Myke Cole - Shadow Ops - Control Point

Jealousy.

Why? he asked himself. Why would you be jealous of her? She’s with them now. She caved. She joined the other side.

The answer came quickly. Because she’s using her magic for good. Because, no matter who she works for, she’s helping people. Therese’s magic heals.

And you, Oscar? What are you doing?

The question hung in his mind, unanswered.

The next morning, Britton left his hooch to head to the SASS, only to find Fitzy waiting for him in the muddy track outside.

“Morning, Novice,” the chief warrant officer said, smiling.

“Good morning, sir,” Britton answered slowly.

“How’d you like a day off from the SASS? Your control has made big strides recently, and I was figuring you’d appreciate a break from the daily brainwashing flicks.”

“I’m fine to go, sir.”

“Actually, Novice, I’m not asking. You’ve stirred up a serious fucking hornet’s nest over there, and I figured it would be smart to let it blow over. Also, both you and Prometheus have been making strides in terms of your control, and I’d like to start putting that to the test. That okay by you?” Fitzy leaned in, his grim expression showing it was a rhetorical question.

Shadow Coven assembled in the yard to find it spread with the usual cloth dummies, a disabled Humvee at the far end. More dummies sat inside, a dummy gunner slumped in the ball turret behind the rusted machine-gun mount.

“You’ve done well in your individual exercises. It’s high time you got serious about working as a team. Shadow Coven is the ultimate force multiplier,” Fitzy said. “You will enter the field as four operators and build your own army. Everything on the field is fuel. Every bug, every spark of flame, every enemy you take down.” As Fitzy spoke, Goblin corpses were unloaded from a flatbed electric car, soldiers placing them directly behind each of the target dummies. “Rictus, you see a dummy with a bullet hole in it, you may consider it dead, and the corpse behind it is game on.”

He distributed pistols and magazines. “These are loaded with forty-five-caliber incendiary ammunition. It lacks the tungsten carbide penetrator you are accustomed to hearing about in its larger-caliber cousins but still contains the zirconium powder. The result is a slightly weaker round. But they are pretty much guaranteed to catch anything they hit on fire. Normally, I wouldn’t be too thrilled about a battlefield roaring in flames, but when you’ve got an Elementalist in your ranks, that sort of thing comes in handy.” He shot Downer a wry smile and mounted a small wooden crate that gave him a better view of the field.

“Stage at Portcullis, gate in, and work your way left to right across the target range. By the time you reach the Humvee, I expect you to have the force necessary to destroy it. You have forty-five seconds from jump. Do not draw your sidearms until you are clear of the gate.”

They paused, waiting for further instruction.

“You ladies waiting for Christmas?” Fitzy asked. “Get moving!”

Britton opened the gate on the darkness of Portcullis’s loading bay and closed it once the Coven was safely through. He inhaled the stale air, thick with the smell of motor oil. Somewhere on the other side of the wall, Billy sat drooling, his mother’s pale, elephantine arms draped around his neck. The chain link of the dog pens stood off to the side, empty of animals for now. He gave himself a moment for his eyes to adjust, then met the gazes of each Novice in turn. Truelove’s glasses reflected what little light filtered through the warehouse from the glowing EXIT signs. He looked terrified. Britton put out a hand. “Magic behind the magic,” he said, smiling foolishly.

Downer and Richards smiled, placing their hands on his. Truelove shrugged and put his on top. “Magic behind the magic,” he said, not sounding convinced at all.

“Is there any way in hell we can do this in forty-five seconds?” Richards asked.

“Absolutely not,” Downer answered, smiling.

Truelove sighed. “Fitzy is asshole,” he drawled.

They loosened their pistols in the holsters and checked the safeties. “Okay,” Britton said, his officer’s instinct for command kicking in. “Stay on my six and watch my lead. I don’t know what Fitzy’s got planned for us, but I’m sure it won’t be nice. I’ll be first through the gate. Put your hands on your weapons and come out shooting.”

Truelove looked grateful, Downer sullen. “I’m fine,” she said. He didn’t argue.

The gate sprang open on the yard, and the Coven charged through just as Fitzy tossed a flash-bang in their midst. Britton shielded his eyes and looked away. “Close your eyes!” he shouted as the low boom erupted, throwing Truelove off his feet and sending Downer and Richards scattering. Fitzy doubled over with laughter as Britton aimed his pistol and squeezed off a round, taking the first dummy in the chest and sending a puff of white flame that crawled across the cloth surface, spiraling upward and growing.

Richards turned back, his eyes streaming, and fired three rounds before one found its mark, tearing through the dummy’s neck and starting its own small fire. With his free hand he gestured, and the ground before them boiled. Fitzy grinned and pulled the pin on another flash-bang, tossing it toward Britton. Britton fired again, taking a dummy between the eyes and opening a small gate in midair. The flash-bang passed through and thumped along the logging trail where he’d abandoned the police car before detonating. The gate shut, cutting the boom short.

The boiling ground vomited a throng of black insects, pouring forward on hundreds of tiny legs. They swarmed the next dummy, the white cloth gone black and chitinous beneath their squirming mass, shreds flying.

Downer recovered and swept her arms upward. The flames about the dummies danced, grew and solidified into three man-sized bodies of fire, leaping from their source and racing to the next dummy. They wreathed it in withering fire. Five more elementals jumped from it, making for the Humvee.

“Damn it, Rictus!” Britton shouted. “Get in the game!”

Truelove staggered forward, blinking. He fired a few shots, wild, as Richards and Britton drilled the last remaining dummies and Downer’s elementals set one more aflame to bring the number of elementals to eight. “They’re all dead, damn it!” Britton yelled.

Truelove stretched out his hands. The Goblin corpses behind the posts lurched upright. “The Humvee! Go for the Humvee!” Britton called, advancing on the vehicle.

Richards’s insects swarmed it, sliding their tiny bodies through the seams in the doors. Inside, the dummies began to jerk beneath hundreds of tiny mandibles. The elementals leapt onto the ball turret, incinerating the gunner and pressing fiery limbs against the turret hatch. Britton could see white sparks as the metal ignited under the intense heat. Truelove’s walking corpses shambled with surprising speed to the vehicle’s side, throwing gray shoulders against one quarter panel. They heaved, and the Humvee trembled. Britton saw legs crack and shoulders hang limp as the joints tore loose, but the zombies pushed, faces blank. One looked at him and stuck out a swollen gray tongue. Truelove smiled as the Humvee jerked upward and toppled onto its side, burning brightly, its occupants rent to ribbons.

Britton sent a gate sideways through it, slicing the Humvee down the middle in a coup de grace. The wreck collapsed in a heap as the Coven turned to Fitzy, who stopped his watch with a beep.

“Minute thirty,” he said. “You fail. Keep up like this in a real combat situation, and you’ll be dead before you get to do any stupid show-off moves. Rictus, what the hell was that? You lose a goddamn contact back there?”