This final application descended straight down toward the creature, over the middle of the platform lift itself. Solomon watched as it stopped just a hand’s-breadth above the thing’s bony, silver cranium and got to work.
Tools and vice grips and what appeared to be glowing laser scalpels emerged and descended to the top of the thing’s head.
This time, it really did howl.
“SsskraARGHH!” It shook, and its entire body trembled as it was operated upon, and the tools withdrew once more—
—to be replaced by the blue light emanating from the metal orb that slowly lowered itself into the void created by the machines.
It was an orb that looked exactly like the Ru’at ‘seed-spore’ drone that had interrogated Solomon in the judgement chamber somewhere above them, and whose ruins he now held in his hand.
Another flurry of alien medical equipment and all trace of the thing’s blood and gore from its head was gone, replaced by a sleek silver module like a third eye that glowed a startling cerulean blue from the light emitted by the Ru’at drone inside.
And the creature’s screaming, howling, and shaking suddenly stilled.
One by one, the cables holding the thing’s joints restrained broke off with tiny puffs of gas, and the creature stood tall and defiant, looking as though it had always worn that strange metal, cybernetic carapace suit.
“You know what?” Solomon murmured, as much to himself as anyone else. “I think we’ve just seen the birth not just of some clone, or a monster…” he said in horror.
The Ru’at had made this place. They had been developing and growing this spore culture for perhaps hundreds of years. They had waited for a time when the humans could get here, could colonize Mars, and then it had seeded humanity with its next stage: cybernetic evolution.
And now, finally, all the bio-genetic development and cybernetic technology is ready, Solomon thought as he looked at the steady, unblinking blue eye in the middle of the creature’s forehead. Like the way you can’t get an ancient computer to run modern applications. The Ru’at had needed to wait until humanity had caught up. The aliens had needed to nudge and push humanity into the technical evolution it wanted.
“I think we just watched the rebirth of the Ru’at themselves,” Solomon breathed.
14
Tactical Distraction
“How’s it coming with that oxygen?” Jezzy stood back with a groan from the control panel she had been working at. The lights overhead flickered intermittently as the reserve power on board the Invincible glitched.
How much power you got left in you, girl? Jezzy thought, looking at the computer controls she had—barely—managed to hack into. It was all thanks to General Asquew’s command codes, of course. Jezzy knew full well that she wouldn’t have had a hope of doing any of this, if it was left to her own skills.
I’m not like Ratko, or Kol before her, Jezzy thought glumly. She had never particularly minded before that she was not a technical specialist. But with every passing encounter, it seemed that the problems and challenges they faced required ever more complicated, convoluted technical answers.
What good is being able to simultaneously attack three opponents at once?
But despite her lack of skills, she had done it. She thought. She hoped.
Munitions>>>Priority 1 Weapons>>>Thermonuclear Warheads…
Ultra-Black Command Code Accepted.
Authorizing signature…
Timer Allocated…
Auto-destruct Sequence Activated…
ERROR!
“Damn it!” What now? Jezzy groaned. She felt as if she had already navigated through a sea of complicated code-trees and directories just to find the right functions to enable or deactivate.
But clearly, she must have done something wrong.
“I think we’re almost there,” Jezzy heard Ratko say over the squad channel.
“Huh?” Jezzy said, before remembering. “Oh yeah. The oxygen.” She turned around where she had found the prime engineering command console—which had access to the rest of the ship’s mainframe—to survey the work of her colleagues.
The Mid-Level Engineering room was a mess of parts and workshop bays, still with stacks of equipment and spare parts dotted everywhere. But Corporals Malady and Ratko could clearly be seen, now standing in front of one of the large airlock doors with what looked to be a large mound of oxygen cylinders attached by cables. Each cylinder was almost half of Jezzy’s height and filled with precious liquid oxygen concentrate, which she knew she would only be able to heft thanks to the augmented support of the power suit she wore.
No such limitations for the man-golem Malady, however, as she watched him carrying another stack of oxygen cylinders—the entire seven- or eight-story stacks enclosed in its own metal trolley—up to the airlock ramp.
“Once I’ve checked all the lines and seals to make sure we won’t be in danger of a leak, then we’re good to go,” Ratko said proudly.
Not quite, Jezzy thought, reflecting on the large, blinking ERROR message in front of her. “Wait for my command,” she settled for telling them, then turned back to the console.
At Jezzy’s feet were a stack of tools that she had picked up along her search for this command console. There was a standard Marine Corps service rifle, capable of burst and multi-shot as well as single shot, but it was half the width and size of the Jackhammers, and she was worried that it would only be like a bee-sting to an unstoppable, unfeeling cyborg.
Added to her salvage was a heavy iron crowbar a shade longer than her forearm—her Yakuza training had always taught her the simplest weapons were often the best—as well as a small, handheld arc welder.
Better than nothing, she thought, sighing heavily as she found a way to pull up more information on this latest error code.
ERROR! Auto-Destruct of a Primary Weapon is Disabled While Primary Weapon is Awaiting Deployment.
“What does THAT even mean?” Jezzy grumbled. Awaiting deployment. That has to be a saccharine way of saying ‘fired at an unsuspecting planet,’ right?
Jezzy reflected that she was really not cut out for command. The language and the bureaucracy alone were enough to drive her mad.
“So…the nuke is still locked inside its loading bay, and I can’t set off the auto-destruct timer because…” she thought through what the console was trying to tell her.
“Because no one wants a nuke to go off whilst it’s still in the belly of the Invincible?” Ratko said over her shoulder.
“Sheesh!” Jezzy jumped. “When were you able to move so quietly?” she berated the corporal, who had apparently sauntered over as Jezzy was engrossed in trying to decipher the weapons controls of the singularly most devastating weapon in human history.
“Well, I was going to ask you to hold one end of the daisy-chain of cylinders for me, but I see that what you are up to is far more interesting!” She nodded at the console screen in front of her. “You’re trying to arm and set off one of the Invincible nukes?” She whistled appreciatively. “Isn’t that, like, a little self-defeating? Y’know, considering that we’re still inside the Invincible and everything.”
“Smart-ass,” Jezzy muttered before kicking the base of the console. “Well, if you’ve got a better idea how we can simultaneously distract and hopefully take out the Ru’at jump-ships out there, be my guest!”
“You need to do a manual override on the auto-safety measures.” Ratko nodded sagely.
“Huh?” Jezzy frowned. “I have no idea what you just said to me.”
“Augh,” her corporal despaired vocally. “The nukes have automatic safety cutouts, in case some idiot decides to try and set them off while they’re still sitting around inside their launch tubes, right?” Ratko said.
Does she even know that I count as her superior officer right now? Jezzy wondered. Probably. But Ratko doesn’t seem to care all the same.
“So, if you want to set off the timer—which I see you already isolated, well done you
…”
“Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence…”
“Hey, it took me four years at technical engineering college to get where I am today,” Ratko pointed out, before grimacing to herself. “That was, of course, until there was the whole business about them thinking I stole their department’s funds, and so they shipped me off to Titan…”
“When you were chosen for the Outcast program anyway,” Jezzy countered. “And did you? Steal the money, that is?”
“Yeah, of course. But anyway,” Ratko continued. “If you want to get the nukes to go boom, then you need to manually break the safety overrides on them. They automatically decouple when the missile is launched anyway, thus making sure that any explosion at least happens outside the ship that fired it, not inside,” she explained.
“Oh,” Jezzy said dourly. Well, there goes that idea, then…
“And the nuke tubes are…” Ratko leaned over to run her hands over the holo controls of the command console. “Forward Tactical Section. Right up the top of the old bird.” She had brought up the design schematic of the Invincible and had managed to create a glowing red dot right near the apex of the pyramid, where the launch tubes had to be.
“Alright then. Shall we get going?” Ratko nodded up to the ceiling of the Mid-Level Engineering Hold. “If we’re not using the elevators again, then we’re talking service shoots, and it’ll be quite a climb.”
“What? No.” Jezzy shook her head. “You’re not coming. I need to be the one to do this,” Jezzy said seriously. “It’s way too dangerous out there anyway, with the place crawling with cyborgs.” And you’re not a combat specialist, Jezzy thought.
“And you know your auto-safety cutoffs from your main power relays, do you?” Ratko looked at her obstinately.
Damn.
15
Through Blood and Fire
“I don’t know about you lot, but I’m not sticking around,” Kol hissed urgently as he started to move. For a man who had supposedly thrown away all trappings of his Marine Corps life, Solomon thought he was doing an excellent impression of one as he backwards crab-crawled past the mounds of Ru’at vegetation.
But he’s right. Solomon spared a look back at the new cyborg creature, still flexing its new limbs and snuffling at the air. It made him shudder as he looked at the thing’s strange skin and animal-like joints.
“Ambassador?” Solomon murmured to the woman at his side, who was still gazing at the creature they had seen created with apparent horror.
Something had changed in her, Solomon could sense. Her face still held some of the brainwashed blankness that the Ru’at had given her, but now, instead of a fixed state of placidity and acceptance, she seemed to be consumed with worry.
Maybe now is the time, Solomon thought, reaching up to touch her shoulder.
Ochrie jumped, almost screeched, but caught her breath just in time.
“You’re going to be okay. We’re going to get out of this,” Solomon promised her. He felt as though their recent roles had been reversed. Where once it had been the ambassador who was in charge, imperiously or cynically dispatching orders, now she was like a child, infantilized by the Ru’at.
“This is the Ru’at,” Solomon said slowly and carefully, nodding at the creature ahead of them. “That is the Ru’at. It is what they are. What they do.”
“But— But…” Ochrie was shaking her head in confusion. “I thought they were our saviors. They said that they were going to make humanity better, to include us in the community of stars.” She repeated the same lies that the alien had given every brainwashed human.
Solomon didn’t even know what to say to that. The evidence in front of them that the Ru’at were monsters—were predators—was astonishing. And I have no idea how to break someone out of hypnotism. He wondered if what he was doing would actually make the ambassador worse rather than better.
“Trust me, Ambassador,” Solomon said.
“And me,” he heard the Imprimatur of Proxima murmur beside him, as the frizzy-haired woman who had been through so much—watching her colony world attacked and destroyed—reached out to take Ochrie’s hand.
The ambassador looked at it for a moment, and then a very small frown furrowed her brows. “Aren’t you… Weren’t you…” she started to say, looking at the woman’s hand that held her own. Solomon wondered if some part of the old Ochrie was trying to resurface. Perhaps the reality of having one of her opponents—the imprimatur that the Confederacy believed had been sponsoring sedition—was enough to prod Ochrie’s sense of outrage.
A low, menacing hiss rolled over the alien landscape, coming from the creature. The singular blue drone light on its forehead flared and flashed, as if it were a scanner light, sweeping the area.
“Kol’s right. We’re not hanging around,” Solomon murmured, turning to start crawling in the same direction that Kol had disappeared in.
They made their way past the middle of the cavern, with the broken-open ‘pods’ of vegetation to their right and left. Solomon saw a break in this strange forest up ahead, with acres of the alien moss in front, and there on the far side were the steps that led back up to the service tunnel that Kol had first found.
Back up to the colony, Solomon thought with an overlay of anxiety. But he felt better about being up there, surrounded by familiar metal and familiar humanoid forms—even if they were all brainwashed—than he did about being out here.
“Uh… Lieutenant?” Solomon was just about to move out into the moss-field when he heard a voice, Kol’s voice, and it was coming from off to one side, where the path they were intending to take branched back around the high heaps of vegetation.
“Kol, what is it?” Solomon asked as he froze and turned—
—to see that Kol was standing there, not even bothering to hide, and that he wasn’t alone.
On either side of him stood more of the Ru’at-Martian cyborgs, and they had their weapon arms already raised and pointed at him.
Ah.
“Once a traitor, always a traitor, right, Kol?” Solomon snarled from his crouch.
What weapons do I have? None.
What weapons can I get? Through the young man’s peripheral vision, he could see lumps of Martian red rock. He might be able to pick one up and throw it if he combat-rolled forward.
But it wouldn’t even be a good enough distraction. Solomon gritted his teeth. It wouldn’t buy Mariad and Ochrie enough time to do, well, anything.
“It wasn’t me, Sol, honest!” Kol was saying, and he held up his empty hands to reveal that the cyborgs had already taken his Jackhammer.
But they haven’t shot him yet, a small, wary and cynical part of Solomon’s mind still noted. This was it. He had lost, he was forced to consider. He had been outmaneuvered and outclassed by the Ru’at. What sort of Outcast Marine was he?
Maybe I’m not a very good one, but I am still a Marine. Solomon felt a cold fire coalesce in his belly. He thought about everything that he had been through. He thought about all the punishing hours of training and watching the Marine transporter crash to a deafening fireball on top of the Ganymede Training Base. He thought about fighting in the dark recesses of space, inside abandoned station-ships as well as under the surface of Mars.
Solomon thought about New Kowloon, and all the people he had cheated…killed.
No. Even he, the ex-criminal, was surprised at the clarity of his conviction. I’m not going out like this, he thought as he slowly rose from his crouch to face the enemy. There were six of them, all told. He wasn’t counting Kol, because the look of abject misery and panic on the young man’s face told him that he was telling the truth: he really didn’t have a part to play in their capture. Three of the cyborgs stood to the right of Kol, and another three stood to the left.
“Lieutenant?” Mariad whispered in alarm as she and Ochrie emerged from the vegetation and froze at the sight before them.
They are going to die, too, Solomon knew, and that realization only added to his fur
y.
Enough. Solomon was done with skulking around. He was done with trying to find the last-chance, crazy opportunity out of the situations he had been in. He straightened up until he was facing the cyborgs directly.
“What are you doing?” Mariad whispered, her hands rising into the air to indicate that she offered no resistance.
Well, frack that, Solomon thought. “Through Blood and Fire, Kol,” the Outcast Commander said with a savage, almost manic sort of grin. He quoted the Marine Corps oath—the very same one that he had scoffed at when he’d first been forced to repeat it, over a year and a half ago, on Ganymede.
‘Through blood and fire, I will still stand strong.
‘I will stand at the borders and at the crossroads, I will stand strong.
‘Even with the eternal night before me, I will be the flame!’
“Sol! Don’t!” Kol begged him, but Solomon was past caring. As soon as he said the last syllable, he sprang forward, fists rising.
FZZT! The first glare of purple-white laser-light from the nearest cyborg was easy to dodge. It was as if, in his fury, all of Solomon’s enhanced genetics had suddenly activated. Maybe some part of his body knew that this was his swansong.
Time seemed to slow around him as his alien-altered RNA activated maximum adrenaline and cortical steroid functions. It was easy to dodge the first shot as Solomon closed in, leaping to one side and punching out with one hand to force the next cyborg’s firing arm up—
“Solomon!” Rhossily shouted behind him, but Solomon was entranced by his battle-frenzy.
He spun on one heel, striking out with his other hand to force another cyborg’s hands away. He was in the middle of this knot of enemies now. The other three wouldn’t be able to get a clear shot on him.
But that did also mean that he was surrounded by three very strong, very fast, and highly tactical cyborgs.
Outcast Marines Boxed Set Page 99
