Command Code

by James David Victor

  “And me,” he heard the Imprimatur of Proxima murmur beside him, as the frizzy-haired woman who had been through so much—watching her colony world attacked and destroyed—reached out to take Ochrie’s hand.

  The ambassador looked at it for a moment, and then a very small frown furrowed her brows. “Aren’t you… Weren’t you…” she started to say, looking at the woman’s hand that held her own. Solomon wondered if some part of the old Ochrie was trying to resurface. Perhaps the reality of having one of her opponents—the imprimatur that the Confederacy believed had been sponsoring sedition—was enough to prod Ochrie’s sense of outrage.

  A low, menacing hiss rolled over the alien landscape, coming from the creature. The singular blue drone light on its forehead flared and flashed, as if it were a scanner light, sweeping the area.

  “Kol’s right. We’re not hanging around,” Solomon murmured, turning to start crawling in the same direction that Kol had disappeared in.

  They made their way past the middle of the cavern, with the broken-open ‘pods’ of vegetation to their right and left. Solomon saw a break in this strange forest up ahead, with acres of the alien moss in front, and there on the far side were the steps that led back up to the service tunnel that Kol had first found.

  Back up to the colony, Solomon thought with an overlay of anxiety. But he felt better about being up there, surrounded by familiar metal and familiar humanoid forms—even if they were all brainwashed—than he did about being out here.

  “Uh… Lieutenant?” Solomon was just about to move out into the moss-field when he heard a voice, Kol’s voice, and it was coming from off to one side, where the path they were intending to take branched back around the high heaps of vegetation.

  “Kol, what is it?” Solomon asked as he froze and turned—

  —to see that Kol was standing there, not even bothering to hide, and that he wasn’t alone.

  On either side of him stood more of the Ru’at-Martian cyborgs, and they had their weapon arms already raised and pointed at him.

  Ah.

  “Once a traitor, always a traitor, right, Kol?” Solomon snarled from his crouch.

  What weapons do I have? None.

  What weapons can I get? Through the young man’s peripheral vision, he could see lumps of Martian red rock. He might be able to pick one up and throw it if he combat-rolled forward.

  But it wouldn’t even be a good enough distraction. Solomon gritted his teeth. It wouldn’t buy Mariad and Ochrie enough time to do, well, anything.

  “It wasn’t me, Sol, honest!” Kol was saying, and he held up his empty hands to reveal that the cyborgs had already taken his Jackhammer.

  But they haven’t shot him yet, a small, wary and cynical part of Solomon’s mind still noted. This was it. He had lost, he was forced to consider. He had been outmaneuvered and outclassed by the Ru’at. What sort of Outcast Marine was he?

  Maybe I’m not a very good one, but I am still a Marine. Solomon felt a cold fire coalesce in his belly. He thought about everything that he had been through. He thought about all the punishing hours of training and watching the Marine transporter crash to a deafening fireball on top of the Ganymede Training Base. He thought about fighting in the dark recesses of space, inside abandoned station-ships as well as under the surface of Mars.

  Solomon thought about New Kowloon, and all the people he had cheated…killed.

  No. Even he, the ex-criminal, was surprised at the clarity of his conviction. I’m not going out like this, he thought as he slowly rose from his crouch to face the enemy. There were six of them, all told. He wasn’t counting Kol, because the look of abject misery and panic on the young man’s face told him that he was telling the truth: he really didn’t have a part to play in their capture. Three of the cyborgs stood to the right of Kol, and another three stood to the left.

  “Lieutenant?” Mariad whispered in alarm as she and Ochrie emerged from the vegetation and froze at the sight before them.

  They are going to die, too, Solomon knew, and that realization only added to his fury.

  Enough. Solomon was done with skulking around. He was done with trying to find the last-chance, crazy opportunity out of the situations he had been in. He straightened up until he was facing the cyborgs directly.

  “What are you doing?” Mariad whispered, her hands rising into the air to indicate that she offered no resistance.

  Well, frack that, Solomon thought. “Through Blood and Fire, Kol,” the Outcast Commander said with a savage, almost manic sort of grin. He quoted the Marine Corps oath—the very same one that he had scoffed at when he’d first been forced to repeat it, over a year and a half ago, on Ganymede.

  ‘Through blood and fire, I will still stand strong.

  ‘I will stand at the borders and at the crossroads, I will stand strong.

  ‘Even with the eternal night before me, I will be the flame!’

  “Sol! Don’t!” Kol begged him, but Solomon was past caring. As soon as he said the last syllable, he sprang forward, fists rising.

  FZZT! The first glare of purple-white laser-light from the nearest cyborg was easy to dodge. It was as if, in his fury, all of Solomon’s enhanced genetics had suddenly activated. Maybe some part of his body knew that this was his swansong.

  Time seemed to slow around him as his alien-altered RNA activated maximum adrenaline and cortical steroid functions. It was easy to dodge the first shot as Solomon closed in, leaping to one side and punching out with one hand to force the next cyborg’s firing arm up—

  “Solomon!” Rhossily shouted behind him, but Solomon was entranced by his battle-frenzy.

  He spun on one heel, striking out with his other hand to force another cyborg’s hands away. He was in the middle of this knot of enemies now. The other three wouldn’t be able to get a clear shot on him.

  But that did also mean that he was surrounded by three very strong, very fast, and highly tactical cyborgs.

  Keep moving!

  Solomon ducked as a metal fist sailed past his ear, and he pivoted once again to this time push with both hands at the third cyborg’s firing hand. In intricate slowness, he could see the wheels of the particle-beam weapon on the thing’s wrist spinning as it activated.

  FZZZT! Solomon felt the shudder race up through his hands as the thing fired, spearing through the air to hit one of the other cyborgs in the chest and send it flying.

  I can do this! Solomon found himself thinking. Maybe it was his augmented body, flooded with endorphins, that gave him that burst of super-confidence. He was already side-stepping around the cyborg that he had forced to fire on its colleague, using it as cover as the remaining cyborg on this side raised its firing hand—

  “Solomon! Watch out!” Rhossily’s voice rose to a shriek.

  Thwack! Just for a metal hand to descend on his unprotected head like a thunderbolt, and everything went black.

  16

  Priority 1

  “Right, remember you’ll have to fire as you approach, but only when the Ru’at ships are out of sight.” Jezzy went through the controls one more time to Malady.

  The man-golem managed to look unimpressed with Jezzy’s anxiety, even despite the fact that his face always looked permanently semi-conscious.

  “I was a full combat Marine long before you were, Lieutenant Wen. I know how to use a piston-operated grappling hook.”

  “Piston-operated magnet hook, if you don’t mind,” Ratko said scathingly. It was clearly one of her pet peeves when all her hard work went apparently nowhere, Jezzy thought, and the very pieces of equipment that she had designed and created out of scrap metals wasn’t even called by its right name!

  “Okay, sure, right.” Jezzy shook her head. Her nerves were already frayed to the point of breaking. A thousand things could go wrong with their plan, and what was worse than that was that she had a lot of people relying on her.

  If I don’t get down to the surface, then Solomon will almost certainly die. She couldn’t help but catal
ogue the risks. She blamed the Yakuza, who had forced her to go through mindfulness exercises before every mission.

  If I don’t get the air to Willoughby and the ship, then Willoughby will die. She had already refilled her own suit with air for the reserve tank she had spent getting to the Invincible, but she was painfully aware that Outcast Marine Willoughby was still out there—presumably—waiting for her much-needed oxygen.

  Mission ID: LifeLine

  Mission Duration:

  Deployment and return to scout… 68 minutes.

  She checked her suit’s internal readouts and cursed when she saw that this mission was running longer and longer. How much oxygen did Willoughby have left? All of this meant there was no time to waste.

  The plan wasn’t the simplest one that Jezzy had ever had. And it had required Ratko to search the available workshop bays around the Mid-Level Engineering Hold for the tools to create her magnet-grapple device.

  Corporal Malady would be disembarking from the hold through one of the massive airlocks, which Ratko had managed to get enough residual power to so it worked. He would be towing the cloud of daisy-chained oxygen cylinders, and his massive strength, as well as the weightlessness of space, would mean that Corporal Malady would be able to haul them all the way to the ship.

  If he can remain undiscovered. Jezzy looked once again at Ratko’s device in Malady’s giant hands. It was a simple spool of metal cable, attached at one end to a small gas-canister launcher, and at the far end, Ratko had welded a pretty large magnet, salvaged from one of the workshop areas.

  “It’s a one-shot wonder,” Ratko explained once again, holding up a satchel clanking with more of the small, hand-held gas canisters to sling over Malady’s shoulder. “You point and fire the cannister, the magnet and line will shoot off to the nearest debris, and then you have to pull yourself in again, get rid of the old canister, and reattach the next one, got it?”

  “I believe I made my comprehension clear to Lieutenant Wen,” Malady intoned. “I have operated planetary assault teams, ejecting from orbit. I think that I have the skills to operate a gas-powered magnet.”

  The benefit of sending Malady out there instead of the others was his greater mass. Depending on his initial jump, Jezzy knew that he should be able to generate the most momentum out of any of them. Enough to take him into the heart of the surrounding wreckage, and when his momentum ran out, he would be able to use the magnet-launcher to attach himself to nearby bits of wreckage, and leapfrog from piece to piece until he had rendezvoused with the ship.

  And, Jezzy hoped, because he won’t be using any propellants, heat or electrical devices, the Ru’at jump-ships shouldn’t be able to track him!

  Or at least that was the plan, anyway.

  And meanwhile, me and Ratko will be worming our way through the hulk to get to the Priority 1 weapons, she considered. The nukes.

  “Activating doors!” Ratko called out, and there was a grating, clanking noise as Malady walked forward into the giant-sized airlock, dragging about thirty oxygen canisters behind him on their chain. He almost looked like a clown at a kids’ party, but whose masses of balloons had all been deflated and were now dragging on the floor.

  “Initiating airlock!” Ratko called from the command console, hitting the appropriate buttons to send the door sliding downward again, obscuring the full tactical from view and crunching to a halt in the floor. “Depressurizing in process… Leaving twenty-percent atmosphere to help propulsion,” Ratko stated, meaning that Malady would be thrown out of the airlock when it opened with the escaping atmospheric gases.

  “Malady, can you read me?” Jezzy called over the squad channel.

  “Loud and clear, sir. I predict that I will be out of range for suit communication in T-minus two minutes,” his voice came back over her helmet speakers.

  “Understood. Just get the cannisters to the ship, and…” Jezzy paused, unsure of how to say this.

  “I will continue the mission, Lieutenant, have no fear,” Malady said. Jezzy had returned Asquew’s data-stick to him, as Ratko said that the final actions to take on arming the nukes were all manual and did not require the high-level codes.

  “Find Solomon first,” Jezzy breathed, but if the giant metal man responded, she didn’t hear it over the sudden glitch in the airwaves as the external door opened and there was a rushing sound over the suit communicators. Malady was gone.

  But he will survive, Jezzy told herself. Nothing could kill Malady.

  “Come on, Marine,” Jezzy called out to Ratko, already powering down the station and picking up her tools and weapons. “Where’s this access chute of yours?”

  “This way.” Ratko nodded to where the giant pipework of the engineering hold buried itself in the wall, along with half a dozen other grates, grills, and fans.

  “You sure this is the right way?” Jezzy breathed in the dark. It was hot in here, the service chute was barely bigger than the wide carapace shoulders of her suit, and she felt like she had been climbing for hours.

  Mission Duration:

  Deployment and return to scout… 88 minutes.

  “This is taking too long,” Jezzy said. They had been climbing up the access chute ladder until their arms, legs, and backs hurt. Jezzy was surprised at the fortitude of the corporal, who was at least managing to keep up with her furious pace.

  “We should be at…” Jezzy heard Ratko mumble over the suit. “Level 4. Only three more to go!”

  Jezzy grumbled and said something that would have scalded the air if it wasn’t already boiling inside of her suit and outside.

  “Just remember the procedure,” Ratko breathed, and Jezzy could hear her panting over the gold channel.

  “Open the arms lock, follow the yellow wires to the relays…” Jezzy announced.

  Thunk-thock. As they climbed, they could hear strange bangs and reverberations from the ship. Jezzy wondered if the entire place was going to collapse around them. If anything, she was sure that it was getting hotter, and she hoped that was nothing to do with the Invincible’s crippled state.

  Creeeeaaaak! A shudder swept through the ladder under Jezzy’s gloves, and for a moment she paused, breathing hard.

  “Ratko… You’re the engineer. How structurally sound would you say this is?” Jezzy said.

  There was a moment of silence behind her, and then Ratko’s voice returned over her channel. “The Invincible has had multiple decompression events, plus it’s been peppered with wreckage. The fact that it hasn’t broken apart yet is a miracle,”

  Great, Jezzy thought as she reached up for the next rung of the ladder—just as there was a louder shuddering crash from above.

  Creaakkkk! THOCK!

  Everything went dark for a moment as the access chute shook, and a billow of dust flew down. When it had finally cleared, Jezzy saw that the chute up ahead of them had collapsed.

  “Frack it!” Jezzy growled. “Why can’t anything just go easy for once?”

  “Because we’re Marines,” Ratko murmured with equal despair. “Come on. We passed an access hatch a few meters back. With any luck, we’ll come out right about Level 2.”

  With much grumbling, swearing, and complicated moving in the dark, they managed to find their way down to the latest access hatch, which was a simple twist-wheel system. It resisted her attempts at first, but with the addition of Jezzy, they managed to get it to groan open, revealing a dark room on the far side with large metal pipes for walls.

  “This must be the Forward Weapons Locker,” Ratko breathed. Jezzy didn’t even think that she was looking at a schematic inside her helmet, as she must have memorized the layout of the Invincible.

  “What does that mean?” Jezzy said as she waited for Ratko to ease herself inside the locker before following. The place looked like a basement, with giant metal pipes everywhere next to chugging, still-operational machines.

  “It means that the Priority Weapons are just up ahead.” Ratko grinned, pointing further into the labyrinth of pipe
s. The two women crawled forward over the pipes and the machines. It was still stiflingly hot, but they pressed on until they came to a square grill in the floor, from which there was a dull orange glow.

  “Emergency lighting,” Ratko insisted as they crowded around the grate.

  Below them appeared to be a gallery of different rooms, each one like a cubicle, but big enough to park a car in.

  And in each of the cubicles, sitting on its wide metal loading bay, was a missile many times taller than Jezzy.

  The Priority 1 Weapons. The nukes. We’ve found them.

  17

  Grudge Match

  “Urgh.” Solomon opened his eyes to a universe of pain radiating down from his scalp. He also opened his eyes to Kol’s rather worried stare as he hovered over him.

  “He’s alive,” the man said, not enthusiastically enough for Solomon’s liking.

  Solomon groaned, tried to sit up, and found that he couldn’t. What?

  He was tied down. Or rather, he had sleek white magnet clamps on his ankles and wrists, but instead of magnetizing to each other, they were immovable on a cold metal sheet under his back. “What’s happening? Where am I?”

  “You’d be better off dead,” Kol said in a low voice, which once again did not fill the man with hope. “They got us, sir. They got us, and they’re…planning something.”

  “They?” Solomon coughed. Did he mean the cyborgs? Or the brain-washed Martians?

  “Yeah, them.” Solomon saw his ex-technical specialist nodding off to one side, and Solomon was relieved that he could at least move his head as he craned his neck to see—

  They were on the floor of a circular metal room, similar in style but much larger than the judgement chamber. “We’re in the colony then, I take it?” Solomon breathed.

  The walls were the same white metal that matched the glowing white of the ceiling. He couldn’t see any obvious doors or hatches, but Solomon remembered that the judgement chamber had used advanced holographic technology to give the appearance of privacy.