That forced a smile from Marshall, who replied, “Do the best you can. With our missiles useless and our laser cannon inoperative, I think our fight’s over.”
“Closing in on launch trajectory,” Steele said. “Twenty-nine seconds to optimum strike window.”
“Once we’re clear, try and veer off.”
Shaking her head, she said, “I’ve lost most of my thrusters, sir. It’s hard enough to hold a straight course. I think we’re locked on this trajectory until damage control can fix us up.”
“Shuttles coming up from the surface,” Weitzman said. “Estimated time to interception is twelve minutes.”
“The Martian Marine Corps on the march,” Caine said, turning to Marshall. “Too late to affect this battle, but we must have done some serious damage to Zeus.”
“Getting better feeds now from ground pick-ups,” Spinelli said. “Getting quite a bit of outgassing, but they’ve already got teams on the outer hull.”
“Not that any of this will matter in the slightest if the orbital defense network comes back online,” Caine noted. “I just hope Logan did a comprehensive job.”
Marshall sat back in his chair, looking at the strategic overview. In one brief spasm of fury, Alamo had disabled its target, but had wrecked itself doing it. His console was running up a series of status updates from all over the ship, none of them encouraging. In less than an hour, the battleship Ares would be on them, ranging in from Mariner Station at full speed, and the full resources of Mars were now arrayed against them. The Marines would have an easy time of it when they came in for a landing.
Still Zeus drifted out there, proud and fierce, hastily repairing the damage inflicted on her. Had she had a full, experienced crew, had the tables been reversed, Alamo would have had no chance at all, that much was clear. The seconds counted down, and Marshall waited to play his last hand.
“Assault group, immediate launch.”
Nodding, Ryder tapped a control, and said, “Raven Squadron, launch, launch, launch. Shuttles One, Two, Three, launch now. Clearance on request.” Alamo shuddered as the ships dropped out into space, their engines throwing them towards their target.
“Oh, God,” Spinelli said, looking up from his console. “Enemy fighters incoming. Twenty-four fighters, half of them on intercept course for the shuttle, the remainder for us.”
“Get your missiles ready, Deadeye,” Marshall said, “and Weitzman, see if Harper’s friends can do anything for us. This battle isn’t over yet.”
Chapter 27
Bradley was pushed back into her couch by the acceleration, throwing a series of switches to lock her into the projected course. She smiled as she looked at the electronic warfare panels to her right, all a mess of confused static. There was so much interference from all around her that this battle was going to be more like an old-fashioned dogfight than anything she’d experienced before. No dueling computers, no interlocked networks, just one-on-one action. Even the communication systems were fading in and out, and while Tabby Dixon, her flight leader, was trying to issue instructions, only one word in three was coming through.
Worse, false orders kept flashing up on the screen, her navigation computers receiving fake feedback; before launching, she’d set all her signal discriminators to maximum, blocking almost everything from outside, and certainly stopping it from having any effect on her onboard systems.
She was keeping as tight a formation as she could, with the three shuttles just behind her, the rest of the fighters just ahead. Her job was to act as backup, if – or, more realistically, when – one of the others dropped out of the formation for whatever reason, she would be able to take their place, and give the group the punch it needed to get through.
Up ahead, twelve fighters ranged in towards her. Another enemy formation was swooping overhead, burning their engines hard in a bid to make a run on Alamo, but that wasn’t her main concern. Caine could, hopefully, deal with that, prevent them from doing too much damage. What did worry her was that they were facing odds of three-to-one against. With Cooper on the lead shuttle, heading towards Zeus with her platoon.
Tapping a series of controls, she computed the combat window. Less than thirty seconds, but she was sure that they would concentrate on the shuttles, not on the fighters. They constituted the real threat to the battleship. As it stood, they’d have plenty of opportunity to unleash enough death on the shuttles that none of them would get through. That left only one answer.
She ramped up her acceleration, amused to see that Dixon had beaten her to it by a split-second, then threw herself on a new trajectory, deliberately increasing the amount of time she would spend in the firing line. A series of warnings flashed on her heads-up display, but she ignored them – the duty of an escort was to protect, not to destroy. Checking that her missiles were set on independent track, she waited for the window to open up, made a few adjustments to the on-board programming, then fired.
Normally, a missile was a very smart piece of equipment, designed to mesh with others in its salvo to work as a distributed network, or even with the fighters that fired it. In the current electronic environment, none of that would work, and would only guarantee that the missiles would vanish in a moment. Over to her left, she saw a couple of flashes close to enemy fighters whose pilots had obviously been less careful about their firing solutions before pulling the trigger.
More warning lights flashed on, and she smiled, she’d done her job. Seven missiles were heading her way, and nine for Dixon just ahead of her. With two missiles per fighter, that left only eight for the shuttles, and the other fighters could deal with them. Especially as she’d set her missiles to run back as an additional escort for the shuttles, after superficially heading for the fighter screen ahead.
Now came the tricky part. She had seven missiles on her tail, and would be extremely fortunate to live through an impact by one. Bailing out in her spacesuit was a risky option. There would soon be enough shrapnel around on her trajectory that she’d stand an excellent chance of being shredded alive. There remained one possibility, and that was the surface, the great red desert below. Mars didn’t have much of an atmosphere, but enough of a one to give some real problems to the missiles. To be fair, her fighter wasn’t designed for it either, but she’d have a lot more control in the descent.
As she spun her fighter around, tail towards the enemy, she noted that the missiles paused for a second, seeming to hesitate, and for a heartbeat she wondered if there was some trick in their programming that would cause them to lock onto a secondary target. She was spending fuel at such a prodigious rate that within a few seconds she would sweep past the point of no return, out of the battle.
Just as she was about to spin around again, pull back up into orbit, with only the vaguest idea about what she would do when she got there, a series of alarms sounded once again, and the missiles locked back on. Seven incoming targets, first impact in thirty-nine seconds. Another light flashed on as she dropped below escape velocity, and her navigation computer started to glare urgently, as if angry that she was putting the fighter into a course from which it could never escape.
Taking one last glance up to the battle, she longed to be able to send a last signal to Cooper, wishing him luck at the very least. She might have managed this landing a thousand times before in shuttles, but never in a craft that was solely designed for the vacuum of space. The brass were working on a exo/atmospheric fighter design, shapes that looked like something out of the last century, but last she heard, they’d barely reached the prototype stage. Glancing to her left, she saw a point of light on a parallel course, and tagged her sensor display to check it. Dixon’s fighter, the veteran pilot trying the same trick. Oddly, that felt comforting. At least this wasn’t just her crazy idea.
Twenty-five seconds to impact, but she was slowing down awfully quickly now, the pull really beginning to bite, the missiles also turning to optimize their
firing pattern. An altimeter popped up on her panel, and she watched the numbers trickle towards zero as she slowed, throwing in a series of evasive maneuvers to discourage the incoming warheads. A faint glow began to build, the fighter digging into the Martian atmosphere, and now her plan began to come into its own in a serious way; the leading missile, unable to compensate for the changed environment, spiraled away out of control, tumbling over to the right.
Two more went the same way; had they been able to network, they could have adapted to the pressure and gravity, at least for a time, but on their own, they were just lumbering dumb brutes. Something of a metaphor. That still left another four missiles on their way, and they seemed to be coping a lot better with the conditions. Less than fifty seconds to impact. Three minutes before she was on the surface.
The glow was beginning to fade, and she pulled the fighter around again, facing forward, and fired the engines at full, biting back into the atmosphere again as she struggled to accelerate, throwing off the missiles. Her fuel gauge was hitting the critical mark, but her prey had far fewer reserves than she did. Surely that would make the key difference. Two more missiles dropped away, destined to crash into the surface, but two remained on her tail.
Less than twenty thousand feet above the surface, she began to fasten her helmet. She was still supersonic, and even gaining speed, but she knew that this was a race she couldn’t win. Fifty-nine seconds to impact, and only one way left to increase the odds. She turned around, and piled on the power to bring herself to a dead stop, the fighter beginning to fall like a rock down towards the surface, the missiles racing in.
There was no time for perfection, no time for prayer. With one last quick check of her suit, she tapped a control, and the fighter dropped away beneath her as the cockpit canopy cracked, sending her tumbling and free. No need for an ejector seat; the residual atmosphere threw her far enough clear, and she fired up her suit thrusters. Her altitude was five thousand feet, and she slammed on at full power, hoping that she could slow her descent in time to make her return to Mars survivable.
Two explosions filled the air, one close enough that the sound reached her even through the thin atmosphere, another a few miles to the north, presumably Dixon’s fighter. The desert raced towards her as she used every ounce of fuel in the suit’s tanks, then started to burn off some of the stored oxygen as well, anything to buy her a chance. There were a series of domes nearby, close enough that help would be on hand, but she still didn’t know whether it would be first aid or a burial party.
She tapped her distress beacon, hearing the squeal echo in her helmet, a dull throb that resounded in her skull. Only two things mattered; her altitude and her fuel gauge. Less than five hundred feet to go, and the ruins of her fighter close at hand, an angry scar on the planet to herald her arrival. Two hundred feet. One hundred. Impact.
A loud crack set her face grimacing, pain flooding in as her legs shattered, the suit medikit pumping her full of painkillers and tranquilizers, the temperature rising to help ward off shock. Somehow, she held on to consciousness, a combination of chemicals and willpower, and looked up at the sky. A trail was still descending down, and she realized what it must be. Dixon’s fighter.
She hadn’t bailed out, hadn’t taken the risk. Instead the pilot was trying to ride her chariot down to the surface, trying an unpowered descent, the rear of her fighter an angry, dull red from the missile impact. Even if she’d wanted to leave, she’d left it too late now, and she swooped around in a vain attempt to arrest her descent. Bradley willed her friend down, hoped for a miracle, as if she could somehow lower the local gravity or increase the air pressure, give her something to work with.
Her hopes were in vain. With grim finality, the fighter slammed into the ground, a cloud of dust and smoke rising, the ground shaking with the force of the impact, then again as the fuel tanks ruptured. Fighting tears, Bradley looked out across the plain, trying and failing to comprehend the enormity of what happened.
Voices were calling for her, whispering in her ear, and it took a moment for her to realize that a rescue party was on the way. The pain had gone, replaced with a blank feeling, but one look down at her suit – which, miraculously, had not been damaged past the point of auto-repair – told her that she was badly wounded. She felt strange, as though she had been able to isolate herself from her body, an effect of the overdoses of medication her suit had pumped into her.
“Who are you?” a voice asked, and she turned her neck with an effort to see a trio of people with work suits, two of them carrying a stretcher. She struggled to focus as they repeated the question. “Who are you? Where are you from?”
“Sub-Lieutenant,” she paused and gasped, the painkillers already beginning to fade out, “Barbara Bradley. Battlecruiser Alamo.” Pointing at the crash, she said, “Senior Lieutenant Dixon.”
“Relax, Lieutenant,” a calming voice said, “We’re going to get you back to Third Landing, get you into our medical bay. We’ve already got a doctor on the way from Sagan City.”
“Tell Alamo,” she said, looking up at the opaque helmets. “Tell them what happened. My husband,” she gasped again, “and Dixon’s. They need to know.” She struggled to fight off the gray fog beginning to overwhelm her, and said, “Tell them!”
“We’ll try,” the voice said.
Nodding, Bradley relaxed, and let the fog carry her away.
Chapter 28
Cooper looked out of his viewport, watching his wife’s fighter dive away from the formation, heading for Mars with a host of death on her tail, his eyes widening as she swept down towards the atmosphere. He felt a hand on his shoulder, tapping him twice, and looked up to see Sergeant Forrest standing behind him.
“Game face on, sir. Time for our party.” Looking past him, he said, “She’ll make it. She’s a damn good pilot. You want something to worry about, take a look at that big beast up ahead.”
Nodding, Cooper switched his view to look at the battleship. Somehow, it hadn’t seemed that large when they were looking at it in the simulators. Almost a mile of twisting metal, revolving along and internal core, festooned with equipment, missile tubes, launch bays. At full strength, it would carry a crew of nearly five hundred, including a hundred Espatiers, enough to dwarf Alamo’s complement of a hundred and fifty. If they had anything like those numbers on board, this battle was going to end almost as soon as it started.
“We’re on the spin,” Cooper said as the shuttle began to thrust up, heading towards its designated airlock, close to the command section of the ship. He hoped. “Stand by to deploy as soon as we hit the deck.” Looking around at the all-too-eager men with him, people who had gone to battle with him before more times than he could count, he continued, “I don’t need to tell you what this fight means. You all know. A lot of people are depending on us to make this work, sixty million of them. Let’s put on a good show.”
The shuttle turned around, ramping on the deceleration as it closed on its target, and he said, “Remember. Our mission today is strategic. We’ve got to take our three objectives in five minutes or it’s all over. If you haven’t received the word after that time is up, set your charges and pray.” Taking a deep breath, he said, “We don’t have time to spare for anything other than getting to our targets. Don’t give the enemy a break, and don’t stop. Lethal force authorized, and don’t let them get the first shot in.”
He shocked himself, perhaps more than he shocked his men, with that. That he was boarding a Triplanetary ship in earnest was difficult enough to take, but that he’d just ordered his men to fire first and ask questions later in such a raid was harder still. He tried to tell himself that these were escaped prisoners, that they had chosen their course of action, and that far more people would die in the war they were fighting to prevent, but none of that helped.
Oddly, the thought of his wife spiraling down to the surface, a likely casualty of that war, that helped. With
an effort, he pushed it to the back of his mind, tried to ignore it. This was business, not revenge, and that couldn’t be a part of what they were doing today, no matter how justified it might be. His personal business could be postponed. For five minutes, in any case.
With a loud slam, the shuttle locked into position, the locks remaining stubbornly closed for a few seconds before the intrusion software forced them open. Cooper led the charge into the ship, racing down the docking corridor to the main entry terminus. A pair of troopers – Triplanetary Espatiers – were waiting for them at the far end, and despite his order, he couldn’t bring himself to shoot them, his gun useless in his hand.
Lomax and Forrest proved to have no such compunctions, firing snapshots that beat their rivals to the punch, dropping them to the deck.
“Problem, sir?” Forrest said, locking eyes with him.
“Negative, Sergeant. You head for Engineering, I’ll take the Bridge. Good luck.” Looking around, he said, “Second Squad, to me!”
As his men rallied towards him, he heard a loud noise from behind, a clattering on the deck, and a quintet of troopers charged at his assembling men, guns in their hands. This time he turned and fired, a shot narrowly missing the lead trooper, who returned fire with his rifle. Cooper felt himself being thrown to the deck, and the mass of Forrest lay on top of him, his breath reduced to hacking coughs, his chest a bloody ruin.
“Get those bastards!” Lomax screamed, leading a counter-charge, bullets flying in all directions as Cooper tried to ease Forrest into a more comfortable position, looking to see if there was anything he could do to save his friend’s life.
“Gabe,” he rasped, “Finish this mess.” The grizzled veteran coughed, sending blood splattering onto Cooper’s uniform, and said, “Do better next time. Tell those bastards. Do better.” His voice trailed away, and gently, Cooper laid him on the deck, running his hand across his eyes to close them.
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