Starfist: A World of Hurt (11 page)

CHAPTER SEVEN

Mud, mud, and more mud. Nothing but mud. And it seemed like all of the mud was underwater. Not deep underwater, like under the ocean. No, if it was under the ocean, they wouldn't have to be slogging through it. This mud was under boot-top water, ankle-deep water, knee-deep water, crotch--
oof!
--deep water.
That
was why they had to slog through all that mud--it wasn't under the ocean, so they
could
slog through it. Mud that clung to their boots, clutched at their trousers--tried to suck their damn boots right off their feet! They didn't dare drop anything, or the mud would suck it straight down to the center of the world, never to be seen again until it went through the entire geologic cycle of tectonic plate subduction and came back in an upwelling of volcanic magma! Try explaining that to the supply sergeant!

If the mud wasn't bad enough by itself, the local trees shot out roots at all kinds of improbable angles, ready to trip unwary feet and drench the men who tripped over them. It wasn't as if the Marines could see the roots--the trees were heavily canopied, and moss hung from branches in thick mats, blocking out most of the light. At high noon the place looked like dusk. Some of them tried to use their infra shields, and the damp, moss-covered roots didn't show up through them at all. Not as well as the naked eye showed them, anyway, and the naked eye hardly showed them at all.

The water itself was murky and almost felt alive. That was likely because of the life that abounded in it, though hardly anybody wanted to think about what kind of life flourished in water like that. They suspected that the fish, eels, aquatic land animals, and the amorphous stuff that drifted with the sluggish currents were all poisonous, or at least too vile for anyone to eat.

And the swamp stunk like an ill-kept sewage system.

It was--by Buddha's great green balls!--worse than Quagmire, and Quagmire was nothing more than an overgrown mud ball!

"What's the name of this island again?" Lance Corporal MacIlargie asked.

"I don't know," Corporal Claypoole snarled. "Something dumb out of Norse mythology."

He wiggled his heel to break the mud seal around his foot that threatened to pull his boot right off.

"Nidhogge," Lance Corporal Schultz said.

"What?" Claypoole asked, surprised that the big man said anything.

"Nidhogge," Schultz repeated. He paused behind a root tangle in thigh deep water and rotated his shields through infra, light gatherer, and magnifier, picking a course through the next section of swamp.

Claypoole snorted. "Got the 'hogge' part right. This is worse than walking through a pigsty." He stopped at a respectable distance behind Schultz and rotated through his shields, looking for whatever Schultz was looking for. He couldn't see anything different enough in any direction to see any point in rotating through the shields.

"You'd know all about pigsties, Rock," MacIlargie snorted. "City boy like you." He stopped behind Claypoole and turned to watch their rear. He also cycled through his shields.

"I know about pigsties because you're in my fire team and I get stuck living in one because of you," Claypoole shot back. Schultz moved out and Claypoole tapped MacIlargie, then followed. "Aargh!" he snarled as he hauled himself out of the water to clamber over the root tangle.

"I am not!" MacIlargie protested.

"Are too! You can't even talk right.
Oof!
" The water on the other side of the root tangle was deeper than he'd expected, and he went in waist deep. He felt about with his feet, found the higher ground Schultz had stepped on, and wondered how the big man had found it while he didn't. "I didn't say you
are
anything," he continued to MacIlargie, "I said you live in a sty."

"Not me." MacIlargie grunted as he maneuvered over the roots. "Never me. My mama didn't raise no slob."

"Your mama didn't raise you at all. She took one look and turned you in for a model that wasn't defective."

MacIlargie, having watched Claypoole's progress more closely than Claypoole had watched Schultz, eased himself over the roots and into the less deep water on the other side. He was working on a riposte that would top Claypoole's last remark when Schultz stopped again.

"Map," Schultz growled.

"You want to see the map?" Claypoole used his light gatherer and looked around. There wasn't anything that would show up on the map, so there wasn't any point in looking at the map except to see where the map's inertial guidance system claimed they were. And they'd made so many turns and doglegs, he wouldn't be surprised to find the inertial guidance system put them on entirely the wrong side of Nidhogge.

Schultz raised all shields so Claypoole could see his face and fixed a baleful look on him.

Claypoole swallowed. "Map. Right. You want to see the map." He turned his head so the map would be oriented with the ground--he hoped his compass was functioning right--and flipped it on.

Schultz stood next to him and studied the projected image. A small rosette showed their starting point and a larger one their destination; a simple X indicated their current position.

After a few moments the big Marine grunted and set out again. Claypoole stood uncertainly watching him, then said, "Ah, Hammer? Shouldn't we be going this way?" He pointed on a tangent to Schultz's direction.

"Inertial's wrong," Schultz said and kept going.

"But..." Claypoole began, his distrust of the inertial guidance system of just a moment earlier completely forgotten.

MacIlargie had also studied the map projection. "As much as we've been slipping and sliding," he said, "that map's got to be wrong. I'm going with Hammer."

"But..." Claypoole stood there, watching MacIlargie follow Schultz. "I'm the fire team leader, I'm supposed to be in charge here," he finished to himself. He sloshed through the water to overtake MacIlargie and resume his place between his men. After all, inertial systems
did
slide off course from time to time, and Schultz
was
one of the best Marines he'd ever heard of at land navigation.

Schultz damn well better be right! he thought.

A half hour later they hauled themselves out of the mud onto an islet of compacted vegetation. Schultz had been right. Only two other fire teams had beat them. They were in garrison utilities that were so clean and dry Claypoole wondered if they had actually made the trek through the swamp. Sun broke through the overhead in a few places. About twelve minutes later the squad leaders showed up, dripping wet and muddy enough that the chameleon effect of their uniforms was negated.

"What are you doing sitting around in your muddies?" Sergeant Ratliff asked as he dropped his pack. He opened it and pulled out a fresh set of garrison utilities and a towel.

He and the other squad leaders stripped down, dried themselves off, and changed.

Claypoole and MacIlargie looked at each other, Claypoole with embarrassment for not realizing that was why they'd had to lug the clean uniform and towel in their packs, MacIlargie with anger because his fire team leader had let him sit around in his wet, muddy uniform.

Schultz ignored it; he was asleep.

The rest of the platoon arrived over the course of the next hour and a half. The command group--Ensign Bass, Staff Sergeant Hyakowa, and Lance Corporal Groth, the comm man--were the sixth of the ten trios to arrive.

Once they'd dried themselves and changed, Bass and Hyakowa went aside by themselves and reported in to company headquarters. Then Bass chatted briefly with each of the teams already in and each of the others as they arrived. When the last of them were in, he stood up and called the platoon together.

"Could be better," he told them. "It took five hours and seventeen minutes for the last team to make it in. For comparison, second squad's first fire team made it in three hours and four minutes. That's a wide difference, but the fire team and gun team leaders also have a wide difference in land navigation experience. Corporal Kerr has more experience than any of the other team leaders." He looked at second squad's first fire team leader. "And more than some of the squad leaders." Several of the Marines looked at Corporal Doyle and remembered how the platoon had to stop when Doyle became a heat casualty. They wondered how his fire team had managed to come in first. None of those who wondered, however, had been with the platoon when Doyle, Company L's chief clerk until 34th FIST's most recent deployment, had been on the "Bass patrol" that navigated across the Martac Waste on Elneal while surrounded by hostile locals. Corporal Kerr knew what the looks meant; he hadn't been on that patrol, but had heard about it. He clapped a hand on Doyle's shoulder and gave it a comradely squeeze. The former chief clerk had a hard time keeping up, but he'd done it. Now, Doyle did his best not to flush, and almost succeeded.

"But that was the purpose of this exercise," Bass continued. "To give all of the fire team and gun team leaders experience at land navigation in difficult terrain." He looked out at the swamp. "And this certainly qualifies as difficult terrain.

"I know that some of you team leaders think this was more difficult than it needed to be because you had to use inertial guidance systems on your maps instead of using GPS."

Some of the fire team leaders--including Corporals Claypoole and Dean--glared at him; they thought exactly that. "But as some of you know from hard experience," he looked pointedly at Dean and Claypoole, "we don't always have a GPS, or even inertial guidance." Claypoole and Dean sheepishly looked away. They'd gone through the Martac Waste with him, an unscheduled, long distance patrol where they hadn't even had a map, much less a GPS unit.

"But the big thing is, all of you made it here on your own. Nobody had to call for assistance, nobody had to be rescued. For that, I give everyone a 'well done.'

"Just so none of you latecomers think some of us were taking it easy here while the rest of you were humping your way through the swamp, the command group made it back in four hours and twenty-seven minutes, and the squad leaders took three hours and forty-nine minutes.

"What I should do now is send those of you who took more than four hours back out to do it again." He raised a hand to cut off the groans. "But it's too late in the day, and there's no time anyway." He glanced at Staff Sergeant Hyakowa, who nodded. "Hoppers are on their way now to pick us up and take us to the company area." He let the cheers at that news run their course.

"Now secure your gear and get ready to saddle up. We'll be moving out in..." He looked at Hyakowa.

"The hoppers are less than ten minutes out," the platoon sergeant said. "You heard the boss, secure your gear."

The Marines of third platoon scrambled to pack their dirty chameleons, which were now drier than they'd been, and get their gear ready to take when they boarded the hoppers.

Corporal Doyle paused halfway through his preparations and looked into the treetops.

"Wait a minute," he said. "How are hoppers going to land here?"

Schultz gave him a look that turned him away. "They aren't," he rumbled.

"Oh." Doyle looked confused--not a difficult thing, since he was confused more often than not about being an infantryman--and resumed packing.

Minutes later they heard the roar of hoppers hovering over the trees above them and four weighted ropes dropped through the canopy. As soon as the ropes touched down, a Marine in a harness slid down each of them. Three of the Marines stood by the ends of their ropes while the fourth detached himself to confer briefly with Bass and Hyakowa. Then Hyakowa ordered, "First squad, over there," and pointed at one rope. "Second squad, that one. Guns, there."

The squad leaders lined their men up at the designated ropes and helped the four Marines who anchored them attach their men to harnesses that were spooned at the bottom of each rope. As soon as each Marine was securely attached, his harness climbed the rope.

Bass sent Lance Corporal Groth up the fourth rope. When the last men of the platoon were ready to be harnessed, Hyakowa followed Groth. Bass waited until the last of his men was rising before he let himself be harnessed. The four Marines who'd ridden the ropes down were the last to ascend.

The only signs third platoon left of its presence on the islet were indentations in the mud that quickly filled with water.

A hot shower, the first they'd had in four days, and plenty of soap, were waiting for the men of third platoon when they reached the company area. The Marines gleefully cleaned themselves; for a while they'd felt they'd never get the miasma of the swamp out of their pores. The hot shower was followed by a hot meal, also their first in four days. It wasn't immersion-heated field rations, but reindeer steaks, baked potatoes, and salad flown in from Camp Ellis and grilled over charcoal on the spot by cooks who accompanied the food.

All that was lacking were a few kegs of Reindeer Ale.

The sun had set by the time they were all cleaned and fed. Gunnery Sergeant Thatcher assembled the company in formation.

"AT EASE!" Captain Conorado shouted when he stepped front and center. "Close in on me, then sit down and get comfortable." He waited a moment while his men pulled in more tightly and sat on the ground. He looked them over and mentally shook his head, thinking he must look like a counselor in front of a bunch of happy campers.

"Listen up," he said when they were settled. "This is good news, bad news time. The good news is, we're almost finished with the training we came to Nidhogge for, and we've done it all successfully so far." He paused while his Marines laughed or cheered or happily poked each other in the ribs. "The bad news is, we have to cut it short and head back to Camp Ellis. We leave at dawn."

This time there were fewer cheerful expressions. The more experienced Marines knew that cutting a training exercise short usually meant a deployment, and wherever they went was likely to be bad.

"We aren't going anywhere, not right away," Conorado said to cut off worries. "We're going back early because we have a distinguished visitor coming and you'll need a couple of days to prepare for him. That is all." He turned to Gunny Thatcher.