Myke Cole - Shadow Ops - Control Point

“All right! All right! I’ve got it! I’ve fixed it!” Britton shouted. The ground was a blurry nightmare of shouting Goblins. The air stank of cordite. His ears rang from churning rotors and gunfire. He had no idea if he could gate back to the place. “Let’s get out of here!”

The flight officer nodded and shouted to the pilots. The Apaches fell into formation as the Blackhawk turned toward the palisade wall, gaining elevation.

And stopped in midair, wrenching so hard that Britton pitched forward.

His arms pinwheeled as he stumbled toward the open bay, the ground, hundreds of feet below, spinning under him. The soldiers cursed as they were thrown forward. A carbine went spinning through the air, tumbling to the ground below.

The carabiner, fixed firmly to the floor ring, yanked hard on his belt, checking his slide. Britton landed hard on his shoulder, one arm dangling out of the helicopter. Down the length of the bird, he could see the tail fixed firmly in a wooden grip. One tower burned brightly where the rocket had struck it. The other had grown outward, its wooden form budding, the planks sprouting leaves and branches. Fresh bark covered its gnarled surface, forming a massive fist that held the helo fast. A white-painted Goblin stood at the fist’s base, a leather cape sewn with metal discs slung around his neck. He gestured, and the fist moved inward, hauling the Blackhawk down to the parapet walk beside a post with a giant bird skull, striped red and orange, affixed to the top, whence it glared balefully at the helo that shuddered against the wood.

Britton stared at the skull. He had seen it before. “Sir, …”

But there was no time. Goblin warriors raced along the walls toward them, brandishing weapons, shrieking.

Fitzy rose to a knee, reaching out toward the Goblin Terramancer, but an arrow shot out of the crowd, forcing him to break his concentration and duck away.

Fitzy cursed. The Goblins closed fast. The Terramancer walked along the branch, surrounded by five Goblins, big for their race, wearing long hauberks of metal rings with extended drapes that covered their faces. Their long ears pointed out from beneath conical steel helmets, pierced through with golden rings. Three brandished curved, broad-bladed swords. The other two held pistols.

One pilot shouted into the radio while the other spun up the rotors, straining against the magic that held them fast.

“Shut her down!” Britton called to him. “You’ll tear us apart!”

Britton turned to the soldiers, leaning out of the bay with their carbines leveled. “Keep the parapet clear, and I can get us out of here!”

The Apaches wheeled above, opening fire, raining bullets on the ground. The throng on the parapet was too close to the Blackhawk for them to risk firing on them.

A bullet whined off the helicopter’s side as the soldiers opened up, the rhythm of their fire slow as they took careful aim. In moments, Britton began to hear the drumroll of three-round bursts as the crowd of Goblins swelled on the parapet, a group so large that even indiscriminate fire would find a target.

Britton called to the pilots, “Get your butts out on the parapet where I can gate you to safety! And wave the damned Apaches off! They can’t do anything here!”

The flight officer began shouting into his headset as one of the pilots struggled with his harness. Fitzy ran to assist him, his face pale. “Stay in the damned bird!” he called to Britton. “We can’t lose you!”

Britton ignored him, stepping out onto the parapet walk as the first of the soldiers began crying for ammo. One of them was firing one-handed, the gas tube on his carbine so hot that the plastic dripped from burned fingers.

They would be overwhelmed in moments.

The Goblins thronged the parapet, climbing over their dead as they scrambled for the helo. A few more rounds cracked from stolen weapons. Britton felt a hiss of air pass his head. He threw open a gate on Portcullis’s loading bay and grabbed the soldier with the burned hand by his body armor, hauling him through.

“Leave it!” he shouted to the rest. “Get in the damned gate!”

The air gusted violently. The hair on Britton’s neck stood up as the smell of ozone filled the air. Another Goblin, painted white and wreathed in crackling lightning, looped over the helo’s rotors, slowly spinning down. He shouted at the Goblins thronging the parapet in their own language, waving his arms, motioning them to move aside.

The Apaches hovered impotently, jerking higher into the air as the Goblin Aeromancer appeared.

Two of the soldiers turned and dove through the gate. The last one looked up at Britton just as an arrow hissed out of the advancing mass, catching him below his neck. He rose and stumbled, falling against Britton’s thigh, tracking blood down his trousers.

Britton hauled him upright as Fitzy appeared out of the helo’s open bay, firing his pistol just as the Goblins reached the helo’s nose, swarming over it, stabbing at the windscreen with their spears. The plastic exploded as the pilots fired their pistols through it.

Britton threw the wounded soldier through the gate just as the first Goblin reached him. It snarled, clad in leather armor, face mostly hidden behind a mail drape hanging from a crude steel bowl of a helmet. It leapt forward, slashing downward with a two-handed axe.

It might as well have moved in slow motion. Britton could see its strike rise, exactly where it meant to fall. The creature’s movements, its eyes, the angle of its shoulders; all telegraphed the axe’s destination. It was faster than an animated corpse.

But it was slower than Fitzy and far slower than Britton.

He sidestepped the blow, catching the axe’s haft and torquing his arm, sending the creature banging into the helo’s side before dropping off the parapet walk and plummeting to the ground below. The Goblin behind it was even slower, stabbing with a pike that dangled beads on leather thongs. Britton grabbed the weapon’s head and opened another gate. He ran the creature halfway through it, then shut it, leaving half a Goblin shuddering in the Source.

Britton turned, leveled the gate horizontally, and sent it slicing down the parapet. Goblins were cut in two, leapt to their deaths, or ran screaming back to the turret.

Fitzy’s words rang in his ears. Once you have learned how to integrate your Gate Sorcery with MAC, you will be deadlier than an entire rifle company.

But the other end of the parapet swarmed. The front of the helo was black with small bodies. They reached through the broken remains of the windscreen, hauling the pilots out.

The Terramancer appeared at the end of his wooden fist, striding triumphantly over the tail boom. He paused just outside the range of the slowing rotors, said something to Britton, and gestured. The parapet walk erupted, sprouting into gnarled branches, blossoming with buds. Hooked wooden fingers reached for Britton…and stopped. “Get back in the damned bird!” Fitzy cried, gesturing at the Terramancer.

Britton raced back into the helo. The flight officer and one pilot held the other pilot’s legs, engaged in a brutal tug-of-war with five Goblins standing on the nose of the Blackhawk. Britton rushed the cockpit, grabbing the pilot’s ankle and adding his strength to the contest. They struggled for another moment, but at last the pilot came flying back through the windscreen, howling as he left skin on the ragged shards of plastic.

The Goblins reached, and Britton opened a gate in the middle of them, slicing them and the helicopter’s nose in half, sending the remains spiraling to the ground. The gate looked in on Portcullis’s loading bay, where the three soldiers were tending their wounded comrade. James the armorer stood over them, buckling on a tactical vest. A few soldiers milled around him in various states of readiness. Their eyes went wide as the gate opened. Britton motioned them back and threw the wounded pilot through.