~*~
Märti unlatched his harness and stood up in the back of the Osprey as the overhead light went green. He reached up just in time to avoid crashing into an overhead tray that carried cables and wiring along the upper part of the payload compartment. He had grown quickly accustomed to the gravity of the enemy ship and had forgotten that there would be none back on the hangar deck of the Ares.
A chorus of angry curses in three languages proved that many of his men were also caught off guard. Though they operated in English, they still tended to react in whatever language they spoke at home. He heard one of the men retching inside of his helmet. Probably ‘Von’ Gunten, he thought. The young man had not earned points with his conscript class by remarking that someone of his pedigree should be an officer rather than a grunt.
Gunten (the family had formally given up the Von with the abolition of the nobility in 1919) had most likely been joking about his status but the men had saddled him with the honorific since that day. They had also taken endless amusement at his long adjustment to zero G. The first few weeks after leaving Earth had been hell for him and Märti suspected that a few hours fighting in regular gravity had set the young private’s stomach back to square one.
Märti moved out the open rear hatch and, after a moment to orient himself, pushed away from the deck towards the open hatch, fifty feet above that lead to one of the main companionways. The closest hatches led to the huge dormitories. No wonder that plague spread so fast among the troops, Märti thought as he led his men into the vast chamber. It was a huge room, two hundred feet square and twenty feet wide. Each side of the room held a honeycomb of small cubicles.
Three feet square by seven feet deep, each cubicle gave a soldier room to store his gear, a day’s worth of ammunition in the event the magazine was hit and a place to sleep. There were just over eight thousand spaces in this room and there were two other dormitories like it on the ship. Each room was a giant plague incubator.
“Rearm, recharge your tanks and make sure you take your pills,” Märti advised his men using the battalion channel. The pills were mostly prescription strength antacids. A large number of his men had experienced severe reflux once leaving the gravity of Earth. “We need to be back on board our lander in twenty minutes.”
He reached his compartment and unlocked the hatch, swinging it up and into the upper part of his small space. He grabbed a fresh magazine – he hadn’t done much firing – and plugged his high density tank umbilical into the air supply panel that sat near the door of each cubicle. Märti was impressed that the designers had come up with the arrangement. Rather than thousands of men lining up to rearm and recharge their tanks, they only had to return to their individual cubicles where they could quickly prepare to return to the fight.
Their bunks were among the closest to the hangar deck hatch and it was now proving to be a problem. “Sohn vonere huere,” an unidentified voice erupted angrily. “Some tubel has taken most of my ammunition and left his damned empties behind.” A chorus of angry shouts flooded the battalion net as others discovered similar liberties taken with their own supplies.
Siech, Märti fumed. They didn’t have time to go to the magazine. He fell back on the time-honored code of the soldier: if someone steals your kit, steal someone else’s. “Those who are missing ammunition, find a cubicle that still has some and take it.” He heard a few dark chuckles over the net. “I will be checking that each man has a full load before he gets on the lander so open your magazine pouches at the boarding line.”
His tank charged, he floated over to where Sgt Goodpaster and his mortar crew were billeted. The man cranked off a floating salute at his major before grinning. “We have all of our gear and ammunition for the stovepipe, sir.” He looked off into the distance where one of his men was drifting back with six magazines. “Our small arms ammunition is another story.”
Mars Surface
6 Kilometers from Olympus Mons Objective
March 12th, 2028
Märti jumped off the back ramp of the modified Osprey. The ride down had been rough compared to the one that had taken them into Earth orbit. Mars’ sporadic electromagnetic activity posed a serious challenge for aircraft that relied on the force to provide lift. He dropped to one knee as he looked around him. His men were already spread out into an all-around defense, dropping their backpacks in front of them for added cover as they scanned the alien horizon for threats.
The Osprey lifted off without disturbing the red Martian dust. One advantage of an electromagnetic engine, I suppose. Märti consulted the terrain-matching map on his wrist display. The small outpost spotted on the way in had already been updated to the map. The staff on the Ares were now working at a feverish pitch, ensuring that data on the enemy was integrated as quickly as possible.
He keyed the battalion net. “Pickets.” Within seconds, two men from each platoon began to work their way out from the circle of men, fanning out from the main body. Each team used their own judgment as to how far they should go. The general principle was to extend the eyes and ears of the unit and so each pair stopped and dug in once they had reached a decent vantage point.
“Sir,” Lt. Hoffstetter waved from the left flank. “I don’t think that’s Bravo company over there.” He indicated a small unit that sat in a similar circle two hundred meters in front of his platoon. One of them was jogging over to the Swiss unit in a faster version of the famous moon walk. The gravity here was more than double that of the moon.
The man stopped at the perimeter and Leuzinger stepped out to talk, holding his visor to the visitor’s while they arranged a channel change. “Battalion command channel, sir,” Leuzinger waved the man through and returned his attention to his sector of the perimeter. Märti approved. If those men were here because of a screw-up, it was better for morale if the men didn’t hear the discussion.
The man had a camouflage pattern of red and orange squares and an American flag on his shoulder embroidered in the same colors as his uniform. A rank badge on his chest showed three upside down chevrons with two rockers underneath. A pair of crossed rifles in the center gave the final clue as to what branch of service this man belonged to.
“Gunnery Sergeant Simpson?” He read the name on the man’s chest as he came to a stop. “One of us is in the wrong place.”
“That would be us, Major,” Simpson answered dryly. “They must have put the rest of our company twenty clicks south with the rest of 12 MEF. I’ve got six fire teams with me and our personal gear but no mortars or heavy weapons.”
Märti considered that for a moment. He had no time to straighten this out and he could definitely use these men. “Our battalion reserve company is really nothing more than a slightly augmented platoon,” he began, indicating his men with a wave. “You and your men will make a welcome addition to our force.”
“Will, sir?” Simpson grinned at the foregone conclusion. “Well, Major, I suppose it is your prerogative under the circumstances and my boys are anxious to get to work.” He looked around at the Swiss troops. “Your men look sharp enough but you don’t seem to have much more than assault rifles and light anti-tank rockets.” He looked back at Märti with obvious pride. “Meaning no disrespect, Major, but my two squads probably carry double the firepower of this platoon, and we consider ourselves under-armed.”
“You can see why I’m not sorry to find you stranded out here. Our objective is the mine and with the plague, forces on the ground are pretty thin. We’re the only troops allocated for this objective.” Märti paused in thought for a moment before he brought up the next topic. “Gunnery Sergeant, I’m aware that Marine NCO’s are accustomed to more responsibility than their counterparts in other branches of service,” he began.
“Typically, sir.” Simpson’s reply was guarded.
“Well, now that our reserve is closer to company strength, I’ll have you take charge of our two sergeants and the men, as well as advising the offic
ers.” Märti knew enough about the marines to realize that this man was a valuable asset. Using him in a lesser role than the one to which he was accustomed would be a foolish waste.
He wasn’t sorry to see the added firepower either. He knew the marines would be carrying a few of the updated M249 belt-fed machine guns as well as the newer magazine-fed M27 automatic rifles. Six fire teams also meant that at least six of the rifles would be equipped with M203 grenade launchers mounted under the barrels of their assault rifles.
“Thank you, sir,” Simpson nodded. “I’ll shift my guys over to your battalion net.” He used his wrist pad to change over to the channel that he had been using and spoke for only a few seconds before switching back to the command net. “I’ve let them know what’s going on, sir. They’re all on your battalion net now.”
Märti looked down and saw that his battalion strength had gone up by 25 new signals. “Welcome to Operation Gold Tooth.” He held out his hand.
“Gold Tooth?” Simpson shook his head as well as the major’s hand. “Who the hell comes up with these names?”
“You know the old saying, if you lock a hundred monkeys in a room with a hundred typewriters, sooner or later one of them will start coming up with mission names.” He shrugged at the marine.
“More likely you get a room full of dead monkeys and crap all over the walls.” Simpson grinned. “Sounds like standard mission planning to me. By the way, Major, it’s a discretionary thing but you might prefer to refer to me as Gunny. My full rank takes to long too say when we’re under fire.”
Märti nodded. “All right, Gunny, let’s switch over to battalion and let the rest know that you’re joining us,” he said and the two men changed their active channels. “This is Major Bohren; we’ve joined forces with six fire teams from the 12th Marine Expeditionary Force under Gunnery Sergeant Simpson. They will be joining our battalion reserve company and Gunnery Sergeant Simpson will act as lead NCO for the company.”
He looked down at his display, both of his forward companies showed ready. “Alpha and Bravo Companies, move out. Charlie Company, keep pace as action dictates.” Captains Merkel and Ramser acknowledged his order followed by Lieutenant Leuzinger who was assigned the reserve company. Märti would be too busy to personally command the reserve and he now had a highly experienced NCO to leaven the young lieutenant’s lack of combat experience.
It was rough going. They were close to Olympus Mons. At 22 kilometers in height, it was the largest volcano in the entire solar system and the jagged rock sat in massive piles and ridges as far as the eye could see. In many cases, that meant no more than a few hundred feet from one crest to the next, with a jumbled, stony valley between. They had not bothered to bring logistical vehicles as the terrain was simply too rough for anything that didn’t walk or fly.
They moved by sections. One section would take up positions among the boulders of a hill crest, ready to provide covering fire. The other two sections of the platoon would then move forward across the stony valley to the next crest, taking up new firing positions.
The rearward section would then move forward past the covering positions and down into the next valley, followed by one of the sections from the crest, always leaving one section of ten men ready to provide fire as they leapfrogged their way forward.
The companies moved in similar fashion but on a larger scale. Eventually, based on the terrain or the need to provide relief to forward platoons, one of the two forward platoons would stop and the reserve platoon would move up and take the lead. The halted platoon would then bring up the rear as the new reserve.
After a few hours of this, Marti began assessing the terrain with an eye towards setting up the first battalion command post. Though the unit was making decent progress, the men would need a place to recharge their air supplies. They would need food as well, not to mention a way to heed the call of nature. Though the suits were designed to handle liquid waste, no human engineer had yet devised a way to allow a soldier to void his bowels while in a pressure suit.
At least, not an acceptable way…
He had just settled on a location, deep in a hidden nook of a seventy-foot-deep valley, when one of the forward units called in a contact. “Sir, this is Merkel. We found the wreckage of an Osprey up here, passing it up to the coordination team as Foxtrot Four Alpha One. I have a squad down there right now checking it out.”
Märti left the reserve company behind and moved forward with his two-man security detail, stopping just below the top of a crest to paint his CP location with the laser under his rifle barrel. In orbit, a sensor array on the Ares identified the reflection from his laser and added a modular shelter unit onto the Osprey flight schedule.
He set Alpha Company’s network to half volume and overlaid it with the battalion net. He could hear the chatter between the investigating squad and their company commander as he moved forward. The downed Osprey had been carrying marines.
Despite the lower gravity, the climb up to where Merkel kneeled between the boulders left Märti slightly out of breath. They had spent months in zero gravity so the low gravity of this planet wasn’t as much of a treat as they had expected. Just as he was kneeling next to Merkel, a single shot rang out followed closely by a flurry of gunfire and half volume yelling on the Alpha Company net.
“Tactically naïve my arsche!” Merkel grumbled. “They have the sense to use this as an ambush, don’t they?” A soldier ten feet away from them had raised up to a firing position and was almost instantly thrown back, shot in the head. “Get your heads down,” he roared. “Goodpaster, get your mortars set up and start hammering that ridgeline, proximity burst, parallel sheaf.”
Märti had only taken a quick look before the shooting started but he knew that he ridge from which the enemy was firing curved around to join the one that he and the men of Alpha Company were on. If he could get his reserve to move in on the Human left, they could cross over onto the reverse slope of the enemy-held ridge and work their way through the enemy’s right flank.
“Hold them here,” he told Merkel over the battalion net. He dropped back from the ridge and made his way over to the left, bringing up his rifle to paint a spot further down the canyon. “Leuzinger, bring the reserve forward on our left flank to the rally point I just designated. I want you to roll up the enemy’s right while Alpha holds them in place.”
He knew that doctrine called for the reserve platoon of Alpha to carry out this maneuver but they still didn’t know what sort of enemy they were dealing with yet. He decided to use the firepower of the reserve company. Until he knew what kind of fighters they were up against, he would opt for the heaviest force that he could bring to bear.
Leuzinger and his men poured over the ridge behind Alpha’s leading platoons and moved to the spot where Märti’s laser had painted a rally point into the fleet-wide network. He saw with satisfaction that the young lieutenant was taking the time for a quick consultation with Simpson. They quickly shook the men into three groups, each composed of two marine fire teams and a squad of Swiss infantry.
The first such team took up positions among the boulders of the ridge before waving the next team on, passing to the left. After a few moments, the first team relayed the signal from the second and the third team moved past the positions of the first team.
Märti suddenly realized that the dull thumping noise was the sound of mortars firing on the enemy. Even on Earth, they had a more muted sound than heavy artillery but, here on Mars, the thin atmosphere made them barely audible. He hoped the air bursts would keep the enemy’s heads down until the flanking attack reached them.
“Mortars, shift right fifty meters, add ten meters, concentrated sheaf.” Simpson’s terse voice called over the battalion net. As soon as the mortar teams confirmed the order, Märti heard gunfire, louder through the radio than the air.
With every man connected by the various radio network layers, standard voice procedure went out the window as every man spoke the way he w
ould when fighting in a regular atmosphere. The current attack was being coordinated on the battalion net but the men of the three hastily-formed assault teams kept it on half volume and set their main circuit to proximity mode to reduce distractions.
“Mortars, cease fire. I say again, all mortars cease fire,” Leuzinger ordered as he led his men on the final push.
Märti looked down at the screen on the inside of his wrist in surprise. Within ten minutes the enemy threat had been cleared but it had seemed to take an hour. He joined Leuzinger and Simpson as they herded four enemy prisoners into the valley where the downed Osprey lay.
What they found wasn’t good for morale.
The aircraft had been carrying marines and Simpson had identified them as belonging to his old company. Twenty-eight men lay in a line beside the wreckage. Merkel was there organizing the removal of his own dead men. Five men from the ten-man squad had been hit by the opening volley and two of them hadn’t been able to use their pressure dressings in time to stay alive. The thin Martian atmosphere, only one percent of what Earth possessed, allowed all the air in a suit to vent very quickly when it was punctured.
In the few minutes it had taken to clear the enemy threat, the two men had died a horrible death in the nearly non-existent atmosphere. The downed marines had suffered similar, though more malevolent, fates.
“Little bastards cut their suits.” Merkel nodded over to the line of dead men by the Osprey. “Lined them up and slit their neck seals, one at a time.”
Simpson and his Marines had gathered around their fallen comrades. If they were talking, they must have been using their own net because Märti didn’t hear a single word from them. Finally, one of them came over to where the prisoners were standing in a row. He poked the first prisoner in the chest with his weapon. “This one has the most markings on his suit,” he mused, sounding like he was picking a melon at the grocery store. His casual, almost lyrical drawl seemed to have a slight French flavor. “He must be the leader of these murdering little bastards.”
Märti felt a cold certainty that the killing was not over.
Simpson, hearing the man, turned in surprise but he was too late.
The man stepped to the right and kicked the second alien in the chest, knocking him to the ground. He placed a boot on its chest and fired a short burst into the creature’s torso before stepping back to look at the enemy officer. “That’s on your head, big man,” he called as Simpson dragged him back and took his rifle. “We all are nothin’ but dead men,” the soldier declared. “Just a question of timing is all…”
And so it grows. Märti watched the alien officer, trying to read the expression on his face. Insults and atrocities by both sides will escalate until we commit to total war. When the public on Earth hear of incidents like this, they’ll demand that we build another fleet. One that can reach the enemy’s home world and damn the impact on our economy. This will end with one civilization crushing the other. Even if they managed to defeat this invasion force, he had his doubts about fighting the enemy on their own soil.
He looked down at his screen. The command post was being loaded. He reset his laser sight menu and painted the ground at his feet. He checked his display; the CP would now drop in this little valley. His medics would be able to work on the wounded men without having to drag them back over the last two ridges.
He turned the battalion net on. “CP will drop on this location. All units consolidate your defenses. We'll do a tank charge and hot meals before pushing on.” He saw Leuzinger standing next to him and switched to proximity mode. “Leuzinger,” he said quietly. “Get those bodies covered, do it respectfully.” He headed towards Simpson. We should arrange to send the dead and wounded back on the same bird that brings the CP.
Mars Surface
4 Kilometers from Olympus Mons Objective
March 12th, 2028
“Contact, thirty plus enemy in sand bag revetments,” Captain Ramser’s voice crackled in Märti’s ear, low and urgent. “I lost five men when they opened up.”
Märti understood the deeper meaning of Ramser’s statement; one that he couldn’t say out loud with the men listening. The enemy was at platoon strength, dug in and waiting for the Swiss and yet they had opened fire on the first men to come into sight. Experienced troops would have let them come closer, drawing more men into the trap before revealing their presence.
The major checked his wrist, the fleet had some Vulcans available and he had no desire to send his men against an enemy position in the dark. “Paint it, Captain.” He activated a fire mission request and, when Ramser’s target came up on his display, linked the mission to the new coordinates. Within seconds, the link went green and a timer started to countdown.
So much had changed in the months leading up to the launch. A year ago, a fire mission would have been organized in the usual way. An eight-figure grid reference would be determined, a compass reading would have been useless on this planet and so the fire mission would have been communicated by radio to the fleet, giving the particulars.
Now, with the new data integration system, units in contact with the enemy could use their weapon-mounted lasers to ‘paint’ targets. The reflection bounced off the enemy position to be picked up by the sensor array on the flagship. Data encoded in the laser carried whatever information the sender entered on a small rugged touch pad that was strapped between the wrist and elbow. An intelligence operator would integrate the information and release it for general use.
All Märti needed to do in order to initiate a fire mission was to select the new node when it appeared on his map and drag a line from it to the appropriate line on the artillery menu. He had a choice of 105mm or 30 mm. He chose the 30 mm Vulcans for their higher muzzle velocity. At 3,450 feet per second, the Vulcan rounds left the barrel at more than twice the speed of the larger 105mm rounds. That cut their wait time to a respectable four and a half minutes and each Vulcan fired six hundred times more rounds per minute than their larger cousins. For enemy troops behind sandbags, the Vulcan would do nicely.
“We’re working our way through the lateral canyon on our right flank with two platoons,” Ramser informed his major. “Once the bombardment lets up, we’ll roll through them and clear the site.” The canyon would keep them out of sight of any night-vision devices that the enemy might have. Ramser would hit them when they were still reeling from the orbital bombardment.
The rounds came as a shock to Märti. The night sky was suddenly filled with sound as though a thousand giant linen sheets were being torn slowly in half. The sheer volume of noise was causing the tissues of his body to vibrate. Brilliant streaks of fire lanced down to pulverize the enemy position in short bursts. Almost a quarter of the Vulcans in the fleet were taking it in turns to fire on the target for a few seconds at a time. The bombardment had its own rumbling pulse, like a living thing, and Märti could only imagine the effects on Ramser’s men as they waited, just a few dozen meters outside of the kill zone.
He looked down at his screen. “Last outgoing rounds are on their way,” he advised. Abruptly, the sound and fury ceased and Märti could hear Ramser shouting for his men to move. Amazingly, some of the enemy had survived and a brief firefight ensued. Märti poked his head out from behind the peak of a small rocky hill and engaged his thermal vision. The enemy position was a horror of warm body parts but there were still at least five or six still alive and trying to fight. They appeared to have difficulty staying on their feet. If they don’t have inner ear damage after that bombardment, I’d be amazed, thought Märti.
Ramser’s men were firing on them from cover until one of them got a grenade into the enemy position. As soon as the flash went off, several of the attacking units on the right flank pressed forward, their comrades cutting their fire as the leading troops reached what was left of the sandbags. They moved quickly, one man advancing while his partner remained stationary to provide cover fire. They leapfrogged their way through the enemy st
rongpoint, firing on the occasional enemy, and set up a semicircular defense beyond the site.
It was quick and professional; leaving four more of Ramser’s men dead. Even with the best of training and good equipment, Märti knew he would lose men but it didn’t make it any easier when Ramser called him on the battalion command circuit. “Four more men bought it,” he said without emotion. “And Wager caught one in the leg. He’s patched up and can hold out here until the next cas-evac. ” If it was tough for Märti, it was worse for Ramser and even more so for the leaders under him. but they had to keep the men moving.
Märti was just forming the orders to get the lead companies moving when the air was torn apart one more time. This time the sound was deeper and the single line of fire streaked more slowly towards the ground but it was still deceptively fast. Before anyone could react, a 105mm high explosive round punched into the captured enemy position, detonating several feet under the ground. Some errant bit of code must have been lurking in the fire control systems up in orbit, waiting for its moment to surface and tag a random round of ammunition onto an existing fire mission.
Wager, laying on his back, survived the initial blast with concussion and a missing toe. The two medics kneeling by his side had been nearly obliterated and so he died without regaining consciousness; his tissues boiling in the thin atmosphere until his brain shut down from lack of oxygen. Captain Ramser, kneeling over the body of his dead soldiers had been killed by one tiny fragment of tungsten that had hit him in the side of the head.
Märti stabbed at the fire mission on his screen’s fire support menu and opened a channel. “Cease fire, you sohn vonere huere,” he shouted. “I have men on that target.” Switching back to Battalion he ordered the men of Alpha company to move forward a hundred meters just in case any more surprises were currently falling through the atmosphere towards them. That was when he learned of Ramser’s death.
“The Captain’s dead, sir,” Lieutenant Tritten replied when Märti began issuing orders directly to Ramser. “Hit by shrapnel.”
The major was stunned by the news but it was the kind of scenario he knew he might have to face. Stager is the most senior and he’s a good platoon leader. He thought. That leaves Sgt. Dreher in charge of his old platoon. He shook his head. Hating the enemy doesn’t disqualify a man for leadership, as long as he keeps his emotions in check and concentrates on the job. “Stager, take over Alpha Company. Dreher, you’ll lead the platoon.”
“Warning, Golf Tango Two Five!” an automated voice blared in Märti’s helmet. “Forward element is danger close!” Märti ordered Stager to move his men further out but no further rounds fell. He suddenly understood and he glared up at the night sky in impotent rage. The warning had come four minutes after the impact, delayed by yet another errant bit of code in the system that had probably calculated the transit time of the extra round.
Why did screw-ups have such a consistent tendency to multiply themselves?
Emergency shelter
Tharsis Region, Mars
March 12th, 2028
Gus lay in the dark. He was on his stomach to one side of the tunnel floor, fifteen feet from the entrance. The shelter was another twenty feet behind him. He held his 9mm automatic out, aiming at the right side of the tunnel mouth where he expected their visitors to appear. He had been changing the battery on his camera when he’d heard the whine of an aircraft passing overhead. He backed into the opening with the camera and tripod, dumping them near the shelter door before picking a spot for his last stand.
Now he could hear the engines coming closer and a red light shone on the tunnel opening, the angle leveling with the ground as the vehicle landed. Shadows rippled through the light as troops approached the entrance. Gus aimed along the sights of his pistol, forcing himself to stay calm. If this was a rescue, he didn’t want to spoil it by shooting at friendly troops. Despite his resolve, he nearly fired as the first form flitted past the tunnel entrance to take cover on the far side. His finger, already attached to a nervous man, was hovering over an unguarded trigger.
It was only as his mind replayed the scene that he realized how big the shadowed form had been. He realized, with a thrill, that the man had been carrying what appeared to be a C7 assault rifle. He lowered the hammer on his pistol and put the safety on before holstering it and raising to his knees and placing his hands behind his head.
He didn’t want to run the risk of getting shot by the soldiers who had come to take them home.
The soldiers, wearing thermal optics, spotted Gus easily and they moved into the tunnel. One of them took his pistol and they moved to the shelter airlock. In less than a minute, they had equalized the pressure and Gus stepped into the main room flanked by two men, one of them carrying a large duffel bag. The colonists had come into the room and, seeing their rescuers, pressed forward, some cheering, some crying but all happy at the promise that the two men represented.
They removed their helmets. “All right everyone?” the man with Kennedy on his chest said with a wide grin. “Your ride is here, so let’s get sorted. We still have some nasties bouncing around out there so we need to kit up and get moving.”
He had been searching the back of the small crowd as he spoke. He found what he had been looking for and his eyes lit up. He stepped through the crowd, crossing the room where he knelt. “What’s your name, little one?”
The little girl, not quite two years old, turned her head and hid her face against her mother’s leg. “Her name’s Carol Grayson.” The woman wiped tears from her eyes. “I’m sorry, it’s just hard to believe that you’re here, that she’s going to have a normal life.” She knelt and comforted the little girl who was frightened by the first strangers she had ever seen.
“Carol, Sergeant Rai has something for you; would you like to see?” Kennedy spoke in a gentle voice and the little girl looked out from her mother’s arms with big brown solemn eyes. After a moment, she nodded and Kennedy waved Rai over.
Little Carol looked up as the sergeant came over and couldn’t help but return the smile. Rai carried a wicked looking curved knife in a scabbard at his waist and he looked like a man who had made regular use of it, but he possessed a natural confidence with children that Carol responded to immediately. She was starting to think that visitors were a wonderful thing.
“What do we have here?” he asked in a playful voice as he rummaged through the bag. “A new suit, made just for you!” he declared theatrically, pulling out a tiny EVA suit, complete with the name Grayson and a little camouflaged American flag on the shoulder.
The little girl squealed with delight. “Go outside!” she shouted, jumping up and down on her tiny little legs.
Mars Surface
500 meters from Olympus Mons Objective
March 13th, 2028
“Well, Major,” Simpson began, lowering the binoculars. “I’d say you have it figured out just fine.” He slithered back down the slope into a shallow depression just behind the crest, turning around to lean against the loose dirt next to the major. He’d been looking at the defenses around the mine entrance, the main objective of Operation Gold Tooth. There were four bunkers surrounding the entrance, two flanking the approach road and two more farther up the forty-degree slope. “The bunkers have overlapping fields of fire but not by much. Those bastards in orbit will only give us six rounds of high explosive?”
Märti nodded, a reaction that was lost because the two men weren’t facing each other; Simson wasn’t looking through the major’s visor. “They say they’re running low and need to prioritize the fire support on Candy Store.” The fight to seize the main compound.
By way of an opinion, Simpson deployed a curt, reproductive word. “Monkeys and typewriters,” he added scornfully. “If that’s the case, then my recommendation would be to follow the plan that you already came up with. No sense gumming up the works with some kind of fancy over-complicated crap. Drop everything on the bunker that’s facing us an
d get inside. Then we can split up and fight our way through the remaining three bunkers. I didn’t see any tracks between them so I’ll bet you a month’s pay they have tunnels.”
“Tunnels?”
“Sir, have you ever seen a defensive position where the strongpoints couldn’t communicate?” the NCO asked bluntly. “Even the tactical morons that we’ve been fighting should know enough to realize that they may need to move men or ammunition without traipsing across open ground during a firefight.” It was a dubious point; earlier that morning they had wiped out an enemy foot patrol that had been trudging along the crest of a high ridge, easily visible against the sky. The enemy was entirely unpredictable: they might set up a decent ambush or they might just as easily walk into one.
Märti had been feeling a growing sense of unease. Their enemy had certainly shown little in the way of tactical expertise but their equipment was good, if somewhat unimaginative. If they had been preparing a force to invade Earth, then there had to be some half decent troops somewhere, didn’t there? Perhaps they’re all down at Candy Store, Märti thought. Maybe they were relying on destroying our cities and infrastructure first, he thought as approaching shadows brought his gaze up. If that’s the case, it’s a good thing we’re fighting them here.
Merkel, Leuzinger and Stager arrived, dropping down opposite Märti and Simpson in the small hollow. The major launched right into the briefing. “We have six rounds of HE.” He noted the indignant looks but didn’t waste time discussing the quality of fire support. “As soon as the first round hits, Alpha and Bravo will lead us up and hold at twenty meters; move fast and stay close to the bunker axis so their neighbors don’t see you coming. Leuzinger, I want you and Gunny Simpson to take the attack into the bunker system. We don’t know for sure how they communicate, but there’s a good chance they may have tunnels linking the bunkers.”
Märti looked down at his screen. “Any questions?” He looked at the officers in front of him. Merkel looked tired but ready, Stager had a nervous frown on his face and Leuzinger was close to exhaustion but his eyes burned with eagerness. The young officer had always shown a great deal of potential but the incident in Paris had come to weigh heavily on his shoulders. The last few hours of constant interaction with Simpson had gone a long way to restoring his effectiveness.
Märti had originally placed Leuzinger in the reserve to keep him out of the way but he now had no qualms about letting him lead a dangerous assault. He saw questions, unasked, on Stager’s face. He remembered the fear and self-doubt that he had felt taking over a company in peacetime. In combat, it had to be much worse. “Thank you, gentlemen; the ordinance will hit in five minutes. The six rounds will hit in thirty second intervals. Be sure to keep count.” He stood, ending the briefing.
“Stager,” he called the man back as he was turning to leave with the others. When Leuzinger and Merkel were out of proximity range, Märti looked him in the eye. “It’s not easy, stepping into Captain Ramser’s shoes,” he said mildly. “Just remember that the platoon leaders will look after their men. Your job is to turn my orders into their orders.”
He gazed quietly at the man for a moment. “When in doubt, go ahead and make a decision.” He turned and started down the hill with the new company commander. “The worst decision is the one you don’t even make. Even a bad choice is usually better than none at all so don’t spend too much time agonizing or the enemy will start calling the shots for you.”
They reached the bottom of the hill and Stager turned to the major. His face was calmer but still troubled. “Thank you, sir.” He took a deep breath. “I’d better get back to my men.”
Märti headed for the reserve company. He would approach with them but he would leave Leuzinger to lead the attack on his own. It was hard enough, making life-and-death decisions without having your boss looking over your shoulder.
He reached them just before the first round struck on the distant bunker. The mad scramble began, crossing the five-hundred-meter field of fire in front of the enemy position. Rather than advancing in wide company frontages, the men streamed uphill in rough columns, threading their way through the boulders and trusting that the first round had penetrated the roof of the enemy bunker. If it hadn’t, then the bunker would be intact and its garrison fully alert.
The second round struck and Märti was shocked at how soon it had come. He took a look at his screen as he bounded along in the low gravity and saw that it had indeed been thirty seconds. He was thinking of the old nightmare that had haunted him as a child.
A huge mastiff was chasing him, saliva dripping from his massive jaws and Märti was trying to run away, but his strides were alarmingly ineffective. The faster he tried to run, the slower he seemed to move, and the huge dog was always on the verge of closing his teeth around his ankle when he would awake, screaming in the night.
Now, desperately trying to move quickly, he felt that he was barely covering any ground at all as he shambled along in the low gravity. He knew his old fears were getting the better of him. In fact, they were making commendable progress. His fear stemmed from the knowledge that these men were racing against the end of the bombardment. Once it let up, the enemy would reinforce the damaged bunker, and he needed to get there first so it would be his men moving through the tunnels rather than theirs.
The third round hit and Märti was starting to breathe more heavily. His breath was starting to show as a light fringe of fog around his visor and a powerful thirst was starting to make itself felt. He took a quick sip from a straw mounted in front of his face and stumbled on.
The fourth round struck and they were close enough to see the blast of debris sheeting out the narrow horizontal firing slit that ran the length of the bunker’s curved face. The shock wave alone would kill anyone inside, he thought as they ran.
The fifth round fell five meters behind the bunker and exploded uselessly. Its guidance fins had probably malfunctioned. It was a minor miracle that it had fallen long rather than short, in the middle of Märti’s troops. If anything, the near miss made Märti feel better about his decision. His first inclination had been to drop one round on each bunker, leaving the extra two for the one to their front. He had decided against it, thanks largely to his mistrust of the artillery crews in orbit. They had already proven their ability to make mistakes by firing an unexpected round on Ramser and his men. Märti had decided to put all six rounds into the one bunker to make sure it was clear.
The rest would be in the hands of his own men.
The sixth round hit as the lead companies were setting up positions roughly twenty meters in front, throwing smoke grenades to obscure the view of any surviving enemy. “Go, Leuzinger. Take them in.” Märti waved the reserve company around the right flank of the lead positions as he came to a halt between Stager and Merkel’s companies. He scrupulously kept his distance from both company commanders, wanting to stay out of Merkel’s way and not wanting to interfere in the development of Stager’s new role.
The men of the reserve poured onto the roof where the dropping ordinance had created a convenient entry. Two of the augmented fire teams assumed an all around defense on the roof while the third prepared to enter. Two men stood by the hole. One of the two pulled the pin on a grenade and released the arming lever, ‘cooking’ it for two seconds before dropping it into the hole and unslinging his assault rifle.
The grenade detonated, sending a shower of fragments out of the hole and the second man was the first to drop into the bunker. As expected, nothing had survived and they must have found tunnels because the rest of the fire team poured down into the hole, followed quickly by the other two teams.
“Stager,” Märti spoke calmly. “Take your company forward and set up an all-around defense based on the destroyed bunker.” He got up and moved forward with them. Moving around to the back, he could see a small trench leading down to a door at the back of the structure. “Merkel, bring your company up and put one platoon at the back of each of the th
ree remaining bunkers. They have hatches at the back so stay sharp. You might get visitors.”
He heard a thump to his left and turned to see a cloud of debris coming out the next bunker’s firing slit. Almost instantly, the sound of automatic weapons fire echoed out through the ruined roof of the bunker where he now stood. Seconds later, a similar thump to the right indicated that a fire team had reached the next bunker in that direction.
“Number four is bugging out,” Merkel announced. “We see six of them in the open but their suits are compromised - shrapnel from the clearing grenade.”
Märti looked over to the far corner as several small figures writhed on the ground. With holes in their suits, they would be exposed to the low atmospheric pressure. Even now, water in their skin would be turning to vapor, rupturing cell membranes and destroying tissues. Their lungs would be expanding as the alveoli filled with expanding gas and their eyeballs would be on the point of bursting. It was a terrible way to die. Just like the marines from the downed Osprey.
And the men of Merkel's company, usually eager to fire on the invaders, stood and watched.
In the space of ten minutes, they had taken the ring of bunkers guarding the mine entrance. Static defenses could be formidable, but they couldn’t be moved and the short artillery bombardment had been enough to open the door and let the combined Swiss-American force in.
Leuzinger advised that he had one man lightly wounded and Märti was breathing a sigh of relief when the corporal standing next to him pitched forward. The major dropped automatically, his mind replaying the sight of blood as it erupted from the junior NCO’s chest. He scrambled around to face the direction that the bullets had come from. Schysse! Intelligence had been certain that there were only miners inside and a small surface garrison. “Contact! Multiple enemy coming out of the mine entrance,” he shouted over the battalion net. “All units engage.”
He unslung his assault rifle, cocking it for the first time since landing on the planet. There were at least a hundred enemy streaming out of the tunnel mouth, firing up from the deep cutting that connected the tunnel to the roadbed. Stager’s company had lost close to ten men in the surprise of the unexpected attack. The rest of his company re-deployed, moving over to fire on the enemy from the low ridge of the cutting.
Leuzinger and Simpson led their augmented fire teams down the slope from the uphill bunkers, firing from the top of the mine entrance. Marines with M203 grenade launchers mounted under their barrels were firing M576 buckshot rounds into the closely packed enemy as they sought to fight their way up the hill and overwhelm the humans. Each round spread two thousand pellets into the milling troops and many of those who weren’t killed outright were left to scream in agony as their body fluids boiled out through the holes in their suits.
Märti’s men made use of the ‘Jungle Style’ lugs that allowed them to connect several magazines together, allowing for quick changes as each one emptied. He had not used the feature as he mostly kept his weapon slung. He was regretting that decision now as he quickly emptied his first magazine. He was ejecting the spent magazine when a group of more than ten enemy managed to break through the rough defensive line of Stager’s company.
Stager, seeing that the fire teams above the tunnel were effectively gutting the enemy charge below, took the remaining platoon from the ridge and led them down and into the vicious hand-to-hand fighting. Märti was just getting a magazine slotted into his weapon when an alien crashed into him, catching him off balance. They tumbled to the dirt, each trying to reach for a weapon. The alien was quickest, pulling a grey knife from a sheath under his left arm.
Märti managed to grasp his enemy’s right hand and, with the knife temporarily neutralized, drew his sidearm. He had released the safety but before he could thumb the hammer back, his arm was pulled back and downwards by his opponent’s tail. Keeping his wits, Märti pushed the hammer until he felt the familiar click. He threw his weight to the left so he could fire without hitting any of his own men and, aiming over his hip, squeezed off two shots.
The strength went out of the small soldier almost instantly. What had been a deadly opponent was now a slack, dying creature. The soldier began to writhe in agony as his compromised suit quickly lost pressure. Märti came to his knees and, looking down at the almost human face, reached out, pulling the trigger a third time to give the doomed enemy peace.
That was when the ground in front of Märti erupted.
UNS Ares
Mars Orbit
March 13th, 2028
Jan stood, magnetically rooted to the hangar deck with her heart in her throat. She had tried to ignore the fact that Liam was fighting on the surface but she failed miserably. She‘d been standing in the same spot last night when the Osprey failed to show. Her first hint had been when the camera crew began to pack up their gear.
They had been waiting to record the return of the rescued colonists. Though their rescue was of little strategic importance, it would definitely be seen as a major triumph back home and footage of their safe arrival aboard the Ares was an absolute imperative. She had approached the one uniformed member of the camera crew, a Public Affairs officer holding a clipboard, and asked what they were doing.
“Heavy patrol activity closing in on the shelter,” he said with a frown. “The enemy have good ground-to-air missiles so we’re no-go until they can clear them out.”
“They?” Jan asked with growing dread.
“The SAS team that they sent down to bring them out,” he shrugged. “That’s why they were sent in the first place – in case things got nasty.”
Now she stood in the same spot as the previous night, a sleepless night of rampant imagination behind her.
Nasty, Jan thought as the rumble of the outer-airlock doors announced the arrival of the anticipated Osprey. Such a small word to describe a night of fighting in the worst sort of environment. A blue light began to flash, indicating that the airlock was pressurizing. Five letters that could mean the death of someone I can’t possibly let go of – dead or alive.
The blue light stopped flashing and changed to green. The inner doors slowly swung open, revealing the Osprey. It fired a short burst from its thrusters and floated towards its assigned docking station, firing braking thrusters and lowering itself down onto the magnetic pre-clamps. The jaws of the main clamp grasped the hull of the small transport and pulled it down into the fully docked position.
Now came the moment that had been filling Jan with such a potent mix of yearning and dread, the opening of the Osprey’s loading ramp. The few seconds of sleep that she had managed to snatch during the night had cursed her with a dream of Liam being unloaded from the transport in a body bag.
Her dream seemed to be turning into reality as she saw three body bags revealed by the dropping ramp. Two medical staff rushed in as the ramp continued to drop. She took a deep breath and scanned the red-lit interior of the craft, seeking a hint or a gesture that would mark Liam. None of the people coming off the Osprey were looking in her direction. They were all watching the tiny, suited form that was holding hands with one of the camouflage-suited rescuers. He stopped to remove his helmet and she recognized Danraj Rai, the former Ghurkha rifleman who had served with Liam in Afghanistan.
“Dany,” she called out, not caring about the film crew. “Dany!”
He looked over and his friendly grin eased her fears slightly. He wouldn’t look so bloody happy if he had to tell me Liam’s dead, would he?
The medics came out with a helmetless form floating between them. They already had a pressurized IV bottle attached through a newly-cut hole in the arm of the suit.
Liam! She tried to catch up with them but they’d mastered the art of moving patients in zero gravity and quickly disappeared through a hatch on the starboard side of the hangar. She kicked off her magnetic overshoes in disgust, leaving them to drift towards the deck where they suddenly slapped loudly onto the deck. She made better spee
d now as she floated towards the hatch.
She raced down the companionway to the infirmary which was built as close as possible to the hangar deck. An orderly stopped her at the sick-bay desk. “If you’re looking for Captain Kennedy, he’s on his way into surgery,” the NCO told her. “A few gunshot wounds but the triage doc said he should be able to pull through just fine.”
Should be able to pull through? Jan floated in front of the sick-bay admitting station, not knowing where to go or what to do. ‘Should’ isn’t terribly definite. She hugged herself. She’d been doing a lot of that in the last few hours. I suppose it’s better than one of those body bags.
But not by as much as she would have hoped.
Mars Surface
Olympus Mons Objective
March 13th, 2028
Märti ran several steps, scanning his surroundings as he moved. “Tanks,” he shouted into the battalion net. “Tanks coming from around the bend in the road.” He threw himself to the ground behind the bulk of a bunker just as the next round struck, ten feet to his left. The first round must have been a simple kinetic penetrator because this second one threw Märti sideways in a jarring flurry of dirt and rock – definitely a high explosive round. He checked his suit pressure and was amazed to find that there were still no holes after two close hits.
He looked farther up the slope where the last of the enemy infantry were still fighting with his men. He set his rifle for semi-automatic fire and began to pick off the aliens. The remainder of his men had moved to the cover of the four bunkers on the reverse slope of the road where it descended into the mine opening. Most of them turned their attention to the last few enemy soldiers on the slope and the few Swiss who were among them began to collect and disengage, giving their comrades a clear field of fire. In short order, they were able to turn their full attention to the new threat.
“The tanks have infantry support,” Merkel announced.
Märti eased over to the corner of the bunker closest to the road and lay flat before easing his head around to take a quick look. He pulled back just as a heavy machine-gun burst hit the bunker at normal head height. At least one enemy gunner was sharp enough to expect his foes to look around corners. Märti resolved to buy an excellent bottle of wine for the instructor at the FIBUA, or Fighting in Built Up Areas, center. Even as his mind processed what he had just seen, he could hear the warrant officer’s voice in his head. “If you’re waiting for the enemy to take a look at you, and you feel like blowing his head off, where do you think you would aim?”
“The infantry came in soft skin vehicles,” Märti augmented Merkel’s information. “It doesn’t look like they’re familiar with combined arms operations.” A force that understood the importance of supporting tanks with infantry usually supplied their troops with light-armored vehicles that could keep up with the tanks and protect the infantry. They typically carried light cannon and machine guns to support the soldiers when they emerged to fight. Tanks on their own were easier to hit from the flank where the armor wasn’t as heavy. It was far easier to aim and fire an anti-armor rocket when you didn’t have enemy troops firing at you.
The tanks were probably escorting reinforcements for the mine, Märti thought as the first of the Swiss mortars went into action. The mortars were being used to thin out the infantry but they would be worse than useless against armor. They would need something with a lot more kick to take out the enemy tanks. They were low, slope-armored vehicles with main guns that looked to be comparable with their more primitive 120mm cousins on Earth.
“Cover fire,” Simpson’s voice boomed over the battalion net. Not sure what was happening, Märti aimed around the corner of the building and began to fire at moving targets. The enemy machine gunner must have given up on waiting for him and moved on to other targets. He heard a deep swooshing sound and saw a Javelin missile fly out from the top of the bunker that he was hiding behind. The launch rocket had completed its burn before the missile left the tube and the flight motor kicked in at a safe distance from the firing team, forcing the weapon up into a shallow climb.
From a height of four hundred feet, the missile angled steeply downward to slam into the thin armor on the roof of the enemy turret. For once, the reality was even more impressive than the Hollywood version. A brilliant orange fireball enveloped the lead tank and the surrounding infantry were flattened by the blast.
The other two tanks halted, pouring fire onto the bunker roof as Simpson and three marines rolled off next to Märti. One of the men unslung a launch tube assembly and held it out while the gunner attached the command launch unit. “Use the remote,” Simpson growled. “They won’t let you sit still for another acquisition.”
The man who had provided the launch tube pulled a unit out of the gunner’s web gear and ran over to the back door of the bunker. He took a quick peek through the door at the firing slits on the far side and then held the remote optic in the open door, exposing only his hand.
“Lift it a bit and angle down,” the gunner instructed. “Rest it against the damn doorframe, Eddie; you’re about as stable as a deer on roller-skates.” He had the launcher aimed into the opening between the two bunkers, the targets nowhere in sight. “Ok, that’s almost it; just drop a degree and go a couple degrees to the right, just a bit more… Hold it there!” There was a delay of two or three seconds while the seeker gained a target lock and then there was another swoosh as the missile was thrown forward by its launch motor. Once again the flight motor kicked in and the weapon climbed up into the sky streaking back down to smash the left-most enemy tank.
The remaining tank resumed the advance, perhaps realizing that its tormentor didn’t need to show his face to fire his deadly weapon. With the two Javelin strikes, the enemy infantry near the targets had suffered heavily. While the marines loaded their last remaining missile, Märti leaned around the corner of the bunker to get a handle on the situation.
It was difficult to even tell where the tanks had been when they were hit. There weren’t even burnt out hulls to mark the vehicles, only a dark patch of debris that spread out for over fifty meters in every direction. Any enemy troops within that radius had been brutally cut down. There was perhaps a single platoon remaining of the company-sized force that had spilled out of the six-truck convoy.
Disaster might yet turn to victory.
Not for the first time, he realized how fortunate they had been to find Simpson and his troops at their landing zone. Without the Javelins carried by the Americans, they would have had a hard time stopping three tanks with their Panzerfaust 3 anti-tank rockets.
The final missile streaked past his head and the flight motor ignited. Instead of climbing into the sky as its predecessors had done, it struck the ground and sketched erratic circles on the roadbed between the two bunkers, coming to a smoking halt, ten meters out from the leading edge of the defensive structures.
The last tank kept coming.
It headed straight up the road that led between the two lower bunkers. “Panzerfaust,” Märti ordered. “Aim for the flanks.” There was little chance of penetrating the frontal armor but he didn’t like the chances on the flanks either; the side armor looked almost as formidable as the front.
Unfortunately, his pessimism was proven to be justified. The Swiss rockets lanced towards the sides of the last tank and their tandem charges, carried in spikes at the front of each rocket, detonated the layer of explosive-reactive armor that covered the enemy vehicle. The hollow-charges of the main warheads detonated directly against the armor, as they were intended to do, but they failed to penetrate.
And the tank, supported by a platoon of troops, came on.
“Who still has rockets?” he demanded urgently.
“My company still has four left,” Leuzinger responded first, waving from behind the bunker on the right side of the road.
“Get them ready. I want you to take them onto the roof of your bunker as the tank drives between us. You might be ab
le to fire down onto the top of the hull.” It was a long shot. Though the rockets carried almost the same mass of explosive as the Javelin, they would still be firing from a much shallower angle, and the troops firing them would be dangerously close to the blast.
It would almost certainly cost them their lives.
The tank was only a few meters away now and one of Leuzinger’s men stood on the bunker with a launcher on his shoulder. Before he could fire, a tremendous blast tore the road wheels and track from the left side of the enemy vehicle. Almost all of the remaining platoon that had been advancing with it were cut down. Only the troops who had been moving around the outer flanks of the two lower bunkers were left standing, and they were only two squads with no armor support or cover.
The third Javelin missile had engaged its flight motor before crashing into the dirt, which had allowed the fuse to fully arm. It had been a miracle that the weapon had spun on its side rather than cartwheeling across the ground. The fuse trigger hadn’t been touched until the enemy tank drove over it. The blast had been so close that Märti landed on his back, feeling as though he had been punched in the chest by a heavy-weight champion. The stunned officer watched heavy ceramic wheels and a long section of armor skirting tumbling crazily through the air. He struggled back to his feet and reassessed their chances as he peered around the corner.
“Kill them,” Märti yelled.
He raced out from the cover of the bunker as shouts rang through his helmet speakers. Everyone was screaming in rage, defiance and fear as they cut down the remaining infantry. Before he could reach the tank, he saw Leuzinger lead his men down to the stricken vehicle whose main gun had begun to move again. It hadn’t been destroyed by the blast but had been turned into a stationary bunker.
Leuzinger fired a burst at what must have been the driver’s periscopes and a wisp of vapor came shooting out. Their tanks must be pressurized, Märti thought as the gun stopped moving. Surely they wear their suits; they would just have to put their helmets on but at least it will hamper them. Leuzinger grabbed a grenade and shoved it into the barrel before running back up the road towards the bunker. He had left the pin in the grenade.
Before Märti could wonder what the young officer was doing, the barrel began to move again. He was beside the tank’s right flank now and was just about to fire a burst at what he took to be a sensor pod when he saw Leuzinger come out from behind the bunker with the empty Javelin launcher on his shoulder. Märti grinned and lowered his weapon.
The enemy gunner, seeing the dreaded missile launcher, swung the main gun around to Leuzinger and fired. Whether or not the grenade went off was anyone’s guess but the high-explosive round intended for Leuzinger definitely exploded when it came in contact with the grenade obstructing the barrel. The main gun blasted apart, splitting in the middle like a peeled banana. After a few seconds, the hatches were thrown open and Märti ordered the men to cease fire.
It was time to take prisoners.
Leuzinger threw the launcher aside and sauntered down the road. His men gathered around him as he walked, slapping him on the back and congratulating him on his heroic defeat of the last tank. Märti met him in the middle of the road. “That was pretty damned brave, using yourself as bait,” he said with a grin. “Of course, we could have called in some Vulcan rounds and pulled back into cover, but this has a lot more flair!”
“Couldn’t let the Yanks get all the tanks.” The young man grinned, and the men of his command, Americans and Swiss alike, hooted at his silly humor. After this, they would likely follow him to the depths of Hell.
They would, if only their fight wasn’t coming to an end. A flight of Ospreys passed overhead, following the road between the mine and the main enemy complex. It was unlikely that any further surprises would come from that direction. He looked down at his wrist display. The reserve company had taken the fewest losses and still possessed the heaviest firepower. He looked back up at the young man. “You and Gunny Simpson will take the reserve and clear the mine. Alpha and Bravo will secure the surface.”
UNS Ares
Mars Orbit
March 13th, 2028
“Get some kip, Mike. You look absolutely knackered.” Jan had drifted into the workstation, doubtless at the urging of McCutcheon. “They have enough staff for three shifts in here; let someone else have a go.” A lieutenant hovered behind her, waiting to take his seat if she managed to talk him into leaving the CIC. “Do you want poor Evans here to tell his kid that he came all the way to Mars to do nothing but listen to music in his bunk?”
Mike had to admit she was right. If she’d realized he was asleep when she started talking to him, she was keeping it to herself. “Yeah,” he sighed. “I should get some food first, all those coffee packs are eating a hole through my stomach.” He undid the straps that held him to his chair and floated over to where Jan waited. “All warmed up for you.” He grinned at Evans as he buckled in.
“How is Liam doing?” he asked her as they drifted over to the main companionway on their way to the mess deck. “I heard he came out of surgery a couple of hours ago.”
“He’ll be fine,” she said. “They plan to keep him under for a few more hours since he hasn’t had a lot of rest over the last thirty-six hours.” She had a cynical grin on her face. “I think McCutcheon sent me looking for you to get my mind off everything.”
“He’ll probably be safer than you if you’re going down to the surface,” Mike suggested helpfully. “Once the fighting is over they’ll still have a lot of prisoners down there; they may try to cause trouble.”
“Safe and on a ship back to Earth,” she said with a tired smile at Mike. “With his injuries, there’s a good chance he’ll be shipped back with the rest of the wounded. I’ll be here studying the enemy while he’s back in the U.K. recovering.” They reached the exit hatch that led out of the CIC and into the companionway. “Talk about long-distance relationships…”
“Do these studies involve probes of any sort?”
“I’m sorry?”
Mike shook his head. “Never mind, just trying to distract you.”
“How long since you ate anything?”
“Not counting those ‘meal bars’?” he asked. “Nothing since we hit orbit.”
“Call coming in from the Willsen.” The communications officer’s simple announcement raised a cheer in the ship’s nerve center. The electronic warfare squadron hadn’t been heard from since the fight began. “Putting it on speaker.”
Mike stopped by the hatch, grabbing Jan by the arm.
“… chasing the wreck of the Cú Chulainn so we had the planet between us and the fleet until now.” Captain Logan’s sentence, though picked up in the middle, was nonetheless intelligible. “There was no stopping her with her systems down but we managed to take off over two hundred crew with our shuttles and we don’t have a hell of a lot of food to put in all those extra mouths. Request permission to transfer the survivors to the Ares, over.”
“Logan, you magnificent bastard,” Towers exclaimed, not caring about protocol. “Send them over, and nicely done. What’s the status of your command?”
Evans’ head poked down out of the large opening in the ceiling. He spotted Mike and waved him over. “Someone wants to talk to you at my station,” he said with a wry grimace. “Just make sure that you remember; it’s my chair now.”
Mike shot up to the work station so fast he almost struck his head again. There, on the screen, was the reason he had stayed at his post for so long. “Mickey.” He felt the tension drain from his body, tension that he hadn’t even noticed until this moment. He suddenly felt very tired.
“Hi, Mike; good to see you guys came through in one piece.” She leaned in. “Did Keira recover?”
Keira. He suddenly felt guilty. He hadn’t seen her since the last time he and Mickey had talked. “Doc says she’s fine. I’m going to go see her as soon as I leave the CIC.” Then some food, followed by falling asleep on my way
to my bunk. He half-feared he’d be found drifting down some companionway, dead asleep. “Everyone’s ok over there?”
“Yep. We didn’t have any excitement over here aside from a high-speed rescue operation, so I was pretty useless after we sent our signal.” She tried to cover a small, secret smile but Mike had grown up with her. “Farquhar says ‘hi’ to all the old Hawaii team.”
“So you guys are still on a last name basis?” Mike teased.
“Go to bed, Mike, you look exhausted.”
UNS Hermann
Mars Orbit
March 14th, 2028
The ride over from the Ares was almost complete. The Osprey was rotating to align with the airlock hatch when Sprunger, the man sitting across from Märti, began to struggle with his seatbelt. At first Märti was going to reprimand the man for breaching shuttle procedures but he noticed the poorly coordinated efforts as the man struggled with the release catch.
The major released his belt, grasping Sgt Oberlin’s shoulder and pointing at the panicking soldier. They reached him just as he gave up on the belt and started beating on his helmet. In the unpressurised hold of the Osprey, the young man would certainly die if he removed his headgear. The two men managed to pin the soldier’s arms in front of his body and Oberlin quickly slipped a plastic zip tie around his wrists before linking three more ties together to secure the man’s feet. Cheap and effective, the ubiquitous plastic ties were Geneva Convention compliant and all of Märti’s men carried them.
The Swiss had been warned about the psychological effects of long duration EVA work. During their training at the Mars Analogue Compound on Mauna Kea; instructors had advised them that prolonged confinement inside an EVA suit could lead to feelings of claustrophobia. The confinement of the suit, along with the difficulties involved in eating and heeding the call of nature would magnify the stress of combat. They’d all kept it in mind but after leaving the surface, relieved by a fresh rotation of troops, dementia had seemed a remote possibility.
Märti took a quick look out the opening rear hatch before an idea came to him. He tapped the side of Oberlin’s helmet so the man would look at him. “He’s in no shape to make the hop,” he began, their visors touching. The hop was the short slide along a guide line connecting a ring bolt on the inner wall of the airlock on the Hermann to a similar ring on the Osprey. It was very much like riding a zip line except for the lack of gravity and the two-hundred-kilometer fall.
“I’ll go first while you hook him up,” the major continued. “Then you can shove him over to me.” Märti turned and pulled the hop line down from the reel above and hooked it to the ring on his suit’s load-bearing webbing. Behind him the Hermann filled the view out the open hatch as the Osprey rotated. They were in position, ten feet away from their home ship.
Märti unlatched the tread plate and rotated it down from the ceiling, locking it into place. He grabbed the small handles and pulled his feet up to rest against the plate, crouching in a position that was now offset by ninety degrees from the floor. Looking up from the floor of the hold, he took aim at a handle next to the airlock door of the Hermann and pushed off lightly, trailing the hop line behind him as he went.
He reached the handle and held it with his left hand while activating the outer door with his right. It silently slid open and he pulled himself in, attaching one of the ship’s hanging carabiner hooks to his webbing before unhooking the hop line and securing it to the ring at the back of the airlock. He appeared in the door, waving at Oberlin who shoved the still-struggling soldier across. Märti pulled him in the door and hooked him up to one of the hanging straps.
The rest of the men crossed over without incident and they unhooked the hop line before closing the door to pressurize the airlock. As soon as it was safe to do so, Oberlin removed the man’s helmet but left the man’s hands and feet bound for the moment. The big sergeant let the helmet drift and tried to pull him closer so they could talk quietly but the man was having none of it. His bound hands darted up to grab the helmet and he frantically searched inside, turning it from side to side before finally relaxing and shoving the offending headgear away.
“It’s in there,” he said with evident relief. “Gopfertami spider!”
There was a moment of stunned silence, then everyone roared with laughter. “You schwöschter,” laughed one of his squad mates. “We thought you’d lost your marbles.”
“Verpiss de, du gorilla blau arsch!” he retorted. “That little dubbel was trying to crawl up my nose.” Insects still thrived on the ships of the fleet, most of them tracing their lineage back to ancestors who had hitched a ride on the loads of produce that had been shipped up before departure.
The laughing and teasing continued as the inner door opened and they made their way back to their original dormitory where they enthusiastically greeted their wounded comrades. Märti was fiercely proud of these men. They had been through a demoralizing mission in France where their sympathies had always been with the protestors. They had endured months of cramped quarters in low gravity, a boarding action, and a grueling two-day fight on the planet’s surface with little respite from their confining EVA suits.
The enemy had proven to be willing but poorly trained. The vast majority of alien troops had still been garrisoned at their main complex, the target of Operation Candy Store. Had they arrived only a week later, the fight to clear the ships in orbit would have been much harder as the troops would have been shifted aboard for their journey to Earth. As it was, they fell with great bravery but little coordination at their main complex. At the mine, the final fight had taken out almost twenty of Märti’s men but they had rallied quickly from their surprise and the combined Swiss-American force had cut down the last gasp of resistance.
The tale of Leuzinger’s mad gamble was making the rounds as men competed to be the first to tell wounded friends about the battle with the tanks.
Only eight enemy mining specialists had been captured inside the dark tunnels. They were all that the sophisticated excavation systems required and they were reluctantly cooperating with the human engineers who now worked to understand what had been installed during their absence. Mining was about to undergo a revolution and the men of Märti’s battalion had helped to make it a reality.
Those men were tired, they were hungry and they were forming a huge line already to use the head. Märti considered exercising the privilege of rank but quickly dismissed it. He had always disapproved of such liberties and so he drifted past them to find one of the heads near the forward battery. The men greeted him as he floated past. Some nodded solemnly, perhaps assuming it the only correct way to acknowledge him while others called out with a wave and a cheerful grin, asking when the Hermann would leave for Earth.
All of them were elated at having defeated an enemy who possessed the technology to travel between the stars. Their weapons had proven to be advanced, reliable and largely unimaginative. The enemy assault rifles were of one design. They had a decent rate of fire as well as excellent range and optics, but they had none of the accessories found on the human weapons. The simple, shotgun-type rounds that the marines had used to such effect in gutting the final enemy attack seemed beyond the grasp of the aliens or, perhaps, beneath their notice.
I suppose we’ve had far more practice at killing humans than they have, thought Märti as he moved through the dormitory. We’ve come up with so many exciting ways to kill our fellow man over the last few centuries.
The word throughout the fleet, or what remained of it, was that the enemy may have had impressive technology but they had very little experience in actual, high-intensity combat. Nonetheless, Märti’s men had traveled to another planet, fought an alien aggressor and shed their own blood to win an important victory. And all I can think about is my bladder, he thought with amusement.
Märti soon found he was grinning like an idiot and he didn’t care because the men loved it; they knew he was proud of them. The men of one squad we
re hovering in a rough circle as he drifted past, small crumbs floating around them as they chewed. “Bretzeli, Major?” a young private holding a battered tin offered eagerly.
In truth, Märti’s bladder was demanding relief far more loudly than his stomach but he knew it would please these men to share a simple treat with their battalion commander. He nodded as he joined the circle and opened his mouth. The young man grinned and took careful aim, ignoring the good-natured jeers of his comrades as he sent the traditional Swiss biscuit spinning towards the major’s open mouth.
Märti grabbed the arm of the nearest soldier, pushing against the man’s mass to position himself in the path of the small confection and trapped it between his teeth. The small group cheered at the idiotic display as he took a bite. The simple biscuit tasted far better than he would have expected and he found himself thinking of home with a sudden longing. “Where did you get these?”
“My tante made them for me before we left,” the man said proudly. “She showed up at the airport before we went up to the Hermann.”
Oddly, Märti remembered the moment. “That’s right,” he said in surprise, remembering the heartwarming scene from what seemed ages ago. “You came up on the same Osprey with me. A pretty woman with long black hair gave you the tin and made you promise to come home in one piece.” He grinned. “I thought that was your sister!”
The young soldier grinned widely. He was surprised that his CO remembered the exchange. All the men in the small group were pleased to see that their leader took an interest in their lives or, at least, in their attractive relatives. “She’s only a few years older than me,” the soldier explained. “She lives in Chur so she came to see me off.”
“Perhaps she can pick you up when we get back; I’m giving everyone two weeks leave when we get home, so you can consider yourselves dismissed the minute our feet hit the ground.” The men cheered as Märti waved the remnant of his bretzeli. “Merci vilmal,” he mumbled as he stuffed it in his mouth. “I’m going to find a head that doesn’t have a huge line before it’s too late.”
He continued forward and entered the port side companionway. It ran between the outer gun mechanisms and the central core where the surgery, mess deck and magazines were located. In the distance, he saw a foot drift into view from a side corridor. It slowly rotated out of view and he thought little of it as he approached until the man’s head rotated out several inches into the companionway.
His eyes were glassy and a small undulating mass of blood clung to an ugly gash in his neck. As Märti watched in shock, a small globule of the fresh red liquid separated from the mass at his neck and, freed from the rotational constraints of the dead German marine, drifted out to spatter against the major’s knee. The physical impact had the same effect as a slap to the face and Märti pushed forward to grasp the man, checking his pulse and finding none.
He looked down the short hallway. He had been here before, Magazine P-4. There was blood on the door controls. Someone had killed the sentry; they were inside with the ordinance.
His own weapons had been handed in as he came aboard; loaded firearms on a pressurized ship were about as popular as an insurance salesman at a cocktail party. He took the sentry’s sidearm, cocked it and reached over to take the sentry’s headset.
He saw Sgt. Dreher floating down the companionway and waved him over as he activated the headset. “Security, this is Major Bohren. Someone has killed the sentry on Magazine P-4 and I believe he’s in there with the warheads right now.” The sergeant took a look at the dead German. Realizing that he was a sentry, he shot a look at the magazine door and frowned in alarm. “Sgt. Dreher and I are going in now. We don’t have time to wait for backup.” He pulled the earpiece away from his mouth as the security officer confirmed the dispatch of an armed team. “Nukes,” he said simply, nodding at the bloody door.
The two men approached the door and Märti punched the door release. It slid open to reveal the rack on the far side of the wall. He poked his head around the corner and saw one of Stager’s men floating near the end of the small storage room. One of the W87 warheads floated next to him, slowly rotating. In the man’s hand was a remote detonation controller. He was out of his suit so he didn’t have a name tag for Märti to rely on.
He had long since given up on trying to remember every name in the battalion. Even knowing every man in his unit when he was a company commander was hard enough. He suddenly wished he had kept trying.
Dreher came to the rescue. “Hoi, Richner,” he greeted the man cheerfully, casually pretending there wasn’t a dead German floating in the hall or a remote detonator in Richner’s hand. “They have wine in the dorm if you want some.” He scratched irritably at an armpit. “Always get itchy when I miss my shower,” he grumbled.
“You stay back,” Richner shouted. “We weren’t supposed to win,” he said with firm conviction. “They were God’s punishment and we defied it. We have to pay.”
Märti was shocked at the statement, one that he had heard several times from the men as they joked. This man obviously took it far more seriously. The major had once wondered if he was meant to stop Humanity from defeating the enemy. He had come to believe that his true role was in helping mankind to capture the secrets of the aliens. It was a realization inspired by his musings on the Vikings and the ancient natives of North America; this time the technology of their enemy would be used to change their future.
“I wouldn’t drag God into this,” the sergeant said absently as he shifted his attention to his other armpit. “He’s going to have his hands full when our lads get turned loose back home. D’you think the infirmary might have some kind of cream?” While he scratched various spots, he slowly drifted towards the man.
Märti realized what the sergeant was doing and he racked his brain for some way to distract Richner. Questioning his assertion seemed like a good way to hold his attention. “Well, you wouldn’t be the first person to claim they’ve cornered the market on God’s will,” he remarked casually. “A lot of murderers try to scrub their conscience with that old chestnut.”
“You don’t understand,” Richner protested. “I have to do this.”
“I think I have a pretty good grasp of it,” Märti replied coldly, positioning himself as the opponent while Dreher was simply a man with itchy crevices, a man to ignore. “Let me see if I can summarize to your satisfaction.” He held the man’s gaze as he raised a hand to count off on his fingers, adding further distraction. “First, you tell us that God wants to punish us. I don’t know how you got your hands on that particular bit of intelligence but you must have better connections than I do and I have family at the Vatican.”
He raised a second finger. “Next, you want us to believe that God screwed up. His punishment backfired because now we’re going to be stronger than ever and he needs a mere mortal like you to help him out. Risky, that, accusing the Almighty of incompetence…”
He raised a third finger and paused, frowning. “Well, I suppose I only have the two points, but let me ask you this: how do you know we aren’t meant to punish the aliens for their pride?” He saw the first hint of doubt play across the man’s features. “How did you make this decision?” the major demanded incredulously. “Did you flip a coin? Did you realize there was more than one possibility?”
Richner’s eyes were riveted on the major. If he had been wrong, then that meant he had murdered a man for nothing more than a delusion. His mind was trying to force him back into the simple conviction that would give him peace, the straightforward belief that he was obeying a higher power. He didn’t see Dreher put his foot against a storage rack of ceramic re-entry cones and shove with all his might.
The punch connected with all of Dreher’s two hundred twenty pounds and Richner was relieved of the need to solve his moral dilemma for a few hours. “Kack,” the big NCO grimaced. “Never hit a man’s head with a closed fist.” A German marine appeared in the doorway, holding an MP5 submachine gun in his right hand while his le
ft held a handle on the outside of the doorframe, ready to pull himself back if he came under fire.
“We’re clear,” Märti said with a deep sigh. He pointed at the unconscious Richner. “That’s the man you want, and we need an ordinance tech in here to secure that warhead.” The man nodded and waved his team in. Märti looked over at Dreher. “Let’s get you over to the infirmary and have that hand looked at.” He frowned suddenly. “Did you say they have wine back in the dormitory?”
“Mol,” the sergeant confirmed guardedly, ready to stand up for the lads if the major started spouting regulations.
“Good, I could do with a drink after that.”
“Alright, but let’s stop at the head first. It’s more urgent than my hand.” They moved towards the magazine door. “Come to think of it, I might need a little help.”
“If you mean anything other than help getting out of that EVA suit, I’ll break the other hand…”
The Oval Office
Washington, D.C.
March 14th, 2028
“Sir, they’re ready for you.” Jack Kitzhaber stood in the hall door, grinning with the knowledge that he would have one of the best days in Press Secretary history.
“Thanks, Jack. ” Parnell looked over from the sitting area where he was in discussion with Sam Worthington, Whitehouse Chief of Staff, and Admiral Tom Kelly, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. “We’re almost done here. Come in and grab a seat for a minute.”
Jack walked over and dropped into a fragile-looking 19th-century armchair with alarming disregard. “First time in five hours I’ve had a chance to sit,” he said with a happy grin. “Did I mention what a good day this is turning out to be?”
“Only a few dozen times,” Sam remarked drily, fishing out his cell phone and holding it up. “For posterity,” he declared as he snapped a picture of Jack’s happy slouch. “I’ll send it to your team so they can make it look like a proper black and white.”
“Jack, we were discussing the plan for putting our own fleet in orbit once we understand the new engines on the captured mother ship,” Parnell cut in. “Needless to say, we’re continuing with the designs of the second-generation ships but those will probably never be built. We can’t afford to build any more ships in orbit. The next generation will be built on the surface and simply launch into orbit using the new Anasazi engines.
“The real challenge at this point is figuring out their star drive. Once we can replicate it, we can probably build a starship for the same price as a surface carrier and nobody is bothering to build those anymore.” The president paused for a moment to consider his words. “Jack, our public stand at the moment is that the U.N. is our best friend, but we all know what they’ve turned into. They’re dangerous. They have the only fleet in space and they’ve sucked the world of most of its cash to build it.”
He looked now at Tom as he spoke. “We need to get out from under their thumb, gentlemen. Once we understand the new engines, we can put up a fleet for a fraction of the cost of the one we sent to Mars and it will outclass whatever the U.N. has left. No one will give them money to build any more ships.”
Jack cut in. “How long before other countries are able to do the same? They all have access to the same data.”
The president nodded. “They do, and the Chinese are probably going to be our biggest rivals. According to Sam, they’re still almost half-and-half between ‘free market’ and ‘command economy’. They can push production a hell of a lot faster than us so we have to try to beat them on the science.”
“The preliminary reports from the tech teams indicate that the physics involved in the captured engines may be very close to existing but obscure theories.” Kelly leaned forward as he spoke, opening a file folder on the coffee table. “We have a list of fringe physicists who are about to find themselves drafted into the service of their nation.” He looked up at Jack. “We haven’t beaten the enemy yet; they still have their nice safe little home world out there somewhere and they sure as hell won’t take this defeat lying down.”
“What Tom is laying the groundwork for here is our need to keep talking about a state of war.” Parnell looked down at the open folder as he talked. “We plan to build our own fleet based on what we learn from the enemy. We’re building a very comfy complex on one of our territorial islands and we’ll staff it with the best minds we have, but not all of them will be keen to come.” He looked up at Jack. “That’s why Tom mentioned drafting.”
“I see,” Jack said slowly. “And by comfy we mean?”
“Nice houses, appealing designs,” Sam shrugged. “Streets, sidewalks, schools, playgrounds, a light commercial zone with coffee shops and restaurants. It’s almost ninety percent complete. It’s the kind of community that folks usually buy into on their own without the added incentive of saving the human species.”
“And if some of our brightest and best don’t want to come?” Jack asked lightly.
“They get put in an officer’s uniform and sent there for less pay,” Kelly said reasonably. “They can still have a nice house if their families come with them but they come, one way or another.” He glanced over at Sam and the President before continuing. “Speaking of recruiting, it’s time we got one of our citizens back.” he pulled a page from his folder and slid it in front of Jack.
“It’s not exactly fair,” Parnell explained as Jack looked down at the sheet on the coffee table. “It’s not much to work with either but you should be able to pass that to someone in a way that doesn’t get back to us?” Though inflected as a question, it was undoubtedly an order.
“Yeah, I can make that happen,” Jack began dubiously. “This won’t create much of a stir. Folks are angry about how much money the fleet cost but hearing that the project manager took his friends and family to Lisbon for a weekend when he was going there anyway is still going to be small beans. We can spin it a bit, but…” He shrugged.
“It should be enough to push him out of the UN payroll,” Sam said reasonably. “They don’t have any pressing plans to build a new fleet so we just need to call attention to the fact that he’s still drawing pay. We’re not looking to get him tarred and feathered. We just want him at loose ends so we can snap him up.”
“I still don’t like this,” Kelly growled. “Sam and I went through Annapolis together and now I’m party to a plot against his kid? He did a damn good job working for an organization that he’s not particularly fond of.”
“Jack, once we have him safely in hand, you’ll turn him into a national hero,” Parnell explained, mostly to mollify the admiral. “He actually brought the fleet in under budget.” He saw his press secretary’s eyebrows lift a quarter inch and the President waved a cautioning hand. “That’s not public knowledge yet but we hear that he plans to hand back seven percent of the original budget.”
Parnell stood and reached for his coat; the other three men came to their feet. “For the love of God, Jack, get him fired before he releases his budget numbers. Once they come out, our chance is lost.” He shrugged into his jacket. “We need him for our own fleet, and we want him and his layout expert living on that island to keep the designers from running amok. We need to get ourselves out from under the UN’s shadow.”
“Did you just say ’amok’?” Sam grinned.
“You won’t let me use it in speeches,” Parnell retorted in a long-suffering tone. “I have to get it out of my system before I step in front of the press, don’t I?” He buttoned his jacket and headed for the door. “Alright, let’s go announce partial victory.”
Jack looked alarmed. “Sir, I need time to change your remarks before you walk in there. The language doesn’t reiterate the continuing state of war.” His best day in history was suddenly in jeopardy.
“I’ll just wing it.” Parnell kept heading for the press briefing room.
Jack looked helplessly at Sam.
“He just might say ‘amok’ again,” The Chief of Staff grinned at his subordinate. He leaned forward and peered down the
hall. “He’s almost at the door, Jack. Don’t you think you should get in there?”
Jack snapped out of his daze and raced down the hall, just catching up as the President opened the door and strode in.
Kelly laughed quietly. “Do you think it’s always like this?” he asked. “Whatever the President says in there will write our names into the history books and he’s pulling the whole speech out of his ass.” He grinned. “His press secretary is just this side of a cardiac event because he has no idea what will happen in the next ten minutes, even though he had every syllable planned this morning.”
“When you have good news, the public will forgive just about any gaffe,” Sam shrugged. “Remember when Kennedy made his famous Berlin speech? A lot of people claimed that adding the ‘ein’ when he said he was a Berliner meant that he was claiming to be a jelly doughnut but the Germans knew what he was getting at and they loved him for it.”
“Makes you wonder what went on in this room during some of history’s great moments,” Kelly mused. “The Cuban missile crisis, for example.”
“Probably a bit of a mess,” Sam agreed. “But this is going to be a hell of a lot bigger, you wait and see. We still have a whole planet filled with enemies out there somewhere.”
Those enemies were about to find that they had lost contact with their colony on Mars.
Epilogue
Guernsey
Channel Islands
August 24th, 2028
Jan jumped from the ramp of the Osprey before it could settle its landing gear on the ground, dropping the last four feet with a practiced, controlled collapse. She ignored the shouts of concern from the vehicle’s loadmaster.
Aircrew here on Earth were far more procedure-oriented than the veterans who had flown between the fleet and the surface of Mars. Ospreys had rarely touched the surface of the red planet but simply hovered while troops disembarked; a sitting aircraft was easy meat for enemy infantry.
She picked up her bag and started towards the low stone wall separating the pasture from the grounds of a thatched, stone cottage. A young boy on the other side of the wall was watching the almost-silent aircraft as it floated back up into the fog. He looked to be around ten and, like most boys, he was fascinated by the new engines that had revolutionized the transportation industry.
There was no mistaking who he was.
“All right, Thomas?” She couldn’t help smiling at this smaller version of Liam.
“Coume tchi que l’affaire va?” The youngster grinned up at her with easy charm.
Her heart skipped a beat. Years ago, when she had imagined children, they had been just like this young man, right down to the father’s confident personality. Only two years on the island and already he’s talking like a local, she thought, setting the bag on the far side of the wall. She threw a leg over and sat on the cold stone. “I thought that language was disappearing.” Very few islanders spoke the local cousin of Norman French anymore.
“They have it at my school,” he said with a happy shrug. “Some things are worth bringing back.” He looked down the hill to where a small cluster of houses stood. “My mum never knew a word of it but my Gran'mère cried when I first used Guernésiais.” He smiled at the memory. “Then she stuffed me so full of gâche, I could barely walk home!” Thomas’ mother had died in an accident while Liam was a prisoner in Afghanistan. The boy had spent several months with his uncle in London until Liam had come to collect him. He had a better life here, with his mother’s family just down the hill and Liam’s sister at this cottage.
Thomas picked up Jan’s bag. “You’ll catch your death sitting on those stones,” he said, acting as though he had known her for years rather than minutes. “We’ve set a place for you; you’re just in time for lunch.”
So like his father, she thought. Liam had the same way of making you feel you had known him forever. As they approached the door, it opened and there he was, a cane in his left hand and a smile on his face. He shuffled sideways as his son disappeared inside the narrow doorway and then he threw his arms around her, the cane dangling behind her back.
They leaned back to look at each other. “How long do you have?” he asked.
She smiled. “As long as I want,” she said. “After what we’ve done, being at Oxford seems like someone else’s life. I think I’d go mad if I had to go back to grading papers and teaching classes.” She gave a tiny shake of her head. “Sometimes, you just can’t go back.”
“Sometimes?”
She gave him a kiss before whispering in his ear.
“Sometimes, you can.”
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A Fireside Chat
Host: So the alien attempt at capturing Earth has been foiled. What happens now?
AG: The Dactari have underestimated us. Not by much, but just enough to buy us a little breathing room. In all probability, the enemy will recognize the need for a proper invasion force, but there’s no knowing when they might get around to that. Meanwhile, politicians will argue, engineers and physicists will analyse the captured vessels and companies will leverage the new technology.
Host: So, we’ll see that in The Dark Defiance?
AG: Well, you can pretty much assume the part about the politicians, so the next story will take us out into the fringes of the dead empire (Succeeded by it’s own military species – the Dactari) where a Human ship is seeking out new sources of rare commodities. Though the Dactari are nothing more than a distant memory in that particular region, there are other dangers to face.
Host: Is there any way for readers to let you know what they think of this book?
AG: I love hearing what readers think. If you have any feedback, you can reach me at my blog: https://agclaymore.blogspot.ca/p/contact-me.html or my email
[email protected]. I try to respond to every email except for the ones pretending to be from Windows Security.
If you really liked the story and want to help others to discover it, the best thing you can do is post a review on Amazon. It can take a long time for a new title to garner enough reviews to be taken seriously. The average rule of thumb seems to be one review for every one or two thousand readers, so it’s a big help anytime a reader takes the time to post one.
Host: OK, let’s stop pretending to be two people and get back to work.
AG: Or you could answer email while I do some outlining?
Host: Sigh… facepalms…
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