Wings of the Magpie: Space Operettas Read Online Free Page B

sighted, the three ships slowed to cruising speed.
    The Badger worldship, gleaming silver and moonsized, dwarfed the three Terran warships. Crimson fire belched from its engines pushed it along, leaving behind a glowing radioactive wake. Plasma cannon covered its surface, and, as the three Terran ships approached, erupted into a deadly fusillade that outshined even the brightest stars.
    It was the Butler , in her position as pack leader, that caught the brunt of this salvo. Unable to react in time, her hull cleaved in two, vomiting hundreds of pink and brown bodies into the cold and unforgiving void. The Butler ’s Vat-Brains screamed, then fell silent as vacuum encompassed the ship, turning her instantly into a charnel house. Horrified and mournful, the Vat-Brains aboard the Tiptree and the Russ pressed on in spite of the tragedy and their own damage, and moved immediately into evasive action, launching dozens of Tac-Nukes towards the Badger ship.
    As the Nukes impacted, flowers of silent orange flame covered the invader’s hull and several plumes of pale atmosphere vented into the void, dissipating like steam erupting from a teakettle. The Vat-Brains chirped and hummed in unanimous agreement; it was time to send in the Marines.
    ***
    …then just as quickly, opened her eyes.
    I awoke to red emergency lights and the shrill voice of emergency klaxons. Outside, I guessed, a battle was raging. I pressed the release on my suspension couch’s hatch, simultaneously disconnecting myself from the umbilicus cable, and tumbled out onto the metal deck. I tuned my Comms implant, hoping for news of our victory, only to discover that we’d lost the Butler with all hands, and that both the Russ and Tiptree had taken fire and suffered heavy losses. The Badger ship was crippled, burning, and leaking radiation. We were being sent in, along with a cadre of Grummands for fire support, to blow the main reactors and finish the job. This wasn’t going to be a mop-up, this was going to be messy.
    Around me, my comrades were climbing from their suspension chambers. Maybe it was just the lingering effect of morphinic hypersleep, but at that moment I had an epiphany. As I glanced around at the naked bodies of my companions (bodies, I might add, that I'd seen in a thousand different circumstances, at work and at play, in war and in respite), I realized that we were all more similar than different. Sure, there were minor things that set us apart, marked us as individuals: Gunny's flat, broad nose and metal-covered teeth; Poynter's pale, freckled face; Emerald's deep ebony skin; Pax, olive-toned and golden-eyed; Mills, with her heavily tattooed flesh; Lawrence's cherubic grin; even me, with my Comms augmentation and battle scars; these minor physical differences meant nothing. Instead, we were unified, all of us, by virtue of being female, Terran, and Marines. Each of us wore the long cesarean scar of our first breeding cycle; each of us bore the ceramic implants necessary for hypersleep and long-distance interstellar travel; each of us had the Terran Fleet Marine Corps crest electronically emblazoned on our shoulders, through it constantly receiving signals from the Tiptree , reminding us of our charge, our mission, our oath: Semper Fideles . It was in that moment that it became clear to me that the Pride of the 419th was more than a shallow title, it was a calling. We were, all of us, the best humanity had to offer, and its greatest hope for the future.
    We dressed in our coveralls without speaking, understanding that the ship’s emergency klaxons would drown out all but the most primitive of non-verbal communication, aware that we were going to be stepping out into a life-or-death firefight. We filed from the safe crèche of our ready room into the hangar where our fighting suits awaited, primed and ready for martial action.
    ***
    It was quieter in the hangar; the constant thrum and clang of machinery felt almost serene in cont rast with the