Revolution: Book Three of the Secret World Chronicle - eARC

by Mercedes Lackey

  He started to look around for the rest of the squad; Mamona was the first one that he spotted. She was leaned up against an overturned vending machine, dazed and bleeding from a cut on her forehead; courtesy of a Blacksnake knife. John trotted up to her, kneeling down and placing a hand on her shoulder. “Y’alright, comrade? We’ve got more fight comin’ to us.” She seemed to focus a little more, wiping some of the blood off of her eyebrow before nodding to him. “Follow me; we gotta police up Bear an’ meet with the Commissar.”

  Pavel wasn’t too far away; he was standing in front of a large piece of shattered mirror, grunting and cursing under his breath; it wasn’t until he turned at the sound of their approach that John and Mamona saw why.

  “This may being slight problem.” A foot long piece of rebar was sticking out of Bear’s chest cavity, perilously close to his gyroscopic heart. “Have been trying to extricate Amerikanski steel, but there was a chance of nicking plasma conduits.” He shook his head. “Not ideal for anyone in the station that is not wishing to become Tennessee Fried Turkey.”

  “I think I’ve got a solution. Hold still.” With a grunt, John yanked the rebar out of Pavel’s chest, dropping it to the ground with a clatter. “Just ’cause I’m a curious sort, what would’ve happened if it had hit your heart?”

  “Station would be having new skylight.”

  Mamona gulped hard. “Right. Shall we?”

  They ran together to where the Commissar was positioning the ECHO personnel; everyone had their weapons out, and those with more flamboyant powers had them charged and ready. John, Pavel, and Mamona fell into place, waiting. The second car came screeching in much like the first, sending a shower of sparks off of the rails; it was clear that it was going significantly slower, however. When it impacted with the rear of the wreckage of the first car it further compacted the ruined cabin, causing everyone to duck and recoil.

  “Be vigilant, tovarischi! They will being in third car!” The assembled ECHO and CCCP recovered and trained their weapons on the third car, collectively holding their breath for what seemed like hours but was in fact only a handful of seconds. Finally, the doors creaked open. Dazed and bloody Blacksnake mercs stumbled out, some clutching weapons and others supporting each other.

  John was about to move in when a familiar feeling creeped up his spine. In a second it felt like a cold snake was coiled in his guts. Something is wrong, something is going to go bad.

  At that moment flashbangs went off, seemingly coming from everywhere and nowhere. John was able to recover just in time to see what looked like nearly two dozen more Blacksnake mercenaries pour in from service entrances and back doors.

  Shit! I thought we had the station secured! There wasn’t any time left to think; almost as one, everyone started shooting—or closing in for hand-to-hand. It was absolute chaos.

  * * *

  Where had all the Blacksnake come from? The last Bulwark had heard, Vickie was only reporting about twenty moving on the station. This was a lot more than twenty.

  “Overwatch to Bulwark. No, I don’t know where they came from. Working to locate all of them, but they keep shooting out cameras. Overwatch to Bulwark’s teams. DON’T MOVE.”

  A moment later, the earth heaved up beneath the cement flooring, providing barricades of earth and broken concrete behind which they could take some scant shelter.

  “OK, now you can move.” Vickie sounded very weak, and shaky. “AFK for 30 seconds—sugar, caffeine.”

  “Take positions behind those barricades!” Bulwark bellowed. “Fan out! I want Omega Tango maneuvers, people!”

  “Davay!” Red Saviour’s voice rang out as even more Blacksnake mercs streamed into the station. “Squads Odin and Dva, left and right flank!”

  For a moment, the dazed ECHO and CCCP metas were completely caught off guard. Within the space of a few heartbeats, they had witnessed one astonishing thing after another; the crash of the train, the sudden onslaught of Blacksnake forces breaching the station, and the very earth rising up from beneath them to serve as makeshift cover. Bull and Saviour’s voices cut through their confusion, snapped them to attention, and with shouts of renewed vigor they moved into position and opened fire on the advancing Blacksnake troops.

  It was relatively easy to tell the Blacksnake that had been on the train; they were stumbling around, dazed and confused, and being pulled out of the wreck of the train by their fresher compatriots. A few of the ECHO ops immediately surrounded them, guns trained on their hearts, ordering them on the ground. Already battered and bruised, most did as they were ordered, though a few chose to attack, and were immediately put down with short bursts of gunfire. Bull glanced around at the fallen and captured Blacksnake operatives. Harmony wasn’t there.

  “Comrade Bulwark!” Saviour shouted. “Numbers are nyet in our favor! Best defense being offense!”

  Bull nodded. “We’re going to have to force a retreat then, to gain some ground until we can secure another choke point!” He glanced around the barricade at the Blacksnake forces, who were returning fire from behind stone columns and debris. He looked back at Saviour speculatively. “You feeling reckless?”

  Saviour broke out into peals of laughter, so much so that she couldn’t speak for a moment.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” Bull said, as he ran to her side and brought his shield to life around them. “Go!” he barked, “Let’s see how much pain you can dish out!”

  Natalya looked at Bull like she could kiss him. Instead, she grinned wolfishly and together they charged around the barricade. Without having to concern herself with taking cover, she was able to concentrate all of her attention on wreaking the greatest amount of devastation possible. Her blasts simply passed through Bull’s shield, though the glimmering bubble still reflected the Blacksnake gunfire right back at their foes. Granted, the reflected gunfire wasn’t even remotely accurate, but the bullets continued to ricochet off concrete floors, ceilings and occasional metal objects, so what the reflected fire lost in accuracy it more than made up for in being unpredictable.

  As for Red Saviour, her energy blasts were accurate and absolutely devastating. If Blacksnake troops took cover behind something that could move, they found it blasted away from them, or into them. If they took cover behind something that couldn’t move, they found it being eaten away. And if they didn’t take cover…Saviour was making no attempt, whatsoever, at non-lethality.

  The Blacksnake troopers were forced into retreating—right up to the point where troops showed up with flamethrowers.

  “Borzhe moi!” Three flamethrowers belched fire at them at once, and now they were the ones retreating.

  But their retreat caused the flamethrowers to advance, which opened holes in the line.

  “ECHO. Gaps at your 9. CCCP, gaps at your 2. Behind 2, troops are reloading. ECHO, full mags on your side, watch it and stay in cover.” Overwatch was doing her job again. “Check your HUDS if you’ve got ’em. CCCP, if ECHO Med is secure, get your assets downstairs, we need you.”

  These were well-trained troops; no bullet-hosing for them, they might have been carrying full-autos, but they were picking their shots and conserving their ammo with short bursts. There was a lot of lead in the air.

  As the flamethrowers continued their determined advance, Bull and Saviour traded places with their shock troops, who dove from nowhere to create general chaos amidst the frontline Blacksnake fighters. Saviour broke off from Bull, raining force blasts into whatever openings she could find, pummeling entire mobs of confused Blacksnake metas.

  Bulwark fell back behind the barricades, and gripped his shoulder. He winced. One of the jets of flame had singed him. He was about to launch himself back into the fight, when the barricade came under attack. Dodging gunfire and flying over the top, one of his operatives crouched down beside him, and flashed him a grin. It was Mel Gautier—now once again callsign everie.

  “Report,” Bulwark grunted.

  “Those were some ballsy moves there, cher,”
she said. “Gave the rest of us an opening. Our melee specialists have opened it up a little more, spread them out a little, and the rangers are picking off targets from cover.”

  “Enough to turn this around?” he asked.

  Mel peeked around the barricade, and jerked back as more gunfire ricocheted off the warped concrete. “Tough call, but we definitely gained a bit of ground. I’d say we’re 50/50 now.”

  “Not good enough,” Bull said, grimly. He appraised her with a grave look. “I’m going to need the group shot. You up for it?” He knew Mel had come a long way since returning to ECHO. Her sessions with Bella had apparently worked wonders. So far, her field work had been exemplary, but they had barely tested her limits. His discussions with Bella about her had been blunt, but Bella could only shrug and say she was coming along, she was ready and fit for duty, but that no one would know just how big a job she could handle until she tried it under fire. Was she ready to try something so big?

  Mel nudged him playfully with her elbow. “I’m back here, ready and waiting. I’ve been itching to try something like this for a while now.”

  Bull nodded in encouragement, but he saw past her swagger and assumed confidence. She was nervous, that much was clear, and her hands shook slightly as she closed her eyes. She clenched her hands into tight fists, and when she opened her eyes they blazed with indigo fire. Bull watched in amazement as the doors of the crashed train were blown out, and streams of ECHO operatives came rushing out. It was perfect. She had gotten it all, from the sounds of the doors being ripped away, to the battle cries of the fresh combatants as they thundered towards the Blacksnake line, screaming for their blood. They very much looked the part as well. They were, each of them, indistinguishable from their real-life counterparts. Bull saw Yankee Pride leading the charge—his gauntlets, a gift from his father, glowing with yellow energy. Unlike Saviour, his energy all went into punches, and no one wanted to be on the receiving end. Behind him were Corbie, Motu and Matai, Silent Knight, the three remaining Winds, Belladonna Blue and Red Djinni. And behind them, still more, the flower of ECHO, dozens of heavily armed combatants in full nanoweave bearing heavy assault weaponry.

  They were, none of them, real. It didn’t seem to matter, as the Blacksnake metas and troopers took one look at them and screamed for a retreat. As they thundered away, the real ECHO and CCCP metas followed, taking full advantage of the illusion, and with a relieved grin Mel turned to Bulwark and began to laugh.

  “Laissez les bons temps rouler,” she said. “Y’know, I think I would even…”

  Her words were cut short, as a sudden shot rang out. Her head flew back and Bull caught her as she fell limply into his arms. An angry cut ran the length of her temple, ending with a bullet lodged right above her ear. Reverie gasped for breath, in shock.

  “Somebody help me!” Bull yelled, and an unfamiliar young man clad in nanoweave under an ECHO Med scrub top knelt at his side. Quickly, he fished out a compress pad, a roll of bandages and forceps from his satchel. He plucked the extruding bullet from Reverie’s head, pressed the compress pad to the wound and immediately began to wrap the bandages around her head.

  Bull looked up. Where had the shot come from? Aside from the Blacksnake ops that had been captured, the rest were retreating back up to ground level! He scanned the scene, and saw a silhouette pause briefly at the entrance of a service tunnel.

  As Harmony looked back, her eyes locked on Bull’s. She shrugged an insincere apology, turned, and was gone.

  “You got this?” Bull asked the ECHO Medic, who continued to work quickly on Mel’s head wound. The Medic nodded.

  “I want you to get her out of here, up to the emergency triage bay they’ve got set-up upstairs. Think you can do that?”

  The Medic gave him an irritated look. “You’re asking if I can do my job?” he snapped back.

  “Fair enough,” Bull said. “What’s your name, son?”

  “Jakob,” the boy answered.

  “Well, Jakob, if she wakes up before I get back, tell her she did a damn good job.”

  “Yessir,” Jakob answered.

  Bull laid a gentle hand on Mel’s shoulder, stood up, and ran for the service tunnel.

  * * *

  Somehow, Frank found himself without a team. He had been on Team Three, but he’d gotten separated after being a meat-shield for them when someone threw a hand grenade. He’d blacked out for a second—just because he was tough, it didn’t follow he was entirely immune to concussive force—and when he woke up, he was alone.

  Where had all those Blacksnake come from? They certainly hadn’t been on the train.

  “Frankentrain to Team Three. Frankentrain to Team Three.” He waited, wincing at the sounds of gunfire and worse echoing in the station as he instinctively took cover against the side of the fourth car. He didn’t want to look at what was left of the first one. Poor Rider.

  “Frank, where are you?” Finally an answer.

  “Next to the train,” he replied.

  “Stay there, we’ll rendezvous with you when we get clear. If you see anything that isn’t us, shoot it. We have Snakes crawling all over us.”

  That made him think of something. Those remaining cars were presumably full of satchel charges, probably C4, military and paramilitary explosive of choice. This was an asset he would rather Blacksnake didn’t get their hands on. Scope and Acrobat probably just pulled the detonators; stick them back in and you’d have working bombs again. I’d better collect them.

  He got himself back in the second car, which had taken relatively little damage. The guy that Overwatch had put on the controls had managed to get the train slowed enough so all that happened when they came in hot was a little crumple at the front and a couple Snakes with broken necks. He began looking for back-pack type bags that were all alike amid the debris and busted signs and other props. As soon as he found two he looked in one, and sure enough…bricks of C4 and canisters. The canisters were probably ball bearings or the like for shrapnel. Scope or Acrobat had pulled out the familiar-looking detonator and the end (the radio receiver? probably) was crushed. Smart kids. Left it in the bag, so no one would find it rolling around and figure out the satchels had been tampered with.

  “ECHO to Frankentrain.”

  “Go, Colt,” he replied, piling the satchels just outside the door.

  “Your team is supporting ECHO Med. Any action where you are?”

  “I can hear it, but nothing close. I’m grabbing the C4 satchels the Snakes left on the train so they don’t come back here and try to use it. When you can send me a heavy lifter to come get it, I’d appreciate.”

  “Overwatch to ECHO and Frankentrain. Got a man that can take it in three trips or so. Don’t shoot him, he looks like a geriatric junkheap.”

  A moment later, the aforementioned “geriatric junkheap” did come clanking out of the smoke from the ruins of a Cafeebucks. “Privyet comrade!” the creature saluted jovially. “Am beink the famous Sovietski Medved, the Russian Bear!”

  He didn’t look anything like a bear, he looked like some Cold War version of an android designed by drunken engineers, but Frank was happy to see him. He piled the old man’s back and arms with the satchels, as the odd fellow happily babbled about exploits of the far past and what he’d done five minutes ago, then just as happily trotted off again, laden like a mule.

  Frank emptied out what had been the third and fourth car and his commie pack-mule turned up to carry that lot of satchels away as well. But it was as he was just starting the fifth and final car that Overwatch reported him being delayed, so rather than leaving something out in the open that Blacksnake would immediately recognize as (a) theirs and (b) useful, he piled the satchels up at the back end.

  He was about halfway through when Overwatch came over the ECHO freq. “Overwatch to Frankentrain!”

  “Go Overwatch.”

  “Are you still on the tracks? Big trouble coming up the tunnel!”

  He ran to the end of the car and peered
through the smoke and glare from the daylight out there. And then he saw it, moving ponderously up the tracks, probably because the extra clearance over the tracks gave it the only clear path to move without hunching over. If it even could hunch over.

  Blacksnake’s been making toys. Someone in their R and D must have been studying the Krieger power armor, because there were obvious similarities. It didn’t look as if it was made of the super-strong stuff the Krieger’s used; this was more like tank armor, which made it as strong as a tank, but also made it as heavy as a tank. Put that much weight on two legs instead of two treads, and you had to have a lot of motive power to make it move; probably why it was so big. Instead of energy cannon, it had twin M134 miniguns for arms. If it started firing it would be able to mow down pretty much anything like a harvester going through a field of wheat. ECHO nano-weave was meant for small-arms fire, not 7.26 x 51mm shells coming at 4000 a minute. The damn thing was nothing more nor less than a killing machine, and could probably even take down any Op3 that wasn’t invulnerable.

  With a moment of impossible clarity, he knew that he was in exactly the right place, at exactly the right time, and he knew exactly what to do.

  “Got it covered, Overwatch,” he said casually, and began clearing the rest of the satchels up to the end of the train. The thing was so heavy it was lumbering at a pace far slower than a normal man’s walk, but he hurried nevertheless, grabbing a couple of discarded Reb bandanas along the way. With his makeshift boiler-plate armor, he looked more like a Reb than ECHO. He tied one of the bandanas around his neck, the other around his head. By the time he got the last of the satchels piled up, the mecha was halfway to the train.

  Dropped tasers were everywhere. He picked one up, and jammed four of the broken detonators into the nearest block of C4, and waved at the mecha.