Revolution: Book Three of the Secret World Chronicle - eARC

by Mercedes Lackey

  “Nechevo,” he heard Red Saviour say, flatly, which he assumed was a swear word in Russian.

  His opponent was not going down any time soon. In fact, his opponent was clearly a master of some sort of nasty, hard-hitting, mixed martial art. And now he was in trouble, separated from the rest of the team, backed into a corner. And the problem was, he couldn’t just pick some other book to channel; he was stuck with this one until it ran out, until the last word from the last page scrolled across his skin.

  And then, just as the Blacksnake-in-Reb-clothing closed in for what was clearly going to be the kill—he wasn’t in trouble anymore.

  Someone rose up from behind the Snake, and with a single chopping blow to the back of his neck, not just broke the man’s neck, but damn near decapitated him.

  “CCCP, Untermensch!” the man barked, clearly expecting Rider to take him on just out of reflex. Rider stared.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be dead?” he stammered, oblivious to the fighting behind Untermensch. The Commie laughed.

  “Da, they keep sayink that. Davay, tovarisch, let us make borscht of these sooka.” And with that, he turned, and Rider just followed behind him, mopping up whatever he left.

  “I know how to run the train!” he shouted over the shouts, screams, and sounds of combat.

  “Then we need get you to front of car!” Untermensch shouted back, ruthlessly plowing his way ahead. What had been eight men, became five, then three…then none. Untermensch made short work of the door; shatterproof glass was evidently not nearly up to blows from a pair of hands that might have looked like flesh, but obviously weren’t as frail and fragile a thing as skin and bone.

  Unfortunately, when Rider wrenched open the door from the inside, and tried to bring up the control panel, he got…nothing. Not a flicker. And the cause was obvious, a scorch mark along the top that must have come from an errant electrical cannon shot. The brains of the train were fried, and as the instruction manual scrolled across his skin, he knew what he had to do.

  “Get everybody out of here, Unter,” he ordered. “Get into the second car. The only way to slow this train is for me to manually decouple from here, then you guys will be the lead car and you can bring the train in under control.”

  “Overwatch to Rider. I can feed Georgi what he needs to run the panel.” Evidently the “Overwatch” chick was saying something similar to the Russian; he had one hand to his ear, and nodding.

  “What about you, comrade?” The Russian asked, looking up.

  “I’ll have to hotwire the brakes and hold the wires in place. That’s the only way to get them to work. Go! We’re running out of time! The rest of you, this guy’s your team lead now, do what he says!” Rider didn’t even turn to see if the others obeyed him; he was prying open the access panel under the controls, hunting for the manual decoupler. By the time he found it, and peered back along the body-strewn car, the Russian had battered open the door between cars One and Two, his men were pushing back the Blacksnake, and the Russian was breaking down the control booth door.

  Rider yanked on the decoupler. There was a lurch, then a second lurch as car One, now no longer pulling five other cars, surged forward, accelerating.

  Rider pulled loose the pertinent wires and jammed them together, holding them in place despite showers of sparks that landed on his hands, stinging and burning them. He didn’t have to look to see the words scrolling across his skin now. As the wheels locked up and screamed, he knew very well that there was too little track between him and the Five Points station to actually stop—not with the engine fighting the brakes. The brakes were going to lose. The best he could manage would be a controlled crash into whatever train was still ahead of them. There was a train ahead, the track-signals told him that much.

  Which would be why The Ballad of Casey Jones was what was playing across his hands and face right now.

  “Rider, this is Overwatch…”

  “It’s okay, Overwatch. I know you can’t do anything. It’s okay.” He kept the wires jammed together. Every bit of speed he could scrub off would be that much less shrapnel flying around the station. Strangely, he felt very calm as he saw the tunnel to the Underground speeding towards him. “Maybe somebody will write a book about this some day.”

  “Rider—”

  But it was already too late, as the words he saw scrolling across his skin came to a dead stop, leaving only two. From the time he first understood his power, Rider had known this day would come.

  There it was. His eyes were fixed on the words, black print on white skin, repeated over and over.

  The End.

  * * *

  The last of the Blacksnake mercenaries in the terminal was trying to make a run for the exit; the rest of his team had been decimated by the CCCP and the ECHO medical teams that had arrived to secure the area and evacuate it. Saviour stepped out from behind the corner she had been using as cover, grabbing the merc by the front of his clothing. In his panic to escape, he had thrown his weapons to the ground, and was wild-eyed with fear. Good. Wicked men should fear. The Commissar lifted him from the ground with one hand while she charged energy in her free hand; the gut-punch she delivered on the captive merc sent him flying nearly twenty feet, where he impacted a row of lockers with a wet thump. With a self-satisfied nod she keyed her comm.

  “Status report, Murdock.”

  The American came trotting up to her from behind a newsstand further down the tunnel, his rifle at a low-ready. “All of the opposition have been taken down, Commissar. Any live ones are in custody, with ECHO med securing them off to the side.” He glanced over his shoulder briefly. “They ain’t got a lot of work t’do, if y’know what I mean.”

  “Civilians?”

  “All evac’d prior to the tussle breakin’ out. We’re gettin’ the train that’s here movin’ out shortly. Conductor is a touch shaky at the moment.”

  She nodded, surveying the scene; casings and bullet holes littered everywhere, with broken tile crunching underfoot wherever she stepped. Saviour was walking with Murdock towards the train when her comm squawked once.

  “Overwatch to Red Saviour. Untermensch back up. Car one coming in at speed, I’ve prodded MARTA but…there’s gonna be a crash if you can’t clear that last train NOW. Cars Two through Five detached and slowing, Unter has the controls, but there’s fighting in them and there’ll be a crunch into anything left on the tracks.”

  “Clear the train now, Murdock.” Saviour keyed the comm for her team and the ECHO med team. “Everyone, be gettink to cover! Runaway car comink in hard and fast!”

  Everyone scrambled; John was already running at a blur towards the front end of the train in the station, yelling to get the train moving. Natalya was directing everyone and helping to clear some of the injured when the train lurched once, then slowly started rolling forward. There was a low rumble that was growing; she could feel it start at her feet and work its way up into her belly. And a scream of metal-on-metal. The train…it’s here.

  “Tvoyu mat’…everyone be gettink down, NOW!” Natalya launched herself sideways, diving away from the train tracks. She landed and covered her head, chancing to look at the last second. The single car came barreling down the tracks, brakes failing, sparks flying from the undercarriage as the wheels screamed. She felt as much as she heard the impact, it was so loud and jarring; both the single car and the evacuated train rippled with the force of the crash, sending pieces of debris flying through the air. The evacuated train’s rear car lurched upward, actually raking the bottom of the ceiling. The lone car was crushed, compacted like an accordion to half its length; smoke was pouring out of it even before its momentum ceased to push the train in front of it.

  Everyone in the station was dazed; Natalya could hear yelling and some screaming from further down the tunnel. She picked herself up, coughing from all of the dust and smoke in the air and trying to get her bearings. “Prepare yourselves! Train with shluha vokzal’naja is comink, will be here soon! We must be rea
dy to properly welcome them!”

  * * *

  Bulwark’s strategy had worked like a charm, up to a point. Frankentrain got a running start and charged first, bowling over Harmony’s frontline defense. They scattered like bowling pins and Bull heard shrill cries accompanied by awful crunching sounds as they flew back into metal dividers, supports and seating. Frank might have continued along the length of the car, shrugging off a storm of bullets from hand cannons and blast from energy rifles, but he was interrupted as a tall, wiry man stepped in front of him, took an enormous breath, and expanded his body like a balloon. Frank charged right into him, disappeared momentarily in a comical Frankentrain-shaped depression in the man’s elastic midsection, and was hurled back like a pebble from a slingshot. He collided into the seats, ripping them from their reinforced stanchions with great tearing sounds of twisting metal and landed in a jumbled mess of steel. He groaned, but not so much from the pain. He didn’t usually feel pain, not when he was moving, but the crash had left him rather dizzy. Frank loved to run, but always in straight lines. Sudden changes of direction always made him want to throw up. He was always good as the engineer or the driver on the straight-run tracks; no one wanted him in the steam-loco’s cabin on the switchbacks.

  When Frank lurched to his feet, he felt the train spinning around him. He might have been an easy target, but Bull and the rest of his team were on the move. Bull led them in, shimmering in his shield as he shrugged off a barrage of thrown knives and bullets. Closing the distance, he had a vague sense that things were going a little too smoothly, when Harmony and a small group of Blacksnake metas vaulted over the riflemen and entered the fray. For Harmony, at least, they were ready. Bull dropped his shield, and three of his ops took immediate aim and blasted her with concentrated sonic, energy and freezing bursts from their hands. Harmony cursed, ducked under the blasts and rolled back behind her troops. The rest of her melee fighters, however, darted in, and it became painfully apparent that these fighters were specialized in close-quarters combat. They seemed to be everywhere—bouncing off walls, tumbling underneath, scaling the very ceilings, and before Bull could blink he found himself in the midst of a brutal fight that ran half the length of the car.

  Bull felt a sudden kick to his midsection, grunted in surprise, and tried to return the blow. His attacker easily dodged the punch, and was already moving on to the next target. The Blacksnake skirmishers appeared to be identically dressed in light armor and hooded face coverings. In fact, they were all the same height and build, and moved in the same eerie manner. Their limbs seemed to possess an enhanced range of articulation, bending at strange angles, orchestrating prescient attacks in all directions. They were constantly on the move, not happy to fight just one ECHO meta but all of them, lashing out with quick attacks before moving to a new target. Whatever they were, their tactics were working. Bull’s team flailed about helplessly as the skirmishers continued their onslaught, an untouchable dervish that was quickly wearing them down. Unable to build up to a run, Frankentrain was knocked over as one fighter delivered a devastating flying kick to his chest while another rolled to trip him up at the feet. Another drove a series of jabs at Arctic, ending in a wild uppercut that sent her reeling. One by one, the ECHO metas were falling.

  Bull collected himself and watched their dervish dance through his stunned team. He kept focus on one of them, willed a condensed shield to flare up around his fist, and reared back in anticipation. As the agile scrapper attempted to tumble past him, Bull struck, and delivered a massive blow to his midsection, amplified by his kinetic shield. The fighter, and all his dopplegangers, flew back towards the front of the car, their forms merging into one sprawling figure who groaned and gripped his stomach in pain.

  “Fall back!” Harmony shouted, seizing another one of her ops by the arm. Bull actually expected her to drain him on the spot, but evidently he was worth more alive than sucked dry. She gave him a rough shove towards Bulwark, snarling “Finish the damn job!” while the rest of her force retreated to the next car. He was a large, heavily armored man, almost as large as Bull. He hunched over, and began to roar as a portal opened up in his chestplate. Bull watched with alarm as a light began to intensify in the man’s chest cavity, realizing what it meant.

  “Take him down!” Bull shouted. The artillery units on his team, those that could still stand, unleashed hell on the living cannon, but all for naught. The man stood his ground, letting the barrage of bullets and force blasts ricochet off his armor, and all the while his power source continued to glow ever brighter.

  “Nice try,” the armored man snarled. Even his head was armored, protected by a series of interlocking, metal plates. “I’ll bet you could eventually find a weak spot in this armor, but you’re out of time, and something tells me I won’t have problems getting past yours.” He began to scream as his build-up hit a critical point, and he leveled his chest to blast them and the entire back of the train to ashes. He began to laugh maniacally, and stopped with the thunder of a single gunshot. His head snapped back, and when it flopped forward Bulwark saw an oozing crater where the man’s left eye used to be. He fell to his knees and sank to the ground, the light in his chest extinguished.

  “How’s that for a weak spot, dickhead?”

  Bull turned around. Scope relaxed, and lowered her smoking gun.

  “Nice shot,” he said.

  “We’ve kept in shape,” Scope shrugged. “Even learned a few things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like how guns don’t solve every problem,” she answered. “But sometimes, they make a hell of a persuasive argument.”

  * * *

  “…freaking non-intuitive…Baromarcú faszfej excuses for engineers, can’t have a nice big red button that says ‘Emergency Brakes,’ oh no…Overwatch to Unter! Who’d you leave on the controls?”

  “Busy, Overwatch!” One of the Blacksnake metas had been holding his ECHO comrades at bay; he was able to generate a sort of bone armor over his skin, with spikes protruding from his knuckles. He was busy…dissuading the ECHO metas from advancing, leaving the Blacksnake behind him to take potshots. To hell with this. Unter vaulted over a pile of seats that had been ripped from their moorings and used as a makeshift barrier, charging straight for the meta. He could see the Blacksnake merc grinning, his grown armor rattling as he braced himself. Just before they met, both metas reared back and punched; Unter altered the trajectory of his thrown punch slightly. With a crack as loud as a gunshot, their fists met; the bone spikes and armor on the merc’s fist shattered and started oozing blood, causing him to scream. Unter shut him up with an uppercut that landed on the tip of the merc’s chin, sending him to flip over onto his back, knocked out cold.

  “Ura ura ura! Push them back!” The rest of the ECHO team rallied, running past him to meet the enemy. The Blacksnake weren’t prepared for the push, and fought a pitched battle as they retreated to the third car. “Ready, Overwatch. The dogs are running.” Unter leaned over the controls and began to follow the instructions that Overwatch had given him.

  “Nechevo. Good job.” At that moment the train lurched a little and metal began screaming. “This is Overwatch, all ECHO, CCCP. Control of train established. You’re coming in hard anyway; there’s too much speed to scrub and there’s gonna be a controlled crash. I’ll give you a five second warning countdown.”

  Unter surveyed the fight; this bunch of ECHO now effectively had the Blacksnake sandwiched in car three between themselves and Bulwark’s team. He idly felt the back of his head where he had been shot; his hand was covered with blood when he pulled it back. Not something to repeat in the near future. Strange dreams after I’ve been shot in the head.

  “Overwatch: all troops! Brace for impact! Five!”

  “Team, we are coming in hot! Brace yourselves!” Unter gripped two poles, hoping that his strength wouldn’t fail and allow his hold to falter.

  “Four! Three! Two! One!”

  * * *

  “Overwatch:
Command: open Djinni private, open Pride private,” Bella whispered. “Red, did you get all that? When the car hits, I’m going to jump away from Verd and have hysterics. That should get attention on me, and when the second train hits, I’ll have a meltdown. That should distract everyone from Pride, and he can jet off to the station. If,” she added with only a little sarcasm, “that meets with your approval, my lords and masters.”

  “Make sure you jump far enough away and even if Khanji reacts I think I can keep her from disemboweling you,” Red replied, with just as much sarcasm.

  By this time, Bella was so keyed up she almost didn’t have to fake hysterics when the first car smashed into the parked train. She shrieked unintelligibly somewhere around High C, leapt nearly to the edge of the stage, and pointed in the direction of Five Points. Tears were rolling down her face for Paperback Rider; even with the station being underground, the sound of that impact meant nothing short of the most resilient metahumans would have survived it.

  When the second impact came, her “meltdown” included a controlled tumble off the stage—something she hadn’t told Djinni was in the program, but which her own parkour practice had ensured wouldn’t even leave much of a bruise, and which would absolutely guarantee that all attention and cameras were riveted on her. As people clustered around her, she moaned dramatically, and feigned confusion until Djinni’s “Okay, he’s away and not even Khanji noticed,” told her it was safe to come tearfully to her feet and babble explanations about flashbacks.

  “Verd’s pissed off. You stole his show. Heh, now he’s looking for Pride. So’s Khanji.”

  Look all you want, monkey boy, she thought, viciously. And come on down here to “see if I’m okay.” I’ll give you a handshake you’ll never wake up from.

  * * *

  John had almost become a head shorter when the first car crashed; a jagged piece of metal had gone whistling through the air where he had been less than a second before. Natalya had been one of the first people up, yelling orders and trying to prepare the troops for the second train. The ECHO med team were still busy dragging off the wounded and putting the still-living Blacksnake mercs out of reach of the Commissar.