17. Out of the Jungle

Jungle southeast of San Teodoro, Vidako
Imperium Stellarum
September 15, 2847

Arc, Cassie, and Natalie Ramírez rode all the way back to the lakeside camp carried together in the open palm of Vijay Iyer’s Janissary. The older cadet kept the mech’s left hand cradled up nearly against the enormous machine’s torso, articulated fingers and thumb gently curved upward to act almost as a sort of half-cage for them to cling onto. It was a good thing, too: for every careful step Iyer took, the mech’s palm rocked and swayed until Arc felt half sick to his stomach, and if one of them had fallen, it would have been a drop of seventeen or eighteen meters to the jungle floor below.

They followed the same path that Arc and the other cadets had hiked to get to the waterfall, with Van Camp’s Tyro leading the way back. The evidence of the two pilots’ pell-mell rush through the forest was clearly visible to either side: broken and splintered tree limbs had been shoved out of the way, and the wet, loamy earth was torn up by the violent tread of running mechs.

Arc kept expecting them to catch up with John Rixley and the rest of the group, but when it didn’t happen he assumed that they’d been met by a medical team. That assumption was borne out when one of the academy’s great, twin-rotored Saker VTOLs came flying in from the northeast, then descended by the shore of the lake, where the cadets had cleared so much ground while making camp. The Saker was off again, back in the direction it had come from, so quickly that Arc doubted they’d even turned the rotors off.

Cassie grabbed his shoulder and gave a squeeze. “That means Seidl’s alive,” she said, having to shout over the sound of the helicopter and the crashing of the mechs through the brush. “They wouldn’t be hurrying back so fast if she was dead.”

Arc nodded, and felt a knot in the pit of his stomach loosen. They’d take her to a hospital in the city, surely. He didn’t know how things would go from there, and he couldn’t see how the pounce of the tree-cat wouldn’t have broken Maja Seidl’s back, but it was still a relief to know that she was alive. He looked down at his sleeves, at his hands, and saw how much of the girl’s blood had stained him after only the short time he’d carried her. Before he could think better of it, he brushed his palms against his pants, but it didn’t help.

The camp was a buzz of activity when they arrived. Arc’s homeworld, Zurah V, had never imported hornets as part of the original colonists’ terraforming efforts—mulberry trees didn’t require a pollinator—so he’d never actually seen a hornet’s nest kicked, but the idiom had survived. Iyer walked them over to a waiting group of corpsmen, knelt, and carefully lowered the Janissary’s hand to the ground so that the three cadets could climb off.

“Are you hurt?” one of the corpsmen shouted, over the thump of Van Camp’s Tyro walking past, toward the field maintenance station that had been set up at one corner of the camp.

“I’m fine,” Arc called back. “It isn’t my blood.”

It turned out that his word wasn’t good enough; all three of them were taken over to one of the grav-trucks, where the field infirmary had been set up. Arc was instructed to strip off both his bloodstained jacket and his undershirt, both of which he doubted he’d ever see again. Once the blood was washed off his hands and forearms, and he’d been thoroughly checked for cuts, bruises, scrapes, and broken bones, he was finally released—with a new undershirt. Ramírez wasn’t so lucky; the medics seemed to have no intention of letting her go until they were certain that the mad run along the jungle path hadn’t exacerbated her previous injury.

“Hey Sandhurst!” Ramírez called out, as he and Cassie walked past. The corpsmen had her leg up, her pants off, and her bandage unwrapped, but none of it seemed to make the girl self-conscious. Arc supposed that days of camping together and squatting over a latrine would do that.

“Thank you,” she said, and winced as she endured having her stitches prodded at. “Thank you for not leaving me behind. You too, princess. I won’t forget it.”

Arc shrugged, suddenly uncomfortable. “I just did what anyone would do.”

“Mierda,” Ramírez cursed. “That’s a load of bull and you know it. When you get a ride, Sandhurst, you’ve got a tech. I’m your Huckleberry. Just don’t wash out and make sure you actually get a mech, alright?”

“Yeah.” Arc nodded. “You’ve got it, Ramírez. You just take care of that leg.”

“And I’ll take care of you too, princess!” she called, as they walked away. “I owe you for that zombie fly!”

John Rixley was waiting for them, leaning against a stack of supply crates just outside the camp infirmary. Like Arc, he’d clearly been stripped of his jacket and original undershirt, and from how wet his hair was, he must have been scrubbed to get Maja Seidl’s blood off of him, as well.

“She’s alive?” Arc asked, and though the departing Saker should have been evidence enough, it was still a relief when Rixley nodded.

“When they got her on the VTOL, at least,” the other cadet said. “They put her on a backboard and strapped her down, but it seemed a little late to me after we bounced her all to hell coming back down the trail.”

“Is her back broken?” Cassie asked.

“I don’t see how it couldn’t be with something that big coming down on her spine.” Rixley shrugged. “But I’m not a doctor. Anyway, I wanted to apologize to you, Sandhurst.”

“Apologize?” Arc frowned. “For what?”

“For not moving quick enough,” Rixley said, and when he shifted his weight from one foot to another, Arc thought that he looked downright uncomfortable. “You were in command. I should have followed your orders right away, and instead I almost got us all killed by asking questions. So, yeah, I owe you an apology. It won’t happen again.” He extended a hand to Arc.

For a moment, Arc was so astounded that he couldn’t move. The idea of one of Cal Madine’s friends actually apologizing to him was so bizarre, so completely outside of anything he would have imagined, that it was only after Cassie bumped him with her elbow that he reached out and clasped the other man’s hand.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Arc said. “None of us expected anything like that to happen.”

“Then we need to start expecting it, don’t we?” Rixley said. “Whatever bug Cal’s got up his ass, you and I? We’re straight. I’ve got your back if you need it.” He gave a squeeze, and the two men dropped each other’s hands. Then, Rixley turned and walked away.

𝝮

Everyone who’d been part of the ill-fated water-gathering expedition was relieved from duty for the rest of the day, and those who’d not been injured were debriefed, one by one, by Lieutenant Kekoa. Arc found himself wondering whether some other squad of cadets was going to be sent to fetch the abandoned canisters, though after thinking about it for a moment he decided that he really didn’t care, so long as no one else got hurt.

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When it came time for Arc’s turn, he stood at attention outside of Kekoa’s tent. Cassie, who’d been called first, ducked out from beneath the flap, thrust aside a handful of hanging mosquito netting, and looked over at him like she wanted to say something. But before she could open her mouth, the lieutenant’s voice came from inside the tent.

“In here, Cadet Sandhurst.”

Arc met Cassie’s eyes for just a moment, gave her a nod, and then ducked inside.

Lieutenant Kekoa’s tent was not substantially more luxurious than the cadet’s own accommodations, save for the fact that he didn’t seem obligated to share his space with anyone else. There was a single cot, with a thin mattress and a sleeping bag; a fleet-issued foot locker; and a collapsible camp desk with a chair, upon which Kekoa’s tablet and a lamp rested. Arc stood to attention in front of the desk, and saluted just as he’d been taught to do.

“Cadet Fourth Class Sandhurst reporting, sir.”

Kekoa leaned back in his chair, and it creaked so loudly that Arc worried it would give way and completely collapse beneath the Alu’kan officer’s muscular bulk. “At ease, cadet,” he said, and crossed his hands over his lap. He waited while Arc stepped left and put his hands behind his back.

“This report is just about done,” Lieutenant Kekoa said. “I’ve interviewed the rest of your ad-hoc squad, with the exception of Cadet Seidl, who I’m informed is now in stable condition at Our Lady of Mercy Hospital downtown. We would have normally sent her to the academy infirmary, but we don’t have the specialists on spinal surgery that Mercy does. If you were worried that she wouldn’t make it, however, you can relax.”