Warslave

Chapter 17: The Viper in the Mist

"No."

Fuck...

Two more steps and his thought process was interrupted by a wall. There really was no navigating this place. He made a left turn and stumbled.

"Fucking hell." He rolled over to see what he had fallen over. "Who leaves their shit lying around here-..."

He'd found one of the men that wasn't with him. His helmet had been broken, and Clark could see the head was nothing but a skull, as if it had been picked clean by scavengers.

The body armour and weapons the man carried were all intact...

"We need to get out of this damn fog."

"Shut up Cla-"

"That was an order, not a thought."

He directed his companions towards the corpse. Reactions varied, depending on how fresh the mercenaries were. Rookies reacted with shock, one of them even almost tearing his helmet off to puke, before the more experienced members of the group stopped him.

Clark and William were the oldest members of the Black Cats present, both having been part of the company since it was first founded. They'd seen corpses in worse conditions. Enough that neither of them was bothered by the sight of the skeleton.

William sat down next to Clark, taking a closer look at the dead man.

"Either the fog is toxic, or there's something very carnivorous out there..."

"I doubt they placed your wife in this maze."

"Shut up Clark."

He just shrugged.

"Looks more like acid, or something."

William tried to remove the helmet, but the skull just crumbled to dust as he did.

"Oh..."

"Any idea who that was?"

All Clark could determine at a glance was that the guy had been a sergeant. He got to wear the symbol of a cat on his shoulder, but had none of the silver threaded into it that the higher ranking officers got to wear. Clark's own cat had silver eyes, ears and claws.

"Dog tags say his name was... Jesus Christ!"

"I doubt that was his name."

"No, look!"

Clark regretted it immediately when he did. There was still flesh in the body armour. Flesh that was visibly rotting away.

"Step back. Don't touch it anymore than we already did. We don't know if this is a poison, a microorganism or... or whatever kind of witchcraft this place has to offer."

William jumped to his feet.

"We never should have taken this job."

"Bring that up to the commander... If he's still alive..."

Progress was slower now, more careful. They weren't on patrol anymore. The enemy could strike at any moment, and they wanted to be ready.

"Everyone's got a number, one to twelve. If I order you by number, you listen."

They all responded at the same time.

"Yes sir!"

It was standard procedure for the Black Cats. Every soldier had a priority number programmed into their armour, so they could immediately fall into any chain of command with an assigned number, which in turn made everything a little easier for commanders.