Jovian Command Patch

Description

I don’t know how or why my platoon was selected to have an inspector attached, but here he was with his little tablet and stylus taking notes as we conducted a long range ice patrol. His insulated armor looked new, and smack dab in the middle of his chest he had a Jovian Command patch velcro’d to his load bearing gear. Jupiter’s blood red eye glared at me in miniature from his armor and again in full malevolent scale from the horizon. My armor had lots of velcro panels for patches but I don’t think I ever got issued any. Oh well.

The other day the inspector actually asked me if I had any extra power banks for his heating systems as his were starting to run low. He seemed shocked when I said that none of us were using ours because it was impossible to carry enough batteries to make a difference. What a warmie. Better to just get used to being cold. The insulation will keep you north of hypothermia and it makes the endless trudging more bearable because at least you have the slight warmth of motion to look forward to.

And so, I trudged along, tuning out his questions by pretending to scan the icy rubble to the front and right of our line of march opposite where he was walking. Suddenly, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and glanced around to see the inspector waving his arms above his head. I waved back, wondering what he wanted, but that just made him flail his arms more rapidly and stomp up and down with his left foot. I signaled the platoon to halt and sent a quick message to 2^nd platoon to let them know we were held up. Ice troopers around me spread out and crouched down, scanning the horizon for threats as I walked over to the inspector. He was still flailing with three limbs but his right foot was oddly immobile. I scraped some of the frost off my visor and looked harder at his foot. It was completely inside the ice, and a dark line was forming that stretched from his foot into the distance. It took my cold brain a moment to put what I was seeing together, but when it finally clicked I started backing up as fast as I could, signaling both platoons that we had a new crevasse forming. Hot water from a volcano or hot spring had seeped up and melted the ice under the inspector’s foot, which immediately refroze around it, but there was more hot water where that came from and that meant a big crack that could catch us all if we didn’t move quickly. Also, the ice spiders loved the hot volcano water both for its minerals and the quick path to the surface it melted for them.

Sure enough, as I turned to see if the inspector had managed to free himself, a forest of segmented legs started poking their way out of the new slush right behind the guy. The jerky, alien movements of the upraised legs increased in tempo as the beasts beneath wiggled their way up towards warm prey.  I raised my pulse rifle in the air to try and remind him that he was armed, but he just sort of windmilled his arms uselessly against the spider legs instead. That was dumb, you can’t slap an ice spider hard enough to matter. Even shooting them takes a little while to work. I considered using some of my ammo to try and help but honestly I’m not a very good shot so I’d probably just hit him. He was probably about to die anyway so there was no point using up the ammo. The whole area around his feet was getting slushy and the spider legs began to work in concert, grabbing him at multiple points and pulling him down in coordinated waves of chitin appendage. By the time he was in up to his waist, everything had frozen up again. He was still jerking around spastically. The spiders were probably eating his lower half with their weird rotating mandibles. Finally, he slumped forward limply and remained still, supported somewhat upright by the structure of his armor. I stared for a full minute waiting to see if he would move again or if the crack was going to resume spreading. I signaled my guys to hold position again just in case they forgot or got distracted. It’s hard to focus on anything for a long time when you’re stuck not moving around in the cold, so it’s good to remind people of what they’re supposed to be doing.

Someone started sprinting towards the inspector. I blinked and tried to focus my eyes on the ID marker my visor was projecting. It was Specialist Palmer. I fumbled numbly at my wrist controls to send him a message to hold off but he either didn’t see it or was ignoring me, so I took a knee to see what he would do. He ran up to the inspector, pushed the torso backwards, and ripped the Jovian Command patch right off his chest and smacked it onto his own in one fluid motion. For a moment he proudly stood there sticking his chest out, then began to pantomime writing on a tablet. Abruptly he stopped writing and danced around waving his arms and kicking one leg. I could just barely see his face through his clouded visor but I could make out that his teeth were bared in a maniacal grin. I exhaled quickly through my nose a few times and something in my belly twitched and ached a little as Palmer sprinted back to his position. Slowly my iced over wits realized that was funny. Wonders never cease. It looked like the crack was done forming so I sent the all clear and off we trudged.

I think I’ll make Palmer write the ice spider encounter report.