Red America: Western Front
Chapter Five: Nuclear Winter
Commissar-Colonel Elisabeth Braddock walked through the corridors of the Soviet headquarters, absently saluting the junior officers who passed by her and dictating some notes to Lieutenant Wagner, who trotted along beside her eagerly, a pen and paper clutched in his strangely-formed hands. Elisabeth was on her way to the main research laboratory, to which Dr Pym had relocated after his breakthrough in his own private research, where she was reliably informed that more trials were underway. As encouraging as that notion was, she did not relish the thought of more people having control of this knowledge – given the choice, she probably would have preferred to keep the facts confidential until everything was confirmed. She was certainly not looking forward to that old fool General Von Doom learning of her discovery and wheeling his useless, withered body down to the lab, in the hope of somehow throwing off his disability and closing his iron fist on the command structure again, as he had when he had been able to walk. He still controlled the Soviet operations on the west coast, true, but the respect of the troops was directed more towards his subordinates, and less towards the broken figurehead who passed them their orders. Elisabeth knew that that fact needled at the old man greatly, and for that reason alone she knew she had to watch him like a hawk. She didn't need him interfering in her affairs more than he already had.
She sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose with two fingers. She needed some tea, she decided – when she was finished in the lab, she would see if she could find the time to make a cup or two in her own private office. Picking up her march again, she clenched her fists inside her gloves and increased her pace a little. The more quickly this was over and done with, the more quickly she could enjoy some Earl Grey. The thought of drinking some decent tea instead of the mass-produced slop that most of the Red Army had to pass off as coffee made a small smile play across Elisabeth's lips.
The smile died instantly when she opened the door to the laboratory and was greeted with the sight of General Von Doom glaring back at her – at her own eye level. His chair was sitting off to one side, empty, and he was standing on two feet, without any leg-braces, sticks, crutches or anything that would have indicated he was still a cripple.
She was too late.
"Hello, Comrade Braddock. I'm very glad to see your research has paid off," Doom said with a small, cruel smile of his own, as the two of them exchanged stiff, perfunctory salutes. "I'd almost forgotten how beautiful the view was from this height." He paused, and then nodded towards the main area of the laboratory. "I believe Dr Pym would like some words with you. You had better not keep him waiting."
"Yes, General," Elisabeth replied, gritting her teeth. Her job had just got a lot harder, and she wasn't looking forward to the extra trouble in the slightest. "Of… course." She felt her fingers twitch a little inside her gloves, almost begging her to let them pull her pistol out of its holster and put a bullet straight between the General's eyes. Closing her fists tightly, feeling her knuckles ache as she swallowed her palpable disgust, Elisabeth stalked away from the jubilant old man and towards the area where Henry Pym was working. It was a large open space filled with several dozen soldiers arranged in pairs, all engaged in hand to hand combat with each other. She could see the astonishing benefits of the serum that they had been dosed with, as each trooper was able to take devastating blows and keep coming back for more. Cuts opened on bare skin as combat knives whispered across arms, legs, chests and faces, blood spraying in all directions, but the wounds were transitional, zipping themselves closed in mere instants. Too, Elisabeth could have sworn that she was hearing more animalistic sounds than she would have expected on such a practice ground, the snarls and whoops she could make out almost sounding like jackals on a carcass instead of trained soldiers. Off to one side, she could see Henry Pym hurriedly scribbling out page after page of notes as he recorded the performance of what was hopefully to be the Russian Army's new vanguard, a look of intense pride on his usually impassive features. He noticed Elisabeth standing to his right after a few moments, cleared his throat, and then put his clipboard down on a table next to him.
"Ah, Comrade Braddock," he said, with a small smile, before gesturing expansively at the men around him. "Don't you think our research is paying off?"
"Clearly," Elisabeth replied with a sour tone in her voice, before she stepped closer to him and lowered her voice to a hiss, viciously pounding a fingertip right into Dr Pym's chest. "What the hell did you think you were doing giving General Doom that serum? Do you realise what you've done? That dated old man will ruin everything I've tried to set in motion here!"
Dr Pym took a step backwards, holding his hands up in front of him defensively. "He came down here with a whole detachment of armed troops. What was I supposed to do? Refuse him?" He shook his head. "I have no desire to be shipped off to Alaska for refusing a direct order from the regional commander of the Red Army, thank you very much."
"You could still be sent there for disobeying a direct order from me," Elisabeth snarled, black fire sparking menacingly in her violet eyes. "I am a commissar of the Soviet Union, and as such I outrank that walking relic. I told you not to let him in here, and you did. I ordered you to make sure that he did not lay his hands on the serum, and you did. One more failure, Dr Pym, and I would have put a bullet through your skull without hesitation. Believe me, I've killed men for less – so you may count yourself extremely lucky." She narrowed her eyes. "Do not fail me again, please. I'd hate to lose a good scientist, after all." To underline her point, she backhanded the doctor across the face, knocking him to his knees and sending his reading glasses flying. "Am I making myself clear?"
"Yes, Commissar," Dr Pym replied, sniffing back a small trickle of blood and placing his glasses back on the bridge of his nose, before pushing himself back to his feet and smoothing out his lab coat. "Very clear."
Elisabeth gave him a crooked smile. "Good," she purred. Readjusting her cap's position on her head, she turned swiftly on one heel and began walking away from Dr Pym with a focused air in her step. "Now, if you'll excuse me, Comrade Pym, I need to check our progress with regard to locating Tony Stark. I'm sure the General will want details on that before too long. More's the pity."
Perhaps that will give me better news, she wondered absently as she stormed off, her fists clenched so tightly that her fingers felt starved of blood.
"Jesus Christ," Kitty breathed in awe, as she took in the incredible sight in front of her. "How long did it take you to scrounge together enough stuff to build this thing?"
"Years," Tony Stark replied, shrugging as if that was nothing special. "Jubilation and I had to steal so much equipment and materials from the Reds that they're probably still counting their losses."
Jubilation chuckled. "Yeah, we were a real pair of Robin Hoods. It was fun, huh, Tony?"
"That's one word for it, I guess," Tony agreed, with a shrug.
In front of the group of rebels and their two guests stood what could only be described as a miracle. It was eight feet of gleaming steel, splattered with fractured Cyrillic script here and there (scavenged armour plate from old Soviet tanks covered most of the thing's body), and covered with hydraulic pumps that looked like they had been torn from the insides of old brake units. The legs of the thing were huge and brutal chunks of metal, the boots on the end of the limbs measuring about a foot from toe to heel, and the arms were on a similar scale. One of the upper limbs ended in a club-like fist, and the other was tipped with a Vulcan cannon that had clearly been torn from the nose of a Soviet helicopter. A loop of armour-piercing bullets curved away from the arm and into the thing's back, which was fat and heavy behind the cockpit glass. Kitty thought the curved hood looked like something that had been stolen from a fighter jet, and wondered again just how much equipment Stark had managed to pilfer right from under the Ivans' noses.
"What are we supposed to do with it?" Madrox asked quizzically. "Does this thing even have a power source?"
"Up until a few days ago?" Stark said. "No. But that was before Jubilation and I managed to 'liberate' a couple dozen of the batteries that the Russkies use for their armour. A few of those in the engine unit, and we've been good to go ever since then." He stepped closer to the machine and opened the cockpit, climbing inside and settling himself into the battered leather of the machine's pilfered seat. Kitty watched him flip bank after bank of switches and push about half a dozen buttons, before she heard an almighty roar emerge from the thing's body. It lurched up to its full height and took a couple of deafening footsteps towards the rebels. She saw Stark's gleeful expression as the metal monster swung its single fist at the nearest wall, sending cracks spider-webbing throughout almost its entire surface, and then ducked as the cannon on its other arm blazed a few dozen rounds into the piles of empty crates stacked against the opposite wall, shredding them into matchsticks. "What do you think?" she heard Stark say cheerfully, over some kind of loudspeaker system.
"I think you're fucking insane, that's what I think!" she screamed at him angrily. "You think the Russkies will let you use this thing?"
"No," Stark replied with a shrug of his machine's exaggerated mechanical shoulders. "But I'll try it anyway." The cockpit opened with a depressurised hiss and Stark hopped down onto the floor, dropping briefly to his knees as he absorbed the impact of his landing. Standing up straight once again, he patted the metal brute's leg with his right hand and gestured at it with a nod of his head. "This thing could change the course of the war," he said matter-of-factly. "You could be in the presence of history in the making."
"Or we could be in the presence of a jackass writing cheques with his mouth that his engineering skills can't cash," Madrox snapped, anger writing itself all over his usually cheerful features. "I'll tell you something now, pal – I don't want to have to gamble my life on a big hunk of tin, and especially a big hunk of tin that got cobbled together by some shyster who I don't know from Adam. No offence."
"Easy, Jamie," Hank said, grasping Madrox's shoulder with a large hand. "This is good engineering – a little bit rough around the edges, but it works. You saw that yourself just now." He turned to Stark and pointed at the metal exoskeleton. "Can you guarantee the armour on that thing will hold against anything the Russians can throw at it?"
Stark nodded. "The amount of bullets Jubilation and I wasted trying to get through that armour plate says yes. We threw entire clips of armour-piercing rounds at it and it still wouldn't crack. A few dents here and there, but that's all. Nothing short of a tank round could kill this thing."
"That's all good, Stark, but how exactly are we supposed to get this heap out of here with us?" Cecilia snorted in contempt. "We were sent to get you out of this dump, not to baby-sit your pet project for you." Stark frowned, before he nodded towards the blacked-out window at the side of the building.
"You saw the Russkies' build-up of arms and men back there," he said, with a brief note of contempt showing in his voice. "With that much armour out there you're going to need something with you that can hit them back just as hard. My Iron Man suit is the best chance you're going to get for something like that – unless you're planning to steal a tank, of course, in which case I'll happily leave my years of work behind. It's your choice."
Kitty grimaced. She knew he was right, even if she didn't want to admit it; they were dangerously vulnerable at this point, and with the Soviets' armoured build-up getting closer and closer, the last thing she needed was to be caught several thousand guns short of the Ivans. "Okay," she sighed. "But we have to keep out of sight. We won't be able to use the sewers any more, unless you know of any super-sized manholes around here. How fast can that thing move?"
"Fifty miles an hour's its optimum speed," Stark began, "but I can get seventy out of it if I push it hard enough."
"Good," Kitty nodded, before she looked over at Danny, who was busily cleaning his machine gun with an oily rag. "Danny, I need you to run point, okay? Find out if there are any Ivans ahead of us, but don't engage them. Come back and tell me so that we can avoid them if we can help it."
"Are you kidding?" Danny spluttered, incredulous, before nodding at Stark's monstrous creation. "With that thing behind us we could cut a path through anything the Russkies have waiting!"
"That's right, we could," Madrox cut in, "but we won't. This is a rescue mission, not an excuse to slaughter Reds." He walked over to where Danny was sitting and put a hand on his shoulder firmly. "Trust me, we're safer that way." She returned her gaze to Stark then, gesturing towards the doorway. "After you."
Stark grinned, before walking back to his metal giant and climbing inside. Once he was secured, and the loudspeaker was working again, he said "Stand back. The doorway's going to need to be knocked through. Still, I've been meaning to do some work on this place, so this is as good a time as any…"
As he stomped towards the door and clenched his metal fist, ready to smash the brickwork around it into dust, Kitty wondered just what the hell she was letting herself and her troops in for.
Clint Barton settled himself down on the firing range and put his eye to the scope of his rifle, tracking the moving targets with practiced ease, and then squeezing off clinical shots with gentle, almost caressing movements of his trigger finger. Every round he fired punched through the centre of the target it hit, ripping a hole into the heart of the plywood and card figures and leaving them hanging off their rails like broken corpses. Clint smiled every time he fired, enjoying the enormous sensation of power he always felt when he was at work, and ejected a spent magazine without even looking. He slapped a new one in with a deft movement of his palm and then returned his gaze to the targets at the other end of the room.
"I trust I'm not interrupting anything?" came a voice from behind him. Clint rolled onto his back, his rifle ready to blow a hole in whomever it was who had startled him, until he saw that it was Captain Cortez. Putting his rifle up sheepishly, he got to his feet and stood uneasily to attention. Cortez waved him down with a casual flick of his wrist. "At ease, Mr Barton," he said, before he gave Clint one of his unnerving smiles. "Hard at work, I see?"
"Yes, sir," Clint replied, feeling a familiar nasty feeling starting to build inside his chest before he elected to cut right to the chase. "I've decided when I'm going to be carrying out this assignment, Captain."
"Oh?" Cortez said, raising an eyebrow. "And when is that, Crimson Commando?"
"There's a pretty high-profile military parade coming up in the next week," Clint said. "There are plenty of high buildings around for me to get a good vantage point – and from what I can tell, Commissar Braddock will be stood on a balcony watching everything, as a representative of the Soviet government as well as a local army commander. She'll be an easy target." Cortez smiled again, and Clint could feel a repulsed shudder working its way outwards from between his shoulder blades. Every time Cortez bared his teeth like that, he felt like a day-old fawn being circled by a hungry panther. Something about the man just made him want to turn tail and run…
"Well done, Mr Barton," Cortez began, with obvious relish. "You're a thorough man. Very… impressive… work."
"Thank you, sir," Clint said, even though he didn't really feel all that grateful. He had a great deal of respect for Colonel Braddock as a fellow soldier – and that respect was bolstered by the fact that although he was always willing to do whatever he'd been ordered to do, it wasn't compulsory for him to like it. Still, he wouldn't let that get in the way of doing his duty. He'd despised a good many of his previous assignments, after all, but he'd still carried them out to the letter. As the Crimson Commando, that was what was expected of him, and he wasn't about to let the reputation of the Soviet Union's resident "immortal" super-soldier suffer because of a few personal difficulties. "I'd like to get on with my practice, if I may, sir. Being frozen tends to throw my aim off a little, and I need some more time to really get it back."
Cortez nodded, waving a hand absently towards the targets hanging at the other end of the room. "Naturally. But I expect you to be fully fit and ready to carry out your mission as soon as possible, is that clear?"
"Yes, sir. Of course, sir," Clint said, standing to attention again and waiting for Cortez to salute him and leave. Once that was over and done with, he knelt down and resumed his firing position on the ground. Settling his eye back up against the sight of his rifle, he imagined Colonel Braddock's head coming into view in the centre of his crosshairs, and squeezed the trigger. In his mind's eye, he saw the woman's head explode like a melon hit with a sledgehammer, saw the decapitated body crumpling to the ground like a ruined concertina, saw the dead limbs flopping to the floor in a tangled heap, and he smiled grimly despite himself.
It wasn't going to be a nice job by any stretch of the imagination, of that he was certain, and he sure as hell wouldn't like himself after doing it, but somebody had to.