Warp Marine Corps- The Complete Series

by C. J. Carella

  Their mission was over.

  * * *

  Kerensky struggled to his feet as the CIC and the bridge crew burned around him,

  Smoke was everywhere, along with the stench of burning plastic and flesh. His implant informed him he’d been mildly poisoned by toxic fumes, had several broken ribs, and was suffering from second-degree burns on his face and both hands. His personal force field had exhausted its power pack; the imp helpfully suggested he insert a new one as soon as possible.

  Moments before a massive explosion had torn into the bridge, the Prophet had collapsed, kicked his legs in an almost comical motion, and died. The same psychic shock had struck the Warplings who’d possessed dozens of his people. Everyone else aboard the Black ships had been stunned or killed outright. Kerensky had been on the verge of losing consciousness when he saw a massive wave of fire wash over the compartment shields and bust them open. He’d survived, by virtue of the second set of force fields protecting the commanders’ chair. That only meant he’d lived long enough to regret everything.

  It was over. He’d sold his soul, murdered billions, and killed other humans, all without achieving his final objective. The Imperium was battered but still stood. A decade or a century from now, some other fanatic would rise to power and demand the extinction of humanity.

  Maybe by then humans will be too strong to attack. It was a weak reed to hold on to, but he had no others.

  He coughed, feeling shards of pain in his chest as he did, and leaned on his command chair for support. A couple of his people were still alive, but he was the only one able to stand. Automatic firefighting systems kicked in and managed to drench the worst of the flames, but that was of little comfort for the dead or dying. He could hear the minds of his remaining spacers. Most of them were dying or falling into comatose states. Whatever had struck down all their Warpling allies had been nearly as bad for the psychically sensitive.

  Faceless armor-clad figures emerged from the smoke, weapons at the ready, led by someone Kerensky’s IFF sensor revealed as a mere captain. Warp Marines.

  Kerensky didn’t know if they had orders to take him alive, but he was in no mood to be taken prisoner. Ignoring the agony of his charred hand and the barked warnings of the Marines, he reached for his sidearm. The Marine captain did the honors himself, leveling his assault rifle before the disgraced admiral had completed his draw.

  I’m sorry, babushka, he had time to think before a burst of gunfire put an end to things.

  Eighteen

  “All resistance has ceased, Admiral.”

  Sondra Givens nodded. Her Marine contingent had been savaged – at least another battalion’s equivalent in casualties in addition to the twelve hundred lost Marines in the destroyed Black Ships. Third Fleet had also suffered: nine ships destroyed outright, with every other vessel heavily damaged. The human formation would have to rely on the Imperium’s charity to get all her hulls ready for the return trip.

  She looked at the screen where three blue-green worlds continued to teem with life. Her ships had earned everything the Gimps could do for them.

  “Any prisoners?”

  “About two hundred all told, ma’am. Most of them either committed suicide or just died from no apparent cause. The survivors are mostly in catatonic or comatose states.”

  Something had happened inside that massive warp aperture, now thankfully closed. Only four Corpse-Ships had emerged from it, which was four more than Sondra had ever expected to see again. The miracle workers had done it again, she suspected. Unfortunately, the missing gunship had belonged to Commander Genovisi.

  Whatever had happened on the other side of that gate, the effect on the remaining Black Ships had been decisive. The fighting had been over in a matter of minutes after the aperture snapped shut and released some sort of psychic blast. The t-wave emission had stunned many of the sensitives among her crews, although the re-attuned force fields had protected them from the worst effects. Most of the mutineers had keeled over dead, or been rendered incapable of offering even token resistance. She suspected the Marines hadn’t been in any mood to take prisoners, which accounted for the low number of survivors. She would make sure nobody suffered because of those heat-of-battle decisions. Nobody who hadn’t been in their shoes would understand.

  “Admiral Kerensky is among the confirmed KIAs, ma’am.”

  “I expected as much,” she said coldly, hiding the pang of anguish she felt at the news. Nicholas had turned into a monster, but she still remembered the good man he had been, and his loss still hurt.

  “To all Third Fleet personnel: well done,” she sent on the all-hands, all-ships command channel. “We have prevailed. The mutineers have been dealt with, and their ships have been captured or destroyed.”

  Everybody not currently doing something too important to stop cheered at the news.

  “This battle concludes all hostilities. We have agreed on an armistice between the United Stars and all belligerents, pending further negotiations.”

  It was too early to say the war was over. There would be some wrangling and posturing, although she thought the Imperium would be unlikely to do either for very long. Not after standing on the edge of the abyss. At least, she hoped so. Humans had brought the known galaxy to the brink of disaster, but had also stopped it. Maybe the message would get through: push us into a corner, and you won’t like what happens next. Nobody will. There were always slow learners, but the lesson should have sunk in.

  Meanwhile, she could say this much:

  “We are going home.”

  * * *

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  Colonel Zhang looked like she wanted to say something else, but whatever she saw in Russell’s face stopped her. “That is all, Corporal. Dismissed.”

  He saluted, left the compartment, and made it all the way through two passageways before it got to him. His fist hit the bulkhead two, three, four times, reinforced knuckles breaking under the impacts. A bubblehead heading the other way looked at him but wisely kept his mouth shut and rushed off.

  Shoulda known better.

  Russell wasn’t an idiot. He knew good times never lasted. He’d just lost his mind for a while. Things had stopped making sense since the night he and Gonzo had taken a drive to see some witch they’d thought was a whore on the side. Okay, getting laid had been business as usual, but afterwards he’d turned into a moron. Going back for seconds. Writing her. Falling for her. Stupid. All he’d gotten out of the deal was feeling like shit. And worse of all, he didn’t think he would have changed anything he’d done, even if now that he knew how it was going to end.

  Fucking stupid.

  He looked at his broken hand. His nano-meds were already on the job, but he was going to have to go to sick bay, or his own imp would tattle on him. Fucking shit.

  Don’t be a complete idiot, Russell.

  The voice in his sounded just like her. Like Deborah. The witch. The dead witch.

  Dead, sure. But warp space is full of dead people, isn’t it?

  Russell didn’t have any idea what she was talking about, but he didn’t care. She was a witch, after all. A warp witch. Next time they made transit, she might be there, waiting for him. And if she still had time for him, he’d make time for her. He waited to see if she had anything else to say, but that was it. Maybe he was just hearing things. Maybe he’d finally lost his damn mind. Truth to tell, he didn’t give a shit.

  The ship’s doctor mentioned he’d never seen anybody show up to sick bay with a broken hand and a big shit-eating grin on his face.

  Starbase Malta, Xanadu System, 169 AFC

  “Hear ye, hear ye,” Captain Gupta, Commandant of Starbase Malta, announced on the all-hands channel, interrupting every transmission, show or VR flick in the facility, both military or civilian, no doubt to the great annoyance of many.

  This better be good, Heather McClintock thought. She’d been in a foul mood for a while. Three months of negotiations, and Third Fleet had only been back
for a week before being sent off into Lamprey space for a show-the-flag cruise meant to impress both the Lhan Arkh and their current dance partners, the Circle. If Peter got killed after the war was all but over, she’d be pissed off enough to engage in some off-the-books wet work.

  “On this date,” Captain Gupta said. “September Nineteenth, One-Hundred and Sixty-Nine After First Contact, the United Stars of America, the Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, the Galactic Imperium and the Lhan Arkh Congress have signed a binding peace treaty, ending all hostilities between all parties. Malta Base is now at DEFCON-Five. New watch assignments to be announced on a departmental or sectional basis. All wartime restrictions and regulations will be lifted at 1800 hours this evening. Leave and liberty schedules are being revised and will be posted shortly.”

  There was a pause, and Heather could hear cheering both on the background of the all-hands transmission as well as from outside her office. She felt like shouting out herself, but resisted the temptation, courtesy of years of emotionally-repressive McClintock upbringing. Even they couldn’t stop the stinging in her eyes, though. Must be dust or something.

  It’s over. It’s finally over.

  “To all personnel in Malta, military and civilian: thank you for your service, labors and sacrifices. Victory would have been impossible without them. God Bless America, and all of us. That is all.”

  That wasn’t all, of course. Heather set aside her millennia-old data analysis and got to work on digging out the details. The full text of the peace agreement would have to wait until a ship arrived bearing it, of course. The QE-Telegram would only have the highlights, since even a major installation like Malta only had a few tens of thousands of characters in storage, making long-winded messages impossibly expensive, not to mention wasteful. But her clearance level allowed her to access the full telegram and draw her own conclusions.

  After a couple of minutes of reading, she was still happy but no longer ecstatic. Like all good diplomatic agreements, neither side had gotten everything it wanted.

  The biggest losers had been the Lampreys: in addition to the customary reparations and the surrender of all personnel involved in the Days of Infamy, the People’s Congress had agreed to demilitarize all its borders with human space and cede bases to the US Navy on those systems, in effect leaving their frontiers wide open to American forces. That had been a huge concession, but the only alternative would have been war with the US and the Imperium, a war the Lhan Arkh couldn’t hope to win. Especially with the Circle having extracted its own humiliating peace treaty after lopping off a hefty chunk of Congressional space.

  The Imperium would pay heavily for its attempted genocide, of course, if not quite as much as the Lampreys. The return of all interned humans, massive war reparations that would impoverish the Gal-Imps for decades to come, and withdrawal from several systems along the Xanadu-Imperium chain, giving the US a presence and a border with their former enemies, as well as access to numerous new trade routes. More sources of wealth and influence, and new neighbors, with the attendant troubles and opportunities. The CIA would be very busy over the next few years, establishing intelligence networks and buttressing old ones. They’d soon be dealing with two Blue Men factions, as well as the Leegor, whose only previous direct contact with the US had been during the Battle of New Texas. The Class Three aliens hadn’t been officially part of the war, and thus not signatories in the peace accords. Nobody knew if they would be neutrals or another potential enemy.

  It never ends.

  The US had won the largest conflict in recent galactic history, meaning a good four thousand years before First Contact had introduced humanity to the merciless realities of Starfarer civilization. In doing so, however, it had firmly established her species’ reputation as dangerous and near-supernatural beings, whose uncanny abilities relating to warp space made them somebody to be feared and, should it become possible, destroyed. The conflict had purchased years – maybe even centuries – of peace, however. Time to grow stronger, perhaps even near unassailable.

  Heather decided that there was more than enough cause for celebration. She only wished Peter could be here. Third Fleet would make its way back to human space soon enough, however. She had a strong feeling that he’d manage to survive until then. And ever since she got her t-wave implants, her hunches had a way to coming true more often than not. For the time being, she would just break open a bottle of Pinot, have a few drinks, and go to bed.

  Peace in our time.

  She hoped that phrase didn’t prove to be as empty as when it was first coined.

  New Texas System, 193 AFC

  “Are you sure, Matthew?”

  “Yes, Dad.”

  Major Peter Fromm, USWMC, Ret., nodded at the solemn teenager, fighting a smile at the slightly exasperated tone in his son’s voice. Matthew Fromm was an unusually serious kid – the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree – but he was still fifteen years old, with all the impatience of the young when approaching the threshold of adulthood.

  “I think going mustang will give me the full experience of what it means to be a Marine,” Matthew went on. “I figure on joining up during the second half of Ob-Serv plus another ten years enlisted, then apply to OCS. and then get a commission.”

  Fromm nodded. That wasn’t particularly unusual nowadays. Former-enlisted officers were common as dirt; those who didn’t learn the wrong lessons during their grunt years often made excellent commanders. The rest ended up stuck as Second or First Ell-Tees for the rest of their careers. He approved of Matthew’s choice, although he knew that his son would soon learn things were never as easy or uncomplicated as he expected. Some lessons needed to be learned on one’s own. And this was as good a time to join the Corps as any. Twenty years of peace, except for the occasional police action or minor conflict; just enough action to keep the fresh blood from becoming too complacent, but without the constant threat of death that had loomed over most of Fromm’s tenure. That he wouldn’t wish on anybody.

  He leaned back on his chair, and his gaze moved past the tall, gangling teenager standing at fake-attention in front of him. The comfortable living room was full of happy memories: this was where he’d helped young Matthew and his sister Melissa learn their ABCs, where they’d celebrated birthdays and First Communions, where he’d gotten together with old friends and traded family stories. Hansen had retired a few years after making Major and also settled in New Texas. He and Fromm had worked for the same fabber consortium for many peaceful years.

  “How about you, Dad?”

  “How about me?”

  “Now that Mom’s gone and Melissa’s off on Ob-Serv, have you thought about, you know, going back? Back to the Corps?”

  Heather had been asked to rejoin the Agency a couple of months ago, and she’d reluctantly agreed. She was on her way to Xanadu System. Fromm might follow her there, or he might not; he hadn’t decided yet. Sometimes a long absence was just what a marriage needed to stay healthy. They’d said their goodbyes with real love and affection, though; that hadn’t changed, in war or peace.

  “No, Matthew. I won’t be rejoining the Corps.”

  He was done with all of that. Putting together his Company one more time after the war was over had been enough. That part of his life was over.

  Unless duty calls. Unless the Corps, the country, needs you.

  Fromm wanted to shake his head at his inner voice, but knew it was useless. Some things could not be denied. Duty was heavier than a mountain.

  “Was it that bad, Dad?”

  “Sometimes, it was that good,” he told his son. “Serving taught me things about myself I would have never learned otherwise. But I’ve gone through it. You’ll see.” And some things, I hope you never see, he didn’t say. Best not to tempt fate.

  “All right,” Matthew said. “I guess I will. I know it’s not going to be easy, or fun. But that’s the point, right? To show you’re a man. To show you can take all that crap and keep going.”

 
; Was I ever that gung-ho? Probably.

  “I…” The young man hesitated for a second, knowing he was going to say something corny, but he said it anyway. It might be corny, but also true. “I want to make you proud of me, Dad.”

  Fromm smiled at his son.

  “I already am.”

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  GLOSSARY

  (Note: Some of the military/Marine jargon below comes from current and past terms used by the US military; the rest are made up, on the grounds that new terms would have been developed over the decades since First Contact).

  03: Warp Marine Slang for someone with an infantry MOS, as opposed to a POG (see below).

  1369: A fake MOS that indicates an individual is unlucky and inclined to give oral pleasure to males of the species.

  AFC: After First Contact. The new US calendar has Year Zero beginning on the day the Risshah bombed the Earth, killing some four billion people.

  ALS-43: Automatic Launch System. Portable heavy weapon that fires a variety of 15mm ammunition, including grenades, armor-piercing and incendiary rounds. Also known as the All-Good or Alsie.

  Area Force Field: A heavy force field can generate a sphere hundreds or even thousands of yards in diameter. Vehicle-mounted versions are used to protect advancing troops.

  Blaster: Slang magnetically-propelled slug-throwers that usually fire plasma-explosive bullets. Also see Infantry Weapon Mk 3.

  Biosphere Classes: The four known forms of life in the galaxy, which appear to descend from four primordial biology groupings that somehow spread throughout known space. Class One. Two and Three Biospheres are carbon-based but each has a distinct biochemical makeup that make them incompatible with each other. Class Four entities are silicon-based and can only survive under environments other classes find uninhabitable.