A World of Hurt

by David Sherman

  The time from when the first Dragon dropped its ramp to when the last Marine stepped off the last Dragon of the third wave was hardly longer than the time it had taken the Marines to board the Dragons back at Camp Ellis.

  Brigadier Sturgeon checked the reports that came in from his subordinate commanders and nodded. His FIST had arrived for this simulated combat assault in three elements: the ground forces, which came in via Essays and Dragons; the Raptors, which had departed Camp Ellis some hours earlier to make the flight on their own; and the hoppers, which had left home the day before. All arrived in good order. Had they landed against a live opponent rather than on an unpopulated island, they would have achieved the desired surprise and struck with shocking force. He was going to have to give everyone a "Well done." Even the navy performed well.

  Now for the next phase of the exercise: infantry movement by companies deeper into the wetlands, where each company would set up a fire base in an area with very little in the way of dry land.

  The next time 34th FIST encountered the Skinks--and Sturgeon had no doubt they would--his companies might have to spend extended periods in wetlands hunting them, and he wanted his men to be familiar with the necessary techniques to avoid immersion injuries and fungal infections.

  And they hadn't stressed men or equipment in a true equatorial climate in a while.

  "It's too hot," Corporal Doyle complained.

  Corporal Kerr stopped scanning the swamp and looked at Doyle. It was hard to tell using his infra, but Doyle's head seemed to be pointed straight ahead--his staggering was easily visible. "Which flank are you supposed to be watching, Doyle?" he asked.

  There was a pause before Doyle replied. "Dunno. Too hot. Can't remember." His voice came through the air to Kerr's helmet pickups, the same as before, instead of over the radio. He raised his screens and looked at Doyle in visual--his screens were up and his uniform's atmosphere was escaping.

  "Why are you hot, Doyle?" Kerr said softly. "Think about it. Why are you hot?" He used his infra to look back. His new man, PFC Summers, was walking more steadily than Doyle. He raised his infra and the image of Summers vanished from sight. He quickly scanned the right flank, then looked toward Doyle again. "Your left, Doyle. Watch the left flank."

  "Left flank," Doyle repeated. The reddish blur of Doyle's infrared image flared bright on the left side of the lump that showed where his helmet was. Kerr knew it shouldn't flare like that. He raised his infra. Damn, he could see Doyle's face. He pushed forward through the water to Doyle's side.

  "What's wrong with your climate, Doyle?" Kerr slipped off a glove and put his bare hand on Doyle's shoulder; it was only slightly warmer than the air temperature.

  "It's too hot," Doyle mumbled.

  Kerr looked closely at Doyle's face. It was flushed and he was sweating copiously. His eyes weren't focused. Kerr touched Doyle's face. His skin was cold and clammy. He called up Doyle's uniform and personal diagnostics. His chameleon's cooler control was off; his body temperature was elevated, his pulse was thready, and there were indications of dehydration.

  "Rat," he said into the squad command circuit, "I've got a heat casualty. Doyle. He's still ambulatory, but I don't think for long." He began looking for a tussock of ground above the water where Doyle could lie down.

  "Roger that," Sergeant Linsman, the squad leader, replied. "Get him someplace where he can lie down." Kerr thought he heard the squad leader mutter "Doyle" before he switched to the platoon command circuit and say, "Corpsman up. Heat casualty. Doyle's down."

  "Third platoon, hold up," Ensign Bass said as soon as he heard the report. "Set a perimeter."

  The voices of squad leaders assigning positions to their fire teams came over the platoon command circuit. On the squad circuit, Kerr heard Corporals Chan and Claypoole assigning fields of fire to their men.

  There: it wasn't dry land--he didn't see any ground above water--but a tangle of small buttress roots looked big enough for a man to recline on; if not comfortably, at least out of the water.

  "Come with me, Doyle." Kerr took Doyle's blaster and slung it over his own shoulder, then he took Doyle firmly by the arm and guided him to the roots. "With me, Summers," he added. Behind him, he heard splashing as Summers hurried to catch up.

  "Give me a hand here," Kerr ordered. Between them they got Doyle recumbent on the tangle of roots. Kerr groped for one of Doyle's canteens and pulled it from its carrier--it was full. He handed it to Summers. "Trickle this down his throat. Don't pour, just give him a small stream until he's able to drink on his own."

  "Right," Summers said, taking the canteen.

  Kerr checked Doyle's other canteen. It was also full. The water reservoir in his pack was less than a quarter emptied. He shook his head. Doyle had more than twice as much water as he did. If he'd been drinking all along, he wouldn't be suffering from heat exhaustion.

  "Kerr, where are you?" HM3 Hough's voice came over Kerr's helmet radio.

  "Over here, Doc," Kerr said. He slipped a cuff out of a glove and raised his arm to let the sleeve slide down. The sudden exposure made his arm feel like he'd just stuck it in an oven; sweat broke out all over it and started flowing down.

  "I have you," Doc Hough said, and Kerr gratefully covered his arm and resealed the cuff into the glove. He checked the indicators; the ambient air temperature was over 40 degrees centigrade. No wonder Doyle was sweating so heavily. Why didn't he have his cooler on, and why hadn't he been drinking? If he didn't replace fluids and lower his temperature, he could be in serious trouble.

  Hough sloshed up to them and quickly checked Doyle's diagnostics. "Classic heat exhaustion," he said, shaking his head. He didn't raise his shields, but did keep the clear screen down so the three Marines could see his face. "How much of that have you given him?" he asked Summers.

  "Not much, Doc. He doesn't want to swallow." Most of the water trickling into Doyle's mouth dribbled back out of his lax lips.

  "Stop for now. If he swallows suddenly he might choke on it."

  Summers withdrew the canteen.

  "Help me prop him up." Kerr helped Hough shift Doyle so his head and shoulders were elevated. Most of the water in his mouth flowed out. "I've got to open him up, get access to his throat," the corpsman said. "Take his helmet."

  Kerr removed Doyle's helmet while Hough unfastened the neck of his chameleons, exposing his neck and upper chest.

  "Hold his shoulders like this," Hough told Kerr, and positioned Doyle the way he wanted him. "Give me the canteen." He took it from Summers and held it to Doyle's mouth. "Take a swallow, Corporal, you can do it." He tipped the canteen so a light flow of water went into Doyle's mouth. He tilted the canteen up and said, "Close your mouth and swallow. You can do it, Marine."

  Doyle rolled his head from side to side.

  "Yes you can, you're a Marine, Corporal. You can do anything."

  Doyle closed his mouth and worked his jaw, but his throat was still, he wasn't swallowing.

  "Swallow, Corporal. You can do it." Hough massaged Doyle's throat and he suddenly gulped. His mouth dropped open; the water was gone. "Have another drink." Hough poured more water in Doyle's mouth, and he swallowed it. "Good man." He slipped a hand into his medkit and checked the label on the medpack he pulled out. "We've got to replace your electrolytes." One-handed, he opened the pack and withdrew a capsule. "I'm going to put this on your tongue, then give you more water. I want you to swallow it. Understand?"

  Doyle's eyes wandered, but he nodded.

  Hough dropped the resealed medpack back into its place in his medkit and put the capsule on Doyle's tongue, then tipped the canteen over his mouth again. "Now close your mouth and swallow."

  Doyle did as he was told.

  "Drink some more water." Hough visually examined Doyle as the corporal took another drink. He was still sweating copiously; his temperature needed to be lowered. "I'm going to close you back up and I want you to turn your cooler on. Do you understand?"

  "It was too cold," Doyle sa
id weakly.

  "You can adjust it." Hough resealed the chest and neck of Doyle's shirt. He added to Kerr, "Put his helmet back on, all shields up." When Kerr did, he reached inside to make sure the nipple from the pack water reservoir was in Doyle's mouth, then toggled on the cooler unit. "Let me know when you start to get chilled," he said, and settled back to watch Doyle's diagnostics.

  Staff Sergeant Hyakowa had joined them while Doc Hough was working on Doyle, but he stayed back and kept quiet so he wouldn't interfere. Now it was all right for him to say something, and he did.

  "How did this happen?" he asked Kerr.

  Kerr looked at the platoon sergeant's hovering face through his own clear screen and shook his head. "I don't know. I checked, his cooler was working properly before we moved out this morning. He never said anything about a problem with it."

  "Can you hear me, Doyle?" Hyakowa asked, turning his face to the reclining man.

  "Yes," Doyle said weakly.

  "What happened?"

  "I was cold. Turned it off."

  "Don't you know how to adjust the cooler?"

  There was a pause while Doyle took a sip of water. "Yes."

  "Why didn't you adjust the temperature instead of turning the cooler off?"

  "Too cold. Off was faster."

  Hyakowa bit off a disgusted response and turned to Hough. "How long will he be down?" he asked.

  Doyle was still sweating heavily, but not quite as much, and his pulse was a bit stronger. "Half an hour, maybe," the corpsman answered.

  "Does he need to be medevacked?"

  "No, he'll be all right."

  "Can you get him up and moving sooner than a half hour?"

  "I don't know. Maybe. It depends."

  "Do what you can."

  "Aye aye."

  The platoon was on the move again twenty-five minutes later. This time, Doyle kept his uniform's cooling unit adjusted for comfort, instead of turning it off when it got too cold.

  Corporal Doyle wasn't the only member of the infantry battalion to have a heat problem. He wasn't even the only one to turn his cooler off instead of adjusting it. None of the units failed. And that was important to Brigadier Sturgeon: he had to know whether the cooling units would function properly in a wetland environment after not having been used for so long, and whether his Marines remembered how to properly use them.

  Thirty-fourth FIST, like most Marine units, relied very heavily on its junior noncommissioned officers to conduct patrols and other missions without the supervision of senior NCOs or officers, so the exercise included training specifically designed for the fire team leaders. Each fire team was taken to an isolated position, given a map with a starting point and a destination marked on it, and told to go from "here" to "there." They were instructed not to initiate any radio contact with company headquarters unless they had an emergency that required a medical evacuation. And their satellite-based geosync positioning systems were taken away from them--they had to rely on the inertial guidance system built into their maps.

  Chapter Seven

  Mud, mud, and more mud. Nothing but mud. And it seemed like all of the mud was underwater. Not deep underwater, like under the ocean. No, if it was under the ocean, they wouldn't have to be slogging through it. This mud was under boot-top water, ankle-deep water, knee-deep water, crotch--oof!--deep water. That was why they had to slog through all that mud--it wasn't under the ocean, so they could slog through it. Mud that clung to their boots, clutched at their trousers--tried to suck their damn boots right off their feet! They didn't dare drop anything, or the mud would suck it straight down to the center of the world, never to be seen again until it went through the entire geologic cycle of tectonic plate subduction and came back in an upwelling of volcanic magma! Try explaining that to the supply sergeant!

  If the mud wasn't bad enough by itself, the local trees shot out roots at all kinds of improbable angles, ready to trip unwary feet and drench the men who tripped over them. It wasn't as if the Marines could see the roots--the trees were heavily canopied, and moss hung from branches in thick mats, blocking out most of the light. At high noon the place looked like dusk. Some of them tried to use their infra shields, and the damp, moss-covered roots didn't show up through them at all. Not as well as the naked eye showed them, anyway, and the naked eye hardly showed them at all.

  The water itself was murky and almost felt alive. That was likely because of the life that abounded in it, though hardly anybody wanted to think about what kind of life flourished in water like that. They suspected that the fish, eels, aquatic land animals, and the amorphous stuff that drifted with the sluggish currents were all poisonous, or at least too vile for anyone to eat.

  And the swamp stunk like an ill-kept sewage system.

  It was--by Buddha's great green balls!--worse than Quagmire, and Quagmire was nothing more than an overgrown mud ball!

  "What's the name of this island again?" Lance Corporal MacIlargie asked.

  "I don't know," Corporal Claypoole snarled. "Something dumb out of Norse mythology." He wiggled his heel to break the mud seal around his foot that threatened to pull his boot right off.

  "Nidhogge," Lance Corporal Schultz said.

  "What?" Claypoole asked, surprised that the big man said anything.

  "Nidhogge," Schultz repeated. He paused behind a root tangle in thigh deep water and rotated his shields through infra, light gatherer, and magnifier, picking a course through the next section of swamp.

  Claypoole snorted. "Got the 'hogge' part right. This is worse than walking through a pigsty." He stopped at a respectable distance behind Schultz and rotated through his shields, looking for whatever Schultz was looking for. He couldn't see anything different enough in any direction to see any point in rotating through the shields.

  "You'd know all about pigsties, Rock," MacIlargie snorted. "City boy like you." He stopped behind Claypoole and turned to watch their rear. He also cycled through his shields.

  "I know about pigsties because you're in my fire team and I get stuck living in one because of you," Claypoole shot back. Schultz moved out and Claypoole tapped MacIlargie, then followed. "Aargh!" he snarled as he hauled himself out of the water to clamber over the root tangle.

  "I am not!" MacIlargie protested.

  "Are too! You can't even talk right. Oof! " The water on the other side of the root tangle was deeper than he'd expected, and he went in waist deep. He felt about with his feet, found the higher ground Schultz had stepped on, and wondered how the big man had found it while he didn't. "I didn't say you are anything," he continued to MacIlargie, "I said you live in a sty."

  "Not me." MacIlargie grunted as he maneuvered over the roots. "Never me. My mama didn't raise no slob."

  "Your mama didn't raise you at all. She took one look and turned you in for a model that wasn't defective."

  MacIlargie, having watched Claypoole's progress more closely than Claypoole had watched Schultz, eased himself over the roots and into the less deep water on the other side. He was working on a riposte that would top Claypoole's last remark when Schultz stopped again.

  "Map," Schultz growled.

  "You want to see the map?" Claypoole used his light gatherer and looked around. There wasn't anything that would show up on the map, so there wasn't any point in looking at the map except to see where the map's inertial guidance system claimed they were. And they'd made so many turns and doglegs, he wouldn't be surprised to find the inertial guidance system put them on entirely the wrong side of Nidhogge.

  Schultz raised all shields so Claypoole could see his face and fixed a baleful look on him.

  Claypoole swallowed. "Map. Right. You want to see the map." He turned his head so the map would be oriented with the ground--he hoped his compass was functioning right--and flipped it on.

  Schultz stood next to him and studied the projected image. A small rosette showed their starting point and a larger one their destination; a simple X indicated their current position.

  A
fter a few moments the big Marine grunted and set out again. Claypoole stood uncertainly watching him, then said, "Ah, Hammer? Shouldn't we be going this way?" He pointed on a tangent to Schultz's direction.

  "Inertial's wrong," Schultz said and kept going.

  "But..." Claypoole began, his distrust of the inertial guidance system of just a moment earlier completely forgotten.

  MacIlargie had also studied the map projection. "As much as we've been slipping and sliding," he said, "that map's got to be wrong. I'm going with Hammer."

  "But..." Claypoole stood there, watching MacIlargie follow Schultz. "I'm the fire team leader, I'm supposed to be in charge here," he finished to himself. He sloshed through the water to overtake MacIlargie and resume his place between his men. After all, inertial systems did slide off course from time to time, and Schultz was one of the best Marines he'd ever heard of at land navigation.

  Schultz damn well better be right! he thought.

  A half hour later they hauled themselves out of the mud onto an islet of compacted vegetation. Schultz had been right. Only two other fire teams had beat them. They were in garrison utilities that were so clean and dry Claypoole wondered if they had actually made the trek through the swamp. Sun broke through the overhead in a few places. About twelve minutes later the squad leaders showed up, dripping wet and muddy enough that the chameleon effect of their uniforms was negated.

  "What are you doing sitting around in your muddies?" Sergeant Ratliff asked as he dropped his pack. He opened it and pulled out a fresh set of garrison utilities and a towel. He and the other squad leaders stripped down, dried themselves off, and changed.