by Graham Brown
“Contact the reserves,” he ordered. “Have them flank our enemies and end this madness.”
The communications officer to his right gave the order and the last of the MRVs moved out into the streets, leaving Gault alone in the city’s central square.
It wasn’t long before he could sense the effects of this latest move. The intercepted radio calls from the 41st told the story.
“This is Bravo Two. We’re getting pinned down on grid one, five, zulu. Enemy units on both corners. Need assistance.”
“We’re trying to get to you Bravo Two, see if you can—”
“Say again Alpha. We did not copy.”
“Alpha?”
“Alpha’s gone. Pull back Bravo, pull back!”
Gault could sense a type of panic setting in amongst the regulars as their numbers dwindled. It brought a smile to his scarred face.
“Finish them,” he whispered to himself. “Finish them.”
A half-mile from Gault’s position, James was even more aware just how badly the battle was going. Rockets and missiles streamed in from every direction. They were ducking and weaving like a fighter in the ring just to avoid obliteration. There was little chance of getting off a well-aimed shot.
“This isn’t good,” Dyson said.
As the words left his mouth, the MRV beside them took a direct hit and exploded like a roman candle going off.
Three more rockets streamed in barely missing them, but a fourth hit their right leg, glancing off before exploding. The big machine began to limp.
“Losing hydraulic pressure,” Dyson shouted. “Switching to back up.”
James could see clearly that they were being surrounded. He made the fateful call. “All units,” he called out. “One final charge. Break this noose or we’re going to be destroyed.”
There was no response. Their antenna had been sheared off in the last hit.
“Go,” he shouted to Dyson.
“Alone?”
“The others will follow! Now move!”
Dyson did as ordered and soon they were turning back into the teeth of the enemy’s fire. James began to fire without aiming. But even then, they didn’t make it far before the hits began to add up.
Cannon fire dented the right side. Explosions in front of them blinded their view forward. Then a direct hit, rocked the cab. Warning lights lit up on every panel. And James flashed back to the defeat at the ridge that had taken Bethel’s life.
“No!” he shouted.
“There’s just too many of them,” Dyson called. “They’re all around us.”
CHAPTER 56
From his spot in the main square, Gault could see it all unfolding on the tracking screen like a chess master hovering over the top of the board. The snare was closing. It would soon be over.
But just when it seemed to be all over but the shouting, things he could not explain began to occur. One by one his own units flashed yellow or red as their telemetry feeds indicated heavy or fatal damage. Some of them blinked off the screen completely as if they’d been removed from the game.
The radio chatter sounded confused, as if the armies of the 41st had somehow flanked them.
“Watch your six, Vultures. Pull back.”
“We’re taking hits. Indirect fire. It’s coming from….”
“From where?
“Everywhere… They’re everywhere”
Finally Gault could stand it no longer. He pressed the comm switch. “What the hell is happening out there?”
“Gault,” one of the commanders replied. “We have to retreat.”
“No!” Gault shouted. “Do not retreat!”
“We have to. We’re being overrun.”
“By who?”
As far as Gault could tell the 41st had less than ten units still in the battle.
“I don’t know,” the commander replied. “Trucks, ATVs, bulldozers. There are hundreds, maybe even thousands of men and women on foot. They have bombs and---”
The signal cut out and the commander’s icon turned red and then vanished.
Gault failed to understand, but he could wait no longer. “All units, pull back,” he ordered. “Retreat and regroup at Government Square.”
Out in the center of the chaos, James could hardly believe what he was seeing. On the very cusp of defeat, assistance had come from out of nowhere.
“My God,” he said, watching a four-wheel drive scout race by with a familiar figure at the controls. “It’s Kamahu.”
“Who?” Dyson asked.
“Old friend of mine.”
Riding on the trucks, ATVs and bulldozers taken from the staging area, Kamahu and several hundred slaves had charged onto the field of battle. They attacked without fear. Some of them rammed bomb laden ATVs into the legs of the mercenary MRVs, tumbling off at the last minute in what looked like suicidal fashion. Others hurled explosives as they raced by, swirling around and confusing the enemy. Waves of gunfire issued from the back of the big flatbeds, like broadsides from an old sailing vessel.
The mercenaries reacted quickly, and their fire was murderous as it poured onto the freed slaves, but the attack continued long enough for James and his forces to recover.
“This is our chance,” he called. “Make it count.”
With everything they had left, the 41st tore into the confused mercenaries. In minutes the line was broken and the few surviving machines were turning tail.
James recalled his mistake from the staging area and chased more cautiously this time. But he was not alone, and soon the fleeing units were run down, hobbled, subdued or destroyed.
Gault saw it all in living color. Aside from a few latecomers that had yet to arrive, his forces were gone.
“Gault, this is Control. Do you read?”
Gault ignored the call.
“Gault! Come in!”
In a fury Gault answered, “My God man, what is it?”
“Cassini is dead. We’ve been pushed back to the command center. The rebels have picked up help from the prisoners and the other citizens. We can’t hold out much longer.”
A sick feeling hit Gault’s stomach. The emptiness of utter defeat.
Damn these people, he thought to himself.
As the words rolled around in his mind he began to smile and then a laugh bubbled up from deep down, a sickly, deranged laugh. “Yes,” he whispered aloud. “Damn them all to hell!”
“Sir?”
Not sure he could trust the command crew to fulfill his next orders, Gault pulled out his side arm and blasted them dead in their seats.
Pulling the dead pilot out of his chair, Gault took over, turned the MRV around and took dead aim at the towering Core Unit looming over the city.
If he was going to die, he might as well go out in style and take all of humanity with him.
CHAPTER 57
Hannah had managed to rescue a hundred soldiers of the 26th armored brigade from the detention center. They fought with revenge in their hearts for those who’d been killed or tortured by the mercenaries, and few of the mercenaries they encountered lived to surrender.
With their help and a sudden uprising from the citizens in general, the little rebellion had grown into a human wave. They swept from building to building and soon overran the control center.
Finally in control, Hannah looked out through the glass wall ahead of her. A thick cloud of smoke hung over the city while fires burned in many of the outer buildings and explosions continued to be heard. As she studied the visual evidence, one of the men from the 26th studied the mercenary’s tactical board.
“What’s it look like?”
The soldier looked up smiling. “Mercenary units all but obliterated. A few coming in from the north, but they won’t make it far. It’s over.
“We’ve won,” someone shouted. “We’ve won!”
Just then a wave of cannon fire ripped through the glass wall in front of them. Hannah dove out of the way, but others weren’t so lucky.
As the gunfire
ceased, bigger detonations shook the building.
Hannah got to her feet and risked a glance. The last mercenary MRV was blasting away at something. Firing everything it had at the walls of the Core Unit.
“Oh my god,” she whispered. “We have to stop that rig from destroying the Core Unit,” she shouted, “or this whole city will go up in a mushroom cloud.”
“No way we can stop that rig with these weapons,” the soldier replied.
“Find a radio,” Hannah ordered. “Get in touch with the 41st. Or all of this is going to be for nothing.”
James and Dyson were tracking toward the government center when long range fire began pelting them from afar. The shots were inaccurate, but substantial.
“They’re coming across the two mile bridge,” Dyson said. “I count three of them.”
Two Mile Bridge was not two miles long but was named for being situated two miles from the edge of Olympia on the northern route.
“Yellow Four,” James called. “Take the rest of the units and deal with these guys. Do not let them into the city. We’re continuing on to the government center.”
“Roger,” Four replied. “We’ll take care of them.”
As the last MRVs peeled off to finish the enemy, James tried to get their systems back on line. He managed to cycle the ammunition feed in the rotary cannon bay and clear the jammed link. He was working on repowering the targeting sensors when another desperate call came in.
“41st Armored, this is Hannah Ankaris. Do you read?”
James was thrilled to hear her voice. “Hannah, this is James. What’s your status?”
“We’ve taken the government center and the control building but we have a problem. There’s one mercenary heavy left in the square out front and it’s blasting the hell out of the Core Unit. I think it’s Gault.”
“The Core Unit?” Dyson said. “Why would anyone--”
He didn’t have to finish.
“We’re on our way.”
CHAPTER 58
Gault had taken a shot at the government building out of shear spite but his real target was the fusion reactor at the heart of the Core Unit. He had every intention of blasting through the containment building, destroying the cooling system and setting the fusion reactor into an unstoppable meltdown that would result in a thermo-nuclear explosion.
He laughed as he fired away at the wall. To hell with the settlers, to hell with the army and the Cartel and Lucien Rex. To hell with all of humanity as far as he was concerned.
As he loosed the last salvo of missiles and waited to see the effect, he began to grow frustrated. The thick, concrete walls were gouged and cracked from his assault, but they were also five feet thick.
Undaunted, he resumed the attack this time opening fire with the plasma cannon. Each hit was devastating, superheating the concrete and blasting chunks of it free due to simple and sudden expansion from the heat.
He continued to fire, maneuvering closer, certain he’d almost completed his task.
A call interrupted his revelry.
“Gault, this is Major Collins of the 41st Armored Division. Cease your attack on the Core Unit and stand down or you’ll be destroyed.”
Gault had no intention of standing down. But the call stunned him just the same. Collins... James Collins. It could not be. But of course it was. Who else would it be?
Disgusted more than anything else, Gault ignored the call and continued to fire, this time augmenting the plasma fire with the bursts from the armor piercing rotary cannon. The heavy shells did more damage than he’d expected, and soon the whole square was filled with a cloud of concrete dust. As it cleared, Gault could see that he was almost through. He lined up to fire, ready to end it for one and all.
Dyson had the throttle on the MRV wide open but the big rig was struggling and wheezing, and James could tell the limping machine would not make it much further.
“We’re losing hydraulic pressure to the right leg,” Dyson warned.
“Compensate for it,” James called back.
“I can’t. The fluid reservoir is almost empty.”
They were so close, only a single glass and steel building between them and Gault. A single obstacle to go around.
“Take us to the right,” James ordered.
Dyson maneuvered for the turn but the MRV stumbled like a drunken man about to fall. Before it toppled, the right leg stiffened and the rig seized up.
“Dyson.”
“I’m sorry. There’s nothing left.”
James looked around in desperation. He could actually hear the pounding being unleashed on the walls of the Core Unit on the other side of the building. In a distorted reflection of a third structure he could see Gault’s MRV unleashing the hellacious onslaught, but he could not reach him.
He had only one choice. He turned the cab to the left, locking the turret’s sights onto the building between them. “God help me,” he said, and then he opened fire.
The rotary cannons spun and unleashed a wave of armor piercing shells that quickly carved a tunnel through the building between them and out the other side. With a sight line that ran straight to the back of Gault’s rig, James flicked the selector to missiles and let the last of his birds fly.
They launched without hesitation and took flight through the wrecked building like fiery arrows through a darkened cave. They caught Gault’s machine center back, just above the spot where the cab rested on the chassis, where the armor was weakest.
The impact buckled the plating and the explosions sent the machine tumbling forward. It crashed face first into the street and then blew itself apart from the inside.
CHAPTER 59
In the moments after Gault’s rig exploded, James, Dyson and Lasky remained on full alert, waiting for a hit that never came. Soon the reports came in from all over the city. The mercenaries had been captured, killed or had run out into the desert where the slaves were pursuing them on the remaining vehicles. James didn’t imagine many of those caught would live to become prisoners.
When the main computer in their MRV gave up, the ghost and the cooling system failed. James knew they had no choice.
“Abandon ship,” he joked. “Time to meet up with the resistance.”
The three of them grabbed rifles and climbed out of the wrecked vehicle.
As Dyson made contact with members of the 26th, James made his way to Gault’s obliterated rig. It had mostly burned out, but the charred remnants continued to smolder and issue black smoke. Three blackened bodies told him all he needed to know about the occupants who’d been inside.
James looked around. The city was burning, the air so filled with smoke that it blotted the sun from the sky. The darkness and carnage brought to mind Earth and all the battles he’d fought under the clouds of carbon, but unlike the home planet, this one still had hope. As if to prove it, the smoke thinned and the disk of the sun appeared, red as blood, but still shining as the smoke drifted past on the wind.
CHAPTER 60
A week after the battle the mood was upbeat as the newly formed government of Mars began ratifying a constitution that guaranteed rights and protections for one and all. In the damaged but hastily repaired government building, James sat in the balcony listening to the final vote and smiling as the gavel went down.
The speaker of the new government read out the results in a booming voice that everyone could hear without a microphone. “One hundred and fourteen votes for, and zero votes against! The constitution is passed unanimously.”
The hall erupted in a chorus of cheers as Hannah, now the leader of the newly formed government, smiled beside James.
“We don’t really need a PA system as long as he’s the speaker,” she said.
James laughed. Of that there was no doubt.
Up on the podium, Kamahu was celebrating with the others, shaking hands and grinning broadly. There were no more slaves or laborers on Mars, only citizens. Everything would be shared and the work on the other sites would resume once O
lympia had been repaired.
As a crowd of the new senators came to speak with Hannah and Julian, James was thankful to have turned down any part in the government.
“I’ll leave you to this,” he said.
“Where are you going?”
“To get some air.”
As the celebration got under way, James left the great hall and made his way outside. A long walk took him out of the city and onto a dirt road that ran beside green fields on one side and golden brown on the other.
For now at least, the smoke and dust were nowhere to be found and the sun was high overhead. In truth, it was a day unlike any James had ever experienced.
He made his way past the fields and came to a place where the oldest trees on Mars stood, trees planted by the first settlers. They were maturing now, fed by the irrigation and the morning mist.
There, under a weeping willow tree next to a stream of clear water, a burial mound lay, silent and still. No headstone had been crafted yet, but one day James would carve one on his own.
He sat down beside the mound and smoothed some of the dirt with his hand. “I wish you could see this place, my friend. It’s incredible. You can watch the sun rise and cross the sky. You can feel its warmth on your skin and watch it set beneath the arms of the trees. You can hear the water running and drink from the stream. It feels like heaven. And I’m going to name it after you.”
With that, James reached into the backpack he had with him, pulled out two shot glasses and filled them with crystal clear water from the stream. “One for the living,” he said, “and one for the dead.”
As was the custom, James raised his shot glass to the setting sun and then to Bethel’s grave. After drinking from his own glass, he placed it down beside the second one, leaving them both at rest on the rich, maroon soil.
