Stranded (Part 8)
For sixteen days we fought beneath a merciless sky, slogging through mud and stench as rain pissed down on our heads, cold and vile and never-ending. It filled our packs, our clothes and our weapons. It filled our mouths. For sixteen days we fought, on little food and even less sleep, an enemy that was better equipped, better prepared and almost certainly better paid than us. And for sixteen days we died.
“Dead end!” Gastun shouts, his voice barely audible over the roar of the storm. It’s our third day in the mountains, already more than a day behind schedule. We’re tasked with securing a forward site for CRU deployment - clones aren’t much use to anyone if they’re miles away from the frontline - but the fighting has pushed us north, out of the burn zone and into the mountains.
I peer over the edge. Gastun’s right. Fifteen feet below, the narrow trail we’ve been following tapers off into the rock face. A steady stream of rainwater rushes past our feet and over the edge. There is no way we’re getting down that way.
“We’ll have to double back, find another way down.“ Gastun nods, a tightening of his jaw the only indication of his growing frustration. We turn and, in single file, start back along the path that brought us here.
“What the hell do they expect us to do?” Krin up ahead, shouting against the storm.
“Our job.” Even here, now, Cala can’t resist starting an argument.
“We’re outnumbered. We have no support. And now we’re stuck on a mountain in the middle of nowhere. Don’t you get it Cala? We’re expendable. They don’t give a shit what happens to us!”
As we walk their argument becomes nothing but white noise, another layer mixed into the sound of rain and wind and thunder. I focus instead on our surroundings. We’re exposed and vulnerable, on a path barely wider than a man, snaking our way through a cleave of rock sixty feet wide and much, much deeper. Walls of sheer rock leer at us from above, white and rain smoothed and... and that’s when I see it. Bent over the edge of a cliff, a smudge of darkness so intense that it seems to collapse the air around it. Watching, motionless, untouched by the rain. The shadow stalker. The black presence that has followed me since Khabi VIII.
Cala’s scream pierces the heart of the storm. I turn in time to see the last bit of ground give way beneath her feet and drop her over the edge. Krin has his back to her and is the slowest to react. Gastun is in the rear, too far away to do anything. That leaves only me. I jump, plunging my arm over the edge, and for a terrible moment feel nothing but air between my fingers. Then skin, fingers. I have her. I try to reach out with my other hand but feel the rock start to give way underneath me as I do. We’re slipping, going over, but then Gastun and Krin are on us and together we pull her, heaving and swearing – she has the body of a 200-pound male after all – to safety.
“We need to get the hell out of these mountains.”
It’s the first time I’ve heard Gastun complain. In later years I would learn that Gastun was afraid of heights. This was as close as he ever came to showing it.
“I couldn’t agree more,” I reply, looking back at the spot where, moments before, the shadow had been.
After that we walk in silence, water-logged and weary. Everything feels heavy. My body aches and every step seems to take twice the effort, as though the rain has soaked into my bones and is weighing me down. There is no joy when we arrive at a small cave; the remnants of a fire the only evidence that we had been here the night before. Inside, tendrils of rock cling to the walls in patches like the misshapen teeth of an old Sitari hag. But at least it’s dry.
Exhausted, sleep comes easily, but it is not peaceful and when I open my eyes the shadow is staring at me, inches from my face. Beyond, at the cave entrance, Gastun keeps watch. How did it get past him? Slowly, so as not to draw attention, I reach for my sidearm. It opens its mouth, a wound that rips and stretches and closes in on itself all at once, but no sound comes out. Darkness oozes around the edge of my vision. My hand closes around the pistol, but it’s too late. The darkness takes me.
There is nothing but silence. Silence and gut-wrenching despair. My chest aches with a grief and guilt so intense that I cannot breathe, cannot feel anything but sadness and fear and confusion. A tumbling helplessness. The pure unchained fear of a child. Then, just as quickly, it’s gone. I feel the rain on my face and wonder how it got inside the cave. I realize then that I’m weeping.
Outside, the deep gray of what should be night is starting to give way to the lighter gray of day, and still it rains. We’ve seen neither sun nor night since we got here.
Gastun appears at the entrance to the cave. “I’ve found us a way out of here!” Buoyed by the thought of getting off this mountain, the rest of us follow.
He can’t keep the smile off his face as he points it out. A ridge, no more than a foot across, cut so close to the face of the mountain that we’d have to hug the wall and inch our way across.
“It’s no wonder we never spotted it the first time.”
It’s a dizzying view, one with barely enough space to stand. Slip and you’d fall. Lean back even slightly and you’d fall. I can’t help but stare at the broken talus slope below. It would not be a pleasant death.
“It widens out further ahead.” Gastun anticipating what, by the looks on our faces, we were all thinking.
“How do you know?” says Krin. It sounds more like an accusation than a question.
“Because I’ve already done it, it’s not that hard.” But something in his face tells me that’s not the whole truth.
“Are you insane!” Krin says, already backing away. “There’s got to be another way down into that valley.”
“I’m with Krin on this one.” We all look at Cala, but no-one seems more surprised than Krin. I guess there’s a first time for everything.
“Look on the bright side,” I say. “If we fall, we get to hike all the way back out here and try it again.”
It takes most of the day, but we make it down. After we had struggled and twisted our way along the outer rim, we wound our way down through the scree, eventually coming out onto the wide, flat plain that we could always see, but until now could never reach.
“Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. If we’re attacked out here, we’re as good as dead.” Gastun observes.
“Then we’d better get to work,” I reply.
The ECCM tower takes longer to put together than I’d hoped. Without the mountain to block it, the wind is stronger down here. It tugs at cables, and drags tools underfoot, and if you’re not careful a sudden gust of it will knock you off your feet. It pushes and pulls like a petulant child desperate for attention while the rain lashes at our backs. With the tower online we’d be able to punch through the interference blanket that covers the area, giving us a foothold in the region and the support we need.
“How much longer, Cala?”
The enemy appears then as though conjured into life by my words. They come in numbers we hadn’t anticipated, in tanks and on foot. They aren’t immortals, but they don’t have to be. They’re an army.
“We’ll hold them off,” I say, but we all know how this will go down. It’s over faster than I’d hoped. The shells destroy the ECCM tower and scatter us. They advance in long columns, walking and firing like some automaton army. We cut down those that get too close, but there are too many of them. Before long, I’m all that’s left.
And through it all, the shadow figure walks unharmed. Bullets pass harmlessly through it before striking and killing someone on the other side. Smoke seems to move around it, the wind doesn’t get near it.
It stops some distance in front of me, oblivious of or unconcerned about the battle being waged around, and at times, through it. It opens its mouth, and this time I hear it. The voice that at this exact moment has me trapped below the earth’s surface. The voice that has forced me through one memory after another. The voice and the shadow that are one and the same.
“They lied to you, Traveller. Are still lying to you. In the worst way possible.”
Suddenly, I’m standing outside of it all, untouched by the rain and the fighting. I look back at the memory of me lying in a pool of my own blood, at the soldiers advancing. Minmatar soldiers; my own people. At the empty husks that once housed Cala and Krin and Gastun.
“Come, I will show you what really happened this day.”