“CHARGE!” Bella ordered, and the ECHO ground troops moved back on the offensive. “Leeeroy! Jenkinsss!”
As her troops began their attack, Bella heard those who were wired into Overwatch groan. Yep, the battle cry still needed some work. She ducked back under cover and hailed Vickie. “Overwatch: Open Vix Private. Vix, how are we doing?”
“Local or global?” Vickie sounded…reasonable. Bella couldn’t hear excessive stress in her voice.
“Global?” she ventured.
“Nothing we can’t handle. Needing to bring in the Supernauts in Moscow. Did NOT let Saviour know that. Had to bring in the local army in a couple of places. We’re winning. Slowly in some places, with lighter casualties than anticipated.”
“Local?”
“You and CCCP. Everyone else is mopping up small squads of suits. Linking you to Saviour now.”
There was a very short pause. “You are wanting update, ECHO Leader?” There was a harsh laugh. “They are no match for the comrades of the CCCP. We are obliterating them. The Spheres are in retreat, and we are herding armor.”
That was far better than she had expected. “Uh—” OK, better be a little formal about this. Saviour had given her the signal. “CCCP Leader, are you taking prisoners?” She paused again when Saviour didn’t immediately respond. “They’re soldiers, not rabid dogs—”
Saviour interrupted her with another laugh. “Am thinking no one with swastika ever signed Geneva Convention. Are not entitled.”
Bella flushed. “Dammit, Saviour!”
Saviour interrupted her again as a volley of heavy fire from the Thulians hit the shield wall. “Am hearing complications, ECHO Leader. Are YOU in position to be taking prisoners?”
Bella peered around the shield wall and did a head count of the enemy, or tried. Lots. Too many. Far too many to be claiming victory, much less…taking prisoners. She blanked for a moment. Dammit, what would Bull say? “But you obviously are, Red Leader,” she snapped. “Remember we need intel, not a body count. Over and out.”
* * *
The trap had been planned, implemented and practiced many times in the previous months. It was only a matter of time, after all, before the Thulians mounted another full scale attack on ECHO HQ. Bella ducked back behind the blast shield to reload her launcher, and snuck a peek around at the remaining Kriegers. She swore. They had built and stocked the hidden MLRS machinery at a feverish pace, and in the end had wondered if they had perhaps committed an enormous act of overkill. It seemed they had not. Despite their best efforts, they had not anticipated the sheer concentrated numbers the Thulians would throw at them.
She fired off her last RPG, and fell back. Bulwark joined her.
“How many?” she asked. She had to use the Overwatch circuits to talk to him, even though they were face to face, the noise was just that deafening.
“Too many,” he grunted. “I’d say about a third left, a hundred give-or-take. And we’re running low on ammo. If they can get their act together, they’ll probably have enough to overrun us.”
“What do we have left?”
“Regular armaments and meta powers,” Bull said. “Precious little in the way of firestarters. Best we’ve got is…”
“Overwatch! Open Jamaican Blaze! Blaze!” Bella barked over the Overwatch system. “What’s your sitch?”
Bella’s HUD lit up with a blinking fire icon where Jamaican Blaze was. It was green, signifying that Blaze was ready to work her power as soon as Bella needed it. Blaze had positioned herself well.
“Hit ’em and hit ’em hard, girl! We’re between a rock and a hard place out here.”
* * *
Blaze leaned back against the blast wall, took a deep breath to steady herself, and emerged to survey the battlefield. The RPGs had done a number on the Kriegers, but it wasn’t enough. Most had been completely engulfed in fire and blown to pieces or simply shredded with explosive rounds, regular gunfire and every flavor of meta artillery you could think of. Unfortunately, many were still up and fighting. Worse, they were organizing a charge on the main gate. It was more than a little disconcerting how fast those suits could move when they wanted to. There were, however, a fair number of them covered in small patches of flame.
It was enough. It would have to be.
She studied the pockets of fire with both hands extended. The teenager gritted her teeth and shifted her focus to a sizable group that had clustered together in the center of the charge. She picked one shock trooper, whose entire back was engulfed in fire, and stoked it.
You can do this, Willa Jean. The voice rang out in her head. It was a clear voice, one that had lifted her so many times in the past, and it was loving, oh yes, so loving…
The trooper screamed as the fire spread across his armor. His startled comrades leapt away from him. Blaze felt a sudden exhaustion as she willed the fire to burst, to spread, and soon the core group of Thulians were thrashing about in helpless agony as she willed the flames higher and brighter, as if she were conducting a blazing symphony among the burning Kriegers. The rapid jump from soldier to soldier generated a current, and the flames began to cycle counterclockwise of their own accord.
The whirling tongue of fire threatened to rise up and out of control; Jamaican Blaze cried out in pain. She had never truly tested her limits. She felt dizzy. Her knees began to buckle. Surely, this was it, she was at the brink, she was past it…
You can do this, Willa Jean.
In the past, Blaze had always found comfort and solace in her grandmother’s voice. If there was ever anyone who could reach beyond the pain, to see it done through hell and high water, it was Dixie Belle. But her Gram was more than a role model for her, more than just guidance and wisdom and an shining example of true heroism. She was, simply, everything to her. Through it all, it was those six words that had always lifted her up. She was up to any task, to any ordeal, with those simple words of encouragement, and she would be damned before she let her Gram down.
I’ll do this, Gram.
With nothing left except a sheer and desperate will, she brought both hands down, not to lessen the fires, but to widen their reach. The flames lashed out to drag the smoldering Thulians into the vortex. The remaining Kriegers on the fringe who had begun to join the assembled mass retreated instead, but to no avail, as they too were drawn inexorably into the swirling storm of fire and mayhem.
“Jamaican Blaze, your readings are starting to redline. Suggest you pull back.” That was Sam Colt; Blaze was wired to Overwatch One, not the new system. She had the feeling that if it had been Vickie in her ear, there would have been some shouting and a lot of cussing.
Jamaican Blaze struggled to breathe in the superheated air, her hands shaking as she willed the vortex into a flaming whip that lashed furiously at the last of the Thulians. She gestured at the air with both hands, gripping and twisting an unseen line. The fiery tornado responded in kind, curling in on itself until the tip met the base and the loop weakened. She pushed both hands together, squeezing the remaining Thulians between the walls of fire until the wavering pillar erupted in a white-hot ball of molten metal.
It appeared that Vickie was paying attention anyway. Just when she thought she was about to die, or fry, or both, a wall of earth and stone suddenly upthrust itself between her and the firestorm, and she was jarred to her knees by a waist-deep hole appearing under her. Suddenly, she could breathe again, damp, cool, cave-like air soothing her lungs and cooling her burning skin. “Breathe, girl. Good job,” came the slightly hoarse voice in her ear. “Yes, Overwatch and I are always here, and if we can help it, we will never let you fall.”
I did it, she thought in wonder, and even sobbed in relief as she slipped into unconsciousness. She was only barely aware of the earth folding around her like a pair of careful, sheltering hands, keeping her safe.
Willa Jean did it.
Victoria Victrix: Overwatch Suite
Frankfurt, Leipzig and Paris were all engaging. More of Zmey’s RPGs h
ad been shipped out to the EU than had been kept at ECHO HQ because there were fewer fire-chucking metas over there than there were here. Vienna had already beaten back the single squad of power-armored troopers that had been dropped there. Berlin had a pair of Spheres but they were still on the approach. Every screen in the suite was live, and most were split in quadrants.
Vickie was coordinating the new Overwatch One Controls in every city that was taking attacks, splitting the work with the Colt brothers. The drills had paid off though; only Budapest and Praetoria had been caught with their pants down.
Vickie was keeping an ear out for a special little alert, however, because the last major attack—the Invasion—had included a cyber-attack, and she was grimly determined not to let a single Trojan slip past the ECHO defenses this time.
There was the sound of a doorbell. “Candygram,” chirped an animation-style voice in her implant. She spared one moment for a quick scan of all the screens; looked like Control could manage without her for a little. She cleared a screen by moving the pages over, and brought up the Honeytrap.
Sure enough…incursions being tried on systems all over the globe, but without the mutating FoF code, they were being blocked. That was good; the Thulians should have expected that after the last time. “So let’s see which backdoors you’re trying that you think we don’t know about, you bastards,” she muttered. She’d pulled in every white, gray, and blackhat hacker she knew for this, besides people like ECHO’s own Belgian geniuses from Toronto. They all wanted the Thulians to think they’d penetrated…and actually, they would. Just not what they thought they were penetrating.
It looked like the ECHO system, and it was connected superficially to the ECHO system. But it was a hollow shell, with Vickie’s specialty, cybermancy, playing herd-dog. And there, there, there—there they were. The real attacks, the ones expected to succeed. She sketched the activation diagrams in the air, and turned loose her little semi-sentient guardians. They could do what no human could; chase after the code like sheepdogs herding sheep, and herd any strays into the Honeytrap. The viruses the Thulians had created were not semi-sentient; they did what viruses do—propagate, and hide themselves. Except they were propagating and hiding themselves inside a giant cage. When the last of them were in, she slammed the door.
And powered down the system.
And just for good luck, hit the system with a localized EMP. Nothing made of ones and zeroes would survive that.
“Byte me,” she snarled.
John Murdock (CCCP)
Three of the troopers, including the first squad leader, were down. The rest had wisened up fairly quickly, and had taken cover. Whenever he wasn’t firing at a position, he was helping Rusalka to reload. They didn’t have many rockets left, though; only three after this next shot. Once they were out—which would happen soon—it would be John’s turn. His fires were extinguished for the moment. He popped up from behind the wall on the roof, took aim, and fired a burst from his rifle at a Krieger that was crouching behind a newly overturned car. The rounds bounced harmlessly off of the trooper’s armor, but he raised up to turn his cannons on John. The exposure was just enough for Rusalka to land a rocket directly on the trooper; combined rifle fire from John and Molotok finished the job.
From the sound of things, similar scenes were playing out down in the destruction corridor. He could hear explosions, the chatter of assault rifles, and what he thought was Bear’s manic laughter interspersed with Russian cursing. John had other things to focus on, for the moment. He set down his rifle and went to the business of reloading Rusalka’s RPG launcher.
“Not being many left,” she said, wiping a strand of hair out of her face. “Hope that you are holding up your end, tovarisch.”
“Don’t worry ’bout me; just make sure whatever I start doesn’t burn the rest of the neighborhood down. Property values are in the toilet already.”
Bear, Unter (CCCP—Destruction Corridor)
Soviet Bear and Untermensch had been forced to split up, taking different positions in order to spread out the Kriegers’ return fire and give them more than one ground target to worry about. While that left Unter with the job of loading his own RPGs, it allowed Bear to do what he did best; create a spectacle. He was firing from the hip, one-handed, with his PPSh-41, sending blasts of plasma from the gauntlet on his free hand, and loudly cursing their enemies. Some of the insults were becoming quite poetic, even as they also became more vulgar.
“If you fired your weapon as much as you jabbered, there would be no Kriegers left, Old Bear,” Unter grumbled as he finished reloading.
“But that would not being as much fun, tovarisch!” Bear ducked out of the way at the last moment as an actinic bolt screamed past his head, with several more impacting against the barrier he was using as cover. “They are getting a little more accurate.”
Unter peeked around the corner of his barrier, nodded to Bear, and then immediately raised the RPG tube. One Krieger that had been bounding forward to cover was out in the open; the warhead from Unter’s weapon struck the Krieger in his midsection, igniting the armor. Less than a second later and before the Krieger had reached safety, Bear had peppered the man’s armor with bullets. Injured and dying, the Krieger kept crawling; he was finally put down by simultaneous shots from Bear’s gauntlet and the ECHO meta Corbie on the roof.
“Six left.” The troopers—deprived of their squad leaders, who had been targeted at the outset of the engagement—looked as if they were ready to bolt, perhaps to spread out and carry the fighting away from the CCCP HQ. Unter and Bear both recognized this immediately; it was their job to protect the people, and that meant keeping the fight here. “We must contain them.” Unter keyed his comm unit. “Molotok; corridor unit is going to be triggering ‘party favors.’ On your command.”
“Affirmative, tovarisch. Murdock, Unter, on my signal, being prepared to fire. Ready? Three, two, one. Fire!”
Immediately upon hearing the command, Unter retrieved and slammed the palm of his hand down on a firing device three times in quick succession. The “clacker” command detonated several flame fougasses that had been pre-positioned in the destruction corridor. This particular section of the corridor was closed off, and the firing device had remained disconnected until the attack was imminent for safety purposes. The flame fougasses themselves, which had shown to be especially effective in the attack on the Thulian North American HQ, had been upgraded with the same mixture that Zmey had devised and had been incorporated into the new RPG warheads. The result of the detonation was that several large plumes of super-hot fire and burning compound engulfed almost all of the Kriegers.
“Let’s hope the American Murdock is having same effect.”
John Murdock (CCCP—Rooftop)
Even from his position on the rooftop, John could feel the heat on the back of his neck from the buried explosives in the destruction corridor. Looks like that training on improvised explosives is still paying itself off. He focused back on the street. He had to do this exactly right, otherwise two of his teammates and potentially a lot of innocent people could end up dead. “No pressure.” He had been reading and rereading the reports and the journal he had left for himself. He had been practicing, as well; igniting his fire, controlling it, manipulating the flames to do exactly what he wanted. There was something different from his old self, besides being healed. Control was much easier, and so was energy expenditure; he felt like he could burn, and burn, and burn until there was nothing left for him to destroy. The aspect that made it somewhat difficult was that he lacked experience with it; he had to be careful that he didn’t get overenthusiastic.
Relaxing, he first let the fire ignite in his palm, then engulf his hand. Almost instantly, it seemed as if there was a white-hot flamethrower belching hell out of his arm, as the flames swung down into the street. John could faintly feel what the fire was touching, as if he was a fireman at the end of a hose pouring out a stream of water, and he barely sensed the blowback of the s
tream hitting things. There. He knew that the troopers’ armor was fully engulfed; he focused the flames on those points, intensifying it. Satisfied, he shut the fires off; everything dissipated immediately, save for some spot fires he had started. Rusalka immediately set to work on those, using water from a leaking fire hydrant on the street and rushing it to keep the fires from spreading. The entire process took less than ten seconds, from start to finish.
“Ground units, move in to engage. Take the fight to the fascista.” The residual heat radiating from the ground still felt like an open furnace against John’s face. He watched as Molotok vaulted over the barrier he had been stationed behind, and closed with the first Krieger. The Krieger was still dazed from the firestorm, and didn’t see his attacker until it was too late. Molotok dodged the first clumsily swung arm, pushed aside the second, and then uprooted the Krieger by lifting one of his legs out from underneath him. The Krieger fell flat on his back, and was trying to right himself when Molotok casually walked over and stomped on the Krieger’s helmet, crushing it inward with a sickening crunch and shriek of tearing metal. The CCCP’er shouted something in Russian before charging forward again. John had picked up his rifle, and was alternately shooting or blasting with fire at the remaining Kriegers.
“What’d he say to ’em?” He looked to Rusalka for a brief moment before scanning for more targets.
Rusalka grinned, keeping her eyes on the street. “He said, ‘This pig died quick and easy. It will not being so for the rest of you bastards!’”
Seraphym: Airborne
Well, now I have the tiger… Sera had caught up with the Death Spheres, which had turned to evade her. Now they were all poised above the roof of the CCCP HQ, and Sera felt suddenly very naked and vulnerable indeed.
Collision: Book Four in the Secret World Chronicle - eARC Page 16