Huh, Solomon thought. The man himself had been fairly stocky, with broad shoulders; he had filled out the suit well. “So, either we’re dealing with disaffected workers, or people who have stolen Mars Construction uniforms.” And who have access to military-grade equipment…
“Commander-sir!” His suit communicator came to life. It was Jezzie. Thank the stars, he found himself thinking instinctively. He had been worried that something might have happened to her.
“You secure? Malady?” he asked quickly.
“Well, it’s still a firefight out here, so I wouldn’t exactly say secure, but you should know that we’re at the crash site, and the X23 is a personal transport ship,” she said, her voice tense.
“So?”
“Malady says that it’s got Department ID numbers,” she reported, and Solomon guessed that she meant Department of Justice and Defense. “He says that it’s an ambassadorial transporter.”
“Oh, frack,” Solomon breathed. That would explain the sudden scramble to get them out here, and perhaps even why the Confederate Marines had sent in the Outcasts, an as-yet unknown, under-the-radar expeditionary group. If anything went wrong, they might be able to deny that it ever happened.
“So, where’s the ambassador?” Solomon asked.
“That’s the whole problem, Sol. The ship was shot down by something heavier than the personal rifles the enemy is using. Blew a hole through the fuselage and brought it down here. There’s no sign of any bodies in the wreckage, and the survival pod is gone.”
“Wonderful,” Cready growled. “The ambassador must have ejected at the last moment.” So they could still be out there, he thought. Or captured. “Okay, thanks. If there’s nothing else that you can do out there, come join us in the cave complex. We’re going to clear it and see if we can find this missing ambassador.”
“Sir? I think I saw something,” Karamov reported. The slightly taller and thinner non-specialist—Solomon was starting to be able to differentiate Karamov and Kol behind their light tactical suits—had moved to the end of the cave where another passageway opened up, heading upward into the cliff. It wasn’t dark, however, as numerous wind-sculpted holes had been bored through the cliff walls to light the passageway in a reddish Martian glow.
“Make it quick, Wen,” Solomon whispered, turning to hurry to Karamov’s side, crouching by the passageway. The distant sound of whumps and thumps could be heard from outside as the battle raged on, but Solomon could tell that they were becoming more sporadic. “What is it?” Solomon sighted down his Jackhammer into the ruddy passageway.
“I don’t know, I thought I saw a movement. A shadow cutting across one of those side passages.” Karamov indicated where a number of other openings ventured further into the cliffs.
What I wouldn’t give for some flash grenades, Solomon thought, knowing that he could just throw them down there and clear the area. Oh yeah, but I’m in a cave, he reminded himself. He’d probably end up bringing the whole thing down on himself. Okay, scratch that idea. We’ll just have to do this the old-fashioned way.
“Cover me.” He nodded at Karamov and Kol, who crouched on either side of the passageway, as he slipped forward at a low, hunched crab-walk.
From his left, shafts of reddish Martian sunlight cut across his shoulder and suit as he approached the darker openings on his right.
What’s the protocol? He could hear his heart thumping, the blood pounding in his ears. He couldn’t remember as he crouched by the first opening, wondering whether he should just jump around the corner with his rifle blazing or whether he should try to peek first.
A Marine would jump and shoot, he thought, but the other part of him—the criminal—knew that he would never willingly give his position away like that.
It is all a puzzle, he reminded himself. In fact, it was the sort of puzzle that he had played before, wasn’t it? There had been many times when he had to hide at the edge of corridors, waiting for security personnel to leave a room. What had he done back then?
Mirrors. Which was something that the Confederate Marines hadn’t thought to give them, of course, but that didn’t mean that Solomon didn’t have any reflective surfaces on him.
He angled his suit’s helmet just slightly, so that the shaft of ruddy Martian sunlight caught it, turning the outer edge of his face visor into a sort of reflective surface. He waited, breathing out, making small and minute movements with his head until he could get a picture of what was inside.
The opening went to a simple short passageway, inside of which was a larger cavern, and a low red LED light. They probably use red to match with the Martian light, he thought. He could see the sharper edges of more crates in there, stacked next to each other. They have some very wealthy friends, Solomon thought. If that was all military equipment, that was.
He thought he saw a movement in the gloom. A shape? Two shapes?
ALL UNITS! MISSION PARAMETERS UPDATE!
The words scrolled across the interior of his screen, obscuring the faint reflection.
Dammit! Not now! He could have cursed, easing back around the edge of the wall. Whomever was in there must know that they had entered their hideout, Solomon thought, thanks to Kol shooting that first attacker. They probably thought that they could just hide.
Mission ID: Hellas Chasma Successful!
All Mission Parameters Met.
Immediate Return to Hellas Plain for Pickup.
No… Solomon gritted his teeth. Whatever the Rapid Response mainframe must have been thinking, they couldn’t know that there were still some of the enemy combatants hiding out here. If they left now, then Solomon assumed that they would just rebuild and re-equip, especially with all of that hefty military equipment they had lying about.
“Commander?” It was Kol’s nervous voice in his ear. “What do you want us to do?”
“The job’s not over yet,” he whispered, hoping that his voice was only carrying inside of his suit, and not out of it.
“But the orders, sir,” Kol repeated.
“Technically, Commander,” this came from Malady, speaking over their shared squad channel, “our mission parameters were to locate the crashed X23 craft, which we did.”
Trust Malady to think in such functional ways, Solomon thought. He was part machine, and worse still, he had been a full Marine at one point, following his orders all the way down to his metal bones inside of his shell.
“But the ambassador is clearly missing,” he whispered back. “You said so yourself.”
“Not our concern, Commander.” Malady appeared to be arguing with him. “The Fleet might have already located her, or there might be another team marked with her retrieval. We have fulfilled our mission.”
“But…” Solomon could have growled back at him, if he wasn’t so intent on being quiet.
Which was just about when he heard a scrape from behind him, coming from the moody red-lit room.
“Did the order go out?” His suit audio amplifiers picked up the muttered voices.
“Yes. They’ll leave you alone. We have her. They shouldn’t be any more trouble,” answered another mumbling voice, but this second sounded strange to Solomon’s ears. Not quite human, modulated by electronics. Like Malady. Or it could have been a screen that the figure inside was talking to.
They have her. Solomon tried to decode the message behind their words. They had to be talking about the ambassador, right? Someone shot down her ship and then what? They kidnapped her?
And ‘the order’ had gone out, meaning that they would be left alone. But which order? From whom?
There was only one order that Solomon thought it could possibly be. The Marine mission parameters, he thought. Whoever these fighters were, they had access to Marine equipment, and it appeared that they also had an ear on the Fleet’s communications.
“Commander, we’d better go…” Kol said, a little nervously.
Solomon breathed shallowly, wondering what to do. The Fleet must not know that the fighters w
ere listening in on them. They must think that all the fighters are dead. And I’ve got no way of telling them, he thought, caught between doing his job and doing his duty.
If I disobeyed this command, then they’ll demote me just as soon as look at me, wouldn’t they? he thought. Or worse, ship me off to Titan…
“Calm yourself, Oortje,” the strangely electronic voice murmured again behind Solomon. “The war is inevitable now. Yes, we had to make a show of it. There had to be losses on both sides. That will give both the Confederacy and the separatists something to fight for. And the death of the ambassador will surely…” the rest descended into mumbling, so that even Solomon’s delicate helmet sensors couldn’t pick it up.
Separatists. That’s who these people we’re fighting are, he thought. That made sense. All the colonies had some form of independence, freedom-fighter, breakaway group, but Mars was always the most vocal and the most prolific. Solomon wondered if it was Mars’s warlike reputation that made its colonials so bloodthirsty.
“Hmkhr!” Suddenly a different sound came from behind Solomon in the room. A woman’s voice, muffled and strangled, as though she were either ill or bound or in pain.
The ambassador! It had to be her! Solomon was already half-rising from his crouch.
“Commander!” It was Karamov over his suit communicator. “I’m not getting shipped to Titan for this!” he said tersely.
Maybe Malady is right, Solomon thought. Maybe he should just accept the fact that he was a part of a larger mission, a larger force even, that he had to trust that the Marines knew that the ambassador was in there, and that they had a plan.
Trust? The thought stuck in his gullet. How could he trust the Confederate Marines? He had been forced into his life, hadn’t he?
No, I chose it, he argued with himself. Sp. Commander Cready, it read on his internal display. That was what he was now. And even though he couldn’t see it, he swore that he could feel the weight of that tiny magnet-linked gold star that sat on the shoulder pad of his suit. He might not have had much choice when it came to picking either dying on some frozen moon or spending the next twelve years fighting the Confederacy’s wars, but they—the Marine colonels had, anyway—had seen something in him. They had trusted him and his abilities.
That had to mean something, didn’t it?
Solomon couldn’t remember the last time that someone had trusted him. Really trusted him. That would have been Matty. And look how that had turned out…
“Someone’s sold us out,” Solomon muttered to himself, crouching behind the large steel refuse bins of Neon Vespers. He was tired, scared, and bloody. His shirt was torn, and he was sure that he would have to stop to look at the wound seeping blood down his leg before too long. He still held the heavy pistol in both hands in front of him as he tried to slow his panting.
They had waited about half an hour inside that elite restaurant to see the mysterious Miss Cheung before the shots had started flying.
Miss Cheung had been Matty’s contact. A woman that he had said had an ear in every office in New Kowloon, and had most of the Shanghai Departmental Authorities either owing her money or favors. She was the intelligence fixer par excellence in New Kowloon, and she would know why some deep-state surveillance program had targeted Solomon, Matty had said.
Solomon didn’t doubt it. Miss Cheung had been one of those small, older women that he often saw around there, usually sitting at the backs of sushi bars or laundromats, calmly knitting or playing backgammon, but to whom everyone paid respect. She was old school, he could tell. One of the uniquely New Kowloon matriarchs who ran their little empires with an iron fist and an even sharper tongue.
“Ah. Solomon Cready.” She had recognized him as soon as he and Matthias had walked in, the door warden ushering them to a small booth at the back of the not-very-crowded, dimly-lit restaurant. A tray of traditional tea was set on their table, along with a selection of sweet dumplings, steaming and looking delicious—not that Solomon had any appetite. It seemed to be a mere formality, either way, as Miss Cheung also did not make any attempt to either pour tea or eat.
“You are here about your little problem, I take it?” she had said, after a few moments of unnerving silence.
Solomon had nodded, saying he didn’t think that he was worth the effort.
“Oh, but you are Solomon Cready, you are.” Miss Cheung’s eyes had glittered with mirth at a joke that she did not share. “You have no idea just how valuable you are to a lot of people, Mr. Cready.”
But why? He was just one more criminal in a ghetto full of them! Just another gaijin white guy stumbling through the Asian-Pacific Partnership. This and more were all things that he had pointed out, and all he had gotten in response had been polite smiles and that mischievous look on the part of Miss Cheung.
Solomon, always one with a temper, had started to get annoyed. “Tell me what I did. Who I owe. Who wants me. What can I do to get them off my back!?”
“Nothing,” Miss Cheung said, finally stretching forward to start pouring some bitter-smelling tea into two cups. “This tea is a hundred years old. Aged and stored and incredibly expensive.” She had seemed to miss the point of their meeting, Solomon had thought. “It is a recipe of unique ingredients that go right back to the Han Dynasty, and the Court of the Emperor himself. Do take a cup.”
“I don’t want your tea!” Solomon had snapped, but his temper did nothing but increase Miss Cheung’s mirth.
“Always such a temper. It is amazing that you ever became such a careful thief, Mr. Cready, with a temper like that,” she observed lightly, and just when Solomon was about to show her just how much of a temper he really had, she interrupted him.
“This is a lesson, Mr. Cready. Think about it. This tea is very rare, and very old. Its precise ingredients and methods of preparation are passed down from tea master to student for generations. Every cup of tea is like a scientific operation, one that can produce vastly different results. Yet the tea master’s endeavor to always preserve the original. Quite astounding, don’t you think?”
Solomon had no idea what she was talking about, and told her so, quite bluntly.
“The tea is not responsible for what it is, what its history is, or what results it will have in the person drinking it,” she stated quite happily, adding some water to her cup and stirring it lightly, before taking one, two, and then a third sip. “And yet, it is still valuable to many people.” She fixed a look at him over her cup. “This tea is like you, Mr. Solomon Cready. You have done nothing to deserve your fate, and yet there it is all the same. Now, answer this: WHY is the tea valuable, and expensive? What has this cup, and these leaves, ever done to be worthy of that?”
“Riddles and games.” Solomon shook his head.
“Not at all, Mr. Cready. The truth is right there, if you will but look,” she said in her quixotic way. When Solomon just looked confused, Miss Cheung gave a small sigh and set her cup down.
“Think about it like this, Mr. Cready. How many years have you been in New Kowloon? When did you first arrive?”
Solomon thought. He was nearing the back end of his twenties, and he had fled the American Confederacy when he was near the back end of his teens. Too many bridges had been burned, and he had been suspected or outright wanted in several high-profile heists. The only answer had been to pack up his ill-gotten gains and get a ticket to the Asian-Pacific Partnership, and then sneak into the most de-regulated and still-wild community of New Kowloon.
“Ten years, give or take,” he said.
“And hasn’t your time here been profitable?” Miss Cheung nodded.
Solomon had to agree. He had done very well for himself. While he might have suggested that he was just some ‘stumbling gaijin’ in a foreign land, prone to misunderstandings and mistakes, the truth was almost precisely the opposite. He was one of the best thieves in town.
“Isn’t it true, Mr. Cready, that you have ALWAYS had employment here. That even when a deal has gone sour, another
, better opportunity has arisen? Don’t you find your apparent luck, and your opportunities, quite frankly incredible?” Miss Cheung had said.
Solomon was about to thank her very much for the compliment, but he knew that wasn’t what she meant. “You mean to say that someone has been looking out for me? Keeping an eye on me all this time?” he’d stated, earning a nod from Miss Cheung.
But who? Who cared at all about a lowlife like him? It was so maddening to talk in riddles, and Solomon just wanted a straight answer.
“The tea, Mr. Cready—” Miss Cheung tapped her cup. “—is valuable because of its formula. Its history. What it contains, even though it is entirely unaware of it. Just like you.”
What?
At that moment, Matty had excused himself to go to the bar. Solomon thought that perhaps his friend was trying to give Miss Cheung the illusion that she could speak in private to him.
“You are a very rare individual, Mr Cready—” Miss Cheung had started to say, just when the windows had burst apart under the hail of bullets.
Solomon had gone from confused and angry to panicked and angry in a heartbeat. Chaos reigned supreme as people screamed, and plaster burst from the walls. Blood was in the air, as was the smell of cordite and gun smoke. Whomever was shooting at them wasn’t using just the light gangbanger pistols that the kids used on their drone-scooters every night. These were high-powered, high-intensity rounds, Solomon knew. His ten years had afforded him quite a lot of experience, after all. Miss Cheung had definitely been right about that, at least.
“Get down! Get down!” He had been shouting at Matty, but his friend was already on the other side of the room, disappearing through the kitchen door.
That hurt for a second, that Matty—the guy that he had known for longer than he had been in New Kowloon—wouldn’t have waited for him, but he knew that it was also the sensible thing to do. No need for both of them to die here.
Miss Cheung was gone. Dead or whisked away to her own hiding place, he didn’t know. Still the shots were coming in thick and fast. There was no call of Enforcer action. No floodlights or mecha-hounds.
Outcasts of Earth (Outcast Marines Book 1) Page 12
