'Bandita' – A Prompted Writing Adventure
She's a badass space marine with an arm for the action.
Time for some fiction!
Yesterday was International Women’s Day, and whilst my wife hosted an IWD-related business leader podcast panel, I spun a story situated within that consummate science fiction staple: IWWD – the Interstellar Weaponised Women’s Department. Spurring me into action was ‘Prompt Quest #1’ – another great initiative from all-round good egg
. (Further details on this below.)My prose writing tends to the softer, near-future end of the speculative fiction spectrum. The level of realism I want to portray still avoids cosy teatimes (rules are rules), but doesn’t exclude enjoying other creators’ cinematic or written journeys offering harder, more operatic SF. Those involving sentient spaceships, atypical aliens and gung-ho space marines with infinite ammo. To be honest, I found this short story relatively easy to write, as it’s stuffed full of simple, familiar tropes and concepts that many SF fans love to lap up. I think the draft splurged onto my screen in less than two hours. Of course, ‘easy to write’ doesn’t always correlate with quality. I think the story veers more into E.E “Doc” Smith territory than some operatic SF authors who followed him – but that’s for you to judge.
In contrast, when deeply immersed in my typical novel writing flow, I can’t help complexity creeping into my head; the plot and characters begging to be wrapped up in multiple interwoven layers. Sometimes these are so subtle they have to be picked up for inclusion in a later book in a series. That’s just the way my head works, slip-sliding away….
Okay, enough prattle. Without further ado, here’s the prompt which briefly tempted me into entering the Valley of Hard SF:
And below is the short story I wrote in response, best described as ‘Aliens meets Fury Road meets Starship Troopers’ (with a smattering of my old 2000AD allies Halo Jones and Rogue Trooper).1
Bandita
Our platoon of Furies liked to gamble on their one armed Bandita. I liked to tease them before taking their money. Had I forgotten my special armoury? How ‘bout I got lucky and was discharged? What if I lost my other arm? No-one bet against the odds like me. Most marines liked to play a longer game instead of testing fate in the crappiest corners of the cosmos. Most of them hadn’t won. Maybe that’s why I was treated with respect: a Fury who didn’t fear death, or having to repeat this shit next month.
We’d been roused two hours ago after reaching a sector indistinguishable from the last, where the fabric of human reality frayed and pointless battles raged. Below us spun Calpamos, an orange-hued rock with minerals aplenty. It resembled an older Mars, born to bleed, its surface not yet scarred by centuries of conflict with extra-terrestrial invaders. Not yet. The Fighting Furies were only deployed to where new colonies met resistance from the deadly indigenous, the alien unknown, or the truly pissed off. We weren’t the only resource-hungry species out here. The competition often rightly assumed human bodies were easily punctured bags of fluid. It wasn’t long after my transfer when I learned ‘made for love’ and ‘made for war’ was the easiest way to divide such bodies. My own messy example had drawn the short straw with a pinched off arm during a hasty airlock ingress – leaving my head still outside. At least they’d fixed my face so I could blink, breathe and eat again. And for anyone who dared aim for third base: no puckering lips didn’t mean no licking tongue.
The platoon’s death-defying bets on me were all the sweeter when there was a new face on C-Deck, especially one with a problem with a marine like me. My crew got off on helping rookies work through their confidence issues about my decreased limb count. I didn’t mind. If it helped them keep the faith in my capabilities, then they’d have my back, front and sides whenever our shit got real. Which it always did.
But the Corp’s recruiters must be scraping prison barrels, because the latest greenie to grace the Endless Anger’s grunt deck was a shaven muscle-head with a ‘roid rage attitude. His tattoos told a sorry tale of macho posturing and vanquished women. My missing arm was now cause for his cash-clenching fist to hover over my pile of potential winnings.
“Not a betting man, Trent?” I asked, an eyebrow raised at his undersized wad of notes.
“Wonderin’ why I need to throw my good money after their bad.”
“‘Coz if you don’t, it tempts the Bad Luck fairy into battle. And nobody here wants that, see?”
He looked around, close-set eyes in a fugly street-fighter’s face. “This some kind of joke? I been in scores of fights. We don’t need no friggin’ fairy with you runnin’ loose.” He looked around for backup and found none. Instead, they were waiting for me to react; because Trent’s face looked like he’d lost all his fights and was about to lose another.
I loved disabusing people’s disabled expectations. With a lightning flash of steel, I positioned the smallest, sharpest blade in my Swiss-armed collection a millimetre from his pulsating jugular vein. I didn’t want him dead. Cannons needed fodder.
“You sayin’ armless is harmless, sweetie?” I crooned in his ear. “I don’t have a dick either. You worried about that too?” There'd been a collective intake of breath at my initial retort. Now, as the rookie grew paler, his venous pulse faster, there’s laughter.
Fun-time was interrupted by Sarg, whose barked orders echoed across the hangar deck. “Both of you dickless grunts can make out when we get back. The enemy isn’t waiting for our permission down there. Another town’s been taken during transit. I want full prep for drop in two hours. Latecomers get to jump to rejoin the flock. Let’s move it!”
There were the usual grumbles, but the Furies existed to fight, and when a Calpamos comlink went dead on a scout’s third scream, we knew there was plenty of fighting for everyone. Not even Trent’s eyes were on my ‘bet she’s dead’ cash, so I slid the pile into my kit bag, and re-stowed it in my locker. Only the lucky living got to open that, with refunds only issued by the losing dead.
Soldiers were always happier with a purpose. Those two hours got sucked into war-torn thoughts and reviewing the colonists’ intel piped up to the Endless. I picked my arsenal carefully.
“Front and centre, people!” ordered Sarg.
We lined up for another unnecessary inspection between our two menacing dropships. They’d been repaired and repainted since the last mission, once the insides had been mopped out. Blood sometimes got into places you didn’t know a ship had.
Rodice stood to attention beside me. The only other woman in the platoon, she wore a full tac-helmet, hiding the fresh buzz cut she’d given herself. Her customary tattoo for the last mission was visible on her forearm. Those xenos had been damned fast on their uncountable feet, but she’d captured their good end pretty well. The one we’d eventually learned to shoot first. Hence the rookie’s arrival. Deffo no substitute for poor Ben. He’d been the most lickable marine this side of Arcturus.
Rodice whispered from inside her helmet: “Tizzy?”
“Yeah.”
“You got anything special for this one?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. You know I won’t say. Otherwise…”
“I know, I know. ‘Imagination makes you weaker’.”
“That’s right, Rodice.”
“Still, glad you’re here, Tizzy.”
“Where else I’d be?”
She squeezed my real arm this time. Pressing the right buttons on my body wasn’t for everyone. I needed to be confident they’d stick around and be alive for a next time.
Sergeant Roth declared us ready to dispense death, and we hauled our sorry asses and bulging combat rigs up the boarding ramps as the shriek of the dropships’ engines reached a deafening crescendo.
With the jolt of release came a final glimpse of the Endless. Teeth rattling as we hit the atmosphere, I checked and re-checked my arm. I hated it when gravity was way off standard. Too low and I was forever fiddling with my sights for the longer parabolics. Too high and the weight of my hardshell pack cut painfully into my shoulders. Calpamos was a big, ugly rock and I hoped my shoulder servo would take the load, even if its natural partner wound up bruised or bled. What I was packing today was heavy every which way.
I was the platoon’s rogue trooper, roaming out on the periphery whilst still meshed into our tactical web. I had a knack for finding out an enemy’s inherent flaws. Authorised to use whatever weapons I judged best, such trust meant skilful planning before I pulled any of my triggers. The thrill of seeing more annihilation than anyone should rightfully wield never left me. And this mission’s ‘bigger trigger’ might surprise everyone.
When we hit the dirt, my helmet struggled to pick out pre-flagged navpoints through the billowing dust of the retros. We’d been briefed again on the way down. They were nearby. Thousand of the little critters. As the dropships blasted back into the dark sky, the beehive of colony domes and a smelting tower emerged two klicks away across a rock-strewn plain. A light wind dusted the eerie silence between the resident dead and the recently landed living.
Rodice spotted them first, emerging half-way between us and the colony. The mil-com feeds lit up, the platoon’s chatter loud in my ear. Servos whined as I shifted my shell on my back and flexed my weapon arm. The high-crush grav was already an irritant as I tried to focus on filtering data from noise.
The insectoids skittered towards us, their chittering cries echoing off a desolate escarpment to the east. I needed to reveal their weaknesses; the chinks in their vulnerable exoskeletons; any over-reliance on a hive-mind’s social instincts. There were precious few moments to dissect their tactics, before we tried to dissect them into countless obliterated corpses – or vice versa. But my seconds counted more than projectiles. I relayed my analysis and Sarg started calling out the tactical changes we needed to succeed or suffer a Fury’s worst fear: defeat.
On planets like Calpamos, the bigger they were, the harder they fell; or the noisier they sounded when blown apart by Rodice’s over-the-shoulder railguns. Firing slugs of heat-fused material sucked up from wherever she stood, her pack resembled a real-time ammo-making furnace. As the pace picked up, the inside of her helmet glowed like an inner planet’s OTC holo. Sometimes I heard her laughing as she sprayed out another chattering salvo. People reacted differently to mortal danger. Rodice wasn't enjoying her day.
We advanced slowly as explosions illuminated the battlefield, blooming like deadly flowers. A barrage of plasma bolts ruptured the latest horde of carapaces to emerge from a tunnel, acidic ichor splattering the ground. The earth trembled beneath my boots as our foe remained relentless, driven by blind, collective purpose to eradicate every sensed human.
Sarg sought me out amidst the constant comms chatter. They’d identified the nest and we needed to unleash a virtual wall of wailing grief. “You better have something good, Bandita,” rasped his voice over the cacophony of battle. “Another swarm like the last and we’ll be overrun.”
“Don’t fret, Sarg. This Fighting Fury is ready to rock.”
“Roger that, Bandita. Give ‘em hell.”
But something else was emerging from under the infernal, explosive-studded plain. Looming over the corpses littering the ground, it was a tortured, savage form. I guess every city needed its queen. Her hissing reflected only a fear of the killers decimating her brood. It couldn’t be anger, just an aeons-old instinct to deter a threat – or eliminate it.
Amidst the chaos of battle and the shrieks of the wounded, a lone figure approached to stand defiant; a rookie with heroics in his head and a craving for the largest tattoo in the platoon. An idiot.
Trent was immune to sense, and Sarg was too late to tell him. The paired tubercules swivelling under the queen’s abdomen weren’t for display , but twin turrets of instant death. The giant bombardiers of Calpamos always meant business - hadn’t he read the damned xenomorph files?
Trent leapt too late, twisting in mid-air as he fired his last round. It missed. Unlike her. Several litres of ejected, super–heated corrosive fluid impacted his body with unerring accuracy. The resulting screams were mercifully short as his torso smoked white. His helmet’s plexiglass caved in as he writhed on the ground, a melted mask to mirror his open-mouthed disbelief. I shook my head at Darwin’s latest victim and tried not to think of my winnings. We weren’t off this rock yet.
This mission’s outcome was dependent on retaking a planet, not a flag. Deadlines were for dead individuals. But it was time I unleashed my own demonic array of badassery. I triggered a hydra of weaponry to sprout from my bionic arm, scything out from shoulder to fingertip; linking to the turtle-like carapace on my back. Each digit was a lethal weapon, their carbon tendons a trigger for untold violence; every fibre of muscular gel a twisted bundle of death. A coarse fusion of flesh and circuitry, I was a testament to human ingenuity, resilience and unyielding Fury spirit.
The latter wasn’t borne from a trite emotion like hope. After Ben, I’d lost all such optimism. Neither the universe nor I believed in fate; we just rolled the die. And I was desperate to have a purpose, to keep a dim beacon alight. I needed something to fend off the darkness threatening to fill my head every day.
My arm hummed with latent energy, each metallic finger curling around a unique weapon’s trigger, whether a plasma beam or mini-railgun. Each was seamlessly melded into my cybernetic limb. I was a walking arsenal, a Fury you never…fussed with.
Rocket tubes extended over my head, glinting in the flames of torched insectoids. Soon, my lovelies, soon. I needed to focus, with a mind cleared of hate and anger and pain; of the guilt built on countless crimes perpetrated by humans – for humans. All without a shred of humanity. With a mind free of Ben – the poor, gorgeous bastard.
I began my task of doling out death and destruction, my arm’s components glowing with the strain of delivering a kinetic firework show. After a few exhausting minutes, I was forced to reload, teeth gritted in pain. Rodice was beside me, covering for the unwanted pause, her expression etched with determination. She’d also made promises to herself and our fallen comrades. Like me, she’d never yield until her final breath.
‘Nano’, I’d asked my semi-legal, quasi-military supplier to deliver; and nano was what I’d received as a small package inside a maintenance tunnel connecting our base to the larger civvie habsat. Banned in most habitable systems, the metal cylinder in my pack shouldn’t have triggered a delicious quiver in my more human parts.
Then the missile I’d primed with my illicit load exploded prematurely after exiting its launch tube – a Trent of a rocket. I could feel the fuckers almost instantly. Once you’d unleashed nanotech, it was too late to stop it. But I wished they hadn’t entered my mouth so soon. Relentless but weirdly painless, the entropy loving micro-machines were hell-bent on chewing me up and spitting me out. Molecule by molecule, they replicated as fast as they feasted. I was already dead.
When Rodice stopped screaming, my fleshier arm had departed from my fading body, even if I still felt it. It was a familiar, phantom experience, a mirror of the pain long before.
“Don’t cry, Rodice,” I smiled with my remaining teeth. “Collect your winnings. Drink to the fallen. Because you know what a fallen Fury is?”
“An…an angel?”
“That’s right, Rodice. I’m gonna be your guardian angel.”
“You’ll be lookin’ over me, Tizzy?”
“Sure, I will.” The urge to cough as my lungs filled was overwhelming. “But don’t tell all of my ugly friends,” I hacked.
As Rodice hugged me to her chest, another heave painted her helmet red. I didn’t want ‘lest we forget’ to happen to us. But I also wanted to be reunited with Ben. There must be an unbeliever’s paradise, even if he’d proven to be a shitty angel. Maybe he asked for this, like the #togeva4eva I’d carved into his arm with mine. Or maybe I was being selfish.
The world faded as the light in my head intensified. I wondered what tattoo Rodice would ink on her return to the Endless Anger. One with at least one arm, I hoped. The good one. The only piece of me being left behind – a Furious Bandita who believed in equally shitty deaths for all.
To conclude this post, below is the link to ‘Prompt Quest #1’ in its entirety, with both the SF and Fantasy prompts. Please do look out for the other stories related to this Quest (or write one of your own!). I’m willing to bet there’ll be more badass heroes out there – none of them harmless…
That’s it folks. Until next week!
JR
If you’re the counting kind, this short story is 2492 words long – the same as the year it’s set in. There’s great value for zero money!
This is a really great pastiche - lots of fun here with the blatant 'dropship scene in aliens starring Vasquez' segues into the first battle sequence in Starship troopers, both of which are fun scenes. I shall have to put those movies on my rewatch list.
"The Fighting Furies were only deployed to where new colonies met resistance from the deadly indigenous, the alien unknown, or the truly pissed off."
I heard Michelle Rodriguez all the way through this. Excellent story.