Background:
I think that every reader comes across at least one book in their life that makes them sit down and go "well, damn". For me, that novel was Starship Troopers. After reading Troopers for the first time, I closed the book, put it down on my bed, and stared at it for five minutes. Then I picked it up and read it again. Then I had to return it to my library. When I slipped the novel down the "Return" slot, I felt like I had just abandoned a part of me to age unceremoniously in a library for a century. Within days, I had ventured down to the borders to acquire my own novel. I did so, and am in the process of reading the book for the third time. But I didn't stop there. No, I have attempted to read every single critical review of the novel the internet has to offer. Having largely done that, I realized that my favorite time-killer, would no doubt have more to offer. There are three other ST fics. Three. Two of them seem to have been abandoned, and the other is a one-shot. Now my career in fanfiction has not been very successful in the past, but the urge to write again I was feeling was invigorated greatly by the lack of material. My favorite book, and one of the greatest novels of all time should have more than three fanfics. It deserves more.
So for this is reason I have decided to break out my pen for another try at writing fanfiction, so that I may pay homage to the book that formed my life's philosophy. This is largely so that the important facts that the book espouses (whether you hate them or love them) will not be forgotten. So I present to you, my unofficial sequel to Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers: Starship Troopers: The Bug War
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
-George Santayana, Spanish born philosopher and poet.
Starship Troopers: The Bug War
I
"…Lives the story of Private Rodger Young."
The Roger Young trembled as her Cherenkov drive was deactivated and she entered into the planet's orbit. I was already in my capsule by that time of course, and so were all the other Roughnecks. We had been lucky on the last couple of drops, and that had me concerned. A company that doesn't lose any of its troopers for a couple of rounds gets lazy, see? Sad as it is, one or two people buying the farm does good to keep everyone else from purchasing some real estate of their own. Since nobody had bit the dust in the last two drops, the whole squad was liable to get killed due to relaxed attitudes. I figured it would be a good idea to warn the boys to stay sharp. Clicking on the universal com I began to speak,
"Listen up you apes, I just want to remind you, don't go in thinking the bugs ain't gonna shoot any better than the last batch we iced. Watch the guy next to you and stay on the bounce."
It was a dumb statement, of course, all arachnid warriors had the same aim as the next one, but the words served their purpose. Hell, last time I'd been here most of my platoon was smeared. Back then I was just a Private, a greenhorn fresh out of boot surrounded by blooded warriors. And they had died, and I had lived. There was no doubt in my or any other officer's mind that we were going to lose a lot of people. My reveries were cut short by the Captain's voice,
"Lieutenant Rico, we are go for deployment. Good luck and be sure to kill a bug or two for the folks up here"
"Can do Captain, and my boys are gonna kill enough bugs for every navy man in the fleet. Cooks included."
Another stupid statement, the majority of Navy personal were actually women, not men. There was a loud clicking sound as my capsule was chambered into the launch tube. I barely had time to brace myself for the launch before I was reintroduced to all the nooks and crannies on the back of my power suit for the umpteenth time. Then I was in open space, hurtling towards the surface of Klendathu.
A cap trooper gets his name from his delivery system: a man sized capsule that gets blasted from the ship by a series of launch tubes situated in the hull. Commissioned officers first, cause no one likes a guy who gives orders but doesn't do diddly squat himself. Then come the non-coms and privates, cause an officer isn't an officer unless he has someone to give orders to. The capsules the troopers reside in are designed to go through several stages. Presently, I had finished the pre-atmosphere stage and was now entering the "sky" of the bug planet. This is when things start to get really hot, as the friction between your capsule and the air can get pretty intense. So much so in fact, that the outer layer of the capsule melts and peels off. Lucky for the fella inside though, there are a few more layers.
I briefly stopped monitoring my own capsule status and turned to scrutinize the part of my heads-up display that kept track of the other infantrymen in my outfit. Noting no errors in the drop so far, I returned to my own and saw that I was close enough to deploy my first 'chute. I did so and received a good jolt, indicating it had ripped off. I was still falling too fast, so I blew my next shell and loosed the second parachute. This one tends to last longer, before stress rips the metal cables and you go into free fall again. Still monitoring my status and the status of my battle-group, I blew the charges on my final shell, destroying the last layer between myself and the enemy atmosphere. The last part of the capsule attached to me was the harness I was strapped to. Burning off the straps, I pushed the frame away, paralleled myself with the planet's horizon, and swanned my arms. Now the momentum from my launch was completely gone, and it was just like a regular sky-dive, except that you're wrapped up in one of the most dangerous devices devised by man, hovering over an enemy planet crawling with giant spiders that want to kill you. Other than that though, yeah, just like a regular sky dive.
Now understand something about a Mobile Infantry power suit, it isn't a machine designed solely for killing. There are other pleasant little devices that provide a trooper with intelligence about his surroundings… so that he may more effectively use the tools that are designed solely for killing. One such intelligence device I was employing right now were the suit's snoopers. Snoopers are these high tech goggles that you pull down over your eyes with a flick of your head. The goggles can see infrared and have a zoom capability so a soldier can see what's going on miles away. These little devices can be a trooper's best friend, and they certainly are one up on the peepers evolution equipped us with.
Taking advantage of the zoom capability, I could see that the landing zone was relatively clear, save for the few dozen bug warriors milling about. A bug isn't actually a "bug" in the literal sense of the word. The phrase "bug" is just another one of those friendly little nicknames that soldiers have given the guy in the opposing trench since man has been fighting wars, which last time I checked has been a period about the length of… forever. Political correctness is all right and proper on the home front, but when an enemy is shooting at you, it's awful hard to be friendly to the guy. It's even harder when the object of your mal intent isn't human.
No, a bug has more in common with a spider than an insect. But this statement is also untrue in some ways. Ultimately, the beakers back on Terra could never really decide just what a bug is in respect to earth life, so they settled on the term "psuedo-arachnid", which to this old soldier seems like a fair enough text book definition. But to the troopers tasked with taking out the garbage, the "psuedo-arachnids" will always be "those goddamn bugs".
The animal itself is an ugly thing, all legs really. A bug's got eight of 'em, four on each side. Long, spindly stalks with sensory hairs popping out between the joints. The legs actually stretch higher than the body, but at the bugs…uhh… "knees", they taper back down into sockets located in the flank of the bug body. The body is one of the things that separates the "psuedo" from the regular arachnids: instead of the two segments that a spider has, a bug has just one main segment made up of little interlinking ones that slide in and out of each other when the body undulates, rather like an armadillo's shell. The main segment is kind of a grub shape about a quarter meter wide and two feet long. This it the body part that contains the nerve case. Bug warriors don't really have a "brain", there's a whole other caste that takes care of that. The nerve case just controls the body and relays images to the brain bugs deep underground. A big maw made up of two pairs of mandibles (I saw a solifugae once when I was a kid on a business trip with my dad in Yemen, vicious looking critter) sit on the face of the grub, and they are always twitching. Our scientists figure that before the bugs started building weapons, these were the main means of attack and defense. They aren't poisonous, but they are sharp as hell and the muscles behind them are really powerful. On Shola I saw a bug that had dropped it's gun use them to take a trooper's arm off, power suit and all. A pair of arms come out from under the bug, and the hold what appears to be a metal pipe, but is actually a ray gun. Two compound eyes sit above the mouth, and when you come across a pair you can see them watching you from behind the jail-cell made by the legs, calculating, thinking.
I might have once mentioned in conversation that a bug looks like a mad-man's conception of an earth spider. Now that I think about it, the term "daddy-long-leg from hell" seems more accurate.
I decided it would be unhealthy for me and my troops to land on top of the beasties, so I deployed my final parachute, ending my freefall and sending me on a slow drift towards the ground. Normally this would be a bad idea when dealing with other humans or the Skinnies. But for some reason, bugs didn't employ surface to air weaponry. They fought in space or on the ground, but not in-between. I could easily lose the 'chute and start down with my jets, but that fuel is expensive and I'm in no rush. The relative stability of the parachute would allow me to use some of my lower-caliber weapons. Snapping my assault rifle out of it's grip on the suit's back, I clicked the safety off and took aim through the rifles scope, which in turn corresponded with some gizmos in my helmet that made it look as though I was standing right in front of the bug. Then I squeezed off a three-round burst.
The first shot hit a warrior's nerve core, which popped in a spray of green goo. It stood stock still for a few moments before finally collapsing onto it's side. The surrounding warriors scattered, jaws writhing in screeches I was too far away to hear. Swarming around they unleashed a haze of fire in all directions, barely missing each other in the process. No problem for me though, the gun's beams will dissipate after about 25 or so meters, and I was beyond range. Within a few more seconds I had downed two more warriors, and the rest scrambled into one of the nearby tunnels that pockmarked Klendathu's surface. No doubt they would wait until their attacker arrived to examine his kills, then spring the trap and gun him down in a storm of laser blasts. Snapping the assault rifle back into place, I snatched a fire pellet from the explosives belt around my waist. Holding out my hand, I set the incendiary device for a 10 second delay and then dropped it into the hole I was now about 50 or so meters above. Then I grabbed one of the high explosive grenades located on the other side of my belt and lobbed that into the tunnel. The explosion from the HE grenade closed the tunnel just as the fire pellet activated, ensuring that any bug standing too close to the entrance was a crispy critter. I could hear the screeching now.
Losing my parachute, I used the suit's jump jets to finish my descent to the surface. Moments later, my feet touched the ground. The battle could start now. Looking upward I could see the red and white parachutes of the men under my command, floating lazily downward towards my position. I was later told that the Roughnecks were the first group to hit dirt in the second invasion of Klendathu. This means I had the dubious honor of being the first man on the planet.
Nobody brought it up, and I didn't care.
End I
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Thank you for reading and please stay tuned for more.