“Give me the stars-damned gun, Marine,” Solomon growled.
Kol wasn’t a Marine anymore. He was a rebel. A traitor. A seditionist.
But something in the lieutenant’s tone of voice, and in his eyes, made Kol hand the Jackhammer over without a word.
He can still take orders, then. Solomon wasted no more time, lunging forward and bringing the butt of the Jackhammer down on the rising Ru’at orb.
CLANG! The thing sparked and shot across the room as if Solomon had scored a homerun. When it had finished bouncing on the floor, it shook and wobbled, but didn’t levitate anymore.
Thwack! Solomon gave the orb another blow for good measure, pleased that the thing didn’t appear as omnipotent as it had first seemed. There was a spray of more sparks, and the orb split along its middle. It was still in one piece, if barely. Solomon could see masses of silver wires, fine and threadlike insides, and no more sparks.
Have I killed it? Solomon hoped he had, but that hadn’t been his intention. He scooped the thing up and shoved it in his pocket before turning back to Kol.
“We can go.” He nodded at the door. “But one thing…”
Lieutenant Solomon Cready handed the Jackhammer back to his old Gold Squad member. “It starts with belief,” he said seriously, repeating one of the first lessons that he had received in his command training program on Ganymede.
“Sir? I mean, Sol?” Kol took the gun gingerly, his eyes wide.
“Tactical efficiency starts with belief,” Solomon quoted the full passage. He remembered at the time learning all these aphorisms and their attendant regulations and thinking they were bunkum. His finely-tuned mind knew them all by heart, and funnily enough, it had taken the devastation of Ganymede for him to work out what they actually meant.
“The belief that your unit has your back, and you have theirs. From belief comes trust, and from trust comes bravery.” He nodded to the veil, indicating that Kol should take the lead.
Kol paused, looking at the man he had betrayed, still holding the gun in both his hands like it was a sleeping snake. Solomon could see the wheels turning behind the young man’s eyes. Was Solomon trying to get into his head? Trying to change his allegiance? Trying to win one over on him?
You bet. Solomon didn’t say anything. But more important than that, he needed to know that he could trust this young man with his life. With their lives—the lives of himself, the brainwashed Ambassador Ochrie, and the elected spokeswoman of Proxima, Imprimatur Mariad Rhossily.
And I need him to know that I trust him, or this isn’t going to work.
If you had asked Solomon Cready a year and a half ago whether he believed in the Marine Corps, or whether he trusted the Marine Corps, then the ex-criminal probably would have laughed in your face—and then stolen your credits and your ID card. But now Solomon had fought and laughed beside the other Outcasts. He had seen friends die, and he had seen enemies turn into comrades.
War was like that. It was a funny, terrible, and enlightening experience.
Solomon still didn’t trust the Marine Corps per se, the bureaucrats, and the highest levels of Confederate command—he had seen General Hausman seize control of Confederate Earth, after all, but he trusted the men and women of the Corps itself. He trusted the Marines, soldiers, pilots, and staffers. They were all he had, at the end of the day—all any of them had.
“We do this quickly,” Solomon said in an authoritative voice he didn’t know he had. “You’re right, Kol. We can’t fight our way out. So that means we have to bluff. You can do that, right?”
Kol nodded.
Of course you can. You bluffed your way through Outcast training, all while being a Martian sympathizer! Solomon stamped down on the moment of rage.
“Okay, uh…” Kol swallowed nervously. “Try to look, uh, brainwashed…” he said as he swept back the heavy veil and led the way out into the cubicle and the thoroughfare beyond.
“Lieutenant Cready! So happy to see you again,” the clone wearing the face of Augustus Tavin—the CEO of the mega-corporation that had helped build the cyborgs—greeted them as soon as they stepped out of the booth.
They hadn’t heard the gunshots, or the fight, Solomon realized, remembering to plaster a look of docile openness on his bloody features. It was the dampening field, he remembered. As soon as he had stepped into that booth, all sound of the colony outside had faded to nothing. Another strange piece of Ru’at technology that the Confederacy would probably give an eye and leg to control.
“Ru’at hails you,” Solomon said, trying to smile although his mouth hurt.
“Lieutenant!” Mariad gasped as soon as she saw his bloody face. Her large brown eyes searched his, and Solomon tried his best to keep his face impassive.
“Ru’at hails you,” Solomon said in response, once again attempting a grin.
“I see that you and the Ru’at had a bit of a…disagreement about your loyalties,” the clone of the NeuroTech CEO said with a smirk.
Solomon hesitated. Outside their little group, the rest of the thoroughfare moved sedately and calmly as they always did—emptier than it had been when Solomon had come in—but he knew that it was just a matter of time before the colony became aware of what they had done. He fixed another mooncalf expression on his face.
“The Ru’at helped me to understand,” he said, smiling even though his lips stung with the abuse they had suffered.
Tavin’s eyes sparked with amusement and malice. “I am sure that they did,” he said, before his eyes darted to Kol. “I do not understand why you had to go in there with him, though, soldier?”
Technical Specialist Kol—he had never graduated to become a full Marine, as it turned out—had always been a good liar. “Are you questioning the Ru’at!?” he said suddenly, fierce and loud enough to make a few heads turn.
“No, of course not. I wouldn’t dream of it.” Tavin said hurriedly. Behind him were the four stationary cyborg guards that Tavin had brought with him from Luna Station. They remained impassive and judgmental, their chrome flesh shining brightly in contrast to their human skin.
“Ochrie, Rhossily, you are coming with me.” Kol nodded toward the nearest exit.
“What? But the imprimatur hasn’t been judged yet.” Tavin’s eyes narrowed.
“Something came up in Lieutenant Cready’s interrogation. The Ru’at wish to question them all further,” Kol said, gesturing with his gun for the un-brainwashed Mariad Rhossily to go first, as Ambassador Ochrie stepped meekly into line behind Solomon. With all the complete assurance of someone who knew what they were doing, Kol nudged Mariad in the small of the back with his gun, and they started to move.
“Surely the Ru’at can find the answers to its questions itself, in the judgement chamber,” Tavin was muttering, but Kol ignored him as they started walking.
The boy’s smart, Solomon thought begrudgingly. Kol knew how to play Tavin, and it was a play that the younger Solomon himself would have been proud of.
Devoted employees are the easiest to scam, Solomon remembered. That was why no one had suspected Kol’s betrayal, after all. When Solomon had been doing such things, it was the guards and the corporate executives and the floor staff and receptionists who really believed in their job who always fell first for whatever lie he had been peddling.
You just use their own loyalty against them, Solomon remembered. Tell them that this isn’t unusual. They just need to follow orders and, nine times out of ten, they will.
“Where are you taking me?” Mariad, however, was under no such compulsion. The Imprimatur of Proxima—the woman who had seen her home planet and capital city torn apart by the Ru’at mothership and the cyborgs—was starting to get anxious.
“Where the Ru’at commands!” Kol announced enthusiastically, poking the woman in the back again with the muzzle of his gun. A little too enthusiastically for Solomon’s liking. We don’t want to make everyone else suspicious, after all…
“They won’t win in the end, you know.�
� Rhossily hung her head as she stumbled forward.
“You are wrong,” Kol stated. They were about halfway across the thoroughfare, and the exit was only a few meters away. Solomon had no idea where Kol was taking them, but he had to hope that the traitor actually knew this colony well enough to take them somewhere they could escape.
“No, you are wrong, traitor,” Mariad’s voice came back, thick and heavy with disgust and scorn. Solomon saw Kol’s jaw twitch with strong emotion.
“You’re a traitor. A traitor to your unit, to your species, to all of humanity!” Mariad’s voice rose a notch. It earned a few more wary glances from the other Martian Ru’at devotees around them.
Shut up, Rhossily! Solomon prayed.
“You see…” Mariad abruptly turned around, halting their advance and forcing Kol to fumble the Jackhammer into the middle of her chest. “Humanity will always win in the end. And you know why? Because we adapt. We survive. And we’re as mad as all hell.”
“Forward! The Ru’at commands it!” Solomon said out loud, trying to glare at Mariad, but she ignored him.
“Have you heard of the Toba event?” The imprimatur, ever a learned woman, rounded on Kol.
“The Ru’at commands you move forward!” Kol said, his voice cracking a little in anxiety. The Imprimatur of Proxima didn’t register it.
“It was a super volcano about seventy thousand years ago that almost wiped out all humans on Earth. A global winter that lasted a decade. Earthquakes. Herd animals dying in the millions,” Rhossily berated the treacherous soldier. “Homo Sapiens was just about an endangered species, but we survived. We persevered. We struggled on. Now, thanks to Toba, all mitochondrial DNA traces back to only about ten women, or something like that,” Mariad said. “Or the Mini Ice Age of twenty thousand years ago that wiped out most human civilization? We got through that, too…,” she said. “Spanish Flu. The trenches of World War One. Humanity may have a habit of making some stupid choices—like trusting you, Kol—but we get up again. We survive. We never give up…”
“I know,” Solomon whispered from where he stood behind Kol’s shoulder.
“Solomon?” Mariad’s breath caught as her eyes scanned his face and found the man’s eyes. His eyes that were full of soul, not Ru’at programming.
“Shhh,” Solomon muttered under his breath. “Just get out. We’re trying to get out,” he said, and Mariad blinked as she looked back at Kol, then at Solomon again. Solomon could see comprehension dawning inside her mind.
“Oh…”
“Move forward!” Kol shouted suddenly, a little too passionately, Solomon thought. “The Ru’at commands it!”
Mariad bowed her head and did so, but the damage was already done. Someone else had noticed their tense, emotional conversation.
“You there, Kol! Halt in the name of the Ru’at!” cried out Tavin behind them.
“Crap,” Kol murmured. “Run!”
2
Intercept!
The Marine scout vessel swam through the Barr-Hawking field, attached to its jump-ship by long metal cables.
To anyone watching from the portholes of The Last Call station—the last Confederate outpost in orbit around Pluto—it would have looked as though the two vessels hung stationary for a second. In a moment, both the jump-ship and its passengers started to dwindle, becoming smaller and opaque as the light holding their image fractured and diffused. There was a final flash as the last of the photons captured in the field of disturbed space-time gave out…and then it was gone. The nearby stars lost their hazy, gaussian effect and once again appeared hard and bright.
“Coordinates updated to jump server…” the voice of one of the distant jump-ship pilots said, transmitted to those strapped into the chairs of the scout.
“Where are you taking us?” whispered Corporal Ratko, a small woman made larger by her power armor, who was sitting next to the commanding officer for the mission, Second Lieutenant Jezebel Wen. On the other side of Wen sat Lance Corporal Willoughby, silent as always, and on the other side of her hulked the massive form of Corporal Malady in his full tactical suit.
The last surviving members of the Outcast Gold Squad faced forward in the tiny vessel, and each one had plenty of thoughts to occupy their minds. They had only just managed to fight their way clear of The Last Call, fending off the insane attacks by the Ru’at cyborgs.
Brigadier General Asquew fought a way clear for us to disembark, Jezzy reflected. Unconsciously, she turned her head inside her helmet and craned to peer out of the nearest porthole—not that she could see the distant orb of Pluto anymore. Instead, all she saw outside the ship were swathes of strange lights as the gravity field created by the jump-ship stretched and warped the photons and neutrinos around them. The jump-ships worked like that: a ring of heavy particle generators on the small haulier ship created a bow-wave through space-time, folding the stuff of the cosmos in front of it and lengthening it like the ripples atop a lake behind. An easy solution to crossing vast interstellar distances in no time at all.
It wasn’t as good as the Ru’at FTL drives, Jezzy thought irritably. But it was all that they had. All that humanity had.
“Commander?” Ratko cleared her throat, prodding Wen to respond.
Should I tell her? General Asquew had given her a top-secret mission. However, that same woman had also given her a data-stick containing high-level command codes for the Marine Corps, and she had given it to Jezzy.
In case Asquew didn’t make it, Jezzy thought, and felt the pit of nervousness and despair threaten to open inside her once more. They had already lost so much: Petchel, Karamov… The Ru’at had overrun the Sol system, and their cyborgs, difficult to kill and unafraid to die, were formidable.
We lost Proxima, Jezzy reflected. And the other general—an old-timer by the name of Hausman—had apparently declared himself as the leader of Earth in the aftermath of New York being nuked. A nuclear device he himself had probably set off.
All that was left of humanity was whoever was living under their new Commander-in-Chief Hausman, and the rebel Rapid Response Fleet under Asquew.
If we survive as a species through all of this, I’ll be amazed.
But Asquew had given Jezzy and her squad a mission. A desperate, hopeless mission. And Jezzy knew that her squad-mate had the right to know.
“Mars. We’re going to Mars,” Jezzy said. “We’re going to rescue Solomon.”
“Isn’t Mars occupied by the separatists?” Ratko asked. The initial jubilation on hearing that their original commander was alive and well—at least, they assumed—had died down. Now it came time for the harsh reality.
“And the Ru’at.” Jezzy nodded seriously. “The First Rapid Response Fleet was stationed there, attacking the Martians when the Ru’at jump-ships appeared and attacked.”
“What was Solomon doing there?” Willoughby broke her silence by asking.
“Maybe trying to join the Rapid Response, maybe trying to find General Asquew.” Jezzy didn’t know. Asquew had been there, after all, overseeing the ‘pacification’ of the insurgent group that called itself the First Martians or the Chosen of Mars. It was a long and depressing story, and one that Jezzy thought paled in significance to the arrival of the Ru’at. The human mining colonies on the Red Planet had always lived up to their planet’s fierce reputation. They had always made noises about independence and ‘Confederate hegemony.’
And finally, the Chosen of Mars had their chance, as their cause was funded and supported by a treacherous mega-corporation called NeuroTech, who was sending them the humanoid cyborgs the company had built according to Ru’at designs. The Confederacy now had Imprimatur Valance, once the spokesperson for the Martian colonies, and Father Ultor, the demagogue of the freedom fighters, securely locked away somewhere.
Unless Hausman has released them, that is, Jezzy thought dismally.
But a ship bearing Solomon’s signature had been observed falling into Martian atmosphere, before it was intercepted and apparent
ly carried away by a Ru’at jump-ship. It was as much evidence as anyone needed that the strange alien species of the Ru’at had claimed the Red Planet as their own, just as they had done to Proxima.
“Okay then, troops.” Jezzy cleared her throat, switching her suit telemetries to a squad-only broadcast. It was probably about time to start acting like a commander, if that was what Asquew wanted her to become.
“We’re tasked to be a forward observation and expeditionary unit,” she said in as confident and firm a voice as possible. She tried to ignore the cynical voice in her mind saying that her unit only had four people left: Ratko, Willoughby, Malady, and herself.
But we’ll get Lieutenant Cready back, she tried to tell herself. And Malady has to count as at least two Marines rolled into one, right?
But still, the idea that four people alone could make a difference to the outcome of an interstellar war was laughable. Jezzy herself would have scoffed at such an idea, were it not for the fact that they had survived so far, through battles, infiltration events, planetary casualties, and overwhelming numbers stacked against them.
General Asquew seemed to think we could get this done, after all. And Asquew was no fool.
“We’re going to get eyes on the Ru’at, and we will try to harvest as much data as we can. Where are they based? What is their power source? How many ships do they have? Where can we best target our attacks?” she said. Not that they had enough ships left to actually launch an offensive against the aliens, she tried to not say.
“And we save the commander,” intoned the heavy-metal, electronic voice of Malady. He sounded like what a cement brick would sound like if it could talk. Jezzy looked over to the man-golem, the only one left here of the original Gold Squad, seeing his half-comatose face locked into bio-chemical symbiosis with his power suit, and nodded slowly.
“Yes. We save the commander,” Jezzy said. She knew, in that moment, that that was what she was really doing this for. Of course she would obey her orders, and she respected General Asquew, but all other aims and goals appeared futile right now. All apart from one: loyalty to her friend and commander.
Outcast Marines Boxed Set Page 90
