Fortress Frontier (Shadow Ops 2)

by Cole, Myke

  The Gahe swung at him, and Britton kicked upward, his boot knocking its forearm back. His toes registered the cold through his winter socks as he used the kick’s momentum to jump to his feet. He launched a gate toward the creature, but it flashed aside, its brother behind it moving in time so that the gate missed them both, cutting through the open ground until it split one of the trees at the edge of the copse, and Britton closed it, cursing.

  Therese raced to Downer’s side as Truelove knelt, concentrating. The corpses drew back from Scylla, running toward each other, the dead flesh fusing, melting together. They began to ball into one another, even as Scylla rotted them away. From the midst of that ferment, a shape began to rise.

  The Gahe circled Britton warily now, trying to bracket him, leery of his gates. Britton conjured one, darted it out toward one of them to gauge its reaction. It flinched, flashing backward. He spun to face the other, the one-armed creature he’d fought and wounded before, and opened his hand, causing it to dart back as well. Then he turned back to the original Gahe as it charged, too close to dodge, the gate catching it in the abdomen and slicing it in half. He felt the other Gahe collide with his back, tearing at his rucksack, filling him with cold.

  The black mist from the Gahe’s bisected corpse washed over him. He burned with cold, but only for a moment, then all was numbness and he staggered forward, teeth chattering. He felt his rucksack tear away and the weight of the other Gahe break off. Truelove’s army of corpses had melded into a huge creature, a giant golem of dead matter. Its marbled flesh was a gray patchwork of shredded uniforms, dried blood, and jutting gristle and bone. It swung a dead fist at Scylla, who backpedaled, grinning fiercely, rotting it even as it came on. Britton could see it diminishing, withering beneath the tide of her decaying magic. It wouldn’t last long.

  He pivoted on his knee, snapped open a gate on the rose moss bowl, leveled it at the Gahe, who circled him, cautious without its partner. Therese, Downer slack in her arms, raced toward him. ‘Oscar!’ she shouted. ‘Oscar!’ Beyond her, the other Gahe still tangled with Downer’s elementals, the stuttering spinning dance continuing with no clear victor.

  Bone-deep cold wracked Britton with shivers that threatened to interrupt the tide of his magic. The Gahe seemed to sense this and flashed to one side. He barely managed to keep up with it, the edge of the gate leveled between them. His arms felt like lead weights. A tooth cracked as he bit down in the effort to keep his tide focused.

  Downer was . . . well . . . down, Truelove’s undead golem eroding every second. Britton didn’t think he could hang on much longer, and he wasn’t leaving Therese to face Scylla and her new ally alone.

  ‘Simon! Come on!’ he shouted.

  He upended the gate, turning it toward Therese. She raced through, Downer still in her arms. Truelove spun, and Britton sent the gate skidding toward him, nearly taking his head off. But Truelove ducked and let himself fall sideways through. Scylla cursed as Truelove used his last burst of magic to force the undead golem to leap onto her, knocking her to the ground and buying Britton a few precious moments.

  The Gahe flew forward as Britton slid the gate back toward himself. Its good arm gripped his throat, sending him spiraling into chilly darkness. The other arm was still the pulsing tendril. It pulled him forward, opening its huge slit of a mouth, bright teeth long as knives.

  Then it shrieked as its other arm fell away, sliced off by the gate’s edge. Black smoke washed over Britton as he turned the gate and fell forward into it, shutting it behind him.

  He lay, facedown in the frostbitten moss, shivering.

  The cold wracked him every bit as much as Scylla’s magic had. His body spasmed, muscles clenching painfully, his skin alternately registering burning and numbness. Beneath it all, he felt a slow, spreading warmth, not the gentle touch of Therese’s healing magic. This was the succubus kiss of hypothermia, beckoning him down into the dark. He knew that, somewhere nearby, Downer must be enduring the same thing.

  ‘Li . . . ligh . . . light a fire,’ he managed through chattering teeth. He heard Therese unzipping her rucksack, still on her back throughout the fight. A body nestled in beside him, cold as a block of ice. Downer. Therese spread her sleeping bag over them and then he felt her weight as she lay across them both, adding her body heat to theirs as her healing magic shored up the cell walls of their flesh, pushing against the ice crystals threatening to form there. Therese was no Hydromancer. She couldn’t manipulate the water in their bodies. Nor was she an Aeromancer, who could heat the air around them. But she could make their blood pump faster, moving it to the areas worst affected by the cold, increasing their body heat, forcing their organs to push on where they would otherwise fail.

  Britton caught a whiff of kerosene smoke as Truelove started a fire. He felt Downer’s magic Draw around him as she made an elemental and set it to building the blaze higher and hotter. Britton blacked out. When he came to, he had been pushed up close to the fire. Downer’s warming body was pressed against him, and Truelove and Therese now both lay across them. Their weight was smothering, the heat of the fire so close he felt his clothing smoldering, but he lacked the strength to protest.

  He’d given all he had. Therese and Truelove had gotten them to this point. He would trust them to see them the rest of the way. His chest felt heavy. His skin stopped reporting pain, and he took a final breath and surrendered to exhaustion, following the trail of warmth down into darkness.

  He awoke leaning against a tree, Therese beside him. She’d removed his boots and laid her hands against his feet. The warmth of her magic raced up his legs, causing tingling at his knees. Below that point, he could feel nothing. The hard, waxy surface of his skin had sprouted purple-and-yellow blisters, beginning to retreat under her ministrations.

  He watched her work, grateful beyond measure. ‘I’m lucky to know you.’

  She shrugged. ‘It was touch-and-go with both of you. Moderate frostbite. I got to you before the flesh died. As the feeling comes back, it’s going to hurt like hell, but you’ll recover.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. Already, his hands and feet were throbbing painfully. They’d lost the tent with his rucksack, but the fire Truelove had built was blazing brightly now, fed by a couple of big logs he’d dragged over. The flames lit up the gathering night. It might alert authorities, but Britton was too weak to deal with that now. Downer’s elemental was gone, and he couldn’t sense her magic at all.

  ‘Sarah?’ he asked, trying to sit up.

  ‘She’s okay,’ Truelove said. He pointed to what Britton had assumed was a log beside the fire. It was Downer, bundled into a sleeping bag, unconscious.

  ‘The wound in her chest is . . . infected somehow,’ Therese said. ‘I was able to get it closed, but it’s going to need further treatment. The Gahe have some kind of poison, I think. I’ve tried everything I know how to do. Boosted her white blood cell and lymphocyte activity, but it’s not helping enough. Back in the cash, we’d sometimes use Terramancers to root out serious infections. Bacteria are just tiny plants, right? They respond to Earth magic. But this feels . . . different. Nastier. Whatever the Gahe put in her, it’s sticking around.’

  ‘Will she die?’ Britton asked.

  ‘Not anytime soon, but I need help here. She’s resting for now. Was frostbitten worse than you. She lost a couple of fingers. I’ve regrown them as best I could, but she won’t be playing guitar again.’

  Truelove pressed a hot plastic canteen into Britton’s hand. ‘It’s soup. Salty. It’ll warm you up.’

  Britton shook his head and pressed the hot bottle into his armpit. ‘Didn’t they give you field medical?’

  Truelove shrugged. ‘We escaped before graduation. They probably saved that crap for last.’

  ‘After exposure to severe cold,’ Britton said, ‘hot liquid is more likely to put you in cardiac arrest. Don’t give any to Sarah either. We need to wait a few hours until we’re sure our core temperatures have stabilized. You’re sure she’s
okay?’

  Therese shook her head. ‘She’s tough as nails, Oscar. I’m as sure as I can be. How do you feel?’

  Britton’s body felt as if it were on fire, and began to itch horribly, but he knew better than to scratch. He’d done cold-weather training in the army and knew exactly where that road led. His head felt clear and his heartbeat steady. He leaned forward, and the world swam slightly, but his focus returned quickly.

  ‘I think I’m okay,’ he said. ‘I’m a little worried about that fire. Nobody’s supposed to camp out here, and nobody in their right mind would at night in the cold season. Anybody sees light, they’re going to assume it’s a forest fire and come running.’

  Therese nodded. ‘Just a few more minutes, Oscar. For Sarah if not for you. We have to risk it.’

  Britton sat up. Therese and Truelove moved to support him, but he shook them off. ‘Thanks, but I’m okay.’

  ‘So,’ Truelove ventured, ‘that didn’t work out so well.’

  ‘No,’ Britton replied. ‘It didn’t. They say no plan survives contact with the enemy, but that was beyond the pale. I thought she was fighting the Gahe when I saw her, but she was either putting on a show, or I just caught the tail end of it.’ He watched their eyes, looking for blame, but for now at least, he found none.

  ‘They definitely recognized us from the Mescalero op,’ Truelove said. ‘Might be they just hated us more than her.’

  ‘I think it’s fair to say we got our asses handed to us,’ Britton said. ‘I couldn’t Suppress her at all. She’s far too strong. I don’t want to go up against her and the Gahe together again. Not without a better plan, anyway. We barely made it out of there.’

  ‘Scylla was . . .’ Therese trailed off. ‘We can’t go after her, Oscar.’

  Britton pursed his lips, then grimaced as the movement sent needles of pain through his mouth. ‘No, we can’t. Not right now. I promise we’ll try again, Therese. I’m not just dropping this, but we can’t—’

  ‘I know, Oscar,’ Therese cut him off.

  Britton stood. He’d unleashed Scylla on the world, and now he’d failed to make good on his promise to bring her down. The guilt gnawed at him. He swallowed and tried to focus on what could be done. ‘What we need is a safe place. Somewhere we can get warm and fed. We’ve also got to figure out what’s going on with Downer.

  ‘We’ve got to find Swift. Maybe he can help.’

  Therese nodded.

  ‘Once you’re sure that Sarah is warm, put extra clothing on her and get that fire out,’ Britton said. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can.’ He handed the hot canteen back to Truelove. ‘Give this to her once she’s up and coherent, not before. Do it too soon, and she could have a heart attack.’

  ‘Not while I’m here,’ Therese said.

  Britton nodded. ‘Therese, can you . . . uh . . . mix up my face a little? Don’t ruin my good looks forever, but could you make me a little harder to recognize?’

  ‘I think so. It’s going to hurt, though.’

  ‘Can’t be worse than what I’ve got going already,’ Britton answered, wincing at his burning hands and feet. ‘Let’s get it done.’

  Therese placed her hands on his face and he bit down to keep from screaming. The warmth of her magic flooded him, but where the tendrils of her current touched, they wrenched his flesh. He felt his nose bending, his cheeks rising, his lips spreading horizontally. One ear bent back until he swore it would be torn away.

  At last it was done, and he fell back, sweating. ‘How do I look?’ he asked. The words came out slurred, his lips feeling tight against his face.

  ‘Like someone beat your ass and set you on fire,’ Truelove said, wrinkling his nose.

  ‘Can you tell it’s me?’

  Therese shook her head. ‘I better be able to fix that.’

  ‘Where are you going?’ Truelove asked.

  ‘To check my email,’ Britton answered. ‘Sit tight. Shouldn’t take too long.’

  Britton gate-hopped back to the Source, then to the town of Brattleboro, Vermont, where’d he’d once visited with his father during a brief flirtation with the possibility of boarding school. After making sure his destination was clear, he stepped through the gate beside the trash-strewn Dumpsters behind the coffee shop where he’d stopped with his father to grab lunch. Britton thrust his hands in his pockets and hugged his coat tightly to him, before walking around the front of the building. Brattleboro was hours away from his hometown of Shelburne, and he doubted anyone would recognize him here. With Therese’s mangling of his face, he felt doubly secure in his anonymity.

  He pushed through the glass front door. Posters extolling the virtues of good books and good coffee lined the walls, circling wooden tables covered with newspapers, food, and laptop computers. A few people were scattered around, chatting, reading, or typing. The shop was warm and inviting, the smell of sandwiches and coffee filling the air. Britton had to fight the urge to pull up a chair and sit down for a while. Nobody noticed his entry, and he picked out a young man, probably a student, with thick black-framed glasses and a bulky gray sweater, hunched over his laptop.

  Britton walked over to him, head down. ‘You get on the wifi okay?’

  The young man nodded absently, not looking up from his work.

  ‘Then I’m sorry I have to do this.’ Britton reached over and yanked the laptop away from him, ripping it free from his power cord. ‘I’ll make good on it, if I ever can,’ he said to the man, who fell backward off his chair and began to scramble to his feet, shouting. Britton opened a gate back to the Source and stepped through.

  He paused in the grass outside Marty’s village long enough to cast a glance toward it. It was quiet, torchlit, seemingly peaceful. If Marty had been unequal to the crisis Britton had stirred up, it didn’t show from this distance. Britton added making it up to Marty to the long list of things he needed to do if he could ever get his feet under him, and opened a gate on a dark corner beside the elevator bank in the Brooks Memorial Library, just a little way from the coffee shop he’d just visited.

  The library was shuttered and dark. Britton could see lights in the offices upstairs, hear voices and footsteps, but the stacks and desks on the ground floor were empty. He stepped through the gate and into the shadows pooling by the elevator shaft. He listened to the voices overhead, making sure he was alone. His eyes adjusted slowly to the darkness, and he traced the outline of the reference desk, the silent monitors atop it. Nothing moved.

  He slid down to a sitting position and opened the laptop. He toggled the wifi and connected to the library’s network, opening a Web browser, careful to avoid looking at anything else on the machine. Just because he was a thief didn’t mean he needed to be a snoop. He couldn’t avoid seeing the photograph the owner had put on the desktop. It was a shot of the young man he’d stolen the computer from sitting at a desk in front of an empty classroom, looking over his shoulder, grinning at the camera. A banner hung on the wall, depicting a stylized white steeple on a green background with the letters UVM beneath. Probably a graduate student or adjunct professor at the University of Vermont, Britton thought. The campus was just a fifteen-minute drive from the house he’d grown up in though he’d never considered going there, his desire to get away from his father far too strong. Britton doubted the poor guy could afford a new laptop and briefly considered leaving it behind once he’d finished, with a note to return it to its owner. He bet the folks working at the library were honest enough to do that.

  But the SOC was clever enough to perform electronic forensics on it as well, maybe skillfully enough to figure out where Swift was. He couldn’t risk it.

  A thief then, and a real one. Hopefully, that guy had rich parents or renter’s insurance. He sighed and did a quick Internet search on the words ‘gate’ and ‘White House’. A number of stories came up, and he clicked on a campaign video by one of President Walsh’s front-running opponents in the upcoming election, Senator Ahmad Fareed.

  Words scrolled across th
e screen. SENATOR AHMAD FAREED competed with ghosted text reading HONESTY, INTEGRITY, and STRAIGHT TALK. Fareed’s photograph appeared, a sallow, craggy-faced man with a genuine smile and earnest brown eyes.

  The film cut to Senator Whalen, Chairman of the Reawakening Commission, standing behind a podium. General Tommy Arrow, the Air Force Chief of Staff, stood at the microphone.

  THE GOVERNMENT LIED ABOUT WATERGATE AND NANNY GATE. HERE’S WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT GATE-GATE. The film cut to cell-phone videos of wounded Supernatural Operations Corps assaulters, led by a battered Harlequin, limping onto the White House lawn. Behind them stood the gate that Oscar Britton had opened after defeating them. White-shirted Secret Service agents milled around them, unsure of what to do. Crowds pressed against the lawn’s iron perimeter fence, snapping photos. Britton turned the volume down so that only a whisper of sound reached him.

  Then he chuckled. Gate-Gate. That was a nice touch.

  General Arrow’s voice cut in, flinty and commanding. ‘What you’re seeing is nothing more than air force experimental technology that deals with the logistical challenge of transporting large bodies of troops. Arthur C. Clarke once said that “any technology, if sufficiently advanced, is indistinguishable from magic”. What you’re seeing here is just that, advanced technology, not magic.’

  DO YOU BELIEVE HIM? Scrolling text asked.

  Senator Whalen’s voice came in. ‘Portamancy remains a Prohibited magical school, and the United States government does not traffic in it.’

  DO YOU BELIEVE HER?

  The film showed a sober-looking man in a gray suit and red tie stepping up to the microphone. HOWARD HAND, the text read, CEO – ENTERTECH CORPORATION.

  ‘I’m afraid that this incident is the fault of a few negligent and overly enthusiastic contract engineers,’ Hand said. ‘I want to assure you that the responsible parties have been disciplined, dismissed from Entertech, and are facing prosecution for unauthorized disclosure of classified information. Entertech remains committed to an ongoing and productive relationship with the military. “Serving those who serve” has always been our motto.’