Chương 68: The Trail

Jungle South of San Teodoro, Vidako Imperium Stellarum February 10, 2848"I think I'm going to be sick," Pika said, his voice crackling over Arc's comm.

"If you throw up in your cockpit, you're going to have to smell it for the rest of the patrol," Arc warned him.

"Longer," Semirye de Ligne said.

"I know a guy who popped the first time he actually got into a Kestrel. You could still smell it for months after."

"None of that is making this any easier to look at," Pika grumbled. They'd kept their three mechs far enough away from the fallen leatherback to avoid disturbing the swarm of zombie flies which crawled over the carcass like a living tide of membranous wings and glistening carapaces.

Yellow-white bones, picked clean of flesh, were occasionally visible when the enormous insects shifted, and the dead herbivore's long tail extended out along the jungle floor, forgotten and still clad in the leathery-hide from which the creature drew its common name.

A distance of twenty or thirty meters, however, was nothing to the optical sensors mounted in the heads of imperial mechs; as a result, Arc and his squad-mates could see every bit of gristle, every feasting zombie fly, and even the spatters of dried blood across the crushed foliage where the animal had thrashed about in agony as it died.

By comparing the physical evidence to academy data-files from the past several decades of patrols, we've been able to come to a pretty good estimate of the leatherback's time of death, Iceni explained.

"By we, I assume you mean you worked with the other two AIs?" Arc said. Correct. The lack of evidence of larva indicates that the leatherback was killed, at most, a day ago. Given how quickly spiked terrors move, it could be more than a hundred and fifty kilometers from here.

"That's too close to the city." Arc frowned. After just over eight hours in the cockpit, and a brief pause to eat in the middle of the first day of their patrol, they hadn't even covered a hundred kilometers on their route south from San Teodoro. They hadn't really expected to find one of the enormous predators this early, and in fact had been getting ready to choose a campsite when Christina had sent them the location of the kill.

"Osprey Actual, how's that trail going?" Semirye asked. It took a moment for Christina to respond, and she sounded distracted.

"Wandering more or less due south," their squad leader explained.

"I don't think we're going to catch it today. I'm dropping a waypoint to mark a campsite. I'll meet you there and pick up the trail in the morning."

"Alright, mole-rats," Semirye said.

"You heard the boss. Let's move out."

"Affirmative," Arc said, and a moment later Pika echoed him. Once again, Arc took the lead, trusting his friend to bring up the rear. For the most part, he kept to the trail that had been broken by the spiked terror, noting the occasional broken branch or uprooted tree.

The fact that a thirty-ton animal had already cleared the way made moving mechs through the jungle that much easier, and it was only when they finally approached the campsite Christina had picked out, near sunset, that Arc moved off and began shoving his Tyro through the underbrush. With every snap or scrape of a branch against unit seventeen's armor, Arc couldn't help but picture Natalie Ramírez's face, twisted into a scowl. What the hell have you done to my paint-job? He could already hear her complaining.

When he pushed through the last stand of greenery, Arc saw that Christina had chosen them a slow, rocky curve where some unnamed tributary stream shimmered nearly rust-red in the Vidakan sunset. Fish scattered at the thunderous sound of the mechs' approach, sending up small splashes of water. Boulders, perhaps deposited by some long ago glacier, or more likely scattered by Alu'kan mega-engineering during the mass lift operation prior to imperial colonization, jutted out into the water, bare of vines or greenery.

"Zombie flies?" Arc asked Iceni, as he lowered settled unit seventeen's arms into a position which saw his laser rifle resting on one shoulder, far enough to the mech's left side that his cockpit had room to open. The stream is moving too fast for them to find it an ideal habitat, Iceni said. Standard precautions should be sufficient.

"Alright, I'm getting out," Arc told the other two over their comms. When Iceni broke his connection with the Tyro, there was a moment of disorientation, of becoming less than he should be, or perhaps of being constrained, squeezed down. He blinked and shook himself, then swung his flatscreen aside and triggered the mechanism which drew plates of shaped ceramic armor away from the center of the mech's chest, like the opening petals of a flower.

While that was happening, he took his standard issue Broadleaf Arms fifty-calibur flechette rifle out of the weapons storage in the cockpit and slung it over his shoulder. The hot, humid jungle air hit Arc's face like a wall, and his jumpsuit was immediately soaked with sweat. He unclipped the rope ladder, tossed it down from the cockpit, waited a moment for the weights at the bottom to stop the worst of the swinging, then turned around and made his way down to the ground.

Once there, he raised the rifle and took a look around.

"Looks like a pretty good spot," Arc said, as much to himself as to Iceni. When no tree-cats immediately leaped out to kill him, he turned around and waved to the Culverin and second Tyro which had followed him up to the stream's edge. A moment later, both Semirye and Pika opened their cockpits and joined him on the stones at the edge of the water.

"I'll start the fire and douse it with fly-repellant," Semirye said.

"You two dig a latrine. Christina should be here in twenty minutes or so." Their squad leader's Outrider slipped through the foliage, moving as close to silently as a forty-ton mech could manage, while Arc and Pika were still at work with their collapsible shovels. By the time they'd finished, jammed one of the shovels into the pile of loose soil to one side of the ditch, and set out a roll of toilet paper on a stick hammed into the ground, Christina was out of her mech and Semirye had a fire built from deadwood.

Together, the four cadets set their rations pouches against the largest of the nearby boulders, using water from the stream to start the chemical reaction which would heat their food.

"We have to figure out the extent of its range," Christina said, as she leaned back against one of the boulders and watched her pouch. She'd already unzipped the top of her jumpsuit, tied the arms around her waist, and sprayed her bare arms and belly with insect repellant.

"If it never gets within seventy or eighty kilometers of San Teodoro, that's one thing." Semirye sighed.

"Even that's a bit too close." Arc noticed that Pika was staring at the stream, rather than at their food, and he nudged his friend with an elbow.

"Not safe to swim in," he warned. Pika sighed.

"I know. But it's so hot, even with the suns going down—and it would feel so nice to get myself into the water..."

"Four watches," Christina said.

"Sandhurst, you're first. You wake up Semirye, I'll take third watch, and Pika you'll be last." Arc nodded. It was only his second patrol, but it seemed to be fairly standard for the more experienced cadets to take the middle watches. When it had come from Vijay, he'd assumed it was a kindness—but now that he saw Christina doing it, he wondered if the decision came out of caution, instead.

It wouldn't surprise him at all if the more experienced pilots didn't trust the newer cadets to stay awake for the middle watches. This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version. When their pouches were finished cooking, Arc found a place to sit next to his friend on one side of the fire, while the two older pilots sat on the other. The moment Pika ripped open his food, Arc could smell what it was.

"You must be the only one I know who likes that lemon-pepper red sail," Arc said, making a face.

"It's the only one of these things that has actual fish in it," Pika pointed out, digging in with obvious enjoyment.

"There's a reason for that," Arc grumbled.

"Tell me you didn't bring that for every single meal." He glanced over at his friend, and saw that Pika couldn't meet his eyes.

"Really? For the entire patrol? You wouldn't rather have some variety?"

"Variety would be shellfish," Pika said. Arc shook his head and set to work on making his way through a leatherback stew. The academy had been experimenting with using local meat, rather than vat-grown, to make substitutions for the standard menu. It wasn't bad. Not good—none of the rations could be called good, by any person with functioning tastebuds—but not bad, either.

"By the way," Pika said.

"I have the last of those reports from the mining companies. It took a bit of back and forth, and I had to mention my mother's name, but I think I have a few good choices for you." He reached into the pocket of his jumpsuit, removed his tablet, and unfolded it, placing it down on his thick left thigh so that both of them could look at the screen.

"I'll send the whole data-package to Iceni, but I thought you'd like to look at these three in particular," he continued.

"I think they're your best options." Arc leaned over to see better, chewed, and swallowed before speaking.

"Alright, let's see what we've got." As he watched, Pika brought up an image of an immense canyon.

"The Great Polar Fault. Didn't exist until about forty years ago, when a meteor hit the surface of Chel," Pika explained.

"Turned out that the rock here was more fragile than anyone thought, and the whole surface cracked open to make a canyon over four hundred kilometers long." They swiped through a few pictures, each of which showed sheer walls of white or gray rock dropping three kilometers down. Though the upper rock faces were illuminated by Vidako's binary stars, the bottom of the Fault was completely obscured by shadow.

"Advantages," Pika said.

"First of all, they might just ban missiles entirely, because it still isn't entirely stable. Even if they don't, the thing is more narrow than most people would believe. He'd basically have to get over it and aim straight down at you. No indirect fire."

"I could also end up buried beneath a kilometer of rubble if it's as unstable as you say it is," Arc pointed out.

"Next." Pika flicked his finger across the screen.

"Astra Resources Corporation's abandoned bastnäsite mines." In these pictures, the stone was not gray or white, but shades of yellow, orange, and even a brown so deep it looked almost black.

"They used to pull yttrium out of these shafts and tunnels, to make things like the comms in our mechs. These are more stable, and no one's used the place in something like a decade. The shafts and pits are tighter than that canyon, and they go down maybe two-hundred meters in some places. That should keep you safe from anything but bunker-busters or nuclear warheads, and the commandant won't let him use those."

"I like it," Arc said.

"Though some of these tunnels might be too tight to fit a mech through. What's the last?"

"The Deeps," Pika explained, pulling up the next series of images.

"About a decade after we put Chel together, there was a bit of a collapse here, exposing a network of gaps between big—and I mean really big—rock faces. The theory is that not everything's been crushed together yet by gravity, and these gaps might go as far down as the moon's core. A few dozen people have gone down over the years to try and map it, and about half of them have come out. The other places, Radecki could get maps of and make plans, just like we can.

If you lead him into the Deeps, who knows where the two of you end up."

"That could also make it hard for us to get back out again," Arc pointed out.

"Alright, I'll think it over and let you know. Thanks, buddy." Pika clapped a hand on his back and stood.

"Of course. I will help in whatever way I can. But now, I think that I will try to sleep." The big man disposed of his garbage and lumbered over to the hung tarps and nets where the sleeping bags had been placed. What do you think? Arc asked Iceni, silently, as he watched Christina and Semirye finish their meals and clean up. The stars had come out while he'd sat with Pika, and now the orange, flickering light of the fire on the faces of the other cadets was about all he could see of them.

I don't have any desire to be buried underground with you, the AI said. And I feel like there is a distressingly high risk of that no matter which of these we choose.

"Sandhurst," Christina said, jolting him out of his thoughts with the touch of her hand to his arm.

"You good to take first watch?"

"Yeah." Arc nodded.

"Get some sleep." He turned to put the fire at his back, and listened as the other three pilots settled in. Between the lack of standing water, the repellent packet in the fire, and the netting, they should be safe from zombie flies. Two spiked terrors wouldn't share territory unless they were mating, so that left tree-cats as the greatest threat to the camp. Eventually, the sounds of bodies tossing in sleeping bags gave way to the much softer sounds of heavy breathing.

If there was one thing Hard Burn taught every cadet, it was how to snatch a few hours of sleep whenever they had the opportunity. Arc spent two hours turning over the options in his mind. The way he saw it, each of Pika's three choices presented at least one tactical advantage. The Great Polar fault would force Radecki to either fly down into the canyon, or attack from a limited angle.

The mines would force the other pilot to come after him, into real knife-fighting range, where Arc's plasma blades and a Kestrel' s lack of articulated hands would mean a real advantage. And the Deeps would throw the entire thing into the realm of chaos and pure chance, as both pilots had to manage a running gun battle while picking their way through unmapped seams in the rock of Chel.

He had a thought of what he wanted, but there was no rush; Pika wouldn't be able to send a message with his final choice until they were all back at the Academy anyway. When Iceni told him it was time, Arc crawled into the shelter, pulling aside sheets of netting, and found Semirye. A gentle shake of her shoulder got the other cadet up, and then Arc nestled himself into his own sleeping bag, and closed his eyes.

𝝮 The cornibus's trail led them, over the next two days, to a death-root choked estuary at the point where the jungle met the southern ocean.

"Can these things actually fish?" Semirye asked. Her Culverin remained behind to anchor their formation as the other three mechs swept forward in a semi-circle, with Christina's Outrider at the center and the two Tyros on the flanks.

"I can't imagine there's anything big enough for them to bother with this close to shore," Arc answered, keeping one eye on his sensors. It was a continual frustration just how thoroughly the dense foliage of Vidako's jungles hampered their range.

"You'd be surprised," Pika murmured, from the left.

"Some pretty big marine life can get into places like this." The dark waters of the estuary buzzed with clouds of zombie-flies, shaded by the twisted branches of trees that hung lower, almost touching the brackish currents. The most color to be seen anywhere were the sharp, vibrant red blade-like flowers of the death-root vines, which seemed to have no difficulty growing out away from solid ground and into the deepwater.

In fact, Arc couldn't tell where actual islets ended and gave way to mere masses of the toxic plant.

"Stay sharp," Christina said.

"These things have a nasty habit of coming out of nowhere."

"You don't think it's beneath the water, do you?" Pika asked, edging his Tyro so close to the edge that earth crumbled away beneath his mech's foot and fell down into the water.

"They're not amphibians," Arc said.

"We've cut up their corpses. So it could only go under for as long as it could hold its breath."

"I've got a contact!" Christina shouted.

"Coming in fast from behind us! Wheel the formation!" What I wouldn't give for thrusters right now, Arc thought, as he brought unit seventeen around. They were completely out of position when the spiked terror broke out of the trees, heading straight for Semirye's Culverin. She was still swinging her rail-guns around, and hadn't locked the heavy mech's feet into the ground yet, but that didn't stop her from launching a trio of short-range missiles from the pod on her left shoulder.

Unfortunately, the cornibus was already so close, and closing so fast, that they flew right by the xenobeast before the warheads armed. Arc snapped a shot off with his laser rifle, burning a line along the monster's right flank just before it slammed into Semirye's mech. For a moment, he thought that she might actually be able to keep the Culverin on its feet—she had the advantage of size, after all.

Then, as she took a step backward, the wet earth of the estuary sunk beneath the Culverin's weight, and she fell backwards. The spiked terror reared up above her, and it was just like his first patrol, when the arm of his mech had been ripped off and he'd nearly died—save that, this time, Arc was the one watching while another pilot's mech was about to be gored by the cornibus's horns.

The cornibus slammed down with both fore-legs onto the chest of the prostrate mech, driving the torso violently into the ground and rocking it with repeated, savage blows. Then Pika, the arms of his Tyro spread wide and his rifle abandoned, charged into the beast's chest at a full run, tackling it to the ground and carrying it away from the fallen Culverin.