We weren’t even given any weapons. How am I going to stop anything coming our way? he wondered grimly, just as there was a snarl over his squad communications.
“Mecha-hounds!” he heard Wen call out, and Solomon peered around the canyon edge to see.
It looked as though this mission was set up like an assault course, Solomon realized, his puzzle-fixing brain quickly connecting the dots. The first stage was the field of fire, and then each squad was making their way to their own particular openings in the rocky walls, presumably to face what Wen, Malady, and Arlo were facing right now.
The three fighters were in a wide avenue between the rocky walls, spread out with Malady in front, then Wen, and Arlo behind. As Solomon watched, he saw a hidden port burst open from one of the canyon walls, sending rock and ice fragments high into the air to reveal a meter-high porthole. A four-legged metal form with a clamping, metal canine jaw charged out.
I should have known, he thought as mecha-hounds burst from the rocks on either side of them, bounding through the air with a killer’s grace as they sought their targets.
I have to help them. Solomon half-rose from his crouch, before he suddenly realized.
Those three down there were the best hologram-mecha fighters I saw, he thought. They could hold out for a few rounds, especially if I…
Solomon had a new idea, and he turned on his heel and started scrambling up the rocky incline above him. He knew that he had crashed out in the virtual tournament just yesterday, and he knew that his body was still repairing itself. He wasn’t a terrible fighter by any stretch of the imagination—he’d been in plenty of fistfights in the various synth-bars of his miscreant home—but he also knew that he just wasn’t quick enough to deal with them. Not in the shape that I’m in at the moment, anyway.
Down below him, he saw Wen spin in the air, the lack of gravity lending a balletic quality as she roundhouse-kicked one of the charging mecha-hounds in the head with her metal boot. It went down in a sudden explosion of sparks. Arlo had picked up one of the larger rocks and was using it like a club to bash the head of another mecha-hound. The most impressive sight of all was Malady, with two mecha-hounds clamped to one arm and a third hanging off his opposing leg as he stamped and thrashed them against the moon’s surface with expert proficiency.
But there was still more coming out of the portholes in the ground, and Solomon knew of only one way to take them out.
He lowered himself to a crawl and pulled himself onto the top of the rock, looking around until he saw what he was searching for. A flare of light as the static gun emplacement attempted to fire at some of the trapped squads behind him.
I got you now. Solomon belly-crawled around the nearest boulders, dragging himself forward so that he was attacking the gun emplacement from the back, and got to work.
These automatic guns looked like floor-mounted rifles, larger and heavier than the Jackhammer rifles that the Confederate Marines were allowed, with twin metal barrels that were almost as long as Solomon was tall, and a large control box on the back, sitting over the loading and movement gyros.
It shouldn’t be difficult, he thought, still wishing that he had his electronic tools as he instead settled for leaning back and kicking the back control plate with the metal of his combat boots.
Thunk! THUNK!
The guns were solid, but even the light tactical suit was strong enough to start to dent the metal of the gun as it wobbled and shook on its chassis.
“Cready, you coward! Get your ass down here!” Arlo was shouting at him in alarm, but Solomon ignored him, taking another kick—
CRACK! This time, the back plate cracked and one of the bolts sheared off.
Now, let’s see how good these power gauntlets are… Solomon seized the edge of the metal plate and pulled. He shouldn’t have been strong enough to tear sheet metal from its fixings, but he felt the magnetic whirr of his suit as the heavy gauntlets clamped shut, and he pulled with all of his might. The jacket harness tightened around his torso automatically, distributing the force and maximizing his effort, and the remaining bolts sheared and the plate was torn off.
“Cready! I’m going to kill you for sabotaging my mission!” Arlo was snarling.
“I’m not sabotaging. I’m helping!” he managed to gasp as he slid forward to the complicated world of wires, pipes, and controls inside.
“It does not look like it!” Arlo snapped over the suit’s communications. Solomon ignored him. No time. One of these has to be the automated controls, and one of these has to be the firing mechanism.
It was a puzzle. All of life was a puzzle. His eyes sought out the power unit, tracked the cables coming up out of it, to find one that plunged into the small memory chip connector, obvious thanks to its blue and viridian green circuitry.
Gotcha. He pulled the wire, and the gun to suddenly shook and dropped its barrels, lifeless, to the rocky floor of the ridge.
Now all I have to do is… The firing mechanism was easy, as Solomon knew that the laser shot rifle had to rely on a battery that cycled to force, and then discharged. He found the battery connector, and the safety button which ‘test fired’ the battery, and the laser. Which is why there was always a delay as they re-tracked and recharged their shots, Solomon knew, gripping the gun top and whirling it around on its gyros until it faced down into the canyon where the rest of Gold Squad were fighting.
The gun might not have any computerized automated controls anymore, but Solomon didn’t need them. The battery pack had a small blinking green LED, which he presumed must mean that it was full already… He hoped.
And he pressed the test fire button.
THOOM! The gun’s recoil was next to nothing as its shock suspensors took up most of the bounce, and a bolt of burning light shot down to knock a mecha-hound that was just about to jump on Jezebel Wen’s back.
Yes! He looked down, to see that the battery light was now flickering red, flickering orange, and then…
Green.
THOOM! Another shot, and another of the attacking hounds was taken out. They moved fast, but Solomon was at least glad that the lack of gravity slowed everything down. It was like shooting fish in a barrel, he thought as he took out three more, and the rest of his squad down there finished the rest.
The gold arrow was still flashing for the squad to continue through the canyon, but as soon as Solomon started to make a move, Arlo paused and pointed up at him.
“Not you, Cready!” his gruff voice snapped through the suit’s communications system.
What? “Why ever not?”
Arlo was gesticulating at him back to the gun placement that he had hacked and taken over. “I want you manning zat thing and keeping an eye out for any more dangers, you got zat?”
“But I might be able to help with the mech-walker—” Solomon said, wincing as he heard just how childish he sounded. Arlo must have thought the same, as the temporary Commander of Gold Squad just laughed and started to bound with the others along the gold arrow.
What would be worse? Disobeying a commander on a training exercise? Solomon thought. Or not being able to prove that I’m pretty good at hacking electronics?
Whatever. Solomon thumped to his behind on the icy rocks, back safe behind the gun. Who was he trying to prove anything to anyway? Arlo? Warden Coates? Neither of them would ever recognize his abilities anyway, and the chances of Warden Coates—who apparently hated him—ever offering him a Specialism anyway was next to nil. So Solomon just sat, and he waited.
He didn’t have to wait long, however, before the ground beneath his feet started to shake with the heavy footfall of approaching metal. At first, Solomon thought that it had to be Arlo and the rest of Gold Squad, but he was surprised to see a shape rear itself on the other side of the field of fire where the laser blasts had now stopped, thanks to the fact that all of the squads had managed to either flee back to the safety of the base, or enter the mecha-hound challenge areas.
It was a four-legged mech-walker,
looking a little like some sort of headless animal, with a large, bulky metal box studded with sensor ports and portholes. Solomon had seen their like in the news feeds. They were used primarily for alien environments, and particularly for worlds where the gravity was different than Earth-normal, as they were powerful enough to move through heavier gravity wells, or else the lighter gravity wells, where they could carry many times their normal load.
The mech-walker wasn’t huge, it didn’t dominate the skyline or the rocky ridges at all, but its tallest boxy top was probably the height of a regular two-story building. Solomon had no way of telling which of the teams had been the one to get the mech-walker operational, and his puzzle-hungry mind itched to be there to work it out. I wonder if they had to break the automatic computer controls, like I did with the guns.
That was it, he suddenly saw the shape of this challenge. That was the thing with puzzles. They always had a shape, a form, a way of doing things that meant when you understood what all of the component parts were, you understood how to beat it. It was like a well-executed heist: the building had certain entry points, each with their own difficulties, but each also provided opportunities. The first challenge, that of the guns, meant that if you succeeded, you could do as he was doing—learning how to use the guns to help the squad defeat the second challenge, the mecha-hounds.
“Clear our path!” Arlo said joyously over the suit communicator, as the ground shook with the arrival of Gold Team’s mech-walker.
“Huh?” Solomon was confused. Wasn’t the whole goal of the mission meant to be that the entire squad was supposed to be inside that thing? Which meant him, as well. He was fairly sure of that. “Warden Coates said that each squad had to retrieve a mech-walker and drive it back to base,” Solomon said with a degree of irritation. He didn’t want to miss out on coming in second as the first mech-walker had already entered the plain, and their mech-walker was only just making it through the mecha-hound canyon on steady, ponderous legs.
“Ze warden also said zat I was in command, are you ignoring my orders, Recruit?” Arlo snapped back as they entered the plain, a good few paces behind the first.
No, I guess I’m not. Solomon didn’t want to add mutiny to his already accomplished list of disagreeable traits that would see him shipped off to Titan instead of free at the end of twelve years.
“There’s nothing to clear,” Solomon said though, as he watched the race unfold ahead of him. The mech-walkers were slow, each mechanical leg rising and falling in slow-motion as the squads inside worked out how to manipulate the controls.
I’d have set Malady in the pilot and navigation seat, Solomon thought, remembering how Malady had a data-port in his fingertips. That meant he could probably think the controls and transmit them faster than Arlo or Jezzie could manipulate them by hand. So many reasons why he should have been inside that mech-walker, instead of stuck outside here!
“I said clear ze path. We have another one ahead of us!” Arlo said angrily. “We don’t have any weapons capability inside zis thing, and I’m not going to risk ramming zem!” He sounded annoyed.
Solomon realized what Arlo meant. At first, the young man had thought that Arlo might have been talking about the other static guns, which were silent anyway, or perhaps some stray mecha-hound, but there were none of those visible left either.
“He’s talking about the other Marine mech-walker,” Solomon muttered annoyedly. He wasn’t sure, but he knew that they hadn’t been given any weapons, and Warden Coates hadn’t said anything about this training exercise being a battle between the squads.
“Aren’t we all supposed to be Marines in this exercise?” Solomon asked out loud to Arlo. “We can’t go around attacking our own forces!”
“He’s right,” Solomon heard Jezzie say from wherever she was inside the mech-walker.
“Shut up, Wen. I’m in charge here,” Arlo snapped back over the open gold channel. “Solomon, you had better start firing zat gun of yours at ze other mech-walker, or I’ll report you for dereliction of duty!”
And I’ll get packed off to Titan, the first chance that Coates gets, Solomon thought, sighing and manhandling the gun so that it pointed at the first mech-walker.
But I can’t cause it to crash! He hesitated. What if it hurt the other regulars and recruits inside? If anyone died because of him, he was sure that it wouldn’t be Titan as his punishment… It would be the death sentence.
“Holy spit, Solomon! Zat’s it, I am reporting you to ze warden as soon as we get back!” Arlo sounded apoplectic with rage.
Solomon fired. He angled the gun at the nearest of the mech-walker’s rear legs, hitting just above the mechanical knee rondel and causing the mech-walker to wobble on the spot, but not stop its march.
“Zat’s it! Fire again!” Arlo was saying gleefully, as the gold mech-walker started to march quicker.
I’m not sure I can even damage that thing, Solomon thought, and instead waited for the exact moment that the opposing mech-walker had lifted its back leg and was about to put it down again, before firing straight at the knee rondel once more.
THOOOM! This time, the laser shot exploded to leave a blackened scorch mark on the gray-cream metal, but it wasn’t the damage of the blast that Solomon had been aiming for. The impact had knocked the descending leg off kilter, so in the light gravity, the leg moved out a little, and had only barely touched the ground in an awkward pose when the other rear leg started to automatically rise.
THOOOM! One more shot on the same, out-of-true leg, wobbling it slightly. It couldn’t bear the weight of the mech-walker and buckled, tipping backwards, the knee rondel bending slowly so that it looked as though the giant beast had sat on its haunches with a great thud that shook the plain.
“Yes! Yes!” Arlo was whooping as they breasted, then passed the crouching mech-walker, its joints rotating and rolling as it tried to get up again.
I hope that I did the right thing, Solomon thought, but he didn’t worry too much, as their mech-walker and Gold Squad marched back to the entrance of their archway and powered down.
The gold team had won.
“Disqualified,” said the severe voice of the Colonel Asquew, looking down at Arlo’s dismayed face, Solomon’s grimace, and Wen’s scowl—if Malady had any expression at all in the solid metal, Solomon couldn’t read it.
They were still in the launch bay of the station and were still wearing their light tactical suits—apart from Malady, of course—but now each of the trainees were holding their helmets under their left arm.
All of the squads had returned once Arlo and his squad had ‘won’ and the challenge was officially over.
Only we didn’t win, did we? Solomon thought miserably. He was even more aware of the surreptitious glares and hard glances from the other squads around them, standing in small rows spaced around the central area. Above them on the metal grate balcony stood the two Marine colonels still in their power armor, but similarly holding their fierce-looking helmets under their left arms.
Colonel Asquew was a woman with a gray and brown crewcut, and a bionic eye. She looked to be middle-aged, perhaps, but that didn’t mean that her face betrayed any sign of weariness. Her head appeared small against the mighty bulk of the suit around her, but her one good eye was bright was anger. Beside Asquew stood Colonel Madavi, a similarly middle-aged Indian man with a buzzcut and grey stubble over his grizzled chin. Warden Coates stood a little further back and to one side of the two colonels, the veins in his neck standing out as though his head might burst with rage.
“Disqualified!?” Arlo burst out. “But why? We came first!”
Bad choice, Arlo. Solomon winced, seeing the colonel’s power gloves clench just slightly on the railings above. He remembered how much trouble he had got into just for questioning the warden’s judgement back on the shuttle. With any luck, they’ll deport him to Titan quick-sharp.
But Colonel Asquew didn’t fly into a rage as Coates would have done. She just stared at the angry Arl
o and stared some more until Arlo had to realize just who he had tried to argue with.
“Uh, I mean…” Arlo quickly backtracked. “Colonel-sir…”
Asquew gave a very minute nod to recognize the appropriate title and cleared her throat. “Your team has been disqualified from the challenge, Regular Menier, because you fired against one of your own side.” Her words were like thrown shards of glass. “This challenge was a test, and not only of your physical abilities but also your mental faculties,” she stated. “We are monitoring your emotional responses to stress and battle, your ability to react creatively and with excellence to a situation, but also your ability to remember your orders, and your self-discipline to stick to them. At no point did we say that you were meant to regard each other as enemy combatants, otherwise we would have given you laser rifles and let you shoot it out!”
I knew it, Solomon thought, to be surprised when Arlo rounded on him.
“Sir, Colonel-sir.” Arlo cleared his throat. “I was the assigned commander, and of course I take full responsibility for that role, but I would also like to bring your attention to the fact that I had extremely extenuating circumstances…” Arlo said.
“Extenuating circumstances, Regular Menier?” Solomon didn’t think that Arlo picked up the hint of dry sarcasm in the colonel’s voice.
“Yes, Colonel-sir.” Arlo nodded gravely, taking on the air of a very aggrieved party. “All throughout the mission, I was having to negotiate with Recruit Cready here, who seemed insistent on ignoring my commands and trying to undermine me.”
What!? Solomon rocked on his metal boots. Maybe he shouldn’t have been surprised that Arlo Menier would stoop so low, but this was beyond petty. It was an accusation that could see him getting shipped off to Titan!
“—I feel forced to point out that he abandoned us to fight the mecha-hounds, and instead damaged Confederacy property by seizing control of one of the guns, and then used it to fire on the enemy’s mech-walker.”
I can’t stand for this. Solomon knew that he had to say something, and his dreadful anger was once again starting to build. “It was your order to shoot at that mech-walker!” he burst out.
Outcasts of Earth (Outcast Marines Book 1) Page 7