Shadow Ops: Control Point

by Myke Cole

  A cry sounded. Britton watched as a Roc banked toward Swift, its back brimming with Goblins, leveling stolen rifles at him. Swift’s attention was riveted on the assault from below, oblivious to the airborne threat moving toward him.

  Britton exploded into motion, running forward and extending a hand. A gate sliced open alongside the giant bird, severing one wing. It shrieked, flapped once, experimentally, fountaining blood onto the creatures below it, then tumbled over on its side and pitched to the ground.

  “Come on!” Britton was shouting. “Swift! Clear a fucking lane and come on!”

  Some of the Goblins to the rear of the mass surrounding the hut were beginning to turn, their eyes narrowing. An arrow thrummed through the air, narrowly missing Therese. Britton opened a gate on the roof of the Quonset hut, but the enrollees spun to face it, disbelieving.

  “Go through! Go through, you idiots!” Britton shouted, then shut the gate to open it again in front of Therese to intercept a spear hurtling toward her belly.

  A group of the Goblins had turned toward them, the muzzles of their wolves plunging and snarling, while the riders brandished swords and pistols. A wolf coiled on its haunches and sprang toward him. Britton caught it in midair with a gate and sent it sliding down through the mass of the creatures, forcing them to dive to either side.

  Britton’s skin began to itch, suddenly, maddeningly. His throat swelled, his tongue feeling as if it had been rolled in dust. He blinked, his eyes burning. A Goblin sorcerer moved toward them, splitting the white paint across its face as it screamed at them. It thrust its arms forward, and Britton felt his whole body cry out for water, as if he’d been wandering a desert for weeks. He swept his arm to one side, sliding the gate toward it, but the sorcerer threw itself backward, and he shut the gate to follow its progress.

  Another Goblin raced toward him, a huge bearded axe waving over its head. Britton managed to drop to his side, aiming a kick at the creature’s abdomen, and sending it flipping forward, the axe tumbling away from it. An arc of lightning plowed through the Goblins, raising shrieks and the stink of burning flesh to Britton’s nostrils, but the Goblin Hydromancer’s grip on him was still tight, and he crawled in the dirt, feeling his skin begin to peel away.

  Suddenly, the magic’s grip released him. He struggled to his feet to see Therese standing, her lips peeled back, fingers extended. She snarled, and the Goblins before them liquefied, flesh melting onto quivering trunks. Bared teeth dripped away, sliding into running gums that vanished to reveal shrinking jawbones. The cry that went up was unholy. What remained of the wolves and their riders danced bloody jigs. Broken hindquarters turned spastic circles. She had sworn she’d never Rend again, Britton thought. This is going to leave a mark.

  For the moment, the circle of Goblins surged back, horrified by the carnage. Therese’s current relaxed, and Britton could see her face fall, horrified at the damage she’d wrought. Can’t worry about that now. He snapped the gate open on the roof again and motioned to Swift. “Go! Go!”

  Swift gaped at the carnage beneath him for a moment before lighting on the roof and herding the remaining enrollees into the gate. Wavesign stumbled, nearly slid off the roof as a javelin flew past his calf, but Swift caught him under the armpits and shoved him through.

  Rotors whined overhead as two Kiowas appeared on the horizon, banking sharply toward them. The Goblins broke their paralysis and turned to face the new threat. Britton closed the gate and opened it in front of them. Therese stood, dumb, her eyes fixed on the field before her. Her mouth worked, silently. She’s no Scylla, he thought. He draped his arm around her shoulder as gently as he could and walked her through the gate, stepping into the bowl of moss where the enrollees had gathered around Marty, shivering in the cold. Swift stared around him at the woods, cradling his elbows, stupefied. Wavesign crouched at the base of tree, shivering in his own cloud of vapor.

  Marty had been busy in their absence, his arms full of mushrooms. A small pile of sampled plants had been gathered on a rock beside him. Now he stood and dashed among the SASS enrollees, clucking over wounds and producing his worn leather pouch.

  Therese paused a moment, then joined him, turning first to Britton. “Nothing I can do for you,” she said, her voice distant, clinical. “You need a Hydromancer, not a Healer.” She walked off, squatting by a young woman with a gash across her face, cupping her cheek and letting her magic knit the wound.

  “Therese…” he called after her. But she ignored him, losing herself in the bustle of her work.

  Later, he thought again. It’s not safe here. You’re in a state park not too far off the beaten path. The SOC still has a Portamancer. They can be here in an instant. How long before you are discovered? Before these people freeze?

  He looked back toward the crowd of enrollees. They squatted, miserable and shivering, muttering in low voices, most looking too shocked to do much. But Britton knew it wouldn’t last long.

  This is your fault. You got them into this. Now, you have to get them out.

  CHAPTER XXXII

  A SAFE PLACE

  …of course the muj had that crazy Muslim total prohibition on magic use. So they were reduced to packing all their gear in through those tight Waziristani defiles, little more than goat paths, really. They were counting on the cloud cover screening them from our air-assault teams. But they didn’t count on the Aeromantic support getting the skies cleared up in a matter of minutes.

  —Interview with COL Alexander Keifer, 101st Airborne Division

  Excerpted from Robin Hamdan’s 100 days in the FATA

  Britton stood, stunned. He had done it. He had fled the SOC, he had gotten away. Swift looked up at him, his eyes wide. You’re thinking the same thing. You have no idea what to do either. You were so focused on getting free that you never gave a minute’s thought to what you’d do once you got there.

  But Britton remembered running before. He remembered his world spinning away from him and keeping on regardless. He remembered staring at a hanging pay-phone receiver, smelling like stale beer.

  Baby steps, he thought. The first thing this crew needs is a leader. The crowd continued to mill, shivering.

  Peapod alone seemed to have any presence of mind. She swept her arms upward, and the trees bowed, extending branches to shelter them, keeping off the worst of the wind. Pyre stooped and heaped a pile of stones, running his hands over them until they glowed red-hot, sparking and cracking, warmer and brighter than any wood fire Britton had ever seen. The enrollees shivered around it, arms draped around knees. Britton worried that the light might alert the authorities but figured that the comfort was more needed at the moment. For now, panic had been staved off.

  “Thanks,” Swift managed. “What happened back there, with Scylla?”

  Britton almost told him, then decided to keep it to himself. You can’t afford a fight over that just now. Instead, he ignored the question. He glanced nervously skyward as the sound of a plane thrummed far overhead. Through a gap in Peapod’s shelter of trees, Britton could make out blinking red lights on the wings.

  “Where are we?” Swift asked.

  “Vermont,” Britton said. “State park. I went camping here once.”

  “We can’t stay here,” the Aeromancer said.

  “No, we can’t,” Britton replied.

  “We could head to Mexico,” Pyre piped up, “or Canada.”

  “So we can get rounded up and handed over as part of the reciprocity agreement?” Peapod asked. “Mexico is a damned vassal state.”

  “You got a better idea?” Pyre snapped.

  “Why can’t we just stay here? Or maybe go to some other wilderness? What about Alaska?”

  “We’re not survivalists!” someone in the crowd said.

  “We don’t have to be,” Peapod replied. “We’ve got magic.”

  “That won’t do us any good once the SOC starts hunting for us,” Swift said. “They’re better than we are.”

  “Bet you wish you’d spent
a little more time practicing with Salamander when you’d had the chance, eh, No-No boy?” Tsunami groused.

  This is getting out of control, Britton thought. Someone has to lead before things come totally apart.

  “That’s enough,” Britton said, his voice taking on the tone of command he’d used in the army. The group responded to it, looking up at him expectantly. What now?

  Britton felt fingers brush his own and looked down to see Marty at his side, looking wide-eyed at him. “Much angry,” the Goblin said. The others stared at him, and whispers ran through the clearing.

  “Why?” Marty asked, ignoring them. “Why angry?”

  Because I hurt them, Britton thought. I didn’t mean to, but I did. And now I have to make that right, Marty. Now I have to help them. But he didn’t say it. The group needed a commander, and it was not the time to show weakness or remorse. He only looked at Marty, his gaze level. “We have to find a place to go where the SOC can’t find us,” Britton said to Marty, his voice loud and full of confidence he didn’t feel. “That place can’t be in this world. It has to be in the Source, and well away from the FOB. We don’t know what else the SOC knows about the lay of the land there, but they will have a harder time finding and reaching us.” He made a point of not mentioning Billy, whose ability made reaching them no problem at all.

  We’ll just have to stay hidden, then.

  Marty pursed his lips and wiggled his ears as if to say of course. He punched Britton’s chest lightly and nodded. “We Mattab On Sorrah,” he said, tapping his eyelids and bowing. “We always help.”

  “This is my Mattab On Sorrah now,” Britton said. “The army is going to come for us.”

  The Goblin nodded and smiled. “I know.” He leaned in close, smiling and tapping Britton’s chest again. “Safe place.”

  “Yes, Marty, a safe place,” Britton said. “We have to take them there.”

  Marty paused for a moment, thinking. “Remember, bird head?”

  Leering in the torchlight, the striped bird skull, hung on the Goblin fastness where Britton had saved Fitzy’s life and been punished for it, rose in his mind. The Master Suppressor’s voice rose in his mind. You’re paid to be a weapon, not a hero. Remember that. “I remember,” he said to Marty.

  “Go there, I take you safe place.” The Goblin smiled.

  “Man, I really don’t want to go back there,” Britton said. He racked his brain for any image that he could recall well enough to gate to. But the landscape beneath the helicopter had blurred by too fast. The only thing he remembered well enough was FOB Frontier and the fortress. He could take them in some distance from it, but it would have to be in sight.

  “Can’t I take us back somewhere else?”

  Marty shook his head. “If not there, then not know where safe place. Go bird head. Then safe place.

  “Safe place,” Marty repeated, giving his ear-wiggling shrug.

  “This is your tribe? This is with your Mattab On Sorrah?”

  Marty nodded.

  Britton felt his emotions well up at the creature’s quickness to help strangers, but now was not the time to show it. He swallowed hard, hoping no one would notice how much the gesture affected him.

  “Uskar,” Marty said, gently tapping his own eyelids, then Britton’s. “Okay. Okay. Always help. You important.” He smiled gently, then leaned forward and imitated the human gesture, hugging Britton about the waist as best he could. “Important. Everything okay.”

  Britton patted the Goblin’s shoulders as he mastered himself. At last he turned to the remnants of the tribe and spoke, hoping his voice wouldn’t break.

  “Marty knows of a place we can go. Someplace safe in the Source. We’re going to take fifteen minutes to get everyone patched up as best we can, then we’re out of here.”

  “Back to the Source?” Pyre asked. “We just escaped from there!”

  “This is only temporary,” Britton said. “Do you honestly think there’s a place in the entire US safe for us? Or in any bordering nation? Besides, I can only gate us places I’ve seen. Or did you propose we walk to wherever we’re going to hide out? I know this isn’t ideal. I’m not offering you an end to running, just another place to run to.”

  “What the hell happened anyway?” one of the enrollees shouted. “How the hell did that Witch get free in the first place?”

  Swift looked frankly at him, arms folded across his chest.

  You’ll have to tell them eventually. If they’re going to follow you, it has to be under honest terms. “That’s my fault,” Britton answered. He paused, letting the stunned silence wash over him. “You want to blame someone, you can blame me.”

  He shouted down the chorus of protests that welled as the group began to grasp the impact of his words. “That’s enough! I’ve been soldiering long enough to know that if we’re going to live through this, it’s going to take discipline and teamwork. You may have done things however the hell you wanted to when you were on the run, but that changed in the SASS, and it’s not going to change back just because you’re free of it. You want to judge me? Judge me later. After we are all safe, after this latest round of running is at an end. I can’t bring the dead back to life. All I can do is save the lives that are remaining. What we need is a safe place, someone to shelter us until we can figure out what you want to do next. Marty can provide that safe place, and I can take us there. It’s the only chance we’ve got, and for it to work, you’re going to have to trust me and let me help you. You may not like it, but it’s the only way.”

  And what do you do once you get to Marty’s tribe? he asked himself. We rest, we get ourselves fed and patched up. Then we make plans. The first thing we need is a place to regroup, rest up, and rearm.

  “What if we stand and fight?” Swift asked, but his eyes showed he already knew the answer to his own question.

  “If you stand against the SOC, you will die, make no mistake,” Britton replied. “You have great heart, but you are too few and too poorly trained. The SOC are professional warriors. They make a study of killing with magic. I have trained with them far beyond the basic exercises you learned in the SASS. I’ve seen what they can do. Bravery isn’t enough. Skill beats will, every time. You’ve learned something of discipline and self-denial in your SASS training. That’ll give you a leg up over the average Selfer, but not nearly enough of a leg up.”

  “Yes, Oscar.” Therese spoke from beside a SASS enrollee with a broken javelin shaft protruding from his thigh. “Get us out of here. Do whatever you have to do to make us safe.” But her eyes were hard. Don’t think there won’t be a reckoning later. Britton nodded, his eyes scanning the group for a challenge. Swift turned away. Wavesign shivered, and Pyre gave a resigned nod.

  “All right,” Britton said. “If we’re going to function as a unit, we need a commander. That’s me unless anyone else thinks they can do a better job.”

  A quick glance around the ranks showed him that nobody thought they could, or if they did, didn’t have the gumption to challenge him. “First things first, many of you need healing and a chance to catch your breath. I’m going to have to gate us in outside a stronghold of creatures like Marty, but who are not friendly to us, and I can’t have wounds or exhaustion slowing us down. Fifteen minutes, then we go.”

  Marty worked tirelessly alongside Therese, enduring his frozen feet in silence until Therese noticed his pained expression. Britton used his pocketknife to cut the bottom third of the parka away, wrapping the fabric around Marty’s feet after Therese used her magic to repair the worst of the frostnip beginning to form on the Goblin’s soles. That had the added advantage of making the parka fit correctly. No longer tripped up by the long coat, Marty was soon moving around more easily.

  Fifteen minutes turned to twenty. Swift waved at the hot air emanating from the fire, sweeping his arms and circulating it through the small shelter of the bent boughs, warming the air to a comfortable temperature. Peapod bent to a small patch of wild onions and strawberries, gestur
ing until the fruits and vegetables responded to her magic. She gathered armloads of the swollen produce, distributing it among the group.

  Therese leaned against a tree in exhaustion when the group’s wounds were healed, but Marty would not sit still. He scurried about the clearing, lifting his giant feet high to avoid catching the tied-on fabric on roots and rocks. He high-stepped off into the underbrush, his breath hitching in excitement.

  “Marty! What the hell are you doing? Get back here!” Britton called.

  The Goblin stopped suddenly, staring intently.

  “What is he…” Therese asked, but was cut off by a furious squirrel perched on a pine branch directly above Marty’s head. It twitched its tail, chattering in rage at this strange creature invading its territory. Marty stared, wide-eyed and delighted, until Britton grabbed his hand and led him away.

  “Come on, Marty,” Britton said. “I know it’s interesting, but there’s no time for this now. I promise we can go on a hike once we’ve got everything settled.”

  Marty came along reluctantly, making petulant-sounding clucks deep in his throat and straining to look at the squirrel over his shoulder as they went.

  While the rest of them rested, Marty examined the new world with absentminded curiosity. He nearly danced with delight, his ears quivering, pointing at cluster of juniper berries, before gathering them and pressing them into the pockets of his parka.

  “Can eat!” Marty said, racing back to them with a handful of shriveled and frostbitten-looking mushrooms. Britton looked at the Goblin doubtfully.