The Kepler Rescue

by James David Victor

  Jezebel was sure that her commander was going to get caught, but apparently not. He was better at that sneaking thing than I had given him credit for, she was forced to admit.

  “I know. But there are always opportunities,” the man said lightly, fiddling with the cart to load it into some sort of self-powering battery charge unit, before drawing out a small personal data-screen and laying it angled on the top of the unit so that Jezebel Wen could clearly see the images on the screen.

  It was surveillance footage. Of the station, which surprised her, as Jezebel hadn’t seen any such obvious cameras during her night jaunt.

  From the angle of the image, it appeared to be coming from one of the light fittings, displaying an empty front atrium with all of the doors in and out clearly visible. Then a shadow moved at one of the doors, and it whisked open to show an image of Solomon Cready, moving fast and quietly across the screen to the medical lounges.

  “This was taken from last night,” the man stated, wiping a hand over the screen to show the same image once again, but this time without Cready as another shadow emerged from the food hall door. Jezzie recognized herself as she had ghosted after Solomon, before being unable to follow thanks to not being able to pass through the medical lounge glass doors.

  Oh no, Jezzie thought. If they had both been caught on internal surveillance cameras, then it was only a matter of time before Warden Coates would know.

  Luckily for both Jezzie and Solomon however, that was not to be the case.

  “This is the only footage on the station,” the man stated in an eerily calm voice. “I deleted and re-looped the cameras on the mainframe, thinking that last night was you fulfilling your orders…” A pause. “It clearly wasn’t.”

  “I got disturbed, the warden and Doctor Palinov—” Jezzie started to hiss, but a cold, measured look from the staffer silenced her. Contained in that scowl were all the years of training of a Yakuza. There are never any excuses for the likes of us, it said.

  “You have twenty-four hours,” the man stated, making the screen vanish with a wave of his hand and slamming the wall locker shut.

  Twenty-four hours until what? Jezzie was thinking, too shocked to say anything, or to call out after the man as he turned to walk away. Until they kill her father? Or until he releases the footage of her out of her bunk in the middle of the night?

  Or before he took matters into his own hand and decided to kill Solomon himself? None of the options were anything that she wanted to face.

  8

  Joachim

  Solomon was now aware of his body in a way that he had never been before as he went through the rest of the day’s training sessions and lessons. His hour and a half of gymnasium saw him paying less and less attention to the other adjuncts around him as he tried to measure his own recovery rate, his strength, speed, and stamina to see if it really had improved.

  He thought that they had, but it was hard to tell if that was from half a year of sustained physical training and the apparently ‘perfect metabolic environment’ that they were supposed to live in here, or from Serum 21.

  It wasn’t until he saw Arlo Menier using just his arms to ascend the climbing wall that Solomon was starting to think that yeah, maybe there is something to all this Complex-strand DNA variant 21 stuff.

  He knew that Arlo was a strong guy. After all, the Frenchman was built like a gladiator, tall and wedge-shaped. Once Solomon had started noticing it, though, he saw evidence of the Outcasts’ improved genetic code everywhere. To one side of the hall, Karamov—his own squad member—had just collapsed after circuit training. Solomon counted the seconds as he watched Karamov pant, wipe his brow for a couple of seconds, and then apparently jump up to his feet once more to have a final lap.

  How’s that for recovery time? Solomon thought.

  Still more adjunct-Marines appeared to be reaping the benefits of Serum 21. There was one Marine who had just apparently lifted his personal best at the weight sets as he loudly whooped and punched the air. There was a Green Squad member who had been on one of the available running machines solidly since they had all started their session and had apparently not slowed or stopped from his medium-fast sprint.

  Holy crap, Solomon thought. He realized that he was truly looking at the Outcasts for the first time. Warden Coates, he hated to say, had been kind of right when he had said that he was going to turn them into an elite fighting unit, one of the best fighting units since the Spartans. Solomon looked around him in frank amazement as he saw his comrades and colleagues in comparison to who he had been back in new Kowloon.

  If I had met any of these guys back then… Solomon thought that they would have appeared to be top-athletes, possibly even superhuman, to the likes of him.

  Which was precisely when the price of their newfound abilities became painfully obvious as Joachim, one of the regular adjuncts without a specialism from White Squad, suddenly fell off his treadmill.

  At first, no one reacted, but Solomon was already moving across the floor of the gymnasium by the time that everyone else noted the white bubbles forming on the side of Adjunct-Marine Joachim’s mouth.

  Solomon reached his side first, to find a man whose limbs were busy shaking and locking into tight positions every few seconds. “Joachim!” Solomon called out nervously. Weren’t you supposed to support their heads? He realized he had no idea what to do in this situation. “Medic!” he shouted, just as the other Outcasts started to realize that something very wrong was happening in their midst. “Someone get a medic!” Solomon shouted again.

  The man’s hands were like curled claws as he was gripped by seizures and fits right there before Solomon’s eyes. Keep the airways open, Solomon thought, remembering his first aid training, and reached to steady Joachim’s head.

  “Huh…” Just as Joachim’s shaking suddenly subsided, his body relaxed, and his eyes closed as gently and as peacefully as if he was going asleep.

  “No!” Solomon said, quickly reaching for a pulse, but it was already too late. Joachim from White Squad had died, right here in front of them.

  CLANG! CLANG CLANG! The klaxons above the door sounded, and they hissed open to spill a small gaggle of fast-running staffers, heading straight to Solomon and Joachim, to separate them and push Solomon out of the way.

  “ATTENTION, ladies and gents!” the very familiar and also very unwelcome tones of Warden Coates cut through the commotion. “Let the boys in gray work. Clear a space! That means you, Cready!” Coates was bawling at them, and although Solomon had no real wish to be electrocuted again, he didn’t back away from Joachim’s body as the warden strode forward into the room, behind the staffers.

  “Cready! On your feet! Attention!” Coates and the others came to a stop just in front of him. The man was a walking steel rod, Solomon thought grimly as he looked up at Coates’s glare of indignation.

  “You disobeying an order, Specialist Cready?” Coates said.

  “This man is dead, Warden,” Solomon heard himself say. A surge of anger ignited in his chest, making him ball his fists and want to scream. Keep it together, Solomon, he told himself, even though every fiber of his being told him not to. Told him to scream and shout at the man that he knew just what they were doing—all of these experiments with Serum 21, which were slowly killing them, one by one.

  And I’ve got the highest dose of anyone in here, Solomon thought, too, his glance moving to the glassy stare of Adjunct-Marine Joachim underneath him. It was probably even Coates’s idea, he considered. Dose me up, kill me off, then he wouldn’t have to think about how much he hated me.

  “Pfagh!” a grunt of annoyance from Coates as he must have registered all the other adjuncts’ worried and shocked looks around him. “Get him up. Take him to the medical lounge, now!” Coates snapped at the staffers, who hurriedly moved to the dead adjunct’s body and lifted him between them. Solomon slowly stood up from his crouch, but he could not find it in himself to salute.

  Coates held his eyes for a period
, and Solomon saw the man’s lip twitching in a similarly barely-held-in-check rage. But whatever internal debate was going on inside the warden’s head—whether to shock Cready or just shout at him—it was overcome by what he had come here for.

  “Adjuncts!” Coates shouted, using his training voice that echoed around the gymnasium. “We’ve had an urgent call from the Rapid Response Fleet. One of our station-ships has gone missing, and command deems it high time that you are put to the test!”

  I thought our mission on Mars proved our worth, Solomon thought.

  “Get to the launch hall, now! Light tactical suits everyone. Double-time!” he shouted, and, after the surprised second of confusion that followed, Coates shouted once once. “WELL!? Move it!”

  Around Solomon, all of the other adjunct-Marines broke into action, but Solomon stood still. He was scared that if he even so much as moved a muscle, it would only be to hit the warden in the face. Which would be very satisfying, of course, but it wouldn’t do him any favors…

  “What about Adjunct-Marine Joachim, sir?” Solomon said as neither man moved. What are you doing, Solomon! a small, more sane part of him argued. Staring down at the warden is sure to only get you electrocuted!

  The warden held Solomon’s glare for a moment, then shook his head in frustration. “Death happens, Specialist Cready,” Coates barked. “You’re in the Marine Corps now. You’d better get used to it.” And, much to Solomon’s surprise, the warden turned on his heel and followed the rest of the adjuncts and staffers out of the gymnasium.

  What, no insult? No punishment? Solomon was deeply confused by this outcome as he broke into a jog. Did this mean that the doctor had been right? That the fact that he, Solomon Cready, was one of the best performing of the Serum 21 experiments meant that the warden wasn’t eager to punish him anymore?

  I doubt that very much, he reflected as he skidded out of the door and turned to the lifts that went down to the launch level—large hangar bays where their suits and equipment were stored in personal identification lockers. As well as where the transporters docked, ready to take them into deep space.

  Solomon wasn’t sure what this new reaction from the warden meant, but he was sure that he wouldn’t be able to push his luck much farther, either.

  9

  Kepler

  LIGHT TACTICAL SUIT: Active.

  USER ID: Solomon CR.

  BIO-SIGNATURE: Good.

  SQUAD IDENTIFIER: Gold.

  SQUAD TELEMETRIES: Active.

  Solomon’s vision flushed with a wash of neon greens and oranges as his light tactical suit activated, and he clicked the visor of his helmet into place. He stood in front of his booth in the main launch hall, and alongside him, their forms highlighted with the fading green line of his suit identifiers, were the rest of Gold Squad. As Solomon turned to survey how they were getting on with their own suiting up, he saw their identifiers flare above them on his visor screen, fading to almost transparent wording as he turned.

  Sp. Adj. Marine MALADY

  Enhancements: Full Tactical Suit

  Sp. Adj. Marine WEN

  Combat Specialist

  Adj. Marine KARAMOV

  Adj. Marine KOL

  ALL GOLD SIGNS GOOD… SUITS ACTIVE…

  As the specialist commander of their squad, his readouts held slightly different information than the rest. An overlay of strategic and tactical options rendered into faintly glowing green lines and arrows pointing their quickest route to the launch hall doors, as well as a minimal set of information on each of his squad’s life signs.

  “All looking good,” he announced, his voice echoing slightly as it repeated across Gold Squad’s suit-to-suit channel. In front of him, his squad and the other squads of the Outcast Marines looked a little like humanoid beetles in their tactical suits. And these were even only the light versions, apart from the walking man-tank that was Malady, sealed inside his full tactical suit for crimes against the Marine Corps.

  The suits were a second skin to Solomon and the others now. A light undermesh suit with ports and connectors for the harness that attached to the leg and arm part-plate armor, as well as the heavier jacket that looked like sheaths of different sculpted metals. It was actually a poly-composite material said to be superior even to sheet steel.

  But there were still plenty of gaps between the plates and the joints of the harness, Solomon knew. Unlike the full poly-metal shell that Malady wore, the light tacticals were designed for faster movement and greater flexibility. The only overt display of power was the singular shoulder pad that each suit had over its right shoulder, emblazoned with the red ‘O’ of the Outcasts, the smaller Eagle-and-World insignia of the Confederacy, and whatever personal ranking identifiers that the adjunct-Marines might have. On Solomon’s shoulder was a small, magnetically-sealed gold star, for instance, which designated him as the specialist commander for this squad.

  And also the one any enemy would want to shoot first, Solomon thought. But there wasn’t time for misgivings, as the holographic countdown on the inside of his visor was already hitting the last minute before they had to ship out.

  “Grab your glad-rags, ladies and gents,” Solomon heard himself saying. It was weird, hearing himself slip into this role so easily. He didn’t remember when it had become so easy to pretend to know what he was doing as a commander.

  Maybe it’s the super-smarts the serum is giving me? he thought wryly as he gestured to the equipment lockers. On the racks was an assortment of weapons from flash-bang grenades to localized EMP charges, and even a few bladed weapons. Solomon stuck to the tried and true, pulling for himself the Jackhammer combat rifle that was standard issue.

  “We don’t know what we’re facing out there today,” he said. In their infinite wisdom, the Marine Corps only gave them the details of the mission when they thought there was a ‘need to know.’

  “…so I want you all to pick what you’re most comfortable with. No surprises this time, okay?” he said, seeing Karamov and Kol follow suit in picking the Jackhammer, but with Kol adding a selection of grenades to clip onto his harness.

  Specialist Malady was a unique case, however, as he picked first two small Rotary MGs—small machine guns with rotating barrels that could spit out small, but very high-density bullets at a rate of three a second—as well as one much larger, tube-like apparatus that he slung over his rounded metal plate shoulder.

  “A particle canon? Really, Malady?” Solomon had never seen the walking metal golem use one of them before, and he wondered if Malady had been listening when he had said ‘no surprises’ just a second ago.

  “I’m the only one who can handle the recoil. I fired them when I was in the Marines,” Malady stated in his deadpan, slightly electronic voice.

  Specialist Wen, of course, picked a Jackhammer along with two poly-steel blades. They looked like katanas but a little smaller, and she slid them into place in her thigh holsters.

  “You ready?” Solomon asked her, still feeling a little wary around her as he hadn’t seen her since their argument in the gymnasium. Another reason I’ve got to talk to Malady and Wen, he thought. He was closer to those two than to Karamov and Kol—not that he didn’t trust anyone on his squad—and he still wanted to share his late-night findings with them about Serum 21.

  That the Marine Corps is experimenting on us. And that any one of us might drop dead at any moment, just as Joachim had, Solomon thought.

  “ATTENTION OUTCASTS! SQUADS ASSEMBLE!” the speaker system announced, and a golden-green vector line appeared over Solomon’s visor screen indicating the path that he was designated to take. As they jogged to their position, the other squads were doing the same until the sixty-odd Outcasts left were now formed into small groups of four to five adjunct-Marines. Each stood before the ramps that led up to the double-doors of the hangar bay.

  “Right!” a voice bellowed, amplified from above. Solomon looked up to see that it was, of course, Warden Coates, standing on the balcony beside two othe
r staffers with Doctor Palinov a few steps behind him. Solomon wondered if the doctor looked a little subdued today, as her head was down, studying a data-screen.

  Probably checking our performance results, he thought with a twinge of unease.

  “Listen up, schlubs! This order comes down from Marine Command, working directly under the Fleet General!” the warden barked. “The deep-field station-ship Kepler is a generational transport ship between Earth and Proxima. You all should know what that means.”

  Solomon did. The ‘deep-field’ ships were a class of spacecraft designed to travel far into deep space, and to jump for prolonged distances on eternal round journeys that looped in and out of Earth’s system, delivering much needed materials and resources to the far-flung colonies of the Confederacy. It was a necessity that even jump travel couldn’t get around, unfortunately. While it was possible to send smaller Barr-Hawking jump-ships back and forth from the colonies in a matter of days, the smaller ships could only manage to carry so much back and forth. Since the colonies were also important for extracting gold and rare minerals to be sent back to their buyers on Earth, then a large-scale, industrial transport network was needed.

  Hence the deep-field ships, each fitted with their own Barr-Hawking particle generators, and able to perform multiple small jumps on their long journey across the hundreds of lightyears that separated the colonies.

  But the Kepler deep-field was apparently also a station-ship, which meant that it functioned pretty much as a moving space station, with habitats and dormitories and recreational facilities. The warden had said that it was a generational ship, which meant that the Kepler had been designed as a miniature traveling Earth colony all by itself, with families of settlers running the ship for years at a time, before moving out to be replaced by a new family.