by Myke Cole
Oscar strained to make it out, but the blizzard picked up, obscuring his vision. Stanley vanished in the deluge until all Oscar could see was his head, leaning back into the crook of another’s neck. The shadow behind him nuzzled him affectionately, like a lover.
“See you soon, son,” his father said, then the snow took Oscar, leaving only the crushing weight on his chest, constriction and lingering agony.
“Oscar.” The snow began to clear. The cold and agony re-mained.
“Oscar.” Not his father’s voice. Someone else. Someone good.
“Oscar, come on.” Something battered his cheeks, he tried to move his head away from it, but the slaps continued.
The snow resolved into a canvas ceiling supported by metal poles. Harsh sodium lights.
The cash.
“Oscar, look at me.” Therese’s almond eyes, wet with concern, filled his vision. She waved a hand in front of him.
Balanced on her fingertips was a steel insect, its segmented carapace still glossed with his blood. One end dangled a long wire, stingerlike. The other housed a clear plastic dome, pulsing a gentle blue light. Black numbers had been stenciled on the side.
“We got it,” he croaked. His voice burned in his throat.
“We got it,” she said, biting back tears. “How are you?”
He began to sit up, the ball of pain in his chest expanded. His head swam with drugged bewilderment and nausea. He leaned over the table and dry-heaved, the spasm aggravating his agony.
“Oh, God,” he said.
Therese put her hands on his chest, whole and unscarred. “Oscar, lie down. You can’t move yet.”
He shook his head, the motion nearly made him pass out. “No time. We’ve gotta get Marty.” And after that? Later. Take it step by step.
He swung his feet over the edge of the cot. They slammed down on the ground, and he nearly vomited again, but the solidity of a hard surface made him feel somewhat steadier.
“Oh, Jesus, you’re crazy,” Therese said, putting her shoulder in his armpit to support him. The smell of her hair soothed him, then made him sick again. His vision faded and returned in time with the pulsing agony in his chest.
“They’ll kill him,” he said, and forced his weight onto his feet. His knees failed him, and he sagged against Therese, who steadied herself with one hand on the cot.
She couldn’t carry him. He’d have to dig deep. He took a shaking step.
It took them nearly a minute to get halfway across the tiny room, but they made it. Therese still dangled the ATTD between two fingers.
“No,” he croaked, “get rid of it. It could go off any minute.”
Outside, the cash was erupting in noise and chaos. The word must have begun to arrive. A loud buzz of helicopters sounded overhead. Deep booms, some sounding like magic, some not.
Therese set the ATTD down on the cot and helped Britton walk. “What’s going on?”
“Later, we’ve got to move.”
“Where are we going?” she asked.
Britton slouched toward the dental unit. “Just look for MPs.”
They found them in abundance. A knot of them swarmed the urinalysis section, carbines pointed earthward but fingers braced tensely over triggers. Marty stood placidly inside a protective ring of surly Goblin orderlies. They snarled in their language at a translator who sat behind a laptop, shouting questions. The tent thronged with onlookers, furious Goblins, soldiers, and orderlies alike. Half of the MPs faced inward, keeping the angry Goblins from assaulting the translator. The other half faced outward, keeping the equally enraged humans from storming Marty.
Truelove and Downer stood outside the ring of MPs, lending their shouts to the throng. Truelove spotted Britton and ran to him.
“They’re trying to see if he had any accomplices on the staff,” the Necromancer said. “I’ve been trying to tell them it’s just a custom, but nobody is list— Wow. Are you okay?”
Britton nodded. “Need to talk to him.”
Truelove glanced nervously from Britton to Therese and back. “They’re not going to let you.”
Boom. Boom. The crackle of gunfire. “What the hell is going on out there?” Truelove asked. He took a step away from the circle, then looked nervously back to Marty.
“Stay here, I’m begging you,” Britton whispered as Therese helped him forward.
He tapped one of the MPs on the center of his body armor and pointed at the Goblin. The soldier wrinkled his brow. “Shouldn’t you be lying down?”
Therese gestured to Marty. “Please! We all know what you’re going to do to him, just let us say good-bye?”
“Fine by me, ma’am,” the MP said, “so long as you’re willing to pay for the lawyer when they write me up for disciplinary action.” He took a half step to better block their progress.
The Goblins continued to shout. The linguist typed furiously on his laptop, shouting back.
No time.
“Marty!” Britton bellowed. His lungs flexed with the effort, and the balloon of pain swamped him. He stumbled against Therese, and Truelove raced to help her hold him up.
Boom. Boom. Thup. Thup. Thup. Three MPs listened to their squawking radios, then took off, running for the cash entrance.
Marty looked up, eyes widening as he noticed Britton. He began to shout.
The Goblins around him surged, throwing themselves at the MPs. The ring widened in reaction, the linguist scrambling backward, snatching up his laptop. The crowd of onlookers stumbled backward, and the tent shook.
“I see him!” Marty shouted. “I see friend!”
The MP officer, a pale-faced lieutenant who looked almost as young as Downer, pulled out his pistol, leveling it at Marty. “Calm down! Now just calm the hell down!”
But Marty would not calm down. He called for Britton as the Goblin contractors clawed at the MPs, a few of whom began to flail with the butts of their carbines.
Britton managed to raise his head. “This is getting out of control, Lieutenant. I’d put that gun down if I were you. You take a shot in here, and you’re going to hit a friendly anyway.”
The lieutenant snatched his pistol backward as one of the Goblin contractors lunged at it, and cursed.
“Damn it, let him through!” he called to the MP in front of Britton.
A boom sounded. Closer that time. Had the ATTD gone off? No, it wasn’t that close.
Yet.
The crowd of Goblins immediately calmed, stepping back and surrounding Marty again as the MP stepped aside, allowing Therese and Truelove to help Britton into the ring.
He shrugged off their grip, kneeling before Marty. The Goblin placed his hands on Britton’s shoulders—huge eyes looking into his. The white spots of his face were smeared, his breath sour. “You hurt.”
Britton rested his head on Marty’s narrow shoulder and whispered in his ear. “Yeah, but it’s going to be okay. We have to go now.”
The lieutenant looked on nervously, and the ring of MPs began to tighten.
Another boom shook the cash this time. The MPs looked around nervously. The lieutenant shouted into his radio. “Shovel, this is six. What the hell is going on?”
When Britton raised his head, Marty looked at him, eyes wide and uncomprehending.
Downer was still outside the ring. Britton turned to Truelove. “We’re leaving. Come with us.”
Truelove took a step back, slowly shaking his head.
“What are you doing?” the lieutenant shouted, turning away from his radio. “Pick him up,” he called to one of his men.
They were out of time. “I’ll come back for you,” Britton said, and extended a hand. A gate opened behind Marty. Beyond it, he could see a bowl of rose moss where he’d gone on his first camping trip in the mountains of Vermont’s largest state park. The current of his magic soothed the pain in his heart but brought a dizziness that nearly knocked him out.
He pushed Marty through the gate with one hand and swung Therese into it with the other. Then he pitc
hed forward, falling halfway into the portal, his face down in the soft plants, his nostrils filling with the scent of frostbitten red clover.
“Come on,” he whispered to Truelove, knowing the Necromancer couldn’t hear him.
He felt Therese’s hands dragging him the rest of the way through the gate, turning him over.
The other side was a maelstrom of yelling soldiers surging toward the gate. The Goblins flung themselves against them, blocking their progress. Truelove stood still, mouth open and head shaking. Downer was behind him, arm draped across his chest and holding him back, her face contorted and screaming. The lieutenant raised his pistol and fired a shot into the gate. It dug a trench in the frozen ground beside him, sparking off a rock.
Britton yanked his knees to his chest and shut the gate.
He lay still for a moment, letting the biting cold chase the fog from his mind, leaving only the pain in his chest.
The silence was overwhelming. He had forgotten how strong the sense of constant magical current was in the Source. Back on the Home Plane, he felt barren, his own current lonely and isolated. The wind picked up, sending a scattering of dead leaves in a rasping dance somewhere nearby. Marty let out a low sigh of amazement, gawping at his surroundings.
Therese broke the quiet, digging furiously in her pocket. “Oh my God, Oscar, they’ll blow it up. I left it in the cash.” He had no idea how powerful the explosive was, but it wouldn’t need to be too strong to do a lot of damage in such tight quarters.
And Britton knew the cash was about to be overwhelmed with work.
He fought to his knees. “I’ll take care of it.”
He swallowed hard, dug deep inside himself for the energy to open another gate, staggering to his feet and lurched back into the room where Therese had extracted it. He snatched the blinking device off the cot, then jogged down familiar pathways, until he stumbled into air as cold as the bowl of rose moss where Therese and Marty awaited him.
He dropped the ATTD in front of the stainless-steel surface of the industrial chiller. He swept his eyes past the Goblin corpses in their various states of dissection and his eyes alighted on a rack of winter parkas bolted to one of the tent-support rods that held up the cold chamber. He snatched three and pushed himself back through the gate, collapsing beside Therese again.
He managed to lift his head and shut the gate.
But not before the flash of orange shocked his eyes and the low growl of the explosive shock wave whispered faintly in his ears, the tremors sending him off into peaceful blackness.
He gave up the fight and surrendered to it.
Because he had escaped FOB Frontier.
Because, at long last, he was free.
CHAPTER XXXI
LAST STOP
You can dress it up any way you like, cover it with laws and fancy proclamations. None of it can change the truth, which is simply this: you’re terrified. Humans are in the presence of creatures that look just like them but are to them as humans are to insects. This is why the SOC is so utterly disgusting. Why the hell would you work for cockroaches? They should be working for us. Hell, they should be slaving for us. And, in time, they will.
—“Render,” Houston St. Selfers
Recorded “Message for SOC Sorcerers” distributed
on the Internet and the streets of New York City
They lay in silence for a few minutes before Britton shook himself and stumbled to his feet. He shrugged the parka over his shoulders and tossed one to Therese. She helped Marty into his, draping it over his oversized head so he looked like a small child bundled up for the cold. He winced at the touch of the ground, lifting the splayed toes of his thickly callused feet, but there was nothing to be done.
Therese placed her hand on Britton’s chest and he could feel the magic beginning to do its work again. “Just let me double-check…” she said.
After a moment, she raised her hands to his shoulders. “Oscar, you’ve got to send me back.”
He shrugged off his exhaustion, pushed through the pain. “What? I just got us out of there.”
Therese shook her head. “There are sick people, hurt people. I have to help. You’re safe now, but I’m not going to run with you. They need me there, Oscar.”
You have no idea, Britton thought. The sounds of explosions and gunfire echoed through his head. He could picture the Goblins swarming through the collapsed perimeter. They are going to need you more than ever now.
“Therese, you can’t. They’ll kill you. How long do you think it’s going to take them to figure out how I got the ATTD out? Do you honestly think they’ll turn a blind eye to that?”
Therese nodded. “Maybe they won’t figure it out,” she whispered. “Maybe I can explain.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. What do you think they’re going to do?”
She shook her head. “Oscar, what the hell was going on there? Something was happening, something started this all off.”
Britton was silent. He looked at his lap. She shook his shoulders. “Tell me, damn it.
“There’s a problem, isn’t there? People are being hurt.”
He nodded.
“Send me back,” she said firmly. “I have to help.”
His heart caught in his throat as the image of the intact Quonset huts flooded his brain. They stood, untouched, in the middle of the devastated SASS. The occupants were still inside, Britton knew. Swift, Pyre, Peapod. Tsunami. Wavesign. The Goblins would be pouring over that ground first.
And that wasn’t even counting the other Goblins, Marty’s tribesmen who worked on the FOB. Would they be punished for helping Marty escape? Maybe. But there were hundreds of them spread all over the FOB. Britton knew he couldn’t save them all.
But the SASS enrollees were all in one place, and that was a start.
“You want to help?” Britton asked. “Help me.”
He stood up, shaking slightly, exhaustion gripping him.
“Where are we going? What are we doing?” she asked.
“Marty”—Britton looked down at the little Goblin—“I need you to stay here.” He shuddered to think of what would become of the creature, stranded on the Home Plane, if they didn’t return for him.
Marty shook his head. “Come with you,” he said.
“Oscar, what’s this about?” Therese asked.
“Marty,” Britton said. “Please. Just sit tight and don’t move. You won’t be able to help us where we’re going, and I can’t stand having gotten you out of there only to get you killed. I promise I’ll be back.” What if you’re not? “I promise.” He unclipped his pocketknife and handed it to the Goblin. It looked larger in his small hands, but still woefully inadequate.
“I’ll be back.” He turned to Therese. “I freed Scylla,” he said. “I thought I had to. I was a fool. She gutted the FOB like a piece of rotten fruit. I don’t know how bad it is, but I assume the neighboring Goblin tribes are hitting it hard right now. That’s what all that noise was. She left the SASS enrollees alive, but they’re right in the path of the advance. If there’s any chance of helping anyone, Therese, it should be them. I’m not happy that the SOC has a fight on its hands, or that people are going to be hurt, but I’ll be damned if I’m going back to them again. You want to help someone? Help me help Wavesign and the rest of them. I put them in this position, but the SOC put us all in it first. I can’t undo what I’ve done, but I can try to fix some of it, and I can do it better with your help.”
She stared at him, mouth gaping. “Please, Therese,” he said. “There’s no time. We need to go right now. I don’t even know if they’re still alive, but we’ve got to try.”
“Goddamn it, Oscar.”
“You want to chew me out? Fine. Do it later.” He opened a gate just outside the scattered remains of Scylla’s pillbox. “Now or never,” he said. He jumped through without looking back.
But when he looked up, Therese was behind him.
And the Quonset huts were still standing, awash in a sea o
f Goblins.
The battle had pushed on beyond the SASS’s borders. Britton could make out army fire teams in the distance, firing from behind the cover of a few armored personnel carriers. Apaches wheeled overhead. Aeromancers danced in between them. The sky was clouded with Rocs, circling over the fray, their backs loaded with Goblin crews discharging clouds of javelins on the battle below them. Squadrons of wolf-borne Goblins charged among the soldiers, swinging halberds. White-chalked sorcerers ran in their midst, their flowing currents sensible to Britton even from that distance. As Britton watched, one armored personnel carrier was engulfed in magical fire. The ball turret gunner leapt screaming from it, beating at the flames. A dull thud heralded the arrival of a mortar round, bursting in the midst of the advancing Goblins, sending a few spiraling into the air. Britton crouched as the shrapnel tore in his direction, but he was too far away to be harmed.
A helicopter flew low over the fight, miniguns blazing. A white-painted Goblin sorcerer spread his arms and the earth erupted into a lurching spike that clipped the spinning rotors, sending the helo spinning erratically into the line of APCs, exploding in a bright ball of flame.
He heard Therese suck in her breath beside him. Later, he thought. For now, do what you can.
Swift floated above the Quonset huts. A few of the enrollees had gathered around the No-No Crew on the roof. A big, bearded man in cargo pants lifted a Goblin over his head and threw him down into the crowd below. Swift spread his arms, and lightning cracked among them, sending them scattering. Wavesign knelt on the curved dome, his perennial rain cloud gone. He managed short bursts of carefully controlled magic, sharp tendrils of ice that spread to scattering storms as they buffeted the Goblins below, driving them back. The stress of the conflict had again focused the young Hydromancer’s magic, and Britton marveled as the shards of deadly ice rained down on the throng. The havoc seemed to have had the opposite effect on Tsunami. She crouched behind Wavesign, hugging her arms around herself, crying. Pyre swept his arms over his head, sending balls of fire arcing down into the mass. A few met targets among the Goblins that gripped the Quonset hut’s superstructure, trying to scale it. Peapod gestured, and earth exploded in the midst of the Goblins, a gaping crater that sucked dozens of them in, burying them as the ground coiled on itself and closed back up, chomping like hungry teeth. A javelin burst from the throng and caught another enrollee in the chest. He fell screaming off the roof, disappearing into the surging mass below.
