TZRK! There was a spray of sparks as her blade came down on the raised metal arm of the first cyborg to strike at the cyborg’s face. It wasn’t enough. In any normal encounter—say, with an actual stars-damned human, Jezzy thought—it would have been enough of a severe injury to make the wearer fall to the floor, howling in agony.
As it was, her opponent just swung his heavy metal fist around, heedless of the half of his face that was hanging off.
Jezzy tried to duck, but the weightlessness made it difficult. All she could do was swim, leap, and glide—
Thump! The blow hit her on the side of the helmet, spinning her in mid-air to the opposite wall of the corridor she was trying to fight her way through and bouncing her head off the inside of her own armor.
Warning! Suit Impact Detected: Helmet, Left Side
Armor Plating Efficiency: -40%
“Eurgh…” Jezzy’s vision swam as she started to bob and float in the air. It was hard to see anything but stars. Even the warning notifications of her own suit appeared to be doubling.
Move. Move! MOVE! A desperate and angry part of her demanded her attention, and she opened her eyes just in time to see the half-faced cyborg raising his weapon arm to fire once again, straight at her chest.
Power Boot Controls: Activate Magnets 60%
Jezzy’s fingers twitched and in response, the tiny data-pads sewn into her inner mesh gloves indicated to her suit what commands she wanted to deliver to it. Power was shunted through the magnets at the soles and balls of her boot, surging them into life and slamming the acting field commander to the floor.
FZZZT! The purple-white bolt of fire shot inches from her helmet to buckle and burn the metal wall behind her.
Move! Attack!
Jezzy was already heeding her own advice, lashing out with her blade to hit the cyborg’s knee joint. There was a clang and a hiss of escaping steam as she must have ruptured some sort of hydraulic system, and the cyborg twisted on its hips, falling to the floor in front of her.
Power Boot Controls: Activate Magnets 10%
Jezzy was already kicking off the floor as she readjusted the magnets in her boots with whisper-quick finger movements. The combined effort of her legs and the sudden lighter weight of her body helped her to somersault over the falling cyborg in front of her as it shot into the wall space she had occupied.
“Urgh!” She kicked out at the second cyborg that was waiting for her, and one more behind that.
Her kick sent the second cyborg careening back into the third, buying her a heartbeat of time.
“Ach!” Pain ripped up her leg.
Warning! Suit Impact Detected: Right Power Boot
Armor Plating Efficiency: -100% COMPROMISED
The cyborg with half a face, instead of firing up at her as she had thought it would do, had instead swung around to grab her wounded ankle that had earlier been hit by one of the particle beams.
At the time, she had been lucky that the laser shot hadn’t melted a hole straight through her suit, but her luck ran out this time.
Hsssss!
Environmental Warning! Suit Pressure Compromised!
Pressure Loss: 2%
Oxygen Loss: 8%
It wasn’t just the loss of oxygen and the asphyxiation that Jezzy Wen was terrified of, it was the sudden freezing cold that penetrated her foot and felt like someone was attacking her with icicles.
I’ll get frostbite in minutes.
I’ll starve of oxygen in minutes.
My foot will freeze and shatter.
These dark thoughts raced through Jezzy’s head in the time it took for her to lunge down with the blade still in her hand at the almost-prone cyborg.
It was a reaction, and an angry one at that. She couldn’t afford to take her eyes off the cyborgs behind her, but what choice did she have? It was a direct blow, under the cyborg’s chin and straight through the neck to its spine.
TZRK! The cyborg juddered and went still, his hand slowly releasing her ankle as—
“LIEUTENANT!” boomed a voice over her suit communicator, and Jezzy had the sense to leap to one side as she spun in the air.
It was Karamov, holding one of his arms awkwardly and cradling a Jackhammer against his hip in the other. He looked injured, but he had managed to fight his way out of the entrance hall to come and rescue her.
Only it looked as though he might be the one who needed rescuing.
PHOOM! He fired the Jackhammer straight into the second cyborg, who had picked itself up and was trying to get a line of fire on Jezzy. The shell, of course, didn’t kill it, but it did separate panels of metal and send the cyborg spinning as it fired.
FZZZZZZZT! The purple-white light scored the walls and ceiling as the cyborg went down, and Jezzy was already lunging, ‘catching’ the falling cyborg with the tip of her blade and severing its spinal cord as they both crashed to the floor of the corridor and bounced.
Which just left the third cyborg, already turning to backhand Karamov with great ease and send him slumping against the wall.
Outcast ID: Corporal Karamov (Medical Specialist)
Health: DECEASED.
“NO!” Jezzy screamed as the warning indicator on her suit helmet flashed orange and red, before fading again to just a grayed-out nametag.
No. How could it be? How? It felt like she had been kicked in the gut. And the head. And everywhere else, repeatedly.
“Karamov…” Jezzy let herself float, unable to even send commands to her arms and legs to move, to duck, to do anything. Her entire right leg now felt like a block of ice, but in that moment, Jezzy couldn’t even care.
She had joined the Outcasts alongside Karamov. They had fought together, trained together, slept in the same room, been on the same missions. He had been the one assigned to the original Gold Squad just by pure luck of the draw, like Kol had as well. Through the last year and a half of training and missions, Jezzy had come to regard him as a friend, and even more so after the treachery of Kol, when she realized that Karamov’s quiet and sometimes taciturn demeanor actually hid a reservoir of kindness.
Which was why he made an excellent medical specialist, Jezzy knew. Karamov might not have been the most reckless of the Outcasts, and he might not have been the largest, or the quickest, or the toughest…
But he had been like an anchor in their group. A group that had been fractured and broken and set upon by forces and enemies and situations that were unbelievably stronger than they were.
Or so Jezzy might have thought, if she had looked at the cyborg warriors or the killer robots or the exploding ice mines and everything else that they had come up against.
The crazy thing was, that through all of that and as people had died all around us, Jezzy thought, Karamov had remained. He had survived. He had earned the right to wear the power armor of a full Marine.
“What have I done?” Jezzy let herself lower to the floor as the cyborg who had killed her friend turned to raise its particle-firing weapon arm straight at the Acting First Lieutenant Wen.
“Do it. I deserve it,” Jezzy spat the words into her helmet miserably. She had failed Gold Squad. She had failed Solomon.
“No. You DON’T!” a voice boomed, and even though Jezzy could hear the burn of particles that were volatile enough to burn through plate metal, she didn’t feel any different.
Am I dead? Is this what dying feels like? Which was odd, because one side of her body still hurt like all hell as it froze from the break in her boot. She looked up—
—to see Corporal Malady, the Marine who had been bio-chemically sealed inside his own full tactical suit and looked like a giant, rounded, walking man-tank. He had arrived, standing over Karamov’s body, and with one great metal arm had seized the cyborg’s firing arm and wrenched it up to the ceiling.
FZZZZZZZZT! The corridor was starting to fill with smoke and steam from the burning weapon.
Environmental Warning! Toxic Smoke!
The parts of her suit that still worked star
ted to apply their air filtration units, as tiny fans woke up to drive the metal gases from the melting ceiling away from her and any chance of getting into her suit.
“What. Did. You. Do,” Malady was roaring in his almost-electronica modulated tones. Jezzy had never seen the big man angry, but now he was. His sleepy eyes were wide awake, still a myopic glassy-white but obviously glaring at the cyborg in front of him.
“To. My. Friend!” Malady held the cyborg’s firing arm up as it continued to burn the purple-white laser into the ceiling. He rammed his other giant metal fist into the cyborg’s head and, rather disgustingly, through it as well.
The line of laser light winked out in an instant, leaving just the ghostly, flickering shapes of Malady and the other bodies in the corridor, amidst the smoke of molten metal already congealing on Jezzy’s suit and the floor, the walls, anything it floated next to.
“Lieutenant Wen,” Malady intoned, as heavy and as serious as a dreadnaught. “Come quickly. The escape pod is waiting, and the Oregon hasn’t got long.”
“Karamov…” Jezzy was shaking her head as she rose, and gobbets of molten metal rained down around her from the ceiling. “His body. We’re taking it with us,” she said, seeing Malady nod and pick up the absurdly limp form of the Outcast Marine that Jezzy had called her friend and—
KERAAASH! The ceiling crumbled and fell in between them as the compromised inner bulkhead gave way and the floor above them suddenly depressurized…
20
Dead Men Walking
“Comman— Solomon?” the ambassador almost called him by his title, before blushing heavily. “What is it?” she hissed in alarm at Solomon’s sudden outburst.
“It’s nothing, uh…” Solomon was saying as the Helga general assistant sitting behind them—the one that had been so interested in talking to the imprimatur—turned his head at the lieutenant’s sudden outburst.
“You okay, buddy?” the man growled, eyes flickering between the imprimatur and him.
“Fine. All good,” Solomon was saying, leaning forward in his seat and wondering what they were going to do. What he was going to do.
We are on board a ship smuggling more of those cyborgs to Mars. Solomon knew that the very same companies who must have pressured Commander-in-Chief Hausman to accept the Martian iron shipment must also have used this trade as a smokescreen to supply very dangerous weapons to the Martian separatists.
But why? Does this mean that Hausman is on the same side as the First Martians? Solomon put his head in his hands and tried to think.
No. Hausman probably didn’t care at all about the Martians, whichever side of the independence debate they might be on.
But Hausman seemed to care about money, and he seemed to care about being the leader of humanity.
Either Taranis were going behind Hausman’s back to prolong the war—it’s good for business!—or Hausman himself knew that he was supplying very dangerous weapons to the Martians. And that meant that it was Hausman who was backing the war between the colonies and the Confederacy, because that meant that it kept his rival, General Asquew of the Rapid Response Fleet, plenty busy while Hausman secured his stranglehold over Earth.
Solomon looked across to Ambassador Ochrie, who was still regarding him with alarm, but he had no way of telling her what he had worked out here in public.
“Ah… Supervisor, sir?” Solomon raised a hand and leaned out to grab their data-screen-wielding supervisor at the far end of the line of seats.
“Yeah? What do you want?”
“Jump sickness, sir. Can I use the bathroom?” Solomon said, putting on his best sick and sickening voice, thinking that if at least he could get down there, maybe he would be able to see just what was in those crates. And if they were dormant cyborgs, he might be able to find some way of deactivating them…
Without any weapons? His own mind berated him.
Solomon gritted his teeth in frustration. How he wished that he had his power armor and the rest of his normal Outcast equipment with him right now. But he knew that he was a resourceful man, he would be able to find something down there in the hold to use as a weapon on dormant machine-things, surely.
If they stay dormant, that is… Solomon thought. On Proxa, they had mysteriously and suddenly been awakened to murderous action, without any apparent warning. Asquew was sure that it was the Ru’at directly, somehow coordinating the attacks of the cyborg mobs throughout Proxima with the Ru’at mothership as it appeared, just as suddenly and as mysteriously.
Which meant that they were all in danger, so long as those crates remained on board.
“Sir, I really gotta go…” Solomon said.
“I don’t believe it. Last time I short-hire from Luna 1 again!” the supervisor grumbled. “There’s sick-bags under your seat. Use them. We’re coming out of jump any minute, anyway…”
Grrrr! Solomon fought the urge to call their supervisor a name, but instead slumped back into his seat instead. He didn’t know how he was going to get down to Hold 3 now, or whether there was already a metal fist, punching out of the ruggedized plastic below—
WHAP!
Another wave of nausea and vertigo, and Solomon realized that they had arrived…somewhere. For a couple of seconds, him along with everyone else in the staff seats were blinking and trying to regain a sense of proportion. Their primate bodies were not used to bending time and space around them to hurtle through that dimensional ripple to the other side. It was a curious feature of jump sickness that it didn’t matter how far you went, or where you went. Even though there was no physical anomaly or radiation that could be detected on those traveling inside the fields, there was plenty of personal evidence every time you jumped that this was what you would get.
Psychosomatic, Solomon thought. That was what they said about jump sickness, and yet he was also looking at a room of groaning, moaning people as they undid their webbing belts and slowly started to stretch and crack their muscles and joints.
I have to move. Now. Solomon clicked open his webbing belt and was already standing up as Ochrie and Rhossily beside him made to join.
“There is something I have to do, and it could be dangerous, ma’am,” Solomon whispered to her under a pretense of adjusting his uniform.
“This whole trip has been dangerous, Lieutenant. Don’t forget what we saw happen to New York!” the ambassador whispered back.
How could I forget? Solomon rocked a little on his feet. He had seen a city burn. Or at least, a part of a city burn. Someone—Hausman, Solomon sneered inwardly— was willing to go to extreme lengths to get his way. He was willing to kill, and to kill in large numbers.
And after seeing New York burn, Solomon figured that the ambassador had a point. He nodded. “C’mon, we’re going.” The lieutenant, the ambassador, and the imprimatur turned and jogged for the nearest door back to the holds, as other assistants behind them were groaning and standing up, masking the noise of their running feet.
“What is this all about?” The ambassador was panting before they got to the end of the service corridor that led down to the three major holds of the Helga.
“Those crates down there. This whole shipment. It isn’t just about iron,” Solomon quickly explained as he skidded to a halt.
Ship-wide Announcement: Jump completed. All personnel to their stations and prepare for the transfer.
The ship’s speaker system blared with its automated voice, and Solomon growled his frustration. They were ahead of the others, but it would only be by a few minutes. How much damage could he cause in that time?
“What are you talking about, Lieutenant?” Ochrie pressed.
Solomon skidded to a halt at the door that led to the ladder down, his hand on the release lever. “This shipment. It’s the cyborgs. And it must mean that Taranis Industries is still manufacturing them. They’re going to send them to Mars, to fight Asquew, because Hausman is the one funding the colonial war.”
“But if those cyborgs get activated…” The
Imprimatur of Proxima paled. She had seen what hell they had caused to her entire city.
“Precisely. The Ru’at will take them over, I’m sure of it,” Solomon said, throwing open the door and jumping down the ladder to the gantry below to see—
—a whole load of burst-open crates, and a line of cyborgs standing in front of their empty plastic wombs, gleaming under the Helga’s ship lights and standing stock still, as if they had been there all the time…
“Ah, Lieutenant Cready, please do come down and join us,” a voice surprised the lieutenant, and it was coming from a man standing at the entrance to the Hold 2 as the containment doors hissed and slid into the floor.
The man was thin, and what some might call ascetic. He wore a formal midnight blue and black business suit, over a white shirt and black tie. Old-fashioned, but impeccable. At his side stood four more cyborgs, two on each side.
And the man was dead.
“Ambassador Ochrie, my pleasure.” The dead man nodded with a wide but thin-lipped smile. “And Imprimatur Rhossily, lately of Proxima! What a pleasure it is to see you all here. I do have to say that your timing is impeccable!”
“You’re…you’re dead.” Solomon couldn’t get over the fact that he had seen this man die, shot through the heart by one of his own creations.
The man in the blue suit looked puzzled for a moment, making an elaborate show of patting the breast panels of his suit and checking for injuries.
“No, I am very much alive, Lieutenant Cready. Surprised to see me?” asked Augustus Tavin—the CEO of NeuroTech…who had died on Proxima.
THANK YOU
Thank you so much for reading the Invasion Boxed Set, which includes books four through six in the Outcast Marines series. If you could leave a review for me, that would be awesome because it helps me tell others about my books.
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