Story [Issue 81] Hek

[Hippin_in_Hawaii 639]

 

 
Hanging in the straps of her parachute, Hek concentrated on two things. First, keeping pressure on the wound in her thigh. There was a lot of blood coming out of that gash, and if she lost consciousness on the way down, she knew she’d never wake up again. Second, she was trying to take in the aerial view of the landscape, take note of prominent features, and most importantly, keep track of where their transport was crashing.

She managed to fumble her NetHand free from its pocket on her jacket and began snapping pictures of the jungle and her surroundings as she drifted down. She couldn’t see any other ‘chutes, but they were designed to blend into the sky, so that didn’t mean much. The smoky trail of the transport, though, was pretty easy to spot.

She stowed the device seconds before the first tree slapped her in the face with a stinging branch. She lifted both arms to shield her face and tried tucking herself into a ball as she crashed down through the upper branches, each impact a little more serious than the one before as the limbs she was plowing through got thicker.

She was yanked to a halt and felt herself swinging. Great. She quickly lowered her right hand to press on her wound again, then more cautiously lifted her face from behind the shelter of her left. Yep, she was flying. Or hanging. The ground looked a long way down. Looking above her, she could see the ‘chute clearly entangled in the tree’s arms. She bounced in the harness a couple of times, but nothing shifted. She was stuck.

Ok, fine. Stuck in a tree, wounded, and lost. Critical priority was to survive. At this second, the biggest threat was her leg and the blood pulsing from it. Hek pulled out her knife and gripped it between her teeth, then reached as far above her head as she could and grabbed a handful of the slender suspension lines connecting the harness to the entangled ‘chute above. She released pressure on her leg just long enough to cut several strands, maybe a meter and a half long.

Next she needed a pad of some sort. Since the leg of her pants was already ripped, and she would need to clear that area to proceed, it seemed like a good place to begin. Cutting the fabric free, one-handed, while dangling in a harness proved to be a bit of a challenge, but she did manage to salvage some fabric while exposing her thigh.

Taking a deep breath, and working quickly, she released the wound. Folding the cloth remnants into a thick square, she pressed it firmly onto the bloody gash then wrapped it tightly with the cord. Far from perfect, but it would let her work with both hands for the next few minutes.

Getting her backpack free from under the harness required some gymnastics; not dropping it required a small miracle. She managed both, then clipped the pack onto her harness to keep it safely by her side. Carefully, but quickly, she slipped her blood-covered hand inside. Years of training with this equipment had given her the familiarity to find what she needed by touch; the first aid kit was a cool, smooth rectangle. She slid it to the top of the pack and gently opened the lid.

There, a pressure bandage, that was what she needed. The paracord she’d used to bind the makeshift bandage was embedded in her flesh; she’d tied it a little too tightly. Deliberately, she slid the blade of her knife between her brown skin and the constricting cord, only nicking herself a little. The cloth pad fell free. She quickly sheathed the knife then applied the pressure bandage. As it auto-inflated and the blood stopped running, she allowed herself a sigh of relief.

She fished out a broad-spectrum antibiotic and swallowed it dry. She looked at the painkillers, but decided that a clear head was more important than quenching the burning sensation consuming her leg.

Ok, critical priority addressed. Following her training, Hek evaluated her status. Wounded; stuck in a tree; separated from the team; lost; carrying limited supplies. Next, she evaluated the situation. No immediate threat; no expected motivated hostility; environmental dangers probable.

Hek saw two immediate courses of action. Getting down from this tree was high on the list. Trying to contact her team was equally high. Since she seemed to be safe for the moment, and since getting down would be easier with some help, she reached for her NetHand. Its functionality would be limited without access to some form of network, but it was capable of short range direct radio contact.

She swiped to the radio app and hit the emergency pulse. A simple burst of broad-spectrum radio waves, it would trigger an alert on any receiving device. That was a risk, not knowing for sure what had caused their crash. It was possible that there were hostiles nearby who were responsible; if so, they would be alerted to Hek’s survival and her general direction. But intel marked this area as unclaimed; likely the only people with receivers would have been on the transport with her.

She waited five minutes, hanging there beneath the jungle canopy, before toggling the burst again. This time, a responding burst came within seconds. No contact, no voice, no text, just another burst. Coming from the… wait, which way was north? The map app in the NetHand was functional, but the thick tree canopy blocked line of sight to the GPS satellites. She could see where she had been when she entered the trees, but there was no directionality. She had a compass, an old-school magnetic needle, but it was buried in the backpack. She preferred not to risk spilling its contents from up here. Ok, the burst came from the direction of that big, rotten tree. She’d check the compass when her boots hit the ground.

Toggling to the text app, she thumbed “Hek:C3:MR:SB:NA” Hek: Condition 3 (moderately wounded): Mobility - Restricted: Situation - Benign: Need Assistance.

A few moments later came”Cro:C1:MX:SB:NA” Cro: Condition 1 (lightly wounded): Immobilized: Situation - Benign: Need Assistance.

Ok, so Cro was out there, but wouldn’t be coming to her aid. At least neither of them were in immediate danger. Sighing, she looked down. That had to be a ten meter drop; in peak shape, she could probably manage it without serious injury, but with her leg in the shape it was, that was a bad gamble. Looking around, she was only a few meters away from the tree trunk. Swinging over to grab it may be an option. Looking up, the limbs above her were certainly strong enough to support her weight, but were about five meters distant. Trying to pull herself up five meters of paracord didn’t sound all that appealing.

She pulled out her knife and, gathering several strands of cord, cut them loose, keeping as much length as she could. Tying the ends together, she attached one end of her makeshift rope to her backpack then began lowering it to the ground, mentally counting the distance as the cord passed through her hands. More like eight meters than ten; still, pretty far for a compromised leg. She let the remaining cord spool down, tying the end to her harness. Now the backpack wouldn’t interfere with her attempts to swing to safety, but she could still pull it up if needed.

Taking a deep breath, Hek began to wobble her body to and fro, slowly building up swinging momentum. It didn’t take long to realize that this was hopeless. It wasn’t as if she were a pendulum suspended on a single cable or a child on a swing; she was tethered to her chute in dozens of locations. It, in turn, was snagged in the tree in multiple spots. As she swung, the tension on one suspension line would loosen while another tightened, twisting the harness and changing her direction. While she may eventually be able to get enough momentum to reach the trunk, there was no chance she’d be able to control her facing, so the odds were that she’d simply batter herself silly.
 
Fine. Up it was.

Starting close to her harness and working up to the limit of her reach, Hek gathered cords that weren’t pulled taut and tied large loops in them. Using the freedom afforded by her dangling position, she slipped the foot of her uninjured left leg into the lowest loop, then began pulling herself up with her hands. It was difficult, of course. The cords were thin and slick, and her hands were coated with blood and sweat. Still, after a few minutes of straining, she was standing upright in that loop.

Pausing first to tie more loops as far up as she could reach, Hek then put her injured leg’s foot into the next loop up. Pulling with her arms, trying not to use the damaged leg at all, she elevated herself a few more centimeters. Then she shifted the other foot up a loop.

Step by step, with frequent pauses to add loops to her makeshift ladder, Hek rose into the awaiting embrace of the tree’s arms. Once there, she straddled the easiest branch to mount and took stock of her situation.

Shimmying to the trunk looked pretty straightforward. Going down would be challenging; the trunk was pretty smooth, and larger around than her arms would reach. A climbing strap would be needed, which the webbing of her harness could certainly supply. First, though, she needed to recover as much of the ‘chute as possible. There was no denying that the silk and the cords could be useful.

Once on the ground, Hek packed the remains of the parachute as tightly as she could, shoving them and the harness into a small sack. Retrieving her compass from the depths of the backpack, she determined that Cro was roughly south by southeast. Using the NetHand’s mapping app, and comparing the map with the images she’d snapped from the air, her best guess was that the wreckage of the transport was east of her. The GPS was still useless, not having access to clear skies. She dropped a pin at her last confirmed location and enabled the inertial tracking. It wouldn’t be accurate, but some reference was better than no reference.

Going to find Cro would be out of the way, but clearly she had little choice. Thumbing over to text mode, she sent “EnRCro.” En Route to Cro. Then, casting about, she found a broken limb that would make a suitable walking stick. She set about trimming it and shaping it a little with her knife, then wrapped some silk from the ‘chute around the grip.

While she was working on that, another emergency pulse flared on the screen. Still coming from SxSE. Pulling her backpack over her shoulders, Hek limped forward into the jungle.

She’d done survival training in the jungle before, more than once. All of them had. Hek had hated it. The stifling heat, the suffocating humidity, the constant physical labor of pushing through undergrowth and tangles of vines, the swarms of biting insects, the cobwebs, the ants… it was a nightmare. The soldier in her mind took all of those distractions and shoved them relentlessly into a tiny box, safely away where they wouldn’t interfere with the business at hand. Find a path. Be alert for dangers. Stay alive.

After an hour, her NetHand chimed. Cro had sent another emergency pulse, pretty much on schedule. Good, that meant he was functioning, alert, and observing protocol. She compared the direction with her compass; the signal was almost due south now. Clearly she’d drifted off course, but that was to be expected. With the foliage so dense, there was no direct path possible. She was constantly circling around giant trees, or bypassing patches of thorns, or following a game trail that provided easier movement but wasn’t quite leading the right direction. Adjusting her bearing, she continued on.

The terrain was ever so slightly downhill, a fact that she noted and filed away. Whatever was downhill on the way out would be uphill on the way back.

An hour later, the device chimed again. She paused to consult it. Almost due west now. She had passed him, or was currently passing him. “SigA2,” she sent. Signal twice by audio. She paused and listened intently. Nothing. But the jungle was dense, and full of sound. He could be 50 meters away and she wouldn’t necessarily hear anything. So she headed west.  

The ground was considerably wetter here. Her booted feet sank a couple of centimeters into the ground, and pulled free with sucking noises. The large trees were still omni-present obstacles, but the undergrowth was definitely thinning.

After 20 minutes, she resent the same text. This time, ahead and to the right, she faintly heard the artificial wail of a NetHand siren. Good, she was really close. “SigR.” Signal received. She pressed forward. Ten minutes later, she heard it again, still ahead and still slightly to the right, but much more clearly audible.

“SigV,” she texted.

“Hek!” came a man’s voice, close, almost straight ahead.

“X,” she texted.

“Slow and easy!” came the voice.

Hek moved forward with extra caution. The ground dragged at her boots, pulling them deeper with each step. She began staying closer to the trunks of the great trees, stepping on their roots when possible. Then she could see a ‘chute, tangled in the branches ahead, its empty harness only a few meters above the ground. Already anticipating what was coming next, she continued forward slowly.

There, in the middle of a clearing, and buried almost to his chest in treacherous black muck, was Cro.
 

Mahalo (thank you) for reading; I hope you enjoyed! This story is part of a series. Information on the series, and links to the other stories, can be found here.

[LyT 222]

Nice.

[P.4.R.K.O.U.R 329]

How the Hek do you write so wonderfully?

[Hippin_in_Hawaii 639]

How the Hek do you write so wonderfully?

I see what you did there!

[Maverick_Storm_Xian 5]

How the Hek do you write so wonderfully?

:lol: good pun...and great job to the person who wrote this ;)

[thethiefofvictory 339]

I've finally read this and well... great story as always!

[P.4.R.K.O.U.R 329]

At least the other guy's name wasn't Croc.

Imagine, Hek rescued Croc from sinking in the mud. :lol:

[Hippin_in_Hawaii 639]

At least the other guy's name wasn't Croc.

Imagine, Hek rescued Croc from sinking in the mud. :lol:

Rats! I missed a real opportunity there!

[3dL 454]

Nice job and Good luck

[ILiveOnTheChatBox123 936]

 

Fine. Up it was.

 

 

You could have named the other guy Up-and then it would be "Fine. Up it was to get down and find Up."

Rats! I missed a real opportunity there!