Free The Drift Wars by Brett James

motioned to a trail that
ran through them, offering up his arm. Amber frowned, but laced her
arm through his.
    The
dirt path meandered, pushed this way and that by tree roots and
small shrubs. A mile from the road, it ended at a muddy creek bed
that was too wide to hop and too filthy to cross.
    Peter
walked back and forth, searching for a bridge that he remembered
from some years back. He saw no sign of it.
    “Is
this what you wanted to show me?” Amber asked, forcing irritation
into her voice.
    Peter
spun and grabbed her, kissing hard. She responded with anger,
hitting his shoulders and chewing his lips, but then she wavered,
grew still. He held her for as long as he dared and then released.
    She
looked struck.
    “I
wanted to show you that I love you,” he said.
    “What?”
Amber asked, laughing with disbelief.
    “I
wanted to show you that I love you,” he repeated firmly.
    “Oh,
Peter,” she said. “That’s so…stupid.”
    “I
know,” he said. “But I do love you, Amber. I want to marry you.
And with the money from the marines, we can live…” Peter trailed
off, losing momentum.
    “Happily
ever after?” Amber asked, dubious.
    He
nodded.
    “I
love you too,” she said. “And I do want to marry you, but I…
You’re leaving, Peter. Going so far away that I can’t even
imagine it. Do you even know when you’ll be back?”
    “After
Basic Training, we get leave every six months,” Peter said.
    “Six
months?”
    “It’ll
go fast. Everything is going to be fine.”
    “No,
it’s not. You’re leaving tomorrow, and we’ve already wasted
too much time. Come here.” Amber grabbed his hand and tugged him
toward a patch of fresh young grass.
    “Why?”
Peter asked.
    “Because
I want to show you something.”
    —   —   —
    “If
you attempt hand-to-hand combat with this creature,” Mickelson
said, “you will not live long enough to see yourself die.”
    He
stood beside a projection of a Gyrine, the smaller of the two
species of Riel—smaller being a relative term, since despite its
hunched look, the creature was nearly twice as tall as the sergeant
and several times wider.
    It
was a lumpy, lopsided beast, as if the work of some half-mad
Frankenstein. Its left arm was shorter than the right, jointed in
two places, and ended in something between a hand and an octopus’s
tentacle. The right arm was jointed in three places, and tapered to
a bony spike. The rest was all chest and torso, which grew wide at
the bottom and split into stumpy, jointless legs.
    Its
skin was coal black with tufts of gray hair spread about at random.
Its face was pinched, its eyes squinty, and in spite of the
carnivorous bulldog fangs, its mouth was webbed with a gelatinous
membrane. It was commonly held that the Gyrine had evolved
underwater, though, given their love of the cold, the water was more
likely liquid helium.
    “You
can bend a knife on this thing’s skin,” Mickelson continued.
“And you might as well punch a rock. I’m told its blood is some
sort of liquid iron, whatever that means. The damn thing weighs more
than a marble statue, but it’s fast. Don’t be fooled by those
little legs—this thing can haul. And its reaction time is off the
charts. He’ll plant that spike of his in your face before you even
know he’s there.”
    The
projection changed to another Gyrine. This one had three-quarters of
its body replaced with robotics.
    “God
made the Gyrine a natural killing machine, but these bastards
weren’t satisfied. Most have some form of cybernetic enhancement.
The most common mod is to replace the lower body, to make up for
their small legs, but a close second is a split down the middle,
head to toe. And they love to replace at least one hand with some
sort of weapon.”
    Various
Gyrine cyborgs flashed by, each more terrible than the last. The
projection ended back at the original, unenhanced one.
    “The
rule seems to be that the fewer robotics, the higher the rank. That
makes this one here