Collision: Book Four in the Secret World Chronicle - eARC

by Mercedes Lackey

  The young Frenchman dragged himself off of the ground with only one arm, the other barely attached to his body. He spat blood on the nearest trooper. “Ta mere suce des bites en enfer.” Before any of the Kriegers could react, Fernand exhaled forcefully, sending a fine cloud of barely visible gas into the immediate area. He had retrieved an antique lighter from his pocket while he had been talking; now, he ignited it. Instantly, there was a massive explosion. Fernand’s meta power was that he was able to create a fuel-air explosive with his breath; those Kriegers that weren’t immediately set ablaze or disintegrated by the explosion were knocked off of their feet, some of the nearer ones actually sent rolling down the street. Corbie and the rest of the team, despite having climbed higher in the air, were buffeted by the tremendous shockwave. Corbie was barely able to recover, and the rest of the team would have been sent tumbling through the air if it weren’t for the gyroscopic stabilization of their jetpacks. Usually, Fernand kept his breath weapon small, and manageable. This time…he hadn’t. Upon surveying the site of the explosion, Corbie saw that there was nothing left where the meta had been. Against the objections of his team, he ordered that they push on.

  Earth Team stayed on the ground after that point. This had demoralized them, on top of the emotional crash that had followed Scope’s spectacular screw-up; Fernand had been well liked by the rest of the Europeans. Corbie, their team leader, was an outsider. He had been doing his best to keep them moving, to harass the Kriegers; with their fire specialist gone, they only had the ECHO RPG warheads to take down trooper armor.

  So they avoided the armored troops. Instead, they decided to go after unarmored Krieger groups, doing hit and run attacks. The German on the team, Carl Rheinhardt, callsign Fledermaus, had the ability to cloud the vision of enemies and also see through the eyes of those around him; helpful, considering he had been born without a set of his own. He had helped to keep the team from getting overwhelmed; blinding Kriegers before a strike, seeing through the eyes of any that were coming before anyone else on the team had a chance of knowing they were there, and covering their retreat through more judicious blinding.

  But this strategy only brought temporary respites, so the team had to continually displace, keeping their direction random so that the Thulians couldn’t predict where they had gone. Which meant that even trying for their original target was out of the question. Corbie was the only one completely wired to Overwatch 2, although the others could hear and talk to Vickie via their earpieces and throat mics, and they all had the little boom-HUDs. But none of them knew her and knew what she could do, and trusted her the way that Corbie did.

  And anyway, she was dividing her attention among eight teams. He was feeling the lack.

  Buck up, old lad. At least she’s got her eyes in the air for us.

  In fact, if it hadn’t been for her “eyes,” and the constantly-updated HUD, they’d have been seriously hosed. He couldn’t imagine how she was doing this for eight teams—but then, she was a computer wizard and a computer wizard so maybe the magic stuff had something to do with all of this.

  But I wish to hell she could magical-port us out of here. We’re arse-deep in the gutter and heading for the sewer.

  When the shield had fallen, Corbie used the small victory to spur his team forward; they’d be scouts, helping to keep the Kriegers from overwhelming the main body of the infiltration teams. There were still a few sullen looks, but everyone obeyed. When the call came, Earth Team was just a little over four hundred meters from Spearhead Group.

  “Overwatch to Earth-leader. Corbie, you look relatively clear. I need a pair of live eyeballs on something I don’t like.”

  “Roger that, love. I’ll hunker down the team and take a recce. What do you need?”

  “Lemme paint you a good stash-point for the team. Your guys need some breathing space or you’re gonna faceplant.”

  Corbie’s HUD lit up; roughly one hundred and fifty meters to the northwest was a structure that was doing…something. It seemed like it was opening, but there was some interference with the eye cam. The building that Vic had highlighted was halfway between their current position and the structure; all the Kriegers in the immediate area were focusing on Spearhead group, so they had a clear approach for the moment.

  “Let’s mount up, chaps. Got a mission from on high.” Carl nodded his assent, moving up to be on point; he took a bearing off of Corbie’s HUD, then started off at an easy trot. The other Brit in the group, their super strength meta who went by the name “Guvnor,” followed. It was only the Italian, Pietro, that hung back. He was the group’s speedster; he could move at a blur, and had been responsible for most of the few armored kills they had made, speeding up to a set of armor and planting a bomb on it before anyone could react. He had also been the best friend of Fernand. Instead of following the rest of the team, he simply stood, staring hard at Corbie.

  “Got to get a move on, Pietro. Don’t want Vic or heaven forbid Bella on our asses about lollygagging.” There was a very tense moment; Corbie could feel how angry Pietro was, and how instead of focusing that emotion on the enemy, he was laying it square on Corbie’s shoulders. After a few heartbeats Pietro started to follow the others without saying a word. That’s going to be a problem. If we live long enough for it to be, that is.

  “Earth team, I need crow-boy’s eyes in the sky. Command wants you four to make a safe-zone for casualties until we can get some pickup out or medics in. Spearhead will start funneling them in as soon as you’ve got the building secure, reinforced, and as invisible as you can make it.” Vix was making no effort to hide her strain or her exhaustion. “We’re getting hammered out here.”

  Everyone keyed an affirmative on their comms. Once his team was in place and performing their tasks, Corbie decided it was time to take to the sky. It was going to be tricky, no doubt; with all of the anti-missile and anti-air turrets firing constantly, not to mention the Robo-Eagles in the sky, he was going to have a time of it. That’s just the job; time to get a move on.

  Then again, the buildings around here were all big; four stories and more tall. If he flew at about the three-story level, there was a good chance he wouldn’t be spotted by ground troops, and he’d definitely be under the level where the turrets could get a bead on him.

  Just like chasing down runners in downtown Atlanta, he told himself, and suited action to thoughts.

  It seemed to work, too! And thanks to the map-overlay of the HUD, he could detour around hot spots.

  As he got near his goal, which was some sort of big, domed structure, he began hunting for a spot where he could land and still observe with some semblance of fragile safety. He spotted a place where something had taken a big bite out of a structure just below the roofline, and he dodged in there. It was a tight squeeze of a landing, but he made it, and turned his attention and the cameras embedded in his eyes on his target.

  Which…was definitely moving.

  “Cor…that thing’s opening up like a kid’s surprise-egg!” he exclaimed.

  “I am not liking this, Limey,” Vix replied. “Nothing that is going to be opening up around here is going to have anything good for us inside.”

  “Then I better get closer.” Before Vix could object, he took to the air again. Scanning around, he could see the Krieger forces moving to engage Spearhead Group; all of them were already tagged by Vix’s eye cams, so he ignored them for now. A few powerful wingbeats later, and he had enough elevation to get a look down into the structure.

  But great clouds of steam billowing out of the opening dome frustrated his attempts to make out what was in there as he approached it. Well, other than what looked like…gantry, or other support-structure, with something inside it. The others—and he could see two more from where he was flying—looked to be opening up at the same rate. They were both further away, and seemed to be spaced equidistant from each other.

  “Rockets?” he thought out loud for Vix’s benefit. “But why would they need rockets or missile
s when they’ve got their bloody spheres? Some sort of super-Sphere?”

  “There was one of those at the North American HQ.”

  “Didn’tcha bury that big ugly, too?”

  “Yeah but I can’t do that here without burying our peeps. And that assumes I got the juice. Not sure I do, Limey. I’m a yard of cheesecloth stretched over a football pitch right now.”

  “Figured a repeat performance was a bit much to ask for. Going to maneuver a bit closer, see if I can see anything more.” Before Vix could object, again, he eyed his angle of attack, and picked a trajectory that would let him shoot past it without (he hoped) attracting the notice of who or whatever was manning those turrets.

  And he was just about halfway to his goal when the smoke or steam suddenly blew away in another of those icy wind-gusts, as the gantry fell away, just like at a rocket launch, and he saw—

  “Holy mother of God!” he shouted, starting to backwing. “It’s a bleeding dragon!” There was the unmistakable shriek of Robo-Eagles above him, and he knew he had made a grievous mistake. Three of them were wheeling in the sky above him, acting as spotters; they clearly had seen him, and weren’t being quiet about it.

  The sleek, black-chromed monster swung its head towards him, eyes blazing, and opened its mouth. He didn’t wait around to find out what was going to come out of that mouth. Doing a fast wing-over so hard it hurt, he dove down among the buildings to try to hide from the thing.

  But he heard it crashing down to the ground much too close behind him. It didn’t seem to care what it wrecked, as long as it could catch him, either.

  At least the bloody bastard doesn’t have wings!

  With Vix frantically highlighting a path for him on his HUD, and the monster painted as a big—much too big—red dot on the map behind him, he dodged among the buildings, weaving between the rooftops while trying to put as much distance between himself and the dragon as possible.

  “Urgent traffic, Overwatch!” he called out on the all-freqs band, for the benefit of Spearhead as well as Vickie. “We got something new here, love! It’s big, pissed off, and got way too many bloody teeth!” Behind him the thing was thrashing its way through the city, sending pieces of stone and steel half the size of cars flying with every move it made. And he couldn’t go up to evade it, because those bloody Robo-Eagles were overhead, ready to dive on him the minute he tried to climb above the level of the rooftops.

  And then, as if all of that wasn’t bad enough, the thing jumped at him.

  He evaded it only by the luck of the gods themselves. He braced himself for the flying debris when it crashed back to earth again.

  Only, it didn’t. “Ah, bloody Hell! Come on!” Corbie groaned. “How is that even possible?”

  The hum of Thulian drives was the answer to that; it was vibrating him so hard his feathers rattled. But how could anything, even alien tech, keep something the size of several football pitches in the air like that?

  It was coming straight for him, and the only chance he could see was a desperation move. Rather than flying away from it, he flew towards it, ducking under a clawed hand the size of three lorries that tried to swat him out of the air, and evading a gout of flame so closely he could hear and smell his feathers scorching. Then he got under it, and did a quick direction change, coming up around its torso and into what he fervently hoped was its blind spot, at its shoulder-blades. He had never, in his entire life, been so utterly and completely terrified. Not even on the day of the Invasion or the MARTA attack.

  His ploy worked. It lost track of him. But while he hovered for a moment, looking for a chance to get clear of the damned thing, it turned its attention to the ground troops. And to his horror, not only were they completely unable to so much as dent it…

  …he watched the thing immolate them.

  Cursing in despair, he saw his opportunity and grabbed it, diving down into the tangle of wrecked and unwrecked buildings, darting through the smoke to further cover his flight, and finally landing hard enough to send him stumbling and somehow making it inside the building where the rest of his team was heading for.

  By the time he got in where the rest of the team had been running to, and finally stopped moving, Corbie was breathing hard, bent over and his wings quivering. “Now that was too bloody close.” He took a moment to steady himself. Then he noticed that they all had their weapons raised, aiming at the back of the room. His entire body immediately felt the alert, and he raised his own sidearm, scanning in the darkness of the room.

  “Eyes. Watching us. False partition, back of the wall.” Fledermaus thrust his chin forward, indicating the wall he was referring to. “They do not seem to be armed…that I can see.”

  Corbie licked his lips, brushing the sweat off of his brow with his off hand. “Order them out, real slow.” Carl complied, barking out commands in guttural German. Slowly, almost a dozen Kriegers came out from behind a breakaway panel; it blended fairly well in with the rest of the furnishments in the room. If it hadn’t been for Carl, Corbie doubted they would have ever known that the Kriegers were there; somehow he had been able to connect with the Kriegers hiding behind that false wall and see through their eyes. The German was right; none of them were carrying weapons, but…something was off about them. They all wore similar uniforms; something like coveralls, slate grey, with pockets and—tool belts?

  The most disconcerting thing was their faces. Some of them were obviously Thulian; the slit noses, the skin texture, their eyes. Others were plainly human; just as normal, though very Aryan, as anyone else. And mixed in…were creatures that seemed to be a blend of both; part Thulian, part human. How in hell was that even possible? He’d had long arguments during his nerdier moments with Merc about how bloody insane Star Trek was for even going there; anyone with any glimmer of understanding of biology knew it would be impossible for aliens and humans to cross. Their biology wouldn’t just be different, it had to be incompatible!

  And yet…there they were, bold as brass. They had more hair than the full-Thulians, slightly more developed noses, and different eye colors. It was disturbing, and Corbie didn’t like the implications. And all of them, Thulian, human, and the hybrids were looking at him with fear and hatred.

  Corbie motioned with his pistol, keeping it trained on the Kriegers. “Guvnor, Pietro, search them. Make sure they don’t have anything hidden on them, look for intel, anything. Then flex-cuff them and sit them down.” The two metas complied, with Carl barking more orders to the Kriegers. The search didn’t turn up anything particularly useful; more tools, what appeared to be some technical manuals and printed orders, a few devices that looked like data-pads of some sort. Pietro was…more than a little rough with some of the prisoners, going so far as to gut-punch one of the Thulians that dared to meet his eyes.

  “Ease off, mate. We’ve got them dead to rights.” Guvnor put a hand on Pietro’s shoulder, but the Italian angrily shook it off.

  “Interesting choice of words.”

  “Stow it. I’ve gotta report this.” Corbie didn’t holster his pistol, but he did lower it as he spoke on the comm.

  “This is Earth Team. We’re all cozy in a Krieger building. The big bastard seems to have lost track of us for the moment, but we can’t exactly put the kettle on yet. Some…complications in here.”

  “Team Earth, shelter in place. Apaches incoming. Corbie, hand on ground please.” Slowly, cautiously, he knelt to give Vix what she needed, never taking his eyes off the Kriegers. “Good, map of structure uploaded to you; follow your HUD, I found the strongest spot in the building.”

  “Will do, love. Gotta handle something, first.” And how, pray tell, do you plan on handling it, bird-brain? There hadn’t been much talk about taking prisoners when the planning for this mission went on. No one thought that there would be much need for it; Krieger troopers fought to the death or withdrew; any wounded or dead they couldn’t retrieve they remotely immolated, turning the suits and anyone inside to slag. It was gruesome, but effective; t
here weren’t Thulian prisoners to interrogate, ever. Why should this city be any different?

  Of course it was different; nothing about this operation had gone to plan so far, so why should a little detail like dealing with non-combatants go the way it should have?

  Guvnor must have sensed what was going through Corbie’s mind. “Corb, what do we do with this lot? We can’t stay here forever, not with that bloody great big beasty outside.”

  “I’m thinking,” came Corbie’s reply. What could the team do with them? March them at gunpoint all the way back to the staging area? They simply weren’t equipped to deal with prisoners.

  “I will tell you what we will do.” Pietro stepped forward, placing the muzzle of his sidearm on the forehead of one of the Thulian captives. “The Kriegers do not take prisoners. Neither shall we.”

  “Fuck’s sake, point that thing away, Pietro!” Corbie started forward pulling at the Italian’s arm, but was brushed off. “They’re civilians, non-combatants! We can’t kill—”

  “Civilians,” Pietro interrupted, “non-combatants? Look at them.” He stared down into the eyes of the Krieger that he had his pistol pointed at. “They hate us. They want to kill us, even now. And besides, killing civilians has never been a problem for the Kriegers. These—these abominations wouldn’t hesitate to shoot us if the situation were reversed.”

  Fledermaus stepped forward, his hands held up placatingly. “Pietro, I do not think we should disobey Corbie. He is the team leader, and—”