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    Soldiers One: Warriors of Misfortune
    Soldiers One: Warriors of Misfortune
    Soldiers One: Warriors of Misfortune
    Ebook76 pages1 hour

    Soldiers One: Warriors of Misfortune

    By Pj Belanger

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    About this ebook

    Two short stories about soldiers in a Sci-Fi/Fantasy scenario.

    “Untenable Situation” and “Heart Strings” reflect the true grit of the human spirit. By reflecting on the serious situations of these soldiers, we come to realize the insignificance of our own circumstances. I hope you enjoy these two short stories and will follow the series as I continue the plight of other “Warriors of Misfortune” in my Sci Fi/Fantasy World.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPj Belanger
    Release dateApr 20, 2014
    ISBN9781310518669
    Soldiers One: Warriors of Misfortune
    Author

    Pj Belanger

    Pj Belanger has spent a good part of her life in the scenic hills of Connecticut. She was always an avid reader. "My father collected every bit of Science Fiction he could find- we would talk for hours on the subject. The Golden Age of Science Fiction is truly a love of mine.Great writers from Heinlein to Jose Farmer to Asimov to Bloch were my idols. They were great story tellers something that influences my own work. Of course, then came Tolkien and I was hooked on fantasy too."After graduating from St. Francis College (UNE) in Maine, she worked in the fast pace newpaper advertising world but always had been a writer of short stories, novel length books of fiction, romance and general interest. Her work is a mixture of a three volume book series, The Houses of Storem filled with wizards, dwarfs, merrs, elfs, heroic Kings and albino Icelanders. Her Space Dectective series is just plain good sci fi fun as is her short story book.Pj was deeply involved in writing local NASCAR Driver Profiles and has a book on The History of Stafford Speedway. "I love racing in general, but I really love the short tracks. It was a labor of love to write the racing books and I enjoyed writing a regular racing column for a local sports newspaper."Pj lives in Florida with husband. She enjoys time with her two grandchildren. Her life is enhanced by a trouble making miniature beagle and a mischievous cat.

    Read more from Pj Belanger

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      Book preview

      Soldiers One - Pj Belanger

      Soldiers One

      - Warriors of Misfortune -

      Short Stories

      by Pj Belanger

      Cover Art by RB

      Soldiers One

      Warriors of Misfortune

      Short Stories

      By

      Pj Belanger

      Copyright 2014

      Smashwords Edition

      BRP Publishing

      All rights reserved. This book is protected by the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproductions or authorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of BRP Publishing.

      All characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

      BRP PUBLISHING

      Contact Author at mailto:pj@pjbelanger.com

      Addition information at http://www.pjbelanger.com

      Table of Contents

      PROLOG

      Untenable Situation

      Heart Strings

      Thank You

      Also by Pj Belanger

      The Triad

      PROLOG

      These first two short stories in Soldiers One came to me while I was riding from Connecticut to Florida. As I waiting on the New Jersey turnpike for over an hour in a stop and go situation, I thought about what the human spirit can endure. Here I was, just totally fed up with sitting in a car - how insignificant compared to what soldiers have to undergo. Thus, my mind went to my Sci-Fi and Fantasy world and a short story series took shape.

      Untenable Situation and Heart Strings reflect the true grit of the human spirit. Thus by reflecting on the serious situations of these soldiers, I came to realize the insignificance of my own situations. I hope you enjoy these two short stories and will follow as I continue the plight of other Warriors of Misfortune in my Sci-Fi/Fantasy World.

      Untenable Situation

      Dumbass!

      Yup.

      You never say anything. It’s like living with a mule, I yelled at the figure stretched out on the cot. I hadn’t remembered Lars Obera being that docile when we had taken up residency at the outpost five months ago. Five months! It seemed like five years. One more month to go and that will seem like a year, I thought. I hadn’t realized a six-month stint would seem such a long time, when as a newly recruited soldier, I had volunteered for this assignment. I had been excited - Stu Chapman and Lars Obera, what a team we were going to be!

      My eyes scanned the small miserable room. Five months! When the two of us had first been brought to this rugged outpost on this forsaken planet, as good soldiers we both had kept it spotless. Now look at it, I thought, as my eyes focused on one messy pile of shit after another. I couldn’t even remember the last time we’d swept the floor.

      You need to get up, I addressed the naked on-the-cot soldier. He was lying in the dark shadows since the windows slats were closed. Obera lay nude, sweating in the near 100 degree room. The man smelled. That was another point of contention - Lars had given up all pretense of normal hygiene. Every other day we were supposed to enter the sterilization booth. Lars had not decontaminated himself in several days. Why aren’t you taking a shower? I yelled at him, I can smell you all the way over here!

      It ain’t no shower, Lars spumed as he sat up. It takes water to make a shower! He’d even grown a small scraggily beard. The naked man would be brought up on charges if superiors ever saw him, but then what officer would see us? We’d been left here and forgotten. I wondered if Command had indeed forgotten the two of us. Had their Captain left the two of us to die slowly in this hell hole? It wasn’t unheard of. Rumor had it they would forget to pick up and switch for a new team every so often. It was like playing a game of roulette. Spin the wheel and forget to pick up the idiots that had stupidly volunteered for this senseless mission.

      Stop it! I chastised myself. I am a soldier, a Federation soldier - one of the proud elite, a Marine! I had volunteered for this, time to pull myself up by my boot straps, man up! No sooner had the thought entered my head than it dissipated - who was I kidding? I’d done it for the extra money. I looked over at the filthy naked Lars wondering why my roommate had also volunteered for this assignment. Unlike me, Lars didn’t have a family to support. Each of us had our reasons for being here but we had never discussed our personal motives. We just knew that we were volunteers. Only stupid naive recruits get sent to this hell hole. Guess we are easy to fool.

      Both of us had run out of things to say to each other after the first few months. It became tedious discussing the same old things. Making it worse, we had been afraid to leave the confines of the small rustic cabin. This did not make for good living conditions and was driving us to the brink of the insane.

      Let’s open up the windows, let some fresh air in, I suggested, the tediousness of the situation making me foolishly brave.

      Go ahead but wait until I get behind the bathroom door. I don’t want to get hit by an arrow. You’re not the best medic, Lars said.

      I patched you up pretty good, I reminded him. In the dim light, Lars’ scar was white against his dark brown arm. He’d gotten himself stabbed by a wild boar shortly after arriving before us two Marines knew enough to watch out for the dangerous wild life that lived on this god-forsaken shit hole planet. Obera’s wound had gotten infected and I had to use a surgical knife to dig the poison-ridden flesh out of Lars’ arm. Then the deep cut had to be sewn to close it all up. It had taken Lars over a month to recover from the fevers

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