Overlord

29

Aston felt a slight hint of madness tickling his mind, only just beaten out by the overpowering sense of wonder. The short low tunnels, the caverns, however large and intricate with vines and crystals, paled into insignificance against the sight before them. The passageway opened out onto a wide, slightly sloping, apron of rock. Standing with the passage at their backs, the space in front of them was gargantuan. The roof of the new cavern had to be a hundred feet above, the walls fanned out to make the place at least five hundred feet across, probably more. The walls and ceiling were bright with glowing green vines and crystals, filling the cavern with a soft glow. Stalactites dozens of feet long hung in profusion from above and filling the cavern floor was a city.

Buildings of one or two stories, some carved into the walls of the cavern, others built from quarried stone, stood in seemingly random rows and groups. In places the natural topography of the ground made the clusters of buildings closer together or further apart, most had small windows, all had low doorways, the majority without doors. Between them, stalagmites stood where trees might adorn a normal town.

“What the..?” Slater breathed, but nobody else had a voice to share.

Then Reid moved forward, pointed with his assault rifle. “Bodies. Old ones.”

The group walked cautiously in amongst the buildings. Houses? Aston wondered. What else could they be? And sure enough, there were dozens of corpses lying in the streets, clearly the remains of a battle fought a long time ago. They were desiccated, mostly skeletal, but with remnants of dried and browned flesh hanging to the bones like human jerky. They still bore the ragged remains of clothing, military uniforms, and some broken weapons lay near them.

Reid went to one and crouched, looked closely at the insignia on the uniform. “Russian,” he said. “I’m a bit of a military history nerd. I recognize these. Early- to mid-nineteen-fifties.”

“Did they fall prey to the mantics?” Sol asked.

Aston spotted something and shook his head. “Maybe some, but not all. Look.” He pulled a bloodstone knife from under one corpse, not unlike the one that had killed Professor Murray Lee.

“Knife wounds are evident in the remaining flesh of this one too,” Reid said.

“And here,” Syed confirmed, crouching near more bodies. “All three of these have stab marks in the skin, and scoring on the bones of their ribs.” She gently moved a skull and winced. “Looks like this one was stabbed right through the left eye.” Moving another, she checked the head again. “This one was bludgeoned, so not only knife attacks.”

“But all pretty primitive weapons,” Aston said. “They must have had a large advantage of numbers, given these soldiers were armed with guns.”

He moved further along one street and spotted another bloodstone blade protruding from the rib cage of a fallen soldier. It appeared a little different from the others. Instead of a simple long, pointed oval of stone with a rounded grip, this one was carved into the shape of a long, curved dagger. The craftsmanship was magnificent, the details intricate, a cross-guard at the hilt, fine lines along the blade and a perfect, razor-sharp edge along one side. He slipped it out from between the dead man’s ribs and turned it over slowly in his hands, admiring it. What was this stuff, that Lee had dubbed bloodstone? He’d never seen stone quite like it before. And why did these attackers use it? It could be simply a lack of metals in the underground catacombs that had driven whoever these people were into a kind of stone age, but why this particular stone? Was it unique to this region? And yet it was unlike all the rock they had encountered so far, so it must have been mined elsewhere. Perhaps deeper, or in some part of the underground network they had yet to see. Or perhaps brought with them from wherever they had originated. Thoughts of alien origins flickered through his mind again, but he pushed the idea aside. Regardless, he felt that he should keep at least one of these weapons close to hand. He still had the one he’d taken from Lee’s chest.

Catching Slater’s eye, he gestured for her to join him. She and Marla came over together, eyebrows raised. He saw fear like his own reflected in their expressions. “Hold onto this,” he said, handing Slater the blade that had killed Lee. He gave Marla the one from under the corpse he had found moments before, and kept the intricately carved one for himself.

“Why?” Slater asked.

Aston shrugged. “Call it intuition. I just feel like we should hold onto them. Besides, as we recently established, we don’t have many bullets left. At the very least they’re a weapon that’s easy to use, and knives won’t run out of ammo. Better than bare fists, I guess.”

Slater and Marla shared a nervous glance, then both nodded and slipped the blades into their jackets. Aston pocketed his, too.

“This is too weird,” Tate said from the back of the small group.

“No shit,” Marla muttered.

Tate gave a small, humorless laugh. “Well, yeah, a huge city under the Antarctic is weird, but I mean the battle. Where are the bodies of the others? Whoever was fighting the Russians? Did they kill them all with no casualties on their side? Seems unlikely.”

“More likely they carried their own dead away,” Reid said, standing and looking around the huge space. “To hide their losses, maybe? Or just out of respect, to conduct burial rituals or whatever.”

“Yeah,” Aston agreed. “And I can’t help wondering if the survivors are still here.”