Evasion
August 10th, 2005
1530 Hours
Southern Equestria
It had been close to midday when Cole landed on the beach after ditching his stricken bird. Floating down like that made him feel helpless, like a young child getting lost away from home. Even the ground felt more inviting to him, as he could not fight back in the air. When he landed and started his new little adventure, the sun was just starting to fall to the west.
With the glowing orb of warmth and light moving away, Cole charged his way through the forest, arms cradling his supplies wrapped in the parachute like a newborn child. He had no idea as to how close the Equestrians were to him, if any at all. If he had to guess, at least one or two Ponies had witnessed the crash, and his ejection. How close they were was anyone’s guess, so the first order of business was to put some distance between him and his landing site.
He spent most of the time looking around, searching for any possible stalkers. Even though Arcaia had been on Earth for five years, it was still partly unclear as to what creatures were intelligent and which were not. Some seemed on the same level as the regular ones on Earth, more or less, but some others seemed smart enough to at least act dumb, but inform Ponies, or whoever their friends or masters were, on what they saw. Though the ones in that odd middle stage, the main point was that they could present a problem.
“Last damn thing I need is some magic hound tracking me down,” he said to himself before realizing something and slowing to a walk, turning his head back for a minute. “Oh Christ, I forgot to cover my tracks!”
In his rush to get out of sight, Cole had forgotten to change or cover his footsteps in any way. Though they were not as visible in the forest, the sand on the beach left clear markings to the direction he was going in, and any search party could use them as a vector to his general direction. Shuffling a bit, going in odd directions, anything could have messed with him, but he had done nothing. The steps in the sand acted like an arrow pointing right at him.
“Damn it, how can I be this stupid?” he asked himself, struggling not to raise his voice too high. “Yea, helluva lot of good that evasion training did. How am I this forgetful?”
He shook his head and looked up at the sky. Through the trees, he could just barely see the sun setting. That, along with the recent discovery of his mishap, pushed him to the point of exhaustion.
“Screw it, I’ve taken enough turns to prevent a straight track,” he said, trying to comfort his worries. “This area is thick enough anyways. Good as any; probably better than a few. Now what else did I forget?”
Though the last statement was sarcasm directed to his own foolishness, it did remind him of an even more important task that had slipped his mind in the rush through the woods: his rescue beacon.
“Ah, right, right,” he mumbled, fumbling around for the tiny device.
Now the question came as to whether it should be used or not; the answer to that was rather easy. Just as a rescue team could use its signal to home in on his location, so could a search patrol. But, of course, that search patrol would also need to be able to track the signal, and Ponies still did not have radios. There was the slight chance of one of them having such a device in their possession off of the black market, but the odds of that were rather slim. It was also possible for a Changeling patrol to hear it, and go after him, as he was near the border from what he could tell. But this, too, was such a minute threat that it was pointless to even consider.
He turned the beacon on, set his bundled possessions down, and did a short scouting of the area, thinking first about where he should stay. He spotted a large ridge a short ways away, only about half a mile, where the forest and foliage became even thicker; something he did not think possible without re-classifying the forest as a tropical jungle. If he could get on top of it, it would give him a good view over a wide area; as well as a landmark that he could relay to rescue whenever it came.
Grabbing his equipment, he hiked over the increasingly rough terrain to the ridge. Shuffling down a small knoll, he was confronted with a nearly vertical wall of rock, towering in front of him as a daunting obstacle. There was no discernable way of climbing it, and the only way to the top of the ridge was to follow the wall until it depressed enough to go around, and then climb up from the back. Cole was considering doing just that until his shadow, stretching across the ground in its long fashion, warned him that his few remaining hours of daylight were running out.
“Alright, well… guess I need to stop. If I could just get up that damn ridge… maybe I could find a better hiding spot up there,” he said, discussing the situation with no one. “No, I can’t risk it. I don’t want to be sleeping exposed, even if it is up there.”
He set down his parachute again and looked over the area. To his luck, he found a small depression in the ground up against the wall, a sort of large, narrow hole in the ground, with a fair amount of foliage in the front for cover. It would prevent throwing a silhouette against the rocks, which was good enough for him.
“Nice,” he grinned, walking back to pick up his belongings and carrying them back to the hole. “Ok, shelter, camo, sanitize; in that order.”
Those were the last three steps he would have time for in the day, and the most important. He had a little bit of food and water with him, enough to last through tomorrow if he was conservative, which he planned to be. He handled the shelter immediately, or what passed for it, taking down small branches and other pieces of the forest to fashion into a small makeshift ‘roof’, while the bushes and trees around him formed a sort of wall. It took the rest of the daylight to arrange everything to look natural, as if nature had made it, but it was needed; and it all meshed together as the darkness settled in.
“What time could it be?” he wondered.
“Time enough to finish your work,” his conscious told him.
“No, not that much,” he said to himself, shaking his head. “At least the personal camo can wait till morning, I’m not going anywhere. But I need to get rid of some things.”
One of the biggest rules taught to him was to abandon anything that was not needed, and to dispose of it properly. He’d already stripped down to just his suit, and went about organizing the few pointless items he had with him into its own pile, the biggest piece being his flight helmet. He moved a short distance from his temporary home, dug a shallow hole in the ground, and placed the helmet in first, followed by the other items. Pushing the dirt over with his hands, Cole felt like he was burying a time capsule. In such a vast expanse, it was unlikely anyone would find this; but what if they did? Not necessarily a search party, but maybe just some lucky campers. What would they think of the find?
“They’d probably want to make some money off of it,” something in his head guessed.
“I’d hang on to them,” Cole said.
“Of course you would, they’re yours. You love this stuff.”
Pushing some leaves over the now buried material, he returned to his refuge, and settled down for the last part. He dug an even smaller hole in the ground, and piled some twigs and dry leaves into it. He needed a fire, but the flame had to be concealed and small so there would not be too much smoke. The entire scenario felt coated in hopelessness and primitive looks.
But, the situation was not as bad as it could have been; it was always a possibility that this could happen to a pilot, and the necessary pieces of gear were available. He was not some stranded tourist, he was trained to survive in the wild; but why go through that work if you could avoid it? More precisely, why spend your precious time and mental stability trying to start a fire when you could do like he did, and bring a small lighter in case of this?
“You wouldn’t, that’s why,” he said with a grin, flicking on the tiny flame and lighting a single twig, which he dropped in the hole.
When he was sure the small fire was going, he killed the lighter and stuffed it back in his pocket, with the other hand diving into another. While the first returned empty, the second pulled out a small pocket knife. He sat in front of the fire, cross-legged, head hanging a bit so as to not hit the protective ceiling. Now came the difficult part of clearing his slate, and the most important.
Being a soldier, Cole’s flight suit had several patches on them, identifying various different things; understandably, they had to come off. The first piece that would be his ranks, which could just be taken off, followed shortly by his name patch over the left side of his suit, which had to be cut off. Legally, he was allowed to tell any captor his name, rank, and serial number but he assumed the Equestrians did not know that; perhaps it would give him some kind of expendable leverage if he was captured and interrogated. Cole was careful not to rip open the suit itself, slowly taking off his personal identification. Once that was off, he put the blade to the United States Air Force logo on the right, which came off just the same.
Next was the squadron patch, covering his right shoulder; it, especially, had to go. He took it off and stared at it for a minute, studying every detail; the squad’s name running over the top, the eagle running smoothly over, with the red, white, and blue tail curling almost all the way back around, the large star in the middle surrounded by the many smaller ones. Complex designs were always a little obnoxious, but they always looked like art; at least this one did.
The last patch was the American flag over his left shoulder. Rather than take it off, as he had with the others, he hesitated, staring at it for a bit. It, in particular, was rather dirty and torn from his journey.
“Should I really burn this?” he asked himself. “I’m not supposed to even drop a flag, much less burn one.”
“Really? It’s a patch, not the real thing,” his conscious spoke up. “This is a matter of survival, I’m pretty sure you can be forgiven for this situation.”
“I know, I just… don’t really want to.”
“You know damn well you have to; stop being melodramatic.”
“I’m pretty sure that if I get caught, they’ll be able to tell I’m American, flag or not,” Cole argued, grazing over it again.
“What do you think they do with old, worn-out flags? Shove them in a shredder?” the other side argued. “It’s not like this one’s going to be used again.”
Cole looked at the patch again; between the dirt and the small scratches, it would not be used on another flight suit again.
“Yea… fair enough.”
Just before he took put the knife to it, he remembered a vital part of the rules of prisoners.
“Remember to ensure that some patches, especially the flag, remain intact,” the instructor warned. “Should your uniform lose all of it’s identification, then you lose the rules that come with it. Should you be captured, the enemy will have the right to execute you as a spy.”
“Damn my memory, all that mental anguish for nothing,” he said, pulling the knife away. "Ah well, I knew I was right. Just had a hunch is all."
He looked to the miniature flag again.
"Yea, right," he sighed, once again disappointed in his own failures for such vital details.
Grabbing the other three, he dropped the patches into the pit, adding a few more pieces of tinder to fuel the fire. They began to burn up, and Cole resolved not to worry over such things in the future. There were certain points, to him, that just required common sense for an answer.
As the fire burned, his mouth stretched open and let out a quiet yawn. It must have been dark for at least three or four hours by now; but, with the way time played with his mind when he was either busy or idle, his estimate could be way off. It would be important not to sleep in too late so he could get moving as early as he could when the light returned, but he could still do a couple of things.
Maybe he could set up some primitive alarm system with twigs and branches to give him a little security while he slept. Or, along those lines of making some type of system, build traps for some food; or just scavenging for food in general. Oddly enough, he was not hungry at the moment, despite everything that had happened and all the work he had done. He decided not to worry about it and see if there was still time to do anything worth doing.
“Alright, what time is it?” he wondered, bringing up his hand to look at his wristwatch. “Let’s see, it is currently Oh… shit.”
The clock’s tiny hands were still, not moving a bit, still stuck on Oh-Fourteen-Thirty-two; Two-Thirty-two. He could not remember the last time he saw the once-shining watch ticking. It may have been struck by something along the journey.
“Great… just fantastic…” he mumbled, the frustration of everything coming to a peak. “Just had to add this. Everything going on isn’t enough; I had to lose my damn watch. Son of a bitch! This… ugh.”
He grunted a bit more, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath; the cover of his eyelids reminded him of how tired he was.
“Screw it, I’m going to bed before anything else bad happens,” he said. “Maybe some PJ or Crow’ll come pull me out before morning.”
He kept the prospect of salvation via Pararescue Jumper close as he lay down. The makeshift bed of dried leaves was surprisingly more comfortable than he predicted it to be; though that was not by much overall, being dried leaves. The parachute served as a makeshift blanket, which he wrapped himself around like a cocoon with his head barely sticking out; he found that added to the comfort.
It was rather humid out, but that did not bother him much. The Southern part of the States was drenched in humidity year round, usually to the point where Cole would joke that half of the Atlantic was just sitting in the air they breathed. He had grown up with that in his lungs; though that did not mean he enjoyed it.
As he tried to go to sleep, he began to think, his mind running faster now that everything had calmed down. It was an annoying habit of his, being unable to sleep because he could not stop thinking over things. What had happened today, worrying about what would happen, and other random thoughts began to enter and exit.
“Happy thoughts equals happy dreams; keep positive,” he reminded himself. “Think about how much better you’ll feel when you’re finally out of this. And writing up a damned report as to why you lost a multi-million dollar plane. Ugh.”
Not finding as much comfort in the prospect of returning home as he hoped, Cole decided to mentally review the day’s events to help drive him to sleep.
“I wonder if that Changeling counted as a kill,” he thought jokingly about the now-pulp Charlie. “That’d be funny if it did.”
Such thoughts continued on until he finally dozed off into slumber.
“Keep looking! Make sure the search is thorough!”
Cole heard the words in his sleep. Even though he knew what they meant, he still hesitated on opening his eyes, or doing any other kind of immediate movement. The first thoughts were the obvious sources: either an Equestrian patrol or his saviors. The volume of the command, which ringed through the wooded area, dreadfully ruled out the latter.
The pilot’s eyes slowly opened, revealing nothing more than the protective leaves and branches of his camouflaged shelter, and the smoking ashes of the miniature fire in the dirt hole. He half expected to see some light coming in through the holes, but there was none. It was still dark outside, but not as pitch as it had been. It must have been sometime early in the morning, close to sunrise.
Cole made sure to make as little noise as possible as he got up, slowly moving the parachute and kneeling on the forest floor. His gloved hand moved up and pushed some of his all-natural home to the side. The movement needed to be slow and quiet, and it was annoyingly long before an entrance was opened. To his luck, nothing was in the little crater he had slept in; though he did not expect them to be either. He thought of retreating back into his lair, but something in his mind told him to examine what was going on; if the pony patrol was sticking around, he did not want to stay there and have the Rescue Jumpers run headlong into them.
Crawling out on his belly, he remained motionless for a bit to make sure he was not spotted yet. Nothing seemed to have stopped or changed in pattern. There was a fair amount of rustling close ahead from the search efforts, and the voices continued unhindered.
“Make sure this place is totally clean! Check every little twig and rock for a hiding spot!” a young voice ordered, probably the patrol’s commander.
The voice was rather young, indeed, for a commander; it reminded him of Dart’s in a way.
“Sir, you don’t think a Human can hide under a twig, do you?” another voice asked in a rather honest way. “I’ve never seen one, but I don’t think they can do that, can they?”
“N-no, of course not! I meant a hiding place for evidence; the Human may have dropped something, or left some kind of trace!”
Cole personally begged to differ; he had made sure that his area was free of any markings of unnatural interaction. Unless they picked the exact location where he buried some of his equipment, and dug down a short ways, they would find nothing. He also refused to believe the commander’s claim; evidence was a good excuse for the catch, but by the awkward tone of his reply, the pony obviously meant the initial type.
Still on his belly, Cole crawled forward, towards the edge of the hole, aiming for a wide tree trunk to hide his head behind. It took about a minute, a tense, heart-stopping minute, before Cole stopped just in front of the tree, most of his body still angled inside the crater, hidden by the ground. He remained quiet, and beyond the normal chatter, none of the Ponies seemed to have noticed him. He took a shallow breath through his nose, and relaxed a bit before moving to the next step.
His head poked slowly around the side, only enough to give him a view. Standing there, almost thirty yards from where he was, was a group of ponies in armor, clearly part of Equestria’s military. A light brown one could be seen in front of the others, with all eyes on him. From his words and movement, what little Cole could pick up, he seemed to be the commander; though nothing on his uniform stood out from the others.
“Is that understood!?” he said, raising his voice and confirming Cole’s suspicion.
“Yes sir!” the group answered.
“Then get to work!”
The group split up and began to individually comb the area. Cole counted fifteen of them, including the leader. Thankfully, none moved directly towards him, but a couple came closer in the general direction. Thirty yards seemed like such a short, precious distance to John; and now it seemed shorter.
“Can’t fight this entire patrol,” he thought to himself, immediately ruling out the first option before he spent too much of his valuable time dwelling over it. “Way too many; and it could cause a political problem. So, stay or leg it?”
Cole’s distress beacon was still active, so there was a chance rescue would pull him out; assuming they found their own way around this group of hunters. If that was his choice, then he could simply hide out in the shelter; it did not stick out too much, at least not enough to inquire the curiosity of a careless eye. Only these were not careless eyes, they were actively hunting for him; and if one lucky pony stumbled across his hideout, it would end there.
The second option was to run, or to maneuver to escape somehow. Of course this ran the risk of being spotted if he was not careful, and if there was a pegasus in the group, he would not be able to escape. But, it would be good to get out of the patrol’s search area, for obvious reasons. It was not the first time Cole had to make tough choices, and it probably would not be the last; but, that did not make things much easier.
One of the closer Equestrians to his left turned, and started searching closer to his position. Fate’s clock started ticking down, and he had a serious decision to make. It did not look like the patrol was going to leave without checking every corner. If he started moving now, he could backtrack and move back towards the beach. Assuming those areas had already been investigated, it could be safer, and it could bring him closer to his possible rescue.
“Ok, I’ll double back,” he thought, keeping his eyes on the closest soldier.
Now one of the faults of his location choice came about. Much of the crater was surrounded by shrub or bush, giving it the extra concealment, but fewer exits. Moving through them would make far too much noise. The only clear way out of it was where he was laying at the moment, and the area in front of him was devoid of cover.
He would have to wait until none of the ponies were looking in his direction, then crawl away to a safer area. Time continued it’s slow, painstaking march, Cole continued to watch the nearest Equestrian, occasionally diverting his eyes to find the others. For what felt like an hour, nothing seemed to move.
Suddenly, there was a loud shout from one of the ponies that made Cole jump. For a moment he thought one had seen him, but after a couple of seconds he realized it was their commander, calling for them. Cole did not fully hear what he ordered, but the entire search seemed to shift left a good deal.
Cole watched as all of them stopped and trotted, at varying speeds, past him. The closest one, what looked like a unicorn, moved just about ten feet from his face. His heart felt like it stopped, and he froze completely; squinting his eyes to the point of barely being able to see, hoping to keep his pupils from being noticed.
Finally, all of the search party had moved off; not out of eyesight, but far enough to encourage Cole to finally move. Slowly, sluggishly, he motioned his right arm and left leg slowly, hovering forward just over the Earth, setting down, and carefully pushing forward one stroke. He stopped and shot his eyes right to see if his advance had been noticed. They all seemed preoccupied with their own sectors to comb over.
He moved forward again, and again he checked the ponies, and then restarted the process. After the fourth time, he was out of the crater entirely, still unseen by the troops. The procedure now became one fluid, smooth process. As he moved, he passed the axis of the group, and began to move away from the entire area.
“You see that?”
Cole froze, unwisely, in the middle of another motion, leaving his right leg and left arm angled oddly; he quickly brought them back to the ground.
“What?”
“Over there,” one of the ponies said. “Does something look odd to you?”
“We already searched that area,” his ally replied tiredly.
“That’s what I mean; it looks like something’s there that shouldn’t be. Can you tell?”
“No, my eyes are too tired,” the second searcher replied. “The only bizarre thing to me is how you’re this awake.”
“Let me go take a quick look,” the first said, ignoring the comment.
Cole was worried about being spotted, but turned his head back all the same. The unicorn was moving back towards him. Everything was coming down to this, and his mind began to race for options. Very few were available.
“Should I just take-off or stay? Shit, what now!?”
The pony closed the distance quickly, but stopped at an awkward, leaning tree a short ways away. He looked around the trunk, noticed a small pile of rock, and turned back to his comrade. Cole stared, astounded, breathing heavily through his nose, his eyes wide and brows raised in shock.
“Nothing right here, but I’m still going to do a quick check!” the unicorn called.
“Now man! While his back is to you! To the trees over to your left!”
Cole did not bother stopping to think. He immediately pushed upwards, and was soon on his feet, moving much faster. If there was a chance to lose them, it would be now. If he could move into a thicker part of the woods, it would be easier for him to lose them. Assuming they even noticed him, which he knew they would.
“There!”
“What!?”
The unicorn swung around, and noticed a bipedal creature darting into the darkness.
“Backscatter, catch him!” the commander called.
Cole did not get far before he began to move sluggishly. A second after that, he began to feel tired, then downright exhausted. He could not tell why before he caught a glimpse of his hands. There was a blue aura flowing around them. He had failed to count in the unicorn using his magic as he began to lose consciousness.
“Damn, that… that just ain’t f-fair!”
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Who sews their patches on instead of velcro? What if you need to wash the flight suit?
5259725
I'll let you know.
5260469
I'm not sure if I mentioned sewing anywhere; if I did, it was probably a slip of the mind on my part.
ugh!! whens the brits get to be involved! itching to get in here!
5273416
Soonest? Not for another 10-12 chapters.
5273420
we await you're call
Gotta love that SERE shit