“Great,” Karamov muttered at Solomon’s side. “The last thing we need is this old argument again…”
“And just who is hanging their dreadnaughts over our skies, huh?” the guard retorted. “If the Confederacy were so interested in the affairs of Martians, then they would already have released our beloved imprimatur and Father Ultor!”
“You’re making no sense…” Asquew muttered darkly.
“No, Colonel, it is you and your Confederacy who are making no sense!” the guard spat back. “So here is our deal: deliver us the imprimatur and Father Ultor back to us, and you may have these two agents of yours, unharmed.”
Solomon kept turning his head from the camera to the screen, hoping to catch a glimpse of what Asquew was thinking behind her eyes.
She’s never going to agree. Why would she?
“As soon as you hurt a hair on their head, then it’s war…” Solomon was surprised when he heard Asquew say out loud.
“I think they’ve already managed to do that, haven’t they?” Solomon murmured, turning so that the camera could see the full extent of his face’s bruises and scrapes.
“The Chosen of Mars understand this. So, deliver us Imprimatur Valance and Father Ultor, and you can have your men back, and then we can talk…” the Martian said, surprising Solomon even more.
No one wants to die. Solomon saw a glimmer of hope. The First Martians or the Chosen or whatever they want to call themselves don’t want to see their beloved home world nuked to a crisp…
“And we want the Confederate fleets to withdraw immediately from Martian space!” the corporate man announced defiantly from out of camera shot.
“Who am I speaking to!?” Asquew peered back and forth on whatever screen she was using.
“Our…consultant,” the Martian guard at Solomon’s side said, just before the corporate executive made even more demands.
“And we want a zero-tariff on all Martian goods!” the corporate executive announced, earning a flinch of surprise from the guard beside Solomon.
“You know that will be a matter of diplomatic discussions with our ambassador…” the colonel started to say.
“And we want a public apology from the Marine Corps!” the executive declared, this time earning a nervous shuffle of the guard’s feet.
What is he playing at? Solomon thought.
“The Marine Corps has acted according to its code of conduct at all times…” Solomon could hear the colonel starting to get annoyed.
“Preposterous! Zero tariffs, a complete removal of all Confederate ships from Martian space, a recognition of Martian autonomy effective immediately, a recognition that the Martian territory extends to its near space…and a public apology from the Marine Corps!”
“This is ridiculous...” Karamov muttered beside Solomon, and, from the way that the two Martian guards were nervously shuffling and looking at each other, entirely unexpected on their part.
Who benefits from a war? Solomon remembered. The corporations. War was always good for business.
“I am not empowered to make those kinds of decisions, whomever I am speaking to, but you should be aware that none of that will be on the table…” Asquew was rising from her seat, her face visibly reddening with anger.
“Then you must be prepared to watch your two operatives die on interstellar broadcast!” the corporate officer crowed with what Solomon thought was glee.
“NeuroTech!” Solomon called out suddenly, remembering the name of the stenciled letters he had seen in the Erisian Asteroid Field, the same one that had been stenciled on the side of the packing container that had once held the murderous robot.
Which was also the creator of Serum 21, the genetically-engineered drug that the Confederate Marine Corps was giving to its outcast Marines.
They are behind this, Solomon thought.
“Shut him up!” the executive snapped.
“What was that? Commander Cready?” Asquew had paused, looking intently at the two agents.
“It’s NeuroTech!” Solomon called again, as the corporate executive lashed out at the camera centered on them, dashing it against the wall, where it shattered into sparks and a number of pieces.
“Tavin!” the guard was hissing behind Solomon. “What on earth do you think you are doing? This was only supposed to be about getting the Father Ultor and the imprimatur back to us! You and your antics have doomed us to a war!”
“There was always going to be a war, you idiot!” NeuroTech Executive ‘Tavin’ shouted back. “And now the Marine Corps knows that my company is behind it! They’ll seize our assets! They’ll freeze our Confederate accounts!”
“If you weren’t prepared for this, Tavin, then maybe you shouldn’t play with the dreams of nations…” the guard shouted, and there was the click of the safety catch from the man’s rifle.
“Don’t be an idiot, Morris!” Tavin barked. “Kill me and Mars won’t receive any more of the armaments you need. Mars will helpless against the Marine Corps…”
“We have the robots. The cyborgs…” ‘Morris’ the Martian stated, now leveling his rifle not at Solomon or Karamov but at Tavin.
“Do you?” Solomon watched as the corporate executive pulled himself up to his full height, even pulling his suit tighter as if making himself presentable for a board meeting. Tavin whistled, and there was a clanking noise from underneath them.
The cyborgs—the part-human, part-encounter-suit soldiers with the dead flesh and the unseeing eyes, marched into the room from underground bay doors.
How many are there? Solomon counted five, ten…twenty…
Then came a terrible metallic whining as one of the objects in the sunken hangar bays pushed itself upright, dominating even the small room. It was one of those experimental killer robots—vaguely table-shaped, but almost as large as a personal rocket ship. Lights flared along its surface, and weapon pods popped open, extending Gatling guns, missile racks, and even one particle weapon.
“They’re all NeuroTech property, you Martian scum. Do you think we would just hand over the control codes to you without having a backdoor?” Tavin sneered. “Now, you will let me go. Because I don’t see that you have any choice…”
There was a moment of silence from the Martian guards, before Morris shouted ‘gah!’ and lowered his rifle.
“Get out. Never step foot on Mars ever again, you snake,” the Martian said.
All the while, Solomon and Karamov were watching this interchange with only one thought: Could they use it to their advantage? To escape? It had been Tavin and NeuroTech who had called for their death, after all…but it was the First Martians whom they had attacked, even killed.
“Oh, don’t worry. I won’t have to, Morris,” Tavin paused at the stairs that ran down to the floor of the warehouse, where his own guard complement of cyborg warriors were awaiting him, as loyal and as patient as bloodhounds. “You see, NeuroTech is just the parent company in a conglomerate. Do you realize what is going to happen after the Marine Corps wipe you lot off of the face of the Red Planet? One of my companies, maybe several of my companies even – will be awarded the contracts to help rebuild, just as we did the first time around.” Tavin grinned evilly.
“I’m going to make a lot of money out of you Reds.” The NeuroTech executive turned and walked away, as the Martians fumed, and the ground started to shake.
KABA-THOOOOM!
The explosion was muted and distant, hitting the ears of the Martians, Outcasts, and the corporate alike at the same time and making them all pause, raising their heads to the distant windows. Did they see the light flicker out there in the Martian skies, just a fraction?
“The bombardment! It’s begun!” Morris was shouting. “Get the weapons! Get the people to the ventilation tunnels!”
Further below them, Tavin redoubled his pace as he, the cyborgs, and his robot broke into a run, leaving the warehouse in a rush.
“Don’t let him get away!” Solomon shouted desperately, not that the Martian
s were paying any attention to what he was saying.
“Captain? The Confederates?” the other guard said as Morris raced out to begin his defense of Armstrong.
Solomon saw the Chosen of Mars pause on the stairs, looking at them dispassionately.
Oh no.
“Kill them. Who cares about these two, now that we have a war on our hands?” the captain said, turning and leaving as the other guard released the safety on his rifle and lowered it towards Commander Solomon Cready…
14
One Advantage Left
KABA-THOOOOM!
Jezzy Wen was shaken awake, quite literally, as she shuddered and bounced on the rocking floor and dust filled the ventilation tunnel she was in.
What was that? She still felt groggy, but she no longer hurt. If anything, her entire body let like warm elastic.
The painkillers. She remembered Kol and his betrayal. Young Technical Specialist Kol, who had fought alongside them for the last year. Who would have known that he was a secret Martian sympathizer? Him and his uncle. Maybe he didn’t even know how deep his feelings for Martian independence went, until it seemed like the Marine Corps—the very people he’d had the misfortune of being pressganged into—were ordered to go to Mars and put down a rebellion.
Whatever. She shook her head, her vision doubling for a second before settling again.
“Breathe. Concentrate on the breath,” she told herself, trying to recall her Yakuza training. As she centered herself, the other part of her training, her Outcast Marine training, kicked in.
What dangers are there? The woman held herself still and listened. There appeared to be tremors racing through the ground from distant explosions. Had Marshal’s generator-buster gone off in the end? No. Impossible, because Kol himself had been the one to install it. So that meant it was something else.
The commander. It had to be, even though those sorts of explosions were so loud and sounded so far away that they sounded more like an aerial bombardment than anything that even Solomon Cready could come up with.
Aerial bombardment or…orbital.
“Oh frack.” Jezzy realized what was happening. The Marine Corps bombardment of Mars, and of Armstrong in particular, had begun.
“So…dangers happen to be—no squad, I’m on my own, I’ve been shot by some weird robot man, one of my crewmates is a traitor, and the planet is now a battle-zone,” she listed. It didn’t sound any better to her than before, to be honest.
What advantages do I have? The next part of the training kicked in.
“Uh…” For a moment, it was very hard to come up with any at all, but eventually, Jezzy managed to force her stubborn and cynical mind to take their situation seriously.
She was still alive. Just about. That counted as an advantage. Her service pistol was still over there, as was all of her normal equipment minus one painkilling tranquilizer pen. She was also Jezebel-fracking-Wen, she told herself—once one of the most dangerous women in Yakuza employ. Trained since she was sixteen or so, with over a decade of learning how to kill people and survive terrible situations.
Anything else? She pushed herself to her feet, feeling wobbly but thankful that the painkillers at least meant that she could ignore any bad effects from her gun wound. In fact, she could probably ignore ANY effects of physical exhaustion about now.
And there was one other thing, of course, she thought when she saw that the tunnel ahead of her had collapsed. The rubble formed a handy stair up to a hazy sky above her.
“Come in, Malady?” she activated the communicator that was still in her ear, before sliding her bubble-helmet in place and picking up her service pistol. “Malady, come in. This is Specialist Wen. I’m in Armstrong, Arceos District, and I could really do with some superior firepower right about now…”
Jezzy Wen had the advantage of having a Specialist Malady to call on.
15
A World at War
“You don’t have to do this…” Solomon said to the First Martian while it sounded like the whole world outside was going to hell. Explosions were erupting all over the place, it seemed, and sirens and klaxons were blaring outside. The lights started flickering, and yet still, the Martian was sighting down the gun at them, tied to their chairs.
“Look, buddy, shoot him first, will ya?” Solomon pleaded. “I never liked him anyway…”
“Hey!” Karamov said beside him.
“Huh?” The Martian guard took the bait, raising his eye from the gun for a fraction of a moment to chuckle at Solomon’s desperate treachery… And it was all that Solomon needed to move.
Solomon rocked forward as fast and as hard as he dared, feeling the rear legs of the chair rise behind him as his weight moved onto his feet, and he jumped, smashing into the guard’s legs with the back of his chair and rolling…
There was a splintering sound and pain shot up Solomon’s arms, but he found that he was sprawled on the floor, half of the chair dismantled behind him and with the ropes much looser on his left wrist.
But where was the guard that had been about to shoot them both?
He had dropped the rifle and was even now pushing himself up groggily from where he had been smacked by Solomon’s charge to the floor. The Specialist Commander of the Outcasts’ Gold Squad wasted no time. His legs were free, so he kicked the man back down again, giving him time to pull an arm free—
“Hyagh!” The guard was also reaching for the rifle, but Solomon didn’t. Instead, he reached for the man’s knife at his own belt as he threw himself forward, killing the guard with one savage blow.
“Urgh…” Solomon rolled over onto the floor in disgust and exhaustion. There were screams and shouts from below as the sky appeared to erupt into flame. No one had noticed their desperate scuffle. Not yet, anyway.
“Hey, Commander, do me a solid and get me out of here, huh?” Karamov was hissing worriedly, still sitting precisely where he was before. “Unless, that is, you really meant what you said about never liking me…”
“Shut up, you fool.” Solomon smirked, cutting the polycord and grabbing the guard’s rifle as he and Karamov crept to the edge of the balcony to look down.
The first Martians were all abandoning their posts. Most had thrown red cloaks over their shoulders and on top of their armor and were hurriedly racing outside. Distantly, underneath the roars of explosions, Solomon could hear the whine of heavy machinery and engines starting, as he imagined the Chosen of Mars jumping onto their hover-bikes and racing to try and defend Mars.
But defend Mars how? Solomon thought. There were two Marine Corps dreadnaughts up there, and all they had to do was to nuke Armstrong Habitat and that would be it…
“But maybe even the Marine Corps can’t be seen to kill an entire civilian city…” Solomon thought out loud, before nodding to Karamov. “Come on.” Most of the First Martians had left the warehouse now, and they appeared to have other things on their minds anyway, as Solomon and Karamov crept down the steps to the doors and look out at the embattled dome…and to look up.
PHOOOSH! Most of Armstrong’s membrane was made of a thick, translucent material, crisscrossed with triangular rods to hold it in place, and it was through this that Solomon could see the effects of the Marine Corps bombardment. Only it wasn’t an orbital bombardment as he had feared.
He saw up there that the sky was awash with five-party flights of the two-winged, wedge-shaped Marine Corps fighters, screaming across the sky and not firing on Armstrong.
Instead, Solomon watched as small, dark parcels like malicious presents were dropped from the underside of the vessels to impact outside the habitat and explode in great gouts of red and black earth.
“They’re showing off their power. Even Asquew doesn’t want to kill a few hundred thousand people in one go…” Solomon said, feeling an odd moment of pride at that.
Only they weren’t alone in the skies, apparently…
PHOOSH! PHOOSH! The Martians had their own fighter-planes. Although ‘planes’ is a bit
of a stretch, Solomon thought. They looked little better than tubes with star-like radials extending from their trunks, each of which had positional booster rockets. In the low Martian gravity, these rockets spun and careened through the sky like fireworks, looking completely out of control yet apparently totally remaining so.
The Martian tube-fighters were insane, faster and more maneuverable than the Marine Corps fighters, but they didn’t pack as much of a punch, Solomon could see. They had only rotating mini-cannons at the front, powerful enough to punch holes through the wings of the Marine Corps fighters, but a direct hit to a Marine Corps hull would only bounce off.
“They’ll never win…” Solomon was thinking.
“You wanna bet?” Karamov was nodding towards where a deeper, juddering sound announced the second wave of the Martian defense.
A Martian saucer—which had always looked like a doughnut to Solomon’s eyes with its wide, banded middle—was appearing over the other side of the Armstrong crater. They were about the size of eight or nine of the Martian attack fighters in one, and they were monumentally, insanely tough, or so Solomon had always heard. He saw plumes of rocket exhaust from its middle as it launched more of the haphazard rocket-ship fighters, and then engaged the enemy with its own missiles.
Meanwhile, Solomon saw white and gray streaks racing up into the skies from the far edge of the Tharsis crater wall around Armstrong, and he realized that the Martians must have some kind of missile defense system out there—or perhaps even ground-based rocket positions. As he watched, he saw two Marine fighters get hit, exploding and spiraling across the sky trailing black smoke.
“You got your encounter helmet?” Solomon asked quickly, knowing that he had lost his at some point during the last night.
Outcast Marines series Boxed Set 2 Page 12
