“You’re lucky. If I lost people from my safety inspection…” The supervisor was clearly annoyed as he hurried them along the narrow service corridor to what looked like a long hallway with rows of seats backed against the wall.
It looked a little like a Marine transporter, Solomon thought, as the supervisor directed them to take up three seats at the end, which they did.
“Buckle up!” the supervisor said, sitting in his seat at the front, and then the Helga was shuddering and shaking as it rose from the surface of the moon on four plumes of flame.
Solomon groaned under his breath. They were precisely where he didn’t want them to be. Now they had to lie through their teeth for an hour-long jump, pretending to be people that they weren’t with the other Helga workers, and hoping that no one recognized them.
Frack.
17
Blood in the Stars
“Ratko! Covering fire!” Jezzy shouted as she made to leap across the space to the next doorway.
“Get some!” the smaller Marine yelled, leaning forward with her automatic shotgun and releasing a burst of heavy shells into the space.
The depressurized Floor 3 was a mixture of laboratories and storage bays, with corridors and small plaza-areas connecting them. Currently, they were filled with floating detritus from every room. Jezzy could see slowly-revolving beakers, shattered glass, stainless steel instruments, chairs—
—and blood, the real stuff as well as the darker gobbets of machine-oil blood that powered the cyborgs.
Not that they appeared to be any closer to dying, Jezzy thought as she saw the cyborg that filled the corridor space knocked back by Ratko’s shells, flying and spinning through the weightless environment.
Now! Jezzy jumped, soaring across the corridor as more flashes of muzzle fire bloomed in the dark.
“Oof!” She sailed through the doorway and hit the floor to find herself in a small laboratory with white floor-to-ceiling cabinets in every room.
“Lieutenant!” There were two more Outcasts in here, not from Gold Squad but others of the company who had been sent to Pluto along with Jezebel.
Outcast ID: Sergeant Ijuo (Combat)
Health: GOOD.
Outcast ID: Lance Corporal Francis
Health: COMPROMISED.
The readouts on the inside of Jezzy’s helmet filled her in on the general state of the two Outcasts in the room, the ones that she had come to try and save after they had been pinned down.
Sergeant Ijuo knelt by the door, Jackhammer raised and already sighting for the next nearest cyborg, while behind him, slumped against the wall, was Lance Corporal Francis, with one arm hideously blackened and burnt from a direct hit by one of the cyborg’s particle weapons.
“Are we glad to see you!” Ijuo exclaimed before firing.
“Francis, can you move?” Jezzy asked, receiving a hazy thumbs-up from the Outcast Marine. He must be high as a kite on suit adrenaline injectors, Jezzy thought, having been there herself when she was shot by one of these things on Mars.
“Ratko, how are we looking?” she called over her communicator.
The Outcasts were spread out across the entirety of Floor 3 in small groups, having entered the floor from various airlocks, seeking to push through to join up in the middle and hopefully forcing the cyborgs back as they did.
That had been the plan, anyway. Only now it looked as though every knot of Outcasts were pinned down and trapped by the seemingly unstoppable cyborgs.
Only they aren’t unstoppable, are they? Jezzy thought.
“I can’t push them back, sir!” Ratko shouted back.
“Oh hell,” Jezzy growled. This was exactly what she didn’t want to happen. To get pinned down herself, as particle-beam laser shot burnt the edge of the laboratory door and the walls of the corridor beyond.
Think, Jezzy, think! She had Ijuo and the wounded Francis here, and she had Ratko and Willoughby across the hall in the door to another room. Karamov and Malady… Where were they? Still stuck the next corridor over, fighting three or four cyborgs.
“Lieutenant! Situation report! I need that hull breach closed off before it can cause any structural damage to the Oregon!” Faraday said.
“Sir! Yes, sir. Heavy fighting. The cyborgs are proving tougher than we thought, but I’m working on it!” Jezzy said, before cursing under her breath.
“I heard that, Lieutenant.”
“Sorry, sir.” Jezzy leaned out and fired a hail of shells at the nearest cyborg, aiming for the thing’s head and neck, but she only managed to hit its chest and shoulder. It was thrown back against the wall, but its fellow machine-man took its place to fire at Jezzy.
FZZZT!
“Frack!” Jezzy was suddenly pulled back by Ijuo, who had grabbed the back of her suit as the purple-white line of fire shot across her head to destroy one of the cabinets behind her.
“Thanks,” Jezzy breathed, as Ratko and Willoughby opened fire.
Everything is just repeating itself… Jezzy growled. It was almost as if it didn’t matter what they did, they could only fight to a stalemate the way they were fighting right now.
What would Solomon do? she thought. What would a real commander with real command training do in this situation? Almost as if she had summoned his ghost by thinking about him, the words rose in her mind. You have to change the situation.
Which is a very easy thing to say, Jezzy growled internally, but not so easy in practice.
How did we fight them off on Proxima? Jezzy thought, remembering the cyborgs that had attacked them at the imprimatur’s palace. Well, they hadn’t really fought them off, not really. Not in a firefight kind of way. But when they had first attacked, Jezzy and Gold Squad had successfully killed at least a few, and they had done that by…
Close-quarter fighting, Jezzy realized, feeling a shiver of horror. The cyborg’s only vulnerability was their spinal cord, which seemed to house all their essential wiring. The problem was that it was sheathed in metal down the back and up to the base of each cyborg’s skull. On Proxima, the Outcasts had been fighting in the middle of the cyborgs, with one or two Marines engaged in trying to distract it while another Marine got in a shot or a strike at the thing’s neck.
Close quarters. Close combat.
“Ijuo, how good are you with that thing?” Jezzy hissed at the Outcast crouching beside her, gesturing to the thick gladius-style blade he had sheathed at his belt harness. Jezzy herself had one longer but thinner blade, subtly curving and razor sharp, strapped across her back.
“I’m good, Lieutenant,” Ijuo said with a feral grin.
“Then be prepared to follow me.” Jezzy nodded, then hailed Ratko and Willoughby. “Change of plan. You’re going to let the cyborgs advance. If you can, lure them towards your location,” she commanded.
“Lure them?” Ratko grumbled. “With what? I don’t think I packed any sweets or breadcrumbs this time, Lieutenant.”
Jezzy ignored Ratko’s insolence. It was a battle, and that was the sort of woman Corporal Ratko was. The heavens knew that Jezzy felt the same way.
“I don’t know how, but I have ultimate faith in you, Marine,” Jezzy said, drawing her blade as Sergeant Ijuo beside her did the same.
Suddenly, Ratko opened fire.
I thought I told her to let the cyborgs advance!? Jezzy hazarded a glance to see that was precisely what she was doing. Willoughby had launched herself down the corridor as Ratko stepped out to cover her, before she jumped backwards.
The shots hit the two cyborgs, but they turned and swiveled in the air, lunging forward to get at the two Outcast Marines.
FZZZT! FZZZT! Two more lines of purple-white fire shot through the corridor.
Jezzy heard a scream. One of her Marines had been hit.
Outcast ID: Corporal Ratko (Technical Specialist)
Health: COMPROMISED.
“No-no-no!” Jezzy was shouting, but her plan was working. As Ratko and Willoughby met the end of the corridor and ducked out of harm
’s way, they were chased by the two charging cyborgs, flying forwards, past Jezzy and Ijuo’s open doorway.
“Haii!” Jezzy stepped out, throwing her arm and the glittering silver blade that it carried in a deadly arc.
TZZRK! She felt pressure and a sensation of weight, and then the force of her blow was pulling her forward into a spin as the head of the first cyborg floated free from its body.
Ijuo had slightly less luck than Jezzy did as he rolled forward under Jezzy’s leap and struck upwards with his gladius. It caught the cyborg across the side and shoulder, missing the spine but sending it crashing against the rear wall.
The cyborg was already raising its particle arm as Jezzy continued in her spin, sweeping her blade in a deadly arc over Ijuo’s head to plunge it into the cyborg’s neck-
FZZZT! But not before it fired.
“Hgargh! A grunt of pain, and Ijuo was thrown backwards, back into the room he had rolled out of.
Outcast ID: Sergeant Ijuo (Combat Specialist)
Health: DECEASED.
“No!” Jezzy howled in frustration and despair. She had been meaning to save them. To save all the members of the company she had been asked to protect.
Because I’m just supposed to keep them alive until Solomon gets here, her thoughts continued as she stared at the ruins of the Outcast Marine sergeant whom she had known for only a brief few moments.
I’m supposed to look after them…
“Lieutenant, I’ve got your suit coordinates on my screen. You’re the closest to the hull breach. Starboard-forward to Storage Bay 4,” the colonel informed her.
Jezzy clenched her teeth in frustration. Her impulse was to follow Willoughby and Ratko, to see what help Ratko needed, and then there was the wounded Lance Corporal Francis behind her. Both of these were her men, and they needed her to get them out of there, didn’t they?
But I have orders from the colonel, Jezzy knew. And she also knew that if she didn’t fulfill them, then it wouldn’t just be her Outcasts who would be in danger, it would be the whole Oregon.
And there was no point saving lives on a ship that was about to break apart. Jezzy turned in mid-air, kicking out at the walls to swim her way forward through the empty corridor to where it ended in the larger storage bay.
Environmental Warning!
Her suit flashed an orange and red warning light moments before Jezzy felt the shockwave hit her body.
One of the walls of the storage bay suddenly crumpled inwards, tearing itself from the ceiling and the wall as the metal fatigue, hastened by the sucking, pressure-less vacuum, took hold.
And Jezzy could now see clearly past the wall to the layers of metal girders of the inner hull, and finally, the thick plates of the outer hull that had been scored and pulled open like a tin can.
And beyond that, stars.
“Colonel, the rip is too big!” Jezzy took a snapshot of the image and wirelessly transmitted it to the bridge. This wouldn’t be the simple case of a spot-weld in a few places, or even a team to cover the holes with the spare metal plates that every starship carried. This would require a major outfit and repair, at a station very much like the Last Call behind them.
“Colonel?” Jezzy hailed him again.
There was silence from the other end of the line.
The hole in front of Jezzy was large, almost the height of herself and about as wide again. The inner and outer hull made up a four-meter length of twisted and shattered girders, crumpled past a narrow crawlspace that must have been the service shoot the cyborgs had broken into and used to worm their way through the hull of the Oregon like termites.
“Colonel? I need orders, now!” Jezzy said.
“Lieutenant Wen. Get you and your company out of there, now. I’m sending people to the escape pods,” Faraday said as a deep shudder went through the battleship. It was the sort of bone-deep, vibrational shake that made Jezzy’s teeth ache just feeling it move up through her feet and into her knees. It was the sort of structural groan that preceded some terrible collapse.
“Sir!?” Jezzy said.
“We’ve got decompression events on Floors 4 and 2, and more cyborgs pouring in. We’re compromised, Lieutenant Wen. We need to retreat and regroup.”
“Retreat and regroup!?” Wen burst out in shock. “How?”
“Get to the escape pods. There are several on your level, if they haven’t been damaged by the decompression,” she heard him say in a tight voice. “I’ve automated them to make planetfall on Pluto. You’ll have basic survival gear, and from there, you can regroup with the Plutonians and await rescue.”
“Sir?”
“The battle is lost, Lieutenant. We held the Ru’at here for a short while. We can only pray that it was long enough for General Asquew to pacify Mars and free up the rest of the fleet. Now, move it, Marine! That is a direct order!” The colonel clicked off their connection, and Jezzy was left hanging in space, in front of the stars, wondering just how it could have come to this.
“Jezzy!” It was Karamov on one end of the communicator. “We’re pinned down. Can’t make it past the entrance hall!”
“I’m coming,” Jezzy said, turning and launching back the way she had come as an emergency broadcast broke in over her suit communicators:
Group-Level Broadcast: Oregon Marine Detachment, Outcast Marines.
Sender ID: Brig. Comm. Faraday (Commanding Officer)
Message: Attention all personnel. Immediate evacuation order. Make your way to your nearest escape pods immediately. Repeat: Immediate evacuation order.
“Jezzy!? What was that?” Karamov sounded spooked, as well Jezzy thought that he might be, given the circumstances. She sure was spooked.
“Orders, Karamov. We all heard the man. I’m on my way.” Jezzy flew through the weightless corridor the T-junction at the far end, just as a line of purple-white fire clipped her boot.
FZZT!
Warning! Suit Impact Detected: Right Power Boot
Armor Plating Efficiency: -70%
“Ach!” Jezzy felt the flush of transferred heat and the pain of constricting metal as she was spun against the wall.
Adrenaline Injector System Activated.
Before Jezzy even had a chance to rebound off the wall, she felt a slight pinch of pain and then the enlivening, electrifying flood of adrenaline as her suit automatically compensated for her injury. All pain was gone, and she felt like she could do impossible things.
Which, right now, meant Jezzy kicking out with her damaged foot to force her body into a tight corkscrew spin, crossing the distance between the wall and her cyborg attacker as she lashed out with her strengthened-steel blade.
CLANG! She hit the thing’s metal arm, and the cascade of sparks and screaming metal indicated that she had nearly severed the limb from the creature that owned it.
But Jezzy wasn’t done there. She punched out with her free power gauntlet—her Jackhammer still strapped to her back, where she had put it when she had taken to the sword—to grab the cyborg’s face with her own metal grip.
The power gauntlets of the Outcasts were only one step down from the full tactical suits like the one that Malady wore. That meant articulated, servo-assisted joints that could pile on pounds more pressure than her already-strong body could normally allow.
She seized the cyborg’s face, feeling vaguely disgusted by this close contact with the almost-dead human flesh, wrenching the cyborg’s head up and back so that she could slam her blade into the thing’s exposed neck.
FZRK! More sparks and gobbets of machine blood, and the body was falling away, revealing the final corridor before the entrance hallway to Level 3, which was filled with three more cyborgs, already turning to confront her.
“Where’s Ratko and Willoughby!?” Jezzy managed to shout, the panic at having three of these monstrous things to deal with on her own finally overcoming her mania-inducing adrenaline rush.
She was going to die. No one had ever fought three cyborgs on their own before. Well, no o
ne had done that and survived, anyway.
“Ratko and Willoughby made it through to us. But we can’t—” she heard Karamov respond, before there was another flash of purple-white light from around the end of the corridor.
Jezzy raised her blade at the nearest cyborg in traditional samurai style, just as her Yakuza mentors had taught her, and she leaped.
18
Contraband
Don’t say anything… Don’t say anything… Solomon prayed as he overheard one of the nearest general assistants on the Helga try to ask the imprimatur a question.
So far, the jump had been going on for approximately twenty or thirty minutes. They couldn’t be that far off from arrival, and Solomon was sure everyone was awash with jump sickness.
But Solomon had heard that there were those who actually enjoyed the paroxysms of anxiety and nausea, of sweaty and aching limbs and clenching jaws. He wasn’t sure if any of the general assistants around him fit that category, but they certainly were a lot more able to withstand the pressures of a Barr-Hawking field.
“So, how long you been at the Luna Station, huh?” one of the assistants behind her leaned forward in his webbing, clearly taking an interest in the aristocratic-looking Mariad Rhossily.
“Oh, just a few days,” the imprimatur said, which was almost truthful. Solomon had to complement her resourcefulness.
“Really? I haven’t seen you in the mess hall. What bubble they got you in?” the man asked.
Shut the conversation down! Solomon was inwardly screaming. He didn’t want to come so far only for it all go wrong here and now.
“Ah, well…” Rhossily wavered. Solomon could tell that she didn’t know enough about the Luna Station, its layout or internal procedures to be able to lie effectively. Should he step in?
Outcast Marines Boxed Set Page 75
