Mars Wars - Abyss of Elysium
Page 41
“Wait,” Peter interrupted. “What rail guns?”
“The ones we have under construction right now,” Brinker responded. “The rail guns that were planned for a future magnetic rail system to the launch site. We’ve now cannibalized them and have a plan in place to finish them tomorrow, just in time to mount and deploy in position. All we had to do was separate the pieces they’d already shipped.”
“But what’re you going to use for rail gun bullets?” Peter asked.
“Rocks, what else?” Brinker responded with a smile. “It’s not like we have any lack of rocks around here. We got more rocks than in my grandmama’s garden. We load up five-liter canisters with the right size rocks then project the loaded canister down the rail. At the end of the rail, we have a reinforced screen that stops the canisters, but the rocks, well, they keep on going – at mach 1.5, give or take a little! And in the thin air out there, they just keep on going! Professor Gorteau designed it himself! The spread of the projectiles is like a super-gauge sawed-off shotgun filled with quadruple ought shot and a shell as big around as my arm! If anyone is anywhere near the end of that gun, even a full klick out, they’re gonna wish they’d stayed home!”
“Unbelievable!” Peter replied.
“We can fire one round every 90 seconds from each rail, with one operator per gun,” Brinker continued, beaming. “He’ll be busier than a one-legged ballerina, but it can be done. The way we have them positioned, we can even shoot through the spaces between the domes if the attack comes from only one quarter, so that all the guns are useful at some aspect of the battle, and totally overwhelming at defending the outside parameters.”
“Excellent!” Peter replied. “What about individual weapons?” he persisted.
Brinker looked away, the fatigue returning to his face. “Well, it’s not good. We have no more than five weapons – three 12-gauge shotguns and two .45 caliber handguns. We have a grand total of twenty-two 12-gauge rounds and a box of forty-eight .45 caliber handgun rounds. That’s it.”
“And who’s surprised?” Peter replied. “It’s not like anyone expected a war up here… It’s a miracle even that much got through! Have you improvised other weapons?”
Brinker shook his head slowly. “We’re still working out some weapons. We don’t have much time and what time we have had I’ve been spending on the rail guns. Fabian is working on some lasers now. But if it gets close up and personal, it looks like knives are the weapon of choice for everyone outside.”
“Hand to hand combat outside?” Peter asked, incredulously. “These people are scientists and engineers. We don’t have time to train anyone for this!”
“It won’t matter, anyway,” Covenant added. “The enemy is very well armed. I estimate they each have high-powered weapons and plenty of ammunition. I don’t believe that it’ll come to any knife fighting. If they get close enough to see us, they’re going to use their guns.”
“That’s exactly why we’ve got to keep the war as far away from us as we can. We have to seize the initiative, anticipate their strategy and meet them outside in front of the big guns,” Peter said firmly. “This is a matter of life or death for them. By the time they get here, they’re going to need to get out of their suits and get to some fresh air. They know this is a war for survival, to live or die out there, so they’re going to be coming at us with a desperate, all-or-nothing attack. We won’t have time to give them any quarter at all, or we could easily be overwhelmed. If even one of them gets through and inside here with a single weapon, we could lose it all.”
Brinker simply nodded. Covenant looked tired and said nothing.
“I need you two as rested as possible,” Peter said firmly. “I need you to be sharp; I need you to be frosty, awake and functioning at your best. Therefore, I’m ordering both of you to take a 4 hour rest period, beginning right now.”
“Talked me right into it,” Covenant said with a deep sigh.
“Sorry, boss, I can’t; not right now,” Brinker replied.
“Why not?” Peter asked.
“Because I’ve laid out our defensive plan in such a way that if certain milestones aren’t accomplished, then we won’t be ready and we’ll all likely die.”
“What is it that can’t wait four hours?” Peter persisted. “What job is there that you have that can’t be delegated to someone else for four hours?”
“I need to plant the camera balloon anchor right now – in fact I’m late. And I need to spot it myself for maximum advantage. No one else can borrow my eyes or brain for the job,” Brinker said hoarsely.
“Then I’ll do it for you,” Peter responded, unwilling to give in. “That way you can follow orders and get some rest.”
“With all due respect, sir, I need to do this, personally. As soon as I return, I’ll grab a few hours,” Brinker replied with a sigh.
Peter rolled his eyes and responded, “Alright then. But, that’s the last task, then rest.” He looked at Covenant. “You stay up until Brinker is done; I need both of you on the same shift.”
“Out of all the mates to land, I had to get a gung-ho Marine. What a bargain!” Covenant said with all good humor.
alf an hour later, Brinker and Corporal Pamela Hiraldo shut the hatch in a large, fat MAT dubbed “Cedro,” and prepared to disembark the vehicle’s airlock bay. The vehicle had been especially outfitted to haul cargo around the base. It consisted of a large, cavernous bay behind the control console. Outside it was chubby with a narrower front that seated the operator, so it had all the external appearance of a pig with wheels. Hence the colonists had named it “Cedro” - Spanish for pig.
Every time a MAT was depressurized, even though the internal air was recovered by directing it back into a holding tank, some of the precious mixture was unretrievable. The use of Cedro was very restricted because each time it was depressurized, a greater amount of unrecoverable life support air was irretrievably lost from its rather large interior than from the smaller MATs. But Cedro was needed on this essential mission to plant the anchor that would fly the camera balloon.
The location Brinker had proposed was halfway between the main colony perimeter and the Crippen Spaceport. The huge MAT rolled outside and onto the sands of Mars. The sun was brilliant and high in the sky. The winter air was still, without dust particles, which made for a crystal clear sky that faded from a dull pink at the horizon to an odd, tinted azure at the zenith.
Cerdo plodded slowly past the domes and toward the exact spot where Brinker had purposed to place the balloon anchor. In the back of Cedro lay a huge Mylar bag, a sand pump, a large length of hose and a spool of super-lightweight wire with which the camera balloon would be anchored. Cedro was pressurized, but Brinker and Hiraldo were both fully suited, except for their helmets, which lay on the floor behind their seats. Soon, the last structure passed behind them and Cedro headed forward on a straight-line path toward their destination. Hiraldo drove, skirting the larger boulders and rocks while Brinker studied a map of the area. In minutes, they arrived.
Wordlessly, Hiraldo shut the MAT’s system’s down, and donned her helmet, pressurizing her suit. Brinker removed his precious stogie from his mouth and placed it on the lip of Cedro’s control panel, then donned his helmet.
“Ready when you are,” he nodded to Hiraldo, who slowly depressurized the MAT with the twist of a single dial.
When the gauge read close to zero, Hiraldo and Brinker simultaneously popped their hatches and stepped outside, almost in perfect unison.
They immediately busied themselves to precisely place the bag in position and then to fill it with sand using the sand pump and hoses. When complete, the bag bulged with fine, red sand, which was more than enough to prevent the balloon from blowing away even in a moderate redwind. Then, with hardly any discussion, they loaded their equipment back into the bay for the drive back to BC1.
The moment the pressure gauge read green, Brinker and Hiraldo removed their helmets and placed them behind their seats once again.
Brinker laid his head back against his seat, tugging on his suit’s neck ring to keep it from digging into the back of his head. He fell asleep immediately.
Hiraldo slowly and methodically turned Cedro in a wide arc and pointed it back to BC1. Seven minutes later, just 10 meters from the first dome, there was a loud, unexpected clunk followed by a shrill series of alarms as Cedro rolled over onto its top, then back onto its side.
The MATS were never designed to roll, and the weight of its mass immediately caused cracks to appear all along its length. The pressure in the vehicle immediately began to lower as air seeped out along a dozen hairline openings in the hull.
Brinker was wide awake as soon as the MAT inverted itself. Both Marines had followed procedures and were tied into their seats with their harnesses, so they hung sideways in their seats with Brinker down and Hiraldo above him.
Hiraldo immediately retrieved her helmet with her right hand from just above Brinker’s seat, then began to fish for his.
Brinker could not move from his position, and he could see Hiraldo was desperately tugging at his helmet that was obviously jammed behind his partially collapsed seat. He could also feel the pressure drop and knew they had but seconds of consciousness remaining.
“Put your helmet on, Marine; now!” Brinker ordered.
She eyed him in panic and continued to try and dislodge his from behind his seat. She knew that only seconds separated them from life and death.
Brinker saw the panic in her eyes, and gripped her helmet with both hands and shoved it with all his energy in front of her face. “Do it now, Marine! Do it now!” he screamed.
Hiraldo looked at him with horror, and then complied. In record time, she had her helmet on and pressurized her suit. With no hesitation at all, she unlatched her belt and fell atop Brinker with a thud. She dug her knee into his forehead as she repositioned herself to wrench his helmet out of its position behind his seat. With one mighty tug, she popped it out, inched away from Brinker and extended his helmet to him.
It was in that moment that Hiraldo saw his eyes; empty and glazed. The pressure had dropped too low and Brinker was on the edge of losing consciousness. If she did not act soon, he would be dead.
In the incredibly tight confines of Cedro, she lifted his head and placed the helmet into position, and swung the latching ring into place. It was jammed. She attempted it again, and again it was jammed. She fought the panic in her mind, and screamed to herself, “…do it Marine; do it now!”
Once again, it was jammed. She ripped the helmet away from Brinker and looked at its ring. To her horror, she saw it was severely bent and would never again fit on properly.
Her mind raced. “He can’t die; he can’t! He’s the only one who can save us!” she thought.
In an instant, she knew what she had to do. She hyperventilated, sucking as much air into her lungs as she could, then depressurized her suit, and, while holding her breath, removed her helmet, and placed it on Brinker, pressurizing his suit as quickly as she could.
The air pressure in the MAT was not at zero, and it was dropping off slower than before, but it was below the pressure required to sustain consciousness and it was below the safe pressure to prevent the nitrogen bubbles from slowly forming in her blood. Hiraldo knew death was but minutes away, and she prayed it would not be painful.
She shook Brinker to awaken him; shaking him and even slamming his helmet into the side of Cedro. But soon, she would be losing consciousness, and even now her thoughts were not fitting together very well…
Brinker awoke completely with Hiraldo’s last thrust of his head against the bulkhead. He saw her eyes lock onto his just before she lost consciousness. Instantly, he realized what she had done.
He grabbed the other helmet and started to put it on her when he saw its malformed ring. He thrust it aside and looked desperately around him for anything. Then he saw the backup anchor bag of Mylar. Quickly removing his knife from his side, he cut a large square of the plastic and wrapped it over her head. Grasping a roll of duct tape, he began wrapping it around her suit collar, pulling it tight, as he slammed his fist into her pressure console, starting the flow of air into her suit.
The bag inflated immediately, but not fully. Brinker knew it was leaking. Desperately, he taped all along the edge of the bag to seal it as best he could, until it inflated tightly and the pressure gauge on her suit evened out to a safe pressure. He looked at her form, now lying silently in his lap, and knew that she had stopped breathing.
“No, no, no, Marine; no, no, nooooo!” Brinker screamed at her. “Wake up, Marine; wake up, damn you!” he shouted, as he shook her violently. “Wake up, Marine; that’s an order!”
He laid her body on what was now the bottom of the vehicle. Brinker desperately considered his options, which were few. He could not slit the bag and begin mouth-to-mouth resuscitation; that would, of course, be impossible. All he could do was try and restart her heart and force the air in and out of her lungs mechanically.
Immediately, Brinker pumped her chest, on her sternum, five times in rapid succession. Then he placed his fist on her diaphragm and pulled her body toward his chest, lowered her, then pulled her toward him again, three times. Frantically he pumped her chest again, and repeated the mechanical attempt at making her breath.
“Come on, Marine; come on, wake up!” he screamed as he worked. “You don’t have my permission to die, Marine! I need you! Wake up!” On the fourth cycle, he could feel her body convulse in a cough.
Desperately, he stood up and forced the door over his head open with unnatural strength. He climbed out of Cedro, and reached back inside and pulled Hiraldo out behind him. He then tossed her over his shoulder and began running back to the nearest pressurized airlock.
The Command Center had been monitoring the accident and had already sent a team to prepare that airlock. When Brinker arrived, the door swung open to receive them.
In the briefest time an airlock had ever been cycled on another planet, the inner door swung open. Brinker laid Hiraldo on the floor among a team of colonists who had gathered around, including a staff physician.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Brinker removed his knife from its sheath and cut the plastic away from her face.
Her eyes were open as she looked up at him in an oblivious fog. “Sarge!” she said hoarsely. “I thought I went blind!”
Brinker removed his helmet and placed it on the floor beside her. Then he swept her up in his arms and held her tightly. He did not speak a word.
eter called Brinker into his office as soon as Cedro had been examined by Covenant. Hiraldo’s in great shape. Between the partial pressurization of the MAT and your quick thinking, she’ll make it,” Peter began. “And considering the story you’re telling, she’s quite the heroine, as well.” Then he added bluntly, “It was sabotage. The axle had been partially cut along an axis that virtually guaranteed it would roll the vehicle when it was in motion.”
Brinker just nodded. “Then we really do have a spy among us,” he said.
Covenant nodded. “I checked all around Cedro’s departure position in the airlock, and there were no filings whatsoever. So it’s impossible to tell when this was done. I have the technicians inspecting all the other vehicles now.”
Brinker’s eyes focused on the empty space just before his nose. The stogie rolled around in his mouth in an even, patterned circle. Then he turned and looked at Peter and Covenant.
“When we find this spy, this mole, this plant, this traitor, this conspirator, or whatever he is, whoever he is - he’s mine. I want him. It’s personal now.”
No one argued with the Marine.
39
hey had made it halfway; at high noon on the ninth day after Covenant’s escape, a caravan of six Soviet SARs sat on the equatorial edge of the Elysium plateau pointed northwest. Dimitr
iov had ordered them to get out of the vehicles and stretch to celebrate the halfway mark.
The thirty odd passengers looked exactly like they felt; totally repugnant and experiencing painful discomfort. Because the SARS were outfitted for a maximum of four passengers, they literally had to sit atop one another. And because they were commanded to ride with their suits pressurized in case of disaster, they had exceeded the suit’s design in every conceivable aspect. The suits were outfitted with emergency urination devices, even had a slim lower compartment for emergency defecation, and each person wore super absorbent diapers in case of leakage. But these systems were not easy to use to begin with and were absolutely impossible to use in the tight confines of the overly packed SARs. In order to use the defecation compartment on the bottom of each suit, the wearers had to position themselves precisely to open the normally closed and narrow orifice leading to the device’s pouch. Since this was impossible while sitting still, most passengers had literally missed the mark and filled their lower suit with a mixture of foul body wastes.
Each suit was also designed to filter out personal organic odors before allowing the suit’s exit hoses to pass the suit gasses back into the SARs master scrubbers to which they were all attached. But the organic loading was so far beyond the designer’s worst nightmares that the filters had failed long ago. They were literally breathing and re-breathing one another’s waste organic gasses, and every time a new bodily function took place, it injected yet another round of nauseating gas into the common air system.
To make matters worse, the life support system was not designed to remove as much carbon dioxide as was being produced in the grossly overloaded SARs. Even though they had quickly engineered a second canister, the system was not working as they had hoped. They were all literally suffocating in their waste carbon dioxide – slowly but with certainty.