Marine Defenders Read online

  MARINE DEFENDERS

  by Isaac Stone

  With contributions by Timothy Mayer

  Copyright 2016 Isaac Stone

  Prelude

  “Chetty at point!” the dark-skinned man yelled into his radio. “We’re down to three. The only ones left besides me are Pavaki and Ghuan. The damned Synners are close and I don’t know what kind of weapons they have.” He placed the microphone down and waited for a response.

  “I’ve got Commander Sura on the line,” the voice from the radio speaker squawked to him. “Give me thirty seconds; I’ll get her to talk to you.” There was a blip as someone on the other end hit a pause button.

  “We may not have thirty seconds,” Pavaki commented from his position near the crumbled wall. There was the dull thud of an explosion in the distance.

  “Didn’t you hear that?” Ghuan asked. “The Synners are using concussion grenades. We need to pull back and fast!” He continued to stare out a hole in the wall.

  “Just give her a chance,” Chetty snapped at his friends. “The commander might have access to intelligence we don’t.” Inside, he felt different and chanted a mantra against fear, the one his mother taught him years ago.

  He and the other two marines were all that remained of the Chanda Unit. This was the group Sura sent in to slow the advance of the Synarchists. From the original twelve marines, only three remained and their future didn’t look good. Each had an automatic rifle and were down to their last magazine.

  The main body of the Synarchist invaders was headed in their direction. There wasn’t a whole lot they could do. The Jyotish Army pulled back beyond the city weeks ago after it was hammered by the other faction, the Jacobites. Now the three of them were all that stood between the Synarchists and the rest of the marines in the center of the city.

  The radio squawked again and a feminine tone came out of it. “Commander Sura here,” the voice made itself heard. “What is your status?”

  Chetty pushed the button down on the microphone. “Not good,sahiba,” he told her. “Only three of us left. Request permission to pull back and rejoin your group.” He knew her group was to the East and outside the immediate range of the Synarchists.

  “Negative, Chanda Unit,” the voice on the other end said to him. “Can you see them from where you are?”

  “Just a second,” he said into the microphone. Chetty nodded at Pavaki who, with one busted leg, pulled himself to the opening in the wall again and looked out.

  Before his eyes, at least a hundred well-armed Synarchists were marching in their direction. The gunfire stopped an hour ago because they faced no opposition. These were the front line troops, steel-eyed men who wore fresh uniforms and carried spotless weapons. He could feel the shock wave from their boots as they stamped the ground in unison.

  “A century of them,” he called back in a shallow voice to his friend. “Marching down the street right at us.” Chetty relayed the news to the commander.

  “Listen carefully,” the voice of Commander Sura said over the speaker. “I want you to hit them with everything you have.”

  “You want us to attack?” Chetty asked over the radio. His friends could see the look on his face.

  In another part of the city, Commander Sura Singh held the microphone in silence. Her second in command stood nearby. He could hear everything she said. She knew the rest of the brigade would join her soon enough, but they needed time to find a safe place.

  Lord Shiva forgive me for what I have to do, she said to herself.

  “No, I want you to hold as long as you can,” Sura’s voice came out of the speaker on the other end of the connection. There was a pause as the three men waited for her to clarify.

  “I want you to make them pay for every inch of ground they advance.” Her voice intoned from the radio. “Your sacrifice will allow us the time we need to regroup. Send those monsters to hell, and know that you are in our prayers.”

  “I copy,sahiba,” Chetty told her and turned off the radio. He turned back to his friends who were already standing at attention with their rifles set to full automatic. Even Pavaki managed to find the last bit of strength to stand up. A few seconds elapsed as Chetty hid the radio under some collapsed boards.

  Chetty turned and nodded at his comrades. The three men began to fire from out of the abandoned building, right into the path of the Synarchist advance. They managed to tear up the front lines with gunfire before the surprise wore off. The resulting siege was a furious affair, but the marines held their line for nearly ten minutes before the Synarchists cut them to pieces.

  From her observation post, Commander Sura listened to it happen. She put the microphone down and touched the three lines on her forehead.

  She turned around and saw a building behind them in the distance. It should have plenty of room.

  “There,” she said to the marines who surrounded her. “We can use that one. The Synners will stop and see if there are any more marines.”

  She was the last one who made it into the building, nearly half an hour later. It took that long for the remainder of her scattered brigade to arrive. Sura stood below the alcove at the main entrance and listened. More gunfire in the distance. The Synarchists must be shooting at anything that moved.

  How had their war come to this? A petty grind of attrition that her forces could not hope to win, and yet, fight on they must.

  Chapter 1

  Neither Krodha nor Shamsana knew what caused the sudden burst of rifle fire from the Synarchist lines. They assumed it was another inexperienced recruit popping of a shot at random. There were plenty of newer recruits with these people. The horde swept through the Wotan System last year and took out several underpopulated colony worlds on its way to Jyotish. The Synarchists were known to recruit heavily every time they conquered a world. Their ranks were filled with young men who looked to improve their status by enlisting. It was that or the bayonet.

  Their tan uniforms were in rags. As part of the elite forward marines charged with stopping the Synarchist advance into the capitol city of Parmesh, both of them were supposed to repair their own uniform and equipment. However, they hadn’t been able to find any clothing supplies in days. The local citizens took everything they could carry during the evacuation last month.

  Both were young, the color of midnight, and career officers in the Jyotish Armed Forces. Rank didn’t matter much this far forward against the enemy. Other than Commander Sura, no one out here was in charge.

  Krodha was from a seaport hundreds of miles away from the capitol. Shamsana, who carried the machine gun, was from a farm town further inland. She’d hoped the military would get her out of the small village where her family lived for generations. Now, all they could think about was to see the light of dawn.

  “Did you hear something?” Krodha asked her as they moved into an abandoned storefront. Up until last month, it sold fancy dresses.

  “A little bit,” she responded and checked her braid. Shamsana kept her long straight hair tied up, unlike her companion who’d shaved his before he was deployed with the marine brigade.

  In the distance, they could hear the amplification of a loud voice. Someone had a bullhorn and screamed out abominations to everyone who would listen. The voice called down the judgement of the ages on anyone who stood in the path of the power of the New Flesh.

  “Synners,” Shamsana said to her teammate and they moved further into the abandoned store.

  Planet Jyotish had the unfortunate location of being in the direct path of the expansion of both the Synarchists from the Raimondo system and the Jacobites from the Machego Empire. Both ideologies developed around the same time and managed to sweep through much of inhabited space. In the 3800 years after humanity left their home world and
ventured to the stars, governments and kingdoms rose and fell. Most of the known universe existed in the form of alliances or confederations. The Jacobites and Synarchists were merely the latest in a long line of pretenders who wanted to unite humanity and rule a single empire. All attempts in the past failed, but there was always another subjugator who wanted to try where others failed.

  Jyotish was home to the descendants of the last wave of migration from Earth. The original settlers to it like to joke they were given this world because all the good ones were taken. However, they’d made it their home for twelve generations and prospered. Limited back on Earth to very specific careers and occupations, the colonists found themselves at an advantage when they came to live on a planet with a harsh environment and dangerous predators.

  Up until a few months ago, there was little conflict among the settlements and cities on the planet. The army had little to do and trained to prevent inter-tribal violence on the surface.

  This all changed a few months ago when the government was warned by some of the nearby star systems near about the conflicts that raged near their planet. At first, the government hoped additional training for the armed forces would be enough to deter any invasion. With the fall of the Wotan system, they realized Jyotish was in the direct path of an expansion.

  The Synarchists believed in all power to the state. They viewed the state as an extension of the popular will. “All for the Synarchy, none outside the Synarchy,” was their popular saying. Their religion stressed the creation of the “New Perfect People” who would rise to conquer the universe. Needless to say, they did not make good neighbors.

  The Jacobite Empire was as aggressive, but elitist. The Jacobites felt their king was the one true and universal ruler who would establish peace and prosperity in the galaxy. They believed in a strict hierarchy for all creatures and humans. In some ways, they were similar to the society the original settlers of Jyotish fled generations ago. Planets that fell under the Jacobite dominion were allowed to live in peace, so long as they followed the dictates of their masters. Later, their new overlords would find them other places to live.

  The government of Jyotish prepared for the invasion by evacuating the larger cities and calling up the reserves. They began to recruit for the armed forces. The planet was in the midst of a general mobilization when an offer of assistance was delivered by the Jacobite ambassador. Of course, Jyotish would be incorporated into their sphere of influence. The government refused. They later discovered there was a two-front war when the first Jacobite knights landed.

  Instead of forming an alliance with each other, as the Jyotish government assumed, the two different off-world invaders launched into battle against each other whenever they had the chance. Their modes of thought were so different as to make compromise impossible.

  Even in war, they were radically different in how they organized. The Jacobites depended on squadrons of knights equipped with the latest weapon technology. The Synarchists employed huge armies that hurled themselves in battle against impossible odds.

  The two marines stood in the back of the store and watched the procession file past. At least they hadn’t stopped to check out the store. Krodha was surprised to see them march in quiet formation, a silent commentary on the indoctrination of the regular troops.

  The first group to march by the store was the Inferno Brigade, the elite front line attack troops conditioned to disregard their own safety on a frontal assault. They wore clean, black uniforms that matched their shiny boots.

  Behind the Inferno Brigade marched the man who preached with the aid of a bullhorn. He held an open book in the other hand, which Shamsana recognized as the Synarchists’ founding text.

  “The New Flesh will make you free!” he screamed into the mouthpiece. “Yield to the power of the Synarchy! We look for men with pure hearts and burning souls!” His voice lessoned in intensity as he walked away from them.

  Behind him strode the regular troops. To the rear, but not all the way to the back, were the new recruits. Here were the Jyotish renegades who’d thrown their lot in with the invaders and hoped to gains some status in the New Order. They weren’t as organized as the Synarchist regulars were, but the speaker’s voce did have an effect on them. Krodha watched as three of the new recruits began to shake in rhythm to the sound of the crazed preacher in front.

  “Are they all this insane?” Shamsana asked her partner as the last of the troops rambled by the store. The door was torn from its hinges and they could see the march of the last Synarchists as they went onward.

  “I’m afraid they are,” Krodha told her. He spoke in a quiet voice, but held his rifle tight in one hand.

  “Charming,” she commented again as the sounds faded in the distance. “I suppose we should keep in visual contact. The commander will want an account of them when we return.”

  They crept to the edge of the store entrance and peered down the street to watch the outline of the troops as they processed away. Krodha stood there and wanted to pick them off with his rifle, but knew they were supposed to scavenge and find out what they could. He heard a crunch under his boot and looked down to see the glass from the window scattered below him. How much money was wasted on that window? Would it ever make a difference?

  The weather was cool that day for a summer in the capital of Parmesh. The city was located in a temperate zone. Most of Jyotish was similar enough to the world they’d left that the first settlers could avoid the tropics and settle in the comfortable areas. The landmasses were similar enough to Earth that the humans could find plenty of space. They managed to avoid the overcrowding left behind on Earth. Some of the original settlers enjoyed the heat and humidity of the tropical areas and did settle there. The first pioneers knew what caused out of control population growth and did everything they could to prevent it. Although there were many different sects and beliefs among them, there was plenty of room to avoid people whose practices seemed “odd” to their neighbors. And, as in every other planet which humanity could live, there were no other intelligent life forms.

  Humanity found itself alone in the universe.

  Krodha and Shamsana’s ancestors were among the most poor and vilified in the land they’d abandoned for the new world. Here, they were the average dominant ones. Neither of them had ever known the indignity of an employer who refused to make contact because they weren’t “pure” enough.

  They managed to catch up with the armed column as it continued down the street. It had to be headed to the administrative part of the city, which was the center. From there, they could control the rest of Parmesh. Although occupying city hall was largely for propaganda purposes, it would still show the rest of the world the Synarchists were serious about adding Jyotish to their dominion.

  As for the Jacobites, they had yet to see one of their knights in combat. Most were scattered across the planet and fought the Synarchists as much as the native population. They still needed to be careful as the Jacobite knights had a reputation of being fanatical killers. It was rumored they were all psychopaths with implants to keep them from going out of control.

  The two marines were almost caught up to the marching column when they saw a figure rush out of a corner building and into the street in advance of it. There was enough room on either side of the column to see what was about to take place.

  The woman couldn’t be more than twenty years old and wore rags. Somehow, she’d managed to survive in this middle of the fighting. Why she was still here was another mystery they would never learn.

  She rushed directly to the preacher, no doubt to beg for some mercy. It was not about to come.

  Around the crazed preacher was an honor guard who’d sworn death to his enemies. Each wore they symbol of a wolf skull and a club. This was to symbolize how they would sink their fangs into his enemies and beat them into submission.

  The Widowmakers, as they were called, each carried a short and very sharp knife. The moment the ragged woman reached their line, they were
on top of her. In minutes, she was reduced to a mangled red heap on the ground.

  “Sorry about that, reverend,” one of the Synarchist troopers said to the preacher. “She should never have been allowed to get this close.” The column halted the moment the woman ran into them.

  “Agreed,” the preacher, said, with the bullhorn still in his hand. “You will all forfeit the evening meal tonight and use the time to contemplate your obligations to me.” The Widowmakers bowed in obeisance and continued to walk next to him as the column marched forward.

  Shamsana had to fight to keep Krodha from using his rifle. He shook in anger over not being able to do a thing.

  “All I want to do is get the crazy dog in my gunsight,” he sputtered at Samsara. “I’ll show that fat fuck what we do to invaders.”

  “Easy,” she restrained him. “Easy. You’d never be able to line up a shot and we’d both be dead. Then what would the rest of the planet do? They need us here to keep the Synners from taking the entire surface.”

  Chapter 2

  An hour later, they found a hidden door to another abandoned building. The two marines found a number of these rabbit holes over the last few weeks. There were still people who wouldn’t leave and decided to tough it out in the city. There were plenty of city dwellers who looked upon the evacuation last month as a great way to grab some things they’d been denied all their lives. Most were slaughtered by the first wave of Synarchist troops, but many did find a place to hide from the invading army. The woman who was stabbed to death was one of them.

  “What do you think?” Krodha asked his companion. Over the months together, they’d begun to function as one mind.

  “I don’t like it, check for a booby trap,” she told her companion. He kneeled down and felt around the door.

  “It’s clear,” Krodha stated and opened it.

  They entered a dark room, illuminated by the sunlight from holes in the ceiling. In one corner was a makeshift bed. Someone had found a place that would stay dry when it rained and sat up a spot there.