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  “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.

  Neither of them were as large as the full tactical unit that Malady wore, but they were large enough to stand a head taller than any of the other non-suited recruits and regulars there. The power armor looked almost like a very old-fashioned suit of plate armor, in the way that every section of their bodies were covered with poly-carbon metal plates, ones that sheathed and interlocked with each other so that they could move with almost as much flexibility as if they wore general encounter suits.

  But this power armor was heavier and larger than mere metal sheets, and Solomon remembered seeing some of the demonstration schematics in the study lounge the day before. Multiple layers of toughened alloys with thin strips of compacted, impact-reducing foam layers in between, as well as insulation and the internal system of thin heating and cooling pipes. Shoulder plates that almost dwarfed the wearer’s head, and round servo-assists at the knees and elbows. Solomon remembered hearing that just so long as you had power, you could be thrown out of airlock in one of those suits and survive for as long as the suit had recycling water.

  The Marines of the Rapid Response Fleet wore the colors of burnt-copper red, with flashes of gold pips at their breast and on their all-encompassing helmets to indicate their command-level ranks.

  “Is that a power-blade?” Solomon heard the recruit just behind him whisper. It was Wen, and she was looking greedily at one of the colonel’s weapons. It looked to be a long blade in a scabbard at the soldier’s waist, thin like a saber or a katana, but with a svelte collection of nodes and power units on the sheath.

  I bet it is, Solomon thought. Power-blades were one of the most fearsome of bladed weapons, and he had seen one in action once. A Triad boss had somehow managed to acquire one—they were military-issue only—and used it to cut through tables and chairs and computers when he needed to scare the living daylights out of someone. Solomon knew that they were made of a strengthened poly-steel, almost impervious, but that their special crystal glazing—so tough that it wouldn’t shatter when the sword met metal, brick, bones—was also connected to a power unit in the hilt, charging when ‘docked’ in the scabbard. This caused the blade to hum with captured energy when drawn, and to create explosions of light and sparks when it made contact with another object.

  “Here is your list of commanders for the day!” the warden shouted, reading from his data-pad a list of names to mixed applause or dismay from the assembled others. Solomon, Wen, and Malady, of course, were sent to make up Arlo Menier’s squad, to which he welcomed them with his own characteristic charm.

  “Right, you lot. It is simple. You follow my orders, or else… Got it?” the big man grumbled, his dark eyes glaring at each of them.

  “That’s what we’re here for, Arlo,” Solomon said tiredly, to find that the front of his encounter suit was suddenly grabbed by the larger man in his meaty fists.

  “Sir. You call me sir today, Cready.”

  Solomon felt his heart thump with hatred for this man, and he was about to tell Arlo exactly what he could call the man instead, but there was a cough from Wen beside them, and the two men turned their heads to see that the Rapid Response colonels were already beginning to walk down the groups of people, seemingly to inspect the caliber of the would-be soldiers.

  “Later, Cready,” Arlo promised, releasing him and side-stepping into a perfect salute. “Attention!” he snapped irritably at them as the colonel paced near in his heavy military-metal boots, and Solomon already knew that today was going to be a long day.

  “Light tactical suits today,” the words of Warden Coates met them as the Outcasts filed into a room that Solomon had never seen before. It was some sort of launch bay out onto the Ganymedean surface, with access stairs down from the higher levels to a wide but narrow room with multiple vaulted metal archways at the far end. Everything had a bluish tinge down there, as the steel was lit by blue LEDs, giving Solomon the impression of twilight.

  Ker-thunk, thunk, thunk! Floodlights clacked on along the wall under the stairs, revealing what Solomon at first thought were more sleep tubes. This time, the tall oval coffin shapes were open-mouthed, and each one held a suit.

  “Augh,” Arlo muttered disappointedly at the sight, and Solomon felt himself agree when he saw that they were indeed looking at Coates’ suggestion, and not the full power armor that the Marine colonels—who were now standing on one of the metal balconies on the side of the stairs—wore.

  “Undermesh suit, jacket harness, wader boots, shoulder pads, armor gloves, and of course, visor…” Coates announced as the different squads of four approached the bays where their names were displayed on the screens.

  I guess they’ve already figured out my size, Solomon thought as he picked up the first article of clothing—the black and steel-blue undermesh suit that looked fairly similar to any of the more lightweight all-in-one encounter suits that he might wear, with zips, air-seals, pockets, and port connectors for the other bits of attire that affixed on top.

  “Each squad has their regulars who have used these before, so I want to see each of you sharing your knowledge, ladies,” Coates’s voice directed them as Solomon started to dress. The encounter suit alone was surprisingly lightweight, almost like hiking gear, and it was hard for Solomon to see how it would withstand the rigors of space. When he mentioned this out loud, his ‘sharing’ Regular Arlo just sneered at him.

  “You junker-brain, Cready. Space is all about cold and pressure. These suits have internal pressure systems and triple insulation. Totally useless against any impact, but it means your blood won’t freeze or your skin pop out there.”

  “Good to know,” Solomon muttered grimly, moving on to the jacket harness, which seemed to be a collection of bulky poly-carbon segments connected with some sort of cloth-covered wire mesh, which buckled at the front and, with magnet snaps, connected to the undermesh. Next came the waders. Really, they were heavy space boots with reinforced rims and an attached shin guard that snapped closed around his legs, and connecters that linked it into the harness.

  “Here…” He felt hands on his shoulders and flinched, then realized that it was Recruit Wen, her black hair already tied back in an austere knot, as she helped manhandle the heavy shoulder pad into place on Solomon’s shoulder. Instinctively, he felt nervous at having someone so near to him. Someone who worked for the Yakuza, he thought, remembering the countless run-ins he’d had with them.

  “You don’t have to, you know…” he grumbled as the pad—the only true bit of power armor—locked into place with his harness.

  Wen looked at him funny for a moment. “Shut up. You’re going to help me with mine in a minute.” She shook her head at Solomon’s apparent shyness.

  I’m not being shy, I just don’t know if I can trust you yet. If I can trust anyone yet… he was thinking, as Wen turned in her own undermesh and harness to present her shoulder for him to buckle on her own armor.

  “Jezzie,” she said as the pad clicked into place. “Jezebel Wen, Shanghai.”

  Is she trying to be friends with me? Solomon wondered, suddenly unable to deal with this situation. He hadn’t come here to look for friends. He didn’t deserve friends.

  “Solomon,” he grunted, turned to slide on the heavy armor gauntlets with their metal-sheathed fingers and locking wristband.

  “Where you from?” Wen asked, working beside him to do the same.

  What do I say? He paused. “American Confederacy,” he said at last. Don’t let her know I’ve been in New Kowloon. She might know who I am. What enemies I have…

  “Star-spit, Cready,” Wen said irritably. “I’m only trying to talk to you, because…” Her voice dropped to a whisper so that their commander couldn’t hear as he struggled with his own gauntlets beside her. “Because I
don’t want to die out there today. We need to work together, because I don’t know if our new boss…”

  “You two done yet?” Arlo straightened up, holding his helmet under his arm as he ‘inspected’ his squad. Solomon grabbed the helmet and slid it on over his head. The world flushed to a dull blue haze, then lightened as words scrolled across the inside of his visor-screen.

  LIGHT TACTICAL SUIT: Active.

  USER ID: Solomon CR.

  BIO-SIGNATURE: Good.

  SQUAD IDENTIFIER: Gold.

  SQUAD TELEMETRIES: Active.

  “Form up!” Arlo ordered, and his words were clearly amplified by Solomon’s helmet. On the screen of his faceplate, he saw the overlay of a faint golden arrow that he presumed meant them, as Arlo led the way along the arrow-path to where it stopped in front of the first of the archways. Jezebel Wen walked in front of Solomon, in her own slightly smaller light tactical suit, and the larger Arlo marched in front of her. The last of their squad had no need for special equipment, of course, as Malady was already inside his own full tactical mechanized suit, and he took up the rear.

  “Simple mission today, teams,” the voice of Warden Coates was piped into their suit helmets. “Follow your squad arrows to your pre-chosen destinations, where there will be corrals of mech-walkers for you to power up and return to base. Each mech-walker can hold up to eight Marines, so each squad will have their own mech-walker to pilot…”

  Solomon wondered at the glaring inconsistency in the plan. He didn’t know if any of them could pilot one of the four-legged servo-droids, but that didn’t seem to stop Coates as he initiated the mission countdown.

  “Three…two…”

  Is it a race? The first to the mech-walkers and back? he wondered, his mind starting to buzz as he considered the mission ahead like a puzzle. He was sure that he could find a way to break into one. It was one of his specialisms—in his previous life, anyway. But did the encounter suit have tools? He would need a laser torch, probably, simple electronic equipment, a way to patch the mech-walker’s mainframe into his own suit’s. Or maybe he could just bypass the mech-walker’s computers altogether, deactivate its intelligence circuits, and just fire up the engines…

  “One!”

  The virtual gold arrow overlaying his vision flashed once, twice, three times, and then there was the sudden hiss of gases at the foot of the archways.

  Oh yeah, decompression… he thought. Presumably, they didn’t want their recruits to be sucked out into Ganymede’s thin atmosphere, to orbit the planet a few times before being sucked down Jupiter’s gravity well, right?

  The gases cleared, and Solomon felt his stomach lurch as the internal gravity and pressures of the launch bay matched those of outside.

  TZ-Thunk! Tzz-Thunk!

  He was about to rise off the floor when the heavy combat boots suddenly reacted, polarizing the mesh of magnets in their soles to create a very weak field, but one that was enough to ensure that he wasn’t totally at the mercy of the weak gravity as he felt his feet hit the ground more solidly.

  The metal archways were opening, sliding up in rows of interlocking plates, revealing the ochre and creamy white surface of the moon beyond.

  “Move out! Double-time!” Arlo was bellowing, and although Solomon could hear the distant, muffled echoes of the other squads beside them, it seemed that the suit telemetries amplified or zeroed in on communications between their own squad members, as he could also hear Arlo’s heavy, panting breath as the big man started to bound forward, and Wen’s shorter, controlled hisses as she broke into a run behind him.

  Solomon followed, jogging out onto the Ganymede surface as other squads of four or five recruits and regulars did the same all the way along the opening archways.

  The surface of Ganymede was strange. Every metal boot-strike crunched through a thick layer of permafrost, sending up slow-spinning clouds of ice and rock granules. Larger rocks that were oddly pocked and worn smooth by the astral winds and irregularities of the moon’s thin climate were scattered about underfoot as the would-be Marines found themselves running across the alien plain. There were deep solid ‘rills’ that striated across the plane like frozen waves, speckled with bits of mica and pockets of black rock dust.

  Beyond this plain, and skirting its edges, Solomon could see gorge-like highlands of rocky outcrops—fantastically sculpted ridges, walls, and stands of rocks that were decorated with pink tendrils that had to be some sort of mineral deposit, but could have been anything to Solomon’s awareness.

  Superimposed over their path was the flashing gold arrow, leading them to the left of the small plain, toward the first break in the encroaching ridges. Solomon dared to spare a look upward, seeing the dome of stars on his right, and on his left, the hulking mass of Jupiter—orange, red, and yellow, noble and kinglike—on the horizon.

  Just run to a bunch of mech-walkers, hack in, and walk one back? Solomon was thinking, increasing his pace a little. How hard can that be?

  A lot harder than he had assumed, apparently, as all of a sudden, the plain lit up with laser fire.

  “Holy spit!” He heard Arlo grunt as the laser shots exploded the compacted rocks and ice all around them, sending up plumes of dust and steam.

  “Who’s shooting at us!?” Wen had already rolled across the ground to one side, her leap in the extremely low gravity of Ganymede sending her farther than Solomon thought she might have liked.

  He was surprised at the suddenness of the attack—laser shots were hitting the dirt all around them, in front of them, to either side and behind—but he found that he wasn’t surprised by it.

  Just like downtown Kowloon, he found himself thinking as he skidded to a halt behind the nearest ridge of ice and rock, itself only three or so feet high, but enough for him to crouch up against.

  “Automated guns,” Malady said over the suit’s communicator as, a second later, the metal man appeared out of the dust and spray behind them, still marching as a bolt of light exploded into sparks across his shoulder. Solomon saw him rock a little, but his step didn’t waver as he kept on marching.

  Of course, laser shot isn’t even going to dent a full tactical, Solomon thought. Malady was the closest thing they had to a full Marine here with them, and his suit was even better than power armor.

  “Malady, sorry about this, but can you…” Solomon thought quickly, remembering all of the times he had to use a passing transport to draw fire.

  “It’s okay. It’s what I’m designed to do,” Malady grunted as he took a small leap and sailed over Solomon’s head. He landed between where Solomon huddled and Wen was similarly crouching, and kept on marching, drawing the laser shots that painted his feet with shards of light.

  “Malady’s drawing them out.” Solomon rolled uncomfortably against the rock to be able to see the sparks of light from the nearest rocky canyon top. “If we make our way under these ridges, we might be able to get in under their arc of fire.”

  “Good idea!” Wen called, already proceeding to worm her way along the frozen ‘wave’ of rock and ice.

  “Arlo, I mean, sir?” Solomon said as he similarly started squirming in the same direction.

  “Hguh,” Solomon heard a grunt from their temporary commander’s suit. “Fine. Let Malady draw ze fire, while we circle around,” he said quickly.

  Whatever, Solomon almost laughed before he realized that was probably a hint of hysteria. Let Arlo think it was all his idea, just so long as I don’t get shot!

  The squad rolled and crab-crawled quickly toward the nearest of the rocky canyon walls, as behind them and around them, Solomon could see other squads trying different tactics to get across the field of fire. He saw one regular hit square in the chest with an explosion of sparks and was lifted off their feet and thrown backwards in the thin gravity. They skidded along the ice, almost back to the base itself. Another was spun around by a glancing blow, thumping with a plume of particles. None of those hit appeared to be badly wounded, however, and Solomon wond
ered if it was more like getting kicked than burned.

  One of the squads had tried to make a run for it straight to their own targets, with some success as it seemed to take the guns a few moments to re-position themselves and re-fire. Another squad had copied what they were doing, using the rills of frozen surface matter to take cover, while another was performing zig-zagging maneuvers across the dirt with more success than any other squad.

  Including ours, Solomon thought grimly. He still considered this to be a race.

  “Come on!” he growled, half at himself and half at the others, as he slammed his back against the rocky canyon wall underneath the nearest of the guns, able to see the white bolts of burning light shoot across the sky to the other poor trainees below.

  “Alright, move out!” Arlo was still ahead of them, running at a hunch along the rock wall to where there was a gap that opened out into another canyon. Solomon saw him pause and crouch at the edge, at least—he wasn’t stupid enough to make himself a target.

  “Malady!” Arlo shouted over the comms, “get in zere!”

  “Roger and out.” There was a distant vibration that Solomon could feel through his boots as he joined Wen and Arlo at the edge of the canyon, their superimposed gold arrow now flashing for them to go inside. Then the barrel-like shape of the full tactical man-mecha was charging ahead of them between the canyon walls, with enough laser fire dancing off his hide to give him his own personal halo before the shots abruptly flickered off when he had passed inside.

  “Ha! Ze guns don’t have line-of-sight in zere!” Arlo said gleefully. “Wen, you’re in next.” He pushed the slightly smaller woman past the corner after Malady.

  So much for a commander always leads from the front? Solomon thought, and waited. He wondered if Arlo was so much of a coward that he would want him to go next as well.

  As it turned out, that was not the case. His commander held up a restraining hand to Solomon. “You wait here. I don’t want any surprises jumping at us from behind. If anything shows up, take it out.”