Fortress Frontier

by Myke Cole

  “I don’t know what to say,” Britton said.

  “Don’t say anything for now. Let’s go see Mr. Hoy and get that infection treated.” He pointed at Downer. “Then you can say that, no matter what crap Render or Flicker flings your way, and there will be more and not just from them, count on it, that you’ll stick with me. Together, we’ll find a way to start sorting out this mess. Remember what Gandhi said . . .” He frowned, searching for the expression.

  “We have to be the change we wish to see . . .” Therese offered.

  Big Bear’s smile took years off him. “I’m done with skulking around tunnels. It’s time to change the world.”

  Britton’s heart swelled. “Let’s go,” he said, gesturing up the tunnel. They went on, even Downer stepping more lightly in the wake of Big Bear’s words.

  The tunnel sloped up at a sharper angle until they were almost climbing stairs, sidestepping up cracks in the concrete surface. It finally let out into a small, arched chamber about six feet across, the walls painted a deep forest green streaked with rust and graffiti. In the center was an ancient-looking spiral staircase, the scrolled iron looking much like the detailed carvings in the surface walls—a beautifully worked relic long gone to seed. The linseed oil had flaked away, black showing patches of rust. Britton wondered if it would hold.

  “What’s up there?” he asked.

  “Hope.” Big Bear grinned. He mounted the staircase and made his way up. It shook but held. Britton motioned Downer and Truelove up first, then Therese, wanting to spare his heavy weight for last. The stairs lurched sickeningly at each step, but he could feel the strength of their anchor at the top, and they held as the group pushed through the hatch in the ceiling and out into bright electric lights.

  Britton blinked, letting his eyes adjust after the soft magical phosphoresce of the tunnels. The light was harsh and piercing, but he could still tell that they stood in an enormous abandoned hothouse; the Victorian sweeps of rusting metal frame housing ancient glass of uneven thickness. The ground was flattened dirt, long gone to weeds and scrub grass, smelling of old cigarette butts, spilled motor oil, and rotten food.

  A man stood about twenty feet away in a poorly tailored business suit. He looked bulky, lumpen, like a football player in his pads. He waved to Big Bear. “You made it! Great to see you.”

  Big Bear moved around behind Britton. He could hear the Terramancer sliding a hatch into place over the hole they’d just come through. He glanced from Big Bear back to the man in front of them, blinking again as the figure came into focus.

  The suit flapped off him, pin-striped, ridiculous-looking over the man’s huge frame. Then Britton’s eyes settled on his neck and face and narrowed. His head was too small to match that giant body.

  He wasn’t bulky beneath that suit. He was wearing body armor.

  “Hello, Oscar,” the man said, smiling. “I see you’ve met the Sculptor.”

  Britton spun back to Big Bear. The Terramancer grinned, then melted.

  His flesh re–formed with breathtaking rapidity, the color draining from his skin, the long beard dropping away, the huge form narrowing, width turning to height. He groaned at the pain, but the grin never changed.

  In Big Bear’s place a thin man now stood, taller, his skin corpse gray. His black hair was slicked to the top of his head, looking greasy. He was already shrugging off Big Bear’s clothing, suddenly many sizes too large. Beneath, a skintight black bodysuit hugged his narrow frame, the Entertech logo blazoned on the chest. His face was blade thin, all nose and jutting lips.

  His dark eyes narrowed as he grinned wider.

  Britton caught his breath. Not a Terramancer. A Physiomancer.

  And the most talented one Britton had ever seen.

  “Sorry, Oscar,” the Sculptor said. “They told me you were dumb, just not how dumb.”

  Then Britton’s magic rolled back, and the glass around them exploded.

  Cloth-wrapped ropes pivoted against the hothouse’s metal frame, bending inward as the men clinging to them kicked out the glass, sliding down their length to the ground, weird, bulky guns leveled. Their body armor, helmets and weapons were a uniform black. The only contrast came from the subdued American flags on their shoulders and the unit patches on the opposite, bearing the familiar motto: our gifts for our nation.

  The SOC.

  The first round caught Truelove in the side of his head, sending him reeling in a cloud of spraying clear mist. Britton caught a whiff of it even as he spun to keep it from spraying in his eyes.

  Hot, spicy. Military grade pepper spray could incapacitate an angry bear. Truelove was already screaming, clawing at his face, as Britton ducked another stream of pepper-spray-filled paintballs.

  Swift cursed and fell back, a soldier grabbing him from behind, pinning his arms.

  At least they want us alive. Britton rolled beneath the stream of paintballs and kicked the shooter in the chest, feeling his boot impact solidly on the interceptor plate of his body armor. The operator fell backward, but Britton seized his weapon, elbowed him in the throat, and arrested his momentum with the sling.

  The operator pivoted between sling and elbow, flipping sideways and landing face-first in the dirt as Britton spun to face the Sculptor, pulling his pistol from his waistband. “You fucking sneaky son of a . . .” The Physiomancer was impersonating Big Bear the entire time. Had the real Big Bear been killed and replaced? Britton cursed and fired .

  The Sculptor made no attempt to dodge. His body oozed sideways, sucking the bodysuit inward so that the bullet skimmed harmlessly by. Britton felt his magic flood back into him for an instant while the Sculptor dropped the Suppression to work his own magic, but he blocked Britton’s flow again in an instant. Britton had never seen such precision. “Now, Oscar,” the Sculptor said. “That’s not very nice, is it?”

  The operators advanced, screaming at them. “Get on the ground, right now! Get your hands in the air!” Truelove already crawled in the dirt, howling, his eyes pinched tight. His glasses were gone. Swift had gone slack in the grip of the soldier behind him. Downer crouched beside Truelove, trying to help. Therese spun to face Britton, whose attack on the operator had carried him away from the rest of his friends. Apart from the magical tide Suppressing him, Britton could feel dozens of others, all around him. But they were no fools, even with Downer sick, they knew better than to give her material she could use against them.

  Therese was another matter. A pepper-spray ball had exploded against her abdomen, soaking her hips, but the vapors didn’t seem to be doing more than causing her to sniff and blink.

  She reached the Sculptor in three strides and fastened her hands around his neck. “Call them off,” she said. “Call them off, or you turn into mush.”

  He chuckled. “Seriously? You going to Rend, Mother Theresa? Thought you’d sworn off that. Even if I hadn’t heard that whole chitchat with you and Render, I still got the pleasure of reading your dossier. Real sob story. Do your worst.”

  Therese gritted her teeth, and Britton couldn’t tell if her magic was Suppressed or if her expression reflected frustration at the Sculptor’s accurate call. Either way, nothing happened.

  The Sculptor slowly pried her fingers apart. “That’s better.”

  Britton planted his boot on the operator’s neck as he tried to rise, scanning with his pistol. The cordon of SOC operators tightened. There were over twenty of them. The hatch they’d entered through was closed.

  “Give it up, Oscar,” the man in the suit called to him. “You don’t want to shoot anybody. Let us get your friends some help, and we can go sort this out.”

  But Downer, for the moment at least, didn’t look like she needed help. Her forehead was beading sweat, but her eyes were scanning the room with every bit of alertness he’d seen on the missions they’d run together.

  “Sarah! I’ve only got ten more rounds!” he shouted, pointed the gun into the crowd of operators and pulled the trigger. The soldiers dove as the gun spark
ed, spitting out the round, a small tongue of flame jetting from the muzzle. Britton felt flows drop and adjust as the operators focused on diving for cover over Suppression.

  He yanked the trigger again and again, the poor control causing the shots to drop crazily, all accuracy gone.

  But that didn’t matter. The bullets careened off the metal struts of hothouse structure, pulsed fire from the gun’s muzzle.

  Elements in motion, hot kinetic energy.

  Britton hoped to hell that Downer wouldn’t let him down.

  She didn’t.

  By the time the magazine had emptied, and the slide locked to the rear, two small elementals had risen at the far side of the chamber. One blazed dirty, cordite-laden fire. The other sparked static electricity from a rust-chipped metal strut. They moved with blazing speed, lighting among the SOC team, ignoring the men with guns across their chests, diving instead for the ones with metal fists emblazoned on their body armor, each clutching a bundle of lightning bolts. Their size didn’t detract from their blazing energy. The Suppressors swore and dove again, beating at the little balls burning and sparking around their heads.

  “Good girl,” Britton whispered, and lunged for the Sculptor.

  He stumbled on the operator’s body, his right cross turning into a wild haymaker that caught the Sorcerer’s throat in the crook of his arm. The Sculptor coughed, his head lurching. A fleshy knob erupted from his back, knocking the wind out of Britton, launching him back to land on his face. Britton felt his magic return to him as the Sculptor dropped the Suppression and engaged his own magic. Britton struggled to Draw, but his hitching lungs and bruised belly forced him to focus simply on breathing.

  “Stupid, fucking . . .” The Sculptor seethed, his head twisting all the way around. He leered at Britton, his suddenly elastic neck supporting his head while his body remained facing forward. A moment later, the flesh oozed, reversed, and he was whole again, solid and facing Britton. “You don’t get it, do you?” he said as he resumed Suppressing Britton. “You can’t fight city hall, Oscar. We will always find you. We will always make you pay.”

  Britton recovered his wind and tried to Draw again. His magic railed against the Scultpor’s disciplined tide, utterly impotent. “You fucking work for them. I was coming here to help people like you.”

  “Pshaw. I don’t need your help, silly boy,” the Sculptor taunted. “I’m doing just fine.”

  His head suddenly lurched forward, greasy black hair flying up, teeth clicking together. Spit flew from his mouth, and he sloughed sideways, eyes shutting and jaw going slack.

  Behind him, Therese shook her fist, her knuckles bleeding.

  Whether or not she was willing to Rend, there was nothing stopping her from putting her fist in the Sculptor’s ear. Britton felt his magic rush back to him as the Sculptor’s Suppression failed with his consciousness.

  It wouldn’t take another Suppressor long to figure out that Britton’s tide was free. He opened a gate across the hothouse floor, just before Therese and the rest of them. It opened on the wooden palisade wall of Marty’s village.

  “Go!” Britton shouted. “Right now, go!”

  The sight of the gate energized Swift. He howled in rage and raised the hand of the soldier pinning him to his face, biting down hard, his teeth penetrating the thin fabric of the shooter’s glove. Bone crunched, and the man screamed, giving Swift enough leverage to free a hand, which dropped to the operator’s pistol, yanking hard. The butt caught against the drop holster, and the pistol held fast, but the soldier had to release Swift to keep him from stealing his weapon, and in the next moment Swift was free, pelting across the ground and diving through the gate.

  Therese pulled Truelove up from the ground and spun to face Britton. Her eyes were wide.

  “Go!” Britton shouted again. “I’ll slide it here once you’re through!”

  She nodded and leapt through the portal, Truelove wailing in her arms, as three more paintballs smacked into her chest and abdomen.

  “Sarah, damn it!” Britton shouted again, on his feet now, pushing the gate toward her.

  Downer looked at him, at the soldiers around her, her eyes clear. Two operators tried to dash between her and the gate, but Britton flickered it forward, and they dove to avoid being cut by its edge.

  “Go, Sarah,” Britton said, hope fading in his breast.

  “Don’t . . . just go.”

  But Sarah Downer looked back to him and shook her head, once, firmly. She dropped to her knees clasping her hands behind her head. Britton could see the elementals flicker out in his peripheral vision, the small sparks of their resistance quenched as Downer’s magic rolled back of her own accord.

  He swore and slid the gate toward himself, but another current drove into his own, batting it aside and suffocating it. The gate flickered and vanished, leaving Oscar staring at the barrels of a dozen submachine guns. The Sculptor pushed his way through them, the bruise forming on his head already beginning to heal as he turned his magic to it.

  “Open the gate,” he said. “Open it right now and show us where they went.”

  Britton shook his head. “No way.”

  The Physiomancer pointed, the tip of his finger stretching into a bone spike that hovered in front of the Britton’s eyeball, so close he could see the pores in the bone, flecked with glistening red. “Are you fucking stupid? Do you have any idea how much I can hurt you? Do you want to die?”

  Britton remembered Harlequin, diving from the flight-line tower to save him. The one thing he could count on the SOC to do was try to preserve his power, bend it to their uses. He knew the Sculptor’s threats of torture weren’t idle. But his threats of death were.

  “Do you want to kill me?” Britton mused. “Because that’s what you’re going to have to do to get me to open another gate anywhere, ever.” He strained to see Downer, but the girl was screened by the legs and boots of soldiers and SOC operators, crowding around her. He thought of calling out to her, then remembered the expression on her face as she’d dropped to her knees. I don’t have anywhere else, she’d said. He hadn’t been able to make her see that she did have somewhere else, and now she’d made her choice. Failure choked him.

  The Sculptor cocked an eyebrow as one of the operators moved behind Britton, his voice firm and low. “Hands behind your back. Spread your fingers.” Britton thought briefly of fighting, then considered the array of weapons pointed at him. He complied, wincing as the cuffs cinched tight.

  “All right, let’s go.” They began to walk him toward the rear of the hothouse, where a pair of metal-framed double doors stood open. As he passed the Sculptor, he twisted toward him, glaring.

  “Be nice,” the Sculptor said, meeting his eyes. “I Rend as well as I disguise. We have a lot of questions to ask you, Oscar. And I’m going to be helping out in that regard, so you’d do well to be kind to me.”

  Britton was forced out onto a cracked concrete driveway, beside which he could see an unmarked white van. Beyond it, a river reflected the lights of assembled skyscrapers, straining skyward like glittering concrete teeth. Police cars blocked the street at both ends, sirens spinning, yellow tape keeping pedestrians well away.

  They stopped him, and the Sculptor came forward, raising a black hood. “You know the drill.” He held it over Britton’s head, meeting his glare. The Sculptor’s eyes were pale gray and filmy.

  The eyes of a dead man. Pitiless.

  Sick fear churned in Britton’s stomach. His heart fluttered like a caged bird.

  “Oh, you and I are going to be spending some quality time together from now on, my dear Oscar Britton,” the Sculptor said.

  “I am so looking forward to it.”

  The hood came down, and Britton drowned in darkness.

  Cross-Purposes

  The “Embracer” faith centers around the belief that magic is the wellspring of life. All those who live outside the faith are thought to have become “lost,” wandering from that pivotal origin. It is the duty
of all rightly minded goblins to bring all living things back to that flow. Success in this endeavor will bring about some kind of heralded golden age. Bringing the “lost” home is a matter of dogma among the Embracers, and the defense of those they choose to embrace one of the few things that will move them to violence. The Mattab On Sorrah exist in a constant state of war with the neighboring Defender tribes that wish to fight against humans.

  —Simon Truelove

  “A Sojourn Among the Mattab on Sorrah”

  Chapter XIV

  In Command

  Working with the indig is . . . I guess it’s productive. They do a lot of work around the base. We use ’em as ’terps and scouts sometimes. They know the country, and that helps. Some of ’em learn English, and that’s great. But the truth is that I don’t ever turn my back on ’em, not for a minute. When I was in Afghanistan, even the ”good” muj were still muj. They liked us, they loved America, yadda yadda yadda. But we all knew they’d shoot us in the back if they thought it’d get ’em somewhere. Goblins’ the same way. This is their home, not ours, and we both know it.

  —Staff Sergeant Byron Pointer

  Third Marine Expeditionary Unit, 212th Suppression Lance,

  FOB Frontier

  Bookbinder was awakened by explosions and shrieking gunfire.

  He rolled into a sitting position, blinking and rubbing his eyes.

  He felt the hair on the back of his neck rise as Aeromantic magic drove what must have been a massive column of lightning into the ground just outside his hooch. The converted container shook, and the smell of ozone filled the tiny room.

  He yawned, shook his head and buckled on his gun belt, strapped on his body armor and helmet, tied his boots. He opened the door and made his way outside, not hurrying. Why should he? Repulsing the attacking goblins bought them two days of peace. The attacks had come roughly every other day since then, increasing in intensity. It was as if the local tribes knew they were cut off and running low on supplies. Or maybe they had seen the interior of the FOB when they’d first overrun the SASS and gone mad at the thought of plunder.