She wondered if he had sabotaged the device. It would not be beyond his capabilities.
She took a deep breath. The air scrubbers were not working, and the smell of vomit hung in the air. Nomad's pain had become so intense that he had thrown up after completing the great effort of operating the 'Mech's foot. He had managed to clean up most of it, but the smell was taking its time. He had seen no point in trying to air out the cockpit. Not only were the air scrubbers down, but the air outside was even worse than this smell.
After sulking for a while, Nomad had fallen asleep again on the passenger seat. The sulking was because Joanna did not thank him properly for saving her life.
"It is your duty to rescue your commanding officer," she told him. "It is not some act of generosity that endows you with special qualities. You are still the same worthless sub-caster you always were. I will commend you properly in my report. That is all the gratitude that a Clansman deserves."
"Have it your way, Captain," he muttered.
"Look, Nomad, if it satisfies you to know, I am content that I will have more opportunity to serve the Clan. For that, I realize you are responsible. I respect those who perform their duty, so I respect you for doing it. Does that make you happier?"
"I'm not even sure I understood it."
She was glad that he slept now. His incessant footnoting of her every word was getting on her nerves. She had no idea where they were, could not use a single instrument of her control panel to find out, and had to—as the saying went—walk blind. They could use nothing in the swamp for a guiding mark. Every part of the place seemed to look almost exactly like every other part.
Something in the neurohelmet was giving her a headache. She shut her eyes and for a moment seemed to see a fully operational cockpit. She was knocked back to reality when the 'Mech stepped into a small pond, and she had to switch her concentration to navigating through water. The pain in her head grew even stronger when the 'Mech tripped over something and careened against a thick tree. She thought she sensed something rattling around in the compartment beneath the cockpit, but then decided it must be just her imagination or the malfunction in the neurohelmet.
Joanna was sure they were traveling in a circle, as so often happened to 'Mechs without sensors in unknown areas. There was no sense of what was behind or in front of her, to the right or the left. She might as well stand still as continue this blundering search.
She stopped the 'Mech and ate some rations she had stored away. She could not get much down, the cockpit odors not being conducive to a heavy appetite. Looking out the viewport, she saw she was facing a clump of tall trees, trees that seemed to stretch above the canopy. Their branches and leaves were in sporadic motion, as if animals were jumping from branch to branch, perhaps excited by the intruder in their midst. She had heard that some animals lived their entire lives in the upper areas of swamps, jungles, forests, never coming down to ground level. The ground must be a wondrous land, something few of their kind ever saw. For Clan warriors the Inner Sphere was such a wondrous place of mythology. Generations ago, the ancestors of the Clan had left there to seek a new home among the distant stars. They were not even Clans then. Since that time, warriors of every generation hoped to be part of the invasion of the Inner Sphere when the Khans decided that the Clans possessed sufficient military strength to accomplish their goals.
She stopped thinking of Clan things when a head suddenly appeared, peering through leaves in one of the trees. Though she realized it was some kind of animal, it was like nothing she had seen before. The thing was monstrous, horny-headed, with a thick snout and sharp teeth that overhung its lower lips.
She hated looking at it so much that she aimed her left-arm PPC and shot it out of the tree. Watching it fall, Joanna felt a sense of satisfaction. It had been like defeating a monster in a nightmare.
She traveled on.
As she walked over a particularly malevolent-looking bunch of shrubs and creepers, her commlink suddenly, with a warning crackle, came back on. Though she immediately began to send out a vocal signal, she was surprised when a response came back within a minute. "I hear you, Star Captain Joanna," the voice said. She recognized it as belonging to one of the freebirth filth in Aidan's unit.
"Where is Star Commander Jorge?" she demanded.
"He is ... he is not with his BattleMech and has left me in charge."
"You in charge!"
"Yes. Do you object?"
"You know I do. Four of your . . . your warriors are from my Trinary. You cannot command them. One of them must be chosen to lead. They cannot be led by freebirth scum!"
The commlink was silent.
"Star Captain Joanna, I thought you would have joined us earlier."
"My inertial guidance and scanner units are out of commission. So was this commlink until a moment ago. I have been guiding my BattleMech through this infernal place. Why did your unit not search for me?"
"It was deemed of lower priority than to rejoin the Glory Station forces."
The words irritated her, especially when spit out from the mouth of a freebirth, but she refused to engage such a lowlife in rational argument. He would not understand reason.
"And why have you not rejoined the garrison forces?"
"Our commander ordered us to go to the rim of the swamp, then await his orders."
"I am your commander again. You will do what I order."
"You are not here."
"When I am there then."
"How will you get here? You said yourself that your guidance system is inoperable."
"You will send one of the warriors to guide me to you. And one from myTrinary, none of your filthy freebirths whom I cannot trust to lead me to a drinking trough of swamp water."
A strange sound came over the commlink, but Joanna could not interpret it.
"Begging your pardon, Captain, but I recommend that you allow one of us ... us freeborns to come for you, filthy though we might be. We know the terrain and can get there faster."
For once Joanna found a freeborn's argument compelling. She told Horse to dispatch a warrior in a 'Mech immediately. He said he would do it before then.
* * *
Horse wished Aidan would return. MechWarrior Prent, whom he had sent out for Joanna, would follow Horse's orders to move slowly, then pretend to have encountered obstacles along the way. It was a stalling maneuver, but he had not known what else to do. Because of the communication difficulties, he could not contact Aidan for orders, so he had to stall Joanna until the real officer came back to give real orders. He did not mind giving her a wild goose chase until then.
* * *
Lanja was as good as her word. After ten grueling kilometers through the muck and mire of Blood Swamp, half-carrying, half-dragging Aidan all the way, she set up her communications gear and carefully aimed the parabolic antenna toward Glory Station. Within minutes, Kael Pershaw's face appeared on the diminutive screen.
"You said you got your idea for the diversion from some book," Kael Pershaw said to Aidan. "A book?Where does the likes of you find a book?"
Aidan almost said that he had found it during his days in the sibko, but then he remembered that, as far as Kael Pershaw knew, he was freeborn and never was anywhere near a sibko. Not wanting to confess his secret cache of books in the freeborn barracks, he tried a lie: "I think, when I was a child, a woman used to come to my house and care for me when I was sick. I believe she brought the book with her. Took it away again later, for that matter."