Lakes of Mars

by Merritt Graves

  Fingers smiled as we descended into the northern hemisphere of the planet, slipping between rainclouds and lightning.

  “The colonists must’ve decided to move up when they figured out how to generate the lightwall,” I said, looking down at the navigation grid and noting that the destination coordinates were above surface level. “I’m thinking we come in hot on a standard attack pattern as soon as we’re through this next mountain range.”

  Fingers nodded and I turned on the comm again. “Drieus Colony, this is UFM defector Pulsar, we’re going to feign aggression on approach so please provide some non-value targets.”

  “Acknowledged, Pulsar, you’ll have them in a few seconds.”

  “Pierre, you hanging in there?” I asked, looking over my shoulder at him. He was slumped in the second officer’s seat—still very pale—his curly black hair matted and slick with sweat against his forehead.

  “Of course.”

  “Just keep it up a little longer.”

  The ship shook.

  “Lightning?” I asked, turning back.

  Fingers nodded. “Our own lightwall isn’t built for these kinds of atmospheric disturbances, but we’re coming out of the clouds now. We’ll have a visual in a few seconds.”

  We emerged into a valley of yellow and green grass, the sun knifing through clouds, reflecting off pockets of rainfall. The colony was in the middle of it, crouched next to a river, lit up not just by the sun, but the red-tracered bombardment of the Mars ships and the return fire from its own antiaircraft batteries.

  “Acquiring targets for the strafing run.” I hit the commline. “Drieus, we’ll be coming in on the transmitted attack pattern, so please adjust your antiaircraft firing arcs.”

  “Acknowledged, Pulsar.”

  There were several explosions ahead of us, unleashing canisters that in turn budded with their own explosions, jerking the ship. Before we were through the smoke, green tracers from the antiaircraft batteries slanted by the cockpit, occupying the air around us.

  “That’s convincing theater,” Fingers remarked.

  We passed through another series of low cumulus clouds and then we were above the settlement which now, at lower elevation, looked more like a city, boasting sleek, neoclassical architecture in its civic buildings and large houses, graceful parks, and cultivated land on the outskirts. Despite having been cut off from the Confederation for years, these guys clearly weren’t your typical colonial rednecks.

  As soon as we were in range our pulse cannons came to life, and the cockpit rattled with their vibrations, causing the sides of already bombed-out buildings to transform into plumes of masonry as we passed.

  “One of the other UFM ships is using their tracking lights to send us Morse code. It . . . it looks like it wants us to attack the lightwall generator . . . or rather it wants us to wait . . . stand by a second. Try to steady us, okay?”

  “I’ve got to stick with the pattern.”

  “Hang on, they’re repeating it. Surface-to-air has been holding them off, but their ground units have almost punched through and they want us to cover the tanks’ approach.”

  I maneuvered the ship into a barrel roll as per the attack pattern, feeling queasiness branch across me. No matter how many hours I logged, or F pills I took, I could never seem to quiet the feeling. It was just a matter of letting it become a part of you. “Okay, we’ll take them out first.”

  “Right, but what should I tell ’em?”

  “Acknowledge and ask them to wing with us on our next run. That’ll let us get close.”

  “Tapping it out now.”

  We came out of the roll on the far side of the valley and then did an upside-down one-eighty to double back.

  “All right, they’re in. I told ‘em we’d follow their lead, so hang back for a second while they come about.”

  I navigated far enough away to avoid suspicion, but close enough that as we swooped down and unloaded with our pulse cannons, they had no time to redirect their energy to their aft lightwall.

  “Nice shooting,” said Daries, his hand still holding his face. “I feel better already.”

  “Did any of the other Mars ships see?” I asked.

  “If they did, they’re not tipping their hands with any vector deviations. The antiaircraft batteries are making them fly at high bombardment altitudes, though, and it’s hard to tell what everyone’s doing up there.”

  “Well, let’s finish ’em off so we can get a clean shot at the tanks. There’s another combat shuttle off on its own . . .” I pointed at the lightpanel. “Approaching from the north. I’m going for it if no one’s looking.”

  “They’re all pretty occupied.”

  I started another faux strafing run, broke right as if coming about for another pass, and surprised the combat shuttle with a few well-placed pulses just as it was coming in for a pass of its own.

  “Let’s go for that one, too—that skinny one looping west.”

  “That’s riskier,” Fingers warned.

  “As they come out of their run they’re going to have all their lightwall charge on the port. It won’t take much to peg ’em on the starboard.”

  “I’m telling you, man, it’s more in the others’ line of sight and those clouds’ll break any second. I would just wait . . . actually, hang on . . . No, hit it. Hit it!”

  “What, why?” I asked.

  “It’s calling us out in Morse code. Quick! Get him before anyone sees!”

  I bolted into its flight path and we exchanged pulse fire. At first it looked like it was going to knock through our bow light wall before we knocked through theirs, but I was able to nudge it just far enough into the latest anti-aircraft firing arc that it exploded before delivering the kill shot.

  “Man, that was messy,” cried Fingers. “Too messy. One of the Fury gunships is breaking off its attack run and flying parallel!”

  “Fuck,” I said.

  “It’s not good at all,” said Fingers.

  A voice broke through our mounting alarm. “Pulsar, this is Drieus Colony, their tank units are approaching the generator. The atmospheric lightwall will go down if it’s damaged and they’ll be able to bring the rest of their ships through. Requesting immediate assistance.”

  I dropped altitude, but so did the Fury. This should have been more troubling but in a way it felt like I’d already died, and all the clouds above and the smoke below were fumes of some previous existence, pushing me further into oblivion. I was in control, but my movements at the instrument panel were so automatic that I didn’t even know what that meant anymore.

  “It’s mirroring us,” said Fingers. “And it can freakin’ light us up, too. It’s got some big guns.”

  I thought about swerving and trying to take it on anyway, but even if I played it perfectly and punched through its lightwall, there wasn’t any scenario where we didn’t go down with it. “Drieus, we’re going after those tanks as requested, but give as much cover as you can since that Fury’s on to us.”

  “Acknowledged. We’ll do our best.”

  I turned to Fingers. “You ready?”

  “Just get it over with.”

  “All right, put everything into our aft lightwall. And hang on.”

  The Fury moved as soon as we did, acquiring missile lock.

  “We’re toast if we don’t get that antiaircraft cover,” Daries said, eerily calm. “We’re too close for countermeasures, right?”

  Fingers nodded.

  “Drieus, I just sent you our expected attack pattern. Set up crossfire in our wake to take down the missiles that the Fury’s about to fire. We’re going straight for the tanks, but we won’t make it if they get through.”

  “Copy, Pulsar.”

  The four UFM tanks came into view after we drew even with the colony’s main road. They were much larger than the Fleet’s RT370s—bright red mammoths crawling over sandstone. Interlopers among the foreign-hued metal and glass of the settlement. They had multiple turrets for smaller ordnan
ce and one big plasma cannon designed for power, but I was surprised they’d been designed at all, having only seen retro Mars tanks in parades in New London. No Confederation member was supposed to have modern armor, after all, since the Fleet provided all planetary defenses.

  “What’s the surface-to-air like on those guys?” I asked.

  “Don’t know. Never seen ’em before.” Fingers zoomed in. “Looks like twenty-one footers on those turrets.”

  I glanced back at Daries and Pierre. “Hold on.”

  Small-arms fire and grenades were bounding off the tanks’ amalgamate metal, thumping and singeing without the velocity or grade to do any more than superficial damage. The cataclysm from our twin pulse cannons, however, ate through them in clean, searing chomps. By the time the second tank was in flames, though, two missiles appeared on the screen, preceded by an antiaircraft shower from the two remaining tanks, slamming against our depleted lightwalls and causing the whole ship to tremble.

  “They’re still locked!”

  Fingers was watching the screen intently. “There are two more missiles. Oh shit, one’s getting the—”

  The trembling turned into thrashing, like we were being jerked around in the mouth of something elemental and savage. Our starboard wing dipped, pulverized by the impact of the missile, and then we were flightless, stumbling out of the sky, and I was trying to steady us, using massive yanks on the throttle to correct for the trauma. Somehow I managed to line up with a tank and fire at it before our tail flipped over our nose and Fingers’ scream of, “Brace for impact!” melded with the sounds of splitting metal and exploding earth.

  Daries’ seat was ripped out of the floor and collided with mine, making the back of my shoulder explode with pain but wrenching me out of the way just enough to avoid the path of the lighting fixture as it sliced down, pendulum-like, from the ceiling. In front of me gravel and earth shot up into the bridge, trading places with the alloys and coatings as the ship carved its way into the crust.

  I was half conscious, half adrift, as if waking up medicated from a nightmare. Confusion thwarted any attempt to focus. Sounds were distant and rumbling, like I was being held underwater in a tub that was burning on the surface.

  But suddenly, everything was bright and loud, a seismic wave punctuated by a shout in my ear. “Aaron! Aaron! You gotta wake up! We gotta get out of here!”

  It was Fingers, or at least I thought it was Fingers. I wasn’t used to hearing concern in his voice. Even when we’d been escaping the station he’d been insouciant, possessing an anarchical, detached panic. But now he was sodden in something frantic. “You’re on fire, Aaron! You gotta move!”

  There was a pause and then I was cold and choking, my ear throbbing as flame retardant sprayed around me. I jerked up through the haze a second time, unbuckled myself from my seat, and rolled on the floor.

  My arm was burning, radiating a rawness that highlighted every nerve ending, yet still felt distant—like it was some other person’s arm—while my shoulder seemed like it was frozen in some invisible case that was too heavy to open. It was like waking up and knowing that you should be doing something important, but all you wanted was to drift back under the covers and collapse under the weight. But when I saw Daries stumbling forward with blood streaming down his forehead, and Pierre still buckled in, trying to shove away the body of the wrench who’d landed on him, the shock subsumed the faintness and consciousness came rushing back.

  This time when Fingers shouted it seemed real. “There’s still one tank left!”

  I felt my lips moving. “We should get it.”

  Chapter 64

  There was a gash in the side of the ship so we didn’t even need to make it to the gangplank. Right as we were about to pop our heads through to take in the lay of the land, though, a man in a tan uniform stuck his head in. We all raised our guns instinctively, but a bullet flew through his helmet and he collapsed before anyone could fire. More followed, forcing us backward.

  After nine or ten seconds I peeked out again just as the remaining tank fired at the citadel that held the generator, puncturing its lightwall and taking a huge chunk out of its slanted concrete side.

  “We’ve got to do this now,” I said, ducking again as a weave of bullets flew overhead. “Cover me!”

  “We can’t cover you. There’s a whole fucking—”

  I didn’t hear the rest. I was already tripping forward into the ash, wet alien air filling my lungs. The humidity of the atmosphere sank into me, burning and twisting the dull pain in my leg and shoulder into something more urgent. A UFM marine crawling from the wreckage of one of the tanks saw me coming and was raising a sidearm to shoot, but he’d been burned worse than I had, and in the time it took for him to stabilize the gun I’d already shot him three times with my rifle.

  More bullets flicked by and, after a quick scan from behind an APC, I realized they were coming from a group of colonists scattered in the rubble. Just as I started screaming to Fingers to comm Drieus and tell them we were on the ground, the shooting from their side stopped.

  Seeing that the angle was now clear, Daries and Fingers fanned out alongside the Pulsar and traded fire with the handful of Mars marines left supporting the armor. I unloaded a magazine at them, taking down the ones who couldn’t get to cover in time, and then I was in the open again, staggering toward the remaining tank. One of its side turrets begin tilting slowly downward to aim at me, but I got inside the firing arc before it was in place and climbed up the side of the spill-treads. The twenty-one-foot gunner on top was shooting at the citadel in grinding, deafening bursts and didn’t hear me coming up behind him until I was already pulling the trigger.

  Keeping low since I was still being shot at by the support marines, I crawled toward the main turret, swinging behind it just before the other twenty-one-foot gunner could get a shot off. I shimmied up the plasma barrel and stuck the last remaining charge inside the muzzle.

  And then I was running as fast as I could with shrapnel in my leg. One stride. Two strides. Three strides, and I dove into a bomb crater. I put my hands over my head and curled up into a ball right as the tank fired at the generator and exploded into a maelstrom of red metal.

  Chapter 65

  The heat of the explosion drew out the pain in my arm and it felt like my lungs were burning from the inside. I held my breath and waited for the smoke to clear before breathing again or firing at the remaining UFM marines I heard running away from the tank, but they were gone by the time I could see.

  There was a screeching in the sky and a Fury gunship trailing smoke plowed into a building a few blocks away, eliciting a cheer from unseen colonists around me. The shooting seemed to be getting more distant every second, but my heart was still throbbing, my jaw still clamped shut. I surveyed the wreckage of the other tanks, the wall next to the citadel, and the adjacent buildings without seeing any more Mars marines nearby.

  Somewhere inside me a switch had flipped and I was up, limping across the square back to the Pulsar. I just needed to come down from wherever I’d been, because I couldn’t stay up. I couldn’t shoot another person if I had to—only stare at the rubble, feeling pangs of commiseration when Daries and Fingers emerged from the wreckage.

  There seemed to be a terrible intermittent presence to everything. Some steps seemed heavier than others as it came and it went. Invisible, springing on me whenever it chose. And I realized then that no matter how long or how hard I fought, it was always going to be that way.

  “Aaron, get down, goddamn it,” Daries shouted, still searching buildings and nooks for any remaining Mars marines. I ignored him and kept walking. It was over. It had to be over.

  The weight reappeared as I approached the Pulsar, dreading what I’d find inside.

  “Aaron, for God’s sake, get down!”

  Gunfire crashed into my consciousness, kicking up earth and stone around me. Daries and Fingers fired back but I kept walking, entering the Pulsar through the rip in its side and st
opping at the entrance to the bridge to check Pierre’s pulse. I’d known I’d find him like that, slumped over in the same jump seat I’d last seen him. If he’d had anything left at all he would’ve crawled out to help lay down cover fire.

  Tears flowed as I turned around, blurring the Corinth Station shuttle that had just landed thirty meters away. There was more shooting when the Blues exited down a ramp, but a few moments later it stopped, and I knew by the way the silence slowly crept out from behind the buildings and the citadel and the wrecked tanks, spreading across the streets, that this time it was for good.

  When I realized who it was disembarking, I shrugged off the pain and ran. Brandon saw me coming, but he just stood there, dumbstruck, as I tackled him.

  “You fucking bastard!” I screamed, spitting the words, finding energy in hate as I rolled on top of him. “You fucking bastard!” My fist slammed into his face. Then again. And again. And again. “You killed her. You fucking killed her!”

  “I—” he mumbled, but I punched him in the mouth before he could finish.

  “Don’t even think about it! Don’t even think about lying to me! I know you told us all the wrong shuttle bay and then waited until we were out of tie-in fluid to tell us the right one . . . so we—we couldn’t tell Eve! You fucking killed her!”

  I punched him again when he tried again to speak and this time I thought I heard something break. He hadn’t been really fighting back before, but as my fists kept coming harder and harder, he started squirming, blood splattering, trying to get out from under me. Daries and Fingers and the other Blue were nearby, but they weren’t stopping me. They wouldn’t stop me. There would be no more breaking up fights now.

  “Aaron, I’m sorry,” he pleaded, extricating a hand and holding it up to ward me off. “I’m so sorry. I just did it . . . I just did it because . . .”

  I was about to hit him again but I stopped.

  “Because she was going to get us all sick . . . with that thing she’d infec—”