With that, Peter walked to the door and opened it. Brinker was standing there facing him, arms folded, looking at Covenant with murderous eyes.
“Brinker,” Peter said, and waited untill the Marine had made eye contact. “Trust him.”
Brinker’s eyes burned into Covenant’s, then back to Peter. “You don’t pay me enough for this,” he hissed.
Peter did not hesitate, as he replied confidently, “You don’t work for pay around here, Marine. Just the honor of serving the Corps for yet another glorious day.”
Brinker’s expression eased slightly, as though his contemplation of simultaneous dismemberment had somehow miraculously morphed into simple homicide before their eyes. “Oh, you think so, do you boss? Well, maybe you’re right about that. But I don’t work for the likes of him,” he said pointing his middle finger at Covenant, “… and I never will.”
“Of course you don’t. You’re actually partners now – equals. And both of you need to come up with a strategy for defending this colony ASAP. You can save your differences for later, if you have any left after the bloodletting.”
“Look at it this way, Sarge,” Covenant added in his best clipped British accent, folding his arms across his white shirt. “We’re actually pals now.”
“Now you listen to me, you Limey punk,” Brinker replied with an acidic edge. “We ain’t pals till I say we’re pals. I nearly tore this place apart looking for your sorry ass.”
“Well, hey, let’s just say you’re now more ready than ever for the next command inspection,” Covenant added, then stepped over to Brinker and slid his arm over his shoulder. “No harm, no foul; what do you say?”
Brinker tossed Covenant’s arm off his shoulder with obvious contempt. “You touch me like that again, you slack jawed pommie faggot and I’ll rip your arm off and stick it up your…”
“No touching on the playground, boys,” Peter interrupted. “You know the rules. Now why don’t you two run along, finish up your bonding and get to work.”
Brinker looked tired and totally exasperated. He sighed deeply, looked to Peter and said again, “You don’t pay me enough for this.”
ovenant and Brinker worked into the night without rest, even though Covenant had had little sleep in the past few sols. In less than an hour, Brinker appeared to have decided that Covenant was one of the most impressive and best trained individuals he had ever met. He was eyewitness to a fleet of seven SARs sitting ready in the Soviet hangar, not counting the one he had hijacked. The seven SARs were being prepared for the attack; every Martian vehicle the Soviets could piece together for the long trip. Covenant’s sharp and focused mind remembered even minute details about their preparations, such as how many bottles of gas were laid out, packs of supplies and even piles of navigational gear. It also helped considerably that he had stolen a fully readied SAR sitting at the head of the line, and much could be interpreted from its configuration. It was also apparent that Covenant saved all their lives by giving them a few essential sols to prepare for the attack.
It appeared that if the Soviets were able to successfully repair all of their vehicles, the attack would come in the form of seven SARs, which could carry six individuals each. They would be jammed in but able to make the one-way trip alive. Therefore, it was assumed that the attack would be carried out by at least 42 individuals. By midnight, Brinker and Covenant had lost all pretense of any combativeness and appeared to be solid, trusting cohorts.
Suzanne was resting comfortably and in stable condition in the infirmary with Bob Kerry never leaving her side. Kirov, however, was in a deep coma and on a respirator. No one expected him to live through the night or even regain consciousness. The extent of his beating was beyond belief, and there was no part of his body larger than a few inches that did not have a cut or contusion.
As Peter summed up all these things, he took stock of the situation. He sat in the dining hall with a hot cup of Rat’s best java, deep in thought. There was an attack coming in just a few sols; of this he was certain. For all practical purposes, it was to be either a wave of suicide fighters or the BC1 colonists would die in the ensuing battle; probably it would be some of both. Even if they surrendered peacefully and even if they were not killed outright, the life support system would be exceptionally overloaded and they would all die horrible deaths in just a matter of weeks. No matter how it went down, many people were inevitably going to die. Their colony, structures and systems were so fragile, that one committed individual alone could kill them all, much less 42 people bent on their destruction.
“You look tired, sport,” said Ashley sitting across from him at the table.
“I am, actually,” Peter confessed to his wife. In his deliberations, he had not noticed that she had been sitting there. As he looked back at her, he realized that she, he or both of them could be dead in a few sols, and he had not even noticed her presence.
She stared back at him wordlessly, with the look that only lovers can give to one another in grave times. His mind caught her look and immediately tried to reason against it. “This is just not the time, not now,” he thought to himself. But the other part of his mind struggled against the first thought. “There may never be another time again for the most important person in your life,” it said. “She needs you now, right now.”
His thoughts were primal; they ran deep, scouring his reasoning and tossing aside all pretense of rationality. For how could there be rationality here, now? It could not coexist with this madness. His mind was caught in a whirlpool of emotions, racked by fear that he dared not show, slammed by conflicts that were too powerful to argue against, by love too deep to say no.
Her warm hand circled tenderly around his. He closed his eyes and could feel her warm breath fall gently around his hand. Soon, he could feel her lips brush against his hand as she raised it to her lips.
He opened his eyes and smiled at her beautiful face; so warm, so open and so full of love reserved for just him, for all of his lifetime. It was a bond and a trust he never wanted to ever question again. “I love you,” he mouthed silently.
“I love you better,” she replied in a hoarse whisper.
Without speaking, she led him back to their quarters. He did not remember seeing anyone or anything else as they walked slowly, just the picture of her face highlighted against the corridor’s red night lights. His hand moved the handle on the door, but he could only see her face, her smile and the fire in her eyes as they shut themselves into the darkened space.
In the dim light, he fell to his knees before her, moving his hands across her clothing which he pulled gently away. As she kissed his hair, he felt the warmth of flesh against flesh and the slow, deliberate assault of obsession, of fear and pain overwhelmed by the love that engulfed it all. In the end they were both consumed and carried away to that special place where lovers go, in a brilliant rush of time and space and passion, both erotic and childlike in its simplicity, which finally, merely, dissolved away into the quiet abyss of merciful sleep.
37
oya Anatolyevna Dimitriov’s black spacesuit clung to her 38 kilogram frame like the get-up of a cheap motorcycle whore. The invasion fleet was ready and had moved outside the airlocks into position. Dimitriov stood beside the lead SAR outside the main airlock, on the desert of Mars pointed northwest. Five other SARs lined up behind hers were filled with 30 heavily armed combatants. Counting the three in her vehicle and herself, she was able to muster 34 attackers. In the Shturmovoi domes behind her, she had left the rest who could not fit into the vehicles, or those who she did not trust - all of them scientists. Counting those whom she had executed in the past five sols for treason, subversion, dereliction of duty, disrespect, hooliganism and loitering, only eight scientists remained behind. She had clearly deemed them useless members of the new society and told them repeatedly how she regretted they would be left to consume priceless oxygen and food while she was away.
With her bulbous helmet, Dimitriov looked ridiculously like she was suit
ed in sprayed-on leather and just about to climb into a cannon to be shot into a net. Yet those who faced her trembled in abject fear. She had successfully made herself into the most ruthless human imaginable, and she dispensed life and death with premeditated horror. No one knew who was going to be next. She stood on the Martian desert, the malevolent empress of all she surveyed. She was determined with her life, and everyone else’s, to plant the New Soviet Empire on this planet. Whether it destroyed them all or not, it obviously made little difference to her.
Only six SARs were able to make the week long trip northwest to BC1because Covenant had done such a through job at trashing as much equipment as he could on his way out of the airlock. By the time they had gone through their entire replacement parts inventory, and cannibalized to make the necessary repairs, they were only able to utilize six vehicles. Many of them were repaired with borderline fixes. Six people were literally stuffed into each of the five SARs behind her, sitting atop one another and rotating positions to allow their blood to circulate. Dimitriov limited the number of passengers in her command vehicle to the number of available seats in order to preserve her level of personal comfort. Thirty-four Soviets had thus assembled to depart Shturmovoi.
Each SAR was loaded with just enough consumables to make the trip. There was no margin for error. If their mission did not proceed exactly as planned, they would all die. The assignment was simple: arrive as quickly as possible; in a surprise attack, puncture the walls of the colony and kill the Americans; capture BC1, patch the holes, execute most of the survivors and live at BC1 until spring. If BC1 was found to be a superior base, as everyone suspected it was, then Shturmovoi was to be cannibalized and the equipment moved to BC1. The main thrust of the plan was to kill everyone except for those who are absolutely necessary in order to conserve enough oxygen, food and water to survive the coming winter.
Leonid Kravchenko unfolded his ungainly and slightly pudgy form from the SAR and walked to stand beside Dimitriov who was silently staring north. “It is sunrise, Colonel Dimitriov; we must be going now,” he said through his helmet communicator. “There lies a great victory ahead of us!”
She turned to look at him with the same contempt with which she looked at everyone. “Shut up and get back into the vehicle,” she spat. “I’ll decide when it is time to leave. You decide nothing.” Kravchenko was used to her stare and knew what it meant. He knew she would just as soon kill him as one of the scientists or a cockroach. But he also understood, as did she, that this wretched woman had no friends and less than a few she could trust, and he happened to be one of them. Such loyalties equated to one of life’s few guarantees here or back in the Soviet society on earth.
Kravchenko shrugged almost imperceptibly and walked slowly back to the SAR. Meanwhile Dimitriov turned around and faced the domes of Shturmovoi. She felt no kinship toward this place, the genius of its construction or even of what it meant for the human species. She pulled a remote control device out of a pocket on her suit and, with no remorse, she pointed it at the Shturmovoi domes. Then she pressed a button on the remote with no forethought at all, and tossed it out onto the sand as she turned toward her SAR. She had rigged a small canister of carbon monoxide secretly in one of the ventilation ducts to expel its deadly fumes at the touch of her button and she had also programmed the computers to simultaneously shut down the life support system. She would simply fumigate the scientists like the disloyal vermin that they were, and then freeze their bodies before they could rot. When she returned to Shturmovoi, she wanted to find a full load of life support consumables. Their solidified bodies would be no trouble at all to remove. How dare they assume they had any right at all to breathe her air?
rom inside the Shturmovoi domes, Petroskovich Drobkiev watched as Dimitriov slid quickly into her seat, closed the hatch on her SAR, and began the long trek northwest. He continued to watch as the other five vehicles followed hers, kicking up a thin veil of short-lived dust in the vacuous air and light of the dim Martian sunrise. Then he withdrew a small canister with a severed hose from his coveralls and laughed aloud as its useless control box light blinked on and off. While he had never considered himself a genius like his friend Kirov, he was not stupid either. He had detected the canister of carbon monoxide and easily removed it. He then just as easily overrode Dimitriov’s shutdown of the life support system.
He turned and looked at the other seven scientists standing behind him and smiled.
“Comrades, when we have assured ourselves that Dimitriov and her useless interplanetary band of idiot outlaws can not possibly return, open up every communications channel and satellite link we have and get me Peter Traynor on the circuit. He needs to know a few things.” Then his eyes scanned the dome above him. “Let us also pray that there is yet enough time and Dimitriov did not leave any more surprises for us of which we are not aware.”
38
C1 was now being run as a full scale military base, preparing for an imminent fight to the death with as many as 42 invaders just sols away. Brinker and Covenant had been appointed military commanders who answered exclusively to Peter. They were given total autonomy to make whatever decisions they deemed best to save the colony. No resources or information were withheld.
With Covenant’s disclosure that there was, in all probability, a cunning and accomplished spy among them, they began to carefully compartmentalize information. In the end, only Peter, Brinker and Covenant knew the whole plan.
The base began to run at full tilt around the clock. But because of the increased activity, the energy requirements doubled and the life support system began to strain, pumping out unprecedented amounts of life giving oxygen, pure water and heat. The colony literally watched as their life support system lost sols and weeks of vital, life-giving capacity in a matter of hours. Not only was oxygen being consumed in larger than planned for quantities, the carbon dioxide was beginning to build up beyond the capacity to remove it, and the air became uncomfortable. The system was never designed to handle so many people working around the clock and sacrificing sleep to get so much accomplished.
Peter and Ashley worked tirelessly, with Peter directing every move personally and Ashley struggling to keep the life support system as balanced as she could under the strained circumstances.
Brinker and Covenant split their duties. Covenant was responsible for the close-in defenses and Brinker for the external defenses and organizing the ultimate conflict itself.
Two sols before the expected attack, Peter, Brinker and Covenant met privately.
“The biggest problem, as I see it, is suits. We only have 12 suits that we can spare for outside defenses,” Peter said, referring to the number of available, operational space suits.
“So that leaves us outnumbered outside over three to one,” Brinker replied, stating the obvious.
“And it leaves only four suits for defense inside the structure,” Covenant finished the thought. “And twenty five colonists inside with no pressure protection except the walls, which may be punctured at any time during the attack. They only need to get a single projectile in here and the ones who are not suited will die at a distance and in quite a hurry.”
“I can’t see them penetrating the walls in too many places, or they won’t be able to crawl out of their own suits,” Brinker noted.
“They need just one hole, Bupkis. One single, well-placed hole,” Covenant responded.
“I told you not to call me that,” Brinker said, annoyed and tired.
“We can assume that depressurizing the structures during the attack is a part of their plan,” Peter said. “So we must be prepared for that, no matter what.”
“Where are we going to protect 25 bodies?” Covenant asked.
“In the shelter, of course,” Brinker responded, referring to the life boat shelter common to every off-planet habitat. These shelters protected the crews during solar eruptions, fires, or other calamities that could destroy large sections of the life support systems.
“
No,” Covenant responded. “That’s the first place they’ll attack, knowing we’re short on suits.”
Peter and Brinker sighed together, wordlessly acknowledging the truth of the statement.
“I propose a secondary shelter that no one but us knows about in advance,” Covenant continued. “It will be a duplicate of the life boat shelter in a very inconspicuous place.”
“Big enough to shelter 25 people for many hours, hidden from our own people until the last minute, totally unobtrusive and one that can be constructed in two sols or less?” Peter asked disdainfully.
“Yes, we have to do this. It’s suicide to assume the life boat shelter will not be attacked immediately,” Covenant replied as Brinker nodded.
“Okay, make it happen,” Peter replied. “Now, Bupkis, tell me about the defense plan.”
“You’re going to love this,” Covenant interrupted with a stiff British grin, eying Peter directly.
Brinker raised his eyebrow and returned a hard stare back to Peter. “Bupkis?” he asked with contempt.
“Sorry; go ahead,” Peter replied with a grin.
“Three rail guns outside the perimeter of the domes,” Brinker began. “Each strategically placed to intercept the enemy from any direction that they come at us. We monitor their advance with a camera mounted on a weather balloon tethered out at 4,000 meters. That way, they can’t easily sneak up on us.”
Mars Wars - Abyss of Elysium Page 40
