SHORT:
Two mech-suited Solarian Space Marines encounter hostile fire on what is supposed to be a deserted planet, and find themselves pawns of political intrigues by a civilization they didn't even know existed.
Will they survive the contact?
A 7500-word military science fiction action-adventure story with mech suits, nanotech, gladiatorial combat, and lost Roman legions in space.
LONG:
Two mech-suited Space Marines encounter hostile fire on what is supposed to be an uninhabited planet and get caught up in being pawns for political intrigues. Will they survive attacks, capture, and a death by gladiatorial combat sentence, or will they disappear without a trace, and doom their shipmates, if not their entire civilization, to a certain death as well?
A 7500-word military science fiction adventure short story.
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EXCERPT:
The Solarian Federation was running out of oil. Again.
The Solarian Space Marines had been pressed into service as scouts for oil, on pain of disbanding the Marines.
No Marine wanted to let the Corps down, least of all one Lieutenant Richard Lauren Case.
He was one-half of a scouting team on a planet that the dsetachment for this section of space jokingly called "The Sandpit".
The good news was, he'd found evidence of oil, and other precious resources the Solarian Federation was rapaciously hungry for.
The bad news was, he'd found evidence of something else, too. He pinged his co-scout. "Sarge, that looks like a city."
"We're in one giant desert, son." Sarge's voice was as dry as space. 'It's a mirage. Use your water tube and keep flying."
"Sarge, I'm serious!"
"Son, serious is keeping to the schedule your XO set out for you. Keep your ass in gear or we're gonna be behind! We got a whole planet to cover and scan for resources."
"Sarge, I'm not humping this scanning gear as dead weight. It's telling me to tell you to take a look, because it's reading heat sigs headed our way!"
