The Frontier War (Alien: Colonial Marines)

WELCOME TO THE CORPS

“A day in the Marine Corps is like a day on the farm: Every meal’s a banquet. Every paycheck’s a fortune—every formation’s a parade! I love the Corps!”

—MASTER SERGEANT AL APONE

Armor piercing rounds sizzle through raw flesh as plasma beams sear swollen retinas. Acrid smoke chokes down your throat before you realize what’s burning is you. Chemical attacks melt your armor, simmer your eyeballs, and fuse your warped helmet to your skull, while bioweapons turn your insides out and pulp you into a quivering mound of black jelly.

Welcome to war on the razor edge of space, marine—where nukes are yesterday’s news, pulse rounds are cheap and a human life is only worth its weight in stock options. It’s a living hell—but none of that’s as bad as the flashes of gnashing metal teeth that terrorize you every time you try to close your eyes—like some goddamn monster just split your head open and crawled inside your dreams.

You joined the Corps because you wanted to see the stars—well, that and because you wanted to shoot at things. You believe in duty and honor. You believe in the Corps. You've made your best friends for life here—and watched plenty of them get cut down by shrapnel or claw for no good reason at all. Hell, sometimes it feels like God doesn't want you out in space anymore than the Devil does. A nuke never cares whose side you’re on—both heaven and hell are always looking for new recruits.

But enough of that philosophy crap. You get paid to follow orders, not ask questions. You’re just a grunt—no offense. So lock and load your pulse rifle, marine—you’ve got a job to do. Protect and serve the citizens of the Outer Rim colonies—no matter what the cost.

THE ROLE OF THE COLONIAL MARINES. Before we discuss what exactly it is you’ve gotten yourself into, let's take a look at what the USCMC does. The amended National Security Act describes it as follows: “The United States Colonial Marine Corps] is an integral part of the United Americas Allied Command (UAAC) that is tasked with maintaining the collective security of all United American (UA) signatories and their recognized interstellar colonies within the Frontiers of the Network.” We are the first line of defense against any attack on a UA colony—that means any world belonging to the United States, Canada, Latin America, and any other member of the UA. That definition has sometimes been broadened to include the colonies of UA ally nations like the Three World Empire. “Working closely with colonial administration and local governments, the Colonial Marines are a first response threat assessment group designed to handle most armed conflicts and natural disasters within the colonized boundaries of the 20 Parsec Limit.” If there is any problem a colony can’t handle on its own, the UA throws the colonial marines at it to see if they stick. That means you, marine. “Under the purview of the UAAC, the Colonial Marines coordinate with the Colonial Armed Forces, Colonial Navy, Aerospace Forces, and the Defense Fleet to execute any extended peace or wartime extrasolar engagements and operations necessary to protect the integrity of the colonial United Americas.” Sound’s boring, I know. What it means is that the Colonial Marines can be backed up and augmented by the other armed forces to ruin the day of any asshole who thinks they’re better than us. “In the event that the Secretary of Defense and the UAAC High Command should become incapacitated, deceased, resign, or be removed from office, the highest-ranking officer of the USCMC shall assume command of an advisory council representing the other branches of service. This interim UAAC Command shall control the nation’s military might under the President of the United Americas until such time as the vacant roles can be filled.” Right after the UAAC, the USCMC has superiority over all other branches of the UA military—and deservedly so. The other services can only accomplish co-dependently what the colonial marines can do on their own. If everything goes to hell during war time and we lose UAAC Command, the USCMC leads the charge against the enemy. Finally, there’s this bullshit amendment: “Co-financed by Colonial Administration and the Weyland-Yutani corporation in order to offer technologically superior protective services to joint venture colony worlds, the USCMC can also be activated as a corporate security force tasked with protecting short-term company interests.” In layman's terms, sometimes we’re the badass gallant heroes riding in on a dropship and a prayer to protect life, liberty, and the pursuit of paychecks—and sometimes we’re just Weyland-Yutani’s bitch.

A LIFE IN THE CORPS

Let’s talk about your part to play in this shitstorm. I’m not going to pussyfoot you—a life in the Colonial Marines is damn hard and you get little reward. Sure, you get money to send home and keep the family afloat. You get instant friends, a sleep pod of your own, and three squares a day. Better yet, you not only get to shoot that gun your recruiter mentioned, but you get rewarded for shooting it. Just make damn sure you shoot at the things they tell you to shoot at and try not to grease any civilians—an important distinction when hoping for that reward.

HAVE HYPERSLEEP POD, WILL TRAVEL

First, you are going to sleep a lot. Even with our fastest displacement drives, it still takes almost three months to get from one side of claimed space to the other. Try to get there on something slower than a cruiser or frigate and it could take three years. That’s hypersleep time in a freezer pod doing nothing but dreaming. Because of this, your tour is going to take a few more years than you probably thought it would. The good news is that while everyone else you grew up with is getting old on some mining asteroid, you’ll still be young and kickin’ when your tour is up.

Now, all that shit about visiting exciting new worlds? Well, all the other Outer Rim colonies are just as boring as that lump of space rock you call home. Planets, moons, asteroids—it don’t make no difference. Every world’s got a sunrise and a sunset or two—but on the Outer Rim, they are always “too” something. Some are too wet or too dry, others are too hot or too cold—and every one of them is looking for a way to make you all too dead.

Hell, most of the colonies you’ll deploy to ain’t even real breathers—they’re shake and bakers. That processed canned air stinks just as bad on every one of ‘em—they all got that cheap metal taste. Why? The O2 there is just as recycled as the shit on your home ball. If there were a ton of worlds we could breath on, do you think the company would be cranking out those big ass air scrubbers again? The colonies have got an overpopulation and overcrowding problem. Humanity needs breathing room—and there ain’t no more left. That long-ass American Arm has got to grope just a little further into the void and hope nothing out their gnaws its fingers off in the dark. That’s why they’ll be dropping you and your squad’s asses on the Frontier—to secure new planets and moons on the ready line of known space.

INDIGENOUS LIFEFORMS

On the Frontier, everything wants to kill you—including the damn air. If the O2 ain’t that tinny recycled shit, it’s probably poisoned. Ion storms will turn your dropship into a brick in freefall, and there are alien critters on these outer colonies that want nothing more than to eat you inside out. Bugs, beasts, and blobs—one platoon even fought off a goddamn dinosaur on Moldoon’s Moon.

When the local fauna gets out of hand, we’re the goddamn exterminators.

Yes, sir—we get paid to endanger species. More often than not we clear out the local fauna and make it safe for the colonists, their babies, and their babies’ babies—a little shit job we like to call a bughunt. Sure, some of them space “bugs” are cute. Some might even seem friendly—at first. But trust me, you don’t need no poodle-sized cockroach humping your leg in the middle of the night, pooping its larva in your boot at dawn and eating your face for breakfast. Nothing out here is your friend besides your fireteam buddy and your M41A1.

Even the fucking plants want nothing more than to turn you into fertilizer—but that’s why they give us the incinerators. If the jungle so much as looks at you funny, you torch it. Sometimes you just have to burn the forest from the trees—and then burn down the fucking trees as well—just for good measure. Call in an airstrike. Douse it in toxic chemicals. You do what it takes to make the bad plants and angry animals go away. Don’t go throwing nukes at the colony, though—the corporate types usually don’t like us irradiating their planet to protect it. Your job on Frontier worlds is to make it easy for the dumb-ass colonists to set up shop—not to make them glow in the dark.

INVASIVE SPECIES

Then there’s the real assholes out here—us. People. Every nation and two-bit independent colony is pushing up against each other and the unknown. Most colonial insurrections are laughable, and any raiders or pirates that the Colonial Marshals can’t handle are a flash in the pan for the Corps. But every now and then, somebody gets entrenched on some key production world. You just can’t scrape ‘em off your shoe, so you’ve got to go in on foot and in force.

Lots of times, corporations are scrambling to own everything and rent you standing room only. Sometimes two companies will get into spit fights that end with us coming in on one side or the other and waving a big stick around. On the Frontier it’s all about who has the biggest stick—everyone is out here waving their sticks like they own the joint. Sometimes your stick isn't big enough. Sometimes the guy next door waves a bigger stick back. Sometimes, he waves a tank. Next thing you know, everyone’s nuked each other and there's one less habitable moon to squabble over. But all’s fair in love and war or some shit—right, marine? Right.

DARK HORIZONS

So, I’ve given you a bunch of hypotheticals, marine—but how does this relate to you right now? Lately, there have been more and more open conflicts erupting along the Frontier. As if Australia and the Oil Wars weren't bad enough, the nuking of Hadley’s Hope on LV-426 has caused a major schism in interstellar relations, and things are beginning to look bad—real bad.

RUMOR CONTROL

For almost twenty years now, the socialist Union of Progressive Peoples and the United Americas have engaged in a friendly cold war game of cat and mouse—each upstaging the other in an arms race that can only end in mutual annihilation. That end may be coming along a lot quicker than either side realizes. Rumor has it the UPP has had enough of the status quo—that they have stolen some secret weapon plans from Weyland-Yutani and completed the program before the UA has. We are, it seems, about to go to war.

There are also hushed rumors about that crazy banned book that’s been making its way across the network—Robert Morse’s Space Beast. Dark Network node chatter claims the book’s account is real, and that some sick terrorist fuck’s got an army of the goddamn beasts ready to be set loose on Frontier colonies. Some even claim it’s not terrorists, but the UPP, and that Hadley’s was nuked by them because Weyland-Yutani was breeding the beasts there to begin with—but that’s none of my business.

HERE ARE THE FACTS

While Colonial Administration has been pretty quiet about it, there is some truth to the rumors. Over the past few months, the cold war on the Frontier has gotten real hot, real fast. The UPP has been showing up and claiming American systems left and right—drawing lines in our own backyards and daring us to cross them.

And they aren’t the only ones being bold. There are disgruntled colonists on production worlds threatening to destroy supply chains if their demands aren’t met. There are fanatics on the Rim who will run right up to you just to explode in your face, and there’s even someone on the Frontier way worse than any corporation or government—someone big and powerful who doesn't like us very much.

Whomever these fuckers are, they’re bombing border worlds off the map—and they are using something nasty to do it—something nastier than any nuke. They’ve got black-goop biochemical weapons that will turn you into a goddamn monster yourself. Whatever that crap is, it’s terrifying, and it ain’t from around here.

It’s alien.

So remember, marine—we’re always the big boys and girls on the Frontier—until we’re not. Right now, we are not.

LIFE AFTER THE CORPS. So you think you’re going to hang back from the front lines, collect your paycheck, hypersleep your way through your tour, and go home in one piece, eh? That’s cute. For the sake of argument, let's say you do survive and make it back to your home ball. Let me tell you what you’ve got to lose. YOUR SOUL: The Corps changes you. Makes you a little dead inside. Complete your tour of duty alive and you’ll get to settle somewhere. You’ll get a pension and all that, but it won't be the same you that goes back to your old shake and bake. For a lot of marines, regular colony life just doesn't work anymore. They’ve seen too much strange shit to go back to farming or mining. Combat is what you know—either you have to conquer it or it conquers you. YOUR BODY: Sometimes your inside-self isn't the only thing wrecked. Sometimes you lose a limb, sometimes you lose them all. If that happens, there’s usually some corporate sponsor willing to give you use of their android prosthetics, for a price—they own the hardware, so technically they own whatever wetwear is attached to it. That means you. You’ll go from military service to corporate mercenary in the blink of an eye, so forget about settling down on some nice little homesteader world with a wife or husband, 2.5 kids, and a Daihotai tractor. One way or another, ninety percent of you that sign up for this shit are in it for life. So get comfortable, marine. You might be here a while.

HISTORY

“If you know the enemy and you know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”

—SUN TZU