through several of Portland’s perennial construction zones, and it’s probably a miracle I don’t get pulled over.
Bishop opens her door as we pull up, leaves it ajar. She’s standing by the body, staring, by the time we cross the threshold. “I didn’t want to do this over the phone. Even with the protective spells. It’s Castle.”
“What’s Castle?” I ask, because she can’t mean what I think she does. “Did he call you? Is something up?”
“No, that corpse is Castle. Our Castle.”
“Shit.”
Continued in the Necromancer’s Gambit.
Table of Contents
Dogs of War: Chapter 1
I couldn't stop thinking about the bomb last week. I was close enough to feel the heat of it, close enough to smell the explosives even before the scent of burning overtook it. I didn't need to be close to hear Hercules' and Hector's screams as they died, as the fire swallowed the air coming out of their lungs and their first cry of shock and pain cut off abruptly as heat burned its way down their throats. The next yelp was smaller, shorter, weaker than the first; I was close enough to hear that one, too.
I stumbled on a little crack in the road, and tried to remind myself that Iraq was no place to be distracted.
“EOD,” came over the radio, from Sergeant Brent, I thought, and my ears perked up, because that was us. “Iraqi civilian reports an IED ahead.”
My partner in EOD, Samson, winced. “How many times have I told them? Radio silence around IEDS. I fucking told them.”
Most Iraqi bombs anymore were more sophisticated than that, and wouldn't accidentally go off from a stray radio signal. But Samson was good at his job, and didn't want the occasional stray Iraqi blown up, even if most of the time that didn't happen.
Brent was standing at the front of the truck with an Iraqi kid. Instinctively I took in the air around him, smelled for vapor wake- to see if the kid had been near explosives. It wouldn't be the first time a fresh-faced kid tried to lure us toward the bomb he got paid to set. But he was clean- or at least clean for an Iraqi kid in Muqdadiyah. It was still a war zone; power, in the places they had it, was intermittent, and access to fresh water wasn't in everybody's cards.
Samson spoke enough of the language to ask the kid if he could show us where it was. The kid nodded his head, vigorously, and ran in front of the stationary Stryker.
“Take care,” Brent said as we passed, and Samson winced; EOD techs tend to believe in luck, since that's usually the only thing standing between them and the monster. He'd rather get a, “Break a leg.” But he didn't say anything. The loss of Corporal Carasco- Hector- and his partner weighed all of us down.
Hector was still in the ICU. He'd probably make it, if you count living the rest of his life inside donated skin, in constant pain living. Herc didn't even last long enough for a MedEvac. Medics carried his corpse out on foot.
I smelled it the moment we were out of the exhaust cloud from the idling truck. Either the bomb was a mess, explosives spilled all over, or my nose was even more attentive after Hector and Herc. The scent of it was strong enough that I couldn't tell if it was coming from the right or left side of the street.
My knees shook. I imagined what it was like to meet the monster in the hole, its black fingers curling towards you as its breath of fire rushed to engulf you. If you were lucky, it was the concussive force that hit you hardest, maybe with some superficial burns. The unlucky got a face full of shrapnel- pretty often shipyard confetti, just whatever metal crap was lying around, screws, ball bearings, anything that would shred someone to pieces.
I was frustrated, and anxious. Samson relied on me; I don't know if it made ours an equal partnership, but he looked to me to find the explosives so he could pull them apart. “Render safe” was the stilted military phrase for it. And normally, I was good at my job. But today, I couldn't find them.
And maybe I didn't want to. The thought shook me to my bones. What if I didn't want to find the IED? What if I didn't want Samson hovering over it, just waiting for the monster to pop out of its little hole, for the vengeful genie to spring out of its misshapen lamp. I swallowed. I was a soldier. I was trained for this, and battle-hardened.
But my legs wouldn't stop shaking. I wanted to help Samson. I wanted to find the bomb. The kid pointed in a general direction down the street, and laughed, like we were playing a game of tag, and ran off. He was a kid; I didn't blame him for it, or think he meant anything by it. He probably didn't know the gravity, just that when you see an IED, you tell a soldier. So he had. And now he had playing to get back to.
I couldn't even verify what the kid had told us. I stepped out in front of Samson. My legs wobbled, and I think he noticed, but for my pride pretended not to. “Got it?” he asked.
I walked in a short circle, looking for disturbed earth, sniffing for vapor wake or the device itself.
I've only had the fight or flight response on a couple of occasions. Once, in training, that first time Samson fired a gun over my shoulder. It surprised me, and scared the hell out of me. But after just a moment, I calmed myself enough to let my training take over, and trusted Samson to have my back.
The other time was with Hector. I'd never been that close to an uncontrolled detonation before. Sometimes, some bombs, the best render safe procedure is demolition, so I was used to explosions, but not to explosions in the field, not while two men I'd consider friends were hovering over the monster's pit.
But I felt it again. My heart beat faster, breath came tight and hurried. My nose focused at the same moment as my eyes, and I recognized the disturbed earth and the tell-tale smell of plastic explosives. But what had suddenly sharpened my senses was not the bomb itself- but the fact that Samson was standing right over it.
It was closer than the kid had said, but again, he was just a kid. And it was subtler than most- which is why Samson hadn't noticed it, either. All of the muscles in my body tensed as I flattened myself, then I leapt.
I knocked into Samson the moment before the IED went off. I felt fire at my back, and the crush of the pressure wave rippling across my flesh. And then I felt it, the horrible sting of shrapnel as it cut its way through my skin, improvised bullets tumbling and ripping through my meat.
I lost a few seconds, and when my mind pushed past the screaming of my nerves, I realized I was laying on top of Samson. I wanted to get off him, to help him up and see if he was all right. But my body wouldn't move; I was a limp pile laying on top of him. I couldn't feel my legs.
Samson stirred, and gingerly moved me. “Goliath?” he asked, and I'd never heard so much vibrato in his voice. “You stupid fuck- you were clear.” He touched my chest, and his hand came back bloody. “God,” he whispered, and keyed his radio. “Need a MedEvac, NOW, patrol Bravo-Tango-Eleven, at Sadre street and 12th.”
I felt faint, but wasn't worried until I saw blood coming from his chest, too. He didn't seem to have noticed. He grabbed my arm, and squeezed. “Stay with me, buddy. You're going to be okay.” My training had always told me to trust Samson. My heart rate was slowing, and I was having trouble even keeping my eyes open. I thought I was dying. But Samson said I was going to be okay. So I believed him.
Continued in Dogs of War, available for free exclusively to those who sign up for my mailing list.
Table of Contents
Nexus
My drink tasted like Martian goat piss; goats never completely acclimated to the terraformed red planet, something about not having the optimal mix of methane and ammonia. Not that I advocated drinking goat piss, generally, but focusing on that awful taste let me tell myself my mind wasn't elsewhere, even if that tasted like Martian goat piss, too.
“You're thinking of Dalaxia,” SecDiv said, shattering my conviction that she couldn't still be sitting next to me.
“Hmm?” I asked, but the muscles in my neck were too relaxed to look up from the bar, and I don’t think I succeeded in making my face look any less droll.
“When
you've been drinking, when you've relaxed enough that your mind can wander, there's a look you get. It means you're thinking of Dalaxia.”
“I might be,” I said. Times like this I hated that she knew me as well as she did.
“And I've never known that to be a good thing.”
“Me, either.”
“You want to talk about it?”
“Do you?” I asked, and she thought a moment and shuddered. It was hard to know which particular aspect of Dalaxia was haunting her: the way that entire world seemed to scream as that whole world burned, the choke of smoke rolling off burning flesh, or the way that planet made us hate people, and each other.
I summoned the strength to look at her; or maybe it was just that I knew she wouldn't be able to look at me, after that.
“Come on,” she said, pushing out of her chair. “I'll get you home.” She put an arm around my torso and pulled me off my stool. She steadied me on my feet, I wasn't sure if she was surprisingly strong, or I was just that plastered and malleable.
She was definitely less in the bag than me, because she weaved her way back to my cabin. She leaned me against my doorway.
“I won't be able to sleep,” I told her, though I didn't mean anything by it; I was having difficulty feeling everything below the pounding beginning in my head, so I had no reason to think the spirit was willing. But that was Dalaxia in a nutshell, and unfortunately,