Ranger

by William Stacey

  "First Sergeant." Alex stared into the other man's eyes, not backing down an inch. There was too much potential for violence to show weakness now. "You are correct. I fucked up, and I'm sorry. But I can't change what's happened. Nor am I sure I would if I could. I made a friend a promise, and I had to keep it."

  "Oh, I get that. I hate leaving people behind too—fucking hate it. But Major Armstrong and I… we have a mission. We have everyone to worry about, all humanity, for Christ's sake. We don't get to pick what orders to follow. The mission comes first. Always and forever."

  Alex, fighting down his own anger, nodded. "The mission comes first."

  "I like to tell the kids, the young lieutenants—mission, men, myself. You'd do well to remember that… sir."

  "Mission, men, myself. Got it."

  "You're the only senior officer left. Even the XO is dead. So I guess you're in charge."

  "I won't let you down again, First Sergeant."

  Martinez ground out his cigarette. "I'm not going to make threats, you understand? Not my style."

  "I understand." And he did. He had served with enough as-hard-as-gristle senior noncommissioned officers to get the meaning behind the man's words—the moment Martinez decided Alex was putting the mission at risk, he'd kill him.

  "Outstanding, sir. Fucking outstanding! Well then, what are your orders, Major Benoit?" Martinez smiled, the first time that Alex had ever seen him do so. It was about as warm as a day-old corpse.

  While the soldiers sorted out the equipment, food, and water, Alex, Ylra, and his new first sergeant stood at the pier, bidding farewell to Gevn Ap. Most of the other guides, eager to return to their families, had already pushed away from the pier and were paddling across the subterranean lake, the torches flickering orange on the water's surface, but several redcaps stood at the end of the pier, waiting for Gevn Ap. It looked to Alex as though they were awaiting a decision from him.

  They're looking to him for guidance now, Alex realized. He's already taken his father's place, a hard thing for a young man. He placed his hand on Gevn Ap's shoulder. "I mourn your father. He was a great leader."

  "Thank you for your words," Gevn Ap said, his voice thick. "And thank you for defeating the water dragon, for returning our sacred cavern to us. You are as mighty as a dwarf."

  "Well," said Alex with a smile, "maybe not quite that."

  "We'll be back," Ylra said, stepping past Alex to embrace the youth, and squeezed him against her chest. "My people swore an oath to protect you and yours, and dwarves keep their oaths, even if it takes a lifetime. First, we need to help the manlings. Then when we're stronger, we'll fight for you. As we did in ages past."

  Gevn Ap inclined his head, his eyes filled with sorrow. "We… we honor the past oaths." He turned away and spoke to the other redcaps, who readily acknowledged his instructions.

  Nature hates a vacuum, Alex mused. His father's dead less than an hour, and he's the new leader. Gevn Ap and the others climbed aboard their canoes and paddled away.

  Alex heaved a heavy sigh. "Let's go look at this chimney."

  Alex stared up at the crevice, biting his lip as he considered the rock wall. His earlier assessment had been right. Someone would have to free-climb it and anchor their own ropes in place. Standing beside Alex, staring up the chimney wall, was the young man given the task—Corporal Erik Ng. Ng, his hands on his hips, a frown on his face, studied the rock face.

  "What do you reckon, Corporal Ng?" First Sergeant Martinez asked.

  "I… reckon, First Sergeant, that I'm gonna have a hard time doing this solo. But… should be doable, I guess."

  "Bullshit," said Leela, surprising Alex with her presence. "You can't highball a cave climb. We'll be scraping you off the rock."

  Alex faced his wife, ready to tell her no, but when he saw the look in her eyes, he kept his mouth shut instead. Paco had told him about Leela's exploits as a teenaged adrenaline junkie. Motocross, rock climbing, extreme sports—she had done it all.

  And she never listened to him.

  Ng sized her up. "You a climber?"

  She flashed him a smile. "British Columbia Mountaineering Club."

  "What do you think?"

  She joined him and stared up the crevice as she studied the rock face. "Based on the slope, the handholds, I'd say only a 5.03, maybe a 5.04. More than doable."

  "What are you talking about?" Alex asked.

  "Shh," she said, holding her fingers to his lips. "Yosemite Decimal System. Now let the grown-ups talk."

  Alex rolled his eyes, and First Sergeant Martinez actually looked amused.

  "The problem," Leela continued, "is that we don't have climbing gear."

  Ng smiled. "That, we do. Enough, at any rate." He spun away to his backpack, which was sitting nearby. Piles of nylon climbing rope in sixty-meter lengths sat beside it. Ng rummaged through his pack, pulling out an impressive assortment of climbing gear, including several pairs of shoes, gloves, chalk, steel pitons, carabiners, and other gear that Alex didn't recognize. Leela picked up a pair of shoes.

  "Might be too big for you," Ng said.

  "Better than combat boots." She sat and removed her boots while glancing at the equipment and lengths of climbing rope. "What are you doing with this?"

  "Rock-climbing subject-matter expert," said Ng. "There was another, my climbing partner, but he was with 3 Platoon."

  Realization flitted across Leela's face. "I'm sorry."

  "Most combat units will have several subject-matter experts in various disciplines," Alex said. "Usually, it's more common in Special Forces units."

  "Strike Force is as special as it gets," said Martinez.

  "No offense," said Alex. "Anyhow, Corporal Ng carried the climbing gear, but other soldiers hauled the ropes—just in case the unit came up against something like this." He stared up at the crevice, feeling emptiness in the pit of his stomach. "You sure you can do this?"

  She raised an eyebrow and gave him a disdainful glare then tightly laced up her shoes before standing and jumping in place. "They'll do," she told Ng. Then she stripped down, removing her load-bearing vest, MR suit, and any other unnecessary gear, remaining only in her physiological-monitoring jumpsuit, which was little more than skintight spandex. Ng did likewise but wore a hydration pack and a shoulder holster for a 9mm pistol. Alex considered insisting Leela do the same, but when she tucked the Brace under the collar of her suit, he realized there was little point in bringing a pistol to a fireball fight.

  "What do you say, partner?" she asked Ng.

  "I say we do this thing."

  Erik handed Leela one harness and a carabiner, and she strapped it into place. They clipped the carabiners to the belay rope. Then Ng went first, with Leela following, acting as his belay partner. She glanced at Alex, saw the worry on his face, and flashed him a cheery smile. He frowned. She was out of practice and tired from days of exertion, but she had been a crazy-good climber since she was fourteen, and heights had always thrilled her. Out of practice or not, she could handle this. Probably.

  Erik scaled the cliff face, moving from handhold to handhold in a technique called lead climbing, in which a pair of climbers moved in tandem, with one ascending first with the rope before setting it in anchors. It would take a while because Erik had to pound the anchors into the rock. Leela belayed Erik as he climbed, feeding out just enough rope to allow him upward progress, always ready to attest a fall.

  Erik had estimated the crevice was at least two hundred feet high, and she had no reason to doubt him. He reached a suitable location to secure the first pitch, the first length of sixty-meter nylon climbing rope, and she waited while he pounded in the anchor, his hammer strikes echoing down the crevice.

  "Okay, climb up," he yelled. "I'll belay you."

  She reapplied chalk to her hands from a large chunk hanging on a cord around her neck then climbed up to him, hauling herself up with the rope. Soon, she was beside him, resting on a small foothold, and he handed her the tube from his hydrat
ion pack, from which she gulped, surprised at how thirsty she was. Rock climbing was hard work.

  "You ready?" he asked her.

  "As I'll ever be," she said as she prepared to belay him once more.

  He smiled and climbed away. This time there were no suitable handholds, but there was a long crack running up the rock face, into which he jammed his entire hand, making a fist to hold himself in place while he climbed farther, each time shoving a fist into the crack. It was an exhausting method of climbing and hell on the wrists. She watched with admiration as he scaled another thirty meters that way. Like most free climbers, Erik was immensely strong, with a gymnast's build and maybe two percent body fat, and while she was still in decent shape, especially after the last week, she wasn't near his fitness level. Erik pounded in the second anchor just past the halfway point, the second pitch. One more anchor to go.

  The night stars through the opening were closer now. Erik belayed her while she climbed up to join him. When they were ready, he began the final ascent to the surface. Erik moved quickly from handhold to foothold like the seasoned pro he was. Then he was over the top and out of sight. She heard him pound the final anchor in place for the last pitch. Then the rope jerked several times as he tugged on it.

  "Come on up," he yelled.

  Gripping the rope, she pulled herself up the final part of the chimney. She was only five feet from the lip when a bat erupted from a crack in the rock, winging right into her face with a flurry of its wings. She slipped, dropping the rope and falling. For several heart-stopping moments, she felt complete weightlessness. Then the belay rope snapped tight onto her harness, jerking her to a sudden wrenching halt, sending pain flashing up her spine. Upside down, she swung at the rock face, channeling a shield just before she smashed into it. She hung by her harness now, spinning, feeling like an amateur. Her spine hurt, but she'd live. Stupid bat!

  "You okay?" Erik yelled, leaning over the cliff, his frame highlighted against the stars.

  "Fine. I'm fine. Just my pride."

  Then she stared in wonder as Liv, now wearing her stripped-down rig, her arms outstretched to the sides, shot up the chimney, with Huck floating beneath her on a homemade stretcher. Liv smiled as she flew past Leela. Even with the armor plating removed, the rig weighed hundreds of pounds, not to mention Huck's comatose weight. How much weight did she say she could lift?

  A moment later, Leela rose as well, levitated by Liv out of the chimney and onto the surface. Liv deposited Leela and Huck next to Erik, who stared at her with his mouth open.

  "Goddamn, Long Bow, you're a superhero."

  "Super-heroine," she answered, settling herself onto the summit, the gear assembly on her legs creaking as she turned in place to examine the terrain. "Like Supergirl, only way hotter."

  They stood upon the top of the spine, but from here, the cliffs led down in a long gentle slope to the desert hundreds of meters below them, easily traversable.

  Leela unclipped herself from her harness and joined Liv, staring at the brilliant desert before them, painted in shades of silver by the glow of Faerum's two moons. The desert extended as far as they could see, the terrain broken by long caverns, deep gulches, and majestic hills, with boulders and tall saguaro-like plants covering everything.

  "Now that's a wonder," Liv said, nearly breathless. "Prettier even than the Sonoran Desert. Almost worth traveling across space to see."

  "Why didn't you do that to begin with?" Leela asked. "Save us the trouble."

  Liv stared at her in confusion for a moment before realization dawned on her. "Oh, no, that wouldn't have worked. I can levitate myself, maybe one or two others if I lift them in spurts, but I can only channel so much mana before I tire. I couldn't have lifted everyone. No, someone needed to climb and set the ropes."

  "Well," said Leela, "thanks for the lift the last bit of the way."

  The trace of a smile creased Liv's lips, as if to say it was nothing, then she sighed at the breathtaking desert expanse before her. Leela watched her from behind, a feeling of unease bothering her. Probably just annoyed with how easily she flew up. She went to help Erik secure the belay lines for the others. The final leg of their journey was about to begin.

  38

  Alex was one of the last to climb the chimney and move into the warm, dry wind of a desert night. Leela and Martinez met him and helped to haul him over the edge. Leela handed him a half-full bamboo water container, and he gulped several large mouthfuls. The soldiers had moved down the slope and were organizing for the march. He stared out over the desert below, marveling at the abrupt change in landscapes.

  Ylra joined him, took the water container, and drank from it. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "Something, ain't it?"

  "This ridgeline, the Spine of the Serpent, it must act as a biodiversity barrier separating the desert from the jungle."

  "If you say so." She sloshed water in her mouth then swallowed it. "Never been here. Actually, other than Kargin, I don't know any dwarf who has been here. Ugly, hot place. Worse than a forge."

  Alex sighed. "It's going to get more unpleasant in a few hours. What are we looking for exactly, a butte or a mesa?"

  "Don't know. Kargin said Deep Terlingas was carved out of a tall, flat mountain, like a table with steep sides. Said the mountain sat alone in the desert, sticking out like your thumb, and only a day's march southeast of the passage through the Spine. He said the only way in was from the summit."

  "Sounds more like a mesa," Alex said.

  "So how do we get up top?" Leela asked.

  Ylra grunted. "Kargin didn't say. I didn't ask. It was his secret to keep, not mine."

  "We'll find a way. First we need to find the mesa." Alex turned to Martinez. "First Sergeant, break out the last UAV."

  "Roger that, sir." Martinez strode away to find the intelligence operator.

  "Coming up on it now, sir," the operator said, holding the control joysticks for the UAV.

  Alex and the others leaned over his shoulder and peered at the small monitor. The UAV's camera operated in night-vision mode, and the desert lay exposed in varying shades of green on the monitor, the ground falling away as the UAV sped along. Then Alex saw the mesa, a vast tabletop mountain with a summit a kilometer wide. The mesa was the only large landmark like it they had seen.

  "That's got to be it," Alex said.

  "Agreed," Ylra answered.

  "It's at the far range of the UAV, sir," the operator said. "Forty-six kilometers from our location. I'm gonna need to bring the bird back or risk the battery running dry and thundering into the rocks."

  "Do one quick flyover," Alex said. He turned to Martinez. "We can do that distance in a day, even with the gear. It's mostly flat lands, no sand, no dunes. No arroyos that I saw."

  "Maybe, sir," said the older man. "But I noted what looked like several kilometers of salt flats in our path. It's been a long night. Troops could use a lie down."

  Alex pondered it but shook his head. "Can't. There's only so much water and no way to get more."

  "There'll be water in the city," Ylra said. "And ale—a lot of ale."

  Alex ground his teeth. "That may be, but if that's the wrong mesa..."

  "That's it," Ylra insisted. "I feel it in me bones. If I were a dwarf—and I am—that's where I'd be."

  "Hey, look at that," Leela said, yanking on Alex's arm and pointing at the monitor.

  He stared at the screen as the UAV flew over the mesa, moving at a height of about six hundred meters. A bowl-like depression occupied the center of the mesa's flat summit, as if scooped away by the hand of God. "That's… that's an impact crater. A meteorite strike."

  "I think you're right," Leela said.

  "That's why Deep Terlingas is there," said Ylra. "The red-star metal." She tapped Witch-Bane's sheathed blade on his hip. "Kargin's grandfather only ever found enough shards to make your weapon, but others were convinced more remained—if only they could find it. But it has to be there. There's no other way the
city could have survived the Culling magic."

  "You built a city just to find one meteorite?" Alex asked.

  "No, we built a city to find enough red-star metal to build weapons that could defeat our greatest enemy, the magic-using fae seelie," she answered. "But don't ye worry. There'll be other metal to mine. We dwarves are nothing if not practical."

  "There's something else," the intelligence operator said. "Look, there's a… a gorge or crack, I guess, along the northern cliff face."

  Alex leaned closer and saw what the operator had described—a gap in the cliff face, filled with boulders but also what might have been a path weaving through the rocks. It would be hard to see from the surface. "You think that's the way up?"

  "That'd be my guess," said Ylra. "It looks natural, but that's how my people would shape it. We're tricksy that way."

  Alex squeezed the intelligence operator's shoulder. "Good job. Bring the bird back." He turned to face the others. "Okay, I'm convinced. That's our destination. I want to move in one hour, 1 Platoon leading, 2 Platoon in support, bounding overwatch by sections. We stop only on my order. We need to reach that mesa by tomorrow night. After that, we'll be in a tight spot for water."

  "Yes, sir," Martinez said.

  "Get 'em fed and make sure everyone hydrates before we start."

  Martinez stormed away.

  Leela watched Alex. "What about you?"

  "I need to ask our dark-elf friend a few questions."

  Veraxia considered Alex's question for several moments. "This is Faerum," she answered. "There are dangerous creatures everywhere. Many use magic. The desert is no exception. Perhaps you could be more specific."

  "We can't afford to run into anything else like the hydra," he answered.

  "You're asking about dragons, aren't you? You wish to know if there are dragons in the Char?"