“Stop whimpering and just do it, you coward,” Kravchenko spat in disgust.
Dybenko swung the muzzle of the pistol around and faced Kravchenko, pointing the barrel of the Makarov at his face. “You are the soulless animal that deserves to die! We have endured your disgusting brutality for too long!” he shouted.
Dimitriov looked supremely annoyed. “Major Dybenko, may I remind you that you have my orders and I expect you to carry them out instantly! Cease blaming others for your failure and carry out your duty. As a senior officer, and ‘hero of the motherland’, you must show yourself an example to those assembled before you who have not achieved such high office,” she continued distainfully.
Through the dim instrument lights in Dybenko’s helmet, everyone could see the disbelief in his eyes as he looked at the pistol in his hand with abject horror. His eyes shot between Dimitriov, the pistol, Kravchenko and then back again.
“Carry on, you buffoon. We don’t have all night to watch you sweat and whimper like a common coward,” Dimitriov urged mercilessly, clearly enjoying her belittlement of the popular Cosmonaut hero.
With that, Dybenko’s face contorted with rage. “No! No you bitch; no! It is you who will die tonight,” he yelled, leveling the Makarov at her heart.
“You don’t have the courage,” she said calmly, staring him in the face with icy black eyes.
Dybenko’s finger pulled the trigger repeatedly on the Makarov, which lay useless and impotent in his hands. There was no response from the weapon because Dimitriov had emptied the magazine as she stood alone in the desert. “Checkmate,” she spat as she took one step toward him, snatched the gun from his hand, and then backhanded its butt against his face shield with all her strength.
The Americans chose to use a nearly indestructible, laminated polycarbonate for space helmet face shields. The Soviets chose a significantly thicker but less durable and less expensive polyethylene product that would not shatter, but it would crack if struck with a well place blow – like this one.
The air began to leak out of Dybenko’s suit immediately. He clutched at his face shield with his hands as though he could somehow stop the slow leak. As he did so, he began to spin in slow circles, “No, no, no, oh God no….”
“There is no God,” Dimitriov said evenly, as she withdrew a large bladed knife from her pouch and cleanly sliced Dybenko’s air hose as he staggered past her. The explosive decompression completed the task in but a few agonizing seconds.
42
ight was not observed at BC1. Peter ordered that rest intervals not exceed four hours on a rotating basis. Everyone had a wartime duty and at one minute after midnight, a condition of war had been declared. The colony was expecting an imminent attack and the word quickly spread that it was no longer conjecture but a fact. They would have to prepare for the worst. All must be prepared to fight to the death.
The colonists expected the attack would come at late evening, just as the light dimmed or at night. They could not speculate on how it would come or from what direction. Worse yet, the colony would have to be evacuated with only a few minutes notice for those who would not have the protection of a spacesuit and must disappear into the carefully prepared shelter. While Peter had tried his best to keep the new shelter a secret, word inevitably leaked out, and if there was a spy in their midst, it could be assumed that he or she knew everything. So to counter this threat, Peter decided that whichever of the two shelters they would use would not be announced until the time the attack begun. Every colonist was to be ready to go to either shelter on a moment’s notice, or possibly split into two groups and use both.
Keeping any secrets under these circumstances was nearly impossible and everyone knew it. The news from Shturmovoi had been shared between only four people: Peter, Francis, Brinker and Covenant, but the inevitable rumor train coalesced with the high intelligence of the populace of BC1, and just about everyone had the entire picture figured out within hours after it was suspected that Shturmovoi had called.
Brinker had his high-flying camera in the air and Toon, appointed Command Center Director by Peter, kept it pointed in the right direction and its monitor continuously manned. With the camera and its super-sensitive infrared lens, they would have at least 45 minutes warning of an attack from any quarter.
The Sarge had also staged his combatant’s spacesuits at designated airlocks so that they could be suited, armed and outside in six minutes flat. The rest of the colony practiced life station drills so that it was determined that everyone could be at either of the two designated lifeboat stations within five minutes. If they decided to use both, each colonist had an assigned number, and odd or even determined to which station they would evacuate.
As a rather welcome interlude in the pre-war activities, it was reported just after the normally scheduled breakfast period, that Soviet Scientist Fyodor Stepanovich Kirov had regained consciousness. Although weak, he begged an immediate conference with Peter to relay the full horrors of Shturmovoi and Colonel Dimitriov. Kirov ultimately drifted off to sleep, but not before leaving Peter with a horrific view of what they were to face and, with it, a new resolve to win at any cost.
The clock hurried toward noon, the time when all war preparations at BC1 were to be completed. Not a single individual questioned the inevitable conclusion. If they did not utterly defeat the onrushing enemy, they would all die. None was so foolish as to believe that there would be any negotiations, any last minute peace deals or even any prisoners taken. The reason for the attack was, after all, a capture of the life support system, which was already impossibly overloaded. For the human ace to survive, a lot of people were going to have to die.
At noon, Peter and his team met together in the dining hall. As Peter called roll, every station answered “ready.” He then picked up his personal communicator and addressed the entire outpost through every speaker in the colony, including their PC2s:
“It’s a sad day for humankind that we should spend our time preparing to fight one another to the death on this, the very first extraterrestrial body we have permanently settled as a species. And yet, let history record that it was ultimately not our decision to fight, but only to spend ourselves in the defense of freedom and to preserve for ourselves and our descendants the opportunity to live to see tomorrow. Today, we struggle to live, to survive and to defend ourselves; not to take, not to deprive and not to hinder another life, but only to preserve our own. Barring a miracle, it’s a virtual certainty that some of us, or many of us, will not live to see tomorrow. But let it be recorded that as long as free, decent people live anywhere in the solar system or beyond, we steadfastly choose to live together as one, or die together as one, and that not one life was taken out of selfishness or treachery so that another might survive. In this battle, let there be courage among us all, knowing that we’ll all chose willingly to take on one another’s burdens and that in so doing, our destiny is defined not by what we took, but by what we gave. May God have mercy on us all.”
ust as Peter spoke those words, at high noon on the Elysium plain, the six Soviet SARs bore down on BC1 like a train of death. The single most damming piece of evidence Dimitriov and her men had gleaned from their spy was the lack of space suits at BC1. Hence, they would outnumber the untrained American scientists fighting outside by two fighters to one, and the colonists’ weapons by an enormous margin. Their SARs had been outfitted with a long barrel strapped to each side, which acted as make-shift missile launchers. Each was armed with two crude missiles equipped with 12-gauge warheads whose single purpose was to puncture the fragile walls of BC1 and evacuate the life-giving air. The vehicles had also been outfitted with a welded frame and ramming rod designed to smash into and puncture targets without affecting the SAR’s rugged body.
While Dimitriov knew she had lost the element of surprise after Covenant escaped, she was totally confident that her fire and manpower alone would easily conquer the Americans, whether they knew she was coming or not. The vermin back at Sht
urmovoi had revealed nothing she did not suspect the Americans already knew from Covenant’s testimony, so they, too, would all have to die as soon as spring assured her return. The only reason she had left Kravchenko alive was to carry out the most horrible, slow executions conceivable by the human mind. On earth or on Mars, Kravchenko had no equal at this undertaking. And, he enjoyed his task immeasurably. To Dimitriov, he was a slobbering, barbarian idiot; but he was a useful idiot nonetheless.
It was Dimitriov’s decision to strike after nightfall. While she knew that it handed the element of knowledge of the terrain over to the enemy, she also felt as though her strategy of brute strength and massive force would overwhelm whatever defenses the colonists could conjure up in the short time they had after realizing they were going to be attacked. It was not a tactic of finesse, but it was one of historic strategic importance that had long dominated her nation’s past military strategy and historic successes. Strike with as much stealth as possible and strike with everything at once. Reloading was a game for losers.
Dimitriov had gained a constant stream of information from BC1 about every conceivable aspect of their preparations from her private ace-in-the-hole spy, including the exact locations of the life boat stations, numbers and names of fighters outside, locations and purposes of the rail guns, their ranges and their blind spots. Given her computer generated diagrams of BC1’s total current defensive posture, she fully expected to be in a nice warm American bunk, after a long shower and a full meal, by midnight. She intended to keep only one of their number alive - her informant; the rest were all going to die before the next sunrise. The only possible exception, and one on which she had not fully decided, was Peter Traynor. After she had Kravchenko slowly kill his wife in his presence, she would toy with him for sadistic pleasure.
As Dimitriov downloaded the last of the informant’s messages, Kravchenko broke the silence, having not spoken a word since the killing of Dybenko the night before.
“Colonel Dimitriov, what is that, over there?” he asked, pointing at the eastern horizon.
Dimitriov looked up from her console in the lurching SAR to see at what Kravchenko was pointing. Immediately, on the horizon, she recognized the unmistakable serpentine trace of a dust devil rising off the Elysium desert. She was about to lower a verbally abusive volley in Kravchenko’s direction for daring to disturb her important thoughts over something as inconsequential as announcing a dust devil, reflecting to herself that dust devils were common on Mars, particularly at the change of seasons. Their telltale traces had been seen cutting across the Martian sands by orbiting satellites even before the turn of the millenium. Most were akin to their earthly counterparts – spectacular, very short-lived, and usually impotent.
Yet the Martian dust devils did have their own unique characteristics. On Mars, any mechanism that tossed dust and small pebbles about at high velocity was a concern, since even the smallest was capable of puncturing a suit or even a SAR with a well placed projectile. And Martian dust devils had the potential to become massive, resembling terrestrial tornadoes. Without the earth’s dense atmosphere, higher gravity and water to mediate their potential and kinetic energy, the Martian versions could spin into monsters with core wind velocities of well over 900 kilometers per second. Because of the lack of atmospheric pressure and the low gravity, Martian dust devils were capable of creating multiple vortexes that came and went in a matter of seconds as they spun. The larger ones, especially, resembled malevolent hydras as they grew from the desert sands and rose to thousands of meters in height. And this one was indeed massive - larger than any she had ever seen - and it was bearing down on the convoy.
“Colonel Dimitriov, we have a dust devil at constant bearing and decreasing range approaching from 128 degrees true,” came a report over the communications channel from the rear.
“I see it, idiot. Break off immediately,” Dimitriov ordered. In her mind she was clearly ordering them all to split off the convoy and go in different directions to reduce the probability of being struck broadside by the oncoming monster. Much too late she would come to recognize that they had interpreted her order to “break off” to mean “stop communications traffic”.
Dimitriov’s eyes were glued to the oncoming red cloud as it approached them at a velocity that they could never hope to outrun. She saw it gaining momentum as it raced toward them, mutating from deep red to black as it spewed sand out its top into the air and blotted out the sun. She witnessed its tail break into three independent vortexes that rose off the plain, thrashing at supersonic velocity and snapping the desert floor like whips. Then, the hydra merged back again into a single funnel as it dipped once more toward the desert, rushing in their direction with astonishing swiftness.
Too late, Dimitriov managed to unlock her stare from the onrushing dust devil and look behind her. None of her convoy had broken off as she had commanded and they were all following her way too closely, no more than one meter apart. The driver of each SAR was increasing speed in their terror while trying to both drive and observe the oncoming disaster at the same time. Before she could speak and warn them away, the SAR behind them struck the rear of her vehicle and the metal spear mounted on its frame did what it was designed to do: puncture her vehicle and depressurize it instantly. Fortunately, Dimitriov’s standing order had been that they all travel in their fully pressurized suits in the event of any given calamity.
In the moment of depressurization, all the water vapor in the air inside the SAR condensed and froze, rendering every window and helmet visor an opaque sheet of ice. Reflexively, but stupidly, Kravchenko stood on his brake which caused the vehicle following them to ram into them again at full speed. Likewise, every SAR, save the last one, rammed into the rear of the one in front of it. And since they were all outfitted with ramming poles designed to depressurize the BC1 structures, each one depressurized the other.
The last SAR saw the mass collision and miraculously managed to swerve and avoid the rest. Because of the frozen condensate on every window and helmet visor following the mass collision, only the last SAR could see the full extent of the disaster and view the mighty vortex bearing down for the kill.
In a panic, the driver of SAR 6 swerved away frantically and began to drive in what he thought was a safe direction away from the hideous dust devil that had risen like a blood red wall of death before him. He could no longer see the dust devil, and assuming it had passed them safely, quickly ground the SAR to a stop. He immediately popped the hatch on the vehicle and stepped out onto the desert to view the situation. What he did not see, and could not have known, was that the dust devil had risen off the desert floor and was now above him, split into four whipping vortexes right over the top of the SAR. Far too late, he looked up and saw the massive maw of four spinning and lashing claws poised over him like a huge talon hovering over its’ prey. Before he could react or move, in the blink of an eye, one vortex descended and, with a single, violent touch, caused the vehicle to explode into thousands of smaller pieces, killing everyone inside instantly. Then the deadly cloud moved on, and, in less than two minutes, dissipated into the atmosphere as quickly as it had formed.
At that moment, in SAR 4, there was absolute silence, save the various alarms echoing through its interior. The occupants in this vehicle had made a secret pact hours before that they were going to remove their helmets and pressurize their SAR so they would not have to ride in constant discomfort. After all, how could Dimitriov ever possibly find out? They had all died in an instant, their faces frozen in total surprise and covered with a thin sheen of ice.
In a rage of inhuman magnitude that surprised even herself, Dimitriov clawed the ice off her visor with her gloved hands, screaming and cursing over the common communications circuit, using creative word combinations that no one had ever heard before. She slammed the door of her SAR open and leapt out onto the Martian sands planning to immediately execute the driver of SAR 2 on the spot.
But she did not expect the full extent of t
he disaster she saw before her. All around her on the sand lay bits and pieces of SAR 6, its main hulk lying in an unrecognizable pile of debris some 75 meters away. And every other vehicle had impaled itself onto another.
Dimitriov withdrew her Makarov and held it tightly in her fist. She resolved that in the next few minutes, someone was certainly going to die.
The occupants of SARs 2, 3 and 5 piled out of their vehicles dazed and shaken, all of them scratching ice off of their visors. In a rage she walked over to SAR 4 and opened the door. Before her were the frozen faces of the four men and one woman, all without their helmets, staring back through crystalline death masks. Dimitriov was so overcome with wrath that she paced quickly away from the pile-up and walked into the desert. After standing there a full 15 minutes, she turned to walk quickly back.
“Before you return, Colonel Dimitriov, may I have a word?” came a voice through the common communications circuit.
Dimitriov stopped and looked at the assembled group at a distance. “Who is speaking?” she demanded.
“It does not matter who of us it is who speaks, Comrade Leader,” the voice of Valentin Anatoliy said with measured control. “But if you insist on carrying out more executions on this desert, I can assure you that we will all die right here, right now.”
“Do you dare threaten me with mutiny?” she demanded.
“Colonel Dimitriov, we have all faithfully followed you thus far to destroy the enemies of our country. But if you continue to execute us one at a time, they will soon outnumber us by too great a margin and we will not be able to succeed. Already, our number has been reduced to 18 and I do not believe that mathematically we can afford to risk even one more Comrade and achieve our goals.”
Dimitriov stopped, and in an instant, willed her anger away. In a totally uncharacteristic moment, she responded, “You are correct, Comrade, of course. I never meant to return and execute anyone. I was simply here grieving over the loss of our countrymen. Now let us repair our vehicles as quickly as we can and move on. By this time tomorrow, we will have achieved an historic victory!”
Mars Wars - Abyss of Elysium Page 43
