FORGE AND STEEL
Three Plague Wars: Alien Invasion Novelettes
by
David VanDyke
FORGE AND STEEL
Steel’s First Temper Copyright © 2016
A Hotter Forge Copyright © 2016
What Price Humanity? Copyright © 2015
Published by David VanDyke and REAPER PRESS for Apple/iTunes
All Rights Reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-37041-213-3
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, or by any means whatsoever (electronic, mechanical or otherwise) without prior written permission and consent from the author. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, businesses and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, businesses and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Table of Contents
Books by David VanDyke
Author’s Introduction
Steel’s First Temper
A Hotter Forge
What Price Humanity?
Books by David VanDyke
Plague Wars: Decade One
The Eden Plague
Reaper’s Run
Skull’s Shadows
Eden’s Exodus
Apocalypse Austin
Nearest Night
Plague Wars: Alien Invasion
The Demon Plagues
The Reaper Plague
The Orion Plague
Cyborg Strike
Comes The Destroyer
Forge and Steel
Plague Wars: Stellar Conquest
Starship Conquest
Desolator: Conquest
Tactics of Conquest
Conquest of Earth
Conquest and Empire
Books by D.D. VanDyke
D. D. VanDyke is the Mysteries pen name for fiction author David VanDyke.
California Corwin P.I. Mystery Series
Loose Ends - Book 1
(Contains Off The Leash novelette)
In a Bind - Book 2
Slipknot - Book 3
The Girl In The Morgue - Book 4
For more information visit http://www.davidvandykeauthor.com/
Author’s Note
This volume consists of three novelettes of roughly thirty pages and four or five chapters each. The first two are Jill “Reaper” Repeth stories, though told from the point of view of Marine Lieutenant Joseph “Bull” ben Tauros.
The last is a Vincent "Vango" Markis story.
The first and the last story have been published in the anthologies There Will Be War, Volume X and Riding the Red Horse, Volume 2. The middle story, however, is brand-new and is only available here.
These three novelettes take place within the period of nearly a century between the end of the novel Comes the Destroyer and the beginning of the novel First Conquest. The three stories are in chronological order, and the first two, Steel’s First Temper and A Hotter Forge, will help you transition seamlessly between those two books.
The third story, What Price Humanity?, illuminates some events that are also mentioned in Tactics of Conquest, Stellar Conquest Book 3, and so contains minor spoilers if you haven’t read that.
So, if you are committed to reading the series through to its end, it may be more enjoyable for you to read Tactics of Conquest first, and then What Price Humanity? immediately afterward.
In whatever order you read them, enjoy!
- David VanDyke
Steel’s First Temper
by David VanDyke
Chapter 1
Newly minted Marine Second Lieutenant Joseph “Bull” ben Tauros turned to look as an unfamiliar woman entered his platoon locker room aboard the EarthFleet assault transport Melita. He exchanged glances with Gunnery Sergeant Kang, his platoon sergeant, who shrugged.
“Can I help you?” Bull asked, walking toward the newcomer in nothing but athletic shorts.
Brown hair, a slim figure, a severe Anglo-Hispanic visage and dark, intense eyes greeted him. Those orbs never strayed from Bull’s face, despite his big bald head, naked torso and massive musculature. He easily topped out above one hundred fifty kilos. They didn’t call him Bull for nothing.
Even women who batted for the other team usually took a clinically interested look at his development. After all, the hard-won slabs of flesh were things of rarity in this age of laminated bones and combat cybernetics.
The ten-centimeter ferrocrystal Star of David medallion on a chain around his neck usually merited a glance as well.
“You Lieutenant Joseph Tauros?” the woman said, not flinching as he encroached deliberately on her personal space to tower above her.
“Joseph ben Tauros,” he corrected. “It means ‘son of the bull.’”
“That fits.” She stuck out her hand. “Jill Repeth. It means the clerks at Ellis Island couldn’t understand a Scotsman’s accent when he said ‘Repath.’ At least that’s the story I always heard. Personally, I wonder if some scoundrel ancestor of mine was running from the law and made it all up.”
Bull eyed her up and down, noting easy confidence wrapped in sharply pressed civvies adorned with an abundance of pockets. It was practical, rugged bush-style clothing, reminding him of former military who took security contractor jobs.
He didn’t take her hand. “You don’t look Scottish.”
“My mother was Hispanic. You don’t look Jewish.”
“Nobody looks Jewish. It’s a religion, not an ethnicity. I’m Israeli.”
“Nobody’s nothing but Earthers anymore.”
“That’s not what a lot of people think.”
“Then they need to think harder.” With a flat stare, Repeth closed her fingers and lifted her hand to point at Bull’s nose. “Might want to check that attitude, Eltee. We’re going to be working together and you do not want to get on my bad side.”
Bull repressed his desire to flatten the twink. No way that would end well. Either he’d put her in the infirmary, pissing off someone higher up – who’d obviously saddled him with some kind of advisor, maybe a reporter – or he’d fail to do so, which would make him look a complete fool in front of the dozen Fleet Marines around the room watching their brand-new, fresh-out-of-training platoon leader with interest.
Besides, he was old-fashioned enough to think manhandling a woman was unchivalrous.
Chuckles from behind him threatened to up the stakes, so he decided to cut his losses and avoid the game until he found out the rules. Forcing a wintry smile, he opened one meaty paw after all. “Call me Bull.”
“Reaper,” she said with a twitch of her eye, slapping her petite palm into his fist to clasp.
He applied just enough pressure to hurt, but the woman didn’t flinch. Didn’t even seem to notice, actually.
“I see you’re enhanced,” he said, letting go. “Who do you work for?”
The woman ignored the question. “You got an office? We need to talk.”
“I have a desk in the orderly room. Out the door to the left. Give me a minute to dress.” He pointed, watching her as she exited.
Laughter bubbled from the throats around him. “Chingawa, Eltee,” said Sergeant Acosta. “I think I’m in love. Leave some for the rest of us, okay sir?”
“I heard you’re in love with your right hand,” Bull replied as he donned a t-shirt, trousers, and then his tunic.
That brought more laughter, but at least it wasn’t directed
at him. Bull pulled on his boots. “And I get a feeling this one would rip your prick off and feed it to you.”
Ooh, went the noises around the room, along with more vulgarities aimed at Acosta, and Bull used them to cover his own exit.
In the orderly room, he saw a lone Personnel troop tapping at a keyboard, but no Repeth. “Ma’am?” Bull called into the air, looking around.
Repeth – Reaper, he reminded himself – leaned out of the open door of the company CO’s office. “In here, Bull.”
When he entered the cramped space, he saw she was alone. She waved him to a drop seat and, once he’d eased his bulk into it, sat down on the edge of the tiny desk, which put her head on the same level as his. “Here.” She handed him a battered secure tablet.
Before he looked at the device’s screen, he said, “So I gotta babysit you? Make sure you don’t get your head blown off or eaten by a Pureling while you get some nice 4D video footage?”
“No babysitting. This ain’t my first rodeo. I’ll pull my weight and more.”
“Would be nice to know who you really are.”
Reaper rapped her knuckles on the desk. “I’m sure you can find some references to me in the Fleet databases. But, time for that later. Read the rest of the orders first. This is a rescue. Intel thinks at least six of our people are being held at a Meme outpost. I won’t get in your way. You make the tactical decisions. Your job is to get us in, recover our people and get out.”
“Then what’s your job?”
“Read the mission brief.”
Lifting the device, he looked over the orders. A short-notice raid on a Meme facility, one of thousands of living bases that had been seeded within the asteroid belt and now waited, stealthy, watching. The Marines could expect heavy resistance by Purelings, programmed warriors cloned from subject races.
The seldom-seen aliens themselves looked like giant amoebas. Teeming with free-floating memory molecules, they spread their Empire by conquest and by blending with other life forms, subsuming them and their abilities. They could build mechanical structures and devices, but they favored living ships and bases, which grew and spread on their own.
With millions of asteroids to search across quadrillions of cubic kilometers, EarthFleet stayed busy playing whack-a-Meme while they waited for the inevitable next invasion.
“So you’re not a reporter. This says you’re in charge,” Bull said, containing his irritation with difficulty.
“Overall command.”
“What are you? Some kind of spook?”
“That’s classified.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“That’s irony, coming from you, Bull. Don’t make me regret this.”
“I’m already regretting it.”
Reaper sighed and glanced upward as if pleading with a watching god. “Let’s get this over with, shall we? You’re the big bad alpha male and I’m the liability of a split-tail who’s gonna get a Marine killed trying to protect her high-value ass.” She hopped over to take the seat behind the CO’s desk and quickly slipped papers and mementos into the drawers, leaving it clear. Then she set her right elbow in the center and held up her open hand, staring at him. “Let’s do it.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“Buk-buk-bukawww.” She sniffed, wiggling her fingers.
Bull stared at this crazy bitch who wanted to arm-wrestle him. She oozed confidence, and in his experience, that meant either she was batshit nuts, or she knew she could beat a fully boosted Marine. “Turn off our enhancements?”
Reaper laughed. “Fair fights are for fools. Come on, Bull. Live a little.”
“I’ll pass. You must be cheating.”
Her hands came down, rubbed together. “You’re not quite as dumb as you look.”
“You must have some really high-grade shit.”
“Beyond.” She grinned, held up one hand. Short blades perhaps two centimeters long sprouted from her fingertips, bright ferrocrystal coated in her own blood as they sliced through her skin from beneath, and then disappeared, healing quickly due to Eden Plague and, for sure, the latest combat nano in her blood.
“Ben zonah. You’re black ops.” Mods like finger-knives were forbidden to Marines. They’d just get in the way of fighting from within battlesuits.
“Direct Action, you mean? I have been. I’ve also been a Marine, and a Steward. And a few other things.” She shrugged.
Bull rubbed his jaw and flexed his hands in unconscious sympathy. Stewards were the white side of Fleet special operations, tasked with VIP protection, internal investigations and, it was rumored, sensitive anti-Blend missions. They got the best of everything.
By contrast, Direct Action operatives, General Spooky Nguyen’s special corps of door-kickers and enforcers, were...well, who knew what they were, beyond wild rumors? That’s why they called them black.
“How the hell old are you, anyway?” he asked. The rejuvenating Eden Plague made everyone appear young, so except for mannerisms and similar tiny cues, the woman in front of him could be ninety for all he knew.
“Old enough to be your mother twice over,” she said with the first genuine smile he’d seen. “Now, have we measured dicks enough, or do you want to go a couple rounds in the ring?”
“No thanks. I get a feeling I’d lose there too.”
“You might. But as you said, it’s only because I’m cheating, right?” She stared at him.
“Is that a trick question?”
“Yep. And here’s the answer. The enemy doesn’t fight fair, and neither do I. Neither should you. People don’t follow you because you can beat them in a ring or bench-press a bigger barbell. They follow you when they believe you’ll lead them to victory and, more to the point, you’ll get them home. Are you here to lead Marines and kill aliens, young butterbar, or to waste my time trying to act like the biggest, baddest bastard around?”
Bull continued to massage his hands as if he wanted to arm-wrestle after all. Eventually he grated, “I signed up to kill Meme.”
“Well, guess what? Like those orders say, you’re gonna get your very first chance. Today. And if you’re lucky, and your people do their jobs, and I watch your back, your grass-green ass won’t come home in a box.”
Chapter 2
Two hours of mission briefings later, Bull watched Reaper inspect her gear in the armory, running through the standard checklist faster than anyone he’d ever seen.
“Hey, what did you do right there?” he asked, holding out a hand.
“What, with my pulse rifle?” She flipped it over, sights down and magazine ports up. “Pre-charged its internal capacitor with a full power pack, and then swapped out with another one to recharge. Just like putting a round in the chamber and then reloading a mag. Gives me a two percent bump in available juice.”
Bull grunted. “Got any more tricks like that?”
“Got a million of ’em.”
He stared, hard. “You’re different.”
“From what?”
“Other females. Most of them, anyway.”
“What the hell does that mean? You have bad experiences with women?” She said it without rancor.
“No. Women compose forty percent of the Fleet, ten percent of Marines, and they’re all highly competent.” He said this as if reciting a text. “But most of them don’t seem so...”
“So into it?” Reaper laughed and slapped a magazine of caseless, electrically fired ammo into the weapon. “Yeah, I’ve been called every name in the book. Uber-bitch. Ballbuster. Clamp tramp. Bull dyke. And those are the nice ones. Some people still can’t accept that a straight woman can excel in this business. I gave up on letting it bother me long ago. I am different. I’m that one in a million women born, bred and built for this life. I’m a warrior. I’m your own personal Joan of Arc. If it helps, think of me as male.”
Bull shook his head. “Not likely,” he said, pointedly eyeing the understated curves beneath her t-shirt.
“Married, too.” She winked
and rubbed at a ring tattooed around the third finger of her left hand. “To a man, even.”
“All the good ones are taken, they say.”
“You wouldn’t want me for the long haul anyway. I gave up dating warriors decades ago. Not enough room for my ego and theirs. Then I met my husband. Cyber-geek. Best in the fleet. He does his thing, I do mine. It works. Here,” she said, putting aside her weapon and picking up electric depilators, handing them to him. “This should help.”
“What...a haircut?”
“Yeah. One less thing to worry about.” She turned around, lifting her already short hair with both hands. “Start from the bottom and it’ll come off easy.”
“Skin?”
“Yeah.”
He shrugged. “Okay.”
When her short brown locks lay on the floor, he had to admit she’d become a lot less feminine. Now she looked like a wiry boy.
The two dozen men and women nearby said nothing, but continued inspecting and readying their gear. No doubt they had been listening closely, but he’d warned them the civvie was in charge, that she was former military, and that she didn’t need babysitting.
And that she had some juice behind her. Bull was smart enough to know that anyone who’d been a Steward – hell, who might be one now – no doubt had flag officers’ personal numbers in her comlink.
He glanced at the wall screen, which displayed the countdown and prep checklist. “Loading in fifty mikes, people. Final inspection in forty.” He looked around. “Where are Acosta and Suarez?”
“Where do you think, Eltee?” Gunny Kang said with a smirk and a raised eyebrow.
“You gonna make me do your job for you?”
The senior NCO’s face blanked. “No, sir.” He turned to stalk out, in search of the two Marines who liked a quickie before every mission, whether training or real.
Not that there’d been a real one for Bull, until now. He caught Reaper looking at him. “What?”
She shrugged.
“You want to tell me how to run my outfit?”
“Did I say something?”
“Not with your mouth.”
“Fine. Since you asked...micromanaging your senior NCOs makes you look even more like a snot-green loot than you already are.”
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