Sean Ellis - Callsign - King

Afar District, Ethiopia-One week ago

Moses Selassie ate alone.

This was not unusual. A solitary person by nature, Moses had never been one to seek out company, especially among those whom he considered intellectually inferior. There was no arrogance in this; he simply found conversation with most of his countrymen-gossip, facile complaints about the state of the economy, discussions about the latest football match-to be unbelievably tedious. By all rights, he should have been teaching at the University, shaping the young minds that were, in his estimation, the very future of Ethiopia…of all Africa, but instead his education and connections at the University had been able to secure him only this position: a common laborer. In Colonial times, he would have been called a ‘bearer.’

Colonial times, he thought darkly. Nothing had changed. The wealth and dignity of Africa was still in the hands of outsiders. Where once there had been European monarchies, now there were multi-national corporations pillaging the natural resources of the continent and leaving only scraps for her indigenous people. He had once dreamed, like his namesake, of leading the beleaguered people of his nation to freedom from their oppressive absentee landlords. Now, those dreams were as empty as the dust that blew across the Great Rift Valley.

But tonight, he had other reasons for keeping himself apart from the two dozen or so laborers the foreigners had hired. On the previous day, he had broken with his custom by hanging on the fringes of a knot of idlers as they bantered about the fate of the expedition. It had been three days since anyone had come out of the cave, and tension in the camp, both among the bearers and their foreign minders, was starting to reach the boiling point.

Something has happened in there, one of the men said.

Perhaps they found something, another suggested. Treasure?

Moses had seen the collective reaction to that suggestion; a gleam of avarice shone from the faces of the men. It was of course very unlikely that the cave contained a trove of gold or uncut diamonds, but there were other kinds of treasure in the Rift that these men would not appreciate. Excavations in the Great Rift Valley had yielded some of the oldest remains of humankind, and many believed that the earliest ancestors of the human race had emerged here. It was exactly the sort of “treasure” that brought foreigners to the Rift; it was, he felt quite certain, the goal of this expedition. He had inquired about his new employers before leaving Addis Ababa; he doubted that a company called Nexus Genetic Research would be lured in by promises of gold or petroleum, but they would certainly have an interest in the wealth of knowledge that might be gleaned from the bones of the oldest ancestors of Homo sapiens.

And that was when he had made up his mind. He had to know what was in the cave.

The division of labor in the camp was explicit. Initially, their role had been to unpack and assemble the tents, and to provide logistical support in the form of cooking meals, and refueling and maintaining the generators. A few of the men had assisted in uncovering the cave entrance, but once that task was finished to the satisfaction of the research team, no laborers were permitted to leave the ad hoc compound. The meals they prepared for the researchers were shuttled to the site by the armed security team-all foreigners-and even those men were not permitted inside; the meals were left in insulated containers by the entrance.

But something was wrong. Three days had passed without anyone emerging from the cave to collect the meals.

The rumors began to flit about the camp like moths around a spotlight. Moses heard only what was said by the other bearers, but even from a distance he could see that the foreigners were likewise troubled by the situation.

Shortly after breakfast, the camp manager, accompanied by two men from the security force, approached the cave entrance, and after fifteen hesitant minutes, ventured inside. Moses surreptitiously observed the manager’s assistant clinging to a handheld radio, receiving reports every few minutes until interference from the mass of earth enveloping the cavern cut off that avenue of communication. Following that, nothing. It was as if the three men had stepped through a portal to another galaxy.

The foreigners had compartmentalized their operation too well. Communications with the outside world had been restricted to the scientific team. The computers which they used to initiate a connection via the satellite dish on the edge of the camp were inside the cave, connected by several hundred meters of fiber optic cable, so the only way for the increasingly distraught assistant to seek guidance from his distant superiors was to likewise venture inside.

As the hours of the day ticked by, the fear and frustration simmered at a slow boil. Many of the Ethiopian labors were preparing to desert the camp. The security guards, evidently tipped off to the growing discontent, made a conspicuous show of force, doubling the guard on the vehicles and establishing several observation posts on the perimeter of the camp.

Though he felt no loyalty to the foreigners, Moses had no interest in deserting the camp. He was not immune to the fear of what might be happening inside that ragged slit in the hillside, but his curiosity was even more powerful. The researchers had found something in there, something important, and he wanted to know what it was.

He tried to force himself to eat everything on his plate, but the food was like sawdust in his mouth. When he could choke down no more, he threw the half-eaten meal away and wandered into the maze of tents. He did his best to appear nonchalant, which given the anxiety level in the camp was no simple feat, and charted a course that brought him to the edge of the compound closest to the cave entrance. Two thick cables-one to deliver electrical power, the other the fiber-optic line-snaked out from the camp, reaching across the emptiness to disappear into the barely visible gap in the hillside. Moses fixated on the insulated bundles; they would mark his path into the cave.

Although the security force had been largely redeployed to watch for deserters, the primary focus of the expedition-the cave itself-had not been abandoned. Two guards were posted at the edge of the camp. To the west, the sun was just kissing the horizon, casting its rays sidelong across the landscape, and Moses knew he would never get a better chance. Taking a deep breath, he emerged from his place of concealment and began striding toward the nearest guard post.

He could see the security man squinting into the sunset in a futile effort to identify him, and offered a friendly wave. The guard hesitated, as if reluctant to let go of the assault rifle he held at the low ready, but raised his right hand to return the greeting. For Moses, that casual gesture was the signal to go.

He bolted forward, running directly at the guard, and closed the distance before the confused man could even think about dropping his hand back to the pistol grip of his weapon. Moses bowled into him, knocking the man backward into the uncoiled nest of concertina wire that ringed the camp. Because he was anticipating the impact, Moses recovered quickly. Using the stunned guard like a stepping stone, he launched himself over the wire.

The second guard, half-blinded by the setting sun, did not immediately grasp that his comrade had been subdued, but when he heard the sound of footsteps out in the open, he knew something was wrong. Moses heard a shouted warning but paid it no heed. Instead, he aimed himself at the twinned cables and started running as if his life depended on it; in fact, it did.