emitted. The fish came on, sensing an easy target, and tried to tear off her arm. Elsadora jerked her arm back, angling the knife towards it.
Twisting in the water she watched the fish swim downstream away from her rapidly. Had she hurt it? Her suit showed no sign of penetration but she had felt it tug at her arm on the way past. She turned again, staring into the murky depths and wishing she had more than a display based on echolocation.
Chemical sniffers in her display flashed warning lights. She called up the report on it and saw that there was blood in the water. Her knife attack had been successful. She kept the vibrating blade at the ready and continued on, hurrying to get out of the water. Another warning slipped into her display, notifying her of a breach in the arm of her suit.
“ What’s next?” She muttered, lowering her arm to minimize the amount of potential air loss. The thermal imaging showed an increased warmth at the spot of the strike. Fine bubbles emerged from it to be swept downstream by the current. She redoubled her efforts to get across, looking up in time for her sonar to present a cloudy image.
She realized it was localized after a catch in her breath. Refinement a moment later showed it was a school of fish swimming upstream this time, from the direction the wounded fish had gone. Her question had been answered, a school of hungry fish following a blood trail was what was next.
They swam around her and pecked at her armor. In a matter of seconds it turned into a frustrated feeding frenzy. Her armor protected her but the fish didn’t give up. Elsa clutched her arms to her chest, covering the minor breech with her other hand, and pushed hard against the current. Her suit showed no additional breaches but a quick glance at the integrity display showed that they were somehow able to wear away at the armored surface. There were dozens if not hundreds of fish swarming her, visibility was reduced to nothing and each step was that much more difficult as she was being hammered from all sides.
The swarm of fish scattered as quickly as it had appeared. Else stumbled, driving one knee into the creek bed without the sudden persistence of the voracious fish. She looked and saw them disappearing back downstream. “I really need to shoot somebody,” Elsa complained, driving herself back to both feet. She glanced up and grinned, the surface of the river was only a few feet above her. She’d made it!
Chapter 4
She emerged from the water as fast as she could. Her arm was wet from the breech and she’d had enough of being stalked by alien piranhas. She kept moving across the loose rocks at the river’s edge towards the massive jungle that awaited her. Beyond that was her first waypoint, the cliff that she had to find a way to climb. She accepted that First Insertion Marines never had it easy, but this was ridiculous. She needed to find a spot to pop off her glove and drain her arm too.
A sound so powerful it felt like a physical blow sent Elsa into a roll across the broken ground. The speakers in her helmet cut out, preventing the overpowering decibels from ruining her ear drums. She scrambled behind some trees and jerked her rifle off her suit. Years of drilling herself and others allowed her to reassemble it by memory in a matter of seconds.
“ Holy shit!” Elsa was frozen, aside from that simple phrase. On the other side of the river a massive creature was staring straight at her. It walked on two legs and was covered with feathers. Rather than looking like a bird, the beast’s legs were massive, proving they had the muscle to drive it to impressive speeds. The front limbs were smaller but no less fearsome for the talons at the end of the fingers. What scared her the most was the head. Plumes of feathers emerged from the peak and back of it, giving it a crowned appearance. The eyes regarded her with a savage fury that spoke of trespass and hunger. Beneath the eyes was another avian feature, a curved predatory beak. It opened the beak to roar at her again, dispelling thoughts of any relationship to a songbird. The open beak also displayed a single row of teeth clearly designed to rend and tear meat. In this case, her meat.
Elsa brought up the sighting reticule in her display and fired. The charged ions zapped the creature in the chest, sending a puff of feathers out and drawing a fresh roar of pain. Elsa stared, a dread chill spreading through her. It took a step forward, plunging a massive taloned foot into the river. The current didn’t seem to bother it, nor did the depth. Then again her sensors measured it at nearly eighteen feet tall.
It looked down at the river, then raised its other foot. Thinking quickly, Else shifted her gun to a new target. “Let’s see if you hungry bastards like how each other taste!” She fired twice, scoring wounds on the other leg moments before it sank into the water. “Bet you think that water feels good, don’t you?”
The Marine energy rifle was the latest example of new science improving old technology. Ionized bursts had been used for centuries in a variety of ways, but armored material had quickly been developed to thwart their effectiveness as weapons. Against unhardened targets, however, there were few weapons more instantly incapacitating. Modern warfare frowned upon weapons capable of causing civilian casualties with such ease, but with preliminary data from Vitalis showed a trend towards highly complex technology breaking down faster, the X109 has been commissioned.
The primary fire mode of the X109 was a stream of charged ions. Against normal organic targets it had a lethal range of four hundred yards, depending on the density of the atmosphere. Against something the size of Big Bird she had no idea what it would do, but the supercharged ions should have turned at least portions of it into fried chicken. It wasn’t as impressed with her weapon as she was.
Elsa fired three more times, confusing the beast but doing little more than slowing it down. It had taken three more steps, covering nearly half the width of the river, when it looked down at the water. It picked up one foot and stomped, then the other.
“ Yes!” Elsa cheered, seeing it starting to circle as it tried to step on whatever was nibbling at it underwater. “Who’s the turkey now?”
It roared at the water, turning more rapidly. Else jumped back when she saw its tail swing around and up into the air, then slam down into the water behind it. Spray from the impact spattered across her, reminding her that she wasn’t nearly far enough away. She pulled back, keeping her eyes on the creature in the water until the jungle enclosed her and prevented her from seeing it. She continued to hear its roars, but soon even those faded away.
Chapter 5
Relatively secure in a niche in the cliff wall, Elsa finally undid the clamps on her smart armor and removed the glove first, then the forearm and upper arm sections. She stared at the armor, looking at the damage done to it. The big fish had been the one to punch some small holes through the elbow joint, but the entire arm showed signs of damage. She took a moment to study the rest of her armor, or at least as much as she could see without taking it off, and saw that her entire suit looked like it had been through a sand blaster. Nicks and gouges throughout from the smaller fish, plus a few deeper scrapes from where the big fish had tried to bite her.
“ Nasty little bastards,” she muttered. She popped up the visor on her helmet and stared at her gear in the pre-dawn light. She was assaulted with the humid freshness again, making her nostrils tingle and filling her with a strange sense of euphoria.
Elsa shook her head and looked at her arm. There was nothing wrong with it, aside from the skin around her fingers looking a little wrinkled from the prolonged submersion. She shrugged and turned it over, flexing her hand as she did so. Elsa’s lips parted with a gasp. She pulled her arm closer and stared at it. She had a scar across the back of hand that ran halfway up her forearm from a broken plastic barstool many years back. The scar was still there, but it was smaller. Something in the exposure to the water had made it fade.
She smirked at the thought. Scars don’t just shrink, it must have faded or healed or something. Regenerated, maybe? She stared at it a moment longer before closing her visor and using the suits sensors. Everything checked out fine with it, although the ambient temperature of her arm was nearly two tenths higher than her core. As she watched, it fell a tenth of a point to ninety nine point two.
Ever since her latest genetic manipulation therapy her body had established a new baseline temperature of
