by Juniper Gray
“Whatever.”
His ship had been in worse shape than he'd expected. Trees were felled all around the little craft, almost buried under charred foliage at the end of a long scar through the jungle. He could crack the door just wide enough to get back in and foraged through the churned insides of the vessel for anything salvageable or worth salvaging. There wasn't much. A few emergency food rations, a stub projectile pistol and an energy rifle, some basic medical supplies and whatever he had on his person were all they had between them.
When he returned to the lakeside, Gen was trying to stand. He tossed a medpack over to him. “At least fix yourself up if you're not going to let me do it.”
He could feel the heat of Gen's glare on his back as he laid everything else they had out on the grass, but at least he wasn't too stubborn to use it. Therse heard him suck in breath as discretely as possible as he set about tending to the wound.
“We need to get moving,” Gen muttered. “There's no way our descent will have gone unnoticed.”
Therse swung round on his haunches. “That all depends on you. Can you walk?”
Gen scowled at him, injecting a hypo of painkillers into his thigh. “I can walk.” He put a hand down to support himself and stood awkwardly, apparently embarrassed and irritated that he was in such a bad way but determined not to let Therse see the worst of it.
“Need a hand?” Therse said anyway, stepping over to him. He was shoved away again.
“Which direction?” Gen said, trying to contain the strain in his voice.
“I need to figure out where we are first.”
Gen slumped back against the grassy bank as Therse returned to his salvage pile and fetched over a topography holo, unraveling it over the sand like a piece of rolled-up paper. The geography of the mission sprang into relief on the little map, drawn by horizontal greenish-pink lines stacked above one another. Their target was indicated by a flashing red blob at the center of it all. “Show current coordinates,” he told it. The map shifted, rises of mountains whizzing past as it adjusted, then stopped. They were forty kilometers from their objective. “Fuck,” Therse muttered, running a hand into his still-damp hair.
“We can still pull this off,” Gen told him.
“How? Your ship's a write-off; there's no way I can get mine airborne in time, it'll take weeks to fix.”
“We walk.”
“What?”
“We walk the thirty-eight-point-one klicks to this ridge here.” Gen pointed at a rise on the map, finger slipping through the holographic contours. “If we don't have the option of tactical strike from air, we'll just have to do it from the ground instead. From here we'll have a perfect view of their base, providing intel is correct. Just give me a gun; I'll shoot this fucker myself.”
Therse had to admit he was a little impressed by the man's bravado, but ultimately it was a flawed idea. “That's impossible, given the state your leg's in.”
“I told you,” Gen grunted, shoving himself upright again, trying to hide the pain Therse knew he must be in. “I'm fine.”
It was still a bad idea. Therse shook his head. “We should find somewhere high-up, send a comms burst, and wait for re-enforcements,” he said, looking around and trying to gauge the best peak in their immediate vicinity.
Gen put his hands on his hips and leaned on his good leg. “Jetty won't be sending re-enforcements. We're not even supposed to be here, remember? This is off-record.”
Therse considered that for a moment. “Why do you think that is, exactly?”
Gen shrugged. “Not our place to know.”
“Look, I'm sure if they find out what's happened —”
“No one's coming, Therse. No one's going to come, no matter how loud you shout. If they were, they'd be here already. Jetty's a whole system away, SAR could have burned up in the atmosphere for all we know. We don't have the first fucking clue what's going on. We're on our own here.”
Therse turned away, running his hands through his hair. He hated it, but Gen was absolutely right.
“So the only thing we can do,” Gen grunted slightly, shifting his weight and testing out his injured leg, “is complete the mission.”
Therse looked back at him; tall and proud despite the hideous situation they were in. There was something about Gen's confidence that put him at ease, even though he still hated the bastard. They needed to work together if they were going to survive this. He relented. “All right.”
* * * *
The day was heating up, and the going was getting tougher. Therse peered back at Gen. He was trying his best not to let the pain show, but their progress had been incredibly slow even with all the pain meds pumping through his system.
“We need to make at least five-k by nightfall,” Therse announced.
“What's your point?” Gen spat, sullen and irritable, a sheen of sweat glossing his face.
Therse stopped and turned back to him. “My point is that we've still got three-k to go, and the sun's going to start setting soon.”
Gen stopped moving altogether. “Well, fuck you. You try getting through this shit,” he said, whacking the thick foliage they were wading through, “with a busted leg.”
“I'm just saying, this is the flaw in your plan.”
Gen limped past him, using a thick stick for support. “We just need to get there; I'll blow his brains out, mission complete, sector saved, everything's fine.”
Therse watched him go. “What do we do after that? If no one's coming for us.”
Silence.
“We can think about that after.”
* * * *
Gen was in a bad way. Therse had to admire the man's grit and determination, if nothing else.
They were settling down for the night in the shelter of a huge moss-covered tree-root, Gen struggling to find a comfortable position to lie in as Therse checked their progress beside him in the near-darkness. He sighed and snapped the map away. It wasn't looking good.
He turned to Gen and considered the risks involved in offering him a hand.
Suddenly a huge burst of light filled the air, shining impossibly bright even through the dense jungle and forcing them both to cover their eyes. There was just enough time for them to exchange a dumbfounded look before the noise and the blast wave hit, buffeting the air about them as the floor shook violently, sending birds and other flying animals screaming into the night, ripping debris from the jungle canopy and dropping it to the ground. A huge branch fell right beside them, narrowly missing Gen's leg.
“What the fuck was that?” Gen said, eyes wide. Therse stood up, thinking fast. Gen said something else to him, but it was drowned out by another round of detonations.
Therse had an inkling as to what it might be. It was coming from the direction they were heading, and there was only one thing he could think of in that direction worth bombing. He peered up the tree they had made camp against, trying to determine in the dim light if it was climbable.
“What? You thinking of going up there?”
“I need to go take a look. Stay there,” he said, then realized how redundant that was. Even in the gloom he could tell Gen was giving him a sarcastic look. “You know what I mean.” He started to climb, cursing his lack of upper-body strength as he grabbed at branches, vines, whatever he could reach. He just hoped none of what he reached for was alive and mobile.
Eventually he climbed high enough to be able to see out over the valley ahead of them. Everything was burning, massive white flames raging up the mountainside, scorching it in a roaring, twisting inferno. He'd never seen anything that could do that.
Gen shouted up at him but Therse ignored his calls, unable to do anything beyond simply stare. At the rate the fire was moving it would reach them within half an hour, and it had taken them all day to get this far from the lake. He might not be able to make it on his own, but at least he stood a better chance.
Why, then, was it something he couldn't even begin to consider?
“What is it?
What do you see? Damn it, Therse!” Gen yelled, jostling him back to reality.
“The base,” he said, hearing the distance in his own voice. “Everything...the whole damn gully's lit up.”
“What does that mean?”
He was about to make some attempt at a response when there was another huge detonation over the valley, this time without any burst of light. Therse removed his arm from in front of his eyes with caution, and for a horrifying moment he thought he might have gone blind. Then he realized it was simply that the fires had been put out.
Something ripped unseen through the sky at what felt like just above his head, scaring the shit out of him and making him lose purchase. He yelped, flinging his arms around the trunk of the tree and holding on for dear life.
“Therse?” There was concern in Gen's voice.
“I'm fine, just, whatever that was took me by surprise is all. It put out the fires, though.”
“Well, get your ass down before you actually fall off the damn tree then.”
Therse smiled to himself, but it was short lived. He began to make the descent and dropped back exhausted to join Gen at the base of the tree, leaning on his knees. It had certainly been a tiring day.
Gen was chewing on something, staring up at him through the gloom. “Were they ours?” he asked, referring to the craft that had made the swoop-and-drop.
“I really don't think so. Didn't sound like any Navy fighter I know of. I have no idea what the fuck is going on.”
“What the hell do we do now?” Gen muttered through a mouthful.
Therse lay back beside him. He was expecting Gen to rip into him for nearly losing his balance, but he didn't. “We can figure that out in the morning.” He rubbed at an irritated spot just below the neck line of his suit. Felt like something had bit him.
* * * *
When Therse awoke, Gen was still sleeping soundly right next to him, hands tucked up under his chin, the cold dew of morning still settled against his warm skin. Therse allowed himself a moment just to watch him, breathing serenely through parted lips, eyes tracking things in his dream. Asleep, Gen looked different. His face seemed gentler somehow. More vulnerable. It was hard to believe from looking at him now just how big of an asshole he really was. Or rather, in that peaceful state, it was easier to believe he wasn't one at all.
Therse shook himself out of it and looked around. The morning air was still and thick with mist. The only shapes he could make out were the huge tree trunks that towered above them, and even they were swallowed by it to an extent.
He listened hard, trying to hear anything like the sounds of fighting in the distance. After the attack on the raider base last night they hadn't heard anything else, but he would have expected whoever was doing the bombing to swing by in the morning to check things out in daylight. Perhaps they hadn't arrived yet. Less optimistically and probably more likely, there wasn't anything left to come and see.
Still, their best hope of escape still lay ahead of them down the valley.
He turned his attentions to Gen's leg, leaning forward as quietly as possible to take a proper look at it while Gen was still unconscious. The compression bandage seemed to be doing a good job of keeping the bleeding and swelling to a minimum, but it was only a temporary measure. Gen would need proper medical attention soon if his leg was ever going to heal right.
Therse froze. A twig had snapped, somewhere out in the mist. He stilled the breath in his chest, not moving a single muscle, listening for another sound. There, in front of them, and closer than last time. He reached steadily back for his stub ammunition pistol.
And then they emerged from the haze: a whole family of creatures he'd never seen the like of before, snuffling through the undergrowth—three larger animals about as big as a dog, accompanied by five or so smaller creatures he guessed were their young. They were round like pigs, with two tiny black eyes set above huge downward-turned mouths like suction funnels, surrounded by mobile mandibles that they apparently used for turning the undergrowth over. He watched them, dumbfounded, afraid to breathe properly in case he scared them away. The smaller ones were following the adults closely, sticking near the head, putting their mouths down to the ground when the bigger ones routed at the debris covering the forest floor.
They were maybe five meters away now, and he could hear their little grunting, snuffling noises, could see the dew glistening on their coarse fur. Therse decided Gen should see this and shook him gently. He opened his eyes groggily and started to sit up, opening his mouth to protest at Therse for such a rude awakening.
Therse's arm came around him, stopping his movement and covering his mouth. Therse held him fast, and for a moment he was confused and infuriated until he noticed the transfixed expression on Therse's face and followed his gaze.
Therse felt Gen's hand move slowly to his, making the gentlest of contacts, bringing it down away from his mouth. Therse glanced sideways at him. They sat like that for another minute or so, embraced almost like lovers, and watched the animals go about their business, neither wanting to move and break the spell of the moment.
And just as suddenly as they had appeared, the animals vanished back into the mist.
* * * *
The still, gray cool of the morning had given way to the still, humid heat of the afternoon. Their progress remained slow, but Therse had at least managed to convince Gen to let him carry all the equipment. The man was stubborn and proud, so it had taken the best of Therse's diplomatic wrangling to get him to give it up. In the end he'd gone for, “I'll carry it today and you can carry it tomorrow; that way we both take shifts having a rest,” though he had no intention of giving it back.
Gen was even slower than yesterday, a combination of the injury and the pain meds beginning to wear off. What made it worse was that there was only one spray left, so they both knew Gen would have to wait until he was in excruciating pain to use it in order to make the meds last.
“So remind me, what was your big idea?”
That was worrying. Therse had told him once already what their new plan was, and having to reiterate it meant that the pain was bad enough now to distract Gen. “We head for the base, or what's left of it at least. It's likely the people who blew the crap out of it might be hovering around, and we can ask for a lift if they're friendlies. If not, there's an outside chance some fighters will be laying around somewhere and we can get ourselves off of this rock.”
“Right.”
“Of course,” he trailed off, looking down at his feet.
“What?”
“Means we'll have to walk the whole distance.”
“Whatever. No problem.”
“Gen, I think it's time to admit that it just isn't possible for you to walk all that way with your leg in that state —”
“You never fucking listen do you? Am I complaining? No. Now let's just keep. Fucking. Walking. You're wasting enough time with your bullshit arguing.”
“Fine,” Therse relented, scratching at his neck again. It was sore now. He pulled the suit collar up over it and resolved not to scratch it again.
* * * *
Therse dropped back to walk alongside Gen, and peered sideways at him. “You could always just wait here. I'll leave you with some rations and the rifle and head up to the base alone. It'll be quicker, and I can scope out what's up there. I mean, what's the point in dragging yourself all the way over there if there's nothing but charred wreckage anyway?”
Gen breathed heavily through his nostrils and kept staring straight ahead. Therse put a hand on his elbow. “Genham.”
Gen pulled away sharply. “There is nothing you can say that will convince me to sit my ass down in the middle of fucking nowhere and wait for you to come skipping back to me, so you needn't bother.”
“All right, fine, I'll say it how it is then, shall I? This is fucking stupid. You can't walk. You're limping along on what is at best a fracture, slowing me up for no reason at all. You can say you don't want to sit somewhere and
wait all you want, but what's to stop me just leaving you behind anyway?”
Gen grabbed him with both hands, wincing as some of the weight went awkwardly onto his injured leg. “Look, you fuckwit, I don't give two shits if you decide you want to run off; we were never anything like a team in the first place. We're just two people who happen to be on the same side in this mess. In fact you know what? I think I'd be much happier if you pissed off, so go right ahead.”
Therse brushed him off, reached into his pack and shoved a couple of rations, the remaining medpack and the rifle into Gen's hands. “Fucking fine by me,” he spat, and walked away.
He got about twenty paces before he heard something collapse into the undergrowth. He stopped and turned back to see Gen trying to lever himself off the floor with the rifle. Gen saw him looking. “Just keep going, piece of shit, I don't need you.”
Therse walked back to him, and, ignoring his protests and bravado, slung one of Gen's arms over his shoulder and hoisted him up. Once he was upright, Gen tried to pull free but Therse wouldn't let him.
“Enough already!” Gen yelled.
“Would you just shut up for one fucking minute?” Therse yelled back at him. “Stupid proud bastard!”
As they walked on, Therse felt himself gradually take more of Gen's weight.
* * * *
Gen was growing weaker, Therse could feel it. It was more difficult for him to hide it now that they were walking like this. He'd known how bad it was when Gen hadn't protested the arm at his waist to offer more support as they walked.
And now an obstacle had appeared that made things so much worse—a river, fast-flowing and thigh-height at least, stretching about twenty meters or so across. Huge rocks and boulders littered the water, throwing up dangerous eddies.
“Shit,” Gen muttered.
Therse shrugged his arm off, then set about moving the pack from his back to his front.
“What are you doing?”
Then Therse squatted down in front of him with his arms reaching out backwards.
