Vengeance Enlisted

by James Scholes

  The rifle was the length of my arm, but even though it was heavy and bulky it was ergonomic enough. My weapon had scratches and bumps all over it. Clearly, it had been in use for some time.

  “Approach the firing position!” one of the stewards yelled, and we stepped up to the end of the pen.

  “Insert clip!”

  We inserted our first clip. It was simple⁠—⁠so simple a trainee could do it.

  “Fire!”

  We opened fire.

  I won’t lie, the feeling of the rifle shooting lethal bolts of energy was intoxicating. The gun hummed, like a purring kitten on steroids. Green fire shot out of the tip of my rifle, sometimes tinged with red or yellow or blue. Every weapon had a different colour stream of death attached to it, as though these weapons were each different, almost as though they had souls.

  I blinked and my first clip was empty. I hadn’t even been aiming at anything, just firing wildly.

  For once, the steward was smiling. He knew we had a lust for war now: soon we would be firing these guns at living, breathing monsters. The geckos.

  They wouldn’t stand a chance.

  “Alright marines,” the steward yelled. “You’ve had your fun⁠—⁠now change to your second clip and take on those moving targets. Compensate for smoke, for movement, for the unexpected. Keep your firing line clear⁠—⁠don’t get too excited, got it? Cool and steady, that’s what we want to see. Remember to collect your empty clips⁠—⁠everything has to be returned at the end of the session.”

  We had already changed clips. My empty one was sitting next to my foot. Harrod, who was beside me, was careless and just let his clip bounce next to me. I looked at it, realised that Harrod hadn’t even noticed. A plan began to form: if I couldn’t shoot Taylor dead today, then perhaps tomorrow… Quickly, quietly, whilst everyone was firing madly at the targets on the ceiling, I used my foot and deposited the empty clip next to my other foot, away from Harrod. It rested next to my first one. Next, I slipped my third clip inside my uniform where nobody would find it.

  Nobody had noticed I hadn’t fired a round. The shooting stopped.

  “Marines, change clips!” the steward ordered. I went through the motions, my hands empty: I kept the full clip in my rifle and lowered an empty hand onto Harrod’s empty clip by my foot, as though it had just been ejected from my rifle. Nobody knew anything. Nobody noticed.

  The energy clip burned against my skin, a guilty thing. I smiled wickedly, stared at the back of Taylor’s head.

  One day…

  Not today, but soon I would have Taylor’s handsomely smug face in my gun sights and then get to pull the trigger. For what he had done to me⁠—⁠what he had done to Beth⁠—⁠he deserved nothing less.

  The rest of the session passed quickly. I felt as though in a dream, just going through the motions. My mind was fixated on Taylor and vengeance.

  When we were finished, we marched past the stewards and returned our four clips. Harrod, of course, only had three.

  “I must have lost one,” he said, innocently, as the fully charged energy clip rested against my thigh.

  “Fool!” the steward snapped. “Go back and find it! And do two hundred push-ups whilst you’re about it!”

  Harrod looked downcast and trudged back to his station. I felt a pang of shame. But I would find a way to make it up to him.

  I had a greater need.

  When I managed to get back to my bunk, the first thing I did was hide my fresh energy clip. I was exhausted and could hardly move. The day had been gruelling: after the firing range we had done more zero gravity drills and then some triple gravity drills. Every fibre of my being ached to be in bed, but first I had to hide the clip. Then I could rest.

  Nobody would search through my stuff, but I tried to bury it as deep as I could. I didn’t want to take any chances.

  It was only once I was finished hiding the clip that I found the note.

  My hands were trembling from exhaustion as I picked up the slip of paper. The note read: too tired to go to the head. The bed’s wet.

  The head: the toilet. I looked at my bunk and saw a dark, wet stain. I groaned.

  But what else could I do? I was exhausted and I needed sleep, so I climbed into my bunk and slept in someone else’s piss.

  War was not what I had been led to believe.

  ELEVEN

  The days became one. An endless cycle of exhaustion. I was always on the point of total failure. We all were. Somehow we managed to keep going.

  “Pheromones,” Wilson said over breakfast one morning. His leg was fully healed; you couldn’t even tell that he had broken it. “I heard someone say they heard the stewards talking about it. They pump pheromones in the air that keep us pumped and motivated.”

  “That’s stupid,” Harrod said. I stayed silent because it sounded plausible to me. I certainly felt like quitting every night, but in the mornings I was read for another gruelling round of training.

  Would they even let one of us quit? Where would we go, except float out into space like garbage? Now we were here, we had no choices. Only orders.

  Pheromones or not, we had to train. Today was hand-to-hand combat day. The drill sergeant was there, and there were a hundred mats laid out on one of the reserve hangers.

  “Perhaps you think the marines is all about blowing stuff up,” the sarge said, “but sometimes you have to get your hands dirty. This session is all about making sure you know how to get your hands dirty enough.”

  The stewards came in then, and they looked downright nasty. They were wearing body armour. We only had our undershirts and shorts on.

  “You can never be sure when or how you will need to attack, and so you are going to be put against an unfair advantage: your stewards are fully protected and better trained than you. Fight them. Take them down. Do what you need to do.”

  And, with that, the drill sergeant saluted his stewards and walked off the hanger. We all looked at one another. Was that it? Were we supposed to take them on together, or one at a time?

  Our steward didn’t give us a chance to figure these things out⁠—⁠he just attacked. Violently.

  Wilson went down: the steward’s armoured punch to the face made certain of that. His left cheek collapsed into a mess of veins, muscle and broken bones. He lay on the ground screaming.

  The rest of us jumped out of the way. The steward came for me. He was taller, bulkier, and the only part of him that was exposed was his lower jaw. It was all I could do to evade him as he tried to kick my shin out from under me. I stumbled and fell, anyway⁠—⁠and then the bastard was on top of me.

  I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move. The bulk of the steward’s armour was just too much for me to handle. I could hear him laughing in my face.

  Gauntlet-covered hands reached for my neck, started squeezing. I went limp.

  The steward didn’t let go⁠—⁠he kept squeezing my neck. I felt a vertebrae shatter and I gasped.

  Was he going to kill me? He squeezed even more. Tighter. Tighter.

  Something went snap⁠—⁠ my neck.

  I went limp. All feeling left my body. My hands, my legs, my chest… I felt nothing. Nothing but fear.

  “Get off him!” someone shouted. It was Taylor. I just groaned. I couldn’t do anything more than that.

  “Make me,” the steward said, and then he was on me again.

  The steward grabbed my jaw, wrenched it open. I screamed like I had never screamed before. The battle armour was powered⁠—⁠his hands had five times the strength of a normal man. I felt my jaw rip clean of its socket, but the steward didn’t stop there.

  It was a sadistic beating. I was defeated. I was a lump of meat lying on the ground. There was no reason to keep attacking me⁠—⁠the battle lay elsewhere.

  I was going to be made an example⁠—⁠this is war, the steward was saying. People die.

  That death was going to be mine.

  “I said get off him!” Taylor shouted. I could see hi
m standing over the steward. He might as well have been naked compared to the power suit the steward wore and yet there he was. Tall, brave, even more powerful than the steward.

  The other recruits stood next to him. They were all there to protect me. I could hardly even breathe⁠—⁠I could hear a ragged hiss escaping my lips, and that was all. My windpipe was shattered. Every moment brought me closer to death, and yet the steward still had his hands around my throat and my jaw. Now he was squeezing my skull.

  He was going to pop my head like a melon.

  Taylor grabbed onto the back of the steward’s suit. Harrod joined in, as well as one of the other marines. Wilson was still lying on the deck, staring at the blood on his hands. He was out of the fight. So was I⁠—⁠but I was the prize. The good meat that the victor would get to gorge themselves on.

  I didn’t understand. I was delirious.

  Somehow, the marines pulled the heavier steward off me. I lay there like a dead duck. My left arm spasmed and that was all the movement I could make. That and my eyes, but I couldn’t turn my head so I was forced to stare at the ceiling of the hanger; a drop ship floated at the edge of my vision, but I doubted I would ever see the inside of one now. My vision blurred.

  I could hear the steward shouting. The recruits were shouting, too. I couldn’t see much beyond an occasional limb as it flashed through my vision.

  More shouting, a thud, someone screaming… And then a siren. I remember the siren because I was starting to black out and the sudden, jarring blast brought me back.

  “Good start,” the drill sergeant’s voice came over a large speaker. I was only just holding onto consciousness at this point. Death felt… Easy. Easier than breathing.

  “We will clear out the wounded and then continue to the second session: here you will learn the skills that would have helped you win last time.”

  That would have been helpful, I thought but my thoughts were elsewhere. I could see Beth staring down at me. She was smiling.

  “Hold still,” she said, her voice strangely robotic. Her fingers were ice cold around my forehead, her skin painted metallic grey. She lifted me. I couldn’t feel anything but I knew I was floating. Floating closer to her.

  “Beth…” I said, full of longing. And then I was gone.

  TWELVE

  I woke some time later. Weeks later, it turned out. I blinked. I could see.

  I moved my jaw. It felt fine. I moved my arms and my legs. Everything responded to my mind’s commands. I looked down at my body. My muscles were bigger than they had been when I had lost consciousness.

  A robo-medic was by my side, doing whatever it was it had to do.

  “Can I go?” I asked. The medic looked at me, its face blank. I felt warm as it irradiated me.

  “Yes,” it said.

  I got up. I was naked. There was a shower down the hall, and clothes waiting for me. I showered⁠—⁠long, slow, so hot my skin turned red. Nobody was ordering me around. There was no sense of urgency. Everything was calm, even the buzzing and humming that surrounded the hospital ward.

  I lingered there, out of the shower but not dry. Warm air removed any trace of dampness from my skin and hair. I resisted getting dressed. That meant I was going back. Did I want go go back?

  I couldn’t answer that question. Taylor had saved my life. Could I still hate him? Beth was a lifetime ago. She was gone. I was a marine now⁠—⁠death was a thing I had to live with.

  The men and women that surrounded me were the ones that mattered. That included Taylor.

  And Taylor had saved my life…

  There were too many things to think about, and I didn’t want to deal with any of it.

  “You’re in a tin can, floating in space,” I told myself. My voice sounded different, but I couldn’t place what had changed. It sounded more pleasant to my inner-ear. Like it was not my own.

  I got dressed. My mind was… Well, I can’t say made up as that wasn’t true. But I was ready to move on. I couldn’t stay in the shower for ever.

  I was a marine, after all.

  I headed for the exit. It was only when I reached the door that I realised I felt… Different.

  I hesitated, turned around. I felt like my mind was doing two things at once: heading for the door whilst also scanning for hostiles. That was new behaviour. It felt new, like a child that hadn’t quite mastered a new trick. Where had it come from?

  “Medic?” I called to the robo-medic that was still by my bed. “What was done to me?”

  The robo-medic had no reason to lie. It turned and looked at me, its face as blank as ever. It spoke in its almost-human, emotionally barren voice.

  “Spinal correction. Spinal repair. Jaw correction. Jaw repair. Eye socket repair. Muscular growth advancement. Mental augmentation. List complete.”

  Mental augmentation? What the hell was that? I asked the medic, and it replied: “Memory implants for courses missed during recovery. Memory implant to counter a lack of appropriate genetics. Memory implant to provide future growth. List complete.”

  The robo-medic lapsed into silence. I just nodded, dumbly. So they had gone into my mind and added things. Great. Why did we need to go through basic training at all if they were just going to implant everything I needed, anyway?

  I left the hospital, angry and annoyed. The rear-engineer in me couldn’t understand why they would put so many people through such hellish training if there was a more efficient way.

  But there was no reason to ponder impossible questions. The top brass did what they thought was best for the war. That meant training, that meant danger, that meant accidents. I should be thankful that the steward hadn’t murdered me. Not many soldiers got a second chance at life.

  With a final it doesn’t matter shrug I left the hospital wing and followed the signs back to the training ground. The Devastator really was a massive ship⁠—⁠I must have spent over half an hour marching through endless corridors, mostly empty with doors sealed shut to parts of the ship unknown. We only used a fraction of the space on the battleship: hangers lay empty, heavy gun turrets were shut off and abandoned, warehouses full of machinery lay dormant. None of it mattered anymore; the Devastator’s role had changed and all that remained was surplus to requirements.

  When I entered the training grounds, it was like coming home. The air was different, lived in. The walls had a layer of grease on them, as though the ship itself had to sweat with so many recruits on board.

  I wasn’t sure what time it was, but I figured the robo-medic would have woken me to my standard sleep cycle. I was hungry. It must be breakfast time. I headed for the mess.

  There were people everywhere. They were milling about, talking in groups. Excited.

  “New recruits,” someone said as they hurried out. He sounded like it was Christmas time.

  Wilson came up to me, all smiles.

  “You’re back!” he said, genuinely happy to see me. “How’d you find the broken bones ward? Those memory plants are crazy, aren’t they? I don’t know what’s real anymore and what they planted in me.”

  “Yeah,” I said, then I gestured to all the new people. “What’s going on? Where did they all come from?”

  “They arrived yesterday,” Wilson said. “They said something about combining smaller training groups. These are the casualties that couldn’t keep up with other teams. That’s what someone told me. Maybe it is even true.”

  “Okay,” I shrugged. It didn’t matter where they had come from. They were just more marines.

  Then I saw Taylor and froze. He was halfway across the mess, his face beaming. Talking excitedly. A girl was standing opposite him, her back to me… I couldn’t see who the girl was. Only, I knew that back too well. My heart skipped a beat.

  “It can’t be,” I said, breathless. “It’s not possible.”

  Taylor caught my eye and stopped smiling. The girl talking to him sensed the change and turned to follow his gaze, saw me standing there. Our eyes locked.

  It was
Beth.

  THIRTEEN

  My head spun. I wanted so much to run to her but then the siren rang to mark the end of breakfast and we were taken straight away back into training. My mind was elsewhere: thankfully the medics had already implanted today’s training session into my brain, as there was no way I could think clearly. My mind and body were on auto-pilot.

  Today’s session was on navigation. A hanger had been transformed into a jungle of crates and freight containers. It was half urban, half hell-hole. We worked in teams. Taylor and Beth were not on my team, but I could see them working together at the other end.

  “Eyes on the prize, marine!” one of the squad snarled. I didn’t know him⁠—⁠he was one of the new guys. I stared him up and down; his body had the look of one that had been recreated by the robo-medics. His muscles were too precise, too perfect. His skin was new, too, and there were tell-tale hexagonal marks crisscrossing his body that told me he had been built a completely new body.

  This guy had been as close to death as possible.

  Beth… She was dead. I had seen her die. There was nothing left of her except a charred hulk of ashes. And yet she was alive. She was here.

  “I said⁠—⁠”

  “I heard,” I told him and pushed him out of the way. I moved through the maze, always scanning. “High left⁠—⁠take them down!”

  The marine that had snapped at me was too slow to react; the droid sentry shot him with a stun bolt. He went down even as Harrod and Wilson took on the sentry.

  “Maybe if you spent more time worrying about the mission and less about me, you’d still be battle-capable,” I told him as he lay writhing on the deck. We left him there. In the real world he would be dead, and in the training world he was incapacitated. Dead weight.

  We moved on.

  My mind was elsewhere. I carried out the mission⁠—⁠I was proving excellent at finding hidden snipers and danger zones⁠—⁠but all the while I had one eye on Beth.