The worst part about SERE is the fact that you hope to never use it.

But you know your life may depend on it. - Flight Leader Arq'enth, Confederate Armed Services, 19th Air Wing "Ground Killers", Big C3

The jack in the back of Yrler's neck withdrew with a clack that made his nerves scream for a second and his feet go tingling.

"Dead stick dead stick dead stick!" Yrler repeated into the headset.

--trying to restart-- 515 said.

Yrler checked the altimeter.

Twenty-five thousands meters and dropping at fifty meters per second.

Yrler did the math. Five hundred seconds. Eight point three minutes. He ran the computations again, taking the math from SERE. He'd need to pull the eject before two thousand meters in case the system had to use the analog hard-wired systems in case of a fully dead stick.

He was no longer moving at Mach-Five, no longer moving at 1,700 meters per second. He'd already dropped to twelve hundred meters a second.

He'd be subsonic soon.

He kept running the math.

At the same time he shut everything down with the manual switches as quickly as he could and tried to restart.

Nothing.

Worse than nothing. The pedals were dead, either locked in place or no resistance at all. Even the telltales were out.

He was down to nine hundred meters a second and still dropping fast.

--no fire no fire-- 515 told him.

Yrler tried to start it again, but got nothing as he exited the clouds, the whole striker shuddering and shaking around him.

He tried restarting again, but this time started looking around, checking the ground.

He was over patchy looking jungle. There were rivers, not the rounded ones that hard turned out to be lakes but winding moving rivers. Tree canopy, which he wanted to avoid. He looked ahead as his speed dropped below six hundred meters a second.

--it should work it should work-- 515 insisted.

"Get up here, we're going to have to eject," Yrler said.

--but---

"Now," Yrler said. He looked around. "We've got an open patch coming up, after that it goes back to bad terrain."

--coming--

Yrler closed his eyes, counted to three, then opened them.

Sixteen thousand meters and dropping. Four hundred meters a second.

The hatch between his feet opened and 515 climbed out in his flight engineer armor. The little green mantid moved into eject position, standing up on his back legs, grabbing the rings on Yrler's harness.

"Ready?" Yrler asked.

Ten thousand meters and dropping. Three hundred meters a second horizontal.

--no--

"Me neither," Yrler said. He reached down and grabbed the handle with both hands. He pulled up slightly till it clicked.

Eight thousand meters by two hundred eighty meters.

Seven thousand meters by two hundred fifty meters.

His implant beeped as the SERE protocols loaded into his implant. He chinned his helmet radio switch.

"BAILOUT BAILOUT BAILOUT!" He yelled out.

--shit shit shit--

He yanked hard on the lever.

"CANOPY CANOPY CANOPY!"

For a split second nothing happened.

Just as his stomach sank the explosive bolts around the forward canopy blew out, the bolts shattered the armor above him, throwing it all away from him.

Something went off below him and he could hear a roaring as the pilot's cradle blew out and up. It tumbled for a second before the systems suddenly kicked on and the chair leveled out. The armor deployed, analog systems unfolding everything even with the wind whipping everything around him.

"CLEAR CLEAR CLEAR!" he called out over his suit radio.

He could see out of the front of the shell around him. None of the instruments were coming on, telling Yrler that the piloting recliner was running purely on analog systems.

Which was better than riding the striker into the ground as far as Yrler was concerned.

--this sucks-- 515 said as the chair began to drop.

Yrler opened his mouth to answer, looking at the striker as it dropped away from them.

The striker suddenly leveled out, went nose up, and Yrler could see the lights on the fins and the tail suddenly blinked on and the weapons deployed. Missiles fired out as the striker suddenly broke the sound barrier.

"You have to be kidding me," Yrler said, watching the striker vanish into the distance under supercruise.

--suddenly hate everyone involved in printing it out-- 515 said.

"Yeah," Yrler said.

His visor warned him that he had crossed the two thousand meters marked.

"Hold on," Yrler warned.

The Icarus System kicked in, the chair slowing down like it had plunged into soft pillows.

It still kicked his heart and stomachs up into his throat.

Training still reared its head and he leaned from one side to the other, looking through the clear macroplas on his left and right as well as between his boots. He looked around, checking his landing area, even though everything seemed to be moving way to fast.

A tree canopy reached up toward him, the leaves purple, green, blue, even streaked yellow and some with red or white dots.

Oh, this is going to suck, Yrler thought to himself.

The cockpit crouched crashed through the foliage, slamming around as it bounced off of thick branches. It hit something hard and spun in, slamming into the ground.

Yrler blinked several times. His breathing was loud inside his pilot's suit. He could hear his heartbeat and his eyes were watering.

"You all right?" Yrler asked.

--think gonna throw up-- 515 said.

"Yeah, me too," Yrler said. He looked around. The command couch had landed in a clear area between several trees with massive trucks that had paper-like bark that was peeled in curls up and down the bark like some kind of curly hair. "Yeah... looks like NavInt was right, the Atrekna might have done some slight xenoforming here."

515 snickered.

"Ready?" Yrler asked.

--yeah-- 515 said.

"Suit check," Yrler said.

Atmosphere: Green - Internal. Suit integrity: Green. Filter System: Green. Suit Electronics: Yellow.

Yrler hit the self-test.

GPS was down, sat-com was down. All his outbound communications were down.

--green green green-- 515 said.

"My commo is down," Yrler said.

--not connected to the striker-- 515 clarified.

"Oh," Yrler said. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "Popping shell."

--go--

Yrler shifted his foot and stomped the pedal.

The canopy unfolded, dropping away.

Sound flooded his senses. Creaking of wood, water pattering, chittering and squeaking around him.

AIRBORNE CONTAMINANTS DETECTED

He felt the hiss as his suit went to heavily filtered air.

Yrler waited for 515 to climb up onto his shoulder.

The moss and ground around his ejection seat was scorched and blackened, nothing more than baked dirt when the chemical thrusters had kicked in for the final braking sequence. He looked around and noted that already there were thin tendrils of green advancing into the scorched area.

SEQUENCING CONTAMINANTS appeared in his vision.

--looks like Second Telkan-- 515 said.

"I wasn't at that," Yrler admitted.

--me either-- 515 said. --hatched two years later--

Yrler got out slowly, looking around carefully.

No fronds were dipping down from the trees, no vines stealthily lowering, no branches, thorn, or leaves orienting on him.

But that didn't mean that they just weren't stunned.

"We're bad off course," Yrler said. "We had about five minutes off their sensors."

--signature profile of a bee's ass-- 515 reminded him.

"Yeah, great when we're trying to avoid non-optical sensors, not so great when we need our own side to find us," Yrler admitted. He reached down with one foot and poked the ground.

Nothing bit him.

--transponder was out no signal-- 515 stated.

"Well, this is going to be fun," Yrler said. He took a deep breath. "Here goes nothing."

He stepped out carefully onto the scorched dirt and wasn't sure if he felt relieved or slightly robbed when the ground didn't suddenly attack him somehow.

--breathe steady easy peasy-- 515 reminded Yrler as he moved around to the back of the cradle.

Luck was finally with him when not only did the mechanical latch work but the emergency kit and survival kit were both present. As an added bonus, they had both been recently inspected and nobody had gotten around to robbing them yet.

Yrler passed 515 the engineer survival kit and then started putting on his hard shell armor. It wasn't a complete suit of environmentally sealed armor, not like the ground pounders, but even a two centimeter warsteel laminate shell was better than just his pilot's suit.

515 checked the ejection cradle's electronics and gave back a set of disgusted emojis.

--all fired-- the mantid sent back.

"Well, no sense crying about it," Yrler said, pulled out the rifle and snapping it together quickly.

515 replied with weeping emojis and finished up with a smiley face sticking out its tongue.

Yrler slapped the amblok into the assembled rifle and noted that at least its electronics and mechanical systems were working since it shaved three rounds off the block and the mag-rails went live.

The rifle felt weird in his hands and he noted it was stripped down and noticeably shorter than the rifles carried by the ground pounders.

Oh well, it's still a magac even if it is a carbine, Yrler thought to himself. He thought about extending the stock but decided to leave it really short.

It felt more than a little strange attaching all the pieces.

Mag-belt first, then the shoulder bandoleer. Rifle attached and synched. Pistol attached and snyched with the pistol loaded with flares. Environmental generator backup. Battery pack with kinetic motion generator. Water purifier that would pull it straight out of the air.

Yrler made sure each piece was fixed neatly.

It wasn't as good as the line slime, but it beat running around naked.

He went down the checklist carefully, then double, then triple-checked the entire thing.

"I'm at 'deploy SAR drone, buddy, how about you?" Yrler asked.

--ready-- 515 replied.

Yrler checked to make sure that 515's telemetry was loaded into the drone's minimal computer then looked up.

The canopy hadn't quite closed over where he'd crashed through, leaving a hole about a meter wide that went straight up.

Already leaves were unfurling to take advantage of the sudden influx of life giving solar radiation.

"Popping drone," Yrler said, looking up and blinking twice.

The launcher on his left shoulderblade chuffed and the drone whipped up and through the canopy.

After a second it sent back the message it was deploying. A few seconds after that it transmitted down to Yrler a 360 panoramic view around it.

Looking at the picture he sighed. There were no mountains, no real land marks that he could use.

"Looks like that was a bust," Yrler sighed.

He looked at the ejection cradle. There were two schools of thoughts regarding his next step.

Stay with the ejection cradle and hope that SAR homed in on the cradle's beacon.

Or start with the "Evasion" part of his training.

He looked around.

The problem was, with an Atrekna biomass jungle, anything he did was potentially the wrong action, including doing nothing.

"Stay put or start moving?" Yrler asked.

--not sure-- 515 said. He looked around, his helmet providing him a wealth of data that was almost as good as his antenna. The trees had high metallic content, the leaves acted as radar scatterers, some of the trees had some really odd substances in the thick veins of the leaves as well as in the sap. --might want to get away from trees might go boom--

Yrler nodded. "Yeah, don't want to be in the middle of a spike launch."

According to the drone, which was already losing communication as the leaves closed up the hole, the spore and pollen count increased, and the Atrekna jamming picked up, there was a clear area less than a mile away.

"We'll hit the clear area and pop another SAR drone, see what we can see," Yrler said.

515 was silent as Yrler started walking. He didn't mind 515 riding on his shoulder, he had a .5 meter step compared to 515's .1 meter stride, as well as only having to walk on two legs rather than four.

He moved carefully, his HUD highlighting plant after plant and rating them according to how the limited VI gauged their possible threat.

All of them said unknown atrekna vegetation which meant they were automatically listed as at least a five on the one to ten scale. Obvious thorns moved it up a point or two, phasic nodules on the outside of the plant moved it up a notch, as well as any lacy leaves.

Which meant he was carefully moving through a jungle of threats that started at seven and topped at flashing red ten.

--vi is no help-- 515 said, sending an emoji of an angry face snorting steam through its nostrils. --everything is highly dangerous or worse--

"It's an Atrekna jungle, everything probably is highly dangerous."

--true-- 515 answered.

He'd moved less than a mile when he got notification he'd lost contact with his SAR drone. He wasn't sure if the pollen had clogged the intake, if the graviton generator had given out, the Atrekna jamming had finally blanketed the entire planet, or if the spore and pollen count was high enough that he couldn't communicate with it any more.

He stopped at the edge of the jungle, looking at what the drone had surveyed as a possible clearing.

It was full of biolumenscent fern-like plants that came up to his chest.

"Yeah, that looks safe," Yrler said slowly. He looked around. "Great. We'll have to go around."

--long road home-- 515 said with an emote of a sad face walking real slowly.

He started moving, a couple of times tempted to reach down and grab out his pilot's cutting bar. He had to make wide circles around some groups of plants, or stay out of range (hopefully) of some of the trees. At least moving around the trees the ground was clear as the trees militantly soaked up every bit of nutrients before they hit the forest floor.

Words floated up on his visor and he stopped in his tracks.

SPOOKY PARTICLE SYSTEM REMOTE ACTIVATION

That made him raise his bushy unibrow.

Before he could figure out what was going on there was an attention getting ping and another message floated up on his HUD.

YOU HAVE ONE (1) NEW VOICE MESSAGE - PRIORITY

"OK, what's this?" Yrler wondered.

--navint telling you that you might be on ground-- 515 sent back.

Yrler opened it up, bracing himself for something that would be little to no help.

"If you are currently involved in hazardous activity this message can be played when you are safe. Five second pause to allow you to pause message," came a woman's calm voice.

Yrler paused it.

"What do you think it is?" Yrler asked.

--dunno she sounds nice-- 515 said. --probably wants to sell us some plastic food containers--

"Let's find out," Yrler said. He unpaused the message.

"This is Task Force Vecna SAR," the woman said. "First of all, you can hear me, I can't hear you. That's because we don't want any signals that the enemy can home in on and find you."

--uh that sounds like female tdh-- 515 said. --thought they all dead--

"I hope she's living otherwise we're in more trouble than I thought," Yrler grinned. He grimaced and rewound the message when he realized that she'd been telling him something.

"Right now the data I have from your drone tell me I need to walk you through a few things," the woman's voice said. "Pause after each task. First task, on your right hip is your biometric system. Look down, there is a thumb switch. It's currently in the middle position, which means that your intake if filtered but your outgassing is not filtered. Take your thumb and push it forward, toward your toes. Pause and restart when done."

Yrler paused it and did as the female Terran's voice said, then restarted it.

"Good. Now, that will keep any pheromones, certain chemical levels, and other telltales from outgassing. It will get a little warm in your pilot's suit but at least the sweat will go into your canteen," the female Terran said. "Now, I'm going to walk you through turning off your VI, since it is probably getting in the way. We want to leave it with some functions but not have it point out every insect and mushroom and yelling at you that it's about to explode like an atomic."

Yrler snickered.

Bit by bit she walked him through changing stuff on his suit and equipment settings.

"All right. Telemetry said you were walking toward an open area. If you're near there and have followed my instructions, fire off another drone. The jamming is too heavy for it to talk to me, but I'll be able to query the beacon," she paused for a second. "It will get terminated right afterwards by biosystems, but that will let me look at you again."

She paused another second.

"After this, I'll talk to you again. Don't worry, Pelfar-8726c71, you are my and my section's sole priority right now," she gave a low chuckle. "Don't worry if you find yourself speaking back to me, that's a normal reaction, so I'll add pauses here and there. Be careful. SAR out."

Yrler just nodded, moving to the edge slowly. It took him nearly twenty minutes. He had to back up and go around twice when he saw plants he didn't quite trust. Once he saw a perfectly still crystal clear pool of water and backed away at 515's advice.

At the edge he fired off another drone. He noticed that the little creation engine on his hip was refilling the mass at a slow rate. The nanoforge was sitting at 2% heat and 1% slush.

"Why's the mass reclaimer operating so slow and the nanoforge so cold?" Yrler asked.

--sar lady had us set to low heat operation-- 515 said. --no thermal sig for plant to stab--

"Oh. I hadn't even thought of that."

YOU HAVE ONE (1) PRIORITY VOICE MESSAGE appeared.

Yrler triggered it.

"Hello again, Pelfar-8726c71. According to my data you prefer your call sign, so I'm going to call you, Yrler, all right?" she asked.

"OK," Yrler said, then felt silly for answering a recording.

"Bioweapons division is pretty sure those plants will kill you, so you made the right decision not going into that clearing," she said.

"Oh," Yrler said.

--called it-- 515 said.

"Right now we're under heavy counter-attack, the Atrekna are pretty dug in, but as soon as I can, I'll shake loose a striker to pick you up," the Terran said.

"I'd like that," Yrler said softly.

"All right, Yrler, 515, remember your training, listen to me, listen to your instincts, and listen to each other," the Terran said. "Right now, I need you to follow this line, stay as close to it as you can, move as fast as you can, safely, and when you reach the waypoint, you need to stay there."

"Why?" Yrler asked as a blue line appeared in his vision.

There was a couple seconds of silence before the Terran woman resumed speaking.

"You have about two dozen Ohm Class Dwellerspawn heading toward you. They aren't making threat displays and are moving fairly slowly at only about twenty k an hour, but they're big and each are surrounded by what looks like ten to twenty smaller versions of them," she said. "Get moving. When you get to the waypoint, pop a drone, Yrler," she said.

Yrler found himself picking up the pace. Suddenly his legs weren't so sore and he wasn't so tired.

--ohm class-- 515 sent an emoji with wide eyes. --big as spaceship--

"Once you get there, fire off a drone. If you can't, fire off a penetrator flare. That will put you at risk, so it's our last resort," the Terran said.

"Uh-huh," Yrler said, moving around a large patch of big mushrooms that had sticky crimson nodules on the white cap.

--penetrator flare will let everyone in orbit know we here-- 515 said.

"Be safe, Yrler. Task Force Vecna SAR out," the Terran said.

Yrler just concentrated on moving quickly but not running straight into something before he could see it.

He was glad that he had spent so much time moving through the ruins of cities, hiking up hills, when he was younger.

A couple of times harmless looking plants gave him the willies and he moved around them. Once he backed up and moved around what looks like a wasp nest made of red resin that had glittering eyes looking out of the holes in it.

It took him nearly an hour before he could to the area.

There was a gap of only about five meters above him, but to get to it he'd have to climb up on a big outcropping of rock.

--lemme scan-- 515 said. He moved up from the harness and onto Yrler shoulder again. He held out a little instrument and a tiny drone lifted up from his back. As Yrler watched the drone moved over to the rocks, going over them slowly.

--looks good non-acidic low penetration rhizomes looks like long term rock crumbler-- 515 said.

"Well, if you're wrong, you'll have to explain to the Colonel what happened," Yrler said.

He climbed up on the rocks, slipping twice, but managing to reach the waypoint.

It was dead in the center of the big pile of rocks.

--looky looky-- 515 said, bringing up an arrow on Yrler's HUD.

Yrler turned and looked.

The trees were waving. He could suddenly hear trees breaking as if they were twigs and hear them slam into the ground. He put one hand on the rock and could feel the vibration.

The trees collapsed, pushed down by the vast form that suddenly loomed out of the jungle.

It was giant insect, with overlapping segmented armor across the body that shifted back and forth. It had dozens, hundred of legs under it and what looked like dozens of legs at the front. It had massive eyes, all of them glowing green, arranged at the front of it.

It was also at least fifty meters high, over a hundred meters wide, and looked like it was five hundred meters or more long.

At the sides were smaller versions, all of them the size of public transport buses.

The ground rumbled and Yrler found himself bracing himself as the gargantuan insect moved by.

Another one erupted from the other side, moving past Yrler, surrounded by smaller ones.

As he watched they went around the rock outcropping, some of the smaller ones pausing long enough to scrape their heavy shells against the rock before moving on.

The massive insects moved into the clearing beyond and slowed down, eventually coming to stop.

He could hear a crunching sound and realized they had stopped to eat.

--wow-- 515 said.

"I think I'll wait for them to settle down before I pop that drone," Yrler said, aware his voice was high pitched with stress.

After a little bit the smaller ones quit moving around.

The only sound was the steady crunching noises. As he watched two of the larger ones moved a few meters forward then stopped again.

There had to be nearly a dozen of the larger ones grazing.

He noticed that it was starting to look slightly foggy out.

"You have fog on your visor too?" Yrler asked.

--pollen and spores-- 515 said. --probably from the plants on their back--

"Makes sense," Yrler said. He took a sip of water and made a face when it was warm and tepid.

"Gonna pop the drone," Yrler said.

After a few moments the notification popped up.

YOU HAVE ONE (1) NEW PRIORITY VOICE MESSAGE

Yrler played it.

"I see you made it. Good job. I knew you could do it, Yrler," the female Terran said.

Yrler felt a flush of pride.

"The jamming and masking is bad enough we can't get a visual on you or tag you with a laser," the Terran said. "Fighting is bad enough that we can't shake anything loose that wouldn't have a couple dozen new friends coming with them."

"Figures," Yrler said.

"Now, my staff and I are doing our best for you. You are our sole priority," the Terran said. The voice paused for a moment. "I'm not going to leave you alone down there, Yrler."

"Thank you," Yrler said.

"You're welcome," the voice said. She chuckled. "I figured you just thanked me for that."

515 sent a laughing emoji.

"All right. Eat, then go through the checklist I just sent you. Pop another drone after you do that and I'll talk to you again," the female Terran said. She paused. "Task Force Vecna SAR, out."

Yrler closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

One of the smaller Dwellerspawn made a long whistling noise that Yerler actually found pleasant.

"You heard the female lemur," Yrler said. "Let's eat."

He checked the meal flavor with a single pull on the tube.

It was his favorite, red bean casserole.

--yummy turkey surprise-- 515 said.

"Enjoy your turkey buttholes," Yrler laughed.

The Ohm Class Dwellerspawn ignored the pair as they grazed on the plants.