Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Free Book Offer
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
ALIEN
INFESTATION
Peter Fugazzotto
Copyright © 2017 Peter Fugazzotto
All rights reserved.
ASIN: B06XCW7FVM
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Chapter One
THE SHIP HUNG against the stars, a gaping hole torn in its dark metal hull. Even with the gash in its side, the name on the space ship was still visible: Galileo D3. A Federation research vessel.
"That's a money maker," said Snake Walker, tapping at the video screen display in the cockpit of his ship, the Phaethon. They were a week away from the nearest outpost, the pawn port of Midasia, just outside the control of the Federated Territories. They had followed a distress beacon to this ship, out here alone in the middle of space, unclaimed. Now he stared at the Galileo through the video display and thought about the fortune he was going to make.
Snake adjusted the leather eye patch over his left eye and smiled. He scratched at the several days' growth of beard on his cheeks. The Galileo was a present being dropped on his lap. He could imagine the credits pouring into his account when they towed the vessel back to Midasia. No questions asked. Just credits filling his account.
That's what Snake needed now. His previous salvage had turned out to be worth far less than he had hoped for, and the cursed moneylenders had intercepted the transaction and skimmed a full seventy percent off the top to cover the loan he had taken out on the Phaethon.
He opened his fingers over the display to zoom in on the Galileo. The ship alone would bring in credits. If it were fully outfitted with computers and high-end research instruments, the credits would just roll in.
This salvage could be the one to get him ahead. Not enough to retire. He was still young enough, in his late thirties, and fit enough, still maintaining at least the outline of the body he once had as a Federated Space Marine before the court martial sent him on the path of salvage pirate. Put him in a uniform and give him a shave on his square jaw and buzz of his haggard brown hair, and he still had the composure to be confused for a marine, maybe even the captain of a destroyer.
"I don't like it, boss," said Fifi. She squinted at the screen. "I think it's a trap."
Snake turned from the monitor to look at his two fellow salvage pirates. An odd pair. The little Chinese girl with her pigtail braids and her skin-tight yellow jump suit. Early twenties. Cute at first, until you put a gun in her hand. Then she was deadly. And the bigger the gun, the happier she was. Snake wondered if when she was a baby she was given guns to play with rather than dolls. It would explain her fixation.
And right beside her stood Crunch shoveling in a bowl of bugmeal rations. His bald head glistened with sweat. A big lug in a stained t-shirt and camo pants, but also an expert with explosives. One of those rebels from I05 given amnesty after the Eight Year War. He couldn't put his skill to work for the Federation so he found himself with jobs at the edges of the territories. And salvage pirates always plied their trade at the edges of civilization.
"Everything's a trap, sweets," Crunch said, his cheeks full and bits of bugs falling out of his lips. "The only question is how do we not get caught."
"He's right," said Snake.
"Shouldn't we turn away from a trap then?" asked Fifi.
"We won't get caught."
Fifi laughed. "Is my memory failing me?"
"I got us out of that jail. No charges were pressed."
"And we lost the salvage. All that time and fuel for nothing. I warned you about that."
Snake shook his head. Maybe it was a mistake keeping Fifi on the Phaethon. She was too cautious. Not cut out for a life where everything was a gray area.
Crunch licked the bowl, slurping at the remains of the processed food. Snake winced. The man liked the bug rations too much. He even ate it when they reached the ports. Claimed it grew on him.
"If it's a trap, we just blow everything up," said Crunch licking his lips.
"Your answer for everything." Fifi rolled her eyes.
"It's never failed me yet," he said. He pointed back to the monitor. "That's a big hole in that ship. And it looks like it came from inside."
Snake returned to stare at the monitor and the torn metal of the Galileo, the bent strips folding back towards him. He imagined some kind of accident. An explosion. Those military boys were always playing around with weapons they should not have been. He knew that better than others. His own accidental military explosion had led to his expulsion from the Space Marines.
"We go in," said Snake rubbing his hands together. "Not leaving this hunk of metal out here for someone else to find. If there's money to be made, I'm first in line."
"Maybe we should call this one in," said Fifi. She tapped another monitor in the cockpit. It pulled up a display of where they were in the galaxy. Their ship a green dot hovered inside of a red dotted line. "Legally, we're still inside the Federated Territories which means it's not a salvage. It's a tow job. A tow job back to Midasia won't even pay for the fuel."
"We say it's a salvage. Who's going to know? We're in the middle of nowhere."
"They'll be able to match our coordinates when we connect our system with the Galileo's. They'll see that we're still in the Federated Territories. Can't really hide that, Snake. Computers don't lie."
Snake frowned. "To think that I was going to pass the Phaethon on to you when I retire. You lack gumption. If you play by the rules, you follow the orders down to finest detail, then you might as well just run a towing business."
Fifi jutted her chin out at him. "So what are you saying?"
"We do a manual hook up, drag the Galileo the hundred clicks or so over that invisible border, and then we do everything proper. We properly hitch to the Galileo. Let the AIs swap saliva. When the systems connect, we'll be outside of the Federated Territories and can claim the proper right to the salvage. The computers don't need to lie. Not if we play this smart."
"I still think it's a trap. This is a serious military grade vessel, and if we get caught dragging this salvage out of the Federated Territories, I'm not
sure we're going to be able to talk our way out of this one."
"We're not going to get caught, Fifi. Come now. Trust me. Real quick in and out. We jump through the compression chambers, do a quick visual inspection, connect a tow cable, and we're on our way before anyone is wise to it. We'll be at Midasia in a few days. Out here at the edge of the Federation, no one's going to know the better. We'll be sneaky. Plus, worse come to worse, we can always bribe our way out. If there's one thing I learned in life, it's that you can always count on someone being more corrupt and selfish than I am.
"I still don't like this," said Fifi. She crossed her arms and shook her head.
Snake punched in the commands to bring the Phaethon close enough to the Galileo so that they could create a docking bridge. "Like it or not, we're boarding that ship and claiming it as our own. The rights of salvage."
Chapter Two
SERGEANT WINN ENGSTROM tried to ignore the noise coming from down the hall of the destroyer Poros. She would have if Sergeant Smith had not been walking alongside her, but with him there, she was left with no choice but to show that she was in control, that her team was not breaking the rules.
"That sounds like Marine Team 6," said Smith cupping one hand to his ear. He nodded, a forced toothless smile on his face. "That's your team, right? Engstrom. I thought you had them better trained. Thought you were supposed to be something special, not just a name. But then again I guess that's why it's team 6 instead of 2."
Smith had been at Engstrom for six months now, ever since she joined the crew of the Poros. He hated her and wanted her to fail. She did not know if it was because of her father, or whether he was intimidated by her looks, or whether he was one of those who thought that women did not belong in the Space Marines.
She had hoped he would give up his badgering, but half a year later, with the Poros running a convoy with a colony ship at the edge of the Federated Territories he only had seemed to grow worse.
It was too bad, Engstrom thought. He should have been the perfect soldier. At least from the way he looked. His white teeth glistened, his eyes squinted just so to show off his ocean blue eyes, his hair shone with gel and not a single strand was out of place. He filled out his armor with smooth muscles. But beneath the veneer he was dry rot. Engstrom wanted to punch him right in the face. She imagined her fist smashing that pretty little nose and blood and rot dripping down his chin onto his black body armor.
"Just a moment of levity, Smith. I'm sure that's all it is." Engstrom hoped they would quiet down enough that she could pretend to ignore them. But instead, they suddenly roared.
Smith looked at his forearm monitor. He tapped it with one finger. "My clock must be off because, lo-and-behold, it's indicating to me that it's five minutes past lights out time, and that is certainly not the sound of well-trained soldiers sound asleep."
"No, it's not." Engstrom caught herself clenching her fists at her side. She consciously relaxed them. She took a step forward in the direction of the command center, but Smith did not move.
They were heading there together but he was testing her.
"I'll deal with this," she said.
His smile did not show any teeth and his eyes only disgust. "I'm sure you will. Engstrom. Can't have the only team led by an Engstrom being the least disciplined, can we?"
Even as he walked away, his boots cracking against the floor, marching in step when no one was around even to look, she wanted to punch him in the back of the head. For a moment, she imagined pulling the prod from its holster and hitting him with so much electricity that he pissed his body armor.
Laughter rolled out of the bunkroom. Smith turned and threw up a casual salute before rounding the corner ahead.
Engstrom cursed. She could not walk away from this now. He had forced her hand.
Hard enough to be a woman in the marines, even harder being the daughter of Federation Forces Commander Engstrom. Harder that everyone knew that she could have simply followed at his heels and been in charge of her own destroyer at this point in her career, instead of choosing to stay a sergeant, to not work her way up but be content in the dirt and mud alongside the grunts.
She remembered an old photo of her standing next to her father. She was in her "dress" uniform, epaulets on her sleeves, cap worn at a tilt, medals pinning her chest. A child still, just before she had to make a choice about joining the Academy, and moving into the officer path.
She was top of her class – best marksman, scored highest on military history, and unsettled the others with the way she led her teams in the military strategy games. Never lost. In her whole four years. Youngest cadet to ever lead a strategy team.
She remembered that final game of her senior year. In the world of the virtual game, she and the other team leaders were on the safety of an orbital command vessel overseeing pitting ground forces against an impossibly fortified AI, housed in an impregnable tower. She and the other team leaders, the sons and daughters of the elite, watched from above, as wave after wave, of virtual space marines, grunts, were sent in only to mowed down by the robotic sentries of the AI. It anticipated their every move.
The other leaders did not care. They sent wave after wave of grunts to their death. The team leaders had done a calculation and they believed they eventually they would be able to overrun the tower, even though the price was three-quarters of the ground force. A slaughter.
Engstrom watched as the AI sent out robot wedges through the attacking troops, to split them, surround them, and slaughter them.
Engstrom doubted the calculations. Even if they were right, the price was too high.
Those ground troops would never breach those walls. They would never reach the foot of the tower. They would never reach the control room at the top to blast the AI's mainframe into a million bits.
So Engstrom broke from her fellow team leaders. Covertly, she hacked into the navigation system of the virtual orbital command ship on which she and the other team leaders schemed, positioned it over the tower, and then cut its power so it dropped like a rock towards the surface of the virtual planet.
The command ship cleanly hit the tower, terminating the AI with a single shot. The training exercise ended.
Her fellow team leaders were stunned. They called her crazy, reckless, unfit.
After graduating, Engstrom skipped the Academy, forgoing officer school, and instead enlisting as a grunt.
She always thought others would have respected her for staying true to the boots on the ground instead of going the route of the elites. But her subordinates bent the rules, her peers whispered about her from out of earshot, and the admiral continually gave her the worst assignments.
But despite all that, she believed in the Space Marines, and especially her team. Without a doubt, they could be more precise and better disciplined than they were, but the team was the basic building block of the entire branch, and she was loyal to her team.
They just needed discipline.
Then they would show her more respect.
Engstrom pivoted back towards the bunkroom and walked quickly down the hall.
She was almost there when Harrison stepped out of the room. He was bare-chested, a towel draped over his shoulder and a toothbrush and toothpaste in one hand. He was a raw recruit six months in, a boy still, hardly old enough to be called a man, and already destined to a life among the stars. His dark, thick eyebrows contrasted with his clipped hair.
"What's going on here, Ensign?"
Harrison's words caught behind his throat. His cheeks turned a bright red. He stared down at his feet. "Sir! Ma'am. Sergeant Engstrom."
"You can look at me. I don't bite."
He glanced up at her, back at his feet, and then with a monumental effort, held her gaze.
She had seen this look before. Her pale blue eyes, her blonde hair, the features and figure she inherited from her mother, a former model, made men stupid before her. She hated it.
"Harrison!"
"Sergeant, ma'am." He thu
dded his bare heels together and gave her a sharp salute.
"What's going on, Ensign?"
"Brushing my teeth, ma'am."
"Are you an idiot?"
His posture collapsed. He looked at his toothbrush and then back at her. "No, ma'am. I don't think so."
"What's going on in the bunkroom, Harrison?"
A big smile broke across his face. "Oh, that. Nothing. Cards, ma'am. Gomes is running a game, and everyone's credits are disappearing in his pocket. Just a little fun to blow off steam."
"Cards?"
He suddenly realized that he had spoken too much.
Engstrom stormed past him into the bunkroom. The remaining eleven marines were circled around a card game or lounging in their bunks. She smelled ship whiskey. Gomes, a contraband cigarette dangling from his mouth, his hair carefully gelled, was in the process of dragging credit chips towards a rather sizable pile when he looked up and saw Engstrom entering the room.
"Is this the kind of discipline I expect?"
The marines stood up and snapped to attention. Eyes forward, lips pressed together, arms at their sides.
"Is it?"
A thunderous "No, ma'am."
"And yet here we are, fifteen minutes past lights out, and I find a card game underway. Is this what you think I expect?"
"No, ma'am."
"You embarrass me. You know the rules. They are simple. And yet you refuse to obey them. I almost get the sense that you do that just to spite me. Is that what you are trying to do? To make me look bad in front of the other sergeants?"
Gomes turned to her. "Sergeant Engstrom, you know that's not the case. Not at all. We're loyal to you." He glanced at the others, and then took one step forward, back ramrod straight, eyes facing forward again. "You can blame me, ma'am. The others were ready to turn out. I convinced them to play a few hands with me. I kept them playing past lights out. I am willing to accept whatever punishment you see fit."
Engstrom allowed her gaze to pass over her team. She needed them sharp. They needed to follow her simplest of orders in times of peace so that they would follow the ones in the darkest of times. She would need to set an example.
Alien Infestation Page 1
