VigRoco's Thought Generator

“I got your Zerg right here!”

Famous last words for a Space Marine. From that point on we were berated as some of the most lazy and incompetent soldiers in the galaxy. Millions of commanders sent us into battle as little more than cannon fodder for some crazy meat grinder campaign. We fight bravely and tenaciously to the death, but never fully receive the respect we deserve.

My name is Sergeant Duncan and I am one of the many Space Marines employed throughout the galaxy. I am here to set the record straight and earn your respect. As you can tell from my rank, I have survived many battles while seeing all my comrades fall by my side due to no fault of our own.

In short, we are driven to our stupidity from all the pressure we must endure. This is why it sucks to be a Space Marine:

Horrendous Engineering:

We are set up for failure from the very first time we put on our armor. We are told it is some of the most advanced technology the human race has ever seen, yet the ‘safety’ features that come standard are more like ‘quick death’ features.

I understand that you don’t really trust prisoners, but is that a good enough reason to install safety triggers on our weapons?

You see, as soon as we move, our weapons lock up and will not fire until we are completely stationary again. And I do mean completely stationary. ‘Rolling stops’ keep the weapon locked. They tell us this is to cut down on the ‘moving fire’ hazard and improve our accuracy, but really, it is just a way to ensure that our commanders have complete control over us.

Big Brother wants to micromanage us into our grave. You have no idea what it is like to come into a field of Zerg knowing you must remain completely still to kill them. It is a wall of death that you should easily be able to back away from while laying down suppressing fire, but can’t. And God help you if they try to flank.

The sad part is that our suits are excellent firing platforms. The internal gyros keep you nice and level when moving, so if they would just take these stupid ‘safety’ triggers off, everything would be fine. We would have pinpoint accuracy while on the move.

But what do I know? I am just an expendable resource.

Beaurocratic Unions:

As if our equipment wasn’t bad enough, we also have to deal with the blasted unions. Each unit type in our army has its own crazy union with its own insane rules. None of them work together, and they only work directly with the army commander.

Work permits control everything. You even have to obtain one to clean your weapon. You would think this only applies to non-combat situations, but you would be wrong. In battle, things get maddeningly stupid.

On the battlefield, you must obtain a fire permit to shoot at an enemy. The only exception is if you are being attacked, then you are free to defend yourself (something about media coverage and interference inspired this). Permits are transmitted digitally to our suits, but it is still a needless step in the heat of battle. Usually it is not the request time that takes so long, it is the response time.

Try to imagine standing watch on a platform while some of the rest of your company gets shot at down on the ground. You wish you could just help them out, but no you have to wait while you submit a permit request to your union lead, who then submits it to the army commander. Sometimes the army commander won’t even notice it and forces you to stand helplessly by as your fellow marines die off.

And don’t even get me started on the Fire Bat and Diamondback unions. They only work for Jim whats-his-face. I have never seen them deployed with any other commander.

Silly Deployments:

Common sense dictates that if you wish to take over a planet, you drop all your man power on the surface immediately. Well, apparently we can’t do that due to our incredibly inept engineers and the union they work for. They demand that we start out with a single command center and only call down the particular troops we need for our current situation. Plus, you have to build the construction facilities right there on the battlefield and employ the engineer union’s approved workers to even begin producing military hardware.

I mean, we can fly our huge space battlecrusiers a planet’s atmosphere, but we have to build them on the battlefied first? What is wrong with this picture? Everything. Enough said.

The only reason we have survived this long as a race is the fact that all of our enemies appear to be doing the same thing as well. I don’t know who decided this was how war should be waged, but it wasn’t a military commander. At least we are all on equal footing.

So, the next time you want to scream at us for our incompetence. Remember that we are people too and have a much worse job than you will ever know.