Myke Cole - Shadow Ops - Control Point

And Goblins, everywhere Goblins. The desecration of their corpses shouted the central message of the Special Projects tent: just another animal. Source fauna.

Britton’s lip curled at the sight. He had to get out of there. He cast about, looking for a flat surface on which to leave the tissue sample. The only flat surface proved to be a folding aluminum writing desk strewn with files. He placed the meat on the clearest portion. A stack of files had toppled over sometime ago, spreading each one out in a stepped path, the titles stamped in antiquated font theatrically stereotypical for the military. AMPHISBAENA, read one, SPITTING SERPENT. Another read UNICORN, HORNED EQUINE. Britton began to leaf through them, eyebrows rising at the identities of the corpses laid out around him.

Then he froze.

SCYLLA, one read. HUMAN NEGRAMANCER. Someone had written UNCOOPERATIVERECAL across the front in red marker. Britton took a glance over his shoulder, then peeled back the cover and began to read.

…remains steadfast in her refusal to act in her own self-interest. While it is impossible to be certain if Andrews’s theory is correct regarding the elemental foundation of her magic, I see no harm in obliging him. We certainly lose nothing by trying, and, frankly, right now she is little more than a drain on the taxpayer resources necessary to house and guard her. We’ve had outstanding success in prefrontral cortex intervention with other subjects, and I don’t think I’m overstating the case when I say that it has handed this army a functional Portamancer where we’d otherwise have had a serious problem. In this case, the use of the Orbitoclast rendered the subject particularly vulnerable to the influence of his mother, who, fortunately, is cooperative and patriotic. While there is no such influence in “Scylla’s” life, I respectfully request that a hard time limit be set to allow the PSYOPS team to finish their work. If IO isn’t the answer here, then surgery certainly can’t hurt us. We should set a deadline for prefrontal cortex interception and see where that takes us…

Footsteps. Britton slammed the folder shut and stood back from the table, his mind swamped with images of Billy drooling, his mother draping her pale arms around his neck, crooning in his ear.

Hayes stepped through the flap and squeaked at the sight of Britton, his jowls shaking. He took a step back and nearly tripped over himself. “What the hell are you doing here!?”

Britton pointed at the chunk of meat on the desk, and croaked “Tissue sample, sir. Fitzy said you’d want it.”

And then he shouldered past the captain without another word, not trusting anything he might say.

Billy, drooling, compliant, opening and closing gates at their will.

They’d do the same to Scylla.

If she didn’t play ball, they’d do the same to her.

Fitzy took Britton’s report stone-faced. He nodded curtly and sat Britton in front of a laptop, where he typed out in meticulous detail all the events he had just recounted. It took Britton over an hour to ensure he’d captured it all, Fitzy making low conversation into a radio while Britton typed.

Eventually, Britton stopped typing and turned, looking at the chief warrant officer while he paced the trailer. “What’s your problem?” Fitzy asked eventually.

“It’s Rampart, sir. I just…I’m sorry.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

Britton was silent.

Fitzy paced forward, his shoulders bunching. “Rampart was SOC in his bones. That man had more steel in his dick than you do in your entire body. He doesn’t need your sorry.”

Britton was used to Fitzy’s posturing by then, and after what he’d just been through, it failed to impress. He shrugged. “Will there be a funeral?”

“There might be, but not for you. Rampart didn’t know you and didn’t want to know you. For you there’s work, and that starts tomorrow at 0600 sharp.”

And 0600 turned out to be more MAC practice. When Britton arrived, Truelove stood beside a wooden pallet covered with a blue plastic tarp. Ashen toes and pointed ears poked out from beneath it.

Truelove looked embarrassed. “Hi.”

“You okay?”

Truelove shrugged. “It’s what we trained for. I’ll be fine.”

“What about Downer?”

“Physically? She’s doing great.”

“Mentally?”

“I don’t know,” Truelove said. “She…she was hurt pretty bad. But she’s not talking about it.”

“What…”

“You got a jump start on your GIMAC,” Fitzy cut him off. “And if you’re done socializing, we might as well get moving with that.”

“We’re gonna MAC?” Britton asked in disbelief, then regretted his tone, as Truelove’s face fell. Truelove was Fitzy’s height and lacked the chief warrant officer’s build.

He struggled to find something placating to say, but Fitzy interrupted him. “Hell, no. Rictus couldn’t MAC with a twelve-year-old girl. This is GIMAC for you, remember? Rictus has integrated MAC of his own.”

Truelove nodded nervously and dropped into a guard.

“We’ve been practicing on our own, while you worked with Fitzy,” he said, his voice apologetic. He raised his arms, and the pallet shuddered. The tarp flew off as ten Goblin corpses jerked their way to circle Britton. Their sightless eyes turned toward him, heads slewing on broken necks. Here, a nose was missing. There, a bit of jawbone protruded. Fresh from some meat locker, the corpses emanated cold. Britton could see traces of frost on what remained of their ears and noses. Truelove closed his eyes, spread his arms, and the zombies dropped into MAC guards of their own. “Hee-yah,” one of them groaned. Truelove smiled.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Britton said.

“No joke,” Fitzy said. “Feel free to gate in and out of Portcullis as needed. Richards’s dog pens are full. Pluck from them as needed to even the odds.”

“Ready or not.” Truelove smiled. “Here I come.”

They swarmed him with surprising speed. The first swiped for his arm, cold, dead fingers brushing his wrist, raising gooseflesh. He leapt backward, and one of the zombies grabbed him around the waist. They were small, but their dead strength was terrible and Britton felt the air squeezed out of him as the withered arms locked over his stomach.

He hammered his elbow backward, cracking the thing hard in the face, while simultaneously twisting his ankle behind it and sweeping its leg. It flew backward into another zombie, and Britton was already turning, pistoning a fist into the face of another opponent, seeking a way to break through the circle.

A zombie leapt into the air, kicking Britton hard in the chin, one frozen toe snapping off as his head rocked backward, knocking Britton into another zombie, which pinned his arms at his sides. Three more rushed him from the front.

He slid a gate open behind him, then pushed off with his thighs, driving himself and the zombie through the portal, crushing it against the hard concrete of the loading-bay floor. Two of the zombies stepped through the gate as he shut it, leaving a heap of half faces and torsos dropping to the concrete.

The thing beneath him ceased struggling and he stood, stomping hard on its face, his stomach lurching at the crunching sound beneath his heel.

He opened a gate beside Truelove and emerged. Fitzy leapt between them, waggling a finger. “He’s off-limits. Go dance with the dead.”

Britton turned just in time to dodge another leaping kick. He slid to one side, opening a gate in midair. The zombie passed through it, and he let it shut, kicking the next one hard in the chest and driving it back into its fellows.

Britton began to find his rhythm, the magic integrating seamlessly into the dance of the MAC. A corpse punched at him, he caught its arm, opened a gate and flipped it through, closing the portal on its shoulder, leaving him holding the limb, which he turned to fling in the face of his next assailant. It fell backward, decapitated by another gate as it tried to rise.