Forgotten Ruin: An Epic Military Fantasy Thriller

by Jason Anspach

  It was less than an hour from full dark when I made it back to the plane. Inside the aircraft they’d already switched over to tactical operations red lighting, and I found the command sergeant major before I should have done what I first needed to do just to make sure what I was about to say wasn’t as completely stupid as it sounded to me. Because it probably was. But he wouldn’t let me speak until we’d moved away from the plane and stood under the outboard engine on the right side of the grounded C-17. Back in the quiet of the forest and field on that small river-locked island. The gloaming coming on out there to the east. Blue fading to purple. The air getting colder. A chill. Breath turning to steam as we spoke.

  “What’d you find out, Talker?” asked the sergeant major once we were out of earshot of everyone else.

  I relayed Jabba’s conversation and stuck to the intel John had taught me to identify and disseminate. Even then, as I think about it now, there wasn’t much when I laid it all out. They, this horde of darkness, were coming for us. There were a lot of them. They were never gonna stop.

  No real surprises or game-changers.

  I’d left Jabba secured and had hustled back before Sergeant Kurtz could find something for me to do. Like police spent brass and build IEDs out of leftover MRE utensils. Some last-minute make-work project that might buy us a few more seconds before all our throats got cut by dirty knives wielded by green scrabbling claws.

  By monsters in the dark.

  “There’s something else, Sergeant Major,” I said, interrupting my own report.

  The sergeant major asked me to clarify.

  I stopped myself from saying, “This sounds dumb, Sergeant Major.” I decided to own my hunch. A gut feeling had started during the debrief with the SEAL Chief McCluskey. And when I got a vague confirm out of something the little goblin dropped near the end of the interrogation, that gut feeling became a hunch that wouldn’t stop itching.

  Trust me, it was stupid. But you know how when you read novels and some character gets a hint about who the real villain is in the story or what the big twist is gonna be and the writer was hoping it was vague enough that you would miss it, but you, the reader, you spot it from a million miles off and the rest of the book is just flat-out ruined and you hate the characters because they’re all stupid for not spotting the obvious dangling plot hook even though it’s not their fault because the writer had to make them practically blind not to see it…

  You know how that is? This felt like that.

  So there I was cutting to the chase and acting on the not-so-vague implication itching the back of my brain. I was telling the sergeant major what my hunch was. Who it was. If I was wrong, then I was a bigger dork than PFC Kennedy. And it was the slit trench latrine pit for me. Probably forever.

  “You know how we both had a… bad… if not strange feeling about the SEAL… McCluskey, Sergeant Major?”

  The sergeant major scanned the darkening forest and then looked back at me, merely nodding once to make it clear he understood what I was saying. Where I was going.

  We were back to nodding again.

  “Okay,” I continued. “In the prisoner’s debrief he mentioned only one named figure. Identified their commander, as far as I can tell. What we’re facing seems to be a joint effort by different entities to hit us. Why? No idea there, Sergeant Major. It was above his pay grade, so to speak. But the name the subject used during the interrogation was ‘King Triton.’”

  I actually used air quotes and it was at that moment I felt that yes, what I was saying was indeed pretty stupid. But sounding stupid had never stopped me before now. Ask any of the girls I’ve asked out.

  “Okay…” I took a deep breath so I could explain Greek and Roman mythology to the command sergeant major and thereby indicate that Chief McCluskey had indeed gone native and turned himself into a warlord probably masquerading as King Triton. My stupid hunch. I know. Here goes…

  “McCluskey’s a SEAL, son,” interrupted the sergeant major just as I began. “If a SEAL was gonna call himself something I could see Triton being one those nutjobs would go right for.” His voice was low and confidential, and he cast his gray eyes about the silent clearing at the edge of the field we’d barely made our landing on. “Follow me.”

  I did.

  I knew it was serious when the sergeant major drew his sidearm as we boarded the rear ramp, passing the two SAW gunners assigned to protect the plane. “Follow me, boys,” he growled through gritted teeth at both gunners. It was clear he was in a mood to bring some hate.

  We were heading right to the clamshell nest the sergeant major had made for the chief to wait out the daylight due to his self-confessed state of vampirism. I wondered at that point if I should draw my M-18, but what with the two gunners and all, I felt my contribution to the shooting about to ensue would either be superfluous, or not enough if it was just me left.

  Surprise, surprise—we found the clamshell nest empty with McCluskey and all his gear gone. Horse missing out in the woods. No one had seen him go.

  A few minutes later we’d find out only one of the fighting positions had seen him crossing the river upstream of them just as the sun went down through the trees in the west. Twilight coming on.

  Outside it was dark now. The air was getting cold. And the island and the forest were dead silent. No drums. Not even the smell of smoke from out there in the woods.

  But you could feel something coming. Feel the length of the long night already stretching out into a never-seeing-the-sun-rise-again moment.

  You could feel that they were coming now. Coming for us. “King Triton” was ordering his forces into battle, marshaling and telling them where to hit us exactly. A dark man on a dark horse, riding here and there in the shadows of the night out there to make sure all was as he wanted now that he knew what he needed to know.

  Now that he had us right where he wanted us.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I was ordered to the meeting that took place in the hour after we’d discovered Chief McCluskey had taken himself off outside the wire. The sergeant major and the platoon leaders got a change of mission from Captain Knife Hand thirty minutes later. Then I was sent down to the river to find out exactly what happened when the SEAL rode his horse across the water.

  There wasn’t much to find out. The rifle squad, still improving their fighting positions and working on their MREs, told me Chief McCluskey just walked his black horse down to the river’s edge, crossed over, and disappeared into the gloom under the trees over there.

  When I got back to the C-17 to report this, I was then tasked with standing by and waiting to see just where I’d be needed tonight. For a while I listened in on the general murmur inside the tactical operations center of the command post and I began to understand what the new plan of action would be to meet tonight’s threat. The sergeant major and the captain, with Chief Rapp listening in and commenting where he felt he could contribute, didn’t trust Chief McCluskey in the slightest. None of them did. They hadn’t liked him, and they’d picked up on everything I’d noticed too. Though their critical assessments were probably much more insightful than, “But Sergeant Major, he didn’t use your proper rank.”

  The general consensus was that most likely the naval warfare special operator was somehow compromised. Or he’d just gone crazy. It was noted by Chief Rapp that McCluskey had been specifically non-forthcoming with regard to useful details from a tactical assessment side of things. He’d obviously been on the other side of the wire and had passed through enemy-held territory. Why then no disposition of forces or plan to disrupt enemy operations? Also, what happened to the rest of his team? What happened to their Forge on their C-17, which was, according to the Forge technician, Josh Penderly, specifically hardened against the nano-plague here in the future? Unlike all modern technology—weapons, smartphones, and Ninja blenders—it should still be operational. Why, then, was McCluskey gea
red up like a Bronze Age warlord?

  That was someone else’s assessment, by the way. The Bronze Age part. Mine would have put his tech cap at somewhere around late Dark Ages, not Medieval just yet. But tomato tomah-to.

  They’d also noted that McCluskey had been very interested, without being conspicuously overly interested, in the Forge’s exact location aboard our grounded aircraft. Long story short, he’d left a pretty bad vibe in everyone’s chi and no one much trusted him. Given time… maybe the command team could have developed faith in him. But instead, in the face of an imminent enemy attack he’d left the defenses and moved right back into enemy territory. Therefore it was agreed he was most likely working with the enemy currently harassing us for reasons unknown.

  “He’s a bad guy now and is to be treated as such,” saith Captain Knife Hand.

  So, it has been spoken, so will the Rangers snuffeth on sight. This was the safest route forward and it was just considered by all a bonus that he was a SEAL.

  When dark came, the captain went forward to the southernmost fighting positions along the island’s edge. This was where the command team was expecting us to be hit tonight. It was the last direction the enemy had left that they had not come at us from. The first night had been the probes along the eastern side. Last night a full-scale assault from the west. The northern tip of the island, just beneath the watchful gaze of what we were calling Sniper Hill, was guarded by a fork in the river where the water was swift, dark, and deep. The enemy couldn’t cross effectively from the other side to there. Plus, Sniper Hill was too steep to easily ascend from the river’s edge. Or from any other direction for that matter. We’d had to cut trenches into it to make a path to the top to carry gear and ammo up there.

  With the platoon leaders, platoon sergeants, and squad leaders in attendance and me somewhere in the back, the captain laid out our new battle plan just before he left.

  The command sergeant major would take the CP. The two civilians, Volman and the Baroness—the latter of whom just watched everything and now and then shook her head with a bewildered smile before returning to her work on her notebook—along with Forge Tech Penderly, the flight crew, and the two SAW gunners, were tasked with CP security around the aircraft. And me. But I was going to be used as a runner in case comm went down for any more unexplained reasons. PFC Kennedy had been relieved from latrine pit construction and was sent off to fill one of the KIA slots in the line rifle squads.

  Volman objected to all this and indicated he would feel much more comfortable if a general vote by all “survivors” could be taken in order that “a Leadership Steering Committee might be formed” to navigate this current crisis.

  His words.

  The sergeant major, upon hearing this from Deep State Volman, looked utterly blank, allowing the bureaucratic buffoon to actually stop the meeting and hector Captain Knife Hand for a few minutes in front of everyone as the op order was being given. I was pretty sure the blank look was the sergeant major’s murder face. Blank. Nothing personal. He was just going to murder you as soon as possible.

  Then I remembered he already had.

  Rather, he’d ordered me to do it. I was supposed to murder Deep State Volman with the sergeant major’s sidearm and silencer. Retire. Clean. Call it what you want. I felt for the silencer in my cargo pocket, because I’m super cool like that, just to make sure it was still there, and when I looked up, the sergeant major was staring right at me as Volman continued to run his mouth on and on about how the vote he wanted taken should be conducted and who should tally the results so that a new government could be formed here on the island.

  He felt that bloating enemy corpses floating in the river were a big problem and a clear indicator that things were going badly.

  The captain stopped him suddenly and said, “That won’t be happening right now, Mr. Volman. We’re fighting tonight. I suggest you find a way to make yourself useful with the chief and the medics. There will be wounded.” Then the captain continued on with the plan.

  That shut Volman up. He turned to his iPhone and started furiously tapping in notes. No doubt preparing some kind of report that would indict everyone who disagreed with him when “the government” was formed. I had no idea who he’d give his secret report to. Nor did anyone else. But he seemed confident that almighty bureaucratic order would soon be restored, and that Captain Knife Hand would be hung from the nearest tree in the judicial aftermath.

  Some people want to watch the world burn. That’s true. Others want to organize a committee to watch the world burn—and to make sure everyone goes up in flames right along with it.

  When the meeting was over, Deep State Volman made a big show of sweeping his super-expensive Sharper Image messenger bag up and rushing off to something important. Instead of offering assistance to Chief Rapp as had been suggested. I wondered exactly what he imagined was an “important” place to be. Because this was it. The cargo deck of the grounded C-17 was the only place of importance. The tactical operations heart of the command post that would be the center of a fight for our lives tonight. The rest of the island was fighting positions and Rangers with murder in their hearts.

  He’d be real stupid to go and try his Hey, let’s all overthrow the captain, guys act out there on the line. No one was that stupid.

  But then I remembered he seemed stupid enough to try.

  Now would probably have been a good time to retire or clean him. But when I got outside the C-17, he was gone, off into the forest dark. I stood there for a long moment, alone in the cold and the deepening twilight. Knowing I should hear some soft little night bird calling out, trying its first song of the night. But I heard nothing. And somehow, that made what we were about to face in the coming hours even more ominous.

  There were three body bags laid out a short distance from the aircraft and I found myself just staring at them as night covered the island and the drums began to roll and chant to one another across the river. Deep and way off in the forest on the other side. They were coming for us now.

  I watched as the flight crew came out and sent their humming little drone up into the sky a short while later. Then it was quiet and I thought about not dying tonight as I watched the dark motionless shapes in the body bags over there. Out of the way. Done with the fight. But not forgotten.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The battle we’d fight that night would be a retrograde. The Rangers were tired of being where they were supposed to be and just taking it from the enemy. The swarming orcs and other messed-up beasts and monsters that made up the OPFOR hitting us whenever, and wherever, they wanted.

  OPFOR. Opposing Force.

  As Captain Knife Hand said, that wasn’t the Ranger way. If Chief McCluskey had gone over to the other side, and again we had no idea what that side was exactly, other than that they’d just shown up and decided to relentlessly attack our positions every night, then chances were they were here for something specific. And the only thing specific they could possibly be after was me and my vast knowledge of languages. Obviously. I was an incredible treasure trove of most likely dead languages. C’mon… what’s not to covet?

  Just kidding.

  Had to be the Forge. McCluskey and whatever cabal he’d established here in the fantastical future knew the value of a Perpetual Taco Machine that could churn out endless amounts of explosives, weapons, and tech. It had templates for everything. I’d even asked Penderly if it could make a nuke.

  He’d just nodded, not looking very happy about it.

  So the captain had decided to let the enemy horde pay the heavy price of getting onto the island. We’d even let them actually take the C-17 close to dawn. The Rangers would cede ground grudgingly, falling back by squads to pre-established phase lines, setting off claymores and other explosive devices dreamed up by the Ranger master breachers in the face of the hordes. Indirect fire support from the mortars would make the dark army pay a dear p
rice just to get close. The Rangers would then turtle around Sniper Hill and detonate body bags filled with chlorine gas the Forge had cooked up. With the enemy having only one avenue of approach to assault from the south, and the gas… and then add in all Ranger elements firing into the kill zone at the base of the hill, overwhelming firepower concentrated in a tight space… well, it was hoped, by Captain Knife Hand, that the enemy would be severely weakened. There were a whole bunch of other dirty tricks we could get up to, but time was of the essence and the Forge didn’t crank stuff out particularly fast. Filling the gas bags had been a tricky operation for a group of Rangers in MOPP gear already.

  The issue of night attacks, or the enemy’s sole usage of them, would also come into play. Maybe the orcs were only good at night fighting. Maybe, like bats, they were also blind during the day. Or weakened somehow, like the vampire McCluskey. Twice now they’d withdrawn in the predawn hours, ceasing their attacks. If we forced them to commit to holding the objective, the Forge, then once they got weak we’d have a combat multiplier. At dawn tomorrow, the Rangers would counterattack and sweep the island, pushing the orcs back into a wall of walking mortar fire starting at the southern end of the island. The island and fighting positions would be retaken, and the Rangers would live to fight another night. The Forge once more back in possession of the home team.

  There was no way an attacking force could get that massive chunk of equipment off the island without heavy equipment. So the Perpetual Taco Machine’s excessive weight mitigated some of the risk of letting it fall into enemy hands for a brief few hours.

  Night fell. Two hours later the drums in the forest beyond the river reached a fevered thunder pitch. It was clear some kind of final conclusion had been arrived at by the swarming masses out there in the shadow lands beyond the body-bloated river. Like some blessing or permission to attack us had been given. We could see them moving toward the river like a dark mass that wouldn’t stop multiplying and spreading. Ever.