Chapter 8
The climb up the ridge was steep, with footing made treacherous by a scree slope of shattered flat shards of ancient lava under the tangled skein of weeds. Pieces slipped and skipped downhill, tore lose under boots and gloved fingers and threw dust even through the plants. That combined with alien pollen to create swollen, oozing sinuses and itching eyes. Even through the gloves, chips and nicks from the impact trauma of the rocks caused niggling discomfort. Then the splinters worked their way in, along with thorns and burrs. Balance was precarious, and Gun Doll and Gorilla skidded several meters down the abrasive surface because of their awkward loads. Swearing and griping, they forced their way back up. Tirdal was clearly exerting himself, to the secret delight of some of the others, but his denser build kept him slipping and sliding as he dug fingers and toes into what solid surface he could find.
After several hundred meters of angled frustration, they found plants solid enough to grip. That made the climb easier, though it added sore shoulders to the tally of aches and pains. The coarse, fibrous stalks with leaves like nettles gave way to low, flexible bushes, then to trees. The terrain was thoroughly un-Earthly; Earth hills would have had loam followed by broken rock with solid basalt higher up. This was flaky followed by loam-covered solid surface with more slatelike shingles above the treeline. What odd eruption and surface effects had caused this? A shallow lake, perhaps, that cracked the lava, boiled away, only to ooze out again from the ground and shatter the bottom? Or had it all slid down from above? Exposed by weather or animals and then eroded?
The ridge was long and twisty, which was why Bell Toll had decided to go over rather than around. A small part of him wondered if that had been the right choice, even though intellectually he knew it was.
A few moments later, another colony of antlike insects attacked. These were larger, almost five centimeters long, and they chewed at the tough fabric of the suits as if it were some other form’s carapace. “Hold still!” Gorilla spoke up. “They’re big enough to bite. I’m sending out bots.”
The little flyers Gorilla had rose into the breeze and alighted on each of the troops, skittering along limbs and gear and flicking the little pests off.
“Captain, Thor, hold still. There’s more on you and they killed all the flyers. We’ll have to take them off by hand.”
“Hurry, Gorilla,” Bell Toll suggested. “I can feel the damned things getting through the fabric.”
“Right there.”
Shortly, all the gnawing annoyances had been accounted for. Bell Toll hadn’t been exaggerating. There were two holes through the fabric of his suit and one halfway through his right shoulder strap. It was a molecularly grown fabric, knitted and then woven into something tough enough to stop knives, most pistol ammo and even slow kinetic rifle rounds. The mandibles from those creatures had shredded it. But there was no injury and nothing to be done about the damage, so the advance resumed.
They rested briefly and silently once among the bushes, and again in the lower trees. It was as swelteringly hot tonight as the day had been. Sweat was pouring from all of them, and even Tirdal had a sheen to his waxy features. His breath was ragged but controlled.
“Nice night for a walk, eh?” Shiva teased. There were faint mutters or snickers in response. “You okay, Tirdal?” he asked, looking over.
“I’m fine,” was the response. “I’m concentrating on Sensing, and meditating to calm my body.”
“Too much exercise even for you to ignore, Tirdal?” Dagger asked.
“Dagger, I have never pretended to be more than I am. If anyone here carries a false face, it is not I.”
“Right, if you can jaw, you can climb,” Shiva said, cutting off more talk. “Back to it.” There were groans and muttered comments from Thor and Gun Doll. But they were softly voiced, pro forma protests, and the ordeal resumed.
“I do think I’m beginning to sense Tslek,” Tirdal said as they resumed the climb. “There’s a pattern of thought there.”
“Details?” Bell Toll asked.
“None yet, sir. Just indications of presence.”
“Right, we’ll take it as a warning. Concealment and discipline, folks. I don’t have to tell you.”
“You don’t, but will anyway,” Shiva said. “And I’ll echo that. No dumbassing.”
The ascent through the trees was fairly rapid, the roots being as useful for traction as they were for tripping. All it took was caution to navigate them. Some of the trees resembled pines with knotty roots, straight and tall with tapering branches. They oozed their own sticky, syrupy sap, too, as Ferret and Tirdal found when they slipped by too closely to one. After that, they tried to avoid the trunks.
By the time they reached the ridge, the growth was back to scrub forms and sparse trees, with stark shadows cast by the moon, leaving lit areas the color of dried blood. They took to cautious crawling and occasional darts across barren ground. Their coveralls adapted to the local colors and shifted their IR emissions, but that latter came at a cost: heat retained inside. Powered armor had a substantial heat sink capability. The Intruder Chameleon Suits the team wore could handle it only for a short time. They were glad to shelter behind an outcropping below the military crest of the hill and let the heat disperse to the breeze. Even if it was a muggy night, it was cooler out there than in the suits.
“Okay,” Bell Toll said, a hint of satisfaction in his voice, “we’re ready to rock. Gorilla, Dagger, sneak us a peek.”
This was the way of DRTs. Days of slogging and pain had brought them here, all of it merely the commute to work. Now the mission proper began. Rucks were left under a shelf of rock to enable faster and easier movement. They’d recover them when done. If they were forced to abandon them, it was likely to be a situation so hot that they wouldn’t live long enough for the extra supplies to be missed.
Dagger slithered forward and higher, suit sealed and scanners in hand. As Gorilla unfolded a bot from his ruck, the captain looked at Tirdal again. His expressions were readable to the others now, and he was clearly concentrating.
“Got something?” Bell Toll asked.
“Perhaps,” Tirdal said with a flick of his ears. “I’m sure there’s a Tslek there. I can feel it. That’s the problem.”
“Why’s that a problem?”
“Captain… I only sense one,” he explained.
“One.” Bell Toll bristled alert, hair on his neck standing up and goosebumps running down his arms despite the heat.
“Yes.”
“That is very not good, Tirdal. Are you sure?”
“I’m sure I sense one. There could be others hidden behind unknown shields, or blocking me, or sensing me and affecting my mind, though I don’t think that’s the case. But I only feel one of them.”
“Are they underground maybe?”
“No, I’d still sense them,” he assured the captain. “And this one is… not worried. Not military. It feels like a caretaker going through a routine.”
“I’m not showing any Blob genetic material on my sensors,” Dagger interjected. “No nonnative molecular activity except us. Though we are making a lot of ‘noise’ that might hide things. And I don’t see anything down there—” he indicated the far side of the ridge ” — that indicates much travel by anything bigger than a rat. All clean. Spooky,” he admitted.
“That doesn’t make sense,” Shiva said. “Any kind of base, even inactive, even if it’s just a supply drop not yet built into a base, should have patrols and sentries. Technicians. Enough shifts to work around the clock. Thirty, forty at least. More likely a couple of hundred. Minimum.”