Jezzy was stunned by this response from the woman. Could she not see the predicament they were in? Half of Jezzy’s own squad was still trapped down there. They had been attacked by experienced fighters of an unknown origin, and there were goodness knows how many dead convict miners already!
And she wants to worry about politics!? Jezzy shook her head. “To be blatantly honest with you, lady, I don’t care. If those people up there can save my friends, then…”
“Don’t. I order you not to, Adjunct-Marine Jezebel Wen.” The ambassador’s voice was low and stark. “I understand that this is a terrible moment for you, but this is not just about you or me. It is about the fate of humanity. Of Earth! We need to think what will happen if the colonies break away from Earth. If there is a war. Who could say who would win? What would they stop at?” The ambassador had started defiantly angry, but ended on a frustrated, pleading note.
It was almost enough to convince Jezebel, but Jezzy shrugged. She had always had too many problems much closer to home to worry about the fate of entire planets. The combat specialist opened her mouth to tell the ambassador where to frack off to, knowing full well that she was probably about to sign her own dismissal and exile notice from the Outcast Marines—
When the decision was taken from her as another vessel crashed through the atmosphere to a deafening roar, the force and fury of its thruster rockets creating billowing jets of stream and making the tube they sat in shake.
Another craft was breaching the Titan clouds, a little ways away from the imprimatur’s Martian saucer. Both Jezzy and the ambassador looked up to see the glowing points of light at each corner of the craft resolve into thrusters, with the wide, blocky metal belly slung between them. It was larger than the Martian saucer, but only by a little bit. It was also not a dedicated combat craft.
It was the Marine transporter.
ATTENTION, MARTIAN VESSEL!
The transporter boomed its message out across the Titan landscape.
YOU ARE AN ILLEGAL VESSEL IN A RESTRICTED-ACCESS FACILITY! LEAVE IMMEDIATELY OR WE WILL BE FORCED TO FIRE UPON YOU!
“Oh frack,” Jezzy muttered under her breath. “I thought you said the point of all of this was not to start an interstellar war?” she said to the ambassador, looking over to see that the woman’s face behind her helmet-visor was tight and pale with concentration.
But what nobody on the surface or floating above it had accounted for was the effect that the arrival of two atmosphere-ripping craft had on the fragile, complicated plates of rock and ice of the Titan surface. In particular, the complicated plates that had already been burrowed into by thirty years of Titan convicts and had recently suffered a catastrophic air-pressure explosion.
With a rumbling sound, the ice mining factory tipped sideways, its railings and balconies and satellite dishes looking absurd for a moment as they pointed down into the pit. One of the building’s massive steel legs started to creak and twist, wresting itself from the concrete plug that had been frozen, cracked, and weathered for years.
“No… You idiots…” Jezzy breathed. The building had been about to go down anyway. All it had taken was a few sonic booms of approaching craft and—
The ice mine broke into two sections. There was a painful shriek of metal agony as the steel stanchion sheared from its concrete seat, and the building thumped down onto the edge of the pit, sending up gouts of dirt.
Thick porthole windows—each one designed with almost a foot of solid glass—cracked and burst from their sockets. Flashes of sparking, exploding electricity terminals flickered along the building’s body and inside of it. Jezzy watched in stunned horror as the large, blocky building slowly crumpled and tipped forward, sliding down to the inner ledge of the pit and pausing briefly…
Before falling over the edge.
Absurdly, the last remaining object was the drill tower, its controls and access bridges sheared from its surface as its parent building disappeared into the deep ice pit. Naturally, Jezzy’s eyes swam up to watch as it wobbled in place, the cylindrical sections around the drill grooves spinning lazily on their own.
And then it too crashed downwards, joining its squat parent as they both shook the ground underfoot and sent up great clouds of black dirt and dust into the atmosphere.
It was over. Solomon, Karamov, Kol, and the Proxima delegates and any remaining mine workers down there were dead.
“No,” Jezzy whispered at the rising clouds of devastation.
The groaning sound was getting louder, and it brought with it a shaking vibration that Solomon and the others could feel through their very bones.
“What is that!?” the scarred convict said as Solomon felt a trickle of icy fear run down his spine.
“I think that is the sound of the factory falling on our heads…” he said, frozen for a moment before the fear alchemically transformed into action. “Come on! Move it! Move it or die!”
So far, they had barely managed to make an aperture that Kol could fit through—he was still the thinnest amongst their number, despite the bulky outline of his light tactical suit. As the ground started to shake, the convict with the ice cutter set to work with renewed vigor—not working on the same hole she had melted already, but instead igniting the plasma at the end of the lance to start a new hole, a little below and off to one side.
The wait was excruciating, and it was made worse by the shaking that Solomon could feel coming up from the floor and through his legs. He watched as the woman made just one incision, a fraction of the depth of the larger hole, and then moved to the left a few feet and started again.
Hsssss! Steam billowed out into the cramped room, making a fine layer of condensation that stuck to their visors and helmets.
Thock-thud. Even through the medium of their suits, their amplifiers and microphones could pick up the dull roar as the internal rock and ice bones of the mine started to collapse, tumble, and crumble.
How far down are we? How far in the mantle are we? Will it hold? All these thoughts were swimming around Solomon’s mind like panicked goldfish as the woman set to the wall again, and again. Much smaller perforations. Not enough to climb through, at all.
“No time to widen the hole. We’re going to fracture it…” she said, pulling back and wobbling on her feet as the room suddenly shifted, the floor now dropping twenty degrees.
One of the Proxima delegates yelped, sliding to the edge of the room where a crack had appeared between wall and floor. Kol was the closest, his hand snapping out to grab her shoulder before she could trip and fall in.
“Hgh!” The convict woman was now using the ice cutter lance as a battering ram, knocking at the wall with its perforated series of holes around the opening.
“Grab what you can, everyone!” Solomon seized one of the tumbled rocks and, even though his side felt tight with a red weight, he hit the solid ice wall with the rock and heard the silvered chink as something fractured.
Crack! Thunk! As soon as his blow had finished, Karamov was hurling himself bodily past him, using the large metal shoulder-pad of his suit and his own body as a human battering ram. “Ach!” He thumped into the wall and slid down, but the crack widened, branching out to join the next burnt perforation and up across the block.
Thock-thock! The Proximians and the convicts battered at the wall with rocks, fists, any tool that they could find on their bodies, before there was a resounding crack like a bone breaking—
Schliiiikt! Blocks of ice were falling back into the room, across their feet as the hole in the ice plug spread, breaking along the perforated holes that the ice cutter had made until it was wide enough for someone to jump through.
“Convicts first,” Solomon ordered, already grabbing the woman, as disagreeable as she was, and nearly shoving her into the hole.
“Hey!”
“The delegates!” Karamov hissed, his amplified voice sounding funny as their bodies shook and the room tipped once more.
“The miners are innocent in this,” Solo
mon said grimly, forcing himself to take the time to help the old man through the hole after the woman. “Just run. Climb as fast as you can. Don’t wait or look back!” he called after them, before grabbing the first Proximian delegate as Kol got on the other side of him, and together they started nearly throwing themselves through.
THUDUDUDUDAO! The sound was deafening, even with the automatic cutouts on the Marine suit speakers. With a crash, a plume of smoke suddenly erupted into their antechamber from the trapped room on the other side. Had it collapsed?
CRACK! Another explosion of dust as the roof of their room suddenly dropped by about a foot.
“Commander—” Karamov was gesturing towards their escape route.
“You know the rules, Marine.” As much as everything inside of him was screaming to get running, Solomon knew that he couldn’t. “Captain goes down with the ship last…”
“Balls to that, sir. You’re a commander anyway, not a fracking captain…” Kol said, pushing him towards the hole.
“Hey! That’s an order!” Solomon managed to say, but Karamov joined him and together, they forced the resisting commander through the ice plug as the room shifted around them.
“Give me your hand!” Solomon said as soon as he felt the other side. It was indeed another shaft with a set of metal steps bolted into the wall, similar to the one that they had climbed down before. He grabbed Kol’s wrist, pulling him through, and then reached in for Karamov, just as an explosion of dust and smoke filled the room.
“Ach!” Karamov was yelling.
Solomon had grabbed onto a part of him, but in the murk, he couldn’t see what it was. He pulled as the roaring sound increased—
—for a very scared adjunct-Marine to land on top of him, sending daggers of pain up through his side as the roaring stopped.
“You okay?” Sol hissed painfully, one elbow held tight above his hip.
“I think all my limbs are in the right place, but are you okay?” Karamov whispered. The roaring sound had stopped, and when Solomon looked back through the aperture that they had all successfully managed to climb through, it was dark on the other side. The room had completely collapsed.
“I’ll be better when we’re out of this dump,” Sol said through gritted teeth. “Come on…”
Their other companions had already disappeared up the stairs, and Solomon could hear the frantic clank of their boots on the metal and see the awkward, thin hazes of their suit lights already above.
The collapse doesn’t seem to have spread to this part of the mine, Solomon saw, his mind starting to kick into a near-delirious overtime. It was probably the pain that he wasn’t allowing himself to feel—either that or it was the first sign of system shock as his brain stem started to overload.
This shaft was tunneled out of solid rock, not ice and rock particles like a lot of Titan’s mantle. Which meant it was less prone to fracturing. He hoped.
Solomon started to climb, forcing his resisting body to move as the other adjunct-Marines followed him.
MARTIAN VESSEL! YOU ARE REQUIRED TO LEAVE TITAN AIR-SPACE IMMEDIATELY UNDER ORDER OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT OF EARTH!
The Marine transporter’s words boomed across the broken surface of Titan as Jezzy looked at the broken ruin of the ice mine. The shooting had stopped, but Jezzy couldn’t bring herself to care about the danger as she stepped from the pipe and started to walk in a disorientated haze towards the edge of the pit.
“Marine! What are you doing?” The ambassador had emerged from her safety inside the outflow pipe behind her, sounding angry and anxious at what was happening.
As well she should, Jezebel Wen thought. There was about to be a war, and what was worse… “They’re all dead,” she said under her breath, her suit transmitting the words—not that anyone could hear her or was paying attention to what the combat specialist was saying.
No one, that was, apart from Malady.
“Dead? Have we got visual confirmation of their bodies?” the man-golem said in his characteristic unemotional drawl.
“Well, unless you want to go down and start sifting through a few thousand tons of rubble, Mal…” Jezzy said. I’m in shock. That is what this is, she thought as she stood on the broken edge of the mine and looked down to see that the ice pit, with its terraced layers of rock and ice, was now half-filled with boulders, concrete, and twisted metal.
There was no way that anything could survive down there.
“They could still be trapped…” Malady stated, and Jezzy was surprised at the optimism in the golem’s voice. She didn’t think that he was capable of human emotions anymore.
“Right,” she said cynically.
“The last shooter is neutralized. I’m returning.” Malady said, although Jezzy wasn’t listening. What did it matter now? She was probably going to get busted out of the Outcasts anyway, thanks to this. Which meant, perversely, that she would end up here. Maybe she should just check herself into the prison facility right now.
And Solomon and the others are dead. Jezzy didn’t care about her mission to protect the ambassador. It seemed futile, especially now that the Martians and the Marines were about to go to war with each other over their heads anyway…
“Open a channel!” Jezzy heard someone shouting behind her, and she dimly recognized the voice as the imprimatur. “You! Specialist Wen! Open a channel to your superiors!” the imprimatur shouted.
“Why?” Jezzy turned to see that the imprimatur was taking large, bounding steps towards her. Behind her, Father Ultor and his guards were looking up nervously at the confrontation in the sky.
The Marine transporter will win, of course, Jezzy thought dispassionately. Her emotions seemed numb to her. But it would be a tough fight. Martian saucers were supposed to be fast, very fast, but there had never been a direct confrontation between Martian ships and the Marines, and the transporter wasn’t a full battleship, was it?
“Get a channel open to those lugheads up there and tell them that we have a duty to repatriate our citizens!” the imprimatur was demanding.
Jezzy just looked at the older woman, a slight frown on her face. She wants me to do what now? “I think you’ve forgotten which side I’m on, ma’am,” she said in a careful whisper.
“Imprimatur, stand your forces down. This is ridiculous,” the ambassador was shouting through her own suit speakers.
“We had an agreement, Ambassador! Repatriate the First Martians, in return for an end to hostilities!” The imprimatur turned on the other woman. It was like watching two titanic forces fighting, Jezzy thought a little distantly. Both were strong women, and neither of them were going to back down.
“How can you talk about repatriation at a time like this? We’ve been under attack ever since we got here, and we have no idea who by. For all we know, it could have been Martian backed—” the ambassador was saying.
“Idiot,” the imprimatur snapped the word as if she had cut it from ice. “More Martian citizens have died today than any Confederate… Do you really think I would endanger my own people so recklessly?”
“Some would say that illegally funding terrorist actions against Confederate supply camps and transports is pretty reckless…” the ambassador countered.
“Then give us a fair share of our own resources!” The imprimatur was nearly at the screeching-phase of the argument, and Jezzy could recognize in both woman’s body language—even through the bulky medium of their encounter suits—that they were barely managing to contain their rage with each other. Thank the heavens neither of them has a gun, Jezzy thought.
But she did.
Click. She unslung and pulled the stubby, cruel form of her Jackhammer and casually, just as if she were about to clean it, examined it for malfunctions, before leveling it at the Imprimatur of Mars.
“Valance? Please tell your people to get the hell out of here,” Jezzy said calmly.
The combat specialist was surprised at how calm she actually felt right then. It was like she was in the very eye
of a storm. As the turmoil of losing friends and imminent war broke around her, she was the only one on stable ground.
“Lower your weapon, Confederate!” screamed a voice, and Jezzy heard the clicks as the five Martian heavies around Father Ultor had seen what was happening and been ordered by Father Ultor to level their weapons at her. “We’ll fill you full of Titan atmosphere before you pull that trigger!” Ultor snarled.
“I doubt that,” Jezzy said casually.
“Specialist Wen? This might not be the best time…” the ambassador was saying, holding her hands up towards the Martian guards.
“Shut up,” Wen said to the Ambassador in a matter-of-fact way. She could hear the hiss of startled aggression from the woman’s suit.
“Someone should have done this a long time ago,” Wen continued, looking back at the imprimatur. “You see here, lady. I don’t give a frack about your politics, or your planet. I just saw my friends die, thanks to who knows what. But I’ve had enough. We can have a shoot-out if you want, and I will probably die, as will the ambassador here, but so will you. So will your ‘First Martians’ or whatever it is you want to call yourselves.”
“Now. If you really want to do your people a favor, then you tell your saucer up there to back off, and then no one else has to die, capiche?”
“Specialist Wen, this is not wise…” the ambassador said.
“I thought I told you to shut up?” Jezzy didn’t take her eyes off the imprimatur as she snapped at Ochrie.
Not a sound came from the ambassador’s suit.
The moment stretched long between them.
ILLEGAL MARTIAN VESSEL! COMPLY IMMEDIATELY OR FACE THE CONSEQUENCES!
“Fine.” The imprimatur sighed, the shoulders of her suit slouching suddenly as she waved a hand at Father Ultor. “Weapons down, everyone,” she said before Jezzy saw her put a hand to where her helmet’s ‘ear’ was, clearly fiddling with the transmitter settings on her own suit.
Outcast Marines series Boxed Set Page 37
