“Huh?” Solomon asked over their squad’s suit-to-suit narrow band communications.
“I was a Marine, don’t forget. And that’s an F-Class Heavy Bomber. Nautilus, they used to call them,” Malady said, and Solomon wondered if he could detect a hint of regret in the man-golem’s voice. “Unless the warden’s had it removed, then the distress sonar should be beyond the top thruster housing and along the ridge to the outer stabilizer fin.” The big metal man inclined his body a little to indicate where he meant. It was the topmost corner of the wreck, Solomon saw, and it made sense for the distress sonar to be somewhere near the outer edges of the craft when it was in motion—less chance of interference from the ship’s own shielding if the crew needed to activate it.
“Well, I’ll take your word for it, big man.” Cready looked at the crater, the hulk, and the other squad members currently beginning their arduous climb up the side of the vessel.
What is more important, the enemy markers or the ultimate objective, which is the Distress Beacon?
“There’s no way that we can get to all the enemy markers ahead of this lot,” he mused out loud, making up his mind. “Malady? What’s your force-per-inch again?”
“I beg your pardon?”
Solomon rephrased. “Physics. Aerodynamics. Or vacuum dynamics, in our case,” he explained, asking how many pounds of pressure the large man could exert by running. As it turned out, Malady’s size meant that it was a lot.
“About five hundred pounds per inch.” The large golem paused as he calculated.
“Ah. Good, then…” Solomon ran through the numbers in his mind. One of the many things that Solomon Cready was very good at was what the Marine Corps tests called ‘agile thinking.’ It was a skill that Solomon had never really considered to be special before. He just always had an easier time than others answering the daily quizzes on the data-streams, or planning a complicated heist, or working out how to trip the safety measures on a door lock.
Or making physics calculations in his head, it seemed. “You should be able to carry me, then.” He grinned and explained his plan.
The plan, as it turned out, was a simple one. Malady was to charge at the crater wall, with Specialist Commander Cready hanging onto his large suit—everything weighs a lot less in near zero-G, after all—and then jump, while Karamov and Kol would work to climb the hulk as the other squad members were doing, and focus on tearing their rivals off the metal structure and getting to the enemy markers themselves.
It’s not much of a plan, Cready thought. But he hoped that he had covered all possible angles. Jezzie, Kol, and Karamov would neutralize what enemy markers they could, hopefully satisfying at least one part of the mission, while Cready and Malady would go for the beacon. It meant splitting their forces, but he wasn’t overly worried about that. After seeing what Combat Specialist Jezzie was capable of, he rather pitied the rival squad members out there, in fact…
“If my calculations are right,” Solomon started to say, just as Malady started his lumbering run.
“Whoa!” All thoughts of numbers and figures fled from his mind as he concentrated on holding onto the large metal golem with all of the articulated might in his power gauntlets.
The Full Tactical Outcast Marine started slowly, its large bounds looking fairly similar to that of any other leaping, non-gravity-assisted body. Then the combined mass and momentum started to build up, and Malady was hurtling along like a train had been given springs. Great clouds of dust and ice exploded from each metal foot as he ran, and the crater walls yawned high above them, and then suddenly were down at foot level as Malady kicked out from the lip of the crater.
It was the sort of jump that no mere human could ever do without some sort of rocket assist. Even the fully-qualified Marines in their power suits didn’t have the concentrated power that Malady had with his powered exoskeleton.
As the other Gold Squad members similarly leapt from the edge of the crater wall, their arcs ended fast, sending them down into the crater to bound toward the bottom of the hulk as Malady and Cready kept on soaring high through the air.
The hulk grew larger by the moment and filled Cready’s vision as he hung on for dear life. The remaining metal plates, dented and scarred, with the shadows of old military stencils still visible, were rapidly growing larger. Cready had to hope that Malady remembered some of his old Marine training, as he wasn’t sure how they were going to land.
Kerrunch!
As it turned out, the metal golem-man did have a strategy for catching hold of the metal hulk that swam toward them.
It was to punch his own metal claws through the hull.
There was an almighty shockwave that swept through Solomon’s body as they crashed bodily against the side of the upturned hulk with Malady throwing his arms out at the last minute, the heavy fists of his own power gloves—many times the size of Solomon’s—punching through the thin, desiccated metal. It was all that Solomon could do to hang on as they slid down a foot, Malady’s strength ripping the metal before finally coming to a halt, dangling over the edge of the lower booster cavity.
Holy frack, holy frack. Solomon caught a glimpse of the surface of Ganymede, some fifteen or twenty meters below. Had we really jumped that far and that high? It was pointless to suggest otherwise, as Solomon wondered what constituted a terminal fall in low gravity. Would he survive if Malady slipped and lost his grip?
Well, certainly not if Malady lands on top of me, he thought, looking for where his nearest handhold had to be.
But before he could do that, and much to his surprise, there was movement as the servo-assisted motors in Malady’s joints spun lazily, and he started to claw his way up the side of the vessel, using just his hands.
“Holy heck, Malady. Just how strong are you!?” Solomon exclaimed, astonished but glad all the same.
“Is this the time to be telling you my pounds-per-inch?” Malady retorted flatly as he managed to dead-pull his body up the side of the bottom booster housing to where he could now also use his legs to speed the climb.
“Was that a joke?” Solomon had thought that the metal-mechanical man was beyond such things as humor.
“I have my moments,” Malady intoned, sounding as deadpan as if he were a news broadcaster reporting on an uneventful day.
The pair climbed—well, Malady climbed and the specialist commander just hung on—until they had rounded the bottom thruster housing and were crossing over the complicated iron girder work to the topmost one above it.
“Okay, hold up.” Solomon paused their ascent, dismounting from his strange steed and taking shelter in the mouth of the topmost booster cavity. “We’ll climb separately, so if anything happens to one of us, the other can finish the job, okay?”
“Aye-aye, sir—” Malady was just through saying when the order was almost immediately challenged. The metal golem started to turn where he stood, but he hadn’t moved.
What?! Solomon had a second to think before realizing that it was the metal girder that Malady was standing on. It was slow-motion bending and turning away from its seat, and Malady was even now starting to slip.
It was happening too fast, there was little Solomon could do.
“Take my hand!” he shouted, lunging forward as his other arm reached to grab onto the nearest strut support.
But Malady was a far, far greater mass than Solomon was. And even in near zero-G, a greater mass still meant one thing: greater acceleration.
Malady raised his heavy power gloves to reach for Solomon as he slid off the upturned girder. Their metal-capped fingers passed within an inch of each other before Malady was spiraling and tumbling down in slow motion.
“No!” Solomon shouted out, just before Malady hit the floor of the crater with a heavy crash, sending up a radiating circle of dust, and was still.
“Malady? Malady can you read?!” Solomon was shouting over his suit’s controls, as he stared now at the golem, lying motionless on its back far below, and as large in Solomon’
s vision as his own hand.
He’s in a full tactical. Those things can survive nuclear blasts, can’t they? he thought. He hoped. He didn’t have time to think more about it however, as suddenly he was starting to slip sideways where he stood.
What!?
The housing frameworks of the boosters were little more than metal support girders, presumably riveted or magnet-locked into place, with metal sheets connecting them to form the thin, inner shell of the housing compartment. The bottom lip where he and Malady had been standing should have had a ‘stair’ of metal girders ready for the rockets to be mounted on, but now these girders were slowly breaking apart from the wall and tumbling to the surface of Ganymede below.
And straight onto Malady, Cready had a moment to think as he took a step on the twisting metal stanchion and leapt—not out or up but further inside the vessel. It was dark in there, save for the rivers of light that came in from the open booster entrance. As he soared, Solomon could make out a large, tube-like room, with more girders and the half-destroyed remains of metal stairwells leading up to the blankly open holes that had been porthole doors.
Slam! Solomon hit the metal floor and rolled forward. It wasn’t a bad impact. Nothing that his full tactical suit couldn’t handle. He bounced up and started to turn back to where the booster entrance was. He needed to see if Malady—
Whumpf! Something large and heavy hit him across the shoulders.
WARNING! SUIT IMPACT!
Light Tactical Armor Plating: 18%
Solomon recoiled as one of the metal girders rolled sedately off him through the near-frictionless space. Not so sedately, however, that its reinforced steel didn’t crumple one of the front mesh panels of his light tactical suit.
And there, leaping down after it, was the large form of Adjunct-Marine Arlo Menier.
“You idiot!” Cready said but realized a moment later that his words were useless as Menier was on Red Squad, so his Gold Squad suit telemetries didn’t match. It was clear what this was all about, however. Arlo had been, and still was, the local ‘big guy’ in the Outcast barracks. The tall and well-built Frenchman had spent the longest time as a part of the Outcast training program and had used his bulk and experience to seize control over the bunkroom.
He had also fully expected to be the next specialist commander, Cready knew as much because he had in fact told him that at every available opportunity. The fact that Cready, a newcomer, had been singled out along with the handful of other Outcasts to receive their first specialization—unique training categories that indicated rank as well as their future role in the Rapid Response Marine fleet—was half of the reason why Arlo hated him. The other was that Cready had been a part of one of Arlo’s unsuccessful squads, and Arlo had flubbed his own chance at receiving a command specialization.
And of course, he blames me… Cready pushed out with one hand to flip himself through the air as Menier landed just a meter away from him.
But as quick as Cready was, Menier, un-winded and with a fully operational suit, was quicker. He threw a hand out at the specialist commander, and Cready had but a moment to see that it wasn’t empty. He had within it a small device that looked a little like one of those ancient hand-held blow driers.
He’s not looking to dry my hair, Solomon thought. It was a micro-welder, its open maw a glowing red nub of sparking plasma.
No wonder the girders fell away so easily. How did he get that out here? Did he smuggle it with his suit? Now that they had spent the best part of half a year at least, with some like Arlo there fourteen months and counting, Warden Coates expected them to suit up without supervision now. He must have brought it in then…
Cready managed to get one arm up, but Menier merely batted it back down, still following it as he landed heavily on top of Cready’s leaping body, slamming onto the metal floor.
“Get the hell off me!” Cready was shouting, as the much larger Menier knelt down on Solomon’s chest, one hand holding his outstretched arm down as he lowered the micro-welder to Solomon’s face-plate.
He’s going to kill me. He’d going to fracking kill me! Cready bucked and twisted, but it was no use. Menier was just too big and too strong, and the micro-welder was too close.
Thump! Menier thumped Cready’s outstretched arm against the metal again, and Solomon realized that Menier wasn’t actually killing him. He was just holding the micro-welder a few inches from his faceplate, where Solomon could see the condensation starting to rise on the inside as the heat started to transfer.
He could press that into the material any time he wants, but he’s not… Cready’s mind raced. That was probably what this is all about. The big guy didn’t want to kill him, not with a contraband weapon, anyway. That would only earn him a one-way ticket to Titan, or worse!
No… Solomon realized that Menier was just trying to intimidate him. Which was kinda working, to be honest.
“What do you want!” he shouted behind his faceplate. Despite the fact that Menier couldn’t hear him, he must have been able to see Solomon’s lips moving.
The large Frenchman just grinned, held the micro-welder for a few more seconds over Cready, before pushing himself up heavily, making sure that he stood on Solomon at least twice.
“Idiot.” Solomon scrambled away from the man, panting, already standing up in a defensive crouch, but Menier was already ready for any counter-attack, the welder held out. Solomon saw Menier shake his head slowly, and the message was clear. You don’t want to fight me now, I WILL kill you…
But Solomon, apart from having an apparently innate skill at ‘agile thinking’ also had the gift—or curse—of a flash-pan temper.
“You really think I’m going to let you get away with that?” he said, drawing himself up to his full height and starting to stalk towards Menier.
BWAOWAOWAO!! Suddenly, before he could make the Frenchman pay for his humiliation, a clanging alarm rang through Solomon’s suit, signaling the end of the training exercise.
Training Mission ID: Break And Enter (Intermediate Level).
ALL-SQUAD ORDERS:
Distress Sonar Sounded!
Stand down, all squads, and await Marine transport to your location.
“Dammit!” Solomon swore, not taking his eyes off Menier as the large man calmly relaxed the weapon in his hand, grinning.
It had been a ploy. Arlo had already known that someone was going for the distress sonar—perhaps one of his own Red Squad—and he had been waiting and watching for a chance to make sure that Solomon, his sworn enemy, didn’t get in the way.
Solomon saw the large adjunct-Marine shrug as if that was all just a part of the fun and games, as Solomon’s suit pinged with the notice that the Marine transporter was arriving outside. Should he say something about Menier’s actions? Should he fight Menier here and now?
No. Stupid moves, Cready, he berated himself, watching as Arlo started to slowly saunter back to the porthole door he must have come in through, to make his way down to the outside. Cready knew that Warden Coates wouldn’t care about what Menier had done to him, or had almost done to him, if it meant that Solomon might be kicked off the program. And to attack Menier now, with the Marine transporter and the attendant guards arriving outside, would only make his deportation that much quicker.
He was stuck, and Solomon hated being forced into any position he hadn’t chosen.
“Fracksticks,” he swore as he waited, panting in the dark for his heart rate to slow and his temper to ebb away. He had to check that Malady’s nuclear-resistant suit was actually that good anyway, he thought, turning to the open bulkhead which had so recently spilled the metal girders. A quick suit communications call to the big metal man confirmed what Solomon had been guessing.
“Undamaged and operational, Commander,” Malady’s dulcet electronic voice echoed in his ear, which was apparently the only piece of good news that would come out of today’s training mission.
3
A Job For You
Solomon’s
been in a bad mood all week, Jezebel Wen thought as she eyed her commander. And whatever bilge that Warden Coates is about to spew probably isn’t going to help…
It was a few days after the ‘Break and Enter’ training mission, which had seen several of the other Outcast Adjunct-Marines receive specialization. It was a constant, rolling system of appraisal, Wen saw. A spectacular performance on any given day could mean that one of their sixty or so small force would be called for a private interview with the warden, the doctor, or the Marine colonels who regularly visited.
But now, however, Wen was standing at the back of the gymnasium along with about half of the Outcasts. The other half were alternating their lessons with either the study lounge work or their personal specialization classes.
As a combat specialist, Wen was tasked with performing double shifts in the gymnasium, and so when this next group of Outcasts came in for their regular martial training—with Solomon being one of them this round—she found that she was already tired.
The stalking clip of the warden’s boots across the gymnasium floor toward them wasn’t helping her sense of irritation, either.
“Schlubs! Attention!” he barked at them, using the normal slur that he had developed especially for ‘his’ Outcasts.
Wen, along with everyone else, snapped into a straight-backed salute and waited.
Beside the warden stalked the blonde-braided Doctor Palinov in her white suit, as well as two other gray-suited station staff. There were more subsidiary staff than Jezzie had first thought, and as she had spent more time there, she saw that the Outcasts were only a fraction of the people there at the base. All the gray-suited staff had that slightly rangy, either athletic or muscular look that told Jezzie that they probably had some kind of military training, but none of them had seemed eager to talk to the Outcasts, so she didn’t know for sure.
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