“How many more of you are there?” Father Ultor was saying.
“Where are the Proximians?” Solomon added.
“Stuff the Proximians!” Ultor snapped. “These are fine and good Martians we need to save!”
Solomon ignored the man, as the first, gasping convict’s voice rose from his own suit’s speakers.
“They were on an inspection—the Proximians, I mean. Some of their people were working at the lower levels, so they went to interview them. Then there was an almighty explosion and…” The convict was panting.
“What’s the quickest route down? That corridor there?” Solomon nodded to the downward-sweeping ramp.
“No. That switches back and forth under the surface mantle. There’s a shaft back through…” The man pointed to the hole he had just crawled out from. Back into the collapsed tunnel.
“Where are the Martian convicts?!” Ultor was demanding, but Solomon had no time for petty allegiances.
“Karamov? Kol? Come on. Let’s go stop a diplomatic incident…” He grabbed the lip of the boulders and squeezed himself through to the tunnel beyond.
“The commander’s last report suggested sabotage, Ambassador.”
Up on the surface, Jezebel Wen spoke carefully to the woman beside her, as she stood in front of the rover parked in the main courtyard, with Harj and the imprimatur already helping to load the injured prisoner on board the rover.
The ambassador and her singular personal assistant stood looking at the open maw of the mine, her face shadowed by the sleek black visor helmet that all the delegates had found stowed away on the rover.
“It wasn’t us,” the imprimatur called out from within her own visor helmet. “You should know that, Ambassador. This wasn’t Mars’s doing.”
“And I doubt whether Proxima would kill off its own negotiators…” The ambassador’s voice sounded like a scowl. “Prisoner breakout then?”
“Absolutely not, Ambassador!” Warden Harj called loudly.
Then who did this? Jezzy thought. It had been the Martian separatists who had bombed the Nuriyen. And now the ringleader of those separatists was down there in the dark with Solomon.
Why would Father Ultor go down there with his men, if he was planning an assassination attempt? Jezzy thought. None of this made sense.
It was at that point that the rover, along with Warden Harj and the injured prisoner, was thrown up into the air by an explosion that threw the imprimatur, the ambassador, her personal assistant, and Jezzy to the ground.
“Ambassador! Report!” Jezzy was hissing in pain. Something had hit her leg. Is my suit compromised? She rolled over, looking down to see that the leg guard had buckled and now had a deep dent that looked as though it was impacting her calf. Not good.
But no time to worry about her own pain. Was the Ambassador still alive?
The scene in front of her was terrible: a blackened circle of wreckage, and the still-recognizable bits of a tracked wheel, a wall. Someone had blown up their rover, and that meant either someone had planted a bomb, or…
Phfft! A small plume of ice and dust a little way from her, followed by another. Almost like it was raining… Only it wasn’t rain, was it?
“Shooters!” she shouted.
“Hgnh… Wen?” It was the ambassador’s amplified voice as her maroon-robed form twitched and moved from the spot where she had been flung. On the other side of her lay a very mangled, very dead personal assistant, eliciting a sob of angered misery from Ochrie. “No!”
The shooters had targeted their position not from the mine, but from the rising rocks on the opposite side of the ice pit, Jezzy saw. They were sitting ducks. “Get inside!” she barked at whoever could listen, jumping forward to seize the ambassador with one hand as she pointed her Jackhammer rifle out at the line of sulfurous rocks and fired a quick, staccato burst. She had no intention of actually hitting anyone, just of forcing their attackers to keep their head down.
Warden Harj was dead, as was the prisoner he had been tending to and the Ambassador’s personal assistant. Jezzy, the ambassador, and the Imprimatur of Mars bounded up the ramp and into the relative safety of the mine building as it continued to shake and judder…
“Is this wise, Commander?” Karamov was saying as they felt their way through the darkness, their suit lights revealing a tumble-down world of boulders on the other side. It was surprisingly quiet in here, no hissing or ticking or screaming, Solomon thought as they searched for this shaft that would lead down to the other delegates.
“Probably not, soldier,” Cready said, as his hands suddenly disappeared into darkness. A hole.
More than a hole, an opening half-covered by rock, leading to a shaft with steps cut into its surface. Under the suit lights, the walls and steps gleamed a dull, opaque white.
“We’ve reached the ice layer,” he said. “And I guess that’s where we need to go…” He stepped over the rocks and started taking the steps three at a time, as fast as he dared without falling down the shaft himself.
“Situation report: found the access to the Proximians. Going down,” he called out on the gold channel, at least expecting to receive some sort of ‘aye-aye’ or an okay from Jezzy far above.
But there was no response. Funny, he thought, checking the suit telemetries.
There was his own suit identifier (SOLOMON CR) as well as the bright green blips of Karamov and Kol following along behind him. But of Malady or Jezzy Wen, there was no sign.
Had they been attacked?
“Jezzy! Malady! Come in!” Solomon ordered suddenly. No… Their suit telemetries would still be visible. Even if they were dead, it would come up with a warning message on their names…
“It’s the rocks, sir…” Kol, their technical specialist, told him. “These Marine suits are good, but they haven’t got the space for a full-strength transmitter-receiver. A few hundred feet of rock and ice like this will kill the signal quicker than pulling the plug.”
“Just great,” Solomon grumbled to himself as he continued to bound down the steps, already raising a sweat. How long had they been descending for? A minute? Two? How far down did this thing go, anyway?
“Hello?” The sound was slight, but Solomon’s suit picked it up. It was a voice, echoing up to them from below.
“I got something!” Solomon redoubled his pace, and in a few minutes, he saw that they were coming to the end of the shaft, as there was light dimly glaring from below.
“This is Confederate Outcast Marine Solomon Cready, Commander. We’ve come to help!” he called out as the glow grew brighter, revealing itself as an opening at the bottom of the stairs.
“Thank god…” an amplified voice said from the other side. Solomon found himself stepping into a rough-hewn room without the metal walls and girder supports this time, forming a long gallery through the ice and rock. One side of the avenue looked like a child’s game of blocks—rectangular and oblong sections had been cut from the wall and apparently dragged out of an opening that had completely caved in.
There were people in the room, a selection of three white and silver-suited people in sleek visor helmets, as well as two convicts in their drab brown. They were huddled against the cave-in, sitting on the floor.
“Why didn’t you climb out up the shaft?” Solomon was the first to say, bemused, when he suddenly realized why.
A shadow detached itself from the wall on the other side of the entrance and something flashed in the darkness. Muzzle flare, as a bullet at point-blank range slammed into Solomon’s back, and the world went dark. He was unconscious before he even hit the floor.
9
Buried Alive
“Commander? Commander!” Jezzy shouted over her suit communicator. But it was to no avail. There was no response at all. “Karamov? Kol? Malady?”
“Malady here,” his electronic drawl arrived. “I’ve secured the air-processor. Re-sealed the crack, but it won’t hold if there is another blow-out. Moving on enemy position now.”
&nb
sp; “You saw the attack? Someone killed the warden and almost killed us!” Jezzy said. Beside her, the ambassador and the imprimatur sat, shoulder to shoulder, their faces nervous behind their visors.
“Short-range personal missile. I saw the tail-flare. Attackers are in the ridge of rocky highlands around the mine. I am making my way to their presumed location now.”
“A personal missile system??” Jezzy said out loud. Well, that would certainly kill a rover, she thought. But surely no one on Titan had access to such armaments, did they? Not even the wardens would have a battlefield weapon like that, would they?
“Okay. Just…be careful. Whoever these people are, they’re trained, and they mean business.”
“So do I,” Malady stated in his deadpan way before clicking out.
“Marine?” The ambassador was pushing herself up, sounding fierce. “I need to open a channel to Confederate Command. This is a military matter.”
“It wasn’t us,” Imprimatur Valance repeated.
“I don’t care who it was right now, just so long as we catch them…” the ambassador stated.
“As you wish, Ambassador…” Jezzy hit her suit telemetries system, using a mixture of hand gestures before fiddling with the controls on her belt.
Light Tactical Suit Telemetries:
Short-Range Radio…
Short-Range Wi-Fi…
Transponder GPS…
“Dammit!” she cursed out loud.
“What is it?”
“These suits… They’re no good unless we’re in closer contact to a transmitter station,” Wen explained. “Usually there would be a battle cruiser or a Rapid Response Fleet ship hanging around with its own signal boosters, able to field and respond to calls, but my suit just isn’t powerful enough…”
“Maybe this command unit has a transmitter…” Jezzy and the ambassador were surprised when the imprimatur immediately turned around to sweep the rubble from the desk they hid behind and start hunting for a long-range radio transmitter.
“Why are you helping us to contact the Confederate Marine fleet?” the ambassador asked.
“Because maybe I don’t want to die down here, Ochrie!” the imprimatur’s suit hissed back at her. “And I think we’ve clearly seen that just as many Martian convicts have probably died down there as Confederate ones, so it can hardly be said to be Mars’s fault, can it?!”
Jezzy had to admire the politician, she thought. She was willing to work with her supposed enemies to secure their safety. But we’re not safe, are we? She frowned as she thought through the ramifications of what had just happened.
“Someone first set off some kind of explosive device in the ice mine, while the delegates from Proxima were down there…” she said out loud.
“And then they fired on the Imprimatur of Mars and the Ambassador for Earth…”
“Destroying any chance of escape,” the ambassador agreed.
“Oh my frack.” Jezzy looked at the open door, and the burnt-out shell of the rover clearly visible outside. “This is a trap. Someone wanted to force us all inside the building.”
The building that was at any moment going to collapse.
CREEAAACK! The walls and the supports groaned and shifted a little bit more…
“You heard me, soldier! I said if anyone moves, I’m putting another bullet in him!”
Solomon rose through layers of numbness to awaken to pain.
“You can’t shoot all of us. Not before we get you.” That was Karamov, Sol recognized his voice even through the fuzz of his suit’s speaker system and the acres of pain between him and reality.
It was dark. Was he dead? This certainly wasn’t Heaven, so he presumed that this must be Hell…
He had been shot.
The thoughts arrived in fragments, none of them fitting together very well. All he knew for certain was that his body felt heavy and full of pain.
He had been shot. That was bad, wasn’t it? It was hard to know anymore, given that his whole recent life had been bad. Was this worse than getting electrocuted by Warden Coates? Than worrying if he was going to wake up with Arlo Menier’s service knife sticking out of chest? Or worse still, waiting for the inevitable seizure that would shake loose his spinal cord, thanks to the cocktail of illegal drugs that the Confederacy were feeding him?
Yes, Solomon, this is worse. Much, much worse. The small, almost-sane part of his psyche informed the rest of him, and the pain flowed up through him like a dark blood-red sea, that he could no longer hide from or block out…
“You’re probably right, but at least your commander will die, and maybe one of you two, as well. Which one of you wants to be the last man standing? Come on, step up, soldiers!” The voice was modulated through its suit, but the mocking and sarcasm was clear enough.
Just shoot them! Solomon tried to say the words, but all that came out was a thin whine of air. There was something in his mouth. Spit? Blood? If it was blood, then he really was in a bad way. That meant that the bullet had somehow gotten under his armor, past his battle harness and through the undermesh suit to penetrate his lungs. He would drown in his own blood before he died of shock.
How about starving of oxygen? a capricious, devilish thought informed him.
Oh yeah. He had been shot, he remembered, while on Titan. The alien moon with its poisonous atmosphere. A hole in him meant a hole in his suit. Which meant that his general options for the future were: he could either drown in his own blood, his system could shut down because of shock, or he could die of asphyxiation.
Of the three choices, Solomon would rather not have to do any of them if he was being honest—which, given his pained circumstances, he had nothing better to be.
“Wise choice, lads.” The shooter once again sounded contented. “You just stay there, keep your weapons where I can see ‘em, that’s it…”
There was a shuffling sound and the scrape of metal on rock. The shooter has taken their guns, Solomon thought raggedly. Anything to take his mind off the pain. Now the shooter will execute them, one by one…
“Sayonara, dirtbags!” There was the slow tread of feet, and then silence.
“Frack,” Solomon heard someone say. He thought it was Kol. It was hard to tell them apart once again.
“We couldn’t let him kill the commander,” said the other one. Which must be Karamov. “How’s that seal?”
“Hmm.” The voice grew louder, and Solomon felt a shadow fall over his face, although he was still having trouble seeing anything but indistinct pictures. “Hold on, I’ll put some more sealant on it.”
There was a popping sound, and then a high-pressure spray, and Solomon gasped as cold seeped into him from his side.
“Well, throw me down a black hole, the commander’s still in there!” he heard Kol say, excitedly, and then the same voice much closer once again. “Hang on in there, Commander. We’ve stopped the bleeding and patched up your suit. You won’t die of asphyxiation.”
Great bedside manner there, Kol, Solomon would have cursed him, but it hurt too much.
“Here,” this was from Karamov. “I got a stimulant injection. That should get him up on his feet, and a painkiller injection.”
“Ace,” Kol responded.
Ah yeah, I told Karamov to bring his medical kit with him, didn’t I? Solomon remembered. Something was happening to his forearm. It was being lifted and the access patch to the small compressed-valve catheter lifted. It was one of the marvels of the Marine Corps that they had already thought of the need of a wounded soldier, in a poisonous or near-vacuum environment, to have life-saving injections. The valve kept the inside of the suit pressurized, creating a small pocket of air underneath a rubber seal. Once the injector pen was attached and sealed in place, the valve could be opened, ‘accepting’ the pointy end of the injector into the same pressure as the rest of Solomon’s suit.
Just like an airlock, but one made of fabric, rubber, and a simple brass valve, Solomon thought, before wondering why he was thinking abou
t it. Oh yeah, because of the pain—
“Ow!” The first injection was painful enough. What size needle are they using?! A stars-be-damned harpoon?! Solomon could have shouted.
And then his heart pumped and his blood flushed around his body, flooding his veins and drawing along his arteries, hitting his organs and his lymph nodes and his blood-brain barrier…
And his blood was now loaded with some of the sweetest military-grade stimulant that the Marine Corps could afford. And the Marine Corps had a budget of billions.
“Hgzzkrgk!” Solomon shot up to a sitting position, almost headbutting Karamov in the process. Vitality and energy flooded through him, making him grind his teeth, making him feel invincible. But there was a ringing in his ears… What was that?
Oh, it’s not ringing. Solomon panted as the drug held him. It was the hammering of his heart. It must be going at easily one-fifty, one-eighty beats a minute…
“Whoa there, Commander! You’re a long way before you’re out of the woods yet,” Karamov was saying, trying to bring the second injector pen down to Solomon’s suit catheter.
“I don’t need painkillers. I don’t feel anything,” Solomon said, grinding his words as his teeth refused to part fully.
“Ha. You say that now, but in five minutes, the pain will kick in.” Karamov forced Solomon’s hand to the floor, leaning on his commander’s elbow as Cready’s over-stimulated body twitched and jerked. “And this painkiller will take the edge off the stimulant. Don’t want you going psycho on us, Commander.” Karamov punched the second injector pen into the rubber seal and released the brass valve one more time.
This time, Solomon didn’t feel the sting of the injection—probably thanks to the drugs circulating his system—but he did feel the slowing down of his thoughts, and the warmer, fuzzy feeling that crept up his arm until his entire body felt elastic. It was a little like being slightly drunk, but without any of the giddy humor, he thought.
Outcast Marines Boxed Set Page 34
