“It’s fine, Coates. I appreciate free-thought in my Marines,”
“Adjunct-Marines,” Coates couldn’t help himself from clarifying. Which, Solomon thought, was actually the very same crime that Solomon was supposed to have just committed—that of questioning their superior officer.
Asquew ignored him as she continued, “I understand your hesitancy, Commander Cready. However, our best Marine Corps analysts have spent years deliberating over the exact reasons behind the Message and the motivations of the Ru’at. And the most that any of us can say with any certainty is this: that this technology is dangerous, and it is surely one of the key reasons why the seditionists thought that they could be strong enough to break away from the Confederacy. This message has already managed to do what some fifty thousand years of human history hasn’t achieved: splinter our species into different groups, with NeuroTech happily making a profit on the downfall of our entire kind.”
“And fanning the flames of war.” Solomon nodded, enjoying the way that his casual conversation with the general was infuriating Warden Coates.
“Precisely. So, not only does the Marine Corps have to put an end to these ridiculous attempts at sedition by Mars, Proxima, and Luna, but we also have to get to the bottom of just what the Ru’at want,” Asquew stated. “We cannot afford to let NeuroTech continue, which is why in the next few days, I will be sending Gold Squad on a mission.”
“Aye, sir.” Solomon nodded formally. “Where to?”
“All in good time, Commander Cready.” Asquew gave the young man a tight smile. “I still have to win the war for Mars, yet…”
Which isn’t going to be happening any time soon, Solomon thought as he looked out the viewing port window to see the surface of the Red Planet, scarred and dotted with smoke.
“In short, Specialist Commander Cready…” Asquew surprised him by speaking again. “None of you would be here if it wasn’t for the Message. The Outcasts are the Marine Corps’ response to the Ru’at. As soon as we realized that this alien force could be among us, we needed an answer, and we created one: a new type of Marine that does not have to rely on the technology of their equipment, but instead be biologically and chemically enhanced,” the general said proudly.
“You Outcasts will be our weapon against the Ru’at. You have been commissioned exclusively with that goal in mind,” she continued. “Now, I need you to make yourselves ready, for in the next few days—sooner than I wanted—I fear that you will have to begin.”
3
The Instincts of Solomon Cready
3 Days Later
Push, and…jump!
Solomon lengthened his stride over the frozen rocks and ice plates of the Ganymedean surface. Ahead of him, Jezebel Wen was little more than a blur against the baleful eye of Jupiter, rising over the far horizon. The gas giant gave everything an almost yellow glow.
They were returning from their exercise run, and Solomon could feel his back and brow clammy with sweat. Working out in near zero-G wasn’t as effortless as civilians thought it to be. Solomon grimaced. The problem was that there was only a fraction of the resistance available to his own limbs. When he pushed off a rock into the next leaping run, it felt like he was pushing against nothing much more than blancmange. It made his thigh and back muscles work that much harder, and Solomon’s side where he had been shot was starting to ache.
Solomon was in a good solid position at the back of the pack of runners. Dammit, the man thought. Although it wasn’t a race, the constant evaluation and assessments that the Outcasts were subject to meant that everything was a competition—even just exercising.
Around him loped members of the other squads of the adjunct-Marines, similarly fresh back from Mars as Cready and his Gold Squad was. Solomon recognized members of Red, Blue, and Teal Squads, but he wondered what had happened to ensure that they got an early rotation back here. Had they succeeded very well or failed on Mars? What had been their missions?
And, slightly more despairingly: Where were the other members of their squads?
He was pondering this mystery—anything to take his mind off the dizzying Ru’at situation—when suddenly something drew his eye and slowed down his pace.
Ahead of them, they were approaching the home stretch of the not-race race as it approached the hangar bays of the Ganymede Training Facility, looking like large crouching turtles with metallic shells and a series of closed launch-bay doors. Behind them stretched the long collection of buildings designed into a semi-circle that was the facility, and above that was the boxy shape of a Marine transporter.
The transporters were the standard dropship of the Confederate Marine Corps, a pregnant, bulging bug from which sprouted four booster rockets at each corner, and each with independent movement so they could swivel and turn, allowing the large logistics craft to make even the most precise of landings.
None of which was happening right now, though.
All four of the Marine transporter’s rocket thrusters were slanted back and up from the main body, firing the craft down towards the Ganymede surface without any attempt to slow down, re-position, or extend the landing legs.
In fact… Solomon made a quick calculation of the trajectory of the descent. It was heading straight for the Ganymede facility.
“Jezzy!” he screamed over his light tactical suit communicator. Normally on these sorts of simple exercise missions, the specialist commander would turn his communicator just to the emergency station band only. He wasn’t supposed to be acting as a squad leader at the moment after all, and he would still have been reachable by Ganymede if they needed to send urgent information.
Well, what is stars-damned more urgent than a crash landing?! Solomon growled, fumbling with the catch on his harness that opened to reveal his short-range wireless controls.
Wireless Network Communicator…On.
Gold Channel…On.
Broadcast All Frequencies…On.
In response to Solomon’s hurried button pushing, his eyes filled with the green haze of the holographic lettering on the inside of his helmet.
“She’s coming in too hot and fast. She’ll hit the main dome. Everyone find cover!” he said breathlessly, starting to run—not toward the training facility, but instead to the nearest plate of ice and rock sticking out from the Ganymede floor. Around him, the other runners had stumbled and slowed, a couple still moving forward thanks to the low gravity as they, too, comprehended was about to happen.
“Nonsense! We need to get people out of there!” one of the other squad’s members said. Frankinson from Red, Solomon thought. At least the guy had the good sense to turn his own suit communicator on as Solomon had done, he thought for a fraction of a moment.
“Negative on that, Frankinson.” Solomon let his momentum slide towards the plate of ice and rock, ducking as he did so. “You’ll never get there in time. Better to help the survivors…” he was saying as his back hit the wall of ice, stopping his charge and effectively providing him a shield against—
Against the inevitable.
Solomon managed to turn just in time to see that some of the other Outcasts were indeed doing just as he had suggested, diving for cover on the complicated ice and rock plain, striated with rills and ridges where surface water had fused with the rock.
But some had ignored him completely, and they were closing the distance towards the launch lobby, the hangar bay doors where Solomon knew they would be activating their suit identifiers and sending messages to the airlock doors to open.
“Station Command! Do you read me? Station!” Solomon was shouting once again. Why aren’t they doing anything? They have defensive gun placements, don’t they? Why weren’t they trying to stop the craft—
Because it was all happening too quickly, Solomon thought. The transporter was creating a blurring red and white haze of plasma as it burst through Ganymede’s thin gassy atmosphere, shaking and shuddering with the G-force of its descent… One of the booster rockets at a corner was flaring
and being torn from its socket thanks to the momentum—
KABABOOOM!
And then there was an almighty flash as the transporter hit the main dome of the Ganymede Training Facility.
Seeing an explosion in near zero-G is almost as surreal an experience as seeing one in the near-vacuum of space.
Unlike the too-quick movements of more earthly tragedies, these terrible acts happen almost in slow motion, given the different gravitational pulls and flows. The transporter buckled and tore, spilling sparkles of light like fireworks at night. The lights glowed oddly in the strange Ganymedean environment, doubling and twinkling and glowing odd colors as they interacted with Ganymede’s unique mixture of scant noble gases.
Waves of fire spread and erupted, growing like clouds in red ink spilled in water—moving languorously and slowly, even gracefully—if it weren’t for the several Outcast Marines who had managed to get to the bay doors just as the flame-clouds enveloped them, picked them up, and consumed their suits in moments.
The ground shook as the pressure of the impact was driven through the training facility’s foundations and into the plates of rock and ice that stood for ‘bedrock’ up here. Solomon heard grinding shrieks that he thought was metal ripping and rending, but when he looked down, he saw that fracture-cracks were racing out in crazy spider-web fashion along the alien plain where the ice—as strong as it was—was still no match for having a Marine transporter thrown at it.
The explosion looked odd, but it was short-lived owing to the lack of available oxygen in Ganymede’s thin atmosphere. Instead, flumes of fire-ink blossomed here and there in jets as portholes inside the facility burst apart, and the heat of the crash found the center’s oxygen-processing machines.
Then instead of fire came the tearing and crumpling of the facility itself as metal met metal and obscenely joined together. Solomon watched in horrified awe as one of the four thruster rockets of the transporter broke off and sheared through the front audience hall, where he and the others would have stood to recite the Marine Oath every day, or hear daily minutes and briefings given by Warden Coates.
The destruction raced along the facility in odd ways—a rounded dome the color of chrome foil and with spiraling metal girders around it suddenly performed a reverse concertina and collapsed in on itself as correctly as if it had been designed to do that all along.
Decompression, implosion, and explosion, a part of Solomon’s mind remembered from one of his command lessons. As a specialist commander, he was expected to take overview classes that covered all other areas of specialist training so when he gave orders to his team of specialists, he would have some idea of what he was talking about, or was even possible.
What would not be possible, however—his training had taught him—was to be able to use the Ganymede Training Facility for a long time. The transporter had finally stopped its dreadful descent, but now most of it had disappeared, apart from one up-turned corner sticking from the center of the facility. Still, portholes burst with slow-moving fire as other areas crumpled in on themselves.
Jezzy… Solomon’s heart froze. She had been at the front of the race. Of course, she would have been. Solomon had never met anyone as athletically accomplished as she was.
Had she got my message to find cover? To stay away? Or, like Frankinson, had she elected stupid bravery over wisely staying alive?
Solomon got up from the shelf of ice and rock that had sheltered him and looked into the ruin that was once his home. There were bodies. There were Outcasts struggling to repair damaged suits, or else put suits on.
People are dying. They need my help.
Solomon broke into a run towards the facility, now that he was sure that the transporter wouldn’t explode.
Broadcast All Channels
“Listen up! Everyone away from the facility! Move out over the plain!” Solomon started shouting at Outcasts as he ran forward, his eyes scanning for signs of Jezzy’s body.
She’s not here, he thought.
“You two!” he barked at two dazed and confused Green Squad Outcasts, and even though he didn’t even know what rank either of them were—anyone could be a specialist commander just like him—he gave them orders all the same. “You can walk. Get up to the emergency reserve bunker on the ridge.” He pointed to the dark shape of a low building that the Marines had built and stocked for emergencies just like this. Well, probably not THIS, Solomon knew. Not the crash of an entire transporter into the facility itself… “We need emergency evac suits. As many as you can get,” he demanded of them, and surprisingly, the two immediately raced off to get the light-weight ‘survival sack’ style suits that could be thrown on in seconds.
Not that it will help most people already out here. Solomon growled inwardly in frustration as he saw one staffer emerge from the facility, already stiff and frozen.
But it gives those two something to do, and we’ll need the suits when it comes time to rescue any left inside, Solomon thought as he continued to jump from scarred wreckage to rock. They would need satellite communication. The bunker might have a mobile unit. They would also need to set up some kind of pressurized emergency habitat somehow, and they would need some cutting equipment to get those trapped inside out before all their oxygen ran out.
But as he was giving orders and rounding up any he came across in the mayhem, he saw what had happened to his combat specialist.
Jezzy Wen was standing amidst a burning field of wreckage, trying to fist-fight a burning, gleaming figure that was stalking out of the fires.
It was one of the cyborgs.
4
To Save A Life
Jezzy lunged—but not at the soot-stained, silver man-thing bearing down on her. Instead, her mesh gloves seized one of the broken bits of alloy pipe sticking out of the ice where it had been thrown when it ripped off the transporter.
The cyborg moved at the same time, stepping out of the jet of flame that burned itself out in an instant and reaching for the combat specialist with one four-fingered claw of a metal hand. The creature wasn’t entirely made of metal—the blackened silver of the creature’s hand ended just beyond the wrist to reveal the pallid, almost yellowing cadaverous flesh of a bare arm and shoulder, obscenely shot through with chrome cables that burst from its frozen flesh like veins.
The rest of the cyborg was the same motley of metal and flesh, with its entire lower half given over to bionic legs, as well as one half of its chest and its left side.
None of that was as distressing as the thing’s face, however, which was horrifyingly human…albeit with sightless, staring dead eyes. A silver cap extended from just above its brow to form a river of metal down the thing’s neck and spine, Jezzy saw as she spun on her heel, bringing the pipe up in a wide arc to connect with the creature’s head—
CLANG! Although she couldn’t hear the impact, she felt the shock of it vibrate down the length of her arm, and the creature was turning to one side—the metal of its head scratched, and its more human cheekbone ruined.
The blow would have been enough to kill any mere mortal, but on the cyborg, it had just worked to bend the pipe almost to a forty-degree angle.
Frack! Jezzy swore, already turning as she knew that the cyborg would counter-strike.
It did, flinging a fist out in a backhand blow that would have killed her, she was sure, if she hadn’t anticipated the move.
No weapons, Jezzy cursed as she allowed the lighter gravity to take her, leaping back a few paces and circling her opponent. This had just been an exercise run, so no one was packing any firepower.
But Jezebel Wen had been in tight spots before, and she had often had to get creative in the worst of situations. She leaped forward, one encounter boot hitting the top of an upturned storage box thrown from the wreckage, which she used as a springboard to leap, jackknifing her body in a head-over-heels motion in mid-air. That was one of the few advantages to fighting in near zero-G—Jezzy could use all the martial arts techniques she had learned as a
young woman and do impossible things with them.
As she spun, she swung out with the pipe once more, her rotational force lending more fury to the blow as it struck the cyborg coming for her, and it was enough to knock it backwards.
“Come on, you glorified can-opener!” she growled into her mask as she landed, her boots sending puffs of ice and rock dust around her. She didn’t waste any time and jumped forward once more, raising the shorn pipe in a two-handed grip over her head to bring it down in a fearsome blow against the creature that was already attempting to stand once more.
Thunk! Both her and the cyborg fell to the ground, bouncing in the thin gravity as Jezzy’s weapon plunged straight through the fleshy part of the creature’s chest. Jezzy rolled away from the tumble, scrabbling to her feet to turn back.
Around the fighting pair was chaos. The ground that had once been humped with rills of frozen ice in places and flattened in others with wide avenues for the mech-walkers to transit was now a broken, churned mess. Great cracks had appeared along the frozen surface, and in places, vast plates of ice-rock had been forced up and sat jagged, pointing towards distant Jupiter.
Bits of wreckage from both the Marine transporter and the training facility littered the plain in terrible confusion. Flashes of light still exploded into the dark as some room, building, or electrical component was ruptured by decompression or heat.
And the cyborg that Jezebel Wen had been fighting was already pushing itself back up to its feet, with a bent metal pipe sticking straight through its body. Even though Jezzy had been briefed that these things were hard to kill, and she had even seen what it took to overwhelm one, it still alarmed her as she saw the creature get back up.
Though Jezzy had been trained to be a killer, that didn’t mean she did not feel fear, far from it, but she could ignore it if she had to. It’s just an energy. A chemical reaction, she told herself, allowing herself to breathe deep as she focused her mind and remembered what the Yakuza martial arts instructor had told her.
Outcast Marines Boxed Set Page 53
