Fortress Frontier Read online

  “We made it,” Britton whispered to the corpse. “We’re out.”

  For now, his mind replied. You beat one team, but the SOC

  will still come for you. Britton had killed the only other SOC

  Portamancer he’d ever seen. He’d talked boldly to Harlequin, but the truth was that he didn’t know if the SOC had another one, or, if they did, how long it would take them to pinpoint his location and try to take him again.

  Nothing had changed. Unless you can change it.

  He touched Pyre’s forehead. “You rest in peace.” I’ll keep them free from here on out.

  And more. I’ll find another way, a better way, so that we can stop running. So that we can live in peace.

  Swift laid a hand on Pyre’s chest. “Rest easy, pal. I promise you they’ll pay for this.” The man who killed Pyre already paid, Britton thought, and by my hand, not yours.

  “We just lost our Terramancer,” Britton said. “We’re going to have to bury him the old-fashioned way. I’ll have to find a shovel and some food for us. I just need a minute to rest first.”

  “If you can get me a lighter, some source of flame,” Downer said, “I can take care of it.”

  Swift’s eyes blazed anger at her at first, then cooled. “We did call him Pyre, after all.”

  Britton nodded. “Don’t think a fire’d be noticed all the way out here. So long as you can make it quick?”

  Downer nodded. “Over in minutes.”

  “Okay.” Britton looked up what remained of his group: Swift, Therese, Truelove, and Downer. “I’ll get some water, too. Winter clothing.

  “I won’t keep any of you here, you know. I’m not going to be anyone’s jailer. If you’ve got somewhere to go, I’ll help you to get there.”

  They were silent at that. Where could they possibly go?

  Nowhere would welcome them. Nowhere was safe.

  “I’m surprised you’re still here,” Britton said to Swift. “Why didn’t you go with Peapod?”

  “You got me thinking,” Swift said. “You’re right about one thing. The problem is the fucking government and their laws. That’s what kicked this whole thing off. That it’s illegal to be who we are.”

  Britton nodded. “I’m going to change that. I’m going to find a way. I swear to God I will.”

  “You just need a movement.”

  “Or something like that. It’s going to take time, but yeah. I need a way to get the word out to the public about what’s going on, get people organized to change things.”

  “There’s a movement.”

  “What?” Therese asked.

  “There’s a movement. There are Selfers, organized, hiding. I know who they are and where they are. You want to change the rules? That’s where you start.”

  Chapter VIII

  Outside the Wire

  Where is God now? What does Jesus Christ say about this? Where in the Old Testament or the New or the Qu’ran or any other religious tract does it explain how to deal with the Great Reawakening? This is the problem with deistic religion. It has limited boundaries. It is a completed construction, a finished house. But life is what lives inside, and it is constantly multiplying, changing, and growing. And what do you do when you outgrow the house you live in? You move somewhere else.

  —Mary Copburn

  Council for Ethical Atheism

  “What are you talking about?” Britton asked. “Are you talking about Mescalero? Because that’s not going to . . .”

  Swift shook his head. “Hell, no. The Apache have already committed so many atrocities on camera that people will never get behind them. The masks, the Mountain Gods. They’re too . . . alien. People follow . . . you know, other people. People like them.”

  “What Selfer feels familiar to a non-Latent person?”

  “Houston Street. The Tunnel Runners.”

  Britton rolled his eyes. “Are you kidding me? They’re terrorists.”

  Swift stabbed a finger at Britton. “They’re only terrorists to you and the other Homeland Security douchebags. To the rest of the world, they’re an oppressed minority fighting for their lives. Plenty of people don’t like them, but plenty of people do. They’ve got sympathizers in Hollywood, famous musicians, nonprofits, even some politicians. How do you think they’ve stayed around so long? It’s not for want of the SOC’s trying to thwack ’em.”

  Britton shook his head. “They’ve killed Americans.”

  “For the same reasons Scylla did. To defend themselves. To stay free. That’s where I was headed when the SOC took me down.”

  Britton turned to the rest of the group. “Do you believe this cra . . .” He paused at the expressions on their faces. “You don’t agree with him, do you?”

  “There’s a lot of debate about the Tunnel Runners,” Therese said. “I never came down on either side. Do you remember when they fed that crowd at Saint Paul’s? Or the time they put out that block fire in Flatbush? They do a lot of good, Oscar.”

  “So does Hizballah.”

  Therese’s expression hardened. “I don’t have a lot of patience with people who expect others to starve and die because they don’t like where they get their help. Swift’s got a point.”

  Swift got to his feet. “You can’t have it both ways, man. You want a movement, a bedrock you can start from to change the law? Houston Street is it. Big Bear is a great speaker, he talks just like a slick shyster suit, which is what you’re going to need.”

  Britton had heard Big Bear, through his anonymized Internet postings. The Selfer Terramancer’s mountain-man appearance, broad shoulders, long dark hair, bushy beard gave the lie to Swift’s description, but he was right about the man’s gift for public speaking. Big Bear came across as honest and reasonable.

  Everyone assigned to SOC runs had to learn Big Bear’s dossier as one of their primary High-Value Targets. The SOC cherry-picked videos depicting Big Bear at his worst moments, calling for peace and Latent rights but tinged with the threat of violence.

  We deeply regret the loss of life on Beaver Street yesterday. Our prayers are with the families of the NYPD officers who were regrettably killed. Those same families should look to the SOC

  and the Mayor of New York City for recompense. Those deaths were completely unnecessary, and would never have occurred if Latent Americans were allowed their inherent, American right to freedom of choice, action, speech, and association, as guaranteed by the US Constitution.

  The words had seemed like slick justification for the murder of men serving in the line of duty back then. But now he was the one hunted for the crime of simply being who he was. He hadn’t asked for his abilities, and neither had any of the Tunnel Runners.

  “I won’t help you take down Scylla,” Swift said. “She’s got every right to do what she did and . . .” Britton remembered the expression of shaking terror when the SOC finally dragged Swift out of the hole they’d forced him to share with her for a night. “. . . and that bitch scares the hell out of me. I’m not squaring up against her. No way.”

  Britton couldn’t blame him. He had seen her magic shred a whole section of a military base. All the personnel, equipment, and structures turned to dust and rotting slime in minutes.

  “But this I can do, “Swift said. “I can get to Houston Street. I can tell them about you. You’ve got the one thing they need, the ability to put anyone or anything anywhere at anytime. They’re not going to sneer at that. Sure, they’ll want to negotiate, but it’s a start.

  “Put me in the New York subway system. I can find my way from there. I’ll get word to you. You want a movement? That’s where you start.”

  Britton attacked Swift’s argument from every angle his exhausted brain could manage, and he kept coming back to agreement. Downer opened her mouth to say something, then shut it again as Therese put her hand on her shoulder.

  “You can’t get word to me across planes,” Britton said. “We’ll go with you. We’ve got a better chance if we stick together.”

 
Swift started to reply, but Therese cut him off. “The hell we will. Scylla is still out there, Oscar. We have to try to catch up with her.”

  “And we will,” Britton replied, “once we get a base of operations set up and . . .”

  “No, Oscar.” Therese’s eyes flashed with anger. “You unleashed this particular hell. Hundreds of people died because of what you did. You have to make it right. Not later. Now.”

  Britton couldn’t hold her eyes, looked away.

  Therese’s voice softened. “Swift’s perfectly capable of making contact on his own. Aren’t you?”

  Swift nodded. “I can get it done.”

  “Then give him some time to do it. The rest of us need to make sure that nobody else . . . suffers what those soldiers back in the FOB did. Nobody deserves that.”

  Britton swallowed his shame before turning to Swift. “Once we take care of Scylla, I’ll come back to the Home Plane. Use Yippee. com. Set up a free email account on there.” He tried to think of something unique and complicated. “!!!Lightning-Bug123!!! use a password of Flyh!$h!” He pronounced each character. Swift nodded and they repeated the codes back and forth until they both had them memorized. “Once you’ve touched base with the Tunnel Runners, send yourself an email on that account. I’ll log in and check it once we’re done with Scylla. Let us know your status and where to find you.”

  Swift grinned like a wolf. “You got it. We can totally fucking do this. We can change the world.”

  “Okay, I only know one location in the subway system under New York,” Britton said. “It’s a maintenance locker where we ran an op once. I don’t know where it goes. You’re going to be on your own from there.”

  Swift shrugged. “I’ll figure it out. I played gigs in New York before. I know my way around. I look like a bum right now anyway, and unlike you, my face isn’t plastered on every wanted poster in the entire country.” Swift had looked the hipster with his black, unevenly cut hair and his tattoo even before the battle, and now he looked like one gone to seed. Britton guessed no one in the New York subway system would give him a second look if he curled up in a corner with his palm out for change.

  “Okay,” Britton said. “Repeat that email and password to me one more time.” After Swift did so, Britton opened a gate back to the fields outside Marty’s village, well distant from the palisade wall. “I’ll be back in one second,” he said, then turned to Swift. “Come on.”

  Britton couldn’t open gates to bridge locations in the same world. He could only open gates between the Source and the Home Plane. He and Swift returned to the Source, then Britton closed the gate and opened a tiny sliver of a gate on the subway maintenance locker. It had been restored, the gap in the wall sealed and tiled over. Plastic yellow mop buckets stood beside coils of cable and a wheeled, multidrawer tool case.

  “You sure you can do this?” Britton asked.

  Swift tilted his head from side to side. “You’re a sanctimo-nious, self-righteous douchebag. But you’ve got the power to junk this system, and I’m not missing my chance to be a part of that. Mark my words, I’m going to find a way to make Harlequin pay, whether you like it or not. But this way, I get a shot at President Walsh and Senator Whalen, too. So, yeah. I can do this.”

  Britton opened the gate full size. “Good luck, we’ll check in soon.” I hope.

  Swift paused. “I don’t suppose I can convince you to just wait until I get you word? Scylla is going to mop the floor with you, dude.”

  Britton thought of Therese’s anger. “Not a chance. I have to tie off that thread.”

  “How are you going to track her anyway? You have no idea where she went.”

  “I’ll go to the FOB first. That’s the last place I saw her. From there, I’ll . . . figure it out. I’ll find her.”

  “Then you’re the one who needs luck.” Swift sighed and stepped through the gate.

  Britton gated back to Truelove, Downer, and Therese. “It’s done. Now I need everyone to sit tight for a minute.”

  “Where are you going now?” Therese asked.

  “I’m off to do some shoplifting,” Britton answered, opening a gate outside the goblin village again. “Just don’t move for fifteen minutes. I’ll be right back.”

  He stepped through, checked his surroundings for danger, then opened another gate on a sporting goods store in downtown Shelburne. The place was shuttered and dark in the early morning, but Britton still crouched in the half-light, painfully aware of the huge windows that opened out on the street. He moved quickly, selecting sleeping bags, pack-and-frames, and bundles of warm clothing. Flashlights, a camping stove, batteries, boxes of trail mix and power bars, a handful of campfire starters. He piled everything on the floor, then flattened himself as a car drove past the window. Once the car passed, Britton opened the gate back on the Source and shoved the whole pile through. I should have left a note, he thought, apologizing. Promising to pay.

  The hell with that. The SOC can pay once you’ve changed the playing field. You’re not a thief any more than a kid stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving family is.

  Back in the Source, he opened another gate on the bowl of rose moss and pushed the pile back through. Therese, Downer, and Truelove gathered around.

  “Gear,” Britton said. “We’re going to need it.”

  “Can you raid a gun shop?” Truelove asked.

  “No need,” Britton said, sending a gate skimming, slicing a cluster of frozen bushes neatly in half. “Got all the guns we need right here. We’re not getting in a standup fight with the SOC. The guards at the FOB had all the guns in the world. Didn’t help them much against Scylla.”

  He held up one of the campfire starters in front of Downer and nodded down at Pyre. “You ready?”

  The Elementalist nodded.

  “Anybody want to say any last words?” Britton asked.

  Therese bowed her head, crossing herself and muttering a prayer in Spanish. Truelove shrugged, and Downer scowled. “I was never a big fan of religion. That’s the crap my mom used to justify treating me like shit.”

  My dad, too, Britton thought. Therese looked up and started to speak, but Britton cut her off before the fight started. “I never spoke about religion with Pyre, so I don’t know what he believed. I can only tell you what I do know, that he was proud to be among you. Above all, he wanted us all to be free. That’s why he never raised the flag. That’s why he fought for you . . .” He paused. When he was able to go on again, he said, “If there was one thing that Pyre would have been willing to die for, it would have been to make sure that we’d never have to be back under the SOC’s yoke. He did that, and it’s as fitting an end as I can think of for anyone. If Pyre is looking down on us right now, I hope he sees that he accomplished what he set out to do. We’re safe. We’re together. We’re free.

  “And we’re going to stay that way. We’re going to stay together, and we’re going to take care of one another. Because together we have a better chance of keeping ourselves safe if the SOC comes for us, and we all know they will never stop trying. Together, we beat them. Together, we can do it again. That’s what Pyre would have wanted, and that’s the best way we can honor him. We love you, Pyre. Rest in peace.”

  “He gave me constant crap,” Downer added, “but he gave me the fire I needed to take down that Render in the sewers. So, I guess that means he saved my life.”

  “All of our lives,” Truelove added.

  All true, Britton thought. Pyre had been petulant and combative, a banner member of Swift’s recalcitrant No–No Crew, but he had been true to his beliefs. He hadn’t knuckled under to the army, right to the end of his life.

  Britton pulled the trigger on the starter, sparking a tiny flicker of flame at its metal tip. Downer Drew and Bound her current, and the tiny flame leapt from the starter’s tip and danced across the frozen ground. She kicked together a pile of drier leaves and twigs, and the fire took on the shape of a tiny flame creature, stubby arms and legs, line of a mouth, d
etermined slits for eyes. It pounced on the pile of tinder and flexed little red-orange muscles, a look of strain on its cartoon face. Britton smiled in spite of himself. The flame turned white-hot, and the tinder caught. Downer added a few more pieces of wood until it was a healthy blaze. The elemental grew and stepped out of the fire, this time in the form of a beautiful woman, robed and hooded. The dancing peaks of fire that were her face were creased in sympathy.

  The elemental knelt beside Pyre’s corpse, the frozen ground smoking around her, and gathered him into an embrace. Pyre’s clothing smoldered, then caught, his skin blackening. The elemental’s form remained distinct from the rest of the flame, the cloaked woman embracing him as he burned.

  Within minutes, all that remained of Pyre was ash and a line of greasy smoke drifting skyward. Downer rolled her magic back. The elemental raised its hands to the sky and vanished, the flames dying as the cold and wet ground fought against them.

  “Thank you, Sarah,” Therese said. “That was beautiful.”

  Downer shrugged, embarrassed. “Least I could do for him.”

  Britton found himself choked with emotion from the tender display but mastered himself quickly. If they were to catch Scylla, time was a luxury they couldn’t afford. He opened a gate on the outskirts of the FOB. “I’m bringing us in close enough that we should get a good view of the SASS perimeter, but hopefully far enough out that they won’t see us. Stay low. The grass is tall and, with luck, it’ll cover us.”

  He opened a gate. After making sure it was clear, he motioned them through, duckwalking and finally going belly down in the dirt beyond.

  They emerged in a burned crater, the remnants of a mortar or rocket strike. Mixed corpses, both goblin and human, lay all around them. The smoking remains of a crashed Blackhawk helicopter were a short distance off to their left. The fight had ranged far from the FOB. It must have been one hell of a battle.