I cursed under my breath and did some quick math in my head. Given the trajectory of where I was and how far this woman had fallen, I was going to have to move almost impossibly quick if I was going to have a chance at saving her. Luckily for me, almost impossible wasn’t entirely impossible. I could work with that.
“Annabelle,” I started. “Divert all energy into lower thrusters. I need to get to that woman before she’s turned into a crushed soup can on the ground.”
“While jarring, that visual is inaccurate,” she saw fit to explain. “A soup can dropped from the height at which this female is falling would explode on impact. Her suit would remain intact. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of her vital organs or bodily integrity. Also, diverting the energy to thrusters would require deactivating your camouflage.”
Which was computer talk for ‘the bugs would be able to see me.’ It wasn’t ideal, but the plan had gone to shit, anyway. We were outside of ‘winning the fight’ and struggling to salvage ‘surviving the moment.’
“Thanks for the input, Annabelle, but I—”
“Don’t care,” she finished for me. “I figured as much. Power has already been diverted to your thrusters. Prepare for boosted speed in 0.7 seconds.”
“You know me too well,” I muttered but, as the last word left my mouth, my body flung forward hard. I shot off like a now-visible rocket, aimed straight at the ground. I was moving so quickly, it became hard for me to think, hard for me to see, and impossible for me to react once I had the woman in my arms.
Of course, to worry about that, I actually needed to get to the woman first. Because I was moving too fast to properly speak, Annabelle was running by my brain’s impulses. My vision shifted as she turned on a sonar overlay. This was a relatively new upgrade, and one that I purchased off-planet after I took down a nest of sand dwellers almost singlehandedly. The Alliance wanted to give me a medal for that, to showcase it on television, and plaster my mug on postage stamps as a sort of planetary hero.
I declined. I didn’t like people staring at me, and I really didn’t want to be the face that convinced people to join this fight. It wasn’t that I was ashamed of what I was doing or even what I had done in the past. People called me a soldier, a Marine, and a fighter. In truth, I was a killer. We all were and, if this war had taught me anything, it was that every living creature under our sun or any other had the capacity to be a killer inside of them. It wasn't because we were bad or evil in some way. It was because, as a rule, people are selfish, especially when it comes to survival.
We might have love in our hearts. We might even like to think life is complicated on a fundamental level. We tell ourselves stories and sing ourselves songs to make the minutia of what we deal with on a day-to-day basis seem important and lyrical. We like to think our moves are predestined because it makes us feel important. The hard truth- and it is hard- is that we’re animals. We, like the dogs we keep at the feet of our beds or the birds we cage so we can hear them sing us to sleep, long for nothing more than the continuation of our own lives.
We would do anything, give anything, and fight anything to make sure our lives didn’t end. We would kill without prejudice if it came down to it and then, when it was over, we would spin a narrative to tell ourselves that doing it was the right thing.
You see, they got the sonar technology from dolphins, the only living earthbound creatures that use more of their brains than we do. They pulled those poor, magnificent bastards out of the ocean and sliced into their brains until they found out what made them tick so they could give it to us.
I had thought there was something dirty about that the first time I heard it. In fact, the thought crossed my mind not to even take the upgrade, to serve as a kind of one-man protest of the way the Alliance had acted. I mean, if we just scourged the planet and took what we wanted and needed from it, how would that make us different from the bugs? They wanted to dig into our planet and kill it just to get the precious metals beneath. How long before we ended up killing the planet in trying to save it?
No, not it. We don’t give a damn about the planet, really. We did it to save ourselves, to prolong our existence. I had a feeling that, if we could do so, we’d move the whole damned lot of us onto space stations and let the bugs have our little water rock at the edge of the universe. We didn’t though, and we likely never would. So, we did use what we had to from the Earth. And yes, I did use what I had to from the dolphins, and I was damned glad I did.
The sonar sight kicked into gear and, from the sounds of the falling woman’s screams as well as the sound of the air around her as it collided with her suit on the way down, I could tell where she was going. I could see the path she would take on the way down, including the spot where she’d slam into the ground.
It would be close enough to Billy’s feet that he could theoretically save her, but he wouldn’t. At this moment, he was standing there, looking up like an idiot and lamenting the mistake he’d made.
I’d have to verbally slap him out of that. Having the kid mourn one error, regardless of how big, was a quick way to an early grave. I didn’t have time to deal with that right now though. I needed to save the first of Artemis squad, before I could turn my attention to Mina John and her other squadmate.
My body shot toward the ground, swooping into the line of the path the woman was predicted to take. I twisted quickly, arms open as the woman slammed into me. Her weight, combined with the weight of her suit, landed against my chest. I latched on quickly while allowing Annabelle to adjust our arc through the air to compensate for the force of catching her so she wouldn’t get sliced in half from the impact or some other such nonsense.
Spinning back around, I saw we were nearly on the ground. At the speed we were both now going, we’d be a crater in seconds.
“Reverse thrust!” I cried.
“Negative. Doing so would break every bone in your body. There’s also a thirty-seven percent chance your eyes would be liquidated. Perhaps intensive shielding would be the better choice.”
I took a breath. Intensive shielding would help, though it likely wouldn’t stop every bit of damage good old Annabelle would take from a fall like this. Still, it was better than countless broken bones and useless, melted eyes.
“Do it.”
Before the words left my mouth, the shield roared up around the both of us. Annabelle must have still been reacting to my brain impulses.
We slammed hard against the ground, grinding into the rock and sand and driving at such a speed that I began to smell the metal of my suit burning in response to the friction. Or maybe that was the woman’s. Probably both.
“Hold on,” I told the woman. If she responded, I didn’t hear it.
By the time we slid to a stop, we were both in a long ditch of my creation. The world was darker down here, the sunlight barely reaching us.
I found myself lying on top of her as the shield receded. Her suit was heavy, but formfitting, the way all our suits were. She was warm to the touch, and I saw her chest rise and fall in rapid shallow breaths.
The dark faceplate on her mask turned colorless, revealing a striking face, bright green eyes, a pair of pouty lips pressed into a grimace, and a cap of red hair barely visible beyond the confines of her helmet.
“Mark Ryder?” she asked, those bright green eyes narrowing as they took me in. “You’re Mark Ryder?”
“I am,” I answered. “I came here to help you. Are you all right?”
“For now,” she said in a raspy voice, “but you didn’t help us, Lieutenant Ryder. We were captured on purpose, and I think what you’ve done has signed our death warrants.”
12
I lay atop the woman, her green eyes staring daggers at me, her arms wrapped around my waist, a product of the fear and exhilaration we both obviously felt during our descent and crash into the ground below.
Her chest was still rising and falling sharply and, as I moved to respond to what she had just said, I felt her body wince under m
e.
“Are you hurt?” I asked, even though her face showed no signs of discomfort, unless, of course, you counted the obvious disdain she had for me as discomfort.
It was strange. This woman had to still be in her early twenties. Her features were still bright, still supple. The angst of years had not yet set upon her, weighing her down and etching lines of worry, joy, or grief into her face. Usually, when people of that age saw me, they lit up. They associated me with bedtime stories and golden age heroics. You know, all that crap that only exists to sell movie tickets and fill recruitment offices.
Still, it wasn’t all bad. I had never been the kind of guy who enjoyed being the center of attention. That wasn’t to say it didn’t have its perks though. Young men often idolized me. On more than one occasion, I was told that by some star-struck kid from Wisconsin or Pennsylvania that they named their dog, or cat, or damn horse after me. I swear, there was probably livestock bearing my name back on that spinning blue rock we called home.
I understood it. They saw me as an important figure, someone who, without knowing any of them personally, had helped shape their youth and guide them to the path they were now on.
That had always rubbed me the wrong way. I took this job because I thought it was a job worth doing, not because I wanted to stand as some sterling example of what was or was not right. It wouldn’t have even made any sense. What I thought was right as a punk seventeen-year-old kid striding into a recruitment office certainly wasn’t the same as what I thought was right now.
Hell, what I thought was right last year probably wasn’t the same as what I thought was right now. The war had changed. Either that, or my perception of it had. The truth was, if it was up to me, I’d have told Billy Langham that his family had given enough to this cause. I’d have told him that his father wouldn’t have wanted this for him. I’d have said that good old Bill Langham had told me himself that his damn dream in life was for his son to be an accountant or something boring like that. It was a lie, but it might have saved his life and, if that isn’t a good enough reason to lie, you’re not going to find one.
I’d have told it to this woman too, as she stared up at me with disdain in her eyes. I couldn’t though. I couldn’t tell that to either of them. They were here, and if we didn’t get our acts together, none of us were going to make it out of this place.
“Suit says I bruised my ribcage and fractured my left arm,” she answered with a sigh. “Nothing that can’t be fixed once we make it back to the Alliance Halls, but for the time being I’m going to run on painkillers.”
“If we make it back,” I said, feeling her arms still wrapped around me and wondering if that act was because she was still afraid or if moving them would just hurt too much. “What did you mean when you said your squad got taken on purpose?”
“Exactly what I said.” Her pouting lips turned down at me. If we weren’t wearing helmets, I could have felt her breath against my cheek. “We landed in a field of gravity mines. I got stuck to the ground, and Jill went flying up into the air. Mina was the only one who managed to dodge them.”
That did not come as a shock to me. If Mina John’s reputation was anywhere close to accurate, it’d take more than a gravity mine to take her out, even a field of them.
“We were captured,” she continued. “You know how the mines are. One flash and they’re gone, but it’s not over then. Even with the suit’s help, it takes ninety seconds for our bodies to adjust enough to be able to move. In that time, we saw the fliers coming. I begged for Mina to go, but she gave me this whole speech about not leaving any woman behind. It didn’t help that the crash had screwed up our communications devices and thrusters.” The woman nodded. “Mina had a plan. Instead of leaving us, she was going to use the fliers to her advantage.”
That seemed both farfetched and outside the box. I couldn’t tell whether I thought it was stupid or brilliant. There was a fine line between those two things.
I heard a shot from overhead. Things were going south and quickly. I was going to have to wait to hear what Mina’s brilliant plan was until after I made sure she and her girl weren’t demolished.
“Can you move?” I asked. “Are you capable of fighting, or do I need to send the kid to keep watch on you?”
“That would be the kid who just shot our entire plan to hell in a handbasket?” She scoffed. “Even if I couldn’t move, I’d have better luck on my own.”
“He did the best he could,” I answered, instinctively defensive as I pulled myself off her. It was a strange feeling. Usually, I didn’t give a damn about the people at my side. Sure, I wanted them to survive, and I wanted them to succeed, but I had learned a long time ago it was easier not to get to know the people you were tasked with working with. That way, when they died in front of you, you could go on without dissolving into a mess of tears, fear, and regret.
Billy was a different case though. He reminded me of someone I’d worked with before that realization, someone who wormed their way through my defenses. I looked at this kid, and I saw his father. There was nothing I could do about that. Still, that sort of connection was the kind of thing I’d worked to avoid to for a large portion of my career. I couldn’t help but wonder if it would slow me down this time.
“Bullshit,” she growled. “You were going for a seal and kill, right? That’s why he combined the utilities the way he did.” Her mask pulled back down as she stood, covering her striking face. Still, the tone of her voice told me she looked at me with knowing eyes and arched eyebrows. “It’s a smart move, or, at least, it would have been if we actually wanted to kill them.”
I extended my hand to her, and she balked at me in response. “You’ve got no thrusters,” I said, shaking my head and putting the ridiculous idea that they didn’t want to kill the bugs on the backburner for a moment. “So, unless you want to claw your way out of the ditch we just dug, I suggest you take the help.”
I felt a rise in my chest. This woman was the first Marine to challenge my judgment in a long time. Most of them, young, pert, and enthused, hung onto my every word when they found out who I was. It was annoying as hell, but it came in handy when giving orders. You didn’t backtalk your heroes.
Guess this chick had a poster of someone else hanging on her bedroom wall.
Reluctantly, she grabbed my hand and once again twisted herself around my body. I heard crashes from above us, from up at the surface, as her hands tied themselves behind my neck and her chest pressed against mine.
“Diagnostics indicate elevated heart rate,” Annabelle said into my head.
“She’s nervous,” I muttered.
“I wasn’t referring to her,” she replied.
“Lower thrusters on,” I grunted, “and extend shielding to cover both of us. I’m not sure what we’ll be jumping into.”
My thrusters roared to life, and we lifted off the ground. As we took to the air, this Marine pressed herself more firmly against me, the gentle shaking of her body indicating that she was either nervous or in pain. Given her attitude toward me, it was unlikely I could help with either, so, instead, I asked her about something else entirely.
“Why wouldn’t you want to kill these bastards?”
“Isn’t it obvious? Our thrusters are shot, and our goal and extraction point is a half a day’s walk from here. We didn’t kill them because we wanted to take them over.”
Of course. They were going to use mental overrides to take control of the bugs’ nervous systems. Why didn’t I think of that?
No, that wasn’t fair to me. I knew why I didn’t think of it. It never came to mind because it was damned near impossible for even the more elevated and talented Marine to accomplish. Hell, the mechanisms and upgrades necessary for someone to even try that were so expensive that it was a rarity almost unheard of in this day and age, when most people wanted to buy out of their contracts as quickly as possible and then sink into a pension-fueled life of ease.
Dampening a bug’s neural activity enough to
take it over was as delicate a process as any surgery and doing so required just as much finesse as a surgeon might have. In fact, it was more dangerous than surgery. At least when a doctor was cutting into some poor bastard, there was no chance both of them are going to end up dead.
You screw up trying a mental override and both your damned brains explode. It wasn’t for the faint of heart, and if you were asking me, it wasn’t for the intelligent either. There were easier ways to get done what the Artemis squad wanted done. I couldn’t think of any of them right now, but I was sure they were there.
We bounded up to the surface and rested on the ground. Looking up, I saw that Billy’s botched action had started a sort of firestorm. The middle woman of the Artemis squad, the one I assumed was Mina, had climbed up on the bug carrying her and was going to town on it with a glowing weapon that looked like a battle axe. The third woman, obviously the one this chick had referred to as Jill, was on the third flier’s back, pushing it toward the ground.
“Damn it,” my rescuee muttered. “This wasn’t the plan.”
“It rarely is,” I answered.
I heard a shout and, looking over to my left, my heart sank.
There, sprawled on the ground with his hands sprawled feebly out in front of him as though they were going to save him, was Billy and standing over him, with curved and pointed arms ready and willing to disembowel the boy, were two bugs, one of who was the flier he had almost killed with his rang.
Almost killed but hadn’t. The chomper cloud’s nanites had been dispersed along the lasso, after all, and as a grassfed with no kills under his belt, he doubtless had the lowest grade cloud. No wonder the flier had lived.
Doomed Space Marine: A Space Adventure (Bug Wars Book 1) Page 8