Risingshadow has the honour of publishing a Promise Paen Short by W. C. Bauers.
About the author:
W. C. Bauers works in sales and publishing during the day and writes military science fiction and space opera at night. His first novel, UNBREAKABLE, was an Amazon and B&N "SF/F Best Book of the Month" pick for January 2015. His second, INDOMITABLE, releases July 2016.
Bauers's interests include Taekwondo, military history, all varieties of Munchkin, and drinking hot caf. He lives in the Rocky Mountains with his wife, three boys, and the best rescue in the world.
About Indomitable:
Promise Paen, commander of Victor Company's mechanized armored infantry, is back for another adventure protecting the Republic of Aligned Worlds.
Lieutenant Paen barely survived her last encounter with the Lusitanian Empire. She's returned home to heal. But the nightmares won't stop. And she's got a newly reconstituted unit of green marines to whip into shape before they deploy. If the enemies of the RAW don't kill them first, she just might do the job herself.
Light-years away, on the edge of the Verge, a massive vein of rare ore is discovered on the mining planet of Sheol, which ignites an arms race and a proxy war between the Republic and the Lusitanians. Paen and Victor Company are ordered to Sheol, to help hold the planet at all costs.
On the eve of their deployment, a friendly fire incident occurs, putting Paen's career in jeopardy and stripping her of her command. When the Lusitanians send mercenaries to raid Sheol and destabilize its mining operations, matters reach crisis levels. Disgraced and angry, Promise is offered one shot to get back into her mechsuit. But she'll have to jump across the galaxy and possibly storm the gates of hell itself.
Links:
GUEST POST: Do Better - A Promise Paen Short by W. C. Bauers
This is Whiskey Four-Echo, over.
Four-Echo copies, over.
Roger that. Four-Echo, out.
She’d mentally rehearsed her new unit designation dozens of times, in every conceivable iteration, hoping she wouldn’t forget her position in Whiskey Company, fourth platoon, if and when the bullets and beams started flying. What if the skipper gave an order, in the heat of the moment, and she froze? What if her mistake got someone killed? What if she didn’t have it in her to kill another living soul.
What if?
Needing a distraction, Promise tripped-checked her gear, and then cycled the capacitor on her Tri-Barrel Pulse Rifle, all-the-while maintaining muzzle awareness. The Tri-B quivered in her hand like a sympathetic string. She envied its singular purpose. Weps didn’t think about muzzle awareness or targets downrange, or if they’d have the guts to pull the trigger as the enemy closed the range. Molycircs and fusion cells didn’t contemplate the afterlife. They did their job, and when they failed to perform an armortech replaced them.
Reflexively, Promise’s hand snaked around the rifle’s pistol grip and took position. Then it occurred to her that the rifle was starting to feel like an extension of her arm, almost like it’d always been there. The thought put her at ease but only for the briefest moment before a scowl consumed her face. Finger off the trigger, P. Wait…until you’re ready to destroy something, okay? Relax, Marine. You can do better.
Marine. She hadn’t been one long. Truth be told, she didn’t feel completely worthy of the word.
Suddenly she was back at Boot Camp. Mechsuit Indoctrination Training, day one.
She stood in the front row of her training class in the midst of a massive hangar. The class was circled around a single suit of mechanized armor. Promise stood directly in front of the mechsuit, exactly three meters away.
“Think it’s on?” said a recruit nearby.
“Nah,” said another from the row behind her. “No driver, see? Mechsuits aren’t allowed to self-drive. It’s against the Regs.”
“Excuse me,” said a timid voice. “Just behind you. Mind if I step through?” A short, thickset man pushed past Promise and toward the suit of armor. He circled the mechsuit, inspecting it from its eyeless head to metaled toe. What he was looking for Promise couldn’t tell. He wore loose-fitting coveralls stained every hue of brown, interspersed with splotches of tar and lubricant, and he smelled like a closed up maintenance hangar.
Raised silvered scars crisscrossed the tops of the man hands. Eyes like shards of glass surveyed the hangar. He mumbled something, and then began a lecture on mechsuit mechanics. Promise quickly wrote him off as humble tech, certainly not of the warrior breed. What did he know that she needed to learn? Sure, he understood mechsuit guts and molycircs and how to repair wounded peristeel. But he’d never driven a suit in combat; never fired up a fusion plant knowing he might die with articulating plates of battle armor fused to his spine. Promise yawned, rocked on her heels, and then she retrieved her datapad from a thigh pocket to check her queue. A slight breezed stirred her short-cropped hair. From the corner of her eye she saw the armortech peel out of his coveralls and move in her direction. She didn’t stop to wonder what he was doing.
“What’s caught your eye, private? Obviously, I haven’t.”
Slowly, she looked up to face the man, but her eyes froze before reaching his. The deck seemed to shift beneath her feet. The glittery on his now revealed tan utilities was the last thing she’d expected: ribbons and Valor-Vs and two wounded-in-combat pins, the humble adornments of a harbinger of death. The chevrons and rockers of a Marine Corps Gunnery Sergeant rode high on both shoulders.
“Private, your assumptions will get you killed. Can you do better?” The question lacked an edge but it still knifed deep into her gut, and then it cut upward, disemboweling her pride.
The gunnery sergeant’s gaze swept the hangar of recruits. “The gears of war are often greased by the bloody assumptions of fools.” Now his voice ricocheted across the hangar’s expanse. “Live smart. Look for the unseen.” His gaze returned to her. “I need a volunteer. Can do?”
Her mouth went dry. He gestured to the mechsuit at his side, which opened from shank to shoulder. Tiny rows of pinprick lights illuminated the suit’s internal structure. “Any takers?” A flash of disappointment arched across his face before he looked away.
A dozen hands went up.
Promise dropped her head to her chest. I’m totally blowing it. Please, give me another chance. Please. She opened her mouth to speak.
“You, there. Yes, you, private. Front and center.”
Her name was Sanaa and she looked like she was about to die.
“What’s that? I can’t hear you.” He cupped a hand to his ear. Smiled. “Forgotten our voices, have we?” The gunny pursed his lips and then returned his gaze to Promise. “Shame.”
Pull it together, P. What is wrong with you? She wanted to do better, hoped she could do better, even if doing better scared her to death, and the Marine before her scared the ever-loving ‘verse out of her. She just had to find her voice and...
“Gunnery Sergeant, I’d—I’d like to volunteer.” Promise stepped out of line and came to attention. “My attitude was...piss poor, sir.”
“And?” The gunny narrowed his eyes.
“My apologies, gunnery sergeant. With your permission,” Promise said, nodding to the driverless mechsuit, “this recruit would like to do better.”