Then outfitted themselves each with a handgun on their thigh and a rifle slung around their shoulder. Each had a backpack as well, and Sarah put hers on without even knowing what was in it.
They were ready and sat without speaking in the eating gallery, and when the pilot came on the com system to tell them they were about to make the final jump Sarah could hardly hear the end of the sentence because her heart had begun to pound loudly within her chest.
“Three...two…one…” came the pilot's voice, and then the ship shuddered and Sarah was pressed into the back of her seat. The ship slowed and rolled to the left and then the right before stabilizing.
They hit atmosphere and the ship began to shake violently. Gar was reaching for her across the table and she slid her hands in his.
“It’s fine,” he said, and then she shut her eyes and tried to calm her breathing, working to suck down each breath and blow it out as the ship continued to shake, as though it was about to burst apart.
Just as quickly, the shaking stopped and there was a thud, one last shudder as the ship set down.
“Here,” Gar said, standing quickly and moving to the ramp. There were masks on the wall and he handed them out. Sarah strapped hers on, familiar with it already. It was very similar to the one the Aeon’s had given her when they had taken her captive.
When they were all masked Gar slapped a control panel on the wall and the ramp extended while a doorway slid upwards.
Sarah was blinded, closing her eyes and throwing her arm up to shield them further. Everything was bright, the light red and piercing, and she forgot it was night time until she stepped down the ramp and looked up to see the pitch black sky above her. In the far distance she could see flashes of light; explosions as the space battle raged, through much of the sky was obscured by thick black and gray smoke.
Slowly her eyes became accustomed to the brightness, and Sarah could better take in her surroundings, even as the ship she had just disembarked pulled in the ramp and took to the sky. They watched it streak off, and then everyone turned to Gar.
“Watch your step,” was his first command. Sarah looked around once more. The ground was rocky and a red so soft it was nearly pink, but there were small rivers of lava crisscrossing it, smoldering and hot, making sloshing sounds that turned to sizzles when it brushed up against new rock.
In the distance was the cone that made up the volcano itself, stretching high into the sky and dotted with what looked like machinery, surely what the Aeon’s had used to funnel in more lava and up the effect of an eruption.
Looking at the cone, Sarah’s heart fell. It looked as though she had misjudged how close they would be landing. It didn’t look a mile away, it was closer to ten, and possibly more.
“Why didn’t we land closer?” she asked Gar.
“The ground is unstable. The ship could have been sucked in if we set down any closer.”
Sarah’s mind went to the soldier shows and movies she had seen back home. They repelled down from helicopters, why not that? It seemed as though Gar was reading her mind when he spoke again.
“The heat makes for updrafts. Dangerous ones. Nothing can approach the volcano in the air without fear of crashing. We would likely be dead right now had we gotten any closer in that ship.
As if attempting to agree with them, the volcano rumbled loudly. Black smoke poured from its mouth in the distance. Sarah had seen plenty of videos on volcanoes, back on Earth. She had never been to one, but her father had seen plenty with his own eyes. Still, she was sure he had never seen one as massive as this. It was jagged looking, the sides seemingly so steep they went straight up and down. It had an evil look to it, as much as a natural design could look evil.
And really, the whole Aeon home world looked evil. It truly reminded Sarah of nothing but hell, all fire and brimstone. It was red, red, red, and smoky, and hot. So hot that as soon as Sarah had left the ship sweat had begun to bead on her forehead. She kept having to fix the mask she wore over her mouth and nose, because the sweat on her face was causing it to slip out of place. The Earth girl had never been so uncomfortable in her life. She has asked herself one question a hundred times over the last few months, but it came to her again. What the hell had she gotten herself into?
“We’re too open here,” Gar said, “Let’s move in and find some shelter so we can take stock of our equipment and move on.”
The others nodded but Sarah felt as though there was no shelter for them to find. It was just rocky red earth, no trees, no bushes. But as they began to move Sarah realized that there were plenty of places to conceal them; dips and trenches in the ground, rocky outcrops which rose ten feet into the air as the glowing red and yellow lava flowed around it.
They picked their way slowly across the landscape, as one wrong step could lead to certain death. Within half an hour of hiking Gar held up his hand to halt them, and held his rifle in front of his body, with his trusty slug thrower, while the others had fast-firing energy-based rifles on their backs, and moved into a cave of sorts set into the side of a rising hill.
When he returned he waved them forward and they stepped carefully toward him. The cave was less of a cave and more of an indent, but it shielded them from view, unless someone was looking at them directly from the side of the hill where the entrance was. They were just in time, too. As soon as Sarah knelt down and slung her pack from her back there came a piercing whine, and the four members of the strike team peered out and up to watch three fighter ships of Aeon design flash overhead, lights at their rear contrasting with the black sky.
“Are they looking for us?” Char asked aloud.
“I don’t think so. Probably just guard duty. We’ll have to keep an eye out for them, we can’t be caught out in the open,” Gar said as he reached inside his own pack and pulled out a pair of high-tech binoculars. He moved to the edge of the cave and peered toward their mountain. “We’ll move from cover to cover. It’s going to be slow, but I think we need to go on our bellies. It won’t do us any good to be shot from a mile up before we get the job done.”
“I don’t want to be shot from a mile up even after we get the job done,” Fib whispered tensely, and Sarah let out a nervous giggle.
“Sheets on,” Gar said, ignoring Fib’s remark, and Sarah had to wait and see just what he was talking about, but when the other three reached into their packs and pulled out a folded square of reddish material, Sarah did the same.
Once unfolded the material was a something like a robe, with baggy sleeves and a hood. But it was wide and long, and Sarah realized that it was a crude but effective bit of camouflage. Lying down with the sheet, as Gar called it, would make them blend right in with the red rocky ground.
But the heat was already oppressive and awful, and pulling the robe-like material on only made it worse, and before they even began to crawl Sarah was drenched in sweat.
“Let’s go,” Gar said, wiping his brow with the back of his arm before pulling his pack back on, underneath his sheet, and dropping to his knees. From there he lay on his stomach, and crawled slowly out of the cave. Fib went next, and then Char motioned for Sarah to go as he pulled on goggles of some sort, and positioned a tiny camera on his shoulder before spinning it around so it would shoot behind him. Sarah realized that with him crawling the camera would be facing toward the sky, and she was sure the goggles had a live feed of what the camera saw. If anyone approached from the sky, Char would see them.
Ahead of her Gar tapped his ear and Sarah heard a small hiss, and then Gar’s voice coming through as though he was right beside her and not twenty or so feet ahead.
“Can everyone hear me?” he asked.
“I’m in,” Fib chimed in.
“Me too,” Sarah replied.
“Loud and clear,” came Char from the rear.
They crawled on the ground beneath them almost too hot to touch, even through their clothing, and Sarah was sure there was no way she would ever make it. No one spoke, the going slow and hard. Zayt
arian’s being naturally more athletic than humans, and these three spending many hours each week staying in an almost impossible shape.
Sarah had a feeling they were going slower than they would have otherwise, if only for her sake, but she was thankful for that. They crawled for two hours and then stopped, sliding under a rocky outcrop that had a natural arch near the bottom, something Gar had seen from the lip of their first cave. They couldn’t stand, nor even sit up, so they stayed lying, in a row next to one another, and they each pulled out one of their three canteens and sipped at the water.
“Slowly,” Gar commanded them, but no one needed to be told. Their three bottles of water (twelve between them all) had to last them the whole mission. There would be nowhere to refill them in this hellscape.
Gar gave them ten or so minutes to rest, and then he was looking through his binoculars once more and picking a new spot to head toward, while being mindful that they needed to make sure they were moving in the direction of the massive cone jutting up in the distance. They couldn’t make a straight line for the volcano, not if they were moving from cover to cover, but they needed to more or less stay going in that direction.
They had begun to crawl again, and had been doing so for an hour when they came to their first problem. A swiftly moving line of lava barred their forward progress. There was a rocky rise nearby. “I’m going to crawl up and see if there’s a place to cross,” Gar instructed through the earpiece. Then he left the three to take an impromptu break, lying as still as possible while he was gone. Sarah closed her eyes and lay her cheek on the blazing ground, now more used to the heat. She could not sleep, of course, but it was nice to rest, as much as she could do so.
Gar was back in half an hour, his face sooty, his skin shining with sweat.
“Nowhere to cross that I could see. We’ll have to jump.”
Sarah’s eyes went wide at that, and she moved to look at him. He knew she would need him there. He was her rock, and the idea of leaping over the lava was one which filled her with fear.
Before anyone could say anything, Char spoke up. “Three ships, coming from the East.”
Then the engine whirring filled the sky and they all lay as still as possible, not daring to turn their heads to watch the ships as they passed overhead. Sarah held her breath until the whirring left the air, and then she blew it out slowly past her chapped and cracked lips. The heat was doing a number on her.
Gar lifted himself to one knee after crawling as close to the lava as he dared. He took a moment to prod at the ground at the edge of the lava, trying to test how likely it was to break up as they stepped on it. It seemed rather solid. He turned to the others.
“Run, plant your foot as close to the lava as you can, and jump. It’s only three or so feet, we can make it.” He looked to Sarah then, and added: “Easily.”
Sarah nodded.
“I’ll go first,” Gar said, standing fully and backing up from the lava. Then he was taking off, running hard, his arms pumping at his sides for a few steps until he was at the edge of the lava, and flung himself forward and cleared the river of fire easily.
When he landed there was a gust of red dust, which he let settle before turning around.
“Fib,” he called. “You’re up.”
Fib nodded, and then did the same exact thing, landing easily across the lava and turning.
“Let’s go Sarah,” Gar said, holding his hands out to her. “It’s easy.”
Sarah nodded as she stood. “Sure. Easy.” She walked to the lava and looked down and then across. Three feet? That was nothing. Except it didn’t look like three feet, not to her. It looked a lot wider than that.
Still, she had to go. She had to make the jump, there was no other option. She backed away from the river, going further than Gar and Fib had, and then she stopped. She closed her eyes for a moment, sucking in a deep breath, and then she opened them. There was Gar, on the other side of the lava river. She needed to get to him. She would.
She began to run. Her feet pounding on the red dirt, he arms pumping at her sides. The river of fire grew closer. She could feel the shocking heat pulsing from within the flowing lava. She was closer, and then with two more steps, closer still. Three more steps she was there, one more would put her in the lava, and so she flung herself up and forward, her legs kicking in the air, her arms still pumping, and she realized that she was going to make it, but only just.
One foot hit the dirt, right at the edge of the lava river, and then the other, but something went wrong and her feet slid on the rocky ground, and she was falling backward, toward the lava.
A strong hand reached out and grabbed her, stopping her from falling into the lava. She looked up and saw Gar in front of her, his hand on the front of her closed robe like sheet. He jerked her away from the lava and then smiled.
“Close one,” he said.
“Yeah,” Sarah answered with a shaky nod, and they all turned to watch Char, who had no problem making the jump.
For the next ten minutes, as they resumed their crawling, Sarah was shaking. Her heart was pounding in her chest, and stinging sweat kept running into her eyes, forcing her to stop for a moment to wipe it away. Finally, as the dark sky faded and the angry red sun rose, they stopped again.
This time Gar had led them to a hole in the ground.
“I can’t go in there,” Sarah said truthfully. The idea of climbing into a hole filled her with fear.
“I’ll check it out,” Gar said, and before she could tell him again that she wasn’t willing to go into the hole he disappeared, pushing himself headfirst into the hole, his legs sliding in after a bit of work when his broad hips caught on the edge of the hole.
“It’s fine. Come on down,” Gar’s voice came a moment later.
“Go ahead,” Fib said, nodding her head to Sarah.
“I can’t. Seriously, guys, I can’t,” Sarah argued. Fib Smiled softly and then shook her head. “You have to,” she said, placing her hand on Sarah’s shoulder and pushing her toward the crack. Sarah slid along on her belly to the hole and looked down. It was pitch black, she couldn’t see anything, and then a shining light was in her face. Gar was down there, holding a flashlight.
“Come on,” she heard his voice say in her earpiece, and Sarah reached down to him. She felt his hands on her wrists and then he was pulling, and she went sliding into the hole.
It wasn’t spacious. Clearly some sort of animal had called it home, or maybe still did, there were a number of small bones in one corner, which Gar took and shoved back out through the hole entrance. They could stand, which was nice, but they couldn’t fully lay down; they had to stretch their legs out in front of them, with their backs against the rough rock wall.
“We only move at night,” Gar said to them. “We cannot afford to be spotted, so we play it cautious.”
This rubbed Char the wrong way. “There are people up there dying. Our friends. Our family. We need to get this done.”
“They’re doing their job, and we’re going to do ours, all right?”
Char nodded, but Sarah could tell he still didn’t like it.
They busied themselves for half an hour with eating, each having a small tin full of what looked almost like nutrition bars to Sarah, brown and rather tasteless, but enough to keep her going. They had all pulled off their robe-like red sheets, but the hole in the ground was even hotter than the surface had been, so the men pulled their shirts off, and after a moment of deliberation, so did the women.
Gar was sitting next to Sarah, the wall on her other side, and he reached over as he closed his eyes, finding her hand and holding it as he drifted off to sleep. Sarah was sure she would be unable to do the same, but sleep found her quickly, and despite the heat, the nervousness, and the looming thought of how far they still had to go, she welcomed it.
Chapter Eight
It was nighttime when Gar woke Sarah. “Get dressed,” he said. “Time to go.”
Sarah nodded and dressed with the others,
pulling the red robe on as well, and making sure she had the right pack and then pulling it on beneath the robe. She grabbed her rifle, slung it over her shoulder, and followed Gar out the hole. He took a moment to scan the landscape with his binoculars, and then it was time to crawl once more.
Sarah kept looking forward to the volcano, and every time she did her heart fell. They didn’t look any closer than they had been before.
Here and there as they crawled the wind would pick up, slinging hot embers and sparks through the air, and they would all have to stop crawling, putting their faces to the hot earth to keep from burning their eyes. They could feel when they neared one of the rivers of lava, but luckily they hadn’t come to another one which they had to cross.
Through the day they had to stop seven times as ships passed by overhead, and soon the sky was lightening once more, and Gar began looking for shelter.
“Night is so swift here,” Sarah said.
“Just over five hours,” Gar agreed. It was eleven hours on his own planet, much closer to Earth's.
“All the more reason to keep moving,” Char said. “We need to finish this. At this rate it will be two more days of this.”
“And so it will be,’ Gar said, with a finality in his voice that made Char understand that his opinion was noted but he was not free to share it again.
“Okay,” Char said with a deep sigh. “What about there?”
Gar looked where the younger Zaytarian was pointing. His eyes went wide. He had somehow missed the structure when he was scanning the landscape, though he realized it was because it had been built on the far side of a rise in the earth, and couldn’t be seen until they were around the hill.
It was a building. It was in disrepair, and leaning to the side, but there was no mistaking it. It was a building made of stone, with a door of wood and a window carved into the side.
Aeon War Page 5