Lost Marine

by James David Victor

  “Well, that was weird,” he said.

  “What do you remember?” Jack said.

  “Everything,” Sam said as he climbed the steps unsteadily. “They are strange beings. Their biological parts have been almost entirely replaced with tech. They have been traveling for eons, repairing and replacing their bodies. They are nomadic. They are just traveling through this region of the galaxy. One of them was damaged and picked up by Stone. They won’t leave without all their people.”

  “Leave none behind?” Jack said.

  Sam nodded, “But it’s not duty for them, it’s engineering. They will find Stone. They must, and I know what they’ll do with him. I’ve seen their thoughts. I wouldn’t want to be Stone when they finally catch up with him.”

  “Speaking of Stone… He’s got all our rations.”

  “And most of our equipment. Do we go after them?” Sam identified the last-known position of Bale’s frigate and began to enter a pursuit course.

  “No, Sam,” Jack said with a heavy heart. “We can manage. We can find supplies. We should try and get back to the fleet as quickly as possible. Once we’re back at the fleet, we’ll make sure the authorities know what he did.”

  Sam sat back in the chair. “Stone has a Mech on board the frigate, right? And it’s probably being experimented on by Stone as we speak. Are we going to let him get away with that?”

  Jack shook his head. “It’s not our fight, Sam. Set course for the fleet’s last-known position.”

  “I knew things,” Sam said in a strange voice. “Things I never thought of before. They are fading now, like a dream. I’ve seen things you wouldn’t believe. I was a Mech. They are old, Jack. Each unit is hundreds and hundreds of years old. They have a combined knowledge. They share a central cognitive system. It’s efficient. I knew everything.”

  Sam began to shudder. His eyes rolled back in his head and he slumped in the chair. Jack turned to him as Sam began to convulse and froth at the mouth. He twisted in his chair and collapsed.

  Jack held Sam by his shoulders and shouted at him.

  “Sam! Sam, what’s wrong? What’s the matter? Sam?”

  Jack dropped back into his seat. There was only one way he could help Sam and he knew it. He set a pursuit course and activated the drive system, sending the corvette accelerating across empty space following the group of Mech attack ships. The nearest medical supplies were on the frigate. Sam needed those now.

  12

  The flight of five Mech attack ships closed in on the frigate from aft. Bale opened a channel to Stone.

  “I need you on the command deck, Chief,” Bale said. “The Mechs are back.”

  The ships were traveling at near top speed and closed in on Bale’s boat as he tried to stay ahead. Once in range of the frigate’s laser assembly, the attack ships quickly changed course and evaded the laser fire directed at them.

  Bale watched them evading his fire on his command chair armrest holostage. The image was replaced by Stone.

  “Mechs?” Stone said, shaking his head. “It can’t be. How did they find us?”

  “They always find us. Just because they got hold of Forge didn’t mean they were going to forget about us, does it?” Bale said. He looked at the main holostage. “Target the lead Mech,” Bale shouted. “For krav’s sake, Ripa, hit one of them.”

  Lieutenant Ripa refocused the targeting sensor and fired again. The lead ship detonated as the laser struck the center of its forward energy weapon.

  Bale punched the air as the ship exploded. Ripa scanned for the next target. She had become an expert in targeting the Mech attack ships over the last several days. Each time they were attacked, she had operated the targeting systems. She knew their tactics and understood their maneuvering capabilities. She could only guess at the number of ships she had destroyed since they first came under attack by the Mechs.

  The first encounter had been shortly after they had responded to a strange signal from a small dwarf planet on the fringes of a star system. Stone had entered the ship and had spent ages in there. She knew he had transferred something to the drive room through the lower access hatch. She had brought it to Bale’s attention, but the commander was reluctant to challenge Stone. She had slowly put the facts together. It was following that encounter that the chief had sealed off the drive room, and that the Mechs had started to appear. Ripa knew she would have to eventually stand up to the chief if her commander couldn’t. She pushed the thought aside. A blast from a Mech attack ship struck the upper hull.

  “Shoot the kravin’ Mechs, Ripa,” Bale shouted. “Take them down.”

  Ripa fired again and destroyed another ship. She waited for the next Mech attack ship to take the lead position before firing the laser again. The third Mech was destroyed.

  The blasts from the attack ships slammed into the hull and threw Ripa forward. She felt herself lift off the floor as the gravity field weakened suddenly.

  “There are five more Mechs closing in,” Ripa said, looking at her wide-field scanner as she pulled herself back down to the deck. The gravity generator kicked in and she dropped, her knees almost buckling.

  “Command deck, this is Stone.” Chief Stone’s image appeared on the holostage from his position in the drive room. “It’s going to get bumpy. The grav generator is fluctuating. I need to shut it off and reset the system. Another hit could throw the calibration out, and we’ll either be floating free or pinned to the walls. I’m returning drive and navigation to the command deck.”

  Bale accessed the controls from his command chair armrest. He should never have been denied access to them in the first place, but this was not the time to get angry with Stone. He put the wide scanner view on the central holostage. Another flight of five Mechs were moving in from below.

  “They are going to be in firing range in a few moments,” Ripa shouted as she targeted and destroyed the fourth Mech. A blast of energy from the remaining Mech slammed into the hull and rocked the frigate.

  She returned fire and hit the final Mech with the laser. The Mech slowed and dropped from the pursuit, dead in the void.

  “Throw everything into the drive,” Bale said. “We have to stay ahead of this next group.”

  “That last Mech wasn’t destroyed,” Ripa said. “The laser focusing loop is losing power. I need to take it offline or we’ll lose the upper assembly.”

  “Maintain the fire, Ripa,” Bale ordered.

  “I can’t,” Ripa said, turning and shouting up to Bale on his command chair. “If I use the upper assembly and the loop goes, we will not only lose the upper assembly but half the upper hull as well. The laser is out of commission.”

  Bale opened a channel to Stone. “Chief, drop what you are doing and fix the laser loop something.”

  “Do you mean the focusing loop, Commander?” Stone replied with a patronizing tone.

  “Just fix it, Chief.” Bale felt himself lift off the seat and then fall back with a thump.

  “Negative on that request, Commander,” Stone said. “The grav generator is drifting. I need to shut it down.”

  “So do it and then fix my laser,” Bale said, looking at the Mech attack ships closing in.

  “It’s not as easy as that,” Stone growled back. “This is a grav generator. There is no off-switch. This is going to take time, and if I don’t get it done in time, you might find out what it’s like to experience the force of a few dozen gravities. It’ll be the last thing you ever experience.”

  Bale thumped his armrest. “We still got the lower laser assembly, right?”

  Ripa glanced over her shoulder and then back to the weapons console. She was bringing the hail cannon online and transferring the power from the laser to the mid-section guns.

  “No, sir,” Ripa said. “The loop is a single unit for both laser emitters. It runs at the generator hub level.”

  “Who came up with that stupid idea?” Bale said.

  “Not me.” Ripa worked to transfer ordnance from the magazine to the mid-s
ection guns. “I am not responsible for laser ordnance architecture.”

  “I thought you were some kind of weapons expert, and you can’t get the lasers to fire?”

  “Show me a weapons officer who could get them to fire without destroying the boat. They were not designed for this kind of abuse. They have been running on an intermittent stream of dirty power. They’ve been taken offline and repowered krav knows how many times. They haven’t had a service since krav knows when. Do you realize how bad all that is for them? Well, it’s bad, very bad. I told you to let me run a basic service on them.”

  “Told me? I’m in command of this ship. You don’t tell me anything, Ripa. Is that clear?”

  And then the first blast from the lead Mech in the second wave struck.

  Bale drifted forward out of his seat as the gravity generator was deactivated. He grabbed hold of the armrest and pulled himself back to the chair.

  Ripa hooked her feet under the side of the weapons console. She targeted the lead ship.

  “Transfer navigational control to the targeting systems. I need to move the boat to get a bead on the Mechs.”

  Bale transferred control to Ripa with a rising level of frustration. He gripped his chair and watched as Ripa flung the frigate around like an attack fighter, aiming at the Mechs and firing the hail cannon.

  “Gravity offline,” Chief Stone’s voice came over the command deck communicator. “I’ll take a look at the loop now.”

  Bale felt redundant. He tried to remain seated in his chair, gripping the armrests and holding himself in place. Another blast from the Mechs nearly flung him out of the seat. He opened the wide-range scanner and looked at the surrounding space.

  A rogue asteroid field up ahead and off the upper port side caught Bale’s eye.

  “There,” he said. “We head there and hide out. Transferring navigational control back to command.”

  Ripa fired a blast from the starboard-side mid-section cannon as Bale turned the frigate. The blast of kinetic hail struck the Mech a glancing blow and sent it tumbling off course. She pressed her lips tightly together as she noted that her targeting solution for the next Mech was lost as Bale maneuvered the boat to a new heading.

  The Mechs fired a rolling wave of energy blasts that struck the same spot on the upper hull.

  “Fire at the Mechs,” Bale said. “Finish them.”

  Ripa transferred the kinetic hail load in the mid-section cannon and loaded a series of high-ex detonation shells. She loaded one to the port and one to the starboard. Then with the frigate’s course stable and the Mechs arranged behind them, she released the shells. They drifted away from the frigate and were left behind. Once clear, Ripa detonated them. The blast filled the space between the frigate and the pursuing Mechs.

  Through the growing orange cloud of fire and energy left by the shells came the Mechs. Ripa noted one was losing power and tumbling off course, and a second exploded, but the third came on.

  “Hit them again,” Bale said.

  “Loop fixed,” Stone said. “You’ve got three, maybe four shots and then I’m taking it offline.”

  Ripa was already targeting the remaining Mech. She fired the laser and struck the Mech in the center of its primary weapon. The Mech vanished, transformed into a billowing cloud of fire.

  “That’s it,” Ripa said, directing her communications to the chief. “Take the laser offline, Chief. Good work getting that loop fixed. How did you do it?”

  “Let’s just say it’s not in the operating manual. Laser-focusing loop offline. I’ll need to strip it before we can use it again.”

  Ripa saw the next flight of five Mechs moving in directly astern.

  “A fresh wave of attack ships,” she said. “They’ll be on us in a few minutes.” Ripa held onto the console with one hand and let herself drift, free from gravity, and relax for just a moment. In a short time, she would be fighting for her life again, managing two batteries of hail cannon, a limited stock of ammunition, and an ineffectual commander.

  “We will be hidden in a few minutes,” Bale said. “Heading into a rogue asteroid field. It’s big enough for us to hide. Can you hide us from the Mechs, Chief?”

  Ripa looked at the asteroid field. It looked strange, but then, all rogue asteroid fields were strange. Asteroids were phenomena associated with star systems, usually found in bands or spherical clouds around a host star. Rogue fields drifted through interstellar space, ejected by their host star. This field was too densely packed and was moving too slowly to be a typical rogue field. That was good news for the frigate—it would make it easier to hide.

  “Going dark,” Chief Stone reported. “Shutting down nonessential power systems now. Ripa, take command-end systems offline. Commander,” Stone went on, “Lieutenant Ripa is going to need access to your chair.”

  Ripa looked back at Bale. She knew that in order to run dark, she would have to deactivate certain systems. Most could be done from the consoles across the command deck, but it was easier to do it all centrally from the command chair. She knew, and Stone knew, that Bale did not have the technical expertise to shut down the command-end systems.

  Bale drifted off his chair and pushed himself toward the central holostage. He ignored Ripa as she moved herself to his seat. Bale pulled up the image of the rogue field on the holostage and stared into the mass. Soon, his frigate would be hidden in the field and he would have his crew fix up all the systems and get them back on track to the fleet.

  Chief Stone reported in. “All done back here. I’ll be in the drive room.”

  Bale floated over the holostage, looking down on the image of the asteroid field.

  “All systems down,” Ripa said from her position in the command chair. “The boat is dark. Entering the rogue field now.”

  13

  Jack detected the Mechs’ weapons fire and knew he was on Bale’s trail. At that point, the trail went dark. Jack turned to Sam sitting next to him. Sam was slouched in the seat, his head lolling to one side. The stream of froth pouring out of his mouth had stopped, but his eyes were rolled back in his head and it was horrible to watch.

  “Bale has gone dark. He’s hiding from the Mechs.”

  Jack scanned the surroundings for any sign of Bale. Not far from the point where the frigate had gone dark was a rogue asteroid field. It was moving away from Jack, all parts of the field drifting together in a slowly moving mass.

  “I bet he’s in there,” Jack said. “He’s hiding from the Mechs. It’s worth checking out. What do you think?”

  Sam grunted and sputtered a dribble of foam. The response was unintelligible, but at least it confirmed that Sam was conscious and could understand, even if he could not make himself understood.

  Of all the injuries Jack had seen suffered by Marines under his command, this had to be one of the most terrifying. He had seen his Marines killed in combat, he’d even seen Sam lose his right arm, but for all the terrible injuries, Jack could not shake the thought of the injury suffered by Sam right now. To lose use of your limbs was terrible enough, but to lose the use of your mind was truly the worst that could happen.

  And Sam wasn’t just a Marine under Jack’s command. He was a friend. They had served together through a long, brutal war. Jack had come to know, trust, and rely on Sam. He was going to do whatever he could to get Sam the help he needed.

  The nearest help was on Bale’s frigate. If Jack had to shoot the frigate down and scoop up a med-pack from the wreckage, he would not hesitate. Jack would kill a dozen scroats like Bale and Stone to save his friend.

  The ship came closer to the asteroid field, and he quickly noticed this was no asteroid field. At a distance, it looked like a rogue field, but up close, Jack could see it was the debris field left over from a space battle. The larger asteroids were burned-out hulks of smashed spacecraft and drifting through the huge hulks were smaller pieces of debris, all the remnants of a battle.

  Jack focused the active scanner on one of the larger fragments, a piece of
debris many times larger than his corvette. The return scan shocked Jack.

  “It’s the Overlord.” Jack fell back in his chair, mouth open. “Sam. It’s the fleet, well, what’s left of it. That chunk of composite is a section of the carrier Overlord. What happened?”

  14

  Jack was stunned. Thousands of people dead. Perhaps the entire fleet. Had anyone survived? That single thought drove Jack forward.

  He frantically started to search for any communications or data-storage devices in the debris. “If we can find some ships’ logs or any combat communications, we might be able to work out what happened.”

  Next, Jack scanned the debris all around and found another huge section of the Overlord. He identified one of the drive reactors. It was completely unpowered, and its temperature was barely above absolute zero, but a fraction of residual heat remained in the center of the core.

  Jack ran an analysis of the residual heat and calculated the time since the reactor had shut down.

  “This battlefield is weeks old.” Jack analyzed the movement in the field and calculated the origin of the debris field. Adding in the time since the Overlords reactor shut down, he was able to identify an estimate on the fleet’s last-known position.

  “Krav it, Sam, we were way off track. Not that it matters now if the fleet has been destroyed.”

  The corvette moved slowly through the debris field. Jack ran scans and collected data on every fragment bigger than a fist. The data poured in. He screened for information on the ships that were laying here in pieces. The data came in slowly.

  “The Leo,” Jack said as the scanner identified a section of the hull from the destroyer Leo, a ship from the Scepter Carrier Group. Then came the Capricorn, identified by an identity code on one of its kinetic hail cannons floating amongst the debris, still connected to a section of hull.

  Then a crewman from the Sagittarius, identified by his personal Fleet identity code, was detected floating in the void.