Space Odyssey: Spectre

Jace pulled himself out of his seat and started grabbing his weapons and the other gear from his drop pod. While his drop pod was slowly sinking into the swamp. He could see the bubbling mud come in behind his seat. He pulled himself out of the pod when he had all of his equipment.

He then looked around to where he would move. An unfortunate part of landing in a soft area was that there were no solid pieces of ground nearby. Jace sighed before leaning down and pulling open a compartment under the seat.

Inside the compartment is a bomb. It was a contingency and could only be activated manually. On it was a timer that could be programmed. The bomb was never in danger of detonating because of the impact of the drop pod. The combustible material was designed to only be detonated by plasma.

So Jace set the time for five minutes before closing the compartment and then turning to the closest spot of solid ground he could use. He sighed and jumped as far as he could through the air without breaking this armor he was wearing. He got halfway to the closest tree when he landed in the mud with a wet thud.

Jace raised his foot up and stepped through the mud barely making any progress as he began moving. He was holding the rotary heavy machine gun above his head as he moved. Since he was stuck moving he decided to tap into the short range radio channel that his people should be using.

"Let's take that tower!" He could hear someone call out over the channel. The channel was not yet encrypted; he would have to take a moment to encrypt it when he had a chance. It was such a low tech method that he would have to do it from scratch when they decided on a channel that was not being used.

"How many do you have at the spaceport? This is Spectre Jace." Now that he was on the ground it did not matter if they overheard that he was a Spectre and located him. He was just worried about getting shot down. He could not do anything while he was in a drop pod.

"Everyone from the first two drops sir! You are the only one missing." A voice responded that he identified as Nina. She was with the second set of people dropping.

Jace groaned in annoyance as he realized that he really was the only one that was thrown completely off course. "Well that is annoying. I will hold position until the drop's have completed." He was almost to the tree. But he was covered up to the chest in mud.

"Understood sir. You have the worst luck!" Nina confirmed over the radio.

Jace clicked his tongue in annoyance as he arrived at the roots of the tree that were going deeper into the swamp water. He switched off the radio but still kept it on in the background, listening for any relevant information.

"This is bad, I did not think I would end up in the worst case scenario." Jace complained aloud as he pulled himself up to the trunk of the trees. Using the various roots that were sticking out to move up to the tree's trunk.

He had several routes he could take to get out of the muddy swamp part. He could see several trees that were in jumping distance. But he could tell that the water got deeper in that direction. So he was cautious about heading toward those trees. While in another direction there appeared to be a solid bar of stone just beneath the surface that ran for what looked like half a mile in the direction going away from the mountain.

Now that he was on solid ground and away from his drop pod he should figure where he should go. Since he was unfamiliar with the terrain he should go up the mountain to get a better look at the surroundings. He was only able to see on this side of the mountain which he bounced off.

Once up the mountain he could get a better look at the surroundings and possibly find a tactical target for them to attack. Or rather for him to attack.

Jace got a running start and jumped off of the tree's roots going towards the next tree's roots. He landed in the swamp in between and this time he completely sunk into the water. He began walking forward until he reached the roots that were going underwater.

Jace pulled himself up onto the tops of the roots. He grunted in annoyance. All of his weapons were now wet. Fortunately it would not cause problems for the rotary heavy hard light machine gun. But his solid ammunition and the guns would have to be cleaned before they dried off and it started causing long term problems.

BOOM!

He glanced back as a bunch of mud was thrown up into the air and the water rippled and built up to large waves that disturbed the water even more than he had already done. As it happened the shifting waves caused the water around the tree roots he was on to clar up and he was shocked as for a moment before it became murky again he could make out something large sliding underneath the water near the bottom of the swamp.

Jace grunted in annoyance while he glanced up as he heard something in the air. Just in time to see two drop pods dropping out of the sky and landing near the mountain on the other side of a large ridge that marked the edge of the swamp he was in.

He queued up his local friendly tags and got two pings from their direction. But it was having difficulty reading it at the moment. Might be the contents of the ridge or something else. He would have to get closer to take a look.

He went to call in over the radio channel when it suddenly began spewing static. Seems that they realized they were using radio and set up a method to jam the radio signals. It would jam a long range set of signals. But as long as they were not near the origin they would be fine to communicate over the channel.

So he should be able to reach the others who landed somewhere near the mountain. Yet somehow he still could not reach out. Jace grunted in annoyance and pulled up his systems on the heads up display. He had the systems in his armor undergo a performance check. It began the process as a bar in the top right with a percentage appeared. It began its slow process.

Before it even reached one percent he was already considering how to jump to the next tree. There was a good chance he might have to swim across the swamp. But with all that gear weighing him down it might be better to just walk across the bottom of the swamp. His armor's stored air capacity was still working.

He could tell because it was one of the few systems that are constantly on display on the helmet's heads up display. It showed that the air capacity was still full. Indicating the amount he has been using has been refilled.

Jace shook his head and then slid down the tree root into the water. Landing with a quiet thud on the bed of the swamp throwing up the dirt causing the murky water to clear for a moment.

He then began walking forward as he moved. The system check showed that it was only seven percent complete. He was able to move as easily through the water as he could the air. But at the moment he was more worried about the other creatures that were swimming around with him.

The ground was hard underneath him as he moved. It was not like it was muddy dirt or coarse sand and gravel. Just like the ridge he had seen in the distance. He continued to walk in the direction that he had seen the mountain behind a small ridge.

After a few minutes the system check's percentage kept increasing while he moved. He had to move to the side every once in a while as a group of roots blocked his path as they dug into the rocky ground he was walking on.

Eventually he started to see some creatures. The first was a brown colored fish that swam past. It almost completely blended into the surrounding murky water especially since he could not see any eyes on the fish.

After a few more minutes he saw more fish until a swarm of fish then went past him. It was not just the blind brown fish either there was also a gray and green one that was long like an eel. Along with a light blue one that had some type of frog-like legs on the back of it.

After the swarm of fish he stopped seeing them. He did not understand why for a few moments until he saw something large swimming straight towards him.