Empyrean Iris Story Collection Vol. 3

Beam Me up

Unfortunately for the Sgt there was everything kinky about that, and it was only his iron clad glair that stopped the rest of the class from giggling even more.

Adam had been blushing.

But now that he was here, in the forest, on the run, he had to agree with Instructor Kimball, there was nothing kinky going on here.

This was the scenario.

His plane had been catastrophically hit in a midair battle. He had managed to shoot down the enemy fighter, but his plane was going down. He had time to eject from his crashing plane and parachute to safety, but now he was behind enemy lines, and the enemy knew he was here, they knew his general location and they were looking for him.

Using his orienteering and overland navigation skills, he was to make it to the safe zone without getting captured.

For two days he had been on the run, and twice he had almost been captured. He could hear their voices raised as they ran through the bushes after him, but managed to escape twice, once by accident after tripping down a hillside, and the second by crossing a river and climbing a rocky cliff face to hide in a small cave, during that time he had used his survival knowledge and a handheld device to determine the edible nature of food, while using the filter straw (concealed in the emergency pack sewn into his flight suit) to drink from any body of water he felt like.

All in all he wasn't doing too bad.

At least he thought so anyway, and the area had plenty of nice landmarks to follow to his preferred location.

He was almost sure he was going to make it out alive.

That was.

Until he heard the barking of dogs.

Oh Shit!

Adam knew about dogs, and he knew that it was almost impossible to fool the nose of a good one. Crossing a river was really your only option to throw off the scent, but sometimes even that didn't work. And all of those myths about covering ourself in mud or animal shit or something else was a complete lie. The stink of human would still be very obvious, and he had had two days to fester in his own sweat.

There was no way a dog wouldn't find him.

So he booked it towards the river.

There was no use in trying to do anything else, but the dogs were getting closer.

He plowed through the river sending up droplets of water and careened into the forest, ever now and again a hand would reach up to touch the Velcro patch on the front of his uniform.

His mother had made it for him, and the instructors had reluctantly allowed them to personalize for some degree of a moral boost.

The way the Sgt had looked at him when he realized he was wearing a cartoon Marvin the Martian was priceless.

They had made fun of him for it, but he didn't much mind.

What he did mind was the baying of the dogs hot on his heels.

He zigzagged across the river to confuse the animals, then hurried up its shallow center for a ways before cutting onto the opposite bank and jumping into the woods. His legs and boots were heavy with collected water, and he could already feel blisters beginning to form. He definitely wished Scotty would beam him up right now.

If only he did have an angry Scotsman waiting in the wings with a interplanetary ship and an emotionless Vulcan to rescue him from this situation.

He tripped over a root and cursed himself