What is she measuring? he wondered, but before he could ask, Palinov nodded and gestured for him to continue to the last two people in the line.
“Commander,” said the man on the right. Actually, the Marine. Solomon realized that he was looking at Colonel Madavi, the dark-skinned man in his full power armor who had vouched for him after their first disastrous training exercise.
“Specialist Cready,” said the figure next to him, the venom dripping from Warden Coates’s voice. The little warden was still wearing his regular encounter suit and ridiculous gold-starred, peaked cap, which made Solomon stifle a grin behind his helmet. You not fighting alongside us, Warden? he thought with more than a hint of scorn.
“Welcome to the Marines, son.” Madavi picked up from the hovering drone table behind him one of only a few small boxes, and when he flicked it open, Solomon blinked as he saw what was inside. It was a singular gold star, the first pip on his way to becoming a full, and real, Marine colonel like Madavi.
Solomon blinked, suddenly unsure of what to say. He’d had people compliment him on his work—usually when he’d made his clients a whole heap of money, of course—and he’d had people pay him bonuses for a job well done. This time, it seemed different. He felt suddenly unsure of himself, in a way that he wasn’t used to.
“Adjunct-Marines,” Warden Coates clarified. “This rank of specialist commander that we are awarding today is only for operational matters out on the field,” he said, and Solomon was surprised when Madavi half-turned with a frown to the warden.
There is a power struggle going on here, Solomon realized. The warden seemed to have total control while they were recruits and regulars, but as soon as they became full Marines… A ray of hope opened in Solomon’s mind. As much as he didn’t particularly appreciate being given orders by anyone, he would much rather be given orders by the likes of Colonels Madavi and Asquew, then the jumped-up little tyrant that was Warden Coates.
“Everyone who receives one of these deserves it. Make sure that you look after your squad.” Madavi had turned back to take the small gold star and settled it with a sudden thunk along the top of Solomon’s shoulder pad, where it seemed to chemically bond as soon as it touched the metal.
I’m a commander now, an actual commander, Solomon thought. Well, adjunct-specialist-commander, anyway. But it was a start.
“I will do my best, sir.” Solomon nodded his thanks to Madavi, and realized that he meant it as he walked past.
Only to be stopped by Warden Coates stepping forward, and hissing in a low voice, much to Madavi’s annoyance, it seemed. “There’s no room for traitors in the Confederate Marines, Cready. Just remember that today.”
Solomon didn’t know whether to nod or argue, but either way, Coates had returned to his place, where he and Madavi awaited every newly-appointed adjunct-Marine to give them their gold pip.
“What was all that about?” Jezzie whispered to him, opening a private suit-to-suit channel as Solomon led them to the nearest available set of seats, there to sit down and buckle the webbing over them.
Solomon came to a sudden decision. He didn’t want to spend any more time toiling under Warden Coates. It would only be a matter of time before the warden decided to make an example of him again.
“I’m changing my orders, Jezzie,” Solomon heard himself say. “We’re not going to just fulfill our mission parameters out there. We’re going to do it better than everyone else. If this is a search-and-rescue mission, then Gold Squad 1 is going to be the ones who do the rescuing.”
“Aye-aye, boss.” Of course, he couldn’t see her face, but Solomon was sure that he could hear his fellow soldier grinning just as fiercely as he was behind her helmet.
When all of the Outcasts were securely seated, the transporter ship wasted no time in disembarking. Solomon felt butterflies in his stomach, but he was well used to nerves. He was the sort of guy who was used to running on adrenaline most of the time, so he breathed through it as he had taught himself long ago and allowed the agitation to turn into excitement.
First, the ramp door slid shut, and with a series of dull whirrs and clicks, they locked and repressurized. Then came a grinding, whining noise from somewhere deep in the ship, and the entire cargo room shook and started to tilt.
Solomon couldn’t see what was happening outside—he didn’t even know what the transporter ship looked like—but the room that he and the other Outcasts were a part of was a large, low hall with steps that went up to a small raised area at both ends, leading to lifts. This must be the belly of the craft, he thought, imagining some bulbous, fat-bellied insect rising on thrusters.
Actually, the specialist commander wasn’t far off, as the Rapid Response transporter was a quad-craft, four adjustable thrusters at each corner point, with an extended blocky belly of gray metal that contained troops, equipment, and anything else that they required. It was ungainly and bloated as it took to the thin envelope of gases that surrounded Jupiter’s largest moon, wavering slightly on the twin jets of plasma and flame that sent up clouds of steam and smoke from evaporated ice and rock dust.
The transporter achieved equilibrium and started to ascend into the dark, away from the orange and red glare of Jupiter, moving faster and faster as it did so until the orb of Ganymede would have been visible to Solomon and the others—if the Department of Justice and Defense had given them portholes.
As such, the troops inside just had to guess what was happening, and Solomon found that he could almost predict it, as the vibrations that ran through the metal of the hull changed in both intensity and frequency.
We’re out of Ganymede’s gravity, he thought as their ride became suddenly a lot smoother, and he felt himself rise a little against the webbing harness that strapped him to the chair. Zero-G. The transporter didn’t have any graviton-engines, he saw. Not like the fancy colony ships that traveled to Proxima and Trappist.
No, this transporter was austere and functional. Every available bit of manufacture was given over either to defense or purpose. The walls were twin layers a meter thick, with galvanized steel framework between them. The corners of the rooms inside, as well as the sensor arrays and hatchways, were all right-angled and sharp.
Now free of the pull of Ganymede and using Jupiter’s own gravity as a slingshot, the four rocket thruster columns at each corner angled themselves and powered the vessel out into the inner system, heading sun-ward, away from the gas giant. The space that it headed toward was not dark, but silver and gray with stars.
The transporter had one destination in mind, and even though it appeared on the outside to be moving slowly, it was actually being thrown forward at many thousands of miles per hour in terrestrial terms.
Inside the transporter, the murmurs of the other Outcasts started up as they tried to second-guess what they were doing, and why.
“Search-and-rescue mission, the warden said…” Solomon heard one of the nearer soldiers say through his suit.
“That’s not all it is,” Solomon said, his voice, just like the others not on his squad, was only a muffled blur, but to his fighters linked into his suit, he was amplified and clear.
“Commander?” Petchel surprised him by saying.
“As soon as we get the green light, stay sharp and keep your rifles up,” Solomon said, holding his own Jackhammer across his lap. It was a heavy-barreled, stocky-looking thing with a range of empty ports for extra attachments. He also had one ammo clip already in place on the underside, plus another three that the Ganymede staffers had given him locked to his belt.
Solomon wouldn’t have said he was any sort of expert before he had started his military training, but he considered what he had been taught in the study lounge, along with the others. “Each clip holds, what, thirty rounds? We’ve been given four clips, so that’s a hundred and twenty rounds a piece,” he said aloud to Petchel and the others. “What sort of search-and-rescue mission requires a hundred and twenty rounds?”
Petchel nodded but said no
thing. The tension in the air grew sharper.
Outside the hull, the transporter ship’s destination was becoming clearer: another vessel waited in the sweet spot where Jupiter’s gravitational pull was balanced out by the other planets. This was the place where the Barr-Hawking jump-ship could get as much traction as possible, and not waste any fuel.
Which was a good thing, really, considering what the jump-ship had to do.
The transporter was large, but the jump-ship was a fraction larger. It was a ring ship, with a central body extending forward like a beak, but with an entire ring around the rear of the ship, attached to its hub by four ‘spokes.’ This ring was a vital part of the configuration of the Barr-Hawking generator, with a series of super-massive particle engines that were synched to produce precisely the same amount of force, the same disruption to the space-time layer, as each other. Any mistake between these linked particle engines meant that space-time would be ripped and folded in unpredictable ways—probably ripping a hole straight through the jump-ship, whatever cargo they were hauling, and near space as well.
Pft! Pft! With tiny bursts of gas, tether cables made of strong steel burst from the surface of the ring and smacked onto the square face of the transporter, their magnet clamps locking to the metal as the jump-ship started to move.
Barr-Hawking jump-ships were a marvel, humanity’s key to opening up the cosmos, and they worked along an unnervingly simple principle. The jump-ship itself produced enough energy to create a ripple in space-time. Just a small ripple, but one that folded near space-time closer together, Solomon had learned through Oracle.
This ripple surged through local space like a bow wave, increasing in velocity and folding ever deeper levels of space-time together until they broke the light-speed barrier. The whole business of ‘jumping’ wasn’t really ‘jumping’ at all. It was merely taking a high-speed shortcut, Solomon mused. The ship was still traveling through conventional space, it was only that the gaps between conventional space were now much smaller thanks to the folded space-time.
However, the Barr-Hawking particle engines were insanely difficult to build, as well as insanely expensive to run—even in the twenty-twos. It was the only hard limit placed on technology, one that the Confederacy was constantly trying to solve. Confederate labs had tried miniaturizing the technology to no avail, as well as using different primary fuel sources, none of which worked. All of that meant that there were only a limited amount of Barr-Hawking particle engines out there, and it was impossible to place them on every spaceship the Confederacy owned.
Instead, Solomon knew that their answer had been a simple one. They used the particle engines in the same way that old-time Earth had used tugboats for the much larger ocean-going liners. The jump-ship created the space-time bow wave, and ships like the transporter or any other Confederacy-approved vessel got to hitch a ride to that bow wave and thus travel at the same speed. All without having to have particle engines or a ring-hull themselves.
Solomon was thinking about explaining all of this to his squad when all thought was blasted out of his mind as the first wave of vertigo washed over and through him.
Jump sickness, he recalled reading. It was a common ailment amongst all travelers, and there didn’t appear to be anything that the Department of Justice and Defense or the wider Confederacy could do about it. Because they were human, Solomon knew that their physiologies weren’t used to traveling at such high speeds. He was sure that there had to be some deep, instinctive, primitive part of their minds that knew what they were doing was almost breaking the rules of time and space. Almost.
If Solomon or any of the other adjunct-Marines in the cargo hold of the transporter had been able to see the view from the cockpit far above them, they would have seen the light start to do strange things around the jump-ship. The stars started to bleed and bend, like a time-lapse picture of a night sky, only one taken near one of the poles of the Earth. The stars quickly became glowing lines of brilliance, forming a circle, and then stretched to form an egg-like shape, then an orb that stretched its brilliance all the way back from in front of the jump-ship’s nosecone to encapsulate the hauled transporter ship behind.
The light grew brighter and more intense outside the ship as the dizziness inside the soldiers’ minds continued to escalate…
And then, rather abruptly, it stopped.
9
Evasive Action
ATTENTION! MISSION PARAMETERS CORRECTION!
Mission ID: HELLAS
Strike Group ID: Outcasts, Adjunct-Marines.
Parent Fleet ID: Rapid Response 2, Confederate Marine Corps.
Squad Commanders: Cready (Gold), Hitchin (Silver), Gorlais (Bronze), Hu (Red), Nndebi (Blue), Walters (Green)
GROUP-WIDE ORDER CHANGE:
Activate the jumper pack situated on your seat rest.
Automated jumper packs will deliver each squad to intended field of operation.
Await further squad-level orders there.
Equipment malfunctions should be reported to squad commander.
Solomon, and all the other adjunct-Marines that made up the Outcasts, read the scrolling words that flashed holographically in front of their eyes on their suit visors.
Jumper packs? Equipment malfunctions? Solomon had a brief moment of panic. This mission was getting very real very quickly. The nausea was fading from his stomach and the jittery feeling of vertigo was quickly draining away, leaving behind a cold sort of dread as Solomon quickly tried to assess just where the controls for this new piece of equipment even were.
I can’t even see whatever this ‘jumper pack’ thing is, he thought. Looking at the armrests of the cargo seat to see that there, along with several other depressed buttons, one was flashing red, with a ‘J’ embossed on it. At least the Marines like things straightforward, he thought as he punched the button, then felt the seat around him start to change. The first adaption was that the backrest extended two metal arms that swung down to fold themselves over his shoulders, clamping to his suit. At the same time, folding arms locked into place around his hips, and he felt the seat shift against him, the backrest now a padded back support.
“Commander?” he heard Petchel say, and he turned to see that all of Gold Squad had similarly figured out the controls and were now wearing a bulky unit that was also their seats.
Oh… A jump-pack. He had seen these before. They were the rocket-assisted backpacks that paratroopers used when deploying into hostile situations.
“Looking good, team.” He gave them an encouraging thumbs-up, then concentrated on the transporter’s movements, which was now bouncing violently.
“We must be entering Mars atmosphere,” he stated, as there was no other reason he knew to explain the turbulence. The Barr-Hawking jump-ship must have detached them, and their travel at faster-than-light must have thrown them across the solar system at incredible speeds, arriving above the surface of the red planet in a matter of minutes.
“Suit check. Equipment check,” he ordered his team, before adding the final command. “Lock and load.”
Each of the Outcasts quickly went through the standard suit checks that they had been taught and knew by heart by now. Tightening the buckles. Checking the magnet locks and the air seals. No one wanted to arrive in a near-toxic environment and find out that their helmets had been loose the entire time. Luckily, each Marine’s visor reported a readout of their suit’s current status, so they were able to check their safety according to a ‘loosen and tighten’ method.
ID: Sp. Commander Cready.
Atmospheric Seals: GOOD.
Oxygen Tanks: FULL (4 hrs).
Oxygen Recycle System: WORKING (1 hr).
Each suit had a distributed network of tubes filled with a liquid substance loaded with high concentrations of oxygen and water—the suit separated them and delivered them to the suit’s helmet and water nozzle accordingly. The light tactical suits also had a filtration system that would suck out any of the odd oxygen particles fro
m a Marine’s breath, as well as drawing any in from the outside environment and using it to prolong the Marine’s life. It wasn’t as good a system as the power armor or Malady’s full tactical system, which could last almost indefinitely thanks to their complicated filtration, absorption, and storage methods, but Solomon knew that it meant that each of his squad had approximately five hours’ worth of available air. If the Hellas mission lasted that long, then he would have to consider how to get his team back to the transporter or to a secure habitat.
BLARP!
Over the three cargo bay doors, a red light suddenly blinked to a flashing green, and a klaxon swept through the ship.
I just wish that I knew what we were heading into! Solomon thought in annoyance, checking his Jackhammer rifle and securing his ammo clip as he stood up. He had been expecting the new jumper pack that he was wearing to be heavy on his shoulders, but some mystery either of the jacket harness or the pack itself meant that he couldn’t even feel it at all.
“Get ready! Eyes sharp!” He was already leading his squad to the nearest hatch as the other six commanders did the same, holding their combat rifles across their bodies and pointing down at the metal floor.
READY…
READY…
INITIATE DOOR CONTROLS IN 3…
2…
Solomon bared his teeth.
1… JUMP-JUMP-JUMP!
Each of the three archways rolled up, sending a vortex of wind and dust into the cargo bay and almost pulling Solomon off his feet. He looked down and saw an orange and yellow surface with plains and canyons that extended for as far as the eye could see.
Hello, Mars, Solomon thought, and jumped out of the transporter, hundreds of feet above the surface of the Red Planet.
Outcast Marines Boxed Set Page 10
