At Blood Swamp she slipped down the slope and into the murky blackness. Once there, she fitted a pair of MAD goggles over her head and looked around. The magnetic anomaly detector was short-range, but in Blood Swamp tended to be more accurate than any installed in a BattleMech. The device also made it easier to travel on foot through the swamp.

Moving quickly and adeptly, Lanja went about a kilometer before discovering the two downed Clan 'Mechs. Their pilots had abandoned the machines, which lay now in swamp water, a pair of drowned giants. Beyond them, however, were faint but clear heat tracings left behind by another BattleMech. The heat signature led in a clear line deeper into the swamp.

For the next half-hour Lanja followed the signature, which got stronger as she swiftly proceeded. Suddenly Lanja was in a small clearing that her scanner showed crisscrossed with a complicated network of heat lines. As she passed through the clearing, she spotted the clear lines of a unit of 'Mechs—seven or eight, it appeared—heading out of the clearing, in the general direction of Glory Plain. If they continued on their current path, they would emerge right into the claws of Clan Wolf. She had to head them off.

Running, she kept her attention on the heat signatures, which got stronger as they became more recent. Her height allowed her to grab fairly high branches, using them to propel herself forward. She made a few magnificent leaps across deep-water areas.

Suddenly she heard the unmistakable sounds of 'Mechs using their hands to clear a path through trees up ahead. She knew she would be seeing the unit soon. Taking off the scanner, Lanja slipped it into its belt holder without breaking stride.

Passing under a high tree, she heard a rustle in the branches overhead. Before she could even look up, she felt the air change as something descended swiftly toward her. She reached for her laser pistol, the only weapon she had, but not fast enough. In that instant, the tree puma landed heavily on her, forcing Lanja down into stagnant, murky water.

15

It was a pity that the pilots in their 'Mechs and the Elemental with her MAD goggles depended so much on external devices. More reliance on their own eyes, on what the real world offered to their view, and they might have found Joanna easily. The warm red glow of emergency lighting from her cockpit was visible for nearly a hundred meters in the dark swamp. An unwavering illumination ten meters above ground level. If any of the searchers had been able to get close enough, they would have seen the Star Captain staring out the viewport, trying to discern something in a place as black as the heart of a Periphery bandit.

"We could try to get out on foot," Nomad said.

"Are you joking? In your condition, you can barely make headway on flat ground."

"Leave me behind."

"I would do that gladly. However, I have no means of navigating, I do not know what the dangers and pitfalls are, and I would prefer not to abandon a valuable BattleMech because its foot is stuck in something, especially when all available equipment is needed for the current combat."

"Then why aren't you trying to pull the foot out?"

"What do you think I was doing? I think it got stuck when it sank into the muck or whatever is down there. It seems to be tangled in something."

"What?"

"If I knew that, I would have said so."

The light inside the cockpit flickered, but did not go out. Joanna balled her hand into a fist and punched the inside of the viewport.

"It is that filthy freebirth, Aidan, who is responsible for our being stranded here. He deliberately left us here so that he could reassume command. I will kill him, first chance I get."

"How? There is no Circle of Equals here. I heard him tell you that. And you, Star Captain Joanna, for all your difficult traits, are not a murderer."

"Do not be so sure. I may practice on you."

Recognizing the threat in her voice, Nomad lapsed into silence. She might not kill him, but he knew from experience that she could do significant damage. With his arms already throbbing, he needed no new pain.

After a long period of quiet, interrupted only by odd whoops and other raucous sounds rising like spectral invasions from the swamp, Joanna finally said, "We must get this 'Mech moving."

"Are you going to try to pull the foot out again?"

"No, I am going down there and disentangle it."

"Out there? In the dark?"

"I have a lantern."

Nomad did not know what to say. On the one hand, he admired Joanna's courage in trying; on the other, if she failed and something happened to her, he would be left stranded in this cockpit, his arms injured, plus legs that did not feel so good, either.

It was not worth wasting his breath. Joanna was obviously not waiting for advice as she hastily grabbed some rope and a lantern from her storage compartment. Then, without so much as a fare-thee-well to her chief tech, she forced open the cockpit hatch and slipped from sight. Nomad strained to listen, to distinguish the sounds of feet bumping against the side of the 'Mech from the many other noises around him. He heard little, only a couple of definite clanks and then Joanna uttering one of the more shocking Clan oaths in a voice that could compete with the swamp cacophony. Using his right arm, which still pulsed with pain, he managed to get himself up off his seat. He worked himself over to the viewport and looked down.

All he could see was the wavering and flickering light from Joanna's lantern.

* * *

At one point Joanna nearly lost her balance and fell. She was at that moment hanging onto the rope, which she had wrapped around the field mounting unit of her 'Mech's left arm. With one hand still clutching the swinging rope, she reached out with the other to touch the tree next to the 'Mech. What she got was the soft, slimy, spongy matter that clung to the tree, perhaps some kind of moss or lichen. It was colored a sickly gray. The lantern did not pick up much color on anything, perhaps a result of so little light penetrating the swamp canopy.

Touching the side of the tree made her shout out an oath she had not spoken since her days as a training officer at Crash Camp on Ironhold. Composing herself and trying to get a new grip on the rope, she recalled the last time she had cursed so thoroughly, disgusted to recall that this bunghole Aidan was connected with the occurrence. It had been on the day she learned what Ter Roshak had done, that he had killed the freebirth unit merely to give Aidan his unlawful second chance at becoming a warrior. She had raged for nearly an hour, smashing several items in her ill-kept quarters, cursing not merely the actions of Roshak and the boon granted Aidan, but the fact that she had been implicated as Roshak's agent. It was Roshak who had ordered her to find and capture Aidan, then return him to Ironhold.

Steadying herself and the rope as well as she could, Joanna continued downward, gagging and coughing at the repellent odors that rose up to meet her.

Reaching bottom, Joanna saw that the 'Mech's foot was buried in the muck up to about ankle level, the heat sink ballistic cover nearly half-submerged. Clutching the rope with one hand, she tilted her body sideways and reached downward into the muck. The viscous substance seemed so eager to draw her hand in that she pulled it out instantly. Shining her light around, she noted a clutch of dark gray vines hanging down from the tree, but each vine seemed pulled taut. At their bottom ends, the vines were also buried in the muck. Kicking away from the side of the 'Mech's leg, Joanna swung over to the vines and held onto one of them. She could feel its tension. When she tugged at it, it barely moved. Whatever was holding the 'Mech's foot down was connected to these vines. Perhaps some of them had become tangled with the foot. For that matter, the muck itself might be enough to exert significant pressure to hold it down.