Jack sent one fire team ahead of him, then followed with the other four behind him.
The Marines, professionals that they were, spread out, letting five paces stretch out between them. Eyes and guns roamed the jungle ahead and above them. Alternate Marines concentrated to the right and left of the path.
They moved through a jungle that quickly became deadly quiet.
“Snake,” a Marine called on net, and the teams halted, taking a knee. Even through the faceplate, Jack could see the grin on a Marine’s face as she held up a headless, long, round something. “It tried to bite my boot. Hardly dented the shine, sir,” she said. The bayonet on her rifle dripped green goo.
The sand gave way to marshy ground; the heavy Marines sank ankle deep into mud that slithered with things that made wakes in the water. A kind of sea grass waved in the wind around them, waist high. There were side tracks through the stuff, game trails that would let something with big teeth charge them without warning.
Jack was taking a serious dislike to this place.
“I found something,” the point Marine called. He held up a tattered piece of cloth, with foam still attached to it. “It looks like part of a longboat seat, sir.”
Jack shook off his willies, and said, “Let’s keep going.”
They came to a pond. Sergeant Bruce cut off a long, tough plant, the local equivalent of bamboo, and tossed it high. It came down and planted itself maybe a quarter of a meter deep in the “lake.”
“This could have been a nice meadow before the last storm,” Bruce said.
Jack ordered the Marines to slog through it. At least out here, they had a better field of fire at anything trying to take a bite out of them. They shot two snakes that didn’t get the word.
SONIC BOOM. RIFLE FIRE, Sergeant Bruce said to Jack on Nelly Net. BUT NO REACTION FROM THE HORNET’S CREW. THIS IS EITHER CRAZY OR BAD, SKIPPER.
Jack said nothing.
On the other side, the trail wound uphill into the volcanic heart of the island, and the jungle grew thicker. Jack was about to order his Marines to hunt around for another trail leading off the pond when Sergeant Bruce pointed uphill. “Isn’t that a ration pack?”
“I think you might be right,” Jack said, and led the way up the trail to its first twist. There, held down by a rock, was the foil wrapper for an egg omelet that was uniformly detested by boonie rats.
“Sensors, talk to me.”
“Nothing new to report, sir. I’ve got even worse reception around this rock pile.”
“Well, stay close. Something human passed this way.”
“Aye, aye, Skipper.”
They started up the trail. There were broken limbs and branches on the trees and bushes, but it was impossible to tell if it had been done by man, animal, or wind. They came to a fork in the trail. One path led farther up, the other down the slope. Jack pointed down.
Again, the trail was full of switchbacks. Under the thick canopy, the ground was covered with a mosslike purple stuff that was slimy and slippery. Marines paired up to help each other over rocks and fallen tree trunks.
“Maybe we should head back,” Sergeant Bruce suggested. “Why would anyone lug their gear over this kind of ground?”
Jack might have agreed, but on net, another Marine chimed in. “My old man is a guide in the mountains of Arkana. You’ll do a lot of stuff for good, clean water. That stuff we walked through looked stagnant. It would make you sick. I suspect these rocks have a spring in them somewhere.”
Jack took the input under consideration and found it good. “We’ll keep following this trail.”
Jack saw him before sensors reported a human outside the Marine line of march.
He was a naked scarecrow of a man, heavily bearded and making slow, stumbling progress with the help of a crocked pole. He was on the switchback below them.
“Corpsman, forward on the double!”
It still took Jack a long minute to cover the ground to the wreck of a human being. In that minute, the man gave up the effort and collapsed into the mud. Jack saw why when he arrived. Diarrhea. Fecal matter dripped down his leg into the mud.
“Medic, to me! We got a man down.”
“Coming, sir.”
“I knew you’d come. I kept telling the crew, Kris Longknife won’t leave us out here.”
The living skeleton in Jack’s arms didn’t look anything like the ship captain Jack had known, but the voice said this was Phil Taussig.
“What happened?” Jack asked as one corpsman arrived, followed quickly by another. They had trouble finding a vein, but it didn’t keep them from quickly getting a liter of water going into one arm and a liter of glucose into the other.
“This planet is killing us,” Phil managed to get out. “The stuff we were eating tore up our guts. You had to be horribly hungry to eat it. But when you’re starved, and there’s nothing else, what can you do?”
“We’re here, and we’ve got meds and food at the beach. Where’s the camp?”
“Down the trail. At the pool. The only drinkable water we could find.”
Thank God for a young Marine’s dad.
It was another thirty minutes to the camp. If Phil was bad, others were worse. Kris had been right to come as soon as she could. In another few days, they would have started dying in droves. Three had died already.
A call to the Wasp brought more medics down on the next orbit. Most of the boffins who knew anything about planets were back on Alwa, but a pair of astrophysicists volunteered to do their best as analytical chemists. After they ran their first set of tests, they leaned back and shook their heads.
“Aluminum. That and arsenic and a couple of other heavy metals. Every plant is poison. Slow poison, but poison nonetheless.”
Phil choked on his bitter laugh. “We knew we couldn’t fight the big monsters on the mainland. We had to find some place they weren’t. They weren’t here.” He cackled again. “Now I know why.”
“You survived until we got here,” Jack said. “That’s all that matters. You’d have never survived on the mainland. That’s for sure.”
“Maybe I should have tried the other planets,” Phil said, his voice now reduced to a whisper. “But the Hornet was so beat-up. We killed the last three of those bastards chasing us, but they hit us good right back.”
“They’re dead. You’re alive. We’ll have you back on your feet in no time,” Jack promised, hoping the docs could come up with a magic potion to get all the heavy metals out of Phil’s and his crew’s system.
All his calls back to the Wasp that day were directed at getting more Marines and medical personnel flowing to the planet below. He didn’t ask for Kris, and she never came on the line. Jack wondered what she was doing with her day but didn’t bother her. He had his hands full.
Still, he had to wonder, what was so important to keep Kris from giving Phil an immediate call. He hoped she wasn’t getting herself—and them—in trouble again.
39
Kris Longknife breathed a sigh when the word came back from Jack that he’d found Phil. But she kept her eyes on the reports flowing back from the wreck of the Hornet.
Phil had fought her until she was fit for space no more. Kris thought the old Wasp was a wreck when they got her back to human space, but the Hornet was little more than a lump of metal with a bit of oxygen and pressure here and there.
If the reports coming up from engineering were right, however, both of the Hornet’s reactors were in decent shape. Not something you’d want to power up and ride home, but still worth saving.