It’s Saturday! Which means it’s time for another Saturday Snippet. This week, it’s the third installement of The Valiant, the first book of my latest space fantasy series Star Legend.

If you missed the first installment, check here. The Valiant goes live on Amazon on 23rd December.

Chapter Three

As the marines who would take part in the rescue piled into the Daisy’s Briefing Room 2, Wright was struck by how young they looked. They had to be at least eighteen—he didn’t think recruitment had become so desperate the BA took on anyone younger—but some of them looked like kids.

The men and women quickly took seats.

How long had it been since he was as fresh-faced as them?

Before he knew it, Wright was rubbing the old wound in his knee. He’d received it at his first engagement, when he’d been no older than the marines in front of him, at the Battle of Queen Charlotte Bay, last stronghold of the BA on the Falkland Isles.

For more than sixteen years, he’d put off getting proper treatment for the injury. He needed the entire joint replaced, the doc had said. The lab could grow new bones and cartilage from his stem cells prior to the op, but afterward it would be two weeks before he was fit to return to duty. There had always been something happening that deterred him from taking so much sick leave; an upsurge in EAC attacks, new, illegal resource harvesting by the Antarctic Project, or influxes of new recruits, refugees fleeing lost homelands.

Time had slipped by so fast.

He took a head count. Only nineteen marines were present. Irritated, he decided to wait another minute for the latecomer.

All his life, he’d known nothing but war. When he’d joined up, the struggle had already lasted fifty-eight years. He’d been in primary school when he’d learned about its origins. The Antarctic Project had been the instigator. Intent on harvesting the remainder of Earth’s depleted resources to build gigantic colony ships, the AP had been looting the planet, and it had been invading protected zones to stock up on the finest genetic material from all species, including humankind.

As governments defied the Project, it had militarized. What it had once stolen by stealth or political machinations, it now took by force. Few had been able to withstand its march across the globe. Only the Britannic Alliance had managed to hold it back, safeguarding the homelands and historical territories. Elsewhere in the world, the AP had done as it wanted, and sovereign nations had been too cowed to stop it.

Then the Earth Awareness Crusade had appeared. When the organization first emerged, the EAC had seemed to be one of the BA’s strongest supporters and allies, sharing the ideals of conservancy and preservation. But as the months and years wore on, the Crusade had shown its true colors. The BA’s policy was to maintain the political status quo in the member states of its protectorate, never interfering in their governance. But the EAC would constantly try to subtly subvert this aim. Political leaders would die in mysterious circumstances, and their replacements would champion new and strange paradigms, ideas that happened to be central to the EAC.

After several repeats of these strange occurrences, the BA realized these events were not coincidences, that the EAC was secretly asserting control. What was more, it was turning the newly acquired country’s populations toward bizarre, cultish belief systems at odds with concepts of personal autonomy and basic human rights.

And now the BA seemed to be fighting a rearguard action. No superior officer had ever described it that way within his hearing, but year after year they lost more ground either seized by the AP or taken over by the EAC, displacing entire populations.

He frowned. He didn’t know the solution. Perhaps the higher ups had something up their sleeves.

Someone coughed, and Wright was mentally jerked back to the briefing. The latecomer still hadn’t arrived. He was annoyed and surprised. He’d chosen the best from the platoon across the skills spectrum. He didn’t have much of an idea what they would face so he’d wanted to cover all the bases. The last thing he’d expected was that one of the exemplary marines would be late.

He would find out who it was later. He didn’t want to waste any more time.

He quickly opened the briefing, and then said, “We touch down in…” He looked up and left, activating a clock that superimposed on his vision. “Thirty-eight minutes. As I explained in the comm, this is a—”

The sound of a pair of rapidly running, booted feet echoed through the doorway. A woman burst into the room and stood to attention before noticing everyone except Wright was sitting down. She jumped into the nearest empty seat, keeping her eyes forward. One of her boots was unlaced.

Her arrival seemed to send a ripple through the room.

Clenching his jaw, Wright strode to the latecomer, coming to a halt a few centimeters from her.

“Name?” he demanded.

“Ellis, sir. Here to replace Abacha.”

“Replace…?” He remembered he’d picked Abacha because the man was proficient at hand-to-hand combat. If they did meet any hostiles in the mountains of West BI, the fighting was likely to be up close and personal.

“He’s sick, sir,” continued the self-appointed replacement. “Threw up all over his rack as soon as—”

“Ellis,” chided Sergeant Elphicke, sitting to her left.

Wright looked the woman up and down. He didn’t recall seeing her before. She wasn’t young like the others. She was closer to his own age. Her rank implied she’d joined up recently, unless her performance had been so appalling she hadn’t been promoted once in fifteen years of service. She was average build, her hair mouse brown and cut just below her ears. Her cool gray eyes remained fixed forward.

The rest of the team didn’t like her. That was what the non-verbal reaction had been about when she entered the room. He wondered what she’d done to earn the other marines’ animosity.

Disappointed that he was down one of the platoon’s best fighters, he hoped Abacha’s mediocre replacement wouldn’t prove too much of a liability.

Wright returned to the front, reminding himself to check Ellis’s story later.

Addressing the room, he said, “We’re going into BI—”

Had that annoying marine jumped a little?

“Currently EAC-held territory,” he continued. “I’m going to be honest: It’s a rescue mission, but I don’t have a clue who we’re rescuing. All we have are the distress signal coordinates. This area isn’t well defended as far as we can tell, but the EAC is not going to miss the Daisy’s arrival. Once we’re on the ground, speed is going to make all the difference to our success or failure. We have to rescue this person or persons and get out of there before the EAC arrive. Flight time from the nearest military airport is thirty-five minutes, and we can expect them to detect us going in, so that leaves us with very little time.”

He went on to share as many details of the mission as he could tell them, but they were precious few. Within a couple of minutes, he was finished.

He told the marines to suit up.

I hope you enjoyed this week’s snippet. Check in again next week for the fourth and final snippet from The Valiant.