World War Mars

by Isaac Stone

  But they kept going. The wall, made from concrete block, was rough and not meant for climbing. He was grateful there were no windows in the walls. Harlo continued to glance right and left for any of the enemy, put he saw no hostiles.

  The bullet knocked a chunk off the wall facing before he even knew someone was shooting at him. He saw dust spray over his faceplate and knew someone had a gun out. Harlo unslung his with one hand as the other gripped the rope.

  He turned to the right and saw the gun port.

  “We got heat from the right of the wall!” Harlo transmitted to the rest of the Volunteers. This was serious, they were hanging at least three stories in the air and target practice for anyone who was a decent shot.

  Lucky for the Ninth that the gun port was built to shoot at targets on the ground and not those going up the wall. Harlo could see the barrel of the gun emerge from it, but the gunner couldn’t get him in his sights. Another bullet whizzed even further away. Harlo calculated he had thirty seconds at most before the sniper figured out what he was doing wrong and fixed it.

  The rail gun fit snug under his arm. Harlo checked to ensure the charge was set to full and fired off a round. There was the rush as the magnetic system propelled a mass at the gun port outcropping on the wall.

  Harlo’s slug hit it dead center. A large chunk of the port blew off from the wall from the hypersonic impact. What he fired wasn’t heavy, but the force was multiplied from the insane speed of the bullet. The sniper retreated and Harlo continued to climb.

  The next time the sniper peered out the port opening; one of the other men nailed him with a direct hit. He watched the blood flow out the opening and continued to shoot. The rest of the Volunteers continued to fire until they were certain there was no more opposition. A few minutes of constant fire from the rail guns reduced the stone outcropping where the sniper perched to rock dust.

  Chapter 27

  Fifteen minutes later, they were at the top of the walls.

  The first thing the Volunteers accomplished was to make sure the plasma cannons were under their control. Tulpa walked over and looked at them after he signaled with a flashlight to the Force snipers on the other side of the expanse.

  “I want to make sure our own guys don’t shoot us,” he explained to the other Volunteers. There were four cannons and he went down the line shutting them off.

  “We’re not going to use them?” Jack asked. It seemed the sensible thing to do.

  “They don’t turn in the direction of the parade ground,” Tulpa explained. “Give the ZR credit, they knew enough not to let their own weapons be used against them. Shame, I would like to have seen these turned loose on those little bastards.” He shut down the final one and looked across the battlements.

  Harlo looked down inside the parade ground and watched a small contingent of ZR troopers rally. The main entrance to the fortress was on the other side of it. From what he could tell, they’d given up on the idea of keeping the Olympians out of the fortress. From where he stood, he watched forty red-suited ZR soldiers wheel out a mobile gun and aim it at the door. They backed the gun up to the flagpole, which flew the banner of the Zhong Republic.

  He looked across and saw another banner with the ZR symbol. Changing it to the Ninth Color would let everyone know they were at the top.

  “You want to fly our colors on that pole?” Harlo asked the small corporal as he pointed at it. "I’ll do it for you.”

  Tulpa responded by swerving his rail gun at the pole and blowing it off the top of the battlements in one shot. “Nope,” he told him. “The only one that counts is the one that is on the parade ground. Now let’s get down there before our guys get into the building. Anybody see something that looks like a door around here?” He walked off looking for one.

  “Found it!” one of the Volunteers told him a few minutes later as he pointed at an access door that led down. He reached down and grabbed the door handle with one gloved hand and pulled.

  Nothing happened. He tried again with the same result. The door was solid metal and in a matching frame. Whoever built the door didn’t want anyone coming in from the roof unless they were supposed to be there.

  Tulpa pulled his heat sword out of the scabbard and activated it. The sword glowed white-hot and he proceeded to burn around the door lock and frame until he made a complete circle. The lock and handle fell off with one clunk to the floor. The door swung open.

  The ZR troops who’d been waiting for them behind the door spilled out into the battlements, shooting as they came. Harlo had enough foresight to have his gun ready and returned fire, killing three of the red suits as they ran at him. He watched another Volunteer go down from a series of bullets to the faceplate, his brains all over the clear shield. Tulpa swung his heat sword up and burnt through three of the red suits before they knew he was there.

  The stone floors of the battlements turned into a massive close-quarter fight as some of the Volunteers were able to draw their swords while others fired their rail guns at point blank range. He kept his rail gun out and fired at every red suit he could find until they quit charging at them.

  Tulpa leaped to the doorway and tossed something down the staircase. He jumped back just as a loud bang sounded from it. A cloud of smoke rolled out of the door. Harlo saw a ZR soldier run at Tulpa. He shot him five times with his rail gun before the red suit was five feet away. The force of the projectiles carried the man over the side of the fortress to the ground below.

  Tulpa did a quick count. That was a fast one but damned if it wasn’t a bloody one. Thirty men made corpses in a matter of minutes. Fine. It was enough to get them to the bottom. He listened with his audio feed to the staircase on the other side of the door. No sounds.

  “Whatever weapon you still have out,” he announced, “Keep it out. Follow me; I want our flag to be on that pole before the Force gets in the front door.” He ran down the stairs with his heat sword lighting the way.

  Chapter 28

  The stairway led all the way down to the bottom. Tulpa ran down the stairs with the Volunteers behind him. Only once did he run into anyone and a quick swipe of his sword sent the man, who wore no armor, in two different directions.

  They didn’t encounter any more opposition until reaching the bottom. Tulpa flew out through a vestibule and found himself in the middle of a large receiving area. He stopped as the rest of the Ninth Legion poured out of the stairwell behind him.

  He halted when he saw a continuous stream of red suits rush past him in a hurry to get outside onto the parade ground. For a few seconds it appeared they would be unnoticed until one of them turned and saw the Volunteers by the stairwell.

  The man yelled and brought his gun up, firing away. The hall filled with smoke and screams as both sides unleashed their guns on each other. Blood flowed on the floors as the projectiles of each side found places they could penetrate the armor each side wore. The floor turned into a slaughterhouse as the Volunteers fought their way to the same door the red suits were trying to exit.

  Harlo opened up with his rail gun and blasted away at everything in front of him. His entire reason for living had changed. No longer was he content to find a way to make some money and get a better position on Earth, he burned with the need to kill and to survive, as if they were one and the same. This was an inferno unlike anything he could imagine.

  Harlo found himself outside his body as he looked down at the scene of death and destruction. He saw a red suit slide to one side of the carnage and sight on him with a smaller form of a rail gun. Harlo fell to the ground and heard his head smack into the side of the helmet as the projectile fired by the ZR trooper spun over the space where he would have been. He rolled over, brought his rail gun up, and neatly shot the ZR trooper in the abdomen. The man fell to the ground in a wave of blood.

  There was blood everywhere and it dripped off the walls. Somehow, Tulpa managed to keep the remnant of his men together and they gradually shot away at the red suits that were left in the hall. Th
e room was filled with smoke and the cries of the dying when Tulpa ordered a cease-fire. Harlo found it hard to release the firing trigger on his rail gun, but pulled his finger off it. He looked across at the massacre of enemy troops everywhere in the expanse. The light fixtures bathed the room in crimson from the blood splashed over them.

  “Let’s get out there!” Tulpa yelled over his transmitter. “That flag isn’t going to put itself up on the pole!” He charged out the door where the red suits were headed before the shoot-out, his gun held low and pointed directly to the front.

  Harlo and the remaining Volunteers ran out the door in front of them. It was enough to leave the ghastly spectacle behind. There was no way he could count the dead inside that room, leave it for another person to do later. All Harlo cared was that he wasn’t among them.

  He ran right into a whole squad of red suits with Tulpa. They were at work on the mobile gun aimed at main entrance to the fortress. The door would last much longer as Harlo could see the burn traces of someone working it from the other side with a flame torch. The ZR troops made the final decision to keep the Olympians at bay with a mobile plasma cannon. Harlo could see they planned to use it the moment the door opened.

  Four of the red suits began to fire in their direction. One of the Volunteers went down next to Harlo as a rail projectile found an opening in his suit armor. Weak light from one of the moons of Mars shown down into the parade ground that was ripped apart by gunfire. Right now Mars truly was the red planet in spite of all the terraforming done over the years.

  Harlo saw a ZR trooper turn in his direction and aim a rifle of at him. He brought up his rail gun and squeezed the trigger to fire off a few rounds.

  But nothing happened. The gun had jammed. It didn’t happen too often, but he was warned the rail guns could overheat and refuse to fire.

  Like right now.

  Harlo grabbed the stock of the gun and swung it at the red suit. There was no way the gun would damage the armor, but it would distract him. The red suit pushed the gun away, but it was enough time for Harlo to get out his heat sword and activate it.

  Thesword turned white hot and Harlo rammed it into the joint between the ZR trooper’s arm and torso where the body armor was weakest. The man screamed, Harlo could hear it through his helmet, as the rod of the flame sword burned its way into his chest. Harlo pushed down and pulled the flame sword back as the man collapsed dead on the floor.

  By now, Tulpa was fighting three red suits for the control of the flagpole. They’d abandoned all hopes of using the mobile plasma cannon. Tulpa shot one of the red suits who tried to guard it and turned around to direct his fire on the others behind him. Harlo came to his aid just as one of the red suits exploded when a rail gun projectile tore through an area not armored.

  Harlo killed the remaining two red suits from behind with his flame sword and went to help Tulpa. By now, Tulpa had the banner of the Ninth out. He tore off the flag of the Zhong Republic and quickly fastened the new banner to it. While the remainder of the red suits in the parade ground faced the main entrance to the fortress, Harlo helped Tulpa secure the Ninth’s banner to the pole.

  The main door of the fortress went down with a crash as the final hinges on it were burnt away. Harlo turned just in time to see it come down and crush three red suits as it collapsed on them. The Force Syndicate washed over the door they flowed over it, shooting at anything in red on the other side.

  Chapter 29

  By the time the Force reached the mobile cannon and seized it, Tulpa had the Ninth banner flying at the top of the flag for all to see. Several of the remaining Volunteers stood back and looked at it in amazement. They couldn’t believe it happened. They’d reached the banner stand before anyone else. All sixty one of them.

  Tulpa stood back and looked at it. “Not bad,” he commented. “I think old Bey would be happy.” He folded his arms in front and admired his work.

  Harlo caught a movement in the galley on the third level of the fortress. Some levels had open galleries, which looked down into the parade ground. Before he could shout a warning, he saw a muzzle flash as a ZR sniper fired at them. Seconds later, the sniper was torn apart by the combined firepower of the Olympians at the bottom of the fortress.

  Tulpa lay on the ground.

  Harlo rushed to him and tried to see if he was still alive. The bullet from the sniper had gone through his helmet and his head. There wasn’t any reason to remove the helmet, it was full of blood. Harlo looked down at the vital signs read-out, which he could still see inside the helmet. He saw all the lines flat with the lights in the red. Not knowing what else to do, he crossed Tulpa’s arms over his chest. He stood back and looked down at him for a minute.

  Harlo turned and looked at the other Volunteers of the Ninth Legion around him. There were all of sixty men left, including him. Sixty who had survived the drop into hostile territory from the battle station that morning and lived to see the banner of their legion flying over the Blue Lotus Fortress. Both the sergeant and corporal of the unit didn’t make it. Sixty men out of three hundred. Day one on Mars.

  He stood in place over Tula’s body and watched the Force sweep through the fortress, securing areas as they took prisoners. With the lower part of the fortress now in the hands of Olympia, the Force Syndicate could be merciful. He watched red suits with their hands in the air marched out of the fortress and ordered to sit down in outside the fort. Eventually, they would be flown out to POW camps. The prisoners could be traded for their Olympian versions held by both the Sultanates and Zhong Republic.

  In the galleries, he watched Force men kick open doors and haul out members of the ZR support staff. They worked their way to the top, taking control of every level. Dead bodies were tossed off the galleries and sorted into piles at the bottom for identification. There were only a few gunfire exchanges with reactant red suits that were too proud to surrender. The entire operation didn’t take longer than half an hour. The Volunteers stood by the banner that flew their flag as the Force worked its way through the Blue Lotus fortress.

  “So what happens to us?” Jack asked Harlo. He stood with him, blood drying on the outside of his armor.

  “I don’t know,” Harlo commented. “Hard to call us a legion anymore. I suppose we’ll be worked into something else, or a fresh batch of recruits will show up for their own day one and get folded into the Ninth.”

  They watched a team of suited technicians began to go over the mobile plasma cannon. From what they could tell, they wanted to make sure it was deactivated before shipping it off to a Force weapons laboratory. If it were rigged to blow from tampering, now would be a good time to know about it.

  “What is on this flagpole?” they heard a man say. Harlo turned around to face the speaker.

  From the insignia on his suit armor, he was a Force captain. Two aides stood next to him with a banner of their own, the official Force Syndicate flag of Olympia. The other aide held the Olympia flag. He stared up at it and looked at the flag. He wasn’t a tall man, but Harlo realized he was someone who demanded respect.

  “Our banner,” Harlo explained. “It was important to Corporal Tulpa we get it up here before anyone else. Sir.” He pointed at Tulpa’s body lying in state on the ground.

  “Oh, you must be with the Ninth,” the captain said to him. “That Volunteer Legion. Well, never mind, Olympian banner goes to the top, followed by Force banner and I suppose we can let yours stay at the bottom.” He went to the rope and began to reel down the Ninth’s banner.

  Jack tightened his fists up and walked to the captain, ready to make sure the banner stayed in place. Harlo stopped him with one hand on the shoulder. He looked at Jack through the faceplate and shook his head. Now was not the time to make an issue of anything.

  They stood and watched the other two flags be place above the Ninth’s banner and wheeled back to the top of the parade ground pole. It was a strange time to raise a flag as the second Martian moon joined the first.

  Demos an
d Phoebus, Harlo thought. Fear and terror, appropriate enough.

  “And this was your corporal, you say?” the captain asked him. Harlo nodded.

  “We’ll need to have the body removed,” he explained. “Stay and watch over it until the removal vehicle comes by. From the looks of things, they’ll be very busy tonight. I’ll find another unit for you to support.” He turned and walked away with his two aides.

  The officer stopped, turned around and looked at Harlo. “Congratulations,” he told him. “You survived day one. Once the drop ships were diverted or shot down we didn’t expect any of you to survive.” He turned and continued to walk away.

  This time Harlo had to hold onto Jack with both hands. Several others of the men joined him to help.

  As the officer mentioned, it took the cleanup crews all night to remove the bodies of the dead and scrub the bloody organs off the walls of the Blue Lotus Fortress. By morning it was renamed Maximum Strength Fortress and officially transferred to Force Command.

  Chapter 30

  The Ninth Volunteers didn’t have much to do that evening. The Force Command still needed to figure out where to place them. The survivors stayed most of the night in a decontamination tent setup inside the parade grounds. They were quiet and listened to the sounds of the new occupation at work on the former Zhong Republic fortress. Four hours after the flag was hoisted, Harlo managed to catch a few hours’ sleep.

  The next day Harlo staggered out of the decontamination tent and looked at the sunrise in the Martian sky. The fortress was officially safe to use without protective suits now that the ZR troops were pushed back another forty miles. He couldn’t believe what had taken place the day before. He’d survived a suicide mission into the heart of the battle. Only a few Volunteers pulled through the nightmare with him. He was surprised to see Jack still alive.