It was a good thing his lifeline to Vickie was an implant now. Nothing for them to see. Nothing for them to hear either; Vickie was being as silent as he was. That was probably smart. If either of them had meta-powers they might hear something if she spoke.
Then they stopped, although the car was still running. He heard the bells of a railway crossing, then the approaching train. When it was near enough that the sound actually rattled the frame of the car, the voice was in his ear again.
“Zhar’s behind you by a good bit, and I have your loc. Looks like you’re heading for the same place we wanted you to go. Got more backup on the way now, but they’re at least two hours at top speed.”
Which means I’ll either be clear or dead by the time they arrive. At least someone might be able to clean up whatever’s left, in the case of the latter. The thought of the angel flashed across his mind. Strangely…being dead had an entirely different slant to it now. The fear wasn’t so much that he would have lost, as it was that he would have lost seeing her again. He’d been doing nothing but surviving for so long, that these past few months of…well, really living, had sort of crept up on him. What would she do if he was killed?
And if…if she really, really was an angel…would it matter?
He got a brief flash of her, hands on her hips, scolding him for getting killed the way his Ma used to for getting into something, and nearly choked on a laugh.
The train passed; the car was in motion again, bumping over the tracks, then taking a right onto what felt like a dirt road. “Are we there yet? I’m getting hungry.” He uncrossed his arms, fidgeting intentionally in the seat. Distracting them had its own perks, one of which was that annoyed people sometimes let things slip. And this bunch didn’t exactly look like the cream of the crop.
“Shut up.” Male voice, directly to his right. The bodyguard.
John decided that it would be all right to gamble. “Make me.” The guard clamped his left hand on John’s shoulder, which was what he had counted on. The guy was big, bigger than John, and was used to intimidating people that way. In a blink, John had locked his left hand onto the guard’s wrist and pulled him forward. After twisting the wrist just a few inches, he applied his elbow to the guard’s outstretched arm, hyper-extending it until he heard a loud pop and a strangled cry. The bag was very suddenly snatched from his head; the woman was pointing a small pistol at him, the driver was turned around in his seat, and the guard was nursing his broken appendage. After a second of studying it, John realized that the pistol was Thulian; one of their weird ray guns. It further confirmed his suspicion about who these goons were. “What?” He shrugged nonchalantly, as if the violence that had just taken place had nothing to do with him at all.
“Get out of the car, Holz. And you. Do not move quickly. I can choose to make you hurt, very, very much.” The woman didn’t look frightened now.
The bodyguard fumbled open the door, hissing his pain as he did so, and got out, leaving John with a clear view of his surroundings.
It looked to be what was left of a farm; John wasn’t at all familiar with farming equipment to identify what sort of farm by the old, rusted-out hulks of machinery parked beside what remained of a wooden barn, but the blowing bits of white fluff everywhere did that for him. Cotton, and it must have been abandoned for a long time, to have built up the little drifts of dead, grayish fiber against the weed-infested fence-line and the base of the barn timbers. The driveway they were parked on was mostly crabgrass with only a hint of the original gravel.
There was a second barn next to the wooden one, in somewhat better shape; sheet-metal over steel, it looked like. And big. Probably where the cotton bales had been stored. John got out, taking his time. The whine of what sounded like a million cicadas filled the air.
The group—minus the bodyguard, who was leaning against the car—strolled through an open door in the second barn, guarded by an equally serious-looking and for-show-big tough-guy. Cotton lint was everywhere, cotton fibers and dust were so thick in the air it looked like a Ridley Scott film. The guard nodded to the group, stepping aside to let them inside. The barn looked a lot bigger from the inside than from without; big enclosed spaces had that effect. The place was almost completely empty, except for several scattered stacks of crates, some more bodyguards and the “hostage” sitting in the center, still tied to a chair. The hostage was dressed plainly enough; he almost looked like a college kid instead of a no-account piece of Reb scum. The question was, why hold one of their own guys as a hostage? Unless, of course, they were counting on him to think the kid was a civvie.
“So, what’s the play here, folks? I haven’t got all night, and I’m still hungry.” He crossed his arms and rolled back on his heels. “Your hostage isn’t much of one; should’ve told the Reb to bathe before y’tried to set this gig up.”
“And what makes you think he is a Reb, schweinhund?” Something very like a Teutonic god leapt down out of the upper story and landed in a cloud of dust and cotton lint. John knew that particular Teutonic god though. Ubermensch.
Oh. So that’s why they went to the trouble of dragging me out here. John was immediately uneasy. Ubermensch, while probably not the smartest man John had ever met, was definitely one of the strongest. John shrugged, again trying his best to appear unconcerned. “Couldn’t have been plainer than if you’d stuck jackboots on him, Fritz. Beer, saurkraut an’ back-bacon on his breath.” John wasn’t about to give away the fact that his “eye in the sky,” Vickie, was the source of the information. He uncrossed his arms, taking a step forward towards the Thulian and the bound Reb. “What do you want?”
The Thulian stuck a thumb at him. “You shamed me. You shall not shame me again. This time we fight—”
“Not to interrupt what sounded like a towerin’ righteous rant, but y’ought to have your barber here fer shamin’ ya. That haircut went out in the 70s. Nobody wears mullets anymore.” Piss him off. Couldn’t really make things much worse. John tensed, readying himself to see how the big—the only really appropriate word to describe Ubermensch—meta would react.
He was disappointed. Ubermensch’s brows knitted. “Was ist ein ‘mullet’?” he muttered to the woman. She shrugged.
“I wouldn’t be too quick to talk about fighting, Adolf. You’re talking to a real man here, and you couldn’t even take out one little slip of a Russian girl.”
The Thulian’s face screwed up in rage. “You insolent pig—” John snapped his right arm out almost instantly, fire cascading down it in a thick stream. The flames jumped and impacted directly in front of Ubermensch and the Reb “captive.” John had paid close attention to the cotton lint and dust that permeated this warehouse; such things were really, really flammable. The space around Ubermensch erupted into a mini-fireball, causing him to throw his hands in front of his face; the Reb, still tied to the chair and gagged, had no such recourse. John didn’t waste any time; he darted immediately to his right, taking the half-second to burn the nearest bodyguard with a spurt of flame large enough to swallow a Buick. Skidding to a halt behind a stack of crates, he waited and listened.
Everyone else scrambled; the aide went straight for the door, and the remaining bodyguards followed suit, sliding and slipping in the accumulated cotton lint. The Reb was the only one that remained still; he had begun to scream around his gag. Ubermensch brushed the ashes and soot from his armor. Although he did not have his sword, the rest of his armor was the same as the last time John had seen him. His golden helmet had been made in the shape of an eagle’s head, an extremely stylized, art-deco sort of eagle’s head, with two equally stylized wings sweeping back from either side. The eagle theme was carried out on the breastplate, where another eagle was incised into the metal, a double lightning-bolt “SS” in one claw, a stylized skull in the other. In the way inconsequential thoughts had a way of intruding when you were under heavy fire, John wondered if this was the same armor that the first Ubermensch had worn—or if the new version had had a new look designed
to match the power suits.
He lifted one gauntleted hand to the helmet, and raised the beak-visor, revealing a head that looked like it had been taken straight off of an old Third Reich statue, scanning the warehouse. His eyes settled on the stack of crates that John was hiding behind. “You’ll suffer for your tricks, pathetic worm!” In five great strides, Ubermensch was at the crates, smashing through them with his shoulder. John barely escaped from behind the bursting wooden boards, sending a jet of flame over his shoulder. The pile of broken crates began to burn around Ubermensch; the light cast reflected off of his gleaming armor, making him look even more like a raging devil.
John took a deep breath, still running, and his enhancements keyed. He moved at a blur, kicking up clouds of cotton dust. He stopped very suddenly, whirled, and braced his right arm. Concentrating and relaxing, he let the flame on his arm build and coalesce; the blast lashed out to strike Ubermensch directly in the chest, splashing flames across his upper body. I’ve gotta keep him outta reach until I can get some good distance between us; then I’ll have time to really unload on the son-of-a-bitch. The Thulian stomped after John, swatting away the fire from his face. “You cannot keep this game up forever!” He bumped into a metal support beam, one of dozens in the warehouse; stopping, he ripped out a meter-long section with one hand. Putting up his free hand to shield himself from the flames, Ubermensch side-armed the hunk of metal at John.
John dropped prone to the floor, shutting off his flames; the beam sailed overhead fast enough to create a violent vortex in the air above his head. It would’ve bisected him if he’d still been standing upright. John was back up on his feet just as quickly, but Ubermensch had seized the opportunity to close the distance. John feinted to his left, then juked to his right towards the center of the room. Ubermensch followed, unfazed by John’s feint. They met right next to the Reb, whose eyes had gone wide in abject terror. Ubermensch caught John in a vice-like grip with a meaty hand inside his metal gauntlet; John wrenched his shoulder, barely slipping out of the hold. This is bad. He jabbed twice, connecting with his opponent’s jaw; it didn’t budge, but something in John’s hand almost cracked. He wouldn’t be able to hurt Ubermensch, not close-up like this.
The problem was that the bastard was so damned strong. John’s mind, flooded with adrenalin and moving faster than his enhanced body could keep up with, jumped back to training with Bella at an ECHO invitational sparring meet, teaching how to handle superior strength when you were just a weak human. All the CDOs had to take these. The highlight had been when a small, unassuming man with a huge bushy mustache and coke-bottle glasses had instructed John to try to strike him with all of him enhanced might; the next thing John had known, he was on his back and halfway across the room. John was a fast learner; he’d picked up quite a bit in that one session.
Flashing back to the present, John watched in not-quite-slow-motion as Uber snapped a fist toward his face; it was a haymaker, and more than powerful enough to kill him. John pivoted, his right and left hand coming up to hold loosely on the Thulian’s arm; moving off the line of attack he guided Ubermensch’s fist in the direction that the strike was already heading. Unable to stop himself, Ubermensch found all of the strength he had planned to use turning John into mush redirected forward. His fist must have seemed to pull him like a rocket as John dropped to one knee and he found himself soaring over John’s head in a parody of flight. His landing sounded as if someone had just flung a ’57 Chevy at a junkpile.
John kept the dance up, redirecting the Thulian’s enormously powerful strikes to work against him. The super-strong meta clearly did not “get” what was happening to him, and his face reddened with fury. I can’t do this forever; I’m not that good, and he’ll get lucky. As if fated, John saw the blow coming; his feet were planted wrong, and he wouldn’t be able to avoid it this time. Without a single thought, he snatched the tied up Reb, who was in the middle of the raging fight, and placed him squarely in front of his chest. The Reb gave a single strangled squeal right before Ubermensch’s fist impacted with him.
Stars exploded in his vision, and John went sailing end over end through the air. He’d been through rough fights, crashes of various sorts, and explosions; none of them seemed to compare with how hard he’d been hit. His back impacting with the metal siding of the warehouse seemed significantly gentler, as did his landing. It took what seemed like ages for his vision to clear and for the black to fade from the edges. Looking down at himself to make sure he was still whole, he noticed that he was covered in the pulpy remains of the unfortunate Reb fake-hostage. Brushing himself off and coughing violently as he stood up, John glanced at the new hole he’d help make in the warehouse. Ubermensch was marching out through the missing piece of sheet metal, infernally haloed by the small fires inside the building. Part of the roof began to cant and collapse inwards as the he exited.
“Johnny, heads up. He’s ramping up something in his armor. It’s not energy beams…grav manipulation or something? I can’t tell, just that there’s something going on, and that can’t be good for you. Wish to hell I had some more complicated sensors.”
“Now…” Ubermench’s face was scarlet with rage. “Now I become serious.” He stepped next to what looked like a thresher of some sort, setting his hand upon one of the massive blades in its exposed internals. Without any apparent effort, he yanked out the gigantic piece of metal, taking it into both of his hands like an oversized axe.
Two green bolts split the air around John, coming from the far corner of the collapsing warehouse. The bodyguard whose arm he’d broken earlier was firing.
Ubermensch whirled on the underling, spitting out something in German. It sounded like obscenities. From the look on the flunky’s face, it probably was. “Das is mein, scheisskopf!” Ubermensch finished, flinging a hand towards John. “Mein! Geh’st du! Schnell!”
Apparently the flunky didn’t react quickly enough to suit Ubermensch. Dropping the combine blade, Ubermensch touched something on his left gauntlet. Immediately, he sank up to his ankles into the dirt. That’s his grav stuff kicking in, then. Twisting to his right, the Thulian grabbed the edge of the combine, and dragged it single-handedly towards him. In one smooth motion, he had hefted the entire contraption above his head, rusted metal whining and creaking pitifully. He hurled it at the barn with impossible, inhuman force; it was mind-blanking for John to witness. The combine tumbled through the air towards the bodyguard; his shriek was cut short as the farm machine impacted with him and the entire end of the warehouse, completing the fiery collapse.
John took advantage of the moment; Uber’s back was turned and he seemed to be literally planted. He focused again, thrusting both arms out to help direct his flames. He was sloppy in his aim this time; his beam gouged into the ground, cutting a burning trough as it tracked up to connect with his adversary. Ubermensch whirled around, but he seemed to be going much slower. He had to make an effort against the grav manipulator in order to move around. This was very good for John; he’d be able to leverage his mobility over the Thulian even more. I’d kill for an airstrike or some arty, though. I wonder if they could shoot Chug outta a cannon?
Ubermensch made his way to another large machine, this one the size of a dump-truck; with his freakish strength, he lifted it. John’s enhancements were still going, so he was able to move out of the way of the thrown equipment easily. So long as he had to keep dodging all of this farm crap, though, he couldn’t set up for a powerful shot. This was a stalemate, and that just wouldn’t do.
Ubermensch hefted another machine; some monstrous Deere contraption, maybe a cotton picker. It still had cotton fluff in its rear catch, floating lazily around. John made a split-second decision, and held his ground. He’d need to be spot on with this shot. Focusing again, he fired; not at Ubermensch, but at the machine.
There must have been some fuel still sloshing around in the bottom of the tank, and plenty of fumes to go with it, not to mention all that flammable cotton lint. Gas fum
es too, not diesel. The explosion swatted John flat into the ground, sending a massive cloud of smoke and fire into the air. Shrapnel rained down around John, and his entire front felt like it had been sunburned. His ears were ringing; the violent noise certainly didn’t do anything good for his sensitive hearing. He scanned the area; the secondary fires that the explosion had created were giving off a lot of smoke. John was barely able to make out the outline of Ubermensch, struggling to stand up.
Using the smoke for concealment, John dashed through the smoke, closing to Ubermensch’s side. Moving with a practiced economy of motion, he grabbed for the Thulian’s left arm trying to deactivate the gravity manipulator. Ubermensch was still stunned, flailing about blindly while John scrabbled at the device.
“Johnny, if you can get anywhere near his controls, they’ll be heat-shielded on top, but not underneath. If you can find a seam—”
John took her advice instantly; instead of trying to switch anything on, he simply allowed his fires to spring from his hands. A half second later, the fires transmuted and became plasma. The housing for the forearm device glowed, crumpled, and then shorted before melting. Some sort of strange pulse of force blasted out of the device before it died; it flung him backwards as John’s senses all failed and his stomach lurched and spasmed. He skidded along the ground, his back plowing through some of the spot fires and getting cut up by protruding rocks.
Still conscious somehow, he tried to stand, but the entire world had gone completely sideways. Must’ve done somethin’ to my equilibrium. The thoughts came sluggishly, and he finally dragged himself to his feet. The barn, the wooden one, was right there. He stumbled towards it drunkenly, falling twice before locking himself inside.
Revolution: Book Three of the Secret World Chronicle - eARC Page 38