Collision: Book Four in the Secret World Chronicle - eARC Read online

She didn’t dare show that, however. If the Kriegers inside sensed even a moment of hesitation, they would strike, and she was no longer what she had been.

  She arrowed for the nearest, aiming to engulf it in fire, and either use her spear on it, or hope that someone down below noticed that the Spheres were above them and decided to try a weapon from below. With the tentacle-arms lashing at her like a nest of cobras, she landed on the top of it and surrounded herself with flame, concentrating to raise it to white-hot temperatures. She sensed the mental babble of the Kriegers inside; they knew this tactic, and knew what it meant, and their only hope was to get her off before she could fatally weaken the armor of the Sphere.

  The tentacles were not constructed in such a way that they could reach the top of the Sphere they were installed on, so long as she crouched, but the operator of the Sphere began all manner of gyrations trying to throw her off—or throw her into the path of one of the tentacles. She called her sword and hammered it into the skin of the Sphere, desperately using it as a handle to hold on.

  The second Sphere was in trouble. While the one she rode bucked and spun, the CCCP had noticed the danger overhead. The CCCPers on the rooftop were firing RPGs at it—regular warheads, designed for penetrating tank armor, while those on the ground finished off the last of the armored troopers. John Murdock was also blasting it with fire, weakening sections of it. Despite this, the second Sphere was coming to the aid of its comrade. Sera saw the tentacles stretching for her, and knew there was no way to avoid them without throwing herself into the reach of the tentacles on the Sphere she was riding. The Kriegers were either taking the chance that she was vulnerable now—or had intuited it from her actions.

  It was with a mingling of fear and relief that she watched Death reaching for her, and could not see a way to escape it. She closed her eyes.

  There was a wash of heat that swept over her in an infernal wave, followed by the sound of a muffled explosion. She snapped her eyes open in time to see a lance of fire pouring into the second Sphere. The Sphere she rode stopped bucking for a moment, and she looked down to the roof. John Murdock had his eyes fixed on the Sphere, and was filling the interior with scorching flame through a hole made by the RPGs. The Sphere stopped its forward motion, jerked a little in the air, and then partly burst at the seams with gouts of fire spilling out and debris splitting the air. The Sphere started descending rapidly, clipping an abandoned building before tumbling into a section of the destruction corridor. There was no way that anyone could have survived inside the burning wreckage.

  The sudden knowledge that she would live after all gave her a burst of strength. She took advantage of the Sphere’s momentary pause to assess where the pilot was inside. There. Yes. Within reach… She summoned her lance of flame. Forgive me.

  She leapt and tumbled along the top of the Sphere until she was just above the pilot, and without hesitation, slammed the lance of fire down through the armor, impaling him and pinning him to the control panel where he sat.

  Then she leapt into the sky, beating her wings frantically to gain distance, as the Sphere shuddered, as though the death of the pilot had struck a blow into its heart, and began to gyre wildly. It tumbled out of control, canted over sideways, and followed its fellow down into the destruction corridor. She lost sight of it behind a roofless building, but the explosion and belch of flame and black smoke that followed on the sound of the impact was more than enough to tell her that the Sphere was as finished as its fellow had been.

  She glanced down, and again, caught sight of John Murdock. As if her gaze had drawn his attention, he peered up, saw her hovering above, and waved. Her heart contracted painfully. Did he remember, at last—?

  No. No, of course he didn’t. She could see it in his face. She was just another fellow-fighter. It was a gesture of congratulations, nothing more. Her spirit plummeted.

  Then she saw it—

  One of the armored Kriegers had somehow escaped the fate of his brothers and must have found a way to climb the blank back wall of the CCCP firehouse. She spotted him just as he levered his massive weight up onto the roof, the helmet optics centered on John’s back. The Krieger raised his arm-cannon—

  She called all her fires, and dove, fire-sword at the ready.

  The Krieger never even saw her as she skimmed his shoulder. A second later, his helmet, with his head in it, toppled from his shoulders. Without direction, the armor shuddered into immobility, freezing in place like some grotesque martial statue.

  Bulwark/Bella/Djinni/Mel: ECHO Campus

  Bella hadn’t really expected Armageddon to be unleashed when she’d asked Jamaican Blaze to do her thing. A lot more fire was what she’d had in mind, not a replay of the firebombing of freaking Dresden.

  On the other hand, when the fire vortex roared up into life, she could not honestly say she was unhappy. Terrified, absolutely. Coming to an absolute blank when she tried to think of what she could do if it got out of control—you bet. Unhappy, however…no.

  Not even though she could sense the blooming of panic, terror and pain coming from those armored troopers. She resolutely hardened her shields and told herself ruthlessly that they’d had a choice of whether or not to obey their commanders and attack. And tucked the “but what if they hadn’t?” into the place she looked at deep in the night.

  Now they were vulnerable to regular armaments and powers, and with Bull expanding his shield to cover everyone that wasn’t on the offensive, she gave the order to pour it on. Too bad you couldn’t fire from inside that shield, but at least he could cover the Medic Corps and give them, and whoever they’d dragged to safety, some protection.

  * * *

  Red Djinni watched as his allies advanced on the remaining Kriegers. There were perhaps only a few dozen left. The Kriegers had lost, though from their defiance it was clear they had yet to realize it. Or perhaps they simply didn’t know that surrender was an option. Whatever drove them, it amounted to suicide as they threw themselves against the amassed ECHO troops, who had little option other than to shoot to kill.

  Amidst the carnage, Red strode wearily to assess the fallen. It was an odd sight, seeing so many of the Kriegers in one place, often in piles, as they had resorted to using their dead as cover. Now they were strewn everywhere, lifeless. Would-be conquerors caught in a well-executed trap. He paused by a heap of dead soldiers, and a movement caught his eye. Trapped beneath the bodies of its fallen comrades, one of the Thulian troopers strained to free himself.

  He stopped, looked up at Red, and snarled. He was in agony, but who wouldn’t be with his entire head on fire? With a tremendous effort, the Thulian struggled to raise his arm cannon, only to scream in pain as Red drove his foot down, pinning the arm to the ground.

  Casually, Red unlatched his sidearm, cocked it, and aimed square between the Krieger’s eyes.

  The Thulian stopped struggling. His head fell back, and over the ringing sounds of gunfire and explosions, Red heard him choke out two words.

  “Macht’s du.”

  The Djinni paused. He realized this was war. For all his time spent dodging bullets, fighting for his life and all that other fun stuff that seemed to crop up in a mercenary shithead’s career, he had always enjoyed a certain emotional detachment when it came to ending someone’s life. No, that wasn’t entirely true. He remembered the Vault, when he had torn the life out of that kid, how it had tasted. Like ashes. And that wasn’t the first time. Truth be told, he remembered them all, from the mob bosses to the heads of industry to those few, unfortunate bystanders who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. He had fooled himself for years. Some of them deserved it, didn’t they? It had become a game of numbers—those that deserved it and those that didn’t. As long as one column was longer than the next, it was all good. But it was a lie, something he told himself so that he could move on, to the next job. The next score.

  The next hit.

  Red felt the grip on his gun falter, and shake. Was this it? Was this what Jack f
elt when he had emptied two entire magazines into him in the Vault? You stood your ground, you kept your gun on your target, and you went cold. But inside, inside the battle raged between your training and the mission and that part of you screaming to stop, to lower your weapon and find another way. Because there was always a cost when a life was snuffed out. On the same day, he had lived through one insane event after another, each trumping the last, and it had culminated with Amythist being blasted away in a torrent of blinding light. And here, lying at his feet, was one of the bastards that had taken her from him.

  Red knelt down, his hand no longer shaking, and pressed the muzzle to the Krieger’s head.

  “MACHT’S DU!” the Thulian screamed. “MACHT’S DU, UNTERMENSCH SCHWEIN, DO IT!”

  Red stopped cold. He stared at the slits in the Krieger’s helmet. You couldn’t see the eyes. You couldn’t see anything human about whatever was in there. So why was it that he was reminded of that mob boss he’d taken out in Manhattan? He had given up a lot that day as well, and the years after, to become the man he was. It had cost him his love, an unborn child, his future. There was always a cost. Memories flashed in his head, images and scenes fired in a rhythmic, staccato picture show. A still, dark bedroom. A sudden slash of his claws. A young man, begging for his life, only to be silenced with a neat slip of a small wire around his throat. Him screaming at Vix. “I’ve killed people for this!” And he had. Why couldn’t he do it now? Because there was always a cost. He had made many bad choices in his life, taken many questionable roads that offered little besides the thrill of the contest, of the hunt, immediate gratification. Sometimes the glory of the moment passed, and you were left with nothing but the void, and you stumbled along until you found another high. Sometimes, it took years for the scales to balance. Somewhere down the road, you really did pay for your sins. It had almost killed Vix, his anger and retreat from the bad choices he had made. He watched himself burst through the window of her apartment, spike her heart with adrenaline and force ipecac down her throat. He watched himself make a choice, to revoke an oath, to begin a long and arduous road to redemption. The only choices that ever seemed to actually pay off were the ones that were selfless. That, at his very core, seemed right for no other reason than they would protect others, give others what they needed, what they deserved, even if he was to suffer. Why was Bella with Bull? Because she deserved someone like him. The Seraphym had warned him, of the consequences of choices. Ten years ago, hell, perhaps just months ago, he would have double-tapped this Krieger bastard through his flaming, vulnerable helmet. But he was better than this. Rather, he wanted to be. And if he wanted more, he would have to earn it.

  “All right, angel lady, I get it. I do. So this is my choice. I don’t need more needless bloodshed on my hands.”

  He lowered his gun.

  “No one would blame you, y’know.”

  Red glanced to his side. Mel had joined him, her own sidearm trained on the helpless Krieger.

  “Can’t do it,” he said. “I’m not that guy anymore.”

  She gave him a puzzled look, shrugged and cocked her pistol. She hesitated. He turned, and watched as the familiar conflict seemed to rage across her features.

  “I get it,” Mel agreed. “When you’re a soldier, you have to turn it off. If you hesitate, you die. I heard that every day; they drilled it into you, ’cause you don’t enlist ready to do any of this. At the beginning, I just wanted to help people. I didn’t think I’d have to make decisions like this, or point a gun at an enemy and turn him into a stain on the battlefield. The girl they sent to war, she wouldn’t have thought twice about this sort of thing.”

  She flashed Red a wry grin and lowered her weapon. “Guess I’m not that girl anymore.”

  He stared at her, startled, and finally nodded. He exhaled, and took in the field. The sounds of combat had ceased. They were surrounded by scores of dead Kriegers. He grimaced as he tallied the number of fallen ECHO soldiers. There weren’t many, but even then, one was too many. He caught a glimpse of Bella as she instructed her troops to do a final sweep over the grounds.

  “Yo, Boss Lady!” he shouted, ignoring his ECHO comm device. “We taking prisoners?”

  Bella glanced over at him, and nodded, looking first surprised at the question, and then, almost irrationally happy.

  “Bet your ass!” she shouted, and waved two of the ECHO Ops who were nearest her. “Bag him and tag him, boys.”

  “Stand down, Djinni,” Bulwark rumbled, with an odd—was it approving?—look at Red. “I’ve got this.” He joined the other two as Red backed off, and together they hauled the captured soldier away.

  From behind the shield wall, Bob staggered into view. With shaking hands, he mopped the sweat from his brow with his jacket.

  “Screw this noise,” he shuddered. “From now on I’m jogging at the water works.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Wounds

  Mercedes Lackey and Cody Martin

  John sipped his scotch and pondered the journal. If it had been a work of fiction, he probably would have thrown it across the room for being crap by the time he finished it.

  The problem was…right up until the angel nonsense, he could relate to all of it. It was written in a voice he recognized. It sounded like something he might have written—maybe on some of the worst days of his life, but he could still recognize and relate to it. Then…well.

  Snarky people with agendas say there “are no atheists in foxholes.” Which was bullshit, and he was living proof of that. So what had been written, well, it sounded like someone who was at the end of his rope and finally grasping at the straws he’d have rejected if he’d been in his right mind. John just wasn’t sure if the chick herself was deluded or had been tricking “that guy.” It’d be easy enough for a chick with mental powers to pick stuff out of that guy’s brain, or shove illusions in there, right? And as desperate and beaten down as that guy had been…it’d be like a bottle of scotch in front of an alcoholic. Drink the Kool-Aid, and everything would be all better. Too many wounds, and a desperate search for redemption, especially after that death-sentence.

  Well, he wasn’t that guy. He wasn’t doomed to make the same mistakes; he didn’t believe in destiny, and he sure as hell didn’t believe that he was locked into this. This journal was a roadmap for him; the worst that could happen, if he let it. But he wouldn’t. He couldn’t say where that other guy was, mentally, after escaping the Program. John knew, however, that you didn’t just run from your problems. You had to confront them, sometimes head-on, otherwise they’d plague you forever. Right now, the Kriegers had priority. After the war was over, though, it might very well be time for him to start digging into that piece of his past, no matter how bloody things got. He didn’t much cotton to the idea of being on the run for the rest of his life.

  There were a lot of things that made him different from that guy. He wasn’t under a death sentence, for one thing. So far two different docs had given him a clean bill of health; whatever had been killing that guy wasn’t killing this John Murdock any more. So he didn’t have that particular stick goading him into buying the ridiculous “angel” line.

  Although…maybe…just maybe…that chick with the wings actually had cured him, somehow. Mind, he hadn’t looked into every other possible explanation but…

  It still intrigued him. He didn’t consider himself an easy mark. And even if he was at the end of his rope, from the journal entries, he figured that he’d been a pretty hard sell. Whatever this winged creature had, it must have been special. Did that “special” include actually being able to cure what ECHO and CCCP both said couldn’t be cured? Was she just delusional about being an angel, but honest about everything else? Plenty of metas were batshit crazy in one way or another.

  Even as unlikely as it seemed to him, the journal was pretty clear proof that he had fallen in love with her. That was another thing that just seemed incomprehensible to him, another instance where “that guy” was different fro
m him. There had been women over the years, of course, but nothing that lasted more than a few months, a year at most when he was young and naive. John had been focused on his job, since at that level you had to be in order to simply stay alive. That didn’t leave time for distractions; as lovely as they were, women and a family life could be a distraction. Some men were able to make it work; plenty couldn’t. John always figured that, if he were to settle down, it would be “in the future”; a nebulous idea about when he wouldn’t be a trigger puller anymore.

  In the middle of this war, however, “that guy” had found someone to connect with. Something John never had been able to do.

  Even if she was crazy…it was still something. What had drawn the other guy in? She was pretty enough, certainly; gorgeous actually, with a sort of unearthly quality to her. But, there had been plenty of good looking women in his life; looks only went so far with him. There had to be something going on upstairs to keep him around other than for temporary fun.

  John had noticed her following him, always at a distance, and watching him while he was out on patrol. John figured it was just about time that they talked.

  He pounded back the rest of his beer, setting the bottle down next to the empty scotch glass and gathering up his journal. He first read the journal at the CCCP HQ, then reread it. And read it once more here at Mel’s for good measure. It wasn’t exactly light reading, and he wanted to analyze and absorb every single detail before accepting any of it as being true. Everyone had given him a pretty wide berth when they saw that he was occupied; Mel had dutifully kept the scotch and brews coming without a word. She was cleaning a glass and leaning against the bar when he started to get up, dropping a few bills to pay for his tab.

  “Where are you off to, Murdock?”

  John checked the bar one last time to make sure he had everything, then glanced over his shoulder at Mel as he walked away. “Gotta talk with an ‘angel.’ Keep the change, Mel.”