Prime (Chess Team Adventure, #0.5)

Bishop wasn’t normally given to making loud, emotionally-charged utterances. Most soldiers believed it was a good thing to vent some of their pent up rage with outbursts of colorful language, but Bishop knew that even a small crack could weaken a dam, and if the dam holding back his anger ever failed… Well, he didn’t like to think about what might happen. The safer course was to meet every surprise, every disappointment, every reversal of fortune, the same way: with silence.

Once in a while, though, he would make an exception.

“What the—”

He had been looking away, watching the tree line for enemy activity, and so he had missed Sasha and Parker disappearing into the rock wall. He almost missed King’s exit as well; he turned just in time to see King plunge into the stone face as if it were merely a curtain stretched over an opening in the wall. For a few seconds, he told himself that was exactly what he had seen, but when he approached the cliff and extended his hand, his fingers immediately encountered solid rock.

No, that wasn’t quite right. It didn’t feel solid exactly; more like stiff clay. He pressed harder and his fingers went in up to the first knuckle, but then stopped abruptly as if he’d hit something harder.

The substance was warm to the touch, almost uncomfortably so, and when he pulled his fingers free, he discovered that even that little bit of plasticity was gone from the rock; it had hardened once more into brittle chalky limestone.

“—fuck?”

He keyed his mic. “King, this is Bishop. Do you copy?”

Nothing.

He glimpsed movement from behind and whirled to find Knight jogging toward him, the enormous Barrett cradled in his arms. Knight’s normally serene visage was twisted with concern; he had overheard Bishop’s transmission, and the distinctive silence that had followed. “What’s wrong?”

Bishop just gaped at the cliff face, silent mode re-engaged, but only because he didn’t have the words to explain what he had just seen.

“Where’s King?”

Bishop pointed at the wall. “He just…walked through it.”

“Walked through it?”

The big man nodded. “Like a ghost or something.”

“A ghost.” Knight’s forehead creased. “Bishop, you sound like my grandmother.”

Bishop had no reply, but continued to probe the wall with his hands.

“You’re serious, aren’t you?” Knight came over to stand beside him. “So, is there a secret passage or something?”

The noise of gunfire—distant, but still close enough to warrant keeping their heads down—curtailed further discussion. Rook and Queen had engaged Rainer and his men. Knight opened the bipod legs for his Barrett and got down behind the weapon, ready to meet any threat that came their way, but Bishop went back to studying the rock. He felt a growing anxiety that had nothing to do with bringing down the rogue Delta operators.

King was inside the rock. There had to be a cave or a hidden tunnel entrance, but damned if he could find it. Had King gone in willingly? Was he in danger right now?

“Shit!”

Knight’s rare expletive brought Bishop back to the moment. He wheeled around and saw the reason for his teammate’s oath. Two figures—Queen and Rook—had broken from the cover of the pines and were bolting across the clearing toward them.

His concern deepened. It wasn’t like those two to run from anything.

A frankenstein appeared behind them.

Why hadn’t Rook dropped it with a couple of shots from his hand cannons?

Two more of the monstrosities emerged on the heels of the first, and the situation became clearer to Bishop.

There were two more behind those, and then more. Suddenly, the clearing was filled with the lumbering once-human things, moving so fast that Bishop couldn’t accurately count them—at least ten, maybe a dozen, maybe more than that.

Knight’s Barrett boomed, the muzzle brake throwing up a huge cloud of dirt as it vented the hot sulfurous gases that propelled a .50 BMG round with lethal accuracy into one of the monsters.

The sniper rifle thundered again, but without the same effect; the frankensteins were moving too fast for him to sight them in.

Queen and Rook were only a few seconds from reaching them, and their pursuers were just a few more.

“Knight! Let’s go!” Bishop shouted.

“Where?” Knight must have intended it to be a rhetorical question, because he didn’t look up from his grim but futile task.

A good question. King had gone into the rock, but they couldn’t follow…