Chapter 18: There and Back Again

She was mostly covered by a woven fiber mat, but I could see her badly blistered and insect bitten face exposed from under the woven covering. At her side on the platform were three empty glass bottles, each wrapped in a twine mesh protective covering. That must have been the last of her water supply. In one arm, she was clutching a long, sharpened spear which protruded from under the covering. I wondered what animals she was worried about and gave a quick look around the clearing. I also saw the metallic blade of a long crude looking machete lying beside her on the platform.

“She had the use of her arms before she fell unconscious,” I noted to Agent.

From the drag marks in the sand and her dirty and abraded feet I suspected she was paralyzed from the waist down.

“Hello? Are you awake?” I called out softly as I approached the platform.

There was no response, not a hint of movement. I watched her for a moment and was relieved to see her chest moving slowly, she was breathing, but very shallowly. I felt her neck for a pulse ... it was warm, probably a fever ... and felt a faint pulse. Agent reminded me to start scanning Jane with the medical scanner and prepare to attach the IV device.

I carefully removed her woven covering and found she was nude except for a tightly woven wrap around her waist. She looked terrible, emaciated, covered with bruises, and clotted cuts and scrapes. Her mottled skin was covered with insect bites and I could see ants and maggots crawling in and around some of the deeper wounds. I brushed away the ants and surface maggots as best I could and carefully removed the spear from her loose grip. I had to brace myself when the smell hit me as she was ripe not only from the putrid wounds but also from diarrhea.

I retrieved the medical scanner from the crate I had brought from Flipper and placed sensors on her temples, neck, and chest, and then ran the scanning wand slowly up her body from her feet to the top of her head.

“John, Jane’s lower spine is damaged, and she is most likely paralyzed from the waist down. She is suffering from various infections, extreme dehydration and malnutrition and have various parasites in her flesh and digestive system. Please attach the intravenous delivery system now.”

I got the unit out of medical pack. It was a small infuser pump that I would strap to her upper arm. The unit would seek out a suitable vein and start delivering fluids and medicine automatically. I did that and the machine buzzed a bit, and in a moment, a yellow light flashed signaling it was ready. I grabbed a pouch of saline and attached it to the infuser. Agent recommended two other smaller medical pouches also be attached along with the saline. I carefully lay the pouches on the platform beside Jane.

“Well done John. I believe that her neck is not compromised so we will eventually be able to move her onto Flipper once her condition is stabilized. Please carefully wipe the worst of the filth and debris off of as much of her body as you can and then apply the nano spray to her visible wounds.”

The medical kit had a cleansing fluid and sterile wipes, but I realized the extent of the filth would require a bit more.

“Can I wash her off with a towel and river water?” I asked.

“Yes, as long as the cleansing fluid from the medical kit is used after, the river water should be safe.”

I grabbed the larger towel from the crate and quickly ran to the river to wet it down and then returned to Jane to begin to remove the worst of the soil and grime. I was happy she was unconscious, as I carefully raised her legs to clean the diarrhea remains from her bottom. Her nether regions were also covered in with a severe rash and the fact that she did not stir from what must have been a painful scrubbing demonstrated that she was seriously injured.

I carefully rolled her onto her side and laid a body sized vinyl-like thin plastic sheet on the mat to keep her out of the filthy mess which remained on the platform. I noticed that her back was covered with bedsores and more parasites, so I cleaned that area as best I could before rolling her back onto the clean film.

The worst of the filth gone, I tossed the towel and proceeded to wash her from head to foot with the medical cleansing fluid and towelettes. That was followed by the nano spray, which I applied to her whole body, head to toe. Agent had explained that this would kill the parasites, protect the wounds, and help her retain moisture as she was rehydrated. The nano particles would also speed healing.

I stood back and waited for the infuser to get some water and medicine into her. While waiting I retrieved the flashlight and flipped up my goggles and used the light to inspect her. She had the complexion and facial features of a Hispanic, or possibly a native of the area. Her hair was dark and though a bit matted and dirty; I could see it was short, at less than three inches. If she had not cut it herself, this would date the time of her awaking at no more than five months ago. The hair on her genital area and underarms also confirmed the time estimate.

“How old do you think she is?” I asked Agent.

“From the scanner readings, I would estimate that she is in her mid-thirties, John.”

She looked much younger and had clearly been rejuvenated during her bio-suspension. Though she clearly was underweight, I could still see the muscle tone of a healthy young women. Her breasts were on the smaller side, but that could have been because of the malnutrition. Her hands were worn, and her fingertips were raw from dragging herself around after her spinal injury. Her feet were callused but also had abrasions extending up her legs.

There were also signs that she had tied her legs and feet together for long periods of time. I could not imagine the hell she must have lived over the few weeks trying to stay alive in this jungle while paralyzed and dragging her legs. She had probably slowly run out of food and water and became too weak to obtain more. I wondered If I would be as strong if I found myself in her situation or if I would have slit my wrists or drowned myself in the river.

“John, please inspect her eyes and administer the medical drops in the kit.”

I did so, noticing that she had brown eyes. Her pupils were responsive though in the flashlight beam. I administered the medicine.

“Good, while I continue to administer fluids and medicine, please return to the aircraft and perform the preparations we discussed for an unresponsive patient. I will be able to monitor her condition with the scanner,” Agent instructed.

I returned to the aircraft and went into the cargo hold. The first thing I did was ditch the fully depleted ESU. With its weight gone we’d be able to easily handle Jane’s weight and also use less energy on the return flight. It would also free up a bit of room in the cargo hold with the four remaining ESUs fitted into their sockets.

I then prepared the travois for later use and set up the inflatable mattress in the forward compartment to be a makeshift hospital bed. I found the large blanket from the second medical crate and centered it on the mattress. I’d be able to use it to cover her or lift her if needed. I grabbed a few more items Agent had said we would need and returned to Jane.

Once at her platform I covered her with another plastic tarp and held it down with my body while Agent flew Flipper closer and landed nearby with the aft cargo hatch facing us. When the noise and wind died down, I asked Agent what we needed to do before I put her onboard.

“John, replace the saline packet with a second unit and add medical vials #6, #8A and #14 to the infuser.”

I did so after double checking I had the right ones.

“Now, wipe her body down with the cleansing fluid again to remove any discharge caused by the nano-spray.”

I gave her another towel bath and found many of her wounds covered with a smelly gray discharge. After she was again clean, Agent had me apply a second coat of nano spray to her wounds and then fit a diaper like garment on her. I then had to dig out the second respirator mask and strap it on her. Agent said it would provide moist oxygenated air to promote healing and be a backup in case of an incident with the aircraft while at altitude.

All this done, I went and got the travois and placed it beside Jane on the platform. I carefully worked Jane’s body over the poles and fabric and then used the travois to lift Jane off the platform and down onto the ground. We’d wanted to keep from bending her spine as much as possible, until we could get her back to Nicaragua.

Now on the ground, I carefully pulled the travois into the cargo compartment and through the door into the passenger area and over two large absorbent blankets I had placed on the partially inflated mattress. Now, it was a matter of rolling Jane off the travois and onto her makeshift hospital bed.

She still showed no signs of waking, so I checked that she was in a good position, adjusted the respirator and placed the goggles with the noise canceling headbands on her head. I stood hunched over watching her for a bit and noted her steady breathing.

“I’m going to go take a leak and check if any of her possessions should be brought back with us.”

Outside the aircraft, I took care of nature’s call and went to poke around Jane’s possessions. I grabbed the machete but left the spear. By the platform, I grabbed a couple of woven baskets full of various items. The raft or reed boat appeared empty aside from a pair of oars and a long push pole. I left the fine woven net and a crude pair of fishing poles and returned to the cargo hold with the knife and baskets.

Agent shut the cargo hatch after I loaded and stowed the gear and I proceeded forward, moving carefully around Jane and into the front pilot’s seat. Flipper spooled up and we took off low over the river. It was now 21:52, only two hours before midnight and the end of day two. I had to think hard to remember that it was just yesterday morning that I had been revived and we had left the Tennessee base. It had been a busy and long two days of travel, and all the naps I had been taking to fight off exhaustion had made tracking the time difficult. The good news is that my body was feeling much better. Either it was healing, or I was too busy or pumped up on adrenaline to worry about the aches and pains.

“John, we are only a bit over one hundred kilometers from the Itaúba field base. Since we found and stabilized Jane quickly and the current weather conditions are favorable, I am going to detour our return slightly and overfly the wrecked base.”

This was odd. “Agent, that would delay us returning at least an hour and cost us energy. Do we really need to?”

“Yes, it will help clear up the confusion surrounding Jane’s survival and why the field base did not contact the orbital station at any time over the past six centuries,” Agent explained.

“If you say so Agent.”

“Proceeding to the former base location John,” Agent stated flatly.

Flipper rose to around 3,000 meters on a long sloping climb to the east as the distance to the base was short. Agent reported that we would arrive at the base location in twenty minutes, so I got up to check on Jane. I had to straddle her body and step on the edges of the mattress, but I was able to make sure she was breathing alright and the mask was still fitted. The infuser still had half a bag of saline and the light was green, so I stepped back to the fold out sink and washed up a bit, getting rid of the remains of the smelly discharge caused by the nano-spray.

I was back in my seat five minutes after Flipper began a gradual decent. A few minutes later, the landing lights came on and those plus the now risen moon allowed me to clearly see a huge crater rim in the jungle a kilometer ahead.

“Wow, this area took quite a shellacking! It’s almost as if the Berserkers knew that a base was here,” I remarked.

Agent never replied to my questioning comment. Instead, she placed a blinking cursor on the night enhanced overlay view of the carnage below. I could see that a very deep erosion channel was forty meters from the location the cursor had marked. Agent took us down and we hovered low and slow over the deep channel.

“It appears that the erosion channel is as deep as the former field bases sublevel would have been. This is likely the route Jane was able to use to escape the buried base to reach the surface,” Agent postulated.

Flipper descended into the wide erosion channel and focused the aircraft’s spotlights onto the location where the base would be.

“There! You can see the remains of a tunnel sticking out of the erosion channels side wall, a few meters up from the bottom,” I exclaimed.

“Yes, that would be the remains of an access tunnel to the sublevel. Note the large amount of water running out of the tunnel. This would indicate that the chamber is at least partially flooded.”

I studied the scene, imaging Jane waking up to a partially flooded and dark muddy hole. She was incredibly lucky to have remained in bio-suspension for as long as she did, and even luckier to not have been buried alive down there.

“Are you able to contact the base A.I.?” I asked.

Agent did not answer for almost twenty seconds before finally replying...”Not completely John, I am detecting the pings of a wireless data net but there were no signs of a controlling intelligence.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“The network pings could be from one or more devices or data banks attempting to contact the A.I. presence, John. In other words, the base is brain-dead,” Agent explained.

Just then there was a bright flash from deep within the tunnel. A second later bits of debris and smoke were emitted.

“What the hell was that?” I asked, surprised.

Again, Agent took a few seconds before responding. “The attempt to establish communication with the base A.I. has inadvertently caused a cascade failure in certain still functional equipment. I am no longer receiving datanet pings or detect signs of active equipment. The base is now completely dead.”

Without another word from Agent, Flipper suddenly rose from the erosion channel and did a wide circle of the area, lighting the crater remains fully with the powerful beams. I saw nothing above ground remaining, just regrowth and signs of old erosion channels as the crater flooded and drained repeatedly

in each rainy season. After a few minutes, we turned towards the northwest and headed for home. Agent remained silent.

It was now 22:35 and we would hopefully arrive to the Amazon staging point in three hours. That would make our arrival there at around 1:40 early Friday or day three. Once we were at altitude and cruising, I did a quick check of the weather and saw that we should be good for at least the next hour of the flight although the reports from Shadow indicated that it was raining at the Amazon staging point.

I was still too keyed up from my stint as a doctor and a rescue man, so I decided to go back and check out Jane’s possessions which I had brought into the cargo hold. I carefully made my way around Jane and back to the rear compartment. There, I untied the covering on the first woven basket and inside I found a half dozen various size glass bottles.

They were old heavy glass bottles, and each was wrapped in a woven rope mesh covering to protect them from breakage. The bottles were sealed with a tightly fitting carved wooden plug which was secured with more twine. Two bottles were filled with dried nut bits and another with bits of dried meat, probably fish. The remaining three were filled with a clear liquid, probably her water supply.

At the bottom of the basket was a few animal pelts. They appeared to be crudely tanned and were of a fine smooth fur. I also found a few small finely woven cloths. Probably her personal hygiene supplies. The second basket contained three empty glass bottles, a few pieces of metal. Some with sharpened edges. A couple of woven nets and a bunch of sharpened sticks looking like utensils or skewers of some sort.

Her machete looked to be a long thin bar of stainless steel which had a leather cord wrapped handle and had one edge sharpened curving down around a rather blunt but still sharp point. I imagined it had taken Jane days to sharpen using stones. The backside of the blade was flat and dented and had clearly been used as a mallet or hammer many times.

I did not find any personal effects or anything which could be used to identify her. No lockets, or old credit cards. Jane would have to remain Jane for now. I headed back to the pilot’s seat and strapped myself in and finally relaxed. We had done it! We had found Jane still alive and were now on the way home. I saw that there were still two hours before we reached the Amazon staging point so after checking to see that it did not crowd or crush Jane, I reclined the chair and closed my eyes.