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Chapter Eight:
Moving Day


Steve Libbey



The salt-and-pepper-maned Piotr Dzhavakhishvili animatedly described the purchase of the building whose lobby he and Red Saviour currently occupied. The American holding company had painted a rosy picture of the building’s condition, and when Dzhavakhishvili threw his hands in the air and stormed at every gross exaggeration, they backpedaled and denied ever making the claim. By the end of the negotiation, the hyperactive, well-coiffed, and overdramatic Russian liaison had bullied the owners into fully halving the price.


Red Saviour chuckled as he related the story. “It serves them right,” she said.


“These slumlords are scum,” Piotr agreed. “We’re their karma coming back to haunt them.”


“It is specter of Communism that will haunt them,” said Natalya. The famous phrase felt awkward in her mouth as English words—a sensation which defined her daily existence in Atlanta. She pointed out the window. “Look at this neighborhood. So much money in this land, but there are perfectly good workers sleeping in cardboard boxes. I am thinking there is big difference to be made here.”


Piotr frowned. “America likes its TV and malls, Commissar. You may find it hard to sell that line of reasoning in this country. Their complacency is overwhelming.”


She shook the curtains, causing a dust cloud to settle to the floor. This headquarters is little more than a decrepit office building with an obsolete, hurriedly installed, Russian computer network, she realized. Three floors and a basement, with a garage for the modest fleet of vehicles allotted them. The basement was blessed with high ceilings, so Petrograd immediately staked out the former laundry room as his lab. Storefronts divided the first floor, worthless to a metahuman peacekeeping force. She had ordered an overhead projector and screen to convert one of the storefronts into a classroom. Another of the storefronts had served as a restaurant in happier times. The kitchen could feed the CCCP and its staff ten times over. Walking through the space sent ideas swirling through her head.


The second-floor offices still contained shabby desks and filing cabinets too heavy and cheap to be worth selling off. She chose an office with a view of the street and a large window that could be used as an exit, at least for those not bound by gravity. A windowless interior room served for the computer network’s core. An air conditioner down the hall blew freezing cold air over the servers through an insulated tube. The setup looked as primitive as an old science-fiction movie.


People’s Blade divvied up the hastily converted quarters on the third floor, leaving space for showers and an adjoining infirmary, weight room, and social area. For herself and Red Saviour, however, she suggested that they take the smallest rooms. “As the new team grows, we will be first to have apartments of our own, as befits our rank. Until then, we will give the benefit to our comrades,” she’d said.


“Correct thinking,” Red Saviour replied though she’d winced at the tiny bed, whose thin mattress grazed two walls. “I will keep my clothes and boxes in my office.”


Fei Li carried her suitcases into her room. Red Saviour watched her go, back straight. Fei Li loves this, she thought. The Spartan arrangements, the military overtones. I, too, but now I find that I miss Papa—and Molotok. He and I are expected to live up to our parents’ legacy, but they had the Great Patriotic War to inspire their rise to glory. All we have is a recalcitrant bureaucracy, a decadent capitalist city and a ramshackle building.


Still, she assured herself as she unpacked her suitcase on the bed, Marx wrote his Manifesto one word at a time, with but pen and ink. Modest tools that moved a world! So shall we.


“I need a signature here,” Piotr Dzhavakhishvili said, standing at the door with a clipboard. “For the reinforcement of the roof.”


Natalya grinned. Even as an airborne meta, she relished what that reinforcement made possible. “The helipad,” she said. “CCCP’s own personal air force.” The work order seemed straightforward, typed on a carbon form like she still found in Moscow. “I am not used to Amerikanski dollars. Is this good price?”


“Beats out the competitors,” he said. “This kind of work is never cheap.”


The work order had been signed by the salesman, initialed by Piotr…yet something was missing. She tapped the pen on the clipboard.


“What’s wrong? Did I forget something? The tool shed, landing pad, lights…they’re all there.”


Nyet, nyet, is something else. Is…hmm…” She drew a circle on the form absently, then it hit her. “Is not union shop!”


“Huh?”


She held out the form for his inspection. “ ‘Look for the union label,’ says old song. In America, strict rules for use of union logo, for union members only. But no logo on this quote.”


He took the clipboard back and scratched his coiffure. “I never thought of that. I just put the bids out.”


“Unions are last vestige of collectivist thought in labor movement. My CCCP is union shop. I reject this bid!” She turned her back on the bewildered liaison. “Find me union quote. That I will sign.”


Annoyance crept into his voice. “The FSO gave me a budget more modest than modern, Commissar. Unions will charge you twice as much for the same work.”


“Is savings at expense of unionized workers! What kind of Communist do you think I am?” She spun on her heel. “CCCP holds to higher standard than cheap Amerikanski Pay-Mart culture. We will begin to set good example—by using union labor.” Fury built up inside her, as her zeal for rehabbing the building dissolved in a sea of bids and shady contractors. “Now, get out of my room, svinya!” She threw a thick copy of Das Kapital at the wall over his head. “Out!”


“Madwoman!” he shouted, stomping out. The floorboards groaned under his weight.


Fei Li peeked out of his own room, holding a crisply folded shirt. “Natalya? What is the commotion?”


“Nothing, nothing,” she said with a sigh as she picked up the book. “Just misunderstanding over contracts. First of many, I am thinking.”


“Don’t alienate our American allies just yet with your temper.” Her voice took a familiar, gently scolding tone. “We have lost much of our leverage. This is not Moscow.”


Natalya scowled at her as she bowed and ducked back into her room. Down the hall, Soviette directed an equipment-hauling Chug into the infirmary. Thanks to the squat powerhouse, they had no need of forklifts to haul heavy loads.


“Wait, Chug,” Soviette said. “Try this wall.”


“Okiez,” Chug rumbled, setting the EKG down. Even though his voice resembled a collapsing cliff face, much like his skin, his joy was evident. Chug was as eager to please as a puppy—one that was five hundred pounds and covered with an impenetrable rocky exterior. Had Soviette asked him to move the entire building, the CCCP would be homeless as the place fell down around a faithfully-trying Chug.


“Jadwiga,” Natalya said in Russian, “how is infirmary coming together?”


The elegant Soviette sighed like a nun in a jungle mission. “It is little more than a playpen for doctors. If anyone gets more than a scraped knee, they’ll die of gangrene. This room is unsanitary, underpowered, poorly ventilated…”


Natalya held up a hand. “Enough. I get the point. We are underfunded, it is true, and Moscow’s purse opens for us no more. We must make do, sestra.”


The doctor pursed her lips. “There is no making do while we lack even the most basic medical equipment. You wanted this infirmary to save us exorbitant American hospital bills.” She shook her head. “It won’t do that.”


“Hmm. But what about that?” She pointed at the unplugged EKG, whose dials and switches fascinated Chug. He hummed tunelessly as he flipped them on and off. “It is very impressive looking.”


“Right now, all it does is tell me when you’ve died in my primitive emergency room.”


“But you can heal with a touch. What need have we for surgical equipment?”


“I am not Jesus Christ,” Jadwiga said with barely restrained anger. “My powers convince the body to knit itself back together, but they are not magic. With serious injuries, there is no substitute for genuine medical knowledge. Besides,” she slapped Chug’s hand away from the EKG, making him cringe, “healing and diagnosis are two different things. Unless you want to pay Echo’s medical center every time Chug gets a stomachache from eating chairs, find me proper diagnostic equipment.”


Natalya bit back a retort. Soviette had been Medic One for years. Her combination of medical knowledge and empathic healing powers had saved many comrades’ lives in the past. Natalya respected her opinion above any other doctor she had met—and there had been many—and Jadwiga did not exaggerate to make a point.


“It’s that bad?” Natalya said softly.


Jadwiga flushed, embarrassed by her outburst. She petted Chug’s head to soothe him. “Da, it’s bad. Do you think it’s a deliberate slight from the old men in the Kremlin?”


Natalya shrugged. “Who is to say? But when in doubt, I just assume it’s politics.” She smiled sadly. “Make me a list. I’ll pass it on to Molotok and we’ll do what we can.”


Horosho. I trust—well, I am sure you and Moji will find a solution.”


“Well…” Her voice trailed off. “Are you done with Chug?”


Da. There is nothing left to carry.” Jadwiga winced at the abruptness of the comment. “For now,” she amended.


“Work on the list. It is important to me.” She squeezed the woman’s shoulder. “I promise.”


Jadwiga’s smile broke through her ordinarily aloof expression to show the great beauty she possessed. Her smiles were rare and to be treasured.


Davay, davay, Chug! We have furniture to move.” Natalya took him by the hand and led him downstairs as if he were a child.


“Chug hungry,” he said.


Natalya groaned. Chug’s strange metabolism ran at lightning speed and allowed him to digest anything. Anything, including plants, machines, concrete—and furniture. She had little time. They passed the comm room, which would contain the advanced radio equipment and video monitors. Bubble wrap and cardboard boxes were stacked haphazardly in the corner.


“In here, Chuggy,” she said. “You can eat the bubble wrap, and the boxes, but nothing made of metal or plastic. Understand?”


“Chug unnerstanz,” he said. Within moments bubble wrap filled his mouth, popping like a miniature strand of fireworks. It would tide him over for an hour, she guessed. If he made up his mind to follow the packing material with a dessert of high-frequency radio transmitters, there was nothing she could do to stop him, aside from scolding him like a child. Chug possessed enormous strength, exceeding that of Worker’s Champion. She had never seen him wounded or injured, only stunned for a moment, when hit by a tank—the entire tank, thrown like an American fastball.


Fortunately, Chug adored the members of the CCCP, particularly the women, who doted on him. Natalya had to admit a fondness for him, and a bit of guilt that she regarded him as a pet.


The bubble wrap was nothing more than a memory and a burp, yet Chug was not satisfied. He eyed the cardboard boxes.


“Go on, but just the boxes.”


“Dank youz,” he said, seizing a pile of folded-up boxes like a hamburger. Chug was not a quiet or dainty eater, but did it matter when all he left were cardboard shavings? She would have to sweep up in here later.


With Chug temporarily sated, they began to move desks out of the rooms designated for meetings, resources, and—although she neglected to advertise it—interrogations. These were no snap-together particleboard pieces of junk, but rather hulking brutes from a time when a desk was expected to outlive its users. Constructed of solid oak and thick rolled steel painted an ugly olive, the desks weighed at least three hundred pounds apiece, enough to put the fear in ordinary movers.


Chug carried the desks in turn, maneuvering them as if they were oversized bags of groceries. A desk for the Commissar’s office on the second floor, three shared desks for the comrades, three in the resources library, leaving one for the reception area. Chug talked to himself as he trundled them up and down the stairs.


Fei Li would surely lecture her about some obscure aspect of feng shui, but the Chinese woman had taken one look at the weed-infested side yard and squatted down to clear it out.


Facing the door would be best for the reception desk, she concluded, recalling some tenuous strand of a feng shui conversation when Fei Li trained her in martial arts. Something about not having one’s back to the door, and that made sense to the soldier in her. Chug, however, had deposited the desk at the foot of the staircase, down the hall. He thumped around upstairs, probably busy trying to remember her instructions.


Natalya rubbed her hands on her jeans, crouched, found a handhold on the desk and heaved. Her metahuman physique afforded her triple a normal man’s strength, and the heavy desk put it to good use. She braced it on her belt and marched it down the hall. Craning her neck to see around it, she guided the desk into position and eased it to the floor. I should move furniture more often, she thought. It’s a better workout than a gym. Good practice for throwing dumpsters and trabants at perps, too.


She pushed a dusty office chair behind the desk and sat, looking out the door to the street beyond. Feng shui appealed to her sense of paranoia. She peeked in the drawers for abandoned office supplies. When she looked up, a man opened the door and strolled in as if he owned the building. Balding, large but not obese, he had the sturdy confidence of a man used to changing his environment with his hands. He wore a tie poorly and a workman’s jacket with ease. His metal briefcase showed signs of wear.


“Hello there, gorgeous,” he said. “I’m here for your boss, Red Saviour.” The man drew a card and held it out to be viewed. “Ross Hensel, Hensel and Hewitt Builders.”


Natalya snatched the card from the man before he could pull back. “Why do you think Commissar Red Saviour should talk to you?”


Hensel narrowed his eyes. “That’s between me and the Commissioner, little lady. As much as I’d enjoy talking to ya, your boss needs work done and my company is the one to do it.”


“I think I am beginning to understand. You want to bid on renovation work on CCCP headquarters, da?”


“You got it. Russian, are ya? They sure grow ’em pretty there, I can see. I can tell why old Red keeps you around. You ain’t hard on the eyes.” He grinned, genuinely thinking he was being complimentary, and cast his eyes around the room. “Got any coffee? I take mine black, two lumps.”


Natalya stood. Hensel came up to her chin. “This logo here, is union logo?” She flipped the card at him.


“AFL-CIO, Building and Construction Trades,” he said. “Member since 1974.”


Horosho. Since you are fellow worker, and member of labor union, I give you another chance.” The man frowned at her words. “You are perhaps accustomed to sexist hiring practices in capitalist country. Is understandable.” She stepped out from the desk. “I am Natalya Nikolaevna Shostokovich, known in Russia as Krasnaya Spasskaya.”


“Kras—” He lost the rest of the syllables.


“Red Saviour. Commissar Red Saviour, Comrade Hensel.”


“Well, hell,” he said, turning red. “My apologies. Sitting at that desk you looked like…never mind. It’s a pleasure, Ms.…”


She shook his hand. “Commissar will do.”


“Commissar. Your man Dzha…Dzhavak…” He fumbled again.


“Dzhavakhishvili,” she said.


“Thanks. He indicated that the bidding process had been reopened, and that you expressed interest in our bid.”


“I said no such thing. He oversteps his bounds, but now that you are here, let us talk about your bid.” She gestured him to follow. “We will speak in cafeteria, where there are more chairs. Today is being moving day.”


“I can see that. Who’re you using?”


She pointed. “Him.” Chug rounded the corner with the last desk propped up on his shoulder.


“I’ll be damned,” Hensel said under his breath. Chug favored them both with a stony smile.


“I’m doing gud, Commissar Savyur,” Chug said. “I only got lost twice. I learn fast!”


Horosho,” she said. “Carry on.”


The stony creature giggled his way past them.


“His English is improving. I would not have thought anything would get through that boulder of a head.”


She brushed off a space for them to sit, using a discarded rag. “Phew,” Natalya said. “Filthy. I don’t need this much space for comrades’ dinner. We will rarely be off duty all at once.”


Hensel settled onto the bench with the care of a heavyset man. “You folks plan to keep busy, eh?”


“Television and McDonald’s has made your Amerikanski metahumans lazy…and fat,” she said with a pointed look. “They seek fame like moths attracted to flame, but they take no care to avoid being burned. In Russia, metahumans are champions of proletariat.”


Hensel frowned. “Don’t think we have proletariats here.”


Natalya pointed at him, and then at his clipboard with the union logo. “Proletariat is you, Comrade Hensel. Is workers your union represents, and workers you unite with to battle against capitalist owners.”


“Yeah, well,” he began, searching for words. “I gotta tell ya, Miss Saviour, the unions got over that talk early last century. We’re about as capitalist as you get. We work hard for a day’s wage. And, no offense, but the final product is a damn sight higher quality than your forced labor.”


Natalya blew air out her lips. The Cold War ended years ago with perestroika, but Marxist thought still found a chilly reception in the country that believed it had “won” by outspending the Soviets. Not until the American proletariat truly suffered under the yoke of oppression would the tenets of Marx and Engels gain any ground with them. I am just planting seeds, she reminded herself.


Reigning in her temper, she forced herself to smile at the man. “Well, is pleasant bantering about politics with so sturdy a worker as yourself, but let us move on to matter at hand.” She indicated the clipboard. He spun it around for her to view.


“Most of those figures concern reinforcement of your roof there,” he said. “You’re gonna want I-beams at six-point-five-foot intervals—er, about two meters. Doubling the load-bearing capacity, you know. Roofs ain’t made for supporting the weight of anything besides a bit of snow.” Hensel’s discomfort at his earlier blunder had disappeared in a sea of shoptalk. He was in his element now.


“You are charging for extra load-bearing columns on all floors. We only need underneath helipad.”


He leaned forward. She smelled cigarettes on his breath and craved one for herself. “That’s where you’d be wrong, Commissioner. Where’s the pressure going after you shunt it through the third-floor supports? To the second floor, where you got nothing. Takes longer to cause damage, but once you’re sagging, you’re looking at replacing the whole damn roof.” He grinned, satisfied with his explanation. “I bet your low-ballers didn’t tell you that.”


Nyet. Horosho point you make.”


“Say again?”


Horosho…is good, is good point you are making.” She put her palm on the tabletop and pushed. “Weight doesn’t disappear altogether. Is distributed to weak spots in structure.”


“You got it.” His eyes strayed to her chest, lingered, and snapped back up. “I can see why they put you in charge.”


She looked down her nose at the man. “Svinya. Now, tell me…”


“Come again?”


Svinya. Means…it means ‘fellow worker,’ ” she lied. “You have charges here for refurbishing this room.”


Hensel swept a hand in a semicircle. “It’s a good space. I just figured since you got a virtual army living here, and you got a mess hall, you’d be using it. No sense in letting it go to waste.”


“I was going to store equipment in here. We do not need all this space for dining.”


He produced a red pen and scratched a line through the columns relating to the cafeteria. “Too bad. You could open a little Russian restaurant or something. Feed the workers.”


Natalya’s eyes went wide. “Feed the…” She imagined the tables full of proletarians, eating and talking…or listening. “Not restaurant,” she said. “What is place for poor people called?”


“The poor house?”


She shook her head. “Nyet, nyet. Where exploited workers and disenfranchised come to eat.”


“McDonald’s?”


Nyet!”


His eyes roved the room. “A soup kitchen?”


Natalya slapped the table, sending up puffs of dust. “Da! Soup kitchen, where we feed comrades for free.”


“There’s one down the street,” he said, inclining his head west. “Saint Francis, I think.”


“Then there is room for another. But will be for Saint Karl!” She stood and spread her arms out. “We serve good sturdy food: borscht, potatoes, stew. Workers can eat for free, as long as they listen to lecture.” She made a fist. “Thus we endear ourselves to proletariat and plant seeds for worker’s revolution in America.”


Hensel grimaced as if she had broken wind. “Um, I think they call that sedition, lady. You can’t preach the overthrow of the government here. It’s a free country.”


Da! Is free country, with free speech laws. You might not like to hear it but is perfectly legal. If they want to eat, they have to listen to us explain to them why they are hungry in first place.”


“I don’t know,” he said. “I mean, Russia’s our ally now, but this is like the bad old days of…” He stopped as she initialed his estimate on renovating the cafeteria. “Of…well, I guess we can accommodate you.”


Horosho.” She grinned in triumph, still awash in the vision of delivering a rousing lecture on ideology to the American poor, who stared in slack-jawed realization of their plight. She would budget for inexpensive, student editions of the Communist Manifesto, to be handed out for further reading. A whiteboard…


“I want whiteboard, too.”


“Sure thing,” he said, jotting it down. “Commissioner, while we’re on the topic, I took the liberty of preparing an estimate for the living quarters for your people.” Hensel pulled a sheaf of papers from his briefcase. “I think you’ll find this fits right into your budget.”


“Excuse me,” a soft feminine voice said. They turned towards the source of the interruption: Fei Li, the People’s Blade, in a muddy T-shirt and jeans. She held a trowel in one tiny hand. “Please forgive me, but I believed you would want to be notified. A gang of street hoodlums is attacking a local grocery, according to the local police band, and aid is called for. They are understaffed in this neighborhood, it appears.”


“Our first operation!” Red Saviour exclaimed. “Excellent! How many svinyas?”


Hensel’s brow beetled at the word he thought he knew in a different context.


“Twenty,” the Chinese woman said. “Apparently there is a metahuman presence, which causes the local constabulary some concern. This particular gang is known as the Rebs.”


“Oh, damn, the Rebs,” Hensel said. “Bad news. If you’re going after them, you ladies better bring that rocky guy.”


Red Saviour turned on him. Such disrespect was intolerable! She opened her mouth to excoriate the man, at last.


“Natalya.” Fei Li had read her mind.


Fei Li’s voice had not risen, but it deflated Natalya’s anger. Her former teacher could command a legion with a single upraised eyebrow.


“Fine. Then, Comrade Hensel, you will be my guest. Bring your papers; we will discuss your plan for our barracks.”


“Your g-guest?” Hensel said. “I thought you were going to tackle a street gang.”


Natalya gave him a wolfish grin. “You’re coming with us.” She held up a hand to stifle his protest. “If you want contract, that is.”


* * *


Natalya and Fei Li went for their uniforms and dressed while Hensel waited in the lobby. Feeling a little guilty at the look of fear on the man’s face, Natalya had Soviette fetch the man a bulletproof vest they kept as a reserve. It could not stretch to fit his bulk, leaving three inches unprotected. His protest went unheeded.


“Pistols tend to stray to the left. You will be fine,” she said. The lie didn’t reassure him.


Natalya tugged at her white-banded gloves. She had chosen her favorite uniform, a tribute to her father. The outfit had the added benefit of being a fine nanoweave that could stop a medium caliber bullet. It might break a bone, but she would survive the wound.


Her red headguard protected the sides of her head from impact trauma and held her wild raven hair in check. Some metahumans preferred to go masked, but she had to issue orders, and she could not do that hidden behind fabric.


“I ain’t so sure about this,” Hensel said.


“Why?” she said. “Because is just People’s Blade and I?”


“Yeah, that, among other things.”


“We will give you good show,” she said. “Now, tell me about barracks.”


“Right.” He unfolded his proposal from his pocket. “You got eight rooms for a predicted fourteen people. That’s getting cramped, unless you’re a freshman in college.”


“I have my own room, as does comrade Soviette and Fei Li.”


“Knocks you down to five rooms to sleep eleven people.”


Fei Li jogged into the room. “Forgive me for being so slow. Let us not tarry any further.” She adjusted her cloth belt around a loose-fitting tunic, into which she had tucked the metal sheath of the fabled blade, Jade Emperor’s Whisper. Red Kevlar-paneled tights, at Natalya’s insistence, gave her legs some bullet protection.


“Keep talking, Comrade Hensel.”


They oriented themselves on the street. “Four blocks,” Fei Li said, pointing west, past a row of ragged tenements.


“We’ll race,” Natalya said. She thrust her arms under Hensel’s from behind. “Comrade, don’t drop anything.”


With a confident smile, Fei Li pushed off the sidewalk as if she were a swimmer at the bottom of a pool. At once she had leaped twenty feet into the air, tapping a telephone pole for additional footing.


“Holy crap,” Hensel said in a stage whisper.


“Bah,” Red Saviour said. “Is nothing. Hold tight.”


Directing the energies under her feet, she and Hensel floated into the air. After a brief lull, the energies exploded under her in a white flash, propelling them forward at the speed of a motorcycle.


Hensel howled in fear.


“Close your eyes. You will get bugs in them.” She adjusted her grip on the big man. He weighed less than the desk.


Bystanders craned their necks as Red Saviour and Hensel blasted by them. She let the energies burst out, making light and noise. Ahead of them, somehow, People’s Blade sprang off a window ledge.


The blocks flashed by. Red Saviour stayed behind People’s Blade, knowing that she would draw fire from their civilian observer.


“Tell me about five rooms, comrade.” She dodged a power line.


“Five rooms,” he said. “Not-not to mention limited bathroom facilities. The room with the drain can be converted—”


“Is for interrogations. Not negotiable.”


“Interrogations? You can do that?”


A column of smoke rose from a storefront ahead. Men in white outfits waved Molotov cocktails, baseball bats, and pistols. She estimated over a dozen targets.


“Put me down here,” he said. “Keep me away from those nutcases.”


“Too far. I will not be able to hear you. Aha!” Shifting their weight, she skimmed the sidewalk, then twisted abruptly to halt behind a parked SUV with shot-out windows. Hensel let out a lungful of air.


“Stopping’s worse than starting,” he said, hunkering down behind the car.


The Rebs stuck to their theme: white jeans and shirts, with Confederate flag armbands, resembling a streamlined, modern-day Ku Klux Klan. Hooting and hollering, they reveled in the fear of their Korean victims and onlookers. Molotovs had ignited the produce cart in front of the small market. More smoke billowed out from the broken plate-glass window.


“Jesus,” Hensel said, peeking around the bumper. “That’s a lot of guys. You sure you don’t want backup?”


“Comrade, give us credit, da? I did not become Russia’s bestest hero by calling for help.” She looked up through the broken windows of the SUV. “Besides, Blade Shuai has decided to make her move. Just watch.”


“That slip of a girl? Unless that sword of hers—”


“You are shutting up and watching.” Natalya grinned, getting excited. “By the way, I like large mirrors in bathroom. We will need sauna, also.”


Fei Li dropped from the sky, sun at her back. She hit the ground and rolled through the open doors of the store, right between the legs of a Reb gangster. Silent and swift, she was inside before the gang members had a clue what the tiny blur was.


A cry arose from the grocery, then a yell of pain.


A single, bare-chested Reb flew out the front window, spinning like a toy, and landed on the street. Blood seeped out of the figure 8 carved into his chest.


“Eight inside,” Red Saviour said with satisfaction. She shrugged at Hensel’s look of horror. “Will be easier when we install radio network.” Her fists began to glow. “Now, stay put. This will take moments.”


“Metas!” cried the Rebs. Weapons were brandished, and all heads turned towards the store.


Svinyas,” Red Saviour said, stepping out into the street. The Rebs spun at the sound of her challenge. “Is time to give up your decadent, exploitative lifestyle and get good factory jobs. You now face real proletarian warriors.”


“What Bond movie is she from?” one of the Rebs said. Another snickered.


In response, she blasted the joker with a streak of blue energy. He skidded across the concrete.


“Well damn! That ain’t right! Get ’er! Get ’er done!” The Rebs swarmed on her with their chains and bats. Red Saviour waited for them to come within arm’s reach, then she stepped under the downswing of the nearest bat-wielding gangster. She wrenched his arms, seized the bat, and jabbed him in the stomach. She swung it up to clip his chin and followed through to parry a bike chain with the bat.


Her foot lashed out and shattered the Reb’s rib cage. Another tried to strangle her with a noose and received an elbow in the throat for his efforts.


“Bathrooms!” she shouted.


Hensel realized he was being addressed. “What?”


“Bathrooms are in tatters. Can you work on plumbings?”


He ducked as a two-foot splinter of broken bat flew past his head. “I got a guy for that.”


Horosho. Add”—she backhanded a Reb—“to”—then flipped over the head of a fat one and kicked him in the spine—“list!”


“Got it,” he called back.


People’s Blade stepped out of the storefront, wiping her blade on a Stars and Bars bandanna. Groans resounded from the storefront, but no one moved.


A heavyset, bearded Reb in a denim vest approached her. She leveled her swordpoint at him.


“I suggest you stand down,” she said in a quiet tone that brooked no dissent.


“I can’t hear you,” the man boomed. “Why don’t you…SPEAK UP?” In an instant, his voice rose to the roar of a hurricane. The force he generated blasted the car in front of the store—and People’s Blade—through the façade with a terrific crash. There was no dodging the sonic assault.


Red Saviour had instinctively covered her ears. A Reb scored a hit with his baseball bat; her cheek reddened and blood spurted from her broken nose. She shook her head to clear the fuzz while the Rebs hooted around her. A boot caught her in the stomach and her muscles tensed to absorb the blow.


The metahuman loomed over her. “Let’s send these commie bitches home to daddy!” Before she could react, he seized her hair and pounded her face into his thick knee. Nose cartilage crunched even more. Bats and fists fell on her back and legs.


The pain and disorientation began to draw her down into unconsciousness. How did she drop her guard? She would never have let this happen in Russia—it was her homeland, her turf, where she and CCCP had kept the peace with an iron fist. Yet most of CCCP had died protecting her countrymen from the Thulians. Why had she survived? To experience further humiliations, like being beaten by a pack of ignorant Americans and their smelly leader? Was this the fate of those who fought for international socialist brotherhood?


Nyet.


She blocked out the pain and gathered her energies for an explosive burst. Such a sudden release could injure her, she knew, but her head swam too much to zero in on the dancing targets around her.


“Now hold on there!”


The beating halted.


It was Hensel. He had waded into the fray and interposed himself between the Rebs and her prone form. He swatted at a gangster with his clipboard.


“I am not going to stand here and watch you goddamn hicks whip on a woman. No way, Jack.”


The metahuman screwed up his face in outrage. “You ain’t from around here, boy.”


“Brooklyn born and raised and damn proud of it.”


“A Yankee.” He raised his arms to his gang. “We know what to do with carpetbaggers, don’t we, boys?”


The gang surged around him, those who Red Saviour had blasted still wobbly but fired up by their leader. They hollered back at him incoherently.


Hensel narrowed his eyes. “You jerks just keep on yammering. You want a piece of the Commissioner here, you gotta go through a union man.” He stood straight and tall in the midst of the predators.


The filthy metahuman burst out laughing. “If that don’t beat all! All right,  union boy, you’ll get your wish. I’m a-gonna show you why they call me Rebel Yell.”


He drew a deep breath. Hensel raised his clipboard as a shield. The Rebs behind him scrambled to get out of the way.


Rebel Yell opened his mouth. The merest exhalation before his vocal cords took hold of the air had the basso, thundering quality of an onrushing tornado.


But no sound emerged except for a surprised squawk. His eyes flew wide and a red droplet leaked from his lips—then he vomited a mouthful of blood.


A slender, inhumanly sharp blade jutted out of his chest: Jade Emperor’s Whisper.


Fei Li withdrew it swiftly. Rebel Yell clutched at his chest and turned to look at her in shock. His breath wheezed out from a gaping jaw.


“You—you stabbed me—” he gasped.


Her smile had no sweetness. Fei Li’s delicate features had subtly changed to project a cold, superior and impersonal harshness. For a moment, Red Saviour could not even recognize her friend and teacher.


This—this was Shuai: the General Shen Xue himself.


Rebel Yell fell to his knees, blood seeping out from his fingers.


And then the People’s Blade—Natalya could not think of her as Fei Li just then—put a tiny hand to her ear and tilted her head.


“I can’t hear you,” she said.


The southern metahuman plopped facefirst onto the street.


Hensel offered a hand to Red Saviour. Standing, she saw that the Rebs milled about, angry to see their leader incapacitated—possibly killed—by a mere woman. Their numbers still gave them confidence.


Horosho, she thought.


“Comrade Hensel, you have convinced me that you are the man for the job. You’re hired.”


The union man chuckled. “Thanks, lady. But these rednecks don’t look too happy about their boss.”


“He will survive,” People’s Blade said, soft and sweet again. “Metahumans heal quickly.”


Hensel picked up an aluminum bat. “I think we still got work to do.”


“Oh no.” Red Saviour cracked her neck. “We are off the clock now. This is play.”


Back to back, they raised their weapons—fist, bat and sword—and faced their enemies.



Interlude:


Remember when I said that the divide between the haves and the have-nots had never been deeper? The actual destruction was relatively “minimal.” For those of us actually in it, it didn’t seem that way; it felt like we were living in the Apocalypse. But for most of the rest of the US, within weeks, it was business as usual. The destruction corridors had mostly marched around or through low-income and slum neighborhoods; for the rest of the population, after the supply situation sorted itself out and there were goods in the stores again, the only difference between then and now was the perception of Echo, and the news stories. After all, no one like them, no one they knew, no one they could connect with, had really suffered.


It could have caused an internal war of the sort that Marx and Lenin predicted and hoped for. Instead, it was the destruction corridors that saved the haves. The have-nots couldn’t reach them, and were, in any case, too busily focused on basic needs and defending those basics from each other. Were the Thulians planning on a class war to follow their initial blitz? I’m betting on it. But they undid themselves with their own plan.



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Framed