The Demons of Kor-Lir

by J. R. Handley

  If not for the suit, the Marines now officially under his command would have seen Lance’s hands shake. Whether it was fear, nervous excitement, or the combat drugs sometimes given to Marines to make them fight like zealots, was anyone’s guess. Lance knew he was afraid and that was enough for him. He dealt with his fear, like he dealt with all of the troubles in his life, by ignoring it and pretending it wasn’t there. This worked, to a point, but his hands still shook.

  While Chloe and Danika took up defensive overwatch positions, Lance squatted down to examine the bodies of his fallen comrades, looking to see what information they could offer. It was clear that both had been killed with the same bladed weapon that had killed the Spacers. It was further clear that they didn’t appear to have put up much of a fight, as there were few sabot casings around the bodies. What was concerning, however, was the substance which seemed to have been shot at them to hold their bodies in place and out of sight. Their enemy was clearly a skilled fighter, with good stealth technology, so finding out that it was crafty as well troubled Lance more than he liked to admit. When it came to enemies, Lance preferred them brave and stupid, regardless of their level of technology. This assailant clearly didn’t fit that mold, and it spoke well of whatever race this creature came from.

  After examining the body, filming the entire operation, to include his vocal notes, Lance sent it through the LBNet to his superiors and resumed his task of retrieving the AI units. Even this simple act took far greater concentration than under other circumstances because of his shaking hands.

  Following the successful recovery of the AIs, Lance queried his section leader, seeking further instructions. After being told to link back up with Alpha Team, Lance got back on his own fire team’s network in time to hear Chloe and Danika chattering fearfully about ghosts and other things that go bump in the night. How could they still think that, thought Lance, when we’ve seen this creature in the Spacer’s helmet videos? It was just an unknown warrior, one who needed to die. Knowing their line of thinking was dangerous and could go nowhere good, Lance ordered them to snap out of it and act like Marines. They are MY Marines, not some princesses from Marine City #3. Damn it, but they had better not spread the vile disease of their panic to the rest of the section, because that kind of fear could kill us all.

  The trip to rejoin his section went quickly, helped by the fearful willingness of his Marines to get the mission complete so they could leave the station they perceived as ‘cursed’. After rejoining his boss, Lance had his team take its position in the rear of the Section File, Fire Team Wedge and continued his mission. He let his strict adherence to the orders that were given him push him through the moments when the weight of fear became almost too heavy to bear. Damn, but I knew those girls really were contagious, thought Lance, as the weight of his own fear slowed him down.

  — Chapter 31 —

  Deck 7 Sierra: CIC Deck, 1st Section

  Beta Team followed Alpha out of the elevator, forming a quick defensive perimeter, with Alpha taking the upper position. After reviewing the TacScreen from 2nd Section, they knew that to prevent this thing picking them off they had to remain a solid unit. Aside from the boost to morale, this would allow them to maximize their firepower.

  After Lance had a brief conference with Nourse, and the drones left behind by their fallen comrades were acquired into their section’s network, they decided they would proceed immediately to the body of Eric Thalberg. Their computer guru with his fancy Cyber Scout AI model, Braden Campen, also updated the drones to interface their targeting system with their cameras, in an attempt to circumvent whatever allowed this creature to remain invisible. This had never been tried, at least not by Tango Squad, so the odds of it being a decisive factor were slim, but you worked with what you had.

  As soon as Lance reached Eric Thalberg’s headless body, Nourse and Alpha Team secured the perimeter. Lance found that Eric’s Mini Cannon was still functioning. He made short work of securing the dead Marine’s AI in the accessory pouch of his combat suit, and briefly wondered whether he should grab the Mini too, but thought better of it, given that an Aux Team would follow his unit and retrieve the physical remains.

  After a few moments of introspection, Lance laughed silently to himself because this creature was doing his Supply Officer a favor, since the use of bladed weapons meant that almost all of the gear could be saved. Next to him, Danika began furiously vomiting into her helmet, causing Lance to wonder why the creators of their combat suits hadn’t invented a cure for this common problem.

  Over the section’s LBNet the Mini gunner from Alpha Team began to mutter about the ghosties they were fighting, a whole section killed by something that the sensors said wasn’t there. As the section leader, Nourse tried to rein in his fire team, but the muttering continued, slowly raising in volume.

  Lance knew if this panic continued or spread that the whole section would die. The tide had to be turned so he took the initiative that should’ve been Acheron’s.

  “Alright, 1st Section, we need to stow this garbage and continue our mission,” ground out a tense Lance. “If we don’t complete the mission, find this frakk stick, it will kill us off or our officers back on the Grendel will. No, if we die, we die with our boots on and carbines at the ready. Now, you have a choice to make. Do you scurry away like roaches and get executed for cowardice? Or would you rather stand with me, complete the mission, and get home in time to get grokked and frakk some cute sailor? Lance Sergeant Nourse, we know what your choice is gonna be!”

  When the chuckling died down, Nourse called the section back into their formation and led the way to the CIC where the rest of 2nd Section was waiting. When 1st Section reached the communications station, the unofficial gatekeeper for the CIC, Nourse ordered the section to halt. Without having to be asked, Braden Campen sent his last drone into the CIC. Lance held his breath, trying to calm his heart as it beat furiously in his chest while he waited to see what was in the other room. It was clear that the room was empty, or as clear as they could tell since the beast seemed to be invisible to them.

  Grenadier Hank DeGross quickly sent a flash bang grenade into the room, before 1st Section charged in expecting anything and everything. They quickly scanned the room, emphasizing the visual over their technology. Beta Team prepared to secure the rear “L” of the section’s defensive cube when Danika Stone dropped to the deck. When Lance looked over, he saw her head was split in half and no enemy was in sight. Thinking on his feet, Lance ordered Xena to scan every visible and invisible spectrum to search for this creature.

  We’ve found it Lance, an audibly excited Xena told him. It was the blade. The creature uses a bladed weapon, so I searched for any metals not native to this QEP. Don’t ask about how I obtained the schematics, just look pretty and play dumb. I can track it. As soon as I upload this into the LBNet, it is as good as dead.

  Lance replied to Xena that that was indeed excellent news, and was preparing to pass the message along when Chloe, just out of his sight but well within sensor range, dropped off his TacScreen. When he looked over, he saw her decapitated body floating in a halo of her bodily fluids, which continued to pump out with gusto and sort of coalesced around her. Even zero-g couldn’t stop her innate need for cleanliness and order, thought Lance. Her body had neatly collected the gelatinous fluids before they could float away, making life easier for whatever poor Auxie was tasked with cleaning this station after it was secured.

  Lance began to shake, this time not from fear, but in a barely contained rage at the loss of the three people who he had lived and laughed with for his whole life. He remembered Chloe crying in the crèche when they packed their uniforms to move into the novice barracks. Leaving his parents behind was hard, but having Chloe there to hold his hand had made it bearable. And Danika, she was the one he used to peek at as she got dressed every day. He could almost track her pubescent journey on a calendar, so enamored was he of her. And Ishrat, he had been the one who taught Lance how to rea
d so he could pass the Novice School entrance exam. Lance would always remember Ishrat as that smart kid who was so eager to please, and equally eager for his friends to excel as well. The thought that they were gone was almost too much. While he struggled to grab control of himself, the creature had somehow managed to get into Alpha Team’s formation, because Nourse dropped off the TacScreen.

  Lance spun in a quick circle, taking in the chaos that surrounded him. Nourse was dead, his head hanging onto his body by the thinnest of ligaments and tendons. It just sort of flopped around in the zero-g as his body expelled the last of the kinetic motion that he had left at the moment of his death. The rest of Alpha Team was panicking, running out of the room as quick as their thrusters would take them. Braden Campen, however, managed to regain control of himself, and turned in his tracks before charging blindly at the creature. His last moments of courage cost him his life, but saved him the indignity of a coward’s execution.

  Over LBNet, Hank was crying, muttering about demons and ghosts while Alice just cried. Lance, however, could finally ‘see’ the creature which had killed so many of his friends. While it was distracted, pursuing the remaining two members of Alpha Team, Lance was trailing it.

  It’s no different than hunting lapuka back on the island, thought Lance. Just sneak up behind it and the battle is damn near won. Memories of hunting the majestic lapuka, a hybrid of several interplanetary types of deer, and the White Knights’ first successful cross-breeding of Earth’s bestiary, only brought back memories of lost friends and filled him with rage. He harnessed this anger and channeled it into hunting this demon which had wreaked havoc in Lance’s world.

  When the creature had turned the corner, so intent on its kill that it became single mindedly focused, Lance made his move. Using the vial of sticky substance that he had retrieved for the lab rats onboard the Grendel, he quickly applied it to one of his ship-killing nanite grenades and tossed it onto the creature’s back. When it emitted the briefest of pops, it got the creature’s attention, causing it to spin around. When it saw Lance there, rifle in hand, it almost seemed to shrug. He could’ve sworn the thing was laughing, but whatever posturing it was doing was long enough for the nanites to eat into its armor, weakening the one advantage it had. When the weak spots in its armor popped up on Lance’s aiming reticle, he silently thanked Xena and put hundreds of sabots into the monster that had killed his friends.

  Lance, shedding the mantel of under achiever that he had worn to coast through Cadethood, decided that dying in a hail of sabot fire wasn’t nearly enough. He activated the monofilaments of his assault cutters and began to mutilate the holes where once an armored beast had been. It was unclear at which point the beast died, but Lance hacked away as he sobbed in fury over all that was lost. He kept this up, only stopping when the teeth on his cutters shattered and nothing was left to continue the assault. He was covered in the badge of his butchery, yet his revenge couldn’t fill the hollow void left by the loss of loved ones.

  It was over so quickly it almost upset Lance, the killing of this creature. He wanted the violence of action, struggle and satisfaction, but all he felt was the emptiness of loss. Lance briefly wondered at the other two members of 1st Section who ran. Will I have to join their firing squad? On a visceral level, he understood the fear and the urge to run away from an enemy so unfamiliar, but he found he couldn’t condone it. They had abandoned him, their brother, in their fear and haste. At least Braden acquitted himself well in the end, though his redemption came at a heavy cost.

  Realizing he would soon be summoned to answer for the actions of the first two sections of Tango Squad, Dog Company, and the 941st TAC writ large, Lance quickly began to examine the alien corpse and collect the AIs of his friends and family. The Marines who had bravely fought and died were family, though Lance was unsure where that left the cowards who ran.

  After collecting the AIs, he quickly wandered over to the corpse of the creature he had killed, and quietly retrieved the blade which had caused him so much pain. After strapping the blade to his back, he contemplated his foe. The fact that it had died meant that it had lived. If it had lived, clearly it wasn’t the ghost that some had feared.

  Using his combat blade, Lance began to poke and prod the creature, before he violently ripped off the helmet. This wasn’t some demon; it was a humanoid in even more alien armor. After realizing the creature was in armor, probably similar to his own in the general concept, though it was clearly superior in many ways, Lance began to look for an AI in an attempt to salvage his unit’s honor after the cowardice of his peers. When he was finally successful at exposing the face of this beast, he gasped. The creature looked almost human. Sure, this thing appeared to have a more muscular face than the humans he served with, and a more prominent brow ridge, but it was clearly a relative of humanity. How could this be, humans fighting against the forces of the White Knights?

  Any further musing was cut short by the gloved Jotun hand that grabbed his shoulder. “Your fight here is done. You served well, Marine. Your brothers and sisters died well. Let that be enough for now, and we will talk again onboard the Grendel. Let your relief secure the QEP and the Auxies remove our honored dead.”

  — Chapter 32 —

  Grendel Technician Bay 12

  After returning to the Grendel, Lance went straight to his squad bay and removed his uniform before quickly donning on a fresh smartfabric fatigues uniform, adorned with his recently acquired rank. Once he was dressed, Lance sought out Technician Bay 12 and Spacer Technician Aura. For the first time today, I get lucky, thought Lance, as he found the sailor he was looking for in the exact same place he had left her. After finding the tech at her work station, Lance walked up to Aura to deliver his sacred package, the AIs of his friends.

  “Technician, these AIs served my friends well,” said a noticeably solemn Lance, “please treat them with respect and find them new Marines to serve. They deserve at least that.”

  Aura looked up at him, pity on her face. She looked about to say something, anything, to comfort him but words failed her. In the end all she had to give was a simple gesture. She laid a comforting hand on his shoulder and nodded. Lance leaned in to kiss the sailor, wanting to feel alive again, to release the pent up adrenaline coursing through his veins.

  When Lance broke the kiss, briefly coming up for air, Aura yelped and jumped back. “What were you thinking?” she demanded.

  Lance looked at her, momentarily confused. What was I thinking? “Seriously? I don’t want to think; I just want to feel alive.”

  It took a second for Lance to realize that he’d verbalized that inner thought, but it was forgiven by the look in Aura’s eyes. She looked sad, but determined. “Just this once, we can take the comfort of the flesh, just this once. Follow me to the side office, it should be empty.”

  Their union was like everything else in a Marine’s life: hard and desperate, without any frills or trappings. There was a savageness to it, the need to feel alive, to feel anything, pushing Lance harder and harder. It was somehow strangely fitting that her grunts and his groans were as savage as their coupling. While he didn’t exactly worry about her pleasure, the expression on her face and the noises that came out of her pretty little mouth told him she enjoyed it too.

  Afterwards, as they climbed down off the plateau of their pleasure and let their heartbeats return to normal, Lance began to kiss her neck again while his hands avoided the Marine sin of idleness, occupied by Aura’s pert breasts. So lost in the moment were they that the arrival of Captain Grimgerde caused them both to jump out of their skin. The look of understanding on the officer’s face was even more confusing, for in the brief instance she seemed almost human. She merely nodded as the pair hastily redressed. The Jotun Captain looked off to the side, pretending to inspect the records left on the desk, unwilling to acknowledge the private moment she had interrupted. “Lance Corporal Scipio, you are to follow me,” said Grimgerde. “We have a stop to make and then we will report to
General Korenje onboard the Metamorphosis.”

  — Chapter 33 —

  941st Regimental Staging Bay

  Immediately upon leaving Technician Bay 12, Lance followed his commanding officer, who was moving at a breakneck pace, through the passageways of the Grendel. It took a few moments for Lance to recognize that they were heading towards the regimental staging bay, an open area used for the infrequent formations that were rarely a part of shipboard life and the dispensing of battle plans to Marines about to go to war. With Marines spending most of their ‘floats’ as icers, he hadn’t had the opportunity to spend any time here, so he attempted to commit it all to memory as they passed through.

  When they walked in, the bay was empty of all human Marines, only occupied by two Spacer Technicians and a smattering of officers. When they kept walking towards the Spacers, Lance struggled to figure out why. After the debacle that was the battle, he thought, they’ve probably called me here to kill me.

  Lance was shocked when they walked past the officers towards the Spacers. Upon seeing the glowing brand held by one of them, he figured it out. I’m getting my tattoo for the QEP combat operation, my first star to sit above the 941st TAC Regiment crest. He squeezed his eyes tight, fighting back the tears. We were supposed to do this together and now everyone else is dead. After looking around, he noticed that his star was going to be added by hand, shocking since it was normally handled by autonomous tattooing booths.

  After realizing he was there for his tattoo, Lance glanced over to his commander, seeking permission to prepare. When he saw that she too was taking off her top, he followed suit and sat down in the chair. While Captain Grimgerde was letting the Spacer shave a small patch of fur off her upper back, where her regimental crest was branded on her, the second Spacer tattooed Lance’s star. The Spacer had just finished, when Lance noticed the smell of burning flesh coming from his commander indicating that she was done as well. That was quick, let’s hope the meeting that follows goes as smoothly.