Myke Cole - Shadow Ops - Control Point

“So we can get rounded up and handed over as part of the reciprocity agreement?” Peapod asked. “Mexico is a damned vassal state.”

“You got a better idea?” Pyre snapped.

“Why can’t we just stay here? Or maybe go to some other wilderness? What about Alaska?”

“We’re not survivalists!” someone in the crowd said.

“We don’t have to be,” Peapod replied. “We’ve got magic.”

“That won’t do us any good once the SOC starts hunting for us,” Swift said. “They’re better than we are.”

“Bet you wish you’d spent a little more time practicing with Salamander when you’d had the chance, eh, No-No boy?” Tsunami groused.

This is getting out of control, Britton thought. Someone has to lead before things come totally apart.

“That’s enough,” Britton said, his voice taking on the tone of command he’d used in the army. The group responded to it, looking up at him expectantly. What now?

Britton felt fingers brush his own and looked down to see Marty at his side, looking wide-eyed at him. “Much angry,” the Goblin said. The others stared at him, and whispers ran through the clearing.

“Why?” Marty asked, ignoring them. “Why angry?”

Because I hurt them, Britton thought. I didn’t mean to, but I did. And now I have to make that right, Marty. Now I have to help them. But he didn’t say it. The group needed a commander, and it was not the time to show weakness or remorse. He only looked at Marty, his gaze level. “We have to find a place to go where the SOC can’t find us,” Britton said to Marty, his voice loud and full of confidence he didn’t feel. “That place can’t be in this world. It has to be in the Source, and well away from the FOB. We don’t know what else the SOC knows about the lay of the land there, but they will have a harder time finding and reaching us.” He made a point of not mentioning Billy, whose ability made reaching them no problem at all.

We’ll just have to stay hidden, then.

Marty pursed his lips and wiggled his ears as if to say of course . He punched Britton’s chest lightly and nodded. “We Mattab On Sorrah,” he said, tapping his eyelids and bowing. “We always help.”

“This is my Mattab On Sorrah now,” Britton said. “The army is going to come for us.”

The Goblin nodded and smiled. “I know.” He leaned in close, smiling and tapping Britton’s chest again. “Safe place.”

“Yes, Marty, a safe place,” Britton said. “We have to take them there.”

Marty paused for a moment, thinking. “Remember, bird head?”

Leering in the torchlight, the striped bird skull, hung on the Goblin fastness where Britton had saved Fitzy’s life and been punished for it, rose in his mind. The Master Suppressor’s voice rose in his mind. You’re paid to be a weapon, not a hero. Remember that. “I remember,” he said to Marty.

“Go there, I take you safe place.” The Goblin smiled.

“Man, I really don’t want to go back there,” Britton said. He racked his brain for any image that he could recall well enough to gate to. But the landscape beneath the helicopter had blurred by too fast. The only thing he remembered well enough was FOB Frontier and the fortress. He could take them in some distance from it, but it would have to be in sight.

“Can’t I take us back somewhere else?”

Marty shook his head. “If not there, then not know where safe place. Go bird head. Then safe place.

“Safe place,” Marty repeated, giving his ear-wiggling shrug.

“This is your tribe? This is with your Mattab On Sorrah?”

Marty nodded.

Britton felt his emotions well up at the creature’s quickness to help strangers, but now was not the time to show it. He swallowed hard, hoping no one would notice how much the gesture affected him.

“Uskar,” Marty said, gently tapping his own eyelids, then Britton’s. “Okay. Okay. Always help. You important.” He smiled gently, then leaned forward and imitated the human gesture, hugging Britton about the waist as best he could. “Important. Everything okay.”

Britton patted the Goblin’s shoulders as he mastered himself. At last he turned to the remnants of the tribe and spoke, hoping his voice wouldn’t break.

“Marty knows of a place we can go. Someplace safe in the Source. We’re going to take fifteen minutes to get everyone patched up as best we can, then we’re out of here.”

“Back to the Source?” Pyre asked. “We just escaped from there!”

“This is only temporary,” Britton said. “Do you honestly think there’s a place in the entire US safe for us? Or in any bordering nation? Besides, I can only gate us places I’ve seen. Or did you propose we walk to wherever we’re going to hide out? I know this isn’t ideal. I’m not offering you an end to running, just another place to run to.”

“What the hell happened anyway?” one of the enrollees shouted. “How the hell did that Witch get free in the first place?”

Swift looked frankly at him, arms folded across his chest.

You’ll have to tell them eventually. If they’re going to follow you, it has to be under honest terms. “That’s my fault,” Britton answered. He paused, letting the stunned silence wash over him. “You want to blame someone, you can blame me.”

He shouted down the chorus of protests that welled as the group began to grasp the impact of his words. “That’s enough! I’ve been soldiering long enough to know that if we’re going to live through this, it’s going to take discipline and teamwork. You may have done things however the hell you wanted to when you were on the run, but that changed in the SASS, and it’s not going to change back just because you’re free of it. You want to judge me? Judge me later. After we are all safe, after this latest round of running is at an end. I can’t bring the dead back to life. All I can do is save the lives that are remaining. What we need is a safe place, someone to shelter us until we can figure out what you want to do next. Marty can provide that safe place, and I can take us there. It’s the only chance we’ve got, and for it to work, you’re going to have to trust me and let me help you. You may not like it, but it’s the only way.”

And what do you do once you get to Marty’s tribe? he asked himself. We rest, we get ourselves fed and patched up. Then we make plans. The first thing we need is a place to regroup, rest up, and rearm.

“What if we stand and fight?” Swift asked, but his eyes showed he already knew the answer to his own question.

“If you stand against the SOC, you will die, make no mistake,” Britton replied. “You have great heart, but you are too few and too poorly trained. The SOC are professional warriors. They make a study of killing with magic. I have trained with them far beyond the basic exercises you learned in the SASS. I’ve seen what they can do. Bravery isn’t enough. Skill beats will, every time. You’ve learned something of discipline and self-denial in your SASS training. That’ll give you a leg up over the average Selfer, but not nearly enough of a leg up.”

“Yes, Oscar.” Therese spoke from beside a SASS enrollee with a broken javelin shaft protruding from his thigh. “Get us out of here. Do whatever you have to do to make us safe.” But her eyes were hard. Don’t think there won’t be a reckoning later. Britton nodded, his eyes scanning the group for a challenge. Swift turned away. Wavesign shivered, and Pyre gave a resigned nod.

“All right,” Britton said. “If we’re going to function as a unit, we need a commander. That’s me unless anyone else thinks they can do a better job.”