Story Neighbors [Fanfic in the Tankiverse]

[Hippin_in_Hawaii 639]

 

Previous Chapters:

Hek

Cro

Imp

 

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Imp stood watch. He had shimmied up into a tree and wedged himself into a crotch where a great limb protruded. with his back to the mire, and his legs straddling the limb, Imp had an excellent view of anything approaching their camp.

Below, and a little to the left, the tiny campfire flickered. Both Cro and Hek were deep asleep, wrapped in mylar, like breakfast burritos, heads pillowed on their packs. Numerous small critters had come to explore the area and take advantage of the fire’s warmth. Imp found that worrisome. It wasn’t that the furry visitors presented any danger, but wild animals tend to be afraid of threats, and both humans and fire usually fell into that category. The fact that so many would venture into a campsite spoke volumes.

Imp allowed himself to doze lightly. He was no stranger to sleeping in trees. As a child, his grandfather would often park him in a tree hours before dawn, rifle in hand, so as to have a shot at various wild animals out for their morning forage. Imp hadn’t fallen out of a tree since he was seven.

The night passed uneventfully. As the surrounding jungle changed its music and the sky began to lighten, Imp slid down the trunk and walked quietly over to his sleeping comrades. He gently lifted the mylar sheets to peer beneath. Sure enough, coiled up next to Hek was a small python, savoring the warmth. It looked at him as the blanket lifted, opening its mouth in a hostile display.

“Go on, now,” Imp said quietly, moving to his left so as to give the snake a clear escape route. “Go freeload somewhere else.” The snake fled into the woods. Imp moved on to check Cro for uninvited guests, but Cro was alone under his sheet.

Imp tossed a few more limbs on the dying embers of the campfire, not being particularly quiet about it. Both Hek and Cro began to stir.

“Oooooowwwwww,” moaned Cro.

“You said it,” grunted Hek. “Gods above, that hurts!” She sat up and reached for her leg.

“You two get oriented, then I’ll head out,” Imp said, slipping a protein bar from his pack.

“Head out? Where are you going?” asked Cro.

“He’s going to look for Mac, silly,” said Hek. “Try not to talk anymore until your brain wakes up. Not that there’s likely to be much difference.”

Imp smiled. If they were fighting, they’d be fine. He shouldered his pack and headed west, setting his NetHand to issue emergency pulses every 15 minutes.

Once he reached the watercourse, Imp turned north, following it upstream this time. There was no shortage of animal life, most of it working on finding breakfast for the day. Imp ghosted through the brush, trying not to disturb anything’s morning routine. He made sure to scavenge as he went, plucking ripe fruits and pulling edible bulbs as he came across them. There was ample food here, if you knew what you were looking for.

An outside observer would see a man moving deliberately through the foliage: his steps carefully chosen so as not to make noise; his body sliding effortlessly between outreaching branches or fronds; his face a study in serenity. It would seem almost a choreographed dance, a ballet, a display of grace completely at odds with the formidable character performing it. And it would be completely deceptive. Although his face was placid and his movements refined, Imp’s mind was racing.

One part was simply absorbing and processing. This was a largely unconscious effort, a skill that he had learned (like so many things) from his grandfather. The jungle was speaking, and Imp was listening. The scratch marks on that tree likely came from a cat. Not large enough to be a threat, maybe worth stalking to make a meal. The gnawed-off fern stalks spoke of a small herbivore, maybe a rodent. Rooting in the soil came from pigs; a small sounder had grazed here yesterday. Those bent fronds meant something large had pushed through the thicket; the small tuft of fur suggested another cat, this one much larger. His grandfather had called this the Tao of Hunting. Imp doubted that the old man had ever studied Tao, but what was in a name? That which we call a rose, etc, etc.

A second part of his mind was pulling and chewing at the small handful of facts Imp had, and the long list of questions he needed answered. Why would someone choose to crash the transport here? Was Mac part of it? If not, why wasn’t he responding to the NetHand signals? How was he going to keep Cro and Hek safe, given their injuries, as they searched for the transport’s crash site? What had become of the others? Even if they found the quad, what next? This is where most of Imp’s conscious thought was focused.

A third part was remembering his grandfather. Imp’s grandfather had been the positive guiding force of Imp’s childhood. Imp’s father...well, even villains have lessons to teach. But Imp found that, when he wasn’t sure of things, thinking about his grandfather helped. Sometimes Imp could unearth a memory of some life lesson or homily that was relevant, but even if that wasn’t the case, just thinking about his grandfather, and the lessons he’d tried to teach Imp, and the times they had shared, and remembering the details of the old man’s smile, and his large, gentle hands, and his quick smile and disapproving scowl, and the laugh lines around his eyes, and a thousand other things, helped bring order to Imp’s soul.

Imp had been following the river for almost an hour when he found the bridge. He froze where he was and turned all of his brain to the zen state of the hunter. “Patience of a tree, eyes of a hawk, ears of rabbit, body made of stone.” Grandfather’s mantra, the last conscious thought Imp allowed himself for now. Slowly, slowly, making not a sound, Imp lowered himself into a crouch, and waited.

Nothing sounded out of place. The jungle continued its normal, indifferent song. Imp mentally began to sing “The Waiting Song,” a ditty of his grandfather’s they would use to mark time.

A hundred men went to battle
Ninety-nine men came home
Ninety-eight men hugged their families
One man dined alone
Ninety-six men polished their armor
Ninety-five men stabled their steeds
Ninety-four men thanked their creator
For sparing their lives from fell deeds

The full chant took about ten minutes if you kept the proper rhythm. Imp kept the proper rhythm. After the last stanza, nothing had changed, and Imp began to creep forward, as slowly as the lengthening shadows of sunrise.

He’d barely been able to see the bridge when he froze; now, creeping forward, he made out details. It was made from hewn trees, their trunks stripped free of branches, lashed together with handmade rope. As he crept closer, he could see a small clearing at either end. On the far side of the river, there were three clearly-discernible trails exiting that clearing. On this side, there were myriad trails, all much smaller and less well-defined.

Imp stayed in the underbrush surrounding the clearing, careful not to break cover. Once he was confident he understood the likely traffic patterns, he melted farther back into a thicket of ferns, and relaxed into a crouch, doing what his grandfather called “hunkerin’ down fer a spell.”

Slipping out his NetHand, Imp began composing a message in the Morse app. Since he had been pushing emergency pulses all morning, there didn’t seem to be anything to be gained from observing radio silence now. If the builders of that bridge were technologically advanced, they’d had ample warning of Imp’s approach, and surely expected him to encounter this bridge.

Imp took his time, striving for a balance between economy of language and sufficient detail: “found a bridge stop we are not alone stop surveilling stop twostep forward stop over”. Twostep forward was an indication that authentication would be expected on all future communication. If his friends were following protocol (and Hek always followed protocol), all he would get back at the moment was a confirmation.

“x” came the reply.

Imp settled in for a long wait, letting the Tao of Hunting wash over him. No conscious thought, just an awareness, an acceptance, an integration with the flow of the world around him. Midday came and went, the heat of the jungle rising from uncomfortable to stifling. The song of the jungle gently waned from active to torpid. Imp continued simply to be.

The afternoon passed, and the worst of the heat broke. As the sky began to color, Imp allowed some conscious thought. While he really wanted to stay and see who used that bridge, trying to find his way back to camp after sunset was not his most intelligent play. He would have to make a call on that soon. Gently, he slipped out his NetHand.

“polka stop no activity stop return q stop over”.

“exotic stop return stop over out” was the reply.

While the twostep authentication protocol was far from foolproof, Imp was pretty certain that the message was from his friends. Even a clever codebreaker would need more than one iteration to understand how it operated, and then, they would still lack the list of codewords. “Twostep” identified the proper referents as the names of dances. “Forward” meant that the names had to come in reverse order. Each of the names would have to begin with the letters which made up the name of the initial dance, but used in reverse order. Someone who had 4 or 5 transmissions to look at would get the pattern quickly enough, but still be unsure which dance to use when “w” came up. A wrong answer would let everyone know that something was amiss, and communications were not to be trusted.

Unless Hek and/or Cro were in on it. But that was a tangle Imp had no way to resolve, if it were true. His choice at the moment was simple; return to them, or not.

Imp melted into the jungle, heading back to camp.

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.

 

[Flexoo 6,980]

The journey with our lost protagonists continues. Will they be able to maneuver themselves from the jaws of the jungle? Find out what happens next!

[Guest]

The American spelling of the word "Neighbour" really irritates me for some reason.

 

It's a neat story though, like how its progressing - looking forward to the next part!