The upper platform of New York’s space elevator, its docking ports and stationary shuttles and transporters and cruise ships, all vanished into the center of the light that hurt Solomon’s eyes and caused his two companions to look away.
And then the bubble retracted, losing luminosity and color as it collapsed back into itself.
Leaving what remained of the space elevator behind it. It was now no longer an orbital space station, attached by polyfilament cables. It was a blackened and twisted skeleton of metal, slowly turning on one edge and discarding pieces of debris as it lowered still more over the dome of the Earth.
“Dear heavens, it’s… It’s….” The ambassador was almost hyperventilating.
The space platform that was the jumping-off and arrival point for thousands of vessels every day was turning on its axis and sinking lower into the skies of Earth. Its closest edge to the planet started to burn red, a deep, angry, malefic red, as it suffered from re-entry for the first time.
“No… Who could have done this?” The ambassador was shaking. “How did the Ru’at get here so quickly…”
But the Ru’at haven’t used nuclear weapons before, have they? Solomon was thinking. The general told me that there were traitors on Earth. Taranis Industries…
“That platform is going to hit the American Confederacy,” the imprimatur breathed. “Tens of thousands will die…”
“Security channel override!” the ambassador shouted at the shuttle’s automated computer system. “Ambassadorial Code X3-Alpha-One. This is the Ambassador Ochrie, and I need a line to the Confederate Council, immediately!”
She was still saying this when the first shockwave hit, and their shuttle lurched to one side.
“Extreme atmospheric turbulence, please take your seats…” the automated shuttle voice said.
You’re not joking, Solomon thought as he threw one arm around the ambassador and held her to stop her from being dashed against the wall. The imprimatur, on the other hand, was already sliding across the floor of the shuttle, her hands scrabbling at the chairs.
“What’s happening!?” Mariad Rhossily screamed.
“Radionic shockwaves,” Solomon gasped, remembering his military study lessons on Ganymede. “They travel faster in lighter atmospheres…”
And their shuttle was still in space, riding the cusp of Earth’s atmosphere where the nuclear shockwaves would be the most violent. The window alternately flashed white and black as the shuttle wheeled end over end, skipping over Earth’s upper atmosphere. Sparks blew from one of the wall units.
“Attention, passengers. Please secure belt harnesses at this time. Navigational systems down. Corrective measures being taken.” If it was possible for a computer to sound worried, Solomon rather thought this one had managed to pull it off.
“Frack this,” Solomon snarled, grabbing the ambassador and shoving her into a chair as he struggled to hang onto the ceiling handles with one hand. “Belt,” he shouted at her dismayed face, before the ambassador nodded and clipped her belt together.
No time for the imprimatur, Solomon was already throwing himself at the small shuttle door that separated their cabin from the automated cockpit.
The door didn’t budge.
“Dammit!” And Solomon didn’t have any of his firearms on him, either…
“Security channel override! Ambassadorial Code X3-Alpha-One! Open the cockpit door, computer!” Ochrie was shouting at the shuttle as she reached down to grab Rhossily’s hand.
“Security override accepted.” The cockpit door hissed open, and Solomon was thrown against one of the two pilot chairs before hauling himself into the seat. In front of him was a bank of data-screen desks, as well as flight sticks and a whole bunch of levers and lights that were currently working on automatic.
“Ochrie, manual override!” Solomon called as he seized the flight sticks and tried to lean the craft into the spin, but the shuttle’s controls remained stubbornly immune to his demands.
The ambassador called the same commands out, ending with an impassioned, “Manual override!”
But nothing happened.
“Automatic navigation is mandatory in near-Earth atmospheric flight…” the computer was perfectly capable of saying.
“Double-dammit!” Solomon swore. He’d forgotten. It was one of the ways that the Confederacy maintained control—a very small but effective security procedure that saw all vessels with a license to operate near Earth have a command override switch placed in their computers. The Confederacy used automated software to direct the orchestra of space traffic that clogged its skies, while at the same time giving it the ability to halt any particular craft it wanted to.
Well, Solomon had once developed some very specific life skills, far below on the streets of New Kowloon.
Where are the controls! Where are the stars-damned controls?! The ex-thief demanded that his brain give up its answers. The younger Solomon had never broken into an orbital shuttle before, of course, but there had been a very particular job that he’d been gaming both the Triads and the Yakuza, and he had realized that if he needed to get out of New Kowloon quickly, then he’d better know at least half a dozen ways how to do it.
And one of those ways was researching standard orbital shuttle manufacture and construction.
CRASH! Solomon’s metal boot finally dented the plate behind the flight control sticks, exposing wires and circuit boards and mechanical devices that clicked and whirred.
Which one was it? His eyes searched as the shuttle shook and started to judder with a low vibrational shake that could only mean that were starting to dip into Earth’s upper atmosphere themselves.
An orbital shuttle can never survive uncontrolled re-entry, Solomon knew. They just weren’t built for it. If he didn’t get control of this craft yesterday, they would all burn up in the skies over the dirty Atlantic Ocean.
There! A big, fat green cable ran through the circuit boards like an artery. It had to be the automatic override, so Solomon grabbed it with his power gauntlets and pulled.
FZZZZT! An explosion of sparks and the alarm went dead, and the flight stick started to erratically jerk, matching the craft as it flipped over once again.
“Into the spin, into the spin…” Solomon seized the flight sticks and tried to channel every second of his training on Ganymede into this.
Solomon fought. He wrestled with the flight controls of the shuttle, and it felt more like driving a bumper car or throwing himself through one of the Confederate Midwest Nascar championships. The orbital shuttle wasn’t designed with aerobatics in mind, and its positional rockets just weren’t powerful or responsive enough to be able to respond to every rippling shockwave from the nuclear blast below.
One of the women was screaming in rage and frustration behind him, but he couldn’t tell which one it was.
His stomach churned as they barrel-rolled over and over, before skidding through the magnetic fields of Earth’s inner Van Allen Belt.
FZZT! More sparks flared from the flight board, and Solomon prayed that it wasn’t some vital part of the ship that had just short-circuited. That was the thing with spacecraft, he fretted, just about everything was vitally important. There were a thousand and more ways that you could die if there was any sort of malfunction at all—from sudden depressurization, to the build-up of toxic carbon monoxide, to freezing to death if the life controls packed up, or becoming lost if the radios or navigation systems blew up.
“Come on!” he snarled at the flight desk and the flashing white, black, and red lights visible over the cockpit window.
He’d done high-G training with the Marines. He knew focusing on the horizon, the middle point, would be their salvation.
If I can keep us heading in that direction… Not falling into Earth’s atmosphere below or spiraling out into space.
Solomon’s hands moved and responded with minute gestures to try and steer the craft into any exaggerated spins and out of any swerves that threatened to send them
careening down towards the Atlantic Ocean far, far below. What he didn’t realize was that, of all the people inside that shuttle, he had the advantage.
The Serum 21 that Doctor Palinov of the Ganymede Training Facility had administered to the Outcasts had been created to change his genetic structure. To promote his DNA and RNA to build amino-protein bridges between previously unconnected genetic code. It made the Outcasts tougher, faster, more resilient, and in Solomon’s case, smarter.
The mutagenic serum that he had been given made only tiny adjustments to his metabolism, his neurological structure, allowing his brain to pass messages a fraction of a second faster, and to respond a fraction of a second quicker.
But it was enough.
I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die… Solomon gritted his teeth as he worked feverishly in the cockpit as Earth burned below them. He thought about his Gold Squad, now many thousands and thousands of miles away. He thought about Jezebel Wen, the tough ex-Yakuza enforcer who had become his friend. He thought about Karamov, his medical specialist, a little quieter and more reserved but filled with a deep strength. And he thought about Malady, the man who had been permanently incarcerated in a full tactical suit for previous crimes, and how loyal he was.
I don’t want to die because I want to see them again, he thought, and suddenly—
PHWOOOSH! The shuttle leveled out, flying straight across the top of the dome of their mother planet, still shaking and bouncing, but at least they were upright and heading in only one—rather than several—directions at once.
Yes! Solomon would have punched the air in celebration, but he daren’t take his hands off the flight stick. He had done it. They were going to survive…
“Everyone alive back there?” he called out.
“Ugh—” there were various moans and groans from behind him in the shuttle compartment but no screams, so Solomon took that as a good sign.
“EMERGENCY BROADCAST. ALL FREQUENCIES.” The speakers suddenly blared to life again. “All near-Earth traffic to return to holding orbit immediately. If you require medical assistance, head to Luna Station. EMERGENCY BROADCAST. ALL FREQUENCIES. All near-Earth traffic….”
“We could try for the Shanghai elevator?” Solomon called loudly. Even though Shanghai was a part of the Asia-Pacific Partnership, nominally a ‘partner’ to the Confederacy of Earth, Solomon thought that they had a good chance of making it to the Confederate embassy, and from there…
“Luna,” Ambassador Ochrie corrected him, sounding haggard. “It’s the safest location nearby, and the Confederacy has the Near-Earth Marine Fleet stationed there…”
“Yes, ma’am.” Solomon took a breath and directed the positional rockets to change course, half-certain that they would tear from their moorings after the ride he had just put them through…
But luck was on their side, at least a little bit of luck, anyway, as the shuttle shot upward in a curving arc towards Earth’s smaller sibling.
6
Last Stand at the Last Call
“Holy stars…What am I supposed to do with this!?” Jezebel Wen couldn’t hide her frustration as she saw the busy field of craft clustered around Earth’s most distant relative.
“Protect it,” muttered the man beside her. Shorter than Wen and wearing the deep purple and red ceremonial encounter suit of a colonel, Faraday of the battleship Oregon still managed to cut an impressive figure, as he and the Outcast Marine stood at the front viewing deck of the Oregon’s bridge and looked out onto the icy planetoid in front of them.
Pluto was a small world, and so far away as to be almost inconsequential, were it not for two things: one, that it was far enough outside of the inner and outer system to provide an excellent departure point for jump-ships, and two, in recent years, it had become a major tourist attraction.
‘Come and See the Solar System’s Furthest Point!’ a gigantic neon sign on the sides of a slowly-moving cruise ship eclipsed their view of the planet beyond.
The Oregon had jumped into Plutonian space just a half-hour before, and already their Barr-Hawking jump-ship had detached its clamps from their forward hull, retracted them and rose to join its fellows in deep orbit outside of Pluto.
“Don’t these people know that there’s a war on?” Jezzy breathed, watching as the cruise ship glittered with lights. She could even see tiny shuttles leaving one of its main holds in small clouds to take near-flight tours of the small world.
“And what do they hope to see? It’s a rock…” she muttered angrily. Jezzy was not one who was accustomed to feelings of anxiety. She had done most of her growing up within the Asia-Pacific Partnership’s most notorious crime syndicate, and of all of the things that it had taught her, the ability to maintain an icy control over one’s emotions and surroundings was perhaps paramount.
However, Jezzy was not facing down a gang of Triads now. This was not a matter of deciding who was to die, and how best and most efficiently to overcome the enemy.
What Jezzy was looking at was a picture of three large, bulbous Confederate cruise ships almost as large as the Oregon itself, as well as a host of smaller shuttlecraft. Each craft probably held between five and twenty civilians, and there was a host of smaller yachts and crafts clustering around Pluto’s main station—Last Call, as it was known.
That could be what, a couple thousand civilians at risk here? Two thousand? Three thousand? More?
“The Confederate civilians don’t want to be reminded of a war,” Faraday corrected her. “Most Confederate civilians won’t have heard about Proxima yet. But they will have heard about the Martian uprising. And that, instead of making them cautious, makes most people want to experience more, to spend more money, have better holidays…”
We nuked Mars! Jezzy could have pounded on the glass in front of her. Let alone the invasion of Proxima, or the imminent arrival of the strange Ru-at ships at any moment. Surely the news that the Confederate Marines had dropped two thermonuclear devices on their neighboring planet made people a little more circumspect?
But Faraday was right, Jezzy cursed silently. She had seen the same kind of behavior time and again when she had been a Yakuza executioner. Something curious happens to the human spirit when they are faced with overwhelming stress and constant anxieties. She had known informers and debtors, in their last days, to suddenly decide to sell all of their belongings or give them away. Even for the Yakuza operatives like her, the same applied. If they knew that they were heading into a highly-dangerous mission, the hours and days before would be filled with a curious elation—anything was possible, and every pleasure, no matter how small, had to be savored.
“They’re trying to forget the danger,” Jezzy breathed, earning an agreeing sound from the colonel beside her.
“They picked the wrong place to go to forget about it, then,” Faraday muttered. The older man was just as annoyed as she was, Jezzy knew. She wondered if he felt outmatched and outgunned by the Ru’at, like she did.
Why didn’t they send the entire Rapid Response Fleet here to head the Ru’at ships off? Jezzy thought in annoyance, but she already knew the answer of course.
Both of the Rapid Response Fleets are engaged with the Martian Uprising. Which, she knew, left just the two Near-Earth Marine Corps Fleets, both of which were usually kept stationed near the parent world of humanity at all times.
Wonderful. Jezzy looked over at the colonel, seeing Faraday pull at his moustache as he looked long and hard at the cruise ships, Pluto, and the orbiting jump-ships far beyond. His expression was stern, and the man did not look happy at all.
You know this is going to be a last stand sort of fight, don’t you? She didn’t say the words out loud to her superior officer, but she thought them. Brigadier General Asquew had sent them both here to try and stop an alien invasion that clearly outclassed them in every way. That meant that General Asquew did not expect them to win at all, but she expected them to slow down the enemy, probably giving her enough time to rally the fleets.
They both knew perfectly well what they were doing here.
7
Luna 1
“Luna 1, please come in. This is Lieutenant Solomon Cready of the Rapid Response Fleet, and I have with me the Confederate Ambassador and…”
“Don’t.” The ambassador put a sudden hand on Solomon’s shoulder before he could mention the imprimatur’s presence as well. “It’s bad enough broadcasting to everyone that I’m in danger, let alone the leader of Proxima…”
Solomon grimaced for a second, but he accepted the orders. “What, you don’t want to spook people?” he muttered. From where he sat, he knew that he would be able to turn his head to see the still stationary bubble of explosive vortex over Confederate New York. The people of Luna and Earth already had a lot to be worried about.
“Of course. It’s my job as an ambassador to make peace, Lieutenant,” Ochrie said.
“I think we’re past that point, Your Excellency,” Solomon muttered, but he did as he was ordered.
Below their shuttle grew the monochrome craters, plains, crevasses and peaks of Earth’s moon. It still looked like a barren lump of rock in the sky, with large parts left barren, but that was all about to change.
Rising ahead of them was Luna 1—the giant collection of white bubble-habitats that could be seen from Earth on a clear night as a distant spark of reflected light. Up this close, it reminded Solomon of some kind of ice palace: a set of white geometric bubbles, the smaller ones clustered around the larger, with many aerial-turrets rising from the bubble walls and apexes, shining with soft blue radiance.
It could be pretty, if it wasn’t for the circumstance, Solomon thought. He had never been to Luna of course. Even during his most lucrative days as a thief on Earth, he could never have afforded the shuttle ride from the Shanghai Space Elevator up here.
Outcast Marines Boxed Set Page 67
