“Thanks. But I still have no idea who it was who brought them here…” Solomon said, breathing hard as he was the first to climb the ridge. The questions bothered him. They had come in a Marine transporter. That meant at the very least a hijack of Marine Corps equipment, overpowering trained Marines, and having the resources and skills to be able to do that.
Or it could mean a traitor in the Corps. Like Kol.
“Wait a minute,” Jezzy cautioned him, bounding to his right side as Malady joined his left, with Karamov behind them, holding the rest of the convoy back until his commander gave them the all-clear. Together, Gold Squad were the first to take the ridge of the hill in a triangle formation, fanning out quickly to the jagged spikes of rocks for cover.
“Anyone got anything?” Solomon peered down the sight of his Jackhammer along the ridge to see nothing out of the ordinary. More rocks. More ice. Nothing that glinted like chrome, or looked like pale, dead flesh.
“All clear at your east,” Malady intoned. The big man didn’t crouch, as his armor would probably be protection enough against most enemy attacks. So far, it hadn’t been tested against the particle beams of the cyborgs, however.
“All clear on your west,” Jezzy echoed, sighting along the spur of the ridge that led back towards the ruined facility.
Which just left the south. Solomon adjusted the range finder on the top of his Jackhammer and scanned down the lowering edge of the ridge to where it dropped into another plateau of ice, and then the crater where the practice hulk was stationary.
It looked like the skeleton of some ancient sea creature, Solomon had always thought, if that sea creature had metal bones. The hulk sat where it had been hauled sometime in the distant past, and still even had old stencil markings of arcane military numbers and designations. Solomon knew it well. He had been sent into its empty holds and bare corridors a few times on training exercises, where he would usually be expected to dummy-shoot a rival squad.
And then there was movement. A shape emerging along the top ridge of metal plates and girders, raising an arm!
“Commander Solomon sir!” an enthusiastic voice said over their general communicator. “Distress beacon working. We managed to fire it up not five minutes ago—”
There was a flash in the dark, and that was the last anyone heard from that particular Green Squad Marine.
“Contact!” Solomon was yelling, turning to trace the line of purple-white light that had speared from the darkness of rock and ice to their west.
“I thought you said the west was clear!?” Solomon growled at Jezzy, looking for the source of the attack. A glint of chrome or silver, a shape that was too regular for the organic shapes of the moon’s surface… Anything.
“It is, stars damn-it!” his combat specialist spat back, doing the same as her commander from her own position. “That’s out on the plateau. Not up here on the ridge.”
Frack it. “Sorry, you’re right.” He scanned the lay of the land quickly. The ridge ran east to west between the facility and the crater that held the practice hulk and the hacked distress beacon. On the other side of the ridge, between their position and the crater, was the ice plateau.
“With any luck, they’re still a ways out,” he announced. He was guessing that the cyborgs—please only be one, please only be one out there… he thought—were at the extreme western edge of the ice plateau, where the ridge started. Maybe they had been about to climb up onto the ridge and take position up here to ambush them, Solomon thought, but the convoy’s quick ascent meant that the cyborgs had to move to the plateau instead.
“Dammit!” He realized the situation at once. Both the Outcasts and the cyborgs’ positions were in a case of stalemate—or at least, that was what his strategic training taught him. The Outcasts had the higher ground, which was good, but Solomon also knew that if he tried to bring the convoy and the buggy over the ridge, they would be silhouetted against the ochre glare of Jupiter.
It would be like a day at a shooting range for the cyborgs.
But similarly, if the cyborgs wanted to avoid getting shot then they would have to remain where they were, too. Hence, stalemate.
“And we can’t afford to wait around here, exposed…” Solomon was growling to himself as he searched the dark for the enemy.
It was at that moment that Solomon realized his total error, as the first cyborg stood up from the ice plateau and casually started walking up hill toward them.
Solomon fired.
Jezzy fired.
Malady fired.
All three shots hit the singular chrome and flesh creature, making it judder and spin on its heels, but it slowly turned and kept marching.
This situation would have been a stalemate if they were facing any other normal human enemy. One that was afraid to get shot and die. And one who, once they had gotten shot, usually did die.
But the cyborgs weren’t like humans at all.
9
Strange Allies
“Multiple contacts. West by southwest…” Solomon heard Jezzy say over the general channel. Not that he didn’t already know that, of course. He was crouching just a little way away from her, after all, and facing the same rising line of cyborgs as they started to climb the ridge. But Jezzy was following procedure, calling out the situation report to any other Marines that might be listening on the general channel, and of course Warden Coates behind.
“Eliminate them!” Coates was hissing in Solomon’s ear.
I wish it were that easy, the Gold Squad Commander was thinking as he ejected the previous ammo mag from his Jackhammer and jammed in another, selecting burst fire from the available settings on the side.
“Fire at will!” Solomon called, leaning out and targeting the nearest cyborg he could see.
It was a heavy-set one, its human body a slightly bigger build than the others, although that was where any trace of individuality ended, as the thing had the same silvered arm, shoulder, part-face and legs as its colleagues.
Colleagues, Solomon scoffed. As if creatures like this know anything about solidarity.
He pulled the trigger, feeling the reassuring kick of the firearm against his shoulder as he gripped hard on the stock to stop it from jumping too much. BADA-BRAP-BRAP-BRAP! He was rewarded by the flash and flare of muzzle fire, almost simultaneously causing a shower of sparks and ricochets from the rising man-machine.
The cyborg staggered under the onslaught, the commander’s bullets forcing it back down the incline to the west of their position. Through the sights of his gun, Solomon saw the grisly image of the creature’s bullet-pocked body, freeing droplets of black machine oil into the Ganymede air.
The creature toppled back, hitting the frozen rocks hard and skidding back down to the edge of the plateau.
Yes! It felt like a victory, but the commander knew it was a limited one. He might have pushed it back, but with ceaseless determination, he saw the thing push itself back up on silvered metal arms and start to climb the incline once more—albeit slightly wobblier than before.
“This is insane!” he cursed, firing another barrage of Jackhammer shots at the thing, this time aiming for its belt and the legs. The cyborg didn’t make any pretense of dodging or ducking. It just took the bullets as stoically as it had every other time that Solomon had fired.
Suddenly, a shower of sparks hissed into the air from one of the thing’s knee-joints, and it was done, sliding back to the edge of the plateau, clearly with some kind of injury to its right leg.
“Well done, Commander,” Jezzy breathed tensely over the channel.
“Not good enough, though…” Solomon saw that the cyborg was once again moving. This time, it was hauling itself over the rocks by its arms since it could no longer stand up, but it was still coming for them.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Solomon breathed over the channel communicator as other Outcast Marines took up positions beside him and began firing—other survivors of the facility crash who had been guarding the buggy
. They had a total of nine Outcasts up here now, all armed with Jackhammers, and they were facing a similar number of cyborgs.
Six… Seven… Solomon ducked a purple-white particle beam that seared overhead as he counted the approaching enemy. Enough to fill a small landing module, easily, and they had approached from the western ice shelf that lay beyond the facility, meaning that they hadn’t come from the crash site itself.
A scream burst over the shared channel as suddenly one of the rock formations on the brow of the ridge burst apart in a flare of burning light, and the particle beam from below that had super-heated the rocky elements and melted the gluing ice punched its way through to find the adjunct-Marine who had taken up position on the near side.
“Outcast down!” Solomon was calling, scrabbling down the safe side of the ridge to re-ascend it underneath the Outcast’s body. The sight was terrible—a darkened burn hole straight through the man’s chest. Acting on instinct, Solomon grabbed the body and pulled it backwards, away from the possibility of any more mutilation, and picked up the man’s spare ammunition to add them to his own, before re-ascending the ridge…
We can’t stop them, Solomon was thinking, just as there was another scream over the shared channel—this time from their eastern flank instead.
“Malady!” Solomon shouted. The full tactical had been guarding that wing of the battlefront, but he had been joined by other survivors. Looking across, he saw the shape of a body flying and tumbling through the air—a human body, an Outcast Marine who had been seized and thrown by an advancing cyborg as easily as if the man were nothing more than a twig.
“Contact east!” Solomon shouted as he realized what had happened. The cyborgs really did have deep machine learning circuits, didn’t they? Their blatant assault of the western side of the ridge had concentrated the Marines on them, as another small group must have crawled over the ice plateau below and up their eastern flank. They were being surrounded! Solomon brought up his Jackhammer—
—just as a heavy, dark shape barreled into the approaching cyborg. It was Malady, standing up to his full height and making a roaring sound over the shared communicator channel as he knocked the cyborg back the way it had come. Solomon saw the back and side plates of the full tactical flex like bronze-colored muscles, and the small wheels and servo-assisted pistons releasing steam all around him as he charged to the next approaching cyborg.
It was like watching two rhinos attack each other. Solomon felt a moment of terrible awe as the two man-robots battled. Malady was clearly the bigger in every way, but the cyborg had an in-built particle-beam weapon. It was quicker than Malady, but not as strong.
“Enemy all around us!” Jezzy was shouting, and Solomon could hear the report of her own gun over the channel as she fought the western assault.
“Position overrun! Fight where you stand!” Solomon shouted the most terrifying words that he had never hoped to utter, but it was now already too late as something half-silver bounded through the light gravity past Malady to land between Solomon and his squad member. More cyborgs launched themselves into the air to similarly break apart the Outcasts line.
BADA-BRAP-BRAP! His weapon was still on burst fire, and Solomon fired straight up at the cyborg’s chest, giving it a full burst that knocked it back.
It’ll be back, Solomon knew, but he had no time to hunt it down, as he was pushing himself back to his feet, turning to see where another cyborg had landed near the center of their group.
This was a sort of fighting that Solomon hadn’t trained for. He was a commander, he was taught to think in positions and logistics and strategies, but this was just a bloodbath. Instead, his more distant, New Kowloon instincts kicked in.
Keep moving. Stay alive. He kicked out, somersaulting over the ridge to the far side as the rocks behind him exploded with purple-white light. He landed badly, half-stumbling before turning and firing a shot at the nearest cyborg to leap again.
Be fast. Take what chances you can. That was how you survived in the chaotic and complicated streets of New Kowloon, Solomon’s body knew, even if his mind didn’t. You had to be agile. Unpredictable.
“Arghhh!” another scream as one of the Outcast survivors that Solomon Cready had rescued was blown off the ridge by a bolt of purple-white light. Solomon turned to find the source of the attack, just as it was smashed to the ice by the leaping, charging Malady.
The specialist commander found himself in one of those surreal lulls in the middle of the violence that he had read about from other Marine’s biographies. All around him, people struggled and fought and died, and everyone was shouting, snarling, and screaming. The ground shook with the thunder of bullet-shot and the impacts of bodies.
The eastern flank is gone, Solomon saw. Only Malady, another Marine, and himself stood on this side of the battle, and there were Outcasts fighting cyborgs in the heart of the ridge as well, who appeared to be trying to push their way to the knot of survivors on the west with Jezzy and Karamov at their center. Solomon had no idea how they were managing to hold out against such an unstoppable enemy, but they were…somehow.
“Rally! Rally, my brothers and sisters!” Solomon held up his Jackhammer and started to bound towards that knot of fighters with Jezzy and Karamov. If they could reform there, then maybe they had a chance…
“Ach!” Something struck him on the side of the shoulder, spinning him around and sending him falling down the side of the ridge, bouncing in the low gravity as his attacker followed him down.
It was one of the cyborgs, who had apparently backhanded him with enough force to send him flying. The cyborg’s metal legs pulverized the rocks and ice as it landed, but Solomon still hadn’t even pushed himself back up again yet, and his Jackhammer was gone! It had slipped from his fingers in the fall and was now slowly floating a few meters away.
The cyborg leveled its weapon-arm at the Gold Squad Commander. Solomon saw the cylinders spin in a blur and discharge threading miniature lightning bolts as it generated the charge necessary to—
“Not today, metal-man!” a voice shouted as something smashed down on the cyborg’s hand, knocking it down so that the light seared into the creature’s own leg, to a hiss of molten metal and steam. It had been a boulder. One of the Outcast survivors—a big one at that—had seized a boulder and thrown it, before reaching to pull up his own gun on the strap around his shoulder and fire point-blank into the thing’s face as they bounded forward.
The cyborg swiveled and flew backward, its leg tattered and showering machine oil and sparks as it flew, and Solomon’s savior reached down to seize the specialist commander by the front of his light tactical and haul him to his feet.
The face inside the Outcast visor-helmet was not the one that Solomon had been expecting, however. It was Arlo Menier, a member of Red Squad and one of the Outcasts who had been determined to make Solomon’s life on Ganymede a living hell.
Adjunct-Marine Menier was a big Frenchman, with the build of a professional wrestler even before adding a light tactical suit on top. He had dark eyes and no hair, but a handlebar moustache that he was very proud of.
Solomon and the rest of Gold Squad had also had one training exercise with him as their commander before their final squad positions were allocated, and Arlo Menier had made every bad decision that a leader could make. Luckily, the visiting Brigadier General Asquew had noticed, ejecting Menier from the squad and giving the command to Solomon instead—which had started almost a year and a half of enmity, near fights, and small acts of cruelty from the large Frenchman towards him.
“Arlo!” he said in shock, unsure of what he should do. This man had tried to kill him out here once. Well, scare me, perhaps, he corrected. But holding a flaming arc-welder just a little away from the vulnerable visor mask of a fellow adjunct-Marine was just as dangerous as trying to kill one, right?
Solomon watched as the larger Menier reached down to snatch up Solomon’s Jackhammer from where it had been starting to settle on the ground. His nemes
is held the gun in his spare hand for a moment, as if also wondering whether he was going to shoot his long-time enemy…
“Here,” Arlo grunted, passing the gun to the specialist commander and turning to fire at another approaching cyborg.
“On your left!” Solomon called, as the cyborg with the particle-burnt leg had managed to drag itself into a crouching position, once again raising its laser-generating arm and aiming at Menier.
Solomon reversed his grip and fired, hitting the thing’s ruined face to an eruption of sparks and machine oil. The neck twisted horribly, and the thing collapsed to the ground, unmoving.
Both Solomona and Arlo looked at the dead cyborg for a moment. Between them, they had done it. They had managed to kill one. It had taken two point-blank shots to the head and a self-application of its own particle laser to do it, but they had still done it.
“Thanks,” Arlo murmured gruffly at Solomon.
“Head shots,” Solomon breathed, wondering how they had managed to do the impossible, before realizing that each of the cyborgs that they had seen so far had platework silver-sheaths covering the backs of their heads down their spine to their belts. Even if their chests or shoulders or arms were bare of metal, each cyborg still had that ‘spine sheath.’
“It must have hit the central cortex or spinal column…” Solomon said. “Down their back… That’s where their control cables are—running down the spine!” he shouted excitedly as both men turned back in the direction of the battle to spread their good news, and to fight. Together.
10
Manna from Heaven
“Hold your positions!” Solomon shouted as he fired again, hitting one of the advancing cyborgs on the side of the shoulder. It wasn’t the hit he was looking for, but it was enough to spin it around, and for the Outcast beside him to target its spine. A direct hit! It went down, but their problems were far from over.
Invasion- Proxima Page 5
