"We could try to get out on foot," Nomad said.
"Are you joking? In your condition, you can barely make headway on flat ground."
"Leave me behind."
"I would do that gladly. However, I have no means of navigating, I do not know what the dangers and pitfalls are, and I would prefer not to abandon a valuable BattleMech because its foot is stuck in something, especially when all available equipment is needed for the current combat."
"Then why aren't you trying to pull the foot out?"
"What do you think I was doing? I think it got stuck when it sank into the muck or whatever is down there. It seems to be tangled in something."
"What?"
"If I knew that, I would have said so."
The light inside the cockpit flickered, but did not go out. Joanna balled her hand into a fist and punched the inside of the viewport.
"It is that filthy freebirth, Aidan, who is responsible for our being stranded here. He deliberately left us here so that he could reassume command. I will kill him, first chance I get."
"How? There is no Circle of Equals here. I heard him tell you that. And you, Star Captain Joanna, for all your difficult traits, are not a murderer."
"Do not be so sure. I may practice on you."
Recognizing the threat in her voice, Nomad lapsed into silence. She might not kill him, but he knew from experience that she could do significant damage. With his arms already throbbing, he needed no new pain.
After a long period of quiet, interrupted only by odd whoops and other raucous sounds rising like spectral invasions from the swamp, Joanna finally said, "We must get this 'Mech moving."
"Are you going to try to pull the foot out again?"
"No, I am going down there and disentangle it."
"Out there? In the dark?"
"I have a lantern."
Nomad did not know what to say. On the one hand, he admired Joanna's courage in trying; on the other, if she failed and something happened to her, he would be left stranded in this cockpit, his arms injured, plus legs that did not feel so good, either.
It was not worth wasting his breath. Joanna was obviously not waiting for advice as she hastily grabbed some rope and a lantern from her storage compartment. Then, without so much as a fare-thee-well to her chief tech, she forced open the cockpit hatch and slipped from sight. Nomad strained to listen, to distinguish the sounds of feet bumping against the side of the 'Mech from the many other noises around him. He heard little, only a couple of definite clanks and then Joanna uttering one of the more shocking Clan oaths in a voice that could compete with the swamp cacophony. Using his right arm, which still pulsed with pain, he managed to get himself up off his seat. He worked himself over to the viewport and looked down.
All he could see was the wavering and flickering light from Joanna's lantern.
* * *
At one point Joanna nearly lost her balance and fell. She was at that moment hanging onto the rope, which she had wrapped around the field mounting unit of her 'Mech's left arm. With one hand still clutching the swinging rope, she reached out with the other to touch the tree next to the 'Mech. What she got was the soft, slimy, spongy matter that clung to the tree, perhaps some kind of moss or lichen. It was colored a sickly gray. The lantern did not pick up much color on anything, perhaps a result of so little light penetrating the swamp canopy.
Touching the side of the tree made her shout out an oath she had not spoken since her days as a training officer at Crash Camp on Ironhold. Composing herself and trying to get a new grip on the rope, she recalled the last time she had cursed so thoroughly, disgusted to recall that this bunghole Aidan was connected with the occurrence. It had been on the day she learned what Ter Roshak had done, that he had killed the freebirth unit merely to give Aidan his unlawful second chance at becoming a warrior. She had raged for nearly an hour, smashing several items in her ill-kept quarters, cursing not merely the actions of Roshak and the boon granted Aidan, but the fact that she had been implicated as Roshak's agent. It was Roshak who had ordered her to find and capture Aidan, then return him to Ironhold.
Steadying herself and the rope as well as she could, Joanna continued downward, gagging and coughing at the repellent odors that rose up to meet her.
Reaching bottom, Joanna saw that the 'Mech's foot was buried in the muck up to about ankle level, the heat sink ballistic cover nearly half-submerged. Clutching the rope with one hand, she tilted her body sideways and reached downward into the muck. The viscous substance seemed so eager to draw her hand in that she pulled it out instantly. Shining her light around, she noted a clutch of dark gray vines hanging down from the tree, but each vine seemed pulled taut. At their bottom ends, the vines were also buried in the muck. Kicking away from the side of the 'Mech's leg, Joanna swung over to the vines and held onto one of them. She could feel its tension. When she tugged at it, it barely moved. Whatever was holding the 'Mech's foot down was connected to these vines. Perhaps some of them had become tangled with the foot. For that matter, the muck itself might be enough to exert significant pressure to hold it down.
She was considering blasting the vines with her laser pistol when an odd vibration of the vine made her look up. She expected to see Nomad pulling at her rope, but what she saw was much worse. Not far above her head, a reptile that looked like some blend of razor-back hog and alligator, as dark and gray as the swamp itself, was clinging to the side of the 'Mech. For a reason known only to it and whatever deity watched over reptiles, the creature was happily chewing on the rope, apparently making great headway.
Drawing her pistol, Joanna fired it upward at the reptile. Her shot was right on target and some of the reptile's razorback went flying. It slipped off the 'Mech, but its mouth continued to cling to the rope. Aiming carefully, so as to miss the rope, she fired again. As the creature fell away, she felt a tug on the rope. The beast was falling directly down at her. Kicking at the 'Mech leg, she swung out. The reptile fell right past her, making a small splash as it hit the muck and then disappeared. She was ready to breathe a sigh of relief as the rope finished its outward arc and came back toward the 'Mech, but the relief turned to fear as she felt the rope separate. Beginning to fall, she grabbed at a vine but missed, then she too went, feet first, into the muck.
Oddly, the muck seemed to break her fall. After she had gone down only a few centimeters, her movement slowed. Yet, at her feet, she felt a definite sensation of suction. She was being pulled in, but whatever the muck was, it was patient in claiming its victims. She wondered what had happened to her laser pistol. She did not remember dropping it. Shining the lantern around her, she spotted it just beyond the rim of the pool of muck, just beyond her reach.
She had been pulled in up to her knees. Looking down, Joanna watched as the line of detestable sediment slowly rose higher.
* * *
Nomad had located a small pair of binoculars in Joanna's storage bin. Ignoring the pulsations in his wrist as he tried to hold onto them, he focused the view on her and saw how she was being sucked downward. His sense of her position suggested that the 'Mech's foot must be just slightly to her right.
He could not use her neurohelmet to work the controls, but if only he could use his hands, he could bypass the helmet to work the foot. Well, one hand, at least. Its damaged wrist would give him ferocious pain, but it would function.
Pulling away a panel beneath the joystick, he wrenched out the wires to the neurohelmet. Joanna would scream when she saw what he had done. But the very fact she saw it would mean he had rescued her and returned her to the cockpit to resume her continuous harangues.