Keep moving!
Solomon ducked as a metal fist sailed past his ear, and he pivoted once again to this time push with both hands at the third cyborg’s firing hand. In intricate slowness, he could see the wheels of the particle-beam weapon on the thing’s wrist spinning as it activated.
FZZZT! Solomon felt the shudder race up through his hands as the thing fired, spearing through the air to hit one of the other cyborgs in the chest and send it flying.
I can do this! Solomon found himself thinking. Maybe it was his augmented body, flooded with endorphins, that gave him that burst of super-confidence. He was already side-stepping around the cyborg that he had forced to fire on its colleague, using it as cover as the remaining cyborg on this side raised its firing hand—
“Solomon! Watch out!” Rhossily’s voice rose to a shriek.
Thwack! Just for a metal hand to descend on his unprotected head like a thunderbolt, and everything went black.
16
Priority 1
“Right, remember you’ll have to fire as you approach, but only when the Ru’at ships are out of sight.” Jezzy went through the controls one more time to Malady.
The man-golem managed to look unimpressed with Jezzy’s anxiety, even despite the fact that his face always looked permanently semi-conscious.
“I was a full combat Marine long before you were, Lieutenant Wen. I know how to use a piston-operated grappling hook.”
“Piston-operated magnet hook, if you don’t mind,” Ratko said scathingly. It was clearly one of her pet peeves when all her hard work went apparently nowhere, Jezzy thought, and the very pieces of equipment that she had designed and created out of scrap metals wasn’t even called by its right name!
“Okay, sure, right.” Jezzy shook her head. Her nerves were already frayed to the point of breaking. A thousand things could go wrong with their plan, and what was worse than that was that she had a lot of people relying on her.
If I don’t get down to the surface, then Solomon will almost certainly die. She couldn’t help but catalogue the risks. She blamed the Yakuza, who had forced her to go through mindfulness exercises before every mission.
If I don’t get the air to Willoughby and the ship, then Willoughby will die. She had already refilled her own suit with air for the reserve tank she had spent getting to the Invincible, but she was painfully aware that Outcast Marine Willoughby was still out there—presumably—waiting for her much-needed oxygen.
Mission ID: LifeLine
Mission Duration:
Deployment and return to scout… 68 minutes.
She checked her suit’s internal readouts and cursed when she saw that this mission was running longer and longer. How much oxygen did Willoughby have left? All of this meant there was no time to waste.
The plan wasn’t the simplest one that Jezzy had ever had. And it had required Ratko to search the available workshop bays around the Mid-Level Engineering Hold for the tools to create her magnet-grapple device.
Corporal Malady would be disembarking from the hold through one of the massive airlocks, which Ratko had managed to get enough residual power to so it worked. He would be towing the cloud of daisy-chained oxygen cylinders, and his massive strength, as well as the weightlessness of space, would mean that Corporal Malady would be able to haul them all the way to the ship.
If he can remain undiscovered. Jezzy looked once again at Ratko’s device in Malady’s giant hands. It was a simple spool of metal cable, attached at one end to a small gas-canister launcher, and at the far end, Ratko had welded a pretty large magnet, salvaged from one of the workshop areas.
“It’s a one-shot wonder,” Ratko explained once again, holding up a satchel clanking with more of the small, hand-held gas canisters to sling over Malady’s shoulder. “You point and fire the cannister, the magnet and line will shoot off to the nearest debris, and then you have to pull yourself in again, get rid of the old canister, and reattach the next one, got it?”
“I believe I made my comprehension clear to Lieutenant Wen,” Malady intoned. “I have operated planetary assault teams, ejecting from orbit. I think that I have the skills to operate a gas-powered magnet.”
The benefit of sending Malady out there instead of the others was his greater mass. Depending on his initial jump, Jezzy knew that he should be able to generate the most momentum out of any of them. Enough to take him into the heart of the surrounding wreckage, and when his momentum ran out, he would be able to use the magnet-launcher to attach himself to nearby bits of wreckage, and leapfrog from piece to piece until he had rendezvoused with the ship.
And, Jezzy hoped, because he won’t be using any propellants, heat or electrical devices, the Ru’at jump-ships shouldn’t be able to track him!
Or at least that was the plan, anyway.
And meanwhile, me and Ratko will be worming our way through the hulk to get to the Priority 1 weapons, she considered. The nukes.
“Activating doors!” Ratko called out, and there was a grating, clanking noise as Malady walked forward into the giant-sized airlock, dragging about thirty oxygen canisters behind him on their chain. He almost looked like a clown at a kids’ party, but whose masses of balloons had all been deflated and were now dragging on the floor.
“Initiating airlock!” Ratko called from the command console, hitting the appropriate buttons to send the door sliding downward again, obscuring the full tactical from view and crunching to a halt in the floor. “Depressurizing in process… Leaving twenty-percent atmosphere to help propulsion,” Ratko stated, meaning that Malady would be thrown out of the airlock when it opened with the escaping atmospheric gases.
“Malady, can you read me?” Jezzy called over the squad channel.
“Loud and clear, sir. I predict that I will be out of range for suit communication in T-minus two minutes,” his voice came back over her helmet speakers.
“Understood. Just get the cannisters to the ship, and…” Jezzy paused, unsure of how to say this.
“I will continue the mission, Lieutenant, have no fear,” Malady said. Jezzy had returned Asquew’s data-stick to him, as Ratko said that the final actions to take on arming the nukes were all manual and did not require the high-level codes.
“Find Solomon first,” Jezzy breathed, but if the giant metal man responded, she didn’t hear it over the sudden glitch in the airwaves as the external door opened and there was a rushing sound over the suit communicators. Malady was gone.
But he will survive, Jezzy told herself. Nothing could kill Malady.
“Come on, Marine,” Jezzy called out to Ratko, already powering down the station and picking up her tools and weapons. “Where’s this access chute of yours?”
“This way.” Ratko nodded to where the giant pipework of the engineering hold buried itself in the wall, along with half a dozen other grates, grills, and fans.
“You sure this is the right way?” Jezzy breathed in the dark. It was hot in here, the service chute was barely bigger than the wide carapace shoulders of her suit, and she felt like she had been climbing for hours.
Mission Duration:
Deployment and return to scout… 88 minutes.
“This is taking too long,” Jezzy said. They had been climbing up the access chute ladder until their arms, legs, and backs hurt. Jezzy was surprised at the fortitude of the corporal, who was at least managing to keep up with her furious pace.
“We should be at…” Jezzy heard Ratko mumble over the suit. “Level 4. Only three more to go!”
Jezzy grumbled and said something that would have scalded the air if it wasn’t already boiling inside of her suit and outside.
“Just remember the procedure,” Ratko breathed, and Jezzy could hear her panting over the gold channel.
“Open the arms lock, follow the yellow wires to the relays…” Jezzy announced.
Thunk-thock. As they climbed, they could hear strange bangs and reverberations from the ship. Jezzy wondered if the entire place was going to collapse aro
und them. If anything, she was sure that it was getting hotter, and she hoped that was nothing to do with the Invincible’s crippled state.
Creeeeaaaak! A shudder swept through the ladder under Jezzy’s gloves, and for a moment she paused, breathing hard.
“Ratko… You’re the engineer. How structurally sound would you say this is?” Jezzy said.
There was a moment of silence behind her, and then Ratko’s voice returned over her channel. “The Invincible has had multiple decompression events, plus it’s been peppered with wreckage. The fact that it hasn’t broken apart yet is a miracle,”
Great, Jezzy thought as she reached up for the next rung of the ladder—just as there was a louder shuddering crash from above.
Creaakkkk! THOCK!
Everything went dark for a moment as the access chute shook, and a billow of dust flew down. When it had finally cleared, Jezzy saw that the chute up ahead of them had collapsed.
“Frack it!” Jezzy growled. “Why can’t anything just go easy for once?”
“Because we’re Marines,” Ratko murmured with equal despair. “Come on. We passed an access hatch a few meters back. With any luck, we’ll come out right about Level 2.”
With much grumbling, swearing, and complicated moving in the dark, they managed to find their way down to the latest access hatch, which was a simple twist-wheel system. It resisted her attempts at first, but with the addition of Jezzy, they managed to get it to groan open, revealing a dark room on the far side with large metal pipes for walls.
“This must be the Forward Weapons Locker,” Ratko breathed. Jezzy didn’t even think that she was looking at a schematic inside her helmet, as she must have memorized the layout of the Invincible.
“What does that mean?” Jezzy said as she waited for Ratko to ease herself inside the locker before following. The place looked like a basement, with giant metal pipes everywhere next to chugging, still-operational machines.
“It means that the Priority Weapons are just up ahead.” Ratko grinned, pointing further into the labyrinth of pipes. The two women crawled forward over the pipes and the machines. It was still stiflingly hot, but they pressed on until they came to a square grill in the floor, from which there was a dull orange glow.
“Emergency lighting,” Ratko insisted as they crowded around the grate.
Below them appeared to be a gallery of different rooms, each one like a cubicle, but big enough to park a car in.
And in each of the cubicles, sitting on its wide metal loading bay, was a missile many times taller than Jezzy.
The Priority 1 Weapons. The nukes. We’ve found them.
17
Grudge Match
“Urgh.” Solomon opened his eyes to a universe of pain radiating down from his scalp. He also opened his eyes to Kol’s rather worried stare as he hovered over him.
“He’s alive,” the man said, not enthusiastically enough for Solomon’s liking.
Solomon groaned, tried to sit up, and found that he couldn’t. What?
He was tied down. Or rather, he had sleek white magnet clamps on his ankles and wrists, but instead of magnetizing to each other, they were immovable on a cold metal sheet under his back. “What’s happening? Where am I?”
“You’d be better off dead,” Kol said in a low voice, which once again did not fill the man with hope. “They got us, sir. They got us, and they’re…planning something.”
“They?” Solomon coughed. Did he mean the cyborgs? Or the brain-washed Martians?
“Yeah, them.” Solomon saw his ex-technical specialist nodding off to one side, and Solomon was relieved that he could at least move his head as he craned his neck to see—
They were on the floor of a circular metal room, similar in style but much larger than the judgement chamber. “We’re in the colony then, I take it?” Solomon breathed.
The walls were the same white metal that matched the glowing white of the ceiling. He couldn’t see any obvious doors or hatches, but Solomon remembered that the judgement chamber had used advanced holographic technology to give the appearance of privacy.
“Where are the others?” Solomon whispered, and he saw the traitor turn his head one way and then the other, scanning the walls.
“I think they were behind there.” Kol nodded to one particular section, proving Solomon’s hypothesis. “They’re alive,” he insisted. “But I don’t know for how much longer.”
Solomon struggled, trying to move, but he couldn’t. He knew that he wouldn’t be able to anyway, but he couldn’t lie there and do nothing. “Then why are you here?” Solomon said. Wherever ‘here’ really was in the Ru’at colony.
“I argued that I had to check on you, in case you swallowed your own tongue or something,” Kol muttered, looking warily around the room at the acres of pristine walls. Or holograms of walls, anyway.
“Well, I guess I should thank you,” Solomon muttered.
“Don’t mention it. I figured if we’re all going to die anyway, then I might as well do something useful,” Kol said, leaning back on his haunches. “Here.” He lifted a simple water bottle to Solomon’s lips. “It’s not going to get any better though, Sol…” he said, showing what he held in his other hand. A fistful of injector pens.
“They said that I had to inject you with these as soon as you woke up, but I reckon that seeing as there’s no one with a gun to the back of my head, I might as well offer you the choice.” Kol waved the injectors. “They said it was painkillers and stimulants.”
“Frack that,” Solomon chuckled, which was also painful. He didn’t know that laughing—even cynical laughing—could be painful. “I trust the Ru’at about as much as I understand them.”
“Heh. Not at all, then,” Kol agreed, putting the injector pens back into his pocket and tipping another dribble of water into Solomon’s mouth.
“He is conscious?” a voice that Solomon recognized called out from the apparently featureless walls. It was Tavin. Or the clone of Tavin, to be precise. “No cognitive deficits?”
“How would I know?” Kol murmured with a shake of his head, before calling out louder, “he always was an idiot, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Gee thanks, Kol,” Solomon said.
“Then step back to behind the line, Kol!” the mysterious voice of Tavin announced.
“Sorry, sir.” The traitor held his old commander’s gaze for a breath. “Looks like this is it. It was a pleasure working with you again, sir,” he muttered, standing up and moving out of Solomon’s view.
“Tavin, you disagreeable piece of space junk!” Solomon shouted with as much strength as he had, which wasn’t a lot. “Tell me what you’re playing at now!”
“You’re in no position to be making demands, Lieutenant,” Tavin’s voice came back. “And anyway, the choice isn’t mine to make. We’re all in the hands of higher powers now.”
“Don’t give me that ‘Ru’at are higher beings’ rubbish,” Solomon said, feeling a sudden shake as all of the magnet clamps de-energized and fell off his ankles and wrists. Groaning, he flopped over to one side and pushed himself up.
“Energy-field activated,” Tavin’s voice said, and suddenly a burning blue and white line, as thick as Solomon’s arm, cut across his vision just a few inches from his nose.
Fzt! Fzt! Fzt! Fzt! The line leapt around the room, where metal rods had risen silently from the floor. Solomon turned and tried to get his legs to move, but he stumbled as the thick line connected all the poles in a many-sided octahedron around the inner circumference of the room.
There was another hiss and sizzle of burning ozone as another ‘rung’ was added to the energy fence, and another, until a fence of particle beams completely ringed Solomon, with him on the inside and Kol crouched against the wall on the far side. Solomon had turned a full circle until he was looking back at where Kol slumped, in the two- or three-meter ‘avenue’ created between wall and fence.
“What the—” Solomon began.
“The injectors,
sir?” Kol had drawn them out. “I can throw them over the fence to you—”
“No.” Solomon shook his head. He had meant it when he had said that he was through playing games with these creatures. “If you’re going to try and hypnotize or brainwash me again, then you might as well get it over and done with,” Solomon called out.
“Oh no, Lieutenant. Our masters have declared that they want something very different for you,” Tavin said.
There was a dull blip from the walls themselves, and a long section disappeared to reveal a gallery of sorts. On the top row stood a thick line of Martian-Ru’at cyborgs, and Solomon counted at least nine or ten up there.
On the bottom of the gallery, however, there were just three people—Tavin, Mariad, and Ochrie—and the clone-Tavin was the only one who was standing unaided. The two women were backed onto a metal sheet similar to the one that Solomon had been attached to, only theirs was standing up.
“Ambassador! Imprimatur?” Solomon rushed to that side of the fence, to see that the two women’s eyes were wide and staring straight back at him, but the rest of their bodies, even their heads, were immobile.
“Muscle spasmodics,” Tavin said beside them, even daring to give Solomon a cheery wave.
“If you hurt one hair on their heads, Tavin, I swear to the stars that I will—” Solomon began, feeling the anger rise in his chest again, like a black storm always threatening to capsize his sanity.
“If you survive what comes next, Lieutenant Cready. Or should I call you H21?” Tavin purred back at him.
“That’s not my name,” Solomon hissed.
“Neither is Solomon Cready. The real Solomon Cready died almost a hundred years ago, or haven’t you figured that out yet?” Tavin took a step forward and spoke in a low voice, as if eager to cast the last accusations and insults he could while he still had the chance. “He was the child that the real Augustus Tavin of AgroMore was observing. He died, very unfortunately, of a full-system collapse…”
Outcast Marines Boxed Set Page 100
