All done covertly, away from the prying eyes of ECHO, save for Victrix.
John agreed with the move, for the most part. They had to go after the Kriegers. To do that you needed intelligence. And to get intelligence you needed boots on the ground, going out to gather it. Besides the infiltration he had done on the missile silo and what they had been able to steal from the Thulian North American HQ, there seemingly had not been any dedicated operations to obtain crucial intel on the Kriegers; for the most part they were taking down pop-up cells or putting down random attacks. Nevermind the bullshit they were still dealing with from Verdigris and his splinter group of Blacksnake.
He didn’t know what Bella and ECHO were doing to find the next Krieger HQ, but it obviously either wasn’t enough, or wasn’t working.
“JM, deploy one of my eyeballs, will you? I want to be able to warn you if that miserable excuse for an airplane is about to go south and augur in.”
“Yes, dear.” John reached into one of his hip pouches, producing one of the techno-magical “eyes”; it hovered from his palm and then zipped away, weaving through the cargo compartment.
“Save the endearments for your wife. Which reminds me; when, exactly, did you two actually get hitched? Inquiring minds want to know.”
“No real ceremony; didn’t need one. I’ll tell you all ’bout it once we get back.” Sera rested a hand on John’s forearm. Despite the world going to hell screaming, John felt happy. He could tell that she felt it too; it was something else he was starting to pick up from their connection. He could feel her emotions, even her thoughts. They both still worried about the war, how to fight the Kriegers, the safety of their friends and the ’hood. But there was a bit more peace that the two of them created within each other. There was a connection between them now, at a deep, deep level, that they had only begun to explore. There were implications to that connection they were just beginning to see.
And under everything, was a new constant, part of the unbreakable bond that they had forged between them. Music. Faintly, but ever-present, that whisper of music that had nearly driven him to distraction when he’d first heard it. They both heard it now, and it was part of them both; Sera called it The Song, and now he knew what it was, and he knew now why being walled away from it had caused her such unbearable pain. Being able to hear it again, though it was a mere breath of what it must once have been for her, put a light in her eyes once more. Knowing what it was, and being able to hear it…well, was healing to his spirit in a way he had never expected to experience.
“You four want the good news, or the bad news?” This, in Russian, presumably being heard by the entire contingent.
John was the first to speak up. “You know me. Let’s have the bad news.”
“This heap is not getting off the ground again. Between the altitude and the cascading failures, she’s gonna need an overhaul before she can fly again. So you better count on someone else for your ride out. Good news is, even though she’s likely to blow a couple tires on landing and spring some more hydraulic leaks, she’ll make it to the airstrip. Note, I said airstrip, not airport. We’re talking barely-combed gravel. Better find some padding for those excuses for seats or your spines are gonna end up driven through your skulls.”
“Your optimism is always being appreciated, tovarisch.” John thought that Unter had been asleep; he guessed that the Russian was merely resting his eyes, listening and aware of everything. He was the team leader for this operation. John also suspected he was there to keep an eye on Sera and himself. Their…”return” had raised quite a few eyebrows, in both the CCCP and ECHO. Both of them had been prodded and tested and analyzed until they were completely cleared, body and mind. Still, they were an unknown quantity again, until they proved that they could hold it together once more.
“I live to serve. And you are going into approach vector, so better find that padding in a hurry. Unter, you haven’t got enough on that ass to cushion you through a good landing, much less the one you’re about to get. JM, you better find some padding too; your brain isn’t gonna be able to handle that much bouncing.”
“Roger that. Speak to ya on the ground, one way or another.”
* * *
John had been through worse rides in his life—though not worse landings. The plane had been airborne more often than it had had its wheels on the ground, at least until it came to a rattling, shrieking, screeching halt. The four of them had been out of the plane as soon as the cargo door was open; probably the same thing had been on all their minds, though Vix hadn’t mentioned it. What if this wreck catches fire?
That the pilot had stumbled out of the cockpit, urging them to more speed in a slurred Russian dialect hadn’t done anything to disabuse John of that thought.
The airstrip was barely passable as that; just a single shack and a battered windsock flopping limply on a pole denoted that planes were meant to be there at all. A group of locals were lounging around, drinking and smoking, until they finally jumped up and ran over to help with the unloading. There was an equally battered, abused, and beaten-up Land Rover—which had to have been built in the 1960s—waiting for them. The pilot stood beside his plane supervising the off-loading of far more crates than that vehicle should have been able to hold, drinking from an unlabeled bottle. Once the cargo was off—which didn’t take long—he clambered back into it, closed the hatch, and turned the plane around. And to Vix’s voluble astonishment, made it back into the sky.
Molotok just laughed at her. “Russian ingenuity, tovarisch. If it can be held together with bailing wire and drunken hope, it will fly.”
The four of them crammed themselves and their packs into the two bench seats in the Rover, which was not easy, since the “packs” included two purloined jetpacks for the two Russians, who couldn’t fly on their own. By the time the luggage had been piled in around them, John was buried, and couldn’t see anything but a sliver outside the filthy window on his side. The locals piled on the boxes on the top of the vehicle, secured them with enough rope to scale Everest with, and then the team was off.
* * *
The Rover dropped them, their gear, and the cargo they had hitched a ride with off in a little Indian village. The cargo vanished almost as soon as it hit the ground. They were met by a villainous looking fellow who could have stepped out of a “B” movie featuring Himalayan bandits, but who, surprisingly, turned out to have tolerable Russian and be quite personable. He had organized a string of ponies that Unter regarded dubiously, and which all the men looked…well…ridiculous on. Sera perched on hers as if she had always been a rider; Moji and Unter looked awkward as hell. John felt awkward at first, but then he caught Sera’s gaze for just a moment, the music strengthened within him for about thirty seconds…and his body began to adjust without him thinking about it, and in a few moments, he was sitting in the saddle as easily as Sera, even if he did feel a little like a grown man on a kid’s tricycle. But the ponies were a lot stronger than they looked and their guide—who only gave them his first name, Jagat—turned out to have been a polo player, who certainly knew how to pick his mounts.
Jagat got them as far into the mountains as he would let the ponies go, which was a lot farther than John had expected. Then he helped them unload their gear. “This is where I leave you, my friends,” he said, as Moji paid him in gold. “When you come back out, use your satellite phone and call me. I will bring the ponies up to get you. If you don’t come back out, I will pray for your next incarnation.” It wouldn’t be a sat-phone that called him, of course, it would be Vix. But he wouldn’t know that. Spoofing a phone was less than trivial for her.
The next leg of the journey would require something more…exotic, in order to get the team around.
The jet-packs were conversion models that ran on something like a power-cell. Mad-scientist stuff, literally, it was one of the latest things to come out of Tesla and Marconi, because Vix’d had some words with them. Seemed she hadn’t fancied dropping out of the Atlanta sky
if there was need to turn the power broadcasters off.
And speaking of Vix…”Overwatch: command: open Vix,” John said, as Moji helped Under into his jetpack.
“Vix here. I read you five by five.” There was a yawn; of course, it was the middle of the night in Atlanta. “System recalibrating. Your maps should be updated with your position now.”
Vix had installed one of the last of her “internal” sets on Moji just before they left. Now John heard him utter a low whistle. “Borzhe moi!” he exclaimed. “If this is magic doing, little witch, I am very much liking it!”
“I live to serve,” Vix replied. “You didn’t have time to read the manual, so I’m just repeating to your set whatever JM calls up on his. If you’d rather I keyed to Georgi…”
“Nyet, Murdock will be a-hokay. Target is being…twenty kilometers, roughly? And mostly up.”
“Da. That puts it in that big valley just the other side of those mountains. Very much of nothing all around it. Watch those jetpacks; I’m not sure they’re going to have sufficient oxygen to operate once you start climbing. And don’t forget to wear your oxy concentrator masks.”
“John and I won’t need them,” Sera said serenely, and exchanged another look with John. Once again, he heard the Song strengthen and fill him, then felt something…adjusting. This time inside him. And where a moment before he had been straining to get breaths, now…he was breathing as easily as a Sherpa.
Huh.
“I’ll take your word for it; Moji and Unter however, make sure you have your concentrators on.”
“Yes, Little Mother,” Moji said with amusement, but put on the mask anyway.
Sera spread her wings wide and was the first into the air. Untermensch was the second. John relaxed and concentrated at the same time, then began to run. When he’d reached what he felt was the right speed, he pushed off…and that rocket-like fire erupted from his feet and lower legs. He still had no idea how he was doing that…but it felt damned good. He had invested in a pair of goggles since his last attempt at flying; polarized, the wind and sun didn’t bother him now.
In a moment he had caught up to Sera, and they flew under the bright Himalayan sun, side by side.
* * *
The jetpacks were not equal to the altitude. They gave out just below the pass that was going to take them into the valley. John was grateful that at least they were still below the snow-line; they weren’t equipped for snow-trekking, and they would have been hideously visible trudging across the pristine face of a glacier.
There had not been a single sign of life, not even a village or a herdsman, in all the time they’d been flying under Vix’s guidance. Then again, she would have been routing them to avoid detection.
“Well, comrades,” Moji said with resignation, peering up at the pass above them, “It looks as if we are walking.”
“Ditch the packs; hide them in the bushes or…wait, JM, put your hand on the ground for me.”
He knew what was coming, pulled off one of his gloves, and knelt to do so. This was the first time he had acted as a channel for Victrix since his re-awakening—and this was—different. He felt it; felt something warm and deep coming from somewhere outside of himself, going through him, and into the earth. There was some vibration, and two mounds of earth heaved up, and parted in the middle, leaving a cavity just big enough to hold the jetpacks. Moji and Unter didn’t need to be told what to do; they pulled ultra-thin, ultra-strong nanofiber tarps out of their backpacks, wrapped the jetpacks in them and set them side by side in the hole. The earth moved to cover them, evening itself out and settling until John himself would never have known the packs were there.
“That should do it. When you come back down, I’ll dig ’em out for you. Meanwhile, nobody’s going to find them.”
“Roger that, Vic. We’re proceedin’ along the course. It’s all Shank’s Mare from here.”
“Just follow the yellow-brick HUD. Put two eyeballs up for me, please. I’ll be your fore-and-aft scout.”
The route that Vickie had plotted out for the team avoided as much of the harsh country as it could, but it still wasn’t easy going. It was going to be an almost entirely uphill trek, over rough terrain that had a habit of giving way underfoot unexpectedly. It wasn’t long before all of them, even with the concentrators and John and Sera’s altered metabolism, were breathing hard from the exertion. Though the view was rather stunning if one of them was to pause long enough to look back along the path they had taken, there wasn’t much else that stood out about this place. Just untouched, mountainous wilderness for miles and miles, with the glaciers and snow-capped peaks high above them. Well, the snow was covering considerably more than just the “peaks” of these mountains. It came down about halfway, and John was just glad that they weren’t going to get near it.
“Are we being sure about intelligence on this area from electric dead men? Expense of this trip alone, not to mention wasted time…” Untermensch eyed the slope above them with disfavor.
“Only being one way to find out, dedushka. And that is to go there and look, with own eyes.” Moji shrugged his pack into a better position before marching forward.
“I…have a feeling, beloved,” Sera whispered. Sera had slowed so that John was abreast of her, with both of them being several paces behind their Russian comrades.
“A feelin’? ’bout the mission?” Ever since their “connection” had been made, John was able to sense Sera’s feelings as if they were his own. It was a new sensation, but it didn’t feel altogether alien for him. He had settled into it comfortably almost immediately, and hardly thought about it consciously anymore.
“Perhaps…I don’t know. I sense…lives. Many living things, nearby.” She looked at him uncertainly.
John concentrated for a moment, then nodded. “I can feel it, too.” Now this was alien to him. It felt as if there were “shapes” on the edge of his perception, shifting and mingling. He knew, though he didn’t know how, that they were alive. “Moji, hold up for a second.” The two Russians stopped and turned to face the couple as they caught up. “Sera is gettin’ a sense that there’s a lot of…someone, up ahead. I can confirm it. I think this lead might not be a bust after all.”
Molotok raised an eyebrow, trading a look with Untermensch. “A ‘sense’?”
“It’s not somethin’ I can really quantify. But I’m not bullshittin’ you, comrade.”
Untermensch clicked his tongue in exasperation. “And our tactical doctrine is supposed to do what with these feelings? Eh?”
“Comrades, you don’t argue with Soviette when she senses something, do you?” John knew that Vix had hit on exactly the right analogy when he saw the exasperation start to fade from both of the Russians’ faces. “I don’t know exactly what Johnny and Sera have now, but I’m pretty sure part of it is like Sovie’s psionics. Only neither of them have the right language yet to describe what they’re picking up, or the experience to know what it is, exactly, that they’re sensing. Hell, it’s like learning to use a HUD when you’ve never seen one before.”
“Da, point made. So, we proceed with caution. Spread out formation, send ‘eyes’ forward to scout. Mission being to observe and report back any activity, with detail.” Molotok nodded to the group. “Murdock, you will be on point. Lead us in direction of this sense of yours. Weapons out, all.” With that the big Russian unslung his rifle, press checked to make sure it had a round chambered, and then set off for the left flank. Unter did the same before setting off to the right.
“I strongly feel I should not be flying,” Sera said firmly, and manifested the spear of fire. “I shall cover the rear.”
“Roger that, love. Mute the brightness on yer spear if’n y’can; don’t want to give away our position.”
She frowned with concentration for a moment, and in her hands, the spear seemed to take on the color of old hot coals.
As she turned to leave, John caught her by the elbow. “Oh, an’ love?”
“Aye,
beloved?”
“Be careful.” He pecked her on the cheek, then winked at her as he grinned lop-sidedly. Unbidden, he felt himself feeding reassurance and his love for her into their connection, and felt it returned in kind.
“And you as well.” She smiled impishly. “You would be much less attractive with bullet holes in you.” Then she was off to her area of responsibility, leaving John alone at the middle and front of the team’s formation. Time to get on with it.
“And put up the other two eyes. I want all four quadrants covered from the air.”
John fished two more of Vickie’s technomagical “eyes” from the pouch on his load bearing equipment, tossing them up into the air; they disappeared almost immediately, off on their errands for the mage. John checked his own rifle, making sure the suppressor was affixed properly, that he had a full magazine, and that there was a round chambered. Satisfied, he set off at a careful trot; the ground had leveled out a little bit, and thus the going was easier.
They were trekking through upland forest, evergreens of some kind, tall and thin. Above them was alpine meadow, and further above that, the snow. And ahead of them, towering impossibly above the slope they were climbing—probably the tallest mountains John had ever seen, so tall it was hard to wrap his mind around how big they were. Steep, craggy, snow-crusted and utterly unforgiving. No wonder the people here considered those peaks sacred. It didn’t seem possible that anything mortal could climb those near-perpendicular slopes. And as for living there…no. They were the essence of frozen death.
This was John’s kind of country; he could easily see himself spending his days living in these kind of woods. It was also the kind of terrain that he was born, bred, and trained to make war in. There wasn’t much in the way of underbrush beneath these trees. This was a hard land, and an unforgiving one. Everything that lived here had to fight to exist.
Collision: Book Four in the Secret World Chronicle - eARC Page 37