What Lies Behind (Sentenced to War Book 8) by J.N. Chaney & Jonathan P. Brazee

Author:J.N. Chaney & Jonathan P. Brazee [Chaney, J.N.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Variant Publications
Published: 2022-04-23T16:00:00+00:00

19

Dawn broke as the company slowly made their way through the swamp, but it was a dark, gray dawn. Cloud cover had moved in during the night, but the temperature still rose. There wasn’t a dry square centimeter on Rev’s body, and it wasn’t just the dank water.

The bandage holding the epipatch in place around his arm had long ago slipped off somewhere—Rev hadn’t noticed when it was lost. For now, the epipatch was still on, but he didn’t know for how long.

His medinanos seemed to be working overtime. The pain had dulled to an ache, and movement was coming back. But as long as Pashu was working, he didn’t care much. He had 1,534 20 mm rounds and five Morays left. Plenty to lower a world of hurt on whatever Naxli dared to test him.

All around him, Marines silently advanced. But there was a sense of purpose that wasn’t quite there before. Everyone knew that this was it. Whatever was going to happen, it was happening soon. There’d be no second chances, no mulligans.

Each of them knew their future looked bleak, even if they came out of the fight victorious, but there was a pervading sense of relief that things were hopefully coming to a head. To a person, they were tired of hiding out in the swamps, hoping that the Naxli would wander by.

The water depth varied more here than they’d been used to. Their initial route had taken them out 1,300 meters to the south, and the going had been fairly uniform. But here, there were more islets and channels. Some of them were quite deep.

As Rev was finding out now. What had been mid-thigh depth just twenty meters back was now up to his clavicle. Rev could swim if he had to. But with Pashu and the harnesses and joint reinforcements he had, swimming wasn’t something he wanted to do. Before he went any deeper, though, it started getting shallower again.

Thank the Mother.

He turned around to Lance Corporal Bin hashim, who was a good five inches shorter than Rev. Bin hashim was already up to his chest, and he didn’t look too happy. Rev held up his hand, palm down, at his shoulder level to let the lance corporal know how deep it was.

Bin hashim raised a hand in acknowledgment, then disappeared with a splash.

“Watch your step, Hash-man,” Rev muttered as he waited for the lance corporal to stand back up. There was another splash, then the writhing back of a huge snake-like creature appeared.

Rev was already charging back. He fired Pashu’s twenty, sending little geysers of water up into the air. There was more thrashing, then nothing, except for a small wake leading away to the right.

Rev reached the spot where Bin hashim had disappeared. “It can’t eat you!” he said. “Fight it.”

He swept his arms, Pashu and organic, through the water, hoping to hit the Marine.

Nothing.

He took a deep breath, tightly closed his eyes, and ducked under the water, widening his sweeps.

Still nothing.

Several Marines splashed up to him, and Rev quickly organized a rough quadrant search.

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