Swapship Troopers

by Walker Long

  “Ouch,” he groaned.

  “What the fuck?” Jordan yelled. “What was that?”

  “A buzzard must have run into us!” Jabara called back. “Fucking rammed us!” That made sense. A buzzard didn’t have missiles or cannons. Its only offensive weapon was its sheer size. A buzzard wasn’t nearly as large as the Jericho of course, but they were plenty large enough to do damage.

  Quantrill struggled to his feet, rubbing a sore shoulder. The ship had been his home for more than a year now. He had thought of Jericho as a solid thing, safe, reliable. Now he saw what it really was – a big can with him inside and the cold vacuum of space outside. It was not a comfortable feeling. He began to understand why Hardaway had ordered them to suit up.

  Quantrill ran to his locker and pulled on his armor. Marine battle armor – when sealed properly – can protect the wearer from toxic smoke, fumes and even hard vacuum. It has a self-contained air supply that lasts up to five hours. It didn’t have thermal protection like a real space suit, but it was a hell of a lot better than nothing.

  Once again the three tones sounded over the public address system. This time Quantrill immediately grabbed a handhold on the wall. The ship tossed around like a leaf in the wind, but he managed to hold on. He heard the terrible screeching of bending metal echo through the ship, then the tumult stopped. As he came to a rest he realized that the artificial gravity was gone as well. He was in freefall.

  “That last collision must have stopped our rotation,” Jabara observed.

  “Great,” Quantrill grumbled. “They broke the fucking ship.”

  “This is Captain Podkayne,” a voice came on over the public address. “Prepare to repel boarders. Q Ring, Deck 4. All personnel are cleared for live fire.”

  “Repel boarders? What the hell does that mean?” Jordan wondered.

  “It means the Bugs are on the ship,” Quantrill told him and floated toward the corridor. “Let’s go. They’re right upstairs.”

  “Wait!” Jabara protested. “We don’t have orders.”

  “Who else on this tub is going to kill these Bugs?” Quantrill demanded and then pushed off the bulkhead and down the corridor.

  “Well, when you put it that way,” Jabara mumbled and followed close behind. The three Marines ascended the ladder to deck 4 in no time – weightlessness did have advantages – but kept running into locked bulkhead doors. These hatches would slam shut automatically in response to an air pressure loss. That way the whole ship’s air didn’t leak out into space. It did, however, make it hard to get around.

  They floated up and down the corridors on Deck 4 until they ran into a pair of Fleet crewmen. Quantrill recognized one of the men who had gotten such a kick out of him smashing into a wall when he was trying to get on the bird down to Antioch. The two spacers were holding small hand-weapons and anxiously watching a bulkhead door. The metal door had several huge dents bulging out, as though it had been rammed from the other side.

  Quantrill and the other Marines floated up to the Fleet crewman. They were in shirtsleeves and emergency pressure masks. That would be enough to keep them alive if the hull depressurized – probably. It would be little help against an attacking Bug, though. Quantrill looked at the spacer’s tiny weapon – it looked like the remote control for a vid screen.

  A loud bang echoed from the other side of the bulkhead. The two crewmen nearly jumped out of their pale blue Fleet uniforms. Another deep divot appeared in the hatch.

  “Well, looks like you have this under control,” Quantrill said casually and turned to float away.

  “Wait! Wait!” the spacers protested. “We – we – we could use some help here.”

  “You want help from us?” Jabara said in mock surprise. “From big, dumb Marines?”

  “No, no,” the crewmen protested. “We love Marines. Marines are awesome. Semper fi!”

  “Alright, don’t embarrass yourself,” Quantrill chuckled. He shouldered his rifle and clicked off the safety. The first rule he had learned when he was stationed on the Jericho was a simple one. It was drummed into new Marines at orientation and repeated time and time again at training briefings. Don’t discharge weapons on a spaceship.

  Quantrill felt a little giddy at having a chance to break that rule. He just hoped he wasn’t going to put more holes in the Jericho than the spacers could fix.

  Another thunderous clang reverberated from the hatch. This time the metal fractured. A jagged-edged hole the size of a man’s fist appeared in the doorway. Air rushed into the depressurized zone on the other side with a high pitched, screaming whistle. There was a loud thump from behind them and then quiet. The ship had closed the bulkhead hatch to seal the leak – behind them. The display on Quantrill’s helmet visor indicated they were now in unbreathable vacuum.

  “I guess we’re locked in here with that thing,” Jordan said over the squad radio.

  “No,” Jabara rumbled. “That thing is locked in here with us.” The big Marine shouldered his weapon and glared at the doorway. Another big dent appeared in the metal but no sound reached them in the airless vacuum. With the next hit the big hinge pins began to fail and the door tilted in the frame.

  “We should maybe back up a bit,” Quantrill suggested. Just as he did, another smash on the door sent it flying. Quantrill ducked and pushed off the ceiling as the heavy metal hatch floated over his head. The opening in the bulkhead filled with two Formid warriors, gnashing their mandibles. Behind them were more. The entire corridor was filled with Bugs.

  The Marines fired on pure reflex. At such close range and with the Bugs filling up the corridor they could scarcely miss. The three closest Formid were killed immediately. Those behind, however, simply pushed the lifeless bodies of their comrades out of the way and kept on coming. They used their insect-like grip to scurry over the walls and ceiling. Weightlessness didn’t slow them up in the least.

  “Fall back!” Quantrill yelled into the radio. He pushed backward down the corridor, keeping his eyes on the Formids. He continued firing his rifle and used the recoil to propel himself away from the charging Bugs. He scored dozens of hits on the Bugs’ hard shells but they kept coming closer. Their creepy wall-crawling was just too effective in freefall.

  Quantrill floated past a wide door where hands reached out and grabbed him. Jabara pulled him through the doorway and out of the corridor full of Bugs. They were in the enlisted mess, a huge room with enough tables to feed two hundred Marines at once. “Good thinking,” Quantrill said over the radio. The open space of the mess hall gave the men with guns an advantage.

  The three Marines and two spacers made for the center of the room. There the Bugs wouldn’t be able to reach them without letting go of the walls. Meanwhile they could pick the Formids off at will. They immediately blasted the Bugs coming through the doorway, but there were too many and they were coming too fast to stop them all. They streamed over the floor and ceiling, toward the five humans.

  Soon the men were surrounded. Bugs clung to the ceiling above them and swarmed over the floor below them. They were able to stay just out of reach of the giant Bugs, however, and slowly inflicted damage on the Formids from a distance. Quantrill dropped an empty magazine and immediately loaded another. Jabara unleashed a torrent of fire with his SAW, killing Bugs right and left. Jordan also kept shooting. They were putting God only knew how many holes into the delicate hull of the ship, but it was nothing compared to the damage the Bugs would do if they weren’t stopped.

  Then one Formid climbed up on the back of another and reached for Jabara’s leg. Quantrill blasted the Bug away, but didn’t see another Formid doing the same thing behind him. He caught movement in his peripheral vision and whirled around in time to see the Bug less than a meter from his head. He tried to fire but his magazine was empty. The Bug launched itself at him. He didn’t have time to reload.

  Quantrill jammed the butt of his rifle into the Bug’s huge mandibles. The massive Bug pushed him across the mess hall. He wrestled with the rif
le in the Formid’s powerful jaws, trying to wrest it free and at the same time keep himself out of the razor sharp pincers. The Bug’s momentum pushed him against the wall. He was pinned! The Bug was going to slowly crush him.

  Then he heard the three high pitched blasts of the collision warning alert. Fortunately his suit com linked up to the public address system. Otherwise he never would have heard the warning in the airless room.

  He let go of his rifle and grabbed a handhold on the wall with both hands. As soon as he did, the ship lurched. Unlike before, however, the ship kept on accelerating in the same direction. That warning hadn’t been for a collision, the ship was taking evasive maneuvers. Serious evasive maneuvers. Everything that wasn’t bolted down was flung across the room. The Formid along with Quantrill’s rifle were flung toward the far wall. The Bug waved its eight legs frantically but found no purchase; there wasn’t even air resistance to slow it down. Quantrill held on to the handhold but was pulled with more and more force toward the other side of the room.

  In seconds the acceleration was so great that the wall he was clinging to became the ceiling and the opposite wall became the floor. He hung there, gripping the handle for dear life. The Bug with his rifle lodged in its mandibles dropped like a stone and smashed into the far wall breaking at least three legs. The other Bugs were caught off guard by the sudden acceleration and fell as well.

  Jabara and the two spacers managed to keep from falling by grabbing onto a dining table. Apparently the starship designers knew something like this would happen, because the tables were fastened to the floor. Just opposite them, Jordan clung to a light fixture on the ceiling. The rookie’s rifle was slung over his shoulder. This time Quantrill was the one who lost his weapon – talk about embarrassing.

  The acceleration stopped as abruptly as it began. They were in freefall once again. Only three or four of the Formids were fully mobile. Jabara killed three of those and Jordan took out the other. The others were dragging themselves around on broken legs and made easy targets.

  When Jabara killed off the Bug with his rifle, Quantrill floated over and retrieved it. He slapped a fresh magazine into the receiver, but then looked over at the spacers. He couldn’t talk with them because their coms weren’t on the same wavelengths. The best he could do was wave and point. He handed the first crewman his AR316 and gestured to one of the crippled Bugs. The spacer looked at the big rifle in his hands and then smiled. Quantrill gave him a nod and the man went over to a Formid and put a 5-round burst into its thorax. The Bug stopped moving and the crewman grinned like he had won the lottery.

  The other spacer got a turn with the rifle and ended a Formid of his own. The two crewmen slapped each other on the back and gave Quantrill a thumbs up. Those were two spacers who wouldn’t be making fun of Marines any time soon.

  Chapter 14

  Shore Leave

  “Are you sure this is on the down low?” Jabara asked for the sixth time. “I can’t afford a black mark on my record.”

  “I’m tellin’ you, Jabby. This place is totally dark,” Potter insisted. The Jericho was laid up in the New Caledonia shipyard for repairs and Major de Coverly had run out of ways to keep the Marines busy. The men were going stir-crazy sitting around on base. The Major was sending them on shore leave for 5 days to get them out of his hair. Everyone was practically giddy over the chance to roam around the city unsupervised.

  “Yeah, come on, Jabby. You don’t want to miss out on this speakeasy place,” Jordan encouraged. Potter grew up on New Caledonia and had been bragging about a speakeasy he knew of. It was basically a tavern that illegally served alcohol without the Impurity Tax. As a result their drinks cost about a quarter of what you would pay anywhere else.

  Even better, since the place was illegal to begin with they went ahead and did a bunch of other illegal stuff there. They had gambling and cigars and dancing girls. Best of all, Potter insisted a man could go in there and rent the services of a young woman for an hour – no questions asked. It all seemed too good to be true, but the Marines – Quantrill included – were dying to check it out.

  “That’s right,” Quantrill agreed. “Think about it – a real live girl. Not some Marine in drag.”

  “All right, all right,” Jabara relented.

  “That’s my man!” Potter cheered.

  “Officer on deck!” Jordan barked suddenly. Quantrill and the rest of the Marines in the barracks snapped to attention. Lieutenant Hardaway walked into the room with his usual stern, intimidating expression. Quantrill sighed.

  “As you were,” Hardaway told them. He held up a stack of glossy cards. “I have your passes here, gentlemen. Once you have a pass, you are free to go.” The Lieutenant stood in the center of the room handing out the cards. One by one the Marines got their passes, grabbed their duffle bags, and disappeared out the door. They had been packed and ready to go for hours.

  Quantrill was the last card in the stack. Hardaway walked over to the smaller man and handed him a card. The card was translucent with a holographic image of the Alliance Fleet logo. It was printed with Quantrill’s photo and vital statistics.

  “Thank you, sir,” he said quietly. He knew he was supposed to leave – to grab his duffle and head for the train depot like the others – but couldn’t get himself to take that first step. He didn’t want to leave. He hadn’t been alone with Hardaway for ages, it seemed like.

  Quantrill looked up at his commanding officer and tried to get some read on what was going on behind those intense, blue eyes. He was the same man – the same Lieutenant Hardaway that had kissed him and taken his breath away. The same man who had lain on top of him and driven him wild with pleasure. Didn’t Hardaway know he was still that person?

  Of course, Quantrill was not the same. The Quantrill who did those things might as well have been a completely different person. But he didn’t feel that way – not inside. The memories were his. They were as vivid as if it had been just the day before. His mind hadn’t changed – only his body. But it was his body that Hardaway really cared about, wasn’t it?

  Quantrill looked away. He should catch up with the others. That was where he belonged. With a frown he reached for his duffle and slung it over his shoulder.

  “Q,” Hardaway said slowly. “Can I … talk to you for a minute?”

  “Sir?”

  “Command keeps a tight handle on the PinkVector,” he began. Quantrill nodded. Of course they did. If that stuff got to the public, Alliance officials would shit bricks. “It’s only issued to platoon leaders, and only the exact number of doses we need.”

  Hardaway paused and looked around the empty room. He reached into the chest pocket of his fatigues and pulled out a small vial with a tiny bit of liquid in the bottom. “But you see,” he went on in a quieter voice. “After we used our doses there was a little of the drug left clinging to the sides of the vial. Just a few drops.”

  “Okay,” Quantrill nodded. What was the Lieutenant getting at?

  “So I collected those drops,” Hardaway continued. “From C224A and from Lapis Lazuli. Altogether it adds up to point five milliliters.”

  “Is that … ?”

  “Yes,” Hardaway nodded. “That’s one full dose of PinkVector.”

  “Is that – you know – legal? Sir?”

  “Technically no,” Hardaway replied. He looked around the empty room again as if he were expecting someone to sneak up on him. “It’s misappropriation of government property at the very least. So we will keep this between the two of us, no matter what your answer is.”

  “Yes, sir,” Quantrill nodded. He couldn’t believe Lieutenant Hardaway would knowingly break regs like that! Of course, Hardaway had always been more interested in protecting his men than in dotting I’s and crossing T’s. But what did it have to do with Quantrill? “My answer to what?”

  “I have a proposition,” the Lieutenant told him. “You should feel no obligation to accept. I’m speaking to you as just an ordinary man. Not as your commanding o
fficer.”

  Quantrill didn’t think he could ever regard Hardaway as just an ordinary man, but nodded and the Lieutenant went on. “I have made arrangements to spend my leave at a resort on the outskirts. It’s a nice place – not on par with the Hotel Azure by any means, but nice enough. I’d like you to be my guest. I have the PinkVector like I said, and a dose of BlueVector for after.”

  “Me? You mean, that PinkVector is for me?” Quantrill was stunned. Someone like Hardaway wouldn’t have any problem getting women – real women. He wouldn’t have to visit an illegal speakeasy, either. He was tall and handsome and an officer – from a rich family, no less. Hardaway could have anyone. But the person he chose was an uneducated grunt from the ghetto? Was this some kind of joke?

  “I understand completely if you’re not interested,” Hardaway said. His voice was as strong as ever, but there was a sad look in his pale blue eyes. “I’d just prefer you didn’t tell…”

  “Yes!” Quantrill chirped. What other answer could he give? If Hardaway wanted him – really wanted him – he could never say no. He laughed and bounced on his toes. He wished he could grab the tall Lieutenant around the neck and pull him down for a long, slow kiss. He would kiss him until that sad look was gone for good. Unfortunately that would have to wait. But they would have plenty of time! Five whole days! “I’d love to be your guest!”

  “That’s great,” Hardaway chuckled. “Just great. Meet me back here in half an hour. I’ll have a train ticket for you.”

  “Yes, sir!” Quantrill agreed. Hardaway strode out of the room whistling softly. Quantrill tossed his duffle onto his rack and went looking for the rest of his squad.

  “Where’s your bag, man?” Jabara exclaimed. “The train is boarding in – like – four minutes!”

  “Yeah,” Quantrill said with his most sincere, regretful voice. What would he tell the guys? He obviously couldn’t tell the truth. He would never live down the teasing. And it might get Hardaway in trouble, which was out of the question. “I can’t. I have to …umm … get a new pass. This one had the wrong … errr … serial number.”