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

  Now, it seemed the tables had turned for the two and, if I didn’t act quickly, Billy was going to go the way of his father.

  13

  I looked over at Billy, at the creatures about ready to skewer him like a Fourth of July hot dog. Staring at him for just an instant before reacting, it became clear to me just how out of his depth he was with all of this. He was a helpless kid, defenseless in the face of our enemies, and that pissed me off.

  I wasn’t mad at the bugs, per se. Though, in truth, I was always mad at the damn bugs. Who comes all the way across galaxies just to screw with someone else’s planet? Still, evil is as evil does, and being upset with them is like being upset with Satan or being afraid of creepy clown posters. It was just a given. No, as my eyes glazed over at a boy who was almost certainly dead, the brunt of my ire went to the Alliance itself.

  For years, a certain sentiment had floated around in my head, and now it was hardening, cementing into undeniable truth. Ever since the Alliance changed up their systems, relegating points and holding the reins of who was given what and how much things that would save your damn life were supposed to cost, they had also done something else.

  They had turned their training program to shit. When I was younger and coming up through the ranks, things were different. We had Acburian samples, actual bugs to fight in controlled situations. We would go at them, see what they were all about, how they moved, and the way they reacted when pushed into a corner. If things got too bad, then the little collar on their necks or arms would go off, putting them down until we could get our bearings or until the next group of trainees came in, looking to learn.

  That wasn’t how they did things anymore. That stuff was too expensive, time was too precious and, honest to God, I think they might have stopped caring.

  Everything was VR now, lifelike simulations of bugs in the field. I remembered when the Alliance came out with it, the way they patted themselves on the back for such revolutionary technology that would stop the abuse of Acburian captive everywhere.

  I couldn’t believe it. First, they were ever stupid enough to think they could decipher the way a bug would act in real time. I mean, if we could reasonably wrap our heads around their actions, then we’d have a better chance of winning this war. As it was, we weren’t exactly ahead in the struggle.

  Secondly, and this one really ground my gears, I couldn’t believe there was a growing sentiment of people who threw themselves on the sword and petitioned for Acburian rights. They came to the Alliance embassies on Earth, holding signs that said capturing and testing on the bugs made us ‘the same as our enemies’ or that it was ‘the opposite of what it means to be human.’

  Those always made me chuckle, not because I thought we couldn’t be like them. I could easily see a future where humans, desperate and without hope, would venture off to another planet with the intent on settling there and throwing its ecosystem out of whack. Hell, it was a definite talking point with the United Nations when the bugs showed up. No. I laughed at the outraged protesters because they hadn’t seen what I’d seen. From their cushy apartments or cottage homes, they didn’t know what I knew.

  The thing they were fighting, the idea that we would somehow become less human in our fight with these creatures, it was the thing that was going to make it possible for us to win. The bugs taught their young well. They taught them to fight above all things, to be ruthless and merciless, and to look at your opponent as less than you and, because of that, undeserving of the resources that all of this started over. It made sense. I mean, if you and a cat were going to die of thirst in the desert and you only had a canteen of water between you, would anyone really protest you taking the whole damned thing?

  The bugs thought that way. It was why they didn’t flinch. It was why they didn’t hesitate, and it was why, if I didn’t get to him in a hurry, Billy was going to die where he lay.

  “Annabelle, lower thrusters on and send alpha force shielding to Billy’s suit,” I commanded, rushing toward him, the fire at my feet lifting me upward and sending me shooting toward the bug. Even this wouldn’t be quick enough though. The monster was already moving, its spiked arm rushing toward Billy’s chest but the energy from my suit to his would travel at the speed of light.

  “Negative,” Annabelle answered. “PFC Langham’s suit doesn’t have the necessary receptors to complete that task.”

  No necessary receptors? My heart sank so far and so fast, I was sure it now lay in broken shards in the pit of my stomach. When I was coming up, receptors were standard, part of the core suit package. Now they were an upgrade, an add-on from a greedy corporation in the business of selling safety to those with the balls to put it all out there to save their planet.

  “Goddammit!” I cried, watching as one of the thing’s arms careened toward the boy’s chest.

  “Maybe I can reach him in time. Cover me!” the girl cried, already pushing away from me and sprinting across the dunes toward Billy. Part of me was impressed with her moxie, especially since she had a broken arm and bruised ribs and a whole hell of a lot of other problems, but for the moment, I didn’t care. If she was willing to go after that bug and help me save Billy, that was all that mattered.

  “Annabelle, photon cannon and pinpoint accuracy upgrade,” I said, swallowing hard.

  In half an instant, the blue screen of the Alliance storefront appeared in my line of sight. I already had the damn cannon. It had cost me a pretty penny a few years ago, but it helped me take out a nest of these bastards when nothing else I did seemed to work. With comms back online, it would only take a microsecond to load it up.

  Unfortunately, the pinpoint accuracy upgrade didn’t seem necessary then. Why would you need to be accurate when you were going to blast your way through forty of the creatures? I just aimed, shot, and was done with it. In the end, I was surrounded by shards of exoskeleton and thick, black goo.

  That wouldn’t be the case here. At this moment, with Billy’s life on the line, I would have to be sure. This thing was already moving, its body committed to an action that even its death wouldn’t stop. I could shoot this son of a bitch in the chest, and there was still a good chance his spear of an arm would pierce Billy’s heart, anyway. No. I needed to take out the means of the piercing. I needed to blow off the arm, and to do that, I needed to be accurate. Otherwise, it would be me and not the bug who was the death of this kid.

  Fortunately, the Store responded purely to mental commands so it instantly brought up what I wanted. What I saw made the bile rise in my throat.

  Alpha-grade Photon Cannon Upgrade – Pinpoint Targeting: Shoot out a bug’s eye at a thousand yards! Never miss again! Yours for only 150,000 coins!

  Fucking extortion. That was over a month’s work at normal payrates for my rank and over a hundred standard bug kills. Even the flier bonus bounty wouldn’t even begin to cover the fact that this would eat over half my reserves in one go.

  It didn’t matter. I bought it with a flicker of a thought, and it was instantly uploaded onto the cannon, which appeared on my arm as quick as I thought it.

  The accuracy upgrade went into effect. The world became pixels in my HUD, millions of dots I could pick out and separate. My target, the tip of the bug’s arm, became a pixel too, and just like that, I could pick it out. It was moving quickly, sure, but so was my mind’s eye. I was moving right along with it, a single pixel floating around with millions, a single pixel that would save this boy’s life.

  The girl was rushing toward Billy, running as fast as her legs would carry her. Undoubtedly, she could handle herself. Having just saved her aside, no one runs toward a pair of bugs unless they know what they’re doing, unless they’re confident they can handle themselves.

  That meant all I had to do was deal with one.

  “Lock onto target. Fire cannon,” I said, gritting my teeth as I commanded Annabelle.

  “Affirmative.”

  A pulse shot from the weapon now strapped to my hand. An orb of bright coheren
t photons went careening out of the cannon, pushing me backward just a little with the force the shot. It was a strong sensation, but a familiar and a sweet one. Anytime I felt this, it meant I was either in the middle of, or about to start, kicking some bug ass.

  As the shot fired, I sped up, directing more energy into my thrusters. I wanted to reach the bug just as it was exploding, make sure that Billy would make it, regardless of how effective that girl was.

  I watched as the pulse flew through the air, and then cursed aloud when the bug flung himself out of the way, missing it.

  Luckily, it wasn’t all for naught. The flier had slammed into the other one as he leapt away from the blast, knocking it backward and away from Billy. With any luck, that would give either the girl or me time to get to deal with the insect, or with any luck, it might give Billy the second or two he needed to gather himself. Though, judging from the look on his face, I wasn’t counting on it.

  Better than that, this cannon was fitted with both a tracker upgrade and a light bender. Targeting the bugs, the standard bug next, now furthest to the left, all I had to do was say, “Revert blast,” and the pulse would turn back to its intended target.

  And that’s just what I did. The photon blast slammed into the bug this time, reducing it to goo and bits. Well, that was a thousand coins to make up for what I had just spent.

  Billy screamed as the shot disintegrated the mass over him. I was going to have to harden him up a little after this. Of course, I’d have to deal with the downed flier first.

  Glaring at it, I gritted my teeth. “Lock onto target. Fi—”

  I never got to finish the word. A blast of something hit me, knocking me off course and sending me flying away from Billy and his bug assailant. Fortunately, Annabelle was in good enough shape to absorb the worst of it, but the pixels that made up my vision scrambled and meshed into an ever-changing mess of light and dark colors. I slammed into the ground again, rolling over again and again, until I grabbed at the ground and pulled myself to a stop.

  “Disable pinpoint accuracy,” I choked out, breathing heavy.

  “Affirmative. May I suggest alpha shielding?” Annabelle asked.

  “Don’t just suggest it,” I grunted as the world shifted back into place in front of me. “Fucking do it.”

  “Language, Lieutenant Ryder,” she cooed as the shield covered me in a protective wrapping. Another blast hit me, knocking me back a little but- thanks to Annabelle, not doing any real damage.

  I stood quickly, blinking and looking forward. I didn’t need to look at this thing or read its nameplate to know what I was fighting.

  It would simply say Acburian Flier, Stinger Class, Bounty: 5,000 coins. They were a subset of the flier family of bugs. A striped aberration with pointed thorn-like protrusions up and down its body, it was the only bug known to the Alliance database capable of producing these kinds of concussive blasts which meant two things. First, I was about to face off with one of the deadliest bugs there was and, more importantly, the three fliers I’d seen earlier weren’t all we were dealing with.

  Rage pulsated in me. I had just been rudely knocked off course and, more than that, it might have resulted in the death of my partner. Worse, I couldn’t even try to help him until I’d dealt with this thing. Normally, that’d mean Billy was as good as dead, but I wasn’t the only one trying to save him. That girl was here too, and with any luck, she might be worth a god damn. Of course, that didn’t matter if I couldn’t take down this thing first.

  Looking up at the insect, I took stock of it. The nameplate read exactly as I thought but, hey, looked like the Alliance Bounty Special! on fliers added onto the stinger bounty. Small comfort those 15,000 coins would be.

  I had seen maybe three stingers in all of my travels and missions thus far. They were a rare breed of Acburian, so rare, in fact, that we didn’t have all the information on them. All we knew for sure was that they were big, ugly, and could create concussive, long-range blasts. That capability alone made me more of a threat than most since it was nearly impossible to shoot them down with ranged weapons. They had a way of slipping around the blasts like a goddamned living eel. No, every time anyone had taken one down, it’d been from behind while it was killing some poor schmuck. Luckily for me, I wasn’t most, and long-range weapons? Well, that was never very satisfying, anyway.

  This particular stinger looked bigger than the others I had seen. I had no way of knowing whether or not this was large for a stinger, but when I told the stories of how I killed it, I would be sure to say it was the largest one ever recorded.

  I had never killed a stinger before. Only a handful of Marines working today in the Alliance ever had. It was a sore spot on my otherwise amazingly well-rounded record, and though I was still royally pissed off about the attack, I was excited to finally have one of them on my kill sheet.

  You know what they say about clouds and silver linings.

  “Annabelle,” I said, glaring at the thing as it neared me, at its quickly flapping wings and hands glowing with green energy.

  “Would you like to reinstate your cannon?”

  “No. It won’t work,” I answered, knowing the only chance I had to take this thing down was to go old school. “Give me the damn warhammer.”

  I took a breath as it appeared in my hands. I could almost feel the sweet release of the bug’s head crushing under the weight of my steel.

  It took that moment to fly toward me. Half a second from now, I would strike, with the damn thing close enough to make the blow fatal. One and done. Then this damn creature would be on my mantle. I just had to hope Billy would live that long.

  One.

  I reared back.

  Two.

  I tightened my grip on the hammer.

  Thr-

  A blast of red energy slammed into the creature, ripping through it and rendering it a mess of black goo and organs on the ground.

  I turned quickly, looking for the source of the attack, of the person who’d just stolen a long-awaited kill from me.

  Standing to my left, in a skintight red and black suit with her arm stretched outward and a psionic bow and arrow glowing at her knuckles, was a woman who stood with such confidence and grace that I knew it could only be one person.

  “Mina John,” I grunted, still peeved at her.

  “Mark Ryder,” she answered lightly. “You can call me Lieutenant,” she continued. “Oh, and you’re welcome.”

  14

  “That was mine,” I said, looking at Mina John and referring to the kill she’d just stolen from me.

  The woman was a sight. Long legs, an hourglass figure, and a pert chest. She strode over to me, her hips twisting so much I was afraid they might break.

  “If it was yours, you’d have had it,” she answered plainly. “You were too slow. Hope that’s not a running theme or anything. I was hoping that, if I ever met you, you’d live up to the hype.” She shook her head. “Don’t tell me I’m wrong.”

  A strange sensation piqued in me as I looked at her, at her olive skin, her dark eyes, and beauty mark that rested on her right cheekbone, all visible through her transparent faceplate. She was challenging me.

  No, that wasn’t right. To challenge, a person has to think of you as worthy of their time. She was sizing me up first, curious as to whether or not I fit that bill. On paper, it should have pissed me off. I was Mark Ryder, for Christ’s sake. I was a living legend, a man who needed no introduction, and someone who had nothing to prove to anyone.

  It didn’t piss me off though.

  Something about the way the woman was looking at me, as though she had seen me without my clothes on and was still trying to decide whether or not she liked it, took me back to my first days with the Alliance. It had been such a long time since anyone had come at me with anything other than reverence that having to prove myself again was actually a little refreshing. Not that I had the luxury of being refreshed right now.

  “I don’t have time for this,” I muttere
d, thinking of Billy and spinning quickly around. “Lower thrusters.”

  “Already on it,” Annabelle said, and I leapt into the air, shooting toward the spot where I’d last seen Billy and the bug who had in all likelihood ended him as I was getting my ass flung through the sky.

  “Initiate photon cannon,” I said, gritting my teeth together as I rushed through the air, my mind filled to the brim with the sort of horrible thoughts only someone who has been through the sort of war I’d been fighting for years could understand. I braced myself, readying my eyes to once again rest on the corpse of a man who died too young, a boy who died for nothing.

  As I neared though, I saw that there was more movement than I would have imagined from a scene where a bug had just murdered someone with ease.

  Two-thirds of the Artemis Squad stood on either side of where Billy was laying, fighting off a few new bugs who had come along with the stinger.

  Luckily, I didn’t see any other stingers in the group, just fliers and standard walkies. The girl I’d found myself laying atop in the ditch we’d made was in front of where Billy lay, a large rocket spear in her hand which she was using with the sort of precision that you would never get from a grassfed.

  The other girl, Jill if memory served me right, was behind Billy.

  She had a pulse laser in her hands and was tearing through the fliers and walkies, her legs spread in a solid, practiced stance to brace the recoil of the weapon even as her body jerked with the force of the gunfire.

  Billy wasn’t moving, but he had to have still been alive. It didn’t make sense for the ladies to protect a dead body.

  “Get me diagnostics on PFC Langham,” I said to Annabelle.

  “Affirmative,” she answered. A few moments passed as I cut through the sky like the bullet that had brought us here.

  “PFC Langham has a severe chest wound. He’s losing blood at an alarming rate. Without assistance, he will expire in less than three minutes,” Annabelle said, her voice soft but showing none of the concern you’d expect from a person. Guess those ‘humane upgrades’ hadn’t come so far after all.