The giant snake hissed as the fifteen-megawatt x-ray laser impacted its body. The laser was only focused on it for half a second, but that proved enough to cause severe damage. It had hit the snake in its midsection and almost immediately drilled through the thinner belly scales, then dug its way into the meat and muscle, where the flesh was almost instantly sublimated into vapor, which rapidly expanded with the force of a small bomb, blasting snake meat and blood in all directions. The snake was almost cut in half and landed limply atop Corporal Cuervo, who sighed in relief as the giant reptile hissed its last.
He pushed it off of him and it draped lifelessly over the branch he was laying on, then shrugged and muttered, “Snakes. Why’d it have to be snakes?”
Jose sat up on the branch and brushed himself off; his uniform was durable and hydrophobic, so it wouldn’t absorb any liquids, but the idea of being covered in the blood and guts of one of his least favorite animals was still disturbing. He fell backward off the branch and did a backflip as he swiftly made his way to the jungle floor branch by branch. If he didn’t retrieve his weapons, they would quickly be covered in roots and dragged below the ground to god knows where.
After retrieving his swords, he climbed back up to where he left the snake and skinned it. The durable hide would serve him well as a makeshift sword belt, so he wouldn’t risk dropping his weapons again. While he himself was a weapon, thanks to having so many implanted blades he was virtually a porcupine, the standoff range provided even by melee weapons would prevent quite a lot of injuries. After all, with six weeks before his mission ended, every injury he prevented meant his odds of survival increased exponentially.
He cut the snakeskin into strips and braided it into a belt with a harness strap that wrapped around his waist and up his torso over his right shoulder. It would have been better if he could tan the skin into leather, but needs must when the devil drives, so he would make do with stiff rawhide. At least the belt and harness combination would allow him to reposition his swords for hip draw or back draw in case he needed to keep them out of the way.
After the brief interlude with the snake, he continued forging a path and mapping his surroundings. His skin was capable of drawing and filtering water out of the atmosphere, his metabolism could be adjusted to control his hunger, and the quantum microcomputer in his brain could stimulate and restrict his hypothalamus gland, so he wouldn’t feel overly cold or hot. He could even tolerate the harsh conditions of deep space for up to an hour before he started having his health impacted, if absolutely necessary.
Thus, the regular rules of survival no longer applied to him, especially on a lush planet like the one he found himself on now. He needed neither water or shelter and could survive on virtually any organic material. It might not be tasty, and it might not provide everything he required, but for six weeks... tree bark would be sufficient as food.
What he did need, however, was a safe resting place. His quantum microcomputer could regulate his sleep function, allowing half of his brain to rest while the other half was active, but that wasn’t a long-term solution. Fatigue would catch up to him and he would need to go into a deep, uninterrupted sleep for at least a few hours every four or five days.
So he continued moving outward from Point Alpha in an expanding spiral, mapping as he went in search of a cave that lacked a resident, or had a resident that was mean enough to scare off the rest of the violent inhabitants of Hellworld A-2485239/JS.
......
Eight hours later, somewhere on the surface of Jurassic Planet.
Jose had quickly learned to test every vine, tree trunk, and flower. He had discovered camouflaged snakes, parasitic foliage that had sap that could melt through his uniform, symbiotic insects that lived in the cracks between tree bark and would swarm out at the slightest disturbance, and flowers that puffed clouds of gas or spat venom. And those discoveries had come the hard way, as he now looked, as his stepdad would say, “like a horse that got rode hard and put away wet.”
Some of the hallucinatory gasses and spores puffed out of the flowers had even caused him to fall into hallucinations despite his implants regulating virtually every aspect of his physical body. It wasn’t until his AI assistant, whom he had jokingly named Pontiac, had forcefully dragged him into VR until the effects of the gas wore off that he even realized he was in danger. Luckily, with his consciousness otherwise occupied, there was nothing driving him to throw himself into a flower to be eaten anymore.
“It was a pretty flower at least, Pontiac,” he muttered as he thought back on his nearest death experience so far.
[It was, Tekillya, but you know you’d never live that death down.]
“Ha, I could think of better ways to go, sure,” he chuckled, then pulled a ration cube from his storage compartment and resolutely chewed and swallowed it.
“You know, Pontiac,” he began. “I almost wish I’d brought a water collector instead of relying on my hydration implants.”
[Why’s that?] she asked, despite having an idea of what he would say next.
“Because I just ate one of the ham and cheese omelette cubes and could really use something to rinse the taste out of my mouth with right about now,” he complained.
[Tekillya, do you know what they say about soldiers and chow?]
“That we always get fucked by the same ‘chefs’ that design dog food and call it tasty?”
[No,] she said. [They say that military chow is purposefully terrible so it gives the soldiers something to bitch about.]
“Why would they do that?”
[Because the only time you need to worry about a soldier is when they don’t have anything to bitch about. As long as they’re griping about something, they’re doing just fine.]
