Invasion- Proxima Page 8

  But can I live up to it? Solomon had a moment of doubt. He had grown into commanding three or four friends, after all, as the Gold Squad Commander. But this was different. His squad had swelled to include the survivors of Ganymede, and he had been promoted on top of that. Could he pull it off? Could he make them believe in him, he wondered.

  And it’s not like my last command went all that well, with one adjunct dying and another becoming the most wanted traitor in the Confederacy, he thought wryly.

  But what was done was done. Solomon looked around at the new and expanded Gold Squad.

  Sergeant Jezebel Wen, his suit telemetries read as he turned to regard each of them. A very small readout of her basic vital signs and suit telemetries read everything normal and active.

  Corporal Malady. The walking man-golem hadn’t received any new power armor, Solomon saw, which was a blessing in many ways, as the full tactical suit was still probably the most dangerous thing they had.

  Corporal Karamov, whose medical specialism had now been upgraded so that he carried a full battlefield surgery module along with a host of more arcane bio-chemical devices that Solomon had never learned to use.

  Lance Corporal Ratko—a small, tough ex-Green Squad woman who was a technical specialist and the woman who had re-engineered the distress beacon to call in the Oregon back on Ganymede.

  Lance Corporal Willoughby—another woman, taller than Ratko and also from the ex-Green Squad of the old adjunct-Marines.

  And finally, the very last of his new arrivals and the one Marine that Solomon was the most wary of: Lance Corporal Menier, his suit readouts said, whose life-signs were all perfectly normal, for a man currently asleep and snoring slightly behind his own helmet.

  The man had been a giant even before the addition of power armor, and now he stood almost as tall as Malady, and almost as impressive. Solomon hoped that their new-found truce would last. Last time, their argument had started when Solomon had been promoted over him. Did that mean that Menier, who hadn’t even been given a specialism yet, would once again be resentful? Would try to undermine him?

  Solomon didn’t know. But he hoped not as he looked at the sleeping man. He was the only one of them so relaxed about what they were going to do that he could sleep through the multiple jumps it had taken to get them all the way out to the system of Alpha Centauri.

  A squad of seven… Will it be enough? The rest of the Outcasts—those who had still been engaged on Mars and who hadn’t been cycled back to Ganymede just prior to its destruction—had also been upgraded to full Marine status, but it was only his squad who had been selected for this mission. It was an honor, Solomon knew, but then why did he feel so nervous? Perhaps because he suspected this very well might be a one-way trip.

  “Squad, select your weapons modules,” Solomon breathed to take his mind off of his nerves. Everything seemed so terribly real now. But the stakes have always been the same, haven’t they? He argued with himself. Don’t die. Don’t let anyone else die.

  Jezzy predictably selected the energy blade, a selection of throwing knives, as well as the trusty Jackhammer, slinging its strap over her shoulder before slotting the weapons into their relevant holders about her belt.

  “Ah…” Karamov said a little uncomfortably as he was the next up, selecting the rifle as well as a belt of flash-bang grenades before returning to his seat.

  Ratko and Willoughby approached the weapons stands next, selecting a mixture of firearms and, surprisingly, a sniper rifle for Ratko.

  “Someone wake Menier up,” Solomon said in frustration.

  “Hgnh? What?” Solomon heard the large Frenchman loud and clear over his suit’s gold channel. “Ah! My favorite part!” Menier saw the stand and understood what he had to do, selecting—of all things—a set of combat claws that retracted into a wristband, as well as a Jackhammer, grenades, and two extra service pistols. “You can never have too many guns!” Arlo announced cheerily to the others as he sat back down, playing with his combat claws by flicking his wrists and sending the sharpened, reinforced steel blades scissoring out over her power gauntlet and back again.

  “Lieutenant, sir?” Malady was the next to stand up, gesturing for his commander to join him.

  “Choices, choices…” Solomon looked at the array of firearms both large and small, as well a whole host of close-combat weapons, grenades, and thrown weapons. He didn’t want anything complicated, and he wanted the freedom to move and think about what was happening around him. Best to stick to what you know, he thought as he selected the trusty Jackhammer alone and sat back down.

  “That’s what I like to see, ladies and gentlemen!” Menier guffawed loudly a few seats down from Solomon. “A man who knows he doesn’t need anything else!”

  Solomon frowned, wondering if he should take that as a compliment or one of the big man’s many acerbic criticisms, but when he shot a sharp look over at Menier, he found the man merely grinning as if he hadn’t said anything wrong.

  Maybe it’s going to take me a long time to trust him, Solomon considered as Malady chose.

  Micro-missile deployment unit, Solomon’s telemetries registered as Malady lifted two metal pods shaped like bubbles with flattened sides, carefully lowering them onto his shoulders where they locked into place. Solomon knew that those pods would burst open to reveal a nest of tiny weapons ports, each bearing an in-built micro-missile, targeted by the wearer’s hands. Malady was probably one of the few people here who would be able to wear and fire two of them, and still use the Jackhammer rifle he selected at the same time.

  “Well, if we’re all suited, locked, and loaded,” Solomon called out, “then I guess we’d better get this show on the road!” He hit the call button on his belt. “Oregon Command, this is Lieutenant Cready and Gold Squad. We’re good to go.”

  “Very well, Lieutenant Cready. Initiating Mission Proxima now,” replied the functionary tones of a Marine clerk somewhere far above them. A few minutes later, the doors down into the hold hissed open and in walked a tall, Nordic-looking woman dressed in white robes whom Solomon had met before.

  She was the ‘personal assistant’ of… Solomon thought, just as the flame-haired Ambassador Ochrie, still dressed in white encounter robes and still looking just as irritated by existence as before, stalked in above them.

  “Outcasts,” she greeted them—a tad coldly, Solomon thought, “I am Ambassador Ochrie, and you will be making planetfall on Proxima with me, under the pretense of my personal guard as I conduct talks with the Proximian Imprimatur…” She paused, her eyes finding the members of the old Gold Squad in the hold below her, and Solomon wondered if that was a look of disdain that passed over her features.

  Well, the last time we were acting as her bodyguards, we almost got her killed and were involved in a major terrorist incident that arguably started the colonial conflict… Solomon reasoned. He knew that he would probably be less than pleased if he were asked to do it all over again, and this time, the stakes were much higher…

  “When a window of opportunity arises, I shall activate you and you will have to make your interception of the NeuroTech production facilities,” she stated. “As much as I hate this level of subterfuge that we have to employ, it would quite simply be impossible to dropship you through Proximian-held space and expect you to survive long enough to actually make planetfall.” She sighed, as it was apparently a necessary evil that even she didn’t want to entertain.

  All of Gold Squad watched as the ambassador’s mouth fell even more into a serious, straight line. “I am afraid that, once activated, there will be little hiding our true intentions to the Proximian military,” she stammered a little over the words, and Solomon realized that the hard-edged women was afraid. “My mission is to deliver you to Proxima, and then, if any of us survive, to escape.” She paused for a moment, before saying the next awful truth.

  “I will be leaving Proxima on my ambassadorial craft and, depending on how your mission goes, it is very likely that I will leav
e as soon as you make first contact with the enemy. You will have to make your way to one of our agents on Proxima, there to leave the planet’s surface on your own, to rendezvous with a jump-craft that will be dispatched to pick you up…”

  All of this sounded very good, Solomon read between the lines, but now at least he knew why the ambassador was so nervous. What she was saying was this: ‘I’m just here to deliver you and get the frack out of there. Once you’re on Proxima, you won’t be coming back.’

  “Understood, Ambassador Ochrie, ma’am.” Solomon nodded, once, up at the woman. It wasn’t just him who understood the subtext to her words, however. Each of the Outcasts exchanged frank and gloomy looks between each other before the ambassador spoke again.

  “Good. Well then, that’s…good.” It was easy to see how hard these orders were for her as well. “Then we shall disembark. Please command your men to follow me, Lieutenant Cready,” she said, making her way down the metal stairs with her beautiful and deadly personal assistant at her side, towards the airlock doors.

  “Aye, Your Excellency.” Solomon stood up. “You heard the lady. Let’s go and get some justice for our comrades lying in the Ganymede ice!”

  “Five…four… Brace!” the slim personal assistant was calling over the ambassadorial courier ship’s internal speakers.

  It was a much smaller craft than the Oregon, Solomon saw, and designed primarily for fast travel from orbitals to surfaces, a vague wedge of two forward-pointing triangles, with heavy thruster rockets at the fatter end and a large number of communications aerials and dishes that were currently being slotted back into the body of the vehicle. It had been attached, limpet-like, to the side of the Oregon, and once through the airlock, Solomon and the six others of his squad were standing in the main room, holding the overhead handle bars as the ambassador and her personal assistant occupied the front cockpit.

  “Three… Disengaging magnet links…”

  There was a hissing sound and a wobble as the courier wobbled free of the Oregon, gravity and spin dynamics making to fall away from the larger craft in slow motion.

  “Two… Preparing thrusters…”

  Another series of clanks and deep, vibrational shakes from the body of the craft.

  “One and…fire!”

  Solomon and the others were jerked to one side by the sudden burn of the craft’s thruster rockets, sending it peeling away from the Marine Corps battleship above and in an accelerating arc toward the bright orb far below it.

  Proxima. Solomon crouched a bit to peer through the nearest porthole. “There she is, boys and girls, take a look,” Solomon said. Because it might be the last time you get to see a sight like this, he didn’t dare add.

  The bright orb of Proxima Centauri was an unparalleled jewel in the night sky.

  The first fully inhabitable planet that humanity had colonized was a little larger than its sister, and looking down onto it was like seeing the home world for what it might have been, centuries ago. There were vast blue oceans, and green landmasses crisscrossed with the whites of untraveled mountain ranges, and the reddened, hotter, Mediterranean regions of its equatorial belt.

  The landmasses weren’t scarred with dead industrial zones or of the urban mega-metropolises that had taken over Earth’s continents. The seas had not yet risen and flooded coastal areas, creating the smoggy, toxic marshes that proliferated back on Solomon’s home.

  The atmosphere wasn’t wild with the swirls of storms and hurricanes either, as if the very weather here was heaven-sent, too.

  Proxima had been called Earth’s greatest hope for a future—a planet that would need minimal to no geo-engineering to make it inhabitable, and which would be the stepping off point to homo sapiens becoming a truly interstellar species.

  Only it hadn’t gone according to plan, Solomon thought as he saw the sparkling objects that hung in near orbit around the planet.

  Satellite-drones. Solomon had heard of the metal cross-shaped structures. They still looked like children’s toys from this distance, but as the ambassadorial craft swept closer, they grew in size until each one was a little larger than the courier itself. They eddied and revolved slowly on their own positional rockets, routinely firing every few minutes to fight the pull of Proxima’s gravity and to keep sending them on a looping orbit around their parent.

  Their four-pointed ‘spikes’ were actually a space-based missile system, designed not to keep peace between warring factions and partnerships as on Earth, Solomon knew, but to keep a watchful eye on the darkness of space.

  “Proxima is a heaven, but…” Solomon was surprised when the words of the ambassador narrated their view of the planet from the ships’ speakers. “But she has always had a sort of cultural paranoia,” the ambassador stated authoritatively. “Cosmo-psychologists claim that it stems from the fact that they are so far away from Earth, and from any colonial neighbors. They do not have the sense of interplanetary community that our Sol System does…”

  “Is she kidding me?” Solomon heard Menier grumble over their squad channel. “Wasn’t much interplanetary community I saw on Mars…”

  Solomon wondered if he should rebuke the man, but he didn’t when he realized that he actually agreed with him. Earth might be blessed with neighbors in the form of Luna, Mars, Venus, and other colonies, but it didn’t mean that they got along…

  Solomon turned back to look at the isolated, perfect planet out here on the edge of humanity’s reach, and he almost felt a sense of jealousy for them. Wouldn’t it have been easier to emigrate out here? he wondered. To start again somewhere new, and never have to worry about New Kowloon and the Yakuza and the Triads and the loss off his old friend, Matthias Sozer.

  Yeah, that still hurts, he was surprised to realize. Matthias Sozer. My friend. Who died…because of me.

  “You have a long face, Lieutenant,” intoned Malady on one side of him, switching to a private channel between them.

  “Thanks.” Solomon pulled a face. “But yeah, I guess I’m worried about the mission. I’m hoping that I can act bravely, and wisely…”

  “All commanders must feel the same,” Malady said, always wiser than anyone else that Solomon had ever met, “before being called to op their duty.” The giant man-golem turned slightly so that his sleepy, half-lit face faced him. “I have faith in you, Solomon,” he stated in his flat, mechanical tones, and apparently that was all the man had to say, because he turned back to regard the planet they were going to pick a fight with, just the same as the rest of the Outcasts here.

  But Solomon knew that, as a commander, he couldn’t afford even a moment of nostalgia or melancholy. “Ratko?” he called over their shared channel. “You’re our technical. Can you work on a way to get past that missile system when we’re making our escape?”

  “I can, Lieutenant, but…” The small woman was frowning, and Solomon thought he knew what her argument would be.

  That escaping the surface seemed a long way away from here… That they had to not get immediately imprisoned by the supposedly still-neutral Proximians first. And then they had to infiltrate the NeuroTech headquarters, on a hostile planet, as their get-out in the form of the ambassador left the system…

  And then we have to find this secret Confederate agent who may already be apprehended or dead by now, Solomon thought a little bitterly. All while they were probably being shot at by Proximians or cyborgs, as they stole a ship and made launch, and navigated the war-style missile system…

  “Just start working on it, Ratko.” Solomon nodded at her. “I have faith in you,” he echoed Malady and saw the woman straighten up in her suit, throwing a salute.

  “Aye, Lieutenant Cready, sir!”

  The ambassadorial craft was starting to shake as they entered Proxima’s near-atmospheric radiation field, something every planet had. Solomon looked at the nearest of the star-like drone satellites, but he didn’t see it spinning towards them or missile tubes hissing open.

  “I’ve got a message coming
in from the surface, patching it over main ship’s comms,” Ambassador Ochrie announced.

  “Attention Confederate Vessel! This is the Proximian Port Authority, please verify our scans within one minute…”

  Vessel ID: Ambassadorial Craft X31 (Courier-Class)

  Vessel Operator: Ambassador Ochrie (Confederacy of Earth)

  Bio-Signs: Nine.

  “Proximian Port Authority, this is Ambassador Ochrie. Your scans are correct, and I am sending over authentication receipts now.” Everyone heard the ambassador’s response.

  “I am allowed, according to your gold-level license, to speak to Imprimatur Mariad Rhossily,” Ochrie said. There was a glitch on the other end as her words must have been relayed through the Proximian chain of command.

  “Ambassador Ochrie, a pleasure to have on Proximian soil once again.” This time, it was a woman’s voice who answered them, with a faint lilting accent that Solomon couldn’t place. He knew next to nothing about the Proximians, apart from the exaggerated claims of gossip-sellers back on Earth.

  They are a peaceful people.

  Life is easy up here.

  They have a perfect society.

  Solomon didn’t believe a word of it. And he wished that he’d been given more time to study their new hosts.

  “I thank you for agreeing to meet with me, Imprimatur. I hope that our meeting will be…peaceful for both of our peoples,” Ochrie said formally.

  “As do I, I can assure you, Ambassador. These are dark times that we are living through, and we have to always be aware of what is important at all times,” the imprimatur stated rather cryptically, and Solomon wondered if that was a promise or a threat. It could have been either.

  “You are cleared to land at my personal docking port, Proxa, Hex-Grid Reference…” Imprimatur Rhossily gave them a string of numbers and letters, for Ochrie’s personal assistant to input the details and their craft’s auto-pilot to adjust their trajectory and speed, turning the ship before they plunged into the Proximian atmosphere, with flames at their nose, and the craft’s belly full of Marines.