Blades of Winter Read online

  Praise for

  BLADES OF WINTER

  “A hell-bent-for-leather mash-up of spy novel and SF, set in a well-realized alternate history, starring a snarky, hormonal nineteen-year-old named Scarlet, who will capture your heart as well as your imagination. First-rate.”

  —ERIC VAN LUSTBADER, bestselling author of The Bourne Legacy and Father Night

  “Smart, sassy, and seriously appealing. Blades of Winter is a fully realized alternate history with extraordinary detailing and pace, high-velocity writing, and—top of the list—a heroine finding herself via weapons of mass destruction, bionic strength, and the heartbeat of a whole new generation. Seventeen magazine mainlines Terminator in this stunning debut.”

  —JEFF LONG, New York Times bestselling author of The Descent

  “A fun, fast-moving alt-history romp!”

  —S. M. STIRLING, author of The Council of Shadows

  “G. T. Almasi’s Blades of Winter is a smart, punchy deluge of radical thought packed into a febrific alternate-history thrill ride. Almasi is an author finding his stride, mind ablaze with kaleidoscopic insight, creativity, and action. And did I mention humor? Because there’s a lot of that, too.”

  —JAMES WAUGH, senior story developer, Blizzard Entertainment

  “Almasi has created a vivid and entirely believable alternate history that is steeped in historical fact, future science, and international intrigue. Blades of Winter has all the action and excitement of today’s hottest videogames and an absolutely unrelenting pace that will keep your heart pounding. The pages practically turn themselves.”

  —JAMES A. BROWN, lead level designer, Epic Games

  “Blades of Winter starts with a freeze-frame bullet to the face and only takes off from there. Vicious action sequences and brilliant SF tech make for some of the best pacing I’ve consumed in a really long time.”

  —SAM STRACHMAN, writer, IP developer, Ubisoft

  Blades of Winter is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A Del Rey Mass Market Original

  Copyright © 2012 by G. T. Almasi

  Excerpt from Hammer of Angels by G. T. Almasi copyright © 2012 by G. T. Almasi

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  DEL REY is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  RANDOM HOUSE WORLDS and House colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming book Hammer of Angels by G. T. Almasi. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.

  eISBN: 978-0-440-42355-3

  www.delreybooks.com

  Cover art: Tony Mauro

  Cover design: Scott Biel

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Excerpt from Hammer of Angels

  CHAPTER 1

  THURSDAY, MAY 1, 1:35 P.M. EST MANHATTAN’S UPPER EAST SIDE, NEW YORK CITY, USA

  Nothing pisses me off more than being shot at while I’m eating. It’s the midday rush here in my new favorite restaurant, a cozy Hungarian joint on East 82nd Street. I’m jammed into a small table by the kitchen, with a Redskins cap pulled low over my face. The charming old dining room is packed, and the paneled walls echo the Eastern European barks of the broad, buxom waitresses as they dominate the good-humored customers. The food here is spectacular, but right now I’m kind of distracted by that bullet hurtling straight at my left eye.

  Until this .22-caliber interruption, I was quietly noshing my yummy goulash. My unwitting target, an ugly little man named Hector, sits at his table across the room with some chick. It’s not a very sexy mission. I’m just following this fucking jerk around. The brief said he was a former Russian Level, so I thought the job would be a lot more exciting than this. I did notice that he chews each bite of food exactly thirty-two times. Whoop-dee-doo.

  At least it’s a Level 12 Job Number. This’ll be the highest-rated mission I’ve ever pulled, although it’s not exactly mine. It was originally assigned to a coworker named Grey, but he called in sick this morning. The ExOps dispatcher is a total dingbat named Virgil, so it was a cinch to sucker—uh, I mean persuade—him to mix me up with my father and assign the mission to me. You’d think the fact that I’m a mid-five-foot, nineteen-year-old female Level 4 Interceptor named Alix would be a hint that I’m not a fortysomething Level 20 Liberator named Philip who’s been dead for eight years. But who am I to correct a senator’s son? If he’s okay with putting me on a Job Number that’s eight steps beyond my pay grade, I’m okay with it, too.

  But back to that bullet flying my way. Five seconds ago, Hector stood up and put on his jacket to leave. Four seconds ago, I turned my head to look for my waitress. Three seconds ago, Hector’s date plucked a small silver pistol out of her handbag. She’s about my age and height but with dark hair and dark clothes, and she’s suddenly wearing a pair of giant Jackie Onassis sunglasses. Two seconds ago, she pointed her puny gun at my face. One second ago, as this miniature Jackie-O chick pulled the trigger, I told my neuroinjector to get me ready to do some serious head stomping. As of this instant, I’m fully jacked on Madrenaline and time has slowed to a crawl.

  The bullet has just emerged from Jackie-O’s little fashion accessory, so I’ve got time to pull out my larger and much more impressive black pistol. It’s a Lion Ballistics LB-505. I inherited this gun from my father, who spent a lot of time fiddling with the onboard artificial intelligence. After a particularly successful tinkering session he nicknamed her Li’l Bertha. I communicate with Li’l Bertha through the raised neural contact pad on her grip that snaps into a matching recess built into the palm of my left hand.

  Like every pistol from Lion Ballistics, my LB-505 is built around the patented radar-assisted gyroscopic aiming system that made this company the Harley-Davidson of hard-core gun nuts everywhere. The AI transparently manages all the techno crap and feeds real-time target information to my Eyes-Up display.

  One of the 505’s coolest capabilities is that it can change caliber on the fly. This feature is called Multi Caliber, and it allows me to reduce my competitors to one or more meat piles, depending on what size bullets I select. As I take aim with my dad’s gun, it scans Jackie-O to see if she’s wearing any kind of armor and pops the ammunition selector into a corner of my field of vision:

  Se
lect Ammo Type:

  1. Standard

  2. Explosive

  3. Armor-Piercing

  4. Incendiary

  5. Pupu Platter

  The scan of Jackie-O returns “null.” There are so many goddamn people in here, the scanner can’t isolate my target. Okay, fine. I tell Li’l Bertha to use .30-caliber Incendiaries. I’ve been taught that whether they’re armored or not, nothing distracts the competition more than setting them on fire.

  Jackie-O’s bullet is halfway here. This isn’t my first time being shot at, but it still makes my hands begin to tremble while my stomach knots up. My neuroinjector senses my anxiety and squirts a dose of Kalmers into my bloodstream. I change my mind about the ammo and decide to precede the Incendiary rounds with two .50-caliber Explosive slugs. I need to move this crowd out of the way so that the Incendiaries can work their subtle magic.

  Christ, her bullet is so close that I can see its rotation! I’ve spent too much time putzing around with my gun. I hold my head still while my retinal cameras photograph this little chickie for posterity, then I dodge to the side. The bullet sizzles across the skin of my left cheekbone as I pump two Explosive shots into the ceiling above Jackie-O. This distracts her with falling debris and gets all the others to duck under their tables. Now she’s totally exposed, so I mash down the trigger and unload my Incendiaries on her.

  My flaming bullet fog hits her so hard that she doesn’t even have a chance to be torn to bits. She simply goes up in a white cloud of smoke that fills the whole dining room. It’s like the girl was never there. Her vanishing act (and perhaps all the noise, fumes, and fire) has scared the shit out of everybody, and they all start screaming their heads off. The smoke is so thick, I can’t even see my table in front of me. I switch on my infrared vision just in time to spot Hector as he follows a group of terrified patrons out the front door. I charge after him and switch my infrared off as I storm into the bright sunshine outside.

  As Hector escapes up the block, the street erupts in gunfire. Damn it! I was so smug about roasting Jackie-O with my full-auto bulletgasm that I’ve stumbled into her backup team.

  A cloud of bullets and one rocket-propelled grenade streak toward me. I leap in the air as the grenade hits the sidewalk and detonates. The concussion kicks me up three stories. My cap flies off, and I crash through a window as the front of my ex-favorite New York eatery goes up in smoke. I hope their insurance covers them for an attack of the killer spies from Psychoville.

  I land on all fours in a small bedroom. The floor dances under me while the maniacs outside pulverize the walls and windows and generally shoot the shit out of the apartment. The air is full of flying metal, wood splinters, and shards of glass. Plaster dust grinds in my teeth, and smoke burns my throat. I roll into the hall and then run up the fire stairs. As I burst onto the roof, the sound of a helicopter thuds through the air. This is a solo mission, so I know the air support isn’t for me. I arm and drop my electromagnetic pulse grenade, then I jump through an open window across the back alley and land in a bathtub. The EMP grenade will roast the electronics of anything in its blast radius, so I take my Mods and Enhances offline while Li’l Bertha shuts down to protect herself.

  A black, nasty-looking little chopper soars over the roof across the alley as I trigger my EMP. The electro-fried aircraft careens out of control and smacks into the building. The helicopter-shaped paperweight drops out of my sight, so I don’t see the result, but I sure as hell hear and feel it. The explosions and squeals of terror are both particularly satisfying.

  My hands start shaking again. The Kalmers have faded out of my bloodstream. Kalmers don’t eliminate reactions to stress and fear; they simply suppress them. Once they wear off, you can be hit by what Med-Techs call emotional recoil. My mouth dries out, my lungs gulp for air, and my legs squeeze together to keep me from peeing my pants. I curl up into a ball and ride it out. After a few minutes I’m done crying and shaking. I lurch out of the tub, scram the apartment, and climb the stairs to the top of the building. My new knees let me rooftop jump all the way to 60th Street, where I slide down a fire escape and catch a taxi to Chelsea.

  Crystal City Gazette, July 8, 1972

  Local Girl Dazzles at the Gymnastics National Championships

  NEW YORK CITY—Crystal City’s Alix Nico thrilled Madison Square Garden last night as she swept the all-around and the individual events in the 10–11-year-old division at this year’s USAIGC Gymnastics National Championships. Her stunning performance was an emphatic finale to an extremely successful year for Nico, who set a USAIGC record for victories in a single season.

  Nico is already considered a favorite to win gold at the Montreal Olympics. She is training at the Roosevelt Gymnastics Center in Washington, D.C., under the supervision of her coach Tasha Dovetsky.

  CHAPTER 2

  SAME DAY, 2:10 P.M. EST LOWER MANHATTAN, NEW YORK CITY, USA

  The cab takes me all the way down Broadway to 18th Street in Chelsea. I walk across Columbus Park and stop in front of a newsstand. My hands flip through a Spider-Man comic book while my eyes scan the street to see if I’ve been followed. Everyone seems normal; no lurkyjerkies. I cross the street against the signal and run through an alley, emerging on the other side of the block. Still nobody out of place, just people rushing hither and yon, doing their thing.

  I take another taxi back uptown to Penn Station and catch a train to Washington, D.C. Then the nine-thirty VRE commuter train gets me to Crystal City, Virginia. The VRE stop is a twenty-minute walk from my house, but since my Mods enable me to run at over thirty miles per hour, I make it home in three minutes. It’s already past ten o’clock when I leap up to the front porch roof, ease through the window into my bedroom, and try to sneak past my mom’s room to the bathroom. She’s got that mother hearing, though.

  “Alixandra Janina Nico, is that you?” She walks into the hall as she ties on her robe. When she sees me, her voice shifts from pissed to scared and she gasps, “Oh, my God, what happened?” She looks at the left side of my face. I reach up and touch my cheek, which feels sort of crunchy. When I hold my hand away, I see that my fingertips have dried blood on them. You wouldn’t think you could forget about a bullet wound to your head.

  “Hmm,” I mumble. “No wonder the people on the train were staring.” I keep walking toward the bathroom. Nobody noticed me in Manhattan, of course. New Yorkers only turn their heads for free bagels or exploding dump trucks.

  Mom follows me, her arms crossed over her chest. “Alix, please listen to me. I really am starting to think that ExOps is too dangerous for a girl your age.” ExOps is short for Extreme Operations Division, where both Mom and I work in D.C. She’s a senior personnel manager in the Admin Department, and I’m a Level 4 field agent trained and equipped as an Interceptor.

  Extreme Operations is a non-public-facing U.S. intelligence agency that specializes in, well, extreme operations. Missions range from high-security black bag jobs to whacking well-protected people. When one of the aboveground U.S. agencies needs an especially nasty job done, it calls us.

  I go to the bathroom sink and turn the water on. Mom stands behind me and watches me in the mirror. “I should have made you go to the Olympics when I had the chance.”

  Before I became a spy I was a sure thing to make the U.S. Olympic gymnastics team. ExOps is way more interesting though, plus I don’t have to put up with all the bouncy little bitches who hated my guts because I kicked their star-spangled asses at every meet. I say, “Cleo, it’s no big deal. It’s just a scratch. I mean, gymnastics was dangerous, too.” I grab the soap and hold my hands under the faucet. “Besides, Dad wasn’t any older than me when he started doing fieldwork.”

  “He was much older, and this is different.”

  “No, it’s not. I—”

  She cuts me off. “It’s different because he wasn’t my nineteen-year-old daughter!”

  “Cleo, it’s only a scratch. I’m fine.” Our reflections in the mirror show how much we loo
k like each other. We’re both on the petite side at five feet four inches, and we’re both skinny with straight, dark red hair and fair skin. Our eyes are different. Hers are brown, whereas mine are blue-green, like my dad’s were. When we’re tense, our mouths both make the same tight little crescent-moon shape. People comment about our resemblance all the time. They say that if we didn’t wear our hair differently, they’d have trouble telling us apart. That’s fine with me. I think my mother is pretty. I just wish I was taller.

  I wash my face, being careful to clean out the wound. After I dab myself dry with a towel, Mom gets a bandage out of the medicine cabinet and carefully tapes it on my cheek. She fusses around with it to make sure it sticks. After a minute I roll my eyes and mutter, “Cleo-o-o.”

  “For God’s sake, Alix, don’t you think I’ll be a little concerned when you come home all bloody and cut up?”

  Maybe she needs some affection. Work and school have been super busy lately, and I haven’t been home very much. I put my arms around her and give her a big squoosh. “Oh, Mom, that’s why I love you, because you’re so concerned when I come home all bloody and cut up.” She gives a start. That was over a dozen nice words in a row, all for her. I even called her “Mom” instead of using her first name. She’s melting. I finish her off with “I’m starved. Can we make supper together?” What mother can resist cooking with her baby girl? I boil spaghetti while she whips up a butter and cheese sauce. Cleo tells me about her day while we eat. When we’re done, she goes back to bed and I go downstairs to my workshop.

  The shop occupies the entire basement. The cracked cement floor and fluorescent overhead lighting aren’t exactly the height of fashion, but I’m more comfortable here than almost anywhere else. I’ve left it pretty much the same as when my dad had it. A heavy wooden workbench commands the front wall. Tall metal racks crammed full of gadgets, supplies, books, and other junk line the back wall. A row of combination-locked four-drawer filing cabinets full of confidential paperwork from Extreme Operations lurk under the stairs. The center of the room is inhabited by a faded green leather couch, a paint-stained coffee table, and two shop stools.