The march was pleasant at first. The air was cool, birds sang from the trees, and the terrain was mostly flat. But as the sun rose higher in the sky and the humid air grew warmer, people began to tire. And what had been a pleasant walk was transformed into a mind-numbing trudge. A constant effort was required to keep the column moving, while noncoms worked to maintain the correct intervals and medics dealt with foot problems.
Adding to the difficulty was the need to conduct occasional drills. Because the question wasn’t if they would be attacked but when. All of which kept Santana and his officers busy roaming the length of the column. And that was where Santana was, about halfway back, watching a tech repair a T-2’s knee servo, when Ponco’s voice flooded his helmet. “Zulu Seven to Zulu Nine. We have a casualty. One of my scouts is down. Over.”
Santana frowned. “This is Nine. Was it due to an accident? Or enemy fire? Over.”
“The latter… But the bugs weren’t involved. Over.”
“I’ll come forward,” Santana replied. “Keep your eyes peeled. Over.”
Charlie Company had come to a halt, and Rona-Sa was already on the scene when Santana and Joshi arrived. Puffs of dust rose as Santana’s boots hit the ground. Ponco glided in to receive him. “It was Atkins, sir. He was about a hundred yards in front of the tractor, and I was operating at treetop level. We were on the team push, and he was telling me about something he had found when the transmission was cut off in midsentence. That’s when I came down to investigate. He was dead by the time I arrived.”
Santana nodded. “Show me.” Then, turning to Rona-Sa, he said, “Put the word out. The rest of the battalion will take a fifteen-minute break. Even-numbered platoons will remain on high alert.”
“Sir, yes sir.”
“Sergeant Joshi… Please keep your sensors on max and stay close.”
With the T-2 bringing up the rear, Santana followed Ponco past the yellow tractor and into the bush. A trail of broken twigs and occasional boot prints led to a small, sun-dappled clearing. That was where Atkins lay, facedown in front of a tree, to which an oval wickerwork container was attached. As Santana approached the body, the cause of death was readily apparent. Bright blue feathers were attached to the six-inch-long dart that had penetrated the base of the soldier’s skull. “Poison?”
“Probably,” Ponco agreed. “I doubt the tip is more than three inches long. But look at where it went in. Below the edge of his helmet but just above his armor. Either the killer was lucky or an extremely good shot.”
“I’d put my money on the second possibility,” Santana said grimly. “I know there are indigs in the forest. Thousands of ’em. And you’d have to be a good shot to survive out here. What’s the thing on the tree?”
“I can answer that,” Ryley answered, as he arrived on foot. “If you look closely, you’ll see a hand-carved spirit doll cradled inside. The sticks use them to mark territorial borders. Whenever we send teams out into the bush to gather raw materials, we have to pay the bastards off. This is what happens if you fail to do so. Our scientists turned the neurotoxin used for those darts into some very profitable products by the way.”
“Thank God for that,” Santana said sarcastically. “Put the body in a cool pack and load it on a quad. We’ll hold a burial service tonight.”
Santana kept the battalion moving, and the hours dragged by. The mood had changed. The forest felt oppressive. It was like a green hand that could close and squeeze the life out of them as the soldiers scanned the thick foliage above and kept their body armor zipped tight. They were scared, and that was a good thing so long as it didn’t get out of hand. “Creative paranoia,” was how Rona-Sa referred to it, and he should know, since Hudathans were hardwired for it. That was one of the primary reasons why his people had battled the Confederacy in the past.
Eventually, the battalion came to a river that, unlike the many streams and creeks encountered thus far, was too deep for the bio bods to wade through. Plus, the water was moving quickly enough to cause eddies and splash the boulders that poked up here and there.
Rather than take the time to fell trees and build a bridge, or construct a raft, Santana elected to ferry his troops across the barrier using quads, T-2s, and one-way trips on the tractors. Though time-consuming, the operation went fairly well.
The problem was the fuel truck. It lacked the clearance required to cross the river on its own and was too large for the quads. Even if one of them had been empty, which wasn’t the case. They could leave the vehicle behind, but Santana wanted to keep the crawlers operational for as long as possible, and they required fuel. So what to do?
Santana and a group of his officers were standing next to the river gazing at the truck when Captain Ryley offered a possible answer. The officer had to raise his voice in order to be heard over the roar of the river. “What we do,” he said in an obvious reference to Temo Pharmaceuticals, “is to strap bola logs to both sides of a vehicle and winch it over. Bola trees are strong but light. And they have thousands of air-filled cells inside their trunks.”
“Okay, Captain. Make it happen. And the faster the better.”
To his credit, Ryley was able to execute his plan in record time by ordering a T-2 to cut down a nearby bola tree with her energy cannon. The trunk was delimbed and sliced into sections the same way. Then, by using more cyborgs to drag the logs into place, Ryley was able to complete all of his preparations in half an hour.
Because of the strong current, Santana insisted on attaching cables to both ends of the truck so that it wouldn’t be swept downstream, where it would slam up against the rocky riverbank. There was a scary moment when the fueler was about halfway across the river and a log appeared upstream. It was seemingly aimed at the truck. But a current jerked it sideways, and the troops cheered as the would-be battering ram slid past the back end of the tanker with only a foot to spare. That was when Santana exhaled and was surprised to learn that he’d been holding his breath.
Twenty minutes later, the battalion was snaking its way between a series of widely spaced low-lying hills when Santana heard Ponco’s now-familiar voice. Despite the fact that it was computer-generated, Santana could hear the tension in it. “Zulu Seven to Zulu Nine. I’m five miles southwest of your position, and I can see a Ramanthian drone quartering the area ahead of me. Over.”
Santana swore softly and opened his mike. “Roger that, Seven. You have a decoy aboard, right? Over.”
“Affirmative. Over.”
“Drop it a couple of miles south and turn it on. Over.”
“Understood. Over.”
The decoy was designed to put out a steady stream of bogus radio transmissions similar to what a battalion of troops could be expected to produce. Then, assuming the bugs went after the decoy rather than the battalion itself, Santana would have one or two days of grace during which to move the unit forward.
But what if the strategy didn’t work? And the chits were able to locate the real target? That was Santana’s worst nightmare. Because an air attack on massed troops would produce dozens if not hundreds of casualties. Even with AA fire from the T-2 and quads. So Santana issued a new set of orders. “This is Zulu Nine. Alpha Nine will break north, Bravo Nine will break south, and Charlie Nine will hold position. Cyborgs will link up via the ITC and prepare to provide coordinated antiaircraft fire. The battalion will maintain radio silence until further notice. Over.”
By breaking the battalion into three separate units and giving them time to prepare, Santana hoped to minimize casualties if the chits realized what was going on. Would his strategy work? Only time would tell.