Invasion: Book One of the Secret World Chronicle-ARC

by Mercedes Lackey

  Alex Tesla

  CEO, Echo

  “It is a coincidence,” she said. “Why did he ask for me?”

  “For your father, actually. But I’d like you to go and meet Mr. Tesla. In the past, we have resisted Echo’s efforts to establish Russian branches of their organization, but in light of current events…” His voice trailed off, awkward.

  “You mean the obliteration of CCCP.”

  “I’m sorry. Yes. And the controversy surrounding the way the attack was handled”—he held up his hands again—“which I do not personally question, of course! But it puts me in a very difficult position. Half the public wants to give you a medal, but the other half wants you jailed for gross incompetence”

  She gritted her teeth. “You know we did the best we could.”

  “I know. Now you must let me do the best I can.” He pointed to the dossier. “Accompany Worker’s Champion and your father to America. Interface with Mr. Tesla about Echo’s intelligence efforts on the Nazis—they suffered more than we did. Let the furor cool down, let the dead be buried in peace.”

  “I can’t rest while they’re still out there to strike again.”

  “We’ll be ready for them.” He paused and bit his lip. “It is best that I tell you this in person. The FSO has been ordered to decommission CCCP for the time being. We’ve activated the Supernaut program to fill the gap.”

  Natalya leapt to her feet, ignoring the pain in her ribs. “Shto?”

  Batov’s guards interposed themselves between her and the President. “We cannot leave Russia undefended, I’m sure you’ll agree?” He didn’t wait for her reply. “CCCP has been gutted—I’m sorry, that’s a poor choice of words—hindered by a personnel reduction. While you head the investigation into the whereabouts of the terrorists, the Supernaut squadrons will be activated to guard key targets. I thought you’d appreciate the homage to your comrade’s sacrifice.”

  So they have renamed the military personnel armor program after Supernaut: that pompous, overbearing, ambitious boor. What about the others that died? “Da, it is a fitting tribute,” she grumbled.

  Especially since Vassily Georgiyevich was little more than a puppet for the Kremlin anyway. She left the thought unvoiced.

  “Good. Then it is settled.” He brushed his hands together. “I will repair your reputation in Russia, and you will find these killers for me. And when you do, Natalya Nikolaevna…” The curtains of diplomacy seemed to open to reveal a furnace of anger to her, a heat to be shared between grieving siblings. “Do not be gentle with them.”

  “This is a promise I can keep, comrade President.” She gave him a crisp salute, which he acknowledged with a confidential smile.

  “Make me proud, Natalya.” Batov turned and pushed past his guards. They followed him out of the tent, leaving Red Saviour alone with her thoughts and the story of Eisenfaust’s life—and death—rendered in black and white in her hands.

  Atlanta, Georgia, USA: Callsign John Murdock

  The sound of wheels on tracks had lulled entire generations of the rootless and restless to sleep, and John Murdock was no exception to that lullaby. He lay stretched out on top of stacked cases of bottled water—not yuppie water, this was stuff in plain plastic jugs, pulled straight from municipal water supplies and labeled “Not for Sale: Emergency Supplies.”

  This was the last stretch of track before Atlanta, and this train was not going to stop until it got there. He had time now, time to think, to watch the landscape roll by, to think about what the hell he was getting himself in for.

  It was a bizarre landscape, too. On the long stretches of Georgia hill country, red clay and tiny farms just barely scraping by, it looked as if nothing had changed since the 1950’s. There wasn’t a sign of trouble from the train, and if the people out there were shaken and scared and scarred by what had happened in the cities, the train sped by too quickly for it to be noticeable.

  And then the train would slow, sometimes to a crawl, to get through an industrialized area. The rust-belt towns weren’t nearly as bad as the bigger cities, but…still. And it would all hit him, with the stench of burning still hanging in the air, the National Guard troops patrolling, the cleanup going on. Near as he could tell, a lot of these spots must not have had more than a single truckload of troopers hit them: one patrol of armor, and none of the fancy flying machines. But one patrol had been more than enough to turn factories and warehouses to rubble. Small-town cops and private security armed only with handguns hadn’t even been a blip on the radar to those troopers.

  John just hoped they’d cut and run, putting their priority on getting the civvies out rather than making a stand.

  What am I doing? Well, that was the question, wasn’t it? Along with What am I going to do? He hadn’t really considered much past Get down there, sign up, put what I can do to good use. Someone had given him one of those combination pen-and-radio novelties, and he’d been trying to pick up FM stations along the way. The reach wasn’t much, but it was enough to get scattered fragments of news. Most shocking, Echo had lost half, closer to three quarters, of its OpTwos and Threes and there was no real tally on how many OpOnes or SupportOps they’d lost. He wished to hell he had something useful, something he could use to help rebuild and clear…as far as search and rescue went, a good rescue dog was of more use than he was, augmented senses and all. But…three quarters…good God.

  No one knew where the Nazis had gone. And they sure hadn’t been beaten. True, they had been losing the fight in Atlanta, but in plenty of places elsewhere they’d had it all their own way. But for a reason only known to them or their commanders, they had suddenly broken off combat, all over the world at the same moment. The flying death machines had gathered up surviving troopers and bodies, and just…vanished.

  If anything, that made people more scared than the attack. They’d come out of nowhere, gone into nowhere, and who knew when they’d be back? The only defense was Echo, and Echo was gutted.

  All right. He could help with that.

  * * *

  John could see smoke still rising from Atlanta, even from thirteen miles out. It’d been over a week since the attack had happened, and the city was still burning.

  Ambivalent did not even come close to describing how he felt about this. It was a complete one-eighty from the way he’d lived his life for the past five years. Until now. He was driven to do this, and he wasn’t sure by what. Or when it had started. Back at the bar, and all of the glass and fire and blood? Or the redheaded kid, and more fire?

  It wasn’t that he hadn’t had plenty of time to talk himself out of this on the way here, either. With all of the destruction and death, he hadn’t had to worry about getting booted from a train by a railroad bull, low-paid legalized thugs sent to make sure vagrants and bums weren’t stealing things or catching a ride. Oh, there were guards on some of the trains—the armaments trains—but there were a lot of trains running. The Nazis hadn’t taken out the rail system but they had done a number on the Interstates.

  Without having to worry about getting hassled by some low-rent security detail, his only concerns were catching the right trains and not getting run over by one. He’d even been able to crack the doors on some cars and ride inside, up on the tops of cartons of beans and bottled water. He’d learned a couple of years ago to try to avoid the livestock cars, even if they were empty, though nothing was empty right now. Even the livestock cars were put to use hauling emergency supplies. Generators, mostly. Livestock cars were ventilated, so gas and diesel fumes wouldn’t build up, but they were metal-sided and could be locked, making them harder to loot. Generators were at a premium right now. There were rumors that this would accelerate Tesla’s old dream of broadcast power for everyone. There were rumors that the head of Echo was behind the Nazi invasion so that he could profit from that. Conspiracy theories.

  And there he was, hiking in towards the city. He hadn’t realized, until he looked at a roadmap, that it was going to be like getting into a fortres
s in a way. Atlanta was surrounded by a ring-shaped superhighway, and from the buzz at the gas station, that ring had been devastated, which meant a lot of rescue people, a lot of clearing, and if he wanted to get in quietly, a lot to keep out of the way of. John had decided that the main arteries into Atlanta would be too clogged with fleeing inhabitants, disaster personnel, and much needed supply trucks. Entering the city through one of the industrial areas would be easier, and leave him less likely to be noticed. Plus, it was more expedient, with the train tracks stopping off closer to the factories and manufacturing plants than to any of the municipal roads or thoroughfares.

  It still didn’t make any sense, but he was here. John Murdock had arrived in Atlanta.

  * * *

  John shrugged his small backpack further onto his shoulder. It wasn’t exactly heavy for his enhanced muscles, but the crude straps still cut into his flesh after a while. That was a new acquisition; he’d lost about everything he had in the fight, but there were plenty of folks handing things out right and left to anyone volunteering with search and rescue. He’d practically had all of this thrust into his hands. The backpack itself, green with the letters CERT emblazoned on the side (along with a green plastic hardhat and lowest-bidder goggles) now held a couple of changes of clothing. He picked those clothes up from a sidewalk dump, an impromptu supply depot made up of folding tables and tarps. He sorely needed some new clothes, since his shirt and jacket were bloodied rags and his pants not much better. The rucksack with his few belongings, left in a bus station locker, was long gone. Water bottles, toiletries, and a hand towel with a duck on it were in the backpack too. Hotels had been handing out their amenity kits as if they were candy at Halloween. John had a couple of them emblazoned with the names of places that would have had their security people giving him the hairy eyeball if he’d even looked at the front door a month ago. Funny what rich people thought were “necessary items.” Soap, shampoo, comb, toothpaste and a brush, yeah. Sleep mask, earplugs, and socks? Who would forget their own socks? Who needed hotel socks? Well, actually, he did.

  John was just getting into the outskirts of the city’s heavily industrialized area when it happened. His mind was elsewhere, and his senses were at a disadvantage; the smoke stung his nose and eyes, the sounds of sirens and distant gas explosions from still-raging fires all worked against him to cut off any early warning he might have had. It wasn’t until he was already around the corner of a brick factory and in the middle of the street that he saw the scene that was playing out.

  He only needed a glance, and knew the entire story of what had happened. A group of rough-looking men were busy rifling through an overturned truck, tossing out boxes and crates to be picked over by more thugs, dirtier and seedier than the ones in the truck. An unconscious civvie wearing a corporate jumpsuit and bleeding from the head lay in a nearby gutter, avoiding the goons’ collective attention for now. These bastards had taken advantage of the chaos in and around Atlanta to do some jacking and looting. An improvised roadblock made of debris and wrecked cars turned on their sides finished the picture.

  But wait—why? This wasn’t a truckload of DVD players and high-def TVs…and it wasn’t a truckload of food and water either. What could have been so important as to make this truck a target?

  John didn’t have much time to contemplate that. This bunch wasn’t terribly bright or observant, but they spotted him quickly enough. Someone let out a whistle, and everyone snapped to very quickly. Initial confusion and even a little panic on their part rapidly turned to anticipation and greed. John was traveling alone, with an emergency worker’s backpack, and lone people were easy prey. He might be a paramedic.

  He might have drugs.

  An unshaven greaseball with a beer gut stepped forward, and stabbed a sausage finger in the air at John. “Where do you think you’re going, pal?” No getting out of this, apparently. “You deaf? I’m talking at you, pal.” The rest of the greaseball’s troupe put aside their distractions, instead focusing on new prey. John unslung his back pack, tossing it back towards the corner of the brick factory. The group of ruffians began shuffling towards John, forming a rough semicircle as they approached. This wasn’t their first time ganging up on someone. Still, they weren’t particularly smart. If they had been, they’d have just shot John and then looted his body.

  The greaseball, relishing the chance to taunt his next victim, laid it on thick. “Just talk to us, pal. We won’t hurt you.” John kept his trap shut. He quickly surveyed their armament; pipes, rebar, some chains, and a pistol. Normally, he’d have kept walking, let them have their fun. No point in doing something as stupid as getting into a fight on behalf of someone else. But—

  But they were pissing him off. John felt the hate rising in his belly, felt the disgust and the sickness. It took him about a second to figure out how to deal with them, how long to wait to move. His timing was ruined, however, by the poor chump in the gutter.

  The driver for the truck started to move around, trying to pick himself up. He whimpered and tried to call out for someone to help him.

  Crap. The greaseball’s head was already turning, his gang following suit. John had to do it now. “Hey. You just gonna stand there, or ya gonna get on with it?” Bullies don’t like being talked back to; the leader of this rabble was no exception.

  Some smirking skinhead wielding a bent piece of rebar piped up. “You going to let him talk to you like that, Al?” The greaseball shot a venomous look to the skinhead, then switched the stare to John. A heartbeat later, and he was charging, his pistol held high and ready to beat John with it. Quite a tell: apparently he didn’t have ammunition to spare, so pistol-whipping was the move. John waited for the man to close within a foot of him before reacting. He sidestepped the thug, using his rooted left leg to trip the man. Off-balance, he took his assailant’s gun hand into both of his own fists, latching on and spinning Al around. Al shrieked in pain and the sudden realization that he was in more trouble than he bargained for. After locking Al’s arm under his right armpit, John loosened his grip enough to wrench the gun from the screaming thug’s hand, breaking two of his fingers. For spite, John broke the man’s arm.

  Al went down, his ruined appendage wobbling uselessly at his side as he writhed on the ground. The rest of the looters were stunned into inaction for a moment, but John never stopped moving, gliding quickly towards the loudmouth skinhead. The loudmouth was able to raise the rebar over his head in an overhanded blow before John was right next to him. John plunged Al’s revolver into the skinhead’s belly, quickly emptying the cylinder. Two shots: yep, they’d been low on ammo. The thug collapsed, a bloody hole through his abdomen. John didn’t skip a beat, dropping the pistol and moving to the next one. Four more to go.

  The next two thugs took the initiative, running at John to attack him at the same time. John ducked under the swung chain of the first one, pushing him in the back with a well-placed elbow. The man’s momentum carried him forward, out of the fight for the moment. The second looter tried to skewer John with a jagged-ended pipe; John twisted in place, avoiding the thrust and escaping with only a gouge to his right side. He jabbed at the thug’s throat, stunning the man as his throat closed up. Throat shots tend to break anyone’s rhythm. A front kick to the thug’s groin, a leg sweep to trip him, and another boot to his temple knocked him into unconsciousness. The first thug had regained his composure, and was marching towards John while whipping the length of chain around over his head, as much buying time as he was showboating.

  Chain-thug was varying his speed, using the chain to keep his distance from John. When the strike finally came, it was well executed. John barely had time to throw up both of his arms and save his eyes. The chain struck, and then the guy was on top of John, trying to force him to the ground. John fell backwards with the thug, locking him in a bear hug. The cracked asphalt bit into John’s back and head as he impacted it, the added weight of the man on top of him worsening the situation. Before the stars in front of his ey
es could clear, John reflexively tucked his chin to his collarbone, and then rammed the top of his skull into the punk’s nose twice. Blood gushed, and the thug was now trying to roll off of John. Wasting no time, John kneed the man in the groin, and rolled out from under him. Standing up as quickly as possible, John slammed a boot into the back of the man’s head.

  John was up and in a boxer’s stance, hand up and ready. He heard the footfalls of one of the thugs running away; the last one was shaking in place, ready to bolt. Normally, John would have let him get away, end the fight as soon as he could and move on. But he didn’t run, and now John was ramped up and the energy, the fury, had to go somewhere. Too bad, so sad. John walked forward, grabbing the man by the throat as he moved past him. Holding the frightened punk against the wall with one hand, John started to relentlessly punch the man in the face with his free fist. A good while later, John wasn’t sure how much later, he stopped, letting the pulp of the man slump to the ground.

  It took a few seconds for John to get his breathing under control, to let the blood throbbing in his ears quiet itself. Once he’d had a moment to ramp everything down, he began to look about at the destruction he’d caused. Most of them dead, dying, or wishing they were dying. One that got away, but that wasn’t too much of a loss. He added up the number of thugs again mentally, and came up short—

  “Over here, you asshole!” Greaseball. He was standing over the prone and sobbing form of the driver, who had crawled from his relative safety in the gutter. Maybe to get at a radio in the cab of the truck, or a weapon. It didn’t matter. The Greaseball had used the commotion of the fight to get away and get into the crates from the truck. He had some sort of…glove, or something, on his whole arm; the broken one was still limp at his side, some of the compound fractures bleeding noticeably. How the man was even standing, John couldn’t fathom. Drugs, maybe. The glove was humming, with Al the Greaseball pointing it at the head of the driver.