Warp Marine Corps- The Complete Series

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Warp Marine Corps- The Complete Series Page 44

by C. J. Carella


  Thing was, that had been Gonzo’s only care package this Christmas, and he didn’t want to be reduced to opening one of the generic gifts the battalion made available to grunts without presents, at least the ones who hadn’t opted out of the holidays for religious or personal reasons. Russell had been happy with his random box, and he didn’t care what anybody thought of him. Gonzo didn’t, either, not really, but without a personal gift he couldn’t make fun of the troopers who didn’t get one.

  The Christmas’ Eve gathering was something of a tradition for the Marines. Anybody who wasn’t on duty – most of the ones working that night were those who didn’t celebrate the holidays – gathered together at the company’s mess hall and everyone opened one of their presents after dinner. The ceremony was supposed to take the edge off being away from home. Sometimes it did.

  “Here goes nothin’,” Gonzo said, tearing into the wrapping. The box was big enough for an old-school book or some electronic device, but Russell didn’t think it was anything Gonzo would enjoy. He’d met his buddy’s ex, a bartender at New Parris who’d been cute enough to fuck, but way too much of a bitch to marry. She’d promptly gone on to screw a Jody or three when Gonzo was on deployment (he’d never found out, and Russell just didn’t have the heart to tell him). Later on, her eating habits had overcome even the metabolic enhancers that kept most people trim, and she’d turned into a proper dependapotamus, without even the excuse of producing a litter of Devil Pups for the unseemly weight gain. Without children, divorcing her had been painless enough, and Gonzaga hadn’t heard from her in years, until now.

  As soon as the box opened, a life-sized hologram appeared over it. It was the ex, but sometime in the recent past she’d gotten back in shape: she looked at least as good as when Gonzo and every other grunt in the bar she worked at had tried to pick her up. Maybe even better; Russell couldn’t be sure because he hadn’t seen her naked until just now. The full-body hologram wasn’t wearing a stitch of clothing.

  “Hola, mi amor,” the naked ex’s hologram said. “Just wanted to let you see what you’re missing.” She wiggled her hips and smacked her own ass, and damned if she didn’t look just fine.

  Everybody burst out laughing. Even Gonzo.

  All in all, it felt like Christmas. Russell’s real present had come in early, almost a month ago. Waking up after being sure he was a goner had been a damn good gift. Waking up with a pretty nurse and an even prettier doctor hovering over him had been nice, too, although both ladies had been married and neither had been inclined to stray. That was okay. By the time he was discharged from the clinic, after they’d grown him a new set of limbs, he’d had plenty of hazard pay saved up, more than enough to have a good time at a discreet brothel that hadn’t shut down for the evacuation. The establishment’s owner had figured there was plenty of coin to be made servicing the Marines’ needs. The ladies had finally left a few days ago, but it’d been fun until then.

  He’d been lucky. Corporal Carson of Second Squad had bought it during the same fight. A good guy, and another veteran of Jasper-Five, which was still the toughest fight in Russell’s career. Mostly because his platoon had been on its own, the only jarheads on the planet. This last fight had been about as easy as those things went. The fact that he’d almost gotten killed didn’t change that. You could get killed during a complete cakewalk, or during a field-ex for that matter. The Viper operators had been tough, but they’d been outnumbered and outgunned, and their primmie puppets hadn’t added much to the mix.

  They were headed for Parthenon-Three, just after New Year’s. That was going to be interesting. If the Vipers arrived in force, it was going to get a little too interesting.

  Trade Nexus Eleven, 165 AFC

  “Happy New Year,” Guillermo Hamilton said with false merriment.

  “I guess so,” Heather said. She didn’t give a damn about the new year, which promised to bring no happiness to anybody.

  “Admit it, you’re happy to be back in the field,” her fellow spy said.

  “If you say so.” I went from being a low-grade intelligence officer to the reincarnation of Jane Bourne simply because I didn’t get killed during the Days of Infamy. She kept that thought to herself, though. True, staying in New Washington and working as an analyst did not appeal to her; she liked field work and she thought she was pretty good at it. On the other hand, most of her achievements had been of the violent kind, the sort of stuff vids and games assumed spies did all the time and which real life intelligence officers avoided at all costs. When you operated in enemy territory, completely outnumbered and outgunned, the last thing you wanted was to pick a fight. She certainly hadn’t enjoyed the times when circumstances had picked a fight with her.

  Still, her survivor’s luck had greatly advanced her career, although her superiors seemed to delight in putting her in dangerous positions, perhaps thinking that her winning streak would continue indefinitely. Remfie rat bastards. And Hamilton was one of said rat bastards, although he was at least sharing the risks with her on this mission.

  Granted, the two Americans weren’t in imminent danger, even though they were working undercover. Trade Nexus Eleven was neutral ground, under the control of the O-Vehel Commonwealth, which had assiduously stayed on the sidelines of the current galactic conflict and had enough muscle to make any of the belligerents think twice before antagonizing it. Heather had harbored some hopes the Vehelians would declare war on the Tripartite Galactic Alliance. After all, one of their embassies had been attacked and nearly destroyed during the Days of Infamy. Provocation or not, however, the Ovals weren’t interested in joining what promised to be the losing side of a galactic war.

  On the other hand, they hadn’t joined the presumed winning side, either, and that was very helpful indeed. Among other things, it meant she and Hamilton could travel freely through Vehelian space. Humans were welcome to Trade Nexus Eleven, just like everyone else, as long as they behaved. All in all, her current posting was not a bad one. She and Hamilton were pretending to be private shipping sales reps, allegedly here to negotiate the services of a consortium of human-crewed merchant ships, a job that allowed them to interact with all kinds of potential sources of information. Even if they were caught, they would probably get off with a slap on the wrist, or at worst a few years in a minimum-security Vehelian prison, both of which were infinitely preferable to what awaited spies in Lamprey or Viper space. Or even the Imperium, which was nicer but not exactly forgiving towards enemy agents.

  Heather was still glad for the hooded robes and face masks that concealed them from casual observation. Both the garments were necessities: although the titanic space station’s life support systems were calibrated to accommodate Class Two biologies, their default oxygen level and temperature were both below comfortable levels for humans. The face masks helped them breathe without needing special nanite treatments, and the robes kept them warm in the fifty-degree ambient temps that Ovals considered ideal. The need to cover up made it harder to identify their species: bipeds their size could belong to any of a dozen different species. All to the good, since humans weren’t exactly popular at the moment. It meant the two intelligence officers could wait for their contact in public without too many worries.

  “She’s late,” Guillermo commented idly.

  “She’ll show up,” Heather said with a shrug. To pass the time, she turned away from her fellow agent and checked the view from the station’s promenade, which was rather spectacular. The miles-long space station was in a stable orbit around a black hole, a small one as those things went but still an impressive sight, not of the hole itself, of course, but of the effect around it. At the moment, the singularity was feasting upon a nebula unlucky enough to cross its path, creating an impressive light show beyond its event horizon. The colorful swirling lights coming from further out than Pluto’s orbit around the sun were beautiful and almost hypnotic.

  The black hole’s effect on the fabric of spacetime had created fifteen ley lines connectin
g a good third of the known galaxy, which was the main reason the space station had been built there – and why the second largest Vehelian fleet in the Commonwealth made it its base of operations. A duo of dreadnoughts being refitted were floating not too far away; the five-mile-long cylinders, festooned with weapons and shields, were pretty impressive, easily three times the size of the equivalent American ships. Only the Imperium built bigger capital ships.

  The view on the inside of the station was less awe-inspiring but just as colorful. The Ovals had gone for a bazaar-like atmosphere for the long promenade around its central hub. Open market squares, filled with vendors hawking their wares and haggling with would-be buyers had been a common feature of thousands of civilizations during their pre-Starfaring days, and the faux-primitive ambiance was a tourist attraction. Spacers, soldiers on leave and travelers taking some time off between warp jumps mingled with hawkers from all over the galaxy, all doing their best to part visitors from their money. On their way to the meeting place, Heather had spotted a dozen distinct species, despite the fact that many of them were partially hidden by heavy clothing and breather masks. Most of them came from Class Two biospheres, with a smattering of Class Ones and the odd Three or Four. Long-necked Wyrms growled at six-limbed Buggers; one stall over, a troupe of Puppy performers were in the middle of a complex sword-dance to the delight of a gaggle of Blue Men spectators. Food from hundreds of cultures was cooked over open braziers, making the stations’ life support systems work overtime to clear out the smoke rising from them: the primitive spectacle was belied by the imp warnings that indicated which kinds of meat and vegetables were edible to her species, and which would be nothing but poison.

  The chaotic environment would provide some cover for their meeting, although not from any serious security agency. Luckily, the Vehelians were taking their neutrality seriously and the enemy would be operating at an even greater handicap than the Americans. Supposedly. Heather had quickly learned that the opposition was perfectly capable of pulling assorted surprises out of its notional hat.

  “I thought Scarabs were punctual to a fault,” Guillermo said after a few more minutes passed.

  “This one isn’t exactly an exemplar of the species,” Heather said, suppressing a sigh. Hamilton clearly needed to be entertained. Everyone dealt with nervousness differently. She handled it by quietly becoming hyper-aware of her surroundings; he apparently craved conversation.

  “And here she is,” she added, noticing the approaching figure before her chatty boss did. It belonged to the right species, but… “Or maybe not,” she corrected herself as Guillermo turned around. “I think this one’s a drone.”

  The Kreck (a.k.a. the Scarabs) were a Class Two species descended from insect analogs that had evolved in a low-gravity planet, enabling exoskeletal lifeforms to grow to sizes that would lead to instant death in anything close to Earth-normal conditions. This particular specimen looked like a typical young neuter adult of the species: forty-six inches in length, with six long, spindly legs, a set of head-mounted fine manipulators that had evolved from antennae, and a pair of thicker arms terminating in pincers protruding from its upper thorax. Plates of plain brown-and-black chitin covered its body; the head resembled an ant’s more than a beetle’s, complete with large, multifaceted eyes and a beak-like mouth.

  The ET was floating inside a bubble created by a gravity field projector that kept it from being crushed by the local 1.1 G environment. Most sophonts dealt with such inconvenience through a combination of medical implants and temporary cybernetics; a G-field generator that small was worth a cool half million Galactic Currency Units and about ten times as much in US dollars, where the facilities to produce that kind of tech were still few and far between. The casual display of wealth was not lost on either of the Americans. Neither was the fact that this Scarab was not the one they were looking for.

  “A nova is a terrible thing to waste,” the alien sent out through its implants: it was the code phrase they’d been expecting. The virtual ID showing up in Heather’s personal display did not match that of their contact, however. This Scarab was at least fifty years too young, and its neuter-drone’s carapace was not decorated, a clear sign of low-to-middling status among Kreck society. A personal assistant at best, despite its expensive personal carriage.

  “Where’s Honest Septima?” Guillermo asked. His brusque tone was probably wasted on the alien, but not the two steps he took forward, right next to the edge of the gravity generator’s effect zone. Krecks liked their personal space; getting that close would make it nervous.

  “I am Heavy Decimus, servant to Proxy-of-Ten-Thousand Honest Septima of Star System 2-9348,” the Scarab replied. Kreck names consisted of an official nickname and the order in which they’d been hatched; the similarity to ancient Roman naming traditions had prompted translators to render the aliens’ numerical praenomen into their Latin equivalent. “I am here to take you to her.”

  “That wasn’t the plan,” the intelligence officer protested.

  “The Proxy conveys her deepest apologies, but she wishes to converse with you at some length. That cannot be done in a public venue.”

  A change in plans was almost always a bad thing. This meeting had been meant to be a simple burst transmission via their imps, serving both as a simple info dump and an introduction to Honest Septima’s new handlers. It appeared that their agent had ideas of her own. Heather bit back on her own reply – a not-too polite ‘Go to Hell’ – and waited for Guillermo’s response. He was team leader, and he already didn’t care for having a newbie come along simply because she’d seen some combat action. Heather even agreed with his general assessment: she thought that killing people and breaking things were overvalued everywhere in the US.

  The senior officer hesitated for a second. “Fine,” he finally said. “Let’s go.”

  Not what Heather had expected. Moving a meeting to an unknown and unexpected location wasn’t a good idea. She went along nonetheless. The chance for actionable intelligence probably outweighed the risk, at least enough that she wasn’t going to second-guess her superior.

  And if worse came to worst, she had come prepared for trouble: a holdout beamer and a light force field were concealed under her hooded robes. She had recently learned she wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger on anybody who threatened her. Maybe the remfies who’d sent her on this mission had known what they were doing after all.

  They followed the floating Scarab through the crowded concourse, past clumps of ogling or chatting visitors. In their robes, they blended in just fine; their guide was the one that stood out, and not in a good way. The Kreck were one of the four Founding Races of the Galactic Imperium, and weren’t popular outside its borders. Most people they passed by didn’t react visibly; those who did exhibited various forms of hostile body language, from deliberately turning their backs on them to raised hackles from a group of Puppies and angry hoots from a passing Butterfly.

  Heavy Decimus ignored the gestures. Nobody tried to do anything beyond that; a Scarab wealthy enough to afford its own anti-grav system would no doubt be well-equipped to defend itself, and the authorities would come down hard on anybody offering violence to a citizen of the Imperium. They made it to one of the station lifts without incident.

  The double doors of the lift looked just like an oversized elevator, although the car inside was capable of lateral movement as well, being suspended in a magnetic field as it moved through a complex system of shafts and tunnels. Heather gave her superior a look, but he simply shrugged and followed the Scarab inside. Half a minute later, the lift’s doors reopened, revealing a nondescript corridor somewhere inside the station. Heather tried to ascertain their location and discovered she couldn’t: the area was shut off from all communications. That was good if the meeting was friendly, but if it turned out to be otherwise, they didn’t know where they were, couldn’t call for help, and would have to hack into the lift’s controls to go anywhere.

  “We did not agree
to be cut off!” Guillermo said when he discovered the same thing a few moments later. It was more than little too late to complain. The moment they’d gotten into the lift they had agreed to put their lives in the hands of their agent. Idiot, Heather thought. And she’d followed his lead; what did that make her?

  “Security,” was all the Scarab said as it walked to the single door at the other end of the corridor. “Be careful upon entering; the chamber is set up to accommodate Kreck’s biological needs.”

  Heather appreciated the warning as they stepped into the opulent room; its local gravity was slightly less than half Earth’s standard. Her Navy training had prepared her for this kind of environment, so she avoided making a fool of herself. Guillermo Hamilton didn’t launch himself across the room or smack into the ceiling, either, so at least he wasn’t that sort of idiot. Her face mask automatically tightened over her face when her imp sensed that the local oxygen concentration was both too high and at unhealthy pressure levels for humans.

  The dwelling had been refurbished to fit the Scarabs’ sense of aesthetics: there were no separate rooms, just one large circular chamber, with partitions made by fence-like walls that only reached halfway towards the ceiling, creating a ring of stall-like sections. The largest one was elaborately decorated with organic-looking furnishings made of plastic or chitin. Their host was waiting for them there.

  Honest Septima lay on a reclining couch. A mature female past her breeding stage, she was half again as large as her servant; her carapace was painted a garish pattern of silver and gold and encrusted with jewels and decorative circuitry. She waved her pincer limbs in greeting.

  “Human-Americans Hamilton and McClintock, welcome to this humble dwelling. I must beg your pardon for the change in plans, but I needed to discuss some things at length, which a brief meeting in public would not allow.”

 

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