Galactic Frontiers: A Collection of Space Opera and Military Science Fiction Stories Read online

  “What are they going to do?”

  “They got two choices. Wait and see if their life support runs out before the Navy shows up and shoots them like the mad dogs they are. Or find the rat bastards – us two, in other words – who blew up their shuttle and kill them first.”

  “They’ll die anyway.”

  “Sometimes your only options are to roll over and die, or die with your hands around someone’s throat.”

  The aliens rushed out from behind City Hall, running in several directions, all headed out of town. Lori spotted targets for Mr. Jacobs: one tango went down with a smoking hole through his chest plate; another one took a hit but his forcefield held. The old man missed his third and fourth shots. The six remaining aliens reached the cover of a hill; they would be safe there for now.

  “Too slow,” he growled. “Too worn out.”

  “What now?”

  “Now they come for us.”

  Lori thought about it. The aliens couldn’t use Highway 3 – a fancy name for the gravel road that let wheeled transport travel between Salvation and Lowell – because it didn’t lead up into the hills and in any case was in plain sight from their position. There was a game trail that would take the aliens through the intervening hills, but it wasn’t easy to spot if you didn’t know where to look. And then there was a footpath leading up and down each hill. If the aliens had any brains, they’d try to move through the woods instead of using either option.

  “You’re probably right,” Mr. Jacobs said when she voiced her thoughts out loud. “We gotta go somewhere we can spot them no matter which way they use.”

  “Round Top Hill. We can see the game trail and the footpath from there, and the woods around it are too thick to let them through any other way.”

  “You got it. Figure we can get there before they do, if we run.”

  He backed a bit downslope before he stood up and lifted his helmet visor.

  “Last chance to go home, girl.” For the first time since they’d started all of this, he didn’t look her in the eye. “Six on two ain’t good odds, even if we get the jump on them. Chances are we ain’t walking out of this fight in one piece.”

  Lori thought about it for a second. Thought about Mrs. Bonilla and all the other dead bodies. About what was left of her father after the compressor blew up. Her father dying hadn’t been the aliens’ fault, but that didn’t matter. Somebody had to pay for it.

  “We’re wasting time.”

  The old man looked tired and his face was twisted with pain and fear, but when he looked at her he smiled. There was no joy in that grin, but she found herself responding in kind, showing her teeth in a predatory grimace. He understood about making the pain stop by hurting somebody else. He sealed the helmet and nodded to her.

  “Now we run some more.”

  * * *

  They beat the pirates by five minutes. That was almost good enough.

  Lori was breathing hard after lugging the Iwo rifle and personal forcefield, but Mr. Jacobs was panting like a dying dog. He all but collapsed when they reached Round Top Hill and started coughing uncontrollably.

  “Are you all right?” she asked him when he was done.

  The old man wasn’t doing well, and that scared her. Now that she was finally going to shoot something, her mouth had gone dry and she was out of breath for reasons that had nothing to do with the frantic run through the woods. She wasn’t sure she could actually do it.

  “Never mind that,” Mr. Jacobs said. “Get over there on the other side of that tree. Watch that side, or they can flank us. Everything you can see from there, that’s your fire sector. Don’t take your eyes off of it.”

  Lori nodded and crawled towards the spot, moving through the leafy underbrush, camo blanket draped over her. She realized she couldn’t see Mr. Jacobs from her new position. He wasn’t that far away, but it still felt like she was on her own. Alone.

  “Never mind that,” she muttered to herself, sounding just like the old man.

  Sighting the unfamiliar weapon was easy enough. Mr. Jacobs had only let her shoot a dozen times back at his shack, enough to learn the Infantry Weapon’s recoil was much lighter than what she’d felt shooting her father’s hunting rifle. The goggles let her see exactly where the gun was aiming, automatically adjusting for range, windage and elevation. The Iwo all but shot itself, but if she pulled the trigger instead of squeezing it, she would still miss. She breathed in and out slowly – shoot on the exhale, her father had always told her – and waited for the ETs to arrive.

  Mr. Jacobs’ laser whined. She turned towards the sound, and that was why she missed the aliens coming in her direction.

  Two of them, one in blue, the other wearing bright pink armor. They didn’t see her under the camo blanket, but they were close, and they were running towards the sound of the laser. Lori tried to aim at one of them and realized her hands were shaking. The rangefinder kept changing the numbers as she tried to steady the gun: thirty meters became twenty-five became twenty and she finally put the aiming dot on the blue chest plate and squeezed the trigger after she breathed out. The three-round burst cycled so quickly it was like firing a single shot. The alien’s forcefield sizzled and died and he stumbled, dropping his weapon. Lori frantically swung the Iwo towards the next target.

  There was a flash of light when her forcefield stopped an energy blast. She cringed for a moment instead of shooting back. A brighter flash followed; something slapped her goggles away and scratched her face.

  At first it didn’t hurt; the whole side of her face and head just felt numb, and she couldn’t see out of that eye. The goggles were broken and the camo blanket was torn up. Lori brought the Iwo up, looking for the tango who’d shot her, expecting to be killed at any moment. Her forcefield had failed; that was why the second flash had been so bright. If she got hit again…

  The pink alien was lying on its side like a dead horse, not too far from where the blue one was crumpled. His head was gone. She’d shot him and didn’t remember doing it.

  The pain hit her a moment later and it was the worst thing in the world. She couldn’t even scream; her mouth opened but no sounds came out. She tasted blood, lots of blood coming down the side of her face.

  She heard the whine of Mr. Jacob’s laser, and a bunch of thunderclaps right afterwards.

  Daddy, she thought as everything went black.

  * * *

  Cold. Something cold and wet was pressed against the side of her head, and the pain was still there but sort of far away, like a fading dream.

  Lori was lying on her back and for a moment she thought she was in her bed, that it all had been a bad dream and when she opened her eyes she would see her father and everything would be all right. But that didn’t last long. Even before she smelled the blood and heard Mr. Jacob’s wheezy breathing, she knew that this was no dream but just the way things were.

  “Easy, girl. Don’t touch that,” Mr. Jacobs said when she started to reach for the wet piece of cloth covering half of her face – including her left eye. He sounded tired and out of breath, even more so than before.

  “My eye.”

  “Don’t fret about it. They’ll fix it for you, or grow you a new one.”

  Lori tried to nod, but the motion sent fresh waves of pain coursing through her skull. She cried out, and tears began to pour down from her good eye, making everything blurry.

  “’S okay, girl. The painkillers take a little time to work.”

  “That’s not it,” she said between sobs. Her heart was breaking, and it hurt worse than anything the ETs had done to her. “My Dad’s dead.”

  “I know,” the old man said. “I know.”

  Mr. Jacobs let her cry for a bit, and after a while he held her hand and that helped.

  “Did you get them all?”

  He shook his head. “Four came down my way. Moving dumber than dirt. Them pirates musta never attacked someone who fought back. They bunched up real close, the stupid bastards. If I’d had my old
fireteam with me… Never mind that. I got two of them, got a piece of another before they ran off, but they got a piece of me too.”

  She realized he’d been using only his right hand, and sort of keeping his left side away from her. His visor was up; when she finally looked at his face she noticed how pale he was.

  “Let me see.”

  “It don’t matter none, girl. Damn forcefield overloaded and they winged me good. It is what it is.”

  “Let me see.”

  He finally did, and she almost began to cry again. His left arm was gone. She had no idea how he’d managed to drag her out of sight and pour healing gel on her wounds.

  “You better not get hurt again. Went through my entire med-kit patching us up.”

  She wanted to hug him, but she was afraid of hurting him worse.

  “You gotta be ready, girl. I ain’t fit to fight, and there’s still two of them out there. One’s hurt, maybe hurt as bad as me, but either way one or both of them are gonna come gunning for us.”

  “Why? Why won’t they just leave us alone?”

  “We killed their buddies. Maybe their brothers and sisters, or nest-mates, or clone-siblings. Before they die, they’ll try to collect some payback.”

  He sighed. “It’s what I’d do.”

  “Reverend McPherson says violence begets violence.”

  “Might be right. But you need to beget more violence, girl, or you’re dead.”

  It was too much. She shook her head.

  “Listen to me, girl.”

  “My name is Lori! Lori, you old bastard!”

  “Lori, look at me.”

  She did. He seemed to have aged years since they’d reached Round Top Hill.

  “Lori. If you don’t do anything, they’ll kill you, and then they’ll kill everybody else they can find. A couple good old boys have mil-spec gear stashed away somewhere, but they either got killed before they could get to it, or they’re being sensible and staying put. Stupid thing to do, haring off looking for trouble. So it’s up to us. Up to you, Lori.”

  “It’s too much.”

  “Bad things happen. Nothing you can do about that. But as long as you’re alive, you have a choice. Let bad things plow you under, or keep on going.”

  She shook her head again.

  “Listen to me. There was this woman. I left her behind in Salvation when I joined the Corps.”

  “The lady in the pictures.”

  “Saw them, did you? Yeah, that’s her. Hannah. Finally, I came back, figured I’d surprise her and see what happened. Figured she’d married and raised a family, but now that people live for centuries, that didn’t mean I had no chance. A lot can change in that time. Except soon as I got here I found out she’d been dead for ten years. That was my bad thing. I let it plow me under. Became a waste of oxygen.”

  She shook her head again but he wasn’t looking at her; his eyes were on something only he could see.

  “I get how you’re feeling, Lori. You don’t care if you live or die, and you want to hurt something.”

  “I want my Dad back. That’s all I want.”

  “You ain’t gonna get what you want.”

  “I know.”

  “Lori.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t let it plow you under. Keep on going.”

  She just looked at him. His eyes were half-closed, like he was about to fall asleep.

  “If I’d stayed with my Hannah, if we’d had children… I’d be proud if… if you...”

  “Mr. Jacobs, I don’t know if I can do it.”

  He wasn’t listening anymore. His eyes were closed.

  Lori wiped her remaining eye and reached for the Iwo, checked it, and put on Mr. Jacob’s helmet. After a little while, she got to her feet.

  And she went hunting.

  * * *

  Lieutenant Harry Mendoza, United Stars Warp Marine Corps, looked at the tiny figure on the infirmary bed with something that went beyond respect. Awe might not be too strong a word.

  “Hi, Lori,” he said gently. “I just wanted to see how you are doing.”

  “Doctor said they’ve got to print me a new set of lungs, an eye and a leg. I’ll be all right.”

  The lone surviving Salvation sheriff’s deputy had found what was left of the fourteen-year-old girl lying next to a pair of very dead ETs. If the Navy squadron hadn’t sent down a medical team after arriving in the nick of time and blasting the pirate ship out of the sky, she wouldn’t have survived. Small miracle she’d held on long enough for help to arrive. But there she was.

  The raid on Gordon-Four hadn’t gone well for the aliens, members of a minor species known as the Lobsterbacks due to their red segmented skin. Their main force had hit the mining facility with the goal of seizing a shipment of processed bastnaesite before its scheduled pickup, but they’d received a warm welcome. The miners’ militia had been well-armed and spoiling for a fight; the raiders had been beaten back with heavy losses. A smaller group had apparently decided it’d be fun to shoot up a small town in the boondocks, but the girl and an old leatherneck – former Staff Sergeant Hiram Jacobs had earned his spot at the gates of Haven – had taught them otherwise.

  “You’re going to be all right,” Mendoza told the girl. He hoped she’d give the Corps a try when she did her Obligatory Service. She was Devil Dog material, no question about it.

  “Thank you.”

  Hard to believe this polite child had sneaked up on two armed Lobsterback aliens and blown them up with a full stonk of 15mm grenades. One ET had lived long enough to shoot back, but the girl kept fighting even after a particle beam blast nearly ripped off one of her legs. By the time she was done, the aliens’ remains were scattered over a thirty-foot radius.

  “You’re going to get a Medal of Freedom for what you did, by the way.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “And, ah, have you given any thought about what you might want to do down the line?”

  This wasn’t supposed to be a recruiting run, but he might as well plant some seeds.

  “I only know one thing for sure, sir.”

  “And that is?”

  “I aim to keep on going.”

  About the Author, C.J. Carella

  C.J. Carella grew up in South America and bounced around assorted parts of the US. After writing over twenty roleplaying books for such companies as Palladium Books, Steve Jackson Games and Eden Studios, he turned his hand to fiction in assorted genres, from superhero/alternate history to horror and science fiction.

  When not writing, C.J. enjoys gaming (computer and tabletop), reading and fighting crime (mostly by yelling at kids to get off the lawn). He does not enjoy long walks by the beach, unless said beach has a partially buried Statue of Liberty.

  Find C.J. online: Facebook | Twitter | Tumblr | Amazon | Website

  Books by C.J. Carella

  Warp Marines Corps Series

  New Olympus Saga

  RIFT

  By Amy DuBoff

  Leanna Jordis raced down the marble-lined hall past a row of empty, darkened offices. Naturally, the message had come through on her handheld while she was on the opposite side of the Priesthood’s massive administrative complex. Six minutes isn’t enough warning for a meeting, she fumed as she jogged in her heels.

  Originally constructed as a monastery, the main administrative structure rose above the coastal cliffs on an island in the southern hemisphere of Tararia, the capital planet for the Taran worlds. As the seat of the Priesthood, the complex was the center of government for known civilization—according to the Priesthood’s senior administrative staff, at least. A sense of entitlement went with the territory, so Leanna knew they weren’t a group who’d take kindly to waiting on an underling like her.

  She reached the end of the regal hall, which terminated in a set of ornate double doors leading into the conference room customarily used for classified briefings. The air hummed from an active suppression field around the room, drawing attention to the
added security measure. Coupled with the urgent summons, it was clear she wasn’t about to walk into a standard meeting.

  After pausing momentarily to catch her breath and secure a loose strand of her black hair, Leanna swung open the door to the conference room.

  A rectangular wooden table in a deep umber stain occupied the center of the space, accompanied by seating for eight. The side and rear walls were all tinted glass, affording an expansive view of the surrounding ocean while maintaining complete privacy for the room’s occupants. Five senior advisors dressed in gray suits were spaced around the table; notably, Kalvin, the Interworld Relations department head and her direct supervisor, was absent.

  All eyes turned to Leanna as she entered and took a seat in one of the open swivel chairs nearest the door. True to her previous experiences in the room, it was at least three degrees too cool to be comfortable—but maybe that was by design.

  “Apologies for my late arrival,” Leanna stated as she placed her handheld on the touch-surface tabletop. The device automatically synced with the brief loaded into the room’s centralized interface.

  “Yes, I saw you had a prior engagement, but this couldn’t wait,” Edwin replied from his seat at the head of the table, befitting his role as the advisory council’s liaison with the High Priests. His dark eyes evaluated Leanna from beneath his graying hair and furrowed brow. “We have a situation.”

  “How may I be of service?” asked Leanna in what she hoped was a neutral tone. She’d been waiting for a chance to prove herself to the council without having Kalvin around to steal the credit for her efforts.

  Edwin let out a slow breath. “Do you remember those old reports about the Bakzen?”

  The statement caught Leanna off-guard. She hadn’t heard the name for a long time—not since she’d read through the extensive data packet that came along with her promotion to Assistant Director of Interworld Relations seven years prior. “Yes, I’m familiar with the records. But there hasn’t been any contact with the Bakzen for two centuries.”

  “Well, they’re back.”