Marine

by Joshua Dalzelle

  Two more plasma blasts hit the table in quick succession, blowing another hole in it to the left of the first and taking one of the corners completely off. The entire sequence had taken less than ten seconds since he grabbed the arm of that Ull, but his adrenaline-soaked perception made it seem like half an hour. He fired both legs out with as much force as he could, his boots slamming into the synthetic surface and sending the table across the room as if shot from a cannon.

  When he kicked the table, Jacob felt something pull in his right ankle, but he ignored it and rolled to his left. The table had clipped the Ull with the broken arm in the head as the alien had still been kneeling on the floor. When the table caromed off the probably now-dead Ull, it had flown right into the active com terminal, the equipment exploding in a shower of sparks.

  “I will kill you!”

  Jacob snapped his head over and saw the second Ull struggling to rise. He had no idea how it had been injured, but he wasted no time thinking about it. He spent a millisecond looking for a weapon and, seeing none available, charged the alien. The Ull’s mouth opened wide in shock at the smaller human sprinting across the room at it. Jacob drove his shoulder into the skinny alien, driving it into the floor. His shoulder throbbed as it felt like he’d tried to tackle a telephone pole that was still in the ground.

  The Ull swung its weapon, clipping Jacob across the forehead and laying the skin open. He grabbed the barrel and forced the weapon aside as it tried to get the unwieldy plasma rifle turned to fire on him. Jacob was in too close, however, and his unexpected strength seemed to confuse the injured alien. With blood running from his forehead into the Ull’s face, Jacob managed to get his left hand on the weapon’s foregrip and push it down so it was laying across its neck. The alien seemed determined to bring the weapon to bear on Jacob and kept both its hands locked onto it even as Jacob started to drive it into its throat.

  “Please have a fucking larynx or whatever it is you scrawny freaks breathe through,” Jacob grunted, arching up onto the balls of his feet and really driving it in. Too late, the Ull realized its error and began to thrash about wildly, but that only compounded the mistake. The movement let Jacob turn the weapon so that the raised sighting rail was now laying directly on the Ull’s skin. Within seconds, the panicked thrashing became weaker and weaker as the Ull faded out underneath him. The alien looked him in the eye one last time, seeming to accept the inevitable, and let its hands fall from the weapon.

  Jacob held fast for ten more seconds to make sure it wasn’t playing possum, and then stood on shaky legs. He couldn’t figure out how the Ull weapon fired so he limped over to where his own tactical harness had been flung in the corner of the room, retrieved his own sidearm, and shot both aliens in the head. It’d be his luck that they were able to regenerate or weren’t actually dead, so he also gave each of them a few more shots in the torso.

  “What a mess,” he groaned. The fire suppression system had done its job, and where the plasma shots had set the interior ablaze, there were sputtering piles of foam. He limped over to the control panel on the wall that was mercifully still working and reactivated the building’s security system and commanded the air handlers to begin pulling out the smoke. Thankfully since it was a human-operated safe house, the controls were familiar.

  The com terminal was a complete loss and his injuries were beginning to make themselves known now that the adrenaline was wearing off. He decided to prioritize his problems and attack them in a row starting with getting himself to the safe house infirmary and patched up. After that, he’d find a way to get a hold of Sully on the ship and see what could be done about tracking down his team.

  The infirmary was state of the art, which surprised him a bit given that Murph claimed this was just a remote outpost that hadn’t been operational in some time. The computer read his neural implant and recognized that, as an active member of the UEAS, he was authorized to use the infirmary. It then began talking to the device in his brain to see the extent of his injuries to determine treatment. No more, “tell me where it hurts.”

  “Please sit,” a pleasant female voice said and a green holographic halo was projected over one of the reclining chairs. He did so and watched as another hologram was projected in front of him, this one a rotating model of his body with the injuries highlighted and a running tally of the damage.

  “Do you authorize me to treat your injuries, Cadet Brown?” the voice asked. Apparently, his rank hadn’t been updated by personnel in the database after he’d been commissioned in that bullshit late night ceremony.

  “Yes, and hurry damnit! The shock is wearing off.”

  “Standby…nano-treatment commencing.”

  Five articulated arms descended down from the ceiling and began applying a viscous suspension fluid loaded with nanobots both topically and injecting them. The specialized microscopic robots would go to work repairing his body at the cellular level and then be filtered out and expelled by his body once they were finished. The miraculous machines were alien tech they’d received as part of the trade agreement with the Cridal Cooperative and, practically overnight, they’d rendered much of human medicine obsolete.

  Other than where they were stitching up his forehead, he couldn’t really feel what they were doing, but on the hologram of himself he saw that the bulk of them were at work repairing the tendon tear in his ankle and a hairline fracture in his right forearm that he had no idea how he got.

  “How long until I can get out of this chair and how long before I’m combat effective?” he asked.

  “You will be ambulatory in fifteen minutes. It is recommended that you allow the nano-treatment a full forty-eight hours to address the most serious injuries—”

  “That’s not what I asked,” Jacob interrupted. “Combat effective, not feeling one hundred percent and perky. You’re an NIS med computer, I know you have varying degrees of gray that you operate in.”

  “You will be able to move and fight within the next ninety minutes.” The computer almost seemed reluctant to give him that information.

  “Thank you,” Jacob breathed. Already, he could see the swelling and angry red color leaving the ankle and the sharp pains in his body were ebbing away while the legion of microscopic machines in his body did their work. “Now, is there a backup com suite in this building?”

  “The team at your safe house isn’t responding.”

  “And you’re sure it’s nothing to do with your coms?” Hollick asked, not bothering to look up at the Ull while he worked on his tablet.

  “Quite sure.”

  Hollick knew where the conversation would lead. They would want to hit the safe house in force to make sure their people were okay. Unfortunately, there were only five Ull left there at the factory to run security and after that, it was himself and the three other humans he’d brought with him. Scarponi was less than useless in this situation, so he couldn’t count on him for much more than getting in the way.

  “Our bargaining chips are all secured and locked away right now,” he said. “I’m assuming you want to go check on your people?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many do you need?”

  “Three of us will go.”

  “Three?” Hollick was pleasantly surprised that he didn’t have to negotiate down from all of them. “Very well. We can manage here with what’s left.”

  “We will be quick,” the Ull promised.

  “By the way, where the hell is your ship?” Hollick asked casually. “It’s overdue by days and, without it, this operation goes belly up. Webb will not be arriving by himself, and the few of us here are in no way capable of handling one of his security teams.”

  “It will be available when it is needed, human,” the Ull hissed before spinning and walking off.

  “Interesting,” Hollick murmured. “So, it’s already here.”

  “What’s already here?” Scarponi asked. The man had been following him around like a lost puppy since he’d arrived on Theta Suden. Hollick rolle
d his eyes before answering.

  “The Ull ship I was just talking about,” he said, indulging the new One World recruit. “They were supposed to bring in enough soldiers to overwhelm any force Webb might bring down from the Kentucky.”

  “Ah,” Scarponi said. “So, they’ve been putting you off about where the ship is exactly but you think it’s already sitting in the system.” Hollick raised an eyebrow, reassessing the Navy engineer he had first assumed to be a bit dense when it came to anything that wasn’t a starship engine.

  “I suspect as much,” he confirmed. "What about you, Scarponi? Any regrets about joining this resistance movement?"

  "I'm not proud of killing Mosler, but I'm happy to do my part," Scarponi said carefully.

  "Uh huh," Hollick said. The One World movement attracted two types of people: zealots and opportunists. He knew for a fact that Scarponi had been promised an obscene amount of wealth and prestige if he helped deliver Webb to Margret Jansen. "How about you keep doing your part and go keep an eye on the door of the room we stashed your old teammates in?"

  "Sure."

  Chapter 26

  "Channel open, sir."

  "Lieutenant Sullivan, this is Captain Webb. What's your status?"

  "I've just been waiting for word from the team, sir," Sully said. "I take it you got my message?"

  "I did. Tell me, son, how did you get this node address?"

  "Zadra contacted me and told me to call in our position and status to you. She's the one who gave me the address. Is something wrong, sir? I haven't been able to get a hold of Lieutenant Brown or any of the others on the ground team." Sully said.

  "What shape is your gunboat in, Lieutenant?" Webb asked.

  "It's rickety but functional," Sully said.

  "I'm sending you a set of coordinates for a spot outside a system not far from you," Webb said, his mind racing in light of the new information his Scout Fleet pilot was telling him. "I need you to meet me there."

  "You want me to abandon the ground team, sir?"

  "I need you to help me save what's left of it and this mission," Webb corrected. "If I'm right, then they've either already walked into a trap or are about to."

  "Location received and confirmed," Sully said, looking off-screen. "I'll be there in…four hours, assuming I don't get delayed leaving the surface."

  "Make it happen, Lieutenant. Webb, out."

  "This is a lot different than what you originally talked about, sir," Commander Duncan said, referring to Webb's plan to try and feel out the pilot and see if Obsidian had been further compromised.

  "That little Eshquarian ship they stole isn't a threat to the Kentucky, and we'll stand-off at max sensor range to see if someone uninvited shows up with him," Webb assured his ship captain. "If Zadra gave him one of the secure node addresses to this ship, that means that not only has she mapped out most of our secure com system at NAVSOC, she's also likely flipped sides and is working for Jansen's people."

  "And what about this other NIS agent Lieutenant Sullivan spoke of in his message?"

  "Elton Hollick. If he's indeed alive and working with Jansen and the Ull, we have a real problem on our hands," Webb admitted. "With him assumed dead, a lot of codes and protocols were never rotated as they would if we'd known he was captured or flipped. Hell, for all we know, he's one of the ring leaders. Actually, that would explain a lot about how One World knows so much about our current intel apparatus and stays one step ahead of us."

  "And the purpose of bringing Sullivan out here with their stolen ship?" Duncan asked.

  "Playing a hunch," Webb said.

  "Yes, sir." Duncan's tone wasn't openly disrespectful, but he obviously didn't like being kept in the dark.

  "Don't worry, Captain, what I have planned won't put the ship at risk."

  "Yes, sir."

  Jacob felt immensely better within the span of two hours. The silvery line along his forehead where the nanobots were still repairing the split in the skin itched like hell, and his ankle still was a bit tender, but all things considered, he felt pretty damn good.

  He’d availed himself of the house’s armory again and fully outfitted himself with fresh clothing, new tactical gear, and new weaponry. The backup com equipment that was down in the subbasement wasn’t of human design, looked outdated, but with the help of his neural implant he was able to determine it was functional. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to raise Sully on the gunboat or any of his team members. Jacob tried a few more tricks he knew to see if he could at least get a ping off any of the com gear carried by the team but ultimately decided he couldn’t afford to waste any more time on it.

  “Time to put up or shut up,” he muttered to himself. He had no idea what had happened to Murph’s recon team other than that they’d been captured by the enemy. Their numbers, armament, and intent were all a mystery to him. Everything he had assumed about the mission—even with Scarponi’s betrayal—had been upended when Zadra had sold them out and admitted to manipulating them the whole time in order to get them to Theta Suden.

  He felt like he was hanging on to a runaway train and the convoluted machinations of seasoned intelligence operatives trying to get an advantage over one another was something his Academy-fresh instincts and training weren’t equipped to handle. But in spite of that, he felt loose and ready with just a touch of anxious energy in his gut that made him want to get started only because the waiting was so unbearable.

  “Are there any vehicles on the premises?” Jacob asked the house computer. Murph had taken the boxy cargo vehicle they’d obtained at the starport.

  “Affirmative. Two wheeled ground cars and one repulsor-drive air car are available for use,” the computer told him.

  “How rare are aircars on this world?”

  “Aircar traffic accounts for seven-point-two percent of the total vehicular traffic in the metropolitan area and nineteen percent of traffic globally.”

  “Hmm,” Jacob mused. “I think I have a really stupid idea.”

  The passage of time weighed heavily on his mind as he worked, rushing to the armory to pull the rest of the gear he would need and taking it to the vehicle. The aircar was under a retractable shelter on the roof so it took five trips to lug everything up the narrow staircase. Thankfully, the aircar, which was manufactured on a world he'd never heard of called Sirona-2, had been refitted with a control interface he was familiar with. It took him less than five minutes to program the vehicle to do what he wanted it to do.

  On a whim, he pulled another case of munitions out of the armory and went to work on all the ground-level entries. He knew the Ull at that factory his team had been scoping out would eventually come back here to find out why their two guards—which were really beginning to stink—weren't answering their coms. Jacob had watched the arrogant, brash Ull in action enough by this point to know they'd likely just kick a door down than try and infiltrate through an upper window or the rooftop. If they did, the anti-personnel mines he was planting on the walls would give them his warmest regards.

  "That should just about assure that I get court martialed for destroying an NIS facility," he said, setting the trigger thresholds on the last of his munitions. He set them back enough and rigged them so they wouldn't go off if the Ull used explosives to breach the doors, only when they detected the close proximity of a biological being. He just hoped Murph was right and there weren't any NIS operatives currently using the safe house who might be coming home to a nasty surprise set up by one dumbass Marine.

  He grabbed the heavy plasma rifle he'd picked as his primary weapon and ran back up to the roof, his injured ankle now barely throbbing as he pushed off on the steps with all his strength. He'd tried to be smart and methodically plan his next moves like he'd been taught at the Academy, and like he thought Captain Webb would want him to do, but now that he was ready, the only thing on his mind was getting to his men. If they died because he'd wasted time here, he would never forgive himself.

  "Slip-space signature is cons
istent with an Eshquarian Type-S1 gunboat. Looks like she has a bit of a radiation leak coming from the real-space engines."

  "That's our ship," Webb said. "Hold here. Maintain EMSEC…no emissions of any kind, com or sensor. I want to be a dark spot in space."

  "Holding fast, running silent, sir," Commander Duncan said.

  "She's lit up like a flare, sir," the com officer said. "Navigational beacon and ident transponder are both squawking, and Sullivan is hailing us over short-range coms."

  "Look sharp, people," Duncan said. "We're looking for another ship that should be meshing-in right on top of us within the next…forty-five minutes to an hour."

  While they waited, the calls from Sullivan in the gunboat were more and more frequent. Although he maintained his professionalism over the com, Webb thought he could detect a certain resignation in the pilot's voice. Perhaps he realized he was being dangled out in space like a worm on a hook.

  It was nearly an hour and fifteen tense minutes later before anything happened. The visible flash of a ship meshing-in lit up their sensors and tripped half a dozen alarms. The Kentucky's bridge crew reacted swiftly and, per Webb's orders, began plotting targeting solutions for the newcomer before they'd even positively identified it.

  "What's the range to the gunboat?"

  "Target ship is six-hundred and forty thousand klicks away from Lieutenant Sullivan's ship, sir. It's come to a full stop and is actively scanning the gunboat."

  "That's our cue," Webb said. "If you would, Captain."

  "Light it up!" Duncan barked. "Full active sensors. Tactical, keep both XTX missiles updated with new firing solutions. I want them both targeting the enemy amidships. Helm, begin your pursuit. Get us closer and keep our bow on that ship."