Control Point

by Myke Cole

  “Shut the hell up,” Day shouted, but Chatto ignored him, his eyes chips of flint as he glared at Britton.

  “You’re a slave,” he said. “All you did tonight was cement your bonds. You will never know freedom. You think just because you can’t see your prison bars they’re not there? Pretty jail’s still a jail.”

  Day backhanded the Apache into silence. The MPs threw him roughly forward and walked him into the trailer, leaving Day shaking his head.

  “Sorry,” he said. “He won’t be laughing in a couple of hours, and the tribal council won’t be laughing when he rolls over on them.”

  “That thing came from here, didn’t it?” Britton asked him, remembering the strange shimmering he’d seen behind the snarling black creature. “That’s the real reason we went after him. There’s some kind of link. That’s what you want him to tell you about.”

  “Now it’s your turn to shut the hell up,” Fitzy growled. “You’ve got some scrapes on you. Much as it would amuse me to leave you here in agony, you are government property, and it’s my solemn duty to see you’re patched up. I’ll radio for a Physiomancer.”

  But Britton wasn’t listening. He was thinking of men who were really just tools. He was thinking of pretty jails.

  The Apache had tried to hurt Downer, but was that so different than Scylla’s reasoned murder? Or Swift’s senseless rage? The outpouring of anger from a powerless and desperate quarry? A mad revenge for the bodies of the women and children they knew they would soon be mourning? Were they so different from the Goblins, fighting for their land?

  Selfer criminal or government tool. He had to find a better way. He looked at the pride and sense of belonging in the eyes of the rest of the Coven. He felt it himself.

  But Scylla’s words kept returning to his mind. He would always belong to them. His magic would only be a tool for their purposes, for bringing people like these to their end. Fitzy’s words followed Scylla’s. You remember one thing, contractor. I am not your friend. I am not your comrade in arms. I am here to make you into a righteous engine of war. Nothing more, nothing less. You’re paid to be a weapon, not a hero. Remember that.

  Dead Goblins, dead women and children. Britton had been the tool the army gripped to bring about their end.

  He realized with a sudden twisting of his guts that maybe he hadn’t meant it when he had told Fitzy that he got it.

  Maybe it was time to run again.

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  OPLAN

  Physiomancy is frequently credited as a healing art. This reputation is deserved, as its primary application is the knitting of broken flesh. But most students of the arcane do not fully appreciate that Physiomancy is merely a neutral manipulation of live flesh. As readily as it can be used to knit, it can be used to tear. Such offensive Physiomancy is commonly known as “Rending” and is among those magical practices specifically prohibited by amendment to the Geneva Convention and the McGauer-Linden Act.

  —Avery Whiting

  Modern Arcana: Theory and Practice

  The screams kept him awake all night—high and shrill, almost childlike. He knew they were Chatto’s.

  Britton, who now had no trouble sleeping through the Goblin’s magical attacks or the screaming return fire of the automatic defenses, was haunted by the tortured cries of this one man. He rolled back and forth in his hooch, pulling his pillow over his head. They hadn’t bothered to take Chatto far; they’d gone to work on him immediately. Britton’s schoolhouse by the P pods had temporarily become their base of operations.

  This is the man responsible for the murders you saw in those videos, Britton reminded himself. This is the man who would have gladly seen Downer raped.

  But the screams carried to him, and he realized that he didn’t care. We’re supposed to be the good guys. That’s what gives us the right to judge Selfers. Because our way is better.

  The thought propelled him to his feet and sent him racing out of the hooch, pushing in the direction of trailer B-6. Idiot! What do you hope to accomplish? he asked himself.

  But his feet wouldn’t stop moving until the screaming became a gurgling sigh, followed by silence. He stopped, only a few hundred feet from the trailer, able to see the external sodium light glinting in the dark, beset by clouds of insects, drawn by its false-moon promise.

  The light cast a sick, yellow sheen on the trailer door as it slid open, and two soldiers emerged, silhouetted against the blackness, dragging something lumpen and wet into the light.

  A man followed them out, wiping his hands on his trousers, breathing heavily. He moved toward Britton, lighting a cigarette as he came. The man almost collided with him in the darkness, then fell back a step in surprise. The light from the cigarette showed the pale, doughy cheeks and blue hospital scrubs of Captain Hayes. The Physiomancer was covered in gore. His scrubs were so plastered with blood that they looked metallic under the moonlight. He gave Britton an exhausted smile.

  “You should get to bed,” Hayes said. “You’re going to be a busy boy tomorrow.” He pushed past Britton and made his way out of P block.

  Britton knew he should say something, impede Hayes’s progress, do anything other than stand there dumbly, staring at B-6’s now-closed door. But he couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. He felt drained of all energy. I did this. As surely as I saved the lives of those marines, I cost that man his. People die in war. Criminals pay for their crimes, sometimes with their lives. So why does this feel so wrong? He didn’t know what Hayes had done to Chatto behind that trailer door, but he could imagine.

  I can’t do this anymore. I can’t work with or for these people. No matter what Therese or the rest of Shadow Coven are doing, I have to go. I have to find a way out of here.

  Britton didn’t sleep another wink that night. His mind raced with escape plans. He couldn’t go to Scylla, and Therese wasn’t ready to help him yet. Where would he run to? After what he had seen at Mescalero, the Selfers trying to rape Downer, could he ever take refuge there? He lay awake, brainstorming, and was dizzy from fatigue when Fitzy finally came for him, near sunset on the following day.

  “Got some more work for you,” the chief warrant officer said. “Follow me.”

  They mounted one of the ever-present electric golf carts and buzzed back into the training area, following signs for the Terramantic Engineering Range. The cart bumped to a stop just as the sun was dipping below the horizon, washing all in shades of simmering orange. A broad field was stripped bare of plant growth, the dry ground randomly soaring upward into earthen bridges and ramparts. A giant length of wall ran ten feet, trailing off into mud. A tank stood on it, empty and silent, treads peeking over the edge.

  Fitzy got out of the cart and beckoned to Britton, making his way toward a long wall of raised earth.

  “I was hoping for more time, but the old man says we’ve gotta be ready to jump as early as tomorrow.” He paused at the wall’s edge. A white sign admonishing all that only authorized personnel were permitted behind it had been driven into the ground. “Now, I know we normally use videos to give you a read on an area you’re gating into, but this is an important run, and the brass wanted to be absolutely sure. So, this time we’re giving you a simulated environment. You’ll be gating in at sunset, so we need you to get it read now.”

  The other side of the wall was a hastily constructed mock-up of a hotel entrance. Groups of contractors were still assembling a sweeping arc of broken pavement covered with sand and scrub cacti. The white paint on the broad awning was badly chipped and pocked with bullet holes. The sliding glass doors were covered with metal strips. A circular driveway, broad enough to host a fleet of vehicles, sported barricades of tires topped with barbed wire. Toppled statues, their arms adorned with bronze feathers, lay heaped beside the doorway. Wooden masks obscured their faces.

  The SOC had gone so far as to pipe in smells. Britton noted the brimstone stink of diesel generators, burned rubber, and spent cordite.

  “This is where the council
is hiding out?” Britton asked. “Or does this have something to do with how the Apache are getting their Mountain Gods over to the Home Plane? Maybe this is how they talk to the Goblin tribes?”

  “It’s not your job to worry about what it is or isn’t, Keystone. It’s your job to familiarize yourself with this set and gate your Coven to the infil point on command. You’re lucky; we were going to use this to run exercises, but it turns out Chatto confirmed our suspicions, and we’re going before his reporting gets stale. You have to admit, a physical mock-up beats the hell out of a video.”

  Britton faced Fitzy. The chief warrant officer looked small, his bald forehead sheened with sweat.

  “These aren’t Goblins, sir. These are Americans.”

  “You’re goddamned right they’re not Goblins,” Fitzy seethed. “You’d better keep that thought foremost in your mind when we run this op, son. Grabbing Chatto is going to seem like a picnic compared to what we’re going to face when we walk into the viper’s very nest.”

  “Americans, sir,” Britton repeated.

  “Selfers,” Fitzy snapped back, “and therefore dead. Did you forget ol’ tons o’ fun you tackled down in those sewers? Did you miss the point of those videos we showed you? You were not pardoned to pontificate. You were given a second chance to follow orders and do your damned job. Is that perfectly clear?”

  A tool. A weapon. Not a person. Remember that.

  Britton stared at him for a moment before turning back to the staged scenery before him.

  After a moment, Fitzy shifted uncomfortably behind him. “Got it?”

  Britton nodded.

  “Are you sure? You’ve got it fixed?”

  Britton turned to face him again. He gestured to his eyes, letting the malevolence show. “Solid, sir. I’m good to go.”

  Britton brooded over his drink in the OC that night, the tension around him palpable. His mind wrestled with escape plans, all of them ending with his heart exploding. The rest of the Coven felt it. Truelove sat nervously beside him. He tried starting a conversation twice, both times with nervous platitudes, before Richards drew him off.

  All the training. All the excitement. All the pleasure that had grown from mastering his magic. For what? Killing his own people? The darkness congealed in his mind. He’d half a mind to confront Fitzy, Suppression or no, and give him the drubbing he deserved. He’d die, to be sure, but it seemed that he’d have to choose between that and being a murderer anyway. Maybe death was more honorable.

  Only the thought of Therese kept him seated and docile. He had her back. That was something. There was a possibility that, with time, she could get him out of there. But how long would it take before she felt confident to help him? And what would they make him do in the interim? Scylla had promised to help him right now. All he had to do was get the Suppression off her for five minutes.

  He could feel Downer’s eyes on the back of his head. He was killing the joy she felt at her own burgeoning skill, and she resented it. Please, he thought. Don’t say anything. Just leave me alone tonight.

  “What is it now?” she asked.

  “I’m in no mood, little girl,” he answered.

  “Excuse me?” she asked.

  “I’m warning you. Leave me the hell alone,” Britton said, turning to face her.

  Richards and Truelove stood. “Easy, you two,” Truelove said.

  Britton held the Necromancer’s eyes. “Shut the hell up.”

  Truelove turned and swallowed. Richards stood still behind him, a hand on his shoulder.

  “What is your problem tonight?” Downer asked. “Are you still pissed about the assault? Because you need to get the hell over that.”

  “Forget it,” Britton said.

  But Downer’s hackles were up. “What, then?”

  “Nothing.” He swallowed hard, trying to suck down the simmering resentment. It’s not her fault. Don’t take it out on her. But he saw her as she was—completely sold on the SOC’s bill of goods. A little while ago, you were running. There’s no zealot like a new convert. The thought infuriated him. She didn’t care what she belonged to so long as she belonged somewhere. Are you so different?

  “Tell me,” she demanded, “or else get over yourself and apologize to Rictus.”

  “Did you miss the screaming last night? Am I the only person on earth who heard it?”

  Truelove looked at his feet. Downer’s face fell. “That’s not our business.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Britton asked. “It’s not only our business. It’s our fault!”

  “You don’t know what happened,” she said, shaking her head.

  “No, you’re right, I don’t know what happened. But I’m not retarded, so I can hazard a fucking guess. And, surprise, surprise! Fitzy had me prep for our next op.”

  Downer’s anger vanished. She pressed forward, Truelove and Richards coming with her. “Seriously? What was it? When do we go? What are we doing?”

  “That’s what you care about?” Britton asked. “Never mind the screams in the night. What’s our next op?”

  “Damned right that’s what I care about!” Downer said. “What is it?”

  He shook his head. “It’s…forget it. Fitzy probably doesn’t want you to know.”

  “Fuck that! You can’t pull that crap! You have to tell us now.” She tugged on his arm.

  He jerked his arm away, standing. Downer leapt back, frowning.

  “Don’t pretend you don’t know! It’s fucking Mescalero, all right?” he said. “Are you happy now?”

  “What, the reservation again?” Richards asked.

  Britton nodded. “Yeah. I recognized that…casino or resort or whatever. You know, the one from the news.”

  “I knew it! That’s Apache Selfer HQ!” Downer jumped for joy. “Holy crap! Chatto talked! He rolled over and gave them up!”

  Britton snarled. “Are you kidding me? Do you realize what they did to him to get him to talk? You were crowing about protecting your country. You went on and on about narcoterrorists or pirates or whatever bullshit you were into.”

  She looked at him, uncomprehending.

  “These are Americans!” he raged. “This is our own country! We’re not going to China or Somalia, you idiot! We’re going to New Mexico! They tortured that guy all night, and we lay there right next to it, and we didn’t do anything!”

  Downer shook her head. “Sometimes you have to break eggs to make an omelet. Did you forget the videos? They’re Selfers…”

  “So were you just five damned minutes ago! And those videos are bullshit! Half the people we took out going after Chatto were girls! Little fucking girls!” Britton shouted, taking a step forward. Richards put a hand on his chest, and Britton slapped it away, sending him backward into Truelove. Both sprawled against the bar.

  An instant later, the mud floor rose up into a fist that gripped Britton’s throat.

  “Don’t,” Richards said, leaning against the bar. “Not another step.”

  Britton opened a small gate, severing the fist at the wrist. The dirt fingers fell away from his neck. Then Britton felt his magic roll back, and he turned to Downer.

  “That’s right,” she said. “You think you’re such hot shit because Portamancy is so rare? Without it, you’re just a bruiser. And there are three of us. We can all Suppress now.”

  A little girl, a pasty nerd, and a doughy older man. Britton thought they’d need three more if they wanted to take him on. An instant later, he regretted that thought. As badly as the anger choked him, what was he going to do? Pummel a little girl because she was doing as she was told? Because she’d found the home he wanted for himself? The SOC wasn’t going to make him kill his own countrymen. But neither was it going to make him swat little girls.

  “Forget this,” he said, turning to the door. “You can go rampaging through a reservation if you want. This isn’t what I signed up for.” And just what the hell do you think they’ll say? “Oh, that’s fine, Oscar. You can sit
this one out. Maybe you’d prefer some other missions that you find more personally agreeable.” They’ll pop that cork in your chest, or you’ll wind up in a blue hospital gown like Billy.

  He hauled open the door just as Downer fired back a retort, but Britton didn’t hear it; his attention was completely fixed on the scene outside.

  Fitzy knelt over Marty, who sprawled in the mud that had frozen hard in the cold air. The chief warrant officer’s fist impacted the Goblin’s oversized head again and again, sending it bouncing off the ground. Marty’s shoulders were limp, his eyes shut. His mouth trickled blood.

  Behind Fitzy, two MPs stood impassively, carbines cradled in the crooks of their arms.

  Fitzy snarled, incoherent words punctuated each blow. His face was a shade of purple visible even in the darkness.

  And then Britton’s legs were moving.

  Behind him, Truelove shouted a warning, but Britton was already throwing his shoulder into Fitzy, knocking the Master Suppressor off Marty’s chest and sending him sprawling. Britton could smell the whiskey even from that distance. The MPs started forward, noted the Shadow Coven uniform, and paused.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Britton shrieked at Fitzy, who had begun to scramble to his feet. He knelt at Marty’s side, chafing the Goblin’s wrists. “Marty! Are you okay? Marty!” The creature stirred weakly, groaning.

  Britton looked up just as Fitzy’s boot swung toward him. It was too late to dodge, but he managed to catch the blow mostly on his neck and shoulder. He launched over Marty and skinned his hands, choking on the dust kicked up by the impact.

  “I told you he wasn’t supposed to drink with you,” Fitzy said through clenched teeth. “This little fucker was on his way here from the cash. Not sure what it is you people don’t understand about orders, but we’re going to get that straightened out right now.” He started toward Britton, who rose to his feet.