Revolution: Book Three of the Secret World Chronicle

by Mercedes Lackey

  “They’re hailing you. I have it covered. Hug the right. See anything like a set of docking bays? Take the third one.”

  Moving slower, Bulwark glided in. Clamps settled onto the hull. Bulwark and Djinni inserted their hands into two more pairs of sleeves and waited. A few Thulians dashed towards the sphere, but before they could reach it, Vickie gave the signal.

  “They’re coming to get you out. Light ’em up.”

  Moving their hands wildly in the sleeves, as if all the weapons had malfunctioned at once, Bulwark and Djinni hosed down the interior of what must be a hangar. The Thulian screams were so intense they bled over Vickie’s freq onto theirs. Gouts of white-hot thermite and nitro-napalm scoured the entire interior hangar. Blasts of orange energy scored the walls, ceiling and floor, blasting docking clamps and equipment into vapor.

  “Clear.”

  John was the first one to unbuckle his safety restraints. “Time to dismount.” Matai slapped a square orange panel; what had looked like a seamless section of plating separated, irising to become an exit hatch. It was a long way down to the floor. The two infiltration teams had practiced jumping from the craft until their execution was perfect; it only took a few moments for everyone to land on the floor and take a defensive position for their assigned sector. John pulled two of Vickie’s “eyes” out of a belt pouch and tossed them up. They vanished.

  Her voice sounded calm and steady. “Rock and roll, troops.”

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  Bella was glued to the multiple feeds from Vickie’s station. She couldn’t even imagine how Vic was coordinating it all. She was practically on fire with the need to be there herself . . . except she couldn’t. She was head of Echo, not to be risked. If she’d been there, chances were that Verdigris would have somehow managed to find a way to drop one of the “Hammers” on her head. Or had one of the other weapons reprogrammed to target her. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have people almost as good at hacking as Vickie—and he had probably set up plenty of backdoors when he was all cozy with the US Military. Or—well, there was a lot he could do, and there was also no way of telling whether or not he still had another mole or ten in their ranks. There was a damned good reason why the Seraphym was hovering just outside her window, and it had nothing to do with providing a little more ambient light in the office.

  She knew all this.

  It didn’t help.

  * * *

  John used hand signals, drawing his team in. Untermensch, Soviet Bear, and Mamona took position behind him. He caught Bulwark doing the same in his peripheral vision. Motu, Matai, Silent Knight, and Red Djinni filed in behind their team leader with practiced precision. John reached down to his belt, flicking a rocker switch on a control unit. His subvocal mics kicked in, allowing him to “talk,” if you could call it that, without actually making any sound. His voice came over the comms, but seemed flat in a way. “Team two, moving out.”

  “Team one, moving.”

  John’s team was tasked with taking out the key areas in the Thulian HQ. The trick was, they had to do it without alerting the entire base that there were intruders doing all sorts of naughty things in their midst. They all crept along, almost perfectly silent, with their rifles trained on their sectors of responsibility. John knew they would have to sacrifice some of their stealth, and soon; the longer they took, the more people would die on the surface. Somewhere just ahead of them, Vickie’s “eye” flew, invisible, scouting for them.

  With a flick of his head, he keyed over to Vic’s frequency, patching it into his team’s comms. “We’re at the hangar exit into the main base. Which way are we headed, and what’s the opposition look like beyond this door?” Talking without saying anything was another of the high-tech things that weirded John out; it didn’t discount the obvious tactical advantages, which he may well have killed for when he was still part of a recognized military.

  “Clear at the door. Left, left, right, left. After the fourth corner, you hit a main drag and it’s full of troopers.”

  “Number? What’s their disposition?”

  “I count six positive, with a possible seventh. Can’t get the eye past them without a chance they’ll pick it up. Static positions. I’ll scoot this eye down the other way to make sure you don’t get a patrol on your tail.” Static positions meant they were either a guard post, or had otherwise been in the same general area for a minute and a half.

  “Roger. Moving.” He motioned for the team to follow. The floors and the walls of the Thulian HQ seemed to be made of the same slick-looking metal that their trooper armor and death machines were. John felt his disgust for the Nazi material welling up in him, and used the emotional capital. His team transversed the distance quickly, stacking up at the intersection with the main drag. John opened a pouch and pulled out one of his personal magic eyes that Vic had given him, dropping it to the floor. It rolled into the middle, invisible, yet patching in a full view of the hallway into his HUD.

  “I believe that is the Welcome Wagon.” Vic could see everything that he could see, through his HUD implant and, of course, the magic eyes. “Nothing coming up on your six o’clock.”

  Unfortunately, Vic was right: six Thulians. Three were part of a checkpoint guard position, while the other three looked to be technicians of some sort, working on a sparking panel. Looks like the kinetic bombardment did a little more damage than we thought. Good. Every Nazi was armed. John signaled for Mamona to come up to the front; she tapped Bear’s shoulder, and the Russian automatically took up a rear-guard position. She looked to John, and he nodded to her. Mamona slung her rifle, bending down to kneel. Her brow screwed up in concentration, and she brought her gloved hands to her chest.

  John saw the effect of what she was doing through his magic-eye camera. The closest Thulians, which included all of the technicians and two of the guards, completely froze in place. The last guard began to retch and heave violently, bile and vomit spilling to the floor.

  “Go.” John was the first around the corner, with Untermensch following close behind. Their rifles barked quietly, suppressed rounds stitching through the Thulians. In less than two seconds, all of the Nazis were dead. “Vic, any chatter?”

  “So far internal freqs are full of nothing to concern you.” How Vickie was patching into Thulian comm frequencies, he had no idea. Probably more of her magic stuff. “A lot of general quarters palaver and emergency repairs on their internals, a lot of screaming and dying and attack orders on their externals.”

  “Roger. Let the bastards burn. What’s Gamayun an’ the scopes say ’bout where to head from here?”

  “Halt, halt, halt.” There was a pause. It was long enough that she was probably talking to someone else. Gamayun, most likely. Gamayun was creating a map as they moved, staying a little ahead of them, using her own curious power of remote viewing. Unfortunately she couldn’t “see” anything much further away from her own location than five miles. Needless to say, she was the best protected person on the battlefield today. “Ahead five hundred yards. Right, right, ahead another five hundred. Down stairs on right. Stairs are clear. Stand by for change.”

  The team proceeded. Vic warned them when to slow up, when to take cover to avoid a group of running Thulians, when to charge ahead. It went much faster than if they’d been going in without her near-omniscient Overwatch. It took a lot of energy to travel silently, though; John was feeling it when they reached their first destination: the main armory for the entire Thulian North American HQ. John floated his personal magic eye into the room; he saw rows and rows of evil-looking rifles, pistols, and crates of munitions. They were all housed behind some sort of clear door; it looked thick, and hardy. There were four Thulians in the room, all looking very nervous. The corridor floor here was polished stone, not metal, probably to prevent accidental electrical discharge into the munitions. Perfect for Vickie.

  “You have two minutes. Patrol just came through. You’ll have to take out the next one. And . . . mark.” The HUD lit up with a cou
ntdown clock in the upper-right-hand quadrant of each teammate’s vision. “I love my job. When all this is over, you guys are stealth-returning all my overdue DVDs.”

  John used a control on his belt to tilt his magic eye up and to the left. “Vic, question. I’m seeing what looks like fire suppression systems in this room. Can ya trigger ’em without alerting the rest of the base?”

  “Good question. Watch for the patrol, let me noodle on it a second. Unter? Bare hand on floor please?” The Russian complied; he was the only team member with bare—though impossibly resilient—hands, discounting Bear, whose hands were titanium. It didn’t take her very long. “Some of that shite is unstable as hell. If I give it a bounce, it’ll go off with a little fireball and that’ll set off the suppression.”

  “Keep that in mind. Might save us munitions.” John kept his suppressed rifle trained down the hallway, careful not to peek the barrel around the corner.

  “Roger. I can bounce on your signal.”

  “Go for it.”

  “Roger. Two guards, your ten and your three o’clock. Two guards, Unter’s four and nine o’clock.” There was another pause. “And mark.” There was a shudder of the floor, a pop, a loud hissing sound, followed by angry shouts in German. John swung around the corner; his Thulian was right where Vicky had said, at his ten o’clock. Two bursts of suppressed fire from his and Unter’s rifles, and all four Nazis were down. Some halon gas hung in the air, but not enough to be dangerous.

  “Time to get to work. Bear, Mamona, plant the charges. Unter, take up position on the door; an’ don’t shoot me. It’d ruin my day.” Bear and Mamona ran behind the counter of the armory; the transparent door to the main arsenal slid open after Pavel pressed the hand of one of the Kriegers to its reader-pad. They began to set the explosive charges, while John and Georgi took defensive positions on the door.

  “Guys, drag the corpsicles over behind those crates. Can’t be seen from the door.” Vickie seemed to have eyes everywhere. “Fewer internal alerts we set off before we blow this pop stand, the better.” Bear did so after he finished setting his last charge.

  The last few digits of the countdown began flashing in John’s HUD. “Heads up. Incoming.”

  The metallic footsteps of the patrol marked their approach, even over the hum of unfamiliar tech and the faint vibrations of floor, walls and ceiling.

  Untermensch slapped his hand onto the weapon barrel of the first Nazi through the door; he jerked it towards the center of the room, and the Thulian followed, still gripping his weapon out of reflex. The rest of the patrol quickly rushed in, confused; they were greeted with a barrage of suppressed rifle fire. Unter unloaded the rest of his magazine into the trooper he had pulled through the doorway. John could see a quiet fury behind Georgi’s eyes, carefully controlled. There was a lot of rage built up in the man, left over and allowed to stew since the Great Patriotic War.

  With the charges in place, the squad moved out to their next objective. Gravity generators. Gonna have to be sure to document as much as we can. He spared another thought for Sera, this one of gratitude. If she hadn’t filled him with her own strength, he’d have already collapsed by now. Gotta make this count . . . and get home.

  * * *

  Motu and Matai were providing security on the door, with one of Vix’s cams stuck right outside it, scanning for threats. The room had been easy to take; there were only four Nazis in it, after all, and they didn’t have power armor in this part of the facility. What had been hard was leaving one of them alive, and relatively unscathed. Bulwark had taken care of that; it’s amazing what a well-placed rifle butt will do for a man’s ability to stay conscious.

  Bulwark stared for a moment at the unconscious Thulian, then at Djinni. His jaw tensed. “Djinni—” he gestured at the body. “This would be your job.”

  “This is gonna play merry-hell with my radar,” he bitched, then set about stripping the unconscious Thulian. Roughing in a face—just taking the face he was wearing and giving it a slightly more Thulian cast—didn’t involve having to rip it off, and he didn’t see any good reason to do a full copy of the guy in his tighty whities on the floor. While the others scuttled around setting charges, he sat on the floor, staring at one of Magic Girl’s wizard-cams, while she fed the image of his own face back to his retinas. Boy, was that trippy. The eye slits were longer, the nose was more of a suggestion than a real nose, the nostrils were slits. Damn near no upper lip, and a thin, long lower one. Skin a jaundiced yellow. And Victrix had supplied him with something to replicate the orange-cinnamon smell of the Thulians; he sprayed himself down with her concoction.

  He stood up. “Ready for my close-up.”

  Bulwark gave him a long stare. “That’ll do.”

  When everyone was ready, Djinni lead the way. The team stayed several paces behind him, allowing him to go around corners and into hallways first. This paid off, when Vix warned them “Infil One, little busy here” and they went on ahead because the clock was ticking. She was juggling two infiltration teams in an enemy base that was buzzing with activity, as well as helping coordinate comms and intelligence for the ground battle raging above; it was understandable. Red was able to hide his surprise when he rounded a corner and almost bowled over a Thulian. The Nazi spilled what looked like a stack of manuals, cursing loudly in German.

  “Entschuldigen mir bitte, Uberlautnet,” Red bleated, then groveled. “Das tut mir sehr leid—” He bent down as if to pick up the manuals, then shot up like an uncoiled spring, catching the Nazi under the chin with his hardened fist. The Thulian went down like a felled tree. Red knelt down to throw the Nazi over his shoulder, and then behind a stack of crates in a small alcove.

  “When did you start learning German?” Motu asked.

  “When I needed to.”

  The team moved faster. They didn’t run into any more Thulians along the way, so they actually arrived ahead of schedule. Red placed his back against the wall just outside of the supposed Command and Control room for the entire headquarters. He could hear a lot of movement and talking inside. Looks like the good guys upstairs are keeping them busy. Since we’re not dead, they haven’t figured our angle out yet.

  “That’s an awful lot of talking going on in there . . . and what I don’t like is they don’t sound panicked.” That was Vix in his ear. “Lemme boost it.”

  Red’s German wasn’t good enough for him to make out what the rapid-fire conversation was all about. But Vix could.

  “Oh, bloody hell.” Her voice took on that flat tone that told him they were probably in trouble. “Listen up, peeps. What they just said was that they aren’t worried, that they’ve only engaged about a twentieth of their force out there and it was the second-stringers at best. And that now that we’ve made them, they are on schedule to pack up and move the rest to a new base by this time tomorrow. There’s several hundred of the bastards outside. You do the math.”

  “That doesn’t change the mission,” Bulwark said firmly. “If anything, this makes it more critical.”

  “That’s a big ten-four. Just wanted you guys to know what’s riding on it. Already relayed the intel. RD, gimme an eye, please.”

  Djinni pulled one of the eyes out of a pouch, and held it in the palm of his hand. The weird little dingus that looked like something out of a steampunk illustration slowly levitated up, then winked out of sight. He waited while she scouted with it.

  “They aren’t even the least little bit alert. We can do this the easy way,” she said. “Showtime, Djinni.”

  Red took a limpet from Motu, and stuck a bandaid on it. The moment the adhesive strip went down, the limpet faded from view. The bandaid happened to have a drop of Vix’s own blood on it, which was kind of creepy actually, but gave her spell contact. Funny that she entrusted that packet of bandaids to him . . .

  He walked in, trying to look as if he was there to get something, spotted a warmer full of empty coffeepots, and headed for them. He was in the middle of what could have been any big
Command and Control center he’d ever seen: desks, lots of monitors, that skewed Thulian control stuff and odd-shaped keyboards and a few sleeves. And . . . they drank coffee?

  “Frischen Kaffee?” asked one of the men at the nearest desk as Red picked up pots and left the limpet.

  Red nodded and replied, “Jawohl, Mein Herr.”

  “Gut. Macht schnell.”

  Red walked out just as calmly, taking up his position next to the door. Matai handed him his rifle, and he checked the chamber to make sure it had a round in it. Bulwark nodded to him. Retrieving a small control with a nice, shiny red button on it, he said, “Ready?” He waited for the nod. Thought of Amethist. “Ignition.” He depressed the button, and a too-loud explosion rocked the hallway. Not wasting precious seconds, Red pocketed the control, bringing his rifle up. The team filed in behind him; the entire control room was full of smoke, with several small fires started where the distraction device had caught combustibles. The Thulians were all on the floor and dazed, some that were the closest to the blast being completely unconscious. The team took them down easily, gunfire and rifle strikes finishing off any resistance.

  Once Bulwark was certain the room was clear, he slung his rifle and walked over to what he had been briefed on, specifically: a mainframe computer.

  The eye unstealthed. It whizzed over the control areas, then stopped. Some sort of plug popped out of its rear, and it backed into a slot. Vix sighed with satisfaction in his ear. “Bingo. Come to Momma.”

  While he busied himself with that and the two brothers providing security on the door, Red and Silent Knight began to gather up any physical intelligence they could: hard-copy, maps, and manuals, mostly. “Overwatch, go private. How’re we doing, Vix?” Red had switched over to a direct line with her.

  “It’s getting ugly outside. JM’s commies are on track so far; I gave them the bad news, so the Reds on Infil Two are trying to plant the rest of their ordinance for the biggest possible boom. Good news: the Nazis never figured on anyone unfriendly getting to this computer station, so there’s no firewalls, no ice, and no interference.”