Collision: Book Four in the Secret World Chronicle - eARC

by Mercedes Lackey

  There were no cheers from the other soldiers, not now; there was no time, and no energy to spare. Everyone continued firing, shouting orders, retrieving the wounded. They were saved, but only for the moment.

  Sera dropped her hand on John’s shoulder; he turned to look at her, through a haze of golden light, and saw her eyes blazing with that same light. The music swelled within him. And he knew—and she knew—

  They turned as one, and left the forward line, racing together, dodging energy blasts and leaping over debris, knowing there were mere moments to spare before—

  Red Team: Ultima Thule

  The last Robo-Eagle carrying one of the suicide troopers was diving, hard and fast, for the last ECHO broadcast generator. John and Sera were both too exhausted to take it out before it would reach its target; the battle with the dragon, and the subsequent non-stop fighting, had left them both utterly drained, pushing forward through sheer willpower. The Kriegers had kept coming, wave after wave. If this broadcast generator went down, then the offensive would fold; they’d be driven back.

  And that was if they were lucky. If they weren’t lucky—If the Kriegers had another wave staged, waiting for the generator to go down… they would be slaughtered.

  A Robo Eagle was coming, carrying a deadly payload.

  Bear and Untermensch were stationed at the last generator. Both of them had seen the threat, and were firing their weapons at the threat, but none of it was having any effect; the submachine gun and rifle rounds simply pinged off of the shield of the Krieger and the metal hide of the Eagle. RPGs streaked up from the ground, but the Eagle was too fast, dodging around them, even with its burden. John watched in his mind’s eye—that’s the best way he could describe it—and then watched it play out in reality as Bear, glancing over to Unter quickly, dropped his rifle, and raised his gauntlets. John put on a little more speed, racing through and dodging around the troops. Next to him, but in the air, Sera flew like the wind itself, so low to the heads of their comrades that they ducked reflexively.

  Pavel, using the last of the energy from the plasma chamber in his chest, fired off a thunderous bolt of concussive plasma from his energy gauntlets. The blast struck true; the Eagle didn’t have time to dodge around it, catching the shot full in the chest. Knocked for a loop, the Eagle and the trooper it was carrying both plummeted to the ground, landing in the Krieger ranks; less than a second later the trooper detonated, either accidentally triggering its payload or the impact having set the charges off. Dozens of Thulians were instantly vaporized, scattering their front lines. This time a ragged cry did rise amongst the coalition forces; the advancing trooper armor was scattered and disorganized, opening many of them up as targets for more conventional weapons. The advance was halted, at least for the moment.

  When Sera and John reached the last broadcast generator, they found Georgi kneeling next to Pavel. The old Soviet was using a gloved hand to gently close Pavel’s eyes. His gyroscopic heart, normally spinning with stored plasma, lay inert in his chest. Georgi was stony-faced, looking up to John and Sera slowly.

  “He ran out. The last shot…it was all he was having left.”

  Red Saviour arrived next, skidding to a halt after a dead run. She looked as if she had hit a brick wall. At first she had looked ecstatic…until she saw Bear on the ground, unmoving. Now she looked stricken, stunned, her hands closed into fists as if she wanted to pummel something, but there was nothing to hit.

  John felt both shock and a moment of sudden, absolute resolution. Not like Perun. I’m not losin’ another comrade. Never again, if I can goddamned help it.

  But the music was still sounding in his mind, and John started to move; almost unconsciously, he took Sera’s hand, leading her over to Bear. Unter looked to them, suddenly suspicious; John didn’t pay any attention to him. Sera looked at John blankly for a moment, and then an understanding sprang up between them, at a level too deep for words. They knelt down on either side of Pavel; as one, they placed their hands on his chest, Sera’s on top of John’s. He concentrated, reaching deep into his reserves of energy; he could feel Sera feeding him more, helping to direct and concentrate it all. He wreathed his hands in flame. It’s not quite right…there. The music in his mind swelled to full, resonant chords. The fires turned from orange-yellow to white-hot, plasma; then the plasma took on the same red-hue as Bear’s concussive blasts. John was sweating, and yet freezing at the same time, and Sera’s face was wracked with the strain of what they were doing. This wasn’t a blast. This was…something else. Delicate. Precise as a laser-scalpel. Attuned as a violin at perfect pitch. It had to go from here to there without…hurting anything. Slowly, the plasma faded from John’s hands…somehow passing through Pavel’s chestplate without harming it, into the cavity with his gyroscopic heart. The empty space filled, and then, flooded the heart.

  The heart moved. Just a little, at first, as if it had been flicked with a finger. Then again. Then, it made a single rotation, slowly. Another. It picked up a little speed, slowed until he was afraid it was going to stop again, picked up speed, spun in starts, before the heart finally got momentum, kept it, and started spinning in earnest. John pulled his and Sera’s hands away, extinguishing the plasma coming from them; the edges of his vision went dark, and he was barely able to catch Sera as she fainted. She felt as light as if she was made of nothing but bones and feathers.

  Pavel’s eyes flew open, and he sucked in one shuddering breath. “Shto?” He looked around, confused at everyone staring at him, at Sera’s unconscious form and John. It felt to John as if he was breathing air that was too thin. He struggled to regain his composure, but couldn’t seem to stop panting.

  Georgi was the first to speak. “You were being…gone, Old Bear.”

  “Was being the best nap I’ve had since before the fall of Berlin. What happened?”

  Everyone turned to look at John and Sera. Saviour in particular stared at both of them as if she didn’t recognize them, as if they were dangerous, as if she wasn’t sure whether they were on her side. Unter simply stared at them, his face still emotionless. Bear, seeing the way the others were reacting, was confused and unsettled. The Commissar looked like she was about to speak—when an energy bolt whizzed past her head, causing everyone to flinch and duck down.

  The Commissar started again, then checked herself. “We are still having enemies to deal with. Old Bear, get off ass and start shooting. Georgi, keep him from taking nap again. Murdock…deal with your woman, then get back to fighting. We need your fire.” What was left unsaid was that there would most certainly be a…discussion, later, about John and Sera, and what they had done. John wasn’t looking forward to that, but he couldn’t worry about it for now.

  Victoria Victrix: Overwatch Suite

  The rack of energy-storage crystals on Vickie’s desk had been refilled four times. Or so she thought; she had lost an accurate count early on, too busy dealing with the infiltration teams and then later the entire assault force. Grey and Herb had just tossed the blackened, sometimes cracked, depleted crystals aside, and there was a pile of the rocks spilling over the side of the desk and onto the floor. Vickie felt like one of those crystals; overheated, cracking, and just about spent. But she couldn’t stop. She was needed everywhere. With Grey and Herb flying her “eyes” for her, she could spare her attention for what they were actually showing her; her hands flew over the keyboard as she moved from group to group—from Djinni to Corbie to Murdock, to those who were kitted up with the headsets like the Chinese. She’d damn near passed out getting up the rock barriers that had saved a couple of the groups before the Thulian Shield came down. The only reason she hadn’t fallen down was that she couldn’t. Passing out was not an option. But by now she was running on sheer force of will and not much else.

  From her vantage of the entire battlefield she could see the overall pattern that was emerging, and she knew that Art of War could see it too. More and more Thulians were pouring into the battle zone from the farther side of
Ultima Thule, and there weren’t enough allied troops to handle them. They couldn’t get enough troops in there fast enough, not without more of the Tesla generators than they had to soften up the defending forces. And those generators were clearly the primary targets for the Thulians, who knew very well how vulnerable the devices made them. One by one, they were going down.

  She could tell by the spike in Bella’s vitals that she saw it too.

  But there was no time, and no energy, to feel anything. Not when people were relying on her battlefield data, on her warning voice in their ear, on her guidance, and on the tiny dregs of magic she could still manage to throw out there. Emotion was a luxury right now, and she was pared down to bone and sinew.

  Then a new voice, someone she didn’t recognize, pierced through the iron of her concentration. “Jesus—Incoming! Incoming!”

  Jolted out of her near-trance, she scanned the banks of monitors frantically, trying to spot what that meant—and felt a gut-punch as she saw the mass of dots streaking from the far side of Ultima Thule towards Base Camp, moving as fast or faster than any jet fighter. The color, the aura of orange light, told her what they were.

  Death Spheres. And there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about them. Even if she’d had the resource of the Hammer available to her, it couldn’t have taken out more than one or two. The now-depleted orbital platform took hours to get into position; pre-selected targets could have tungsten rods dropped on them in minutes, if you had a good idea where they would be, and with her magic “eyes” she had painted a bulls-eye right on top of the weapon that had threatened to turn the tide against them. But the station had exhausted its ammunition during the battle of the Thulian North American HQ, against the gigantic, possibly prototype Death Sphere—and hadn’t been resupplied. That would have taken either a metahuman who could fly in vacuum—which so far as she was aware didn’t exist—or some form of conventional space vehicle and a spacewalk, which had not exactly been a priority. And that had been only a single target, Now, there were…hundreds.

  Before any jets or attack helicopters could be diverted to intercept them, the Death Spheres had arrived at the staging area. Bolts of energy razed the ground, destroying entire buildings or ripping vehicles and heavy equipment apart. A pair of spheres stopped in the air, hovering for a moment; then the thermite jets shot out from beneath them, burning everything they touched. Several ground troops began to fire back immediately; those closest to any of the Death Spheres were snatched into the air or impaled by the mass of mechanical tentacles that each sphere possessed.

  All of this carnage passed on Vickie’s screens in utter silence, save for the radio chatter. She watched, frozen, caught in the paralysis of utter helplessness. Slowly, too slowly, the defense rallied; jets and attack choppers made attack runs—all “danger close”—and soldiers began using surface to air rockets with ECHO payloads. The ECHO broadcasters at the staging area enabled the coalition forces to damage and destroy the Death Spheres with conventional weapons, but it all seemed like too little, too late. The damage was done by the time the last Death Sphere was destroyed, intentionally crashing itself into one of the few standing farm buildings before exploding. The staging area was a ruin; vehicles, ordinance, and troops meant to be funneled to the fighting, destroyed. Hundreds, thousands of people…all dead or dying, in the span of mere minutes. Bella and her healers were spreading out among the downed troops, but the numbers that could be saved were vastly outweighed by the numbers of those past saving.

  Then she heard it, the order from Art of War. “Activate the Glass option,” the man said grimly, from his command chair. “We may have to use it.”

  Vickie thought her heart stopped the moment she heard those words. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, because she knew what that meant. The nuclear option. Not just one, but…well she didn’t know how many, exactly, but at least a dozen nuclear missiles had been reprogrammed and aimed for Ultima Thule. And Art of War had just ordered them armed. If they were used, they would be launched and detonated sequentially; once started, there would be no stopping the sequence. Each nuke would launch, detonate over the city, and then several minutes later the next would do the same, until there were no warheads left. With the staging area being as close as it was to Ultima Thule, it was likely that they wouldn’t get out unscathed if nukes started going off. Art of War knew that, of course…and yet he was still willing to detonate them. As for the people still in that valley…

  “Sir…is that even going to work?” someone asked.

  “We’re out of options. Our people on the ground are going to be overrun and crushed, and soon. We need to get as many out as possible.” There was a long, quiet pause over the comms. “The offensive has failed.”

  Somehow, Vickie’s hands were moving over her keyboard without her consciously ordering them. For everyone wired into Overwatch 2, their HUDS were now flashing the evacuation order, and showing the quickest way out of the city. For everyone wired into Overwatch 1, a pre-recorded message was repeating in their left ears.

  And that was all she could do. From thousands of miles away, that was all she could do. No earthen barrier that she could throw up would protect her friends, the people she loved, from the hell that was going to fall on them. All her magic, all her skill…none of it mattered.

  Her hands fell limply onto the keys, and her eyes welled up with helpless tears, blurring the scenes of carnage on her monitors.

  And yet…they kept fighting.

  The wounded were being evacuated the hard way, largely not by vehicle, but by being carried, or half-supported, by fellow soldiers. She caught sight of a flash of black wings—Corbie, following the route on his HUD, directing the others. And and as her “eye” turned, there was another flash, of white this time—Einhorn, moving among the wounded, a touch here, a touch there, giving just enough healing, just enough strength to keep a faltering man moving.

  Vickie watched as Einhorn dashed into the open and knelt to tend to one large group of wounded at the edge of the landing zone. All too suddenly, there was an explosion, followed by another and then another. A Death Sphere streaked overhead; it was quickly engaged by ground troops and air assets, but not before it had dropped a deadly payload.

  Krieger armored troopers, an even dozen of them, all landed at the edge of the landing zone…right next to Einhorn and the wounded. Vickie did not expect what happened next.

  The pearly little horn that gave the girl her call-sign began to glow, casting a gentle radiance on the wounded. Somehow, they struggled to their feet and began to move, with others rushing in to assist them when it was obvious that—for some unknown reason—the Kriegers were not moving. Einhorn’s eyes were fixed on the armored Thulians—and they were not moving.

  In fact…one after another, they began to droop, or bow their heads. One of them even began to shake. And that was when Vickie understood what she was doing.

  Projective empathy. It was part of the meta’s powers, and was usually more of an annoyance than anything due to her emotional outbursts. Somehow, Einhorn had gotten into even the Thulians’ alien heads, and was bombarding them with—what? Grief? Remorse? Whatever it was, she had them in her emotional clutches, and she was not letting them go. Vickie found her hands clutching the armrests of her chair, willing more strength into the girl, as behind her, the men she had been healing and guarding were getting away, out of sight, out of range. Just a little more…

  A single, thin beam of energy lanced out from a distant rooftop. The beam struck Einhorn in the back, just to the left of her spine. She turned, confused, looking for what had hit her. Then it seemed as if she grew too tired to stand any longer, collapsing to the ground. It looked unreal; even falling to the ground, she looked graceful and beautiful. It was almost theatrical, a movie death scene rather than the brutal reality of war. Vickie didn’t need to check her monitors, but did so anyway, mostly out of habit. The readings confirmed what she already knew; Einhorn was dead. The soldiers around
her immediately responded; first venting their rage upon the Krieger troopers that Einhorn had been entrancing, just now coming out of their stupor. Then upon the sniper, calling in artillery and using crew-served weapons to completely flatten the entire building the Thulian had been perched on.

  Vickie swore, scrubbing tears of rage out of her eyes with the back of her hand. There wasn’t time for grief; she had too many others that she had to try to save. She flung herself back into the frantic effort to get as many of her friends out of that valley as she could. Maybe the mountains would protect them. Maybe they wouldn’t—but if she didn’t at least try…

  She was sending Djinni’s team out the opposite direction of everyone else. He didn’t understand, but he was following her directions anyway. From where he and the remains of the Misfits were, there was no way they’d get to the “right” exit point anyway. There were too many Kriegers between them and the original LZ. Maybe, just maybe, with the Thulians focused on the main assault, Blue Team could sneak out.

  Spearhead wasn’t retreating. They couldn’t even if they wanted to; if they tried to run, they’d be cut down in the streets by the Kriegers who were pressing in from nearly all sides. So instead, they stayed to fight. Holding the line there meant that the rest of the forces would have more time to get clear. Their position was no longer the leading edge of an assault, but a “die in place” holdout; they’d occupy the Kriegers, and take down as many of them as they could. Even from the high elevation that the eye she was currently using was at, she could clearly pick out where Sera and John were. It would’ve been hard not to see them; great torrents of fire and spears made of flame were constantly assaulting the Kriegers, keeping them at bay. She didn’t know where the two of them were getting the energy; after everything they had already done, and how much it had taken out of them…