Collision: Book Four in the Secret World Chronicle - eARC

by Mercedes Lackey

  “Move,” Molotok said in a harsh whisper. He hit John on the shoulder once for emphasis; he was going to be the point man for the team. With a nod, John set off, moving quickly in a half-crouch along the route that Vickie had marked for them. He had memorized it prior to stepping off for the mission, but the visual cue gave him one less thing he had to worry about messing up. Due to all of the marked enemy units starting to show up on the HUD map, though, they’d have to alter their route. John whispered, engaging his subvocal mic. “We’ve got the lead elements of the welcomin’ committee up ahead. Adjustin’ route.”

  John lead the team down a side alley between two of the pristine white buildings, keeping his rifle directed to the front. If anything popped out at them, he’d have to take it down, and silently; the suppressor, while not perfectly silent, would keep any “unfriendlies” from getting a good fix on the direction that the rifle fire was coming from. The sound bouncing off of all of the buildings would help with that, too. Once they came to the end of the alley, John flattened himself against the wall on his right side, then slowly and deliberately edged himself towards the corner. Peeking only one eye around the corner, he checked both ways down the street. “Clear.” He swung around to the right, bringing his rifle back up. He was starting to hear sporadic gunfire off in the distance…followed closely by the unmistakable sound of Thulian energy cannons.

  “Overwatch to Team Red.”

  Moji replied. “Go Overwatch.”

  “All teams except Blue, so far, are encountering hostiles. More hostiles on the way. Cat’s out of the bag.”

  “Copy, Overwatch. Proceeding with mission.” Moji muttered something under his breath in Russian. Vix replied the same way. John thought he made out the names “Scope” and “Bulwark” from both of them. “Double time, Murdock. We are being on accelerated schedule, now.”

  John nodded his assent. No point in worrying about Bulwark; that was way out of his hands. He picked up the pace moderately, but there was only so fast that you could go while being anything resembling stealthy. They were making good progress, though; so far as John could see on his HUD map, they had gotten further than any of the other infiltration teams in their immediate area, save for Blue Team.

  “Bull was frikking right. Scope wasn’t—SHIT, contact front! Coming out of the building, three right!”

  The team was out in the open, right in front of a building but not near any sort of cover that they could get to in time. Three Kriegers, all in trooper armor, exited a building about one hundred meters in front of the team. They seemed to turn as one, facing the group of metas, and went statue-still, as if they were stunned, for a second. Then, belatedly, they raised their arm cannons. John was the first to act; his enhancements were already keyed up, and the movement of the Kriegers seemed exaggerated and slow to him. He quickly stepped into the street, clearing some obstructing pillars from his line of sight. He dropped his rifle to his side, thrusting out both hands, he…

  He didn’t concentrate. It was more that he let go. His hands flared white-hot for a moment, surrounded by plasma that didn’t so much as scorch a hair—and then the plasma erupted away from him, to engulf the three Kriegers in a white inferno. Sera leapt into the air and over his head, half-flying, half jumping, and came down ahead of him and to his right. She manifested her spear of fire and threw it all in a single motion, then leapt back again, alighting beside him, another spear already in her hand, as the Krieger on the right, impaled, slowly toppled over. John, focusing on the Krieger on the left, concentrated the fire on his hands for a second before loosing it; it flashed out in a solid beam, hitting the trooper square in the chest and burning a hole through him. The rest of the team raised their rifles in almost perfect sync, stitching the remaining disoriented and weakened trooper with suppressed rounds, starting at the joints and working their way up until he was dead.

  “Pooch officially screwed. They know where you are. Three groups converging. Watch your HUDs. Sec, gotta juggle.”

  Vickie was right. They were officially on the radar of the Kriegers. Unless they could break free and slip the net the Kriegers were trying to envelope them with, they’d be stuck.

  “Keep moving!” Unter elbowed Molotok, nodding down the street. Some three hundred yards away, more Kriegers were appearing, making their way to the team.

  “You heard the man. Move out!” Molotok shouldered his rifle again, keeping it trained on the approaching enemies. John decided to take the team closer to the center of the city, cutting to the right through a boulevard. He could see that the Kriegers were still closing in; at least seven teams, now. This is goin’ to be tight, no two ways about it. John kept their pace as fast as he dared. They hadn’t gone more than two blocks when he got the strangest tingle at the back of his brain. He had the presence of mind to look back at Sera for a moment.

  Her eyes were blazing blue and gold, and he knew, though he could not see them, that his were doing the same. He felt the bond between them in a way he had not felt it before. They were not one, but yin and yang, two planets orbiting the same sun, aware, acutely aware, of what the other was doing at every moment. Not only the present…but briefly into the future as well. They anticipated each other perfectly, intent and action blurring into each other.

  “Contact right,” John breathed, letting his rifle hang as his hands were sheathed in flame. Sera manifested both spear and sword. Molotok didn’t have time to protest before the pair sprinted forward and turned a corner, facing four bewildered Krieger troopers that had been waiting in ambush. John bathed the entire group with nearly white-hot fire in one quick burst. Sera launched herself straight up into the air and came down between two of the Kriegers, impaling one helmet-to-toes with her spear as she landed, and half-turning instantly to bisect the other with her sword.

  Before the other two could react, she was in the air again. While they were trying to track her, John moved forward. With a flick of his wrist, he sent a beam of plasma to blast the helmeted head off of the Krieger on the left. The remaining one noticed his presence, and was about to bring his arm cannons to bear. John ducked under the Krieger’s aim, manifesting his own, much larger fire-sword. Some part of his mind not occupied with fighting thought again that it might pass for a Scottish claymore. With a backhanded sweep John hamstrung the trooper as he stepped past him, then turned and plunged the sword through the Krieger’s back as he fell to his knees. The sword dissipated as soon as the trooper was dead. John snapped his head up, looking past the team, then unholstered his 1911 and fired once. The single round hit an unarmored Thulian that was coming from behind Mamona in the throat, sending the creature gurgling to the ground as it dropped the knife it had meant to plant in her back. Sera landed beside him at that same moment, and the two of them went into identical postures of readiness.

  Moji stared at them for a long moment. “Borze moi.…”

  “Behind!” Sera called, in a high, clear voice. Moji, Unter, Bear, and Mamona were suddenly in the thick of a Thulian squad; most of them were unarmored, but there was a single one in Krieger armor. The one that John had dropped had only been the first. Unter lashed out with precise Systema strikes against the enemy nearest to him, breaking bones and destroying organs with each blow. Mamona ducked under a shot from a Thulian energy pistol, then stepped next to her attacker; almost casually, she stabbed the man, first in his kidneys, then his liver, then above his clavicle and down into his heart, forcing him to the ground. Bear pulled the Krieger that was focusing on him into the barrel of his PPSh while firing it before sending the man flaming down the street with a burst of plasma from his gauntlets.

  Molotok grabbed the final unarmored Thulian by the throat. The creature clawed at the team leader’s forearm fruitlessly. Then Molotok squeezed. The Thulian went limp, very dead, before Molotok threw him for the entire length of the next block. Spinning his head around, he dropped to the ground to leg sweep the armored trooper before it could bring its cannons to bear on his comrades. Molotok pi
nned it to the ground as Unter, Bear, and Mamona began to methodically shoot all of the Krieger’s joints, sending sparks and spurts of blood onto the ground. Satisfied, he finally stood up, looking directly into the armored Krieger’s visor.

  “Die slow, svinya.”

  “Moji,” John said, after a glance at his HUD showed him this was just the first of far too many Kriegers bearing down on them. “We need to move, an’ right now. We’re at risk of gettin’ enveloped, here. They’ve got our number, just ’bout.”

  Molotok nodded, then signaled for the team to head out. Things were going to start to get really interesting in this part of the city. John just hoped they could live through it.

  Belladonna Blue: Forward Medical Unit

  For agonizing minutes, all Bella could do was watch Bull’s vital signs in her HUD, and wait for the Swift to reach the Med Unit. And curse herself and Scope. Herself, most of all. I’m the one that put her in the field. I’m the one that overrode Bull. If I hadn’t…

  In snatches, Vickie had told her what she’d done. “This is like a body-tourniquet. I basically froze everything at the moment I set the spell. If blood vessels were about to rupture, that stopped them, like that. It’s a dumb spell, it doesn’t tell me anything and I wouldn’t know what to do if it did tell me anything. We hope it lasts ’til it gets there and he’s in your hands. If it lasts longer, then you get that many more seconds to fix things before it wears off. It’s… he’s pretty bad, Bella. Prepare yourself.”

  The entire team was waiting for the Swift to come in hot and offload their precious cargo. Herself, Soviette, Gilead, Panacea, Einhorn. There were other healers, another half dozen she’d recruited and trained, and others from the other nations, Euro ECHO, and conventional doctors, but these four were the ones she trusted, who’d worked with her, hand in hand. And Upyr…Upry who had, in the fifteen minutes that had passed since the disaster in the pass, recruited (or dragooned) a full thirty Marines to serve as living “batteries.” Bella might not have “angel juice” for this, but she was going to have the next best thing. Upyr would stand right at her back with one hand on her, and one hand on the Marine she was siphoning energy from, and when he flagged, the next would step up, and the next.…

  And then they heard the Swift, its noise-suppressors off, screaming in to a hot landing.

  “Still holding,” Vickie said in her ear, and then was off again. The HUD showed that the Thulian city was a maelstrom of blue and red dots, with the red converging on the blue. For the first time, Bella was grateful that someone else was in the hot seat instead of her. But there was only a second to feel that gratitude, because at that exact moment, she and the team were running out the door to get Bull into the shelter of the Med Unit tent with the assistance of the medics on the Swift.

  As soon as they got him inside, Bella tore off the blanket that covered him, and witnessed one of her nightmares spring to life. He was… mangled. The arms and legs seemed bent in obscene places. What skin was exposed looked like one big bruise, and his face…

  Oh god, his entire face is swollen shut.

  She gave herself a second, just one, to take a breath and pull herself together.

  “Einhorn, right arm and leg. Gilead, left arm and leg. Sovie, head. Panacea, pain.” She fired off instructions as they all raced beside the gurney. It was just dawn…pale, pearly light streaming over the improvised airfield. It would still be dark in the mountains. The room was already prepped, with a regular surgeon and team waiting, just in case, but she shook her head at them as they all shoved through the curtains. There was nothing a conventional doctor could do here. Under any other circumstances—

  —dear God, he’d be liquified goo inside.

  Only two things had prevented that; the work she had done strengthening his bones and muscles and organs, and Vickie’s spell, which had stopped everything mere fractions of a second after the avalanche. There were microruptures everywhere, and he’d have been bleeding out internally in seconds if it had not been for that spell. Which was still holding, giving her more precious time.

  “Sovie?”

  “Severe concussion, sestra, and micro-ruptures.” Sovie sounded clinical and calm. “Nothing I cannot handle.”

  “The bones!” Einhorn wailed, appalled. “The bones are bent!”

  Of course they were bent; Bulwark’s bones were as much metal as bone now, so instead of breaking under the terrible strain they had held until they bent…and she could feel, though she walled it away, just how terrible the pain was. “What the hell can we—” she bit off, feeling a horrible surge of despair for a moment. A broken bone could be set, but how would you straighten something like this without doing even more irreparable damage to his muscles?

  “Spoonbender!” Panacea all but shouted. And Bella’s despair cleared. The shy, innocuous Op 1, barely a meta by most peoples’ standards, had been along brought to aid with equipment repairs. With Spoonbender around, you often didn’t need to disassemble equipment to repair it…

  And he can bend Bull’s bones back without hurting the rest of him!

  “Overwatch!” she commanded. “Open Spoonbender. Bender, this is Bella. We need you at Bay One of the Med Unit five minutes ago. STAT!”

  “Uh…what? Uh, Roger!” Spoonbender stammered.

  “Get to work, Blue. I’ll explain when he gets here. That spell could give out at any moment,” Gilead grated, her voice rough as it always was when she was working.

  At that moment, Bella felt a familiar presence behind her, and a warm hand planted on the back of her neck. Upyr. “Go to work, sestra. I am to being petrol station.” The Russian girl chuckled a little. “We can do this. I know. It is Bulwark and we do not fail him.”

  Doctors were always told never to work on family members or loved ones…emotions would inevitably complicate matters.

  Screw that. She would use her emotions to fuel her healing. She would use everything to fuel her healing. As she felt energy coursing into her from the hand at the back of her neck, she sank into that semi-trance where she could somehow see and feel everything that was wrong, everything that was broken. And she did not allow herself a moment of despair over it. Vickie’s spell, somehow, was still holding, granting her yet a little more grace time to mend the worst.

  Heart first. Oh, the irony! …here we go.

  Blue Team: Ultima Thule

  They had been on the move, ever since they had broken through John’s portal and into the city. The plan had been simple. Each squad had been given a path to take. Get in, avoid detection if possible, and get to your target. Take energy readings, if it’s big enough then it’s probably a generator. Blow it up.

  Red Djinni swore under his breath as he led his squad through the alleys of Ultima Thule. It was the only plan they had, the best they could do under the rushed circumstances, but there were so many things that could go wrong, so many uncertainties, that he had cringed each time someone had suggested contingency measures. Call it what you wanted, even with an advance wave of infiltrators to knock out the defensive shield, this was still a kick-in-the-door approach. This was merely a prelude to a full-out assault, and he had never, ever, seen one go off without a hitch. Still, it was the best they had, and during the frantic planning stages, he had kept his mouth shut.

  Maybe I should have raised just one or two suggestions…

  For one, he might have personally requested a pro-Parkour team. He glanced up at the closely-packed architecture of the streets. The rooftops were close enough to allow for at least one group of freerunners to race to their objective above the chaotic battles that now raged in the streets below. Mel and Scope had just begun their training, relatively speaking, and the clunky suit of armor that Silent Knight had to wear to safely contain him and his sonic weapons made him about as agile as an arthritic turtle. And there was Bull, of course. The man was as strong and stubborn as an ox, but mobility had never really been his strong suit even before Blue had worked her voodoo on him and turned him into some
one you didn’t want sitting on your couch.

  Not that it mattered, of course. Bull wasn’t with them anymore, not after Scope had blown their entry and ruined the element of surprise, their one advantage in this whole mess of a plan. Perhaps he should have spoken up about that one too. Bull had benched Scope, with good reason, and had been overruled by Bella. Would it have made a difference if Red had spoken up, if he had tried to scream some sense into her? Hindsight, twenty-twenty, and all he could do now was deal.

  And he had to deal. With Bull gone, Moji had yanked Red up to a leadership role. Who else in their squad could lead? This, he told himself, was not good. History had taught him that Red Djinni calling the shots had seldom, if ever, worked out well. Insanity was defined as repeating the same act, with the expectation of different results; and even knowing that, he was somehow forced to repeat history. History, he had decided, was a bitch.

  Still, his squad had one thing going for them. Despite the bulk and plodding limitations of his armor, Silent Knight had provided them something invaluable. They were able to move at good speed without a sound. The armor soaked it all up, masking their footsteps and its own clatter by simply absorbing all nearby sonic energy. Scope’s eyes warned them of danger, Red was adept at finding concealment and could easily herd them under cover and when they needed to move at a dead and silent run, Knight would make it happen.

  “Overwatch to Djinni.”

  Red brought his squad to a halt and ushered them from sight under a nearby alcove. He signaled Knight to turn off the sound dampening.

  “What is it, Vix?” he whispered. “We’re on the run here.”