"Just take the backplate off one of the warheads," he said. "The casing'll direct the flames out, like a flamethrower."
"Jeez, we better make sure we unscrew the fuze first!" Wheelwright gasped.
"Yes, you had better," said OT Wilding with a twist of his lips.
"Wilding," Brainard continued, "take charge of loading useful items into packs. Weapons, ammunition, food if you think we'll need it. You're the environmental expert. Remember that we'll carry loose barakite from the other warhead. We may need it farther along." He swallowed. "I'll take the communicator myself," he said.
The laser communicator was their one hope of rescue. With that solid security in his hands, Brainard thought he might be able to get through the hours until they reached the peak. Might.
Everybody looked at him. "Caffey, what are you waiting for?" he snapped. "Let's move!"
The two torpedomen swung immediately to the hovercraft's rail. Caffey snubbed up at the end of the hose connected to his environmental suit and paused. He looked back at Brainard.
Next problem. One at a time. "Until we're through the, the frontal wall of the jungle," Brainard said, "you can wear your suits or not as you choose. After that, they'll be too heavy and confining. We'll leave them."
They all stared at him. The tough suits were armor, real armor against the lethal surface environment, but men wearing them couldn't carry a load as much as a hundred yards with the air hoses disconnected.
"I'm going to take mine off now," said Brainard. His body began to obey his mouth, opening the catches and taking the direct shock of heat and saturated humidity. His mind watched the events as if they were taking place on the holonews.
Caffey unclipped his hose and clambered over the rail, followed by his striker. For the grace period Brainard had offered them, the discomfort of a disconnected suit was more bearable than facing the surface unprotected.
Leaf knelt and began cutting the tack welds with his multitool. The motorman directed Bozman as if his assistant were a barely-sentient tool himself.
Wilding gave orders in a clear, precise voice, separating into manageable loads the objects that would keep the crew alive during its trek. Everything was under control.
Brainard stepped out of his suit. He felt naked and afraid. He jumped quickly from the deck before he could lose his nerve.
Stupid. He sank to mid-calf in the muck. Wheelwright glanced back. Men were looking at him from deck also.
"Get on with—" Brainard called.
A leech the length of Brainard's arm rose from the mud. It twisted toward his face. It was green with white stripes the length of its body, and its mouth was a black pit.
Brainard tried to scream but his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He thrust out with the rifle in his hands. The creature engulfed the weapon's muzzle in a hideous sexual parody.
Brainard pulled the trigger and nothing happened, nothing happened! He jerked the rifle upward convulsively. The leech clung for a moment, then slipped off and writhed through an arc over the marsh. A tube worm shot from its armored housing near the shore and snatched the leech while it was still in the air.
Brainard stared at his rifle. The selector was still on Safe. He rotated it to Automatic and began to drag his legs forward. He was almost blind from fear. He knew that unless he moved at once, he would be unable to move ever again.
"Newton," ordered Wilding, "I told you to bring the remaining bandoliers from the arms locker. Get moving!"
It was a good thing they had Wilding along. He'd been born to lead. Most officer-trainees were kids who went blind with fear in a crisis. . . .
* * *
July 12, 381 AS. 0933 hours.
"I've brought your new XO, Tonello," Lieutenant Holman called to the officer bent over in the cockpit of the hovercraft docked on a shallowly-submerged platform.
Holman prodded Officer-Trainee Brainard between the shoulderblades. Brainard, his hard-copy files clutched in his hands, hopped convulsively from the quay to the vessel. The gray deck shivered beneath his sudden weight. The hovercraft was 60 feet long and 28 feet across the beam, but her mass was deceptively slight because most of the volume was the empty plenum chamber.
Lieutenant Tonello straightened with an engaging smile and extended his hand out of the cockpit well. He was a lanky man several inches taller than Brainard's own five-foot-eleven. "Welcome aboard K67—" his eyes read the name tape sewn over the left breast pocket of Brainard's utilities "—Brainard. You had three months aboard the Kudu, I believe?"
Tonello's grip was firm, but he didn't play finger-crushing games the way Lieutenant Holman had done half an hour earlier. Brainard handed his new CO his file with some embarrassment. "Ah, no sir," he said. "I'm straight out of training school."