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Tarkel Jungle

March 8, 1984 RE

It was getting close to the end of our first day on foot. Nothing had attacked us and that was about the only good thing I had to say about the day. As it turned out there was one thing that had managed to get overlooked before this expedition started. That thing was the physical condition of the people on my team. Now, the soldiers had to be aware they were not going to pushing anybody on my team to perform a forced march, but they had expected us to at least be able to keep up a fairly brisk pace. Unfortunately, about a third of my team was over 55 years of age and about half of my team was not in what I would consider the best of shape. I'll hand it to some of the senior members of our team and say that they had managed to stay in decent shape, but they just did not have the endurance of their youth helping them through the day.

The soldiers had obviously been a little frustrated with how slow they had to travel and how many breaks they had to take early on. It had been like pulling teeth getting Colonel Miller to take that first break. I had practically had to drag him back to a see a few of my team members. Once he had seen how red their faces were he had finally decided that he might loose a few of the people he was supposed to be protecting to heart attacks and heat exhaustion. When the Colonel called for that break a few of my scientists just fell over and laid on the ground huffing and puffing for a few minutes.

I saw Tracy conversing with the Colonel before we started up again. About 15 of the largest soldiers came over and actually strapped the worse off members of the expedition to their backs and offered to carry some of the other members of my team for brief periods of time. That was not that bad a solution actually. It was amazing just how much weight some anthros could carry and with the dragons it was really a matter of how much space they had on their bodies to carry stuff and not how much weight they could actually carry. One of the dragons had actually managed to strap three humans to himself and did not seem to be the least bit overburdened as he walked along. If he had to reach for a weapon or ammunition all those people would cause some problems though.

The Colonel's decision did help things move along a little faster since the ones of us not being carried were in better shape and the ones that started to get tired could just jump on the back of one of the volunteer anthros. When we set up camp for the night I was extremely relieved. I was not in bad shape, but I had never been in a rush to get to my destination on any of my other expeditions. The pace the soldiers had set for us may have been lethargic for them but it was torture for me. My feet had swollen up a little and did not want to come out of my boots that night. Sometimes I thought the anthros had the right idea in never adopting footwear. Then I thought of what it would be like to march through the jungle with no shoes with all the sharp rocks, thorny plants, and poisonous insects and decided my sensitive feet were better off inside of boots.

Tarkel Jungle

March 10, 1984 RE

Something caused me to wake up a little early this morning. With the pace the soldiers had been making us keep that was unusual. I have been getting every bit of sleep I can get and it has not been much. It was about half an hour before sunrise that there was some unusual activity in the camp. The soldiers were not making a lot of noise; it just was not the usual noise they were making. I was about to emerge from my tent when I remembered the incident back on the ship and decided to stay put until someone came to get me.

It took a few minutes before I heard Colonel Miller outside of my tent. "Dr. Sanders, would you please come out here. There is something that needs to be brought to your attention," said the Colonel.

"Alright, I'll be right out." It did not sound like we were in any danger and I was happy he wanted me out there. I really did want to know what was going on. Still, I was not expecting what I saw. The moment I walked outside the only thing I noticed was how dark it was. Thick jungle foliage pretty much blocked out what little light there was and I couldn't see a thing. A large paw rested on my shoulder. It was too large to be the Colonel's, or so I thought. Even though the anthro that I turned around to see was only a few inches away from me I could barely make out any of his features. As my eyes adjusted as well as they could to the darkness I could see that the anthro was sitting on the ground Indian style and yet he was only a few inches shorter than me.

"We've had an incident doctor," the anthro that sounded a lot like the Col. Miller said. My jaw nearly dropped as I realized this anthro was the Colonel.

"My God, how tall are you?"

"Currently I am ten feet three inches tall. I'm not the only one to be affected either. Two scouts and 18 of my soldiers have also had a bit of a growth spurt, but I appear to be the most drastic case. This is rather inconvenient for me though," he said with a sigh.

"Why? What's the matter?" I asked. The Colonel just pointed down. His night vision was considerably better than mine and it took me a while to notice what he was pointing at. He was not wearing any pants.

"The shirt I was wearing grew with me but my pants stayed the same size. A couple of the scouts are really good with a needle and are working on modifying the rest of my pants but it's going to take a while," said the Colonel who sounded a little annoyed.

"At least you're not human. That nice coat of fur you have will cover up anything private," I said in an attempt to lighten the situation.

"So you say. I'm going to have to go pants-less for at least a day and it is definitely going to be awkward issuing any orders like this."

"Oh, it's not that bad. Did you know that before civilization collapsed there were plenty of cartoons that featured anthros that didn't wear pants of any clothes at all on some occasions?"

A glint of light reflected off the Colonel's eyes and I could see he was frowning as he said, "There was furry porn around before there were any actual anthros?"

"Well, yes, but that's not what I was talking about. There were many children's cartoons that featured anthropomorphic creatures in various states of dress. One of the more famous ones I have come across is this little white duck. I forget his name, but I believe it was Donovan Duck, or was it Damien, or something like that. All the pictures I've seen of him never show him wearing pants and it never seemed to bother anybody," I said jokingly.

Col. Miller just snorted, "I can't believe you humans would have allowed your children to watch such material. What were they thinking?"

"I guess it is a little hard to explain to an actual anthro, but it was all completely innocent stuff. It wasn't like any of those characters ever did anything inappropriate with each other," I said.

"Sure they didn't. Well, this conversation has lead into areas about humans that I hadn't expected it to but I really should be getting back to my other duties," the Colonel said as he stood up and walked away. I marveled at how tall he was before I walked back into my tent and started to pack everything up. Later I found out that Tracy had now reached seven feet in height. Many of the soldiers including Tracy had been forced to swap uniforms in order to find something that fit. In the end things worked out pretty good. There were more anthros available to carry my team members and we made better time today than we had so far on our expedition.

Tarkel Jungle

March 11, 1984 RE

Colonel Miller had managed to get himself a modified pair of pants and he was looking especially bright eyed and bushy tailed today even though he was trying to hide how good he was feeling. I would have never guessed someone like him would care so much about what people thought of his appearance. Then again, I wouldn't like to parade around in front of everybody without pants for an entire day. It must have been especially tough for him since his position pretty much guaranteed he was going to be the center of attention for many of the people on this expedition.

Things were going pretty smoothly though. There had been mounting complaints from many of my team members as the days wore on. Even I was getting tired of them despite most of the complaints being directed at the Colonel. Most of the people on my team just did not take well to the jungle and they had no problem letting everybody know. Earlier today the Colonel finally snapped. The Colonel was a naturally intimidating person and his new height only served to amplify his intimidation factor. When he practically roared that everybody needed to shut up everybody except for the most troublesome members of my team shut up. As for the ones that didn't, they wound up gagged and thrown over somebody's shoulder. When Col. Miller looked at me to see if I objected I raised my hands in surrender and shook my head. Personally, I was happy not to have to deal with the complaints anymore and I definitely was not going to defy a ten foot tall jaguar about this matter.

A couple of hours later, things had settled back into a pretty routine day. It was amazing how fast things could change. When all of the soldiers with excellent hearing readied their weapons the rest soon followed. I noticed that a little shell of soldiers started to form around my team. Then I could hear some faint screaming. Soldiers were taking up attack position and were more than adequately prepared when a group of people came bursting out of the foliage. It was pretty obvious something was chasing them but I sure couldn't see anything. Then a thick scaly form reared up off the jungle floor. It stuck at one of the people with lightning speed and dragged him backwards while coiling around him. I recognized the snake that was attempting to make a meal out of the man and I knew it should not be more than a foot long. By the size of it I would have to say it was maybe 50 to 60 times that length.

A few of the soldiers put away their guns and pulled out machetes that they had been using to hack their way through the jungle. All of the soldiers that were doing so were types of anthros that were renowned for their own speed and reaction time in a fight. The snake was a little too busy constricting its prey to notice the danger it was in. It did not see any of the soldiers until they were within a few feet of it. I could barely see what followed as the snake tried to strike at the soldiers. Everything was a blur of motion. It was trying to bite the soldiers and lash out with its tail while the soldiers danced nimbly out of the way. In the end the snake was no match for the group of soldiers. There weapons made quick work of the snake and a water monitor anthro made sure it was dead by taking its head off.

Three of the people were still running and the fourth, the one that had been captured by the snake was being checked out by a medic. The soldiers were easily able to capture the others since they were already exhausted from their run. Another interrogation like the one from our first day in the jungle took place. This one turned out to be far more interesting than anybody had expected it to be though. I did not bother to listen to this interrogation since I was only expecting more news about various giant animals in the area. If I needed to know anything else the Colonel would tell me. Listening to a few people babble for a few hours was just no fun.

When Col. Miller did call me over to him some time later I thought he was just going to tell me it was time to move on. There was something about the way he carried himself that told me something was bothering him though. "Dr. Sanders, it appears we have a bit of a problem," Col Miller said.

"And that problem would be?"

"We are not alone out here. The Southern Alliance has sent its own expedition out here and these people had been capture by a couple of their scouts," said the Colonel. "They were being taken back to the main body of the SA forces in the area when that snake attacked. It killed and ate one of the scouts. These people made their escape while the other scout was busy with the snake."

"That's not good news," I responded.

"There is some good news. Those scouts were big talkers. They complained about a lot of things within hearing range of these people. One of those things was about how they had rushed to try and beat us into the jungle in the first place. They did have about 1000 soldiers with them when they came out here, but because they rushed there were equipment and supply issues. Close to 600 of them have been forced to turn back because of those issues. The commander of their group also seems like a typical SA commander."

"If you don't know what that means it's that SA commanders barely know that the sock goes on before the boot," said Tracy, who had silently come up behind me.

"The private is correct. SA officers mostly come from their noble and elite citizens. I can't begin to explain how many times the incompetence of their officers has managed to save my people. And they have officers from two of the countries that make of the Alliance in their ranks. The only thing the Southern Alliance hates more than us is each other. They're probably having a few problems with each other as we speak," Col. Miller explained. He was probably right. The Southern Alliance was composed of four member nations, Dalga, Polatvit, Mirdandia, and Selevanta. None of them cared much about the other and would be just as happy to see their flags flying form each others capitals.

They claimed to be trying to resurrect what was once known as the Confederacy. The region of the world we are now in was once known as the United States of America and all of our countries were located in a section of country that had tried to break away for some reason lost to history and called itself the Confederacy. The Southern Alliance was being pretty ambitious. No one has been able to control as much land as the Confederacy had in a long time and they could not even take control of the area controlled by three of the Confederacy's member states. The bulk of my own country resides in the state my country is named after. Virania is just a mispronunciation of Virginia. Caressee is actually named after the two states that it resides in, North Carolina and Tennessee. I doubt the Southern Alliance could ever accomplish their goals though, even if they could beat Caressee they would probably end up destroying each other.

"Why are they out this way though sir? There must be a quicker way to that facility from their own borders," Tracy said.

"There is one really good reason for that. The Southern Alliance simply does not have the expertise needed to bring that facility online. As you may know, they have been falling behind us technologically," said the Colonel. "For years they have had to resort from stealing technology from us just to stay in the game. They need our scientists in order for their mission to be a success. So, they have tried to rush out here as fast as they could in order to intercept us and kidnap our charges."

The Colonel dismissed us and we started walking away. I noticed that Tracy did not seem like she was bothered about anything she had heard. How the news that 400 enemy soldiers were out there to kill her and kidnap me did not bother her was beyond me. "How can you act so calm after news like that?" I asked her.

She just grinned a feral grin and said, "We can take on 400 SA troops. Besides, most of them must be from Dalga and they operate on the spray and pray philosophy."

"Spray and pray?"

"That means you hold your gun at your hip, pull the trigger, and pray you hit something. Dalga hasn't trained their troops to shoot straight ever since they started using guns. They might have been better off sticking to bows and arrows. I once managed to get isolated with ten supposedly elite Dalgan troopers. They didn't even manage to singe my fur before I captured two of them and killed the rest," she said while smiling as if remembering some pleasant experience.

I must have looked a little nervous to her because she draped one of her large arms over my shoulder and said, "Hey, don't worry Larry. If we get attacked you just stick with me and I'll make sure nothing happens to you." Well, it was her they were trying to kill and if she could remain in such a good mood then I guess it would not kill me to at least pretend I was in a good mood as well. She was too tall for me to put my arm around her shoulder, so I just wrapped my arm around her waist and we made our way back to the camp that was being set up for the night.