Outcast Marines series Boxed Set Read online

  Outcasts of Earth Boxed Set

  Outcast Marines, Book 1 - 3

  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

  Outcasts of Earth

  The Kepler Rescue

  The Titan Gambit

  Thank You

  Outcasts of Earth

  Outcast Marines, Book 1

  Prologue: New Kowloon, 2205

  Solomon Cready sat in the small hotel room overlooking Hong Kong’s New Kowloon District, blue neon light streaming through the blinds, with blood on his hands.

  It shouldn’t have gone down like this… The man’s dark eyes stared at the red that was flickering with the neon, at turns looking black, red, black, red…

  He needed to get up.

  He needed to get out of there.

  It was impossible to tell if the rise of whining alarms outside the window were the Confederate Enforcers already coming for him, or whether they were just tracking any number of other criminals in the heavily over-populated mega-city. New Kowloon was like that—the largest slum in the Asiatic Partnership and second in size globally only to Dharavai, Mumbai. It was to New Kowloon that lowlifes like him went. Where they flourished. Where they died.

  If you could get through the Enforcer perimeter walls, which was easy when you worked out which of the blue-suited, mech-assisted Enforcer guards were on the take of the Triads or the Yakuza or any other of the mobs that ran the streets, then New Kowloon could be the place where you made your million. You could be picking up contracts from those mobs as easy as asking for directions, or perhaps from any of the many mega-corps that had unofficial ‘offices’ down here, doing unofficial ‘work.’

  But it was also in the electric-lit night of New Kowloon District—it looked like its own bright star when seen from space—that you could disappear. Many thousands of people did every year. Never to be seen again.

  Just like Matthias, the young man thought as he looked at all the blood.

  “Why did you have to go and stick your nose in!” he hissed in frustration at the memory of that awful night. But frustration couldn’t do anything for him now, especially not as the flashing blue light outside the window suddenly broke into a white glare.

  CRASH! The door to his hotel room—eleven stories up, and with twenty more above even him—burst into wood fragments. No metal reinforcements or digital bolts for New Kowloon. And there, standing in its place, was a mecha. Four hydraulic limbs mounted on a stubborn metal chassis, its wide, vaguely canine head glittered with flashing red lights.

  “Citizen Solomon Cready! This is the Confederate Enforcers! You are under arrest for the murder of Matthias Sozer!” the electronic voice of the Enforcer drone outside the window blared.

  He could have tried to do something foolish—he could have jumped up and reached for the Beretta on the side table, the very one that had put three holes in Matthias Sozer. He could have tried to get a shot off at the mecha-hound in front of him and hoped to hit some vital part of its machinery before it chewed his face off, or the Enforcer drone outside shot its needle-point laser through his skull. He could have gone down in a hail of bullets and rage—

  But Solomon Cready did nothing, except sit there and stare at his friend’s blood.

  Sometimes, your actions catch up with you…

  1

  Leaving Earth

  The dome of the Earth fell away, but its brilliance still illuminated the near vastness of space. The blue and green gem of humanity’s home world used to be praised for its beauty—at such low-orbital distances, everything looks lush and verdant, everything looks like wilderness.

  Not so much anymore.

  The cradle had become busy, with the continents that were turned away from the sun now a glittering spiderweb of yellow sodium and sharp white neon. Even the dark seas were crisscrossed with trailing lines of light, as the continual shipping-flotillas formed semi-permanent habitats; entire communities living, praying, eating, and dying on their continual trek from one Confederate mega-city to another. On the half of the planet exposed to the sun, the land was obscured by the gray skies of smog and atmospheric disturbance. The Earth of the ‘twenty-twos’—or AD 2205, to be precise—was over-populated, over-polluted, and still the most glorious thing in the sky.

  Glorious, Solomon Cready thought as he looked out of the port window, because it was everything that he was not allowed to have anymore.

  “Fracking bullcrap…” muttered the figure seated, and similarly shackled with solid metal magnetic bracers, beside Solomon. He hadn’t said his name or why he had been deported from Earth so far on their journey up the Shanghai Space Elevator, but it was clear to anyone just what he thought of the process.

  The man was taller than Solomon’s somewhat athletic, reedy form by another good head and a half. His pale skin was crisscrossed with black-ink tattoos.

  66 Cadre… Ace of Spades… Solomon read some of the insignia and figured him for a gangbanger. Not the typical sort that you’d expect to see in the Asian-Pacific Partnership, but hey, the world lived in a new era of globalization now, didn’t it? It was easy to catch a shuttle from one Earth hemisphere to the other. Or you could travel via the magnet-trains that sped under the earth’s surface, or, if you had a few Confederacy credits to spare, you could cut your travel time to hours by riding one of the three space elevators that sat just outside Virginia in the American Confederacy, Greenland in the Atlantic Confederacy, or the one that their transport had come up, the Shanghai Asia-Pacific Elevator.

  Solomon didn’t pass comment on his fellow inmate’s opinion. Yeah, it was all bullcrap. But that was life in the twenty-two’s, right?

  Solomon looked down at the roof of the world as their transport shuttle started to shudder as they passed through the upper atmosphere and the near gravity well. Earth was a frackhole, he had to admit.

  And God knows that I messed up my time down there, he thought as he considered what awaited him for the rest of his days. Hacking away at the frozen CO2 ice of Titan, hoping not to hit a pocket of methane and blow himself up, never feeling the not-so-fresh, exhaust-laden breeze of Earth ever again, or ever leaning against one of the hydroponically grown trees in Kowloon’s Tranquility Park.

  Frack.

  “Pigeons, man,” grunted Gangbanger 66 beside him.

  “What?” Solomon frowned. The two men shared their small space with half a dozen or so other deportees from Earth. Each of them wore the regulation gray one-piece suits that declared their status on their backs—’CONVICT’—and sat on benches with their hands clamped together, chained between their legs to the metal seat. Solomon could see men and women, everything from nervy eighteen-year-olds to gray hair and wrinkles. Earth had no space left for the mad, bad, and dangerous, but it did have plenty of work for them to do…. It just wasn’t on Earth anymore.

  “I’m never going to see a fracking pigeon again,” 66 moaned. “I used to race ‘em… Guess I’m not going to see any birds now, right?”

  Solomon was surprised at this moment of poetry from the big man beside him. A man who looked like he’d be much more comfortable throttling a man’s neck than feeding corn to a bird.

  “But I made some bad choices, I guess…” the big man said.

  Didn’t we all, Solomon thought. “Maybe you should have stuck to racing pigeons instead…” Solomon shrugged,
earning a glare and a shift as the man strained to look down at the smaller, morose man by the window seat.

  Solomon looked up and realized that he didn’t feel a thing. Not fear. Not intimidation. I’ve already seen the worst this life has to offer, pal, he thought.

  “Ha!” Mr. 66 suddenly barked a guttural laugh, the tension easing from his shoulders. “You’re alright. Yeah, I guess I should have stuck to racing ‘em…” He started to guffaw, repeating his words to himself in what Solomon thought was a slightly hysterical manner.

  Out-fracking-standing. Solomon turned back to look out the port window. If this was the level of conversation that he had to look forward to, being blown apart by frozen methane might just be a blessing…

  Department of Corrections, Asia-Pacific Partnership (APP)

  Fwd to:

  Department of Justice & Defense, United Earth Confederacy

  SUMMARY ORDER OF DEPORTATION

  Case Ref: 2205/78001/05/5623

  Commissioning Court: New Kowloon APP

  Sentencing Judge: Justice Benebel Xin Sr

  Convict Details: SOLOMON TOBIAS CREADY, male, Caucasian, 29 years.

  Place of Birth: American Confederacy.

  Crime:

  Found guilty of the murder of MATTHIAS SOZER, male, Caucasian, 30 years.

  Sentence:

  Immediate Deportation to Department of Justice & Defense Work Program.

  Recommended Sentencing: LIFE.

  APPROVED

  “ATTENTION ALL PASSENGERS!” The interior intercom system of the shuttle blared in a tinny, electronic voice. “Approaching Shanghai Orbital Platform, please ensure that your safety belts are secured, and we apologize for any turbulence…”

  “They’re having a laugh, right?” muttered 66, pulling on his chained manacles. Prisoners didn’t get safety belts, apparently, but the other passengers of their shuttle did.

  They were just one of a number of different tube-like craft attached with linking arms to the poly-metal cabling that stretched into the sky. A space elevator was a bit of a strange misnomer really, Solomon thought as he angled his glance down through the port window, seeing the bright white line that stretched back underneath them, all the way down to the bright earth. Distantly, he could make out another tubby shuttle racing out of the clouds beneath them, its top glowing a little with plasma and electromagnetic radiation as it broke the near-earth orbit.

  The space elevator was more like one of those mountain ski-resort trams, Solomon considered—several static shuttles permanently fixed via wheels and clamps to their dedicated wires and sent endlessly up and down those wires around the central column to their destination. As it relied on traction and not propulsion, Solomon knew that space elevators were fantastically cheap on fuel, and they were faster than rocket-propelled ships as well, as there was next to no friction in space, and they didn’t have to contend with breaking the resistance of Earth’s gravity well.

  But still… When Solomon had first heard about the elevators going up when he was a kid, back home in some middle-of-the road American agricultural town, he had imagined them to be more like the elevators of the distant corn harvesters he would see roaming the Midwest plains. Actual rooms that you stepped into with air conditioning and banal music that would smoothly bring you up to the top terrace.

  This was more like being a bug in a bottle, which was then chucked into the sea. The shuttle shook and juddered—worse for the convicts of course, as their seating arrangements had no backrest, no armrests, and no cushions as they bounced and jostled against each other. Outside of one of the two metal doors at the end of their cabin, Solomon knew that there would be a very different sight indeed—rows of safety-buckled commuters, tourists, businessmen, and immigrants oohing and aahing from their comfortable upholstered seats.

  Thudd-udh-duhr! From where their room was on the elevator shuttle, near the lowest edge, they got the brunt of the vibrations as the elevator slowed on its track, throwing the convicts one way and then another to their angry cries of alarm before a series of loud bangs and thumps shook the walls.

  “Have we just punctured something or is that us docking!?” Gangbanger 66 called out nervously, earning worried responses from the other convicts seated near them, but not Solomon, who leaned his head against the reinforced glass and felt the shakes vibrate through his skull.

  I’m only going to feel this a few more times in my life, he thought. That was what they said about being deported to distant Titan, wasn’t it? They shot you up there, you shot down, and then that was it. No more space flight. No more shuttle flight. Just wobbling about a freezing metal work base on some distant moon, before your body eventually surrendered to the harsh environment and you are found, floating on your own tether line to be added to the colony’s incinerators.

  Solomon didn’t feel especially cheerful.

  THUNK! A final bang shook through the hull, and their upward progress had finally stalled. Looking out his window, he could see metal struts and beams of the underside of the Shanghai Platform, and underneath that, the busy comet-like flashes of communications and security drones as they skated over Earth’s magnetic ionosphere.

  “Listen up, you bunch of schlubs!” The door hissed open and a new voice barked at them, coming from the mouth-hole of a man who was surprisingly short, and who also looked surprisingly old.

  This new figure wore the same regulation gray of their own uniforms, but his had a gold band running from shoulders, down the arms, sides, and legs. He also wore a small peaked black cap trimmed in similar gold, and with a singular brass star emblazoned on its center. His eyes were startlingly sharp, and he had one of those unnaturally healthy, yet wizened faces of those who spent a lot of their time in the gym.

  “I guess he’s the big fracker around here, right?” Gangbanger 66 beside him muttered, still with a twinge of mirth from his earlier bout of laughing.

  Solomon tried to make himself look uninterested and equally as unimportant beside the larger man, but it was no good. This new, angry little man had heard his companion.

  “That’s right, you worthless piece of space junk!” the man bawled at 66, who just shrugged.

  The small man in the cap pulled back a little, ramrod-straight back, Solomon noted. He was Enforcer or military all right.

  “Oh, so it looks like we got ourselves a talker here?” the man said. “A real conversationalist, are you, Mr.…” He raised his hand to the small tablet that he held and nodded. “Convict 4301. Duke Ormskert, I got here…” The man slid the tablet into the breast pocket of his gray suit and smiled slowly.

  Solomon had seen that sort of smile on people before. Hell, he realized that he had probably smiled like that himself from time to time. It was the sort of smile that a pack of hyenas might give a baby foal when they find it, lost in the Serengeti.

  “Duke.” The man started to stalk toward their bench.

  Oh, frack off, Solomon sighed.

  “What a glamorous name you have there, son…” the man sneered as he stopped in the aisle across from them. Solomon knew that something bad was going to happen. It always did when you give sadistic people some power.

  Just like me?

  “How about you, Convict…7203?” The man’s eyes flickered over Solomon. “Mr. Cready, I see. American fourth-generation, is it? Still got the wheat between your ears?”

  Solomon knew that he shouldn’t, he knew that it would do no good either way, but he just couldn’t help himself. I’ve lost everything already, he thought as he stared unapologetically at the little man.

  “Oh, I see, a little pair of talkers we have here then…” the little man sneered at them both, slowly moving his hands to the holster on his hip, where he drew what looked to be an asthma inhaler.

  You can frack right off with that, too… Solomon had no idea what it was, but he didn’t like the look of it.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Warden Coates, of the Department for Justice and Defense. For the next however lon
g I can stand to look at your ugly faces, I will be your god. Your alpha and your omega. I will be the voice that you get up for in the morning and the reason you go to bed at night. If you are hungry, it is me who will allow you to eat. If you are tired, thirsty, or whatever the hell else you miserable excuses for chromosomes can think of, it’s going to be my boots you have to lick if you want to get it, right?”

  There was silence in the shuttle for a moment, and the warden turned back to Solomon and Duke’s bench to find Solomon still staring at him, but Duke with his head bowed.

  I’m not scared of you, Solomon’s eyes said. He’d had Yakuza torturers on his trail. He once had to explain to the Triads why they should leave a particular part of town. One more jumped-up little sadist with a chip on his shoulder wasn’t going to faze him. The only difference was that this one had a uniform and a little hat…

  “Your friend’s got some cajones at least, I take it…” Warden Coates said, still looking straight at Solomon as he jammed the inhaler-looking device into 66 Duke’s neck.

  “Ach! What the hell?” The much larger man tried to raise his hands but obviously couldn’t. In a second, however, it was all over as the warden pulled the device back, leaving a thin rivulet of blood running from Duke’s neck.

  “What did you do that for?” Duke was snarling, trying to writhe in his seat, but the warden ignored him as he spoke, still holding Solomon’s gaze.

  “You’re all going to get a chip. It’s our little way of making my job easier.” The warden lifted the device and a fat thumb played over the settings there for a moment.