MISSION VERITAS (Black Saber Novels Book 1)

by John Murphy

  The group felt the subtle current turn into a greater flow against their calves.

  “We’ve got to get out of here!” Mitchell cried.

  “How far? How far?” Kerrington asked.

  “A few hundred feet. We should run.”

  At the front, Vasquez tried to run, but he struggled against the increasing current. “It’s shallow on this side.” He was on a narrow ledge, with water churning in a gutter to his left.

  “Get up on the ledge, everyone!” Kerrington said.

  A hollow on the left indicated a turn in the slot canyon. They could hear water rushing beyond. They came around the bend on a slight rise above the water, only to find a mammoth boulder wedged into the slot. Water gushed furiously from a gap on the left side.

  A clap of thunder startled them as they gathered on a flat outcrop.

  “Oh, fuck! We’re dead!” Tucker said.

  Vasquez pulled the rope off Tucker’s pack. “We’ve got this.”

  “Yeah, but how are we gonna get it up there?” Benson asked.

  Kerrington turned to Pima. “Can you climb this?”

  She looked up. “I could, but I’d have to take off all my gear. Besides, it would take too long! You’d all be washed away!”

  “Not if you hurry.”

  “I could fall! Even if I get to the top, do you expect me to haul you up on the rope? What if there’s nowhere to anchor it?”

  Vasquez touched either side of the walls with a bend in each of his elbows. “I’d say it’s about four or five feet.”

  “Can you spider your way up?” Tucker asked.

  Vasquez tried to span the crevice, but it was too wide. “No can do.”

  They looked around for a way up. Heavy raindrops started pelting them a few at a time.

  “We’re fucked. Head back, head back,” Kerrington commanded.

  “That’s going to cost us a lot of time,” Sowell argued.

  “We have no other choice! We have to go back.”

  “Wait a second.” Killian squeezed forward and braced himself against the churning gutter. He surveyed the boulder and the width of the walls. “It’s about twenty feet high or so.”

  “What do you got in mind?” Vasquez asked.

  Killian handed Vasquez his plasma rifle. “Here, lock this onto my pack.”

  As Vasquez secured the rifle, Killian turned and faced the wall on the right, put his forearms on the rough surface, then reached his left foot to the wall on the opposite side. He pressed into the wall and brought his right foot up. His helmet was tucked between his forearms, and his body went rigid.

  “Vasquez, climb up and do the same above me,” Killian said. “Be sure to keep your weight on my hips and back so you don’t buckle my legs.”

  Vasquez did as he was asked, putting a knee on Killian’s hip and then carefully shifting his entire weight up.

  “Aaaagh! Don’t take too long!”

  Vasquez did a similar brace between the walls.

  “Good! A human ladder!” Kerrington shouted. “Tucker, Sowell, climb up!”

  When they did, they were just short of the top.

  “Spalding, you’re next tallest. Get up there,” Kerrington said.

  Finally, the top of the boulder was in reach. Pima scampered up the backs of the other candidates. Dohrn followed, then Carmen, who carried the rope slung around her shoulder.

  “Wrap the rope around the three of you and create an anchor,” Killian called.

  As they did, gushing water began claiming their tiny stretch of ledge. The rain increased in intensity.

  Killian dropped from his braced position into the ankle-deep water.

  Spalding looked down from the top of the human ladder, eighteen feet up. “Hey, how am I gonna get down?”

  Killian resumed his position, and Spalding clambered down on the backs of his fellow candidates, followed by Sowell, Tucker, and Vasquez.

  The three women at the top wrapped the rope around them and draped it down.

  “I can’t climb up there!” Mitchell said. “I don’t have that kind of upper body strength.”

  “Me either,” Goreman said.

  “Kerrington, can you scale this?” Killian asked. “Then you can help anchor it for Vasquez, and he can pull the girls up.”

  Surprisingly, Kerrington agreed without arguing. Using the climbing rope, he walked up the boulder, then joined the anchor. Vasquez scaled the boulder after him, followed by Tucker.

  The water deepened, thunder rolled, and the sky darkened.

  Killian held a stretch of the rope in front of Mitchell. “You can hang onto the rope, but you’ve got to walk it up.”

  Their helmets nearly touched as Killian wrapped loops around Mitchell’s thighs and waist. “I’m not so sure I can do this,” Mitchell whispered.

  “I’m here to help you.” Killian could see her worried expression through her rain-spattered face shield. “I know you can do it, but you’ve really got to try.”

  She gulped, then nodded.

  Killian stepped behind her and gave a thumbs-up to Vasquez.

  It took a couple of tries, but Mitchell caught on eventually and walked up as Vasquez and Tucker pulled.

  The rope got tossed down again, and Killian wrapped it under Goreman’s raised arms. He felt her armor touching him, more so than he felt Mitchell’s.

  Helmets close, Killian saw a much different expression, a seductive one.

  “Be sure to give me a push from below,” Goreman said.

  “Whatever you need,” Killian said. He got flustered at what appeared to be an invitation.

  “Don’t get too grabby, now,” Kerrington said.

  Killian realized all the hushed words could be heard over comms. He felt his face redden. He waved a thumbs-up.

  The rope went taut again. Goreman got her feet up, but groaned. Killian put his hands on the small of her back. She struggled a bit more, but gradually inched her way up. He pushed on her ass.

  “Oooh!” she said in a playful tone.

  “What’s going on?” Kerrington asked.

  “No grabbing,” Killian said. “Just pushing. She’s coming.”

  Vasquez muttered, “Sounded a little like coming to me.”

  “That’s sad, Vasquez,” Spalding laughed. “You should hear them when I push.”

  “Stop fucking around,” Kerrington shouted. “The water’s rising really fast on this side.”

  Rain came down harder. The water squeezing beneath the boulder jetted out, roaring furiously. An eddy created by the boulder heaved against the remaining candidates.

  Spalding, Benson, and Sowell scrambled to the top of the boulder.

  Pima screamed, “It’s coming over! It’s coming over!”

  The liquid started as a trickling flow over the face of the boulder, then quickly became a sheet of water. It splashed over Killian as he ascended the wall.

  By the time he reached the top, the girls were already on a ledge, climbing on all fours up the steep strata.

  Vasquez hauled Killian up as water cascaded over the top of the boulder.

  “Let’s go! Let’s go!” Kerrington shouted.

  They tugged the rope out of the swift current, and clambered farther up the ledge. They made it to a wider part beneath an overhang, where the group huddled out of the increasing rain.

  “We got everyone?”

  “Yeah,” Killian said, out of breath.

  “Keep going! Keep going!” Kerrington shouted.

  They scrambled up the ledge, eventually reaching a wider area well above the river below. The covered ledge continued on for several hundred feet, so the group felt safe resting underneath.

  The rain came down even harder. It was as if the group had sneaked behind a huge waterfall. The river roiled below, rising quickly
above the ledge where they’d first found shelter.

  “Motherfuck!” Tucker said. “This is unbelievable!”

  “Monsoon rains in India once set a record of three feet in twenty-four hours,” Mitchell pointed out.

  “Holy shit!” Vasquez said, raising his face shield.

  The others also lifted their face shields, exposing fearful expressions.

  “We could have all fucking died,” Spalding said.

  “Had we backtracked, we would have been washed away,” Mitchell agreed.

  “Yeah, like whoever’s helmet we found in the sand,” Spalding said.

  “We would have been okay,” Kerrington countered.

  An immense vibration caused the rock beneath them to quake.

  The females all yelped. The vibration intensified, and then there was a ground-shaking thump. The boulder they had just climbed tumbled, and water crashed over the top.

  The group all exchanged wide-eyed glances.

  “This is bullshit!” Benson said.

  “Can it,” Kerrington ordered. “Let’s not waste any more time bickering. We’re all right now.”

  “They said it would be dangerous,” Killian said.

  “Yeah, but holy fuck!” Vasquez broke into a breathless grin and then laughed. Moments later, the others joined him, until they were all laughing and slapping each other in their post-adrenaline rush.

  “Holy motherfuck!” Tucker shouted. “We could have died!” He fell over with laughter.

  Killian felt the familiar rush of giddiness that came after escaping death, but he didn’t laugh.

  You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

  * * *

  The group rested in the relative safety of the overhang, leaning against their packs and excitedly recounting their brush with death. Killian kept quiet. Eventually, everyone’s excitement died down and they went silent, waiting for the rain to abate.

  A small, round rock fell from overhead and hit Benson on his chest plate. It rolled off him, then moved around on its own.

  “What the fuck?” He sat up in a panic and clambered away.

  Another rock fell, landing on Pima. She shrieked as she watched it crawl under her legs.

  “What the fuck is that?” Tucker asked, as another rocklike creature fell before him.

  The group looked up and saw thousands of round “rock creatures” the size of fists covering the entire ceiling. More rock creatures fell.

  “This could be bad,” Mitchell said.

  “What the hell?” Kerrington kicked them away.

  “Swarming like this,” Mitchell said, “they’re likely carnivorous.”

  CHAPTER 15

  THE ROCK BUGS RAINED DOWN and swarmed around the candidates, climbing their legs. The candidates danced around, swatting and kicking them away.

  “Shit,” Vasquez said. “Do they bite?”

  As if in answer, the rock bugs began clamping onto the candidates’ armor.

  “If they can,” Mitchell said, “they’ll eat us like piranhas.”

  “Holy shit!” Tucker said, swatting and kicking at the rock bugs.

  “They’re attacking me!” Pima screamed and began running. She stumbled out of sight around a bend in the ledge.

  The rock bugs spread across the floor in one roiling mass. They clacked against one another, making sounds like frying bacon.

  The candidates tried to follow Pima, but they stumbled across the uneven, moving mass.

  Killian aimed his plasma rifle at the path ahead, flipped it to “kill,” and fired. Rock bugs splattered from the intense heat of the blast. The rifle was as powerful as he’d anticipated.

  Others fired in various directions, their weapons on stun, which scattered the bugs like a puff of wind on dry leaves.

  The bugs kept coming.

  Killian raced to the smoldering blast zone, the ground hot underneath his feet. He fired again, paving the way for the group’s escape. The others followed him. The rock bugs kept swarming. In another hundred feet, he was clear of the overhang, but the bugs followed, unrelenting predators.

  Killian ran along the ledge and around the corner, where he found Pima looking into the open space of the gorge below. The ledge had run out. The others quickly joined them.

  The candidates looked over the side and saw a slide of gravelly scree eroded off the canyon walls about twenty feet below. It continued down another hundred feet. At the bottom of the slide was another flat ledge and the raging runoff below that. The canyon walls were sheer.

  Behind them, thousands of rock bugs clambered over the tops of one another, desperate for their share of flesh.

  The rearmost candidates fired at the bugs, blasting away patches of the teeming creatures, but thousands more filled the gaps.

  “What do we do? There’s no way forward!” Dohrn screamed.

  “We can shoot them all day long, but that way leads back down to the slot canyon,” Kerrington said.

  “Jump,” Killian said.

  “No!” Pima screeched.

  “The cliff debris will break our fall,” Killian said. “It’s not that far. It should be okay.”

  Mitchell said, “The angle of the slope and the porous gravel will dissipate the energy of our fall, lessening the impact.”

  “No!” Pima shook her head furiously.

  “Maybe we can use the rope to lower us down,” Kerrington said.

  “The bugs are coming too fast,” Vasquez said.

  Kerrington said, “We’ve got to—”

  Killian jumped, his arms flailing for balance in midair, his left hand clutching the plasma rifle. He landed in the gravelly scree, which gave way under his feet. He slid down about ten feet but remained upright.

  “Fuck it!” Tucker jumped. He tumbled once, then came upright.

  The rock bugs swarmed over the remaining candidates, clamping onto their legs, clutching their way higher.

  Vasquez jumped, then Sowell, followed by the rest of the candidates—except for Pima. She stood at the edge of the cliff, screaming and shooting her plasma rifle. Bugs climbed her legs.

  Hundreds of rock bugs tumbled over the ledge, but when they hit the scree slope, they kept rolling, right over the next ledge and into the river.

  “Jump, Pima!” Kerrington shouted.

  “No!”

  “Damn it, Pima! Jump!” Dohrn yelled.

  Pima screamed as the bugs clambered up her pack and onto her helmet.

  “Jump, Pima, jump!”

  Her arms flailed as she tried to dislodge the bugs from her armor. Finally she jumped, arms whirling, and landed badly on her left leg. Her torso buckled, and her helmet hit the scree hard. She rolled down the rest of the slope and stopped on the ledge.

  “Linda!” Vasquez leapt forward and tumbled down to where Pima lay. “Linda! Linda! No, Linda!”

  The others looked at each other in confusion. Linda?

  They chased after him, making exaggerated strides down the gravelly slope. They gathered around Pima, knocking the remaining rock bugs off her and kicking them into the river. They watched as scores of rock bugs leapt off the ledge after their prey, all of them cascading helplessly into the river below.

  Killian and Vasquez grabbed Pima by the arms and dragged her away on the ledge. “Linda! Linda!” Vasquez sobbed, his voice hoarse with emotion.

  Sowell snatched up Pima’s plasma rifle, and they all ran to a wide area of the ledge. Distance muffled the roar of the river in the canyon below.

  Vasquez cradled Pima in his arms as he wept. “Linda, you’re gonna be all right. You’re gonna be okay.”

  The others huddled around them.

  Sowell leaned in. “Pima, are you badly hurt?”

  Pima pushed free of Vasquez. “I hurt all over, but I think I’m okay.”

  “Are you sure
?” Vasquez asked, tears streaking his face.

  Pima rolled onto her knees and attempted to stand. “I think I hurt my leg when I fell.” She attempted to put weight on it, but it gave way. “It hurts too much.”

  “Do you think it’s broken?” Sowell asked.

  “If it was broken, she wouldn’t be able to stand at all,” Mitchell said.

  “We can’t be sure,” Kerrington said.

  “Even a fracture would be too painful to stand on,” Killian insisted. “She’d be screaming her head off.”

  “Oh, you know so much, Mr. Street Fighter?” Kerrington challenged.

  “Yeah, I do,” Killian said.

  * * *

  Vasquez carried Pima in his arms. Sowell carried Pima’s pack and helmet. Her rifle was affixed to Tucker’s pack. Without her helmet, the atmosphere helped deaden the pain in her ankle.

  They had to stop frequently to let Vasquez rest, but he insisted he be the one to carry her.

  Not more than 200 feet across the canyon, a waterfall carved yet another channel from the cliffs above them. The water was reddish and rusty looking. Its power as it crashed down the crevice was fierce and frightening.

  As they watched, chunks of rock calved off and dissipated into the churning falls.

  “That could have been us,” Tucker said.

  “Yeah, no shit,” Spalding said with uncharacteristic sobriety.

  Farther up the canyon ledge, they came upon massive green bridge-like formations that crossed the gorge. A dozen or more bridges continued into the distance at varying elevations, most emerging from the canyon walls. They arched gracefully, as if they were roots exposed by the planet as it cracked open. The bridges were wrinkled and twisted, but had a polished look.

  Mitchell explained that the bridges were made of lava that ran through the valley, remnants of ancient volcanic flow across the landscape. The rivers of lava had been covered over for millions of years by an ocean bottom. High amounts of oxidized copper accounted for the bridges’ green color. The sedimentary rock the trunks were buried in gave way more easily to the erosion that had carved the deep canyons, leaving the massive connecting bridges.

  The rain stopped, and the river below subsided significantly, but it was still an unnerving fifty-foot drop to the rapids.