Parting Gifts

by gerald hall

  Marilyn Barnes had a similar conversation with her children, Benjamin and Lissette. She had left to meet with them just as soon as she learned about the offer. Both Benjamin and Lissette were at their manufacturing center working on producing more weapons and munitions for the militia in spite of the periodic artillery and aerial attacks. The people of Ashley had put considerable effort to camouflage the buildings and to reinforce the walls with earthen berms to protect it.

  Benjamin and Lissette were working on one of the 3D milling machines when Marilyn walked up. Both of Marilyn’s children stopped what they were doing when they saw her approach.

  “Hi, Mom. What’s going on? I thought that you were pulling observation post duty. It isn’t that Jeff would relieve you unless something serious had happened.” Lissette asked.

  “Well, something has come up that involves all of us. Let’s go someplace private to talk about this.”

  “Ok, Mom. We can go to my office. “Benjamin replied.

  After the three walked to the office and closed the door, the three people then sat down across from each other. Then, Marilyn began to explain what she had just learned.

  “A group of people from Ashley have been offered free passage to live on Mars. All three of us have been included in that offer. I wanted to let you know personally about it and what my decision is going to be.”

  Benjamin and Lissette listened intently, but were still shocked by what their mother told them.

  “I am going to stay and help defend this town for as long as I can. But I want both of you to go ahead and leave here while you can. Apparently, someone on Mars has thought enough of us to make a standing offer of a home and transportation to the colony there. We all know that there are some pretty amazing things going on there. But perhaps the most important things are that they are safe, free and not facing a war.”

  “Mom, we are not going to abandon you here. We have too much work at the factory to leave it behind at this point either. You know that the factory has been producing much of the equipment that our militia and our neighboring militia units are using. If Ben and I leave right now, most of our workers will also leave as well. We know that our militia still doesn’t have enough materiel set aside to sustain an extended defense of the town, even with battlefield salvage.

  If our neighbors are going to have a chance at all, we have to stay as long as we can, Mom.” Lissette insisted.

  Marilyn was profoundly impressed by the courage and thoughtfulness of her children. But still, she wanted as a mother to protect them from harm. So she tried once more to convince her children to leave before the front line got any closer to Ashley and that option closed.

  “I really want you both to be safe. I am very proud of you and your willingness to sacrifice for your neighbors. But please understand my concern for you.” Marilyn said while tears welled up in her eyes.

  “We need to keep this factory running for as long as possible so that our militia has the tools to keep fighting. You told us that this is a standing offer, Mom. So we are standing by you for as long as we can. If you tell us to go, we will leave. But please don’t make us leave here while we can still do some good here.”

  Marilyn silently sat there for a few moments thinking about the people that her children had grown up to be. They had already seen so much more loss with the death of their father, surviving the nuclear autumn and the challenges of their mother struggling to make ends meet day after day. But even though she wanted so badly to protect them from the terrors of a war that had already inflicted so much destruction to their town, Marilyn respected the strength, courage and honor that her children were demonstrating. Finally, she spoke again.

  “Alright, you two can stay as long as you feel that you must. But when I tell you that you must leave, I want you to go ahead and get the hell out of here. Go to Mars, raise families and make a difference on that world just as you have been making such an incredible difference here on this one. But most importantly, be safe. I need for you to trust my judgement on this, please.”

  “OK, Mom. We will, I promise.” Benjamin said.

  At that, the three of them stood up and hugged each other, tears freely flowing in the knowledge that they may not see each other a week from now.

  “OK, kids. I need to get back on duty. You get back to your jobs now, but be ready to leave at a moment’s notice. A moment may be all the time that you have available if you want to survive, I fear.”

  Early the next morning, Jeff went to visit the Methodist Church in town to see Reverend Joshua Marcum and his wife Cynthia. He had called them shortly after Major Norris’ visit to give them a brief description of the message. Now, he was following up to see what their decision would be.

  Joshua and Cynthia met Jeff at the door of their home. The house was on the eastern side of town and was one of the few fully intact structures remaining. It had originally belonged to Deborah’s biological parents, but had been given by Deborah to her adoptive parents long before she left to go to Mars. A few people in town who knew who Deborah’s father was and what his gift had done for the town quietly whispered that Stewart was still providing protection to his old home from afar. Stewart and his wife Sarah had disappeared from the face of the Earth in the aftermath of the still mysterious Second Event.

  “Hello, Jeff. Come on inside.” Cynthia warmly told him.

  “How are you folks doing? I’m sure that it hasn’t been easy for you with all of your children being scattered all over the place.”

  “We are doing alright. It helps that we know that all of our children are going to be safe. Then, of course, there is Deborah. I suppose that she is doing her part to keep others safe herself out there on Mars.”

  “Well, that Marine Corps major that flew in yesterday told me that the message is also reaching all of your children, including Nathan. They are all getting priority transportation to the evacuation centers.”

  “We are very blessed to hear that bit of good news. I’m sure that they will all be very happy to be reunited with their sister at Hebes Chasma.”

  “Have you two reconsidered your decision to stay here?”

  “No, Jeff. We are too old now to be flying off to Mars. Besides, I feel that my place is here providing spiritual comfort for all those who have to stay here. I will continue to do the Lord’s work where I am needed for as long as I draw breath.” Joshua said with a weary but proud smile.

  “I will be staying by my husband’s side as well. Someone has to also be his rock in these challenging times. I am just happy knowing that all of my children will be safe.” Cynthia added, the tears clearly welling up in her eyes.

  The leader of the Ashley militia still had far too much to worry about. While his children were going to a place of relative safety, Jeff still had his wife and the rest of the town to protect. Hopefully, the cargo that the Marines had delivered would help make a difference.

  “Well, what did the Marines bring with them on that Osprey to leave with the militia?” Jeff asked after the tilt-rotor aircraft finally left.

  “We now have about thirty M72A7 Light Anti-armor Weapons. They also dropped off about thirty thousand rounds of 6.5mm ammunition, twenty anti-tank mines and about three hundred pounds of C4 explosive.”

  “Wow, we can certainly do a lot with all of those explosives. The rest of the materiel will help us tremendously with the Caliphate armored vehicles that are supposed to be heading this way too.”

  “There’s one other crate here too. That’s that long case over by the wall. It’s marked with the designator ‘FIM-92J’.”

  “Well, I’ll be…. That is a Stinger antiaircraft missile. How many of those cases did you say that they brought?”

  “Just the one case, Jeff.”

  “I guess that we are just going to have to be very picky as to what we want to shoot this baby at then, won’t we?” Jeff said with hungry expression on his face.

  “You know how to shoot one of those things?”

  “Yes,
I was trained on it when I was in the Air Force. I’m going to have to give a few of you guys a quick course on firing one of these things too before things get too hot. More importantly, I am going to be showing you what we are going to be shooting at with this man-portable air defense missile. We are not going to waste it on just any aircraft that flies near us. We need to make sure that we make the greatest impact possible with this weapon since we have only one of them. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  Jeff didn’t have much time left to train his people though. The Caliphate’s forces were advancing eastward all too quickly. Less than a week later, a very loud reminder of this reality woke up the residents of Ashley.

  Jeff Harden heard the roar of an A-10 Warthog overhead as he tried to get the Ashley militia into their defensive positions. A handful of A-10’s supplemented the F/AV-21’s that had been operating from improvised highway airstrips after the last of the large East Coast military and civilian airfields had been obliterated by a constant barrage of Arab Brotherhood aircraft and missile strikes.

  The STOVL F/AV-21’s had been stationed aboard US Navy ships, but had been repositioned to the land bases so that they could be closer to the front lines. Harden heard that the British military refugees also brought with them a handful of their own STOVL P-1216 Harrier III’s that were also aiding in the defense. The short takeoff and vertical landing fighter-bombers were extremely well suited for operating from the short lengths of interstate highway that they used.

  The Warthogs were used purely for the ground support role since they had little air-to-air capability beyond a pair of Sidewinder missiles and the massive GAU-8 30mm Gatling gun that the A-10 was built around. So the supersonic F/AV-21’s and P-1216’s had to do both longer ranges strikes against jihadist targets and supply what little air cover was available to protect the Warthogs and the surviving Alliance Army rotary-wing aircraft like the Cheyenne gunships, Osprey tilt-rotors, Chinooks and Blackhawks.

  When not flying, the aircraft were often hidden under highway overpasses that also provided the aircraft with shelter from the weather. But operations were austere at best from these improvised airfields. Getting fuel and ammunition required the supplies to be trucked from the few Air Force depots that had escaped being destroyed in the massive attacks staged by the Arab Brotherhood earlier. The ground convoys of vital supplies for the aircraft were under constant threat of air and ground attack. But even worse, was the utter lack of spare parts for the aircraft.

  The British relied upon the dwindling number of spare parts that had been aboard the two aircraft carriers that were now docked at Norfolk Naval Station for the P-1216’s. The F/AV-21’s had some spare parts remaining at several of the East Coast naval stations and the Marine Air Station at Cherry Point, North Carolina. But the intensity of the conflict in the air was such that those parts were running out very quickly.

  The A-10’s were in ever worse shape. All of their spare parts had been coming from the boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base which was now far behind Caliphate lines. So the only parts available came from other A-10’s that were too damaged to be flown any longer.

  The Caliphate had no such problem. In fact, while the average age of the aircraft being employed by the Caliphate got greater with the old aircraft being reactivated from the boneyard to replace lost combat aircraft, the actual numbers of aircraft available to the Caliphate became greater. There was nothing that the Alliance could do to prevent this, especially since the boneyard was so far to the west of the front lines now.

  If a strip of highway that the Alliance aircraft was operating from was discovered by the Caliphate, the improvised runway would be immediately hit by air and long range rocket artillery strikes. That forced the Alliance to frequently relocate preemptively, reducing the number of sorties that could be flown even more. The combat aircraft being used by the Caliphate had the overwhelming advantage of having undamaged conventional airfields and all of their infrastructure to operate from.

  So every time that Jeff saw that fewer Alliance aircraft flew over his head east back home than the number that flew west to attack the enemy attackers, his heart sank just a little more.

  Chapter Thirty Two:

  Operations Center

  Mars Orbital Station One

  May 21, 2048

  “Well, look at that. That asteroid has to be massive to be visible to the naked eye at this distance.” Karen Chandler said as she watched a large oblong object slowly closing within three hundred kilometers of the space station.”

  “Yes, it is an incredible sight. You know this will be the first new moon that Mars has had in at least several millions years. It’s still a lot smaller overall than either Phobos or Deimos.” Mark Tennison replied as he stood next to Karen at the station’s observation module.

  “It was a big job for our fusion-powered remote probes to shove around a ten kilometer diameter M-class asteroid. The initial scans from our probes have said that that big rock out here is chock full of valuable metals. The nickel-iron is vital to our construction projects, but the rare earth metals and possible radioactives are even more so. Our engineers are going to be incredibly busy working on this once it enters permanent Mars orbit in a few days.”

  “Yes, they will be. But we aren’t just going to mine this rock. We are going to hollow it out and have people living in it full-time as another space station orbiting Mars. That will help us tremendously out here with the potentially significant increase of available volume. Because the facilities will be in microgravity, we can utilize them to manufacture materials and compounds that we can’t produce at the bottom of the Martian gravity well.”

  “You sound pretty excited about it, Mark”

  “I certainly am. Within the next five years, we are going to have four more new ‘moons’ orbiting Mars more or less just like her. We’ll do the same thing with them. Hollow them out, seal up the openings, pump in some air, install a nuclear power plant and put people inside. The amount of space that we will have in just one of those new moons will dwarf this space station obviously. The nickel-iron structure of the moon will also give the people living inside a lot better protection against cosmic radiation as well.”

  “Is there any truth to the rumor that we are going to put weapons onboard, Mark?”

  “Yes. We are going to use the exterior of one or more of the new moons to mount defensive weapons to help protect us on Mars. There is still a very real possibility that the jihadists on Earth may attempt to launch a strike against us someday. We have to be prepared for that. I know that we have had Marines here for several years. But they alone won’t be able to defend us.”

  “It is a shame that we could not have simply left all of the violence behind when we left Earth. It would be nice to live someplace where we didn’t have the threat of war still hanging over our heads.”

  “I agree. It is just as the ancient Romans once said ‘hacen pacem, para bellum’. That roughly translates to ‘If you want peace, you have to prepare for war.’ I know that we don’t want to wage war again. But until the other side decides that they finally want exactly the same thing that we do, we have to be ready.”

  “Still, it’s a shame. I would much rather use those resources for other things like expanding or colony’s facilities or doing more exploration of the solar system. They would be a lot more beneficial to mankind as a whole. But I suppose that we still have to deal with the ‘wolves’ among us.

  On another note, has anyone named this new moon yet? I’m sure that the original asteroid had been given some sterile designation by NASA years ago. But now that she is going to be a new moon for Mars, it has to have a real name now.” Karen noted.

  “I don’t know yet. But I’m sure that someone has figured out something already. We just have to wait on folks to make the announcement.”

  What Mark had not told Karen was that this first artificial moon would eventually become far more than merely a source of metals and a new orbital habi
tat. Mark was one of the polymaths who belonged to the team designing the warp drive that will be constructed inside that asteroid to turn it into humanity’s first interstellar colony ship.

  Karen and the others at Hebes Chasma would eventually be informed about the project. But for now, the information remained tightly compartmentalized within the group of polymaths directly working on the design and a select few other colonists like Deborah. This would remain the case for several more years until the asteroid was ready for the colonists to begin installation of the warp drive.

  Chapter Thirty Three:

  Martian Colonial Marine Barracks

  Hebes Chasma, Mars.

  May 28, 2048

  “Hello, Matt. How are things going with your Marines?” Deborah asked.

  “Besides being a little tired of being farmers and miners, my people are doing very well, thank you. What brings you to our part of the Mars Underground?” The leader of the Martian Colonial Marines asked.

  “Actually, I came to invite you and ‘Harpo’ to come over to check out a new ‘toy’ that some of our people have been working on for your people. I think that you and your Marines will find it very interesting indeed.”

  “Well, by all means, lead on. I’ll contact Captain Marx right away to meet with us.” Matt said with a smile. Even though Deborah was a fellow veteran and a friend, it wasn’t all that often that the de facto leader of the polymaths came around to visit the Marine area.

  “Great, please tell her to meet with us at Module 48C.” Deborah explained.

  “May I ask what we are going to see exactly?”

  “Not yet. I and the people who have been working on it want this to be a surprise for you. But don’t worry. Your people are going to love it.” Deborah replied with a knowing smile on her face.