by Mark Wandrey
He put one foot in front of the other, stumbling every so often, but he managed to keep moving. After a while he realized his shoulder hurt badly. The strap from the rifle he’d taken was digging in to his skin. Surprisingly he hadn’t lost it when the explosion threw him. He stopped to switch it to the other shoulder then continued.
Jim’s head hurt, and he felt disorientated. He didn’t know how long he walked, only that he didn’t stop, even to drink. There was a bladder in the survival pack. He found the hose and slid it over his shoulder. He got one sip filled with ice chips, then nothing. He sucked hard, and got a tiny amount of water. He clipped it back to his suit front and continued onward.
Eventually he realized he was stumbling in circles. How far had he gone? He stopped and half fell to his knees as he pulled off his pack. Inside was a small relay navigation device. It would receive the passive coded signal from the ship above. And he felt like an idiot; it had a radio too.
“You’re a moron,” he said into the breathing mask as he opened the radio. It fell apart in his hands; apparently he’d crushed it when the tank exploded. “Great.” He dropped the shattered device in the snow and moved on into the deepening dusk.
Jim wondered how he ended up sitting down. One minute he’d been walking slowly, trudging one exhausted step at a time, the next, he was sitting against the bole of a tree. He shook his head. Had he fallen asleep? The sun was down, and it was dark. He had apparently skinned the sleeve of his survival suit at some point, because the cold was biting the exposed skin in that spot like a rabid animal. Hissing, he looked at the time. Yes, it was four hours after dark. He’d been asleep for about six hours. He didn’t feel like he’d slept for six minutes.
He struggled to his feet. As he did, he recovered his arm, pulled out the survival suit’s control, and looked at it. The sun was down, and the air was now -14 degrees Fahrenheit; the suit was using power at a frightening rate. However, at least the radiation meter showed he wasn’t going to glow in the dark. Jim chuckled at his own gallows humor.
Walking onwards was going to be tough. The little flashlight built into the survival suit’s arms barely cast enough light to see a few feet in front of him. He used the light and moved slowly through the woods. It had been surreal before, like an old cartoon or something. Now, in the dark, it was just plain frightening. He found himself thinking of old stories from his childhood. Of Mirkwood or The Forbidden Forest from Harry Potter. If he didn’t know from the briefings given by the Duplato that there were no predators bigger than a house cat, he would have been sure he was being followed. The feeling was almost overwhelming.
Because of the uneasy feeling, he made very little progress. He kept looking over his shoulder and scanning around with the dim flashlight.
“Stop being paranoid,” he said aloud, his voice vibrating against the plastic face shield. Then a branch broke under his foot, and he almost jumped out of his skin. He spun around, the flashlight giving off a little circle of crazily dancing illumination. The shadows played against each other, and his mind created all kinds of creatures stalking him. Jim stopped and stood still, pointing the light at his feet, controlling his breathing.
After a long minute, he was calmer. All he could hear was the wind howling through the rocks and trees, and the sound of branches moving and snow falling. He took the pack off his back and rummaged inside it. Finding what he sought, he removed the pistol (a version of the C-Tech GP-90 he knew so well) and checked the action. It was loaded, chamber empty. He slid it into the holster built into the survival suit. It wasn’t very heavy, but he felt more reassured with the weapon, even though it was much less powerful than the rifle. He was familiar with the GP-90. Intimately familiar. He only wished it had the linking module so he could interface it with his pinplants.
Chastising himself for waiting to do this until now, Jim checked the pack for anything else immediately useful. There was a camp light, but it didn’t throw a directional beam. He wasn’t interested in something that would draw attention to him from miles away, so he left it there. There was more water, all frozen like that in the bladder built into the pack. A little energy stove, if he could find shelter, a solar charger, a slate with survival manuals, and other survival gear.
“Thirsty,” he said and slung the pack. There was an icicle hanging from a branch nearby, so he broke it off and chomped the end. It tasted a little strange, something to do with the planet’s atmosphere. Traces of ammonia? But not dangerous. Didn’t taste very good. He let the crunched-up ice melt, swallowed, then took another bite. The water was brutally cold as it went down and once the skin on his lips froze to the icicle, making him accidentally tear his lip. That reminded him of the back wound. He hadn’t thought about that in a while. It didn’t hurt much, because his feet hurt worse.
The few bites of ice helped. He tossed the rest of the icicle away and started walking again. One foot in front of the other. He didn’t know where he was going, but at least he was going somewhere. It was sometime later when the swaying flashlight caught a break in the low rock ridge to his left. He stopped and played his light around. It wasn’t much of a break. Maybe it led to a cave? A sheltered overhang? He wasn’t much of a climber. Still, what choice did he have?
The climb quickly got steep and treacherous. He was immediately grateful for the heavy gloves built into the survival suit, and regretted the boots weren’t nearly as tough and did not provide nearly as much gripping ability. Plus, bending over to find handholds made his back hurt. A lot.
“Fuck,” he mumbled as he stopped for a break, “this was a bad idea.” The cleft was narrow, barely wide enough for him, and exhaustion was overtaking him. He knew the battery in the survival suit probably wouldn’t make it through the night. He leaned against the rock wall and worked at catching his breath, looking to the side and down to the gloomy woods now many feet below. The snow was letting up and the stars peeking through provided a little light. And he couldn’t feel the cold though his hands on the rock wall. What?
“Shit,” he said and fished out the control, immediately afraid the power was failing and his hands were becoming numb. His fingers worked and the control showed almost thirty percent power remained. In fact, his hand got colder when he took his hand away from the rock wall. That didn’t make any sense.
Jim replaced the controller in his pocket and slowly pulled the glove off. The cold bit at his bare skin like a piranha. Shaking, he reached out and gingerly touched the rocks. They were warm.
“A geothermal vent?” he wondered aloud as he slid the glove back on. He used the flashlight to look up. Yes, the cleft above him had steam coming out! With fresh energy driven by hope, he renewed his climb.
Jim reached a ledge of sorts. It was small, maybe smaller than him. He was desperate, so he tried climbing in. Yes, it was too small. He had to back out and kneel on the ledge while he tried to figure out how to get inside. He tried a second time before he realized why it wasn’t working. The rifle and pack were catching on the lip of the entrance. Grumbling about his stupidity and realizing just how much real world experience he lacked, Jim stripped them both off, pushed them into the cave and followed them in. He’d crawled about twenty feet or so when he felt the shaft start to go downward. Before he could investigate, he rammed his head into a rock, and the lights went out.
Jim was having the strangest dream. He was lying in a sauna, in darkness, and butterflies kept flapping along his cheeks and face. He laughed and tried to brush them away. When he did they turned into miniature Zuul, their jaws snapping and teeth red with his blood.
“Stop!” he cried and woke up. “Oh,” he moaned and reached up to his head. His mask was gone and the hood shoved away. He felt a moment of panic, had he frozen half his face off? No, the air on his cheeks was warm, and he was sweating in the survival suit. The flashlight on his right arm waved around to show him the inside of a cave. He touched his head and held the hand under the flashlight. It was bright red with blood. “I’m a mess,” he s
aid. He wiped his hand and started looking around with the light.
Eventually Jim found the cave entrance he’d come through; it was more than ten feet above. Judging by the bang on his head and the additional bruises, he’d cracked his noggin in the tunnel up there and fallen into the cave. He reached in and shut off the power on the survival suit, and unzipped it. It was quite warm in the cave.
He found a flat place and made himself comfortable. Based on his watch, he’d been out for an hour. The water bladder in his pack was now thawed, thank goodness, so he drank almost half of it. As he drank, he examined the rifle which had landed nearby. It seemed unharmed. No surprise, a laser rifle of that type was meant to take a beating. Next, he began cataloging in more detail the contents of the pack itself. As he laid out the items, he occasionally felt a chill draft from above. With the suit’s heating element off, it was just warm enough that he didn’t feel very cold, only chilly.
Jim knew that merc troopers had all kinds of survival training when they first began working. Of course, he’d gotten none of that. He’d scanned and stored the manuals, but that wasn’t practical knowledge. He realized he should have memorized the contents of the pack, at least. Inside he found a flare gun with an integral five-shot magazine. His people were looking for him, and that would have helped a lot. He made a note to go over the manuals later. What the damned pack didn’t have was any rope. Now that would have been useful. There was a little polycord, though.
In one of the outer pockets he found the medical kit. Time for some first aid. The back wounds were as he thought, shrapnel damage from the missile hit. After he gave himself a pain killer from the medkit he could feel the fragments with his fingers. He spent a fun hour with tweezers and a scalpel digging them out. The contortions necessary while lying on his considerable belly were far less than fun, and he had no clue if he’d gotten them all when he was finished. At least it felt like he did. They’d all been shallow, less than a quarter of an inch deep in his skin. He concluded he’d been extremely lucky.
Jim used the mirror to look at his head. There was a nasty bump and a nice little cut that had stopped bleeding while he worked on his back. All in all, the repairs were as good as they were going to get. With blood still dripping down his back, he dug out the little nano-treatment unit and read the instructions. Unlike the therapy he’d gotten, these nanites didn’t require an external power source. They were short-lived and worked very quickly. He dialed the selector on the cylinder for “skin closure.” It was designed for direct application, so he set the other selector to “Small,” covered his eyes with his left hand, and sprayed his forehead. It hurt like crawling fire.
“Fuck!” he cursed as the little robots did their thing. “No one said this shit would hurt!” After a minute, the pain faded, and he looked in the mirror again. There was an angry pink line where the skin had been torn, and that was all that remained of the wound. The status on the applicator read “10.” “And now the fun one,” he said adjusting the sprayer. He selected it for “Moderate” this time. The two controls varied the tasking of the nanites and the amount dispensed. The indicator on the applicator went from “10” to “7.”
“Maybe I can get by without it,” he thought aloud. But his back was hurting much worse after his first improvised surgery. The survival manual made it clear that in any exposed environment, closing wounds was a major priority. The nanites would also clean the wound of any foreign organisms. He had to do this. His hands shook nervously as he leaned forward and took the applicator. Even though it was supposed to be sprayed directly on the wound, the manual said you could use a hand to apply it, if you were quick. He sprayed the dosage into his right hand and quickly reached around behind and smeared it up and down over the wound.
If the face wound had hurt, this was pure agony. Where his scalp had felt like crawling fire, this felt like something inside his skin eating the flesh! “Oh,” he cried, “oh, ow, ow, ow, it hurts!” Tears rolled down his cheek, and he bit his lip hard enough to taste blood. It seemed like an hour before the pain began to fade. His hands were shaking uncontrollably as he reached behind him and felt the skin, now only bumpy in places where the shrapnel had been. It was all still tender. “That was horrible,” he whimpered. He tried not to imagine what it would be like for an internal injury. He was glad he’d been unconscious for his treatment back on Earth.
With the wounds taken care of, he washed his hands with a little water, as recommended in the manual, and settled back. He took a blanket from his survival pack and wadded it up as a pillow, and another as a cover, and curled up on the rock floor. In minutes, he was asleep.
* * * * *
Chapter 21
Murdock watched from almost a mile away via remote link as a pair of specially-fitted CASPers examined the blast crater and the area around it. The tank had gone up with the force of almost a kiloton. The biggest part of the war machine they’d found was a track assembly and the turret. Unfortunately, Jim’s suit was in similar condition.
“Any sign of a body?” he asked his troopers on the ground. He was in his own suit, as was Hargrave, standing next to him in the circling dropship, Phoenix 1.
“No sir,” the trooper reported. “The suit is fucking torn into at least a dozen parts. The cockpit looks like a bomb went off inside it.”
“Acknowledged,” Hargrave said. “Get the pieces into containment and back to the hangar so we can go over them.”
Adayn Christopher, who’d been in the dropship on the off chance they’d find Jim, and her armorer expertise would be needed, did her best to mask her shock and concern for Jim’s well-being with efficient professionalism, but it wasn’t a very convincing act. Murdock was beginning to think the hot little girl had a thing for his pizza-eating commander. There was no accounting for taste.
“I tried to tell the kid to just hang on there and wait,” Murdock said. “Stupid move, taking on that tank.”
“As you were, 1SG,” Hargrave said. “That kid probably saved my squad.” He pointed at the blast crater, almost 100 feet across, then at the blasted forest. “Took some serious balls to jump that beast, and he took it out.”
“We don’t know if it was just luck,” Murdock grumbled. “I never doubted the kid had guts – just no skill.”
“He needed time,” Hargrave said; “now he’ll never get it.”
Murdock knew the old guy blamed him for getting the kid killed. He wondered if there was some truth there. Sure, it was his job to take care of the kid, but it was also his job to carry out the mission and protect his subordinates. There were a lot of green troopers in the command. It was a miracle no one had died in that engagement. Well, almost no one.
Below, one of the troopers who’d been going through the wreckage jumped to the top of a ridge and deposited a mangled CASPer leg. Murdock had seen such sights a hundred times on as many worlds. He shook his head. The kid should never have gone out on deployment with them; it was that simple. “What about the Cavaliers?” he asked Hargrave.
“The trust is clear. Without a Cartwright in direct command, the assets revert.”
“And what about his mother?” Hargrave’s suit turned toward him and Murdock could almost feel the stare through the armor. “Fine, forget I said it.”
“No, don’t worry about it.” Hargrave was silent for a few minutes while more pieces of shattered combat suit were delivered. “We might need to face the fact that, with Jim Cartwright dead, the Cavaliers may be dead too.” Still, Hargrave thought about one more option, out there in the galaxy somewhere was a last-ditch contingency. It was the last thing he’d hoped he would ever have to do.
Jim woke up feeling better, even though he was as sore as he ever remembered being. He had bruises on almost every area of his body. Only his back and forehead, where the nanite therapy had been used, felt unharmed. When he felt his back after stretching he was annoyed to find a single sore spot, with a lump under the skin.
“Must have missed a piece of shrapnel,” he sa
id in the nearly dark cave. His voice rebounded around the cavern. Feeling better, he decided food was in order. As soon as he made that decision, his stomach threatened to consume his entire being. How long had it been since he’d eaten? It had been nearly the end of their shift when the alarm had sounded, hours after dinner. According to his watch it was just over a day, or thirty-two hours ago.
He dug out his energy stove and set it up, removing the power cell from his survival suit pocket and connecting it as well. The cell powered many of the tools in his survival pack. And if he could get outside in the daylight, he could recharge it. For now, it still had a third of its original charge, enough to cook a couple dozen meals.
The food was compressed, dehydrated concentrates of various flavors. There was a total of twenty-one meals in the pack: six breakfasts and fifteen dinners. He opened one of the breakfasts, crushed the cube with his hand and sifted it into the stove’s pan then added a few ounces of his water. With power turned on, the water was boiling in just under a minute. He used the spoon to stir it until the water was absorbed, leaving him with a pan full of egg-like substance mixed with sausage-like substance and bits of cheese-like substance. He tasted it with a spoon and found it uninteresting.
After it had cooled, he added some of the salt and pepper in the rations accessory pack and that made it a little more palatable. He removed the flashlight from the suit and connected it to the power cell. There was enough energy to run that item for years. He used the light to explore his surroundings as he ate. The entrance he’d fallen in through was way too far up to jump to, and it overhung the opening slightly. No way could he climb up to it. He’d have to find another way out.
