“We want nothing to do with your plans,” I said, my teeth ground together. “We want nothing to do with your infighting.”
“Luckily for me, I’m not giving you a choice. Your goal was to rid Teela’s caves of her metal. As that is the source of much of her sway here, I want to help you. Should you refuse that offer, I will kill one of the women with you and ask you again. Should you refuse a second time, I will kill both the remaining women. A third time, and I will chop off your hands and your sex organ. At which point you’ll be of no use to anyone. So, I’ll let my people take turns beating you as you live out your remaining years in one of my cells.”
She shook her head. “Or, you can do as I ask of you. My men will take you through a secret tunnel that will deposit you along one of the weaker points of Teela’s territory. We will take no active part in the destruction of her lands, but should you succeed, we will stand down and allow you to take the metal.”
“How do I know?” I pressed. “How do I know you’ll actually let us have it when the fight is over?”
“You don’t,” the queen admitted, “but I can tell you one thing you should know to be true. Should you double cross me, should you promise to uphold your end of this deal and go back on it once I’ve reinstated your communications devices, I’ll shoot every Earth ship that comes for you out of the sky. Innocent people will die, and you will still remain my prisoner. Now, what say you?”
“I can’t speak for these women,” I answered. “Earth isn’t the way it used to be. They should have their own say over what they do.”
“I will open the communications to them, but it will cost one of them their lives. Chose.”
She peered at me.
“You’re not serious,” I said.
“I am more than serious,” she replied. “I did not go through the trouble of kidnapping you, bringing you here, seeping into your neural device, and transferring my language to Earth drivel to have a democratic debate. Hesitation has its price. Today, that price will be the life of one of these women.” She smiled at me. “Unless, of course, you’d like to accept my offer right now.”
I sighed heavily. We both knew she had me. “Fine. I agree—we agree.”
“What have you agreed to?” Mina asked me, panicked. I didn’t look at her. What was the use?
“Good.” The queen smiled. “One final issue. You have one of my citizens. He lays trapped in your suit as we speak. If you wish for me to treat your people with respect, you must first do the same for mine. Give me the specimen in your suit, and I will instruct my men to take you where you need to go. Do not, and one of your women will die. It will be, as you say, a fair trade. One of mine for one of yours.”
“I get it,” I answered in a huff. “Here.” I stuck my arm out and pressed a button causing the compartment in my suit to open and reveal the leech.
“Thank you, Lieutenant Ryder,” the queen said, reaching out and taking the vial. With a flick of her wrist, she opened the container and freed the leech inside.
“No,” Mina said. “That’s our—”
“It is not yours,” the queen said, and I could tell from the look on Mina’s face she could hear her now. “He does not belong to you. In fact, until I saw fit, you belonged to me.” She looked over at the elites at either of her sides. “Take them to their destiny.”
32
“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” Claire said from her position in the front of the line, right behind our elite guide.
It was strange. After the queen gave us our marching orders, the elites she’d sent with us positioned us right back into our places. It made me think there was a reason, like maybe they were going to separate us again. Part of me knew better, of course. After all, why would the bug queen let us go just to screw with us again? If she wanted us dead, she’d had plenty of opportunities.
No. She had told me the truth back in her throne room, or, at least, it was all the truth she thought I needed to know to do what she wanted.
“Working for bugs?” Jill asked, from behind me.
“Yes!” Claire shook her head. There was whining in her voice that made her sound younger than her years, and if I hadn’t known better, that would make me think she wasn’t able to handle herself. I knew she wasn’t incapable though. I had seen her man a whip. I had seen her do other things too, things that told me she was all woman and all in control.
Still, I had to admit, this was a scary situation. In fact, I couldn’t think of a time in my long and storied career when things had gone this far off the rails. It only made sense for her to be a little off-kilter about all of it.
Luckily for us, the elites didn’t seem to share their queen’s ability to get into our minds and speak our language, which meant they likely didn’t understand what she or Jill were saying.
“We do what we must to survive,” Mina answered sternly. “They don’t teach you that in the Alliance.”
“Yes, they do,” Jill said from behind me. Her proximity to me had grown more pronounced since our encounter in the cell, and I couldn’t tell whether that was because she was afraid and figured I was her best bet at survival, or because she felt close to me after what we’d done together. “It’s the first thing they say.”
“It might be the first thing they say, but it sure as hell isn’t the first thing they mean,” Mina explained as we exited the tunnels.
We stepped out into the desert of the moon’s surface again. It was dark out, exactly what I had been trying to avoid. Still, the night had mostly passed us by as we sat captive in the queen’s lair. A hint of ambient light shimmered in the distance, giving the world a soft glow that told us morning would break soon.
“The Alliance is all about what they can sell to you,” Mina continued, “and I don’t mean upgrades and the promises of early retirement.” She cleared her throat. “The truth is, where the Alliance really makes their money is through turnover. More soldiers means more government funding, so they breed a world where people are ready and willing to ignore the obvious and throw themselves into an abyss.”
“And what’s the obvious?” Jill’s voice cracked slightly.
“That this is fucking dangerous,” Mina said with about as much emotion as you’d expect from someone ordering a ham sandwich with light mayo. “There’s a good chance we won’t survive this, and if we do, there’s an even better chance we won’t survive the next mission. We constantly face death, Jill. That’s the truth. So, to get you to ignore that simple fact, they tell you how amazing an opportunity it is to be among heroes and walk with legends.”
“Isn’t it though?” Jill asked as we crossed a long, dry looking plain.
“Sure, but the truth is that heroes and legends are just who you say they are.” Mina sighed and shook her head. “If the Alliance needed more doctors or lawyers, then an onslaught of commercials would tell you they’re the real heroes and that anyone who decided to go into the military was obviously an idiot or mental defect.”
Obviously deflated by the tone in her voice, Jill muttered, “That’s a dark way to look at things.”
“Not really because, the truth is, they’re not wrong. Sure, the Alliance is basically lying to you. They’re lying to us all, but no matter what people want to believe about those who fight for their freedom, the fight against the bugs is still happening. If you can look past the bullshit and the stories about legendary Marines, present company excluded,” she looked back at me, “then you’ll see the real reason we do this, and there’s beauty in that. Moreover, there’s strength.”
“You’re good,” I muttered low enough to be confident she was the only one who could hear me. She was as impressive with pep talks as she was with missions, and that wasn’t a talent to be taken lightly. In fact, it made her an even better leader than I already thought she was. “You’re damn good.”
“I know that,” she murmured back, equally quiet.
I felt a connection to her now different than I had before. She had always been an eq
ual of mine, or close enough to split the difference in one direction or another. Now though, Mina John was something else. She was my bunker mate. She was my partner. She understood what it meant to be me in a way I wasn’t really sure any other person in this or any world ever really could.
I didn’t say any of that, of course. We were being marched to near certain death by a group of bugs who had instructions to kill us if we so much as looked like we were going to step out of line. Now wasn’t really the best time to tell the woman how much I admired her. A little cheesy, and I wasn’t the type for that.
“We’ve got this,” is all I said. “We’ve made it this far. We can make it the rest of the way.”
It was wishful thinking at best, and a downright lie at worst. Mina probably knew that. The look she shot me certainly told me she did.
Still, the others were young enough to believe I knew what the hell I was talking about, and that life wasn’t just this giant shot in the dark ninety percent of the time. If they were going to die tonight, they might as well do it with confidence.
Mina must have agreed because she didn’t stop me.
“The queen thinks we have a shot at this,” I said, “and the intel she gave us is certainly useful.”
“Intel?” Mina asked, turning back to me again with narrowed eyes as we walked. “What intel?”
“The maps of Teela’s land,” I said as though she should have known what I was taking about.
“That bitch!” Mina snarled through gritted teeth in a tone I knew would have been louder if not for the elites on either side of us. They might not have been able to understand our language, but a shout was a shout regardless of how you said it. “She didn’t send me any damn maps. In fact, my suit still isn’t completely functional.”
My suit wasn’t completely functional either. Annabelle’s sweet voice had yet to return to my headspace. I did have the maps though, showing a bug city in a cavernous valley that, if I was right, was situated right at the end of the plains we were now walking on.
“I’m sorry,” I answered. “I’d send it to you if I could.”
It was the truth. Mina was more than fit to help me with planning this attack. In fact, she’d proven to be a real asset. The suits were still down though, so the information would have to remain with me for the time being.
As we neared the end of the plane and found ourselves standing on a cliff, I saw Teela’s ’city’ stretch out before me. Hives, sand hills, and even clay mounds stretched out. The outer rim of the city’s circle was surrounded by guards, all elites, all armed and studded with armor.
Getting into this city would be a tall order. Taking it down would be damned near impossible.
“My God,” Claire murmured as we were fanned out into a straight line at the edge of the cliff.
The elites backed off, pushing buttons on their wrist cuffs.
As they did, I heard a low buzz in my ear, and then a familiar sound.
“Lieutenant Ryder,” Annabelle said. “It’s been too long.”
“Oh, thank God,” I answered. At that moment, I would have rather heard that robotic, wonderful voice than that of my own mother. “Longer than you can imagine, Annabelle.”
“I’m scanning the area and situational variables as we speak as well as sending coordinates and a progress report to Alliance headquarters,” she explained. “I’m afraid anything that happened during my rest period or during the time in which my capabilities were compromised will not be included in the report.”
“That’s probably for the best,” I said, remembering all that had gone down. “Just tell them where we are, that we’re close to getting the Ellebruim they asked for, and to be ready to receive it. Oh, and tell them the damn thing is a valley and not a cave. Their intelligence is for shit.” I glanced at Mina who was no doubt having a similar conversation with her own AI. “And send Mina a copy of the new geographical data in your database.”
“Affirmative. A transcript has been sent to the Alliance, my scans have been completed, and I’ve forwarded the maps to Officer John,” she said. “With the initial overlook of both our current situation as well as the mission objective, would the human vernacular ‘we’re fucked’ be a reasonable summation of where we’ve found ourselves?”
“Yeah, Annabelle.” I looked down at the bug Mecca as the elites with us stepped back, leaving us to our fates. “I think it would be.”
33
This was it. I looked down at the valley full of bugs milling about and the circle of elite guards that protected them. After a mission that stretched out well past what it was supposed to be, after losing the son of a friend I had lost years ago, and connecting with a group of women who had surprised me in more ways than I ever could have imagined, I was standing here. It seemed strange that all this existed without the Alliance’s knowledge.
This was an entire world, an ecosystem under the guise of nothingness. If this was what happened on the moon of Fenal, then I could only shudder when thinking of what secrets the bugs’ homeworld was likely hiding from us.
Still, I didn’t have time to think about that now. No, now was the time to figure out how we were going to do the impossible. Mina was still hungrily looking at the intel.
She stared at it for a few more moments as I stood there quietly, letting her process. I’d always hated it when people asked me questions while I was trying to formulate a plan, so I figured she must have felt the same way about things too.
That’s why I was so surprised when she looked at me and asked, “So what do you think?”
Protocol dictated there could only be one leader per squad. According to the Alliance, the buck had to stop somewhere, and Mina had made it perfectly clear on more than one occasion that it was her. So why did she want to let me in on the decision-making at this point? Could it have been that I had earned that sort of stature, at least in her eyes?
“We have a circle of elites surrounding an entire valley full of bugs. I have to imagine at least some of them can fight.”
“I guess most of them can,” Mina agreed. “I’m also going to go out on a limb and say that this intel isn’t complete. There’s a huge space in the center of this canyon where nothing is. Have you ever known the heart of anything to be empty?”
“I have not,” I admitted, nodding at her. “Good point.”
“And we don’t know where the metal is either?” Her eyebrows furrowed.
“Not unless you found something I didn’t in there. I’m pretty sure that if we can’t see huge stacks of metal from here, it’s underground.”
“My thoughts exactly.” Mina nodded. “That must be why there’s ‘nothing’ in the center. There must be a tunnel to the holding room or something.”
“So, we need to get there, to the center,” I said, putting it together.
“Which means we need to get through the circle of elites and stroll through a city full of bugs sight unseen,” Claire added, her tone dripping with sarcasm. Little did the woman know that she had just spoken my plan exactly.
“That’s what it means,” Mina said, speaking before I had the chance to, “and that’s what we’re going to do.”
“Excuse me?” Jill asked, looking from Mina to me. “What she just described was a suicide mission.”
“It’s always a suicide mission,” I answered, walking closer to Mina and staring Jill down. “You effectively committed suicide the moment you joined up. Deal with it. All any of us can hope for now is to buy a few more cool gadgets before we die.” I arched my eyebrows at Mina. “Got a plan?”
“Same as yours, I’m sure.” She shrugged. “Cloaking spheres, grappling gear, and prayer.”
She was right. She had just stated, more or less, my entire idea for getting through this alive. We’d shroud ourselves in cloaking spheres and descend this cliff with our grappling upgrades, then we’d cause some sort of diversion, something big and loud enough to create a hole in the circle of elites. We’d sneak through, and if we were lucky, we would
get to the center of the city sight unseen.
There would be more to do after that. That only brought us to the place where I thought the metal was. If I was wrong, or if there was more to the security than I was counting on, we’d have to come up with some serious survival skills on the fly.
That was where we were though. We’d make do when we needed to make do. We were Marines. That was part of the job.
“Got cloaking spheres?” I asked, looking at the two younger women. I didn’t need to wonder about Mina. Like me, she was stacked, packed, and loaded with all the upgrades she would ever need.
“Yes,” Jill answered quickly. To my surprise, so did Claire.
“Alpha level?” I asked, alluding to the highest upgrade of cloaking that was possible to buy.
“Yes,” Jill said, but Claire stayed quiet.
“Damn it, Claire,” I said, glaring at her.
“What?” she asked. “No one needs alpha level cloaking. The regular package is good enough.”
“Good enough gets you killed,” I said offhandedly.
It was something I had learned early on, and it stayed with me my entire career. We needed to be better than good enough. We needed to be perfect because even that wasn’t enough half the time.
I pressed Claire further. “What if they have thermal technology? What if they have sonar technology? The basic package only shields you from standard visuals.”
“This is a town in the crater of a moon. What are the chances they have advanced surveillance tech?” she shot back.
“It’s a town in the crater of a moon that the almighty Alliance had no idea was even here,” I retorted, angrier than I should have been. “The chances are better than I want to bet on.” I shook my head. “You’re not going down there with the basic package. Buy the goddamn upgrade or stay here.”
Doomed Space Marine: A Space Adventure (Bug Wars Book 1) Page 20
