She pulls up when she’s less than fifty meters from his hull, and cuts loose the cargo module. She’s turned it into a massive fuel tank. It slams down onto the back of Chang’s ship and blows. The fireball wipes away whatever “crew” he had left on deck, and added to the mass of the module hitting him, makes the keel of his ship bow. Then it starts to come apart. The tail section breaks away, leaving only what’s left of the wings and the boat-like main section. He spins in, but doesn’t hit.
“Tough son-of-a-bitch,” Samuels assesses grimly, coming around to try to finish the job with her own engines failing. Acaveda is burning away, nothing left to do but get out of there.
“Acaveda, do you have enough fuel left to make Melas Three?” I ask. MAI tells me otherwise before she can answer.
“No, sir. I can stay up for another few minutes, less if I burn hard.”
“Try to get outside whatever jamming field we’re under. Let Colonel Ava know what’s happening. Then call out on the ETE channel. Go.”
She turns tail and heads south.
Alarms tell me Samuels is going down.
“Get some distance, Lieutenant,” I order. “Get the ridge between you and that thing. And don’t land on anybody.”
“Yes, sir.” She takes my hint and turns north, tries to get past the ridgeline. Chang’s wreck keeps stubbornly after her, but is barely able to keep pace with the crippled ASV. Her wingman keeps plinking the shredded hull with his guns, and gets only intermittent fire in reply.
“Melas Three Flight, disengage…” I tell him—the ID says it’s Lieutenant McKay—wanting to try to save at least one ship out of this massacre. “Escort Captain Acaveda clear—she’s going to need a ride home.”
Samuels is losing altitude, but manages to clear the ridgeline. Chang is starting to close. I’m thinking my ploy is going to fail—that maybe our mysterious new friends are out of rockets. But what they are is disciplined. They let Chang get right over top of them and start hitting him in the belly.
“UNMAC base,” I hear them again, still using our operations channel, “the enemy’s lift is in the undercarriage. Can you help concentrate fire?”
“On it, Colonel,” Thomas comes on. Her troopers have dragged up fresh launchers and are huffing it over the top of the bunkers to get a shot. More rockets fly and slam Chang. Big chunks of his ship are falling away as it staggers in the air. There’s less and less return fire coming down as our combined efforts appear to be whittling down his guns. MAI tracks the remaining four light fighters, who have turned and are fleeing northwest, toward PK territory. But Chang himself still doesn’t look like he’s in the mood to retreat.
Our new friends are taking what’s left of his fire. MAI tries to give me visuals of the armored strangers as they scatter for better cover. They move in alternating waves, one line falling back and digging in to provide cover fire for their fellows. Chang pushes his flaming wreck to keep on top of them, as if hoping to use the burning debris that keeps dropping from his disintegrating airship to bomb them. They fan out, giving Chang a more difficult set of targets. They’ve effectively taken all fire off of us, but they’re paying for it. I see armor suits go down under Chang’s barrage. A lot more are lying across the ridge.
Thomas is about to send back inside for another reload, and Rios is moving his remaining troopers in to join her. MAI’s cold calculations count forty-one dead and seventy-four being brought in with injuries. Tru’s people account for the worst of the trauma because of the lack of armor.
Samuels has managed a rough set-down a thousand yards over the ridgeline. Her cameras give me another perspective on the battle. The newcomers are keeping up a valiant fight, and I can see Chang lose another turret. He’s only got two working guns left, but he’s using them. I watch him tag another one of our unnamed rescuers, who goes down shooting back. Rios sends his remaining rockets up.
This last round of penetrating charges lights up the flank of Chang’s ship, and manages to kick it sideways into a list that looks terminal. He manages to start dragging the ship up, righting it, going back on the offensive. But then something bigger slams him, something we don’t see coming—it looks like the ship has been swatted by an invisible giant. The wings fold, twist. I can see bodies fly from the wreck along with more flaming debris.
“Contacts incoming,” Metzger announces. “West-northwest.”
On visual, I can see two ETE ships coming in fast. They both go straight for Chang, and their ship-mounted “tools” knock him around. Brutally. It isn’t more than a few seconds before his ship flies apart and tumbles into the slopes of the north ridge.
“Colonel Ram, this is Paul Stilson,” I hear a welcome voice on the Link. “Sorry we couldn’t get here sooner. We launched as soon as our sensors detected explosions in your proximity. Why didn’t you call?”
“We’ve been jammed, probably projected by that ship you just swatted,” I explain quickly. “Glad to see you. Next time I’ll know to just blow something up.”
“Jamming is lifted, Colonel,” Kastl confirms. “Colonel Ava is signaling.”
“Melas Two to Melas Three,” I call out.
“Can you give me a sitrep?” Lisa comes on urgently. “What’s been happening?”
“Long story,” I tell her. “We’re still here, but we’ve taken some bad hits. Thanks for the air support. It was very timely. The ETE just sent help as well. I think we may have this under control.”
“What did we just take down?” Paul interrupts. “It didn’t look like a Zodangan ship. We saw the three you shot down on the way in…”
“I need you to get in close to that wreck,” I tell him urgently. “But carefully, Paul. There’s probably at least one nano-hybrid, either in the ship or close by. He’s advanced, even by your standards. He’s either pure nanotech or he can create some impressive illusions.”
“What does he look like?” Paul asks the obvious.
“You’ll know him when you see him. He calls himself Chang. He claims to be the master of the Discs, and brought some to prove it. He also claims to be from the future.”
Paul doesn’t reply—I can only imagine how he took the bizarre intel. The ETE ships settle silently, putting the flaming wreckage in a crossfire. Blue sealsuits emerge from one ship, green suits from the other. They use their tools to hover a few feet off the ground and glide smoothly in closer to the wreck, fanning out to encircle it.
“We’ve got a lot of wounded out there,” I shift priorities. “Including our new friends. Rios, Thomas, can you link up with them see how much assistance they’ll need?”
“On the way, Colonel,” Thomas confirms. I watch the H-A suits start heading for the ridgeline. Samuels and her gunner are coming in to help as well.
“Paul,” I call out, “I can’t be sure Chang is even in there. He…”
“I see him,” Paul tells me, his voice like ice. Thomas holds up and sends me video:
Chang’s silhouette steps out of the flaming husk of his ship like he’s taking a walk in a garden. He’s none the worse for wear, at least not that we can see. The ETE move in and surround him, but keep a cautious distance. I see they all carry the new Rod “gun” that Paul showed me.
“Colonel Ram,” I hear Chang’s voice on our channels, “that was foolish.” He sounds only moderately annoyed. “I expected you to be smarter. You have wasted not only lives but what little weaponry you had left on only one of my ships. What will you do when I come back with more?”
It’s Paul that answers him before I can. Even with the helmet on, I can tell it’s him. The blue suit breaks ranks, lands his boots on the ground and steps directly at Chang. Then he points his weapon.
I watch Chang’s silhouette dissolve violently, like a man of mud hit by a fire hose. Chang seems to struggle to stay together, to stay standing, but Paul just keeps hammering him, blowing him apart, moving in as he does so. The Shadow Man is smoke in a windstorm. I see parts reform, only to get blasted away again.
The other Guardians just stand
there. I don’t think they know what to do about Paul’s aggression, his single-minded drive to push Chang’s nano-form beyond where it can re-assemble. To kill him.
Paul doesn’t say a word. The storm goes on for maybe half-a-minute, then Chang seems to be getting a foothold. I see legs reform, then arms. Paul’s Rod is discharging. Chang steps into his attacker, and I see his arm become something like a whip, lashing out. Paul staggers from the blow. His helmet breaks open, his goggles shatter. Chang hits him again, sending him to his knees.
Paul pulls a Sphere from his belt, charges head-first and thrusts it into Chang’s belly as his silhouette reforms. There is an explosion of light.
When it passes, only Paul is there.
“Look!” Rios calls, his view showing what looks like a cloud of black sand or tiny insects, blowing on the wind, swirling and dancing. It rides with the blowing dust to the west and vanishes.
Paul drags himself to his feet, rips away his broken helmet. I watch his bleeding head heal itself. None of the other Guardians go to help him. They just stand there.
Paul turns, surveys the battlefield. I see him pause, taking in the bodies, the wounded, strewn about the landscape. Dead and bleeding all around.
“Help them!” I hear him shout to his fellows, his voice breaking. “Help the injured!”
Tru is already heading for the lock. She can see how many of her own people are lying out there, blood blending into the red of the Martian landscape. Halley is sending up as many trauma-pods as she’s got, but they won’t even dent this.
And I realize we did our jobs too well: Except for the few light fighters that escaped, none of Chang’s recruits has a way home. That means we have the burden of their wounded on top of our own.
“Update Colonel Ava,” I tell Kastl. “Then flash a preliminary sitrep up to Earthside. Feed them all of our video of what just happened. I’m going out to do what I can. And I think I owe our new friends a proper thank you.”
“Colonel, I’ve got another contact,” he stops me, sounding more confused than urgent. MAI is flashing on something to the south-southwest. Optics zoom and enhance, and show me a figure standing on the ridgeline to the south. One figure, just standing, as if watching the battle and its bloody aftermath.
It’s hard to see details because of an unusual amount of glare coming off what must be some kind of metallic surface. MAI does what it can with the filters.
“What…?”
Gold armor. And a helmet in the shape of a hawk’s head, with a classic Egyptian cowl and collar. There is a bright light—almost too bright for MAI’s filters, like a sun—hovering just above the helmet.
I saw you before, I try not to say aloud. But I was sure I was hallucinating then.
“Rios,” I call out. “You have visual?” Despite what MAI’s feeding me, I need to know other people can see this.
“Affirmative, Colonel. It’s…”
Gone. In a flash of light, nothing is there.
“Man Behind the Curtain? Or did our Shadow Man come with a nemesis?” Kastl asks.
“I damn well hope it’s number two,” Rios answers him, then goes back to tending his wounded, checking his dead.
I look at Sakina for any kind of recognition. She can only shake her head.
Chapter 4: Conversations with Friends and Enemies
The battlefield easily qualifies as one of the worst I’ve seen.
Of course, I’m used to fighting a kind of war that usually consisted of surgical strikes, hit-and-fade; brief, contained skirmishes to eliminate small entrenched forces, and usually from a position of technological superiority. In that, I was more assassin than soldier. Enforcer. Executioner.
There have been exceptions that rival this day: The “end war” against the entrenched extremists in the Philippines. That unpleasantness with an enclave of militiamen in the Appalachians. The so-called “Battle of Lancaster”. The ill-considered mass blitz-attacks on the Eco-held positions shortly after I arrived on this planet.
But I’ve never personally killed this many people in one day (except, perhaps, for that Appalachian incident). The fact that I didn’t actually fire a shot doesn’t distance me from that responsibility. I pulled the trigger. These people are dead and wounded because of my choice, no matter Chang’s threats.
Looking at the bloody, smoking aftermath, I can’t help but realize that this is exactly what I’d hoped to keep from ever happening on this planet. Standing on the ground under the pale sky, without the plexi and concrete and blast doors and scanners that had kept me separated from it, all I can see is the wreckage of people and machines littering the once-pristine desert, almost as far as the eye can see. The stink of it leaks into my mask no matter how many times I adjust the seal.
The collapsed and ruptured wrecks of the Zodangan airships are still burning, pushing thick columns of smoke into the morning sky so high they anvil outward over our heads like storm clouds when they hit the atmosphere net. The bodies of our would-be enemies are scattered across the barren landscape, literally rained from the sky. Shot to pieces. Blown to pieces. Incinerated. There may be well over a hundred of them, maybe two hundred, but it will be awhile before we can get into the smoldering airframes to do a proper count. And I expect we’ll have to do the morbid ritual of counting body parts—reassembling butcher shop puzzles of meat and bone—to get any kind of accurate number. (Did they believe in Chang’s purported mission? Did they believe they were serving a greater good, protecting their homeworld, saving humanity? Or did they just want the power he promised them? I suddenly very much want to know what they all thought was worth dying—or at least killing—for.)
So far Rios and his troopers have managed to find barely two dozen of Chang’s “recruits” that are still alive: an assortment of air pirates (still identifiable by their tattoos despite the new black uniforms and military haircuts) and what are probably PK (better hygiene, better health and no tattoos). All are in dire need of medical attention that we can’t spare.
As for Chang’s “flagship”, there are no survivors. His ship was far sturdier than his people. Its shredded remains are just twisted metal and burning meat.
Only Chang got out unscathed. Or at least he did until Paul got him in his sights. I can only hope that Paul at least hurt him. (Assuming Chang was telling the truth about his nanotech “immortality”, will it take him months or moments to regenerate from being blasted to dust? Or did Paul manage to damage him permanently?)
It’s almost an hour after the last shots were fired, and we’re still focused on bringing in our own. MAI counts sixty-two confirmed dead: forty-one of my troopers and twenty-one of Tru’s volunteers. And there are over one hundred of our people—my people—wounded, most badly enough to need a human surgeon. The triage teams will be backed up tending to the bleeding, stabilizing what they can, well into tomorrow.
Our main medical facility was on Phobos. Halley, Ryder and Shenkar were only intended to run an on-planet front-line trauma center in the aftermath of a bloody fight, and otherwise generally attend to the routine injuries of living and working in a hostile environment. Injuries we couldn’t patch-up down here were airlifted in traumapods. The worst (who survived long enough) were sunk into Hiber-Sleep and sent home. But now what we have is all we have, and it isn’t nearly enough.
“You’ve never seen anything like this, have you?” I project upon Sakina as she walks out to the north ridgeline with me. She doesn’t answer. Her only focus seems to be staying close to me, remaining vigilant for any remaining threat to what must be the only thing she really cares about. (And I wonder what she would have done if Chang’s forces overwhelmed the base. Dragged me away into the desert to fight another day? Or made a stand in the deeper levels of the base, where the enemy couldn’t use their air power?) She’s more out of her depth than I am—at least I have seen the work of aircraft and artillery. And I wonder if she even remotely considered something like this when she threw herself in behind me as the one to save the pl
anet.
“Colonel Ram,” Anton comes over my Link. “I sent Earthside all the video and tactical—return time is at least forty-five minutes given planetary positions. I also had MAI run the images of whoever or whatever that was we saw out on the south ridge.”
He flashes the image of the golden figure onto my goggle HUD.
“The theme is definitely Egyptian, though pretty theatrical, like a bad cosplay with good effects,” he tries to distill it into sensibility. “Given the falcon’s head on what I’m assuming is a showy helmet and not its actual head, that would be Horus or Ra. The sun disk—characteristically cradled in long ox horns—that repeats on both the helmet crest and the abdomen leans toward Ra. The sun god. Which makes a certain twisted sense since our Shadow Man was kind of the opposite.”
“Colonel,” Kastl comes on, “I rechecked the south ridge sentry feeds. It looks like this Ra or whoever showed up just as we started shooting, then stood there the whole time, watching. MAI didn’t target because there was no apparent threat. And I guess we were too occupied to notice.”
“And as far as we can tell, Birdman didn’t assist Chang.” Anton assesses. “At least not that we can see. But then, he didn’t assist us either.”
I try to remember exactly what it was this—what? Fake dead god? Hybrid? Egyptophile wearing a theatrical special-effect?—said to me when I thought I was hallucinating, when Matthew died.
It said Matthew wasn’t supposed to die like he did. And I wasn’t…
Chang said he rewrote all of our futures. Assuming he isn’t lying or delusional…
“For all we know, shiny-bird-head was projecting Chang as some kind of sophisticated remote avatar,” I hear Rick—sounding very angry and very weary—coming on to add his opinion. “The Chang we saw may have been a mobile nano-generated hologram or construct to convince us he was here and real when he wasn’t. Chang might not even exist. The real bad guy could have been safely somewhere else the whole time.”
“And the walking black hole is just a Wizard of Oz thing to impress the minions?” Anton allows. “Or us?”
The God Mars Book Two: Lost Worlds Page 24