by J. J. Green
None of it made any sense.
“Should I scout for an entrance, sir?” asked Marks, one of three marines accompanying him.
“Yes, do that.”
He didn’t hold out much hope the woman would find anything, but he didn’t know what else to do. Maybe the people sending the signal had traveled through the mountain from another spot and then discovered there was no way out. Thinking about it, that was the only answer, but it didn’t help him.
He climbed the final few meters up to the vertical mountain face. On a closer look, it appeared as though it might have formed from a rockfall eons ago. The surface was jagged and split, and tough, stunted shrubs sprouted from the nooks and crannies. Thin cracks divided the crammed rocks, but they were far too narrow for a human being to have slipped through. Even a child wouldn’t have made it. Judging from the long, leathery roots that gripped the stone, it hadn’t been disturbed for years.
Wright rested one hand on the impenetrable surface and, with the other, popped open his visor.
“Hello?!” he shouted. “This is Major Wright of the Britannic Alliance. Can you hear me? Please respond.”
He awaited a reply, but all he heard was hiss of pulse fire coming from below and the sigh of the wind around the mountain. He tried to make contact a couple more times, with the same result.
He thumped the stone with a fist. Somewhere not far from where he stood, people were trapped, possibly injured or dying, and he had no way of reaching them.
Marks returned. “I couldn’t find anything, sir,” she reported breathlessly.
Should they stick around, trying to find a way in? The chances of a safe exit for his marines was growing slimmer. Or should he abandon the mission as hopeless? Could he justify continuing to risk the lives of his men and women?
“Can I make a suggestion, sir?” asked Marks.
“I’m all ears.”
“Blow it open.”
“Blow...the rock face?”
“We brought an XM57 along,” Marks said. “We could try. What do we have to lose?”
“What we have to lose are the very people we are supposed to be rescuing, if they’re anywhere near the outer wall.”
Wright wondered what Colbourn would have to say if he returned to the Valiant bearing several rescued corpses.
“Sir,” said Elphicke. “There’s been a skirmish on the lower slopes. Blake, Chen, and McEndry have blued.”
Wright closed his eyes.
Dammit!
“Okay,” he said to Marks. “We’ll give it one try.” He gave the order for the XM57 to be brought up.
While he was waiting for the mortar to arrive, he yelled toward the rock face some more, telling anyone who was inside to move deep into the mountain.
He guessed there was a good chance they would cause a rock fall, but he was out of time and ideas.
Marks had been surveying the rock face. She inserted a hand into a gap. “I think here would be best.”
In response to Wright’s questioning look, she continued, “My family are miners. They all work for the AP.” She grimaced. “I switched sides.”
He nodded and moved away, down the slope. “You take the lead.”
The XM57-bearer, Cole, appeared, scrambling over rocks, scattering scree as he climbed with the mortar on his shoulder. Marks quickly directed him to a position to stand the weapon and indicated where he was to fire.
Wright gave the order for everyone else to stay well away.
The whoomf of the mortar was magnitudes louder than the soft hiss of a pulse round. Wright received the full force through his still-open visor. When the missile hit the mountainside, there was an ear-splitting explosion. Rock crumbled and fell. He ran up the slope, but when the dust cleared, the mountain face remained solid.
“One more try, sir!” said Marks. “If there is a cave there, I’m sure we’ll break through next time.”
“Just one, then we’re out of here.”
Marks gave more instructions, and the XM57 fired once more. After the second hit, the ground shook, and large stones tumbled down.
She ran up the slope. “We’re in!”
The dust began to clear, and Wright saw what she meant: Among the shattered debris, a cleft had opened.
“Wait,” he ordered, hurrying to catch up to the young marine, who was about to enter it.
Marks halted. Her helmeted head turned toward him.
“Get back,” said Wright, conscious the opening could collapse any minute.
He passed her and leaned into the dark interior. His helmet light revealed a small space, only roughly four meters wide and deep, though the roof of the cave was higher. It rose to a central point about six meters above. It looked naturally formed with a dusty, sloping floor and a rugged ceiling and walls. More than half the space was taken up with rubble from the mortar fire.
He tensed. Were people buried under the broken rocks? He closed his visor. His enhanced view showed no signs of warm bodies as his gaze roved the rocks. He swept the rest of the place. No one seemed to be in the chamber at all. No people, no transmission equipment, and no exit. The rear wall was solid rock.
Except...
On the far side of the chamber, something glowed, very faintly.
The gap they’d blown open was narrow. He had to turn sideways to ease through it. A few steps across the chamber brought him to the scant heat source. At step three, he thought he might be able to save someone’s life, but by the time he reached the figure, that hope was gone.
He stared down at it.
What lay upon the flat, raised, carved surface was barely recognizable as human. Fleshless skin stretched taut over the bones, the closed eyes were wells in their sockets, and the hair was wisp-thin, clinging to the scalp. The prone body might once have been a large man, but he had died years ago, probably due to a large wound that had torn open his stomach and chest.
The corpse wore strange ornaments. A thick torque encircled his neck, and another gripped his bicep, the pure gold gleaming richly, uncorrupted by the passage of years. The same could not be said of his clothes, which had rotted away to bare threads, exposing the man’s skin in many places. Across his shoulders and upper chest, stylized tattoos of animals pranced, fixed in time.
Wright had heard of cadavers like these. In very dry conditions, the human body didn’t rot but remained whole and preserved for millennia. He guessed the heat the body was giving off was caused by extremely slow decomposition. At another place and time, he might have found the mummy interesting, but right now it was only a distraction.
He scanned the rest of the cave again. There were definitely no exits other than the one the mortar fire had created. He concluded the body must have been placed there before the rockfall sealed off the place. Other than that, the cave was entirely empty.
So where was the distress signal coming from?
He checked his HUD for it, and sucked in a breath.
The signal was gone.
Marks leaned in through the breech in the wall. “Find anyone, sir?”
“No. I thought I told you to get back.”
It was time to leave. The fighting down slope had to be intensifying. Wright felt sick with disappointment and frustration. The BA had sent a warship into enemy territory and three men were dead, for nothing. The distress signal must have been...He had no idea what could have caused it.
“What’s that?” asked Marks, focused on the mummy.
“Nothing important. We’re pulling out, heading back to the Daisy.”
The young marine took a final look at the dried-up cadaver, and then withdrew.
Wright told Elphicke the mission was over, but as he went to leave the chamber, he paused.
How remarkable it was that the mummy should be here, in the very place where the glitch in the system had placed the distress signal. An odd coincidence. If he had never come here, the body would have lain undiscovered for thousands of years, if not forever.
Now the chamber had bee
n opened, the EAC would probably find it. It was just the kind of thing they liked. Maybe they would use it in one of their weird ceremonies.
Marks reappeared. “Are you coming, sir?”
“Yes, I’m on my way.”
She hesitated.
“Go! I’ll catch you up.”
His attention had been drawn again to the stunningly beautiful torques around the dead man’s neck and arm. It was a shame the EAC would get a hold of them, but he didn’t have time to—
He started.
The thick curve of metal around the mummy’s throat had moved. Or had it? He bent closer and opened his visor, shining his helmet light down to see the thing more clearly. The torque had only seemed to move a fraction, but it had caught his eye.
He exhaled a long breath.
It was moving.
Almost imperceptibly and very, very slowly, the torque was rising and falling, as if the mummy were breathing. He placed a trembling hand on the corpse’s chest, but he didn’t detect any movement through his thick gloves.
What am I thinking?
Incredulity gripping him, Wright activated his field medic scanner and requested the general health status.
Snapping his visor closed, he read the display.
He blinked, almost not believing what he was seeing, vaguely wondering if he’d taken a hit to the head.
His HUD displayed a health status of two percent and pulse and respiration rates that were impossibly low. He’d only ever seen such poor prognoses for survival in marines taking their last breaths. Yet this figure lying before him must have been here for years. The man was a living, breathing miracle.
How was it possible?
But he couldn’t spare any more time to wonder at the phenomenon. He had to return to the Daisy with his team. He decided he couldn’t leave the man there, not while he was still alive. Though he was certain to die soon, he felt obliged to do all he could to save him.
He scooped up the fragile figure in both arms, finding it hardly seemed to weigh anything. He carried it across the chamber and gently maneuvered it through the gap in the wall. A strange feeling coursed through him, a sense of unreality, as if he were awake and aware while in the middle of a dream.
When he emerged into the night, the snow had stopped falling and the clouds had cleared. The mountainside was empty. Marks was gone, and so was Cole with the XM57. Way below, distant pulse shots flashed in the darkness, dancing like fireflies.
Above, a dark shield curved, bearing ten thousand stars.
Chapter Six
Cradling the barely-alive man in his arms, Wright sped down the slope, sliding on scree and dodging rocks, trying to find the fastest route among the drifts of fallen snow. Soon, he was on the fringes of the firefight, and a few poorly aimed pulse rounds came his way.
He told his marines he was on his way, and they began to lay down covering fire. In a few minutes, he reached the base of the mountain, and in a few minutes more he was part of the retreat. Now that he was with them, the marines doubled their pace as they ran back to the Daisy.
While descending the mountain, he’d regularly checked the health status of the emaciated, dehydrated man he’d rescued. Every time he saw the stats, they’d improved. The ‘mummy’s’ chances of survival had improved to nine percent, providing he received appropriate medical care. What the treatment would turn out to be, Wright was curious to find out. He didn’t think any of the Daisy’s docs had ever encountered a case quite like this one.
Despite his improving health, the man’s appearance hadn’t discernibly altered. He looked just as ancient and very, very dead as when Wright had found him.
But that was a puzzle for later. Now, he had to get everyone safely back into space. The EAC troops hadn’t fired on them for a while, and he had a suspicion why.
Elphicke commed him from somewhere ahead. “Sir, I think you should know, Ellis isn’t returning to the ship.”
“Why not? Where is she?” As he replied, Wright answered his own question, singling out the marine’s location on his HUD.
She was still halfway up the mountain! And she wasn’t moving. What the hell was the stupid marine doing?
“About 200 meters away, stuck in some rocks,” said Elphicke. “She’s immobilized, her foot’s trapped. After Chen and the others bought it, I didn’t expect her to survive. The EAC were on to her. But she’s still there and still alive.”
The sergeant didn’t put the moral dilemma into words. They were tight on time. Should he send someone back to try to free her, risking everyone’s lives with the delay, or should he abandon her?
Wright chewed over his decision. In the distance he could see the Daisy, resting at a slight angle on a field of stubble. Most of the team were nearly at the ship. If he did nothing, everyone except Ellis could be away within minutes, and, if his suspicion was correct, they didn’t have much longer than that before they would have more problems to face than EAC infantry.
He also had no clue about how to get her out of her predicament. If she was trapped among the rocks and hadn’t managed to free herself, was there any hope someone else could get her out in the scant minutes available?
The right thing to do was to sacrifice Ellis to save the team. On the other hand, Colbourn’s words rang in his ears: They must know we’d never abandon our own.
He swore. Damn the woman. He’d known from the outset she was a liability.
Running to the nearest marine, he said, “You, take this man to the ship and carry him straight to sick bay.” He passed the figure over. Next, he commed Marks and Cole and told them to follow him. Finally, he told Elphicke what he planned to do, and that the Daisy was to depart in ten minutes, or earlier if she came under fire, no matter what.
“That’s an order, sergeant,” he said. “You understand?”
“Understood, sir.”
Turning, he set off in the opposite direction, back to the mountain, continuing to mentally curse Ellis.
What kind of dumb marine would get their damn foot stuck? If he did manage to save her, he was going to check out her story about Abacha being sick for sure. If she’d been lying, he’d put them both in the brig. He might even push for a dishonorable discharge for Ellis. Not Abacha, he was too valuable. The last thing the BA needed was idiots who put others in danger.
Now running uphill once more, he scanned the skies.
They were clear, for now.
On his HUD he saw two dots had broken free from the group near the Daisy and were moving in his direction. Marks and Cole were on their way. Another minute’s running up the lower slopes brought him half the distance to the trapped marine. He slowed down as he drew nearer to Ellis.
It was possible he was walking into a trap. The EAC could be keeping her alive in order to lure in some BA marines. Now that the snow had stopped falling, the gray, icy rocks stood out sharp and distinct. There was no sign of life in the bare, desolate landscape.
“Ellis?”
“Yes, sir?”
Her voice had quivered, as if she were frightened. Was it because she was alone and in danger of being left behind, or because an EAC soldier was holding a gun to her head?
“Sitrep.”
“I-I, shit! I’m sorry, sir. My foot’s stuck, and—”
“Yeah, Elphicke told me. What I need to know is...” How to phrase it so he didn’t put her in danger. “Is there anything else I should know?” The question should give her a wide scope for a cryptic answer to warn him she was being held.
“I don’t think so, but you should go back without me. I’ll figure something out.”
“Figure something out? You’re trapped by your goddamned foot in the middle of nowhere. What the hell do you think you’re going to figure out, marine?” Wright stopped himself from saying more. He didn’t want to turn into another Colbourn, though at moments like these he could see her point of view.
Ellis was silent.
Her answer had seemed to indicate she wasn’t being held by the
EAC. She was just an idiot.
Marks and Cole had made it to fifty meters from his position. He waited as they climbed the final distance. When they’d reached him, he continued on with them.
This section of the slope was thick with rocks. He stepped down from a boulder, and only just redirected his foot in time to avoid stepping on a body.
The man was lying face down. Wright identified him from his ID dot, still blue on his HUD.
“McEndry,” said Marks sorrowfully.
Wright passed by the corpse. He wanted to take McEndry and the others who had died back for a proper burial, but he didn’t have that luxury. He was going to be lucky to save Ellis.
He made a ‘down’ gesture. Crouching as they continued, they slowly climbed the last thirty meters. He told Marks to flank out left and sent Cole to the right.
About five meters from her, he finally got a visual on Ellis in the shadow between two boulders. No EAC seemed to be around. One of her legs had sunk into the space between two rocks while the other was bent up, and she was holding herself up by propping her elbows on each rock.
“Holy shit,” Marks blurted.
“What’s up?” asked Wright.
“Ellis, how did you do it?”
“Do what?” replied Ellis. “Oh, you mean—”
“Marks,” began Wright, but then he saw something that surprised him, too. Scattered in the spaces among the rocks between him and the trapped marine lay three EAC corpses. Two had been killed by pulse fire, direct, close-range hits to their chests. The third was on his back at Ellis’s feet, his visor shattered and the handle of a knife sticking out of his right eye.
“You killed three of them?” Marks continued, “or did the others do it?”
Three of them? She had to mean three EAC soldiers, but she was on the other side of Ellis. She couldn’t be referring to the bodies he could see.
“Uh, no, I did it,” replied the trapped marine. “Look, I appreciate you coming back for me, but are you guys gonna be able to get me out? I don’t see how, unless you cut off my leg, and I’d rather keep it and take my chances, if it’s all the same with you.”
“Did you kill these ones too?” asked Cole, setting down the XM57 at Wright’s side.