"Well, where the hell are you?" Moore asked.
"I'm hanging on to the rocks just over the edge of the escarpment just about two hundred meters form you, sir. That is why I can still receive your transmissions. If you will wait I'll reroute your AIC through the infrastructure uplink through the big ship in orbit back down to the appropriate ships. I certainly hope little Deanna is all right. Although I do see two vehicles at the bottom of the ravine with my optical sensors. If you leaned over the edge you could probably contact them. But please be careful, sir."
"Thanks, BIL." Moore waited impatiently for what seemed like forever and wasn't sure he wanted to decide it was safe to get up yet, especially since they were out of ammo. All of them were out of ammo.
On the other hand, he was getting more and more worried about his daughter and his wife. Had they made it to the bottom safely? Had they been evacuated out?
I'm sure they made it, sir, Abigail said. BIL is connecting me now. I'll let you know in a few seconds.
"Sergeant Clay!"
"Yes sir, second lieutenant?"
"As we are completely out of ammo and for all intents and purposes out of this fight, why don't we see about finding those evac ships and see if we can find any surviving wounded out there," Second Lieutenant Thomas Washington said. Moore approved of the young lieutenant and thought to himself that he would watch him closely and maybe even see what he could do to help the young Marine's career.
The second lieutenant stood and ran a quick sensor sweep over the battlefield and could see no immediate threats. Since they had reset their software Moore suspected that the Marine would trust his suit's sensors. Washington whistled in amazement and horror as he looked across the battlefield at the dead mecha and soldiers and pockmarked and bloodstained Martian landscape. Moore decided to give it a few seconds to see if the Marine was shot down, and when he wasn't, joined him.
Moore rose to his feet cautiously beside the second lieutenant. The sun was beyond the overhead point and was beginning on its way into evening. The evening sun glinted off the hundreds of fragments of torn-asunder mecha and armor suits. Moore whistled at the site.
"Hell of a fight, hey, Lieutenant?" Private First Class Vineat "Kootie" Kudaf said.
Abigail? the senator asked his AIC.
I'm communicating with them now, senator. The evac ships set down at the bottom of the escarpment. They have your wife and daughter and Reyez Jones safe and sound, sir. Apparently Deanna would like to jump off the cliff again as she thought it was a lot of fun.
That's my girl.
Yes sir. Acorn didn't fall far did it?
Humph.
But the battle still rages in orbit and the pilots of the evac ships tell us that they have no place to return to so they are staying put for the moment.
What about the naval base to the south? Can't we go there?
For right now sir, they say their instructions are to stay put out of harm's way.
Then tell them that we are clear up here and could use help with wounded.
Yes, Senator.
Timmy! Captain Jefferson wanted to avoid a suicide run with the Madira if at all possible but things weren't looking good at the moment. The DEGs had bought them critical minutes that the fighter squadrons put to good use and in a heroic last effort one of his Marines had ripped the weapon of mass destruction from the bowels of the Seppy hauler and rocketed it out to detonate harmlessly in space. But that goddamned hauler was still falling on a collision course toward Mons City and would hit in minutes if they couldn't break it up. Or at least push it out of the way.
Aye sir?
Get the vulnerable attitude control point of that hauler transmitted to the squadron AICs! Get all the firepower available focused on that spot to push the hauler off course.
Aye, sir! Uncle Timmy had already analyzed the Seppy haulers and discovered the best places to concentrate fire in order to make its attitude go unstable or push its trajectory an arc second to the west so it would miss Mons City—or at least the main dome. Since the Marine FM-12 pilots had gone on board the enemy ship and taken out the guidance and control power-plant stabilizers, it was now a matter of just pushing the ship hard enough to make it tumble. If they couldn't make it tumble and burn up on reentry then they'd push it over some. But it was a big ship with lots of forward momentum and worse was that just as the Marines were entering the ship the Seppies had put a roll on it so that it was spinning about its axis of travel, giving it gyroscopic stability. Therefore the concentrated firepower at the nose of the ship was causing it to precess about its axis just like a tilted planet does about its poles or a top does before it falls to the ground. It would be hard to push it over. It would be hard to move. And if they didn't, millions in Mons City were about to have a very bad day. A. Very. Bad. Day.
"CO Madira! CO Thatcher!" squawked over the command net.
"Go, Thatcher."
"Wally, we've got propulsion and that's about it! Life support is failing rapidly and I'm ordering all hands to abandon ship. I don't think the Thatcher is salvageable after this. She's been a good boat," the CO of the Margaret Thatcher informed the fleet commander. "But I've got an idea."
"What do you need, Sharon?" The CO was now down to three supercarriers and most of them had only missiles and cannons and were limping along at half normal space propulsion. The DEGs had overheated and fused on all of them and they were all venting life support into space. The Separatists' attack on the fleet had been brilliantly orchestrated and had completely crippled the U.S. Navy fleet and whittled it away to only three out of eighteen supercarriers remaining in any form of useful operation. The U.S. military might had been taken totally unaware and beaten to a pulp, a bloody messy pulp. General Ahmi had executed the battle nearly flawlessly, much more flawlessly than a simple terrorist could. This had been a brilliantly developed and executed plan with multiple waves and levels of attack ranging from global ground force movement, to electronic and cyber warfare, to air and space combat. It had been a brilliant command of an army that nobody even suspected to exist.
The plan was so well thought out that there were multiple failsafes. Even after the Marines had taken the WMD threat from the disabled falling ship, it was still a massive enough ship that it would cause tremendous damage to the city on the planet below if it crashed on a valid target. Its trajectory had been planned well. From the second that ship entered normal space from the hyperspace conduit, even while it was deploying its hundreds of fighters and mecha, even after its propulsion plant had been destroyed, and even after it had been defanged of its weapon of mass destruction, it was still a serious threat that took all the attention of the surviving fleet, which was still having to fight for its life against the surviving Separatist fleet ships. The death toll would be considerably more than the tens of millions if the entire Tharsis region had gone up in a supernuclear fireball, but still with just the crashing ship it would be pushing the millions.
"Well, sir," squawked the net. "If you would kindly run blocker for us, I was thinking about running one right up the gut just like we did back in the Army-Navy game our senior year," Captain Sharon "Fullback" Walker, a former aviator turned command crew said. Fullback had been her call sign because in her Navy Academy days she had played fullback for the Navy, which was not a position that many females played. It was especially not a position that many females played with the expertise and drive that Sharon had. Sharon was built more like a stack of bricks, a big stack of bricks, than a brick shithouse, and had a face that her mother might say was "handsome." On the other hand, she could have been a champion body builder but she was more ambitious and way smarter. And on top of that she could run a four-point-one-second forty-yard dash and do it over and over for four quarters while being hit hard by mean Army linebackers. She was definitely Navy fleet officer material. Captain Wallace Jefferson had played lineman a couple of the years that Sharon played and they had been teammates for a very long time. He was used to making holes for he
r to run through.
"Roger that, Sharon! I-formation through the two-hole on the snap!" The CO of the Sienna Madira didn't have time to reflect on the fact that he had just authorized his friend and teammate and fellow officer to carry out a suicide mission. Perhaps she had an escape plan. After all, Sharon was smart. But it didn't matter, because Sharon was a soldier and she would do her job whatever it took. It was fourth and one and they by God needed a first down.
Timmy, spread the word to the fleet to block for the Thatcher!
Aye sir!
"All fleet vessels, all fighters, all mecha, form blocking formation and protect the Margaret Thatcher and make sure that she makes it to the enemy kamikaze!"
"XO Burley," Fullback called to her second officer. The Thatcher had been a good tough ship and she had enjoyed her command on board her for the last four years. But all good things must come to an end, she thought. Her ship had taken a beating and she was going to give it a sendoff that was honorable!
"Aye sir!"
"Are the troops away?" She scanned the crew manifest briefly in her mind but was more concerned with moving SIFs around to weak points in the hull and rerouting power as needed. Since the majority of the engineering crew had abandoned ship most of those functions were rerouted to the bridge. There were a few crewmen still aboard, those who couldn't see it in their hearts to leave the ship, and those brave stupid souls had stayed behind to work diligently at their tasks to keep the ship functioning as it was being torn apart around them by enemy fire and soon by one mother of a collision.
"All escape pods are launched, Captain."
"Helmsman, you have conn discretion to give us the shortest path for a collision with that damned hauler!" Fullback ordered her young helmsman.
"Aye sir!"
"Burley, get me every ounce of structural integrity field you can get me on my forward hull!"
"Aye sir!" the XO replied.
"Helmsman Lee, get us moving at full-out balls-to-the-wall maximum acceleration!" the CO ordered.
"Aye sir! Helm at max accel," the ship's pilot acknowledged.
"Time and trajectory to impact, navigator?" She turned her head and looked through her virtual sphere of the ship and the battle around it at the young lieutenant junior grade who had volunteered to stay at his post.
"Trajectory is plotted now, ma'am. Forty-two seconds to impact!" Lieutenant JG Joey Gugino replied.
"Understood." Fullback nodded.
The Thatcher rocked hard to starboard, vibrated and shuddered harshly, and then damped out as the inertial dampening system compensated. At least it was still working, even though it did seem to be a bit sluggish and erratic. Warning klaxons would have blasted the bridge had the captain not had them turned off a long time prior. The helmsman managed to hold her balance but sprained her wrist doing so. The XO was flung forward into the front window and bumped his head against it so hard he was knocked unconscious or worse. The inertial dampening field clearly was no longer working uniformly within the bridge and the health status monitors showed that that was the case throughout the ship.
Her AIC informed her that the XO's AIC had alerted it that Burley's neck was broken but he was still breathing. It didn't matter. They were all going to be dead in a few tens of seconds anyway. She just wanted to take that damned Seppy hauler with them.
"Captain, we're taking heavy missile fire on aft sections," the navigator said as he looked up from the CDC interface screens. The CDC had been evacuated and rerouted sensors to the bridge. The navigator was the CDC now.
"We won't be needing those sections in a few more seconds anyway," Fullback replied. "Helmsman, stay on course full acceleration!" She continued juggling power around the ship's SIFs, attitude control systems, and propulsion systems.
"She's driving like a goddamned beached whale, ma'am, but she's moving where I point her!" Helmsman Lee shouted over the ringing and pounding from the hull being blasted to hell.
Chapter 23
2:21 PM Mars Tharsis Standard Time
"Rabies, Rabies! Got a Seppy bot motherfucker sneakin' across the bridge hull—got it?" BreakNeck alerted his boss. Rabies was closest to that part of the Thatcher and he could get there quickest. "Guns, guns, guns." BreakNeck trailed off after a Seppy Gnat that just passed him head-to-head at several hundred kilometers per hour relative.
"Roger that, BreakNeck! Mmmfff!" Rabies pulled back on the HOTAS into a full reversal of his acceleration path and rolled over, going full throttle into a dive at the bridge of the supercarrier.
"Warning maximum g-loading. Warning pilot blackout probable," the "Bitching Betty" sounded in Rabies' cockpit.
"No . . . fucking . . . kidding!" he screamed, and squeezed his abs and bit the hell out of his TMJ mouthpiece. Pure oxygen flushed his face, helping keep him alert. Rabies shook his head and normalized his flight path to something more humanly tolerable.
It would have been a damned sight more tolerable a flight path if it weren't for all the enemy fire and debris and shit in his way. Debris was venting upward explosively from every bulkhead and deck vent of the once pristine supercarrier, and it looked like hell hung over, nicotine deprived, and on a bad hair day to boot at the moment.
"Shit Rabies, on your six too! Mooove Rabies! Move!" BreakNeck shouted as he took on fire himself. "Goddamnit, Fox three!"
"Got it! Guns, guns, guns!" Rabies went to guns to track in on the Stinger pounding across the bridge of the ship and yawed hard left one hundred and eighty degrees to get a firing solution on the Gnat that was taking station on his six. "Uhg. Fox three!" he yelled, and probably would have vomited if he hadn't already puked up everything in his stomach during the deathblossom moments before. The mecha-to-mecha missile burned from beneath the wing of the snub-nosed fighter on a short and abrupt path through the tail of the Seppy fighter plane. The purple ion trail the missile left behind tracked right up to the orange-white exploding fireball that was once an enemy fighter plane.
Pull out, Rabies! His AIC warned him as the deck of the supercarrier rushed up at him.
He cursed and yawed and rolled the fighter back to normal nose-forward into the dive and then yanked back on the HOTAS with his left hand and pushed left and forward with his right hand as he passed through the expanding fireball of the exploding Stinger mecha. Debris and plasma whirled and clanged against the fighter and a large chunk of the exploding mecha's empennage slammed into the nose of the fighter, pounding the armor plating loose at the laser-weld joints. He passed by the bridge windows so closely that he could see the faces of the crew inside and could have sworn he saw one of them hit the deck. As the supercarrier rushed by underneath his cockpit he pulled the ship up and away from it.
"Warning, enemy radar lock on! Warning, structural integrity at minimum safe levels! Warning enemy missile launched."
"Goddamnit! Guns, guns, guns!" Rabies went to guns to track the incoming missile but there was no time and flying though that fireball did major damage to his plane. It was reacting sluggishly to his control commands and the HOTAS was erratic.
"Warning impact imminent!"
Eject Rabies! Eject!
"Eject, eject, eject!" he screamed, and pulled the red lever and was flung hard away from the ship almost immediately. The Seppy missile impacted the fighter less than a second later. The debris from the explosion slammed hard against his ejection seat, sending him spinning and careening uncontrollably through space into a hornet's nest of friendly and enemy mecha, cannon fire, DEG bolts, and exploding debris fields all around him. A shitstorm of bad news zinged past him in every direction at hundreds of kilometers per hour or more.
"Oh, fuck!" Rabies yelled at the top of his lungs as a hot slag of debris whipped through his right arm taking it off just below the elbow. A tiny spurt of red blood had time to escape before his e-suit resealed itself. But Rabies never saw it, because he was spinning wildly out of control. The ejection seat dampening thrusters tried to compensate, but the spin was too much angular momentum fo
r the thrusters to overcome. The impact of the debris made the wild random spin of his ejection seat even worse than it had been before and Rabies' day just kept getting worse.
A problem with debris fields in space is that if there is one piece of debris there are probably more—lots more. Almost as soon as the searing pain from his severed arm registered in his mind more debris cut through his body, ripping gashes in his abdomen and back and severing his left leg almost at the hip, and several smaller-millimeter diameter pieces passed through him like HVAR rounds. The last thing Lieutenant Armando "Rabies" Chavez heard was his own terrified bloodcurdling screams as one of the pieces of the exploded debris slammed through his helmet faceplate, killing him instantly as it passed out the back side of his head.
"All hands, this is the captain. If you are still with us, you have fought well and it has been my honor. Brace for impact! Shit . . . " The CO of the Margaret Thatcher hit the deck reflexively as a Seppy Stinger exploded just outside the bridge window, splattering the armored transparent material with debris from the fireball. Just as the fireball began to dissipate, milliseconds later a Navy Ares fighter punched through it with its cannons firing full auto. The fireball formed a collapsing plasma ring from the effects of the fighter passing through it at high speeds. Almost as soon as the fighter pulled away from the ship it was hit by a Seppy missile and blown asunder into a streaming red plasma debris field. The pilot had been able to eject but was consumed by the fireball debris of his exploding ship almost immediately.
"Thanks and Godspeed, pilot," Fullback whispered under her breath.
The ship began to list hard to starboard again but this time not as violently. The captain watched the health monitors in her head. The entire rear port sections had been blown out. Atmosphere, fluids, and debris jetted from the destroyed section, pushing the supercarrier slightly off course and giving it a yaw.
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