Doomed Infinity Marine 2
Bug Wars Book #2
J. A. Cipriano
Conner Kressley
Edited by
J. B. Garner
Copyright © 2018 by J. A. Cipriano
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Created with Vellum
Contents
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Also by J.A. Cipriano
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Thank You for reading!
Author’s Note
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Also by Conner Kressley
Immortal Mercenary
Mark of Cain
Curse of Cain
Rise of Cain
Also by J.A. Cipriano
The Pen is Mightier
World of Ruul
Soulstone: Awakening
Soulstone: The Skeleton King
Bug Wars
Doomed Infinity Marine
Doomed Infinity Marine 2
The Legendary Builder
The Builder’s Sword
The Builder’s Greed
The Builder’s Pride
The Builder’s Wrath
The Builder’s Throne
The FBI Dragon Chronicles
A Ritual of Fire
A Ritual of Death
Starcrossed Dragons
Riding Lightning
Grinding Frost
Swallowing Fire
Elements of Wrath Online
Ring of Promise
The Vale of Three Wolves
Crystalfire Keep
Kingdom of Heaven
The Skull Throne
Escape From Hell
The Thrice Cursed Mage
Cursed
Marked
Burned
Seized
Claimed
Hellbound
The Half-Demon Warlock
Pound of Flesh
Flesh and Blood
Blood and Treasure
The Lillim Callina Chronicles
Wardbreaker
Kill it with Magic
The Hatter is Mad
Fairy Tale
Pursuit
Hardboiled
Mind Games
Fatal Ties
Clans of Shadow
Heart of Gold
Feet of Clay
Fists of Iron
The Spellslinger Chronicles
Throne to the Wolves
Prince of Blood and Thunder
Found Magic
May Contain Magic
The Magic Within
Magic for Hire
Witching on a Starship
Maverick
Planet Breaker
1
I felt the power of the tornado, generated by the Titanic Tornado upgrade in my Second Battalion power armor, whipping around me, wind mixed with the insane amount of energy this new suit of mine was able to hold. It surged, making me feel like a vengeful god casting down judgment on these Acburian bastards. They were all that was keeping me from the last living member of my squad and a semi-successful extraction.
We had blown the bug’s sandcastle up with a Smiling Sun fusion bomb (damn the Alliance’s candy-colored names for shit, all the better to pull in a bunch of grassfeds’ credits), but Lance Corporal Flackman had already been torn to shreds in the initial assault. I may not have liked him, but I didn’t want these bastards to tear him apart. Corporal Rex, though, was still alive and nothing was going to keep me from him.
“Lieutenant Ryder,” Annabelle, the AI of my suit and one of two women I could implicitly trust with my life out in the field, chimed into my ears and my head. “Judging by the number of grounded Acburians in the area, the probability of them finding, overpowering, and killing Corporal Rex is, at present, 97 percent. However, your present course of action is increasing his likelihood of survival by 1.2 percent per second. I would suggest continuing.”
“My pleasure, Annabelle,” I grinned as I mentally nudged the Titanic Tornado forward. The ripping wind had the effect I was hoping it might, and I wasn’t just talking about tossing these bugs around like, well, like bugs.
A bunch of those pesky bugs got you down? Turn the surrounding atmosphere into a weapon and literally blow them away with the Titanic Tornado weapon upgrade! That’s how the Alliance Store shilled it, and for once, it wasn’t too far off base. A combination of turbines and internal air induction systems combined with more meteorological knowledge than I could ever care to know to create cyclonic winds around any given suit, the wind strength proportional to the time the system was online, available energy, and naturally how many coins you dropped on the quality of the weapon.
Me? I always bought Class S, baby.
No, the real danger of this sort of storm, something I knew from experience growing up on my family’s Iowa farm, was the debris field. Even pebbles and particles of sand could be whipped so fast as to flay the skin off a human and a stalk of grain can pierce through wood like an arrow. Even the bugs’ exoskeletons weren’t proof from this. Bugs were torn apart or run through by debris as I roared through their fields, energy pouring out of my suit, feeding the twister around me. It kept me upright, kept me flying when my thrusters turned off.
Lifting my hands and watching the bugs on the ground scuttle away from me like the insects they were, I felt something I hadn’t felt in a long time, maybe ever. I felt powerful like I was part of something bigger than myself, which was (at this moment, at least) very true.
The scream of the wind surrounded me as moved, blocking out everything else. If I’d have been able to hear, I’d have likely been privileged to hear Acburian screams, and maybe even a desperate prayer or two. I didn’t need to listen to that though. I could look down at their bodies, bodies like those that had killed so many good men and women I had known throughout the years. That was all I needed to keep myself going. I could run forever like this.
Unfortunately, my fervor wasn’t all it took to keep myself running.
“Lieutenant Ryder.” Annabelle’s voice shot straight into my head, the only way I’d have been able to hear her through the wind. “Energy is down to just under fifty percent. I suggest you make your way to Corporal Rex and prepare for extraction.”
“Good idea,” I nodded, looking over at the cave wher
e Annabelle told me Rex was hiding, being as useful as you’d imagine most junior officers might be. “He still alive?”
“For the moment. Diagnostics show Corporal Rex won’t be for much longer though. You have roughly two minutes to get to him and extract him to the medic bay on the Bullet ship if he’s going to survive his wounds.”
“Of course. Detach me from this damn hurricane and send it westward.”
“Towards the cave you have two minutes to get to?”
“The very same.” I thrust my body upward and darted out of the eye of the storm. Internal power reserves flowed from the Titanic Twister system into my thrusters and shields, but the windstorm kept going, powered by the natural forces of weather. “I want to clear a path, and I don’t see a better way to do that than with a big ass weather system.”
“Affirmative, Lieutenant Ryder,” Annabelle answered. “Be forewarned that the remaining fliers had fled to the opposite direction. As such, there is a chance you’ll have to deal with them when they discover you’re not protected by the storm.”
“If they can see me, you mean,” I muttered, pushing away from the tornado and letting my lower thrusters turn back on and hold me up. “Switch on Alpha camouflage.”
“Affirmative.”
As the words left her mouth, light twisted around me, hiding me from the bugs and the rest of the outside world, as thermal dampers and audio cloaking came online. I breathed a sigh of relief, though only hesitantly. Full Alpha camouflage, while powerful, had a significant drawback.
While cloaked, none of my offensive weaponry would work; no short range, no long range. The distorters hid me from everything except the Alliance itself, and even their location services were dampened enough so that I couldn’t be sent any upgrades, weapons, or extra energy while the camo was engaged.
Worse, the suit required a fifteen second reboot period once the cloaking has been turned off, as the massive energy drain returned to the rest of the suit’s subsystems. That might not seem like much, but a lot can happen in fifteen seconds, especially when dealing with a bug army.
To that end, I was going to have to be careful not to let the fliers see me because, if they did, I would be every bit as defenseless as the moron I was going to save right now.
Pushing dread out of my mind while holding onto a healthy amount of defensive worry, I flew toward the cave in the wake of the storm. That was both a good and a bad thing. While the rampaging tornado was doing an excellent job of scaring the earthbound Acburians into a hasty retreat and freeing up the cave entrance, it was moving pretty quickly. I would need to not only outrun the stupid thing but also get Rex out of there before the winds tore through the cave and killed the kid before the bugs did.
That wouldn’t be the easiest thing in the world. My thrusters weren’t exactly silent. They were basically jet engines on my feet, for God’s sake, and even Alpha camouflage could only dampen the sound so much. If I went as full-tilt fast as I needed to be, they were almost as loud as they sounded without cloaking.
So, would I ensure my own safety and take it slow and entirely silent, or would I throw caution to the wind (literally) to go all out on trying to bring the poor kid home?
I didn’t need to think about it at all. I had been around the block more than enough times to know who I was, to know what kind of Marine I was, and what kind I wanted to be. I would do everything I could to save the kid. Not because it was right or selfless.
In fact, the reason I would do it was more than a little selfish. If I played it safe and Corporal Rex died, I wouldn’t be able to look at myself in the mirror. After all, I had lost my last squadmate Billy, the son of an old friend, on my previous official mission, and the Lance Corporal with me today had already gone to that big ant farm in the sky. I didn’t want that much blood on my hands, not anymore.
On top of that, if I lost an entire squad again, people might start to talk. Maybe they would think I was losing it or, worse, maybe they would begin to say I had gotten too old and detached to do this with other people anymore. While I usually didn’t give a rat’s ass what people had to say about me, this was a little different. I didn’t want to garner a reputation for being selfish, of holding my own interests above those of whatever team I found myself on. I had fought too hard for too long and with too many other people to allow that to happen.
“Full power to lower thrusters,” I said to Annabelle.
“But Lieutenant Ryder - “ Annabelle started.
“I don’t give a fuck, Annabelle.” I understood she was going to tell me that full power to the thrusters would likely give away my positioning. “Just do it. I’m bringing this kid home.”
“Affirmative, Lieutenant Ryder,” she said, and my thrusters roared to live.
I pushed through the air, moving faster than the tornado. Of course, the fliers heard me. Perhaps realizing I had to be cloaked in some way, they flew toward me. That didn’t matter though. I was going even faster than I thought I would. I had already moved past the tornado and was at the mouth of the cave.
I saw Corporal Rex. He lay on his back, his hands clutching at his gut. His skin was pale, and his body was still. Diagnostic scans told me he was alive though, and that was what mattered. I was seconds away from grabbing him, seconds away from getting him back to the Alliance Halls and allowing them to fix him up, to save his life.
The man saw me and weakly extended his arm. I could hear the twister behind me, but I was too quick. I held out my hand and prepared to grab him, to pull him upward with me. I wouldn’t be able to hold him steady, but once he was in the air, his suit would turn on his thrusters and autopilot, following me to safety.
It was all going to be all right ... and then it wasn’t.
I felt the pull on my back and instantly knew what it was. I had felt it a thousand times before.
“What the hell?” I stammered as the tractor beam pulled me away from Corporal Rex, yanking me to the awaiting Bullet ship and leaving the kid to die.
“An official tractor beam has taken hold of you,” Annabelle said. “I’m afraid I am unable to free you from it.”
“No!” I screamed, pulled away from the cave against my own will. “Take me back!”
“I’m afraid I cannot -”
“Then turn on my tractors!” I countered. “Lock on Corporal Rex and get his ass to me! Prepare to extend shielding the moment we’re connected.”
There was a lurch as the two tractor beams interacted, a split-second where neither of them worked, before my suit’s beam broke free and latched onto Rex’s battered armor. A moment before the twister I had unleashed tore through the cave, the bloodied kid was pulled into my grasp, Annabelle instantly wrapping my much superior shields around him. The cyclonic winds ripped through as the Bullet’s tractor yanked us up and away, washing over us like a light rain.
Despite every bit of fuckery, I had managed to save him. Not that those asses at Alliance Command would care. Hell, they tried to keep me from saving him, taking the choice of what to do about my subordinates out of my hands. Well, they were going to get a big piece of my mind when they got back, that much I swore.
2
“What the hell was that?” I growled, anger and disgust coating my voice as I pushed my way uninvited into Della Conroy’s office. As the Major in Charge of Information Acquisition, she was my superior. Though we had joined the Infinity Marines at roughly the same time, Della decided to take the road more often traveled. She worked her way up the ranks, trading in the perils of the infantry for a cushy office, reasonable security, and having everyone she meets call her ma’am and treat her with respect.
Well, almost everyone.
“Tell me you did not just barge into the official office of one of your superiors with a scowl on your face and a hitch in your tone, Lieutenant,” she answered, standing behind her desk. “You might be Mark Ryder, the most decorated war hero in the Infinity Marines, but your britches are definitely not big enough for that.”
S
he had a point. I would never come into the office of another of my superiors like this, even if they had just royally screwed me over the way Della did. She wasn’t like any of my other superiors though, and as much as I wanted to, it was hard for me to treat her like one all the time.
We had been friends. During our younger years, there was a ‘with benefits’ that could have been tacked on to that moniker. That ran its course, but the friendship didn’t. Even if we didn’t always agree, we were still close. Sure, she was above me in every conceivable manner to the rest of the Alliance, but she never made me feel like that.
Not usually anyway.
“You messed up when you tried to fuck me over,” I said flatly, closing the door behind me and walking up to her desk.
As small as she was, there was little doubt that Della Conroy had a presence. She could fill up a room without ever having to move, and when she looked at you, she had the gravitational pull of any planet I had ever been to.
She shook her head and looked down at a stack of papers on her desk. ”Don’t start with me.”
“I’m not the one who started this, Della,” I shot back, using her given name, a huge no-no when it came to superior officers within Alliance Halls.
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