Ramadi, Iraq

A dust cloud blossomed on the horizon. Nyssa visored her eyes against the brutal Iraqi sun. Damn, she thought. We need more time. 

Behind her, she could hear the workmen scrambling with their preparations. The most vulnerable pieces would to be covered with a tarp, secured by whatever means available against a desert wind that could strip the flesh off a carcass in under a day. Others worked feverishly to deepen the entrenchments, or fill more sandbags, or prepare their souls. The workers cursed violently in Arabic and Kurdish. “Zrba abteezk!” someone screamed as the wind ripped a corner of one of the tarps loose, and Nyssa had to grin in spite of herself. A few months ago, such language might have made her blush. Now, she just nodded in agreement. In a few short hours, the dust cloud would be upon them. 

To her right, she heard the sound of metal sliding against metal. Dager was working the action on his rifle, inspecting the gaps for any sand that might have accumulated in the bore. When he was satisfied, he engaged the safety and slung the weapon on his back, his expressionless face turned toward the oncoming cloud. 

“What do you figure?” Nyssa asked him. 

The Kurd squinted as he thought, the weatherbeaten skin near his eyes forming deep wrinkles at the corners. The two of them had worked together for three seasons now, but Nyssa still couldn’t read him. 

Dager stroked his thin beard, then spat at his feet. “Three or four pickups. Probably a Humvee, most likely with a fifty cal mounted. Maybe twenty men in total.” Dager might have been ordering lahmacun for all the emotion in his voice, but Nyssa felt her stomach twist in knots. An armored vehicle. A fifty caliber machine gun. Kalashnikovs. Against a few dozen graduate students, local workmen, and professors. We should be running, she thought.

But then Nyssa caught a glimpse of the metal that gleamed beneath the loose tarp before the workmen tied it back down. She shook her head. She thought of what had happened at Palmyra. At Hatra. That’s not an option. We have to stay. We have to try. Even if it means our lives. 

“How are the fortifications coming?” she asked. 

Dager shrugged. “They’re doing their best. The rest is in Allah’s hands.” 

Meaning he doesn’t have much hope, Nyssa thought. She nodded grimly, and began to walk toward the sandbags. She felt Dager’s powerful hand grab her upper arm. He fixed his eyes on hers. 

“You need to say something to them,” he said, his voice still as calm and unyielding as the mountains. “They need to hear from you.”

“Even if we don’t have a chance?”

He nodded. “Especially.” He released her arm. 

Nyssa’s shoulders sagged. He was right, of course. It was her expedition, and that made their lives her responsibility. And the sacrifice she was asking them to make was enormous. She walked to one of the jeeps, and hefted her lithe body until she stood on the hood. 

“Alright. Listen up everyone.” She raised her voice to be heard over the wind, but she needn’t have bothered. Every face in the camp turned toward her as soon as she climbed on the jeep. Three years ago she’d been worried about leading such an expedition. Not the work itself, of course. The science she knew better than almost anyone on the planet, and she’d been spending most of her summers toiling beneath the unforgiving desert sun on the off chance that some small fragment of pottery, stonework, or wonder of wonders, metal had survived the millennia. 

Nyssa lived for those moments. The thrill of discovery never got old, and her heart still skipped a beat every time she thought she might be the first person to lay eyes on something in over two thousand years. Even the thought of it sent a shiver of excitement through her body. 

But this had been the first excavation she’d organized herself. She’d worried about her abilities to lead the team of professors and student volunteers in such a dangerous part of the world. She’d worried even more about how the local workmen would respond to her, how comfortable they’d be with the idea of a woman in a position of authority. 

But the men had responded well. Many even seemed to look up to her, just as the students did. They had worked hard for the limited wages she could afford to pay them, dedicating themselves to the job with a professionalism she never would have dreamed of. When the first warnings came that the Islamic State was coming, only a handful disappeared, slinking off under the cover of darkness. The rest had stayed. It was their land. This was their heritage. And they’d be damned if they were going to let the barbarians destroy it.

They were a marvelous group. And now she had to ask all of them to die. 

“The fighters we were warned about will be here in a matter of hours.” Worried murmurs rippled through the students. She couldn’t blame them. The locals took the news in silence. She’d expected as much. Few people who had grown up in this country had escaped witnessing the violence of the last decades. Many had experienced first-had some of the worst atrocities humanity had to offer. They had few illusions about life. 

“We can expect up to twenty of them, according to Dager. They’ll have at least one armored vehicle, and possibly some heavy weapons.” The students’ murmurs grew louder, but Nyssa raised her hands to calm them. “None of this is a surprise. We knew the risks when we chose to come here. When we chose to stay.” 

Some of them nodded, more to reassure themselves than in agreement, she thought. She could see the fear in the students’ eyes, naked and unselfconscious. Some were already shaking. She could see it in the eyes of her fellow professors, despite their best efforts to put on a brave face. 

“I’m not going to lie to you. We’re not soldiers. We’re academics, students, and laborers. This isn’t our job. This shouldn’t fall to us.”

She stretched out her hand to the metal object covered by the tarp. “But none of us expected to find that thing here. And now that we have, I don’t see how we have a choice. The work you’ve done here will change the course of history. But you’ve seen what those men,” her hand swept forward to indicate the approaching dust cloud, “do to history. They will destroy this place. They will destroy everything we’ve done. Every piece of our work. And our work is all that matters now. We have a responsibility.” 

Nyssa’s voice wavered with emotion. Not now, she thought to herself. These people need strength. Show them steel. She straightened her back and took a deep breath. “We have a responsibility. As scientists. As human beings. You know this. It’s why you chose to stay. It’s why you chose to fight. This is your heritage. This is your birthright. What we do today determines our future as a species.” She found Dager’s face in the crowd. He smiled. She nodded back. “Let’s give them hell.”

Next Chapter: Chapter 3