Fortress Frontier Read online

  In the distance, he heard the growl of fighters launching airborne.

  Whatever was going on, it was big.

  He had no helmet, no go bag, no ammunition, and no idea what the hell he was supposed to do.

  He was caught up short by a couple of MPs outside the office, who pushed him back gently, but firmly. “Sorry, sir. It’s off-limits until we get this situation resolved.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Bookbinder asked.

  “My office is in there!”

  “Sorry, sir. We have our orders.”

  “Well, I’m giving you new orders! Now get the hell out of my way!”

  The MPs didn’t budge.

  “At least tell me what’s going on?”

  The MPs shared a look before shrugging. “Goblins breached the perimeter, sir. Suitability Assessment is overrun.”

  “The SASS?” His stomach turned over. That was where Oscar Britton trained daily and next door to Shadow Coven’s quarters. “What about P–Block? Is that intact?”

  “Sorry, sir. We don’t know.”

  “Damn it! Let me talk to Colonel Taylor!”

  The MP was about to say something when Taylor emerged from the office in full battle dress. He made for an electric cart idling in the mud.

  Bookbinder lunged forward, but the MPs held him back.

  “Colonel Taylor!” Bookbinder shouted. “Where do you want me? I can help!”

  Taylor jerked toward Bookbinder’s voice, his eyes rolling in disgust.

  “I can help!” Bookbinder shouted again, straining against the MPs.

  “The hell you can,” Taylor said. He turned to the MPs. “Keep him here. I am not sending back to Washington for another goddamn J1!” He jumped on the cart and rumbled off toward the fighting.

  Bookbinder shook off the MPs. “I’ll have your goddamn stripes,” he growled.

  The MPs looked unimpressed. “Why don’t you head back to your hooch, sir? I’m sure Colonel Taylor will let you know if there’s anything you can do to pitch in. For now, it’s important that you keep yourself safe.”

  Bookbinder opened his mouth to curse them, then felt ashamed. They were following orders. Good officers didn’t take their setbacks out on their people.

  He returned to his hooch and sat on his rack, listening to the staccato of gunfire and the occasional whoosh-pop of heavier ordnance. Every so often, the crackle of energy indicated magic’s presence in the fight raging nearby.

  The fight that had no need of him.

  Should he circumvent the MPs? Find a way to get into the battle? And then what? He could barely shoot. Christ, he hadn’t shot in so long, he wasn’t even sure if he knew how to take it off safety. Besides, he was a colonel. He wasn’t supposed to be shooting. He was supposed to be commanding.

  Bookbinder could commanded brigades of soldiers to process paperwork or fund operations. But he had no idea what one soldier was supposed to do in a firefight, much less a brigade.

  He would be a hindrance.

  Taylor was right. He was better off here.

  The thought set him to feeling sorry for himself again, and this time he managed to stave off the self-pitying tears as he drifted off to sleep.

  And was jolted awake for the second time that night.

  The door to the hooch slammed open, jerking Bookbinder out of sleep and banging his head on the wardrobe again. Taylor stood in the doorway, his uniform smeared with dirt, his helmet gone. His body armor looked burned and splashed with long streaks of dried blood.

  “You want to help? Now’s your chance. Meet me at my office. I need you on station in ten minutes.”

  And he was gone, leaving Bookbinder wondering if he’d dreamed it.

  He’d fallen asleep in his uniform this time, so he clomped down the short flight of stairs out of his hooch and down the muddy track toward the office. The night was eerily quiet, broken only by the short reports of single shots and the occasional shout. A single helicopter made lazy loops over the smoking ruins of the SASS, searchlight sweeping beneath it. A small unit of Aeromancers circled behind it, occasionally illuminating the sky with bursts of flickering lightning. This was clearly the battle’s aftermath, and it looked like they’d won.

  Carmela greeted him at the office, hair and makeup perfect, as if she’d been awake and at her desk all night. “Evening, sir,” she said. “Colonel Taylor’s in the huddle room.”

  “Thanks,” Bookbinder said, trying to sound confident, and headed toward the door.

  “Sir.” She stopped him, then handed him a pad of yellow paper and two ballpoint pens. How could I forget? The tools of my trade.

  Colonel Taylor, Chief Warrant Officer Fitzsimmons, Lieutenant Colonel Crucible, and two other officers sat gathered around the table, poring over a map of the FOB. They were talking in low tones that stopped when Bookbinder entered. They looked up at him, their brows furrowing, as if unsure of why he was here.

  “Colonel Bookbinder,” Taylor said. “I’m not sure if you’d heard. We had a significant breach tonight. Goblins overran our Suitability Assessment Section. There have been significant losses, but we’ve beaten them back and secured the breach.”

  He talks like I never got out of my rack to try to fight.

  “I heard,” Bookbinder said.

  There was a brief silence as the officers looked at one another, as if trying to decide if they should say anything further to him.

  “Gentlemen,” Bookbinder said, “you got me out of the rack, and it looks like the fighting is over, so I doubt you want me to lead anyone into the thick of anything. Why don’t you tell me how can I help?”

  Crucible smiled, Fitzsimmons’s face was stone. Taylor nodded.

  “Oscar Britton has escaped.” Fitzsimmons said.

  “The Portamancer? The one from Shadow Coven?”

  Fitzsimmons nodded.

  “I thought he’d raised the flag,” Bookbinder said. “Come around to our line of thinking?”

  Taylor looked daggers at Fitzsimmons. “I may have overestimated his degree of commitment to the mission, sir,” Fitzsimmons said.

  “Wait. Didn’t you have a beacon in his chest? Some kind of a bomb?” Bookbinder asked.

  Fitzsimmons nodded. “We detonated it once we realized he was running. Took out half the cash. It turns out one of the Physiomancers in the SASS with him helped him to get it out.”

  Bookbinder racked his brain, trying to remember the names of the SASS inmates from their personnel records and funding lines. “Therese . . . Therese Del Aqua?”

  “That’s the one,” Fitzsimmons said. “They fled in the company of a goblin spy, Mardak Het-Parda, but Britton and his flunkies called him “Marty.” I don’t need to tell you how serious it is to have an ability as unique and dangerous as Oscar Britton’s in goblin hands.”

  Bookbinder sucked in his breath. “No, I guess you don’t. Who else got out?”

  “Don’t remember their real names, sir. They give themselves nicknames that they go by. There’s an Aeromancer called Swift, a Terramancer called Peapod, a Hydromancer called Tsunami and a Pyromancer called Pyre.”

  Bookbinder shook his head, making a mental note to update the personnel database on the missing, once he’d figured out their real names.

  He sucked in his breath. “Wait . . . what about the Witch? The superdangerous one . . . Scylla?”

  “Gone,” Fitzy said, shaking his head.

  “Jesus,” Bookbinder breathed. “What can I do?” Is it my magic? Is there something I can do with it? His heart leapt.

  “You can sign this. We need a special line of funding authorized to enable a special asset we’ve put in place to handle this kind of contingency.” Taylor pushed a ream of papers toward Bookbinder.

  As quickly as the hope flared, it died. They wanted him to do what he’d always faithfully done—push paper.

  “It allows simultaneous operations both on the Home Plane and here in the Source. It needs authorization at the J1 level. In the pa
st, I was the acting J1, so I’d just do it myself, but now you’re here so . . .” Taylor didn’t look pleased.

  “So, now you need me to do it.” Bookbinder slumped in one of the folding chairs and rubbed sleep from his face.

  Taylor looked uncomfortable. “It’s just a formality.”

  “No, Colonel Taylor. Funding authorization is not just a formality. It’s an important aspect of financial oversight that ensures that taxpayer dollars are being spent appropriately. I can’t just rubber-stamp something because you’re in a hurry. I need details.”

  Fitzsimmons’s mouth quirked. Crucible turned white. Taylor gritted his teeth. He spoke very slowly. “You’re not authorized for details.”

  “Then you’re not authorized for funding. I have an obligation to . . .”

  Taylor leapt out of his chair, fist pounding the table. The map jumped. “We don’t have time for this bullshit! We have an unsecured Portamancer running amok with half the damn SASS in tow! I can’t delay getting this under control because you need to feel like you have a job!” He stabbed a finger at the stack of papers, knocked askew from his pounding on the table.

  “I am in command, here!” He seethed. “Now. Sign. The. Fucking. Authorization.”

  Bookbinder stood and met Taylor’s eyes. His heart and stomach were doing cartwheels so severe that he could barely distinguish one from another. I will not be cowed. We are the same rank. I am done being pushed around. For all I know, I’m authorizing this guy to fund an addition to his bungalow in Hawaii.

  He gathered his courage and opened his mouth to reply . . .

  Crucible’s hand on his shoulder silenced him. He turned to face the lieutenant colonel, whose kind eyes were deep with concern.

  “Please, sir,” Crucible said. “I appreciate your desire to do your duty, and I promise I will go over this with you later to the extent that I can. We’ll get you read on if at all possible, but for now we’ve got a real situation here. We need to get this moving right now.”

  Bookbinder’s anger evaporated. Taylor was an arrogant blowhard, but Crucible was competent and kind. Besides, what did Bookbinder really know about contingency operations? Signing paper was all he’d ever done, and now, when he was really needed to do it on an emergency basis, he balked.

  Flushing to match Taylor, he grabbed the pen and signed.

  Disgusted with himself, he sighed, then turned to go.

  And almost rebounded off the glittering chest of a thing out of a B–movie.

  The giant creature was bent nearly double to cram itself below the nine-foot ceiling. Its enormous chest was practically the size of the table. At least a dozen pairs of muscular arms draped to its waist, which stretched into a snake’s tail, trailing out of the door. A forest of snake’s heads bent to consider Bookbinder.

  He could see the shining, jewel-like scales flickering in the fluorescent light as some of the heads reached past him to look at him from behind. The array of colors was dazzling, contrasting with the glinting silver of a veritable butcher block of knives and swords held to its waist by a red silk sash.

  Bookbinder had seen a wide array of strangeness since he’d arrived in the Source, but he was unprepared for this. He stumbled backward into his chair, knocking it over and almost falling on the table.

  The creature reached out with one of its arms and caught him, lifting him as easily as if he were dry twig, setting him back on his feet. It hissed at him in a singsong cadence that sounded vaguely like language.

  “My apologies for startling you, sir,” said a man beside the creature. “I assure you that His Highness is not a threat.” The man’s thick accent was Indian or Pakistani, with a lilt of an English formal education. He was young, with coffee-colored skin and eyes that danced with amusement. He smiled under a neatly trimmed beard. His muscular body was covered by an olive uniform faced with red edging and gold buttons, the Indian flag stitched onto the shoulder. His hair was hidden by a white turban.

  Bookbinder straightened his uniform as the creature dusted him off, hissing something to the Indian man which made him chuckle. “Umm, sorry. I’m just not . . . not used to . . .”

  “Of course,” the man said. “The naga are impressive on first meeting. May I present His Highness Vasuki-Kai, who is my Bandhav and a prince among his people. I am Subedar Major Dhatri.”

  “Subedar Major Dhatri is the Sahir Corps liaison here, on behalf of the government of India.” Crucible said helpfully.

  “That’s the Indian SOC?” Bookbinder asked.

  “Where the hell do you get off barging in here without notice?” Taylor demanded.

  The naga made a burst of angry-sounding hissing, but stopped when Dhatri placed a hand on one of its many elbows.

  “Colonel Taylor, sir. Please accept my apologies for the intrusion,” Dhatri said, his voice not sounding the least bit apologetic.

  “His Highness is greatly concerned in the aftermath of the battle that took place this past night. He respectfully requests to know why he wasn’t alerted to the altercation and why we were not included in this council.”

  The naga hissed over Dhatri’s words, not looking like it was respectfully requesting anything. Its cluster of heads stretched over the table, fixing Taylor with an array of golden eyes. One of the hands yanked a punch-dagger from the sash and cleaned the fingernails of another.

  Taylor bridled but responded in more respectful tones.

  “Please tell your Bandhav that I appreciate his concern and apologize for any inconvenience.” Dhatri translated into what Bookbinder assumed was Hindi. The naga nodded its understanding with those heads currently not occupied with glaring at Taylor.

  “But,” Taylor went on, “I must remind His Highness that the United States of America is a democracy which has relations with the government of the Republic of India, and not the Naga Raja. If His Highness wishes to file a request through you, Subedar Major, on behalf of your government—”

  Vasuki-Kai cut him off with a wave of his hands.

  “Yes, yes,” Dhatri translated. “His Highness is abundantly familiar with your insistence on protocol. He assures you he will register complaints through the proper channels, and he also assures you that he has no faith at all in a response. He asks me to remind you that you are in the presence of royal blood that extends back more than five thousand years, and that you are guests in the Raja’s domain. The Raja is master of all he surveys and tolerates your presence here only out of consideration to his more respectful children.” Dhatri gestured to the Indian flag on his shoulder.

  Taylor blushed, and even Fitzsimmons stirred at the words.

  The colonel looked as if he would retort, but Crucible cut him off, saying, “I know I speak for the colonel when I thank His Highness for his reminder and assure him that we will inform him of any news as it becomes available through normal channels.”

  The naga looked slightly mollified as Dhatri translated. It clapped Bookbinder on the shoulder and turned to go, turning sideways in an effort to fit through a doorway built to accommodate humans. This caused it to trip over its tail, which evoked a hiss that could only have been the naga equivalent of a curse.

  Finally, Vasuki-Kai gave up and took the doorframe broadside, his giant shoulders smashing the sides as easily as if it were made of paper.

  He slithered out, Dhatri in tow, leaving two half-moons in the wood and drywall, Taylor muttering in his wake.

  “The naga,” Crucible explained to Bookbinder over Taylor’s steady stream of profanity, “have rather grandiose ideas about their position in the Source.”

  “They think they fucking run the place!” Taylor said.

  “They’re supposed to be our allies! Hell, the Indian Army uses our Portamancer to get their envoys over here to meet with them in the first place! I will not be talked down to like that on my own post! I swear to Almighty God if I wasn’t . . .”

  “Colonel Taylor is right,” Crucible said to Bookbinder, as Taylor fell into another fit of rage. “But
as you can see, Vasuki-Kai is kind of hard to argue with.”

  Bookbinder thought of the giant snake creature and nodded.

  Now he could add diplomacy with monsters to his list of new experiences.

  He slumped back in his chair, staring in amazement at the shattered doorjamb, all the evidence that remained of the naga’s passage.

  Chapter VI

  Short Rations

  It was Napoleon who first said that “an army travels on its stomach,” an early nod to the all-important role of logistics in military campaigns. Armies that cannot feed themselves cannot fight, and armies that cannot move critical assets to flash points rapidly and in good order find themselves throwing in with too little, too late. US Transportation Command is proud to have embraced magic as a tool of logistical dominance. Our Aeromancers calm storms, our Terramancers secure bridges, our Hydromancers ensure clean and abundant drinking water no matter the terrain. Our Pyromancers clear vegetative obstacles in seconds. The long-standing partnership between USTRANSCOM and the SOC ensures that our warfighters are rested, fed and where they need to be, right on time.

  —Colonel Thomas Burge

  Public Affairs, US Transportation Command

  Bookbinder figured it out. With the comms so spotty through the gate, there was no way he could to talk to Julie properly. But maybe the same pipe would allow a short burst of data? He could compose a thoughtful message and tell her how he felt without fear of interruption.

  It took him a full hour to say everything he needed to; how much he missed her and the kids, how he was safe, and she shouldn’t worry. He repeated the all-important bottom line: that he loved her and he loved her and oh, God, how he loved her.

  No matter what he’d ever said, through every stupid fight and thoughtless moment, that he loved her was the only thing he’d ever meant. He loved her and the girls so much and please don’t forget to tell them. He added another short line asking Julie to send back her own video message. It might be one-way comms, but it would be better than the inadequate voice line.