Space Cadets Read online

  SPACE CADETS

  ADAM MOON

  Space Cadets (ACE 1-4) Copyright Adam Moon 2013

  All rights reserved

  Table of contents:

  Contents

  Title Page

  ACE First Contact

  Teleportation

  Conquistador

  Mech

  Captain

  Tour

  Flight

  Unexpected Arrival

  Traitor

  Bosley

  Rick and Peggy

  Cache

  Seek and Destroy

  Inside Man

  ACE 2 Copyright

  Here’s some back-story:

  Contact

  Captain Wilkomen

  Gotcha

  Warp

  Autopsy

  Skeptics

  Hidden Modifications

  Dolores

  Cache

  Firefight

  Recovery

  Perspective

  Call to Arms

  ACE 3 Jack Peterson

  New Mission

  Comrades

  Mission

  Abort

  Earthbound

  Arthur Johnson

  Platinum Shield

  Attack

  Broken

  Beast

  Help From Above

  Last Stand

  Human Shield

  After Life

  ACE 4 Intro

  Bleeder system

  Techs

  Bleeder warship

  Space Walk

  Contact

  EMP

  Cousins

  History

  Weapons of Global Destruction

  Nova

  Mech Madness

  Boom Ship

  Dreadnought

  Too Late

  Save Earth

  Sabotage

  Dead

  Earth

  Back to Camp

  Mass Exodus

  Wilkomen

  New Life

  For more by Adam Moon, check out:

  ACE copyright Adam Moon 2013

  All rights reserved

  First Contact

  First contact with an alien race didn’t go the way people had hoped. It sucked, really. I wasn’t even born yet when they arrived in earth's orbit. Neither were my grandparents.

  At first, they did nothing. They just circled and watched.

  Then, just as our ancestors started to get really frightened, they opened up dialogue with some world leaders. What they had to say was even scarier than when they just observed us silently. They told humanity that it would be evaluated over the course of the next several hundred years. They said that if we weren’t up to their standards, whatever they were, that we would be wiped out. Then somewhere between one and three million people simply vanished from the face of the earth and the alien spaceship disappeared. We’re pretty sure now that those people were abducted. We think the aliens took them to experiment on them but there’s no way to be sure.

  That was over two hundred years ago.

  Guess what humanity has done in that time: We prepared for their return.

  The nations united and space travel became more than just a fad or a means of discovery; it became our only hope of preventing our own doom. You see, we knew we’d fail their test, whatever it was, and we weren’t about to just roll over and let them kill us all.

  The space program started out slowly but all our resources went into it and now we’ve got our space legs firmly under us.

  My name is Jack Peterson and I’m a cadet at Deep Training Camp Eighty Seven. I’m not a very good student but that’s partly because I didn’t choose to be here. I was an orphan from birth so this is the equivalent of a foster home for me, all paid for with tax money. I’m not ungrateful, but it’s not much fun here. The instructors are strict and I’ve seen over a dozen fellow cadets die during training.

  I turn eighteen next year. That’s when I get to serve a ship. I can’t wait to get out of this dump.

  Deep Camp Eighty Seven is in orbit around Mars. We went land side last summer but it was nowhere near as much fun as any of us thought it would be.

  I lost four close friends to Mars. They burned to death upon entry when they screwed up their spacewalk. No one mentioned it during the days following. It was too common an occurrence to fuss over.

  Orphans get stuck with Mars. The enlisted and the elite get earth orbit. That means they get to go home every once in awhile.

  Convicts and lowlifes get Jupiter. Jupiter sucks. A lot of those guys get cancer later in life. They say if you fall into Jupiter, you’ll fall for days before you hit anything solid. Of course you’d be long dead by then. The sun looks like a star from that far out. I hear that fact alone causes space madness. The instructors tell us space madness is a myth but there’s anger and sadness in their voices when they say it so I have my doubts.

  I’ve got the most space walks of any other active cadet here. It doesn’t mean much but it makes me proud. The air thrusters suck on the suits though. I try to tell new arrivals to never find themselves in a situation where they need to rely on thrusters during a walk because by the time they use them, it’ll already be too late. They’re too weak. No one listens to me though so screw ‘em.

  Weapons training is my favorite class but the instructor hates my guts. She’s pretty too, so that sucks. Her name is Mrs. Salazar and she’s probably only a couple years older than me. She’s been here about a year now, and she’s pretty critical of the way I carry myself. She says I get carried away, and then my aim goes to shit. I can’t help myself though. I love firing my PQ5000. It’s got regular physical projectiles that could turn an alien into Swiss cheese and it’s got poppers that’ll take a chunk of hull out of a ship. My favorite attachment is the Zipper (we have nicknames for just about everything). It’s an energy buster that’ll put your insides out. We call victims of Zippers Picasso’s because of what their fluids do to the walls behind them.

  We only get to fire off our Zippers outside the camp. One of these days maybe I’ll get to use one in atmosphere and actually hear what it sounds like.

  They brought us some animals last month; goats and such. We use them for close quarters training. They usually look like red pincushions by the time we’re done with them. I don’t like to stab and slash defenseless animals but if you refuse, then the instructors will beat you and starve you so you do what needs to be done. Danny refuses to wash his knife afterwards because he says the blood gives it power and Stacy Jones licks hers while locking the other students in an uncomfortable stare. I take a hot shower afterwards and my knife gets rinsed.

  I hate to admit that I kind of enjoy the next thing we do with the animals, but they’re already dead so it’s not that big a deal: We launch them out the airlock and then we all get to stand at the rails and shoot them with Zippers and Sizzlers. My aim is much better under those conditions. In fact, it’s sort of legendary. I’ve been asked by a couple of other students to bow out just so my fellows get a chance at a hit. Mrs. Salazar seemed pleased that I took a step back and let them. I think she thought it showed character because she knows how much I enjoy it.

  Teleportation

  We get to board a real life warship tomorrow. The captain’s name is Jonathan Hitchcock. I’ve never heard of him but the instructors tell us he’s one of the greats.

  I’m pretty scared. We all know we’ll need to teleport but none of us are happy about it. There are just too many old horror stories about teleportation.

  What’ll happen tomorrow is this: We go into a stasis pod but we don’t get cryo-frozen right away. Our thought processes will be ghosted and then converted into pure
energy. They’ll be transferred as quantum packets of energy across space to a receiver (onboard the warship). So our essence, as it were, will travel instantly to a point elsewhere in space, leaving our bodies behind. A side effect of the ghosting process is that our brains stop transmitting electrical signals and we will die rather quickly if left that way. So, before our real, fleshy bodies die, they get locked in a deep freeze.

  Anyway, our thought patterns then get transferred to a kind of bio-mechanical super soldier suit onboard the distant ship. The suits are called A.C.E which is an acronym for Automated Combat Equipment, but we usually just call them skins or suits. They’re made to look kind of humanoid, at least in the face, so we don’t freak the fuck out when we look in the mirror after transfer. The last thing anyone wants is for the soldiers to lose sight of the fact that they’re human. I hear it can take time to adjust but I guess I’ll find out for myself tomorrow.

  The reasons to be afraid of teleportation are almost too many to list. It’s instantaneous, so that means the thought bundles don’t just go faster than the speed of light, they ignore its limitations altogether. Once in awhile, the quantum bundles get to their destination so jumbled up that the transfer can’t take place, and since the screwed up packets can’t be returned, you basically get put out of your misery and your quantum soul just dissipates into the ether.

  One time, an entire cryo-facility lost power for almost an hour before it got restored. That resulted in four thousand men and women dying. Of course, they’re still alive, kind of. They just have to keep the suits forever because there’s no way for them to go back to their real bodies. An interesting aside is that they were all officially pronounced dead, so a human mind in a suit does not officially constitute life to the bureaucrats in charge of such things.

  I’ve heard of people getting melded together in the storage cells. That can happen when the idiot who is supposed to transfer your mind back to your freshly thawed body forgets to do it in time. Then, if another persons mind gets transferred, it mingles with the first one in storage. A couple of times two minds have been put back inside a single body by accident. It didn’t end well. The heart skips beats and is impossible to regulate. The body doesn’t abide by the conflicting commands and the person goes completely insane. In each case, the person was euthanized. So it’s best to have someone competent at the controls.

  I’m not going to get to sleep tonight, I just know it.

  Conquistador

  Mrs. Salazar and another instructor, Mr. Humboldt, were picked to chaperone us to the warship.

  The ship’s an attack class model and it’s called the Conquistador.

  We all gathered in the teleportation bay. Mr. Humboldt stripped naked in front of the entire class, to a smattering of snickers. Stacy Preston wolf whistled but the instructor ignored her. He’s our interrogations psychology professor and he doesn’t rattle easily.

  He got in the pod and laid down flat. Then this flat metallic disc was lowered within just an inch of his nose. It made a kind of zap sound interspersed with sizzling noises.

  Then Mr. Humboldt went completely still. His chest failed to rise. Air escaped his lungs and he farted. We might have laughed if we weren't so afraid.

  Then the lid to his pod got shut and his body was surrounded by a green mist. A bright light, too bright to look directly at, lit up the inside of the pod, and then he was frozen stiff.

  A guy in a lab coat whose nametag read Doctor Bolder fiddled with some switches and buttons and then said to Mrs. Salazar, “We’ve got a solid connection. There’s nothing to worry about. Who’s next?”

  Just then I had the utmost respect for Mr. Humboldt. He had gone first without knowing whether the connection was good or bad. That takes balls of steel.

  Guess who got picked to go next? Me.

  I stripped nude and everyone laughed at me. My dick shrunk up from the humiliation which made them laugh even harder.

  But then something magical happened: Mrs. Salazar stripped down right in front of the entire class, and her body was gorgeous. Everyone forgot about me in an instant which was good because my dick started to make a comeback.

  She took me by the hand and led me to a different pod.

  Then as I lay down, she turned to face the class and said, “Nothing you will do takes more courage than this. You have to subject yourself to the ridicule of others and then you have to trust your very life to an untrustworthy piece of tech. Jack was picked to go first because he has more guts than all the rest of you pukes put together. And you punks had the audacity to laugh at him?

  As the disc came towards my face, all my worries evaporated. For the first time, I wondered what it would take to get Mrs. Salazar to bed.

  Then my mind screamed out in confusion and my thoughts went out like a light.

  Mech.

  I woke with a start. A robotic mammoth was staring at me. Its face was more or less human-like but nonetheless, hideous to wake up to.

  It said in a masculine voice, “I’m Mr. Humboldt. Which one are you?”

  “I’m Jack Peterson, sir.”

  “Well, you’re a lucky boy because I think you got just about the coolest Marine skin available. Come with me and take a look.”

  I followed him to a mirror, specially placed there to help us come to grips with our new visage. He was right. My visor was the same as the others but my exoskeleton was blue and pitch-black with little green highlights, as opposed to the usual grey of the other skins.

  I lifted my visor with my robotic hand. The fake face underneath was even a little cooler than his was.

  To make the transition easier, the skins are all man sized, just so we don’t trip over our own feet because of a size difference.

  I did a little twirl and then I stopped in my tracks. “Holy fucking shit,” I said, oblivious to the fact that my instructor was at my side.

  He just smiled a weird, rubber smile, and said, “Yep. I told you it was the coolest one. I’m a little jealous.”

  On the right shoulder of my skin was an etching. It simply said, Rick Pimpage. Semper Fi mother fucker.

  The signature belonged to Richard Pringle, the most badass son of a bitch to ever don a space Marine skin. I was literally wearing the same skin my hero had worn before.

  Just then, there was a thud and Mr. Humboldt went clopping off. I watched him introduce another student to the weird and wonderful world of being a bonafide space Marine.

  He asked who was in the skin and then he slapped a magnetic nametag to the chest plate. He led the formidable looking robot over to me and allowed it to gaze into the mirror for awhile. I saw the name tag read Becky Morrison.

  I don’t know Becky very well. She’s a bit of a dunce and she doesn’t talk much, but when she saw the etching on my shoulder, she coughed and said, “No way? You’re so lucky Jack.”

  I smiled and for the first time, noticed that one of my incisors was chipped, damaged no doubt by Richard Pringle during some daring assault on terrorists or something equally exotic. Maybe he was quelling an uprising on a penal planet? Maybe he took a piece of shrapnel to the face during a skirmish with militarized Skeptics. I knew it was also equally plausible that he just tripped and fell or hit his mouth on a beam but I pushed those imagined scenarios to the back of my mind.

  I should mention what Skeptics are. Skeptics believe that the whole notion of aliens coming back to earth to extinguish humanity is nothing but a hoax perpetrated by the government to keep the people down. It’s an odd stance but it has some merit to it. None of us were alive when the so-called aliens arrived. No one alive saw it with their own two eyes, so it’s easy to dismiss as a ruse.

  But lately Skeptics have taken up arms. They’ve assassinated high up military personnel as well as politicians. They blow up earth bound military facilities. There is some evidence they were the ones responsible for the power failure at that cryo-freeze facility I mentioned before.

  No one really understands why they do what they do. We think
it’s to topple the system that they believe is lying to us to keep us toeing the line, but so far they haven’t published any kind of concrete manifesto and no single leader has come forth yet. I think they’re just lunatics.

  They’re a bloody menace and I know for a fact that Richard Pringle infiltrated a few of their various cells in the past; it was all over the news feeds.

  I looked to the left just in time to see a space Marine suit drop to its feet from the three inch suspension of cables and wires that held it. It hit the floor with a thud. The detached cables dangled over the robotic head like attacking vipers.

  Mr. Humboldt helped the new arrival acclimate as he had with us.

  When Mrs. Salazar announced her arrival, we knew everyone had made it safe and sound. The room was full of hideous but formidable looking space Marines now.

  Mr. Humboldt said, “While we’re here, you will call me by my first name. My name is Billy. Mrs. Salazar’s name is Samantha. Call her that until we go back to camp.”

  We all nodded. I guess I did already know that her name was Samantha, but now that I was going to get to call her that, and now that I knew what she looked like naked, I felt closer to her. Plus she said I had more guts than everyone else in the class. She had gone from my worst teacher to my favorite teacher in mere minutes.

  That alone, made me suspect that this field trip was going to be unusual.

  Captain

  Captain Jonathan Hitchcock walked into the skin room. He was handsome for an old guy, with a neatly trimmed beard and his stripes showing prominently. He had a golden, metallic orb in his left hand.

  He took in the entire class and said, “You are some lucky kids. You get to don soldier skins instead of having your thoughts stuck in one of these things,” he tossed the orb a few inches in the air and it floated there for a few seconds before falling back to his hand. “Non military personnel never get to wear skins so you can thank Billy Humboldt for the privilege. He’s an old friend.” When no one thanked him the captain bellowed, “Thank him now or I’ll throw you off my fucking ship.”