YAMATAI - JUST BEFORE 'SHE' WAS SET FREE.
He had made it to the shore of the island without incident; an odd thing for even his people landing on this island. He had swam underwater from a mini-sub some twenty miles out, all the while certain he would be dragged into the beach by some supernatural reverse rip tide; but nothing like that occurred - he was grateful, but still... it was odd. Letting that momentary thought go, he stepped habitually cautiously on to the beach of a place that - to the world outside the world he had been part of his whole life - existed only in myth: Yamatai.
The higher-ups painted this deployment as a blessing for serving with distinction - a select few ever got to protect the interests on this rock. The greatest honor bestowed to any agent: the honor of dying as caretaker to their greatest prize... Himiko - or as they referenced their old enemy's tortured soul in communiques for over sixteen centuries - the Star Phenomenon.
He had been anxious for this gift: to hear her pathetic pleas for mercy in the wind; her insane, useless demands of 'No one leaves!' (whatever that means.) He was joyous to be her jailer. It was too long in the coming.
Finaly he would show them the true power of their gods - the Old Ones - and the unimaginable gifts they could reclaim through the practice of true faith; instead of this child-like dependency on their precious, faulty, limited vision enhancing 'technology'. What a double win for both him, and the soul of the order .
So he smiled as he pulled his oxygen tanks off, dropped them and his mask under a rusted hunk of airplane wing, pulled his wetsuit from his lean, fifty-five year old frame, and began stripping the clothes from some masked corpse of roughly his size. convenience was a blessing he never let a little thing like desecrating a corpse get in the way of. He couldn't hope for a better way to get accepted by the islands new inhabitants - before he poisoned them to death. He didn't feel this optimistic for long; it started with his choice of clothing, and went down hill real fast.
It was a good fit, but it was only after he looked at the naked body that he realized his costume would fool no one: a hole, the size of a half-dollar, was clearly visible between his deceased benefactors shoulder blades. So much for blending in. His disappointments had only just begun.
He looked around the beach... more fresh bodies; all of them dressed like his freshly naked cadaver, their clothes even more useless: bullet riddled and blood soaked. It got worse as he moved inland. But what happened next truly ruined his day.
The sky above the island suddenly exploded... into brilliant sunlight.
This isn't what he wanted to see, ever, over this island - clear, sun lit sky over every inch of the heavens. He looked up at the suddenly clear blue canopy and trembled... was SHE gone? He started to run toward the monastery when he slipped. He fell on his back, his hands splattered into a puddle of thick, viscus liquid. He looked at his hand as he lifted it from the ground, and gasped. What happened here?
Blood, the thick red liquid covered the ground, the walls, it flowed in the streams till the clear water ran as crimson as vein. As his panicked eyes focused with the light of the sun illuminating the earth around him, he staggered backward, and gaped at his now visible surroundings in terror. The dead bodies on the beach were but a portent to the charnel house he now strode through.
The blood was inches deep in some places. Thick, red, freshly spilled blood. It all but saturated the island; seeping out of an army of men, well armed and organized, slaughtered by an unknown threat. He puzzled at the bodies, their frighteningly effortlessly dispatched appearance: some hacked with the same pointed pick-like weapon, others shot square in the head - the lucky ones.
There were other bodies that looked like whoever killed them wanted them to be a message... try to run. These bodies were - simply put - decimated; just riddled with bullets, from groin to gullet; and the faces, what little was left, were barely recognizable as having been men.
This was clearly the work of a group of élite soldiers, he surmised, the best men in the military of whatever country they were from. But the butchery, it chilled him to his core.
He trembled as he touched half a skull blown apart by a shotgun blast positioned under the chin of the victim. He studied the extensive injuries delivered before the kill. What professional soldiers did this? It was as if the assailant was enjoying playing with their victim, as if they wanted to relish the fear. What were they up against?
He lifted a cell phone from a watertight bag, and stared at its glowing bars in astonishment... a signal - here... SHE was gone.
He pressed a single button and had to suppress a nervous laugh as the call went through without a single pause.
"What?" Came the gruff, English accented man's voice, clear as if the person on the other end called from a yard away.
"You will never guess where I'm calling from,"he said, as he looked over the carnage in growing unease.
"Playing games?," was the irate response, "Don't waste my..."
"Yamatai." he interrupted.
The silence on the other end of the phone was palpable. When the voice spoke again, the nervous stutter in it added to his sense of trepidation, "Im- Impossible... your charts are off!"
He shook his head, and almost burst out laughing in his anxiety"NO, my charts were not off. Trust me. Trace the phone... I'll wait." He gazed down at a pile of ashes overlooking the sea, reached down and pulled out a pair of dog tags, and looked them over carefully.
"Fuck," the voice whispered in stunned disbelief, "She's gone? The Star is... fuck! Get out of there! Before the authorities show up!"
"Hold on," he said as he read the name,"Find out what you can about a Conrad Roth, British royal Marine Commando. There has been a slaughter here, and no, the bitch's minions didn't do it. Theres a group of squatters on this rock, and the whole slew of them were splayed by an unknown team of élite killers... this Roth, he may be one of them. Just run it."
"What makes you sure? Maybe he's just another one of the others killed."
"No," he said as he kicked the dust, "They gave him a pyre. No one else was given that honor - just run the name through our London contacts and see what you get. If the British did this we are summerily screwed. We need to pull up..."
The sputter of a struggling boat engine could be heard over the gulls and sea crashing into the reefs, wrecks and shore."Hold on," he said as he lifted a small pair of binoculars to his eyes, and scanned the water for the source of the sound. "You are fucking kidding me," he whispered as he sighted his quarry.A rusted PT boat, circa 1933, slid out from an inlet down the coast, and into the open waters of the Sea of Japan. He touched a button on the top of the binoculars, and the view through them closed to inches from the faces on the ship. Another button press highlighted each one of the weary people, and gave a detailed description and bio of each. He finally reached the most battered of them: a young woman of some twenty years, torn tank-top, and jeans; heavily bandaged; scars covered her bare arms, the exposed skin of her ample breast, and a thick patch of dried blood covered the lower left side of her shirt, just above her hip. She turned to look at the island, and right at him.
He gasped at the sight of her blooded, dirt covered face - she was stunning. He hit the button; her bio streamed out on the side of her image. He smiled broadly, "well, well, well... the prodigal daughter..."
"What!?" the voice on the phone asked impatiently.
"A possible ray of hope, and a chance for a little payback for Croatia. It may well be that all of this is easily resolvable. I think Richard Croft's daughter is taking after her daddy. SHE is the one we're after for this."
"A girl? Are you cracked?"
"I'm looking right at her at this moment. Beautiful girl, nice figure, covered in blood and scars, and what may well be at least one bullet wound. Maybe there were more with her when this fight started; but she looks to be the most beat up. She seems to be as invincible as Daddy... till now."
"Deal with her."
"Love to. Just one problem: I'm on this fucking rock,and I need to destroy all remaining evidence of our interests in this scrap yard before they get to civilization; besides, she is on a fucking boat three miles away, and getting further away by the second. She is YOUR problem."
"You think she knows about us? Our 'interests' there?"
"Can you risk it? Our last agent here was that stupid fuck Rory Collins. He was obsessed with his fucking GPS trackers, scattering them like seeds... and they're gone. I can't find one. I have a feeling I know where they are. No Croft can resist something shiny. I have the code to track them in my phone. I'll text it to you. If she has them, we need to resolve this issue quickly." He thought for a moment, "Make it clean. Make it look natural. perhaps she succumbs to her injuries before she talks to the authorities. Lets just be clear about one thing: as long as she lives, we risk exposure, we risk loosing millenniums of history. Send HIM."
"Who?"
"That countryman of yours... old softy. Just follow-up with a small contingency to handle the other three, and for the unlikely event he fails. I'll finish here. By the time I'm done nothing they say will be provable. I'll see you in Rome. See that she's dead first, no matter how long, or whatever it takes... or we'll all be"
