"Pheromone Pharmacopia"

by Brandy Dewinter

(c 2001, All rights reserved)

 

Chapter 11 - "Misguided"

Waylon Jennings wore a particularly self-satisfied smile as he waited with pseudo-gallantry for the team to be seated for the morning conference. He shared a smirk with Oz Anderson, then hinted at his little surprise.

"Ladies, y’all are about t’ experience one o’ the less, ah, pleasant aspects of astronaut trainin’."

"Worse than the Vomit Comet?" Carol asked in alarm.

"Sure thing," Jennings confirmed. "Right, Oz?"

"I guess we’ll see," Anderson replied, for once forgetting to fake an Aussie accent. His smug smile said that he was focused on something he expected to be even more rewarding.

If Jennings expected more expressions of alarm from the girls, he was to be disappointed - not that it diminished his smirk - and he moved smoothly into lecture mode.

"As y’all know, some o’ the launch and recovery emergency scenarios result in the astronauts comin’ down in remote areas. Obviously, we don’t expect that t’ happen, but we must be prepared for all contingencies. As a result, all a’ y’all need to be qualified in basic survival skills."

"Like what?" asked Jaymi with a grimace that suggested she already had a distressingly good idea of what that might mean.

"Like dropping us somewhere in the middle of nowhere and expecting us to eat bugs for two or three days," Jacqui answered with her own scowl. "Been there, done that, ain’t no fun. But we can handle it."

"I’m sure we can," Marilyn said brightly. "I was in a movie once where I was shipwrecked on a deserted island, you know. I learned all sorts of survival skills while making that picture."

"Oi think you moight find that a *real* wilderness is jus’ a bit more . . . difficult," Anderson said. "Roight, Beaver?"

Jacqui shrugged, then asked a question of Jennings with a raised eyebrow.

"Yes, Jacqui, we think you should go, too. You’re the shuttle commander, and will be responsible for the safety of the crew."

She sighed, but nodded. "Same rules as before?"

Jennings nodded in his turn, then explained. "We used t’ do this as a no-notice exercise, with the candidates limited t’ what they were wearin’ at the moment they were tapped t’ go. But the men . . oops, the candidates were all qualified military pilots, and once they learned that a survival demonstration was part of the trainin’, they all started carryin’ a bunch of gear from their reg’lar flight kits. That sorta defeated the purpose of the no-notice approach, so now we give you fair warnin’. Specifically, y’all have an hour t’ git ready. You can bring whatever you want, dress however you want, as long as you board the chopper in an hour."

"Where will the exercise be held?" Vanna asked.

"Louisiana," Jennings announced. "Y’all’ll be provided with maps just before you’re dropped off."

A pout formed on Marilyn’s full lips. "This seems like a lot of bother for something we shouldn’t need anyway. Do we really have to be out there for days?"

"That’s sorta up t’ you," Anderson said. "If you hurry, you c’n make it t’ th’ pickup point in a d’y or so. Oi’ did."

"Will you be coming with us?" Jaymi asked, hinting with a smile at interest in a little . . . unsupervised time with the tall astronaut.

"No, thank you," Anderson said, showing no regret at missing whatever Jaymi might have been suggesting. "As Beaver said, I’ve been there, and Ah’ll pass."

"That doesn’t seem really fair," Marilyn said. "I mean, if Jacqui has to do it over, then why not you?"

"I’m not on this flight," Anderson said, a patronizing tone in his voice as he explained what should have been obvious.

"Well, yes, but, this isn’t really part of our mission, either," Marilyn said, still pouting as she tried to understand. "It’s just a sort of . . . general qualification thing, right?"

Jennings nodded, a new flavor to his smile.

Marilyn’s smile brightened as she reached what seemed like the obvious conclusion. "And if Jacqui has to go again, then it’s a sort of recurring thing, so you have to do it over sometime, too. Right? Why not now?"

"She’s got you there, Oz," Jennings chortled. "I think that would be a good idea. We wouldn’t want them to think we were being unfair."

"Speaking of that," Marilyn said, interrupting anything Anderson might have wanted to say. "How do we know this isn’t some sort of . . . macho thing, just to make us feel uncomfortable? I mean, who picks the place, and how far we have to go, and, well, that sort of thing? What if something bad happens?"

"I pick the exercise parameters," Jennings admitted. "But I assure you, it’s a reasonable test. And safe, too. All a’ y’all will have beepers so you can signal for help. Of course, that would mean you failed the exercise."

Marilyn’s pout was turned on at full force when she looked at Jennings. "Well, if it’s so reasonable, then why don’t *you* do it, too?"

"I’m not an astronaut candidate," Jennings replied, unconsciously mimicking the patronizing tone Anderson had earlier used to respond to the challenge directed at him.

"Hell, Waylon, you were happy enough to saddle me with this," Anderson said. "I think it would do you good to get out from behind your desk for a while."

"Unless you think you couldn’t do it," Sandy said, blandly offering Jennings a way out - one that would require him to admit he wasn’t up to a challenge he considered reasonable for the slender girl.

"I could do it," he snapped quickly. Too quickly, because he had no chance to reconsider his words before Marilyn stood.

"Good, that’s settled. It’ll be the boys against the girls, and the last team to the pickup point treats the winners to a nice dinner, okay?"

Her team rose with her. The men weren’t even given a chance to agree before she turned toward the door. "Come on, girls, we only have an hour to pack."

Once they were out of the conference room, Marilyn’s jiggle damped out considerably as she led her team toward their rooms. That doesn’t mean it disappeared. In the heels they all wore a lot of hip motion was more necessity than affectation, but there was now a gliding grace that seemed more sinuous than soft. She led them into her room, signaling Vanna, who was last in, to close the door.

Marilyn turned to look at the team. The sharp, decisive look in her eyes was a shocking contrast to their typical appearance; shocking at least to the newest member of the team. "All right, Jacqui, there isn’t time for a full briefing now, but you’re going to start seeing a few things you probably don’t expect. The mission to Seward’s space station is real, but our objectives aren’t quite what we’ve said. I’ll go into that later. For now, we need to take advantage of this opportunity."

"Opportunity?" Jacqui repeated, a bit of a dazed look in her own eyes.

"Yes," Marilyn said. "We need to get Jennings and Anderson to take our training seriously, yet do it without blowing our cover stories completely. This is our chance to do that."

"How?" Carol asked.

"We’re going to look just as empty-headed as ever when we’re with them, but we’re going to beat them to the pickup point. That should confuse them about just how capable we really are, but it should also get them out of the expectation that we’re bound to quit before we’re actually launched. After that, they’ll have to make sure we’re really qualified."

She expanded her attention to encompass the whole team. "All right, the rest of you know the drill. Hide the real stuff under the frills. I’ll explain a bit more to Jacqui. Dismissed."

After the other team members had dispersed, Marilyn turned to Jacqui. "I wish we had more time to bring you up to speed, but we’ll handle that once we’re alone in the woods. Gather what you want to take with you - Jennings knows you’d choose useful things, but don’t change from your flight suit."

Jacqui looked down at the skin-tight purple outfit, complete with towering heels, and said, "You’ve got to be kidding! We can’t spend three days hiking in the mountains while wearing a corset and heels."

"The heels and thin soles come off those boots," Marilyn informed her. "I’ll bring you some replacements. And we can live with the corsets; they’re stiff, but not that tight. But we need to make it look like we’re totally unprepared for this, so unprepared that we aren’t even aware of how bad it’s going to be. I want Jennings and Anderson to be way overconfident."

"Oh, they will be," Jacqui said, but she looked at Marilyn with a new respect, then shrugged her shoulders and started heading for the door. "Okay. Whatever you say."

Just before the appointed time the team, less Carol, sashayed to the waiting helicopter, all besides Jacqui pulling stylish roll-aboard suitcases. Jacqui’s utility vest seemed at least as incongruous against her shiny purple outfit and the heels each still wore were obviously a challenge even on the flat expanse of the concrete landing field.

Oz Anderson, clad in well-worn camo BDUs and combat boots, started to speak. "Um, ladies, you’re only supposed to bring what you can carry."

He was interrupted by a similarly clad Jennings. "That’s all right, Oz. They can make their own choices."

Sandy, filming as usual, struggled with her large camera and a cute little trailer suitcase full of extra tapes and battery packs that was hooked to her own roll-aboard. She smiled helplessly at the helicopter crewman after struggling to lift the heavy bags. He lifted the roll-aboard easily into the waiting helicopter, but even he had to strain to lift the densely packed camera gear.

Carol came running up last (an interesting sight in her heels and skin-tight outfit), frantically stuffing a hair dryer in her own wheeled luggage. The wisp of pink daintiness that slipped from the opened suitcase to blow across the ramp had the virtue of being lighter than the hair dryer, but was probably not a lot more useful.

"Carol, dear," Marilyn said patiently, "We’re going to be roughing it. I don’t think we’ll be able to plug that in anyway. You’ll just have to let your rollers air dry. After all, this is a survival exercise."

"Oh. Oops," Carol said sheepishly. "Oh, well, I’ve got it now, and you did say we’re going to Louisiana, right?"

Jennings nodded, then Carol continued, "Well, then after we get done with this hike thing, we can all party in New Orleans. We’ll need our hair dryers there!"

"Oh, I wish I’d have thought of that," Vanna said with a pout.

Anderson and Jennings were studiously going over their own gear one last time, only faces flushed to a rich scarlet giving testimony to their efforts to keep their thoughts to themselves. And their laughter. Jacqui nearly matched them in color, a most unfortunate effect with her purple outfit, only in Jacqui’s case it was clear that humor was not what she was suppressing. No one said anything more though, and the flight crew managed to find places for all the luggage. In minutes the chopper was lifting off the pad, headed toward the morning sun.

The flight was long enough to become boring, but not long enough to require refueling. That, plus the look of the swamp under them when the helicopter swooped to a hover were their only clues to where they were. After a couple of minutes of careful jockeying, the helicopter pilot managed to set down in a small clearing. Jennings and Anderson courteously helped the women offload all their gear, ending up doing most of the work as the women took their first good look at their new environment.

"Ooh, this is *icky*," Jaymi observed, struggling to extract one slender boot from the muck.

"And it’s just . . . ruining my hair," wailed Vanna.

"Where are the, you know, tents and things?" Marilyn asked Jennings.

"Tents?" Jennings repeated.

"Sure," Marilyn said. "When I did that island picture, there were, you know, tents and little huts and, oh, things like that."

"Sorry, ladies, but all you get is what you brought with you," Jennings smugly reminded them. "Oh, and these."

He handed out small plastic boxes to each of them, along with laminated maps. "The beepers only have a panic button, but they put out a location signal as well, so we can come get you if you need us."

"I thought you were going to be doing your own survival exercise," Jaymi said.

"Oh, yeah," Jennings replied. "Well, we might get done before you. If not, someone else will come."

"Are you *really* going to be doing the same exercise?" Marilyn asked suspiciously.

"Of course," Jennings said, then he pointed on his own map. "We’re going to be dropped off about a mile from here, and we both have to make it 10 miles to the pickup point."

"Ten miles?" Carol groaned. "It’ll be, like, *forever* before we get to New Orleans."

Jennings and Anderson were not terribly sympathetic, snickering at the looks of disgust shared by the pretty girls. Whatever damage the swampy humidity had done to their hairstyles was minor next to the blast of air as the chopper lifted off, but the team was too busy shielding their faces to complain.

However, as soon as the chopper was out of sight, their demeanor changed. Marilyn started issuing orders immediately.

"All right, girls, let’s get unpacked."

"Hey, Jaymi, have you seen my makeup case?" Sandy called.

"Incoming!" Jaymi called back, tossing a bright pink box toward her longer-haired teammate.

"Makeup? Here? You’ve got to be kidding!" Jacqui snorted.

"Don’t leave home without it!" Sandy declared, then laughed as she opened the case to display sticks in a muddy palette of grays and greens and browns. "This is the latest look, don’t you know?"

The artistry that made her features look innocent and child-like disappeared behind a smudged pattern that appeared to have only the virtue that the coverage was thorough.

"Camouflage?" Jacqui realized at last.

"With insect repellent built right in - and some really nice moisturizers," Sandy announced. "You’ll need some, too."

"Here, Jacqui, you’ll also need these," Marilyn continued, handing the still-confused pilot a pair of what looked like lace-up rubber overshoes.

"Like this," Sandy said, pulling a similar pair from her own kit. In seconds, she had pulled the arched soles and spiked heels off her boots and attached the wider, flat soles of the overshoes. The flexibility of the suit material allowed her ankles to bend to a comfortable angle in what now looked like high-top sneakers, still slender and much lighter than combat boots, but with a real sole and good traction.

Jacqui struggled to follow Sandy’s example as the rest of the team extracted rations, canteens, and packs from their roll-aboard suitcases. Sandy’s camera kit supplies opened to display GPS units, commo headsets, and a laptop computer. Each girl produced a set of web gear already decorated with combat knives and obviously-filled holsters. Jacqui’s eyes widened with each display, but the question she wanted to ask was interrupted by a casual apology.

"Sorry, Jacqui," Marilyn said. "But we don’t have an extra GPS for you. We do have another headset, though. Oh, and you can hotbunk with whoever is on watch at night, so you won’t need your own sleeping bag."

"Who ARE you guys?" Jacqui asked. "This is all, um, Army gear, isn’t it? Special ops stuff."

"Is it?" Carol asked, laughing with her eyes as she snicked a live round into her sidearm. "Gee, imagine that."

"I think you’ve been keeping secrets from me," Jacqui accused, but for the first time since Jennings had announced the survival exercise, she seemed to relax a little.

"A few," Marilyn admitted. "Let’s get moving and I’ll tell you why we’re *really* here after we’re on our way."

She continued with orders before explaining, though. "Vanna, take point and break trail. Carol, help her find a good path on the moving map, and alternate with her when she gets tired. Remember, there are gators and moccasins in this swamp and I’d just as soon not solve that sort of problem in a noisy way. Try to find a path that follows a ridge line. Sandy, I’ll need you and Jaymi to do a recce tonight, so try and figure out a good place to intercept Oz and Waylon."

The team moved swiftly to their assigned positions, leaving the detritus of stylish luggage behind without a backward glance. Once they were on their way, Marilyn turned her attention to Jacqui again.

"As you’ve obviously figured out, we’re not quite what we seem," she said, ignoring a muffled snort from the nearby Jaymi. "I think it’s about time we let you in on the real mission."

"Yes, I sincerely hope so," Jacqui replied, a bit of irritation floating on the fringes of more-dominant confusion in her tone.

Marilyn had a way of disarming any suspicions that someone might hold, even when not in bimbo mode. She could appear to be fully open while still holding the important parts of the mission, or of the team, back. Perhaps it was her bright, clear eyes, or the easy smile on her full lips, but there was no hint of deeper secrets hiding behind what she actually said.

"We’re not really making a movie," she began. "Seward’s Folly, or ‘Seward Space Facility 1’ is actually a cover for a blackmail scheme against the entire world. We’re going up there to put a stop to it."

"Yeah, right," snorted a disbelieving Jacqui. "The assembled governments of the world chose a bevy of beautiful women to defend themselves against evil."

"No, only the US Government," Marilyn corrected her, the flat statement carrying such simple conviction that Jacqui’s eyes widened as she began to believe. Her cheeks burned at the realization that she had showed an unconscious prejudice herself. Why *shouldn’t* a team of women be just as capable as men in . . . whatever needed to be done? Hadn’t she spent her life proving that?

Marilyn moved on with the explanation rather than letting Jacqui dwell on her mistake. "While some of us are distracting him, the rest of us will try and, ah, take care of the station."

"By doing what?" asked Jacqui.

"Well, we understand that Seward has a thing for blondes. Vanna and I will, um, occupy his attention while Jaymi and Sandy try to disable the hardware that makes his bombs work."

"Bombs, on a space station? That’s insane!" Jacqui snapped.

"Probably," Marilyn said with a nod. "But that shouldn’t be a surprise, either. Actually, the bombs are outside the station proper, as best we can see from reconnaissance photos. It’s the triggering mechanism Jaymi and Sandy will be after."

"And me?" asked Jacqui.

"You’ll stay in the shuttle in case we need an immediate getaway. Carol will be in the airlock, ready to go EVA if needed."

"We don’t allow solo EVA’s," Jacqui said automatically. "At least, not without someone standing by in case a rescue is needed."

"There shouldn’t be much risk of that," Marilyn said confidently. "Carol probably won’t go outside the ship anyway, and if it *does* become necessary, the rest of us will head back to help. We thought it would be a good idea to have someone suited up and pre-breathing, just in case."

Marilyn’s breezy optimism was buoyed on the best insights of the experts who had thought up the mission in the first place - experts who were all too ready to take risks with another’s life. Tragic risks. It would be too late when they learned that, though.

Jacqui was highly intelligent and knew it. Despite the poor showing she had made on her earlier assumption, to recover her standing she made the next step in the briefing herself.

Thoughtfully, she mused, "If I were trying to defend myself on a space station, I’d do something about the air supply - and with the requirement for all-female crews, something . . . sex-based?"

"Very good," Marilyn complimented her. "At least, we think so, too. Seward’s Folly is likely to be saturated with pheromones that make women less of a, um, threat."

"And you’ll be able to overcome that? How? Gas masks?"

"No," Marilyn replied. "His internal surveillance system would make that too obvious. We’re just, ah, we think we can . . . resist."

Any further briefing, including any potential for difficult questions from Jacqui, was interrupted when Sandy and Jaymi dropped back to report on their study of the map.

"We think they’ll try and camp here tonight," Sandy began, pointing at a clearing indicated on the aerial photo they had downloaded from a satellite-linked database.

"How far?" asked Marilyn.

"About 8 klicks from here for us, maybe 5 or 6 for them depending on how good a pace they’re making. It’s the only place for three or four miles that should be high and dry, though. And we’re betting that they know about it. I expect that Oz Anderson has already been this way."

"Ya think?" Marilyn said with a snort. "Why, that would be cheating, to drop him someplace he’d already been, where’d he know the way and all."

"Yep," Sandy agreed with a smirk. "Or else it’s a coincidence that there’s this nice little ridge for them to walk on, while we’re slogging through muck to our knees."

"I wish it were only to our knees," groaned Jaymi as she slipped into a deeper hole.

"We’re going to have to pick up the pace a bit," sighed Marilyn, looking at her own GPS. "Jacqui, do you feel like taking a turn on point?"

"Um, sure," the petite girl replied, tucking an errant strand of raven hair behind an already-muddy ear and speeding up.

"We’ll all take turns, aside from Sandy and Jaymi. They need to be as fresh as possible tonight," Marilyn explained as the smaller girl moved ahead.

"Fresh, I don’t promise," Sandy said, plucking at her tight uniform.

"I know," Marilyn said. "These outfits are too hot, really, but they’ll protect us from the bugs - and other wee beasties - in this swamp. Make sure you drink plenty of water."

"What do you want us to do tonight?" asked Jaymi.

"I’m betting that they have GPS, too," Marilyn said. "But I doubt if they brought shelters. So I want you to get their GPS, their beepers, and if you can, their boots. Don’t take them, just make it look like raccoons or some other critter gnawed on them - but render them, ah, hors de combat."

"You got it," Sandy said, giggling.

For the next few hours, the team focused all their energy on the hike. The lead pair had found a dryer path and they made reasonably good time - which in a swamp means a kilometer an hour or so, a bit more than 10% of what they might have managed on good ground. It was still a very long, very tiring day until they reached the site they had selected for their own camp.

Sandy and Jaymi pulled thin, camouflaged garments from their kits and covered the bright colors of their skinsuits within shapeless ponchos. Jacqui watched with an expression that was too tired to be called amazed as they snugged down a few adjustment straps to keep the flowing covers from billowing or making any noise, then turned to Marilyn for any last minute instructions.

Their still shapely, though disheveled, blonde leader had only a minor change in plans. "Leave one of their beepers, just in case they get in real trouble. After all, they may break a nail or something."

"Right," Sandy said, managing to dredge up a smile though she was too tired to giggle.

The dark-haired pair vanished into the gloom like a whiff of half-remembered scent, only a faint rustle that could have been wind hinting at their passage.

"We might as well get some sleep," Marilyn said tiredly. "I’ll take first watch."

The remaining members of her team offered no argument. Only a relentless sense of duty kept Marilyn awake for the two hours she had selected for her own watch. And of course the recce team returned just as she had managed to fall asleep after she had been relieved.

"Marilyn, they’re back," Vanna reported.

The team leader crawled from her bedroll and motioned the camouflaged wraiths to her. "How’d it go?"

Despite the lines fatigue had etched in their faces, both dark-haired girls looked at each other and giggled.

"Oh, the poor dears," Sandy snickered. "They were *so* tired."

"Yep," Jaymi confirmed. "They just dropped their packs, pulled their boots off, and crashed. Poor old Waylon hardly got a blanket spread under him."

"Did you get their gear?"

"Most of it," reported Sandy. "Oz was using one of his boots as a pillow, so he’s got one good one. But some fierce little animal chewed a hole in the other three boots, and ripped off the laces."

Jacqui and the others, who hadn’t heard Marilyn’s earlier plans, started to giggle as well. "Oh, that’s cruel."

"It seems that the little bugger liked the taste of plastic, too," Jaymi said. "The buttons are all chewed off their GPS units, including the power switch. They may be able to jury-rig something, but it would probably be just as quick to follow the sun. Oh, and they may have both beepers because the only one we found was Waylon’s and we left that. But we think Oz’s got lost somewhere. We couldn’t find it, but I’ll guarantee it wasn’t in his pack or on his web gear."

"Maybe they’ll just call for help," Vanna suggested. "They might have some other way to contact the outside."

"Not those guys," Jacqui said confidently. "Even if they have something, they won’t use it until they knew for sure that we had bailed."

"Well, I know for sure I’m tired," Marilyn said. "Sandy and Jaymi are, too. Let’s get back to sleep. Whoever’s on watch, wake us at sunup."

 

(continued in next part)

 

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SMITE 2 - Pheromone Pharmacopia © 2001 by Brandy Dewinter. All Rights Reserved. These documents (including, without limitation, all articles, text, images, logos, compilation design) may printed for personal use only. No portion of these documents may be stored electronically, distributed electronically, or otherwise made available without express written consent of the copyright holder.