One Day on Mars s-1

by Travis S. Taylor

  "Fox three!" he cried, letting loose a mecha-to-mecha missile that twisted through the fiery debris trails, hitting the Stinger mecha dead center of the pilot cabin. The enemy mecha exploded into a spinning orange and white fireball. Jack had to just grit his teeth and fly through.

  "Where do you think you're going! Fox three!" Fish said. "That's another toasted Gomer."

  "Yeah well, don't get cocky, there're plenty more where that one came from! Shit!" Jack flipped his bird a complete one hundred and eighty degrees without changing his flight path direction and grimaced at the pain from the massive g-loading. "Fox three!" He fired a missile, taking out the mecha that had taken position on Fish's six.

  "Thanks, sir," Fish said sheepishly.

  "Warboys, Warboys! DeathRay! Copy?"

  "Warboys, here! Go DeathRay."

  "We're gonna try to turn these bastards off of you if we can. But we're taking a pounding, so you might want to hunker down in case it doesn't work," Jack told the Army tank driver.

  "Negative, DeathRay, that is a negative. If you can do anything to steer them, bring 'em on to us!"

  "They have you waaay outnumbered, Colonel!" Jack warned Warboys.

  "You let us worry about that. Besides, I got me some friends."

  "Roger that." Jack's sensors only showed the AEMs, but four AEMs against a bunch of mecha couldn't be much advantage. Warboys must be cooking up something and the Killers were nearby, somewhere.

  "XO! We're rapidly losing pilots!" Captain Jefferson's DTM lists of his crew were blinking out fast. Since the invisible Seppy ships had entered the mix, the battle had turned in the wrong direction—seriously in the wrong direction.

  "Aye sir! We need to pull the Ares fighters in, I think. They can't fight like this," Colonel Checkov replied.

  "Can't pull them in now! Tell them to get out of the engagement zone at max velocity on any safe vector! And get me every gun with eyeball tracking capability we've got on the exterior decks," the CO ordered.

  "Aye sir!"

  Sir!

  Yes, Timmy?

  The Yeltsin has taken heavy damage from one of the ghost ships. It is venting and on fire! The Thatcher has taken heavy damage and the Washington has lost its SIF generators! The Lincoln, Reagan, Kolmogorov, Ames, Crippen, and the Blair are completely out of commission and reporting no propulsion or weapons capabilities.

  Shit. The CO scrolled up the Madira's health monitor to the foreground in his mindview. The battle still raging in the mindview sphere around his head.

  "CO! Word from Engineering is that the SIFs are holding but the coolant systems for the DEGs are battered to hell. We're going to lose the forward starboard DEGs soon!" the XO alerted the CO. Although the CO had health monitoring menus on the ship in front of him, it was the XO's job to get firsthand reports from the sailors keeping the systems running.

  "XO, the guns must fire! Structural integrity will do us no good if we are sitting ducks and not returning volleys."

  "Aye sir!"

  "Helmsman Marks! R equal to four kilometers, theta equal to ten degrees, and phi set to one hundred degrees at maximum normal speed! Pitch, yaw, and roll to maximize port DEG targeting angles!" the CO ordered.

  "Aye sir!"

  "Fireman's Apprentice King! Lock that shit down right now!" Hull Technician Petty Officer Third Class Joe Buckley alerted the young enlisted man to the overheating flow valve on the starboard side main directed energy gun coolant system. The three-dimensional DTM view of the ship's flow systems in both of their heads showed overheating systems in red and nominal ones in green. There was a lookup table ranging from green to red of different levels of status for the flow equipment. Some of the systems flowed liquid waste products while others flowed superheated liquid metals. The valve on the forward DEG coolant loop would have to be locked out and the flow rerouted or it could go critical and start a serious fire on the below deck of the weapon system.

  "The software to the valve shows it locked HT3, but the flow meters are still reading seventeen megapascals on the flow pressure. The only flow valve down stream is from the SIF generator loop on the forward decks. Do I divert the flow?" Fireman's Apprentice Jimmy King had never seen the Madira hammered so hard. He had been on board for only a few weeks and the previous day's mission had been his first combat. Oh, there had been pilots going and coming from the supercarrier going into battle, but this was the first time the Madira itself had been in the mix of a full-scale naval battle and taking on anything worse than a few SAMs.

  "No! Jimmy, if the SIFs go out on that end we'll have a standard coolant pipe with over seventeen megapascals of pressure in it. The instant that SIF went down, the pipe would be a bomb of exploding superheated liquid toxic metals!" Buckley scratched his head in thought for a brief second. The Madira lurched downward suddenly and a little faster than the inertial control system could compensate for, leaving Buckley with the brief feeling that his stomach was somewhere on the deck above him.

  "We've got to do something, boss. The pressure in that loop is rising and the main gun is just getting hotter!" the fireman's apprentice replied. "Shit!" He grabbed the sides of his station to keep his balance as the ship continued to jerk randomly.

  "No, the cats on all ends are at minimal use now that the fighters are out. Switch over the catapult coolant flow loops to the main gun coolant loops. Maybe that'll take some of the pressure off that stuck valve. The goddamned thing is probably seized open. That happened to us last year at Triton. That was ugly." Buckley grabbed at an icon for the cat coolant reservoir to read the internal temperature of the coolant bladder. Although the cats weren't going presently, they had just taken a hell of a thermal load to launch more than four full squadrons of fighters, mecha, and drop tanks in the last few minutes. The reservoir was above midway on the look-up table, reading yellow and not that far from red. But yellow was better than red. "Fuck. It'll have to do."

  "HT3!"

  "What now!"

  "Looks like the port side SIF generators are starting to overheat!" Jimmy said with a little panic in his voice.

  "CO! Port SIF generators are overheating. Starboard DEGs are overheating. We can either take a pounding and not fire or fire and take a pounding!" the XO warned the captain of the Sienna Madira.

  "Air Boss! I want all the mecha on the Starboard exterior decks now!" the CO ordered.

  "Aye sir!"

  "Senator, I think it is time you find a better hiding place," BIL announced over the speaker.

  "I agree, BIL. Can you let us out of here?" Moore asked. Just as he did, the rear door slid upward letting the sunlight in. "Let's go! Everybody with me!" Moore grabbed his daughter from his wife and dove out the ass end of the giant mechanical arachnid bouncing with fifteen meter steps at a full run. "BIL, go hide somewhere."

  "Very well, Senator. It was fun talking with you."

  "You as well, BIL. Thanks for the lift."

  "You are very welcome. Bye, little one." The garbage hauler actually lifted one of its front legs and waved it at Deanna.

  "Bye, BIL." Deanna waved over her father's shoulder back at the garbage hauler.

  Reyez, Joanie, the reporter and her cameraman, and the senator's wife followed him, bouncing out of the garbage hauler onto the Martian soil. The cameraman, Calvin Dean, was videoing with every bounce and every breath. He paused for a second to get a shot of the two dozen American tanks hovering about the gorge's edge and the tank driver talking to a few armored soldiers. The mechanical spider let them out very near the edge of a large drop-off into the gorge at the bottom of the giant volcano's outermost edge. The drop-off must have been at least a half a kilometer deep or more in places.

  "Okay, we're going to go to the edge of that set of lava stone outcroppings there and dig into the sand and hide until the evac gets here," the retired Marine ordered them.

  Senator? his AIC said into his mind.

  Yes, Abigail?

  The FM-12 mecha pilots claim to have found the signal center freque
ncy.

  Yeah? Moore landed just behind the stone outcropping and sat his daughter down against the largest rock. "Stay down and don't move."

  "Yes, Daddy," Deanna said.

  It has a center pulse at two three three six megahertz, sir.

  Well, that narrows the search down to a bandwidth around that peak. Look for the hopping frequencies around that one. Alexander knew his AIC would have already thought of that.

  I'm doing that sir, but without more information that is still an excessive number of combinations. It might take a while.

  Well, keep at it.

  Of course, Senator.

  "Alexander, what now?" His wife Sehera bounced beside him. She was panting for breath, her e-suit inner layer slowly absorbing and recycling the sweat rolling off her face.

  "Dig!" he started digging a foxhole behind the rocks. "We dig a hole and hide until they can get us out of here. Where is our goddamned evac?" He looked around the horizon for an aircraft but saw none.

  Abigail, where is the goddamned evac?

  Hold one second . . . the area is too hot right now, Senator. There is a squad of Starhawks in orbit waiting for a green light.

  Shit, get word to them that we have a child with us!

  Yes, sir.

  They all started digging. Alexander and Joanie used the butts of the Seppy HVARs for shovels. The Martian regolith pushed out of the way slowly as it was cold and hard and filled with lava stones.

  "Allow me," a voice said as a shadow loomed behind them.

  "What the?" Moore spun around with the rifle but the large Marine standing there quickly blocked the barrel and held up the palm of his heavily armored hand at the senator.

  "Easy, sir. We're the good guys," Sergeant Jackson said, and pointed at the E5 markings on the shoulder of his e-suit. "I hear you should understand what that means sir?"

  "You're damned right I do, Sergeant. Semper fuckin' Fi!" Alexander shook the AEM's hand. The armored hand engulfed the hand of the standard e-suit Moore was wearing. The sergeant motioned the senator out of the way so he stepped back to let him through.

  "Lieutenant, I've found them." The sergeant alerted the other AEMs and then knelt to the rocks and started digging. The added strength of the armored e-suit enabled the Marine sergeant to dig faster and deeper than all of the civilians put together.

  "Need a hand, Sergeant?" Private Kudaf and Corporal Shelly bounced into the beginnings of a nice foxhole and started digging, too.

  "That was an interesting ride you folks had." One of the AEMs offered the senator his hand. "Second Lieutenant Washington, sir. I assume you are Senator Alexander Moore?"

  "Lieutenant." Moore nodded. "That garbage hauler AI turned out to be pretty damned useful."

  "Well, if you ask me, Senator," Corporal Shelly added, "spiders, mechanical or not, are just plain creepy. Why not make the thing look like a dog or a cat or something?"

  "You got nothing better to do, Corporal?" Sergeant Jackson looked over at the Marine, warning her to keep her mind on her job.

  "Ha, I wouldn't have minded if it had been a pig. It got us here," Reyez said. "Smelled like a pig though."

  Something the female corporal had said triggered a thought cascade in Abigail's neural network. There was something about animals that seemed to have a familiar pattern to it that she had trained herself to learn before. There was something just at the tip of her software mind but she couldn't quite place it. The AIC knew there was something important here. Something about animals . . .

  Abigail! Cats! That's it! A cat! The senator was excited.

  I know there is something about a cat, Senator. But what? Abigail could just taste that she was near the answer to the jamming signal.

  No! Don't you remember? Ahmi had that goddamned AI kitty every day in that fuckin' POW hell hole! A cat! What frequency do commercial AIKs use?

  I don't know, Senator. And, honestly, I'm not certain why I didn't remember that piece of information. But BIL is still in range. I'll have him look it up over the infrastructure communication line. Somebody on the Madira should know. I'll get started on it now.

  "Does anybody here know anything about the spectrum of AI Kitties?" Moore asked the AEMs as they spread out the foxhole and prepared it for battle.

  "Sorry, Senator. Look, we should get in the foxhole," the second lieutenant warned.

  BIL, I need all the technical info on AI Kitties I can get as fast as I can get it. Can you help me? Abigail QMed to him on the infrastructure channel.

  I'd love to help you, Abigail. You are such fun to talk with. Please stand by, BIL said.

  Senator? BIL is searching.

  Keep me posted. Alexander wished there was a way to just download the info DTM so that he would know it, but DTM just added another sensory approach and you still had to experience the data before you remembered it. Alexander had confidence in his AIC. He knew she would summarize the important parts of data from large amounts of information for him.

  Yes, sir.

  Chapter 16

  1:30 PM Mars Tharsis Standard Time

  "Everybody down! Now!" Second Lieutenant Washington pulled the civilians into the foxhole as several Ares fighters corkscrewed overhead, only a few tens of meters off the deck, with a wake of noise and flying Martian dust trailing behind them. Two of them were being tracked by Seppy Gnats and there were several Seppy Stingers in bot-mode bouncing and flying around in the mix.

  The American tank squadron had gone to bot-mode and were scattering fast along the ridgeline and had begun firing their cannons and main directed energy weapons. The DEGs were held in the hand of the bot-mode tanks and were being fired from the hip.

  A mass of Seppy drop tanks pounded over the hillside. There had to be more than two hundred of them and they were intermingled with ground vehicles and armored Seppy troops that were scattering the mountainside with automatic railgun fire.

  "Marines! Hold off on cover fire and shut down the QMs. We are to keep the civilians out of harm's way! Understood," Washington ordered his AEMs.

  "Lieutenant, those Army tanks are extremely outnumbered . . . shit!" Moore instinctively ducked his head as an Ares fighter screamed over his head flying upside down and backwards while washing the sky with its blue-green directed energy pulses. A Seppy missile struck the fighter on the port wing, sending it reeling and slamming into the ground. Martian soil, fire, smoke, and debris flew upward in a slow arc across the edge of the escarpment.

  "What would you have us do, Senator?" the second lieutenant asked.

  "Fight, Marine! Fight!" Major Moore said. "Fight and keep those Seppy motherfuckers off my family!" He rolled the Seppy HVAR off his shoulder and turned to Reyez Jones who was cowering in the bottom of the foxhole. "Reyez Jones! If I give you the order you WILL pick up my daughter and jump over that escarpment with her. Do you hear me, Reyez Jones!"

  "Uh, yes, Senator! That is a hell of an idea. Why not do it now?" Jones perked up and peaked over the edge of the foxhole at the fifty-meter run to the edge of the cliff.

  "No!" Major Moore ordered. "You'll do it when I say so. That is a last effort because we won't have any Marines or Army tanks down there to protect us. But if I give the word you go! Go fast! And you protect my daughter with your life, understand!" The senator turned to his wife and held her hand for a brief second. "Sehera, you'll be right behind him, right?"

  "I'll be right behind him, Alexander." Sehera replied affectionately to her husband. If they hadn't been in e-suits she would have kissed him and her daughter.

  "All right then, I'm gonna keep these motherfuckers off our ass!" Major Moore said and patted his daughter on the helmet. "I love you, baby." He smiled at the little girl and bounced about fifteen meters out of the foxhole and then four or five more times to another stone outcropping and took up a sniper position nearly seventy meters away.

  "I love you, Daddy," the little girl cried. She wasn't sure what exactly was going on but she could tell by the reaction of the adults that someth
ing was serious and scary and the noise was terrible and she didn't like the tone of her daddy's voice.

  "That's right, Marine, fight!" Joanie Hassed, the little Triton refugee, followed right behind the senator. "I didn't want to go skydiving today anyway."

  "Shit. Just what we need is a couple of loose cannon civilians," Washington said under his breath. "Clay, keep them covered! Kootie on me!"

  "Yes sir," Sergeant Jackson said. "They're covered sir. Shelly, get those two down in the hole better and dig out the bottom a little deeper. We do not draw fire to this foxhole if it can be helped, understood!"

  "Yes sergeant!" Shelly started digging the hole deeper.

  Sergeant Jackson leveled his HVAR across the edge of the foxhole and kept a bead on the fight. His trigger finger itched.

  The second lieutenant and the private leapfrogged each other up the mountain, taking up positions on either side of the senator and the HVAR-toting woman. The four of them started picking targets and bringing them down. They focused on e-suited Seppies but every now and then got a close shot at a Seppy drop tank's joints and other vulnerable spots.

  "Calvin, tell me you are getting all this!" Gail Fehrer patted her cameraman on the back and eased her head up to visor level with the top of the foxhole.

  "Every Pulitzer-winning bit of it, Gail. That senator is one balls-to-the-wall son of a bitch!" Calvin held the camera ball over his head above the rocks and tracked the senator's activities through the view on his cameratech's e-suit visor display. Often he would be distracted by a hand-to-hand mecha encounter on the ground or by an Ares fighter screaming overhead through swarms of enemy planes, missiles, and directed energy blasts. Calvin was getting extreme close-ups of war from an inside-the-battle view. It would indeed be Pulitzer material.