Author's Note: Please note that this chapter contains plenty of things which will doubtless raise some eyebrows—including one very notable issue concerning Storm Shadow's hearing. Please be assured that I know these are weird, and they are in fact plot points that will be explained in future. We're getting into the thick of it now, kids.
Rating: T for now. May climb to M in future due to violence.
Disclaimer: G.I. Joe is the property of Hasbro, Inc. The Aliens and Predator franchises are property of 20th Century Fox Entertainment. I derive no profit from the use of these characters and concepts, and have received no compensation. Please accept this work in the spirit with which it is offered—as a work of respect and love, not an attempt to claim ownership or earn money from these intellectual properties.
Chapter Four: Old-Time Religion
The world was gray and misty the next morning when the Joes fell in. Still in the guise of Sgt. Dietrich and her troops, but with packs jammed full of decidedly non-regulation equipment, they double-timed it across the sloping ground towards the lacework of barbed wire that served for a fence around the temple site itself. There were two yawning guards on duty at the gate, perfunctorily checking passes and orders; today was the day when the civilian archaeologists were supposed to be moved off-site, and aside from the soldiers changing shifts, nobody was expected to enter the building itself. Scarlett could see Beach Head tensing at the state of the guards, and hurried the team through the checkpoint before he could blow their cover by assigning more than the usual physically-impossible numbers of pushups.
The closer they drew to the ruined temple, the thicker the mist grew. The crumbled limestone littering the ground was chill to the touch, and beads of moisture clung to everything, making the footing treacherous. For a few long moments, after the gate had been swallowed up by the early-morning dimness and with nothing but the vague shadow of the temple looming before them, the Joes seemed to be utterly in the world. Coarse gravel crunched underfoot with each step. When Lifeline's foot hit a discarded soda can, the hollow clonk made the little medic jump and elicited a muffled obscenity from Beach Head.
Lights bloomed out of the dimness ahead, and two shapes resolved themselves into another pair of guards. "Fucking fog," one of them said in a strong British accent, rubbing his hands on his jacket in a futile attempt to get them dry. The other passed a comment in French, making Lady Jaye laugh. "Sgt. Dietrich, right?"
"Relief on the second sublevel," Scarlett said.
"Right, we've got you on the sheet." The soldier beckoned them forward, leading them right up to a half-crumbled ancient stone wall. A temporary guard shack had been erected by the dark doorway into the temple. "You'll need these," he said, unhooking several halogen lanterns from the wall and handing them to the Joes. "It gets darker than Satan's asshole down there. This shaft takes you straight down to the second level, so if any of your people are claustrophobic, they're out of luck. Your relief's coming through at 1400 hours."
Without another word, he and his fellow guard returned to their posts, and the Joes faced the entrance to the temple.
The broad ramp that they had seen from the air led up to the first and only level of the steppe pyramid, but the Joes were going below. The doorway in front of them was barely six feet tall, chiseled roughly out of the stone and braced with a mass of steel tubing and blue plastic tarps. Crude steps led sharply downward, with battery-powered lights strung haphazardly along one wall and providing just enough light to see the fall you would take if you put a foot out of place. From the look of the fresh tool marks on the stone, the archaeologists had broken a new entrance into an old shaft, probably to avoid unstable areas. The lights half-illuminated scenes and glyphs cut into the walls—bas-relief pictures interspersed with stained sheets of bare rock that once have must been intricately painted. Their breath echoed loudly in the tight space, and Beach Head cursed again as he cracked his head against a low-hanging spur of rock. "Gawddamn short people," he muttered, breaking the tension somewhat.
The further down they climbed, the newer the decorations on the walls looked. Small niches appeared, some empty, some containing bizarre statues of kneeling figures with oversized masks and weaponry. Here, the paint was in better condition and the pictures were much clearer. Every wall was a scene of war, with the blood depressingly well-rendered. Jaye murmured something about oxidized paint, and Scarlett agreed with her. The beautifully-painted blood pools all shone lurid green in the light of the lamps.
It was only a couple of minutes, but it seemed much longer when the Joes finally emerged from the cramped tunnel. The darkness dropped away abruptly as they stepped out into a large hall. Rather than rough-cut stairs, there were neatly squared blocks of stone underfoot, and more electric lanterns strung from block columns covered with intricate carvings. The roof was more than fifteen feet above, supported by curving arches fitted together from shapes as intricate as puzzle pieces. Statues lined the walls, but the hall was too broad for the light of the lanterns to reach them, and they remained dim half-shapes on the edge of sight.
Half a dozen soldiers were gathered in the light, quietly killing time in one manner or another. Two were playing cards, one was quietly sketching, and the others were talking about soccer. The sketcher looked up as the Joes stepped out of the tunnel and gave a whistle.
"Relief's here," he said, tucking away the sketchbook. While the others gathered up their gear, he stepped forward to introduce himself. "Corporal Calloway. You guys are here to take over for this level, right?" When Scarlett nodded, he sighed. "Good. Too damn spooky down here. Everything's been pretty much blocked off, except . . . well, nobody likes going past that open hole, frankly."
"Carry on, corporal," Scarlett said briskly. "Well take it from here."
The six men had decamped within seconds, and their voices rang out loud and relieved as they rattled their way up the stairs of the narrow shaft. Scarlett held up a hand, and the Joes remained still until a nod from Storm Shadow confirmed that he'd heard the soldiers reach the top of the stairs.
"Now comes the fun part," Tunnel Rat said cheerfully. The ninjas instantly dropped their packs and began shucking out of their BDUs, revealing skinsuits and belts of weaponry underneath. While the other Joes checked their weapons, Snake-Eyes retreated to a dark corner to peel off his prosthetics in relative privacy; when he returned less than a minute later, his customary mask back in place, he blended so easily into the deep shadows that Scarlett had to blink and focus just to make sure he was there.
Outback fished a radio pack out and thumbed it on. "Testing, testing," he said, pitching his voice low to avoid raising an echo in the long stone hall. "When is a portcullis not a portcullis?"
"When it's a-loft," Chuckles' voice came back. "Thanks for providing the confirmation phrase, 'Corporal Cameron'; I didn't know it was possible to intellectual-ify a third-grader joke, but you've proven yourself once again. Please don't kill me when you get back to the world. How's the weather down there?"
"You don't have to earn your nickname, wise guy," Outback grumbled. "Receiving you loud and clear. You find a safe place to transmit from?"
"Yep. The colonel was nice enough to put me on punitive duty in a shed that just so happens to be isolated and practically soundproof. He catches on quick, that man."
"Good," Scarlett interjected. "Chuckles, we're at the entrance of the second level-" She checked a handheld compass "-northwest corner. What's our bearing?"
"Straight on and take a right. There'll be a big gap in the westernmost wall, and a set of stairs leading down . . . And that's where my map ends. You'll have to be guiding me from then on."
"Roger that. Alpine, take over the radio; we may need your sense of direction to keep Chuckles oriented." At Scarlett's nod, the mountaineer took the radio from Outback and the compass from the redhead herself. "Everyone, form up. Storm Shadow? Head of the column, with me. Outback and Alpine. Jaye, you'll be in the middle there. Then Lifeline and Tunnel Rat, and Snake and Beach Head bringing up the rear. Everybody stays together. Safeties on until Storm says otherwise. Everybody has a flashlight? Emergency flares? Extra rounds?"
"Yes, Mom," Tunnel Rat murmured, just loud enough to be heard in the echoing tunnel as Scarlett strode past. Without breaking stride, she reached across and gently but firmly smacked the tunnel specialist upside the head.
"Good. Because unlike your mother, I don't clean up your messes." Scarlett pulled her crossbow out of her pack and double-checked its mechanisms before clipping it to its mount on her hip. "Let's move, everyone."
They moved.
There were four of them, all Blooded, even the youngest. Their leader growled softly in his throat as he examined the glowing projection before them. A Hunting ground should not be invaded unless it was time for the ritual to begin, but the alert had been triggered days ago when Oomans first set foot in what was supposed to be a secure location. Now the four Blooded had finally reached the planet, only to find that there were more of them than ever! They had penetrated deeper into the Hunting grounds, further even than their scanners could read. They might have even reached the queen of the Kainde Amedha!
This was by no means acceptable. The temple of the Chiva was too valuable to risk Oomans damaging it when it was not time for the Hunt. The leader of the Blooded hissed behind his mask as he deactivated the projection. This would not be a Hunt; it would be damage control.
Twenty minutes' quick walk brought them to the dark gap in the wall that Chuckles had mentioned. Scarlett signaled a halt and put a hand on the broken rock, carefully angling her flashlight to illuminate the first of the steps downward. These had clearly not been freshly cut; they were ancient, lightly flecked with stone dust and intricately carved. Soft dips in the center of each step showed where the passage of ancient worshippers had worn down the rock.
Beyond it, there was darkness. The steps vanished downward into the gloom, with no light to be seen beyond the illumination provided by the Joes' flashlights and lanterns. A cool breeze ruffled Scarlett's hair: the hall beyond was huge, and somewhere beyond the staircase, there was an airshaft. At least they wouldn't suffocate.
"Hey . . . look at this," Alpine said softly. Something about the vast darkness beyond seemed to have induced the same reverent hush as a cathedral or a cave, and his voice was barely above a whisper. "Look at these rocks. More tool marks here—fresh."
Tunnel Rat shone his flashlight on the edge of the gap and nodded. "And check this out. The cuts are new, but the stone is old. Probably part of the original structure, or built within fifty or sixty years of it."
"Somebody built a wall across a well-used staircase?" Scarlett said, frowning. "Why would they do that?"
Storm Shadow smiled a little. He had pulled on his normal white mask, and in the stark light of the lanterns, the crease of his smile under the fabric threw eerie patterns of shadow onto his face. "I can think of a few reasons."
There was a moment of tense silence before a rumble from Beach Head broke it. "Ah'll bet you can," he said shortly. "Now ain't the time fer more of yer creepy stuff, spook. Scarlett, we movin'?"
"Let's." Scarlett put one hand on her holstered sidearm and, biting down a sudden inexplicable rush of nervousness, stepped over the crumbled threshold onto the first step.
As they descended downwards, a fresh rush of cool air greeted them. Their steps echoed hollowly, the size of the hall around them catching the noises and tossing them back at them lessened, like a ball worn soft from overuse. There was no illumination but the glow from the Joes' lanterns, and the strong beams of the flashlights became thin streaks of light in the blackness.
Tunnel Rat let out a low whistle as he played his flashlight over the ceiling far above them. "This place is huge," he murmured. "Look at that. It's been here so long that there's stalactites up there."
"Look at the columns," Jaye said softly. The bubble of light from their lanterns was just wide enough to reach the wall, some twenty feet away on either side, and Jaye aimed her own flashlight to the right to get a better look at the inset columns of stone. Leering figures stared back at them. "They're telling a story."
They were. The first of the columns showed a proud warrior, much taller than the grovelling human figures crouched beside it, holding an ornate spear to the sky in a gesture of challenge. The second column, ten feet further onwards, depicted the warrior descending into the earth through a door ringed with snakes. On the third, human slaves lay in a circle, disembodied skeletal hands clutching their faces. Jaye let out a quiet obscenity when she spotted the fourth column: spiny lizard-monsters were bursting out of the stomachs of the slaves. The humans' contorted expressions of pain were exceedingly well-rendered.
"Some sort of ritual?" Jaye mused aloud. "A sacred rite?"
"An' you looked at me funny when Ah said religious types creeped me out," Beach Head muttered to Snake-Eyes, who just shook his head.
The story unfolded. The warrior descended further into the pit, where the spiny lizards attacked him. He stabbed to death with several weapons—the spear, long daggers lashed to his arms—and even snared one in a net. Finally, as they reached the end of the hall, the last column showed the warrior emerging triumphantly from underneath the earth, the head of one of the monsters mounted on his spear.
"No surprise Cobra Commander wanted this place," Tunnel Rat commented. "This creepy stuff is exactly his style."
"I'll say." Jaye turned to her left and played the flashlight over the columns on the opposite wall. They told the same story—up until the last few, when the warrior was subdued and murdered by the lizards, who then attached another skeletal hand to his face. The final column showed the temple itself, consumed by flames. "It's a battle of the gods. Every culture has an Armageddon myth—the Vikings feared the day when a wolf would catch and eat the sun, and the Greeks were certain that even their gods would die. But the way this is depicted . . . definitely an Aztec influence."
Scarlett shifted to get a better look, and her foot clanked against something. She frowned and looked down, angling her lantern for a better look. A lone soda can looked back at her.
"I don't know about Armageddon, but we're on the right track for a fight," she said softly, bending down to pick up the can. The cheerful face of Julio the Grape, the plump-cheeked mascot of Argentina's best-known brand of soda de la uva, stared back at her. "Look at this."
Storm Shadow grimaced as he took the can from her. "This cannot be FDA-approved. They must be getting desperate. And buzzed. Look at the sugar content on this label."
"Relax, Storm." Scarlett slowly unclipped her crossbow from its mount and raised it, checking the safety again. "It was probably all just good, wholesome chemicals. Do you hear anything?"
"Everybody be quiet." The Joes obligingly fell silent and Storm moved several paces away from them, closing his eyes and concentrating. For a moment, there was no sound but their own muffled breathing. When he rejoined them, there was a frown on his face. "I hear . . . something, I think."
That got a reaction from Snake-Eyes. [You think?] he signed, surprise clear even through the mask. [You mean you're not sure?]
Storm Shadow's expression was sour. "I heard something. It's muffled. Either it's very, very far away, or the walls of the temple are interfering somehow. Sound-dampening."
" . . . How far away would it have to be?" Scarlett said carefully.
"With this level of echo and background noise?" The ninja considered. "About three miles."
Scarlett flicked the safety off her crossbow. "Sound dampening it is, then. Maybe interference from the structure itself. Psyche-Out could probably explain it." She felt confident saying that. Psyche-Out could explain everything; the trick was getting him to stop. Safeties off, everyone. We're proceeding on high alert. Alpine? Update Chuckles."
"Got a rog on that." The climber moved aside and began to narrate in a quick, low voice to Chuckles, describing the area and what they had seen so far. Scarlett thought she could hear a scratching of pencil as Chuckles, high above in the storage shed, made a rough sketch of the area from Alpine's descriptions. Storm Shadow, clearly irritated, closed his eyes and tried to concentrate. Lifeline just shifted worriedly in place, jumping a little when Beach Head ratcheted the slide on his sidearm.
Finally, after several long moments, Storm Shadow returned again. "I've got a bearing on them. Fifteen or sixteen, coming from the southeast. Probably taking an alternate way around." The shadows deepened against the white mask as Storm grinned again. "They know we're here, and there's definitely Dreadnoks."
"How the heck do they even know we're here?" Lifeline asked tensely. His hand automatically went to his medical pack, as if anticipating that he would need it. "Does that mean someone told-?"
Scarlett cut him off quickly. "Doubtful. We knew going in that they'd be anticipating us showing up. Storm, are they looking for a fight?"
"I heard a chainsaw revving." Storm Shadow flicked a wrist, and several yards of climbing rope spiraled seemingly out of nowhere. "Shall we?" he called to Snake-Eyes, who cast a questioning glance at Scarlett.
[Mission leader,] he signed, pointing at Scarlett. Storm Shadow sighed.
"She's using the chain of command as your leash, brother. Very well . . . esteemed mission leader?"
Scarlett stopped for a heartbeat and took stock of the situation. If the Dreadnoks were coming from the southeast, that meant they were going to be coming up between the Joes and the way out. More maneuverability in the big hall, but also more darkness. But a smaller area could box them in . . . She flicked her light towards the end of the long hall, now only about thirty feet away. There! An antechamber, with only one smaller door leading out of it on the other side. And on the other side . . . was that a glimmer of weak light? She made her decision.
"Snake, Storm, and Outback," she whispered quickly. The three stealthiest of the whole party. "Go ghost. The Dreadnoks are coming up on our back, but they have to come through this room before they can catch us. I want you to make this room the most terrifying goddamn thing they ever walked through." A flicker of a smile from Snake-Eyes, and she resisted the urge to smile back. Silent ninja or not, he was a foot soldier at heart, and he liked it when she took command. "The rest of us will pull back to the antechamber and pick them off from a distance. It looks like there's an airshaft back there, and any shaft capable of getting enough air down here has to be big enough for a man; Alpine, if everything goes to hell and the exit's blocked for any reason, you're going to be our lifeline to the surface. Got it?"
Nods all around, and Scarlett's eyes narrowed. "Storm? How close are they?"
"Getting closer. I can hear them fine now, even through these-" Japanese obscenity "-walls."
"All right, let's move. Safeties off."
The Joes split into two groups and picked up the pace. Outback and the ninjas vanished into the shadows of the hall, Outback stepping back towards the wall, the ninjas unfurling climbing ropes and heading straight upwards. In seconds they were lost in the deep gloom. Scarlett took a deep breath and pushed the rest of Tango Team forward, double-timing it for the relative safety of the antechamber and the glimmer of light that hinted at an airshaft. They piled through the slope-sided doorway and clung to the walls, quickly and carefully checking their equipment one final time.
The chamber was much much smaller than the hall they had just left, about ten feet by eighteen. Here, the walls were painted instead of carved: more friezes of warriors and spiny black lizards. The corridor beyond was in bad shape, half-choked with rubble, but a broad air shaft cut diagonally out of the rock was still in near-perfect shape. A few weak rays of sunlight lent just enough light for Scarlett to see particles of rock dust falling slowly through the air, swirling in the soft breeze that continued to blow from . . . somewhere.
There was a shout from the other side, and the grinding roar of a chainsaw. Frenzied yells broke out, the hall echoing with the sound of running feet and triumphant bellowing from the Dreadnoks. Scarlett instinctively flinched as she heard the ripping chatter of a submachine gun. Expanding their horizons, I see, she thought as she snagged Alpine and hurried him back into the half-lit corridor.
"Stay here," she hurriedly ordered him. Alpine didn't need to be told twice: he jammed pitons into the cracks between the blocks and tested them before unholstering his own weapon.
Something damp dripped onto Scarlett's cheek and she flicked it away hurriedly, slamming a magazine into her sidearm and performing one last check on her rifle. The pounding feet were getting closer—and there they were, the first howls as exultation turned to fear and the charging groups began to scatter. Beach Head and Tunnel Rat, crouched by the door, fired off a handful of rounds with measured precision. Somebody shrieked, and there was the thud of a body being dropped from a great height. Scarlett knelt, taking cover behind the second door with her back to the air shaft. Jaye joined her, and Lifeline huddled behind them.
Another drip, something thick and gluey. Scarlett cursed and wiped it away, remembering what 'Rat had said about stalactites. She glanced up hurriedly, wondering if there was something up there that she might accidentally knock her head on in a firefight-
-and found herself staring into the biggest pair of teeth she had ever seen.