Full Metal Heroine: A Military Space Opera Adventure (Lady Hellgate Book 2)

by Greg Dragon

“What was that thing?” she said, looking past him to peer out into the passageway.

  “That was what we call a mutineer, young Tasmin. Four of them managed to stall our ship and try to take the bridge. We suffered casualties, but I am glad you’re safe. The last thing I want to do is explain to Captain Tara Cor how we got another civilian killed.”

  “Thanks?” Tasmin said, not knowing how to take his words. His body language was friendly, and she always felt safe in his presence, but it sounded to her that to these men, she was a mere beacon to find the captives. “That sword—”

  “Sarge,” a man shouted from the passageway, and Codi held up his hand for her to wait as he turned to see who it was.

  “What’s the situation, Corporal?”

  “A dreadnought class ship just jumped into Vestalian space.”

  “And Bane, our pilot, what’s he doing?” Codi said, and Tasmin could tell that he was expecting to hear something disappointing.

  “We’re at full thrust heading back to the hub, sir—”

  “What?”

  “We’re going back. Bane says that being close to the satellite will deter the invaders because they know it’s under watch by the Alliance Navy. Out here they can pick us apart, but near the hub it would be suicide for them,” the corporal said, and Tasmin saw that it was the same man who grabbed her before. He was working hard at not looking her way, but she prepared the nastiest, most poisonous glance for him just in case.

  “Bane is wrong, and he never cleared it with me. It’s way too late to alter course. The timing of this attack after what happened to Tasmin’s people tells me that this is connected somehow. There is someone on that satellite communicating with the traitors, and I’m willing to bet that there is no longer a line going to the Alliance. We are all we’ve got until we can make the jump back to the Aqnaqak. We did inform the Alliance, so help is on the way, but they won’t make it here before that dreadnought intercepts. Tell my Marines to strap in and prepare for contact one way or another. Tasmin, come with me,” he said, and then led her out past the arrogant corporal.

  “Cruta,” Tasmin whispered an insult as soon as they walked past the man. She almost stumbled over the large form of a dead Marine in the hallway. It was so surreal, seeing a corpse up close.

  Codi stopped and knelt down to retrieve the long black sword. He held it up and then flourished it, and the edge came alive with white fire. Tasmin jumped back from the grating sound it made, and the sergeant powered it down.

  “You got to see that cruta use this on poor Rhadra, huh?” he mumbled. “Wicked, thyping weapon, as dangerous to the user as it is to the person getting the business. This is why we shoot the lizards from a distance if we can. This blade can cut a hole in the hull, but they use it on human flesh. On a planet, they’re at a disadvantage against our starguns and auto rifles, but on a ship with passageways as tight as this one, most of us have no chance.” He manipulated his belt in a way to open up a loop and slid the las-sword into it, where it hung limply by his left leg.

  “Do you know how to use it?” Tasmin said, still mesmerized by the weapon, and the sergeant nodded confidently before opening a door to another passageway.

  “CQC is something that most spacers are taught in basics. Marines especially, since we must have the means to thwart assassination attempts and treachery within confined spaces. My favorite weapon from the training was the cutlass, which is a shorter, more accessible version of the sword. I was good with it and was looking for a similar weapon to carry around for protection.”

  Codi Arc stopped in front of a group of Marines who were tending to a wounded man with a gash across his leg. Tasmin felt her stomach turn from the sight of all the blood. She had gotten past the numerous stages of fright, but now in a stupor that wavered between shock and repulsion, she felt lightheaded as she watched the carnage, and wondered at when she would finally pass out.

  “What happened?” the sergeant said as he approached his men.

  “Las-sword cut from one of them, sir, but we managed to shoot him out the airlock.” The sergeant pulled open a door, and touched Tasmin’s lower back to urge her inside.

  Eager to leave the bloody passageway, Tasmin let him lead her to a large compartment that turned out to be a galley. There were shelves loaded with MREs, soft rations, and various food supplies. “I’m sorry you had to see that,” the sergeant said. “You’re no older than my girl, and I would lose my mind if she saw anything like that.”

  “Is your girl a cadet?” Tasmin said, taking a seat on one of the benches. She was fascinated with the equipment and the fact that they devoted an entire compartment for food.

  “No, she lives on Traxis with her mother. She intends to be a doctor once she’s finished with her schooling. The last thing I want for a child of mine is to get mired in this schtill soup we have up here in space. Anyway, you remind me of her somewhat, and I saw your face just now when you saw Ramon’s leg. Listen, we will be okay, do you hear? Whoever’s behind this expected us to be an easy target, and what they met was the mettle of the Aqnaqak Marine Corps. That is how they got killed so easily, and why they will think twice before doing this again.”

  Tasmin thought about his words and how proud he was, yet he didn’t strike her as the type of man to recklessly brag about his prowess. Maybe the Aqnaqak was special so the ambush didn’t give the traitors very much of an edge.

  “Could you teach me CQC?” she said, still not knowing what the initials meant. “Just in case there’s more onboard and I find myself alone or trapped?”

  The sergeant gave her a measuring look and then rolled his eyes towards one of the shelves. “If only there was time, young Tasmin, I would happily show you some self-defense techniques.” He exhaled slowly and then pointed to another door, which was on the far side of the galley. “That door there, it leads to the bridge. If you can wait here for about ten minutes, I need to have a word with the captain.”

  Tasmin slunk back as she watched the sergeant go. First, he tried the door several times and then he knocked, commanding the pilot to open it. When there was no response, the giant Marine backed up and tried to kick the metal door down. Five large men rushed into the galley and they all took turns kicking at the door, trying to bring it down.

  “Maybe we should try the other door,” one of them said, and then they were running out into the passageway.

  Tasmin, frightened by the sergeant’s anger and the implications of a pilot going rogue, slipped behind one of the racks to get out of their way. “To me, Tasmin,” the sergeant called as he made his way to the door, and she obeyed quickly, scampering behind them as they pushed past a crowd of Marines.

  Several of them were already working on the door leading to the cockpit, and through one of the portholes, Tasmin could see her satellite in the distance. She remembered Sergeant Codi Arc being worried that they had turned around, and now she could see that it was too late.

  Then there was a light, so bright that she had to cover her face, and she fell back against the bulkhead. It was so bright that it actually hurt, and she heard gasps and screams all around her. Against her better judgment, she chanced a look, and that was when she saw that the satellite was gone. In its place was a fireball with a debris field about it like a tiny, minute sun.

  She was stunned. Was that her satellite, her childhood home that still had on its deck the hundreds of people who survived? She felt numb. There was no way that had just happened. That window must be some sort of vid screen, showing another satellite from a long time ago.

  Strong hands grabbed her, pulling her back as the crowd of Marines moved up, fighting with one another to get a better view. The hands covered her face and held her still, and that was when she knew that it was real. “Was that Syr?” she managed through a dry mouth that quivered as she spoke.

  “Yes,” said a deep voice that she recognized as the sergeant’s, and then she felt lightheaded and everything went dark.

 
She woke up on the floor in the arms of a female Marine. The woman was using her hand to fan her rapidly as she rocked back and forth humming. It was very nurturing but frightening at the same time, especially when juxtaposed against the scene in that passageway. Before Tasmin could say anything, she heard a loud “thunk” that snapped her head around. At first, she feared that they were being boarded, but then she saw that the door to the cockpit had fallen off.

  Sergeant Codi Arc powered down his las-sword and rushed into the compartment. Tasmin heard two shots and a heavy sound on the deck as more Marines rushed in and pulled the dead pilot out. It was organized chaos in the most violent way, and she rolled her eyes to the porthole where she now saw blackness where her home used to be.

  She grabbed the fabric of her pants and twisted it into a knot as she bawled for the lives of the people she’d left behind. The pain was excruciating. She wanted to die, and as she shook, she felt the woman’s hand massaging her back.

  “I’m so sorry, sweetheart. We’ll get them, I swear,” said a soft gentle voice, repeating the phrase over and over. She saw that it was the female Marine, who was with her when she collapsed. Tasmin knew it was likely that she had been ordered to care for her, but she appreciated her presence, regardless.

  She felt empty and numb. Once again she had been spared, and only because she had been chosen to accompany the Marines back to their mothership. Her mind dipped into the absurd. What if she was the reason this was happening? What if she knew something that someone wanted to erase, and when they couldn’t find her on the hub, they’d decided it would be better to just destroy the place?

  The light and the implosion were embedded at the fore of her mind, and she was stuck thinking that had she been there, she too would have been reduced to ash.

  16

  Meluvian days were long, one and a half times that of a Vestalian day, which was what the Rendron used to sync sleeping hours. Since a starship was in space for the entirety of its lifetime, the inhabitants, who were the children of planet dwellers, needed a sequence of time in order to coordinate sleep, meal times, and a calendar. This dilemma forced the Alliance to agree on a universal time and the Vestalian clock was adopted with its 24-hour cycle.

  This fact played back in Helga’s mind as they trudged through the jungle bearing north. It felt as if they had been walking for over six hours, and she had begun to wonder why the sky was still bright. They had started off later, after another protein-filled breakfast of small animal carcasses with a side of MRE. Quentin had found a rowcut bush, which they boiled and drank with their breakfast.

  Rowcut herb energized the body and did something to the blood, which was why the spacers all knew it well, though it was illegal on every ship in the system. The herb was as delicious as it was potent, and one cup was akin to drinking twelve cups of coffee. Beyond that it was an aphrodisiac, and an ingredient in medicines all over Meluvia, but the downside was that it could be poisonous if too much was taken in a short period of time.

  Tired soldiers on the planet would forget the dosage as they chewed it, the herb allowing them to stay up for several days while ramping up the blood flow to give somewhat of a high. In the end many would die from overdose, exhaustion, or other complications, so the Alliance thought it prudent to keep the temptation away from their spacers.

  Quentin pulled enough for the trip and gave it to Cilas for safekeeping, but as they made their way north, Helga could feel the effects of the rowcut, and a part of her wanted to smuggle a bit back onto the Rendron. On Dyn in their PAS suits, she hadn’t known exhaustion like she did here. The bite of the brovila, coupled with the long day of hiking and fighting, had brought back pain within her limbs that she hadn’t experienced since BLAST.

  When she woke up that morning to Cilas speaking to that old man, it had felt as if every joint in her body was inflamed. It had taken considerable effort for her to make the small walk to get to their meeting area. After drinking the tea, the pain had slowly faded away, and it was two hours into their silent march that she realized why she felt so good.

  No memories of Dyn trying to break into her mind, and no pain to keep her focused on every single step. Matter of fact, she had begun to admire the beauty of the wildlife. Strange creatures caught her eye, slithering or crawling up trees, and not once did she worry about a nest of brovilas.

  Now she looked forward to their mornings, since the rowcut was replacing coffee. She needed to feel like this all the time, but she could hear Cilas Mec inside of her head. “As an officer, you will need to be that much better than the men and women who look up to you, Helga. Spending time in this bar … you’re going to find yourself with an unkind rep. Look, I get it, this is how you cope, but you need to find something else, something less destructive. Go to the range, work out like a monster, take some solo trips in your Classic, anything but this. Do you understand?”

  That speech had come about when she’d passed out at the bar and one of the owners made a call to her lieutenant. Embarrassment was too short a word to express how she felt when Cilas showed up to drag her back to her compartment.

  After that day she avoided the bar and kept the drinking to the privacy of her quarters. She slowed it down, drinking only when she would see the bottom. Now, on a mission, she didn’t need anything to cope. After all, the best remedy to deal with the thoughts inside of her mind was being right here in the middle of the action.

  Still, the rowcut was a treat, though she knew it would become a problem so she was happy that it was Cilas that carried it inside his pack. Had it been Quentin or Raileo, she could pull rank, and they would have let her have it. Then she would be one of the fools chewing it throughout the day, gliding through life on a cloud that drifted at light speed until she hit a wall.

  She could hear the captain now. “Thanks for gathering here as we send off Ensign Helga Ate, a woman who was unmatched in the cockpit but absolutely horrible at life. Helga was a drunk and a drug addict, who—” She stopped the thought by shaking her head. That will not be me, she thought, as she hopped over a fallen tree. I refuse to dishonor my family’s name.

  “How are you feeling, Ate?” someone said, and she turned to see that it was Raileo.

  “I feel much better, actually, between the sleep and the … um, tea.” She swallowed hard and looked around. It was as if she was already addicted to the plant, the way it made her feel guilty to admit to drinking it.

  “Yeah, we had a pretty rough day and then the night. Makes me wonder what we have coming at us for the day.”

  “Hopefully we’ll just find this cruta’s camp and can drag him home,” she said, laughing. “I’ve been attacked by a strange worm, gotten sick, been burned, shot at, passed out a few times, and ate cute furry creatures. I would say that checks off all the boxes for a crappy mission, so I’m pretty much owed an eventless day.”

  “There was some good in there, at least to me,” Raileo said. “We did a space-to-surface drop with an amazing free-fall, experienced a remote village on Meluvia, and sailed in an actual boat. How many boomers back home can say the same? Even our Marines can’t claim half those things, yet we did all that in the span of one Meluvian day.”

  “Not to mention we swam in a river, fought above a waterfall, and survived an ambush,” Quentin said, glancing back at them with a big smile on his face. “I thought that becoming a Nighthawk meant recon in the wildest places, and I am pleased to see it’s everything I thought it would be.”

  “Oh, you optimistic newbies make me sick,” Helga grumbled, and the other three men laughed as they continued their trek through the trees.

  When they came upon a clearing, Cilas pulled them up short to rest. “This looks like a good spot to take a break,” he said.

  “I wish we had a reaper drone.” Quentin sat down heavily on top of his pack. “We could program it for surveillance and no rebel would ever get a drop on us while we’re in our camp.

  “The proximity rods did their job,
” Raileo said quietly. “It’s just that the lieutenant had ventured past the perimeter when he ran into those thypes from last night. Had we all been still eating the rods would have given us the warning.”

  “And we all would have been burned up when they lobbed that grenade. I say we think about that the next time we set up a perimeter on the campsite,” Cilas said.

  “How close are we to the mark?” Helga pulled off her boots to air out her feet.

  “Too close for a fire, but too far to not setup a camp,” Cilas said. “How do you all feel? If we push another four hours, we would be close enough to start surveying their setup.”

  The four Nighthawks exchanged glances and then the men all looked at Helga. She was in the grass with a wet towel over her head and her hands massaging the toes of her right foot. When she saw that they were all looking down at her, she slatted her eyes and let the disappointment show across her face.

  “A girl gets bit by a brovila and all of a sudden she’s the weak link? How about the two losers last night that assumed the same thing? Why don’t you ask them how weak this spacer is?”

  “Ate, no one here thinks that you’re weak by any means,” Quentin started and then stopped when she gave him a grin. Cilas, feigning frustration, exhaled audibly as Raileo picked up a bit of dirt and threw it at her. “Well played, ma’am,” the big man said, giving her a goofy smile of his own.

  “Okay, so we’re doing this,” Cilas said, and then brought out a bit of parchment where a rough map was drawn. “We’ll keep pushing north, through the jungle until we get to this swamp, which marks the southernmost region of the rebel’s encampment. Things are bound to get messy, and we may even be ambushed again. But Nighthawks, if they break us up, keep moving north to the other side of this river. There’s another abandoned temple, apparently it’s tall enough to see above the tree line. We will meet up there if we aren’t together, and that is where we’ll camp and make plans for the extraction.”