BLOOD OF BORNEO

Chapter 12: The Forgotten Faction

         The sharp scent of upas tree sap and burning incense assaulted Damang’s senses even before he was fully able to open his eyes. The last thing he remembered was the pain splitting through his bone marrow as the Rajah on his body reacted to the aura of the ancient tomb. Now, he felt the cold surface of a stone floor beneath his back, but there was something colder and sharper pressed directly against his Adam’s apple.

          “Don’t move. One small twitch, and the tip of this blowpipe dart will send kalas poison into your bloodstream. Your heart will stop beating within five seconds,” a woman’s voice said lowly, yet filled with undeniable authority.

           Damang slowly opened his eyes. His vision was still slightly blurred, but he could make out the silhouettes of several people surrounding him in the dim cave. The torchlight attached to the stone walls cast an orange glow over faces that looked hardened and full of suspicion.

          Right in front of him, a woman with black hair tied in a ponytail was holding a long bamboo blowpipe dart. Its sharp tip pressed against the skin of Damang’s neck. The woman wore a worn tactical vest paired with a Dayak woven cloth tied around her waist. Her sharp eyes showed that she was someone who had witnessed far too much death.

          “Who are you people?” Damang asked hoarsely. His throat felt as though he had swallowed sand.

           “We should be asking you that, Soldier,” replied a young man standing beside the woman. He held a short parang and stared at Damang with open hatred. “What is the son of a traitor doing in the sacred tomb of the Panglima?”

          “Bara, enough,” the woman ordered without taking her eyes off Damang. She slightly loosened the pressure of the dart, though she remained cautious. “I saw that Rajah on your body when we found you unconscious. The pattern is unmistakable. It belongs to the bloodline of Nyarung. But I also saw the scars from composite armor and the way you move. You’re Damang, aren’t you?”

           Damang tried to sit up, but the pain in his ribs made him grimace. “Yes. I’m Damang. And I’m not a traitor. I had just tried to destroy Thorne’s logistics bridge before they blew it up with me on it.”

           The woman lowered her dart. She gestured for the others to lower their weapons. “My name is Sali. I used to be a nurse in Long Baram before Elias Thorne’s dogs wiped the place out. Now, I lead what remains of your people.”

            Damang looked around. Inside the vast cavern, he saw around thirty people. Most of them were women, elderly people, and several young men who looked thin yet had tightly built muscles. They armed themselves with whatever they had. Blowpipes, old mandaus, and a few makeshift rifles that looked far from reliable.

           “The Forgotten Faction,” Damang muttered while holding his stomach. “I thought everyone in the village had been taken to the labor camps.”

           “Thorne took many people, but he couldn’t capture everyone,” Sali sat on a large rock in front of Damang. She grabbed a bottle of water and tossed it to him. “We’ve been hiding in this underground cave network since the first day of the attack. This tomb is a place they fear because its spiritual energy is too chaotic for their sensors. But you... you entered this place and survived. That’s impossible.”

             Damang drank the water greedily. It tasted incredibly fresh, washing away the metallic taste lingering on his tongue. “I had no other choice. The Baram River dragged me here. And this tomb... this tomb healed me.”

           “Healed you?” Bara, the young man who had pointed the parang at him earlier, stepped forward. “Look at your body now. That Rajah is absorbing ancestral energy. You stole what doesn’t belong to you. You ran away to the city while we were slaughtered, and now you return to take this mystical power? You’re nothing but a coward wearing a special forces uniform.”

           Damang stared at Bara with his silver eyes, now carrying a much sharper gaze. “I never asked for this power, Bara. And I didn’t run away. My father sent me to the military to learn how to fight modern enemies. But I realized bullets alone aren’t enough to stop Elias Thorne.”

           “Then what’s your plan now?” Sali asked, cutting off the argument. “Do you know what’s happening up there?”

           Damang shook his head. “I lost communication after the bridge exploded.”

Sali let out a long breath. She picked up a digital tablet with a cracked screen that still functioned. Apiece looted from Thorne’s logistics unit. “Thorne has kidnapped nearly all the adult men of Long Baram. He isn’t turning them into mining slaves. He’s turning them into test subjects. They’re being taken to an underground laboratory in the Western Sector. According to the information we stole, they’re injecting something into the prisoners’ bone marrow.”

           “Blood sorcery,” Damang hissed. “Thorne is searching for a suitable host for the entity he wants to awaken.”

           “That’s not all,” Sali continued, her voice trembling slightly. “They’re searching for a more precise coordinate of the Earth’s Heart. And they’re using seismic vibrations to find it. If they discover it, this entire forest will die. Its life energy will be drained to revive that Andalusian demon.”

          “We need to strike now,” Damang said firmly. He forced himself to stand, and this time he succeeded despite the stiffness in his body.

          “Strike?” Bara laughed cynically. “With what? We only have thirty people. They have Paladins, drones, and Lieutenant Vargas, who can snap your neck just by looking at you. You saw what happened on the bridge yourself. You lost, Damang.”

           Damang stepped closer to Bara. Even without carrying a weapon, the aura radiating from his body made Bara instinctively step back. The Rajah on Damang’s arm pulsed faintly, releasing heat that everyone nearby could feel.

           “I lost because I was still fighting as a soldier,” Damang said in a low voice that vibrated through the cave. “But now, I fight as part of this land. I’ve seen that tomb. I’ve felt the rage of the Panglima whose skulls you guard here. They don’t want us hiding like rats.”

           “Bara is right about one thing, Damang,” Sali intervened. “We don’t have enough strength for a frontal assault. We’re low on ammunition and medicine. We’ve only survived to make sure our bloodline doesn’t completely disappear.”

           “Surviving only delays death,” Damang replied. He pointed toward the cave ceiling. “Can you feel that vibration?”

           As if responding to Damang’s words, a violent tremor suddenly shook the cave. Dust and small pebbles rained down from the stone ceiling. A deep low-frequency hum echoed, as though the earth itself were groaning from being pierced by a giant needle.

         “The Harvester machine,” Sali stood up in panic. “They’re conducting another seismic excavation. They’re getting closer to these coordinates.”

          “Thorne knows we’re somewhere around here,” Damang picked up his ancestral Mandau lying near the altar. “He doesn’t need to find the entrance to this cave. He only needs to collapse it with those vibrations, and we’ll all be buried alive with our ancestors.”

“We have to move deeper into the sector!” shouted an elderly fighter from the corner of the cave.

           “There’s no time to move!” Damang shouted, his voice overpowering the rumbling tremors. “If we move, we’ll only get trapped in a deeper hole. Sali, you said you have a map of their installation?”

          Sali hesitated for a moment before showing the map on her tablet. “We managed to map the energy pipeline leading to the Earth’s Heart. There’s a weak point in the waste disposal sector, but it’s heavily guarded by reconnaissance drones.”

           “Give me the coordinates,” Damang ordered.

            “You’re insane if you plan to go alone,” Sali said.

          “I won’t go alone if you come with me,” Damang looked at everyone inside the cave one by one. “You are the Forgotten Faction. But tonight, we will remind Thorne that this land can never be bought.”

           Bara looked at Damang skeptically, though there was now a flicker of admiration in his eyes that he tried to hide. “How can you guarantee we can get in undetected? Their sensors can read human body heat from a kilometer away.”

            Damang touched the Rajah on his neck. “This Rajah can manipulate aura. If we move in small groups, I can cloak you within the Mist. But the price is heavy. My body will feel like it’s burning, and I’ll need you to cover my back when I can no longer move.”

           Sali looked at her people, then back at Damang. She saw certainty in the silver eyes of the young man. Something the people of Long Baram had lost long ago. Hope.

           “Alright, Damang,” Sali grabbed her makeshift rifle and checked its chamber. “We’ll come with you. Not because we believe in miracles, but because I’d rather die from bullets than be buried under rocks.”

           “Prepare your gear,” Sali ordered the others. “We only bring what’s necessary. Fast movement, silent strikes.”

            The atmosphere inside the cave suddenly turned busy. The women prepared blowpipe darts already coated with deadly nerve poison. The young men sharpened their parangs and mandaus with river stones. Damang stood before the black ulin chest he had touched earlier. The chest was calm now, but he could feel something inside it observing his every movement.

           “You can feel it too, can’t you?” Sali approached Damang and stood beside the chest. “My mother used to be Indung Inan’s assistant. She once said this chest contains something called the ‘Last Breath.’ Only someone whose soul is truly dead can open it without going insane.”

            Damang stared at the chest with clenched fists. “I feel like the soldier inside me died in that river, Sali. All that’s left is rage.”

            “Use that rage wisely,” Sali whispered. “Thorne feeds on emotions. If you become too angry, you’ll only become his snack.”

The seismic tremors struck again, this time strong enough to knock down one of the skull racks and shatter it on the floor. Damang closed his eyes, allowing the vibrations to flow through his legs and merge with his Rajah. He began mapping the position of the Harvester machine above them through the resonance of the earth.

           “They’re at coordinate 110-North,” Damang said. “Only two kilometers from here. They’re drilling through the granite layer above this tomb.”

            “That’s the fastest route to the Earth’s Heart,” Sali checked her wristwatch. “We have less than six hours before they reach critical depth.”

            “Move now,” Damang ordered.

The guerrilla group began exiting through a narrow gap behind a waterfall. They moved like shadows among the wet rocks and dense forest that was beginning to wither because of Thorne’s pollution. Damang stayed at the very front, constantly touching the ground every few meters to ensure no reconnaissance drones were nearby.

           Each time he used his power to conceal the group’s aura, Damang felt an unbearable burning sensation along his spine. Sweat poured from his temples, and his breathing grew heavier. Yet he did not stop. He allowed the pain to remind him of every life lost on the bridge, of every villager now being tortured inside the laboratory.

           They arrived at the edge of the Western Sector. In front of them stretched a laser fence equipped with automatic motion sensors as far as the eye could see. Beyond it, watchtowers with xenon spotlights swept across the ground in deadly rhythm.

           “That’s the target,” Sali whispered while pointing at a low concrete structure releasing blackish-green steam. “The biological waste disposal channel. It’s the only entrance that doesn’t require full biometric authentication.”

            “Bara, take the diversion team east,” Damang instructed calmly with a military tone. “Plant some sound mines near the logistics warehouse. When I give the signal, detonate them all. Make them think a large attack is coming from the forest.”

           Bara nodded, this time without arguing. “Understood, Commander.”

           “Sali, you’re coming with me. We enter through the waste channel. We need to find the data center and figure out where they’re keeping the prisoners,” Damang continued.

As they prepared to split into teams, a sharp electronic screech sounded from above. A Scouter drone shaped like a giant wasp hovered directly over their position. Its red sensor began rotating, attempting to penetrate the aura concealment created by Damang.

            “Don’t move,” Damang whispered.

He focused his energy. The Rajah on his hand emitted a small electromagnetic wave that disrupted the drone’s frequency for several seconds. In that brief moment, Damang leaped from the bushes, caught the drone midair, and crushed its communication module with one bare-handed grip.

            The drone died without sending a warning signal. Damang landed smoothly, but he had to drop to one knee as a sudden pain stabbed through his heart.

           “Are you alright?” Sali grabbed Damang’s shoulder.

            “Just... a small electric shock,” Damang lied. He knew it was his heart protesting the rapid use of energy. “Come on. We’re almost out of time.”

            The vibrations from the Harvester machine grew more intense, causing the ground beneath their feet to tremble nonstop. In the distance, golden light from the Earth’s Heart began seeping through cracks in the ground, a sign that Elias Thorne’s ritual had reached an extremely dangerous stage.

           Damang stared at Thorne’s arrogant facility before him. He knew this might be a suicide mission. He knew the Forgotten Faction might not survive until sunrise. Yet when he looked at Sali, Bara, and the other fighters prepared to battle for their homeland, Damang felt a new strength flowing through his blood. Not power from the Rajah, but the strength of human dignity refusing to submit.

           “For Long Baram,” Damang whispered while unsheathing his Mandau.

“For Borneo,” Sali answered with equal strength.

           They crawled forward toward the waste channel, entering the belly of the deadly enemy while carrying long-buried vengeance and hope newly awakened from the depths of Baram’s hell. The real war had only just begun, and this time, the forgotten faction would make sure their name would be remembered forever in the blood of the invaders.