Scorpion’s Fury

by C H Gideon

  “No,” the doctor scowled, “making me sign a prenup was the smartest thing they ever did.”

  She shot him a withering look before breaking down and giving an obligatory chuckle. “Fine, fine…I’ll go see the commander.”

  She stood and stretched before looking down at Podsy, who hadn’t moved since Fellows had put him into a chemically-induced coma three days earlier.

  “He’s stable,” the doctor assured her, giving her an expectant look and shooing her away. “The commander’s expecting you.”

  “I meant what I said about the cot,” Xi warned, eliciting an eye-roll and mock gesture of surrender from the doctor before she left the field hospital and made her way to the battalion’s command center.

  Things had been relatively quiet since the takeover, though Commander Jenkins had compartmentalized the results of their wildly successful takeover. Patrols continued as before, and Pounders and mech crews saw to their wounded. Complaints persisted regarding the low-quality ration packs and, more disgustingly, the necessary consumption of recycled dark water.

  Fortunately for Xi, sealed bottles of fresh water continued appearing in places she would find them. She had little doubt who was giving them to her, but she was confused as to their meaning. Ordinarily, she would have suspected such gestures to be sexual advances and would have publicly spurned them. But this time around, she found herself perplexed so she had avoided a confrontation with the most likely suspect.

  As she approached Roy, the first thing she noticed was that the command vehicle’s receiver dish was deployed. This only happened during scheduled links with orbital forces, which meant the commander was probably on the line with Fleet at that very moment.

  Quickening her stride, she walked up Roy’s boarding ramp and heard Commander Jenkins’ raised voice.

  “Copy that, Wolf Three-Niner,” Jenkins said in mild exasperation. “The area is secure; you are clear on all approaches. I say again: you are clear on all approaches.”

  When the static-laden reply came, it was filled with disbelief. “Wolf Three-Niner requesting you repeat your last, Roy.”

  Jenkins briefly met Xi’s gaze and a wry, victorious grin spread across his face as he declared, “This is Roy. Allow me to rephrase, Wolf Three-Niner: we’ve already cleared this rock. We’ve even rolled out the beach blankets and are working on our tans. Why don’t you guys come down and join us? The weather’s perfect this time of year.”

  Xi couldn’t help but laugh at the commander’s quip—tidally-locked planets with negligible axial tilt didn’t experience seasons. As she resumed control of herself, she noticed Sergeant Major Trapper had clambered up the ramp behind her. They made brief eye contact before both focused on the conversation taking place. It was clear that Commander Jenkins was every bit as proud of what they had done as she was and, for the first time since joining this ragtag group of convicts and misfits, she felt like she actually belonged among them.

  “I’ve already forwarded copies of all thirty-eight anti-orbital gun placements,” Jenkins continued, “but I say again: those guns are cold. You’re clear on all approaches.”

  A lengthy delay followed, which was finally broken by a different voice from the first. “This is Wolf Leader. Is that you, Leeroy?”

  “Leeroy Jenkins, in the flesh.” The commander grinned. “It’s good to finally hear a familiar voice, Johnny. I thought Fleet Ground was coming. Didn’t expect the Marines.”

  “We’re on direct approach, ETA six minutes,” Wolf Leader ‘Johnny’ replied, “and assuming this isn’t some kind of payback prank for that regrettable latrine incident a few years back, it sounds like you people just set a record for the swiftest conclusion to a planetary siege in Republic history. On behalf of Fleet Command and everyone in Wolf Company, I’d like to congratulate you all on a job well done.”

  Jenkins turned to face those in his command mech. He pointed to each and nodded in silent celebration of their hard-fought and costly victory. The feeling of belonging, of purpose, and of camaraderie crystallized in that moment as she celebrated with her fellow servicemen. If she could have, she would have made that moment last forever.

  “We appreciate that, Wolf Leader. We’ve got wounded down here,” Jenkins continued, raising his voice above the celebratory din. “How soon can we expect priority medevacs?”

  The mood dampened considerably, and Xi’s thoughts immediately went to her comatose partner.

  “The Paul Revere’s in geostationary orbit over the plateau,” Wolf Leader replied. “As soon as my people have confirmed the area’s secure, they’ll start shuttling your wounded up.”

  "Roger, Wolf Leader.” Jenkins nodded approvingly. “I’ll start prepping the most critical cases for transfer. Roy out.”

  Xi’s thoughts were now solely of Podsy, and she brushed past Sergeant Major Trapper before running toward Elvira. She needed to get Podsy’s things ready for transfer and, if possible, she would accompany him. He had bled for her down there, and Doc Fellows seemed less-than-hopeful about his chance at recovery.

  If he was going to die, she couldn’t let him die alone.

  The Terran Fleet Marine Corps was the unrivaled pride of Republican ground forces. From their rigorous physical and mental performance standards to their incredibly effective power armor, they were the undisputed cream of the crop in the Terran Armed Forces. Deployed by their advanced dropships, which could maneuver like void fighters and take direct hits from everything but the biggest naval guns, there was no stopping them from reaching their targets and eliminating them with unrivaled ferocity. While other branches joked at the Marines’ expense, everyone in uniform knew the truth: everything about the TFMC invoked respect and fear from friend and foe alike, and they deserved every bit of their hard-earned reputation.

  When Wolf Company’s command dropship, the Geralt, appeared in the sky above the plateau, all eyes were there to witness its arrival.

  Its monochrome matte-black, sharply-angular hull was broken only by the fierce, white wolf’s head emblem representing the company’s mascot. That emblem was emblazoned upon the side and rear doors of the vehicle, as well as the vehicle’s underside. A command dropship like the Geralt was more valuable than a company of Jenkins’ best mechs, and the power-suited Marines it carried were each worth more than three mechs.

  The Geralt’s engines roared, gently lowering the vehicle to the ground beside Roy. No sooner had the landing gear touched down than all three doors opened to reveal fully-armored Marines.

  Those superhuman warriors disembarked the Geralt with such precision they might as well have been pre-programmed machines. Armored boots touched the granite plateau as a dozen Marines, three full squads, filed out and formed a perimeter around the dropship.

  The total time from disembarkation to setting their defensive formation was just under three seconds, and Jenkins knew he was not alone in being awestruck by the display. A quick glance around at his fellows showed that even Sergeant Major Trapper, standing beside Jenkins, was unable to hide his appreciation of their precision.

  An unarmored man came walking down the right-side ramp, wearing a Marine field uniform normally reserved for deployment in non-combat zones. Unlike his men, who were armored and ready to engage the enemy, Colonel Johnny Villa strode confidently past his peoples’ perimeter toward Jenkins and Trapper bearing nothing but a sidearm and the unshakable air of a man who had stared death in the face and laughed.

  Marines weren’t known for taking other branches at their word or putting their safety in the hands of others, so it was that particular gesture, more than any other, which filled Jenkins with a sense of accomplishment and recognition for what he and his people had done on Durgan’s Folly.

  “Commander,” Colonel Villa greeted after coming to a stop before Jenkins and Trapper, “Sergeant Major.”

  “Colonel Villa,” Jenkins said, standing at attention while the majority of his people did likewise. “Welcome to Durgan’s Folly.”

  Vill
a swept the command plateau with a critical eye before raising his voice. “This has got to be the sorriest-looking excuse for a military outpost I have ever seen in my life.” He turned a slow circle, eyeing everyone nearby as he finally cracked a grin and boomed, “Which, in my military mind, makes what you Monkeys and Pounders did one for the history books!”

  The plateau erupted in approving cheers, and the Marines at Villa’s back stood up from their battle-ready crouches and fired their wrist-mounted autocannons in an arc over the desert. A few even launched short-range surface-to-air rockets high into the air, where they exploded with palpable whumps.

  Villa clasped Trapper’s hand, grinning as he said, “Trapper, you old bastard. You’re not dead yet?”

  “Doing my best.” The sergeant major returned the grin. “Just can’t seem to get over the hump.”

  Villa chuckled and turned to Jenkins before shaking his head in wonderment. “I don’t know how you did it down here, but you’re right: this whole rock’s quiet as a Sunday service. I need you to confirm the coordinates of those anti-orbital guns so I can call down airstrikes to neutralize them. There’s nothing like a space-based barrage to brighten one’s day.”

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Johnny,” Jenkins said firmly. “Send teams with demo charges to secure the guns locally. We’ve pacified the rock-biters down here, but my tech says it wouldn’t take much to stir them back up. Orbital strikes could jeopardize our control of the situation.”

  “Did I read your strength estimate correctly, Lee?” Villa said in a lowered voice as the celebrations continued all around them. “You think there are four million Arh’Kel down here?”

  “That’s our best number.” Jenkins nodded gravely.

  Villa whistled appreciatively. “In that case, we need to get off this rock ASAP.” He turned and snapped a series of commands into his wrist-link. When he had finished, he said, “I’ve sent teams to clear out the anti-orbitals in this sector. Once they’re offline, we’ll start bringing you and your gear up. In the meantime…” He gestured to the sleek, black-hulled Geralt’s open doors. “Let’s get your wounded aboard.”

  “I appreciate that, Colonel,” Jenkins said with feeling, knowing that Villa was bending over as far backward as he could to accommodate Jenkins’ circumstances—from the non-combat fatigues to turning his command vehicle into a medevac shuttle. Jenkins activated his wrist-link and raised Dr. Fellows. “Doc, start transferring your patients.”

  “I’m sorry, Lieutenant,” Dr. Fellows reiterated tersely as he helped roll Podsy’s gurney out of the mobile hospital. “This flight is for critically wounded only.”

  “But I need to stay with him,” Xi insisted. “I’m only seventy-three kilos, Doc—each of the Marines’ backup hydro-packs weigh more than that!”

  “I’ve never heard a woman boast about weighing a buck sixty,” Strange Bed muttered. “But no amount of whining or bulimic purging is going to change the fact that you’re not getting aboard that dropship.”

  “But, Doc,” she pleaded, causing him to stop and take her by the shoulders.

  “Listen, Lieutenant,” he said forcefully before relaxing and lowering his voice earnestly, “I’ve never seen someone as loyal to a crewmate as you’ve been to Podsy. You’ve spent nearly every second at his side since he was wounded and now I’m telling you, as a professional who deals with this kind of thing every hour of every day—” He patted her shoulder lightly, and somehow it didn’t come across as condescending, unlike every other interaction she’d had with Strange Bed. “—you’ve done more than enough, kid. It’s time to step back and let him get the care he needs.”

  She was taken aback by his apparent sincerity, and against her better judgment, she relented. “Just do everything you can for him, okay?”

  “Of course.” Fellows nodded. “I know Doc Turney, the Revere’s CMO. She’s the best,” he assured her. “I’ll make sure Podsy gets top priority. You have my word.”

  Xi nodded, and at that, Fellows and his team wheeled Podsy out of the hospital toward the waiting Marine dropship.

  A few minutes later, all nineteen of the worst-wounded were aboard, and the black-hulled Geralt rose from the plateau amid the high-pitched whine of its engines. Mere seconds after its gear was up, it rocketed into the sky, soaring ever-higher until it was a speck against the dome of perpetual twilight.

  For the first time since landing on that rock, Xi felt completely rudderless. Podsy had become more than a crewmate to her during their training and deployment. He was family. He had looked out for her when no one else did, and now she was unable to reciprocate that commitment and devotion.

  More than that, she was alone.

  Wiping the tears from her face, she turned and headed for Elvira. She needed to sleep, to put the day behind her, and Doc Fellows had ordered her on strict non-physical activity to help heal her still-badly-blistered fingers.

  When she arrived at her mech, she was immediately struck by just how empty it felt without Podsy.

  Then she noticed it wasn’t empty at all.

  Hunched over her pilot’s chair was none other than Tim Trapper. He had a bottle of fresh water in one hand and a slip of paper in the other.

  He looked up at her and sighed. “I was hoping to slip the last of these in before you got back. My apologies… I must be getting old.”

  “Why?” she demanded a bit more irritably than she would have liked. “Why have you been slipping me bottles of fresh water? Is this some sort of courtship ritual for you?”

  Trapper chuckled. “You couldn’t be much further from the truth.”

  “Then what?” she asked, less upset than she expected to be during this understandably tense exchange.

  “The truth?”

  “What else matters,” she agreed.

  He sighed again. “The truth…is you remind me of my kid sister.”

  Xi recoiled in surprise, “Oh…” She couldn’t think of anything else to say, which only served to embarrass her more than she had thought possible.

  “It’s all right,” he assured her. “She was a dropship pilot assigned to the Marines. She enlisted because it’s something of a family tradition, not so much because it’s what she wanted to do.”

  Xi nodded, slowly realizing the significance of his speaking in the past tense about his sister.

  “What happened to her?”

  “Arh’Kel anti-orbitals while she was coming down to this very rock,” Trapper replied matter-of-factly. “Managed to emergency-deploy half of her Marines before her ship went down. She was a good pilot…and a better person.” He fixed her with those intense, diamond-hard eyes. “She might not have died if she’d been a little better at strategically dropping her guard and making friends…or if my old man hadn’t pulled strings to get her strapped into a dropship before she was ready.”

  Xi had not expected this level of blunt honesty, or to hear him recount such intensely personal details. “I’m not your sister,” Xi said pointedly, again unable to think of anything better to say.

  “No,” Trapper agreed, “but you remind me of her. You’re both sharp as a tack and prickly as a hellspawn cactus, with more determination to excel than the good sense to stop and enjoy the moment. If there’s one thing I could have gone back and said to her, it would have been this…” He drew a deep, steadying breath. “Sometimes it’s better to drop your guard and risk being hurt than to live like this fuckin’ plateau: alone, perpetually ready to engage, and surrounded on all sides by the endless sea of things that might do you harm.”

  She nodded before gesturing to the water bottles. “If you’ve got a few minutes, I’ll share those with you while you tell me a little more about her.”

  He chuckled. “That sounds like a good idea, Elvira.”

  “You people have been through a lot down here, Lee,” Colonel Villa said after reviewing Jenkins’ logs. “I’m amazed you survived, let alone pulled off this takeover. You should be proud.”

  “I am.
” Jenkins nodded guardedly. “What about you? I thought you were on the Descartes?”

  “I was.” Villa nodded grimly, briefly eyeing the unopened whisky bottle atop Jenkins’ shelf. He refocused on Jenkins and set his jaw. “When the Arh’Kel came through the wormhole, it was like nothing in Fleet history. The rock-biters moved with such intensity, such ferocity…three dreadnoughts were down before we could properly respond, but the Descartes lasted a little longer.”

  “How did they hit us?” Jenkins leaned forward intently.

  “Mass drivers, hyper-kinetic warheads, limpet mines, fireships…” Villa leaned back in his chair and grimaced. “You name it, they threw it at us. We even got to repel boarding actions, which is the only reason my company’s still intact. Most others weren’t so lucky.”

  “Void boarding actions?” Jenkins asked in disbelief. Marines drilled anti-boarding actions as a matter of course, but not once had the Terran Fleet actually experienced such an engagement.

  “First time for everything.” Villa smirked. “We held our own and then some, scraping those sandy bastards off the hull as fast as they punched into it. Not one Arh’Kel breached the Descartes’ interior on Wolf’s watch,” he declared with grim satisfaction. “But she was the only mobile dreadnought to survive the first wave of fire, so it was only a matter of time before the rock-biters bracketed her and finished the job.”

  Jenkins sank back into his chair in disbelief.

  “Thankfully,” Villa continued, “Sixth Fleet was on standby and responded in time to hold the gate and keep the Arh’Kel off this rock. And after reviewing your logs, it’s pretty clear why they were coming here.”

  “This was going to be their beachhead,” Jenkins said knowingly.

  “For a major offensive.” Villa nodded. “My guess is there’s enough ordnance buried beneath this planet’s surface to supply a ten-year war, and more than enough rock-biters standing ready to replace whatever losses such a conflict would entail. All they had to do was get the ships through this star system’s gate, at which point they’d attack Terra Americana from Durgan’s Folly and take complete control of the New America System. From there, it wouldn’t be tough to break through the rest of the wormhole gates, but losing this star system would cripple our military infrastructure.”