Warp Marine Corps- The Complete Series

by C. J. Carella

  “Well, yes,” she said. “My plan is to not give them any choice in the matter. I’ve been on my imp ever since I got the news, working with the US Consul to facilitate our exit strategy.”

  Guillermo didn’t know what she was talking about, and he was afraid to ask.

  “Don’t worry, Gill. I’ve got this.”

  They were on their way out a moment later, not sparing a second glance at their home for most of the past year.

  “The Consulate is quietly evacuating and destroying all files,” she went on as they briskly walked down the crowded promenade leading to a transit tube. The colorful gathering of aliens now seemed vaguely threatening to Guillermo. “Consulate personnel will meet you at the Polo’s docking bay. They’ll tell you what to do.” She handed him her bag. “Here, take my stuff with you.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Like I said, I need to facilitate our exit strategy.” She grinned at him, and he felt his blood go cold. “I’m off to do some ground-pounding. Not your kind of scene, Guillermo. So be a good boy and hold my fucking bag, willya?”

  He nodded stiffly and kept walking towards the lift while she went off deeper into the massive space station.

  * * *

  One does not simply walk into the Central Control Center of a Vehelian Trade Nexus.

  Heather strolled casually past the Nexus Administration Building, noting that security had been increased. Where normally only a couple of bored-looking guards stood by the double set of sliding doors leading into the building, there was a full squad of Emergency Services troopers in light combat armor standing at attention. Vehelians were taller and wider that humans; the guards looked like gigantic death-robots in their faceless helmets and shiny breast plates, holding their weapons at port arms. She’d seen what their lasers carbines could do, and had no desire to be on the receiving end of one of them.

  The guards automatically scanned everyone who entered the block of streets containing the station’s administrative offices. Heather’s imp had altered her ID codes; she would show up in their scanners as a member of the Vatyr species, humanoids about the right size and shape for her to pass as one, especially under the bulky outfit she was wearing. The same camouflage system hid her weapons from a casual scan.

  The Emergency Service guards might dress like soldiers, but they were cops with mil-spec gear. They weren’t thinking like soldiers. For one, they were still hooked up to the station’s intranet; one of them was actually chatting with his prospective mate while standing at attention and pretending to give a damn. Against real soldiers, what she was about to do would have failed spectacularly. Military comm systems were hardened against intrusion; the police version relied on decent but hardly impervious firewalls, and the CIA electronic warfare devices were top-class, purchased from the Puppies at a ‘best friends forever’ discount. She was about to find out if the Agency had gotten its money’s worth.

  Execute, she ordered her imp.

  Every ES cop within a three-block radius collapsed limply to the ground, some of them convulsing feebly, the rest still like the dead.

  “Go, go, go!” she cried out as she rushed past a couple of twitching forms, beamer in hand. The sensory overload program she’d sent via the Emergency Services command channel wouldn’t kill the Oval security officers, but it would keep them out of the way for at least thirty minutes. Hopefully that would be enough.

  The multispecies workers inside scattered from the sight of an armed intruder in their midst. Only one Oval civvie, looking pretty tough despite wearing a plain office tunic, tried to get in her way. A stun blast scrambled his nervous systems and sent him to the ground. Heather vaulted over him and ran deeper into the complex. Behind her, a platoon of Warp Marines was deploying, their weapons and armor similarly hidden from view until she’d given the ‘go’ order. They would make sure she wasn’t disturbed while she finished the task at hand.

  She had to stun a couple more people before she made it to the CCC; several people inside the large control center were also down, being connected to the Emergency Services network she’d turned into a weapon. They included the Guard Commandant; his massive form was slumped over a console, an overturned cup of steaming noodle soup he’d been drinking making a mess on his desk. A glance at the screen showed her the updated ETA of the planetary assault ships: thirty-two minutes. This was going to be close.

  A chorus of ‘Clears’ answered her status query. The Marines had taken blocking positions on both sides of the avenue facing the building. So far all they’d had to do was wave their guns to scare the civvies away. Frantic calls for help were being sent by hundreds of cybernetic implants, but Heather’s imp had just finished hacking the communications center’s main computer. None of those calls were going to reach anybody.

  Once she had secured the comm systems and uploaded a very special piece of Puppy software into the CCC’s computer, she placed a call to the next-highest Emergency Services officer in the base, a Captain Jeek, currently at the military docking level, where he was awaiting to take charge of the incoming Spaceborne Infantry troops. She didn’t give him a chance to speak.

  “Listen carefully, Captain. I have taken over the Trade Nexus’ Central Control Center. You will comply with my instructions or I will start shutting off assorted vital systems on select portions of the station. Among my first targets will be the military docking station. Do you understand?”

  “You do not dare do this!” the Oval officer blurted. “You would be at war with half of the galaxy!”

  “Your polity is in a state of war with the United Stars of America,” she said. “That makes this station a legitimate target.” While she spoke, her imp was downloading the space station’s data records, which among other things confirmed everything her criminal contacts had told her. The Ovals had betrayed the US, the egg-headed bastards. They hadn’t gone so far as to declare war, but were basically rolling over and playing dead for the Tripartite Alliance.

  “You cannot do this!” She wasn’t sure if he meant she couldn’t physically do it, but she decided to be literal about it.

  By way of response, Heather had all the emergency doors of the military docking level shut closed, sealing Jeek and his bodyguards between two airlocks, one of which she could vent to space with a mental command of her imp.

  “Wait!” the good captain shouted. “Wait!”

  “Do you understand the situation now, Captain?”

  Jeek made an affirmative gesture. The officers’ double row of ridges, the only noticeable facial feature among Ovals, were turning purple with rage. “I understand,” he said.

  “You will proceed as follows,” she continued. “All human personnel in the Nexus will leave the station, and your security officers will not hinder their movements in any way. The evacuees will board the starship Maffeo Polo, at which point we will exit into warp space. Under the circumstances, we will have to make a warp transition while in close proximity to your station, which will result in some property damage. I would like to say I am sorry for any needless destruction, but I would be lying if I did.”

  The purple ridges were now a deep magenta, and they were throbbing steadily, a clear sign Jeek was suffering from a massive stress-induced headache. She almost felt sorry for him.

  “While the evacuation proceeds, the assault ships due to arrive in the next half an hour are to change course and head away from TN-11 until they move beyond firing range. They will not come any closer until after we are gone. Failure to comply will result in the destruction of this facility. Do you understand?”

  ‘I understand,” he repeated. It wasn’t like the Ovals to fold so easily, but the sudden change in allegiances had taken the station’s personnel by surprise, too. It took some work to switch mental gears and accept that former friendly neutrals had now become enemies. It’d taken Heather almost a minute to make that leap.

  “Good,” she said. “Maybe next time your superiors will know better than to threaten my country.”<
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  * * *

  “I really must protest this seizure of private property,” said the skipper of the Maffeo Polo for the umpteenth time. Heather had only heard the complaint about half a dozen times since she’d made it to the docking bay and waited for the last refugees to enter the ship, and she was already sick of it. She considered using her beamer on the merchant captain – on stun, of course – but decided that would complicate matters.

  Fortunately for everyone concerned, the only American vessel in the system was a massive bulk cargo freighter, currently laden with a hundred and fifty thousand tons of fabber feedstocks earmarked for Sol System, eight warp transits away. Even with full holds, the ship had enough space for the six hundred or so humans in TN-11, although the accommodations would be Spartan at best and its life support system was going to be strained by having to provide basic consumables for ten times as many people as it was designed to keep alive.

  “Protest all you want,” Heather said. “Your ship was about to be seized by the Ovals, rather than borrowed by the US government. Not to mention you and your crew would have been interned and possibly killed.”

  The captain shut up, letting Heather consider the situation.

  This was going to be almost as bad as the Days of Infamy. The Ovals had been major trading partners and there were hundreds of ships and thousands of humans inside their borders. Most of them wouldn’t have any warning until they were captured or worse. The financial losses alone were going to badly hurt the country.

  At least getting away wouldn’t be a problem. New Jakarta was ten warp-hours away from the station. It was GACS space, but the Pan-Asians were on America’s side. And given that the Ovals were clinging to at least the pretense of neutrality, their fleet wouldn’t follow the Polo there. The US would have to decide whether seizing thousands of citizens and billions of dollars in property, not to mention allowing enemy forces to travel through Vehelian space, was enough provocation to declare war on the O-Vehel Commonwealth.

  She shrugged. Deciding such things wasn’t her job. She’d managed to save a few hundred souls, the best she could do under the circumstances. Her biggest regret was losing contact with Honest Septima, who’d been proving to be a priceless fountain of information about the Imperium.

  “That’s the last of them,” Guillermo said. After he’d recovered from his shock, her fellow spy had helped organize the evacuation. Not bad for a suit.

  “Going into warp while docked is going to destroy this entire level,” the captain of the Polo said. “Tens of millions of GCUs in damage. And it will certainly be construed as an act of war!”

  “They shouldn’t have started it, then,” she told him.

  A few minutes later, the Maffeo Polo fled the system, tearing a big chunk out of TN-11’s docking bay and leaving a mess of escaping atmosphere and electrical fires in its wake. There were no casualties, but the damage was just as bad as the captain had feared. And Heather didn’t feel the least bit sorry about it.

  The war had taken yet another turn. Warp-induced visions of destruction haunted her for the entire trip.

  Advance to Contact

  Warp Marine Corps, Book Three

  By C.J. Carella

  Published by Fey Dreams Productions, LLC

  Copyright @ 2016 Fey Dreams Productions, LLC. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced, displayed, modified or distributed without the express prior written permission of the copyright holder. For permission, contact cjcarella@cjcarella.com

  Cover by: SelfPubBookCovers.com/ Saphira

  This is a work of fiction. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

  - Percy Bysshe Shelley

  “What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.”

  - Cool Hand Luke

  Prologue: Let It Burn

  Star System Hades, Nasstah Union, 165 AFC

  Transition.

  Sixth Fleet entered warp space ready and willing to endure twelve hours of hell for the privilege of delivering their own dose of eternal damnation unto the enemies of humankind.

  USN Admiral Sondra Givens held on to the command chair and steeled herself for a seeming eternity surrounded by ghosts and evil spirits. The USS William Halsey Jr. ceased to exist in the physical universe, the universe as understood by Newton and Einstein, and entered a new realm, one hinted at by the wilder hypotheses of quantum mechanics but never fully understood by any human scientist, even after a century and a half using it to traverse the vast chasms between the stars. Most warp transits lasted less than ten hours: the maximum length of time most thinking beings could withstand exposure to the bizarre reality outside the physical realm was somewhere in the thirty-hour range. A longer stay all but guaranteed death, insanity or, worst of all, being marooned in the space between spaces, for however long one could survive there.

  Twelve hours was bad enough. All nonessential personnel aboard the Halsey – the lucky third of the crew who had just completed their watches – had been heavily sedated to ease their passage. The rest couldn’t afford that luxury; they were headed towards a hostile world, and there was always a chance their arrival would be detected, in which case the enemy would be lying in wait for them, ready to strike when Sixth Fleet was most vulnerable. They would come in hot, ready to fight at a moment’s notice.

  Their mission was worth the risk: they were finally on the attack, bringing the war to those who had decided humanity should be exterminated.

  Payback is a bitch.

  The thought almost made her break out in maniacal gales of laughter. Almost three years of pent-up rage bubbled inside of her, beginning when three Starfarer polities attacked the US without warning, slaughtering seven million people before deigning to send a declaration of war. Her grandson Omar had been among the victims. The ‘deeply regret’ notification, delivered in person by the Secretary of War in deference to her rank, had followed the initial news of the attack by less than twenty-four hours, while she was still trying to accept the fact that hundreds of American outposts around the galaxy had been targeted for destruction by murderous mobs or sneak orbital attacks. No one had been spared. The goal from the beginning had been clear: to make the human race extinct.

  “You were so proud of me, Grammie,” the shade of Omar Givens whispered in her ear. She’d been expecting him, or someone like him. Seeing dead people was a common side effect of warp transit. The accepted wisdom was that all such visions were mere hallucinations created by minds being deprived of all physical input, as meaningless as any dream. Those who experienced those visions firsthand weren’t so glib about them, however.

  “First member of my class to win a slot as a ship’s XO,” Omar went on, grinning despite having a large piece of ceramic-metal alloy sticking out of his chest. Blood seeped from his mouth as he spoke. “All that hard work, only to get killed on my first cruise. Do you know that the Wildcat’s captain is in your fleet? The bitch that let me die while she ran away is serving under you. As a Marine pilot. Funny how things turn out, isn’t it?”

  The ghost was mixing lies with half-truths. Yes, the former Lieutenant Commander who’d led the USS Wildcat to her doom was currently part of Sixth Fleet. But the woman hadn’t run away from her post; Omar himself – the real man, not this mocking apparition – had dragged her unconscious body to an escape pod, and managed to launch it to safety before his death. Givens would never forgive the former naval officer for allowing both ships under her command to be destroyed, but the unfair accusation of cowardice offended her sense of fair play. Disputing the facts with a hallucination was pointless, however. Nothing she would say would change his ranting, or whatever else followed in his wake.

  And yes, Sondra had been very proud of Omar. About a third of her five children and twenty-one grandchildren had made a career of the Navy, but none had gone so
far so fast as Omar, and none had shown the promise she’d seen in the young man. She’d made it abundantly clear that none of her descendants could trade on her name for their benefit, and come down hard on any signs of favoritism, to the point that being a Givens in the Navy guaranteed that everyone would be tougher on you than anyone else. Most youngsters had gotten discouraged and moved on to civilian life, or switched services. A few had learned to cope and done well. And her grandchild had been the best of them all – until his ship had been destroyed by a Lamprey stealth mine.

  The mocking ghost of her dead grandson vanished. She was glad to see him go.

  Her perceptions shifted. Givens found herself surrounded by the ruins of Heinlein-Five, the stench of death all around her. She’d insisted on visiting the fallen colony in person, although she could have easily stayed in orbit, safely removed from the carnage. The Navy had failed in its primary mission to protect the worlds of the United Stars of America, and she owed it to the dead to take a good long look at the results of that failure. She’d made every commissioned officer in Sixth Fleet do the same. The lesson of those tours had been simple: this is what awaits us all if we don’t do our duty.

  The fifth planet from the star Heinlein had been a ‘near-Goldie’ world, with an atmosphere well within the ideal ranges of temperature, oxygen-nitrogen mix and pressure for normal humans. It was also well-situated for trade and transportation, with one warp ‘valley’ connecting it to an even larger American colony; two other ley lines led to small outposts that in turn provided links to other galactic nation-states, all allegedly friendly.

  One of those friendly polities had allowed the Vipers to cross into their territory and invade the US. A massive battle had been fought at Heinlein System between Fifth Fleet and the Nasstah Armada. Fought, and lost: Fifth Fleet had been forced to retreat, leaving Heinlein-Five at the mercy of the invaders.