"What the hell, Chief? I thought we were doing a second wave deep into the mountains past Elysium." He returned the salute to the maintenance chief climbing the ladder on the other side of the fighter and then stepped down another rung of his own ladder. Jack pulled the seal ring on his gloves and removed them with a pop swoosh. He tossed them beside his helmet as an afterthought.
"Yes, sir. It appears that the Madira and most of the fleet has been called to the Tharsis Mons region. Mons City has been overrun by a large invasion force and we are pulling out to there."
"No shit?" Jack couldn't believe what he was hearing. Mons City under attack? Those Seppy bastards have got some kind of balls.
I agree, sir, his AIC Candis commented.
"Well, pull that backseat hardware out of my fighter and reload it with standard gear. I suspect I'll be going back into the mix when we get there along with the rest of the Gods of War." Jack nodded to the chief. "Meantime, I'm gonna get some chow."
"Yes sir! I'd avoid the meatloaf sir. The stuff gave Hull Technician Third Class Joe Buckley the worst case of the shits I ever saw. He literally almost shit himself to death. Doc says he's gonna make it though." He laughed but his warning was serious. After all, it was the chief's job to make sure his pilots and their gear were always running top-notch and ship shape. He had to do his part in taking care of the men. Sure the CAG would say the pilots were his men, and the captain of the Madira would say they were his, but the chief knew different. He looked out for his men.
"Thanks, Chief. Has double zero reported in yet?" Boland asked.
"You haven't heard?" The chief turned three shades of pale.
"Heard what?" Jack stood still. He'd seen that look on the chief's face before. Even through the smut, oil, and other grime covering the chief's orange coveralls from head to toe he could tell the chief was hurting inside.
"Lieutenant Commander Tyler was shot down south of Elysium about fifteen minutes ago. She and her AIC were lost." The chief looked at his boots for a brief moment.
"Shit!"
"Yes sir. Seppy motherfuckers! Some of the pilots were saying there was a new Seppy mecha out there that got her. Did you see any new vehicles sir?"
"No. But I didn't engage them as long. I did see a whole shitload of mecha on the ground though."
"Remember sir, don't eat the meatloaf."
"See ya later, Chief. I can't believe it. And get that backseat out of my plane."
Jack couldn't believe it. Sarah Tyler, call sign EvilDead, good ol' double zero, the CAG, was shot down. Jack had known Sarah for years. They went through flight school together. Shit!
Yes sir. Shit! Candis agreed. Jack, the XO's AIC has ordered us to see him ASAP.
Tell him we're on our way. I guess the meatloaf can wait anyway.
"Lieutenant Commander Boland, sir!" Jack snapped a quick salute as he stepped into the XO's office. The chief executive officer looked up from his coffee cup and glanced to his right at his office couch. Captain Wallace Jefferson nodded to them both as well as a man that Boland had seen only one other time—the briefing where he met Nancy Penzington.
"At ease, gentlemen," the captain said. The man with no name was wearing a lieutenant's insignia, but Jack doubted that the man was in any branch of the military, since the last time he saw the man he was wearing an army colonel's uniform.
"Sir." Jack stood at ease with his hands behind his back.
"Have a seat, son," the XO said, waving to an office chair. Jack just nodded and took a seat.
"First things first." The captain started. "Was the package delivered?"
"The package was delivered coincident with the ordnance, sir," Jack said in a low, quiet tone. All the cloak-and-dagger stuff tended to make him lower his voice subconsciously.
"Good enough?" Captain Jefferson asked the "lieutenant."
"Excellent. Thank you, Captain, Colonel Chekov, and thank you, Lieutenant Commander Boland. Your country owes you a debt of gratitude. There will be a sealed classified commendation added to your personal records." The man offered to shake Jack's hand. Jack rose and gripped the man's hand firmly.
"Thank you, uh, Lieutenant." Jack smirked.
"Captain." The man nodded and made his exit from the XO's office.
"Is that all, sir?" Lieutenant Commander Boland asked.
"One more thing, Jack. Your new flight number is double zero again. Try not to blow up any civilian domes this time."
"Yes, sir."
"We'll expect you to say a few things at the service," Colonel Chekov added. "Sarah will be sorely missed."
"Yes, sir. She will. She has a daughter but she's grown. Still, she'll miss her mother." Jack straightened himself up. "Other orders, sir? What about this Mons City thing?"
"Well, Jack, it appears as though you'll be going to work in a couple hours or so. No rest for the CAG. Mons City has been overrun and the Churchill has been completely destroyed by sabotage as far as we can tell. Also, our long-range communications into the area have been completely jammed. Even the hardlines have been cut, but we're getting data out from daisy chained QM coms and from the Mars News Network AIC feeds."
"Jesus," Jack muttered.
"My sentiments exactly, son." The captain paused for a second.
"How did they sabotage the Churchill, sir?"
"We have zero intel or BDA at this point. We have no idea how they managed to get onto the ship and with ordnance. Maybe they used some ordnance already on the ship, but then how did they get to it? We could go nuts trying to figure that out without any data. So don't, that's an order." It was clear the CO was unhappy with the situation.
"Yes, sir."
"Just know that we are upping the security on all the ships in the fleet as we speak."
"Makes sense, sir. What do we do about Tharsis?" Jack was certain there was a big fight coming. Seppy bastards can't just blow up a U.S. Navy supercarrier and attack a city and expect to get away with it, he thought.
Absolutely not! Candis agreed.
"The air and space over the entire Tharsis region have been secured by the Seppies," the CO continued. "Initial drop tanks came in a large cargo freighter and dropped on the city at the same time the Churchill was destroyed. Then the freighter evaded the rest of the fleet over Tharsis just long enough to lure them in and detonate itself. The thing went off with the energy of a gluonium bomb and took out most of the local fleet."
"Holy shit, sir. Gluonium? Where did they get that?"
"Good question. There's more. Only minutes after the freighter's detonation, six carriers dropped out of hyperspace from somewhere out past Kuiper Station. Drop tanks and other Seppy mecha have been scattered across the region. The bastards can only hold the space for a few more hours with just six ships. We are going to bring all eighteen supercarriers and more than ten lesser-sized vehicles of the fleet in and crush them if the president gives the go-ahead. Unfortunately, there are over five million hostages in the Olympus Mons area, and more than twenty-five million spread out in the other Tharsis mountain cities, all assumed captured with many thousands dead. We've received no terms from the Seppies, so who knows what they are planning."
"Where did they get six carriers from, sir?"
"Your guess is as good as any right now. And Jack, there is one more glitch here."
"Sir?"
"We just got a courier from Earth in a small ship capable of hyperspace. The courier brought us this data straight from the Pentagon. Since the long-range coms are jammed we're sending messages back and forth the old-fashioned way." The CO tapped a few keys on a console at his desk and spun the monitor around for Jack to see. "Read this intel. It is quite alarming. The Seppies have a new fighter mecha that appears to be a poor man's copy of the FM-12. Analysts' details are in there, but if you haven't heard yet, we encountered a squadron of them after you had gone past the engagement zone. They are formidable and there are eyewitness accounts and computer analyses of them in there as well. All I can suggest is that you read
this intel and plan accordingly."
"Aye, sir."
"The main thing is to prepare air support for an attack on six carriers, with the Sienna Madira running point and minimizing damage to the civilian population and hostages and at the same time allow for a VIP extraction at the ground coordinates in the file. I want you to have the air group ready in ninety minutes. We attack in two hours and thirty minutes. Understood, Lieutenant Commander?" The captain stared at him tight-lipped.
"Sir! I'm on it."
"And . . . DeathRay . . . "
"Sir?"
"Good hunting."
"Yes sir!"
Chapter 9
11:15 PM Mars Tharsis Standard Time
". . . This is Gail Fehrer with MNN on the ground in the central dome of Mons City. My crew and I were able to escape the war zone in the southern borough domes and sneak into the main dome with the moving Separatist troops. That was quite a harrowing experience, Shennan," the reporter whispered into the video as she scanned over her shoulders for activity.
"How long did it take to get from one borough to the next, Gail? We've been told that the tunnels from one dome to the next had been cut off," the anchorman said deadpan, as if reading from a teleprompter or, more likely, repeating from his AIC.
"It wasn't an easy trek, Shennan." Feher's reply was considerably more animated than the anchor's. "The Seppies have an exterior route set up where they are trucking troops and equipment from dome to dome and from drop ships that have landed between them. We hitched a ride on the back of one of the equipment loads. We were almost discovered two or three different times. We just uploaded some video to you that shows some of this as well as the enemy movement through the airseam on the South wall of the main dome just north of the central city recycling plant. The airseam down there is large enough for lightly armored vehicles to get through. The main dome of Mons City is overrun by the Separatist forces. We have seen some signs that the Separatist troops are rounding up the civilians and moving them inward toward the center of the city. We don't know where to at this point."
"As far as we can tell here at the MNN building, we—the entire city including the boroughs—are being held captive by this invasion force. There has been no word from any of the Separatist leaders at all and we are really uncertain why MNN is still being unjammed and allowed to broadcast. Any idea of what the Separatist forces have in mind? I mean, they can't really believe they can hold off the United States Fleet do they?" Shennan asked with a little more animation than before.
"Throughout history General Ahmi has proven to be wiser than this and has tried not to create an all out engagement with the U.S. on what is considered mainland U.S. soil. There haven't been skirmishes on Earth in more than a century and few on Mars since the Martian Desert Campaign. Since that skirmish more than thirty years ago she has shown no signs of desiring a full-scale war. But, Shennan, I'd have to say something appears to have changed with that policy. The forces we saw outside the domes and moving into the domes are well organized, equipped, and appear to me to be ready for war. The death toll already must be hundreds of thousands if not more. This is war, no doubt. And the question still remains as to where they got so much support and —" Fehrer nodded as if her cameraman had said something to her and then she turned to look over her right shoulder.
"Gail, what is it?"
"Shennan, I'm sorry, but we have to go now. We'll contact you when we can. This is Gail Fehrer for MNN reporting." Then the video feed went blank.
"Wow, amazing report from MNN correspondent Gail Fehrer. Godspeed and be safe Gail. Let's go now to . . . "
"Alexander, we can't fight these soldiers. Deanna is too . . . "
"Yeah, dear, I know. I should never have faced off with the men in the elevator. This was a bad, very bad plan." Senator Moore carried his daughter as they fled through the bowels of the Mons City infrastructure. Using security feeds and other sensors, such as automatic door activations and elevator operations, and by eavesdropping on the enemy communications channels, his AIC staffer was helping them evade capture. The AIC continued to hack away at the security protocols of the commandeered Separatist soldier's AIC with marginal luck. For now Alexander kept the small implant in his pocket, but if Abigail couldn't hack into it within the next five minutes he was going to smash the thing.
"Mr. Moore." Reyez Jones, who was taking up the rear position a hallway behind them, called to him on the e-suit to e-suit wireless.
"Reyez?"
"I was down here once about a year ago and I think there is a garbage incinerator a few hundred meters from here," Reyez said.
"And?" Moore held up and waited for his wife and Joanie Hassed to cross the intersecting hallway to be followed closely by Reyez. Moore motioned to Reyez to hold the conversation until he was in audible distance. "Let's stay off the radio if we don't have to use it. So, what about the garbage incinerator?"
Abigail, DTM the blueprints for this floor showing this incinerator if you can get them, he thought to his staffer.
Already working on it, Senator. All I've got are the same engineering blueprints we've had for these lower levels of the city. The highlighted pathways are the route to the garbage collection and destruction system.
Thanks.
"Well, if I remember right . . . " Reyez rolled his eyes to the ceiling in thought or recollection and was distracted momentarily by the brown mold stains scattered about by the leaky plumbing system of the city's engineering infrastructure. "I seem to recall a service lift for reclaimable resources that could be transported to one of the manufacturing domes. I think it goes to a highbay and an airseam at the Southeast side of the dome."
"Alexander, I'd rather take my chances outside than inside," Sehera added.
"We could hide out there easier. There are sensors and electronic gates everywhere here," Joanie Hassed agreed. Her life on Triton during the terrorist insurgency there had taught her the valuable lesson of lying low and staying out of sight. She would have rather kept Senator Moore from engaging the Seppies altogether, but it was too late for that now. And the big man seemed to know what he was doing.
"Okay. We go to that elevator and then out of the dome. We'll see about transportation to an evac once we get that far." One thing a former Marine could do was to adapt and improvise. He continued to think in the Major Moore mode rather than as Senator Moore. He hoped that would keep them uncaptured and alive.
Abigail, how is the IFF hack coming?
It is harder than I thought it would be. The Separatist AIC technology is better than I had expected. A few more minutes. The AIC seemed uncertain of itself.
We don't need to risk a few more minutes right now, unless you are certain you are jamming it. Are you?
No sir.
Thought so. Keep thinking about it and maybe we'll get another sample later. But for now, I don't want them tracking us directly with it. Moore fished into his breast pocket and dug out the little sunflower- seed-shaped implant and then dropped it on the ground in front of him. He twisted it into the floor with the ball of his jumpboot causing a barely audible crunch.
Understood sir.
How are you coming with the cloaking hack countermeasure?
I know the signal is there because there is more energy overall in the bandwidth than should be there. But without the encryption sequence I can't find it. The dictionary code breaking search is still running but could take years. Any suggestions? Abigail asked.
Yeah, keep at it. Moore was ready for something to go their way, but so far his plans had been falling apart on him. Perhaps he should have listened to those two idiots at the adventure shop and just stayed put there.
"You want another beer?" Rod Taylor finished off his Mons Light and then crushed the can against his forehead. "Reckon those idiots made it to the top of the dome?"
"I'll take one," Vincent Peterson belched and then took out a pack of cigarettes and started to light it up. "Who knows. Hate he had to take that little girl along with t
hem. They're liable to get her killed. Idiots."
"Hey man, this ain't a smoking section of the dome." Rod smiled and handed his young friend another light beer. "Yeah, poor kid."
"Uh, Rod. Look outside that freakin' window."
"Yeah? What about it?" Rod shrugged his shoulders and reached into the red and white cooler they had liberated from the beverage store down the street for another beer himself.
"I don't think with all those Seppy bastards out there anybody's gonna give a flying shit if I have a smoke." Vince pointed at the armored trucks convoying down the street and shook his head.
"Well, it just ain't considerate is all—" Rod started but was interrupted by a group of Separatist troops in e-suits that had begun to unass outside the door of the shop and two of the men came through the door with two behind them in standard two-on-two coverage formation.
"What's up?" Vincent looked up at the Seppy railgun barrel lowered at him and lit his cigarette. "We're closed."
Lieutenant Commander Jack Boland sat in the middle of a row of ten simulation consoles in the Battle Operations and Scenario Simulation Room, the BOSS as it was known. The low level lighting of the room was accentuated only by the flickering of changing scenes on flat panel computer displays and cast a dim blue hue over the overcrowded computer battle lab. The display screens were mainly for secondary data acquisition and list display as most of the simulation was done through DTM link.
Jack's AIC was connected hardwire for maximum data rate to the BOSS wargaming, logistics, tactics, and strategy computer system. The BOSS main computer ran trillions of calculations per second to help squadron commanders plan and simulate upcoming operations. The BOSS implemented state-of-the-art AI software and genetic algorithms to predict the outcome of multiple coupled dynamical systems and perform calculations that consisted of thousands of differential equations all tangled up and connected in some way to each other.
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