Primal Link Read online

  Primal Link

  Justin Sloan

  Linton Bowers

  Enter Tree Press

  Copyright © 2020 by Justin Sloan and Linton Bowers.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Welcome

  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

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  And don’t miss PRIME EVIL:

  1

  With a deep breath, I prepared to enter the training simulator. Excitement for the mission to find the lost SEALs threatened to make me act rashly, but this was my opportunity to prove myself. Two teams had been sent to investigate strange signals on an alien planet… both teams vanished.

  I had to keep my calm. I had to ensure they knew I could hack it, to hang with the big boys and girls. It wasn’t every day a non-aug Marine like me got to go to an alien planet for a rescue mission. Steeling my nerves, I breathed out, then connected.

  Complete blackness of the loading screen faded to reveal the sand-covered landscape of a battlefield. Before I could move, the ground shook. An explosion sounded as the ground shook again and I fell back. The force sent me rolling over rock, and I slid to a stop against the legs of another Marine.

  “You’ll have to do better than that, Corporal Goshawk.” With a meaty hand, Standish snatched me up by the back of my flak jacket and flung me to my feet. “If you want to help win this, you need to do as I say and keep your eyes open.”

  “I heard you the first time, Lance Corporal.” I spat out dirt and rocks as I spoke.

  “Then why do you have a mouth full of grit and sand? Doesn’t matter. We need to move.”

  Without waiting to see if I was following, Standish turned and ran. As an enhanced Marine, a trot for him was a full sprint for me. A hundred yards in, and I already had to fight for every breath while struggling to maintain the pace.

  A sharp whistling sound grew out of the air right before another mortar hit the ground to my right. The explosive was far enough away that I was able to keep my footing, but the concussive force still hit my chest and rattled my teeth. The resulting spray of dirt blinded me momentarily, and fear swept through me. Fueled by my need to find safety, I pushed on through the burning pain in my legs and lungs.

  The cloud of dust kicked up by the mortar obscured Standish and the rest of the squad from my view. I kept on pushing myself as hard as I could. If I could impress these infantry Marines, they might give me a recommendation for augmentation. As a radio operator, I wouldn’t have to change my MOS—Military Occupational Specialty—to infantry, but I could serve with the infantry grunts on the battlefield. I wanted to be as strong and fast as they were. The augmentation process was basically bottled superpowers and, for me, a lifelong dream come true. The product of too many comic books and cartoons when I was growing up, I suppose.

  The dust cloud cleared and my squad came into view. Standish was the last one in line and the closest Marine to me. Like the other grunts, he was running at a full sprint and gaining distance at an alarming rate. My heart sank at the realization that I could never catch up to them. They’d done the unthinkable and left me behind. It was clear they didn’t see me as one of them. Somehow, I had to compensate for my lack of speed and strength. To prove myself.

  Two choices lay before me. I could give up and stop running while the rest of the squad finished the training exercise. The thought of resting my legs and catching my breath was appealing, and I gave it a moment of serious consideration.

  “Forget that,” I growled.

  Despite pushing on, my pace slowed to a trot, and my breathing grew heavier. Keeping up was never a viable option. Fortunately, bullets could move much faster than me. I brought my M-114 rifle to my shoulder and slowed more. Moving at a quick walk allowed me to aim well enough to hit my target, or give them something to think about, while still advancing.

  The enemy, another squad of Marines, were entrenched behind a berm that stretched far to the left and right. Because of time constraints, we ended up rushing head-on instead of trying to pin them down and flank their position. It was a sound tactic for Marines capable of running twenty-five miles an hour for over two hours. For them, the distance might as well have been a hundred yards. For me, without augmentation, it was as rough as it sounded.

  A head popped up, and I squeezed the trigger. The rifle bucked slightly as a three-round burst of hot lead zoomed down-range. The first round impacted the dirt in front of the head. The next two hit the back of a running Marine who stepped into the line of fire narrowly missing being hit by the first round. He jerked twice then fell forward. The tan clad Marine shattered into a million blue cubes signaling his virtual death.

  I came to a stop and lowered my weapon while staring in horror at the spot where the Marine had been. If this were a real combat situation, I would have just killed one of my brothers. The rules coming into the simulator were clear: any violation would result in failure. Friendly fire was an instant Game Over.

  The world around me shattered like the fallen Marine had. Black nothing surrounded me for a moment before they pulled me from the sim. The helmet split and receded, followed by the haptic sensor suit attached to my body. All of it went back into the table I lay on. It rotated, changing my orientation from horizontal to vertical. The straps holding me down released, and I stepped off.

  “What the fuck do you think you were doing, Marine?” Sergeant Lupita snarled as he stomped over from his own table. “My squad was undefeated until you pulled that bullshit.” He stopped inches from me and looked down with murder in his eyes. “What do you have to say for yourself, you piece of shit, POG?” POG was short for person-other-than-grunt, and I’d more than lived ‘up’ to the mantle.

  I looked away, unable to keep eye contact with the intense man. “I’m sorry, Sergeant, but I fucking had ‘em. If you would have kept my line of fire clear, I could have...”

  He jabbed my chest with his finger. “Who the fuck gave you permission to think? You had one job, Devil Dog.” He said the title with contempt. “Stay out of the fucking way and let real Marines do our jobs. If we needed to phone home, we would have told you to put the fucking quarter in the machine.”

  “Take it easy, Sergeant,” Standish said as he pulled me back and stepped between us. “Don’t expect a POG to be a Super-Marine on h
is first try. He fucked up, but you didn’t exactly give him enough guidance, either.”

  “You trying to get busted down again, Standish?”

  “Do what you feel you have to, Sergeant. Don’t bother me one way or another.”

  The big Sergeant growled, then shot me a gaze full of venom and malice. “You better get this POG up to snuff before the next sim, Standish. You want to waste your time trying to be his hero, then he’s your responsibility from now until I can get rid of his useless ass.”

  Lupita spun on his heels and marched away. Standish and I watched in silence as he barked at a couple Marines while exiting the room. My jaw clenched in anger while I allowed a moment to fantasize about punching the massive man in the face.

  “Don’t let him get to you, Corporal,” Standish said, turning to face me. “Lupita forgets what life was like before he was augmented.”

  “He’s right about me fucking up,” I said. “I should have paid closer attention to what everyone else in front of me was doing.”

  “That, and you shouldn’t have fired at all with Marines in front of you.” The left side of Standish’s face turned up into a half-smile. “I wish I would have thought to put a bullet in Lupita’s back, though. If it were an actual bullet, I would go dig it out of him and have you autograph the damn thing. The best thing you can do is learn from this and move on.” He looked up as the tip of his tongue protruded from his lips. “Maybe you should search the archives for Private Penchant’s trial sim. That kid was as dumb as a box of rocks, but he was a natural when it came to real combat. He passed on his first run and was issued his augs shortly after.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “You get two more chances to show the world what you can do. There’s still hope, Goshawk.”

  “Thanks, Standish. I’ll look those clips up right away.”

  “Hey, old man,” a Marine I didn’t know said as he stepped up to us. “You hear yet?”

  “Hear what?” Standish asked. “And stop calling me that. I already told you about that shit, Kopf.”

  Kopf chuckled. “We have a destination. The ship is changing course. We’ve been able to locate the planet where we believe the SEALs disappeared.”

  “The SEALs?” I asked, a bit giddy at the idea of being the team to go after them.

  Kopf grunted. “I know they vanished on an OP, but… come on. They’re probably just out there killing more bugs.”

  Most of us had been in the Wudanai bug wars, for better or worse. Marines seemed to have gotten the worse, mostly, while SEALs had led the inner assault and left with most of the glory.

  A loud shrieking whistle filled the vessel, signaling a ship-wide announcement. “Attention all hands,” the Captain of the ship said through the intercom. “The Lincoln has received orders. We’ll be jumping in fifteen minutes. All essential personnel to your stations. Everyone else, follow lockdown protocols. I repeat…”

  We all moved as the Captain repeated his statement. While most of the sailors on the ship had jobs and places to go during a jump, most of the Marines had only one place to go: back to our berth to strap into our bunks and wait.

  Marine country, the area of the ship we occupied, became a bustle of activity as Marines rushed to get to their assigned bunks and strap in. The sim trainer was close to my berth, so I was strapped in with eleven minutes to spare.

  Each bunk came with a set of holo-glasses, which allowed us to review mission briefings, watch training vids, or stream DOD-approved entertainment videos. As I waited, I surfed to the training archive and pulled up the footage Standish recommended. With the help of the audio buds in my ears, I didn’t hear the announcement for the jump. I noticed it as a sensation of sliding sideways off my bunk. It hit me hard and caused me to become queasy. Then it was over, and the ship was traveling in hyperspace.

  As we traveled, I watched Penchant take off running behind the augmented grunts. He seemed to quickly realize the futility of trying to keep up. He made a sharp right turn and sprinted for all he was worth. The Marine’s plan wasn’t too different from mine. He lifted his rifle to his shoulder and provided covering fire while advancing at a quick walk. Unlike me, he moved far enough to the side to ensure none of his squad would be in his line of fire.

  Penchant was halfway to the berm when an Augmented Marine leaped impossibly high, landing in a crouch right in Penchant’s line of fire. The Marine let his weapon fall on its sling and ran at full speed. He hit the berm and rolled over it. His weapon came up in the blink of an eye, and he sent a round into the side of an enemy Marine fighting off one of Penchant’s squad-mates. He moved right away, stepping through the fading blue cubes and firing into the next Marine in line.

  When it was all said and done, he’d racked up one-third of the total kills, and his squad was victorious. The after-action report filed by the squad leader came up after the vid. The man claimed not to have seen any non-auged Marine do as well ever before, and recommended Penchant for immediate augmentation. It was the outcome I had hoped for.

  I was halfway through a movie about teens going on an adventure to solve a mystery that would get their parents’ jobs back when a call came through.

  “Corporal,” Lupita’s deep voice boomed through my earbuds. “I’m stuck with your ass for this OP. Once we return to normal space, get your ass to the armory.” He cut the call before I could respond.

  A moment later, the sensation of sliding off my bunk returned. I undid my straps and ran for the armory. My second chance had come, even if it was different from what I had expected. I would do everything in my power to prove my worth.

  2

  The Hercules-class dropship was a marvelous machine. Unless you were strapped in during atmospheric entry.

  My hands squeezed the crash webbing wrapped around my torso so tight that my knuckles cracked. The dropship moved with all the grace of a ballerina when in deep space, but in the atmosphere, it shook like a baby's rattle.

  Not long after the shake, rattle, and roll, the dropship calmed and a couple of deep breaths helped to release the tension I felt. Using the screen attached to my arm, I pulled up the video we had watched during the mission briefing.

  “I don’t know what the hell is happening here,” a man with a salt-and-peppered high-and-tight haircut said as he bent over to look into the camera. As he finished the first sentence, a gun barked three times with three corresponding flashes of light highlighting the left side of the speaker’s face. “Shortly after arriving, these…” his eyes darted from left to right before returning to the camera. “These creatures attacked…”

  The image became a field of white and black as static poured from the speakers. Pixels cleared enough to see a figure moving back while firing, shouting hysterically. A large, gray blur dashed across the screen. Then static again.

  I stared, waiting, then jumped as the screen shook heavily. More screams followed and then blood splattered.

  Finally, the shaking stopped, giving way to the image of splattered blood again. Finally, before it stopped, two smaller forms zipped across the screen in the opposite direction from the first big blur.

  My stomach twisted, a lump forming in my throat. This was… disturbing, to say the least. If they’d been part of some horror film, I wouldn’t have been affected at all. But, this was no movie.

  Whatever attacked those SEALs was probably waiting for us on the surface of the planet we were about to land on. The next person’s blood to spill could be ours.

  “Get me an open line to the boat, Goshawk,” Sergeant Lupita snapped.

  Radio operators of old carried devices that transmitted and received radio waves. The job evolved as our technology had. The duties of my colleagues and me included data transmission, incorporating tight beams for direct connections, or using a ship’s built-in Li-Fi for transmitting data through light to everyone’s equipment. The latter I did to fulfill the Sergeant’s request. Just because I didn’t like the man didn’t mean I wouldn’t do my job.

  “You’re on with t
he ship’s operator, Sergeant.”

  As soon as he connected to the line through his helmet’s heads-up display, HUD, I disconnected. One perk of the job was a high security clearance allowing me to listen to anything the Sergeant might say. Most radio operators didn’t listen in as it was an unofficial taboo.

  Instead, I watched the video transmitted by the SEALS again. An involuntary shiver ran through me as I shut off the video. The image was too grainy to get anything useful from it and dwelling on what I saw wouldn’t help at all.

  “Ensure you’re all securely fastened in back there,” a voice said over general comms. “We’re setting down in three mikes.”

  “Hey, Corporal,” the Marine sitting on the other side of Standish said. “Is that the vid from the SEAL’s mission? Can I get a copy?”

  “Hook a brother up, Devil Dog,” the Marine next to me said.

  “Me being Intel, you not—”

  “But, giving this out to augmented Marines could go a long way toward them being willing to help you look good enough to earn your augs. That’s only my opinion,” Standish said while keeping his eyes on the screen attached to his wrist.

  My mouth opened to object, but nothing came out.

  Standish had a good point, and no one would know. A Marine had to do what a Marine had to do. I transmitted the videos to the other two. Getting on their good side was a must. Having these Marines help me get through this mission would look good on me. That was one argument I couldn’t refute.