Hey Rogues,
Looking for a reason to start my new series, Iron Legion? Check out this sneak preview of Book 1, Recruit. I guarantee you’ll be hooked after reading this!
Recruit – Sneak Preview
Bred to work.
Trained to fight.
Sent to die.
James Maddox is a colony rat. A tuber: born in a vat to live, work, and die on Genesis-526. The only way off a toxic dustball like Genesis is to enlist. But with a 7% three-year survival rate, the Federation’s Ground Corps doesn’t look too appealing…
Still, the recruiters are always looking for fresh meat. And they don’t take no for an answer.
So when a Federation dropship descends from the sky, Maddox isn’t given a chance to run. Hell, the damn thing nearly kills him. And that’s before he’s picked up, strapped to a rocket and fired at a training carrier in orbit. Ready to become cannon fodder on some alien battlefield.
Until he’s offered a lifeline – the Mech Corps. They’re the elite. The first in and last out of every fight, piloting twenty foot tall steel beasts of war. But no tuber has ever made it into the Corps, and they want to keep it that way. The instructors want him out, the other recruits want him gone, and they’ll stop at nothing to make sure it happens.
But they’ve never met a tuber quite like James Maddox. Compared to working to death on Genesis, training is a piece of cake. And it’s definitely better than getting shot at. After all, boot camp is a long way from the front line.
But when your ship is capable of interstellar travel, it’s closer than you might think…
Chapter 1
Planet: Genesis-526
Earth Date: 2734AD
All the glasses rattled on the table top as a freighter swung around the dustball that was Genesis-526, and slingshotted into deep space.
I sighed and watched the surface of my drink settle.
“All’s I’m saying is that,” Zed belched, “Ninety-Three could definitely benefit from a Sim-Stack.” He shrugged and drained the last dregs of beer before slamming the cup down on the steel table top. He was a skinny guy, a tuber like me, grown for purpose, with a shaved head.
Sybil squinted at him, one eye half closed. He was older, Ex-Federation Ground Corps. Dishonorable Discharge. I watched him choose his words, fishing drunkenly for them. It was crazy that, for anyone from off-world, getting shipped to Genesis-526 and being put on terraforming duty was the worst punishment conceivable. For us tubers, it was a career. And a life-long one at that.. Not like we had a choice, though. I stared at the flat surface of my beer, watching it bubble slowly. I wasn’t much in the mood for drinking. I wasn’t much in the mood for anything.
“Sim-Stack, eh? You just want to,” Sybil hiccoughed, “get your digital di—”
“Hey!” Zed cut back in. “I appreciate the fine form of a woman as much as any guy — probably more so considering how fucking few of them the almighty goddamn Federation saw fit to grace this barren rock with — but that’s not what I’m talking about.”
“For once,” snorted Crash, the ex-Federation cargo pilot who’d ploughed into one of the moons off Zebox while he was flying shitfaced. They called him Crash for obvious reasons.
“I’ve never been off this fucking planet, alright?” Zed snapped, sucking on his empty cup. “I’ve never seen anything other than goddamn dirt and algae. I don’t want to fucking die here, not without seeing somewhere else, something else.”
I grimaced but stayed quiet. I knew that ache.
“Listen, kid,” Sybil kicked back in, sighing, “the universe ain’t all it’s cracked up to be, alright? Terraforming for a colony planet’s not a bad gig. It’s safe, secure, and you’re making a decent—”
“You developed Stockholm syndrome, or are you just a fucking idiot, Syb?” Crash drained his beer and cocked an eyebrow.
I looked at the three of them, an utter bunch of misfits, and wondered how the hell, firstly, that it was our responsibility to turn a planet into something habitable, and secondly, that I’d somehow managed to throw in with three guys I could barely stand. I shook my head. I could already see how the conversation was going to go — Syb and Crash would start arguing about the Federation, both ragging on it and defending it at the same time, angry at themselves for fucking up their lives and getting stuck down here. And Zed would just get shitfaced, and then cross them both, and then they’d brawl, get kicked out, and we’d get stuck with the bill for the damages. And I’d have to foot my part, despite not getting in the middle of any of it. I was sick to my back teeth of it — of them. And then, after all was said and done, they’d stagger home and fall into bed, wake up hungover and bruised, go to work, pretend like everything was peachy, and then go do it all over again.
I left my drink untouched and stood up, pulling on my jacket.
“And where d’you think you’re going, Jim?” Zed piped up.
I tried to smile but found it hard. I knew this was my lot in life, but I didn’t want to get reminded of it every single night. “I’m not feeling drinking tonight, guys. I’m gonna see if I can’t squeeze in some overtime.”
I saw their looks of disapproval at my intention to do any more than the bare minimum required by the Federation. In truth, my options were either stay and listen to their bullshit, head back to my cramped little hab and lie in bed staring at the ceiling until sleep swallowed me up, or get back to work and earn a few extra credits. At least the last option might afford me a little bit of luxury to make my existence just slightly less unbearable. The wage we got was hardwired into the system from the Federation protocols that governed the universal currency — Federation creds. It was practically impossible to earn enough money to do anything other than sleep and eat. And if you wanted to drink, you had to forgo one of the others. Syb and Crash, for all their bickering, shared a hab like a pair of kids, freeing up enough cash to get drunk enough every night to forget they were consigned to this life until they both died of old age — or cirrhosis, whichever came first. Any way you spun it, things were spread thin. But the Federation liked that. It kept us in line — kept us controlled.
“Overtime?” Crash laughed. “Fucking scab.” There was venom in his voice, like it was an affront to him. If he didn’t have so much bile in him, or a habit that needed quenching, he’d probably be out there too. But he did, so it was easier to try to make me feel bad about it than face his own demons. I just let it roll off my back. I was used to that now.
The others mumbled in agreement. I shrugged and turned away, waving over my shoulder. Before I even reached the door, they were back to talking about the Federation, and how it was fucking them three ways from Sunday. Underpaid. Overworked. Taken for granted and not appreciated. Because, of course, who wouldn’t want three discontented and mutinous drunks in their ranks?
The Federation didn’t care though. They were just one group in a thousand just like them in every settlement from here to the poles and back. The Federation fucked everyone, though. It’s what they did. They ran half the universe.
I walked the length of the steel catwalk outside Marcy’s, one of two bars in Ninety-Three, one of the terraforming settlements on Genesis-526. The settlement itself was a mess of stacked habs, loaded on top of each other, tied together by catwalks and walkways, covered by a huge dome. In a couple hundred years, the dome would come off — but for now, the air outside was lethal, so the dome stayed, keeping us safe, keeping the air in. Keeping the stink in. I hacked and spat the stale air over the railing, watching it sail into the murky depths below. It splatted on the ground with a dull slap, hidden by the darkness, and a grunt of indifference rang up. People lived on the ground — but no one bothered with them. They were fade-outs. We called them that because that’s what they did. They just faded out. Either they stopped working, or retired, or just pissed away their money until they couldn’t cover hab-rental. Either way, they lived under tarps, sleeping on anything that kept them off the ground — the sludgy, algae-covered ground. No one went down there if they could help it. The fade-outs didn’t take kindly to workers. They’d shiv you for a couple of credits. They had nothing and the Federation wouldn’t do shit about them — nothing except scrape them up and toss them out when they finally did fade.
I pushed the thought out of my mind and kicked down off the catwalk onto another one, clearing the miniature ladder that connected them. The fade-outs didn’t need thinking about, or pitying. Everyone was fighting for what they had out here. They were the ones who’d given up. My Blower was calling. It was the only place I felt comfortable. Most people hated the claustrophobia of it, but for me it was the opposite. I liked that isolation, that feeling of protection, that feeling of power, of moving something big like that, of having so much strength at my fingertips.
I went on autopilot, and before I knew it I was scanning myself into the airlocked hangar of one of the surface ports. The Blowers, terraforming machines like snowcats, with treads and autonomous arms, were lined up in a row — mine, Zed’s, Crash’s, Syb’s. I headed across the catwalk suspended over them and dropped onto the roof of mine with practiced ease.
I popped the hatch and climbed into the cockpit, a windowed bubble equipped with a chem shower for decontamination following a walkabout, and not much else. I pulled the hatch shut after me and basked in the silence as it sealed.
The hangar was dark and still, and the only light in the cockpit was coming from the clock on the center console that told me it was about two hours to sundown.
I settled into my chair, sponge bulging from the cuts and gouges in the fabric, and pulled on my headset. I pushed the ignition switch and the system buzzed to life, the console lighting up. Telemetry and readouts filled the screen in front of me, and then settled into the corners, and a big smiling face popped up in the middle of the screen.
“Sal,” I sighed, glad to be feeling comfortable again.
“Good evening, James,” she said in her dulcet tones. “A little late for work, isn’t it?”
Sal was about as close to a woman as I’d ever been. The settlement wasn’t exactly a hotspot for women. Without them there, it was one less thing for the drunken, dishonorable terraformers and traders to fight over. As such, they were few and far between. But it didn’t really bother me. You couldn’t miss what you’d never had. Sal was the closest I’d ever come, and she did alright for me. I shrugged. “Never too late to earn some money.”
“If you say so. What would you like to do?”
I took a breath and reached for the joysticks, pushing into the throttles with my heels. One for each track. “Pull up all available overtime jobs.”
“Of course.” The screen filled with a list of titles, none of which seemed appetizing.
“Prioritize those with the highest pay.”
“What’s the magic word?”
“Please,” I laughed. Sally was full of sass for an AI. Her old driver must have been more polite. Or maybe she just liked to remind me who was in charge.
“Sorting.”
The jobs rearranged and I expanded a few, casting them aside with a swipe of my fingers. I wasn’t looking for anything hard, or dirty. “Any suggestions?”
“I can see that a radio relay is in need of repair.”
“How far out?”
“Thirty-one kilometers.”
“That’s a trip.” I rubbed my eyes. The other option was just going back to the bar, and the thought of that was even worse than trekking thirty kilometers into the desert at seven at night. “Screw it.” I tapped on the job and marked it ‘in progress.’ Sally pulled up the coordinates and plotted a course. The telemetry showed up in a dotted line on the windscreen. A tiny green blip flashed in the distance, somewhere beyond the hangar doors.
“Whenever you’re ready, James. Systems are all functioning correctly.”
“Thanks, Sal. How about some music?”
“What would you like?”
I smirked. “How about some rock?”
“Martian?”
“Earth, for a change.”
“Would you like me to choose?”
I hit the button for the airlock doors and they began to part. The cab rocked gently as the air washed out and normalized the pressure. “Sure. Make it a classic. Pre-Expansion.”
I planted my feet and we rumbled into the desert beyond Settlement Ninety-Three just as Born to be Wild kicked up.
It took almost an hour to reach the coordinates. It turned out that it was a simple enough thing — a cable exchange that needed rerouting. Usually, this was droid’s work, but just like everything on Genesis-526, the droids seemed to be too broken down to do their jobs. The Federation was supposed to take care of all that — delivering supplies, providing new equipment, but they didn’t. It was a big job, looking after a thousand planets, and some little dust ball in the middle of an undeveloped system wasn’t at the top of their priorities list. So here I was, doing droid work. And yet, the peace and quiet was almost nice. And of course the extra credits were a welcome bonus.
I pulled my feet off the throttles and let the engine settle to idle. “Sal, would you be a dear and route the audio to the external speakers?”
“Sure thing, James,” she said softly as I got out of my chair and stretched my neck.
I stared at it for a second, the cracked veneer, the sponge sticking out of the tears, the word ‘FUCK’ unceremoniously carved into the headrest by one of the previous owners. Guess even his manners ran out at some point. Or maybe it was because of behavior like that that Sal developed her authoritative air. I couldn’t say. It was against policy to discuss former employees. I’d asked what had happened to him when I’d first climbed into Sal, but she’d told me straight. And we’d just sort of gone on from there. I’d be lying if I said she hadn’t softened some since then. I curled my lips down. But fuck what, exactly? Was it an exclamation of anger? FUCK! Or maybe a statement of hopelessness. Fuck. Or was it more an act of rebellion? Fuck this. Fuck that. Fuck everything. I couldn’t say, but whatever they were trying to say, I got it.
I pulled on my walker suit and slammed the helmet down, listening to it seal with a hiss. The hatch that led outside was accessed through a chute — a glass screen that slid out of the wall to seal off the cabin, and then opened into the air above. I hit the release button and felt the dust and sand swirl around me. I wasn’t an engineer, but this was easy money. I took the ladder in hand and climbed out, looking around at the endless sea of pale orange dust streaked with green and brown veins of algae. The beginnings of oxygenation. But there was still a long way to go — another half a dozen centuries before anyone would take their first rancid, stinking, sulfur heavy breath of surface air.
One of the restaurants back in Ninety-Three, the bubble-domed excuse for a town I called home, had a landscape like this painted on one their walls. I asked the owner about it once. He told me it was called a prairie. It had come in a pre-painted pack from the Federation. He’d never been to Earth himself — no one ever had. It was a thousand light years away.
He’d said that ‘Earthscapes’ were reproduced from datafiles and shipped all over the universe — wherever humans were. For some reason there seemed to be a focus on that. On remembering ‘home’ like it was some fairytale land to travel back to one day. From what I’d heard it was a wasteland. There was nothing much left to visit except ash and sludge. But then there were people who said it was everything but. They were all rumors, millennia old, drifting across the universe. So which was right? Maybe both were true in different times. Either way, I’d never know unless I saw for myself, but I didn’t think that would ever happen, so what was the fucking point in giving a shit? It was a pretty picture, so what did it matter?
I clenched my fists in my rubbery gloves and let myself down the external ladder into the shadow of Sally’s square body. The Blower cast a long dark square in the sinking sun, red and tired on the horizon. I went to a storage hatch on the dark side and got out my tool bag.
I circled her, knocking on the chest-high treads with a wrench, drumming to the beat of the song blasting in the thick air. I wondered what sort of fun and games they had in the jungle, and what exactly a jungle looked like.
The dust hammered my walking suit as I approached the exchange, a half-buried metal box that regulated cable currents across the surface. The steel had already started corroding and the door was hanging half open. I stared at it, wondering how in the hell they thought it’d last for another seven hundred years. I grimaced, realizing that they knew it would last because they had chumps like me to come and fix it every time it broke down. I repaired the door first, the route of the problem. Without it, the wires inside were exposed. The wind and dust had already eaten through the rubber and into the metal. I did what I could. It really needed replacing, and I put that in as a note, but I knew it’d just stay like it was until it needed repairing again. I shut the door and got up.
It was dark by then and the stars were glittering overhead. I looked up at them and paused. One was big. Really big. And growing, fast. I narrowed my eyes, watching it. A freighter coming in for a slingshot? No, wrong angle. Satellite falling out of orbit? No, too small.
As I was trying to figure what the fuck it was, it burst into flames, hitting the atmosphere. The shockwave staggered me and I stumbled backward, dropping my tools with a clang. “What the fuck?” I mouthed in my suit. I reached for my comms link and opened it. “Sally, sitrep — what the hell’s going on?” I dragged my eyes away from the swirl of fire around it and made for the Blower. Whatever it was, it was big, and it was coming in fast. My heart was hammering in my chest, my breathing suddenly tight. The figures blinked furiously at me in the corner of my visor. “I detect a large incoming craft. It appears to be a Federation vessel.” Her voice was calm and sweet, as usual, but it didn’t do anything to dispel the adrenaline surging in me.
I made it halfway back to the Blower, kicking dust up behind me in a thick cloud, before the noise hit me like a wave, nearly throwing me over. The ground started to rumble, and my insides coiled up like a snake. I staggered sideways and plunged onto my knees, skidding in the red earth, my breath fogging in my visor. I twisted around just in time to see it, white hot and smoking, sailing over the desert like a huge torpedo. The air split around me and all the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I swallowed hard to pop my ears, but they wouldn’t listen. My eyes tingled and my teeth felt furry. My brain stammered and the air whined in my ears. Electromagnetic repulsors. It had to be. That was the only thing that had effects like that. My comm faded to static and crackled in my ear.
Electromagnetic repulsors were used on the biggest Federation sub-orbital vessels to stop them destroying half the planet on entry. And they only used them when they were coming in for a landing. But we weren’t expecting a delivery, and especially not from something that size — so what the hell was it doing here? I scrambled forward. I had to. If I couldn’t make it back to Sally before it passed overhead, they’d rip me in two.
I got no more than ten feet before they crushed down on me, and then sucked me backward into the air. My feet left the ground and there was nothing I could do. Ahead, the Blower reared onto its hindquarters and somersaulted backward like a toy truck. I tumbled forward and over, catching sight of the huge black underbelly of the ship above, broken by blue ports firing out thrust and repulsor jets. The heat sent the sensors on my suit wild and my screen lit up in red and white, flashing madly as I swirled through the air, screaming in my own ears. All I could feel was heat. My skin felt like it was peeling off, sizzling like seared meat.
My skin burned inside the suit, threatening to blister and bubble, and everything else went numb in the haze of pain. My teeth clattered together and my eyes stung. My brain fizzled and stuttered and the ground and sky flashed in turn as I was dragged through the jet wash, a leaf on the wind. The engines howled above me and every bone in my body shook and jostled against the others.
I dragged red hot air into my lungs and felt my eyes glue shut. My stomach lurched in the force and I spewed sickly bile into my helmet. It washed up the glass and gummed in my hair. I retched hard, choking on the smell and liquid. I kept my eyes closed and the inside of my face exploded in a plume of pain as the acid rose into my sinuses.
My ears rang like bells, and then there was silence, darkness, weightlessness. Impact. Screaming. Pain. Crying. My heart beating in the darkness, hard and fast like drums.
And then, nothing.
Chapter 2
When my eyes opened, all I could see was darkness. I pulled my face back from the visor and felt my face peel from the acrid bile dried on it. The HUD readouts glowed in the darkness, bright against the sand, speckled and cold beyond the glass. I moved my hands and felt the sand around me shift. The slow pulsing of blood in my ears died away and I became aware of the pain in my joints and back. I thought about my chair in my cockpit, wherever the hell it was, and the word carved into the headrest. I sighed and made a mewling noise, understanding it now more than ever.
Fuck.
I pushed myself out of the sand on shaking arms and onto my knees, feeling it drain off my back and pool around my heels. My throat was razor blades and my head felt like it’d been hacked in two. I swallowed painfully and sat back, breathing hard, the gravity of the situation sinking in. My heart was hammering again and my HUD told me that my oxygen was below fifteen percent. It flashed in red and yellow, burning against the endless ocean of sand around me. I tried not to look at it. A huge gorge had formed in the sand and a canyon ran into the distance toward Ninety-Three. The glow of the two moons that hung over Genesis-526 played softly on the ridges of churned earth. It was the trail left by the Federation dropship that had tossed me like a ragdoll. I stared into the abyss, wondering how the hell I was going to get out of it. I reached up and pressed the comm link on the side of my helmet. It clicked uselessly in my ear. The electromagnetic field must have fried the circuits. My breath sounded shaky and my eyes stung. There was no sign of my Blower, no sign of anything. My fists curled at my sides so hard the rubber of my gloves groaned and twisted.
It was a goddamn miracle I was alive, and the fact that my back wasn’t snapped was pretty fucking astounding. Though it wouldn’t be worth shit if I suffocated to death in the middle of nowhere. No. I couldn’t think like that. I gritted my teeth and tried to shake off the feeling of hopelessness. It wouldn’t budge. I sucked in a hard lungful of vomit-stricken air and watched the number in front of me plunge to fourteen percent. The Blower. Where was the Blower? I had to find it. If I did, I wouldn’t suffocate. Then I could go from there. It was just one step at a time. Shit. I had to think. It couldn’t be too far — walking distance, at least — I hoped. I was near to it when we were tossed. It must have been close by, and close to the surface. If it wasn’t… I didn’t really want to think about that just then.
The flicker of courage waned as quickly as it’d risen and I collapsed forward and swore, sucking in the putrid stench of vomit, trying not to think about it being splattered and smeared all up my face. I gritted my teeth and willed myself not to give up — not to accept death, no matter how heavy I could feel it on my back. I had to get up. I had to think.
My comm was fried. Shit. That wasn’t good. But my HUD was still functional, sort of — and that meant that the EM field hadn’t fried my electronics. If it had, my respirator would have failed and I’d have asphyxiated before I even woke up.
There was that, I supposed. Comms weren’t working because the antenna in my helmet only did short range, relaying off the Blower. It must have been the Blower’s antenna that was shot then — snapped off in the carnage, no doubt.
I pulled up my hand and opened my wrist readout, a holographic display suspended over a projector on my glove. I moved through the screens, cursing the ancient equipment that the Federation gave us. Any halfway decent suit would have been built with long range transmission. Getting out of here would be as simple as sending out a distress call and getting picked up. This suit was a relic, though, and was about as advanced as a Gollaxian sea slug. I swiped until I came to the map and zoomed out. Seemed like the geolocator was still working on my suit. I was a tiny white blip in an undulating sea of gray. I breathed a sigh. It was something. The Federation Standard Issue Colony Surface Suit, or a Walker as most people called them, was the workhorse of the settling world. From mining colonies to settlements all across the known universe, these suits were in action. One of their base functions was a sonar pulse — usually used while on scouting missions to check for subterranean water sources, mineral deposits, or in my situation, a buried Federation Blower 400 named Sally.
I selected the option and held my breath between my teeth. “Well, here goes nothing,” I muttered to myself. I pushed the button tentatively and watched a white ring ripple outward from the blip on my map. Nothing came up at first, but just as it started to fade, a faint white shape glowed to the east. I stared at it, watching it disappear back into nothingness. It was thin, but it was all I had. It was almost two hundred meters away, following the line of the canyon.
I stared at my feet, buried in the soft sand, and swore. My oxygen had dropped to twelve percent. I didn’t know if it was enough. If I set off, it would dwindle faster. I’d be breathing harder, consuming more. If I stayed put, I could conserve it, but the chances of anyone finding me were slim to goddamn none. I turned my head, hoping to see some light on the horizon — a search party or passing ship. But there was nothing. Just an endless black canvas.
I decided, and with a grunt, I rose out of the sand and set off, ignoring that the effort of doing that alone had reduced my O2 level to ten percent. I hit the sonar pulse every few seconds to make sure I was on track, trying desperately to keep my breathing steady. The soft sand torn up by the ship was making it harder. Every step had me sunk up to my knees, and every heavy gaited stride was burning precious airtime. My heartrate hadn’t dipped below a hundred and ten the entire time, and I could feel the beads of sweat trickling through the vomit clinging to my skin. I minimized the display and pushed on. I didn’t need to be reminded how close to suffocation I was. The thin air and the rattling of a near empty tank in my ears was enough.
When a pulse told me I was right on top of it, I stopped. To my left was a drop-off of about twenty meters. It was sheer at first, and then flattened, leading to the canyon floor. I stood on the mount of churned earth, staring into it. I had no tools, nothing to dig with, and the sonar was telling me that the Blower was about ten meters down. And even as small as it was, the tiny display in my peripheral was clear as day. Single digits. I was out of time, and there was only one thing to do.
I turned left and edged towards the precipice. “Fuck it.”
I stepped off and plunged through the cool night air. My feet hit sand and I crumpled into the ground, somersaulting forward down the slope. I threw my arms and legs out and skidded to a halt in a cloud of dust, breathing hard. My oxygen was failing. I had to get up.
I turned and scrambled up the slope on all fours, jabbing at the sonar continuously. Dirt ran in streams around my knees as I clawed my way upward. I hit the vertical wall and started digging. It was all I could do. My hands pulled at the earth and it came away in soft chunks. An overhang formed and then fell on me. It clattered on my helmet and back, but it didn’t matter. I had one option now, and that was dig. Dig. Digging was all I could do. The Blower was in there somewhere. I’d either find it, or die trying. My teeth ground together and my visor fogged with each ragged breath. The bead in my oxygen tank rattled on empty with each inhale, squeezing the last of the remaining gas into my tubes.
The words ‘Critical Warning’ flashed on my visor and I watched through them as my fingers scraped and pulled at the bottomless wall of dirt. A thought crossed my mind and almost stopped me dead. What if it wasn’t the blower? What if it was a rock? Or something else? A chunk of clay or some crashed ship or machine from centuries back? What if I unearthed something completely useless? I thought about it, and wondered if I’d burst out laughing, or just burst into tears in my final moments before collapsing backwards, choking on my own vomit and hot, putrid breath. It was almost poetic, or maybe just the way that life goes.
The Federation would have birthed me, and it only seemed fitting that they would kill me, too. James Alfred Maddox, age nineteen, presumed dead. Body never recovered. Another casualty in the crusade for universal domination. All people, one Federation. I scoffed and then sputtered, my lungs struggling to open. My fingers reached out meekly now and tore at the sand. My O2 hit zero and the words changed to ‘Oxygen Depleted.’ I gasped and sucked on the vacuum and my lungs started to crackle. My ears popped and squeezed like I was underwater and my eyes ached. My vision blurred in the negative pressure and I retched hard, the vacuum trying to fill itself with my insides. My fingers left the sand instinctively and I clawed at the seal on my helmet. I sank back into the dirt and scrambled, kicking and swimming away from the impending suffocation. I flailed, searching frantically for the release. Blackness pulsed in time with my heart. It closed in like a tightening aperture. My head was pounding, diaphragm crumpled into a heap against the bottom of my empty lungs. My heels kicked dirt and it rained down on me, submerging me, drowning me. No. I couldn’t stop yet. The air. The air outside. It was toxic, but it was better than nothing. What was it at the last reading? Thirteen percent oxygen saturation? I couldn’t remember. It was almost half the safe threshold and even lower than the planetary target. It would hurt. Hell, it would kill me, but it might have been a few seconds more. I just had to get my fucking helmet off. Where was the latch? Left side. Right. I had to find the next seal. There. Good. My fingers moved along it frantically. No! Slow. Slow down, goddamnit. I had to keep my breath tight, not panic. My lungs clamped shut. I couldn’t breathe. The pain rushed up behind my nose like pins. Ignore it. Push through it.
My eyes stung. I shut them, tight. I didn’t need to see. It was my fingers I needed, not my eyes. Where was the fucking latch? My eyes throbbed. I had to find it. There. Wait. No. Yes. There. My fingers closed around it and lifted. They were fat, heavy, useless. Lift it up. There, now push.
It clicked and hissed and gas rushed in. I sucked a lungful of half oxygen half whatever else was flying around out there, but it didn’t matter. It was something. I clamped my mouth shut and threw off my helmet. It bounced and rolled down the slope. I blinked and my eyes burned in the atmosphere, scrabbling desperately to unearth myself and sit up. The stars glowed above, hazy in the methane thick air. My head was swimming, my blood filling with all the wrong gases. I tried to unbury myself, kicking at the earth. My feet churned uselessly. Come on. I wasn’t going to die in the sand like a worm. Come on!
Kick. Kick. Kick. Clang.
My boot heel hit something solid and my neck snapped my head down so hard it clicked. I stared in the twilight at the exposed metal hull of the Blower in front of me, covered with sand on all sides, but there it was. My eyes widened in shock and it was everything I could do not to scream with joy.
I ignored my aching lungs and heaved myself forward, cheeks puffed. I breathed into them and then back into my lungs, raking every measly second of consciousness I could out of whatever air was knocking around inside my mouth.
I kicked it again and more sand peeled away. The porthole of steel widened. I kicked it as hard as I could and sand started to cascade around the edges. I threw my feet into the corners of what was exposed and the sand ran like water, streaming down around me. It was on its side, top toward me, which meant the hatch was somewhere. I reckoned I had now more than about twenty seconds of air before I passed out, and that was being generous.
Adrenaline surged in me and through a pinprick of vision I watched my hands hit the steel and spider sideways. I couldn’t think — only do.
I brushed and heaved at the chunks of dirt until my fingers sang. The darkness had all but closed in when the hatch hinge burst from the sand and glinted in the moonlight.
I exhaled, unable to hold it any longer, and choked on the oxygen-deprived air. I ran my fingers around the edge and found the handle, up to my elbows in sand. I yanked it up. It took two goes before it gave, and then a torrent of sand unfastened itself and poured down on me. I fought to stay up, clinging to the handle with everything I had, and dragged myself through it, into the tube, pulling the door behind me. It sealed and the cabin lit up, blinding me. I collapsed onto the wall, the whole machine upended, and I watched distantly as my hand weakly stretched out for the big red button. My fingers touched it and my mouth opened. More air rushed in, hot and dusty. The button clicked, and I closed my eyes.
In the darkness, the hiss of oxygenation pierced the air and my lungs collapsed, squeezing out whatever was in them. My lips were parched, cracked, my head covered in sand, my suit filled with it down the collar. It itched and rubbed and grated on my skin, but I was alive, and that was all that mattered. I swallowed hard and coughed, then retched again, vomiting earthy bile onto the ground under my chin. The glass screen showed me the cockpit ahead. All my shit was everywhere, tossed around inside a giant tumble dryer drum. The cabin was bathed in red warning lights and the windshield was cracked and covered, totally buried. The surge of hope ebbed quickly, and the realization that I was still very far from home, and very far from being out of the woods, sank in.
I dipped in and out of consciousness for a few hours while my body filled with oxygen and expelled all the poison in my veins. When I finally had enough in me to lift my head, it wasn’t far to dawn. I chewed on my oversized tongue and grumbled, forcing myself upright. Hunger gnawed at my belly and thirst clawed at my throat. I’d vomited out everything that was in me and now I was running on empty. Every part of me was aching and it wasn’t hard to figure out why. But there was no time for rest. Not yet. The oxygen tanks were bigger in here than my suit, but they wouldn’t last forever. I had to get back, somehow. I had to raise a signal, get a distress call out, or something.
I clambered out of the chute and shed my walker suit, tossing it, sand and vomit clad, back inside. I shut the door and stood on the wall, steadying myself on the floor with my hand. I went for the decontamination shower first, and after unhitching the nozzle, managed to turn it into a hosepipe. It wasn’t warm, or pleasant, and the stench of chlorine was unavoidable, but the dried sick flaked off my face and out of my hair and pooled between my feet, which was a much better place for it. I used my dirty shirt to soak up what I could, and then tossed it into the chute along with my suit. I found a spare one lying around and pulled it on before going to the controls. I pressed the ignition button, but nothing happened. “Sally?” I called to silence. The internals must have been damaged. I wasn’t surprised. The engine was probably trashed too, filled with sand or torn apart in the melee. The cockpit ran off a separate power source, but functionality was severely diminished. Not even enough to power Sal. Shit. I knew she was okay, just sleeping, or as good as, but still – hearing a friendly voice would have been a welcome reprieve from the darkness of the cabin. I wasn’t liking the claustrophobia so much anymore.
I flicked the comms switch and opened all channels. “Mayday, mayday, this is a distress call. Come in.” The line crackled gently. “I repeat, this is a distress call. Does anyone read me?”
Nothing. Shit. A cold sense of dread crept up my spine as I stared at the windows, totally black. It was the sand, and it was blocking the signal, which wasn’t surprising — but it still sucked. But I couldn’t dwell on that now. Panic would be the worst thing. I had to stay focused, concentrate on getting out, not on being trapped in. I twisted the console until it was sort of facing upright, and held the manual reboot buttons. After a second it flickered dimly to life. An emergency power banner appeared and then rose to reveal a schematic of the Blower. Almost every portion of it was flashing red. I tapped on the engine and a message appeared: ‘Intakes Blocked — Clear debris before ignition.’ I kicked it hard and growled. The image strobed before settling down. No engine, no comms, limited air supply and exactly zero fucking chance of someone stumbling upon me. It’d be morning before anyone even thought to look, and from what I could work out, the wash of the jets had tossed me who knows how far from the relay I was fixing. Being found and rescued wasn’t a very likely prospect. I needed to figure something else out. If it wasn’t for the walker suit, I would have been dead. I couldn’t believe I wasn’t already. But, even now that I was in my Blower, time was still limited. The oxygen levels were falling fast, and the filtration system wouldn’t be pulling any fresh air in from outside either, not with all this fucking sand. It looked like most of the critical systems were damaged, the engine wouldn’t fire, and the power cell was running at twenty percent. The Blower had taken a harder landing than me, that’s for sure.
My fists curled and I pushed back from the console, looking around. Alright. I had to figure this out. How was I going to get out of there? I sure as hell didn’t want to expire on that dirt-ball of a damn planet. Born, live, and die, right there on Genesis? No thanks. I sighed. I had to think of something.
It took me thirty minutes of leafing through the technical manual of the Blower 400 before I found something useful. By that time, the air was getting soupy, sticking in my throat and squeezing my lungs like sodden sponges. I tried to ignore it, focusing on the task at hand. It was a lot easier without my vital signs flashing in my face.
The Blower 400 was equipped with a set of autonomous arms, which were attached to a motor that was attached to the subframe that connected the cockpit to the hull. The cockpit itself was a plexiglass dome and a space behind. The back end of the Blower contained all the motors, gearing, engine, and everything else that a motivated individual could need for reshaping a landscape. I traced my fingers in the dim emergency lighting over the dotted lines of the exploded diagrams, looking at the couplings and linkage.
A minute later I was prying up an access hatch I’d never accessed before. I pulled the emergency toolkit from under my seat and then went to work. About eighty screws and bolts later, the couplings were un-attached, and then I was following what was called the ‘Emergency Submersion Cockpit Ejection Sequence,’ which in layman’s terms basically blew the cockpit free of the carcass, leaving it free with only the arms attached. Apparently, if a pilot was stupid enough to drive their rig into a body of water, it would sink — go figure. But the cockpit was filled with air, and pressurized, and as such would float if detached. So, in-built was the ability to do that. Doing so would engage a miniature power cell capable of running life support systems and the arms for a couple of hours. Maybe enough to dig myself free and make it some of the way home, dragging the dismembered carcass of the Blower. Maybe.
I took a rotten breath and pulled the lever. An explosion blew the cockpit free of the body and the sand shifted around it, rumbling deeply. Wisps of smoke drifted up out of the hatch, and then the cockpit settled again. The emergency lighting died and was replaced with the glare of the standard white halogens. The console’s screen lit up, filled with a series of bars brimming with green. The label said ‘Energy Levels.’ A smiling face flickered to life on the windscreen, too. “Good morning, James.”
I sank back onto my haunches and grinned, relief flooding through me. She might just have been wires and pixels, but seeing her face was a huge comfort. Tears formed in the corners of my eyes. “You don’t know how good it is to hear your voice, Sal,” I sobbed.
“It’s good to hear you too, James. I detect major structural damage to most systems, including our communications. Would you like to conserve remaining energy resources to await assistance?”
I smirked and levered myself into the seat, strapping myself sideways so I could resume control. “If we did, I don’t think anyone would come for us.” My hair flopped off the side of my head as I reached for the arm controls, grabbing hold of two gyroscopic handles. I flexed them and gears whined against the sand, like a strained grunt as it gave everything it could to shift the tons of earth crushing them.
“So, what would you like to do?”
“Let’s go home.”
Chapter 3
Settlement Ninety-Three was a bit of a shit heap.
From the outside, it looked like a giant soap bubble filled with coal. The clear dome arched over the town, lined and stained by algae growth both inside and out. While it was essential for oxygenation, it got everywhere, and covered everything in a thin layer of greasy green filth. I could see it looming on the horizon, a dark growth on the pale sand.
The buildings were a collection of shanty-shacks assembled from old ship and rover parts, bolted onto Federation habs — square-shaped blocks that could be stacked modularly. They were smooth and rounded off on the corners to create a sense of ‘cleanness,’ but every single one was streaked with algae, scraped up, battered, bruised, and decorated by the inhabitants in some way, so the whole thing looked closer to a shanty town than anything else.
The main gate into Ninety-Three was a huge round airlock that fed inside, measuring around thirty meters across. A circular plate with a segment missing rotated into the ground to allow entry, and then closed off behind the ships or Droids that came in and out, before letting them through the other side. Above it was the entry tower — a double height hab unit with a miniature airlock on its viewing deck which led outside — manned by a couple of Federation sentries armed with plasma rifles. They sat around playing cards mostly, waiting for their shift to end. There was no wildlife to fend off, and there was nothing to get raided for. It was just standard protocol, and it was boring as hell to man.
The guy on duty that morning was named Jackson, I found out years later when I ran into him on Tracelon-3. He was six feet tall, and had yellowed teeth.
It was almost seven in the morning, and he was coming off the tail end of a night shift. He was leaning back in his chair, feet propped up on a table, hat pulled down over his eyes. When the droid he was on shift with started squawking, he fell backward and sprawled to the floor.
“Unknown entity approaching,” the droid yelled without warning, stepping back through the open door to the viewing deck. He was an 8C — humanoid with built-in binocular eyes and speakerbox for a face. A standard Federation sentry droid — a hundred years ago. Not exactly the most refined model.
Jackson scrambled to a stance, throwing the tail of his Federation duster back off his head. He grabbed up the scope on the table and ran to the window.
The droid stood next to him. “Subject is at seventeen degr-”
“English, dammit!” Jackson growled, ramming the scope against his eyes.
“Straight ahead, a little to the right,” the droid as good as sighed.
Jackson dialed in his scope and honed in on the approaching entity. “What the fuck?” he mouthed, dropping the scope and staring into the planes beyond the glass, still drowned in the murky gloom of the dawn.
I watched as a fleet of Treaders raced out to meet me — half tank, half troop transport, rolling fast and leaving a cloud of dust in their wake. I let off the handles and the cockpit teetered. It’d taken some doing, but I’d managed to dig myself out eventually, rolling the entire thing sideways into the canyon. After that, the filters had kicked in and the air had started circulating, which was something, at least. Then there was a lot of dragging, swearing, and falling, until I figured out that with some gentle persuasion, the arms could be positioned to lift the cockpit into the air. After the first hour, I managed a couple steps, and after that, I was walking, sort of. More like tottering. Still, it was a lot faster than crawling. I mean, it was a feat by any stretch of the imagination, whether I looked like some demented crab or not.
The Treaders circled me and ground to a halt. The dust blew over like a wave. I heard boots, then rifles cocking, and then nothing. I waited for the cloud to pass and found myself staring down the barrels of half a dozen rifles pulled tight against the shoulders of Federation sentries.
“Identify yourself!” one yelled.
I grunted and ran my forearm across my head, flicking sweat all over the floor and windows. “James Alfred Maddox,” I called through the speakers.
They stared in at me, sitting in the cockpit of Sally’s battered and dismembered corpse, likely seeing nothing but a filthy, grubby kid through the cracked glass. I couldn’t blame them for not welcoming me with streamers and a parade. I lifted my arm to show them the barcode tattoo emblazoned there. Standard issue for any colony tuber. “Don’t believe me? Come in here and fucking scan me.”
“I would advise politeness in this situation,” Sally said gently.
“Oh, I’m way past polite,” I said through gritted teeth.
One of them did, and recoiled at the stench in the entry chute. I swiveled on my chair and smirked as he dropped in. “Sorry.” I stood up and offered my arm. “Been kind of a rough night.”
They stuck an emergency breathing mask on my face and dragged me out of there, throwing me into the back of one of the Treaders without telling me what the hell was going on. In the distance, the Federation dropship that had tried to kill me lay dormant behind the settlement. I glared at it, willing it to burst into flames, but it didn’t. It just sat there, not giving two shits about the kid it’d nearly torn in two. And what was worse was that no one answered when I asked what it was doing there. Everyone leapt in and the Treader took off at pace, leaving the cockpit, and Sally, beaten and bruised in the dust. I watched her shrink into the distance, broken down in the dirt, and wondered if they’d bring her in for repairs or just scrap her, and whether my lobbying would make the slightest bit of difference. Either way, I figured I could pull her AI core and put it into the next Blower — if they gave me one at all. It all came down to whether or not I could convince them that it wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t, of course, but I wasn’t sure they’d like the story too much. Little did I know that was the last time I was going to see her again.
I was basically frogmarched back through the airlock, despite my protests. The Federation sentries didn’t seem concerned about my health at all, and just more than a little pissed off that I’d managed to total one of their Blowers. They were giving me the silent treatment.
The door hissed closed behind us and we were back inside Ninety-Three. I never would have thought I would have been glad to breathe that recycled air again, but just then I was. One of them pulled the mask off and I sucked it down gleefully. The Federation dropship loomed behind the glass beyond the habs like a humongous beached whale, half obscured by the slime.
I waited, but the sentries didn’t seem to want to let go of my arms. “Hey guys, you want to let me go? I can walk on my own.” I struggled against them but they wouldn’t budge. They just marched me into the gap between the two nearest buildings where sand became street, and then stopped, holding fast.
“Come on, guys!” I pleaded. “It wasn’t my fault.”
They didn’t reply.
I jerked my shoulders, but they held tight. “Seriously, what are you gonna do to me? I can’t afford to pay for that damn Blower…” I ground my teeth. “I didn’t do anything. It was that dropship, it…” I tried to smile but they wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Look, guys, can’t we just—”
They leapt straight and both saluted with their free hands. I snapped my head around and froze, watching three figures clad in Federation gray marching toward me. There was an officer at the front, visor pulled low, hands behind his back, rod straight, striding hard, flanked by two guards, plasma rifles hanging at rest.
They approached quickly and stopped. The officer, a Porosian on the older side of fifty, looked me up and down, recoiled at the smell of me, sighed, sneered, and then nodded. They were an odd race, almost like humans, but with pinker skin and slits for noses that flared when they breathed. “Show me,” he demanded through thin lips, voice strained to speak one of the human tongues.
One of the sentries lifted my arm roughly and turned it over. The officer pulled up his hands and ran a scanner over my barcode. It beeped and he looked at the screen on it. “James Alfred Maddox. Nineteen.” He looked me in the eye and then turned the corners of his lips down. “He’ll do. Take him away,” he said harshly.
The two sentries handed me over to the two soldiers and then disappeared. The officer looked at me indifferently.
“What the hell’s going on?” I squeezed out.
The officer stared at me for a second, and then cast his eyes at the huge black shape visible through the glass dome between the buildings. He smirked. “Conscription.”
I was strong-armed all the way across the settlement. They weren’t letting go. The streets were empty, except for the Federation Soldiers. They were swarming, like groups of wasps, knocking on doors, chasing down settlers and colonists, subduing the ones who fought back, tasering and cuffing the ones that fought back hard. Anyone between the ages of eighteen and forty, by the look of it. Conscription, though? What the hell were the Federation into that they needed to roll through Genesis-526 looking for recruits? I asked, but got no answer. I guess we were just resources like everything else that could be mercilessly dredged out of a planet flying the Federation flag. I grimaced at the thought, feeling the squeeze of the Federation boot against the back of my head. Eat it. Eat this shit!
When we got to the Spaceport, a run-down square of a building that blockaded the airlock that suction-cupped to the side of whatever ship was docked, I was thrown into a line and the soldiers and officer turned and walked away. Someone jabbed me in the ribs with the muzzle of a rifle from the other side, and I shuffled forward toward the gangramp. Behind me and in front were dozens and dozens of people — big, tall, human and not. Most tubers were human — we were easy to grow, apparently, so most of the recruits were human. The other races, though, were all humanoid, carbon-based, oxygen-subsisting. We got a lot of different species through. Outcasts, dregs, nomads, fugitives, runaways. Anyone looking for a fresh start that didn’t care where they landed. And you’d have to not care to be okay with landing on Genesis, and then settling down in Ninety-Three. The only work to be had was terraforming or maintenance. Neither were exciting prospects, so they didn’t attract the best crop of people. All shit flows downhill, I guess, and Ninety-Three was right at the bottom of one.
I swallowed and caught the eye of one of the soldiers guarding the line. He was gripping his rifle tightly, and his finger looked twitchy. I kept my head down instead, and tried to focus on the fact that I’d at least be able to check something off my bucket list.
I’d always wanted to get off Genesis; I just never envisioned it happening like this.
Twenty minutes later, I’d been scanned, tagged, and strapped into a seat headed for orbit. The countdown rang through the cargo bay and I stared at all of the scared faces around me. None were from my crew, but I didn’t think about that for long. We worked together, but we were never close. It was a rotating cast, ever changing. Getting close to people just wasn’t something you did. I knew some of the guys in the line from around. Others not so much, but none of them were soldiers. You could tell by the look in their eyes. I wondered how many would be dead by this time next year. We’d heard the stories of Federation incursions. I hoped they weren’t true. I licked my dry lips, dying of thirst, and tasted the dried bile on them, sour and sickly sweet. My heart throbbed in my throat and I realized that I was gripping the harness with white knuckles. I’d never flown before and my breathing was shallow. I’d had enough excitement for one night. I just wanted to go home and fall face down in bed. Maybe cry a little. Maybe a lot. I felt the tears come again, and my mind whirled with what was to come. I swallowed hard and felt an iron lump in my throat, hot and sharp.
For a second I thought about what would happen to my hab, to all my stuff after I was gone. Then I realized that I had nothing to leave behind except dirty laundry and a couple of shiny rocks I’d found on the surface. Almost seemed stupid to collect them now.
And then the countdown hit zero and the thrusters kicked me in the ass.
That’s all for now! But if you liked what you just read, then why not keep reading? Just click here to download Veteran, Book One in the Iron Legion series. Or search “David Ryker Recruit” on the Amazon store.