by Michael Ryan
The Ted must have been green, because rather than pausing to size up the situation, he blundered after me, spraying water with clumsy footsteps. My system alerted me that his blade had grazed the back of my suit, and I muted the warnings, which were only distracting me.
I watched him close in on me again in my rearview screen. When he was on top of me, I spun with all the force I could muster and slammed him in the side of the head with a closed fist.
Even though the suits could withstand serious hits from many weapons, including indirect shock waves and radiation from field nukes, having a pile driver punch to the temple could stun momentarily – the suit didn’t completely insulate you from all harm, but rather shielded you from small to medium projectiles and proximate missile strikes. Within limits, the reverse-force technology could protect a body from shock, but it was a huge energy suck, and it wasn’t something I could turn on in a hand-to-hand fight. For all the ingenuity of its design, it wasn’t made of unicorn magic, and had practical limits unless locked down and immobilized – at which point it could survive most anything thrown at it, until you used up your power supply. Then, of course, you’d die from suffocation if you didn’t self-terminate.
The Ted recoiled from the force of the blow and then threw himself at me. We both went down in the water while we pounded at each other, delivering strikes that would have killed ten unarmored men, but which had little effect on us.
I broke his grip on me and managed to step away from him. The smooth rocks beneath our boots were worn to a rough polish by the current and were slick with moss, making fighting in the river even more impractical. I waded farther from him and he gave chase, oblivious to everything but his enemy trying to get away.
Battlefield psychology is a fascinating topic of study. The mind plays tricks in the heat of combat, focusing to a kind of tunnel vision that excludes anything that could distract. In past eras, it wasn’t uncommon for soldiers to be unaware they’d been shot in the midst of a firefight, the adrenaline rush quashing the senses except for those critical to killing the enemy.
This is never more so than when in pursuit of a foe. At the sight of an adversary turning tail and running, the mind floods with a sensation that’s been described as better than sex.
The Ted put on a final burst of speed to get me, and I surprised him by spinning toward him and leaning forward from the hips, as though I were bowing to him. His momentum carried him into me, and he scrambled onto my back, fighting for a hold on my weapon cache, no doubt to try to stab at me with his laser knife long enough to penetrate my armor.
I straightened with an abrupt jerk and he was flipped upside down, kneeing the back of my head and pounding at my thighs with his fist. I ignored the blows and backed slowly away from the bank, waiting for what I knew was to come.
Assuming I’d called this right.
I didn’t have long to wait.
A jarring shock knocked me forward into the water, and suddenly the Ted’s weight on my back was gone.
I watched as the monster dino-lizard worried the Ted like a pit bull with a chew toy, its mighty jaws crushing the armor of the enemy’s leg. The Ted kicked at the creature’s eye with his foot, but the blow only seemed to enrage it more. He slashed at it with the knife, but his upper body was too far from the dino-lizard’s head to do anything but piss it off.
The leviathan jerked the soldier back and forth and then dove into the current and began a death roll. I watched as the Ted reappeared at the surface several times. His armor held at the hip joint for a couple of spins, but by the third it had weakened, and by the fourth roll, his leg separated from his body in a torrent of blue and red fluid.
The dino-lizard reappeared, and its powerful jaws clamped onto the Ted’s torso and dragged him under, leaving only a swirl of blood on the surface in its wake. I made my way back up the bank and swept the area for additional lizards, but apparently my savior was a loner. The beast appeared a final time farther downstream, rolling with the Ted’s torso, and then vanished beneath the surface with its grisly prize.
~~~
I retraced my steps until I reached the spot where Veetea and I had separated. I tried to reach him, but he was out of comm range. I suspected he’d follow the same rules he’d given me, and would keep searching until twenty-four hours elapsed. In that case, my orders were to find Callie, so I left the waterway and marched back to the bunkers, where the Second Platoon was doing a grid sweep.
It seemed logical that the bunkers were designed to protect something, but whatever that something was remained hidden. I entered the bunker where we’d left Callie, and found her busy working at a computer terminal.
“Anything exciting?” I asked.
“No. Contact reports. Requisitions. Requests for leave. Logistical stuff, but nothing about a top-secret research lab.”
“Shit.”
“Well, nothing worth doing is ever easy.” She went back to her work. “Is Veetea with you?”
“No. We were forced to split up.” I paused. “I got the runner.”
“I assumed,” she said.
“We agreed on a twenty-four-hour protocol. He’ll be back tomorrow. In the meantime, since you’re working, I’m going to nap. Assuming you don’t need my expert comp skills?”
That drew a humorless laugh. “Nap,” she said. “I’ll wake you if I need you.”
I opened a med window on my screen and selected a sedative to help calm me down. All the adrenaline coursing through my system had me wide awake, but I knew I was physically exhausted. Getting rest while I could seemed like a wise decision, and a short time later I slipped into a dreamless sleep.
~~~
Sergeant Veetea never returned.
Like Maaly, no body or suit was ever recovered.
Even all these years later, I like to believe they’re still officially MIA, but I can’t imagine anyone who doesn’t think they were killed in action. What finally got them was still an open question, but something in the jungle clearly had.
The Second Platoon ended their search for Veetea after the third day. When the final search party returned, Callie announced to the Second Platoon leader that she felt she’d done everything possible with the bunker computers. They weren’t connected to an outside network, so once she’d gone through thousands of files, there wasn’t anything else to find. We debated whether it would be more advantageous to wait and see if a network link connected or if it would be better to destroy the third bunker.
“If they do connect,” the Second Platoon leader said, “they’ll see that the other two bunkers have been destroyed. We gain no tactical advantage leaving this one standing.”
“I can’t disagree, sir,” Callie said.
“Clear out,” he said. “I’ll have one of my teams take care of it.” He regarded us in silence for a few seconds. “I’m considering attaching both of you. Thoughts?”
The officer could incorporate us into his command if he felt we had no standing orders that were actionable. Without a way for us to communicate with our command, we fell under the orphan section of chapter thirty-eight.
“I don’t think we have an objection,” Callie said. “Avery?”
“I’m thinking,” I said.
“Okay,” the lieutenant said. “I need to get your e-sigs on the appropriate form.”
“Forms,” Callie said, sighing. “I just skimmed through thousands of forms for everything from Gauss rounds to beer.”
“They got beer delivered out here?” I asked.
“Sure – beer, grenades, a bread maker, algae, rice, sugar, coffee. Standard stuff.”
“A bread maker?” I repeated.
“Well, it might have been a pasta maker. My Tedesconian is weak. I didn’t bother running words through a translator unless the document looked special.”
“I bet you could go to an Earth library and find documents from the First World War requesting cigarettes and condoms,” I said. “As if keeping those records had been a matter of national
security.”
“There are documents going back a lot further than that,” the lieutenant said. “In logistics class, we studied grain requisitions imprinted on clay tablets.”
“Someday there’s going to be students on Purvas trying to figure out why the Teds were requisitioning algae,” Callie said.
I froze as puzzle pieces fell into place. “It’s used in labs,” I said. “Sir, I’m going to have to object to joining the Second on grounds.”
“Which are?” he asked.
“If this place was requesting algae…”
“It’s a long shot, Sergeant,” he said. “You have to be aware that you’ll be safer as part of a platoon.”
“Agreed, sir,” I said. “But this mission is high priority, likely on both sides. I don’t have an expectation that anything we do will be safe.”
“Well, I won’t force the issue,” he said. “But I think you’re being imprudent. The offer’s open if you reconsider.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said.
We left the bunker. A team of anxious engineer types turned the facility to dust. Two hours later, the Second left the compound to us.
“Now what?” she asked.
“We find out where they took the algae.”
“The platoon’s been searching for days.”
“I have a feeling.”
“I need to grab some sleep,” she said. “Stand guard?”
“Of course.”
The following morning, we began a new search.
~~~
We decided to stay together as we pored over the terrain, clocking forty kilometers per day. Callie and I walked randomly, covering ground with caution, looking for anything that hinted at a man-made structure. Even though the area had already been grid searched, I wanted to see if anything – an anomaly, a pattern, a hunch – hit my subconscious. After two days, I thought I’d made a mistake.
“You think we should have gone with the others?” I asked Callie.
“Don’t second-guess yourself.”
“All right, but this is beginning to feel like a complete waste of time,” I said. “If you were hiding the entrance to an underground facility, where would you put it?”
She thought for a moment. “Under a rock or a tree, or behind a waterfall…or maybe through a secret door into a parallel universe.”
“You’ve been watching too many movies,” I said. “But who knows.”
“Where would you put it?” she asked.
“The lab in the Arctic DZ was well hidden. To find it, you had to descend into a crack in a glacier, and even then it had a hidden entrance. When I got there, the tunnel roof had caved in and had exposed the front door.”
“Okay, so in the jungle, what’s analogous?”
“Damn.”
“What?”
“That cave I hid you in when you were out of your armor.”
“I remember, but that’s–”
I cut her off. “No, I don’t mean that specific cave.”
“That’s a long way from here, isn’t it? Are there caves around here?”
“No, but think. When I was dropped into the DZ, it was a good distance from the lab – a precaution against being followed and giving away the location. If the Teds are doing logistical drops here, it would make a lot of sense for them to go a few days on foot or in small vehicles to the entrance. In case they were being tracked.”
“Then we need to find some caves a couple of days’ march from here.”
“Caves, lava tubes, or anything else that naturally leads underground.”
“I’m game. But which direction?”
“Hold one.” I pulled up my maps and scanned the surroundings. Topography maps showed a ridge that rose above the jungle a hundred and ten clicks away. I sent a snap of it to Callie and waited for her to view it. “What do you think?” I asked.
“Seems as good as any,” she said.
“It’s two days or so if we–”
“Bad idea. Let’s give it an extra day. If we cover the ground too fast, we might miss something or draw unwanted attention.”
“Fair point,” I said.
We spent the better part of four days traveling to the southernmost point of the ridge. On the fifth day we discovered a series of caves, but nothing indicating purvasts had been there.
On the sixth day, we came across a footprint in the mud outside one of the last caves in the string.
~~~
We photographed the print and compared it to the file footage. It was a Ted military boot.
“I think we need to go inside and see,” I said.
“They’re likely to have surveillance gear,” she countered. “I’d expect the works – tripwires, cameras, motion detectors…”
“Okay. You stay out here, ready to run.”
“And send you in there alone?”
“Why not?” I asked. “It makes the most tactical sense.”
“Then you should stay here. You’re a faster runner.”
“I’m not sending you in there alone,” I said, a little too quickly.
“There you go.”
“That doesn’t settle it,” I said. “It makes no sense for us both to be captured.”
“If you get captured, the first thing they’ll do is search out here.”
“Maybe they’re understaffed,” I said. “Maybe since we destroyed the troops at the bunkers, it’s just the scientists.”
“That’s a lot of conjecture.” Callie removed a telescope from her pack and scanned the cave from the cover of the trees.
“Anything?”
“Nope. Except for that single print, we got nothing. This whole debate might be moot.”
“Might be,” I said. “But we’ll only know if I investigate.”
“Fine. But I’m going with you.”
The cave mouth was smaller than many of the others we’d searched, but it stretched deeper into the ridge. We crept along the dank stone floor, careful not to slip on the lichens that seemed to cover every surface, our night-vision filters engaged. There were no signs of life until we’d gone deep enough so the light level dropped to almost pitch black, and even the NV gear struggled to illuminate the area. We entered a cave with a higher ceiling than any we’d gone through before, and found it full of bats.
Thousands of the creatures hung from the ceiling. Movement near our feet drew my attention, and I looked down. Living in the bat guano was an entire community of insects and small rodents, and snakes slithered at the base of the cavern walls. We continued deeper into the formation, and I considered the difficulty of bringing supplies this deep.
“I can’t imagine they’d come this far,” I finally said. “If they did, we’d have seen their tracks in the guano. Maybe this is a dead end.”
“Normally I’d agree,” she said. “But look at how fast our footprints are being erased.”
I looked where she was pointing. It wasn’t instantaneous, but I could see how over enough hours, perhaps a day or two, the thriving life in the cave would cover any traces. “Shit,” I said.
“No, guano.”
“How many caverns like this do you think there are?”
“At least another dozen. And that’s only on this side of the ridge.”
“Should we go deeper into this one?” I asked. “We shouldn’t leave a cave until we’re reasonably sure there’s nothing to see, but at the same time…”
“It’s a lot of ground to cover,” she said, finishing my thought.
We decided to perform a cursory examination of all the caverns, and if we didn’t locate the lab, we’d return and go deeper into each until we found something or neared the limits of our suit power.
In the seventh cave, which, like the one where Callie had almost died, was obscured by thick vines, we tripped across a loading area, and beyond that, a door.
~~~
We conducted a careful search of the cavern and scanned every inch, paying particular attention to the stone floor.
By the
time we finished, we’d identified five bombs with pressure triggers molded into the rock. It was only on close inspection that we could make out the hairline seams where synthetic resin had been used to match the stone. Someone had gone to considerable trouble to make them undetectable. I programmed a red circle around each location and sent the floor map to Callie. She edited it and sent it back to me.
<
“Nice touch,” I said.
“I did it to remind myself. I’d rather not end up naked in the jungle again.”
“It wasn’t so bad.”
“Men.”
“So,” I said, “do we investigate further?”
“I don’t see the point. We should send out a burst,” she answered.
We stepped back through the vines and into the sun. “I’m surprised we haven’t been detected already. I sort of expected to be dead by now.”
“I agree. It’s strange.”
An internal program was running that would automatically send up a burst of data if destruction was imminent. My expectation, if we discovered anything important, was that the enemy would try to kill us immediately. In that event, our suits would transmit data a nanosecond before we shed our mortal coils, likely in a high-energy explosion. I assumed that kind of death would be painless and quick, but given there was no way to communicate with those who’d gone before me, I wasn’t entirely convinced there wouldn’t be suffering involved.
Life begins in pain. Why shouldn’t it end the same way?
<
I ran a test. My system notified me that an unknown physical issue existed. I had a brief recollection of closing a warning pop-up during my fight with the runner. Things had happened so fast I’d forgotten I’d dismissed it. Had the Ted’s knife actually managed to do some damage?
“Callie, can you do a visual on my gear? My data didn’t transmit.”
She walked behind me. “There’s a slice here. It’s such a fine cut I never noticed it before. Send me your packet.”
“On the way.” I sent what I had to her, and she transmitted it to the Amphoterus.
“What now?” she asked.
“If the Teds didn’t know we’re here, they do now.”
