Vengeance Enlisted

by James Scholes

  Vengeance Enlisted

  James Scholes

  ONE

  “I don’t care who you are. You are a marine! I don’t care where you came from. You are a marine! I don’t care what your name is. Your name is now marine!”

  A pause, and then: “Who are you?”

  “Marine!”

  The cry echoed throughout the ship. There must have been ten thousand recruits in the hanger. It was hard to tell: the hanger was enormous, the amount of people insane. We were lined up between the drop-ships and fighters. The hanger doors were open; stars shone blankly in the black of space beyond. We were on the retired battleship Devastator. For seventy years this battleship had been deployed to fight the geckos. Now it trained recruits to join the fight against those alien monsters.

  I could see another three battleships floating in the distance, each with the same mission: train fresh recruits. Earth floated beneath us. I would never see that planet again. Nobody ever came back. They said it was because the outer planets were better. More exciting, more opportunities. Nobody even whispered the truth, although we all knew it. You couldn’t escape it.

  Nobody ever came back because they were dead.

  We were in groups, a hundred per group. A century, like in ancient Rome.

  “Who are you?” The drill sergeant yelled.

  “Marine!’” the recruits shouted. It was like a rock concert, but a murderous one. All of us were fired up. We were pumped. We were here for different reasons, but the mission would be the same: kill the geckos.

  Geckos: monstrous creatures. Violent things devoid of reason. Reptilian monsters. Cold blooded. Alien.

  We were at war.

  The amount of recruits on this ship was a testament to the size of the war. Every week another ship came back to Earth. Every week another hundred thousand men and women signed up to fight.

  We never came back. No soldier ever did.

  “You are now my sole property,” the drill sergeant yelled. Bits of spittle flew from his mouth. He took a moment to stare at each and every one of us. His eyes were terrifying. They were unhinged. His cheeks were red, veiny, pores broken from alcohol, scars from conflict, grey hair on his head that hadn’t thinned at all but was shaved short, just like all of us. Too old to fight⁠—⁠and one of the rare survivors of the galactic war.

  “I will be your mummy. Your pappa. I will be your girlfriend. You want a kiss? You get on your knees and kiss this first!”

  I watched the recruits near me. Men, women, all young. All my age. The sergeant was old enough to be our father. Our grandfather, even. I wondered how he had survived so long. Nobody ever came back from war.

  Perhaps he had never seen combat.

  The sergeant was still screaming at us.

  “Ninety per cent of you will die on your first deployment,” he screamed. “Of those that remain, fifty per cent will die in your second… You don’t get paid until your third.” he laughed at that, then he grew serious. “Some of you won’t survive the training. Don’t look for help because there is none. You’re marines now. You survive or you die. And you will kill!”

  Those final words made a fire well up inside me. And you will kill… I searched the crowd for a familiar face. I couldn’t see him, except in my mind’s eye: tall, handsome, strong, with a twinkle in his eye. Not like me⁠—⁠scrawny, not suited for combat, hair a mess. No, my target was always going to be a winner. One of those guys that got everything he wanted.

  But I would get what I wanted, this time. Revenge. Vengeance.

  Still searching… Ignoring the drill sergeant now… Skip passed the fat ones, the ugly ones, the girls… Still searching…

  There he was! He was standing near the front of the group. I was standing near the rear. I could just make out the side of his face, the cut of his jaw. His twinkling eye. His name was Taylor.

  And I had enlisted for just one reason: to kill him.

  TWO

  I never planned to be a marine. My genetic code wasn’t suited for the rigours of combat. No, I had planned to become a rear-engineer. I was going to repair the giant battleships that returned from war. I loved machinery. I was excited about it. Sure, engineering wasn’t as glamorous as the front line, but it was safer, more interesting⁠—⁠and guaranteed me a ticket off Earth.

  Space beckoned. It pulled at me like a magnet. The whole galaxy was available to explore. Exciting, interesting men and women were making their name every week as they discovered new planets, new life forms, new… Well, new everything.

  But to get off Earth, you had to sign up. Five years at war and then you got your passport. Travel anywhere the ships will take you, and if they don’t take you then just pilot a ship yourself.

  That was my dream: exploration. But to do that, I had to serve. A marine could just sign up, do basic training and be on the field within six months. An engineer needed three years of study before they would even see a space shuttle. I was two years into my training⁠—⁠still on Earth⁠—⁠when things began to change in my plan.

  It was summer, although the seasons were an old myth that meant nothing. The weather was always the same: hot, muggy, with a blanket of smog turning the sky red from noon until dusk. The only difference was tornadoes came in summer, and storms, too. Lightning crackled across the sky, racing around the world and wrapping around itself. The rain stung. There was a special wash to use after the summer rains. It made my skin turn purple and my hair a shade of green so I tried to avoid the storms⁠—⁠and the shampoo. We had been lucky: London was hit by a tornado three years ago and never recovered. New-Paris was still just an empty hulk from a super storm, with those that remained living in decades-old colonisation shelters, leftovers from before the geckos.

  But it was summer, and the old books and vids made it out to be such a fun time to be a young person. Just hang out with beautiful people all the time.

  That was me, except there were no beautiful people… Until, one day, there was. A girl.

  Her name was Bethany. Beth. Dark hair, brown eyes, skin like chocolate. Her genetics were a mix of pretty much everything, but that didn’t make her any less beautiful⁠—⁠or any less capable.

  Of course I was in love with her. We all were, everyone she met. She had a smile that could erase everybody else from existence, and when her eyes twinkled in my direction my body went limp. I was powerless. Under a spell.

  We were best friends. It was torture.

  I can’t say why she chose me, but she did. For that summer we did everything together. We went to the beach; you couldn’t swim in the toxic ocean but you could still lie on the beach. She stripped down to her bikini, smiled at me. I smiled back, too love-struck to say anything. Her body was amazing, and I could not help but stare. I’ve already said my genetics weren’t suitable to be a marine, but hers were suitable for anything. She was tall, athletic, heavenly.

  It sounds lame, but that wasn’t why I loved her. It was her brain that got me. She was smart. Capable. But she wasn’t going to be an engineer. She was coded to be a marine.

  As we lay there on the warm sands, I couldn’t stop myself. I knew it would ruin our friendship, but was it fair to be living a lie when I wanted more?

  “Beth,” I said, and I almost chickened out. My voice broke, disappeared in my throat. Beth looked up at me and smiled. Her face was radiant. Her eyes twinkled like twin galaxies. Somehow I found my voice, managed to keep talking. “Will you… Will you go out with me?”

  She didn’t respond at first. My heart sank. I had blown it. She would cover up and run away. I would never see her again.

  But she didn’t run away. Instead, she sat up, leaned in and kissed me on the mouth. She tasted of the burger we had shared for lunch. Pickles had
never tasted so divine. When she pulled away, she giggled.

  “I thought you would never ask,” she said.

  Our first date was to the monthly military parade. All the new recruits were there, marching in formation. This was the last time any of them would see Earth.

  They marched among giant missiles and walking mechanised units. Fighters did a fly-by and then performed aerobatics over the crowd. High in the sky I could make out the closest battleship, an oblong star too low to be real. I didn’t know which battleship it was but there were so many it was hard to keep up.

  As the giant interplanetary missiles rolled past, Beth put her hands between my legs. Started rubbing. I sat there, confused and not sure how to respond. The pleasure was embarrassing. There were families about. Old people, too. They were all cheering and clapping their loved ones and here I was getting aroused.

  Beth leaned over and nibbled on my ear.

  “Let’s beat it,” she said.

  “But the parade…” I had always sat through the parade.

  “There will be another one.” She smiled and those damned eyes made up my mind for me.

  For the first time ever, I missed the parade.

  The massive GX-838 interplanetary missile was rolling past⁠—⁠too heavy for hover-engines, the missile relied on two-dozen wheels the size of a house to thunder down the boulevard⁠—⁠when she took my hand and led me away from our seats and down through the stand and out of the stadium that lined the street.

  My heart was pounding. I had never done anything this reckless before. People would notice. They would talk. My parents would find out. It was all so crazy, and yet her hair was flying behind her as she ran and she was giggling, her cheeks flushed red, her body perfect in the purple-glow of twilight.

  There was a set of storage sheds for the robotic trash collectors nearby. We sneaked inside and then she was naked. It all happened so fast⁠—⁠I was clumsy, amateurish, in-experienced. She was slow and sensual and just amazing. I finished before she did, and afterwards we were both lying in a mess of our own creation. I was breathless. She was still smiling. I could hardly meet her eye; how could she be smiling when it had been such a mistake? Surely she was mocking me.

  But, once more, she kissed me and those eyes of hers sparkled even among the trash. She touched me gently, tenderly. A lover in every sense of the word.

  “My parents signed me up,” she said, and her smile left her. “I’m doing basic training next month.”

  And, just like that, my heart was crushed. She was going to war. Nobody ever came back from war. Nobody.

  THREE

  I lay in bed. Inaction. I skipped breakfast, skipped lunch, only ate dinner because I had to eat something. Inaction. I watched a few vids. Inaction.

  Inaction. Inaction. Inaction!

  Did General Carter suffer inaction when he met the geckos? No! He opened fire with all guns blazing, blew those alien reptile bastards into atoms and smiled all the while… And here I was, moping because my girl was going to war and going to die.

  Inaction wasn’t the answer. It never was. I knew this. We all knew this.

  So I got up. I got dressed. I walked out the door. Action was the answer. I had no plan, but action was the answer.

  I found myself at the sign-ups office. There was a line, but it was moving fast. The marine line always moved fast⁠—⁠they didn’t need much, only a name and an age and a genetic blueprint for confirmation. I had all this on my thumb-chip. I just needed to scan and I was signed.

  So I scanned my thumb and the old man at the sign-up desk just shrugged and moved me on my way. It was done. I was going to become a marine. The two years I had spent preparing to be an engineer was wasted. It was done.

  I would be in the same unit as Beth. We would train together. We would fight together. We would die together. Beth would be happy.

  My parents, of course, were furious. My talents would be wasted in the marines: my genetic code was designed specifically because they wanted to produce a rear-engineer for the war effort. My father was a manufacturing engineer on Earth, my mother was a design specialist, also on Earth. Their blueprint for me did not involve bulky armour and heavy weaponry.

  But it was done. Once you sign up, you can’t take it back.

  “At least,” my father said with disdain, “Your foolishness will only cost your own life. The war effort won’t suffer from your pigheadedness. There must be a mistake in your genetics somewhere. A true engineer would never be so stupid.”

  My mother wouldn’t even look at me. She had told all her friends how much the genetic mapping had cost. She had been so proud when all of her friends were producing marines, fighter pilots, medics⁠—⁠gecko-fodder that would never see a promotion. Her child was going to be different. Special.

  Her child was going to make a difference. But no longer. I was dead to her, already a corpse on a battlefield a million miles from where I should be: in a hanger above Earth, working tirelessly to improve the war machines.

  What a waste!

  Beth was angry, too.

  “Why did you do that!” she shouted at me, tears flowing down her face. Then she kissed me, passion overflowing. Warm, hot, wet as hell.

  We made love again, but there was something there that hadn’t been there before: sadness. This couldn’t last. It was crazy. We were both going to die and the death started now. We both knew it.

  “We have to make the most of this time together,” she told me as we held each other. “We don’t have long before we belong to them.”

  Them… It felt rebellious to say it like that. Treacherous. But she was right. Now was the only time we would ever have before the war consumed us; a rare handful of days where the machine had no use or desire for us. We were in a holding pattern until basic training. We could do whatever we wanted.

  What we wanted to do was each other.

  And so that was how we spent the last days of summer: naked, sweaty, in each other’s arms. It was glorious.

  And then, one day, there was a form on my bed.

  “This form cost me a lot,” my dad said. “You don’t know what I have had to sacrifice for you to get this.”

  “What is it?” I asked. It was meaningless to me, just a simple form.

  “You are going to be a rear-engineer,” my father said. “Take this to the marine’s office and give it to them. I want to hear no more nonsense of you being a marine. You’re not cut out for combat. You don’t have the genetics.”

  “But I⁠—⁠” I began, but my father slapped me so hard across the mouth that I fell off my bed and crashed onto the floor. I sat up and ran a finger across my lips. There was blood there. I stared at my dad with hatred in my eyes. He stared right back, just as full of hate and loathing as I was.

  “You say one more thing that isn’t yes sir and I’ll hit you so hard you’ll never get up, you got that? You got that?”

  I could see in his eyes that he wasn’t joking. I just nodded, too dumb to do anything else.

  “Yes sir,” I said.

  FOUR

  I told Beth about the form. I told her about my dad. I could not keep these things from her. I was torn⁠—⁠perhaps my dad was right, but I didn’t want to lose Beth to the war and be forever alone.

  Beth just kissed me.

  “That doesn’t make things any easier,” I told her.

  “You should listen to your father,” Beth said. “He rules you. You must obey him.”

  To soften the words, she reached for my pants. I swatted her hands away. I wasn’t in the mood⁠—⁠didn’t she know how important this was?

  “I want to throw it in the river,” I said and I waved the form in the air like it was an angry fan. “I hate this. I… I just want to be with you.”

  “But our genetics are different,” she said, as kindly as she could. “I am built for combat. You are built for thinking. It is just the way of things.”

  “So you agree with him, then?” I couldn’t believe it. Bet
h was just standing there, looking beautiful and innocent and her face was completely blank. She didn’t understand. Perhaps she couldn’t⁠—⁠she was birthed for combat, after all. Thinking came second for her.

  “I want to be with you,” I told her.

  “And I want you, too,” she said and she kissed me again. It was her answer to everything. Kisses. Kisses and love making. Perhaps that was why I was drawn to her: her answers were all physical, whereas I preferred to think things through.

  At least, that was what I thought… There was rage bubbling deep inside me that was limiting my thinking. Perhaps there was an issue with my genetics. I wasn’t supposed to get angry. I was supposed to be methodical. Plodding, even. Wasn’t that what an engineer was supposed to be?

  But as I looked into Beth’s beautiful eyes all I could feel was rage. The galaxy just wasn’t fair. All of a sudden I didn’t want to go to war at all. I didn’t want to fight. I wanted to lie in bed and make love and cuddle. I wanted an easy life. A happy life.

  “I can’t wait to fight,” Beth said, clearly reading my mind and oblivious at the same time. “I hate being stuck here on Earth. I’m itching to get into space. If you want to come with me, then we will go together. Your parents will be proud of you no matter how you contribute⁠—⁠you might become the best marine that ever lived. You might become a hero.”

  “Everyone that serves is a hero,” I said, quoting the standard line we had heard since birth. And in that moment I believed it. Every man and woman that served was a hero.

  My thoughts were a moment of weakness, that was all. It was a fight everybody had, but the fight was internal. I was weak.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked me.

  “I… Maybe everybody is right except me. I don’t know anymore! All I know is I want to be with you. I’m so confused.”

  “That’s because you overthink things,” Beth told me and she took my hands and leaned in, kissed me again. She pulled back and smiled, added: “and I just do what feels right, right now.”