Chapter 24

The crash site was easy to find. They had located a dirt track, hardly a road at all as much as a path through the forest that previous vehicles had torn, and they followed it until they spotted the first shattered tree tops.

The forest was thick and heavy, the canopy almost completely blocked out the sunlight, but where the flier had torn through the tree tops, the sunlight flooded in, bleaching the color out of the forest floor.

A blind man could have followed the trail from there and the crash site was quickly located, less than half a kilometer away.

They set up camp a few hundred meters into the forest, under cover of the heavy canopy, and surveyed the wreck site for the first time. There were still heavy tracks that the rain had not been able to erase completely. They were probably made by the rescue crews that had responded and searched the area for survivors, but any hope of finding signs the searchers had missed were probably buried beneath the vehicle tracks.

Having two mules would allow them to plot a grid around the crash site and search methodically. They had three days to find something, anything that would point them in the right direction. If they had not found any signs before the ship arrived - if the ship arrived - they would have to reevaluate.

If the ship didn't arrive, Kat wasn't sure what her options would be. They didn't have enough fire power to take control of the transmitter in the Comm station at Champlace, not and hold on to that station until help arrived. Neither of them were pilots, so even if they could duplicate the theft of a flier, they would have to kidnap a pilot to fly it ... where?

Bob sketched a rough map in a cleared spot on the forest floor of their camp and they drew in a grid. Bob would take the Eastern side including the trail they had followed that meandered off to the Northeast. Kat would take the Western side and the game trail that they had discovered on the walk from the camp to the crash site. Each would search in widening circles until they had covered two kilometers laterally, covering an area of eight square kilometers each. Two north, two east/west and two south of the base camp in the center. The next day, they would extend the perimeter and continue the search, quadrant by quadrant.

Kat had decided to cover her area in a sweep pattern, long, overlapping paths that would take her North to South and back again until she hit the Western edge of her search area. She was able to mark off several large areas as impassable, even for the mule, much less for a wounded man. Areas like up thrusts of rock with sheer faces, swift-running water with no visible way to cross and one area, almost a kilometer square, that was so choked with heavy, thorn-heavy bramble that she almost got the mule hung up in the wiry branches.

She ended up concentrating most of her time in the area on the most logical paths, around the game trail they had found, and around two others she had come across. It wasn't until the sun was starting to go down, and the angle of the light was just right to reflect on a scrap of silver cloth snagged on a root to the side of the trail. Kneeling down, she could see that the cloth was embedded with metallic fibers and looked tantalizingly familiar. She didn't know that it was from the survivor of the wreck, it could have come from a searcher, but she hadn't found any sign of vehicle traffic or even partial foot prints within several hundred yards of her position. She carefully marked a waypoint on her Comm and, staring wistfully up the trail in the direction she was travelling, made the decision to turn back. It would be dark soon and she could return in the morning.

Bob was waiting when she returned, pacing back and forth between the tents and looking more agitated than she had seen him since they met. When he heard her vehicle, he fairly sprinted over to greet her, a predatory grin on his face.

"Pirates. I know it. Scum from the looks of them." He pointed northeast and continued, "About 3 kilometers that way. I was running the grid when I heard noises ahead. I did a sneak & peek, saw a pair of men marking trees. Followed for another kilometer and a half, or so, and they met up with a dozen more. Lots of bitching and moaning, but they had been sent out to find more wood for expanding their compound. I guess some of these trees rot pretty quickly when cut down, and they were looking for specific kinds. I couldn't get too close, but I did hear that they were going back to their camp and that it was only a thirty minute ride. In this terrain, that can't be more than about ten kilometers."

Kat frowned, fingering the scrap of cloth in her pocket. "How do you know they were pirates?"

"They were scum. You get to know the type when you are in the military but the clincher was a billed hat one of them was wearing. It had HSS Hellspawn embroidered on it. Jonesy, the pilot who brought us here?" he paused to see if she made the connection, and when she nodded, continued "He was friends with the Hellspawn's captain. Had us hoist a drink when the ship was reported missing and presumed taken. That was about nine months ago. It's possible that this man was a cashiered dirtball who served on her, but my gut tells me that these are the guys who took her."

Kat found herself nodding, the scrap of cloth forgotten and her mind already on the next steps of tracking these men to their base. "First light tomorrow, we go hunting, Bob."

Just before dawn, and after a quick breakfast, Bob took out the small container that held the ear buds and handed Kat a new one. They were going to be close enough to use them again, unlike when they were kilometers apart, searching. There was no sense in taking a chance that the batteries were weak in the old pair.