her grip on the plasma cannon that encased her right arm up to her bicep. She walked next to Speed Freak, their odd pairing providing quick firepower on the outskirts of the city. The diminutive Metisian woman did not share Ramona’s talent for outward calm. “Whatever has been generating the artificial gravity, it’s shutting down now, and this structure can’t hold. It’s going to collapse in on itself as all of the subsystems shut down, and the rapid apoptosis will compromise anything on the inside that’s part of a living endoskeleton.”
“I concur, and I have forwarded that info—” Eight began, when the AI’s voice was replaced by a Klaxon. The alarm stopped just long enough for Yankee Pride to bark authoritatively, “All forces! Fall back and retreat to the platforms and ships! Fall back!”
Positions in a half-circle along the ridge on the edge of the city lit up Ramona’s overlay, showing the remaining snipers that Mercurye had placed. Debris blocked the paths that he had taken to place them…hours ago? It seemed longer than that. “Eight, you’ve got retreat plans for our guys on the ridge? All of them?”
“Evac is inbound to their locations. Your team is cleared to—”
The boom and crack of stone gave the only warning as part of the ridge began to slide into the basin. Ramona stood, frozen in horror. She could barely hear the rotors and she knew they wouldn’t be able to reach the remaining snipers in time.
“I’ve got northwest! Tell Donni this one’s coming right for her!” Corbie took a few quick steps and launched himself into the air.
“We’ll take west.” Trina swung herself up to Speed’s back and tucked the arm cannon along her side. Before Ramona could ask or argue, they raced toward the collapsing ridge. Her HUD flashed, Pride’s command repeating in her immediate field of vision.
She swallowed hard. “Everyone else, on me! Fall back and retreat to the platforms. Go!”
Eyes focusing on the terrain ahead of them, Ramona willed herself to keep her feet moving. She kept a steady count of the remaining members of her group, moving along the path that Eight laid for her through what remained of the city and into the perimeter.
Three creatures too small to be wolves burst from behind a smoldering pile of metal debris. They ran alongside the group, barking frantically. Only one of them had any bit of nanoweave on it, the edges singed and caked with blood. Ramona slowed to a jog, then stopped and crouched down a short distance from the largest of the dogs. It crept toward her, head down and tail low.
The dog’s ID came up as River. “It’s okay, River. You come with us, you and your team.” Ramona felt her throat close up as the creature lay down a foot from her and let out a low whimper. They must have heard Pride’s order and started to move, even if Leader couldn’t get out with them. “Come on, let’s move.”
As if to confirm her worst fear, Eight said quietly, on her private freq, “Leader of the Pack is offline.”
The group started running again, this time with the few remaining dogs who had gone into the Thulian city with Leader of the Pack. Three times, just as small groups of Thulians headed for them, another group of Thulians appeared out of nowhere and cut them down. Another thing to think about later. Ramona picked up the pace and kept her focus on the platforms and the ships just beyond. Small metal cylinders broke the surface of the water near the rail guns, hatches on top opening to allow the retreating forces to board the larger ships. The remaining metas able to fly landed on the decks. Most carried the injured and touched down only long enough to hand off their comrades to waiting medical teams. Her HUD said that Corbie was still back on the ridge, even with a wave of choppers coming back over the team on their way to the platform.
The ground beneath her feet cracked and buckled, beginning to collapse on itself in meter-wide patches. Ramona fought to keep her feet moving and her mind on the singular task of reaching the line of ships. She could see other teams scrambling over the crumbling lip of the half-sphere and directing others to the ships that would evac.
A blur of black feathers tumbled from the sky and hit the edge of a platform. It split into two, the darker half falling into the water. Ramona cried out and lurched forward, but the dogs moved faster and dove for the sinking figure. Another violent tremor shook the ground and pushed the ash and rock toward the retreating forces. Her exposed skin reacted to the rush of debris, but she still felt the jagged pieces and smoldering embers.
“Keep moving,” she called to the remaining forces around her. “Get to the first ship that will take you.” Ramona waved them ahead, then turned to face what remained of the outer edge of the floating city.
The dying fires of the initial battle marked the center of the rapidly widening crater. Where the surface had cracked under the intense heat and heavy fighting, parts of the living city oozed a burnt orange ichor. The buildings and terrain that had created the ridge surrounding the lush forest continued to collapse upon the remnants of the Thulian forest.
Her heart sank. No one would have survived that kind of destruction.
In her HUD, two names flashed, then dimmed. Eight spoke over her private freq to confirm the loss. “Speed Freak is offline. Trina is offline.”
Ramona sucked in a lungful of smoke-filled air and willed herself to turn back to the ships. On one of the platforms, two of Leader’s dogs stood over the sodden limp figure of Corbie. “Eight, please tell me that—”
“Corbie is injured and unconscious. Continue retreat ordered by Yankee Pride.”
She exhaled and fought down a wave of rage and tears. “Understood. Continuing retreat.”
* * *
Untermensch and the remainder of the forces under his command had been the first unit to reach their objective. They held the area as the rest of the assaulting elements advanced, beating back increasingly frenzied waves of Thulians. The CCCP—his CCCP now—did not take any further losses, aside from a few of Kirill’s copies. Untermensch was amazed at how quickly Jadwiga, Thea, and Mamona had been able to respond to casualties. He suspected that losing the Commissar had galvanized them, making them push themselves to prevent anyone else from dying. For the most part, they had been successful; only a few of the soldiers that fell were unable to be saved. He was glad to see that they didn’t take any foolish risks, as he
had seen others do when a comrade had been lost.
Natalya trained them well. She would be proud of them.
He still wasn’t sure to make of that split-second vision in which the Thulian High Commander had blurted out things that had made his entire self rise up in rage and revolt. Bella had been in it, and the little witch, and Bulwark…and Red Djinni. But Red Djinni was dead! Or…was he?
The warning Klaxon and calls for retreat startled Georgi when they first blared over his Overwatch connection. They were winning! How could they possibly be considering retreat? That was when the worst “ship quake” yet had thrown him from his feet. He had grown accustomed to them during the push to the center of the ship, towards their assigned sector; he and the rest of the fighters had learned to anticipate the bad ones, bracing themselves, going flat, or lifting off the ground with powers if they could. This quake was different; buildings that hadn’t been hit with any munitions began to crumble, and the streets erupted in places, with the cracks spewing flame or a noxious odor. He didn’t need to give orders to his people; everyone began running almost immediately. The fighting had ceased with that first huge tremor; even the Thulians recognized that something had slipped in the machinery that kept the World Ship running, and that it wouldn’t be long until it consumed them all.
As the unit the furthest in, Untermensch’s people had priority for many of the evacuation helos. A flight of Mi-8 MB Bisektrisa medevac helos intercepted his unit as they ran for the beachhead, hovering in a ruined plaza.
“Wounded first! Davay davay, get moving!” Georgi glanced around for Jadwiga; she and Thea were carrying a young soldier with a swath of bloody bandages around his midsection. “Sovie, you and Thea stay with that man; we’re loading all of the worst cases on one helo. Keep them stable until you get back to the ship.” The medical officer nodded once, then continued towards the helos.
Fed presumably by Eight, Georgi heard Gamayun sounding off soldiers’ names, directing them to which helo to take the wounded. It was the first time he noticed that Gamayun had command of every Russian and former-Soviet language and dialect. Each man was addressed in the language he would respond to the quickest. A polyglot. It makes sense for her position, come to think of it. How had he never noticed that before?
Avalanche: Book Five in the Secret World Chronicle Page 78