Doomed Space Marine: A Space Adventure (Bug Wars Book 1)

by J. A. Cipriano

  “Stay close to me,” I said to Billy and Conroy.

  “How do we—”

  “Hands at your sides and feet together,” I answered, cutting Billy off. “Throw your body weight to your left. Conroy, throw yours to the right.” Switching back to Annabelle, I said, “Initiate personal gravity field. I want these bastards close enough to me that nothing will happen to them on the descent.”

  “Initiating personal gra—”

  A pulse knocked me off course, shutting Annabelle up and causing my entire suit to shake as I drove toward the moon’s surface. I cursed under my breath, my heart racing. I scrambled, mentally searching for something- perhaps a memory- to hold onto and calm me down. I had learned a long time ago that freaking out and losing your cool didn’t necessarily do anything but ensure you wouldn’t live to see tomorrow. I had seen more people than I’d have ever cared to think about lose their shit at the first obstacle and pay for it with their lives. If you made something bigger than yourself, then there was no way to overcome it. At least, that was what I had always believed.

  “Electromagnetic beam detected,” Annabelle said. “Damage is at seven percent, but thrusters will take 2.7 seconds to reload.

  “I don’t have that,” I said, swallowing hard and trying to come up with an alternative.

  “I’m aware of that, Lieutenant Ryder. Defensive shields have been deployed in preparation for a crash landing.”

  I looked up, watching Conroy and Billy veering toward each other, somehow unaware that I had been knocked out of the sky.

  “Pull back!” I screamed at them. “Pull the hell back!”

  It was too late though. The pair crashed into each other and sparked as their suits inflicted unnecessary damage on the other.

  I slammed into the ground, hard and dry rock, a second later. The surface of the moon was intense, hardened and seemingly completely without moisture. It would have reminded me of one of the deserts on Earth’s surface, except it was darker, and tinted with a red hue. Hitting hard on my neck, I flipped over three times before I came to a stop on my back just in time to see a huge damn bug looming over me, gashing its pinchers as it got ready to rip me to pieces.

  5

  It never failed. Every time I looked up at one of these disgusting things, I had the same question. Why on Earth (or any other planet, for that matter) would anyone ever call them anything other than bugs?

  Their bulbous lower bodies flared out into a bowling pin shape with spiked backward facing knees on long legs. That combined with their unblinking black oval eyes, and the antennae sticking out of their ugly, identical faces, it was obvious they shared more than a little DNA with the tiny things that crawl in our walls and shuffle around on our dark corners. The difference, of course, is that instead of being relegated to the lowest rung on the evolutionary ladder, these bugs were in charge of things.

  That was why the Alliance pushed the people of Earth to abandon the ‘bug’ moniker. They didn’t want us to underestimate the Acburians. To try to reinforce this point, my HUD conveniently added the nameplate Acburian Soldier A, Rank Unknown over the bug’s head.

  For people like me though, soldiers who had lost more than a few nights’ sleep dealing with these things, we didn’t need to be reminded of how dangerous these things were. The evidence of it was literally staring me in the face.

  The monster peered down at me, its mouth open as it emitted a sound that my early Marine training had taught me was most likely a call to its comrades.

  Saliva dripped from its open fang-filled maw.

  These things were stronger than us. They were even faster than us. Even the greenest of grassfeds knew that. They knew that, while the suits were powerful and provided us with our best shot at survival, they still didn’t make us equal with the bugs. Not even close. Still, what sometimes got lost in the horror stories of what these bugs were capable of was the fact that they weren’t nearly as flexible or agile.

  Sure, the bugs were large and damned near indestructible, but all that size and strength didn’t come without a price. They couldn’t contort the same way we did, couldn’t move in the same directions and ways that we could. We were twisty and lithe creatures in comparison, even if we came in infinitely more fragile packaging.

  “Activate reverse leg thrusters,” I cried to Annabelle.

  “Affirmative,” she answered directly into my head.

  As her words filled my brain, my suit moved to comply with what I’d just said. Heat burst out of my feet in twin explosions that threw me backward.

  As I slid across the jagged rocks and dry dirt of this planet’s surface, the bug bounded toward me. I remembered the first time I saw a bug move, bopping up and down on inverted knees in an almost hypnotic rhythm. I’d almost met my maker right then and there, and if not for Bill’s warning scream to me, I might not have made it out of that particular fight. I’d survived though, and the least I could do was make sure his son was given the same opportunity.

  Of course, I’d have to survive myself first.

  I watched the bug bridge the gap between us in the blink of an eye. “Leg thrusters off. Shoulder thrusters on.” With my leg thrusters off, I stopped sliding across the ground and, with shoulder thrusters pushing me in the other direction, I found myself suddenly standing upright. I had all of two seconds to pick a weapon to defend myself from this thing. Otherwise, I’d be in pieces on the sand.

  “Initiate pulse canon.” I threw my hand forward to burn a hole through this damned thing’s exoskeleton armor.

  “Negative,” Annabelle replied.

  “What?” I asked as my unarmed forearm remained that way. I didn’t have time to rectify the situation. The predator was too close to me for that. I’d have to rely on evasive maneuvers until I could figure out what was going on.

  Like a praying mantis, these bugs weren’t much for beating around the bush, and this one was no exception. They went for kill shots and kill shots alone. If they weren’t greedy sons of bitches who wanted to kill us and hollow out our planet for damn metal, I could almost respect that. They were though, so all I had to do was make sure I didn't find myself on the receiving end of one of them.

  As the bug’s large, ribbed and ridged scythe-like arms lashed out at me, I threw my body backward, my back arching so far and fast it nearly broke. I felt the heat coming off the thing’s arms as they whooshed past me, which pissed me off even more. Annabelle should have increased my thermal dampening.

  I thrust myself forward, slamming my helmeted head into the damned thing’s face with all the force my mechanized armor could bring to bear.

  It let out a high-pitched shriek and stumbled backward, shaking its head as it regained its footing.

  I turned, running as fast as I could away from the beast. Like they trained us to, I zigged and zagged in a ‘Z’ formation as I rushed away. The back and forth would prove difficult for the bug, and while it wouldn’t stop it from catching me, it might slow it down enough for me to figure out what the hell was going on with my weapon systems.

  “Annabelle,” I said, my jaw tight and my mouth dry. “What’s up, sweetness?”

  “The atmosphere in this area is rife with an usually high amount of chlorine gas which would prove fatal to the human body almost immediately. Power was automatically redirected from weapon systems to emergency self-preservation for this and the other two suits connected to you. This setting cannot be overridden, and per rules and regulations set forth by the Alliance and agreed upon by you upon reception of, well, of me.”

  “I remember what I agreed to,” I muttered, thinking about what this meant. The air in this place wasn’t full of chlorine. It would have been the first thing those damned Alliance receptors would have picked up when they snuck into the atmosphere.

  That’s when I noticed the geysers in the distance. Thick yellow-green smoke spilled into the atmosphere, and because chlorine was about two and a half times heavier than air, it was displacing the atmosphere down here. That w
ouldn’t cause a problem for the bugs, but for us? Well…

  My eyes widened in realization. The bugs had set a trap for us. That was why the damned cameras were able to get in in the first place. The bugs wanted us here and, now that we were, they were going to kill us, either by tearing us apart or smothering us with their poisoned environment. The joke was on them though. They’d probably expected to lure us in for a full-scale invasion, and they’d gotten, what, twelve of us?

  That was the problem with traps, you couldn’t catch what wasn’t there, and if I had it my way, I’d make sure the Alliance knew what was going on.

  “Open communication lines,” I said.

  “To the others?” Annabelle asked.

  “No,” I answered. “To Della. To the Alliance.”

  ”Negative, Lieutenant Ryder,” Annabelle said as the massive insect bore down on me. “In addition to being composed of corrosive and harmful materials, the chlorine cloud also appears to be infected with nanites which are blocking reception to and from your suit. I am currently working to bypass them but, given the amount of power being channeled to keep the corrosion from eating through the suit and tearing away at your flesh, you currently have a 2.6% chance for success.”

  “Well isn’t that a kick in the nuts?” I muttered to myself. Not being able to communicate with the Alliance meant I also wouldn’t be able to communicate with Billy and Conroy if all of it was down. At least, not until after I was out of this damned cloud.

  It also meant the trap was even more sophisticated than I’d previously imagined. These bugs lured us here, and now they had trapped us, cut off our communication with each other, and forced our suits to redirect enough energy to render our long-range energy weapons completely unusable.

  Given the fact that those types of weapons, blasters, photon arrows, even good old-fashioned flamethrowers, accounted for over two-thirds of all Alliance inflicted bug deaths, it seemed likely the bugs would eventually counter it with something.

  Maybe I had been wrong about things all along. Maybe we hadn’t been taking them seriously enough after all.

  “Well, damn,” I muttered, pushing the thought away. I had more important things to focus on, like the fucking praying mantis about to slice open my guts. Thankfully, I wasn’t completely out of tricks.

  While many of the newer recruits liked to spend what little money they didn’t keep saved up on flashy long-range weapons, they had one flaw. Powerful weapons like that required big, bulky, complex electronics and firing mechanisms, which meant they took up a lot of space in any given suit’s central mainframe where it shared the infrastructure with things like upgrades, digital intel, diagnostics, and neural interfacing.

  Because there was so much going on there, and because even the most technologically advanced piece of equipment the Earth had ever seen had its limitations, keeping long range, high-powered weapons inside the suit itself was, at this point, an impossibility. It didn’t usually matter. There was plenty of room at Alliance headquarters for that kind of thing and one neural impulse sent in their direction would automatically send your long-range weapon right into your hands where it belonged.

  Of course, if you couldn’t contact the damned headquarters, then you were just shit out of luck. Fortunately for me, I wasn’t a new recruit. I was old school, trained by Lieutenant Carver James himself. He was a man of many talents, a legend in his own time, as the statue outside of the mess hall in headquarters would attest. The impressive bastard had one eye thanks to an early run-in with a bug, and he still clocked more successful missions than anyone in the history of the Alliance. Well, until me.

  He had taught me a lot of things, but the most important one, the one that’d kept me alive this long, was the importance of always preparing for the worst.

  “Everything fails,” he’d say. “All of this technology, it’s just a crutch. When it falters, when it cracks and breaks- and it will- you need to be able to rise to the occasion. You need to be able to show those bugs that it’s you, not all the bells and whistles, that they need to fear. You’re the one keeping them up at night in their disgusting little holes. Not the suit, but the person in it.”

  So, I did that. I trained hard in every way imaginable to be the best soldier I could be. I studied every form of martial arts. I looked over the plans of famous war generals throughout human history, and I made sure I was skilled with both long range and close combat weapons.

  And the cool thing about close combat weapons is that they were usually pretty simply. Once you buy them, they can sit pretty in your armor’s mainframe until you decide to call them up. No external connection needed.

  “Annabelle,” I said, turning on my heels and spinning around. “Warhammer!”

  “Affirmative, Lieutenant Ryder,” she said as I swung my hands toward the giant sack of slime still hurdling toward me.

  The insect must have thought I was insane. I was in a place where long range weapons couldn’t be accessed, and here I was, stopping in mid-retreat to have a slap fight I was sure to lose.

  If I was a younger recruit, it would have been right. Melee weapons have fallen out of favor in the last few years. So much so that, in the back of my mind, a ping of worry told me the rest of my team were as good as sitting ducks. It was extraordinarily likely that if they even had a melee weapon, it’d be the stock piece of shit butter knife they beamed grassfeds down with, and that wouldn’t do the job against these sons of bitches.

  A sheen of blue energy shot from my hands as I took a home run swing at the creature. The energy morphed and melded, taking the shape of a large and heavy war hammer that solidified in my grip in time to clock the bastard right in the kisser.

  The blow caved in the side of its head, causing ichor to gush through the cracks in its exoskeleton as it stumbled sideways. Taking a deep breath, I readied myself to continue my assault. These bastards had pissed me off, and now they were going to see why that was such a costly mistake.

  I tossed the war hammer from one hand to the other, rejoicing in the weight of it. I’d bought this weapon just before they’d gone out of fashion, and ever since I’d thought it was the coolest thing in the world.

  Large and black, it had a leather strap and a cinderblock head that was capable of doing the damage of a wrecking ball when I swung it with my suit-enhanced strength. It was, without question, my weapon of choice for a long time and, as such, I’d outfitted it with a few upgrades.

  “Annabelle,” I said, marching toward the bug with my hammer in the air. “You think our friend here might appreciate a light show?”

  “There’s only one way to find out, Lieutenant Ryder,” she answered, responding in one of the preset cues they’d programmed into the suits’ AI systems to make them feel more human. I had to admit, it worked. Before that last upgrade, Annabelle had sounded like a fuzzy radio station that was set up exclusively to give the weather reports. Now, I could almost have a conversation with her.

  “Initiate electrical impulse on war hammer.” I was fortunate energy damage upgrades on melee weapons were both simpler and far less energy intensive than ranged energy weapons so despite the energy demands of the corrosive atmosphere, I could still fire up my hammer.

  “I thought you’d never ask,” she replied as the cinderblock head of my warhammer shone with a bright blue flicker of crackling energy.

  The bug, now having regained its composure, lunged at me, scythe hands swinging for my face and neck.

  I threw myself back, twisting my body downward and thrusting the electrified hammer toward him. It smashed into one of the creature’s hands. An explosion of electrical energy tore the hand off the bug’s arm, spraying me with thick black fluid. Any other time, that would have really ruined my day. Now though, I couldn’t think of a more beautiful scene.

  As its limb went spinning off into the distance, the bug retreated, screeching in agony.

  “Should I translate?” Annabelle asked, referring to the horrific sounds coming out of the bug’s mo
uth.

  “No,” I answered. “I think I understand where it’s coming from.”

  I rushed the thing before it could recover and brought the massive warhammer down hard on the bug’s head. The sickening crunch of the thing’s head was deafening even over the sound of the wind whipping around me.

  “Congratulations, Lieutenant Ryder!” Annabelle chirped. “Your kill of Bug Soldier A will be credited to the Kill Leaderboards when contact with Alliance command is reestablished. You have also received a 1,000 coin bounty!”

  I sighed at that canned message, one I’d heard thousands of times before, as I pulled back, placing my free hand on the bug’s carcass and allowing its energy to pool into my suit. I watched as the sensors on my fingertips began to glow. That light pricked other lights along the energy points inside of the bug’s body, the bio-electric batteries that enhanced the bugs’ natural physical superiority. Soon, a constellation of energy appeared in the thing before rushing to me and into my suit.

  “Energy levels up fourteen percent,” Annabelle said, and like always, when she announced the acquisition of bug energy, the words sounded sort of hot and heavy in a way I rarely heard outside the bedroom.

  I was about to open my mouth to ask if that was enough to allow me to access my offensive shielding, but a deafening howl of pain made my question die on my lips. That wasn’t bug pain. It was human pain. Grassfed pain.

  “Damn,” I muttered and sprinted toward the source of the noise.

  6

  “Run external diagnostic check,” I said to Annabelle as I ran toward the source of the screams.

  My heart was pounding and my mind was racing. You’d think I’d have gotten used to this by now, to the constant surprises that this life and these missions consisted of. In some ways, I guess I sort of had. I was harder. I was less trusting, less able to be calm, to be quiet. Still, you can’t prepare for everything, and I didn’t think I would ever be ready for all that might come my way while on these damn planets.