William C. Dietz by Prison Planet

Author:Prison Planet
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-12-14T17:28:23+00:00

Chapter Nine

They buried the dead marines during a heavy rain. As ranking noncom, it was up to Jumo to say the words. "I don't know if these people believed in God or not. We didn't talk about things like that much. But I know Waller and Ho loved to fly... and they were damned good at it. They'd do anything to leave the station and rack up a few hours. This time it got 'em killed. And Sanchez, well she liked men, tall, short, fat, skinny, she didn't care, long as they could sing in Spanish, or were willing to learn. Goldman was, well, he was different. He spent most of his spare time reading micro spools. I don't know what it said on 'em, but whatever it was made him laugh a lot, and then we'd laugh too. And Corporal Burns, well, there wasn't anyone that could handle a flamer like him. Too bad he didn't have one when he needed it most. I didn't know Lieutenant Costello very well, her being an officer and all, but I know she loved the green hills of New Britain. Anyway, if there's a god out there, I hope you'll take good care of them. They were marines."

It took only a few hours to bury the dead, but it took three days of hard work to clear an LZ for the shuttle. It turned out that Chin was good at electronics. He managed to piece together a transmitter from the piles of shuttle junk Renn and the marines brought him. This made Renn a little suspicious, since Chin seemed to be a lot better at electronics than he was at biology, but he decided to keep his thoughts to himself.

Five hours after Chin's first transmission, a shuttle roared overhead. Help had arrived. Renn and Marla watched with detached amusement as everyone else jumped up and down with excitement.

Chin dashed into the cabin as the roar of the shuttle died away and turned on the transmitter. "Chin to shuttle, Chin to shuttle, you just passed over our position, repeat, just passed over our position." Since they had no receiver he said it over and over again, hoping the shuttle crew would home in on the signal.

Outside, all eyes were on the sky. The dense layer of clouds made for poor visibility, but they looked anyway, hoping to see the shuttle return. And return it did, dropping out of the clouds with a mighty roar and pushing a tidal wave of displaced air before it. As the shuttle came to a stop and hung suspended on its repellors, the jungle foliage swayed this way and that, while the muddy water of the channel was pressed completely flat. A black rectangle appeared in the bright metal of the shuttle's hull, and moments later, a bright orange dot fell towards them.

It became an orange blob, then an orange rectangle, and then a parachute suddenly blossomed over it to slow its descent. As the parachute drifted slowly

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