Gunz

by William Stacey

  "Love you, too." Clara turned the lights off.

  Sleep took its time, but when it finally came, Elizabeth was still holding Clara's hand.

  PRIVATE ALEX BENOIT stood at attention within his bright-white cell. He was in PT clothing—a light-green T-shirt, gray shorts, and running shoes. It was 5:15 a.m., fifteen minutes after reveille had been piped over the intercom, waking up the inmates at the Canadian Forces Service Prison and Detention Barracks, mockingly referred to as Club Ed—nicknamed for Canadian Forces Base Edmonton on which it was based. The inmates began every day at 5:00 a.m. and ended it at 9:20 p.m. Exactly. Every. Day. To say discipline was strict would be a vast disservice to the term—even speaking without permission was prohibited, not that Alex particularly wanted to speak to his wing-mate, the only other prisoner in the Serious Crime Wing.

  His small, sterile cell contained a window with metal wire across the glass, a gleaming steel toilet, and a slender bed topped with a thin cot-style mattress. At present, his cell was completely bare of bedding and clothes, all of which had been neatly folded and placed inside a tight plastic rectangular box stowed just outside the open door of his cell. He waited while the military police officers inspected his wing-mate's cell, a young soldier who had assaulted his girlfriend, beating her so badly she needed extensive facial reconstruction surgery.

  Alex heard them screaming at the young man, berating him because his bedding wasn't folded exactly right. Most likely, the bedding had been just fine, but it didn't matter. Like Alex, the MPs didn't like men who beat women. Most days, they spent an inordinate amount of time inspecting the young man's cell, finding fault with just about everything.

  Sucks to be him.

  Eventually, the two MPs, a large, bullet-headed sergeant and a thin corporal, moved on to Alex's cell. The sergeant brushed past Alex, spun about in his cell, then walked out again, muttering, "Passed."

  Alex always passed. In fact, he was the perfect prisoner. But that wasn't why the MPs cut him slack. It was because of his past service. They knew he had been a commissioned officer, a captain, and a highly decorated combat veteran with numerous tours in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other nasty places where things went boom all too often. But while his former commission meant nothing to these men—who, let's be honest, suspected all officers were raging candy asses—they also knew he had been a member of Joint Task Force 2. That changed everything. JTF-2 was the Canadian Forces' Tier-1 Special Forces unit. Highly respected all over the world, JTF-2 was as elite as you could get in the Canadian military. Its members were regarded with the same reverence and respect as other, better-known Special Forces units like the British Special Air Service or US Delta Force.

  Normally, it was unheard of for JTF-2 operators to end up in Club Ed. But normally, JTF-2 operators didn't kill their superior officer in hand-to-hand combat.

  Alex had.

  Following the ad-hoc rescue mission to Rubicon to rescue Colonel McKnight a year ago—and the subsequent death of Major "Buck" Buchanan—Alex had been a prisoner. His sentence would last another thirteen months, at which point he would be released from both prison and the military. Two years less a day, the maximum sentence he could serve in a military prison. He had gotten off lightly, and knew it. While the military had charged and convicted him of insubordination and assault, he was guilty of manslaughter—if not murder.

  Definitely mutiny.

  Overall, his sentence could have been much more severe.

  A number of factors had mitigated his sentence. One, his prior service in the Canadian Army had been exemplary, with numerous operational commendations. Two, there had been witnesses—other Special Forces soldiers, both Canadian and American, who had testified that Buck had attacked Alex, coming at him with a knife and clear lethal intent. Really, though, it was the third fact that had kept him from spending the rest of his life in prison: the crime had taken place on another planet while under strict operational security, op sec. Had the Canadian Army tried to charge Alex with the much more serious charges of manslaughter or murder, the trial would have gone to a civilian court, which would have meant open disclosure of the existence of Operation Rubicon and interstellar travel—as well as the existence of a hostile alien race, the dark elves.

  Some secrets were worth more than lives.

  Alex had accepted his light sentence gladly and quietly, knowing it was more than he deserved for taking another man's life.

  The MPs ordered Alex and his wing-mate out of their cells. Alex stepped forward, did a smart left turn on the march, and moved down the corridor, swinging his fists to the level of his shoulders, keeping his gaze firmly to his front, his chin up. The other prisoner fell in behind him, with the MPs screaming at him to "get his arms up."

  Every day was the same. An hour of physical fitness first, followed by showers and five minutes for non-verbal breakfast before they began their cleaning chores—all under the hawklike attention of the MPs.

  A bright-red stripe ran down the perfectly polished floor, and Alex and the other prisoner followed it, heading for the exercise yard outside. He marched out into the cool Albertan air. Canadian Forces Base Edmonton was located in the province of Alberta, where summers were cool, with virtually zero humidity.

  The other prisoners, twenty-three young men and one woman, were already waiting in ranks, all wearing identical gym clothing, all standing rigidly "at ease," their legs separated by two feet, their hands locked behind the small of their backs, and their gaze directed perfectly forward. They could have been statues. Alex and the other inmate joined the ranks.

  "Private Benoit!" yelled the MP Sergeant.

  Alex stamped to attention. "Yes, Sergeant."

  "You know what to do."

  "Yes, Sergeant."

  Alex marched out of ranks, his arms swinging high, and carried out a series of tight wheels until he stood before the other prisoners. He then took charge, leading them through a series of stretches and calisthenics to warm up. As always, no one spoke. The punishment for even a whisper was extreme and instant.

  While technically, the MPs were responsible for the conduct of drill and exercise, they took advantage of Alex's expertise with physical fitness. Once the warm-up was completed, Alex led the other prisoners through a series of muscle-building exercises and plyometric jumping drills. Within forty minutes, each prisoner was drenched in sweat and breathing heavily. All detainees lost weight at Club Ed. It was the ultimate fat-burning camp. All work, no cheat days.

  The workout completed, the MPs marched the detainees back into the barracks to return them to their cells for showers before breakfast.

  Two years, less a day, mused Alex as the hot water beat upon his back. Better than I deserve.

  3

  As it descended, the Dash-8 passenger aircraft hit a pocket of air and dropped suddenly, causing the sole flight attendant to stumble for a moment before taking her seat in preparation for landing. The propeller aircraft banked, circling the North Peace Regional Airport Terminal, and Elizabeth stared out her window, noting the presence of the dark-blue van parked in the terminal's loading zone. "Your ride awaits," she said to the young woman with the short blond hair sitting beside her.

  When Cassie "Starlight" Rogan didn't answer right away, Elizabeth looked over to see her sitting with her eyes closed, her hands tightly gripping the armrests.

  "Come on, Cassie," Elizabeth said, putting what she hoped was a reassuring tone to her voice. "You've been through an interstellar gateway to another world; this is just turbulence."

  Tops, one of the two very fit, very serious-looking young men sitting across the aisle—and the only other passengers on the aircraft—leaned forward and gave Elizabeth stink eye before shaking his head.

  Elizabeth whispered, "Sorry," although the flight attendant was too far away to have heard her. For the past year, every time the two women had to fly commercial air, Task Force Devil bought all the other seats on the aircraft—the military didn't like the optics of using military airc
raft in the sparsely populated north. Cassie, her eyes still tightly closed, snorted then smiled. "Careful, Elizabeth, or Sergeant Tops will shoot you for violating secrets and throw you overboard."

  "Overboard is for ships," said Tops. "This is a plane. Doesn't count. And don't call me Sergeant. Besides, I'm not shooting anybody. I don't dig the paperwork."

  Tops was a sergeant, Elizabeth knew, but his last name was actually Topper, Rick Topper—hence the oh-so-clever army nickname. Not that it would have made any difference had Cassie used his real name. Referring to rank in any capacity broke operational security, and Special Forces types like Tops were very serious about op sec… like, insanely serious. Cassie knew that, which was kind of the point. She considered teasing the operators to be a sport and had a well-developed disinterest in the army's rank system, purposely mixing up the officer and non-commissioned member ranks at every opportunity. After a year of this, Tops knew what she was doing, and so did his buddy sitting beside him, Master Corporal Cory Ward, a blond, blue-eyed, granite-jawed, and movie-star-handsome young man nicknamed ... well, no nickname, just referred to by his last name, "Ward."

  Sometimes soldiers went for simple.

  Ward put down his health-and-workout magazine, casting a mocking glance at Tops. "Good thing, 'cause you suck balls at paperwork."

  Tops frowned then rammed his elbow into Ward's ribs. "Shut it, dickless."

  Both men were Canadian soldiers, members of Canada's elite Special Forces unit Joint Task Force 2, and now assigned to Operation Rubicon and Task Force Devil, although the existence of both was a closely guarded secret. Operation Rubicon oversaw the joint Canadian-American endeavor to operate an interstellar gateway between earth and an alien world they had called Rubicon after the famous river near Rome. Task Force Devil was the military and civilian team that operated the Gateway Machine that opened the portal between worlds. Cassie and Elizabeth were special. They were termed mag-sens, magic-sensitives. For reasons no one understood, especially the two women, they were now somehow able to manipulate mana, unseen forces of magic, and channel those forces to cast magic—real magic. Now, Cassie and Elizabeth were volunteer members of the task force and had been training with the Special Forces soldiers for the last year, preparing to accompany them on further reconnaissance missions to Rubicon—if the task force ever mounted another mission.

  After the dark elf rulers of Rubicon had sent one of their mages back to earth, accompanied by a giant eight-legged pet basilisk, the dark-elf mage had killed dozens of people and kidnapped the task force's commanding officer, bringing him back to Rubicon through her own magical gateway. The surviving task force soldiers, as well as Cassie and Elizabeth, had mounted an unauthorized, ad-hoc rescue mission, traveling across space through the task force's Gateway Machine. They had then tracked the basilisk and the dark elf back to her fortress on Rubicon, where they had assaulted it, killing dozens of her strange fish-faced soldiers and trolls, her basilisk, and the mage herself, before escaping back to Earth. It had been the first-ever battle between humanity and an alien race, and as a result, the governments of the United States and Canada had decided it would be best to delay any further missions.

  Until things normalized.

  That had been a year ago.

  The Dash-8's wheels slammed onto the runway, and as the pilot applied the brakes, the tires screeched. Elizabeth reached over and patted Cassie's hand. "All safe."

  They had flown to Ottawa early that morning for a demonstration of their magic, highlighting what they could do for a grouping of senior Canadian and American government authorities. A year ago, when mana had first returned to this world, neither Elizabeth nor Cassie would have been able to channel mana that far from the dark elf's entry point near their home of Fort St. John, but the mana, it seemed, was spreading now, making such a demonstration feasible. Colonel Collingway, the new task force commander, had called it "a robust operational example of a developing new force-multiplier." The task force soldiers called it "another dog and pony show," the fifth in three months. What none of the senior staff admitted but everyone suspected was that Colonel Collingway was desperately trying to save Operation Rubicon from being defunded and shut down.

  Elizabeth thought Collingway was wasting his time, but she and Cassie had agreed to help the army, and so that was what they did. Like good little soldiers, they and their two bodyguards, Tops and Ward, had flown to Ottawa and channeled mana, levitating objects and creating magical lightning—Elizabeth rarely channeled fire anymore; after she'd almost burned to death, it didn't take a psychologist to figure out why—Cassie had even turned herself invisible, which was something to see, or not see. Everybody had seemed suitably impressed, but somehow Elizabeth doubted they had been impressed enough to continue funding a multi-billion-dollar operation that hadn't done anything for the last year. She was certain Operation Rubicon was in its final days. Clara thought so as well, which explained why she had just received notification of a promotion and transfer to a new assignment in eastern Ontario.

  Everything was changing.

  Today, though, her mind was on other matters. She and Cassie had been living on the secret army base in the wilderness, affectionately called "The Magic Kingdom," for a year now, but this weekend, Colonel Collingway had given Elizabeth permission to visit her family in Fort St. John. Both Tops and Ward would accompany her, but she'd get to see her brothers and her parents again. She had spoken to her family by phone over the past year, but this would be her first "leave."

  Her relationship with her mother was strained, but the last few times they had spoken, she had seemed different. She had even hinted at reconciliation. And—best of all—Elizabeth would finally be able to attend a proper Catholic Mass, something other than the nondenominational services held in the library on the base. Elizabeth had made her peace with a too-quickly changing world of magic and monsters, but she needed her relationship with God.

  Cassie was watching her.

  "What?"

  "You sure about this?"

  "They're my family. You should come. It's not too late to call Colonel Collingway and ask permission."

  "Elizabeth," snapped Tops.

  "Sorry, sorry." She waved her hand at him, biting her lower lip and smiling impishly at Cassie.

  Cassie had no family to visit. Her parents had died in a car accident years earlier, and her only sibling, an older sister, had been one of those killed by the basilisk—in fact, she had been bitten in half before Cassie's eyes.

  Cassie shook her head. "No, you go. I'm gonna spend some time at the mess tonight, show these soldier-boys how to play poker."

  Tops sighed heavily. "You're both hopeless."

  Elizabeth patted her hand. "You change your mind, you're always welcome."

  As the plane taxied to the terminal, Elizabeth looked out the window, wondering if she was inviting Cassie because she was being a good Christian or because she didn't want to be alone with her mother.

  4

  Elizabeth sat with her family in the Church of the Resurrection in Fort St. John, her parents on her right, her four younger brothers on her left, with the youngest, eight-year-old Stephen, glued to her side. In the pew in front of them sat their newest neighbors, the Johnsons—the heavyset bearded patriarch, Albert, and his rail-thin wife, Melissa, who had moved in several months ago. Her mother, looking better than she had in years, glanced down her thin nose at Elizabeth before reaching out, placing her hand over Elizabeth's, and squeezing it, displaying just the smallest hint of a smile. Her mother had always been a plain, stern woman and never wore makeup. Today, for a pleasant change, neither her mother nor her father stank of gin. In fact, her mother had proudly let slip that they had both "cut down" on their drinking. She prayed that was the case but secretly harbored her doubts. No one in the family would ever come out and admit it, but they were both closet alcoholics.

  She could forgive them their sins. After all, they were her only family.

  Elizabeth had chan
ged as well over the last year, entirely because of Clara. She had gained confidence and a sense of pride. She even wore makeup now, if only a touch—Cassie had insisted on teaching her the basics. Several of the young men in the church had made a point of coming over and saying hello to her and her family. Maybe they liked what they saw; maybe they picked up on her confidence. Either way, they were wasting their time.

  She was already in love.

  Glancing over her shoulder, she saw Tops and Ward in the last pew, looking suitably nondescript. Nondescript or not, her mother had already noted them sitting in the sedan across the street from their home. The North Peace Secondary school was across the street, and her mother often spied through the curtains, making sure the teenagers weren't up to any mischief, so naturally she had zeroed in on the two young men in minutes, suspecting they had to be burglars casing their home. When Elizabeth explained that they were her bodyguards, her mother wanted to invite them inside. Elizabeth, knowing neither man would have accepted—and would have been embarrassed—talked her out of it. If her mother knew that at this moment both men carried concealed firearms in church, she'd flip out.

  Stephen, who had proudly told her last night he was going to be a famous movie director, turned sideways on the pew to point their family's small handheld camcorder at her. She smiled and turned her head in a dramatic pose, tossing her hair back. He had been filming her triumphant return home since the moment she had walked through the front door. Since then, he had barely left her alone, no doubt terrified she'd disappear again. She felt bad for him. The last year had been hardest on him. The others—Rory, Christopher, and Peter—were in their early teens and had their own lives, their own friends. With Elizabeth gone, Stephen only had her parents now.

  That had to have been a challenge.