The Kepler Rescue

by James David Victor

  It would be so easy to leap into a flying elbow. Cready had a moment to assess the tactic but decided against it. Despite the fact that this was technically a ‘friendly fire’ mission, he had no great wish to end up trading blows with any other adjunct-Marine, and instead converted his momentum into a dive, seizing the Blue Squad attacker by the leg and flinging them bodily into the air—the low gravity really helped with being able to manipulate heavy objects.

  It wasn’t that Solomon had any great love for his fellow Outcasts—none of them apart from his own squad had shown any loyalty or camaraderie to him, after all—and Solomon had never been averse to putting the boot into a mugger or punk who might have tried to rob him on the derelict streets of his previous home, but…

  I need to get Kol out of that wrestling match, he thought, as the Blue Squad attacker rolled and flailed through the air, to come down with a thump twenty meters away. Far enough, and hard enough, that Solomon didn’t have to worry about him for a moment.

  And I want to do well on this mission, he thought. He needed to do well, more like. Warden Coates had it in for him—thanks to the details of his criminal past—and Solomon was sure he was just waiting to use any excuse from insubordination to poor performance to bust him back down to everyday convict status and ship him off to Titan.

  So Specialist Commander Solomon ignored the leaping attackers from Blue, Red, and even some of the Yellows who tried to target him. Instead, he viewed his leaping bounds like a game of dare, timing his leaps so that he sailed over their heads or else safely out of the way of those who sought to pummel him into the ground.

  “Sir. Tactics.” Malady’s voice sounded completely unfazed as it came over Solomon’s suit audio. Cready could see that Malady already had two different squad members clinging onto him—one on his back and the other on his leg, attempting to bring him down.

  The full tactical golem was calmly ignoring them.

  “Don’t get bogged down,” Solomon said to his crew. “Push and divert. Don’t end up in a wrestling match.”

  “Oh,” Karamov’s voice said, worriedly. “Someone should tell Jezzie that, then.”

  Oh hell. Solomon was still bounding over to where Kol was on the ground, being straddled by another adjunct-Marine and repeatedly punched in the helmet. He glanced toward Jezzie, who was surrounded by three assailants and was apparently loving the attention as she jump-kicked one in the chest, used his weight to slow her landing, then turned to attack another. Satisfied she had her situation under control, he turned his focus to Kol.

  “Hey!” Solomon shouted, although that didn’t make the man attacking Kol stop. Oh yeah, he’s not on my squad frequency, so he can’t hear me...

  Instead, Solomon settled for increasing the speed of his bounding leaps, straight at the man, and this time, he really did throw himself forward into an elbow barge.

  You’re not supposed to kill anyone! Solomon snarled as he collided with the man high in the back, and the momentum that he had garnered sent the man cartwheeling across the surface of Ganymede as Solomon himself skidded and rolled.

  “Kol? Report. You okay in there, champ?” Solomon asked as he came to a stop.

  “…yeah. Just shaken like a tin of beans, sir. I’m good…” Kol wobbled to his feet as a little ways away, Jezzie sent the last of her own attackers flying.

  “Right. What now, sir?” She sounded out of breath but quite happy as she bounded over.

  What he had hoped not to happen had happened. “Well, it looks like we’re about the last ones to reach the enemy station objective thanks to this little diversion,” he groaned, seeing the distant forms of the other squad members disappearing over the horizon.

  That was probably their plan, he realized with a flare of anger. Various members of different Outcast squads had purposefully attacked them! Which they were completely allowed to do of course, but there had been so many, and from so many different squads, that it sure looked as though they had conspired to delay and distract Cready’s Gold Squad to make sure that they finished last.

  “Well, we’re not out yet,” Solomon said, nodding towards the distant ‘enemy station’ marker. “Come on. The rest of those schlubs might have got there first, but that doesn’t mean that they’re going to win!”

  Gold Squad of the Outcast Marines started to bound and leap across the surface of Ganymede.

  Training Mission ID: Break And Enter (Intermediate Level).

  GOLD-SQUAD STATUS:

  Enemy Station Reached!

  We’ve never been here before, Solomon thought as his bounding steps ate up the distance to the large, holographic arrow hovering on his visor.

  Over the course of the last three months, the Outcast trainees had performed many training missions outside the safer confines of the Ganymede Military Base. Sometimes even boarding a heavy-bellied transporter to carry them to some distant part of the massive moon.

  So far, they had only managed to repeat the same terrain twice, and this one ahead of them was completely new.

  The lines of rilled ice and rock-like frozen waves were broken abruptly by the jagged lip of a massive crater. And as Solomon and the rest of Gold Squad slowed down to crab-crawl up to the edge, they saw what must be their objective.

  The crater was large, filling the foreground. It was a very old impact crater, Solomon saw, as the sides sloping inwards were smooth and not sharp or burnt.

  The center of the crater was occupied by a blocky shape that stuck out at a forty-five-degree angle to the surface of the moon. It was a ship. A crashed ship, to be precise. It must have been crashed on purpose, the Gold Squad Commander thought, as the vessel looked old, and had been stripped of all available pods and quite a few doors and hull panels as well. There were great swathes of darker, corrosive metal stains that striated across the blocky framework of what remained, and Solomon wondered if that meant it had been a battleship that had long since lost its purpose.

  Small, sparkling LED floodlights had been set here and there about the frame, four on the topmost end around four large octagonal holes into the ship, which Solomon figured must have once housed rocket thrusters. There were several more over different, gap-toothed openings.

  Other squads were already busy climbing the structure to make their way in.

  Mission Objectives Updated! Solomon’s—and everyone else’s—suits blipped as the large holographic triangle faded away on their internal visor screen and was replaced by several much smaller orange triangles, superimposed over the large hulk.

  “Those must be the enemy markers,” Solomon said. Which meant that the actual object of their mission—the distress sonar—wasn’t showing up on their suit holographics. Not yet, anyway.

  “But if there is any reason to this mission, then I would suggest that a distress sonar beacon would either have to be on the bridge of the ship, or…” Solomon thought.

  “No. Topmost corner,” Malady intoned beside him. His mech suit did not allow a crouch at all, so he just stood on the lip of the crater like a statue.

  “Huh?” Solomon asked over their squad’s suit-to-suit narrow band communications.

  “I was a Marine, don’t forget. And that’s an F-Class Heavy Bomber. Nautilus, they used to call them,” Malady said, and Solomon wondered if he could detect a hint of regret in the man-golem’s voice. “Unless the warden’s had it removed, then the distress sonar should be beyond the top thruster housing and along the ridge to the outer stabilizer fin.” The big metal man inclined his body a little to indicate where he meant. It was the topmost corner of the wreck, Solomon saw, and it made sense for the distress sonar to be somewhere near the outer edges of the craft when it was in motion—less chance of interference from the ship’s own shielding if the crew needed to activate it.

  “Well, I’ll take your word for it, big man.” Cready looked at the crater, the hulk, and the other squad members currently beginning their arduous climb up the side of the vessel.

  What is more important, the enemy
markers or the ultimate objective, which is the Distress Beacon?

  “There’s no way that we can get to all the enemy markers ahead of this lot,” he mused out loud, making up his mind. “Malady? What’s your force-per-inch again?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Solomon rephrased. “Physics. Aerodynamics. Or vacuum dynamics, in our case,” he explained, asking how many pounds of pressure the large man could exert by running. As it turned out, Malady’s size meant that it was a lot.

  “About five hundred pounds per inch.” The large golem paused as he calculated.

  “Ah. Good, then…” Solomon ran through the numbers in his mind. One of the many things that Solomon Cready was very good at was what the Marine Corps tests called ‘agile thinking.’ It was a skill that Solomon had never really considered to be special before. He just always had an easier time than others answering the daily quizzes on the data-streams, or planning a complicated heist, or working out how to trip the safety measures on a door lock.

  Or making physics calculations in his head, it seemed. “You should be able to carry me, then.” He grinned and explained his plan.

  The plan, as it turned out, was a simple one. Malady was to charge at the crater wall, with Specialist Commander Cready hanging onto his large suit—everything weighs a lot less in near zero-G, after all—and then jump, while Karamov and Kol would work to climb the hulk as the other squad members were doing, and focus on tearing their rivals off the metal structure and getting to the enemy markers themselves.

  It’s not much of a plan, Cready thought. But he hoped that he had covered all possible angles. Jezzie, Kol, and Karamov would neutralize what enemy markers they could, hopefully satisfying at least one part of the mission, while Cready and Malady would go for the beacon. It meant splitting their forces, but he wasn’t overly worried about that. After seeing what Combat Specialist Jezzie was capable of, he rather pitied the rival squad members out there, in fact…

  “If my calculations are right,” Solomon started to say, just as Malady started his lumbering run.

  “Whoa!” All thoughts of numbers and figures fled from his mind as he concentrated on holding onto the large metal golem with all of the articulated might in his power gauntlets.

  The Full Tactical Outcast Marine started slowly, its large bounds looking fairly similar to that of any other leaping, non-gravity-assisted body. Then the combined mass and momentum started to build up, and Malady was hurtling along like a train had been given springs. Great clouds of dust and ice exploded from each metal foot as he ran, and the crater walls yawned high above them, and then suddenly were down at foot level as Malady kicked out from the lip of the crater.

  It was the sort of jump that no mere human could ever do without some sort of rocket assist. Even the fully-qualified Marines in their power suits didn’t have the concentrated power that Malady had with his powered exoskeleton.

  As the other Gold Squad members similarly leapt from the edge of the crater wall, their arcs ended fast, sending them down into the crater to bound toward the bottom of the hulk as Malady and Cready kept on soaring high through the air.

  The hulk grew larger by the moment and filled Cready’s vision as he hung on for dear life. The remaining metal plates, dented and scarred, with the shadows of old military stencils still visible, were rapidly growing larger. Cready had to hope that Malady remembered some of his old Marine training, as he wasn’t sure how they were going to land.

  Kerrunch!

  As it turned out, the metal golem-man did have a strategy for catching hold of the metal hulk that swam toward them.

  It was to punch his own metal claws through the hull.

  There was an almighty shockwave that swept through Solomon’s body as they crashed bodily against the side of the upturned hulk with Malady throwing his arms out at the last minute, the heavy fists of his own power gloves—many times the size of Solomon’s—punching through the thin, desiccated metal. It was all that Solomon could do to hang on as they slid down a foot, Malady’s strength ripping the metal before finally coming to a halt, dangling over the edge of the lower booster cavity.

  Holy frack, holy frack. Solomon caught a glimpse of the surface of Ganymede, some fifteen or twenty meters below. Had we really jumped that far and that high? It was pointless to suggest otherwise, as Solomon wondered what constituted a terminal fall in low gravity. Would he survive if Malady slipped and lost his grip?

  Well, certainly not if Malady lands on top of me, he thought, looking for where his nearest handhold had to be.

  But before he could do that, and much to his surprise, there was movement as the servo-assisted motors in Malady’s joints spun lazily, and he started to claw his way up the side of the vessel, using just his hands.

  “Holy heck, Malady. Just how strong are you!?” Solomon exclaimed, astonished but glad all the same.

  “Is this the time to be telling you my pounds-per-inch?” Malady retorted flatly as he managed to dead-pull his body up the side of the bottom booster housing to where he could now also use his legs to speed the climb.

  “Was that a joke?” Solomon had thought that the metal-mechanical man was beyond such things as humor.

  “I have my moments,” Malady intoned, sounding as deadpan as if he were a news broadcaster reporting on an uneventful day.

  The pair climbed—well, Malady climbed and the specialist commander just hung on—until they had rounded the bottom thruster housing and were crossing over the complicated iron girder work to the topmost one above it.

  “Okay, hold up.” Solomon paused their ascent, dismounting from his strange steed and taking shelter in the mouth of the topmost booster cavity. “We’ll climb separately, so if anything happens to one of us, the other can finish the job, okay?”

  “Aye-aye, sir—” Malady was just through saying when the order was almost immediately challenged. The metal golem started to turn where he stood, but he hadn’t moved.

  What?! Solomon had a second to think before realizing that it was the metal girder that Malady was standing on. It was slow-motion bending and turning away from its seat, and Malady was even now starting to slip.

  It was happening too fast, there was little Solomon could do.

  “Take my hand!” he shouted, lunging forward as his other arm reached to grab onto the nearest strut support.

  But Malady was a far, far greater mass than Solomon was. And even in near zero-G, a greater mass still meant one thing: greater acceleration.

  Malady raised his heavy power gloves to reach for Solomon as he slid off the upturned girder. Their metal-capped fingers passed within an inch of each other before Malady was spiraling and tumbling down in slow motion.

  “No!” Solomon shouted out, just before Malady hit the floor of the crater with a heavy crash, sending up a radiating circle of dust, and was still.

  “Malady? Malady can you read?!” Solomon was shouting over his suit’s controls, as he stared now at the golem, lying motionless on its back far below, and as large in Solomon’s vision as his own hand.

  He’s in a full tactical. Those things can survive nuclear blasts, can’t they? he thought. He hoped. He didn’t have time to think more about it however, as suddenly he was starting to slip sideways where he stood.

  What!?

  The housing frameworks of the boosters were little more than metal support girders, presumably riveted or magnet-locked into place, with metal sheets connecting them to form the thin, inner shell of the housing compartment. The bottom lip where he and Malady had been standing should have had a ‘stair’ of metal girders ready for the rockets to be mounted on, but now these girders were slowly breaking apart from the wall and tumbling to the surface of Ganymede below.

  And straight onto Malady, Cready had a moment to think as he took a step on the twisting metal stanchion and leapt—not out or up but further inside the vessel. It was dark in there, save for the rivers of light that came in from the open booster entrance. As he soared, Solomon coul
d make out a large, tube-like room, with more girders and the half-destroyed remains of metal stairwells leading up to the blankly open holes that had been porthole doors.

  Slam! Solomon hit the metal floor and rolled forward. It wasn’t a bad impact. Nothing that his full tactical suit couldn’t handle. He bounced up and started to turn back to where the booster entrance was. He needed to see if Malady—

  Whumpf! Something large and heavy hit him across the shoulders.

  WARNING! SUIT IMPACT!

  Light Tactical Armor Plating: 18%

  Solomon recoiled as one of the metal girders rolled sedately off him through the near-frictionless space. Not so sedately, however, that its reinforced steel didn’t crumple one of the front mesh panels of his light tactical suit.

  And there, leaping down after it, was the large form of Adjunct-Marine Arlo Menier.

  “You idiot!” Cready said but realized a moment later that his words were useless as Menier was on Red Squad, so his Gold Squad suit telemetries didn’t match. It was clear what this was all about, however. Arlo had been, and still was, the local ‘big guy’ in the Outcast barracks. The tall and well-built Frenchman had spent the longest time as a part of the Outcast training program and had used his bulk and experience to seize control over the bunkroom.

  He had also fully expected to be the next specialist commander, Cready knew as much because he had in fact told him that at every available opportunity. The fact that Cready, a newcomer, had been singled out along with the handful of other Outcasts to receive their first specialization—unique training categories that indicated rank as well as their future role in the Rapid Response Marine fleet—was half of the reason why Arlo hated him. The other was that Cready had been a part of one of Arlo’s unsuccessful squads, and Arlo had flubbed his own chance at receiving a command specialization.

  And of course, he blames me… Cready pushed out with one hand to flip himself through the air as Menier landed just a meter away from him.