Miss Cheung was gone. Dead or whisked away to her own hiding place, he didn’t know. Still the shots were coming in thick and fast. There was no call of Enforcer action. No floodlights or mecha-hounds.
Solomon got the uncomfortable feeling it was something to do with the government surveillance chip that he had found in his apartment.
Whatever. Survive first, ask questions later…
And that was how he came to be crouching against the refuse bin at the back of Neon Vespers, panting and gasping and wondering where Matty had got to. He should be out here, shouldn’t he? Solomon had managed to crouch-run through the kitchen just as Matty had done, and he hadn’t seen his body or any other ways out.
Matty had run, Solomon thought. He had left him in there, which wasn’t like his friend. Matty might be a charmer, and he might be a bit obnoxious, but he was no coward. He was loyal.
But Matty had gotten up to go to the bar a minute before the shooting had started, Solomon’s cynical, puzzle-solving mind had told him.
And how did anyone know that he would be there? That he would be having a meeting…
Crouching beside the bin, Solomon’s heart thumped, and he felt like he was going to be sick. It couldn’t be true, could it? The whole world stopped for just a moment. He had always lived by the rule that you couldn’t trust anyone in this business, but he had thought that there was one person that he could trust: Matthias Sozer.
Had Matty sold him out?
You can’t trust anyone. Solomon’s jaw tightened. Petchel had died because of this mission—not that he had known the adjunct-Marine for long, but the man had put his faith in him as the commanding officer to keep him safe and look what had happened.
His death is on my hands, just like Matty’s is, despite everything. Solomon made up his mind.
“Sod the orders. I’m finishing this mission,” Solomon hissed, working quickly.
“What!?” Kol was saying.
“Commander, we did good today. Don’t throw that away!” Karamov agreed.
Don’t throw Petchel’s life away, you should be thinking. Solomon rolled his eyes and thought about what he could do. He had his Jackhammer rifle and a knife. He couldn’t sneak down the passageway because they would be sure to see him. They would either shoot him or kill the ambassador before he got there—or both. He needed a distraction.
But I don’t have anything! He could have cried out. All he had was his suit...
Unless…
It was a crazy idea, but that seemed to be the only sort that Solomon had left. These light tactical suits have four hours of oxygen in their tanks, don’t they? And the tanks were set up as tubes that ran through the jacket harness….
Moving quickly and as silently as he dared, he unclipped the jacket harness and shrugged it off. He instantly felt a lot lighter, but also a lot more exposed.
Warning! Light Tactical Suit Compromised! Unable to Read Sensors!
His helmet visor blared the warning at him, which Solomon thought was a little silly.
“Yeah, I know the suit is compromised,” he grumbled. The oxygen filter was in the helmet, and it could replace and restore his oxygen for approximately one hour. That should be enough time, shouldn’t it?
“Commander! What are you doing?” That came from Malady, but Solomon ignored him as he took a deep breath, trying not to think about the fact that he only had fifty or so minutes left of oxygen. He moved out.
He rolled his shoulder around the passageway opening, flinging the jacket harness with one hand as he raised the Jackhammer rifle with the other and fired.
What was the armor plating integrity down to? Solomon panicked, and wished that he had checked before he had decoupled the harness. Too late now. Was it low enough that his Jackhammer could burst the hardened steel and mesh shells to rupture the oxygen tanks beneath?
BRAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!
His gun jumped in his own hand, sending sparks across the passageway as the bullets hit the harness. Luckily for Solomon, he had fallen from a great height not only once but twice while wearing that thing so yes, a close-range, high-powered military rifle was enough to get past the metal plating—
PHSSSSSSS!
Plumes of white steam suddenly erupted into the passageway, filling it in a second as the pressurized liquid oxygen reacted with the thin Martian atmosphere. Solomon only had a moment before it evaporated, but a moment was all he needed.
“What the—” he heard someone shouting as he jumped up, charging through the smokescreen that he had created, and pounced into the room.
Expecting to see two people and the ambassador, he only saw a blank wall.
No, not blank. Solomon saw a sparkling light fading and realized that at the base of the wall was a hologram generator, precisely the same sort that he would expect to see almost anywhere in the Confederacy. The lights had been the form of a man, a man in a dark uniform—with brighter hair perhaps—who dissipated into shards of fading light.
No time to worry about that. There were two people in here, and only one of them was standing. He was stocky, dressed in the same tan and ochre work suit of Mars Construction, but Solomon could tell that the man was clearly the leader of their little group of separatists. For one, he had a lot more weaponry on him—a Jackhammer rifle in his hands and heavy pistols strapped to the front of his own harness and at his hip.
The other occupant of the room had to be the ambassador. She was in a simple emergency encounter suit, the sort you have to don if you are traveling interstellar or orbital ships with minimal safety procedures, but her suit white and sky blue, the colors of the Confederacy Diplomatic Corps. She was also trussed with heavy poly-fiber straps that crossed her arms, waist, legs, and ankles. The separatists had even gone so far as to wind some of the straps around her helmet visor so that when she shrieked in alarm, it came out just like a muffled groan.
Solomon swung his own Jackhammer around, but the separatist leader was too close, and too fast, flinging his own rifle up, and Solomon saw that he had modified his by adding a heavy combat blade to the barrel.
“Frack!” There was a clang as the separatist brushed aside Solomon’s rifle, instead turning his back towards Solomon’s unprotected body.
Oh no you don’t. Solomon had a lifetime of making crazy, reckless choices, because he knew precisely that sometimes, it was only the reckless choices that got you free. He let go of his own rifle instead of trying to sweep it back around to a firing position, seizing the man’s rifle instead.
BRAT-ATAT-TAT-TAT! The leader’s gun fired, and Solomon was sure that he would feel his legs or his chest being blown out from underneath him.
But no, he had managed to turn the barrel of the gun between them as they wrestled.
The separatist was strong, stronger than Solomon was, for sure. Fortunately, though, Solomon had Marine training, and three months or more of sparring practice, every day, day in and day out.
Solomon knew that the instinctive reaction when someone tried to wrestle a weapon from your hands was to pull it back or shove them away. Solomon pulled on the gun as the separatist easily pulled back, and then, when the separatist leader pushed out with all of his considerable strength to try and throw Solomon, the specialist commander pulled instead of pushed.
The leader came flying forward as Solomon turned a shoulder and dropped a hip, and the man neatly tumbled over him in a near somersault that spun him through the air to come crashing down on the floor—
“Gurr!” the man suddenly cried out in pain, and Solomon saw that, as they had twisted and Solomon held onto the rifle, it had reversed grip and, when the man had slammed into the floor, his own knife modification had slammed into his own encounter suit, right above where his heart was.
“Ach…” Solomon panted in shock for a moment, seeing the separatist leader’s body shake, then go still.
It was over. He had saved the ambassador. He, Solomon Cready, Specialist Commander of the Outcasts, had done it.
Epilogue
: Ganymede, 2205
“Blatant disregard of mission parameters,” Warden Coates stated tersely, almost spitting as he stalked in front of where Solomon stood at attention, in one of the smaller audience halls aboard the Ganymede Marine Base.
Solomon had been summoned to this meeting as soon as the adjunct-Marines had returned from their Hellas Chasma mission on Mars, after they had attended the grim and austere Ceremony of Remembrance, where the names of those lost were read out as rockets were fired for each of the fallen.
Despite their apparent victory, it was still with a muted, somber air that the remaining Outcasts had returned to Ganymede. They had lost five of their number, and a further three were injured seriously enough to drop out of training. Solomon actually felt sorrier for those injured, as they would probably be sent off to Titan to do what menial work they could from their hospital beds.
After the ceremony, instead of being rewarded a very rare free period of rest and relaxation before bed, Solomon had been summoned to Warden Coates’s observation lounge—a round room with a domed ceiling that afforded a breathtaking view of the stars and Jupiter outside.
Where Solomon’s fate was to be decided—only luckily, not by Warden Coates alone. There also stood in the room Doctor Palinov, as well as Colonels Asquew and Madavi.
“The mission was cancelled, and he continued to fight, putting himself and his squad at risk. We can’t have that!” Warden Coates argued. “And one of his squad died! Adjunct-Marine Petchel!”
Solomon held his breath. There was that. Of the two charges against him, that was the only one that he cared about.
“He should be deported to continue his convict sentence immediately!” Warden Coates ended on a victorious note.
Solomon thought that all of this was a bit of a formality. Of course the warden was going to exile him from Ganymede. He had been waiting for an opportunity to do that ever since he had gotten there.
“Enough, Warden Coates,” Colonel Asquew said, frowning deeply. “Insubordination, and the inability to follow mission parameters, is a very worrying trait. It shows a degree of arrogance, and…a lack of trust,” the colonel said piercingly.
And she’s got me there, alright, Solomon thought.
“Doctor Palinov, what is your assessment?” Asquew said suddenly, surprising Solomon. What does the doctor have to do with anything?
“Physically, his test results are all within acceptable ranges. No major injuries that would warrant decommissioning him,” she read from a thin data-pad. “But then again, nothing to particularly recommend keeping him, either,” she offered.
Warden Coates’s face lit up in glee.
“However, it is his psychomotor test results that are truly…abnormal,” she said. “His ability to learn and pick up new skills is one of the best that I have ever seen, and his mental agility, as shown through the Oracle virtual tests—”
Those jigsaw shapes! Solomon remembered his many hours spent in the study lounge. I knew it!
“—is also phenomenal. For these reasons alone, I would recommend retaining him,” Doctor Palinov said.
“But he disobeyed orders!” Warden Coates burst out. “It doesn’t matter if he’s a superman if he can’t follow orders!”
“There is a difference, Warden Coates,” Madavi stated heavily, “between orders and principles, as I know that you are well aware. Whilst this man might have a long history of, uh, shall we say difficulty with orders, we can certainly say that he followed the principles of the Marine Code by continuing to pursue his goal and to rescue the Ambassador to Mars, even on his own.”
The warden’s face glowered at the rebuke, but he lowered his head.
“Then we are in agreement, it seems,” Asquew stated flatly. “Madavi and Palinov rule to retain Specialist Commander Cready as an Adjunct-Marine of the Outcasts, and Warden Coates, I presume, votes against?”
“I do.” The warden shot Cready a venomous look.
“Then it is decided. Two votes against one. Incidentally, I happen to side with my colleague Madavi.” Asquew nodded, then turned to address Solomon directly.
“You may remain here on Ganymede, amongst the Outcasts, Specialist Commander. You will continue to train and work until we feel that you are ready to become a full Marine. I have to warn you, though, that further disrespect of your mission parameters will not be met so leniently, no matter what your physical and mental competencies are. Understood?”
Solomon nodded that he did indeed understand. He felt something strange kindle in his chest.
It was pride.
The Kepler Rescue
Outcast Marines, Book 2
1
Break and Enter
“Gold Squad, go!” the electronically-filtered voice of Warden Coates barked in Specialist Commander Cready’s helmet, and the young man was already moving by the time the fuzz of static clicked off. His heavy combat boots—sheaths of hardened poly-fiber over rubber and mesh—hit the metal gantry, powering him towards the stars.
Cready didn’t waste time checking in with his squad members behind him to see if they had copied the order. By now, he knew that if any of the four adjunct-Marines had a problem, they would be sure to tell him.
There were perks to being the most-hated squad in the Outcast training program, he had a brief moment to think, as the cream and gray surface of Ganymede, shot through with pink striations, appeared underneath the roof of cold stars. We do things our own way. Argumentative, tough, difficult at times, but we stand together against all the others.
Behind him ran Jezebel Wen—or Combat Specialist Jezzie, as the Japanese Outcast and former Yakuza hitwoman was called. She wouldn’t take fools gladly and was just as likely to tell her commander to frack off as to obey an order if she thought there was something wrong with it.
Then came the heavy, full tactical golem named Malady. Built like a walking tank, with heavy domed shoulders and fully-automated limbs, somewhere inside of that suit—but only visible as a sleeping, cadaverous ghost behind the faceplate—was a human being, once a full Marine before he had been busted down to adjunct status for assaulting a superior officer. Another one who was roundly distrusted by the rest of the Outcasts and had nothing to prove to anyone.
Finally came Karamov and Kol, one slightly smaller than the other—and Cready would have had a hard time telling them apart in their suits if it weren’t for the holographic identifiers that flared in his visor every time he looked at another member of his squad. Both had a chip on their shoulder. Solomon had been worried that at least part of their obtuse nature was the fact that they had been assigned to Gold Squad in the first place—the squad that managed to get itself disqualified in a training exercise but had also managed to save the Confederate Ambassador to the Mars colony, but only by disobeying mission parameters.
Then again, both Karamov and Kol always obeyed Cready’s orders, so maybe they liked being part of the outcasts of the Outcasts.
It had been three long, arduous months at Ganymede since the Hellas Mission on Mars. Three months of grueling days stacked one on top of another. Two hours of physical training, followed by mealtime and study hall sitting in front of computer terminals powered by the Oracle mainframe, performing mental puzzles or learning Marine history, science, or flight procedures. After that came the specialist classes for those that were ‘lucky’ enough to be awarded them. Solomon was a specialist commander so he and a handful of others would be led to more computer terminals to replay and re-enact holographic battles, while Combat Specialist Wen went to the sparring circles, and so on. After that came more food, more weapons training and finally gymnasium work before crashing out to bed. It was a devastating regimen, and one which several other adjunct-Marines had already flunked.
Break your ankle in sparring? Flunked and sent to mine ice on Titan.
Bust a rib? Flunked and sent to mine ice on Titan.
Get into an argument with the warden? Have a nervous collapse? Flunked and… Everyone got the idea o
f what was expected of them now—which was everything.
The Outcasts were an experimental crew of ex-cons, affiliated to the Rapid Response Fleet of the Confederate Marines, training to be sent into all the dangerous, awkward situations where the Department of Justice might not want to send fully-trained, and very expensive full Marines. Not one of the sixty or so Outcasts left had any chance to argue their case. The choice was simple: Fight for the Confederacy or work out your sentence on the surface of distant Titan, probably dying miserable and freezing.
But the Outcasts had won a recent victory. Their first ‘away’ mission on Mars had neutralized the Martian Separatists. More importantly, the newswires hadn’t picked up on the distant gun battle on the red sands. So, they had performed perfectly according to parameters, as their superiors might say. Not that their training supervisor, Warden Coates, had spared them any time to celebrate their success.
Partial success, Cready had thought. There was still the question of how the Martian Separatists had gotten access to Confederacy military-grade hardware, and how they had managed to hack into the Confederacy communications systems, which presumably should have been the best encrypted information systems available to humanity…
Not that any of that was important right now, of course, as Solomon’s boot hit the end of the gantry and he jumped!
LIGHT TACTICAL SUIT: Active.
USER ID: Solomon CR.
BIO-SIGNATURE: Good.
SQUAD IDENTIFIER: Gold.
SQUAD TELEMETRIES: Active
Solomon’s vision was filled with the flaring neon holographic readout on the inside of his visor plate as his legs started to cartwheel through the near vacuum of Ganymede. He was twenty meters above the surface, jumping from one of the tall towers that stuck out of the side of Ganymede Marine Training Station. On either side of him, other specialist commanders were similarly scissor-kicking their legs as they leapt into the eternal night, trying not to think about what might happen if their light tactical suit malfunctioned, or any host of other things went wrong.
Outcast Marines Boxed Set Page 13
