The Primal War : First Elements Saga Book 1

Chapter 8: Rescue Mission

“Cross your heart?” Marcus said with a lopsided grin. Then he was looking around at the hole they now were in as he tread water.

“I’m just glad this pothole was here so we could bring you back with it,” he said, looking up at the cliff. “Even if we have to climb our way out!”

“It’s a karst formation pool,” Val said, also looking up at the steep sides as she hung suspended more than anything, her hands barely moving to keep her afloat in the element that she commanded.

“We call them cenotes in the Yucatan. “Formed when the underlying limestone collapses from the effects of water running through it and the resulting space fills with water either from the water table, or collection from a nearby stream, usually subterranean.”

“Nice. At least it doesn’t have snakes or gators in it.” He looked over at her. “Actually, now that I’m thinking about it, we don’t have to climb freestyle. I can skip jump back to the plane and return with rope.”

Val slowly positioned herself onto her back.
“Take your time,” she said, eyes closed as she floated. “It’ll give me the chance to use the water to bring me back to full power! Then we can check my team to see how many we can restore before those black tags get here!”

A skip jump later and a quick ascent up a rope got Valentina out of the cenote and into a set of Marcus’s backup clothing from his pack to replace her crash-tattered set. Then they were carefully making their way through the two hundred meters or so of jungle back to the crash site. “Mierda!” Val hissed tautly in Spanish from where she knelt beside a burnt RedSky operator.

“Most of them are dead!”

“How about those that aren’t?” Marcus asked from where he too was kneeling beside one of the downed soldiers.

“I can restore them, but they don’t recover as fast as we do,” she grimly indicated, standing just enough to shuffle to the next unmoving form. “We won’t be able to count on their help when the black tags get here.”

A glance to the north with his Spirit Sight yielded a handful of glowing dots in the distance that were quickly growing in size as they moved towards them.

“That sucks,” he said with a grimace. “I say we have ten, maybe fifteen minutes at the most before those vat-grown tough guys are on top of us!”

“They’re modified, not cloned, Marcus,” Val corrected him even as a cool mist extended from her hands into the soldier she was crouched beside to begin healing him by slowly knitting his tissues back together. “So, technically, they’re machine shop macho men!”

“Nerd,” Marcus retorted before grinning wryly. “But I like that: machine shop macho men!” The fire primal looked over at his water primal counterpart.

“Can you heal all those that are still alive in ten minutes??” Then watched as the man she had been working on, sat up with a groan.

“I believe so. As long as you stop interrupting me with your incessant questions,” Val primly answered as she moved to the next downed soldier.

Marcus snorted. Who knew the shy little water primal had that amount of attitude once you got her out of the Briar Patch? Then he was moving to help the sitting-up soldier to stand and move away from the crash site.

Working as quickly as they dared, the two primals recovered eleven of the twenty operator team, three women and eight men, in those ten minutes. The remaining soldiers, and the pilots were beyond Val’s water weaving method of healing so they left them where they were, the advancing black tags forcing them to be as efficient as possible in their recovery efforts. If they survived the upcoming fight, they’d police the bodies and properly bury them.