Shadow Ops 3: Breach Zone (33 page)

‘These aren’t
people
, Simon. These are goblins. I’m glad you get along with them, but that doesn’t make you one of them.
Your
people are on the other side of that gate, and they need your help.’

‘I don’t have to listen to this,’ Truelove said. Downer felt his current rise, and this time he did storm off, his narrow shoulders shaking as he made his way toward the village. Therese called his name, ran after him.

Downer turned back to Britton. ‘I’m not some stupid little girl who wants to be in the clubhouse anymore, Oscar. I don’t know what you’ve seen of New York, but I’m here to tell you it’s going from bad to worse. I need you to trust me, and I need you to take me seriously.

‘Most of all, I need you to come with me. We need you in New York.’

Chapter Nineteen

Cry For Help

To New York, and a new world!

– Recorded message distributed on the Internet from the Consortium of Selfer Organizations (CSO)

The first of them came that night.

Harlequin and Bookbinder stood on the parapet, watching the ground outside the barricades around the park, now mostly clear of
Gahe
. The sleek black creatures had taken some time to grow wary of Bookbinder’s ensorcelled bullets, but they had learned at last, and hung back now, under cover of buildings in the distance.

‘This is it,’ Harlequin said. ‘At least, I think this is as good as it’s going to get. How are you holding up?’

Bookbinder’s shadowed eyes were slitted, his lips cracked over mostly gray beard stubble. He scratched at one ear, an irritated patch had cropped up near the lobe, rubbed raw where he’d worried it. His nails were too long, filthy. The man desperately needed some rack time and a shower. They all did.

But Harlequin also knew that every single one of his ammo dumps contained at least a can of 5.56mm rounds crackling with electricity.

‘I’m fine,’ Bookbinder said, smiling a rictus grin. ‘Ready to run a fucking marathon, actually.’ He took a pull on the small silver can in his hand. The energy drinks helped, but caffeine made them jumpy.

A round flew out of the darkness somewhere to their left, leaving a sizzling trail. It clipped the side of a building in the distance where a
Gahe
must have shown itself. Crackling blue electricity crawled along the brick surface before the round’s magic was spent.

‘You do good work,’ Harlequin mused.

‘We do good work,’ Bookbinder said. ‘Without the payload, it’s just a bullet.’

‘We need to start getting this stuff up north.’

‘I’d feel better if I knew what
Gahe
were where. I don’t want to run our people out into those streets only to have them fall on us. We need to smoke them out of the buildings closest to the park.’

‘Could we try ensorcelling some mortar rounds? Maybe a couple of the Javelins? Or the rockets on the helos? How would the area effect work?’

Bookbinder paused, thinking. ‘Never tried it. I don’t think the explosive effect would make a difference. Stands to reason that if I ensorcell a casing large enough to fragment, or the shrapnel inside a high-explosive round, that it would spread the magic that way. M67 grenades? I saw a case of those back in the ready room.’ He rubbed his forehead. ‘Jesus, I can’t think straight.’

Harlequin clapped his shoulder. ‘Maybe we should grab a few hours. We can’t go out there half-drunk on fatigue.’

Bookbinder shook his head. ‘I’ll be okay, I just ne . . .’

Both men froze as they felt a magical current prickle their senses, moving in quickly from the west. The remaining Fornax Novices were on the wall, but Harlequin knew the feel of their currents now. This was different. He turned to Bookbinder, but the general was already nodding to him. ‘Go.’

Harlequin shot airborne, shouting into his radio. ‘We’ve got magic incoming, west wall . . . not sure of the dis . . .’

He could already see the soldiers on the western perimeter, where a makeshift gate had been constructed from an enormous superdozer, its earthmoving blade bolted to a section of T-wall. The dozer had backed inward slightly to create a gap in the wall covered by soldiers, who were busy ushering in the latest stream of refugees. A few of them covered the opening, but most were busy helping the civilians in as quickly as possible, ushering them toward Castle Clinton and the makeshift camp beyond.

He scanned the crowd of twenty or so people, but they all looked uniformly bedraggled, exhausted, and filthy. Many were wrapped in fire blankets or sheets, heads down. None of them wore uniforms. The magical current intensified, emanating from among them.

Harlequin began shouting, waving at the soldiers to get the hell back. They looked up at him in surprise. The civilians joined suit, frightened eyes staring in shock as he sped toward them.

Save two.

They threw off silver fire blankets, one of them jumping airborne and unleashing a torrent of lightning that blew three of the soldiers off their feet, sending them tumbling in smoking heaps.

Harlequin reached the edge of Castle Clinton and both figures came clear under the klieg lights set up around the park. He hoped against hope to see the small, gnarled, white-painted figures of goblins, knew he wouldn’t.

Both were humans, tall and lithe. The Aeromancer looked like a reject from a bondage film. Studded, black leather belts crossed his chest, his head hidden behind a mask with a zippered mouth. The other was female, broad-shouldered and stripped to the waist, heavy breasts sagging almost to her belt under a field of tattoos covering every inch of exposed skin.

Not goblins. Selfers. The first recruits answering Scylla’s call.

The female stretched out a hand, and Castle Clinton’s rear wall went abruptly soft, the stone flowing into itself, brick and mortar reverting to liquid and dust. Harlequin could hear shouts from inside, see the antennae arrays they relied on for communications droop and sink earthward. He dove as low as he dared, watching the patchy grass rise up to meet him before throwing his current forward to roll the Terramancer’s back. His own magic, bound up in Suppression, no longer held him aloft, and he tumbled in the grass, rolling on his face and shoulders. He ducked into the roll, letting himself come up and into a kneeling position, ripping his pistol from its holster on his thigh. His head spun from the impact, but he gritted his teeth and leveled the gun at the Selfer Terramancer, who backpedaled, eyes wide.

Harlequin threw himself back, colliding with the softened castle wall as a sizzling burst of lightning rent the ground beside him. The wall bowed inward, still standing, but only just. He raised the pistol again, fired at the Aeromancer, who danced aside, swooping around to get at him from behind. ‘West wall! West wall!’ he shouted into his commlink.

He heard shouts as soldiers came running, heard the sharp cracks of carbines. The Aeromancer dove, extending a hand toward them. Harlequin could feel the hair on his arms rise, smell the ozone.

He swore, dropping the Terramancer’s Suppression and Binding his own magic into a column of lightning that clipped the Selfer Aeromancer. He shouted, somersaulting in the air, coming around for another pass. Then he jerked sideways as a round caught him in the arm, yelping like a dog. He swooped low, arms outstretched to retrieve his comrade, but the soldiers were getting on their sights now, and well-placed shots drove him away.

The Terramancer, out from under Harlequin’s Suppression, turned back to Castle Clinton’s wall. Harlequin leapt out of the way, gathering his magic to interdict the Selfer’s flow again.

But another flow raced past him, interweaving with the Terramancer’s. The Selfer gaped as her magic was reeled in, then pushed back out, Binding to the ground around her feet. She sank to her waist, her tattooed body held fast by a mud pit of her own making.

Bookbinder appeared at Harlequin’s side. ‘Got her,’ he panted, then pointed skyward.

Harlequin leapt airborne and flew after the remaining Selfer. The man ducked, dove, tried to loop up behind Harlequin, undisciplined bursts of lightning tearing rents in the ground, clipping the side of one of their few remaining Humvees. Like most Selfers, he was powerful but undisciplined.
Skill beats will,
the SOC mantra went. Harlequin stayed easily on his six, following him through clumsy loop after loop, dodging the bursts of poorly aimed lightning. He herded him carefully back over Castle Clinton, shedding altitude, firing his own lightning at a steep angle to force the Aeromancer higher.

At last, he alighted on the castle. The Selfer Aeromancer danced out over the barricade wall, looking over his shoulder one more time. He banked back over the park, one hand clutching his arm where the bullet had skimmed him.

Harlequin shook his head, reached out, and Suppressed the man’s flow.

The Selfer shouted as his dive became a tumble. He pitched through the air, arms flailing, slamming into the harder part of Castle Clinton’s wall with a sickening crunch.

Harlequin turned and flew back to the Terramancer. Three rounds had caught her in the chest, lifting her mostly up and out of the ground, turning her upper body at a disturbing angle from her lower. Her face had turned purple, tongue lolling out. She held a nickel-plated high-caliber revolver in one hand.

Bookbinder reached Harlequin’s side. ‘She pulled a gun, started shooting. We returned fire. Damn it. Would have liked to question her.’

‘What would she tell you?’ Harlequin shrugged. ‘She’s from Mississippi. Or she’s from upstate. Or Utah. Or maybe even the cleared zone in Tribeca. She saw Scylla’s message and came to take her place in the founding of her new and glorious free country. These two are just the beginning. There’ll be more, and they’ll all have the same story.’

Bookbinder nodded. ‘We’d better start screening any civilians from now on before taking them in. Make sure we have someone Latent get a read on them.’

‘Yes.’ He left unsaid the obvious fact, that they didn’t have enough Latent resources to go around.

‘We better radio up to the barricades, see if they’re getting hit, too.’

Harlequin nodded, his stomach sinking. Because, even without making that call, he knew what the answer would be.

Bookbinder shook his head. ‘We are well and truly fucked.’

Harlequin realized he’d been fanning a tiny ember of hope for the past three days, guarding it against the winds of defeat that had been buffeting him since he’d arrived at Battery Park.

With Bookbinder’s words, the ember died. ‘Yeah.’

And then the gate opened, static light spilling over them both, stinging Harlequin’s eyes until they watered, tracking dirty trails down his cheeks.

‘It’s fine, Oscar,’ Harlequin said to the shimmering surface. ‘No harm will come to you, I swear. We just want to talk.’

The broad shoulders of Oscar Britton’s silhouette were sharply outlined against the darkness of the Source at night. ‘If it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll hang out here for a minute.’

Harlequin shrugged. ‘Suit yourself.’

‘Where’s Sarah?’ Britton asked.

‘North of here on Houston Street. The barricades would have fallen without her help long ago, and they may still fall regardless.’

‘She’s okay?’

‘She’s fine, Oscar. She’s pissed off and angling for all kinds of concessions when this is over, but she’s fine.’

‘Sir.’ Britton inclined his head to Bookbinder.

‘Nice to see you.’ Bookbinder nodded back. Harlequin thought it an understatement. The last time he was this happy to see someone was when Sarah Downer had stepped off her helicopter and punched him in the jaw.

‘Jesus, Oscar. Just come out here. It’s stupid talking to you through that thing. It’s making me dizzy,’ Harlequin said. ‘We need you. I’m not going to do anything to screw that up.’

‘You have my word on it, Oscar,’ Bookbinder added. ‘The word of a general.’ The words came out solemn, rang ridiculous. They all tried to keep a straight face, but a moment later they found themselves chuckling. The tension broke, and Britton stepped through, sticking close to the gate.

‘A general, huh. I heard you were a big deal now,’ Britton said.

Bookbinder smiled. ‘Yeah. I have all these new responsibilities. Like . . . staying away from the media at all costs and . . . not seeing my family. Oh, and I almost forgot, making boomers for whoever tells me.’

Britton turned and motioned at the gate. Therese Del Aqua emerged behind him, cautious, legs tensed to jump back in at a moment’s notice.

‘Ma’am,’ Cormack said, as he joined them. A small ring of soldiers gathered, pointing and whispering.

‘This is . . .’ Harlequin began.

‘I watch the news, sir,’ Cormack said. ‘Nice to finally meet you. If you’re wanting to do any healing, we’ve got a fairly endless supply of wounded here.’

She nodded. ‘I’ll always help with that’ – she turned to Bookbinder – ‘especially for a general. Maybe you’ll let me take a look at your eye first?’

Cormack nodded. ‘I’d be much obliged, ma’am.’

‘I’ve been seeing both of you in the press a lot,’ Britton said. ‘Figured you put Porter in a tough spot, being dissenters and public heroes at the same time.’

‘They put me out to pasture,’ Harlequin said. ‘They’d have been happy to leave me there if it hadn’t been for the Breach.’

‘The right choice. Both of you,’ Britton said.

Harlequin paused. ‘Well, thanks. Anyway, I’m not sure if you’ve seen the news, but it seems one of your chickens has come home to roost on our doorstep here. It’s Scylla.’

Britton and Therese exchanged a meaningful look, and Britton swallowed. ‘I know.’

‘You helped start this, Oscar,’ Harlequin said, ‘now we need you to help finish it.’

Britton’s brows drew together. ‘You don’t need to convince me of that. Not a night goes by that I don’t remember what happened. I went after her as soon as I got free of the FOB. I even saw the team you sent to bring her in. Sarah told you, when you were interrogating her.’

Harlequin looked uncomfortable. ‘I didn’t interrogate her . . .’

Britton shook his head. ‘But you worked with the people who did.’

‘Oscar, it wasn’t my call,’ Harlequin said. ‘I did everything I could to get her out. My star wasn’t exactly on the rise at the time.’

Britton had the bit in his teeth. ‘You people. You never fucking learn. This is why . . .’

‘Easy!’ Bookbinder interrupted. ‘You’re talking to the guy who sprung you from prison. The man who defied the President of the United States, then came back to face him. The man who is currently dealing with a problem you created by letting that Witch go in the first place.’
We both let her go, didn’t we?
Harlequin thought.
Or at least it was close enough as makes no difference.

‘Sure,’ Therese said, ‘because it’s one-sided like that. None of this has anything to do with your jacked-up system that created these conflicts. Without the McGauer-Linden Act, I would never have been at FOB Frontier, and neither would Scylla . . .’