CHAPTER 30
Rich Dalton felt reasonably rested despite late guard duty. He did have a second cup of coffee, and damn, the Bykos had good field coffee. With some sausage and biscuits, he was in good shape for PT before drawing a ray gun for hunting detail.
The captain had said, “Get us something tasty we can roast old style.”
With Oglesby along, he found a bush overlooking the trees and hunkered down into a comfortable position for shooting. Then he did the man thing of “nothing.” He let his mind go blank. Next to him, Oglesby was as motionless, staring.
Shortly, the other man tapped his leg and pointed very carefully.
Near the woodline to the west foraging for food was a young, tender-looking deer. Hunting became so much easier with a Byko blaster. Rich slowly raised the weapon, and the animal tensed slightly, but at this range he was certainly out of arrowshot. The stag had no reason to believe he was at risk yet.
Rich pointed the gun and squeezed. There was a thump, a rush of air, and the deer fell over, dead.
It really wasn’t sporting. But, it was a good way to feed people.
Next to him, Oglesby said, “Nice shot!”
“Thanks. Let’s bundle it.”
If they were quick, they wouldn’t even need to gut it here.
He unrolled the sled, as they called it, that was more slippery than snot on ice, and made it easy to drag the corpse across the terrain. They were only about a kilometer from camp.
Ten minutes later they reached the wards. Nothing looked dangerous, but the camp was upgraded.
Rich entered the perimeter and paused. They’d barely been gone an hour.
The wards were wider, covering more area. Everything inside was mowed to lawn level. Brush was trimmed and stacked as kindling. Several scrub trees had apparently been sacrificed to make a pile of firewood. All the rocks were around the fireplace, or part of a cairn in one corner. Tents had been relocated into the previous layout. A tethered balloon and orbiting drone watched from above. The CQ was as it had been, with a trench from the shower running downhill to a sump covered with more rocks.
That pole with a hose appeared to be some sort of well or siphon, probably to ensure they had enough water. The vehicles and awning collected runoff and dew, but that composed a limited supply.
Okay, the Bykos had erected another enclosure. That’s what had changed. He dollied the carcass over to Roller Two, for Raven and Arnet to prep, and paused again.
“What’s going on in the new tent?” he asked.
Arnet replied, “Hot tub,” as he bent over the deer and flicked a knife blade out from his combination tool.
Rich was taken aback. “You have a hot tub?”
Arnet was busy bleeding the deer, but said, “Yes, packed in the vehicle, but it takes a couple of days to process up and down, so I didn’t want to pitch it until we were confirmed in a location.”
Rich complained, “You let us struggle for weeks building ours, piece by piece.”
“It kept everyone occupied and focused,” Arnet pointed out.
“Yeah, but—”
“And you had a sense of accomplishment when finished.” The man sounded so reasonable.
Dr. Raven started pulling out entrails and cutting them free.
“Granted, but dammit…”
“Also, we didn’t have one in the vehicle. I added the necessary struts on this mission.”
Son of a…“You’re a…prankster, Arnet.”
The man didn’t look up, but replied, “I believe you meant to say ‘asshole.’”
Raven giggled.
“I meant it, but I try not to say it. It’s crass.”
“We were on a field exercise then and only had limited kit aboard.”
“Wait, so your limited exercise kit includes a shower, mineral fabricator for booze, and porn?”
The tall man stood at last, and replied, “Yes. Are you bothered?”
“No, more like jealous.”
“Sanitation and recreation are critical to maintaining peak operating health.”
“Yeah, but our logistics can’t support that yet.”
“Anyway, the tub is open if you want to shower and get in.”
“Shorts or naked?”
“No one is wearing clothes I know of, and none are needed.”
He rather preferred something over his junk, but once in the water, no one would see, and he didn’t want to be That Guy. He dropped gear in his tent and walked back to the rec tent in shorts. He opened the flap to find it was a vestibule, and stepped through the second door. Inside it was lit, with an inflated and framed tub with a stepladder, and an area for sitting and dressing.
The tub was big enough for five at a time, but the other half of the tent had a floor, seats, and warm air. This had to be using some power. He sat on the bench next to Spencer, and waited.
Spencer said, “We’re doing ten-minute rotations. And damn, this feels good as you get old. A hot shower is amazing. This is like being Caesar.”
“Yeah, I remember last time, the shock and thrill. I actually haven’t been in one since.”
Doc called, “Time!” and thumbed the current occupants out.
At the tub, he focused on the women. Caswell was actually quite shapely, and better than last time. He did prefer women who shaved and trimmed. Oyo was very hot, long and leggy and lean. Noirot was in good shape with some stretch marks but had less figure. On the bench, Sheridan was flat-out unattractive in the face, and ugly in the body. He didn’t want to be judgmental, but she didn’t fit his type.
The men were just men, and he’d have been fine showering naked. That was typical for the field. It was having women along as well that complicated things. Had it been all women, that would have been fine, too. The mix felt inappropriate.
The recoverees seemed both thrilled with the tub, and very, very jealous. Five years they’d been here, from their point of view, and they had been fully native the entire time.
Captain Elliott said, “One week to go. Routine schedules all around, relax time after dinner, and we’ll shortly be in the Bykos’ time.”
“I’ll be thrilled to see it,” Maldonado said.
“You will,” Sergeant Spencer assured him. “Though culturally it’s a shock. They don’t have to wait for anything. The coffee is served before you even finish asking, for example. If you want a steak, it might take ten minutes, but sometimes only three.”
“And the architecture,” Sheridan offered from the bench. “It’s weird. Not even free-form. They don’t look like buildings, just blobs and angles, all pure art. But inside they’re total sci-fi.”
Ten minutes was enough for now. He felt very refreshed, his skin tingly. The tub had some combination of salts and minerals to keep it clean and invigorating. It really was therapeutic.
What Sean Elliott thought of as the upper management tended to hang out in the CQ. He had to be here to log absolutely everything for the Byko leadership and the Army. Cryder did his with a combination of video feed, voice, and text with finger swipes. Arnet monitored drones and operations. Doc was here because all the clinic equipment was here. Sergeant Spencer liked having a good view of the troops to keep an eye on them. Sergeant Caswell did a great job of tuning recipes to suit twenty-first-century Americans. The Byko choices were strongly flavored and weird. Both Arnet and Cryder agreed they could tolerate her recipe choices.
At present, Dr. Raven was skinning out the deer and removing certain parts. They had a rotisserie to mount the main carcass on. She explained as she cut.
“It’s a fresh kill, but it’s had a couple of hours above fifty degrees, which should be okay for aging. We need a lot of salt in the cavity, with crushed herbs, and we’ll tie it closed. Then that pepper and sesame paste can go on the outside with more salt.”
Caswell said, “That’s a lot of salt.”
Raven shook her head. “Not per mass it’s not. There’s forty pounds of muscle meat here, plus the organs.”
Sean asked, “Are we going to use those?”
“Not the brains. I don’t think there’s prions here, but who wants to find out, or start a trend? I have a sample to look at later. I can make a pie or stew with roast meat, veggies, kidneys, and liver if anyone wants it. I can tolerate liver and onions, but I won’t ever ask for it. I tried both in London. Once. Heart and tongue are okay, but not impressive.”
Caswell said, “Yeah, we wound up using everything. Liver went into sausage in sparing amounts. It’s strong.”
Spencer offered, “I’m told impala liver and scrambled eggs is popular with big-game hunters. No thanks.”
With his approval, four of the recoverees spent the morning digging a shallow pit and prepping the pile of firewood for roasting coals. Spencer took his machete and with surprisingly few cuts turned two limbs into rests. The spit had a larger end with flats cut on it that enabled steady resting with each partial rotation. This accomplished the twin goals of a good meal and keeping troops occupied. They had a week to go. Still, that was all that was left.
He turned to Cryder. “We’ve got a week until departure. How did six weeks get used up that fast?”
“That’s part of why we had that window. Estimating between longest safe operation time and longest search time.”
“Yeah, I guess it’s a good thing you did. We’d hate to have run out of time on the Germans, and could easily have needed more time with Shug or the cave.”
Cryder said, “I set the wards to work both ways. No one can exit without my key. If no one tries, we won’t hear anything about this. If they do, they’ll be stunned, and we’ll know who to watch.”
“I understand. I’ll make sure we stay inside. It’s roomy enough for a walk.”
Cryder sounded deadly serious as he elaborated, “We can’t leave anyone behind, or risk leaving others who are trying to recover them.”
“Definitely. I’ll have them bust ass making the camp neat, then see if we can watch movies or other entertainment for the remainder.”
“Last hunting trip tomorrow,” the man warned in conclusion.
“Understood.”
It was a small cantonment, and six days and a wakeup to go. He still wasn’t used to the wards, with no physical barricade against threats. He understood it was adjustable for outside, anything from invisible to opaque to making the camp invisible. His brain wanted a fence, palisade, abatis, trench and earthwork, something.
They had an area right about thirty meters across. A quick calculation showed it at just about a quarter of an acre. That was all the bivouac space they had, and nowhere else to go.
Oglesby went out with Arnet on Roller Two to drag back a substantial dead tree. They all chopped it up for firewood using machetes and axes, which killed a good chunk of a day, and counted as exercise.
That night was venison stew with ground and chunked meat, reconstituted potatoes, carrots and peas, and huge chunks of crusty bread. Off to the side, Dr. Raven ate venison plain with a slice of something not-bread that Arnet had made from coconut flour.
She looked pleased, and said, “I need the recipe for this. It’s almost like real bread.”
The man smiled. “Glad you enjoy it. Yes, that’s an easy recipe and we can share it.”
“Thank you!”
It was pleasant enough to big-screen a movie outside, so they sat and sprawled and watched Iron Man. The response was enthusiastic.
The next day was full of baked goods including cookies, and an evening dance party. There was as much recreation as work, but they had to keep everyone focused on something.
Two days out, departure countdown started seriously. Much of the gear was cleaned, prepped, and put away. The hot tub and tent came down. The wards were reduced in perimeter to bring things in closer. Cryder marked a spot on the ground and a radius around it.
“That’s where we’ll transition from,” he explained.
Sean remembered last time had been similar, but he wanted to make sure. “What is the circular error probable on that?”
The man grinned his usual grin. It was reassuring, not smug, but always carried a hint of condescension.
“As last time, I’ve gone small and they go large. It’ll be fine.”
Sean felt he needed to justify that. “Good. Just nervous.”
Cryder admitted, “I am, too, but we’ve done this before.”
The morning of departure day, everyone lined up for what should be the last field breakfast. Rich Dalton offered a brief prayer, and others joined him.
“Holy Father, we thank you for our friends and technology that enable this recovery, even if their misuse caused it. We’ve all learned and grown, and forged strong friendships and trust. We appreciate Your support and wisdom in this sequence of events, and look forward to our return to our friends’ world, before returning to our own. Amen.”
As he finished, Captain Elliott announced, “I’ll brief while you serve and eat. After this, tents come down, vehicles get packed. We’ll mark a latrine area with a screen. We’ll have water on the vehicles. Everything buttons up, and we stand in the redeployment area. There’s margin of error, so we hope it’s on time, but it may be a bit early or a lot later. All we can do is wait for it to happen. Wards will come down, so we’ll have sentries against wildlife. Fireplace has to be dismantled. Stand by for instructions. We’re going home.”
There was a definite wave of elation through everyone, notably Uhiara, Keisuke, Hamilton, and Burnham.
A gust of cold wind blew leaves from trees. Temperatures were dropping fast now. They hadn’t had the color change he was used to back home. A hint of color, brown, and down.
Within an hour everything was stowed, lashed, or crated. Arnet was atop Roller Two with the mounted weapon, and something else with a large bore.
“Bring me the fireplace rocks,” he ordered.
Rich had a guess, but he watched as troops eagerly grabbed the still-warm stones and brought them over.
At a gesture, he tossed them up to Arnet, who did something with the large bore tube, and then THOONK!, launched one across the landscape to cheers from the soldiers. He followed that with another. In a couple of minutes, they were all scattered distant. That was a hoot. A giant air cannon.
Cryder ran one of his tools over the ashes and scorched ground and churned it up. It didn’t seem that a single fireplace would be much of an issue, even if it survived thousands of years. As last time, though, the Guardians erased all traces. It was just their OPSEC.
With that done, Cryder waved everyone inside the transfer point. Lozano and Munoz were in Byko restraints that seemed to be cuffs and shackles magnetically bound to a guide bot on the ground in front of him. They looked pissed. They’d struggled once or twice, and seemed to accept it was impossible to escape. Kita was on a leash her mother held, and didn’t seem bothered.
Rich hoped the future would offer what the past and present couldn’t. He wanted Lozano to find a way out of his sins by himself, not be forced to comply. Though if that’s what it took to stop him from going after tween girls, then force was certainly a valid option. Judgment was the Lord’s, but it was reasonable to assist in the Earthly elements of some of it.
They had a time tick in twenty-seven minutes.