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Click herePulling him closer, Maylene placed his head on her chest, so he could hear her heart beating. Its steady rhythm seemed to sooth him during the nightmares. She knew that buried deep within his subconscious, in the places where he tried to bury all of his pain and torment, his heart was breaking.
As it did on each of these nights, Maylene's heart broke along with his.
In the darkness, Maylene wept along with her sleeping husband. They shed tears for men and women she had never met and Eric almost never talked about. But she knew their faces haunted his dreams.
And in the morning, he would pretend everything was fine.
*************************
Two months later.
"Sir, get down!" Master Chief McDaniel called. But it was too late.
The explosion hurled Burke across the room. The world seemed to stop for just a second. There was a flash of bright light, then complete and utter silence.
Things slowly came back into focus. His head spun. There was a ringing in his ears.
He tried to roll over, but couldn't. The power armour felt so heavy. A searing pain started in his gut.
"Holy fucking shit," he vaguely heard someone shout. "Corpsman up!"
Burke tried to speak, but only spat blood all over the inside of his faceplate.
"Hold on, sir," a voice said. A young woman—or was it a man? You never could tell in the armour—held his shoulders down.
Behind her, Burke could see people scurrying around frantically.
Don't worry about me!he wanted to say, but could not form the words.Plug the gap with second squad and kill those fuckers!
His arms groped around for something to hold on to. He tried to stand.
Raising his head, he saw his armoured legs. They were covered in blood. And on the other side of the command center.
A corpsman was in his face. Commander Burke could see his mouth moving, but couldn't comprehend what he was saying. The corpsman reached into his pack and pulled out a SCMU, scanned the gaping wound in Burke's gut, then ripped it open, releasing hundreds of miniature robots and medical nanobots. Their job was to stabilise him and keep him from bleeding to death.
Burke suddenly felt faint. Maybe it was because he knew he was dying. Or maybe it was the suit injecting him with sedatives to keep him from going into shock.
For a brief instant, there was a brief burning sensation in his stomach as the nanobots began cauterising and suturing his wounds shut. Then his entire body went numb.
He tried to give his final orders. But his body failed him.
Before the blackness claimed him, one thought ran through his mind.
Maylene is going to kill me.
*************************
To be continued in part 3.
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Dramatis Personae
SOLAR Team 6, Alpha Platoon
Lieutenant Eric Burke – OIC
Sub-Lieutenant Ikuyo Kato – AOIC
Ensign Vincent Tran – Third Officer
Chief Sonya Hayes – Chief Petty Officer
HM1 Danielle Martin – Lead Petty Officer
CM2 Terry Brockelbank
GM2 Togo "Bunny" Easter
HT2 Chris "Crispy" Paymer
IS2 Anne Rhodes
TM2 Janine Traylor
DS3 Jedadiah "Wonder Boy" Gillispie
HM3 Joran "Ski" Walgroski
SM3 Herman "Zipper" Kitts
GM3 Andrea "Juggs" Stanley
SN Tatyana Kellerman
SN Alisha White
Fleet Admiral Bernadette von Luck – CO, Special Warfare Command, Sector 12
Lieutenant-General Aleksander Petrovich Kravchenko – Commanding General, VII MEF
Vice-Admiral Tobias N'Genge – CO, Task Force 114
Brigadier-General Khalid Ibrahim – Deputy Commanding General, VII MEF
Captain Thomas Harrison – CO, Naval Special Warfare Group One
Commander Maylene Torres – CO, VFVA-221 "Heaven's Fury"
Commander Chuck Stickle – CO, SOLAR Team 6
Master Chief Warren McDaniel – Command Master Chief, SOLAR Team 4
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Glossary of Terms
AD – Air Defense
AOIC – Assistant Officer in Charge
BDU – Battle Dress Uniform, the familiar camouflage uniform worn while on duty. Rendered largely ineffective in combat in the age of power armour and full body armour, but still worn as the uniform of the day.
CAG – CO for a Sky Wing; the acronym stands for Commander, Air Group, an anachronism from when a naval aircraft carrier supported an air group instead of an air wing
CO – Commanding Officer
fit rep – Fitness Report
HUD – Heads-Up Display
IKC – Interstellar Knights Cross, the Alliance's highest military award
LPO – Lead Petty Officer
LZ – Landing Zone
MEF – Marine Expeditionary Force
OIC – Officer in Charge
SCMU – Self-Contained Medical Unit
sit rep – Situation Report
Sky Wing – Fighter and tactical spacecraft detachment assigned to a deep space carrier
SOLAR – Space, Ocean, Land, AtmospheRe; special operations troopers, direct descendants of the Navy SEALs
third-O – Third officer; in a SOLAR team, this is often an officer on their first operational deployment who is third in command of a platoon, but is there primarily to learn the ropes of command
TSMC – Terran Space Marine Corps
TSN – Terran Space Navy
VFVA – Space navy squadron designation for a virtual reality attack/strike fighter squadron
XO – Executive officer
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A note on Navy Enlisted Rates and Ranks
Enlisted personnel in the Navy are assigned a rating which indicates their job specialty and a rate that indicates their rank. In Navy-speak, enlisted sailors are often addressed as a combination of their rating and their rank. For instance, GM2 refers to a Gunner's Mate, Second Class. Officers do not have a rating.
Non-commissioned officers in the Navy are called petty officers. They are the equivalent of sergeants in the Army, Marines or Air Force. The lowest ranking is the petty officer, third class. Next up are the petty officers second and first class. The senior NCOs are the chief petty officers which are no longer addressed by their rate, but simply as Chief, Senior Chief or Master Chief.
Some of the rates used in this story:
BM – Boatswain's Mate
CM – Construction Mechanic
DS – Data Systems
ET – Electronics Technician
GM – Gunner's Mate
HM – Hospital Corpsman
HT – Hull Technician
IS – Intelligence Specialist
SM – Signalman
TM – Torpedoman
Below the NCOs are enlisted sailors. These are usually new sailors and are assigned the following pay grades:
SN – Spaceman
SA – Spaceman Apprentice
SR – Spaceman Recruit
For the purposes of this story, the TSN uses a rank system similar to the US Navy for officers. From highest to lowest they are:
Grand Admiral
Fleet Admiral
Admiral
Vice-Admiral
Rear Admiral
Commodore
Captain
Commander
Subcommander
Lieutenant
Sub-Lieutenant
Ensign
Commodore and above are considered "flag" officers.
Another wonderful piece of writing. Please keep up the good work and do not make us wait so long for another submission.
a culture/civilization/a race of species like humans spending more than half of its waking hours --- out side of sleeping hours and recup hours --- doing nothing but loading ammunition, lubbing mighty killing machines, and preparing to out maneuver and blow up galactic ships of "bad guys" out of the sky/in vacuum space ....... like those 1940's black and white John Wayne movies about marauding, mindless killer indians and good christianly gentle little-house-on-the-prairie type settlers and cowboys carving our a peaceful living in "virgin territories".......... the notion that such culture, such a race, such a species, such a civilization has become a space-faring one..... it is total nonsense. <p>
oh, yes, I've not forgotten: during those few hours, days, or weeks when those heroes and heroines have to replace their missing limbs with prothetics, they have star-crossed, romeo-juliet type romance, too, yes! <p>
honest to Jesus step brother, Satan, I love romance AND science fiction; and if you could blend them well, nothing beats them..... but this visuality of perpetual battles by heroic men and women for freedom, liberty, and righteouness against mindless evil doers .... it is surely no more than just vomit stuff. it is upper-elementary school mentality. upper elementary school mentality never left behind even in our grown up phases, that is... <p>
harsh story-plot criticism notwithstanding, the author HLD IS A GOOD WRITER. have read one of two his his/her stories and have found the writing, as a technical feat, enjoyable...
This ranks up with every action thriller that I've ever read! WOW! Where's Chapter 3!!!!
i havn't even read the story yet, though i have every confidence that it will be amazing. Just wanted to say however, thank you for releasing another bit of work. Your work is seriously publishable quality, so every time you have new work come out, well...its always amazing. i check nearly every day for new stuff, almost never comes up, when when it does, like today, in for a real treat. thank you for writing!
I'm loving this story and I hope you won't make your readers wait too long for the next chapter! :)