A World of Hurt

by David Sherman

  Lieutenant Prang, the team's xeno zoologist, gave the lake a worried look. "There must not have been anything living in this water--there aren't any floaters," he said. Lieutenant Brightly looked at him, not understanding. Prang explained, "All that ash would have clogged the gills of any piscoids and suffocated them. Dead fish float, and there aren't any floating bodies. The samples I took didn't have any microbial life--or any other kind--either. Very odd." He shrugged. "We'll find out more when we get the samples back to the Grandar Bay."

  The three looked to the island. With its flashy colors and promise of cooling shade, it was inviting. Once they got there, Brightly would be fully in charge of the scientific mission--unless they found animals, in which case Lieutenant Prang would take over.

  When the Marines looked at the island, they were less sanguine. They knew other Marines had gone into a very similar forest in that valley and were attacked. UAVs had been knocked out of the air and destroyed, and recon minnies had been destroyed on the ground.

  The scientists might have been ready to search for new and fascinating life-forms to study, but the Marines were ready for a deadly fight and intended to come out of it the winners.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  According to the string-of-pearls, from where they stood the pond floor sloped gently and evenly from the bank to its lowest point, little more than a meter down. On the other side it climbed more abruptly to the island, but not so abruptly that they would have to crawl or climb instead of walking to the shore. What the string-of-pearls didn't show was whether the bottom was firm or soft--its sensor suite hadn't had time to check until after the fire; by then, the pond was filled with ash and it couldn't make the determination. Which also meant the string-of-pearls report on the pond's depth was suspect.

  The scoot carried a float to ferry the scientists' equipment to the island. The original plan called for a squad to wade to the island and establish security, then for two more Marines to wade across, pushing the float ahead of them. Then the float would be drawn back and forth as needed via ropes attached fore and aft. But Ensign Zantith wasn't willing to risk any of his Marines to what might prove to be a quicksand bottom. The float had a carry rating of three hundred kilos, more than sufficient to carry two Marines, maybe even three, equipped with weapons.

  "Sergeant Oconor up," Zantith ordered over the command circuit. The first squad leader joined him in a moment. "Get the float in the water and assign your three lightest men to take it across to the island. We don't know how firm the bottom is, so I want them to rest as much of their weight as possible on the float, just in case. Understand?"

  Sergeant Oconor looked at the small lake and the island in its middle. "Yessir," he said.

  "As soon as they've got the towline secured over there, I'll have the float pulled back and send more of your squad over with it. Questions?"

  "Nossir, that's pretty clear."

  "Do it."

  "Aye aye." Oconor headed for the scoot. "First fire team, on the scoot," he ordered into his squad circuit as he walked. First fire team wasn't his three lightest men, but he didn't think they would swamp the float. Corporal Juliete and his men got to the cargo scoot at almost the same minute he did. The Marines hadn't packed it; that had been the responsibility of the scientific team. The scoot was loaded with small crates, and smaller parcels were lashed down on top of them.

  "Lieutenant, which one of these crates contains the float?" Oconor asked the three navy scientists, all of whom were standing next to the scoot, discussing what they were going to do when they reached the island. Let them sort out which one he was talking to.

  "What?" asked Lieutenant Brightly. "Oh, the float."

  "It's in there." Ensign Szelt pointed with an ungloved hand, not that the Marines needed to see the bare hand at the end of her ash-coated sleeve to tell where she was pointing.

  "Thanks. By your leave?" Oconor didn't wait for the officers to move out of the way before directing Juliete and his men to start unloading the scoot to get to the float. He had an intelligent layman's respect for scientists in most instances, but in the field, in a place where there'd just been significant fighting and he had no reason to believe there wasn't still danger from hostile forces, he saw scientists--even navy officers who were scientists--as nothing more than clueless civilians who would just get in the way and endanger lives when the shooting started.

  "Hey, be careful with that!" Brightly yelped, and wrested a parcel away from Lance Corporal Rising Star. "That package has some delicate instruments in it." He carried the parcel several meters away from the scoot and gently laid it on the ground. By the time he turned back, Ensign Szelt and Lieutenant Prang were busily unloading packages with scientific instruments. Brightly joined them, and in moments all the smaller parcels that had been lashed to the crates were unloaded. Once most of the equipment was unloaded, Lieutenant Prang began setting up trid cameras to record the Marines' approach to the island. Ensign Szelt helped him. They also set up two 2-D vid cameras.

  "Thank you, sirs and ma'am," Oconor said when the three scientists were through. Just because he thought they were in the way didn't mean he couldn't be polite. "Too bad the float wasn't loaded last." But not polite enough to not get in a jibe about how the navy officers loaded their gear. He ignored the scientists' protests as Juliete and his men opened the crate and removed the float. It was bulky, nearly two meters wide, half again as long, and twelve centimeters thick, but it weighed next to nothing. The four Marines held onto it as they carried it to the lake, not so much to bear its weight as to keep it from blowing away in the gentle winds that gusted through the valley.

  "All right," Oconor said once he assured himself that the towlines on the float were properly tied off fore and aft, "the lake isn't supposed to be any deeper than chest high anyplace, but we don't know what the bottom's like, if it's firm or soft. There might be sinkholes in it. I want one of you prone on the bed, the other two, one on each side. Put as much of your weight on the float as you can and still have traction to push the thing across. When you get there, secure the fore-end cable to a tree and we'll bring it back to send another fire team over. I'll come with them. Juliete, talk your way across, let me know what the footing's like and if you feel anything else under the surface."

  "Any questions?" Oconor finished.

  They did have questions, beginning with, What can we expect to run into over there? and What's going to happen if we run into a whole shitload of Skinks? But they didn't ask any. The reason they were going was to find out what was over there, and the rest of the platoon would be standing by to give them covering fire to withdraw under if they did run into a whole shitload of Skinks.

  "Do you see the tree with the red leaves--there's a yellow bush about a finger to its right?" As soon as Juliete said he had it, Oconor said, "That's your aiming point. Get over there as fast as you can. Keep a low profile while you do it. Don't move out of my sight when you get to the island." Sight, right, he thought. With the ash coating their chameleons, he'd be able to see them with his unaided eye. As much ash as there was suspended in the water two of them would wade through, they'd probably be even easier to see by the time they got there. "I'll join you as soon as possible," he concluded. "Go."

  "Roger," Juliete said. "Bhophar, get on, we'll give you a ride. Keep your eyes peeled." PFC Bhophar was his usual point man, and he was good enough at spotting trouble before walking into it that he was on point more often than anyone else in Kilo Company.

  "Right." Bhophar stepped into the water and pushed the float out a few meters to where the water was thigh deep before he climbed on to lie down facing the island. He settled his blaster into his shoulder and shifted its aim with every movement of his eyes.

  Juliete and Lance Corporal Rising Star took up positions on opposite sides of the float. They lay their blasters on it but didn't let go of the weapons. Each got a firm grip on the float's side with his free hand.

  "On three," Juliete said to Rising Star. "One, t
wo, three." The two Marines pushed off.

  They didn't lift their feet completely off the bottom as they pushed along, but lifted their heels and slid their toes forward. Rising Star quickly adjusted his pace to Juliete's, and the float didn't waver from a straight line toward their destination. It was easy to keep it going straight since there was no current for them to struggle against. The lake bottom had a soft upper layer, but the soft layer was thin. Their boots barely sank into it before their treads found purchase on firmer ground. The irregularities in the bottom were minor and mostly gentle; only seldom did they have to lift their feet over an obstruction high enough that they couldn't simply slide across. The hardest part was when the water got crotch deep, but the water temperature was close enough to that of the air that there was hardly any discomfort.

  Juliete kept up an almost constant chatter about what his feet encountered. "I wish I could see down there," he said when they were almost halfway across. "I don't feel any weeds, but some of the things I have to step over feel like roots, or vines. Nothing's moving, though." He was talking to his squad leader, but was on the circuit that allowed the platoon command group and the other squad leaders to listen in.

  He and Rising Star kept pushing when the water reached chest height, where the bottom leveled off. But nothing about the lake changed; no leafy plants brushed against their legs, no swimming life bumped them. There were only the occasional things like roots or vines that they had to step over--and those became more frequent as they neared the island.

  Prone on the float bed, Bhophar studied the nearing island through his magnifier screen, occasionally switching to the blaster's optical sight to get a finer view of whatever caught his interest. Nothing moved that couldn't be accounted for by air currents. Two or three times he switched to the infra screen, but nothing showed on it other than the normal background of rotting vegetation. He kept a sharp watch anyway; he was experienced enough to know that lack of visible movement didn't mean no one was there--and he'd fought Skinks before, so he knew they didn't show up easily in infra, especially when there was something to mask their signatures.

  The rest of the platoon, prone in fighting positions, anxiously watched the fire team's progress. None of them wanted to change places with the three Marines in the lake; all of them would give them fire support if they ran into trouble. Ensign Zantith didn't assign anybody to watch the platoon's flanks or rear, since he wanted to be able to use the platoon's entire fire power if the three Marines needed help. Instead of eyes to the flanks and rear, he had his comm man watch the UPUD's motion-detector display; he thought that would give just as good a warning as human eyes if anyone approached.

  When the first fire team was only twenty-five meters from the island, Juliete reported, "The stuff on the bottom is getting thicker. There's not much in the way of bare bottom now. We have to step on those roots, or whatever they are. And they're loose." A shudder was audible in his voice. "They move when we step on them."

  "How firm's the bottom?" Zantith asked.

  "It's been firm enough all the way," Juliete answered. "We didn't need to hang on to the float. And there's no current to make you lose your balance."

  "Sergeant Oconor," Zantith said into the all-hands circuit, changing the plan for moving the platoon to the island, "get the rest of your squad ready to cross as soon as the towline is secured on the other end. Keep the float there for now. Have everyone keep a hand on the towline."

  "Roger," Oconor replied. "You heard the man," he added to his Marines. "When I say go, head for the water. Get a good grip on that line."

  "The bottom's rising now," Juliete reported when they were ten meters from the island. "There's a real tangle of roots on the bottom. I believe it could be real easy to get a foot stuck here." He grunted as he pulled a boot free from a tangle.

  Seconds later the float butted against the island's bank and Bhophar slithered onto land. Juliete and Rising Star scrambled ashore and the fire team leader quickly tied off the end of the fore towline around the trunk of the tree they'd used as an aiming point.

  "Line secured," he reported, and positioned his men far enough away from the tree to allow other Marines to come ashore without crowding. He kept them out of the forest, so they were visible from the lakeshore.

  Juliete didn't know what the leaves on the trees and bushes should look like. He hadn't entered the valley before, and so hadn't seen the forest before the fire. But the foliage appeared wilted to him. He reached out and took a large blue leaf between his fingers. It wasn't supple, the way he expected a leaf to be. When he bent it with gentle pressure from his fingers, it snapped.

  "Do you see anything?" Zantith asked as the rest of first squad filed into the water.

  "That's a negative," Juliete reported; he'd turned up his ears and been cycling through all of his screens even while examining the leaf. He and his men settled in to watch, listen, and wait. All he could see inside the forest were trees and bushes with brilliantly colored leaves, and the vines that trailed along the ground or snaked up the trees to dangle from branches. He hoped they didn't have to fight--if the leaf that broke in his hand was typical, that patch of forest was dry and could easily flare up if the platoon began hammering it with plasma bolts.

  The rest of the squad was more than halfway across the lake when Bhophar murmured, "I hear movement, my one o'clock."

  "How far?" Juliete asked, shifting his attention and aim to Bhophar's right front. He cycled through his screens without seeing anything.

  "Too close," Bhophar said.

  Juliete snapped his aim to his direct front when he heard something--something too close. On his other side, Rising Star aimed to his left front. "We hear movement all across our front," he reported, totally forgetting the dryness of the forest.

  "Do you see anything?" Zantith asked. In the water, Oconor urged first squad to move faster.

  "Negative," Juliete answered. "We hear them close, but we can't see anything. There's another one! I still can't see anything, damnit!"

  "I see movement!" Bhophar blurted, then, "No, it was just a vine." After a brief pause he whispered, "What made it move?" His eyes traced the length of the vine where it lay on the ground as far as he could follow it, but he didn't see anything that could have made it move.

  "Buddha's balls," Rising Star murmured. "I see a vine moving by itself."

  "That's impossible," Juliete said, but he looked where Rising Star's blaster aimed and watched as a vine slowly twisted without anything visible to make it move.

  First squad was scrambling to reach the island. Most of the Marines had released the towline and were spreading out. They tripped and slipped on the roots that snaked across the lake bottom, but managed to keep their balance and their blasters pointed into the forest so they could fire on anyone who attacked their squad mates already ashore.

  On the lakeshore, first squad and guns looked through their optical sights. The island jumped into sharp focus, the fringe of foliage seeming only ten meters away. Seeking a foe, they looked into the gaps between tree trunks and brightly colored leaves.

  "I see a vine moving!" someone in second squad shouted.

  "What's moving it?" Sergeant Kraeno shouted back.

  "I dunno, it looks like it's moving itself!"

  "It can't be!" Kraeno shouted back.

  "Great gods," Zantith said, "it is." Looking through his monocular, he watched as several vines twisted, turning themselves so an end--a hollow end--was pointed at the three Marines on the island's bank. "One, get your people off that island right NOW!" he snapped.

  "First fire team, pull back!" Sergeant Oconor ordered.

  Juliete and his men had heard the platoon commander's order and were already wriggling backward into the lake. They spun around and dove into the water as streamers of greenish fluid shot through the air and splashed down where they'd just lain.

  The members of first squad approaching the island didn't see where the streamers came from and began shooting wildly int
o the forest. The same held for second and gun squads a hundred meters away--only Ensign Zantith had seen the greenish fluid pulse from the vine ends.

  "Cease fire, cease fire!" Zanith shouted into the all-hands circuit. "First squad, get away from that island!"

  Sergeants Kraeno and Morgan took up the "Cease fire" cry, and fire from the lakeshore slowed to a stop. Tendrils of smoke drifted up from bits of plasma smoldering in wood.

  "First squad, pull back!" Sergeant Oconor ordered. The members of first squad began shuffling backward, firing into the forest as they went.

  "First squad, cease fire!" Zantith shouted.

  "First squad, cease fire!" Oconor repeated. "Fire team leaders, report."

  Juliete, ten meters away from the island, into the deeper water, looked to his sides and saw both of his men. "First fire team, no casualties."

  Second and third fire teams also reported no injuries or missing. Then, as Oconor reported his squad's status to Zantith, two streamers arced into the water and the entire platoon opened fire again.

  "Cease fire!" Zantith commanded. This time the fire from the platoon stopped faster than it had before--the Marines on the lakeshore could see that first squad's first fire team was almost at the middle of the lake, near the extreme range of the Skink acid guns--if any Skinks were on the island.

  "What are you Marines doing?" Lieutenant Brightly shouted, bounding toward Zantith. He grabbed the Marine commander roughly by the shoulder and twisted him around to face him. "Look at that!" He angrily waved an arm toward the island, where fires were beginning to spread from the blaster bolts that struck the dry wood. "We're supposed to investigate that flora, and you're burning it up!"

  Zantith raised his shields so the navy scientist could see his face clearly and pointedly looked at the hand on his shoulder. Brightly saw the hardness of the look and jerked his hand away.

  The Marine stood. "Weren't you watching, Lieutenant?" he asked harshly. "My men came under fire. They returned it."