But we'll see if he can fight, Ben-Ari thought.
She widened her stance and raised her fists. "Very well."
Sergeant Jones removed his boots and uniform shirt, remaining in a tank top and trousers. By God, the man was huge. He was probably over three hundred pounds of rippling muscle, far larger than the robot Ben-Ari had fought.
If the admiral wanted pure strength for our mission, Ben-Ari thought, he chose the right man.
The NCO lunged into a wild attack. Ben-Ari retreated at first, dodging his blows, but he was relentless. He would not let her win because of her gender, size, or commission. That much was obvious. He attacked in a fury, kicking, punching, and it was all Ben-Ari could do to dodge his blows.
"You're quick," he said.
"I have to be."
He leaped toward her, making to grab her shoulders. She sidestepped and shoved him over her leg. He slammed down onto the mat with a great thud and crack, sounds so loud Ben-Ari winced.
"You all right?" she said.
The giant lay on his back, groaning. She reached down and helped him up.
"Looks like I'm more about brute force than speed or agility," Jones said.
"That's good," said Ben-Ari. "I could use some brute force in my new platoon."
His eyes darkened. "Ma'am, if I may ask . . . There's talk. Talk of something big, that our platoon will be going far up shit's creek. Where exactly are we going?"
Ben-Ari had not received any more information, but she thought she knew. And that thought chilled her. She stared up into the tall man's eyes.
"All I can say is this: I need you to be ready. I need you to train our warriors well. And when the time comes, Sergeant Jones, I'm going to need every last drop of that brute force of yours."
* * * * *
"Full war."
The words echoed through the halls of the space station, hovered in the eyes of soldiers, rose from the air vents, dripped from the walls, filled the eyes and ears of all who served here. No longer a war of attrition, a slow grinding down of the enemy, a slow pain beneath their claws. Full war. Full fury. The days of the Cataclysm—returned.
Marco and Addy walked through the corridors of the station. They wore new uniforms this morning. No more would they wear the olive green of Earth's corps. They now wore black fatigues, the sturdy fabric bristling with belts and buckles and pouches. Black helmets topped their heads, complete with dark visors. They carried new guns, no longer the T57s of Earth but the newer, lighter Fyre-7 plasma rifles, their barrels shorter but their fury deadlier. The gun had three modes: safety, semi to fire bullet-sized bolts of plasma that could rip through steel, and automatic to spray an inferno like a flamethrower.
"These make our old assault rifles seem like pellet guns," Marco said.
"They're almost as deadly as my old hockey stick," Addy said.
They were to begin training today as STC warriors. Soon they would descend down toward the dark surface of Nightwall's rogue planet, and there they would spend a month training before the great assault on Abaddon began.
As they walked through the station, a thousand thoughts filled Marco's mind. He thought about Lailani, wondering what she was undergoing. He thought about Kemi, wondering if she was already on her way back to Earth. He thought about what he and Addy had done last night, that night of scared, lonely sex they had not spoken of since. He thought about the war ahead, about humanity's looming assault on the scum's homeworld, about the fire and death he would witness. Soon that war would begin. Full war. Full fury.
But first—before the war, before their training—Lieutenant Ben-Ari had asked to meet them in the officer's lounge. They entered the room, a round chamber with floor-to-ceiling windows affording a view of a hundred starships, two other space stations, and millions of stars. Ben-Ari was there, and she too wore a new STC uniform. Hers was not battle fatigues but a navy blue formal uniform with brass cuff links and golden insignia on her shoulders. With her stood another officer, a mustached man with the insignia of a major—a single star on each shoulder strap.
Marco and Addy slammed their heels together, saluted, and reported for duty. Ben-Ari and the major nodded and returned the salutes.
"Private Marco Emery," Ben-Ari said. "Private Addy Linden. Both of you have served in the HDF for only a few months, but both of you have served admirably. You fought bravely in Fort Djemila. You fought bravely at Corpus. You both displayed valor and sacrifice and defeated your enemies."
Marco and Addy listened quietly to this praise. It felt so hollow to Marco. Valor? He had been scared shitless. Defeated his enemies? Those enemies still haunted his dreams. He said nothing.
"You have earned your spots in Space Territorial Command," Ben-Ari continued, "and in an hour, you will begin your integration and training into these prestigious corps, and you will fight bravely when the time comes to assault the enemy. But first I have a gift for you." The hint of a smile touched her eyes, and she held out insignia in her palm. "Wear these proudly, Corporal Emery and Corporal Linden."
Marco had heard that during promotions, soldiers laughed, sang, sprayed water from bottles, champagne if they could find it. But he and Addy could summon no mirth here, no joy. They stood still, faces blank, as Ben-Ari attached the insignia—two chevrons—onto their arms. They were now corporals, seasoned warriors, no longer green privates. But Marco did not feel like a warrior, not like Corporal Diaz had been. He felt as young and afraid as he had on his first day in the army.
Full war. Full fury.
"It's strange," Marco said to Addy after they had left the officer's lounge. They were walking down a corridor, passing between thousands of other soldiers walking to and fro, everyone from teenage privates to white-haired colonels. "When we were first drafted, when we first met our corporals—Diaz and Webb and St-Pierre—I thought them like gods. I thought them impossibly wise and strong. Now I realize they were like us. Just kids. Barely into their service, just with one or two battles under their belts. I don't feel as mighty as I thought corporals were back then."
"You're still the same old Poet," Addy said. "Some new piece of cloth on your sleeve can't change that."
But she was wrong, Marco knew. He wasn't the same old person. He wasn't who he had been when joining the military. He would never be that person again. He had seen too much, lost too much. They both had. He glanced at Addy, saw her look away hurriedly. She too, he knew, was thinking about last night. The quick averting of her eyes told Marco that yes, it had truly happened, had not merely been a dream. They walked on in silence.
As they traversed the space station, Marco kept looking around him, hoping to see Kemi or Lailani, knowing it was impossible, knowing that Kemi was on her way back to Earth now, knowing that Lailani was confined to some lab. He would have even welcomed seeing Osiris now, but the android was back on the Miyari, returned to her duties. Thousands of faces were here, young and fresh, old and stern, all strange to him.
Addy and he got lost several times, finally found their way toward the bottom of the space station, and saw a sign to the space elevator. They walked down a carpeted hallway between clear windows. Below them loomed the black surface of the rogue planet, lit with countless lights of the military bases and towns below. Marco could just make out the cables running down toward the distant surface. It was as if the space station were a balloon on a string hundreds of kilometers long.
Guards stood at the elevator doors. Marco and Addy showed the electronic passes they had received that morning. A guard scanned the chips, then nodded.
"You're clear. Next elevator in twelve minutes."
As Marco waited, he wondered if Lailani was being kept on this space station, down below on the planet's surface, or perhaps had been ferried somewhere else entirely. He hated the thought of potentially moving farther away from her.
Are they hurting you, Lailani?
Perhaps he should feel rage toward Lailani, maybe even disgust. His interrogators yesterday had felt such things. Lai
lani had killed people. Had killed Elvis, their friend. But Marco still couldn't believe that had been her. A different voice had emerged from Lailani's throat, deep, inhuman.
You were possessed by them, controlled by the enemy, Marco thought. It wasn't you. It's not who you are. I know this. You have to tell them, Lailani. You have to show them who you really are.
Finally the elevator doors opened. Marco had expected an elevator like those down on Earth, a simple metal box, but instead he stepped into a transparent globe with a ring of seats. On one side, the globe was attached to the cable—and that cable was, Marco now realized, a good ten feet in diameter. A few other soldiers shuffled in and sat down, all in black battle fatigues, carrying Fyre-7 plasma rifles. At first Marco felt a moment of awe, of respect, even a little intimidation being next to these warriors, and it was strange to think that he was one of them now, perhaps indistinguishable from the others. He had never wanted this, to be a fighter, to battle the scum in space, and he felt like an impostor here.
But that's who I am now, he thought. That's who I've become. I fought the scum. I survived while hundreds died. I'm not like Ben-Ari, not like Addy. I never wanted to fight. Yet now I'm on the front line, gearing for total war.
The elevator began to descend. Marco looked through the rounded, transparent walls. He could see hundreds of starships floating around them, some massive vessels the size of aircraft carriers, others small jets the size of cars that flitted back and forth. He could even see the Miyari, and he nudged Addy and pointed. They stared at the starship together. The damage looked terrifying from here. The hull was dented and cracked, one turbine dangled like a bad tooth, and the solar panels had shattered and hung in ruins across the hull like scabs. It was hard to believe this ship had ferried them here; it looked ready to collapse. More than ever, it dawned on Marco how close to death they had come on Corpus.
"Come on, move faster!" Addy said, pounding the elevator floor. "It'll take an hour this way."
"Just be grateful there's no elevator music," Marco said.
Addy's eyes lit up. "Now there's an idea!" She began to hum "The Girl from Ipanema," stopping only when everyone in the elevator was groaning and threatening to shoot her.
They kept descending, leaving the space stations and starships above, rushing down toward the black planet. Nightwall orbited no star. Here was a rogue world, hurtling aimlessly through space, no sun to warm it. But this world was not dark. Countless lights spread below, lining roads and airports and shining from thousands of buildings. There was no fire or so much as a tremble of reentry. If there was an atmosphere here, it was thin. Marco wondered why the STC had chosen such a barren world for their headquarters. Why choose an airless, lifeless rock, far from any source of light, heat, and energy? This was a frozen wasteland, the most inhospitable place Marco could imagine. But perhaps, he thought, that was why the STC had chosen this world—a world inaccessible, harsh, cruel, unforgiving, one that enemy lifeforms would overlook, perhaps purposefully avoid. This wasn't just a headquarters. It was a massive fortress.
The elevator moved significantly slower than a rocket. As Addy had suspected, it took a good hour before they reached the planet's surface. Here was a barren landscape, all dark rocks and dust, and it might have reminded Marco of Corpus, but the city seemed several times the size, its towers and barracks and hangars all lit. The elevator descended through an airlock and down a tube, finally coming to a stop underground. The doors opened, and the soldiers emerged.
They found themselves in an underground city, much like a space station itself, all winding halls and doorways and thousands of soldiers walking back and forth. Their new helmets' visors came with an augmented reality system that popped up luminous arrows to show them the way—a far cry from the crude technology back on Earth. But even with this virtual map, Marco and Addy got lost several times and had to stop and ask for directions.
Finally they found their way to a gymnasium. A hundred soldiers stood inside, all in black fatigues. An NCO stood before the soldiers, among the largest men Marco had ever seen, a hulking giant with a bald head, dark skin, and muscular arms. Marco counted three chevrons and two semicircles on the man's sleeves, denoting him a Gunnery Sergeant, two ranks above a regular sergeant like Singh had been. This warrior must have been fighting in the HDF for ten or twenty years to achieve this rank.
"Well, looks like we have a pair of party crashers!" the NCO said, turning toward Marco and Addy. "If I'm not mistaken, Corporal Marco Emery and Corporal Addy Linden have finally decided to grace us with their presence."
"Sorry, Commander!" Addy said. "We were busy killing about a million scum on Corpus."
"Addy, hush!" Marco whispered. He didn't feel like starting their first day here by antagonizing their drill sergeant.
"Only a million?" the NCO rumbled. "Just you wait until our invasion of Abaddon, little soldiers. You'll miss fighting only a million of the scum. Get into formation."
Marco and Addy hurried to form rank with the other soldiers. Glancing around him, Marco didn't see any privates. Everyone else was either a corporal or sergeant—experienced warriors.
"All right, boys and girls!" said the towering NCO. "My name is Gunnery Sergeant Bo Jones. I will be your worst nightmare for the next month. Some of you, like Corporal Linden here, might think yourselves hotshots. All of you have killed a million scum already. All of you have distinguished yourselves in battle. That's why they sent your asses to me in the STC, rather than let you rot down on Earth. But let me tell you: Up here in space, you are nothing special. You might think you've seen action during your short military careers. You ain't seen shit. There are horrors up here in space that'll curdle your balls and make your piss run red. Some pencil-pushing officer gave me the task of training you for an invasion of Abaddon. If you ask me, it's a waste of time. You're all scum fodder. But maybe, just maybe, one of you bastards will get lucky and fire a one-in-a-million shot and kill the scum emperor. For that chance, I'm going to train you hard. Welcome to the worst month of your lives."
An invasion of Abaddon.
Marco glanced at Addy. She looked back, eyes wide.
An invasion of the scum's homeworld.
Marco nearly fainted. Addy gave him a hesitant smile.
Their life as space corps warriors began.
CHAPTER FIVE
"Welcome," said Gunnery Sergeant Bo Jones, "to your new bodies."
A hundred STC trainees stared. Across the hangar, a hundred metal men stared back.
Addy leaned closer to Marco. "Fuck yeah," she whispered.
At first glance, Marco had mistaken the hundred figures ahead for robots. They were tall, bulky, and forged of black metal. Gears and cables and bolts thrust out from them, and rocket launchers rose on their shoulders. Their heads loomed, dark and hollow, peering with glass eyes. On closer inspection, Marco saw that the constructions were hollow. These weren't robots. They were suits. Suits that soldiers could climb into, like a hermit crab climbing into a shell.
"That's right," said Sergeant Jones, pacing in front of the suits. "These bad boys are the latest and greatest pieces of military technology the STC is wasting on your useless asses. Behold the Exoframe W78b Hardsuits, trademarked, all rights reserved, made by the blessed Chrysopoeia Corp. The scum have their exoskeletons, and you have your exoframes." The NCO kicked one of the towering metal suits. "These bastards are forged from steel and graphene, so they'll take a punch, or a bullet, or a scum claw to the balls. They're equipped with a grenade launcher, an air filtration system, gravity-adjusting boots, climate control, and your choice of AM or FM radio. Once inside your new skin, you'll jump higher, run faster, punch harder, and kill much, much more of the enemy. You will be the toughest sons and daughters of bitches this side of the galaxy. You will defeat the scum in these suits; they cost too much for you to die in. Does everyone understand me?"
"Yes, Commander!" they shouted.
"Where's the cup holder?" Addy asked to the sound of groan
s.
"Suit up!" said Sergeant Jones. "Today you become true killing machines. Literally."
A few soldiers ran toward the exoframes. Marco approached more cautiously. While others were already climbing in, Marco touched one of the exoframe's arms. The metal was cold. The suit loomed, a good foot taller than Marco. He realized that what he had mistaken for glass eyes were, in fact, flashlights mounted onto the helmet. He could see the symbol of Chrysopoeia Corp emblazoned in white across the chest, a snake consuming its own tail. Beside it appeared the symbol of the STC—the man and woman of the Pioneer Plaque—and finally the phoenix of the Human Defense Force.
Marco climbed into the suit. It felt like climbing into a man-shaped coffin. He fit his limbs into the proper cavities, and he found himself standing several inches taller than before, what with the suit's heavy boots. A memory returned to him of putting on his father's coat and hat many years ago. The photo still hung back home.
"Place your hands into the gauntlets," said Sergeant Jones. "Curl your fingers inward, then outward, three times, and your suit will seal itself."
Marco followed the instructions, and suddenly his suit changed—so rapidly his heart burst into a gallop. Slats of metal shifted and snapped into place. A breastplate slammed shut across his torso like a fridge door. A visor whooshed down from inside his helmet. He stood completely enclosed within the suit. He felt like a scum—a soft, gooey creature inside an exoskeleton.
"I am Iron Man!" Addy intoned from inside her suit. She began humming the riff to the Black Sabbath song.
"There are sensors across the inside of your exoframes that detect your movements and correspond accordingly," said Sergeant Jones. "Now take a step forward."
With a thud that shook the hangar, a hundred soldiers took a step forward. The suits were heavy but required no more effort to move than walking normally.
Earth Rising (Earthrise Book 3) Page 5
