Its bite contains a highly addictive toxin…
And its victims are protecting it…
Skylar Solace has always dreamed of becoming a starship captain but lacks confidence and has failing grades. She gives up on her dream, quits school, and joins the Marine Corps. to serve on the frigate Cyclone in a war against the Rheanians. While boarding a Rheanian starship in an attack, the captain withdraws his marines before taking the ship and orders Skylar and her squad to stay behind against impossible odds. They encounter lizard-like creatures called basilisks with extraordinary speed and agility. They bite, and their victims fall into a deep sleep and wake up hours later, consumed by a desperate need to be bitten again.
Skylar discovers that the basilisks' presence is not incidental. They were brought in from a distant planet on another starship and are part of an evil plot.
If Skylar is to win this battle, she has to become the leader she didn’t think she could, figure out how to fight off the basilisks and their victims, take command of the Rheanian starship, find the evil plot’s perpetrator, and crush him before it’s too late.
Its bite contains a highly addictive toxin…
And its victims are protecting it…
Skylar Solace has always dreamed of becoming a starship captain but lacks confidence and has failing grades. She gives up on her dream, quits school, and joins the Marine Corps. to serve on the frigate Cyclone in a war against the Rheanians. While boarding a Rheanian starship in an attack, the captain withdraws his marines before taking the ship and orders Skylar and her squad to stay behind against impossible odds. They encounter lizard-like creatures called basilisks with extraordinary speed and agility. They bite, and their victims fall into a deep sleep and wake up hours later, consumed by a desperate need to be bitten again.
Skylar discovers that the basilisks' presence is not incidental. They were brought in from a distant planet on another starship and are part of an evil plot.
If Skylar is to win this battle, she has to become the leader she didn’t think she could, figure out how to fight off the basilisks and their victims, take command of the Rheanian starship, find the evil plot’s perpetrator, and crush him before it’s too late.
Skylar Solace stared at thirty marines clutching guns with trembling lips and cold sweat on ashen faces, wearing fatigues, wrapped in interceptor vests, crowned with helmets, and strapped in steel seats in an egg-shaped shell that shifted like a ride at a fair. Everything was ebbing, flowing, rising, falling, shifting. She needed to throw up.
What had she done? She could be home, raiding the fridge, chatting with friends, and chasing her dream of becoming a starship captain. It wasn’t beyond reach, not if she put in the effort… But she didn’t put in the effort, did she? She squandered her time, hung out with scumbags, and did drugs. What an idiot.
Through the hatch to the cockpit, she caught a fleeting glimpse of the enemy corvette, long and sleek, with a bridge high above its bow like a serpent’s head, dozens of gun turrets up and down its fuselage, all firing, and two canister-shaped thrusters protruding from its stern spewing blue flames. It was still a long way off.
Some marines carried backpacks marked with a red cross containing first aid kits, while others carried collapsible litters on their backs, a constant reminder that there would be casualties.
A military genius somewhere figured it was better to sacrifice lives and capture a starship than to blast it out of existence. How fucked up was that? The Karian Marine Force didn’t need more starships. It had three times as many as the Rheanians.
Skylar’s best friend, Trudi, short with red hair poking out of her helmet, sat beside her. Her thoughts drifted back to when she told Trudi she wanted to join the Marine Corps. Trudi was furious, telling her she was nuts. Why quit school when you’ve worked so hard and almost finished?
‘Not hard enough,’ Skylar had replied. ‘My grades suck, and no matter how hard I try, I’m going to fail. I’m not cut out for this. Officers are natural-born leaders. There’s a genetic factor that I don’t have. I want it, but they won’t give it to me. I didn’t just fail the Leadership Personality Test. I got the second-lowest mark in the class.’
Skylar came out of her trance and glanced through the hatch to the cockpit. The corvette loomed closer. The guns fixed to its hull spewed a barrage of blue plasma bolts, and a shuttle ahead was hit, silently shattering to pieces. Smoke and debris spread broadly, and bits struck the hull like hail, hammering a tin roof.
Across from Trudi, another member of her squad, Kaydon, broad-shouldered and muscular with a baby face, closed his eyes, pressing his eyelids tight. Beside him sat Riley, the corporal in command of her squad, slim with a pallid and charmless face. How many would survive the boarding? Would she be among the dead? She really needed to vomit.
The shuttle closed the distance quickly, rising and sinking, rising and sinking, shifting to port and starboard, narrowly avoiding bolts of blue like a bird sweeping through a volley of arrows. Gradually, the shuttle got closer. It braked as it reached the corvette’s hull, and robust electromagnetic clamps abruptly and loudly slapped and screeched onto the fuselage. The marines lifted their restraints, got up, and checked their guns.
Sergeant Birks had a wide mouth and knew how to use it. “Burn a hole.”
Wearing a shadow beard, Corporal Jackson stood by a pad on the wall, pressing buttons. An ear-splitting sizzle broke out at their feet around the perimeter of a circular hatch. The marines, tight-shouldered and reeking of body odor, gathered around it and pointed their guns down.
“We’re gonna kill some Rats,” Birks yelled over the sizzle. “Say it.”
“We’re gonna kill some Rats,” the marines replied in unison.
“I can’t hear you!”
“We’re gonna kill some Rats!”
The sizzle stopped, and they heard the cutout hitting the deck below with a loud clang and the clatter of clamps slapping onto the cutout’s edges. “Ready weapons!” Birks ordered. “Open it up!”
The marines gripped their guns with white knuckles. The breach hatch’s pie-shaped teeth retracted in the blink of an eye, and ropes dropped into a tubular passageway. Marines slid down into the corvette, ten at a time, blue bolts striking many before their feet touched down. Bodies, severed arms, legs, and a head piled up on a blood-soaked deck.
Skylar grabbed a rope and slid down, her heart in her throat. She hit the deck and doubled over, throwing up as whistling streaks of blue flashed by her head and torso.
The vomit landed on a green glass floor, dimly lit. She took several deep breaths and looked up at a glaring white ceiling and the sloped walls of the slender tubular passageway patterned green like snake’s skin. She pasted herself behind a support beam and wiped the vomit off her chin with the back of her hand.
Riley, Kaydon, and Trudi stepped out and raced down the passageway in the direction of the gunfire. Skylar followed from one beam to the next, aiming but seeing only blinding flashes of blue striking falling bodies and hearing blood-curdling screams and ear-splitting reports that dulled her hearing. She pasted herself against a curved wall behind another pillar.
“Keep moving,” Riley raged. “Don’t stop!”
Skylar gritted her teeth, stepped out, and ran forward. Her squad pasted themselves to the wall behind the next beam, and she joined them.
Blue streaks struck the marines out in the open, knocking them back, killing them instantly, or sending them into screaming agony.
“Move up,” Riley yelled, stepping out into the line of fire. He ran forward, aiming and firing as he went. Kaydon followed, and then Trudi. Skylar took a breath, telling herself she had to do this. She didn’t have a choice. She had to stay with her squad. She forced herself to run forward, not seeing the enemy, only the backs of other marines and flashes of blue. She stepped over a Rheanian lying in the passageway, his guts spilling onto the deck. ‘Rats’ were what they called them, but they were humans, bigger than Karians, with square heads and sunken eyes.
Another Rat, wounded and lying on the deck, reached for his gun, and Riley shot him four times.
Dozens of Karian marines were down, most dead and some wounded. Medics broke out first aid kits while others extended the telescopic arms of litters.
Skylar trailed her squad around a bend, seeing an open bulkhead hatch half the width of the passageway and an expansive room beyond.
“Hold up,” Sergeant Birks shouted. “One squad at a time. Corporal Jackson, line them up.”
“Aye, Aye, Sarge,” Jackson replied. “Squad by squad. Ready weapons.”
The marines dutifully stood one squad behind the other. Parties missing people formed new units of four. They’d practiced this and been told they kept the squads apart so a grenade couldn’t take them out all at once.
“First squad,” Jackson ordered. “Go.”
The first squad went down the passageway towards the bulkhead hatch. Two marines had their guns pointed, and the other two had grenades. When they got to the hatch, a marine with a grenade managed to throw it inside before a blinding storm of blue streaks cut his arm off. He fell and squirmed in agony. The other marine with a grenade got hit several times, and the grenade fell beside him. Another marine saw the loose grenade, scrambled to reach it, and threw it just before being battered with streaks of blue.
A grenade exploded in the room and then another.
One marine remained alive, standing to the left of the hatch with his back to the wall. Only one.
“Second squad,” Jackson ordered. “Go.”
The second squad moved forward. One marine went down on her belly behind one of the dead. Another ran straight through the hatch, firing as he went. A blue streak nailed him, and he flipped over backward.
Skylar plunged into despair, staring at severed arms and legs and men being discarded like trash. She couldn’t be a part of this butchery. She had to get away.
The other two attacking marines ran up to the side of the hatch where the remaining first squad member stood. They stuck their heads and guns around the corner, one high, one low, and fired. They lasted a bit longer but got hit, fell into the open, and were torn to shreds by incoming fire.
Skylar’s arms and legs tingled, and she felt feeble. Jackson was tossing his men away like dried leaves to a firepit. She knew she couldn’t do what the others had done. She couldn’t run to her death. It wasn’t in her.
“Third squad,” Birks ordered. “Go.”
The third squad ran forward. Two marines went in behind the bodies piling up in the entrance, and the other two went to the opposite side of the hatch where the marine from the first squad was still waiting. They stuck their guns into the room and fired sweepingly without exposing their heads. The number of blue streaks coming from the room diminished somewhat. One of the marines by the hatch got hit on the arm and retreated. The marine from the first squad, who had done nothing so far, stuck his gun around the side of the hatch and fired without looking.
The fourth squad was Skylar’s squad. She envisioned red and blue flashing lights and a corpse on a stretcher, coupled with a sickening feeling that was paralyzing.
“Fourth squad,” Birks ordered. “Go.”
Her squad went, but Skylar didn’t move.
“Move it, Lance Corporal!” Jackson yelled.
Riley stopped, came back, grabbed her arm, and dragged her forward. “C’mon, Skylar. What the fuck are you doing? Snap out of it.”
The flashing lights were gone. Birks was aiming his sidearm at her. She started running, and Riley let go.
Kaydon tossed a grenade through the entrance, and everyone moved to the side. The grenade exploded, and Riley charged in, firing as he went. Kaydon and Trudi followed. Skylar stopped, put her gun to her shoulder, and edged forward.
Dozens of yellow-ringed cylinders lined the cavernous room. A stairwell went up to an exterior gun station. There were no live Rats, just a dozen bodies and a hatch on the floor. Skylar aimed her gun at it, expecting it to lift, but it remained closed. The marines gathered around, and Kaydon showed them a grenade. Riley nodded, grabbed the hatch, and lifted it. Kaydon tossed the grenade in. Riley dropped the hatch, and they all scrambled away. The explosion popped the hatch slightly before it fell back into place. Marines returned to the hatch with their guns aimed. They opened it to find a few dead Rats lying on the deck below and nothing moving.
The fifth, sixth, and seventh squads came up with Birks and Jackson behind them.
Skylar was a worm, a cowardly, disgusting worm. She couldn’t look the others in the eye.
Kaydon climbed down the ladder, and they all went, one by one. They moved up against the walls of another tubular passageway and waited for orders.
Birks was last down the ladder. “Corporal Jackson. Move ‘em out.”
“Four by four, standard,” Jackson ordered. “Move out.”
They went down the passageway, a Rat’s tunnel, reeking like rancid butter. Some squads were missing bodies, so the usual four-by-four standard wasn’t always four. They came to a vestibule with a dozen Rat bodies and mirrors of blood, went down an open hatch, and continued along another putrid-smelling tube into the engine room.
A giant tokamak and racks of torpedoes sat in the middle. The walls were lined with consoles and screens spewing images and data. Two massive engines stood tall behind it all. Ear-splitting cracks of guns and blue streaks rained down from catwalks above. Ropes that didn’t reach the deck hung from a breach hole cut into the fuselage five stories up. A blaze of shots like bolts of lighting raked down on the catwalks from the shuttle’s hatch.
Skylar had fucked up and was determined to make amends. She couldn’t live with herself if her squad thought she was a coward. She stormed into the expansive room, shooting at the Rats high on the catwalks with little regard for safety.
“Keep moving,” Riley hollered. “Don’t give them an easy target.”
Riley found a staircase and went up, keeping his gun trained upwards. Skylar and the others followed. At the top, the Rats on the catwalk had their backs exposed. The squad opened fire, cutting them down like bowling pins. One fell over the railing, and three more fell where they stood, but the fifth one, smaller than the others, spun around and dropped to the deck face-down when Kaydon’s shot took a slice out of his leg. He wore a steel-gray uniform, not the same dark gray as the other Rats.
Kaydon kicked his gun away, grabbed his shoulder, and rolled him over, exposing a grimacing face. The bastard wasn’t Rheanian. He was Karian, his hair falling from inside his helmet in black curls.
“What the fuck!” Skylar gasped, bewildered.
“A defector,” Kaydon stated.
“How could that be?” Skylar snapped, her thoughts racing, searching for answers.
“Stupid fucker,” Riley said, moving up to the railing and glancing down into the engine room. The battle had died down, only distant gunfire.
Skylar shook her head, thinking back on the horrors she’d witnessed. “How can a Karian fight for the Rats?”
“You didn’t know about them?” Trudi asked.
“No, of course not,” Skylar conceded. “What the fuck is he doing?”
“Well, you can ask him if you want,” Kaydon said, “but I doubt you’ll get a reasonable answer.”
“Tell me what you’re doing, you fucking bastard?” Skylar snarled, her heart boiling with hate. The fucker was killing his own people.
He closed his eyes, fighting off a wave of pain, his leg severely burnt.
“Tell me!” Skylar shrieked. “How the fuck could you side with these monsters?”
He grimaced. “The basilisks don’t care whose side you’re on.”
“What did you say?” Skylar asked, her thoughts clouded, taking her back to when she was in school. ‘Perhaps you’ve heard of a mythological creature called a basilisk that can kill with a breath or a look,’ the professor had said. ‘Of course, it’s a creature that doesn’t exist in the real world.’
“They’re going to kill us all,” the defector added.
The Karian lying on the floor in front of Skylar was an aberration, a Karian killing Karians in a war against the Rheanians. He didn’t belong in her world.
Riley raised his gun. “We should kill him.”
“We’re not doing that,” Skylar said, pushing his gun barrel down. “We’ll take him to the sick bay with the others. I want to know why he’s here.”
Gunfire broke out on the opposite side of the engine room, drawing everyone’s attention. Five Rats backed into a room on the fifth-floor catwalk and shut the door. Three Karian marines raced along the catwalk, kicked open the door, and threw grenades into the room. One of the grenades came back. They tried to escape, but it went off, and their bodies tumbled like tossed cats and hit the deck like raw meat. Two explosions inside the room followed, and then, silence.
Skylar went back to aiming her gun at the defector. He hadn’t moved.
Riley moved up to the railing and looked down.
“What do you see?” Birks shouted, standing on the deck below.
Riley scanned the room. “All clear.”
“Check all the rooms,” Birks yelled.
“Aye, aye, Sarge.”
Riley glanced at the defector and turned to address his squad. “Tie up the fucking traitor.”
Kaydon pulled out a plastic tie and kneeled beside the defector.
Skylar kept her gun pointed at him. “How could you fight against your own people?”
“Ya wouldn’t understand,” the defector responded. “Kari’s not what ya think it is. Alder’s a fucking monster.”
“Propaganda lies,” Skylar snarled, gritting her teeth. She recalled President Alder’s rallies. She found them thrilling. He campaigned, giving speeches in huge stadiums brimming with cheering supporters. He talked about freedom and promised what they wanted: strict immigration policies, low taxes, and a booming economy. Elections occurred every six years, and the president would invariably win in a landslide. Rightfully so. The man was a marvelous orator and a great leader.
The defector closed his eyes, grimacing.
Skylar waited for Kaydon to finish, and they joined the others, going from room to room, finding nothing of interest. Other squads also searched, and when done, Riley ordered his team down to the engine room’s deck.
Birks pointed at the wounded marines lying on the deck. “Corporal, get your squad on two of those litters.”
“Sir, we found a defector,” Riley reported.
“A what?”
“A Karian, fighting for the Rats.”
“Really?”
“Aye, sir. He’s wounded, and we left him up on the top catwalk with his hands and feet tied.”
Birks lifted his helmet and put it back on. “You should have killed him. Now, we’ll have to patch him up, charge him for being a traitor, and then shoot him.”
“Do you want me to go back up?” Riley asked.
Birks’s eyes widened. He grinned and shook his head. “Too late now.”
“I’d be happy to go and get him if you want,” Riley added.
Birks broadened his smile. “That’s okay, Corporal. I’ll get someone else to do it.”
Trudi tugged on Skylar’s sleeve and pointed to an unconscious marine on a litter. They picked him up. Riley and Kaydon picked up the one next to him, writhing in agony with his vest fused to his shoulder. They carried them out of the engine room and up five flights of stairs to the passageway under the shuttle. The pilot lowered hammocks, and the wounded were drawn up into the shuttle. Skylar and her squad went back for more wounded.
Riley pulled up beside her. “What the hell happened back there? You froze up.”
“I don’t know,” Skylar replied. “A feeling came over me like I was going to die, and I couldn’t shake it.”
“I thought Birks was going to shoot you for sure,” Trudi said. “Riley took a chance going back for you. You should be kissing his ass.”
Skylar bit her lower lip.
“Don’t mention it,” Riley jeered, grinning.
Skylar grinned back. “Okay, I won’t.”
She and Trudi picked up a litter holding the marine with the missing arm. Kaydon and Riley picked up a marine with a face burned black. The man with the missing arm gritted his teeth and took the pain, but the burned man whined like an abandoned baby. Again, they transferred the wounded to hammocks, and the marines in the shuttle drew them up.
“All aboard,” Jackson ordered. “We’re all done here.”
“What about the dead, sir?” Riley asked.
“Lieutenant Carpenter will take care of them,” Jackson told her.
Skylar grabbed a rope and was drawn up into the shuttle. She sat down under hammocks suspended side by side over the breach hatch and waited amidst the groans of the wounded. The others boarded, a few at a time, and when it was time to leave, the seats were less than half full.
“Close it up,” Birks ordered.
“Aye, aye, sir,” Jackson responded. He went to the pad on the wall, and the hatch slammed shut.
There was a rattle of clamps retracting, and the shuttle pulled away from the corvette.
“Good work, marines,” Birks praised. “We got the fuckers.”
“What’s going to happen to the corvette, Sarge?” Riley asked.
“Lieutenant Carpenter’s taking it back to Kari. It’ll be retrofitted and put into service.”
“I can’t stop thinking about the defector,” Skylar told her squad. “Can anyone explain to me what he’s doing?”
“He’s doing what we’re doing,” Riley said.
“But he’s Karian,” Skylar argued.
“What does he believe, though?” Riley asked. “Does he believe what we do?”
“I can’t say for sure,” Kaydon said, shrugging, “but when you think about it, it’s kind of like that. There are always a few who don’t believe what the rest of us do.”
Skylar glared back at him. “But the Rats are fucking monsters. How could he be okay with that?”
“It’s complicated,” Trudi replied, tossing her head as if only she understood.
“Well, I don’t get it,” Skylar muttered, shaking her head.
Trudi smirked.
“I often wonder whose side you’re on,” Skylar said, still shaking her head.
“I’m on your side,” Trudi said. “I’m just saying it’s complicated.”
“We should interrogate him,” Skylar said, trying to restrain the anger in her voice.
“That would be pointless,” Kaydon answered. “You can’t believe anything he says.”
“I don’t care if it’s pointless,” Skylar snapped. “I have to find out what he’s thinking. What did he say? Something about basilisks.”
“He said they’ll kill us all,” Kaydon said quietly, staring like in a trance.
“Why would he say that?” Skylar asked.
“I don’t know,” Kaydon said, “but he believed it.”
Basilisk by Scott Bradley is a riveting military science fiction story about a brutal conflict between two warring planets, Kari and Rhea, that suddenly threatens to annihilate both when one side decides to introduce a mythical alien creature known as basilisks into the battle. Skylar Solace, the daughter of the renowned captain of the Kari starship Dragon, is foundering in her studies to become a starship officer. So, when the planet Rhea attacks and decimates one of Kari’s space stations and its more than 2,000 souls aboard, she and her best friend, Trudi, with passions high (A LA STARSHIP TROOPERS), enlist in the Marines. But all the training in the world can’t prepare Skylar for the terror she feels going into battle. Not only must she fight the enemy, but her own paralyzing fear as well. Adding to her emotional struggles are the rampant rumors that Kari’s leader, President Alder, may be responsible for starting the war for personal gain.
While initially appearing to be a passionate and gung-ho recruit wanting to prove herself to a cruel, unfeeling father, Skylar Solace turns out to be a remarkably complex character struggling with a lot of baggage. I had some difficulty connecting with her, especially when she froze during her squad’s first engagement with the enemy, possibly contributing to the death of a marine under her command. However, as the story unfolded, she grew on me as she matured and grew into the kind of protagonist that her command saw as a competent and canny leader, able to cut through the smokescreen of subterfuge of Kari’s power-hungry and corrupt politicians. She goes from acting like a schoolgirl when confronted with her current crush to fighting through excruciating pain and the mind control caused by the bite of the all-too-real alien Basilisk.
Corporal Solace is supported by a plethora of teammates besides Trudi, such as the mercenary Levi and the ever-contentious Coma. Many characters come and go as they fall in the many shipboard skirmishes, and the squad is re-formed over and over. Skylar slowly comes to trust herself, learning a hard lesson when she relinquishes command to a less talented squad member in a moment of weakness.
The story starts in high gear as Skylar’s squad boards a Rhea Corvette, and the author does a bang-up job describing and choreographing the ensuing chaos they experience as they breach the hull under fire and meet the enemy head-on. Capturing an enemy combatant, a Kari insurgent, readers get their first hint that the virtually unstoppable Basilisk of lore might not just be a myth, and their involvement in the Rhea-Kari war is a much larger threat to everyone, giving off fresh ALIEN vibes for the rest of the book. I found the story exciting and entertaining, but there were a few places where the action lagged with unnecessary repetitions of explanations or character introspection, typos, and incorrect word usage.
I recommend BASILISK to readers of military science fiction, especially those who enjoy strong female protagonists.