U.S. Army Mage Corps: SWORD

by John Holmes

  Closing the browsers on his cell, he brought up another app, and dialed through to his Chief of Staff, Lieutenant Colonel Bates at Saratoga. Even though New York was eight hours behind Durkistan, the phone was picked up right away. The app itself was run by Mages in the communication section, so it was even more secure than the NSA could come up with.

  “This is Colonel Scarletti. I’ll be back there” he said, glancing at his watch “in about an hour. I want a full interrogation suite set up in the hospital, and CW4 Krause from Intel set to do a deep mind probe.”

  He hung up and called an old friend of his who had retired some years back and still acted as a consultant. “Hey Jose, this is Tony. I need you to come in to ‘toga for a few days and do a memory implant on one of my guys. Yeah, I know how dangerous it is. Did you see the news? OK, then you know what I’m dealing with. OK, thanks. See you then.”

  His next call was one that he dreaded, and one that never got any easier. “Felice? This is Tony Scarletti. I just wanted to call and tell you how sorry I am about Bob. He and I were friends for a very” and he was cut short by a loud “FUCK YOU” and the phone hung up.

  She would get over it. He hoped.

  Captain Lang met him outside the hospital, accompanied by Smith and Bognaski. Since none of them had any possessions except their weapons and the uniforms they were wearing when the base was destroyed, they were ready to go. All four went inside the hospital. Where they were met by a standing, but still shaky, Chief York.

  Bognaski spoke first. “Hey Chief, you look like crap!”

  She smiled weakly. “Thanks, Nasty. I feel worse than I look.”

  “Are you up for travel?” asked Captain Lang.

  “Uh, yeah, I guess. I might get airsick.”

  Bognaski laughed, saying “I wouldn’t worry about that, Chief. The Colonel is going to drag is through some weird extra-dimensional portal to get us back to HQ.”

  “Is it that bad?”

  Captain Lang answered her. “Nothing permanent, unless the spell puts you in the wrong place. Then you fuse with whatever is in the way, and in very, very rare occurrences, one of your atoms’ nuclei intersects with another atoms nucleus and they annihilate each other, releasing about a kiloton of explosive power. Hasn’t happened in more than a thousand years. Plus you vomit sometimes, and the further you go, the more likely you are to shit yourself, plus temporary erectile dysfunction.”

  Bognaski chimed in with “No way, not for me. I’ve been here almost a year, I’m going to the club in Albany, going to pick up some dumb college girls.”

  Scarletti shushed him with a look. “Don’t worry, Chief, you’ll be fine. It takes an incredible amount of skill to pull this spell off, but I’ve done it thousands of times. Come on, time is wasting.”

  They all stepped outside and Scarletti had them link arms. Then they pulled together as tight as possible, holding onto each other.

  “This is soooo gay” said Bognaski, then the world went dark for eternity.

  Chapter 12 Mage Corps Headquarters, Fort Warren, Saratoga Springs

  They landed two and half feet above the teleport pad at Fort Warren, and were moving sideways at about ten miles per hour. The tight group fell apart and tumbled over the rubber material placed over the concrete. Scarletti and Lang both tucked into a version of the Parachute Landing Fall, or PLF, flopping onto the ground with little effort. The rest rolled across like sacks of potatoes tossed from a truck. If it hadn’t been for the padded cover, they would have broken bones. As it was, Bognaski, who was most out of shape, landed hard and broke his ankle.

  “Jesus, Colonel, you could have warned us about that whole moving sideways and falling thing!” Nasty winced as Chief York twisted his ankle back into shape.

  Scarletti looked down at him and half grinned. “Maybe if you weren’t such a fat slug, you wouldn’t get hurt. How about you work on YOUR teleportation? And your PT.”

  Lang chimed in. “Yeah, Nasty. When you can move five people half way around the earth, you can criticize the boss. How about you spout back to me the moving variables of teleportation?”

  The Staff Sergeant started “Uh, Ok, well, first Earth’s rotation on its’ axis, then, uh, I forgot.”

  “One, Earth Axis Rotation. Two, Earth Solar Orbit. Three, Solar random movement through the local star cluster. Four, the star cluster’s movement through the Orion Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy. Five, the Orion Arm’s rotation around the gravitational center of the Milky Way. Six, Milky Way Galaxy’s movement through the universe, relative to other galaxies and the point of origin of the Big Bang.”

  Scarletti clapped as Smith finished reciting the Six Axial Variables of Teleportation. “Very good, Sergeant Smith. Bognaski, next time you sit down and watch Harry Potter and think this shit is all so easy, remember, that was a work of fiction. Come on, let’s get going, we’ve got a lot of work to do.” He turned and walked towards the stone buildings that stood guard over the Hudson River.

  “You know, that didn’t help. What are you, a frigging spell tome?” said Bognaski.

  Smith grinned at him. “I stayed in a Holiday Inn Express last night.”

  “Are you two done? We have work to do” said Chief York, who was already walking briskly towards the Headquarters building, seemingly recovered from her illness now that she was on home ground.

  “Just showing Smitty the sights, Chief.”

  Fort Warren stood high on a hill, on the western side of the Hudson River. Originally built during the Revolutionary War, the first, hasty wooden palisades had been thrown up to prevent a possible second attack from Canada, the year after the battle of Saratoga. In the following century a broad stone wall had been, twenty feet high, sloped down to a ditch. The slope was designed so that cannonballs would fly over the fort, ricocheting overhead. Beyond was a gentle slope to the river, and then a rise up to where the Green Mountains of Vermont caught the last rays of the setting sun. It had been a little after 11:00 when they left Durkistan, and eight time zones westward, they had arrived just after sundown. They both stood and breathed in the clean air for a minute, reveling in the lack of dust, then turned and descended down the steps.

  Inside the walled area stood stone barracks, an armory, and a General Purpose HQ / meeting hall. The fortress itself, however, had fallen away from direct military use after the war of 1812 ended the British threat. In 1820, Major Uriah Livingstone had been appointed first Chief of the newly formed, and still secret, United States Army Wizardry Branch, and the Defense Magic Institute had been founded. Almost two hundred years later, the Mage Corps still operated out of the small fortress, even though the school itself had been moved to Billings, Montana during the Second World War.

  Entrance to Fort Warren was prevented by a perimeter fence that encircled the entire hill. Patrols both magical and non-magical ran randomly throughout the woods that had grown up around the fort, and persons trying to enter the grounds often found themselves sitting in a café in Saratoga, with no recollection of the past few hours. During the Cold War, the Soviets had stopped bothering to send spy satellites overhead; the first half dozen suffered irreparable damage. Rumor had it that Fort Warren still had more than a dozen nuclear warheads targeted on it by Russia, more than twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Even Google Maps showed nothing but a plain farmers’ field. Personnel assigned there, no more than fifty or so permanently, showed up on the rolls either as being part of the Watervliet Arsenal, twenty miles south, in Recruiting positions scattered around the Northeast, or as full timers with the local Army Reserve unit in Schenectady or Albany.

  York stopped at the flag pole and knelt. The American Flag hung limply in the humid evening air, halfway up the pole, but stirred slightly as she touched the ground with the palms of her hands. The lights illuminating the Stars & Stripes flickered briefly.

  “What is she doing?” whispered Smith as they came up behind her.

  “She’s getting her mojo back. Healers need to be rooted to the
ground, kinda spiritually anchor themselves. It’s OK downrange, but” he nodded in her direction as he stood up and brushed the dirt from her hands and knees “to really recuperate, they have to be on home soil.”

  “This is her home? I thought she was from California.”

  “No, you book smart idiot. THIS is her home. America. The United States. It’s OUR home. Every Mage gets a lot of his power from the people who make up his nation, as long as they believe in their nation. It’s one of the things Captain Lang and the Colonel have been worrying about. This war has been going on for more than twelve years now, and people are tired of it, and this stupid recession, I mean, shit, people are starting to not believe in the country anymore. It’s those stupid frigging politicians.”

  Smith eyed him warily. “They didn’t teach us any of that at the DMI.”

  “Oh yeah, like they’re going to let a bunch of frigging noobs worry about shit like patriotism effecting magic. You chicken nuggets have enough to worry about. We’re never going to LOSE our magic, but it can get weaker or stronger. Look at every really powerful wizard in history. Merlin shows up when Celtic England is threatened by Saxon invaders. Diego fought the Moors in Spain in the Middle Ages. Al Hussmeni when the Mongols burned Baghdad. Ling Pau in China, fighting the Japanese in the 1930’s. Shit, even Kuro Yamauchi and Hagen Brandt on the Axis side in World War Two. As goes the nation, so go the mages.”

  Smith stood there in shock. “You actually studied in Mage history?”

  “Sure, why not? I love that stuff. Right here, in Saratoga, is the grave of one of the first Continental Army Mages to die in combat. Duked it out with a Brit who was backing General Burgoyne, and got in the way of some grapeshot while he wasn’t paying attention. Sergeant Mordecai Sanders.”

  “Damn, Nasty, you impress me.”

  “Ha, wait till we hit the clubs in Saratoga and you see me in action with the ladies. They don’t call me Sweet Nasty for nothing!”

  Chief York was waiting for them, holding the door open. “Please,” she said “I just got done vomiting. Don’t make me puke again.”

  Chapter 13 Mage Corps Headquarters, Fort Warren, Saratoga Springs

  Inside the old mess hall, an elevator led down into several underground levels that had been hollowed out of the bedrock back in the 1960s as prevention against Soviet Nuclear attacks. They rode the elevator down in silence. Captain Lang and Colonel Scarletti had gone in before them, and weren’t waiting when they stepped out into a hallway. Tacky fluorescent lights made the government issue green paint look even more sickly than they were.

  “Why don’t they use Magelight on this place?” asked Smith.

  Bognaski snorted out loud. “Guess who would get the crappy duty of walking the entire complex every fifteen minutes renewing the spells? You, that’s who. Don’t stir the pot.”

  They passed several people in ACU’s heading back towards the elevator. A few gave nodding acknowledgement to Bognaski, and more than one male cast a covert glance at Chief York’s blue eyes and blonde hair. All of them ignored Smith.

  They passed through a set of double doors into a conference room, where several people were already seated, and three screens showed others calling in from various locations around the globe. Colonel Scarletti sat at the head of the table, flanked by his Chief of Staff, LTC Bates, on one side, and his Senior Enlisted Mage, Command Sergeant Major McGhee, on his the other. Bates was tall and skinny, looking like his namesake from Psycho, Norman Bates, and had about the same scary look on his face. It completely matched his personality, acting as Scarletti’s whip in driving the officers.

  CSM McGhee, on the other hand, looked exactly like what he wasn’t. If you saw him in civilian clothes, his short muscular stature, heavy face, and broken nose screamed “thug”. He held two Masters Degrees from Columbia University, one in Foreign Relations and the other in Psychology. The enlisted soldiers of the Mage Corps either worshipped him or feared for their lives, depending on his mood. He pointed his finger a Bognaski. “You and me, we need to talk, Nasty. See me in my office when this is done.”

  Bognaski went pale and muttered “oh shit” under his breath. “You too, Smith. In fact, I want to see you first.” Smith fought the rising panic as best he could. Not good, not good, his brain screamed at him.

  “Chief York, please have a seat. Smith, Bognaski, stand at ease until called on.”

  “Yessir!”

  York seated herself next to the head of Mage Medical, Chief Warrant Officer Five Houchins. She looked like an older version of York herself, blonde hair tied tightly in a braid. She projected an encouraging, lively presence in the room, in contrast to Bates’ gloom. Only Scarletti knew of the battle she had been waging for years against cancer. It was a testament to her own powers at healing that she was alive, and she had been grooming York as a successor. He had asked CW5 Houchins to be present because she knew more about psyche probes than anyone alive.

  Two screens flickered into life, one showing the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the other the President. They all stood as the Commander in Chief’s image solidified.

  “Mr. President” said Colonel Scarletti.

  “Colonel, can you hear me OK?”

  “Yes Sir.”

  “Ok, I only have a minute. The fallout from this attack on our forces is eating up all my time. Colonel, what is your assessment on the situation? Does this pose a direct threat to the United States? And what have you done to prevent a further attack of this magnitude?”

  Scarletti sat back in his chair and tapped out a few commands on his tablet. “Sir, I’m sending you a complete breakdown of our deployments. The Chairman has approved of them. In regards to the asteroid strike, that was a one-time thing. I have Major Shoklavik at Fort Greely with the 49th Missile Defense Battalion. He’s tied in to USASMDC at Fort Collins in Colorado. Nothing will get past him.”

  The President looked off screen as someone said something to him, then turned back to Scarletti. “It had better not. Now, where are you on identifying this terrorist wizard?”

  “Ah, nowhere yet, Sir, but I expect to have information within the next twelve hours.”

  “I want it on my desk by the morning National Security Update.” The screen went blank, cut off by the President. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs leaned forward on his desk.

  “He’s got the ass, Tony. I haven’t been chewed out that hard since I was in Officer Candidate School. You better come up with something quick, since this is being spun as the Mage Corps fault. You know you have few friends out there in the general public, and on the Hill especially.”

  Scarletti blew his breath out in a long whistle. “So the knives are out already in Congress, huh?”

  “Yes. Losing a platoon, well, that’s one thing. Losing a Brigade and a billion dollars’ worth of equipment, well, that’s whole other ball of wax. Reverend Falstaff has been on the phone with his Senator from the great state of South Carolina, and on his TV show, too.”

  “Let me guess, something along the lines of the devil worshipping wizards need to be burned at the stake, yadda yadda?”

  “Pretty much. Listen, Tony, I know how important your work is, and this one caught pretty everyone with their pants down. However, unless you nail this bastard, quick, heads are going to roll. As it is, I had to talk the President out of carpet bombing the entire Gorengal Valley.”

  Nasty spoke up from the back of the room “Not a bad fucking idea!” LTC Bates shot him a dirty look, but CSM McGhee had to hide a smirk.

  “Did someone in the room say something?: asked the four star General on the screen.

  “No Sir. We’ll get this guy and it won’t take ten years like it took the CIA to get Bin Laden.”

  The CJOS nodded his head. “I owe you for Panama, Tony, but there is only so much I can do to cover for you. The existence of your organization is on the line.” The screen flicked off, and they all sat back.

  Chief Houchins was the first to speak. “Sir, I have the medsurg
e unit all set for Sergeant Smith.”

  “The who the what?” said Smith.

  Scarletti looked down the conference table at him. “We have to do a deep psyche probe on you to recover all the events that happened in the ambush. I should have done it when it first happened, but I didn’t think this guy was this dangerous. My fault.”

  Smith turned to Houchins. “What is a psyche probe, Chief?”

  “Basically we go in and record all your memories of that time, transfer them to digital imaging.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “Ah, not really. Nothing you can’t handle.”

  Scarletti interrupted them with instructions to Houchins to take care of getting things worked up with CW4 Kraus from Intel, and to make arrangements for Jose Cervantes when he showed up later today.

  “Listen up, people. You heard the Chief of Staff. The existence of the entire Corps is on the line, so I want everyone working overtime on this. I’m guilty of not taking it seriously enough, but you’re going to pay the price of my guilt in sweat and hard work. No travel outside CONUS for anyone until we ID this guy and come up with a valid course of action. Jonas” he said, turning to his XO “I want a full work up of that plan I sent you. Sergeant Major, make sure these two don’t go anywhere.”

  McGhee stood up and put a huge hand on Smith and Bognaski’s shoulders. “Don’t worry, Sir. Me and Nasty and Smith are going to have a bit of a chat.”

  Chapter 14

  “Special … I mean, Sergeant Smith reporting as ordered, Sergeant Major!”

  Command Sergeant Major McGhee looked up from where he was typing into a laptop, looked at Smith, then resumed typing.

  “Sit down, Sergeant Smith. I want to talk to you.”

  “Uh, OK, Sergeant Major.” Smith sat down in the chair, ramrod straight, at the position of attention.