Hellmarine: Prologue (ROUGH DRAFT)

My coauthor Alphonse and I started on Hellmarines, and I wanted to share some chapters with you as we went.

The day began like any other for the people of Aonus. Those on the first shift woke with the sun to ready themselves for a day of mining for the various competing companies on the frontier world, while those from the third shift returned home for much-needed rest. Orco Industries, the largest of the mining companies on Aonus, also maintained a robust science division to examine and study new and interesting samples unearthed by its numerous employees. To protect this research and the facilities that held it, Orco contracted the services of the renowned and respected MoonShot Security. 

One such young man among MoonShot’s employees wasn’t there as a matter of employment or even prestige but to remain close to his family employed by Orco Industries in its research labs. Scientific research was something of a family business, as was mining. His mother had grown up on Aonus in a prominent mining family known for its start as independent contractors, hitting it big with major discoveries as well as pioneering much of the technology that kept the miners safe deep underground. On his father’s side was a long line of xenogeologists and xenophysicists who had left behind the core worlds of the Sol Alliance long ago to explore the mysteries of the cosmos. 

Military service wasn’t represented much in their family. He was frequently reminded of it when he was younger and decided he felt a call to serve. Many arguments had been had over his career path. He was intelligent, cunning, strong, and possessed of an unbreakable will. Why, then, had he chosen to eschew his gifts—waste them even—by giving it to the military? He wanted to protect his family and the people of Aonus, who were at the fringes of known space with any number of alien threats skulking around on their doorstep. Touched by his protective instinct, the young man was given the blessing of his family to do as he liked to pursue his goals. In a moment of clarity and compromise, he chose to enlist with MoonShot in order to remain close to home while working for a company lacking in dirty laundry like so many others. 

He woke with the first shift, grabbing breakfast and a shower as he did every other morning. He lived alone, the way he preferred it, but wasn’t without friends. He was a fixture in the community, known for his strong moral code, fairness, and strength. He wasn’t the type for conversation, but whenever people needed him, he would be there. Even during social functions, he had little to say but was present to lend his stoic support to others. He laughed on occasion and loved on a few others, but those who knew him the longest considered him a hardworking man of peace who’d drawn his weapon only a handful of times—even in the roughest of situations. For him, people were worthy of second chances, and so lethal force was seldom an option. 

Despite his choice to live alone, he often ended up with one person in particular who didn’t get the memo—his sister. 

“There you are,” his sister said, letting herself in through the front door. She was as tall as he was, though much less muscled due to the nature of her work. She was already dressed in her lab coat with the credentials needed for maximum security areas fixed firmly to her belt. “What are you doing here?” 

“Breakfast,” he responded simply, gesturing with a fork to the scrambled eggs and bacon on his plate before resuming his meal. 

“Did you forget what day it is today?” She pressed, walking over to the small table he sat at to pluck a piece of bacon from his plate. He watched his bacon vanish into her mouth before shaking his head. 

“No,” he grunted, nudging his plate a little closer to her so she could have more if she wanted. Her interest in his breakfast waned when it became freely available, though. 

“Mom and Dad have been asking about you!” She continued, brushing a strand of hair from her face to adjust her glasses. “They’ve been at it all night. The xenolinguist they called finished decoding the first section of the ruins.” 

“Mhm,” He murmured, finishing his food off and bringing the plate to the sink where he left it. He would get to it later when his shift was over. He went about getting the rest of his things together while she continued to speak. She wasn’t looking for a lot of input from him, anyway. 

“They need you down at the lab ASAP!” She exclaimed, waving her arms toward the door. “Let’s go! Chop, chop!” 

Still fastening his belt around his waist, he gestured to the clock on the wall. The digital readout showed he still had roughly forty-five minutes before he was due to clock in. She glanced at the clock, her face scrunching up in irritation as she turned her attention back to him. “So what? This is huge! Do you know how long it’s been since anything like this has been uncovered without some kind of interference from the core worlds or interdictions from aliens?” 

The young man heaved a sigh. It wasn’t that he wasn’t interested in what they’d uncovered. On the contrary, he was very wary of the security concerns that such a monumental find represented. However, there were other factors in play that tempered his zeal. His sister had a tendency to hyperfocus on singular things at the exclusion of everything else. It was part of what made her so good in her field but was detrimental in other instances. 

“Overtime wasn’t approved,” the young man explained with a tired look. The revelation caused his sister to become a little more crestfallen, realizing that she couldn’t compel him to join her earlier than management would sign off on. “Sorry.” 

“Mule,” she snorted as she admitted defeat.

“Nag,” he chuckled in response. He buttoned his work shirt up to the top and strapped on the protective vest the company issued all of its personnel. Once finished, he took a few steps closer to her and pulled her into a hug. “How’s Jack?” 

“He’s great,” the Nag responded with a smirk. “He’s taking care of me just fine if that’s what you’re wondering.” 

“Good,” the mule remarked with an approving nod. He and Jack had been childhood friends that had grown apart, but the man had returned for work a couple of years ago. His sister and Jack had hit it off and grown quite close since then. A marriage proposal had been made weeks ago, but the ceremony was going to have to wait until the paperwork with the company was cleared. It didn’t normally take so long, but the assumption was the company had its hands full with the new findings. 

Sadly, there was also the matter of communications outages. All the networks were experiencing them, though no explanation had been offered as to the cause. Rumors had begun to spread about some alien incursions into Alliance space, while others had started to talk about something darker and nastier than mere aliens. Whenever something big happened, the Outer Colonies were always the last to find out. It was also where the worst and most outlandish rumors took root. Things were strange enough so far away from the Core Worlds. Adding to it wasn’t really needed, in his opinion. 

The fact that his sister had someone else to look after her and take care of her when he wasn’t able to do so set the young man’s mind at ease. They might not have had the ceremony or the paperwork, but Jack and his sister were already married in spirit. He grabbed his credentials, fastened them to his belt, and headed for the door. 

“You’re not going to make a lunch?” his sister asked curiously, glancing back at his fridge. “You always bring lunch.” 

He opened the door before turning to look back at her with an impatient look. She followed, stepping through the door onto the street. The usual bustle of the mining town was well underway, with numerous pedestrians and vehicles clogging up the roadway. Overhead, a transport ship’s engines roared as it came in for a landing at the spaceport. He glanced up at the short-range transport, recognizing it as one of the ones from the eastern territories, before locking the front door. He tested the handle to make sure it was closed, as he always did. 

Turning to face his sister once again, she met him with an accusatory jab of her finger. “You forgot to order your groceries again, didn’t you?” 

The young man didn’t answer as he pushed past her to join the flow of traffic on the street, but his face said it all. She laughed as she followed him but didn’t press the issue further. “I’ll buy you something later. How’s that?” 

Glancing at her, he offered her a little smile. As annoying as she could be, she still had a good heart. 

The main complex for Orco Industries wasn’t far from where he lived, so he elected to walk just about every morning. Here, he rubbed elbows with the miners and other facility workers for most of his journey before splitting off toward the security office. The facility was impressive, sprawling out in a wide circle with a large spire at the center reaching skyward, creating a vague appearance of a child’s top half buried in the ground, composed entirely of steel and concrete. 

What couldn’t be seen was how far that spire penetrated below the surface of Aonus. Through it, access to the main mining arteries was achieved, and the various science labs were located. The surface sections were mostly administrative and corporate, with space set aside for transit and cargo transport. Short-range transports and long-range freighters alike came and went from the latter portion of the complex at all hours of the day, but traffic was heaviest during daylight hours. 

“Hey, aren’t you a little early?” An older gentleman called from the tower of the front gate. Even at this distance, the young man could tell the man was smirking at him under his bushy gray beard. “They’re not gonna approve the overtime, you know?” 

The young man raised a hand, offering a simple wave without bothering to answer the question. It was more about providing his sister an escort than clocking in early. He wouldn’t be on the clock officially, but he decided there would be no harm in lurking until it was time to do so. He greeted various co-workers as he passed the first security checkpoint, presenting his credentials for the scanner as he went. He stepped into the elevator alongside his sister and several other science personnel and descended into the lower levels. 

Nearly everyone else stepped off the elevator before them, lacking the clearance for the lowest levels of the facility. When the doors finally opened to their destination, it was just the two of them and one other scientist stepping out. Each had to scan their credentials again before they were granted access to the lab. 

“About time!” The young man’s father called from the other side of the lab that opened up into the cavern with the unearthed ruins and the relic within. “We had to get started without you, kiddo!”

He returned his father’s wave as he stepped into the lab, glancing around at the others who worked under his parents. The lab was alive with activity in a way that he’d seldom seen. Before he knew it, his sister had joined the activity, eager to get back to work. 

“Morning,” his mother said as she passed by him, going up onto her toes to plant a kiss on his cheek. “Don’t mind your father. There’s still plenty of work left to be done.” 

His mother patted him on the chest, which he hardly felt through the body armor. “I know you don’t clock in for a little bit, but would you mind helping me move a few things?” 

“Sure,” he agreed without hesitation. His mother led him out of the main room to a storage area filled with various locking crates and shelves.

“We’re clearing this section out to make room for the cryo storage, but some of these are a little too heavy,” she explained, motioning to the larger black crates. They were heavily armored to protect their contents, so it made sense she would struggle with moving them. He looked at her with an arched brow, silently questioning the cryo storage. 

“We need to cryo for sample storage,” his mother explained, gesturing briefly toward the part of the lab that opened into the caverns. “Your father is certain we’re about to uncover something significant. We’ll be taking in more samples than we’ll be able to examine right away, so they’ll be kept perfectly preserved in here until we get additional personnel with the proper clearance.” 

He nodded and got to work, lifting the heavy crates and placing them where his mother directed. With the extra muscle he’d put on since joining MoonShot, it didn’t take long at all to move everything out of the way. A few technicians brought the cryopods in immediately after and began the task of setting them up. Each had its own redundant power source in the event of power failure, allowing anything stored within the pod to remain in complete stasis for years. 

Stepping back out into the main lab, he took a moment to indulge his curiosity, looking out from the observation platform onto the strange obelisk that was the main focus of their work. At first glance, it looked like any other slab of granite jutting out from the floor of the cavern to a height of fourteen or fifteen feet, about ten feet wide, with a thickness of only six feet. What was so interesting about the formation was the exotic minerals that composed its surface and the faded symbols carved into its surface. Even now, the xenolinguist they had contracted was still poring over the symbols to decode them. Colored sticky notes were attached to the front, showing which sections he was working on and which he had finished with varying levels of certainty. 

The young man glanced at the clock hanging over the lab's steel doors and decided he had just enough time to make it to the main security office to clock in. He glanced at his mother, offering her a subtle smile as he activated the doors. “I’ll be back.” 

His mother returned his smile and turned away, joining his father in beginning the next phase of their examination. He didn’t know the specifics, but he didn’t need to. His job was to oversee the security of the lab, making sure no unauthorized personnel gained access and that his family was protected. 

As he stepped into the security office, he was greeted by the guard at the desk and the guard dog he kept close by. The dog yawned when he entered, wagging his tail lazily at the young man. He spared a moment to pat the animal’s head before continuing to the terminal, where he tapped his credentials in and logged his time. The young man never admitted it, but he was quite attached to the dog, which the guards had found wandering around in search of scraps a year prior. Though not technically trained for the job as a guard dog, management hadn’t objected to having the animal around in the position. He was sort of their mascot. 

“You catch the game last night?” The guard at the desk asked without looking up from the video feeds displayed on his own terminal. “Hell of a beatdown they took, hm? Starting to see why you don’t bother with the betting pool.” 

The young man snorted with amusement before offering a brief shrug. It wasn’t the only reason he didn’t bother with betting, but the win-loss rate of the home team wasn’t something he would chance his paycheck on even if he was. As he stepped backward through the door back into the hall, he held his arms out to his sides. Before he could speak, he felt a tremor through the floor that nearly through him on his ass. 

The guard at the desk looked up at him, just as surprised as he was. Their expressions asked the same question of one another, though neither of them had an answer. The dog growled, his fur standing up on end as he backed away from the door. The desk guard glanced at the feeds, his eyes wide with horror. 

“The feeds are gone,” he muttered, immediately stepping away from the desk toward the weapons locker with keys in hand. As another tremor rocked the facility, killing the regular lights and triggering the alarms, the young man didn’t bother to wait for his co-worker. Drawing his sidearm, he rushed down the hallway toward the lab as red emergency lighting came online. 

As he neared the security doors, he saw them dent and warp from the inside. A second later, the doors burst outward, peppering the hallway with thick chunks of steel and concrete. One of the larger chunks caught the young man in the head, knocking him down to the floor. His head swam as spots filled his vision. He struggled to remain conscious as he pushed himself up onto his hands and knees. Shaking off the vertigo, he used the wall as a support to get to his feet. The alarms sounded like they were coming from a great distance as an undercurrent of screams joined them. Then came the gunfire. 

The young man steadied his breathing as he resisted the temptation to speculate as to what was happening, instead focusing solely on the immediate objective of getting to his family. Pushing off of the wall, the young man turned to resume his course toward the lab, only to see a strange creature on all fours emerge from inside. 

Each of its legs ended in large, vicious claws capable of tearing gouges in the floor without effort. The skin along its skull was pulled tight, nearly exposing the bone beneath. On either side of its head were grotesque fleshy flaps that resembled a cross between fins and ears. Its gaping maw was filled with rows of sharp, ragged teeth. As it neared the young man’s position, a spiked, ragged tongue flicked out like that of a snake in search of prey. The thing had no eyes to speak of, only recessed pits where they should have been. 

Beyond the creature, the lab was burning. He heard his mother scream. In an instant, a switch was flipped in his mind, and he went to work. 

Grabbing his OT-5 Outsider from the floor where he’d dropped it, the young man fired off three shots at the creature, each round of which caught the creature in the skull. Two skittered along the ridges, tearing superficial wounds in its flesh. The third connected with one of the recesses in the creature’s face, blowing the interior of its head out through the back of its skull, spattering the wall in gore. He sped past it before it even hit the floor. 

The sterile, tidy lab that he had left several minutes before was engulfed in chaos. Chemical, colored flames obscured his vision while the blaring alarm confounded his hearing. It didn’t matter. All he needed was to find his family and get them out. 

Another of the four-legged creatures emerged from behind one of the lab tables. As the young man turned to face the creature, it lashed out with its tongue, driving it into his chest like a harpoon. The body armor took the brunt of the punishment, but an inch of the tongue still managed to penetrate his chest beneath. Snarling with anger and pain, he reached out and took hold of the tongue, preventing the creature from retrieving it or fleeing, holding it still as he put two rounds in its head. As it collapsed, he spared a third round through the tongue to sever it from its owner. 

He jerked the thing out of his chest but held onto it. The Outsider had a twelve-round capacity. He’d used six. Keeping something as lethal as the tongue might prove useful. 

Moving on, another creature looked up from where it feasted on the chest of his father. His blood ran cold at the sight of his father’s mangled corpse and then hot as his gaze fell upon his father’s lifeless eyes. The creature stood on two legs, covered in leathery skin with spikes protruding from it in several places. The wounds on his father sizzled with the same acid dripping from its toothy maw as drool. 

With a furious roar from somewhere deep within, the young man brought his weapon up to end his father’s killer. It responded by hurling a ball of flame from one of his clawed hands, forcing him to dodge to one side to avoid being burned alive. He lashed out with the tongue, catching the bipedal acid-mouthed creature along the side of the head with the ragged surface of his improvised weapon. The wound that formed poured a dark and foul substance from it but looked otherwise superficial. 

In its pain, the creature briefly looked away, allowing the young man to close the distance and slam his shoulder low into the thing. It dug its claws into the body armor of his back and brought him along with it as it went tumbling down onto the observation deck and through the broken glass to the cavern floor below. The young man tumbled with the strange creature only for a moment before righting himself and jamming the muzzle of the Outsider into its mouth and squeezing off another couple of rounds. Four rounds left in the mag. 

As he stood, one of the quadrupeds hurled itself at his back, raking with its claws through the body armor straight down into his flesh. The young man let out a pained cry, but the pain only served to focus his resolve. He reached over his shoulder, wrapped an arm around the creature’s neck, and tore it free into a shoulder throw with all his strength. The creature landed hard on the spikes of the biped, impaling it and rendering it immobile. He spared a moment to loop the tongue around its neck and pull, nearly popping the head free. 

Instead of remaining to finish the job, he made his way back up the stairs toward the observation deck, glancing over his shoulder at the stone slab. The text on it glowed, and the surface shifted almost like liquid. Storming through the lab, he dumped the rest of his rounds into a couple more of the creatures. When he pulled a spare mag from his belt, another of the bipeds took advantage, slapping his weapon from his grip and carving his abdomen open. 

He held the fresh wound with one hand while snatching a handheld drill from a nearby table with the other. He flicked it on and drove it into the head of the creature that had mistakenly believed him to be done for. The creature thrashed around briefly, reeking blood spraying as its teeth gnashed wildly in an attempt to bring him down with it before slipping lifelessly to the floor. 

As he stepped over the quartered body of his baby sister, his vision filled with red. More of the creatures came, and more fell before his wrath. Anything he could get his hands on became a weapon. Rock samples, a surgical saw, and even metal trays. The blood of the creatures was black against the red of the emergency lights, painting every surface he passed amidst his rampage. Soon, he was so blinded with unbridled rage that he resorted to his fists. Though the creatures tore into him every few seconds, he pressed on. He crushed a biped’s skull against the corner of a table before stepping over the body of a lab assistant to enter the cryo storage room. 

“Mom—,” he murmured, his eyes settling on the eviscerated body of the woman lying at the foot of one of the pods. His rage cooled as sorrow took hold, dousing the flames within with ice water. He became suddenly aware of how tired he was—how weak his body felt. Looking down, he tried to take inventory of his wounds but found them beyond counting beneath a cascade of crimson down his torso. The most glaring of his injuries were the entrails he was barely managing to hold in with one hand. 

There were no more of the creatures in the lab, which was perhaps fortunate. As angry as he was, the spots in his vision and vertigo had returned. Stumbling toward his mother, the young man spared what strength he could to bring his hand across her face, closing the lids of her wide, terrified, lifeless eyes. Pieces of the technicians were scattered around the room, but it looked like they or his mother had got one of the pods online. 

With no other course of action left to take, the young man activated the cryo-pod and rolled into it as the lid closed, hoping that one of the others—or anyone from Moonshot—would lock the area down and find him inside before he died.

As he thought of the unspeakable monstrosities that slaughtered his family, he knew what he’d live for in the unlikely event of his survival.