“Done,” Tirdal said. “It is oozing blood and should be allowed to drain. I see no need to lance it further.”
“Thanks, Tirdal,” Shiva acknowledged. “Your turn.”
Tirdal held up his hands, which had a dozen small welts on them, though Shiva didn’t recall him making any noise or fuss. He took the Darhel targeted nanos and sprayed Tirdal’s hands down. There were a couple of stings buried in the skin, but they came out easily. Drops of violet Darhel blood flowed briefly.
That done, the two of them worked the others over. Ferret was worst, with bites to his neck and almost up to his elbows where some of the fire ants, for want of a better name, had crawled under his cuffs. Dagger was almost as stoic as Tirdal. Gun Doll demonstrated a rich skill of invective, the backs of her hands being badly swollen. Thor, who’d been last, had one single bite.
“Lucky bastard,” Gorilla commented. He’d taken more than a few himself.
Everyone treated, trash and gear recovered, they resumed, Ferret leading them around the nest and avoiding other rotten trunks. There was no hurry and no need to repeat the experience.
That day they slept among old, weathered boulders, hunched against their bases or sprawled over their curves, the local sun pattering across them through long leaves. They woke stiff and sore, stretching and flexing to work out kinks.
“Well, shit,” Gorilla muttered.
“What?” Bell Toll and Shiva asked together.
“Lost another bot,” he groused. “Checking…” he muttered and fussed with his controller.
“I need cover while I go get it,” he said after a moment.
“On it,” Dagger agreed, leaning over a boulder and ready to shoot. Thor went with Gorilla as close support, and the two hiked out fifty meters to get the device. The rest policed the area, then took cover amongst the formation, awaiting the prognosis.
“Servos shot on one side,” he announced. “Looks like cumulative wear and tear, grit inside and all those kilometers of walking. I can’t fix it here. This is the oldest one I have, anyway. Want me to lug it along, Sarge? The sensors still work; it can sit watch.”
“We should be fine,” Shiva said after thinking. “It won’t help in a battle, it is mass we don’t need to carry, and there’s little enough to sense between here and there. We have more bots and the sentries will just have to be alert.”
“Gotcha. Let me set the destruct.”
Thirty minutes later, the team well down the slope and the sun still just up, an enzymic reaction followed by a small, hot fire took place in a hollow under a massive boulder. As well as the bot, all their accumulated trash was disposed of in the convenient inferno. It left a congealed puddle of metals and plastic residue. The latter would crack and dust with “age” in a few hours, leaving little evidence of their passage.
Down the hill they moved. Downhill is not fun in the dark, loaded with gear, footing unsure, mud, debris and leaves that can slip or trip or entangle. They were cautious, following single file along Ferret’s chosen route. Gun Doll’s load caused her to slip here and there, once even puckering the tough fabric of her suit as she passed a broken limb while tobogganing down the slope on her hip. She limped slightly after that, especially when forced to put her entire weight on her right foot. Her only external reaction was to swallow a couple of pain pills and reach inside her suit to slap a nanite patch to her skin when they rested.
“I’ll be fine. Can’t dance here, anyway.”
They were all taking damage. That was part of the job. Aches, pains, bruises and nicks, exhaustion and fatigue, blisters on the feet, and collarbones grinding under the mass of rucks that strained the limits of the human body were familiar, if despised. Then they were ignored as mere background. No one took this job without understanding its risks, and while griping was a pastime, whining was not acceptable.
Shortly, the ground started to flatten out to hummocky woods. Here and there the depressions contained puddles or mud, often with some local algae and slime analogs afloat. Ferret moved them between such obstacles when possible, both for comfort and because splashing mud and water were hindrances and noise hazards. Above them, saplings and limbs of heavier trees had been sheared off by some recent severe wind or tornado. The spearlike bases stabbed at the sky while the broken sections bowed low.
Those and other occasional breaks in the canopy showed the stars wheeling overhead, bright and clear through a sky unbothered by industrial effluent or the lights of civilization. The local moon was ruddy rather than bluish, and showed a small crescent.
“Pretty,” Thor remarked at break time, tilting his faceplate for a quick glance up.
“I’ve never seen stars so bright,” Tirdal said. “Our planets have little wilderness.”
“We only get to see them out past the Fringe,” Ferret said.
“It almost—” Tirdal said, then twisted. He’d Sensed something. It was a large insectoid akin to the one that had jumped Ferret, mandibles wide and skipping forward. He dodged as it came, raising his punch gun and firing a shot that went wide. The bug landed beyond him, twisted in an odd eight-legged bounce and came back. It was in midleap, ready to shear off chunks with those appalling jaws, when it fractured and tumbled with a sharp crack. It landed on him, but in a fall rather than a leap. Gun Doll and Shiva bounded over and rolled the wriggling corpse off him. The head was sitting by itself about two meters away, antennae and mandibles still twitching in a grotesque imitation of life.
Dagger was alongside shortly, asking, “Are you all right?”
“I am,” Tirdal replied, sounding breathless. It might have been from the exertion of a fifty plus kilogram bug landing on him and the resulting wrestling match, or perhaps he was distressed at last. “Did you shoot it, Dagger?”
“Yup. Through the neck, contact fused. I don’t know where the brain is, but I figured if the head was separated, it was less of a threat.”
“Good shot!” Gun Doll said, impressed.
“Thanks,” Dagger acknowledged.
“I owe you one, Dagger,” Tirdal said. “Let me know. I’ll take a shot for you.”
“Really?” Dagger asked. It didn’t sound very Darhel.
“Surely. But only in the leg.”
After a moment’s pause, there were repressed laughs and snorks.
“Are you otherwise okay, Tirdal?” Shiva asked.
“Fine, and ready to move,” he said.
“Everyone else?” Shiva asked around. Getting nods, he said, “Then let’s hump.”
They’d made good time so far. The next couple of days slowed progress immensely. They came to a narrow chunk of grassland that led into the savanna proper to the north. The grass forms and bushes were tall enough for cover, but hindered visibility.
Gorilla switched the bots to manual and had them crawl out slowly under the grass. He guided them with an inertial joystick attached by a wire to his helmet, which was attached in turn to a small module, to which the wires on the bots were connected. The hair-thin threads that the bots unspooled as they went were fairly tough, but were considered one-use items. Rewinding them would take additional mechanisms aboard the bots and the wires would be covered in crud anyway, even if they didn’t break. He had a package of spares in his ruck, but they were a finite resource. With less cover for the troops and clear ground for the bots, it made sense to use them for a time.
“What do you want to do, Captain?” he asked, slaving his image to the captain’s channel.
“I want to see more,” Bell Toll said after a moment’s pondering. “Can you send up some flyers?”
“Right away,” he agreed. Clear ground was the bane of infiltrating troops, and they were understandably cautious. Still, if it were safe, cutting across would save much time over detouring to the south.