Shadow Ops: Fortress Frontier-ARC (pdf conv.) (24 page)

“But your instincts are right. Revolutions don’t change the world. Not in the lasting ways we need here. That only comes when the majority of the people become so comfortable with a thing that they’re willing to make it the law of the land. It has to become a part of the culture, a fact of the ground.

“That’s why I’m so glad you’re here. Because I think we finally have what we need to make that happen. Flicker’s wondering why I trust you enough to be alone with you and three of your friends. I guess it’s because if you’re an enemy, if I can’t trust you, then it means that hope is all for nothing. And I can’t live with that, Oscar. I really can’t.”

The sincerity in his face held Britton, made him ashamed of having doubted the man. He looked at the ground, no longer the bear of a Terramancer who led the most wanted band of Selfer terrorists outside of Mescalero. He was a tired old man, displaced.

Sick of running. Desperately wanting a home.

Just like Britton. Just like all of them.

“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 sparked, 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.”