Chapter 192

192 Frog Season, Pt Planet Dro’ren, Fusil System, Federal Colonial Territories

Eva’s tall mud boots sank into the soft ground with a wet SQUISH. In fact, all their boots did the same as they traversed the water-logged wetlands that Dro’ren was known for. The ground was so soft that their feet sank down to their ankles with each step.

The Ravens all wore their rugged exploration outfits, each with C-ranked light ballistic armor over top of them. And also the mud boots. Without them, their feet would have been soaked in water long ago.

“Remind me again why we’re here?” asked Eva.

“Not a bad question,” said Max. “Allow me to add to it... Why am I here? It’s not like I’m getting paid like the rest of you are.”

“You seem like a seriously nice person,” Amal replied, “but that doesn’t mean we’re gonna leave you alone with our ship. Aaaand we’re all out here ‘coz I need a poison sack from a rare swamptoad, buuuut I can’t do it alone.”

“Okay. Poison sack. Swamptoad. Got it,” said Eva. “Doesn’t really clear things up though, just FYI.”

“We can’t really get very far without it, honestly. Need a poison sac to synthesize an antidote. Buncha kids were out here, mayor’s boy included, and got themselves some swamptoad toxins in them, somehow.”

Eva was stupefied by what she heard.

.....

“Wait, wait, wait,” she said. “You’re telling me that the mayor’s kid got poisoned while playing with toads in a swamp?”

“Technically, this is a wooded fen,” said Max. “Not a swamp.”

“Well, thanks for clearing that up,” said Eva, sarcasm deep in her tone. “We oughta tell the settlement they should call it a fentoad instead.”

“What can I say?” said Amal. “The mayor’s kid’s apprenticing with the settlement’s doctor. He was out here with a few friends studying the wildlife for medicinal purposes. Well, that’s what they told me, anyway.”

“Fentoad sounds lame,” said Miko, after a few moments had passed.

As they walked, they surveyed the wetlands all around them. The land was incredibly rich and filled with life. Whole swaths of land were either waterlogged plains, or waterlogged forests, with very little in between.

They were currently making their way through one of the vast forests, whose thick trees all but dominated the landscape. Their serpentine roots spread all throughout the area, and ensured the trees would never get torn out of the ground.

There was also a vast amount of flora to be seen, from tall stalks of grass to huge leafy bushes to mushrooms to vines to moss to wildflowers... you name it.

“Do you all see the size of that insect?” asked Miko. “It’s the size of my head.”

She pointed to a dozen or so thin, spindly mosquito-like insects a half dozen meters away. The buzzing of their wings was soft, and easily lost among the sounds of the wetlands.

And when the rest looked, they realized Miko was far from exaggerating. In terms of wingspan, they actually were about the size of her head. They were large enough that they could clearly see their drill-like proboscis and saw-like legs.

Half of them paled at the sight.

“Probably where they laid their larva,” said Max. “Looks like they’re practically patrolling that pond they’re hovering over. We ought to stay away.”

“Not gonna argue there,” said Eva. “Wouldn’t wanna get bit by those things.”

The group decided to give the bugs some distance, especially since they seemed to be eyeing them.

Eva could have sworn that they looked hungrily in their direction.

They also made sure to veer away from any other insect colonies they came across. Just in case they turned out to be aggressive. The last thing they needed was to become a meal.

“How do you know so much about wetlands?” Miko asked Max.

“Ah, was stationed on a planet just like this a year or so back,” he replied. “It was nice. Quiet. Serene. Far from all the fighting. I had all the time in the world to look around and learn.”

“Sounds like you had a blast,” said Eva.

“Best deployment I ever served in.”

“Is that why you enlisted?” asked Claire. “To travel to all sorts of weird planets? I mean, that’s what I would do, if I was into the whole navy service lifestyle.”

Max shook his head adamantly.

“No, I was forced to enlist,” he replied. “You could say it was a family thing. Dad’s in the military, grandad’s in the military. Great-grandad. So on and so forth. Became some legacy nonsense, like it became up to me to hold the standard for our family.”

“Well, I can definitely identify with that,” said Eva. “Desertion seems kinda extreme though, just to get back at your fam.”

“There’s the whole thing about killing people for their land, property, and influence too. I definitely didn’t wanna be a part of that.”

As they walked deeper into the fen wetlands, Claire noticed that there was hardly any animal life. Or at least none that they ran across. If there were swamptoads out here, where the hell were they?

“Um, so do you know what these swamptoads would look like?” she asked. “I mean, I imagine they kinda look like what toads normally would?”

Max shrugged.

“Your guess is the same as mine,” he replied. “Probably a little different based on this biome. Maybe a bit larger, kinda like those bugs.”

He spread his arms as he approximated how big they would be. It kept shifting, but he predicted it was about a meter and a half in length.

“The colonists told me it was larger than normal,” said Amal. “So you’re prolly about right. I’d better configure a preset on my MedGun just in case. Oh! Also, they said they had mossy backs to help blend in.”

All five quickly looked around, but realized that almost everything was covered in moss. Rocks, trees, stumps, logs, everything. They could have been buried up to their necks in swamptoads, and they would’ve never even realized it.

“Well that doesn’t help,” said Eva. “Can we do a scan or something? Like check for animal life? That’s doable, right?”

“That is no problem,” said Miko. “I can have them scout out for us. If they are fast enough, then they can avoid being eaten.”

She quickly activated two of them, and sent them off ahead of them. They quickly, and nervously, zipped all over the woods and began to observe everything that they could see all around them.

The two drones spent ten or so minutes ahead of the party, scanned what they could, then went back to report their findings.

Miko listened to their machine-like tweets with gracious intent.

“It seems there is a great variety of wildlife,” she said. “They are clearly wary of us and maintain their distance. None however seem to be these swamptoads that we are looking for.”

“What did they find?” asked Amal.

“Mostly avians, some mammals, and also some reptiles,” she replied. “One of my drones even found a moss-covered carnivorous rodent the size of a boar. Although I find it odd that they did not find a single amphibian. Are you certain this is where the swamptoads are?”

Amal double-checked the coordinates that she had, then compared them to their geo-positional location. They were a near-match.

“This is definitely the right region,” she said. “Unless they accidentally put a typo in their own contract. That’s always a possibility, you know?”

The group came to a moderately-sized clearing with a small stream that split it in half. Off on one side was a hill with a fallen tree on top. Next to it was a little pool of water that was just barely connected to the stream.

“Here, let’s take a breather,” Amal continued. “I’ll contact the mayor just to confirm these coords.”

Eva went over to the pond to look for swamptoads – she figured they would hang out around there. At the same time, Claire and Max went up the hill towards the fallen log.

It looked as though it had been there a while, and the moss that was growing on it gave it a little extra padding. It made for the perfect bench, so Claire sat down right on it. She sighed as she caught her breath.

“We’ve been at this for a few hours now, haven’t we?” she asked.

Max walked over and sat down on the hill itself, then leaned up on the log next to Claire.

“Yeah, four at least,” he replied. “Stopped counting when my legs started to go a bit numb. Trudging through all that soft ground’s a lot more tiring than I thought.”

“I thought you said you were deployed at a fen?” she asked.

“Hey, cut me a little slack. It’s not like I went around marching in it for half a cycle.”

Claire laughed a little

“Take it easy,” she said. “Was just teasing you. But yeah, I agree, all this soft ground is so damned hard to walk on. So much more different from the nice, flat, hard surfaces in Helios. I’m having a real tough time keeping up with all of you.”

“Yeah, even with training, it’s still tiring as hell. But look, those three barely look affected at all. What the hell’s up with them?”

Claire and Max looked at Eva and Amal as they walked around. It seemed as though they were hardly impeded by the ground. They still walked slower than normal, but they were far from breathing hard.

Certainly not like the two of them.

“Ah yeah, that’s ‘coz they’re refugees,” she answered.

“Is that supposed to mean anything?” he said. “The Hegemony gets tons of Federation refugees all the time, and not a single one of you is that tough.”

Claire chuckled.

“Oh, that’s right,” she said. “That’s what we call the people who just came outta nowhere. They all just popped up in our regen facilities one by one, in the millions.”

“From a year or so ago?” said Max. “That makes sense. At the Hegemony, we call ’em Revisions. Apparently, they’re a better version of who they used to be, or somesuch. People keep saying they’ve got fewer flaws and are crazy strong. I even heard they’re immortal. I think it’s all faecus.”

He looked at Eva and Amal again, and realized that they actually were tougher, and appeared to have unlimited stamina.

“Mostly faecus,” he corrected himself.

“You are mistaken,” said Miko.

Both were startled by the girl. She hardly made a sound, and seemingly popped out of nowhere. As though she was some kind of ghost.

She walked quietly up to them, reached out at the trunk, and felt the moss under her hands.

“We do not have fewer flaws,” she continued. “From the data I have seen and studied, everything about us is genetically exaggerated. As though we are incredibly complex caricatures of our old selves. Both our strengths and weaknesses have been amplified. Not refined.”

She pulled up a clump of moss from the trunk and took a good whiff of it. Then she turned her head and brought it close to her ear, as though she was listening for something. When she was done, she crumbled it up and felt its various parts and pieces slip between her fingers.

“If we had been instead filtered or refined,” she said, “and our flaws were removed, then our genetic variances would have also been removed. We would no doubt have lost a great deal of our individuality.”

“How... how old are you again?” asked Max.

Miko looked at him and blinked, then she grinned at him.

.....

“That is unimportant,” she replied. “What is important is that I have plenty of time to think about the truths of this galaxy. For example, this moss. This log. This hill.”

“What about them?” asked Claire.

“Does their location not seem odd to you?”

“We’re in the middle of a wooded fen,” said Max. “Moss and logs and hills are everywhere here.”

“Yes, but the location... is a clearing in a wooded fen not suspicious? We have been exploring here for five hours, forty-two minutes, and ninety seconds now, and this has been the first clearing we have come across.”

It dawned on him slowly that her hunch was right. When he was deployed, he did see some spring mound fens, but they occurred rather often. In these woods, they hadn’t seen a single one.

Until now.

Miko tapped on the hill with her foot, curiosity deep in her eyes. Then she quickly ordered her third drone to zap the hill. It rose lazily out of her hair, then discharged a streak of electricity as she commanded.

“Again,” said Miko. “Half strength.”

The drone charged up for a second, at which point it discharged a much larger arc of electricity, like a miniature lightning bolt.

It impacted on the hill, and flung mossy bits in every direction. Nothing happened at first. But then, moments later, the hill moved. Or, more accurately, the hill twitched.

All three were knocked around as the whole thing shook and adjusted itself. Two mossy mounds shook themselves open and revealed the gigantic amphibian eyes underneath.

The hill then reared back and flung the three right off its back. Although Miko was caught by her cottonball drone, Claire and Max tumbled down to the ground and got the wind knocked out of them.

As it reared back, its mouth split open, and shook itself free of any lingering moss around its head. It swelled as it took in air, then bellowed a long, deep, guttural croak into the air.

Waves of force spread outwards and caused the trees along the clearing’s edge to sway and get pushed back into the trees beside them.

Both Claire and Max were thrown back a dozen meters and were both stunned by the sound. The sheer energy of the soundwaves wrecked their eardrums. It sent them to the very brink of losing blacking out.

Miko and her drone were flung back and thrown to the ground as well. Her body rolled around a bit until a bush caught her, and stopped her from going any further. Amal was also pushed back and knocked down to her knees.

Only Eva was able to stand her ground. But she too was deeply shaken by the sonic attack.

“Looks like we found ourselves a swamptoad,” she said through gritted teeth.