But the Yakuza numbers are small… Jezzie’s mind raced. Which was why they couldn’t control the other gangs in the APP. They were the best trained and offered the harshest punishments for any who got in their way, but their elitism and selectivity worked against them in some ways.
Which was why Jezzie had thought she would be safe up here, thousands of miles away through the vacuum of space. Why would Boss Mihashi send a valuable Yakuza asset all that way just for her?
“We’ll be in touch, Miss Wen,” the staffer said in a low growl, turning back to look at the utility machine as if nothing had happened between them at all, and leaving Jezebel still reeling in a state of shock.
Why would they send an operative all this way just for me? she thought, but Jezzie, unfortunately, already knew the answer. Because I used to be a VERY valuable asset to them. And what this gray-suited staffer was letting her know was that the Yakuza could not only get off-world anytime they wanted, but that they could also get to her anytime they wanted…
4
Old Habits Die Hard
‘Calm down,’ Solomon repeated to himself, shaking his head. He couldn’t believe that Jezzie, one of his own squad members, had told him to ‘calm down’ back there. The physical training had ended, and, exhausted but still filled with an electric energy, Cready was making his way back to the Outcast dormitory, feeling like he had a supernova about to go off inside his head.
I was better off on the streets of New Kowloon, he was thinking. If only he could find a way to get off this rock. Stowaway on one of the food transports, maybe…
In the reflective chrome walls of the corridors, the young man caught sight of himself—just one amongst many tired and bedraggled Outcasts, morphing out of shape and back in again as the steel didn’t quite give a perfect reflection.
A glint showed the gold band on his training jacket.
Ah yes, Specialist Commander Cready, Solomon scoffed at the blurry, gold image. He remembered feeling proud—absurdly so—when he had received the star from the Marine colonels, claiming that his quick thinking and character traits made him perfect for a command role. It was the first time that someone had believed in him. Well, someone who wasn’t asking him to steal money for them, that was.
Did his squad believe in him? He thought of the metal golem Malady, Karamov and Kol, Jezzie. The memory of Jezzie’s annoyed look hit him like a slap across the face. Clearly not.
His squad would probably be better off without him anyway. He grimaced as he tucked his head down and shuffled forward. The food vending units were coming up, and the crowd always slowed when it was time to start receiving the dispensed cubes of reconstituted goop that the staffers said were full of every sort of nutrient, mineral, enzyme, and protein that their bodies needed.
What he wouldn’t give for some New Kowloon street food. His stomach grumbled at the thought. Crispy duck. A honey and mustard dressing. Fresh noodles. Proper noodles, still steaming hot and spicy with chili, ginger, lemongrass…
“Here he is, Commander Cready!” said a French accent up ahead, making Solomon groan and open his eyes warily. It was, of course, Arlo Menier, leaning against the opposite side of the corridor with two handfuls of the nutrient cubes.
Who did he bully to get a second? Solomon wondered. He was already in a bad mood, and the jitters of the warden’s control chip still ran through his limbs.
And it’s probably all this big lug’s fault, isn’t it? Solomon realized. One of the reasons that the warden had singled him out for special punishment was the fact that Solomon had been the commander who had finished last, leading his squad to the lower rankings of the last training mission.
That had been because of Arlo cheating. Solomon’s eyes flared.
And met their match in Arlo, who was staring at him as steadily and as hungrily as a wolf might look at a lamb. Silence seemed to gather around the two men—Arlo large and built like an amateur weight-lifter, while Solomon was thin and wiry, and a good head shorter than the Frenchman. It seemed as though the rest of the Outcast Adjunct-Marines had been waiting for this confrontation, as they stepped back to form a space for them.
“You don’t deserve to be here.” Arlo’s first volley, which Solomon thought was pretty weak, to be honest.
“We’re all ex-cons. I don’t think any of us deserve to be here,” Solomon countered, and heard a small chuckle from somewhere in the crowd. He wondered if it was Karamov or Kol, rooting for him.
“You’re an idiot.” Arlo ignored his riposte, instead going for the direct insult.
“Maybe, but you’re ugly. At least I can pretend to be clever,” Solomon stated.
The Frenchman’s face turned a deeper shade of purple as his brain caught up with the insult, and he let out a strangled grunt of rage, stepping forward—
“Halt!” a voice cried out, and suddenly Solomon felt that sharp singe of pain moving from his shoulders to his neck and down his spine. He lost control over his legs and staggered into the nearest Outcast member, who was similarly gnashing their teeth in rictus pain as they slid down the wall.
“Gentlemen,” said an eloquent women’s voice, tinged with a Russian accent. The pain started to subside from Solomon’s and everyone else’s control chip, leaving them gasping for air. Solomon was able to blink aside the tears of pain to see that it was indeed Doctor Palinov, standing in the center of their circle in her white lab-coat and austere blonde braid, holding up a control device similar to the one that Warden Coates used.
Solomon’s heart was suddenly in his mouth. She will have to report this to the warden. Even if he hadn’t thrown a punch yet, he was sure that the warden wouldn’t care.
“Save your fighting for the gymnasium, please,” the doctor stated, turning on her heels to go, before pausing over Solomon’s huddled, pain-wracked body. “Cready. Get up and follow me.”
Oh no. Solomon managed to force himself to his feet even though every joint ached. He was certain that this was it, that she was going to take him to the warden, who would order his expulsion from the program.
I know that I wanted to get out of here, he chided himself. But that doesn’t mean that I want to spend the rest of my days on Titan!
Behind them, he heard the murmur of the other adjunct-Marines, similarly struggling to their feet, but with their eyes watching the downfall of Specialist Commander Cready.
So, Solomon was surprised when Palinov turned right instead of left at the end of the corridor, leading him past the entrance to the study lounges and toward the double-plated, reinforced glass doors that led into the restricted medical lounge.
Palinov reached into her pocket and waved a small card of white plastic at the door controls. With a dull hum, their red restricted lights turned to green, and the doors slid open.
“This is more for your benefit than it is ours,” Palinov said as they swept through and the doors closed behind them. “We have all sorts of pathogens, diseases, viral and fungal antibodies…” she explained, gesturing up the large, industrial air filters and fans that were mounted in the ceiling at regular intervals. “We couldn’t have the lot of you getting sick on us now, could we?” she said lightly.
Just like the entire Outcast complement got sick with the flu—even Malady—and even though there was no way for the virus to be introduced to Ganymede? Solomon thought, but didn’t say. He already had his suspicions about that particular viral outbreak, and this might be just the chance that he got to confirm them.
The medical lounge was built like a scientific suite, with large glass windows and similarly locked doors in front of labs on either side of them as they walked down the pristine, chrome and white corridor. Solomon couldn’t help but look through the glass. There were rows of metal tables and white-suited staffers working at test tubes or screens. Other bays were filled with reclining medical chairs, stuffed with an array of instruments over their heads.
“Hmm.” Palinov noticed him looking and waved a hand as she strode forward. The windows d
arkened, the reactive chemical properties in the glass responding to some signal she gave.
“Can’t give away all our secrets,” she said in a slightly amused tone, which Solomon knew meant she wanted to sound as though she were being agreeable and talkative. It only made him suspicious.
She brought him to one of the rooms with now-darkened glass. The door hummed aside to reveal a more conventional doctor’s room—small, with a reclining medical chair on one side, next to a desk with a screen and walls mounted with test tubes and strange medical equipment.
“Hop on the bed, if you please, Mr. Cready,” Palinov suggested, while she turned to busy herself at one of the desks, laying out data-pads and donning sterile blue gloves.
“Is this, uh… Is this going to hurt?” Solomon asked. Stupid question. Everything hurts in this place. But even as he was worrying about what fresh hell the doctor had in store for him, he found that his eyes were also scanning the room in that way that he had taught himself, so many years ago.
He had been a thief back on Earth, in the part of the globe known as the Asia-Pacific Partnership, and more specifically, the largest ghettoized urban area called New Kowloon. But Solomon Cready hadn’t just been your run-of-the-mill mugger or snatch-and-run sort of thief. No pinching tourists’ handbags for him.
Solomon had been one of the very best, infiltrating mega-corporate laboratories and Confederacy museums, industrial factories and the elite penthouses of the rich and corrupt.
He was quite proud of that fact, to be honest.
Anesthetic. Antibiotics. Vaccinations. He studied the assembled bottles and jars and dispensaries. Not that he was particularly interested in stealing any of them—unless of course he could start to trade them with some of the other Outcasts for favors?
But then again, this isn’t prison, not really. What favors do I need from anyone in here? Solomon thought in disgust. Everyone here was in the same boat. He could possibly use them to bribe other Outcast Marines to stand with him against Arlo. Maybe he could bribe Arlo himself to get off his back….
Nah. That was a road that Solomon didn’t want to go down, as he knew where it would lead. Never be the person paying off the bigger guy, gang, or syndicate, his experience told him. You’d only end up more in debt.
So, no. He was still surreptitiously looking at the different cabinets and metal lockers when he saw something that did interest him. Doctor Palinov had reached down to wave her ID card once again over a set of steel cabinets. There was a dull, internal click and the metal doors slid back, revealing rows and rows of test tubes. Solomon squinted at them, seeing small labels with printed names. His suspicions were confirmed when Palinov riffled through the tubes to pick out one, and, as she stood back up, Solomon was sure that he saw the letters “CREA—” stamped on its side.
Cready. That’s me. But it wasn’t a blood sample, instead, it looked to be just a clear solution.
“What’s that?” he asked, as he knew that he would probably get more answers from what Palinov wouldn’t say than what she would.
“Just your antibiotic culture. We grow them now, using traces of bio-engineered viruses. Nothing to worry about. No side effects.”
Serum 21? Solomon thought. That was what he had overheard them talking about—this very lady, he was sure, just a few months ago, when they had thought that he had been asleep. They had said that it was part of a ‘program,’ but it wasn’t one that any of the Outcasts had been told about.
“Oh,” Solomon said, and tried to not flinch when she stuck a needle of the substance into his arm. He gritted his teeth and held his breath, waiting for whatever might happen, to happen.
But nothing did.
“See? I told you that there were no side effects. This will just keep your body in tip-top condition.”
Why me? Solomon thought. Why didn’t she call all of the Outcasts here for their supposed ‘antibiotic top-up’?
“Now, if you will just lie back and relax,” Palinov instructed, holding the small control device over his body.
“It’s fine. I’m complying,” Solomon was quick to say, but Palinov just gave a small shake of her head and ignored him. Cready saw that she was using the control device the way that others might use a detector of some kind. Not only could it communicate to the control chip implanted in his neck, Solomon realized, but clearly that chip must be able to send back readings as well. But readings of what?
“Hmm.” Palinov paused, picking up her data-pad as she synced the two devices and looked at the readouts. Her brow tightened a little, as if the test results were interesting, strange, or alarming.
“Tell me, Mr. Cready, do you remember any serious illnesses as a child?” she asked lightly, setting down both the data-pad and the control device.
Phew! Solomon was starting to get jittery around that evil little thing.
The doctor retrieved a variety of more mundane medical devices including bands that slapped onto his arms and forehead, and read such things as heartrate, blood pressure, temperature, etcetera.
“Not that I remember.” Cready shrugged. He had a rather uneventful childhood, from what he recalled. It was like his life had started when he had snuck into New Kowloon, desperate to make a name for himself and to put his talents to good use. He had dim, hazy memories of a time in the American Confederacy Midwest; long fields of genetically-modified golden corn, and the tower of the harvester in the background, slowly chugging away, night and day.
It had been so utterly boring, he told himself. So utterly boring that he had to get out.
There were other fragmentary memories, of course, like the technical college where he had studied electronic engineering. Again, boredom and wasted talent had turned that short escapade into mush. Better off forgotten.
“I see.” Palinov frowned, studying him for a moment, before retrieving a small visor that looked like a set of shades but with larger, pull-down screens attached. “Can you run through these initial tests for me? We need to keep an update on your cognitive functioning.”
I thought you did that every couple of days through Oracle? Solomon thought about the Ganymede mainframe: a low-cognizant AI—no personality, just data-sorting—that gave them ‘learning opportunities’ in their scheduled study hall lessons. Each session spent in the study hall was essentially the same. A personally-tailored education program, which always started with virtual-reality, holographic puzzles to ‘warm up the brain’ and then would switch to an investigation of a topic or event that they had been assigned. So far, Solomon had learned a lot about the general history of the Confederacy, and the Confederate Marine Corps, as well as been guided on several rudimentary introductions to jump theory, space travel, basic biology, modest spacecraft engineering, and other such subjects that every Confederate Marine was supposed to have a passing knowledge of. All of those lessons were child’s play for Solomon, especially compared to the far more advanced command specialism classes that saw him re-enacting battle strategies against holographic foes or studying troop deployment and inter-personal psychology.
Now, however, he was presented with a set of tests that he had never performed before.
There was a field of blue and red, with blotches of green in front of his face, projected by the virtual holographic sensors of the visor.
Hmm. What’s this all about? he thought, moving his hand just as he would in the study hall simulations to see a rippling, glowing cursor highlight over the colored swathes.
They were pixelated, he saw. Small islands of green surrounded by advancing ‘washes’ of red and blue blocks. It would sure help if there were some instructions for this, Solomon thought, but he guessed that was probably the point.
As soon as his ‘hand-cursor’ hovered over one of the colored blocks, he saw that he could control it, turn it in place, making it active or dormant. He did so, choosing some from the small green splotch, as for some reason he felt a little drawn to the underdog.
In response, the field flashed white, and he s
aw various red and blue blocks become active or dormant and thus Solomon started to understand what he was supposed to do. Immediately, he lost one-half of his green territories as the rival red and blue ‘spreads’ chose to become active against him.
But why didn’t my blocks take over theirs? Solomon thought, and two more turns made him see that it all depended on the ‘weight’ of the color behind the active block. If there were only two adjacent blocks of the same color, then the block could resist an attack, if there were five, then the ‘active’ block initiated a sort of ‘invasion’ mode.
It’s like checkers, or Mah Jong! Solomon realized that the goal of the game was to precisely activate certain blocks at certain times, not always if they could ‘invade’ the enemy territory, but sometime just to ward off an attack.
Solomon happily moved and changed his small green blocks about the field, losing one territory but managing to build a bridge between the other two so that he had a far larger ‘weight’ of color. By the time that Palinov called for him to stop, Solomon had managed to surround and almost take over most of the blue field, and he had left the red field to invade the blue from the other side.
“Very good.” Palinov turned off the simulation and took off the visor, looking at Solomon skeptically for a moment. “Not many people choose green. The weakest of the three colors,” she said lightly, although her voice was loaded with emphasis. “And not many people are able to turn around green’s fortunes if they do.”
“I did well?” Solomon asked.
“Hmm.” Palinov didn’t answer, but was once again back at her handheld data-screen, looking at something. He saw her blink once, twice, and look over at Solomon again. Was that surprise in her face?
“Is there something wrong?” he asked, trying to turn his own concern into a joke. “Are you about to tell me that I’ve only got three days to live now, Doc?”
Outcast Marines series Boxed Set Page 17