Chương 71: The Dark Jungle

Sea Cliffs South of San Teodoro, Vidako Imperium Stellarum February 10, 2848 Arc stood atop the sea cliff, wind whipping at his jumpsuit, and looked down at the dark sea below. The water wasn't the proper shade of green or blue; the binary suns of Vidako, K'in orange and Neto red, caused all the colors to be off, compared to what he'd grown up knowing.

Still, the white caps of the breaking waves on the rocks far below looked just the same, and the sound of them carried up to the heights where his battered patrol had sought refuge. Am I cursed, or something? He asked Iceni silently. Two patrols in a row, with casualties each time. That can't be normal. Is it me? Am I doing something wrong? There is such a thing as simply bad luck, Iceni said. If the ground hadn't turned under Cadet de Ligne's foot, her mech wouldn't have fallen.

If she hadn't been thrown about so violently, Pika would never have had to get out of his cockpit. Bad luck twice in a row, though? Arc found himself suddenly profoundly grateful for the AI's presence in his mind. He didn't have the kind of relationship with Christina Fortin that would let him admit these kinds of thoughts out loud. Sareth Khan wasn't a case of bad luck, Iceni said. It was a lack of judgement on the part of Cadet Iyer, Lieutenant Commander Libby, and arguably the medical staff as well.

None of which were your fault. Though Iceni's words made sense, it was difficult to let the thought go. Perhaps it was for the best that Semirye de Ligne stirred, gave a groan, and drew both Arc and Christina's attention. Christina immediately hurried over to where her roommate lay, stretched out on a patch of indigenous lichen that colored the bare rock, a rolled up sleeping bag set under her head. Arc followed, though at a slower pace; he didn't really know Semirye well at all.

"Hey," Christina said, squatting down.

"How are you feeling?" Semirye groaned.

"Fuzzy," she admitted.

"My head hurts. What happened?"

"Do you remember the spiked terror hitting you?" Arc asked her.

"Mmm." The other cadet winced.

"Yeah. And then I saw it get up on top of my mech and come down..."

"Cadet Pika tackled it off you," Christina explained.

"And then he got you out of your cockpit."

"You left my mech behind?" Semirye exclaimed, and tried to sit up. Christina caught her by the shoulders and held her down.

"Don't move. Yes, we left it behind. The cockpit's sealed, and we can go back and get it once you're feeling better," Christina assured her.

"For now, just rest. We're going to camp here tonight." Arc frowned, but he didn't say anything until Christina had closed her eyes once again, presumably to sleep. Pika hadn't woken yet, and Arc honestly hoped that he wouldn't, until they were back at the academy.

"Come on," Christina said, once she'd stood up.

"Let's set up camp." She turned and headed for her mech, to begin hauling out camping supplies. Arc hurried after her.

"May I have a word, sir?" he asked. Christina paused with her hand on one rung of her rope ladder, and looked over her shoulder.

"What is it, cadet?" Whatever softness she'd shown when speaking to Semirye was gone, and Arc could tell that he'd put her hackles up by addressing her formally. But he had to: she was in command of the patrol, and she was making a mistake.

"Sir, I think we should call for evac," Arc said.

"You and I can make it back in our mechs just fine, but Christina shouldn't even be trying to connect until she's been checked out."

"It's a minor concussion," Christina said, turning away from him and setting the sole of her boot on the bottom rung of the rope ladder.

"She's had them before. She'll be fine." That explains a lot, Iceni said. Ask if she's had one within the past year.

"She's had concussions before?" Arc asked, before Christina could climb away and ignore him.

"How many? When was the last one?"

"That's not any of your business," Christina said, and she actively began climbing. Arc realized that she was running away from him.

"It is, and your AI will know it just as well as mine does," Arc called up after her.

"Ask it to run the numbers. There's centuries of medical data on this." Christina slumped against the rope ladder, halfway up.

"She got one last spring," the older cadet admitted.

"Toward the end of the term. And I know it wasn't the first—she was in a crash when she was a child. I know they almost didn't let her get the neural lace."

"Then we can't hook her brain back up to a mech right now!" Arc shouted, though he felt like his words were carried away by the wind.

"And Pika!" He threw a hand in the direction of his unconscious friend.

"There's one egg left inside him—at least one that I saw. If we don't get him back to the infirmary, it's going to hatch. Half our squad is out of action, Christina. We need to call for help."

"We can't!" Christina said, and hurried back down the ladder before dropping the last meter or so to the bare rock. There, she walked right up to Arc, almost chest to chest, so that he had the urge to step backward. It took an active effort to stand his ground.

"If Semirye has to be flown out of here on a Saker, they're going to pull her from patrols for weeks while they check her brain out," Christina hissed, as if afraid they'd wake the other two cadets.

"Weeks, or months. They'll probably pull her out of the sims, too. She might have to make up a year, if they let her come back at all." Arc blinked, trying to process her words.

"Wait. Your plan is to just not tell anyone that she had a concussion?"

"If she walks her own mech back, no one has any reason to ask questions," Christina said.

"She can take it easy for a few weeks while she recovers, and just not sign up for another patrol. There's only three months left in the term, anyway. By the time she comes back from summer break, she'll be fine."

"You'd rather your friend pass her classes than get medical treatment." Arc grit his teeth at the idea.

"This is what she would want," Christina snapped.

"I know her well enough to know that. She'd rather deal with a headache here or there than get slapped with a medical discharge."

"And Pika?" Arc asked.

"He needs to get back immediately."

"And we'll get him there," Christina said.

"We spend one night here to let them both recover. Tomorrow we take these three mechs back to pick up Semirye's Culverin, and then we head straight back to the academy. We'll get there in time. I promise. Now, help me make camp." Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

"Is that an order, sir?" Arc asked.

"Yes." Christina narrowed her eyes.

"It is."

"Yes sir," he said. 𝝮 It was a lot more work to set up camp with only two people. Arc dug the latrine himself, a process that was only extended when he needed to help Semirye over to the ditch he'd dug, thirty meters downslope where the rock face gave way to earth again, so that she could vomit. Then he helped her back to her sleeping bag and shovelled loose dirt over the place where she'd been sick. Keeping a fire going was a pain, even in the gap where the rock split that Arc had used the first time.

Instead, they just set up four pouches of rations and watched them steam as the chemical reaction did its work. Christina helped Semirye eat, while Arc carried Pika's meal—another helping of lemon-pepper red sail—over.

"Hey," he said, sitting down next to his friend, and nudging the big Alu'kan until he blinked awake.

"Eat some of this, and then you can go back to sleep." Pika tried to sit up, which immediately made him gasp in pain. Arc set the pouch aside and did his best to support the bigger man's weight, though he worried about tearing the wound open and getting the bleeding started again.

"Did you get the eggs out?" Pika asked, in between bites of fish.

"Most of them," Arc admitted, while he dug into his own rations. Not fish. Cheesy-potato slices and vat-grown beef.

"Most." Pika paused, fork halfway between his ration pouch and his mouth, and looked Arc straight in the eyes.

"How many left?"

"At least one," Arc told him.

"One that I saw slip deeper. I couldn't be certain there weren't more." Admitting it out loud felt like he'd failed his friend—his best friend at the academy, really. Cassie didn't count. Pika chewed on that for a moment, rather than his meal.

"One isn't so bad," he said.

"You might have killed it poking around. Eggs are usually pretty delicate things. It might not hatch at all." Arc didn't really think that Pika believed that.

"Yeah," he agreed.

"And Christina's promised we're heading straight back in the morning, as soon as we collect Semirye's mech." They both looked over to where the two women were huddled together, Semirye shaking her head while Christina tried to coax more food into her.

"You think she can pilot?" Pika asked.

"Christina does," Arc said. Pika ate quietly for a few moments, until he finished his meal.

"It probably won't happen," he said.

"We'll be back before the egg hatches, if it ever does. But if it gets to my brain, Arc, I want you to shoot me."

"I can't do that," Arc said.

"You can." Pika handed him the empty ration pouch.

"That would be better than feeling it... gnaw at you. It would be mercy. And my mother will understand. She would thank you."

"Sure," Arc said.

"But I won't need to do that." Pika nodded, and settled back into his sleeping bag.

"Good. That makes me feel better. I'm going to rest a bit." You just lied to your friend, Iceni pointed out, once Arc had stood up to get rid of the remnants of their meal. I'm not going to let things get to that point, Arc said. I want you to check my notes from the xenobiology briefings we got during Hard Burn. They should still be on my tablet. I need to make absolutely certain that I remember something correctly. 𝝮 Christina took first watch, which gave Arc and Iceni ample opportunity to review his notes.

When she shook him awake, sometime during the dark of the night, she didn't immediately move away.

"I took you on this patrol because I thought you were someone who would have my back," the older cadet whispered. With only the light of the stars, and a crescent-shaped sliver of Chel high above, Arc could only make out the shadows of her face. It was impossible to see her expression.

"You can," Arc said.

"I know you disagree with my decision. But I need you to follow your orders anyway," Christina said.

"That's what it means to be a soldier." Unless those orders are unlawful, Arc thought to himself. But out loud, he only said, "I will. Get some rest. I'll wake you at dawn." Christina hesitated for a moment, as if she couldn't quite bring herself to trust him, and then moved over to her sleeping bag. Arc grabbed his BA-50 flechette rifle, stood, and made a quick circuit around their campsite.

He didn't expect any problems: they'd already killed the spiked terror which claimed this territory, and while another would eventually move in, that would take time. The flat, open rock at the top of the cliff had none of the foliage tree-cats depended on for their ambushes, and the zombie flies hated windy, open areas like this. Once he was certain that Christina was asleep, Arc climbed up to Pika's cockpit and got his friend's rifle down. Then, he knelt at Pika's side and shook the big man away.

"Shhh," Arc whispered, once his friend stirred.

"Don't say anything. I need you to take watch for a bit. Not long."

"Why?" Pika hissed back.

"I need to get something. I'll be back soon," Arc said. He set off down the bluff for the tree-line, and once he was certain he was far enough away that Christina wouldn't notice or wake up, he switched on the light attached to the barrel of his flechette rifle. The dark leaves of the undergrowth popped against the darkness that surrounded his thin beam of light, and Arc made his way carefully into the trees. It was the first time that he'd ever gone alone into the dark jungles of the planet at night.

There was no line of other cadets strung out behind him, rifles at the ready and water-jugs in hand, on their way to a stream. Everything was louder than he would have thought, as it seemed a million kinds of insects and animals whistled and hummed and squeaked and cried off in the distance. That sound, like a woman screaming at some great grief or pain? That must have been a treecat, and he could only hope the noise carried a long, long way.

He found the deathroot after forty minutes of walking, and only then because Iceni had kept a record of what they'd passed on their way up to the top of the cliff. Arc slung his flechette rifle over his shoulder, so that it hung against his back, and drew his utility knife. He tried to hold his breath while he cut the bright red flowers, shaped like jagged blades, and collected them. He wasn't sure how many would be needed, or how many would be too dangerous.

Once he had what he'd come for, he retraced his steps back up the cliff to the campsite. Arc had half expected Pika to be asleep by the time he got back, but his friend was sitting up, flechette rifle propped against his uninjured shoulder.

"You're relieved, cadet," Arc whispered, sitting down next to his roommate.

"Here. Chew on this." He handed the flowers over.

"Spike?" Pika hissed, in disbelief.

"No," Arc said.

"Spike is the street drug they make out of it when it's processed. These are the original flowers. Tree cats eat them if they get stung by a zombie fly. When it gets into their bloodstream, it kills the eggs." Pika looked down at the flowers in his hand for a long moment.

"Do you think it is -" he hesitated.

"Will I be able to stop taking it, once I start?" Arc sighed.

"I don't know," he admitted.

"It shouldn't be as strong as what the gangers out of the Pylons deal. Not as concentrated, right? But if you live long enough for that to be a problem—""It means I survived getting back to the academy," Pika finished the thought.

"You went alone into the jungle to get this for me. You could have been killed, Arc. It was your watch—she could say that you abandoned your post." He shrugged.

"I was relieved, wasn't I? And now I'm relieving you."

"I think," Pika said, "that I was very lucky to be assigned the same room as you, my friend. Thank you." Carefully, he raised a single leaf, put it into his mouth, and bit down, grinding it between his teeth. Pika made a noise of disgust.

"Bitter," he said.

"How much should I have?"

"Iceni says that tree-cats usually eat two or three leaves after they've been stung," Arc explained.

"Of course, you're bigger than a tree cat. I got you six. I really hope it's not too much. If there's any left over that you don't eat, you can't bring it back to the academy. You've got to get rid of it."

"No worries of that," Pika said.

"I'm not going to choke down something that tastes this bad and find out I didn't have enough. All six it is, before I go back to sleep." He popped the next leaf into his mouth.

"You must be just about the toughest man I've ever met," Arc said, as they sat there next to each other under the stars.

"They way you carried her up that ladder? I didn't think you were going to make it." Pika chewed for a moment before he answered.

"I saw what had to be done, and I did it," he said.

"You would have done the same. You have done the same for me."

"We've got to be careful of Christina tomorrow," Arc warned him.

"She's not thinking straight. She's trying to protect her friend, and she doesn't realize that she might hurt Semirye even worse by what she's doing." No sooner were the words out of his mouth than he wondered if he might not be doing the exact same thing with Pika. By the time the first of Vidako's two suns rose, over the ocean to the east, Pika had long since fallen asleep again, all six of the leaves consumed. For a moment, Arc simply considered letting the other three cadets sleep.

Semirye and Pika certainly needed as much rest as they could get. But Christina had told him to wake her at dawn, and that had been a direct order. Arc looked down at the flittering threads of burnt orange, shining along the waves that rippled the surface of the ocean far below. For a world as deadly as Vidako was, it could also be beautiful, sometimes.

He scrubbed his hands with a bit of the water from his canteen, to make certain there was no trace of the narcotic red flowers lingering on his skin, and then he brushed his hands dry on the thighs of his jumpsuit. Then, he walked over to where Christina Fortin was sleeping and shook her awake.