Shadow Ops: Fortress Frontier-ARC (pdf conv.) (26 page)

Bookbinder was a master bureaucrat. He had hidden behind regulations and “covering his behind” hundreds of times when he didn’t want to deal with an issue. He could hardly begrudge that particular dodge to Taylor, especially now. “Sure thing. Just don’t forget me, okay?”

Taylor nodded and turned back into the tent, Bookbinder following.

The chaos outside was nothing compared to the charnel house within. The stink of burned flesh and congealing blood hit Bookbinder like a wall, mixed with the high, chemical odor of rubbing alcohol, iodine, and latex. The tent seethed with activity, white coats and blue scrubs flew past him in a blur, covering goblin and human alike. The low buzz of medical conversation: diagnosis, triage, and treatment was punctuated by the occasional agonized howl. Despite the encroaching winter, the heat inside was damp, oppressive.

“Jesus,” Bookbinder said.

“Tell me about it,” Taylor responded, then began waving to a white-coated officer over a sea of bobbing heads. “Colonel Dacic! Dacic!” He turned to Bookbinder. “Come on.”

Taylor began pushing his way through the hot press of bodies.

He made good progress for a few steps, then came up short against a couple of goblin contractors who couldn’t get out of his way quickly enough. They looked comical in their baggy blue scrubs. Their surgical masks were made for human features, and stretched to the limit over their long noses. The press of bodies was so close that Bookbinder’s chest thumped against Taylor’s back when they stopped.

“Damn it!” Taylor cursed at the creatures. “Get the lead out of your asses!”

The goblins jostled, bumping into Taylor’s knees, chattering angrily to one another in their own language.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” The angry edge that Bookbinder used to fear leapt into Taylor’s voice. “Get out of my way!”

The goblins suddenly stopped, facing one another. All of the jostling disorganization vanished. They tapped their eyelids synchronously, then turned.

One of them grabbed Taylor’s knees and drove its bulbous head into his stomach.

Taylor doubled over, his face slack with shock.

The other goblin reached into its waistband and produced a surgical scalpel. With a shout, it plunged it into Taylor’s throat, driving it in so deep that the handle nearly disappeared.

Gurgling, Taylor fell backward as the first goblin swarmed up his legs, planted its foot on his chest and vaulted over him, screaming, reaching for Bookbinder.

Bookbinder’s existence split in two. The first part stood in stunned horror as the scene unfolded. Taylor slumped to the floor, blood fountaining from the wound in his neck with such ferocity that it sprayed Bookbinder’s boots to midshin. The goblin reached for Bookbinder’s face, screaming curses in its own language.

The second part simply reacted. Bookbinder grabbed the goblin’s face, his fingers gripping the long nose, one punching into an eye socket. His other hand dragged the pistol from his holster, fumbling as it came so that he found himself clutching the barrel. He drove the smaller creature into the dirt floor, putting his full body weight on top of it. The second goblin scrambled after him, but he extended one boot, punting the thing backward. “Rogue contractors!” he heard the second part of himself shout. “A little help here!”

The first part watched in amazement as the second part lifted the pistol and slammed the butt into the first goblin’s head, brought it up and down again, up and down again, a carpenter hammering a nail. After the third stroke, the hard surface of the goblin’s head went soft. After the fifth, Bookbinder was tenderizing meat.

The soft contact of the blows brought him back to himself, and the two Bookbinders merged into one—horrified, frightened, exhausted. He looked up.

The controlled chaos of the cash had spilled its banks. All work had stopped. A wide circle had emptied around him, filled only with Taylor’s still and pale body, Bookbinder, and his assailant. The second goblin was pinned beneath a burly patient, who had thrown himself off his gurney and was busy choking the life out of it. Outside the circle, people rushed to and fro.

They tripped over one another, toppling heart monitors and oxygen tanks, pulling plugs and IV tubes. They were on the verge of a stampede in the middle of the worst possible place for it.

Bookbinder dropped his pistol and reached toward Taylor.

His hand came into view, stained red to the wrist, flecked with tiny yellow-white pieces of the dead goblin’s skull. That couldn’t be his hand; it wasn’t the hand of a paper pusher. And yet, here it was, reaching out to take Taylor’s pulse, finding nothing, closing the staring eyes.

Bookbinder stood, shouted. “Everybody needs to calm down! Let’s try to get some order in here! Why isn’t someone securing the exits? Where the hell are the first sergeants?”

A few people paused, looking at him in obvious relief. A white-coated physician’s assistant ran to him, first sergeant’s diamonds stitched above his name tape. “You need to get those exits secured,” Bookbinder said. “Maybe get MPs to round up the goblins. Do
not
harm them. Just get ’em separated out, I can’t have fights breaking out. We need to get this cash running again, stat!”

“Sir!” the first sergeant said, and took off, shouting orders.

Some semblance of order returned to the cash, but not nearly enough. Across the room, Bookbinder saw two Marines lighting into a group of goblin contractors pushing a cart of medical supplies, punching them indiscriminately.

“Hey!” he shouted. “Cut that the hell out! Somebody stop those men!”

The Marines couldn’t hear him across the din of the surging cash. A couple of goblins leapt into the fray, trying to assist their comrades. The stampede was threatening to become a full-scale brawl.

“Damn it! We need order in here!” Bookbinder shouted.

“Someone give me a hand!” He began to wade through the surging mass of people toward the fighting.

“Goddamn it!” he screamed, his voice finally cutting through the din and bringing some relative quiet as all turned to face him.

“Enough of this jackassery!” Bookbinder shouted. “Who the hell is in command here?”

The first sergeant who’d been helping him turned, his face pale and sweating. “You are, sir,” he said, his eyes sweeping past Bookbinder to Taylor’s cooling corpse.

“You are.”

Bookbinder sat in Colonel Taylor’s office. His office now. He’d have to get used to that concept sooner or later. It wasn’t much bigger than his old office, with the same décor, imposing cherrywood desk, crossed flags. He had gathered all of Taylor’s personal effects—his challenge-coin collection, pictures of his family, a signed baseball from a World Series a decade ago—into a cardboard box, which now sat on the floor in the corner.

With the FOB cut off, there was no way to get it home anyway, or even report Taylor’s death.

Cold panic crept up his spine, tying his stomach in knots. He was the ranking officer on post. With Taylor dead, the command of the sprawling, division-sized base, with all its operations, fell to him. Fifteen thousand servicemen and -women from all five branches of the military and all the supporting government civilians and contractor personnel. Roughly thirty square miles of fortified ground, all of it under siege almost daily. Low on supplies, cut off from home.

I can’t do this. I’m a bureaucrat. Even a hardened commander
would balk at this.

Stop it. You have to do it. Everyone is looking to you. Dig
deep and find a way.

But the deeper Bookbinder dug, the hollower he felt. Where he looked for a reserve of confidence and ideas, he found only more questions. Where did he even start? Who did he talk to first? He looked down at his fingernails. He had washed his hands dozens of times since that horrific night in the cash, but he still imagined he could see the faint brown streak of Taylor’s blood on them.

Dig deep, damn it. Find a way. There’s a division’s worth of
people looking to you to lead them. You will not let them down.

He swallowed as Carmela appeared in the entryway. “Sir?”

He willed his face to take on hard contours, a firm gaze, resolute mouth. He would act the part of a commander and hope he eventually felt it. “Carmela.”

“Lieutenant Colonel Allen is here to see you, sir.”

“Very well, thank you. Please send him in.”

Crucible entered, his helmet under his arm. One of Bookbinder’s first orders once he took command was for all FOB personnel never to leave fixed structures without helmet, body armor, and at least a sidearm. The short man’s hair was matted to his head, a day’s growth of stubble on his face. He looked like he hadn’t showered in several days. But he took a formal step to Bookbinder’s desk and stood at attention. “You wanted to see me, sir?”

“At ease,” Bookbinder said, gesturing at the chair opposite his desk. “First, take a load off. Second, call me Alan.”

“Sir?” Crucible looked puzzled as he sat.

“Alan. It’s my name. I want you to start using it when we’re alone together, okay?”

Crucible looked uncomfortable. “Alan.”

“Thanks. You know, you SOC guys always go by your call signs. I never got your first name.”

Crucible gaped. “Um, we just go by the call signs, si . . . Alan.”

Bookbinder sighed and bowed his head behind his steepled fingers. “Crucible, please. I’m alone in this.”

There was a long silence. Bookbinder was about to go on when Crucible said, “Richard. People call me Rick.”

Bookbinder looked up in surprise. “Rick. Thanks.”

“No problem.”

“The meeting is set up?”

Crucible nodded. “All officers O–3 and up not on critical assignment will be assembling in the plaza at 1400, sir, per your orders. I’ll have one of our Aeromancers do some air vibrations so that you won’t need to use a microphone.”

“Senior enlisted, too. I want all the command sergeant majors and master chiefs.”

“Of course, sir.”

“And I’d like you to move into my old office, Rick. I need you close by.”

Crucible paused. “Sir . . . Alan, if it’s all the same to you, I’d prefer to remain where I am. SAOLCC needs—”

“It isn’t all the same to me,” Bookbinder cut in. “I don’t think you fully appreciate what’s going on here, Rick. Keeping SAOLCC running is on the absolute bottom of my priority list right now.”

Crucible sat back in his chair and cocked his head to the side.

“Excuse me, sir?”

“I’ll explain it all during the address. Just make sure we double the perimeter patrols during the meeting. The last thing I want is for all of our leadership to be taken out at a stroke.”

Crucible was silent. Bookbinder’s comment about reprioritizing Crucible’s main program was not scoring any points with the man.

Bookbinder sighed. “I’m sorry, Rick. I know that program is your baby, and it’s important to the army, but we’re going to have to make some big changes here. It’s a shame, really; I could have used some of that leadership training. Especially now.”

Crucible met his gaze, inscrutable. Bookbinder felt his magic current across the desk, disciplined and muted. He resisted the urge to use his own magic to reach out and tug it toward him.

After the man made no reply, Bookbinder sat back in his chair.

He hoped to make a friend here today, to feel like he had someone in his court. That clearly wasn’t happening. “All right, you can go.”

Crucible stood stiffly and headed to the door. Bookbinder went back to his computer and woke it up from the screen saver when Crucible’s voice reached him. “You can do this, sir.”

“Excuse me?”

Crucible looked so uncomfortable that Bookbinder thought he might crawl out of his own skin. “I’m just saying, si . . . Alan. You can do this. I know you’ve never been in combat before you came here. I think that’s a lot less important than the army makes it out to be. From what I’ve seen since you arrived, you know when to hold and when to fold. That makes a big difference. I’m not happy Taylor’s gone, but nobody’s kidding themselves that he was a great leader. Most of us hated him. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I think you’re going to be fine, sir.”

Bookbinder nodded, a tide of relief flooding his gut. His throat swelled, and it took him a moment to speak. “I don’t know what to say.”

Crucible’s mouth quirked. “That’s fine. I mean, it’s fine now.

It won’t be fine at the meeting this afternoon. But I’m confident you’ll get it worked out by then.

“I’m with you, sir. I guess that’s what I’m trying to say.”

And then he was gone, leaving Bookbinder to master his whirling emotions and the magical tide that surged along with them.

A Terramancer raised an earthen platform with a short flight of rock steps leading up to it. The full range of officers and senior enlisted stood around it in a sea of green, tan, and gray. Bookbinder began to wade his way through the crowd, uttering polite excuse me’s as he went. At first, the men and women pushed back against him, glaring. Then a few pairs of eyes lighted on the eagle stitched to the front of his helmet liner and whispers began to spread. By the time he mounted the platform steps, the throng was silent. He crested the platform and looked over the hundreds of people covering the plaza and streaming around the DFAC, MWR, and surrounding structures. Necks strained expectantly toward him, battle-hardened operators, medical personnel stained to the elbows in the blood of their comrades, technicians and logisticians, police officers and pilots. Professionals, all.

Looking to him to lead.

Panic gripped him, and his vision grayed. He felt sickness rise in his throat. Every fiber of his being wanted to run, to crawl into a hole. Anything but having to address the crowd before him. He swayed on his feet.