Lone Marine Read online

  Lone Marine

  Nikolas Bunko

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  One

  Year: 2580

  Location: Persephone Quadrant

  * * *

  Private Lance Tully watched the gray chrome exterior of the FDF Astraeus as it slowly faded from the Scout ship’s viewport. The Forward Deployed Flagship was so named after the Greek god of dust and stars. Actually, he was a Titan, not a god. Mythology was never Tully’s strong point at school. To be fair, academia wasn’t his strong point – unless it involved larceny and hacking and whatever else he may have excelled at before he dropped out. Tully did remember that all the Titans died pretty horrible deaths, which didn’t help pre-mission apprehension one bit.

  Pre-mission apprehension, Tully thought. I’m a poet and I don’t even know it.

  It was stupid and infantile, but it kept his mind off the mission. More specifically, it stopped him from thinking about all that could go wrong with the mission. His thoughts were interrupted by his armor A.I. asking permission to begin the armor check, forcing his mind back to the situation.

  He shifted in his armor as he initiated his supply check. The armor A.I. ran through all the supplies located within the various compartments of his armor. He was equipped with additional rations, ammunition, basic tools and flares. He did all this while the NCO, Sergeant Phil Drummer, briefed them on the mission.

  “Listen up, Marines!” he barked. “The Astraeus has picked up strange readings from the Persephone Quadrant. It’s our job to be the flagship’s eyes and ears!”

  “Haven’t we got, you know, probes for that?” Private First-Class Rodriquez spoke up.

  “You’d know all about probing, wouldn’t you, Rodriguez?” Corporal Laskey quipped.

  “Shut the fuck up, Laskey,” the burly marine shot back. “There’s not a probe small enough to fit into your tiny asshole.”

  Lance Corporal Conway chuckled at this clear in the back. This prompted Rodriguez to flick off the quiet Marine.

  “Both of you stow it!” Drummer interrupted. “As you may have heard, the Astraeus encountered heavy radiation. It’s interfering with our systems. It’s so bad they had to pull back a coupla hundred miles and send us out to look. Fortunately, our destination is outside of the hot zone.”

  “Still don’t see why they need us,” Rodriguez sighed. “They gotta have, I don’t know, instruments that can peer through this crap.”

  “Rodriguez, radiation equals not good. Lots of radiation equally very bad,” Tully couldn’t help himself. “It’s a nuclear meltdown out there. It makes Earth look like a tourist trap.”

  “Shut your hole, Tully. You didn’t even finish high school,” Laskey shot back.

  “At least I know what the business end of my rifle looks like, Laskey,” Tully said. “Or did you think I’d forgotten what happened in Basics?”

  “Fuck you, Tully! You said you’d pipe down about that shit!” Laskey retorted.

  “Okay, shut up, Marines!” Drummer boomed. “The bottom line is we’re here. Command needs us to check out this moon. Unfortunately, that means getting close to the radiation bands in the first place.”

  The fourth Marine on the mission, silent up until this point, looked over to Tully as he loaded his battle rifle. Tully looked up to see the same anxiety reflected on Private Cole’s face.

  “Are we expecting trouble?” he asked, noting the fire arm.

  “We’re Marines, Cole,” Tully responded to Corporal Peter Cole as he loaded his rifle. “We’re always expecting trouble.”

  Drummer continued, “The landing zone is on a small moon called Tartarus Five. We’ll recon the moon once we land and set up some of those remote instruments Rodriguez shut his flap about.”

  “See?” Rodriguez started. The burly Marine soon found himself withering under Drummer’s gaze. Drummer went on with the briefing.

  “If we’re lucky, this moon will fit the Kolchev-Torbit scale, and Command can place an outpost on the planet,” Drummer said. “Who knows? Might even find some magradium for our star-drives. Sound good?”

  “So it’s just in and out?” Tully spoke out as he finished setting up his battle rifle.

  “Not exactly,” Drummer sighed with a note of regret. “The Scout ship has a limited range, and the Astraeus can’t exactly fly through all that radiation to pick us up. So we have to wait two days and hope Command isn’t too busy to retrieve us.”

  “We survey this moon,” Laskey said. “And then what? Sit around with our thumbs up our ass until Command gets off theirs?”

  “Don’t worry, Laskey,” Drummer said. “This moon is frozen over. Temperatures reach a blistering three hundred and twenty-seven degrees below zero on a good day. If there’s the slightest crack in your armor, you won’t have any feeling in your thumb, much less your ass.”

  The Scout ship pilot, seated in a separate cabin down the way, called to Drummer. The sergeant glanced over his shoulder and nodded.

  “We’re coming up on Tartarus Five,” he said. “Buckle up, Marines. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.”

  With that proclamation, Drummer sat down and clipped himself into his restraint. Tully followed, as he registered the metallic cranks of the other four Marines following suit. He’d been out on patrol with Laskey and Rodriguez. Despite their bluster, they had very similar backgrounds. Rodriguez was fleeing a jail sentence, while Laskey came to avoid a dead-end. Conway was a military brat – this much was expected of him. From what Tully heard in the mess hall, the same was true about Drummer. The guy was a hard ass, but mostly harmless if you did your job and didn’t goof off.

  The only Marine in the detachment Tully didn’t have a good reading on was Private Jeff Cole. At a glance, it looked like a case of another FNG – Fucking New Guy. At least, that’s how Laskey and Rodriguez saw it. Tully wasn’t so sure. Cole seemed to know his way around the flagship, which wasn’t a skill you came by easily throughout the remnants of the Earth empire. Still, despite his apparent competence, he seemed nervous, although that was pretty normal for a newbie.

  The Scout ship began its descent onto the icy moon of Tartarus Five. Tully stared ahead through the wide viewport in the pilot’s cabin. Tartarus Five was not what he expected. Somewhere, Tully had seen a picture of Antarctica on Earth, before the planet was declared unsustainable. It was a flat sheet of ice and snow, but that wasn’t Tartarus Five. Instead, the moon’s surface was covered in large icy spikes that resembled stalagmites. Only some of these stalagmites were as tall as skyscrapers.

  The Scout ship dropped closer to the moon’s surface, entering into a narrow cavern of rocky ice formations. It was heading towards the pre-programmed landing zone when an unexpected loud beeping filled the cabin. Unfortunately, Tully knew very well what that voluble diagnostic meant.

  Collision alert.

  Tully scanned the viewport for signs of the imminent collision but found none. The canyons around them were at least 6 foot from the Scout ship’s wings, while the nearest icy tower was several miles towards the horizon. The pilot in the cabin merely shrugged.

  “Maybe it’s a glitch,” he said.

  A loud scraping sound sque
aled across the bottom of the Scout ship. The cabin shook and rattled violently. Tully looked up to see the once calm pilot frantically pushing buttons.

  “We’ve lost our stabilizer!” he yelled.

  Drummer glanced over his shoulder, “Hang tight, Marines. It’s going to be a rough landing.”

  “I don’t even know if it will be a landing at all,” the pilot said as his fingers banged on the console.

  “You know what they say,” Drummer said. “The only good landing is the kind you walk away from.”

  “Yeah, that’s why I said it won’t be a landing!” the pilot said. Tully saw Cole’s wild blue eyes lock eyes with his.

  “Shit,” he said. “That sounds serious.”

  “He’s overreacting,” Tully said. “These Fleet guys always gotta be dramatic.”

  Tully made sure his restraint was tightened. It was an action that didn’t go unnoticed by Cole.

  “Safety first, right?” Tully shrugged. Cole gulped. Tully did his best to remain calm, but he only needed to appear calm on the outside. He could freak out all he wanted on the inside.

  On the inside, Tully was screaming.

  The Scout ship careened sideways. The loss of control was evident, as Tully now saw one of the icy towers coming into view. With no control, the Scout ship slipped the tower, sending the entire craft into a spiral.

  Laskey’s restraint was the first to give. Tully watched as his armored body flew against the ceiling with a deafening thud, sending sparks glistening down upon the occupants. The Scout ship fell into darkness. There was just enough light for Tully to see Laskey’s still-airborne body falling towards him. He ducked. But behind him, Conway wasn’t so lucky. He heard the unmistakable sound of bones crunching on impact. He wasn’t sure if they were Conway’s, Laskey’s, or both.

  After what seemed like an endless minute of freefall, the impact followed. The violent death rattle shook the entire craft. Someone else’s restraint broke, and in the red-soaked emergency light, Tully watched as another Marine was lifted into the air and then bounced against the cabin walls like a screaming pinball.

  Someone beside him vomited, probably Cole. After a while, the blur of motion, screams and shrieking metal became one. After several minutes, Tully received his first mercy.

  He passed out.

  Two

  Tully’s eyes opened to the flashing lights of his helmet’s HUD. He felt the faint trickle of warm blood down his face. He gritted his teeth as he pried off the metallic restraint which kept him in place. Pain reverberated through every inch of his body, but after a few seconds, it mercifully faded. He hurt, but as far as he could tell, nothing was broken. His armor’s A.I., as austere as it was, would have notified him of any internal injuries.

  “Sarge?” he called for Drummer. He found him sitting in the same place, at the top of the cabin.

  Or more specifically, he found his body. Drummer was dead, having taken the full force of the impact. Tully saw his blood-soaked armor. The restraints had actually pierced his armor, cutting into him. He had bled out.

  Tully didn’t need to examine the crumbled body of the pilot to know he was dead. As the Scout ship crashed, he would have likely been the first to die.

  “Laskey? Rodriguez?” Tully called, but he was becoming discouraged. After all, no one answered when he called for Sarge.

  Rodriguez was the one who had crashed into the wall of the cabin. He had no injuries, but his HUD revealed Rodriguez’s helmet to be cracked, causing decompression. The same happened to Laskey when he was flung from his seat. Conway’s neck was snapped when Laskey’s body crashed into him at full force.

  “Cole?” he called on his open channel.

  Tully found him lying at the back of the cabin. He checked his vitals from his HUD. Nothing. The man had to be dead. Still, it was strange. Why wasn’t Cole in his seat? He was only a few inches from where he started. Laskey and Rodriguez, by contrast, had been blasted clear across the cabin.

  He didn’t have time to think about that. It didn’t matter. Cole was dead too. Along with everyone else on this Scout ship.

  Except him.

  He scanned the Scout ship. It was damaged but operable. Just as Fleet personnel were trained in close quarter combat and group tactics, Marines were also cross-trained in basic flight simulation. He could hypothetically fly this bird out of here and to the Astraeus, if they bothered to show up on time. The problem was that the Scout ship had a gaping hole in it, and according to his HUD, he could only last two days before his oxygen ran out.

  If he was lucky.

  Great. Just great.

  He was alone. His squad was dead. He was trapped on a barren, icy planet. He had a narrow window of opportunity to escape and survive, if he could affect repairs and if nothing else went wrong.

  Tully sighed.

  If nothing went wrong.

  Because my luck has been great so far.

  Three

  Tully looked up at the night sky. On any other day, the stars would have been pleasant, even inviting, but today they looked as ominous as the mountains in the distance. Help was out there, somewhere . . . but they were millions of miles away, with the cold abyss of space and an equally dangerous radiation band between them and Tully.

  Tully returned to the relative comfort of the ship. The metallic doors hissed snake-like as they closed behind him. As Tully saw it, he had two options. The most realistic was flying out of here the same way he came. Repairs were possible. The only problem was they were time-consuming, draining both Tully’s air and energy in the process. After all, it would be a good sixteen hours of hard, intensive labor.

  He watched as the soldering laser tore through the gaping hole in the hull. The ship’s on-board A.I. played step-by-step instructions on effecting repairs. The good news was, thanks to the invention of artificial intelligence, even a newbie straight out of Basics could affect repairs. The artificial intelligence could even conduct certain repairs on its own, once all systems were online. The bad news was that the work was an uneven mix of monotony and stress. It was effectively a repetitive process, but if Tully messed up – a slip of the soldering laser, the wrong bolt here, a premature power surge – he could damage the ship more, making for more repairs he didn’t have time for. After sixteen hours with minimal breaks, Tully had had enough. It was time to explore other options.

  The second option was finding some way to communicate. If he could reach the Astraeus, they could send another detachment to find him, maybe even complete the mission. At the very least, the flagship personnel could advise him on how to affect repairs, making sure he didn’t shoot himself in the foot.

  After all, he breezed through Fleet class with the same enthusiasm he applied to academics – barely passing. Still, since dropping out wasn’t an option, he must have retained enough knowledge to fix the damage and consider flying out of this mess.

  What am I going to say to Command when I get back carrying the bodies of five dead Marines? No way is this going to look good.

  Tully’s disciplinary record was a thing of beauty. Three hearings, two court martials, and that was just the tip of the iceberg. While he hadn’t clashed with his current crew of misfits, as far as command was concerned, it was only a matter of time before Tully screwed up. And once he got back to the ship, he was going to prove them right.

  If he got back to the ship.

  He knew what he was doing. He was planning his life, thinking of what smart-ass retort he’d flash in the face of the C.O. when he returned. He considered it an additional motivation. And right now, he needed all the motivation he could muster.

  A flashing wavelength monitor caught his eye inside the ship up where Sarge’s body had been before Tully had moved his dead comrades to the hold of the ship. Tully stepped up to the console and sat in the seat. He felt odd sitting in the very seat left by his NCO, but he needed to figure this out. The console read “SIGNAL OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN”.

  This was the signal Drummer had mention
ed. Tully’s mind raced. If the Astraeus had picked it up, then someone or something had found a way to pierce the radiation field. He struggled to figure out what could be causing the signal. Could it be a survivor from another expedition? It was unlikely, given how far out the Persephone Quadrant was from any other ships in the vicinity. A more likely scenario was that the signal was emitting from some sort of high-end probe, probably something Fleet-level that was knocked off course. Whatever the reason, Tully hoped it would yield results in punching through the radiation field.

  “Download signal coordinates to HUD,” he told the ship-board A.I.

  “Accomplished,” the A.I. replied in monotone.

  The response always sent a shiver down his spine. You’d think after five hundred years of practice they’d learn how to not make these A.I. units sound so freaking creepy when they spoke. Then again, maybe it was equally unnerving if they sounded a little too human.

  “Repair status?” he asked.

  “Sixty three percent complete,” the A.I. responded.

  “Well, that’s a D Minus. That’s passing in my book,” Tully grinned to no one but himself.

  “Survival at this stage is extremely unlikely. Even if hull maintains structural integrity, radiation shielding is insufficient. Radiation sickness likely within thirty minutes, death within forty-five and total system failure within one hour of flight time,” the A.I. spouted off. “In addition, the collision detection system is flawed, making the odds of a successful evacuation off-moon one thousand to one.”

  “Thanks for bringing me back down to Earth,” Tully sighed.

  “Correction. We are not on Earth. We are on Tartarus Five. Earth was rendered unstainable in 2108,” the A.I. responded. “Shall I check for signs of delirium or dementia?”