The Writing Marathon - new prompt every 2 days (deadline 30th April)

[Azazeal849]

Delayed fourth prompt - I’m stuck in a time warp!

[Azazeal849]

Prompt number 5, back to normal time!

[Kiki]

Spoiler: Prompt #3: Power 

It’s so odd to forget that human bodies, humans themselves, are electric.

We conduct electricity, we are conduits for the earth. Feet planted in the dirt, should we be struck by literal lightning, we may not die. The energy, the power, surges through us, and out into the ground like the roots of a tree.

Absolutely insane, if you ask me.

They say ghosts aren’t real, but how can we know for sure? It may not be the bed sheet ghosts of yore, but who is to say that all the electricity, the power, the energy of our cells fully leaves the early when our meat mecha suits do?

Carl Sagan really had something when he talked about us all as starstuff. How mysterious and just downright random we all are, conductors of electricity, tiny currents generated by our nervous system, small worlds on a bigger one, miniature oceans just walking around.

When you think too hard about our existence, it really is awe worthy.

[Vaidia]

Spoiler: Prompt #4: Apology 

The solitary figure kneeled before the throne. The large room seemed empty except for the kneeling subject and the three others sitting upon three imposing thrones that were identical except for the material they were made of. One was of marble, another of wood, and the third was of bone. There was quiet in the room, but the shadows were deep and hid many things.

"You can stand back up," the person on the bone throne spoke. She was the seemingly the youngest, her dark skin contrasting against the bone, but there was a sallow and gaunt look to her that added many years to her appearance.

There other two looked at the ruler of bone. The one in the marble throne smiled kindly, and there were lines on her face to prove he did so often. The one on the wooden throne looked far more stern and severe. They both knew what the third of them must be thinking right now. Must be feeling.

"I failed," the kneeling subject said simply. "I know what failure as a Knight of the Three means. You do not need to see my face again."

The was a considering hum from the Ruler of Bone. She leaned forward in her throne, as if a few more inches of closeness would let her do just that. See her knights face. "And what does failure mean?" She asked, voice still gentle.

This almost caused the knight to look up, but they stopped, a spasm crossing their face in self reprimand. "Disposal."

"Hm," The Ruler of Bone mused again, "No. I don't think that's what I will do."

The Ruler of Roots and Ruler of Stone leaned back, looking away from the other. They also knew how this would go. They had been in the same place once.

"My Sovereign?" The knight whispered.

"You are my knight. Your only need apologize, and I will forgive you." She leaned back. If she moved anywhere else, she would not be able to help herself from going to them.

There were several moments of quiet. "I am sorry. For failing. It will not happen again."

The three rulers did not reply. All of them knew that was impossible.

All Knights were made to die. But that is why they served the ruler of Bone.

Spoiler: Prompt #5 Oak 

You feel it one day as you run your fingers across your skin and you recognize it instantly. You always did like walking through the woods. Too often you went there barefoot, feet nestling into the dirt, skin as one with the earth as the trees that towered above you. You often wondered what it was the trees spoke of in the wind. You already knew what the roots spoke of. Every vibration was yours to know. The faintest change in moisture consistency a novel inked in dirt and decay. The song of the worms was one you heard in your sleep, and how much it did call to you.

You know your skin now better than before. Trace the grooves forming where there was once soft flesh. Perhaps anyone else would feel terror at such a change. Feel the stiffening of bones as reasons to run and move more. You can't help but feel relief. To you, you are becoming strong. Your skin is now armor as bark, and your branches far more sturdy than what bone could ever be.

And your roots go deep.

Did you ever really understand the song before now? Before you became what you were meant to be?

You have become Oak. You finally know yourself.

[Azazeal849]

I’m loving the strange directions you’re taking these prompts in!

Today’s word is up

[Kiki]

Spoiler: Prompt #4: Apology 

It is no mistake that somehow in the course of talking a client through therapy, an apology seems the hardest thing to do for a person.

I wish apologies didn’t mean something weak, since that’s what our society has decided to do with them: negate them, belittle them, shrink them, mock them. Apologies can be so lovely, moments of clarity, of compassion, of leveling, of accountability. But no, instead our society has turned self-care into turning on others – “If they can’t get you, cut them out!” No apology. No offering of softness, of warmth, of understanding.

I’m not trying to push anyone to make undue apologies, mind you. I just think we could all learn to say “sorry” a little easier than we do now. Guarding our tongues from uttering a single word of an expression of regret, or of amends.

Apologies can fix things. Silence most often just doesn’t.

[Kiki]

Spoiler: Prompt #5: Oak 

I grew up around big, tall, oak trees.

For context, they did not fit where I lived, at all. I grew up in an urban sprawl, a concrete jungle, skyscrapers, rough neighbors, hollering kids who played in the street until the lights came on at dusk. Trees just didn’t fit in a place where every square inch was mostly pavement. But our backyard had oak trees.

Sometimes in the summer, on the hottest of days, the oak tree seeds (what I always thought were acorns, and I guess they are) would heat up so much under the sun that they pressurized, and you could hear their soft POP! right as they would snap off the tree and then tumble to the ground below. A feast for a future squirrel.

I remember sprawled out on the earth below, laid down on my back, peering up at the trees. There was never any way to see the tops from the ground, even if you craned your neck or were flat on your back.

Even though the city loomed not too far away, I lived right next to the best sort of skyscrapers: the oak trees.

[Kiki]

Spoiler: Prompt #6: Lonely 

In a world with infinity possibilities, of a universe blown literally out of proportion and growing every single second of every single day, I refuse to feel lonely.

I know it would be easy to lean into all of the terrible things, capitalism, the western expansion ideas of the U.S., the rugged individualism that is pressed to our throats. But I refuse.

I don’t think or want to be a millionaire. I don’t want that to be what I strive for.

I want to be connected. I want to recognize the universe in all its expansiveness. It’s filled with purpose. It has inherent multiverses. And in none of them I am lonely.

This kind of thinking has drastically helped how I feel, even at my lowest. I don’t want to get consumed by what the media tells me, or ingulfed by societal expectations. I just want to feel not so lonely, and this is the only way I know how.

[dakkagor]

Spoiler: tulip 

“Tulips” Kay said at last. “Tulips.”

“Tulips?” The Yldar doctor prompted her. She didn’t look up from the medical beds analysis suite. Phantom sensations ran up and down Kay’s skin: spikes of heat, brushes of cold, pins of pain, stabs of tightness. Kay winced as the sensations seemed to jump around her new body, making her flinch against the straps involuntarily.

“You asked for a memory of my father before I transitioned. Tulips.”

“Elaborate, please.” The Doctor didn’t look up, leaving Kay focusing on the aliens smooth, blue skin that bunched and rumpled across her forehead. Apparently, they looked just like some sci-fi writers idea of an alien, basically human but with elongated, pointed ears, head ridges, no body hair, and blue, almost translucent skin. They moved, lived and breathed like a human, and the Yldar, arriving as refugees, had lived in Alliance space for over a century. They still triggered an uncomfortable response in most humans, though. Some evolutionary dead-end danger warning that the thing that looked mostly human, wasn’t, and should be feared.

Kay had often wondered why they had that response so deeply hard wired in. Had there been some human-shaped predator back in the fossil history, something they had wiped out? Was it left over from their ape ancestors, who could just be as brutal, ruthless and cruel as humans when pushed?

Was that why the dark days of the 21st century had been so dark? Too many humans, all crammed together, all slightly different, all triggering an outsider response? Why the species had prosecuted their own even as their planet burned down?

Kay wondered about that, until the doctor shined a light in her eyes.

“Tulips.”

“Right.” Kay swallowed as the test moved to her other senses. Her eyes watered, her mouth dried. Strong scents projected by the doctors test wand assailed her nose. “We were watching my mother in our garden.”

“Where?”

“New Paris.” She continued. “Trappist Prime?”

“I know it, but I’ve never been.”

“Yeah, so, she was planting tulips. And my Dad, with this smile, tells me this bullshit story about how an old earth trade empire, in the early days of capitalism, tanked their economy and wasted vast fortunes on tulip bulbs.”

A pair of soft gel earphones were pressed into her ears. A set of sounds, some almost imperceptible, others deafeningly loud, cycled through them. The doctor (what was her name?) didn’t ask Kay to respond. She could read her brain scans directly, see the bits of her brain she had carried over from her old body light up to the stimulus from the new one. A slight smile, which Kay took to be a good sign, crossed the aliens features when she removed the headphones.

“But it wasn’t bullshit.” Kay smirked. “I looked it up on the net, and it was real. The Dutch Tulip Bubble, 16th century. The whole thing repeated with crypto in the early 21st.”

“Most illogical.” The doctor tapped at a pad. “Is this a happy memory?”

“I. . .is that part of the diagnostic?”

“Answer the question please.”

Kay snorted. “I suppose it is. I used it as the basis for an essay in economics in school and got an A+ for it. My Dad was so proud he took me for dinner. He’s a government Economics Engineer, so he thought I’d follow in his footsteps.”

“Did he approve of your transition and joining the Military?”

“What, is this a psych exam?” Kay growled and tensed against the bonds. “Why do you care?”

“I am gauging your emotional responses while dialling in your brain chemistry to as closely as possible match your previous responses to these questions during your intake. Answer the question please.”

“I. . .yes. He did approve. He knew I wasn’t happy, and it kind of broke him that I couldn’t live in my own skin. He didn’t want me in the military though, he was worried I’d get killed.”

“Are you worried about that? Getting killed?”

“The Alliance has the most powerful military in the galaxy.” Kay smiled. “I feel pretty safe. And hey, the medical perks are great. Rather than a basic rebuild, I get a top-flight full body prosthetic that matches exactly how I want to look. Not bad for a five-year tour.”

“My people thought we were invincible once.” There was a hint of emotion in the doctor’s voice clinical voice. “But, I agree, the Alliance looks after its citizens. Better than our government ever did.” There was a pause as the Doctor fiddled with her pad. “We are done. Your brain chemistry registers within acceptable parameters, but I will have your Assistant Intelligence monitor your hormonal outputs and report to me for the next six months.” Another faint smile, barely a ghost. “I will clear you for active duty and confirm your completion of Alliance Basic Training, along with a pass for Alliance Body-mod Acclimation Training.”

The Doctor tapped a control, and the straps unlocked and retracted into the bed. Kay rose back to sitting and stretched. She felt good. Strong, dangerous, capable, proud. For the first time in forever, she felt comfortable in her own skin.

“Thanks, Doc. So, do you know what branches I’ve been cleared for?”

“I do.” Another quick tap of the screen. “You should talk this over with your training officer, but I can see you have scored highly on physical aptitude, knowledge retention and fine motor control. That means you can apply for combat pilot roles, PDR duty, PAR duty, or the Marines.”

“The Marines. . .” Kay chewed that over.

“Regardless. We are done here.” The Doctor helped her to standing. “Good hunting, Recruit Kay Adams.”

She took a moment to look in a mirror, marvelling at the young, athletic woman staring at her. A stranger, but her.

“I should get a tattoo.” She finally said. “Celebrate.”

“Very common in your species.” The doctor smiled again. “May I suggest a tulip?”

Kay laughed. Yeah. Why not.

Spoiler: Walk 

“Ready for a walk Trooper Adams?”

“Sir, yes Sir!”

“Sound a little nervous” Sergeant Dumbani stepped in front of her, checking over her suit seals, and inspecting her flechette rifle. “You did this in sim. What you worried about, Trooper?”

“First time doing it in real life, Sir. Don’t want to puke in my helmet.”

The sergeant laughed, a deep, hard laugh that cut across the comm band and made Kay wince. She felt stupid, suddenly, she had done this in sim, dozens of times. The sergeant patted her on the shoulder, hard, and that seemed to help settle her nerves. He turned sharply on his heel, and opened a band to the entire platoon.

“Alright pukes, listen up!” The sergeant walked along the line. “The first time you step out the airlock you will all freeze up. This is the hull of a Carrier, in deep, deep space. There is no horizon, no sunlight, just you, your suit, your rifle, and the ship you’re mag-tethered to! I will allow you all to puke! I will allow you all to freeze! But if aNY GODDAMNED ONE OF YOU DROP YOUR WEAPON I WILL REAM YOU WITH IT, DO YOU HEAR ME YOU PUKES?”

“SIR YES SIR!” The twenty recruits yelled back. Kays hands (her untested, new hands) gripped her rifle tighter.

“Activate combat mods!”

The twenty recruits turned their attention inward, focusing on the little switch in their minds-eye. It looked different to all of them, built by the subconscious and combat integration wetware and hooked up to the glands, artificial muscle bundles and advanced electronics that threaded their bodies. Each of them was as heavily augmented as possible, rebuilt from the ground up over six months of surgeries and training to be faster, stronger and tougher than any baseline human, or even a civilian in a standard FBP.
For Kay, it looked like an oldschool lever, one with a big, shiny round red ball on it. She closed her eyes, gripped it, and pulled.

The.
World.
Slowed.
Down.
Stimulants flooded her nervous system. Combat wetware spun-up, layering data over her HUD that was projected into her optic nerve. Muscles shivered, tensed, and relaxed.
The door opened glacially slowly, and Sergeant Dumbani, in his thick neo-Zambian accent, roared for them to go.

They raced for the door, all lean power and superhuman acceleration. Until the first wave stumbled, paused, and the second line slammed into their backs. The charge of transhuman killing machines was instantly transformed into tangle of vac-suitted armoured limbs, flailing and screaming young adults from four different species, and Sergeant Dumbani laughing his hard, barking laugh over the comms.

Kay had cannoned off the back of Zemmer, a cute girl she had a crush on from Delta squad. Zemmer had flattened to the deck then sprang back up, cracking her in the faceplate and sending Kay flying from the deck as her mag boots failed. She slammed into the lip of the Hydra Class Carrier Zumwalt’s egress point, and spun into deep space.

She screamed, and pissed herself in raw terror. Her suit helpfully provided her with an exact break down of the content of her bladder and recommended she drink more water as the catheter chugged to life and she spun, helplessly, into the void.

“FUUUUUUCK!” she screamed again into the helmet. Her spinning point of view made her want to vomit, and she was convinced she was going to die in a training accident, lost in the haunted depths of the Benetnasch system, another anonymous vac-suited body from the costly battles of the 2nd crisis war. They were still collecting bodies from the wrecks, a decade later, and she would join them, a grinning skull sealed into her suit, spinning into the nebula. . .

“Trooper Kay, do you feel like joining us?” Sergeant Dumbani cut over her comms, his calm drawl snapping her out of her panic.

“I’m untethered Sir!” She tried not to panic, but there was nothing out here. It was a black void dotted with little lights that were all a billion miles away. She felt very, small and alone.

“I see that trooper! What are you going to do about it?”
“SIR!” She swallowed. “I. . . I need help, sir!”

“Your suit recycling systems will keep you alive for 24 hours, Trooper Kay.” Sergeant Dumbani’s voice was cold, and angry. “You have all the training you need to unfuck yourself. And you remembered your rifle. Rejoin us when you’re ready Trooper. If not, I’ll send a shuttle to pick you up.”

Before she could respond, the link was cut. She screamed into her helmet again. Slammed her free hand into her helmet. Cried. This wasn’t fucking fair! How in the fuck was she meant to get out of this? Her training? Ok, think. No reaction pack. The rifle? The marine Flechette rifle had minimum/no recoil, it was a coilgun. But. . .

Fuck, the tether system! She shut her eyes so the spinning sensation would abate, and activated her inner-ear implants to fight the motion sickness. Blind, she found the coil of mono wire and slapped it into the rifles mod-slot.

“Activate tether mode.” The rifle chirped happily. “Clamp the rifle to the suit gloves.” She felt the magnetic tingle through her nervous system, confirming the rifle was now glued to her hands. Now the hard part. She reopened her eyes and instantly felt nauseous, but the fear had abated. Controlling the spin was pointless, but. . .

“Suit, fire-control for FR-122. Aimpoint, Zumwalt troop embark point.”

“Fire control online. Aimpoint confirmed.”

She threw herself right, and she turned, the Zumwalt appearing briefly in her visor. The rifle fired in her hands, the suit aiming for her. The cable snapped taught as it hit, and she activated the winch. The rifle dragged her into the deck a minute later, and she bounced once before mag-clamping back to the deck.

“Welcome back trooper!” Dumbani crowed. “Enjoy your walk?”

Spoiler: Power 

+Power Core is 150m ahead. Caution: enemy combatants ahead.+

Zumwalt’s tone was clipped. Kays HUD snapped an enemy icon into her display, and she rounded the corner at a dead sprint, rifle at her hip.

The smart rifle vibrated three times, simulating three shots. The holographic enemies, Coalition marines, crumpled. She didn’t slow, didn’t check her kills. The objective was to reach the ships power core, and stop the enemy engineers blowing them all to hell.

+Power core is 125m ahead. Divert right. Caution: Enemy combatants in store room.+

She slammed into the door frame, and Zemmer piled into the door frame opposite her. They liked mixing their squads up in training, testing who was a good fit with who.

Kay just wanted to be a good fit with Zemmer, in a biological sense. But she wasn’t interested. Neo-catholic, traditional. Not closeted, not even a ‘phobe. Just not interested. She was doing her tour out of a sense of national pride and because, in her own words ‘Nobody wants to live on a world like Tammpere forever.” Her family were farmers, ‘like almost everyone on Tammpere really’ and the last thing she wanted to do with her life was spend it wading in dirt.

Zemmer had extended a sensor waldo from her wrist and snaked it into the store room. 3 in cover. Zemmer flicked her the waldo cams feed, and Kay palmed a grenade. She skidded it along the floor into the bay on a long primer, and lobbed another a second after on a shorter fuse. The holograms ducked back as the grenade, a broad-spectrum flashbang with a chaff/EM component, went off in a spray of rads and weaponised glitter. The enemy ducked back, then rolled smoothly back into position as the second went off. Their blue Yldar skin disappeared behind the polarisation effect of their faceplate, and Zemmer and Kay went through the door together, firing their rifles full-auto. The grenades had knocked out their own auto-senses, so it was down to training, putting as many rounds down range as possible. The holograms fired back, spraying rounds blindly into the door frame as the two girls stormed the room.

The armour simulated hits to Kays chest, leg and left arm. The left arm hit was a penetration, and the suit clamped, shutting down her limb below the elbow so it was a dead weight. There were spikes of simulated pain with the hits, the training suits lining their armour providing a full sensory experience of being shot with Coalition weapons, recorded from the wars the Alliance had fought against the Yldar and their allies.

Kay was a damn good shot. Two of the holograms went down, and the third crumpled under Zemmers fire.

Another two holograms emerged from the far door on the other side of the chamber, and opened fire. Kay was hopped up on adrenaline and stims, snatching them both of their feet by firing her rifle one handed from the hip. Zemmer, who had been checking the room, crumpled.

“Zem!” Kay yelled, limping over to the fallen marine. Zemmer pushed herself onto her back and tensed in pain. The training suits did not pull their punches, and Zemmers scream of pain cut across the comms, her pretty, pale face pinched.

“Shit!” Kay popped a hardline and plugged it into an interface jack on Zemmers neck seal. The news was grim. The simulated rounds had hit her weaker back armour and penetrated, then ricocheted from the front plate into her abdomen. The suit had locked up Zemmers legs to simulate the severing of her spine, and was applying all the sensations of being gut shot. Ironically, thanks to the mods, it was survivable, but not definitely not enjoyable.

“Zumwalt, I need a medic to storage bay 21!”

+Confirmed. Move to bay 22 and engage enemies. Suppress in support of fireteam 2. Confirm.+

“Zemmer’s been critically hit! I can’t abandon her!”

+Trooper Kay Adams, you have a mission.+ The clipped, cold tone was gone, in its place was the stentorian, commanding voice of Zumwalts primary intelligence. +If you do not suppress the enemies in the next bay, fire team 2 will be killed and the mission will fail.+

“Fuck!” Kay swore. She staggered to her feet. Her mods and the suit hit her with another batch of stims to keep her moving. “Confirmed.”

+You are at 67% combat effectiveness, Trooper. You will engage from cover and suppress only.+

“Confirmed!” She snapped. She unlinked from the gasping and writhing Zemmer.

“Just go Kay.” Zemmer groaned. “Go be a big damn hero already. I’ll be fine.”

With a lingering look, she limped into bay 22. She was greeted with gunfire.

“3 o’clock!” she yelled, and opened fire. She caught one enemy, and then had to duck back. She hooked her rifle around the corner, using its auto-sense function, and kept up her suppression. “You fuckers can come in any time you like!”

Gunfire welled up from the bays other side, and the enemies fell back. The stims drained out of her system, and she slumped to the deck, shivering.

+Trooper Kay, move to rally point Alpha Charlie. Join up with Fire team 4 and suppress enemy reinforcements. +

“What about the power core?” She groaned as she levered herself to her feet.

+Not your concern, Trooper Kay. Your resistance to orders has been noted in this exercise+

“Get fragged” she muttered into her helmet, limping back across bay 21. She stopped in the middle of the bay, where she had left Zemmer. She was lying on her back, still. A simulated kill.

“Fuck. I called for a fragging medic!”

+They were needed elsewhere, Trooper Kay. Let me be clear: your job is to defend this ship and its crew of a thousand souls. Her death served that mission. Do you understand?+

“Crystal, Zumwalt.” Kay sighed. “Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

+Indeed. I don’t either. But her ‘death’ saved fireteam two, and the whole ship.+

“Confirmed, Zumwalt”

Spoiler: Apology 

“Look, I’m sorry, but I really won’t be able to make it for Christmas this year.”

Kay tried to look apologetic, but frankly she was thrilled. This was her first time away from home, and she couldn’t imagine missing a shipboard Christmas for anything. The canteen was doing goose (Which was traditional in the navy, for some reason) and the platoon had been allowed to decorate the communal area. They’d even picked up a little pine tree on leave at Side 3. Sure, they’d be on patrol coreward zone, and at readiness condition yellow, but the chance of anything actually happening was really slim.

“But how will you open your presents J. . Kay. Your aunts bought you a load of clothes this year for your . . . well.”

“Its womanly things Kay.” Her mother interjected smoothly. “Your father has seen a bra before, and honestly I don’t know why he’s struggling with the subject.”

“I’m not.” Her dad snapped. “Its all. . .just a big change. We miss you kiddo.”

“I miss you too.” She rested her hand on the side of the screen. This hypernet call was provided free, but its time was limited. She did feel far from home when she called her parents, but when she didn’t, she felt freer than she ever had. “Look, we’ll be returning coreward in a few months. I’ll ask for leave when we swing through Trappist. How about we all meet up? We could visit Trantor. I know Dad has always wanted to go.”

“Well. . .alright.” Her Dad smiled wanly, and then cursed. “Damnit, I left the dinner on.” He stepped closer to the camera on his end. “Keep your head down kid. Love you, and good luck.”

“You should say. . .” she begun. “Good hunting!” Her mother finished for her. Dad smiled sheepishly, then dashed off camera, swearing about the boiling over pot in the kitchen.

“How’s the garden?” she asked, when mum turned back to look at the screen.

“Oh, fine of course. We got so lucky with the soil comp on Trappist. We’re coming up on the tricentennial soon, you know.”

“I know, Mum.”
“Oh, listen to me prattle on about my boring hobbies, how are you? Are you eating alright? Are you cold? Do you need anything from home? None of your clothes will fit from before. . .but if you need some shopping, I can go to the commercial zones for you. Just give me your new measurements and we’ll get you something nice.”

“I’m fine.” Kay chuckled. “The food is really good, and the environment controls are top notch. I’ve been able to do some shopping at Side 3, so I have clothes for shore leave now.” She didn’t mention how that had been one of the most gender affirming moments of her young life. Wandering the sparkling shopping districts of one of the great orbital stations, a Side, in uniform, and the shopping assistants treating her as a woman automatically, reflexively. She had blown nearly her entire first pay check in four hours of capitalist clothing frenzy. “The Zumwalt is an amazing ship, and my platoon are great. Even Sergeant Dumbani isn’t such an ogre now we’re all bedding in.”

“He better not be breaking the Human Rights Uniform code with you kids, or so help me I’ll sue the Marine Corp within an inch of its budget so help me god. . .”

“Mum! He’s fine, honestly. He’s a ballbuster, but he needs to be. He’s whipped us into shape from basic. We’ve got all the tools we need to do this job, including the tools up here.” She tapped her head. “We’re some certified ass-kickers now.”

“Your father worries.” Her Mum sighed. “I worry, forgive me I do. Its threatening to flare up on the border again. I really don’t want you in a shooting war.”

“I’ll be fine Mum. I’ll see you after Christmas, you’ll see.”

“I know, I know. Damn, the timers about to run out. Look, I wanted to say. . .you look happier and healthier than I’ve ever seen you, you’re beautiful darling, my beautiful baby girl. Your Dad just found it more of a shock than he thought. You look so much like his sister. Its hard for him.”

Kay paused. “What happened to her, Mum. You never told me.”

“She was a pilot on a starbase during the last war with the Coalition. Her strike craft was crippled, but she piloted it back to the hanger. She saved her crew.”

“But not herself.”

“Your Dad has her medals, in a box somewhere. His parents never forgave the Alliance for what happened. It wasn’t . . .it wasn’t a good death, Kay.”

“None of the deaths out here are good, Mum. But she was a hero. That’s what we all want, if we have to go. To save our friends.”

“Oh, my baby girl, all grown up. Don’t you dare do anything heroic or risky! Don’t yo-“

The link timed out. Kay sat staring at the screen for a little while.

“Sorry Mum. I can’t promise that.”

Spoiler: Oak 

“It’s a tree, Kay. You get those in Trappist, right?”

“Yeah smartass, but not this big.” Kay turned and gestured to the vast plant that towered over her and Zemmer. “Look at the size of this monster.”

The Oak tree stretched up, into the sky of Mars, like it was trying to escape the rich volcanic soil of Olympus Mons national park. Mars had been fully terraformed a hundred years ago, and the trees here had been planted as part of that process.

“It’s an oak.” Zemmer said, pointing at the distinctive cupped seeds and spirally arranged leaves. “You can feed the acorns to pigs. And when you cut it down, you can get some great whisky barrels out of it.”

“I can’t imagine wanting to cut down something this beautiful.” Kay murmured. She ran a hand over the rough bark. She wondered who had planted it, over a hundred years ago, knowing there would be little chance they would see it fully grown.

“They used to do it all the time. The old wooden walled sailing ships that dominated the oceans of Earth were made of oak. Ironically, the first ships marines sailed on.”

“I didn’t know you were a history buff.” Kay nudged Zemmer in her ribs.

“Well, you need a hobby on a ship. Can’t just be endless PT and weapon drills.” Zemmer took Kays hand, and started to drag her deeper into the copse of trees. “Hey, I hear they have some cool ruins around here.” Kay blushed. She was still carrying a torch for Zemmer, and Zemmer, ever since they had been put together as a sniper team, seemed only too happy to grab any part of Kay next to her and pull her around.

The two jogged under the massive trees. Kay reckoned the lower gravity and thinner air had allowed these genetically engineered monsters to reach their ridiculous size. Each Oak had a trunk bigger than a battleship railgun, and some of the leaves were as wide as dinner plates. Some of the acorns were the size of grenades.

“Here!”

A ruin, a folly, had been built around and over a small river that was winding its way down the massive shield volcano. Kay had no idea how far the river stretched, or where its source was. Considering the conservation zone covered the whole mountain, this small stream could well have come from the snow-capped summit and cut its path all the way to here, then all the way to the Amazonis ocean. A small stone bridge spanned the stream, and the stubby remains of a castle that had never been whole rested strewn around the oaks that blotted out the sun, leaving everything under them dappled in shade.

“Its gorgeous.” Kay breathed, enjoying the loamy smells of the earth and the sharper smell of running water. She had booted up some of her combat senses, and could hear not just birds in the trees, but the insects in the soft soil under her boots. Zemmer had let her hand go, and run across the bridge. She called Kay on, and she followed. She was glad they had been assigned to the training base here. The past month on Mars had been amazing.

Zemmer was standing in front of a ruined tower, and pointed to one of the flag stones. “My god, its still there! Just where Dad said it was.” Zemmer crouched, and cleared the rock of debris. Kay stood over her shoulder. There were dozens of names carved into the fallen rock.

“My family were part of the original terraforming teams. My dad cam back here on holiday with my mum, and proposed to her here.” Zemmer pointed to a pair of names, surrounded by a crudely cut love heart. “They used a lascutter to mark the stone.”

“That sounds kinda illegal Zemmer.” Kay offered, crouching next to her.

“Oh, a little, but look,” she pointed to the other names. “Its traditional. All these names are terraformers or the descendants of terraformers. All coming back to Mars, the first time we turned a dead rock to a paradise.”

Kay stood, and turned in a slow circle. The stones were covered in etched names. It felt almost religious. A shrine to the world builders. The modern day gods of creation.

“Zemmer. . .is there. . .”

“Something I want to tell you?” She stood, and took Kays hand again. “I. . .I’ve been thinking. These past months. . .they’ve been intense. And. . .you’ve been rock solid, Kay. Dependable. And god, its lonely. And now we’re going to be working together.” She rubbed her thumb over the back of Kays hand. “And. . .I. . .can’t deny it anymore. But I don’t want to say it, in case that jinxes it.”

“You said. . .”

“I know what I said.” Zemmer looked her in the eyes. Kay loved those eyes, sea green and sparkling bright. “But I don’t want to say anything else.”

Zemmer leaned into a kiss, light, cautious, testing. Kay almost froze in surprise. Zemmer leaned back, looking crestfallen.

“I’m sorry, I. . .”

Kay lunged, carrying Zemmer to the ground, locking her lips to her partners.

“Finally.” She growled. “Damnit girl, you’re such a tease.”

Zemmer laughed, and kissed her back.

When they left the ruins, two new names had been carved into the stone, soon to be obscured by falling oak leaves.

Spoiler: Lonely 

“This has to the loneliest rock in space.”

“I dunno.” Kay could hear Zemmers smirk through the suit-mic. “I’m not feeling lonely right now.”

The two trudged up a ridge covered in simple, stage one grasses and mosses. What had been scheduled to be a verdant world was a desolate, lonely world, covered in a simple matt of vegetation, piles of rotting garbage, and slowly settling black dust. This planet had been scheduled for full terraformation, until a pre-FTL civilisation, just entering its machine age, had been discovered living under its surface. They had broken through to the surface just as the atmosphere had been fixed to be breathable to humans. Protocol was clear in these instances: the terraforming project was wrapped up to be as stable as possible, an observation post had been built, and the armies of terraforming engineers had retreated to the surface, leaving as little trace as possible.

“Should have just annexed the fuckers.” Kay stopped, and turned to look where Zemmer was looking. Factory chimneys poked through a rift in the ground, dumping black, toxic smoke into the new sky, that then settled as the pervasive black carbon dust. The primitive inhabitants had come up with an ingenious solution to recycling and waste management: dump vast piles of crap on the surface of their pristine world and not worry about it.

“They don’t know better.” Kay shrugged. “What, should someone have annexed us?”

“If they did, maybe we’d still have whales.” Zemmer huffed, and started marching again, humping the holographic blind, the spare power packs, and her spotting gear, alongside a suppressed Mk-VII rail SMG.

“We have whales.” Kay fell in behind her girlfriend. “We saved all those species. The Alliance. . .”

“We didn’t save them.” Zemmer spat. “We brought them back. Cloning tech, old samples, gene engineering. Yeah, we have whales. But they are as artificial as this atmosphere. They probably had a culture, Kay. Fuck, we know Orcas did. But we poisoned our oceans and skies and earth, and the only thing we could save were samples and hope, and what we got back were copies. The Alliance could stop these people making the same mistake, but we chose not to out of some sense of moral superiority.”

They reached the ridgeline, and Kay unslung her rifle. There was a drum shaped structure a kilometer out, built from advanced materials, in a style the locals didn’t use.

“Sierra Actual this is Echo 4. We have eyes on the pirate outpost. Confirmed Backattan architecture, looks like a prefab. Floating a drone.”

“Received E-4. Observe until we get everyone else in position.”

They hunkered down, Zemmer setting up the holo-blind to conceal their position and Kay sighting her rifle. From here, they had a great view of the whole structure. The drone, a small device the size of Kays palm, wafted into the air, and turned invisible, before starting to drift over the pirate base.

“Zemmer. . .are you seeing this.”

Zemmer looked up from her scans. She had spotted a medium density minefield around the structure, Springbox AP mines that had been banned in the galactic community 30 years ago, as well as automated gun-turrets, a laser field, and that the structure had been reinforced with shields.

“Seeing. . .Jesus Christ.”

The drone had floated over the drum shaped structure, and its cameras were automatically scanning the base. The drum shape was infact a massive retaining wall, with multiple structures inside. And one of those structures was an open air pen, filled with distraught aliens in chains.

“Those are the locals, right?” Zemmer asked. Kay nodded, before activating her comms.

“Sierra Actual this is Echo-4. We have eyes on local hostages.”

“Echo-4 confirm last. Hostages?”

“Yes Sierra Actual. Sending you the feed now.”

Silence. The two women watched the camera feed from the drone. The locals were holding each other, most seemingly in shock. They were humanoid, at least, but Kay knew for them not only had their understanding of the universe just fallen apart, it had come with the second blow that their lives had been ruined as well.

“Echo-4, change of plans. We will be launching a full ground assault.”

“The hostages. . .”

“Have a better chance of surviving a ground attack than the original plan of levelling the structure.”

“Confirmed Sierra Actual. Orders?”

“When the shooting starts, I want you to shoot as many of those slaving fuckers as possible.”

“Gladly, Sierra Actual.”

When the attack started, it was from above. The Los Angeles in high orbit fired a plasma missile over the base, which detonated in a blinding wash of EM jamming and comm killing rads. Half the mines around the base detonated in sympathy with the missile’s shockwave, and a dozen of the gunturrets on the drum wall froze up. Mortar fire followed, precisely targeted to clear the minefield.

Then the assault itself. A hundred angry marines stormed forwards, rifles snapping at the stunned guards and the remaining auto-turrets.

Kay got her first kill, ever. A slaver on the wall. She centered her rifles reticule, adjusted for wind, gravity and curvature, and fired. The weapon first produced a charged tunnel of air, which cut friction and for a split second, linked the rifles barrel to her victim with a tether of electric force. Then the weapon fired its tungsten slug. Whisper quiet at the firing point, the slug cut through the air until it hit the targets torso. Then there was an almighty bang as he was explosively disassembled.

Kay only felt a slight pressure against her shoulder.

“Got another one. 10 degrees right.”

She fired again. And again. She started to feel something.

Anger.

Spoiler: Lucky 

“They told us they were lucky.” The Jaklly looked around the medi-centre the San Fransisco had set up on the surface. The pirates had been defeated, and the prisoners liberated. The difficult part was un-fucking this tangled situation.

The Jaklly were an odd looking species. Basically, an upright molluscoid. Their heads were dominated by a reinforced keratin plate surrounded by four eyes as black and reflective as bowling balls, and their mouth parts were a waving mass of tentacles.

Kay stood behind the Observation Outposts translation specialist, a woman of Terran pan-pacific descent by the name of Nopera. They were translating for the Jaklly, who was clutching one of its young to its chest, turning the clicks, whistles and subtle colour shifts of their luminescent skin into something Captain Kirkley could understand. Kirkley, a dusky skinned, rangy old spacer who had grown up on a Side and felt more at home in deep space than a gravity well, was watching the Jaklly intently, nodding at its statements, and speaking slowly to the translator, who would use a pad to translate his questions into the Jakllys own language. The Jaklly and the Captain were sitting, not too far apart, and Kay had noticed that Kirkley had already started to mimic the subtle body language of the Jaklly, helping put it at ease.

“Who told you that you were lucky?” Kirkley pressed, not breaking eye contact with the Jaklly.

“The government.” There was a pause. “We are poor, we have little opportunity for the future.” The Jaklly stroked its child, soothing its shrill cries. “The government held a lottery for a new settlement on the surface, a colonisation effort. They shipped us directly to the others.”

‘The others’ where the pirates and slavers Kay and her company had burned through. She clenched her hands into fists at the memory, but stayed at attention.

“We lived in slums were the rich ignored us. When the lottery came, we thought it was to save us. . .” The Jaklly trailed off, and Nopera crouched in front of her, talking quickly.

“She is ashamed.” Nopera finally stated. “There is little trust for the government and rich in the lowest rungs of their society, and yet she, and many others, fell for this scam. Out of hope, I suppose.”

“Thank you Specialist” Kirkley rose, and patted the slim woman on her shoulder. “Get as much information as you can, then report to me.”

Nopera nodded, and turned to the other Jaklly prisoners. Kay fell in behind Kirkley as they strode away.

“Sir” Kay swallowed. “Permission to speak freely?”

“Granted, Corporal.”

“We should do something. We have the Los Angeles in orbit, we have a company of marines, we should. . .”

Kirkley spun on his heel, bringing Kay up short. “We should do. . .what, exactly, Corporal?”

“We need to stop their government! We’ve treated a symptom, not the cause!”

“So you’re suggesting I should turn the carriers guns on the surface, tear open their stoney sky, and then let you marines drop into their cities to overthrow their government?”

“Sir, I. . .my partner has pointed out that they are killing their biosphere. They are selling their own people into slavery, probably for off-world, advanced technology. This isn’t just this city-state. Its going to be a problem for all of them, very soon. The pirates will come back and this will happen again!”

Kirkley sighed, and rubbed at his nose. “Corporal, I would love for nothing more than to kill the bastards who did this and dropped the mess in our lap. But if we overthrow this government, we’d be trapped in a regime change operation. The effects would domino across the whole planet, terminally interrupting their natural development. It could lead to war. And, moreover, its illegal. Not just under Alliance law, but galactic law as well.”

“We have to do something, sir.”

“We do, Corporal Kay. What we have to do is hand these people to the observation outpost, lay new sensor satellites to watch the orbit of this world, and report it to High Command. Anything else is above our paygrade.”

“Sir. . .”

“I know. I know you want to do more, and hell, I wish I could. But the system is set up like this to stop us overreaching, stop us making the same bad decisions our ancestors did. If we act as our hearts dictate, we will be sucked into a quagmire and we will harm these people more than we can help.”

“I. . .yes Sir.”

“I promise you Corporal, if we do get lucky, and we get to take the bastards responsible to task, I’ll make sure you and your partner are on the tip of the spear.”

“Thankyou sir.”

“Now, get back to work, Corporal.”

“Sir, yes Sir.”

Kay watched Kirkley leave the medi-centre, and turned back to look at the Jaklly scattered around on beds, being tended to by outpost staff.

She prayed they would get lucky.

Spoiler: Light 

‘Bad news travels at the speed of light’ was an axiom the Alliance had repurposed from some older, pre-FTL saying. Ambassador Madani was increasingly of the opinion that it needed updating. With hyperspace enabled communication on key worlds and all space ships and stations, bad news could travel much, much faster than the propagation of mere light. Terran Alliance warships could flatten a planet, move on, and chase the bow wave of hyperspace transmitted terror from the inhabitants of the world they had just smashed into damp gravel, and commit a similar atrocity before the light from the explosions had escaped the bounds of a star system.

Yes, Bad news travelled fast, and so that meant that they had to move just as fast, think just as fast. She thought this through as her armoured limo travelled through the city of Limeria, the capital of Koldar, itself the capital world of the Coalition. No longer the capital of the Ferbanitan Control Zone, the sprawling hegemon that rivalled the Alliance and her allies in power and prestige, and was comprised of a dozen smaller states. That dubious honour belonged to the Bakkattan, a hive species that sprawled across the galactic rim. In fact, the Yldarn people had left the FCZ hegemon and struck out alone 8 years ago. The Alliance, if they wanted to, could crush the Yldarn, and it didn’t seem like anyone in the galaxy could stop them.

They didn’t want that, however. In fact, the Alliance viewed the Yldarn as their greatest diplomatic failure. Border conflicts and the Alliance taking the Azanti, their old rivals, as a vassal state had driven a wedge between the two species, which considering their similar politics and biology, didn’t make sense to an outside observer.

Madani ruminated that history rarely made sense. It was probably about to take another bad, inexplicable turn.
She stepped out of the limo, just as her comm. implant chimed. It was Hoover, the Terran Intelligence Officer that operated multiple cells in Coalition space. The officer dumped several terabytes of encrypted data into her neural lace, and she speed read it as she and her escort of 4 marines and a gaggle of aides passed Coalition security checkpoints and headed through their senate building.
They were quickly ushered into a luxurious, wood panelled meeting room, and her marines stacked up against one wall while Madani and her aides set out the printouts, tablets and drinks they would need to get through another fraught meeting.
+We’re in a faraday cage here, Envoy+ Jackson, the commander of her marine bodyguard warned her over implant comms. +try not to piss them off Madani+
+No promises.+ She shot back.

The Coalition envoy didn’t keep them waiting. Much like Madani, they had a bodyguard of marines, and a pair of aides. They sat, set down their own printouts and tablets, and waited for her to start.

“We have evidence of a Coalition backed slaving operation on a Pre-FTL world. We can deal with this here, or we can take this to galactic community.”

“This is all an Alliance fabricated smear.” The Yldarn envoy responded coolly.

Madari slid the printouts across the table, across the no-mans land it represented.

“Our marines dug this up from the Pirates accounts. Its pretty clear what was happening. You wanted guinea pigs, you had old tech, and you thought we wouldn’t notice. We did, and we caught you.”

The Yldarn flicked his eyes across the documents.

“This is fake.”

“Fuck you!” She snapped. “We have camera feeds, eye-witnesses, prisoners who have testified under oath. We have pages of receipts! This isn’t fake. You were kidnapping people in return for polluting a pre-ftl culture with foreign technology!”

The Yldarn envoy met her gaze evenly. “So what? Why do we care about Alliance law?”

“Because it was in our territory.” Madari growled. “Now you have an option. Send us all the people you took, or we’ll take them back. By force.”

“You would throw your nation into war for less than ten thousand people who are not even your citizens?”

“We would.” There was more than that. The chance to remove the Yldar from the galactic table as a threat to the Alliance. The perfect Casus Belli. A sudden outbreak of peace and a receding of threats elsewhere. A sudden hawkish upsurge in Alliance politics as their military had expanded. They knew it, she knew it. But this was the flashpoint, now. They could back down, stop it. If they were smart.

“You’re bluffing.”

“Try us.”

The two envoys stared each other down. The Yldarn got up first, stiff and trying to put on a brave face. Madari was the bearer of bad news, under orders. He was not in a position to countermand his government. There was no point talking. History was going to take another strange, unexpected turn.

“We are done here.”

“So we are.” Madari agreed. She stood, dusted her suit down. “We will withdraw our embassy in the next twenty four hours.”

As they left the jamming area, Madari started issuing orders. The embassy would be packed up and moved in much less than 24 hours, and they would be back home in Alliance territory in a few days. Chasing the bad news all the way, that would be travelling much faster than the speed of light.

Spoiler: Choice 

“No choice.” Kay breathed.

“No.” Zemmer agreed, taking her hand across the mess hall table. “No choice at all.”

Kay had earned a promotion to Sergeant (Sniper) along with Zemmer, and their unit had been reassigned to the Medusa, A Themis Class Titan with the 1st Combat Group. Like so much in the Alliance military, a boring, bureaucratic name hid a terror. The 1st Combat group was comprised of a squadron of Titans, the largest warships in space, supported by squadrons of big gun battleships, battle carriers, and a flock of escort destroyers. Most nations could launch two or three titans. The Alliance had three titans in each combat group, and four combat groups. These were the elite, the cutting edge of the Alliances military technology and the best, most highly drilled crews. They were the first responders, the ones called on to hold the line when all else crumbled and failed. The reason the rest of the galaxy looked at the unassuming, hairless mammal bipeds from a class 3 death world and saw a warrior race, a military hyper power, the heirs of the galaxy.

Which is why everyone in the mess knew they would be the first into Coalition space. “Always first.” It was more than a motto. It was a promise.

Kay could feel her implants buzz with message notifications. Old unit and training friends who had been gone into different career paths. Her parents. Oh god, her parents. They had been nagging her about resigning in six months when her five years came to an end. Well, that was done for, even if she had wanted to, which she didn’t. The military was her life, now. She was a professional, skilled, respected. She wanted to give that up as much as she wanted to cut of her arm.

They stayed sitting, quietly watching the news, the Presidents sombre speech. Bringing the Coalition to heel. Protecting wider federation interests. Justice for. . .

“Holy shit.” Kay breathed. Zemmer stared at the screen.

“That was us. The Jakly. That whole thing with the pirates months ago. . .”

Kay stared, incredulous. The rest of the unit were staring as well. If the mess hall had been quiet before, now you could drop a pin.

“We did this.” Kay breathed. “We’re going to war. . .because of us.”

“No, Kay, listen to me.” Zemmer took both her hands, and gently turned her head so she wasn’t looking at the screen. “We were doing our job. This is the Coalitions’ fault. They did this. We had no choice.”

Kay nodded, but her thoughts weren’t in the room. She was thinking back to her lasty conversation with Captain Kirkley, and how he would do his best to give them a shot at the people responsible for what had happened. Well, here it was. And they were in the 1st Combat group. They’d be getting plenty of shots.

They had no choice about that.

Spoiler: Risk 

Risk is inherent to any battlefield. Training exists to reduce the number of unnecessary risks a soldier might take in the course of their duties, so that they may continue to be productive tools of the state.

But that runs into problems. Soldiers are not tools, or unthinking, logical machines, no matter how the training of a technocratic, egalitarian state might try to build on a fearsome early education of logical reasoning and problem solving to try and build their ideal of the ‘philosopher soldier’. People are not thinking animals when they are in foxholes, or under fire, or dragging someone out of danger. They are instinctual.

Kays instinct, at that moment, was to keep fucking firing. She had hunkered down in a blown out apartment building with Zemmer, holoblind up, and were covering the retreat of the rest of the unit as they fell back from a sudden push of Coalition armour and battlesuits.

“Get moving you idiots!” Zemmer yelled over the comms, as Kay put a round through the opposite building. She cursed, much of its velocity had been expended punching through the concrete walls, and it ricocheted from a battlesuit, not penetrating. But it slowed it down, the Coalition line slowing and spreading.

Kay tracked the rifle left, only dimly aware of the troopers scrambling across the highway below her vantage point.

“Yes I set up mines you fucking puke!” Zemmer snapped at some corporal in the broken squad. “Now run your ass off!”

The first battlesuit came through the opposite building, trailing broken furniture and tearing through the walls. It was a bulky, round thing that reminded Kay of a terran cane toad. They were nicknamed ‘toads’ by the planetary assault regiments, and tended to be assigned to defensive garrisions for this kind of urban work, where their thick armour, prodigious strength and powerful weapons pack allowed it to dominate at close quarters.

But not against her rifle.

She put the round through the optic cluster, one of the suits few true weakpoints. As it spun, sparking electricity and spraying self-sealing armour composites, she put the second round into its powerpack. The detonation rattled the street and blew out windows, scooping a hot crater out of the glasphalt.

She ejected the power pack and reloaded smoothly, by rote, as Zemmer yelled into the comms. for gunship support, for air evac, for some kind of goddamned cover. She’d take an orbital strike if it was available, because the sensors the company had dropped as they advanced were steadily going dark. The toads pushing through the street were just the vanguard of a massive counterattack.

Kay fired again, and a leg crumpled. She didn’t get a chance to finish her target, as another toad stepped into the street, grenade launchers firing and rail rifle peppering the whole building. The holoblind had protected them, hiding their shots, so the enemy simply resorted to hosing the entire façade with grenades, machinegun fire and particle beamer fire.

“Zemmer!” Kay yelled, ducking back. Zemmer swore, threw herself flat, and command detonated three of the mines out in the street. The whole world seemed to shake as the anti-matter doped explosives cooked off, sending pillars of white plasma flame into the air and disintegrating another pair of over-eager toads.

+Up!+ Zemmer commed, both of the womens ears ringing. They both scrambled to their feet, Kay lugging her rifle, Zemmer with her SMG, and set off running for their fast rope of the back of the building.

+how many explosives did you set for the nest?+ Kay asked as she slid down the building.

+everything I had left+

They hit the street, Kay scanning left and right with her rifle, Zemmer focused on her tactical hud as they both hustled across the street after their company.

The sky screamed at them. Something arrowed down, black and hypersonic. It slammed into the building they had been holding and detonated like the wrath of the biblical god, a blinding flash of light, plasma and heat. Kay looked over her shoulder, and watched as the building ballooned outwards, then imploded inwards in a gulp of white fire.

“Holy fucking shit.” She turned, and ran faster. The shockwave hit them a second later, knocking them both flat and burying them in hot, radioactive dust and debris.

“Zemmer!” Kay yelled as she scrambled to her feet. Her partner, her girlfriend, was lying on the floor face first, suit chalky with dust. “Zemmer, come on!”
Her suit vitals were fine, but she was unconscious. That wasn’t even meant to be fucking possible, unless there was some kind of glitch, or. . .

She didn’t get a chance to find out more. Two toads, fire-blackened and dented, pushed through the firestorm and opened fire. Kay, riding a murderous high of adrenaline and combat stimms, swung her rifle up and fired it one handed. The round, near point blank, blew through a toad and flung it backwards, its armour opening up like a flower.

Its squadmates return fire tore of her right arm and right leg, and put two rounds into Zemmers back right through her armour.

Kay dropped, gasping. The suits bio-support kicked in, closing the holes in the suit by the simple method of amputating the ragged remains and sealing them behind an emergency iris. At the same time, it flooded her system with enough pain meds and stimms to stop her slipping into shock. As the suit stomped towards her, she pulled a pistol, her gauss flechette sidearm, and emptied the mag into the curved, charcoal coloured armour.

It didn’t stop it. It bent down with a clawed manipulator, and pulled the gun from her fingers before tossing it aside. Then it swatted at her helmeted head with the same arm, and knocked her cold.

Spoiler: Belief 

Muffled words.

Her mind was a red place of smothering nothing. She floated in a comforting, dead void, wrapped in an all-encompassing warmth.

“I said, wake up.”

Pain. It felt like her torso was packed with glass shards, her right arm and leg burning in acid, her throat filled with molten metal.

Kay woke up screaming, then gagging around the intubation tube. Eyes wild, she looked left and right, and thrashed against the gurney she was strapped to.

What was left of her thrashed, anyway. She had been stripped out of her armour, her bodysuit peeled back away from her suddenly ice cold skin. The room was dark, and stank of blood, urine and shit. Weak red emergency lights shone from the ceiling, revealing other soldiers, other humans, in similar states of disassembly, most filled with so many tubes and wires they looked more like machines than people. She looked down at her body, at the grim stitching that criss-crossed her stomach and chest, the tubes and wires threading in and out of her skin and trailed to hanging machines and bags of fluids. The pain swelled as she took in the damage, and she started to fade away, she wanted it to happen, anything was better than this red hell.

Shock. She was going into shock. The pain was killing her.

“Let me dial that back.”

Her pain editor kicked in, shutting of the damaged nerves. Kay slumped, sweating and breathless, shivering in exhaustion and remembered agony. A Yldar doctor, blue skin purple in the light, eyes pitiless black orbs, appeared in her vision, tapping at buttons on a pad. She felt a rush of warmth, muscles tensing and the binds holding her down on the gurney creaking. A stimulant shot.

“Let me get that tube out of your throat.”

“What have you done to me?!” She rasped once it was removed, then immediately had a coughing fit, bringing up bloody phlegm.
“I ask the questions here.” The doctor replied. Before Kay could say anything else, he turned off her pain editor again. The agony of her destroyed body slammed into her like being hit by a battle tank, and her every muscle locked, her jaw clenching so tight that she swore her teeth cracked. When he turned it back on, she sobbed in relief. “Now. My questions. . .”

“Adams, Kay, Sergeant, Terran Alliance Marine Corp, Serial number. . .”

A quick, corrective jolt of pain.

“None of that.” The doctor reached over and gently stroked her hair from her sweating face. It hadn’t been that long before. How long had she been out? “Now. I took samples from your combat wetware, spinal tissue and brain. Those samples do not match the rest of your body.”

Kay focused on breathing. Her HUD had reinitialised, finally, and it was a mess. She was a mess. As it reeled off the damage report, she began to panic again.

“WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME?” she screamed. The editor was shut off.

“Your partner, brought in with you, had significant damage to her internal organs. You were a compatible donor, so I took what you wouldn’t need for the foreseeable future.”

She stared at her HUD as it was reeling of the damage. The arm and leg, she could have handled that. . . but she was now missing a lung, a kidney, parts of her digestive system . . .

“Now, answer my questions. You were born a human male, were you not?”

“Why does that matter?” she growled. “You MUTILATED me!”

Pain again. When it stopped, the doctor was hovering inches from her face.

“Do you honestly believe you are a human female?”

“I don’t believe it.” She spat. “I know it.”

Pain, again.

The doctor took on an instructional tone “In our nation, we would have done corrective surgery to your brain.”

“Brainwashed me.” Kay snapped. She was exhausted, nauseous, hot and cold by flashes. Her combat wetware was trying to activate due to her stress, but was being blocked by an outside hack. It was like repeatedly running into a wall. But the anger was keeping her together. “The Alliance gave me the body I should have had right from birth.”

The pain coursed through her. She couldn’t track how long she hovered in agony.

“I’ve woken you up, because you were the least damaged of all my product.” The doctor continued. “And I desire someone to talk to. Your artificial biology is an interesting curio, especially when coupled with your evident mental disease in believing yourself the opposite to your birth gender.”

“I. . .what do you mean, product?”

“The war is over. My people lost, and I did not fancy facing a tribunal for my work. So, I cleaned as many damaged Terrans out of our field hospitals as I could find. Your wetware and cybernetics sell for millions of credits on the black market. Money I will use to disappear.”

“You sick freak!” Kay yelled, straining at her bonds. Even when the pain hit, she kept fighting, kept screaming in rage.

“The ships cryo-hold is full of the dead and those I put down. They will keep. However I realised I could carry a great deal more product if I kept you. . .fresh. That’s why I harvested your organs. You and your partner will keep.”

He stepped aside, reactivating the pain editor, and gestured. Lying opposite Kay, on a stretcher, was a bandaged, unconscious Zemmer. She had even more tubes and cables running out of her than Kay, her face masked with a breathing apparatus.

“I have to oversee our escape to neutral space.” The Doctor stepped back into her field of view. “I’ll be back in a few days, and we’ll run some more tests on that fascinating brain and body of yours.”

“I’ll kill you.” Kay promised.

“You can certainly believe that.” The Doctor replied over his shoulder as he walked out, leaving Kay alone in a red, blood soaked hell.

Spoiler: Without 

The Marines had trained her, frequently, to do without. Fight without weapons, without support. Survive without tools. Push forwards without hope. Make plans without orders.

She didn’t think any training would have prepared her for being trapped on the Equinox of Wisdom.

That was the name of the ship she was being stored in as spare parts to be sold at auction at an interstellar blackmarket. Meat to be broken down and traded to fill the purse of an amoral, sociopathic Doctor. Her, and a dozen other soldiers, including Felice Zemmer, her spotter, partner and lover. She was missing her right arm, her right leg, and nearly a third of her internal organs, which made her total lack of equipment seem trivial.

But she didn’t give up hope. She still had her implants, and over several agonizing days she had used her internal ICE package to wrest control of her body back from the Doctor without him noticing. She had left his backdoor to her pain editor intact, however. If he suspected anything, she was sure the Doctor would put a bullet in her brain, or worse.

That meant she had to spend hours hovering in pain, listening to the bastard pontificate about the superiority of Yldar science. When she pointed out that the Coalition had lost the war, that was when the knives came out. He would peel back what was left of her, examining her implants, before sticking her back together. If she behaved, she got to use her pain editor. If she didn’t, she got to scream.

Slowly, she probed the ships defenses. A week in, she broke into an unguarded port, and got access to ships secondary systems. A combat hacker would have done it in minutes. She was a shooter, not a spook, and distracted. She was proud she had managed it at all. She hijacked internal cameras, sensor logs. She desperately looked for drones, weapon systems, anything she could use to escape.

++++++

“You are quiet this evening.” The Doctor mused. She now knew he was called Haol Zilgrin, and had been a high ranked biologist in the Coalition. In a dark twist of fate, he had worked on many of the captured Jaklly that had started this war. When she had mentioned that it was her unit that had uncovered the pirate base, he had punished her with six hours with her senses shut off and the pain editor completely disabled.

She had endured it, only because if she didn’t, no one would save Zemmer.
“I said.” He tapped her stomach “You are quiet.”

“What is there left to say?” She grunted. She could feel a cold tugging around the skin of her abdomen. “Any time I say something you hurt me.”

“I wish for edifying conversation.” The Doctor sighed. “I suppose I should have salvaged a scientist rather than a grunt.”

“Fuck you.” She snarled. She tensed for the pain, but there was nothing. Just the cold tugging. She turned her attention away, poking at the ship systems.

A comm buffer, set to passive because the ship was in stealth mode, picked up a Gorthikan Alliance IFF. It was a system outer marker.

“What a marvel of bio-engineering.” The Doctor breathed. “Complete fidelity.”

She fought down the nausea, and carefully interrogated the ships sensors. Alamak system. Class M Red giant, habitat around the primary, mainly a logistics hub with some planet side exo-mining. More importantly, a Citadel holding the systems jump points down. A plan began to form.

“You want me to talk, fine. Where are we going?”

“Gudgan space. I have contacted an old comrade there, who will help me sell you. Then I should be set for life as an independent researcher in their academys.”

“So me and my friends get cut up for parts, and the person who cut us up walks of scot free.”

They would need to head to the systems gate. Gates could be dialed to any other gate in the network, and the Gudgans had at least one gate in their territory. Her theory was confirmed when the ship altered course, and began active transmitting using a stolen Gothrikan ID.

She moved quickly. She inserted herself (cold tugging, nausea, headache, push through) into the nav system, and waited for the bridge crew to dial the gate. She simply altered the dial code, a few digits. It went out unnoticed, and was confirmed. What she had just done was technically treason, but she felt she would be forgiven, if it worked.
The Doctor finished up, and stitched her back together, and left without another word. Kay allowed herself to relax, and a small smile of triumph.

+++++

Hours later, claxons blared through the red-lit hell. The Doctor burst into the room, flanked by two guards.

“You’ve dropped us right into Alliance territory. Their most secure military base! We’re being overhauled right now, but I won’t give you the satisfaction of seeing me hang!”

He killed the pain editor, and Kay screamed as hot agony speared through her abdomen alongside all the other wounds. The Doctor watched her for a second, before retrieving a powered bonesaw. Kay lunged, tearing through her binds, pain editor active, implants pumping her damaged body with enough stimulants to kill her. Her hand grabbed the doctors pistol, dragged it clear of its holster, and she put two rounds into his gut in a split second. As he slumped over, Kay shot again, putting a neat hole into the ribbed foreheads of each of his guards.

+ Sergeant Kay, TAMC! I need medical evac for a dozen wounded! +

+Kay, this is the Destroyer Mogador, We have you on sensors and are dispatching medical teams. Hold on Sergeant!+

She pushed Zilgrins corpse of her, and rolled of the bed. Using the bed and cables as supports, she hopped to Zemmers unconscious form.

“We’ll be ok.” She whispered, as she passed out, the Mogador yelling in her implants to hold on a little longer.

Spoiler: Climb 

Hand over hand. Foot after foot. A hard, draining climb up the cliff face, at an angle. She had attacked this climb, an equal to ‘Tribe’ in Italy or even the infamous Dawn Wall in Yosemite, over a dozen times. It didn’t have a name, yet. It was part of the preserve on Holibrae Secundus, and the native Zaydran had never named this imposing, impassable cliff. If Kay climbed and rated it, she would get the honour of naming it.

Kay attacked the rock face with anger and frustration propelling her upwards. She didn’t stop, she didn’t think. Thinking was the problem. She found each hand and foot hold, first from rote memory, then exploring as she went as the light faded. The temperature dropped. Holibrae Secundus was an artic world, 70% of its surface covered in ice pack and glacier. Even here, in the equatorial zone, the nights were cold and bitter. The cold bit her skin, numbed her fingers, sapped her strength. But she pushed on.

Her hand slipped, inevitably. She cursed, gripping on by left hand and left foot. Her right arm. Always the right, the one the doctors had replaced. She’d had it looked at dozens of times, and each time it had been checked out it was fine. But it didn’t feel fine. She scrambled to get her right foot onto a ledge as thin as a knife blade, and slipped, swinging her out into space on her screaming left shoulder and hip.

She cried. She wept bitter, frustrated tears. She was broken, and she couldn’t climb this fucking rock. So she let go.

The suit she was wearing detecting the sudden change in momentum. It pumped air into inflatable cells, cocooning her, and she hit the rocks below, bounced, rolled, and deflated, coming to a stop in a bruised but intact heap not far from her little base camp.

She swore again, a long, loud set of curses thrown at a darkening sky. Then she packed up her gear, and headed home.

++++++

She stepped into her home, and dumped her gear by the door. Felice would complain, but she didn’t have the energy to clean it up now.

There was a presence in the dark of the kitchen. She snap drew her pistol, and aimed it at the figure sitting at the table. They raised their hands, and Kay activated the lights.

“Sergeant Dumbani” Kay lowered her pistol. “Fucks sake. I could have killed you.”

“Surprised you didn’t Kay.” The sergeant, as physically imposing and bombastic as Kay remembered, lowered his hands. “Most veterans would have plugged me. Anyway, aren’t those” he gestured to the pistol as she holstered it. “illegal planet side?”

“Special dispensation for park rangers.” Kay offered, crossing to the table and pulling a chair out to sit. “They have predators on the ice that make polar bears look cuddly. The pistol helps dissuade them.” She sat heavily, and leaned back in her chair, making its wooden legs creak. “What the hell are you doing here, Sir?”

“I could ask the same, but I can guess. You picked a system with fortifications second only to Sol, but with wild spaces big enough to disappear into. You’re far away from Felices family, and yours. But you’re also close to Ground Command HQ on Holibrae Prime. So, Kay, Specialist Sergeant with a chestful of medals, you’re hiding. You’re fed up with the press, the family, and the shrinks, and you want to work through your heap of trauma on your own terms, but you don’t think you’re done yet.”

“That’s a hell of a lot of guessing, Sir.”

“Stop calling me Sir, Kay, you outrank me. And even if you didn’t, you’ve been pretending to be a civvy for the last six months.” He stood, his chair grinding on the stone tiled floor, and he crossed to the kitchens stove. “Coffee? Your wife left a pot out for us.”

“Sure.”

“So. PTSD, obviously. Specifically, Cyber Leper Syndrome, an addiction to using your pain editor. You even feeling those bruises right now?”

“Not your business, Gerald.”

“Combine that with phantom limb syndrome, and combat stimm aversion, you’re convinced you’re a write off. A full body rebuild from the neck down, and the only thing they couldn’t fix was your mind.”

He put the coffee pot down on the table, and put a mug of black, bitter liquid in Kays hands.

“You tryin’ to kill yourself? Hoping a local predator or a fatal fall will finish the job?”
“I’m trying to work through it.” Kay slugged half the coffee down. She shuddered as she turned her pain editor down, and felt the bruises on her back and arms from the fall.

“I can help with that. Because I can offer you what you need.” He dropped a datapad onto the table, then activated it with a gesture. “A week ago a black market contact let their Alliance handler know someone was selling harvested Alliance cybernetics. The seller?”

A Yldar face appeared over the table, and Kay jumped back in shock, coffee scalding her hands.

“Its not possible! I killed that fucker myself!”

Dumbani continued like he hadn’t heard Kay. “Then, an illegal harvesting operation of spaceborne lifeforms near the Trabbur system. Then other places. Over a dozen sightings, all so close in time and far in space they could only mean one thing.”

Kay stared. Dozens of horrors. Dozens of crimes. Only one face.

“So, Sergeant, how do you feel like killing Doctor Haol Zilgrin as many times as you like?”

++++++

Kay attacked the rock with a passion. Hand over hand, foot after foot. Her muscles ached, her lungs burned.

For the first time, she reached the top. She flopped over the edge, breathing hard, and stared up at the crisp, clear stars.

He was out there. And Kay knew, that she would only know peace when every part of him was dead.

That promised to be a long, hard climb.

Spoiler: Ending 

The Alecto drifted on silent running. A Fury class Cruiser, only a bare handful existed across the entire Alliance. Packed with the most advanced tech and weapons the alliance could muster, as well as an advanced stealth system, the Alecto was a lone wolf predator, designed to ambush, disable, and if need be, kill ships much less defended than itself then slip away from its crime undetected.

This was because it was the most aptly named class in the Alliance. They sent out the Furies to hunt war criminals and monsters, monsters like Doctor Haol Zilgrin and his dozens of illegally grown and mind-stamped clones. The ships current prey.

Captain Ramesh stroked at his long beard, looking over the tactical display with eyes like a hawk. The sensor bouys had just picked up something interesting.

“What have you got?” came a voice from over his shoulder that made him jump. He turned in his chair to regard the Marine commander standing there, the legendary Kay Zemmer, the mission lead. She was clad in her heavy boarding armour, and had a rifle slung over her shoulder. She still looked shockingly young to Ramesh, but then anyone who had survived two full body rebuilds would probably not look their age.

“It’s the Haleorian Prince, alright.” He stated, calming himself. After all, Kay was on his side. And he’d much rather have the marine fight the monsters than himself.

“Disable it for boarding.”

“Why not simply destroy it?” He asked as he input commands. “He won’t talk.”

“Maybe not.” Kay shrugged. “But every time we board, we force his clones to transmit their findings. That gives us another chance to triangulate his actual position.”

“Ready.” He reported. “Railgun is at charge, and deadfalls are primed.”

“Engage.”

+++++

They put a railgun round through the super-tankers drive cone, and used missiles to blind and silence it.

The boarding craft, a M18A ‘Limpet’, breached at engineering, and the marine fire team killed the reactor before it could be scrammed or sabotaged.

“No crew.” Corporal Wright noted as they swept forwards. She was covering Kay as she lead the way down an access corridor.

“That’s not unexpected.” Kay responded as they checked empty rooms and storage bays. “A big tanker like this, you can automate almost everything.”

They came to a viewing gallery that had been added to the ships portside spinal corridor. Kay insisted every deviation from the deck plans for a ship like this, mass-produced in dozens of commercial yards, was thoroughly checked. Looking at those schematics, she realised this viewing gallery was internal, looking over the portside midship cargo bay.

“Holy hell.” She muttered. Still, after months hunting the demented clones of Doctor Haol Zilgrin, they could surprise her with their perverse madness. Every wall of the bay, even its floor and ceiling, where covered in organic, red, fleshy fronds.

“Sir. . .what the fuck are we looking at?” Wright asked, her voice breaking as the tentacles oozed across the reinforced glass of the observation dome. Things moved in the meat. Things that might once have been people. In places, she could see pods hanging from the mass, and in them twisted humanoid figures. Small, capering horrors tended the pods, ignoring the two armoured women staring in at them.

“Evil.” Kay responded. “Pure fuckin’ evil.” The comm. channel was alive with similar finds. Each bay seemed to support an artificial ecosystem of sorts, filled with bio-engineered monsters.

“He’ll be on the bridge.” Kay. “Don’t bother with det-charges. We’ll grab the fucker, exfil, and have the Alecto blow this ship to scrap.”

+++++

The door to the bridge exploded inwards, and monsters flowed out. They were haphazardly stitched together things, laced with scavenged cyberware and primitive weapons. Kays squad hosed them from the deck with a deluge of fire. Then they stalked through the cooked blood and bone, onto the bridge.

The clone Doctor had linked himself to the ships systems with more red fronds of corrupted biomatter. The smell would have been atrocious, if the squad removed their helmets. The air was laced with deadly pathogens, but none were getting into the suits.

“Kay Adams.” The Doctor gurgled, head rolling on his shoulders like his neck was broken. Kay sneered at the monster.

“You’re not him. You’re another clone.”

“You’ll never find the prime, Kay.” The. . .thing chuckled wetly. “This will never end, not until he has killed your species. Until he was wiped the galaxy clean for his children.” It looked at the cooked blood on the deck. “Once they are strong enough. . .”

She grabbed the things neck. “Where is he?”

“None of us know.”

“What was the purpose of this ship? What experiments are you running on the Prince?”

“The experiments are over.” The monster laughed, black ooze pouring from its mouth. Kay stepped back. More than once that ooze had been a vicious biological acid. “This whole ship is a womb for a new, hybrid life form. A space going hunter organism, self maintaining, growing its own crew. And you will be its first prey.”

She fired, the burst tearing the clone apart.

“We’re leaving now, via the hull!”

Around them, the ship shuddered, bucked and rolled. Like something convulsing. Like something alive. They blasted through the bridges hull in seconds, revealing walls packed with fleshy, red tendrils that groped and stretched over the gap. Trying to heal the wound.
“Go!” The squad didn’t need to be told twice. Kay was the last to leave, cutting through the fronds with a combat blade to make sure they couldn’t grab her. Once on the hull, they used manoeuvre packs to push clear.

“Alecto, light her up!”

The first salvo of missiles revealed the horror. Scorched meat and fleshy growths that spilled into space. The next four killed it.

She was getting closer. This was one more data point, but it wasn’t over. Kay new that. But she knew it was ending.

Soon. Soon she would finish the bastard.

[Azazeal849]

Some philosophy and some sci-fi, nice.

@dakkagor; is that from one of the previous universes (GE2, Wreckage, Vacuum Crows) or a new one?