by Myke Cole
As Fort Wadsworth came into view, the dull thudding of rotors sounded, and Bookbinder made out two Blackhawk helicopters growing on the horizon. Their door gunners pumped a few short bursts of fire into the depths off the Breakwater’s starboard quarter, and the goblins finally gave up the fight altogether, the churning water finally going still. Bookbinder forced down the anger that rose at their appearance, but Marks gave it voice. ‘Better late than never.’
The helos hovered over the ship. Bookbinder guessed they were trying to radio, but now had a good look at the damaged radar mast. They finally came as low as they could before tossing out a handheld radio wrapped in a poncho liner. Marks ran down to retrieve it, held it to his ear, and returned to the bridge with an arched eyebrow.
‘It’s for you,’ he said, handing the radio to Bookbinder.
Bookbinder took it. ‘General Bookbinder.’
‘General, this is Chief Warrant Officer Grieves from Incident Command Post Battery Park. I’m glad you’re all right. We need to take you back to Manhattan.’
‘I’m fine, but we’ve got dead and wounded on board. This ship is in a bad way.’
‘Drop anchor where you are. We’ll load up the whole crew and take them in. We can use the help.’
‘No way,’ Bonhomme said. ‘This is my ship. I’m not scuttling her, and I’m not abandoning her.’
Bookbinder relayed this to the helo. Grieves’s response was doubtful. ‘You sure you can make it? You look . . . beat up from here.’
Bonhomme’s eyes flashed. ‘It’s not even a mile from the pier. I can get her in.’
‘Negative. No liftoff needed, they’ll get in on their own power,’ Bookbinder translated. He turned to Bonhomme. ‘It’s fine, skipper. You take your ship home.’
‘I’m sorry, I . . .’
Bookbinder couldn’t bear to hear it. He remembered cowering before the bullying commander of FOB Frontier, Colonel Taylor, as the man’s spit flew across the bridge of his nose. He hadn’t been equal to the task, unable to stand up when he needed to.
Until, suddenly, he had.
Bonhomme’s course was different, but too similar for Bookbinder to hold any grudge for his initial panic. He’d rallied. Bookbinder would have gone to pieces trying to hold FOB Frontier together if it hadn’t been for Crucible, rock-steady at his side. I guess we all have our Crucibles. I was Bonhomme’s.
‘All right,’ Grieves said. ‘They can head in, but you need to come right now, sir.’
Bookbinder hesitated a moment. A part of him rebelled against leaving the Breakwater after all they’d been through, but the real fight was on the island. Manhattan by helo was closer and faster than Staten Island on this limping ship.
He turned to Bonhomme and Marks. ‘Gentlemen.’
Bonhomme stared, Marks inclined his head. ‘We’ll get back, then we’ll get in the fight.’
‘I’ve got a feeling that’s where I’ll be,’ Bookbinder said. ‘See you soon.’
Bonhomme insisted on caring for his own, but the crew carefully wrapped Ripple’s corpse in blankets, hoisting it up after Bookbinder. He stared at the rumpled cloth in the bottom of the helo cabin as they headed inland, the Breakwater slowly dwindling to a speck below them.
The two helicopters encountered no resistance as they covered the rest of the distance to Manhattan’s southern tip, where one broke off to make for the northern barricades while the other descended slowly over Castle Clinton.
Bookbinder looked out of the open cabin. The park below was still burning in patches, strewn with rubble and fragments of smoking metal. Corpses were neatly stacked in a pile outnumbering the living. The survivors were near corpses themselves, filthy, ragged, and exhausted. Dead vermin were scattered everywhere, pigeons and rats mostly. Two soldiers were straining with entrenching tools, shoveling them into a pile that was already so high it threatened to topple over on them.
My God. What the hell happened here?
The Blackhawk touched down, and Bookbinder cradled Ripple’s corpse in his arms. No sooner had he stepped out than the defenders began to load up the open cabin space with wounded and a few civilians. They moved mechanically, eyes hollow, paying no attention to the star on his uniform, too tired to notice or care.
Bookbinder laid Ripple gently on the ground, then tapped an airman on the shoulder. The man’s rank had been lost when his sleeve burned away. The arm beneath was covered with bandages already stained yellow and red from the wound beneath.
The airman looked up at him, blinked. Then his eyes fell across the star and he slowly dragged his hand up in a salute. ‘Sorry, General.’
Bookbinder returned the salute, realized he was uncovered. He’d lost his patrol cap somewhere during the fighting on the Breakwater. Too tired to care, he waved the salute off. ‘I think we’re past protocol for now, son. What’s going on?’
The airman gestured toward the castle interior. ‘Colonel Thorsson can explain everything, sir. You bringing help?’
They look like they could use it.
‘Sure, I am.’ The lie turned his stomach, but he couldn’t bring himself to tell the truth. Not to this exhausted kid. ‘Help’s on the way.’
The airman nodded and stumbled off, shuffling like the walking dead.
Bookbinder made his way to the castle entrance. Two bulletproof barriers stood to either side, signs of a guard post that had once been set up here though it wasn’t manned now.
Inside, soldiers worked in silence, triaging wounded, dispensing ammunition, all with the same hollow desperation Bookbinder had seen in the airman’s eyes.
Lieutenant Colonel Thorsson leaned over a map sketched in charcoal pencil on butcher paper, talking in hushed tones with a young captain. Harlequin looked up as Bookbinder walked in, his expression igniting.
He reached Bookbinder in two strides and shook his hand hard enough to sprain his wrist. ‘Oh, thank God. Thank fucking God. It’s so good to see you, sir.’
Bookbinder gently pushed him back, nodded to the captain, who grinned despite a bloody bandage indicating the loss of an eye.
‘Good to see you, too, Colonel. I would have come sooner, but we had goblin trouble out on the water.’
‘There’s goblin trouble everywhere, sir. Our problem is the mountain gods. We need something that can hurt them.’
‘The SOC can hurt them.’
‘The SOC’s pinned down, sir. Mescalero.’
‘Mescalero . . . ?’ Bookbinder began.
‘It’s right on top of our nuclear arsenal at White Sands,’ the captain said. ‘We can’t afford to lose control over that Breach.’
Bookbinder shook his head. ‘Jesus.’
‘We were short on magical support to begin with. Working mostly off training Covens here, and few enough of them as it is. We just got hit again, and hard.’
Bookbinder remembered the court of Ajathashatru the Fifth. The Naga Raja had kept him virtually imprisoned there in the hopes of using his power to imbue the naga arsenal with magic.
‘Magic bullets. You need me to make magic bullets.’
‘Can you do that for us, sir? Our only other option is to reach out to some Selfer gangs in theater. I was just talking to Captain Cormack about doing that. With you here, we won’t have to.’
Bookbinder had always put his duty first, but he didn’t have a star on his chest for no reason. If there was a time to use his rank, it was now. ‘First, I’ve got someone I need to bury.’
‘Respectfully, sir, we’ve got plenty of people to bury.’
‘Then let’s do right by all of them. We can’t fight standing knee-deep in our own dead.’ He took in Harlequin’s shadowed eyes, his matted, bloody scalp. ‘Let’s take a minute to lick our wounds. Then we can get back in the fight.’
At Harlequin’s request, Drake magicked a
tomb for Hewitt’s remains in the concrete foundation of the castle. There was little left to bury, but Harlequin had insisted. The Novice had even raised Hewitt’s name in stone letters over the spot. ‘He fought like a lion to hold this ground,’ Harlequin said. ‘He shouldn’t give it up now.’
Drake also opened a hole big enough for a mass grave. The Novice seemed eager for the chance to do something, looked gratefully at Bookbinder when he’d given him the detail. He took him aside as the bodies were laid in the pit as gently as could be, which, given so many corpses and so few hands to do the work, wasn’t very gentle at all.
‘Listen, Novice. I’ve got someone . . . important to me.’ He pointed at Ripple’s corpse, a tiny shape under the blanket. ‘I want you to take care of that one for me. Put her apart, deeper down. Do it right.’
Drake’s jaw set. His eyes focused, and Bookbinder knew he’d made the right call. ‘What’d she do, sir?’
‘She saved my life,’ Bookbinder said. ‘I want a grave I can visit.’
Drake nodded and set off. Bookbinder finally let himself return to Castle Clinton, where he slumped in a folding chair, sipping on bottled water. He let his head loll forward, eyes half-closing. His uniform was still striped with sweat and long ochre streaks that could have been older blood or might have been rust from the Breakwater. White patches bloomed across the fabric. Salt. He smiled inwardly. I’m a real sailor now.
He looked up. Harlequin had come into the room and sat down across from him, though he was too tired to notice when. He raised his head with an effort. Harlequin’s eyes were half-shut, with bruised-looking half-moons beneath them. When was the last time he slept? Bookbinder wondered. My God, that’s what I look like, isn’t it?
‘You okay?’ Bookbinder asked.
Harlequin didn’t bother to look up, reveling in the rest that came from simply allowing his neck to take the weight of his head. He half shrugged. ‘Picking ’em up and putting ’em down, sir.’
Bookbinder floated on his fatigue, stared off into the middle distance.
‘You know, Gatanas said I was supposed to surrender command to you once you arrived,’ Harlequin said.
Bookbinder snorted. ‘Hell, no. You’ve got things as well in hand as they can be.’
Silence followed, then he laughed, a short bark.
‘What?’ Harlequin asked.
‘It’s just that, when we were at the FOB, the only thing I really wanted in life was to be a real dyed-in-the-wool commander. Now I’m doing it, and I can’t think of anything I want less.’
Harlequin nodded. ‘You got back with your family?’
‘I’m in the doghouse with Julie,’ Bookbinder said. ‘Maybe if we win this thing and get medals from the president on TV, she’ll get over it.’
‘In the doghouse?’ Harlequin raised an eyebrow.
‘She’s . . . distant. I guess you’re away from a person for a really long time, then when I got back, they wouldn’t let me see her. Between the tests and the questioning, I never really came home. All that time, she’s hearing from the news and the other officers’ wives that I’m some kind of traitor. That can put cracks in a person.’
‘Or make her draw closer to you. That’s what should happen.’
Bookbinder shook his head. ‘We took up with one another in high school. She waited for me through academy, through every tour since. The Army was my life, same as yours. We’ve lived on or near a post since she was seventeen. All her friends are service. Everywhere we go. Everything we do. Did.’
Harlequin’s face was a mix of surprise and sympathy.
‘Ah, never mind,’ Bookbinder said. ‘She’ll come around.’
He didn’t know that, but somehow, saying it helped him believe it. ‘Once we beat this thing, that’ll make everything right, right?’
Harlequin snorted. ‘Most definitely, sir.’
‘Don’t get married.’
‘No danger of that.’
‘You got someone waiting for you?’
Harlequin was silent for a long time. ‘There was somebody. It didn’t work out.’
‘Happens to all of us. You move on.’
‘I never did, I guess.’
‘You’re a young man. Good-looking. You’ve been all over TV. I figured you’d have taken up with some vapid, music-video starlet. Hell, if things don’t work out with Julie, I am most definitely sowing my oats again for a while.’
Harlequin didn’t answer, and Bookbinder realized with a start that his back had gone stiff and his expression blank.
‘Ah, hell. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything.’
‘It’s all right, sir,’ Harlequin said. ‘It’s just that we’ve got a lot of work to do.’
‘Of course. Let’s get to it.’ They walked out of Castle Clinton and headed toward the barricade wall, saying no more of it, but Bookbinder’s mind churned. What happened to him?
‘I’m SOC, aren’t I?’ Bookbinder asked, trying to regain the friendly course of the conversation.
Harlequin arched an eyebrow, tapped one finger against the SOC patch Velcroed to Bookbinder’s sleeve, filthy and peeling off at one corner. ‘Says so right there.’
‘You guys all get call signs, don’t you?’
Harlequin shrugged. ‘Sooner or later, yeah.’
‘What the hell am I? Chopped liver? Are you guys waiting for me to make O-8 before you give me mine?’ Bookbinder looked down at his blank lapel. ‘I don’t even have a school pin.’
Harlequin broke out in a broad grin. ‘They don’t have a name for your school, sir.’
‘How is this my fault? I’m pulling rank here. I’m a goddamn general. Fix this.’
Harlequin smiled wider, then went thoughtful. He fished in a cargo pocket, then yanked off a bit of loose thread from his uniform. ‘With your permission, sir,’ he said, sticking the frayed string to a bare patch of Velcro where Bookbinder’s rank had begun to peel off. ‘There’s your pin, sir. I hereby christen you “Binder”.’
Bookbinder looked down at the string. ‘What’s this?’
‘You know, like a rope. For binding things.’
Bookbinder blinked.
‘What?’ Harlequin asked. ‘It fits. And it’ll be easier for everyone to remember.’
‘Binder,’ Bookbinder said, trying out the name. He covered the book in his name tape with a finger. ‘Binder. That works. I like it.’
They had barely reconstituted the perimeter when the enemy came on again.
Harlequin, Bookbinder, and Cormack took up positions in one of the jury-rigged observation towers nestled up against the concrete barricades. The Gahe were bolder now, slivers of black mixed in with the field of brown and green that marked the giants and goblins. Small pockets formed around them as the goblins gave them a wide berth, pushed off by the cold.
Shooters in the towers kept the rocs off while the last Fornax Aeromancer hovered above the barricade wall, sending blasts of lightning out whenever the Gahe moved forward. One of two remaining Kiowas patrolled the perimeter, fireballs streaking out as the Pyromancer inside did his work. The Gahe kept their distance, stutter-flashing back from each flame strike, but where one fell back, another two came forward. The Aeromancer lighted on the barricade wall long enough to guzzle a bottle of water. She bent over, hands on her knees, panted. Two Gahe raced for the concrete barriers, flashing against them, long, thin fingers prying at the seams between the T-walls. Where their hands touched, the concrete rimed over with dirty frost. A shout from the soldiers, and the Aeromancer jumped into the sky again, showering them with lightning, driving them back, only to dive back herself as a wyvern swooped in and nipped at her before being chased away by bursts of fire from the towers.
‘You weren’t kidding,’ Bookbinder said.
Harlequin nodded. ‘You arrived just
in time. I don’t know how long we can keep this up. They’re exhausted.’
‘Everybody’s exhausted.’
Harlequin shrugged. ‘You sure you can do this from here?’
Bookbinder nodded and waved at the helo as it made its next loop around the barricades. The Pyromancer shifted to the cabin’s edge, boots on the skid.
‘You sure you want me to do this, sir?’ The Pyromancer’s voice came over the radio.
‘I want you to hurry the hell up about it,’ Harlequin said, reaching forward and sending a blast of lightning down at another Gahe.
Bookbinder watched as the young man pulsed fire along his arm, then pointed down at the tower. Harlequin tossed Bookbinder a magazine of 5.56mm rounds. Bookbinder caught it, rotated the magazine, pointed it out toward the enemy.
‘What are you doing?’ Harlequin asked.
‘I’m about to Bind Fire Magic into a piece of metal just a couple of millimeters away from an explosive charge. If these puppies go off, I’d rather not be in the way. That okay with you?’
Harlequin smiled, and Bookbinder reached out with his current, feeling for the Pyromancer’s as he Bound the magic and sent the flame roaring down to them. His current interlaced with the Fire Magic and drew it off, weak and halting. The Novice was frightened he would hurt them, holding back.
‘Come on! Pick it up!’ Bookbinder shouted up at the helo. The Novice nodded, and the strength of the current rose, the flame jet thickening. He heard Harlequin curse and leap out of the tower, probably to drive off more of the Gahe, but ignored it, focusing on hauling the Pyromancer’s magic in until the magic roared in his veins. He turned the current, funneling it into the tips of the bullets, sighing in relief as the doubled flow poured out of him.
The magazine grew hot, and he cursed, tossing it in the air and catching it again with his hand shielded by a dirty sleeve cuff. The heat was concentrated to one side of the magazine. That was good. It was the most precise Binding he’d done so far, the bullet tips containing the magic, keeping it clear from the powder behind.