The Void

CHAPTER 14

Ivan Zlatan was first over the rim of the mountaintop and stared down into the massive crater formation.

It had taken them an entire day to climb to the peak, without a single break, and it had not been without cost. He had started with five Kurgan, five of the top engineered combat soldiers in all of Russia, and perhaps the world. But he had lost one good man. Divinov had been big, strong, and unlucky. The shelf of rock he had clung to had simply fallen away like the skin of an onion. He dropped around 500 feet to the first rock shelf where he had bounced once then vanished from sight. No one would bother going looking for his body, and Zlatan only cared about his team’s reduced strike capability.

Like his remaining comrades, Zlatan’s fingers were near frozen, and his muscles ached and joints screamed, but they would mend with the rapid healing their metabolisms would undertake in the next few hours.

He had received his last update from Moscow just minutes before. A large helicopter was on its way to the plains spread out before the mountains — good. It meant the Americans had not yet arrived on the mountain, and his team was first in.

It didn’t matter. Even if the Americans were already here, and had retrieved the camera data, his orders were to bring it back it to the Motherland at all costs. The Americans would hand it over, or he’d take it from their cold, dead hands. It didn’t matter if they had Special Forces assets — in fact he hoped for it. Zlatan smiled grimly. He wanted them to put up a fight as he would like nothing more than to test his Kurgan against the best America had to throw at them.

He looked again into the crater. It was enormous, miles across, and strangely devoid of ice now he was at the top. He still felt the bitter cold at his neck as he perched above it, but on his face, he could feel the warmth emanating from below. No doubt it would be warm once they were under the blanket of the strange, thick fog. He stared. It swirled and moved like a sea that had eddies, currents, and whirlpools all just below the surface.

Visibility would be impeded, and he had been told to expect a communication blackout once they descended. But still, Zlatan had the advantage, and he needed to use it. He felt a moment of uncertainty and calmed himself by thinking of Rahda. For you, my love.

He looked out over the massive smoke-filled crater that looked like a titan’s boiling cauldron then waved his men on. Together they descended the several hundred feet down the side of the mountain and entered the smog layer — well before they had even found the bottom.

Zlatan held up a hand, watching the fog swirl past it. Looking closely, the fog wasn’t actually a mist, but instead countless small dust-like particles. The closer to the ground, the more there was. He could just make out a soft whining sound, like the noise the wind makes when it sneaks in through a gap. Strange.

It was like entering the atmosphere of an alien planet. The Russian grimaced as the particle gases stung his nose and throat — he had been told by his superiors to expect a significant moisture suspension, possibly from ice melt. But this stuff had a tang of something different, something organic. The Kurgan bodies would be able to fight off most contaminants and toxic substances, and he hoped this wouldn’t prove debilitating.

In a few more seconds he adjusted, and was at least thankful for the blanket of warm air allowing his fingers to thaw and the ice on his body to melt. He rubbed at his dripping nose. It was only around fifty degrees Fahrenheit within the mist layer, but compared to above it, it was a luxury.

After several hundred feet of scaling down, the Kurgan reached bottom. Zlatan slowly turned; the mist layer here was so thick, it created a twilight gloom, and underfoot he felt something that was akin to slimy moss.

He held up a hand and his team froze. Zlatan stood silent, listening — had he heard something? Movement? He let his eyes slide slowly around them and strained to hear.

Nothing now but the background whine. After another moment, he gave up and turned to his team. “Virinov, use the tracker.”

The man close to him nodded, and removed a cigarette-pack sized device from a pouch, turned it on and held it out. Immediately a pulse emanated from the device and he watched it for a few seconds before lifting his head and pointing off into the distance.

“That way; 4,400 feet.”

Zlatan looked in the direction Virinov had pointed — just like all around them, there was nothing but a wall of thick cloud. He blew hard, making the speckled fog in front of his face swirl away into tiny spinning eddies.

His tongue was coated with the strange sweet taste of the mist. He spat on the ground. It came out like a paste.

Zlatan waved his men forward. “Move out.”