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Chapter 47

Chapter 48

January 30, 2157 (station time)

The thick salty sea air was refreshing, even if it was a little harder to breath than the dry air Logan was now use to.  Once again, as the air cooled, the thick fog rolled in from off the ocean.  With the fog came the uncomfortable feeling of claustrophobia.  To help fight the feeling, Logan kept all communication channels opened.

Keeping the channels open did two things for Logan.  First, It was a comfortable reminder that he was not alone.  Second, Logan found that he had to concentrate to separate the voices in his head to pick out anything that was directed at him.  This concentration didn't allow him any time to think about how he couldn't see anyone in his party.

Logan, Mike, Taavi, Manuel, Mika, Gantulga, Josh and Chuck were the members of the first surveillance on the Clothan village.  The trip to the village was frustratingly slow.  True to form, Josh struggled with running in his mech suit, just as Logan had earlier.  Logan offered a few words of encouragement and help, but knew that Josh had to learn for himself.  

An hour and thirty minutes later, they arrived at their preselected destination.  Earlier, Mike and Logan had traveled that same distance, in a little over twenty minutes.  Logan assumed that one of the reasons he was so frustrated was the anticipation of finally seeing a Clothan first hand.  His mind couldn't stop him from creating possibilities about the different parallel evolutions between the Clothans and Humans.

Josh was breathing a little harder than he should have been; yet he was still breathing comfortably.  Taavi was trying to hide his frustration with him.  If Logan hadn't been trained to read people as part of his career he probably would not have noticed.  Due to the delay, they were running behind.

For most of the team, this is were they would wait for the sun to come up and the fog to lift.  Mike and Gantulga climbed out of their mech's and began to shift storage containers.  They had four containers each connected to the back of their mech suits.  They each moved one container from the back of their mech, and attached it to the chest.  The other three containers remained in place on their backs.

Logan knew that the containers were filled with more transmitters.  These were smaller than the ones that were placed around the base camp.  These ones were designed to be smaller, with less function, yet still be able to receive input from a variety of censors and transmit data.  It was an easy way to receive information about the movements of the Clothans around the village.

Mike and Gantulga climbed back into their mechs and without a word, the two turned and left the group.  The transmitters could be planted in the day, but the chance of them being seen by a Clothan was greater then.  They had a lot of ground to cover and only another eight hours of darkness to do it.

Logan joined Josh and Mika who had moved a little way from the group and began to climb out of their mech.  Once Logan was out of his mech, he pulled his coveralls out from a compartment in the leg of his mech.  He slipped it on and then joined the rest of the group.

Were Mike and Gantulga had a lot of work to get done of the next eight hours, Logan found the opposite.  He and the remainder of the group could only wait until it got lighter before they got their first view of the village not far from their location.

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The team was the top of a ridge three kilometers away from the village.  This ridge was chosen because the rock formations on its surface easily hid the team.    The ridge also had direct line of sight on the village.  However, the fog was still too thick to see more than a thirty meters.