by Myke Cole
‘I’m sure she can.’
‘How’s it work? You have to switch it on?’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Bookbinder said. The SOC had been clear. The less people outside the program knew about his ability, the better. The truth was that there was no need for an on switch. The boomer held the spells, waiting for an occurrence that required their discharge. He remembered the short stubs of metal he’d Bound with Ripple’s water-purification magic. They’d discharged their power when dropped in fouled water, longer-lasting and more effective than any chemical system he’d ever used.
There was nothing more to say, so Bookbinder stood quietly as the ship made way through the Lower Bay and out to sea, his nausea increasing with the chop.
The water seemed an unchanging blue-green expanse before him, until at last he saw the dull tan-green of Sandy Hook begin to crystallize out of the horizon off their starboard bow.
The bridge was silent as all turned their eyes expectantly southward, and the seas picked up, rocking the large ship less and less gently.
Bookbinder watched the horizon, trying to keep the line of sky in his field of vision, hoping it would ease the rising sickness. His stomach rolled worse than ever.
A dull thud sounded from behind them, echoing across the sky. Bookbinder turned, but his view was obscured by the instrument panels and charts that adorned the bridge’s aft bulkhead. He could hear the crew shouting around the crane, rushing to the railings, craning their heads aft and holding their blue-and-white plastic hard hats to their heads. Bookbinder’s current intensified with his heightened nerves, and he felt Ripple Drawing her own magic, ready to Suppress him. It was ridiculous. Bookbinder’s magic could spike to the limit, and he would never go nova. His power was a parasite, only working off the magic of others.
Bonhomme knew better than to turn, and called instead into the radio. ‘Who’s got the stern watch? What’s going on?’
There was a pause, a brief burst of static. Then, ‘Sir, something big blew up . . . I can’t tell . . . maybe the battery? Big column of smoke. Might be Brooklyn.’
Bonhomme dropped the radio and pulled another handset down from a bank of them above his head. ‘Sector New York, Sector New York, this is Coast Guard Cutter Breakwater, over.’
The response was hissing static. He tried again, his voice rising, edged with worry.
‘Bosun’ – Bonhomme turned to Rodriguez – ‘nothing on encrypted, can you . . .’
Rodriguez was already pulling down another handset. It crackled into life before she could depress the button. ‘Coast Guard Cutter Breakwater, Coast Guard Cutter Breakwater, this is New York Naval Militia Patrol Boat 21 . . .’
‘Yes! Pete! Hi,’ Bonhomme said, snatching the handset from Rodriguez’s hand. ‘What the hell is going on? We’re seeing smoke. We heard an explosion.’
The response was staticky, intermittent. ‘. . . talk to Sector?’
‘No!’ Bonhomme shouted into the radio. ‘I can’t raise them. What’s going on?’
‘. . . lot of folks talking at once right now. What’ve you got on board?’
‘For what?’
‘Armament.’ Pete’s voice was also rising, breathless.
Bonhomme turned pale. ‘What the hell are you talking about? I can’t discuss this in the clear on channel 16.’
‘Come on!’ Pete yelled back.
Bonhomme stared at the handset. Bookbinder, despite his seasickness, was already feeling the familiar calm that began to settle over him in a crisis.
Bonhomme finally swept his arm over the sailors on the bridge and around the crane below it. None carried arms. If there were weapons mounts on the Breakwater, Bookbinder couldn’t see them. ‘We’re a buoy tender, Pete,’ Bonhomme said into the radio. ‘What do you think we’ve got?’
Silence.
Then the radio came alive again. ‘Get back to shore. Even law-enforcement gear will help.’
Bonhomme dropped the radio and turned to Rodriguez. ‘Raise Sector any way you can. Try 21, 23, 83.’
Rodriguez punched buttons on the radio console while Marks called commands to the helm, and the Breakwater began to come about, rolling harder as the waves took her on the beam.
‘Sir,’ Rodriguez said as one of the radios began to repeat a message. ‘All vessels return to base. I say again, all vessels RTB.’ The encrypted radio lit up. ‘Coast Guard Cutter Breakwater, Coast Gu . . .’ Bonhomme snatched up the radio. ‘Breakwater, Commander Bonhomme.’
‘Jeff, it’s MAT4.’
Bonhomme sighed. ‘What’s up? The radios are going crazy.’
‘We need you back here right now. I’ve got gunner running an inventory, but what armaments are you carrying?’
Bonhomme stared at the radio. ‘Standard law-enforcement complement. Enough for two boarding teams.’
‘It’ll have to do. Come on back as quickly as you can.’
‘Will you please tell me what’s going on?’
A pause, then, ‘Manhattan has been . . . invaded. Have your guys ready to go the second you RTB. We’re going to muster at Sector, then head up to the battery. Station’s fleet is already on scene.’
Bonhomme looked at Bookbinder. ‘Did he say invaded?’
Bookbinder’s sense of calm deepened. He tried to will some of it into Bonhomme. ‘He did, skipper.’
‘What the hell does that mean?’ Bonhomme looked at Marks. The younger man was also pale but continuing to give orders.
‘It means we scrub the current mission,’ Bookbinder said, gesturing at the boomer still tied to the crane. ‘We get back to the pier and figure out what’s going on.’
He wanted to grab Bonhomme by the lapels and shake him, remind him that his people were watching, that his posture would determine theirs.
‘Right. Right.’ Bonhomme turned to Marks, began to speak, realized the ship was already coming about. He stood, stammering.
‘Skipper,’ Bookbinder said. ‘They did say to come ready to fight. You might want to turn out your boarding teams. Get them rigged up.’
‘Right,’ Bonhomme said again, looking at his hands. Focusing on a task seemed to return some of his presence of mind. He turned back to Rodriguez. ‘Bosun, keep scanning those channels. See if anyone out there is talking about whatever is going on. Ask if anyone has cell phone signal. Maybe there’s something on the Internet.’
He turned to the armed sailor behind Bookbinder. ‘ME1 Mattes, get both teams turned out and suited up.’
Mattes said, ‘Aye aye, sir,’ but didn’t move. He looked expectantly at Bookbinder.
‘I’ll be fine,’ Bookbinder said, before Bonhomme could respond. He gestured at Ripple. ‘She’ll Suppress my magic. What am I going to do, jump off and swim? Go.’
‘Sir, I . . .’ Mattes began.
‘It’s fine,’ Bonhomme said. ‘Get them turned out.’
Mattes nodded and left. Bonhomme turned to Bookbinder while Rodriguez scanned the radio channels.
‘Bad timing,’ he said lamely.
Bookbinder waved a hand. ‘It’s fine. I’m more interested in finding out what the hell is going on.’ He worried at his wedding ring, twisting it until it became warm against his finger.
The radio chatter was confused. A couple of boaters were talking about an army in the Financial District, with some saying it was the Chinese, or the Iranians. Some said monsters were coming out of the sewers. Bookbinder frowned, wracking his brain. Did someone have a Portamancer? That was the only way he knew to get an entire army onto the southern end of Manhattan that quickly.
Was it Oscar Britton? Had the man decided to seek revenge against the government? Maybe free Latent-Americans by violence? As quickly as the thought rose, he dismissed it. He’d never do that. Not the Britton who saved the FOB.
The Breakw
ater began to pick up speed, the huge crane rising and falling as the bow cut through the waves. Bookbinder steadied himself against the rail in front of the console. The sickness faded to a thematic buzz in his belly that he could just tolerate. Marks raised a pair of binoculars and squinted into the distance.
He dropped them. ‘Sir, there’s . . .’ He looked down at the radar, back up.
But Bookbinder and Bonhomme could already see it. A curtain of air hung directly in their path. It shimmered, wavering like asphalt heated in the sun, as if the water had climbed vertically until it reached the height of a building. Its edges were made distinct by lines of green rot, wafting a necrotic stink that Bookbinder could smell even inside the bridge. Around it, the water frothed and churned. Bookbinder felt Ripple’s magical tide spike hard. ‘Easy there, Captain,’ he said, smirking. ‘I wouldn’t want to have to Suppress you.’
Ripple blushed. ‘I’m fine, sir.’
‘All engines stop.’ Marks looked down at the sonar. ‘Sir, you’ll want to see this.’
Bonhomme pushed past Bookbinder and stared at the screen. ‘What the hell is that? School of fish?’
‘Biggest school of fish I’ve ever seen,’ Rodriguez said, looking over, ‘and that’s . . . that’s a whale.’ Her finger tracked shaded blotches across the screen, moving steadily toward the city. As Bookbinder watched, the blotches paused, flickered, then began moving quickly toward what Bookbinder assumed was their position.
‘That’s not . . . normal,’ Bookbinder said, looking out the window over the buoy deck. The bow dropped as the ship slowed. The boiling patch of water around the shimmering square of air moved closer to them. Bookbinder thought he saw things breaking the surface . . . sharp and pointed. Spearheads?
‘All engines! Back full!’ Marks was shouting.
The Breakwater’s bow shuddered as it cut into the boiling water. The surface was seething now, light glinting off pointed shapes piercing the surface, as if an army swam beneath. A huge black shape, at least as big as the Breakwater itself, appeared alongside the ship. The sonar was a sheet of solid color surrounding the buoy tender.
‘ME1!’ Bonhomme shouted into the radio. ‘Get your teams on the buoy deck!’
A response crackled back, drowned by the yelling on the bridge.
The Breakwater ground to a stop, the hull echoing as if a thousand hands were drumming against it.
The water erupted.
Creatures flung themselves out of the waves, sticking to the Breakwater’s sides. They were small, skinny, with long, pointed ears and fingers, shaped like human children and scarcely bigger. Their pale skin dripped seawater, reflecting the sun. They were crusted with barnacles, seaweed clinging to their sparse hair. Tentacles sprouted randomly, wriggling between shoulder blades, protruding from under an armpit, writhing from the knuckles of webbed fingers. They clutched spears, knives, short hatchets that looked to be carved from bone or coral.
They paused, chattering to one another, then swarmed up the hull, just as Mattes’s boarding teams appeared on the buoy deck, still tightening their helmet straps and adjusting the slings on their weapons.
The creatures came over the gunwales and down around the crane, scattering the unarmed sailors, who went scrambling back through the boarding teams, shouting. The creatures looked like the goblins Bookbinder knew from FOB Frontier, warped and twisted by the sea.
Bookbinder had lived and worked in the Source long enough to be unsurprised by the sight of monsters, but the crew of the Breakwater had no such advantage. The boarding teams stumbled backward, blinking. The sea goblins swarmed forward, grinning at the fear on the faces of the retreating sailors, brandishing their spears, brine trickling from their mouths, sun glinting off their pointed teeth, yellow, broken, and wickedly sharp.
Chapter Five
Hold What You’ve Got
We now have what the world is calling a second ‘Gate-Gate’ scandal from the United States. This scandal confirms the revelation that America, in collusion with the Republic of India, has been operating in the alternate magical dimension known as ‘The Source.’ They have done so without respect to the security interests of this body, or the input of its members. This brazen colonialism is nothing more than what we’ve come to expect from these two powers. Which is why we have now assembled member nations from both ASEAN and the SCO to demand this body conduct a full investigation into the extent and the intention of this collusion, and take appropriate action to safeguard the interests of all member nations.
– Peter Tan
Singaporean ambassador to the United Nations speaking before the UN Security Council in the wake of the ‘Second Gate-Gate Incident’
Harlequin watched the Chinooks circle overhead. The huge helicopters shed altitude, ground crews moving the T-shaped concrete barricade walls that hung from their undercarriages into place. They had mostly completed an impromptu wall around Battery Park, the gaps filled with sandbagged machine-gun positions. A navy Seabee unit directed another Chinook, lowering the top of a guard tower onto hastily constructed supports.
Harlequin could see a few of the enemy, less than a thousand feet away, still in numbers too small to mount an assault. But not for long.
‘No!’ he shouted into the radio handset, jerking to the side and forcing the RTO whose backpack it was connected to to stumble along behind him. ‘I need all your T-walls. I don’t care if you don’t have the fuel budget for this. I need you flying nonstop sorties. We need to keep this foothold, and that’s not going to happen if we can’t get a perimeter up. What part of “from the president himself” don’t you understand?’
A knot of civilians huddled by Castle Clinton’s entrance, already outnumbering the soldiers inside the barricade wall four to one. Some were burned and bleeding, all looked ragged, exhausted, and thirsty. They needed water. They needed medical attention that his tiny force couldn’t possibly provide. Most importantly, they needed to get the hell out of here.
Harlequin looked up as a thin-skinned Humvee drove in through a gap in the barricades and rolled to a stop in front of him. Hewitt stepped out of it, in battle gear, with Knut and two more soldiers.
Harlequin saluted. ‘Good to see you here, sir.’ Unless you’re going to break my balls. In that case, go fuck yourself.
He looked back at the radio. The supply officer at the other end had taken his sudden distraction as an excuse to hang up.
Hewitt scowled but returned the salute. Knut didn’t have to be reminded this time.
Hewitt gestured at the T-walls. ‘You haven’t wasted any time.’
‘There’s no time to waste. I’m being sucked dry by bureaucrats at Fort Dix. They sent the one helo flight’ – he indicated the Chinooks – ‘but we need more if we’re going to get this park walled off.’
As each Chinook dropped off its T-wall, it landed long enough to take on a load of refugees before taking off back in the direction of New Jersey and safety, but it wasn’t nearly enough.
‘I’ve got more T-walls inbound from Hamilton and Wadsworth, too. I’m talking to the Coast Guard about making sure your back is covered.’ Hewitt indicated the water behind him. ‘There’s some kind of problem there. They’ve got a ship underway that’s not coming in. This’ – he indicated a yellow New York City school bus that was even now unloading a platoon of soldiers – ‘is something, at least.’
Harlequin met Hewitt’s eyes. He knew how much this man must bridle at helping him. He’d make it as easy as he could. ‘Thanks, sir. I’m glad to have you with me. I’m going to need a New Yorker to help me understand the lay of the land.’
Hewitt snorted. ‘I’m from Ohio. I was transferred here from Fort Bliss, Texas, a few months ago. I don’t know New York, but I know it’s my responsibility to protect it, no matter who the president puts in charge. So, let’s get this straight. This is my ground, and I’m c
overing it. I’ve spent some time in the manuals since you came on scene, and there’s definitely some wiggle room over jurisdiction. I’m not going to tug my forelock and step aside while some . . .’ He swallowed, calmed himself with an effort. ‘While you take over. I’m here, and I have a voice in how this action is handled.’
Harlequin considered arguing, decided to bite down on his pride. Hewitt was determined, and his rank was nothing to sneeze at. He’d played the military trump card, wasting your opponent’s time. Countering him would require hours of his own spent poring over joint-service publications and incident-command-structure manuals. Any argument would have to be followed by an appeal up the chain, which would make him look weak and incompetent and underscore the lack of confidence the rest of the military had in him.
He shouted over to the soldiers piling off the bus. ‘Get that bus loaded up with refugees!’ The civilians surged at his words, and his soldiers had to shove them back as they began picking the closest to load on the bus.
‘Battery Tunnel is closed,’ Hewitt said.
‘Then open it,’ Harlequin replied. ‘I don’t have the supplies or the manpower I need to care for these people. We keep them here, and not only will they die, but they’ll take us with them. Every one of them we can get out of here makes our chances that much better.’ And these are the people we joined the Army to serve. He left the thought unspoken, but Hewitt’s expression showed he understood it as well as if it had been said aloud.
Harlequin wondered if he’d pushed the man too far, but the colonel nodded and barked a command to one of his soldiers, who jumped back into the Humvee and spoke into the radio as the bus, crammed with civilians, trundled off toward the tunnel entrance.
Harlequin turned back to Hewitt, relieved. ‘I’ve set up an ops center in the monument.’
Hewitt and Knut fell in beside him as they made their way to the old fort. ‘So, you’ve done your recon. What’s the SITREP?’
‘There’s some kind of . . . rent in the planar fabric, like a Portamantic gate.’
‘Like what you used in Gate-Gate,’ Hewitt said.
