Moving slowly she set her rifle against the wall and then put her back next to it. With her eye on the river and the passage up to the surface she began to unclasp her boots. She worked her way up, slipping the armor off of from the bottom up until she had only her torso and arms covered. She detached a water pod and took a drink, trying to fight past the pain in her face. That finished, she emptied the rest of it then squatted down.
“ If this is ever replayed or spoken about I will hunt down the person responsible for it!” She hissed, knowing her helmet recorded everything that had transpired throughout the mission. With that warning delivered, she took in a deep breath and forced her abdominal muscles into action. The water pod was never designed to serve as a bedpan, leaving Elsa to struggle as most of the hot stream ran down her fingers and hand.
She shivered, the poison making her body feel cold while her cheek seemed to be on fire. “I don’t believe I’m doing this,” she said, moving the warm pod to her right hand and then reaching up to unclasp her helmet and pulled it off.
She took the pod back, tipped her head to the side and, clamping her lips tightly closed in spite of the agony it caused, she poured to bitter contents of the pod over the scrape on her cheek. It felt warm at first contact, then cooler and soothing. The last of her captured urine trickled out, leaving a strange feeling like an echo of a sting on her cheek.
She straightened her head and looked around, afraid somebody might have seen her. It was just her and remains of the shelled monster. Her cheek was still warm and throbbed, but the fire had been taken out of it. She chuckled at the ridiculous situation, then started laughing. Her laugh went deeper, erupting into fits of giggles and belly-racking convulsions that made her shoulder ache and her face hurt. When the hysteria passed she was sitting on the shelf with fresh trails of tears running down her cheeks.
“ I don’t want to die on this fucking planet!” It was whiny and she knew it, but with no one to stand tall for, she just didn’t care. She was a Marine, it was her job to keep her men in line and to protect others. She looked around: she had no men and women looking up to her and she had no people to protect. What does a Marine do when a Marine has no one to do it for?
“ You pull your head out of your ass and you do the job!” She answered. Elsa reached across and unhooked the armor on her arm. Getting it off was a painful process that took several minutes. She studied her shoulder it as best she could, then reached across her body to feel the joint. It bulged from dislocation, an injury she’d seen on a few of her boys and girls over the years. It happened during training more often than in the field, so she’d seen veteran trainers put the tortured joint back in place enough times to have an idea what to do. The problem was there was only her, no one else to hold it and pop it back in.
“ Semper Fi,” She growled. Elsa slipped her glove back on, knowing full well that without being connected to the rest of the armor it would serve little purpose. She snarled in defiance and forced her arm out so it was only a few degrees forward of being held straight out from her body. She took three steps across the slippery rock and threw herself forward with a primal scream.
The resulting pain the erupted in her shoulder silenced her scream and drove her into a darkness free of monsters.
Chapter 8
Elsa woke to the feeling of something on her face. She swatted at it absent-mindedly, then jumped up in terror. Bugs, hundreds of them, were crawling across her or on the rocky shelf surrounding her. She bit down the scream and scampered back, slapping the chitinous creatures off of her. They were making short work of the pieces of dead monster, and she had no doubt she’d have been next. Individually they were smaller than the palm of her hand, but the sheer volume promised a painful, if quick, death.
She grabbed her rifle and fired a few shots into the thicker concentrations of them. The overgrown cockroaches superheated and exploded instantly. She barked out a laugh at them and fired again until they got it into their insect brains that she was a threat they didn’t want to mess with.
Elsa realized she was breathing hard again, then felt the pang in her stomach. It had been almost a day or maybe even longer since she’d last eaten anything other than water. Intel said there was lots that could be eaten on Vitalis, one such meal, pre-cooked, had just been disposed of by the bugs. Elsa sneered and set about putting her armor back on. She’d been caught with her pants down, literally, and she expected she’d catch hell when she was debriefed. Debriefed by her superiors, that is, not the debriefing she’d given herself the night before.
Elsa’s eyes went to the passage to the surface. Her instincts had been right, light was shining down through the tunnel. It was daytime again. That meant she’d been out for several more hours. Once her armor was clamped back in place she slipped her helmet on so she could see if anything had changed. No messages from her unit and nothing from command. She had been asleep for another five hours, time she knew her body needed but she didn’t have. She was down to twenty two hours before the deadline. Less than a day.
She paused on her way to the tunnel, eyeing a pile of dead bugs. She knelt down and reached for one with her right hand. She stared at her hand, realizing that the pain in her shoulder was gone. She picked it up and rotated it, grinning at how well it worked. He cheek felt smooth and flawless as well, as though she’d never been injured.
She picked up a bug and pulled out her knife with her other hand. She peeled away the shell then carved out a chunk of the cooked meat inside. Holding her breath she tossed it in, chewing quickly and swallowing before her stomach realized what she was about to do to it.
Elsa waited a long moment for the convulsions or tremors to begin. Nothing happened. She stared at the carcass in her hand for a long moment, then carved out more of the innards. Insects and stranger sources of nutrition had been part of Marine FIST survival training. She’d never enjoyed that part, but then again she’d never gotten sick because of it. Her luck held true as she worked her way through three of the partially cooked Vitalian insects.
“ Not quite eggs and bacon with a side of home fries,” she said. “Then again, even the synthetic version on the ship tastes like dead bugs.”
Elsa stood up and made her way to the tunnel. She had to push her rifle ahead of her and struggle to wiggle her way up through it. She consciously focused on not thinking about how tight the short tunnel was, nor did she wonder what the odds of the tunnel collapsing on top of her. Instead she stared at the bright disc that promised sunlight and the top of the cliffs.
Elsa emerged unscathed, if dirty. She pulled her helmet off and stared, letting the bright sunlight warm her face and bring tears to her eyes. A soft wind blew through her hair, reminding her how badly she wanted a shower. She felt alive and filled with sudden hope.
Grinning widely Elsa turned away from the morning sun and saw another ridge ahead of her, several miles distant. It was jagged, promising to be more mountainous and hilly instead of a vertical line of rock. Her smile faded slowly, then was replaced by a feeling of numbness in her chest when she saw a small herd of massive creatures on the plain between her and the ridge.
Chapter 9
Against her wishes, Elsa had to put her helmet back on. She used it to gauge the distances and size of the animals. They were the largest things she’d seen so far, some of them close to thirty feet tall. Smaller animals stalked about on four legs but the largest ones had six.
Not only were the animals massive, so were the grasses growing out of the plain. They were tall enough that Elsa was able to slip through them without crouching to stay concealed. Her global positioning might have been useless but the smart armor was able to track her movement based on the images she’d taken of the plain and the pedometer tracking her movement. A small corner of her display had a localized map rendered on it. The only thing she couldn’t do was mark and track the indigenous animals.
Elsa’s concerns had grown to a point where the sweat now beading on her forehead was caused by concern more than the humidity and heat. As if in answer to her unspoken prayers she stopped abruptly before a large
