The Former Online Journal of Eric T. Marin
This is my former online journal. To read current entries, please visit my LiveJournal blog here.
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Photo copyright 2004 Eric Marin
The Rearguard
I thought I'd post my short story, "The Rearguard," here for anyone who didn't have an opportunity to read it in AlienSkin Magazine.
Enjoy!
The Rearguard
Copyright 2004 by Eric Marin
(First appeared in the February 2004 issue of AlienSkin Magazine)
I lie unmoving among scorched bodies and twisted wreckage, clinging to life.
I don’t know why I bother.
My powered armor bleats textual warnings onto my flickering heads-up display. Air supply critically low. Suit breaches in quadrants A, G, and N. Vital signs failing. Evacuation required.
“I know,” I mutter. “I’d move if I could.”
The suit ignores me and continues to cry out its silent warnings to me and any other units nearby, but the symbols for the ninety-seven other soldiers and ten armored personnel carriers of the First Light Armor Recon Company glow a steady orange on my display.
Orange for dead or destroyed.
Soldiers I just started to know, as I began my first tour as a lieutenant in the American Union of Worlds Marines. Marines of my own platoon. All gone.
I stare up at the white sun as it glares down on me and the wind-sifted sand of the canyon. The sun’s light is harsh even through the tinting of my helmet faceplate.
“I’m already in Hell, and I’m not even dead yet,” I murmur as air and blood escape me in equal amounts.
I feel no pain, despite my wounds. The armor injected anesthetics into the three blasted areas of my body in the aftermath of the massacre, but to no purpose. A plasma pulse must have seared my upper spine in the initial barrage because I can’t feel anything below my neck anymore.
“My first battle, and my last,” I whisper. “How pathetic.”
I still have the questionable luxury of complaining. The company’s captain, Jared Garcia, my fellow lieutenants, the non-commissioned officers, and the troops do not.
I feel like crying, but I’m so low on fluids, my tear ducts have dried up, much like the ancient riverbeds of this God-forsaken planet my company died for today. The Union needs to hold this world, to help block the advance of the totalitarian Confederation, but my part is done.
The suit tells me I have twenty minutes of air left, but only nine minutes before I faint from blood loss.
“Great,” I mutter. “Why don’t you do something useful like tell HQ where I am or that there’s a battalion of Confederation mobile artillery moving around out here?”
It ignores my sarcasm, as it continues its useless announcements. The armor’s long-range transmitter, including its distress beacon, cannot break through the jamming devices left behind by the Confederation.
In another half hour, my company is to report its progress to the division. Only then will the regiment’s command realize something went wrong out here.
Too late for Lieutenant Michelle Kingsbury.
The ambush caught us out in the open, and the Confederation heavy plasma weapons annihilated our lightly shielded scout vehicles in a span of a few breaths.
The rupture of my vehicle catapulted me back-first into a boot black sand dune. Before I could react, more plasma bursts hosed the area down, destroying every active suit but my own, which lay out of sight but still in sensor range. Three pulses reached me through the fine grains of sand. Paralyzed and unable to contact headquarters, I could neither fight nor sound the alarm. Every other Marine lay dead, cut down by overwhelming firepower.
“That kind of weaponry isn’t supposed to be anywhere near here,” I mutter, as my brain works its shock-slowed way around the puzzle. “The Confederation must be sneaking around our lines to attack HQ.”
“Always expect the unexpected,” one of my instructors, Colonel Arjun Patel, had told me in my first year at the Union Naval Academy. “Be ready to adapt at a moment’s notice.”
Good advice if you have time to react, I think to myself, as talking becomes more difficult. The company had no time. I have time now, just not a lot of it, and I can’t do anything to warn headquarters of the imminent attack.
I think of my parents and how they will react to the news of my death.
Badly – dying in a good cause still means dying to your family.
I stifle a sob. If I have to go with my body broken, at least I can go with a little emotional dignity.
As I think on dignity, I a command I learned at Quantico Plus, the space station where I received my armor training, opens in my mind like a deadly flower.
“It’s only for situations where there’s no hope left and no friendly units in range,” Captain Greg Chan had explained to me and the other intent officer trainees. “In fact, you’ll be conditioned to not think about it all unless everything has gone to hell.”
I can think about it now. Easily.
But I hesitate.
Maybe I’ll be rescued soon, I think, knowing that I’m fooling myself.
I stall some more, as I try to find another way to get the attention of headquarters.
No means other than one presents itself.
I take a shallow breath to gather the remaining air in my helmet and gasp out,
“Engage Seppuku Cycle: thirty seconds.”
My display blinks off then pops back up, red-tinged. The armor’s warnings and status updates have vanished. Only a digital timer remains, counting down.
I wait for the fusion pack powering my armor to detonate. The nuclear blast will alert regiment command of danger, and they’ll have time to prepare. Perhaps I’ll even take a few straggling Confederation troops with me.
I don’t want to die any faster than I have to, but I will.
For my company. For the Union. For my mom and dad, who never imagined their tomboy daughter becoming a Marine.
“Semper Fi,” I growl, as the timer blips to zero.
Enjoy!
The Rearguard
Copyright 2004 by Eric Marin
(First appeared in the February 2004 issue of AlienSkin Magazine)
I lie unmoving among scorched bodies and twisted wreckage, clinging to life.
I don’t know why I bother.
My powered armor bleats textual warnings onto my flickering heads-up display. Air supply critically low. Suit breaches in quadrants A, G, and N. Vital signs failing. Evacuation required.
“I know,” I mutter. “I’d move if I could.”
The suit ignores me and continues to cry out its silent warnings to me and any other units nearby, but the symbols for the ninety-seven other soldiers and ten armored personnel carriers of the First Light Armor Recon Company glow a steady orange on my display.
Orange for dead or destroyed.
Soldiers I just started to know, as I began my first tour as a lieutenant in the American Union of Worlds Marines. Marines of my own platoon. All gone.
I stare up at the white sun as it glares down on me and the wind-sifted sand of the canyon. The sun’s light is harsh even through the tinting of my helmet faceplate.
“I’m already in Hell, and I’m not even dead yet,” I murmur as air and blood escape me in equal amounts.
I feel no pain, despite my wounds. The armor injected anesthetics into the three blasted areas of my body in the aftermath of the massacre, but to no purpose. A plasma pulse must have seared my upper spine in the initial barrage because I can’t feel anything below my neck anymore.
“My first battle, and my last,” I whisper. “How pathetic.”
I still have the questionable luxury of complaining. The company’s captain, Jared Garcia, my fellow lieutenants, the non-commissioned officers, and the troops do not.
I feel like crying, but I’m so low on fluids, my tear ducts have dried up, much like the ancient riverbeds of this God-forsaken planet my company died for today. The Union needs to hold this world, to help block the advance of the totalitarian Confederation, but my part is done.
The suit tells me I have twenty minutes of air left, but only nine minutes before I faint from blood loss.
“Great,” I mutter. “Why don’t you do something useful like tell HQ where I am or that there’s a battalion of Confederation mobile artillery moving around out here?”
It ignores my sarcasm, as it continues its useless announcements. The armor’s long-range transmitter, including its distress beacon, cannot break through the jamming devices left behind by the Confederation.
In another half hour, my company is to report its progress to the division. Only then will the regiment’s command realize something went wrong out here.
Too late for Lieutenant Michelle Kingsbury.
The ambush caught us out in the open, and the Confederation heavy plasma weapons annihilated our lightly shielded scout vehicles in a span of a few breaths.
The rupture of my vehicle catapulted me back-first into a boot black sand dune. Before I could react, more plasma bursts hosed the area down, destroying every active suit but my own, which lay out of sight but still in sensor range. Three pulses reached me through the fine grains of sand. Paralyzed and unable to contact headquarters, I could neither fight nor sound the alarm. Every other Marine lay dead, cut down by overwhelming firepower.
“That kind of weaponry isn’t supposed to be anywhere near here,” I mutter, as my brain works its shock-slowed way around the puzzle. “The Confederation must be sneaking around our lines to attack HQ.”
“Always expect the unexpected,” one of my instructors, Colonel Arjun Patel, had told me in my first year at the Union Naval Academy. “Be ready to adapt at a moment’s notice.”
Good advice if you have time to react, I think to myself, as talking becomes more difficult. The company had no time. I have time now, just not a lot of it, and I can’t do anything to warn headquarters of the imminent attack.
I think of my parents and how they will react to the news of my death.
Badly – dying in a good cause still means dying to your family.
I stifle a sob. If I have to go with my body broken, at least I can go with a little emotional dignity.
As I think on dignity, I a command I learned at Quantico Plus, the space station where I received my armor training, opens in my mind like a deadly flower.
“It’s only for situations where there’s no hope left and no friendly units in range,” Captain Greg Chan had explained to me and the other intent officer trainees. “In fact, you’ll be conditioned to not think about it all unless everything has gone to hell.”
I can think about it now. Easily.
But I hesitate.
Maybe I’ll be rescued soon, I think, knowing that I’m fooling myself.
I stall some more, as I try to find another way to get the attention of headquarters.
No means other than one presents itself.
I take a shallow breath to gather the remaining air in my helmet and gasp out,
“Engage Seppuku Cycle: thirty seconds.”
My display blinks off then pops back up, red-tinged. The armor’s warnings and status updates have vanished. Only a digital timer remains, counting down.
I wait for the fusion pack powering my armor to detonate. The nuclear blast will alert regiment command of danger, and they’ll have time to prepare. Perhaps I’ll even take a few straggling Confederation troops with me.
I don’t want to die any faster than I have to, but I will.
For my company. For the Union. For my mom and dad, who never imagined their tomboy daughter becoming a Marine.
“Semper Fi,” I growl, as the timer blips to zero.
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