“I’m certain she’ll return soon; she used her radio and has kept us updated as to her progress.” Audy made a point to stare at him as he was explaining.
He nodded and scratched the side of his face with his middle finger, but gave his friend a chagrined look.
“I think we should get ready to move immediately,” he spoke directly to Audy. “Let them find nothing but an empty village. We’ve got a hundred forty-seven people, and tons of supplies to move and four RHIBs to do it with.” He turned to Arsolis. “I think it would be a good idea if your people packed up your shit and came with us.”
Audy gave him a harsh look and then reached out and placed a hand on Arsolis’s shoulder. “It would be an honor to take this fight to the Kaerin with you and your people as allies.”
“Fight?” Arsolis coughed. “It sounds like you will be running away and you need my ships to help you do it. This is our home.”
Jake coughed up and launched a loogie of his own. It was a piss-poor effort compared to the master, but the message conveyed was the same. “If your men are right, it won’t be for much longer.” He turned to face Audy. “And there will be a fight. Get me to shore, and I can keep them focused elsewhere while you sealift this circus.”
“And Kyle? He will be expecting us here.”
“One problem at a time, Audy.”
“Who is Kyle?” Arsolis had been following the conversation and getting angrier by the second.
“He’s the cavalry.” Jake smiled as if that should explain everything.
Arsolis almost shuddered in anger at the unfamiliar word. The man gave Audy a harsh jerk of his chin, which was probably some sort of assent to the plan, before storming off, mumbling to himself. The village’s dogs scattered before him as if they knew to be in the krathik’s path was to risk injury.
“Why do you enjoy provoking him?” Audy asked, watching the Hatwa storm off.
“Better him than you.” Jake smiled. “In my defense, I still haven’t had any coffee.”
Audy turned to face him. “Do you plan on staying here to meet Kyle?”
“I figure one of us has to, and you’re needed herding these cats, and keeping Arsolis in line.”
Audy’s look seemed to say he didn’t believe that division of labor was fair.
“I’ll be fine, Audy. We’ve been out of communication with Eden for a long time. Kyle won’t be taking any chances and won’t pop in here unless he’s packing heavy.”
“Packing heavy?”
“Armed to the teeth. The redneck is probably pacing a hole on the floor of Pretty’s office, waiting to get here.”
*
Idaho, Earth
Kyle sat on the edge of his cot that had also been his stretcher for the last five days. His left leg was stretched out in front of him, and still ached from the slow circuit of their camp that he’d managed with the use of Danny Carlisle’s crutch; the cowboy was doing fine without it. Kyle had surprised himself with the progress. He was sure he could get back to the ranks of the walking wounded with a couple of days of real rest.
He shifted his M4 in his lap and took in the sleeping forms around him. They were exhausted, and it was mostly due to the fact that they’d all been taking turns carrying him. Grant had returned to their main party just before sunrise. The rancher had spoken the first real words to anyone since burying his father, and reported that he and Tom hadn’t picked up anyone on their trail. They were staying off the radios because the real worry was getting noticed by a drone. Kyle knew from operating for years with the benefit of the machines just how good they were. And more to the point, how fast they could assist in targeting long-range fires or air strikes.
So far, though, nothing. Not that they’d ever see an air strike coming. Grant had shown him on the map where Tom was holed up for the day. A good location with a great vantage point, about four hours’ march behind them. Four hours for a healthy soldier; the same distance had taken them nearly a full day to carry his ass that far. They were making shitty time, and starting to slow.
They were going to be late getting to the exfil site. Even with Jensen’s hedging, the scientist had assured him that he’d be there at the ten-day mark. It was day nine since Jensen had left with the phone booth. At the pace they were moving, it was going to take them at least another two days, maybe three, to make the exfil site.
Grant had fallen asleep the moment he stopped moving after reporting in. Looking at the man’s form, he couldn’t help but feel for the man who would have to tell his own mother that her husband had been killed. If . . . if they made it back to Eden at all. He chewed on a piece of stay-awake gum, thinking that if they made it out of this, there wasn’t anything that would bring him back to Earth, ever. He remembered having had that thought before and almost laughed out loud at how things had worked out.
He adjusted his position again, trying to be as quiet as possible as he did it. Jeremy, the younger of the two techs who had been left behind with them, would usually jerk awake at the slightest sound. They’d all given the physicist a hard time about spooking every time he heard a squirrel crashing through the pine needles or running across the crusty blanket of two inches of snow and ice they’d been trudging through. Kyle had caught sight of the man’s ragged and bloodied hands yesterday when he’d picked up the handles of his stretcher. The blisters had probably popped during the first day; since then, the scientist had been suffering in silence. The least he could do was keep quiet.
It was an hour later, the morning creeping toward mid-day as he watched a gray sky that looked to be getting heavier, promising more snow - when he heard a branch break somewhere uphill of their makeshift camp. He brought his weapon up with a movement that pulled painfully on the stitches in his shoulder, and scanned the hillside. He spotted Jeff waving his watch cap. A second later, two more armed figures emerged from the tree line on either side of him. It took him only half a second to recognize Hans and . . . Carlos? Jensen was back, and he’d brought help.
Carlos reached him first and had a huge grin on his face as he walked the last few feet. “She’s going to be pissed off.” His friend grimaced, looking at him on the stretcher. “What’d you go and do?”
He ignored the ribbing as the sleeping forms came awake around them. “It’s good to see you guys.”
“We ran into Carlos coming our way,” Jeff said, dropping to the ground. “They’ve been there four days.”
“The doctor says his machine is ready; he sent Carlos to find us.” Hans came around, knelt at his leg, and examined the dressing.
“It’s charged already?”
Carlos shrugged. “It freaking should be. There was barely room for us with all the shit Jensen packed in there.”
Danny Carlisle staggered up from his sleeping bag and stood balancing on one leg, rubbing his wounded ass cheek. “Whoa, hey there. We got a new guy in camp . . .”
Carlos shook his head. “You must be Danny.”
“How you know that?”
Jeff took mercy on the cowboy. “I told him we had two wounded. You fit the description.”
“Ah.” Danny nodded as if that made sense. “Right.”
A second later, Josh Carlisle stirred and sat up in his sleeping bag, his eyes going from Jeff, to Carlos, to Hans, and then back to Jeff. “We getting up? I was having the best dream about riding in a pickup truck.”
“You must be Josh?”
Kyle was looking at Carlos as he spoke and could see the laughter in his friend’s face. Jeff had clearly warned him, but Kyle figured if Carlos spent a day alone with the Carlisle brothers, they might come up two cowboys short.
Given the situation, they decided to move out and push through once everyone was awake and fed. Less than five hours into the movement, with the sunset minutes away and the sky about to dump fresh snow on them, they’d already covered as much distance as they had the previous day. If the telephone booth was ready, there was no reason to delay. Grant had headed back the way they had come to co
llect Tom. The two of them could make much better time if they weren’t having to worry about maintaining a watch on their six. Kyle was hoping that everyone’s arrival wouldn’t be too staggered.
Carlos and Hans each had one end of his stretcher, and the only time that fact slowed them down was due to the terrain. Jeff had been this way twice now, once during his original scouting trip and a second time the previous day. He kept them all on point and moving as fast as Carlos and Hans could carry the stretcher.
The only downside to the whole hike was the fact he was still cargo. That, and the fact the Carlisle brothers had kept up a running dialogue about anything and everything they saw. When Jeff called a halt, even Hans gave a sigh of relief. Carlos took a knee, breathing hard, and glared at Kyle with a sick grin playing at the corners of his mouth. “I figure you’d do the same for one of us.”
Kyle smiled back. “Maybe, maybe not.”
Danny and Josh came over and stood over his stretcher as he turned sideways and accepted a hand up from Hans. The man’s hands enveloped his own as if he were a child. He had to get some rehab in at some point.
“You know,” Danny huffed. “We could have carried ‘Gimpy’ here this fast if we had somebody carrying our packs.” He dropped Hans’s pack at his feet as he said it.
“Truly?” Hans’s tone left nothing to the imagination as to what he thought of the claim.
“Yeah,” Danny said. “Truly.”
“Challenge accepted.” Carlos came to his feet and walked over to Josh. He pulled Josh’s own pack off the cowboy’s shoulder and picked up his own in the process.
“Dude!” Josh was shooting daggers with his eyes towards his brother. “You just had a bullet dug out of your ass.”
“Not bothering me at all; well, hardly at all.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“You saying we can’t do it?”
“I’m wondering why the hell you think we should try,” Josh fired back, shaking his head.
Carlos looked down at Kyle for a moment and winked. “You two all talk?”
“Dumbass is doing all the talking,” Josh explained. “I didn’t say shit.”
Carlos just stood there, waiting in expectation, staring Josh down.
“But yeah . . .” Josh replied, glaring back at Carlos. “Hell yes, we can do it.”
“All right, then.” Carlos gave an officious nod. “The secret to it is the breathing. No talking, just hump the load. Talking throws off your air intake, especially at this altitude.”
“Does the load get a vote?” Kyle asked, knowing the answer.
“I’ll flip you for his feet,” Josh called out to his brother. “Heads you win, tails I win.”
“Deal.”
Thirty seconds later, after much digging, they both realized they didn’t have a coin between them.
“OK.” Danny held up a hand. “You pick a number between one and a hundred. If you’re within twenty of my number, you win.”
Josh looked at his brother for a moment and then around at the others for support. Finding none, his gaze settled on Augusto. “You’re good at math, right? Is that a good deal?”
“It’s very good odds for one of you.” The scientist was having a hard time keeping a straight face.
Josh let that answer percolate for a moment. “Deal . . . Twenty-five.”
Danny’s face fell. “You’re sure?”
“Twenty-five! Dumbass.”
Danny slammed a fist into an open palm and grinned. “Almost had me that time. You lose, again.” Danny walked up and slapped his brother on the shoulder. “As usual.”
Josh glared at his brother’s back as he walked off into the woods to take a leak. He looked at the faces staring up to him and shrugged in defeat. “I swear that asshole needs to go to Vegas at some point. He wins every time.”
“Amazing . . .” Kyle struggled to keep his face straight.
“Not the word I’d use.” Carlos was smiling.
“No.” Kyle shook his head. “You don’t understand. I’m amazed that Danny came up with the game. If I had a gun to my head, I would have sworn that Josh was the smart one.”
“I heard that,” Josh yelled. “I am the smart one.
*
Six hours later, Kyle was more than a little impressed. The two Carlisle brothers hadn’t said a word to each other or anyone else since picking up their load. The load himself couldn’t be sure as to whether or not they carried him faster than Hans and Carlos had, but it certainly hadn’t been any slower. When they stopped for a two-hour rest around midnight, Kyle saw the patch of blood soaking through the seat of Danny’s pants and didn’t waste any time pointing it out.
Danny shrugged and gave him a smile. “I’ve never had stitches that didn’t get ripped open.”
“You’ve had a lot of stitches?”
“Mom used to sew us up at the kitchen table. It was quicker and cheaper than going to the doctor.”
“God’s truth,” Josh added in rare support of his brother. “She used to say the doctor would just numb it up, and we wouldn’t learn no lesson.”
“Makes sense,” Kyle had to admit.
As much as the two brothers annoyed him, he couldn’t help but like them. With some training, they might be useful. One thing was certain; the two brothers were almost as tough as they thought they were. He almost asked them if they had distant relatives in Louisiana.
“You two did good.” He gave them each a nod of respect. “Just as fast as Carlos and Hans.”
“But not faster?” Danny might have been offended; it was hard to tell. Kyle certainly felt they were all safer with Jeff, Hans, and Carlos available to react, rather than carrying his sorry ass.
“Maybe.” He nodded. “I think I need a bigger sample size, to be sure.”
“Sample size? You saying you need us to carry you some more?”
Josh looked over at his brother. “Yeah, that’s what he means.”
“Can do.” Danny stretched his back with a loud groan. “These nanites are miracle workers. I would have loved to have them when I was riding bulls.”
Danny continued stretching as he wandered out off.
“You’re an evil bastard,” Josh said quietly as he pulled him upright and made sure his own good, or better, leg was going to hold him.
Kyle gave a short laugh. “You guys make it pretty easy.”
“You want your soldier friends out there ahead of us, don’t you?”
Kyle nodded, surprised that Josh had figured that out on his own.
“Don’t take it the wrong way, but it’s what they do.”
Josh accepted the answer well enough, but then with a glance towards Jeff, who was coming down the hillside towards them, he gave his head a shake. “I’ll bet we could outshoot you and your buddies.” Josh stood there a moment, staring at Carlos and Hans following Jeff. He took a few steps in the direction of his brother, before turning his head back over his shoulder. “Yep, fairly certain you Army boys would be in for a surprise.”
Kyle was still shaking his head when Carlos joined him.
“What was that all about?”
“How much further?”
“We push hard through the night . . . we should be there around midmorning. You up for it?”
“In the worst way.”
Carlos looked at him with a strange expression on his face and then glanced over to where the Carlisle brothers stood. “I know I just met them, but they remind of Jake.”
He nodded in agreement. “Yeah, Jake’s just lucky he doesn’t have to share a brain with anyone.”
“I wonder how he’s doing?” Jeff asked. “Probably sitting around with his feet up, drinking the local swill, practicing his brand of diplomacy.”
They both chuckled at the memory of Jake being almost abducted by a pair of Jema women. Not that their friend had put up a struggle.
He smiled. “I picture Audy sitting on him, or maybe tying him to a tree to keep him out of trouble.”
“He
’ll be all right.” Jeff smiled. “He’s the luckiest bastard I ever met.”
Jeff looked around at their party, who were all in different poses reflecting exhaustion. “You sure you’re good to push on?”
“I’m sure.”
Jeff stared at him for a long moment as if to determine just how full of shit he was. He came to a decision with a tired shake of his head. “Eat what you can,” he shouted. “We’ll push through the night.”
*
Chapter 23
Baltic Coast, Chandra
“Weapons and ammo first.” Jake pointed at the depot of supplies that they’d brought with them. They were back on the small island that had been their original insertion site on Chandra. The small cove in front of them was taken up with the three RHIBs they had. The largest boat of Arsolis’s small fishing fleet lay at anchor just beyond. Similar preparations were underway a few miles away at Varsana, the village that had been Arsolis’s family’s home for centuries.
“Don’t unload the boats until you have a place you can defend,” Jake continued.
Audy gave a short laugh. “I have managed to direct several hands of warriors before, Jake . . . and their supplies.”
“I know, I know.” Jake knew he was being a nursemaid. “How many times have you done it, where you were dependent on supply by boat?”
“Is it so different than arranging supply trains?” Audy had a smile playing at the corner of his mouth.
“Ever had a supply wagon sink into the earth, along with all its supplies? Have you ever had to make an assault where you had to ride your freaking ox carts all the way into the face of the enemy? By that, I mean did you have to stay on the cart? Would you have drowned if you hopped off your wagon or horse?”
“I understood your meaning,” Audy relented. “We are . . . cross-loading? That is your term, yes?”
“Yeah.”
“We are also landing on the other side of the island from the Kaerin’s fort. We will remain hidden until we are secure and have the numbers to take it.”
“Don’t forget—”
“Their long-talking station,” Audy interrupted him. “It will be our first target.”
New Shores: The Eden Chronicles - Book Three Page 32
