Fortress Frontier (Shadow Ops 2)

by Cole, Myke

  She grunted, reaching backward and grabbing his arm, pulling it forward until it was draped over her.

  ‘Just to keep warm,’ she said softly.

  ‘Yeah,’ he answered, his voice thick. ‘Just to keep warm.’

  Despite his exhaustion, Britton barely slept all night, drowning in the smell of Therese’s hair and the closeness of her, almost crying out when Truelove finally nudged her awake and she took her turn at watch.

  Neither of them spoke when Britton roused them after eight hours, the sky still dark around them. After they had breakfasted in silence and buried their trash, he opened a gate, putting them back on Scylla’s trail, the withered edges of the grass guiding them on.

  Truelove raised his arms, and the entourage of dead shambled into view, their gray skins tinged with frost. Some of them had been nibbled on during the night by the local fauna, but overall, they were whole. Britton still swallowed his gorge at the sight of them, and even Truelove looked uncomfortable at so many in one place. But they were one more thing they had to throw against Scylla should they meet her. Downer called up her air elementals again, the strong breeze providing ample fuel for the spell.

  The encroaching winter gave the Source air a crisp, metallic bite that would have been pleasant if it weren’t so cold, but it still carried the curdled-egg stink of the aftermath of Scylla’s passage. With the sun beginning to brighten the horizon and shroud the unfamiliar constellations of the Source from view, they pushed on.

  They came across the helicopter as the sun began to crest, and the day came on in earnest. It was a Blackhawk, nose down in the frozen ground, tail boom crumpled over an accordioned cabin. The cockpit was flattened, the nose practically inverted.

  The engine and rotors were gone, the metal simply rusted away to nothing from the cabin upward. Britton pointed. ‘She rotted off the rotors and let it drop out of the sky.’

  Purple stains, still slick, dotted the ground outside the crushed cabin. ‘And killed the team on board as they crawled from the wreckage. Jesus. Those must have been some hard operators to crawl away from that.’

  He moved to the cockpit, then froze. He hung his head. ‘Oh, hell. Oh, that fucking bitch.’

  ‘What?’ Therese asked. ‘What is it?’

  He pointed at the shattered windscreen, the hands still streaked with dried blood trying to pull themselves through it, gone gray with rigor mortis.

  ‘She left the pilots alive. They were crushed in there, probably broke every bone in their body, bleeding out. Maybe choking to death on the smoke. But she left them.’

  Therese lifted a hand to her mouth. Britton could feel the current of her magic reach forward, then recoil. Physiomancers could only manipulate living flesh, and there was none of that to be found here.

  He turned to her. ‘Still want to give her a chance to join us?’

  Without waiting for an answer, he moved down the trail.

  ‘Bring them,’ he called to Truelove, gesturing at the pilots behind the shattered windscreen.

  ‘Are you serious?’ Truelove called back.

  ‘We’re practically on top of Scylla now,’ Britton answered. ‘They died to serve. Let them serve a little longer. It’s the closest thing to revenge we can give them.’

  But Scylla’s trail grew colder as they went, the wet-looking patches left by the aftereffects of her magic beginning to dry. Somehow, she had begun to gain on them. Britton grimaced and put on speed. They kept on for another two hours as the sky fully lightened, and the landscape came to life around them. The night had been unusually cold, and the ground twinkled with fresh frost. It sparkled in the sun, transforming the landscape into a spray of crystal green, but it made footing treacherous as the ground sloped downward and their boots slid with each step. This was made harder by a grove of tall trees, which forced them to descend at an angle as the decline increased.

  After a while, Britton found himself crab-stepping sideways, sliding every other pace as the edges of his boot soles failed to find purchase on the slick surface of thawing frost. Therese stumbled, and he put out a hand to steady her. Truelove and Downer latched on to her, and they descended in a human chain. The elementals fanned out in front of them, blowing air back toward them, trying to help them stay upright with no success. Britton heard a thump, and one of the zombies, less sure footed than his human master, flopped on its face and slid past them, tobogganing on its stomach before coming to stop and trying to rise, slipping as it strove to mimic Truelove’s careful descent.

  A moment later, Britton felt his own feet going out from under him, and he sat down hard, his tailbone reporting the impact, and began to slide downhill. Therese scrambled for balance for a moment and pulled where he had pushed, clinging to Truelove, who clung to Downer. All of them went down in a heap, flying down the hill and slamming into Britton. They wound up in a tangle of arms and legs at the bottom, laughing hysterically.

  Britton hissed, ‘Secure that. We are too close for this crap; Scylla could be anywhere around here.’ The mirth dried on the others’ faces and they turned sullen looks on him. God, he thought. I must sound like Fitzy. But that didn’t make him wrong. He was willing to be a killjoy if it meant keeping them safe. They could laugh all they wanted once they’d dealt with her.

  ‘Come on,’ he whispered. ‘We just made a lot of noise here. We need to get off the X.’

  He stood, then froze.

  The slick, putrid sheen of the grass marched in a narrow lane around the copse of trees, so fresh that it dripped. The wind blew toward them, bringing the faintest hint of what might have been muttering from off in the distance. With the wind toward them, Britton could hope that whatever was making that noise hadn’t heard them.

  ‘Hold here,’ he whispered. He pointed to himself, then to the trail of slime. Once again, he gate-hopped back to the Home Plane, then opened another gate farther out on the freshly cleared trail, just high enough for him to low crawl through. Once through, he lay facedown in the tall grass, slowly inching himself up onto his elbows, raising his head for a clearer look.

  From his new vantage point, he could see beyond the edge of the copse of trees, to where the strip of bare ground continued in long patches mostly freed of frost by the risen sun.

  Four sleek, black, horned things stood astride the strip. They stood between eight and twelve feet high, dagger claws hanging at their sides. White grins showed teeth as long and sharp as knives, the only contrast to the unbroken, liquid darkness of their bodies.

  The ‘Mountain Gods’, the Gahe of the Apache. Britton, with all of Shadow Coven at his side, had barely managed to defeat one before. Here were four.

  One of them was missing an arm. In its stead was a tiny rope of black sinuous flesh, twining uselessly from a stump of a shoulder. It pulsed, oozing slowly. Britton’s stomach fell. The fight at Mescalero flashed through his mind, his gate slicing upward as the Gahe’s frozen touch spread through his torso, slicing through its shoulder, sending the arm spinning in a cloud of black smoke.

  He recognized the creature instantly, he had fought it before, and it had nearly finished him.

  The four Gahe stood tensely, shoulders hunched, clustered around a woman. Her black hair was cut in a severe bob, the points sharp looking. Her eyes were dark, remorseless.

  Scylla was none the worse for wear. He skin was still pale and smooth, her face still wise and beautiful. She’d traded her prison jumpsuit for thicker, warmer goblin leathers, but her boots were the same. Army-issue, black and mud spattered.

  A cloud of black smoke drifted behind the Gahe, the grass beneath it frozen solid gray. That’s their blood, Britton thought. That freezing smoke. She must have killed one of them.

  Pulses of shimmering air passed from the Gahe, clustering about Scylla’s head. ‘Come now,’ she said to them. ‘Do you really want this fight?’

  The creatures growled and inched forward, and Scylla gave ground slightly, raising her hands. More shimmering pulses moved between the Gahe and he
r. ‘Really, now?’ Scylla responded to their silent communication. ‘Maybe so, but I assure you. I’ll take a few more of you with me.’

  The Gahe flashed across the ground, spreading out to surround her. Scylla crouched, bared her teeth.

  Britton had seen enough. He opened another low gate and scrambled through it, then opened another gate back to his companions. He motioned them through, and they came, standing in the bowl of rose moss. ‘It’s her, she’s just around those trees.’

  They were silent. Truelove’s eyes went wide.

  ‘She’s in the middle of some kind of standoff with the Gahe. You remember them? The Apache Mountain Gods?’

  Truelove and Downer had been with him on the mission where they’d faced the one and severed its arm, but Therese had only ever seen them in training videos before. ‘I remember them,’ she said. ‘They’re monsters. The Apache worship them.’

  Britton turned to her. ‘Truelove, Downer, and I have fought them before. They’re fast. They move by short-teleporting. One second they’re five feet away and the next they’re on top of you. Their touch will freeze you, and they bleed smoke that’s just as cold. We’re talking hypothermia in minutes. You got all that?’

  Therese nodded, her confusion and fear vanishing as her training took hold. ‘Got it. Same plan?’

  Britton nodded. ‘Those things are doing us a favor. If we’re going to get her, now is the best time, while she’s distracted. We head back, collect Truelove’s corpses and rush her. Ignore the Gahe. They’re not our fight. We take her down and get the hell out of there. Everyone square?’

  Truelove’s voice was tinged with panic. ‘Can’t you just gate in next to her and take her out?’

  Britton shook his head. ‘And risk getting cut off alone? If she takes me down, you’re all stranded. Bad idea. We go as a unit. Your corpses and Downer’s elementals up front. She’ll be pinned between our expendable element and the Gahe. Safest course.’

  ‘We’re wasting time,’ Downer said.

  Britton nodded and gated them back to their original position. Truelove raised the line of corpses, fallen flat in their absence, and they moved around the edge of the copse, where Scylla whirled to face them. The Gahe stood behind her. Whatever differences they’d had with Scylla, they appeared to be reconciled.

  Chapter Ten

  Quarry

  We’ve impressed ourselves upon magic, tried to shoehorn it into human limitations. We’ve given it taxonomy, ontology, category. But it’s the nature of magic to ignore all that. It’s not interested in making us comfortable. It doesn’t care what we think is a ‘school’ or which element we think it controls. Magic is wild and new and free. The idea of ‘schools’ is an inadequate way to get our heads around a force that we’re only beginning to understand. Magic can do many things that we can only dream of. We’re chipping at the tip of an iceberg that runs very deep and very, very wide below the surface.

  – Professor Andre Sinnawa

  ‘The Magic Behind the Magic’

  Journal of Modern Arcana

  ‘Hello, Oscar,’ Scylla said. ‘You’re just in time to meet my new friends.’ She gestured to the settling cloud of freezing black smoke. ‘We’ve just come to a mutually beneficial understanding.’

  The Gahe shrieked, the one-armed one’s shoulders hunching, its recognition of Britton written clearly across its posture.

  Britton reached out for Scylla’s current. He felt it immediately, strong and rich, and wrapped his own around it, rolling it back.

  Scylla cocked an eyebrow at him, smiling. She rolled her shoulders and without a hint of effort, pierced his Suppression, his own current roaring back into him and hers surging through, unimpeded.

  Britton cursed and threw open a gate.

  Downer sent her elementals streaking toward Scylla, simultaneously drawing her pistol and squeezing off a round. The Gahe crouched. They stuttered forward until they screened Scylla, their position shifting like poorly advancing film, one second in one place, one second the next. Their shrieks went silent, and Britton saw the air shimmer between them, accompanied by a low thrumming. Downer’s bullet disappeared into one of their dark bodies, swallowed as surely as if it had been fired into the cold void of space.

  Britton sent the gate skimming across the ground at Scylla. The Gahe stutter-flashed out of the way, shrieking. Scylla reached forward and Suppressed Britton’s own current effortlessly, and Britton’s gate vanished long before reaching her.

  Downer’s elementals raced toward the Gahe. One of the Gahe swept its clawed hand through one of them, only to be caught in the elemental’s whirling funnel and tossed aside. Another Gahe pulsed away from them, stuttering its position from side to side as they pursued. The remaining two Gahe howled again, then pulsed silent communication to Scylla.

  Scylla smiled. ‘You know one another? I don’t know if that’s more surprising than your showing up at all.’

  Truelove gestured, and the corpses shambled toward her as quickly as they could, leaving parts of themselves on the frozen grass in their urgency. Scylla dropped her Suppression of Britton as the corpses closed on her. Therese and Downer pulled in behind the zombies, and Britton stepped out on their flank, opening another gate, hovering over his hand.

  Scylla sighed dramatically, spreading her arms. ‘Oh, let’s not fight. You just got here. I was chatting with my newfound traveling companions, and you’re welcome to join the conversation.’ She turned to the three snarling Gahe not busy with Downer’s elementals, who had begun to spread out, two approaching from one side of the cordon of zombies, while the one-armed one circled to the other.

  ‘Although,’ Scylla mused, ‘they don’t seem to like you very much.’

  Her voice was syrup-smooth, her tone reasonable. Britton was almost tempted to negotiate with her. Then he remembered the crashed helicopter, the slick stains that had once been humans and goblins. And now she was linked up with Gahe. He’d been lulled by that voice before. A lot of people were dead because he had allowed it to convince him. ‘Now,’ Scylla began again, ‘what do you expect . . .’

  ‘Therese!’ Britton shouted. ‘Lock her magic down!’ He dove to the side, sending the gate flashing toward her. She arced backward, face to the sky, back gracefully bent, the pointed tips of her bobbed black hair shorn off by the gate as it sliced a hairsbreadth above her nose. She straightened with near-boneless grace. ‘Now, that’s no way to make friends.’ Her smile curdled. ‘I see you’re still determined to be on the wrong side of history.’

  She Drew and Bound. The ground around Britton blackened. The grass wilted aside, the frost turning to sickened vapor. Britton vomited instantly. The sick agony he’d felt when Scylla had first put him in the grip of her Sorcery back in the SASS was nothing compared to this. The illness was an expanding fist in his gut. He felt the lining of his stomach contract, spasm painfully, as if it would rip itself from his body and hurl itself out of his throat to eject the decay fostering within him. He felt something leaking from the corners of his eyes, not tears. Muscles across his body cramped in response, every atom of his being rebelling against the disease that spread throughout his system.

  In the same instant, he felt Therese’s magic engulf him, the warm current of it repair his flesh as it came apart.

  But it wasn’t enough.

  Britton pitched forward, unable even to cry out. He felt his jaw sag open, then cramp in position. Black fluid leaked from it, flecked with blood. He heard the Gahe shrieking off, heard Downer scream, the angry buzzing of her elementals, but there was nothing he could do.

  He struggled to reach for the tide of his magic, but all he could feel was the wrenching of his body. The sick stink of rot filled his nose until the soft hairs in his nostrils and throat turned slick, then liquid, trickling out of him. Even as he fought to hang on to life, he awaited the mercy death would bring.

  He felt Therese’s hands fall to his shoulders, heard her grunt with effort behind him. Slowly, her magic began to get
the upper hand. A spark of warmth flooded through him, stilling the muscles, knitting them. He could still feel the illness, but the agony of it was no longer so intense. He heard Therese’s pistol crack as she fired at Scylla, forcing the Witch to dive to the side, breaking the torrent that washed over him.

  He rose to one knee. Downer was crawling on her side, three long claw marks gashed down her chest. Her elementals still harried one of the Gahe, tossing it to the side only to have it stutter back among them, the speed of its passage dragging their forms askew. Downer’s wound welled blood, was rimed with gray ice. She pulled herself along with one hand, shivering violently. Her lips were already turning gray-blue. One of the Gahe loomed over her for another strike. The other two were engaged with Truelove’s corpses, knocking them aside with sweeps of their long, clawed hands.

  Britton found his magic and summoned a gate, sending it sliding horizontally toward the Gahe just as the creature brought its clawed hand down. It turned just as the gate cut through its wrist. Britton arced it upward, slicing up through the torso and neck. The Gahe’s scream went silent, its upper body enveloped in black smoke that cloaked the ground around it. Downer disappeared underneath, crying out. The grass froze instantly, wreathed in twinkling gray as the Gahe vanished. One of her elementals raced to her side, its spinning funnel racing as it tried to blow the heavy, freezing mist away from her, with little effect.

  The other Gahe snarled and flung themselves toward Britton. ‘Simon!’ he managed before they were upon him, ‘Get Scylla!’

  Then the first Gahe had stutter-flashed across the ground, horned head lowered. He threw himself to the side, missing the horn, but catching the side of the creature’s head. It threw him sprawling in the grass, burning cold rippling through his shoulder.

  Behind it, he could see Truelove’s small army of dead charging Scylla. They lurched a few feet, then collapsed into puddles of rancid slime. Scylla rolled her eyes. ‘Are you serious? I can do this all damned day!’