Kara Discovered: Episode 14, The Point of Mandatory Return
Lack of water ends their mission.
Jeffries sloshed the last of his three canteens as his sergeants inspected their squads to make sure no one was out of water. They were damn good men. But being good men, wasn’t enough.
How in the hell were they making the doctors and his men keep up this insane pace? The next break would have to be the last. Catch them or not, heading back was mandatory at that point. Already they would be out of water long before they made it back, and if they lost their trail returning, they were dead men.
Coming out, they left a clear trail, but how long that trail lasted no one knew, and that worried him. He guessed that the light wind blowing across their trail would take weeks to wipe it out, but that was a guess. If the wind picked up, how long would that last? They had to have better means of navigating this desert if they had to do this again. He put his canteen away.
“Platoon! Forward! March!” called out his top from the front of the column right on time. Though tired, everyone started forward on command. They were damn good men.
“Quickstep! March!” came right on time next.
Hearing “Platoon, Halt!” two minutes later spiked his blood with terror and he rushed forward. The men he passed pulled out their lances at the unexpected stop.
“What is it Top?”
“There, just ahead. That discoloration. I don’t like it,” he said in a tight low voice.
Jeffries didn’t see it, but trusted his Top. “Squad two, right flank! Squad four, left flank.”
“Ready!” called back squad two in seconds.
Another ten seconds passed before he heard, “Ready!” from squad 4.
He bellowed out. “Squads! By the numbers, even and odd, One!” Half the men in each squad took three steps forward, weapons at the ready, including his Top. There they stopped and squatted down, ready to spring in any direction, just as he’d trained them.
“Two!” Jeffries yelled and moved forward six steps. He could see a slightly darker line ahead of them.
“One!” he called out.
The first half moved, again getting three steps ahead of them.
“Two!” he moved forward. That blur was a road.
“Platoon! Halt! Squad three, check out that road. Two and four, cover them.” Squad three ran past him, some waving their staffs, others with javelins ready to throw. It was sloppy, with none showing their normal precision in drill.
“Dress that line,” barked his Top just as he thought that.
Good man that, probably best in the Legion. Jeffries had tried over and over to beat into their head; with primitive weapons, you had to move together or be picked off.
The men pulled to a stop. “It’s made of bricks,” called out the sergeant of squad three. “I am standing next to where they left the sand,” he said next.
Jeffries joined him.
The bricks were rectangles, not as long as his forearm and roughly as wide as his hand, and polished smooth. As he watched, the sand that had been on his shoes and fell onto the road, moved to the edge of the road.
“Top, send men fifty meters each way to take up guard. See if they see a sign of which direction they took our people. Everyone else, ten-minute rest break, and then we head back to the gate.”
Grabbing a hand full of sand, he squatted down and started dribbling it on the road and watched the grains slowly move to the side as if being vibrated. Touching the brick, he felt no vibration. But a self-cleaning road was a sure sign of some type of advanced civilization.
“This changes things,” said his Top, kneeling down next to him and watching the sand move off the road.
Jeffries looked at him, wondering what prompted the comment. His Top was a man of few words. The man said nothing more about it.
“It certainly does. More than we can even guess at, at the moment. That will have to be decided by someone above my pay grade. I want measurements of how big the bricks are and how wide the road is before we head back.”
“Yes, sir.”
