The Maggot Colony Read online

  It’s not his words, for they are simple in the extreme. Just his fucking presence. We come alive with the feeling to kill. It’s a good time to be alive.

  I would be lying if I didn’t finish the job and include this:

  Far across on the other side of the launch bay a man stares at me. I absolutely and completely have no clue what the expression on his face means, but I acknowledge it is there.

  He is stripped to the waist. Thin, no fat, but not skeletal. A sheen of sweat and oil covers his skin. A streaking nasty rash wraps around him like a whirlwind of pain and suffering. Surely the result of spending too much time in pathogen armor.

  Of course I know him. We all do. With the exception of Omen there isn’t a more storied marine in the force. He’d been with us at Tranquility’s End, his pathogen armor is still smoking from the beating it took. I wasn’t lying when I said it had been an honor to witness the most heroic act I could possibly imagine.

  Back in the day he’d been a part of Most Vicious. Fleet had broken them up and built 2nd Marine fire team Sect Now Venomous up around him. Rumors swirled that he wanted his old job back.

  The only reason he wasn’t going in with them now was because he’d evac’d off Tranquility’s End in the sync 30 minutes before our last haul out. His techs, who had busily been stripping him for space and downtime, were now hastily plating his armor back on, rubbing lubricants and salves into the dead spots on his arms and skin, trying to restore blood flow to the reddened splotches that cover him. He will surely lead the next wave that will be sent at the earliest second sync opportunity.

  I don’t need to be able to read his expression to know what he is thinking.

  He is Deamos. The personification of fear and terror on the battlefield. He has earned what I have not. And been denied what I have been given. He wants what I have taken–the place where he belongs and I do not–to be on the battlefield beside Most Vicious once again.

  He’s almost certainly an asshole, most men are, and there will surely be bad blood between us but he is a professional. He throws back his head, long curling blonde hair cascading around his shoulders and down his back.

  “Ayooooooooah,” he belts out a long bloodfreezing howl and raises his holocauster, First Strike inscribed on the firing barrel. Every groove of the lettering sculpted with extreme care and intense precision. The most precious expression of a soul.

  The men join in. A long slow howl lifts from the assembly as a pack mentality takes hold. Their voices full of belonging, brotherhood and a bunch of other things that are wholly alien and completely have no meaning to me.

  My turn. I’m the only one left. Everyone else is already aboard. What am I waiting for? I move towards the platform. Cautiously. So damn scared.

  That’s when I spot the kid.

  Fuck me.

  He hovered at the fringe, where the others couldn’t see. Dipping in and out of the darkness like a shadow. Desperately wanting to be a part of something, but afraid he didn’t belong. You know the feeling.

  Scarecrow little mother fucker. Raggedy ass pair of ripped shorts and a long sleeve shirt with a collar. Full captain insignia on the sleeve. Class A’s. Real military. Not some pogue playing pretend like the rest of us.

  Not that it matters, but it wasn’t stolen valor, and he wasn’t looting graves. Probably from a dead older brother, maybe his father.

  Though I wouldn’t blame him if he had been, it gets cold at night. I did far worse when I was his age.

  Not a damn wrinkle one in either of the rags he wore. Good taking care of. No way he was pressing that flea bag for a uniform. My guess is he probably was hanging out down near the generators or the engine room. Draping it over the reactor heat release pipes, shivering naked in the cold while letting his precious threads hang in the steam. I know how it’s done. I’ve been there myself.

  Who gives a shit about what he was wearing, I’ll tell you what is important.

  He stood by himself. More lesions on his face than a leper. Spine ramrod straight. His left arm held at attention. His right arm an empty sleeve fluttering next to his side. Amputee. What hell that kid had been through I can only imagine.

  He looked five, maybe six but he coulda been as young as eight maybe as old as twelve. Nutrition is so lousy and getting adequate calories is so hard to come by it’s difficult to tell. It’s especially hard on the really young.

  It’s not much but I stop my woe-is-me-shuffle and stand beside him.

  I searched for the right words.

  …

  Apparently I didn’t find them.

  I reached down and scooped up some of the gray medical shit the corpuscler had been spreading on my knee. With my finger I spread the goo in a thick line under his eye.

  “Warpaint.” I tell it like it is.

  His eyes grow wide.

  I made a fist. “Fuck yeah–” I caught myself before I called him ‘kid’.

  “Grim Sleeveless,” I say instead, giving him a callsign his dead mother would surely hate but I can hear his grandmother’s ghost cackle her approval.

  “Captain!” I raise my fist. “Of the Empty Sleeves Brigade!”

  We bump fists in salute.

  Kids not careful those eyes are going to bug right out of his head. With my thumb I dab a bit of the goo on the end of his nose. “Welcome to the Marines.”

  I didn’t think the kid could stand any straighter. He surprised me and managed to somehow. Fucking fire shone in that kid’s eyes. A toothy grin split across his face.

  “Uh… Six-by?”

  How the fuck did he know my name?

  “They’re waiting for you.”

  Oh. Shit.

  I must have stumbled because the corpuscler rights me, touches my chest, then my mouth with his fist. I stare back. I might be a little off.

  The corpuscler flashes to me again, he’s using the fingersign language we use to communicate on a tainted battlefield.

  “Am I breathing,” he says it this time.

  It wasn’t a question, but I answer it anyways. “Yeah, of course you’re breathing.” Dumb ass.

  He shakes his head, and flashes once more. Fist to chest, fist to mouth. Then flashes do you understand?

  Oops. I get it this time. He was asking me if I was breathing. Check. Breathing is one thing I can do.

  Feeling a little stupid, I flash back affirmative, then I copy.

  “Six-by is clear to jump!” He announces out loud.

  What? That was my medcheck? That’s it? That’s all?

  The corpuscler, he’s pointing at his patch. “My callsign is Leather Apron.” He says it like it means something.

  I try and walk. My knee won’t support my weight yet. Fuck it. I’ll walk with a limp. I won’t be the first.

  “Not to worry.” Leather Apron double taps his bitch tits. “Your leg is fine with me.”

  His tone is upbeat, almost jovial as he continues. “You need to see a traumist. I’ll talk to Whitechapel.” That word scares the shit out of me but I couldn’t tell you why. “Whitechapel’s gonna see The Light. I don’t know how yet, but he’s gonna try and jump the build order.”

  In the standard build order, blood wagons don’t come until the fifth sync or sometimes even later. Despite being a very unpopular strategy there are very good reasons for this.

  I must have looked unconvinced because Leather Apron’s tone sharpens considerably.

  “There’s gonna be blood wagon down there early. You hear me? This is important. You be there for it.”

  I will say this. Those little freaks are fucking hard core. That corpuscler–Leather Apron–acted like he’d follow me down to Debron IV, patching my knee all the way and muttering I really need to see a traumist soon.

  I hear a familiar tearing sound. I recognize that sound. I look down at my knee.

  What the fuck?

  The corpuscler is cross wrapping the stump and artificial substitute with duct tape.

  I must have had a quizzical exp
ression because he asks, “You want it to stay on don’t you?”

  I take back every nice thing I said about him.

  Damn quack.

  The mission objectives have been finalized, and the Apocalypse updated. Everything halts as to a man we all take a moment to read Fleet’s apocalypse.

  Scout the planet surface.

  Establish a base of operations.

  Construct an extractor.

  Construct a gassery.

  Begin mining materials and energy.

  Construct a garrison before Thredfall.

  Protect the vurkers (the vurkers must survive!).

  Until the next sync, you have your orders, it’s been a helluva war,

  –Fleet

  There you have it. Pretty standard stuff. Build a barracks and get a supply chain going. The first day planetside is always the easiest. It’s not until after the thred falls that things get hairy.

  “The Trumpets are up!” Couldn’t tell you who said that.

  The lander’s lights cycle from red to soft blue. It’s starting the transport sequence.

  My incompetent ass needs to quit fucking around. It’s showtime. I have only a few seconds to get up onto the platform next to the others.

  The corpuscler is pushing me up the loading ramp. Gibbering critical last minute medical shit I’m already forgetting.

  I shake the duct-taping-bastard’s help off. I can get my own damn self up there. Nothing proud in my step because there is nothing to be proud of. I didn’t bound, run or scramble. Instead, leaking gray goo I sorta limp dick hobbled like a useless prick up to where the others stood.

  They just looked at me. Everyone was looking at me.

  Honestly, I can’t read their expressions so I don’t even bother to try.

  With one arm I raise my holocauster above my head. Girls in White Dresses is scarred deep into the barrel. I know what I was thinking when I wrote that, but… What the hell was I thinking?

  The apes go apeshit. Can you blame them? Most of us have never been laid, and never will be. Their incel dicks get hard if the wind blows. Off to the side in his lonely shadow even Grim Sleeveless joins in, hopping up and down and pumping his only fist in the air.

  Six-by, corrupter of youth.

  A little whisper in the back of my thoughts. If you can’t believe in yourself. Believe in the kid who does.

  Fuck that. I might play dumb, but I’m not that dumb.

  My last thought before we make the jump. Seditious in the extreme.

  Everyone knows there are two types of New Guys. Type A–the fresh faced recruit who survives but loses his innocence and in doing so learns to become a man.

  No dice. That’s not me. Can’t be. I’m probably too young to call a man yet but I’ve definitely lost my innocence. Which means…

  Shit. I’m a goner for sure. I know why they wanted me for this mission. Poor ‘ole Six-by, he’s obviously a Type B. Just a faceless, nameless expendable who dies horribly to show how awful the war is.

  Damn. I hope we get pussy in hell. Visions of all the vaginas I never got to fuck dance in my thoughts.

  No time for regrets. The lander starts the final launch sequence. Two marine fire teams, our ethicists and twenty vurkers. We make our weight. The mission’s a go.

  More growled thank spoken, Big Bro gets the last word in, “Alright friends! Yeah!”

  I think it’s time to–

  Chapter Two

  (Not Yet!) Past His Bedtime

  call sign: Plumb Useless Grim Sleeveless

  unit type: currently untrained

  location : The Good Shepherd

  * * *

  ONE OF THE FEW BENEFITS OF LIVING AFTER THE COLLAPSE OF ALL CIVILIZATION is that there are no bedtimes anymore. I’m a man’s man. Always have been, always will be. I sleep when I want.

  Yup.

  I sped down the corridors of our ship at top speed, looking good, feeling great, not ashamed who knew it. Heading to my pocket of hidey space everyone else calls a hellhole but I know affectionately as:

  Home Sweet Home of the He-Man Future Kernel Society!

  With my lucky hand I reach up and touch the sign that reads just that, then push the wedge open that blocks the entrance to my fort.

  First order of business is to take a picture of myself with my warpaint.

  Ayoooah!

  I strike a couple of poses and then fiddle with the lighting a bit. In the right light I have a six-pack like Omen. I’ve got good news, I’m still handsome!

  I’m so excited I fall to floor and roll back and forth across the rotten lumps I pretend is a bed and call my sleeping pallet. I kick my feet in the air and thump my lucky hand into the roll of metallic shielding I use for a pillow.

  Next to the bed is the unrecycled scrap mirror sheeting I use to keep score.

  Plumb Useless I

  Rats IIII

  I cross out “Plumb Useless” and update the board with my new callsign. Grim Sleeveless.

  Without thinking I rub my arm where while I was sleeping the rats had bitten me last time. Whitechapel had said it wasn’t infected but still… Those rats are getting ahead of me. I needed to get a joss piece. And sleep lighter.

  I live down here in the engine ward near the hazardous waste recyclers. It’s great, we get plenty of warmth when the recyclers are operating. And steam. And on the weekends if I wake up early enough I can usually get some water. The air is pretty clean considering how close we are to the engines and their waste recyclers and it doesn’t smell that bad. And best of all I can connect to the ship’s computer at almost full speed no problem and read the Apocalypse as much as I want.

  Sure, my space is small and everyone laughs at me and say I smell bad because [a sewage line runs overhead and tends to drip] of all the waste, but I still love it. It’s long enough that I can almost stretch out my legs without touching the walls. And it’s wide enough I can roll over twice. I can’t stand up though, but if I bend my back and neck I can usually sit up but it’s too uncomfortable to stay like that. Mostly I just lie down in the sleeping pallet and read the Apocalypse and dream.

  It’s a great life! What more could a man want?

  Well. Maybe proper radiation shielding. I get sick a lot down here, but whenever I do I just go to Whitechapel and he takes care of it. He says he is a sucker for a one armed bandit. That’s me!

  Yup, some guys get all the luck. Ha!

  Anyways, the stuff we picked up when we salvaged The Good Shepherd is pretty amazing. There’s no way they’ll ever let me anywhere near any of that. Not that I mind. I’m a pathogen fan. Yup, a man’s gotta follow his heart and I love this stuff. I’m pretty sure it’s in the blood.

  I never knew my parents, but I like to think they were kernels. Maybe Dad designed the clever catch-and-release mechanism that holds the gencels in a holocauster. Nobody ever thinks about stuff like that, but I bet my Dad did. He was just that kind of guy. Sometimes I think I’m just like my dad, you gotta have an eye for the little things that everyone else is overlooking.

  And Mom must have been something cool. Like in the good old days before I was born, when Fleet still had a fleet to command. And together The Darkness and The Light waged war against the enemy, fighting across the galaxy.

  I bet Mom was a real hero, like Lansing. She was probably an expert on light and physics too but just like Lansing she chose to become a kernel instead of a rationalist. And she was probably real good at designing space interceptors. And before important missions Fleet and The Light would ask her for advice. And she would tell them and then they would win.

  That’s my mom for ya. She was one of the best, I’m sure of it. Sometimes I think I’m just like my Mom. Looking at the big picture, sharing it with everyone else.

  Anyways…

  I’ve been looking at everyone’s pathogen armor. Poring over everything in the Apocalypse I can find on them. Why is Omen so much stronger than everyone else?

  The problem is Omen is so quiet. I’ve r
ead everything he’s ever written but he hardly writes anything in his apocalypses. I think his longest entry was “Everyone else is dead, I’m pulling back.” It doesn’t exactly give me much to work with.

  I can’t wait to see if Six-by writes more in his. Before I go to sleep tonight I need to bookmark his apocalypses.

  I wanted to watch the sendoff so I really haven’t had a chance to read anyone’s apocalypse from what happened on Tranquility’s End, but did you see how bashed in they looked? Six-by looked like he’d been on fire.. Half his armor was the color of charcoal the rest of him was as splattered with Krag ichor [as Omen]. It was like they bathed in it. I wish I had a tape measure with me. I would have measured the indentions on his face plate and neck guards – those are some of the biggest [bite spreads] I’ve ever seen. he might have set a record. You can’t fight hand to hand with a [unit] and survive. No one has ever done it. How did he survive something that big?

  I pulled up the schematics on Six-by’s armor. It was definitely a [non-standard] design. It was fascinating. I could study this stuff forever.

  Did you see that look on his face when Deamos was staring at him? Oh, man, epic! Deamos! You know what the means. The personification of fear and terror on the battlefield. And Six-by just stared at him like he wasn’t even there. That might be the scariest thing I’ve seen in my life.

  I doubt anyone’s reading this but I really miss my grandma. I think I’ve always been an orphan, but she was the one who raised me. I remember when I used to run and jump in her lap and she would catch me. we had such fun together. Until one day…

  One day…

  …

  I think maybe I had better get back to the suits.

  Chapter Three

  Dopefiend Soldiers

  call sign: Six-by

  unit type: space marine

  location : The Battlefield (Debron IV)

  * * *

  THE SURFACE OF DEBRON IV IS A TERRIFYING PLACE TO BE. A world of dark and gray, bathed in an eerie almost glowing blue fog. The kernels detonated a terminatus bomb before our jump, blasting everything it its kill radius to ash. The ground beneath our boots still smolders, burned gray-black granules of grit, it reminds me of sand but off-colored and rough, its texture is almost sharp. You could shave with it and probably leave your face rubbed raw and bleeding.