Chapter 89. A Path Through Traps
Our advance through the alien jungle could hardly be called a march. It felt more like an endless combat engineer operation. The point team swept every yard for hidden traps and tripwires while the riflemen constantly looked up, scanning the thick canopy for Loz'an guerrillas. As if that was not enough, we also had to deal with one more headache handed down from above: the Corps' strict collateral damage protocol. According to regulations, research teams would move in after we secured the area to collect local plants and wildlife for laboratory study with as little disturbance as possible. Headquarters was not run by complete idiots, of course. Everyone understood that if someone was firing heavy weapons at you, no soldier was expected to protect every bush. Still, with the fighting temporarily quiet, the platoon dutifully skirted clusters of glowing berries and strange, slime-covered mushrooms.
With all those restrictions, we had already been averaging about a mile an hour. Now, stripped of our armor's technological support, we slowed to an absolute crawl. Before, everyone had an invisible safety net in the back of their minds. Even if you tripped a wire or ran straight into an enemy patrol, the armor reacted in a fraction of a second. One button press was enough to throw up an energy shield around you. Now that safety net was gone. Only four people in the entire platoon could rely on personal defenses, those capable of generating barriers from their own internal reserves. Even Mary, for all her celebrated genius, could produce nothing more than an unstable energy film that would collapse under any serious hit. Knowing how exposed we were made even the veterans inspect every suspicious leaf twice.
"Danny, you mentioned once that on a normal combat op, when you're not dragging a bunch of green recruits behind you, clearing an area works differently," I said to my former handler. We had stopped again while the scouts up ahead were practically crawling through the undergrowth, examining another suspicious patch inch by inch. "If our group wasn't part of the equation, how would the platoon handle this mission?"
"Oh, man, it'd be a completely different story. Faster, rougher, none of this careful crap." Danny answered without hesitation, wiping sticky sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. In this suffocating steam bath and dead silence, he looked ready to grab onto any conversation just to kill the boredom. "On a real combat mission, the colonel wouldn't keep the infantry sitting around forever. He'd send me and a couple of the other guys cleared for flight straight to their base. We'd come in from the air and start crushing those green bastards in their own nest while everyone else waited here in the safe zone until their armor came back online. Fifteen minutes of hard work, and we'd already be back at base drinking ice-cold Cokes from the vending machine."
Danny delivered that last line with such genuine longing that a low murmur rolled through the veterans. Between the relentless heat and the endless waiting, everyone's brains were starting to melt, and they listened to his stories like teenagers hearing a radio report from the beaches of Malibu.
"But nope, no easy life for us," Danny said with exaggerated sympathy, spreading his hands as several burly veterans let out synchronized sighs. "If us old-timers do all the dirty work ourselves, what are you rookies supposed to get out of this little field trip? You won't learn a damn thing. So on your first mission, the rulebook says everybody sweats together."
"Got it. Thanks for explaining." I gave him a quick nod.
Just then the scouts signaled the path was clear, and we advanced another ten yards before Leon raised his fist again, bringing the platoon to a stop. The colonel did not like the strange bend in the purple grass ahead. Just because every electronic system in the area was dead did not mean the danger was gone. The Loz'an were perfectly capable of building crude mechanical traps out of sticks and whatever else they had lying around, and Tech Sense could not detect those.
"Oh, come on! At this rate we'll still be stuck here by Christmas!" Ted groaned, throwing his head back as his voice cracked into an exaggerated whine.
Surprisingly, none of the veterans even bothered to snap at him for sounding like a spoiled teenager. Apparently the endless stops had gotten on everyone's nerves, and he had simply said what they were all thinking.
"Hey, Danny, I've learned everything already, I swear!" Ted declared, thumping his fist against his chest plate with a dull clang. "Why don't you just fly over there and fry those green freaks yourself? Or take Mary with you! She can fly too, and she's amazing at turning aliens into wall decorations!"
Ted gave Mary a friendly slap on the shoulder with all the fearless familiarity of an obnoxious teenager. She barely reacted, simply rolling her shoulder enough to shrug off his hand. But, surprisingly, she stayed silent. No cutting remark. No icy glare. It seemed this climate had finally worn down even our little ice queen, leaving her too drained for her usual arrogance.
"You know, bro, that's actually a pretty solid plan," Danny said with a wink. "Seriously, what haven't you seen by now? You know what color a Loz'an's brains are. You've sweated your ass off in the jungle? Check. You've been in a firefight? More than enough."
"See? I knew you were cool!" Ted beamed behind the clear visor of his helmet. "Grab the shorty and go wreck 'em! I've got total faith in you, man!"
"I'll get right on that," Danny replied in a perfectly straight voice, barely hiding a grin. "Here's what you do. Go pitch that brilliant tactical masterpiece to Colonel Stewart over there, and the second he gives me written approval, I'll be airborne and roasting green asses."
"Ask the colonel...?" Ted slowly turned toward Leon. The colonel stood only a couple of yards away, taking vicious drags from a cigarette while muttering a nonstop stream of curses about the local wildlife, his radio, and headquarters. Ted visibly flinched and instinctively hunched his shoulders. "Dude... you're messing with me, aren't you?"
"A little," Danny admitted with a chuckle as he adjusted his gear. "But seriously, without a direct order from the CO, I can't leave my trainees for even a second. That's the rule."
"Looks like I'll be celebrating my sixteenth birthday in these damn bushes," Ted concluded in the tone of someone reading his own obituary, drawing genuine laughter from several nearby veterans.
The sound of branches being pushed aside snapped my attention back to Leon. The colonel stood at the edge of a concealed pit the point team had just uncovered. A classic punji pit. A thin layer of branches and broad purple leaves hid sharpened stakes driven into the ground below, each fitted with a thermal tip. Primitive, but brutally effective. If a fully equipped adult stepped onto it, the spikes would punch straight through the soles of their boots, and the thermal charge would burn flesh down to the bone in an instant. Crude, but devastating.
"Kim, get down there and collect those tips," Leon ordered, studying the dull glint of metal at the bottom of the pit. "The charges haven't armed yet, so they're stable. They'll make good battlefield salvage until we get the S-Guns back online."
"Yes, sir!" Danny snapped off an overly dramatic salute, throwing his hand to his temple. It was obvious the endless waiting had him climbing the walls, and he was grateful for anything that gave him something to do.
While the scouts carefully checked the next ten yards of ground, I silently watched our handler at work. Danny drifted smoothly to the bottom of the pit and began easing the stakes out of the packed earth one at a time, careful not to make any sudden movements, then passed them up to the support team. The key was not to trip the pressure sensor built into each tip.
Everything went according to plan until the third stake. Danny either lost focus or tugged a little too hard. A sharp click echoed through the pit, and the metal in his hand instantly flared white-hot. The linked trigger activated. Every remaining tip buried in the ground ignited at once, turning the bottom of the pit into a blazing furnace.
"Ah, hell, that's hot!" Danny instantly wrapped himself in a dense aura of flame and shot out of the pit like a rocket. "Sorry, Colonel. Guess I wasn't exactly surgeon material today. The rest went to... uh... they all activated."
"Don't give a damn," Leon muttered, spitting into the pit as waves of heat and the smell of scorched metal rolled upward. "The science nerds can deal with that melted junk. Not our problem."
"Look out!" one of the scouts suddenly shouted from up ahead.
He had snagged a nearly invisible purple cord stretched through the grass. High above, a massive log studded with the same thermal spikes broke free from the branches of an alien oak and came crashing down with a heavy whistle. The impact armed the sensors exactly as intended. The log became a blazing battering ram and slammed into a neighboring trunk, instantly turning the ancient tree into a roaring column of white fire. If anyone had been standing there, nothing would have been left but a handful of ash. Pure carbon.
"Kim, put that thing out!" Leon barked, shielding his face from the blast of heat. "It's hard enough to breathe out here without setting the whole jungle on fire."
Danny casually snapped his fingers, and the flames consuming the tree simply disappeared, as though they had never existed. It was an incredibly practical ability. No wonder the Corps regularly called on Danny to deal with forest fires. With his level of control, the job took only seconds.
The platoon started moving again, slowing its pace even further.
"First punji pits, now tripwires," Danny grumbled as he carefully stepped over a tangle of vines. "Feels like we're not fighting some high-tech alien race. Feels like we got dropped into damn Vietnam."
"Seriously, man, I'm getting Saigon flashbacks already!" Ted chimed in, sweeping his useless S-Gun across the upper branches. "Any second now the gooks are gonna come pouring out of those bushes!"
Without thinking, Danny slapped Ted's outstretched hand, and I quietly added another entry to the ever-growing file labeled Astonishing Levels of Immaturity.
"My God, Drake, do you ever think before you open your mouth?" Mary rolled her eyes, and the familiar icy edge returned to her voice. "Flashbacks? The Vietnam War ended long before your parents even knew each other."
"Oh, relax, shrimp. The combat veterans are talking," Ted shot back with effortless familiarity, completely oblivious to how ridiculous he sounded.
"Has this heat actually cooked your brain?" Mary turned toward him, genuine concern bordering on clinical curiosity in her expression. "You're just as green as I am. We're exactly the same."
"Not anymore." Ted flashed a smug grin as he adjusted his grip on the S-Gun. "I've got one confirmed Loz'an officer kill. That officially puts me way ahead of you in combat experience."
"I immobilized him and held him there," Mary reminded him, struggling to keep the irritation out of her voice as her fingers tightened around the grip of her weapon. "It was a team kill. We both earned it."
"Guess you've never played video games," Ted said with a smug snort. "Everybody knows the XP and the kill go to whoever lands the finishing blow. That's called kill stealing, baby."
"Nerd." Mary turned away with theatrical disgust and deliberately moved several steps farther from him, as though standing too close might somehow damage her reputation.
"Takes one to know one... squirt," Ted shot back.
"For the love of..." Leon's deep voice cut through the childish bickering. "We've got another damn surprise."
The platoon stopped at once. Another freshly dug pit blocked our path, its bottom lined with sharpened stakes.
"So, I'm playing archaeologist again, boss?" Danny asked, peering into it with obvious dread.
"To hell with that." Leon spat onto the purple moss and checked the timer. "We've crawled three hundred yards in forty minutes. At this rate we'll be camping here until morning, and I've got no intention of feeding the local mosquitoes. Kim, fire up those burners and torch everything for a mile straight ahead. Clear us a path."
"You serious, Colonel?" Danny raised an eyebrow. "You know I'm always up for a good fireworks show. But after I'm done, this place'll be nothing but slag and scorched earth. The Corps scientists are gonna skin us alive for wiping out all the rare specimens we came here to collect."
"I don't care. I'll send them a pressed flower," Leon replied flatly. "I'm not risking my people's lives on tripwires just so some lab rats can squeeze another bottle of cough syrup out of this jungle. Burn it."
A murmur of approval spread through the exhausted soldiers. The idea of walking across clean ash instead of through another maze of traps appealed to everyone. My perfect endurance and stable metabolism, however, kept my mind functioning at peak efficiency. Destroying valuable resources was an inefficient solution.
"Colonel, there's no tactical need for a scorched-earth approach," I said calmly as I stepped out of formation and closed the distance between us. "I can eliminate the delay. I'll take point and personally neutralize every trap along the route."
Leon slowly turned toward me, his lone eye narrowing with open suspicion.
"Ross, you're volunteering to be the guinea pig again? What's your trick this time?"
"Nothing extraordinary, sir. Just process optimization. I'll make use of a specific aspect of my Awakened ability. I should warn you, though. It may look... unusual."
"Unusual? How so?"
"I'll shift my mind into a state of absolute concentration. My entire awareness will be devoted to the task. I'll stop responding to outside distractions and background noise. Nothing but pure calculation will remain."
Leon silently weighed my explanation for a few seconds. "Ah, hell. You really are a computer in human skin. So let me get this straight. This'll get us through these damn jungles at a normal pace and leave all these damn bushes intact for the science crowd?"
"Exactly, sir."
"Then why the hell are you still standing here wasting my time?" Leon gave me a brief, predatory grin. "Move, Ross. Let's see your magic trick. Carry it out."
I acknowledged the command. My consciousness instantly shut out the background noise, the soldiers' voices, the oppressive heat, and every trace of fatigue.
[Special Command: Advance along designated vector. Eliminate threats and neutralize enemy traps at maximum operational efficiency.]