Invasion- Pluto Read online

  “It’s something I have to do, sir,” Jezzy said, “There’s a civilian caught in the field. I can’t let him die without a gun in his hand.” And that, at least, appeared to be something that the colonel understood.

  “I have the firing plan that you suggested locked in and will be firing as soon as you’re clear.”

  “Affirmative, Colonel, sir!” Jezzy said, flying through the debris field that she herself had orchestrated.

  It was far easier to negotiate the revolving bits of metal like this, Jezzy thought. It was like diving, if anything, she thought. She would fire her rockets to make a clean run through a ‘bare’ patch of space before ‘landing’ on the edge of a piece of metal and pushing off, leap-frogging from one piece of spinning wreckage to another.

  And still, the Ru’at jump-ships didn’t make a move.

  What are they waiting for? Jezzy wondered as she suddenly flew through a shimmering field of washers and bolts.

  She heard drumming all over her suit and faceplate as the tiny bits of metal drummed across her body like solid rain. None of them were traveling fast enough to do her power armor any harm, of course, but she still retracted the harness’s positioning rockets all the same until she had broken through to the other side.

  Not that I’m not glad that the Ru’at haven’t attacked yet… she thought as she fired up the harness once again to swoop under a large piece of hull plate. She saw the spinning Esther ahead of her.

  Which was now spewing gases from several places across the metal rhomboid of its body, and whose hull had clear heavy scratches and dents across it.

  “Ahmadi? I’m there. Patch me through to the Esther,” Jezzy said.

  “I read you, one, two, connecting and here—” The sergeant heard the glitch and hum of connections before the now-familiar voice of Joe greeted her.

  “Here comes the cavalry! Am I glad to see you!” Joe said. He sounded gruff, stressed, and scared.

  “Situation report. What’s happening over there, Joe?” Jezzy started to tap the rockets of her harness so that she scooted forward gently towards the shaking, revolving ship ahead of her. “Can you get to an airlock?”

  “Fuh-freezing in here, Lieutenant.” Joe’s voice shook and trembled. “The impact must have taken out life support. I’m in my encounter suit, but these things have only got forty-five minutes of oxygen…”

  “How much atmosphere you got in the Esther?”

  “We’re at…uh…two percent…” Joe didn’t sound very pleased at all. Which wasn’t enough to last more than about twenty minutes, Jezzy quickly calculated. But it was plenty of time for what she had in mind.

  “We’ll get you out of there before then, Joe, don’t you worry. I want you to get to the airlock and wait for my signal,” she said, seeing the hexagonal dome of the external bulkhead door swing past her and around again.

  “But how am I going to release the door? There won’t be anyone in the cockpit!” Joe said, alarmed.

  Oh, fracksticks. Why didn’t these tugs have the same level of sophistication as the Marine Corps ships!? She could have screamed, but she didn’t. Marine Corps ships had multiple redundancies built into them. For all their thuggish utilitarianism, the Marine Corps airlocks could be operated by the suits of those waiting inside or outside.

  “Okay, I’ll come to you then. All airlocks have external controls, right?” she said, half-asking the question rather than stating it. She knew that all Confederate airlocks were supposed to have external opening and closing controls for emergencies.

  The engineers probably hadn’t imagined this situation, Jezzy thought.

  “It’s got external mechanical locks. You’ll have to break the seal and turn the wheel counter-clockwise,” Joe said. “There are pressure converters, but it’ll still open with a punch.”

  “Not if you run through the full decompression process on your end, Joe,” Jezzy reminded him. “Get to the airlock now, Joe.”

  “Aye-aye, Sergeant.”

  Swoop. The airlock hatch swept past Lieutenant Wen’s view once again, before the Esther was shaken by another impact to its front and circled wildly.

  The Ru’at ships still weren’t attacking, Jezzy realized, which was a good thing, but also insensible. What were they doing? Just sitting there until General Asquew could send more of the Rapid Response Fleet here to blow them out of the sky?

  Jezzy didn’t doubt for a moment that the entire weight of the Rapid Response Fleet could destroy these vessels. There were only fifteen of them, right? And the Rapid Response Fleet alone had six or eight times that number of vessels, of all different classifications from one-Marine fighters all the way up to the giant flagship dreadnaughts.

  Only fifteen. Her memory did the mental equivalent of sucker-punching her in the gut.

  General Asquew’s footage of the departing Ru’at jump-ships that had been shown to Jezzy on board the Oregon had shown about thirty of the enemy vessels.

  Where did the other half go? Jezzy thought in alarm. She was already gesturing for her suit communicator to activate when she saw small flashes of light out of the corner of her eye.

  Flashes of light that were not coming from the Esther in front of her, or the scrap wreckage field behind her.

  It was coming from the Ru’at fleet—or half of it, anyway.

  Tiny explosions of light across the face of the strange cylindrical vessels. Jezzy gasped. “Are they firing at us?” she called out on her command frequency. It had looked like muzzle flashes from a distance, but there was no accompanying hail of projectiles, missiles, or torpedoes lancing into the Esther and her. Instead, the lights flared, diffused, and winked out just as if she was looking at lights, not down the barrels of ship-mounted guns.

  Were they trying to send a message to us? she thought, until she saw precisely what the lights had meant. Small dark shapes were flying through the night—straight for the asteroid field.

  The Ru’at had indeed decided to send a message, but their message was the flying bodies of cyborgs, metal on one side, and dead, blackened flesh on the other.

  And they were coming straight for the Esther, and for Acting First Lieutenant Jezebel Wen.

  12

  Not Entirely True

  “Lieutenant,” Ambassador Ochrie hissed from where she stood in by one of the bistro’s porthole windows. Every line of her body was tight as she peeked out past the curtains.

  So far, the wanted Marine, ambassador, and imprimatur had spent the last several hours enjoying the strong coffee of the Greek restaurant as they tried to figure out their next move. Despite their sudden imposition, and the fact that they brought with them the threat of General Hausman’s Marine guards breaking down the door at any moment, Max Poulanous and his son Alexi had appeared to be nothing but generous to them, and currently, the pair sat at one of the dining tables with Rhossily, who was trying to teach Alexi a game of chance.

  “Lieutenant!” Ochrie repeated urgently.

  “What have you got?” Solomon stepped up to her side, leaning to look through the gap in the curtains to see what troubled the ambassador.

  Marines. They were outside, moving down the hallway in their power armor, their Jackhammers slung across their chests. Solomon’s eyes narrowed.

  The Marine of Hausman’s force—who Solomon presumed had to be members of the Near-Earth Fleet, just as he was a member of Asquew’s Rapid Response Fleet—wore the same armor that he did, but their colors were gold and red, and their belt harnesses seemed to have less of the battlefield-minded Rapid Response accoutrements, with less rope deployments or medi-kit modules. Instead, these Marines had more lines of flashbang grenades and handcuffs.

  “Hausman’s building a private police force,” Solomon murmured, watching as they sauntered down the corridor, past the closed doors of adjacent shops.

  “A private police force that will have us executed the first chance he has!” the ambassador said. A Luna-wide curfew had gone up across the station since the New York attack
, and there was an eerie quiet outside their walls.

  “Hush,” the ambassador said, stepping back from the curtain as Hausman’s Marines stalked past, policing the curfew. At the dining table, the imprimatur and the others caught wind of what they were saying and fell into an uneasy silence until Solomon checked the curtains once more and saw the retreating backs of Hausman’s guards.

  “We’re good,” he breathed, hearing the audible sigh of relief from all those around him.

  “We need to get off the Moon,” the ambassador whispered to Solomon.

  “Aye,” he agreed. I need to let Asquew know just what is going on back here. Solomon knew that it would take hours, at least, for radio news to reach Mars about New York, and Hausman. Hours during which time the Ru’at would have appeared, and Asquew’s offensive of Mars would already be well underway. He thought about what he had seen in Luna 1’s docking stations. “We might be able to steal a ship. It’d have to be civilian maybe, as I don’t think we could get a Marine Corps ship…”

  “But then, how would we jump?” the imprimatur pointed out. “All of the ships near Earth have been grounded or are in holding patterns. No one is allowed to enter or leave near-Earth space.”

  “That is not entirely true…” Max cleared his throat and spoke up.

  “What? Do you know a way to get off the station?” the ambassador asked suddenly.

  “Well…” The restaurateur grinned broadly. “That depends on who’s asking.”

  “Are you sure about this?” Ambassador Ochrie still managed to look fierce, even behind the heavy gray cowl she wore over her head. The imprimatur was similarly garbed, but, despite Max’s protestations, Solomon had refused to leave his power armor behind. Instead, they had changed their plan to this: that Lieutenant Cready would pretend to be one of Hausman’s guards, escorting subversives…and hope to note run into any of Hausman’s Marines who could see his ID.

  Solomon walked down the long, empty access tunnel with Max behind him, his hands held together with a length of rope that wasn’t actually tied, and behind him came the ambassador, cowled and fake-tied, and then Imprimatur Rhossily, similarly adorned.

  “Nothing is ever certain, madam,” Max said, still with his characteristic trace of energy and optimism, but his voice did sound a little strained. “But I have been living in Luna 1 for a long time… Me and some of the other local tradespeople, we have, you could say, developed a few small ways to make sure that goods are easily available…”

  “Smugglers, you mean,” the ambassador said dourly.

  “Ambassador, I hardly think that any of us have the luxury of choosing our allies.” Imprimatur Rhossily said.

  If they WILL even become our allies… Solomon thought as he saw their destination, the distant airlock of Port 13, one of the smaller bubble habitats to the rear of the larger Luna 1 bubble, and apparently just as deserted.

  Max had spirited them out of Luna 1 just a short time earlier, waiting for a time when the patrols were at their lightest and leading his charges through a series of service elevators and access tunnels that were the domain of couriers, cleaners, and delivery staff, until they had entered their last hurdle—getting into Port 13.

  “It’s a hoods terminal, meaning that you only get workers, porters, haulers coming through here. No tourists or civilians,” Max explained.

  “Aren’t you a civilian?” Solomon asked.

  “Ah…” He reached up to tap the lanyard on his neck, which had a picture of his smiling face and his ID reference numbers as a tradesperson of Luna 1.

  “Luna Trade Guild. All self-owned businesses get to be on it. It gives me the right to use this port,” Max said as they stepped up to the white metal doors, the light above stubbornly stuck on red.

  “Not the rest of us, though…” Solomon murmured dismally, standing in front of the small camera by the side of the door, angrily gesturing to the people behind him and pressing the door-release button.

  Access Denied. The small LED screen flashed the words. Solomon groaned. He was not a member of the Lunar Trade Guild, quite clearly.

  “Listen up, by order of General Hausman!” Solomon raised his voice to shout into the camera. “I have three prisoners here and I need access to this port for further investigations of illegal activity! Open up or I’ll get a demolitions team to burst our way in!” he said, adding some fire and grit into his voice as he did so.

  “Sheesh, Lieutenant…” Max sniggered behind him. “I think you’re going to give them a heart attack. You almost gave me one!”

  “Ah.” Solomon actually felt a little proud of his performance. Lying was something that he had been very good at, once. “Old skills.”

  “You were an actor?” Max asked as they waited for whoever was on the other side to come to the decision that it was best to let the angry Marine in now rather than later.

  “I suppose you could say I was a performer, of sorts…” Solomon shrugged, as the small LED screen suddenly flashed the words:

  Access Granted.

  There was a hiss, and the doors opened ahead of Solomon, revealing a line of rather large, burly men in the gray and blue tradesmen encounter suits, some with utility belts and a variety of small tools and modules attached, looking at them speculatively.

  “They don’t look very happy to see us…” the ambassador whispered warily.

  Are you really surprised? Solomon thought as he looked at the six or seven men standing in front of him, blocking his access and appraising him with all of the calculated menace of a boxing ring. These guys aren’t just tradesmen, Solomon recognized immediately.

  Lieutenant Cready of the Outcasts had just found the smugglers of Luna.

  13

  The Invasion of Pluto

  “Lieutenant Wen, get out of there!” Faraday was roaring over her suit.

  Jezzy ignored him. The Ru’at jump-ships had ‘fired’ their cyborgs, apparently from specially-made launch tubes, and with their flesh being kept alive by cybernetic enhancements and controls, they had no need to encase them with protective suits or atmospheric helmets.

  Instead, the cyborgs flew forward like living missiles into the wreckage field, and Jezzy was frozen for a moment in shock at this bizarre act of war. Didn’t the Ru’at know that the Marine Corps could just fire at them? Jezzy thought. The Oregon alone, a powerful—if aging—Marine Corps battleship, could probably fill this scrap field with missile fire.

  But then Jezzy remembered the battle that she had fought alongside Solomon and a fraction of the Outcasts on Ganymede, back when Ganymede had been their training home and they had been called ‘adjunct-Marines’ not yet even worthy of full Marine status.

  They had fought just a handful of the cyborgs on Ganymede’s frozen surface. A handful against almost double those numbers of trained Outcasts. And still the cyborgs had managed to overrun their position, decimating their numbers

  And it was all because they didn’t stop. They don’t die when they are supposed to! Jezzy remembered with a snarl of rage. You could pour bullets into them, and those that did manage to get past the cybernetic plates didn’t even slow them down. You had to totally dismantle them or sever their spinal cord to stop them.

  No wonder the Ru’at weren’t bothered about sending their cyborgs into battle first. The Ru’at cyborgs could probably walk, stumble, and crawl through a field of exploding missiles and still launch themselves at the ship that had attacked them.

  But right now, Jezzy had only one ship to worry about. The Esther.

  She had no time to wait for the perfect matching trajectory. She fired the rockets of her harness and shot forward towards the spinning vessel as a cloud of cyborgs approached from the other side.

  Woah! She narrowly missed a spinning metal rod, moments before she impacted the side of the Esther with a brutal, heavy THUNK!

  “Ach!” Jezzy saw stars for a moment and her hands scrabbled, sliding down the hull of the tug as it turned over and over, before one of her power gauntlets fina
lly caught something—one of the many external grabrails. She was no longer bouncing on the hull but was instead revolving with the Esther, hanging on like a limpet.

  Wonderful. Now all I have to do is find the airlock.

  Luckily for the acting field commander, the design of the tug was fairly straightforward—the grabrails she clung to led to the ladder, which in turn led to the dome of the airlock. The woman cursed how everything seemed slower in zero-G, as she grabbed the ladder bars and hauled herself up, one hand at a time.

  KLUNK! She felt the vibration of an impact vibrate through the outer hull of the ship and froze for just a second. But the Esther kept on spinning on its axis, and there were no sudden explosions of gases or electronics. Whatever piece of junk had hit the ship, it wasn’t THAT bad, clearly… Jezzy thought as she continued her ascent, reaching the hexagonal dark gray dome of the airlock.

  “Joe, I’m in place. You ready?” she asked.

  “I’m inside,” he said, and her external suit microphones picked up a muted tapping on the inside of the airlock.

  Right. Break the rubber coating, turn the wheel clockwise. No, wait, COUNTER-clockwise! Jezzy hooked one hand to the nearest ladder hold and studied the dome. There was a thick rubber seal running around the edge of the control wheel on the very top, but luckily, Jezzy had a tool for that.

  Using the controls on her new harness, she moved the grabbing vice arms overhead down to the seal to pinch onto the squashed cake of rubber and press down, exerting more and more pressure.

  She felt the pressure suddenly lesson as the vice-like pincers cleaved through the rubber, which burst from between wheel and outer airlock door. She released it, letting the rubber rotate away. She felt a twinge of ridiculous guilt at littering space, before remembering that she’d just poured eight tugboats full of metal into Pluto’s near space. That was going to require some heavy clean-up satellites to get rid of after all this.