Authors: Jason Halstead
It roared at the water, turning more rapidly. Else jumped back when she saw its tail swing around and up into the air, then slam down into the water behind it. Spray from the impact spattered across her, reminding her that she wasn’t nearly far enough away. She pulled back, keeping her eyes on the creature in the water until the jungle enclosed her and prevented her from seeing it. She continued to hear its roars, but soon even those faded away.
Chapter 5
Relatively secure in a niche in the cliff wall, Elsa finally undid the clamps on her smart armor and removed the glove first, then the forearm and upper arm sections. She stared at the armor, looking at the damage done to it. The big fish had been the one to punch some small holes through the elbow joint, but the entire arm showed signs of damage. She took a moment to study the rest of her armor, or at least as much as she could see without taking it off, and saw that her entire suit looked like it had been through a sand blaster. Nicks and gouges throughout from the smaller fish, plus a few deeper scrapes from where the big fish had tried to bite her.
“Nasty little bastards,” she muttered. She popped up the visor on her helmet and stared at her gear in the pre-dawn light. She was assaulted with the humid freshness again, making her nostrils tingle and filling her with a strange sense of euphoria.
Elsa shook her head and looked at her arm. There was nothing wrong with it, aside from the skin around her fingers looking a little wrinkled from the prolonged submersion. She shrugged and turned it over, flexing her hand as she did so. Elsa’s lips parted with a gasp. She pulled her arm closer and stared at it. She had a scar across the back of hand that ran halfway up her forearm from a broken plastic barstool many years back. The scar was still there, but it was smaller. Something in the exposure to the water had made it fade.
She smirked at the thought. Scars don’t just shrink, it must have faded or healed or something. Regenerated, maybe? She stared at it a moment longer before closing her visor and using the suits sensors. Everything checked out fine with it, although the ambient temperature of her arm was nearly two tenths higher than her core. As she watched, it fell a tenth of a point to ninety nine point two.
Ever since her latest genetic manipulation therapy her body had established a new baseline temperature of ninety nine point one. She knew a few FIST members who were closer to one hundred, but they’d gotten nearly everything done they could think of. She wondered sometimes if they even qualified as human anymore. They looked human enough, from a distance, but they’d once given a trained robo-lifter operator a serious run for his money in a contest to see who could load supplies into a drop ship the fastest.
Elsa’s mods were far less unusual. She was stronger and had more stamina than a typical person, plus her eyes had been enhanced considerably. Improved ability to function under fatigue and endure stressful conditions, and even some enhancements to her nervous system to make her a little quicker to react. Reaction time and knowing how to react were different matters, but that was what training and experience were for.
She looked at her arm again and couldn’t help but smile. The blemish to her skin from the scar had long bothered her, but she figured she was a Marine. Scars were better than medals and service ribbons. Still, it sent a thrill deep inside her chest at the possibility that she might erase one of the many marks of service her body wore.
“Okay, enough narcissism, my boys are waiting for me.” Elsa slipped her armor back on, resealing it as best she could. Without a field repair kit for the armor she could do nothing about the breach. Another denied inventory request due to the non-hostile nature of Vitalis’ environment. She snorted in derision at the thought of exactly just how friendly the indigenous life had proven to be thus far.
A fresh drink through the tube built into her helmet and she was ready to set out again. She climbed out of the niche in the rocks and looked around, hoping to avoid Big Bird or any other feathery predators. Nothing was ready to pounce on her so she turned to study the cliff above her. Even with the smart armor and her genetic enhancements she wasn’t sure it would be possible to climb it.
Her display alerted her to the rising light level, something she‘d never have noticed until it was too late. It was impossible to tell which direction the sun was rising, thanks to the tall trees behind her and the rock wall in front of her. Well, dawn was coming and coming soon. Hopefully any nocturnal hunters would leave her alone. That left only the diurnal ones.
Elsa walked along the bottom of the cliff looking for some means of scaling it. Every crack or gentle slope proved to be a false hope. Every vine wouldn’t support her weight before tearing free. She’d dreamt up and cast aside several scenarios, had she requisitioned the proper equipment. But alas, their drop zone was on a coastal plane, no need for any mountaineering equipment. Elsa swore again before moving on.
As the morning approached she learned that the sun was rising away from the cliffs. She seldom saw a direct beam of sunlight breaking through, but it bathed the cliffs above her in a brilliant golden haze. She stopped and stared, opening her visor to wipe the sweat off of her forehead. She inhaled deeply, squinting against the brightness until her eyes adjusted. Her toes itched, making her long to kick off her boots and walk through some of the soft grass she had seen.
Else shook her head and grinned. All this nature nonsense was getting to her head. “Gunny, you got a job to do!” She snapped. She took in a last deep breath then cast a longing glance up at the side of the cliff to a new, disturbing, predicament. “Aw fuck!”
Elsa’s visor snapped down, allowing her to zoom in at the movement she had witnessed. She scanned about, searching the upper reaches of the cliffs and making sure. They were riddled with caves and depressions and, almost without fail, those very holes were filled with giant birds like the ones she’d seen flying the night before.
Climbing the cliff suddenly didn’t seem like a good idea. The thought of lying exposed while a few hundred birds the size of a military grade aeroskimmer flew by didn’t appeal to her. She stalked another hundred feet before an idea came to her. Rivers flowed from high to low. She’d passed one last night. Dipping her toes in for the fish to nibble on had no attraction, but if it had carved out an easier route to climb up the cliff, perhaps she could still make it and have some cover.
Chapter 6
“Yet one more thing the recruiters never told me about.” Elsa had a collection of items that fit the list. Most Marines did, but she’d gone from being a finishing school track star to an elite Special Ops soldier. Hers was longer.
The gunnery sergeant snapped her helmet back on after giving herself a quick moment to dunk her head in the large pool at the base of the cliff. The water refreshed her, washing away the heat and exhaustion that surviving a screamer pod followed by fifteen hours of hard marching had caused. Her sensors verified it was safe for consumption so she’d sampled it, then marveled at how much better it tasted than the water in her kit. Then again, the water in her kit was recycled, either by her suit of armor or back on the Navy ship that brought her to Vitalis.
She glanced at the waterfall that fed the pool and the stream that led away from it. The noise was deafening, but that also meant nothing would hear her. Under different circumstances — and without angry chickens bigger than her last apartment running around — she’d want nothing more than to strip off her sweaty armor and dive into the pool. Then again if the fish downstream could chew metal she didn’t want to know just what they’d do to her more sensitive parts.
“This place isn’t a paradise, it’s a death trap,” She muttered. “Tempting me to do things I’d never do normally and then—“
Elsa clamped her mouth shut abruptly. Across the pond from her, at least eighty feet away, three animals had emerged from the forest to drink from the pond. They were four legged but they reminded her of giant frogs. The largest was sitting down and looking into the jungle, keeping watch. Even sitting it was taller than Elsa. The two smaller ones, babies or children she guessed, were drinking from the pond.
Elsa stood up slowly and backed away, hoping to slip away unseen. The mega-frog on duty turned its head and fixed its four bulbous eyes on her.
“I really hate this planet,” Elsa muttered, slowly raising her rifle. It let out a piercing croak that echoed off the cliff walls and briefly overpowered even the sounds of falling water. Else grimaced but held her ground, the dampeners in her helmet blocking the noise before it overwhelmed her.
The two baby frogs scrambled back immediately and hopped into the jungle. Mama sent another warning croak Elsa’s way before it followed after them.
Else stared after them, shaking a little, then realized she needed to be somewhere else before something bigger and toothier came to investigate. The only problem with that was her only retreat was a vertical one. She stared up the cliff wall, having her best view of it yet thanks to the pool of water and the waterfall. Unfortunately her only cover came from the rock that countless years of running water had chewed away. Wet rock and a long fall was her definition of inhospitable.
Elsa glanced back along the water’s edge, reluctant to turn her back for long on the jungle. A flare of red in her display alerted her to something creeping through the trees. Not under the trees, in them. It was large, like everything else, and when her helmet was able to refine the view she saw it possessed four long and overly articulated legs. It moved stealthily, unused to tracking prey with the technology that Elsa had at her disposal. It reminded her of a spider and a monkey, but it wasn’t until she turned off the thermal imaging that she was able to see it clearly. Instead of fur or feathers, or even the slimy looking skin the mega-frog family had sported, this creepy crawler blended in so well she was sure she wouldn’t have seen it if it hadn’t been moving.
She commanded her helmet to take a video of it as it moved, afraid nobody would believe her when she returned to report it. As it moved so did the colors and shading on its skin. It was part spider, part monkey, and part chameleon. She raised her rifle and took careful aim at what she thought was its head. As soon as the beam of charged ions hit it let loose a screech that threatened to make her spine buck out of her skin. The dampers in her helmet judged the decibel level safe so it let her enjoy the wretched death wail.
“Get your ass moving, Gunny,” Elsa told herself. With that racket added in, it was only a matter of time until something else came along. She broke her rifle down and attached it, then turned and stepped into the water where it lapped against the cliff wall.
She moved along a small ledge against the wall. The wet rock was slippery but a firm kick into the rock helped chip it away and give her a little more footing. She hugged the wall, using her hands whenever a crack was available to help until the cliff opened away near the edge of the waterfall. Spray and mist covered her, blurring her vision. Miraculously, the fish had done little damage to her helmet earlier, but now it became a moot point given the persistence of the spray.
The ledge widened slightly, allowing her lean back and look up, though it did her little good. With a grunt she moved in further then decided enough was enough, it was time to go up. She wiped the mist off her visor, regretting it instantly. Either she could look through a distorted image or one smeared with streaks and splatters. Cursing, she flipped her visor up, rationalizing that her eyelids could blink the mist away as needed. Within seconds her face and hair was soaked and the water began to work its way down her neck and into her suit.
“This planet is fucking awesome,” Elsa growled. With no display to superimpose over her open viewport she subvocalized the necessary commands to boost power to her suit. The batteries would drain faster, but she had solar rechargers in her gear. One requisition filled, thankfully. Then again without energy a Marine was lost – limited ammo, limited smart armor, worthless gear, and even her vibrating V-Bar combat knife would be little more than a sharp stick.
She drew back her fist and slammed it into the rock, cracking the hard stone and giving her the first of the many handholds and footholds she would need. She held her fist up and flexed it, looking at it carefully. The armored glove was holding up fine, but she had several hundred more left and right jabs into the cliff to go. A kick with one leg and she was off, making her own path up the side of the wet cliff.
The climb was exhausting even with the suit providing extra oomph to her strikes. Micro actuators in her fingers helped her hold on, but there was no power in the suit to keep her shoulders and elbows in place, nor to help her make each grip.
Nearly three hours later, her visor still open and her face now drenched with sweat, Elsa found a crack in the cliff that allowed her to pull herself inside of it. She collapsed, gasping for breath and praying it was too small for one of the predatory birds she’d seen. It was damp in the small crevice, but aside from a couple of tiny hard shelled creatures that slipped into cracks in the rocks, it was uninhabited.
Elsa lay panting for several minutes. The ache in her arms faded and the pinch in her side let loose, making her feel human again. All that remained was the ache to get out of her suit and stretch, but that was a luxury she couldn’t afford. She hoped this trip wasn’t like the one she’d endured on a mission to retake a mining complex in one of the outer systems – her unit had been trapped for nearly three weeks in their suits the entire time.