Fortress of the Dead

by Chris Roberson

  “We gotta go, kid,” the sergeant shouted in her ear. “This is our stop!”

  Jun swallowed hard as she carried her own bundle of weapons clutched close to her chest, and hurried across the deck to the edge of the bay doors, reaching it just as Sibyl disappeared from view. She paused for the briefest of instants to glance back over her shoulder at the sergeant who was moving into position directly behind her. Josiah grinned and gave her a thumbs up. Jun nodded, turned to the open doors, and held her breath as she stepped over the edge and plunged down into the night.

  Chapter 17

  JUN CROUCHED IN the shadows at the edge of the landing pad, ears straining to hear any sounds coming from the defensive emplacement that stood about twenty yards to her right. Whenever she shifted her weight her left ankle screamed out in agony, from where she twisted it badly when she landed higher up the slope of the mountain a short time below. She’d had to limp her way down onto the platform, but at least the ankle had not proven to be broken as she’d originally feared.

  Of all the members of the squad, only Sibyl and Werner had managed to touch down directly in the designated drop zone, coming down right in the middle of the landing pad itself. Sergeant Josiah had come down even farther up the slope than Jun had, and for a considerable while it looked like Curtis might have been blown off course entirely. It wasn’t until Jun and Josiah got out of their harness and rid themselves of their chutes, and then made their way down to the landing pad where they joined Werner and Sibyl, that the young American poked his head up over the edge of the pad, having climbed up from the spot where he’d come down lower on the mountain’s slope. And while the squad had suffered the odd scrape or bruise, it appeared that Jun’s twisted ankle was the closest any of them had come to an actual injury, and so aside from her pronounced limp the squad was able to move through the shadows unhindered.

  Now they waited to see if their arrival had been detected by the fortress’s defenses. The squad communicated only in hand gestures and the nod or shake of a head, wary of making any unnecessary noise. Jun listened hard for any sound of klaxons or of voices raised in alarm, but the turrets remained silent. Lights shone from within, but the squad could not see into the interiors from their vantage behind the turrets in the emplacements’ blind spots.

  When several minutes had passed without any alarm being raised and without guards emerging to defend against invaders, Sergeant Josiah motioned for the squad to approach the hangar doors one by one. He initially signaled for Jun to take the lead, but in response she indicated her injured ankle, suggesting that her limp would slow her down and that she might better serve bringing up the rear, instead. So the sergeant had tapped Werner to take point, with Sibyl and Curtis following close behind. Finally the sergeant darted across the landing pad to the hangar doors, and then Jun trailed after them.

  It was only a short distance across the landing pad to the hangar doors, which were even larger than Ndidi’s sketched diagram had suggested. By the time that Jun limped her way across the landing pad and reached the others, Werner and the sergeant were already in the process of attempting to lift up the bottom of the rolling door. The intention was that they would force the door to raise just enough for the squad to slide under, while hopefully not making enough noise in the process to alert anyone within to their presence.

  Best case scenario would be that they would get the door open and all five of them would be inside before any roaming patrol happened upon them, leaving them free to infiltrate the fortress undetected. Worst case scenario would be that their attempt to open the door would alert someone inside to their presence, and the squad would find themselves facing the full force of the fortress’s defenses.

  What was actually happening fell somewhere in the middle, Jun decided, better than the worst case but far from the best, as well.

  “It won’t budge,” Josiah said in a harsh whisper, straining to lift the door. He turned and motioned for Curtis and Sibyl to shoulder their arms and join him and Werner in the attempt. But even with another pair of hands they didn’t seem able to budge the door even a fraction.

  Jun considered adding her own hands to the equation, but took one step closer to the door and winced when her weight shifted onto her injured ankle. She knew that the added strain of attempting to lift the clearly extremely heavy door would be too much for her already complaining joint to take. And so she stayed back, eyes scanning from one side of the landing pad to the other and back, watchful for any enemy forces.

  That’s when she spotted the shadow in the wall beside the hangar door, not far from the place where she was now standing.

  From a distance, and seen in the dim light from the far side of the landing pad, Jun had thought that the rough walls of reinforced concrete to either side of the rolling door continued unbroken until they met the raw stone of the mountainside itself on either side. But from this closer vantage point she could now clearly see that what she had taken to be seams between two sections of the concrete wall was actually some kind of access panel.

  Glancing back to see that the sergeant and the others were still trying their luck with the rolling door, Jun limped over to the access panel. It was painted the same flat grey as the concrete wall around it, but seen close up it was clearly a different texture, smooth where the concrete was rough. It was small and square, flush with the ground and rising only about as high as Jun’s knees. And when she bent down and tapped a fingernail against it, she could hear a faint metallic ringing sound. She ran her fingers around the edges of the panel, and found that she was able to prise it away a fraction of an inch from the surrounding concrete with only a little effort, but couldn’t seem able to make it open up any wider.

  Not wanting to raise her voice and draw any undue attention, Jun straightened up and limped back over to where the sergeant and the others were clustered around the hangar door.

  “Damn thing’s gotta be locked,” the sergeant said in a voice scarcely above a whisper. “No way it’s that heavy.”

  “Maybe this wasn’t the best plan to begin with?” Curtis chimed in, unhelpfully.

  Sibyl shot the young American a sharp glance, but Werner had stepped away a bit and was studying the edges of the rolling door.

  Jun tapped the sergeant on the elbow, and then when he turned to her she pointed in the direction of the access panel. Jun could see a light coming on in the sergeant’s eyes as he nodded and quickly stepped over to stand in front of the panel. She watched as he knelt down, did the same sort of cursory inspection that she had a moment before, and like Jun before him tried to pull the panel loose from the surrounding concrete. He only managed to get it to open marginally wider than Jun had, and she could see frustration lining his face. But then he pulled his combat knife out of its sheath on his belt, rammed the point in between the outer lip of the access panel and the concrete behind it, and working the blade back and forth for less than a minute at several key spots around the edge managed to force the panel completely away from the wall. The sergeant deftly caught the panel before it fell clattering to the ground, and then propped it up against the wall to one side before bending down and peering into the space beyond the opening.

  Jun lowered herself down onto her knees beside the sergeant, careful not to put too much weight on her injured ankle as she did. She bent low, the palms of her hands against the ground, and as the sergeant leaned out of the way she moved into the place he had just occupied, looking through the small square opening.

  It was a mass of electrical wiring, neatly bound into bundles that ran along the sides of a narrow conduit that snaked away from the opening and deep into the wall beyond. The area immediately on the other side of the opening was as dark as the tomb, but light could be seen dimly shining somewhere beyond the bend. And despite the fact that bundles of wiring were affixed to both sides of the conduit, there was about eighteen inches of clearance down the middle, at least as far down the conduit as she could see.

  “Well,” Josiah said in a
quiet voice, laying a hand on Jun’s shoulder as she straightened up from the opening. “At least you can stay off of that bum ankle of yours for a while longer.”

  Jun had the sinking feeling that she knew just what he was suggesting.

  “None of the rest of us could squeeze through,” the sergeant continued, and then reached out and laid his hands against the outsides of both of Jun’s shoulders, like he was taking a measurement. Then he turned back to the opening, his hands still held that distance apart, and sized it against the clearance down the center of the conduit. “It’d be a bit snug, but I think you could manage it.”

  Jun was already unslinging her submachine gun from her back and pulling the strap of her bolt-action rifle off her shoulder. Sibyl and Curtis had walked over to join them, and Jun handed them her weapons to mind as she removed anything that served to increase her profile, including the heavy coat she had worn. In the end, she kept the holstered Webley Mk VI belted around her waist, along with the combat knife in its sheath, but all of the rest of her equipment, ammunition, and arms she had given over to her squad mates for safe keeping. She stood in shirt sleeves, teeth chattering in the frigid alpine air.

  Werner moved silently across the landing pad to join them, keeping his eyes on the defensive turrets. “No sign that they have spotted us yet,” he said in a barely audible hush, “but if they adhere to standard defensive procedures then a sentry patrol is bound to sweep through the area before too much longer. Whatever we do, we need to do it quickly.”

  At the last minute, Jun opted to remove her boots as well. She was not sure what the conduit passed through or by as it traveled through the wall, but was mindful of the dangers of making too much noise as she shimmied her way through, searching for a way in. And her stockinged feet and bare hands would doubtless produce less noise than her boots clanging against the metal walls of the conduit as she crawled along it. It meant that she was even more conscious of the cold than she had been before, but if it reduced her chances of being detected, then the discomfort would be worth it.

  “Find a way into the hangar, and get the doors open,” Sergeant Josiah said, quiet enough that only Jun could hear, his hands once more on her shoulders, but this time gripping them firmly in a supportive gesture rather than sizing her up. “Doesn’t have to be wide open, either, just high enough for us to slide under. You get that?”

  Jun just nodded, eyes narrowed. She clenched her jaw, but as much to keep her teeth from chattering from the cold as anything. She found that she was actually eager to get moving, if it meant getting in out of the chill.

  “Good luck, then, kid.” The sergeant released his hold on her shoulders and stepped aside, waving an arm towards the opening like a doorman at a posh hotel welcoming a guest to enter.

  Crouching down low on her hands and knees, Jun crawled to the open access panel. The sergeant was right, it would be a tight fit. She felt lucky that she had never been bothered by confined spaces. Or by the dark, as once she was inside the conduit with her body blocking the faint illumination from outside, then the only source of the light would be somewhere out of sight beyond the last bend ahead.

  Pushing her arms out in front of her, palms down against the cold metal floor of the conduit, she slid forward as far as she was able, until she was sliding along on her stomach. Then using her hands to pull and her feet to push, she shimmied her way through the narrow opening in the conduit, gradually inching her way into the heart of the fortress.

  Chapter 18

  CRAWLING THROUGH THE confined space felt a little too much like being buried alive in a narrow coffin, and Jun had not travelled far along the conduit’s length before she regretting thinking only moments earlier that snaking through the cramped, dark space would be preferable to being out in the open, chill air. And while she was not normally one given to unnecessary fears, something about being so constricted, with her mobility so severely limited, was bringing out any number of anxieties and worries that would not usually have even occurred to her.

  Her pulse thundered in her ears, and the sound of her own breathing seemed near deafening as it echoed back to her off the cold metal walls of the passageway. She found herself wondering if the air supply within the conduit might be limited, and if so if she might be in danger of exhausting it before she made it through. At one point she even thought to wonder whether any of the bundles of cables she was brushing past might be improperly insulated, and from that moment onwards part of her brain was occupied with worries about being electrocuted by coming into contact with a bare live wire.

  After what had only been a matter of minutes but felt like a small eternity, Jun finally reached the bend in the conduit that she had seen from outside, beyond which a light was shining somewhere ahead. Thankfully the bend in the conduit was a fairly gradual one, Jun realized with a sigh of relief, as she would likely have had considerable difficulty pushing herself through had it been a turn that was any sharper. As it was, there was a moment after her head and shoulders were past the turn but her lower half was still on the far side, where she had to hold her breath and suck in her gut as much as possible to squeeze her hips through the turn. But then she was all of the way past, and could at last see what the source of the illumination ahead was.

  The conduit continued straight beyond the bend for at least another twenty or thirty feet before turning again, but about halfway along that length there was some kind of metal grill set into the right side of the conduit. Bright light streamed in through the gaps in the metal grill, shafts of illumination carving up the darkness within the narrow space.

  It took Jun several more minutes to drag and push herself along the conduit until she approached the grill, and every minute that it took, every second that passed, she was conscious of the rest of the squad standing out in the open on the landing pad, exposed not only to the elements but to the view of any patrol that might happen randomly to pass by. Her muscles screamed in agony over the odd contortions she was forcing them into, the skin of her palms rubbed raw by the friction. Her injured ankle was already a constant source of pain and distress, but now her toes on both feet felt battered and abused, and she wouldn’t be surprised to learn that she had managed to dislocate one or more of them in the process.

  But finally her head and shoulders pulled even with the edge of the metal grill, and squinting her eyes Jun was able to peer through the tiny gaps in the grill and into the brightly-lit space beyond.

  At first, all she could see was the broad expanse of concrete that stretched out just below the other side of the grill, the floor of the hangar inside the rolling door. Then, shifting her weight up onto one shoulder and craning her neck to one side, she could see the rolling hangar door itself, and twisting around as far as she was able she could just make out the chain-and-pulley system on the sides of the hangar door which winched it up and open. Lowering herself back onto both shoulders, her cheek pressed against the metal floor of the conduit, Jun tried to see if there was anyone about in the hangar, but as far as she could see, the cavernous space was entirely empty.

  Gritting her teeth, Jun got to work on trying to remove the grill from the opening, remaining careful not to make any unnecessary noise. Just because she couldn’t see anyone in the hangar didn’t mean that there wasn’t anyone there. The view from her vantage point seemed almost as restricted as her range of motion within the conduit itself, which was making removing the grill even more difficult than she had anticipated. She found the places where screws had been driven into place from the other side, affixing the grill to a metal frame that sat in the side wall of the conduit. In the end, she found that it was more manageable simply to remove the entire frame, grill and all, using the point of her combat knife to bend back the somewhat more malleable metal of the conduit wall, gradually freeing the grill and frame from their moorings.

  The frame and grill came loose a split second sooner than Jun had anticipated, while she still had both hands on the handle of her combat knife, bending back th
e last bit of the conduit wall holding it in place. The heavy grill landed on the concrete floor beyond with a deafening clatter, that echoed back from the far walls of the hangar, reverberating in the enormous space.

  Jun cringed, shoulders hunched, sure that at any moment guards would come rushing over to investigate. But as the last faint echoes of the clattering grill died away, the hangar once more settled into a still silence.

  Deciding that either the coast was clear or it would soon be too late to do anything about it one way or another, Jun went to work trying to twist and contort herself to squeeze through the open gap in the wall of the conduit. It was even a tighter fit than climbing into the conduit had been in the first place, made even more difficult by the fact that there were now bits of twisted metal with sharp edges where Jun had pried the grill’s frame loose from its housing. As it was, Jun managed to wiggle her way almost entirely through the gap before suffering an injury, when one of the sharp bits of twisted metal dug into the outside of her right thigh as she squeezed through.

  Jun was through the gap and on her hands and knees, her eyes having to adjust to the bright illumination in the hangar after the dim gloom within the conduit. Her Webley revolver was in her hand even before she had climbed to her feet, her eyes darting to either side of her, ears straining to hear the sound of approaching footsteps. And while she could hear a voice echoing somewhere in the distance, too far to make out any individual words but with a buzzing electronic quality to it that suggested it was someone talking over a loud-speaker or through a public address system, the hangar itself remained quiet.

  She took a brief moment to check on her thigh. The metal had torn through the fabric of her fatigue pants, but while it did drag a nasty gash across her thigh deep enough to draw blood, the wound was shallow enough that Jun didn’t think that it needed immediate dressing.