Revolution: Book Three of the Secret World Chronicle - eARC Read online

  Oh Christ, is that headcheese?

  With a roar, Doppelgaenger brought a fist down, shattering Red’s claws, and hurled Red to the side. Red tumbled away and collided with a nearby support column. He heard the concrete support, already weathered and crumbling, crack from the impact. He was showered with more debris as the ceiling groaned and shifted under the strain. Short of breath, eyes tearing from the pain, he got his arms under him and managed to push himself up on his elbows. He glanced up at Doppelgaenger, and witnessed a truly terrifying sight.

  The giant stood at attention, his face contorted in a grimace of pain, his belly now bleeding profusely from the five jagged claws embedded in his gut. His breathing slowed to a measured beat, and Red watched in horror as the claws were slowly engulfed by the big man. They simply slid into him. The wounds began to…eat the claws, making wet, slurping noises as they sucked the razor-sharp shards in. After a moment, the wounds healed, the bleeding stopped. Doppelgaenger looked down at his hand, concentrated, and in moments the pinpricks from Red’s neck spikes were gone. Relief spread over Doppelgaenger’s face and he smiled down at Red.

  “Rapid healing,” he sighed. “That is a most useful talent you possess, Herr Djinni.”

  Red shuddered, and collapsed. He was beaten.

  * * *

  As he waited for his tardy carrier to arrive, Doppelgaenger amused himself by snapping the thorns off of Red Djinni’s neck, one by one, as one might do with flower petals. The Djinni, it seemed, was still conscious, and Doppelgaenger was rewarded with muffled gasps of pain with each fracture. He was pleased, he was beyond pleased. His quarry was remarkably resilient. It would be such a pleasure to break him, to delve into him, and retrieve the answers he had sought after for so long.

  “She loves me, she loves me not…” he sang, happily.

  Suddenly he was thrown up and back by a spike of dirt and broken concrete erupting right at his feet.

  “She loves you not, widernatürlich Scheisskerl,” snarled the tiny woman peering from behind a concrete pillar. She had an automatic pistol pointed at his head. “Take your brown-shirted thugs and go home while you still can. And be grateful that my concern for my partner trumps my wish to splatter your brains on the wall behind you.”

  “Scheisse!” Doppelgaenger swore as he rose to his feet. “Of course, the rescue attempt. Is it not the way of things, fraulein? To truly enjoy something, you must earn it first.” He looked around. “Or not. I hardly see how this is much more than a minor inconvenience, like a bug to an eagle. Surely, there are more than just you, kleine Kaefer?”

  “I’m armed,” she pointed out. “You aren’t. David killed Goliath with a bullet. I expect I can do the same.”

  Doppelgaenger laughed, and spread his arms wide. “By all means, fraulein Victrix, fulfill all your biblical fantasies…”

  She didn’t hesitate, not for a second, and she didn’t take just one shot. She unloaded three rapid and well-spaced slugs into his chest. Then she paused, waiting to see the effect. Doppelgaenger clutched at his heart, grunted, and drew his hand away with her bullets. She watched as the wounds healed before her eyes.

  “And what now, Herr David?” he asked.

  She dropped the mag and reloaded, muttering. “Dammit, I knew I should have led with incendiary rounds.” She aimed again.

  “Perhaps you need a bigger gun?” Doppelgaenger offered, sweetly.

  An energy blast slammed into the wall between him and the Djinni, knocking them further apart. Doppelgaenger spun around, his eyes darting about to spot the source of the blast.

  “Bigger gun, as you wish. Get your filthy hands off him, fascista svinya,” spat Red Saviour, swaggering into a patch of light coming from an overhead light fixture. “That wasn’t a miss. The next one will flatten your nekulturny head. I will be extremely pleased to kill you.”

  “Chyort voz’mi!” Vickie swore, whirling to stare aghast at the Commissar. “What do you think you’re doing, jumping the gun like this?”

  Saviour examined her nails. “Too much talking, time for smashinks,” she said casually. Her fists began to glow as she turned her attention back to Doppelgaenger. “Inferior heir to Ubermensch could not kill me, dolboeb. You will not be givink me sweating.”

  Doppelgaenger sneered. “So, Mother Worker’s Champion sends the super-model instead of the real Red Saviour. Is the dog too old to bite?”

  “The old wolf sees no reason to waste his teeth on inferior, mongrel meat, huiplet. The young wolf needs a chew toy. You’ll do.” She bared her teeth.

  Doppelgaenger signaled his armored troops to move in. “I think the young wolf is about to break all her teeth and be whipped. I could use a pet to tie to the foot of my bed.”

  “And I could use a new dummy at the target range. I wonder how many slugs you can absorb before you look like a lace shawl?” Saviour snickered.

  “Enough of this,” Doppelgaenger said in disgust. He motioned to his troops, who began to ramp up their cannons. “Tötet sie jetzt! Schlagt sie auf—”

  He faltered as he heard the pounding of very heavy feet behind him. He turned, too late, and was struck by an enormous fist, encased by a small shimmering force-field. Doppelgaenger flew back and collided with two of his troopers, bowling them over.

  “Was?!” Doppelgaenger cried, struggling to come to his feet.

  “Big Gun, reporting for duty,” Bulwark said. He placed himself directly between Red Djinni and Doppelgaenger, and raised his glowing fist in defiance.

  “It took you long enough,” Saviour grumbled, as she and Vickie raced to Bulwark’s side. “What did you do, take the route with scenery and be smelling flowers?”

  “Bubble is a go!” Bulwark barked, ignoring her. “Execute!”

  Doppelgaenger watched as they spun to face him. Under different circumstances, he might have admired their subterfuge. But today, so close to his goal, he suppressed an urge to scream. He had let them cut him off from the Djinni.

  Idiot! You let them play you for a rank amateur!

  They moved as one. Red Saviour brought her hands up and away, her fists glowing with a hellish blue light. She took aim and fired off two blue and brilliant bolts, shattering two opposing, weight-bearing columns. The ceiling groaned ominously. Vickie thrust both her hands into the air, palms-upward, and Doppelgaenger heard an awful bubbling sound as the earth opened up in front of him, in front of all his troopers, as individual payloads erupted out of the very soil at their feet. His eyes widened as the rocket-shaped devices split open, contents mixing with each other and the air. Then there was nothing but white-hot fury, flames licking upwards as if from hell itself, engulfing his men with liquid fire. His troops began to scream, and he found he was screaming as well, when he witnessed Bulwark’s force bubble blaze into existence around the heroes, just as the ceiling came down on all of them.

  * * *

  The CCCP van sounded as rough as it looked, but it seemed to have plenty of power, and someone had done a righteous job on the shocks and springs to allow it to get over the churned-up streets in this destruction corridor. Red Saviour had wanted to blast the siren, but Vickie shouted her down. It was bad enough they had to do this in broad daylight, and there was no sense in drawing even more attention to themselves. Besides, it was the destruction corridor. It wasn’t like traffic was an issue here.

  Vickie’s heart was racing. They had done it! Bull had gotten out mostly on his own two feet, though even his trademark stoicism seemed to falter as he gingerly gripped his chest and sides. Cracked ribs and internal bleeding again, she figured. Even with the meta-powered ECHO med staff patching him up, it seemed a miracle this man had any intact organs left at all. Saviour had picked up and carried Djinni over his weak protests. They had made their way out of the demolished warehouse, piled into the van and been just enough ahead of Doppelgaenger’s incoming transport that either the Kriegers didn’t spot them speeding away, or they’d been too busy thinking about digging their boss out to care.

&n
bsp; The van had been modified to serve as a makeshift ambulance, with two gurneys in the back and a fully equipped emergency unit “liberated” from ECHO. Bulwark and Red lay on the gurneys. Red Saviour was behind the wheel (Vickie was too short to reach the pedals), and was perhaps enjoying her rare chance to drive a vehicle a little too much. She rocketed over potholes and only occasionally swerved to avoid the larger pieces of debris in what was left of the road. The van swayed dangerously, but whatever modifications had been done to it meant at least it wasn’t bottoming out or breaking its spine. Gamayun remonstrated in Russian over the radio, while Vickie strapped the two broken men in. To save everyone the explosion that would occur if the two were presented to Bella, they were heading for the CCCP medbay and the tenderer mercies of Soviette. Anyway, it was closer, and any verbal flogging these two deserved, Vickie was going to deliver herself. She felt it was more than owed to her at this point, she had earned it, and by all the gods, she was going to have the pleasure of flaying them within an inch of their lives. She suddenly understood why Saviour always grinned wolfishly when about to unload an “excoriation.”

  “I don’t know what the hell you two bucks were butting heads over that got both your panties in a wad,” Vickie said, glaring at both of them as she belted herself into the passenger seat. “But you—” she pointed an accusing finger at Bull. “You are kibaszott disgrace as a Marine! I’ve got half a notion to call Retired Master Sergeant Hosteen Stormdance down here from DC and have him break your goddamn saber over his knee. You should know better. No man left behind. That’s right up there with Semper Fi, you moron! I don’t care what the man on your team did to you, said to you, you don’t leave him behind. You don’t even think about leaving him behind. You don’t hesitate. And you know that.” She turned to glare at Red. “And as for you, you oslayob, you are polnyi pizdets, and I have just one thing to say. Stop being a kutyafasza. We get it. You’re a Free Bird, a maverick, a smartass, a loose cannon—all that and a bag of stale chips. And we are tired of it. Keep it up, and I swear to Herne, I am going to magic your mouth shut and have Bella feed you through a tube. Labagiule!”

  Vickie slammed the divider closed, though she continued to shout curses from the passenger’s seat. Thankfully, her voice was greatly muted by the thick steel divide. Red counted profanity in at least two more languages, not including the three she had used on him—Hungarian, Russian, and Romany. Romany? Where did she learn that one? Last he saw they didn’t give lessons in the gypsy tongue in college…

  “She’s right,” Bull said, finally. “What you said before…disturbed me, gave me pause.”

  “She was right?” Red croaked. “Do me a favor, don’t ever tell her that.”

  They lay in silence, entertained by the muffled sounds of Vickie’s on-going rant and Saviour’s persistent chortling. From the sound of things, Vickie had been keeping a lot bottled up for a long time, and she was letting it all out with the fluency of a dockside whore.

  “You really thought about ditching me?” Red asked.

  “For a moment, yes,” Bull admitted. “But I didn’t.”

  “No,” Red said. “No, you didn’t. Y’know, she did pretty good back there. Was that plan hers?”

  Bull nodded, wincing as the pain flared up in his ribs. “She was the only one who could come up with it on the fly. She had the intel, the connections at her fingertips, and no time to explain it all. All she needed was a bit of a push.”

  “She did?”

  Bull nodded again. “Just a little one. I’d say she pulled through just fine.”

  “So I wasn’t pushing her too hard, was I?”

  “No,” Bull said. “You did a good job with her, Red.”

  Vickie opened the slide again. “And stop talking about me like you think I can’t hear you!” she shouted. “Bagami-as pula in mortii matii!” She slammed the slide shut again. Saviour was howling. Evidently she knew Romany too.

  “Chicks,” Red said, shaking his head.

  “Truly,” Bull agreed.

  “Hey Bull…” Red began, and paused.

  “Just say it, Djinni.”

  “Thanks,” Red finished, lamely. “And I’m sorry, man.”

  Bulwark nodded, closed his eyes, and let himself pass out.

  * * *

  His breaths came in short bursts. He seemed otherwise paralyzed, his body refusing to respond to the simplest of commands. They had dug him out from the rubble, the only survivor, and were carrying him gingerly to the transport when he finally fought past his rage and managed to order them to a halt. He lay on the litter and concentrated, willing his body to heal. His rescuers gasped, a strange, muffled sound that reverberated from their mechanical mouthpieces, as his burns reverted to pinkish flesh while his bones and joints set and righted themselves.

  Gingerly, Doppelgaenger swung his legs over the sides of his litter and stood up. He thought about obliterating them all for their tardiness, thought better of it, and told them to retrieve the remains of their fallen comrades instead. It wouldn’t do to simply leave that sort of technology lying about. Bad enough that ECHO and Dominic Verdigris had retrieved as much as they had. His former elite squadron had been fitted with the next generation of energy cannons. It would be a mistake to let those fall into enemy hands. And he had failed enough for one day.

  He strode lightly to the transport, a smaller and faster version of the gigantic death spheres, and pondered what had gone wrong. He had been arrogant, he supposed, overconfident in his own abilities, but he had earned that. It had been so very long since anyone had truly challenged him. No, that was unfair. Alone, the Djinni had proven no match for him. He should have taken him easily, if not for the inevitable interference by his allies. Little bugs, all of them, but together they had bested him.

  He should have anticipated that however. It had been the same in the War. These people never worked alone; no matter how much they cultivated the “lone wolf” image, the pack always came to the rescue. And the pack would never allow one of their own to fall without a fight.

  To best the Djinni, he would need to best all of ECHO, it seemed. No. Not all of ECHO, only those closest and dearest to him. He needed…

  Doppelgaenger grimaced. It would seem that game-time was over. So much for fun.

  “The pack will always come to the rescue,” he mused.

  It was time to go to work.

  Terminal

  Mercedes Lackey and Cody Martin

  Verd had a plan. That plan did not include taking most of ECHO with him. But being Verd, he liked having test runs.

  It had been a good day for Dominick Verdigris, so far.

  He had finished up an early lunch with Khanjar at one of the premier restaurants in Atlanta. She had found it strange initially, since Dominic usually took long lunches later in the afternoon, but quickly dismissed it. Working for Dominic Verdigris always involved putting up with personal quirks and ideas came out of left field. If it wasn’t that he could, and demonstrably did, keep his attention on one thing for hours, days, and weeks at a time, she would have said he had ADD.

  There was a sort of manic air around Verdigris today, as well; he was in an exceptionally good mood, and rushed to get back to his office at ECHO HQ. Once he was at his desk, he was back to work almost instantly, typing through the interface at a nigh feverish pace.

  Khanjar was lounging on a leather-covered chaise identical to her favorite in his office back on the island. Identical, except for color that is; Dom had done this office all in creams and golds and browns. He had gone into one of those trances of activity that had been all too rare since the Invasion.

  “Dom, what are you doing? It’s been awhile since I’ve seen you this…” She thought for a moment, as if rolling around the word she was going to use in her mouth. “Well, this happy.”

  He looked up for a mere moment, still typing away. “Oh, just my daily stock market manipulations, putting distortions here and there where I want them. I’m also keeping up with the poni
es; something about the racetrack always draws me back, I don’t know why. Getting a few different accounts taken care of offshore, more of the same ol’ same ol’, really. Setting up a deal with some of those chaps down in the Democratic People’s Republic of whatever in Africa; seems they need some new guns to start up another coup. Oh! Almost forgot—” All of it had been spilling out in rapid fire before Khanjar cut him off.

  “That’s all nothing unusual for you. Something else is going on.” She cocked her head to the side coyly. “Won’t you tell me?”

  Verdigris stopped, exhaling once. “Yes, yes, my dear. Come over and check this out.”

  One of the many windows in the monitor that was the entire surface of his desk showed a sandwich shop just outside of Underground Atlanta. Strangely, all of the tables seemed to be occupied by black-uniformed ECHO Support Ops—and Khanjar recognized a few of those who were not wearing the uniforms to be ECHO plainclothes. “Where is that?” she asked, leaning over the desk. “Oh, I recognize it, that’s NomKitteh, the banh mi shop. I think half the ECHO Support Ops eat there since you closed the campus to food trucks. Why are you watching it?”

  “Wait for it. Best part is coming up.” He checked his watch, a Patek Philippe that he had personally commissioned. “It should be…right about…now!”

  A beat up van rounded the corner and came to a screeching halt in front of the eatery. All of the patrons looked up in time to see the doors open and what appeared to be a half dozen Rebs all brandishing shotguns and automatic rifles. Before any of the ECHO personnel could react the Rebs opened fire; most were cut down where they sat, while others were shot in the back as they tried to run or shoot back. After the rifles and shotguns were empty, one Reb lit a Molotov cocktail and threw it, setting the shop front and several of the bodies—some still moving—on fire. The doors slammed shut on the van as it sped away leaving a cloud of tire smoke.

  Even Khanjar had to blink at the speed and brutality of the attack. “Dom…did you do that?”