by Myke Cole
“You’re not going to gear up, sir?” one of the soldiers asked Harlequin.
Harlequin balled his fists as the vehicle lurched forward, the bench vibrating. Electricity blazed between his knuckles. “Just keep your geared-up ass out of my way, and you might learn something.”
Britton felt the sudden change in magical flow as they pierced the gate. Rampart’s Suppressing field intensified, then softened as he adjusted for the increased current on the gate’s far side.
“Welcome to the Source,” Harlequin said, grinning fiercely.
Overhead, the gunner cursed as he opened up with the fifty-cal, blazing lead at some unknown foe.
CHAPTER XI
HOT LZ
Yes, I know what Dawa means. It’s Arabic for…what? Conversion? Preaching? When Islam first took hold here, we had plenty of that, I can tell you. But Dawa is an older word for us. It was our way—our medicine of the old gods. When the world awoke the Dawa came back to us. Some of us, very few and very old, remembered what to do with it. But we taught the young and it gave them the strength to fight. The many old gods against the new one.
—Hihhu Okonkwo, Kisii Tribe, Bantu Nation
The Stryker rocked on the uneven track. Britton could hear the dull booming of explosions and the staccato rhythm of the machine gun despite the armored hull.
And something more—the rush of wind and the crack of lightning striking, far louder and closer than any lightning should have been. He heard banging on the hull and a muttered conversation as the gunner ceased firing. A moment later, he called down into the squad bay. “They cut the road, sir. Rotary wing’s the only way to the Forward Operating Base. Blackhawk is spinning up on the pad right now.”
Harlequin cursed and jerked a thumb at Britton. “Close detail on our guest here. Anything happens to him between here and the helo, you’ll wish it had happened to you. Rampart! If you don’t run Suppression, I have to, so keep yourself out of the fight. Dampener or no Dampener, I’m not taking any chances. You keep his flow blocked. Oscar, keep your head down and go where I damn well tell you! On deck!”
The hatch dropped, and the dawn flooded over them. Even the half-light was dazzling, the rough ground glittering with bits of crushed rock. The air had the same intense, alive smell, tainted with other odors, all strengthened by the Source’s heightened sense of things: gasoline, cordite, ozone, and blood.
A Blackhawk helicopter stood thirty feet across from them, rotors spinning. A gunner stood in the open door behind the whirling barrels of a minigun, its blurred muzzles blazing, spitting a stream of rounds into the distance. The scream of the motor and the clatter of casings on the cracked concrete pad were loud enough to hear over the beating rotors, swirling up enough dust that Britton jerked his sunglasses over his eyes as the escort lowered the goggles on their helmets.
They stumbled down the ramp. Harlequin leapt out of the hatch, rocketing airborne. The dust whipped up by the Blackhawk’s rotors whirled around him, his magic gathering it into a funnel. The sunglasses were too dark in the early light, so Britton slipped them back onto the cap brim, taking advantage of Harlequin’s drawing off the dust.
He caught his breath.
Over Harlequin’s shoulder, Britton could see a massive bird banking toward them. Its brown feathers were flecked with gold, black beak opened wide enough to swallow a car. A mottled bird’s nest of ropes was strapped between its wings.
“Move, damn it!” Rampart said, shoving him hard. The escort pushed across the perennial saw-edged grass, withered and burned in patches, making for the helo. A long line of concrete blast barriers formed a wall that stretched past Britton’s field of vision.
The helo gunner stopped firing, motioning them onward. The escort stopped short as a long, metal javelin thudded into the earth before them, quivering. It was quickly followed by the popping sound and dancing earth that indicated rounds impacting. Britton threw himself backward, knocking Rampart into the soldier behind him. The three went stumbling.
The soldiers in front of him scattered, firing their carbines skyward. The gunner in the helo worked the ammunition feed to his minigun with panicked speed.
The bird circled above them, the basket on its back writhing. Britton’s eyes widened as he saw it was crammed with small, brown-skinned humanoids. Huge heads topped gnarled bodies and large, pointed ears jutted, pinned back by the wind of the giant bird’s descent. Garish paint adorned their faces—ragged stripes, handprints, streaking stars. One of them, painted completely white, clung flat to the bird’s neck, just behind its head. Most of the creatures in the basket brandished bright metal javelins in their long, thin hands, but at least one held a carbine.
One of the creatures hefted a grenade launcher meant to be attached to the underside of a rifle. It shouted something Britton could not hear and fired, the recoil knocking it back into the basket. The grenade detonated way off mark, but succeeded in spraying the group with spinning fragments of dirt and rock. One of the escorting soldiers cursed and collapsed, dropping his carbine and grabbing his ankle.
Britton spun away, shielding his eyes from the scattering dirt. He looked back at the bird. Red holes blossomed in its wings as bullets tore into it, but it didn’t seem to notice. It opened its giant beak in a piercing cry and dove lower. Britton raised his carbine and sighted down it. Rampart slapped the barrel down. “What the hell are you doing? Get your ass in the helo!”
Britton hesitated. The men around him were his captors and enemies, but his instincts rebelled against leaving fellow soldiers in the midst of a fight, his muscles responding to the sight of the uniforms and the sound of gunfire, rooting his legs to the spot.
A cluster of javelins burst from the basket. One of the escorts fell gurgling, impaled through the neck. Bullets plucked two of the squat, brown-skinned creatures shrieking out of the basket. More rounds tore into the bird.
It just kept coming. Britton could feel the wind swept toward them by its massive wings.
Rampart threw his shoulder into Britton, setting his legs moving again as the two ran for the helo.
A funnel of wind drilled horizontally through the air, focusing all the gathered dust into a gritty corkscrew. The tornado slammed into the bird’s back, rolling it over and sending it tumbling across the track until it slammed against the concrete barrier wall. Gold-flecked feathers, each as long as a sword, exploded from the impact and showered down around them. The small creatures tumbled from the basket, pitching across the ground. A few stirred. Blasts of sizzling electricity turned them into piles of smoking meat before they could rise.
Harlequin swooped low over them, the remains of the dust devil swirling about his fists. “Damn it, Rampart! How hard is it to get him in a damned helo?” He kicked off in the air and shot skyward, making for two more of the birds, distant but closing fast.
Rampart cursed and hurled Britton forward. The helo gunner had reloaded his minigun but checked his fire as Harlequin swerved in front of the spinning muzzles.
A hammerblow threw Britton on his back, his body armor digging a trough in the rough ground, his nose filled with a burning stink.
He blinked, struggling to rise onto his elbows, weighed down by his gear. His carbine was gone. His magazine pouches smoldered in his vest. The magazines inside must have ab-sorbed the blast. They were melted, the bullets fused with their containers.
One of the brown creatures rose some fifty feet over the concrete barrier wall, its body wreathed in blue electricity. Its eyes were long and yellow, catlike. Its long nose hooked over a snarling mouth, showing tiny pointed teeth. Its skin was crusted with thick white paint.
“Christ!” Rampart said. “Don’t you run!” Britton felt the magic tide return as the Suppression fell away. The flow came gently, controlled by the Dampener in his blood. Rampart dropped his carbine to dangle from its sling and raced forward, hands outstretched.
The creature flew forward, the halo of electricity pulsing for another strike. Britton scrambled backwa
rd on his hands, palms scraping the shattered earth.
And then the electricity winked out, the tendrils flickering off with tiny popping sounds and puffs of black smoke. The creature hung in the air for a moment, eyes wide, then plummeted, shrieking, to the ground. It struck hard and bounced, its huge head flopping on a scrawny neck, the white-painted surface turning red. It lay, stirring weakly.
Rampart hauled Britton to his feet and propelled him the last few feet to the helo. The gunner left his weapon and helped them into the bay. A crew chief, head invisible in his flight helmet, knelt over him, clipped a carabiner to Britton’s belt and secured the other end to a metal ring in the center of the Blackhawk’s floor.
“He’s in!” the chief called to the pilots. “Let’s go!”
The escorts were left to scramble back to the Stryker’s relative safety as the Blackhawk lurched skyward. The Suppression took hold again as Rampart settled himself beside the crew chief. Only then did Britton realize that he hadn’t even thought to use his magic to escape when he had that brief chance. Even if he had thought of it, how could he have made it work? The Dampener protected him from the overwhelming power of the current, but he still lacked the control to call it to his will. He cursed himself, his heart pounding. He still imagined he could feel the tight pressure of the bomb within it.
Britton gripped the metal ring as the Blackhawk banked, watching out the open door past the gunner’s hip. Harlequin arced through the air toward one of the giant birds. The creatures on its back fired guns at him, the bullets flying wide.
That far above the ground, Britton could see the land outside the concrete barrier wall that ringed the LZ. It was dotted with small groups of the brown, squat humanoids, each surrounding one of the white-painted ones that had nearly fried him a moment ago. One of the white-painted creatures burst into a fireball, which shot upward, missing Harlequin by several feet. Britton recalled the words of the SOC Pyromancer who’d assaulted the school. Theatrics don’t win battles. Skill beats will, every time.
That adage was being proved on the ground. Britton could make out army fire teams, moving and covering in perfect order. The troops poured fire and took cover behind the broken fragments of concrete barriers and the few Strykers that rolled with them, working with the near-perfect efficiency that had always made him so proud to be a soldier, man as machine. The creatures took the worst of it, falling back.
A piercing shriek dragged Britton’s gaze to Harlequin, who had conjured a thick gray cloud. It draped one of the birds. Britton could see its wingtip as it struggled to stay aloft, the feathers sopping from the cloud’s innards. The Aeromancer somersaulted upward, allowing the bird to pass beneath him and alongside the Blackhawk, waving to the gunner as he went. The bird shrieked again, shaking free of the cloud—bursting out broadside of the helo.
The gunner grinned as he opened up with the minigun. The barrels spun hot as the weapon pumped one thousand rounds each second into the passing bird and its crew. Britton looked away, but not before he saw much of it dissolve in red mist, screaming as it hurtled earthward.
Harlequin turned to the second bird as it banked away from him. He shook his head and flew to the helo, matching its speed.
The bird shrieked as something impacted with its shoulder, exploding in a cloud of burning feathers. It rolled onto its side, flapping uselessly with the remaining wing. The massive talons flexed, grasping empty air as it fell.
Over its back roared two Apache attack helicopters. They buzzed along, vicious horned insects, metal thoraxes gleaming with armament—twenty-millimeter cannons, laser-guided Hellfire missiles, Hydra rocket pods. They spiraled over the fallen birds before taking up escort positions behind the Blackhawk. Britton’s throat tightened. He’d hoped to pilot one of those agile gunships long ago, before magic had carried him far from such dreams.
The fighting raged beneath them, but the creatures were falling back, helpless without air support. Erupting balls of fire and brief flashes of lightning spoke of magic on the ground, but it came less and less frequently, and, at last, they swept beyond it.
“What the hell are they?” Britton asked.
He could imagine the crew chief’s eyebrows arching behind his tinted visor. “Really big birds, sir.”
“No, I mean the things on their backs,” Britton said.
The chief shrugged. “Goblins.”
“Goblins? Is that what they really are?” Britton asked Rampart.
“Nobody knows what they are,” Rampart answered. “They’re the indigenous around here. Until somebody comes up with something better—they’re Goblins.”
Britton’s mind reeled. Goblins. Real, live Goblins. The storybook legends come to life. Were other creatures from fantasy stories living here? Dragons? Unicorns? The Limbic Dampener kept his emotions from overwhelming him.
“They have guns?” Britton asked, his voice cracking with wonder.
“Every once in a while, they get lucky and take out a supply truck”—Rampart shrugged—“or one of the indig workers at the FOB smuggles one out. I’m not worried, though. They don’t know how to zero them, and their bodies are too small to handle the recoil. Half of them don’t bother to use the sights. It’s not stolen weapons you need to worry about with these bastards, it’s the magic. They live in the Source all their lives and come up Latent at around twice the rate we do.”
“Indig,” Britton breathed.
Rampart nodded. “A lot like the Mujahidin back in the old War on Terror. Bunch of broken-up tribes fighting themselves. The only thing they hate more than each other is us. They lay off somewhat in the winter, but they go on the warpath something fierce once the weather gets warm.”
Britton shook his head and rubbed his temples. Why not Goblins? They didn’t fit the description he’d come to know from his days of role-playing games and fantasy books. But the birds did—massive creatures with black beaks and talons, large enough to threaten a ship at sea? Britton had read of them in Persian mythology and comic books. They were Rocs.
The battle below him surged around a creature he couldn’t identify. A towering black figure, vaguely man-shaped, swept among the Goblin ranks, darting out toward the soldiers. It moved, lightning quick and oily smooth—one moment in one location and the next several feet forward. It gibbered, huge mouth slavering, flashing giant teeth in a horned head that reared ten feet above the multitude.
“Jesus,” Britton breathed. “What the hell is that?”
“What?” Rampart asked, but the helo had banked sharply and moved on, leaving the battle behind.
Britton looked out the open doors again as the Blackhawk banked, shedding altitude. Past the gunner’s boot, a much wider line of concrete blast barricades formed a massive wall. Behind it, makeshift wooden buildings stretched under corrugated-metal roofs. The spaces between were alive with people and vehicles.
“Where the hell are we?” Britton asked.
“Forward Operating Base Frontier,” the Suppressor answered. “Hope you like it, because you’re going to be spending an awful lot of time here. The FOB’s the one place in any world where Probes like you are permitted to exist.”
The helicopters descended toward a helo pad along a flight line long enough to support strike fighters and fixed-wing support aircraft. It was well maintained, with armored control towers and fueling facilities in good repair. A ground crewman waved them into position with lit wands. A Humvee drove out to meet them. The Apaches wheeled off and regained altitude, heading back to the fight.
Britton shook his head as he remembered yelling at Cheatham beside Dawes’s hospital bed.
Maybe they’ll take you to that secret base and train you!
There is no secret base! You don’t believe that conspiracy-theory crap!
The Blackhawk’s wheels touched down on the tarmac, the Humvee pulled up to receive him, and Oscar Britton realized it wasn’t crap after all.
CHAPTER XII
SHADOW COVEN
What are you? K
each. Lost. You abandoned the flow that bore you. You wandered far. What can you expect? Take the blood from Heptahad, and they die. That’s what you are—walking dead. We are not killing you. We are merely reminding you of that death. We are forcing you to lie down and accept what happened to you long ago.
—Captured Sorrahhad “defender” Goblin warrior
(Custodial debriefing transcript translated to English)
The Humvee turned onto a dirt road that snaked its way between shipping containers converted into windowless housing. Each was surrounded by piled sandbags, gabions rigged from wire fencing and packed earth, or the occasional concrete blast barrier. Water tanks stood atop showers built from blue tarps stretched across plywood frames. Longer trailers and enormous military tents indicated all the patchwork efforts of a forward-deployed center—a Band-Aid of a dining facility, a smudge of a gym and Morale, Welfare, and Recreation building. Britton had called them the DFAC and MWR. He missed the membership those old acronyms implied.
The Humvee bumped past a busy Combat Surgical Hospital. Ankle-deep mud sucked at the tires. Britton felt naked without his weapons and armor, which an armorer along the flight line had forced him to check in, trading him a camouflage parka inadequate to the harsh cold.
The Forward Operating Base was a joint operation. Air force airmen in digital tiger stripes, navy sailors in work dungarees, marched alongside SOC soldiers. Britton saw Marine Suppression Lance grunts in surly rows, their magic kept under wraps by their Suppressing officer, anchoring the line. His eyes grew huge at the number of full-fledged SOC Sorcerers simply walking around. He saw a Pyromancer helping a work crew by heating a piece of metal. Terramancers raised firm paths out of the mud. Aeromancers in flight suits streaked overhead.
More incredible were the Goblins. He saw them everywhere, wearing blue jumpsuits like prison uniforms save for the Entertech patches on the shoulder and chest. They clustered in groups, spreading gravel over the mud, tending tiny beds of grass, running the septic truck as it pumped out the latrines. As they passed the cash, Britton saw at least one of the things in blue scrubs carrying out a barrel marked as biological waste. Each group had at least two soldiers in full battle gear standing watchfully by. The other humans ignored them.
