Space Marine Loki (Extinction Fleet Book 2) Read online

  Space Marine Loki

  Extinction Fleet Book 2

  Sean-Michael Argo

  Copyright 2017

  by Sean-Michael Argo

  Edited by TL Bland

  www.severedpress.com

  Table of Contents

  Farewell Proud Men

  The Hungry Dark

  Trickster Creates the World

  Angrboda

  Lord of Misrule

  Paper Targets

  Phalanx

  A Watery Grave

  The Clutch

  The Rig

  A Storm without End

  A Place Among the Pines

  Wolves

  Shapeshifters Walk Alone

  Underworld

  Death and Darkness

  The All Change

  Scorched Earth

  The Center Cannot Hold

  “They have seen my strength for themselves, have watched me rise from the darkness of war, dripping with my enemy's blood. I swam in the blackness of night, hunting monsters and killing them one by one; death was my errand and the fate they had earned.” - Beowulf, epic poem, author unknown, circa 700-1000 A.D.

  THE HUNGRY DARK

  In the half-light, it almost looked human.

  And then it moved.

  Camouflage was abandoned in an explosive revelation of teeth and claws.

  Deputy Stratton screamed as he squeezed the trigger of his sub-machine gun, the weapon kicking wildly in his hands as it spit rounds from its short barrel.

  The thing that was not a man ducked low to avoid most of the bullets, scuttling forward on limbs that now ended in pointed blades of hardened chitin. Somewhere behind the creature, in the murky glow of the underground drainage chamber, there was a shriek of pain and anger as the deputy's salvo managed to hit one of the other deputies.

  Stratton scampered backwards, still firing, doing his best to track the nightmare with the barrel of his weapon.

  "On your left!" came the desperate voice of Deputy Marcone. Hearing it, Stratton hurled himself to the right and out of the way.

  Marcone rushed into the chamber, emerging from a side tunnel already firing upon the creature. The small caliber rounds didn’t damage the thing much individually, but as Marcone continued shooting, the sheer volume of rounds did the job. By the time the deputy's magazine clicked empty Stratton had been able to regain his footing and draw a bead on the wounded monster. Three rapid bursts from his weapon at point-blank range wiped the creature's sickeningly humanoid face from existence. The sight of it, however, was burned permanently into Stratton's mind.

  "Where's Bowski?" asked Stratton as he and Marcone rapidly swapped out their empty magazines.

  "Bowskiiii..." From the darkness of the drainage chamber

  rasped a voice that could not possibly be considered human any longer. from the darkness of the drainage chamber.

  Marcone saw it before Stratton and raised his sub-machine gun to unleash with full-auto. In the muzzle flash strobe light of Marcone's fury, Stratton caught a brief glimpse of a giant armored form.

  It stood nearly seven feet tall, or it would have, had it not been so clearly stooped to avoid scraping its head against the ceiling. Sparks flew as the small caliber rounds were deflected by the unknown enemy's armor. Stratton raised his weapon to fire just as the armored assailant launched its own counterattack.

  In an eyeblink, the enemy leapt from its position, revealing powerful double-jointed legs, but it stayed low to get out of the field of fire instead of attempting to pounce on the two deputies.

  Stratton felt a sickening jolt of recognition when he saw the enemy's armor, though he couldn’t quite place it in the heat of the moment.

  The hesitation gave the enemy all the time it needed.

  Marcone's gun went dry just as the armored figure, shrouded in the half-light of the subterranean environment, raised what appeared to be some manner of assault rifle and fired.

  Deputy Marcone was picked up off his feet and launched across the small chamber slamming into the concrete wall. The high velocity rounds tore through the deputy's tactical armor like he was wearing simple cloth, Stratton knew they were out matched. Street gangs did not have this kind of armor or firepower, much less whatever abominations had emerged from the shadows to violently transform a simple tunnel purge into a massacre.

  Stratton switched to full-auto and strafed the enemy, for the most part firing blindingly as he sprinted towards the tunnel exit. He was positive he had done little to damage the enemy, even if he did hear the impact of several rounds against its armor. He didn’t stop to reload, or dare look twice at the grisly corpses of the other four men in his purge team as he fled the scene.

  He didn’t pay much attention to where exactly he ran, and soon was hopelessly lost in the endless subterranean system. That did not stop him from pressing on. Some part of his mind still held onto the knowledge that once he found a maintenance hatch or staff ladder he'd be able to gradually work his way to the surface through trial and error.

  Stratton's breath grew labored, each time he inhaled a sharp pain would race from his waistline up, across his right side. Running had never been his strong suit, even if he always passed his routine physical fitness exams. A deputy had to be able to perform the basics of their duties with full kit, which for a man on the special tactics unit meant body armor, utility harness, and at least one detainment net. Stratton was as fit as the average tactics man, though generally once the shooting started there was little reason for such sustained exertion.

  He cursed at himself under his breath as he realized his rebreather was venting only on the left side. No wonder he was having trouble breathing down here, it was like having one lung doing the work of two. It didn't help that upon closer inspection, the armored enemy had grazed his side twice with nearly fatal shots.

  Stratton knew he didn't have much time. Being unable to take a full breath, he accepted that there was little chance of survival anyway. Five men dead in less than two minutes, and the killers were something he even now could barely comprehend. Surely, he had not seen what he thought he had. Men who were not men, with limbs and eyes too alien to be anything but abomination.

  There were lots of strange chemicals down here, also the gangers usually went in for bizarre costumes as part of their militant swagger. In the heat of the moment he must have imagined most of it.

  "Just a bunch of gangers on the salts, probably laced with drift," he argued with himself as he struggled to breathe, knowing he was lying, but determined to buy a few more seconds of sanity before the walls came crashing down upon him. "Just people."

  The deputy came to a halt in the middle of the cramped sewer tunnel and soon the shin deep water he'd been splashing through settled. He leaned against the wall for support and began fumbling for one of the replacement filters in his utility harness. His sub-machine gun hung on his chest, the strap rigged to allow him to go hands free when detaining a suspect or one of any number of things he might need both hands for. The stubby barrel was still hot from the last firefight and an acrid odor rose from it as the heat cooked off the water that had splashed it.

  Even through the rebreather this place stank beyond belief, and for a deputy who had served for years in this dark underworld, that was a very bad sign indeed.

  The great mega-city of Tankrid, named after the planet upon which it was the capitol, was a veritable ant hill of steel, glass, and concrete. With so many billions of human beings packed into such a dense urban environment, it took a vast sewer network to manage the sheer tonnage of waste. It was a seemingly endless honeycomb of tunnels, chambers, locks, and dams down here. L
ots of places to conduct activities away from the ever-watchful eyes of the Marshal Corps.

  Humanity was on the precipice of annihilation by the tooth and claw of the Extinction Fleet and yet, here he was, a sewer cop who wrangled human scum when the street gangs got too powerful. Tunnel purges were just part of the job, something that happened every six months or so, when one gang or another forgot its place. The elites of Tankrid didn't care at all what the human scum did to each other in the lower levels of the giant city, but when the crime waves splashed across their glittering lives there was hell to pay.

  For all the courage and sacrifice of the Einherjar on those distant battlefields, human civilization had done little with the precious gift of time that the blood of heroes had bought over and over. We carry on much like we did before, thought Stratton as he swapped out the filters as quickly as he was able so that his hands could return to the comfort of his weapon. After three or four years, it seemed as if people barely remembered the old bad days before the Einherjar, where system after system fell before the enemy.

  Stratton had never seen an Einherjar in person, but it felt, in moments like this, on these brutal tunnel purges, that the fearsome warriors of the All-Father were just the myths and the legends they were based on.

  To patrol these grimy streets, to struggle with poverty and gang violence while elites sipped expensive tea and fresh food in their towers far above, one felt rather removed from such things.

  His mind snapped to attention when he heard the unmistakable sound of something sloshing through the shallow water at the base of the tunnel. The sound of it made him think of the men who were not men that had torn his team to pieces. They were real, there was no denying it.

  Stratton flexed his fingers around his weapon and continued towards the ladder, only this time faster as the scraping began to escalate in volume and urgency. Soon he could hear the pounding of feet against the concrete mixed in with the scraping and he wondered if the armored enemy was in pursuit as well.

  He felt it more than he saw it when the first one appeared behind him. The deputy fired behind him as he kept scampering towards the ladder, fighting every instinct he had to go full-auto and instead laying down a steady beat of short bursts.

  It was hideous to watch the thing that was not a man continue to charge him through his withering fire, as if the beast could not comprehend that it was marching to its own death.

  Suddenly, he understood the tactic it was using, perfect for the confined environment with an enemy, him, who had finite amounts of ammunition. As the magazine clicked empty and the first beast fell, a fresh one leapt into the light to take its place.

  Stratton roared then, filled with fear and anger in equal measure, and he dropped his sub-machine gun so that he could yank his pistol from its hip holster. He was an excellent marksman, something to make up for his achingly average fitness levels, and with great precision he put hollow point rounds through both of the monster's kneecaps. The deputy realized now that it took a full magazine, sometimes more, to bring down a single abomination, so he focused on buying himself some time.

  The deputy had the last several minutes recorded with his body cam, and as the beast stumbled into the glow being cast by the service light at the top of the staff ladder, he was able to capture a clean view of it. Upon seeing it fully illuminated, Stratton turned and ripped off his rebreather just in time to vomit into the shallow sluice of fetid sewage. His mind struggled to make sense of the face that was not a face, the man who was not a man, and it was all he could do to place his hands on the ladder and begin to climb.

  The beast thrashed with wounded fury, its voice straining against the limitations of the flesh it hid within.

  A clawed hand grasped the bottom of the ladder.

  Stratton pushed himself with every last ounce of will he had, ascending several rungs before he pointed his pistol down. The creature was slowly making its way up the ladder, limbs awkward and ill-suited for a conventional ascent despite the humanoid digits that hung limply from its form.

  He emptied his magazine into the creature's head and chest, taking his time to line up his shots, slowly purging the creature from his mind as much as driving it away from his physical self. Finally, the creature let go of the ladder and splashed back down to the floor.

  Stratton returned to climbing, realizing that the ladder led to a hatch that read "Hub LvL 2". If he could get that hatch open he'd be in the maintenance level, just underneath the busy streets of Tankrid. He was nearly there, if he could get the camera to command then his men would be avenged.

  The deputy was bathed in yellow light as he reached the hatch. He reached up, his pistol discarded, and grasped the wheel that would turn and open the hatch.

  There was a sudden stinging sensation in his lower back, and a wet sort of pressure that seemed to spread across his hips and groin. The deputy looked down and saw a ragged hole torn through his body armor, recognizing it for what it was, an exit wound.

  It would take an armor-piercing round to punch through the plating on his back and then through his mid-section. He felt oddly detached from his own body. Somewhere in his mind he realized that this was his body's way of coping with the shock and trauma. The deputy found himself falling backwards, barely aware of his own weight as he sailed downwards.

  He crashed into the ground at the base of the ladder, the height of the fall driving his armored form through the water and against the concrete to make a mighty splash. His helmet protected his skull with modest effect, and though he was positive he'd suffered a concussion, at least he was conscious. A fact that he soon regretted as he looked up to see the armored enemy standing above him, bathed in the sick yellow light from the hatch.

  The deputy could not speak, the pain and shock was too much for him, so he said nothing when the armored enemy leaned over him and stretched out a metallic, clawed hand and snatched the body cam from his chest.

  Stratton stared into the bright red glow of the enemy's armored helmet. He could see clearly now that it was, in fact, high end combat armor, though the shape of the thing wearing it was all wrong, too many joints and limbs far too long to be anything but abomination.

  The armored enemy crushed the camera in its hand and let the broken pieces splash into the water next to the deputy. He wanted to scream at it, to challenge it, and yet, Stratton found he did not have the strength even for that. He was struggled mightily to stay conscious.

  As the armored creature receded into the dark, one of the things that was not a man stepped into the light. This time, he could not look away, and for what seemed like an eternity he stared into those matte black eyes. He could sense the hunger in it, but there was pride there, too, ambition, and intellect. He felt true terror then, and as several more gathered around him, Stratton decided to stop fighting.

  He closed his eyes and let go.

  Better to sink into oblivion than to witness what was coming.

  TRICKSTER CREATES THE WORLD

  It was dark when he opened his eyes, and it was only by the soft whisper of a gentle breeze upon his dry pupils that the skald knew himself to be alive at all.

  Upon achieving the awareness of his eyes, the veteran warrior began to concentrate on his breath, the first thing he had been taught when he was welcomed into the ranks of the Einherjar special forces. He focused on filling his lungs with air and expelling it slowly and with measured care. Soon he could feel the rising energy in his body, and he methodically tightened and relaxed his muscle groups one at a time.

  It was not long until the skald's body crackled with kinetic potential, his fighting form warmed and limber, ready for anything. The entire process had taken less than a minute, but for him, it was nearly twice the time. He could not place himself in context to this lightless place, nor could he clearly imagine who he was in specific. That he was a warrior he recalled, a mighty operator in the service of the All-Father's army.

  The skald attempted to rise from what he realized was a prone po
sition, and became aware that he was naked and bound tightly. His chiseled form was pressed against a cold stone surface only marginally warmed by his flesh. He swallowed down the panic that suddenly threatened to overwhelm him, and intentionally lowered his heart rate as he rapidly regained control of himself. The skald strained against the bonds, less to break them and more to investigate them, taking note of the tightness and tensile quality of the bindings.

  It was rope, but not the synthetic webbing material used by the Einherjar, more a crude length of woven fibers. It was the kind of rope that had not seen use in centuries, perhaps longer on the central planets. The machines that created such ropes no longer existed, and the craftsmen who wove them by hand were gone by a millennium.

  As he moved carefully against the bindings the familiar scent of a woman enticed his senses.

  Light from a torch soon illuminated what he saw was a small cave, and a beautiful woman came around a rough stone corner holding the torch aloft. Her long hair was tied behind her head to reveal a deep neckline, and as the flickering light danced across the ragged walls, her full lips seemed to glow. Upon seeing her, the skald's mind was flooded with memories of her, even if the fur mantle and simple spun dress she wore gave the impression of a costume rather than the modern clothing he recalled.

  Ariana was her name, and she had been his wife.

  His own name was lost in the darkness, yet the knowledge of her was sharp in his mind. Those memories stabbed at his heart, and he began to wonder with grim suspicion that this was some manner of hallucination or dream. Ariana had died during the grueling first years of the invasion, like the lost loves of a great many Einherjar, her body ground into so much raw organic matter upon the battlefields of Tarsis Prime.

  The garm consumed all organic material available to them to keep the swarm active and effective. Every garm organism the Einherjar faced, after so many years of war, was no doubt in part comprised of the flesh of humanity just as much as it was the flora and fauna of any conquered plant. He wept as he watched her walk barefoot down a small and well-worn path from the mouth of the cave to the stone slab he'd been tied upon.