“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 leave 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.
14
Utopian Dreams
Fanfare and dazzling sunlight greeted them as Solomon led the way down the craft’s ramp, his heavy metal power armor suit feeling as light as a feather thanks to the internal servo-assists. Solomon had a moment to wonder at just how comfortable this upgrade was—far better than the light tacticals they had worn for so long—before he turned to take his place standing at the edge of the ramp.
Jezzy and Karamov joined him at his side, while Menier, Ratko, and Willoughby performed a mirroring position in front of them, creating an avenue for the ambassador and her assistant to walk though.
The ways of ambassadorial visits couldn’t have changed much since the times of sailboats and people in funny cloaks, Solomon thought, as the air was split by trumpets and the ambassador sedately made her way down the ship’s ramp. It gave Solomon plenty of time to look around him…and marvel.
The imprimatur’s ‘personal landing site’ looked like a small park, with three large bare patches and adjoining bare paths that joined together, leading to a white palatial building.
In the distance, Solomon could see a brick wall surrounding the landing site, encrusted with ivy and with the heads of curiously Earth-like trees peeking from the far side. The white-walled palace imitated a neo-classical style, Solomon saw, with colonnade terraces and formal gardens. The overall building was quite low—no more than three stories high at the highest levels.
But what was really astonishing was the view that the palace had over the city of Proxa, the capital city of the planet and the largest. The imprimatur’s palace was placed on a ridge of rolling highland that descended into woods and patchwork meadows on one side, but on the sea-ward side displayed a huge bay with waters as blue as sapphire.
The city of Proxa itself was designed on vaguely hexagonal lines—different squares and districts all built according to hexagonal patterns, with more brick walls between them or lines of trees. It could have been something out of a fairy tale, save for the tall chrome buildings of Proxa’s center. Earth’s sister world even had skyscrapers now, it appeared.
The city displayed a cluster of parks and even small lakes, and Solomon scanned the scene for the building that he knew had to be there. That he and his team had come to infiltrate…
There. The gold triangular spire sat in the middle of its own hexagonal precinct, with low, white, L-shaped buildings clustered around it. Despite its gold, terraced walls, the entire site was still a very green, airy space, with each terrace of NeuroTech’s headquarters overflowing with greenery, and the avenues between the low white buildings showing off lines of landscaped trees.
Proxa is a vision of heaven, Solomon had to admit. How could anyone think that there could be any crime, or poverty, or disease here?
Or that the building there is churning out murderous robots to fuel a distant civil war? Solomon’s jaw clenched.
“Ambassador, a pleasure…” he overheard the Imprimatur of Proxima say as she approached, flanked only by two people in silver and white robes. She was a small woman with curly chestnut-gold hair slowly giving over to silver. She wore only a simple silver star at her breast, and no other ostentation or insignia. No honor guard? Solomon wondered. That must mean that either Proxima really is an entirely peaceful colony, with no awareness of what NeuroTech is doing under their noses, or…
Or that she was so supremely confident of her strength that she wasn’t afraid.
He thought that the second explanation was the most likely.
“These are…troublesome times we find ourselves in,” Solomon overheard the two women talking as he walked a few steps behind and to the left of the ambassador. At his side walked Jezzy, and behind them walked the oth
er Outcasts, though without Malady, whom Solomon had ordered to stay in the craft with the ambassador’s personal assistant.
When we need some big guns, I’ll need him, he thought. And it also didn’t hurt having one of his own men with their most obvious escape ship, either.
Maybe I can tell Malady to hold the ship in orbit or come and get us when we’re done instead of… Solomon’s mind was racing as he tried to figure out the plan of attack. It was difficult since he was also trying his best to listen in on the ambassador’s conversation and register their surroundings.
The imprimatur’s palace was every bit as grand at close range as it had appeared at a distance, Solomon realized. White stone walls and marble columns, flagstones veined with quartz, and everything set in beautiful parklands with many plant species brought or seeded from Earth, he saw. Their flagstone path did not head straight up to the palace above them, however, but took time to wind through the sedate garden, turning past banks of lavender and pruned rhododendron bushes.
“I am glad that Proxima understands the gravity of the situation,” the ambassador stated. “Obviously, the Confederacy wishes to extend its continued support to all of its colonial allies…”
The imprimatur stopped walking suddenly, making the rest of the line shuffle awkwardly to a halt to avoid stumbling into each other. “Even Mars?” she stated incredulously.
The ambassador, to her credit, didn’t skip a beat. “The Confederacy believes strongly in the people and the prosperity of Mars, and when they are free of the yoke of their fanatics, we will all be safer.”
“And by the fanatics, you mean the Chosen of Mars? Father Ultor’s group?” the imprimatur said evenly. “I believe I heard that both Father Ultor and Imprimatur Valance of Mars were in Confederate Marine Corps custody, am I right?
The ambassador really did hesitate then, nodding. “Yes, that is correct.”
Outcast Marines Boxed Set Page 59