What Lies Beneath
By Soul Reaver
Disclaimer: Both the Roughnecks and the Mummy characters belong to their respective creators. I make no money out of this and my only reward is my own enjoyment.
Summary: Set in the late 21st Century, a decade after the Bug War, and parts may spill into the 20th Imhotep's evil still lives, festering beneath the sands, as does his cult. A line of asterisks shows a change of point of view and a line of minus sands shows a change in time, either backward or forward..
Chapter One
The little wooden marionette danced across the floor in an inanimate pirouette. Its strings lead up to the deft hands of the man who controlled it. He was a medium built man, with wire-framed eyeglasses and a low faded haircut. A small, thin beard was growing on his face he hadn't shaved in days. It was a face as scraggly as his garb, simply an undershirt and a pair of drab olive fatigue trousers. A German shepherd lying on the floor perked up as he dropped the puppet on the floor in a heap as opposed to hanging it from the hook on his apartment wall.
He stared out the window into the Cairo streets below his apartment building. There was a building across the street, the Cairo Hospital. He looked at it for a moment as if trying to recapture a lost moment, trying to go back to a time when there wasn't reconstruction going on in the building façade. It was long moments before he migrated to his desk, switched on his computer and began to type.
As he typed, these words appeared on the screen:
The woman I love is…
It was long moments before he could bring himself to type the word that spoke the truth, but was somehow too painful to simply type at this moment. He decided to continue on with his tale.
Appeared on the screen of the computer. The man continued typing; It is a tale of strife, of intrigue, but a tale of love nonetheless.
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That same man, a few days ago, twenty one year old Warrant Officer Larry Purvis, K-9 Corps, kenneled Ranger, his German shepherd, his K-9 partner whom he had been assigned. He had taken this Cairo station after two of the three years he had been in the K-9 Corps being spent at the training school and later at the Amazonia K-9 Corps base along the Amazon River in Brazil.
K-9 Corps handlers were all warrant officers or above, typically applicants would go through the warrant officer school which was a year long course half spent in military basic training and the other half in military etiquette before going to K-9 Corps assignment with training for another year. Two MI troopers passed by, both saluting. Purvis returned the salute before turning around and taking Ranger out of the kennel.
"What the hell, boy." Purvis said, "We both need a walk."
He leashed Ranger and walked him out the base gate. He walked about until he came to the Cairo Hospital. He saw her walking from her car as he and Ranger walked by. "Got a minute?" he said.
"You aren't sick, Purvis." she replied.
"Come to think of it," Purvis said, gamely, "there is that nasty ache in my abdomen…"
"Very funny." she replied. She was petite in stature, dark haired with matching eyes, and slim figured. Irene Amoros was the apple of Purvis' eye since he had arrived here, but for some reason he could never quite get the nerve to tell her how he really felt.
Ranger barked impatiently, wanting to continue his walk. "Ranger, calm down boy." Purvis said.
"Your dog seems quite edgy." Irene said.
"He just wants exercise." Purvis said, gently but firmly bracing his forearm on Ranger's leash. The German shepherd got the message and sat.
"Well, I've got work to do." Irene, ever the busy young medical intern, replied.
Purvis continued his walk. Ranger got back up and followed, lead by Purvis' leash. As far as K-9 Corps went, most handlers tended to become very emotionally attached to their dogs and Purvis and Ranger were no exception. Ranger refused to go anywhere unless Purvis told him otherwise. Presently, Purvis strolled back onto base, back to his small apartment in the Bachelor Officer's Quarters, and off to bed.
It was Ranger who first realized something was amiss when he nuzzled his handler out of his bed. "What is it boy?" Purvis said, putting on his glasses.
It was just then that the alarm went off and in the middle of the night, all personnel were assigned to join their units for specific briefings.
Lieutenant Kirsch was standing in one of the briefing rooms, awaiting the last of his handlers for his twenty-man K-9 reconnaissance unit. He activated a holographic viewer and Purvis saw what looked like an underground sonar map of ruins underground, partially dug up. "A seismic research facility reported finding this city four months ago. Ever since then, unusual seismic activity has been peaking up in that general vicinity. As of 0100 this morning nothing has been heard of from the research facility. Now the Sky Marshall doesn't want to be too overt about this, so we have the MI garrison on standby alert with three squads accompanying us. Intel's sending more psys into this region and in the meantime, they want us gathering intelligence on that site round the clock. Our K-9 units are to range ahead of the main force, gathering any and all intelligence we can, constantly relaying information to the command post. Understood."
"Mr. Purvis," said Chief Warrant Officer Colley, "Prep the K-9's for the op."
All K-9s had their quirks and the K-9s Purvis was assigned to prep were no exception. Diablo was the dog he least liked to prep. Diablo, the LT's dog, a Doberman pinscher, had the tendency to bite or otherwise injure other handlers aside from his master. Right now, Diablo was growling ominously at him as he carried his radio collar and camera equipment harness. All neodogs carried a radio, a self destruct bomb which the operator or the dog can blow itself up in case of bad wounds or capture, and a variable vision mode camera which enabled his human partner to see what it saw. There are stories about K-9 handlers whom, when they lose their charges, go insane and need extensive mental rehabilitation. As for K-9's whose masters are killed the K-9 is killed at once to spare it the grief of losing its caretaker who cared for it from puppy hood onward. All K-9 Corps recruits are assigned to an adolescent dog and one of the K-9 Corps School's objectives is to foster a sort of partnership between both dog and man.
Purvis knew all this as he geared up all nineteen dogs, and the handlers geared up as well for the fight. Purvis threw on the supply vest over his khaki fatigue uniform, which contained a pistol, ammo magazines, his radio, flashlight, canteen, and infrared scope. He took the Glock 21 and his spare magazines. Purvis preferred to carry the heavier .45 caliber weapon as opposed to the standard nine-millimeter firearm because of it's greater stopping power than the nine-millimeter.
He scratched Ranger behind his ears as the 3rd Tactical Reconnaissance, K-9, squad boarded its skimmer, flying out towards the seismic research facility. Once there, the K-9 Corps would be inserted five miles away from the objective and provide recon data on the periphery of the MI and Intel spec ops units inserted ten miles from the site.
K-9 senses are inherently sharper than those of humans, so Purvis released Ranger's leash and let him sneak through the ruins at his discretion. K-9 handlers typically were reliant on stealth to accomplish their missions and their K-9s were equally as well trained.
Keeping low and to cover, Ranger used every sense he had, making little, if any, noise as Purvis activated Ranger's camera to see what he could see. Activating his own infrared scope, he panned about the ruins from the rocky outcropping where he was hiding. He took the little flat screen reader, the one connected to Ranger's translator unit, that would translate his barks into human terms and took a look at the screen, Ranger hadn't barked yet so nothing was going on.
This was the riskiest part of a K-9 team and both K-9 and handler know not to make any noise unless absolutely necessary. Ranger came back from his patrol, he hadn't detected anything unusual, he reported by a series of body positioning that both he and Purvis were trained to recognize. Something was wrong, however, as the fur on the back of Ranger's neck stood on end. "What is it boy?" Purvis whispered.
Ranger responded by pointing towards the direction he wanted Purvis to go. Crawling silently, with Ranger in the lead, Purvis drew his pistol, chambered a round and peered over a dune. There was a dune in front of him that appeared suddenly, in the shape of a face, a human face. Almost as soon as it appeared it disappeared. This is unusual. Purvis thought.
Ranger led him around the face like appearance, toward the entrance of a large structure. The tracks of vehicles were visible, as were several vehicles themselves, red turbaned warriors stood guard around them with several more coming in and out of the structure. From out of a truck, came three people, one of them one of Purvis' fellow K-9 handlers, a chubby fellow Hutchinson. Hutchinson's face had a hollow eyed look of a handler that had just lost his K-9. All three appeared to be prisoners and Purvis saw the most unlikely sight he had ever laid his eyes upon. A man, whom, judging by the stature his skeletal figure and rotted flesh presented, might have been quite muscular in life, stood before the three captives and strangely enough, in a swirl of sand, he watched as Hutchinson was reduced from the fleshy frame to barely a skeleton. Each time the walking corpse repeated this deed he would appear more human and when he finished off the third captive, he was now a copper skinned, muscular, and bald headed man.
Purvis was horrified and he tightened his grip on his pistol. The strange man said a few words in a language he didn't know, but judging from his tone, he didn't like it. Coming up behind him were half a dozen mummy soldiers wielding wicked looking swords and tridents. Creeping away before they saw him, Purvis managed to get out of the canyon when his boot slipped and a rock skittered down the cliff. The six mummy soldiers went after him. Firing his pistol, the first mummy took two .45 caliber rounds to the chest and a third to the head before going down. Assuming a practiced firing stance, Purvis squeezed another tight pattern around the fourth and fifth mummies about their torsos. Half reduced the attacking force continued pursuit as Purvis raced across the desert, firing his weapon, and dropping the empty clip, one mummy still in pursuit.
He came upon the command post, expecting to find answers and at least a few MI troopers to help him drive off those mummified bastards but the command post was deserted, dead men lying killed at their posts, and drag marks where human beings had been dragged across the sands. He tried to raise the base on the radio, nothing but static.
He had to get to Cairo in time to warn the base of what to expect. Finding a jeep, he drove across the dunes like a madman, not knowing what awaited him and Ranger in the city. He didn't know, could not know, that the city had already been completely taken over…
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