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Gold Squad was the first out, tumbling through the sky like a line of dropped seeds from the heavy-bellied ship above them. The orange-red surface didn’t appear to rush toward them immediately. For a moment, they could see the rise and fall of the landscape below like a panorama. A large crater surrounded by the steep walls of rocky highlands, everything cast in ochre and red hues.

  And a trail of black smoke, from the far side of the crater where it met the highland.

  Jumper Suit Activation!

  Rockets 1, 2 Firing…

  Stabilizers Firing…

  Solomon didn’t need his suit’s notifications, because he felt the kick of the rockets behind him as, unseen to his eyes, two petal-ended rocket tubes extended from the base of the ‘seat’ and started to fire jets of burning white smoke. At the same time, two much smaller thrusters burst from the ‘shoulder’ sides of the suit and similarly fired, automatically tracking with the larger, fixed-position rockets below to manage their descent.

  They weren’t falling anymore. They were flying.

  GOLD SQUAD 1

  COMMAND ID: Sp. Commander Cready.

  ORDERS UPDATE:

  Locate and Approach X23 Crash Site.

  Solomon’s light tactical suit was updated with his local orders by the Rapid Response Fleet mainframe, which he assumed was transmitted via the transporter ship, even now rising back into the sky as its own four rockets sent it up into a safe orbit.

  Well, maybe this won’t be so hard after all, Solomon thought, relaying the orders to his team.

  “Gold Squad! The jumper suits look to be self-navigating, so no need to do anything there. We’re heading for the crash site,” he said over his suit controls as the wind howled around his helmet. “Malady, I want you on the north side. Hold position until we get a clearer picture of what’s going on. Petchel, Karamov, and Kol, you’re with me.”

  “What about me?” asked Combat Specialist Wen, flying behind him with her arms by her side and looking like a human dart.

  Good idea, he thought, and copied her. Suddenly his speed increased, and so he ordered his squad to do the same.

  “We don’t know if this will be close-combat or ranged,” Solomon said as the billows of black smoke started to get closer and closer. On his suit monitor, Solomon could see the vector blips of the other five Outcast squads fanning out to various coordinates around the crater on their own unique missions.

  “Until we know, I want you hanging back between Malady and us,” Solomon said, quickly laying out his plan. “Me and the other non-specialists will approach and lay down covering fire if needed. I’ll use your skills if we get into any nastier trouble…”

  “Pffft…” He heard Jezzie’s opinions on her being held in reserve, but Solomon wouldn’t throw her in yet. She was much better up close, and they needed to secure the site first, if they could.

  As it happened, the nastier trouble found them first.

  PHEET! PHEEET!

  Tracer lines erupted from the rocky walls of the crater near the crash site, heading straight toward them.

  Solomon’s suit readouts suddenly blared into alarms and warning.

  WARNING! ENEMY FIRE DETECTED!

  INCOMING: North by Northeast.

  But the jumper packs are automated, Solomon had a microsecond to think. What were they to do?

  But Solomon Cready had one thing going for him, and that was his very quick mind—a mind that had allowed him to make decisions on the fly in the much more complicated streets of New Kowloon.

  “Use your arms! Air brake!” he shouted suddenly, remembering how Jezzie’s arm and hand positions had changed their flight. He threw one arm out and felt the torment of the wind threaten to push it back, but it had the desired effect. The air resistance that it gained sent him in a spiraling arc. The jumper suit still powered him forward, but one of the two burning tracer lines of fire swept through the empty space where the specialist commander had been.

  Jezz! he thought in alarm. Hadn’t she been right behind him? He spared a look behind him, just as he heard the worst thing possible.

  “ARRG-ZZZT!” A scream almost deafened him over his communicator, before being cut off by sudden electric static.

  No!

  But he had no time to turn his head, as the red sand and rocks were coming up fast before his eyes, too fast, as his wild hand movement had changed the trajectory of impact.

  Solomon might have been quick-witted, but he had no idea how to brace against a planet. Without thinking, he did what came naturally, throwing his arms to protect his helmet as he folded his legs

  CRASH!

  Maybe it was some trick of fate, or maybe the jumper suit’s internal controls really were far more advanced than he had given them credit for, but as he hit the surface of the angry planet, he rolled, exploding in a plume of sand before sliding some twenty meters across the surface. He hadn’t hit the ground at a steep incline, nor had he hit the larger boulders, but he had been skidded across the softer sands of the plains, and it still hurt.

  WARNING! SUIT IMPACT!

  DAMAGE ASSESSMENT: Armor Plating -30%

  Solomon groaned, his mind still tumbling and turning, even as his body was still. There was the distant thuds and crashes of the rest of his team, and for a brief, hysterical moment, he wondered if they had all come in too hot and broken their limbs.

  First hour of the first day of actual combat and look what I have achieved. His cynical thoughts struck home, before being replaced by a sharp stab of worry.

  “Specialist Wen!” he shouted on the communicator, already turning and rolling himself from his deep furrow to try and find the nearest cover he could.

  “What?” He heard Jezzie’s voice behind him. She was okay. Then who…

  The answer was already visible on his suit readouts. There, along with the other Outcast vectors, and the warning orange exclamation marks where the enemy fire had come from, was the red and crossed out glyph of one of his squad.

  Adjunct-Marine Petchel.

  DECEASED.

  “No, no, no!” Cready snarled, turning on his heel to raise his Jackhammer rifle up at the nearest of the enemy exclamation marks. His eyes couldn’t see them, and instead all he could make out was the rock walls looking like multiple ribs and columns of sandstone. Like a wall of bones sticking out from the desert, Solomon thought darkly as he squeezed the trigger.

  BAP-PAP-PAP-PAP! The gun jumped in his arms as he cradled it. He knew how to take the recoil, and he kept it trained on the first exclamation mark for a burst of three seconds.

  “Gold Squad, sound off!” he demanded. They had all landed, and he needed to know that none of them had in fact broken anything.

  “Kalamov, okay.”

  “Wen, annoyed as all hell.”

  “Kol, okay.”

  “Malady, functional.”

  Well, that’s something at least. He didn’t let his mind go to the newer, smaller plume of black smoke rising from somewhere inside the crater, which he knew to be the remains of Petchel, struck by one of the enemy tracer rounds and immolating his jumper pack boosters.

  But Petchel apparently wasn’t the only one, Solomon realized as he fired another short burst on the position. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see multiple such smoke trails now rising into the sky, and the dart of bright fire from the walls all around them.

  They call this a search-and-rescue!? he thought angrily, as suddenly there was a strafing line of explosions as his fire was supported by Karamov and Kol.

  “Mission parameters still stand. I’m going to check out the crash site,” Malady announced.

  “I’m going with!” Wen chimed in, and Solomon was about to angrily tell them to dig in, until he realized that was precisely the plan. His plan. That he and the non-specialists lay down covering fire, while the specialists did the up close and personal work.

  How many Marines have the Outcasts lost altogether? If only they hadn’t been coming in so visible in their jumper packs, he thought as
he crouched behind a boulder as a couple of singular shots came from the walls behind. They were trading bullets with whomever the enemy was, as there appeared to be a series of caves in the rocky crater walls up there. They could get pinned down like this for hours, Solomon knew, unless...

  The jumper pack!

  It was still attached to his back, and now he had an idea.

  “Karamov. Kol. On my mark, hold fire. Then, when you see the enemy fire again, concentrate your fire on them, okay?”

  “Okay, but I don’t understand.” Karamov sounded stressed and uptight. “Isn’t that what we’re doing anyway?”

  “Not like this you’re not.” Solomon turned to trade a few shots with one of the hidden snipers, then barked, “Hold!” At the same time, he fumbled with the belt controls of his jumper pack, knowing that somewhere on there, there had to be—

  Phwoosh! The base rockets fired, catapulting him into the air and sideways, towards the walls.

  PHEET! PHEET!

  In another instant, when presented with such a close target, it seemed like Solomon had been right and that the two hidden shooters couldn’t help but open fire on it.

  Open fire on me, he thought as he quickly threw out one of his arms just as he had done before, forcing his body to spiral through the air…

  “Fire!” he shouted at Karamov and Kol as the enemies’ shots missed him as he tumbled, but now he had an altogether different problem. He was plummeting back to the ground, and this time, the base of the rocky walls was not smooth sand, but was littered with rocks.

  “Oh frack—”

  Crash! He hit the ground awkwardly, sliding and rolling down the grit and rock as his suit alarms once again went off.

  WARNING! SUIT IMPACT!

  DAMAGE ASSESSMENT: Armor Plating -60%

  “Urgh…” he was groaning as he lay, looking up at the sweep of rocky walls above him and the trails of black smoke now criss-crossing the sky. But at least there was some good news in all of this.

  “We got him, Commander!” Karamov was shouting excitedly. “He fell from the wall!”

  “You don’t know it was him, Karamov,” Cready groaned. This time, his body hurt as well. “And there were two of them.”

  BAP-PAP-PAP! Karamov and Kol concentrated their fire on the lines of caves for a moment, then waited. Solomon knew that he should get up, that he should move, but he felt like Malady had stood on him. He held his breath when his comrades finished their burst fire and waited for the return shot. None came.

  Elsewhere on the plain, it seemed as though the rest of the Outcasts were having similar issues with their own snipers. But who were they? he wondered. Smugglers? Raiders? They had brought down ‘craft X23,’ which he presumed was the largest of the burning pyres of debris and smoke that Malady and Wen had gone to investigate. Which reminded him.

  “Specialists Malady and Wen, report!” he said. He didn’t want to find out that they too had fallen to some random sniper.

  “ZZZZT!” There was no reply from their channels but the whine of static.

  No. No, Solomon started to think, pushing himself up, when his suit informed him.

  Unable to Establish Connection. Electronic and Atmospheric Diffusion.

  What did that even mean? he wondered, before realizing that it must be the crashed vehicle itself, and all the palls of smoke, messing with their suit’s short-range frequencies. He couldn’t even see Malady or Wen on his visor, so they must have moved around to the far side of the wreckage, cutting themselves off from Solomon’s line-of-sight.

  Okay, don’t panic…yet, he thought, looking around him. This was all too crazy, and too strange. They had fulfilled the mission parameters as far as he knew, but not the mission. There were clearly more enemy combatants out there, and they seemed to have no qualms at all about firing on Confederate Marine forces.

  If anyone even knows that we ARE Confederate Marines, Solomon considered. The Outcasts were a new unit, after all. Who were they fighting? Why had they brought down that ship?

  None of these were questions that were going to be answered here, but Solomon saw a place where he might get them. A little further down, at the base of the cliffs, was what looked to be a rounded entrance into the honeycomb network of caves. Stacked at its base was a series of large, reinforced plastic cargo crates.

  Whoever we’re fighting, this is their hideout. A base of some kind.

  “Karamov and Kol, move out on me!” he called, breaking into a jog toward the crates. First, he would try to track down and stop any more nests of these snipers in the crater walls, as he and the other Outcast Marines below were effectively becoming target practice for them.

  But it’s always a puzzle, isn’t it? And if he managed to get some clues on the journey, then all the better…

  10

  The Ambassador

  Solomon jammed his combat knife into the seal of the ruggedized plastic crate and shimmied the blade, the strength of his suit and his power gauntlets working to snap the heavy plastic and provide more purchase for him to physically rip it open.

  He couldn’t wait until he managed to get his hands on a proper power armor suit, as the things that he would be able to do in one of those would be incredible. Knock down walls. Knock a hole straight through a light spaceship maybe…

  But it was the contents of the box that surprised him. There, stacked in their precision-molded foam trays and all separated out into their composite parts, was tray after tray of Jackhammer combat rifles.

  “Commander-sir?” Karamov and Kol skidded to the walls of the cliff beside him, panting.

  “Whoa, Commander, you look terrible,” Karamov said, and Cready figured that it must have been the multiple times falling on his head from his most recent jumper pack adventure.

  “That’s sir terrible to you, soldier.” Cready managed a weary smile. But the point reminded him. “Jumper packs off. I don’t want any chance of suddenly exploding or attempting to fly under a mountain of rock,” he said, showing the two others where he had found the controls of the suit, and the large deactivation button. As soon as each of them had pressed it, there was a clicking sound and a whining as the magnet locks decoupled, the belt unclicked, and the rocket-propelled packs landed to the sand with heavy thuds behind them.

  “That’s better.” Solomon rolled his shoulders and pointed at the crate. “You recognize these?”

  “Of course,” Kol stated, looking from his own gun to the one below. “I thought they were military issue only?”

  Yeah, so did I, Solomon thought, nodding to the inside of the cave and pointedly not telling them what he was actually starting to think. That maybe this entire Hellas Chasma mission was something cooked up by the Confederacy to see how good they were…or weren’t.

  “Come on, follow me,” he said, turning and raising his own weapon as he stepped into the gloom.

  “AIIII!” Someone jumped out at him.

  “Frack!”

  “—stars!”

  The adjunct-Marines shouted in surprise as a shadowed form leaped toward Solomon, sweeping toward them what looked to be a long weapon—

  A sword? Solomon dropped to one knee and raised his nearest arm, feeling the grating jar as the blade contacted with his greaves and skittered off his power gauntlet. It still hurt terribly, though.

  “Agh!” he hissed in pain.

  “Get back!” Karamov was shouting, as beside him, Kol apparently wasted no time at all in snapping up his own Jackhammer and firing it.

  No! Solomon even had a split-second to think when he saw the muzzle flash of Kol’s weapon. He wanted this attacker alive, to see who it was. To demand why they had Confederate Marine weapons.

  BRAP-PAP! The shots, however, did the deadly job that they were designed to do, and Solomon heard an agonized gurgle as their ambusher was thrown back against the opposing wall, to slide to the floor, dead.

  Dammit! Solomon thought, but didn’t say. Kol hadn’t known any better. He hadn’t given the orders, wh
ich he did so now.

  “Nice shooting, Kol. Quick. But I want to try and incapacitate from now on. Legs, arms. We need to bring them in for questioning,” he said, and Kol’s body inside the light tactical suit straightened a little as if he had been slapped.

  Wonderful, Solomon thought. I’ve already managed to lose one of my squad, and the other two might really be dead as well, and now I’ve insulted one of my few remaining soldiers!

  But he didn’t have time to spare the feelings of Kol, or anyone else. This was no longer a recuse mission. This was a battle.

  “That’s an order, Kol,” Cready said as sternly as he could muster, earning a perfunctory nod from the sharp-shooting adjunct-Marine.

  “Aye, Commander,” Kol’s voice stated in a thick manner.

  Whatever, Solomon thought. We can work it out later. Not now. Instead, he crossed over the small entrance cavern, past other stacked equipment crates looking suspiciously like the two outside, and to the body of the man who had tried to chop his head off.

  Ill-prepared, was Specialist Commander Solomon’s first thought. Which was strange, given the high caliber of military armaments that they had available to them.

  Cheap encounter suit. He looked at the drab tan-colored two-piece suit with its rather basic seals and close-fitting helmet-visor. It had a basic sort of cross harness over the chest, but no body armor on at all. In fact, it looks a little like… “A work suit?” he murmured.

  “What’s that, Commander?” Karamov asked.

  “This suit, it’s not military, and it’s not industrial. If anything, I’d say…” Solomon took a step closer, although he really didn’t want to, given the state of the deceased, and saw that yes, there on the shoulder was a padded shape that looked as though a patch had been ripped off and re-sewn. But the general shape could still be made out. A round shape with a line spearing straight down from it.

  In fact, doesn’t that look a little like….