Conquest of Earth Read online

  It was Kol who answered her. “They’ve got FTL, which is just about as near to magic as anyone can figure. Who knows what a civilization as old as theirs can do?” he mused. “But even back on good old Earth, the science academies are starting to ask whether they could use subspace to encrypt and encode messages.”

  “Subspace?” Solomon didn’t know what that was.

  “Oh, it just means a few iterations up from quanta,” Kol said, still baffling First Lieutenant Cready. “Electrons come in pairs and can transfer data between themselves no matter the distance, right? Well, subspace communication is the idea that because everything was once compressed to a point before the Big Bang, then everything is kinda connected to everything else. You just gotta find the right atomic particles, although electrons are still the best candidate.”

  Solomon kinda got it. “You could transmit information across the galaxy using this ‘interconnected particles’ thing?”

  “You got it, chief,” Kol laughed. “Although it took you a long while to get there.”

  They were in the middle of this warm glow of success, of finally having a battle plan that might actually work, so Solomon almost didn’t feel the orb in his hand start to wobble.

  “Hey, I’m sure that’s Elysium Mons, and that must be Hecates Tharsis!” Kol said, pointing to a rising mountain on the horizon, and a smaller mound next to it. “There’s a habitat out there, one with a space port. We can steal a shuttle and get the good news out there—”

  The Ru’at orb once again shook in Solomon’s hand, but amidst all of the bouncing, shaking, and jostling that the Martian rover itself was doing, Solomon thought no more of it.

  That was until, of course, light flooded the interior of the cab as the orb started to rise from Solomon’s outstretched hand.

  8

  Runaway Rover

  The brilliant blue-white light filled the tiny cab as it hovered in the open air.

  “What the crap is that?” Rhossily shouted, risking a look over her shoulder at the alien intruder in the vehicle. “Get that thing out of here now!”

  “You brought one with you?” Kol shouted, obviously distressed. “What on earth possessed you?”

  Well, we’re not on Earth, for starters… The thought flashed through Solomon’s mind. It must be the Ru’at Serum 21 that they had given him in the colony, sharpening his wits and giving him an insane level of self-belief.

  “It’s the subspace network! They’ve got it up and running again!” Solomon shouted as he darted his arm forward—an arm that could now move as fast as a striking viper, muscles and tendons locking into perfect synchronicity a moment before.

  FZZTHAP! The Outcast Marine had intended to strike the thing with an open palm, to grab it out of the air or at least bat it against the metal walls.

  “Argh!” But instead, all that Solomon got was an almighty shock that pounded him back against the wall of the rover’s cab. There was a line of blue-white light spilling from the circumference of the Ru’at orb, and, if anything, Solomon was certain that it was getting brighter.

  Like it was powering up for something.

  Do these things have weapons?? What will it do when—

  FZTHWAP! Another flash of light spread through the orb, and this time the entire rover was kicked to one side, coming off two of its side wheel-legs before slamming down again, sending up great gouts of Martian dust.

  “Get that thing out before it kills us all!” Mariad shouted from the driver’s seat as Kol was already leaning over the back of his chair, armed with the unlikely low-tech addition of a long tire iron.

  FZAP! The orb pulsed once more, and it somehow directed the pulse of invisible power at the new threat. Kol was thrown against the side door with a pained grunt.

  But he had dropped the tire iron, and Solomon still had the Ru’at pistol in his belt. His hand moved to the handle just as the orb darted forward to hover a foot or so away from his face. It was clear that in silent Ru’at orb speak, it was saying the equivalent of I wouldn’t even dream of it…

  Solomon froze, his chest rising and falling as he panted in tense concentration. “Alright, what do you want? How do I make you go away?” Solomon snarled.

  From somewhere in the driver’s section, there was a dull bing of electronics, and Mariad started swearing profusely. Across from her chair, the insensate form of Kol was crumpled in the footwell. Solomon hoped that the thing broken his neck.

  “It looks like that little darling nugget of evil has been calling its friends,” the imprimatur broke from her torrent of verbal abuse to share with the others. “We’ve got two of the Ru’at jump-ships appearing on the horizon.”

  The orb bobbed and shook occasionally as it floated in front of Solonom. “It’s injured,” the man said. “I don’t think it’s at full operational capacity yet…”

  “It doesn’t seem that ill to me!” Mariad was incensed as she threw the rover into another swerve, this time throwing them down the side of a steep crater. The human members inside the cab were all thrown forward, but the Ru’at orb just continued to bob and weave a little unsteadily.

  “The ships are gaining fast,” Solomon could hear Rhossily say through clenched teeth. “But they’re not running their FTLs.”

  “They probably can’t inside atmosphere,” Solomon murmured, keeping his eyes on the floating thing in the wagon. Now that it had managed to call its bigger, much more dangerous brothers in the form of the Ru’at jump-ships, it seemed that it was content to not zap anyone any more.

  It probably spends too much power doing that, Solomon thought. And, he realized, it was a drone, wasn’t it? It ran on machine logic. Why should it expend energy when it could just get two much faster, larger, and better equipped jump-ships to do its dirty work for it?

  If I can get it to run low on power, I might be able to disable it, Solomon thought, seeing the tire iron just a few inches from his outstretched hand. Of course, that would still leave the problem of two very large and angry alien spaceships coming for them, but Solomon had always been a one-problem-at-a-time sort of person. It was all he knew how to be.

  It’s going to shock me. It might even break some bones, but I need to get it to use up a lot of its internal power… Solomon started to take a deep breath.

  Just as Ambassador Ochrie’s outstretched hand folded around the orb.

  “Huh,” she said nonchalantly. “Did you want this, Lieutenant?” she said in her low, slightly drowsy voice.

  She was brainwashed by the Ru’at, Solomon realized.

  “What is she doing? What is she doing with that thing?!” Rhossily was once again shouting as she threw the rover into a tight turn around the canyon wall that connected this crater with the next.

  “Maybe that means it doesn’t see her as a threat,” Solomon murmured. The blue-white light was still spilling from between the ambassador’s hands, but it seemed to have dimmed somewhat from its fiercer glow a heartbeat before.

  “Well, I certainly see it as a threat!” Mariad—rather unhelpfully, in Solomon’s view—clarified.

  “Ambassador?” Solomon closed his hand around the tire iron and started to edge his way forward. “I want you to do something for me.”

  “Of course, Lieutenant.” Her voice was slightly slurred, but there was still a spark of that same, cantankerous woman in there somewhere. Solomon wondered briefly at the fact that the Chosen of Mars back at the Ru’at colony hadn’t appeared to have it as bad as she did. Maybe, given the fact that Ochrie was the Ambassador of Earth, the Ru’at had decided to imprint their message of servility deeper into her consciousness.

  “When I say now, I want you to throw the orb into the air. Not hard, and not fast, just as if you were tossing an apple.” Solomon slid to a crouch, readying the tire iron over his right shoulder. “Can you do that for me, Ambassador?”

  “I should think so, but…why?”

  “Now!” Solomon didn’t want to give the befuddled woman a moment for her conditioning to kic
k in. He assumed that it was only his authoritarian bark of command that made the brainwashed ambassador do as he ordered.

  Ochrie opened and bobbed her hand upwards, releasing the Ru’at orb.

  Solomon swung—

  Inside his clone body, his Ru’at genetics read his high cortisol levels and fierce concentration. They activated, chemicals and tailor-made enzymes surging through his body. Solomon could feel every muscle across his back unlock and stretch, producing a rippling line of force that surged through his shoulder and down his arms.

  The Ru’at chemicals made it seem to Solomon as if time itself was slowing down, but they weren’t that magical. It was the cocktail of enhanced neurochemicals that made him aware of his unfolding arm in the very moment that the orb rose into the air and started to turn on its axis toward him.

  But he was too quick. His wrist and hand were already pivoting with all the momentum of his arm and shoulders and back, and, at just below full stretch, the tire iron made a humming noise as it sliced through the air.

  FZZZ! The orb had time to suddenly grow brighter, a moment before the iron connected with its metal skin.

  Solomon roared in rage and effort—and pain. The thing’s final parting shot electrified his metal weapon as it connected, and—

  THWAP! Both the Ru’at orb and the lieutenant were thrown backwards, with the orb smacking millimeters above the driver’s window before bouncing on the dashboard and into the footwell.

  Rhossily screamed, but it sounded more like from shock to Solomon’s ringing ears as he fell against the cab door, his body twitching and shivering.

  “Lieutenant?” Ochrie was saying with apparent worry as she moved—not altogether quickly—to his side.

  “Is it dead? Is it dead!?” Mariad shouted in the confined space as Solomon groaned and pushed himself up from the floor. He scrabbled forward, hand burning and arm tingling, to see that yes, the orb was lying in the footwell of the rover, and its blue-white light was snuffed. It was broken open along the middle circumference line, displaying the strange silver and crystal lattice of wires that Solomon had seen before.

  Still, even given the fact that it just looked like some sort of technological bauble that Kol or Ratko might have dreamed up, Solomon was loath to touch the thing. But he knew that he had to, so he seized it and stuffed it into his pocket.

  “Urgh…” Solomon slumped back. He never wanted to have to do that again, but he also didn’t want to throw the orb away. It was a piece of Ru’at technology. It wasn’t something that had been hybridized or hacked by human corporate engineers like the cyborgs were—at least, as far as Solomon was aware. That meant that it might yet have useful information inside it on how to best combat the Ru’at menace.

  “Hold on!” Mariad shouted, a moment before the entire rover shook and jumped. The door windows lit up with blue-white light, and Solomon heard the thunder of rocky debris hitting their roof.

  “The Ru’at ships are firing on us,” Mariad said, kicking out with one foot against a lever at the same time as she leaned down hard on the steering wheel.

  In response, the rover swerved just as there was another flash on their other side.

  “They’re less maneuverable in atmosphere!” Solomon called, pushing himself up to crane his head along the side of the window. His Ru’at pistol was in his hand, but he doubted that even the Ru’at weapon would do anything against a much larger ship.

  Mariad threw them halfway up one of the crater walls only to spin them down again, sending up a great spray of red dust and gravel high into the air. The fast turn and downward charge gave them speed, but both Solomon and the woman in the driver’s seat knew they couldn’t keep this up for long. The Ru’at would get a lucky shot eventually. Either that or the imprimatur would start to tire.

  FZZT! There was an almighty blast from up ahead as the jump-ships did not fire directly at them, but at the crater walls ahead of them, where erosion had caused a large outcrop of rock.

  “Frack!” the imprimatur swore once again, throwing the rover into a spin as tons of rock and dust smashed into the ground ahead of them.

  The rover lifted on the side where it only had two wheel-legs, and all the occupants were thrown around inside the cab as it came perilously close to tipping over. Solomon had dreadful images of them hitting the red dirt with their legs in the air, as helpless as a bug.

  A loud roar split the skies as the two Ru’at jump-ships screamed overhead, turning as they came back for an attack vector.

  I thought they wanted me as their general! Solomon thought in fury before he was thrown into the air once again as the rover smacked into the ground, thankfully upright.

  “Hit it!” Solomon shouted, and the Imprimatur of Proxima did just that, slamming her foot down as the rover surged forward.

  FZT! This time, Solomon saw the twin lines of blue-white laser fire burst from the approaching Ru’at ships, slamming into the ground and sending up sprays of pulverized rocks before the beams raced across the crater floor toward them.

  Mariad forced the rover in the only direction they had left—straight up the nearest crater wall, as the Ru’at laser fire raced behind.

  “We’re not going to make it!” Rhossily gasped.

  “We will! Go for it! We will!” Solomon shouted, wishing that there was something he could do.

  There was a judder, and suddenly the Martian rover was lifting from the edge of the crater wall, launching into the air and rising in an uncontrolled arc. The viewing screen ahead of them showed only the dirty orange skies of the Red Planet.

  Everyone inside the cab screamed, even Ambassador Ochrie, which Solomon might have taken as a good sign that she was coming out of her hypnotized state were it not for the fact that his ill-spent life was currently flashing before his eyes.

  FTHWAP! Something hit them at the peak of their arc—a bright flash of light and a wave of force that spun them around, making even the enhanced genetics of First Lieutenant Solomon Cready feel nauseous and sick, before…

  They crashed.

  9

  Ansible

  The rover hit the orange dirt, sending up plumes of dust and sand as it rolled, end over end, across the Martian landscape, bouncing in the slightly lighter gravity of the Red Planet.

  Solomon forgot which way was up, or down, or anywhere else for that matter. He felt like he was a bug trapped in a jar, being viciously shaken by a cruel child. Pain erupted into his consciousness from every outer part of his body—his knees and feet, his elbows and hands, and his forehead as other various parts of his anatomy smacked into various parts of the metal interior of the cab.

  We’ve been hit. We’ve been hit… Even in his distress, his command training kicked in and a small, removed part of his brain assessed the damage.

  We have stopped moving, and we’ve been hit. He was sure of that. What had that flash of light been? That sudden air blast that had dashed them against the rocks?

  But a strike from one of the Ru’at ships would have sheared through the shell of the rover… He blinked, trying to open his eyes, but it was dark. He could smell burning rubber and the ozone smell that usually came with sparking electrics. Or Ru’at laser fire.

  Then why aren’t I dead? For one thing, he could still breathe. He knew that he could, because he could smell. He had to have working lungs to push the air through his nose, right? But the Ru’at laser shot would have exposed them to the deadly low oxygen, high methane, and high carbon dioxide mix of the Martian atmosphere…

  You’re in an encounter suit, you idiot, he told himself. That would be a good reason why he was still able to breathe. Maybe they were buried under a ton of rock. Maybe it was everyone else inside the cab here that had died…

  “What the frack…” He was thankfully proved wrong by the sound of a groan coming from just a few feet away from him. It was a man’s voice, and it sounded an awful lot like Kol.

  “Kol? Are you okay?” Solomon coughed.

  “Do I look like I’
m okay, chief?” Kol hacked, and there came the sound of moving debris as Solomon presumed the once-technical specialist sought to fight his own way out of the tonnage of red rocks.

  “I can’t see you. I can’t see anything.”

  “Fair enough. But who in the name of the sweet holies let the imprimatur drive this thing!?” Kol did not sound impressed, and for a moment Solomon was transported back, almost an entire year ago, to when it had just been him and Jezzy and Malady and Kol and Karamov. He had missed Kol’s caustic humor and boundless optimism, the lieutenant realized at that point.

  They had been Gold Squad. The perilous and embattled Gold Squad of the Outcast Marines—the Outcast adjunct-Marines, he remembered, as that had been before General Asquew had lifted their entire regiment to full Marine status.

  But remembering that they had been promoted also reminded Solomon of why they had been promoted.

  The Outcast adjunct-Marines had been given their first full-battle experience in the ‘pacification’ of Mars, split off into their respective squads to perform various infiltration, expeditionary, and reconnaissance operations.

  And it was during Gold Squad’s infiltration of the Martian Armstrong Habitat that Kol had betrayed them.

  Not many of the adjuncts had made it out of their first true battlefield experience. Maybe it was poor planning, or maybe their skills were better suited to more discrete missions, but from almost a few hundred, they had been cycled back to Ganymede as less than a hundred and fifty.

  And then, this technical specialist, who was cursing and groaning about how he couldn’t see anything and how everything hurt, had hacked into a Marine transporter and sent it crashing into the Ganymede Training Facility, killing more of his battle brothers and sisters. At the same time, Kol must have helped land a unit of the Martian-Ru’at cyborgs to clean up what was left, and Solomon, Gold Squad, and even the thug Arlo Menier—currently somewhere on Proxima, fighting a guerrilla war—had to fight for their very existence.