Revolution: Book Three of the Secret World Chronicle

by Mercedes Lackey

  Before Unter could line up another target his pistol was kicked from his hand. The Blacksnakes were circling around him as they regained their bearings. The one that had attacked him lunged with a knife; Unter caught it in his nearly invulnerable hand and snapped the blade off at the hilt, throwing it to the ground. The stunned merc still had enough sense to keep his guard up. Unter began pummeling him with blows, aiming at joints and weak spots not covered by the body armor under the merc’s clothing. He had driven the man against the control booth for the car, and was about to deliver a crippling blow to the bleeding merc’s neck.

  Then he felt the muzzle of a pistol pressed against the back of his head. Less than a second later everything went dark, and Untermensch didn’t feel anything more.

  * * *

  Natalya shot up into the sky, hung for a moment, then began a glorious swan dive and hurtled towards the Blacksnake operatives climbing up onto the roof of the train. She had never before had the opportunity to knock mercenary svinya off of a moving train, and she planned to enjoy herself.

  “We can’t be leaving Georgi to be having all of the fun.” She was accelerating to ramming speed when the call came over her comm. She slowed her descent, and grumbled at the interruption.

  “Red Saviour, this is Overwatch.”

  “Da, go ahead Rasputin’s Daughter, I am listening.”

  “I thought you’d promoted me to Hero of the People, Commissar. I read you as being right over the train.”

  “Correct. Am going to be smashing mercenaries soon. Out with it, Hero of the People.”

  “You should see that the last two cars have separated from the rest—that’s the ones with the WWII vets in them.”

  The young witch was right; the last two cars had detached from the main section and were slowing down. That was most excellent for Natalya; it would give her more freedom in blasting the kidnappers to steaming bits.

  “It seems two Echo Ops moled themselves into the Blacksnake ranks and dropped a shoe into their gears. Can you pick them up and haul them to the rest of the train? They don’t want to miss out on the action. Request of Bulwark, with his compliments and thanks.”

  Nasrat. “Beink taxi for Echo spies is not what I agreed to when beink signed up for this ‘conspiracy.’”

  “Of course not. The advantage is that Bull is going to have the back door open for you and a gun and ammo waiting.”

  “Have both already, needing neither anyways.” She mulled it over for a moment; time was wasting, and the train was only getting closer to the station. “Fine, fine, I will be there. Tell them to back away from open doors; don’t want to scare any of the little heroes or be squishing one when I land.” Natalya flipped in the air and twisted, turning towards the end of the train. She flew in a wide arc, decreasing in altitude until she was almost level with the tracks. Her HUD from Overwatch was keeping her updated on her speed, elevation, and other vital information; a marker in her vision indicated where her two Echo charges were. Increasing speed, she accelerated towards the open door at the back of the rear car, cutting off energy for flight when she was twenty feet away. Her momentum carried her forward, and she was able to clear the doorway by five feet, landing heavily on the floor of the train car.

  Two people, a slender young woman and an elfin young man, stepped forward to meet her. They wore what looked like generic uniforms, but were oddly covered from head to toe. They wore battle masks under rough scarves and goggles to cover their necks and faces, their hands clad in tough leather. Her HUD immediately identified them as her pickups, by the tactical armor they were wearing under the uniforms, and the arms they were both carrying. “Good,” she said, nodding. “You are not beink fat with Amerikanski fasting food. Am beink your taxi, da?”

  “More like our angel, Commissar ma’am, if you Russkies have angels,” said the young man. “Overwatch gave us instructions on running the car. We’ve got that under control.”

  “What we are havink is no time for theological discussions. Are both of you ready? Where am I takink you?” She had placed her fists on her hips, impatient already.

  “Where else?” the girl said. “To the fighting!”

  “Davay, then. Come over here so I can grab both of you, under your arms.” They moved as fast as her own comrades in the CCCP, she was gratified to see; Bulwark must train his underlings well. A nice change. She wrapped her arms around both of their chests tightly; she was taller than both, so she had to crouch down slightly to do so. “Do not be shrieking like frightened babushkas when we fly.” Without another word, she kicked off from the edge of the door, dragging the Echo metas with her. Her energy plume erupted below her feet, carrying them up. Both of the metas kept silent, but she felt them both scrabble and grasp onto her arms tightly as they ascended. With the extra weight Natalya wasn’t able to turn as quickly or as gracefully; she felt as if she were hauling sacks of grain on a farm. Fortunately her HUD was able to allow for all of that; it even gave her several options for a plotted trajectory depending on how high or fast she wanted to go. Useful thing, this. Victoria was definitely elevated to Hero of the People.

  Very shortly they caught up with the rest of the train; flashes of light seemed to erupt from the fourth car, and there was open fighting on top of the first. She swooped down sluggishly, coming to a rest atop the back compartment. “Packages are beink delivered.” She released her hold on Scope and Acrobat; it took them a half second to release their grips on her arms and drop down to grab firm holds of the train roof.

  “Commissar, much appreciated!” Scope yelled. She nodded to Acrobat. “Let’s go!”

  “Which fight?” Bruno shouted back. “Outside or in?”

  Scope glanced at Rider’s crew. “Looks like the outside team have them on the ropes! Let’s get inside to Bull! C’mon! Hurry or there won’t be any fighting left for us!”

  “I like your thinking, girl!” Nat grinned, and motioned to follow them into the train when her inner ear pinged with an incoming message.

  “Overwatch to joint command.”

  “Chyort voz’mi!” Natalya shouted. “Vedma, what is it now?”

  “Blacksnake units moving openly on Five Points Station. Estimate twenty based on comm chatter and headcount via traffic cams. Not enough Echo in place to hold them off and what there is, is mostly Echo Med.”

  “Chush’ sobach’ya,” Saviour swore. Small arms, mostly healing powers, they will be target practice. “Was lookink forward to using Systema in close quarters. Have not had enough practice.” She sighed. “Overwatch, am comink to strafe svoloch Blacksnake from air. With luck, will catch them at entrance; will make nice cozy place for Blacksnake to beink turned into paste.” She gave Scope and Acrobat a quick salute, turned on her heel, and kicked off of the train car. As she rose, she saw a group of Echo fighting their way atop the car she had dropped Untermensch onto. There was still one Blacksnake left. Unable to resist, she charged her fists, squinted a little to sight, and blasted that last man off the top, sending him in a graceful arc that was doomed to end in a not-so-graceful splat onto the pavement. Mollified, she accelerated up, using her energy to speed into the blue Atlanta sky.

  Be leaving some for the rest of us, Georgi, she thought. Otherwise it is going to be a boring day indeed.

  * * *

  “Overwatch to joint command. Man down, car one, Untermensch.”

  Rider was channeling the novelization of Enter the Dragon and thanks to his opponents was a little too busy to do more than swear. The writer hadn’t been very good, and as a consequence his Jeet Kune Do was a lot weaker than Bruce Lee’s.

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

  His opponent was not going down anytime 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 was 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 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 ready 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 l
ength 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.