Sarah Pauling was one of the first to get shot; she and Andrea Gell-Mann were ambushed as they were scouting a small valley. Pauling went down immediately, shot in the head and the neck; Gell-Mann managed to identify the locations of the shooters before a trio of shots in the chest and abdomen brought her down. In both cases their integration with the rest of the squad collapsed; it felt as if they were ripped out bodily from the squad’s pooled consciousness. Others fell in short order, gutting the squad and sending its remaining members into disarray.
It was a bad war game for the 8th.
Jerry Yukawa compounded the problem by getting shot in the leg. The training suit he was wearing registered the “hit” and froze the mobility to the limb; Yukawa fell midstride and barely kicked his way behind the boulder Katherine Berkeley had gotten behind a few seconds before.
::You were supposed to lay down suppressing fire,:: Yukawa said, accusingly.
::I did,:: Berkeley said. ::I am. There is one of me and five of them. You do better::
The five members of the 13th Training Squad who had trapped Yukawa and Berkeley behind the boulder sent another volley their way. The members of the 13th felt the simulated mechanical kick of their training rifles while their BrainPals visually and aurally simulated the bullets tearing down the tiny cul-de-sac of a valley; Yukawa and Berkeley’s BrainPals correspondingly simulated some of these bullets smacking the bulk of the boulder and others whining as they shot past. The bullets weren’t real but they were as real as fake could get.
::We could use a little help here,:: Yukawa said to Steven Seaborg, who was the commander for the exercise.
::We hear you,:: Seaborg said, and then turned to look at Jared, his only other surviving soldier, who was standing mutely looking at him. Four members of the 8th were still standing (only figuratively speaking in the case of Yukawa), while seven members of the 13th were roaming the forest. The odds weren’t good.
::Stop looking at me like that,:: Seaborg said. ::This isn’t my fault.::
::I didn’t say anything,:: Jared said.
::You were thinking it,:: Seaborg said.
::I wasn’t thinking it, either,:: Jared said. ::I was reviewing data.::
::Of what?:: Seaborg asked.
::Of how the 13th moves and thinks,:: Jared said. ::From the other members of the 8th before they died. I’m trying to see if there’s something we can use.::
::Can you do it a little quicker?:: Yukawa said. ::Things are looking mighty bleak on this end.::
Jared looked over to Seaborg. Seaborg sighed. ::Fine,:: he said. ::I’m open to suggestion. What have you got.::
::You’re going to think I’m crazy,:: Jared said. ::But there’s something I’ve noticed. So far, neither us or them look up very much.::
Seaborg looked up into the forest canopy, looking at the sunlight peek through the canopy of native Terran trees and their Phoenix equivalent, thick, bamboo-like stalks that threw off impressive branches. The two types of flora did not compete genetically—they were naturally incompatible because they developed on different worlds—but they competed for sunlight, reaching as far into the sky as possible and branching thickly to offer scaffolding for leaves and leaf-equivalents to do their photosynthetic work.
::We don’t look up because there’s nothing up there but trees,:: Seaborg said.
Jared started counting off seconds in his head. He got as far as seven before Seaborg said, ::Oh.::
::Oh,:: Jared agreed. He popped up a map. ::We’re here. Yukawa and Berkeley are here. There’s forest all the way between here and there.::
::And you think we can get from here to there in the trees,:: Seaborg said.
::That’s not the question,:: Jared said. ::The question is whether we can do it fast enough to keep Yukawa and Berkeley alive, and quietly enough not to get ourselves killed.::
Jared quickly discovered that walking through the trees was an idea better in theory than in execution. He and Seaborg almost fell twice within the first two minutes; moving from branch to branch required rather more coordination then either expected. The Phoenix trees’ branches were not nearly as load bearing as they assumed and the Terran trees featured a surprising number of dead branches. Their progress was slower and louder than they would have liked.