“No signs of Blobs or other intelligent life? No technology visible?” Bell Toll asked.
“Nothing, sir. Rats, bats and bugs,” was the reply.
“Go ahead, then,” Bell Toll said, ordering the next step.
“Yes, sir,” Gorilla replied, thumbing another control. The wire to the first bot was severed, giving it easier range of movement. Four more bots kicked loose, swam ashore and trundled into the weeds. Behind them, the pod extended two tubes just below the choppy waves, their mouths sealed by forcefields.
As the bots moved ashore and spread their electronic senses for threats, the team shifted and prepared to debark.
Ferret was the first up, shoving his gear into one tube before sliding himself into the other. He often wondered if this was what a baby felt like at birth. The passage was long, dark, confined and made it hard to breathe. The traction field grabbed him and drew him up until his hands reached the lip. Drawing a deep breath, he slipped up into the chill water. Reaching into the other hatch, he grabbed his punch gun first, then his ruck, which was surrounded by a flotation jacket. The near one hundred kilograms was too much to swim with. Gingerly, he let his helmet break the surface with a soft ripple, then rose with gentle frog kicks until his nostrils just cleared the troughs of the choppy waves.
What the sensors had filtered out and not bothered to mention was that it was raining. Rain interfered with vid image, and it wasn’t heavy enough to be considered a terrain threat. It would give cover to both them and any threats. It was one of those cold, constant rains that fit the term “a great day for DRTs and ducks.”
“Pouring cold rain, but no immediate threats,” he reported back in a whisper, the sensors of his helmet deducing the voice as a transmission.
“Understood, break,” Shiva said from below. “Tirdal, you’re up. Stand to and stand by.”
“Yes, sir,” he agreed, repeating Ferret’s procedure with the tubes.
“Go,” Shiva said a few moments later. Tirdal felt the field grab him, and he was drawn up the tube. He took a breath as he passed through the forcefield, then he was in water. He grabbed his punch gun and ruck and surfaced near Ferret.
Ferret wondered how Tirdal was doing. Tirdal’s breath sounded strained and he was paddling hard to stay afloat. Moments later, he seemed fine, and his motion slowed to near nothing. Some mod of his suit was handling flotation. Was swimming that tough for Darhel? Ferret wondered. Perhaps he was denser than humans. Or maybe he lacked the proper angle to his limbs. No matter. He seemed fine now. But damn, did he glow on infrared. Either he was strained, or that was some metabolism he had.
With a nod, Ferret swam forward, low in the water, towing his ruck. He couldn’t fault Tirdal for being strained. This was one bitch of a swim, through chop, loaded with gear and, he found out as he neared shore, through muck and weed. Regardless of the local weather, that water was cold, too. He made adequate time: five minutes for a hundred meters, riding up and down in the waves, dunking occasionally. Months of training had taught him to throttle his breathing at the first splash of water in his nose. It itched and dripped horribly, but he’d take care of that upon landing.
As he neared the breaker line, he began crawling through the shallows. The suit was tough enough to be a ballistic shield, but it was thin and the pressure of sand and gravel through it chewed his knees to raw meat that stung in the salt water now draining out. In theory the suit could be sealed as an impermeable membrane. For cold climate that was fine; in this weather they wanted ventilation and drainage. As the waves dropped below his torso, he drew his ruck up next to him. He deflated the cushion, which had four more gas cylinders to inflate it, should they need to cross more water. A few seconds of wriggling got the ruck onto his shoulders, with him sitting. Rolling to his side, then to his abused knees, he rose to a low crouch and shimmied up into the shore weeds, cleared his boot soles of gunk, then edged into the taller grass for cover. A quick glance in his rear view showed Tirdal halfway to shore, Gun Doll afloat and almost invisible behind him. That confirmed, he kept his eyes open in front for any possible threats. The hissing waves of rain damped sound, especially on the water.
And Tirdal was good, much better than he had appeared in training. Were it not for the rear image, he wouldn’t have known the Darhel was there. Tirdal slipped to his left about five meters and hunkered down, his punch gun trained outward but his expression seeming to be turning inward. Ferret took that chance to blow his nose, a finger over one nostril to concentrate airflow. Snot, salt water and sand spewed from one side, then the other. He kept it quiet and low to the ground, wiped off on his sleeve and rose back to a low crawl below the grasstops.
Gun Doll was ashore on his right momentarily. While large for a woman, indeed larger than Ferret or Dagger, she was much smaller than Gorilla, and her load was almost as huge. Besides her tribarreled support cannon, she had power packs, ammunition and some of the commo gear. The sheer energy put out by her more massive weapon meant high-capacity heat sinks that added to the mass she carried. She moved slowly, sinking into the muddy sand as she humped up the beach.
The three moved cautiously forward into the drooping forest edge, nerves reaching out for any threat, as Gorilla came in behind. He had an oversized ruck stuffed with technical gear. Added to his huge bulk, it forced him to lie down to minimize his profile. The captain was next, then Dagger. Again they shifted forward, then Shiva and Thor brought up the rear.
Gorilla sent a signal that ordered his bots ahead. Slowly, they clambered through the growth. Their brains were sufficient for most terrain problems. Occasionally, one would pause when it could find no clear or quiet path, and await a nudge from Gorilla, who was watching miniature windows in his HUD. The team slithered along behind the rolling perimeter, alert for anything the broad senses and limited mentation of the bots might miss.
A hundred meters in, one of the bots was attacked by an insect form as it extended the perimeter. The segmented, clawed carnivore grasped the bot in an embrace similar to that of a praying mantis and tried to bite through its carapace just behind the head, mandibles skidding off the tough molecular surface of the bot. The bot reacted as programmed, extending monomolecular spikes that shredded the abdomen of the predator. Everyone paused as the attacking insect twitched and wriggled in death. The bot then dragged the dead body off under a broad, feathery bush to conceal it before resuming its position for the march.
“I’d hate to see an aquatic version of that,” Ferret commented in a whisper. “The Loch Ness Lobster.” There were snickers from Shiva and Bell Toll in response. The rest hadn’t been to Earth and likely didn’t get the reference. Tirdal almost certainly didn’t, and who knew what he would laugh at? Dagger may have gotten it, but loved his icy façade. Still, two chuckles on an obscure reference wasn’t bad.
Behind them and forgotten for now, the ship slowly sank beneath the waves and retreated to the depths for camouflage. Later, it would move to a ready point near the extraction zone and await their return. If no message reached it after two weeks there, it would move to a different extraction point farther south for ninety-six hours. There was a tertiary position to the north for emergencies that would be available for ninety-six more hours; everyone hoped to avoid that, since it would mean mission failure and hiding near what would probably be a Blob military installation with their presence known. If none of those plans worked, the pod would assume the team dead and follow the planned escape route to try to get the information back to the Republic.