The Wars of Zegandaria by Atanas Marinov, Atanas Marinov, Atanas Marinov, Atanas Marinov (find a book to read .txt) 📕

'You must succeed, Mark, at all costs. Only you have the necessary qualities to endure to the end.,' He heard General Wallace's voice in his ears. 'On the battlefield, rank doesn't matter, for all are equal before death, and you have no fear of it.'

Suddenly someone shook him on the shoulder. He gasped. It was the Rat. They had left him on duty while the others slept, but he would soon be replaced by another.

- 'Mark,' he heard his concerned voice and was slightly surprised at his tone, 'whatever you've seen, you should get some sleep. You can't leave the group without a guide. It's only four hours until dawn.'

Then fatigue took over and he closed his eyes. And for a moment, at least, he was plunged into utter emptiness, into complete oblivion, where no one and nothing existed!

Early in the morning the fighters stirred. All without exception were in a more cheerful mood than the day before, for they now had water for about a week, and this, at least in theory, increased their lives by as much. The sun seemed to be baking more mercilessly than the day before, apparently intent on making up for the joy of every drop of water they had poured into their waterskins.

They hadn't made it all the way across the canyon yet, but according to Father, there wasn't likely to be much further to the famous Landorian Pass. Lendorian Pass. This place was shrouded in mystery, even complete mystery. Virtually no one else in the group had heard of it besides Father.

- 'Come on, boys,' Sam Wallace motioned to them, grinning, 'the beach is over.'

The group laughed, getting his joke.

- 'It really is time,' Paul confirmed. 'Father will be our guide, since he's been here before.'

- 'I'm not saying I've been here exactly, just that I've been around these parts,' Father tossed in, seemingly casually, but it was obvious he felt flattered by his words.

- 'Enough talk,' Rat cut them off quizzically. 'Don't you want those birds to come out of nowhere and raid us again? We're easy targets out here in the open.'

The remaining few hours passed in near silence. Everyone had their assault rifles at the ready and were moving in a tight line, with the civilians trailing behind. Strange as it was, nothing unusual happened to stop them in their tracks.

As they moved, Mark surveyed the surrounding hills of red sandstone and limestone cliffs. ‘A river must have flowed here, though thousands of years ago. But now it has dried up, like the future of mankind.’

Paul, Rat, Sam, Long Jack, and Father paced, the loose sand crunching under their feet. They all knew that their chances increased the faster they got out of the canyon, but the unknown that awaited them in the mysterious passage did not particularly excite them.

Nearly five hours passed at a measured soldier's gait.

- 'There, that there in the distance,' cried the Father suddenly.

Everyone fixed their eyes ahead, even the civilians who were totally forgotten by the group. The air trembled with the heavy marana, like molten lead. No more than two hundred yards ahead of them, behind a small sand dune, were the vague outlines of high cliffs. Apparently the canyon ended with them. However, a closer look revealed a relatively large cave-like hole that yawned dark and fathomless. Mark remembered his lessons about black holes in astronomy class. The comparison was quite apt. According to his teacher, concepts like time and space simply didn't exist there. However, it was quite difficult to imagine a big nothing, because subconsciously the human brain was trying to transform it into something, to dress it up in some human notions that clearly did not correspond to reality. Or was reality just not there?

- 'What are we going to do?,' was the first thing Grandpa Jack called.

- 'Let two or three of us go forward and the rest of us cover them,' suggested Rat, 'Paul's a good sniper, let him stay and watch our backs, there's no telling if the calm we've had so far has been the calm before the storm.'

The others approved the idea and Paul, along with Grandpa Jack and Sam Wallace took up a comfortable position on the dune for possible opening fire. Forward went Mark, the Rat and the Father. After all, wasn't Father in his own waters? But they had barely taken a few steps when Father said:

- Do you know, bass I catch that this here is a minefield? I had heard once that those of Ultra City were rather peculiar, though peace-loving, they liked to be quite sheltered. If what I've heard is true, the Lendorian Pass will take us close to the hermetic gates of the city.

- 'We've planted ourselves nicely, all right!,' murmured the Rat in his typical style, 'Now how are we going to find the mines?'

- 'There's a way.,' Father stated, not very confidently. 'Though there are no guarantees though.'

- 'And what is it?,' asked Mark, a little nervous.

- 'Well, let's just sacrifice some of the civilians,' Father voiced his thought.

Even the Rat looked at him a little surprised and asked:

- Well, how are we going to get the others to follow us, so we don't have to kill them later too? They might panic and refuse to move.

- 'They will follow us wherever they go, there can be no turning back, they saw very well what we left behind us,' Father argued calmly.

His words definitely had an impact on the others. It really was pure madness for the civilians to take the return route alone, after seeing with their own eyes how the group barely escaped the dangers at the cost of so many casualties. It was simply unthinkable!

- 'You mean we're going to put them in a complete standoff?,' asked Mark.

- Exactly. They actually are. Neither can retreat back, let alone return to theirs. You know that the Military Tribunal of Imgradon will issue death sentences to them directly. Just think, if even one manages to get through without activating a single charge, then we will very carefully leave, treading right in his footsteps. Mines are sensor mines, we have to pray that someone doesn't get a hand or foot over the airspace of one.

- 'If we're lucky, we might hit the jackpot with the first one.,' Rat grinned in his typical style. 'After all, they haven't been much use to us so far.'

- 'We'll have to choose which one it'll be though.,' Mark added. 'We'll rank them in order of importance.

- 'Tell the new recruits to bring them here.,' the Father turned to the Rat.

Rat ran back, signaling to Paul and the others who were on the dune that all was well for now.

After a few minutes the recruits brought the tortured captives home. It was actually a dozen Elohyn warriors, but of minor ranks, they were worth practically nothing. General Jacob Wallace's reason for ordering Mark to let them live was more than practical. The thing was, when he and Grandpa Jack had been crawling around Xanderar, which had been turned into a veritable battlefield due to the conflict of the two armies, the two of them had knocked out the heroes in question, who were defending a small fortification with a laser launcher, and had taken their plasma rifles because they needed them desperately. Of course, they had to kill some of them. But the rest, on General Jacob's advice, were used as cover so they could get across the heavily guarded border with Synthros, which, in theory at least, was kept autonomous by ELohiarian troops. Mark and Long Jack had taken the name badges of several slain warriors, figuring that in the commotion the border guards wouldn't be so careful. The ploy had worked in the end. The rickety speeder that our ‘Elohyn’ fighters had crammed into along with the real ones had flown through the triple laser firewall, which had been briefly disabled by the naive patrollers who, after a quick check of a few of the real Elohyn fighters' badges, hadn't bothered to check the rest. This was greatly helped by the explanation Mark had pushed, which seemed quite plausible to them. He asserted that General Jin Paley, the commander-in-chief of the ELohiast forces, had personally sent them on a special mission to liaise with the units of the Second ELohiast Army stationed on the Southern Front in the Sinthros area, and that every minute was of the utmost importance in carrying out this important mission.

Mark now recalled all these details as he saw the enemy soldiers facing him. Their appearance was more pitiful even than that of his own men, for the ELohiasts were not receiving their regular ration of water. They were grim, their eyes staring blankly into nothingness.

- 'And so, lads,' the Father began, 'which of you will pass first along the track?'

At first they didn't even understand what he was saying, but after a few seconds one of them said torturedly:

- What do you really want from us? Where the hell are you taking us?

- 'What's your name, boy?,' asked Mark.

- 'Westner,' replied the other, languidly and apathetically.

- 'Okay, Westner, here's the deal,' Mark continued. 'You know very well that there's no turning back for you, so I'm offering you the following deal that you can't refuse. I want you to carefully walk those two hundred yards all the way to that hole in the rocks, carefully leaving deeper footprints in the sand, do you understand me?'

- 'And if I refuse?,' stretched Westner.

- 'Then we'll blow your brains out right here like a dog!,' snarled the Father, a little unnerved by all this stalling.

- 'But if you pass,' Mark added, 'we'll increase your daily water ration.'

The soldier licked his chapped lips, glanced back at his comrades, who had fixed questioning eyes on him, and after a few seconds of inner struggle said:

- All right, I accept.

- 'Stand back, boys,' the Father motioned to them, 'because there may be a big 'Boom!'

The group retreated back to the dune and hunkered down awaiting the outcome.

Westnor strode forward slowly, picking the best path. He had almost reached the opening in the rocks when a powerful explosion tore him apart. Pieces of his body flew in different directions and where they thudded new explosions followed.

Mark, Paul, and the others barely managed to land before the shockwave reached them.

- 'Fuck him,' Father growled, 'birds and cacti were child's play compared to these mines.'

- 'Let's hope most of them at least blew up,' Rat said in an angry tone. 'What do you think, Grandpa Jack?,' he added suddenly.

- 'I think we'd better risk another one going to the very end by exactly the same route,' suggested Grandpa Jack.

- 'Let us go, damn you,' the Elohyns cried. 'We'd rather die by those vile cacti than serve your filthy experiments.'

- 'Then let's finish this right now, yeah?,' the Father pulled down the safety of the machine gun with a threatening gesture. 'We've already wasted over two hours on nonsense.'

Faced with the possibility of instant death, the captured warriors sobered. There were murmurs like 'What are we going to do, so and so will die!', 'Let's show them that we are not afraid of death' and so on. This went on for a few minutes, until suddenly a wisher came out and said:

- Hell, I'll do it, at least I'll know I died like a man.

- 'You just do it, from then on you'll rise in our eyes,' Rat laughed ironically.

- 'It gives you a chance to prove yourself,' Mark allowed him. 'The offer of water rations stands.'

The man scrambled down the dune and landed carefully on the ground below. A small cloud of dust rose from his footsteps. He looked around. The space had definitely taken on the appearance of a battlefield because of the many detonations. Shallow craters of 1-2 meters had