by Allen Ivers
It was sound strategy, clear some of the fog of war and minimized the risk. It was still damn dangerous. Extremely so. People get killed on these missions. Commanders rarely had a moment with such certainty for blood.
He could be sure someone would die on this mission.
Riley had just given himself chills. “Two Oskies, volunteers. Briefing is at your discretion. Get in, get out.”
“Thank you, sir.” Holmst pulled the map back down into his wristwatch and went for the door.
Not so fast.
“Two things,” Riley said, stopping his aide at the door, “You’re in their back ranks. Lots of HVT. Keep the risk to your team minimal, but if you get the opportunity at some infrastructure, cut their ankles out.”
“Can do, sir,” Holmst cheered right up at that.
“Number two: you're staffing up with Capitals. Take Aaron Havenes.”
And that sucked the air right out of his sails. “Sir, that I’m not so sure that's a good idea. Aaron's exposure to-"
Riley silenced him with a raise of his hand, as if he could cut the air flow to Holmst’s throat. Aaron, Aaron, Aaron -- Riley was sick of hearing that name. “Talania is using military hardware to undermine military authority. You’re going to put her Hero on a Hero’s mission. We need the best.”
“Willco, sir. My only concern is--”
“Your concern is well founded, Lieutenant,” Riley cut him off again, locking eyes with his subordinate, “No matter how minuscule, he is a potential threat. And you always have the authority to secure the safety of your men. Do we have an understanding?”
Holmst didn’t move, his eyes flitting across Riley’s face, as if trying to defuse a bomb with uncommon delicacy, before ultimately giving in, “I think I understand, yes, sir.”
"Gamble with their lives, never your own. We don’t have the blood to spare,” Riley intoned like it was a chant, “Your op. Get this done.”
12
Aaron
There was a sort of shelf at about shoulder height in the Howler, perfect for resting a tired head against. Aaron could lean backward and take all of the stress out of his neck and shoulders. He couldn’t fall asleep standing up like that, but it was a relaxing position for a good daydream.
The others weren’t so lucky — that shelf jammed ‘em right in the back. Perks of being ‘shortstack.’
On the opposite end of the sanity spectrum, Keira had properly nodded off, with her mouth hanging open like she was trying to catch rain on her tongue. Solomon cuddled against her shoulder, taking his own flight through Neverland.
Aaron never thought he’d be jealous of that pair, of all people, but they could sleep in an active warzone, so long as they were together. There was something oddly romantic about it, if Aaron wasn't quietly convinced they both ate human flesh.
Command had dangled sweet, sweet inactive hours in front of the regiment as bait and almost Aaron's entire team had jumped at the chance. No one knew the stakes until they’d been briefed, and then they regretted opening their mouths.
Nora had chosen wisely to stick with Wall duty; gambling on dangerous missions for R&R was foolish. Can’t take rack time if you’re dead.
Aaron didn’t want the R&R. He just wanted out of that damn city. Better to focus on his trade than consider the measures and costs of it.
To his credit, Holmst had picked this team well. He had gotten rather familiar with the individuals in the Capitals that stood out for competence and obedience both.
For all their bloodlust, Solomon and Keira were efficient machines. Carmona was in the jump seat next to the Oskies, the de facto commander of the Capital detachment. He waited with a stiff back, less like a lap dog and more of the patient attack breed, a stern-looking rottweiler awaiting instructions on who to unleash his particular brand of Hell on.
Jensen and Eden sat opposite Aaron, signing a basic conversation to each other to kill the time. It was a confusing long stare before he picked up they were playing a game -- Eden kept grunting when she lost, drawing the attention of the Oskies who were more accustomed to the silence of a disciplined op.
The last Capital hadn’t met anyone else’s gaze since he boarded -- Michonne. For all his usual bluster and venom, he held uncommonly still at Aaron’s shoulder.
That animated aggressor from the barracks had somehow been stripped away. His eyes squeezed shut, as if chanting some comforting mantra inside his own skull. When Aaron had been bedridden, Michonne had racked up an impressive kill count on the Wall, five scratches in the stock of his rifle.
But that posturing and reputation were stripped away in the belly of the Howler. His hands trembled by his sides. The rest of the team were as relaxed as circumstances allotted, and they all had stunt and combat drops under their belts. Michonne was a Wall jockey who had never served forward of the line, and he looked ready to vomit.
Something was wrong.
Aaron nudged him, trying to draw his eye, give the man some resolve. But Michonne shifted away, not out of annoyance or consideration. He snapped away, like he'd been burnt, shifting weight onto the opposite leg.
His skin pale, and his jaw tight. He didn’t want to be here. Muscles tense, too tense, his knuckles wrapped tight on his rifle’s grip.
Aaron nudged him again. He had to calm down or Michonne risked injury on the drop. Michonne sneered, but still refused to glance over.
Holmst whispered something to Carmona. He gave a crisp nod and turned back to the Capitals, grabbing his throat mic, “Two minutes out. We are silent running, no talking, no nothin’. We get found this deep in, and we are all dead in record time. Oskies are setting the pace, so if you fall behind, we will not hold up for you. Huah?”
The team nodded, tapping chests and gripping weapons, rather than bark their response. He did say silent running after all.
Carmona made the briefing concise and declarative, like a proper platoon leader. Aaron could swear Car had pitched his voice down to have more authority. Was he trying to impress the dignified First Lieutenant seated next to him?
Holmst held up one finger -- one more minute. His eyes tracked over to the sleeping Solomon and Keira and he smirked.
Aaron gave Keira a good-natured shrug, jostling her and Solomon both. They sniffed, straightened and shouldered their gear like they had been awake the whole time. They didn’t need specifics anyway. These two followed the leader, followed orders with silent efficiency, and killed whatever blocked their path; speechcraft was not their field of expertise.
Carmona moved around the cabin, swooping from person to person, checking their cables and rigging, like Holmst had done every other time. The Lieutenant had delegated some of his duties out. Whatever. It still had to be done. No room for mistakes. Not this far out.
But Carmona was awfully proud of himself, all chipper and bouncy. There was even some color in his face again, like someone had breathed life back into him. He was well rested. Alive. He looked like a different man.
Satisfied, Carmona took his station and Holmst rigged him up, giving a paternal slap on the shoulder to confirm before turning back to the cabin. He carefully drew everyone’s eyes in, raw magnetism and pure adrenaline pulling the focus. He raised his hand, five fingers, counting down.
Four, three-- Aaron closed his eyes. Relax or break your neck.
And the floor fell away. That grinding whine pierced his ears as he zipped down. Trust the cable. It’ll say when to open your eyes.
When the cable jerked, he heard the snap next to him like a chicken bone next to his ear, wet and crisp.
His boots scuffed against granite, and the cable whirled away up. He opened his eyes – in time to see Michonne’s limp body crumple like soiled laundry. If he felt his neck break, it was brief.
Aaron moved to check him, but Holmst waved him off and back to his position: every avenue has to be held and checked, lest the locals get the drop on them. Aaron shouldered his rifle and looked out over the mountain, feeling the Oskie Lieutenant slide
up behind him to attend to Michonne’s surely fatal injuries.
If he was alive to feel any part of that, he wouldn't be for long.
Aaron occupied himself with the vista. Bare granite on a steep grade, with smooth beveled edges from the harsh wind. The consistent mottled gray was marred at irregular intervals by patches of black scorch marks and ragged barren branches, leftover from whatever plant had been cooked into glass. What remained looked like tiny black fingers reaching up from shallow graves.
The air was thin, promising refreshment for strained muscles and failing to deliver -- Aaron was already gasping for a proper chest full.
Wisps of cloud grazed the boulders and outcroppings, like a bed sheet of cool air or a lover’s hand caressing its curves. The Howler could still be made out between the rolling curtains, circling back away toward the refueling station.
They were all alone now.
The apprehensive platoon looked to Holmst for instructions, soon following his stare to the crumpled remains of Michonne.
When Aaron looked back, he found Holmst staring at him. For how long, Aaron couldn’t be certain. There was a dilemma in his eyes. Maybe he was considering evacuating the dead, or calling off the mission to try again another time? This was inauspicious beginning to hinge upon. They were down a man before they’d even touched the ground.
Did he blame Aaron for the drop-rook's injury? No, there was something softer in his eyes, something deep back there, and it was far more chilling than blame.
Regret.
Ultimately, Holmst sneered and got to his feet, leaving Michonne where he fell. With a nod, he took point and began his march up the mountain face. The two other Oskies gave hand signals to Carmona, directing the marching order and urging silence. Their quick-knives were at easy reach on their chest rigs and Aaron didn’t doubt that they would deploy those knives to preserve the secrecy of the mission.
Jensen and Keira had the roughest time of it, as they were tasked with hauling the thumpers up the steep incline. They had all carried more under worse conditions -- Hell, Solomon had carried Keira on more than one occasion -- but they had to carry this load under cover of silence. They could not grunt, whine, or moan, nor could they scrape or scrabble their way up.
Each step had to be laid with precision. Worst case scenario, the beasts below could hear the breathing above them -- no need to give them any help detecting the intrusion. A slight mistake might cause a tiny rockslide, just a tinkle of rocks dancing down the slopes that should not be that would give away the entire team, and with no support or escape route, they would be butchered like lost children in a dark German forest by the waiting bogeyman.
Aaron had enough trouble making the quiet climb without hauling fifty additional pounds of reconnaissance gear. Silence isn’t golden. Silence offers a blade and waits with bated breath for the owner to do the harm themselves.
Aaron resorted to counting his steps, curious to see how many it would be before they reached the caves, or his feet snapped off at the ankles.
His toes ached inside his ill-fitting boots, as his legs burned from the stress of each successive footfall. His shins bemoaned every motion, as though they might convince him to take a seat and drink in that vista until the sun set against the glassy fields below.
Don’t think, count. One, two, three…
Why was Holmst so concerned with Michonne? A Capital died, he did so quietly and without disruption. This should be a moment of somber celebration for any full-fledged Citizen of the Empire. At best, it was a moment that should pass like hot fumes from a rusty tailpipe, lingering only to remind of the toxic effect its presence had brought.
Instead, Holmst had acted as though Michonne was important somehow, held value as a real human life. That was out of character. Michonne, the Banished and the Dweller -- he barely held value to other Capitals. What currency he held had long been spent, frittered away in useless conflicts and fleeting pleasures.
He was physically capable but hardly exceptional; he was far from stupid but no intellectual; he had no real allies to speak of and more than a few enemies, and Aaron had numbered among them. He was an awfully big risk to put alongside a collection of safer bets.
Thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two…
It was no cave.
The stone surface was porous and pocketed, and it was certainly a natural occurrence, with jagged outcroppings and dips in the passage, but the eight-foot-wide hole in the rock face could hardly be described as a cave. This was not hewn by claw or machine, but something had spat forth from this point some time ago. This was a lava vent, from long ago when these mountains had been active.
That might explain why the Jergad rested here. The roads were already in place.
There might be hundreds of the big bastards huddling in the many corners of this labyrinth, waiting for the slightest disturbance to unleash hell. Or there might be none at all. Possibility was the enemy of calm.
Holmst picked at the wall with the snub-barrel of his rifle, as if to check if the pumice could take the pressure of his weight. It refused to give against his repeated probing, so he confidently took a stride into the mountain’s belly.
Jensen threw a glance at Aaron. The big guy had misplaced his trademark smile. Through thick and thin, drenched in sweat and shivering the cold, that man could bring out his infectious grin. He stood slack-jawed now, trying to gasp as quietly as his chest would allow, with eyes narrow and spider-webbed with pink capillaries.
The altitude was doing its damage, but the nightmare now presented to him was what finally robbed him of his joy. At least Aaron wasn’t alone in that.
Holmst looked back out of the tunnel, his eyes seeming to glow in the dark as his cybernetic retinas caught the light and reflected a sickly yellow, like a pale gold. They seemed to pulse softly, a rise and fall of tide waters, a soft hand growing in insistence.
Aaron was reminded in that moment how far from human the Oskies had become. If the Capitals had lost their humanity for their crimes, the Oskies had given it up for other gifts.
They did not climb all this way for a nature hike, but nobody wanted to follow into that maw. Even stalwart Carmona found his newfound patriotism sapped away at the sight of it. Holmst could sell their fear and those demon eyes narrowed to slits now.
The assembled crowd of Capitals in their loose linens and over-sized boots were not as capable, not as dependable. They were just Capitals; no stomach for this. They needed motivation.
An Oskie’s rifle probed into Jensen’s back, urging him onward. He was the pack mule with the mission sensitive gear, after all. But every instinct in his reptilian nethers refused that order. But with a gun at his back, there was only one way to go: into Hell. No one voluntarily visits that establishment without four or five escape plans.
The Oskies looked at each other. No one wanted to carry Jensen’s pack, but they were preparing to, as one reached for his quick-knife.
Aaron had to draw attention.
He took one big step out of the formation and over the threshold into the dark. Everyone watched as he sidled up to Holmst, vanishing into the lightless cave like a cloak had been draped about his shoulders to shield him from view.
Aaron looked back to his friends, first catching a mean glare from Carmona. He was Capital Lead after all; he should have been the one to take this plunge, but this was a little deep in the shit for posturing and protocol. Carmona did not relish this leap of faith any more than the rest, but Aaron had just shown him up and they were in no position to discuss the matter.
Satisfied -- or perhaps he didn’t want to stray too far from Aaron -- Jensen adjusted his gear and followed Aaron into the black. Momentum gained, the rest soon followed, inching themselves deeper and deeper into the void.
They couldn’t turn on torches, not without alerting the homeowners, but there was no way to passively see in that kind of darkness. Not even the Oskies’ implants could pick up enough light.
Instead, Holmst dropped small
infrared torches, sticking them in air pockets in the walls. They were just small sticks, really, barely the size of a pencil, but the fat tip threw off a faint glow, more than enough light this far removed from the sun.
The Oskies had their implants, but the Capitals resorted to using handheld monoculars to see in the dark, squinting through a bulky steel tube in one hand while feeling their way forward with the other.
Holmst would place the flares at regular intervals as they descended, lighting their way forward -- and hopefully, their way back out. Aaron had no idea what the half-life on the things were and quickly conjured the obvious scenario where the flares go out, and the blind little Capitals were left to die in the hollows of a dead volcano.
They stopped only briefly for Jensen and Keira to set up their thumpers. The work allowed the others to catch their breath and draw from their rations. Carmona made sure that the two mules got fed and watered during the cumbersome task, because as soon as they finished, Holmst would press the group on, deeper and deeper into the mountain’s heart.
There was a logic to it, not cruelty; the longer they were here, the more danger they were all in. Better to move fast and patch injuries after.
The silence was maddening, but what was worse was how that silence magnified even the smallest sound: the scuffing of a shoe heel or a heavy breath, the clank of polymer parts as someone adjusts their grip on a rifle, or even a squeak as someone wiped the sweat from their forehead.
Aaron swore he could hear his own eyelids as he blinked.
With his vision tunneled and too afraid to speak, it was enough sensory deprivation to drive someone mad.
And whenever Aaron turned, he would catch Holmst turning away. In one sense, that would be normal, but with paranoia edging, it stuck in his mind. Every single time, Aaron would turn and Holmst would look away, like he was being caught staring.
Something was wrong. He could smell it.