Silver Sable: Payback, page 1
part #7 of Marvel Heroines Series
I was escorted back to the front of the house by Captain Verlak, Doom striding off down that never-ending hallway toward – well, it wasn’t for me to think about. Just as my foot hit the top step, she called out to me.
“Silvija Sablinova.”
I turned to look at her. “What is it?”
“You’re not one of us, so this might not mean very much to you,” she said, and there was an intensity in her voice that was almost as powerful as Doom’s. “But you should understand that you’ve been given a very special opportunity, one that Doctor Doom offers to very few people. Getting the chance to serve him was the most challenging thing I ever decided to do, and it proved the mettle of my character to me.”
I shook my head. “I’m not serving him. This is a job, just like any other.”
“Not like any other,” she replied. “Not even close. And I think you know that, Silvija. Just… tread carefully, and whatever you do? Don’t fail him.”
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First published by Aconyte Books in 2023
ISBN 978 1 83908 219 1
Ebook ISBN 978 1 83908 220 7
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There are Silver Sable fans out there who've been eager for new content and who welcomed me into their fold as soon as they knew her book was coming. I hope this one makes you as happy as it does me!
Chapter One
What do you think of when you hear the name “Silver Sable”?
Do you picture the mercenary? The freedom fighter? The woman who’s made some regrettable decisions when it comes to her personal life?
All of these impressions are valid. So all-encompassing that sometimes, I can’t see beyond them myself.
Tonight, though, I needed to see past them. I needed to go all the way back, to ground myself with the very earliest tendrils of my memory, because given the meeting I was about to walk into, I couldn’t afford not to be ready for anything that might be brought up.
When you’ve been invited to a talk with Victor von Doom, it always pays to be prepared. Even when your preparations hurt.
It’s difficult for me to remember my own past. Not all of it, of course – as a mercenary, I need to be able to put names to faces fast, memorize and retain the layouts of buildings and cities, anything that makes taking down my target easier. Every job I take leaves an impression, whether it’s hunting down Nazis, fomenting revolution against tyrants, or underwater battles with benthic beasts.
But the early years, those are so much harder. To recall the person I so briefly was, the child who didn’t even know what to fear beyond spiders and dark places and unquiet dreams… it’s almost impossible to get a clear mental image of what I experienced so long ago. However, to properly move forward sometimes requires a hard look back, and so… let me see, how do these stories start?
Ah, yes. Once upon a time.
Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Silvija who lived with her parents in a small but beautiful home in the country of Symkaria. They loved her very much, and she was so happy with them. Her parents hoped their daughter would grow up in a peaceful land, with the freedom to live any sort of life she chose for herself.
Then one day, her mother was murdered in front of her. Her father’s enemies gloated in the light of the terrible fire that consumed Anastasia Sablinova, and little Silvija screamed and begged and wept for the impossible – for her mother to be returned to her. It couldn’t happen, of course. Not even her father’s vengeance could turn back time and heal that first deep, terrible wound.
Silvija’s hair went from gold to silver, and after that day, she never cried again. Not from pain, not from heartbreak, not even from joy. She learned to fight from her father, pushed herself to train until she couldn’t be broken, hardened her heart and gathered allies and set herself one great, overarching goal: to serve her home nation of Symkaria to the best of her ability, for as long as she was able to. After all, families could be taken away but nations, those were permanent… weren’t they?
Silvija learned the hard way just how wrong she was. Wars could be fought, leaders could be overthrown, nations and their people could be conquered. The fate of Symkaria seemed to be one of subjugation, over and over again, by a string of dictators with more will than wisdom, more cruelty than compassion. And so Silvija Sablinova became Silver Sable, and she fought the same battle, over and over, and each time it destroyed her a bit more, until she became the woman she was now.
A woman willing to consider another path. A woman desperate for a different choice. A woman capable of putting even the depredations of Doom into the dark places in her memory, so that she could try to make a brighter future for her country. A country that was currently under the rule of none other than Victor von Doom himself.
All of which leads me to tonight, with me standing in the boarded-up remains of the old Symkarian embassy in New York City and staring at myself in a full-length mirror in what used to be the Symkarian ambassador’s bedroom as I prepare for dinner with Doctor Doom.
“Oh no,” Juliet said abruptly as she reentered the room, her head shaking a negative as she looked at me. “No, you’re not going to dinner with one of the most powerful men on the planet wearing a pantsuit that makes you look like you just stepped out of the eighties. Shoulder pads, Silver, really?”
I frowned at her. “The saleswoman said they were making a comeback.”
“She was a lying liar who lies,” my coworker – and fashion consultant, apparently – said flatly. “They’re not making a comeback – at least not that wide of a comeback. What are you, a linebacker?”
“A what?”
Juliet waved her hand dismissively. “It’s an American football term, don’t worry about it. Truly, though, Silver… no. Tell me you brought something else to wear.”
I reached into my bag at the foot of the bed and pulled out an outfit that I would be far more at ease in. “How about this?”
“Your body armor?” Juliet brushed a shock of short purple hair out of her face and crossed her arms as she considered it. “I mean, it’s very ‘you.’ I guess it wouldn’t be out of character, but… is that the tone you’re going for?”
Tone? My armor was flexible, comfortable, and effective. Did all of that constitute a “tone”? “What do you mean?”
“I mean, you’re going to dinner, not heading into a fight. Wearing armor might send the wrong message.”
Ah. I hadn’t considered it from that angle. While nothing would make me feel better than punching Doom in the face before sticking one of my throwing knives up his nose, that would be taking things in the wrong direction.
“Besides, that’s the set that’s still all messed up from the shark bite,” Juliet added, pointing at the mended section on the left thigh of the suit. My own thigh twitched with reluctant muscle memory at the reminder of that little incident. “Wearing half-assed armor would be even worse than a pristine set.”
“I don’t have anything better,” I confessed. “The pantsuit was the only thing I bought when I went shopping earlier today.” I had some lounging clothes, a few pairs of jeans and shirts to help me blend in if I was out walking around the city, but those wouldn’t work for this.
“Not a problem.” Juliet checked the phone on her wrist. “When’s the dinner? Maybe we have time to sneak in a quick trip to a department store.”
“In half an hour.”
“Oh.” She looked at the pantsuit and sighed heavily. “Well, if we rip the shoulder pads out and pair it with a really nice
I didn’t have a really nice blouse with me. I had three fitted T-shirts and a men’s gray Henley, a leftover from one of those “regrettable life decisions” that I’d kept because it was so darn comfortable. “Um…”
“Silver.” Juliet shook her head. “Tell me you have another shirt to wear under that jacket. The one you’re in is so wrinkled!”
It was, wasn’t it? “I just bought this thing,” I muttered, pulling at the base of the shirt irritably. It was pink. Pink. Pink was not my color – it showed blood abominably, for starters – but the color was the least of my worries right now.
“Didn’t they fold it before they put it in the bag?”
I frowned. “Why bother?” Buy, shove, leave. That was the most efficient way to shop.
“Silver! This is linen, you can’t treat linen like that!” Juliet looked at me like I was a particularly slow puppy who still hadn’t learned not to scratch at the door. “Shoot, OK. We need to iron it, at least. Let me check around to see where they keep it…” She began opening doors – there were a surprising number of them, for a single room. A large room, but a single one. I tugged in frustration at the shirt again, smoothing all the wrinkles out – then watching them reappear.
Like magic. Ha.
I didn’t like magic, not of any kind. I was going to have to keep that sentiment to myself tonight, though. Victor von Doom was one of the greatest sorcerers the world had ever known, a man who kept his home country of Latveria safe – and subdued – as much with spellcraft as with more typical armaments. Guns I could deal with, robots I could handle – heck, until recently I’d been using an android avatar myself to do my work, to help conceal the fact that I was still alive. But magic?
No, thank you.
“Um… Silver?”
I glanced over at Juliet, who was standing in front of the opened closet, her eyebrows so high they were nearly touching her hairline. That was uncommon enough as to be alarming. I immediately went into professional mode.
“Is it a bomb? What sort, can you tell? Can you see a trigger mechanism? Let me–”
“It’s… not a bomb,” she interjected, her voice still a little stunned but her surprise diminishing. “Just, um. Well. Look.”
I joined her in front of the closet, which was – oh.
Oh.
“That’s a lot of dresses,” Juliet said carefully. “I thought the last ambassador of Symkaria to the States was a man.”
“He was,” I confirmed. “And he was unmarried, but he did love to, ah… be generous to his guests, from what I hear.” He had abandoned the embassy in a very big hurry after the scandal had come out about him facilitating illegal weapons dealing on embassy grounds. That had been years ago, but these dresses still looked nice. Fashionable. Expensive. A little dusty, but you couldn’t have everything.
“Pick one,” I said, pulling my jacket off and throwing it onto the bed. “I’ve got five minutes before I have to leave.”
“You don’t just throw clothes around like that,” Juliet muttered, pawing through the dresses even as she shot me an exasperated look. “This is why your shirt is a mess.”
“You wear nothing but tank tops and yoga pants.”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t know how to treat nice clothes!”
“I thought you hated that jacket anyway.”
“You–” She rolled her eyes, pulled a sparkly pouf of silvery fabric out of the closet, and threw it at me. “Put that on.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I ignored her sotto voce diatribe about how I didn’t appreciate her and pulled the dress free from the hanger, then stepped into it. It was… oh, huh, surprisingly comfortable. Snug but not too tight around my chest, didn’t have a terribly deep neckline, left my shoulders free for ease of movement, and the bottom half might cling to my hips a bit more than I liked, but then it opened up into a… what were the things called… fish style? Yes, fish style.
“Mermaid cut for the win,” Juliet said, moving in to zip up the final inches of the back. “This looks good. Like you want to look nice, but you’re not trying too hard.” She sniffed and winced. “Smells a little like mothballs, but we don’t have time to screw around with it. Get your shoes on.”
“I already have them on.”
Juliet sighed. “No, I mean your high heels.”
“Yes… I have those on,” I said slowly, like she was the cute but dim puppy now. “You saw them just a moment ago, on my feet.”
“Oh. Huh.” She looked down at the hem of the dress, which trailed a good two inches of fabric onto the floor. “Dang, you’re short.”
I smacked her on the shoulder. “Shut up, I’m the perfect height.”
“For climbing through tunnels and crawling between walls and fitting into other tight spaces, yeah. Not for this dress. And I didn’t bring any heels with me.” She turned slightly. “Maybe X-Ray has some–”
“Her feet are twice as big as mine!” I protested. “And she’s no more likely to wear high heels than you or I. No. I’ll just have to… um.”
Juliet snapped her fingers suddenly. “I’ve got it! Hang on, let me grab something out of the ops center, don’t move!” She ran out of the room, leaving me standing there in a dress that would try to trip me the second I took my eyes off my feet, with my silver hair tied up in a simple bun at the back of my head, without jewelry, without makeup, and without anything that made me feel like me.
I glanced at the bed. Well, that, at least, I could take care of.
Twenty minutes later I stood in front of Doctor Doom’s Manhattan brownstone with the hem of my dress only a bit uneven, thanks to Juliet’s hasty stapling job, and my katana strapped across my back. I had my derringer at my hip as well, but I’d left the chais back at the embassy. There was such a thing as over-armed, after all.
I took a deep breath, steeling myself for what was about to come. No way out but through. He can’t say yes unless you give him the chance. Slightly fortified, I reached out to ring the bell.
The door began to open just before my hand touched the button.
Chapter Two
Even if I hadn’t known ahead of time that this unexpectedly modest – for New York City, at least – home belonged to Doctor Doom, I would have been suspicious that it was more than it appeared. There were a plethora of security cameras on it, as well as numerous cameras on other homes and across the street that were directed here, rather than at their own front porches. The bay window facing the street looked normal, but I knew deceptive architecture when I saw it. Whatever that “glass” was made of, it was heavy enough to warrant extra support beneath it. And if I looked carefully, I could just make out the hair-thin crack in the porch that ran lengthwise beneath the kitschy welcome mat beneath my feet.
If I so much as looked at this door the wrong way, I had no doubt that the ground would open up beneath me and send me down into some dark, inescapable laboratory in the depths of Doom’s home. Or maybe it would just deposit me straight into the sewers. Either way, I didn’t care to test it.
The biggest clue that this home belonged to Doom was the woman who opened the door. She loomed over me, and not simply because she had six inches on me. Looming was probably part of the job description for the head of Doctor Doom’s personal guard, and Kariana Verlak was as expert at that as she was at everything.
I had never met her before, but I knew her by reputation. A Latverian patriot and a true believer in Victor von Doom and all that he stood for, if Captain Verlak got the slightest inkling that I meant her boss any harm, he wouldn’t need to use his magic to incinerate me or throw me to a Doom bot. She would shoot me through the eyes without blinking.
Or, well, she would try.
I kept my hands away from my weapons and tried for a nonchalant expression. The last thing I needed was to get into a staring match with this patrician-looking woman right now. I was a guest here, and a supplicant; as much as I hated it, I needed to act like it. “Captain Verlak.”
“Ms Sablinova.” She looked me over, then smirked. “Nice dress.”
“Thank you.” You jerk. Captain Verlak was wearing a set of fitted black fatigues with Latverian-green accents on the shoulders and lapels. She looked disgustingly comfortable in them, too. I counted up to three weapons on her, then stopped. No sizing her up. You’re not here to pick a fight.
