SIX-BY

======

“CONGRATULATIONS! YOU WON!” The voice belongs to Hangman and he is laughing when he says it. Yes, the Hangman. Heavy Weapons from Sect Most Vicious, laughing in my face, patting me on the shoulder, welcoming me to the team. It’s the stuff of legend, every puke marine’s dream is to make one of the first line fire teams.

I’m not kidding when I say I’m sure I don’t deserve the honor.

Hangman laughs again. There is no mirth in his laughter, but there is camaraderie. Something that is wholly alien to me.

How I got glad-handed into Most Vicious is a long story and it’s time consuming. The one sentence version is this: my first day in combat everything went horribly wrong, the rest of my unit was killed and my right leg was blown off from the knee down, I had the honor of witnessing the most heroic act I could possibly imagine, then half of Most Vicious got killed and I banded together with the surviving members and we fought our way back to the safety of The Good Shepherd then folded to the other side of the galaxy.

That was fifteen minutes ago.

Now, back aboard The Good Shepherd we are anywhere but safe and the fight is anything but over.

I, with my new teammates, am rushing down a darkened corridor, there is nothing to see but the path forward, slowly revealing itself in the muted blues and soft greens of the guidance lights that twinkle on and off as we rush past. We are heading from the recovery bay that just hauled us out of the shit to the launch platform. I have no clue where we’re being sent next but the voice of Fleet booms from the ship’s squawk box, apprising us of the situation.

“I will not bullshit you. Our situation is dire, is it ever not?” says Fleet, no hint of humor in his amplified voice.

“The space fold operation was a mixed success. We have evaded the Krag Subjugation forces and achieved [irregular orbit] around the target planet of Debron IV. However, the maneuver was not without issue. Our [kernel engineers] have calculated a significant over usage of energy. Estimated at more than three times the projected energy allotment. Further depleting our already dangerously low fuel stores.”

Fleet continues, the news, not surprisingly, doesn’t get better.

“In addition to our pressing lack of energy, the space fold drives cracked and will need immediate repair. A team of kernels is combing the historical databases looking for a restoration procedure. Due to the recent shortages of material even with a valid procedure it is unlikely we will be able to repair the drive. As a last resort we will attempt the cannibalization of the remaining vestigial areas aboard The Good Shepherd.”

He pauses a moment to let that sink in. We’re outta gas. The engines are broken. We’re not sure we can fix them.

“We are not without recourse.”

You gotta love Fleet’s optimism. I mean that. Sincerely. I’m not too far gone that I don’t wish I could muster some myself.

“Fortunately, Debron IV is an excellent candidate to harvest both material and energy from. The next synchronization opportunity is in five minutes. We are sending down an advance team of [vurkers] to scout the planet’s surface then construct a base of operations and establish our supply chain.”

To be honest my balls could use some more pubic hairs but I’m old enough that my days of making sarcastic comments between statements of my superiors in Senior Management are behind me. So I just keep my mouth shut and gimp leg be damned hustle down the dark corridors as best as I can.

Wasting no more time, Fleet wraps up his broadcast. “To escort the vurkers we are tasking 1st Marine fire team, Most Vicious. Supporting them will be 3rd Marine fire team, That Aggressive. As always, the situation remains both highly fluid and extremely precarious, I will update the [Apocalypse] with your mission objectives before you jump.”

And that’s how I made the cut. Not because I was good. Or because I deserved it. But because we had five minutes to sync, and I was still in my pathogen armor ready for combat and already heading towards the launch platform. I didn’t earn my place, I wasn’t chosen by fate, there just wasn’t anybody else available.

I’m not going to shame myself. The ship is dying. We have no choice. This must be done.

But I know I’m not the right person for the job. I’m fatigued. Probably traumatized. Just barely able to hobble on this stumpy thing that’s all that remains of my leg. But there you have it. Life sucks and the facts are I’m all out of excuses.

Nor am I alone.

A [corpuscler] dogs my every not-a-step. The little freaky fuck sets my teeth on edge. Yes, he’s human, but doesn’t look it at all. An unnerving glint in his evil damn eye. His white nursing suit still caked gray with ash and gore from the battlefield.

He is either the bravest, or the stupidest person I have ever met. I know this because the last of the fighting on Tranquility was ferocious. Something big, nasty and extremely violent had gotten very close. Close enough to rip through pathogen armor and tear my leg off. With only minutes before the sync back to The Good Shepherd the corpuscler had detached himself from the lander and at great risk to himself crawled across the battlefield unsupported. His bitch tits—the two enormous white barrels strapped across his chest—bulge where just under half an hour ago I’d seen him stuff my leg after scavenging it from the battleground. Then pick his way back through the carnage and attach himself to the lander scant moments before we sync’d the hell off that shithole planet.

Now, as I hobble after the rest of Most Vicious, he massages the stump of my missing knee, rubbing it with some sort of clear medical smelling liquid—probably a disinfectant or a painkiller draught.

“Six-by…”

The corpuscler looks at me. Then at my knee. Then back to me.

A strange look on that strange face of his. Those damn eyes of his…

I am convinced he is trying to tell me something. I’m not the best at reading people, I simply have no clue what he’s trying to say.

The moment passes.

“No good,” he says finally.

There are certain times in life where you just don’t want to hear those two words. When someone is trying to reattach the bottom half of your leg is near the top of that list.

“You need to see a [traumist],” he says instead.

The corpuscler continues, telling me he has no choice. My leg won’t set in time, he has to use a substitute. I stop paying attention. We are falling behind the others. I struggle to catch up.

Following me, the corpuscler spreads a glop of gray goop between his hands and rubs them together. Then smears the medical grease where my knee should be, talking to me in a low, heavily accented tone. His voice calm, reassuring. He never misses a beat. Muttering a stream of medical advice at me that I mostly ignore and entirely don’t understand. He acts as though it’s the most natural thing in the world to snatch someone’s leg from the heat of battle and then follow him down an unlit corridor of a dying spaceship trying to replace it in the hasty moments just before he syncs for the next fight.

Medical types. Their dedication to the job cannot be questioned. If you can just overlook those off glinting eyes that I’m pretty sure mean something is not right in their head.

We near the launch bay, where the lander that will send us down to the new theater on Debron IV is waiting.

The battlefield is still being prepped.

We have a few minutes while the kernels get the [Trumpets] up. Until they’re online we’re not going anywhere. Leaving irregular orbit without them would just be jumping to our deaths.

The launch bay itself is enormous, we are swallowed by its endless darkness. Once again I am humbled at the mammoth size of the The Good Shepherd. A reminder of the glory of another age, and of how far we have fallen.

Fifty thousand people could easily fit in here. Not that there will ever be that many humans alive again. Almost everyone who isn’t on duty or integral to the sync is here to see us off. Their gaunt, sallow faces greet our arrival. Precious few. We, the sole surviving members of the human race. The men mill about. Aimlessly. A scared, dazed look on their faces, unable to make eye contact.

I am haunted by a nagging feeling, I should know these people. I should recognize these faces. And though they should be familiar, they are not.

Men I don’t recognize call out to me. They know my name, but I don’t know theirs. Maybe it’s the blood loss. Maybe fatigue. Maybe the unreal amount of drugs my pathogen armor is surely pumping into me. My head’s not right. I might be traumatized. Have I said that already? I’m not sure.

Nah, I’m shore of it. I’m traumatized. I know this because even though pathogen armor seems magical they aren’t magic. Dump enough blood in a bucket and even a marine will traumatize. And I lost a helluva lot more than a bucket.

It has to be the drugs. Every not-a-step I take is an easy reminder something horrific must have happened to me. My suit knows this too, and so it is surely pumping cc after cc of an intoxicating mixture of fucking-no-regrets mixed with with you-won’t-feel-a-thing plus a hundred other chemicals I have no idea the name of through my bloodstream, forcing me to forget the horrors and ignore the pain. My addicted nervous system laps it up, eager to please. Of this there is absolutely no question.

“Just go down there and make something happen,” a voice calls out.

“Make something happen!” Someone else repeats.

“Just make something happen!” A third voice takes up the mantra.

I get it, they’re scared. We’re all scared.

Fleet didn’t sugar coat, but he also didn’t spell it out. Humanity is doomed and the ship…

Man, we can’t even keep the damn lights on.

We all know this mission is only so much masturbation. Positioning men and material as quickly as possible then hoping a strategy will present itself before the next sync.

Fuck it. I’ll say it. Since no one else will.

The truth is—

“Yo, Six-by! Whatever happens, man.” The shouts continue.

“That’s all that matters. Just make something happen.”

It’s like walking the gauntlet. They know I don’t belong here. I know I don’t belong here. Their shouts of encouragement are for their own sake.

There is not much to see. The lights are off to save power, and it’s cold. I’ve breathed fresher air, but it’s nothing to complain about. In the center of the launch bay is a platform. With a lander. The loading ramps leading up to the lander are alive with a bustle of activity.

I am neither a vurker nor a kernel and other than the obvious—they are loading heavy gear and cargo onto the lander—I’m honestly not exactly sure what they’re doing. Something to do with miles and miles of cable. And pipe.

One vurker is hauling massive reinforced steel canisters—frosted so they look like kegs of beer, but sadly are not—one by one up the ramp and onto the lander.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

I see two other vurkers pulling a heavily loaded bulkloader up the ramp, crammed with I couldn’t tell you what but it looked impressive. Industrial shit you use to make cool stuff. The two vurkers have misjudged the weight, the load is too heavy for them, they stagger under the load and take a step back. The hauler they are lugging twists, then tips dangerously. It’s not threatening to fall over, it is falling over.

Before the bulkloader collapses two men step up and lend a hand. They are quickly joined by two more and working together they right the cargo and help the vurkers finish pushing the over burdened hauler up the ramp.

Fuck yeah, good looking out for. Never ask if you can help, just do it. Get the job done.

A lesson I shoulda learned a long time ago.

“Hup. Hup. Hup. Hup.” There is a huddle of twenty or so vurkers on the platform. They’re piloting multi-purpose construction vehicles. No surprise there. Arms entwined they move in a slow circle, chanting in unison.

As each vurker finishes his loading duty he joins the huddle. Their circle grows a little larger. The hup-hup-hup chant grows a little louder.

I assume these are the vurkers we’ll be escorting. Pumping themselves up for the mission to come. None of them carry a weapon. They aren’t wearing armor. They were going to build.

Third Marine fire team, That Aggressive, comes bumfucking up the ramp. Just a team of space marines and their ethicist, trying to get their shit squared away. It’s not my place to point out I’ve seen monkeys shit fighting at the circus more organized. Nothing to be ashamed of. They’re just sober and scared, they weren’t on Tranquility. They’ll get it together.

Now. Time for Most Vicious. First Marine fire team.

First up is Omen, of course. He vaults to the platform of the lander, sleek and graceful. In his fist he holds his holocauster rifle. Wrath scrawled across the barrel, like he didn’t give a damn.

From the assembled men there is mad cheering. There should be. The guy’s a fucking legend and man does he look the part. Omen has something I haven’t seen in years. Muscle tone. Impossibly broad shoulders. A muscular back that tapers to his waist. This is what human men are supposed to look like. Across the chest of his black pathogen armor a skull is splattered, the color of faded Krag ichor. He is either a world class artist or touched by the gods. Maybe both, he is Omen after all.

Next, is Hangman. He looks like the rest of us. Emaciated, stunted, hunchbacked. Malnourished. Slowly rotting away on an improper diet of old wounds that won’t heal and nightmares that won’t go away. His pathogen armor is battle scarred, the protective plating bashed and dented from heavy use. Lurking deep in their sockets are two bright furtive eyes that desperately wanted to conceal, ignore and deflect the horror show his life had been.

Hangman carries an Ouroboros Cannon. The gigantic serpentine gun sodomy locked tight so he didn’t fuck his own ass up. With a dull blade Your. Turn. To. Die. had been hacked into four of the cannon’s five massive firing tubes. The fifth tube…

Sickening is the only way I can describe what he’s done to it.

I’ve never seen anyone carry so many [gencels]. Duct taped all over him, they cover his pathogen armor. He wasn’t taking any chances, he probably has gencels taped to his gencels. When the techs had run out of power supplies everyone else had pitched in filling any gaps in his pathogen they could find. Or imagined they could.

Handwritten messages to the Krag are scribbled on the makeshift power supplies. Everything from the traditional Getsome to the cryptic Invade with me to my personal favorite, I hope this hurts.

On his feet are a pair of pontoon boots, taken to absurd levels even for pontoon boots. You could storm the gates of hell in those things and float home on Noah’s flood, high and dry.

For a little guy with a big gun he moves quick, scampering up the platform to join the others on the lander. You gotta admire the guy’s style. One big gun and all the ammo he can carry. If he would just do something about those goddamn pontoon boots.

Following Hangman up the platform is Big Bro, team leader and ethicist of Most Vicious. He doesn’t have a gun and doesn’t need one. There is a reason why Most Vicious is the top rated fire team in the entire force, and he’s it. He bounds across the platform in exaggerated movements. You can read these damn apocalypses all day long and you’ll still never understand until you’re with him. He just has this fucking presence, man. Some men have it and the rest of us are just in fucking awe of it.

I can only imagine the effect he is having on the others—guys who actually give a shit and believe in being a team player and all that crap. I have it on good authority I’m a pretty selfish, petty and evil minded guy but even I get caught up in the moment a little myself.

“Hey friends!” Big Bro addresses us all. “Are we having some fucking fun down there or what?”

The mood in the air begins to turn. Not even I am immune to it. Banishing the feelings of desperation. Letting go from resignation. Replacing them with a primal will to live, to fight, to protect what is ours.

It’s not his words, for they are simple in the extreme. Just his fucking presence. We come alive with the feeling to kill. It’s a good time to be alive.

I would be lying if I didn’t finish the job and include this:

Far across on the other side of the launch bay a man stares at me. I absolutely and completely have no clue what the expression on his face means, but I acknowledge it is there.

He is stripped to the waist. Thin, no fat, but not skeletal. A sheen of sweat and oil covers his skin. A streaking nasty rash wraps around him like a whirlwind of pain and suffering. Surely the result of spending too much time in pathogen armor.

Of course I know him. We all do. With the exception of Omen there isn’t a more storied marine in the force. He’d been with us at Tranquility’s End, his pathogen armor is still smoking from the beating it took. I wasn’t lying when I said it had been an honor to witness the most heroic act I could possibly imagine.

Back in the day he’d been a part of Most Vicious. Fleet had broken them up and built 2nd Marine fire team Sect Now Venomous up around him. Rumors swirled that he wanted his old job back.

The only reason he wasn’t going in with them now was because he’d evac’d off Tranquility’s End in the sync 30 minutes before our last haul out. His techs, who had busily been stripping him for space and downtime, were now hastily plating his armor back on, rubbing lubricants and salves into the dead spots on his arms and skin, trying to restore blood flow to the reddened splotches that cover him. He will surely lead the next wave that will be sent at the earliest second sync opportunity.

I don’t need to be able to read his expression to know what he is thinking.

He is Deamos. The personification of fear and terror on the battlefield. He has earned what I have not. And been denied what I have been given. He wants what I have taken—the place where he belongs and I do not—to be on the battlefield beside Most Vicious once again.

He’s almost certainly an asshole, most men are, and there will surely be bad blood between us but he is a professional. He throws back his head, long curling blonde hair cascading around his shoulders and down his back.

“Ayooooooooah,” he belts out a long blood freezing howl and raises his holocauster, Terrorstrike inscribed on the firing barrel. Every groove of the lettering sculpted with extreme care and intense precision. The most precious expression of a soul.

The men join in. A pack mentality takes hold and a long, slow howl lifts from those assembled. Their voices full of belonging, brotherhood and a bunch of other things that are wholly alien and completely have no meaning to me.

My turn. I’m the only one left. Everyone else is already aboard. What am I waiting for? I move towards the platform. Cautiously. So damn scared. I have nothing to live for but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to continue doing it.

That’s when I spot the kid.

Fuck me.

He hovered at the fringe, where the others couldn’t see. Dipping in and out of the darkness like a shadow. Desperately wanting to be a part of something, but afraid he didn’t belong. You know the feeling.

Scarecrow little mother fucker. Raggedy ass pair of ripped shorts and a long sleeve shirt with a collar. Full captain insignia on the sleeve. Class A’s. Real military. Not some pogue playing pretend like the rest of us pukes.

Not that it matters, but it wasn’t stolen valor, and he wasn’t looting graves. Probably from a dead older brother, maybe his father.

Though I wouldn’t blame him if he had been, it gets cold at night. I did far worse when I was his age.

Not a damn wrinkle one in either of the rags he wore. Good taking care of. No way he was pressing that flea bag for a uniform. My guess is he probably was hanging out down near the generators or the engine room. Draping it over the reactor heat release pipes, shivering naked in the cold while letting his precious threads hang in the steam. I know how it’s done. I’ve been there myself.

Who gives a shit about what he was wearing, I’ll tell you what is important.

He stood by himself. More lesions on his face than a leper. Eyes so big and so round I swear he pulled them off a bug. Spine ramrod straight. His left arm held at attention. His right arm an empty sleeve fluttering next to his side. Amputee. What hell that kid had been through I can only imagine.

He looked five, maybe six but he coulda been as young as eight maybe as old as twelve. Nutrition is so lousy and getting adequate calories is so hard to come by it’s difficult to tell. It’s especially hard on the really young.

It’s not much but I stop my woe-is-me-shuffle and stand beside him.

I searched for the right words.

…

Apparently I didn’t find them.

I reached down and scooped up some of the gray medical shit the corpuscler had been spreading on my knee. With my finger I spread the goo in a thick line under his eye.

“Warpaint.” I tell it like it is.

His bug eyes grow even wider.

I made a fist. “Fuck yeah—” I caught myself before I called him ‘kid’.

“Grim Sleeveless,” I say instead, giving him a callsign his dead mother would surely hate but I can hear his grandmother’s ghost cackle her approval from the grave.

“Captain!” I raise my fist. “Of the Empty Sleeves Brigade!”

We bump fists in salute.

Kids not careful those eyes are going to bug right out of his head. With my thumb I dab a bit of the goo on the end of his nose. “Welcome to the Marines.”

I didn’t think the kid could stand any straighter. He surprised me and managed to somehow. Fucking fire shone in that kid’s eyes. A toothy grin split across his face.

“Uh… Six-by?”

How the fuck did he know my name?

“They’re waiting for you.”

Oh. Shit.

I must have stumbled because the corpuscler rights me, touches my chest, then my mouth with his fist. I stare back. I might be a little off.

The corpuscler flashes to me again, he’s using the fingersign language we use to communicate on a tainted battlefield.

“Am I breathing,” he says it this time.

It wasn’t a question, but I answer it anyways. “Yeah, of course you’re breathing.” Dumb ass.

He shakes his head, and flashes once more. Fist to chest, fist to mouth. Then flashes do you understand?

Oops. I get it this time. He was asking me if I was breathing. Check. Breathing is one thing I can do.

Feeling a little stupid, maybe I was the dumbass, I flash back affirmative, then I copy.

“Six-by is clear to jump!” He announces out loud.

What? That was my medcheck? That’s it? That’s all?

The corpuscler, he’s pointing at his patch. “My callsign is Leather Apron.” He says it like it means something.

I try and walk. My knee won’t support my weight yet. Fuck it. I’ll walk with a limp. I won’t be the first.

“Not to worry.” Leather Apron double taps his bitch tits. “Your leg is fine with me.”

His tone is upbeat, almost jovial as he continues. “You need to see a traumist. I’ll talk to Whitechapel.” That word scares the shit out of me but I couldn’t tell you why. “Whitechapel’s gonna see The Light. I don’t know how yet, but trust me, he’s gonna jump the build order.”

In the standard build order, [blood wagons] don’t come until the seventh sync or sometimes even later. Despite being a very unpopular strategy there are excellent reasons for this.

I must have looked unconvinced because Leather Apron’s tone sharpens considerably.

“I said Whitechapel.” That word. Leather Apron says it like it scares the shit out of him too. “He’s gonna talk to The Light. He’s gonna jump the build order. There’s gonna be a blood wagon down there. Do you understand?” He’s thumping on my chest like I’m the one with the bitch tits. “This is important. You be there for it.”

I will say this. Those little freaks are fucking hard core. That corpuscler—Leather Apron—acted like he’d follow me down to Debron IV, patching my knee all the way and muttering I really need to see a traumist soon.

I hear a familiar tearing sound. I recognize that sound. I look down at my knee.

What the fuck?

The corpuscler is cross wrapping the stump and artificial substitute with duct tape.

I must have had a quizzical expression because he asks, “You want it to stay on don’t you?”

I take back every nice thing I said about him.

Damn quack.

The mission objectives have been finalized, and the Apocalypse updated. Everything halts as to a man we all take a moment to read Fleet’s apocalypse.

* Scout the planet surface.

* Establish a base of operations.

* Construct an [extractor].

* Construct a [gassery].

* Begin mining materials and energy.

* Construct a [garrison]before [Thredfall].

* Protect the vurkers (the vurkers must survive!).

Until the next sync, you have your orders, it’s been a helluva war,

—Fleet

There you have it. Pretty standard stuff. Build a barracks and get a supply chain going. The first day planetside is always the easiest. It’s not until after the thred falls that things get hairy.

“The Trumpets are up!” Couldn’t tell you who said that.

The lander’s lights cycle from red to soft blue. It’s starting the transport sequence.

My incompetent ass needs to quit fucking around. It’s showtime. I have only a few seconds to get up onto the platform next to the others.

The corpuscler is pushing me up the loading ramp. Gibbering critical last minute medical shit I’m already forgetting.

I shake the duct-taping-bastard’s help off. I can get my own damn self up there. Nothing proud in my step because there is nothing to be proud of. I didn’t bound, run or scramble. Instead, leaking gray goo I sorta limp dick hobbled like a useless prick up to where the others stood.

They just looked at me. Everyone was looking at me.

Honestly, I can’t read their expressions so I don’t even bother to try.

With one arm I raise my holocauster above my head. Girls in White Dresses is scarred deep into the barrel. I know what I was thinking when I wrote that, but… What the hell was I thinking?

The apes go apeshit. Can you blame them? Most of us have never been laid, and never will be. Their incel dicks get hard if the wind blows. Off to the side in his lonely shadow even Grim Sleeveless joins in, hopping up and down and pumping his only fist in the air.

Six-by, corrupter of youth.

A little whisper in the back of my thoughts. If you can’t believe in yourself. Believe in the kid who does.

Fuck that. I might play dumb, but I’m not that dumb.

My last thought before we make the jump. Seditious in the extreme.

Everyone knows there are two types of New Guys. Type A—the fresh faced recruit who survives but loses his innocence and in doing so learns to become a man.

No dice. That’s not me. Can’t be. I’m probably too young to call a man yet but I’ve definitely lost my innocence. Which means…

Shit. I’m a goner for sure. I know why they wanted me for this mission. Poor ‘ole Six-by, he’s obviously a Type B. Just a faceless, nameless expendable who dies horribly to show how awful the war is.

Damn. I hope we get pussy in hell. Visions of all the vaginas I never got to fuck dance in my thoughts.

No time for regrets. The lander starts the final launch sequence. Two marine fire teams, our ethicists and twenty vurkers. We make our weight. The mission’s a go.

More growled thank spoken, Big Bro gets the last word in, “Alright friends! Yeah!”

I think it’s time to—