Revolution: Book Three of the Secret World Chronicle

by Mercedes Lackey

  Nat was not about to try and fish out the camera to see around the edge of the table, but she didn’t need to see when she could hear the sound of something heavy crunching its way toward them across the ballroom. Either the armored troopers had decided that she and Unter were a greater threat than the Blacksnake operatives or—

  “Hullo, Commissar,” said Chug. “Chug found crying man. Chug brung him.” Over the edge of the table tumbled the much-the-worse-for-wear councilman. Richard Saint was gutshot and weeping between screams of pain.

  “Who are you people? Get me out of here!” The councilman was clutching his belly; from the look of the wound, he had been shot in the liver. With that much bleeding, he didn’t have a lot of time to live. Well, at least it wasn’t a shotgun wound; nothing to point to CCCP as the ones on the other end of the trigger.

  “Get you out, svinya?” Nat barked, hauling him to her. “You are beink make many demands for a traitor.” She thought about smacking him, but he was already in such pain he wouldn’t feel it. “Maybe we will think about this, if you begin tellink us what you know.”

  “Anything! Anything!” Saint babbled.

  “It might be worth the trouble, Commissar,” Georgi observed, directing Chug to position himself between them and the firefight, which seemed to have turned two-sided instead of three. Chug watched the battle dispassionately; as long as no one was shooting at his friends, he didn’t much care what was going on. “Best to do this somewhere else; gunshots and explosions make for hard hearing.” With that, Untermensch unloaded his shotgun again in a rapid series of shots as Saint shook and wept on the floor.

  “Oh, did you think being informant to fashista was all sunshine and nekulturny champagne?” Saviour mocked. She peeked over Chug’s shoulder. The Thulians and Blacksnake were fully involved with each other; all of the technicians were dead and their equipment was a wreck, but the soldiers and the armored troopers were still going strong. She thought she saw what looked like a meta using his powers among the Blacksnakes, but it was hard to tell in the confusion. “Well, it looks to me that no one has any interest in a couple of Russian tourists. I think we go.” She heaved Saint over her shoulder. “Might as well take you.”

  Saint screamed in protest, but Natalya was already charging through the door with him. She could hear Chug bellowing and Untermensch firing his shotgun behind her. She ran down the hallways, but quickly lost her way. “Chyort voz’mi! Where the hell are we?”

  Untermensch shouldered past her while leading Chug by the hand, casting a glance behind them as he loaded the last of his shells into his shotgun. “Allow me to lead the way, Commissar. The exit isn’t far, thankfully. We will have to run for the van, however.”

  “Da, da. Get moving on!”

  They ran through a dizzying series of hallways; she wasn’t sure how Georgi had kept track of where they were until she saw surreptitious marks made with what looked like a grease pencil on the baseboards of the walls; they barely stood out against the other scuffs and scrapes, but apparently it was enough for him to navigate by. Georgi shouldered through a final door, and they were out into the humid air of Atlanta again. Both he and Natalya stripped off their NVGs, replacing them on their belts.

  “Van is this way! Davay, comrades!” Untermensch charged ahead, keeping his shotgun at a low ready position. They were all breathing hard, save for Chug, when they reached the van. Saint had given up his screams for pitiful moans, and he had bled stickily all over Saviour’s shoulder. They all piled into the van; Georgi took the driver’s seat, while Saviour shoved Saint into the back and herded Chug in before jumping in herself and slamming the doors. With a screech of rubber on torn asphalt, they sped away.

  “So, suka,” Nat said, grabbing the man by his collar and shaking him. “Be talking, or I will to be opening door and dumping you out for your friends.”

  “You can’t—” he gasped.

  “Oh no?” She kicked the door open; it wasn’t that hard in this van. “Who will tell anyone?” She dragged him to the edge, hanging his head and shoulder out over the road speeding away under them. “I am thinkink you will not last past first bounce.”

  “Oh shit! You crazy bitch! This—this is illegal! I’m a city council— Aah!” She pushed her fist against his gunshot wound, grinding her middle knuckle in particularly viciously.

  “And I am to be havink diplomatic immunity,” she said sweetly. “You will be tellink me everything you—”

  Behind them in the direction of the hotel, a gigantic fireball loomed bright against the Atlanta sky. The sound caught up with them a moment later with the accompanying shock wave; windows shattered and dust fell from every building around them. Saviour swore under her breath as the rear axle of the van kicked up. Chug was shifting uneasily, causing the van to rock slightly from side to side.

  “What in Lenin’s name was that?” Saviour reeled Saint back into the van as Untermensch did his best to keep it on the treacherous road. He checked the rearview mirror, then looked ahead again.

  “Hotel. Either fashista scum or Blacksnake running dogs did not want anyone to be leaving it alive.” He hazarded a quick glance over his shoulder. “Since he still is, and we were to be seen leaving with him, I think we should expect traveling partners soon.”

  “You think Blacksnake is to care about traitorous running dog working with Kriegers?” Saviour asked doubtfully.

  “He was our target. He seemed to be only valuable thing in room, besides destroyed fashista equipment. Blacksnake is not in habit of doing things without capitalist profits attached.” He pointed at Saint over his shoulder. “Is profits.”

  “Bah.” Saviour turned her attention back to Saint. “You. Councilman Profits. What else do you know?”

  “No-nothin—” the man began.

  Natalya pressed her fist into his wound again, slowly, causing him to squirm and scream. “Nothing? I am not needing nothing from you; would have left you there for nothing. You get to live for something. This is exchange, da?”

  “I don’t know—” Saint screamed. “All right! Stop, god stop it!” His shouts trailed away into one long unintelligible shriek before he started blubbering again. “I’ll tell you! I’ll tell you what I was giving the Kriegers!” Spittle flecked his lips as he gasped, catching his breath. “In my coat’s pocket, there’s a little black book. It—it’s got everyone in it, all of the people that supply the Kriegers with intel from Atlanta; cops, Echo, politicians, officials. They’ve got a lot of—god, it hurts!—a lot of people on the take. Just get me to a frickin’ hospital, goddammit! I don’t care!”

  Natalya fished the booklet from his pocket after a quick search; scanning through it, she saw names, vital information, job titles, and in what capacity they worked for the Thulians. It was everything that Saint said and more; he was an intermediary, funneling all of the information from the traitors to the Thulians, able to go anywhere because of his position with the city council, keeping them insulated from exposure. “You are lucky piglet, svinya; fashista would kill you themselves if they knew you wrote vital contacts down. Stupid and sloppy, like all bureaucrats.”

  “Commissar!” Georgi was calling from the front of the van.

  “Shto? What is it?” she snapped. “Am busy here!”

  Chug was peering out the back window, so she couldn’t see what was behind them. “Are we in race? We are winning! Yay!” Nat looked around Chug to see out the window; a matte black SUV was on the road behind them, and closing fast. From the lack of insignia or any other sort of identifying marks on it, she concluded that it had to be Blacksnake.

  “Sookan syn. Prosrat!” She somehow managed to get Chug to move aside, picked up Unter’s KS-23 and took aim for the windshield of the SUV. She discharged a shell into the driver’s side, but the buckshot only slightly spider-webbed the glass; it was bullet resistant. She aimed and fired at the front grill, hoping to damage the engine and kill the vehicle that way, but the damage was cosmetic at best. The SUV continued to gain on th
em until it was keeping pace with the CCCP van; two mercenaries leaned out of the side windows and began to fire in short bursts at the Russians. “Armored vehicle! Vse zayebalo! Pizdets na khui blyad!” Saviour tossed the gun aside. “Chug, move in over here!” She positioned him on the left side of the van, so that his body covered Untermensch’s seat and the prone form of Saint; it wouldn’t do any of them good to have their driver incapacitated, or their captured asset killed. Chug would protect them from the Blacksnake’s rifles, and give her cover to lean out and return fire.

  Georgi leaned out of the driver’s side window after weaving to the right to avoid a burst of rifle fire; he had drawn his GSh-18, aiming for the SUV’s tires. After expending the pistol’s magazine in a fast but measured pace of shooting, he ducked back into the van. “Airless tires. Language, Commissar. Remember troop morale.” He dropped the magazine from the pistol, slamming another that was resting between his leg and the seat with one hand. “This may be difficult.”

  Natalya charged her left fist before ducking around Chug to fire; the scarlet energy lashed out and met the front bumper of the vehicle. Amazingly, the entire front end of the vehicle shimmered with the energy for a split second before it reflected back towards the point of origin: Natalya and the van. “Khuinya!” she cursed again from reflex, falling backwards as the energy blast ricocheted over the roof of the van, scorching it and screaming off into the night sky.

  “Are you all right, Commissar?” Georgi called back. Between swerving around piles of debris from the destroyed buildings and dodging the Blacksnake guns, he seemed to have his hands full as well.

  “Vsyo zayebis!” She got back onto her knees. “The vehicle is reflective too. Svinya. How am I supposed to have big surprise victory if they anticipate me?”

  “I am having idea. Come up and take wheel.” Georgi swapped places with Natalya, which was an exercise in acrobatic maneuvers that should probably have been an Olympic event, and began stacking boxes together.

  “What in Stalin’s tomb are you doing?” Natalya wondered how Georgi had managed to keep the van moving; the rubble made this road all but impassible, never mind having to deal with the Blacksnake mercs hot on their tail.

  “Fixing problem. Thing learned from fashista in Great War.” He started wrapping duct tape around the stack of crates; there was something stuck in the middle of them that was leaving an open space, but the Commissar couldn’t see what it was from the quick look she was able to steal. “You should drive very fast, then keep steady pace, Commissar.”

  “Well, if I can be finding a piece of road that does not resemble Stalingrad after siege—ha!” She spotted a relatively clear stretch and made a tire-screaming right-hand turn to get onto it. “Whatever you are going to do, davay!”

  “Keep straight! Need to gauge timing, Commissar!”

  The road, thankfully, looked as if it would cooperate with that idea. Actually it looked as if someone had come through here with a bulldozer shortly after the Invasion and just cleared off a good long stretch. Debris and wrecked vehicles were piled on either side of the cratered asphalt.

  The gunshots continued to echo like a hellish typewriter, clacking and echoing back loudly among the gutted buildings. Georgi watched the road between the van and the SUV intently, bobbing his hand in time. Then, suddenly, he pulled something from the middle of his duct-taped crates and shoved the entire bundle out of the van. The SUV continued after them; both of the mercs that had been firing at them had reloaded after a brief pause, and leaned out to take aim at the exposed Russian. At that moment the bundle went under the SUV . . . and the vehicle did a violent front flip after a thunderous explosion; it landed on its roof, crumpling it violently down to the frame like it was nothing more than cheap construction paper.

  Nat shook her head violently, her ears ringing from the blast. Glancing back, she saw Georgi pounding the side of his head with the heel of his hand to clear his hearing. Only Chug seemed unaffected; he was clapping his hands. “Do again!” he demanded. “Again! Fireworks!”

  “Borzhe moi, must cut off access to nekulturny Tubbytellys,” she muttered, then raised her voice as she slowed the van to a sane speed. “Georgi! What in name of the Manifesto did you do?”

  “Fashista used to make grenade bundles as expedient antitank weapon in Great War. To use Amercanski thinking, I ‘super-sized’; added many more grenades.” He shook his head, sitting down in the van. “Also, added thermite grenade along with regular grenade to detonate. I did not know if normal offensive grenade would have enough generated heat or blast potential to detonate others; stable explosive compounds, you see.” He looked up. “Oh, look. Mercenaries are now being on fire.”

  “Horosho.”

  “Also, profits man is being dead. Or good job of faking.” He turned around to face Natalya. “Apologies, Commissar. Did not kill our enemies fast enough to keep the traitor from expiring before he could be interrogated further.”

  Natalya chuckled. “Good, now is no need of making explanations. Profits man now becomes helpless kidnap victim, rescued by CCCP, but tragically, thanks to pursuing Blacksnake, we could not get to hospital fast enough.”

  Georgi thought for a moment. “Might help if we first are to wipe blood off of gloves. And rest of uniforms.” He shrugged. “Plausibility.”

  “Nyet, is blood of hero we get trying to carry him to safety. Merely smear it around more. Looks more plausible than trying to remove.”

  “And the intelligence documents gained, Commissar? Do we . . . share this with Echo along with corpse of traitor?”

  “What intelligence documents?” she dead-panned. “Eh, we share with Daughter of Rasputin. She will know what to do with them. Tragic death of civilian hero will not be spoiled.”

  “Da, Commissar. Very, very tragic. Flowers and such sentiment.”

  “Aha! Look. Hospital sign.”

  There was indeed a much battered and bent-over “H” sign by the cleared road, which explained why it had been cleared in the first place. Saviour followed the signs, eventually coming out onto regular city streets. There she accelerated, as if her cargo was still alive, and pulled, tires screaming, into the Emergency entrance. She and Georgi did a lot of shouting in Russian. Initially, there was a frantic scrambling of emergency personnel, and she made her predetermined explanation to the inevitable police and an Echo SupportOp that turned up (while Georgi pretended he only spoke Russian). She even managed to feign sorrow and disappointment when someone came out to report that Saint was dead.

  “Terrible! Terrible! We have much sorrow for his family,” she said, as (how did they learn about these things?) a television crew materialized. “If it had not been for Blacksnake, perhaps we would have come in time. CCCP will send flowers to funeral of this civilian hero. No, no more interviews, spasibo. We must back to headquarters. Chug is hungry.”

  Just then Chug poked his head out of the back door of the van. “Commissar?” he rumbled in Russian. “Was Chug good? Can Chug have waffles?”

  No one but Nat and Georgi understood him, of course, but the television crew hastily agreed that it would be a good thing for Chug to be fed. Saviour and Untermensch piled back into the van, and pointed it back in the direction of CCCP HQ.

  Unter glanced over at her. “Commissar, you are reminding me of wolf with calf in her mouth.”

  Nat realized she was grinning. “Eh, is just good to be back in action, da, comrade?”

  Unter snorted. “Is very good, Commissar. So long as there is no paperwork, is very good.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Brothers in Blood

  DENNIS LEE AND MERCEDES LACKEY

  I had to get out. I had to. I could see where my path was going otherwise, locked in a small room with nothing but a coffee IV and computers. Because, frankly, the idea was incredibly seductive. Maybe it doesn’t sound that way to you, but look at it from my point of view. It was now possible for me to be incredibly effective without ever unlocking my door. Djinni was even letting
me channel magic through him. Why would I ever need to leave?

  Except that . . . what if I had to? What if the Thulians figured out who I was and what I was doing and came to blow down the building? Would I die because I couldn’t bear to cross my own threshold?

  Or what if someone was in trouble out there, one of my friends, and I was the only one who knew or could get to them in time? Would I let them die because I was housebound?

  Of course I couldn’t. And Djinni was right. So. I started working on getting out. Little did I know how soon I would need to.

  * * *

  Vickie’s eyes felt like someone had poured a pint of sand in each. Her nerves were fried, and her stomach sour from all the coffee she’d been drinking. She hadn’t had anything close to a decent night’s sleep in . . . longer than she could remember right now with her brain all fogged up.

  And her bed did not beckon at all. In fact, she was doing everything she could to hold off sleep with both hands. Not that she didn’t need it—she knew all too well that if she didn’t get some soon, she was going to start making major mistakes. But sleep was going to bring anything but rest.

  Bella had warned her that the “desensitization” they were doing was going to make things worse before they got better, and Bella had no idea how much worse it had gotten. Sleep had become an ordeal. She’d soundproofed her bedroom to keep from terrifying the neighbors, because if she didn’t wake up literally screaming, she woke up crying. Either crying because she and Red were an item in the dream (like that would ever happen), or crying because as soon as she woke up, she realized she’d been dreaming herself back into that eighteen-year-old body she used to have, about how things used to be, and when she woke up, she woke up to the reality that they never would be that way again.