Semper Mars: Book One of the Heritage Trilogy

by Ian Douglas

  The release code and the word “Excalibur” were also glowing in green letters, winking on and off against the message display in the lower right corner of her helmet’s HUD, the confirmation she’d been waiting for. Things had just turned nasty in Mexico City, and First Platoon, Alfa Company, was headed for a hot LZ.

  Fuentes turned in her seat and caught the eyes of the rest of her platoon. They were all suited up in Class-Two armor, which made them look a bit like astronauts in EVA hardsuits…except that these suits used an active camo surface layer that mimicked the colors and shadows and light sources around them in an eerie shifting of ill-shaped reflections. The only thing Class-One had that Class-Two didn’t, in fact, was the bulky full-support backpack that turned it into a space suit in fact as well as in appearance. She couldn’t read the faces behind the dark helmet visors on either side of the Peregrine’s troops compartment, but she knew every man and woman in the section was watching her intently.

  “It’s a go, Marines,” she told them over her helmet’s com system. “Mexican forces have opened fire on our people at the embassy. Basket has just relayed the codeword Excalibur. We go in, and we go in hot.”

  She’d been pretty sure that they would get the go-ahead this time. Fifteen minutes earlier, the Peregrine’s pilot had alerted her that Mexican Air Force F/A-22s had tried to intercept them over the coast, and only the Marine AV-32s flying CAP on Operation Rattlesnake had stopped them from pulling an intercept. Maybe those F/A-22s had been ordered to simply escort the intruders out of Mexican airspace…but Fuentes didn’t think so. The Mexicans had been getting cocky of late, certain that the entire United Nations was behind them in their dispute with the US, and they must have known that the only way to stop the relief flight was to shoot it down.

  But that shooting would take some doing. Rattlesnake Flight consisted of four Peregrines and an escort of four Marine AV-32s, superb VSTOL fighters derived from the Harrier jump jets of the last century. All of the aircraft had stealth technology, and all had sophisticated antimissile defenses. There was a good chance that they would be into the Mexican capital and out again before the Mexican air-defense net could even get them pinpointed.

  “So what do you think, Lieutenant?” Corporal Steve Bellamy asked over the section’s chat channel. “Is it gonna be war?”

  “That,” Fuentes replied with a singular lack of interest, “is up to the politicians.”

  Fuentes herself was about as apolitical as it was possible to be…but she hated the fact that some people had questioned her allegiance, and for no better reason than the ethnic origins of her name. She happened to be the daughter of legal Mexican immigrants, born in San Diego, California, and as far as she was concerned—at least until and unless the UN Aztlan plebiscite went through—that made her an American.

  Hell, if the Southwestern US was suddenly torn away to become a new country, she wasn’t gonna go with it. She’d already made up her mind to stay in the Corps and resettle wherever they sent her. She didn’t like thinking about the rumor—an ugly possibility—that all Hispanics would be forced out of the US Armed Forces if that happened, or that they might even lose their citizenship. She was pretty sure that the other Hispanics in her platoon—Garcia, Ortega, and Carle—all felt the same.

  In a way, she welcomed this current crisis with Mexico. It gave her an opportunity to show everyone just where her loyalties truly lay. She’d found it interesting as she thought about the problem over these past few days, however, that her primary loyalties weren’t to the United States of America, though she considered herself a patriot and was willing to put her life on the line for her country.

  Her main loyalties were to her brother and sister Marines.

  She used the utility wrist-top jacked into her armor’s dataport to open a window on her HUD’s data display. Channel four showed a computer-generated map of the region northeast of the Mexico DF. The aerial relief flotilla had already cleared the Sierra Madre Oriental, flying nap-of-the-Earth up the Nautla Valley, then hurtling low across the plains of Tlaxcala. They were over Texcoco Lake now, hurtling toward downtown Mexico City at better than four hundred knots. Eighteen kilometers to go—at this speed, less than two minutes more.

  “Everybody check your gear!” she called. “Ninety seconds!” She wished the Peregrine had a window so that she could see out…but, of course, every square centimeter possible of the aircraft’s hull was coated in radar-absorbing polymers. She watched as each Marine in the platoon checked the armor and ordnance of the Marine at his or her left, then repeated the inspection to the right. Gunnery Sergeant Christopher Walsh checked her over, making certain that external armor snaps were locked, that grenades were secure, that she didn’t have any “Irish pennants”—loose straps or cords dangling where they could hang up and trap her. Then she returned the favor.

  “Nervous, Lieutenant?” Walsh asked her on the private channel.

  “Hell, yes,” she replied. It was her first time in combat, and Walsh knew that.

  “Good,” he replied, and she could just make out his grin through his dark helmet visor. “If you were sure of yourself, I’d request a transfer out of this outfit, effective yesterday. Don’t worry, L-T. You’ll show ’em!”

  She was grateful that he hadn’t patronized her with a “you’ll do fine,” and more grateful still that he recognized the spot she was in. Hell, in another couple of minutes, she might find herself shooting at her relatives.

  But that was because they were shooting at her family….

  United States Embassy

  Mexico City, República de

  México

  1520 hours local time

  The Mexican civilians had stopped coming over the wall now; in fact, as far as Bledsoe could tell, all of the civilians had scattered and fled after those first few volleys. Bledsoe was still on his knees next to Larabee, bracing his ATAR on the sandbag wall, drawing a bead on a scrawny guy wearing officer’s epaulets who seemed to be waving the attackers on from the far side of the barred front gate. He squeezed off another burst and watched the man tumble backward onto bloody pavement.

  The initial rush had been beaten back, but the attack was far from over. Something large was growling unseen on the street beyond the gate, ominous and implacable. Moments later, an old Bradley AFV lumbered around the corner, striking the closed gate in a piercing clash and rattle of metal bars. A second M-2 Bradley followed the first…and a third.

  “Christ!” Larabee yelled above the din. “They’re sending in the whole frigging Mex army!”

  A rotary cannon on the lead Bradley howled, its muzzle flash a flickering beacon on the turret. Both Marines hit the deck as brick and sandbag alike were pulverized by the stream of heavy metal. To the right of the main gate, a portion of the wall burst inward in a crashing shower of brick. The squat, hulking shape grinding through the breach was no Bradley, however, but an M1A2, one of the old Abrams tanks sold to the Mexicans twenty years before.

  Abrams and Bradleys might be laughably obsolete by modern standards, but they were still deadly. Neither of the Marines was packing weapons that could challenge that kind of armor.

  Reaching up, Bledsoe touched the transmit key on the Motorola strapped to his vest. “Homeplate, this is Outfield!” he called. “We’ve got heavy armor here, and they’re knockin’ on the goddamn front door!”

  “Copy that, Outfield,” a calm voice replied. It sounded like Captain Warhurst. “We see them. You can’t do anything more out there. Come on inside.”

  “Rog—”

  The world exploded. The Abrams had just fired its main gun, and the round had crashed into the front of the Residence and detonated somewhere inside, behind the front door. Bledsoe and Larabee, both already flat on the front porch, were lifted several feet and slammed against their crumbling sandbag barricade.

  Groping through the swirling smoke, Bledsoe looked around for Larabee. The sandbags had been scattered as though kicked by a playful giant; Larabee lay on his back
where the blast had flung him, off the porch, down the steps, and several yards out into the Residence front lawn. The front of the Residence itself, never designed to take such punishment, had partially collapsed, a jagged tangle of brick and beam and splintered wood, licked about with flame. The upper stories and the rear of the large mansion were intact, but a few more direct hits by that tank and the whole structure was gonna come tumbling down.

  Mexican troops were spilling from the three Bradleys now, troops better equipped than the civilians in the first wave had been, with modern assault rifles and kinevlar vests similar to what Bledsoe and Larabee were wearing. Gunfire popped and chattered; Bledsoe groped for his ATAR, dropped when the Abrams had fired, and knocked down three or four running figures. The smoke was getting thicker now, and it was difficult to acquire and hold a target. The full-auto fire from the wrecked front of the building seemed to be making the attackers cautious.

  But they would be charging across the lawn and up the steps of the Residence any second now.

  Bledsoe knew he didn’t have much time.

  Rattlesnake One

  TR-5 Peregrine transport/gunship

  Mexico City, República de

  México

  1521 hours local time

  “Landing alert, Lieutenant!” sounded in Fuentes’s headset. “Thirty seconds!” She could feel the transport’s nose coming up, could feel the change in pitch of the engines as they rotated to their straight-up, hover position.

  “Roger that,” she replied.

  “We can see the embassy now,” the Peregrine’s pilot added. “Looks like there’s a lot of shooting going on down there.”

  Her pulse raced. Had war broken out officially, or was this just another “incident,” the kind that left widows and cripples in its wake? Had the Mexicans really been stupid enough to try a toe-to-toe slugfest with the United States?

  Maybe they thought that with UN backing, they could win.

  She punched in a combination on her wrist-top, then studied the low-res vid-feed from the TR-5’s nose camera as it flickered in pale black and white on her helmet display. The embassy’s broad, rooftop helipad was visible at the center of the picture; one of the AV-32s swept past her view from right to left, circling low, dropping smoke canisters that erupted in a dense, boiling gray-white fog around the embassy perimeter. There might be snipers nearby packing firepower heavy enough to bring down a Peregrine, and the smoke would hamper them when they tried to find a target. It would also screw up the enemy’s laser range finders. There was already a hell of a lot of smoke in the area; it looked like the front of the Residence might be on fire.

  Two of the Peregrines, moving according to plan, were making for the helipad, where they would start taking off the embassy’s civilian staff. While a third circled the compound providing gunship support, the one carrying Fuentes’s platoon would deposit them in the compound between the Residence and the front gate. They would hold the embassy until all of the civilians were away, then hightail it back for their transports and haul-tail for the Gulf of Campeche.

  “Snakebite, Basket. Be advised that we have hostile MBTs and AFVs in the AO.” A side window opened on the display, showing a freeze-frame image from a military satellite, looking down onto the embassy compound. Several vehicles were highlighted by winking red dots.

  “Roger that.” Tanks and troop carriers. Things were a bit more complicated than they’d expected. Just frigging great!

  But then, she thought, main battle tanks were why God had invented Marine air close-ground support.

  United States Embassy

  Mexico City, República de

  México

  1521 hours local time

  Bledsoe looked up as jet engines howled low out of the sky. The sheer relief, the release when he saw two Valkyrie AV-32 hoverjets sweeping low across the rooftops, sunlight glinting from their canopies, was enough to leave him weak and shaking. “Yeah!” he screamed at the sky. “Go! Go!”

  The turrets of the Bradleys were pivoting to meet this new threat, but they were having trouble connecting with the targets. Vals were hard to see, even in broad daylight. Their active-camo hull coatings mimicked the surrounding colors of the sky almost as well as they absorbed radar, and with no vertical stabilizers on the flat upper surface, there was very little to catch the eye. When they dropped down low and started a head-on pass, they all but vanished, even if you knew exactly where to look.

  The attack had at least distracted the Mexican troops for a few, precious moments. Bledsoe snatched at the chance, rising from his hiding place, sprinting across the scattering of sandbags, and throwing himself down across Larabee’s still form.

  Larabee was still alive and breathing, though he had a nasty gash down the side of his head, and blood was pumping from a neat, round hole in his thigh, just above his left knee. Bledsoe grabbed an Ml first-aid kit and fumbled it open, extracting a sterile gauze pad and stuffing it onto the wound, trying to stop the bleeding.

  Then the Bradley AFVs opened fire with their rotary cannons, hosing the sky with streams of red tracers, trying to drag down the oncoming Vals. Bledsoe never even saw the Valkyries return fire; the armored fighting vehicles simply began exploding in a quick one-two-three succession, flame and jagged black chunks of metal whirling into the air. Another blast rocked the Mexican tank. The concussions were deafening; Bledsoe covered Larabee with his own body, sheltering him as the explosions thundered and the Marine Valkyries streaked overhead.

  He looked up, blinking into swirling smoke. Two more Vals were circling in the distance, as a quartet of TR-5 Peregrines angled in toward the Residence.

  Time to get the hell out of Dodge. Rolling off his buddy, he gathered the unconscious Larabee into a fireman’s carry and started crawling back toward the embassy’s shattered front porch.

  Rattlesnake Flight

  TR-5 Peregrine transport/gunship

  Mexico City, República de

  México

  1521 hours local time

  In a swirling blast of deflected exhaust, two of the Peregrine gunships brought their noses up, tilt-jets howling as they swung to the upright, hover position, the aircraft barely moving as they drifted above the city streets in front of the embassy. A shoulder-launched rocket streaked skyward from the roof of the Sheraton; the aircraft’s active antimissile defense system, reacting with a computer’s superhuman speed, replied before the missile had traveled half the distance to the target, snapping back with a burst of radar-guided rotary cannon fire that detonated the SAM in an orange-black blossom of flame and smoke. The gunship’s main battery cut loose then, its Zeus high-speed cannon buzz-sawing into the roof of the structure with a cyclic rate of six thousand rounds per minute. Under that firestorm of depleted uranium penetrators mingled with 6.2mm high-explosive rounds and green tracers in a 7:2:1 ratio, the roof of the hotel literally disintegrated in a black cloud of whirling chips and fragments. Windows exploded, walls buckled, and much of the upper two stories of the structure crumbled into an avalanche of shattered masonry, glass, and stucco. The line of green tracers, so thick and solid-seeming it appeared to be a bright streak of dazzling green light, played briefly across the target zone, then winked out.

  The tilt-jet Peregrines pivoted slowly, like hovering, airborne dragons searching for prey. Most of the mob had dispersed by now, though a number of bodies sprawled motionless in the streets or crawled slowly for imagined places of safety. Three AFVs and a heavy tank were burning in front of the embassy. A second aging M1A2 grumbled from a side street, seeking shelter from the air attacks, perhaps, but the green bolt of solid-looking flame flared once more, touching the Abrams’s turret at the engine cover. The fireball as the fuel tanks detonated roiled into the crystalline blue mountain air above the city like a black death’s-head.

  The Peregrines continued to take small-arms fire from the surrounding buildings. It looked as though most of the buildings had, in fact, been occupied by Mexican troops, though the Peregrine
gunners were under orders not to initiate a slaughter of Mexico City’s general population. They responded to the most serious threats, blocking incoming missiles and sending bursts of high-velocity cannon fire back at the shooters.

  Enemy fire slacked off noticeably as the Mexican troops decided to stop calling attention to themselves.

  Rattlesnake One

  Mexico City, República de

  México

  1521 hours local time

  Aboard the Peregrine, a red light winked on overhead. “On target,” the pilot’s voice said in Fuentes’s headset. “Opening up!” With a growling whine, the Peregrine’s aft ramp cracked open, then lowered, admitting a blaze of blue-white light from the outside.

  There wasn’t room to land a Peregrine on the Residence’s front lawn. Instead, as the rear door eased open, the aircraft’s crew tossed four nylon ropes out the back; almost immediately, the first four armored Marines were fast-roping down the lines, hitting the ground hard and moving fast, clearing the area before the next man down the line hit the same spot. Fuentes followed Private Peterson, stepping off the ramp and sliding down the rope with practiced ease. The ride down was dizzying, with the Peregrine hanging like a vast, black whale just above their heads, the tilt-jets shrieking to left and right like demented banshees.

  Fuentes landed with pile-driver force, nearly sinking to her knees, but then she was diving ahead, getting clear before Gunny Walsh landed on her shoulders. She didn’t remember slapping the release on her M-29, but her rifle was in her gloved hands and the liquid-crystal readout on the stock showed a full load of one hundred rounds, ready to rock and roll. She didn’t see any immediate targets; a Mex tank was burning cheerfully in a smashed-out gap in the compound wall to her right; the smoking, flame-blackened shells of a trio of Bradley AFVs were scattered along the embassy’s front drive farther on.

  Near the front door of the embassy, she saw one Marine crawling with another man slung across his back. “Bellamy! Kelly! Sanderson!” she snapped off. “Deploy right! Hold the wall! Gunny! Take the others! Form a perimeter covering the main drive and the front of the building!” Fuentes double-timed it across the lawn, reaching down to help the Marine with his wounded buddy. Both men were hurt, one unconscious with head and leg wounds, the other with blood smearing his face and the dazed look of someone caught too near an exploding round.