Jack picked out his small package from his pocket and unwrapped his family silver watch. “My watch.”
“Whatever you are going to do, do it fast. Chitins at twelve o’clock.”
Jack snapped the back off. He popped out the mechanism, with its creamy face and fine hands. The solder iron was hot in a second. Jack held the power cell in place and carefully melted the silver case of his family watch.
The sound of Torent’s rifle fire startled Jack. The Chits were close. Jack activated the power supply and the craft lurched upwards.
“They’re coming,” Torent said. “Send that thing.”
“I need a way to pilot it,” Jack said. It was a remote reconnaissance drone and needed some human input. A spare user headset was found in one of the broken pieces of equipment. It took a moment to calibrate the headset to the drone.
“This should do it,” Jack said.
“So do it.” Torent laid down a sustained fire.
“It’s dangerous. I haven’t got a neural processor. I need to buffer the information. I might get overloaded.”
“You’ll be dead for sure if you don’t try something.” Torent closed the door and stepped back into the workshop, taking cover behind a workbench.
Jack put the headset on.
A mass of information flooded Jack’s mind. There was reconnaissance information and the drone had at one point been linked to the training moon’s many surveillance systems. All the information that had ever been collected on the moon flooded into Jack’s mind.
It was an impossible mix of information. Jack watched recruits arriving on transport vessels, coming in as raw hayseeds and leaving as newly qualified Marines. The training time had been longer in the past. Recruits were coming in smaller numbers and being shipped out after shorter and shorter training programs.
Jack saw his brother. He had trained here too. And there was Crippin, shouting into his face.
Jack was suddenly present in Crippin’s office. A fleet captain was visiting. Crippin was being told that the Chitins were powerful. Humans were being pushed back. Destroyers were being lost at an unsustainable rate. A carrier had been destroyed. The war was being lost.
Jack saw himself arrive at the moon training base. He looked sad. He looked alone.
Then Jack saw his watch through the bunkhouse surveillance. It was being taken from the hiding place in his bunk and was being placed in Torent’s bunk. The data showed Jack who had moved the watch: it was Bill Harts. Bill had hidden his watch in Torent’s bunk. Jack saw the dispute between Torent and himself over the watch and there was Bill Harts, sitting back on his bunk and enjoying the show.
“Jack!” Torent shouted. “Jack. Wake up or I’ll put a round through your messed-up brain.”
“I have control,” Jack said. He wiped away the trickle of blood that dribbled out of his nose.
The drone leapt up and smashed through the roof. The targeting display picked out the advancing Chitins. Jack accessed fire control. The drone was minimally armed but it should be enough to destroy the few Chits outside. The drone’s cannons purred and the Chitin’s bodies burst as the incendiary rounds burned them from the inside out.
Then Jack was flying, skimming the craft centimeters above the rocky surface. He was at the hill in a moment. Jack saw the line of recruits still firing down the other side. Jack skirted around the hill and came up on a position flanking the line of Chitin soldiers advancing on the hill.
The canons purred again and scorched the front line of the Chitins.
The plasma whips flashed toward the drone. Without a neural processor, Jack could not handle all the information. He was slow. A plasma lance sliced through the port side of the drone. Jack pulled away, firing a hail of bullets from the small store of kinetic rounds. They tore through the Chitins as he retreated.
The signal was received by the communications office and routed through the drone to Jack. It was from the Destroyer Scorpio.
“Attention all personnel. Evac from Beta Training Base parade ground in five minutes.”
“We need to get to the hill,” Jack said to Torent. His speech seemed slow and slurred. “Evac inbound. We need to tell them. We only have a few minutes.”
“We can’t get there in that time.”
Then the drone crashed back in through the hole in the roof.
“Climb on,” Jack said. “And hold tight.”
The drone arrived at the hill. Crippin was walking behind the line of recruits, who were all in the dirt laying down a well-ordered and disciplined fire.
“That’s it. You’ve got them dug in now. They don’t want this hill as badly as they first thought.”
Torent dived into the dirt amongst the recruits and opened fire. Jack gave Crippin the news.
“Evac?” she said. “Thought I would serve out my time on this hill.” She patted Jack on the shoulder. “Good work, Forge. Scout the route back to the parade ground. Make sure there are no Chits waiting for us, then secure the landing area.” As Jack ran off down the hill, he heard Crippin shouting orders. “Sergeant Hacker, take this squad down the hill. Tactical withdrawal.”
The recruits came running toward the parade ground. Jack scouted the area ahead with the drone. The Chitins were closing in on all sides around the training complex. Crippin and Hacker were falling back toward the training complex, firing as they went. The few remaining Chitin soldiers were approaching more cautiously, but they were lashing out with their plasma spears.
Sergeant Hacker yelled in pain as his right leg was ripped off by a spear that coiled around his knee. Crippin grabbed the sergeant and dragged him backwards, firing her rifle one-handed at the Chitins as she went. A spear flashed out and took her rifle arm at the elbow.
Jack piloted the drone between Crippin and the chits. He faced off against the chits and fired the last few remaining rounds. Kinetic rounds, incendiary rounds, and finally a mid-yield explosive that threw up rock and dust and Chitin flesh.
The rescue craft came down on the parade ground. A gun on the upper hull was firing bursts, hundreds of rounds per second. In the distance, Jack saw the rocky surface of the moon throwing up clouds of dust as the rounds struck. An officer ran out of the rescue craft and called the recruits aboard.
“Lieutenant Crippin,” Jack shouted.
“Get in, Jack,” Torent shouted from the ramp. “Get in,”
Jack piloted the drone to the stricken sergeant and lieutenant. He hovered the drone low to the ground and let Crippin and Hacker climb aboard. Carefully and as quickly as he could, Jack brought the drone and its human cargo to the rescue craft.
“We’ve got incoming,” the rescue craft officer shouted. He grabbed Jack by the collar and dragged him aboard. Jack watched through the drone sensors as a plasma spear struck from orbit. A huge Chitin craft appeared and eclipsed the distant sun. The massive plasma spears scoured the moon surface, throwing dust and rock into the thin atmosphere.
Jack gripped his head. His eyes burned from the inside as the information from the plasma spear strike flooded his brain. And then he lost contact with the drone. The sudden end of the data stream was as disorientating as when he first accessed it. Exhaustion hit and Jack collapsed, unconscious.
The first thing Jack noticed when he came around was the noise, the distant hum of the fusion drive. The second thing was the cold of the deck. He looked about and saw he was in a hangar deck aboard a destroyer. The hangar was neat and clean, except for the ragged recruits covered in dust and blood. An officer walked in front of the assembled recruits.
“At ease, trash bags. Welcome aboard the Scorpio. You have had the shortest and most brutish training any squad in the Fleet Marine Division has ever been through. You have all proven yourselves in the face of the enemy. It’s my duty to award you your Fleet Marine stripe.”