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

by J. A. Cipriano

  I cursed under my breath. With that kind of wound, Billy wouldn’t be able to defend himself, and without receptors to accept shielding, these women were his last line of defense.

  Well, unless you counted me.

  My head swam with anger and bitterness. I was usually better than this, usually more on top of things. I had learned a long time ago that giving in to your base instincts was the opposite of helpful in the field. I might have been fuming with anger. I might have thought the Alliance was two brain cells shy of a working cranium for sending us into what was obviously a trap set by the bugs. I might have even thought they were selfish bastards for monetizing human suffering and death, but allowing any of that to sway me even in the slightest would be akin to signing my own death certificate.

  I knew it, but I couldn’t help myself. Something about having Bill Langham’s kid with me, about seeing him lying there about to have the same death as his father, was enough to get me to chuck the better part of my common sense out the window.

  I wanted to give in the anger, consequences be damned. If it clouded my mind or shook my hand, well, at least I was going to make this count. I was going to let loose, to let these aliens know just who they were messing with and why it was such a bad idea.

  “Retract photon cannon,” I snarled. “Get me my damn warhammer.”

  “Lieutenant Ryder,” Annabelle said, “I must remind you that in situations such as this, the Alliance suggests the use of long-range weapons—”

  “Get me the damn warhammer!” I shouted, my eyes narrowing as I neared the group.

  “Affirmative. Your selection will be recorded and is subject to review by the Alliance.”

  “I don’t give a damn about the Alliance,” I said honestly. If the Alliance wanted to punish me, they’d have to get creative about it. I mean, I was already a legendary Marine cleaning up piss to make ends meet, for Christ’s sake. What were they going to do, take away my mop?

  I neared the group quickly, not breaking stride as the warhammer appeared in my left hand. I felt its familiar weight, like a friend whose handshake felt just right.

  I wanted to go right for Billy, to help him out in whatever way I could, but I knew better than that. I might not have cared what the damned Alliance had to say about protocol, but I had my honor. I was too much of a soldier to leave the fighting to a pair of women, even women who were as capable and fierce as these two seemed to be.

  I veered to the left, away from the woman with the pulse laser and the crazed look in her eyes. I had a very destructive weapon in my hands, so I wasn’t one to judge.

  In fact, given the way I felt right now, I’d have said she was a woman after my own heart.

  That said, I didn’t want to get on the wrong side of her firing arc. The pulse laser might have been meant for the bugs, but it would kill me just as quickly if I flew into the spray.

  I landed beside the lady with the spear, helping her out by slamming the head of my warhammer into the face of a walkie. Its long head crunch and its disjointed body crumpled. It cracked under my force, and I felt the sweet give of its exoskeleton as the bug crumpled to the ground.

  “Congratulations!” Anabelle praised. “Your kill has been noted and you have earned 1,000 coins plus a 1,000 coin Marine Salvation Bonus!”

  “That was my kill!” the spear-wielder screamed, echoing a sentiment I’d given to Mina John just seconds before.

  “Tell it to your boss,” I said, spinning around in the air and throwing myself toward the crew again. ”Apparently, everything is up for grabs.”

  The woman, sneering at me just like she did in the ditch, tossed the rocket spear at a bug I was heading toward, warhammer at the ready. It skewered the bug, ripping a hole straight through its torso that pinned it to the dirt like a giant moth. The creature writhed, graspers reaching up toward the spear when the back of the weapon exploded with light as the built-in thrusters ignited.

  The spear tore violently out of the creature, stringing its guts out across the moon’s surface as it arced back through the air and came back to her.

  “That’s how we do it in Artemis,” she said to me, her face scrunched into something like a scowl.

  I didn’t give a damn how they did anything in Artemis or anywhere else. All I cared about was saving my partner and doing right by a man who died beside me well over a decade ago.

  “Lower thrusters. Get me on the ground,” I muttered to Annabelle.

  She did as I requested, and I pushed Ms. Spear out of the way, making my way to Billy.

  “Don’t listen to Claire,” the woman with the pulse laser, Jill, said. Sparing her the briefest of glances, I noticed that Jill was a shapely thing. With dyed purple hair and eyes that had obviously been genetically modified to match, she looked at me with less disdain than I’d gotten from either Mina or the other woman. “She’s mad you took her kill.” She shrugged. “I think it was kind of impressive though.”

  “Thanks,” I grunted at her before kneeling over Billy. His face was pale, and his body was still.

  “Stay with me.” I looked down at the boy, but I could only see his father. “Don’t do this to me again.” I swallowed hard, feeling lost and helpless, like a damn grassfed myself. “Diagnostics, Annabelle.”

  “I’m afraid he’s going into cardiac arrest, Lieutenant Ryder,” she said. “Nothing short of immediate surgical intervention would save him now.”

  “No,” I answered quickly, shaking my head. “That’s not right. A bio patch might do it. Give him one of my bio patches. Put it on his heart and keep the damn thing stable until we can get him off-world.”

  Bio patches were bleeding-edge nanotech, slap patches that were laden with microscopic doctor-bots. They got to work at the molecular level, doing everything in their power to repair critical tissue damage and keep a patient stable. A bio patch could work a medical miracle, assuming they could get to the skin and were fed enough energy.

  “We’d have to lug him around,” Claire said from over me.

  “I didn’t ask you!” I barked back over my shoulder. “Annabelle, you do as I say.”

  “PFC Langham doesn’t have the receptors necessary to receive a bio patch from you, Lieutenant Ryder. Furthermore, if he did, it would only serve to—”

  “Give him my damn receptors then!” I screamed, choking on my words. I knew it wasn’t standard. I knew receptors weren’t transferable, but I had given my life to this cause, dammit. I deserved a favor, and I was calling it in.

  “Lieutenant Ryd—”

  “Get me Della!” I screamed. “Get me Della right this fucking minute!” I shook my head. “I have given too much to see this happen on my wa—”

  “He’s dead, Mark,” a voice came from over me. It was calm, cool, and so seasoned it could only be one person.

  Mina John stood over me, a somber look on her face.

  “He’s not dead,” I replied, staring up at her.

  “Let’s not pretend we haven’t done this before,” she replied, soft but stern. “He’s gone no matter what we do. Let him go with dignity.”

  I looked back down at the boy, seeing his father, seeing myself a little.

  It took all I could do not to cry.

  15

  “You’re not serious,” Mina said, looking at me with narrowed eyes and a bemused look on her face. I could tell that even though we’d been face to face for less than half an hour, she was already tired of me. Perhaps she was looking for the Mark Ryder of lore, the hero who always knew what to say when faced with a difficult situation and knew what to do with a problem that couldn’t be fixed.

  She should have known by now that, if that man ever existed, he wasn’t here anymore. All the proof she needed was the body of a dead kid in front of her.

  “Do I look like I’m not serious?” I snapped.

  “You look like an old buffoon,” Claire said, staring at me and matching her leader’s look of distaste.

  “That’s enough,” Mina replied, turning to Cl
aire and nodding at her. That was all it took for the younger woman to stand down and shut up. If reputation alone wasn’t enough to let me know who was in charge here, that one interaction would have been.

  “Mark,” Mina said, turning her attention back to me, “this is insane. We have orders.” She showed me her band, not that I needed to see it. Mine updated right after Billy stopped breathing too. I’d read what it said, and right now, I didn’t give a rat’s ass. “We have to get to the top of that hill as quickly as possible.”

  She pointed off into the distance, where the flat, barren land crested up to a rounded point. It was as far as the eye could see and, from the looks of it, was about an hour walk. I had my thrusters intact, so walking wouldn’t have been necessary for me, but I couldn’t carry even a single suited up woman with me as I flew. The suit just wouldn’t handle the extra weight and having them dress down while still in enemy territory would have been suicide. No, they’d have to walk, and that meant I’d have to do it with them.

  “I know what it says and, if you want to go on without me, be my guest,” I scoffed in her general direction.

  She scoffed right back at me, walking around until she’d settled into my line of sight. Cocking a leg out, she looked me up and down. I could see that, behind her eyes, she was weighing me, probably comparing me to the idol she’d undoubtedly heard about for years now.

  Though the Alliance was the biggest single entity in the history of Earth, it was still a small place when you got down to it. The lifers, or survivors as they were, all seemed to know each other. Infantry was even worse. We may have seen faces come and go; advance, buy out their contracts, or end up like poor Billy here, but for the most part, we were at least familiar with each other.

  I had heard about Mina for years now, the yin to my yang, the woman who could unquestionably give me a run for what little money I had. She had certainly heard about me too, and I couldn’t tell from the look that graced her dark eyes whether or not I was living up to any of it right now.

  “You know I can’t do that,” she huffed. “As much as it irritates me to say, the minute your band updated with the same intel as ours, it made you part of our mission. I wouldn’t leave one of my girls behind, and that means I can’t leave you behind either.”

  I looked up at her for a second, blinking and trying to decide whether or not to thank her for that. I didn’t. Instead, I went back to digging in the dirt of this alien rock with my shovel. It was a holdover from a long-ago mission, and I’d not used it in at least a decade, but that didn’t mean I hadn’t had access to it anymore.

  “I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” I said, meeting her eyes, “but I’m not one of your girls.”

  She looked me up and down again, her eyes scraping across my body before settling back on my face. “Oh, I know that, Lieutenant Ryder. One of my girls would never disobey me the way you have.”

  I drove the shovel into the dirt so it stuck up right next to where Billy’s body still lay. I sighed hard, shaking my head.

  “Oh, I’m back to ‘Lieutenant Ryder’ now?” I huffed as lightly as I could in hopes that Mina wouldn’t see how winded I was. “A few minutes ago, you called me Mark.”

  “A few minutes ago, you looked like you were spinning out,” she explained, crossing her arms over her ample chest. “I needed to get through to you, and in my experience, I’ve found that using someone’s Christian name does the trick.”

  I flinched at the use of that phrase. That’s what my mother used to call it; my ‘Christian name.’

  “I’d have done the same thing with any of my girls,” she continued. “Not that I’d have to. They know better than to lose their shit like this.”

  I leaned my weight onto the shovel, torn somewhere between pissed off and impressed. I couldn’t remember the last time a Marine had spoken to me like this, like I had to prove myself. Even Della and those who had moved on to move senior positions knew what I was capable of and treated me as such. But this woman, she was something different.

  “You seem pretty hell-bent on comparing me to your girls,” I said, pursing my lips at her.

  “Just want to make sure you know where your place is,” she answered. “You are part of my mission now, like I said, but it is my mission, Lieutenant Ryder. Yours ended when you got your people killed.”

  I blinked at her, a shot of anger running up my leg and lighting fire to my gut.

  “I’d say the bugs did that,” I answered through gritted teeth.

  “The bugs always do it,” she sighed. “That’s like blaming the rain for flooding the streets and trapping you in your house, all the while knowing that the weatherman warned you.” She walked closer to me.

  “I’m the fool that ignored the weatherman?”

  She settled right in front of me, so close that I could have smelled the scent of her if I wasn’t wearing my suit.

  “You’re the only man I see.”

  A tingle ran through me. I was still more than a little pissed off, but there was something about hearing her refer to me as a man that was at least a marginal step up from where we had been.

  Turning, Mina barked at her squad mates. “Jill! Claire! Take point and watch our asses.” She looked down at the shovel and the hole I had started to create. A shovel appeared in her hand, glowing red before it solidified in her hands. “We’re going to be here for a while.”

  “You can’t be serious!” Claire shouted, shaking her head. “You’re going to let this knuckle dragger tell us what to do?”

  “I’m not letting anyone tell me what to do,” Mina answered, her tone firm but not nearly as animated as Claire’s, “including you. Now, unless I’m mistaken, there were no question marks at the end of my sentences. Get your asses where I ordered them this minute!”

  Claire looked from Mina to me and back again, her gaze as withering as any cannon blast. I didn’t care. Honestly, I didn’t have the time or inclination for either adoration or disdain today.

  Wordlessly, Claire turned around and headed out to cover our backs.

  Mina’s eyes slid over to Jill, but if she was looking for a fight there, she’d come up empty. The purple haired woman had a sly smile on her face, and she already walking to the opposite side.

  “You’re going to help me?” I looked to Mina with curious amusement.

  “Of course, I’m going to help you.” She thrust her shovel into the ground and got to work. “Don’t think it means something that it doesn’t. I still think burying this boy is a colossal waste of time, and it goes against at least three Alliance regulations, but I’ve been around enough Marines to be able to read them.”

  She glared at me for a second again before moving her attention back to the ground. “You’ve got a head as hard as the hill we’re being directed to. I wouldn’t be able to talk you out of this if I tried for a year solid. That being said, two can shovel twice as quickly as one.” She looked at my shovel, still stuck in the ground. “Providing you don't refuse my help.”

  I pulled the shovel out and helped, careful not to look at Billy. His face was too much for me to handle right now. I needed him in the ground before I could move on. If Mina couldn’t understand that, at least she would help. That was something.

  “You’ve got a handle on your girls,” I said without looking up at her. “That’s impressive. It’s also a little insulting.”

  “Insulting?” she asked, digging every bit as quickly as I was. “How do you figure that?”

  “You know the regulations every bit as well as I do. No Marine is allowed to choose their own squad. Not even me, but you do, don’t you?” I shook my head. “I thought it was just a gender thing. I thought you couldn’t handle working with men.”

  “You’d be surprised what I can handle, Lieutenant Ryder.”

  “I’m sure, but that’s beside the point. These aren’t just any women. You handpicked them, and you’ve worked with them more than once.”

  She looked up at me, a sly smile spread across
her face. “Is it that obvious?”

  “It’s a compliment actually. You’re a machine, well-oiled and all that.”

  “Well-oiled, but not perfect,” she explained. She tossed her shovel to the side and looked up at me. “That should be deep enough to ensure the bugs don’t get to him, assuming you strip him of his suit.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” I said, nodding firmly.

  “Good. Be quick about it,” she said, turning away. “And Lieutenant Ryder,” she added, turning back to me for just a second, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  16

  Billy took it hard when there was no one to pray over Conroy’s body when he died. To that end, it seemed fitting and kind that I would do him that service now that he had followed his fellow junior officer into death.

  Fitting as it might have been, I wasn’t the type of person who could fulfill it. I hadn’t been a Godly man for decades now. Though the Alliance Hall had services every Sunday, I never went. While it was true that you could find a chapel, synagogue, church, or whatever else to fit whatever flavor of the Almighty you subscribed to, I usually spent my Sunday mornings nursing a cold beer or flipping through old westerns that no one but me seemed to read anymore.

  It wasn’t that I wasn’t a believer. I had been raised Christian by a mother who sang as loud as her lungs would allow anytime a priest led the hymn. It was just that, after everything I had done, I wasn’t sure God would even listen to me anymore.

  We believe the Lord made everything, and bugs are part of everything. If that’s the case, then it turns out that I’ve killed a hell of a lot of our maker’s creations and, worse than that, I planned on killing a lot more.

  Wasn’t sure that put me and the man upstairs on speaking terms.

  So, after I’d stripped Billy of his battle suit and compacted it down enough to fit in a compartment of my own suit, I covered the boy over with dirt and stood there for a moment, thinking.