Outcast Marines series Boxed Set Read online

  The object joined, flashed a total green, and then changed. This time another shape, also made of complicated angles and towers, with two more attendant pieces to choose from.

  This was the thing about Solomon Cready, and something which he didn’t generally like to boast about—well, he did, but this sort of skill was not something that he could ever admit to, as it was usually dedicated to working out the layouts of buildings and how best to avoid the various drone surveillance, trip-wires or infrared sensors…

  But the fact was, he was really good at puzzles.

  He didn’t know when this aptitude had started, not really, but he remembered always doing well in his ‘digital studies’ class, which was a catchall term that his local community college had for everything from computer programming to computer research and coding. He wasn’t a whiz kid by any stretch of the imagination, but there was something about Solomon’s head that could see the shape of a situation in front of him like a puzzle, and it was matched by his insatiable curiosity to figure it out.

  It was this curiosity that had lead to his downfall, he recalled, having found a way to hack the surveillance cameras of the community college so that he could break into the mechanical laboratories to steal an experimental rocket-bike. He had been caught, fined, and expelled, but that hadn’t done anything to curb his curiosity.

  It turned out that Solomon was good at evading the authorities, just as he was good at getting into places where he shouldn’t be. Every situation was a puzzle, and life was a game, he reflected as he matched the next set of shapes, and then the next and the next…

  COMPLETED. 100% SUCCESS.

  BEGINNING INDUCTION PROGRAM…

  The screen flashed again, and the floating shapes disappeared, this time to be replaced by a flowing line of text, with key pull quotes expanding as his eyes moved over them, and interspersed with short videos, pictures, and interviews.

  Solomon began to learn about the formation of the Confederate Marines, its capabilities and operational codes, as well as being introduced to a couple dozen different schematics and details for the various craft and equipment that the Marines were allowed to use.

  CONFEDERATE MARINE SERVICE

  OVERSIGHT: DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE AND DEFENSE

  SUPREME OFFICER: Lord Admiral Dametz

  APPROX PERSONNEL: 99, 000 (not including support, reserve, logistics and non-combatant roles)

  COMPETENCIES:

  Each Confederate Marine is equipped in two standard packages. Light tactical encounter suit or power armor, with light tactical being especially designed for reconnaissance, rapid search and deployment, and usually hot-world conditions. Able to withstand some low-caliber projectile weapons as well as impacts, strikes, melee weapons and most physical attacks. Power armor is designed for full-assault and battlefield conditions, is servo-assisted, and can double-function as a spacesuit and survival pod. Power armor also has a full range of chemical and biological filters in place to protect from most biological and chemical agents, and is able to withstand most commonplace projectile weapons, as well as melee and physical attacks from conventional attack vectors.

  Each Confederate Marine, although specializing in their own particular weapons system, is automatically equipped with a Jackhammer rifle able to be modified to personal tastes, including: burst fire, grenade launch, close-attack bayonet, torch, flare deployment.

  Any Confederate Marine, upon receiving their full Marine status, is also able to choose particular weapons systems to suit their aptitudes and the strategic requirements of their squad and current mission. This is not limited to, but could include: rocket launcher, micro-missile system, close-combat blade, machine pistols, heavy rifles, gun halberds, etc.

  Each Confederate Marine comes equipped with a range of personal tools and equipment, not limited to, but not always including: combat knife, poly-filament climbing wire, personal medical kit including basic range of wound sprays, pain sprays, and stimulant injectors, personal data-node (inbuilt in both light tactical and power armor suits) enabling direct digital uplink with relevant superiors, short-wave transmitter/responder, as standard.

  Each Confederate Marine is expected to be highly versed in both ranged (projectile) combat, as well as close-combat (hand-to-hand, including some weapons training) and have a working familiarity with craft operations, ensuring that despite operational challenges in the battlefield, there should always be a Marine capable of at least basic piloting skills present.

  Each Confederate Marine reaches their point of deployment with the full, current array of viral, fungal, and disease inoculations and immune-system support.

  MARINE FORCE COMPETENCIES:

  Confederate Marines are split into the following four fleets:

  Earth Fleet.

  3 x Dreadnought-Class Warships, and attendant fighter-craft.

  Responsible for the patrol and defense of Earth and near-Earth orbit.

  Moon Fleet.

  1 x Dreadnought-Class Warship, and attendant fighter-craft.

  Responsible for the defense of the Moon, and to assist Earth Fleet.

  Rapid Response Fleet.

  3 x Warrior-Class Battleships, and attendant fighter-craft.

  Stationed near Jupiter, tasked with responding where needed.

  Borders Fleet.

  4 x Dreadnought-Class Warships, and attendant fighter-craft.

  3 x Warrior-Class Battleships, and attendant fighter-craft.

  On constant rotation, tasked with securing trade routes and colonial safety.

  “Huh,” Solomon murmured as he read up on the history and structure of his new organization. It was a little boring to be honest, but it was stuff that he assumed he had to know if he was going to make a go of it for the next twelve years.

  A few things stuck out at him, though, like the fact that the Borders Fleet was larger than the Earth Fleet, telling him—like the puzzle that every situation was—that the Confederate Marines were more concerned with keeping the various colony worlds in check than they were the safety concerns near Earth.

  Also, Jupiter… He reread the description of the Rapid Response Fleet, clicking on their title to bring up a list of its most notable battles and skirmishes. Jupiter is where I am, isn’t it? He was on Ganymede Military Base, and Ganymede was the largest moon of Jupiter—the largest moon in the entire solar system, in fact, almost a planetoid in its own right. So that meant, surely, that the ‘MEF’ or Marine Expeditionary Force—the Outcasts, he added—were going to be a part of the Rapid Response Fleet.

  “What sort of stuff did they get into, again?” he muttered as he clicked through to the information, and then wished he hadn’t.

  •Pacification of Olympus Mons, Mars

  •Proxima Gate Battles, 2195

  •Pacification of Tycho

  •Huygens Orbital Station Battle, 2202

  •Pacification of Hellas Chasma, Mars

  •Battle of Cassandra Asteroid Cloud

  •Moon Strike Deployment, 2173-2182

  “Holy frack…” Solomon’s eyes slid down the list of most notable conflicts and campaigns that the Rapid Response Fleet had been on. It wasn’t that there was a lot of them, although there were, but what little he had heard of them back on the news wires and blog sites back on Earth.

  The ‘pacifications’ were all, generally, the deployment of troops against insurgent forces and colonial radicals who had tried to declare themselves independent or generally attack Confederate power structures on Mars, the moon of Tycho, and so on. Solomon remembered the drone footage of occasional street-to-street fighting, the red air hazy with even more soot and dust than normal. It didn’t look like fun. At all.

  The Proxima Gate Battles… That had been the most ‘warlike’ of all of the list, and it was when, only ten years or so ago, a coalition of raiders and smugglers had sought to close off the jump routes to the distant colony of Proxima, thus controlling all trade that flowed between the two worlds. It had been the fight for the ver
y reason of the Confederacy’s existence, and it had been awful and bloody—proving what every pundit had already agreed upon: that the raiders, smugglers, and one-time looters were being financed and backed by some of the largest of criminal organizations right there on Earth. Or else, they had a lot of very influential friends in high places. Who else could go toe-to-toe against the Confederacy?

  But it was also the type of deployments that the Rapid Response Fleet (and hence, his Outcast unit of the MEF) got sent on that was troubling Solomon. None of these missions looked to be run of the mill, boring space lane patrols, and it wasn’t even colony and station defense, or stopping the occasional trading ship and inspecting their cargo.

  No, Solomon thought. This was all the nasty end of a soldier’s work. This Rapid Response Fleet was clearly designed to be there at the sharp and painful edge of every complicated conflict and battle, throwing themselves into situations where they would often be surrounded and outnumbered, but relying on their better training, equipment, and sheer ferocity to win the day.

  How am I ever going to survive twelve years of that!? Solomon wondered.

  Solomon was still mulling it over when his allocated study time was up, and the visor clicked off and powered down. He realized that he felt hungry and tired.

  Just how long did I spend in there? he wondered, hanging the visor back into its cradle as the cubicle screen locked back into position. He stumbled to his feet, rubbing his eyes. Around him came other bleary-eyed recruits and regulars, as it seemed to Solomon that everyone must have had a similarly intense amount of brain exercise.

  Their tiredness didn’t stop them from turning their shoulders away from him, though, even side-stepping when he came near. I guess that I’m still the leper in this community, he thought, shaking his head as he paused, sighed, and saw that someone was watching him.

  It was Doctor Palinov, standing outside Lounge 3, with a speculative look in her eyes, bright blue behind her glasses.

  What, you heard what I am capable of too, is it? He held her gaze for a moment, daring her to frown or scowl at him, but instead she just hurriedly looked away as if she had been caught doing something that she shouldn’t, before turning to hit the door release for Lounge 3 and disappearing inside once again.

  What was all that about? he thought, falling in line behind the rest and following them out to the corridors, where their route was planned out by the bright green floor lights, leading them back toward the gymnasium.

  Not again! He moaned, but luckily, the ‘evening’ session wasn’t as grueling as the first. There was no fighting this time, only running, climbing, and stretching, as well as using a host of exercise machines that slid out from the walls as they piled on. Over the next two hours, Solomon used resistance weights and rowing machines and was very much looking forward to his bed by the time the alarm CLANG-CLANG-CLANG went off.

  He stumbled behind the others, seizing the protein gunk and shake on the way through. He could hardly taste it he was so tired on his way back to his foam mattress on the floor. It was a strange kind of tired, one that was borne of intense physical and mental activity, and not one borne of natural day and night rhythms. Solomon had the impression their days or ‘watches’ were shorter here than the usual eighteen standard sunlight hours of Earth, and his body felt jittery and electric as if he had been shocked with the warden’s control chip.

  “Cready.” the large form of Arlo Menier suddenly moved to block his route to his bed.

  “Yes, Arlo?” he said, feeling so exhausted that he couldn’t care what the big man had to say to him right now. The intense experience of the day, and all of the pain and exertion that he had been through, made him feel like he had known the people in this room for years, not just a few short hours.

  “Just remember tomorrow,” the big man growled. “Don’t let me down.”

  “Okay.” Solomon was too weary to get into this right now, and it wasn’t long before, as soon as he stripped and pulled the blankets over his aching and twitching body, he fell into a deep sleep.

  Not altogether dreamless, though.

  “You have to get out of this,” his good friend Matthias Sozer said, looking up at him from the desk.

  “I can’t,” Solomon had said, and heard himself say, once again.

  Matthias had shuttled in just that morning, using a fake journalist’s visa to get into New Kowloon and track down his old friend Solomon when he had called him in.

  Usually when the two met up, there would be camaraderie, laughter, and then they would get on with the business of whatever had brought them together—a small money transport, a museum, a complicated industrial sabotage case, a wealthy businessman too stupid to hold onto his own fortune. The jobs could be as varied as a simple drop-off to a full heist. Solomon always knew that, on the jobs that he couldn’t do alone, there was only one person on the planet that he could trust to watch his back.

  But today, it was different, as Solomon hadn’t called Matty in before the job, as was customary. This time, it was halfway through.

  It was because of what Matty was looking at, on the desk, sitting atop an array of New Kowloon city maps and schematics.

  It looked no bigger than an old-fashioned pen lid, or perhaps the end of a data-cable—a thin tube of uncertain materials, with tiny wires from one end, and a small blob of iridescent silvered data-nodes.

  “And you’re sure it’s deactivated?” Solomon heard himself say, to which Matty nodded, picking up the tweezers that he had so carefully set down a moment earlier, still holding the tiny graphite diamond data-cell.

  “Sure as frack.” Matty looked a little aggrieved that his friend could ever doubt his abilities. As well as being fairly brilliant with people, it turned out that his old friend Matty was also brilliant with machines.

  Some people had all the luck, Solomon thought then and thought now—until he remembered.

  Matthias doesn’t come out of this lucky…

  “It’s not general military issue, and it’s certainly not civilian…” Matty frowned as he looked at the tiny sensor. “But I would say, from the craftsmanship, from the lack of serial numbers or identifying machine-marks…” He took a deep breath. “This has to be Intelligence. Government Intelligence. Or maybe a mega-corp, but it has to be one of the bigger ones. Who’ve you gone and annoyed this time, Solomon?”

  Anyone? Everyone? Solomon could easily have answered, but he hadn’t. “Why would the fracking government want me under surveillance?” he had said, although mostly to hide his fear. Government Intelligence or the bigger mega-corporations. Those were the shadowy sorts of worlds that he really DIDN’T want to mess around with. They were the sorts of people who orchestrated crashes in the stock market or overthrew smaller Confederate powers just to secure a trade deal. What was he to them?

  “Oh, I don’t know, Solomon, maybe it’s because—his test scores were high,” Matty said eerily.

  “What?” Matty had never said that, a not-so-asleep part of Solomon’s brain thought. The Matthias that he had known had gone on to jibe him about being one of the best thieves in New Kowloon, and that it was only a matter of time before he started ‘playing at the big table.’ Whether he liked it or not.

  “Very high,” Matty agreed with himself as he turned back to look at the tiny surveillance drone.

  “We have to initiate Phase 2 now,” Matty cryptically said.

  “What are you talking about?” Solomon heard himself say—although he had never said that, either…

  “But half of them might crash out in the next round of tests!” Matty said, apparently having a whispered argument with himself as Solomon looked on, bewildered.

  “This one is ready, at least. Do it. That’s an order,” Matty mumbled into the table as he turned the tiny thing one way or another. Solomon saw his old friend look up to give him that devilish, reckless grin that he had done before, but it wasn’t his old, living friend who was looking up at him, but the eyeless, bruised face of Matthias So
zer on the night that he had died.

  “No!”

  5

  Commanded

  Solomon woke the next day groggy and tired, and feeling like his body had been pummeled from head to foot by Malady. He wasn’t surprised to find the purple and ruddy mosaic of bruises already on his shins and arms from yesterday’s training, and he still had the healing red welts of the medical tests during his long sleep. He wondered how long a slower-than-light trip to Jupiter had taken… Three months? Six?

  Enough time for the dust to settle back home, he thought, before realizing that no, he couldn’t call New Kowloon home anymore. He couldn’t call Earth home.

  The point was made painfully clear when, on Ganymede, he went through the same routines as he had the day before: the alarm call waking them up to stand at the end of their bunk—or mattress, in Solomon’s case, then to get washed and to eat reconstituted protein food, and then on to the gymnasium, but this time, it was only a short exercise session, because their time was cut short by the CLANG-CLANG-CLANG of the station bell. Warden Coates appeared, along with two other figures in full power armor.

  “Real Marines,” Solomon heard one of his fellow Outcast cadre whisper.

  “Schlubs!” Coates greeted them with characteristic affection. “This is Colonel Asquew and Colonel Madavi of the Rapid Response Fleet, here to observe today’s training mission,” he said, looking tiny in his gray and gold suit next to the hulking Marines.