Forged by War (Jack Forge, Fleet Marine Book 9)

by James David Victor

  “I’ve been practicing. Look.” Torent set his arm down on the ground and walked away. “I can get it to work from a distance. Look.”

  Torent's prosthetic arm began to crawl along the floor with its fingers. Then the fore finger tapped the floor.

  “See?” Torent said. “Set up the arm on the overload switch and I can set it from almost a hundred meters. That’s halfway to the corvette. Thirty seconds might be enough.”

  Jack clasped a hand on Torent’s shoulder. He smiled brightly. “You sure you can manage without the arm?” Jack said.

  “I’d be delighted,” Torent said. “The kravin thing is nothing but a pain in the ass…well, the shoulder.”

  Jack pulled his micro drone out of his pocket and let it hang in the air. “We can see using this,” he said. “Put your arm on the power cell, Sam,” Jack said.

  Torent made the arm crawl with its fingers toward the blast laser power cell.

  “Don’t mess about, Sam,” Jack said. “Hurry, please.”

  Torent stomped over to the arm and picked it up off the floor. “Always so serious, Jack,” Torent said. He set the arm down on the power cell.

  Jack pointed at the correct switch. Torent placed his prosthetic arm’s first finger over the switch. Jack called up the image from the micro drone and displayed it on his wrist-mounted holostage. He unclipped the holostage. Torent held out his arm and Jack strapped it on Torent’s left arm.

  Jack nodded at Sam. “Okay. You hold at one hundred meters while I power the corvette. Give me sixty seconds to get the ship ready then you can sprint over so we can take off. It’ll be close, but we should make it.”

  Torent nodded. He handed his pulse rifle over to Jack. “Let me swap for your pistol. It’s easier to handle one-handed.”

  Jack nodded. He took Torent’s rifle and slung it over his shoulder, then he unclipped his pulse pistol and handed it over.

  Torent looked at the pistol. “Not a patch on the old Fleet Marine Pulse Rifle,” he said.

  “You can have your rifle back if you like, but you’ll need your other arm back and then I’ll have to set off the explosion myself,” Jack said.

  “Always trying to be the hero, ain’t you, Jacky,” Torent said.

  “I never try,” Jack said. “Some things just happen that way.”

  The pair readied themselves and turned to the exit. In an unspoken agreement, the pair started off at a jog.

  The open doorway was still surrounded by Chitin soldiers, but there was enough room for Jack and Torent to slip past. Just beyond the structure, Torent stopped and looked at the holoimage on the wrist-mounted holostage. Jack nodded and ran off at full speed to the corvette. He ran up the boarding ramp and jumped in the pilot’s chair. A few switches flipped, and the ship was ready for takeoff.

  Jack looked out to Torent, who was looking down at the holostage.

  “Come on, Sam,” Jack said to himself.

  Torent began walking back toward the power distribution node facility. He stopped after a few steps.

  “What are you doing? Hurry up, Sam.”

  Torent walked toward the facility again, taking huge strides forward.

  “What are you doing?” Jack said. And then, Torent turned and started running as fast as Jack had ever seen him move.

  As Torent ran, Jack saw a nearby Chitin soldier move toward him. Maybe the noise of his running or a disturbance of the ground brought its attention. Torent raised his pulse pistol and took aim.

  “Don’t do it,” Jack said.

  Torent fired. The pulse round slammed into the Chitin soldier’s head.

  “Krav it all, Sam,” Jack said. He clambered out of the pilot’s chair and ran to the ramp. He grabbed the pulse rifle and took a position on the boarding ramp.

  Chitin soldiers were moving in toward Torent, who was now firing at every nearby Chit. The Chitin soldiers were moving in on all sides. Jack took aim and dropped two of the nearest. He shouted out.

  “Stop firing, Sam! Run!”

  Torent waved Jack back inside the ship and dropped another Chitin soldier with a well-aimed shot.

  Chitin soldiers moved in toward Jack firing from the boarding ramp and blocked Torent’s path. Jack let out a burst of fire and dropped the Chits, cutting a path for Torent. He came leaping over the fallen, twitching Chitin soldiers.

  Jack ran back to the cockpit. He watched Torent’s progress on the ramp’s surveillance feed. The moment Torent set foot on the ramp, Jack hit the drive.

  A Chitin soldier right behind Torent came onto the corvette’s gundeck. Jack began to close the hatch, the Chitin soldier still inside. Torent was sitting and looking up at the towering Chitin soldier as it scurried toward him.

  The Chit began to strike out with its stabbing tentacles, jabbing toward Torent.

  “Shoot it, Sam,” Jack shouted. “Now you can shoot it.”

  Jack could see Torent had lost the pistol and it lay on the ramp as it slowly closed. Jack grabbed the pulse rifle. He held it on his shoulder, pointed backward toward the Chit, and then using the gundeck surveillance feed to aim, he fired a single shot.

  The pulse rifle round slammed into the Chitin’s smooth head, knocking it sideways. Torent took the opportunity and scrambled for the pistol. He grabbed it, turned, and fired a number of rounds into the Chit.

  “Hold on,” Jack said. “Three seconds. Two. One.”

  The flash lit up the interior of the corvette as the light streamed in through the boarding ramp door as it closed the last few centimeters.

  Jack turned the corvette on a heading away from the blast. He checked the detonation on the surveillance feed.

  A blast came rumbling along the ground toward the fleeing corvette. The Chitin Leviathan was not moved by the blast, but a cloud of gas from the chemical cloak was billowing up into the atmosphere.

  The cloud of dust thrown out by the blast was catching up to the corvette. Jack pushed for greater speed, but the ship was only designed for maneuvering speeds in the atmosphere and only reached full speed in the vacuum of space. The hull began to rumble as the ship pushed through the atmosphere, the explosion blast catching rapidly.

  Then the shockwave hit, pitching the corvette forward. Jack struggled to regain control, his hands moving over the flight console, pushing the stabilizing thrusters into action and attempting to power out of the wave.

  A power conduit ruptured toward the rear of the gundeck, vapor streaming out of the conduit.

  “I’ve got this,” Torent said and started to lock down the rupture.

  The corvette stabilized and moved ahead of the wave. Jack slowed the corvette and pushed it higher into the atmosphere. He turned the ship and looked back to the power distribution node. A column of gas was rising and leveling off, spreading out in all directions like an umbrella. The cloud continued to billow out of the power node site and stream across the sky.

  “Sam,” Jack called out. “Report.”

  “I’ve got the rupture under control,” Torent said. He picked up the pulse pistol and walked toward the cockpit, firing a couple of rounds casually into the fallen Chitin soldier as he stepped past it.

  “We’ve done it, Sam,” Jack said.

  Torent dropped into the copilot seat and looked at the forward view screen.

  “You did it, Jack.”

  “Well, you had a hand in it,” Jack said.

  Torent laughed. “A hand it in, good one, Jack,” Torent said.

  Jack looked at Torent in confusion.

  “A hand in it,” Torent said again. He pointed at his loose left sleeve.

  Jack saw the joke. He still didn’t find it funny.

  “What’s next, Jack?” Torent asked. “You ready to retire now that you have saved the world?”

  Jack turned the corvette away from the billowing cloud of chemical cloak streaming into the upper atmosphere. “Let’s form up the battalion before we monitor the cloak and decide on our next step.”

  Torent nodded. “Copy that,” he sai
d and put his feet up on the flight console.

  Jack slapped his feet away. “Go and drop that dead Chit out of the boarding ramp and take a seat in the back,” Jack said.

  “Copy that, sir,” Torent said and climbed out of the copilot’s seat.

  Jack set a heading to take him toward Laidlaw’s and Boa’s last-known position. The Scorpio Battalion had been through a lot these last few days. Maybe, just maybe, it was finally all over.

  19

  Jack and Sam Torent stood on the broken roof of the civilian spaceport awaiting the arrival of Cobra and Boa Companies. Adder Company was holding the perimeter around the spaceport. Boa Company came in from the northwest, where the Chitin attack on the stadium Leviathan was still in progress. The plasma arcs still lit up the sky.

  “Those Chitin Hydras are giving that Leviathan a beating,” Torent said.

  A formation of Hydras raced overhead. Jack and Sam instinctively took cover, but the chemical cloak was still effective and the Hydras ignored the pair. Jack watched them fly toward the distant attack on the Leviathan.

  Jack looked to the distant battle where Chitin Hydras, attracted and stimulated by the inverted cloak that Laidlaw had delivered, were firing at their own massive warship.

  “Why doesn’t the Leviathan fire back?” Torent said.

  “It can’t fire on its own kind,” Jack said. “It’s only the inverted cloak that makes the Hydras attack.”

  “How much damage can a Leviathan take?” Torent said with a breath of exasperation.

  “They are tough ships,” Jack said.

  And then at that moment, the distant sky lit up. A deep rumble was felt at first and then heard, the huge rumble of a massive explosion. A dust cloud came racing over the ground and a fireball grew above the horizon. Then, climbing out of the fireball, came a Leviathan, listing to one side with fire erupting from its shell-like hull, and still there were the flicker of plasma arcs from distant specks of the attacking Hydras.

  Then the Leviathan fell back to the ground, lost in a billowing cloud of dust and fire.

  Jack aimed his field scanner at the distant explosion. It was satisfying to see a Leviathan fall. And then on the ground in the near distance, Jack saw movement. He focused his field scanner on the area. It was a company of Marines. Laidlaw was bringing Boa back to the battalion.

  Jack turned to a runner sitting nearby. “Take word to the northern observation post. Marines approaching from the north. Let them in.”

  Jack went down to the ground level to greet Laidlaw. They met outside the smashed walls of the civilian spaceport and shook hands warmly.

  “Good to see you, sir,” Laidlaw said, exhausted and dirty from two days scrabbling through the rubble of the city and hard fighting.

  “You too,” Jack said. “Good work delivering that inverted chemical to the Leviathan. We just saw it destroyed,” Jack said. “Great work, Stuart.”

  Laidlaw nodded. “Boa Company fought hard, sir. Now we’re just glad to be out of the fight.”

  “It’s not over yet,” Jack said gravely. “Eros is still swarming with Chitin soldiers.”

  Laidlaw nodded.

  “And there are still Hydras and Leviathans inside the atmosphere,” Jack said.

  “I saw the chemical cloak enter the atmosphere,” Laidlaw said. “Isn’t that going to blind us to them from now on?”

  “The ones in orbit will ignore the planet, sure,” Jack said. “But those inside the atmosphere…” Jack shrugged. “Looks like they are staying. We still have a fight on our hands to clear those Chits out.”

  Laidlaw looked at Jack slack-jawed and stunned. “One battalion against a planet-wide invasion. There must be thousands and thousands of them still on the planet.”

  Jack nodded. “But there are civilians too. We have to do our best to protect them.”

  Sam Torent came running over to Jack and Laidlaw.

  “Cobra Company coming in from the west, sir,” Torent said.

  Jack stood at a table in the makeshift command center on the corvette rear gundeck. Sam Torent and Stuart Laidlaw stood with him. Erin Bevan came up the boarding ramp, pulse rifle slung over her shoulder. She stepped up to the table and placed a small flask with a grenade strapped to it on the table.

  “It’s that inverted cloak,” she explained. “We made a whole batch of them at the chemical plant.”

  Torent picked up the grenade with the flask attached. A small device that would spread the inverted cloak over any Chitin and make them the target for a brutal and withering attack from their own kind.

  “Good work, Erin,” Jack said.

  “And we’ve got enough of the chemical cloak to make the entire battalion invisible to the Chits. My squad leaders are spraying everyone now.”

  Jack nodded. “Great work, Erin, but we have more to do.”

  Torent placed the grenade back on the table. “How many of these have you got?” he asked. “We’ll need thousands of them.”

  “I’ve made just over two dozen. The inverted chemical isn’t an issue, but we only have so many grenades.”

  Jack removed the grenade from the table and pointed at the simple map of the city he had drawn on the tabletop.

  “Supplies,” Jack said. “That is our first objective. We need ammunition if we’re going to fight off these Chits.”

  Jack pointed to the Fleet Command and Control buildings on the map. “There are supplies here. I want a team scouting and bringing back anything they can carry.”

  Bevan held up her hand. “Adder Company hasn’t moved so much in the last few days. I’ll pick a team from Adder.”

  Jack nodded. “But we also need to assess the enemy strength and position. I want every Leviathan in the city identified so we can take them down with the inverted cloak. Set the Chits against the big ships and then we can deal with the leftovers.”

  A crackling sound from the cockpit drew everyone’s attention. The communicator was coming alive with a transmission.

  “Who’s transmitting?” Jack said in annoyance. “Don’t they realize they’ll be found?”

  A voice came through the crackling of a weak signal.

  “The Chits are attacking each other,” the voice said. “I’ve just seen a Leviathan get destroyed by its own kind.”

  “Who is that?” Torent said.

  “It’s a civilian channel,” Jack said. He dropped in to the pilot seat and listened intently.

  “The Chits on the ground and the ones in the air were all attacking the big warship. I’ll keep you all informed of any other developments.”

  “They are going to get themselves killed,” Laidlaw said.

  “Wait,” the voice said. “There is a Leviathan approaching now. Looks like I’ll have a ringside seat when this one gets attacked. I can’t tell you how kravin big this ship is. It’s moving in slowly.”

  “Stop transmitting,” Bevan whispered.

  “There are a few of the small ships coming too, and I think I can see some Chitin soldiers on the ground. Wait a minute. The little ships are not attacking the big one this time. I think they are going to fire their weapons.”

  And the channel went dead.

  Jack stood up from the pilot’s seat. “And we need to find as many civilians as we can and tell them not to transmit.”

  “How are we going to get to everyone?” Torent said. “Maybe we could send one quick message on a broad channel and tell anyone and everyone to maintain communication silence.”

  “But that will bring the Chits down on us,” Laidlaw said.

  Jack snapped his fingers. “Of course,” he said. “The transmission will bring the Chits down on us. I think I’ve got a way to clear Eros of the Chits. Well, the Leviathans and Hydras at least. Okay, here’s my plan.”

  20

  Jack stood on the base of the boarding ramp with Sam Torent, Erin Bevan, and Stuart Laidlaw.

  “We all know what to do,” he said. “Good luck.”

  Bevan and Laidlaw saluted.

&nb
sp; “You sure you can do this by yourself?” Bevan said.

  “All I need is a ship and a communicator. Sam can assist me. You won’t have much need of a one-armed Marine down here.”

  “It’s my best arm,” Torent said. He clenched a fist and held it up as if to challenge Jack. “At least, it is now.”

  “Let me send some Marines with you to service the corvette’s weapons,” Laidlaw said.

  Jack considered it. “I won’t need them, and you need every Marine available down here.”

  “There are some walking wounded,” Laidlaw said. “I would only have them hold the command post. They can go with you.”

  “If this works, I won’t need them. If it doesn’t, they’ll be safer down here than up there with me,” Jack said.

  “Great,” Torent said. “So why don’t I get to sit on my kravin ass in the command post too?”

  Jack looked at Torent. “You can stay if you want, Sam.”

  Torent shrugged. “Nah, I’ll go.”

  Bevan and Laidlaw saluted Jack. Jack returned the salute and then walked up the ramp.

  “Close the ramp behind you, Sam,” Jack said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Climbing out of the spaceport gave Jack a view over the city. He climbed higher and spotted the fires of the fallen Chitin craft. A horde of Chitin soldiers were moving through the city in a wide sweep. They would reach the command post at the civilian spaceport in a little under an hour.

  Torent leaned forward and looked closer.

  “We should go back and let the battalion know the Chits are closing in,” Torent said.

  “They’ll do just fine,” Jack said. “Besides, we don’t need to go back. I’ll tell them right now.”

  Jack looked over to Torent.

  Torent nodded.

  “Ready?” Jack asked.

  “Ready,” Torent replied.

  “Opening a channel now.” Jack reached out for the communicator, then he hesitated. The corvette was currently invisible to the Chitins thanks to the chemical cloak. As soon as he hit that button, he would light up like a flare and bring the Chitins against him.