Red America: Western Front

Chapter Three: On The Sickle's Edge

Commissar-Colonel Elisabeth Braddock knocked on the door of the opulent office at the Soviet forces' local division headquarters, dressed in a smartly-pressed and scrupulously-clean uniform, and heard the office's sole occupant loudly grant her entry. She marched inside, and came to a precise, parade-ground stop in front of the desk that stood close to the large window at the rear of the room, saluting with equal precision and keeping her gaze fixed and looking forwards. "At ease, Colonel," said General Von Doom, and Elisabeth visibly relaxed, removing her black cap from her head and tucking it under the arm of her greatcoat. She didn't know why she was so concerned about meeting with this sector's commanding officer (after all, given her status as a commissar, she essentially out-ranked the man, and could easily have him thrown into a cattle truck bound for Alaska at any time she chose – and besides which, she had met with General Von Doom more than a few times before, and had already gained a more than sufficient measure of the man), but she decided that she would take the initiative and enquire why she had been summoned anyway.

"You wished to see me, sir?" she asked, at which General von Doom smiled, giving Elisabeth the impression of a wolf bearing down on a day-old faun. She was long past being intimidated by the arrogant, self-important old man now, though, and so she simply returned his smile as smartly as she had returned his salute, before setting herself down into the seat facing him from across the desk.

"Yes, Colonel, I did," Doom replied, and Elisabeth tried not to take offence at his deliberate omission of her other rank, the hairs on the back of her neck beginning to stand on end in abject irritation. "I wish to hear what progress you have made with regards to your mission in this city. I have seen detailed reports from several other senior officers in pursuing their objectives, but I have yet to see one from you. Why is that, I wonder?" He smirked, as if he was used to playing this sort of game with his inferior officers before shooting them dead on the spot. "Perhaps you are too busy playing conqueror with the troops under your command to remember our real purpose here?"

"You forget yourself, General," Elisabeth retorted, momentarily losing her temper. "I might be a colonel in the Red Army, but I am also a Commissar of the Soviet Union, and you are just a soldier. A high-ranking soldier, true, but just a soldier nevertheless, and you would do well to remember the power I hold." She pulled her gun from its holster on her hip and examined the barrel with casual disinterest. "I could execute you for treason right now, and nobody outside the Politburo would be brave enough to ask me what you had said. So I would think twice before you begin calling my methods into question." She smiled thinly and slotted her pistol back into its holster, satisfied that her threat had had its desired effect. "Sir."

General Von Doom swallowed, looking suitably chastened. "Yes… of course. Do you have anything to report… Commissar?"

"Yes," Elisabeth replied simply. "Dr Banner's research into gamma mutation, coupled with the research we managed to rescue from the New York operation, ought to provide our soldiers with the edge they need to take on any number of rebels – being able to shrug off a bullet and then kill with a flick of your wrist is far too enticing a prospect for any soldier, don't you agree?"

"Yes… yes, that would be an excellent weapon," Doom said, a far-away look coming over his face for a moment, and Elisabeth could see the scenario she had just described playing itself out behind his eyes. She wasn't surprised – Doom had been a bitter cripple ever since a rebel sniper had robbed him of his legs, and she could only imagine what lengths he would be prepared to go to in order to regain their use. Injecting a cocktail of gamma-mutated healing cells would probably be amongst the least of those lengths, she thought with some well-disguised humour. As she kept a laugh suppressed, Doom shook himself out of his reverie and looked at her again. "How soon will you be able to put this into effect?" he asked.

"Dr Henry Pym is currently working out a way of meshing the two variables together in a workable fashion," Elisabeth began, "but there should be no more than a short delay before we can begin a mass-inoculation programme for our troops."

Doom's eyes almost glowed with anticipation. "Good. Good," he said. "Excellent news, Commissar-Colonel Braddock. Dismissed."

"Thank you, sir," Elisabeth said, saluting him and then turning one-hundred-and-eighty degrees on the ball of one foot so that she could march out with as much precision as she had entered, her black peaked cap placed squarely back on top of her tightly-bound blonde hair. Malleable as ever, aren't you? she thought in amusement. You old fool. I think that sniper must have taken more than your legs if you believe that I would waste valuable resources on you…

Kitty pushed open the door to the bar, keeping a hand lightly on the holster of one of her pistols. She'd left her rifle outside in the alleyway with Danny and his machine gun, who had also taken the rest of the squad's larger weapons just in case. The last thing Kitty wanted to do was start a firefight in here, especially with her squad's target sitting by the bar, in full view of some drunken Russian soldiers. She could see Tony Stark hunching himself over a glass of what looked like whiskey, even from this distance – which made her smile broadly despite the Russian uniforms dotted unpleasantly around the bar's interior: Logan had told her that Stark had a fondness for strong drinks, and liked to indulge that fondness far too much. The girl beside him she didn't recognise, but that was easily rectified. She turned to Madrox and said, in a low tone, "I see Tony over there. Keep the rest of the guys happy while I go get him."

"How are you planning to do that?" Madrox said, in a way that suggested he already knew what she was going to do. "We aren't exactly out of sight here, after all."

"How am I going to get him out of here?" Kitty grinned. "I'm going to flash him. How else?"

Madrox creased his face up into a sour grimace. "I had to ask."

Kitty chuckled, then kissed Jamie on the cheek and sauntered away from him towards the bar, giving her buttocks a tantalising wiggle as she did so. Pushing past a few knots of patrons, she eased herself up to the bar and rested her elbows on the cracked wooden surface. "Hello, stranger," she said with a broad smile. "I'm Kitty. What's your name?"

"His name's Tony Stark," said the girl sitting next to him, visibly bristling at Kitty's perceived invasion of their privacy, "and he doesn't want to talk to you."

"It's okay, Jubilation, really," Stark said, raising his whiskey glass to his lips and sipping a little of the amber liquid before clearing his throat and continuing "Who am I speaking to?"

"My name's Kitty," Kitty said, holding out one hand for Stark to shake. He grasped her fingers delicately, before drawing her hand up to his lips and kissing it gently.

"Charmed," he said with a dashing smile that Kitty was sure had seduced more than one woman in its time. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Well, I'd love to say this was a social call, but Jim Logan told me to come find you," Kitty said, cutting straight to the chase (and feeling privately gratified about Stark's very visible disappointment, to boot). "To put it simply: the Russkies can't be allowed to take you prisoner, so we're here to get you safe passage to the underground."

"How many of you are there?" Stark asked, before he nodded subtly at the bar and all the Russian soldiers inside it. "I suppose I'd be disappointed if I said I hoped there was at least a battalion's-worth?"

"You would," Kitty agreed ruefully, her eyebrows arched highly. "You've got my squad and me, and that's all. Logan thought that would be enough."

"Fucking wonderful," the girl called Jubilation snarled. "That stupid old man just signed all our death warrants. Have you seen how many Ivans there are in this bar alone?" She jerked a hand at the bar's door scornfully. "How are we supposed to survive out there?"

"By keeping quiet, doing exactly as I tell you, and not attracting any unwelcome attention," Kitty fired back smoothly. She'd dealt with characters like this girl more than once before, and she knew that you had to assert yourself right from the word go, or they'd keep on causing a nuisance until they endangered themselves or others. "Logan put a great deal of trust in me when he picked me for this mission, and I intend not to let him down. Now," and she glanced at the closer knots of Russian soldiers, "we need to figure out a way of getting you closer to the door without shooting the place up…" She pondered the point for a moment or two before she snapped her fingers excitedly. "Got it!" she exclaimed. "You guys wait here. I have a plan. When I get to that first table, you start moving towards the door, okay, and don't stop no matter what." She walked into the centre of the bar, and then let out an ear-piercing screech before collapsing heavily onto the sticky floor, a hand pressed firmly (and, she realised, rather theatrically) to her brow. As she'd predicted, the Russian Army troops were the first to see what had happened, ready to check whether or not CPR would be required on the strange American girl who had just fainted very loudly in front of them. Kitty kept one eye open as she lay on the ground, watching Stark and Jubilation moving through the crowd as fast as they could, being totally ignored by everybody else. Trying her hardest to look both extremely groggy and pleased to have the attention of so many Russian soldiers, she pushed herself up on her elbows and smiled coyly at them, fluttering her eyelashes and offering her hand to the nearest man in a Soviet uniform. "Why, thank you, comrade," she purred, leaning close to her knight in shining armour and planting a grateful kiss directly on his lips. "I don't know what I'd have done without you." She hugged him then, looking over his shoulder and watching Jubilation and Stark quickly skirting the edge of the bar, towards the spot where her squad was waiting for them. When she saw that they were all safely out of the bar, she disengaged herself from the soldier and winked at him one last time before moving towards the door herself. She didn't get more than two paces before the man touched her gently on the arm.

"Wait," he said in a thickly Russian-accented tone, his brown eyes sparking with genuine concern. "Are you all right now, Miss?"

"Yes, thank you," she said, keeping a broad smile on her face even though she really wanted to leave as quickly as possible. "I think I'd better get home so I can have a lie down, though. Although if you want to thank me properly, soldier… you can call me later." She found a scrap of paper and scrawled a random string of numbers onto it, before she slid it into the soldier's breast pocket, winked at him and sauntered casually out of the bar.

"If you ask for a threesome with that guy, Kit," Madrox said as soon as she emerged into the cold night air, "remember who you're sleeping with, okay?" As if to emphasise his point, he slapped a hand against the wall of the bar, and another Madrox popped into existence beside him. "See? We're a living orgy," the Madroxes said in unison. "Can't beat that, can you?"

"Don't flatter yourself, Jamie," Kitty snorted contemptuously, taking her rifle back from Danny, who had already handed out the rest of the squad's weapons. "I wouldn't want a threesome with a Russkie anyway – or another guy, for that matter." She blew a kiss at Tabby, enjoying the way that both Madroxes' eyes boggled out of their skulls. "Now let's get out of here before those guys realise that anything's wrong."

"Good plan," Stark agreed. "I've got a safe-house a couple of blocks away. We should be safe there for the night, but I don't think it's wise to stay here any longer than we have to."

Kitty nodded, before she nodded towards the nearest manhole cover. "Okay – but we'll have to use the sewers to get there for now. Jamie, you take point. Danny and Hank, you hang back and cover Tony and Jubilation. Cece, Tabby, you're with me. Now let's get out of here…"

"Dr Pym," Elisabeth said as she entered his laboratory. "I trust you have some good news for me?"

"Not yet, but I will do shortly," Dr Pym replied, gesturing towards the work-surface behind him, which was strewn with empty test-tubes, bloodstained microscope slides, and a few quietly bubbling beakers. "The two samples are reaching a critical stage – without this precise synchronisation, the experiment will fail. I can't simply throw them into a beaker and expect them to sit quietly while I stir them together." He gestured at the containers of oozing, necrotic black slime that sat in the sink to his left, awaiting orderly disposal. "The results have to be watched closely, or they turn into… well, they turn into that."

Elisabeth raised an eyebrow. "I see." She crossed the room to where the table stood, and picked up a half-filled syringe, putting her thumb on the plunger and pushing out a small trickle of the bloody fluid inside. "How soon can you deliver a workable test sample?"

"Within the next forty-eight hours at the most," Dr Pym said, shaking the nearest beaker gently and watching the bubbling contents spit a little. "The first of the test subjects can be sent down here shortly, though – I'll need to brief them at length on what they're testing before I do anything else."

"You'll have them, then, Doctor," Elisabeth said, tapping her chin with a gloved hand before she left the laboratory and began marching down the corridor. She was confident that she could draw a few volunteers from the local Soviet garrison – or failing that, she could always take a few prisoners from the local gulag and have them pumped full of the experimental serum. Either way, she was going to have her superhuman soldiers soon, and that thought amused her a great deal. Lieutenant Wagner, she thought sharply. Attend me.

A sulphurous cloud erupted next to her as her adjutant popped out of thin air, before he brought his hunched, demonic form to attention and saluted her with one of his two-fingered hands. Elisabeth had to admit that had he not been such a superb soldier, she probably would not have socialised very much with this freakish creature. "You called, Comrade-Colonel?" Lieutenant Wagner said in a voice that told her he was very eager to please.

"Yes. I wish you to organise a group of test-subjects for me," Elisabeth said. "Dr Pym will need them to assemble here at headquarters for a briefing at 0700 tomorrow morning – I want them to be here with no excuses. Any stragglers are to be shot for desertion, is that clear?"

"Yes, sir," Lieutenant Wagner said, and then he paused. "Is there anything else, sir?"

Elisabeth pondered the point for a moment, before she nodded. "Actually, yes, there is – I want a progress report on the capture of Tony Stark. I believe we are still missing him from our collection of captured Yankee scientists, are we not?"

"We are, sir," Lieutenant Wagner replied nervously. "What… what do you wish me to do?"

"Interrogate Dr Richards to try to discover where we might find Mr Stark. I think somebody as intelligent as Reed Richards ought to know where one of his colleagues is hiding, don't you?" Elisabeth said, before a cruel smile spread across her lips. "Tell him we will leave his wife and son alone if he talks. I always find blackmail helps to loosen tongues." She nodded towards the door at the end of the passageway. "Dismissed."

"Yes, sir. At once," Lieutenant Wagner agreed, snapping to attention and saluting before disappearing into another cloud of purple, foul-smelling smoke. Elisabeth didn't wait for the cloud to dissolve before she began marching again. She had another meeting to attend to with General Von Doom, and she had no desire to keep this news from him. His earlier insults still rankled at her, and she wanted to make sure he ate those words again – without having to drag him out from behind his desk and sending him to Siberia in order to do that. Quite aside from anything else, the paperwork involved was horrendous, and Elisabeth hated signing piles of forms. She'd had enough of that in New York.

No, this way was much more satisfying…

Like always, the cold was what struck him first. The chill of the refrigeration chamber was accentuated by the glutinous hibernation fluid that clung to his skin, making him shiver unreservedly. He looked around through eyes turned to slits by the bright lights trained on the door of his metal cocoon, and realised suddenly that he didn't recognise this place. He hadn't been here the last time he'd gone "on ice", and the unfamiliarity of the room made him uncomfortable – which he hated, since he didn't like to acknowledge any personal weaknesses on his part. After what seemed like an eternity, his eyes adjusted to the light, and he was able to make out a black-coated figure standing in front of him with its hands clasped behind its back.

"Where am I?" he growled through chattering teeth. "What's going on?"

The figure held up a hand. "All in good time, Crimson Commando."

"Don't call me that," he snapped. "I have a name, you know. Mind using it?"

The figure stepped forwards into the light, and he was able to pick out the sneering features of a red-haired man. "I have a name, too, Crimson Commando: Captain Cortez, or 'sir' – whichever you prefer."

He ground his teeth. "Fine. Mind using my name… sir?"

"That's better." Captain Cortez leaned close to him and smiled. "Welcome back to the land of the living, Clint Barton. We have a mission for you…"