by William Cray
“Well, they’re coming in hot… Better let the Colonel know.”
Cochrane checked the positioning of the fleet of assault landers surrounding him, forming a broad vertical disk above Mars. With a command on his console, he ordered the flotilla to change formation, shifting the automated vessels, firing maneuvering units and dropping down into a holding pattern in low orbit and opening up their formation.
He watched the track of India Five-Two. The vessel’s decent leveled off with a sudden roll and slipped into low orbit above Cochrane’s station. It’s decent had been so rapid, that the sudden change in trajectory seemed out of place. Cochrane checked his screens, then called back to Peligrew.
“Captain, what happened? Did they respond to your warnings?”
“Negative Colonel. They just pulled up.”
“Are they in range to pick up the alpha wave?”
“Probably. If they are zeroed in.”
“Has anything changed on the surface?”
“Colonel, they have lost complete control down there. Communications are nothing but sheer panic and I can’t raise any of the local authorities. The city has declared an environmental emergency and the Habitation Domes are completely black.”
“The alpha-wave?”
“Signal strength is spiking.”
“India Five-Two is the reaction force I’ve been expecting. They pulled up for a reason. I think time is up.” Cochrane ran through a quick series of navigation calculations then opened the com again.
“How long before the fast attack makes another pass?”
“If nothing has changed, based on our simulation, it should have just made a pass right under you. Next one should be within the next half an hour, if we’ve got everything right, but I’m not sure about the variables Colonel.” Peligrew responded. “Too many moving parts.”
“It will have to do.” Cochrane said.
“When was the last time you flew one of those Colonel?”
“Ah... actually, never. I did a few turns on the simulator during an orientation course a few decades back. Didn’t look that hard back then. But I’ve crashed in one before. That wasn’t a simulation.”
“Seriously? How does it look now?”
“Harder. Mainly because I’m trying to fly one hundred and sixteen of them at once.”
“Why haven’t you died yet?”
“It’s early still. I just found the button to descend.”
Peligrew laughed. “Understood. Good luck.”
Cochrane stood in the pilot copula of a decades old assault lander, alone but in charge of the flotilla. The fleets of tiny expendable vessels were capable of flying in massive formations of hundreds or thousands to deliver troops or cargo safely to the surface of a planetary body. Coordinating a flotilla of fast moving swarms of these vessels was a hive brain that took simple instructions and kept the ships in formation as they dodged enemy fire and each other. It was a key part of Commando kit, and Cochrane was intimately familiar with them as a passenger. But today he was both pilot and flotilla commander.
Exemplifying the Commando ethos, he had adapted what he knew to what he needed and came up with a plan, utilizing the depots ample fleet of outdated, but working assault landers to seed the space in front of the spectral fast attack. A poor-mans minefield.
Cochrane moved his fleet into position and activated the lander's internal station keeping and proximity navigation systems. The flotilla of assault landers, one hundred sixteen strong, glided into position above Mars, forming a horizontal disk across the projected flight path of the ghostly vessel.
Once the ships confirmed they were in position, he reached back and strapped himself in, pulling the restraints tight. He lowered the visor on his pilfered maintenance E-suit as he listened for directions from Peligrew and his team.
The depot had thousands of the landers left over from the Vendetta fleet that had never seen a day’s service in combat. A squadron of the sturdy, uncomplicated vessels, were kept operational to shuttle work crews and machines around the vast depot and over to Demios. They were easy to operate and mostly pilotless, but they were still combat vessels, fast and armored, but unfortunately their self defense gun systems were stripped away long ago. The only thing they could possibly do to a modern Imperial fast attack was get in the way, and that was the idea.
The assault landers kept their loose vertical disk formation, spreading out to their maximum intervals, firing their engines and maneuvering thrusters in random patterns, creating a dizzying and confusing scatter of obstacles for any ship to navigate through. The evasive maneuvers were designed to throw off the aim of attacking weapons, but today Cochrane hoped at least one of his tiny erratic flotilla would be struck. He knew that was a chance beyond any reasonable hope. If everything went perfect and if their initial tracks were correct…if Peligrew managed to get inside the FA captains decision cycle…if the attack profile was standard. If, if, if, so many variables.
But the goal was simple. Get the fast attack’s captain to lose his or her nerve and force them to maneuver clear of the herky jerk minefield and maybe reveal his position to Peligrew, who stood ready to track and harass it unmercifully once the depots sensors had gained a lock. By putting himself and his group of unmanned assault ships in the path of the fast attack, he hoped to screen the surface and buy more time for Duran and Lieutenant Braiselle to bring down the Mind Control Antenna.
“There! Got it sir, just where you told me!” Martes exclaimed. “Right ascension. Looks like an engine pulse. Cold release.”
Peligrew leaned in. “Colonel, we just picked up the release. Contact in your location, eight minutes. Probably a GBUS. Trajectory is good.” He turned back to Martes. “Track it with everything. Go hot.”
“Understood, Captain. But there’s nothing I can do now.” Cochrane responded over the open comm. Abrupt engine noises in rapid bursts could be heard in the background of the transmissions audio.
Martes worked frantically on the sensor controls, maneuvering frequencies and pulsing active sensors to pound the area with waves of energy in hopes of a return. The seconds ticked by and nothing. Peligrew leaned in, putting his hand on Martes’s shoulder as he scanned the bandwidth for a possible return. There was a bomb in the air, and they had lost it. It had slipped by them. They didn’t even have enough to run a plot. It flared for an instant as it was released from the ghost ship then disappeared into the background. The bomb was shielded by the same Tri-Lum technology that hid the stalking ship.
Peligrew went back to the plot table, rerunning the iota of data they had on the launch. The release had taken place on the far side of Mars, just over the Hellas Planitia region of the planets eastern hemisphere. Peligrew ran the simulations he had preprogrammed into the computer, using his experience and what little known data they had available. Based on what he could determine, they had about thirty minutes before the bomb struck in the vicinity of New Meridian, if it was a bomb at all and not some random discharge of ionized gas.
A bomb would be on a steep trajectory into the atmosphere. Examining the track, he compared it to Cochrane’s position. He shook his head. They were off. He had miscalculated. He had expected a trajectory that would have taken the bomb three or four orbits to strike, but the backscatter on the drop was too low, reflecting against the atmosphere. The bomb was going straight in for the kill. He hit his com switch, praying he wasn’t too late.
“Colonel. You are too high. Descend immediately four thousand.”
“Decending,” Cochrane replied.
Peligrew watched as the flotilla nosed over and burned directly at the planet, licking the upper atmosphere as they dove towards it. He could hear the strain on Cochrane through the open com system as the g-forces increased on him and the safety harness clamped down. The screen started to blur as the landers with working flares and chaff canisters, fired off their loadouts. Cochranes flight computer chirped at him, “Count
ermeasures… empty, countermeasures…” The jammers confused the situation and the fast attack had to be seeing the same chaotic picture he was approaching. One of the landers suddenly blipped off the screen.
“MAG PULSE!” Ensign Yancy called out, monitoring the weapons panel. “They just took out one of the landers!”
“Where?” Peligrew shifted over to Yancy’s station.
Topside. Number eleven oh nine!” Martes reported. “It’s gone, No detonation. Probable kinetic strike.”
“Confirm.” Peligrew leaned in.
“Sir, I need to traverse tracking arrays five and six.”
Peligrew mulled it over. He could find the fast attack now. It was maneuvering, he thought. The fast attack would have only fired at one of Cochrane’s flotilla if the crew thought they might collide with it. Rather than maneuver clear it had used its very quiet rail gun to punch a hole in the screen big enough to pass through. That meant Cochrane was close. He had an aim point for his sensors. But somewhere the bomb would be following, arching towards the surface. That was the priority. They had to find it.
“Negative Martes. Keep all arrays looking for that vampire.”
“Sir, I can track it.” Martes pleaded. “It’s right there. We can bag it sir.”
“Negative. Find that bomb. I need to know where it’s going to hit.”
“What was that?” Cochrane called over the strain of the decent.
“Probable KEP Colonel. You lost one of your quadrant four ships.” Peligrew replied. “Recommend you increase rate of decent to eight-five.”
Cochrane was looking straight up, level with the orange and white horizon curving off into the distance as he and his squadron dove into the dark side of Mars.
“Have you got it?” Cochrane asked.
“Negative.”
“I’m already at my maximum rate of descent Captain.” Cochrane checked his systems as the heat began to build up on his ship.
Peligrew chopped in again. “You just lost another one sir. This one below you.”
Cochrane looked down at his display. “Engine failures. Much further and I won’t be able to pull out. These things aren’t rigged properly for atmospheric flight.”
A tiny sparkle against the red surface caught his eye below him, like the glint off a pinhead against the sand on a beach. An instant later, another of his squadron below him swerved out of control and tumbled into the atmosphere in a ball of flame.
“What was that?”
Cochrane checked his status board. The tumbling vessel had lost control after firing its maneuvering thrusters to avoid a fast moving object and had yawed too far from its flight envelope, spiraling to its death. More of the unmanned ships below him reported dodging a small debris field passing through them as they caromed towards the surface. The speed of their decent and lack of atmospheric maneuvering package doomed them.
Peligrew yelled over the com. “We got it sir. Maneuvering thrusters firing below you. It’s tumbling. I think it hit something.”
Cochrane looked up, but the cascade of failures on his formation display told a more sobering story. “Negative Captain. I’m losing ships here. They’re coming apart. Those are my ships.”
More of his formation spun away in twisting fireballs. Damn, he thought. Feeling he had failed, Cochrane ordered his lander to pull up before he joined the shower of metal tumbling to the surface below. The other vessels in his formation pulled up with him, reforming automatically on their defeated leader as he climbed back up into high orbit.
Cochrane cursed, banging his hand against the control console. He activated his com system as he watched the spiraling flares of falling ships. “Captain, inform whoever is listening on the surface they have incoming.”
Cochrane looked down at New Meridian. He waited silently for the catastrophic explosion.
But the flash didn’t come.
36
Mars Orbital Tower
Passenger Elevator B
Duran looked down as New Meridian City became a jumble of lights from this altitude, like a fissure made of tiny stars. From this perch high above the city, there was no sign of the chaos below, only emergency lighting that blinked off and on in the trench. It was a good sign that maybe the infection of the Intruder had stopped its spread into the city. Cole, if he had survived, would begin to pick up the pieces, reassembling what was left after the massive loss of life. They would have the toughest job, burying the dead and mourning the passing of friends, colleagues and loved ones.
Too many had been forced to stand their ground against him, and lost their lives in the attempt. The blood on his hands stained worse than any of the terrible days of his past. He wanted to join the dead, but his architecture wouldn’t allow him to spend his life before the mission was complete. It would have to be taken from him. It was impossible for him to pay for his sins with his own singular life. So many had suffered today.
Now he was just tired. Exhausted. His body was spent and his mind dulling. The crash from the drug-induced rampage would come soon and his mind was already starting to drift. He couldn’t afford to lose focus. He was so close now. The barriers between him and his target had dissolved and the way to Celeste was open.
The elevator began to slow as it neared the Large Capacity Elevator. He could feel them now, the Intruder’s familiar malicious scowl beginning to cloud the room.
The elevator came to rest over eight kilometers above the twinkling surface. The indicator said he was level with the L.C.E. Duran took one last look below him.
The three looming mountains of the Tharsis bulge formed an imposing ridge far in the distance. The hovering darkness of Olympus Mons blacked out the stars, still hundreds of kilometers away on the horizon. A piercing brilliant speck of light hovered above the monolithic mountain range. Earth was so far away it took him a moment to register.
Earth wasn’t his home. He had only been allowed there briefly. He’d fought a battle there once. But it was a strange world to him. Now it hung in the sky as a reminder.
Duran removed the Talon, its weight seeming foreign and heavy in his hand. It felt out of place, a blunt instrument. It was the last vestige of technology he would rely on.
He pulled the tabs loose on his vest and he let it fall away from his shoulders, dropping his communications, info-board and remaining armor to the floor. The link was severed at the base of his neck so it was nothing but dead weight now.
The doors behind him hissed open as the automated systems announced his arrival to level twenty-four. Duran remained, staring outside into the night, gun in hand until Kari arrived next to him quietly. She had remained as far away from him as she could in the passenger compartment, as if she knew her purpose and was trying to protect him from the harm she might cause, but now she came up to him, in her way, telling him it was time to go. Time to bring this to an end.
The dreams of his first moments around Mars were no longer a mystery to him. They were the suppressed memories of a conflict with the Intruder on the distant moon of his destroyed homeworld. He wondered what nightmares this new conflict would bring. Would he suffer the sleepless nights with dead companions? Would Eric Hansen visit him as a tormented figure like the Most-Hated had done, he wondered. Would the collapsing spine of James Floss be a ghostly figment, accusing Duran for killing him? If the macabre visitors came to him in his sleep to seek their haunting revenge, in what form would Celeste visit him? She too would join them in the restless nights to come. Perhaps even become the axis around which the others in his violent past would haunt him. Duran knew that Celeste would join them. She would not survive it.
Duran felt the steady draw of the Intruder presence wash over him. They… were waiting. He checked Eric Hansen’s Talon with a quick glance. It was loaded and charged.
Taking Kari by the hand, he slid the doomed girl behind him, shielding her from whatever waited beyond. He turned to the open doors and walked through them.
Duran entered
the Large Capacity Elevator through an adjoining copula along the Stratospire’s exoskeleton, pulling Kari behind him. The persistent Martian cold rushed into his nostrils, filling them with the air of machinery. The interior of the L.C.E. was dark, with sparse lights streaming in along the edges, oriented towards the platform’s center. The hum of machinery drowned out the howl of high altitude winds blowing across the tower, feeling the massive construct sway under his feet.
A white beam of light shined into the doorway as they entered, blinding him from seeing further into the platform. Releasing Kari, Duran raised a hand to shield his eyes, keeping his gun hand cleared for action. Kari slipped away into the shadows and Duran let her go. He could sense the presence of others inside the pressurized compartment of the elevator. The smell of sweat and weapon silicates mixed with the residue of machinery inside the elevator, forming a maelstrom of antagonistic odors in the thin air. They were squatting in the dark somewhere in the big chamber.
He could feel the antagonistic stream of mental commands from the Intruder, but Celeste was silent in the dark. For a long time she had been the dominant mind, reaching out into the city through the Mind Control Device, but now her silence put Duran on edge.
Duran angled out of the light along its edges. He moved behind a stack of containers scattered around the interior, arranged along a series of anchor points on the floor. Ringing the edge of the elevator were the gutted hulls of fleet interceptors, standing on end, their engines and electronics stripped away. The L.C.E. was a junk bin of refuse and discarded materials, stacked dozens of meters high, packed tight on the elevator floor. The shadows stretched like long jagged fingernails in the spotlight that followed him.
Not far now.
The shadow of a lone figure angled toward Duran as he curved around the last interceptor hull near the center. The obelisk of the machine was behind him. Gaps of light and dark hid a large mechanism that could only be the converted Mind Control Device. Duran could glimpse the device past the corona of lights preening down on him. He expected to find an alien technology behind the device’s design, instead finding something resembling a long endurance starship control copula that protected a human body during high stress accelerations but still allowrf the occupant to retain command of the vessel through the cybernetic link of mind and machine. It was heavily modified with the life support systems stripped away and other machines and relays placed around the central copula. The complexity was staggering.