Shadow Ops: Fortress Frontier-ARC (pdf conv.) by Myke Cole Page A

in one of the folding chairs and rubbed sleep from his face.
    Taylor looked uncomfortable. “It’s just a formality.”
    “No, Colonel Taylor. Funding authorization is not just a formality. It’s an important aspect of financial oversight that ensures that taxpayer dollars are being spent appropriately. I can’t just rubber-stamp something because you’re in a hurry. I need details.”
    Fitzsimmons’s mouth quirked. Crucible turned white. Taylor gritted his teeth. He spoke very slowly. “You’re not authorized for details.”
    “Then you’re not authorized for funding. I have an obligation to . . .”
    Taylor leapt out of his chair, fist pounding the table. The map jumped. “We don’t have time for this bullshit! We have an unsecured Portamancer running amok with half the damn SASS in tow! I can’t delay getting this under control because you need to feel like you have a job!” He stabbed a finger at the stack of papers, knocked askew from his pounding on the table.
    “I am in command, here!” He seethed. “Now. Sign. The. Fucking. Authorization.”
    Bookbinder stood and met Taylor’s eyes. His heart and stomach were doing cartwheels so severe that he could barely distinguish one from another. I will not be cowed. We are the same rank. I am done being pushed around. For all I know, I’m authorizing this guy to fund an addition to his bungalow in Hawaii.
    He gathered his courage and opened his mouth to reply . . .
    Crucible’s hand on his shoulder silenced him. He turned to face the lieutenant colonel, whose kind eyes were deep with concern.
    “Please, sir,” Crucible said. “I appreciate your desire to do your duty, and I promise I will go over this with you later to the extent that I can. We’ll get you read on if at all possible, but for now we’ve got a real situation here. We need to get this moving right now.”
    Bookbinder’s anger evaporated. Taylor was an arrogant blowhard, but Crucible was competent and kind. Besides, what did Bookbinder really know about contingency operations? Signing paper was all he’d ever done, and now, when he was really needed to do it on an emergency basis, he balked.
    Flushing to match Taylor, he grabbed the pen and signed.
    Disgusted with himself, he sighed, then turned to go.
    And almost rebounded off the glittering chest of a thing out of a B–movie.
    The giant creature was bent nearly double to cram itself below the nine-foot ceiling. Its enormous chest was practically the size of the table. At least a dozen pairs of muscular arms draped to its waist, which stretched into a snake’s tail, trailing out of the door. A forest of snake’s heads bent to consider Bookbinder.
    He could see the shining, jewel-like scales flickering in the fluorescent light as some of the heads reached past him to look at him from behind. The array of colors was dazzling, contrasting with the glinting silver of a veritable butcher block of knives and swords held to its waist by a red silk sash.
    Bookbinder had seen a wide array of strangeness since he’d arrived in the Source, but he was unprepared for this. He stumbled backward into his chair, knocking it over and almost falling on the table.
    The creature reached out with one of its arms and caught him, lifting him as easily as if he were dry twig, setting him back on his feet. It hissed at him in a singsong cadence that sounded vaguely like language.
    “My apologies for startling you, sir,” said a man beside the creature. “I assure you that His Highness is not a threat.” The man’s thick accent was Indian or Pakistani, with a lilt of an English formal education. He was young, with coffee-colored skin and eyes that danced with amusement. He smiled under a neatly trimmed beard. His muscular body was covered by an olive uniform faced with red edging and gold buttons, the Indian flag stitched onto the shoulder. His hair was hidden by a white turban.
    Bookbinder straightened his uniform as the creature dusted him off, hissing