COMMANDER

“You got a wicked fast right cross, sir,” a man on my right stated, rubbing his neck where the bruising was already showing.

“Yeah,” agreed the last trooper I had fought, “and he kicks hard, too. My tits are gonna hurt for a week!”

“What was the point of this, sir?” asked another trooper. “This group seems to be hand-picked.”

“You’re all on the ‘hotheads’ list,” I answered truthfully, “and still hurting, grieving, and angry over what has happened to us despite PTS therapy sessions. I thought I would bring you together and work your asses off till you were too tired to cause any trouble. We PT’d hard, ran hard, and then I gave you a chance to fight . . . smack someone around a little . . . blow off some of that head of steam you’ve been building up. Honestly, I didn’t know what else to do. I’m no therapist, and hand-to-hand is what I am best at, so, this is what I did.”

“You put yourself in this ring and told us we were weapons free, knowing we were ready to rip someone’s head off?” asked the biggest male there, his voice on the ragged edge of both disbelief and insubordination had I not allowed for free speech.

“Then, he takes on every one of us in a row, with no breaks,” another voice, female, spoke. It was the first female whose ass I had so thoroughly kicked . . . Donner. “Some twice!”

“Dumbass!” stated the big man, but with something different than belittlement in his voice, something more like respect. “And here we are, I guess, the Dumbass Team!”

“Yeah, well, sit on this and spin, Dumbass Team,” muttered another male. “The workout was a good one, Commander, and had the desired effect. I’m too fucking tired to care about much of anything else at the moment.”

Most of the others agreed I had made my point, a real-world demonstration. There were more important things to go emotionally off course about as a Marine than getting our asses handed to us in battle by an enemy who had betrayed our trust. A Marine was not supposed to get emotional about battles, win, lose, or draw. They were supposed to learn from them! These people weren’t dumb brutes, as many civilians thought of soldiers. You had to be intelligent and agile in your thinking to be a Marine.

They figured out the lesson without me having to articulate it clearly and succinctly. Most of them, grudgingly, admitted the session had probably been good for them and their interactions with their troops and fire teams.

Two of them stared at me with neutral expressions, thinking hard but unwilling to share at the moment. One, a male, remained bitter and angry. My “therapy” had only pissed him off further.

“Let’s finish this with a 2K jog to cool down, people, then muster back at this spot. Run!” I commanded, and they ran or hobbled away as best they could.

I turned to the last man, whom I had asked to remain behind, and said, “You. Wait. What’s your story, trooper?”

“We still in free speech . . . sir?”

“Go for it.”

“I think your actions with this PT and training session only indicate guilt and self-flagellation on your part, sir. Frankly, there’s talk most of the mess we’re in is a direct result of your actions which precipitated the battle with the Shaquaree.”

“You have not seen the AI report and data which exonerates me, trooper?”

“I just want to get home in one piece . . . sir.”

“Ah,” I nodded, “and being too close to me doesn’t improve those odds, does it?”

“No . . . sir.”

“Mmmm. I see. Name and position?”

“Winston Jamison, 21452,” the trooper answered.

“What?” I bellowed.

“Sir! Winston Jamison. PapaBravo 2-1-4-5-2, sir!” he bellowed back at me, a blaze of fiery anger in his eyes. He was responding to the old numbering designations! There was no Billet 2 anymore. His clear, continuing, and unrepentant insubordination really torqued my ass.

“Report to HQ and wait for me, trooper,” I ground out, barely managing to keep my own temper.

I was so pissed I turned my back on the trooper before he could reply and looked for the closest comm port. I found the comm and limped over to it, then changed my mind. I would have a briefing with the lieutenants soon enough. I needed to calm down and think this through. Instead, I caught the attention of Trooper Donner as she passed by, running at a pace just over a fast walk with a pronounced limp. She was breathing very raggedly, and spit and vomit were dribbling down her chin and onto her battle bra, but there was a bright fire in her eyes. She wasn’t going to stop until she either collapsed or I told her to quit. Hoo-rah!

At my sign, she turned and came to a semblance of Attention before me, gasping for breath and trembling with sweat dripping from her nose and fingertips. She tried to say something and I interpreted it as “Sir.”

“Trooper Donner,” I told her sternly, “gather up the other ten runners and relay my order for a fifteen-minute cool-down walk, then all of you report to the hospital for checkup. You will all report to my office at 0630. Dismissed.”

She managed a semi-intelligible, “Aye, aye, sir,” before turning and staggering away.

My mind was already in the sonic shower and anticipating both medication and sleep as I turned my steps toward HQ. I passed the second AV on my walk, its nose down sharply at an angle from a missing hub and wheel section, blast damage showing darkly across the armored viewport and side pillar in torn armor and black scorch marks. From the corner of my right eye in the edge of peripheral vision I caught a movement. I was turning my head when I heard a scream of rage and then a body slammed into me and a Marine fighting knife, twenty-five centimeters of high tensile plas-steel and carbon fiber, slammed deep into my right pectoral. We both fell to the deck in a tangle, struggling.

Even with the mask of uncontrolled rage distorting his visage, I recognized him immediately. Trooper Jamison! There was no time for rumination, for contemplation, for assessments and decision-making. I let my subconscious battle tactics, we call it SBT, take over and apply my training.

He had his right hand on the knife hilt and was trying to either twist it or pull it out for another stab while his left arm sought a vice hold around the back of my neck, his body splayed out to my right side. With my right hand I grabbed his right wrist at the base of the thumb and tried to twist his grip from the knife. With my left, I jabbed at his left elbow to try to jam the nerve center and deaden the forearm. He was too quick and we were too slippery with sweat and blood, and neither of my efforts found success. The blade twisted and agony shot through my upper right torso like a fiery brand being torn through my flesh. My right arm and shoulder went mostly numb.

With all the strength I had remaining I hooked my left arm in an arc upward with my thumb sticking straight out, and jammed it into his left eye. Jamison screamed and rolled away, leaving the knife buried in my chest. As he scrambled to his feet with one hand clamped over his ruined and deflated left eyeball, I rolled flat on my back and spun, and kicked hard against his right knee. It made a crunching, popping sound and folded backwards, and Jamison fell forward, screaming again, to collapse on the deck beside me. His rage overcame his pain as taught, courtesy of Marine training, and he rolled and grabbed at the knife hilt sticking out of my chest with his remaining right eye, the enhanced one, wide and staring in a snarling mask of hatred and fury. I fought with him for possession of the knife with my left hand and, together, we ripped it from my chest, widening the stab to a ragged slash with gore and blood spraying in all directions.

With a roar of pain and battle rage, I grappled with him for the hilt using every trick of twisting and leverage I had ever absorbed. In our scrambling, we both managed to rise to our knees. I pulled hard, jerking him off-balance toward me. When he resisted and pulled back, I waited until I felt his strength was at its peak, then reversed my pull and pushed! It wasn’t easy to guide the blade but I managed, and plunged the blade into his ruined eye. The blade drove through his eye socket until the tip imbedded in the back of his skull. His screaming stopped and he went limp at the same time.

I clambered to my feet in a fighting stance, swaying only a little with my left hand spread like talons while my right arm dangled mostly numb and tingling slightly. My battle-rage was ready for whoever was next as the hot blood poured down my chest to soak my tee and shorts. Another trooper appeared but he didn’t seem to be coming for me. He was just looking to see what the screaming had been about. I saw his eyes widen as he took in the blood, the body, and the commander’s tattoo on my neck. He yelled for help and moved forward slowly, carefully, with his palms out and empty. I was still crouched and ready.

“Sir! Help is coming! Can you hear me, sir?”

It was an immense effort to take control, to calm myself, as the pain and adrenaline rampaged through me.

“Trooper! Comm both officers to the hospital to meet me, then comm the hospital to send a trauma team.”

“Aye, aye, sir!”

He took off at a quick run. The hold was spinning a little, and I thought it might be a good idea to sit down. The next thing I knew, a trauma-bot was sliding an anti-grav stretcher under me and then I was floating by a sea of troopers’ faces. I blinked, and found myself in the hospital, and beautiful Dr. Hazel was muttering over readouts on the screen next to me while several robot arms worked over my chest. I felt wonderful!

I blinked again and found Timmons and Jenkins standing over me. I was in a hospital crèche, tucked into a med couch. I didn’t feel as good as earlier but, still, not bad considering. Then I moved a little to shift position. I groaned and decided not to do that anymore. It seemed like a good, timely decision.

Timmons didn’t say anything but I could see the look in his eye, the sourness of his face. Of course. He blamed me for Jamison’s death. In his mind, I could have, should have, handled the whole “hothead” situation differently and none of this would have happened. In his view, I had exacerbated an already tense situation with the most high-strung of the clan, pushing them to the break-point. From his perspective, it was my pushing which forced Jamison over the edge. Timmons’ expression made it clear he thought I should have given them more time with the AI’s PTS program to bring them back to emotional and mental balance.

Well, tough shit! In our situation, alone and facing unknown threats while less than fifteen percent battle-worthy, we didn’t have the time or luxury of “playing nice.” This was a “step up or die” situation.

“Time?” I croaked.

“0330 hours, sir,” Jenkins replied. “Doc says you’re stable and going to be fine.”

“It was around 2300 when I came in. That’s a long time in surgery. Do you have any details?”

“No, sir. Doc says if you ask to tell you to talk to her.”

“Alright,” I replied. “Report.”

“The captain has relieved the maneuvering alarm, so whatever he was dodging is gone,” Jenkins continued. “There was no indication it was due to enemy action. One more AV is fully operational, making a total of four available with one completely inop until we can get some spare parts fabbed. Of the suits, we have twenty-seven repaired, thirty-one still . . .”

“Fuck the numbers, just tell me how many troops I can have suited and how many will be standard by planetfall,” I broke in.

“That’d be 162 suited, ninety-two standard, including you, sir,” Jenkins replied.

I nodded.

“If you’re wondering about Jamison’s death . . .” I began.

“We have already pulled and reviewed the security vid from all the hold cams, sir,” Timmons stated evenly, though his expression remained unchanged. “There is no question Jamison broke mentally and attacked you, and his death was attributable to self-defense. We have logged the vid with both our statements and locked the evidence into admin archive files.”

I nodded again. I knew his statement would hold his views of my portion of the responsibility.

“Thank you both for your efforts,” I said. “Gene, eleven troopers will appear at the office at 0630 but I will likely not be there to handle them. Put ’em through PT Sequence Two at double-time followed by a 10K, then send ’em back to work. Keep an eye on them for attitude. All I want to do is give them a good, solid workout to get them fatigued so they will think less about our situation. Harlan, check with your squid contacts and find out everything you can about the planet. Once we have the intel, the two of you need to begin a strategic plan for planetfall. I will join you as soon as possible. When I get out of here, my first stop will be a meeting with the captain. Anything else?”

“Nothing that can’t wait, sir,” Gene replied.

“Dismissed.”

As they left, I punched the button to call hospital staff. Doctor Hazel appeared within minutes, her hair tousled and weariness weighing her eyelids as she pushed through the sonic and light barrier curtain shielding my cubicle area from external sight and sound.

“You’re awake already?” she asked with a small frown. “I didn’t expect that for another couple of hours. How are you feeling?”

She laid her hand on my thigh with her fingers resting over my femoral artery and glanced at the readouts above the head of the couch. As she watched them, she shifted her hand to fondle me just a little.

“Hmm . . . responses look very good,” she reported with a smile, “and they feel good, too.”

She pulled at the Velcro to loosen her shorts as her eyes widened a little and her grip tightened and added, “Very good!”

I was smiling back, as best I could. “Are you sure this is . . . that I should . . .?”

“I didn’t operate down there,” the doctor responded and giggled.

Then, her shorts were off, my covering was off, and she was climbing onto the couch. She straddled my hips and settled slowly with light moans.

When we were both breathing somewhat normally again, and she lay snuggled up to my undamaged side with her head in the hollow of my shoulder, I finally was able to ask her about the damage.

“You’ve been hurt worse,” she said as she poked me in a couple of scars. “The blade severed part of the brachial nerve set and nicked the artery as well as your right lung. We used SynthNu to repair the nerve bundle and Hyper-gen on the lung. I also tuned up your nanos with a little more aggressive response code. And, since I know your suit is down, and since I know it will not stop you from leading your planetfall, I added some neural and myo nanos I cooked up with the AI.”

“Myo?”

“Muscular enhancement . . . faster response time,” she explained as she stroked my left shoulder and chest. “The neurals should speed up your whole nervous system and provide better translation through the cortical bridge. It means you will get better integration of concept and decision-making. Without breaking protocols, of course! The myos then round it out by speeding up the response time of your muscles by enhancing the bridge processes between nerve and muscle cells. You won’t be any bigger or stronger than you are normally but you should have a noticeable increase in quickness. Besides,” she cooed softly, “you don’t need bigger.”

Protocols, she mentioned. Back in the bad old days, centuries ago and just after we humans had launched into space and colonization in a big way, we had realized we may need some, um, bodily enhancements to help us both survive space and alien planets, as well as any alien threats we may encounter. Numerous programs of cyber-graft and implant enhancements were undertaken, and experimentation employed to see how far we could modify the human body for survival and combat.

Even nanotech was further developed and researched illegally. At that time, nanotechnology was really going through birth pangs and the public and more paranoid politicians were terrified of nanotech getting out of control. There were many laws already enacted to control or eliminate nanotech. Turns out they were right.

It was all a gigantic failure. Truly monstrous results were created by nanos, implants, grafts, and gene therapies. Most of them worked . . . to a point. The point was psychological. The human mind is not capable of enduring such aberrations of body without massive psychologic trauma, and many of the creations turned on their creators with raging abandon and pathologic thirsts for power and control. Both private and government programs wound up under the control of madmen who created more madmen with superhuman capabilities. Battles were fought, and in one case even a significant war. Millions of innocents died in horror.

We learned, at great cost, the human mind must be “controlled” for any of the truly significant transformations to be workable, usable. But then the creation was little more than a robot made of flesh and blood and whatever had been grafted into it. It was less costly in every way to simply build the robot.

So, protocols had been adopted and agreed by every government, indeed, every sane person alive . . . the Brazil Protocols . . . named after the country where the most horrendous of atrocities had been experienced, and the largest number of civilians killed. A large city named Rio de Janeiro had been nearly utterly wiped out by three battling groups of “enhanced” humans who had used everything from biologics to small nuclear devices on each other and the populace.

Strict limits were placed on what could, and what could not, be done to a human in terms of “enhancement.” Our eye implants, for instance, were fairly simple cyber products which enhanced the lens and retina to provide zoom capability and spectral vision in much broader ranges of EM, and if the implant failed, we could still see normally from the eye.

We also learned an amazing amount of psychologic advancement, for it was truly the mind and emotional balance which were best optimized. As for the body, today we only enhanced normal functions within sane limits. Weaponizing a human body was both highly illegal and horrendously wrong.

I dreamed. It was a recurring dream, one of several which came back from time to time. My first battle had been on a light grav planet fighting pirates who came to plunder a colony world in the early days of my time with the Marines. Seven months out of Basic, cramped into a corvette and wondering if I had made a serious mistake with my choice to join up, we were called into action. I was a T1, an Assault Gunner, and gained my first scars in the battle.

Battle suits were primitive then compared to what we have now. My job was to assault the defenses the pirates had erected around their shuttle and grav floaters used between their ship and the villages they attacked and looted. I had cover fire from T2, and the corporal was talking me through the assault run, when to turn, when to duck, where the enemy was, all of that. T3 was lobbing grenades into their defensive structures as I ran in short, hopping strides, and I was shooting my 10mm rifle on three-round burst as ordered. T4 was well back, popping anything moving and not in a Marine battle suit. Well, right up until he popped me in the back. It wasn’t his fault.

I had taken out eight pirates when a pair appeared from my left, leaping at me as I passed by a dead tree trunk. We all went down in a tangle and my 10mm rifle was stripped from my hands. I couldn’t get to my lance or my katana where they were mounted on my back, so I pulled my Marine fighting knife. The MFK2B is a very nice weapon, and I knew how to use it. They also had big knives and one had a flechette handgun, as well.

After rolling around on the ground for few moments, we all struggled to our feet. I managed to take the one with the handgun out with only a few minor wounds from two short range blasts of his flechette gun and a slash from the other pirate. As he pulled the trigger of the second blast I took his gun hand off at the wrist and opened his throat on the back swing, then turned back to the second pirate as the first one fell with squirting blood and wide eyes.

We sparred for a few strokes and then I feinted and passed his guard to plant my blade in his throat, moving upward and into his brain from below the jaw. I will never forget the surprised look on his face as I stared at him only centimeters away while blood poured down my glove and arm.

As the man sagged in front of me, a pirate grenade went off near the T4 sniper, causing his aim to swing a couple of centimeters just as he was touching the trigger pad. The 10mm slug caught me a slashing cut across my back just under the shoulder blades from left to right and imbedded in my right lung. I found out later what had happened. All I remember from the end of the fight is the look of surprise on the face of the pirate and the smashing blow to my back. Everything went black as I fell, wondering why the pirate had been so surprised.

From the hospital, I headed for the bridge after I woke the next morning. I imagined the base tube of the ship as I traveled through the passageways of the base propulsion and engineering section. Thick in the middle third at twelve hundred meters diameter, this tube tapered smoothly in a short arc from the middle section down to the thirds of each end at eight hundred meters diameter. Each end terminated in a slightly thicker section about one hundred meters long for the weapons placements of heavy lasers, plasma cannon, and Grafnal cannon.

The thick central section through which I now moved housed almost everything else around the engine core; the holds for fabricators, raw materials storage, power generators, shielding generators, and grav controls. In the thinner areas on each end were: the machine shops, heavy and light fighter bays and hangars, Wasp fighter bays, multiple missile launchers, PDP batteries on the exterior, and forty decks containing crew quarters and mess halls, hospital, hydroponics and life support, Marine country holds, science labs, and, of course, the bridge. *[See Appendix A]

Fabricating wards internally could produce any of the weaponry or ammunitions expended, including any of the missiles and any other hardware we needed for maintenance or repairs. The hospital section contained trauma, surgical, and regen sections ran by AI, manned by robots and Navy medics, and controlled by the best trained doctors the Fleet could produce or procure.

The capacious bays housed four robotic drone gatherers which could plunder nearly any asteroid or gas planet for the raw materials required to produce, repair, or maintain anything and everything on the ship. Food was grown in hyper-grow chambers; all manner of vegetables, grains, and fruits, and several types of molds and fungi. For emergency use, there were enough nutri-bar stores to last a full crew for six months at full rations, a year at half-rations.

Beyond that, the ship carried Marine Armored Assault Vehicles and Landing Craft, heavy fighters, light fighters, and Wasp fighters. All of the remote vehicles, except the Wasp fighters, were fitted with AIs which did most of the computational work. The Navy fighters were amazing vehicles which could operate in space or in atmosphere. They were mounted with external lasers and plasma cannon, missiles, and with Marine troopers in the heavy and light fighters. The Wasps were essentially one-man fighters meant to overcome the enemy like a cloud of deadly mosquitoes. Well, okay, make that “deadly, angry wasps.”

Then, there were the troopers, my troopers. Genetically altered and cyber-implanted, many civilians called us cyborgs, but we aren’t. A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, meaning literally a computer housed in an organic matrix. A trooper is the reverse, a biologic organism with cybernetic implants. Most troopers were unrecognizable from any other human unless one happened to spot the neural ports behind their ears or looked closely at their eyes. Really, it is the training and the lifestyle, the psychology, which made troopers so unique.

The normal crew of a frigate-class ship was 200 sailors, and it would carry a full clan of Marines, 427 troopers strong. One hundred thousand tons of plas-steel, carbon fiber, and nanotubes, a frigate was armed with ten fore and ten aft plasma cannons, ten thousand missiles of various types, a main Grafnal cannon up front, and two massive 50TW laser cannons astern. There were twenty computer-controlled Point Defense Platform batteries studding the hull equilaterally firing kinetic-kill projectiles for defensive armament, which normally meant anything coming at the ship could be ripped to shreds or exploded before whatever it was reached five kilometers of approach.

In short, a frigate was essentially a traveling city having the speed and maneuverability of a smaller corvette and nearly the armament of a larger battleship. It was a really dangerous and totally self-sufficient city, at least under normal circumstances. The Rontar had seen some, well, abnormal circumstances.

I entered the bridge at 0800 and approached the captain. Lt. Cmdr. Dotes cocked an eyebrow at me from across the room. I wondered what he meant by it but, first things first. It was time to address the rank situation and the animosity between us.

“Good morning, Captain Lewellyn.”

The captain continued reading the holovid screen projected into the air in front of him. Obviously Dotes and his team had been able to get more systems back online, and obviously the captain was reinforcing the message he was several light years ahead of, and better than, the mere Marine lieutenant who stood near. A lieutenant who was currently masquerading as a commander.

What had really irked him was the fact that he was the one required, by Navy and Marine regulation, to advance my rank officially. There were no Marine officers above me to perform the ceremony. A clan leader must be a commander by regulation, a flag officer, and lieutenants cannot promote themselves to a higher rank. Lewellyn had the AI research the regs for hours trying to find a way out.

In the end, he bent the rules somewhat. He promoted me to commander, alright, but he also officially stipulated the rank was temporary until officially accepted and ratified by Marine Command. In my book this made him just another slimy prick who would do anything to remove himself from potential blame. Typical for a fucking squid of any level. By rank, I was now his equal as the senior Marine aboard, and it didn’t just rankle, it truly insulted and angered him. So, he would punish me in any way he could.

I waited patiently. After several minutes of reading, signing documents, and issuing orders, he finally graced me with a condescending gaze.

“What is it?” he asked, clipped and short, no respect whatsoever given in front of his bridge crew.

I leaned forward and whispered, “May we speak privately, Captain, on a matter of some urgency?”

He sighed, deeply and theatrically, then waved a hand toward the bridge staff conference room, aka the Ready Room. I walked to the doorway and stood respectfully while waiting for him to make his way there. After he entered, I followed him in and then turned and shut the door behind us. It was a simple plastic door without a locking handle, but I knew the room was soundproof to the rest of the bridge. While he sat regally and intentionally at the head of the small conference table, I remained standing to block the door from anyone entering or exiting.

“Captain Lewellyn, let me begin our discussion with my heartfelt congratulations on your most impressive feats of manual navigation. Your performance yesterday was nothing short of miraculous I am told by people who know about such things.”

He began to radiate smugness.

“All of the troopers aboard will shortly know about this exemplary feat.”

The smug radiation began to ebb slightly.

“They will hear the full story of how the ship came into such grave danger from the asteroid belt, and how the captain, alone, was responsible . . .”

The smug expression gave way to instant, red-face anger. “You wouldn’t dare!” he cried out.