Progeny (The Progenitor Trilogy, Book Three) (18 page)

              ‘Agreed,’ he replied.  ‘Let’s go.’

              ‘Admiral Haines?’ said one of the other marines, Sergeant Philips. ‘It’s good to have you back, sir.’

              They made their way quickly up the hill, away from the road and into the deeper parts of the jungle. Two marines went on point, scouting the way ahead through the dense undergrowth.  Behind them, in the swampy, tsunami trashed bay behind them, invisible through the thick tree canopy, the sounds of aerial vehicles moving to and fro could be heard.  Haines kept his camo-cloak drawn over his shoulders to mask his heat signature, whilst the marines in their light recon armour were using their suits’ systems to mask their thermal profiles.  They needed to avoid combat at all costs.  The sounds and heat signatures of weapon discharges would surely bring the enemy down on their heads with lethal swiftness.

              Haines still had his doubts.  These were definitely his men, part of the
Abraham Lincoln’s
complement of marines, but he was still unsure if he was being led into a trap.  It had been several days since the
Lincoln’s
destruction.  There was no telling what might have happened to any of these men in the meantime, no way to be sure if the enemy hadn’t captured them and implanted them.  For what good it would do him, he kept the pistol handy, just in case.

              After about an hour of scrambling through the tangled undergrowth they finally happened upon a small ravine with a narrow stream running down its centre.  Dawson called a halt and Haines sat down gratefully on a flat rock, speechless with breathlessness for a moment before he recovered.

              ‘Are you alright, sir?’ said Dawson, removing his helmet and looking at his commanding officer with concern as the older man wheezed and coughed a few times before clearing his throat and spitting on the ground.

              ‘I’ll be... alright in minute, Captain,’ said Haines between breaths.  ‘Guess this old body of mine ain’t used to the pace.’

              ‘Sorry, sir.  If you’d said...’ said Dawson and looked apologetic.

              ‘Don’t worry about it, we needed to get away, like you said.  Can’t have an old man holding you up.’  Haines reached for his water bottle and drained it, then refilled it from the stream and popped a couple of purification tablets inside.  ‘So,’ he continued. ‘I’ve been a little out of touch these past few days.  Anything you can tell me about what’s been going on around here?  How’d you survive?’

              Dawson sat down on a boulder opposite Haines and began to relate his tale.

              ‘Well, the
Lincoln
was going down and the call went out to abandon ship.  We managed to get a couple of drop-ships off the bow without use of the catapults: mostly full of marines, plus some technical staff from the flight deck.  Enemy fire had taken out a whole bunch of the escape pods so it was the only way.  Both ships took enemy fire on the way down and mine crash landed just east of here.  I don’t remember much, except I woke up outside the ship at the foot of a tree.  Guess I must have stumbled out after we hit the ground.  Most of the others in that ship didn’t make it.  The other ship had made an emergency landing without any fatalities.  They saw where we went down and managed to reach us after hacking their way through the jungle for two days.  We managed to salvage a fair bit of gear from both ships.  Neither would ever fly again so we destroyed them with demo charges to prevent the enemy from getting hold of them, then we disappeared into the jungle.  We’ve set up camp ten clicks north of here for the time being.  We move it around every few days to stop the enemy from locating us.  How about you, sir?’

              ‘Well my memory’s a little patchy.  I stayed on the bridge as long as I could.  I wanted to make sure everyone got away before I did, but life support was failing and I blacked out.  I think eventually someone dragged me into an escape pod.  I remember... well I don’t remember much about the descent,’ said Haines and shrugged.  ‘When I came to I was hanging in my restraints inside the escape pod.  Everyone else had been killed by the crash.  I grabbed what I could from the pod and spent the next few days in the jungle.  I had no idea where I was headed.  I guess this direction seemed as good as any.  How’d you find me?’

              ‘To be honest sir, it was luck, more than anything.  We’d noticed a lot of aerial activity in this region and figured that the enemy were up to something.  At first we thought that they might be investigating the wreck of the
Lincoln
out in the bay, but they seemed to be searching the jungle.  It seemed logical that they were looking for survivors from the fleet, maybe senior officers, so we decided to take a look.  It was pure chance that we ran into you, however.’

              ‘Well, despite my initial reaction, it’s good to have company,’ said Haines.  ‘I couldn’t ask for a finer bodyguard than the Marine Corp.’

              ‘Thank you, sir.’

              ‘But there are things in these jungles that I don’t think even you boys can handle.’

              ‘Sir?’

              ‘Shapers, son.  The damn Shapers are here on this moon.  Not those agents and other puppets that you’ve heard about, the actual beings themselves, if you can call them that.  I saw a couple whilst I was out on my own, or maybe it was the same one both times.  I think they were hunting me.  Will all due respect, I don’t think bullets would do much good.’

              ‘How did you manage to escape them, sir?’ said Dawson.

              ‘Luck, I think,’ Haines admitted.  ‘I’m not sure.  I had my camo-cloak on, I was a long way off the ground in the tree branches at the time and there were a lot of those Dryad things in the trees around me.  Maybe they mistook my heat signature for one of the creatures.’

              ‘Dryads.  Those ape things?’

              ‘That’s the ones.  They’re pretty good as an early warning system, to be honest.  They were interested in me, but the Shaper had them really spooked.  They kicked up a hell of a racket when it came into view.  Something to bear in mind.’

              ‘If I might ask, sir.  What did the Shaper look like?’

              ‘Did you ever disturb a hornets’ nest by accident when you were a kid?’

              ‘Uh, no sir I grew up on Elysium. No hornets there.  I think I know what you mean though.  Needle bug nests were a problem.’

              ‘Okay well, imagine you kicked over a nest of those needle bugs of yours, and the whole swarm of them rose up as one and moved like a single creature.’

              ‘What, like a hive-mind?’

              ‘More than that, son.  There was a single controlling will behind that swarm. I could feel it, I could see it, and it gave me the creeps, I can tell you.’

              After their brief rest stop, Haines and the marines continued up the slope and headed deeper into the jungle.  Eventually they crested the shoulder of the tree-swathed hill and began to descend into the broad valley beyond.  Here, the moist air hung heavy under trees that dripped with moisture.  The ground was slippery with mud, and rocks, treacherous with moisture and moss-like growths.  All around was the scent of decaying vegetation and the heady perfumes of the many flowers that grew from drooping branches, clinging vines and the boles of trees, and which flourished on the ground in patches where the sunlight managed to penetrate through the greenery.  Haines and the squad of men accompanying him were soon slick with sweat, the soldiers unable to allow their suits to vent too much heat for fear of discovery and Haines unable to remove his camo-cloak for the same reason.

              Eventually, they reached the banks of a wide, sluggishly flowing river that wound its way lazily across the valley bottom.  They kept well behind the tree-line, far away from the broad expanse of brown, muddy waters and followed the river upstream.  Here, the heat and humidity was even worse and to add to their discomfort, the damp air beside the river brought with it clouds of biting insect-like creatures who filled the air with angry, shrill buzzing and settled on the exposed, sweat-beaded flesh of anyone within range.  Soon, almost everyone sported fresh, livid, itchy lumps at least somewhere on their body, some even finding that the creatures had managed to penetrate clothing and armour joints with their needle-like mouthparts.  It made the going miserable, and soon the marines started to bicker with one another and curse the insects, the jungle and anything else that they could think of that annoyed them.

              They were five kilometres from the location of the camp when Haines heard a sudden shrieking from the opposite bank of the river.  He recognised the sound from his time alone in the jungles south of the bay - it was the Dryads calling to one another in alarm.  He ordered Dawson to tell his men to halt and find cover.  With whispered commands and hand gestures they quickly did so, concealing themselves behind rocks and tree-roots.

              Haines hunkered down behind the bole of a tree with Dawson and peered out through the gaps between the tangled undergrowth across the broad expanse of water to the opposite shore.

              ‘Sir, what did you see?’ said Dawson, fishing in his equipment pockets for a small pair of binoculars which he focused on the tree-line on the opposite bank.

              ‘Nothing yet, but those calls, can you hear them?’ said Haines.  Dawson nodded.  ‘Dryads.  It’s just like when I was in the jungle and they spotted the Shapers.  They’re making the exact same sounds.’

              ‘Maybe that’s the sound that they always make when they spot danger?’

              ‘Maybe.  Can’t be too careful though, Captain.’

              They waited for a few tense minutes.  The shrieking from the other side of the river continued in sporadic bursts of noise.  So far, they had seen nothing.  Haines was starting to wonder if he had been mistaken in calling a halt when Dawson pointed at something on the opposite bank and silently passed him the binoculars.

              There were figures moving under the trees.  They were soldiers dressed in the uniforms and light body armour of Orinoco’s Planetary Defence Force.  They moved oddly, like automatons, each with rail rifles gripped stiffly across their chests in the exact same position.  Dawson began using hand gestures to signal to the other marines about the presence of the new threat across the river.  They remained utterly silent.  Only a few hundred yards separated them from the enemy.  The PDF soldiers seemed to be searching the riverbank for something.  Haines saw a couple wade into the sluggish brown waters before they returned to the tree-line and vanished from view.

              ‘What d’you think, sir?  Do you think that they were looking for us?’ said Dawson, keeping his voice low.

              ‘Undoubtedly,’ Haines replied.  ‘But it looks like they misjudged our location and ended up on the wrong side of the river.  Are there any crossing points near here?’

              ‘There’s a bridge across the mouth of the river where it reaches the ocean to the west, but there’s not a lot of human settlement in this area, according to the maps that we have,’ Dawson whispered.  ‘There’s no bridge across for about another thirty clicks, of course that doesn’t preclude there being places where it might be shallow enough for them to wade across.’

              ‘I doubt that would stop the Shapers themselves, and they have air support too.  We need to keep moving... shit, look!’ Haines ended the sentence in a hiss and pointed.  One of the soldiers had re-appeared at the opposite river bank.  Another appeared behind him, then another and another.  The first man stepped forward to the edge of the water and began to wade in.  Soon, the water was above his waist and rising.  The others followed him.

              ‘What the fuck are they doing?’ whispered Dawson.  ‘It’s too deep to walk across and they can’t possibly swim with all that equipment, they’ll be dragged under.’

              ‘I think,’ said Haines.  ‘That that may not present them with a problem. Look.’

              As they watched, the first man’s head disappeared under the murky water.

              ‘Shit!’ whispered Dawson.  ‘How the hell...?’

              ‘They’re no longer really human, Captain,’ said Haines.  ‘I don’t think the usual rules apply any more.  They must have spotted us.  Air support is likely to be incoming.  So far I can’t see any actual Shapers at all.’

              ‘What do you want to do, sir?’

              ‘We can’t have these guys tailing us through the jungle back to your camp.  We need to take them out quickly and then melt away into the undergrowth.  If we’re lucky, we’ll manage it before any reinforcements show up.  Do we have anything that can take down an aerial vehicle?’

              ‘A couple of my men have been lugging man-portable anti-tank missiles around,’ said Dawson.  ‘They might work, I suppose, though they might just go straight through un-armoured vehicles without exploding.’

              ‘Well it’s worth a try if it comes to it.  Okay, Captain. Have your men take up defensive positions.  We need to take them down as they come out of the water.  They need to aim for the head, wounds to the rest of the body won’t do a great deal, trust me.’

              With Sergeant Philips organising them, the marines moved quietly amidst the undergrowth.  Though some remained in the positions that they had previously chosen, others move forwards to better firing positions.  One man, Corporal Antonov, carried the squad’s support weapon, a heavy rail gun.  He found a suitable rock to steady the rapid firing gun’s bipod against and trained it at the waterline, waiting for the enemy to emerge.  Haines reloaded his pistol and thumbed the safety off, feeling a little under-equipped next to the marines with their rifles, grenades and anti-armour weapons.  Eventually, they witnessed two dozen PDF troopers enter the river from the opposite bank.  There was a tense wait of several minutes before lines of bubbles began to break the surface of the muddy waters, and then the enemy attacked.