Salvage Marines (Necrospace Book 1) (2 page)

She was from a different Hab-Block and though most people did not venture out of their own districts, she had decided on a whim to explore. Sura had simply boarded the metro and decided to get off at the first stop that looked interesting. She was a photographic artist, which was something Samuel had never heard of until she asked for permission to take his photo.

Samuel had been sitting on the concrete steps of the district’s Spire, which was a skyscraper that housed the local police force and public surveillance operations. He was waiting for Ben Takeda to be released from jail. Again.

Ben had been jailed for nearly a week, without pay, for brawling with a site foreman at the sewage processing plant where he’d been assigned. This was Ben’s second offense that year. It had been nearly twelve months since his assault on the graduation administrator. A third workforce related incident would result in a penal reclassification and he would be shipped to one of the mining compounds that clung to the various moons and asteroids that filled the Baen system.

Something about Samuel’s posture as he waited for his friend had struck Sura as indicative of life in Grotto as a whole, and she needed to capture it. At first, she snapped several photos before approaching him, and then the troubled young man had agreed to remain and allow her more photos.

“I don’t have a license for it, so no quality control division or public surveillance office is going to hire me to gallivant around the Baen system,” she had said, brazenly snapping away at Samuel as he sat on the concrete steps of a Grotto executive office spire, “But I just love doing it, so when I’m off shift I just travel wherever the metro takes me and shoot what’s interesting.”

“What do you do with your photos after you take them?” Samuel had asked incredulously as he did his best not to stare at her. She was easily the most attractive woman who had ever spoken to him. “I’ve never seen anyone take photos for no reason.”

“There’s plenty of reasons. To see things in a different way, maybe show people something new.” She had laughed easily as she snapped a few more before sitting down next to Samuel and showing him some of the photos in her digital display, “Have you ever seen yourself? Like through someone else’s eyes?”

“I’m nobody special, why would it matter?” Samuel asked, trying to follow her logic, until she came upon a particularly stark photo of him that she had taken before speaking to him. Samuel was taken aback at how haggard he looked. With the hard edges of the Spire in the background, and her black and white filter, it was a grim image.

“I see a man who knows that the universe is a hard place, that life under Grotto Corporation is a heavy thing,” Sura said as she showed him the photo, seemingly so caught up in the shot that she didn’t notice as Samuel looked at her, “But he strives to carry on. There’s power in that.”

Samuel looked at himself in the mirror of the tiny wash unit that occupied a corner of the bar he had asked Ben to meet him at for a drink. Two years on the assembly line and to his eyes he looked far older than twenty.

There was a toll being paid by his body and mind, he thought to himself, and it wasn’t until now that he realized just how telling that photo Sura had taken really was.

He and Sura had continued talking, and over the next few weeks found themselves enjoying each other’s company more and more as their budding friendship transformed into more.

Sura saw the world so differently from Samuel, and he felt as if she was a sun around which he was an orbiting planet. Sura also worked in food service, though she often had to push for re-assignment due to unwanted attention from co-workers or site foremen and she always teetered on the edge of financial ruin as a result.

Samuel was their foundation, and though they often found themselves having to make hard choices about their life-style, they managed to be as happy as a Grotto couple could be. She often told him that she thought it no accident that they found each other among the swell of humanity, and together, they strived to make the best of their lot in life. They had lived like that for just over a year, until last week.

Sura was pregnant.

Samuel walked back to his table, where Ben sat nursing a beverage so day-glow green it looked radioactive. The other man had a similar weary look despite his young age, understandably so, since Ben had been working in waste disposal.

It was a grueling, physical job, and since Grotto Corporation had determined that manual labor was a cheaper alternative to high-end machinery, whenever possible, assembly lines, factories, and in Ben’s case, waste disposal, used hard physical labor in place of machines.

Ben had echoed Samuel’s father in his frustrated indictment that Grotto had intentionally regressed and eschewed technological advancement in favor of further expanding the Great and Holy Bottom Line.

“So what did you want to talk about, man?” asked Ben as Samuel sat down and took a furtive sip from his own glass. “I know you only drink like, once every hundred years, so I figure whatever you’ve got to say it’s big.”

“Do you remember that REAPER card?” Samuel said after knocking back his entire drink and gesturing to the waitress for a second round. “It’s been on my mind lately.”

“Brother, you invite me out to a bar, which you never do, you get three drinks in before saying anything other than small talk and then you open with that?” laughed Ben as he took a swig of his drink, “Seems like you’ve been thinking real hard about it.”

“Sura is pregnant,” Samuel stated, then paused as Ben took another swallow while the waitress brought Samuel’s refill.

They sat in grim silence for a full minute before Ben finally spoke, “You’re going to do it, aren’t you?”

“It’s already done,” stated Samuel as he took a strong pull from his drink, “I signed the contract this morning.”

“Whoa, man! Hold on a minute. Does Sura know? Did she see this coming?” sputtered Ben, baffled at his friend’s casual delivery of such grave news.

“The physician confirmed it two days ago, we’re having a boy,” rasped Samuel, as if Ben hadn’t spoken, his voice choking up with emotion as his eyes began to moisten, “His name is going to be Orion.”

“I mean, congratulations brother, but seriously, Sura has no idea what you’ve signed on for? What you’ve signed
her
on for?” Ben asked.

“She won’t like it, but she’ll come around. You’ve said it yourself a thousand times, Ben, we’re born into a life we can’t escape from, just like our parents. If I don’t do something to change that, then Orion is going to end up just like me,” Samuel growled in frustration, the edge of his voice hardened by the alcohol. “You were right to punch that son of a bitch at graduation. This was a raw deal from the start.”

“So why are you telling me and not Sura right now, huh?” Ben retorted just before draining his glass and gesturing to the waitress for another.

“The recruiter said that Baen system is one week away from a new fleet founding. If you sign on now, we’d end up in the same unit,” Samuel said, his gaze downcast and his foot tapping nervously on the floor. “I didn’t want to tell Sura until I could also tell her that you had my back. She’s always thought the world of you.”

“I’m one fist fight away from a penal colony, not sure what she sees in me,” Ben laughed.

“That’s my point. You don’t back down. That makes you a crappy janitor,” Samuel insisted, “but I bet that would make you a hell of a soldier.”

“Now you sound like a recruiter,” Ben growled as he accepted the new drink from the waitress and sucked down half of it in one strong pull. “There a signing bonus if you get me to come with?”

“This is Grotto, of course there’s a bonus for convincing your friends to sign on the dotted line,” snorted Samuel as he finished his drink, “Look, just think about it. Being line workers and shit shovelers on Baen 6 is no kind of life, not for us, and not for our families. We could do this, and make something better for ourselves.”

Samuel finished his drink and set a disposable credit stick on the table to cover the tab. He patted Ben’s shoulder and left the bar.

Ben sat alone for quite some time, saying nothing. Eventually, he finished his drink and pulled a brand new REAPER card from his jacket pocket, turning it over and over in his hands before slotting it into his handheld data-pad.

REAPER– Resource Exploration And Procurement Engineer Regiment

Welcome Citizen, to a new life of adventure, including meal plan and hazard pay!

Because Grotto Corporation is heavily invested in exploration and military ventures there is always a place for stalwart citizens, twenty-five standard years or younger, willing to risk life and limb for incredible wages and a sense of accomplishment.

As a REAPER, your primary function will be to serve as foot soldiers and salvage specialists for militarized expeditions into regions of both mapped and unmapped space in search of raw materials ready to be exploited. To claim or re-claim machinery, equipment, and building materials from former battlefields, space hulks, and otherwise abandoned facilities.

Base wages for training and transit time are nearly twice that of the average workforce assignment, and all recovery and combat duties come with additional hazard bonuses.

See your local recruiter for details.

Sign up today!

Ben took a deep breath and put the data-pad and card back in his jacket, then left the bar to walk into the evening streets.

MINING UNIT 5597

Basic had been hard on Samuel, as it was on every new recruit, though particularly so for the young man who had just put everything on the line for his budding family. Or at least that’s what Samuel continued to tell himself as he fought his way through the sweaty grind of physical training, the scorching heat of the salvage tool orientations, and the concussive repetition of firearms assessment and operations.

In truth, it felt somewhat like a defeat, as if he’d retreated from an unhappy life and a dismal future rather than taking an opportunity to carve out a better one. It felt selfish, and though Sura had spoken only words of encouragement and support, Samuel could see disappointment in her eyes and could sense a growing distance between them as she constructed emotional walls to protect herself. Just as Samuel trained his body for war, so did Sura harden her heart for the long haul on the home front.

Samuel knew enough about himself to know that he was more of the ‘strong, silent type’ when it came to matters of the heart and part of his personal quest during basic REAPER training was to become a better communicator. In the end, communication was all that he and Sura had left.

In the last few days of training he had been informed that the newly founded Baen REAPER fleet had already been issued marching orders. There would be no time to see their families or have shore leave. Basic training was to continue to its conclusion on board the massive tug ship that would serve as both home and base of operations for the Reapers.

Samuel and Sura were allowed video streams and audio contact as each marine quarters came equipped with a com-deck, and the spouses did the best they could through the mediums available.

It wasn’t much, but it was something.

Samuel looked ahead at his friend Ben Takeda and smiled inside his helmet. The few months between their conversation in the bar and now being deployed on their first mission had been hard, but Ben had helped Samuel through it all.

Ben had found that he was indeed well suited to the life of a soldier and showed an early aptitude for the heavy machine gun. Samuel often thought that it was the positive shift of Ben’s newfound zest for life as a REAPER that helped Samuel keep himself together.

During basic training the entry level REAPER pay rate was not only more money than either man had ever earned before, it was more than either of their parents had ever made.

Ben had run the numbers and discovered that with the base rate he would be able to clear his life-bond within five years. Ben insisted that after five years as a REAPER he had little intention of going back to being a Grotto civilian. Working for Grotto, he would still be on the waste disposal detail, so for him at least, the plan was REAPER until death or retirement.

As Samuel met other new recruits in basic, the exotic beauty, Jada Sek, and the exceptionally average, Spencer Green, for example, he discovered that Ben’s attitude was common. Samuel had little desire to be a soldier for the rest of his life, though when he calculated the life-bonds for both he and Sura on top of the expatriation fee, he was going to have to survive nearly a decade of service.

For Samuel and all of the rest of the recruits, the real game changer was the hazard pay bonuses. If a REAPER spent even just half a standard year officially “deployed” on an operation, whether it was combat or salvage or both, the pay was nearly double the standard rate.

Samuel had never wanted war, though when he compared five years of deployed hazard time to ten years of basic service to accomplish his goals and get his family away from Grotto, he found himself very willing to take up arms. So long as the paychecks kept clearing he would keep fighting.

It was this vision of his future life and future family that kept him warm in the cold of space, and though he knew it was just as much of a daydream as anything else, he clung to it. There was strength in his goals, a purpose beyond himself that he hoped would push him to excel in combat and to survive whatever the universe had in store for him.

So it was that Samuel and Ben were rolled into Tango Platoon, along with orphans Patrick Baen and Aaron Baen. Their squad leader position, known as Boss, was filled by Maggie Taggart. The marines called her Boss Taggart to her face, but thought of her as Mag when they weren’t addressing her.

Mag was a tough-as-nails veteran, as was Boss Lucinda Ulanti and Boss Wynn Marsters, assigned from other Reaper fleets to be leaders for the Baen 6 founding fleet. It was these veterans who set the standard for what it meant to be a REAPER. It was they who would not only lead the marines, but also teach them through action, how to take what the new recruits had learned in basic and execute it in the field.

Samuel’s grip tightened on his combat rifle as he looked behind him once more into the darkness of the tunnel, silently hoping that the training had been enough.

“Everybody watch your corners, just because someone already swept it doesn’t mean something hasn’t show up in the meantime,” Mag growled into her com-bead as she raised her combat rifle to point the muzzle into the darkness of the corridor in front of her. The mounted light on the rifle illuminated a small bend on the right that indicated a side passage. “We don’t want to get flanked if there really is something in here with us.”

“Copy that, Boss,” said Samuel in a low voice, partly through the com-bead and partly to himself, as he’d certainly not double checked either of the last two passages they’d come through since entering the labyrinth of corridors that made up the underbelly of the compound.

His imagination threatened to conjure up any number of horrors from childhood stories, and he retreated into his firearm routine to calm his nerves.

Ever since basic, he habitually checked the safety of his weapon, and then looked at the ammunition read out on the side of the gun. He had not fired a single shot outside of training, and certainly not twenty minutes into his first salvage mission, but the young man took an obsessive comfort in the assurance that he had control of his weapon and a full magazine.

The fleet had set anchor in low orbit around a small planet with no name beyond designation M5597. In the pre-drop briefing the shift manager had informed the marines that fourteen years prior, a mining branch ship was sent to this planet in response to data returned by unmanned probes revealing large deposits of biridium and mordite gases. As both resources were labor intensive and time-consuming to extract, a ship outfitted with the ability to found a mining compound was dispatched. After several years of acceptable levels of production yields, communication with M5597 abruptly ceased.

The entire 5500 sector was considered low security space, so keeping military vessels in the area was deemed unnecessary. The transport way station, after missing two consecutive deliveries, had filed an automatic report.

Once the regional managers of the sector, who worked out of the Home Office on Grotto Prime, were made aware of the report they determined that the cost of a response effort would outweigh the projected profits of the facility.

At the time, Grotto Corp. was engaged in a bitter trade war with the Hadrian Conglomerate in several of the surrounding sectors. To re-task even one response ship to pass through the war zone and into sector 5500 would have not only resulted in the loss of the ship to one or more of the many Hadrian frigates that picketed the area, but also ran the risk of Hadrian management discovering that there were precious resources hidden on a small planet deep within the largely ignored and unmapped sector.

The report was buried and the fate of the mining compound on M5597 was unknown.

It had been ten standard years since then and the war with Hadrian had eventually ground to a halt as more lucrative ventures had presented themselves to both companies in other parts of the universe.

Two weeks ago the branch ship that had sourced the mining compound, which should have been the ship to deliver the production yields all those years ago, had been sighted several systems away and flagged as a rogue ship, no doubt being crewed by pirates or independents.

The companies that dominated the universe, though in constant conflict with one another, did ostensibly share information about independents and pirates, as both groups represented a challenge to corporate rule.

Once flagged as a rogue vessel the ship would be ‘red listed’ alongside thousands of others. They simply ceased to exist as far as being under the protection or responsibility of any company. While this certainly represented a kind of freedom, Red Listed ships, and static communities for that matter, were completely on their own. They had no allegiance to anyone, which meant they also had no rights. Most Red Listed ships and communities quickly turned to piracy in order to survive, were wiped out by a corporate interest, or were simply swallowed by the void of space and never heard from again.

A new regional manager on Grotto Prime, so far removed from the field that even the shift manager did not have their name in her briefing, had decided to classify M5597 as a REAPER objective.

Samuel had listened attentively, not once flinching at the shameless bureaucracy and adherence to the bottom line that ruled Grotto society. He had long ago accepted that such things were unchanging. It made perfect sense to him that the managers, both old and new, made their decisions based on the profit and loss projections of their actions. Such was the Grotto way, and he had been raised in that world, as had the other hundred and forty marines.

It was the logical choice now that the trade war was over and there was a new regional manager looking to boost his or her quarterly revenues and political status within the organization.

Sending a REAPER fleet was relatively inexpensive, and since the cost of the entire facility had already been tagged as a loss, any salvage or resource yield would be pure profit. The shift manager went on to say that, as per standard operational procedures, the marines were to do their best to avoid further damaging the compound should they be met with armed resistance.

It was that thought of armed resistance that hurled Samuel’s mind back into the present moment and he once more checked his safety and ammunition count.

Squad Taggart had made planetfall roughly twenty minutes prior and though their drop-pods were outdated and uncomfortable, they were sturdy. As they’d been coming down, Samuel had found himself looking at the blast scarring on the interior of the pod, and realized that at some point in this pod’s history an incendiary device had gone off inside it. He hoped that the marines within had already exited the craft since salvage marines weren’t usually dropped into direct combat, though it was anybody’s guess what had happened.

Record keeping was more concerned with resources expended and resources procured and there was little in the way of storytelling amongst the marines. They were a grim lot, being the lowest paid and most poorly equipped of the Grotto military even though they were always being sent into the unknown.

As Samuel swept his rifle through the gloom of the corridor he found himself wondering if it might have been better to be a legionnaire. At least then he would have bio-implants to make him faster and stronger, an armored dropsuit, and access to the most impressive and deadly of armaments. However, he told himself, instead of prowling the dark corridors of mysteriously abandoned mining facilities in the middle of necrospace he would be in the middle of a firefight with enemy soldiers who were just as powerful as he was. Samuel was a pragmatic young man, and had been raised Grotto from birth, so as the seconds ticked by he considered that his pay-per-minute as a marine was the better choice for a family man.

A sharp scream that could not have been human filled the corridors, and Samuel’s blood felt like it had turned to ice. Suddenly the unknown of an alien threat seemed much more intimidating than fighting other humans.

Samuel had always heard stories and rumors of inhuman creatures that stalked the forgotten corners of space, and there were always tales of ancient aliens who ruled the frontiers of necrospace. Like most people, he had ignored them, though in that moment, there was no doubt in his mind that monsters were real and that one was inside the dark compound with them.

“Tighten up people, this is what you’ve been training for,” muttered Mag as she held a fist up for the squad to stop, “This is a big place, sounds like that could carry serious distance, whatever it is could be on the other side of the compound for all we know. Aaron what’s our position?”

“The rig says we’re only about two hundred meters from the central quarters, Boss,” said Aaron as he checked the data-deck affixed to his forearm which contained all of their mission specifics, including maps of the facility and last known inventory lists. “Could be that whatever it is came in through the tunnels on the far side of the compound.”

“Squad Ulanti entered on that side. With all the atmospheric interference we aren’t going to hear anything from them until we’re face to face,” grumbled Mag as she lifted her rifle and continued forward, “Keep it together, people, let’s breach the compound and get out of these freaking tunnels.”

The squad began to move forward again and Samuel, who was bringing up the rear, could not help but turn to peer down the corridor behind them. He was astounded that the three other marines, raw recruits just like him, seemed so unshaken by the scream. Mag, as a Reaper veteran of at least ten years, he could understand, but the certain knowledge that something was in here with them, something not human, had rattled him to the core.