Outcast Marines series Boxed Set 2 Read online

  OUTCASTS DISEMBARK 07:00 HRS…

  ALL OUTCASTS TO CARRY BASIC EQUIPMENT…

  BLUE SQUAD REPORT TO TECHNICAL BAY 4…

  RED SQUAD TO REPORT TO MEDICAL…

  Ganymede’s internal speaker systems clattered with updates and repeated orders as the various members of the Outcasts rushed about their business, preparing in what little ways they could. There was an air of taut expectation, even worry, Solomon realized as he finished applying machine oil to the gears and servo joints in his battle harness and made sure that his personal first aid kid was topped up with all the requisite bandages, freezing sprays, and tranquilizer sprays.

  “Spare oxygen cannisters…check,” he murmured as he assembled with the rest of Gold Squad in the main launch bay, located on the ground floor of the facility and looking like a large warehouse with three separate ramps leading up to thick bulkhead doors. Already there was steam rising from the vents around the doors as the ships outside connected and re-pressurized the seals to allow secure transit.

  Apart from Malady, who lived in his suit, each squad member stood in front of the booth that contained their encounter suits, which had their identifier nametags over the frame on scrolling LEDs.

  Sp. Cmdr. CREADY (S.)

  The light tactical suits had a liquid oxygen mix stored throughout the harness and the undermesh suit in a series of tubes, which converted the pressurized material into breathable air, as well as having environmental filters on their helmet visor that could recycle and suck oxygen out of any near-Earth environment, like Mars. But Solomon still made sure that he clipped an extra cannister, which looked more like a silver ampule, into his harness, just in case.

  “We don’t know how long we’ve got down there, but I don’t want to take any chances…” he was saying, as beside him the others shrugged into their undermesh suits and reached for their battle harnesses. These acted like a light, close-fitting flexible frame of intelligent materials on which to connect the heavy combat boots with servo-assisted joints and sheaths that stretched halfway up the thigh, as well as the power gauntlets, the breastplate, collar, and shoulder pads.

  OUTCASTS DISEMBARK 07:00 HRS…

  GOLD SQUAD TO REPORT TO HANGAR BAY DOOR 1 IMMEDIATELY…

  “Oh crap, give a guy some time to get dressed!” Kol, ever the comedian, said just as all of the scrolling LED lights over their booths flashed red.

  “What now?” Solomon growled. When he tried to pull his helmet visor from its seat, he found that it was locked in place. “Hey!?”

  “Gold Squad?” said a voice, and they turned to see that it was one of the many staffers who were hurrying delivering last-minute changes or supplying the adjunct-Marines with requested final pieces of kit.

  “Order change from the Lord General. Your suits will be transported alongside you, but you will be wearing civilians for your mission,” the staffer said, delivering the orders succinctly before rushing off.

  “What?” Karamov coughed. “No tactical suits? We won’t last five minutes…”

  But it’s an infiltration mission, isn’t it? Solomon remembered. If they weren’t allowed to wear their tacticals, then that meant they really were going to go in undercover…

  But as much as Solomon felt the same trickle of doubt run through him, he knew that he also needed to give his squad some confidence in their abilities. “You heard the man, Squad. Leave everything where it is and get over to Hangar 1. I always thought those things slowed us down, anyway…” he tried to joke, turning to jog—

  “Excuse me, Commander,” said an electronic, deadpan voice. It was Malady, surgically sealed into the gigantic man-tank of his full tactical suit.

  Ah. Solomon considered his options, before deciding on the classic Marine Corps response, “I have no idea what they’re planning to do to camouflage you, big fella. I say we let the higher-ups worry about it.”

  “As you wish, Commander.” Malady managed to not sound very pleased as the shutters on the Gold Squad booths banged closed, and they were threading their way past the other squads to be the first to assemble at the ramp of Hangar 1, where Solomon’s heart fell when he saw the warden, Doctor Palinov, and a handful of other staffers waiting for him.

  “Sir?” Solomon managed to bite down on the scorn. The warden had made no attempt to hide his hatred for Solomon, claiming that the murderer and thief had no right to be there, but so far, Solomon had managed to scrape through and even win friends amongst the colonels, it seemed.

  “Gold Squad!” Coates snapped at them. “You heard your orders. Infiltrate and extract. You will be traveling separately to your rendezvous point, and you will find all the equipment, including weapons, you need in the ship,” Coates nodded to the hissing doors beside him. “Your light tactical suits will be shipped alongside you and deposited at a safe location, in case you require them. Any questions?”

  “Ah…” Solomon looked at Specialist Malady. “Just one point of confusion, sir…”

  “Specialist Malady will stay with the tactical suits drop-off location and will be your back-up in case things…get interesting,” the warden stated.

  Wow, they really are playing this one by the book. Solomon suppressed another shiver of annoyance. The colonels had even planned how they were going to tackle this mission, instead of leaving it to him to figure out. Which he was sure that he would do a better job of, given his long history of sneaking into places where he shouldn’t be.

  We’ll just see what happens on the ground, Solomon promised himself.

  “Injections.” Doctor Palinov stepped forward.

  Solomon flinched. He knew precisely what was in some of those injector pens, and he also knew the cost.

  “Something wrong, solider?” the blonde-bobbed doctor looked at him strangely over her glasses.

  “Just nerves,” Solomon lied. And Serum 21. The mutagenic gene-virus that added layers of RNA to their own DNA strands, allowing them to heal faster, react quicker, be stronger and tougher… And also collapse and die at any given moment, Solomon thought, knowing that he couldn’t refuse to be injected, but also not wanting to have any of that toxin in his system.

  Solomon knew that he alone, of all of the Outcasts, had a much higher dose, as well. His solution read 48% percent, whereas everyone else’s were in the low tens. He was still trying to work out if it was the doctor trying to kill him off quickly by giving him an increased chance of the deadly side-effects, or whether he was just a ‘lucky’ guinea pig.

  “Just your unique antibiotic, anti-viral strains, plus a touch of steroids for the mission ahead,” the doctor lied, reaching up to apply the injector pen to Solomon’s neck.

  “Hsst!” A stab of pain, and then that was it, he was done and Doctor Palinov had stepped back, watching him intently. Solomon breathed. He didn’t collapse.

  “Good. Well… Next?” Palinov said quickly, looking almost embarrassed at this deception. None of the Outcasts were supposed to know about the illegal gene-therapy they were undergoing out here, but Solomon did.

  “Cready! You heard the doctor, move it!” the warden shouted at him, and he did, reluctantly, step back and turn to the ramp, where the doors were hissing open.

  Mars, here we come. Solomon stepped through the steam and towards a war.

  The warden had been right that they were traveling separately to all of the other squads. Gold Squad merged into a small airlock and out the other side into a cramped hold far smaller than the spacious warehouses of the Marine Transporters. The hold was already partly filled with crates and boxes strapped to the sides of the walls, with a set of metal stairs leading to the decks above, down which was already rushing a man in sandy-colored robes over an undermesh suit.

  He didn’t have any military insignia visible, but from the way that he moved and his general build—and buzzcut, Solomon thought, he could see all the hallmarks of military training radiating from the man.

  “Gold Squad? I’m Lieutenant Vikram, and I’ll be leading you into Armstrong
. You got robes, weapons, and personal communicators in the crates by the launch seats there. Make sure you check your equipment and get dressed. We’re on a small privateer merchant vessel the Bluebird, and we’ll be heading straight for deployment,” Vikram said, sparing them all a glance before stopping when he saw Malady.

  “Oh,” the man said, and that was all he had to say on the matter as he turned back to the others. “I’ll be relaying your mission parameters as we go, working from the Bluebird to liaise with Marine Command on our encrypted frequency to you as you make your way through Armstrong to the target, clear?”

  Not really, Solomon thought. “What about enemy contact? How many? What are our evacuation procedures?” he said, remembering his command lessons. This mission was nothing like what he had been trained to expect.

  “Enemy contact?” Vikram gave a short, wolf’s bark of a laugh. “If any of you start shooting up the place in there, then you’ll be surrounded by thirty-odd thousand enemy contacts! And the evacuation procedure is simple: I guide you to your target using communicators, you get the job done, you hightail it back to the Bluebird as soon as you can, and I get us off planet before all hell breaks loose. That’s our evacuation plan.”

  “We were told our light tacticals would be dropped off in case we needed them.” Along with Malady. Solomon felt a lot securer knowing that Malady would be waiting with an array of combat suits that they could hop into as soon as the bullets started flying, and he had no doubt that they would, as they always did.

  “They will be. They’re being loaded in the secondary storage bay as we speak.” Vikram gave Solomon a dead-eye stare, as if the man didn’t like being questioned. “But I’ll only know the drop-off location when I get eyes on the ground. This is a highly fluid situation and we might need to change at the last moment…” Solomon made a face. Too many variables, he thought. We are going into this mission almost blind…

  “Anything else? No? Good.” However, Vikram was not apparently going to offer them anything else, as he moved to re-climb the stairs and disappear through one of the doors.

  Solomon stood for a moment longer, feeling uncertain, before shaking his head and nodding to the crates. “Let’s get them open, see what they’ve given us…”

  Mostly, it appeared to be a selection of robes, clothes, backpacks, and that seemed to be about it.

  “Really?” Karamov said miserably. “They expect us to face armed insurgents with this?”

  But Solomon knew better. He might not have done anything so volatile or so threatening with so little equipment, but he had certainly managed to pull off impressive heists with little more than a lockpick and a set of gloves. “Hold your judgement, let’s see…” He popped the slight pressure seals and pulled the bag open to see that it contained a set of poly-fiber gloves, a strand of climbing rope, and various perhaps-useful devices such as carabiner clips, flashlights, handheld drills, first aid kits and a basic toolset.

  What else was in there, though, was a bulky pistol and holster, spare ammunition magazines, and a small plastic wallet which, when opened, revealed a falsified identity card and a plastic envelope.

  GEO-SAT SHORTWAVE COMMUNICATOR, MODEL 3x

  Solomon read the packaging and ripped it open to reveal a small earbud that nestled perfectly in his right ear.

  GEO-SAT TECHNOLOGIES… INITIATING…

  Connection Made!

  Node 1 (CREADY) Active…

  Node 2 (MALADY) Active…

  Node 3 (WEN) Active…

  Node 4 (KARAMOV) Active…

  Node 5 (KOL) Active…

  Establishing Connection… SUPERVISOR NODE (VIKRAM) Active…

  The tinny electronic words whispered into Solomon’s ear, accompanied by dull bleeps and hums. The small communicators would read the vibrations and movements of Solomon’s jaw as he whispered or talked, transmitting them to speech to the other nodes in the chain, looked after by their ‘supervisor,’ Lieutenant Vikram.

  They were a far cry from the fully-developed systems of the visor-helmets, which displayed washed-out holographic commands, updates, battle schematics, and suit readouts on the inside of the faceplate, but at least Solomon could talk to the rest of his crew now if they got separated.

  “Hey. They couldn’t find the right size?” Kol was saying mournfully as he started pulling on the costumes over his undermesh suit. A simple rigger jacket, faux reinforcements at the elbow pads and collar, along with rough, baggy trousers with multiple pockets. The jackets and trousers varied in cut and style and even color a little between the four human Gold Squad members, but they were all largely similar in affect. When they had finished dressing, Solomon looked up to see that his adjunct-Marine squad had been transformed into modestly poor Martian factory or station workers. Nothing special stuck out from any of them. Apart from Malady looming over everyone and looking about as camouflaged as a walking ballista.

  Next came the sandy, ochre, and red robes—again in a variety of colors, cuts, and styles. Some were little more than ponchos, while others were styled more like a long dressing gown with sashed belts that locked and cinched at the front.

  The colors of the Red Planet, Solomon thought as he adjusted his own reddish poncho robe. The colors of the Chosen of Mars, he corrected himself.

  The pistols went under the robes, Solomon preferring his just above his hip, Wen strapping hers under the arm, and Karamov and Kol electing for the more traditional small-of-the-back concealed position. Each Marine wore their backpack either under or over their robes, giving them a humped appearance and only adding to the impression of the harried, already-busy worker.

  “Look at us. Martians,” Solomon said with a grin, holding out his arms and turning around.

  “GET YOURSELF STRAPPED IN! LAUNCH in Five…Four…Three...Two…”

  The voice of Lieutenant Vikram sounded over the speaker system and their earbuds, and the floor of the hold was already starting to shake and rise as they scrambled for the chairs in place along the walls and buckled themselves in.

  This was it. They were going to war.

  Outside the semi-circular building of the Ganymede facility, a set of blocky vessels hissed and extruded steam. Two of them were the large square Marine transporters with their four corners displaying large omni-directional thrusters. Still more of these large ships were lowering themselves through the thin Ganymede atmosphere in holding positions.

  Solomon and the rest of the Gold Squad had never seen Ganymede look so busy, and for a moment, he suddenly received an intimation of just how vast the machine of the Confederate Marine Corps really was. At times of haphazard ‘peace’—if that was what he could call the last confusing, dangerous year—it had seemed that Ganymede stood on its own, with few visitors or contact with the outside world. True Outcasts indeed.

  Now, however, it looked to Solomon that the rest of the CMC had just been biding its time, as he saw lights flickering in complicated arrays of signaling between the control towers of Ganymede and the approaching craft above. Still further out from the porthole of the Bluebird, Solomon could see the large terrestrial mech-walkers converging on the storage dumps around the base, moving in complicated patterns as the facility swung into full-action stations.

  The Bluebird wasn’t like the other craft that swarmed Jupiter’s moon, however. It was a fraction of the size and shaped like a small, elongated wedge of black and red metal, with a protruding belly criss-crossed with external loading straps and two fixed-state wings displaying directional thrusters, indicating that it could travel both in atmosphere and between the stars.

  With roars from its two largest wing thrusters, the Bluebird was the first to ascend of all the craft locked onto the launch bay, rising on twin jets of fire and smoke before hovering in the night a few hundred feet up. Its thrusters revolved in place until they were pointed straight out as the smaller positional stabilizers fired in bursts.

  WHOOOM! And, with a vibrational roar that the Gold Squad members could feel inside
the craft but was silent outside, the Bluebird exploded into motion. It had none of the tonnage of the Marine transporter rockets, and so required speed as well as force to break even the thin envelope of Ganymede’s gravity.

  Inside the small hold, designed for a small merchant crew to make shipments between the stations, everything shook and juddered as the Bluebird climbed, before suddenly going still as they entered true space and glided between the moon of Ganymede and its father, the gas giant Jupiter.

  They couldn’t see ahead of them, but what would have surprised Solomon—if he stopped to care about such things—was what lay ahead of them. In the small patch of null space where the gravity wells of Jupiter’s competing moons cancelled each other out was stationed not one but three of the Barr-Hawking jump-ships, looking like rings attached to a small torpedo-like cockpit.

  The Barr-Hawking jump-ships were insanely expensive to run, and only the deep-field and the largest of the dreadnaught battle cruisers also had their own internal Barr-Hawking particle generators.

  But three had been reserved for the Outcasts alone, and one had been assigned to the tiny Bluebird, even though the fuel expenditure alone would have been worth a space station. That, if nothing else, would have confirmed just how much importance the Colonel Asquew placed on their mission—even if she had only given them heavy pistols to defend themselves.

  With precise balletic grace, the Barr-Hawking was already moving ahead of the Bluebird, starting to cycle the outboard ring as it matched its trajectory and speed with the merchant craft. Gases puffed as the magnetic clamps were thrown out on cables to attach to the Bluebird’s nose and body, before the cables pulled tight and the jump-ships started to perform their own special kind of scientific magic.