Chapter 89: Hanging On By The Skin Of My Teeth
I really wish I knew where I was going. I was getting more than a little tired tramping through the thick undergrowth of the endless jungle, hoping to stumble across a snake. I now had one of each species that the client wanted, but that meant that I was still missing six.
I think what made me the crankiest was the idea that I was being constantly watched. With all my luck, it was another one of those stupid chimps thinking I would make a great meal. However, it wasn’t enough of a threat to make me want to put on my armor.
After being on the ship for so long, there was nothing that I was enjoying more than breathing in the fresh air and feeling a breeze blowing across my face.
"Any idea how I am going to find six more of these stupid things?" I asked Jun Li as I ducked under a long hanging branch. I became even more satisfied with how short I was with each passing moment. It definitely made things easier in the jungle.
"You seem to be doing well," said Jun Li, trying to infuse some enthusiasm into his voice.
"Well? I have been here for two days, and I have only managed to get two of them. If I am not wrong, that is an average of one a day, which puts me more than a little behind schedule for the drop-off," I grumbled, not at all happy with how slow my progress was. Where was the Pied Piper when you needed him? Sure, he lured mice, but I figured that enough mice would draw a snake where I needed it to be.
It was also getting late, I hadn’t been able to eat anything since breakfast, and I was getting more than a little stabby and hangry. I needed to organize my thoughts, and I needed to do it fast.
Snakes were not territorial creatures unless mating, incubating, or hibernating. And I didn’t know the Agkistrodon rhodostoma or Bothrops lanceolatus well enough to know if they were going through any of those stages. That means that if I managed to find two of them in the same area, there should be more of them.
Depending on how many resources they needed.
My head was spinning with information, but none of it would give me a definitive answer.
The path I had chosen to walk down was similar to the one on which I found the Bothrops lanceolatus, so maybe I would get lucky again. And hopefully, I wasn’t moving in the opposite direction of where I needed to go. I should probably add tracking skills to the long list of things I needed to learn.
Night made a light chirping sound before jumping down from where he was perched on my backpack. I watched him scamper off into the bushes, not overly concerned. I mean, he managed to track me across the jungle after the vines managed to kidnap me. He would come back, or he wouldn’t. I was really hoping for him to come back.
A big part of me wished that I had some music to listen to as I walked, but I felt that in an alien environment like this, that would be a death wish.
All of a sudden, there was a loud rustling sound just off to my right. I quickly activated my armor, not sure if I was going to be abducted by another plant or animal. Instead, a smaller version of the Agkistrodon rhodostoma slithered across my path. Not bothering to second guess my luck, I unsheathed my wrist blades and quickly jumped onto the snake’s back.
On a scale of 1-10, I definitely gave this experience a 0 out of 10, would not recommend.
As much as I had classified this as a juvenile or adolescent, based on the size, it was still bigger than the largest anaconda ever found on Earth. There was no way for me to wrap my arms around its girth to be able to climb up it. I would like to say that I was in complete control, but that was a complete and utter lie.
My wrist blades managed to penetrate the scales just enough to allow me to stay in place, but based on the snake’s reaction, I was nothing more than an annoying mosquito.
"I don’t suppose that I have blades in the toes of my boots," I asked my helmet, trying to think about how I could make my way up to the head in the least amount of effort possible.
"Ah! I just installed those! And they are from a much better material than your wrist blades; I should update those too when you don’t need them so much!" The very cheerful voice coming through my helmet’s speaker let me know that the mechanical voice that I had come to enjoy was no longer available.
"I figured that if you were talking to Jun Li, then the radio silence was over! Now, back to the upgrades..." Sha Shou was just as perky and hyper as I remember her. But I couldn’t say that I didn’t miss the silence.
"We can go through those later; right now, can you activate the toe blades?" I asked with as much politeness as I could, given my current situation.
"Oh, sure. If you go to your wrist unit—"
"Sha Shou, my hands are a bit busy. Now, my helmet was able to do what I asked without me first putting it in through my wrist unit. Can we go back to that?"
"You didn’t need to access your wrist unit? I thought you always need to go through your wrist unit to activate the different commands..."
"Sha Shou, if you aren’t going to be able to help me right now, can you please give me the other one?" I said as the snake almost managed to fling me off its back as it slithered back and forth through the trees. Whatever had spooked, it must be something truly terrifying.
Luckily, I had my armor on; if not, my arm would have definitely been ripped out of my socket right now.
"You know, you can can the attitude, young lady," snapped Sha Shou, sounding more and more like a human mother than I ever wanted my armor to sound like. I blamed Jun Li.
"I am sorry, I am currently hanging onto the back of a giant fucking snake that is dragging me through the jungle. I want to kill it; I just need to get up high enough for that to happen," I said through gritted teeth. Maybe we should go back to Earth and get a body of Sha Shou so that she leaves my armor alone.
Add that to the list too.
