The tower of the structure began to glow brightly, the purple light glowing and building to a bright electric blue. The sand was compressed under foot as the energy was now directed into the moon’s surface. Jack felt his hairs stand up all over his body. A strange swaying dizziness grew and the fluid in his inner ear was compressed, the hairs in his inner ear standing at attention. His suit’s medical diagnostics reported a sudden onset of vertigo and administered a dose of antihistamines.
“Can you fly that landing craft?” Torent asked.
“No jokes, please.” Jack grabbed Reyes under her arms and pulled her to her feet. Her suit’s auto-mobility servos engaged and made Jack’s job easier. “Get us out of here, Sam.”
“Sixth squad,” Torent yelled as he fired, “form square.”
The squad quickly formed up into neat tight ranks, firing and slashing at the Chits that pressed in on all sides.
“Concentrate fire forward.” Torent sounded cool and levelheaded as he shouted his orders. “As one, Sixth squad. Back to the landing craft. Double time. Move.”
Jack ran along with his squad, his pulse rifle in one hand and Reyes held up with the other. He risked a glance back toward the tower. Chitin soldiers were crawling all over it. They pulled Reyes’s Chit suit away and it was shredded by a dozen blades. Jack saw a Chit scurry up the pillar and pull free the sinew he had planted, but all the time, the channels in the pillar burned with a more brilliant light than before. From electric blue to white and then an incandescent brilliance that started to burn the shells of the surrounding Chits.
Overhead, Jack saw even more light trails of Chits being dispatched to the surface. He urged 6th squad to move faster. Torent echoed his call and the squad advanced at a run, tearing through the Chitin soldiers that rushed in from every side.
The lander was surrounded by Chits when the square came upon it. They were on top and around, blocking the ramp up to the hold.
Then the plasma spears leapt toward the square.
The Marine in front of Jack fell as a plasma spear sliced clean through the shoulder of his armor. The defense systems of the tactical suit combined deflector shields from all surrounding suits and more of the spears ricocheted away. The square fired a withering hail at the Chits on the top of the lander, tearing one and toppling another off.
“Check your fire,” Jack shouted. “Don’t damage the lander. EBs only. Bayonet them away from the ramp.”
“Form diamond,” Torent called as the square pressed forward. Torent took the tip and hacked at the next Chitin. The rest of the squad formed up in a wedge behind Torent.
A plasma spear sliced through the air from Jack’s right. Reflex caused him to jerk away just in time and the plasma scorched the front of his helmet. Reyes fell from his arms to the ground. He bent to pick her up. Behind him in the distance, he could see the lights on the tower glowing brilliant white, becoming too painful to look at. The pulses of energy were traveling down the beam moving with terrific speed. It was as if the energy of a thousand plasma spears was slamming into the moon’s surface.
Jack realized the formation had left him and Reyes behind. They were on the ramp and slicing and stabbing with electron bayonets at Chits inside the hold. A burst of plasma spears erupted from inside the landing craft, blasting outward into 6th squad’s formation. Two Marines were thrown backwards by the volley, their suits torn apart. One lost an arm, his blood boiling away in the thin air in an instant.
A Chitin came scurrying and slithering around the side of the landing craft. Jack fell backwards, pulse rifle raised. He launched a volley of his own into the Chit’s body, causing the tentacles and antennae to thrash about. The Chit fell away.
“Jack,” Torent called from the ramp. “We need you.” Torent came forward and dragged Jack to his feet.
“Sarah,” Jack shouted and reached for her.
“She’s gone, Jack. She’s gone.”
“No,” Jack shouted. He pulled himself away and grabbed Reyes off the ground. Torrent stepped up next to Jack and fired at an advancing Chit soldier, plasma spear sizzling in its hand ready to be launched.
Torent covered Jack’s retreat to the landing craft’s ramp, turning this way and that, firing and slashing with his bayonet. And as Jack dragged Reyes into the hold, the ramp began to close.
A line of Marines rushed forward and fired out of the closing gap. A plasma spear cut through the last narrow gap into the hold. Jack saw a Marine spin around on the spot as the plasma spear smashed into the shoulder. The spear went on and struck the opposite bulkhead, exploding into a million shards of light.
Jack ran to the cockpit and started firing up the landing craft. Official pre-flight checks would take fifteen minutes for a scheduled takeoff. Jack reckoned he could activate the necessary systems and have the thing off the ground in seconds.
Through the view screen, Jack saw the distant energy beam pouring down to the moon’s surface. The Chitin Leviathan in orbit seemed closer. Then Jack realized it was being drawn to the surface by the energy beam.
Jack heard the lander scream and hiss. His running repairs and jury-rigged systems were working, but it made a frightening noise and shook the Marines in their suits.
Then, as the landing craft built up energy for the leap into orbit, Jack took one more look at the energy pulse on the Chit device. The Leviathan was even closer and looked to be bound to the energy beam. Then the direction of transfer switched in a blinding instant, from flooding down to the surface to being returned to the Leviathan in a huge burst of energy that slammed into the belly of the Chitin craft. Brilliant white light glowed from hairline cracks in the massive ship. Then the light was gone, leaving it’s afterimage on Jack’s display.
The Leviathan glowed for an instant as the light poured out of a thousand tiny cracks in the hull. Slowly and silently, it fell from space. As it came closer and closer, Jack could see the true scale of the massive craft. It was bigger that any of the fleet’s three carriers, its many tentacles that spread out to the sides were each longer than the Scorpio.
The Leviathan fell directly onto the now dead energy transfer device. Jack pushed the landing craft as hard as he could, the systems screaming their disapproval.
The Leviathan collided with the Chit device and exploded in a flash. Jack pushed the landing craft to orbit. He realized Marines were standing behind him and looking out of the view screen in awe at the terrible destruction. Then awe turned to elation as the enormity of the destruction and the enormity of their victory overcame their fatigue and emotion. The hold was filled with whooping and cheering, Marines in their suits dancing and leaping.
“Hey, Sam,” Jack called out. “Better get those Marines in their alcoves, old buddy. I can’t keep this battered crate in the sky with that lot skipping about.”
Jack heard the cheering die away. Osho came up beside him and spoke quietly.
“Torent took a plasma spear in the chest just before the door closed. He’s still with us. Just. You want to see him?”
Jack sat back in the pilot’s chair. “I need to fly this thing. I’ve gotta find the Scorpio. Strap those Marines in their alcoves, Osho.”
“They’ll listen to you, Jack,” she said.
“Listen up, Sixth Squad. It’s not a successful mission until we land back on the Scorpio flight deck. Calm down. Act like Marines. Let me get this boat home and we’ll all celebrate. You get me?”
“We get you, Jack,” came the firm reply, followed by a quiet, orderly movement to alcoves.
Jack checked the landing craft’s scanners. “Where the krav is the Scorpio?” he muttered to himself. “Where the krav am I going to take these brave Marines?”
18
Captain Pretorius tugged his cuff. “Mister Chou, put me through to the Overlord.”
Group Captain Wellard of the Overlord appeared on the holostage, sitting in his chair aboard the massive carrier.
“Ahh, Alistair,” Wellard spoke in a deep, calm voice. “What can I do for
you, Captain?”
“Request permission to detach from the flotilla, sir.”
“Yes, of course. Is there somewhere you need to be?”
“One of my long-range sensor drones has detected a signal from my missing landing craft. It’s the boat that put down on Kratos, sir.”
Wellard sat back in his seat. “They’ve been lost for a few days. Hope they’ve held up well.”
“I’m making for their position at full speed now.”
“If you find any of your people in there, give them my regards. How that company of Marines brought down that Leviathan is a miracle. I want extensive debrief and commendations for all.”
“Yes, sir,” Pretorius replied, “but it wasn’t a company, sir. Just one squad. Sixth Squad of Cobra Company.”
Wellard leaned forward in his seat. “I haven’t read the reports yet.” Wellard rubbed his chin. “Go get your people, Captain.”
19
Jack sat slumped in the pilot’s chair. The distant star field drifted across the view screen. His throat was dry, his stomach hollow and heavy. He turned and looked along the alcoves and the Marines strapped in them. The status of the squad displayed on his enhanced data overlay. All life signs weak. Torent was clinging on by a fingernail. Sarah’s data wasn’t reading at all. It should have read something, even if she was... Jack couldn’t bear to finish the thought. He looked out into the void, the dark distant void. How long would he drift with his squad before they decayed to nothing in the emptiness of space?
And then over the top of the view screen came the hull of a destroyer. A bright light exploded through the view screen and washed over the hold and its cargo of fatigued and desperate Marines. The hold filled with the sound of a collision alarm. Then came the sound of docking clamps latching on.
Jack saw the black of space turn to the bright lights of the destroyer’s flight deck. As Jack’s eyes drooped, he saw the letters ‘SC’ painted on the wall in bright letters. This was the Scorpio’s flight deck.
Jack was home. There was no denying it any longer, he was truly a Fleet Marine.
Forged to Lead
Prologue
Bill Harts was not awake. He was not asleep. He was unconscious, yet he was aware. He was fixed in place, unable to move. He was captive.
The cold hung over his skin and penetrated his bones. He felt every chill moment, but his body did not shiver. The tentacles writhed over his skin. They held him in place and touched him lightly. Cold and sticky, rough and smooth.
Harts saw himself held in the mass of tentacles. He watched as if in a dream, a nightmare. He urged himself to move, to break free from the tentacles that held him, but his muscles would not respond. He tried to cry for help, but his mouth remained closed, his voice lodged in his throat. His face appeared relaxed, no muscles tensed. He screamed in his sleeping mind.
A mass of tentacles covered his unconscious head and felt their way across his sleeping face. He felt their touch and yelled out. No sound came from his relaxed body. A tentacle slipped between his limp lips and into his mouth that tried desperately to yell and holler and scream. He imagined how good it would be to bite down hard and sever that black and purple slime-covered tentacle. He dreamed that he would fight back and hurt the beast that had given him such pain and fear.
A tentacle slipped around his throat. It stretched out, growing thinner and thinner. The tip thinned to a fine thread that flicked across the view of his sleeping, all-seeing eyes.
The thread reached toward Harts’s eye. His eyelids flickered with the nightmare. The tentacle thread slipped under the eyelid and sought out the pupil. The thread slipped into the pupil and reached down to the nerve at the back.
Bill Harts tried to pull away. He tried to lash out with his arms and kick out with his feet, but he was stuck. His arms and leg remained static, limp and unmoving.
More tentacles thinned down to fine threads. They slid in to his ears and up his nostrils. He felt their cold slime feeling their way through his brain, triggering memory and thought.
The noise was deafening as he heard the Chitin voice. The Chitins wanted to know who he was. They wanted to know how they could use him. They wanted to know how to control him.
Bill Harts knew he was betraying mankind as he told the Chitins everything he knew. He could not resist. He was not in control of his body or his mind. The tentacles found what they wanted and what they needed. Bill Harts was conscious of his own mind giving up every scrap of information it had. The Chitins drew it from him as easily as they could draw blood from an artery. They discovered the knowledge that Bill Harts didn’t even know he had. Every sight and sound and smell that he had ever experienced was drawn out by the thin black tentacles that threaded their way through every part of his being.
The Chitins rejected useless information. His childhood was discarded as worthless. Harts felt the loss as all memory of his early days faded away, the color of his existence washed out of the fabric of his being.
The Chitins found the memories of life in the Fleet Marines. Every moment was studied and analyzed in minute detail. Bill became aware of nothing else. His existence was a tableau of frozen images. A ship of the fleet…a pulse rifle…a Fleet Marine parade…a commanding officer…a control panel of a landing craft. The information was drained from Bill Harts as the tentacle turned his mind on like a faucet and drained information as if it was pouring water.
Bill Harts was aware of one last thing, and that was the tear that welled up in the corner of his eye as utter helplessness overwhelmed him.
As the Chitins probed his being, he became more aware of their mind. He saw their home in the massive oceans far below the clouds of their gas giant world. He saw their spawning grounds. He watched them grow, learn, build, attack. Harts became aware of their previous attempts to drain knowledge from captured humans, aware of the traumatic, fatal attempts to probe the hundreds of individuals captured and dragged here. Harts was aware of the million memories of all those people captured by the Chitins, captured from ships both military and civilian, captured from facilities on moons and asteroids through the system. Lives, both young and old, all broken and ended by the Chitin tentacles in their attempt to study humans. He knew their ultimate goal: to control a human and to occupy a human mind.
Every attempt until this moment had led to an improvement in their technique. And now, success.
Bill Harts was free. He was awake. Aware. The tentacles were gone. His body was clothed. His mind was alert. He was alive. He remembered everything. He remembered nothing. Bill Harts was ready to return to world he’d left. He was ready to return to the fleet.
1
The debrief room was lit by a harsh white light emanating from the translucent ceiling. A brushed metal table and chairs sat in the middle of the room. Jack Forge sat uncomfortably on one of the chairs.
The Fleet Marine 6th Squad was being interviewed following their mission on Kratos, the outer moon of the gas giant planet, Penthus. Jack was waiting for his turn. He’d been waiting for some time. Over an hour, he guessed.
Jack stared at the door until he knew every last scratch and stain. He didn’t know what he could say about the destruction of the Chitin Leviathan. All he knew was that somehow, they had turned an energy transfer device into a weapon capable of destroying a Chitin Leviathan, one of their most destructive craft.
The fleet was buzzing excitedly with rumors that the fleet was testing new weapons that could destroy the Chits once and for all. Jack didn’t know how it had worked. It had been Sarah Reyes’s plan. Maybe she knew, but the last Jack had heard of Reyes was that she was being held in isolation in the Scorpio’s med bay.
The door burst open. Jack stood, his hands at his sides. The woman who entered was dressed in the severe dark uniform of a military intelligence officer. She pulled her chair out, scraping it across the floor, and dropped a computer tablet on the metal table with a thump. She sat down.
“Sit, Marine.” It was an order.
> Jack sat down. His heart pounded in his chest. This was an agent. She wasn’t here to interview Jack and write a report on the Battle of Kratos Fuel Station. An agent was always deployed to keep a battalion in line, to sniff out disobedience, dereliction, and possible collusion with the enemy.
“I am Agent Visser. I will be frank with you, Marine. You need to be frank with me. If I am not satisfied with your responses, I will deploy more forceful techniques. We will know the truth.”
There was one truth Jack could not reveal. He suddenly knew why Agent Visser was here.
“When did you last see Commander Finch?” Visser asked with no hint of emotion in her cold voice.
Realizing immediately that any movement or flicker of emotion could give him away, Jack answered calmly. “When we scouted the Chitin construction site on Kratos.”
“Yes,” Visser said. She tapped on the tablet in front of her. “You were flogged during your training. Do you have a problem with authority, Marine?”
Jack could suddenly feel the raised scars on his back touching his shirt. The pain of the flogging never went away, but what hurt most was the realization that his loyalty to the Fleet Marines would always be questioned.
“I follow orders,” he said coolly.
“You like to give them too.” Visser flicked her fingers across the small tablet screen. A hologram of Jack talking to Squad Leader Torent appeared. It was a recent surveillance recording of Jack in a vocal and animated disagreement with Torent. Jack watched the recording and remembered the argument over tactics in a training simulation. He remembered the moment well. Torent pulling rank and Jack arguing loudly. Jack knew his approach would be best. Torent usually listened, but on this occasion, he had dug in his heels and was being obstinate.
Jack looked past the image to Agent Visser. She had her eyes fixed on him.
Jack Forge, Fleet Marine Boxed Set (Books 1 - 9) Page 17
