As she stood guard Bill repeated her actions. The commotion of their interchange awoke the others, both of whom crawled out of their hammocks, grabbing their rifles from the under-hammock slings as they did.
Breakfast consisted of flight rations warmed in boiling water.
“From what I can see, we’ve got a couple of day’s worth of flight rats, then it’s on to field rats, hunting, foraging, and survival rats. I’d like to hold off on eating any more of the rations until we absolutely have to,” Karen told the crew as they ate their morning rations around the fire.
“Bill, were you able to pull any imagery of where we are?” Karen asked.
Bill shook his head in the negative. “Nope. The last stuff I backed up was from before the last turnaround.”
Karen bit her upper lip, in obvious deep thought.
“Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do. I want to bring all our supplies with us, which means either rafting down a river or hauling them by hand. If we have to haul them by hand, then we’ll need to make some travois,” she said, referring to the frame structure consisting of two long poles lashed together with crosspieces and used to carry cargo and pulled by people or pack animals.
“I’d rather we go the easy way, rather than hauling everything by hand, so the first order of business, after determining where we are, is to see if this lake has an outlet. If it does, we’ll follow it. I don’t know of any lakes in this part of the world that don’t feed into an ocean or a river that feeds into one. Bill, do you?”
“Not to my knowledge, but I’m not as good at European geography as I am GIS,” he replied.
Karen thought for another minute, and then told the group what she wanted done. Ben and Meri were to go along the lake’s shore to the south to see if they could find an outlet while she and Bill stayed at the campsite. Bill was to determine their location, which meant using the sextant to take sun shots.
“Your chrono still set for Alpha time?” she asked Bill, who nodded his agreement. “Good. At least that’s one thing we don’t have to worry about. You keep yours set to Alpha and when noon rolls around I’ll set mine to local. That way we’ll always have a pretty good idea on where we are.”
After breakfast, Ben and Meri gathered their equipment, donning survival vests, belts, and backpacks. Karen told the two to take a PDW and try and bag a deer or something like it if they saw one. “Save the rifle ammo for when it’s really needed,” she cautioned.
Meri gave Bill a kiss before the two pilots began their westward trek along the southern shore of the lake. With no operating radios, there was no way to communicate other than by using whistles, voices, mirrors, or shooting. And, any shooting done wouldn’t be for signaling, rather for food or safety.
“Y’know,” Karen said, after Ben and Meri were gone, “I bet we’re just north of Marseilles. If that’s the case, we could be at the Med in a couple of days.”
“As the crow flies, we’re probably less than 200 klicks from the Med,” Bill offered.
“Hmm. Twenty klicks a day by foot, yeah, more than a couple. More like ten or so. I’ll have to keep that in mind. In the meantime, get the sextant and take a sun shot. I’ll keep watch out, and when you’re done clear a space on the beach for a stick so we can find out when local noon is. I figure we’ve got plenty of time, but I don’t want to be scrambling.”
Bill dug the sextant out of the pile of group survival equipment and sought out the best place on the beach to take a sun shot. Soon, he had things lined up and he was able to determine their latitude. After a quick calculation, he announced to Karen that they were at 45 degrees and no minutes north.
Digging out the field tablet that he had recovered from the crash box Bill decided to find the line of latitude they were at and follow it until he found a lake surrounded by mountains. It wasn’t long before he found one, and it was one of a string of four, so it seemed to fit the bill.
“It’s possible we’re at Grand Lac de Laffrey,” he said, mangling the name with his abysmal French pronunciation. Looking closer, he then said, “Doesn’t look like there’s an outflow river, but there is a river to the north of us, the Isère. Looks like it loops around and feeds into the Med. Too bad we didn’t make it another 150 klicks north, we could have landed in Lake Geneva and rafted down the Rhône the entire way.”
Karen looked at the snow-capped mountains surrounding them and said, more than asked, “You want us to walk over that?”
Bill shook his head. “No. I don’t think we need to. Looking at the topo map, I think we’re on a high valley over the river. There looks to be a break in the mountains at the northwest end of the lake, and that should lead us straight down to the river. That is if this planet’s like Hayek.”
“Well, let’s wait ‘til the others get back and then we’ll decide. In the meantime, let’s find our longitude so we’re a little more accurate on our location.”
As noon approached Meri and Ben returned to camp from the north, having walked all around the lake. As Bill suspected, the only outlet they found was a small stream on the north end, not large enough for a raft.
“Looks like we hoof it then,” Karen decided.
“One other thing,” Ben said. “We found a fire pit.”
Bill didn’t catch on at first until Karen asked, “Are you sure? Was it a real fire pit or just a lightning strike?”
“It was real,” Meri answered, holding up a stone artifact.
“Crap. That just raised the stakes. We may have gone from a Class III to a Class II planet.”
Bill recalled that a planet without hominids was classified by the Corps as Class III, but if there were any, it was marked Class II and shut down to further exploration, exploitation, or settlement.
Karen took the artifact from Meri, examined it briefly, then handed it to Bill.
Damned if that doesn’t look like a spear point, he thought.
“Okay, everyone pay special attention to the surroundings and keep an eye out for any hominids,” Karen told them. “Also, while we can’t scuttle the Monarch, let’s get everything that could possibly identify us or Hayek out of there and burned. You two,” she said, pointing to Meri and Ben, “get back inside and pull out anything that’s a potential identifier. That means all flight manuals, logs, whatever. We need to get them burning, now.”
She turned to Bill and told him to complete his task.
“I’ll hold onto this,” Karen said, referring to the artifact, “just in case we make it back. The Corps’ll want it as evidence.”
As the sun began to reach its zenith Bill began marking the tip of the stick’s shadow every minute. Within twenty minutes they could tell when it had been noon, so they calculated their longitude, finding out that Bill had been correct in his assessment of their location.
Meri and Ben went back into the Monarch while Karen kept watch. They soon emerged with armfuls of manuals and other paper items. Karen had them toss everything on the fire, piece by piece until everything was burned. While the two were engaged in their pyromaniac behavior, she went into the floating craft and double checked to ensure no identifiers were left behind.
She soon returned to the fire, legs dripping with lake water. “Looks good. Too bad we can’t sink that bird, but it’s designed not to be. I locked it, though, so unless whoever had that fire has axes, ain’t nobody getting in.”
As the last of the paper was burning Karen said, “I guess it’s pretty much settled. We walk. Let’s get a few saplings cut and limbed so we can make the travois. Let’s start out with two and see if that’ll do. Meri, you keep watch while we get it done.”
Soon there were enough saplings to construct the travois. Karen dug out one of the parachutes they had salvaged from its pack and used the parachute cord to tie the frames together. The parachute straps were used to make shoulder straps for the travois. That way nobody would have to hold onto them, thereby freeing their hands to carry rifles.
As Karen pulled the chute out, she discovered that it
had been sliced.
“Look at this!” She held up the cut fabric. Everyone could see that it was a neat slice, and one guaranteed to ensure the parachute would fail when deployed.
“Those bastards weren’t dickin’ around,” Ben said.
“Well, we’ll repair it later. Let’s get the travois done first,” she said, stuffing the parachute back into its bag.
Karen had the men sling the travois over their shoulders while she loaded the equipment on them. It soon became apparent that even wearing their packs, there was too much equipment and food to carry on just two travoises. One more was constructed and that sufficed.
“Rather than getting a late start, we’ll spend the night here again and head out in the morning. It’s not like we need to get anywhere in a hurry,” she said with a wry chuckle after they had set the travois down. “Bill says the creek you two found will lead us to a larger river that feeds into the Med, so we’ll follow that down.”
Once more, hammocks were strung, wood brought in to feed the dwindling fire, and trip wires set out. Bill and Meri decided to try their hand at fishing while Ben and Karen kept watch. Rather than use the issue Cuban yo-yo reels, the two of them had elected to pack small packable fly rods. It was their lucky day: they had strike after strike. Soon they had a string of trout and whitefish on shore, enough for all without digging into any of their limited rations.
The fish were cooked over the fire using a field expedient grill made from the limbs of one of the saplings they had cut down to make the travois. The burning wood added flavor that the lack of seasoning couldn’t. After eating, Karen made sure all fish remnants were disposed of away from camp. “No sense tempting hungry critters,” she commented.
Karen decided to go with a rotating watch schedule, so that the first person on watch one night would be the second on the next, and so on. As Bill had the last watch the night before he was given the first watch and told to wake Meri after his watch ended at twenty-two hundred hours. The other three crawled into their hammocks while Bill took the first watch. After two non-eventful hours he roused Meri, and when she was up, attired, and standing ready with her rifle, he slung his rifle under his hammock, grabbed his PDW, and crawled into his hammock.
The cool morning air woke Bill as the sun was climbing over the mountains to the east. As he climbed out of his hammock, PDW in hand, he saw mist rising off the lake. Ben had stoked the fire, so a cheery blaze rose from it. Suspended over the fire was a pot of boiling water.
“Hey,” Ben quietly said to him from the fire, not wanting to wake the others. Bill grunted.
Bill joined him at the fire, sitting down on a log strategically placed by the fire. He set the PDW on his horizontal thighs, and faced his palms to the fire, feeling the warmth seep into him.
Using a bandana as a hot pad, Ben poured some of the hot water into a cup and handed it to Bill. “Here. It looks like you need some coffee.” He took the proffered cup, thanked him, and took a sip. The first sip was hot and he could feel it coursing down to his stomach.
Before Bill was halfway through the coffee, he could hear Meri and Karen stirring. Soon, they joined Bill and Ben and each had a cup of coffee. “Might as well enjoy it while it lasts,” Karen said wistfully.
After the coffee was gone, Karen ordered the others to pack up their hammocks, ensure their canteens were full, and to get ready to move out. “Once we’re ready, then we’ll have a quick breakfast. I’d like to be on the river by this afternoon, if possible.” Meri added more water to the pot over the fire so they could heat some flight rations for breakfast.
While Meri was doing that, Karen asked Bill how far away he thought the river was. Bill pulled out the field tablet, activated it, and pulled up the Hayek map. He used the ruler tool to estimate the distance from their location to the river.
“If this is the same terrain as Hayek, then we should be about five or six klicks from the river. It’s flat about half way and then we drop about 500 meters in elevation to the river valley,” he told the others
“So, if we average three klicks an hour, we should be there in about two hours,” Karen said. “A couple of hours to build some rafts, so we oughta be well on our way downriver by noon, then. Okay. Well, everyone pack your hammocks and get your gear on. Packs can stay off until after breakfast, but from now on, unless we’re stopped for an extended period, you keep all your survival gear on you at all times.” The others nodded their assent at these words.
Soon, all the gear was packed, everyone was wearing their full field uniform, including survival vests and belts, and had their packs placed on the ground next to them. Breakfast was a hurried affair, and the retort bags from breakfast and the day before were buried in the fire pit and covered with rocks.
“Well, no sense wasting time. Meri, you take rearguard and keep an eye out to the front, back, and sides. Ben, you take point. Bill and I’ll be in the middle. Everyone keep heads on swivels. Remember, this is a non-impact world, which means there are some truly dangerous critters out there.”
The three designated pack animals put their packs on and then picked up the travois by the improvised shoulder straps. It was a bit awkward, Bill thought, but a lot easier than trying to carry everything by hand or on their back. And, we’re not leaving anything useful behind.
Within minutes the quartet was walking along the eastern shore of the lake, heading north. Fortunately, there was enough of a beach they didn’t have to bushwhack through trees. All four carried their rifles at the ready and were constantly scanning the ground and trees for any potential threat. As they walked, Bill thought about what Janice Goodland had said in one of her survival classes. “A lot of threats come from above, trees, boulders, the sky, but for some reason, none of us look up. Do so, constantly! It might save your life.”
After an hour they had made it around the lake to the northwest corner where the gap between the mountains became obvious. Working their way through the forest wasn’t as difficult as Bill had thought it would be. This was mainly because it appeared to be old growth forest with minimal undergrowth, most of which appeared along the edge between the lake and the trees. Some quick work with a machete got them into the forest, where the walking, while darker and cooler, was easier.
The trip downhill was somewhat daunting, between not having a trail and hauling the travois while wearing their packs and survival gears and carrying their rifles. But they eventually made it, coming out on a gravel bar on the river.
The river didn’t appear too deep but it was relatively swift and had the cloudy look as if from glacier runoff. Touching her fingers to the water, Karen said what they all were thinking, “Yep, it’s cold.”
Looking around, Bill took in with his fisherman’s eyes the fact that the water had been higher just days before. “Looks like it’s dropping,” he commented. The others look around and Meri agreed with him.
Picking up a stick from the gravel bar Bill tossed it into the river and watched it rapidly disappear downstream. “Quick and cold. Most likely snowmelt.”
“Well, doesn’t much matter,” Karen said. “We need to get down to the Med and get a boat built, so let’s get crackin’.”
The three Explorers hauling the travois dropped them to the ground and placed their packs on top. Karen told Bill and Ben to cut enough trees to make two rafts, while she and Meri kept watch.
The two men identified trees that would be suitable for the rafts and began chopping them down. Each raft required two skid logs with a half dozen top logs. The skid logs were short, barely two meters long, but wide and heavy, to support the top logs which rested on them. Each top log was four meters long and a third of a meter in diameter. After a couple of hours of chopping, and several blisters, Bill and Ben had all the logs lined up on the riverbank ready to be assembled. Feeling the sting of broken blisters on his hands, Bill commented, “Guess I’m not as up to chopping as I used to be.”
Karen gave them guard duty, as a way to rest, while she and Meri assembl
ed the rafts, placing the top logs over the skid logs and lashing them together with parachute cord. In just a couple of hours, both rafts were ready, and the two women chopped down saplings that would be useful for poling and maintaining control of the rafts. Karen tied ropes to the ends of each raft so they could be dragged or held on to.
“Before we start this flotilla, let’s make sure all the gear is strapped down. Does us no good to get to the Med if we can’t build a boat,” Karen said. She then directed the trio how she wanted the equipment lashed to the raft decks. “Wear your vests and belts, but keep the belts unbuckled. If you fall in and start going under, I want you to get out of them quickly. Rifles over your shoulders.”
Once all the equipment was lashed to the rafts, they were pushed into the river. Karen ordered Meri on one and had Bill hold the tow rope. Karen and Bill pushed the raft into the frigid waters, then they pushed the second raft partially into the river, where Karen jumped on it and Ben held onto the tow rope. Ben then sat down on the gravel bar, and using his feet, pushed the raft out into the river. Fortunately, the site they had chosen to build and launch the rafts was on the downriver inside curve of the river, so the current didn’t pull the ropes out of the men’s hands.
“Hop on,” Karen commanded, and both men launched themselves onto the rafts, which dipped perilously, touching the bottom of the river briefly. Fortunately, the part of the river bottom that they touched was barely a couple of inches. I wouldn’t want to do that in deep water, Bill thought.
Slowly, with assistance from the four Explorers poling, the rafts moved out into the river and were soon swept up into the current. Bill estimated that they were going about seven knots, or about thirteen kilometers per hour. Heck, with that speed we might just make the Med in just a couple of days.
28
It was just after noon when the crew launched the two rafts. While not very maneuverable, they were better than walking and carrying all the survival equipment.
The Corps of Discovery Trilogy Box Set: Books 1-3: A multiverse series of alternate history Page 30
