“My analysts are collecting all the information they can, Madam Ambassador,” Hausman said. “But until we have more intelligence, I cannot let rumors like that be spoken freely.”
“Rumors!?” Ochrie burst out. “We saw it, General. We saw the blast!”
“Madam Ambassador.” Hausman’s tone became clipped and stern, and Solomon saw the two Marines stand up a little straighter beside him. “Now is not the time for histrionics. I have a planetary disaster to see to. Now, you said that you and the lieutenant, and…” He threw a look at Mariad Rhossily, who merely stood demurely behind the ambassador beside Ochrie’s personal assistant. Solomon noted that the Imprimatur of Proxima kept her head down as if she was just another staff member.
“That you were here to deliver critical information. As I am the acting commander-in-chief, you may present that information to me.” Hausman nodded.
Ochrie shared a look with Solomon that spoke volumes. Can we trust him? Will he believe us?
“Not here, General,” she settled for. “It is too sensitive, worse even than rumors.” She added the final part in what Solomon thought was a slight barb, but Hausman ignored it.
“Fine. Marine Offices, Luna 1. Get yourselves there and I will be there as soon as I can.” Hausman nodded to the exit.
The Ru’at are already in Earth’s solar system! Solomon screamed inwardly. “Sir, please, this is of the utmost critical importance, sir!”
“Lieutenant Cready!” Hausman barked suddenly, his face turning from the stern patrician figure to that of a red-tinged, furious bull in an instant. “You are no doubt aware of how I like the chain of command to run here in the Near-Earth Fleet! General Asquew is a noble and courageous leader, but now, while you are here on my soil, you are under my command. Understood, Marine?”
Solomon blinked several times. Hausman was almost as bad as Warden Coates. He hadn’t expected that level of outrage from the man.
“Sir. Understood, sir!” Solomon threw another salute, a better one this time, and Hausman dismissed them both with a nod.
“Oh frack,” Ochrie whispered under her breath as soon as the general and his bodyguards were out of earshot.
“You’re telling me,” Solomon murmured back.
“You think he will listen to us?” Ochrie asked.
Solomon Cready didn’t know.
8
Bridgehead
“They need to be gone, now!” Jezzy watched as Colonel Faraday barked an angry order at the administrator of Pluto’s only station, the Last Call.
Pluto wasn’t technically a colony, it had no flag or colors or insignia of its own, and all of the people who lived there only did so on the back of the transport and the service industry around the tiny planetoid. As far as Jezzy was aware, Pluto had never pressed for independence, and it had no way of sustaining itself anyway—no fertile land, no bio-habitats big enough to support a growing population, no large-scale energy-harvesting technologies.
But still, as Jezebel Wen looked at the woman who in charge of the Last Call on the behalf of the Confederacy, she was sure that she could see that same spark of defiance coming from her eyes as she had seen on Mars, and on Proxima.
Administrator Fatima Ahmadi was a woman in her early fifties, perhaps, thin, with long dark hair that she allowed to fall freely over the sturdy leathers and meshes of her encounter suit. The woman was on the other end of a data-screen—presumably on the station itself, Jezzy reckoned—and looked about ready to turn her end of the connection off.
She didn’t look like a Confederate administrator, as Jezzy saw them. She didn’t have any of the finery or seals of high office that other officials in the Confederacy enjoyed. If anything, she looked like she had just rolled out of a shift at the mechanical bays and had sat down to answer some video-messages.
So no, Pluto wasn’t a colony, but Jezzy was starting to think that this woman here might want it to be one.
“Do you know how much money we’ll lose if we cancel all of those fancy tourist visas?” Ahmadi inspected her nails and proceeded to bite at one of them.
“This is a military matter, Administrator Ahmadi, and as such, I have to ask you to comply now,” Faraday demanded.
Jezzy stood with the other bridge staff on the Oregon, a few steps behind the colonel and wearing her full power armor. She tried to maintain absolute stillness and poise, knowing that it would add to the message.
“Am I going to have to ask about jurisdiction, Colonel?” Ahmadi was infuriating, and, Jezzy thought, absolutely unafraid of anyone. She was starting to like her.
“You can ask, Administrator, but I don’t have to remind you that military orders trump civilian regulations. If you want, I can get General Asquew on the line right now and you can hear my orders from her…”
“And by ‘on the line,’ you mean sending a sub-frequency message which will take hours to get to Mars—where I hear your General is busy bombing people—and then hours to get the answer back here?” Ahmadi raised an eyebrow.
We don’t have time for this… Jezzy thought.
“I’m afraid we don’t have hours, Administrator.” Faraday’s tone was serious. Deadly serious. “You don’t have hours.”
From behind her helmet, Jezzy saw Ahmadi’s eyes narrow as she tried to work out whether that was a threat or an attempt to intimidate her, but the look on Faraday’s face was too severe and too blunt. “Fine,” Ahmadi said. “But I will be raising this with the Confederate Council, and we’ll be sure to bill the Marine Corps for lost earnings to my station, you know.”
“Feel free. And lost earnings is infinitely preferable to lost lives, Administrator.” Faraday nodded gratefully.
“You don’t live out here then, do you?” Ahmadi shot back, but she was already complying, as she said. “I’ll dispatch the order, but it’s going to take time to round all the tour parties up, and to provision the cruise ships and get them jumped out…” she was saying.
No time! No time! Jezzy’s heartrate increased a notch.
“As soon as you can, please,” Faraday said, before the message clicked off. When he turned back to Jezzy, he looked worried. “The Ru’at will be here by then,” he murmured.
“We don’t know that, Colonel,” Jezzy said, wishing that she believed it. She looked up at the two holographic displays over the viewing window—out of sight of the screen which the administrator had recently talked to them on—and saw the projected countdowns to the Ru’at’s arrival.
Even the best Marine Corps scientists didn’t know how long the journey would take, Jezzy thought. All bets were off with faster-than-light travel, but she had been present at the debrief, when he had explained that these two estimates were the best that their scientists could come up with.
One display read: 2 hours: 43 mins: 13 seconds.
The other read: 38 mins: 24 seconds.
Jezzy sure hoped that whoever had come up with the first time was a lot smarter than the one who had figured out the second one.
9
An Officer Abroad
Solomon, Ochrie, and Rhossily made their way through the terrified and panicked Luna Station 1 to find the resident offices of the Marine Corps.
It felt strange to Solomon. Even though he had been to a few off-Earth worlds now as a part of his almost two years with the Marine Corps, he had never spent time in one that wasn’t currently under attack.
Although, that might all change at any moment… Solomon thought miserably.
There was an element of Mars to the sights and sounds that he saw—in the way that everyone in the wide metal corridor walkways seemed to be a notch poorer than the average Earth-based Confederate citizen, and also in the way that most of them wore trade suits, dull ochres, browns, grays or gunmetal blues with insignia patches for various corporations or smelting works.
Luna is an industrial town, Solomon thought, as the main connecting avenue from habitat-bubble twelve to the main, much larger bubble of Luna 1 ended in a set of airlock doors
. Solomon and his two companions waited for the lights to cycle to their green ‘okay’ position and for the doors to open.
“This feels wrong…” Rhossily muttered at their side as Solomon led the way.
“What do you mean?” Solomon asked, although he knew that he couldn’t see much that was right with their position at that moment.
Inside the airlock, they emerged into a wide concourse that must have run around the inside of Luna 1’s circumference. In the distance, Solomon could see more airlocks on their side of the wall hissing open, taking in or disgorging people on their hurried way to their next work shift in the smaller outlier bubbles, no doubt.
The opposing wall was given over to narrower corridors that led deeper into the station, as well as lines and lines of boutiques, cafes, and restaurants—all of which were being shutting down or had already been shut down by teams of burly Marines.
“Martial law! Immediate curfew!” Solomon watched as one Marine in a bronze sort of suit barked at a pair of surly, blue-clad Luna workers, with short caps on their heads. The two workers slowly stood up, making a point of draining their coffee mugs slowly, before sauntering off deeper into the station.
“Well, that for a start,” Rhossily answered Solomon darkly.
“We have to get this information to the council,” Ochrie repeated in an urgent whisper. “They will take the appropriate steps to safeguard Earth, and the Confederacy, and of course to retake Proxima.” She inclined her head at Rhossily.
“You believe so, Ambassador?” the Imprimatur of Proxima asked candidly.
Solomon stopped the two Marine guards and before they could bark at him, he asked them where their main offices were.
“Inner Hub, Level 4, Lieutenant, sir.” One of the Marines saluted him, making Solomon pause for a moment. His own squad had saluted him on occasion—he was their commanding officer who had fought alongside them, of course—but usually they were a little sloppy, perhaps a little sarcastic.
It was strange to be afforded the respect of his new officer rank right here and now, in front of other Marines.
“As you were, Marine,” Solomon remembered to say, turning in the direction indicated. “Ladies?” He gestured.
“Lieutenant, what’s your opinion?” Mariad asked pointedly as they walked quickly down one of the wide white corridors, past doors and ladders that went up to the terraces and balconies and residential flats apartment. “Of whether coming to Luna—or even Earth—is a good idea?”
“They are my orders, ma’am,” Solomon said. Taranis Industries. The Confederate conspiracy. General Asquew had asked him to get to the bottom of them. Him. Solomon Cready.
“The Confederate Council is in a shambles, and there is now martial law across Earth,” Rhossily stated, regaining some of her old poise and composure as her voice strengthened. “The Confederate Marines are soon to be fighting a war on two fronts, with the Near-Earth Fleet apparently not getting involved in either.” She continued ticking off reasons for despair as if counting ships at a space dock.
Solomon’s temper broke. “And what would have me do, Imprimatur? What can I do, apart from my duty?” He dropped his voice into a low hiss. “All three of us know what’s coming for us.”
“All I am suggesting, Lieutenant Cready, is that you would be better served by heading out there, back to General Asquew and fighting the Ru’at,” Rhossily stated in her infuriatingly calm Proximian way.
“What are you talking about?! My home just got nuked!” Ochrie whispered back just as fiercely.
“So did Mars,” the imprimatur said. “Look, what I am saying is this. We Proximians have a way of looking at things that tries to teach simplicity, and forthrightness,” she said. “To me, and to my Proximian upbringing, then, any more time that we spend here in Luna 1 or near Earth will be a waste of our energies from the real challenge that we have to face. There is too much confusion here, and too many vested interests.”
Solomon had to hand it to the woman, even after seeing her home world get invaded by an unknown alien force, and all of her people become refugees, she remained levelheaded and even wise in this most dangerous of times.
“We’re not leaving!” Ambassador Ochrie hissed, as they came up to a set of double-doors bearing the stencil ‘Inner Hub’ over the frame. Solomon realized that the main bubble habitat of Luna 1 was made out of concentric smaller ‘bubbles,’ with each presenting a different zone.
The green light hissed open, revealing a white avenue, at the end of which looked to be the central plaza of Luna 1, with terraced levels spreading up the walls.
But the corridor wasn’t empty. There, standing at the doors, were two pairs of Marine guards in power armor.
“Gentlemen.” Lieutenant Cready nodded at them from inside his own power armor suit, stepping forward with the ambassador and the imprimatur behind him.
But something wasn’t right. Solomon saw a minute gesture from one of the Marines on the right, a hand moving a fraction of an inch to their utility belt harness.
System Alert! Suit Telemetries Inactive…
An orange holographic warning scrolled across the inner space of Solomon’s helmet. That was odd, he thought. His suit telemetries—the short-range radio frequencies that every Marine suit used to connect to the rest of their squad and to the current battle mainframe—was blocked.
Not that there is anyone to talk to, the thought flashed through Solomon’s mind. His suit was probably keyed to the Gold Channel of the Outcasts, who were literally at the other end of the solar system right now, or else trying to link up to the main battlefield mainframe of the Rapid Response Fleet, currently invading Mars.
But doesn’t the suit automatically upgrade to the local Marine mainframe? Solomon frowned, just as he saw, out of the corner of his eye, a guard on left give a small, almost imperceptible nod to the guards on their right.
“Marine,” Solomon turned to greet him, pausing for a second. “Is there a problem?”
Lieutenant Cready could see through the man’s faceplate, and he could see the man’s eyes widening for a moment in shock, concern.
This isn’t right, Solomon thought, just as the guard on the right started reaching for the butt of his Jackhammer rifle.
“Back!” Solomon shouted, stepping in front of the two women and pushing them back as the first Marine swung up their Jackhammer.
Solomon swerved to one side as the muzzle went off.
BOOOM!
The flash was incredible, just a foot in front of his face as Solomon turned under the arc of fire, his suit’s noise cancellation suddenly cutting the boom of the weapon.
Solomon bounced up on the balls of his feet, one power gauntlet pushing the man’s Jackhammer aside as his other hand struck out in an upward blow to where the Marine’s neck would have been, were it not for the metal cowl that locked into the helmet.
CLANG! Fighting in power armor was an art, and one that Solomon had to learn quickly. Unlike the light tacticals, where you could feasibly cause damage through the plate and the battle harness, power armor was like an all-enclosing shell of interlocked plates. Although Solomon hit the man as hard as he could, all he left was a scratch on the metal, but the Marine was pushed back, spinning.
“Lieutenant!” he heard the ambassador shout as there was another muted BOOM from behind him. Who had been hit? he thought, spinning around to see that one of the other guards was pointing his Jackhammer at the two women and was taking aim.
Solomon lunged, seizing the man’s gun and forcing it up so that it fired into the ceiling.
Solomon Cready had a fraction of the service time that these Marines did, but he also had an advantage: his blood and his body, his very substance, was full of Serum 21. Deep inside his cells, the serum activated, alerted by the sudden flush of neurotransmitters and cortisol.
The serum activated RNA strands that had been dormant, it rewrote his biological command code, forcing his nervous system to respond more efficiently, and his muscles to
take up more protein, more adrenaline.
Solomon kept on moving through his lunge, snatching the Jackhammer from the man in a sudden move, reversing his grip and firing it point-blank into the Marine’s chest.
There was a huge blast of sparks and smoke, and the Marine flew backward to land with a thump against the wall. The front shield plates of his power armor were horribly mangled, blackened and dented, with a tiny wisp of smoke rising from the center. Solomon didn’t think that he had managed to burst a hole through the man’s suit, but he could easily have broken ribs. Either way, this Marine was out, slumping to the floor.
“Solomon!”
Another shout and Solomon turned to see that the ambassador had dragged the imprimatur back, and they were stumbling, falling over themselves through the airlock and into the outer hub. There were still three Marines, one of which was getting back to his feet where Solomon had punched him, the other two raising their Jackhammers to take aim at his two charges.
“No!”
Flak System. Activate.
Solomon snapped his hand to one side as the controls glowed green inside his helmet. He felt a thunk and a vibrational judder as, from the ports on his shoulders, his suit spewed out the pre-loaded flak system designed to disorient attackers, provide cover, and disrupt a weapon’s targeting systems. Smoke burst into the tunnel around him, as well as loud bangs, and tiny missile tubes fired coils of aluminum foil.
“Agh!” He heard a gunshot and a woman scream as the smoke and the flashing foil obliterated his view.
Thermal Imaging. Activated.
Working automatically, his faceplate flushed a neon green and suddenly Solomon could see the hazy, ghostly images of red and white shapes. The two Marines were now pushed to the sides of the tunnel, and two smaller, glowing white heat signatures were on the floor further ahead.
Invasion- Pluto Page 5
