Space Marines

[peterpan]

Hi everybody

This thread is for CONSTRUCTIVE discussion of Space Marines (SF & Fantasy). "Girls just want to have fun and blow things up"

Your input is welcome, either direct or simply to inject ideas here. Personally "Space Marines" will be a place for me to pour another page into the central thread when I feel like writing.

For people interested in contributing, your entry is most likely to become part of the central thread if

--it is in context.
--it is in character.
--the main character does not become secondary or worshipful to a male hero or villain.

 

[android1966]

Hi Peterpan

I have not got any criticism, having read the Q&A
and Xanthopella stories i'm very impressed.

A couple of questions though, i presumed from the starting thread that Jane used to be an officer, was she demoted? When Jane goes to the bunk room all the Marines where gender is mentioned are women, are all marines women, are the men bunked elsewhere or perhaps the two whose gender wasn't mentioned are guys?

 

[peterpan]

Hi android1966,

Yes to the officer question, although I have no background info. I also know very little about command structure, so if anyone could explain one to me here I would appreciate it.

This is not fixed, but I guess I am thinking all women in this room, probably even this section (say a hundred people). I guess the marines are basically packed in like sardines. Almost like being in prison except that there is the constant threat of your section being hit. Women with men friends on board might see them in the mess hall or arrange to sync their recreation time, or if unlucky, their shifts could prevent them contacting for weeks, even though they are only a few decks apart.

So basically we are talking dehumanising tedium here, then action happens all of a sudden. I figure this is the lowest of the low, and soon it will be all night-clubbing and Nuking.

I think I am most interested in the relationships between the women in any case, but not necessarily sexual. Mostly just that word that is spelt a bit like comaradire

Thanks for reading my tales

-----------------
Continuity notes:
a "Cherry" is an unblooded recruit.
The black girl in Jane's bunk is called Skin
Jane had three years of service before being demoted to private a week before the thread begins.

 

[peterpan]

Sorry, my addition not much...

My addition was a bit of a cop-out. I am always caught between the soapy all girl shower scenes and the bug eyed monsters, but for now at least the main thread will probably be fairly slow developing.

Perhaps the way to play it is that the central thread is a fairly sane plot development leading potentially to part two, but all the funny stuff happens in the offshoots.

Ideally the options would not be ordered by first-come, so you would actually have to consider your decision in order to find your way through, do you know if options can be reordered or anything like that? I guess otherwise I could always write two entries, one wise & one not.. but more work..

 

[peterpan]

Inspired (IC)

If there is something I really hate about the Panther egg it is the vasiline. OK, exomemetic gel if you like. Some girls call it badjelly but it looks and smells like vasiline. Stops chaffing and nappy rash. Also can grip you like a skin of iron within milisecs if internal gee shear gets too great; not by itself, but it gives something for the coils insulating the egg's hull to grab onto.

I had almost got used to riding with Skin, but that was different. We got on. Red had hated me from day one. I still didn't know why. Maybe this was a chance to find out. Like as not we would have days together in that thing, in radio silence. Plenty of time for girl talk.

If things went bad, we could have a couple of months. Then the fission cell would degrade and there would be nothing to power the water recyc. or crack the C02 back into carbon and oxygen. Guess which would kill us first.

The Panther egg is the bit of the Panther that holds the crew. One look at the thing and you know that whomever designed this thing resented the requirement of a crew at all. They wanted a nice tidy electronic brain. One wire in for power, one out for control. No fuss.

One look inside and every trainees first thought is "Hey, this is going to be a bit cramped for a girl." Then with growing consernation they watch as the instructor demonstrates how two can fold into the same space.

Red was pilot. That meant she had to be strapped in first. Pilots position was sort of like that of a motorbike racer, limbs wrapped around the machine. Knees and elbows, feet and hands were gripped in pnematic gauntlets that read her intended movement while only allowing a couple of inches of real leeway. She had no trouble fitting her 'tailpipe' to the recyc, thankfully. Cherries often found themselves strapped all the way in before discovering a problem. Then the gunner had to do the dirty deed of adjusting the twin catheters and packing it all back in. Not a good way to start.

I was "Riding shotgun", strapped not down like Red but back against the padded rear of the egg. At least my arms would be free to operate controls. I would be practically straddling Red's bare waist with my bare thighs, except that straps kept us an inch or two from actual contact. My head was a bit higher than hers so we could have different screens. The whole setup was somewhat like a two-crew combat chopper with all the space sucked out like a vacuum pack.

Technicians pushed the canopy closed on us like an over stuffed suitcase and instantly there was silence but for our own breath. In silence they wheeled up a chef's special of robotic limbs and armaments and, fast as any pit-stop, assembled the Panther around us. Orange lights flashed. I imagined I could see the air rushing out. Then the floor dropped away and we fell.

---

Experimenting:
Xanthopella

 

[peterpan]

Just experimenting again

Just experimenting with my signature

 

[android1966]

The 'Island' class light cruiser 'Cuba' hung in space seemingly dead. Inside the craft the crew worked frenetically, as they prepared the ship to insert the four Panthers that clung to the belly of the cruiser like Remora fish. Finishing its scans of the barren system the cruiser fired its engines and powered towards the first drop point.

Recon of this system had shown a nexus of jump points with indications of intermittant use. Since fleet knew that none of its craft had used these jump points, it had decided to post a watch here. Panthers had been chosen for the task. With systems on passive a Panther was virtually undetectable, depending on what jumped in they had the option of attacking or staying passive and simply observing.

Jane and Red ran through the pre-drop checks for the tenth time, all the Panthers systems showed green for the tenth time. A shudder ran through the tiny craft as the cruiser dropped the first Panther, Skins, into position.

"Two minutes to the second drop point," Jane said.

Red made no reply, but then none was really needed. A second tremor shook them as another Panther was dropped. Jane recalled that this was crewed by the two marines from Oranje, a large colony seeded in the first wave.

"90 seconds to third drop," Jane said tonelessly, relaying the information from the screen.

Again the Panther shook as the third drop went off without mishap.

"Our drop next, 60 seconds to drop point," Jane read.

"Understood, standing by," Red replied.

Jane looked down at Red, or rather at the back of Reds head and the mass of ginger curls that reached to her shoulders. A single drop of sweat ran down her spine. Six weeks cooped up in a Panthers egg with this sarcastic bitch was an assignment Jane could gladly have done without.

"10 seconds to drop," Jane warned, pulling her attention back to the screen.

There was a hiss as the umbilical to the cruiser diconnected and the Panthers internal systems took over. The Panther lurched as the docking clamp released and Red briefly fired the retro engines to bring them to a stop.

Jane read the scanner information, watching the cruiser head back to the jump point. One at a time the other Panthers of the wing established tight beam comm links till all four Panthers were in contact with each other. All four reported no problems. On the screen the cruiser slowed as until it stopped dead on the jump point.

"Good luck and good hunting, " the cruisers captain wished them.

The cruiser folded the space around it and blinked off of the scan.
The four Panthers drifted silently all they had to do now was wait.

 

[peterpan]

four days later.

The space around a jump point did not feel like space should. It did not feel clean, or thin. Frictionless? Yes. But not thin. An oily blackness. Jane could feel the pressure and hear it now and then as stresses in the chassis. Gravity dipoles liberated by the naked singularity occasionally shook her with throbbing notes too deep to hear; each one signifying a lethal puncture in reality against which the strength of metal was meaningless; the bonds that held your atoms in place so irrelevant that Jane and Red may as well have been patterns in smoke.

In general that death was easily sidestepped by a brief thrust of ions. Then cross your fingers and hope that nobody is watching because there is nothing so blatent as a trail of ions tumbling into the infinite depth of a singularity, glowing x-ray hot.

Sound exciting? It isn't. If Red made good choices and was lucky she might only be required to make a couple of course corrections during the entire six week stint. And although it was possible that there was something out in the blackness slowly zeroing on a Panther's position, chances were they were alone, the mission would be a no-show, they would be picked up in six weeks.

Instead of sleep what a Panther crew got the neuroelectric equivalent of screen savers: ten minutes of inactivity and you drift into a dream of twisting trajectories and pings in the darkness. The slightest change in your environment and you were wide awake. The time would flash by like it was say, a week.

A week isn't so long is it?

Hell yeah.

Of course pilot and gunner were allowed entertainments. Anything you liked so long as it didn't take any mass. neuroelectric substitues for drugs and sex that would have you tripping or grunting like the real thing. Neither of them had taken anything yet. Not hard to imagine why.

It was Red that broke first; that is, broke their unspoken yet entirely mutual agreement to silence. four days and not a word spoken outside of the verbal checks required between pilot and gunner.

'Stop it' She said.

'Stop what?'

'Staring at the back of my head.'

Jane bit back an acid reply that might have revealed her guilt. She may well have been staring at the back of Red's head. Although the strap that was Red's headrest restrained most of her hair, one strand had worked its way free and now invaded Jane's space. Jane had stared at that for quite a while. Jane had not been thinking of it at that instant, but certainly it was at least as annoying as the possibility that someone else was staring at the back of your head.

'How would you even know?' Jane said, reasonably.

'I can feel it.'

Jane had been about to retort something about Red's psychic abilites when Red continued:

'Your breath. I can feel your breath on the back of my neck. It's been there for ages. And before that it was up and down my spine.'

Jane sighed, and Red's back Jerked as if her breath was ice. 'Bitch,' Jane heard Red hiss quietly.

Four days, out of about forty. Jane had been looking forward to sarcasm and clumsy barbs, not paranoia. What would she do if the girl in front of her really began to crack?