unlike anything he had ever felt before. A warning?
“Alfonso…” he said to Zevon before getting to his feet and going to the door. Opening it and looking outside, he noticed nothing amiss. All was as it should be. Freeing his spirit, he searched around the encampment for any threat to his people, his mind’s eye scouring every rock and tree.
“Sir?” Alfonso asked quietly, his rifle at the ready to protect his commander. He knew Reza probably did not need it, but that would not keep him from being prepared.
“I do not know,” Reza said as he completed his mental sweep of the area. Nothing. But the tingling continued, grew stronger. “Something feels… wrong? Different? I am not sure.”
Zevon scanned the area, as well. He happened to be looking at the enormous mesa a few kilometers away when seven streams of electric blue light erupted from it and shot through the sky.
“Captain! Look at that!” All around the bivouac, Marines were leaping to their fighting positions, regardless of what they had been doing.
But Reza did not hear him, nor did he see the blazing blue lances Zevon was frantically pointing out to him. He did not have to. At the instant the beams erupted from the ancient cavern, Reza felt as if a set of electrodes had been inserted into his brain and an invisible switch thrown.
Convulsing but a single time, Reza’s eyes rolled up to expose the whites before he collapsed to the ground.
Eustus fought to keep his footing as Enya helped him run through the forest and Hell erupted behind them. He still couldn’t believe they had managed to survive the fall from the blazing tunnel into the lake. They had struggled to shore and started running for their lives.
“Look!” she shouted above the roar of the cataclysm behind them.
Turning his head just enough to peer back through the canopy of smoldering trees, Eustus could see that the shaft of blue light behind them had changed its position. Sweeping slowly in a horizontal arc through the mountain, the beams – he could see others now, too, lancing toward the horizon – were slicing the rock apart, as if they were consuming the upper half of the mountain. Sheets of flame and rock, molten and vaporized to plasma, shot out and upward. The lake was now a boiling pit, the trees at its edge bursting into flame from the heat of the ash and rock that spewed from the disintegrating mountain. Beneath them, the ground shook with the force of an earthquake, the trees around them swaying precariously over their heads.
“Come on!” he shouted, pushing her forward, “We’ve got to get out of here!”
“Where are the horses?” she cried.
“Long gone, if they’ve got any brains at all. Run!”
They staggered onward, forcing steadily hotter air into their lungs. Eustus felt like the steam that was now roiling from the doomed lake was poaching them. Above them, he could hear the crackling of the treetops as they burst into flame. And everywhere was the rain of ash and glowing blobs of molten rock.
Behind them, the great beams continued to circle the mountain, faster now, grinding and burning it away to expose the pulsing core that Enya had somehow brought to life.
“Look out!” Enya screamed as she shoved Eustus aside, both of them toppling over a rock outcropping. A huge chunk of burning rock smashed to the ground where they had just been, burning a hole into the earth. “What are we going to do?”
Eustus didn’t have a good answer. The smoke-filled air was so hot it was almost searing their lungs, and flaming debris was raining all around them. As slow as he was moving now, limping along on his injured ankle, they didn’t stand a chance of escaping the fire.
“Enya,” he pulled her close so she could hear him shouting, and also so that he could feel her next to him one more time, “I’m not going to make it. Can’t run fast enough. You’ve got to go on alone, try to–”
“No! I’m not leaving you! We both go or we both stay!” The look in her eyes left no room for argument as her hands tightened in his.
He turned away, not wanting Enya to see the look of hopelessness on his face. He expected to die in the Corps, but he never thought it would be like this. And not with the woman he loved beside him.
He looked up to the sky, now so clouded with smoke and ash that the sun was no more than a dim disk in the darkness, searching for inspiration. Instead, he saw salvation.
“Look!” he shouted, pointing at the glinting metal shape that was rocketing toward them. “They’ve found us! They must’ve homed in on my comm link!” Eustus had tried to call the company and warn them of what was going on, but could hear nothing over the din crashing all around them.
Weaving through the flaming treetops, the hail of liquid rock spattering dangerously on its lightly armored sides, the “jeep” – one of a dozen light utility skimmers in the company – settled half a meter above the ground beside them, the troop door already open. Eustus saw a fully armed and armored figure with the name ZEVON stenciled on the helmet, frantically gesturing for him to get on board.
“Get in!” he shouted at Enya, who needed no further prompting. Zevon hoisted her aboard with one arm, his other still clutching his rifle, aiming it out beyond Eustus. With a grunt of effort, Eustus threw himself in after her, slamming the hatch shut just as a shotgun blast of debris hit the outside of the door.
“That was close, Top,” Zevon said through gritted teeth as the jeep’s pilot raced upward and away from the burning forest as fast as the little vehicle could take them. The debris outside sounded like hammers were being thrown at the skimmer, and Eustus’s nose filled with the smell of charred clothes, skin, hair, trees, rock, and metal. “What the fuck – sorry ma’am – happened?” Zevon asked.
Eustus and Enya exchanged a strained look. “We don’t really know,” Eustus said as he took a long drink from the canteen Zevon handed him. He gave another to Enya.
“The Kreelans have been here,” Enya told him. “It was a long time ago, probably hundreds or maybe even thousands of years. There was what looked like a tomb or something deep in the mountain.” She cast her eyes down. “I think I touched something I shouldn’t have.”
“Yeah,” Zevon said, looking worried, “looks like it.”
“Back off, Zevon,” Eustus warned. “It wasn’t her fault.”
“It doesn’t matter to me, Top,” the younger man replied. “But you two are going to have to explain to the XO why the company commander is in a coma.”
“What the hell do you mean, he’s in a coma?” Eustus demanded. “What happened to him?”
“He got some kind of funny feeling just before those beams lit off,” Zevon explained. “Said he felt like something was wrong or different, but he didn’t know what. We went outside to look. A minute later, all hell broke loose back there where you were, and the next thing I know the captain stiffens like someone hit him with a cattle prod, and he falls to the ground like a sack of potatoes.” Zevon was silent for a moment. Reza had been like a father to him, and he was not able to deal with the situation as well as he would have liked. “The medtechs have been working on him, but all they know for sure is that he’s in some kind of coma.”
Eustus closed his eyes. “Sweet Jesus, what have we done?”
Enya leaned close against him, tears in her eyes.
“Eustus, I’m so sorry. It was stupid. I–”
He put a finger to her lips. “It wasn’t your fault. There was no way for us to know. I should have dragged us out of there the instant we figured out it was Kreelan, and gone to get Reza.”
The jeep emerged from the cloud of smoke and spiraled in to land at the Marine firebase, now fully alerted to a disaster the magnitude of which had yet to become apparent.
Thirty-One
