Chapter 408

... Ann looked at the screen in front of her. “See that?”

“Yeah,” Arlene said with a sigh. “Continental shelf. Our world is going shallow. We’re almost there.”

“Chances are that very shortly we’re going to be brain dead for real,” Ann quietly said as she began yet another check of their systems.

A few minutes later, they came to a halt in water no more than fifty feet deep. “I don’t see any signs of our intruder on my screen. How about yours?”

Ann shook her head, then realized that Arlene hadn’t seen. “No. Nothing. Maybe they ventured too far down for their craft. I was never certain whether it was one of the fighters or an oceangoing vessel of some kind. With our depth and the distance it was from us, and since we couldn’t go to active scans, I never got a clear image.”

“Well, if it shows up while we’re ashore, things could get even more interesting, but time is running out.”

They had spent a few minutes making sure that Icky fully understood their plans since there had already been some very distinct deviations from the original plan of sneaking in from orbit using their new and more sophisticated camouflage. As they donned their gear, then checked each other, “This is a job for the Marines, not two female fighter jocks,” Ann grumbled as their craft, piloted by the AI, kissed the shallow bottom not too far from the beach.

“We’ll exit through the side hatch, Icky,” Arlene instructed, unnecessarily.

“Affirmative. I shall be awaiting your signal.”

A few minutes later, Arlene released the hatch seal and water began coming in. The two checked each other’s skin suits one last time as the water swirled about their knees.

“They work in vacuum; they’ll work in water,” Arlene told her partner as the airlock filled, but it sounded more like she was trying to tell herself.

Both pilots activated their suits and glided out the hatch, careful to keep from snagging their packs as they struggled through. As soon as they were clear, Icky closed the hatch. In seconds, their ride was disappearing toward deeper water to wait for them.

Uncertain how far they could be heard underwater, they headed for the beach without activating their short-range communicators, just in case. As they drew nearer the shore, Arlene in the lead, motioned for her partner to wait before coming to the surface. The skin suit struggled to stabilize her in the surf as waves brought her higher before dropping her, her head clear of the water only now and then. In the diminishing light, she saw a gravel beach interspersed with large boulders that the surf crashed against. Without the stabilization of the suit, she would have had to fight to keep from being smashed against the rocks.

With a hand signal from Arlene, Ann came to the surface, and together they made their way to the beach, the thunder of pounding surf obliterating any sound they made in the process.

On the beach, such as it was, they discovered that the surf had eaten into the land and they had to scramble up an embankment several times their height before they could gain the jungle proper – or this world’s version of a jungle, anyway.

Once in the trees and intense undergrowth, they remained kneeling while they scanned around them, particularly toward the sea. But they saw nothing and heard only the crash of the surf and the scream of some type of bird-like things that circled well above the water and occasionally dived into it, supposedly after prey.

“I wish it was closer,” Ann said with a sigh as she checked her scanner before gazing toward the interior. “I don’t think I’m going to like this jungle.”

“Yeah. Me either, but our objective hasn’t gotten any closer,” Arlene agreed, trying not to sigh herself. “A good day’s march in this crap. I would hope for the jungle to clear, but then we would stand out, and at this point, that certainly isn’t something we want. I suspect the enemy tends to shoot first and doesn’t bother to ask questions afterward.”

“You just had to remind me,” Ann said as she inspected the stubby rifle she had swung around on its lanyard after they crawled up the short cliff from the beach.

“And if we have to use one of those things at full power, we risk bringing a whole raft of enemy down on our asses. Ever kill anybody with that knife on your hip?” she asked.

“You know I haven’t, but if they’re between me and our ride when we’re leaving, I don’t think I’ll have any problem with it. I don’t like this place, already.” Then after a short pause, “When we had that week of jungle training at the academy, I never in my wildest dreams thought I would ever use the knife.”

They had been kneeling in thick bushes just past their climb while using their passive instruments to scan around them before continuing on. Satisfied they were alone for the moment, Arlene came to her feet and reached to part the foliage in front of her. Motioning toward the primary star/sun as it neared the horizon behind them, “It’s time we were on our way, and yeah, me either. My opinion of ground troops has already gone way up.”

Ann pulled her foot from a vine that seemed determined to trip her, before starting after her partner. “I second that.”

As full dark descended (neither of the two distant, sister stars was above the horizon just yet, and the small moons shed very little reflected light), the two stopped near the top of a small hill. As Ann had already alluded, they were a far cry from being experienced infantry troops, but they had received the standard survival training that every interceptor crew had to pass. They squirmed on their bellies to stop just short of the crest, where they extended their surveillance equipment into a position to see.

They were almost ready to crest the rise when movement across the valley caught their attention. “There,” Arlene quietly said over their short-range communicator, “see them?”

“We would have been sitting ducks if we had walked over the crest,” Ann returned. “So what do we do now?”

“We wait until they’re out of the immediate area, then work our way around,” Arlene said, motioning toward her left.

“But that’s going to take another hour at least, maybe two. If we don’t have our bomb set up in time and the other teams set theirs off at the other power stations, the enemy will expect an attack here...” she said, not bothering to finish.

“Yeah, I know,” Arlene returned with a sigh. “But I see a second patrol over to the right. Suppose they sent out extra patrols because of where we hit in the ocean?”

“Either that, or maybe they enjoy walking in this mess,” Ann replied as they eased down from the ridge and began to carefully work their way to their left.

Hours later, the two sat propped against a fallen tree to eat an energy bar and take a sip of water. “How long until dawn?” Arlene asked her partner.

“Which dawn?” Ann returned with a grin. “Aren’t there supposed to be three?”

“Crap. I don’t know. The one from the nearest star. Didn’t the update say the other two were so far away this time of year that they only provided something like full moonlight while they were up?”

“Yeah, I suppose.” Ann consulted her comp. “But with the crappy planet’s long day/night cycle this time of year, we should have darkness all the way ... if this thing is correct.”

“It would probably be pretty if there weren’t enemy everywhere,” Arlene reasoned.

“Maybe so, but I’m not accustomed to semi-intelligent vines that sneak up on you,” she grumbled as she yanked her foot clear for what seemed like the hundredth time. “If we didn’t have these skin suits on, we would both be in some sort of vegetation being digested about now.”

Arlene grinned at her co-pilot. “They don’t like being cut, though, and it seems like you enjoy chasing them.”

“They’re friggin’ intelligent,” Ann grumbled. “After you go after them aggressively, they tend to shy away for a while. They must be able to communicate somehow.”

Arlene put a hand on Ann’s shoulder to steady herself as she rose and scrambled over the half rotted tree they had been leaning against. As the two continued on, “It’s not the vegetation I’m worried about. There’s animal life here, too – remember. And I’m not talking about those little rodent-looking things we keep seeing, either, or the snakes, but rather that other thing.”

“Well, I don’t like the snakes, but you just had to remind me about that other thing,” Ann grumbled. “I told you before we left the interceptor that I didn’t want to hear about that six-legged cross between a spider and a crocodile. But you just had to go and remind me. Now I can feel chill bumps running up and down my spine.”

“Well, they’re supposed to hang around water a lot...”

“I’m feeling like there’s an ‘and’ in there somewhere.”

“And we have a swamp to cross unless you want to take another day to walk around it.”

“There you go reminding me again. But after that, we’ll be almost there according to my scanner, right?”

“Yep,” Arlene said as she stopped to check around them for a moment before working her way through the next nest of foliage and vines that seemed to conspire to become a major offensive against the two young women.

Again, they lay just below the crest of a low hill with their sensors extended over the top. “No enemy showing in that mess, but sensors show that we can wade most of the way across, even in the deepest places. Most of it is just mud, plant life and...”

“Animal life,” Ann offered.

“Yeah. And there’s plenty of that for sure. My scanner is practically lit up with little red blips, not to mention how many larger blips that are showing.”

“We’re bound to meet some of those spider things,” Ann worried. “All our sensors show are their relative sizes, so I can’t really tell which animal is which, but I don’t have any problem guessing. Knowing our luck, the biggest blips are the spiders, right?”

Arlene had to fight her own chill bumps. “Yeah, and we can’t use our weapons’ full capabilities. In other words, we have to use only the laser function, and we’re stuck with it if we don’t want to advertise ourselves. A particle beam will announce our presence to the enemy, loud and clear.”

“Yeah, I know, and here’s something else interesting. My comp says those spider things have three brains, any one of which is capable of carrying the load should the other brains become incapacitated. In other words, they don’t die easily,” she almost whispered before ending with, “Shit. Shit. Shit.”

A half hour later, the two were in near waist-deep water, their feet mired in the deep silt of the mucky bottom, “This way,” Ann whispered over their circuit as she stared at her screen and wished they could use the suits’ propulsion systems. But those could be detected by the enemy, too. “There’s a peninsula of dry land a short distance away and twenty degrees to our left.”

“Dry land?” Arlene asked with sarcasm as she pulled a foot free of the sucking mud.

“Oh, well, you know what I mean. Something that doesn’t act like quicksand and this excuse for water hasn’t taken over yet.”

“I tried not breathing filtered air just after we entered the swamp,” Arlene commented to get her mind off what she was “walking” in. “I almost threw up before the suit could cycle the smell out.”

Ann raised a foot from the muck to shake off something that wiggled and flopped about as it tried to use its teeth and suckers on the near-impervious suit. But the skin suit sluffed off the creature’s actions without much notice, and she stomped it into the muck. A few minutes later, they were out of the water and on the long peninsula of muddy land that extended partway through the swamp. Tired, the two stopped for a breather. Turning, Ann started to make a comment, but instead screamed out to Arlene, “Look out!” just as one of the spider/crocodile things crashed down on her, its weight smashing Arlene prone into the muck, its web spinner already beginning to wind strands of its sticky contents around her prone body.