Doomed Space Marine: A Space Adventure (Bug Wars Book 1) Read online

  He smiled at me again. “How about we talk during it?” He lifted his band up so I could see it, along with the words scrolling across it. “I think we might be doing this together.”

  I blinked. All I could see was Bill’s dead body, the way those monsters just ripped him up.

  Looking at his son, at the same face and the same smile, my heart dropped.

  “Damn,” I muttered.

  2

  I moved into the War Room with Billy at my side, his eyes as big as saucers as he looked around the room like a puppy on his first visit to the park. I wondered if that was how I looked the first time I set foot in this place, so innocent, so full of energy and hope.

  No. I might have been greener when I was a grassfed, but I had never been like that. Maybe that was the reason I had survived all this time.

  “Whoa,” Billy mumbled as he walked a pace or two behind me. I didn’t need to look at him to know what his face looked like.

  Like most, he was probably looking up at the War Room in awe, at the large metal cylinders that ran from the silver metallic floor and disappeared up into the high roof overhead. They crackled every so often with blue electricity, the remnants of information currents which were sent from every part of the Alliance Halls and its orbiting vessels both above the Earth and throughout space. This was the hub of human intelligence in the universe, so it only made sense Billy would react to it like a kid watching his first snowfall.

  Me? Let’s just say I had seen more than my fair share of snow over the years. It would take more than this to impress me.

  “Lieutenant Ryder. Private First Class Langham,” Della Conroy greeted us as we marched into the large circular plateau in the center of the oval-shaped room. She saluted us, and we saluted back. Though, admittedly, Billy did so with a little more vigor than me.

  Della was the Major in charge of Information Acquisition for the Alliance Halls and Headquarters, which meant two things. Nothing went down on this side of the Milky Way that she wasn’t aware of, and she outranked me by more than a few levels.

  Neither of those things were always true. Though she’d joined up a little bit after me, we’d both started at the bottom more or less together.

  When she’d bounded into our platoon all those years ago, she’d been one of the most gorgeous creatures I’d ever laid eyes on. With sunburned yellow hair, a tight body with lithe limbs, and eyes that were always on the lookout for trouble, I spent a lot of time fantasizing about her. My fantasies would soon become reality as it turned out she had looked at me the same way.

  What we had together could never last, though. We both knew that. Even if both of us managed to survive the bugs, infantry Marines weren’t allowed to fraternize.

  Of course, that rule seemed insane to me when they’d put us all in the same bunks. Men and women, trained to be in the best physical shape of their lives, knowing that they might not get a tomorrow, sleeping side by side. I used to wonder what they thought was going to happen. I still didn’t know.

  If they wanted to test our resolve, it was a fool’s errand. We might not be bugs, but we were still animals. Resisting the temptations of the flesh was always a taller order than running out to near certain death. I liked to think that they knew grassfeds would get involved with each other. Maybe they thought it would strengthen our bonds.

  Either way, it didn’t matter. Once she moved up the rankings, it became clear there would be no future for us. A major could not be with an infantryman out in the open. It didn’t stop her from crawling into my bed from time to time though, at least until she got married a few years ago though.

  Now there was nothing left of our relationship but these salutes, the memories, and if I’m not mistaken, a couple of longing looks from across rooms every once and again.

  “I hope the day finds you both well,” she said, her tone as formal and detached as always.

  “As well as can be expected,” we both answered, as was customary. Though, again, Billy’s words seemed to lift with a bit more excitement.

  “Good,” she said. “The last member of your crew will be here shortly, but he’s being brought here by messenger straight from the North American base and will be patched through on comm. He should be able to hear us right now.”

  The North American base? Jesus, they were pulling kids straight from Earth now? Without so much as a training session up here? I would have shaken my head in disapproval if it wouldn’t have been disrespectful of both Della and her rank. Besides, I didn’t need to. The look that passed between us told me she knew exactly how I felt about that.

  I thought about that base, about where that kid was jetting from at this very moment.

  The North American base was in Cocoa Beach, Florida, where the NASA headquarters was when that still existed. Of course, once humanity realized what was staring back at them from space, the focus turned away from exploration and more toward survival. Losing forty percent of the men on the planet will do that to you.

  I hadn’t been back there in years and hadn’t heard from anyone back there in nearly a year. I thought about my brother, moving around in his wheelchair and taking care of our mother. I hoped they were both okay. Part of me wished I could have been back there with them, to help them get by. I knew that could never happen though. First off, I hadn’t saved near enough money to buy out my contract and, secondly, I wasn’t sure doing so would even be a good idea.

  For all the problems I had with the Alliance and the way it was run these days, I couldn’t deny the fact I was a lifer, and like most lifers, I had a complicated relationship with Earth. It was the shining mecca and all that, the thing we fought for. Still, I couldn’t, with a straight face, say that I felt like I belonged there. In truth, I couldn’t remember a lot about the way it felt to feel sunlight that wasn’t filtered through UV glass or gravity that wasn’t machine made and managed.

  That was okay by me. There was a reason I had passed up on every sabbatical I had been offered, and God knows it wasn’t for the overtime. I had found a place here in the infantry, somewhere I belonged for better or worse. Bouncing back and forth would only serve to muddy that. It would cloud my vision and make my heart shaky. That kind of thing would get you killed.

  “So,” she said, pursing her lips and moving on, “the three of you have some work to do.”

  “I figured you didn’t bring me here for old time’s sake,” I muttered, only half joking.

  Della glared at me and ignored my comment. She tapped a few times on the counter in front of her and, in the space between us, a holographic image of a small rock planet appeared.

  “Turan,” I murmured.

  “Yes, Lieutenant Ryder. This is Turan,” Della confirmed, looking over at me. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’ll fill PFC Langham in on what he’s looking at, as he hasn’t had near the experience staring at the same system of planets as you have.” Her eyebrows arched at me. “What has it been, fifteen years now?”

  “Seventeen,” I muttered. I wouldn’t have answered at all, given the fact that she was being a real bitch, but ignoring a superior officer was a finable offense, and I didn’t have the coin to spare.

  “Must be downright second nature to you by now.” She turned to Billy. “As you heard, this is Turan, one of the orbiting moons of Fenal, home planet and stronghold of the Acburian Empire.”

  It always struck me as strange why the Alliance insisted on calling these things by the names they gave themselves. The way I saw it, doing that gave them power. It made them relatable. These things were bugs. We might as well just call them that. I mean, when’s the last time you felt bad about crushing a bug under your foot? If you have, you shouldn’t. Turns out they don’t feel so bad when the situation is reversed.

  “Turan has long served as a military outpost and mineral reserve for the Acburians,” she continued. “ntil recently, we thought of it as impregnable. Now though—”

  “You managed to knock it up?” I grinned a little despite myself.

/>   With a different officer, I might not have been so fresh. Of course, I had never had any of those officers’ nipples in my mouth. I guess there was a difference there. Besides, Della knew it was all in good fun. She knew it was my process. Laugh at death so it can’t take you with it. That had always been the way I did things, and it had served me well so far.

  Once again, Della ignored me. “Surveillance methods were able to make it into the Turan atmosphere, and pass undetected into the moon’s colonies. They’ve since stopped transmitting, but before that, they sent intel about the layout of the moon as well as what it contained.”

  “Ellebruim?” I asked though I didn’t need to wait for the answer. I knew what they had found on that damned moon. It was the only thing the Alliance cared about anymore. Ellebruim was used to make our battle suits. It was used to fight the bugs, and that was all that mattered anymore. The fight.

  “Among other things,” Della answered as Billy remained quiet. “But yes, the Ellebruim is what is of importance to this particular mission.”

  The doors at the far end opened and the lift ejected another willing soldier out to us. Somehow, this one looked even younger than Billy. With red hair and so many freckles that it was hard to see the skin underneath, this kid looked like a walking puppet. I’d bet what little coin I had in my coffers he was just as effective in the field.

  It took all I could do not to sigh in disgust as Della addressed him.

  “PFC Conroy, glad to see you made the jump okay. I trust you’re up to speed.”

  She caught my eye as she spoke and absolutely read the frustration on my face. Two grassfeds meant I was going to have to do all the heavy lifting. It meant they’d have just come out of training and that all their instincts would be wrong. They’d be interested in doing what they were taught as opposed to what worked to keep them alive. Worse than that, it would mean their armor would be shit.

  Armor was expensive, and the Ellebruim needed to make it was hard to get. Sure, we had some on Earth. It was what the bugs came for in the first place, but in the case of our planet, the Ellebruim was near the core. Accessing it would mean destroying our planet as we know it.

  To that end, we were left with what we could scavenge from bug wreckage and corpses, as well as what we found on other, uninhabited planets. That meant good armor, armor with a lot of Ellebruim, was saved for people the Alliance thought were safe bets to actually bring it back, at least back in the old days, anyway. These days, it meant whoever could rack up the coins, either through killstreaks, or whatever other bullshit goals the Alliance came up with that day, would get the best armor.

  So, while my armor was pretty top notch, an artifact of the old system, the grassfeds they were sending down with me might as well have been outfitted in tin cans.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Conroy answered nervously.

  “It’s Major,” Della corrected him, her tone stern.

  “Jesus and the saints,” I muttered, shaking my head.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he answered quickly. “I mean, yes, Major. I’m sorry, Major.”

  “Noted,” Della answered.

  She turned back to me. Of course she did. It was time to talk about the specifics of the mission, and there was very little need wasting that energy on the other two. They would follow my lead. That was how it worked.

  “You’ll be sent down with three other triads,” she said, using the Alliance phrasing for groups of three. “Each group will be set down at adjacent points outside of what our information tells us is the biggest Ellebruim mine on the planet. As always, necessary maps and information have been beamed to your suits and will be available when necessary.”

  She nodded, as much to herself as to me. “You are to reach that mine, and get us exact coordinates so we can then strip it of as much Ellebruim as possible. It will then be destroyed it on the way out. Once they know we are able to reach them, the bugs will alter their security protocol. Our intelligence says destroying this mine will be a near deathblow to the bugs.”

  “I’ll believe that when I see it,” I said. It had been a thousand years since the start of this fight, and in my seventeen year sojourn, I had heard the word deathblow thrown around so much, it had lost all meaning.

  Della’s face tightened. Obviously, that was one quip too far. “If you’d like to see it, then do it, Lieutenant Ryder.” Her lips disappeared into a thin, aggravated line. “Otherwise, stop complaining. That’s an order. Understood?”

  “Understood.” It was a scolding, to be sure, but I couldn’t help smirking a little as I thought about the girl she used to be, about what I used to do with that girl when we were sure no one was looking.

  She always did like to be in charge.

  “Good. Now get to your transport vehicle. You leave in one hundred and sixty seconds. Any further questions can be handled by your pilot. He’s also been briefed on the mission. Though, at this point, if you don’t know what you’re doing, I’m not sure any amount of answers could help you.” She gave another salute. “Be swift. Be safe.”

  “Be effective,” we all finished in a military bark.

  Della looked at me again, though this time it might have been one of those longing looks. After all, this was, like all missions, a dangerous one. I might have been good at what I did, but even the good died. Still, there was nothing to say about that now. Too much time had passed. Too many things had changed, and we weren’t the children we used to be.

  Instead of putting all of that into words, she said simply, “Dismissed.”

  3

  I walked into the transport vehicle with the pair of grassfeds behind me. I could hear them muttering to each other, too stupid to realize they shouldn’t be happy right now. We were about to descend into a war zone, into a place that would make Dante’s depiction of Hell look like a trip to the malt shop with plans to skip along the park afterward.

  The worst part was, I didn’t know anything about it. The moon of Turan had long been a secret held by the bugs. Their security systems made it impossible for us to know what was beyond the thick cloud of smoke and smog that served as its atmosphere. Now that the heads of Alliance had managed to pop a camera or two in there though, they seemed to think jumping headfirst into the place was just hunky dory.

  That was ridiculous. It was like glancing at a postcard of Paris and then facing off with your worst enemy there, thinking you were an expert on the terrain. You know, back when Paris still existed.

  Just because I had my doubts about this mission didn’t mean I would voice them though. First of all, it wasn’t my place. Those decisions were made by people with more stars on their shoulders than me and higher rankings than I would ever have.

  Secondly, no one would listen to me. I might have been a legend to the grassfeds circulating through this place, but to those in command, I was an underling, a janitor who had managed not to get himself killed for more missions than any living Marine on the planet or the Alliance Halls.

  All that would buy me is a scolding, and if it came from anyone other than Della, it would probably get me fined as well.

  “Oh wow. It looks just like it does in the pictures,” Billy said, doing everything but wetting himself with glee as he looked around the vehicle. It might not have been fair to judge him. After all, the transport vehicle was really something, especially if you had never seen one up close before.

  A rounded silver circle that drove into a point at the end, the thing looked like a giant flying bullet when it took off, moving at warp speeds to take us where we needed to be in the universe. That shape was definitely on purpose, a symbol meant to show fierceness and danger.

  Of course, it wasn’t directed at the bugs. As far as anyone knew, no species outside of man used metal bullets as a weapon of choice. Why would they? It took a dozen rounds to break through the bugs’ exoskeleton. A flamethrower would do much better. Hell, so would a good old-fashioned axe. The bullet shape of our transport was likely intended to make us feel better about ourselve
s, about our chances in a universe that was not only bigger than us but also seemed to outpace us at every given turn.

  We were the most technologically stalled species in the universe who hadn’t already died out, either by the inability to protect itself from a natural disaster or succumbing to its own baser instincts.

  In fact, there’s a popular theory that if not for the bugs’ intervention, man would have destroyed each other with nuclear weapons. I didn’t subscribe to that thought process, not because it didn’t seem reasonable to me. After all, the only thing worse than human beings was everything else. I just didn’t like the idea of giving the bugs credit for anything, even if it wasn’t on purpose.

  “You over there,” I said, pointing for Billy to sit in the open pod to my left, “and you there.” I motioned for Conroy to do the same to my right.

  “Yes, sir,” Billy said and hopped to it.

  “Mark,” I corrected, sitting in the center pod and pulling the crash restraints (pads set on a bar) down far enough that they clicked as they pressed against my chest and shoulders.

  “Excuse me?” Billy said, looking over at me and mimicking my actions.

  “We’re about to get really comfortable with each other, son.” I glanced over to make sure Conroy was doing the same thing. “More comfortable than you can imagine. You’re about to put your life in my hands in a way you’ve never done with anybody else in your entire life, not your mother, not your pastor, not your best friend. I’m about to be the most important person in your whole damn life and, rank aside, I won’t have you calling me sir. If we make it off this rock, you can call me sir then. Until then, you call me Mark, and I’ll call you Billy.”