Forged to Hunt

by James David Victor

  Jack fired the Tac cannon and another Chit was obliterated, reduced to a few writhing tentacles and a thick stream of slime that quickly dissipated and drifted into space.

  Then another Chitin leaped from the broken Hydra, and another, and yet another. As the tac boat’s cannon purred and poured fire at the new targets, another Chitin leaped toward the tac boat.

  The cannon destroyed one soldier after another, taking only seconds to acquire a new target and destroy it. Jack saw that each Chitin was making it just a little closer than the last. Jack backed slowly and carefully away.

  The seventh Chitin was destroyed. Jack knew to expect one more. He deactivated the cannon. Coming through the splattered remains came the last, the eighth of the Hydra’s crew. It moved toward the tac boat at a constant speed, its only form of propulsion coming from the leap out of the Hydra.

  Jack kept the ship moving backwards, holding the Chitin at a controlled distance from the front of the view screen. The Chitin soldier reached out in vain with its tentacles and tried to catch hold of the tac boat. Jack kept out of its reach. He called his small team forward.

  “This is why we need to be alert at all times,” Jack said, pointing at the Chitin soldier thrashing in front of the tac boat, reaching out with its tentacles and grinding its rasping teeth. “This is why we need you to be Marines. One of these Chits could be lurking in the next shadow. Only by keeping focused on what you are doing will you reduce the chance that one of these will be the last thing you ever see.”

  Jack looked back at his small team. They were staring at the flailing Chit. Jack activated the cannon and let the system acquire the target and destroy it. Then he targeted the remains of the Hydra craft the soldiers had come from. He set the cannon to deliver an incendiary pulse that would reduce the Chitin Hydra to a molten mass. Then he marked the remains, its speed and heading, on the Fleet database.

  Jack re-pressurized the tac boat and pulled off his helmet. “Okay, relax. This is supposed to be our scheduled rest period.”

  Jack moved the seat back away from the flight console and stretched out his legs. He felt tiredness creep over him. He let it come and drifted to sleep.

  He was running over the prairie of his childhood. Sarah Reyes was running with him. Th sun was hot. The ground, hard. The sound of dry grass rustling and the smell of the dust. He was drinking water in the kitchen of home, sunlight sparkling on the edges of his favorite childhood glass. His brother was on the hill calling him. Jack turned as he heard his father and mother call him from the family room. He walked, excited and nervous, over the cool stone floor of his boyhood home. Captain Pretorius was standing at the holostage in the middle of the family room.

  “You’ve got a lot to learn,” Pretorius said.

  Jack turned around. A Chitin soldier was standing behind him, looming over him. Thick gray fluid dripped from its round mouth and deep inside the mouth, he saw the snapping blades of the guillotine-like beak.

  Then the Chitin was Sam Torent, fists raised and ready to strike. Then it was Tyler, a rigid Chitin tentacle lodged in her chest.

  “You’ve got a lot to learn,” Pretorius called out again.

  Jack woke with a jolt. He felt uneasy. He quickly scanned the flight console. He had been asleep for two hours. Two hours unbroken sleep. The tac boat was quiet. His small team all strapped in their chairs. Their medical readouts showed Jack they were all asleep.

  Jack settled back into the chair. He wouldn’t be able to hunt Chitins or command effectively if he was fatigued. He let himself drift back to sleep.

  3

  The suit’s built-in chronometer woke Jack gently. If this had been an emergency, the suit would have revived Jack with an intravenous dose of stimulant more effective than a bucket of ice water in the face, but as it was, the suit could let Jack wake slowly.

  The console blinked with colored lights indicating the tac boat’s systems in various states of operation, some in standby mode, others running scheduled self-diagnostics. Jack brought the boat back to operational readiness.

  The holostage on the flight console showed the line of tac boats stretched across the width of the asteroid belt. Jack sent a command to every ship of Task Force One to get underway and continue with the operation.

  “Maintain formation,” Jack said over the Task Force One channel. “Don’t rush. Check every last rock, every little cavity and crater. Report any contact directly to Fleet Command and Control. Forge out.”

  Setting the boat’s search pattern, Jack saw that the first stop would be a major asteroid, the biggest asteroid that Task Force One had yet encountered. The rest of the search line would have to slow to let Jack conduct a ground search.

  His small team in the back was casually pulling on their helmets and getting ready for another day of reconnaissance. Jack hoped they didn’t run into any trouble—he was beginning to enjoy the slower pace of life. For too long, he had been running and fighting. The search was welcome break.

  The tac boat was handling well. In all his time in the Fleet Marines, Jack had traveled in some extremely rundown craft. From company landing craft to destroyer-class ships of the line, the Fleet had been at war with the Chitins for so long that everything had taken a beating and was in desperate need of repair. The tac boats had all been serviced and put in good shape for the asteroid belt sweep.

  Even though the whole fleet was still on active service, there was time to refit and repair. The destroyers were patrolling the inner system along with the fleet’s two remaining carriers in a big wing. They were in close proximity to the industrial sectors on Eros and its orbiting asteroid mines. With a break in the conflict and the shortened supply lines, the fleet was being put back into good order. With every minor repair and every small maintenance job, the fleet was growing in strength. Although it would take a year or more to rebuild, it was becoming more powerful by the day.

  The group of corvettes that had been assigned to patrol the debris ring left by the planet Eras found it clear of Chitins. The debris left by Eras was localized but was steadily spreading out along the orbit the planet used to occupy and creating a new asteroid belt. Already, mining ships and civilian crews were being landed on the debris, mining its exposed core for metals and rare elements that would be invaluable for sustaining and repairing the fleet.

  The asteroid belt was another vital source of material, but it was too far out from the defensive cover of the planetary defense cannon to risk the fleet’s warships, so the tac boats and the fighters from the destroyed carrier craft had been deployed to the asteroid belt to sweep it clean. The belt had been divided into four quadrants and Jack had volunteered to lead Task Force One, made up of Cobra Company, in the sweep of one of the four quadrants.

  So far, the big wing of the carriers and destroyers had covered the entire inner system. The planet Eros had been declared Chitin-free by the battalions of the Scepter Carrier Group.

  The Chitins were gone. Jack could hardly believe it. He expected a Chit to appear around every corner. The only Chitins he had so far encountered were the abandoned remnants of the massive Chitin fleet. Unpowered Hydras and lone soldiers lost and abandoned. Forgotten fragments of a once devastatingly powerful force.

  It was tempting to believe that after the asteroid belt was clear, humanity could return to normal, return to living as they had done before the first encounter with the Chits and the start of the brutal war.

  The target asteroid appeared out of the black. It was large and roughly spherical. It was among the biggest asteroids in the belt, and although it was not charted as a former mine asteroid, it was highly likely it had been occupied by humans at some point in its history.

  The tac boat matched the asteroid’s spin and Jack brought the boat down, resting it on the rocky surface. With the ship secured on its landing site, Jack called out to his small team.

  “Helmets on. Pulse rifles ready.” He verified his team was suited up and then began decompression. With the air fully drained back t
o the storage tanks, Jack nodded to Drake at the door.

  “Open her up, Jason.”

  Drake appeared to hesitate as Jack climbed out of his seat. Attah gave Drake a nudge and then the door was opened. The side of the tac boat opened and the small boarding ramp slid down to the surface.

  Drake stood in the fully opened door way and looked back at Jack.

  “Take point, Jason,” Jack said and waved Drake out.

  Attah and Garcia both looked at Jack for instructions. Jack sighed to himself. He couldn’t believe these Marines still showed no initiative, no drive. They waited for every last instruction, not willing or able to act without the explicit order from Jack. They were either unable or unwilling. Jack still hoped that with a bit more time together, they would become able and willing, and place themselves among the best in the Marine service.

  Jack knew the fleet needed good Marines, now as much as ever. The war had robbed the service of its most experienced professionals. The men and women who had served in the fleet before the outbreak of war had been well trained and highly motivated.

  Then came the war and within weeks, the fleet had lost dozens of companies. The replacements had come forward from the population, ready to fight for humanity’s survival.

  And then the Fleet Marines had suffered their biggest losses with companies made up of new recruits and seasoned professionals defeated in the battles of the asteroid belt and the moons of the gas giants Penthus and Zelos.

  Following the rash of defeats, the Fleet Marine Service had been in desperate need of replacements. First, they had taken back into service Marines previously dismissed for misconduct. Then came the draft, where every able-bodied man and woman had been required to submit to service. And then, with losses climbing daily, the prisons had been stripped of low-level offenders prepared to take the fight to the Chits for the promise of a reduced sentence.

  Then school dropouts were sent for compulsory training, and then active students with low grades were conscripted. Soon, with total war upon humanity, every man, woman, and child were pressed into service in some way. It was a fight for survival—a desperate, determined fight against extermination.

  They had nearly lost. And nothing had yet been won. Jack feared the lull in the fighting was merely a stay of execution and that soon, the Chitin forces would be back. At least the fleet had time to refit, repair, and rearm. Time to prepare to fight for their lives once again.

  The asteroid was dark and hard. Jack used filters on his helmet display to better survey the terrain. The filter picked up a residual heat pattern on the asteroid surface. The surface had been in contact with a heat source recently.

  Having decided to take a closer look at the location, Jack released a surveillance drone from the tac boat. With the drone nearing the target area, Jack halted his small team of Marines.

  The markings were a few days old, but running the data through an identification program would give Jack some idea of their origin. The answer came back quickly. The patterns were consistent with the residual energy from a Chitin Hydra. An enemy ship had been on the surface of this asteroid recently.

  Sending the drone higher, Jack was able to get a better view of the area. It was a wide, flat plain on the large asteroid. Although it was almost spherical as a whole, the surface of the asteroid was a lumpy network of peaks and troughs. The area up ahead that had the residual energy marks was one of a few landing spots.

  The surveillance drone scanned the surface. Jack flicked through the images that streamed over the enhanced view afforded by his helmet. A cold, dark spot lay just to the edge of the residual heat pattern. Jack moved the drone closer. It was a tunnel, running vertically down into the asteroid.

  Sending the drone crashing to the surface created a mini seismic shock that transmitted itself through the rock. The detectors on Jack’s suit and the tac boat received the information in the minute tremors coming from the drone impact and presented it to Jack as a three-dimensional map of the asteroids interior. The vertical tunnel led to a subsurface network of tunnels and chambers.

  Before the Chitin war, it was not unusual for asteroids to have been used by miners, traders, and even pirates. The fleet had patrolled the asteroid belt seeking out pockets of illegal mining. It looked as if Jack had found one, an abandoned one, long since disused.

  Then his seismic sensors detected a shifting density pattern in one part of the cavern. Jack took a step back toward the tac boat. He felt the danger. He sensed the danger. Logic told him that the shift in density readings was simply some part of the subsurface cavern that had been dislodged by the drone impact. Instinct told him his team was in danger.

  “Back to the tac boat,” Jack ordered. His voice was calm but inside, he was on full alert, ready for the danger that could come from any of the dozen or so cavern entrances his freshly acquired subsurface map had detected. It was essential that no matter how anxious he was inside that he didn’t betray that feeling to his team. Better to wear an uncomfortable appearance of calm than panic his team with even the slightest flicker of concern.

  “Back to the tac boat,” Garcia complained. “But we’ve only just got out.”

  “Yeah,” Drake agreed, “we’ve only just started our search, sir. Give us a chance to stretch our legs.”

  “Quietly as you can,” Jack said. “Return to the tac boat.”

  Releasing another drone from the tac boat and sending the surveillance unit high above the asteroid gave Jack a view around his team. The asteroid was covered by a series of knee-deep channels bounded by jagged walls. He picked his way back along a channel toward the ship, all the while watching for the slightest movement.

  The base of the channels showed on the surveillance data as dark, pure black lines speckled with the slightly more reflective peaks of the channel walls. Jack instructed the drone to light up the asteroid. With a sudden flickering of light, the drone imaged the entire surface around the tac boat and the retreating Marines. The detection of a slight movement in a nearby channel was inconclusive but coupled with his gut feeling, he had no doubt that the Chitins were here.

  “Fall back, Marines. Defensive positions at the tac boat,” Jack said calmly.

  He sent up another drone and had it sweep the area behind him. He turned and looked toward the tac boat while keeping a rear-view display relayed from the drone to his helmet visor.

  The flickering in the shadows became more frequent. Jack guessed there were at least eight Chitins moving about in the deep jagged ridges of the asteroid. All of them closing in on his retreating Marines.

  A message came over Jack’s helmet communicator. Sam Torent of 6th squad was clearly irritated at the slow progress.

  “Jack, what’s taking so long down there? We are ready to move the task force search line forward. Give me permission to proceed, Jack. You can catch us up when you’ve finished kravin around down there.”

  It was typical of Torent to want to get stuck into the Chits, but this was not the time to go charging off. Jack answered Torent with a growing feeling of annoyance at his old friend’s impatience.

  “Negative, Squad Leader. Hold your position. I’ve got Chits down here. Stand by.”

  “Do you need support?” Torent sounded eager. “Sixth squad is ready to assist, sir.”

  “Negative,” Jack said. He saw the flicker of movement in the dark channels of the asteroid on his helmet’s view, relayed from the surveillance drone high over head. “Hold position and wait for my orders. I’ve got this under control. Do you copy?”

  Jack waited for the reply. He could tell by the slight delay that Sam Torent was impatient and frustrated. The communicator channel flickered to life with Torent’s begrudging compliance

  “Copy that, sir.”

  Torent poured all his frustration into the simple response, but Jack had no time for Torent’s frustration. There were Chitin soldiers creeping up on his position and he needed to get his team to the relative safety of their defensive position at the tac boat
.

  Jack accessed the ship’s systems through his suit’s wrist-mounted interface. The door opened smoothly as the Marine on point, Garcia, neared the boat.

  “Activate that hail cannon, Garcia,” Jack said. “Access the surveillance drone data to enhance the targeting computer.”

  Jack came alongside the tac boat and turned to face the oncoming Chitins. He watched carefully, scanning the surface of the asteroid. The surveillance drone data was added to his helmet’s visor, highlighting areas of movement. The whole surface of the asteroid seemed to twitch and writhe as Chitin tentacles moved in the dark shadows of the low channels.

  “Jack, you’ve got Chits closing in on your position,” Sam Torent’s voice came over Jack’s communicator.

  Jack knew Torent could not have detected the Chits here on the asteroid from his location on the outer edge of the asteroid belt. Torent had to have disobeyed his orders to hold position.

  “Where are you, Sam?” Jack asked.

  The tac boat flew overhead, the engine thrust disturbing the finer particles of dust on the asteroid surface. The dust leaped up from the surface and chased after Torent’s ship.

  “Thought you needed a hand,” Torent said.

  Torent’s boat lit up as the hail cannon’s poured fire into the surface.

  “Engaging the Chits, sir,” Torent said excitedly.

  “I’ve got Chit targets available, sir,” Garcia said. “Permission to fire.”

  Jack watched Torent’s boat hold position above the asteroid and turn on a dime, its hail cannon spitting a vicious stream of fire into the asteroid’s surface. Torent’s ship was only twenty meters off the surface. Jack’s tac boat could add its fire and cut down the Chits hiding in the trenches, but there was still a risk of causing damage to Torent’s boat with the debris thrown up from the asteroid under the assault of two, close-range hail cannon attacks.

  “Hold your fire, Garcia,” Jack said. He stood and looked at the tac boat hovering and wheeling about, blasting chunks out of the asteroid’s surface. A cloud of debris came billowing toward Jack. It was thick with fragments of rock. It rattled over his meat suit like a hard rain made from rock fragments and broken pieces of Chitin shell.