Space Cadets (3 page)

Unexpected Arrival

A rumbling kind of siren blared that made the captain jump. He mumbled, “That’s odd. I wasn’t told of additional arrivals.” To Humboldt he asked, “Did you schedule any more students to come aboard?”

Humboldt shook his head.

The captain grabbed me by the wrist and said, “Follow me.”

As I allowed him to lead me below deck, I asked, “What’s up, sir?”

“We have an unauthorized arrival and I need you for protection.”

I almost laughed until I remembered I was wearing the body of a Marine.

We made it to the skin bay in time to see a Marine suit fall from its cables and hit the deck with a thud. It looked confused at first but then it saw us approaching and held its hands up defensively.

“Check with your comm. officer,” it said. “You should be receiving a distress signal any second. We came under attack. I barely made it out alive.”

“Who are you?” I demanded.

“I’m the technician, doctor Bolder, who sent you here. I was wearing the lab coat.”

The captain interrupted. “What happened?”

“The training camp was infiltrated.”

“By who?” With expectation in his tone, he asked, “Was it the Enemy?” Some people called the aliens by the name
Enemy
.

“No, it was the Skeptics. They were killing students and staff off left and right. They nearly got to me too.”

I grabbed him by the throat and asked, “Who else can operate the teleporter?”

“Just me,” he replied, confusion playing across his rubbery face.

“Then why are you here? You should’ve stayed behind to help more of them get here.”

The captain added, “You fucking coward. They’re all stuck there now that you’re here.”

“You don’t understand captain. They’re all dead.”

Traitor

The captain said, “Tell me you disabled the link to my ship.”

“I couldn’t. I had to get here and if I’d have cut the link, I’d be stuck with those murderers.”

“That’s fine. We can do it from this end.” He pulled a thumb sized device from his pocket and hit a button. It looked like a primitive kind of radio. He opened his mouth to speak and then there was a loud pop and his head disappeared. His headless body hit the deck with a soft thud. I tried to wipe the captain’s blood out of my eyes but it was difficult with the overly large hands.

The tech screamed and batted at the blood splotches that hit him, which would have been funny, given he was wearing a suit designed to stomp asses, but under the circumstances, it was not.

I wheeled around in time to see a space Marine point a laser rifle at my chest. I froze, confused, and waited to die.

But when I saw the nametag on the skin, I was even more confused. It read Samantha Salazar.

She walked into the skin bay and shut the door behind her. “No one move and no one say a fucking word and you both might just survive this.”

The tech guy said, “Ok,” and she shot him in the head. He fell over and the floor shook from the impact. Mrs. Salazar mumbled, “I said don’t say a word, asshole.”

I stared at her but because she didn’t have human eyes, it was impossible to read her.

She shoved me back against the wall and trained the rifle on me with one hand as she walked over to the unused skins. There was a thunk as one of them hit the floor. The skin looked at her, then at her nametag, and smiled. “It’s Bosley,” he said in a male voice. “The others are right behind me. How’s the situation here?”

“I haven’t made a move yet. I figured I’d wait for you guys to get here first.”

Bosley walked to the headless captain, bent down and fingered the stripes on his bloody shoulder and said, “This is a good start.”

There was another thunk as another Marine came to life. It happened again and again, until I was surrounded by eight super soldiers.

One of them asked her, “Should we be worried about those kids? We’re outnumbered if they decide to fight.”

Mrs. Salazar went to each soldier and reached under their faceplates, one by one. She fiddled around a bit and then tugged something small and square out of each. She tossed them on the floor lazily and then said, “We don’t need to worry about those brats now. We’ll just initiate the all-stop on the suits and they’ll go off-line. We’ll be fine. I just disabled ours.” Then she did the same to her own.

I considered reaching inside my faceplate but I was pretty sure that move would be my last.

All eyes turned to me and Mrs. Salazar said, “Leave him with Bosley. The rest of you come with me. Cover me until I get to the all-stop. After that, it’s a free-for-all.”

Bosley

Bosley was a fucking douche bag. He snickered a lot and called me kid. He said, “I wonder what it’ll be like for you. How will it feel when your real body dies and your mech. body won’t respond? That’s got to be a living hell, huh kid? That’s got to be like getting buried alive or knowing you’re in a coma.”

I remained silent until he yelled, “Answer me you little bitch.”

I nodded and said, “I’m pretty scared.”

“Well then maybe you shouldn’t have decided to become a part of the military machine. You’re the problem. You and those like you. And I’m the solution. There are kids staving to death while the governments of the world spend our money on a fake war that is never coming.”

“I didn’t have a choice. I’m an orphan. Most of us on Eighty Seven are. We’re born into this life.”

If I thought that might soften him, I was way wrong. “That’s a bullshit excuse. If you didn’t want anything to do with militarization, you could’ve launched yourself into the void. You would have been a martyr and a hero to many. Now you’re going to suffer and die like a dog.”

I started to formulate a plan of attack at that moment because I was pretty sure I was not going to get out of this by doing nothing.

Before I had a chance to make a move, I heard a tinny voice issue from Bosley’s suit. He put his index finger in his metal ear and said, “Did you say you already hit the all-stop? When?”

Bosley nodded and said, “Uh huh,” and locked me in a stare.

I realized that my suit should have gone stiff if the all-stop had been initiated already so I didn’t make a move. I stood stock still as Bosley approached. Luckily, you don’t need to breathe or anything in a skin. I would have tried to ponder why mine was still working but my mind was racing too fast.

Bosley’s face came so close to mine, our fake noses touched. I was as solid and still as a statue.

He stepped back and said, “Goodbye kid. If you can still hear me in there, I just want to say that you got what was coming to you.”

And then I hit him with all of my might in the stomach. His suit buckled under the impact and he took a frightened step backwards.

Before he could react, I quickly said to my suit, “Activate flight controls. Manual control,” and my suit lifted in the air. I willed it to turn me so my body was parallel to the ground, and then I whipped around so my foot thrusters were right in Bosley’s face. I blasted him full force until his suit crumpled to the floor in a melted heap. His head was reduced to a wax-like pulp. It was over quickly.

I’d never killed a person before so I was pretty shaken up, but I forced myself to get over it. There was too much to do and I had no idea what any of it was. Should I try and take out the Skeptics one at a time, covertly? Should I get to the controls and send out a distress signal? Should I try and override the all-stop to free the cadets?

The door to the skin bay opened and I realized I think too much. I should’ve acted. But rather than one of the Skeptics returning, I saw Mr. Humboldt’s suit standing in the doorway.

“Hurry Jack. We need to act quickly. I had a feeling that bitch was up to something.”

“Why aren’t you immobilized?”

“Whoever wore my suit before me was savvy enough to disable the kill switch. I’m guessing Rick Pringle did the same to yours when he wore it.” Then he saw the headless body of the captain and he visibly stiffened. “Did she do that?”

“Yeah, she killed the tech that came through too.”

“We need to stop her.”

“It’s more than just her now. There are seven of them onboard and they’re all wearing skins.”

“The first thing we need to do is alert the crew about this. They think the suits glitched and that’s why they stopped functioning. I was kind of hoping the same thing.”

“Ok.”

Rick and Peggy

We didn’t even get out of the skin bay before our plans were changed for us. Two suits fell from their cables. They didn’t stand still like idiots though. They moved at me and Mr. Humboldt quickly.

One of them grabbed me by the throat and shoved me into the wall. The other one picked my instructor up bodily and held him aloft.

The one who had me demanded, “State your name.”

“I’m Jack Peterson, a cadet from Eighty Seven. I’m here on a field trip.” I was very afraid. This guy had killer written all over him.

The one who had Humboldt had a female voice. “Now you,” she said.

He said, “Billy Humboldt. I’m Jack’s psych. warfare teacher. I specialize in field interrogations.”

He was dropped to the floor like a lead weight. Then the girl bent down and inspected his suit. “Hey, this was my old suit.”

The guy grabbed me roughly and turned my shoulder towards him. “This guy has mine. Shit. I wish we could swap. I had that thing all modded up.”

I said, “They activated the all-stop. They might do it again.”

He said urgently, “Get the kill switch out quick.”

They each reached within their helmets and yanked out the devices.

He said, “I’m Rick and this is Peggy. Tell us everything.”

I couldn't believe I was staring at my hero, at a worldwide hero. His name alone was a kind of mascot or a rallying cry. I wanted to ask for his autograph.

Cache

After we told them what had happened, we found out that someone from Deep Camp Eighty Seven had issued a distress warning after they came under attack. They detailed everything the invaders had done, including teleporting to the Conquistador. A nearby ship picked up the distress signal and Rick and Peggy were immediately deployed here to assist us.

Peggy went to a hidden panel and punched it with her metal fist until it caved in. Inside was an arsenal.

Rick said, “Just how we left them.”

They’d hidden a cache of weapons just in case a situation arose where they’d need them. I wondered if every skin bay on every warship had a compartment with hidden guns, placed there by these overzealous space Marines.

There was a cowardly part of me that hoped Rick and Peggy would tell us to find a nice hiding spot while they took care of business, but no such luck.

When Rick told me to take the rear, I knew I was going to die horribly very soon.

Seek and Destroy

He led us from the skin bay, along the corridors inch by inch. At each corner, he jumped out and waved his gun around like a madman. I don’t think his training stuck because that is exactly what we’re trained not to do. Peggy rolled her fake eyes each time he did it.

Once we knew the halls were cleared, we went above deck.

We were immediately met by the sounds of sobbing and pleading. On his knees was the first mate. He wasn’t the one sobbing though. In fact, he looked pretty defiant. The women from the ship's crew were sobbing for Samantha to spare his life (I hope to one day be so handsome and popular that women sob to save me, but I doubt that will ever happen).

Samantha said to one of her own people, “Get Bosley up here. What the hell is that dip-shit doing?”

Then she pointed a gun at the first mate’s head and said, "Give me the authorization codes to the ship."

He turned his eyes towards her and just stared insolently. That made her angry because she started to squeeze the trigger when Rick walked out into the middle of the command room and said loudly, “Who wants to be the first to die at the hands of Rick Pimpage?”

When the room went silent, Rick said, “Fine, I’ll choose,” and then he started to run. He shot two of the Skeptics before anyone had even reacted. Their bodies were blown in half from the gunshot. Rick was dashing this way and that, firing from the hip as he went.

Samantha brought her gun up in his direction but Peggy slammed her body into her back before she got the shot off. In a whirl of motion, Samantha was rendered immobile by some kind of steel cable used to tie her up. Her gun was tossed towards where me and Humboldt were standing.

The first mate scrambled to his feet and quickly took cover.

When Peggy was done tying Samantha’s hands, she stood up and surveyed the carnage all around. Rick had laid waste to the command room but there were still two of the bastards firing off shots willy-nilly.

I hefted my laser rifle up and took aim at one of them but Mr. Humboldt put a hand on my shoulder and whispered, “Let the experts do it.”

Peggy fired off a three round burst and killed one of them. The last guy threw his weapon down and surrendered.

Peggy tied his hands up more carefully now that there was no imminent threat.

It was a total anticlimax, for which I was thankful.

In fact, it seemed like a foregone conclusion to Rick and Peggy that they would be victorious.

But when Samantha was hefted to her feet, we knew we were fucked. She had a fist sized EMP device in her hand and we knew what that meant. It meant that if she was going to go down, we’d all be going down too. An EMP device so small probably wouldn’t take out all the ships systems but it would take out our suits, for sure. Which meant our consciousnesses would die. That is the exact same thing as death.

My mind started to race. Where had she gotten the weapons from? How the hell had she managed to get her hands on an EMP? All of that stuff would have had to already be here because you can't take anything with you when you teleport.

It made no sense.