Outcast Marines series Boxed Set

by James David Victor

  Dust and ice burst into the air under the bounding feet of the first two Outcasts who had been close behind. They must have seen Jezebel almost falling, and then her desperate rescue of Erebus, because now it seemed that they were fully prepared for the chasms and crevasses and ice sheets. Jezzy saw them lengthen their strides into long, bounding hops, sailing over the unmissable holes ahead of them to land on the far side and keep on running.

  “Looks like I really have lost then.” Jezzy frowned, before pushing herself back up to rejoin the race. She wouldn’t come in first, nor second, and from the speed that the rest of the Outcasts were gaining on them, probably not third or fourth either…

  Tap-tap. It was Erebus, who had moved to her side to thump lightly on her shoulder pad.

  “What do you want?” she said, knowing he couldn’t hear her but hoping that he could lipread.

  The larger man pointed at the crevasse as another Outcast sailed over in a gravity-less high jump. Erebus pointed at Wen, and then at himself, and gave her an exaggerated thumbs-up sign.

  “You’re welcome,” Wen sighed, shaking her head as she crouched into a sprint, and Erebus did the same. “I would tell you to buy me dinner, but there aren’t any fracking restaurants up here!” she grumbled to herself, before breaking into a fast, bounding run, down onto the flat rock plain, heading for the two, bright yellow glowing sticks that marked the finish line, already with two adjuncts lounging on the other side, and two more ahead of her.

  Wen came in fifth, and Erebus sixth, but at least she consoled herself that they hadn’t died out there today.

  “See now, thanks…” the mangled lips of Adjunct-Marine Tycho Erebus moved around the words, and Jezzy wondered if he was a man who was used to being grateful. A man like him probably never had much reason to be, she considered as she towel-dried her hair and adjusted her undermesh suit, having just stepped out of the changing rooms, along with the other combat specialists.

  The others were loudly horsing around, those that had managed to make it to the finishing line congratulating each other, while the others who had been totaled by the laser shots nursed bruised limbs and winded torsos.

  “Feynman, better get that to Doctor Palinov,” Jezzy called out to one of the smaller combat specialists, who was still sitting on the floor, rubbing his knee where it had taken a direct hit.

  “Nah, I’ll be golden, see— Argh!” Feynman tried to walk on his damaged knee, and instead collapsed to the wall once again, muttering curses loud enough to turn the recycled air blue.

  “Look, I get it,” Jezzy said. “You’re scared the doctor will find you unfit for duty, and they’ll pack you off to Titan… But that’s not going to happen.” She held Feynman’s eye. “I reckon you’ve got a sprain, maybe a hair-line fracture. With the doctor’s treatments, she can get you in top condition in less than a week. Not worth the fuel cost it will take to exile you,” she said, although the younger combat specialist didn’t look particularly convinced. It was, after all, the threat that hung over all their heads every shift.

  Break the Marine Corps rules and regulations? Get sent to serve out your sentence on Titan.

  Perform so badly that the warden didn’t think you’d make full Marine? Get sent to Titan.

  Get so badly injured that it will take you months to recover? Get sent to Titan.

  It was a frack-show, she considered. But even under this pressure, it wasn’t as steep a learning curve as she’d had with the Yakuza. At least here, if you got exiled to the prison colony, you might be able to serve out your sentence or even try to escape. If you made a misdeed in the Yakuza, you’d end up in a rocket fuel tank, just as it is about to take off…

  “Fine…” Feynman growled, wincing in pain as he hobbled along the wall to the door and eventually, Jezzy hoped, the Doctor Palinov’s medical lounge.

  Even though Jezzy was the exact same rank as all the other combat specialists—one step up from adjunct-Marine, one step below specialist commander, and all of them underneath the coveted position of ‘full’ Marine—she had achieved a sort of seniority amongst this little cabal. Not one of them belonged to the same color squad as she did, but amongst the combat specialists, it seemed that the usual rules of mutual competition, intimidation, and jealousy wasn’t an issue.

  Maybe it’s because we’re all learning how to deal with death on a daily basis, kinda puts the playground politics in perspective, Jezzy thought idly, turning back to Erebus. All the other adjuncts—specialists or not in their own disciplines of technical, medical, or command—generally hated everyone according to squad. The Reds hated the Blues, who hated the Greens, who hated the Silvers, who were always lording over the Bronzes, and just about everyone outside of this changing room hated her squad under Specialist Commander Cready—the Golds.

  “Don’t mention it,” Jezzy said to the man she had saved from being crushed in the ice-caverns of Ganymede. Erebus was a large, well-built young man with mashed ears, nose, and more than a few teeth missing from his head. He had short, light-colored hair, and he looked as though he might have been a boxer or underground cage fighter before coming here.

  I wonder what you got caught for, Jezzy wondered for a moment, and then shook her head slightly as Erebus turned back to his locker. I don’t want to know, she thought. Do your own training. Not anyone else’s.

  She had enough things to worry about, anyway. Like how to keep her Gold Squad alive and performing well when Warden Coates had it in for her commander and seemed hell-bent on finding small ways to trip him up, punish him, or otherwise make his eventual dismissal a reality.

  And Solomon has been running all over the base, getting obsessed with his Serum 21 thing, Jezzy thought as she picked up her kit, shut her locker, and made her way out of the sliding metal doors and into the front atrium.

  Solomon was convinced that they were being experimented on by Doctor Palinov, and that Coates was in on it. He thought that was why plenty of the adjuncts had crashed out recently, suffering fits and seizures for no apparent reason.

  Which made sense, Jezzy considered that piece of evidence at least. But either way, she was exasperated. What did Solomon want them to do about it? They couldn’t very well form a union and ask for International Health Rights, could they? They were criminals. They should all be either dead or exiled from Earth by now. Jezzy wasn’t even sure what their legal status was anymore. Did the Confederacy regard them as human beings now, or secondhand property?

  “Wen,” a voice coughed from just behind her shoulder, and Jezzy’s heart sank.

  This is the other reason why I am stressed as frack, she thought, standing still and wondering if she could pretend that she hadn’t heard him. But she had.

  “Adjunct, I need help with those containers,” the voice said a little louder, so that when she followed the gray and silver-suited staffer under the peaked cap, it wouldn’t look out of place to the other staff and Outcasts.

  “I’m really busy…” she tried to say lightly, even as ice gripped her belly.

  “Make time,” the voice said, as the staffer pushed past her to pick up the first two of the poly-plastic crates and carry them into one of the side storerooms that opened out onto the front atrium.

  Dammit. Jezzy walked towards the stack of boxes in slow motion, cataloguing what items she had on her.

  Emergency medical kit.

  Hand wrappings.

  Toothpick.

  That was about it. No weapons, she cursed silently as she bent down to pick up one of the crates and follow the staffer inside.

  It was a narrow but long storeroom, with uniform cargo crates stacked on metal shelves up and down the walls.

  “Here.” The staffer indicated an empty shelf and stood to one side as Jezzy very carefully, and very casually, eased the crate to its position, always keeping the man in her forward vision in case he made any sudden moves.

  “You been avoiding me,” the staffer said in a low growl as Jezzy straightened. He was a bit smaller t
han her, with dark hair and dark eyes that burned into Jezzy’s. He wore the silver and gray jumpsuit of his position in Marine Corps society, studded with utility pockets and belts, as well as the small peaked cap. But his small stature belied what he was, Jezzy knew. He was the one who had made contact with her here, thousands of miles away from Earth.

  He was a killer. He was her Yakuza handler.

  “I’ve been busy…” she said defiantly. This, at least, was true. The warden had thrown them all into excruciating training sessions as soon as they had returned from the Erisian Asteroid Field and the hulk of the Kepler. She had hoped that their sudden call-out by the warden and the subsequent training would have meant that her handler would have cut her some slack. It didn’t.

  “I gave you twenty-four hours. You didn’t get the job done. Boss Mihashi will be sorely displeased,” the man stated in exact tones. He wasn’t making a threat or a promise, he was just stating the facts.

  “Twenty-fours hours? We were called on an away mission!” Jezzy said. “Constant supervision. A crazy enemy killer robot thing. Don’t you think that changes things?”

  “You were on this away mission with Solomon Cready, I take it?” The staffer was indefatigable. “He is the commander of your squad still, isn’t he?”

  “What do you want me to do!?” Jezzy almost burst out, before checking her voice and keeping it low in case anyone overheard. “I couldn’t very well put a bullet in his back out there, could I?”

  “Couldn’t you?” the man said dispassionately. “You know the order. The Boss has judged Cready. And punishment must be delivered. And you are going to be the one to deliver it.”

  “Isn’t a life spent waiting to get shot at or blown up punishment enough!?” Jezzy said, earning a cold silence from the Yakuza infiltrator in front of her.

  I guess not, she thought. I should have known, after all.

  “If you cannot perform your duty, Miss Wen, then you know what will happen,” the staffer said, before reaching into one of the pouches on his belt and drawing forth a small fold of paper to hand to her. “I have been authorized to give you this, as an…incentive.”

  Jezzy took it gingerly, feeling the paper crinkle under her fingers as she unfolded it. For a moment, she wasn’t sure what she was looking at, and then she saw the name and her heart dropped.

  WORK PERMIT ORDER #3301

  ISSUING AUTHORITY: Asia-Pacific Partnership

  SIGNING OFFICER: Snr. Development Officer-in-Chief Bien

  Valid Until: Six Month Permit

  NAME: Mr. Hoshu ‘Harry’ Wen

  POSITION: Mechanical Engineer & Fabricator (Guildsman status)

  EXPERIENCE: 34 years

  DISCIPLINARIES: None

  PAY-GRADE: 0-4

  UNIQUE IDENTIFIER: 23/01001b/389

  Harry Wen. Jezzy looked at her father’s name as if it were the first time she had ever seen it written. Her father. Hoshu-Harry, as she had heard his work colleagues call him. They teased him for taking a Westernized name, and for allowing his daughter to take her own, too.

  But he said that it brought in more business… She scoffed at the old man’s optimism. Hoshu-Harry was always trying to win ‘international’ clients for his engineering skills. He applied every year to the American Confederacy mega-corp factories, knowing that they had a much better rate of pay than the Asia-Pacific did.

  And every year, you get turned down, she thought, well, at least as far as she remembered. She hadn’t actually spoken to the man since he had kicked her out of their hovel of an apartment for running around Tokyo getting into trouble.

  That was before I even got with the Yakuza. He’d kill me if he found out what I’d been doing for the last ten years…

  “What is this?” she said, holding the paper up.

  “I would have thought that it is obvious.” Her handler didn’t even frown. “It’s your father’s work permit. The original, not a copy. It should show you that we have access to your father’s files, which means we know where he works, and we can use the unique identifier to trace where he lives, and…” The handler didn’t have to go any further.

  “Are you threatening him!?” Jezzy crunched the paper into a ball in her fist and shook it at him. “Because…” she hissed, not knowing what she would say after that. What could she do, really? Her father was a jump-ship away. It would take days for her to get back to the APP, even if she did find a way to smuggle herself out of here. And then she would have to smuggle herself down the Shanghai Space Elevator somehow, avoiding all the Triad and the Yakuza operatives who would doubtless be looking for her…

  “I should have thought that what we are doing is obvious,” the handler said wryly. “Get your job done, and no harm will fall on your father’s head, I promise.”

  Jezzy still seethed where she stood, but at least she knew that much was true. The Yakuza were awful, terribly cruel, but they also kept their word above all things. If someone was given the all-clear, then no Yakuza would ever go near them again.

  But if someone had been judged guilty… Jezzy hung her head at the futility of her situation. She had no intention of killing her commander. How could she? That would get her shipped off to Titan. But how could she let her own father die because of her morals?

  I might not like my father. I might not get on with him, and I might not even know him anymore, but that doesn’t mean I want to see him dead!

  “I see that you understand the situation now, Miss Wen,” the handler said casually, readjusting the last crate and slipping out beside her, leaving her to her dark thoughts.

  What can I do? I have to buy time. I have to get a message to Earth. I have to…

  Jezzy had no idea what it was she could do to save her father. Aside from kill Solomon Cready, that was.

  2

  A Personal Request

  ACCESS DENIED!

  The holographic display over Solomon’s visor flared a warning orange sign, and the young man bit his lip to stop himself from swearing.

  Oh crap, Solomon Cready thought as he looked at the input box he had been trying to get past, as well as the warning sign flashing over everything. He sat with his head contained in one of the ‘learning visors’ of the study lounge, secluded in his own private booth, supposed to be learning from the mainframe called Oracle about various technical specifications of guns and equipment.

  Yeah, I get it. Fire-y bit at the end, pully-trigger bit at the other end. Angry murder-bullets put in the middle, inside the cartridge… he told himself.

  It was his designated study period in here along with approximately a fifth of the available adjuncts, and each of them were working through a set of problems as well as searching and referencing history available via the screens in front of them. The Oracle awarded each of them with unique lessons, based on their previous session of study and their latest performance reviews by the staff and the doctor.

  Apparently, someone reckoned that I needed to know a heck of a lot more about how firearms are put together, where they come from, and how useful they’re not in the wrong situation. Solomon sighed. Probably because the very last time he had been in combat, he had to resort to using the boxy shell of a lift cubicle instead of a weapon.

  But Solomon had better things to do than to study the relative merits of guns vs. a half-ton lift.

  Like Serum 21, he considered. And this killer robot on the Kepler.

  It had been a simple thing for his skills to create a small fake ‘ghost instance’ of his workroom here, and by creating a small code program that ‘refreshed’ the pages of information every few moments. Enough to fool Oracle that he was still hard at work, when in fact he was trying to crack into the restricted areas of Oracle’s memory.

  Bizarrely, it had been relatively easy to find information on Serum 21—or as it was more scientifically known, ‘DNA complex-strand variant 21.’ It had been first dreamed up by a company called NeuroTech, who traded out of the American Confederacy before being deemed illegal by the
Confederate Board for Health. There were too many side effects, such as seizures and dying spontaneously, and the implied results—the forced mutation and recreation of someone’s DNA—had been deemed far too ‘existentially risky’ to allow a private company to develop.

  Which meant that the science boys in the Marine Corps got to play about with it all they wanted to, Solomon knew. The Marine Corps had bought the rights to the drug, and that appeared to be that. They now dosed him and all the other Outcasts up with it, in an attempt to turn them into ‘superhuman’ fighters for the Confederacy.

  But against who? The Martian separatists? Solomon had to wonder.

  If it was easy to find this much out about the drug they were being unwittingly exposed to, then it was impossible to find anything about what had happened on the Kepler.

  The official line was—Solomon knew because he had been there—that the Kepler had suffered some catastrophic computer error, resulting in a loss of cabin pressure and the eventual death of all of her crew.

  But what Solomon also knew was that he, Malady, and Wen had been fighting some sort of experimental robot that was being shipped from Proxima Colony all the way back to Mars.

  The robot was large and unlike anything that Solomon had ever seen. It had also been entirely murderous, as well as apparently intelligent enough to mimic a human survivor’s voice, which it broadcast through the hacked Kepler’s internal speaker system to lure Solomon’s squad to its lair.

  And let’s not forget that before we even got there, the thing had managed to damage enough of the atmospheric laboratory to cause a blowout that took out half the Kepler itself, dooming the crew, Solomon considered. None of that sounded like the random actions of a faulty industrial robot.

  It sounded like a planned sabotage, to Solomon’s ears.

  Not that he could find any evidence on what that robot thing was, or where it had been built. Only that it came from Proxima colony. Was it a boobytrap? The Confederacy got on well with the colonies—still nominally under its power—or at least that was what the news wires had led Solomon to believe. The truth was that there were always separatists, seditionists, and freedom fighters bubbling under the surface.