Shadow Ops: Fortress Frontier-ARC (pdf conv.) (48 page)

One of Britton’s shimmering gates arced horizontally through the goblins’ front rank, a dazzling cleaver, cutting them to pieces. Bookbinder pumped his fist as one of the giants went down howling, cut off at midthigh, crushing his smaller comrades beneath him. Sheets of lightning cut ragged rents in the attacking army, Thorsson’s work and that of the other Aeromancers energized by his sudden appearance.

Bookbinder raced along the impromptu barricade line set up by the Strykers. “Britton! Britton!” He found the man standing on the back of a Stryker, working his magic.

“Get to the main plaza!” Bookbinder shouted to him. “Start running everyone out of here! Once we fall back, this place is going to be overrun.”

Britton nodded and jumped off the Stryker. “Where are we going?”

“I don’t fucking know!” Bookbinder shouted at him. “Some place safe! A hospital! Get everyone to a hospital!”

Britton smiled. “I’ve got just the place.” And then he was gone, racing toward the FOB’s heart.

Bookbinder found Blake sheltering behind an armored Humvee, its Mark 19 pumping a thundering stream of bullet-shaped grenades into the enemy line. The horns were sounding again, high-pitched and plaintive. Bookbinder saw banners wave, space opening up between the combatant lines, a no–man’s–land strewn with goblin corpses.

“Okay!” Bookbinder shouted at him. “You’ve bought us a little time! I need you to hold this position until you’ve fully cycled the relief! Once you’re confident that we’re all out, you can start falling back to the plaza.”

Blake nodded, raising his radio. Bookbinder stopped him with a hand on his wrist. “Make sure you
wait
until we’re fully out, then fall back immediately to the plaza! It’s the only way out of here, and this base is going to be totally overrun once we abandon these defenses.”

“Where are you going?” Blake shouted back at him.

“I’m staying here,” Bookbinder answered.
At least until I’m
sure everyone is ready to go.

With that he was up, racing among the FOB’s original force, shouting at them to head for the plaza, settling the QRF guardsmen into their old positions, shoving them into the pillboxes, exhorting them on.

The gap between the two groups widened. Bookbinder threw himself behind a Stryker and peeked around its giant tire, then back along the perimeter line. The uniforms around him were all fresh and clean-looking, QRF guardsmen. He leaned back, and shouted to Blake. “It’s clear! Start falling back to the plaza!”

Bookbinder heard a thud behind him and spun to face Thorsson, filthy, bleeding and grinning like a wolf. “Looking pretty bad for the enemy.”

“Outstanding. Help me get everyone the hell out of here. Britton is gating us out from the central plaza.”

Thorsson gave a thumbs–up and leapt skyward again.

The QRF guardsmen began to move backward in good order, following the original defenders toward the plaza, moving and covering as they’d been trained. Bookbinder retrieved a fallen carbine and moved with them, firing in three-round bursts. The weapon bucked and it was impossible to hit anything, but he figured the stream of bullets would make the goblins keep their heads down, and that was something.

The goblins sensed the change in the defenders’ posture and surged forward. Squadrons of rocs clouded the skies over them as the air cover fell back to circle over the plaza. The good order of the guardsmen began to flag as they sensed the enemy’s surge in momentum. Within moments, the first of them had turned his back on the enemy, running pell-mell for the plaza. Bookbinder shouted to no avail. The stream became a river and the guardsmen abandoned all pretense at order, running for escape.

Bookbinder cursed and ran with them. Men fell around him, javelins quivering in their backs. A column of fire jetted through their ranks, sending men howling to roll in the mud. Elbows jostled Bookbinder’s ribs, and he nearly went down as a goblin Terramancer raised a doglike thing with spiked teeth made of glittering rock, sending it lurching into the column. He dodged around it, pushing along the muddy track, screaming at the men to move faster. He glanced skyward, grateful for the circling air cover, the only thing keeping this rout from becoming a massacre.

Horror rose in his gut.

Even with this relief force, the enemy was not sufficiently repulsed. The goblins were hot on their heels, leaving them the choice of standing and fighting until their ammunition ran out or running for the gate and being cut to pieces, back to their enemy.

One army wasn’t enough.

An arrow whistled by Bookbinder’s ear, and he heard the horns sound again, answered by a howl of victory from the goblins as they began to pour past the now-abandoned perimeter, hot on the retreating soldiers’ trail. Thorsson landed beside him, his eyes wide with worry.

“What?” Bookbinder shouted to him. “I don’t need bad news right now!”

“Britton’s gone.”

Bookbinder cursed as they crested a rise in the track, giving him a clear view of the plaza before them. The gardens were churned to mud by the FOB’s original defenders. They’d arrived first, and now clustered together in confusion, looking for a gate home that was nowhere to be found. A cry went up from them and they began firing. Bookbinder winced for a moment until he realized they were shooting in another direction.

Then he froze. Goblins came pouring into the plaza from the east, cutting off the retreating defenders from the ones clustered in the plaza before them, blocking their escape. The guardsmen let out of cry of despair and stopped, slamming into one another.

Crucible had been wrong. The goblins had hit the perimeter from another direction and punched through.

Worse, Britton was gone, and with him, their way out. For the second time, the defenders of FOB Frontier were cut off.

Bookbinder turned to Thorsson. “Get us some fucking cover!”

Without waiting for the major, he turned to the nearest guardsmen and yanked on his body armor’s back strap, hauling him around to face the pursing goblins. “Pour it on!” he shouted, racing among the other guardsmen, trying to organize them into something approaching a firing line.

It was a stupid way to fight, more befitting Napoleon’s troops than a modern force, but there was no cover and no retreat. The narrow track was hemmed in on either side by housing units ringed with sandbags. Ahead of them, the other goblin force was hotly engaged with the FOB’s original defenders in the plaza’s center, buying them some time from the rear for now. Either those goblins would overwhelm that unit and pin them against their pursuers, or the original defenders’ bullets would cut through them and start slicing into the QRF guardsmen’s backs.

Either way. They were finished.

He felt his wedding band sliding along his finger, pressed against the gun’s grip.
Julie, the girls. You won’t see them again.

The sadness was followed by a spike of hot pride.
You led from
the front. You stayed with your people, and you are putting
down your life for theirs. You’re a soldier. No one can ever gainsay
that now.

With that thought, he scrambled with the guardsmen clustering behind the fleeing Strykers. He was done shouting. He’d imposed what order he could, led as best he knew how. From here on out, there was only fighting. The thought brought him a measure of peace as he tapped a soldier on the shoulder, received a full magazine, swapped, out and started firing.

An explosion blossomed to his left, a shock wave swatting him aside like a hot hand. One of the QRF’s Blackhawks had crashed into the housing pod on that side of the track, its rotors covered in thick ice. Chunks of the cabin spun away, blazing shrapnel slicing through the QRF’s ranks. A guardsman spun toward Bookbinder, his arm sliced off, his face slick pale, mouth working silently before he dropped. Bookbinder forced himself to turn away, pouring fire back the way they had come until the barrel of his carbine smoked. He couldn’t see anything through the smoke and spraying earth of the track, but with the enemy packed so thickly behind them, it was impossible to miss.

A shriek sounded, high and piercing, trilling above the din of gunfire and shouting voices. Both sides paused in the silence that followed, craning necks behind the goblin horde. The shriek sounded again, and the goblins began to part, admitting a small troop of giants, shambling their way up the muddy trail. They surrounded three creatures that oozed liquid blackness, gliding over the surface of the ground, shadows from a nightmare. Every soldier who’d seen news clips of the Apache insurgency had glimpsed them before, had heard the rumors of their existence in the midst of the reservation’s violent ferment, but none had thought to see them here.

The Apache called them their “Mountain Gods.” Everyone else called them monsters. What the hell were they doing here?

The Mountain Gods shrieked again, stuttering forward on the trail, one moment in the midst of the goblin army, the next shifting a hundred feet closer, flickering in and out of vision.

Their long, thin limbs absorbed the morning light, the uniform sable of pooled india ink. Their fingers tapered to kitchen-knife claws, equally as long as their teeth, and just as sharp. The white cut of their mouths was the only feature in their narrow, horned, black heads.

“Holy shit,” said a guardsman, opening fire. The bullets arced across the intervening distance and vanished in their black mass as if they’d been swallowed. The Mountain Gods cried out once more, flickered, and were suddenly in the midst of them.

What little order remained shattered in an instant. The scream that went up from Blake’s force rivaled the shrieking of the monsters among them as they swept about with their long claws, shattering bones and tossing the guardsmen in the air like uniformed rag dolls. Bookbinder shouted for them to hold, but it was useless, as soon as the first few shots passed harmlessly into the Mountain Gods’ liquid black skins, the soldiers threw down their weapons and fled in the opposite direction.

Straight into the goblins now battling the FOB’s original defenders, who began to turn their spears on the panicked, unarmed soldiers charging into their midst. Bookbinder shouted at them, reached out to grab at the grab-handle on a fleeing soldier’s body armor, and missed as the woman ran screaming onto the point of a goblin spear. She doubled over, the plate of her body armor turning the point aside, and Bookbinder reached her in three steps, reaching over her shoulder to punch the goblin in the face as she dropped to the ground. The goblin staggered back, shook off the blow, angry eyes turning to slits as it raised its spear.

Then abruptly widening in terror. The goblin dropped the spear and backed away quickly, until it vanished in the melee behind it. Bookbinder turned just as the Mountain God’s dagger claws swept down toward him.

He got his carbine up in time, jarring his shoulders from the impact of the creature’s arm. The monster gripped the carbine, wrenching it back, dragging Bookbinder with it. Crouched so close, he could feel the chilly air that emanated from its skin.

His hands went numb as the metal in the gun conducted the cold to his fingers, making his arms leaden, difficult to keep up. His hands felt thick, clumsy. He fell back in the mud as the Mountain God wrenched the weapon from his hands and threw it away. Its head flickered forward, dagger teeth glinting wetly.

Then it cried out, wreathed in lightning, as Harlequin swooped over its shoulder, ribbons of electricity arcing from his fingers, engulfing the creature’s head and shoulders. Black mist wafted from the wounds, so cold that Bookbinder’s teeth chattered despite being several feet away from the outpouring. The creature flailed, covering its head, snarling up at Harlequin, who somersaulted in the air and rocketed upward, dodging the feeble swipe it directed at him. He steadied himself for another blaze of the magic, then jerked aside as a roc dove at him, nearly catching him in its jaws. A white-painted goblin Aeromancer followed behind the giant bird, unleashing a torrent of lightning that Harlequin dove low to avoid. The goblin Aeromancer streaked past him and banked sharply, coming back for another pass.

Bookbinder scrambled in the mud as the Mountain God shook off its wounds and turned back to him, still bleeding that freezing black mist. He dragged himself forward, wincing as a fleeing guardsman stepped on his hand, scrambled to get to his knees. He jerked upright, planting his fists in the dirt to push himself to his feet, feeling his knuckles brush against a wooden cylinder.

The goblin’s spear.

He gripped the haft and spun, holding it at waist level, pointing it at the Mountain God. The creature paused, arms spread.

The black smoke cascaded from its head and shoulders, rising above its curling horns, Bookbinder gritted his teeth to stop himself from shaking. Over the creature’s shoulder, Harlequin did battle with the roc, kicking it in the beak and using the momentum to carry him over backward as he channeled a burst of lightning that ignited the bird’s features and sent it flapping backward.

The giant bird kept coming, keeping his attention as the goblin Aeromancer finished its turn and came at Harlequin from behind, extending its hand for another burst of lightning.

Bookbinder forced himself to take a step forward, could swear he sensed a look of incredulous surprise in the featureless black space above the giant mouth. Then he extended a hand, Drawing hard for the goblin Aeromancer’s magic, Binding it into the spear tip with everything he had.

The goblin Aeromancer screamed and plummeted to the earth, its magic suddenly gone. The Mountain God howled in time as the spearhead blazed into a dazzling cone of crackling blue lightning.

Bookbinder screamed and thrust the point toward the Mountain God’s chest. The creature batted it away with one long hand, then flinched as the crackle of electricity singed its claws, unleashing more of the freezing smoke. Bookbinder spun with the spear’s momentum, swinging it over his head, bringing the added length down so that the crackling tip cut across the monster’s face. It screamed, flickered backward into one of the giants, knocking it to one side with a grunt. The Mountain God grunted, falling on its back, scrambling flickering arms to get to its feet.