Mercedes Lackey - Invasion: Book One of the Secret World Chronicle

Invasion:
Book One of the Secret World Chronicle - ARC

Created by Mercedes Lackey and Steve Libbey

Written by Mercedes Lackey with Steve Libbey, Cody Martin, Dennis Lee

Edited by Larry Dixon

Advance Reader Copy

Unproofed

Baen

BAEN BOOKS BY MERCEDES LACKEY

Heirs of Alexandria Series

The Shadow of the Lion (with Eric Flint & Dave Freer)

This Rough Magic (with Eric Flint & Dave Freer)

Much Fall of Blood (with Eric Flint & Dave Freer)

Urban Fantasies Series

Bedlam's Bard (with Ellen Guon)

With Rosemary Edghill

Beyond World's End

Spirits White as Lightning

Mad Maudlin

Music to My Sorrow

Bedlam's Edge (ed. with Rosemary Edghill)

The Serrated Edge

Chrome Circle (with Larry Dixon)

The Chrome Borne (with Larry Dixon)

The Otherworld (with Larry Dixon & Mark Shepherd)

Historical Fantasies with Roberta Gellis

This Scepter'd Isle

Ill Met by Moonlight

By Slanderous Tongues

And Less Than Kind

Bardic Voices

The Lark and the Wren

The Robin and the Kestrel

The Eagle and the Nightingales

The Free Bards

Four & Twenty Blackbirds

Bardic Choices: A Cast of Corbies (with Josepha Sherman)

The Fire Rose

The Wizard of Karres (with Eric Flint & Dave Freer)

Fortress of Frost and Fire (with Ru Emerson)

Prison of Souls (with Mark Shepherd)

Lammas Night

Werehunter

Fiddler Fair

Brain Ships (with Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball)

The Sword of Knowledge (with C.J. Cherryh, Leslie Fish, & Nancy Asire)

Invasion: Book One of the Secret World Chronicle

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

Copyright (c) 2011 by Mercedes Lackey, Steve Libbey, Cody Martin, and Dennis Lee

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

www.baen.com

ISBN: 978-1-4391-3419-1

Cover art by Larry Dixon

First printing, March 2011

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

t/k

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed in the United States of America

Dedication

Dedicated to the dear friends, brilliant creators, and great souls who have inspired and guided us:

Gail Simone, Kurt Busiek, Art Adams, Greg Pak, Perry Moore, Stan The Man, Mike Grell, Matt Wagner, James Owen, Austin Grossman, Dwayne McDuffie, Alex Ross, Paul Dini, Mike Mignola, Bill Willingham, Matt Sturges, Jeff Parker, Garth Ennis, John Ostrander, Fred Van Lente, Mark Waid, Geoff Johns, Matt Fraction, Neil Gaiman, Joss Whedon, Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, Warren Ellis, Grant Morrison, Howard Chaykin, Charles Vess, Walt & Louis Simonson, Ann Nocenti, Ed Brubaker, Alan Moore, Phil Foglio, Marc Silvestri, Fabian Nicieza, Chris Meadows, Doug Shuler, Dave Burns, Mike Glasheen, Jay Doherty, David Nakayama, Vince DAmelia, Sean Fish, Michael Shreeves, Andy Wein, Scott Merry, Cedric Johnson, Alex Lennox-Miller, Dan Shull, Jake Fejedelem, Mike Eastham, Bart Heid, Josh Haycraft, Kenneth Widmer, Steven Dare, Michelle Travis, Chris Meadows, Veronica Giguere, Victoria Fulford, Stephen Zajac, David Morgan, the hoopy froods at 2000AD, our awesome pals at DC, cool cats at Marvel, Cory Doctorow, Brian Azzarello, Stan Sakai, Greg Rucka, Jonathan Hickman, Sean McKeever, Dale Eaglesham, Nicola Scott, Howard Porter, Carlo Pagulayan, J.H. Williams III, Harry Knowles & AICN, Cracked.com, BoingBoing, Wizards Asylum, Zeus Comics and all the amazing friends at Comic Book Resources and YABS, Comics Alliance, Scott Shaw!, Unscrewed!, Gayla, Dalton, Tiyada, Awbrey, Mr. Mike, Dale, Keith, our RPG and gamer buddies, Curt, Tammy, Alex, Paul & Tor, Joe Phillips, Adult Swim, Ken Mitchroney, Seanbaby, Chris Sims

and all the wild and lovable fans who give us support, smiles and good times.

Acknowledgements

But above all:

We owe this story to City of Heroes/City of Villains/Going Rogue, the MMORPG by NCsoft and Paragon Studios where all these characters first were born. They evolved, grew, and changed from their original concepts, but much of that development took place in the world of Paragon City. If you would like to play in our favorite addiction, go to www.cityofheroes.com and give it a try. Who knows? One day you might meet up with one of us.

Part One:
The Way the World Ends

Introduction

The blue-skinned, blue-haired woman known by the callsign Belladonna Blue leaned into the oval hatch of the captains cubby. She was already suited up in her white, full-body nanoarmor, with only her head exposed. Her helmet was under her arm. Youve got about two hours, Vic. Make the most of it.

Victoria Victrix nodded. She hoped someone was going to be around to read the file when all this was over.

She began to type, hesitantly at first, but picked up speed as she went to make the most of what little time there was left.

* * *

Whoever you are thats reading this, you might not know that the real genesis of where we are now was back in 1935.

That was when the first metahumans first started showing up in Nazi Germany, paraded before screaming crowds at Hitlers rallies. The very first to appear were Vaterland, and his sidekick, Hitlerjungend. Then came the one the rest were named forUbermensch. And honestly, nobody thought they were anything but propaganda blow-ups using stage magic and fakery until the Blitzkrieg started pounding across Europe. But there were more of these Ubermenschen, and all by themselves they were the equivalent of entire battalions and tank corps. For a while they had it all their own way, too.

That changed during the Battle of Britain; the waves of fighter-bombers were being led by a Nazi who had reflexes like nobodys business and hardly needed a plane at all.

The Black Baron.

Bullets literally bounced off him. His plane was a frame with eight machine guns and an armored engine. He could pull maneuvers that would easily have sent anyone else into full blackout. He was an unstoppable one-man fighter squadron. And he was cutting the RAF down at the coastline.

One of those RAF pilots was Lieutenant Commander Nigel Patterson, whose plane burst into flames and disintegrated around him under the Barons guns.

Except Nige didnt die, because something happened to him in that instant. Out of the explosion burst a fireball that was a man, who proceeded to punch holes with his body in every Nazi fighter-bomber in that formation. Then he landed on the frame of the Black Barons craft, ripped the control cables and fuel lines out, and punched the Baron square in the nose for good measure, knocking him out. The Barons plane folded up and plummeted. Maybe the Baron could survive bullets, but he couldnt survive a terminal-velocity fall with an armored V-16 engine crushing him. He turned into a red smear on the ground.

Spitfire, the first of the Allied supers, was born.

Time after time, again and again, it happened during the War. Nazi, Italian Fascist and Japanese metas would show up and kick butt for a while, and then something bizarre would happen on the battlefield. Suddenly they were facing someone that could take them. That changed the way the war was fought. The metas battled it out one on one, gladiator style, leaving conventional forces to win or lose the battles. And after the war was over, the metas that didnt much cotton to law and order just moved on to crime. Which was where Echo came in, funded by the eccentric but charismatic nephew of Nikola Tesla who had a boatload of his uncles inventions and the savvy to make them pay off handsomely. Echo organized the old metas from former WWII vets and recruited new ones, bundling them all into a single organization. And for a while, well, things in the world looked a lot like the comic-book writers from before the war used to picture them. Every city had its Echo HQ, and youd see the occasional metavillain pulling off something extreme and your local Echo OpTwo or Three would take him out, either alone or with a team. People got used to it, and couldnt remember a time without metas, actually. They collected trading cards and action figures, and wore buttons with their favorites on them, like they did with ball players. Metas got legislated, with the Extreme Force laws and the Control Officer mandate. Echo built special containment prisons for metavillains. It was a lot less scary than the threat of the A-bomb, and then the H-bomb. And a lot more marketable.