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  “The Red Planet is besieged by the Rapid Response Fleet. You won’t even make it through to the surface!” Ochrie spat angrily.

  “Oh well.” Tavin shrugged. “By now, Brigadier General Asquew should be either dead or flown.” Tavin tapped his own forehead, as if he had access to all the secrets and information of the universe locked in there.

  “And you lucky people are going to be the first Confederates to see what has become of Mars!” The clone-Tavin once again took on the awed, grandiose timbre. “You will be fortunate enough to witness the birth of a new colony on Mars. A Ru’at colony!”

  The Shield of Aries jumped, and Solomon and the rest felt the familiar lurch of nausea and vertigo that came with every use of the Barr-Hawking field.

  But while the other hostages thought that the jump-sickness only added to their misery, for Solomon the feeling was quite the reverse at that moment. He relished the waves of sick headaches that pounded at him. He welcomed the primal certainty that he shouldn’t be here and shouldn’t be doing this.

  Jump-sickness was one of the unintended side effects of using a Barr-Hawking field. The field itself created a small bow-wave in space-time in front of the craft, folding impossibly long stretches of space together so that you could travel enormous distances, whilst stretching the same space-time out behind you. It was one of the peculiarities of human biology that it created a sense of cosmic wrongness.

  This wrongness was a feeling that Solomon threw himself into, because it reminded him that he had to be, indeed, at some level, human.

  No matter what the clone-Tavin said… Solomon glared at the floor of the Shield. A few paces in front of him was the form of Kol, standing with his gun leveled at them. But the side effect of the jump-sickness gave Solomon minute glitches of perception. His brain simultaneously tried to tell him that Kol was very far, far away and yet still just a few paces ahead of him.

  Jumping, the trained Marine Corps soldier knew, was a nightmare for operational logistics. Your computers and ship and navigation might all be working perfectly, but your crew would all be bleary-eyed and sick, and trying to work out just where they should be and what was real or not.

  Which was why Solomon chose that moment to look over to the impossibly-close and must-be-far-away Ambassador Ochrie beside him and asked, “Is it true?”

  Ochrie raised her head—which seemed to take forever in the strange perceptions of the Barr-Hawking field—and the look on her face told Solomon everything that he needed to know.

  It was. He wasn’t him. He was a clone.

  BWAARRRRM!

  “Proximity warning! Proximity warning!”

  The Shield dropped from the top of the fold in space-time and immediately all the alarms in the ship went off.

  “What is it? What’s going on!?” Kol was nervous, already moving to the ladder up the flight deck.

  “Stay here with our guests,” clone-Tavin snapped, taking his place on the ladder and walking through the automatic doors.

  Solomon could see through the glass wall that separated the flight deck from them, and he could tell that something was up. A crew of four Martians looked worried, jumping up to race to different command units, hitting controls and shouting at each other.

  Unknown to the hostages inside the ship, the view outside the Shield was horrendous. The small Martian transporter—with its own Barr-Hawking generator wheel—had blazed into existence inside its own corona of light just as it should have done—

  —and straight into a warzone.

  “We’re too early!” Kol had run to one of the portholes to peer outside. “This stage was supposed to be completed by now!”

  “What stage?” Solomon heard Ochrie demand.

  Kol didn’t take his eyes from whatever was happening outside, but his voice carried clearly. “The arrival of the Ru’at.”

  Outside the Shield of Aries, there was a minefield of ship parts and fast-thrown debris, set against the backdrop of the mighty Red Planet. Mars was once again true to its reputation as it spilled blood on the surface and in space. Again.

  The Shield was little more than a disk-shaped craft, with the wheel of its Barr-Hawking particle drive still spinning like mad at the fatter end. In front of it, debris—some bits as large as the transporter itself—spun and careened through space.

  The debris quite clearly belonged to what was left of the Rapid Response Fleet, under General Asquew. She had been attempting to blockade the Red Planet, leading to a land-invasion of key infrastructure points and habitat-domes. That meant that the near-orbit around Mars was filled with Confederate Marine Corps battleships, frigates, destroyers, and smaller attack craft.

  Or it should have been, anyway. All that was left between the Shield and Mars was a handful of the heavy-bellied, proud-prowed battleships still firing their missiles and torpedoes into the darkness and at the Ru’at jump-ships.

  The Ru’at jump-ships were fat cylinders just a little bigger than the Shield itself, with three concentric rotating rings around their tubular body, which spun in a blur of light. These rotating rings looked a little like the rings of the Barr-Hawking ships, but any human looking at them would see they had something to do with the general propulsion and not just the ability to cross the light-speed barrier.

  But the Ru’at jump-ships were attacking the remaining knot of Martian defenders. They flickered through the vacuum of space, blurring so that they looked to be traveling at near light-speed already, before stopping stock still and firing a singular purple-blue beam from their nosecones at the Confederate vessels.

  These particle beams were unlike anything that the Confederate ships had faced, and everywhere they hit scored a line across a Marine Corps ship, whole floors depressurizing and rupturing, spilling fire, plasma, bodies, and equipment into the cold grave of space.

  The Rapid Response Fleet was getting wiped out, but the remaining ships were not retreating.

  “BWAAARM! Brace for impact!” the Shield’s automated voice declared, a moment before the ship suddenly juddered and violently turned on its side, throwing Kol against the wall.

  “Urgh!” The traitor flopped, clutching his forehead that was now blossoming with blood as sparks showered from one of the wall units.

  “We’re being targeted!” Solomon and the other hostages could hear the desperate calls from the flight deck. Someone must have left the open channel running in the panic.

  “What is it? Who’s attacking us?” Kol was shouting, struggling to his feet as he attempted to make it to the ladder, but Solomon could see that the knock on his head was bad. Not bad enough to kill him—more’s the pity, the Gold Squad Commander thought—but bad enough to make him woozy.

  “You can’t fly this thing, Kol,” Solomon snapped. “You know it. And it looks like your Martian pilots aren’t worth the sand they came from.” The lieutenant had a plan, but the chances of it working were next to nothing. “Let me out. I’ll fly this bird to safety.”

  “Hngh-ah…what?” Kol had slouched onto his knees, holding his head as he tried to stem the bleeding.

  Bet you wished you made it to full Marine and your power suit now, huh? Solomon couldn’t resist the rather uncharitable thought.

  “Tavin!” Solomon shouted, hoping that if the flight deck had left their open channel on, then they would also have left their receiver open as well. It worked, as the glass doors above them hissed open and there, clutching at the frames, was the clone-Tavin, looking paler than usual.

  “Evasive Action!” the speakers shouted, and clone-Tavin was thrown to one side as the Shield lurched once more—but not fast enough.

  FZZZARRK! There was a sudden explosion from the rear of the Shield of Aries and the rear half of the hold—just a few meters from where the hostages and cyborgs sat—crumpled inwards, spilling sparks and wires.

  “Tavin! Another one of whatever those were and we’ll be looking straight into space!” Solomon shouted. “You know I was trained by the best Marine program. Let me fly!�
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  But clone-Tavin did not respond from above them. Solomon wondered if the Shield’s sudden swerve and attempt to get away from whatever had hit them had injured the man.

  Hopefully, Solomon thought.

  “BWAARRM! Aft Hull compromised! Power lost to rear-rockets 3 and 4!” the computer voice said once again, and the ship lurched and swung as it tried to compensate.

  “I can fly! I was trained for combat missions, and I don’t want to die up here!” Solomon shouted at the open flight deck doors as the hostages were shaken in their seats.

  “You’re a pilot?” a new voice said over Kol’s groaning. It was one of the Martian pilots, looking small and scared as she clutched to the open doorframe in her rust-red encounter suit. She had a simple command visor pushed back over her brow and had soot and dust down one side of her face.

  There was smoke coming from the open doorway above the woman’s head, the lieutenant saw. Then it’s a lot worse that even I thought. Whatever had struck the Shield must have also shorted some of the ship’s command circuits, he thought. That was one of the only ways that you’d get a fire on a flight deck short of a direct hit.

  “I can fly,” Solomon said. He wasn’t technically a pilot. That would have been, back in the Marine Corps anyway, the role of the technical specialists, trained in all aspects of military machines from their upkeep to their use.

  Which is what Kol was before he defected. Solomon looked again at the injured man, now scrabbling at the wall-mounted medical module for help. Nope. Kol would have made the better pilot, but from the look on the face of the Martian woman above them, even she could see that her reserve pilot was in a bad way.

  “I’m releasing him!” the pilot shouted back into the flight deck as she turned to scrabble at one of the wall consoles, hands hitting buttons and flicking through holographic controls. If there was any argument from the crew of the Shield, then Solomon couldn’t make it out over the sounds of the alarms.

  “Lieutenant! You cannot help these people. They’re trying to bring down the Confederacy!” Ochrie was saying—slightly hysterically, in Solomon’s opinion.

  “The Confederacy is already brought down, lady!” Solomon returned. His nerves were frayed with the recent revelation and his temper was up. But even in the middle of his confusion and anger at being lied to his whole life, there was an icy center to his thoughts. “Trust me, Ambassador. I’m going to get us out of here.”

  “And fight off the Ru’at all on your own?” Ochrie said imperiously.

  “If I have to,” he replied, seconds before there was click and the harness that had been holding his arms and waist snapped open, released by the Martian woman above.

  “Get that traitor’s gun!” Ochrie hissed as soon as Solomon was free, but the lieutenant had barely jumped out of his chair before a silver-chrome hand had grabbed his shoulder and clamped down in a vice-like grip.

  “Ach! Really!?” Solomon snarled up at the flight deck as the cyborg that had moved quickly to seize him continued to stare impassively forward.

  “You can fly. But don’t think for a minute I trust you,” said the rising form of clone-Tavin, shaking his head and staggering. “You’re going to have a gun to your head the whole time, and if I suspect for a second that you’re trying to escape, I’ll tell the cyborgs to blow a hole through your friends down there!” clone-Tavin said angrily, batting at the Martian woman to return to her seat.

  The Shield tossed and turned as it tried to avoid the debris of destroyed battleships, as well as the attacks by whomever was trying to take them out.

  “BWAAAARM! Coolant system overheating! Mandatory venting procedure activated!” the computer said, and the ship lights flickered, the temperature dropping noticeably.

  But that temperature is going to rise soon, Solomon knew as the cyborg marched him to the ladder. One of the many misnomers about spacecraft was that, without all of these environmental controls, they would be freezing cargo boxes.

  Which is only partly true, Solomon thought as he climbed quickly up to the level of the flight deck. The cyborg clanked behind him.

  In truth, a spacecraft had to endure conditions similar to that of the harshest deserts on Earth. If you were traveling through a vacuum, far enough from the sun for it to just be another twinkling blip in the sky, then the spacecraft had to be kept heated. But as soon as you flew as near to a star as any of the inner planets of the solar system, then the unshielded radiation could fry flesh in minutes.

  Which is why every ship needs a transvector coolant system, Solomon knew. It kept the inner hull panels cool, reducing heat transmission to the inside of the craft, or could be turned into a heating system, warming up the inner hull panels by a few degrees.

  And if that system was broken…it meant that the tin box they were flying in was at the mercy of solar winds and reflected radiation from the Red Planet below.

  “What’s the sit-rep?” Solomon barked as soon as he entered the flight deck, seeing that it was already in a mess.

  The Martian transporter should have had three console-panels and three staff members sitting at each one. A classic figuration, the lieutenant thought, with the consoles given over to pilot and navigation, comms, scanners and ship technical, and finally, the captain’s seat. The flight deck of the Shield was also laid out in the classic design: a semicircle of floor space, before the wide viewing porthole above, and drop-down screens—two of them, cracked and dark.

  Only the piloting and navigation console seats appeared operational, as both the captain’s seat and the comms console were smoking wrecks.

  “What the crap happened here!?” Solomon said in alarm as he took the piloting chair and buckled himself in.

  “Massive system overload. Negative feedback energy surge,” the Martian lady with the sooty face said, hovering around the ruined comms desk and trying to see if any of its smoking, cracked screens were still operation.

  It was then that Solomon noticed the red-suited bodies—two more of the Martian flight crew, the last two. They must have been the pilot and the captain of the Shield, who had been thrown to the floor, dead.

  Click. A sound by the side of his head made Solomon turn to see the snarling face of clone-Tavin, pointing a heavy pistol at him from one side of his chair, while behind him loomed the silent, ominous form of the cyborg.

  “Do you really need to do that?” Solomon said as he gritted his teeth and took the controls. He was pleased that there was nothing out of place here, at least—two flight sticks, one on either side of the chair, linked to the console board in front of him.

  “As I said, Lieutenant Cready—any suspicion that you are attempting to escape and I will not waste my time with you any longer!” Tavin repeated his former warning.

  Gee, thanks, the man thought as he concentrated on the board in front of him, throwing glances up to the viewing port ahead to get a visual cue.

  “BWAAARM! Proximity alert!” the Shield of Aries computer was clearly still active as it blurted out a warning that was entirely unnecessary.

  Unnecessary because Solomon could see the giant bit of Marine Corps battleship spinning through space and coming straight toward them. On one of its torn faces, Solomon could clearly see the words CMC Strident—the Confederate Marine Corps battleship known as the Strident, or what remained of it anyway.

  6

  Take My Breath Away

  “Come in, Outcast Company! Come in, Gold Squad! Anyone!?” Jezzy said over her suit communicator. Even the usually calm and collected Yakuza killer starting to fray at the edges.

  “Where are you all?” Jezzy whispered to herself. Colonel Faraday of the Oregon had given the evacuation alarm just a few minutes before the decompression event.

  How many Marines managed to get to the escape modules and out? Jezzy thought. Surely some of them would have survived, wouldn’t they?

  FZZT! “Comm... Oregon… Repeat: confirm your status…” Her suit communicator suddenly glitched and a crackle of static met
the woman’s ears, but Jezzy couldn’t make the words out.

  It must be this damn ship, Jezzy thought. All the damage to the hull and the infrastructure was getting in the way of her suit transmitter. Normally, any Marine Corps power suit would piggy-back on the local server-transmitter of the battle group, thus Jezzy’s suit telemetries should be using the Oregon’s own signal boosters, as her suit’s personal range was tiny in comparison to the banks of satellite dishes and pulsed radio waves that the ship could send.

  But the ship’s communicators must be down, so I’m only on suit power… Jezzy reasoned. The small wireless and radio transmitters installed in her power armor wouldn’t be able to broadcast through the thick metals of the Oregon.

  But someone had heard her. Someone was on the other end of the line.

  “Hello? This is Lieutenant Wen, of the Outcasts I’m on board the Oregon, Deck 3… I think…” Jezzy repeated, and then forced herself to repeat the same words again, but much slower still.

  “Hello? Can anyone read me?”

  For a moment, there was nothing, and then—

  FZZT! “Lieutenant Wen! This is Faraday… FZZZT!”

  “Colonel?” Jezzy blinked in surprised. Of all of the people that she might have expected to hear on the other end of the line—Malady perhaps, Willoughby or Ratko—she had never even dreamed it would be the colonel who would answer.

  “What are you doing still on Level 3? I tho— FZZZZT! —of there!?” she heard the man’s patchy voice exclaim.

  “Colonel, line is bad. Repeat: Line bad. I’m trapped. Bulkhead…” She scanned the walls for the stencil marks she had seen earlier. “…forty-four, bulkhead forty-four.”

  There was a sudden explosion of some very caustic swearing on the other end before Faraday, the man in charge of the Oregon and their entire battlegroup, returned to civility. “FZZT! ...there. Repeat: Wait there… I’m coming to… FZZT!”