Destiny Rising - A Hard Military Space Opera Epic: The Intrepid Saga - Books 1 & 2
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“That’s why they won’t give you one of those,” Taylor whispered to Perez.
“Yeah, I wouldn’t get within a thousand meters of you and a weapon like that.” PFC Koller grinned. “It’d be suicide.”
Without warning, laserfire flickered from the far side of the stream, focused at one/two’s position and forcing the fireteam down into the brush. The enemy obviously had sound-sensitive targeting, but their actions revealed their own locations. The Marine’s combat helmets traced the enemy’s shots by the heat signatures the laser beams left in the air and squads one and two opened up with everything they had. Two other captured railguns whined as they charged and then the first ten meters of trees across the stream ceased to exist.
Williams sent them both a slap across the combat net and reminded them that enemies were still across the stream—enemies who were now in possession of shiny new EMF emission data. Unfortunately, his necessary reprimand gave away his position as well, and he signaled dispersal to those around him and the other broadcasters.
Laser fire continued to flicker from the far shore and the Marines returned the favor, the opening volleys turning into a full skirmish. It played out for several more minutes before the sounds of the enemy retreating could be heard. Williams called for a weapons/wounds check while updating the command net with their positions and number of targets estimated to be eliminated.
Corporal Taylor led his team to the Staff Sergeant’s position and prepared for a tongue lashing. Williams looked them up and down, his displeasure a palpable thing.
“Why I don’t put my boot up your collective asses and send you home is beyond me. However, it is nice to have a team that volunteers as bait. It also means that I don’t need to get too attached to you assholes since you are all going to die soon.” They took it well, like Marines.
“Next time one of you decides to start commenting on a firefight when we are maintaining a tactical silence, pretend you can’t, cause once more and you’ll all be physically incapable of communication!” He spat on the ground and took a deep breath. “You got me one/two?”
“Yes, Staff Sergeant.” The response was quick and in perfect unison.
“Good, go swap places with two/one. You’re on the left flank now. Don’t let me down.” After a verbal beating it was never a bad thing to give the team some responsibility. They’d be all the more eager to prove themselves proper soldiers.
“I think Taylor’s gonna be numb for a week.” Sergeant Kowalski walked toward Williams after sending Jansen on point again. “Becker estimates we got thirteen baddies. Hard to say for sure—he was counting heads, but he thinks he could be plus or minus one. I guess some of the heads didn’t make it too well.”
Williams nodded. “Taylor’s right about one thing. There’s a reason they don’t hand out guns like that in the corps.”
“We gonna get a talkin’ to from the brass for using ’em?” Kowalski asked.
“Maybe… Hopefully they’ll take it as a fighting-fire-with-fire situation.”
“Well”—Kowalski grinned—“It’s your ass, not mine.”
“Thanks for the support.”
Combat net indicated that squad three was in position and waiting on first and second to make it to their ready point.
The facility was a squat two-story building with several outlying power transfer and storage sheds. Jansen’s team silently took out four sentries and set up a covering position behind a power transfer shed that hid their EMF signature. Williams directed the two slug-throwing teams to set up positions at the northwest and southwest corners of the building. Squad three had the rear of the structure covered. Williams settled down behind a storage shed and scanned the combat net. The assault was scheduled for t-minus 6 minutes according to the clock ticking on his HUD.
Two/one would cover with the heavies and provide additional backup. Squad one was taking the front door. Two fireteams from squad three would secure the rear rooms of the facility and catch any escapees.
The count crept down toward zero as he scanned the facility. The enemy had to know the attack was imminent. Nothing showed, but he was certain that behind most, if not all, the second-floor windows were enemy troops all too ready to rain hell down on the Marines.
He saw movement behind one window in particular and passed the information along to two/one, noting with approval how Corporal Salas assigned the target and also had PFC Reddy run the intel over to Chang’s heavy team. A man was spotted on the roof and Salas took care of that target as well.
Thirty seconds remaining.
Taylor’s fireteam was to be first in, with Dvorak holding back until the facility was secured. They’d need him to hack the systems the brass was so interested in, and Williams needed to keep him breathing for that little event.
Squad one’s teams were moving now, slow and silent, keeping to lanes out of sight of the building’s windows. A moment later Taylor was at the door, setting a shape charge before flattening himself against the wall.
The sound was muffled, most of the blast erupted inside the building. Marine boots smashed into the door’s remains and knocked them inward. A flash and a conc rolled in and one/one was back against the wall as the whine of railguns charging echoed out of the opening. No fire came, instead curses erupted from within the building.
The other two teams in squad one hadn’t been sitting idle. While the front door action was underway, they were breaching ground floor windows.
A gunner leaned out of the window Williams had noted earlier and PFC Altair burned a hole through his head. At the same moment, Reddy took out the man on the roof with a shot from one of the commandeered railguns.
Before the sounds of pain within the building died down, one/one was through the doors; their IR scan showing the locations of the radicals inside, with three quick shots the entrance was secured.
Williams rose from his position and followed the squad into the building—time to finish the job.
HISTORY
STELLAR DATE: 3227171 / 08.06.4123 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Marine Troop Transport En-Route to TSS Normandy Orbiting Venus.
REGION: Terran Hegemony, Sol Space Federation
“So, we’re being sent to Mars.” Grenwald addressed his NCOs after wrapping up their post-op review on the transport back to the TSS Normandy.
“What’s going on there?” Sergeant Li asked. “Aren’t they usually pretty particular about anyone else doing a job they think their vaunted MSF can handle?”
“Wouldn’t know about that,” Grenwald said. “We’re not going to the surface, but to the Mars Outer Shipyards where they’re building that big colony ship, the Intrepid. They’ve got a major and an admiral with some sort of trouble that needs Marine boots to fix.”
“Intrepid, eh?” Williams grunted. “That’s the ship that Redding guy made the new super ramscoop for right? Supposed to be one hell of a ship.”
Green leaned his seat back and stretched. “I don’t really see what they would need us for, sir. Do they need us to shoot a contractor or something?”
Grenwald shrugged. “Not in the brief. I caught wind that they pulled up an MCSF from Mars 1 and have a couple companies of Regulars running security for the ship.”
“Great,” Li groaned. “We’ve got to play nice with regulars? You know they’re not really our biggest fans. Plus, they’ve already got MCSF to wipe people’s asses. That’s their specialty.”
“She has a point,” Williams
said. The 8th Battalion of the 242 was Force Recon Orbital Drop; the TSF usually didn’t deploy them to stations. The TSF usually didn’t want them on stations. “What good are FROD Marines going to be at babysitting a construction job?”
“Well, as it turns out we were specially requested. I guess some of the folks on that ship have pull.”
“Who made the request?” Sergeant Green asked.
“Some MICI major named Richards.” The lieutenant sounded dismissive. “Probably just some hopped-up OCS brat who wants more attention than she deserves.”
“Oh, I don’t think so.” Williams grinned at Kowalski, who had been with the platoon ten years ago when Major Richards, then a lieutenant colonel, was temporarily the de-facto commander of their battalion. “If she’s involved, and called for us, we’re going into the fire.”
“You can say that again.” Kowalski nodded.
“This major’s been demoted?” Grenwald asked. “Is she that Tanis Richards?”
“One and the same,” Williams nodded.
“Great, so we’re going to the MOS under the command of some nut-job Micky major?” Sergeant Green rubbed his face with frustration.
“Hey.” Kowalski smacked him on the back. “Don’t knock it till you try it.”
“Who cares about that?” Li was accessing data on the MOS over her Link. “There are absolutely no good bars on that shipyard!”
AN UNEXPECTED INTERVIEW
STELLAR DATE: 3227178 / 08.12.4123 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Mars Outer Shipyards
REGION: Mars Protectorate, Sol Space Federation
Amanda stopped to check herself over in the mirror before leaving the hotel in the MOS visitor’s district. Several hairs were not in place and she smoothed them back with her hand before sending a command to lock them down. From a distance, a good long distance, what was on her head may look like hair, but so much as a glance up close would tell an observer that the black metallic strands coming out of her head could not be hair, especially since each was nearly half a centimeter in diameter, slowly tapering to a point over twelve to twenty-four inches—depending on the necessary attenuation.
She smiled, double checking that the makeup on her nearly translucent skin was to her liking. She had opted for a bright red lip color that appeared to be the current vogue, and matched it with a grey/blue eye pattern which masked the extra sensory inputs around her eyes and temples.
Amanda usually picked whatever clothing would show off her mods and alterations the most, but today—for the interview—she had chosen a pair of glossy black pants and a grey neoprene top. She knew it certainly wasn’t the normal sort of attire most of the interviewees would be wearing, but it was the most demure clothing she owned.
Rolling back her sleeve, she opened a panel on her forearm and slid a small stun charge into place. If she ran into any trouble, a touch of her hand would take her assailant down for the count. Not that she expected trouble; it just seemed to find her a lot. She didn’t think the charge would be noticed at any security checkpoints. The Auth & Auth systems would be certain to pick up all of her power-hungry mods and logically assume the charge to be nothing more than a benign power source.
After leaving the hotel, she took a tube up several levels to a maglev train, which shot her down forty-seven kilometers of station in under a minute. From there, she boarded the lift to level A8.7 where security awaited.
Amanda couldn’t help but feel nervous as she faced the stern looks of the TSF soldiers. With a slow breath, she schooled her expression so that none of her anxiety would show. She had to do this, had to see it through; her future depended on it.
The soldier in charge, a quick lookup of his shoulder insignia informed her that he was a sergeant, gave her a raised eyebrow as he saw all of her modifications through the scanner, but said nothing as one of his men waved her through.
That uncertain moment passed, and Amanda refocused her worry on the interview itself. She didn’t know why it was occurring on the ship. Her lookup of the GSS’s records showed that most interviews, in fact nearly all of them, took place either in Jerhattan or Sulter City on Mars 1. She couldn’t imagine why hers was any different.
The lift took her up to the A9 deck and she stepped out onto a massive dock. There were several men in GSS uniforms checking the destination of each person coming off the lift and giving their credentials a final once over with both machine and the Mark I eyeball.
Upon scanning Amanda’s ID, the man frowned and then directed her to wait in a designated area. He didn’t tell her why, and her pulse rose with concern over the separation from other the other visitors.
Her wait lasted only a few minutes, after which a young woman approached, identifying herself as Corporal Summers. Without even a glance at Amanda to ensure she was following, the corporal led her a short distance to a PHT and gestured for her to take seat. Moments later they were traveling across the dock toward the main lock of the Intrepid.
Amanda hadn’t realized at first how far away the ship was, but as they slowly drew closer the true scale of the massive colony vessel dawned on her. What she had assumed to be boxes of cargo stacked near the ship’s cargo hatch turned out to be containers the size of buildings, some even larger. The hatch itself was big enough to drive a stellar transport through. When they finally passed through the portal, she had the uncomfortable feeling of being swallowed and subsumed.
She could feel the immediate disconnect from the MOS the moment they passed through the lock; her queries against the shipnet directed her to a very restricted public network with only the most basic of databases and non-sentient AI.
Unable to help herself, Amanda pushed gently against the barriers into restricted areas of the networks, attempting to follow routes that she was able to infer, or guess at, based on the public net’s layout. Gaining access to one of the internal communications nets wasn’t terribly difficult, though not easy either. From there, Amanda simply listened in on some of the comm chatter, waiting to see if she’d been detected, or if any information would pass her way that would show further routes into the shipnet.
Just as she hoped, a communication went down a route not normally visible on the routing matrix and she followed it, curious where it was off to. She was about to establish a connection with the new subnet when she was halted abruptly.
It was almost as though she had been running at full speed only to find that someone had slipped a collar around her neck, jerking Amanda off her feet. The sharp pain in her head re-enforced the analogy. A moment later, her connection was routed back to the basic public net and a warm timbre filled her mind.
Though the tone was firm, there was a warmth to it, an almost welcoming quality. That being said, Amanda could tell the communication came from an AI. The bandwidth it consumed on the public net and the nature of its connection caused her to realize that it was likely the Intrepid itself that she was communicating with.
Amanda was too stunned for words and simply sent an affirmative response. She maintained a light connection to the public net, but returned her focus to the physical world around her. As it turned out, she and her escort were arriving at the main elevator bank within the ship and the corporal led her into a tube before keying in a very large number, and then a security code.
The lift br
ought them up to deck 1045 and from there they took a maglev train to the forward engineering section of the ship. While Amanda knew that the upper decks were crew and administration—somewhere she expected to be—she couldn’t imagine why she was going to engineering.
Once they disembarked from the train, the corporal led her down a series of corridors to a large lobby and directed her to have a seat. Her escort cocked her head slightly, most likely her tell that she was accessing her Link, before turning to Amanda.
“They’ll be a minute or two, please wait patiently.” With that, the corporal left and Amanda took to surveying her surroundings.
The lobby itself was non-descript; a few seats along one wall, and a series of casts and feeds hovering in the middle of the room. The far side was dominated by a window, which was currently opaque. Checking first to see if the room’s general settings were public—she had no intention of disregarding the Intrepid’s warning—Amanda rose and walked to the window, changing its setting to full transparency.
The sight took her breath away. The window looked back over the bulk of the ship. The angle of Sol’s light and illumination from MOS caused the Intrepid to gleam spectacularly.
Almost directly below ran the spine of the ship. From what she understood of its design, that was where the hydrogen atoms, which were scooped up during flight, would be accelerated to their fate in the annihilator and engines. On either side of the ship’s particle accelerator, two large cylinders rotated almost about twice a minute—her rough math indicating nearly 1g of centripetally generated force on their inner surface.
Near the rear of the ship, several of the large cargo containers were in place, and, when the ship was complete, they would fill all the space under the spine between the two cylinders. Over ten kilometers away, the bulk of the engines rose up, a mass of reactors and storage tanks mixed with the assemblies for the high powered lasers that would create an environment within the engines not unlike the core of a star.