Just like the Outcasts’ suits, Jezzy thought. The Martian encounter suits probably had their own narrow-band channel designed to be picked up by their own people.
“This is Imprimatur Valance. This channel number should verify my identity…” everyone heard her say. “Stand down, stand down. Code: Red Gold.”
For a moment, nothing happened, and then there was the hiss and roar of rockets as the saucer started to slowly spin on its central hub, turning and rising into the yellow smog of Titan’s atmosphere. The clouds rolled and billowed behind her, and then it was gone, save for the diminishing noise of its thrusters.
“There. That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Jezzy said lightly.
Above her, there was another sound of hissing as bulkhead doors popped open in the Marine transporter above and figures burst from hatches, tethered to the boat above with poly-filament lines. The transporter didn’t have a full complement of Marines, probably not even a full squad, but the engineers, staff, and pilots had all had their basic training as a part of the Corps. And now those that the ship could spare had donned their own light tactical suits, their arms full with their own Jackhammer rifles, and were coming to pacify the situation.
ATTENTION, CITIZENS! THIS SITE IS UNDER THE SPECIAL JURISDICTION OF THE MARINE CORPS, CONFEDERATE CODE 301! ALL WEAPONS TO BE PLACED ON THE GROUND! ALL MARTIAN PERSONNEL TO BE TAKEN INTO CUSTODY!
Jezzy waited for the Martian heavies to place their own weapons on the ground before she did the same and stepped back. Although she shouldn’t technically be in trouble, as she was only doing her job, she also knew that she would be.
“There will be ramifications for this!” the imprimatur spat at both the ambassador and Jezzy.
Ambassador Ochrie, however, just shook her visor helmet at the woman, clearly reserving her scorn for Jezzy. “The imprimatur is right, Specialist Wen. What have you done? This was supposed to be a peace negotiation, not a war.”
Jezzy thought about the collapsed mine behind her, hiding the bodies of her fellows. “Too late for that, ma’am.”
Am I going to make it? Solomon was having serious doubts as he climbed up the metal stairs. The pain was starting to come back, and his entire left side felt like it was on fire. Had the bullet shifted position when Karamov tumbled on him? Was all this stair-climbing just forcing it deeper into his body?
“You okay up there, Commander? You look a bit wobbly on your pins there…” Karamov said over their suit channel.
“I’m fine. Fine…” Solomon said as he leaned against the rock wall once more, panting. He really wasn’t fine at all.
How much fracking further? He looked up to see that there was light up ahead.
And silence.
Hang on a minute. Where were the others? he thought as he paused. Maybe they had already found a way out and were—
THA-BANG! The gunshot was amplified by the tunnel that he was climbing up, splintering into a hundred echoes. And it came from above.
“No,” Solomon hissed in dismay as he heard Karamov and Kol’s frantic questions. Who was firing? What at? What side were they on? Who had been hit?
The fear lent a newfound energy to Solomon’s body as he vaulted up the steps, taking advantage of Titan’s lower gravity to move faster and quicker than he would reasonably dare to in such icy and treacherous conditions. He could hear startled voices above him, sobbing as he saw that the stairs climbed up into a small antechamber cave just above him with a light-filled archway leading out.
“What did you do? Why did you do that? Who are you?!” It was one of the Proxima delegates, nearly hysterical.
“He’s dead… They’ve killed him… He’s dead,” one of the other delegates was saying.
Solomon remembered at the last moment that he had no weapons. They had been stolen from him and his crew by their own mysterious attacker. Solomon had thought that it might have been an irate prisoner at first, but now all of the pieces started to fall together into the jigsaw.
No prisoner did this, Solomon knew as he moved. No time for careful and brilliant plans. Whoever the attacker was would have already heard his clanking boots on the stairs. He would probably already have leveled his gun at the archway, maybe.
This was a tactical hit, Solomon thought. Someone—either the Martians or some rogue element of the Proxima delegates or the Belters—had decided to go ahead and start a war on their own, and this was where it began…
Solomon didn’t have a plan. He was too mad with pain to develop one. He knew that he would probably get shot as he mounted the final stair and lunged towards the archway, but what was he to do? Hide down there as the attacker killed everyone in the room and just fire down the mineshaft until he killed Sol’s men as well?
No, I’m as good as dead anyway, with this bullet in my side, Solomon thought in a flash. At least he could provide a distraction, a diversion for Karamov and Kol to seize the initiative—
“Hyurk!”
PHP-BANG!
But Solomon wasn’t the only one to think about distractions and diversions. As he leapt through the archway into a small cave that was open to the yellow Titan atmosphere at one side, half-filled with crates, someone else clearly had the same idea.
The Proxima delegation was clustered around the body of one of the convicts—the old man, Malcom Jeckers—and standing over them was a man dressed in a shabby encounter suit similar in style to the prisoners’ suits but with extra arm and leg greaves. They wore a superior visor-helmet too, not the bubble-helmet of the prisoners.
And in their hands was a military-issue Jackhammer, which could even have been one of the guns that had been stolen from Gold Squad themselves…
The attacker raised the Jackhammer at the leaping form of Solomon as he cleared the threshold.
And the only other person in the room, the woman prisoner with the scarred face, swung her ice cutter at the shooter, igniting the plasma torch at the end as she did so.
“I worked with him!” she screamed in fury as there was a sudden hiss and a scream as the white-hot plasma torch met the attacker’s suit, and he fired.
“Ooof!” Solomon grunted in pain as he bowled into the shooter, narrowly avoiding the ice cutter himself as both people tumbled to the entrance of the cave, limbs flying everywhere.
Hssssss! From somewhere, there was the whine of escaping gases. It must be the shooter’s suit. The ice cutter must have burnt a hole, Solomon was thinking. How long did they have before they lost all their internal suit pressure? Would it be quick enough?
“It’s over!” Solomon grunted as he scored a punch on the tumbled, struggling figure, his own side starting to radiate agony like it was an atomic core.
“Grargh!” Another shout and the shooter’s boots were kicking Solomon across the head, then in the side—
“Ach!” The pain was excruciating as the shooter’s boot hit the sealed spot in his suit over the concealed bullet. Even with the cocktail of drugs that the Commander had taken, both the ones that Karamov had given him and the experimental ones he had been subject to as a part of the Outcasts, it was still too much for him to bear and he doubled over, coughing.
“He’s getting away!” one of the Proxima delegates was shouting, and Solomon forced himself up into a crouch to, yes, see that their attacker was bounding out of the cave and into the yellow air of Titan, running awkwardly as a jet of white steam, laden with his precious oxygen, was bursting from his chest.
He won’t get far, Solomon thought, but then in the next moment, he remembered his own suit, which Kol had managed to seal. This operative could easily perform something like that.
The Specialist Commander of Gold Squad seized the man’s dropped Jackhammer and sighted along the barrel. Every movement with his arms was a torment, but he knew that he had one shot.
The racing figure was starting to become blurry and indistinct as they merged into the fogs.
Solomon fired.
“Ach!” A small, muffled sound, and the shadow thum
ped to the ground. It really was over.
13
The Day We’ve Had
“They killed Malcom Jeckers, the architect for Proxima independence,” Jezzy said in a subdued voice.
“You look worse than me,” Solomon attempted to joke, but the effort pulled strangely on his ribs and he ended up wincing in pain instead. He was currently lying on a medical bed in the Marine transporter’s medical bay, a room filled with brilliant white light and bleeping machines.
It had been Malady who had found them, as their suit telemetries popped up onto the grid as soon as they had emerged from Titan’s subsurface. Then had come the shouting and being surrounded by Marine guards as they tried to identify the shooters from the traitors and the prisoners.
Solomon remembered being loaded up onto a stretcher, attached to poly-wires and hoisted into the air into the belly of the Marine transporter, where everything had gone dark.
“Two hours of surgery, Commander,” Karamov said, sitting on the low bench opposite him. Neither him nor Jezzy—or Solomon, for that matter—were wearing their busted, scarred encounter suits anymore and had instead reverted to their spare undermesh suits, which were the only things about them that looked intact, their faces blotchy and pinched with worry and stress.
“Did they find it?” Solomon wheezed.
“Yeah. Found and removed the bullet, cauterized the damaged veins. You were about a couple inches away from an artery, so you’re a lucky man, Commander,” Karamov said, toying with something in his hands, which he then threw to land with a soft thud on the commander’s white-sheeted bed.
It was a small bullet, about the size of Solomon’s little nail.
“This is the little beast, is it?” The commander painfully reached to pick up the small bronze bullet, lightly striated where it had ripped through his suit. I’ll keep it as a reminder. He clenched his fist around it. Be more careful. Be sharper.
No one had killed him yet, and this bullet was going to be a reminder. A reminder that Karamov and Kol saved my life, he thought. He had been intent on trying to escape from his life on Ganymede, from its psychopathic Warden Coates and the constant fear of reprisals from Arlo Menier, but now, feeling the ugly little weight of that fragment in his fist, he realized that it wasn’t just about him.
I never wanted to rely on anybody, but they saved my life in the end anyway, he thought. It made him feel humble, and proud at the same time. And defiant.
Arlo isn’t going to be the one to put me down, Solomon promised himself. And the warden isn’t going to do it either. If this murderous little bullet couldn’t kill him, he wasn’t going to let anyone else do it either.
“We’d better let you sleep, Commander. It’s going to be a short jump back to Jupiter, but I bet we’re all going to have a debrief with the warden when we get back.” Karamov was standing up, running a hand through his dark brown hair. “And I could really use a nap after the day we’ve had.”
“Karamov,” Solomon called the retiring man as he was about to leave. “I don’t know how much power I’ve got in all this, but, if I can…I’m going to put you forward for a specialism. Medical. You saved my life out there today. You are good at the medical stuff.”
Karamov shrugged. “My father was a doctor. You pick things up along the way.” He threw a half-assed salute and a wry smile, his way of taking his leave as he walked through the automatic doors, leaving Jezzy and the commander behind.
Now, I guess I should figure out what has been eating up my combat specialist for this entire mission… Solomon thought. Even though he was tired, he felt confident. Like he had been given another chance. Like he had been made anew.
“Jezzy, you did really good out there today. You kept it together. You kept the ambassador safe,” he pointed out to the woman, who appeared to be staring into space.
“Huh?” When she turned to look at him, the glassy look in her eyes told Solomon that she wasn’t really looking at him.
“Jezzy, what’s up? You’ve been out of sorts ever since we left Ganymede,” Solomon said. “We survived. Everyone survived. You saved the ambassador.”
The woman just looked at Solomon for a second, before shrugging. “The ambassador is going to file a complaint about me. I’ll be court-martialed and dismissed from the Outcasts, and probably end up here,” she said, before adding, “where I suppose that the only saving grace is that I won’t be doing any ice mining any time soon…”
“I think the ambassador’s got a whole lot of other trouble on her plate right now, to worry about one adjunct-Marine,” Solomon said, nodding at the small data-screen on the wall.
MAJOR TERRORIST INCIDENT AT TITAN PRISON CAMP…
The words scrolled over the newswires.
IMPRIMATUR VALANCE OF MARS HELD FOR QUESTIONING…
“It wasn’t the Martians.” Jezzy shook her head.
“No?” Solomon wasn’t so sure. “The last time we fought the separatists, they had the same Marine equipment as these ones did,” he pointed out.
“But why would they risk killing their own imprimatur? Or Father Ultor, the leader of the Chosen of Mars?” Jezzy said, although it didn’t really seem as though her heart was in it.
She’s probably worried about the possible disciplinary, Solomon thought. “Look, I’ll speak to Doctor Palinov. She almost likes me,” he said. In fact, she thinks I’m a useful lab rat, but there you go… “And I’ll even speak to the warden. I’ll make them keep you.”
“Huh. Good luck with that.” Wen stood up, pausing as she half-turned to the door. “For what it’s worth, Solomon, it was good to see you alive.”
“Where are you going?” Solomon asked.
A shadow passed over her features. “I, uh…” Her eyes went far away once more. “I’ve got a job to do,” she said, before walking out of the room.
What is up with her? Solomon was left looking at the closed door for a longer moment, before the news on the data-screen dragged his attention away. It was one of the general channels, widely distributed across the satellite networks and run by Confederate Earth.
RIOTS ERUPT ACROSS MARS, AS PEOPLE DEMAND THE RETURN OF IMPRIMATUR VALANCE AND FATHER ULTOR, SPOKESPERSON FOR THE ‘FIRST MARTIANS’…
THE SPACEPORTS AT OLYMPUS MONS AND HYSPERIA HAVE BEEN BLOCKADED. MARTIANS CLAIM THAT THEY WILL NOT RELEASE TRADE OR GOODS UNTIL ALL MARTIAN PRISONERS HAVE BEEN FREED ACROSS CONFEDERATE TERRITORIES….
WITH TENSIONS MOUNTING BETWEEN THE TWO SIDES, THE MARINE CORPS HAS BEEN CALLED IN TO ORBIT MARS…
The door hissed open as one of the transporter staffers walked in, pushing ahead a small cart with cleaning products stacked inside. He was a small man in a gray and silver suit, with a cap of the Marine Corps staffers.
“Evening, Specialist Commander Cready,” the man said brightly, before taking out the mop.
“Is it evening? I never know any more these days…” Solomon said. He guessed that it could be evening, in the sense that it could be a part of the shift where most of the trainees were supposed to be asleep. But in the void of space, when traveling under permanent artificial light, it seemed a little silly to have such distinctions.
“The job never ends, does it?” Solomon said with a weary smile, nodding at the cleaner’s mop.
“You are quite right, Mr. Cready. The job never ends.” The man calmly slid the metal mop through the handles of the door, wedging it shut.
“Now, this won’t take a moment.” The man turned back, and in his hand, he held a thin-bladed knife, looking ridiculously sharp. “Please don’t make this difficult, Mr. Cready. Boss Mihashi does hate complications, so…” the man said, stepping towards Cready’s bed…
I have to kill Solomon, was all that Jezzy could think throughout their entire conversation. Over and over, the words played out inside her head, repeating and repeating until she thought she was being driven mad.
She should have been happy that her commander had survived, as well as the others. But in some ways, that had only retu
rned the awful weight to her shoulders. It was a burden that she thought she had forgotten, in the heat of battle and the panic of protecting the ambassador on Titan. It had felt good, actually, to forget everything that she should have been worrying about—her father, Ganymede, Boss Mihashi.
One of the workers walked past her, pushing a cleaning cart, as Jezzy’s thoughts were wrapped up in themselves.
But now, I have to be the one to kill him if I am to save my father… The thought was unavoidable. But how could she? How could she kill the man who had placed his trust in her?
But by not doing so, that would only mean that her father would be killed.
Jezzy couldn’t choose between the two. It was no choice really, just two equally appalling events.
Ker-thunk. There was a distant thud and the sound of breaking glass, muffled and far away, that caught Jezzy’s attention. Given the sort of day that she’d recently had, she was inclined to ignore it, but then her mind suddenly caught up with itself.
The cleaner had been a small man, in a cap.
Just like her Yakuza handler.
The one who had been assigned to the ambassador’s Marine-logistics detail.
Oh frack. Jezzie turned, breaking into a run.
“I don’t owe him anything!” Solomon struggled with his assassin, hissing the words as he held onto the man’s wrists, both of them writhing on the floor and trying to get the upper hand on the killer’s knife.
The medical bay was in disarray, with tables broken and beakers smashed as Solomon had fought back with everything that he had. The Marine staffer had lost his cap, and instead had a bleeding graze on his forehead where Solomon had thrown some unidentifiable medical instrument at him. It hadn’t been enough to stop the Yakuza operative, however.
Outcast Marines series Boxed Set Page 38
