Outcast Marines series Boxed Set 2 Read online

  Invasion Boxed Set

  Outcast Marines, Books 4 - 6

  James David Victor

  Fairfield Publishing

  Copyright © 2019 Fairfield Publishing

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Except for review quotes, this book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without the written consent of the author.

  This story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is purely coincidental.

  Contents

  The Martian Incursion

  Invasion: Proxima

  Invasion: Pluto

  Thank You

  The Martian Incursion

  Outcast Marines, Book 4

  1

  The Ides of March

  “What the frack did you DO, Matty!?” Solomon screamed at his life-long friend and accomplice, Matthias Sozer.

  The younger Solomon Cready stood in his scuffed and torn short-sleeved shirt and vest, his sharp features glitching with the swathes of neon advertisements from the megaplexes overhead. He could feel the comfortable weight of the heavy pistol tucked into the waistband of his jeans, and his fingers itched to pull it out.

  The young man didn’t think that he had ever been so angry. Not when the Triads of New Kowloon had burned out his shell investment firm—a cheap ghost-hack that filtered 0.5 Confederate Credits to one of his accounts every time the stocks fluctuated. It wasn’t the biggest and best scam he’d ever played, but it kept him in cheap shirts.

  He’d come close to being this annoyed when the Yakuza had treated him like a child, though they appeared to treat every gaijin westerner in their ghetto-city of New Kowloon that way.

  And then there had been finding the government transponder, buried in the skirting board of his apartment. A tracking device, one that Matthias Sozer had said was deep black government intelligence, and that he knew someone who knew what was happening.

  That had been Miss Cheung, a top-level Kowloon Fixer who had contacts and fingers in every dirty little deal running from the laundromat franchises along Water Lilly Street to the backroom deals of New Kowloon administrators.

  But then they had been attacked. Government snatch-squad, Solomon reckoned. Confederate Intelligence Services maybe. Someone had sold him out. But who?

  Who knew about this meeting apart from the only two people who had set it up: Miss Cheung and Matty?

  And just why the frack were the Confederate Intelligence Services interested in a crook like him? He was a very good crook—he was proud enough, or maybe arrogant enough, to admit that. He was already winding up his takedown of the Kowloon Yakuza family—and all because he could. A person like him, a cat-burglar, thief, confidence artist, and industrial spy, thrived on the chaos that job would bring him. A criminal always needs a healthy dose of chaos, Solomon knew, and they hated monopolies by anyone—be it the Yakuza, the Triads, or the Confederate government.

  But really, as much as he excelled on living on his wits and calling quick choices, what was happening was crazy.

  “I’m not that good for the CIS to take an interest,” Solomon was saying, his voice coming out in hitches like he was about to burst into tears. But he wasn’t about to cry. It was the anger that constricted his throat and his ground teeth that chopped up his words and made Matty Sozer, his friend for over ten years, look over at him from the doorway to the cheap apartment with wariness in his eyes.

  “Why you scared, Matty?” Solomon heard himself say. He felt as if the whole world had moved three steps away, and that he was watching himself in slow motion, unable to stop the terrible events that he knew had to unfold just as they always did, night after night in this nightmare…

  “What did you do?” he asked again, a sort of calm settling over him. A dreadful, unavoidable decision.

  “Why are the CIS after me? What did you DO, Matty!”

  “Sol!”

  The young man, older now than in his dreams but not by much, floundered into wakefulness as the loud, booming voice of Malady reached his ears.

  Solomon blinked, looked up at the rounded metal figure that was adjunct-Marine Specialist Malady—once a full Confederate Marine but who had been busted down to ‘adjunct’ status the same as the rest of the Outcast outfit on Ganymede, as well as being sealed inside of his full tactical suit, kept alive through the suit’s systems but changing him irrevocably.

  “Wake up,” the electronic-modulated voice of the metal golem said, looming over the Gold Squad Commander. Solomon could clearly see the man’s ashen and apparently half-sleeping face behind the faceplate of his suit. He looked like a living cadaver. The suit punched directly into his brain stem, bypassing the need for such silly little things like eyeballs or vocal cords.

  “What time is it? I didn’t hear the alarm…” Solomon groaned, sitting up just as his side suddenly twitched in white-hot agony. “Ach!” The pain was short-lived, just a twinge, but a reminder that his body was still technically recovering from a bullet that had lodged itself about two inches away from his liver.

  That had been out on Titan, when all of this mess had really started. The memories came rushing back to Solomon as the nightmare of last night faded. Titan the prison moon. The place he would have ended up if he hadn’t been pressganged into the Outcasts. Tasked with protecting the Confederate Earth’s ambassador as she negotiated a peace treaty with the Outer Space Alliance—the coalition of colony worlds, with Mars being the most vocal opponent of Confederate Earth control.

  But it had all gone belly up, hadn’t it? The echo of the pain in his side was testament to that. Someone had attacked them. Someone had killed convicts and politicians alike.

  And the Martian Imprimatur—the spokesperson for humanity’s second founding colony—had been blamed.

  “No alarm. News feed. You will want to hear this.” Malady moved off, the whining servo mechanisms in his lower back, hips, and knees hissing and screeching as he turned to where the screen over the door was playing the news.

  Solomon and the metal man weren’t the only Outcasts who had woken early from their slumber, the commander saw. In fact, the entirety of this shift in the bunkroom appeared to be blearily getting up, transfixed with horror at the large screen. Silence hung over the men and women of the Outcasts—which itself was unusual, as there was always some muttered argument or almost-scuffle about to break out between the ex-convicts.

  CONFEDERATE NEWS WIRE: Andrea Gibson Reporting, LIVE from OrbiSat 1

  “Disturbing news today, as the Confederate blockade of Mars enters its third week…

  “Martian colonists and Martian separatists—many flying the banner of the ‘Chosen of Mars’—have ransacked and set fire to the three largest ore depots on the Red Planet, all of which are owned by the Confederate Mega-Corp TransCorp, which was awarded the leading contract in the extraction and transport of Martian resources.

  “While this could well be a crippling blow for the TransCorp company, our analysts have indicated that it shows a sophisticated and calculating move on the behalf of the Martians, whose message is clear: unless they receive all of their Martian detainees back from the Confederate Marine Corps, including the Imprimatur of Mars herself, Dr. Valance, and the spokesperson of the First Martians/Chosen of Mars group, Father Ultor, then they will continue to hurt Confederate interests…

  “In response, the Confederate Marine Corps has confirmed that they are dispatching battlegroups from Earth and the Rapid Response Fleet to put more pressure on the Martians to comply, although with tensions similarly simmering amongst the colonists of Proxima and the Asteroid Belt, can the Marine Corps really afford to stretch its fleet across such vast distances? Our expert, Professor Vladjic T
rajan, examines the issues…”

  “Oh frack…” Solomon heard someone say, as the data-screens showed low-orbit news satellite pictures of the three burning depots.

  They had once been white geodesic domes, designed to perfectly withstand the pressures of the Martian environment, entirely sealed with an internal atmosphere. The images showed they even contained entire business parks, trees, and corporate buildings beside the warehouses and loading modules.

  Each one was now broken and burst apart like the shells of cracked eggs, with torrents of black smoke boiling out of the domes and forming localized mushroom clouds over the orange sand. Solomon imagined how it must have gone—maybe there were actual explosive devices, or maybe the separatists had shelled the domes directly. Either one would have only caused a fraction of deaths compared to what must have happened as soon as the pressure seals of each dome had been breached.

  There would have been a catastrophic loss of oxygen, a wind-storm of air that blew apart windows and doors and entire bulkheads. Computer systems and pipelines would have ruptured, creating a firestorm that only those in full protective suits could have survived. Unless, of course, the separatists had sent an evacuation warning, the commander hoped.

  He wasn’t looking at just a tactical ‘statement’ against the power that the Confederacy had over the Red Planet, but instead at a massacre.

  “The Confederacy won’t let this stand,” Solomon breathed.

  “Damn right!” one of the other Outcasts called out in response. Solomon thought it was Specialist James, from Green Squad. “We’re going to frack them into oblivion! Bombard the damn rock from space until they give in, or wipe them off the dust and start again, that’s what I say!”

  Maybe the Marine Corps had heard Specialist James’s recommendations, because no sooner had he spoken than the alarms went off, echoing through the Ganymede Training Facility that the Outcasts had called home for the better part of a year.

  WAOWAOWAO!!

  ATTENTION ALL OUTCAST MARINES! ASSEMBLE IN THE MAIN BRIEFING ROOM IMMEDIATELY FOR MISSION PREP!

  “Here we go,” Solomon whispered. This was it. This was the war that he had feared would come, but even as he rushed to grab his light jacket and over-wear pants, the young man already knew that he wouldn’t be heading straight to the main briefing room. In this mad scramble of the other Outcasts, no one would notice if he made a detour.

  He had to speak to his combat specialist, Jezzy Wen.

  2

  A Dark Sort of Hope

  Jezebel Wen, the young combat specialist of Gold Squadron, sat with one leg hanging over the edge of a fifteen-meter climbing wall. Her body shivered, although she wasn’t cold. Her mesh vest top and leggings regulated her temperature perfectly, actually wicking away the heat that her finely-honed body was producing as needed.

  She’d just climbed the wall not once but three times, all in an attempt to get to this point where her body was exhausted and rubbery with adrenaline, hoping that her mind would follow suit.

  It hadn’t.

  He’s going to die, she kept thinking, the thoughts rolling around and around every finger and toehold, written in every scream of tortured muscles in her calves and back.

  Her father was going to die. And it was all her fault.

  Jezzy considered performing a double-quick climb down and back up again, in order to stop these thoughts. To batter her recalcitrant mind into submission. But what would be the point? She couldn’t escape the guilt and the shame. It coursed through her body as the burn of lactic acid was starting to seep into her muscles.

  I shouldn’t have killed him. She remembered that moment, slamming the undercover Yakuza’s knife into his neck back on board the Marine transporter just out of Titan. She didn’t recall the event with anything but a sort of dark glee, as she had finally put an end to his blackmail and intimidation of her.

  Only she hadn’t, had she?

  The man had been masquerading as a Marine Corps staffer—one of the basic training logistics and support staff that kept the fighting units, their stations and their ships, as well as every other mundane aspect of the Marine’s life, running. But he had also been Yakuza, just like Jezebel Wen had been before being caught by the Confederate Earth Enforcers. She would have ended up on the prison moon of Titan, just like every other Outcast, if the Marines hadn’t found a ‘more appropriate sentence’ for her here on Ganymede as one of the fledgling Outcasts.

  The planning that Boss Mihashi must be capable of boggled Jezebel. How long did it take to put someone through Marine Corps basic training? And it had to be someone who would remain fanatically loyal to the Earth Yakuza during those five or six long years, and who also had a clean enough record that the Marine Corps wouldn’t suspect a thing.

  Jezzy had only been funneled into the Ganymede Training Facility in the last year, which meant that Yakuza agent had been sent here way before that. Did the Boss already know that Jezzy would get caught—for doing his dirty work, she grumbled—years in advance? Or had he been working to infiltrate the Marine Corps anyway, just as he had many of the mega-corporations operating out of Earth?

  Either way, it didn’t really matter. She had killed the handler, and she was here now. She carefully pulled out the scrap of paper that the Yakuza agent had given her, as proof of her predicament. She kept it on her person at all times now, even though she knew that she should destroy the evidence of Yakuza collusion, but it was her only piece of evidence of the Yakuza’s plans. It was a work authorization order for a Mr. Hoshu ‘Harry’ Wen—her estranged father—that clearly showed his unique identification number and address.

  And the fact that Boss Mihashi can have him fired any time he wants…or killed. The Boss already knew his address, and it wasn’t as if the Yakuza had any qualms about delivering their honor-bound ‘punishments’ on the next of kin of those that had wronged them.

  I’ve killed my father, the moment I sunk that blade into the operative’s neck… Jezzy thought. And there wasn’t a damn thing she could do to warn him, at least without alerting the psychopathic Warden Coates, who ran the Outcast training program with an iron fist and electric stunners.

  I’ll get deported to Titan, she knew. It had been hard enough concealing the ‘staffer’s’ body on the Marine transporter that had jumped them back ‘home’ here on Ganymede. Luckily, the one benefit of a spaceship was that she had a choice of either airlocks or incinerators. She had gone for the incinerators.

  “Jezzy!” someone shouted from below. She shook her head and wiped her eyes to see the tight, worried face of her squad commander, a fellow ex-con like her, Solomon Cready.

  “Don’t make me climb up there, for heaven’s sake…” he tried to make a joke, half-rising an arm to indicate where he had been shot.

  “Hmph.” Jezzy was in no mood for talking, but she knew that she had to move. The station alerts had gone out just a minute ago, calling for everyone to go to the main briefing room. She had stayed up here out of a sort of despairing spite at her own position. A part of her perversely wanted to get into trouble.

  I deserve it, she thought, before unslinging her leg and rolling her shoulder and body over the restraining bar to nearly fall over the edge—

  “Whoa!” Solomon gasped.

  But Jezzy was very good at this kind of stuff. She caught the bar on the way over, swinging herself down to the next handhold and, barely using her feet at all, crab-crawled down the wall faster than many people could jog in a straight line.

  She landed on the balls of her feet beside Solomon, sweating and breathing fast. The exertion still hadn’t done anything to put her mind to rest.

  “You heard the alert?” Cready nodded at the screens that hung over the doors.

  “Don’t tell me you came to collect me, Sol…” Jezzy said as they turned towards the door.

  “Nope. I came to, uh, ask…” Jezzy could feel him looking at her with those owlish eyes that he had when he was worried. She hated it. It made her feel
weak, like he was pitying her.

  “Spit it out,” Jezzy said, wanting to get this over with. Three weeks. It had been three weeks since they had started an interstellar incident, and she still hadn’t heard anything from the Yakuza or about her father.

  “That guy who had come to kill me, the Yakuza operative…” Solomon was muttering under their breath as they quick-walked through the gymnasium and out into the still-busy corridors beyond. “You said he had a hold over you. Your father…”

  Jezzy nodded, but her face was a flat, stoic line.

  “I’ve been doing some thinking, and I think that there might be a way we can help. From here,” Solomon whispered.

  “You’re crazy,” Jezzy said. “It’s been three weeks anyway. He’s already dead. The Yakuza don’t hang around.”

  “I don’t think he is,” Solomon countered, a reaction that made Jezzy’s blood boil with anger. She stopped mid-walk, even as the last of the other Outcasts were entering the briefing room ahead of them. She rounded on her commander.

  “You wait three weeks to come up with a plan? Who do you think you are, Solomon Cready? Why do you think that I need your help? Just who are you to tell me about how the Yakuza do things!?”

  Solomon’s eyes flickered nervously to the closing door. They had to get in there if they didn’t want to incur the wrath of the Warden Coates, but…this was important.

  “Look, the Marine Corps elected me to be the specialist commander of our squad, right? That’s because they know that I’ve got the mind for it,” he said. It was bravado and bluster, Jezzy thought, but he was right that the Marine Corps, along with their armies of doctors and scientists were the ones to order and orchestrate every facet of their development here.