Decisively Engaged (Warp Marine Corps Book 1) (3 page)

“The Mountain? The NRA activist?”

“And gun dealer. And lawyer. And writer. Talented guy. Took some doing, but he’s on board. Pro tem, since we don’t have enough congresscritters to do confirmation hearings, or fill a short bus for that matter. And that’s fine. It’s pen-and-phone time, and I’ve got the pen and the phone. And the trigger-pullers to make it stick.”

“That Portagee bastard’s got my vote. You probably should start reading some SF yourself. Start with
Starship Troopers
.”

“Oh, I read that one a while back. Lots of good ideas there.”

“You’re going to take an axe to the Constitution, aren’t you?”

“The Constitution was dead before fucking E.T. came a-knocking. Between ‘penumbras and emanations’ and ‘living Constitution’ and all that other bullshit, it was on its way out. The old America was dying, and now it’s dead. Before I go, I’m going to leave behind a new America. One that can survive in the universe we happen to inhabit, not the fantasy land libtards and proglodytes kept dreaming of, all while they cheerfully dismantled our civilization, with no guarantees whatever replaced it would be one iota better.”

“Don’t have to convince me, Al. I’m the one who said eight million needed killing. Which is why you don’t want me in charge of anything major. Most of my solutions come in 9mm Parabellum.”

“I’m hoping most fuckheads will appreciate the gravity of the situation. The rest… We’ll see.”

“We’ll see,” Tyson agreed.
I’ve got a little list. Most of the names are crossed off already, but not all
. “Tell me more about the aliens.”

“Turns out the galaxy’s a nasty neighborhood, Ty. Wait till you get briefed on all the things the Puppies are telling us. It’s Might Makes Right all the way down.”

“So there’s no Prime Directive? No congenial peace-loving aliens?”

“Heh. I hated
Star Trek
when I was a kid. No. It’s nineteenth-century-style international politics. To the winner go the spoils. Primitive species are forced into trade agreements at gunpoint, or exterminated without a second thought. The lucky ones get sort of adopted by the nicer aliens, like the Puppies. In this case, we’re getting a great deal of help, because the Puppies accidentally led the Snakes – the motherfuckers who wiped out half the planet – here, and they feel they owe us.”

Is that so? Then, yeah, hound-dogs. You owe us
.

“So there’s no rules at all?” he said out loud. “That’s rough. What’s stopping the Snakes from dropping a dinosaur-killer asteroid to finish us off?”

“There are some rules. Can’t inflict major damage to a planet’s biosphere, apparently. That’s why they didn’t use nukes or big rocks; their city-busters are designed to exterminate the tool-users while leaving most everything intact. Things like bioweapons aren’t allowed, or ‘grey goo,’ whatever that is.”

“You don’t want to know. Who enforces the law?”

“The Puppies were a little vague about it. Elders of the Universe or the fucking Q Continuum, something like that. Whoever it is, they mostly leave the Starfarers – the guys with starships – alone, as long as they stick to some very loose rules.”

“Good enough.” Tyson thought about it for a second, but the answer was never really in doubt. “All right, Al. You’ve got me, for whatever it’s worth. I think I know what we need to do.”

“I thought as much. We can’t afford second-guessers or self-haters to get in the way.”

“It’s not going to be pretty. The cure might be almost as bad as the disease.”

Hewer’s expression hardened. “As long as we survive and we carve a place for us among the stars, I don’t care. Three hundred years from now, college professors can denounce me as an evil tyrant. And that’s fine, because that means our species will be around three hundred years from now.”

Tyson nodded.

“Let’s go to work.”

Year 163 AFC, D Minus Ten

One step at a time.

USWMC First Lieutenant Peter Fromm’s left leg wasn’t working right, but he limped along, ignoring the stabbing pain that flared up with every shuffling stride. The artificial muscles in his combat suit weren’t working anymore, and the combined weight of his body armor and the unconscious form of Captain Chastain was becoming unbearable. Fromm’s desperate dash for cover with a body draped over his shoulders had quickly turned into a limping walk. Even hunched over, he knew he was too high off the ground, making a perfect target, but he also knew that if he went down he would just lie there.

One step at a time.

Nothing else mattered. He had to reach the entrenchments ahead of him, had to save the captain’s life. The CO of Charlie Company was a casualty only because Fromm had knocked him unconscious less than an hour ago. He’d had good reasons, but he couldn’t leave the man to die, even if the first thing he did upon waking up would be to order Fromm’s arrest.

Friendly fire ahead of him, flashes like fireflies in the night. Hostile fire behind him, the whine of ionizing charges followed by loud explosions whenever charged particle bursts or laser beams hit something solid. His force fields were down, and the only thing between him and the storm of deadly energies raining all around was his body armor, which might stop a hit, but most likely would not.

Just a few more steps.

A stray laser pulse from a Lamprey grav tank clipped him from behind.

There was one more thing standing between him and certain death: the limp form of Captain Chastain slung on his back. The unconscious officer he’d been carrying to safety burned under the megawatt glare of the Lamprey weapon. Sublimated armor, flesh and bone erupted in an explosion that smashed Fromm to the ground.

His mouth was full of blood. He couldn’t breathe.

I’m dying
, was his last thought before the universe vanished.

* * *

Captain Peter Fromm, United Stars Warp Marine Corps, woke up with a start, memories of blood and breath still vivid in his mind.

He was safe. Astarte-Three was hundreds of parsecs away. The ‘police action’ that had decimated his company and led to the death of its commander was over, and peace reigned in the galaxy. He was safe.

“We’re putting you in a quiet spot out in the galactic boondocks until we figure out what to do with you.”

Colonel Macwhirter’s words echoed in Fromm’s mind as he watched the spectacle below the descending shuttle.

Uncontrolled fires ringed Kirosha’s capital city. Some quiet spot.

Unrest and warfare were common features in primmie planets even before making contact with a Starfaring civilization, and things usually got even more lively afterwards. The technological and sociological shocks of First Contact always brought about unintended consequences.

Earth’s own First Contact had been particularly harsh. Over sixty percent of the planet’s population had died within hours of discovering humanity was not alone in the universe. The survivors had adapted, even thrived in the aftermath, but it’d been a rough few decades. Fromm’s great-grandfather had shared lots of stories with him before passing on, shortly after his hundred and seventy-sixth birthday. Super-Gramp’s depictions of First Contact had made a much greater impression than any history lesson: the blooming fire-domes that marked the deaths of most cities on the planet; the struggle to survive amidst privation and unrest; nights spent shivering in the dark. Given that, Fromm wasn’t terribly sympathetic to the current socio-economic woes of Jasper-Five’s natives.

A closer look revealed the fires were outside the capital city proper. Fromm’s imp – the implanted cybernetic systems linked directly to his nervous system – laid a map schematic over the visual feed from the shuttle as it orbited the only spaceship-rated landing facility on the planet, waiting for clearance. The spaceport wasn’t exactly bustling with traffic, but its facilities could handle only one landing at a time. A Wyrm Cargo Globe had arrived shortly before the human freighter that had brought Fromm to his new posting, which meant a wait of half an hour if not longer until the alien vessel was unloaded and the landing pad cleared. Fromm could imagine the grumbling in the shuttle’s cockpit about spent fuel and wasted man-hours. Civvie freighter crews owned shares in their ships: all expenses literally came out of their pockets.

The delay gave him time to study his briefing packet and compare it to the reality he’d soon experience first hand.

Jasper-Five was almost identical to Earth, with a mostly-compatible Class Two biosphere and a dominant tool-using species. A pretty accomplished species, as a matter of fact. It had developed technologies roughly comparable to Earth’s first century before First Contact, or the twentieth century in the old calendar. Most sophonts in the galaxy never advanced beyond the Iron Age (the vast majority stayed at Paleolithic levels, as a matter of fact) before a Starfarer species showed up and uplifted, enslaved or exterminated them. Earth and Jasper-Five were exceptions to the rule.

The planet had been discovered some twenty years ago by an American survey ship, and First Contact had been established shortly after. The United Stars had placed the system and its inhabited fifth planet under its protection and largely ignored it, until a follow-up survey had discovered large deposits of rare earths, among the most valuable commodities in the galaxy. While asteroid mining provided most of America’s rare earth needs, new sources were always in demand. Jasper-Five’s lanthanide deposits were concentrated in one of the planet’s continents, dominated by the Kingdom of Kirosha.

While some Starfaring civilizations would have just seized the kingdom’s mineral wealth by force, the USA found it easier to negotiate with the locals for mining rights, providing them with hard currency they could use to improve their technology and living standards far beyond what they had before First Contact. It was cheaper than outright conquest, and in the future might provide the US with a client species that might serve as an eventual ally. The US could always use more friends in a largely hostile galaxy.

Over the ensuing two decades, Kirosha had changed a great deal; the formerly insular, relatively backward kingdom had become the most powerful nation on the planet. Its newfound wealth had allowed it to purchase the best military equipment available from its neighbors (no Starfarer was willing to sell them high-tech weaponry for the time being) and modernize their kingdom.

From the smoke dotting the edges of the city, it looked like the changes had brought their share of problems as well.

The fires were mostly concentrated on a ring of shantytowns that had accrued around the city proper like crystals in a supersaturated solution. The briefings didn’t provide any reasons as to why the locals seemed intent on arson as a form of protest. Fromm would have to figure that out by himself after he made landfall. He couldn’t even query his own command or the Embassy beforehand, not with two rival Starfarer delegations in place, quite capable of eavesdropping on any but the most heavily-encrypted communications.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the shuttle’s pilot announced. “We’ve been authorized to land, and will be arriving in under five minutes. Be advised; there are reports of civil unrest throughout the capital. Transport to the Foreigner Enclave has been provided for everyone, courtesy of Caterpillar, Inc and Star Mining Enterprises. Venturing outside the Enclave is not recommended. If you must go into the city proper, make sure you do so in groups. Things are a bit rough out there. Hope you had a good trip. God Bless America.”

“God Bless America,” the passengers chorused back. A couple of remfie suits sitting near the captain did so while rolling their eyes in jaded cynicism, but the miners, technicians and machinery operators who comprised the majority of the passengers said the words with the mildly bored sincerity of people raised to love God, Flag and Country from earliest childhood. Fromm’s own response was heartfelt, but tempered with the knowledge of the price involved in upholding those words. God might wish America His best, but He left most of the heavy lifting in the hands of mere mortals like Fromm and his beloved Corps.

There was the usual rapid shift in pressure as the shuttle dropped the last several hundred feet towards the ground, throwing itself on the mercy of the gravity grapples dirtside. The abrupt motion slowed down during the last few seconds, and the hundred-ton vehicle came down in a gentle, almost imperceptible motion. Fromm grabbed his personal satchel from the overhead compartment. His orders had come so abruptly that he’d left most of his meager possessions behind; they would follow him here eventually, which given the remoteness of his new posting meant weeks, if not months. On the other hand, a few weeks ago he’d fully expected to spend the rest of his life behind bars, which given the capital nature of his crimes was likely to be a very short time. A hasty posting to a planet in the ass-end of nowhere was a much better alternative.

The Marine took a deep breath as he stepped onto Jasper-Five’s soil for the first time. It was a bit of a ritual he had, marking his first impression of each new world he visited. Every planet was slightly different, even Full Goldie worlds like this one, where conditions were nearly identical to Earth’s. ‘Nearly’ always turned out to be a rather elastic term. In this case, there was a hint of spice in the air, likely coming from the cultivated fields beyond the spaceport, vast expanses of some kind of yellow-capped plant, broken by scattered copses of leafy trees. Mixed in with the fragrance of the local flora was a faint smell of burning things, coming from the capital city thirty klicks away.

He looked up. A huge moon was clearly visible in the mid-morning sky, easily four, five times larger than Earth’s. His briefing classified it as a planet, actually, but it looked like Earth’s Moon: a white, pockmarked disk, bereft of an atmosphere and life. The sky surrounding it was a blue so light it faded to white in places. Out in the distance, a line of snow-capped mountains filled the horizon. The temperature felt cool to his skin; his imp helpfully reported it was fifty-nine degrees Fahrenheit at the moment, with a high of sixty-three and a low nighttime temp of fifty-two degrees. Not too bad.

The landing pad was a flat concrete circle a quarter of a mile wide and sixty feet tall, surrounded by the squat shapes of the port’s landing grapples. Loading cranes and trucks moved towards the shuttle’s cargo hold as the passengers disembarked. A fenced pedestrian path led to a flight of stairs and a lower level where ground transport was located. About a dozen humans and twice as many locals were waiting there.

His imp highlighted one of them: a woman in her mid-thirties, her light brown hair covered under a colorful shawl thrown over a utilitarian civvie outfit, a jacket over pants tucked into leather boots with sensible rubber soles, dressy but perfectly good for walking and running. The imp ran an overlay onto his field of vision, containing all her basic data: Heather Tamsin McClintock, Department of State, Deputy Charge D’affaires of the US Embassy on Jasper-Five. Her Facettergram profile was set to private; so was her curriculum vitae.
Spook
, he decided as she walked up towards him, a pro forma smile on her face.

Normally, he would have expected to be met by his platoon sergeant and a driver, maybe with a squad’s worth of grunts if an escort was deemed necessary. Nothing about this situation was normal.

“Captain Fromm,” she said, shaking his hand. Her nails were short, her grip strong, indicating someone who worked with her hands at least some of the time, if only for physical fitness purposes.

“Pleased to meet you, Ms. McClintock.” Imps made personal introductions largely superfluous, except for politeness’ sake, which remained rather important.

“Ambassador Llewellyn wanted to keep all military forces at the embassy, due to security concerns,” McClintock said, answering Fromm’s unspoken question. “Given the current situation, he deemed them necessary for the protection of the Foreigners’ Enclave.”

“I see,” Fromm said.
What the hell’s going on in here?

“I’ll brief you in the car.” She looked at his satchel. “Is that all your luggage?”

He nodded, noting with some envy that most of his fellow passengers were dragging hundreds of pounds of baggage on their mag-lev carriers. It was nice to have stuff.

“You carrying?” she asked.

“Colt PPW.” The 3mm pistol was standard Marine issue. Fromm could not imagine being out and about without a gun. It’d be like forgetting to wear pants in public.

Her smile became harsher and sincerer at the same time. “Good. You probably won’t need it for the trip to the Enclave, but you know how it goes.”

Fromm nodded. Better to have a weapon you didn’t need, than need a weapon you didn’t have.

When you needed a weapon, you needed it very badly.