Was this who Shade was working for? Except why would that one independent world care about Swindle?
Jane read it over again, then noticed a slight error in the record. A miniscule thing. But Jane had learned to read miniscule aberrations in the code.
Her piggy had not gone to the Kong at all. That whole trip was an elaborate deception.
This was a Trojan Pig. Someone had caught her trace, loaded it up with spyware and lies and then sent it back. Of course, Jane was far too careful, so it had been placed in quarantine upon its arrival. Her systems had never been in danger because she would not be letting this particular piggy out of its pen.
She examined it closer. All programs had certain accents and nuances indicative of who had made it. How did they think? What culture were they from? Where had they trained, or were they self-taught? It was an unconscious thing that they all did. That was the same reason she could never let any of her art out into the wild.
This code felt American.
Shade, the one brokering the deal, was sending secret codes to Earth, to the same country leading the embargo against the Warlord. Why would they do that? Shade wasn’t American, but the captain was. Did he know his old country was breaking its own embargo? Or was the American signature yet another misdirection? This code was top tier.
The only thing that this told Jane for sure was that whoever Shade was really working for had serious resources. Jane gave the poor corrupted piggy a mercifully quick deletion and then went back to focusing on her search for Jackson.
Chapter 19
It rained for hours. It rained so hard that Jackson’s suit struggled keeping the moisture out. The edges of his faceplate fogged. On the bright side, the lightning was spectacular, multiple forks cracking and booming over and over again. It was the most electricity Jackson had ever seen in a storm, as if some mad scientist had been given the job upstairs. One bolt struck so close the boom knocked him sideways. A companion bolt struck ten meters farther on. A third crashed just a little to his right, splitting a tree in a bright flash.
Jackson wondered if he was next, but the lightning moved away. As the water rose above his ankles, he thought of the leeches that infested the streams of his home world. To jump-start the biosphere, the colonists had seeded a lot of Earth animals on Gloss, most of which hadn’t survived, but the damnable leeches had thrived. Worse than that, he’d read about Earth beasts like piranha and anacondas and figured there was surely some Swindle nightmare equivalent that swam in the shallow water, so he moved to higher ground.
Even though he was cold, damp, and miserable, on the bright side the torrential rain was washing away all sign of where he’d been, including his scent. Which made it slightly less likely something terrible would murder him in the next fifteen minutes. The downside was that surely Tui—if he’d made it back to the base himself—wouldn’t leave a man behind. They’d be coming back to the site of the attack with a sniffer tracker. Only there wasn’t a scent trail in the world that would survive this flood.
With the rain falling in sheets, punctuated by so much lightning that it was basically a strobe light, visibility was awful. He had to take cover. So Jackson sat with his back against a tree. Even that didn’t help much because needles that passed for leaves in this place swelled up like sponges, until the ones above him got too full, and then they’d vomit liters of cold water on him at a time. His environment suit had self-healing fabric, and the leg tear had sealed, but not before some water had seeped in, water that he expected would be as caustic as the air. At least Raj was keeping it off his skin.
Late in the night the rain softened, then drizzled, then stopped. The helmet had full transfer tech so that he could hear and smell and even feel the temperature of the outside air if he wanted to—an environment suit wasn’t much good if it removed all environmental feedback—so he kept the temperature bearable, but not comfortable. He’d rather save the battery for oxygen purification. But he made sure to turn up the audio and olfactory sensors, which allowed him to smell the sharp tang of Swindle and hear occasional rumbles and cries in the distance. Hopefully he’d be able to sense the predators coming.
He maxed the magnification of the ambient light for night vision, but with the clouded sky and a canopy of trees, there wasn’t much to magnify. There was just enough to see when little mothlike things came out and other small creatures jumped from tree to tree to catch and eat them. And it was enough to make out the rough outline of something large that rustled as it crossed the canopy of trees above him.
Jackson forced himself to remain alert. He was exhausted but afraid to sleep with the head injury. Heck, after catching a tiny glimpse of that kaiju he didn’t think he’d ever sleep again. Raj could hit him with stims or painkillers if necessary, but he’d avoided both so far. The headache was awful, and his shoulder and his finger were miserable, but painkillers would just make him even foggier. He needed to keep his wits.
Except as the miserable night went on, the pain occupied more and more of his thoughts. It had been one thing to push through it while marching, but another to bear it when you were stuck. So he took one hit off of Raj’s stash, but that was all he’d allow himself. It made his head feel slightly less awful.
Hunger was starting to gnaw at him. He should have brought some rations, at least a lifeboat cookie or something, but Warlord had assured them it was unnecessary. It would be rude for his guests to assume he was incapable of caring for their every need. Right then Jackson wanted nothing more than to put a steel bolt into their host’s smug face.
And so the night went. The rain finally stopped. An hour or so later, the first ghostly glimmer of dawn began to lighten the sky. Jackson told himself he was going to get out of this mess. He just needed to get back to that mountain base.
And then he heard a branch crack on the ground. It was followed by the brush of something against leaves. Then a squelch.
He rose, maxed the audio, then turned toward the sound and caught a shadowy movement in the dim green light of the woods. Adrenaline pumped him wide awake. He unslung his Wakal and saw a flash of the creature again as it crossed between shadows. It was the size of a large dog, but with tusks and a pair of spines on its shoulders. It was coming right at him, seemingly oblivious.
Jackson figured animals here were probably like they were in most places and would attack if startled. So he clapped his hands to alert the creature of his presence and warn it off.
The creature paused a moment, sniffed the air, then began to growl. At least, that’s how Jackson read the low rumble. So he picked up a dead branch and threw it at the thing.
The stick struck it right in the snout. It flinched.
“Run away, you little shank.”
Instead it charged.
Jackson raised his Wakal and aimed at its head. The creature was closing fast. Jackson had to pull the trigger with a finger that wasn’t broken, and that screwed up his aim. Instead of nailing the thing in the head, the bolt struck it in the shoulder. The thing hissed like a snake, and spun, snapping at the wound. Jackson backed away at a diagonal. He didn’t want to waste another precious bolt, so he picked up a rock and threw it.
The rock struck the flank of the thing with a solid thud, and apparently that was enough, because it grunted and ran off into the shadows. Jackson listened to its flight until he was sure it was gone.
Time to move. He had a vague notion of which direction the base was, so he’d go that way and hope for the best. Fifi might get a signal, or he might stumble across a ranger patrol.
Morning came with mist, which didn’t clear for a few hours. Between the visibility and the rough terrain, he made terrible time, and he wasn’t even sure he was moving in the right direction. When the mist finally started to thin, he decided he needed some height, and so he began looking for something he could climb. Many of the trees here were like palms with straight trunks topped by a spongy tuft of what passed as leaves. Some of them were incredibly tall, and occasionally the tr
ees had grown into each other, forming weird shapes, almost like balconies and landings high above. He picked one that looked climbable because the bark had a bunch of lumps that would make good handholds. He slung the Wakal and started climbing.
The gravity of Swindle was less than standard, which allowed the trees to grow very tall. It also made climbing a little easier. He figured he was around twenty meters up when he finally reached a cluster of branches where he could stop. To his disappointment, there was still enough mist to limit his view to a few hundred meters. He decided maybe he should perch up here until the mists burned off.
He spotted a place he could sit and rest, except when he stuck his hand onto that branch to pull himself up, the leaves started to hum. Suddenly a dozen black creatures, each the size of his fist burst out, flapping and jumping. One landed on his faceplate. It immediately started stabbing the plastic with the stingers on its head. Another landed on his hand. More landed on his arm and back.
Jackson startled. He swatted at the thing on his arm, then another. And suddenly he was falling back. He gave the trunk a thigh squeeze.
More of the black creatures landed on him and his mask. He swatted one away, then another, but there were too many of them.
Jackson tore open an exterior pocket. “Fifi! Get ’em!”
One of the devils pierced the suit covering his arm and stabbed into his arm. It was like getting hit with a staple gun.
Jackson cursed, smashed it.
Then Fifi sprang onto one of the devils, landed on its face, and lanced one of its eyes. It screeched and flapped wildly away. She sprang at another, lanced one of its eyes. Another screech and wild flapping. She sprang at another.
“Fifi, clear my body.”
Fifi sprang again, this time to his back.
Black devils flapped about. Others kept biting. Jackson smashed two more. Then he loosened his grip enough to begin to slide down the tree trunk. Another one got through on his back. Jackson grunted, then loosened his grip to speed his descent even further, hoping the rough bark didn’t shred his suit.
More of the creatures flapped wildly away from him as he slid down the trunk, Fifi attacking them with speed.
A few moments later, he approached the ground. And then another one of the black devils penetrated his suit by his thigh. He swore, hit the ground, knocked the creature from his leg, then stomped it. Purple guts exploded beneath his boot. Another landed on his shoulder. Jackson tore it away and flung it, then ran down the hill, trying to escape.
A few stragglers came after him, but a few seconds later they began to suddenly turn and fly away.
Jackson kept crashing through the brush. Fifty meters later, he stopped. The spots where the things had bit him were on fire.
Jackson initiated a selfheal on the suit and turned on Raj’s antitoxin controls. The environmental suit had a much better system, but its system had been broken when the caliban had given him that love swat.
He cursed. And was now officially pissed. It was time to get out of this idiot forest and off this damn planet.
He saw a small black speck springing down the hill toward him, jumping in big arcs. At first he thought it was some other Swindlen nightmare, but it was only Fifi. She bounded down the hill, then landed on his chest.
“How was the fight?”
She gave him a positive chime and then projected a report onto his dirty visor. 137 eyes slashed.
“Impressive.”
17 wings.
Jackson nodded to himself.
5 mouths.
“Mouths?” he asked.
Fifi played a brief video of them trying to eat her, one successfully, before she cut her way out of its throat.
“Thank you, Fifi. Well done.” One simply did not mess with Fifi.
Happy chime.
The stings were burning like crazy. He needed to get out of here. It was time to change tactics. He hadn’t been a guerilla, but he’d supported them, and he’d at least tried to pay attention.
He knew the burned clear area was probably somewhere within a three- or four-klick radius of where he now was. If he could find that, he could find his way back to the fort. So he would do this the hard but thorough way. He would walk ever-widening squares until he found it. He selected a tall tree on a tall hill as a center point, used his knife to marked the tree on all sides, and then walked a straight line fifty meters out, then he turned ninety degrees and began his first square, counting his paces. Every ten to fifteen meters, he used his knife to mark all sides of another trunk with the number for this first square. He checked his pacing and counts three times as he made his square by walking back to the center tree and saw he hadn’t lost his dead-reckoning skills.
He finished his first square around the tree, strode out to a point a hundred and fifty meters out and started his second square, marking the trees as he went. On this happy excursion he navigated a boggy area, saw some small wildlife that included a segmented, crab thing clipping leaves, a couple of gliding battish things, and tiny insectoids the that were a dull yellow and liked to rest on the arms of his suit. He also picked up a long, sturdy stick he could use as a pike against small beasts, and webs, because it appeared Swindle had also evolved something similar to spiders. He checked his dead reckoning twice more and found his pacing and visual direction spot on.
He finished his second square and started a third. This one he took out to eight hundred meters. And on this one, he spotted a herd of animals the size of deer moving through the brush. He assumed they were prey animals, but who knew? On Swindle it seemed everything was ready for a fight. When they didn’t move on, he adjusted his path, and continued.
By the time he had finished the third square, he’d walked about eight thousand meters. It had taken him about three hours to do eight klicks. He’d hoped the mists would have thinned out by now, but they just stayed. So he started his fourth square, walking out sixteen hundred meters. That made each side of his square thirty-two hundred meters. A total of 12,800 meters. 12.8 freaking kilometers. And if he didn’t run into the burn in this circuit, then he was going mad.
The problem was that by this time the devil bites were burning like he’d been injected with Satan juice. Furthermore, whatever those little goat-lovers had injected him with was making him sweat. Which meant that before he’d gone another klick, he was not only parched, he was beginning to get lightheaded. Still Jackson trudged on, counting his steps aloud so Fifi could record it.
He came to a part of the wood that had a thicker canopy. Below the tall branches all was dark shade. Jackson paused, not wanting to rush in where something might be lurking. He scanned the shadows all the way to the other end of the dense part, and there, out in the light, stood a human figure. Someone in a suit. Someone small.
Jackson blinked.
It was a person, all right. A kid in a suit. With a rifle and a pack. And surely the kid had to be carrying water.
“Hey!” Jackson called.
The kid turned and saw him.
Jackson waved. “Hey!” he called again.
But the kid took off.
“Wait,” Jackson said, but the kid was running, so Jackson took off after him. In just a few seconds he arrived at the spot where the kid had turned off. Jackson spotted his trail through the brush and followed.
“Hey! I’m lost. I need help.”
Jackson looked in the direction where the kid was running and decided to take a diagonal and cut him off. He crashed through the bushes and hoped he didn’t run into any more devil biters, and he didn’t. Instead he broke through into an area where there was almost no underbrush and just about ran over the kid.
The kid startled, scrambled away.
“I’m not going to hurt you, please.” Jackson dashed after him, reached to grab his pack, but there was a snap as something wrenched tight around his ankles.
A split second later he was swinging by his feet about two meters off the ground. His Wakal slipped off his shoulder. He tried to gra
b it, but it landed in the grass.
At first Jackson imagined some octopus-armed Swindle monster had grabbed him, but then he looked up and saw it was just a rope. A snare. Jackson had stepped into a snare, like something out of some old-timey jungle movie.
“Are you kidding me?”
He let his head fall and looked at the world upside down. There were men in well-camouflaged ghillie suits coming toward him.
“I am so glad to see you guys. I got lost. I need help.”
Except his answer was getting zapped on his back by hundreds of volts. His muscles clenched and wouldn’t stop. When the shocker was pulled away, Jackson gasped. “What the hell, man?”
“Tranq him,” a man said.
There was a prick on Jackson’s arm. A moment later a strange happiness and peace rolled over him.
“I guarantee he’s a plant,” a woman said. “Just kill him.”
Chapter 20
Jackson woke to a comfortable electric hum. He slowly opened his eyes and saw he was sitting in his underwear and socks, his arms and legs bound to a chair. He tested his bonds and found all his limbs had been cuffed.
“Welcome.”
Jackson looked up. There was a black woman sitting across from him. She had gray running through her hair and piercing blue eyes. She was wearing boots and a camo patrol suit. Although clearly aging, she was trim. Holstered at her waist was a well-used Brady. A butt-ugly handgun that could take just about any punishment one could dish out and still shoot like a dream.
Standing behind the woman was a lean boy who’d taken some scrapes, another woman whose hair was buzzed short, and two men. One of them had a beard. The other had a big bandage on his neck. They were all dressed in similar clothing, and from the sweat and grime, looked like they’d just come out of the forest.
The woman laid her hand on a glass jar sitting on the table next to her. “Quite the little defender you have here.”
There was something tiny inside the jar.
Jackson saw that it was Fifi.
“It almost killed three of our soldiers.”
Gun Runner Page 24