| Jovian APAworks | Volume 1, Number 1 | December, 2000 |
Semper Fi -- do or die
I'm a CEGA Marine
And I know what to do
I'm a killing machine
And I'm coming for you
God, I love that fucking song. I forget the name of the band who originally sang it. Cleveland Steamship or something. It doesn't matter. It's been kind of an unofficial rallying cry for us marines for the past fifteen years or so, since it first came out. Right when I joined up. Jesus, have I been in that long? Guess so.
The attack pod I'm in shakes and shudders as the clamps holding it fast to the Kumano unlock and retract. We're about ready to go then. Everyone's strapped in for the short burn it'll take us to get over to that goddamn STRIKE ship. In one of my heads-up-display screens I see that her engines have been knocked out, and that the Tacoma's KKCs are holing her hull. Little blasts of flame and gas tell me that she's been depressurized. Anyone not in a vacc suit by now is dead. Anyone in a vacc suit by now is going to have to deal with us. Pissed off CEGA marines.
We're pissed off because we hate these fuckers. STRIKE is full of goddamned deserters from the CEGA military. We're pissed off because we've all seen the destruction these rat-bastards leave in their wake. I'm pissed off because I lost my best friend to a STRIKE bombing on Alexandria Station last year. I hope this ship is just loaded with STRIKE assholes. I want to crush each and every one of them under my fucking armored boot. Yes I do.
"Green light for launch, sir!" Beckman, the pilot for our short trip yells.
"Do it," I return. "Semper Fi!"
"Do or die!" the rest of the squad bellows in unison as our Piranha is catapulted out into space. Our thrusters fire and we're all slammed against our restraints as we rocket towards the crippled STRIKE vessel, an Inari liner. Our Piranha, the Black Hornet, is all painted up like a black and white wasp, like one of those sons of bitches that stung me when I was a boy. She's a tough little pod. We took a direct hit from a Pathfinder's particle cannon eight months ago and only lost one marine, Murphy. And we still completed our mission.
I rest my head on the vibrating bulkhead behind me and keep my eyes on the translucent image of our target -- the Kane -- which is starting to look a little closer. I hear a retching, gurgling sound in my earpiece, and look over at Baker just in time to see him puke all over the inside of his armored faceplate. He's too fucking green for this shit, but if he gets through it, he'll be fine. He's a tough kid.
Here we go. Ship's pretty close now. We all lurch as Beckman fires the thrusters to chop our speed. "Thirty seconds!" he calls out, fighting the controls a little.
I nod. "Check weapons."
Everyone does, and the tension mounts as we cruise in towards the scarred hull. Jhones has no expression on her face -- she's cool, as always. Lark looks like he's anxious to get in there, to start shooting. Taio has his eyes closed, but I know he's ready. Baker has himself mostly cleaned up.
A few seconds more and we bump gently into the ship we're about to board. The Black Hornet's three grappling claws grab the hull and pull us into position. Once we've got a good seal with our breach point, the plasma torch ignites and starts cutting into the Kane.
"Form up, weapons live!" I order. Everyone gets into position -- it's tight quarters in the pod, and we're vulnerable, so this is often the most crucial stage of a boarding action. Once we're through the breach, once we've got the area secure, usually the rest is gravy.
These Piranhas are a marvel of engineering. When the cutter finishes its arc, a piston-driven hammer swings into place and punches the circular section of cut-out hull into the ship. No order is needed from me at this point -- CEGA marines know what to do. Taio leads the way, moving quickly into the opening, his magnetic boots keeping him fixed to the deck. He's only halfway through when something -- something fucking powerful -- punches a hole right through him. We all hear his death rattle in our helmets as he doubles over and spurts bright red blood all through the air from the holes in his chest and back.
Elitch doesn't hesitate -- she pushes past Taio, anchors one foot on the corridor ceiling and opens up with her laser, then her underslung electromagnetic grenade launcher. "Go, go!" she yells, lighting the dark hallway with her eerily silent weaponsfire.
Thirty seconds later we've taken our entry point. We've cut down four of the pricks, but Taio is dead, shot through by a large caliber gyroc weapon. They were waiting for us, here in this exterior access hall. I smell a rat. There must be some ex-CEGA armed forces on board. Time to be careful.
We spread out, snuffing resistance wherever we find it. Griese's armored suit gets punctured at one point by small arms fire, but Jhones patches him right up. They may have known we were coming, but they're no match for us, for CEGA marines. We move like clockwork through the ship, and Lark, Baker and I finally end up in a bolt-on cargo pod which looks like it was turned into some kind of make-shift hanger.
The place is a mess, and I can see stars through a number of large holes over my head. The vacuum in here is hard, and fucking cold. A couple of dead STRIKErs float by, one of them a woman with half of her now- frozen guts spilling out into the air. I brush her aside and signal for Lark and Baker to spread out.
Nothing showing up on sensors, but all this wreckage makes for pretty good hiding places, as does the control room overlooking the bay. "Stay sharp," I'm about to command, even as a voice -- a familiar voice -- rings across our comm frequency.
"Semper Fi," the voice says as Lark's helmet -- and head -- explodes with utter silence and violence. Flipping end over end toward the wall behind us, his corpse spouts a fountain of blood and brains that freezes almost as soon as it leaves the warmth of his body. I'm sure it all shatters when it hits that back wall, but Baker and I don't see it. We're too busy lasing the darkness in front of us for all we're worth. Nothing showed up on my nightvision scope, but based on Lark's vector, we can roughly gauge where the shot came from. The control room. We both find some cover and reload. I can hear Baker breathing hard, and I offer some reassurance.
"Take it easy, kid. You'll be fine."
"Do or die," the voice growls, and I see sparks fly off the metal plate Baker is hiding behind. The kid falls back, loosing a stream of frozen blood bubbles from his shoulder. Fuck. This guy's got something that can shoot through steel -- a high-powered gauss rifle, maybe. Our suits are self-sealing, but not when the holes are as big as the ones Baker's sporting. He's losing pressure fast, and he's a goner unless I scramble over there and help him. Unless I put myself right in the line of fire.
But I'm a CEGA marine, and I know what to do. The kid's under my command; he's my responsibility. A few clomping strides takes me from my hiding place to where he's laying in the open. I drag him back behind the ineffectual cover he was kneeling behind when he got pegged, and I slap patches on the holes in his armor just as another round from the STRIKE shooter pierces the steel plate beside me. The bullet goes right through my leg, and it hurts like a son-of-a-bitch. Not only that, I swear I heard a 'splang' as the shot ripped through the metal. But I know I couldn't have. This guy's got us dead to rights. Time to get serious.
My leg is bleeding and I'm losing air, but I don't have time to fix what ails me. Instead, I'm up on my feet, firing grenades like a demon at the shooter's position. The smoke covers my advance, and as I cover the last five meters or so, I switch off the magnets in my boots and leap up and into the control room. I crash right into the bastard, knocking him back against the wall while I careen off towards the ceiling. I recover first. In an instant my boots are back on, I'm upside down and I've got him point blank. He's in an armored suit as well, but it won't stand up to my laser at this range. I see him glance at his rifle -- I was right, it's a high-powered gauss gun -- and I use my tongue switch to open a communications channel.
"Give it up. Reach for it and die," I say.
"You're bleeding, and losing pressure," he returns calmly, orienting himself in the zee-gee as his weapon floats away from him. "Looks like you've got maybe a minute before you're out of air."
He's right. I'm screwed unless I can patch my suit, and I can't do that with one hand.
"You're going to kill me, right? You're a killing machine, after all. And you came for me. That's what marines do. It's all they can do."
Who the hell is this guy? "Fuck you. You don't know shit about the marines, or about me. Fuck you."
"Don't I, Braddock?"
Jesus Christ. Jesus fucking Christ. Now I know the voice. It's impossible. He's dead.
"I know all about the marines, Geoff. I know how the brass is fucking with your heads. They don't tell you what's really going on."
"Warren... I thought you were dead. You were with STRIKE all along, weren't you?"
He moves a little closer, and I can see his face. It's Warren all right.
"No, not all along. But for a long time, once I realized what it was going to take to get humanity back on track in this cluster-fucked solar system. I don't expect you to understand. I expect you to kill me."
My head swims a little, from the loss of blood, and from the thinning air inside my suit. Warren falls out of focus a little, and when he comes back in, I say, "Yeah," and burn a hole right through this chest with my laser rifle. He smolders a little as he drifts away, and I'm goddamned thankful I can't smell him. I patch my leg up, turn and get back to doing my job.
Semper Fi. Do or die.
I love that fucking song.
--Fin
Hey, this story is based on a real song, written and performed by a few friends of mine back in Halifax, Nova Scotia. They're called the Heelwalkers these days, but back when they first wrote, "US Marine" they were going by the moniker Cleveland Steamer. So there you go. It's a rocking song, incidentally.
| Jovian APAworks | Volume 1, Number 1 | December, 2000 |
Jovian Chronicles is © 2000, Dream Pod 9, Inc. All rights reserved. Jovian APAworks is not affiliated with Dream Pod 9 in any way. Submitted material remains the property of the creator.