Shadow Ops: Fortress Frontier-ARC (pdf conv.) (17 page)

“We’re practically on top of Scylla now.” Britton answered.

“They died to serve. Let them serve a little longer. It’s the closest thing to revenge we can give them.”

But Scylla’s trail grew colder as they went, the wet-looking patches left by the aftereffects of her magic beginning to dry.

Somehow, she had begun to gain on them. Britton grimaced and put on speed. They kept on for another two hours as the sky fully lightened, and the landscape came to life around them. The night had been unusually cold, and the ground twinkled with fresh frost. It sparkled in the sun, transforming the landscape into a spray of crystal green, but it made footing treacherous as the ground sloped downward and their boots slid with each step. This was made harder by a grove of tall trees, which forced them to descend at an angle as the decline increased.

After a while, Britton found himself crab-stepping sideways, sliding every other pace as the edges of his boot soles failed to find purchase on the slick surface of thawing frost. Therese stumbled, and he put out a hand to steady her. Truelove and Downer latched on to her, and they descended in a human chain.

The elementals fanned out in front of them, blowing air back toward them, trying to help them stay upright with no success.

Britton heard a thump, and one of the zombies, less sure-footed than his human master, flopped on its face and slid past them, tobogganing on its stomach before coming to stop and trying to rise, slipping as it strove to mimic Truelove’s careful descent.

A moment later, Britton felt his own feet going out from under him, and he sat down hard, his tailbone reporting the impact, and began to slide downhill. Therese scrambled for balance for a moment and pulled where he had pushed, clinging to Truelove, who clung to Downer. All of them went down in a heap, flying down the hill and slamming into Britton. They wound up in a tangle of arms and legs at the bottom, laughing hysterically.

Britton hissed. “Secure that. We are too close for this crap; Scylla could be anywhere around here.” The mirth dried on the others’ faces and they turned sullen looks on him.
God,
he thought.
I must sound like Fitzy.
But that didn’t make him wrong.

He was willing to be a killjoy if it meant keeping them safe. They could laugh all they wanted once they’d dealt with her.

“Come on,” he whispered. “We just made a lot of noise here. We need to get off the X.”

He stood, then froze.

The slick, putrid sheen of the grass marched in a narrow lane around the copse of trees, so fresh that it dripped. The wind blew toward them, bringing the faintest hint of what might have been muttering from off in the distance. With the wind toward them, Britton could hope that whatever was making that noise hadn’t heard them.

“Hold here,” he whispered. He pointed to himself, then to the trail of slime. Once again, he gate-hopped back to the Home Plane, then opened another gate farther out on the freshly cleared trail, just high enough for him to low crawl through.

Once through, he lay facedown in the tall grass, slowly inching himself up onto his elbows, raising his head for a clearer look.

From his new vantage point, he could see beyond the edge of the copse of trees, to where the strip of bare ground continued in long patches mostly freed of frost by the risen sun.

Four sleek, black, horned things stood astride the strip. They stood between eight and twelve feet high, dagger claws hanging at their sides. White grins showed teeth as long and sharp as knives, the only contrast to the unbroken, liquid darkness of their bodies.

The “Mountain Gods,” the
Gahe
of the Apache. Britton, with all of Shadow Coven at his side, had barely managed to defeat one before. Here were four.

One of them was missing an arm. In its stead was a tiny rope of black sinuous flesh, twining uselessly from a stump of a shoulder. It pulsed, oozing slowly. Britton’s stomach fell. The fight at Mescalero flashed through his mind, his gate slicing upward as the
Gahe
’s frozen touch spread through his torso, slicing through its shoulder, sending the arm spinning in a cloud of black smoke.

He recognized the creature instantly, he had fought it before, and it had nearly finished him.

The four
Gahe
stood tensely, shoulders hunched, clustered around a woman. Her black hair was cut in a severe bob, the points sharp-looking.

Her eyes were dark, remorseless.

Scylla was none the worse for wear. He skin was still pale and smooth, her face still wise and beautiful. She’d traded her prison jumpsuit for thicker, warmer goblin leathers, but her boots were the same. Army-issue, black and mud-spattered.

A cloud of black smoke drifted behind the
Gahe
, the grass beneath it frozen solid gray.
That’s their blood,
Britton thought.

That freezing smoke. She must have killed one of them.

Pulses of shimmering air passed from the
Gahe
, clustering about Scylla’s head. “Come now,” she said to them. “Do you really want this fight?”

The creatures growled and inched forward, and Scylla gave ground slightly, raising her hands. More shimmering pulses moved between the
Gahe
and her. “Really, now?” Scylla responded to their silent communication. “Maybe so, but I assure you. I’ll take a few more of you with me.”

The
Gahe
flashed across the ground, spreading out to surround her. Scylla crouched, bared her teeth.

Britton had seen enough. He opened another low gate and scrambled through it, then opened another gate back to his com-panions. He motioned them through, and they came, standing in the bowl of rose moss. “It’s her, she’s just around those trees.”

They were silent. Truelove’s eyes went wide.

“She’s in the middle of some kind of standoff with the
Gahe
. You remember them? The Apache Mountain Gods?”

Truelove and Downer had been with him on the mission where they’d faced the one and severed its arm, but Therese had only ever seen them in training videos before. “I remember them,” she said. “They’re monsters. The Apache worship them.”

Britton turned to her. “Truelove, Downer, and I have fought them before. They’re fast. They move by short-teleporting. One second they’re five feet away and the next they’re on top of you.

Their touch will freeze you, and they bleed smoke that’s just as cold. We’re talking hypothermia in minutes. You got all that?”

Therese nodded, her confusion and fear vanishing as her training took hold. “Got it. Same plan?”

Britton nodded. “Those things are doing us a favor. If we’re going to get her, now is the best time, while she’s distracted. We head back, collect Truelove’s corpses and rush her. Ignore the
Gahe
. They’re not our fight. We take her down and get the hell out of there. Everyone square?”

Truelove’s voice was tinged with panic. “Can’t you just gate in next to her and take her out?”

Britton shook his head. “And risk getting cut off alone? If she takes me down, you’re all stranded. Bad idea. We go as a unit. Your corpses and Downer’s elementals up front. She’ll be pinned between our expendable element and the
Gahe
. Safest course.”

“We’re wasting time,” Downer said.

Britton nodded and gated them back to their original position.

Truelove raised the line of corpses, fallen flat in their absence, and they moved around the edge of the copse, where Scylla whirled to face them. The
Gahe
stood behind her. Whatever differences they’d had with Scylla, they appeared to be reconciled.

“Hello, Oscar,” Scylla said. “You’re just in time to meet my new friends.” She gestured to the settling cloud of freezing black smoke. “We’ve just come to a mutually beneficial understanding.”

The
Gahe
shrieked, the one-armed one’s shoulders hunching, its recognition of Britton written clearly across its posture.

Britton reached out for Scylla’s current. He felt it immediately, strong and rich, and wrapped his own around it, rolling it back.

Scylla cocked an eyebrow at him, smiling. She rolled her shoulders and without a hint of effort, pierced his Suppression, his own current roaring back into him and hers surging through, unimpeded.

Britton cursed and threw open a gate.

Downer sent her elementals streaking toward Scylla, simultaneously drawing her pistol and squeezing off a round. The
Gahe
crouched. They stuttered forward until they screened Scylla, their position shifting like poorly advancing film, one second in one place, one second the next. Their shrieks went silent, and Britton saw the air shimmer between them, accompanied by a low thrumming. Downer’s bullet disappeared into one of their dark bodies, swallowed as surely as if it had been fired into the cold void of space.

Britton sent the gate skimming across the ground at Scylla.

The
Gahe
stutter-flashed out of the way, shrieking. Scylla reached forward and Suppressed Britton’s own current effortlessly, and Britton’s gate vanished long before reaching her.

Downer’s elementals raced toward the
Gahe
. One of the
Gahe
swept its clawed hand through one of them, only to be caught in the elemental’s whirling funnel and tossed aside.

Another
Gahe
pulsed away from them, stuttering its position from side to side as they pursued. The remaining two
Gahe
howled again, then pulsed silent communication to Scylla.

Scylla smiled. “You know one another? I don’t know if that’s more surprising than your showing up at all.”

Truelove gestured, and the corpses shambled toward her as quickly as they could, leaving parts of themselves on the frozen grass in their urgency. Scylla dropped her Suppression of Britton as the corpses closed on her. Therese and Downer pulled in behind the zombies, and Britton stepped out on their flank, opening another gate, hovering over his hand.

Scylla sighed dramatically, spreading her arms. “Oh, let’s not fight. You just got here. I was chatting with my newfound traveling companions, and you’re welcome to join the conversation.”

She turned to the three snarling
Gahe
not busy with Downer’s elementals, who had begun to spread out, two approaching from one side of the cordon of zombies, while the one-armed one circled to the other.

“Although,” Scylla mused, “they don’t seem to like you very much.”

Her voice was syrup-smooth, her tone reasonable. Britton was almost tempted to negotiate with her. Then he remembered the crashed helicopter, the slick stains that had once been humans and goblins. And now she was linked up with
Gahe
.

He’d been lulled by that voice before. A lot of people were dead because he had allowed it to convince him. “Now,” Scylla began again, “what do you expect . . .”

“Therese!” Britton shouted. “Lock her magic down!” He dove to the side, sending the gate flashing toward her. She arced backward, face to the sky, back gracefully bent, the pointed tips of her bobbed black hair shorn off by the gate as it sliced a hairsbreadth above her nose. She straightened with near-boneless grace. “Now, that’s no way to make friends.” Her smile curdled.

“I see you’re still determined to be on the wrong side of history.”

She Drew and Bound. The ground around Britton blackened.

The grass wilted aside, the frost turning to sickened vapor. Britton vomited instantly. The sick agony he’d felt when Scylla had first put him in the grip of her Sorcery back in the SASS was nothing compared to this. The illness was an expanding fist in his gut. He felt the lining of his stomach contract, spasm painfully, as if it would rip itself from his body and hurl itself out of his throat to eject the decay fostering within him. He felt something leaking from the corners of his eyes, not tears. Muscles across his body cramped in response, every atom of his rebelling against the disease that spread throughout his system.

In the same instant, he felt Therese’s magic engulf him, the warm current of it repair his flesh as it came apart.

But it wasn’t enough.

Britton pitched forward, unable even to cry out. He felt his jaw sag open, then cramp in position. Black fluid leaked from it, flecked with blood. He heard the
Gahe
shrieking off, heard Downer scream, the angry buzzing of her elementals, but there was nothing he could do.

He struggled to reach for the tide of his magic, but all he could feel was the wrenching of his body. The sick stink of rot filled his nose until the soft hairs in his nostrils and throat turned slick, then liquid, trickling out of him. Even as he fought to hang on to life, he awaited the mercy death would bring.

He felt Therese’s hands fall to his shoulders, heard her grunt with effort behind him. Slowly, her magic began to get the upper hand. A spark of warmth flooded through him, stilling the muscles, knitting them. He could still feel the illness, but the agony of it was no longer so intense. He heard Therese’s pistol crack as she fired at Scylla, forcing the Witch to dive to the side, breaking the torrent that washed over him.

He rose to one knee. Downer was crawling on her side, three long claw marks gashed down her chest. Her elementals still harried one of the
Gahe
, tossing it to the side only to have it stutter back among them, the speed of its passage dragging their forms askew. Downer’s wound welled blood, was rimed with gray ice. She pulled herself along with one hand, shivering violently.