Savage World

by Jennifer Slusher

  * * *

  At base camp, Luke, enthralled by the camera footage, was surrounded by squints gathered around his worktable. After years of hearing his brothers describe their military action, this was the first time he was seeing it from their POV, thanks to the live feed.

  “Hell yeah, it's better than All Access porn…”

  THWACK!

  “OW! Jeez Tom!” He glared at the glaring Major. “Yeah, you're five by five!” Luke grumbled, rubbing the back of his head. “Geez…”

  * * *

  Rolling her eyes, Shiny silently thanked whatever gods were listening that Major Merrick was up there. Sure, he could make the Foreign Legion blush, but he didn't take crap from his people.

  “Radio check solid, Gunny!” she sang out as she approached the entrance. Slinging her rifle strap over her head, she dropped to her haunches to study the hole.

  “Roger that,” Derick nodded, listening to his link feed and the voices reaching him from the other side of the rock. He couldn't see over it, but he could hear them. Sounded like a lot of skylarking, but they'd let him know if there was trouble.

  With Shiny, Maya and Jag now through, it was just him and Ren. “How's the leg?” he asked, resting an arm on his rifle.

  “Peachy, Gunny,” Ren quipped enthusiastically. “Feels like I'm back at Boot in Florida.”

  That was mostly the truth. Her skin felt odd, prickling with the sensation Maya warned was a result of tissue regeneration. For the most part, she tried to ignore it, save for the occasional tingle that felt like something crawling under her fatigues. A quick, surreptitious scratch usually solved it.

  Even if there was more, Ren would never admit it. Not to Derick. He'd gone against his better judgement allowing her to come on this mission. By all rights, she should have remained behind with Beta, babysitting the squints. She wasn't going to make him regret the decision by complaining about the invisible ants she felt running across her thigh.

  “Uh huh.” Derick raised an eyebrow. He'd suffered through tissue regen before and knew what she was probably feeling. Hell, just thinking about it made him want to scratch. It was a creepy sensation and he hated it every damn time. Without thinking, Derick let his eyes drift down to the leg of Ren's in question and caught himself right around her belt.

  Damn… Damn.

  “Right.” Derick cleared his throat. “Let me get through, give it a five count and then you come on, all right?” he ordered. Raised to let women go first, he caught himself before offering to make the offer to Ren. Out in the field, any chivalrous overture on his part would be met with a snort. If he was lucky. Not waiting for an answer, he dropped to his knees and crawled through the opening.

  In just a short time, Derick was back on his feet, flicking an insect off his arm. Moving out of the way, he took in their surroundings. “Shiny?”

  “Links are four out of five, Gunny,” the young woman called out from where she stood closer to one of the massive stones making up the wall. She ran her fingers over a thick vein of black ore running through the rock. “Might be this, yeah? Static increases the closer I get.”

  “Noted. See if you can't get a sample for the squints,” Derick ordered as Ren made her appearance, looking none the worse for wear.

  Ren wiped the sweat off her brow, frowning because a tuft of red curls had managed to get into her face. Surveying the terrain once again, she welcomed all that green, even if it was a bitch to get through. Bugs zipped around them cautiously while mosquitoes the size of zephyrs eyed her fair skin with hungry desire.

  “They're going to flip out over this place,” she grinned. An honest-to-God alien civilization. Who wouldn't freak out? When she was eight, Ren and her parents toured Giza and she remembered soaking in the ancient monuments, built by people who had no concept of electricity. This place reminded her of those now destroyed treasures.

  “Oh yeah.” Luke would go nuts, Derick figured. “Shiny…?”

  “Done!” She held up the small, plastic container with flecks of black in it as she stowed her knife.

  “Good.” The vegetation was less dense inside the walls, allowing Derick to spot what looked like paths disappearing into the overgrowth. “Just in case we're not alone here, heads up and eyes open,” he began, eyeing the pyramids seen in the drone footage. “Ozzy, don't step in anything resembling shit this time.”

  There was a grumbled 'for the love of God, it was ONCE' behind him, making Derick smirk. Of the three pyramids, one was straight ahead and the other two canted off at an angle on either side of the main building. Derick waved nuisance insects away from his face.

  “NAF!!”

  “What the hell? Shiny?!” Derick frowned at her, dropping his gaze to the fur ball at her boots.

  “I didn't bring him, Gunny! He must have followed us,” the younger woman replied, trying to wave the creature off. “Shoo. Go back to camp, Henry.”

  “You named it?!?!”

  Ozzy grabbed French by the battle harness when he went to scoop the animal up. He shot his friend a side glance warning 'if you value your life, come with me'. Pulling him back to where Ren stood, he mouthed 'uh oh' at the redhead (who was safe territory since she wasn't involved in pissing off Gunny). Plus, he didn't want to step in naf dung.

  He'd simply never hear the end of it.

  Ren winced in agreement. Shiny had done the unforgivable by not only feeding it but naming it. Those were Gunny 101 rules. Glancing at the creature, Ren found she couldn't blame the Motswana. The little fuzz ball was cute as hell. She narrowed her eyes and decided to use her power for good. This time.

  “Hey Gunny, might not be a bad idea if the little guy tags along,” she piped up, winking at Shiny. “For all we know, this could be Gaia's version of a dog or… a canary.” Okay, sometimes she overshot.

  “What?” Shiny stared at her in dismay as she gathered the creature in her arms.

  Derick gave Ren a 'not you, too' look and rolled his eyes. He shoved his safety glasses back up his nose. She had a point, as usual. Frowning at the creature, he finally inclined his head.

  “Fine. Bring Henry,” he said dryly, his opinion on the matter clear in his tone. “Richards, take Mayday and Jagger to the left pyramid. Jackson, you've got Thing One and Thing Two, to the right. Ozzy, French and Shiny, you're with me, in the middle,” he said, indicating the middle of the three pyramids. “Report every ten mikes, meet back here in one hour,” he said, glancing at the chronometer strapped to his wrist. “Clear?”

  “Crystal,” Ren returned and gave him a little smile, nothing overt, just enough to thank him for letting her share in all this. She would have been gutted to be left behind. “See you later Henry.”

  NAF!

  “Hey, it knows its name!” Ren smirked and headed out in search of Mayday and Jagger.

  Derick would have winked at her if no one else was around but, instead, let a slight smile shadow across his face as he turned away.

  “Fantastic. Do you all know your names because I don't fucking see anyone moving?!” he called out. The Sharks around him set to, quickly forming up and heading off in the directions he'd given.

  Turning to his group, he yanked his machete free of its sheath on his back. “I've got point. Shiny, take our six.”

  “Roger that!” the comtech replied over a soft 'Naf!' “Shhhh.”

  Rolling his eyes one last time, Derick headed into the underbrush and sank the machete unnecessarily hard into the first plant he found. At least this would work off some of his pent-up energy.

  * * *

  Their pyramid, which Ren had started calling it not two steps into her team's trailblazing, was smaller than the others but no less impressive. Almost three-storeys high, the sides were meticulously terraced and doubled as steps. The tan brick used to construct the edifice was limestone. It made sense, Ren thought as Jag cut a swathe through the vegetation. Their scans of the mountains indicated an abundance of it and limestone was an extremely versatile construction material for a
primitive culture.

  The top of their pyramid was a flat platform, with a stone bench positioned in the middle. On the next tier, two small windows peered out at the world. Between them, a smoothed slide of rock reached all the way to the base of the structure. More Mesoamerican, Ren decided, instead of Mesopotamian. Wouldn't her mother be proud, using big words like that? Frowning, she pushed back a low-hanging branch and followed Maya.

  “Harah!”

  Maya glanced at Ren and turned back to Jag. After serving with him for the last six months, they recognised the word escaping Jag's lips as the Hebrew equivalent of 'shit'. While Ren felt sympathy for him, she also felt guilty, not being able to take some of the burden. Any suggestions otherwise and she'd get dirty looks from both of her friends (and a mouthful from Maya).

  Pausing a moment to catch his breath, Jag wiped the sweat from his brow and squinted at the tall grass yet to be cleared. Driving the machete tip first into the ground, he took a sip out of his canteen, wincing as he shook his hand and wiggled his fingers to relieve some of the cramping.

  “Let me see your hand,” Maya ordered, holding hers out for it.

  “I'm good,” Jag obeyed. “We're almost there,” he gestured at the path.

  After Maya finished inspecting his hand, he gave her a crooked grin and tucked away his canteen. His eyes drifted to Ren and when she met his gaze, he smiled slightly. All the Sharks were close, but he felt more akin to these two than anyone else. Ren and Maya were family.

  They filled the sizeable crater left in his heart after Earth's destruction took his beloved sisters and mother. Seeing Ren almost dead yesterday drove home their worth to him. He would do anything for these cackling hens, even when they were embarrassing him by asking the sexual orientation of every cute guy they encountered because they also knew a hot, single guy.

  Or talking about shaving their nether regions.

  Wiping sweat off her cheek, Maya held up her slate, snapping pictures like a tourist even as she kept an eye on their surroundings. Doing this kept her mind off the still fresh wound of Colin's loss. She frowned, actively reminding herself of how far she'd come, and loss was a Shark thing. Still, a tiny voice whispered. Bloody fucking unfair.

  Six months ago, she lost a fiancé, something she hadn't worked up to tell Ren about yet. Not that she missed Vikram, she hadn't known him. Her parents arranged the marriage when she was twelve and he was fourteen. As adults, Maya was pleased to learn Vik hated the idea as much as she did. An arranged marriage for a Royal Marine medic?

  Rubbish. Ancient, archaic, outdated rubbish. Nobody did that anymore!

  She was pleased Vic didn't want it to happen anymore than she did. It was ignorant baggage from growing up Hindi. The caste system was abolished over a hundred years ago and with it, arranged marriages. Yet some families were too stubborn and steeped in tradition to abandon it. How many times had her mother droned on and on about how proud she should be of her Indian heritage?

  And wasn't it just like Amma to be right?

  Now, no matter how outdated those words were, Maya would have given just about anything to hear Amma's lecture on the importance of all of it one more time. Or sit by Baba, listening to him curse at the cricket scores. God, how she missed them!

  Oblivious to her friend's thoughts and the caboose of their team, Ren kept her eyes peeled for anything Maya's bio-tracker detector did not pick up. She was grateful it was calibrated to filter out insects or the readings would have driven them all insane, since the world was teeming with bugs. Evidence of a healthy ecosystem, Ren's sixth-grade biology teacher would have said.

  Waving away something buzzing at her ear, she wished the bio-tracker would have told them about the sky crabs. To be fair, the sky crabs rewrote their classification of recognisable organisms, (flying lobsters capable of creating hurricane force storms??), which explained why there hadn't been a peep from anyone's sensors. This time, they were caught with their proverbial pants down. Going forward, they needed to adapt better and faster.

  Before more people died.

  A grasshopper thunked against her body armour, making Ren smirk as it pinged off Maya's helmet. Crazy thing.

  “Good for planting, Miss Renee.”

  Ren looked down, digging at the dirt with the toe of her boot.

  Mister Edgar, her family's gardener, would approve of the rich, loamy soil. Not for the first time, Ren wondered if their original landing site should be abandoned. This valley, with the river, good soil, and shelter, thanks to the surrounding mountains, might be a better place. Certainly, the architects of this city had settled here for good reason.

  Stepping forward, Ren pulled back when she felt her boot push something hard into the dirt. To save time, they'd veered off the paved path to take a direct route to the pyramid. Looking down, something jutted out of the ground and Ren dropped a knee beside it.

  “Hold up!” she called out, pulling a multi-tool from a vest pocket. Unfolding it to produce a flat blade knife, she dug in, brushing away the loosened dirt with the back of a hand.

  “What is it?” Jag asked, flipping on his torch to give her some more light.

  Ren grabbed the pale object and wiggled it, finally yanking it free.

  “Oh wow…” she breathed, holding up a glazed figurine the length of her palm. If she had to guess, she would say it was carved from bone. Tapping her link, she hailed Derick. “Gunny, I found something.”

  “I'll say, look at the detail,” Maya's eyes lit up as she grinned at Jag.

  The artist in Ren agreed as she stepped into a shaft of sunlight and held up the figure. “Major, can you see this?”

  * * *

  Pausing, Derick slipped his slate from a pocket and tapped it as Ozzy moved around him to take up clearing their trail. “Luke, patch her feed to my slate,” he ordered.

  * * *

  “Do I get my allowance if I do?” Luke's voice responded.

  “Oi, patch him through!” Tom ordered, shooting the younger Rickman a look that said now was NOT the time.

  * * *

  Derick winced at the tone in his Major's voice and made a mental note to talk to (or shake him, shaking was good) Luke when he got back. Orders were orders and Luke ought to know better. A light blipped at him from the corner of the screen and he swiped a thumb across the smooth surface. A second later, he was looking at Ren's gloved hand holding up a small … thing.

  “Okay. What am I looking at?”

  * * *

  “It's a carving of some kind,” Ren explained, rubbing more dirt off with a thumb. “I think it's made from bone. There's a rudimentary glazing to keep it from breaking down. I've seen the technique in pottery made by the Mesopotamians in the 13th century BC but look at it, though. It's a biped,” she said, running a finger over the two legs, the big round eyes and the prominent ridge above the bow-shaped mouth. The nose was wide and stubby and the body willowy but the hands… Ren turned it over in her palm and spoke again. “It's amphibian! Look, its hands are webbed.” She pointed out the splayed-open long fingers and toes.

  “Gunny, I think this is one of them.”

  * * *

  Whoa.

  Was that Ren? Derick stared at the slate. Sounded like her and yep, those were her hands. That was her voice (a rather posh Manhattan lilt the Marines hadn't been able to drill out of her) and the feed identified her as RICHARDS RENEE E. Still catching up from 'rudimentary glazing' and Mesopotamian, Derick blinked at her latest information. Damn. When did Orphan Annie turn into Indiana freakin' Jones? Even as he processed what he was seeing, a thought nagged the back of his mind. She was sooo out of his league, wasn't she?

  “Should I bag it?” Ren was asking him. Right.

  “Uh… Yes,” Derick shook his head, dislodging something off his helmet. “Dr. op a locator next to anything else you find and leave it. I don't want to lose our daylight,” he said, more business-like than usual.

  * * *

  Ren met Maya's gaze with a puzzled expression
of 'what crawled up his ass and died?' “Gotcha, I'll bag this thing and flag any more souvenirs.”

  Maya dug a plastic Ziploc bag out of a pocket and handed it over. “Here. Off you go, Jagger,” she grinned, making shooing motions with her hands. “Chop-chop.”

  Muttering in Hebrew, Jagger shot Maya the bird and yanked the machete out of the ground where he'd planted it. The Indian medic reminded him most of his sister Jacoba and the thought saddened him.

  Sweet, bossy, big sisterly Jacoba. She should have been here.

  XVIII

  Worship

  Hacking at the last of the vines curtained over the darkened entry, Derick yanked them free and tossed them aside. Stepping back, he snagged a rag from his belt to wipe down the blade before sheathing it. Dank, cool air breezed out of the passageway, brushing them all with the scents of greenery and decay. Frowning, he yanked more vines from the sides of the entry, revealing identical holes on each side. About six inches by six inches, they were mostly worn smooth, with gouges cutting up the edges.

  “Looks like a locking mechanism of some kind,” he said, bringing his rifle up. Thumbing on the torch snapped to the top, he shined it down the passageway. “French, you're with me. Shiny, Ozzy, you two stay out here.”

  “NAF! NAF NAF!!”

  “You stay here too, Private,” Derick glanced back, pointing at the critter. Not that he would admit in a million years, but the little fuzz butt was growing on him already. Nor would he admit to breaking his own rules and leaving a protein bar out for Mrs Henry. “Base, Shiny and Ozzy are covering the entrance. French and I are heading in. You got a good link on the visual?”

  * * *

  “Yeah, you're coming in five by five,” Tom answered from where he now sat beside Luke and Jules, all of them glued on the feed. “Clear to proceed. You can see, Doc?” he asked, glancing to where Dr. Samara Nordin was standing behind them. While his Sharks were playing Jumanji, Jules ensured the appropriate personnel was present to offer their expertise. In particular, the cultural anthropologist attached to the expedition.