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An Uneasy Alliance
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An Uneasy Alliance Copyright © 2021 by Variant Publications
Book design and layout copyright © 2021 by JN Chaney
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living, dead, or undead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from JN Chaney.
www.jnchaney.com
www.jonathanbrazee.com
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Contents
Glossary
Previously in Sentenced to War . . .
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Acknowledgments
Connect with J.N. Chaney
Connect with Jonathan P. Brazee
Join the Conversation
About the Authors
Glossary
AGMS: Anti-G Straining Maneuvers
AIW: Association of Independent Worlds
ASAP: As Soon As Possible
BC: the digital currency for most nations
BOCT: Benevolent Order of Crystal Technicians
Bronze Nova: the third-highest medal in the Union military
CCR-32 Didactic Interface: the AI implanted into the Marines’ heads.
Cerrocrete: a very strong futuristic concrete
CG: Commanding General
CO: Commanding Officer
COH: Congress of Humanity, the highest authority of mankind
CST: Combat Simulation Trainer
D-5 Cord: an explosive-saturated cord
DC/Direct Combat: Marines such as infantry, recon mech combat engineers, who will face the enemy in direct combat.
DI: Drill Instructor
Dykstra: a heavy sniper rifle
E-Club: Enlisted Club where the lowest three ranks can hang out, drink, and eat.
ECR: Effective Casualty Radius. The radius from a detonation within which will produce 50% casualties
EMP: Electro-magnetic Pulse. Will shut down all electronics within range
EOE: End of Enlistment
EVA: Extravehicular Activity
FTL: Faster Than Light, a starship drive
Gold Nova: the second highest medal in the Union military forces
G-Loc: G-force induced loss of consciousness
Goundpounders: slang for infantry
HE: High Explosive
Host: the military arm of the Frisian Mantle, a sometime ally/enemy of the Perseus Union
Karnan: Nickname for the hyper-augmented soldiers from the MDS
KIA: Killed in Action
Leaches: Military slang for civilians
M49 Assault Rifle: the standard weapon of the Union Marines. It fires a 2mm high-velocity dart.
M-102 Nellis: the Marine Corps’ main sniper rifle
M-133: a heavy weapon fired by mech Marines
MF-30: a standard issue handgun
MDS: Manifest Destiny Sphere
MilDes: Military Designator
MilDes Ninety-nine/Ninety-nine: essentially indentured servants in uniform
MMCS: Marine Mechanical Combat Suit
MP: Military Police
MPT: Military Placement Test
NCO: Non-commissioned Officer. The middle two ranks of enlisted Marines
NCOIC: Non-commissioned Officer in Charge
NM: Neuro-mapping
NVD: Night Vision Device
Omega Division/OD: the secret police and spy agency of the Union
Optisight: a flexible optical tube
PAL-3: Personal Armor, Light 3: the standard body armor for an infantry Marine
PAL-5: Personal Armor, Light 5. The standard body armor of recon Marines and Raiders.
Paladin: a large Centaur heavy mech unit, similar to a light tank
PFC: Private First Class
Phoenix MG-3 Incendiary Mine: a small grenade that can burn through most substances
Plastiderm: a synthetic skin that is used in medical procedures
PN: Platinum Nova the highest military award in the Perseus Union military
Poolee: someone who is committed to the Corps but who is not yet been sworn in as a recruit
PQ: Personality Quotient. Used to determine the human characteristics of some AIs
PUNS: Perseus Union Naval Ship
Raider: part of Recon, but with more combat-focused missions instead of surveillance
Recon: Reconnaissance Marine
Riever: a smaller Centaur mech unit, similar to a Marine Raider or reconnaissance Marine.
Secdrones: Security drones used by the police
SFC: Sergeant First Class
SNCO: Staff Non-commissioned Officer. The highest three ranks among enlisted Marines.
SOP: Standard Operating Procedure
Syksky: a deep-fried bread stuffed with spiced meat and vegetables
VGW: Veterans of Galaxal Wars
WIA: Wounded in Action
XM-554: a more powerful missile designed to have more punch
XO: Executive Officer, the #2 person in the unit.
Yellowjacket: a shoulder-launched missile
Yellowshirt: a Navy sailor charged with moving people and goods around a flight line.
Previously in Sentenced to War . . .
The war with the Centaurs, the first intelligent race known to humanity, is not going well. Mortality rates among human fighters are high, and volunteers are not enough to replace those fallen. In the Perseus Union, where the draft is illegal, the government starts an alternative method to fill the ranks—those breaking the laws are conscripted into the Marines and Navy.
Reverent Pelletier is convic
ted of a traffic violation, and three weeks later he’s sworn into the Corps. As a Marine Raider, Rev’s augmentations make him faster and stronger, and they provide enhanced senses. Included in the augmentation is an AI “battle buddy” named Punch, implanted into Rev’s brain to help him become a more capable fighter. Humanity is hesitant to accept human augmentation, which was essentially banned after two devastating wars with altered human beings, but with the fate of humanity at stake, a blind eye is turned to the process.
The Marines on Safe Harbor serve in the regimental system, so Rev will serve in the same unit as those he went through boot camp with. He bonds with eight other recruits, and they form a posse, becoming lifelong friends. One of them, Tomiko Reiser, accompanies him to his first assignment as a Marine Raider.
Rev is quickly thrust into combat. During his first engagement, by both luck and audacity, he manages to kill a Centaur paladin, which is comparable to a medium tank. The battle, however, is lost, and the regiment is decimated.
More battles follow, some more successful than others. During one, Rev and Tomiko discover a Centaur body, a rarity as the enemy’s vehicles always self-destruct to avoid capture. This is an important discovery and could change the course of the war.
Not all humans are behind the defense. The Children of Angels believe the Centaurs have arrived to elevate humanity to the next level of existence, and to fight them is to thwart God’s will. When they begin to actively cooperate with the Centaurs, the rest of humanity has to step in. During an operation against the cult, Rev loses an arm while saving the life of a child and is offered something other than a typical prosthesis. The Integrated Hoplological Bionic Unit (IBHU) is a powerful weapons system that he will operate as if it were his natural arm. It is cutting edge technology.
Now considered a sentient weapons system, Rev is thrust back into combat. Because of his successes and efficiency, more Marines who’d lost arms in combat are recruited into the program. With the Children of Angels defeated, the tide of the war against the Centaurs is shifting.
The Centaurs attempt a final major offensive. Safe Harbor is one of the planets invaded, and the Marines fight a desperate battle to save their home.
The Centaurs are thrown off Safe Harbor, and while there are some heavy losses throughout the galaxy, the Centaurs perform a surgical strike on Earth. Anxious to limit damage to the Mother, the Congress of Humanity decides to send in elite teams from the Union and the Manifest Destiny Sphere, who have their own super soldier counterpart to the IBHU Marines.
Across the Centaur landing sites, these human strike teams quickly take down the Centaurs. Rev, who is the point Marine at Machu Picchu, senses that something is off, and instead of killing the unresisting Centaurs there, discovers that they have set up devices that will destroy the Earth if all of their teams are eliminated. They are holding the planet hostage.
But Rev and a Manifest Destiny lieutenant avert Earth’s destruction. The war is truly over, and as the situation starts to return to normal, the military forces are being reduced. Rev’s own commitment is over, but there is concern over what to do with the IBHU Marines. Rev decides that he doesn’t want to leave the Marines. He’s found his true calling and cannot imagine giving it up for civilian life again.
But Rev won’t be spending the next three years on Safe Harbor. Along with almost all of the IBHU Marines, he is offered a position in the Home Guard, the Congress of Humanity’s military arm. The IBHU Marines will join the elite of the other militaries in the service of humanity at large.
And so begins the next entry in the Sentenced to War Saga, An Uneasy Alliance.
1
The Centaur paladin crested the rise, its pedestal traversing to bring its cannon to bear.
Staff Sergeant Reverent Pelletier, Perseus Union Marine Corps, darted forward and closed the distance. He raised Pashu, his IBHU, from where she hung from his left shoulder where once his organic arm was connected.
He didn’t have to activate a mechanical trigger of any kind. He merely “thought” it to fire, exactly as if he were pointing. The braided meson beam shot downrange just as the paladin’s cannon zeroed in on Rev. There was a burst of blue as the beam hit the paladin, followed a moment later by a spectacular blast as the enemy armor self-detonated.
Rev spun around, the first paladin forgotten. At 319 meters, this one was too far for Pashu’s cannon, but Rev was well within the enemy’s range, and he’d have to run too far while exposed to get within his firing envelope before being nailed himself.
He knew his only option was his Morays. He started sprinting to his right as he fired three of his six missiles, each one a quarter-second apart. The paladin reacted, firing its self-defense belt, destroying the first missile and deflecting the second. But before it could fire a second belt, the third missile hit home.
A Moray was never a sure kill against a paladin, but this time, the missile burned through the enemy armor, setting off a catastrophic explosion, the pedestal cartwheeling thirty meters into the air before it came down with a thud and a cloud of dust.
Rev spun around again. Right in front of him, the cannon muzzle looking huge as Rev could almost look down it, the riever relentlessly closed the distance to him . . . and if he could see down the muzzle, he was within its sights. Rev dove to the ground as the blast fired where he’d been standing an instant before. Firing a Moray from the prone position was likely to drop the missile into the dirt before it could lock on and fly, so with a twitch of his shoulder, he switched Pashu to the 20mm cannon mounted beneath his main gun. Before the rieiver could reacquire him as a target, he fired fifteen jacketless rounds within a period of less than a second.
With every five rounds a tracer, he watched them cross the intervening space and slam into the riever. The thing’s twelve legs collapsed, and the main body smacked into the ground.
It didn’t self-detonate, but Rev knew it was dead. He stood up and brushed the dirt off of his front with his right hand as he surveyed the damage.
“Cease fire, cease fire on Range four-zero-nine.”
Rev turned back to where a door was opening from the underground range bunker. A smiling Daryll, the Sieben tech rep for the Camp Nguyen IBHUs, came jogging up to him.
“How did it feel?”
Rev rotated Pashu, trying to detect the same pulling sensation he’d experienced since the Centaur invasion. There wasn’t anything.
“Pretty good. Feels like when she was brand new.”
“Told you the new secondary harness was going to do the trick. The only thing better was going to be taking out the old and putting in the new model, but that would have taken another two months before you could start using it.”
Which wasn’t going to work, not with Rev’s orders to the Home Guard, the combined force that protected the home system.
“What about when you fired the twenty? How was the recoil?” Daryll asked as he took out his field scanner.
Rev had been using a .50 cal coilgun as his projectile weapon, which packed a pretty good punch in its own right. But the modified 20 mm cannon was finally finished, and the brass thought it best if he showed up at the Home Guard maxed out in firepower. There had been some concern that with the degradation of his support harnesses, the recoil of the twenty would be too strong even with the neodymium suppression system installed.
“Pretty good. Feels fine, in fact.”
“You say the word, and we’ll put back the fifty. You leave in three weeks, right?”
Rev nodded as he swung Pashu through her range of motion.
“OK, then, we’ve still got time. So, what do you think?” Daryll asked.
Having a 20 mm cannon instead of a .50 cal was pretty impressive, and every Marine in history loved things that made a bigger bang. The only downside was that he’d be sacrificing over a hund
red rounds in his combat load.
But I sure don’t need to use as many, he told himself as he looked over to the dead riever.
“No, I’ll keep it.”
“I told Doctor C you’d say that, even if your shoulder was screaming at you to go back to the fifty.”
“You’re beginning to understand the Marine mind well, Daryll.”
“Is your shoulder screaming at you, though? Between you and me?”
“No, it really does feel OK.”
Which was a relief. He’d been suffering during the entire fight for Safe Harbor. His original harness had started to break free, and the connection to his shoulder stub hadn’t been designed correctly to take the constant beating and stress he was putting on it. Right now, though, he almost felt human again.
“What about Lieutenant Macek and the other two? They getting these mods, too?”
“All four of you are. Six of you, if you count everyone. You’re going to be a long way from home, so we don’t want anyone to start breaking down like you guys did. We just needed you to test the mods first.”
“So, I’m the guinea pig?”
“Hell, Rev. You’re IBHU Number 1. You’ve always been the guinea pig.”