The Kepler Rescue

by James David Victor

  But as quick as Cready was, Menier, un-winded and with a fully operational suit, was quicker. He threw a hand out at the specialist commander, and Cready had but a moment to see that it wasn’t empty. He had within it a small device that looked a little like one of those ancient hand-held blow driers.

  He’s not looking to dry my hair, Solomon thought. It was a micro-welder, its open maw a glowing red nub of sparking plasma.

  No wonder the girders fell away so easily. How did he get that out here? Did he smuggle it with his suit? Now that they had spent the best part of half a year at least, with some like Arlo there fourteen months and counting, Warden Coates expected them to suit up without supervision now. He must have brought it in then…

  Cready managed to get one arm up, but Menier merely batted it back down, still following it as he landed heavily on top of Cready’s leaping body, slamming onto the metal floor.

  “Get the hell off me!” Cready was shouting, as the much larger Menier knelt down on Solomon’s chest, one hand holding his outstretched arm down as he lowered the micro-welder to Solomon’s face-plate.

  He’s going to kill me. He’d going to fracking kill me! Cready bucked and twisted, but it was no use. Menier was just too big and too strong, and the micro-welder was too close.

  Thump! Menier thumped Cready’s outstretched arm against the metal again, and Solomon realized that Menier wasn’t actually killing him. He was just holding the micro-welder a few inches from his faceplate, where Solomon could see the condensation starting to rise on the inside as the heat started to transfer.

  He could press that into the material any time he wants, but he’s not… Cready’s mind raced. That was probably what this is all about. The big guy didn’t want to kill him, not with a contraband weapon, anyway. That would only earn him a one-way ticket to Titan, or worse!

  No… Solomon realized that Menier was just trying to intimidate him. Which was kinda working, to be honest.

  “What do you want!” he shouted behind his faceplate. Despite the fact that Menier couldn’t hear him, he must have been able to see Solomon’s lips moving.

  The large Frenchman just grinned, held the micro-welder for a few more seconds over Cready, before pushing himself up heavily, making sure that he stood on Solomon at least twice.

  “Idiot.” Solomon scrambled away from the man, panting, already standing up in a defensive crouch, but Menier was already ready for any counter-attack, the welder held out. Solomon saw Menier shake his head slowly, and the message was clear. You don’t want to fight me now, I WILL kill you…

  But Solomon, apart from having an apparently innate skill at ‘agile thinking’ also had the gift—or curse—of a flash-pan temper.

  “You really think I’m going to let you get away with that?” he said, drawing himself up to his full height and starting to stalk towards Menier.

  BWAOWAOWAO!! Suddenly, before he could make the Frenchman pay for his humiliation, a clanging alarm rang through Solomon’s suit, signaling the end of the training exercise.

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

  ALL-SQUAD ORDERS:

  Distress Sonar Sounded!

  Stand down, all squads, and await Marine transport to your location.

  “Dammit!” Solomon swore, not taking his eyes off Menier as the large man calmly relaxed the weapon in his hand, grinning.

  It had been a ploy. Arlo had already known that someone was going for the distress sonar—perhaps one of his own Red Squad—and he had been waiting and watching for a chance to make sure that Solomon, his sworn enemy, didn’t get in the way.

  Solomon saw the large adjunct-Marine shrug as if that was all just a part of the fun and games, as Solomon’s suit pinged with the notice that the Marine transporter was arriving outside. Should he say something about Menier’s actions? Should he fight Menier here and now?

  No. Stupid moves, Cready, he berated himself, watching as Arlo started to slowly saunter back to the porthole door he must have come in through, to make his way down to the outside. Cready knew that Warden Coates wouldn’t care about what Menier had done to him, or had almost done to him, if it meant that Solomon might be kicked off the program. And to attack Menier now, with the Marine transporter and the attendant guards arriving outside, would only make his deportation that much quicker.

  He was stuck, and Solomon hated being forced into any position he hadn’t chosen.

  “Fracksticks,” he swore as he waited, panting in the dark for his heart rate to slow and his temper to ebb away. He had to check that Malady’s nuclear-resistant suit was actually that good anyway, he thought, turning to the open bulkhead which had so recently spilled the metal girders. A quick suit communications call to the big metal man confirmed what Solomon had been guessing.

  “Undamaged and operational, Commander,” Malady’s dulcet electronic voice echoed in his ear, which was apparently the only piece of good news that would come out of today’s training mission.

  3

  A Job For You

  Solomon’s been in a bad mood all week, Jezebel Wen thought as she eyed her commander. And whatever bilge that Warden Coates is about to spew probably isn’t going to help…

  It was a few days after the ‘Break and Enter’ training mission, which had seen several of the other Outcast Adjunct-Marines receive specialization. It was a constant, rolling system of appraisal, Wen saw. A spectacular performance on any given day could mean that one of their sixty or so small force would be called for a private interview with the warden, the doctor, or the Marine colonels who regularly visited.

  But now, however, Wen was standing at the back of the gymnasium along with about half of the Outcasts. The other half were alternating their lessons with either the study lounge work or their personal specialization classes.

  As a combat specialist, Wen was tasked with performing double shifts in the gymnasium, and so when this next group of Outcasts came in for their regular martial training—with Solomon being one of them this round—she found that she was already tired.

  The stalking clip of the warden’s boots across the gymnasium floor toward them wasn’t helping her sense of irritation, either.

  “Schlubs! Attention!” he barked at them, using the normal slur that he had developed especially for ‘his’ Outcasts.

  Wen, along with everyone else, snapped into a straight-backed salute and waited.

  Beside the warden stalked the blonde-braided Doctor Palinov in her white suit, as well as two other gray-suited station staff. There were more subsidiary staff than Jezzie had first thought, and as she had spent more time there, she saw that the Outcasts were only a fraction of the people there at the base. All the gray-suited staff had that slightly rangy, either athletic or muscular look that told Jezzie that they probably had some kind of military training, but none of them had seemed eager to talk to the Outcasts, so she didn’t know for sure.

  “Right! At ease!” Warden Coates snapped at them as he held out a hand for one of the gray-suited staffers to pass a data-pad to him. The warden was a small man, constrained and wound-up like a spring, with a small peaked cap on which was a singular gold star. He wore the gray suit of a staffer but had a gold band running down the lapels and arms to indicate his position.

  “The results of your recent training exercise have been analyzed, and I can say that they were…interesting,” he said in a slightly more normal voice, but Jezzie still winced. What was interesting to the Warden might mean atrocious to anyone else, she thought.

  “Hiu! Farnham! Gigi! Cready!” he called out a list of names from the pad, ordering them to take a step forward from the throng until almost a third of their number—ten people all told—stood in a line in front of him.

  “Back of the gymnasium, hop to it!” He pointed for the group to move, which they did, quick-marching to the opposite wall and once again reforming into a line.

  Oh no… Jezzie had a bad feeling about this. It was never a good sign if you got singled out
by the warden.

  It turned out that she was right.

  “Outcasts,” the Warden sighed melodramatically. “Do you know why they call you that?”

  It was a rhetorical question clearly, and thankfully no one actually dared to answer the warden.

  “It was a joke.” He looked up at the group that he hadn’t called out, ignoring the ten men and women that had Cready in their number. “The Marine Commandant told me to call you that, because you were the dregs of society. The unwanted. The last-chancers.”

  Wow. Great pep-talk, Warden, Jezzie glowered.

  “But instead, I took that name and I have endeavored to create something…magnificent.” A rare smile from the warden’s face, and Jezzie strangely found herself feel a shiver of pride at that. If she had done well enough to make even the horrible and mean little Warden Coates proud, then wasn’t that a good thing?

  “You, my schlubs, were hated and reviled by everyone,” the warden continued, apparently crowing with glee at the thought. “The rest of the Marines thought you would be no good. The Justice and Defense Department thought you were no good. The people of Earth turned their back on you.

  “Only I have put my faith in you. In what you can be. Other people might see you as the Outcasts, but I call it a badge of honor! Let yourselves be different! Let everyone look in fear and envy at what you can do, above and beyond any other!” The warden snarled and goaded them, his throat swelling with passion, before taking a deep sigh and standing back, as if worried that he might explode. When he next spoke, his voice was soft and serious.

  “And I can say that in many ways, my faith has been rewarded. Everyone here—” He spoke to the group in front of him, of which Jezebel Wen was part of. “—have been proving me right. You have excelled at your training and your studies. You are becoming the sort of fighting force that I had envisioned when I first proposed this idea to the Rapid Response Fleet. However…”

  The warden half-turned to include the line of ten other Outcasts that he had separated against the back wall. “There are some of you who are not performing to the standards which I expect.”

  Jezebel could swear that she could see the flicker of fear spread through the ten people standing there.

  “Farnham. Gigi. Cropper. Step forward,” the warden barked at them, and the four adjunct-Marines snapped to attention, one step in front of the others.

  “As you all know, we observe and collate every iota of data. Your physical performance, your mental stamina, your proficiencies with weapons or Marine procedures…” Warden Coates said. “And all of these ten people here have been falling behind.” There was a pause, and Jezzie’s thought chimed with everyone else’s in the room, even if she did not know it.

  What punishment was going to come for this?

  “Schlubs, I need you to understand one thing. That your success or failure—my success or failure—depends on your ability to perform. To perform as an individual Marine and as a group. If you cannot do that, then your failings are bringing down the rest of the Outcasts!” he said tersely, berating the ‘failures’ in front of their comrades.

  “You three?” the Warden looked at Gigi, Cropper, and Farnham. “You’re out. Collect your things. Return all Confederate Marine property to the lockers and await immediate deportation.”

  “What?” the adjunct-Marine named Farnham—a youngish man in his thirties with a good-looking, if slightly babyish face—burst out. “But, Warden sir, I can do better—” he started to say quickly.

  “SILENCE!” Coates roared at the man, and Farnham immediately shut up as if slapped. There was a tense moment as everyone watched Coates watching the three, wondering what would happen, until the warden just cleared his throat.

  “I thought I told you three to get your things and get off my base?” he said to them, and the cold realization hit. Yes, they had really just been dismissed from the Outcast training program, which meant for most of them a life sentence on Titan, never to see Earth or any green and growing thing ever again.

  “But—” This time it was Cropper, a larger woman, who was frantic. Jezzie couldn’t really blame her, as when your only option was dying frozen and alone on a blasted ice-moon far from home, you might as well try to argue your case, right?

  But Coates was having none of it. Without pausing, his free hand blurred and there, in its place, was the small hand-held controller that he used to—

  “Ach!” As the warden hit the dial, the three would-be Titaneers fell to the floor, writhing in agony. It’s the chip we all have in the top of our spinal column, Jezebel Wen knew, feeling suddenly hyper-sensitive of that spot at the base of her neck. They had all been injected with the micro-control chip, which was apparently a tiny drone, following their blood vessels to where the spinal column met the largest nerve cluster in the human body. Through it, Jezebel Wen knew—because she had experienced it herself—crippling electric shocks pulsed straight through the middle of the body, able to cause a minor discomfort or completely paralyze.

  It was the paralyzed, drooling option that Coates went for this time as he stood over the three twitching bodies. Now it became clear what the gray-suited staffers were for, as they hurried forward at a nod from Warden Coates to pick up the twitching, rictus bodies and carry them out of the gymnasium.

  “Let that be a lesson to all of you,” Coates called out. “You all need to perform better, but you six especially…” He frowned at the remaining failures, of which Solomon was one.

  “So, because you six seem to be unaware of what it takes to be a Marine, and to be an Outcast Marine, I will leave you with a small lesson.” Coates hit the dial once more, and the remaining six failures all gasped and stumbled, before straightening up. The shock that he gave them wasn’t as crippling as the one that he had delivered to the dismissed Outcasts, but Jezzie could well imagine how painful it must have been. The six that stood there were twitching and shaking as they attempted to maintain their stances at attention. The combat specialist saw beads of sweat on Solomon’s brow as he gritted his teeth.

  “Pain will make you better, Outcasts. Struggle will make you better. Better than you allow yourself to be!” the warden barked at them, turning on his heel and stalking back out of the gymnasium as their lesson resumed, leaving the six still being shocked behind him. Jezzie saw Doctor Palinov hesitate where she stood, looking at the retreating back of Warden Coates and then back at the six men—did she focus on Cready specifically?—before she, too, turned and hurried after her superior officer.

  Oh hell, Jezzie thought, breaking into a jog to get to Solomon’s side as soon as the green light flared over their door, which signaled the start of their training.

  “How bad is it?” Jezzie hissed as she held up the sparring gloves in front of Solomon once more.

  Their lesson today was simple combat techniques, with all of those assembled—both the six failures and the twenty-odd ‘successes’—practicing or trading blows in pairs.

  “Had worse,” Solomon grunted, his thin face still tense and with a waxy sheen of sweat that wasn’t just from the sparring lessons.

  Coates was keeping the electric shock running on them, Jezzie realized, as she spared a look at the other five members of the disgraced, who all seemed to be in a similar state of agony.

  “Hyurgh!” Solomon threw a punch, clearly meaning to capitalize on the moment that Jezzie was distracted with the other shocked Outcasts. But Jezzie was a combat specialist, and before that, she’d had a lifetime of sparring and fighting in the streets. Solomon was quick, but she was quicker, especially now that her commander was also battling muscle spasms and central nervous system pain. She stepped back with ease and raised the training pad once again.

  “Nice try, bigshot,” she said, watching the man move as he took another swing at the offered pad this time. The pain was slowing him up, she saw, but he was resisting it remarkably well, keeping his eyes focused on her and what she was doing. This time, she accepted the blow on the fist-pad, and
then swung her own other hand and strike-pad out as if it were a retaliating punch.

  Smack! Solomon was supposed to duck it, rolling either forward or back on his hips, but he batted the attempted, lazy blow with his right forearm, and instead shot out a jab with his left, back at the pad.

  Thump. A good, solid jab, but that wasn’t what this training exercise was about.

  “Nice idea, champ, but keep your mind on the parameters,” she said, raising the pad once more and preparing to swing with her other fist again. A simple agility and counter-strike exercise, which she would speed up until Solomon’s body memory was able to duck and counter-strike at lightning-fast speeds.

  That was the plan, anyway.

  “Screw the parameters,” Solomon hissed through bared teeth, not striking out at the offered ‘target’ pad but instead blocking it by stepping in with his left forearm.

  “Sol, what are you…” Jezzie was already on the returning, lazy counter-strike when Solomon blocked that with his right forearm and raised his foot to kick forward at Jezzie’s chest.

  “Hey!” The woman jumped back easily, out of the way, but Solomon kept coming, this time swinging with his lead right arm in a powerful roundhouse.

  It sailed harmlessly in front of Jezzie’s face, inches from her nose as she dodged the easy to recognize, broadcasted blow.

  “Sol!” she snapped again. They weren’t supposed to be doing full sparring yet. It was supposed to be practice moves.

  Another wild jab with Sol’s left, and this time, Jezzie met it with her own practice pad, already anticipating the uppercut which Solomon was sure to follow with, turning on her hip and dropping her shoulder so that she stepped inside his blow and gave him a hard shove with both hands on the chest.

  “Oof!” She was stronger than she looked for a slight Anglo-Japanese woman, and Cready had been caught off guard. He slipped his footing as he stumbled backward, before landing on the floor with a heavy groan.