“Besides,” she continued, “what were you going to do once that thing coughed you up?” She shook her head like she was admonishing one of her girls. “You know as well as I do that the only shot I had at taking this down was when I had a clear shot into its open mouth.”
“A shot I afforded you,” I chimed in, suddenly feeling like I was defending something that didn’t really need to be defended.
I knew better than to actually care about things like kills and credit. Bounties aside, that was grassfeds stuff, something I’d moved past long ago. Still, there was something about being around a woman who was so close to me in terms of merit and accomplishment that brought out the competitor in me.
“What are you doing here, anyway? Don’t you have a squad to keep safe?”
“The squad can take care of themselves,” she pointed out. “Well, more or less. Besides, I told you that I’m not about to be known as the woman who let Mark Ryder die.” She nodded at me. “Not today anyway.” Blinking, something dark passed through her eyes. “Not like that.”
She shook her head and, just like that, the darkness drifted away, replaced by a fierce determination the likes of which I had only ever seen staring back at me from the mirror.
“Come on,” she said. “We’ve still got work to do, and I don’t have time to go saving you at every turn.” She pointed to the dead sandworm. “Take the energy you used up inside and let’s go.”
“Wait, you’re going to just give me its energy?” I was confused. I mean, she was right, I needed to replenish my shields and life support, but it was one thing to give away the energy from a walkie or two. It was another to give away a sandworm.
“Mark, take the energy.” She met my eyes. “Now.”
“Fine,” I said, doing as she asked and absorbing the energy from the sandworm. As it filled my capacitors to the max, I couldn’t help but feel like an asshole for arguing with her about the kill. After all, she’d just given me the equivalent of a year’s salary if I sold it off, not that I was going to do that.
“We can share it.” I reached out my hand. “You did get the kill shot.”
“Mark, you told me you had it.” She met my eyes, and there was something in them I didn’t quite get, certainly not the anger I expected, but it wasn’t there all the same. “Are you telling me you lied? Because I find that hard to believe.”
She lifted her bow back to the ready position, and I couldn’t help but notice how she looked in the quickly vanishing light, with what counted as this system’s sun behind me, backlighting her and forcing whatever flaws she had out of my vision. She looked young, nearly as young as the girls she had with her, except, where they were filled to the brim with the flush of youthful exuberance and optimism, Mina was etched with a sort of wisdom and realignment I recognized. Strangely, it made her more beautiful than the others. It certainly made me a hell of a lot more impressed.
I shook that thought off. The way she looked against the setting sun was neither here nor there. The fact that we were still, at this very moment, in more danger than most citizens of Earth would ever face in their lives was what mattered. She could have been a lumberjack with a beer belly and a face tattoo for all it mattered. In fact, I’d probably do better to look at her that way.
“The girls,” I said as we both started running toward the cave where she was already supposed to be. “Where are they?”
“Doing their jobs and trying to keep the fliers out of the cave,” she said, her feet stomping loudly as she ran.
It was obvious to me that she had initiated the sonic amplifiers in her boots, and that was how she’d drawn the sandworm back up to the surface. It was a smart move, but keeping them turned on would undoubtedly draw any similar creatures toward us.
“Wanna do something about that?” I asked as we ran, looking down at her feet.
“Turn the boots off, Margie,” she said, obviously talking to her suit.
“Margie?” I asked, shaking my head as we ran. “Even your suit is a woman?”
“I want it to work, don’t I?” she scoffed as we caught sight of the fliers at the mouth of the cave. I saw them reacting to whatever weaponry Claire and Jill were using though I couldn’t see through the circle of flying, and sometimes dying, bugs.
“My thrusters still work,” I reminded her. “I’m going to take to the skies and go at these things from a higher angle, maybe shoot down at them.” She wasn’t the only one with a shiny new pulse laser, after all.
“No,” Mina said, nearly snapping at me. “Claire’s shielding was destroyed in the first attack.”
“Damn,” I muttered. “What about backup?”
“She didn’t buy the upgrades.” I could tell from Mina’s tone exactly what she thought about that decision.
“Goddamn grassfeds.”
“Hey,” she shot back. “They might be less experienced, but those are still my girls. I won’t have you talking about them any way you feel like.”
We strode up to the circle of floating bugs, their wings flapping. “If their fuck ups are going to get me killed, I’ll say whatever the hell I want. Thrusters on, Annabelle!” I launched upward, chainsaw in hand.
With long-range weaponry out of the question thanks to Claire’s penny-pinching ways, I figured the best thing to do was go at these bastards like I was in a street fight, well, a street fight that was in the air anyway.
“Hey Annabelle,” I said as I neared the fliers, smiling as the first one caught sight of me. “You ever seen those bug zappers like they used to have in front of screen doors out in the country?”
“I am not a person, Lieutenant Ryder. I’ve never been out in the country, and I’ve never ‘seen’ anything. Still, my databases are showing something akin to what you describe. Is there a reason for your inquiry?”
“Sure is, sweetness,” I said, feeling about a thousand pounds lighter than I had just a few minutes ago while I was swimming around in the belly of that beast. “I want to show them what happens to bugs when they mess with country boys.” I chuckled. “So how about you lace this chainsaw with enough electricity for me to remind them of where they oughta be in the evolutionary chain?”
My request wasn’t completely accurate. I wasn’t a country boy, per se. We lived in the suburbs, always had. Still, if you went ten miles south, there were hay bales and rusted barn roofs, the whole nine yards. Besides, it sounded slicker coming out of my mouth.
“As you wish, Lieutenant Ryder,” Annabelle answered. “Though I must inform you that the electric upgrade for this particular weapon is sold separately.”
“Of course it is,” I muttered as the first of the fliers started at me. “Just buy the damn thing.”
She could purchase things without me seeing the Store or its cost as long as she had my verbal order. It was a feature that was touted as an advantage in split-second battlefield situation. Me, it was something I felt was actually a scheme by Alliance merchants to take advantage of desperate Marines in desperate situations.
“Purchase complete at 100,000 coins,” Annabeth informed me, and for a second I nearly wanted to check my bank account. “Turning on now.”
I reared back, looking at the flier in front of me all flapping wings and claws, anger filling me every bit as much as fear. Thrusting my chainsaw forward, blue energy sparked around it. It hit the bug, zapping it dead nearly instantly as the blade of my saw worked its way through the thing’s body.
“Yep, that was worth every penny,” I muttered as I watched it fall to the ground. Good bugs were dead bugs, everyone knew that.
“Congratulations, Lieutenant Ryder!” Annabelle cheered. “If you kill three more Acburian fliers or their subspecies before the end of the day, you will earn a 20,000 coin Killstreak Bonus! Isn’t that delightful?”
I ignored the cheery AI and flew toward another, slicing its head off before it even had a chance to turn around, and then another. I slammed the running chainsaw through its chest and watched as dark liquid spewed from the
hole I created. The electrical upgrade shocked it to death before I could finish cutting through it, leaving the corpse of the thing hanging limply on my chainsaw. I pushed it off, letting the body fall on another bug and knocking it to the ground. Mina and the others would deal with that one, killstreak crap be damned.
That was when I saw Claire. She was bloody and struggling. Her shielding was down, leaving her vulnerable, and the rocket spear in her hand wasn’t doing her any favors. She needed something more, something that could deal with all three of the fliers surrounding her.
A bug slammed into my back, knocking me forward in the sky. I could feel the thing pull at my arm hard.
“Damn it!” I cried as my chainsaw fell to the ground, still spinning, still sparking. “Watch out!”
Claire, the person closest, looked up and shrieked. She dove out of the way, and the chainsaw struck one of the bugs that lunged in for her, killing it instantly. It must have counted as an official kill because the sound of jingling coins filled my ears in the most annoying way.
Annabelle sang the official Alliance Killstreak anthem as I turned, clocking the bug who had my arm hard enough to knock it back as we hurtled downward. As it released me, I grabbed it by the carapace and initiated my left thruster while turning off my right one, throwing us into a wild arc that spun us around right before we slammed into the ground. The flier hit first, shattering on the hard-packed earth like a broken egg, while also managing to cushion my fall enough to keep me from doing the same.
“Thrusters off,” I said offhandedly as I scrambled to my feet and grabbed my chainsaw while Claire moved to cover me from the remaining two fliers.
“You almost killed me!” she barked.
“What’s the matter?” I scoffed. “Sad you weren’t going to get the honors yourself?” I glanced down at her spear as the remaining bugs neared us. “That’s not going to cut it. Get a wire whip and a fire upgrade.”
“That’s 20,000 coins. It’d take me a month to—”
“It’ll take you a second to die,” I interrupted her. “And two more to get the rest of us killed. Get a goddamn whip and put an end to this!”
She sighed loudly, but I saw her eyes glow. She pulled her hand back and, when she flung it forward, a blood red whip composed of thousands of razor-sharp wires glistened in the air.
Wire whips were great melee weapons for this situation. Electromagnets throughout it coordinated with the minicomputer in the hilt and the suit targeting systems to not only increase whip speed but unerringly guide it on its way.
Claire’s whip slapped into one flier with a thunder crack that knocked it to the ground, and Claire’s face filled with determination as she targeted the next flier.
I rushed the earthbound one, digging my chainsaw into it before it could even react. The zapper function made quick work of it.
Looking back up, I saw Claire’s whip wrap around the remaining flier’s torso. The bug struggled to pull away from the whip’s grasp, wings beating the air as it tried to lift off. It was pulling so hard, Claire was having trouble both holding on and staying on the ground.
“Ignite!” I screamed, watching as one of her feet left the ground.
“What?” she asked me with panicked eyes.
“Tell the fucking whip to ignite!” I shouted.
“Ignite,” she repeated, and a string of fire ran up the whip, lighting the bug up like the night sky of an Independence Day celebration.
The whip instantly let loose, saving itself from the dangerous convulsing of the flier as it went through its death throes. The body crumbled to the earth, and I noticed that, against all odds, we had done it. I, along with Artemis Squad, had killed all the fliers and actually managed to survive this.
“Fire whip?” Claire asked me breathlessly, looking at the weapon she had just bought and then back at me with just a skid on less distaste.
“Fire whip,” I repeated.
I took a deep breath, thinking I might have just a second to relax.
And then our bands started to buzz again.
“Damn,” I muttered. “Just damn.”
22
“I can’t believe this,” Jill said, looking down at the band on her wrist and shaking her head. The contents had scrolled across our arms the instant the bugs were dead, as though the Alliance somehow knew we finally had a moment to breathe and wanted to screw with that.
May have been the case. Our suits recorded everything we did, said, and saw. Sure, the Alliance told us there was a pretty sizable time delay between what happened in the field and when they saw it up in their perches in the Hall. I knew better though. I had seen enough and been through enough to know their reaction time was damned good when they wanted it to be, when it helped them.
Like it did right now.
“Can you believe this?” Jill asked, looking up from her band at the lot of us, her purple eyes wide. “We run to this cave, this very cave, and then the objective changes.” She shook her head. “What about the hill? I thought we were supposed to get to the hill.”
“Forget about the hill,” Mina said, her voice dripping with both certainty and the sort of indifference years of barely escaping death earns you. After all, once you’ve had to cut your way through a flurry of fanged bugs who want nothing more than to rip you from limb to limb, things like last minute plan changes kind of lose their potency. “We have a mission. This is it.”
Jill looked over at me from across the cavern where we’d found shelter after the bugs were killed and our bands went off. As she stared at me, her violet eyes flickering against the fading sunset, I thought maybe she was looking for some kind of confirmation, an assertion that her confusion and outrage was well placed.
She wouldn’t find it with me. I learned a long time ago not to waste my time trying to guess the motives of the people in charge. Though they had all been where we stood once upon a time, I was always amazed by how quickly they forgot what it was like to be out in the field once they’d taken their leave from it.
We were chess pieces to them, checks on a list and money on paper. Infantry was an assembly line. If we died, there would be people to take our place. Sure, there was no denying that losing both Mina John and Mark Ryder in one fell swoop would be a painful blow to both world morale and the cosmetics of the Alliance as a whole. They’d work their way through it though. They’d probably even spin it to their favor, not that I had any idea how they’d get that done.
“Look on the bright side,” I said, staring at Jill’s unblinking eyes and feeling a bit of connection with her.
She, like I had been several years ago, believed in what she was doing. She saw the fight as a good one, one that needed to be fought, and she was going to do it. I could respect that, even if I wasn’t one hundred percent sure I even agreed with it anymore.
“And what would that be?” she asked, purple eyebrows shooting upward with her question.
“If we’re in this cave, we’re not out there.” I looked from Jill to Claire and back again, trying to make sure I was getting a certain point across. “If you think things were crazy out there a few minutes ago, you’d both wet yourselves once the sun goes down.”
“I’m sick of hearing that,” Claire said, impatience in her voice. “Don’t get me wrong, the Alliance sent us a new map to follow and a new position to get to. I’ll follow it. I’ll do it without opening my mouth because that’s my job.”
She nodded firmly. “That’s right. I do my job, and I’m sick and tired of being treated like some kid who doesn’t know what she’s up against. The two of you might have experience. You might have been thrown into more missions than years I’ve been alive, but I’m young, and so is Jill. We were trained with the new stuff, better tech, more advances. We didn’t sit through years of antiquated training we had to unlearn later.”
“Claire,” Mina barked.
“No,” Claire shot back, turning to her dark-haired C.O., “you’re the leader of this squad. I’ll treat you the way you des
erve to be treated, but I expect you to pay me the same respect. I’ve been through things too, and so has Jill. We’ve risked our lives just like you, and our lives are just as valuable as either of yours.”
“I didn’t mean to imply that they weren’t,” I said, narrowing my eyes at Claire. I knew the woman didn’t like me, but I hadn’t seen the truth of that before this moment. It wasn’t me, not really. It was a problem with authority, well, authority and change.
It wasn’t the best combination of things for a Marine to have, given the sheer amount of orders we were expected to follow on a daily basis. Still, there was a fire inside of Claire I found exciting.
“In fact, that’s why I’m telling you this,” I continued. “That’s the only reason I’ve ever told either of you anything.” I shook my head and walked toward the woman. She didn’t flinch. In fact, she arched her back in response, thrusting her breasts out toward me defiantly. I blinked, taking in her arched back and perfect form. “You think it was easy for me to see Billy die or Opie?”
“Who the fuck is Opie?” Claire asked.
“Any of them,” I answered. “All of them. All of you. You’re all fucking Opie!” I cleared my throat. “There’s an endless parade of you people that come walking through these lands, beating back bugs and fighting the good fight. I’ve seen more of you die than I can count. I know more dead people than I do living. Do you have any idea how screwed up that is?”
“I do,” Claire answered, leaning back and jutting her hip out defiantly. “At least, I think I do. What I don’t know is what that has to do with me.”
“I don’t want to see it happen to you,” I admitted, setting my jaw. “You’re a bitch.”
“Hey!” Claire fumed.
I shook my head. “I mean that in the best possible way. You’re a stone-cold bitch with a heart of fire and a beast in your belly that is constantly trying to get out. Am I wrong?”
Doomed Space Marine: A Space Adventure (Bug Wars Book 1) Page 14
