Siege Line
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PRAISE FOR
JAVELIN RAIN
“One of Myke Cole’s best novels so far . . . Great, vital speculative fiction.”
—Tor.com
“A heartfelt, action-packed military fantasy that punches readers in the guts and takes their breath away. Somehow, in writing about an undead Navy SEAL fighting other undead warriors, Cole has found a way to explore what makes us tick—as people, as members of a family, and as part of a society.”
—Fantasy-Faction
“Javelin Rain continues Myke Cole’s outstanding track record of delivering novels that balance entertainment and thought provocation . . . Highly recommended.”
—SFFWorld
“[Cole’s] unique blend of might and magic is unlike anything else currently being written. I’m eager to see what else he has in store for us.”
—SFcrowsnest
“This story rockets from point to point, ratcheting up the action as things go from pretty bad to worst-case scenario.”
—io9
PRAISE FOR
GEMINI CELL
“Myke Cole’s novels are like crack: they’re highly addictive, and this one is no exception.”
—BuzzFeed
“Intense and explosive—Cole tells a hell of a story.”
—Mark Lawrence, international bestselling author of Red Sister
“Character-rich and action-driven—a Molotov cocktail of human weaknesses and superhuman abilities.”
—Robin Hobb, New York Times bestselling author of Assassin’s Fate
“The story is a powerful one . . . it takes some oft-maligned tropes of military adventure fiction and shows us how those things are supposed to be done.”
—Howard Tayler, award-winning creator of the webcomic Schlock Mercenary
“With each book, Myke Cole levels up, and Gemini Cell is no exception . . . A fast-moving, page-turning story that you’ll read late into the night.”
—Fantasy-Faction
“This is some really good, exciting military/urban fantasy. Cole’s style is fast-paced, immensely enjoyable, and delivers on both action and character in equal measure.”
—SFRevu
PRAISE FOR THE SHADOW OPS NOVELS
“It’s not just military . . . It’s just a great book.”
—Patrick Rothfuss, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Name of the Wind
“Hands down, the best military fantasy I’ve ever read.”
—Ann Aguirre, New York Times bestselling author of Breakout
“Fast-paced and thrilling from start to finish . . . military fantasy like you’ve never seen it before.”
—Peter V. Brett, international bestselling author of The Core
“Excellent, action-packed novels that combine elements of contemporary magic and superhero fiction with the type of atmosphere genre readers usually only get in military SF.”
—Tor.com
“Myke Cole is an absolute gift to urban fantasy and military fantasy subgenres.”
—Fantasy Book Critic
Ace Books by Myke Cole
GEMINI CELL
JAVELIN RAIN
SIEGE LINE
SHADOW OPS: CONTROL POINT
SHADOW OPS: FORTRESS FRONTIER
SHADOW OPS: BREACH ZONE
ACE
Published by Berkley
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014
Copyright © 2017 by Myke Cole
Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.
ACE is a registered trademark and the A colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.
Ebook ISBN: 9781101636770
First Edition: November 2017
Cover illustration by Larry Rostant
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
For Wilma Pearl Mankiller,
who always fed the right wolf
Contents
Praise for the Novels of Myke Cole
Ace Books by Myke Cole
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Epigraph
Author’s Note
PROLOGUE: SNOW SNAKE
CHAPTER I: PUBLIC SERVANT
CHAPTER II: HEAD MAN IN CHARGE
CHAPTER III: IN FROM THE COLD
CHAPTER IV: TECHNOLOGY IS A BEAUTIFUL THING
CHAPTER V: DOUBLE BACK
CHAPTER VI: SURPRISE
CHAPTER VII: SENSE OF URGENCY
CHAPTER VIII: TO THE NORTH
CHAPTER IX: RESOLUTION
CHAPTER X: THE RIGHT CALL
CHAPTER XI: WALKING DEAD
CHAPTER XII: FIGHT THROUGH
CHAPTER XIII: ALL IN THE FAMILY
CHAPTER XIV: SIGNAL
CHAPTER XV: RELIEF
CHAPTER XVI: THE COMPANY OF WOLVES
CHAPTER XVII: BRAVE NEW WORLD
CHAPTER XVIII: DEAD GIVEAWAY
CHAPTER XIX: MUSH
CHAPTER XX: LET ME HELP YOU
CHAPTER XXI: PUMP FAKE
CHAPTER XXII: ANCESTORS
CHAPTER XXIII: CAVALRY ARRIVES
Glossary of Military Acronyms and Slang
About the Author
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Just a few short years ago, I was an aspirant who never thought he’d publish a novel. This book in your hands is my sixth out with a major publisher, and I currently have three more under contract. What’s more, by the time this book prints, I’ll have been on a major prime-time TV show, signed my first deal to write history, and announced a board game based on my Shadow Ops novels.
My point (apart from bragging) is this: I never, ever, ever thought any of these things would happen. And they weren’t happening, until suddenly, they were. You have your span of years on this earth, and while I can’t promise you’ll hit the marks you set, I do think you may as well keep aiming for them. Don’t give up. I’m so unspeakably glad I didn’t.
Of course, none of it would be possible without you, the readers and fans. It’s impossible to thank each of you individually, but those of you who’ve caught up to me at cons have hopefully gotten at least a handshake, a signature, and a brief chance to chat. I also owe thanks to all the people who believed in me and gave me my shot: Anne Sowards and the staff of Ace/Roc, Joshua Bilmes and the folks at JABberwocky Literary Agency, Laura Fuest Silva and her crew at Endemol Shine, Glenn Geller and his people at CBS, Anji Cornette and the brilliant actors and engineers at GraphicAudio, and Deputy Commissioner Jessica Tisch and her command at the NYPD. And this doesn’t even cover the legions of friends, family, fellow authors, and gamers, my endless nerd tribe. To thank you all properly would be a book in itself.
But I do want to single out Peter V. Brett, as I have done for six books running now, because he is both Aaron and Hur to my Moses, holding my arms up until the battle is won.
Thanks.
The wolf that wins is the one you feed.
—NATIVE AMERICAN PROVERB
AUTHOR’S NOTE
A glossary of military acronyms and slang can be found in the back of this book.
Fort Resolution is a real place, and the Athabasca Chipewyan a real people. I’ve done my best to do both the place and the people justice, but in the end, I serve the needs of the story above all. Any errors are entirely my own.
PROLOGUE
SNOW SNAKE
Mankiller threw the spear.
Her grandpa had taught her to play snow snake when she was six, and thirty-six years later, the motion was second nature. Two shuffling steps, the arm whipping low, gently. She gave a little hiss of air as she released the shaft, not because she needed to, but because she always had.
The spear did look like a snake, a thin brown line skipping through the unbroken snow, sending up white puffs that revealed the thick ice of the frozen lake beneath. There was a soft thud as it struck the hay bale dead center, sending a spray of yellow across the white. Grampy always pumped a fist when he got a bull’s-eye, but Mankiller stood frozen in her throw. Moving too quickly after letting the spear go could alter its course if you weren’t careful.
Joe Yakecan snorted hard enough to set the fur edges of his hood waving. “Weak. That’d been a caribou, he’d ’a jus’ sniffed it and gone back to sleep.”
“Ain’t a caribou,” Mankiller said, still not moving. “’S a hay bale.”
“Ya think?”
Mankiller didn’t answer, trying to take in the moment like Grampy told her. The sun reflecting off the smooth white surface of the snow. The sharp bite of the air against her nose. The spear pointing like a compass needle perfectly centered in the hay bale’s side. Save the good ones, Wilma, Grampy always said. Remember ’em for the times when the sun won’t come up.
Yakecan must have taken her silence for anger, because he added, “I’m just kiddin’, Sheriff. It’s a good shot.”
“Great shot.” Mankiller finally turned to look at him, giving the tiny quirk of her hard line of a mouth that passed for a smile.
Yakecan looked like God had come down from heaven and stapled half a dozen animals together. He was as big as a grizzly, had a face like a Saint Bernard. His wide cheeks hung down to his neck, chins overlapping just enough to tell the world that this was a man who liked beer, fried chicken, and chocolate. He was as furry as a beaver, and it didn’t help that he was always cold despite all that blubber. He covered himself in even more furs until he looked like a walrus.
Yakecan had been her deputy since Mankiller came to Fort Resolution after her tour in Afghanistan. She’d read his file from the Army, knew what he’d done in Iraq. Their first job together had been putting cuffs on Albert Haida after he beat up his wife. Haida was even bigger than Joe, and a mean drunk to boot. Haida had resisted, and turned out to be more than Mankiller had bargained for. She knew that he’d have hurt her, maybe even killed her, if it hadn’t been for Yakecan. He might be as big as a grizzly, but Joe was as fast as a striking eagle. Haida was on his back, knocked senseless, before Mankiller knew Yakecan had even moved. When the Yellowknife cops came to take custody of Haida, they’d asked Mankiller how she’d got so banged up. Yakecan could have said Haida’d gotten the drop on her, that she’d needed him to save her. But he only stood there, smiling. I’ve got you covered, that smile said.
She never forgot it.
Yakecan smiled his usual smile now, open and easy, the kind of smile that made you feel rested. “A great shot,” he conceded. “Even harder jus’ goin’ over the open snow.”
“But you think you can do better.”
“Hell, I know I can.” Yakecan’s smile got so big, his cheeks disappeared inside his hood. “Watch thi—”
A howl split the air, long and mournful.
Yakecan’s smile vanished. He glanced up at the bright sun, bent to retrieve the rifle where it lay propped against a small boulder of ice.
She put a hand on his elbow. “C’mon, Joe. You know that . . .”
But Yakecan’s eyes were scanning the horizon, the gun already at the low ready. “All right, Wilma. Can’t be too careful . . .”
He only called her by her first name when he was frightened.
“Joe, look at me.”
His eyes stopped scanning, met hers. She stared back. Her calming stare. “Sergeant’s Eyes,” her lieutenant had called them.
“Joe, they’re howling in the middle of the day. You know what kind of wolves these are.”
As if on cue, another howl sounded, closer this time. Yakecan’s eyes snapped away, and Mankiller followed his gaze to a low line of stunted trees, jagged gray limbs struggling through the thick snow.
A small shape, gray as the dead growth around it, detached itself from the trees, slunk along the icy ridge, its head turned toward them. Two dots burned in the center, brighter than the shining snow around them. Twin dancing fires, silver threaded with lines of thin gold. Wilma looked into the wolf’s eyes for a moment, and then it turned its head away, trotted along the ridge.
Mankiller gave the animal a tentative wave, felt her heart swell. She swallowed the emotion, kept her hand on Yakecan’s elbow until he finally sighed, letting the rifle barrel dip to the ground. She couldn’t resist crossing herself with her other hand.
It was a moment before she could speak. “Come on, Joe. It’s your throw.”
Yakecan didn’t move, tracking the wolf’s progress. “I don’t like turnin’ my back on ’em.”
“You know they ain’t gonna hurt you,” Mankiller said. “Might be your grandma under that fur.”
“Yeah,” Yakecan said, setting the rifle down. “S’pose you’re right. Might as well show you how the game is played, eh?” The smile was back, but there was no warmth in it now. “Need the spear.” He nodded toward the brown line sticking out of the hay bale.
“That’s right,” Mankiller said. “So, go get it, Deputy.”
Yakecan’s laugh was genuine. “Aye, ma’am.”
He trotted toward the spear, froze as another sound echoed toward them.
Not a howl this time. A low, rhythmic thudding. Distant but growing closer.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Helicopter?” Mankiller asked, but she already knew she was right.
“Yeah. We expectin’ anybody?”
Mankiller shook her head. “Probably droppin’ off hunters, or a research team.”
Yakecan looked doubtful. “We’d have heard ’bout that.”
Mankiller grunted. “Maybe they’re jus’ . . . passin’ through.”
“We’re in the middle of fuckin’ nowhere, boss. Nobody jus’ passes through.”
Mankiller grunted again. The rotors were much closer now, loud enough for the roaring of the turbines to be heard. “Sounds like a pretty big helo.”
“Military,” Yakecan said.
“Why would they be flyin’—”
“They wouldn’t. At least, they never have before.”
Mankiller nodded. “Think we better get out of sight.”
Yakecan moved with his deceptive speed, snatching up spear and hay bale in a single smooth motion. Mankiller retrieved the rifle and led the way toward an icy gulch carved by the runoff of a day that passed for warm this far north. The melting snow had washed a sizeable pile of bracken down the slope, forming it into a makeshift lean-to when it refroze.
Yakecan fell in behind her instinctively, crouching his way down the slope, his tread surprisingly quiet despite the frozen crust over the snow. He held the hay bale easily in his huge arms, his breathing smooth and even. Ever since Afghanistan, Mankiller had always felt uncomfortable with her back exposed. On the few occasions she ate at Bullock’s in Yellowknife, she always chose a chair with her back to the wall. Not when Yakecan was around. She k
ept her eyes front and scrambled under the frozen cover, felt Yakecan jostle her shoulder as he joined her.
The roar of the helo engine was even louder now, the dull whup whup whup of the rotors sounding like they were just over the ridge where she’d seen the wolf. Yakecan wedged his giant head up toward the icy cracks in the sticks overhead, his broad cheek pushing against her own with all the grace of a drunken bear.
“Move, you idiot,” she whispered.
He ignored her. “I can’t see it, boss. Sounds like it’s right over us.”
“Calm down,” Mankiller said, grabbing a fistful of Yakecan’s hood and pulling his head back. “Let me look.”
The film of ice over the sticks refracted the light, a prismatic spray of color that danced at the edges of her vision, but Mankiller had been squinting practically since the day she was born. There was an art to it, a thing that every Dene mastered by the time they were a few years old, scrunching your eyes just enough to keep you from seeing stars, but not so much that you missed what you were after. Yakecan said it was bright like that in Iraq, only it was the sun shining off the sand instead of the snow.
The bright white outside first wavered, then bent, then finally resolved as she got her eyes just the right degree of closed. She swept her gaze up, over the hill, unerringly tracking the echo of the rotors to their source in the ice-blue sky.
A huge rotor churned above a gray oval, no bigger than a football from this distance. It looked a little like a much larger version of the American Black Hawks that had shuttled her from hilltop to hilltop in the Korengal Valley, jammed shoulder to shoulder with soldiers from Montreal or Kansas or Tbilisi or any other of a legion of places she’d never see.
But the Army helos were green or, if they were one of the newer ones, that weird digital camouflage pattern that was so easy to see, it might as well have been hot pink. This one was a silk gray that matched the tenor of the sky. The angles of the airframe were different, softer and more numerous, a deft series of geometrical tweaks that made her eye want to slide right off it. Army Black Hawks flew rough, huge wheels dragging at the air, the shuddering cabin making all inside sore, tired, and vaguely sick after just a few minutes in the air. This helo was as smooth as a bullet. No lights. No weapon pods. No markings of any kind.