Shadow Ops: Fortress Frontier-ARC (pdf conv.)

by Myke Cole

  “His Highness demands to know what it is you are finding so funny.”

  It was a moment before Bookbinder could answer. “Please apologize to His Highness on my behalf, Subedar Major. It’s just that we were about to come find you to inform you that we have assembled a team and are preparing to depart for your FOB.”

  Dhatri looked mollified. “Very good, sir. Where is this team?”

  Bookbinder swept an arm backward, indicated Woon, Sharp, and his men. “Here it is. I’ll be leading it personally.”

  Vasuki-Kai paused before tentatively hissing.

  “His Highness says this is a very small team.”

  Bookbinder nodded. “Which is why I respectfully request that His Highness and his Bandhav accompany us. We leave tomorrow at dawn.”

  Crucible met Bookbinder in his office long after dark. Bookbinder had been racing to complete preparations before departing, an act he apparently planned to accomplish on no sleep at all, despite Crucible’s fervent protests. A lieutenant entered at Crucible’s side. She was nervous, all of maybe twenty-three years old, her uniform looking a size too big for her.

  “This is Lieutenant Ripple, sir.” Crucible gestured to the young woman stood at attention.

  “At ease, Lieutenant,” Bookbinder said, and turned shadowed eyes to her. “Ripple a call sign or your name?”

  “Both, sir,” she answered. She gestured to her Hydromancer’s lapel pin. “The guys thought it appropriate when I came up Latent.”

  Bookbinder chuckled. “Well, okay, I was—”

  “You want me to be on the team, sir?” Ripple cut him off, then put a hand over her eyes. “Sorry, sir, I’m . . . uh . . . enthusiastic sometimes.”

  Bookbinder chuckled again. “It’s fine, Lieutenant, but no. I need all hands on deck here, especially folks with your abilities. The FOB has to hold, and clean water is going to be critical to that particular mission.”

  “It’s going to be critical to your mission, too,” Crucible added. “I was thinking you’d decided to take a Hydromancer when you asked me to bring Lieutenant Ripple to see you.”

  “Yeah, about that,” Bookbinder said, reaching behind his desk and lifting a plastic bucket of water with a grunt. “Heavy,” he said, setting it on the desk. The water’s surface was rank, with particles of mud and algae swirling across it. A foul odor wafted through the room.

  Crucible wrinkled his nose. “What’s this for?”

  Bookbinder gestured to Ripple. “You can clean that up, right? Make it drinkable?”

  Ripple didn’t blink. “Certainly, sir.”

  “How? What exactly is your magic doing when you clean water?”

  “It’s hard to explain, sir. I don’t mess with the dirt and bacteria, that’s a Terramancer’s job. I sort of . . . call the water itself forth from that, separate it out. What you wind up with is just pure water. No contaminants. That’s the short answer, anyway.”

  “That’s the answer I wanted,” Bookbinder said, pulling a short piece of rebar from his pocket and holding it over the bucket. “Okay, use your magic to clean the water in this bucket.”

  Ripple shrugged and held out a hand. Bookbinder placed one of his hands over her own and shut his eyes, concentrating. The water in the bucket began to bubble for a short moment before petering out, the slime on the surface reconstituting.

  Ripple’s eyes widened. “Sir, what are you . . .”

  “Keep going!” Bookbinder interrupted her. “Finish the spell. This won’t hurt you, I promise.”

  Ripple’s eyes remained wide and fixed on Bookbinder, but she complied.

  After a moment, Bookbinder grunted in satisfaction. He hefted the piece of rebar, unchanged. “Well, let’s hope this works.”

  He waved away Crucible’s question and dropped the piece of metal into the bucket. He stared at it with folded arms, not breathing.

  “Sir, enough of the dance–of–a–thousand-veils act. What’s the point of this exercise?”

  “The point,” Bookbinder said, looking up, “is to leave you with as many Sorcerers as possible. And I do believe I have just succeeded in that very objective.”

  He gestured back down at the bucket, full to the brim with potable water, clear and sparkling under the fluorescent office lights.

  Chapter XVII

  Move Out

  Magic has been good to us. Kashmir is back where it belongs. Relations with the Chinese have warmed into the partnership we had always hoped they would eventually become. India has taken her rightful place as the major player in Asia that we have sought to be since we won our independence. But this is not the greatest thing it has done for us. The Great Reawakening has done nothing less than unite us with our traditions, and the deities that passed them along to us millennia ago. India is, quite literally, a nation that has at long last come home.

  —Madhav Singh, Minister Arcane, Republic of India

  Bookbinder sank into his body armor, letting the huge rucksack slung over his shoulders absorb the shuddering of the helicopter’s airframe. Vasuki-Kai, Dhatri, Woon, Sharp, Fillion, Anan, and Archer all sat uncomfortably on the Chinook’s long benches. The humans looked like camouflage-patterned cauliflower, bulging grotesquely with gear. Outside the helo’s open cargo hatch, two door gunners scanned the airspace and the ground beneath them for threats. Fortunately, they didn’t see any. If the goblins spotted the helo this far out from the FOB, they’d probably be under attack from the moment they landed.

  They needed time to get clear of the ring of hostile Defender tribes and into the territory beyond. After that, the helo would push them as far as its fuel would allow, saving only the reserves necessary for a safe return to the FOB.

  Bookbinder tried to sleep, resting his helmet brim against the action of the breaching shotgun they’d given him to carry, but it was useless. The giant helo was sensitive to every gust of wind, jostling him awake the moment he thought he might be drifting off. Sharp and his people looked bored. Vasuki-Kai coiled toward the entrance to the cockpit, bent nearly double to accommodate his height, looking like he held court in helicopter cabins every day. Dhatri sat nestled in the coils of his giant tail, looking nervously out the open cargo hatch. Woon had put her goggles over her eyes, leaving the black cloth dustcover in place, hiding her expression. Bookbinder finally gave up on sleeping and sat blinking through his dust goggles as the helo shed speed and altitude, the roaring of the rotors dying down. Sharp and his men advanced to the cargo ramp, weapons at the low ready, while the rest of the group scrambled for their gear.

  At last, the helo touched down with a jolt, and Sharp and his men advanced out of the hatch, guns tracking the perimeter, before taking a knee and giving a hand signal that it was safe to exit. Bookbinder, Woon, and Dhatri shouldered their weighty gear and stumbled out into the saw-toothed grass, rippling in the rotor wash like the green surface of an ocean. Vasuki-Kai followed leisurely behind.

  Bookbinder was still taking in the landscape when he felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned to see the helo’s crew chief, sun visor and helmet hiding the upper half of his face, lean forward to shout into his ear. “You’re clear as far as we could see all the way down, sir! I wouldn’t sit still any longer than I have to. Good luck and Godspeed!”

  Bookbinder nodded, and the crew chief saluted, racing back into the helo. The huge airframe shook as it rose skyward again, circling the area once before disappearing back the way they had come, a slowly shrinking point in the early-winter sky.

  Bookbinder took in their surroundings. There was almost nothing to see. As far as his eye could cover, knee-high saw-toothed grass waved in the cold air, patches of mottled brown the only break in the carpet of pale green. He felt a brief moment of disorientation, vertigo. There was no way to tell where they had come from, where they were going.

  Sharp tapped his shoulder and pointed behind him. “Sir, it’s that way. We need to get moving.” Relief flooded him. Crucible hadn’t been kidding that he’d found the best, in such company h
e would be fine. That’s what the military was about after all, leaning on the person next to you.

  The relief brought his command presence back. “All right,” Bookbinder said. “We’ll move out in a minute, I just need to check a couple of things. Who’s got the comms?”

  Archer raised his hand, producing a handset from his backpack.

  “Do a pulse check with the FOB,” Bookbinder said. “I guess you’re RTO for this run.” Archer nodded and began speaking into the handset in hushed tones.

  Bookbinder tried to meet the eyes of each member of the team and did fine until he came to Vasuki-Kai.

  After a moment, he picked one of the flurry of snake’s heads and figured that would have to do. “Remember,” he said, “if the comms pulses stop coming, the FOB will send out another team. Per my instructions, that team’s objective is not to locate or rescue us. That team’s objective is to reach the FOB Sarpakavu and secure assistance from the Naga Raja and the government of India. I want everyone to understand that. I’m not calling this a suicide mission. We’re too squared away for that. But it is a do–or–die mission, and I want that understood. I hate stupid bumper-sticker slogans like ‘failure is not an option.’ But this is one of the rare circumstances where it’s actually appropriate. Everybody clear?”

  The entire team nodded concurrence with the exception of Vasuki-Kai, who hissed questions at Dhatri, who translated back in a low voice. Bookbinder recalled his last words to Crucible before boarding the helo out. Even with the helo getting us partway, it’ll take us the better part of a month to walk the rest of the distance. You have to hold until then.

  Crucible had nodded. We’ll hold, sir.

  “Okay,” Bookbinder said. “Remember your fire discipline. Only shoot at what you can hit, and don’t shoot unless you have no other option. Remember that Major Woon can Whisper if we run into hostile fauna. I’d rather have her violating the hell out of the McGauer-Linden Act than you wasting precious ammo.”

  Archer, who had just returned the handset to his pack, raised a hand. “Pulse check is good, sir.”

  “All right,” Bookbinder said, mostly to himself. “Anything else . . . anything else . . .”

  “Water-decontamination tablets,” Archer said. “You want to distribute those now, sir? I’d feel better if they were spread across the team.”

  “That’s right,” Bookbinder said. He produced three pieces of rebar from his cargo pocket, handing one to Archer and one to Sharp and keeping one for himself. “Here ya go.”

  Sharp looked down at his palm in disbelief. “This is a piece of metal, sir.”

  Bookbinder nodded. “It’ll do the trick. And unlike decontamination tablets, it doesn’t run out . . . I think.”

  Sharp’s eyes narrowed, but Woon crowded closer. “I can . . . I think I can feel a current off it . . .”

  “You can,” he agreed. “I’ve got tablets as backup, but those’ll work.”

  “Are they magic, sir?”

  Bookbinder tapped the side of his nose. “Call it experimental tech. I’m calling it a Bound Magical Energy Repository for now.”

  “BMER . . .” Woon mused. “Boomer?”

  Bookbinder nodded. “Boomer it is. Just sling the questions for now. They work. That’s what you need to know.”

  Woon frowned, and Dhatri and Vasuki-Kai exchanged conversation in their own language, but Sharp and his men shrugged. “What else, sir?”

  Bookbinder looked down at the breaching shotgun slung across his chest. “I’m not even qualified on this stupid thing.”

  “You’re just humping it, sir,” Sharp said. “Not shooting it.”

  “You can have the SAW if you want, sir,” Anan said, lifting the machine gun slung over his shoulder. It looked at least double the shotgun’s weight.

  Bookbinder pursed his lips. “Hmm. I think I’ll hold what I’ve got.”Anan chuckled. “Suit yourself, sir. I’m just trying to provide options.”

  “I appreciate it. Anybody have any questions?”

  Nobody did.

  “All right, let’s go.”

  Within the first half hour, Bookbinder began to see Crucible’s wisdom in suggesting that he stay on the FOB. The rucksack and its straps were padded, and it was balanced as well as it could possibly be. The shotgun was cinched tight across his chest. His helmet, his body armor, his boots were all rigged tight. None of it mattered. The gear still jostled against him as he marched over the uneven terrain, occasionally stumbling as his foot found some hole that the tall grass had concealed. Go ahead and roll an ankle now, you jackass. That’s exactly what we need. His high boots had supported his ankles thus far, and he stepped gingerly. Regardless, before long his helmet chafed the center of his forehead, his boots rubbed his shins raw. A knot formed over his spine right between his shoulder blades, and the straps of his pack felt like they were digging furrows in the insides of his arms. His breath came in labored puffs. Sweat soaked his helmet liner despite the cold.

  “You okay, sir?” Sharp, moving so easily across the ground that he looked like he was floating in spite of his load, looked over at him.

  Bookbinder glared back. “Fine . . .” he wheezed. “Fine, thanks. Just . . . don’t want you . . . to feel like I’m making you look bad.” If Sharp found it funny, he gave no sign. You wanted to lead this little camping trip. Now suck it up. But, oh dear God.

  The light runs he’d done all his life hadn’t prepared him for this.

  The only other one who seemed to be having a hard time of it was Dhatri, but the Indian officer didn’t complain, his eyes eager, fixed ahead. Vasuki-Kai slithered along in the middle of the column, his many heads looking in all directions, towering over them. It somewhat made up for the fact that the naga, being royalty, refused to carry any gear at all, despite his large and powerful frame being capable of hauling more than any three of the humans combined. Multicultural sensitivity, Bookbinder thought. Who’d have ever thought it would apply to other species?

  Bookbinder fell in alongside Fillion. The operator ignored him, eyes on the horizon, scanning for threats. Bookbinder appreciated his alertness, but Vasuki-Kai had all the angles covered, and there was clearly nothing around for miles. He figured now was as good a time as any to get to know his people. A leader should do that.

  “Where you from?” he asked.

  Fillion ignored him. He repeated the question, and the specialist finally turned as if noticing him for the first time.

  “New York, sir.” He spoke so quietly that Bookbinder could barely hear.

  Bookbinder nodded. “Right. The city?”

  Fillion’s eyes had already gone back to the horizon. “No, sir.”

  Bookbinder sighed and turned away. Anan was covering the column’s other flank with every bit as much intent silence, so Bookbinder gave up and fell in with Sharp again.

  “Your boys are certainly dynamic conversationalists.”

  “Don’t take it personal, sir. They’re just focused,” Sharp said.

  “Focused,” Bookbinder replied.

  “That’s why they call us the quiet professionals.”

  “Well, they’ve got the quiet part down.”

  “They just want to do their best for you, sir, and that means no distractions.”

  “No distractions, right.” Bookbinder kept his peace and marched on.

  They made good progress the first day. The only creatures they saw were a pack of what looked like horses, with shaggy-hyena-looking fur coats. They trotted toward the party, keening eerily, their eyeless snouts terminating in a single, sharp-looking tooth.

  Anan sighted his SAW as they drew near. Bookbinder could feel Woon Drawing her magic in preparation to Whisper one of them. He hoped they wouldn’t have a fight on their hands already. “Hold your fire,” he said, waiting to see what the creatures’ intentions were. He drew his own pistol and took aim just in case.

  “Hud yur feer. Hud yur feer . . .” one of the creatures began to croon, circling them. The crude impression of Bo
okbinder’s voice sent chills down his spine. Dhatri took a knee, aiming his carbine and whispering an oath in Hindi.

  Vasuki-Kai hissed what sounded like exasperation, sank into his coiled tail, and sprang into the air. Bookbinder was shocked by how lightly and quickly the giant naga could move. He landed in the midst of the creatures, drawing six of the swords and knives he kept thrust into his sash and hissing a warning, puffing out his chest and shoulders, his heads lashing around him, snapping at the empty air.

  The creatures howled, a few of them making shrieking imitations of Vasuki-Kai’s hissing before they scattered, tufted tails tucked between their legs as they raced away. The naga drew a bladed ring from his belt and cast it after one of them; it sliced through the creature’s tail before gracefully arcing back to one of his hands. The creature shrieked and put on speed, forming back up with the pack and making for the horizon.

  Vasuki-Kai’s many heads scanned the horizon for threats before he returned his weapons to the sash at his waist. He nodded in satisfaction, slithering his way back to the group and hissing smugly to Dhatri.

  “His Highness says that we do not have time to play with animals,” Dhatri translated. “He demands we continue along at once.”

  By the time the Source’s big sun began to set, washing all in an intense, almost neon rippling of orange and bruised blue, Bookbinder could see the ground beginning to slope down toward a wide river. Beyond it, he could make out a stand of trees.

  “What do you think?” he asked Sharp, as darkness began to cloak them.

  “We’re making good time,” Sharp answered. “Night-vision equipment is good for short ops, but you don’t want to be hiking in it, and I don’t know what the big guy’s night eyes are like.”

  He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at Vasuki-Kai, whose eyes had begun to glow a dull yellow in the failing light.

  “All right, let’s make camp. I’d like to steer clear of that water until we know what’s in it.”

  Woon conjured a small earthen hut while the rest of them grounded their gear and Bookbinder demonstrated his water-cleaning “boomer” to Sharp in a nearby half-frozen puddle.