Invasion- Pluto Read online

“You sound pretty certain,” the ambassador said. But Solomon realized that he admired Tomas, despite all his outrageous arrogance in taking Solomon’s power armor! You needed self-belief for this job. The job that was only a few nudges away from what Solomon had used to do, after all.

  “The Helga is a transport ship that is scheduled to go and pick up the latest in Martian iron,” Tomas explained once again. “Where it gets brought back here, and then off to all of its buyers who’ve already invested in it,” he said.

  Minus a nice cut to you, the smuggler king of Luna, no doubt, Solomon thought.

  “But I thought you said that ‘Commander-in-Chief’ Hausman—” Imprimatur Mariad Rhossily said his name with apparent humor, as if she found the title ridiculous. “—had stopped all traffic to and from Earth?”

  “He has,” Tomas growled, clearly annoyed. Solomon wondered what that would mean for his operation in the near future. “The Helga is one of the last boats to get clearance, and that is only because there are a lot of very rich corporations both here on the Moon and back on Earth who want their imports.”

  “But Hausman has declared the Rapid Response Fleet to be traitors?” Ambassador Ochrie stepped in. “How is the Helga supposed to make their transaction with Mars, which is currently under Asquew’s command?”

  “Ah, ye of little faith…” Tomas gave the woman a crooked grin. “The iron has already been brought and loaded onto a Martian cargo ship, which has already jumped from Martian space…before New York,” he said meaningfully. “I have a friend in Hausman’s guard—”

  You do? Solomon thought.

  “—who said that this was the last shipment that was going to come out of Mars for a long time. And Hausman needs to keep his corporate backers happy, right?”

  “Corporate backers like Taranis?” Solomon raised an eyebrow. Was he about to help—albeit in a tiny way—Taranis to build more killer cyborgs?

  “I have no idea.” Tomas shrugged. “So, the Martian jump-ship isn’t coming here because of the trade embargo, but it’s going to be arriving near the inner asteroid belt, where the goods will transfer to the Helga, and where you three get on the Martian ship and fly off to your beloved Asquew.” Tomas smiled proudly.

  That’s the plan, Solomon knew. It was a complicated plan as far as he was concerned. His old criminal instincts shouted a warning at him that there was already too much that could go wrong. Too many people were involved—from Tomas and his band of smugglers, to the other staffers and whomever the pilot and captain of the Helga was, and finally to this other Martian cargo ship. Would they all be loyal to Asquew? Would any of them? How closely was the new ‘commander-in-chief’ paying attention to this final ship to break the embargo?

  Solomon had never liked complicated plans, in all of his years of running some of the biggest scams, heists, and cons in the history of New Kowloon.

  A complicated plan always breaks, he told himself. Keep it simple. The best jobs were always the ones where it was just him, his wits, and one destination. The fewer people involved, the better.

  Only now I have the Imprimatur of Proxima and the Ambassador of Earth to worry about, Solomon thought irritably. Both would be worth a fortune to Hausman, and either would probably be worth a lot to any number of rival factions, from the First Martian seditionists to the mysterious Taranis Industries.

  And I’m the only person they’ve got, this side of Mars. Solomon took a deep breath. He had never thought that this is what his life would become. Protecting people. Saving lives. Loyal to the Confederacy. No, not the Confederacy! he corrected himself immediately. Loyal to the soldiers who had fought alongside him, had died for him. Loyal to the Outcasts.

  And the Outcasts were somewhere out there, fighting in the darks between the stars, and he was stuck here. But he had been given a mission by his superior officer, Solomon argued with himself. A mission that he had failed at but had been given to him because Asquew had believed in him. Had trusted him.

  And so, if it is the very least that I can do, I will get the pair of you to safety, Solomon silently promised the two women at his side.

  “Let’s do this.” Solomon nodded to Tomas.

  “Go!” Tomas pushed Solomon’s back, and he moved quickly across the open ramp to where the latest cart of metal boxes had been brought up and was awaiting workers to push and pull it the rest of the way through Loading Door 2 to the waiting Helga beyond.

  Solomon was the first to arrive at the cart, moving to the front to grab one of the metal handles as Ochrie and Rhossily moved to the back, reaching up to push it. “Got it?” Solomon whispered to the two women, who nodded at him seriously from the shadows of their cowls.

  “Let’s go.” He heaved, hauling the cart that was supposedly full of machine repair parts and spare components for the Helga up the ramp, bouncing over the airlock seals and into the noisy, busy hold of the docked ship.

  The Helga was a standard-sized transporter ship, which meant that it had a series of three large holds but with only one door at each end. Each hold looked like a warehouse with a gantry level running around the top with doors up into the mess halls, cabins, and whatever other amenities the Helga afforded its staff.

  “Where are we going?” the ambassador hissed at Solomon as he pulled the cart past a line of jogging staffers, and then past wide, empty bays waiting for the shipment of Martian iron.

  Solomon scanned his surroundings. There was the large opening to the central hold, Hold 2, and beyond that, Hold 3, but there was also a whole range of smaller bays with carts just like this one lined up under the gantries.

  “There,” he said. It was darker down there, and it seemed to be a place for general maintenance equipment. And all we have to do is to pretend we’re busy for the next hour or two, Solomon thought, and then make it across to the Martian transporter at the other end.

  If it was a longer jump that they were about to take part in, then Solomon might have been more worried. He might have tried to find them a safer place to buckle up and wait out the nausea and dizziness of Jump Sickness, or he might have been more worried of their true identities being uncovered by the Helga’s staff.

  But this is only a micro-jump, Solomon told himself. All we have to do is keep our head down for an hour, hide out somewhere dark.

  Currently, they each had on the encounter suits of ‘Luna General Assistants,’ which was a very uninteresting way of saying that they were pretending to be any one of the short-term contract staff who worked the transport network. It was Tomas who had gotten them their suits and told them that no one would bat an eye. He had already ordered three of his guys off the work detail to be replaced by these three.

  What if they want to check identity cards? Solomon thought.

  Tomas had said they wouldn’t, and Tomas was their only shot at getting to Mars.

  “Hey! You three! Stop, you three!” a voice suddenly barked down at them from above, and Solomon froze.

  What if the Helga staff know all of Tomas’s workers? What if they’re suspicious?

  “Sir?” Solomon said in a thick voice, looking up at the thin man on the gantry above them in similar shabby worker suit grays, a data-screen in his hands. He was obviously some kind of supervisor for the Helga.

  “You Luna lot are new, ain’t ya?” the man shouted down over the hiss and gasp of pistons and the bustle of other staffers hurrying here and there.

  Solomon’s fist clenched on the handlebar of the cart. Frack.

  “Is it that obvious, sir?” he managed to say.

  The supervisor paused, looking hard at Solomon for a second, before snorting in disgust. “Less of your lip, son. Those parts are going for Hold 3. Right at the back in the engineering section, you got that? You can follow simple instructions, can’t you?”

  Breathe. Solomon felt his chest start to fill with anger as his temper rose. Follow simple instruction, he thought. I’ve been ordering men and women to their deaths! And before that, I masterminded one of the biggest heists
against the Asia-Pacific Partnership Yakuza there has ever been!

  But, unlike the Solomon he had been—the one who would tell the overseer just what he could do with his ‘simple instruction’—the newer Lieutenant Solomon took a deep breath and brought himself under control.

  I have a mission and a duty. To these two women at my side. To Asquew. To the honor of my Outcast brothers and sisters.

  “Yes, sir. I can follow simple instructions, sir.” He nodded and proceeded to haul the cart away from the safe, dark place he had been meaning to stash both it and their party, and instead rumbled it over the airlock seal to Hold 2 as the imprimatur and the ambassador pushed at the other end.

  “That was too close,” the ambassador whispered as they trundled through the exact same warehouse layout as before, but the crowds of other staffers were growing thin, Solomon was glad to see.

  Departure imminent! Please ensure your cargo is stowed and your duties completed to ensure a speedy departure.

  The ship’s alert system announced this as there was a hiss from Hold 1’s doors as the airlock seal started to slide shut.

  “Lieutenant!” the ambassador hissed at him again.

  “Trust me, just wait…” Solomon was dawdling, pausing the cart by a stand of small forklift loaders and bending down as if he were adjusting one of the thing’s wheels. They were mostly out of sight of Hold 1 and the supervisor, Solomon reckoned. All we have to do is act natural.

  The ship’s alert system sounded again, now to be joined by a low, warning beep that signaled their liftoff.

  “C’mon.” Solomon stood up, rattling the cargo crate into Hold 3, which had lost the brilliance of the service lights and instead just had the dull glow of the ship’s background lighting.

  Hold 3 was deserted, but it wasn’t empty, Solomon saw.

  Departure imminent! Please ensure…

  Half of Hold 3 was already given over to large crates of ruggedized plastic, each one several feet long and a few feet tall.

  Where have I seen something like that before? Solomon wondered as he slid their cart next to the others, locked the wheels, and tied the webbing around it.

  Hsssss! The outer doors had finally closed, and now the doors between the holds were also beginning to hiss shut, too.

  “Solomon!” the ambassador squeaked in alarm.

  “It’s alright, Ochrie. This is the plan,” Solomon insisted, drawing them closer into the shadows of the crates. “The boat’s busy. We’ll just be forgotten about in here, and then in an hour, forty minutes, whatever, we’ll sneak out and onto the Martian transporter.”

  That was Solomon’s plan, anyway. As it turned out, Tomas’s was far more successful than his.

  “Hey! What in the name of Earth are you three still doing down here?” shouted a voice from above them. It was the supervisor, having entered their gantry level by some hidden door above, obviously inspecting the holds before final takeoff.

  Departure imminent! Please ensure…

  “Get up here and get to the jump-seats now!” the supervisor snapped, waiting until Solomon, the ambassador, and the imprimatur hurried up the stairs to the gantry level, where he directed them through the nearest bulkhead door.

  “You’re lucky. If I lost people from my safety inspection…” The supervisor was clearly annoyed as he hurried them along the narrow service corridor to what looked like a long hallway with rows of seats backed against the wall.

  It looked a little like a Marine transporter, Solomon thought, as the supervisor directed them to take up three seats at the end, which they did.

  “Buckle up!” the supervisor said, sitting in his seat at the front, and then the Helga was shuddering and shaking as it rose from the surface of the moon on four plumes of flame.

  Solomon groaned under his breath. They were precisely where he didn’t want them to be. Now they had to lie through their teeth for an hour-long jump, pretending to be people that they weren’t with the other Helga workers, and hoping that no one recognized them.

  Frack.

  17

  Blood in the Stars

  “Ratko! Covering fire!” Jezzy shouted as she made to leap across the space to the next doorway.

  “Get some!” the smaller Marine yelled, leaning forward with her automatic shotgun and releasing a burst of heavy shells into the space.

  The depressurized Floor 3 was a mixture of laboratories and storage bays, with corridors and small plaza-areas connecting them. Currently, they were filled with floating detritus from every room. Jezzy could see slowly-revolving beakers, shattered glass, stainless steel instruments, chairs—

  —and blood, the real stuff as well as the darker gobbets of machine-oil blood that powered the cyborgs.

  Not that they appeared to be any closer to dying, Jezzy thought as she saw the cyborg that filled the corridor space knocked back by Ratko’s shells, flying and spinning through the weightless environment.

  Now! Jezzy jumped, soaring across the corridor as more flashes of muzzle fire bloomed in the dark.

  “Oof!” She sailed through the doorway and hit the floor to find herself in a small laboratory with white floor-to-ceiling cabinets in every room.

  “Lieutenant!” There were two more Outcasts in here, not from Gold Squad but others of the company who had been sent to Pluto along with Jezebel.

  Outcast ID: Sergeant Ijuo (Combat)

  Health: GOOD.

  Outcast ID: Lance Corporal Francis

  Health: COMPROMISED.

  The readouts on the inside of Jezzy’s helmet filled her in on the general state of the two Outcasts in the room, the ones that she had come to try and save after they had been pinned down.

  Sergeant Ijuo knelt by the door, Jackhammer raised and already sighting for the next nearest cyborg, while behind him, slumped against the wall, was Lance Corporal Francis, with one arm hideously blackened and burnt from a direct hit by one of the cyborg’s particle weapons.

  “Are we glad to see you!” Ijuo exclaimed before firing.

  “Francis, can you move?” Jezzy asked, receiving a hazy thumbs-up from the Outcast Marine. He must be high as a kite on suit adrenaline injectors, Jezzy thought, having been there herself when she was shot by one of these things on Mars.

  “Ratko, how are we looking?” she called over her communicator.

  The Outcasts were spread out across the entirety of Floor 3 in small groups, having entered the floor from various airlocks, seeking to push through to join up in the middle and hopefully forcing the cyborgs back as they did.

  That had been the plan, anyway. Only now it looked as though every knot of Outcasts were pinned down and trapped by the seemingly unstoppable cyborgs.

  Only they aren’t unstoppable, are they? Jezzy thought.

  “I can’t push them back, sir!” Ratko shouted back.

  “Oh hell,” Jezzy growled. This was exactly what she didn’t want to happen. To get pinned down herself, as particle-beam laser shot burnt the edge of the laboratory door and the walls of the corridor beyond.

  Think, Jezzy, think! She had Ijuo and the wounded Francis here, and she had Ratko and Willoughby across the hall in the door to another room. Karamov and Malady… Where were they? Still stuck the next corridor over, fighting three or four cyborgs.

  “Lieutenant! Situation report! I need that hull breach closed off before it can cause any structural damage to the Oregon!” Faraday said.

  “Sir! Yes, sir. Heavy fighting. The cyborgs are proving tougher than we thought, but I’m working on it!” Jezzy said, before cursing under her breath.

  “I heard that, Lieutenant.”

  “Sorry, sir.” Jezzy leaned out and fired a hail of shells at the nearest cyborg, aiming for the thing’s head and neck, but she only managed to hit its chest and shoulder. It was thrown back against the wall, but its fellow machine-man took its place to fire at Jezzy.

  FZZZT!

  “Frack!” Jezzy was suddenly pulled back by Ijuo, who had grabbed the back of her suit as th
e purple-white line of fire shot across her head to destroy one of the cabinets behind her.

  “Thanks,” Jezzy breathed, as Ratko and Willoughby opened fire.

  Everything is just repeating itself… Jezzy growled. It was almost as if it didn’t matter what they did, they could only fight to a stalemate the way they were fighting right now.

  What would Solomon do? she thought. What would a real commander with real command training do in this situation? Almost as if she had summoned his ghost by thinking about him, the words rose in her mind. You have to change the situation.

  Which is a very easy thing to say, Jezzy growled internally, but not so easy in practice.

  How did we fight them off on Proxima? Jezzy thought, remembering the cyborgs that had attacked them at the imprimatur’s palace. Well, they hadn’t really fought them off, not really. Not in a firefight kind of way. But when they had first attacked, Jezzy and Gold Squad had successfully killed at least a few, and they had done that by…

  Close-quarter fighting, Jezzy realized, feeling a shiver of horror. The cyborg’s only vulnerability was their spinal cord, which seemed to house all their essential wiring. The problem was that it was sheathed in metal down the back and up to the base of each cyborg’s skull. On Proxima, the Outcasts had been fighting in the middle of the cyborgs, with one or two Marines engaged in trying to distract it while another Marine got in a shot or a strike at the thing’s neck.

  Close quarters. Close combat.

  “Ijuo, how good are you with that thing?” Jezzy hissed at the Outcast crouching beside her, gesturing to the thick gladius-style blade he had sheathed at his belt harness. Jezzy herself had one longer but thinner blade, subtly curving and razor sharp, strapped across her back.

  “I’m good, Lieutenant,” Ijuo said with a feral grin.

  “Then be prepared to follow me.” Jezzy nodded, then hailed Ratko and Willoughby. “Change of plan. You’re going to let the cyborgs advance. If you can, lure them towards your location,” she commanded.