by Myke Cole
PRAISE FOR MYKE COLE
“A dark fantasy tale with sharp teeth and a hard punch. Heloise is the hero we need, and Myke Cole is the writer to bring her transformation to light.”
Chuck Wendig, New York Times Bestselling author
“Cross The Forever War with Witch World, add in the real world modern military of Black Hawk Down, and you get Control Point, the mile-a-minute story of someone trying to find purpose in a war he never asked for.”
Jack Campbell, New York Times Bestselling author of The Lost Fleet series
“Cole’s managed to cover a hero’s journey story, a quest story, and now a running battle interspersed with a romance. It works spectacularly.”
io9
“A tense and action-packed ride… full of desperate, back-against-the-wall combat scenes.”
Tor.com
“Very entertaining… The best ride military fantasy has to offer… The Magic 8 Ball says ‘will enjoy.’”
Mark Lawrence, international bestselling author of The Liar’s Key
“Hands down, the best military fantasy I’ve ever read.”
Ann Aguirre, national bestselling author of Endgame
“Cole has created a dark medieval world that by the end only has a small sliver of light in it… A must-read for fans of Erika Johansen’s Queen of the Tearling series.”
Booklist, starred review
“Character-rich and action-driven a Molotov cocktail of human weaknesses and superhuman abilities.”
Robin Hobb, author of Fool’s Assassin
“Think Vince Flynn plus a whole lot of magic mixed in and baked in hellfire, and you’ve got the gist of how awesome Myke Cole’s new series is shaping up to be.”
Michael Patrick Hicks, author of Emergence
“Dark but well-depicted.”
RT Book Reviews
“Cole weaves... a fantasy world that feels comfortably familiar, then goes to places you’d never expect. You won’t stop turning pages until the stunning finish.”
Peter V. Brett, international bestselling author of The Desert Spear
“Brutal and lovely — an inventive and poignant fantasy that’s rich with keen characters, set in a vivid, fascinating world.”
Cherie Priest
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
THE SACRED THRONE TRILOGY
The Armored Saint
The Queen of Crows
The Killing Light
THE SHADOW OPS TRILOGY
Control Point
Fortress Frontier
Breach Zone
THE REAWAKENING TRILOGY
Gemini Cell
Javelin Rain
Siege Line
Legion Versus Phalanx
ANGRY ROBOT
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Hold on to your hats…
An Angry Robot paperback original, 2020
Copyright © Myke Cole 2020
Cover by Issac Hannaford
Edited by Simon Spanton-Walker and Paul Simpson
Set in Adobe Garamond
All rights reserved. Myke Cole asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Sales of this book without a front cover may be unauthorized. If this book is coverless, it may have been reported to the publisher as “unsold and destroyed” and neither the author nor the publisher may have received payment for it.
Angry Robot and the Angry Robot icon are registered trademarks of Watkins Media Ltd.
ISBN 978 0 85766 805 9
Ebook ISBN 978 0 85766 806 6
Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by TJ International.
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This book relies heavily on military acronyms. In order to maintain authenticity and not interrupt the narrative, I will not always define those acronyms for the reader. I am including a glossary at the end of the book for those who need it.
For those of you familiar with radio argot and the structure and operational procedures of the United States military, and the Coast Guard in particular, you will doubtless notice deviations from your experience. This is a work of science fiction, and I have taken some liberties in evolving both the service and the military at large to fit the purpose of the narrative. Where I could, I have cleaved as closely as possible to my own experience in the guard. Any errors are entirely my own, and I beg your patience with them.
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
EPILOGUE
GLOSSARY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHAPTER ONE
PROLOGUE
…Live from the Moon’s Lacus Doloris, the “Lake of Sorrows” where tensions between American and Chinese Helium-3 miners have just escalated into open violence. Now, technically, the 1967 Outer Space Treaty prevents exploitation of lunar resources for the benefit of any one country, but settlement here has outstripped the authorities’ ability to do anything but keep groups of miners separate and keep the peace. Until now, that is.
JENNIFER HSU, REPORTING FOR THE LUNAR 6 NETWORK.
The Coast Guard Cutter Aries bucked as she fired attitude thrusters to keep herself in position, making her groan and creak like a wooden sailing ship. Below her, the Lake of Sorrows boiled, its surface rippling with knots of miners, hurling boulders in the lunar gravity.
Commander Jane Oliver didn’t bother to look through the quartz-glass window in the cutter’s underbelly. She also didn’t bother to check the LADAR for the Aries’ exact altitude above the Moon. Though her eyes were still sharp despite fifty years of hard use, she knew it was too far to see much with the naked eye. Instead, she turned her attention to the high-definition screen and its magnified view. Digital crosshairs swept over the mobs of dueling miners. She would have felt better if the rioters had formed some sort of battle-line, but the skirmish had become so intense that all sense of organization had vanished, with clots of people battling back and forth, swirling and mixing like droplets of oil on the surface of an agitated pond. In the chaos she was left to pick out the Chinese from the Americans by their suits, with her countrymen in their bulky hardshell models lumbering forward to scatter their more agile Chinese enemies in skintight biosuits. If it came to guns, the Americans would be glad of that thick, rigid material, but it hadn’t come to guns yet.
Thank God.
Oliver had spent her career on the surface of the Earth, most of it saving drunk boaters from freezing water. The most violence she’d seen was when a bigger version of Willie Nelson decided to resist arrest after her boarding team had found a kilo of uncut heroin in the hold of his fishing vessel. She’d certainly never dealt with a riot in lunar-g. She rubbed her temples. “Somebody please tell me how this happened again?”
She could make out knots of police, American Lacus Doloris Police Department officers and Chinese People’s Armed Poli
ce, watching from a distance, guns at the low ready. She didn’t blame them for staying out of it. The melee was much too big for them to do any good without killing people. They were trying to keep it contained while they waited for orders, and backup, hopefully.
“Who knows?” Lieutenant Commander Wen Ho’s voice was politician smooth, soft and calming. Her executive officer had been working with her since she’d pinned on field-grade rank, and was like a lung to her. She felt herself relax as soon as she heard the hint of humor that always rode his words. “Near as we can tell, a Chinese miner detonated a charge that resulted in an accidental American death. The Americans lynched the Chinese miner, and things just kind of played out from there.”
Oliver nodded and looked back to the screen. Several of the habs were already demolished. She could see the miners bounding through the wreckage, stopping only long enough to scoop up huge chunks of structure, 3D-printed from the lunar soil. The debris would have weighed hundreds of pounds on Earth, but on the lunar-g surface of the Moon, the miners lifted the chunks easily, and with no atmosphere to slow them down once they were thrown… She watched in horror as an American miner threw a car-sized hunk at a fleeing Chinese man in a biosuit. She could almost hear the crunch as the debris impacted and he went down.
“This is out of control,” she said. “We don’t know anything else?”
“I already asked for clarification,” Ho replied, and she smiled. Of course he had. “This is Navy intel we’re talking to here.”
Oliver increased the pressure on her temples. “Let me guess… you don’t have a…”
“…Need-to-know, yes,” Ho finished her sentence for her, “that is precisely what they said. I have already registered a complaint.”
“Those fuckers will never learn that there are five armed services in the United States,” Oliver said. “Have you reached out to the LDPD?”
Ho stepped over to the screen, moving with a dancer’s grace despite the spin-gravity forcing a slight lean. His body was so long and thin he looked made of stretchable plastic. He tapped the monitor with a slender finger. “See that?”
“That…” Jane leaned closer, squinting at a jumble of twisted metal in the middle of the riot, “…is that another smashed hab? A vehicle park?”
“That’s the regional communications array,” Ho said, “they’re bringing the backup online, but it’ll be a minute.”
She looked up at the radar just as the watchstander opened his mouth to speak. “Thanks, BM3,” she cut him off, “I see.”
A capsule-shaped wash of blue indicated the cutter Volans coming out of orbit and maneuvering in alongside. She took another look at the riot, and willed the fighting to stabilize before anyone else got hurt. “Give me a visual.”
The screen flashed away from the rioting and showed the Volans, rocking as its reaction-control system engaged, attitude thrusters keeping its bulk from spinning. Whoever was at the helm was good, and she glided into a station keeping position alongside Aries. At 378 feet, the Constellation Class cutters were the biggest ships the Coast Guard had, but Oliver knew they would be dwarfed even by the smaller Navy frigates. The double triangle constellation Volans was painted on the ship’s side, above a cartoonish image of a flying-fish.
The encrypted radio channel buzzed. “Coast Guard Cutter Aries, Coast Guard Cutter Aries, this is Coast Guard Cutter Volans, over.”
Oliver waved off both Ho and her radio watchstander and grabbed the mic herself. “Hi Clare.”
“Jane, sorry,” Lieutenant Commander Clare Montaigne sounded frightened, “figured it was faster to ride out the orbit than try to burn all the way here.”
“Don’t sweat it, you’re well in time.”
“What the hell is going on?”
“Nobody knows, but LDPD aren’t going to do anything about it, and people are dying down there. I need you to turn out your boarding teams. How many small boats you have on there?”
“I’ve got two longhorns, same as you.”
“No, I mean are either of them charlie status?”
“No, they’re ready to go, but are you sure this is the right move? I see the PAP on my screen here. What if we spook them? If shooting starts, people could die.”
“If you see the PAP on the screen, then you also see the riot, and you know that people are dying right now while we sit here jaw-jacking. Turn out your crews, launch your boats, and let’s get down there and stop this thing.”
“Jane, I don’t…” Montaigne began. Her voice was cut off by a priority hail on the encrypted channel.
“Hang on, Clare,” Oliver said, hovering her finger over the button that would patch the priority hail through. “I’ve got an override.”
“It’s probably Ops, hopefully with orders.”
So long as they’re the right ones, Oliver thought, punching the button. “Aries Actual, go ahead.”
Oliver felt herself automatically stiffen at the sound of Admiral Allen’s voice. She’d only met the Coast Guard’s head of operations once, when he’d spoken at the change-of-command ceremony that saw her installed as the CO of the Aries, and once had been enough to cement her impression. Save for a rare few, admirals were political animals, soft-handed smooth-operators long removed from the late-nights, bad coffee, and tense stand-offs that were the Coast Guard’s daily fare. Allen was one of those rare few. “Jane, you wouldn’t perhaps be thinking of launching your boats now, would you?” Allen had long mastered the trick of combining gentle, amused-sounding words with a tone of pure iron.
“I’m the operational commander on scene, admiral,” Oliver said. “It’s my call.”
“Not anymore, it’s not,” Allen said. “The Navy is taking point on this. You and the Volans will deploy on their mark and according to their instructions.”
Oliver felt the familiar frustration boiling up the back of her throat. The Navy. Always the goddamn Navy. “Sir, with all due respect… what the hell? This is a civilian riot. We need to deescalate. The Navy is a warfighting service. That sends the wrong message. We can’t send them blazing in there to…”
Her voice cut off as Allen hit the override button and the buzz of his hail made her wince. He paused, letting the silence make its point before he spoke. “What’s this ‘we’ business you’re referencing, Commander? There is no we here. There is only me, receiving my orders from the Commandant, who got them from the Secretary of Homeland Security. Just little old me, passing those orders along to little old you. That clear?”
Oliver could picture the Navy assault craft disgorging marines onto the surface, the frigates shadowing them overhead, bristling with deck guns and ball-turrets visible to anyone who cared to glance at a radar signature. This was going to be bad. But she was lucky Allen had been willing to indulge her even this far. She swallowed. “Aye aye, sir.”
“Besides,” Allen’s tone softened, “we’re keeping this in the family anyway.”
“Excuse me, sir?”
“Ops out.”
As soon as the click signaled that Allen had cut comms, the watchstander spoke. “Ma’am, we’ve got a contact coming out of orbit.”
Oliver glanced at the radar and instantly identified it as a Perry Class Navy frigate. She tensed at the thought of its crenelated hull-signature showing up on Chinese radar. Missile pods, deck guns, extended launch bays crammed with assault craft.
The watchstander’s voice cracked as he said, “It’s… It’s the Coates, ma’am.”
Oliver’s mouth went dry. She felt her heart speed up. The Coates was the frigate commanded by…
“Hello, Commander!” Thomas Oliver’s voice sounded over the radio. “Sorry to steal your thunder.”
…her husband.
She remembered them lying on the couch in their Brooklyn apartment, right after she’d pressed the assignment officer for a transfer to the Moon. You realize what’s inevitably going to happen if we’re both out there on the 16th watch? he’d asked.
We’ll wind up running an op together,
Oliver had said, nestling her head on his shoulder and burrowing her foot between his calves.
It’s inevitable, Tom had said. The wine made her drowsy, and his voice was a pleasant buzz. The kids had been out of the house for years now, but they were well past the age where they’d rush to take advantage of the quiet time. A tendril of desire flickered somewhere between the bottom of her ribs and the tops of her thighs, but she’d been content to let it be for the moment.
I don’t know, she’d said. Nothing’s inevitable.
Tom ignored her, So what do we do when it happens?
Oliver had shrugged, kissed his neck. The tendril of desire was snaking down further, lighting up her crotch.
Our jobs.
Jane Oliver watched her husband’s ship fire attitude thrusters to move in alongside her cutter, its launch bay doors locking open, and realized that the time for them to do their jobs had finally come.
She tried to say something professional, a greeting, a formality, anything. Instead what came out was, “Is this some kind of a joke?”
The encrypted channel made Tom’s laugh into jovial static. “Don’t think I can handle it?”
She glanced at the picture she kept taped to the corner of her desk monitor – the last family photo they’d taken at their daughter Alice’s wedding. Alice in her white dress, dark-haired like her mother, her brother Adam smiling as much as he ever did. Oliver stood in front of them, shorter by a head than both her kids. Tom towered over them all, sandy-blonde hair and blue eyes sinking in a joyful sea of crow’s feet, beaming as if he knew some happy secret that he couldn’t wait to tell the world.
“Of course you can handle it,” she spoke into the radio, wishing she could see his face. She briefly considered asking the watchstander to get her a video call, but that was a level of intimacy she didn’t want to share with everyone on the bridge. This familiar talk over an encrypted radio channel was bad enough. “You can handle it better than anyone alive, but the Navy’s the wrong tool for the job and you know it.”
She could hear Tom’s smile, the sad and serious one he wore to show the person he was talking to that he had heard their concern and was doing what he wanted anyway. “I also know that it isn’t up to me. But I’d be lying if I didn’t take some perverse pleasure from being in charge.”
