Ruins of the Galaxy Box Set: Books 1-6

by Chaney, J. N.

  “Definitely not.” He cursed. Maybe he wasn’t as good at this programming thing as he thought.

  “I’m on it, sir,” Cyril said, running over to the access panel on the wall near the door. “Got your six on the double, sir.”

  “Computer,” Magnus said. “Share creative authority with Cyril.”

  “Request acknowledged,” the AI replied.

  “Okay, the rest of you, fall in.”

  Magnus waited as his unit gathered around him. In all, he was overseeing thirty-eight warriors including himself, nearly enough for a special-units company. So, following Awen’s advice, he’d decided to do just that—make a small company and break everyone up into compact recon-style platoons according to species.

  Alpha Platoon belonged to Dutch and included Valerie, Nolan, Haney, Gilder, Sootriman, and Ezo. He also put the Reptalon with them since he didn’t trust Saasarr to get along with Jujari or Marauders. Magnus imagined that Flow and Cheeks would eventually join this platoon, but he still didn’t have the heart to introduce them to any Jujari, let alone tell them that they were on a Jujari starship in orbit over the ancestral home planet of that species. The two Marines were still confined to sick bay, the mess hall, and a cargo hold that Magnus had converted into a gym for them. He didn’t expect their PTSD to go away anytime soon, and neither he nor Valerie felt they were ready for the full truth. They’d taken well to the half truths that he’d fed them so far—being en route to a planet to start training and prep for the next mission. But they were getting restless. It was only a matter of time before they demanded to know what was going on, and Magnus wasn’t about to avoid the truth with them any more than he already had.

  Bravo Platoon was led by Abimbola. It consisted of two of the surviving Marauders they’d taken to Worru—Rix and Silk—as well as some of the additions Abimbola had picked up on the return trip—Berouth, Cyril, Nubs, Dozer, “Doc” Campbell, and Reimer.

  Magnus decided that Titus would make the best leader for Charlie Platoon. Charlie Platoon was Magnus’s old unit designation, and he gave it to Titus with pride, knowing the man would lead it with distinction. Magnus assigned Zoll, Bliss, Robi, Jaffrey, Ricky, Shorty, Ford, Andocs, Bettger, and Baker to him. The team was well rounded and ready to send some blaster bolts downrange.

  Last but not least, Magnus gave Delta Platoon to Rohoar. The roster consisted of Saladin, Arjae, Lugt, Redmarrow, Dihaze, Czyz, Longchomps, and Grahban. The nine Jujari were a veritable storm of destruction. Magnus just hoped he could manage to rein them in long enough to get them within proximity of their targets. Then he’d loosen the reins and let them do their thing.

  Magnus raised a palm to get everyone to quiet down. “Over the last couple of days, I hope you’ve noticed a difference in our team dynamic.”

  The team shared nods and more than a few grunts.

  “You’re working better together as individuals and as platoons. And that’s good. But we need to do better, and I expect more from you than you’re giving me right now.

  “The enemy we’re going up against is highly trained. They’re a fluid unit, able to adapt to sudden changes and still carry out the mission. That means that we need to hit them hard and fast and give them something they’ll never be able to adapt to. The good news is that I think we have that covered. No one will know how to adapt to the likes of you.”

  A smattering of laughter and growls went up from among the group. Magnus let them have the moment.

  “Go ahead, look around.”

  They eyed one another—some in disgust, some in fascination, and all in some semblance of wonder.

  “That’s right,” Magnus said. “You’re the craziest-looking bastards I’ve ever seen in one unit—no exceptions. Which means…” Magnus let the word hang in the air for a beat. “I expect you to fight like crazy sons of bitches too.” He caught the eyes of several women in the group. “And daughters of bitches.” Damn. It just didn’t have the same ring to it.

  “We get the point, Magnus.” Valerie gestured for him to keep going.

  “Right.” Magnus cleared his throat. “Today, we’re trying an urban-warfare simulation, one that I don’t expect you to survive.”

  “So, it's like the hidden level in Renegade Galaxy then?” Cyril asked. “Where you are pretty much doomed from the start? I mean, nobody beats that level—not even me. I think the devs put it in there just to piss people off. So, if that’s what you’re going for, sir, then isn’t that just a little dark, sir? I mean, to put people through it without any chance of beating the level?”

  “No, it’s not, Marauder. It’s real. Because while each of you has fought in a context like this before, none of you have ever done it together. That means that you’ve got to talk more, call things out clearly, and move in a coordinated effort. Until that happens, every sim will end with you meeting the same fate. It’s the same fate, mind you, that you’ll meet in Itheliana if we try to take these Paragon troopers without you knowing what you’re doing. And I’m not about to lose my first command in the Gladio Umbra because I didn’t do my part in training your sorry asses. Copy?”

  The response was a mess of people saying, “Copy,” grunting, a hiss, and other words of assent not in the Marine lexicon. He’d need to fix that.

  “Magnus?” Bliss said, looking between his other Marauders as he stepped forward. “Gladio Umbra?”

  “That’s right,” Magnus replied, understanding the man’s implied question. “That’s our new name, our new allegiance. You may have fought for the Galactic Republic, and you might again one day, but not today. You may be Jujari, and you may always be Jujari because that’s the blood that runs in your veins, but not today. And you might be a ragtag bunch of Marauders from all corners of the galaxy, pulled together by a giant Miblimbian, but not today.”

  A hand went up. It was Ezo. “What if you don’t fight for any of those factions?”

  “Yes,” Saasarr echoed.

  “Then that means you belong to me,” Sootriman replied.

  The entire team replied in longwinded Oh!s and snorts.

  “And today,” Sootriman added, “that means I fight with Magnus, and so do you.”

  “You fight with me.” Magnus nodded, looking around the group. “But you also fight for one another. Because you’re fighting for the future of the galaxy that you want to live in—that our children’s children’s children will inherit. And let me remind you, none of our children will want to inherit the galaxy that’s coming if we don’t get this right. So today, you check your particulars at the door. Today, you are Gladio Umbra. Today, you are fighting for a new future. Which means we’ve gotta train like we want it. You’ve gotta taste it.”

  “I can taste the traitor’s flesh,” Arjae said, licking his chops.

  “That’s good,” Magnus replied. “That’s good. But now you’ve gotta be smart about how you get to that meal. Copy?”

  The group started nodding and talking.

  “Hold up.” Magnus waved his hands. “When I say ‘Copy,’ I need one response back, not a dozen different ones. If I say ‘Copy,’ you say, ‘Yes, sir.’ And that’s all. Copy?”

  “Yes, sir,” they said as one.

  “Good. No more of that wishy-washy splick. Copy?”

  “Yes, sir,” they said more loudly than the first time.

  Magnus’s brain suddenly kicked into other points of nomenclature he hadn’t yet taken to the time to cover. “And from now on, you’re not Marines or Jujari or Marauders. You’re not soldiers or troopers or combatants. You’re gladias. Copy?”

  “Yes, sir,” they said together.

  “That’s what the Gladio Umbra called themselves. Gladias. So that’s what we’re calling ourselves—I don’t want to hear anything else from this point forward.

  “And, while we’re at it, we also need a rallying call. We need our word for making sure we’re on the same page, breathing the same air…” Magnus knew the kind of words they used in the Corps, but none of those felt right, no
t anymore, now that they were gladias. With so much change, his vocabulary needed to change too.

  “How about la-raah, sir?” Sootriman asked.

  Magnus looked at her, his head upturned, inviting her to explain.

  “I was doing some more research on the Gladio Umbra last night and—”

  “Last night?” Ezo’s eyes went wide with surprise. “But last night we were… I mean…”

  Sootriman turned to the smuggler and brushed his cheek with the back of her hand. “Let’s just say that, sometimes, drawing your blaster isn’t the only thing you’re quick at, dear.”

  The group chuckled, and Ezo blushed.

  “As I was saying,” Sootriman continued, “after a certain someone passed out, I got bored and decided to read about what Awen’s been so fascinated with lately. Turns out that word, in their native tongue, means ‘as one.’”

  “La-raah,” Magnus said, trying it out. If he could imagine shouting it with a loud voice in a firefight, then it worked. “I like it. La-raah it is.”

  He pointed to the team as if he were a conductor asking for a note from the orchestra. In one voice, they replied, “La-raah.”

  “I can’t hear you,” Magnus yelled then pushed a fist into the air.

  “La-raah!” the team yelled.

  “Again!” He punched the air.

  “La-raah!”

  The vibrations of over thirty warriors shouting the word shook the building’s walls. That’ll work, Magnus thought. He looked at Sootriman and dipped his head as if to thank her. She replied with the same gesture.

  “One more thing,” Magnus said, raising a finger. He hadn’t planned on this, but it just felt right. “When I say dominate, you say liberate. Dominate.”

  “Liberate,” replied the company in a loose fashion.

  “I can’t hear you! Dominate!”

  “Liberate!” they yelled as one. The air was charged, and goose bumps appeared along Magnus’s flesh. “That’s our motto. When you’re downrange, when you’ve run out of options, when you’re thinking of giving up, you remember what we, the Gladio Umbra, are there for. We dominate the field—it’s ours. It doesn’t belong to them. The whole thing—it’s ours. But we have a mission beyond mere destruction. We serve all those who will need rescue, who need liberation. That’s what drives you as a Gladio Umbra from now on. And today, the galaxy needs our help to fight against Kane and his forces. That’s what’s going to stir you to get up when you feel like staying down. That’s what’s going to make you step toward the enemy when you feel like turning back. And should you fall in the field of battle, that’s what will be written on your tombstone—on all our tombstones. Dominate!”

  “Liberate!”

  “Now,” Magnus said, a surge of emotion pumping through his veins and swirling in his head. “Who’s coming with me to take this street?”

  * * *

  Alpha Platoon was playing it safe, just as Magnus thought they would, taking turns moving between columns and buildings and laying down covering fire. It was methodical and textbook Marine doctrine. But it was also too slow for what this mission called for. Magnus had given enemy simulants a ninety-percent accuracy rate and a seventy-five-percent aggression rate. That was high by any Marine standards and certainly much more demonstrative than what Alpha Platoon was serving.

  Within the first sixty seconds, Gilder had been lasered twice in the same leg, and Valerie was cussing like a sailor, laid out on her back in the middle of the street from enemy sniper fire. The warriors wore new bracelets on their wrists that delivered small electrical charges when they’d been hit by a simulated blaster bolt, whether from enemy weapons or friendly ones. Magnus figured the addition of pain would help everyone train better—and maybe provide some minor comic relief.

  Magnus had tried to construct this scenario based on what he’d gathered from those who’d actually fought in the city of Itheliana. Awen, Sootriman, Ezo, and TO-96 had been instrumental in making this street feel as authentic as possible, right down to the blades of grass growing between the massive stones.

  Everywhere Magnus looked, there were vines and trees and the ruins of millennia-old buildings. Though technologically advanced, they still showed numerous signs of weathering and age. They lined both sides of the avenue leading to a Repub-style encampment that Magnus had developed from his own experiences in the Recon. It was spartan but highly defensible, made of several concrete berms, windowplex shields, and portable sensor towers for long-range data collection. He also included a mobile shield generator just in case the real Paragon had thought ahead—which, Magnus concluded, they probably had.

  While the Marines were busy getting pinned down under heavy enemy fire, Bravo Company was advancing much more quickly. Their approach had the right idea—move fast, stay low—but they hadn’t figured on the enemy using heavy weapons on the objects they used for cover. Despite their best efforts to advance up the street, Abimbola’s platoon was taking heavy casualties. Even Abimbola himself took a head shot when he stepped from behind cover to help pull one of his men to safety. Magnus made a mental note to create some sort of protective throw bag like they used in the Corps—no need to come out from behind cover to retrieve a gladia.

  For all his creative thinking, Titus’s platoon was doing even worse. At first, Magnus was impressed that Titus had decided to use the building interiors as a means of advancement—which would have worked in a typical urban setting in almost any other known city in the protoverse. However, these were ruins, and just because one building joined another didn’t mean any existing passages between them were usable. After disappearing for the first minute, Titus and his platoon were eventually spat out in the middle of an unprotected plaza, where they were raked with enemy fire.

  Delta Company got the prize for making it the farthest—and dying the most dramatically. Rohoar had led his warriors along the tops of the ruins to the right, their feet treading across the hard-light surface as if the buildings were real. They hopped between the gaps in structures as easily as if they were skipping along a trail in the countryside. The platoon made it as far as the enemy’s encampment, save for the fact that they were ten meters up. That didn’t matter much to a Jujari, of course, as that distance was easy to leap from, and they incurred little more than an ache in their joints.

  So it wasn’t the jump that killed them all—it was the automatic turret fire from the nearby rooftops. In their haste to storm the enemy position, Rohoar and his unit failed to take into account the defenses that they couldn’t see. As the bodies fell safely to the padded ESCE floor, kill indicators popped up over their heads, floating above them as flags to signal their deaths. More than one Jujari batted at the red tag, trying in vain to swat it away. They spoke incessantly in their mother tongue, presumably cursing at the small apparitions.

  “Computer, reset simulation,” Magnus said.

  “Acknowledged.”

  “Granther Company,” Magnus bellowed, “form up on me.” Magnus had decided several days ago to name his company after one of the most feared alpha predators on Abimbola’s home world. The Limbian granthers, he was told, were quite nasty. He figured if Abimbola was afraid of one, it was safe to say they all would be. More than that, however, Magnus felt that naming their company after something from Abimbola’s home might be meaningful to the Miblimbian. Sure enough, as Abimbola heard it for the first time, his eyebrows went up.

  “Do you approve?” Magnus asked as the black giant fell in.

  Abimbola nodded. “Granthers rip their prey apart before swallowing them in tiny pieces.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “If that’s what we get to do to Kane’s forces and So-Elku, then yes, I approve.”

  “Glad to hear it, because my next option was Sorlakk Company.”

  Abimbola winced. “The soft Paglothian sea creatures?”

  Magnus smiled. “The same.”

  “Granther is much better, buckethead.”

  Magnus winked at him. “
You see, Bimby? I’ve got you covered.”

  Once the rest of the company fell in, Magnus motioned them to stop talking. “After-action review. First, give me three things you got right.”

  “We killed some enemies,” Jaffery said, smiling.

  “Yeah, just not enough,” Shorty replied. A few laughs went up.

  “What else?” Magnus asked.

  “We stuck together,” Dutch said.

  “And got killed together,” Valerie noted, giving Dutch a slight nudge with her elbow.

  “Give me one more positive,” Magnus said.

  “Abimbola tried to save me,” Doc Campbell said.

  “Only because you are a medic,” Abimbola added. “Everyone wants to save a medic and never the big guy.”

  “That’s ’cause you’re too hard to drag,” Nubs said. More laughs.

  “Extra points to Bimby for saving the good doctor,” Magnus said, nodding to Abimbola. “Now, what went wrong?”

  One by one, each platoon leader relayed what had taken them and their respective platoons down. It was painful but absolutely necessary if they wanted to get better. And they had to get better.

  “All right,” Magnus said when they were through. “That’s what took you out. But I want to know if you identified what you could have done to help one another out.” No one responded. “Dutch, did you see the auto turrets at the end of the street?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “And had you called them out…”

  “Rohoar’s team might have had a chance. Roger that.”

  “Abimbola,” Magnus said, calling the Miblimbian by his full name in front of the company. “You left Dutch’s platoon behind. Did you ever consider leapfrogging with them?”

  “They are too slow,” Abimbola said.

  “I understand that, but maybe their discretion could have saved you some unnecessary losses. And Rohoar?”

  “Yes, Magnus.”

  “Please tell me that you saw the RPGs before the enemy fired them at Abimbola’s platoon?”

  Rohoar gave a somewhat embarrassed nod.

  “By my count, we could have mitigated several casualties by communicating what we saw on the battlefield. Use your comms, people.” Magnus made a show of tapping his earpiece. “That’s what they’re there for. You’re on an important date, and you don’t know enough to sweep this lady off her feet by yourself…” Magnus paused to look at Dutch, Valerie, Silk, Bettger, and Saladin. “Or man. That’s why you have a wingman, someone to feed you the lines. Without them, you’re screwed, and there is no second date—this was your only date. La-raah?”